This disaster was the capture and sack of Rome by a wandering tribe of Gauls from the north, who descended the valley of the Tiber, took the Romans by surprise, and utterly routed them at the little river Allia, twelve miles from the city. These Gauls were formidable in battle and fairly frightened the Romans; but, like other Celtic peoples, they were incapable of settling down into a solid State, or of making good use of their victories. They vanished as quickly as they had come, and left nothing behind them but an indelible memory of the terror they had inspired, and many stories of the agony of that catastrophe. The most characteristic of these shows the veneration of the Romans for what was perhaps their greatest political institution, the Senate. The citizens had fled to the Capitol, where they contrived to hold out till relief came; but meanwhile the older Senators, men who were past the age of fighting, determined to meet their death, and devoted themselves, according to an old religious practice resorted to in extreme peril, to the infernal deities. Each then took his seat in state robes at the door of his house. There the Gauls found them and marvelled, taking them for more than human. At last a Gaul ventured to stroke the beard of one of them named Papirius, who immediately struck him with his ivory wand: he was instantly slain, and of the rest not one survived. We need not ask whether this story is true or not, for it is impossible to test it: but it is truly Roman in feeling, and from a religious point of view it falls in line with others that were told of the sacrifice of the individual for the State.

This experience was a terrible discipline for the Romans, but no sooner had the Gauls departed than they began to turn it to practical account. They saw that they must secure the country to the north of them more effectually, and they did so by making large portions of it Roman territory, and by establishing two colonies there, i.e. garrisoned fortresses on military roads. Then they turned to deal with their own confederates, who perhaps had felt a secret satisfaction in the humiliation of a leader of whom they were jealous, and were now, especially the two great neighbouring cities of Tibur and PrÆneste (Tivoli and Palestrina), beginning to rise in open revolt. Knowing what happened afterwards, we can say that these Latin cities were standing in the way of Italian progress: but to the ancient city-state independence was the very salt of life.

All public records and materials for history, except those engraved on stone, were destroyed in the capture and burning of Rome by the Gauls, so that up to this time Roman “history” is not really worthy of the name. But from this time onward certain official records were preserved, and we gradually pass into an age which may truly be called historical. In detail it will still be questionable, chiefly owing to the tendency of Roman leading families to glorify the deeds of their own ancestors at the expense of truth, and so to hand on false accounts to the age when history first came to be written down. But in the fourth and third centuries B.C. it becomes fairly clear in outline. I said in the last chapter that the Romans were curiously destitute of the imaginative faculty. But no people is entirely without imagination, and it is most interesting to find the Romans using their moderate allowance in inventing the details of noble deeds and honourable services to the State. Provoking as it is to us, and provoking even to the Roman historian Livy himself, who was well aware of it, this habit has its own value as a feature of old Roman life and character.

But I must return to the story of the advance of Rome in Italy. It seems clear that after the Gallic invasion the Latins became more and more discontented with Roman policy, which probably aimed at utilising all the resources of the league and at the same time getting complete control of its relations to other powers. We have the text in Greek, preserved by the historian Polybius, of a treaty with Carthage, then the greatest naval power in the Mediterranean, which well illustrates this: the date is 348 B.C. Rome acts for Latium in negotiating this treaty; and Carthage undertook not to molest the Latin cities, provided that they remained faithful to Rome; nay, even to restore to the power of the leading city any revolting Latin community that might fall into their hands. This plainly shows that revolt was expected, and a few years later it became general. But in spite of the support of the Campanians in the rich volcanic plain farther south, and indeed of danger so great that it gave rise to another story of the “devotio” of a Roman consul to the infernal deities on behalf of the State, the Latins were completely beaten at the battle of Mount Vesuvius, and the Romans were able so to alter the league as to deprive it of all real claim to be called a federation.

