ROME MISTRESS OF THE WORLD
We have never before seen the world in the condition to which we have
brought it now, in the whole course of the story.
At first, you will remember, there were the two great empires
warring, the Nile Valley empire and the empire of the Euphrates and
Tigris. Then came the Persian. He overthrew them both. But then he
came up against a wall too strong for him to break down, in the
opposition of Greece; and he broke his own head against that wall.
After him came Alexander, the Macedonian, going through the world, as
it was then known, like a flash of lightning, getting the better of
everything that stood in his way as if it was of no account at all.
But like a flash of lightning his light went out again, and he left
the world he had conquered to be cut up into pieces and quarrelled
for by the generals that he had led to the conquest.
Then the scene of action shifted westward along the inland sea.
Carthage had grown to power at the cost of Phœnicia, her
mother-land, and over against Carthage had grown together, in a
wonderfully short time, this new Roman power. Carthage and Rome had
fought, and Rome had utterly prevailed.
Then Rome, looking eastward, and troubled by King Pyrrhus, who had
helped the Carthaginians, came in touch with the Macedonians and the
Greeks, {191} and after a period of trouble got the better of both,
came up against the peoples of Asia Minor, and had them at her mercy
whenever she chose to put out her strength. Already Egypt, though
independent nominally, had acknowledged Rome as sovereign.
[Sidenote: Pax Romana]
So you see whither we have come. Hitherto it has always been a
struggling world that the story has had to tell of--one or the other
master holding power a short while perhaps, but never really having a
hold over the whole world and getting all his opponents under. It is
quite otherwise now. Rome is mistress; and she is not going to let
go her hold for a very long while. When she does lose hold it will
be really because her grip has lost power owing to her own maladies,
rather than that any other very formidable foe has come against her.
You will understand, of course, what I mean when I talk of "the whole
world" at this point of the story, and what that Greek historian,
Polybius, of whom I told you in the last chapter, meant by it. He
knew, no doubt, that there was a great deal of the world, in the
sense of land inhabited by human beings, beyond the wide lands over
which the Roman power really did extend. But neither he nor any one
else in the Greek or Roman world of that day thought that these lands
and their inhabitants counted for anything. They did not matter.
These peoples were called barbarians. They were considered rather as
we consider the North American Indians or the negroes. They were far
more formidable to the Romans than either of these are to us, because
the people away to the east and north-east of Syria, to the north of
Asia Minor and Thrace and of Italy itself, all these had limitless
lands behind them, on the sides farthest {192} from the central power
of Rome, to retreat into when she came with any power against them.
For the most part they were peoples who led a wandering life. It was
no trouble to them to strike their tents and go back into the wilds.
But it was terrible trouble for the legions to follow them very far
into those wilds; and the legions could not easily force them to a
decided battle if they did follow them.
Therefore the Romans doubtless knew that however far they might push
out their power in the east and north there would always be peoples
on the edge of the lands which they could really make their own who
would be apt to give trouble and would require small campaigns to be
waged against them from time to time. Probably they made up their
minds to that. But inside that wide barbarian fringe, and with the
Atlantic Ocean on the west and the nearly uninhabited deserts of
Africa on the south--within the wide expanse of which these form the
boundary, the Roman power was such that if Rome said a thing had to
be done, there was no man who questioned it. Done that thing had to
be. That is what is meant by a phrase that you have most likely
heard, the "Pax Romana," the Roman peace. It meant the peace which
Rome could, and did, enforce within these regions under her power--a
peace that could not be broken because every man knew that whatever
she said was to be done, must be done. There was no help for it.
Of course the peace was not perfect, it was not untroubled. No peace
ever is. But it was peace of a kind that the world had never known
before. The whole world--the whole world that mattered--was for the
first time under one single authority. It was also for the last
time; for it is a condition that the {193} world has never been in
again since the break-up of the Roman power. So I think I was
justified in asking you to stop a moment in the course of the story
in order to consider the position of affairs to which it has brought
us. It is interesting, is it not?
