worshipper and god, for that is also typical of the old Roman
character. “The gods,” he says, “confronted man just as a creditor
confronted a debtor.... Man even dealt in speculation with his god: a
vow was in reality as in name a formal contract between the god and the
man by which the latter promised to the former for a certain service
to be rendered a certain equivalent return.” Nay, he might venture to
defraud his god. “They presented to the lord of the sky heads of onions
or poppies, that he might launch his lightnings at these rather than
at the heads of men. In payment of the offering annually demanded by
father Tiber, thirty puppets plaited of rushes were annually thrown
into the stream.” It may be true, as Mr. Warde Fowler argues, that the
bargain sometimes took the form of a lively sense of favours to come,
but a _votum_ was essentially a business transaction.
The deity was very dimly visualised: the cult was everything, the god
nothing. The true Latin god does not marry or beget children--did not,
at least, till the Greek theologians came over and married them all
suitably and provided them with families. Before history began the
Romans had forgotten the little they had ever known about their most
ancient deities. The rite, perhaps the altar, was preserved, but no
one remembered the object of it. This is a typical Roman prayer as we
have it in old Cato: “This is the proper Roman way to cut down a grove.
Sacrifice with a pig for a peace-offering. This is the verbal formula:
Whether thou art a god or a goddess to whom that grove is sacred, may
it be justice in thine eyes to sacrifice a pig for a peace-offering in
order that the sanctity may be restrained. For this cause, whether I
perform the sacrifice or any one else at my orders, may it be rightly
done. For that cause in sacrificing this pig for a peace-offering I
pray thee honest prayers that thou mayest be kind and propitious to
me and my house and my slaves and my children. For these causes be
thou blessed with the sacrifice of this pig for a peace-offering.” To
misplace a word in this formula would have been fatal. The vagueness of
the address is typical: the wood is sacred, no doubt, to some invisible
_numen_; the woodman must guard himself against addressing the wrong
power. Much of the Roman worship is thus offered “to the Unknown God.”
LAW
It was this quality of precision and formalism which made Rome the
lawgiver of Europe. In the battle between law and sentiment the Roman
sword has been thrown with decisive effect into the scale of law. All
Roman law was originally a series of formulæ, and like all ancient law
a part of religion. First the king and then the priests were the only
people who knew these formulæ. Thus the king was the sole judge both in
private and public right; he might summon a council of advisers or he
might delegate his powers to an inferior officer, such as the prætor
or the prefect of the city, or the trackers of murder. Both these
rights, that of choosing a consilium and of delegating authority, with,
however, a right of appeal from the lower to the higher functionary,
remained inherent in the Roman magistracy. In all cases, private or
public, the king or the magistrate who replaced him had to pronounce
the _jus_ first: that is, to state the proper formula for the case in
question; then he would send the case for trial of fact, or _judicium_,
before judge or jury. The formula would run “if it appears that A.
B. has been guilty of---- condemn him to----; if not, acquit him.”
_Jus_, human right, was inseparably connected with _fas_, divine right:
no layman could properly interpret either. For a long time it was
necessary for one of the priests to be present in court to see that the
proper formularies of action were observed with strict verbal accuracy.
This was, of course, an enormously powerful weapon in the hands of the
patricians.
Then in the course of the struggle between the orders came the usual
demand for written laws. The famous story of the Decemviri and their
commission to Athens in 451 B.C. is unfortunately very dubious history.
It is full of romantic elements, it is part of that systematic
depreciation of the Claudii in Roman history which Mommsen has traced
to its probable source, it has elements which look as if they were
borrowed from the story of the thirty tyrants at Athens, and there
is no confirmation from the Athenian side. Professor Pais believes
that the fifth century is much too early for such a code. There are,
it is true, in the fragments of the Twelve Tables which have come
down to us, some enactments closely resembling those of the Greek
codes--regulations, for example, limiting the expense of funerals--but
we find such laws in other codes than that of Solon. One would like to
have fuller details about that later Appius Claudius, the famous censor
of 312 B.C. It is said that he desired to reduce the now complicated
bulk of legal formulæ to writing simply for the benefit of the priests,
but that a low-born scribe, one Flavius, whom he employed for the
purpose as his clerk, fraudulently revealed these judicial secrets
to the public. The whole tendency of the Claudian falsifications is
to make out that the Claudii were tyrannical and anti-democratic. It
certainly looks as if the dishonesty of the freedman had been put into
the story for the purpose of robbing the famous censor of his credit
for helping the people to a knowledge of law.
