It is by no means true that history has the effect of weakening one’s belief in an overruling Providence: in it we see realized what Herodotus so often says, ἔδεε γὰρ αὐτὸν ἀπολέσθαι; one may say just as often, ἔδεε γὰρ αὐτὸν σώζεσθαι. Had the Gauls, for instance, burst upon Italy during the first Punic war, they alone would have been sufficient to interrupt its course, and the Romans could not have thrown themselves with all their might on Sicily. If Alexander, son of Pyrrhus, had tried to avenge the misfortunes of his father in Italy, there can be no doubt but what he might at that time have still broken up the leagues in that country, and have destroyed the power of the Romans. Yet everything combined in their favour: the Carthaginians got a good general only at the end of the war; Alexander of Epirus contented himself with small conquests; the Gauls were quiet. The Romans indeed were in dread of an attack from the east; they seem to have been prepared for whatever might happen, and for this reason they still kept a garrison in Tarentum. Even before the first Punic war, they had made a friendly alliance with Ptolemy Philadelphus; after the peace they concluded another with Seleucus Callinicus. Thus far did they now already stretch out their arms. The Gauls had lost the Romagna, and had not stirred for fifty years: they were perhaps themselves glad that the Romans seemed to have forgotten them. The Senonian territory had come into the hands of the Romans as a wilderness; but it is a fine country: here, according to the provisions of the agrarian law, a great number might settle and occupy land. About the year 522, the tribune C. Flaminius, in spite of the violent opposition of the senate, carried a bill in the assembly of the people for the division of this _ager Gallicus Picenus_. The _ager_ of the Senonians is part of the Romagna, of Urbino, and the March of Ancona; the colony of Ariminum was already established there. Polybius, in a most unaccountable manner, calls this motion of Flaminius an attempt at rebellion; an example of how even a sensible man may err in judging of some particular circumstance, or follow others, without thinking himself on the subject. As none of the other tribunes would interfere, those who were in power got the father of Flaminius to make his son desist; and the old man ascended the _rostra_, and led him off. Here we behold the change which had taken place in the state of things: the father, a plebeian like his son, opposes the division of the _ager_. And again, we see in this an instance in which, as might be done by virtue of the _Lex Hortensia_, a measure of this kind was carried against the wishes of the senate, by a _plebiscitum_ which emanated from a single body; and in this meaning perhaps is the expression of Polybius to be understood (ἀρχηγὸς τῆς ἐπὶ τὸ χεῖρον διαστροφῆς τῆς Ῥωμαίων πολιτείας). In this assignation of the _ager publicus_, the point in dispute was no longer whether the plebeians