* * * * *
[Sidenote: Mithridates]
Now, I do not know that there is any need to trouble you with all the
smaller happenings which led to Rome's asserting herself more and
more strongly in the East. Probably she would have done better if
she had established her power more strongly in Syria rather earlier
than she did. In the end she took it and turned it into one of her
provinces as well as the other lands that she conquered; but by the
time she did so a certain king called Mithridates, of a certain
kingdom called Pontus, on the Black Sea, to the north of Syria, had
made himself very strong, and gave the Romans a terrible deal of
trouble about the year 88 B.C. and onward.
But long before that, and even while she was claiming to impose her
"Pax Romana," the Roman peace, on all the world, she had very little
peace within her own borders. It is all an outgrowth of the old
trouble that we saw beginning as far back as the time when the Romans
drove out those Etruscan kings and formed themselves into a Republic.
All through their story we have seen the Senate, which was for the
most part the high-born, the rich party, on the one side, and the
Comitia, or assembly of the plebeians, on the other. And the last
was perpetually struggling to get power and to take power away from
the first. That struggle still went on until it ended in neither of
them having any power at all. And that happened in this way.
{194}
As Rome grew rich, by the plunder and taxation of the provinces that
she conquered and annexed, an immense number of slaves were brought
into Italy. They cultivated the land for their masters a great deal
more cheaply than the native small farmers could cultivate it, and at
the same time a great deal of corn and other things that these
farmers used to grow was brought in from the provinces at a cheap
price. The small farmers, what we might call peasants, could not
grow corn in Italy as cheaply as this, so the fields fell out of
cultivation and the peasants flocked into the towns where they could
get their share of the cheap corn.
Great discontent grew out of this. Two brothers, who were leading
men of the people, Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, got laws passed to
give the people a chance of cultivating their land on better terms,
but the selfishness of the rich party, who were opposed to them, made
these laws of no use.
[Sidenote: The power of the generals]
The people had succeeded in getting one of their own class, Marius by
name, appointed as general of an army in Africa, which conquered a
restless and powerful people called the Numidians, who had been
giving much anxiety to the Romans and had defeated the armies under
the general that the Senate had sent out in command. When Marius
came back, as victor, from Africa, some of the northern barbarous
tribes were harassing Italy itself. He took command of the army
against them, and again was completely successful. Thus he rose to
great power, and one of his acts, when at the height of his power,
was to repeal the law according to which it had always been
compulsory on the people to serve in certain legions, and to allow
them to enlist in what legions they pleased.
{195}
Do you see what that meant? It meant that the people would go and
enlist under a popular general, and, this being so, the general
became the authority to whom they gave their allegiance and to whom
they looked up as their head. It was no longer to Rome that the
soldiers looked as the great authority. They looked to their general.
That made a very great difference in the whole state of affairs. It
meant that the general who was able to rely on his army became really
independent of the power of either Senate or Comitia. They might
give him orders, but he had the armed force at his back and could
almost please himself as to whether he should obey the orders or not.
Thus it was that the real power passed altogether out of the hands of
the Senate and Comitia and fell into that of the commanders of the
legions, or of whichever of the several commanders of legions might
prove the strongest. The Senate or the Comitia, sometimes the one
and sometimes the other, might appoint the commanders, but once the
commanders were appointed, the power was with them so long as they
could rely on the support of the soldiers.
The Senate succeeded in getting leaders devoted to their interests
appointed to command some of the legions, and the Comitia got men of
their own side appointed to others, and so it came to pass that there
were these two opposing forces in the world, the legions that were
under a general who was on the side of the aristocratic party and the
legions that were commanded by one who favoured the popular side.
It is much more easy to see, long after it all happened, how one
state of affairs grows out of what has gone before, than it is for
the people who are acting in them {196} to see it. We can see how it
all happened much better than they can have seen then, but I suppose
that even those Romans who were in the very middle of it all and were
actors in the story must have realised that something was going on
which they had never known before, and which was certain to make a
great difference, when they saw one of these commanders of the
legions march his forces right up to Rome and take forcible
possession of the city.
[Illustration: ROMAN LEGIONARIES.]
