367

On Rome's conquest of Sabinum, Picenum and Etruria.

By Tenney Frank.

The generally accepted view of Rome's method of subjugating and disposing of the Sabines in the third century B. C. is now, apparently, the one given by Mommsen in CIL IX, p. 396. To outline briefly, Mommsen holds that in 290 B. C. the Romans devastated the Sabine country, driving out most of the natives (plurimos exterminarunt); they then assigned a part of the conquered territory to their own citizens, without the formality of colonization, sold some of it, but kept the greater part as public land for the sake of revenue. A few natives were left in undisturbed possession of their lands, and given Roman citizenship: half rights, immediately, and full rights in 268.

If one examines all the trustworthy evidence now available, however, I think one must arrive at quite a different conclusion, namely, that the native Sabines were left in the possession of most of their land, being by degrees admitted into full citizenship, and that, though a part of their territory was taken as war indemnity, we are not justified in assuming that Rome assigned any of the Sabine land to her own citizens with or without colonization, nor sold any part of it at that time.

We need not trouble ourselves to prove that the inhabitants of Sabinum were Roman citizens at least after 225 B. C.). The fact is generally acknowledged. The question is whether or not those citizens were native Sabines. The documentary evidence is as follows: Velleius I, 14 says explicitly: M.' Curio et Rufino Cornelio consulibus (290) Sabinis sine suffragio data civitas,... Sempronio Sopho et Appio consulibus (268), suffragi ferendi ius Sabinis datum. Cicero says on two different occasions (De Off. I, 35, and Pro Balb. 31) that citizenship was early given to the Sabines, and Livy (XL, 46, 12 and XLII, 34, 2) relates incidents that contain the same information by implication. This combined testimony of independent sources not only makes it clear that at least some portions of the Sabine people were early given Roman citizenship but it leaves a

4

1) Niese, R. G. p. 71, on the strength of Pol. II, 24, assumes that the Sabines were still allies in 225. Considering however that Polybius probably includes the Picentes and Praetuttii under the term Sabini, and that at best their number is exceedingly small, this one passage alone can hardly bear the burden he places upon it.

strong presumption that in the first century B. C. the belief was prevalent that the Sabines as a whole were left in possession of their country and granted Roman rights.

In support of these explicit affirmations we may add a number of less direct, nevertheless noteworthy considerations.

1) Strabo for instance has no idea that the original inhabitants were supplanted by the Romans, as is apparent from his words in Bk. V, 228 ἔστι δὲ καὶ παλαιότατον γένος οἱ Σαβῖνοι καὶ αὐτόχθονες . . . . ἀντέσχον μέχρι πρὸς τὸν παρόντα χρόνον. He apparently includes as the cities of this stock all the well-known municipalities of the Sabine region.

2) Livy XXVIII, 45, 19, by recording the offers of volunteers from the Nursini, Reatini et Amiternini Sabinusque omnis ager among those of the Umbrian and other Sabellic peoples, implies at least that these are of non-Roman stock, otherwise the offer would hardly have seemed worthy of special note.

3) Evidence of a different nature may be gathered from Schulten's studies of some Italic names as presented in Klio, II and III. From his list, it is apparent that the percentage of peculiarly Sabellic names in (i)edius and idius is nearly as large for inscriptions from Sabinum as for those of the neighboring tribes whose native stock unquestionably remained undisturbed. If the percentage is not quite as large, the explanation lies in the fact that this district was so near Rome that it attracted a considerable immigration from the city. Conway's list of personal names (It. Dial. p. 367) will in convenient form furnish material for additional linguistic proof.

