CHAPTER V.

PUNIC WARS AND WARS OF MACEDONIA AND ASIA.

(From 488 to 621.)

[Sidenote: Comparison between Rome and Carthage.]

I. Rome, having extended her dominion to the southern extremity of

Italy, found herself in face of a power which, by the force of

circumstances, was to become her rival.

Carthage, situated on the part of the African coast nearest to Sicily,

was only separated from it by the channel of Malta, which divides the

great basin of the Mediterranean in two. She had, during more than two

centuries, concluded, from time to time, treaties with Rome, and, with a

want of foresight of the future, congratulated the Senate every time it

had gained great advantages over the Etruscans or the Samnites.

The superiority of Carthage at the beginning of the Punic wars was

evident; yet the constitution of the two cities might have led any one

to foresee which in the end must be the master. A powerful aristocracy

reigned in both; but at Rome the nobles, identified continually with the

people, set an example of patriotism and of all civic virtues, while at

Carthage the leading families, enriched by commerce, made effeminate by

an unbridled luxury, formed a selfish and greedy caste, distinct from

the rest of the citizens. At Rome, the sole motive of action was glory,

the principal occupation war, and the first duty military service. At

Carthage, everything was sacrificed to interest and commerce; and the

defence of the fatherland was, as an insupportable burden, abandoned to

mercenaries. Hence, after a defeat, at Carthage the army was recruited

with difficulty; at Rome it immediately recruited itself, because the

populace was subject to the recruitment. If the poverty of the treasury

caused the pay of the troops to be delayed, the Carthaginian soldiers

mutinied, and placed the State in danger; the Romans supported

privations and suffering without a murmur, out of mere love for their

country.

The Carthaginian religion made of the Divinity a jealous and malignant

power, which required to be appeased by horrible sacrifices or honoured

by shameful practices: hence manners depraved and cruel; at Rome, good

sense or the interest of the government moderated the brutality of

paganism, and maintained in religion the sentiments of morality.[486]

And, again, what a difference in their policies! Rome had subdued, by

force of arms, it is true, the people who surrounded her, but she had,

so to say, obtained pardon for her victories in offering to the

vanquished a greater country and a share in the rights of the

metropolis. Moreover, as the inhabitants of the peninsula were in

general of one and the same race, she had found it easy to assimilate

them to herself. Carthage, on the contrary, had remained a foreigner in

the midst of the natives of Africa, from whom she was separated by

origin, language, and manners. She had made her rule hateful to her

subjects and to her tributaries by the mercantile spirit of her agents,

and their habits of rapacity; hence frequent insurrections, repressed

with unexampled cruelty. Her distrust of her subjects had engaged her to

leave all the towns on her territory open, in order that none of them

might become a centre of support to a revolt. Thus two hundred towns

surrendered without resistance to Agathocles immediately he appeared in

Africa. Rome, on the contrary, surrounded her colonies with ramparts,

and the walls of Placentia, Spoletum, Casilinum, and Nola, contributed

to arrest the invasion of Hannibal.

The town of Romulus was at that time in all the vigour of youth, while

Carthage had reached that degree of corruption at which States are

incapable of supporting either the abuses which enervate them, or the

remedy by which they might be regenerated.

To Rome then belonged the future. On one hand, a people of soldiers,

restrained by discipline, religion, and purity of manners, animated with

the love of their country, surrounded by devoted allies; on the other, a

people of merchants with dissolute manners, unruly mercenaries, and

discontented subjects.

[Sidenote: First Punic War (490-513).]

II. These two powers, of equal ambition, but so opposite in spirit,

could not long remain in presence without disputing the command of the

rich basin of the Mediterranean. Sicily especially was destined to

excite their covetousness. The possession of that island was then shared

between Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, the Carthaginians, and the

Mamertines. These last, descended from the old adventurers, mercenaries

of Agathocles, who came from Italy in 490 and settled at Messina,

proceeded to make war upon the Syracusans. They first sought the

assistance of the Carthaginians, and surrendered to them the acropolis

of Messina as the price of their protection; but soon, disgusted with

their too exacting allies, they sent to demand succour of Rome under the

name of a common nationality, for most of them called themselves

Italiots, and consequently allies of the Republic; some even were or

pretended to be Romans.[487]

The Senate hesitated; but public opinion carried the day, and, in spite

of the little interest inspired by the Mamertines, war was decided. A

body of troops, sent without delay to Messina, expelled the

Carthaginians. Soon after, a consular army crossed the Strait, defeated

first the Syracusans and then the Carthaginians, and effected a military

settlement in the island. Thus commenced the first Punic War.

Different circumstances favoured the Romans. The Carthaginians had made

themselves objects of hatred to the Sicilian Greeks. The towns still

independent, comparing the discipline of the legions with the excesses

of all kinds which had marked the progress of the mercenaries of

Agathocles, Pyrrhus, and the Carthaginian generals, received the consuls

as liberators. Hiero, master of Syracuse, the principal town in Sicily,

had no sooner experienced the power of the Roman armies than he foresaw

the result of the struggle, and declared for the strongest. His

alliance, maintained faithfully during fifty years, was of great utility

to the Republic.[488] With his support, the Romans, at the end of the

third year of the war, had obtained possession of Agrigentum and the

greater part of the towns of the interior; but the fleets of the

Carthaginians remained masters of the sea and of the fortresses on the

coast.

The Romans were deficient in ships of war.[489] They could, no doubt,

procure transport vessels, or, by their allies (_socii navales_), a few

triremes,[490] but they had none of those ships with five ranks of oars,

better calculated, by their weight and velocity, to sink the ships of

the enemy. An incomparable energy supplied in a short time the

insufficiency of the fleet: a hundred and twenty galleys were

constructed after the model of a Carthaginian quinquireme which had been

cast on the coast of Italy; and soldiers were exercised on land in the

handling of the oar.[491] At the end of two months, the crews were

embarked, and the Carthaginians were defeated at Mylæ (494), and three

years after at Tyndaris (497). These two sea-fights deprived Carthage of

the prestige of her maritime superiority.

Still the struggle continued on land without decisive results, when the

two rivals embraced the same resolution of making a final effort for the

mastery of the sea. Carthage fitted out three hundred and fifty decked

vessels; Rome, three hundred and thirty of equal force. In 498 the two

fleets met between Heraclea Minora and the Cape of Ecnomus, and, in a

memorable combat, in which 300,000 men[492] contended, the victory

remained with the Romans. The road to Africa was open, and M. Atilius

Regulus, inspired, no doubt, by the example of Agathocles, formed the

design of carrying the war thither. His first successes were so great,

that Carthage, in her terror, and to avoid the siege with which she was

threatened, was ready to renounce her possessions in Sicily. Regulus,

relying too much on the feebleness of the resistance he had hitherto

encountered, thought he could impose upon Carthage the hardest

conditions; but despair restored to the Africans all their energy, and

Xanthippus, a Greek adventurer, but good general, placed himself at the

head of the troops, defeated the consul, and almost totally destroyed

his army.

The Romans never desponded in their reverses; they carried the war

again into Sicily, and recovered Panormus, the head-quarters of the

Carthaginian army. For several years the fleets of the two countries

ravaged, one the coast of Africa, the other the Italian shores; in the

interior of Sicily the Romans had the advantage; on the coast, the

Carthaginians. Twice the fleets of the Republic were destroyed by

tempests or by the enemy, and these disasters led the Senate on two

occasions to suspend all naval warfare. The struggle remained

concentrated during six years in a corner of Sicily: the Romans occupied

Panormus; the Carthaginians, Lilybæum and Drepana. It might have been

prolonged indefinitely, if the Senate, in spite of the poverty of the

treasury, had not succeeded, by means of voluntary gifts, in equipping

another fleet of two hundred quinquiremes. Lutatius, who commanded it,

dispersed the enemy’s ships near the Ægates, and, master of the sea,

threatened to starve the Carthaginians. They sued for peace at the very

moment when a great warrior, Hamilcar, had just restored a prestige to

their arms. The fact is, that the enormity of her expenses and

sacrifices for the last twenty-four years had discouraged Carthage,

while at Rome, patriotism, insensible to material losses, maintained the

national energy without change. The Carthaginians, obliged to give up

all their establishments in Sicily, paid an indemnity of 2,200

talents.[493] From that time the whole island, with the exception of the

kingdom of Hiero, became tributary, and, for the first time, Rome had a

subject province.

If, in spite of this definitive success, there were momentary checks,

we must attribute them in great part to the continual changes in the

plans of campaign, which varied annually with the generals. Several

consuls, nevertheless, were wanting neither in skill nor perseverance,

and the Senate, always grateful, gave them worthy recompense for their

services. Some obtained the honours of the triumph; among others,

Duilius, who gained the first naval battle, and Lutatius, whose victory

decided peace. At Carthage, on the contrary, the best generals fell

victims to envy and ingratitude. Xanthippus, who vanquished Regulus, was

summarily removed through the jealousy of the nobles, whom he had

saved;[494] and Hamilcar, calumniated by a rival faction, did not

receive from his government the support necessary for the execution of

his great designs.

During this contest of twenty-three years, the war often experienced the

want of a skilful and stable direction; but the legions lost nothing of

their ancient valour, and they were even seen one day proceeding to

blows with the auxiliaries, who had disputed with them the possession of

the most dangerous post. We may cite also the intrepidity of the tribune

Calpurnius Flamma, who saved the legions shut up by Hamilcar in a

defile. He covered the retreat with three hundred men, and, found alive

under a heap of dead bodies, received from the consul a crown of

leaves--a modest reward, but sufficient then to inspire heroism. All

noble sentiments were raised to such a point as even to do justice to an

enemy. The consul, L. Cornelius, gave magnificent funeral rites to

Hanno, a Carthaginian general, who had died valiantly in fighting

against him.[495]

During the first Punic war, the Carthaginians had often threatened the

coasts of Italy, but never attempted a serious landing. They could find

no allies among the peoples recently subdued; neither the Samnites, nor

the Lucanians who had declared for Pyrrhus, nor the Greek towns in the

south of the Peninsula, showed any inclination to revolt. The Cisalpine

Gauls, lately so restless, and whom we shall soon see taking arms again,

remained motionless. The disturbances which broke out at the close of

the Punic war among the Salentini and Falisci were without importance,

and appear to have had no connection with the great struggle between

Rome and Carthage.[496]

This resistance to all attempts at insurrection proves that the

government of the Republic was equitable, and that it had given

satisfaction to the vanquished. No complaint was heard, even after great

disasters; and yet the calamities of war bore cruelly upon the

cultivators--incessantly obliged to quit their fields to fill up the

voids made in the legions. At home, the Senate had in its favour a great

prestige, and abroad it enjoyed a reputation of good faith which ensured

sincere alliances.

