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In that case the way to Campania and Latium would have stood open; and in the then existing state of feeling, when the Volsci and Hernici and the larger portion of the Latins would have received him with open arms, the political existence of Rome would have been in serious danger.

The Volscians and Aequians ravaged the country up to the walls of Rome; and the safety of the city must be attributed to the Latins and Hernici, not to the men of Rome. Meantime the tribunes had in vain demanded a full execution of the Agrarian law.

It was assigned to Fabius to march the legions to Antium; to Cornelius, to protect the city; lest any part of the enemy, as was the practice of the Æqui, should come to commit depredations. The Hernici and Latins were ordered to supply soldiers in conformity to the treaty; and in the army two parts consisted of allies, one part of natives.

The Romans were supported by the Latins and Hernici, to whom the overthrow of their dreaded neighbour was productive of scarcely less satisfaction and advantage than to the Romans themselves; whereas Veii was abandoned by its own nation, and only the adjacent towns of Capena and Falerii, along with Tarquinii, furnished contingents to its help.

The agrarian law of Spurius Cassius and that of Tiberius Gracchus had in the main the same tenor and the same object; but the enterprises of the two men were as different, as the former Roman burgess-body which shared the Volscian spoil with the Latins and Hernici was different from the present which erected the provinces of Asia and Africa.

II. IV. South Etruria Roman II. V. League with the Hernici The well-known derivation is doubtless an invention. Perhaps no section of the Roman annals has been more disfigured than the narrative of the first Samnite-Latin war, as it stands or stood in Livy, Dionysius, and Appian. It runs somewhat to the following effect.

"Fairly exciting, I admit," Tanno remarked when Bultius paused. "Sounds like the tales of goings-on in Latium in the days when the Aequi, Volsci and Hernici raided up to the gates of Rome four summers out of five. I had not thought Sabinum so primitive." Before I could speak, Fisevius Rusco cut in.

The Samnites were already on both sides surrounded by the Roman meshes; already the line from Rome to Luceria severed north and south Italy from each other, as the fortresses of Norba and Signia had formerly severed the Volsci and Aequi; and Rome now rested on the Arpani, as it formerly rested on the Hernici.

Then an opportunity was laid hold of by the military tribunes, so that during the absence of most persons from the city, when the patricians who were to be recalled by a private intimation were to attend on a certain day, a decree of the senate might be passed in the absence of the tribunes of the commons; that a report existed that the Volscians had gone forth into the lands of Hernici to commit depredations, the military tribunes were to set out to examine into the matter, and that an assembly should be held for the election of consuls.

Practically indeed Rome must have possessed the hegemony even then, for, wherever a single state and a federation enter into a permanent connection with each other, the preponderance usually falls to the side of the former. Extension of the Roman Territory after the Fall of Alba Hernici Rutulli and Volscii