them wished for the command of the expedition to Asia, and the senate
gave it to Scipio, who would not, however, have gotten it, had not his
great brother offered to serve as a legate under him. For the latter
could not be appointed consul, as the law by which ten years were to
elapse between two consulships of the same individual, was now very
strictly adhered to. P. Scipio had in the meantime been censor, and
his influence was still almost unbounded, as was plainly shown on this
occasion, when L. Scipio, a most insignificant being, was chosen merely
for the sake of his brother; just as the great Fabius Maximus in former
times had procured the consulship for his son, under whom he then acted
as legate. The Roman fleet had scarcely appeared off the coast of
Asia, the Scipios being still in Macedonia, when ambassadors arrived
from Antiochus, to ask for the conditions of peace. He offered to give
up the Chersonesus; to acknowledge the freedom of the Asiatic towns,
Smyrna and Abydos, which had been taken by the Romans; and to bear half
of the expenses of the war. These conditions, coming from one who owned
himself vanquished, the Romans did not accept: Scipio declared that
they would have been good enough before Antiochus had evacuated the
Chersonesus, but that now the bridle was put upon Asia. They marched
through Macedon and Thrace over very difficult roads, aided, however,
by Philip, whom they rewarded by giving up to him the possession of
the towns on the Thracian coast. When the Romans had now crossed the
Hellespont, P. Scipio fell sick, a thing which often happened to him,
and as he was not able to follow the army, he was obliged to stay
behind at Elæa, an Æolian town. This put a stop to all the operations,
and Antiochus took advantage of the delay to set on foot fresh
negotiations, which, however, led to nothing. Scipio proposed very fair
terms; but they offended the pride of Antiochus. A son of the great
Scipio had in some way or other been taken prisoner in Asia, and was
treated with the greatest distinction. The ambassadors first offered to
set him free; then Antiochus sent him back without ransom, hoping that
it would now be easier for him to obtain peace. Scipio wished that a
decisive battle might be put off until his recovery; Antiochus, on the
other hand, was in a hurry to have it fought. The armies encountered
on the borders of Lydia, near Magnesia, at the foot of mount Sipylus,
in a country of moderately high hills, which is one of the finest in
the world, being, like all the lands along the coast of Asia Minor,
quite a contrast to the inland regions which are barren and devastated
by volcanic convulsions. The army of Antiochus consisted of eighty
thousand men, its chief strength being the Macedonian phalanx, which
in all likelihood was made up of men of all countries: there were
likewise some Macedonians among these, the descendants of the troops of
Alexander, who, however, were already mingled in blood with the Asiatic
population. Besides these, he had peltasts armed in the Greek manner,
and a host of Asiatics, concerning whose arms and equipments Livy and
Appian tell us nothing. The Romans had only a consular army, as the
other was still fighting against the Ætolians: besides two legions and
the proportionate number of allies, there were a few thousand Achæans,
and a small number of auxiliaries from Eumenes (who only ruled over
Pergamus and some Ionian and Mysian towns), the whole being much less
than thirty thousand men. They had been advancing against each other
for three days; on the fourth, the battle came on. The large army of
Antiochus outflanked the Romans: their left wing rested on a river,
which, however, had no depth, and thus they were outflanked on the
opposite bank. The Syrian army consisted of the phalanx, of a medley
of troops attached to it, of cavalry, elephants, and war-chariots. The
Romans also had elephants, but African ones, which they did not use
because they were far weaker, and much more timid than those of India.
