Romans, there being in each _maniple_ one century of Roman and one of
Latins. There were at that time four legions, and as a legion, including
the reserve troops, contained three thousand men, the total is twelve
thousand; now the account which mentions twenty-four thousand men must
have presumed that there were four field legions and four irregular
civic ones. There would accordingly have been no more than six thousand
plebeians, and, even if the legions were all made up of Romans, only
twelve thousand; if in addition to these we take twelve thousand
irregular troops and sixteen thousand allies, the number of forty
thousand would be completed. In this case, the population of Rome would
not have been as large as that of Athens in the Peloponnesian war, and
this is indeed very probable. The cavalry is not included in this
calculation: but forty thousand must be taken as the maximum of the
whole army. There seems to be no exaggeration in this statement, and the
battle on the Alia, speaking generally, is an historical event.
It is surprising that the Romans did not appoint a dictator to command
in the battle; it cannot be said indeed that they regarded this war as
an ordinary one, for in that case they would not have raised so great a
force, but they cannot have comprehended the danger in all its
greatness. New swarms continued to come across the Alps; the Senones
also now appeared to seek habitations for themselves; they, like the
Germans in after-times, demanded land, as they found the Insubrians,
Boians, and others already settled; the latter had taken up their abode
in Umbria, but only until they should find a more extensive and suitable
territory.
The Romans committed the great mistake of fighting with their hurriedly
collected troops a battle against an enemy who had hitherto been
invincible. The hills along which the right wing is said to have been
drawn up are no longer discernible, and they were probably nothing but
little mounds of earth: at any rate it was senseless to draw up a long
line against the immense mass of enemies. The Gauls, on the other hand,
were enabled without any difficulty to turn off to the left. They
proceeded to a higher part of the river, where it was more easily
fordable, and with great prudence threw themselves with all their force
upon the right wing, consisting of the civic legions. The latter at
first resisted, but not long; and when they fled, the whole remaining
line, which until then seems to have been useless and inactive, was
seized with a panic.
Terror preceded the Gauls as they laid waste everything on their way,
and this paralyzed the courage of the Romans, instead of rousing them to
a desperate resistance. The Romans therefore were defeated on the Alia
in the most inglorious manner. The Gauls had taken them in their rear,
and cut off their return to Rome. A portion fled toward the Tiber, where
some effected a retreat across the river, and others were drowned;
another part escaped into a forest. The loss of life must have been
prodigious, and it is inconceivable how Livy could have attached so much
importance to the mere disgrace. If the Roman army had not been almost
annihilated, it would not have been necessary to give up the defence of
the city, as was done, for the city was left undefended and deserted by
all. Many fled to Veii instead of returning to Rome: only a few, who had
escaped along the high road, entered the city by the Colline gate.
Rome was exhausted, her power shattered, her legions defenceless, and
her warlike allies had partly been beaten in the same battle, and were
partly awaiting the fearful enemy in their own countries. At Rome it was
believed that the whole army was destroyed, for nothing was known of
those who had reached Veii. In the city itself there were only old men,
women, and children, so that there was no possibility of defending it.
It is, however, inconceivable that the gates should have been left open,
and that the Gauls, from fear of a stratagem, should have encamped for
several days outside the gates. A more probable account is that the
gates were shut and barricaded. We may form a vivid conception of the
condition of Rome after this battle, by comparing it with that of Moscow
before the conflagration: the people were convinced that a long defence
was impossible, since there was probably a want of provisions.
Livy gives a false notion of the evacuation of the city, as if the
defenceless citizens had remained immovable in their consternation, and
only a few had been received into the Capitol. The determination, in
fact, was to defend the Capitol, and the tribune Sulpicius had taken
refuge there, with about one thousand men. There was on the Capitol an
ancient well which still exists, and without which the garrison would
soon have perished. This well remained unknown to all antiquaries, till
I discovered it by means of information gathered from the people who
live there. Its depth in the rock descends to the level of the Tiber,
but the water is now not fit to drink. The Capitol was a rock which had
been hewn steep, and thereby made inaccessible, but a _clivus_, closed
by gates both below and above, led up from the Forum and the Sacred Way.
