Niebuhr's History of Rome (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1845 Excerpt: ...sued for peace. Soon after this the republic was disabled for foreign enterprises by internal dissensions about the Licinian bills: these circumstances rendered the senate by no means unwilling to listen to terms of peace, which Velitrae and Praeneste probably concluded with Rome about this time. A war with the Gauls, in which Camillus gained his last laurels, is also spoken of at the close of the present period, in 383. Polybius and Fabius, however, knew nothing of this war, and on comparing the account of it with that of the victory gained by L. Camillus in 401, the identity of the two wars is so striking, that there is no doubt, that the later Roman annalists are here guilty of their peculiar vice of repeating a story and throwing it back into an earlier, whether mythical or historical, period. CHAP. XL. CIVIL HISTORY DOWN TO THE YEAR 374. The ferment which produced the Licinian laws did not arise, like the commotions which led to the Publilian laws' and to the appointment of the decemvirs, from the pretensions of the higher class of the plebeians to more, freedom and a due share of civil offices, but from the misery which the Gallic invasion had left behind it. Few free states have passed through revolutions, brought on by general distress, without receiving a death-blow to their liberty. It was, however, the peculiar glory of Rome, that twice in its history such an excitement gave rise to a higher and more desirable state of legal freedom. Since the time of the decemvirate the prosperity of the nation had much increased; a conciliatory spirit was diffused between the orders: the aggrandisement of the public domain had increased the fortunes of the patricians, whilst a number of plebeian families had acquired some little property by assignments of land, ...