The battle was decided at the very first onset, the victory being
contested for a moment, only by the mass of the Macedonian phalanx, and
on one single point: on another, Antiochus drove the Roman troops back
as far as their own camp, whereupon, however, he was repulsed. A good
general might with the aid of the phalanx have given the Romans a great
deal of trouble, as was still done at Cynoscephalæ; but all was lost
by the king’s wretched tactics. The phalanx at first was formed into a
number of smaller bodies with intervals; and instead of their keeping
that order, and acting together in masses, these gathered from fear
into one huge cluster, which could have been of use only in a plain,
and in extreme danger: but here, on uneven ground, there arose an
immense confusion, in which the light troops of the Romans so harassed
them with their javelins and slings, that they all broke and fled. Just
as vain had been the attempt, in the beginning of the battle, to use
the scythed chariots against the Romans, whose skirmishers put them
to flight, as the horses were soon made to shy: this is an Asiatic
invention, but it is also to be found among the Celts, especially in
Britain. The overthrow was so complete, that it was impossible to
bring together again the small remnants of the army. The king fled
through Phrygia, and sent Xeuxis as his ambassador to Scipio to beg
for peace, stooping at the same time to the meanest offers. Scipio was
glad to come to terms. It is possible that L. Scipio received also
some presents, which was the charge afterwards brought against him;
yet there is no need for supposing this, as a Roman consul could not
have wished for anything better than to make peace before the coming of
his successor. The conditions were, as follows:--Antiochus was at once
to pay down five hundred talents (675,000 dollars) for the truce;[35]
the definitive peace was to be settled in Rome, and as soon as it was
concluded, he was again to pay two thousand five hundred: this latter
condition, very likely by accident, is never mentioned again. Then he
was to pay twelve thousand talents (16,200,000 dollars) in yearly
instalments of one thousand each, and to give twenty hostages, among
whom was his own son. He was to place at the disposition of the Romans
the whole of the country on this side of the Taurus which belonged to
him, that is to say, Asia Minor with the exception of the two Cilicias
north of the Taurus, the Halys was to be the boundary. Thus Antiochus
was to yield up all that he possessed in Phrygia. It was afterwards
a moot point, whether Pamphylia was also included therein: Livy and
the fragments of Polybius throw no light upon it, and, on the whole,
the geography of these countries is very obscure; as far, however,
as I can understand Appian, Pamphylia did not remain under the rule
of Antiochus, nor was it bestowed upon Eumenes, but it existed as an
independent state between both. Moreover the king was not to meddle
with the affairs of Europe without leave from Rome, nor to wage war
with nations which were allies of the Romans, unless he were attacked;
he was to give up his ships of war, even the triremes, all but ten; to
keep no elephants; to enlist no mercenaries from countries which were
subject to the Romans; to pay a specified sum to Eumenes; and also to
deliver up Hannibal, and some others whom he had received at his court:
(these last were added only for the sake of appearances, to give a
good colouring to the demand for the surrender of Hannibal). But these
made their escape. This happened in the year 562, the definitive peace
being concluded somewhat later. A rashly undertaken war could have led
by one battle to such a peace; but that a prince capable of making it
should have been called the Great, is quite inconceivable: and yet he
had still an immense empire, as large as Germany, France, and Spain put
together.
In the following year, Cn. Manlius, the successor of L. Scipio, took
the command, quite impatient to do something. This, and the hope
of booty, led him in compliance with the wishes of the Asiatics to
undertake a campaign against the Galatians or Gallo-Grecians in
Phrygia. About the time of Pyrrhus, the Gauls overran Macedonia, and
had forced their way as far as Delphi: then--whether moved, as the
Greeks relate, by awful natural phenomena, or allured by the accounts
which they had heard of the beautiful countries in Asia--they marched
off out of Greece eastward to Thrace: there many of them remained,
and established their rule in it; others, twenty thousand in number,
crossed in two divisions, the one over the Hellespont, the other over
the Bosporus, being favoured by the feuds of the Asiatic princes. Here
they gained settlements in Ancyræan Phrygia, on the northern coast;
just as in later times the Normans did in Neustria; and henceforth they
lived in thirty free towns, in a land which is meant by nature to be
the seat of the greatest wealth and happiness, but which now under the
rule of barbarians has become a wilderness. There were three tribes of
them, the Trocmi, Tolistoboii, and Tectosages, the two first of which
seem to have been formed in the course of their migrations; for we do
not meet with them elsewhere, as we certainly do with the third. They
united themselves with the Bithynians, among whom two small kingdoms
arose. The latter were Thracians, and they dwelt between Nicomedia
and Heraclea: during the Persian domination, they were under their
native princes; but after the breaking up of the Persian and the
Macedonian empires, which had always been least consolidated in Asia
Minor, they widened their sway, and became proportionally important.
Nicomedes, who was then king, took the Gauls, among whom there were
still but ten thousand armed men, into his pay; he defeated his
rival, and founded the Bithynian state, which now became hellenized.
