suffered comparatively the most.  The soldiers of the better classes and the subaltern officers and equites in a body, either voluntarily or constrained by the -esprit de corps-, declined to receive pay.  The owners of the slaves armed by the state and manumitted after the engagement at Beneventum(3) replied to the bank-commission, which offered them payment, that they would allow it to stand over to the end of the war (540).  When there was no longer money in the exchequer for the celebration of the national festivals and the repairs of the public buildings, the companies which had hitherto contracted for these matters declared themselves ready to continue their services for a time without remuneration (540).  A fleet was even fitted out and manned, just as in the first Punic war, by means of a voluntary loan among the rich (544).  They spent the moneys belonging to minors; and at length, in the year of the conquest of Tarentum, they laid hands on the last long-spared reserve fund (164,000 pounds).  The state nevertheless was unable to meet its most necessary payments; the pay of the soldiers fell dangerously into arrear, particularly in the more remote districts.  But the embarrassment of the state was not the worst part of the material distress.  Everywhere the fields lay fallow:  even where the war did not make havoc, there was a want of hands for the hoe and the sickle.  The price of the -medimnus-(a bushel and a half) had risen to 15 -denarii- (10s.), at least three times the average price in the capital; and many would have died of absolute want, if supplies had not arrived from Egypt, and if, above all, the revival of agriculture in Sicily(4) had not prevented the distress from coming to the worst.  The effect which such a state of things must have had in ruining the small farmers, in eating away the savings which had been so laboriously acquired, and in converting flourishing villages into nests of beggars and brigands, is illustrated by similar wars of which fuller details have been preserved.

The Allies

Still more ominous than this material distress was the increasing aversion of the allies to the Roman war, which consumed their substance and their blood.  In regard to the non-Latin communities, indeed, this was of less consequence.  The war itself showed that they could do nothing, so long as the Latin nation stood by Rome; their greater or less measure of dislike was not of much moment.  Now, however, Latium also began to waver.  Most of the Latin communes in Etruria, Latium, the territory of the Marsians, and northern Campania —­and so in those very districts of Italy which directly had suffered least from the war—­announced to the Roman senate in 545 that thenceforth they would send neither contingents nor contributions, and would leave it to the Romans themselves to defray the costs of a war waged in their interest.  The consternation in Rome was great; but for the moment there were no means of compelling the refractory.  Fortunately