was deserted, but the Capitol was held by about 1000 desperate combatants. During several days the city was given up to plunder, and, with a few exceptions, all the houses were burned to the ground. Part of the conquering army now continued their advance, and the remainder almost succeeded in taking the Capitol, the defenders of which were reduced to the last extremities by famine. Brennus, after remaining seven months, was induced to accept a thousand pounds weight of gold as the price of quitting Rome and her territories, upon which he led his people home without encountering opposition. The story of their subsequent defeat by Camillus is a fiction of Roman vanity.

It was now proposed that the seat of government should be removed to Veii, a town equal to Rome in magnitude and beauty, when the lucky omen of a word decided the question, and within a year a new city rose from the ashes of the former. Fresh wars ensued; Roman fortune again prevailed; the Sabines, Etrurians, Latins, Æqui, and Volsci, were successively defeated, and the Gauls, who had attempted a second invasion, were routed with great slaughter. But Rome still suffered much from the former assault of that fierce people; though this, which elsewhere was a deathblow to liberty, raised the constitution nearly to a perfect state. The oppressive rate of interest, the power which the creditor still possessed, and not unfrequently exercised, of life and death over the debtor, had reduced the lower orders to desperation. Manlius, the preserver of the Capitol, took pity on the helpless people. On the retreat of the invaders, he had found himself neglected, while all civil and military honours were heaped upon his enemy Camillus. His first actions, which resulted from the pure feelings of humanity, led him to become the patron of the commonalty. The measures by which he proposed to alleviate the public distress excited the anger of the patricians, who charged him with aiming at despotic power, and committed him to prison, from which he was soon afterwards released. He was again accused by the tribunes, with the design of driving him into exile, but he was unanimously acquitted. Still thirsting for his blood, the public prosecutors once more arraigned him; he was on this accusation condemned to death, and a slave treacherously pushed him down the fatal Tarpeian rock, 384 B. c.

LICINIAN LAWS.-The universal distress had now reached the highest pitch, and Rome was on the point of degenerating

into a miserable oligarchy, when two men appeared who changed the fate of their country and that of the world. In the year 376 B. C., Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius were chosen tribunes. The celebrated rogations, which they brought forward, produced a violent opposition between the two parties of the state, which lasted six years. Though the country was fortunately at peace, such a condition of affairs was unsafe; and at length, Camillus mediating between the patricians and the commonalty, the rogations passed the senate. By these, the consuls, one of whom was to be a plebeian, replaced the military tribunes; the laws of debtor and creditor were altered; an Agrarian law was enacted, limiting the shares of the public lands to 500 acres and the taxes to be raised upon them, and enjoining that free labourers should be employed in their cultivation. The consular power was however diminished by committing judicial affairs to a prætor, and by the appointment of curule ædiles, 366 B. c. L. Sextius Lateranus was the first plebeian consul; and the commons having once made good their claim to this high office, were not long before they participated in the others. They were admitted to the dictatorship, 359; the censorship, 351; the prætorship, 337; and the priesthood, 301 B. C. A second commercial treaty with Carthage (348) shows that the Roman navy was at this time far from contemptible; and though it appears to have been merely piratical, squadrons were equipped and sent from their ports before the close of the century.

SAMNITE WARS, 343 B. C.- -The Samnites inhabited the mountains towards the kingdom of Naples, and had spread still farther to the south, when the Campanians, with whom they were at war, applied to Rome for assistance, which was readily granted. The former made a long and vigorous resistance; but being at last routed by Decius, 30,000 of them were left dead on the field. The Roman arms were now turned against the Latins, who had long been their allies. A war, which differed little from a civil contest, broke out; and in a conflict at the foot of Vesuvius, the Latin and Samnite forces would have conquered, but for the patriotic sacrifice of Decius, who, clad in magnificent robes, rushed into the ranks of the enemy, where he fell under a thousand wounds. A cruel revenge was taken by the victors, and Latium was rendered for ever incapable of opposing their power, 338 B. C. A signal disgrace, it is true, was inflicted on their army at the Caudine Forks, 321 B. c.; but it was soon effaced, and Sam

nium reduced to submission, after a struggle of more than fifty years, 290 B. C. These wars opened a way to the subjugation of Italy, and laid the foundation of Roman greatness. A new species of tactics was learnt; the relations with neighbouring states were more firmly established; and the influence of Rome extended to the most distant parts of the Peninsula.

The internal discords of the city were ended about this period in consequence of three laws introduced by Publilius Philo, the dictator :—1st, The office of censor was made common to the two orders; 2d, The veto was taken away from the curiæ; 3d, The plebiscita, or decrees of the people, were rendered binding on the whole state; the distinction between patricians and commons being now merely nominal. Thus was the constitution completed, and Rome rapidly advanced to universal empire, 286 B. C.

JUDEA.

