ROME AT HOME AND IN THE EAST
As we have seen, there was a moment in the Second Punic War, just
after the Battle of Cannæ, when it seems marvellous that Rome escaped
destruction. What is almost more marvellous still is that it was
just during the same time that she was fighting so hard, and in the
end so victoriously, against the Carthaginians that she was able to
fight and to extend her power towards the East, over Macedon, Greece,
Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt. It is an extent of conquest which must
seem most marvellous of all when we consider how quickly it was all
done. It is only a few pages back that we have seen her coming into
the great story at all, as an actor of any importance, and now she
begins to take such a masterful part in it that all the rest become
of little account when compared with her.
How did that happen? We may be very sure that it could never have
happened unless those Romans had been very uncommon people, unless
they had possessed great courage and determination, and unless they
had devised a very excellent form of government, both for themselves
and also for the nations over whom their armies and their fleet got
the mastery. The fighting forces had to be of splendid qualities in
order to win that mastery, but the government had to be wonderfully
wise in order to keep it.
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It is a point that you should notice particularly, that all through
the story of Rome, even from those days when the story is really so
little known that you need not believe much more of it than you
like--from the days of Romulus and Remus and of the mother-wolf--we
are told that Romulus himself appointed a body of men called the
Senate to manage the affairs of the city. What I want you to notice
is that the name Senate comes from the Latin word "senex," meaning an
old man. This governing assembly was an assembly of the old men, and
they were thought likely to be the best rulers because they had lived
long in the world and had been learning the lessons that it had to
teach them longer than younger men.
[Sidenote: The Senate]
All through their story, down to a later date than that to which we
have followed it, they paid very much reverence to old age. The
power of the father was very great over his children, and the
authority of the mother was looked up to only a little less than his.
The children were thus brought up in the habit of obedience to their
parents, and there is not the least doubt that this habit must have
helped them to be obedient to military discipline when they had to go
out and fight.
Even after their fathers had died they had a great reverence for
their memory, and this reverence made them try to be worthy sons of
their fathers and to rival them in fine actions, in showing courage
and so on. And this same feeling made them very respectful of all
the customs that their fathers had followed. The custom of their
ancestors was the custom that they thought they ought to follow.
Religion, in the sense of expecting a reward or punishment from the
gods, whether for good or for bad deeds, does not seem {179} to have
counted for much in their lives, but this idea, of living in a manner
of which their ancestors would have approved, to some extent took the
place of religion. It made fine men and women of them, ready to
fight their best for the state and to die for it.
I do not mean that the Senate was chosen by Romulus really of the
hundred oldest men in his city--a hundred is said to have been its
number at first, but it increased to many times a hundred as time
went on--but it would have been made up of men of age and experience
chosen from the most important citizens. Thus it continued right on
to the time when the Tarquins, the Etruscan kings, were driven out;
and after they were driven out the Senators chose, each year, two of
their own number to be the rulers of the state for that year. As
these rulers, called consuls, ruled for a year only, it is probable
that the Senate knew pretty well what they were likely to do during
that year. The Senate would not elect consuls who would go against
the will of the Senate. So probably it was the Senate that really
had the power.
The Senate was thus an aristocratic body, as we might call it. The
men who composed it were called "patricians"; and there again you see
the idea of reverence for the father's authority, because "patrician"
comes from "pater," meaning a father.
But, as we have noticed already, the plebs, or common people, that is
to say, all who were not patricians, began to assert themselves more
and more against the government by this patrician, or aristocratic,
class. After a while they gained the right of holding their own
assembly, called the Comitia (from "co" or "com," meaning together,
and "ire" to {180} go)--they "went together" in this assembly. And
as they were, of course, far more in number than the Senate, they
succeeded by degrees in getting more and more power of law-making and
so on into their hands. They, according to the laws which they
succeeded in passing, became the chief power in the state, and the
Senate was only a bad second to them.
But though that was the condition of things according to the law, the
power which the Senate retained was, in fact, very considerable,
because the Senate, still only a few hundred in number, were always
there, in Rome, ready to be called together and come to a decision.