The whole fabric of Roman law was supposed to rest upon the foundation
of the Twelve Tables. Only fragments of them have come down to us.
They are undoubtedly very ancient and primitive, more so, it would
seem, than the Athenian law of 451 B.C. Fines are to be paid in metal
by weight. A creditor has the right to carve up the body of his
debtor. Plebeian may not intermarry with patrician. But they also
carried something of a charter of liberties for the citizens in that
capital punishment could not be inflicted without right of appeal to
the assembly, and no law could be proposed against an individual. The
language of this famous code is of a rugged simplicity and directness
that is truly Roman. On the whole Roman law is merciful, considering
its strict character: though much of Roman pleading, as we have it in
the mouth of Cicero, is full of appeals to sentiment, Roman law itself
allows no appeal to anything so vague as abstract justice. The written
letter stands, and there can be no pleading without a legal formula.
The character of the ancient Roman is best described by his favourite
virtue of _gravitas_. In that word is implied serious purpose,
dignified reserve, fidelity to one’s promise, and a sense of duty.
Levity is its opposite, and among the things repugnant to true Roman
gravity were art, music, and literature. It is on the battlefield, in
the senate-house, and the law-courts that the old Roman is most truly
at home.
II
CONQUEST
quæ neque Dardanus campis potuere perire
nec quom capta capi, nec quom combusta cremari,
augusto augurio postquam incluta condita Roma est.
ENNIUS.
[Illustration: This is a block letter “T”]
The great Samnite wars, which had lasted on and off from 343 to 290
B.C., had been the school of Roman valour. In her citizen legions
Rome had evolved a fighting machine unequalled, probably, until the
Musketeers of Louis XIV. and Marlborough. Also she was learning
politics and the art of government. She was now mistress over the
greater part of Italy; all, in fact, except the Gallic plain in the
north and the Greek cities of the south. The Pyrrhic war which followed
after a short breathing-space forms the transition between domestic
expansion and foreign conquest. Our business here is not with wars
and battles for their own sake, but it will be important to observe
in what manner Rome was launched on her career of empire-making.
Seeley has shown how the British Empire grew up in a haphazard manner,
without any wise policy to direct its growth, with continual neglect
of opportunities, and often in contemptuous ignorance of the work that
private citizens were undertaking for its honour and advancement.
We shall see that it was very much the same with the Roman Empire.
One responsibility leads to another, one conquest leads to many
entanglements: if the coast is to be held the hinterland must be
conquered. Thus power follows capacity, and the doctrine which seems
so unjust, “To him that hath shall be given, from him that hath not
shall be taken away even that which he seemeth to have,” is fulfilled
in all the dealings between Providence and imperial peoples. By coming
into contact with the Greeks of the south Rome was brought definitely
to deal with a superior but declining civilisation. The career of
Agathocles, the brigand tyrant of Sicily, had lately shown how easy a
thing it was to make empires among the opulent and luxurious cities of
the Calabrian and Bruttian shores.
One summer’s day in 282 B.C. the people of Tarentum were seated
in their open-air theatre, watching the performance of a tragedy.
They looked out above the stage over the blue waters of the Gulf of
Calabria, and there they saw a small detachment of the Roman fleet
sailing into their harbour. The ships were on a voyage entirely
peaceful, but there was an old treaty forbidding the Romans to pass the
Lacinian Promontory, and these barbarians had lately been interfering
in the affairs of their Greek neighbours, always in favour of oligarchy
against democracy. The mob was seized with a sudden access of fury;
they rushed down to the harbour, butchered or enslaved the sailors, and
put the admiral to death. The Roman Senate met this atrocious insult
with calm, even with generosity. But the Tarentine mob would have no
peace. Looking abroad for a champion they invited the Prince of Epirus
to their aid. Pyrrhus was a young man of charm, ability, and ambition
almost equal to that of Alexander the Great, whose career he longed to
emulate in the West. He was called the first general of his day, and
he brought with him 20,000 infantrymen of the phalanx, 2000 archers,
500 slingers, and 3000 cavalry. Moreover he had twenty Indian war
elephants. The boastful Greeks had offered to provide 350,000 infantry,
but when it came to the point they would do nothing but hire a few
mercenaries. However, Pyrrhus was victorious in the first battle near
Heraclea. The victory was won, it is said, by the final charge of the
elephants. The simple Romans had never seen an elephant before; they
called them “snake-hands” and “Lucanian cows,” and their horses were
even more alarmed than they. But the next time the Romans had to meet
elephants they provided themselves first with wonderful machines, in
which chariots were mysteriously blended with chafing-dishes, and then
when these failed, with fiery darts, which converted this heavy cavalry
into engines of destruction for their owners. That is rather typical of
the simple Roman and his way of encountering monsters.
