candidate for the quaestorship. He dreamed that his brother Tiberius appeared to him, and said, Caius, why do you linger? There is no escape: one life for both of us and one death in defence of the people is our fate. Caius told the dream to many of his friends. The authority for the story is the historian L. Caelius Antipater, who affirms that he heard it, and, as it seems, from Caius himself, if we follow Cicero's version of Antipater's text. As Valerius Maximus reports Antipater, the historian merely said that the story reached his ears in the lifetime of Caius. Plutarch's narrative implies that Gracchus had the dream before he was quaestor; and this agrees with what Cicero and Valerius Maximus report on the authority of Antipater. Cicero and Valerius also say that Caius told the story before he was elected tribune; from which we must either conclude that he kept the matter to himself until he was about to enter on his dangerous career, or they simply mean by these words to show that the dream was told by Caius before he was made tribune, and that the warning was verified; and so the foreboding of Caius did not arise from his own fears during his tribunate, when he might without difficulty have foreseen what his end would be. The superstition of the Romans about dreams was common, and even a man like Caius may not have been free from it. This is a story of a dream which turned out true, and it has better authority than many other like stories.

The years B.C. 126 and 125 were memorable for wondrous events. The annals of Rome from early times recorded many strange things, some of which may have been true, and others certainly were false. But all were believed by a superstitious people, and they were used for political purposes by those who were somewhat wiser. The history of a nation without the history of its religion and even its superstition would be very imperfect. The Romans above all civilized peoples of the world were made the slaves both of natural and supernatural events by the very nature of their political and religious system. The weeping of a statue, and the speaking of an ox, and other like wonders told in Roman history, will not be accepted in this incredulous age; but besides these miracles

we find many facts recorded which are valuable evidence of the changes which the surface of this globe has undergone.

In B.C. 126 there was an eruption of Aetna, and a stream of lava ran down from the crater. Near the island of Lipara the sea boiled like a pot: the vapour choked seamen in the ships, and the heated water sent up fish ready cooked. A similar phaenomenon has appeared in the present century off the west coast of Sicily, when the sea vomited forth flames and heated vapour, and at last the land itself appeared above the water, heaved up by the mighty internal force. The year B.C. 125 was equally unlucky. Besides showers of oil and milk in the neighbourhood of Veii, a fact of which some people may doubt, an owl, it is said, was seen on the Capitol, which may have been true. The shower of stones at Arpi of the year 125 was unusual in its duration. It rained stones for three days, and must have done great mischief. Showers of stones are one of the commonest of Roman prodigies, and if these falls of aerolites were always truly registered, they would be valuable records of a phaenomenon the possibility of which no man now denies. In Africa in this same year there was an invasion of locusts, which after devouring every green thing and even gnawing the bark of trees and dry wood were swept into the sea by a strong wind. But the sea would not keep the locusts: the waves cast them up on the shore in heaps, and the locusts did more harm when they were dead than when they were alive. Birds, cattle, and wild beasts were infected with pestilence, and their rotten carcases corrupted the air. At last the contagion reached man. In Numidia in the kingdom of Micipsa eighty thousand, or, as some editions of Orosius have it, eight hundred thousand persons died; and on the coast about Utica and Carthage it was said that two hundred thousands perished through this plague. Exaggeration in numbers is usual in all ages; and Orosius, in whose book such a story appropriately had a place, may have found these extravagant numbers in his authorities. When he tells us that thirty thousand Roman soldiers in garrison at Utica died of the plague, we do not accept either the number of the garrison or

the number of the dead as other than great exaggerations. But a horrible pestilence in Africa at the same time that the country was devoured by locusts may be added to the facts of history and to the long catalogue of human sufferings. The locust is one of the plagues of North Africa. In the year 1845 clouds of wandering locusts devastated Algeria: this pest came from the south part of the Regency of Tunis.

