derate
estimates, are alleged to have amounted to 70,000 men capable of
bearing arms. The Romans found themselves compelled for three
successive years (620-622) to despatch consuls and consular armies
to Sicily, till, after several undecided and even some unfavourable
conflicts, the revolt was at length subdued by the capture of
Tauromenium and of Enna. The most resolute men of the insurgents
threw themselves into the latter town, in order to hold their ground
in that impregnable position with the determination of men who
despair of deliverance or of pnrdon; the consuls Lucius Calpurnius
Piso and Publius Rupilius lay before it for two years, and reduced
it at last more by famine than by arms.(16)

These were the results of the police system for securing order, as
it was handled by the Roman senate and its officials in Italy and
the provinces. While the task of getting quit of the proletariate
demands and only too often transcends the whole power and wisdom of
a government, its repression by measures of police on the other hand
is for any larger commonwealth comparatively easy. It would be well
with states, if the unpropertied masses threatened them with no other
danger than that with which they are menaced by bears and wolves;
only the timid and those who trade upon the silly fears of the
multitude prophesy the destruction of civil order through servile
revolts or insurrections of the proletariate. But even to this easier
task of restraining the oppressed masses the Roman government was by no
means equal, notwithstanding the profound peace and the inexhaustible
resources of the state. This was a sign of its weakness; but not of
its weakness alone. By law the Roman governor was bound to keep the
public roads clear and to have the robbers who were caught, if they were
slaves, crucified; and naturally, for slavery is not possible without a
reign of terror. At this period in Sicily a razzia was occasionally
doubtless set on foot by the governor, when the roads became too
insecure; but, in order not to disoblige the Italian planters, the
captured robbers were ordinarily given up by the authorities to
their masters to be punished at their discretion; and those masters
were frugal people who, if their slave-herdsmen asked clothes, replied
with stripes and with the inquiry whether travellers journeyed through
the land naked. The consequence of such connivance accordingly was,
that OH the subjugation of the slave-revol