The first Punic war exercised a remarkable influence on manners. Until

then the Romans had not entertained continuous relations with the

Greeks. The conquest of Sicily rendered these relations numerous and

active, and whatever Hellenic civilisation contained, whether useful or

pernicious, made itself felt.

The religious ideas of the two peoples were different, although Roman

paganism had great affinity with the paganism of Greece. This had its

philosophers, its sophists, and its freethinkers. At Rome, nothing of

the sort; there, creeds were profound, simple, and sincere; and,

moreover, from a very remote period, the government had made religion

subordinate to politics, and had laboured to give it a direction

advantageous to the State.

The Greeks of Sicily introduced into Rome two sects of philosophy, the

germs of which became developed at a later period, and which had perhaps

more relation with the instincts of the initiated than with those of the

initiators. _Stoicism_ fortified the practice of the civic virtues, but

without modifying their ancient roughness; _Epicurism_, much more

extensively spread, soon flung the nation into the search after material

enjoyments. Both sects, by inspiring contempt for death, gave a terrible

power to the people who adopted them.

The war had exhausted the finances of Carthage. The mercenaries, whom

she could not pay, revolted in Africa and Sardinia at the same time.

They were only vanquished by the genius of Hamilcar. In Sardinia, the

excesses of the mutineers had caused an insurrection among the natives,

who drove them out of the country. The Romans did not let this

opportunity for intervention escape them; and, as before in the case of

the Mamertines, the Senate, according to all appearance, assumed as a

pretext that there were Italiots among the mercenaries in Sardinia. The

island was taken, and the conquerors imposed a new contribution on

Carthage for having captured some merchant vessels navigating in those

latitudes--a scandalous abuse of power, which Polybius loudly

condemns.[497] Reduced to impotency by the loss of their navy and the

revolt of their army, the Carthaginians submitted to the conditions of

the strongest. They had quitted Sicily without leaving any regrets; but

it was not the same with Sardinia; there their government and dominion

were popular, probably from the community of religion and the

Phœnician origin of some of the towns.[498] For a long time

afterwards, periodical rebellions testified to the affection of the

Sardinians for their old masters. Towards the same epoch, the Romans

took possession of Corsica, and, from 516 to 518, repulsed the Ligures

and the Gaulish tribes, with whom they had been at peace for forty-five

years.

[Sidenote: War of Illyria (525).]

III. While the Republic protected its northern frontiers against the

Gauls and Ligures, and combated the influence of Carthage in Sardinia

and Corsica, she undertook, against a small barbarous people, another

expedition, less difficult, it is true, but which was destined to have

immense consequences. The war of Illyria, in fact, was on the point of

opening to the Romans the roads to Greece and Asia, subjected to the

successors of Alexander, and where Greek civilisation was dominant. Now

become a great maritime power, Rome had henceforward among her

attributes the police of the seas. The inhabitants of the eastern coasts

of the Adriatic, addicted to piracy, were destructive to commerce.

Several times they had carried their depredations as far as Messenia,

and defeated Greek squadrons sent to repress their ravages.[499] These

pirates belonged to the Illyrian nation. The Greeks considered them as

barbarians, which meant foreigners to the Hellenic race; it is probable,

nevertheless, that they had a certain affinity with it. Inconvenient

allies of the kings of Macedonia, they often took arms either for or

against them; intrepid and fierce hordes, they were ready to sell their

services and blood to any one who would pay them, resembling, in this

respect, the Albanians of the present day, believed by some to be their

descendants driven into the mountains by the invasions of the

Slaves.[500]

The king of the Illyrians was a child, and his mother, Teuta, exercised

the regency. This fact alone reveals manners absolutely foreign to

Hellenic and Roman civilisation. A chieftain of Pharos (_Lesina_), named

Demetrius, in the pay of Teuta, occupied as a fief the island of Corcyra

Nigra (now _Curzola_), and exercised the functions of prime minister.

The Romans had no difficulty in gaining him; moreover, the Illyrians

furnished a legitimate cause of war by assassinating an ambassador of

the Republic.[501] The Senate immediately dispatched an army and a fleet

to reduce them (525). Demetrius surrendered his island, which served as

a basis against Apollonia, Dyrrhachium, Nutria, and a great part of the

coast. After a resistance of some months, the Illyrians submitted,

entered into an engagement to renounce piracy, surrendered several

ports, and agreed to choose Demetrius, the ally of the Romans, for the

guardian of their king.[502]

By this expedition, the Republic gained great popularity throughout

Greece; the Athenians and the Achaian league especially were lavish of

thanks, and began from that time to consider the Romans as their

protectors against their dangerous neighbours, the kings of Macedonia.

As to the Illyrians, the lesson they had received was not sufficient to

correct them of their piratical habits. Ten years later another

expedition was sent to chastise the Istrians at the head of the

Adriatic,[503] and soon afterwards the disobedience of Demetrius to the

orders of the Senate brought war again upon Illyria. He was compelled to

take refuge with Philip of Macedon, while the young king became the ally

or subject of the Republic.[504] In the mean time a new war attracted

the attention of the Romans.

[Sidenote: Invasion of the Cisalpines (528).]

IV. The idea of the Senate was evidently to push its domination towards

the north of Italy, and thus to preserve it from the invasion of the

Gauls. In 522, at the proposal of the tribune Flaminius, the Senones had

been expelled from Picenum, and their lands, declared public domain,

were distributed among the plebeians. This measure, a presage to the

neighbouring Gaulish tribes of the lot reserved for them, excited among

them great uneasiness, and they began to prepare for a formidable

invasion. In 528, they called from the other side of the Alps a mass of

barbarians of the warlike race of the Gesatæ.[505] The terror at Rome

was great. The same interests animated the peoples of Italy, and the

fear of a danger equally threatening for all began to inspire them with

the same spirit.[506] They rushed to arms; an army of 150,000 infantry

and 6,000 cavalry was sent into the field, and the census of men capable

of bearing arms amounted to nearly 800,000. The enumeration of the

contingents of each country[507] furnishes valuable information on the

general population of Italy, which appears, at this period, to have

been, without reckoning the slaves, about the same as at the present

day, yet with this difference, that the men capable of bearing arms were

then in a much greater proportion.[508] These documents also give rise

to the remark that the Samnites, only forty years recovered from the

disasters of their sanguinary struggles, could still furnish 77,000 men.

The Gauls penetrated to the centre of Tuscany, and at Fesulæ defeated a

Roman army; but, intimidated by the unexpected arrival of the consul L.

Æmilius coming from Rimini, they retired, when, meeting the other

consul, Caius Atilius, who, returning from Sardinia, had landed at Pisa,

they were enclosed between two armies, and were annihilated. In the

following year, the Gaulish tribes, successively driven back to the

other side of the Po, were defeated again on the banks of the Adda; the

coalition of the Cisalpine peoples was dissolved, without leading to the

complete submission of the country. The colonies of Cremona and

Placentia contributed, nevertheless, to hold it in check.

While the north of Italy seemed sufficient to absorb the attention of

the Romans, great events were passing in Spain.

[Sidenote: Second Punic War (536-552).]

V. Carthage, humiliated, had lost the empire of the sea, with Sicily and

Sardinia. Rome, on the contrary, had strengthened herself by her

conquests in the Mediterranean, in Illyria, and in the Cisalpine.

Suddenly the scene changes: the dangers which threatened the African

town disappear, Carthage rises from her abasement, and Rome, which had

lately been able to count 800,000 men in condition to carry arms, will

soon tremble for her own existence. A change so unforeseen is brought

about by the mere appearance in the ranks of the Carthaginian army of a

man of genius, Hannibal.

His father, Hamilcar, chief of the powerful faction of the Barcas, had

saved Carthage by suppressing the insurrection of the mercenaries.

Charged afterwards with the war in Spain, he had vanquished the most

warlike peoples of that country, and formed in silence a formidable

array. Having discovered early the merit of a young man named Hasdrubal,

he took him into his favour with the intention of making him his

successor. In taking him for his son-in-law, he entrusted to him the

education of Hannibal, on whom rested his dearest hopes. Hamilcar having

been slain in 526, Hasdrubal had taken his place at the head of the

army.

The progress of the Carthaginians in Spain, and the state of their

forces in that country, had alarmed the Senate, which, in 526, obliged

the government of Carthage to subscribe to a new treaty, prohibiting the

Punic army from passing the Ebro, and attacking the allies of the

Republic.[509] This last article referred to the Saguntines, who had

already had some disputes with the Carthaginians. The Romans affected

not to consider them as aborigines, and founded their plea on a legend

which represented this people as a colony from Ardea, contemporary with

the Trojan war.[510] By a similar conduct Rome created allies in Spain

to watch her old adversaries, and this time, as in the case of the

Mamertines, she showed an interested sympathy in favour of a weak nation

exposed to frequent collisions with the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal had

received the order to carry into execution the new treaty; but he was

assassinated by a Gaul, in 534, and the army, without waiting for orders

from Carthage, chose by acclamation for its chief Hannibal, then

twenty-nine years of age. In spite of the rival factions, this choice

was ratified, and perhaps any hesitation on the part of the council in

Carthage would only have led to the revolt of the troops. The party of

the Barcas carried the question against the government, and confirmed

the power of the young general. Adored by the soldiers, who saw in him

their own pupil, Hannibal exercised over them an absolute authority, and

believed that with their old band he could venture upon anything.

