The Boians, who dwelt between the Senonians and the Po, were filled with rage and apprehension at the fate of their brethren, and assembling all their forces they entered Etruria, where being joined by the Etruscans and the remnant of the Senonians, they pressed on for Rome; but at the Lake Vadimo the consular armies met and nearly annihilated their whole army; the Senonians, it is said, in frenzy of despair put an end to themselves when they saw the battle lost. The Gauls appeared again the next year (284) in Etruria; but a signal defeat near Populonia (282) forced them to sue for peace, which on account of the war in the south, the Romans readily granted. The war with the Etruscans continued till the year 280, when, in consequence of that with Pyrrhus, the Romans concluded a peace with them on most favourable terms. This peace terminated the conflict, which had now lasted for thirty years, and converted Etruria into Rome’s steadiest and most faithful ally.[c] FOOTNOTES [38] [Edward A. Freeman[e] calls the Samnites “the worthiest foes whom Rome ever met within her own peninsula.” He adds, “There can be little doubt that they possessed a Federal Constitution. Their resistance ended only with the extermination of their race.”] [39] [Freeman[e] notes that Rome had never appeared to be “the mere capital of the Latin League. As far as the faintest glimmerings of history go back, Rome holds a position towards Latium far more lordly than that of Thebes towards Bœotia. It is no wonder that a League of small towns could not permanently bear up against a single great city of their own race whose strength equalled their united strength, and which was more liberal of its franchise than any other city-commonwealth ever was.”] [40] [In the interpretations of clauses 1 and 2 of the Publilian Law scholars are divided. The comitia curiata had now lost all real power, and in fact had never enjoyed the right to pass upon resolutions adopted by other assemblies. It was probably either the senate or the patrician part of the senate which was required to give its previous consent to bills brought before the centuries. Clause 2 probably gave validity to resolutions of the tribal assembly, even when no patricians were present; cf. Botsford.[h]] [41] [This is the Papirius Cursor of whom Livy [g] writes the glowing eulogy we have quoted in the preceding Volume, Chapter LVII, where Livy claims that Papirius Cursor--as the contemporary of Alexander and the general whom he would have met had he attacked Rome instead of Persia--would have equalled the Macedonian and driven him out of Italy.] [42] [This law probably made unnecessary the consent of the senate to resolutions passed by the tribal assembly under the presidency of the plebeian tribunes.] [43] [The Tarentines were not of course so bad as the Roman historians represent. Though imprudent, they had good ground for indignation.] [Illustration: ROMAN TROPHIES] [Illustration]