(200-131 B.C.)
From the time of Pyrrhus, Macedonia, and all Greece as well, had abundant
causes to look with jealousy upon the growing power of Rome. For the
most part Greece was in too shattered a condition--though doubtless most
contemporary citizens did not realise the fact--to enter into active
dispute with the new Mistress of the West. There were times, however,
when Macedonia, not yet able to forget the brief period of her recent
supremacy, strove to become a factor in the contest that was going on
between Rome and Carthage.
And so it happened that Philip V of Macedon, an unworthy successor of
his great namesake, made an alliance with Hannibal, and even promised to
send troops to the active assistance of the Carthaginian general. The
promise was never kept, thanks to the indecisive nature of Philip. But
the intention brought upon Philip the wrath of Rome, and led, among other
causes, to a series of contests between Macedonia and Rome, in which
the latter always had the advantage; and in which, finally, all Greece
was involved, partly on one side and partly on the other--with that
suicidal lack of unity which was always the bane of the Greek character.
The ultimate result was that all Greece, including Macedonia, became at
last a Roman province. The destruction of Corinth followed close upon
the destruction of Carthage, and for some generations after these events
there was no maritime city left to dispute in any sense the position of
Rome as mistress both by sea and land. The commonwealth of Rome thus
stood at the apex of its power, little knowing that even in the day of
its prime the period of decline was being ushered in.[a]
THE MACEDONIAN WAR; WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS III
[Sidenote: [200-192 B.C.]]
The victory of Zama gave the Romans the dominion of the west; the
ambitious senate then aspired to that of the east, and the king of
Macedonia was selected as the first object of attack. The people, wearied
out with service and contributions, were with some difficulty induced to
give their consent; and war was declared against Philip under the pretext
of his having injured the allies of Rome, namely, the Athenians, and the
kings of Egypt and Pergamus.
Philip after the late peace had been assiduous in augmenting his fleet
and army; but instead of joining Hannibal when he was in Italy, he
employed himself, in conjunction with Antiochus, king of Syria, in
seizing the islands and the towns on the coast of the Ægean, which were
under the protection of Egypt, whose king was now a minor. This engaged
him in hostilities with the king of Pergamus and the Rhodians. A Roman
army, under the consul P. Sulpicius, passed over to Greece (200); the
Ætolians declared against Philip, and gradually the Bœotians and Achæans
were induced to follow their example.
Philip, thus threatened, made a gallant resistance against this
formidable confederacy; but the consul T. Quinctius Flamininus gave him
at length (197) a complete defeat at Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly, and he
was forced to sue for peace, which, however, he obtained on much easier
terms than might have been expected, as the Romans were on the eve of a
war with the king of Syria. The peace with Philip was followed by the
celebrated proclamation at the Isthmian games of the independence of
those states of Greece which had been under the Macedonian dominion; for
the Romans well knew that this was the infallible way to establish their
own supremacy, as the Greeks would be sure never to unite for the common
good of their country.
After an interval of a few years, the long-expected war with Antiochus
the Great of Syria broke out. The immediate occasion of it was the
discontent of the Ætolians, who, being mortally offended with the
Romans, sent to invite him into Greece. He had been for three years
making preparations for the war, and he had now at his service the
greatest general of the age, if he had known how to make use of him.
For Hannibal having been appointed one of the suffets at Carthage, and
finding the power of the judges enormous in consequence of their holding
their office for life, had a law passed reducing it to one year. This
naturally raised him a host of enemies, whose number was augmented by
his financial reforms; for discovering that the public revenues had been
diverted into the coffers of the magistrates and persons of influence,
while the people were directly taxed to pay the tribute to the Romans, he
instituted an inquiry, and proved that the ordinary revenues of the state
were abundantly sufficient for all purposes. Those who felt their incomes
thus reduced sought to rouse the enmity of the Romans against Hannibal,
whom they charged with a secret correspondence with Antiochus; and though
Scipio strongly urged the indignity of the Roman senate becoming the
instrument of a faction in Carthage, hatred of Hannibal prevailed, and
three senators were sent to Carthage, ostensibly to settle some disputes
between the Carthaginians and Masinissa. Hannibal, who knew their real
object, left the city secretly in the night, and getting on board a ship
sailed to Tyre. He thence went to Antioch, and finding that Antiochus was
at Ephesus he proceeded to that city, where he met with a most flattering
reception from the monarch (195).
[Sidenote: [192-191 B.C.]]
Hannibal, true to his maxim that the Romans were only to be conquered in
Italy, proposed to the king to let him have a good fleet and ten thousand
men, with which he would sail over to Africa, when he hoped to be able to
induce the Carthaginians to take arms again; and if he did not succeed he
would land somewhere in Italy. He would have the king meanwhile to pass
with a large army into Greece, and to remain there ready to invade Italy,
if necessary. Antiochus at first assented to this plan of the war; but he
afterwards lent an ear to the suggestions of Thoas the Ætolian, who was
jealous of the great Carthaginian, and gave it up. He himself at length
(192) passed over to Greece with a small army of ten thousand men; but
instead of acting immediately with vigour, he loitered in Eubœa, where
he espoused a beautiful maiden, wasted his time in petty negotiations
in Thessaly and the adjoining country, by which he highly offended King
Philip, whom it was his first duty to conciliate, and thus gave the
consul M. Acilius Glabrio time to land his army and enter Thessaly.
Antiochus hastened from Eubœa to defend the pass of Thermopylæ against
him; but he was totally defeated, and forced to fly to Asia (191).
[Sidenote: [191-189 B.C.]]
Antiochus flattered himself at first that the Romans would not follow
him into Asia; but Hannibal soon proved to him that such an expectation
was a vain one, and that he must prepare for war. At Rome the invasion
of Asia was at once resolved on. The two new consuls, C. Lælius and L.
Scipio (190), were both equally anxious to have the conducting of this
war; the senate were mostly in favour of Lælius, an officer of skill and
experience, while L. Scipio was a man of very moderate abilities. But
Scipio Africanus offering, if his brother was appointed, to go as his
legate, Greece was assigned to him as his province without any further
hesitation. The Scipios then, having raised what troops were requisite,
among which five thousand of those who had served under Africanus came as
volunteers, passed over to Epirus with a force of about thirteen thousand
men. In Thessaly Acilius delivered up to them two legions which he had
under his command, and being supplied with provisions and everything
else they required they marched through Macedonia and Thrace for the
Hellespont. A Roman fleet was in the Ægean, which, united with those of
Eumenes of Pergamus and the Rhodians, proved an overmatch for that of
Antiochus, even though commanded by Hannibal. When the Scipios reached
the Hellespont they found everything prepared for the passage by Eumenes.
They crossed without any opposition; and as this was the time for moving
the _Ancilia_ at Rome, P. Scipio, who was one of the salii, caused the
army to make a halt of a few days on that account.
While they remained there an envoy came from Antiochus proposing peace,
on condition of his giving up all claim to the Grecian cities in Asia
and paying one-half of the expenses of the war. The Scipios insisted
on his paying all the expenses of the war, as he had been the cause of
it, and evacuating Asia on this side of Mount Taurus. The envoy then
applied privately to P. Scipio, telling him that the king would release
without ransom his son, who had lately fallen into his hands, and give
him a large quantity of gold and every honour he could bestow, if through
his means he could obtain more equitable terms. Scipio expressed his
gratitude, as a private person, to the king for the offer to release his
son; and, as a friend, advised him to accept any terms he could get, as
his case was hopeless. The envoy retired; the Romans advanced to Ilium,
where the consul ascended and offered sacrifice to Minerva, to the great
joy of the Ilienses, who asserted themselves to be the progenitors of the
Romans. They thence advanced to the head of the river Caicus. Antiochus,
who was at Thyatira, hearing that P. Scipio was lying sick at Elæa, sent
his son to him, and received in return his thanks, and his advice not to
engage till he had rejoined the army. As in case of defeat his only hopes
lay in P. Scipio, he took his counsel, and retiring to the foot of Mount
Sipylus formed a strong camp near Magnesia.
The consul advanced, and encamped about four miles off; and as the
king seemed not inclined to fight, and the Roman soldiers were full of
contempt for the enemy, and clamorous for action, it was resolved, if he
did not accept the proffer of battle, to storm his camp. But Antiochus,
fearing that the spirit of his men would sink if he declined fighting,
led them out when he saw the Romans in array.
The Roman army, consisting of four legions, each of fifty-four hundred
men, was drawn up in the usual manner, its left resting on a river;
three thousand Achæan and Pergamenian foot were placed on the right, and
beyond them the horse, about three thousand in number; sixteen African
elephants were stationed in the rear. The army of Antiochus consisted of
sixty-two thousand foot, twelve thousand horse, and fifty-four elephants.
His phalanx of sixteen thousand men was drawn up in ten divisions, each
of fifty men in rank and thirty-two in file, with two elephants in each
of the intervals. On the left and right of the phalanx were placed the
cavalry, the light troops and the remainder of the elephants, the scythed
chariots, and Arab archers, mounted on dromedaries.
When the armies were arrayed, there came on a fog, with a slight kind
of rain, which relaxed the bowstrings, slings, and dart thongs of the
numerous light troops of the king, and the darkness caused confusion in
his long and various line. Eumenes, also, by a proper use of the light
troops, frightened the horses of the scythed chariots, and drove them
off the field. The Roman horse then charged that of the enemy and put it
to flight; the confusion of the left wing extended to the phalangites,
who, by their own men rushing from the left among them, were prevented
from using their long _sarissæ_ (or spears), and were easily broken and
slaughtered by the Romans, who now also knew from experience how to deal
with the elephants. Antiochus, who commanded in person on the right,
drove the four _turms_ or troops of horse opposed to him, and a part
of the foot, back to their camp; but M. Æmilius, who commanded there,
rallied them. Eumenes’ brother, Attalus, came from the right with some
horse; the king turned and fled; the rout became general; the slaughter,
as usual, was enormous; the camp was taken and pillaged. The loss of the
Syrians is stated at fifty-three thousand slain and fourteen hundred
taken; that of the Romans and their ally Eumenes at only three hundred
and fifty men (190).
All the cities of the coast sent in their submission to the consul, who
advanced to Sardis. Antiochus was at this time at Apamea; and when he
learned that P. Scipio, who had not been in the battle, was arrived,
he sent envoys to treat of peace on any terms. The Romans had already
arranged the conditions of peace, and P. Scipio announced them as
follows: Antiochus should abstain from Europe, and give up all Asia this
side of Taurus; pay fifteen thousand Euboic talents for the expenses of
the war, five hundred down, fifteen hundred when the senate and people
ratified the peace, the remainder in twelve years, at one thousand
talents a year; give Eumenes four hundred talents and a quantity of
corn; give twenty hostages; and, above all, deliver up Hannibal, Thoas
the Ætolian, and three other Greeks. The king’s envoys went direct to
Rome, whither also went Eumenes in person, and embassies from Rhodes and
other places; the consul put his troops into winter quarters at Magnesia,
Tralles, and Ephesus.
At Rome the peace was confirmed with Antiochus. The greater part of the
ceded territory was granted to Eumenes, Lycia and a part of Caria to the
Rhodians (whose usually prudent aristocracy committed a great error in
seeking this aggrandisement of their dominion), and such towns as had
taken part with the Romans were freed from tribute. L. Scipio triumphed
on his return to Rome, and assumed the surname of Asiaticus, to be in
this respect on an equality with his illustrious brother.