The Comitia, composed of members many of whom lived at a distance
outside Rome, and not at hand to express their views and give their
votes, could not decide matters nearly so quickly; and often, when
Rome was so constantly at war, important decisions had to be taken
quickly.
Chiefly for this reason, though in part for various other reasons
too, the power of the Senate was still great, and far greater than it
would have been if they had kept strictly to what they were allowed
to do by law.
The Forum, that famous place of assembly, of which we may still see
the remains in Rome, was the site where the Comitia met. It was only
those who were owners of land, or who owned property of a certain
value, who had the right to vote in the Comitia, and it was a right
that belonged only to citizens of the Roman Republic and a few cities
outside, which had won this privilege by some special services
rendered to the Republic. In its beginnings the Comitia may have
been open to patricians only, but by the time that Rome came to take
any big part in the story of the {181} world the Comitia had become
the assembly of the people, as opposed to the patrician Senate.
[Sidenote: The Legions]
The ownership of land or of property sufficient to give a man a vote
for the Comitia made him a citizen in another sense also, namely,
that he was obliged, if summoned, to take arms for the Republic and
serve in war, and these citizens, thus summoned, became the famous
Roman legions which won battles all over the world. After a while,
as the power of Rome extended, legions were formed in subject
provinces far away from the capital city, but they were always under
the command of Roman officers.
It would take far too long to tell you about all the stages by which
the people, the common citizens, grew to have more and more power,
and the patricians to have less. You must understand that the Senate
was not in the least like our House of Lords. The eldest son of a
Senator did not become a Senator when his father died, but the
numbers of the Senate were kept up by elections, and some of the
highest officials of the Comitia became Senators by reason of their
holding these offices, so that by degrees many of the plebs, that is,
of the people themselves, became Senators, and this made the citizens
more content than they would otherwise have been with the Senate
deciding how the wars should be carried on and when it was right to
make war and peace with their enemies.
The number of soldiers in a legion was from four to six thousand.
These legionaries, as they were called, all being--at first, at all
events--holders of property in the Roman Republic, must have felt
that it was for themselves and for their own property that they went
to fight. That must have added to their courage and determination.
They were heavily-armed {182} infantry soldiers, and to each legion
was assigned some auxiliary lighter-armed troops and some cavalry.
The way of fighting was much the same as that of the Macedonian
phalanx, and it was actually the Macedonian phalanx that the Roman
legions came clashing up against when Rome began to extend herself
eastward beyond Italy.
That came about in this way. Philip V., king of Macedon, had allied
himself with the Carthaginians in the Second Punic War, that war in
which Hannibal seemed to have Rome at his mercy. During its progress
the Romans had made alliances with several powers in the East: with
Egypt, where one of the Ptolemies was king; with Rhodes, the large
island lying just off the coast of Asia Minor, which had a strong
navy; with Pergamus, a city state on the mainland, which also had a
strong fleet; and of course she was the defender, in Italy and in
Sicily, of the Greek colonies there.
When she was threatened by Philip of Macedon on her north-eastern
side, she put herself at the head of a confederation of Greek states
against Philip.
Philip, on his part, had made an ally of Antiochus, one of the
dynasty of Seleucus, who was king of Syria, and they agreed between
them to take possession of Egypt, which had little power of its own
at this time to withstand them.
[Sidenote: Rome against Macedon]
Thus the Romans, with all the trouble with Carthage on their hands on
the one side, had these enemies in Macedonia and right away to Asia
Minor on the other. But the alliance with Pergamus and Rhodes gave
them strength in the eastern waters of the Mediterranean.
Then, in 201 B.C., the Punic War ended, in a manner probably quite
different from that which Philip and his {183} Syrian friend had
expected. Rome was free to turn her full attention to the East.
The legions met the Macedonians in several battles in Greece itself;
a force sent from Rhodes defeated an army that Philip had sent into
Asia Minor, where his ally Antiochus, who had troubles in his own
kingdom, seems to have given him very little help. Another of his
armies was broken up by the Greeks themselves at Corinth. In fact he
suffered disaster in all directions. Within two years the war was
over. The power of Macedon was crushed. Philip was allowed, by the
treaty of peace which followed, to keep his kingdom of Macedonia, but
he lost all that he had claimed to hold in Asia Minor, and Greece was
set free from the sovereignty of the Macedonians which had weighed
over them ever since the conquests of Alexander.