From that time, the Gauls sold their aid to whosoever wanted it, and
made the whole of western Asia tributary to themselves. This part of
history is still very confused; but it may be disentangled, as we
have many materials for it. They were defeated by Antiochus Soter,
on which they withdrew into the mountains, and when circumstances had
changed, they burst forth again: every one paid them tribute to escape
their ravages. When the war broke out between Ptolemy Euergetes and
Seleucus Callinicus, and afterwards between the former and Antiochus
Hierax, they sold themselves, being thoroughly faithless, now to one
now to the other, and they became the scourge of the whole of Asia,
until to the astonishment of everybody, Attalus of Pergamus, refusing
to pay them tribute any longer, attacked, and defeated them; which
is only to be accounted for by the fact, that sloth had made them
utterly effeminate and unwarlike; just like the Goths whom Belisarius
encountered in Italy. From this blow they never quite recovered;
yet they still retained considerable influence, as Asia was always
divided, and although Antiochus was living in their neighbourhood,
he was too busy notwithstanding to be able to protect that part of
Phrygia which bordered on the country where they dwelt. They therefore
went on raising tribute far and wide; and now, after the downfall of
Antiochus, the Asiatic peoples were afraid that they should not be
able to defend themselves: this gave Cn. Manlius an opportunity of
taking the field as the defender of these against the Galatians. Those
barbarians had answered his summons to yield, with a _stolida ferocia_.
He marched through Phrygia, and attacked them in their mountains,
without, however, exterminating them; they remained there, and retained
the Celtic language for a remarkably long period, even down to the
times of Augustus. By degrees they also hellenized themselves, and
such we find them to have been in the days of St. Paul.[36] The war
was most desirable for the inhabitants of Asia Minor; but thoroughly
unjust on the side of the Romans. Cn. Manlius undertook it contrary
to the expressed will of the _decem legati_ who followed him. It was
ended in two campaigns, and brought the Romans no other fruits but the
booty and the sum of money which may perhaps have been paid; for the
countries between western Asia and the land of the Galatians, were not
the subjects, but the allies of Rome. The Gauls suffered such severe
defeats, that thenceforth they lived quietly, and in subjection to the
Romans.
The Romans now divided their conquests. Eumenes, who until then had had
quite a small dominion, very much like that of a petty German prince,
now became a great king. Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia on the Hellespont and
Great Phrygia (the two were afterwards made one under the name of
the kingdom of Asia, and the inhabitants were called Asians), Ionia
with the exception of Smyrna, Phocæa, Erythræ, and some other Greek
towns, which retained their freedom, became his. It was a great, and
an enviable empire, but for all that a feeble one, owing to Asiatic
effeminacy. The Rhodians got Caria and Lycia, with the exception of
Telmissus which, heaven knows why, fell to the share of Eumenes. This
was for a little republic an immense windfall, as these were fine
rich countries, from which they might draw millions of our money: the
taxes among the ancients were very heavy, and mostly on land, being
a third of the whole produce. Revenues like these made the Rhodians
very rich, and they spent them partly in armaments, and partly on the
embellishment of their city, which, even without this, was already so
beautiful. The Rhodians are a thoroughly respectable people; the Romans
themselves acknowledged that they had none of the _levitas Grœcorum_
about them, but were quite their equals as to _severitas disciplinæ_.
IMPEACHMENT OF L. SCIPIO. END OF P. SCIPIO AFRICANUS AND OF HANNIBAL.
DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. M. PORCIUS CATO.
The contradictions which, according to Livy, were everywhere rife with
regard to P. Scipio’s end, are a remarkable instance of the way in
which even impossible statements were got up; and we see from thence,
that even at a time in which contemporary history was already written,
when the work of Fabius was ended, and that of Acilius began, these
accounts were very little substantiated. We do not know for certain the
year in which Scipio died. What is quoted in Livy from the speech of
Tib. Gracchus, must be deemed to be worth more than the stories of the
annalists. There is no doubt that L. Scipio was once called upon in the
senate by the Petillii to answer to the charge of having received sums
of money from Antiochus, and of not having accounted to the republic
for those which had been gained during the course of the war. This
kind of impeachment is one of the earliest which we meet with among
the Romans. The consuls might indeed freely dispose of the _manubia_;
they might distribute them among the soldiers, or deposit them in the
_ærarium_; but they were always to be ready to give account, as the
Romans in money matters were very particular with regard to this point.