The rock, indeed, was not so steep as in later times, as is clear from
the account of the attempt to storm it; but the Capitol was nevertheless
very strong. Whether some few remained in the city, as at Moscow, who in
their stupefaction did not consider what kind of enemy they had before
them, cannot be decided. The narrative is very beautiful, and reminds us
of the taking of the Acropolis of Athens by the Persians, where,
likewise, the old men allowed themselves to be cut down by the Persians.
Notwithstanding the improbability of the matter, I am inclined to
believe that a number of aged patricians--their number may not be
exactly historical--sat down in the Forum, in their official robes, on
their curule chairs, and that the chief pontiff devoted them to death.
Such devotions are a well-known Roman custom. It is certainly not
improbable that the Gauls were amazed when they found the city deserted,
and only these old men sitting immovable, that they took them for
statues or supernatural visions, and did nothing to them, until one of
them struck a Gaul who touched him, whereupon all were slaughtered. To
commit suicide was repugnant to the customs of the Romans, who were
guided in many things by feelings more correct and more resembling our
own, than many other ancient nations. The old men, indeed, had given up
the hope of their country being saved; but the Capitol might be
maintained, and the survivors preferred dying in the attempt of
self-defence to taking refuge at Veii, where after all they could not
have maintained themselves in the end.
The sacred treasures were removed to Caere, and the hope of the Romans
now was that the barbarians would be tired of the long siege. Provisions
for a time had been conveyed to the Capitol, where a couple of thousand
men may have been assembled, and where all buildings, temples, as well
as public and private houses, were used as habitations. The Gauls made
fearful havoc at Rome, even more fearful than the Spaniards and Germans
did in the year 1527. Soldiers plunder, and when they find no human
beings they engage in the work of destruction; and fires break out, as
at Moscow, without the existence of any intention to cause a
conflagration. The whole city was changed into a heap of ashes, with the
exception of a few houses on the Palatine, which were occupied by the
leaders of the Gauls. It is astonishing to find, nevertheless, that a
few monuments of the preceding period, such as statues, situated at some
distance from the Capitol, are mentioned as having been preserved; but
we must remember that _travertino_ is tolerably fireproof. That Rome was
burned down is certain; and when it was rebuilt, not even the ancient
streets were restored.
The Gauls were now encamped in the city. At first they attempted to
storm the _clivus_, but were repelled with great loss, which is
surprising, since we know that at an earlier time the Romans succeeded
in storming it against Appius Herdonius. Afterward they discovered the
footsteps of a messenger who had been sent from Veii, in order that the
State might be taken care of in due form; for the Romans in the Capitol
were patricians, and represented the _curies_ and the Government,
whereas those assembled at Veii represented the tribes, but had no
leaders. The latter had resolved to recall Camillus, and raise him to
the dictatorship. For this reason Pontius Cominius had been sent to Rome
to obtain the sanction of the senate and the curies. This was quite in
the spirit of the ancient times. If the curies had interdicted him _aqua
et igni_, they alone could recall him, if they previously obtained a
resolution of the senate authorizing them to do so; but if he had gone
into voluntary exile, and had given up his Roman franchise by becoming a
citizen of Ardea before a sentence had been passed upon him by the
centuries, it was again in the power of the curies alone, he being a
patrician, to recall him as a citizen; and otherwise he could not have
become dictator, nor could he have regarded himself as such.
It was the time of the dog-days when the Gauls came to Rome, and as the
summer at Rome is always pestilential, especially during the two months
and a half before the first of September, the unavoidable consequence
must have been, as Livy relates, that the barbarians, bivouacking on the
ruins of the city in the open air, were attacked by disease and carried
off, like the army of Frederick Barbarossa when encamped before the
castle of St. Angelo. The whole army of the Gauls, however, was not in
the city, but only as many as were necessary to blockade the garrison of
the Capitol; the rest were scattered far and wide over the face of the
country, and were ravaging all the unprotected places and isolated farms
in Latium; many an ancient town, which is no longer mentioned after this
time, may have been destroyed by the Gauls. None but fortified places
like Ostia, which could obtain supplies by sea, made a successful
resistance, for the Gauls were unacquainted with the art of besieging.