After the victory of Heraclea, Pyrrhus sent to Rome with overtures of
peace a smooth-tongued courtier named Cineas, who was much impressed
with the incorruptibility of the political chiefs and their wives. It
was he who described the Senate as a “council of kings,” so grave and
majestic was their bearing and discourse. Nevertheless the Roman Senate
would have made terms if it had not been for the great Censor Appius
Claudius, now blind and infirm, who laid down for the first time the
celebrated doctrine that Rome never listened to terms while there were
foreign troops on Italian soil. Therefore, although the Romans had lost
15,000 men, fresh conscripts eagerly enrolled themselves to make a new
army.
Meanwhile Pyrrhus, after another incomplete “Pyrrhic” victory, was
proceeding unchecked over the island of Sicily. There he drove the
Carthaginians from point to point until they concentrated in their
great stronghold of Lilybæum in the west. But all the time his position
was desperate. The coalition on which he depended was composed of
faithless and useless allies. While his stiff Epirot phalanx was
depleted at every victory, fresh levies of Roman citizens seemed to
spring from the soil to replace the losses of every defeat. So at
length it came to the battle of the Arusine Plain, near Beneventum, in
which the Romans were completely victorious. Thus Pyrrhus leaves to
history the reputation not of a conqueror but of an adventurer. The
Romans had thus faced and overthrown the Greek phalanx at its best, and
were now masters of Italy from Genoa to Reggio, with Sicily obviously
inviting their next advance. That Rome was now formally accepted among
the great powers of the Mediterranean world is shown by an embassy
offering alliance with Ptolemy of Egypt.
She had a breathing-space of eleven years before the first of her two
great conflicts with the Carthaginians. Carthage, a colony of the
Phœnicians of Tyre, had grown rich and prosperous on the fertile soil
of the modern Tunis. She was an aristocracy wholly devoted to trade,
and living uncomfortably amid a surrounding population of dangerous
native subjects. War was not her main business, but when she sought
fresh markets she was apt to fight with horrible ferocity, sacrificing
her prisoners in hundreds to hideous gods when she was victorious,
and impaling her generals when she was not. As a military power she
varied greatly: the comparatively puny Greek states of Sicily had
been maintaining a fairly equal struggle against her for centuries.
But she used the British system of sepoy troops, and thus everything
depended on the general. Had it not been for the inexperience of the
Romans at sea and the extraordinary genius of Hannibal, Carthage would
never have come as near victory as she did. We have no history of the
struggle from the Punic side, and Carthage herself must remain somewhat
of a mystery even when illuminated by the brilliant imagination of the
author of _Salammbô_.
In entering upon this war, which Rome did ostensibly in response to an
appeal from a parcel of ruffianly outlaws for whom she had no sympathy
whatever, we can for once discover no motive but desire of conquest.
