that Publius Decius Mus, son of that hero who had sacrificed himself at
Mount Vesuvius, followed his father's example, devoted himself and the
opposing army to the infernal gods, and thus enabled the Romans to
achieve a splendid victory.

The Samnites continued the desperate struggle five years longer, but in
the year 290 they became subject to Rome; their leader, the hero of the
battle of the Caudine Forks, having been taken two years previously and
perfidiously put to death in Rome as the triumphal car of the victor
ascended the Capitoline Hill. This is considered one of the darkest
blots on the Roman name, and Dr. Arnold forcibly says that it shows
that in their dealings with foreigners, the Romans "had neither
magnanimity, nor humanity, nor justice."

The Etruscans and the Gauls did not yet cease their wars on the north,
and in 283 they encountered the Roman army at the little pond, between
the Ciminian Hills and the Tiber, known as Lake Vadimonis, on the spot
where the Etrurian power had been broken thirty years before by Fabius
Maximus, and were defeated with great slaughter. The constant wars had
made the rich richer than before, while at the same time the poor were
growing poorer, and after the third Samnite war we are ready to believe
that debts were again pressing with heavy force upon many of the
citizens. Popular tumults arose, and the usual remedy, an agrarian law,
was proposed. There was a new secession of the people to the Janiculum,
followed by the enactment of the Hortensian laws, celebrated in the
history of jurisprudence because they deprived the senate of its veto
and declared that the voice of the people assembled in their tribes was
supreme law. Debts were abolished or greatly reduced, and seven jugera
of land were allotted to every citizen. We see from this that the
commotions of our own days, made by socialists, communists, and