The Saguntines were at war with the Turbuletæ,[511] allies or subjects

of Carthage. In contempt of the treaty of 256, Hannibal laid siege to

Saguntum, and took it after a siege of several months. He pretended

that, in attacking his own allies, the Saguntines had been the

aggressors. The people of Saguntum hastened to implore the succour of

Rome. The Senate confined itself to despatching commissioners, some to

Hannibal, who gave them no attention, and others to Carthage, where they

arrived only when Saguntum had ceased to exist. An immense booty, sent

by the conqueror, had silenced the faction opposed to the Barcas, and

the people, as well as the soldiers, elevated by success, breathed

nothing but war. The Roman ambassadors, sent to require indemnities, and

even to demand the head of Hannibal, were ill received, and returned

declaring hostilities unavoidable.

Rome prepared for war with her usual firmness and energy. One of the

consuls was ordered to pass into Sicily, and thence into Africa; the

other to lead an army by sea to Spain, and expel the Carthaginians from

that country. But, without waiting the issue of negotiations, Hannibal

was in full march to transfer the war into Italy. Sometimes treating

with the Celtiberian or Gaulish hordes to obtain a passage through their

territory, sometimes intimidating them by his arms, he had reached the

banks of the Rhone, when the consul charged with the conquest of Spain,

P. Cornelius Scipio, landing at the eastern mouth of that river, learnt

that Hannibal had already entered the Alps. He then leaves his army to

his brother Cneius, returns promptly to Pisa, places himself at the head

of the troops destined to fight the Boii, crosses the Po with them,

hoping by this rapid movement to surprise the Carthaginian general at

the moment when, fatigued and weakened, he entered the plains of Italy.

The two armies met on the banks of the Tessino (536). Scipio, defeated

and wounded, fell back on the colony of Placentia. Rejoined in the

neighbourhood of that town by his colleague Tib. Sempronius Longus, he

again, on the Trebia, offered battle to the Carthaginians. A brilliant

victory placed Hannibal in possession of a great part of Liguria and

Cisalpine Gaul, the warlike hordes of which received him with enthusiasm

and reinforced his army, reduced, after the passage of the mountains, to

less than 30,000 men. Flattered by the reception of the Gauls, the

Carthaginian general tried also to gain the Italiots, and, announcing

himself as the liberator of oppressed peoples, he took care, after the

victory, to set at liberty all the prisoners taken from the allies. He

hoped that these liberated captives would become for him useful

emissaries. In the spring of 537 he entered Etruria, crossed the marshes

of the Val di Chiana, and, drawing the Roman army to the neighbourhood

of the Lake Trasimenus, into an unfavourable locality, destroyed it

almost totally.

The terror was great at Rome; yet the conqueror, after devastating

Etruria, and attacking Spoletum in vain, crossed the Apennines, threw

himself into Umbria and Picenum, and thence directed his march through

Samnium towards the coast of Apulia. In fact, having reached the centre

of Italy, deprived of all communication with the mother country, without

the engines necessary for a siege, with no assured line of retreat,

having behind him the army of Sempronius, what must Hannibal do?--Place

the Apennines between himself and Rome, draw nearer to the populations

more disposed in his favour, and then, by the conquest of the southern

provinces, establish a solid basis of operation, in direct communication

with Carthage. In spite of the victory of Trasimenus, his position was

critical, for, except the Cisalpine Gauls, all the Italiot peoples

remained faithful to Rome, and so far no one had come to increase his

army.[512] Thus Hannibal remained several months between Casilinum and

Arpi, where Fabius, by his skilful movements, would have succeeded in

starving the Carthaginian army, if the term of his command had not

expired. Moreover, the popular party, irritated at a system of

temporising which it accused of cowardice, raised to the consulship, as

the colleague of Æmilius Paulus, Varro, a man of no capacity. Obliged to

remain in Apulia, to procure subsistence for his troops, Hannibal, being

attacked imprudently, entirely defeated, near Cannæ, two consular armies

composed of eight legions and of an equal number of allies, amounting to

87,000 men (538).[513] One of the consuls perished, the other escaped,

followed only by a few horsemen. 40,000 Romans had been killed or taken,

and Hannibal sent to Carthage a bushel of gold rings taken from the

fingers of knights who lay on the field of battle.[514] From that moment

part of Samnium, Apulia, Lucania, and Bruttium declared for the

Carthaginians, while the Greek towns of the south of the peninsula

remained favourable to the Romans.[515] About the same time, as an

increase of ill fortune, L. Postumus, sent against the Gauls, was

defeated, and his army cut to pieces.

The Romans always showed themselves admirable in adversity; and thus the

Senate, by a skilful policy, went to meet the consul Varro, and thank

him for not having despaired of the Republic; it would, however, no

longer employ the troops which had retreated from the battle, but sent

them into Sicily with a prohibition to return into Italy until the enemy

had been driven out of it. They refused to ransom the prisoners in

Hannibal’s hands. The fatherland, they said, had no need of men who

allowed themselves to be taken arms in hand.[516] This reply made people

report at Rome that the man who possessed power was treated very

differently from the humble citizen.[517]

The idea of asking for peace presented itself to nobody. Each rivalled

the other in sacrifices and devotion. New legions were raised, and there

were enrolled 8,000 slaves, who were restored to freedom after the first

combat.[518] The treasury being empty, all the private fortunes were

brought to its aid. The proprietors of slaves taken for the army, the

farmers of the revenue charged with the furnishing of provisions,

consented to be repaid only at the end of the war. Everybody, according

to his means, maintained at his own expense freedmen to serve on the

galleys. After the example of the Senate, widows and minors carried

their gold and silver to the public treasury. It was forbidden for

anybody to keep at home either jewels, plate, silver or copper money,

above a certain value, and, by the law Oppia, even the toilette of the

ladies was limited.[519] Lastly, the duration of family mourning for

relatives slain before the enemy was restricted to thirty days.[520]

After the victory of Cannæ it would have been more easy for Hannibal to

march straight upon Rome than after Trasimenus; yet, since so great a

captain did not think this possible to attempt, it is not uninteresting

to inquire into his motives. In the first place, his principal force was

in Numidian cavalry, which would have been useless in a siege;[521]

then, he had generally the inferiority in attacking fortresses. Thus,

after Trebia, he could not reduce Placentia;[522] after Trasimenus, he

failed before Spoletum; three times he marched upon Naples, without

venturing to attack it; later still, he was obliged to abandon the

sieges of Nola, Cumæ, and Casilinum.[523] What, then, could be more

natural than his hesitation to attack Rome, defended by a numerous

population, accustomed to the use of arms?

The most striking proof of the genius of Hannibal is the fact of his

having remained sixteen years in Italy, left almost to his own forces,

reduced to the necessity of recruiting his army solely among his new

allies, and of subsisting at their expense, ill seconded by the Senate

of his own country, having always to face at least two consular armies,

and, lastly, shut up in the peninsula by the Roman fleets, which guarded

its coasts to intercept reinforcements from Carthage. His constant

thought, therefore, was to make himself master of some important points

of the coast in order to open a communication with Africa. After Cannæ,

he occupies Capua, seeks to gain the sea by Naples,[524] Cumæ, Puteoli;

unable to effect these objects, he seizes upon Arpi and Salapia, on the

eastern coast, where he hopes to meet the ambassadors of the King of

Macedonia. He next makes Bruttium his base of operation, and his

attempts are directed against the maritime places, now against

Brundusium and Tarentum, now against Locri and Rhegium.

All the defeats sustained by the generals of the Republic had been

caused, first, by the superiority of the Numidian cavalry, and the

inferiority of the hastily levied Latin soldiers,[525] opposed to old

veteran troops; and, next, by excessive rashness in face of an able

captain, who drew his adversaries to the position which he had chosen.

Nevertheless, Hannibal, considerably weakened by his victories,

exclaimed, after Cannæ, as Pyrrhus had done after Heraclea, that such

another success would be his ruin.[526] Q. Fabius Maximus, recalled to

power (539), continued a system of methodical war; while Marcellus, his

colleague, bolder,[527] assumed the offensive, and arrested the progress

of the enemy, by obliging him to shut himself up in a trapezium, formed

on the north by Capua and Arpi, on the south by Rhegium and Tarentum. In

543 the war was entirely concentrated round two places; the citadel of

Tarentum, blockaded by the Carthaginians, and Capua, besieged by the two

consuls. These had surrounded themselves with lines of countervallation

against the place, and of circumvallation against the attacks from

without. Hannibal, having failed in his attempt to force these latter,

marched upon Rome, in the hope of causing the siege of Capua to be

raised, and by separating the two consular armies, defeating them one

after the other in the plain country. Having arrived under the walls of

the capital, and foreseeing too many difficulties in the way of making

himself master of so large a town, he abandoned his plan of attack, and

fell back to the environs of Rhegium. His abode there was prolonged

during several years, with alternations of reverse and success, in the

south of Italy, the populations of which were favourable to him;

avoiding engagements, keeping near the sea, and not going beyond the

southern extremity of the territory of Samnium.

In 547, a great army, which had left Spain under the command of one of

his brothers, Hasdrubal, had crossed the Alps, and was advancing to

unite with him, marching along the coast of the Adriatic. Two consular

armies were charged with the war against the Carthaginians: one, under

the command of the consul M. Livius Salinator, in Umbria; the other,

having at its head the consul C. Claudius Nero, held Hannibal in check

in Lucania, and had even obtained an advantage over him at Grumentum.

Hannibal had advanced as far as Canusium, when the consul Claudius Nero,

informed of the numerical superiority of the army of succour, leaves his

camp under the guard of Q. Cassius, his lieutenant, conceals his

departure, effects his junction with his colleague, and defeats, near

the Metaurus, Hasdrubal, who perished in the battle with all his

army.[528] From that moment Hannibal foresees the fate of Carthage; he

abandons Apulia, and even Lucania, and retires into the only country

which had remained faithful, Bruttium. He remains shut up there five

years more, in continual expectation of reinforcements,[529] and only

quits Italy when his country, threatened by the Roman legions, already

on the African soil, calls him home to her defence.

In this war the marine of the two nations performed an important part.