Messina, the home of the said ruffians, was for her merely the _tête
du pont_ which led from Bruttium into Sicily. The conquest of that
rich Greek island was plainly the objective, but she plunged into war
without foreseeing the immensity of her undertaking. The chief interest
of the First Punic War, which lasted from 264 to 241, lies in the
creation of a Roman navy which occurred in the course of it. Although
we may agree with Mommsen that “it is only a childish view to believe
that the Romans then for the first time dipped their oars in water,”
yet tradition says that the Romans constructed a fleet in a great
hurry, taking for model a stranded Carthaginian galley. It was at any
rate her first war-fleet worth mentioning. The tradition is proved by
the lack of seamanship displayed by the Romans, for every storm cost
her enormous losses by shipwreck. The device by which she overcame the
Punic ships--a sort of grappling gangway on pulleys affixed to her
masts, so that her soldiers could fight the enemy as if on shore--was
a successful but essentially a landlubberly invention, and no doubt
accounts for many of her losses by shipwreck. Her annual consuls,
transformed for the occasion into annual admirals, had not even as much
opportunity as Colonel Blake to learn their trade. And, though Rome
launched fleet after fleet until at length she became mistress of the
seas, she never treated her navy with respect. The ships were rowed
by slaves and manned chiefly by subject allies, but the real business
of fighting was done by the 120 legionaries on each vessel, who came
into action when the enemy was grappled and the gangway fast in her
deck. So the war dragged on for nearly a generation until at length the
Carthaginians made peace, and Rome gained the coveted island. Britain
is not the only empire in history which wins victories by “muddling
through.”
The peace was clearly nothing more than a respite: the command of the
Western Mediterranean was not yet settled. Rome spent the interval
in making fresh conquests. First she seized the opportunity, while
Carthage was involved with her native rebels, to annex the islands of
Sardinia and Corsica, alleging with more ingenuity than geographical
exactitude that these were some of the islands between Sicily and
Africa which Carthage had agreed to surrender. Here we behold the
simple Roman as a diplomat. Then she was compelled to intervene in
Illyria in order to clear the Adriatic of piracy, and so acquired
territory across the water. Soon afterwards the Gauls of the northern
plain began under pressure from their kinsmen across the Alps to
threaten invasion; and Rome, after failing to gain the favour of heaven
by the pious expedient of burying a male and female Gaul alive in her
Forum, marched out to meet them, slaughtered them in thousands, and
thus rounded off her control over the peninsula. Much of this looks
like conscious empire-building.
In the Second Punic War, which lasted from 218 to the end of the
century, Rome was not the aggressor. At Carthage by this time the
native rebellion had been put down with a heavy hand. It seems that
Carthage had its party system, the democracy, as usual in ancient
cities, being for war, and the aristocracy of rich merchants for peace.
The democracy was led by the celebrated Barca family, who had long
supplied the state with famous generals and now occupied a position
of unrivalled eminence. Constitutionally a Carthaginian could rise
no further than to be one of the two _shophets_ who corresponded to
the Roman consuls, but actually the Barcas were more like a family of
dictators. From the first Hamilcar Barca foresaw that Rome was still
the enemy, and he is said to have made his little son Hannibal swear
an oath at the altar that he would prosecute that enmity to the death.
But first it was necessary to acquire resources and an army for the
purpose. This he resolved to do, as Julius Cæsar did after him, by
foreign conquest. Without orders from home he led his army into Spain,
and there began to build up a province and a native army under his
absolute control. Though Cadiz was already a Carthaginian market and
there was already a Greek colony at Saguntum, and the ships of Tarshish
were known even to King Solomon, this is the first real appearance of
Spain in history. There was metal to be had from the mines, gold,
copper, and silver, and there were hardy warriors in the hills who only
needed training to become excellent soldiers. So Carthage began to
acquire a western substitute for her lost province of Sicily. Hamilcar
died; his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, was assassinated; and then the army
chose for its leader Hamilcar’s son Hannibal, then a young man of
twenty-nine.
This man, though his history was written exclusively by his enemies,
stands out as one of the greatest leaders in history. In strategy he
was supreme; in statesmanship he had the gift which Marlborough shared
of being able by his personal influence to hold unwilling allies
together even in adverse circumstances. He was a cultivated man who
spoke and wrote Greek and Latin. He is charged by the jealousy of
the Romans with cruelty and perfidy, but in fact history has nothing
to substantiate these charges: on the contrary his actions are often
magnanimous and honourable. His brilliance as a general largely sprang
from his power of entering into the mind of his enemy. This was the man
who inherited his father’s deep-laid plans of vengeance, and set out,
his heart burning with hatred of Rome, to fulfil them.