The Ardeatans, whose territory was likewise invaded by the Gauls,
opposed them, under the command of Camillus; the Etruscans would seem to
have endeavored to avail themselves of the opportunity of recovering
Veii, for we are told that the Romans at Veii, commanded by Caedicius,
gained a battle against them, and that, encouraged by this success, they
began to entertain a hope of regaining Rome, since by this victory they
got possession of arms.
A Roman of the name of Fabius Dorso is said to have offered up, in broad
daylight, a _gentilician_ sacrifice on the Quirinal; and the astonished
Gauls are said to have done him no harm--a tradition which is not
improbable.
The provisions in the Capitol were exhausted, but the Gauls themselves
being seized with epidemic diseases became tired of their conquests, and
were not inclined to settle in a country so far away from their own
home. They once more attempted to take the Capitol by storm, having
observed that the messenger from Veii had ascended the rock, and come
down again near the Porta Carmentalis, below Araceli. The ancient rock
is now covered with rubbish, and no longer discernible. The besieged did
not think of a storm on that side; it may be that formerly there had in
that part been a wall, which had become decayed; and in southern
countries an abundant vegetation always springs up between the stones,
and if this had actually been neglected it cannot have been very
difficult to climb up. The Gauls had already gained a firm footing, as
there was no wall at the top--the rock which they stormed was not the
Tarpeian, but the Arx--when Manlius, who lived there, was roused by the
screaming of the geese: he came to the spot and thrust down those who
were climbing up.
This rendered the Gauls still more inclined to commence negotiations;
they were, moreover, called back by an inroad of some Alpine tribes into
Lombardy, where they had left their wives and children: they offered to
depart if the Romans would pay them a ransom of a thousand pounds of
gold, to be taken no doubt from the Capitoline treasury. Considering the
value of money at that time, the sum was enormous: in the time of
Theodosius, indeed, there were people at Rome who possessed several
hundredweight of gold, nay, one is said to have had an annual revenue of
two hundredweight. There can be no doubt that the Gauls received the sum
they demanded, and quitted Rome; that in weighing it they scornfully
imposed upon the Romans is very possible, and the _vae victis_ too may
be true: we ourselves have seen similar things before the year 1813.
But there can be no truth in the story told by Livy, that while they
were disputing Camillus appeared with an army and stopped the
proceedings, because the military tribunes had had no right to conclude
the treaty. He is there said to have driven the Gauls from the city, and
afterward in a twofold battle to have so completely defeated them that
not even a messenger escaped. Beaufort, inspired by Gallic patriotism,
has most excellently shown what a complete fable this story is. To
attempt to disguise the misfortunes of our forefathers by substituting
fables in their place is mere childishness. This charge does not affect
Livy, indeed, for he copied only what others had written before him; but
he did not allow his own conviction to appear as he generally does, for
he treats the whole of the early history with a sort of irony, half
believing, half disbelieving it.
According to another account in Diodorus, the Gauls besieged a town
allied with Rome--its name seems to be mis-written, but is probably
intended for Vulsinii--and the Romans relieved it and took back from the
Gauls the gold which they had paid them; but this siege of Vulsinii is
quite unknown to Livy. A third account in Strabo and also mentioned by
Diodorus does not allow this honor to the Romans, but states that the
Caerites pursued the Gauls, attacked them in the country of the Sabines,
and completely annihilated them. In like manner the Greeks endeavored to
disguise the fact that the Gauls took the money from the Delphic
treasury, and that in a quite historical period (Olymp. 120). The true
explanation is undoubtedly the one found in Polybius, that the Gauls
were induced to quit Rome by an insurrection of the Alpine tribes, after
it had experienced the extremity of humiliation.
