Notes for Chapter X

1. —­Ide gar prasde panth alion ammi dedukein—­ (i. 102).

2.  II.  VII.  Last Struggles in Italy

3.  The legal dissolution of the Boeotian confederacy, however, took place not at this time, but only after the destruction of Corinth (Pausan. vii. 14, 4; xvi. 6).

4.  The recently discovered decree of the senate of 9th Oct. 584, which regulates the legal relations of Thisbae (Ephemeris epigraphica, 1872, p. 278, fig.; Mitth. d. arch.  Inst., in Athen, iv. 235, fig.), gives a clear insight into these relations.

5.  The story, that the Romans, in order at once to keep the promise which had guaranteed his life and to take vengeance on him, put him to death by depriving him of sleep, is certainly a fable.

6.  The statement of Cassiodorus, that the Macedonian mines were reopened in 596, receives its more exact interpretation by means of the coins.  No gold coins of the four Macedonias are extant; either therefore the gold-mines remained closed, or the gold extracted was converted into bars.  On the other hand there certainly exist silver coins of Macedonia -prima- (Amphipolis) in which district the silver-mines were situated.  For the brief period, during which they must have been struck (596-608), the number of them is remarkably great, and proves either that the mines were very energetically worked, or that the old royal money was recoined in large quantity.

7.  The statement that the Macedonian commonwealth was “relieved of seignorial imposts and taxes” by the Romans (Polyb. xxxvii. 4) does not necessarily require us to assume a subsequent remission of these taxes:  it is sufficient, for the explanation of Polybius’ words, to assume that the hitherto seignorial tax now became a public one.  The continuance of the constitution granted to the province of Macedonia by Paullus down to at least the Augustan age (Liv. xlv. 32; Justin, xxxiii. 2), would, it is true, be compatible also with the remission of the taxes.

CHAPTER XI

The Government and the Governed

Formation of New Parties

The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth of its aristocratic character.  We have already(1) indicated that the plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well as, and in some sense still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for, while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights prevailed, the new constitution set out from a distinction between the senatorial houses who were privileged in point of burgess rights and of burgess usufructs, and the mass of the other citizens.  Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a corresponding opposition were formed; and we have already shown how