communal
organization was simply reproduced in a far more absurd manner than
before. Nowhere perhaps is it so clearly apparent as in this
instance, that in the view of antiquity a free constitution was
inseparable from the appearance of the sovereign people in person in
the primary assemblies, or from a city; and that the great fundamental
idea of the modern republican-constitutional state, viz. the expression
of the sovereignty of the people by a representative assembly--an idea
without which a free state would be a chaos--is wholly modern. Even
the Italian polity, although in its somewhat representative senates
and in the diminished importance of the comitia it approximated to a
free state, never was able in the case either of Rome or of Italia
to cross the boundary-line.

Warlike Preparations

Thus began, a few months after the death of Drusus, in the winter of
663-4, the struggle--as one of the coins of the insurgents represents
it--of the Sabellian ox against the Roman she-wolf. Both sides made
zealous preparations: in Italia great stores of arms, provisions, and
money were accumulated; in Rome the requisite supplies were drawn from
the provinces and particularly from Sicily, and the long-neglected walls
were put in a state of defence against any contingency. The forces
were in some measure equally balanced. The Romans filled up the
blanks in their Italian contingents partly by increased levies from
the burgesses and from the inhabitants--already almost wholly Romanized--
of the Celtic districts on the south of the Alps, of whom 10,000
served in the Campanian army alone,(13) partly by the contingents
of the Numidians and other transmarine nations; and with the aid
of the free cities in Greece and Asia Minor they collected a war
fleet.(14) On both sides, without reckoning garrisons, as many as
100,000 soldiers were brought into the field,(15) and in the ability
of their men, in military tactics and armament, the Italians were
nowise inferior to the Romans.

Subdivision of the Armies on Either Side

The conduct of the war was very difficult both for the insurgents and
for the Romans, because the territory in revolt was very extensive and
a great number of fortresses adhering to Rome were scattered up and
down in it: so that on the one hand the insurgents found themselves
compelled to combine a siege-warfare, which broke up their forces
and consumed their time, with the protection of an extended frontier;