ome replaced
the gardens and arable fields of the farmers. As a matter of course,
moreover, in all the communities of the peninsula the persons of note
who were not well affected to Rome were got rid of, so far as this
could be accomplished by political processes and confiscations of
property. Everywhere in Italy the non-Latin allies felt that their
name was meaningless, and that they were thenceforth subjects of Rome;
the vanquishing of Hannibal was felt as a second subjugation of Italy,
and all the exasperation and all the arrogance of the victor vented
themselves especially on the Italian allies who were not Latin. Even
the colourless Roman comedy of this period, well subjected as it was
to police control, bears traces of this. When the subjugated towns
of Capua and Atella were abandoned without restraint to the unbridled
wit of the Roman farce, so that the latter town became its very
stronghold, and when other writers of comedy jested over the fact
that the Campanian serfs had already learned to survive amidst the
deadly atmosphere in which even the hardiest race of slaves, the
Syrians, pined away; such unfeeling mockeries re-echoed the scorn of
the victors, but not less the cry of distress from the down-trodden
nations. The position in which matters stood is shown by the anxious
carefulness, which during the ensuing Macedonian war the senate
evinced in the watching of Italy, and by the reinforcements which were
despatched from Rome to the most important colonies, to Venusia in
554, Narnia in 555, Cosa in 557, and Cales shortly before 570.

What blanks were produced by war and famine in the ranks of the
Italian population, is shown by the example of the burgesses of
Rome, whose numbers during the war had fallen almost a fourth.
The statement, accordingly, which puts the whole number of Italians
who fell in the war under Hannibal at 300,000, seems not at all
exaggerated. Of course this loss fell chiefly on the flower of the
burgesses, who in fact furnished the -elite- as well as the mass of
the combatants. How fearfully the senate in particular was thinned,
is shown by the filling up of its complement after the battle of
Cannae, when it had been reduced to 123 persons, and was with
difficulty restored to its normal state by an extraordinary nomination
of 177 senators. That, moreover, the seventeen years' war, which had
been carried on simultaneously in all districts of Italy and towards
all the four points o