The Historians' History of the World 05

In spite of the higher level of civilisation to which it had risen, the state of Rome, like that of the Samnites, was a state of farmers. But it possessed what the Samnite tribal organisation lacked, a superior political system, which gave it the advantage of the municipal form of government, on exactly the same lines as the municipal republics of Greece. But with this municipal organisation it combined (and therein lay the secret of its success) a capacity for expansion and an ever increasing extension of civil rights which offers the strongest contrast to the churlish spirit of the Greek cities. In the latter, purity of descent and the exclusion of all foreigners from civil rights was an axiom of political life, to which radical democracies, like Athens, clung even more tenaciously than the rest; and the consequence was that every success abroad led to the subjugation of the vanquished under the yoke of the ruling city. Rome, on the contrary, for all her conquests, made no subjects in Italy. In her own vicinity, and in Latium first of all, conquered communities were usually admitted to the Roman political confederacy on equal terms, and allowed to retain local autonomy (as municipia) under Roman supervision. She extended the same system far into middle Italy; the franchise and the right of voting in the Roman popular assemblies (comitia) being withheld only from communities of alien language, like the Etruscan Cærites, and the Campanians of Capua. In other cases, when Rome had vanquished a foe she took possession of a portion of the public lands, and established citizens there as settlers to cultivate the soil; the rest of the citizens retained complete liberty and political autonomy (Rome, however, altering the system of government according to her own good pleasure and taking care that the administration fell into the hands of her own adherents), but were pledged by an everlasting covenant to follow the Roman standards as free allies. Moreover, Rome had founded colonies in the heart of the enemy’s country, daughter-cities organised as independent municipalities, which occupied the same position towards her as formerly (before 336) the cities of the Latin League, and were consequently known as Latin colonies. By this organisation Rome not only maintained possession, in every instance, of the territory she had won, but made provision for a constant supply of sound and capable peasantry, from whose ranks the army was recruited. While retaining, in her political administration, the form of a city, she had in effect far outgrown its limitations and become a great state, with all its forces at the disposal of the government unconditionally. To this circumstance it is due that while the constitution recognised the absolute sovereignty of the people (the abolition of the whole body of aristocratic privilege belongs to this very period)[1] the government remained vested in the hands of the great families of patrician and plebeian descent, and the dignity of office, which was degraded to a mere phantom in the Greek democracies, remained virtually undiminished in Rome. The interests of the farming class and of the dominant families went hand in hand; the former profited by the agrarian policy of expansion on which the latter insisted, and every success abroad, no matter at what cost, consolidated and increased the strength of the community, and led a step farther on the road to supreme dominion.

In numbers, military capacity, and martial ardour, the Samnites were at least a match for the Romans, their generals were possibly superior to those of Rome in ability; the Samnites won more victories than their adversaries in the open field. The Samnites’ farming communities perished through the defects of their political organisation; they could not make a breach in the solid fabric of the might of Rome, nor master the Roman fortresses, even though they might capture one now and again; while, thanks to her superior civilisation and the supplies of money, provisions, and war material furnished by the various cities within her territory, Rome was able to carry on war much more continuously than the Samnite farmer, whose armies could not remain in the field for more than a few weeks at a time, because, like the Peloponnesians in the war with Athens, their stock of provisions was exhausted and they were obliged to return home to till their land. In addition to this disadvantage, all their neighbouring tribes, the clans in the Abruzzi, the Apulians, and for a while even the Lucanians, took the part of Rome.