thus furnishing a demonstration, very inconvenient for himself, of the small value of the liberty and sovereignty which had just been solemnly assured to the Campanians by the Carthaginian general.  On the other hand, the south Italian Greeks adhered to the Roman alliance—­a result to which the Roman garrisons no doubt contributed, but which was still more due to the very decided dislike of the Hellenes towards the Phoenicians themselves and towards their new Lucanian and Bruttian allies, and their attachment on the other hand to Rome, which had zealously embraced every opportunity of manifesting its Hellenism, and had exhibited towards the Greeks in Italy an unwonted gentleness.  Thus the Campanian Greeks, particularly Neapolis, courageously withstood the attack of Hannibal in person:  in Magna Graecia Rhegium, Thurii, Metapontum, and Tarentum did the same notwithstanding their very perilous position.  Croton and Locri on the other hand were partly carried by storm, partly forced to capitulate, by the united Phoenicians and Bruttians; and the citizens of Croton were conducted to Locri, while Bruttian colonists occupied that important naval station.  The Latin colonies in southern Italy, such as Brundisium, Venusia, Paesturn, Cosa, and Cales, of course maintained unshaken fidelity to Rome.  They were the strongholds by which the conquerors held in check a foreign land, settled on the soil of the surrounding population, and at feud with their neighbours; they, too, would be the first to be affected, if Hannibal should keep his word and restore to every Italian community its ancient boundaries.  This was likewise the case with all central Italy, the earliest seat of the Roman rule, where Latin manners and language already everywhere preponderated, and the people felt themselves to be the comrades rather than the subjects of their rulers.  The opponents of Hannibal in the Carthaginian senate did not fail to appeal to the fact that not one Roman citizen or one Latin community had cast itself into the arms of Carthage.  This groundwork of the Roman power could only be broken up, like the Cyclopean walls, stone by stone.

Attitude of the Romans

Such were the consequences of the day of Cannae, in which the flower of the soldiers and officers of the confederacy, a seventh of the whole number of Italians capable of bearing arms, perished.  It was a cruel but righteous punishment for the grave political errors with which not merely some foolish or miserable individuals, but the Roman people themselves, were justly chargeable.  A constitution adapted for a small country town was no longer suitable for a great power; it was simply impossible that the question as to the leadership of the armies of the city in such a war should be left year after year to be decided by the Pandora’s box of the balloting-urn.  As a fundamental revision of the constitution, if practicable at all, could not at least be undertaken now, the practical superintendence of the war, and