Body

37. II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

38. II. III. The Burgess Body

39. II. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

40. We have already mentioned the censorial stigma attached to Publius
Cornelius Rufinus (consul 464, 477) for his silver plate.(II. VIII.
Police) The strange statement of Fabius (in Strabo, v. p. 228) that
the Romans first became given to luxury (--aisthesthae tou plouton--)
after the conquest of the Sabines, is evidently only a historical
version of the same matter; for the conquest of the Sabines falls in
the first consulate of Rufinus.

41. II. V. Colonizations in the Land of the Volsci

42. II. VI. Last Campaigns in Samnium

43. II. VIII. Inland Intercourse in Italy

44. I. III. Localities of the Oldest Cantons

45. I. II. Iapygians

46. II. V. Campanian Hellenism

47. II. VIII. Transmarine Commerce

48. II. VII. The Full Roman Franchise

49. II. VI. Battle of Sentinum

50. II. III. The Burgess-Body

51. II. VIII. Impulse Given to It

52. II. III. New Opposition

53. II. VII. Attempts at Peace

CHAPTER IX

Art and Science

The Roman National Festival--
The Roman Stage

The growth of art, and of poetic art especially, in antiquity was
intimately associated with the development of national festivals.
The thanksgiving-festival of the Roman community, which had been
already organized in the previous period essentially under Greek
influence and in the first instance as an extraordinary festival,
--the -ludi maximi- or -Romani-,(1) --acquired during the present
epoch a longer duration and greater variety in the amusements.
Originally limited to one day, the festival was prolonged by an
additional day after the happy termination of each of the three
great revolutions of 245, 260, and 387, and thus at the close of
this period it had already a duration of four days.(2)

A still more important circumstance was, that, probably on the
institution of the curule aedileship (387) which was from the first
entrusted with the preparation and oversight of the festival,(3) it
lost its extraordinary character and its reference to a special vow
made by the general, and took its place in the series of the ordinary
annually recurring festivals as the first of all. Nevertheless the
government adhered to the practice of allowing the spectacle proper
--namely the chariot-race, which was the principal performance--to
take place not more than once at the close o