The Romans strained every nerve to remain masters of the sea; their

fleets, stationed at Ostia, Brundusium, and Lilybæum, kept incessantly

the most active watch upon the coasts of Italy; they even made cruises

to the neighbourhood of Carthage and as far as Greece.[530] The

difficulty of the direct communications induced the Carthaginians to

send their troops by way of Spain and the Alps, where their armies

recruited on the road, rather than dispatch them to the southern coast

of Italy. Hannibal received but feeble reinforcements;[531] Livy

mentions two only: the first of 4,000 Numidians and 40 elephants; and

the second, brought by Bomilcar to the coast of the Ionian Gulf, near

Locri.[532] All the other convoys appear to have been intercepted, and

one of the most considerable, laden with stores and troops, was

destroyed on the coast of Sicily.[533]

We cannot but admire the constancy of the Romans in face of enemies who

threatened them on all sides. During the same period they repressed the

Cisalpine Gauls and the Etruscans, combated the King of Macedonia, the

ally of Hannibal, sustained a fierce war in Spain, and resisted in

Sicily the attacks of the Syracusans, who, after the death of Hiero, had

declared against the Republic. It took three years to reduce Syracuse,

defended by Archimedes. Rome kept on foot, as long as the Second Punic

war lasted, from sixteen to twenty-four legions,[534] recruited only in

the town and in Latium.[535] These twenty-three legions represented an

effective force of about 100,000 men, a number which will not appear

exaggerated if we compare it with the census of 534, which gave 270,213

men, and only comprised persons in a condition to bear arms.

In the thirteenth year of the war the chances seemed in favour of the

Republic. P. Cornelius Scipio, the son of the consul defeated at Trebia,

had just expelled the Carthaginians from Spain. The people, recognising

his genius, had conferred upon him, six years before, the powers of

proconsul, though he was only twenty-four years of age. On his return to

Rome, Scipio, elected consul (549), passed into Sicily, and from thence

to Africa, where, after a campaign of two years, he defeated Hannibal in

the plains of Zama, and compelled the rival of Rome to sue for peace

(552). The Senate accorded to the conqueror the greatest honour which a

Republic can confer upon one of her citizens--she left it to him to

dictate terms to the vanquished. Carthage was compelled to give up her

ships and her elephants, to pay 10,000 talents (58,000,000 francs

[£2,320,000]), and, finally, to enter into the humiliating engagement

not to make war in future without the authorisation of Rome.

[Sidenote: Results of the Second Punic War.]

VI. The second Punic war ended in the submission of Carthage and Spain,

but it was at the price of painful sacrifices. During this struggle of

sixteen years, a great number of the most distinguished citizens had

perished; at Cannæ alone two thousand seven hundred knights, two

questors, twenty-one tribunes of the soldiers, and many old consuls,

prætors, and ediles were slain; and so many senators had fallen, that it

was necessary to name a hundred and seventy-seven new ones, taken from

among those who had occupied the magistracies.[536] But such hard trials

had tempered anew the national character.[537] The Republic felt her

strength and her resources unfold themselves; she rejoiced in her

victories with a just pride, without yet experiencing the intoxication

of a too great fortune, and new bonds were formed between the different

peoples of Italy. War against a foreign invasion, in fact, has always

the immense advantage of putting an end to internal dissensions, and

unites the citizens against the common enemy. The greater part of the

allies gave unequivocable proofs of their devotion. The Republic owed

its safety, after the defeat of Cannæ, to the assistance of eighteen

colonies, which furnished men and money.[538] The fear of Hannibal had

fortunately given strength to concord, both in Rome and in Italy: no

more quarrels between the two orders,[539] no more divisions between the

governing and the governed. Sometimes the Senate refers to the people

the most serious questions; sometimes the people, full of trust in the

Senate, submits beforehand to its decision.[540]

It was especially during the struggle against Hannibal that the

inconvenience of the duality and of the annual change of the consular

powers became evident;[541] but this never-ceasing cause of weakness

was, as we have seen before, compensated by the spirit of patriotism.

Here is a striking example: while Fabius was pro-dictator, Minucius,

chief of the cavalry, was, contrary to the usual custom, invested with

the same powers. Hurried on by his temper, he compromised the army,

which was saved by Fabius. He acknowledged his error, submitted

willingly to the orders of his colleague, and thus restored, by his own

voluntary act, the unity of the command.[542] As to the continual change

of the military chiefs, the force of circumstances rendered it necessary

to break through this custom. The two Scipios remained seven years at

the head of the army of Spain; Scipio Africanus succeeded them for

almost as long a period. The Senate and the people had decided that,

during the war of Italy, the powers of the proconsuls and prætors might

be prorogued, and that the same consuls might be re-elected as often as

might be thought fit.[543] And subsequently, in the campaign against

Philip, the tribunes pointed out in the following terms the disadvantage

of such frequent changes: “During the four years that the war of

Macedonia lasted, Sulpicius had passed the greater part of his

consulship in seeking Philip and his army; Villius had overtaken the

enemy, but had been recalled before giving battle; Quinctius, retained

the greater part of the year at Rome by religious cares, would have

pushed the war with sufficient vigour to have entirely terminated it, if

he could have arrived at his destination before the season was so far

advanced. He had hardly entered his winter quarters, when he made

preparations for recommencing the campaign with the spring, with a view

of finishing it successfully, provided no successor came to snatch

victory from him.”[544] These arguments prevailed, and the consul was

prorogued in his command.

Thus continual wars tended to introduce the stability of military powers

and the permanence of armies. The same legions had passed ten years in

Spain; others had been nearly as long in Sicily; and though, at the

expiration of their service, the old soldiers were dismissed, the

legions remained always under arms. Hence arose the necessity of giving

lands to the soldiers who had finished their time of service; and, in

552, there were assigned to Scipio’s veterans, for each year of service

in Africa and Spain, two acres of the lands confiscated from the

Samnites and Apulians.[545]

It was the first time that Rome took foreign troops into her pay,

sometimes Celtiberians, at others Cretans sent by Hiero of

Syracuse,[546] in fact, mercenaries, and a body of discontented Gauls

who had abandoned the Carthaginian army.[547]

Many of the inhabitants of the allied towns were drawn to Rome,[548]

where, in spite of the sacrifices imposed by the wars, commerce and

luxury increased. The spoils which Marcellus brought from Sicily, and

especially from Syracuse, had given development to the taste for the

arts, and this consul boasted of having been the first who caused his

countrymen to appreciate and admire the masterpieces of Greece.[549] The

games of the circus, in the middle of the sixth century, began to be

more in favour. Junius and Decius Brutus had, in 490, exhibited for the

first time the combats of gladiators, the number of which was soon

increased to twenty-two pairs.[550] Towards this period, also (559),

theatrical representations were first given by the ediles.[551] The

spirit of speculation had taken possession of the high classes, as

appears by the law forbidding the senators (law Claudia, 536) to

maintain at sea ships of a tonnage of more than three hundred amphoræ;

as the public wealth increased, the knights, composed of the class who

paid most taxes, increased also, and tended to separate into two

categories, some serving in the cavalry, and possessing the horse

furnished by the State (_equus publicus_),[552] the others devoting

themselves to commerce and financial operations. The knights had long

been employed in civil commissions,[553] and were often called to the

high magistracies; and therefore Perseus justly called them “the nursery

of the Senate, and the young nobility out of which issued consuls and

generals (_imperatores_).”[554] During the Punic wars they had rendered

great services by making large advances for the provisioning of the

armies;[555] and if some, as undertakers of transports, had enriched

themselves at the expense of the State, the Senate hesitated in

punishing their embezzlements, for fear of alienating this class,

already powerful.[556] The territorial wealth was partly in the hands of

the great proprietors; this appears from several facts, and, among

others, from the hospitality given by a lady of Apulia to 10,000 Roman

soldiers, who had escaped from the battle of Cannæ, whom she entertained

at her own private cost on her own lands.[557]

Respect for the higher classes had been somewhat shaken, as we learn

from the adoption of a measure of apparently little importance. Since

the fall of the kingly power, there had been established in the public

games no distinction between the spectators. Deference for authority

rendered all classification superfluous, and “never would a plebeian,”

says Valerius Maximus,[558] “have ventured to place himself before a

senator.” But, towards 560, a law was passed for assigning to the

members of the Senate reserved places. It is necessary, for the good

order of society, to increase the severity of the laws as the feeling of

the social hierarchy becomes weakened.

Circumstances had brought other changes; the tribuneship, without being

abolished, had become an auxiliary of the aristocracy. The tribunes no

longer exclusively represented the plebeian order; they were admitted

into the Senate; they formed part of the government, and employed their

authority in the interest of justice and the fatherland.[559] The three

kinds of comitia still remained,[560] but some modifications had been

introduced into them. The assembly of the curiæ[561] consisted now only

of useless formalities. Their attributes, more limited every day, were

reduced to the conferring of the _imperium_, and the deciding of certain

questions about auspices and religion. The comitia by centuries, which

in their origin were the assembly of the people in arms, voting in the

Campus Martius, and nominating their military chiefs, retained the same

privileges; only, the century had become a subdivision of the tribe. All

the citizens inscribed in each of the thirty-five tribes were separated

into five classes, according to their fortune; each class was divided

into two centuries, the one of the young men (_juniores_) the other of

the older men (_seniores_).

As to the comitia by tribes, in which each voted without distinction of

rank or fortune, their legislative power continued to increase as that

of the comitia by centuries diminished.

Thus the Roman institutions, while appearing to remain the same, were

incessantly changing. The political assemblies, the laws of the Twelve

Tables, the classes established by Servius Tullius, the yearly election

to offices, the military services, the tribuneship, the edileship, all

seemed to remain as in the past, and in reality all had changed through

the force of circumstances. Nevertheless, this appearance of immobility

in the midst of progressing society was one advantage of Roman manners.

Religious observers of tradition and ancient customs, the Romans did not

appear to destroy what they displaced; they applied ancient forms to new

principles, and thus introduced innovations without disturbance, and

without weakening the prestige of institutions consecrated by time.

[Sidenote: The Macedonian War (554).]