L. Scipio sent for his books, and produced them in the senate; but his
brother snatched them out of his hands and destroyed them, saying that
it was a shame, when he and his brother had made the state so rich,
to ask an account for such a trifle as a million of drachmæ. Thus
225,000 dollars were already then a trifle! Hereupon an impeachment
was brought against P. Scipio; he spoke a few proud words, and then it
was--which can hardly be otherwise than authentic--that he cried out,
“This is the day that I conquered Hannibal at Zama, on which ye are
always wont to offer sacrifice: let those who are well disposed, follow
me.” The tribunes alone are said to have staid behind. This accusation
may perhaps be made to agree with the fact that Gracchus himself had
wanted to have L. Scipio arrested, and that on this, when the prætor
Terentius Culleo was about to try the case, P. Scipio had in all haste
come up from Etruria, and rescued his brother from the beadles. And
therefore as P. Africanus _plus quam civiles animos gerebat_, he too
was impeached. He either did not wait for this prosecution, and retired
to Liternum, a Latin colony, or _colonia maritima_, between Cumæ and
Minturnæ, or he had lived there already before. Thus much is certain,
that the last years of his life he did not pass in Rome. That he lived
at Liternum in exile, and not for his own pleasure, becomes probable
from the circumstance, that before his death, some one else was
_princeps senatus_. Such an exile was easy to bring about; for, if he
settled at Liternum as a citizen, he had thereby renounced the right of
Roman citizenship.
L. Scipio, with his quæstor and legate, was found guilty of having
embezzled the sum with which he had been charged. He was not addicted;
but his property was seized by the state, and it is said not to have
been sufficient to cover the demand. To conclude from thence that
he was innocent, would be quite absurd; for he might have been a
spendthrift in the meanwhile.
After the first Punic war, the number of the tribes had been raised
to five and thirty, as a great part of the Sabines had acquired the
full right of citizenship, and had formed two new tribes, the Quirina
and Velina. This was nearly sixty years after the last increase, and
thus, there were considerable signs already of a state of political
stagnation. At the same time, perhaps as early as before the first
Punic war, many towns were made præfectures with Cærite rights.
During the second Punic war, there were four prætors; and while it
yet lasted, their number was increased to six. Like Sicily, Spain
now became a province; or rather, it was divided into two provinces,
_Citerior_ and _Ulterior_, to which two prætors were sent. Southern
Italy had likewise taken the form of a province, owing to the war with
Hannibal, and it continued as such for some time after: the prætor
there was most likely in Tarentum or Bruttium. But Gaul was not yet
reduced _in provinciæ formam_, and there was, of course, no prætor
there. The greatest change, which reached deepest, and had the most
lasting consequences, had been caused by the falling away of many
peoples to Hannibal: they were punished, and the places which had
belonged to them lost all the privileges of Italian allies; some were
treated as conquered, their lands being either confiscated, or merely
left to them on sufferance; others, who had submitted, had but met
with forbearance. This was the fate of a great many places in Samnium
and Apulia, which were severed from their communities. Those which
had remained faithful, kept indeed their ancient constitution. As the
Lucanians, in the war with Hannibal, had their own prætor whom they
elected themselves, they may have still enjoyed this privilege; but
all their subject towns which had revolted, were detached from them.
The Bruttians, who had persisted the longest in their revolt, were
altogether deprived of their constitution: they were mere _dediticii_,
no more allies at all; they had some of them to become serfs, and the
whole of their land was confiscated. It is uncertain, whether they had
been formerly on the same footing with the Samnites and Lucanians: as
being of Greek descent, they were most likely treated as foreigners,
yet they had still held an honourable position, which was now gone.
Tarentum lost all its rights, and lingered on forsaken within its own
walls, until little by little it fell to nothing. This change among the
allies, made it more difficult for those who remained to fulfil their
engagements to Rome than before; and owing to the rebellion likewise,
a bitter and long-lived hatred had grown up between Rome and many of
the Italian peoples. And what had much exhausted the allies, was the
drain upon their citizens, many of whom had taken advantage of the
isopolity, to settle in Rome or in the colonies. Some of the Latin
colonies, moreover, had neglected their duty, twelve out of thirty
having furnished no contingent during the expedition of Hasdrubal; and
now, when circumstances allowed of it, their rights were abridged.
The traces of the war with Hannibal had never been done away: the
Samnites, Apulians, and Lucanians had already been hardly dealt with
before; Etruria alone found herself in a state of high prosperity.
