were condemned
as criminals. In Etruria also Roman troops had to take the field
against a band of slaves (558), and even in Latium there were
instances in which towns like Setia and Praeneste were in danger of
being surprised by a band of runaway serfs (556). The nation was
visibly diminishing, and the community of free burgesses was resolving
itself into a body composed of masters and slaves; and, although it
was in the first instance the two long wars with Carthage which
decimated and ruined both the burgesses and the allies, the Roman
capitalists beyond doubt contributed quite as much as Hamilcar and
Hannibal to the decline in the vigour and the numbers of the Italian
people. No one can say whether the government could have rendered
help; but it was an alarming and discreditable fact, that the circles
of the Roman aristocracy, well-meaning and energetic as in great part
they were, never once showed any insight into the real gravity of the
situation or any foreboding of the full magnitude of the danger. When
a Roman lady belonging to the high nobility, the sister of one of the
numerous citizen-admirals who in the first Punic war had ruined the
fleets of the state, one day got among a crowd in the Roman Forum, she
said aloud in the hearing of those around, that it was high time to
place her brother once more at the head of the fleet and to relieve
the pressure in the market-place by bleeding the citizens afresh
(508). Those who thus thought and spoke were, no doubt, a small
minority; nevertheless this outrageous speech was simply a forcible
expression of the criminal indifference with which the whole noble
and rich world looked down on the common citizens and farmers.

They did not exactly desire their destruction, but they allowed it to
run its course; and so desolation advanced with gigantic steps over
the flourishing land of Italy, where countless free men had just been
enjoying a moderate and merited prosperity.

Notes for Chapter XII

1. In order to gain a correct picture of ancient Italy, it is
necessary for us to bear in mind the great changes which have been
produced there by modern cultivation. Of the -cerealia-, rye was not
cultivated in antiquity; and the Romans of the empire were astonished
to rind that oats, with which they were well acquainted as a weed, was
used by the Germans for making porridge. Rice was first cultivated in
Italy at the end of the fifteenth, and maize at the beginnin