This commander was Sulla, and he acted as he did because Rome at the
time had fallen into such a state of lawlessness, owing to the fights
between the rich people and the poor, and to all the evil causes that
I have mentioned, that no man's property or life was safe. Sulla
came in with his soldiers and enforced what we might call Martial
Law. He restored order, but he restored it only by terribly severe
punishments. He was on the side of the Senate, of the rich and
patrician class. This was in the year 88 B.C. But he did not stay
in Rome. That war on the eastern boundary of the Empire with King
Mithridates of Pontus required attention. Mithridates had been
terribly successful at its commencement. He had overrun Asia Minor,
and it is said that in a single day 80,000 persons who claimed to be
Romans, or to be {197} under the protection of the great Roman power,
were massacred.
[Sidenote: Sulla and Pompey]
Sulla was a great general. Mithridates had advanced into Greece, but
he made no stand against the legions. His armies were defeated in
Asia Minor too, and by 84 B.C. this, which was called the First
Mithridatic War, was over. A treaty was made whereby the territories
of the king of Pontus were strictly defined, and Sulla came back to
Rome.
The popular party had been busy while he was away. Marius, their
champion, was dead, but his place had been taken by another popular
general, Cinna. When Sulla returned he found Rome in possession of
Cinna and the populace. With his own legions Sulla overthrew Cinna
and his power, and his punishment of his opponents was even more
fearfully cruel than before. The story of the years that followed is
a terrible one. The life of no man of any importance was safe in
Rome if he was suspected of showing any favour to the popular cause.
And now another very great name comes into the story, that of
Pompey--Pompey the Great as he was sometimes called. In Rome, Sulla
had drowned in blood the opposition of the popular party; but there
were legions outside Italy itself, and some of them, in Spain, were
under popular leadership. Against these Pompey went out as commander
on the patrician side. After some three years of fighting he was
completely successful. Sulla, wearied of power and tyranny, had
thrown up his dictatorship at Rome and had retired into the country
and to private life. Pompey led back his victorious legions, and
with his soldiers at the gates of the city demanded the honours which
he thought due to him as victor.
{198}
There was no denying them to him, and he was elected Consul.
The condition of affairs in Italy was bad. There had been a great
uprising of the slaves who had become very numerous and had banded
themselves together, to a number said to be 70,000. They traversed
the country, pillaging and acting in defiance of all law.
Pompey, as Consul and with the military power at his command, showed
himself a far less cruel dictator than Sulla. He revoked many of the
worst laws and lawless institutions of Sulla. The slave revolt, as
it was called, was put down. Something like order was restored
again. And when all this had been done in Italy, Pompey was given,
or maybe took for himself, command of a fleet and of armies in the
East, for the special purpose of destroying the sea pirates in the
eastern part of the Mediterranean and strengthening the Roman power
in Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor. The treaty with Mithridates had not
succeeded in making peace in that corner of the world for long, and,
though he had been beaten in one or two battles by the legions, he
was still in the field and far beyond the boundaries which that
treaty had assigned to him.
[Sidenote: Julius Cæsar]
Pompey carried all before him. He put down the pirates in a series
of sea fights, settled affairs in Syria, which he at length made into
a Roman province, and then went northward, where he met Mithridates
and defeated him so decisively that he gave the Romans no further
trouble, and shortly afterwards took his own life. With all these
victories to his credit, Pompey returned to Italy, where by that time
had come into the story one whose name, great as was that of Pompey,
was to become greater even than his--Julius Cæsar.
Cæsar had gained fame both as an orator and as a {199} soldier. His
sympathies were with the popular party. He had been chosen as
Consul, but had not yet entered into that office when Pompey came
back, triumphant, from the East. We might expect that Pompey, who
was on the patrician side, would be opposed to Cæsar, but Pompey was
dissatisfied with his treatment by his own party. He seems to have
promised his soldiers, as a reward for their bravery and their
victories, that they should be given grants of land, to live on, in
Italy. The Senate were not ready to confirm this promise, and they
did not approve of all that he had done in Asia Minor.
The result was that Cæsar and Pompey became friends and allies.
Cæsar married Pompey's daughter. They brought into their alliance
one Crassus, whose chief value to them as a friend was that he had
immense wealth. This combination was known as the Triumvirate, or
combination of three men (from _tres_, meaning three, and _vir_,
meaning man). Acting together, the three could get any laws passed
that they pleased. One of the measures which they joined in passing
made an immense difference in our story. It was that measure which
gave to Cæsar the command of the legions in Gaul.