4) The political organization of Sabinum also lends support to our contention). Festus (M. 233) includes Reate and Nursia in a list of prefectures, all of which, with one late exception, consisted of native Italic peoples who had early been given half citizenship by Rome. Furthermore, inscriptions show that the Sabine towns of Amiternum, Nursia, Trebula and Interamnia Praetuttiorum employed the peculiar magistracy of the octovirate 2), a fact that is more easily explained on the assumption. that it was a survival of a native form of government in that region than

1) Since Niese has proved that the Campanian cities were foederata and not incorporated into the Roman domain before 210 B. C., it follows that we must also bring down the date of the Campanian prefectures to 210. If we now examine Festus' lists from this point of view, we find that the distinction between his two classes may fundamentally have been a chronological one, since the second group, with one peculiar exception, dates before 290, while the first class dates after 210. If this difference actually points to a historical change, there is further significance in the presence of the Sabine prefectures here.

2) Plestia in Umbria is so near the Sabine country that the presence of octoviri there may point to a Sabine origin of the town.

that it was of Roman invention, since it does not seem to occur in municipalities organized by the Romans at this time.

5) Finally, I would point to the strong probability that Rome did not thus early so disregard her treaty obligations with her Italic allies. as to take land in Italy for her own use, whether for assignation to individual citizens, for sale, or for the Roman public domain. This point has not been made before, I think, and it cannot even be established absolutely, but a survey of Roman policy so far as it can be determined for the century following the Latin war will at least establish a probability that during that period Rome fairly divided the fruits of war with her allies, reserving for herself and doubtless by explicit stipulation only the special privilege of planting small maritime colonies of 300 trustworthy citizens at critical coastal points.

The full discussion of this statement must rest at present, with only an indication of the chief evidence. We know for instance that the allies, at least during the third century, shared not only as individual soldiers in the military donatives, but also as communities in the apportionment of booty to the municipal treasuries (Beloch, It. Bund, 217; Mommsen St. R. III 680). Now the most important material fruit of a war was a portion of the land taken, according to an old Italic practice, by way of war indemnity. Many incidental references naturally lead to the conclusion that the allies also shared fairly in the distribution of this form of booty. The evidence 1) is well known, and should, I think, satisfactorily prove that the clause relating to the booty in the so-called foedus Cassianum 2) was also incorporated in the new treaties signed with the Latins and Campanians about 340-38, and probably in most of the Italic treaties made before the Pyrrhic war.

The reason why this apparently logical conclusion has not long ago been accepted seems to be that the annals contained so much regarding the distribution of Roman public lands to poor citizens that the historian seemed compelled to assume some source for the acquisition of so much land. Most of these references, however, can now be disregarded as anachronistic (Niese, Hermes 23 p. 410). A brief examination of Rome's method of disposing of captured land during the century following 340 will prove that she must have been obeying some such regulation as we have assumed. A few new tribus of Roman citizens were, to be sure, formed, but in such a way as to betray the fact that Rome had not a free hand. The Maecian and Scaptian tribes (332 B. C.), whether settled by new assignments, or, as is more likely, simply organized for the reception of

1) See Serv. Aen. I, 12; Liv. 42, 4; 34, 42; 33, 24, Lex agr. 1. 29 etc., also Mommsen St. R. II 636.

2) Dating the treaty after 390, but considering it otherwise in the main as an authentic document.

