ole the
Romans had been worsted in this passage of arms: and above all the
senate and the burgesses had lost the spirit, which had formerly
borne them to victory through all the crises of the Hannibalic war.
They still doubtless began war with the same defiant arrogance as then,
but they knew not how to end it as they had then done; rigid obstinacy,
tenacious persistence had given place to a remiss and cowardly
disposition. Already after the first year of war their outward and
inward policy became suddenly changed, and betook itself to compromise.
There is no doubt that in this they did the wisest thing which could
be done; not however because, compelled by the immediate force of
arms, they could not avoid acquiescing in disadvantageous conditions,
but because the subject-matter of dispute--the perpetuation of the
political precedence of the Romans over the other Italians--was
injurious rather than beneficial to the commonwealth itself.
It sometimes happens in public life that one error compensates another;
in this case cowardice in some measure remedied the mischief which
obstinacy had incurred.

Revolution in Political Processes

The year 664 had begun with a most abrupt rejection of the
compromise offered by the insurgents and with the opening of a war
of prosecutions, in which the most passionate defenders of patriotic
selfishness, the capitalists, took vengeance on all those who were
suspected of having counselled moderation and seasonable concession.
On the other hand the tribune Marcus Plautius Silvanus, who entered
on his office on the 10th of December of the same year, carried a
law which took the commission of high treason out of the hands
of the capitalist jurymen, and entrusted it to other jurymen who
were nominated by the free choice of the tribes without class--
qualification; the effect of which was, that this commission was
converted from a scourge of the moderate party into a scourge of the
ultras, and sent into exile among others its own author, Quintus
Varius, who was blamed by the public voice for the worst democratic
outrages--the poisoning of Quintus Metellus and the murder of Drusus.

Bestowal of the Franchise on the Italians Who Remained Faithful--
or Submitted

Of greater importance than this singularly candid political
recantation, was the change in the course of their policy toward
the Italians. Exactly three hundred years had passed since Rome had
last been obliged to submit to the di