[Sidenote: [189-183 B.C.]]
Cn. Manlius Vulso succeeded Scipio in Asia (189), and as the Roman
consuls now began to regard it as discreditable and unprofitable to pass
their year without a war, he looked round him for an enemy from whom he
might derive fame and wealth. He fixed on the Gallo-Grecians, as the
descendants of those Gauls were called who had passed over into Asia in
the time of Pyrrhus, and won a territory for themselves, named from them
in after-times Galatia. He stormed their fortified camp on Mount Olympus
in Mysia, gave them a great defeat on the plains of Ancyra, and forced
them to sue for peace. The booty gained, the produce of their plunder
for many years, was immense. Manlius then led his army back to the coast
for the winter. The next year (188) ten commissioners came out to ratify
the peace with Antiochus; they added some more conditions, such as the
surrender of his elephants; the peace was then sworn to, and the Romans
evacuated Asia.
[Illustration: ROMAN BATTERING RAM]
Hannibal, when he found that the Romans demanded him, retired to Crete;
not thinking himself, however, safe in that island, he left it soon
after and repaired to the court of Prusias, king of Bithynia, who felt
flattered by the presence of so great a man. But the vengeance of Rome
did not sleep, and no less a person than T. Flamininus was sent (183) to
demand his death or his surrender. The mean-spirited Prusias, immediately
after a conference with the Roman envoy, sent soldiers to seize his
illustrious guest.[c] Cornelius Nepos thus describes the tragic result:
Hannibal constantly confined himself to one place, being a castle with
which the king had presented him as a reward for his services, which he
so contrived, that he had sallies on all sides through which he might
escape if he should have occasion; for he always suspected that that
would befall him, which at last did really happen. The Roman ambassadors,
accompanied with a great number of men, having at length surrounded this
castle on all parts, his servant perceiving them from the gate, runs
to his master and acquaints him that there appeared a more than usual
company of armed men; upon which he commanded him to go round all the
doors of the house and speedily bring him word whether there was any
way to escape. When the boy had immediately acquainted him how the case
stood, and had farther assured him that all the passages were stopped, he
was soon satisfied that this could not happen by accident, but that they
came to seize his person; and that consequently he could not long enjoy
his life, which he was resolved should not be in another man’s disposal:
upon which he immediately swallowed a dose of poison, which he was always
accustomed to carry with him. Thus, this our most valiant hero, harassed
with numerous and various labours, reposed himself in death.[h]
It is said that Scipio Africanus died in the same year with his
illustrious rival, an instance also of the mutability of fortune, for the
conqueror of Carthage breathed his last in exile. In the year 193 he had
had a specimen of the instability of popular favour; for while at the
consular elections he and all the Cornelian gens exerted their influence
in favour of his cousin P. Cornelius Scipio, the son of Cneius who had
been killed in Spain,--and who was himself of so exemplary a character
that, when the statue of the Idæan mother Cybele was, by the direction of
the Sibylline books, brought to Rome from Pergamus, it was committed to
his charge, as being the best man in the city--they were forced to yield
to that of the vainglorious T. Quinctius Flamininus, who sued for his
brother, the profligate L. Quinctius. But, as the historian observes, the
glory of Flamininus was fresher; he had triumphed that very year; whereas
Africanus had been now ten years in the public view, and since his
victory over Hannibal he had been consul a second time, and censor--very
sufficient reasons for the decline of his favour with the unstable people.
[Sidenote: [187-183 B.C.]]
The year after the conclusion of the peace with Antiochus (187) the
Q. Petillii, tribunes of the people, at the instigation it is said of
M. Porcius Cato, cited Scipio Africanus before the tribes, to answer
various charges on old and new grounds, of which the chief was that
of having taken bribes from Antiochus, and not having accounted for
the spoil. Scipio was attended to the Forum by an immense concourse of
people; he disdained to notice the charges against him; in a long speech
he enumerated the various actions he had performed, and taking a book
from his bosom, “In this,” said he, “is an account of all you want to
know.” “Read it,” said the tribunes, “and let it then be deposited in the
treasury.” “No,” said Scipio, “I will not offer myself such an insult”;
and he tore up the book before their faces.
The night came on; the cause was deferred till the next day: at dawn the
tribunes took their seat on the rostra; the accused, on being cited, came
before it, attended by a crowd of his friends and clients. “This day,
ye tribunes and quirites,” said he, “I defeated Hannibal in Africa. As,
therefore, it should be free from strife and litigation, I will go to the
Capitol and give thanks to Jupiter and the other gods who inspired me on
this and other days to do good service to the state. Let whoso will, come
with me and pray to the gods that ye may always have leaders like unto
me.” He ascended the Capitol; all followed him, and the tribunes were
left sitting alone. He then went round to all the other temples, still
followed by the people; and this last day of his glory nearly equalled
that of his triumph for conquered Africa. His cause was put off for some
days longer; but in the interval, disgusted with the prospect of contests
with the tribunes which his proud spirit could ill brook, he retired to
Liternum in Campania. On his not appearing, the tribunes spoke of sending
and dragging him before the tribunal; but their colleagues interposed,
especially Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, from whom it was least expected, as
he was at enmity with the Scipios. The senate thanked Gracchus for his
noble conduct,[57] the matter dropped, and Scipio spent the remainder of
his days at Liternum. He was buried there, it is said, at his own desire,
that his ungrateful country might not even possess his ashes.
The actions of the two great men who were now removed from the scene
sufficiently declare their characters. As a general Hannibal is almost
without an equal; not a single military error can be charged to him,
and the address with which he managed to keep an army composed of such
discordant elements as his in obedience, even when obliged to act on the
defensive, is astonishing. The charges of perfidy, cruelty, and such
like, made against him by the Roman writers, are quite unfounded, and
are belied by facts. Nowhere does Hannibal’s character appear so great
as when, after the defeat of Zama, he, with unbroken spirit, applied
the powers of his mighty mind to the reform of political abuses and
the restoration of the finances, in the hopes of once more raising his
country to independence. Here he shone the true patriot.
The character of his rival has come down to us under the garb of
panegyric; but even after making all due deductions, much remains to
be admired. His military talents were doubtless considerable; of his
civil virtues we hear but little, and we cannot therefore judge of him
accurately as a statesman. Though a high aristocrat, we have, however,
seen that he would not hesitate to lower the authority of the senate by
appealing to the people in the gratification of his ambition; and we
certainly cannot approve of the conduct of the public man who disdained
to produce his accounts when demanded. Of his vaunted magnanimity and
generosity we have already had occasion to speak, and not in very exalted
terms. Still Rome has but one name in her annals to place in comparison
with that of Africanus; that name, Julius Cæsar, is a greater than
his--perhaps than any other.
[Sidenote: [201-171 B.C.]]
To return to our narrative. In the period which had elapsed since the
peace with Carthage, there had been annual occupation for the Roman arms
in Cisalpine Gaul, Liguria, and Spain. The Gauls, whose inaction all the
time Hannibal was in Italy seems hard to account for, resumed arms in the
year 201, at the instigation of one Hasdrubal, who had remained behind
from the army of Mago; they took the colony of Placentia, and met several
consular and prætorian armies in the field, and, after sustaining many
great defeats, were completely reduced; the Ligurians, owing to their
mountains, made a longer resistance, but they also were brought under the
yoke of Rome. In Spain the various portions of its warlike population,
ill brooking the dominion of strangers, rose continually in arms, but
failed before the discipline of the Roman legions and the skill of their
commanders. The celebrated M. Porcius Cato when consul (195) acquired
great fame by his conduct in that country.
Philip of Macedonia, who with all his vices was an able prince, had long
been making preparations for a renewed war with Rome, which he saw to be
inevitable. He died however (179) before matters came to an extremity.
His son and successor Perseus was a man of a very different character;
for while he was free from his father’s love of wine and women, he did
not possess his redeeming qualities, and was deeply infected by a mean
spirit of avarice. It was reserved for him to make the final trial of
strength with the Romans. Eumenes of Pergamus went himself to Rome, to
represent how formidable he was become, and the necessity of crushing
him; the envoys of Perseus tried in vain to justify him in the eyes of
the jealous senate; war was declared (172) against him on the usual
pretext of his injuring the allies of Rome, and the conduct of it was
committed to P. Licinius Crassus, one of the consuls for the ensuing year.
[Sidenote: [171-168 B.C.]]
The Macedonian army amounted to thirty-nine thousand foot, one-half
of whom were phalangites, and four thousand horse, the largest that
Macedonia had sent to the field since the time of Alexander the Great.
Perseus advanced into Thessaly at the head of this army (171), and at
the same time the Roman legions entered it from Epirus. An engagement of
cavalry took place not far from the river Peneus, in which the advantage
was decidedly on the side of the king. In another encounter success was
on that of the Romans; after which Perseus led his troops home for the
winter and Licinius quartered his in Thessaly and Bœotia.
Nothing deserving of note occurred in the following year. In the spring
of 169 the consul Q. Marcius Philippus led his army over the Cambunian
mountains into Macedonia, and Perseus, instead of occupying the passes
in the rear and cutting off his supplies from Thessaly, cravenly retired
before him, and allowed him to ravage all the south of Macedonia. Marcius
returned to Thessaly for the winter, and in the ensuing spring (168) the
new consul, L. Æmilius Paulus (son of the consul who fell at Cannæ),
a man of high consideration, of great talent, and who had in a former
consulate gained much fame in Spain, came out to take the command.
Meantime the wretched avarice of Perseus was putting an end to every
chance he had of success. Eumenes had offered, for the sum of fifteen
hundred talents, to abstain from taking part in the war, and to endeavour
to negotiate a peace for him: Perseus gladly embraced the offer, and
was ready enough to arrange about the hostages which Eumenes agreed
to give; but he hesitated to part with the money before he had had
the value for it, and he proposed that it should be deposited in the
temple at Samothrace till the war was ended. As Samothrace belonged to
Perseus, Eumenes saw that he was not to be trusted, and he broke off the
negotiation. Again, a body of Gauls, with ten thousand horse and an equal
number of foot, from beyond the Ister, to whom he had promised large pay,
were now at hand; Perseus sought to circumvent them and save his money,
and the offended barbarians ravaged Thrace and returned home. It is the
opinion of the historian, that if he had kept his word with these Gauls,
and sent them into Thessaly, the situation of the Roman army, placed thus
between two armies, might have been very perilous. Lastly, he agreed to
give Gentius, king of Illyricum, three hundred talents if he went to war
with the Romans: he sent ten of them at once, and directed those who bore
the remainder to go very slowly; meantime his ambassador kept urging
Gentius, who, to please him, seized two Roman envoys who arrived just
then, and imprisoned them. Perseus, thinking him fully committed with the
Romans by this act, sent to recall the rest of his money.
Paulus led his army without delay into Macedonia, and in the
neighbourhood of Pydna he forced the crafty Perseus to come to an
engagement. The victory was speedy and decisive on the side of the
Romans; the Macedonian horse fled, the king setting the example, and
the phalanx thus left exposed was cut to pieces. Perseus fled with his
treasures to Amphipolis, and thence to the sacred isle of Samothrace. All
Macedonia submitted to the consul, who then advanced to Amphipolis after
Perseus, who in vain sent letters suing for favour (168).