We saw that any citizen of a Latin city could buy and hold property, marry and have legitimate children, in any other Latin city, knowing that he was protected by the law in the enjoyment of these rights. But after the rebellion this was all changed. A citizen could enjoy these rights in his own city, or at Rome, but nowhere else, while a Roman could enjoy them everywhere. A citizen of PrÆneste, for example, could enjoy them at PrÆneste or Rome, but not in the neighbouring cities of Tibur or Tusculum: while a Roman could do business in all these cities, and be supported in all his dealings by the Roman law, which now began gradually to permeate the whole of Latium. Rome thus had a monopoly of business with the other cities, which were effectually isolated from each other. To us this seems a cruel and selfish policy, and so in itself it was. But we must remember that Rome had been all but destroyed off the face of the earth, and that the Latins had done nothing, so far as we know, to help her. To resist another such attack as that of the Gauls, it was absolutely necessary for Rome to control the whole military resources of Latium, and this she could not do in a loose and equal federation. She was liable not only to assaults from the Gauls, but from Etruscans, and, as we shall see directly, from Samnites, and, if we find that in the struggle for existence she was at times unjust, we may remember that there has hardly been a successful nation of which the same might not be said. She saw that Latium must become Roman if either Rome or the Latins were to survive, and she devised the principle of isolation with this object.

From this time all Latins served in Roman armies nominally as allies, but in reality as subjects; and all Latins who became Roman citizens served in the Roman legions. When a military colony was founded, it might be either Roman or Latin; but a Latin colony meant not necessarily a collection of Latins; it might admit any one—Roman, Latin or other, who threw in his lot with the new city and accepted the two rights of trade and marriage described above. Thus the term Latin came to mean not so much a man of a certain stock as a man with a certain legal position, and so it continued for many centuries, while the new power rising to prominence in the world came to be known not as Latin, but as Roman.

The last and decisive battle with the Latins took its name, as we saw, from Mount Vesuvius, and the reader who knows the map of Italy will ask how it came to be fought so far south of Latium, in the large and fertile plain of Campania, near the modern city of Naples. The answer is that a powerful State, such as Rome was now becoming, is liable to be appealed to by weaker communities when in trouble; and the Campanians, attacked by the hill-men from the central mountainous region of the Samnites, had appealed for help to Rome. This was given, but the Romans found it necessary to make peace with these Samnites, and left the Campanians in the lurch, and then the latter threw in their lot with the Latins, and the Latin war drifted south to Campania. At the end of that war they were treated in much the same way as the Latins; and thus Rome now found herself presiding with irresistible force over a territory that included both the plains of western Italy and all its most valuable land, and over a confederacy in which all the advantages were on her side, and all the resources of the members under her control.

But to be mistress of these two plains was not as yet to be mistress of Italy. Those plains, and especially the southern and more valuable one, had to be defended from the mountaineers of the central highlands of the peninsula: a region which the reader should at this point of our story study carefully in his map. Towards the end of the Latin war these highlanders, Samnites, as the Romans called them, had ceased raiding the Campanian plain, for they in their turn had to defend southern Italy against an unexpected enemy. The strong and wealthy Greek merchant-city of Tarentum, just inside the “heel” of Italy, destined to play an important part in Italian history for the next century, had lately had its lands raided by the Samnites and their kin the Lucanians to the south of them, and had called in Greeks from oversea to help them. Here we come into touch with Greek history, just at the time when Alexander the Great was the leading figure in the Greek world. A Spartan king came over to aid Tarentum, and lost his life in so doing; then Alexander of Epirus was induced to come, an uncle of the great conqueror: and after a period of success against the Samnites, he was assassinated. It is said that Rome came to an understanding with him, and it is likely enough; there must have been men in the great Council at Rome who were already accustomed to look far ahead, and keep themselves informed of what was going on far away in Italy and even beyond the Italian seas. Her long struggle for existence had taught her venerable statesmen the arts of diplomacy, and we are not surprised to learn that after the death of Alexander she began to form alliances in that far country between the Samnites and Tarentum, much of which was rich and fertile, in order that when the inevitable struggle with the hill-men should come, she might have them enclosed between two foes—herself and Latium on the north and west, and the Apulians and Greeks in the south and east. It seemed as if her power and prestige must continually go forward, or collapse altogether; the same alternative that faced the English in India in the eighteenth century and later. In neither case did the advancing power fully realise what the future was to be.

The inevitable struggle with the Samnites came, and lasted many years. We need not pursue it in detail, and indeed the details are quite untrustworthy as they have come down to us; but one episode in it is told so explicitly and has become so famous, that it deserves a place in our sketch as showing that hard feeling of national self-interest, without a touch of chivalry, that is gradually emerging as the guide of Roman action in her progress towards universal dominion.