VII. During the second Punic war, Philip III., king of Macedonia, had

attacked the Roman settlements in Illyria, invaded several provinces of

Greece, and made an alliance with Hannibal. Obliged to check these

dangerous aggressions, the Senate, from 540 to 548, maintained large

forces on the coasts of Epirus and Macedonia; and, united with the

Ætolian league, and with Attalus, king of Pergamus, had forced Philip to

conclude peace. But in 553, after the victory of Zama, when this prince

again attacked the free cities of Greece and Asia allied to Rome, war

was declared against him. The Senate could not forget that at this last

battle a Macedonian contingent was found among the Carthaginian troops,

and that still there remained in Greece a large number of Roman citizens

sold for slaves after the battle of Cannæ.[562] Thus from each war was

born a new war, and every success was destined to force the Republic

into the pursuit of others. Now the Adriatic was to be passed, first, to

curb the power of the Macedonians, and then to call to liberty those

famous towns, the cradles of civilisation. The destinies of Greece could

not be a matter of indifference to the Romans, who had borrowed her

laws, her science, her literature, and her arts.

Sulpicius, appointed to combat Philip, landed on the coast of Epirus,

and penetrated into Macedonia, where he gained a succession of

victories, while one of his lieutenants, sent to Greece with the fleet,

caused the siege of Athens to be raised. During two years the war

languished, but the Roman fleet, combined with that of Attalus and the

Rhodians, remained master of the sea (555). T. Quinctius Flamininus,

raised to the consulship while still young, justified, by his

intelligence and energy, the confidence of his fellow-citizens. He

detached the Achaians and Bœtians from their alliance with the King

of Macedonia, and, with the aid of the Ætolians, gained the battle of

Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly (557), where the legion routed the celebrated

phalanx of Philip II. and Alexander the Great. Philip III., compelled to

make peace, was fain to accept hard conditions; the first of which was

the obligation to withdraw his garrisons from the towns of Greece and

Asia, and the prohibition to make war without the permission of the

Senate.

The recital of Livy, which speaks of the decree proclaiming liberty to

Greece, deserves to be quoted. We see there what value the Senate then

attached to moral influence, and to that true popularity which the glory

of having freed a people gives:--

“The epoch of the celebration of the Isthmian games generally attracted

a great concourse of spectators, either because of the natural taste of

the Greeks for all sorts of games, or because of the situation of

Corinth, which, seated on two seas, offered easy access to the curious.

But on this occasion an immense multitude flocked thither from all

parts, in expectation of the future fate of Greece in general, and of

each people in particular: this was the only subject of thought and

conversation. The Romans take their place, and the herald, according to

custom, advances into the middle of the arena, whence the games are

announced according to a solemn form. The trumpet sounds, silence is

proclaimed, and the herald pronounces these words: ‘The Roman Senate,

and S.T. Quinctius, imperator, conquerors of Philip and the Macedonians,

re-establish in the enjoyment of liberty, their laws, and privileges,

the Corinthians, the Phocians, the Locrians, the island of Eubœa, the

Magnetes, the Thessalians, the Perrhœbi, and the Achæans of

Phthiotis.’ These were the names of all the nations which had been under

the dominion of Philip. At this proclamation, the assembly was overcome

with excess of joy. Hardly anybody could believe what he heard. The

Greeks looked at each other as if they were still in the illusions of a

pleasant dream, to be dissipated on awakening, and, distrusting the

evidence of their ears, they asked their neighbours if they were not

deceived. The herald is recalled, each man burning, not only to hear,

but to see the messenger of such good news; he reads the decree a second

time. Then, no longer able to doubt their happiness, they uttered cries

of joy, and bestowed on their liberator such loud and repeated applause

as make it easy to see that, of all good, liberty is that which has most

charm for the multitude. Then the games were celebrated, but hastily,

and without attracting the looks or the attention of the spectators. One

interest alone absorbed their souls, and took from them the feeling of

every other pleasure.

“The games ended, the people rush towards the Roman general; everybody

is anxious to greet him, to take his hand, to cast before him crowns of

flowers and of ribbons, and the crowd was so great that he was almost

suffocated. He was but thirty-three years of age, and the vigour of

life, joined with the intoxication of a glory so dazzling, gave him

strength to bear up against such a trial. The joy of the peoples was not

confined to the enthusiasm of the moment: the impression was kept up

long afterwards in their thoughts and speech. ‘There was then,’ they

said, ‘one nation upon earth, which, at its own cost, at the price of

fatigues and perils, made war for the liberty of peoples even though

removed from their frontiers and continent: this nation crossed the

seas, in order that there should not be in the whole world one single

unjust government, and that right, equity, and law should be everywhere

dominant. The voice of a herald had been sufficient to restore freedom

to all the cities of Greece and Asia. The idea alone of such a design

supposed a rare greatness of soul; but to execute it needed as much

courage as fortune.’”[563]

There was, however, a shadow on the picture. All Peloponnesus was not

freed, and Flamininus, after having taken several of his possessions

from Nabis, king of Sparta, had concluded peace with him, without

continuing the siege of Lacedæmon, of which he dreaded the length. He

feared also the arrival of a more dangerous enemy, Antiochus III., who

had already reached Thrace, and threatened to go over into Greece with a

considerable army. For this the allied Greeks, occupied only with their

own interests, reproached the Roman consul with having concluded peace

too hastily with Philip, whom, in their opinion, he could have

annihilated.[564] But Flamininus replied that he was not commissioned to

dethrone Philip, and that the existence of the kingdom of Macedonia was

necessary as a barrier against the barbarians of Thrace, Illyria, and

Gaul.[565] Meanwhile, accompanied even to their ships by the

acclamations of the people, the Roman troops evacuated the cities

restored to liberty (560), and Flamininus returned to a triumph at Rome,

bringing with him that glorious protectorate of Greece, so long an

object of envy to the successors of Alexander.

[Sidenote: War against Antiochus (563).]

VIII. The policy of the Senate had been to make Macedonia a rampart

against the Thracians, and Greece herself a rampart against Macedonia.

But, though the Romans had freed the Achæan league, they did not intend

to create a formidable power or confederation. Then, as formerly, the

Athenians, the Spartans, the Bœotians, the Ætolians, and, finally,

the Achæans, each endeavoured to constitute an Hellenic league for their

own advantage; and each aspiring to dominate over the others, turned

alternately to those from whom it hoped the most efficient support at

the time. In the Hellenic peninsula, properly so called, the Ætolians,

to whose territory the Senate had promised to join Phocis and Locris,

coveted the cities of Thessaly, which the Romans obstinately refused

them.

Thus, although reinstated in the possession of their independence,

neither the Ætolians, the Achæans, nor yet the Spartans, were satisfied:

they all dreamt of aggrandisement. The Ætolians, more impatient, made,

in 562, three simultaneous attempts against Thessaly, the island of

Eubœa, and Peloponnesus. Having only succeeded in seizing Demetrias,

they called Antiochus III. to Greece, that they might place him at the

head of the hegemony, which they sought in vain to obtain from the

Romans.

The better part of the immense heritage left by Alexander the Great had

fallen to this prince. Already, some years before, Flamininus had given

him notice that it belonged to the honour of the Republic not to

abandon Greece, of which the Roman people had loudly proclaimed itself

the liberator; and that after having delivered it from the yoke of

Philip, the Senate now wished to free from the dominion of Antiochus all

the Asian cities of Hellenic origin.[566] Hannibal, who had taken refuge

with the King of Syria, encouraged him to resist, by engaging him to

carry the struggle into Italy, as he himself had done. War was then

declared by the Romans. To maintain the independence of Greece against

an Asiatic prince was at once to fulfil treaties and undertake the

defence of civilisation against barbarism. Thus, in proclaiming the most

generous ideas, the Republic justified its ambition.

The services rendered by Rome were already forgotten.[567] Antiochus

thus found numerous allies in Greece, secret or declared. He organised a

formidable confederacy, into which entered the Ætolians, the Athamanes,

the Elians, and the Bœotians, and, having landed at Chalcis,

conquered Eubœa and Thessaly. The Romans opposed to him the King of

Macedonia and the Achæans. Beaten at Thermopylæ, in 563, by the consul

Acilius Glabrio, aided by Philip, the King of Syria withdrew to Asia,

and the Ætolians, left to themselves, demanded peace, which was granted

them in 563.

It was not enough to have compelled Antiochus to abandon Greece. L.

Scipio, having his brother, the vanquisher of Carthage, for his

lieutenant, went in 564 to seek him out in his own territory. Philip

favoured the passage of the Roman army, which crossed Macedonia, Thrace,

and the Hellespont without difficulty. The victories gained at Myonnesus

by sea, and at Magnesia by land, terminated the campaign, and compelled

Antiochus to yield up all his provinces on this side Mount Taurus, and

pay 15,000 talents--a third more than the tax imposed on Carthage after

the second Punic war. The Senate, far from reducing Asia then to a

province, exacted only just and moderate conditions.[568] All the Greek

towns of that country were declared free, and the Romans only occupied

certain important points, and enriched their allies at the expense of

Syria. The King of Pergamus and the Rhodian fleet had seconded the Roman

army. Eumenes II., the successor of Attalus I., saw his kingdom

increased; Rhodes obtained Lycia and Caria; Ariarathes, king of

Cappadocia, who had given aid to Antiochus, paid two hundred

talents.[569]

[Sidenote: The War in the Cisalpine (558-579).]

IX. The prompt submission of the East was a fortunate occurrence for the

Republic, for near at home, enemies, always eager and watchful, might at

any moment, supported or excited by their brethren on the other side of

the Alps, attack her in the very centre of her empire.

Indeed, since the time of Hannibal, war had been perpetuated in the

Cisalpine, the bellicose tribes of which, though often beaten, engaged

continually in new insurrections. The settlement of the affairs of

Macedonia left the Senate free to act with more vigour, and in 558 the

defeat of the Ligures, of the Boii, of the Insubres, and of the

Cenomani, damped the ardour of these barbarous peoples. The Ligures and

the Boii, however, continued the strife; but the bloody battle of 561,

fought near Modena, and, later, the ravages committed by L. Flamininus,

brother of the conqueror of Cynoscephalæ, and Scipio Nasica, during the

following years, obliged the Boii to treat. Compelled to yield the half

of their territory, they retired towards the Danube in 564, and three

years afterwards Cisalpine Gaul was formed into a Roman province.