Many colonies were planted in the south of Italy, not so much for
security’s sake, as thus to provide for the poorer Romans. The veterans
of Scipio’s army were rewarded by a special grant of land in Apulia and
Lucania, which is the first example known to us of a provision made
for veterans on a large scale; if we had the second decade of Livy,
we might perhaps discover some earlier instances, but indeed they can
only have been single cases. The condition of Italy must have been one
of extreme distress: the price of every thing was unnaturally high,
and, owing to the heavy war-taxes, the middle classes must have been
utterly impoverished. In the latter periods of the war, we meet with a
public debt, which was repaid in three instalments; but the Macedonian
war had so drained the exchequer, that the third instalment was made in
public lands. The Roman people itself was affected in its very life’s
blood. The war had cost an immense host of men; and if notwithstanding
the census now gives a like number, we have only a proof that in the
meanwhile a crowd of foreigners, especially freedmen, had been received
as citizens, and that thus the body of the Roman commonalty had become
quite a different thing from what it had been before: those who had
stood the war, were for the most part grown wretchedly poor. All this
misery is not to be detected in Livy’s narrative; but we know from
other sources, that in Rome almost continual famine and epidemics were
raging; many families had their estates in the Falernian country and
in Campania, which districts were entirely laid waste; others which
had possessed landed property in the revolted provinces, had lost
their all; so that this struggle quite destroyed the wealth of the
nation. The Greek towns, Croton and others, were never able to recover.
Another consequence was, that the soldiers remained for years under
arms; that the legions, which had been composed of men enlisted for a
campaign, were converted into a standing army. This continued to be the
case after the war; and the soldiers became accustomed to look upon
themselves as a permanent order, which they had never been before, as
the legions were disbanded every year, and newly raised the next. This
condition of the preservation of republican freedom was now changed by
the war with Hannibal, and thus were the seeds here sown of the later
troubles. Owing to the great confiscations, immense landed estates had
been gained, the possession of which was divided between the great men
among the patricians and plebeians, as there was no one now to control
them, and the Licinian law had become a dead letter.
At that time, not a soul actually thought of danger; yet the beginning
of dissolution most decidedly existed already. It is said that, owing
to the victories in Asia, luxury and its concomitant vices had spread;
but this was an accidental symptom, the real cause lay deeper. After
such long, savage, and destructive wars, in which so many deeds of
outrage and ferocity had been wrought; in which the poor had become
poorer and poorer, and the middle classes had gone down more and more,
whilst the rich were crammed with wealth; many things must have changed
for the worse. The same soldiers who formerly had earned glory under
Scipio, and then as hungry plunderers went to Asia, enriched themselves
immensely, and returned with ill-gotten treasures: they had no real
wants, and did not know how to use their suddenly acquired riches.
Even in the character of the great men, as in every thing else, we
everywhere meet with a great alteration: the dismal spectacle of an
utter degeneracy is already preparing itself. The generals appear like
robbers; they carry on wars merely for the sake of pillage and booty,
and the exceptions among them are few, and far between. The men of
high rank are overbearing towards the allies: in former times a Roman
magistrate, when travelling through Italy, would put up at the house
of his own guest-friend, but it was now customary for such travellers
to be everywhere received with pomp. The games were got up in a style
and on a scale which required an immense fortune; in 580, there were
at one funeral no less than a hundred and fifty gladiators: in the
forum, banquets were given to the people. It was already the fashion
to seek for choice specimens of art and luxury; the officers and the
nobles filled their houses with furniture, tapestry, and plate of every
description. A brutal expenditure of wealth got in vogue, a judicious
and liberal use of riches being one of the most difficult things in
the world. Thus, when several years ago, the inhabitants of Dittmarsch
all at once made a great deal of money, it immediately gave rise to a
sluttish wastefulness, until, before long, they were reduced again.