Whatever the enemy had taken as booty was consumed; they had not made
any conquests, but only indulged in plunder and devastation; they had
been staying at Rome for seven or eight months, and could have gained
nothing further than the Capitol and the very money which they received
without taking that fortress. The account of Polybius throws light upon
many discrepant statements, and all of them, not even excepting Livy's
fairy-tale-like embellishment, may be explained by means of it. The
Romans attempted to prove that the Gauls had actually been defeated, by
relating that the gold afterward taken from the Gauls and buried in the
Capitol was double the sum paid to them as a ransom; but it is much more
probable that the Romans paid their ransom out of the treasury of the
temple of the Capitoline Jupiter and of other temples, and that
afterward double this sum was made up by a tax; which agrees with a
statement in the history of Manlius, that a tax was imposed for the
purpose of raising the Gallic ransom: surely this could not have been
done at the time of the siege, when the Romans were scattered in all
parts of the country, but must have taken place afterward for the
purpose of restoring the money that had been taken. Now if at a later
time there actually existed in the Capitol such a quantity of gold, it
is clear that it was believed to be a proof that the Gauls had not kept
the gold which was paid to them.
Even as late as the time of Cicero and Caesar, the spot was shown at
Rome in the Carinae, where the Gauls had heaped up and burned their
dead; it was called _busta Gallica_, which was corrupted in the Middle
Ages into Protogallo, whence the church which was built there was in
reality called _S. Andreas in bustis Gallicis_, or, according to the
later Latinity, _in busta Gallica--busta Gallica_ not being declined.
The Gauls departed with their gold, which the Romans had been compelled
to pay on account of the famine that prevailed in the Capitol, which was
so great that they pulled the leather from their shields and cooked it,
just as was done during the siege of Jerusalem. The Gauls were certainly
not destroyed. Justin has preserved the remarkable statement that the
same Gauls who sacked Rome went to Apulia, and there offered for money
their assistance to the elder Dionysius of Syracuse. From this important
statement it is at any rate clear that they traversed all Italy, and
then probably returned along the shore of the Adriatic: their
devastations extended over many parts of Italy, and there is no doubt
that the Æquians received their death-blow at that time, for henceforth
we hear no more of the hostilities of the Æquians against Rome.
Praeneste, on the other hand, which must formerly have been subject to
the Æquians, now appears as an independent town. The Æquians, who
inhabited small and easily destructible towns, must have been
annihilated during the progress of the Gauls.
There is nothing so strange in the history of Livy as his view of the
consequences of the Gallic calamity; he must have conceived it as a
transitory storm by which Rome was humbled but not broken. The army,
according to him, was only scattered, and the Romans appear afterward
just as they had been before, as if the preceding period had only been
an evil dream, and as if there had been nothing to do but to rebuild the
city. But assuredly the devastation must have been tremendous throughout
the Roman territory: for eight months the barbarians had been ravaging
the country, every trace of cultivation, every farmer's house, all the
temples and public buildings were destroyed; the walls of the city had
been purposely pulled down, a large number of its inhabitants were led
into slavery, the rest were living in great misery at Veii; and what
they had saved scarcely sufficed to buy their bread. In this condition
they returned to Rome. Camillus as dictator is called a second Romulus,
and to him is due the glory of not having despaired in those distressing
circumstances.
TARTAR INVASION OF CHINA BY MEHA
B.C. 341
DEMETRIUS CHARLES BOULGER
(The first Chinese are supposed to have been a nomad tribe in the
provinces of Shensi, which lies in the northwest of China, and among
them at last appeared a ruler, Fohi, whose name at least has been
preserved. His deeds and his person are mythical, but he is credited
with having given his country its first regular institutions.
The annalists of the Chinese chronicles placed the date of the Creation
at a point of time two millions of years before Confucius; this interval
they filled up with lines of dynasties. Preceding the Chow dynasty the
chronicles give ten epochs--prior to the eighth of these there is no
authentic history. Yew-chow She [the "Nest-having"] taught the people to
build huts of the boughs of trees. Fire was discovered by Say-jin She
[the "Fire producer"]. Fuh-he [B.C. 2862] was the discoverer of iron.
With Yaou [B.C. 2356] is the period whence Confucius begins his story.
