statesmen of the fourth and fifth centuries had joined
together the stones of their structure were thoroughly put to the test;
the building, though shaken in various ways, still held out against
this storm. When we say, however, that the towns of better position
did not at the first shock abandon Rome, we by no means affirm that
they would now, as in the Hannibalic war, hold out for a length of
time and after severe defeats, without wavering in their allegiance
to Rome; that fiery trial had not yet been endured.

Impression As to the Insurrection in Rome
Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation
Commission of High Treason

The first blood was thus shed, and Italy was divided into two great
military camps. It is true, as we have seen, that the insurrection
was still very far from being a general rising of the Italian allies;
but it had already acquired an extent exceeding perhaps the hopes of
the leaders themselves, and the insurgents might without arrogance
think of offering to the Roman government a fair accommodation. They
sent envoys to Rome, and bound themselves to lay down their arms in
return for admission to citizenship; it was in vain. The public
spirit, which had been so long wanting in Rome, seemed suddenly to
have returned, when the question was one of obstructing with stubborn
narrow-mindedness a demand of the subjects just in itself and now
supported by a considerable force. The immediate effect of the
Italian insurrection was, just as was the case after the defeats
which the policy of the government had suffered in Africa and Gaul,(11)
the commencement of a warfare of prosecutions, by means of which
the aristocracy of judges took vengeance on those men of the government
whom they, rightly or wrongly, looked upon as the primary cause
of this mischief. On the proposal of the tribune Quintus Varius,
in spite of the resistance of the Optimates and in spite of tribunician
interference, a special commission of high treason--formed, of course,
from the equestrian order which contended for the proposal with
open violence--was appointed for the investigation of the conspiracy
instigated by Drusus and widely ramified in Italy as well as in Rome,
out of which the insurrection had originated, and which now, when
the half of Italy was under arms, appeared to the whole of the indignant
and alarmed burgesses as undoubted treason. The sentences of this
commission largely thinned the ranks of the senatorial