As to the Ligures, they maintained a war of desperation to the end of

the century. Their resistance was such that Rome was obliged to meet it

with measures of excessive rigour; and in 574, more than 47,000 Ligures

were transported into a part of Samnium which had been left almost

without inhabitants since the war with Hannibal. In 581, lands beyond

the Po were distributed to other Ligures.[570] Every year the frontiers

receded more towards the north, and military roads,[571] the foundation

of important colonies, secured the march of the armies--a system which

had been interrupted during the second Punic war, but was afterwards

adopted, and especially applied to the south of Italy and the

Cisalpine.[572]

In achieving the submission of this last province, Rome had put an end

to other less important wars. In 577 she reduced the Istrians; in 579,

the Sardinians and the Corsicans; finally, from 569 to 573, she extended

her conquests into Spain, where she met the same enemies as Carthage had

encountered.

[Sidenote: War against Persia (583).]

X. For twenty-six years had peace been maintained with Philip, the

Ætolians vanquished, the peoples of Asia subdued, and the greater part

of Greece restored to liberty. Profiting by its co-operation with the

Romans against Antiochus, the Achæan league had largely increased, and

Philopœmen had brought into it Sparta, Messene, and the island of

Zacynthus; but these countries, impatient of the Achæan rule, soon

sought to free themselves from it. Thus was realised the prediction of

Philip, who told the Thessalian envoys, after the battle of

Cynoscephalæ, that the Romans would soon repent of having given liberty

to peoples incapable of enjoying it, and whose dissensions and

jealousies would always keep up a dangerous agitation.[573] In fact,

Sparta and Messene rebelled, and sued for help from Rome. Philopœmen,

after having cruelly punished the first of these cities, perished in his

struggle with the second. Thessaly and Ætolia were torn by anarchy and

civil war.

Whilst the Republic was occupied in restoring tranquillity to these

countries, a new adversary came to imprudently attract its wrath. One

would say that Fortune, while raising up so many enemies against Rome,

took pleasure in delivering them, one after the other, into her hands.

The old legend of Horatius killing the three Curiatii in succession was

a lesson which the Senate had never forgotten.

Perseus, heir to his father’s crown and enmities, had taken advantage of

the peace to increase his army and his resources, to make allies, and to

rouse up the kings and peoples of the East against Rome. Besides the

warlike population of his own country, he had at his beck barbarous

peoples like the Illyrians, the Thracians, and the Bastarnæ, dwelling

not far from the Danube. Notwithstanding the treaty, which forbad

Macedonia to make war without the consent of the Senate, Perseus had

silently aggrandised himself on the side of Thrace; he had placed

garrisons in the maritime cities of Oenoe and Maronia, excited the

Dardanians[574] to war, brought under subjection the Dolopes, and

advanced as far as Delphi.[575] He endeavored to draw the Achæans into

an alliance, and skilfully obtained the good-will of the Greeks. Eumenes

II., king of Pergamus, who, like his father Attalus I., feared the

encroachments of Macedonia, denounced at Rome this infraction of the old

treaties. The fear with which a powerful prince inspired him, and the

gratitude which he owed to the Republic for the aggrandisement of his

kingdom after the Asian war, obliged him to cultivate the friendship of

the Roman people. In 582 he came to Rome, and, honourably received by

the Senate, forgot nothing which might excite it against Perseus, whom

he accused of ambitious designs hostile to the Republic. This

denunciation raised violent enmities against Eumenes. On his way back to

his kingdom, he was attacked by assassins, and dangerously wounded.

Suspicion fell on the Macedonian monarch, not without show of reason,

and was taken by the Republic as sufficient ground for declaring war on

a prince whose power began to offend it.

Bold in planning, Perseus displayed cowardice when it was necessary to

act. After having from the first haughtily rejected the Roman claims, he

waited in Thessaly for their army, which, ill-commanded and

ill-organised, was beaten by his lieutenants and repulsed into mountain

gorges, where it might have been easily destroyed. He then offered peace

to P. Licinius Crassus; but, notwithstanding his check, the consul

replied, with all the firmness of the Roman character, that peace was

only possible if Perseus would abandon his person and his kingdom to the

discretion of the Senate.[576] Struck by so much assurance, the king

recalled his troops, and suffered the enemy to effect his retreat

undisturbed. The incapacity of the Roman generals, however, their

violences, and the want of discipline among the soldiers, had alienated

the Greeks, who naturally preferred a prince of their own race to a

foreign captain; moreover, they did not see the Macedonians get the

better of the Romans without a certain satisfaction. In their eyes, it

was the Hellenic civilisation overthrowing the presumption of the

Western barbarians.

The campaigns of 584 and 585 were not more fortunate for the Roman arms.

A consul had the rash idea of invading Macedonia by the passes of

Callipeuce, where his army would have been annihilated if the king had

had the courage to defend himself. At the approach of the legions he

took to flight, and the Romans escaped from their perilous position

without loss.[577] At length, the people, feeling the necessity of

having an eminent man at the head of the army, nominated Paulus Æmilius

consul, who had given many proofs of his military talents in the

Cisalpine. Already the greater part of the Gallo-græci were in treaty

with Perseus. The Illyrians and the people of the Danube offered to

second him. The Rhodians, and the King of Pergamus himself, persuaded

that Fortune was going to declare herself for the King of Macedonia,

made him offers of alliance; he chaffered with them with the most

inexplicable levity. In the mean time, the Roman army, ably conducted,

advanced by forced marches. One single combat terminated the war; and

the battle of Pydna, in 586, once more proved the superiority of the

Roman legion over the phalanx. This, however, did not yield

ingloriously; and, though abandoned by their king, who fled, the

Macedonian hoplites died at their post.

When they heard of this defeat, Eumenes and the Rhodians hastened to

wipe out the remembrance of their ever having doubted the fortune of

Rome[578] by the swiftness of their repentance. At the same time, L.

Anicius conquered Illyria and seized the person of Gentius. Macedonia

was divided into four states called _free_, that is to say, presided

over by magistrates chosen by themselves, but under the protectorate of

the Republic. By the law imposed on these new provinces, all marriages,

and all exchange of immovable property, were interdicted between the

citizens of different states,[579] and the imports reduced one-half. As

we see, the Republic applied the system practised in 416 to dissolve the

Latin confederacy, and later, in 449, that of the Hernici. Illyria was

also divided into three parts. The towns which had first yielded were

exempt from all tribute, and the taxes of the others reduced to

half.[580]

It is not uninteresting to recall to mind how Livy appreciates the

institutions which Macedonia and Illyria received at this epoch. “It was

decreed,” he says, “that liberty should be given to the Macedonians and

Illyrians, to prove to the whole universe that, in carrying their arms

so far, the object of the Romans was to deliver the enslaved peoples,

not to enslave the free peoples; to guarantee to these last their

independence, to the nations subject to kings a milder and more just

government; and to convince them that, in the wars which might break out

between the Republic and their sovereigns, the result would be the

liberty of the peoples: Rome reserving to herself only the honour of

victory.”[581]

Greece, and above all Epirus, sacked by Paulus Æmilius, underwent the

penalty of defection. As to the Achæan league, the fidelity of which had

appeared doubtful, nearly a thousand of the principal citizens, guilty

or suspected of having favoured the Macedonians, were sent as hostages

to Rome.[582]

[Sidenote: Modification of Roman policy.]

XI. In carrying her victorious arms through almost all the borders of

the Mediterranean, the Republic had hitherto obeyed either legitimate

needs or generous inspirations. Care for her future greatness, for her

existence even, made it absolute on her to dispute the empire of the sea

with Carthage. Hence the wars, of which Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Italy,

and Africa, by turns, became the theatre. It was also her duty to combat

the warlike peoples of the Cisalpine, that she might ensure the safety

of her frontiers. As to the expeditions of Macedonia and Asia, Rome had

been drawn into them by the conduct of foreign kings, their violation of

treaties, their guilty plottings, and their attacks on her allies.

To conquer thus became to her an obligation, under pain of seeing fall

to ruin the edifice which she had built up at the price of so many

sacrifices; and, what is remarkable, she showed herself after victory

magnificent towards her allies, clement to the vanquished, and moderate

in her pretensions. Leaving to the kings all the glory of the throne,

and to the nations their laws and liberties, she had reduced to Roman

provinces only a part of Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Cisalpine Gaul. In

Sicily she preserved the most intimate alliance with Hiero, tyrant of

Syracuse, for fifty years. The constant support of this prince must have

shown the Senate how much such alliances were preferable to direct

dominion. In Spain she augmented the territory of all the chiefs who

consented to become her allies. After the battle of Cynoscephalæ, as

after that of Magnesia, she maintained on their thrones Philip and

Antiochus, and imposed on this last only the same conditions as those

offered before the victory. If, after the battle of Pydna, she overthrew

Perseus, it was because he had openly violated his engagements; but she

gave equitable laws to Macedonia. Justice then ruled her conduct, even

towards her oldest rival; for when Masinissa asked the help of the

Senate in his quarrels with Carthage, he received for answer that, even

in his favour, justice could not be sacrificed.[583]

In Egypt her protection preserved the crown on the head of Ptolemy

Philometor and of his sister Cleopatra.[584] Finally, when all the kings

came after the victory of Pydna to offer their congratulations to the

Roman people, and to implore their protection, the Senate regulated

their demands with extreme justice. Eumenes, himself an object of

suspicion, sent his brother Attalus to Rome; and he, willing to profit

by the favourable impression he had made, thought to ask for him a part

of the kingdom of Pergamus. He was recommended to give up the design.

