his own house. To be murdered was the usual end of exceptionally
distinguished Romans, in a State where the lives of citizens were
theoretically sacred. His death was the signal for an insurrection, which
began in the mountains of the Abruzzi and spread over the whole peninsula.

The contrast of character between the two classes of population became at
once uncomfortably evident. The provincials had been the right arm of the
Empire. Rome, a city of rich men with families of slaves, and of a crowd
of impoverished freemen without employment to keep them in health and
strength, could no longer bring into the field a force which could hold
its ground against the gentry and peasants of Samnium. The Senate enlisted
Greeks, Numidians, any one whose services they could purchase. They had to
encounter soldiers who had been trained and disciplined by Marius, and
they were taught by defeat upon defeat that they had a worse enemy before
them than the Germans. Marius himself had almost withdrawn from public
life. He had no heart for the quarrel, and did not care greatly to exert
himself. At the bottom, perhaps, he thought that the Italians were in the
right. The Senate discovered that they were helpless, and must come to
terms if they would escape destruction. They abandoned the original point
of difference, and they offered to open the franchise to every Italian
state south of the Po which had not taken arms or which returned
immediately to its allegiance. The war had broken out for a definite
cause. When the cause was removed no reason remained for its continuance.
The Italians were closely connected with Rome. Italians were spread over
the Roman world in active business. They had no wish to overthrow the
Empire if they were allowed to share in its management. The greater part
of them accepted the Senate's terms; and only those remained in the field
who had gone to war in the hope of recovering the lost independence which
their ancestors had so long heroically defended.