others. The Tribune, L. Apuleius, impeached Camillus for having taken for himself the great bronze gates of the city; and, though his Clients and fellow gentiles would have paid for him any fine that might have been inflicted, they were unable to procure his acquittal. So he went into exile, and took up his abode at Ardea; praying, as he left the city, that his country might soon have cause to regret him (B.c. 391). His prayer was answered; for the GAULS had already poured over the Apennines and laid siege to Clusium, and the interference of Rome was about to bring her to the verge of destruction. But she was destined to rise again, with renewed life, from beneath the torrent which overwhelmed the civilization of her ancient rival; and the same blow which levelled her for a moment prepared for her an easy conquest in Etruria. The decline of that great nation continued steadily after the Gauls had retired from Rome, chiefly in consequence of the maritime successes of Dionysius of Syracuse. His capture of Pyrgi, the port of Cære, gave a fatal blow to the naval power of the Tuscans. His maritime empire, indeed, ceased with his death; but the Carthaginians were strong enough to exclude their old allies from the benefit of the change; and the co-operation of Tuscan ships of war with Agathocles marks the complete rupture of the league, to which both had owed so much. of their naval power, and which Aristotle mentions as in full force down to the death of Alexander (B.c. 323).

B.C. 390.] REMOTER NATIONS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD. 259

CHAPTER XXII.

WARS WITH THE LATINS AND SAMNITES.

FROM THE TAKING OF ROME BY THE GAULS TO THE END OF THE SAMNITE WARS. B.C. 390 TO B.C. 290.

"Majora jam hinc bella et viribus hostium et longinquitate vel regionum vel temporum spatio quibus bellatum est dicentur."-LIVY.

THE REMOTER NATIONS OF THE ANCIENT WORLD-THE CELTIC RACE-THEIR MIGRATION FROM THE EAST IN HISTORIC TIMES-THEIR NATIONAL CHARACTER AND MILITARY HABITS-TRANSITORY EFFECTS OF THEIR ENTERPRISES-THEIR EARLY SETTLEMENTS IN ITALY-CISALPINE GAUL--COMMON STORY OF THE INVASION-SIEGE OF CLUSIUMINTERFERENCE OF THE ROMANS-BATTLE OF THE ALLIA-PREPARATIONS AT ROMESELF-DEVOTION OF THE FATHERS-CAPTURE AND SACK OF THE CITY-THE CAPITOL SAVED BY M. MANLIUS-RANSOM OF ROME-RETREAT OF THE GAULS-LEGEND OF CAMILLUS SUBSEQUENT ENCOUNTERS WITH THE GAULS-RESULTS OF THE INVASION -DISTRESS AT ROME-WARS WITH THE ETRUSCANS-SETTLEMENT OF CISALPINE GAUL DISRUPTION OF THE LATIN ALLIANCE-WARS WITH THE LATINS AND VOLSCIANS -INTERNAL DISSENSIONS CONDEMNATION OF MANLIUS-THE LICINIAN ROGATIONSPLEBEIANS ADMITTED ΤΟ THE CONSULSHIP-INSTITUTION OF THE PRÆTORSHIP AND CURULE EDILESHIP-UNION OF THE ORDERS-DEATH OF CAMILLUS RESULTS OF THE REVOLUTION, TO THE FINAL SETTLEMENT OF THE POPULAR CONSTITUTION-RENEWED WARS WITH THE ITALIANS-NEW LEAGUE WITH THE LATINS AND HERNICANS-GREAT SAMNITE AND LATIN WARS-ORIGIN AND GROWTH OF THE SAMNITES-FIRST SAMNITE WAR-MUTINY AT CAPUA-GREAT LATIN WAR-BATTLE NEAR VESUVIUS, AND SELFDEVOTION OF P. DECIUS-BATTLE OF TRIFANUM-DISSOLUTION OF THE LATIN CONFEDERACY-ROMAN COLONIES IN LATIUM-SECOND OR GREAT SAMNITE WAR-PAPIRIUS AND FABIUS-THE ROMANS DEFEATED AT THE CAUDINE FORKS-SUCCESSES OF THE ROMANS-DEFEAT OF THE ETRUSCANS AND SAMNITES-ROMAN CONQUESTS-COALITION OF ETRUSCANS AND ITALIANS AGAINST ROME-THIRD SAMNITE WAR-VICTORY OF SENTINUM TRUCE WITH ETRUSCAN CITIES-DEFEAT OF THE YOUNGER AND VICTORY OF THE ELDER FABIUS-END OF THE SAMNIET WARS.