The Senate restored his son to Cotys, king of Thrace, without ransom,

saying that the Roman people did not make a traffic of their

benefits.[585] Finally, in the disputes between Prusias, king of

Bithynia, and the Gallo-græcians, it declared that justice alone could

dictate its decision.[586]

How, then, did so much nobleness of views, so much magnanimity in

success, so much prudence in conduct seem to be belied, dating from that

period of twenty-two years which divides the war against Persia from the

third Punic war? Because too much success dazzles nations as well as

kings. When the Romans began to think that nothing could resist them in

the future because nothing had resisted them in the past, they believed

that all was permitted them. They no longer made war to protect their

allies, defend their frontiers, or destroy coalitions, but to crush the

weak, and use nations for their own profit. We must also acknowledge

that the inconstancy of the peoples, faithful in appearance, but always

plotting some defection, and the hatred of the kings, concealing their

resentment under a show of abasement, concurred to render the Republic

more suspicious and more exacting, and caused it to count from

henceforth rather on its subjects than on its allies. Vainly did the

Senate seek to follow the grand traditions of the past; it was no longer

strong enough to curb individual ambitions; and the same institutions

which formerly brought forth the virtues, now only protected the vices

of aggrandised Rome. The generals dared no longer to obey; thus, the

consul Cn. Manlius attacks the Gallo-græcians in Asia without the orders

of the Senate;[587] A. Manlius takes on himself to make an expedition

into Istria;[588] the consul C. Cassius abandons the Cisalpine, his

province, and attempts of his own accord to penetrate into Macedonia by

Illyria;[589] the prætor Furius, on his own authority, disarms one of

the peoples of Cisalpine Gaul, the Cenomani, at peace with Rome;[590]

Popilius Lænas attacks the Statiellates without cause, and sells ten

thousand of them; others also oppress the peoples of Spain.[591] All

these things doubtless incur the blame of the Senate; the consuls and

prætors are disavowed, even accused, but their disobedience none the

less remain unpunished, and the accusations without result. In 599, it

is true, L. Lentulus, consul in the preceding year, underwent

condemnation for exaction, but that did not prevent him from being

raised again to the chief honours.[592]

As long as the object was only to form men destined for a modest part on

a narrow theatre, nothing was better than the annual election of the

consuls and prætors, by which, in a certain space of time, a great

number of the principal citizens of both the patrician and plebeian

nobility participated in the highest offices. Powers thus exercised

under the eyes of their fellow-citizens, rather for honour than

interest, obliged them to be worthy of their trust; but when, leading

their legions into the most remote countries, the generals, far from all

control, and invested with absolute power, enriched themselves by the

spoils of the vanquished, dignities were sought merely to furnish them

with wealth during their short continuance. The frequent re-election of

the magistrates, in multiplying the contests of candidates, multiplied

the ambitious, who scrupled at nothing to attain their object. Thus

Montesquieu justly observes, that “good laws which have made a small

republic great, become a burden to it when it has increased, because

their natural effect was to create a grand people, and not to govern

it.”[593]

The remedy for this overflowing of unruly passions would have been, on

the one hand, to moderate the desire for conquest; on the other, to

diminish the number of aspirants to power, by giving them a longer term

of duration. But then, the people alone, guided by its instincts, felt

the need of remedying this defect in the institution, by retaining in

authority those who had their confidence. Thus, they wished to appoint

Scipio Africanus perpetual dictator;[594] while pretended reformers,

such as Portius Cato, enslaved to old customs, and in a spirit of

exaggerated rigorism, made laws to interdict the same man from aspiring

twice to the consulship, and to advance the age at which it was lawful

to try for this high office.

All these measures were contrary to the object at which they aimed. In

maintaining annual elections, the way was left free to vulgar

covetousness; in excluding youth from high functions, they repressed the

impulses of those choice natures which early reveal themselves, and the

exceptional elevation of which had so often saved Rome from the greatest

disasters. Have we not seen, for example, in 406, Marcus Valerius

Corvus, raised to the consulate at twenty-three years of age, gain the

battle of Mount Gaurus against the Samnites; Scipio Africanus, nominated

proconsul at twenty-four, conquer Spain and humiliate Carthage; the

consul Quinctius Flamininus, at thirty, carry off from Philip the

victory of Cynoscephalæ? Finally, Scipio Æmilianus, who is to destroy

Carthage, will be elected consul, even before the age fixed by the law

of Cato.

No doubt, Cato the Censor, honest and incorruptible, had the laudable

design of arresting the decline of morals. But, instead of attacking the

cause, he only attacked the effect; instead of strengthening authority,

he tended to weaken it; instead of leaving the nations a certain

independence, he urged the Senate to bring them all under its absolute

dominion; instead of adopting what came from Greece with an enlightened

discernment, he indiscriminately condemned all that was of foreign

origin.[595] There was in Cato’s austerity more ostentation than real

virtue. Thus, during his censorship, he expelled Manlius from the Senate

for having kissed his wife before his daughter in open daylight; he took

pleasure in regulating the toilette and extravagance of the Roman

ladies; and, by an exaggerated disinterestedness, he sold his horse

when he quitted Spain, to save the Republic the cost of transport.[596]

But the Senate contained men less absolute, and wiser appreciators of

the needs of the age; they desired to repress abuses, to carry out a

policy of moderation, to curb the spirit of conquest, and to accept from

Greece all that she had of good. Scipio Nasica and Scipio Æmilianus

figured among the most important.[597] One did not reject whatever might

soften manners and increase human knowledge; the other cultivated the

new muses, and was even said to have assisted Terence.

The irresistible inclination of the people towards all that elevates the

soul and ennobles existence was not to be arrested. Greece had brought

to Italy her literature, her arts, her science, her eloquence; and when,

in 597, there came to Rome three celebrated philosophers--Carneades the

Academician, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic--as

ambassadors from Athens, they produced an immense sensation. The young

men flocked in crowds to see and hear them; the Senate itself approved

this homage paid to men whose talent must polish, by the culture of

letters, minds still rude and unformed.[598] Cato alone, inexorable,

pretended that these arts would soon corrupt the Roman youth, and

destroy its taste for arms; and he caused these philosophers to be

dismissed.

Sent to Africa as arbiter to appease the struggle between Masinissa and

Carthage, he only embittered it. Jealous at seeing this ancient rival

still great and prosperous, he did not cease pronouncing against her

that famous decree of death: _Delenda est Carthago_. Scipio Nasica, on

the contrary, opposed the destruction of Carthage, which he considered

too weak to do injury, yet strong enough to keep up a salutary fear,

which might prevent the people from casting themselves into all those

excesses which are the inevitable consequences of the unbounded increase

of empires.[599] Unhappily, the opinion of Cato triumphed.

As one of our first writers says, it must be “that truth is a divine

thing, since the errors of good men are as fatal to humanity as vice,

which is the error of the wicked.”

Cato, by persecuting with his accusations the principal citizens, and,

among others, Scipio Africanus, taught the Romans to doubt virtue.[600]

By exaggeration in his attacks, and by delivering his judgments with

passion, he caused his justice to be suspected.[601] By condemning the

vices from which he himself was not exempt, he deprived his

remonstrances of all moral force.[602] When he scourged the people as

accuser and judge, without seeking to raise them by education and laws,

he resembled, says a learned German, that Persian king who whipped the

sea with rods to make the tempest cease.[603] His influence, though

powerless to arrest the movement of one civilisation taking the place of

another, failed not to produce a fatal effect on the policy of that

period.[604] The Senate, renouncing the moderation and justice which

hitherto had stamped all its deeds, adopted in their stead a crafty and

arrogant line of action, and a system of extermination.

Towards the beginning of the seventh century, everything disappears

before the Roman power. The independence of peoples, kingdoms, and

republics ceases to exist. Carthage is destroyed, Greece gives up her

arms, Macedonia loses her liberty, that of Spain perishes at Numantia,

and shortly afterwards Pergamus undergoes the same fate.

[Sidenote: Third Punic War (605-608).]

XII. Notwithstanding her abasement, Carthage still existed, the eternal

object of hatred and distrust. She was accused of connivance with the

Macedonians, ever impatient of their yoke; and to her was imputed the

resistance of the Celtiberian hordes. In 603, Masinissa and the

Carthaginians engaged in a new struggle. As, according to their

treaties, these last could not make war without authorisation, the

Senate deliberated on the course it was to take. Cato desired war

immediately. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, obtained the appointment of

a new embassy, which succeeded in persuading Masinissa to evacuate the

territory in dispute; on its part, the Senate of Carthage consented to

submit to the wisdom of the ambassadors, when the populace at Carthage,

excited by those men who in troublous times speculate on the passions of

the mob, breaks out in insurrection, insults the Roman envoys, and

expels the chief citizens.[605] A fatal insurrection; for in moments of

external crisis all popular movements ruin a nation,[606] as all

political change is fatal in the presence of a foreigner invading the

soil of the fatherland. However, the Roman Senate judged it best to

temporise, because of the war in Spain, where Scipio Æmilianus then

served in the capacity of tribune. Ordered to Africa (603), to obtain

from Masinissa elephants for the war against the Celtiberians, he

witnessed a sanguinary defeat of the Carthaginian army. This event

decided the question of Roman intervention; the Senate, in fact, had no

intention of leaving the entire sovereignty of Africa to the Numidian

king, whose possessions already extended from the ocean to Cyrene.[607]

In vain did Carthage send ambassadors to Rome to explain her conduct.

They obtained no satisfaction. Utica yielded to the Romans (604), and

the two consuls, L. Marcius Censorinus, and M. Manlius Nepos, arrived

there at the head of 80,000 men in 605. Carthage sues for peace; they

impose the condition that she shall give up her arms; she delivers them

up, with 2,000 engines of war. But soon exactions increase; the

inhabitants are commanded to quit their city and retire ten miles

inland. Exasperated by so much severity, the Carthaginians recover their

energy; they forge new weapons, raise the populace, fling into the

campaign Hasdrubal, who has soon collected 70,000 men in his camp at

Nepheris, and gives the consuls reason to fear the success of their

enterprise.[608]

The Roman army met with a resistance it was far from expecting.