Meantime the prætor Cn. Octavius was come with his fleet to Samothrace.
He sought ineffectually to induce Perseus to surrender, and then so
wrought on the people of the island, that the unhappy prince, considering
himself no longer safe, resolved to try to escape to Cotys, king of
Thrace, his only remaining ally. A Cretan ship-master undertook to convey
him away secretly; provisions, and as much money as could be carried
thither unobserved, were put on board his bark in the evening, and at
midnight the king left the temple secretly and proceeded to the appointed
spot. But no bark was there; the Cretan, false as any of his countrymen,
had set sail for Crete as soon as it was dark. Perseus having wandered
about the shore till near daylight, slunk back and concealed himself in
a corner of the temple. He was soon obliged to surrender to Octavius, by
whom he was conveyed to the consul. Macedonia was, by the direction of
the senate, divided into four republics, between which there was to be
neither intermarriage nor purchase of immovable property (_connubium_ or
_commercium_); each was to defray the expenses of its own government, and
pay to Rome one-half of the tribute it had paid to the kings; the silver
and gold mines were not to be wrought, no ship-timber was to be felled,
no troops to be kept except on the frontiers; all who had held any
office, civil or military, under Perseus were ordered to quit Macedonia
and go and live in Italy, lest if they remained at home they should raise
disturbances. In Greece the lovers of their country were put to death or
removed to Italy, under pretext of their having favoured the cause of
Perseus, and the administration of affairs was placed in the hands of the
tools of Rome.
Paulus on his return to Rome celebrated his triumph with great
magnificence. His soldiers--because he had maintained rigid discipline
and had given them less of the booty than they had expected--instigated
by Ser. Sulpicius Galba, one of their tribunes, a personal enemy to the
consul, had tried to prevent it; but the eloquence of M. Servilius and
others prevailed. Perseus and his children, examples of the mutability of
fortune, preceded the car of the victor. After the triumph, Perseus was
confined at Alba in the Marsian land,[58] where he died a few years after.
Octavius was allowed to celebrate a naval triumph; and the prætor L.
Anicius Gallus, who had in thirty days reduced Illyricum and made Gentius
and all his family captives, also triumphed for that country.
AFFAIRS OF CARTHAGE[59]
[Sidenote: [201-149 B.C.]]
After the conclusion of the Hannibalian War, the Carthaginians seemed
disposed to remain at peace; but the ambition of their neighbour
Masinissa, whose life, to their misfortune, was extended to beyond ninety
years, would not allow them to rest. He was continually encroaching on
their territory and seizing their subject towns. The Roman senate, when
appealed to as the common superior, sent out commissioners, who almost
invariably decided in favour of Masinissa, and he gradually extended his
dominion from the ocean inlands to the Syrtes.
On one of these occasions M. Porcius Cato was one of those sent out; and
when he saw the fertility of the Carthaginian territory and its high
state of culture, and the strength, wealth, and population of the city,
he became apprehensive of its yet endangering the power of Rome; his
vanity also, of which he had a large share, was wounded, because the
Carthaginians, who were manifestly in the right, would not acquiesce at
once in the decision of himself and his colleagues; and he returned to
Rome full of bitterness against them. Henceforth he concluded all his
speeches in the senate with these words, “I also think that Carthage
should be destroyed.” On the other side, P. Scipio Nasica, either from
a regard to justice, or, as it is said, persuaded that the only mode of
saving Rome from the corruption to which she was tending was to keep up a
formidable rival to her, strenuously opposed this course. The majority,
however, inclined to the opinion of Cato; it was resolved to lay hold on
the first plausible pretext for declaring war, and to those who were so
disposed a pretext was not long wanting.
At Carthage there were three parties; the Roman, the Numidian, and
the popular party. This last, which, with all its faults, alone was
patriotic, drove out of the city about forty of the principal of the
Numidian party, and made the people swear never to re-admit them nor
listen to any proposals for their return. The exiles repaired to
Masinissa, who sent his sons Micipsa and Gulussa to Carthage on their
behalf. But Carthalo, a leader of the popular party, shut the gates
against them, and Hamilcar, the other popular leader, fell on Gulussa
as he was coming again, and killed some of those who attended him. This
gave occasion to a war; a battle was fought between Masinissa and the
Punic troops led by Hasdrubal, which lasted from morning to night without
being completely decided. But Masinissa having enclosed the Punic army
on a hill, starved them into a surrender; and Gulussa, as they were
departing unarmed, fell on and slaughtered them all. The Carthaginians
lost no time in sending to Rome to justify themselves, having previously
passed sentence of death on Hasdrubal, Carthalo, and the other authors
of the war. The senate, however, would accept of no excuse; and after
various efforts on the part of the Carthaginians to avert it, war was
proclaimed against them (149), and the conduct of it committed to the
consuls L. Marcius Censorinus and M’. Manilius Nepos, with secret orders
not to desist till Carthage was destroyed. Their army is said to have
consisted of eighty thousand foot and four thousand horse, which had been
previously prepared for this war.
OUTBREAK OF THE THIRD PUNIC WAR
[Sidenote: [149 B.C.]]
The Carthaginians were informed almost at the same moment of the
declaration of war and of the sailing of the Roman army. They saw
themselves without ships (for they had been prohibited to build any),
without an ally (even Utica, not eight miles from their city, having
joined the Romans), without mercenaries, or even supplies of corn, and
the flower of their youth had been lately cut off by Masinissa. They
again sent an embassy to Rome, to make a formal surrender of their city.
The senate replied that if within thirty days they sent three hundred
children of the noblest families as hostages to the consuls in Sicily,
and did whatever the consuls commanded them, they should be allowed to
be free and governed by their own laws, and to retain all the territory
they possessed in Africa. At the same time secret orders were sent to the
consuls to abide by their original instructions.
The Carthaginians became somewhat suspicious at no mention of their
city having been made by the senate. They however resolved to obey,
and leave no pretext for attacking them; the hostages accordingly were
sent to Lilybæum, amidst the tears and lamentations of their parents
and relatives. The consuls straightway transmitted them to Rome, and
then told the Carthaginians that they would settle the remaining
matters at Utica, to which place they lost no time in passing over, and
when the Punic envoys came to learn their will, they said that as the
Carthaginians had declared their wish and resolution to live at peace
they could have no need for arms and weapons; they therefore required
them to deliver up all that they had. This mandate also was obeyed;
two hundred thousand sets of armour, with weapons of all kinds in
proportion, were brought on wagons into the Roman camp, accompanied by
the priests, the senators, and the chief persons of the city. Censorinus
then, having praised their diligence and ready obedience, announced to
them the further will of the senate, which was that they should quit
Carthage, which the Romans intended to level, and build another town
in any part of the territory they pleased, but not within less than
ten miles of the sea. The moment they heard this ruthless command they
abandoned themselves to every extravagance of grief and despair; they
rolled themselves on the ground, they tore their garments and their
hair, they beat their breasts and faces, they called on the gods, they
abused the Romans for their treachery and deceit. When they recovered
from their paroxysm they spoke again, requesting to be allowed to send
an embassy to Rome. The consul said this would be to no purpose, for the
will of the senate must be carried into effect. They then departed, with
melancholy forebodings of the reception they might meet with at home, and
some of them ran away on the road, fearing to face the enraged populace.
Censorinus forthwith sent twenty ships to cast anchor before Carthage.
[Illustration: CAR FOR CARRYING A BATTERING RAM]
The people, who were anxiously waiting their return, when they saw their
downcast melancholy looks, abandoned themselves to despair and lamented
aloud. The envoys passed on in silence to the senate house, and there
made known the inexorable resolve of Rome. When the senators heard it
they groaned and wept; the people without joined in their lamentations;
then giving way to rage, they rushed in and tore to pieces the principal
advisers of the delivery of the hostages and arms; they stoned the
ambassadors and dragged them about the city; and then fell on and abused
in various ways such Italians as happened to be still there. The senate
that very day resolved on war; they proclaimed liberty to the slaves,
they chose Hasdrubal--whom they had condemned to death, and who was
at a place called Nepheris at the head of a force of twenty thousand
men--general for the exterior, and another Hasdrubal, the grandson of
Masinissa, for the city; and having again applied in vain to the consuls
for a truce that they might send envoys to Rome, they prepared vigorously
for defence, resolved to endure the last rather than abandon their city.
The temples and other sacred places were turned into workshops, men and
women laboured day and night in the manufacture of arms, and the women
cut off their long hair that it might be twisted into bowstrings. The
consuls meantime, though urged by Masinissa, did not advance against the
city, either through dislike of the unpleasant task, or because they
thought that they could take it whenever they pleased. At length they
led their troops to the attack of the town.
The city of Carthage lay on a peninsula at the bottom of a large bay;
at its neck, which was nearly three miles in width, stood the citadel,
Byrsa, on a rock whose summit was occupied by the temple of Esmun or
Æsculapius; from the neck on the east ran a narrow belt or tongue of
land between the lake of Tunis and the sea; at a little distance inlands
extended a rocky ridge, through which narrow passes had been hewn. The
harbour was on the east side of the peninsula; it was double, consisting
of an outer and an inner one, and its mouth, which was seventy feet
wide, was secured with iron chains; the outer harbour was surrounded by
a quay for the landing of goods. The inner one, named the Cothon, was
for the ships of war; its only entrance was through the outer one, and
it was defended by a double wall; in its centre was an elevated island,
on which stood the admiral’s house, whence there was a view out over the
open sea. The Cothon was able to contain 220 ships, and was provided with
all the requisite magazines. A single wall environed the whole city;
that of Byrsa was triple, each wall being thirty ells high exclusive of
the battlements, and at intervals of two hundred feet were towers four
stories high. A double row of vaults ran round each wall, the lower one
containing stalls for three hundred elephants and four thousand horses,
with granaries for their fodder; the upper barracks, for twenty thousand
foot and four thousand horse. Three streets led from Byrsa to the market,
which was near the Cothon, which harbour gave name to this quarter of the
town. That part of the town which lay to the west and north was named
Megara; it was more thinly inhabited, and full of gardens divided by
walls and hedges. The city was in compass twenty-three miles, and is said
to have contained at this time seven hundred thousand inhabitants.
The consuls divided their forces; Censorinus attacked from his ships the
wall where it was weakest, at the angle of the isthmus, while Manilius
attempted to fill the ditch and carry the outer works of the great wall.
They reckoned on no resistance; but their expectations were deceived,
and they were forced to retire. Censorinus then constructed two large
battering-rams, with which he threw down a part of the wall near the
belt; the Carthaginians partly rebuilt it during the night, and next day
they drove out with loss such of the Romans as had entered by the breach.
They had also in the night made a sally and burned the engines of the
besiegers. It being now the dog days, Censorinus finding the situation
of his camp, close to a lake of standing water, unwholesome, removed
to the sea-shore. The Carthaginians then, watching when the wind blew
strong from the sea on the Roman station, used to fill small vessels with
combustibles, to which they set fire, and spreading their sails let the
wind drive them on the Roman ships, many of which were thus destroyed.
