in Italy, even after their admission to Roman citizenship retained unchanged their former communal constitution and Greek as their official language.  At all events, as a consequence of these laws, the circle of Roman burgesses was extraordinarily enlarged by the merging into it of numerous and important urban communities scattered from the Sicilian Straits to the Po; and, further, the country between the Po and the Alps was, by the bestowal of the best rights of allies, as it were invested with the legal expectancy of full citizenship.

Second Year of the War
Etruria and Umbria Tranquillized

On the strength of these concessions to the wavering communities, the Romans resumed with fresh courage the conflict against the insurgent districts.  They had pulled down as much of the existing political institutions as seemed necessary to arrest the extension of the conflagration; the insurrection thenceforth at least spread no farther.  In Etruria and Umbria especially, where it was just beginning, it was subdued with singular rapidity, still more, probably, by means of the Julian law than through the success of the Roman arms.  In the former Latin colonies, and in the thickly-peopled region of the Po, there were opened up copious and now trustworthy sources of aid:  with these, and with the resources of the burgesses themselves, they could proceed to subdue the now isolated conflagration.  The two former commanders-in-chief returned to Rome, Caesar as censor elect, Marius because his conduct of the war was blamed as vacillating and slow, and the man of sixty-six was declared to be in his dotage.  This objection was very probably groundless; Marius showed at least his bodily vigour by appearing daily in the circus at Rome, and even as commander-in-chief he seems to have displayed on the whole his old ability in the last campaign; but he had not achieved the brilliant successes by which alone after his political bankruptcy he could have rehabilitated himself in public opinion, and so the celebrated champion was to his bitter vexation now, even as an officer, unceremoniously laid aside as useless.  The place of Marius in the Marsian army was taken by the consul of this year, Lucius Porcius Cato, who had fought with distinction in Etruria, and that of Caesar in the Campanian army by his lieutenant, Lucius Sulla, to whom were due some of the most material successes of the previous campaign; Gnaeus Strabo retained—­ now as consul—­the command which he had held so successfully in the Picenian territory.

War in Picenum
Asculum Besieged
And Conquered
Subjugation of the Sabellians and Marsians