[Illustration: Curius Dentatus refusing the Magnificent Gift offered by the Samnite Ambassadors.]
The Samnites made one more desperate effort against Rome, and Lollius, a runaway hostage, who had escaped to his native mountains, found life such thoroughly up-hill work, that he resolved to change it, or part with it. Having got round him a band of robbers, who were just the sort of persons to do everything by stealth, he secretly prepared to attack the Romans; but they, hearing of the approach of the marauders, were early in the field, and, securing the leaders of the insurrection, struck off their heads in order to break the neck of it.
Rome was now mistress of Italy, but her ambition, which, though always vaulting, knew no bounds, would not allow her to keep her empire within its natural limits. In the management of her conquered possessions she affected much generosity, in professing to admit the vanquished to a share of her own advantages,--an operation she effected by taking all the advantages to herself in the first instance, and then conveying a small moiety back to those from whom they had been wrested.
The Colonial system pursued by Rome was peculiar, for instead of selecting uninhabited places, she preferred a population ready made, possessing wealth already acquired, of which she usually helped herself to a full third in exchange for a Government, which she supplied from her own large stock of persons in want of places. The relationship between Rome and her colonies has been compared to that of parent and child; but considering the stripping process to which Rome had recourse, she seems to have acted less as a mother than a kidnapper. The Roman Constitution, like the Roman cement, was an excellent compound, of which it is impossible to describe the ingredients; and, indeed, it is found that the best Constitutions--like our own British--are those which cannot be defined by a written prescription, or made the subject of a perfect analysis. There was a judicious spreading of political power over a considerable surface, and thus--to use a figure from the chemist's shop--a plaster was always ready to be applied to the sores, or even the trifling eruptions that might make their appearance on any portion of the great body of the nation.