Book contents
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- The Latin State
- The League with the Latins
- Of the Colonies
- On the Rights of Isopolity and Municipium
- On the Franchise of the Latins
- The League with the Hernicans
- The Wars with the Volscians and Æquians, down to the end of the Veientine War
- The Office of Warden of the City
- The Internal Feuds of the Patricians
- Of the Public Land and its Occupation
- The Assignments of Land before the time of Sp. Cassius
- The Agrarian Law of Sp. Cassius, and his Death
- The seven Consulships of the Fabii
- The Veientine War
- Internal History from the Destruction of the Fabii to the first Pestilence
- The Legend of Coriolanus
- The Wars with the Volscians and Æquians down to the Peace of 295
- The Æquian War down to the Decemvirate
- Disasters and extraordinary Phenomena
- Civil History of the eleven Years preceding the Decemvirate
- The first Decemvirs, and their Laws
- The second Decemvirate
- The first Year after the Restoration of Freedom
- Civil Commotions down to the Constitution of 311
- The Consular Military Tribunate
- The Censorship
- Civil Affairs from the Year 311 down to the last Veientine War
- On the Pay of the Troops
- The Wars down to the Last with Veii
- The last War with Veii
- The other Wars down to that with the Gauls
- Internal History down to the War with the Gauls
- Physical History from 305 to 365
- On the Gauls, and their Immigration into Italy
- The War with the Gauls, and the Taking of Rome
- On the Olympiad and Year of the Taking of Rome
- Rome after the Departure of the Gauls
- The Wars down to the Reform of 384
- Civil History down to the Year 374
- Appendix I On the Roman Mode of Partitioning Landed Property, and on the Limitatio
- Appendix II On the Agrimensores
Disasters and extraordinary Phenomena
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 June 2011
- Frontmatter
- PREFACE
- Contents
- INTRODUCTION
- The Latin State
- The League with the Latins
- Of the Colonies
- On the Rights of Isopolity and Municipium
- On the Franchise of the Latins
- The League with the Hernicans
- The Wars with the Volscians and Æquians, down to the end of the Veientine War
- The Office of Warden of the City
- The Internal Feuds of the Patricians
- Of the Public Land and its Occupation
- The Assignments of Land before the time of Sp. Cassius
- The Agrarian Law of Sp. Cassius, and his Death
- The seven Consulships of the Fabii
- The Veientine War
- Internal History from the Destruction of the Fabii to the first Pestilence
- The Legend of Coriolanus
- The Wars with the Volscians and Æquians down to the Peace of 295
- The Æquian War down to the Decemvirate
- Disasters and extraordinary Phenomena
- Civil History of the eleven Years preceding the Decemvirate
- The first Decemvirs, and their Laws
- The second Decemvirate
- The first Year after the Restoration of Freedom
- Civil Commotions down to the Constitution of 311
- The Consular Military Tribunate
- The Censorship
- Civil Affairs from the Year 311 down to the last Veientine War
- On the Pay of the Troops
- The Wars down to the Last with Veii
- The last War with Veii
- The other Wars down to that with the Gauls
- Internal History down to the War with the Gauls
- Physical History from 305 to 365
- On the Gauls, and their Immigration into Italy
- The War with the Gauls, and the Taking of Rome
- On the Olympiad and Year of the Taking of Rome
- Rome after the Departure of the Gauls
- The Wars down to the Reform of 384
- Civil History down to the Year 374
- Appendix I On the Roman Mode of Partitioning Landed Property, and on the Limitatio
- Appendix II On the Agrimensores
Summary
For twenty years before the institution of the decemvirate Rome was visited by all imaginable scourges, mortalities, earthquakes, calamitous defeats, as though heaven had resolved to exterminate the distracted nation from the face of the earth; and manifold signs, betokening an inward coil and stir of nature, announced that the times were out of joint. A similar combination of all natural horrours with the last extreme of human misery came again upon the city after the lapse of a thousand years, and left it desolate as a grave, three hundred years after Rome had experienced the first pestilence the ravages of which can be compared with those of this earlier period.
The first of these epidemic disorders makes its appearance in the year 282: its peculiar character is not described, only that it attackt every one without distinction of age or sex; that it rolled over the city like a torrent or a lava-stream, and would have swept all before it, had it made a longer stay. This sickness is expressly said to have visited the rest of Italy. The same thing is not stated of the second, which raged nine years after, in 291, though it is impossible to doubt that it was no less widely spread: an account has been preserved of its victims, sufficient to give a notion of its ravages, and deserving unqualified credit. It carried off both the consuls, three out of the five tribunes, two of the four augurs, the chief curio, and the fourth part of the senators.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The History of Rome , pp. 270 - 275Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010