that fiery trial had not yet been endured.

Impression As to the Insurrection in Rome
Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation
Commission of High Treason

The first blood was thus shed, and Italy was divided into two great
military camps. It is true, as we have seen, that the insurrection
was still very far from being a general rising of the Italian allies;
but it had already acquired an extent exceeding perhaps the hopes of
the leaders themselves, and the insurgents might without arrogance
think of offering to the Roman government a fair accommodation. They
sent envoys to Rome, and bound themselves to lay down their arms in
return for admission to citizenship; it was in vain. The public
spirit, which had been so long wanting in Rome, seemed suddenly to
have returned, when the question was one of obstructing with stubborn
narrow-mindedness a demand of the subjects just in itself and now
supported by a considerable force. The immediate effect of the
Italian insurrection was, just as was the case after the defeats
which the policy of the government had suffered in Africa and Gaul,(11)
the commencement of a warfare of prosecutions, by means of which
the aristocracy of judges took vengeance on those men of the government
whom they, rightly or wrongly, looked upon as the primary cause
of this mischief. On the proposal of the tribune Quintus Varius,
in spite of the resistance of the Optimates and in spite of tribunician
interference, a special commission of high treason--formed, of course,
from the equestrian order which contended for the proposal with
open violence--was appointed for the investigation of the conspiracy
instigated by Drusus and widely ramified in Italy as well as in Rome,
out of which the insurrection had originated, and which now, when
the half of Italy was under arms, appeared to the whole of the indignant
and alarmed burgesses as undoubted treason. The sentences of this
commission largely thinned the ranks of the senatorial party favourable
to mediation: among other men of note Drusus' intimate friend, the young
and talented Gaius Cotta, was sent into banishment, and with difficulty
the grey-haired Marcus Scaurus escaped the same fate. Suspicion went
so far against the senators favourable to the reforms of Drusus, that
soon afterwards the consul Lupus reported from the camp to the senate
regarding the communications that were constantly maintained between
the Optimates in his camp and the en