At the end of the Punic War Rome had claimed, and had annexed as her
own by right of conquest, both Sicily and Spain, from which she had
expelled the Carthaginians, but she did not at first, after the
defeat of Philip, claim any of the territory which he lost in the
war. She left Greece to enjoy the freedom she had won for her. But
she had, of course, increased her reputation and her power towards
the east of Italy enormously. The Greeks looked on Rome as their
liberator and champion. About Antiochus they perhaps would not have
troubled themselves, since he had proved such a feeble ally to
Philip, but Antiochus began to stir up trouble for himself by his own
imprudence and ambition.
He had given such feeble help to his ally, Philip, partly because he
was engaged in an attack on Egypt. Already, nearly twenty years
before, he had attempted to gain possession of the Egyptian provinces
Phœnicia {184} and Palestine, but had been heavily defeated near
Gaza.
Now, just at the time that Philip was being finally beaten off the
field in Greece, Antiochus was completely successful against Egypt.
The reigning Ptolemy was a child, the government was in weak hands,
Antiochus had little trouble. Amongst other consequences of his
victories, one was that Palestine and Jerusalem passed from the hands
of Egypt into the control of Syria, and it seems that the Jews
resented the manner in which the later Ptolemies had ruled them, and
welcomed the change. The Egyptian garrison was driven out.
Philip, conquered by the Romans, had lost his hold of the Greek
cities in Asia Minor, and Antiochus seems to have thought it was the
moment to take advantage of the misfortunes of his ally and seized
those cities for his own.
Both the Egyptian enterprise and also this in Asia Minor were a
direct offence to the Romans, seeing that both Egyptians and Greeks
were their allies and looked to Rome for protection.
They did not look in vain. It is likely that Antiochus did not
realise how great Rome had become. She was a long way off. But a
few years ago she was scarcely known. We may imagine that he had
very little idea of the might of the nation whose allies he had dared
to attack. Perhaps the Romans themselves did not realise their own
strength or the weakness of the enemy, for they tried their best to
come to terms with him.
It was all to no purpose. Antiochus actually ventured into Greece
itself with an army; but before he achieved anything of importance
the Romans had {185} come to the help of the Greeks, and the Syrian
force broke up and melted away after the very first battle.
[Sidenote: The Legions in Asia]
But the Romans had not finished with them yet. They had seen,
perhaps, that the Syrians were less formidable than they had thought.
The Syrian navy was beaten heavily by the combined navies of Rome,
Rhodes, and Pergamus. The following year, that is, 190 B.C., saw a
sight new to our story--Roman legions in Asia Minor. They were under
the leadership of one of the Scipios, who was consul for the year and
brother of that Scipio who had led the Roman legions in Africa in the
last years of the Second Punic War, and for his victories had been
given the surname of Scipio "Africanus." Scipio Africanus
accompanied his brother, the consul, with the legions in Asia Minor.
There West met East, and there was no doubt, after the first clash of
arms, with which the victory must be. The Roman legionaries under
this Scipio, who assumed the title of "Asiaticus," as his brother
took that of "Africanus," had a discipline and a battle formation
against which the impetuous attacks of the more lightly armed Syrians
broke and wasted themselves. Just so far as the Romans chose to
advance must those others recede before them. They had all Asia
behind them for their retreat. Rome at her strongest could not
utterly destroy the power of the East as she had destroyed the power
of Carthage; but she could drive it back and back at her pleasure, so
long and so far as she chose to put out her power. The East would
come on again after each driving back, like flies at some great
creature which has whisked them away for a moment, but they could not
really get through the great creature's hide; certainly they could
not get to any vital part, {186} to any centre of his body where they
could do him real hurt. Rome had perpetual trouble with these
buzzing swarms in the East all through her days of world-power; but
it was this kind of trouble--vexatious, and costing her much money
and many lives of her soldiers, but never threatening her own life or
power, as the Gauls from the north had threatened it once, and were
to threaten it, and worse than threaten it, again.