The cooks, who hitherto had been the most despised of slaves at Rome,
now became the most highly valued: in earlier times, the consul lived
like the peasant; only the pontiffs, whose bills of fare we may still
read in Macrobius,[37] were held to keep as good a table as the most
dignified of canons. With the Athenians it was quite different. The
Greek is naturally very temperate, and the Italian can be so too; but
when the latter has an opportunity of feasting, he makes a beast of
himself. Moreover, although the constitution was most democratical in
appearance, yet we already see the overweening pride of the nobles
on the increase: the rich were almost above punishment. L. Quinctius
Flamininus, the brother of Titus, to amuse his catamite, caused a
man who was either a convict, or a Gallic hostage, to be beheaded;
for which Cato expelled him from the senate. And though fifty years
afterwards, Polybius conscientiously places the Romans above the
Greeks, peculation and extortions from the allies were notwithstanding
very common, as we may see from an excellent fragment of Cato _de sumtu
suo_, the gem of the collection of Fronto: it shows that towards the
end of the sixth century, it was the general belief that the servants
of the state seized upon every opportunity of feathering their own
nests. All distinctions between the different orders had entirely
ceased; the only thing looked to, was whether a man were noble or
not, the patricians, as an order, having quite lost their importance.
The last of their privileges, that one consul should always belong to
one of the two orders, was done away with at the time of the war with
Perseus, as the patrician houses were nearly extinct: for the ædiles
only, this was still the rule, but in the case of the prætorship it
was altogether abolished. It was, however, extremely difficult for
a plebeian to rise, who was not of high rank: for only a few _novi
homines_, like Cato, could make their way, and the whole of the
nobility seem to have been in a league to check such intrusion.
On the other hand, the city was very much embellished. Stately
buildings were erected, and instead of the courts of justice being
held any longer with no other covering but heaven, as was done by our
(German) forefathers, _basilicæ_ were built. This name was derived
from the στοὰ βασιλική under which the βασιλεύς at Athens used to sit:
it was a triple portico in which the judges assembled in the open
air, though not under the open sky. Cato was the first who built a
_basilica_ (Porcia) in the forum; by and by several others followed.
They were afterwards enclosed with walls; and when the Christian
religion was introduced into Rome, this form was deemed to be the one
best suited to the Christian worship, as the different _stoæ_ might
be assigned as separate places, the men and the matrons being in the
aisles on each side, and the clergy in the middle; at the tribunal,
was the high altar, and the throne of the bishop. Hence the name of
_basilica_ was applied to all Christian churches, even when they were
no longer in this form. The material of the buildings was still the
old, simple one; the style, the ancient Doric or Tuscan: marble was not
yet to be seen.
M. Porcius Cato is the most remarkable man of that age, he is quite a
man of the old times: (the surname Priscus, however, merely indicates
his Latin origin from Tusculum.) The account of him in Plutarch is
excellent, as his life may be understood without any knowledge of the
constitution, or deep insight into politics: nothing else was needed
but a keen perception of individual character, which was Plutarch’s
strong point. Perhaps Rome never again gave birth to so original a
genius as his. Whilst all around him had their science and erudition
from Greece, Cato had it from himself; he learned Greek only late in
life; his language, his style, his knowledge, were altogether Roman.
A more versatile mind than his, the world has never known: he was a
great statesman,--his censorship was a distinguished one,--an excellent
agriculturist, an active man in every business of life, gifted with
remarkable eloquence, which was pure nature, and not at all formed
after artificial rules; and he was also a very eminent scholar,
indefatigable in research, an excellent prose-writer in his own way,
although harsh and uncouth. Livy, who otherwise is fond of him, applies
to him in jest the phrase, _qui vivo eo_ ALLATRARE _ejus (Scipionis)
magnitudinem solitus erat_. His peculiarities were those of a man of
low birth, who, being endowed with immense energy, had worked his way
by dint of it through countless difficulties: all his life long, he
kept up a feud with the nobles and the rich; he abhorred their manners
from the bottom of his heart,--there was no affectation in it. The
only one like him in feeling, was his colleague in the censorship and
the tribunate, L. Valerius Flaccus. Cato was a fanatical Roman: he
bore a hatred against every thing that was polished and elegant, his
nationality therefore led him to dwell fondly on the past; he looked
upon the men of his day as quite degenerate; his ideal dated a hundred
years back, and with him the height of happiness was in simplicity,
thriftiness, and stern morality. His constitution was of iron strength:
in his eighty-sixth year, he still carried on a troublesome lawsuit;
and even as late as in his ninetieth, he impeached Servius Sulpicius
Galba. He stood up without flinching for Rome’s supremacy; but at the
same time he had an extraordinary sense of justice: though he did not
like the Greeks, he yet defended the Rhodians, as he likewise did the
Lusitanians against the perjury and the extortions of Galba. On the
whole, he is very like the great German characters of the sixteenth
century, in whom what is called coarseness by no means deserves that
name.