ome, and vigorous population: with a just legislation as to corn
it would doubtless have been possible to make the basin of the Po, and
not Sicily the granary of the capital. In like manner Picenum and the
so-called -ager Gallicus- acquired a numerous body of farmers through
the distributions of domain-land consequent on the Flaminian law of
522--a body, however, which was sadly reduced in the Hannibalic war.
In Etruria, and perhaps also in Umbria, the internal condition of the
subject communities was unfavourable to the flourishing of a class
of free farmers, Matters were better in Latium--which could not be
entirely deprived of the advantages of the market of the capital, and
which had on the whole been spared by the Hannibalic war--as well as
in the secluded mountain-valleys of the Marsians and Sabellians. On
the other hand the Hannibalic war had fearfully devastated southern
Italy and had ruined, in addition to a number of smaller townships,
its two largest cities, Capua and Tarentum, both once able to send
into the field armies of 30,000 men. Samnium had recovered from the
severe wars of the fifth century: according to the census of 529 it
was in a position to furnish half as many men capable of arms as all
the Latin towns, and it was probably at that time, next to the -ager
Romanus-, the most flourishing region of the peninsula. But the
Hannibalic war had desolated the land afresh, and the assignations
of land in that quarter to the soldiers of Scipio's army, although
considerable, probably did not cover the loss. Campania and Apulia,
both hitherto well-peopled regions, were still worse treated in the
same war by friend and foe. In Apulia, no doubt, assignations of land
took place afterwards, but the colonies instituted there were not
successful. The beautiful plain of Campania remained more populous;
but the territory of Capua and of the other communities broken up in
the Hannibalic war became state-property, and the occupants of it were
uniformly not proprietors, but petty temporary lessees. Lastly, in
the wide Lucanian and Bruttian territories the population, which was
already very thin before the Hannibalic war, was visited by the whole
severity of the war itself and of the penal executions that followed
in its train; nor was much done on the part of Rome to revive the
agriculture there--with the exception perhaps of Valentia (Vibo,
now Monteleone), none of the colonies established there attained
real p