guides to show them the way back to their camp, though as they had come to Carbo they must have known the road as well as he did or better. Carbo secretly told the guides to lead the men by a circuitous route, while he hurried by a shorter cut and fell on the Teutones, who were unprepared for an attack. But the barbarians made a bold resistance. Carbo lost many of his men, and perhaps he would have lost all his army, if a sudden thunder-storm had not shrouded the heavens in darkness and separated the two armies while they were fighting. The scattered army of Carbo was dispersed in the forests, and with difficulty was brought together again on the third day. Strabo is the only authority who has fixed the place of Carbo's defeat at Noreia, but he has made å great mistake about the position of this town, which he supposed to have been on a river which flowed into the head of the gulf of Venice, and twelve hundred stadia from the mouth of the stream. The site of Noreia is perhaps not certain. Some geographers have placed it at Friesach in Styria, but others at Neumark a few miles further north and nearer the river Murius (Muhr), which flows into the Drau or Drave. Others again have identified Noreia with Gmund, which is forty miles west of Friesach. We hear no more of the Cimbri and Teutones for the present, but they will appear again.

This was the age of Roman defeats and disgrace. Carbo may have been prosecuted for his mismanagement of this war, for Cicero speaks of the orator M. Antonius instituting some proceedings against him. The passage is obscure, and the commentators are not agreed whether Cicero means to say that Carbo was acquitted by some corrupt practices and did justice on himself by taking poison.

The Epitome of Livy (Ep. 63) has recorded a successful campaign of M. Livius Drusus, one of the consuls of B.C. 112, against the Scordisci. This is the Drusus who had been tribune in B.C. 122. Drusus had the province of Macedonia, and if he had to fight against the Scordisci in Thrace, these barbarians must have left their own country to plunder the parts south of the Haemus. The perpetual blunderer Florus says that Drusus forbade the Scordisci to cross the Danube, as if the country north of the Danube were their abode;

unless he means that Drusus after defeating the Scordisci required them to cross the Danube and settle north of that river. Florus also says that the Scordisci were the most savage of the Thracian tribes, from which we may either conclude that he supposed Thracia to extend north of the Haemus or that he knew nothing of the Scordisci. It is not likely that Drusus went without a triumph, but no record of it has been preserved.

CHAPTER XXIII.

THE THORIA LEX.

B.C. 123-111.

AFTER speaking of the death of Caius Gracchus, Appian continues thus: And this was the end of the disturbance caused by the party of the second Gracchus. Not long after a law was enacted to this effect: That the holders of the land, which was the matter in dispute, might legally sell it; for this too had been forbidden by the law of the elder Gracchus and immediately the rich began to buy from the poor, or on various pretexts forced them (to sell, or turned them out). And things thus became still worse for the poor than before, until Spurius Borius a tribune proposed a law to this effect: That there should be no more distribution of the public land, but it should be left to the possessors who should pay certain (annual) charges (vectigalia) for it to the state (Sńμy), and that the money arising from these payments should be distributed (among the citizens). This was indeed a relief to the poor by reason of the distribution of the money, but it helped not at all towards the increase of population. Now when the law of Gracchus had once been evaded by these tricks, a most excellent law and most useful to the state, if it could have been executed, another tribune not long after abolished also the annual payments, and the people (Snμos) were completely deprived of every thing. The consequence was that they were still more in want at the same time of citizens and soldiers, and income from land and distributions

. . for about fifteen years from the time of the legislation of Gracchus there was a cessation of all suits.' This passage contains many difficulties, but the general

purport of it can be understood. The first enactment mentioned by Appian repealed that clause in the law of Tiberius Gracchus which prohibited those who received assignments of public land from selling them. The object of the clause was to secure the success of this great reform bill, to establish a number of small proprietors who should cultivate their little farms, and breed citizens and soldiers. But such forced culture is impossible. If a man cannot or will not cultivate his little farm and breed men for the use of the state, which at Rome meant breeding for the use of those who held the political power, no legislation can compel the man to do his work. To give land to a man and to deprive him of the power of sale is a great inconsistency, for the power of sale is an essential part of that dominion which we call property in land. If an owner wishes to sell, he has always sufficient reason, whether he sell from necessity or choice; and in either case, it is better that he should sell and that another should buy. If the result of this prohibitory clause being repealed was that the land was purchased only by the rich, this fact shows either that there was no class of poor cultivators able and willing to buy, or that the rich, as Appian names them, gave a better price; and that was an advantage to the seller. But he also speaks of something like forcible ejectments, or at least of such annoyance from the richer landholders as would make a poor man glad to escape from his neighbours. We may easily imagine much more than he has told us, but without adding any thing to the bare facts of the historian, we conclude that the Roman state with all its external splendour and power was at this time in a miserable condition.

This first law, says Appian, was made not long after the death of Caius Gracchus. Rudorff thinks that we may assign this law "to the tribune M. Octavius, who during his tribunate of B.C. 120 also made an alteration in the Lex Frumentaria of Caius," or the law for the distribution of corn among the Roman poor. But Rudorff's conjecture is not supported by the authorities to which he refers; and the change in the Lex Frumentaria was probably made by a tribune M. Octavius, who lived much later. There is in fact

no authority for assigning this repeal of the prohibitory clause in the law of Tiberius Gracchus to any particular tribune.

The second enactment mentioned by Appian stopped all further assignments, but it imposed again on the occupants of the public land the tenths which had been remitted by the Lex Livia. (Chap. xix.) Thus a fund was established for the use of the poor; but we do not know how it was administered, unless it was applied in execution of the Lex Frumentaria of C. Gracchus. This new piece of legislation was well adapted to keep up and to increase the number of the poor in Rome, for applicants for relief will never fail. The name of the tribune who proposed this law is Spurius Borius in all the manuscripts of Appian. The name of Spurius Borius is otherwise entirely unknown, but we know there was a tribune Spurius Thorius, who is mentioned by Cicero twice; and accordingly the early critics suggested that Borius is a mistake in Appian's text, and that the name should be Thorius. Schweighaeuser, in his edition of Appian, has introduced the alteration into the text; but he saw, as he says in his notes, that Cicero's remark on the Lex Thoria cannot be reconciled with what Appian says of the Lex Boria. The name Spurius Borius should therefore stand in Appian's text, and the true conclusion is this. The name Spurius Borius is either a genuine name or not. If it is genuine, we have no more to say. If it is not the true name, the error may be Appian's, or the error of the transcribers of his manuscripts. Now it is rather singular that we should have both a Spurius Borius and a Spurius Thorius; and we might conjecture that Appian did write Spurius Thorius. But then either Appian is mistaken about the purport of the Lex Thoria, or Cicero is mistaken, for they do not agree. There is a third possible case. Both of them may be mistaken: Appian about the purport of this second law, whatever was its name; and Cicero about the purport of the Lex Thoria. But this third hypothesis leaves us in total uncertainty. If Appian wrote neither Borius nor Thorius, he wrote something else, which has been uniformly altered by the transcribers, and made into Borius; and on this hypothesis we must be content not to know what

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