Censorinus having gone to Rome for the elections, the Carthaginians
became more daring, and they ventured a nocturnal attack on the camp of
Manilius, in which they would have succeeded but for the presence of
mind of Scipio, one of the tribunes, who led out the horse at the rear
of the camp and fell on them unexpectedly. A second nocturnal attack
was frustrated by the same Scipio, who was now the life and soul of the
army. Manilius then, contrary to the advice of Scipio, led his troops
to Nepheris against Hasdrubal; but he was forced to retire with loss,
and four entire cohorts would have been cut off had it not been for the
valour and the skill of Scipio. Shortly after, when commissioners came
out from Rome to inquire into the causes of the want of success, Manilius
and his officers, laying aside all jealousy, bore testimony to the
merits of Scipio; the affection of the army for him was also manifest;
of all which the commissioners informed the senate and people on their
return.
[Sidenote: [149-147 B.C.]]
Masinissa dying at this time, left the regulation of his kingdom to
Scipio, who divided the regal office among the three legitimate sons
of the deceased monarch; giving the capital and the chief dignity to
Micipsa, the eldest, the management of the foreign relations to Gulussa,
and the administration of justice to Mastanabal. Scipio also induced
Himilco Phamæas, a Punic commander, who had hitherto done the Romans much
mischief, to desert to them, bringing over with him twenty-two hundred
horses.
In the spring (148) the new consul L. Calpurnius Piso came out to take
the command of the army, and the prætor L. Hostilius Mancinus to take
that of the fleet. They attacked the town of Clupea by sea and land, but
were repulsed; and Calpurnius then spent the whole summer to no purpose
in the siege of a strong town named Hippagreta. The Carthaginians,
elevated by their unexpected good fortune, were now masters of the
country; they insulted the Romans, and endeavoured to detach the
Numidians. Hasdrubal, proud of his successes over Manilius, aspired
to the command in the city; he accused the other Hasdrubal of having
intelligence with his uncle Gulussa, who was in the Roman camp; and
when this last, on being charged with it in the senate, hesitated from
surprise, the senators fell on and killed him with the seats; and his
rival thus gained his object.
The elections now came on at Rome; Scipio was there as a candidate for
the ædileship; all eyes were turned on him, his friends doubtless were
not idle, and the letters from the soldiers in Africa represented him as
the only man able to take Carthage. The tribes therefore resolved to make
him consul, though he was not of the proper age.[60] The presiding consul
opposed in vain; he was elected, and the people further assumed the power
of assigning him Africa for his province.
This celebrated man was son to Æmilius Paulus, the conqueror of
Macedonia. He had been adopted by Scipio the son of Africanus; the Greek
historian Polybius and the philosopher Panætius were his instructors and
friends; and he had already distinguished himself as a soldier both in
Spain and Africa.
[Sidenote: [147 B.C.]]
The very evening that Scipio arrived at Utica (147) he had again an
opportunity of saving a part of the Roman army; for Mancinus, a vain rash
man, having brought the fleet close to Carthage, and observing a part
of the wall over the cliffs left unguarded, landed some of his men, who
mounted to the wall. The Carthaginians opened a gate and came to attack
them; the Romans drove them back and entered the town. Mancinus landed
more men, and as it was now evening he sent off to Utica, requiring
provisions and a reinforcement to be forwarded without delay, or else
they would never be able to keep their position. Scipio, who arrived that
evening, received about midnight the letters of Mancinus; he ordered the
soldiers he had brought with him and the serviceable Uticans to get on
board at once, and he set forth in the last watch, directing his men to
stand erect on the decks and let themselves be seen; he also released
a prisoner, and sent him to tell at Carthage that Scipio was coming.
Mancinus meantime was hard pressed by the enemies, who attacked him at
dawn; he placed five hundred men with armour around the remainder (three
thousand men), who had none; but this availed them not; they were on
the point of being forced down the cliffs when Scipio appeared. The
Carthaginians, who expected him, fell back a little, and he lost no time
in taking off Mancinus and his companions in peril.
Scipio, on taking the command, finding extreme laxity of discipline and
disorder in the army, in consequence of the negligence of Piso, called an
assembly, and having upbraided the soldiers with their conduct, declared
his resolution of maintaining strict discipline; he then ordered all
sutlers, camp-followers, and other useless and pernicious people to quit
the camp, which he now moved to within a little distance of Carthage.
The Carthaginians also formed a camp about half a mile from their walls,
which Hasdrubal entered at the head of six thousand foot and one thousand
horse,--all seasoned troops.
[Illustration: A ROMAN STANDARD]
When Scipio thought the discipline of his men sufficiently revived, he
resolved to attempt a night attack on the Megara; but being perceived
by the defenders, the Romans could not scale the walls. Scipio then
observing a turret (probably a garden one) which belonged to some private
person, and was close to the wall, and of the same height with it, made
some of his men ascend it. These drove down with their missiles those on
the walls opposite them, and then laying planks and boards across got on
the wall, and jumping down opened a gate to admit Scipio, who entered
with four thousand men. The Punic soldiers fled to the Byrsa, thinking
that the rest of the town was taken, and those in the camp hearing the
tumult ran thither also; but Scipio, finding the Megara full of gardens
with trees and hedges and ditches filled with water, and therefore
unsafe for an invader, withdrew his men and went back to his camp. In
the morning Hasdrubal, to satiate his rage, took what Roman prisoners he
had, and placing them on the walls in sight of the Roman camp, mutilated
them in a most horrible manner, and then flung them down from the lofty
battlements. When the senators blamed him, he put some of them to death,
and he made himself in effect the tyrant of the city.
Scipio having taken and burned the deserted camp of the enemy, formed a
camp within a dart’s cast of their wall, running from sea to sea across
the isthmus, and strongly fortified on all sides. By this means he cut
them off from the land; and as the only way in which provisions could now
be brought into the city was by sea, when vessels, taking advantage of
winds that drove off the Roman ships, ran into the harbour, he resolved
to stop up its mouth by a mole. He commenced from the belt, forming the
mole of great breadth and with huge stones. The besieged at first mocked
at the efforts of the Romans; but when they saw how rapidly the work
advanced they became alarmed, and instantly set about digging another
passage out of the port into the open sea; they at the same time built
ships out of the old materials; and they wrought so constantly and so
secretly, that the Romans at length saw all their plans frustrated, a new
entrance opened to the harbour, and a fleet of fifty ships of war and a
great number of smaller vessels issue from it. Had their evil destiny
now allowed the Carthaginians to take advantage of the consternation
of the Romans, and fall at once on their fleet, which was utterly
unprepared, they might have destroyed it; but they contented themselves
with a bravado and then returned to port. On the third day the two fleets
engaged from morn till eve with various success. The small vessels of the
enemy annoyed the Romans very much in the action; but in the retreat they
got ahead of their own ships, and blocking up the mouth of the harbour,
obliged them to range themselves along a quay which had been made without
the walls for the landing of goods, whither the Roman ships followed them
and did them much mischief. During the night they got into port, but in
the morning Scipio resolved to try to effect a lodgment on the quay which
was so close to the harbour. He assailed the works that were on it with
rams, and threw down a part of them; but in the night the Carthaginians
came, some swimming, some wading through the water, having combustibles
with them, to which they set fire when near the machines, and thus burned
them. They then repaired the works; but Scipio finally succeeded in
fixing a corps of four thousand men on the quay.
During the winter Scipio took by storm the Punic camp before Nepheris,
and that town surrendered after a siege of twenty-two days. As it was
from Nepheris that Carthage received almost the whole of its supplies,
they now failed, and famine was severely felt.[c]
APPIAN’S ACCOUNT OF THE DESTRUCTION OF CARTHAGE
[Sidenote: [146 B.C.]]
As soon as spring came on, Scipio assaulted the citadel called Byrsa and
the gate called Cothon at the same time, which caused Hasdrubal to set
on fire that part of the gate which was square; but whilst he expected
Scipio should make a new attempt on that side, and stood firm with the
inhabitants, Lælius mounted privately by the other side of the gate which
was of a round figure, and making himself master of it, the shouts of
those that were already got up so dismayed the enemies that the other
soldiers now contemning the besieged, and having filled all the places
difficult to pass with beams, engines, and planks, they leaped in on
all sides in spite of all the resistance of the guards oppressed with
hunger and lost to all courage; Scipio thus possessed of the wall that
encompassed the gate called Cothon, got thence into the great place of
the city which was nigh unto it, where night coming on, and not suffering
him to go farther, he kept there in arms with those soldiers he had with
him, and as soon as day broke, caused four thousand fresh men to come
thither, who being got into Apollo’s temple, plundered his statue which
was all of gold, and all the inside of the temple, which was covered
with plates of gold of a thousand talents’ weight. They cut in pieces
the plates with their swords, do what their captains could to hinder
them, till such time as having got what they could they pursued their
enterprise.
Meanwhile Scipio’s chief design was against the place called Byrsa,
for that was the strongest of all the city, and a world of people were
retreated thither. The way from the great place thither was up hill
through three streets, on each side of which there was a continuance of
very high houses, whose upper stories, jetting somewhat over into the
street, whole showers of darts flew from thence upon the Romans, who
were constrained before they passed farther to force the first houses
and there post themselves, that from thence they might drive out those
that fought in the neighbouring houses, and after they had driven them
out, they laid beams and planks from one side of the street to the other,
on which, as on bridges, they passed across the streets; thus they
maintained war in the chambers whilst as fast as they met they fought
more cruelly below in the streets.
All places were filled with cries and groans, people dying a thousand
different sorts of deaths, some at sword’s point, some thrown headlong
down from the tops of the houses upon the pavement, others falling upon
javelins, pikes, and swords presented against them, however none durst
yet set fire because of those who maintained the fight in the lofts; but
when Scipio had gained the foot of the fortress all the three streets
were immediately in a flame, and the soldiers had charge to hinder the
ruins of the houses caused by the fire from falling into the street, that
the whole army might have the more convenient passage; and now were new
spectacles of calamity to be seen, the fire devouring and overturning
the houses, and the Roman soldiers all about so far from hindering it,
that they endeavoured to involve the rest in the same ruin. The miserable
Carthaginians in despair falling confusedly with the stones and bricks
on the pavement, dead bodies, nay, people yet living, and especially old
men, women, and children, who had hidden themselves in the most secret
places of the houses, some laden with wounds, others half burnt, and all
crying out in a deplorable manner, others tumbling headlong from the
upper stories of the houses among the mass of stones and wood were in
their falls torn in pieces.
Nor was this the end of their miseries, for the pioneers, who to make way
for the soldiers, removed the rubbish out of the middle of the streets,
tossed with their hooks and forks the bodies, as well of the dead as
living, into the vaults, turning them with their iron instruments as if
they had been pieces of wood or stones, so that there might be seen holes
full of heaps of men, of which some having been headlong thrown in, yet
breathed a long time and lay with their legs above ground, and others
interred up to the neck were exposed to the cruelty of the masons and
pioneers, who took pleasure to see their heads and brains crushed under
the horses’ feet, for these sort of people placed not those wretches so
by chance but of set purpose.
