The wretched Roman commander, however, knew not how or where to

attack; the army marched to and fro in Thessaly, without accomplishing

anything of importance. Perseus might have assumed the offensive; he

saw that the Romans were badly led and dilatory; the news had passed

like wildfire through Greece, that the Greek army had been brilliantly

victorious in the first engagement; a second victory might lead to a

general rising of the patriot party, and, by commencing a guerilla

warfare, might produce incalculable results. But Perseus, while a

good soldier, was not a general like his father; he had made his

preparations for a defensive war, and, when things took a different

turn, he felt himself as it were paralyzed. He made an unimportant

success, which the Romans obtained in a second cavalry combai near

Phalanna, a pretext for reverting, as is the habit of narrow and

obstinate minds, to his first plan and evacuating Thessaly.

This was of course equivalent to renouncing all idea of a Hellenic

insurrection: what might have been attained by a different course was

shown by the fact that, notwithstanding what had occurred, the Epirots

changed sides. Thenceforth nothing serious was accomplished on either

side. Perseus subdued king Genthius, chastised the Dardani, and, by

means of Cotys, expelled from Thrace the Thracians friendly to Rome

and the Pergamene troops. On the other hand the western Roman army

took some Illyrian towns, and the consul busied himself in clearing

Thessaly of the Macedonian garrisons and making sure of the turbulent

Aetolians and Acarnanians by occupying Ambracia. But the heroic

courage of the Romans was most severely felt by the unfortunate

Boeotian towns which took part with Perseus; the inhabitants as well

of Thisbae, which surrendered without resistance as soon as the Roman

admiral Gaius Lucretius appeared before the city, as of Haliartus,

which closed its gates against him and had to be taken by storm, were

sold by him into slavery; Corcnea was treated in the same manner by

the consul Crassus in spite even of its capitulation. Never had a

Roman army exhibited such wretched discipline as the force under these

commanders. They had so disorganized the army that, even in the next

campaign of 584, the new consul Aulus Hostilius could not think of

undertaking anything serious, especially as the new admiral Lucius

Hortensius showed himself to be as incapable and unprincipled as his

predecessor. The fleet visited the towns on the Thracian coast

without result. The western army under Appius Claudius, whose

headquarters were at Lychnidus in the territory of the Dassaretae,

sustained one defeat after another: after an expedition to Macedonia

had been utterly unsuccessful, the king in turn towards the beginning

of winter assumed the aggressive with the troops which were no longer

needed on the south frontier in consequence of the deep snow blocking

up all the passes, took from Appius numerous townships and a multitude

of prisoners, and entered into connections with king Genthius; he was

able in fact to attempt an invasion of Aetolia, while Appius allowed

himself to be once more defeated in Epirus by the garrison of a

fortress which he had vainly besieged. The Roman main army made two

attempts to penetrate into Macedonia: first, ovei the Cambunian

mountains, and then through the Thessalian passes; but they were

negligently planned, and both were repulsed by Perseus.

Abuses in the Army

The consul employed himself chiefly in the reorganization of the army

--a work which was above all things needful, but which required a

sterner man and an officer of greater mark. Discharges and furloughs

might be bought, and therefore the divisions were never up to their

full numbers; the men were put into quarters in summer, and, as the

officers plundered on a large, the common soldiers plundered on a

small, scale. Friendly peoples were subjected to the most shameful

suspicions: for instance, the blame of the disgraceful defeat at

Larisa was imputed to the pretended treachery of the Aetolian cavalry,

and, what was hitherto unprecedented, its officers were sent to be

criminally tried at Rome; and the Molossians in Epirus were forced

by false suspicions into actual revolt. The allied states had war-

contributions imposed upon them as if they had been conquered, and if

they appealed to the Roman senate, their citizens were executed or

sold into slavery: this was done, for instance, at Abdera, and similar

outrages were committed at Chalcis. The senate interfered very

earnestly:(4) it enjoined the liberation of the unfortunate Coroneans

and Abderites, and forbade the Roman magistrates to ask contributions

from the allies without its leave. Gaius Lucretius was unanimously

condemned by the burgesses. But such steps could not alter the fact,

that the military result of these first two campaigns had been null,

while the political result had been a foul stain on the Romans, whose

extraordinary successes in the east were based in no small degree on

their reputation for moral purity and solidity as compared with the

scandals of Hellenic administration. Had Philip commanded instead of

Perseus, the war would presumably have begun with the destruction of

the Roman army and the defection of most of the Hellenes; but Rome

was fortunate enough to be constantly outstripped in blunders by her

antagonists. Perseus was content with entrenching himself in

Macedonia--which towards the south and west is a true mountain-

fortress--as in a beleaguered town.