newly incorporated municipalities like Lanuvium, came into existence with, and not subsequent to, the new alliances. The Falerna and Oufentina, though settled as late as 318, were also established on land that accrued to the state prior to or with the settlement of 338. The Aniensis and Teretina apparently grew out of a resettlement with the Hernici of a foedus that antedated, and was therefore independent of, the new alliances of 338. Obviously 338 marks a change in Rome's method of creating tribes. The same date to be sure introduces the citizen-colony for coastal defence, but here too there is an arbitrary limit binding the number of participants down to 300 colonists, and only nine such colonies were founded during the century. Surely these limitations are due to some clause by which Rome bound herself not to take land for her own use. This becomes the more probable when we find that during the century twenty-one large Latin colonies covering an area of about three and a half million iugera were opened for the common settlement of allies and Romans together. The bearing of this conclusion upon the Sabine question is at once patent. If Rome bound herself by the Italic treaties following the Latin war to share lands as well as other booty with her allies, and if she is found in general adhering to such a rule at least well into the third century, it is then not likely that the Sabine lands were disposed of on a very different principle. This point having been established, it follows that the people who, according to Velleius, received citizenship in 290 and 268 were no other than the native Sabines, who had in fact been left in undisturbed possession of most of their country. The foregoing is, I think, a summary of the most reliable evidence upon the main question of what Rome did with the native Sabines after the conquest in 290; and it seems to me far to outweigh the contradictory citations upon which the more prevalent view is based, namely that the native Sabines were largely driven out. These citations, all late and from an inferior annalistic tradition center about several anecdotes regarding M' Curius Dentatus. The substance is found in Orosius III, 22; Florus I, 10; Val. Max. IV, 3, 5; Vir. ill. 33, 14; Frontinus Strat. IV, 3, 12; Plut. Rom. Apoth. I; and Colum. praef. I, 14. According to the anecdotes found here, Curius after the conquest of Sabinum some add Samnium and Pyrrhus in reporting his victory to the senate said that the territory captured was so great that he could not adequately express the extent of it. A part of this territory (Sabinum is specifically mentioned by some) he divided among the citizens viritim (Frontinus says soldiers) giving seven jugera to each man (Vir. ill. says fourteen) himself accepting one share, upon which he later lived in all simplicity.

Now it is evident that this material comes from encomiastic biographical reworkings of confused annalistic sources which were quite oblivious. to the requirements of historical accuracy. In fact the semi-legendary

character of Curius Dentatus was particularly inviting to the moralizing biographer as well as to the miracle-monger (cf. Pauly-Wissowa IV 184).

The story does not bear critical scrutiny. When the biographer (e. g. Plut. 1. c.) represents Curius as assigning a part of the land to Roman citizens but determining that the main portion shall be left as public domain, he pictures him in the role of a Caesar or at least a Sulla who assumes both legislative and censorial functions, and he forgets the constitutional impossibility of such an act in the third century. Nor is the story of Curius accurate in chronological details. Mommsen has already remarked (Röm. F. II 372) that Livy and the Fasti are so erroneous as to place the conquest of the ager Gallicus of 284 in the first consulship of Curius, that is, in the same year as his victory over Samnium and the Sabines. It is probable in fact that it was this error of the annalists which mislead the biographers, and that the vast territory said to have been brought into the public domain if indeed the story has a kernel of truth was that very ager Gallicus. Or the story may in the beginning even have referred to the conquest of Samnium in 290 and the colonization of Hadria in the Praetuttian territory in 289, for it is a wellknown fact that the annalists often confused the Samnites (who called themselves Safini, and who were also called Sabelli by the Romans) with the Sabini) and further that Sabinum was often conceived of as extending to the Adriatic coast (cf. Florus I, 10. and Pliny N. H. III 115). These stories therefore belong to late moralizing fiction and cannot safely be used by the historian; certainly they have little weight against the firmer authorities which they contradict.

As for the extent of the ager publicus in Sabinum we have fairly trustworthy evidence as follows. Siculus 2) Flaccus (Feldm. 136-7) says that in the region of Reate there was some public land called the montes Romani, the rental of which accrued to the public treasury, furthermore that a part of the Sabine land was called ager3) quaestorius, being divided into fifty-jugera lots and leased by the quaestor. Hyginus (ibid. 114)

1) Cf. Beloch in Riv. Stor. Ant. IX, p. 269; Sonnenschein in Conway, It. Dial. p. 683; Niese, Hist. Zeit. 1888, p. 503.

2) This passage of Flaccus can safely be used only in so far as it indicates conditions existing in his day. The main statement is meant to be a general introductory summary and not necessarily accurate as to chronological sequence. Mommsen utterly changes the purport of the whole passage by his brackets in CIL. IX, p. 396.

3) One cannot conclude from Flaccus that Rome immediately appropriated the land and began to lease it. It may have been undisposed of for a long period, and later when Rome began to use such unassigned lands for the benefit of the treasury she may have converted it into ager quaestorius.

The portion here referred to cannot be assigned to the city of Cures on the strength of lib. col. II 253, as is done in CIL. IX p. 396, for that passage is proved