THE general course of Ancient History has been well described as the history of civilization among the nations lying around the Mediterranean. Though belonging to races strikingly distinct in their languages and ethnic affinities, their position round that great pathway of maritime intercourse, the advantages of their climate and the general conformation of their shores, and the presence amongst them of the highest sources of civilization, grouped together into one historic whole peoples that belonged to the three divisions of the ancient world. Accordingly, since the stream of primeval history was divided at the dispersion of the nations, we have been engaged with its five main divisions-the history of the chosen family, the early civilization of the Cushite race in Egypt and Chaldæa, the great Semitic monarchies of Assyria and Babylon, the Aryan empire of the Medes and Persians, and the

growth of the kindred Hellenic and Italian peoples of the West. Glimpses more or less distinct have presented themselves of the outlying nations, with which these came into contact from time to time; and we have met with cases in which great peoples have burst the boundaries that seemed to divide them from the nations already civilized. Now, however, we have reached a point, where one of the chiefest of those irruptions calls on us to look beyond the Alps, and inquire into the origin of that mighty race which, under the name of CELTS or GAULS, overspread Western Europe at the earliest ages of recorded history.*

The whole region, from some indefinite boundary in Central Europe (apparently from the western frontier of the Scyths) to the Pillars of Hercules, was known to Herodotus as the Land of the Celts. The Celts were already intermixed with other races in parts of that vast region, as, for example, with the Iberians in Spain; but they unquestionably formed the great bulk of the population west of the Rhine and the Alps. They were a branch of the great Aryan or Indo-Germanic race; and, like all the European nations of that family, they undoubtedly migrated from the East, at a period of unknown antiquity. The occurrence among them of names etymologically identical with that of the great Cimmerian people, of whom we have had occasion before to speak, points to an ethnical affinity. If this were established, the inference would seem probable, that the same great movement of the Scythians from the East, which displaced the Cimmerians from the shores of

* Cæsar distinguishes the two names in the well-known passage (B. G., I. 1), "ipsorum lingua Celtæ, nostra Galli appellantur." All English readers are familiar with the name of "the Gael," as that of one important branch of the race in our own islands; and it appears also in the appellation of Gallia. Celta (Kéλrai) and Galatæ (raλára) were modifications of the native name, first used by the Greeks, whose colony of Massalia made them acquainted with the people, and adopted by the Romans, who much more commonly, however, use the name of Galli. In modern usage, CELTS is the generic name for the whole of this great branch of the Aryan race. We make no attempt to adopt the form Kelt, which is indefensible in English, unless we were prepared to talk of the Kentaurs and the Kyklops, forms which even Mr. Grote's authority has failed to naturalize.

+H KEλTIKh. It is very remarkable that Herodotus had no distinct knowledge of the Germans as a separate race.

See Vol. I. p. 255. Examples occur in the name of Cymry or Cumri, as that of the people who formerly inhabited Britain, and are now found in Wales and Cumberland; in the Cimbrica Chersonesus (Jutland), which, though inhabited by Teutons in historic times, may have been first peopled by Celts; and in the Cimbri, probably the original inhabitants of that peninsula, who invaded Italy with the Teutons towards the close of the second century B.C.; for the attempts to prove these Cimbri a Teutonic people are unsatisfactory.

B.C. 390.]