Marcius Enters Macedonia through the Pass of Tempe

The Armies on the Elpius

The third commander-in-chief also, whom Rome sent to Macedonia in 585,

Quintus Marcius Philippus, that already-mentioned upright guest-friend

of the king, was not at all equal to his far from easy task. He was

ambitious and enterprising, but a bad officer. His hazardous venture

of crossing Olympus by the pass of Lapathus westward of Tempe, leaving

behind one division to face the garrison of the pass, and making his

way with his main force through impracticable denies to Heracleum, is

not excused by the fact of its success. Not only might a handful of

resolute men have blocked the route, in which case retreat was out of

the question; but even after the passage, when he stood with the

Macedonian main force in front and the strongly-fortified mountain-

fortresses of Tempe and Lapathus behind him, wedged into a narrow

plain on the shore and without supplies or the possibility of foraging

for them, his position was no less desperate than when, in his first

consulate, he had allowed himself to be similarly surrounded in the

Ligurian defiles which thenceforth bore his name. But as an accident

saved him then, so the incapacity of Perseus saved him now. As if he

could not comprehend the idea of defending himself against the Romans

otherwise than by blocking the passes, he strangely gave himself over

as lost as soon as he saw the Romans on the Macedonian side of them,

fled in all haste to Pydna, and ordered his ships to be burnt and

his treasures to be sunk. But even this voluntary retreat of the

Macedonian army did not rescue the consul from his painful position.

He advanced indeed without hindrance, but was obliged after four days'

march to turn back for want of provisions; and, when the king came to

his senses and returned in all haste to resume the position which he

had abandoned, the Roman army would have been in great danger, had not

the impregnable Tempe surrendered at the right moment and handed over

its rich stores to the enemy. The communication with the south was

by this means secured to the Roman army; but Perseus had strongly

barricaded himself in his former well-chosen position on the bank of

the little river Elpius, and there checked the farther advance of the

Romans. So the Roman army remained, during the rest of the summer and

the winter, hemmed in in the farthest corner of Thessaly; and, while

the crossing of the passes was certainly a success and the first

substantial one in the war, it was due not to the ability of the

Roman, but to the blundering of the Macedonian, general. The Roman

fleet in vain attempted the capture of Demetrias, and performed no

exploit whatever. The light ships of Perseus boldly cruised between

the Cyclades, protected the corn-vessels destined for Macedonia, and

attacked the transports of the enemy. With the western army matters

were still worse: Appius Claudius could do nothing with his weakened

division, and the contingent which he asked from Achaia was prevented

from coming to him by the jealousy of the consul. Moreover, Genthius

had allowed himself to be bribed by Perseus with the promise of a

great sum of money to break with Rome, and to imprison the Roman

envoys; whereupon the frugal king deemed it superfluous to pay the

money which he had promised, since Genthius was now forsooth

compelled, independently of it, to substitute an attitude of decided

hostility to Rome for the ambiguous position which he had hitherto

maintained. Accordingly the Romans had a further petty war by the

side of the great one, which had already lasted three years. In fact

had Perseus been able to part with his money, he might easily have

aroused enemies still more dangerous to the Romans. A Celtic host

under Clondicus--10,000 horsemen and as many infantry--offered to take

service with him in Macedonia itself; but they could not agree as to

the pay. In Hellas too there was such a ferment that a guerilla

warfare might easily have been kindled with a little dexterity and a

full exchequer; but, as Perseus had no desire to give and the Greeks

did nothing gratuitously, the land remained quiet.