A strong Roman army, under the command of both consuls, was pushing to the south through the mountains, and fell into a trap in a defile called the Caudine Forks,[3] a name never forgotten by the Romans. All attempts to escape were vain, and they were forced to capitulate. The terms dictated by Pontius the Samnite general were these: the consuls were to bind themselves on behalf of the Senate to agree to evacuate Samnium and Campania and the fortresses (coloniÆ) which had been planted there, and to make peace with the Samnites as with an equal power. The consuls bound themselves by a solemn rite, and the army was allowed to go home, after being sent under the yoke, i.e. under a kind of archway consisting of one spear resting on two upright ones: this was an old Italian custom of dealing with a conquered army, which may have originally had a religious signification. When the disgraced legions reached Rome, and the consuls summoned the Senate to ratify their bond with Pontius, the Fathers, as they were called, positively refused to do so. The consuls and all who had made themselves responsible for the terms were sent back to Pontius as his prisoners, but not the army. His indignation was great, for he knew that Samnium had lost her chance, and would never have it again. The consuls, of course, had no power to bind the Senate, and the Samnite terms were such as the Senate could not accept as the result of a single disaster caused by a general’s blunder: that was not the way in which the Romans carried on war. But the disgraced army should have been sent back too, and the Senate and people knew it. The speech which the later Roman historian puts into the mouth of Pontius to express his indignation, shows that some feeling of shame at this dishonourable action had come down in the minds of many generations.

The last effort of this long struggle against Rome was a desperate attempt to combine the forces of Samnites, Etruscans and Gauls: the idea was to separate her armies and thus crush her in detail. Even this was a failure, and without going into the doubtful stories of the fighting, we may ask why it was so. Beyond all doubt the Roman power was for a time in very great peril; but in the end it prevailed, and this is a good moment for pausing to think about the advantages that Rome’s genius for organisation had secured for herself; advantages which no other Italian stock seemed able to acquire.

First, she had learnt how to use with profit her geographical position; to north, south and east she could send armies to strike in different directions at the same time; and she must have devised some means (though we do not know the method) of keeping up communication between these armies. The stories seem to suggest that the commanders of this period belonged to a very few noble families whose members had spent their whole lives in fighting—not indeed merely in fighting battles, but in carrying on war: the Fabii and Papirii are particularly prominent. These veterans must have come to know the art of war thoroughly, as it could then be applied in Italy, and also the details of the country in which they had to fight.

Secondly, the efforts of these tough old heroes were admirably seconded by the home government, i.e. the Senate, because this assembly consisted of men of the like military experience, and the leaders among them were themselves generals, men who had been consuls and had led armies. Though at this very time, as we shall see, there was a strong tendency towards popular government, yet in the direction of war we find no sign that the monopoly of the old families was questioned; and as their interests and their experience were all of the same type, they could act together with a unanimity which was probably unknown to their enemies. The fact that Rome always at this time, and indeed at all times, negotiated and kept in touch with the aristocracies in the Italian cities, shows how completely the noble families had gained control over the management of diplomacy as well as war.

Thirdly, Rome was now beginning to learn the art of securing the conquered country by means of military roads and fortresses (coloniÆ): an art to which she held firmly throughout her history, and to which the geography even of Roman Britain bears ample testimony. My readers will do well to fix their attention for a moment on three of these colonies which were founded during this long war; they are by no means the only ones, but they serve well to show the extent of the Roman power in Italy at this time, as well as the means taken to secure it. The first is Narnia, far up the Tiber valley (founded 299 B.C.) on a military road afterwards known as the Flaminian Way: this was an outpost, with quick communication with Rome, against both Etruscans and Gauls. The second, FregellÆ, a city with a sad future, was some seventy miles to the south-east of Rome, on a road called the Latin Way, but beyond the limits of Latium proper, commanding, in fact, the passes between Latium and Campania; it was in a beautiful situation near the junction of two rivers, and became in time a most prosperous city. For the third colony we must look much further south on the map, at the south-eastern end of the mass of the Samnite highlands: this was Venusia, with 20,000 colonists, destined to separate the Samnites from the Greeks and other inhabitants of the heel and toe of Italy. It stood on the most famous of all the great roads, the Via Appia, which after leaving Rome ran nearer the coast than the Latin Way, but joined it in Campania, and then ran across the hilly country to Venusia, and eventually to Brundisium (Brindisi), which also became a colony fifty years later.

