The History of Rome, Book IV The Revolution

With the abolition of the Macedonian monarchy the supremacy of Rome not only became an established fact from the Pillars of Hercules to the mouths of the Nile and the Orontes, b...

From the time when the defeat of Pyrrhus had put an end to the last war which the Italians had waged for their independence--or, in other words, for nearly two hundred years--th...

About the time when the first pitched battle was fought between Romans and Romans, in the night of the 6th July 671, the venerable temple, which had been erected by the kings, d...

The state of breathless excitement, in which the revolution kept the Roman government by perpetually renewing the alarm of fire and the cry to quench it, made them lose sight of...

The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, became on his death a ruin. His death indeed, like that of his brother, was primarily a mere act of vengeance; but it was at...

This state of suspense and uncertainty existing in Italy when Sulla took his departure for Greece in the beginning of 667 has been already described: the half-suppressed insurre...

For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna the Roman state enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there on the surface. Its dominion extended over t...

Gaius Marius, the son of a poor day-labourer, was born in 599 at the village of Cereatae then belonging to Arpinum, which afterwards obtained municipal rights as Cereatae Marian...

The sixth century was, both in a political and a literary point of view, a vigorous and great age. It is true that we do not find in the field of authorship any more than in tha...

Tiberius Gracchus was dead; but his two works, the distribution of land and the revolution, survived their author. In presence of the starving agricultural proletariate the sena...

From the close of the sixth century the Roman community ruled over the three great peninsulas projecting from the northern continent into the Mediterranean, at least taken as a...

We have traversed a period of ninety years--forty years of profound peace, fifty of an almost constant revolution. It is the most inglorious epoch known in Roman history. It is...

In the great struggle of the nationalities within the wide circuit of the Roman empire, the secondary nations seem at this period on the wane or disappearing. The most important...

Then follows the confession that the tortoise is referred to. Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic tragedians, who on that account were often and sharpl...

2. Italica must have been intended by Scipio to be what was called in Italy forum et -conciliabulum civium Romanorum-; Aquae Sextiae in Gaul had a similar origin afterwards. The...

1. If Cicero has not allowed himself to fall into an anachronism when he makes Africanus say this as early as 625 (de Rep. iii. 9), the view indicated in the text remains perhap...

5. This total number is given by Valerius Maximus, ix. 2. 1. According to Appian (B. C. i. 95), there were proscribed by Sulla nearly 40 senators, which number subsequently rece...

7. These figures are taken from the numbers of the census of 639 and 684; there were in the former year 394, 336 burgesses capable of bearing arms, in the latter 910,000 (accord...

4. The words quoted as Phrygian --Bagaios-- = Zeus and the old royal name --Manis-- have been beyond doubt correctly referred to the Zend -bagha- = God and the Germanic -Mannus-...

6. This is apparent, as is well known, from the further course of events. In opposition to this view stress has been laid on the fact that in Valerius Maximus, vi. 9, 13, Quintu...

4. -Exterae nationes in arbitratu dicione potestate amicitiave populi Romani- (lex repet. v. i), the official designation of the non-Italian subjects and clients as contrasted w...

4. To this occasion belongs his oration -contra legem iudiciariam- Ti. Gracchi--which we are to understand as referring not, as has been asserted, to a law as to the -indicia pu...

1. The whole of the representation that follows is based in substance on the recently discovered account of Licinianus, which communicates a number of facts previously unknown,...

1. In 537 the law restricting re-election to the consulship was suspended during the continuance of the war in Italy, that is, down to 551 (p. 14; Liv. xxvii. 6). But after the...

28. As two quaestors were sent to Sicily, and one to each of the other provinces, and as moreover the two urban quaestors, the two attached to the consuls in conducting war, and...

7. It is not possible to distinguish exactly what belongs to the first and what to the second tribunate of Saturninus; the more especially, as in both he evidently followed out...

7. The statement that no "Greek games" were exhibited in Rome before 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists (--technitai--) and athletes appeared as early as 568...