As for the men of war, their being engaged in the fight, with the hopes
of approaching victory, the eagerness of the soldiers heightened by
the sounds of the trumpets, the noise made by the majors and captains
in giving their orders, made them even like furies and hindered them
from amusing themselves at these spectacles. In this bloody toil they
continued six days and six nights without respite, save only that the
soldiers were from time to time relieved by other fresh ones, lest the
continual watchings, labour, slaughter and horror should make their
hearts fail them. Scipio only bore out all this time without sleeping;
he was continually in action, continually running from one place to
another, and taking no food but what offered itself by chance as he was
passing, till such time as quite tired out he sat down in an eminent
place, that he might see what passed. Meanwhile strange havoc was made on
all sides and this calamity seemed likely to continue much longer, when
on the seventh day they had recourse to his clemency, and came to him
bringing in their hand the Vervein of Æsculapius whose temple is the most
considerable in all the fortress, desiring no other composition but that
he would please to give their lives to all that would come forth, which
he granted to them, except only to the runaways. There came forth fifty
thousand as well men as women, who he caused to pass out of the little
gate towards the fields with a good guard.
The runaways, who were about nine hundred, seeing there was no mercy for
them, withdrew into the temple with Hasdrubal, his wife and children,
where, though they were a small number, they might defend themselves,
because of the height of the place situated upon rocks, and to which
in time of peace they ascended by sixty steps, but at length oppressed
with famine, watchings, and fear, and seeing their destruction so nigh,
impatience seized them, and quitting the lower part of the temple they
fled to the highest story. Hasdrubal meanwhile privately withdrew himself
and went to Scipio with a branch of olive in his hand; Scipio having
commanded him to come up and prostrate himself at his feet, showed him
to the runaways, who seeing him demanded silence, which being granted,
after having vomited forth an infinite number of revilings and reproaches
against Hasdrubal, they set fire to the temple, and buried themselves
in the flame. It is said that whilst the fire was kindling, Hasdrubal’s
wife, decking herself in the best manner she could, and placing herself
in the sight of Scipio, spoke to him with a loud voice in this manner.
_The Oration of Hasdrubal’s Wife; Scipio’s Moralising_
“I wish nothing to thee, O Roman, but all prosperity, for thou dost
act only according to the rights of war. But I beseech the gods of
Carthage, and thou thyself to punish, as he deserves, that Hasdrubal,
who has betrayed his country, his gods, his wife, and children,” and
then addressing her speech to Hasdrubal: “Perfidious wretch,” said she,
“thou most wicked of all mankind! This fire is about to devour me and my
children; but thou, great captain of Carthage, for what triumph are not
thou reserved, or what punishment will not he make thee suffer, at whose
feet I now see thee.”[61]
After these reproaches she cut her children’s throats and cast them into
the fire, and then threw herself headlong in; such, as is reported, was
the end of this woman, but this death had certainly better become her
husband.
As for Scipio, seeing that city which had flourished for seven hundred
years since it was first built, comparable to any empire whatsoever for
extent of dominion by sea and land, for its arms, for its fleets, for
its elephants, for its riches, and preferable even to all nations on the
earth for generosity and resolution, since after their arms and ships
were taken away, they had supported themselves against famine and war
for three years together,--seeing it, I say, now absolutely ruined, it
is said that he shed tears and publicly deplored the hard fortune of his
enemies. He considered that cities, peoples, and empires are subject to
revolutions, as well as the conditions of private men, that the same
disgrace had happened to Troy, that powerful city, and afterwards to
the Assyrians, Medes, and Persians, whose dominion extended so far, and
lately to the Macedonians, whose empire was so great and flourishing,
which was the reason that unawares, and as it were without thinking of
it, that distich of Homer’s escaped him,--
“Priam’s and Troy’s time come, they Fates obey,
And must to fire and sword be made a prey.”
And Polybius who had been his tutor, demanding of him in familiar
discourse what he meant by those words, he ingeniously answered, that the
consideration of the vicissitude of human affairs had put him in mind of
his country, whose fate he likewise feared; as the same Polybius reports
in his histories.
_Plundering the City_
Carthage thus taken, Scipio gave the plunder to the soldiers for some
days, except only the gold and silver, and offerings, which were found
in the temple. After which he distributed several military recompenses
to all his soldiers, except only those who had pillaged Apollo’s temple.
And having caused a very light ship to be laden with the spoil of the
enemy, he sent it to Rome to carry the news of victory, and caused it to
be signified throughout all Sicily that those who would come and claim
the offerings made to their temples, which had been carried away by the
Carthaginians when they had made war in that island, should have them
restored. Thus giving testimonies of his goodness in all that he could,
he gained the good will of all the people. And, at last, having sold what
remained of the spoil, he caused all the bucklers, engines, and useless
ships to be piled together, and being girt after the manner of the
Romans, set fire to them as a sacrifice to Mars and Minerva.
The ship that went from Carthage happened to arrive at Rome in an
evening, where as soon as the news was known of the taking of that
city, all the people flocked to the public places, and the night was
spent in rejoicings and embracing each other, as if this victory (the
greatest that ever the Romans had gained) had confirmed the public
repose, which they before thought insecure. They knew well, that they
and their predecessors had done great things against the Macedonians,
the Spaniards, and lately against the great Antiochus, as likewise in
Italy; but they confessed they never had a war so much to be feared as
this, by reason of the generosity, prudence, and hardiness of their
enemies; nor so perilous, by reason of their infidelity. They likewise
remembered the miseries they had suffered by the Carthaginians in Sicily,
in Spain, and likewise in Italy, for sixteen whole years together, during
which Hannibal had sacked four hundred cities, and destroyed in divers
encounters three hundred thousand men, and being several times come to
the very gates of their city, had reduced them to the last extremities.
These things considered, made them with difficulty believe what was told
of the victory, and they often demanded of one another if it were certain
that Carthage was destroyed.
Thus they passed the night in recounting one to another how, after having
disarmed the Carthaginians, they had presently made themselves new arms
beyond judgment of all the world. How having taken away their ships, they
had built others of old stuff; and how having stopped the entrance of
their port, they had in a few days dug a new one on the other side. They
spoke likewise of the unmeasurable height of their walls, the vast stones
they were built with, the fire which they had several times put to the
engines. In short they represented to the eyes of the auditors the whole
figure of this war; insomuch that giving life to their discourse by their
gesture they seemed to see Scipio on the ladders, on the ships, in the
gates, and in the streets, running from one side to the other.
_Sacrifices and the Triumph_
The people having thus spent the night, on the morrow solemn sacrifices
were made to the gods, and public prayers, wherein every tribe assisted
separately; after which plays and spectacles were exhibited to public
view, and then the senate sent ten commissioners, of the number of the
Fathers, to settle jointly with Scipio such orders as were most necessary
for that province and for the Romans’ best advantage. As soon as they
were arrived they ordered Scipio to demolish what remained of Carthage;
henceforth forbidding any to inhabit there, with horrible imprecations
against those who in prejudice of this interdict should attempt to
rebuild anything, especially the fort called Byrsa, and the place called
Megara, to the rest they defended no man’s entrance. They decreed
likewise that all the cities which in that war had held on the enemy’s
party should be razed, and gave their territories, conquered by the Roman
arms, to the Roman allies, particularly gratifying those of Utica with
all the country extending from Carthage to Hippone; they made all the
rest of the province tributary, from which neither men or women were
exempt, resolving that every year there should be a prætor sent from the
city, and having given these orders they returned to Rome. Scipio having
executed them, and beholding himself at the height of his wishes, made
sacrifices, and set forth plays in honour of the gods, and after settling
all things in a good condition returned to Rome, whither he entered in
triumph. Never was anything beheld more glorious, for there was nothing
to be seen but statues and rarities, and curious pieces of an inestimable
price which the Carthaginians had for so long a time been bringing into
Africa from all parts of the world, where they had gained an infinite of
victories.[g]
THE ACHÆAN WAR
[Sidenote: [151-147 B.C.]]
In the same year in which Lucullus and Galba took command in Spain, the
senate was induced to perform an act of tardy justice in the release
of the Achæan captives. The abduction of the best men in every state
of Greece gave free scope, as has been said, to the oppressions of the
tyrants favoured by Rome. In the Achæan assembly alone there was still
spirit enough to check Callicrates, who never ventured to assail the
persons and property of his fellow-citizens. Meantime years rolled on;
the captives still languished in Etruscan prisons; hope deferred and
sickness were fast thinning their numbers; the assembly asked only
that Polybius and Stratius might return, but the request was met by a
peremptory negative. At last, when Scipio returned from Spain, he induced
Cato to intercede for these unhappy men. The manner of the old censor’s
intercession is characteristic.
The debate had lasted long and the issue was somewhat doubtful, when
Cato rose, and, without a word about justice or humanity, simply said:
“Have we really nothing to do but to sit here all day, debating whether a
parcel of old Greeks are to have their coffins made here or at home?” The
question was decided by this unfeeling argument, and the prisoners, who
in sixteen years had dwindled from one thousand to three hundred, were
set free. But when Polybius prayed that his comrades might be restored
to their former rank and honours, the old senator smiled, and told him
“he was acting like Ulysses, when he ventured back into the cave of the
Cyclops to recover his cap and belt.”
The men released in this ungracious way had passed the best part of their
lives in captivity. The elder and more experienced among them were dead.
The survivors returned with feelings embittered against Rome; they were
rash and ignorant, and, what was worse, they had lost all sense of honour
and all principle, and were ready to expose their country to any danger
in order to gratify their own passions. The chief name that has reached
us is that of Diæus. Polybius did not return at first, and when he
reached Greece he found his countrymen acting with such reckless violence
that he gladly accepted Scipio’s invitation to accompany him to the siege
of Carthage. Callicrates, by a strange reverse, was now the leader of the
moderate party. Diæus advocated every violent and unprincipled measure.
On an embassy to Rome the former died, and Diæus returned as chief of the
Achæan League.
Not long after (in 148 B.C.) a pretender to the throne of Macedon
appeared. He was a young man named Andriscus, a native of Adramyttium,
who gave himself out as Philip, a younger son of that luckless monarch.
The state of Macedonia, divided into four republics, each in a state of
compulsory excommunication, was so distracted, that, in the year 151,
the people sent an embassy to Rome, praying that Scipio might be sent to
settle their affairs, and he had only been prevented from undertaking
the task by the self-imposed duty of accompanying the army of Lucullus
into Spain. The pretender, however, met with so little success in his
first attempt that he fled to the court of Demetrius at Antioch, and this
prince sent him to Rome. The war with Carthage was then at its height.
The senate treated the matter lightly, and the adventurer was allowed to
escape. Some Thracian chiefs received him, and with troops furnished by
them he penetrated into Thessaly. The Roman prætor, Juventius Thalna, was
defeated and slain by the pretender.
The temporary success of Pseudo-Philippus (as the Romans called him)
encouraged Diæus to drive the Achæans into a rupture with Rome. The
haughty republic, he said, was at war with Carthage and with Macedon; now
was the time to break their bonds. Q. Metellus, who had just landed in
Greece with a considerable army, gave the Achæans a friendly warning, but
in vain.
Metellus soon finished the Macedonian War. At his approach the pretender
hastily retired from Thessaly, and was given up to the Roman prætor by a
Thracian chief whose protection he had sought.
Meanwhile, a commission had already arrived at Corinth, headed by M.
