History of Julius Caesar Vol. 1 of 2. Napoleon III

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220

At the beginning of each consular year, the magistrates or deputies of the towns were obliged to repair to Rome, and the consuls there fixed the contingent which each of them was to furnish according to the list of the census. These lists were drawn up by the local magistrates, who sent them to the Senate, and were renewed every five years, except in the Latin colonies, where they seem to have taken for a constant basis the number of primitive colonists.

221

The country of the Samnites, among others, was completely cut up by these domains.

222

Titus Livius places in the mouth of the consul Decius, in 452, these remarkable words: “Jam ne nobilitatis quidem suæ plebeios pœnitere” (Titus Livius, X. 7); and later still, towards 538, a tribune expresses himself thus: “Nam plebeios nobiles jam eisdem initiatos esse sacris, et contemnere plebem, ex quo contemni desierint a patribus, cœpisse.” (Titus Livius, XXII. 34.)

223

Titus Livius, XIV. 48.

224

We have the proof of this in the condemnation of those who transgressed the law of Stolo. (Titus Livius, X. 13.)

225

Valerius Maximus, IV. iii. 5. – Plutarch, Cato, iii.

226

Valerius Maximus, IV. iii. 6.

227

Valerius Maximus, IV. iii. 9.

228

Titus Livius, IX. 46.

229

“The goods of the debtor, not his body, should be responsible for the debt. Thus all the captured citizens were free, and it was forbidden for ever to put in bonds a debtor.” (Titus Livius, VIII. 28.)

230

Ignorance of the calendar, and of the method of fixing the festivals, left to the pontiffs alone the knowledge of the days when it was permitted to plead.

231

“The lawyers, for fear that their services might become useless in judicial proceedings, invented certain formulæ, in order to make themselves necessary.” (Cicero, Pro Murena, xi.)

232

Titus Livius, Epitome, XI. – Pliny, XVI. x. 37.

233

Cicero, Brutus, C. xiv. – Zonaras, Annales, VIII. 2.

234

“You see here all the principal senators who set you the example. They will partake with you the fatigues and perils of war, although the laws and their age exempt them from carrying arms.” (Speech of the Dictator Postumius to his troops; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, VI. 9.)

235

Titus Livius, X., XII. 49.

236

Valerius Maximus, II. viii. 4, 7.

237

Plutarch, Flamininus, xxviii.

238

Aur. Victor, Ill. Men, xxxvi. and xxvii.

239

Titus Livius, IX. 10

240

“A sedition was already rising between the patricians and the people, and the terror of so sudden a war (with the Tiburtini) stifled it.” (Titus Livius, VII. 12.) – “Appius Sabinus, to prevent the evils which are an inevitable consequence of idleness, joined with want, determined to occupy the people in external wars, in order that, gaining their living for themselves, by finding on the lands of the enemy abundant provisions which were not to be had in Rome, they might render at the same time some service to the State, instead of troubling at an unseasonable moment the senators in the administration of affairs. He said that a town which, like Rome, disputed empire with all others, and was hated by them, could not want a decent pretext for making war; that, if they would judge the future by the past, they would see clearly that all the seditions which had hitherto torn the Republic had never arrived except in time of peace, when people no longer feared anything from without.” (Dionysius of Halicarnassus, IX. 43.)

241

Claudius made war thus in Umbria, and took the town of Camerinum, the inhabitants of which he sold for slaves. (See Valerius Maximus, VI. v. § 1. – Titus Livius, Epitome, XV.) – Camillus, after the capture of Veii, caused the free men to be sold by auction. (Titus Livius, V. 22.) – In 365, the prisoners, the greater part Etruscans, were sold in the same manner. (Titus Livius, VI. 4.) – The auxiliaries of the Samnites, after the battle of Allifæ (447), were sold as slaves to the number of 7,000. (Titus Livius, IX. 42.)

242

“The military port alone contained two hundred and twenty vessels.” (Appian, Punic Wars, VIII. 96, p. 437, ed. Schweighæuser.)

243

Appian, Punic Wars, VIII. 95, p. 436.

244

Strabo, XVII. iii. § 15.

245

Appian, Punic Wars, VIII. 130, p. 490.

246

5,820,000 francs [£232,800]. (Appian, Punic Wars, CXXVII. 486.) Following the labours of MM. Letronne, Böckh, Mommsen, &c., we have admitted for the sums indicated in the course of the present work the following reckonings: —

The as of copper = 1/10 deniers = 5 centimes.

The sestertius = 0.975 grammes = 19 centimes.

The denarius = 3.898 grammes = 75 centimes.

The great sestertius = 100,000 sestertii = 19,000 francs [£760].

The Attic or Euboic talent, of 26 kilogrammes, 196 grammes = 5,821 francs [£232 16s.].

The mina, of 436 grammes = 97 francs.

The drachma, of 4.37 grammes = 97 centimes.

The obolus, of 0.73 grammes = 16 centimes.

The Æginetic talent was equivalent to 8,500 Attic drachmas (37 kilogrammes, 2 gr.) = 8,270 francs [£330 16s.]. The Babylonic silver talent is of 33 kilogrammes, 42 = 7,426 francs [£297]. (See, for details, Mommsen, Römisches Münzwesen, pp. 24-26, 55. Hultsch, Griechische und Römische Metrologie, pp. 135-137.)

247

Nearly 700,000 francs [£28,000]. (Athenæus, XII. lviii. 509, ed. Schweighæuser.)

248

Strabo, XVII. iii. § 15.

249

Scylax of Caryanda, Periplus, p. 51 et seq., ed. Hudson.

250

See the work of Heeren, Ideen über die Politik, den Verkehr, und den Handel der vornehmsten Völker der alten Welt, Part I., Vol. II., secs. v. and vi., p. 163 et seq., 188 et seq. 3rd edit.

251

Athenæus informs us that Polemon had composed an entire treatise on the mantles of the divinities of Carthage. (XII. lviii. 541.)

252

Herodotus, VII. 145. – Polybius, I. 67. – Titus Livius, XXVIII. 41.

253

Reckoning, after Titus Livius, her troops at the time of the second Punic War, we find a force of 291,000 foot and 9,500 horse. (Titus Livius, Books XXI. to XXIX.)

254

Carthage, under certain circumstances, could make daily a hundred and forty shields, three hundred swords, five hundred lances, and a thousand darts for catapults. (Strabo, XVII. iii. § 15.)

255

Strabo, XVII. iii. § 15.

256

In 513, 3,200 Euboic talents (18,627,200 francs [£745,088]); in 516, 1,200 talents (6,985,200 francs [£279,408]); in 552, 10,000 talents (58,210,000 francs [£2,328,400]). Scipio, the first Africanus, brought, besides this, 123,000 pounds weight of gold from this town. (Polybius, I. 62, 63, 88; XV. 18. – Titus Livius, XXX. 37, 45.)

257

Aristotle, Politics, VII. iii. § 5. – Polybius, I. 72.