26.34
The
plebs having thus resolved, the senate made the following orders: First they
restored their liberty and property to Oppia and Cluvia; if they wished to ask
the senate for a further reward, they were to come to Rome. Separate
decrees were made in the case of each of the Capuan families; it is not worth
while giving a complete enumeration. Some were to have their property
confiscated, they themselves with their wives and children were to be sold,
with the exception of those of their daughters who had married outside the
territory before they passed under the power of Rome. Others were to be
thrown into chains, and their fate settled afterwards. In the case of the rest,
the question whether their property should be confiscated or not depended
upon the amount at which they were assessed. Where property was restored
it was to include all the captured live stock except the horses, all the slaves
except the adult males, and everything which was not attached to the soil. It
was further decreed that the populations of Capua, Atella, Calatia and the
valley of the Sabatus should all retain their liberty, except those who
themselves, or whose parents had been with the enemy, but none of them
could become a Roman citizen or a member of the Latin League. None of
those who had been in Capua during the siege could remain in the city or its
neighbourhood beyond a certain date; a place of residence was assigned to
them beyond the Tiber at some distance from it. Those who had not been in
Capua during the war, nor in any revolted Campanian city, were to be settled
to the north of the Liris in the direction of Rome; those who had gone over
to the side of Rome before Hannibal came to Capua were to be removed to
this side of the Volturnus, and no one was to possess any land or building
within fifteen miles of the sea. Those who had been deported beyond the
Tiber were forbidden to acquire or to hold either for themselves or their
posterity landed property anywhere except in the territories of Veii, Sutrium
and Nepete, and in no case was such holding to exceed fifty jugera. The
property of all the senators and of all who had held any magistracy in Capua,
Atella and Calatia was ordered to be sold in Capua, and those persons whom
it had been decided to sell into slavery were sent to Rome and sold there.
The disposal of the images and bronze statues which were alleged to have
been taken from the enemy, and the question which of them were sacred and
which profane, were referred to the Pontifical College. After hearing these
decrees. the Capuans were dismissed in a much more sorrowful state of mind
than that in which they had come. It was no longer Q. Fulvius' cruelty to
them, but the injustice of the gods and their accursed fate that they
denounced.