Aurelius Orestes, who summoned the chiefs of the League to hear the
sentence of the senate upon their recent conduct. He informed them that
they must relinquish all claims of sovereignty over Corinth, Argos, and
Lacedæmon--a doom which reduced the Achæan League nearly to the condition
from which Aratus first raised it. The chiefs reported what they had
heard to the assembly. A furious burst of passion rose, which Diæus did
not attempt to restrain. Orestes and the Romans hardly escaped personal
violence.
[Sidenote: [147-146 B.C.]]
Orestes instantly returned to Rome; and the senate, preferring diplomacy
to force, sent a second commission headed by Sext. Julius Cæsar, with
instructions to use gentle language, and merely to demand the surrender
of those who had instigated the violent scenes lately enacted at Corinth.
A contemptuous answer was returned, upon which Cæsar returned to Rome,
and the senate, roused at the Grecian insolence, declared war against the
Achæans (147).
Metellus hoped to win the glory of pacifying Greece, as well as of
conquering Macedonia. He sent some of his chief officers to endeavour
to bring the Achæans to their senses. But their leaders were too far
committed; and at the beginning of 146 B.C. Critolaus, a friend of
Diæus, who was general for the year, advanced into Thessaly, and was
joined by the Thebans, always the inveterate enemies of Rome. Metellus
had already heard that the Achæan War was to be conducted by L. Mummius,
one of the new consuls; and, anxious to bring it to a close before he
was superseded, he advanced rapidly with his army. On this the braggart
chiefs of the Achæans retreated in all haste, not endeavouring to make
a stand even at Thermopylæ. Their army dispersed almost without a blow.
Metellus pushed on straight towards the isthmus. Thebes he found deserted
by her inhabitants; misery and desolation appeared everywhere.
Diæus prepared to defend Corinth. But popular terror had succeeded to
popular passion; few citizens would enlist under his banner: though he
emancipated a number of slaves, he could not muster more than fifteen
thousand men.
When Metellus was almost within sight of Corinth, Mummius landed on the
isthmus with his legions, and assumed the command. The Romans treated the
enemy with so much contempt that one of their outposts was surprised; and
Diæus, flushed with this small success, drew out his forces before the
city. Mummius eagerly accepted the challenge, and the battle began. The
Achæan cavalry fled at the first onset; the infantry was soon broken,
and Diæus fled into one gate of Corinth and out of another without
attempting further resistance. The Romans might have entered the city
that same day; but seeing the strength of the Acropolis, and suspecting
treachery, Mummius held back, and twenty-four hours elapsed before he
took possession of his unresisting prey. But the city was treated as if
it had been taken by assault; the men were put to the sword, the women
and children reserved to be sold by auction. All treasures, all pictures,
all the works of the famous artists who had moulded Corinthian brass
into effigies of living force and symmetry, were seized by the consul
on behalf of the state; then, at a given signal, fire was applied, and
Corinth was reduced to a heap of ashes.
Mummius, a new man, was distinguished by the rudeness rather than by the
simplicity of an Italian boor. He was not greedy, for he reserved little
for himself; and when he died, his daughter found not enough left for
her dowry; but his abstinence seems to have proceeded from indifference
rather than self-denial. He cared not for the works of Grecian art. He
suffered his soldiers to use one of the choicest works of the painter
Aristides as a draught-board; but when Attalus offered him a large sum
for the painting, he imagined it must be a talisman, and ordered it to
be sent to Rome. Every one knows his speech to the seamen who contracted
to carry the statues and pictures of Corinth to Rome. “If they lost or
damaged them,” he said, “they must replace them with others of equal
value.”
In the autumn ten commissioners arrived, as usual, with draughts of
decrees for settling the future condition of Macedon and Greece.
Polybius, who had returned from witnessing the conflagration of Carthage
just in time to behold that of Corinth, had the melancholy satisfaction
of being called to their counsels--a favour which he owed to the
influence of Scipio. A wretched sycophant proposed to the commissioners
to destroy the statues of Aratus and Philopœmen; but Polybius prevented
this dishonour by showing that these eminent men had always endeavoured
to keep peace with Rome. At the same time he declined to accept any
part of the confiscated property of Diæus. Politically he was able to
render important services. All Greece south of Macedonia and Epirus
was formed into a Roman province under the name of Achaia.[62] The old
republican governments of the various communities were abolished, and
the constitution of each assimilated to that of the municipal cities of
Italy. Polybius was left in Greece to settle these new constitutions, and
to adjust them to the circumstances and wants of each place. His grateful
countrymen raised a statue to his honour by the side of their old heroes,
and placed an inscription on the pedestal, which declared that, if Greece
had followed his advice, she would not have fallen.
Such was the issue of the last struggle for Grecian liberty. It was
conducted by unworthy men, and was unworthy of the name it bore. Polybius
had always opposed attempts at useless and destructive insurrection. He
considered it happy for Greece that one battle and the ruin of one city
consummated her fall. Indeed it was a proverb of the day that “Greece was
saved by her speedy fall.”
The ten commissioners passed northwards into Macedonia, and formed that
country, in conjunction with Epirus, into another province. Illyricum was
so constituted soon after Cæsar’s conquest of Gaul.
Metellus and Mummius both returned to Rome before the close of 146 B.C.,
and were honoured with triumphs not long after Scipio had carried the
spoils of Carthage in procession to the Capitol. In memory of their
respective services, Metellus was afterwards known by the name of
Macedonicus, while Mummius, who appears to have had no third name of his
own, was not ashamed to assume the title of Achaicus.
SPANISH WARS: FALL OF NUMANTIA
[Sidenote: [150-141 B.C.]]
While Rome was engaged in war with Carthage, the Lusitanians resumed
their inroads under the conduct of the gallant Viriathus, who had escaped
from the massacre of Galba. No Roman general could gain any positive
advantage over this indefatigable enemy, and in the year 143 B.C. the
war assumed a much more serious aspect. The brave Celtiberian tribes
of Numantia and its adjacent districts again appeared in the field.
For several years we find two Roman commanders engaged in Spain, as
before the treaty of Gracchus: one opposed to the Numantians and their
Celtiberian allies in the north, the other carrying on an irregular
warfare against Viriathus and the Lusitanians in the south.
The conduct of the Celtiberian War was committed to Q. Metellus
Macedonicus, who had been elected consul for the year 143. He remained
in command for two years, and was so successful in his measures that
by the close of the second campaign he had compelled the enemy to shut
themselves up in their strong cities. But he was disappointed, as in
Greece, by finding anticipated triumph snatched from his grasp by Q.
Pompeius, consul for the year 141 B.C.
Pompeius and his successors could make no impression upon the Numantians.
Nay, C. Hostilius Mancinus, consul for the year 137, suffered a memorable
reverse. Mancinus set out for his province amid general alarm, excited
by the unfavourable omens at his inaugural sacrifices. He was attended as
quæstor by young Ti. Gracchus, who had already distinguished himself at
the siege of Carthage. Mancinus found the army before Numantia in a state
of complete disorganisation, and deemed it prudent to retreat from his
position in front of that city. The Numantians pursued and pressed him so
hard that he was obliged to entrench himself in an old camp, and sent a
herald with offers to treat on condition that his army should be spared.
The enemy consented, but only on the understanding that young Gracchus
was to make himself responsible for the execution of the treaty. Articles
of peace were accordingly signed by Mancinus himself, with Gracchus and
all the chief officers of the army.
[Sidenote: [141-140 B.C.]]
Before we notice the sequel of the famous Treaty of Mancinus, it will be
well to follow the Lusitanian War to its conclusion.
[Illustration: JUNO
(From a statue in the Vatican)]
Here also the fortune of Rome was on the decline. Q. Fabius Servilianus
was surprised by Viriathus in a narrow defile, and so shut up that escape
was impossible. The Lusitanian captain offered liberal terms, which were
gladly accepted by the proconsul. This peace was approved by the senate,
and Viriathus was acknowledged as the ally of Rome.
But Q. Servilius Cæpio, brother by blood of Servilianus, was little
satisfied by the prospect of an inactive command. By importunity he wrung
from the senate permission to break the peace so lately concluded by his
brother, and ratified by themselves--a permission basely given and more
basely used. Cæpio assailed Viriathus, when he little expected an attack,
with so much vigour that the chief was fain to seek refuge in Gallæcia,
and sent envoys to ask Cæpio on what ground the late treaty was no longer
observed. Cæpio sent back the messengers with fair words, but privily
bribed them to assassinate their master. They were too successful in
their purpose, and returned to claim their blood-money from the consul.
But he, with double treachery, disowned the act, and referred them to the
senate for their reward.
The death of Viriathus was the real end of the Lusitanian War. He was
(as even the Roman writers allow) brave, generous, active, vigilant,
patient, faithful to his word; and the manner in which he baffled all
fair and open assault of the disciplined armies of Rome gives a high
conception of his qualities as a guerilla chief. His countrymen, sensible
of their loss, honoured him with a splendid military funeral. The senate,
with a wise moderation which might have been adopted years before,
assigned lands to a portion of the mountaineers within the province,
thus at length making good the broken promises of Galba. Such was the
discreditable termination of the Lusitanian War. We must now return to
Mancinus and his treaty.
[Sidenote: [140-138 B.C.]]
He returned to defend his conduct before the senate. He pleaded that
the army was so demoralised that no man could wield it with effect,
and admitted that he had concluded a treaty with Numantia without the
authority of the senate and the people; as that treaty was not approved,
he declared himself ready to support a bill for delivering up the
persons of himself and all who had signed it to the Numantians. Such
a bill was accordingly brought before the tribes. But young Gracchus
upheld the treaty, and Scipio, his brother-in-law, made an eloquent
speech in his behalf. But the people, always jealous of defeat, voted
for delivering up Mancinus alone as an expiatory offering. Accordingly a
person, consecrated for this special purpose, carried him to Numantia.
But the Spaniards, like the Samnites of old, refused to accept such
a compensation; one man’s body, they said was no equivalent for the
advantage they had lost. Mancinus, therefore, returned to Rome. But when
he took his place in the senate, the tribune Rutilius ordered him to
leave the curia, because, he said, one who had been delivered over to the
enemy with religious ceremony was no longer a citizen of Rome, and could
not recover his rights by simply returning to his country. A special law
was introduced to restore Mancinus to his former position.
Dec. Junius Brutus, consul for 138, an able officer, was entrusted with
the pacification of Lusitania; the town of Valentia owes its origin
to a colony of this people planted there by him. After finishing this
business, he carried his arms northward across the Tagus, the Douro, and
the Minho, and received homage from the tribes of the western Pyrenees.
He was the first Roman who reached the shores of the Bay of Biscay, and
saw the sun set in the waters of the Atlantic; and he was not unjustly
honoured with the name of Callaicus for his successes.
But Numantia still defied the arms of Rome. Men began to clamour for a
consul fit to command; and all eyes fell upon Scipio. His qualities as
a general had been tested by success at Carthage, and circumstances had
since occurred which raised him to great popularity.
After his triumph in 146 B.C., Scipio had continued to lead the simple
life in which he had been bred, and which not all the wealth he inherited
from his adoptive father induced him to abandon. He affected an austerity
of manners which almost emulated that of Cato, though he was free from
the censorious dogmatism and rude eccentricities of that celebrated man.