Endangered by Manlius, it was saved by the tribune, Scipio Æmilianus, on

whom all eyes were turned. On his return to Rome, he was in 607 elected

consul at the age of thirty-six years, and charged with the direction of

the war, which henceforth took a new aspect. Carthage is soon inclosed

by works of prodigious labour; on land, trenches surround the place and

protect the besiegers; by sea, a colossal bar interrupts all

communication, and gives up the city to famine; but the Carthaginians

build a second fleet in their inner port, and excavate a new

communication with the sea. During the winter Scipio goes and forces the

camp at Nepheris, and on the return of spring makes himself master of

the first enclosure; finally, after a siege which lasted for three

years, with heroic efforts on both sides, the town and its citadel Byrsa

are carried, and entirely razed to the ground. Hasdrubal surrendered,

with fifty thousand inhabitants, the remains of an immense population;

but on a fragment of the wall which had escaped the fire, the wife of

the last Carthaginian chief, dressed in her most gorgeous robes, was

seen to curse her husband, who had not had the courage to die; then,

after having slain her two children, she flung herself into the flames.

A mournful image of a nation which achieves her own ruin, but which does

not fall ingloriously.

When the vessel laden with magnificent spoils, and adorned with laurels,

entered the Tiber, bearer of the grand news, all the citizens rushed out

into the streets embracing and congratulating each other on so joyful a

victory. Now only did Rome feel herself free from all fear, and the

mistress of the world. Nevertheless, the destruction of Carthage was a

crime which Caius Gracchus, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus sought to repair.

[Sidenote: Greece, Macedonia, Numantia, and Pergamus reduced to

Provinces.]

XIII. The same year saw the destruction of the Greek autonomy. Since the

war with Persia, the preponderance of Roman influence had maintained

order in Achaia; but on the return of the hostages, in 603, coincident

with the troubles of Macedonia, party enmities were re-awakened.

Dissensions soon broke out between the Achæan league and the cities of

the Peloponnesus, which it coveted, and the resistance of which it did

not hesitate to punish by destruction and pillage.

Sparta soon rebelled, and Peloponnesus was all in flames. The Romans

made vain efforts to allay this general disturbance. The envoys of the

Senate carried a decree to Corinth, which detached from the league

Sparta, Argos, Orchomenus, and Arcadia. On hearing this, the Achæans

massacred the Lacedæmonians then at Corinth, and loaded the Roman

commissioners with insults.[609] Before using severity, the Roman

Senate resolved to make one appeal to conciliation; but the words of the

new envoys were not listened to.

The Achæan league, united with Eubœa and Bœotia, then dared to

declare war against Rome, which they knew to be occupied in Spain and

Africa. The league was soon vanquished at Scarphia, in Locris, by

Metellus, and at Leucopetra, near Corinth, by Mummius. The towns of the

Achæan league were treated rigorously; Corinth was sacked; and Greece,

under the name of Achaia, remained in subjection to the Romans

(608).[610]

However, Mummius, as Polybius himself avows,[611] showed as much

moderation as disinterestedness after the victory. He preserved in their

places the statues of Philopœmen, kept none of the trophies taken in

Greece for himself, and remained so poor that the Senate conferred a

dowry upon his daughter from the public treasury.

About the same time the severity of the Senate had not spared Macedonia.

During the last Punic war, a Greek adventurer, Andriscus, pretending to

be the son of Perseus, had stirred up the country to rebellion, with an

army of Thracians. Driven out of Thessaly by Scipio Nasica, he returned

there, slew the prætor Juventius Thalna, and formed an alliance with the

Carthaginians. Beaten by Metellus, he was sent to Rome loaded with

chains. Some years later, a second impostor having also endeavoured to

seize the succession of Perseus, the Senate reduced Macedonia to a

Roman province (612). It was the same with Illyria after the submission

of the Ardæi (618). Never had so many triumphs been seen. Scipio

Æmilianus had triumphed over Africa, Metellus over Macedonia, Mummius

over Achaia, and Fulvius Flaccus over Illyria.

Delivered henceforth from its troubles in the east and south, the Senate

turned its attention towards Spain. This country had never entirely

yielded: its strength hardly restored, it took up arms again. After the

pacification which Scipio Africanus and Sempronius Gracchus successively

induced, new insurrections broke forth; the Lusitanians, yielding to the

instigations of Carthage, had revolted in 601, and had gained some

advantages over Mummius and his successor Galba (603). But this last, by

an act of infamous treachery, massacred thirty thousand prisoners.

Prosecuted for this act at Rome by Cato, he was acquitted. Subsequently,

another consul showed no less perfidy: Licinius Lucullus, having entered

the town of Cauca, which had surrendered, slew twenty thousand of its

inhabitants, and sold the rest.[612]

So much cruelty excited the indignation of the peoples of Northern

Spain, and, as always happens, the national feeling brought forth a

hero. Viriathus, who had escaped the massacre of the Lusitanians, and

from a shepherd had become a general, began a war of partisans, and, for

five years, having vanquished the Roman generals, ended by rousing the

Celtiberians. Whilst these occupied Metellus the Macedonian, Fabius,

left alone against Viriathus, was hemmed into a defile by him, and

constrained to accept peace. The murder of Viriathus left the issue of

the war no longer doubtful. This death was too advantageous to the

Romans not to be imputed to Cæpio, successor to his brother Fabius. But

when the murderers came to demand the wages of their crime, they were

told that the Romans had never approved of the massacre of a general by

his soldiers.[613] The Lusitanians, however, submitted, and the legions

penetrated to the ocean.

The war, ended in the west, became concentrated round Numantia,[614]

where, in the course of five years, several consuls were defeated. When,

in 616, Mancinus, surrounded by the enemy on all sides, was reduced to

save his army by a shameful capitulation, like that of the Furculæ

Caudinæ, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and gave up the consul

loaded with chains. The same fate was reserved for Tiberius Gracchus,

his questor, who had guaranteed the treaty; but, through the favour of

the people, he remained at Rome. The Numantines still resisted for a

long time with rare energy. The conqueror of Carthage himself had to go

to direct the siege, which required immense works; and yet the town was

taken only by famine (621). Spain was overcome, but her spirit of

independence survived for a great number of years.

Although the fall of the kingdom of Pergamus was posterior to the events

we have just related, we will speak of it here because it is the

continuation of the system of reducing all peoples to subjection.

Attalus III., a monster of cruelty and folly, had, when dying,

bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people, who sent troops to take

possession of it; but a natural son of Eumenes, Aristonicus, raised the

inhabitants, and defeated the consul Licinius Crassus, soon avenged by

one of his successors. Aristonicus was taken, and the kingdom, pacified,

passed by the name of Asia under Roman domination (625).

[Sidenote: Summary.]

XIV. The more the Republic extended its empire, the more the number of

the high functions increased, and the more important they became. The

consuls, the proconsuls, and the prætors, governed not only foreign

countries, but Italy itself. In fact, Appian tells us that the

proconsuls exercised their authority in certain countries of the

peninsula.[615]

The Roman provinces were nine in number:--1. Cisalpine Gaul. 2. Farther

Spain. 3. Nearer Spain. 4. Sardinia and Corsica. 5. Sicily. 6. Northern

Africa. 7. Illyria. 8. Macedonia and Achaia. 9. Asia. The people

appointed yearly two consuls and seven prætors to go and govern these

distant countries; but generally these high offices were attainable only

by those who had been questors or ediles. Now, the edileship required a

large fortune; for the ediles were obliged to spend great sums in fêtes

and public works to please the people. The rich alone could aspire to

this first dignity; consequently, it was only the members of the

aristocracy who had a chance of arriving at the elevated position,

where, for one or two years, they were absolute masters of the destinies

of vast kingdoms. Thus, the nobility sought to keep these high offices

closed against new men. From 535 to 621--eighty-six years--nine families

alone obtained eighty-three consulships. Still later, twelve members of

the family Metellus gained various dignities in less than twelve years

(630-642.)[616] Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when,

addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is

regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and

infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the

multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus), on the contrary, did not wish to put

all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling

together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or

two orders.”[617]

It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a

Roman. In reality, notwithstanding the changes introduced into the

comitia, the bearing of which is difficult to explain, the nobility

preserved its preponderance, and the habit of addressing the people only

after having taken the sense of the Senate, was still persisted in.[618]

The Roman government, always aristocratic, became more oppressive in

proportion as the State increased in extent, and it lost in influence

what the people of Italy gained in intelligence and in legitimate

aspirations towards a better future.

Besides, ever since the beginning of the Republic, it had harboured in

its breast two opposite parties, the one seeking to extend, the other to

restrict, the rights of the people. When the first came into power, all

the liberal laws of the past were restored to force; when the second

came in, these laws were evaded. Thus we see now the law Valeria, which

consecrates appeal to the people, thrice revived; now the law

interdicting the re-election of the consuls before an interval of ten

years, promulgated by Genucius in 412,[619] and immediately abandoned,

renewed in 603, and subsequently restored by Sylla; now the law which

threw the freedmen into the urban tribes, in order to annul their vote,

revived at three different epochs;[620] now the measures against

solicitation, against exactions, against usury, continually put into

force; and finally, the right of election to the sacerdotal office by

turn, refused or granted to the people.[621] By the Portian laws of 557

and 559, it was forbidden to strike with rods, or put to death, a Roman

citizen, before the people had pronounced upon his doom. And yet Scipio

Æmilianus, to evade this law, caused his auxiliaries to be beaten with

sticks and his soldiers with vine-stalks.[622] At the beginning of the

seventh century, the principle of secret voting was admitted in all

elections; in 615, in the elections of the magistrates; in 617, for the

decision of the people in judicial condemnations; in 623, in the votes

on proposals for laws. Finally, by the institution of permanent

tribunals (_quæstiones perpetuæ_), established from 605, it was sought

to remedy the spoliation of the provinces; but these institutions,

successively adopted or abandoned, could not heal the ills of society.

The manly virtues of an intelligent aristocracy had until then

maintained the Republic in a state of concord and greatness; its vices

were soon to shake it to its foundations.

We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and

thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no

nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she

has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the

Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has

conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of

Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east,

the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians,

the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a

tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the

Danube.[623] Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of

barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles,

Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of

civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia

receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of

the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her

tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a

Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms.

But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within

exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.