These three advantages, duly considered, will help the reader to understand to some extent how the prize of Italian presidency fell to Rome and not to another city: and they will also explain why Rome emerged safe and stronger than ever from another peril that was now to threaten her existence.

The great colony of Venusia, as we saw, was meant to separate the Greeks of southern Italy from the highlanders of Samnium. Of the Greek cities by far the most powerful was Tarentum, then ruled by a selfish and ill-conditioned democracy, apt to be continually worrying its neighbours. That Rome should sooner or later come into collision with Tarentum was inevitable; but the Senate tried to avoid this, knowing that the Tarentines would appeal to some Greek power beyond sea to help them. Now just across the Adriatic, in Epirus, there was a king of Greek descent who was looking out for a chance of glory by imitating Alexander the Great; for Alexander’s marvellous career had stirred up a restless spirit of adventure in the free-lances of the generation that succeeded him. Pyrrhus seems to have fancied that he could act the part of a knight-errant in freeing the Greeks of the west from the barbarians—from the Romans that is, and the Carthaginians, who were at the moment in alliance. When the inevitable quarrel with Rome came, and Tarentum invited him, he crossed the sea with a small but capable force, determined to put an end to this new power that was threatening to swallow up the Greek cities. But he had to learn, and through him the Greek world had to learn as a whole, that the new power was made of sterner stuff than any that had yet arisen in the Mediterranean basin.

Pyrrhus began with a victory, not far from Tarentum; it was won chiefly by some elephants which he had brought with him to frighten the Roman cavalry. This shook the loyalty of many Italian communities, but the Senate was unmoved. The ablest diplomatist in Pyrrhus’s service made no impression on that body of resolute men, trained by long experience to look on a single defeat as only a “regrettable incident” in a long war. “Rome never negotiates while foreign troops are on Italian soil;” so, according to the story, the aged Appius Claudius told the Greek envoy in the Senate-house. Then Pyrrhus tried a march on Rome; but he had to learn, like another invader after him, that the nearer he drew to the city the more difficult his task became. A second victory was far less decisive and almost fruitless, and Pyrrhus most unwisely evacuated Italy. Tarentum had turned against him, unwilling to submit to his discipline, and now that wayward city fell a victim to the Roman power. The king crossed to Sicily to deliver the Sicilian Greeks from Carthage, and this he did brilliantly, but there, too, the fickle Greeks grew tired of him. Returning to Italy, he fought one more battle with the Romans, at Beneventum in Samnium, and lost it. Foiled everywhere, he left Italy, with Rome more firmly established than ever in the supremacy of the whole peninsula: for Tarentum, with its fine harbour, its almost impregnable citadel, and its fleet, fell soon afterwards into the hands of the Romans.

Almost the whole Italian peninsula was now Roman; or perhaps it is truer to say that Rome had become an Italian state. It was a wonderful work: perhaps the most wonderful that Rome ever achieved. The military part of it was the result mainly of constantia, steady perseverance and refusal to accept defeat; the political organisation was the result of good sense and good temper combined with an inflexible will, and a shrewd perception of the real and permanent interests of Rome. In the third century B.C., at which we have now arrived, Italy may be described as a kind of federation, in which each city has its own alliance with the leading one, and no alliance with any other. Each has its own government and administers its own law, but places all its military resources at the disposal of the Roman government. The fighting power of the future was to be Italy under Roman leadership, and all questions of foreign policy were decided by Rome alone. There was no general council of the whole confederacy. The Roman Senate controlled an ever-increasing mass of detailed and varied business, having to deal with Latins, Italians of the old stocks, Etruscans, Greeks and Gauls. How the business was done we cannot tell: not a single contemporary record of it is left. One glimpse of that wonderful Senate at work would be worth all descriptions of the battles of that century.

Before the close of the third century B.C. that Senate, instead of directing a further steady advance, had been forced to defend the State against an invader, in the most terrible life and death struggle ever experienced by any people. But in the next chapter I must pause to try and explain wherein consisted the nerve-power, the mental and material fibre, of the people destined to rule the world.