The History of Rome, Book III eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 707 pages of information about The History of Rome, Book III.

The History of Rome, Book III eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 707 pages of information about The History of Rome, Book III.
their capital was razed, and the inhabitants were dispersed among the surrounding villages.  The doom of the Bruttians was still more severe; they were converted en masse into a sort of bondsmen to the Romans, and were for ever excluded from the right of bearing arms.  The other allies of Hannibal also dearly expiated their offence.  The Greek cities suffered severely, with the exception of the few which had steadfastly adhered to Rome, such as the Campanian Greeks and the Rhegines.  Punishment not much lighter awaited the Arpanians and a number of other Apulian, Lucanian, and Samnite communities, most of which lost portions of their territory.  On a part of the lands thus acquired new colonies were settled.  Thus in the year 560 a succession of burgess-colonies was sent to the best ports of Lower Italy, among which Sipontum (near Manfredonia) and Croton may be named, as also Salernum placed in the former territory of the southern Picentes and destined to hold them in check, and above all Puteoli, which soon became the seat of the genteel -villeggiatura-and of the traffic in Asiatic and Egyptian luxuries.  Thurii became a Latin fortress under the new name of Copia (560), and the rich Bruttian town of Vibo under the name of Valentia (562).  The veterans of the victorious army of Africa were settled singly on various patches of land in Samnium and Apulia; the remainder was retained as public land, and the pasture stations of the grandees of Rome replaced the gardens and arable fields of the farmers.  As a matter of course, moreover, in all the communities of the peninsula the persons of note who were not well affected to Rome were got rid of, so far as this could be accomplished by political processes and confiscations of property.  Everywhere in Italy the non-Latin allies felt that their name was meaningless, and that they were thenceforth subjects of Rome; the vanquishing of Hannibal was felt as a second subjugation of Italy, and all the exasperation and all the arrogance of the victor vented themselves especially on the Italian allies who were not Latin.  Even the colourless Roman comedy of this period, well subjected as it was to police control, bears traces of this.  When the subjugated towns of Capua and Atella were abandoned without restraint to the unbridled wit of the Roman farce, so that the latter town became its very stronghold, and when other writers of comedy jested over the fact that the Campanian serfs had already learned to survive amidst the deadly atmosphere in which even the hardiest race of slaves, the Syrians, pined away; such unfeeling mockeries re-echoed the scorn of the victors, but not less the cry of distress from the down-trodden nations.  The position in which matters stood is shown by the anxious carefulness, which during the ensuing Macedonian war the senate evinced in the watching of Italy, and by the reinforcements which were despatched from Rome to the most important colonies, to Venusia in 554, Narnia in 555, Cosa in 557, and Cales shortly before 570.

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The History of Rome, Book III from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.