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There had been noticed for many days before a trembling of the earth, which did not alarm us much, as this is quite an ordinary occurrence in Campania; but it was so particularly violent that night that it not only shook but actually overturned, as it would seem, everything about us. My mother rushed into my chamber, where she found me rising, in order to awaken her.
But it is not on the fertility of the soil, it is not on the mildness of the atmosphere, that the prosperity of nations chiefly depends. Slavery and superstition can make Campania a land of beggars, and can change the plain of Enna into a desert.
But terror is a bad weapon of proselytism; the Romans succeeded, with comparatively trifling loss, in surmounting the perilous moment of their first weakness. The war in Campania came to a standstill; then winter came on, and Hannibal took up his quarters in Capua, the luxury of which was by no means fraught with benefit to his troops who for three years had not been under a roof.
After the southern army under Caesar had assembled in the spring of 664 in Campania which for the most part held by Rome, and had provided Capua with its domain so important for the Roman finances as well as the more important allied cities with garrisons, it attempted to assume the offensive and to come to the aid of the smaller divisions sent on before it to Samnium and Lucania under Marcus Marcellus and Publius Crassus.
But Vinicius knew that on reaching the top he should see, not only Bovillæ and Ustrinum, where fresh horses were ready for him, but Rome as well: for beyond Albanum the low level Campania stretched on both sides of the Appian Way, along which only the arches of the aqueducts ran toward the city, and nothing obstructed the view.
Subjected to these simultaneous and, as it were, concerted assaults on the part of very different peoples the Syracusans, Latins, Samnites, and above all the Celts the Etruscan nation, that had just acquired so vast and sudden an ascendency in Latium and Campania and on both the Italian seas, underwent a still more rapid and violent collapse.
All readers will remember pithy sentences like these: "Hannibal has grown old in Campania;" "The issue of war will show who is in the right." His rhetorical training discovers itself in the elaborate exactness with which he disposes of all the points in a speech. The most artificial of all, perhaps, and yet at the same time the most effective, is the pleading of old Horatius for his son.
NEVER was business more disagreeable to me than when it prevented me not only from accompanyinng you when you went into Campania for your health, but from following you there soon after; for I want particularly to be with you now, that I may learn from my own eyes whether you are growing stronger and stouter, and whether the tranquillity, the amusements, and plenty of that charming country really agree with you.
Sulpicius Rufus, once a champion of the Senate and the most brilliant orator in Rome, went over to the people in the excitement. Rufus was chosen tribune, and at once proposed to enfranchise the remainder of Italy. But Sulla was not so easily got rid of. It was no time for nice considerations. He had formed an army in Campania out of the legions which had served against the Italians.
Cicero was appointed to a command in Campania that of raising levies, the duties of which were not officially repugnant to his triumph. His doings during the whole of this time were but little to his credit; but who is there whose doings were to his credit at that period? The effect had been to take all power out of his hand. Cæsar had given him up.
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