In 142 B.C. he was elected censor in conjunction with Mummius, who so
thwarted all the efforts of his colleague to promote reforms that the
latter publicly exclaimed, “I should have been able to do my duty, either
with a colleague or without one.” Scipio had gained a clear conception
of the unsound state of things, which long-continued wars and senatorial
government had produced. In the prayer, which he offered on entering upon
the censor’s office, he altered the usual form; and instead of asking
that “the gods would increase and magnify the power of Rome,” he said, “I
pray that they may preserve it; it is great enough already.”
[Sidenote: [138-133 B.C.]]
His frugal life carried with it a guarantee of honesty and devotion to
public interests, which would alone have secured him public favour. But
several acts gained him more direct popularity. The son of his kinsman
Nasica, nicknamed Serapio, had joined the high oligarchical party. But
the son of Æmilius Paulus, on the few occasions on which he appeared in
public, took the popular side. In 137 the tribune Cassius proposed the
first law for taking votes by secret ballot,[63] with the intention of
neutralising the undue influence of the senators. Scipio came forward
and addressed the people in favour of this law. As his popularity was
increased, his favour with the senate proportionately fell. Six years
before, when he was canvassing for the censorship, App. Claudius, seeing
the motley crowd which followed him, exclaimed: “Ah, Æmilius, it would
trouble thy spirit to see thy son followed by such a crew.”
Yet he courted not popularity; he seldom even visited the Forum, though
he spoke with force and eloquence when he chose. When the same Appius
boasted that he knew all who frequented the Forum by name, Scipio
replied: “True, I do not know many of my fellow-citizens by name, but I
have taken care that all should know me.” Popularity came unasked, and
the people cast their eyes upon him to retrieve the dishonour of the
Roman arms in Spain. Legally he could not hold the consulship, for a law
had been lately passed forbidding a second election in any case. But
Scipio received the votes of every century, though he was not a candidate.
He was now fifty-one years of age, and he proceeded to execute his
commission with the same steady vigour which distinguished him on
other occasions. He found the demoralisation of the army not less than
it had been described, and he applied himself to correct it with the
same severity that his father had used in Macedonia, and he himself
had used before Carthage. All courtesans and hucksters, together with
fortune-tellers who drove a lucrative trade in the dispirited army, he
commanded to quit the camp. All carriages, horses, and mules he ordered
to be sold, except those that were needed for actual service. No cooking
utensils were allowed except a spit, a camp bottle, and a drinking-cup.
Down beds were forbidden; the general himself slept upon a straw pallet.
After some time spent in training his army, he led it to Numantia by
a difficult and circuitous route, in order to avoid a battle. As he
approached the place he was joined by young Jugurtha, bastard son of
Micipsa, who came from Numidia with twelve elephants and a large body
of light cavalry. By this time the season for war was nearly over, and
he ordered two strong camps to be formed for winter quarters. In one he
fixed himself, the other he put under the command of his brother Fabius.
With the beginning of spring (133 B.C.) he began to draw lines of
circumvallation round the city, and declined all attempts made by the
Numantians to provoke a general action--a circumstance which is rather
surprising, if it be true that the available troops of the Spanish city
amounted to no more than eight thousand men.
Numantia lay on both sides of the Douro, not far from its source. The
blockade was so strict, and the inhabitants were so ill provided, that
in no long time they were reduced to feed on boiled leather, and at
length (horrible to tell) on the bodies of the dead. In vain those who
retained sufficient strength attempted sallies by day and night; Scipio
had established so complete a system, that additional troops were always
ready to strengthen any weak point which might be assailed. In vain did
the young men of Lubia endeavour to relieve their brave neighbours.
Scipio promptly marched to that place with a division of light troops,
and, having compelled the government to surrender four hundred of the
most active sympathisers, he cut off their right hands and returned.
Such was the cruelty which the most enlightened men of Rome permitted
themselves to use towards barbarians. Nor does any ancient historian
whisper a word of reproach.
The wretched Numantians now inquired on what terms they might be admitted
to surrender. The reply was, that on that very day they must lay down
their arms, and on the next appear at a given place. They prayed for time
to deliberate. In the interval a certain number of brave men, resolved
not to submit on any terms, put themselves to death; the remnant came
forth from the gates. Their matted hair, squalid apparel, and wasted
forms made even the Romans turn away in horror from their own work.
Scipio selected fifty to walk in his triumphal procession, and sold the
rest. The town was so effectually destroyed that its very site cannot be
discovered.[b] The Roman historian Florus gives a slightly different but
very vivid account.
FLORUS ON THE FALL OF NUMANTIA
[Sidenote: [133 B.C.]]
But when famine pressed hard upon them, (as they were surrounded with a
trench and breastwork, and camps,) they entreated of Scipio to be allowed
the privilege of engaging with him, desiring that he would kill them as
men, and, when this was not granted, they resolved upon making a sally.
A battle being the consequence, great numbers of them were slain, and,
as the famine was still sore upon them, the survivors lived for some
time on their bodies. At last they determined to flee; but this their
wives prevented, by cutting with great treachery, yet out of affection,
the girths of their saddles. Despairing, therefore, of escape, and being
driven to the utmost rage and fury, they resolved to die in the following
manner. They first destroyed their captains, and then themselves and
their native city, with sword and poison and a general conflagration.
Peace be to the ashes of the most brave of all cities; a city, in my
opinion, most happy in its very sufferings; a city which protected its
allies with honour, and withstood, with its own force, and for so long
a period, a people supported by the strength of the whole world. Being
overpowered at length by the greatest of generals, it left no cause for
the enemy to rejoice over it. Its plunder, as that of a poor people, was
valueless; their arms they had themselves burnt; and the triumph of its
conquerors was only over its name.
Hitherto the Roman people had been noble, honourable, pious, upright,
and illustrious. Their subsequent actions in this age, as they were
equally grand, so were they more turbulent and dishonourable, their vices
increasing with the very greatness of their empire. So that if any one
divides this third age, which was occupied in conquest beyond the sea,
and which we have made to consist of two hundred years, into two equal
parts, he will allow, with reason and justice, that the first hundred
years, in which they subdued Africa, Macedonia, Sicily, and Spain, were
(as the poets sing) golden years; and that the other hundred, which to
the Jugurthine, Cimbrian, Mithridatic, and Parthian wars, as well as
those of Gaul and Germany, (in which the glory of the Romans ascended
to heaven,) united the murders of the Gracchi and Drusus, the Servile
War and (that nothing might be wanting in their infamy) the war with the
gladiators, were iron, blood-stained, and whatever more severe can be
said of them. Turning at last upon themselves, the Romans, as if in a
spirit of madness, and fury, and impiety, tore themselves in pieces by
the dissensions of Marius and Sulla, and afterwards by those of Pompey
and Cæsar.[e] Such was the destructive, but not glorious work, which
earned for Scipio the name of Numantinus, as the ruin of Carthage had
given him a better title than adoption to that of Africanus.
Commissioners were sent, according to custom, to reorganise the Spanish
provinces. The conquests of Scipio and of Dec. Brutus were comprehended
in the limits of the hither province, and for some years Spain remained
in tranquillity.
There was no enemy now left on the coast lands of the Mediterranean
to dispute the sovereignty of Rome. Nine provinces, each fit to be a
kingdom, owned her sway, and poured yearly taxes into her revenue. The
kings of Asia Minor, of Syria, of Egypt, were her obedient vassals.
FIRST SLAVE WAR IN SICILY
[Sidenote: [134-133 B.C.]]
While Numantia was yet defying the Roman generals, a war broke out near
home of a more dreadful kind than any distant contest with foreigners
could be--the insurrection of the slaves in Sicily. Some remarks have
already been made on the rapid increase in the number of slaves which
attended the career of Roman conquest; and it was observed that, while
domestic slaves usually were well treated, the agricultural slaves were
thrust down to a condition worse than that of the oxen which laboured on
the land. The evils which such oppression might engender were now proved
by terrible experience.
Every one knows that in the early times of Rome the work of the farm
was the only kind of manual labour deemed worthy of a free citizen.
This feeling long survived, as may be seen from the praise bestowed
on agriculture by Cicero, whose enthusiasm was caught from one of his
favourite heroes, old Cato the censor, whose _Treatise on Agriculture_
has been noticed. The taste for books on farming continued. Varro
the antiquarian, a friend of Cicero, has left an excellent treatise
on the subject. A little later came the famous _Georgics_ of Virgil,
followed at no long interval by Pliny’s notices, and then by the
elaborate _Dissertations_ of Columella, who refers to a great number of
Roman writers on the same subject. It is manifest that the subject of
agriculture possessed a strong and enduring charm for the Roman mind.
But, from the times of the Hannibalic War, agriculture lost ground in
Italy. When Cato was asked what was the most profitable kind of farming,
he said, “Good grazing.” What next? “Tolerable grazing.” What next? “Bad
grazing.” What next? “Corn-growing.” Later writers, with one accord,
deplore the diminished productiveness of land.
This result was due in part, no doubt, to war, but much more to other
causes. Corn could be imported with facility from the southern lands of
Sicily, from Egypt, and from Numidia, while a great part of Italy was
little suited for the production of grain-crops. These causes found a
powerful assistant in the growth of large estates, and the profitable
employment of slaves as shepherds and herdsmen.
A few examples will show the prodigious number of slaves that must
have been thrown into the market after the Second Punic War. To punish
the Bruttians for the fidelity with which they adhered to the cause of
Hannibal, the whole nation were made slaves; 150,000 Epirots were sold
by Æmilius Paulus; fifty thousand captives were sent home from Carthage.
These numbers are accidentally preserved; and if, according to this
scale, we calculate the hosts of unhappy men sold into slavery during
the Syrian, Macedonian, Illyrian, Grecian, and Spanish wars, we shall be
prepared to hear that slaves fit only for unskilled labour were plentiful
and cheap.
There was also a slave trade regularly carried on in the East. The
barbarous tribes on the coasts of the Black Sea were always ready to sell
their own flesh and blood; Thrace and Sarmatia were the Guinea Coast of
the Romans. The _entrepôt_ of this trade was Delos, which had been made
a free port by Rome after the conquest of Macedonia. Strabo tells us
that in one day ten thousand slaves were sold there in open market. Such
were the vile uses to which was put the Sacred Island, once the treasury
of Greece, when her states were banded together to secure their freedom
against the Persian.
It is evident that hosts of slaves, lately free men, and many of them
soldiers, must become dangerous to the owners. Nor was their treatment
such as to conciliate. They were turned out upon the hills, made
responsible for the safety of the cattle put under their charge, and
compelled to provide themselves with the common necessaries of life. A
body of these wretched men asked their master for clothing: “What,” he
asked, “are there no travellers with clothes on?” The atrocious hint
was soon taken; the shepherd slaves of lower Italy became banditti,
and to travel through Apulia without an armed retinue was a perilous
adventure. From assailing travellers, the marauders began to plunder the
smaller country houses; and all but the rich were obliged to desert the
country and flock into the towns. So early as the year 185 B.C., seven
thousand slaves in Apulia were condemned for brigandage by a prætor sent
specially to restore order in that land of pasturage. When they were not
employed upon the hills, they were shut up in large prison-like buildings
(_ergastula_), where they could talk together of their wrongs, and form
schemes of vengeance.