He says of that epoch: "The house door could safely be left open." Yaou
greatly extended and strengthened the empire and established fairs and
marts over the land.
One of China's most notable rulers was Tsin Chi Hwangti, who was
studious in providing for the security of his empire, and with this
object began the construction of a fortified wall across the northern
frontier to serve as a defence against the troublesome Hiongnou tribes,
who are identified with the Huns of Attila. This wall, which he began in
the first years of his reign--about the close of the third century
B.C.--was finished before his death. It still exists, known as the Great
Wall of China, and has long been considered one of the wonders of the
world. Every third man of the whole empire was employed on this work. It
is said that five hundred thousand of them died of starvation. The
contents of the Great Wall would be enough to build two walls six feet
high and two feet thick around the equator. It is the largest artificial
structure in the world; carried for fourteen hundred miles over height
and hollow, reaching in one place the level of five thousand
feet--nearly one mile--above the sea. Earth, gravel, brick, and stone
were used in its construction.
The weak successors of Hwangti finally gave way to the usurper, Kaotsou,
who had been originally the ruler of a small town, and had borne the
name of Lieou Pang.
The reign of Kaotsou was distinguished by the consolidation of the
empire; the connection of Western with Eastern China by high walls and
bridges, some of which are still in perfect condition, and the
institution of an elaborate code of court etiquette. His attention to
these things was, however, rudely interrupted by an irruption of the
Hiongnou Tartars.)
The death of Tsin Chi Hwangti proved the signal for the outbreak of
disturbances throughout the realm. Within a few months five princes had
founded as many kingdoms, each hoping, if not to become supreme, at
least to remain independent. Moungtien, beloved by the army, and at the
head, as he tells us in his own words, of three hundred thousand
soldiers, might have been the arbiter of the empire; but a weak feeling
of respect for the imperial authority induced him to obey an order, sent
by Eulchi, Hwangti's son and successor, commanding him "to drink the
waters of eternal life." Eulchi's brief reign of three years was a
succession of misfortunes. The reins of office were held by the eunuch
Chow-kow, who first murdered the minister Lissep and then Eulchi
himself.
Ing Wang, a grandson of Hwangti, was the next and last of the Tsin
emperors. On coming to power, he at once caused Chow-kow, whose crimes
had been discovered, to be arrested and executed. This vigorous
commencement proved very transitory, for when he had enjoyed nominal
authority during six weeks, Ing Wang's troops, after a reverse in the
field, went over in a body to Lieou Pang, the leader of a rebel force.
Ing Wang put an end to his existence, thus terminating, in a manner not
less ignominious than any of its predecessors, the dynasty of the Tsins,
which Hwangti had hoped to place permanently on the throne of China, and
to which his genius gave a lustre far surpassing that of many other
families who had enjoyed the same privilege during a much longer period.
The crisis in the history of the country had afforded one of those great
men who rise periodically from the ranks of the people to give law to
nations the opportunity for advancing his personal interests at the same
time that he made them appear to be identical with the public weal. Of
such geniuses, if the test applied be the work accomplished, there have
been few with higher claims to respectful and admiring consideration
than Lieou Pang, who after the fall of the Tsins became the founder of
the Han dynasty under the style of Kaotsou. Originally the governor of a
small town, he had, soon after the death of Hwangti, gathered round him
the nucleus of a formidable army, and while nominally serving under one
of the greater princes, he scarcely affected to conceal that he was
fighting for his own interest. On the other hand, he was no mere soldier
of fortune, and the moderation which he showed after victory enhanced
his reputation as a general. The path to the throne being thus cleared,
the successful general became emperor.
His first act was to proclaim an amnesty to all those who had borne arms
against him. In a public proclamation he expressed his regret at the
suffering of the people "from the evils which follow in the train of
war." During the earlier years of his reign he chose the city of Loyang
as his capital--now the flourishing and populous town of Honan--but at a
later period he removed it to Singanfoo, in the western province of
Shensi. His dynasty became known by the name of the small state where he
was born, and which had fallen early in his career into his hands.