After the first punishment had been given to Antiochus, Rome did not
annex any of his dominions or form them into a province under a Roman
governor. There is this remarkable difference that we may see
between the Romans and other conquerors whom we have met in the
course of this great story, that the Romans, before they went on
farther, always consolidated, made solid and firm and almost a part
of themselves, what they won.
They acted on the principle _divide et impera_, that is, disunite
people and then you can rule them. They did not interfere much with
the customs and laws of the peoples that they conquered. They let
them manage their affairs in their own way. They expected them
perhaps to pay tribute and to furnish soldiers for the army. So long
as they did this they were not greatly troubled by their Roman
governors. But--and this is the point on which the Romans insisted,
and to which they owed a very great deal of their success--although
these peoples were allowed to manage their own affairs, within their
own borders, they were not allowed to make wars or treaties of peace
and alliance or anything of that kind with their neighbours. On all
such questions they had to refer back to Rome and ask her permission
and advice and help.
One sees what the effect of that must have been--to {187} make these
always look to Rome as their sovereign. That was one effect.
Another was that they were not able to combine together and so become
strong enough to be a danger to that sovereign. And Rome was wise in
her dealings with them. She punished them heavily if they did not
obey her, but rewarded them, by giving them rights and privileges, if
they were very faithful in obeying and in helping her.
[Sidenote: The prudence of Rome]
She was prudent, at this moment, in not attempting to annex any of
the domain of Antiochus, because, if she had, she would have had this
province lying far away out in the East, and between herself and this
province would have been Greece and Macedonia, which were supposed to
be free countries, though they doubtless knew that Rome could take
them for her own if she chose.
Antiochus, lately the ally of Philip, had attacked and taken Philip's
cities in Asia as soon as he knew that the Romans had broken Philip's
power. Philip, in revenge, had helped the Romans when they attacked
Antiochus, but he did not get much reward for it, in the treaty of
peace. He was dissatisfied and restless; the Greek cities, as usual,
quarrelled among themselves. Another page of the story was turned
when Perseus, son of Philip, succeeding his father on the throne of
Macedon, made an alliance of Thracians, Syrians, Greeks, and others,
and declared war against Rome. What followed? The Greeks were very
brave while the Roman legions were in Italy. As soon as the legions
marched on Greece the fighting spirit went out of the Greek cities.
Syria was too far East to help the West. Macedon and Thrace met Rome
in a big battle fought at Pydna. Perseus was utterly beaten. He was
taken prisoner and brought to Rome. Macedonia {188} was allowed some
form of freedom, but she began intriguing and giving trouble again;
Rome could suffer it no longer, and she made Macedonia into a Roman
province.
The story of the Greek states after Pydna was much the same. The
authority of Rome over them was really supreme if she cared to exert
it, but for a while she contented herself with the punishment of
those that had helped Perseus. Again, it was their own imprudence
which compelled Rome to take action. They formed a confederacy and
were ill-advised enough to go to war with her. It was a war that
gave Rome no trouble. The Greek armies made little resistance, some
of the cities had their walls razed to the ground. Even yet, Greece
was not formally annexed as a Roman province, but the Roman governor
of Macedonia was given some authority over Greece also, and the
states were forbidden to form any more alliances with each other.
Rome might do as she would with them.
[Sidenote: Rome must be obeyed]
This being so, you will see that Rome was now in a position to
advance her power, whenever it pleased her, into Asia Minor without
leaving unconquered nations between the centre of her power and those
Eastern nations. But she went slowly, perhaps to make the more sure.
She reduced the power of those strong naval states, Rhodes and
Pergamus, although they had lately been her allies. She acted, in
all her dealings, with a purely selfish regard to her own interests.
Egypt acknowledged her supremacy. A new king of Syria was appointed
under her direction, and as he was quite young a Roman guardian was
given to guide his actions. It was said, and no doubt it was said
truly, by the Greek historian Polybius, whom the Romans {189} had
taken prisoner to Rome, that in all the world men knew that there was
nothing else to be done, if Rome gave an order, but to obey it.
And now I want you to pause a moment in the story and see whither it
has brought us. For we have now come to a condition of the world
which had never been seen before.
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