The Sicilian landowners emulated their Italian brethren; and it was their
tyrannical conduct that led to the frightful insurrection which reveals
to us somewhat of the real state of society which existed under the rule
of Rome.
In Sicily, as in lower Italy, the herds are driven up into the mountain
pastures during the summer months, and about October return towards the
plains. The same causes which were at work in Italy were at work, on a
smaller scale, in Sicily. The city of Enna, once famous for the worship
of Demeter, had become the centre of a pastoral district; and of the
neighbouring landowners, Damophilus was the wealthiest. He was famous
for the multitude of his slave herdsmen, and for his cruel treatment of
them, and his wife Megallis emulated her lord in the barbarities which
she practised on the female slaves. At length the cup was full, and four
hundred of his bondsmen, meeting at Enna, took counsels of vengeance
against Damophilus.
At Enna there lived another rich proprietor, named Antigenes; and among
his slaves was a Syrian, known by the Greek name of Eunus. This man was
a kind of wizard, who pretended to have revelations of the future, and
practised a mode of breathing fire, which passed for a supernatural
power. At length he gave out that his Syrian gods had declared to him
that he should be king hereafter. His master treated him as a jester, and
at banquets used to call him in to make sport for his guests; and they,
entering into his humour, used to beg him to remember them when he gained
his sceptre. But to the confederate slaves of Damophilus, Eunus seemed
in truth a prophet and a king sent to deliver them. They prayed him to
become their leader, he accepted their offer; and the whole body entered
the city of Enna, with Eunus at their head breathing fire.
The wretched city now felt the vengeance of men brutalised by oppression.
Clad in skins, armed with stakes burned at the end, with reaping hooks,
spits, or whatever arms rage supplied, they broke into the houses, and
massacred all persons of free condition, from the old man and matron to
the infant at the breast. Crowds of slaves joined them; every man’s foes
were those of his own household. Damophilus was dragged to the theatre
and slain. Megallis was given over to the female slaves, who first
tortured her, and then cast her down the crag on which the city stands.
Eunus thus saw the wildest of his dreams fulfilled. He assumed the
diadem, took the royal name of Antiochus, and called his followers
Syrians. The ergastula were broken open, and numbers of slaves sallied
out to join him. Soon he was at the head of ten thousand men. He showed
no little discretion in the choice of officers. Achæus, a Greek, was
made general of the army, and he exerted himself to preserve order and
moderate excesses.
A few days after the massacre at Enna, Cleon, a Cilician slave, raised
a similar insurrection near Agrigentum. He also was soon at the head of
several thousand men.
The Romans in Sicily, who had looked on in blank dismay, now formed
hopes that the two leaders might quarrel--hopes soon disappointed by
the tidings that Cleon had acknowledged the sovereign authority of King
Antiochus. There was no Roman magistrate present in Sicily when the
insurrection broke out. The prætor of the last year had returned to
Italy; and his successor now arrived, ignorant of all that was passing.
He contrived to collect eight thousand men in the island, and took the
field against the slaves, who by this time numbered twenty thousand. He
was utterly defeated, and the insurrection spread over the whole island.
[Illustration: ÆSCULAPIUS]
The consternation at Rome was great. No one could tell where the evil
would stop. Movements broke out in various parts of the empire; but the
magistrates were on the alert, and all attempts were crushed forcibly. At
Rome itself 150 slaves, detected in organising an outbreak, were put to
death without mercy.
The insurrection seemed to the senate so serious that they despatched the
consul, C. Fulvius Flaccus, colleague of Scipio in the year 134 B.C.,
to crush it. But Flaccus obtained no advantage over the insurgents. In
the next year L. Calpurnius Piso succeeded in wresting Messana from the
enemy, and advanced to Enna, a place strongly defended by nature, which
he was unable to take. His successor, P. Rupilius, a friend of Scipio,
began his campaign with the siege of Tauromenium. The slaves offered a
desperate resistance. Reduced to straits for want of food, they devoured
the children, the women, and at length began to prey upon each other.
Even then the place was only taken by treachery. All the slaves taken
alive were put to the torture and thrown down a precipice. The consul
now advanced to Enna, the last stronghold of Eunus. The fate of the
insurgents was inevitable. Cleon of Agrigentum chose a soldier’s death,
and, sallying forth with all who breathed the same spirit as himself, he
died fighting valiantly. Of the end of Achæus we are not informed. Eunus,
with a bodyguard of six hundred men, fled to the neighbouring hills;
but, despairing of escape, the greater part of the wretched men slew
one another. The mock king himself was taken in a cave, with his cook,
baker, bathing-man, and jester. He showed a pusillanimity far unlike the
desperate courage of the rest, and died eaten by vermin in a dungeon at
Morgantium.[c]
To show how horrible the thought of fighting slaves was to the Roman
mind, it may be well to quote Florus upon this first war, the quelling of
which he credits to Perperna.[a]
THE WAR AGAINST THE SLAVES
[Sidenote: [133 B.C.]]
Though, in the preceding war, we fought with our allies (which was bad
enough), yet we contended with free men, and men of good birth; but
who can with patience hear of a war against slaves on the part of a
people at the head of all nations! The first war with slaves occurred in
the infancy of Rome, in the heart of the city, when Herdonius Sabinus
was their leader, and when, while the state was distracted with the
seditions of the tribunes, the Capitol was besieged and wrested by the
consul from the servile multitude. But this was an insurrection rather
than a war. At a subsequent period, when the forces of the empire were
engaged in different parts of the world, who would believe that Sicily
was much more cruelly devastated by a war with slaves than in that with
the Carthaginians? This country, fruitful in corn, and, in a manner, a
suburban province, was covered with large estates of many Roman citizens;
and the numerous slave houses and fettered tillers of the ground
supplied force enough for a war. A certain Syrian, by name Eunus (the
greatness of our defeats from him makes us remember it), counterfeiting
a fanatical inspiration, and tossing his hair in honour of the Syrian
goddess, excited the slaves by command of heaven as it were, to claim
their liberty and take up arms. And that he might prove this to be done
by supernatural direction, he concealed a nut in his mouth, which he had
filled with brimstone and fire, and, breathing gently, sent forth flame
together with his words. This prodigy at first attracted two thousand
of such as came in his way; but in a short time, by breaking open the
slave houses, he collected a force of above sixty thousand; and, being
adorned with ensigns of royalty, that nothing might be wanting to his
audacity, he laid waste, with lamentable desolation, fortresses, towns,
and villages. The camps even of prætors (the utmost disgrace of war) were
taken by him; nor will I shrink from giving their names; they were the
camps of Manilius, Lentulus, Piso, and Hypsæus. Thus those, who ought to
have been dragged home by slave-takers, pursued prætorian generals routed
in battle. At last vengeance was taken on them by our general, Perperna;
for having conquered them, and at last besieged them in Enna, and reduced
them with famine as with a pestilence, he threw the remainder of the
marauders into chains, and then crucified them. But over such enemies he
was content with an ovation, that he might not sully the dignity of a
triumph with the name of slaves.[e]
[Sidenote: [133-131 B.C.]]
Thus was crushed for a time this perilous insurrection, the result of
the slave system established by Roman conquest. The well-being of Sicily
had even now been so seriously impaired that extraordinary measures were
deemed necessary for restoring order. The Sibylline books were consulted.
The oracular page ordered the propitiation of “Ceres the most ancient”;
and a solemn deputation of priests proceeded to the august temple of the
goddess in the city of Enna. This circumstance, seemingly unimportant,
becomes significant, when it is considered that the war really originated
in the neglect of agricultural labours, and was at its height during the
notable year in which Ti. Gracchus was bringing to all men’s knowledge
the reduced condition of the farmers of Italy.
Ten commissioners were sent to assist Rupilius in drawing up laws for
the better regulation of the agricultural districts. The code formerly
established by Hiero at Syracuse was taken as the basis of their
legislation, a measure which gave great satisfaction to all the Greek
communities. The whole land was required to pay a tithe of its produce to
the Romans except the five free cities and some others which were allowed
to pay a fixed annual sum. The collection of these tithes was to be let
to Roman contractors. But to prevent extortion, courts of appeal were
provided. All disputes between citizens of the same town were left to be
decided in the town courts; those between citizens of different towns,
by judges drawn by lot under the eye of the prætor; those between a town
community and an individual, by the senate of some other city; those
between a Roman citizen and a Sicilian, by a judge belonging to the same
nation as the defendant. There can be no doubt that the general condition
of the Sicilian landholders was considerably improved by this system; and
agriculture again flourished in Sicily as it had done in former times.[b]
FOOTNOTES
[57] For this, and for his similar conduct to L. Scipio, the family gave
him in marriage Cornelia, the daughter of Africanus. The two celebrated
Gracchi were their sons.
[58] This town, which must not be confounded with the ancient Alba Longa,
lay on the Fucine Lake.
[59] [The great original authority for the Third Punic War was
Polybius,[d] whose accounts of striking incidents in the Hannibalic Wars
we have previously quoted. Polybius was the personal friend of Scipio the
Younger and was present, as we shall see, at the destruction of Carthage.
Unfortunately his first-hand description of that memorable event has not
been preserved. But the accounts of Livy[i] and of Appian[g] were based
largely, if not solely, upon Polybius. Appian’s account of the war as a
whole is too long for insertion here; but Keightley’s[c] description is
virtually an abridgment of Appian, paragraph by paragraph, at times the
translation being almost literal. For the concluding scenes we shall turn
to Appian himself.]
[60] The lawful age for the consulate at this time was forty-three years,
and Scipio was only thirty-eight.
[61] [Ihne[f] says of this: “We have serious doubts about the truth of
this dramatic effect, which would do honour to any stage manager. A
woman standing on the roof of a burning temple, and, in the midst of
uproar and carnage, haranguing her husband, who is at a safe distance,
is a scene passing all bounds of historical probability. What makes it
particularly suspicious is the pretty little piece of adulation which the
frantic woman has the politeness to address to Scipio: σοὶ μὲν οὐ νέμεσις
ἐκθεῶν ὦ Ῥωμαῖε, ἐπὶ γὰρ πολεμίαν ἐστρατεύσας. Appian,[g] VIII, 31. Καὶ
τῷ στρατηγῷ μεγάλας ἐπανῆγε τὰς χάριτας. Polybius,[d] XXXIX, 3, 6. All
this is as much a fiction as any scene in a sensational novel. We have no
doubt that Hasdrubal and his wife were retained by the Roman deserters
against their will. At last Hasdrubal succeeded in escaping from them
(λαθὼν ἔφυγε, Appian, VIII, 131). It is possible that thereupon his wife
and children were murdered before his eyes.”]
[62] [According to Marquardt,[j] Achaia was not organised into a separate
province till the reign of Augustus.]
[63] These _Leges Tabellariæ_ (as the Romans called them, _tabella_
being their word for a ballot) were four in number: (1) The _Gabinian_
(139 B.C.), introducing the use of the ballot at elections. (2) The
_Cassian_ (137), introducing it in all state-trials, except in the case
of high-treason (_perduellio_). (3) The _Papirian_ (131), introducing it
into the Legislative Assembly. (4) The _Cælian_ (107), which cancelled
the single exception made by the Cassian Law.
[Illustration: ANCIENT TOMB, HEWN FROM SOLID ROCK]
[Illustration]