We cannot dwell upon his wonderful march over the Alps and his
brilliant series of victories on the soil of Italy. Hannibal’s whole
plan of campaign was, briefly, to invade Italy by land with a compact
striking force and raise the unwilling subjects of Rome against her,
while the main force of Carthage attacked Sicily and Italy by sea. But
it contained three serious miscalculations which brought it eventually
to ruin. First, the southern Gauls on whom Hannibal relied for his
communications and his base proved fickle and untrustworthy allies;
secondly, he found that Rome’s mild imperial system had not produced
unwilling subjects such as Carthage possessed in Africa; and thirdly,
he hoped for support from Philip of Macedon, but here he was foiled
by Roman diplomacy. Moreover, while the Romans showed a tenacity and
power of recuperation unexampled in history, Carthage herself, now in
the hands of the commercial oligarchs, gave him grudging and uncertain
support. The firmness and courage of the Roman senate and people were
amazing. Beaten again and again in the field at the Ticino, the Trebia,
Lake Trasimene, and Cannæ, Rome never lost her pride. She refused
offers of help from King Hiero of Syracuse, she could find time to
order the Illyrian chiefs to pay their tribute, she actually summoned
Philip of Macedon to surrender her fugitive rebel Demetrius. She kept
an army in Spain; a fleet still cruised in Greek waters; she had an
army in Sicily, while four legions besieged Capua; she had troops in
Sardinia, three legions in North Italy, two legions as a garrison
in the capital--no fewer than 200,000 citizens under arms. When the
foolish demagogue Varro returned in defeat and disgrace from the awful
disaster at Cannæ, the senate thanked him for not having committed
suicide--“for not having despaired of the salvation of his country.”
No doubt Rome owed something, but not as much as her poets and
orators pretended, to the cautious tactics of Quintus Fabius. At any
rate, he gave her time to grow used to the presence of the invader
and to recover from the shock of the three disasters with which the
war opened. The Romans had never before been called upon to face a
consummate strategist. Pyrrhus had been, within the limitations of
Greek warfare, a clever tactician; he had even shown the originality
to copy the Roman manipular system in his later battles. But Hannibal
was more than a strategist; he was a psychologist who knew when
the opposing general was rash and when he was wary, who had spies
everywhere and could supplement their intelligence by disguising
himself to do his own scouting. Scouting was an art that the Romans
had yet to learn by bitter experience. At the Trasimene Lake[10] they
blundered straight into the most obvious of natural death-traps. But
the Romans were always good learners, and, as usually happens, the
amateur patriot army steadily improved during the war while the hired
professionals steadily deteriorated. The actual strategy by which
Hannibal won most of his battles was simple enough. It was the policy
of a long weak centre into which the Roman legions buried themselves
deep while the two strong wings of the enemy closed round on their
flanks and rear. In his Numidian horsemen Hannibal had the finest light
cavalry yet known to European warfare.
For a time all went brilliantly for the invader. Italians, Greeks, and
Gauls joined his victorious standard. Rome was on the brink of despair.
The very gods began to tremble; their statues sweated blood, two-headed
lambs were born with alarming frequency, and cows in Apulia uttered
prophetic warnings with human voices; the most horrible of omens
portended destruction. But the city and the senate never lost heart and
gradually as the years passed by Hannibal began to see that his cause
was lost. The Latin allies stood firm for Rome. The Romans were able to
hold Sicily and even despatch a brilliant and lucky young general named
Scipio to reconquer Spain. Thus the longed-for reinforcements were cut
off. The stupid aristocracy of Carthage were jealous of their great
soldier, and when at last a reinforcing Punic army from Spain managed
to slip through into Italy, Nero caught it at the River Metaurus just
before the junction was effected. The first news of that battle came
to Hannibal when the Romans tossed over the rampart into his camp the
bleeding head of the defeated general, his own brother Hasdrubal.
Horace has sung of this tragic episode in his noblest manner:
quid debeas, o Roma, Neronibus
testis Metaurum flumen et Hasdrubal
devictus et pulcer fugatis
ille dies Latio tenebris.
* * * * *
dixitque tandem perfidus Hannibal:
“cerui, luporum præda rapacium,
sectamur ultro quos opimus
fallere et effugere est triumphus
* * * * *
“Carthagini iam non ego nuntios
mittam superbos. occidit, occidit
spes omnis et fortuna nostri
nominis Hasdrubale interempto.”[11]