DESCRIPTION OF THE CELTS.

261

the Euxine, was that which drove the Celts westward. Whether the Teutonic races, whom the Romans called by the name of Germans, shared this movement, or whether they followed it, and displaced the Celts from the country known as Germany, we have no means of deciding. In either case, the Celts passed beyond that great central region of mountains, forests, and morasses, across the Rhine, which thenceforth formed their eastern boundary.

The civil history of the world is only concerned with nations which have reached the state of social communities. It leaves to the antiquarian and the ethnologist the speculations about an "age of stone" and an "age of iron" and the still earlier time when human beings are supposed to have led a life like that of beavers in huts raised on piles above the surface of Swiss lakes; only taking care, however, to maintain the truth, derived from the authentic records of man's primitive condition, that, if parts of Europe were ever peopled in this manner, it was not the original condition of the inhabitants, but a state into which they had declined from their primitive civilization. The true history of the Celts begins at the period when their migrations brought them into contact with the nations of Italy and Greece. That collision was the result, so to speak, of a great reflex movement in a direction opposite to their original migration, whether they were impelled by want arising from the increase of population, or tempted by a happier soil and climate, or moved by the mere restlessness of a people who were but slightly attached to their native country. For the Celts were a pastoral people; and so little taste had they for agriculture, that Cicero says it was esteemed disgraceful for a free Celt to till the ground with his own hands. They were more addicted than either the Germans or Italians to congregating in towns and villages; but they had not the steady purpose, and the earnest public spirit, which created the city life of the Greeks. In no branch of the human family have better and worse qualities been more strangely mingled, or the former more strikingly neutralized by the latter. The pictures drawn of them by the most ancient writers describe their character to the present day. "Gaul for the most part," said Cato the Censor, "pursues two things most perseveringly-war, and talking cleverly." The great modern historian of the people, Thierry, depicts their character in the following words:-"The prominent qualities of the Celtic race were personal bravery, in which they excelled all nations; an open impetuous temperament, accessible to every impression; much intelligence, associated with extreme volatility; want of perseverance; aversion

to discipline and order; ostentation and perpetual discord-the result of boundless vanity."

Their part in the history of the ancient world is admirably described by Dr. Mommsen: "Such qualities-those of good soldiers and of bad citizens-explain the historical fact, that the Celts have shaken all states and have founded none. Everywhere we find them ready to rove, or, in other words, to march; preferring moveable property to landed estate, and gold to everything else; following the profession of arms as a system of organized pillage, or even as a trade for hire, and with such success that even the Roman historian Sallust acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in feats of arms. They were the true soldiers of fortune' of antiquity, as pictures and descriptions represent them, with big but not sinewy bodies, with shaggy hair and long mustachios-quite a contrast to the Greeks and Romans, who shaved the upper lip; in variegated embroidered dresses, which in combat were not unfrequently thrown off; with a broad gold ring round their neck, wearing no helmets, and without missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance-all ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful in working in metals. Everything was made subservient to ostentation, even wounds, which were often enlarged for the purpose of boasting a broader scar. Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on horseback, in which case every freeman was followed by two attendants, likewise mounted: war-chariots were early in use, as they were among the Libyans and the Hellenes in the earliest times. Many a trait reminds us of the chivalry of the middle ages, particularly the custom of single combat, which was foreign to the Greeks and Romans. Not only were they accustomed in war to challenge a single enemy to fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures; in peace also they fought with each other in splendid equipments, as for life or death. After such feats, carousals followed in due course. In this way

they led, whether under their own or a foreign banner, a restless soldier-life; constantly occupied in fighting, and in their so-called feats of heroism, they were dispersed from Ireland and Spain to Asia Minor. But all their enterprises melted away like snow in spring, and they nowhere created a great state, or developed a distinctive culture of their own." Such were the people who now almost terminated the existence of Rome, and were afterwards with difficulty repulsed from Greece; who became masters of the