Judæa now became part of the Syrian prefecture, under the heads of the priesthood, subject to the civil and military control of the Persian satraps, 373 B. c. The meagre annals of this period record but one remarkable event, and that an atrocious crime, perpetrated by the high priest Jonathan, who, suspecting his brother Joshua of intriguing with Bagoses, the imperial governor, slew him within the precincts of the temple. Bagoses hastened to Jerusalem, forced his way into the holy edifice, and imposed a heavy tax on the sacrifices as a penalty for that outrage. Alexander passed under the walls of the city, which he was induced to spare by the timely submission of the people; while he bowed in adoration before the name of Jehovah, inscribed on the headdress of the high priest Jaddua. He was shown the prophecies in which Daniel had foretold his conquest of the Persian empire; at which circumstance he was so much pleased, that he took the Jews into particular favour, 332 B. C. After his death and the division of his empire, Palestine was regarded as a valuable frontier province both by the Syrian and Egyptian kings. It fell at last into the hands of Ptolemy Soter, who took Jerusalem by treachery on the Sabbath, and led a great multitude of the inhabitants captive into Egypt, 312 B. C. Philadelphus, on his accession to the throne, released 120,000 of them, and caused the famous translation of the Hebrew Bible, called the Septuagint, to be prepared by seventy learned men. The fables concerning the

isolation of these translators and the perfect coincidence of their versions, are utterly unworthy of credit. The high priest Simon the Just, the favourite hero of Jewish traditions, died in 292; an event that is said to have been announced by prodigies, and which the nation had cause to lament, while groaning under his unworthy successors. He completed the Canon of the Ancient Scriptures, which has never since been changed. About this time the sects of the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Essenes assumed their peculiar distinctions.

PERSIA.

The safe retreat of the Ten Thousand, and the subsequent victories of Agesilaus, revealed the weakness of this monarchy: but the union of the Athenian and Persian fleets under Conon, and the defeat of the Spartans near Cnidus, had neutralized those events, when the peace of Antalcidas again restored to Persia its supremacy over Asia, and inflicted on Sparta a deep disgrace. Artaxerxes II. failed in recovering Egypt (374), so little could his barbarian hosts achieve without Grecian troops and generals. The court was under the control of women; each satrap was at war with his neighbour; and disputes about the succession had nearly produced the downfal of the empire thirty years before the battle of Arbela. Ochus mounted the throne and assumed the name of his father, 358 B. c.; and though insurrections in Asia Minor and extensive rebellions in Phoenicia, Egypt, and Cyprus, disturbed his reign, he nevertheless, with the help of Greek mercenaries, reduced Egypt once more to a Persian province (350). Returning to his own capital, he resigned himself to luxury, as if desirous to allay the pangs of conscience; for he had scarcely assumed the regal tiara before he massacred one hundred and fifty of his relations, besides a great number of the nobility. He was himself poisoned by his favourite, Bagoas, who promoted the king's youngest son to the throne, 338, but soon after murdering him with all his family, he set up in his place the unfortunate Darius III. Codomannus, by whom the invasion of Alexander was ably opposed. After several bloody battles, the last of which was fought on the well-known field of Arbela (331 B. c.), the destiny of the empire was sealed, and Darius, whose virtues entitled him to a better fate, shortly afterwards perished by assassination.

THIRD CENTURY.

ROME.-280, Pyrrhus.-264, First Punic War.-256, Regulus in Africa. -218, Second Punic War.-216, Cannæ.-202, Zama.

GREECE.-280, Achæan League.-279, Gallic Invasion.-226, Cleomenes. -206, Philopomen.

MACEDON.-294, Demetrius Poliorcetes.-286, Lysimachus. - 221, Philip V.

EGYPT.-283, Ptolemy Philadelphus.-270, Septuagint Translation of the Hebrew Scriptures.-256, Parthia-Arsaces.

INVENTIONS, &c.-269, First silver Money coined at Rome.-264, The Parian Chronicle.-263, Parchment.-250, Clepsydra.-220, Burningglasses.

LITERATURE, &c.-Euclid, Archimedes, Theocritus, Manetho.-Plautus, d. 183.

ROME.

PYRRHUS, 280-275 B. C.- -After subjugating the Latins and Samnites, the Romans turned their arms against the Tarentines, who, unable to defend themselves, applied to the King of Epirus for assistance. Tarentum was a Lacedæmonian colony of the eighth century B. c., established at the same period with many other towns in the southern parts of the Italian peninsula, hence called Magna Græcia. These cities, which had made rapid advances in wealth and power, had also attained some eminence in science, literature, and philosophy. Crotona was immortalized by the presence and instructions of Pythagoras, to whom the real system of the universe was not unknown; while Herodotus and Lysias were among the founders of Thurium. The Eleatic school of philosophy, the parent of so much genius and virtue, was first formed in Magna Græcia, where history and poetry were cultivated with an ardour worthy of their birth. The celebrated laws of Zaleucus of Locris continued in force two centuries; but the progress of the Tarentines in luxury, which led to their ruin, was not less rapid than their advances in literature and refinement. Involved in a contest with the Romans, they demanded the aid of the military talents of Pyrrhus. He came to their assistance with 30,000 men, and success at first crowned his efforts on the fields of Heraclea and Asculum, but after six years he was compelled to yield to the ascendency of Rome. Leaving the Tarentines to their own resources, he returned to his native country, where he perished by an unworthy death, 272. The fall of their capital in the following year decided the fate of Southern Italy.