Despondency of the Romans

The temper of the burgesses was singularly depressed.  After the battle on the Tolenus, when the dead bodies of the consul and the numerous citizens of note who had fallen with him were brought back from the neighbouring battlefield to the capital and were buried there; when the magistrates in token of public mourning laid aside their purple and insignia; when the government issued orders to the inhabitants of the capital to arm en masse; not a few had resigned themselves to despair and given up all as lost.  It is true that the worst despondency had somewhat abated after the victories achieved by Caesar at Acerrae and by Strabo in Picenum:  on the news of the former the wardress in the capital had been once more exchanged for the dress of the citizen, on the news of the second the signs of public mourning had been laid aside; but it was not doubtful that on the whole the Romans had been worsted in this passage of arms:  and above all the senate and the burgesses had lost the spirit, which had formerly borne them to victory through all the crises of the Hannibalic war.  They still doubtless began war with the same defiant arrogance as then, but they knew not how to end it as they had then done; rigid obstinacy, tenacious persistence had given place to a remiss and cowardly disposition.  Already after the first year of war their outward and inward policy became suddenly changed, and betook itself to compromise.  There is no doubt that in this they did the wisest thing which could be done; not however because, compelled by the immediate force of arms, they could not avoid acquiescing in disadvantageous conditions, but because the subject-matter of dispute—­the perpetuation of the political precedence of the Romans over the other Italians—­was injurious rather than beneficial to the commonwealth itself.  It sometimes happens in public life that one error compensates another; in this case cowardice in some measure remedied the mischief which obstinacy had incurred.

Revolution in Political Processes

The year 664 had begun with a most abrupt rejection of the compromise offered by the insurgents and with the opening of a war of prosecutions, in which the most passionate defenders of patriotic selfishness, the capitalists, took vengeance on all those who were suspected of having counselled moderation and seasonable concession.  On the other hand the tribune Marcus Plautius Silvanus, who entered on his office on the 10th of December of the same year, carried a law which took the commission of high treason out of the hands of the capitalist jurymen, and entrusted it to other jurymen who were nominated by the free choice of the tribes without class—­ qualification; the effect of which was, that this commission was converted from a scourge of the moderate party into a scourge of the ultras, and sent into exile among others its own author, Quintus Varius, who was blamed by the public voice for the worst democratic outrages—­the poisoning of Quintus Metellus and the murder of Drusus.