The execution of the law for the distribution of the Public Land, as Appian says, was hindered by the opposition of the Possessors, and principally of those Italian Socii who were in possession of Public Land. M. Fulvius Flaccus, one of the consuls of B.c. 125, and at the same time one of the commissioners under the Agrarian law, proposed to buy off the opposition of the Italians by giving them the Roman citizenship, which it was supposed that they would value more than their lands; and perhaps some of the rich and noble among them might have been willing to accept these terms, which would have opened to them the way to the high offices in the Roman state. But we may conjecture that the poorer sort, who happened to have any of this Public Land, would not readily have exchanged their property for a name, which would not have improved their condition. However, the Senate would not listen to what seems to us a reasonable and politic measure: they would not consent to make citizens of those dependent peoples, who supplied the armies of Rome. with some of her best soldiers. A passage of Valerius also shows that Flaccus proposed to grant an appeal to the popular assembly to those Peregrini, who were unwilling to comply with the law of Pennus, which drove them out of Rome. A cry for help from the Massaliots relieved the Senate for a time from the presence of Flaccus. The Massaliots were in danger from a powerful people, the Salyes or Salluvii, who are named Salvii Galli in Livy's Epitome. These Salyes were Ligurians or a mixed race of Celts and Ligurians. They perhaps occupied part of the coast east of Massilia: they certainly extended inland behind that town to the Rhone on the west and to the north as far as the river Druentia (Durance). They occupied the wide plain which you may see from the highest point of the great amphitheatre

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of Arelate (Arles) stretching east from Tarascon and the Rhone as far as the eye can reach it is one of the best parts of the country between the Durance and the Mediterranean. Flaccus defeated the Salyes and even penetrated north of the Durance. He had a triumph in B.c. 123. The defective Capitoline Fasti appear to include the Vocontii, who were north of the Durance, among the people over whom Flaccus triumphed.

In B.C. 125 the Latin colony of Fregellae revolted. It is sometimes called a Roman colony by modern writers, but if this were so, the revolt of Fregellae would be unintelligible. Fregellae was a city within the original Volscian territory on the left bank of the Liris (Garigliano) and above the junction of the Trerus (Sacco) with the Liris. This colony was founded by the Romans in B.C. 329; and it was faithful to Rome during the war with Hannibal. A Latin colony had its own law, unless it chose to adopt the law of Rome, and it had its own magistrates and its own mint. It supplied its contingent of troops according to the Formula or terms on which it was settled; but the soldiers of the Latin colonies were not placed in the Roman legions. The Latin colonies and the Latin states formed at this time that body of people who were comprehended under the name of Latini or Nomen Latinum. They had no political union among themselves, and they were dependents of Rome, but their particular privileges distinguished them from the other Italian dependencies, and they formed the highest class of the Peregrini. Fregellae, though it was a Latin colony, may have had Roman citizens among the original settlers, which was sometimes the case in the establishment of a Latin colony; but it was a rule that if any Roman citizen joined a Latin colony, he lost his rights as a Roman citizen. The cause of the rebellion of Fregellae is unknown, but a passage in Asconius' Commentary on Cicero's oration against Piso speaks of general discontent among the Latini at this time, and the recent law of Pennus which even excluded them from Rome would increase the dissatisfaction. There may have been preparations for a general rising of the Latini and other Italians, but whatever was the design, the capture of Fre

gellae by the praetor L. Opimius checked all further insurrection. The conquered people were at the mercy of the Romans. One man, Q. Numitorius Pullus, a principal citizen of Fregellae, betrayed the designs of his townsmen, and it seems that his former doubtful fidelity to Rome was excused in consideration of his recent treachery to his own city. The rest of the citizens of Fregellae were driven from their homes. and dispersed. L. Papirius of Fregellae, the most eloquent of the Latin orators of his day, made a speech before the Roman Senate in favour of his countrymen, and of the Latin colonies,' as Cicero expresses it, from which we may probably infer that other towns besides Fregellae were implicated, even if they had not actually risen against Rome. Papirius indeed, according to the usual text of Cicero (Brutus, c. 46), lived about the time of Ti. Gracchus, the father of the tribune Tiberius, who carried the Agrarian law, but I think that either Cicero made an historical error here, or that the text is wrong; for there is no reason for referring the delivery of this speech to any other time than the year B.C. 125. However the Senate were inexorable. They destroyed Fregellae, and in the following year they established the Roman colony of Fabrateria at a short distance from the site of Fregellae. A Roman colony consisted only of Roman citizens, and the founding of Fabrateria was the same thing as fixing a permanent garrison in a discontented country. The destruction of Fregellae, a flourishing and rebellious city, was conformable to the vigorous policy of Rome, as we see it expressed in the speech which Livy puts in the mouth of L. Furius Camillus after he had conquered the revolted Latini B.C. 338. Machiavelli on a like occasion advised his countrymen of Florence to follow the principles of the Romans in the treatment of their rebellious dependents of the Valdichiana. If you will retain your hold on dependencies which have rebelled and been subdued, you must either treat them in such a way as to make them friends, or deprive them for ever of the power of doing you harm.

There was a Lustrum in B.C. 125. The Censors were Cn. Servilius Caepio and L. Cassius Longinus. The number of heads entered in the censors' books was 394,000. This is a