The difference that it was to make was not seen just at first. Cæsar
went up north to his command. His campaign against the Gauls, of
which he himself has written the account in his "Commentaries," are a
little out of the direct line of our great story. They had their
effect on the big story, for if they had ended in any other way than
the way in which they did, if Cæsar had been killed or conquered--and
he was nearly killed or conquered more than once--the big story might
have gone quite differently. But as it was, {200} in the end--and
the end of his campaigns in Gaul did not come until nine years had
passed--he was completely victorious. During those years he made an
expedition to Great Britain, but did not stay there long. At the end
of the nine years he came back. He was chosen as Consul for the
second time. He came back to the borders of Italy at the head of his
victorious legions. He was commanded by the Senate to disband his
troops before coming to Rome to be made Consul. The Senate and
Pompey, for Pompey still was chief man in Rome, did not want a
general with soldiers devoted to him at the gates of the city.
Cæsar halted for a time, while messages about this went to and fro
between him and the Senate, the Senate ordering him to disband the
troops, and Cæsar refusing. He halted on the banks of a small
stream, the Rubicon, which has become very famous because it was the
boundary of Italy beyond which he was forbidden to go at the head of
troops.
Finally, in the year 49 B.C., he determined to go against the order
of the Senate and brave the consequences. _Cæsar crossed the
Rubicon!_
The crossing of that river meant war. Cæsar knew it. The Senate
knew it. Pompey knew it. The great Pompey fled before him, and took
command of the Senatorial armies in Greece. Cæsar, who had no fleet,
went in pursuit.
They met at Pharsalia, in Thessaly, and there was fought one of the
great battles of history. Cæsar gained the day, and Pompey again
fled, into Egypt. Again Cæsar pursued him, and was met on coming to
Egypt by a messenger who thought to find favour with him by bringing
him the head of Pompey, who had been murdered. But Cæsar was a
generous enemy. {201} Pompey had been his friend, and he mourned his
death with respect.
[Sidenote: Cleopatra]
There was trouble in Egypt at this time. The rulers were supposed to
be one of the Ptolemies and Cleopatra, also of the same family, the
two sharing the throne. But the Ptolemy had thrust the queen out and
claimed to rule alone. Cæsar, captivated by the beauty of Cleopatra,
restored her to her share in the government. Then he marched up with
his force into Syria. There, too, there was trouble.
The trouble was with a powerful people called the Parthians, coming
from that part of Asia, east of the Euphrates, from which the
Persians had come long ago. They were a warlike nation, fighting on
horseback, lightly clad in mail; and their mode of fighting was like
that of the Persians of old--to come galloping down upon the enemy,
to shower arrows, discharged from horseback, upon him, to gallop off
again, turning in the saddle and shooting as they went, and then to
reform, to come back again, and repeat the same tactics until the
enemy's formation was broken up.
Really it was very like the fighting of the Persians, which, as we
saw, was broken by the solid Greek phalanx. But these Parthians
prevailed in several battles against the Roman legions. They had
defeated a Roman army under the command of that Crassus who was one
of the triumvirate. Of these three, Cæsar was the only one who was
alive after Pompey's murder in Egypt.
Cæsar met the Parthian forces and defeated them very heavily. He
drove them back over the Euphrates; and the Euphrates we have to look
on as the boundary, eastward, of the Roman power. The Romans did not
try to press farther. They had enough, and more {202} than enough,
work on their hands in making good the conquests they had gained.
Cæsar returned to Rome, victorious; but still he had enemies, in the
shape of armies in the field, under commanders appointed by the
Senate. There were some such forces in Africa. Thither Cæsar went
and made an end of them. Still there were others in Spain, and
there, at length, he seems to have put out the last spark of
opposition by a victory in the battle of Munda in 45 B.C. He had
crossed the Rubicon in 49 B.C. What he had accomplished in those
four years is wonderful. Victorious in Greece, Egypt, Syria, Africa,
Spain. All enemies had gone down before him. He was elected
"dictator for life" of the Roman Commonwealth.
{203}