Paullus

At length the Romans resolved to send the right man to Greece. This

was Lucius Aemilius Paullus, son of the consul of the same name that

fell at Cannae; a man of the old nobility but of humble means, and

therefore not so successful in the comitia as on the battle-field,

where he had remarkably distinguished himself in Spain and still more

so in Liguria. The people elected him for the second time consul in

the year 586 on account of his merits--a course which was at that

time rare and exceptional. He was in all respects the right man: an

excellent general of the old school, strict as respected both himself

and his troops, and, notwithstanding his sixty years, still hale and

vigorous; an incorruptible magistrate--"one of the few Romans of that

age, to whom one could not offer money," as a contemporary says of

him--and a man of Hellenic culture, who, even when commander-in-chief,

embraced the opportunity of travelling through Greece to inspect its

works of art.

Perseus Is Driven Back to Pydna

Battle of Pydna

Perseus Taken Prisoner

As soon as the new general arrived in the camp at Heracleum, he gave

orders for the ill-guarded pass at Pythium to be surprised by Publius

Nasica, while skirmishes between the outposts in the channel of the

river Elpius occupied the attention of the Macedonians; the enemy was

thus turned, and was obliged to retreat to Pydna. There on the Roman

4th of September, 586, or on the 22nd of June of the Julian calendar

--an eclipse of the moon, which a scientific Roman officer announced

beforehand to the army that it might not be regarded as a bad omen,

affords in this case the means of determining the date--the outposts

accidentally fell into conflict as they were watering their horses

after midday; and both sides determined at once to give the battle,

which it was originally intended to postpone till the following day.

Passing through the ranks in person, without helmet or shield, the

grey-headed Roman general arranged his men. Scarce were they in

position, when the formidable phalanx assailed them; the general

himself, who had witnessed many a hard fight, afterwards acknowledged

that he had trembled. The Roman vanguard dispersed; a Paelignian

cohort was overthrown and almost annihilated; the legions themselves

hurriedly retreated till they reached a hill close upon the Roman

camp. Here the fortune of the day changed. The uneven ground and the

hurried pursuit had disordered the ranks of the phalanx; the Romans in

single cohorts entered at every gap, and attacked it on the flanks and

in rear; the Macedonian cavalry which alone could have rendered aid

looked calmly on, and soon fled in a body, the king among the

foremost; and thus the fate of Macedonia was decided in less than an

hour. The 3000 select phalangites allowed themselves to be cut down

to the last man; it was as if the phalanx, which fought its last great

battle at Pydna, had itself wished to perish there. The overthrow was

fearful; 20,000 Macedonians lay on the field of battle, 11,000 were

prisoners. The war was at an end, on the fifteenth day after Paullus

had assumed the command; all Macedonia submitted in two days. The

king fled with his gold--he still had more than 6000 talents

(1,460,000 pounds) in his chest--to Samothrace, accompanied by a few

faithful attendants. But he himself put to death one of these,

Evander of Crete, who was to be called to account as instigator of the

attempted assassination of Eumenes; and then the king's pages and his

last comrades also deserted him. For a moment he hoped that the right

of asylum would protect him; but he himself perceived that he was

clinging to a straw. An attempt to take flight to Cotys failed. So

he wrote to the consul; but the letter was not received, because he

had designated himself in it as king. He recognized his fate, and

surrendered to the Romans at discretion with his children and his

treasures, pusillanimous and weeping so as to disgust even his

conquerors. With a grave satisfaction, and with thoughts turning

rather on the mutability of fortune than on his own present success,

the consul received the most illustrious captive whom Roman general

had ever brought home. Perseus died a few years after, as a state

prisoner, at Alba on the Fucine lake;(5) his son in after years

earned a living in the same Italian country town as a clerk.

Thus perished the empire of Alexander the Great, which had subdued and

Hellenized the east, 144 years after its founder's death.

Defeat and Capture of Genthius

That the tragedy, moreover, might not be without its accompaniment of

farce, at the same time the war against "king" Genthius of Illyria was

also begun and ended by the praetor Lucius Anicius within thirty days.

The piratical fleet was taken, the capital Scodra was captured, and

the two kings, the heir of Alexander the Great and the heir of

Pleuratus, entered Rome side by side as prisoners.

Macedonia Broken Up

The senate had resolved that the peril, which the unseasonable

gentleness of Flamininus had brought on Rome, should not recur.

Macedonia was abolished. In the conference at Amphipolis on the

Strymon the Roman commission ordained that the compact, thoroughly

monarchical, single state should be broken up into four republican-

federative leagues moulded on the system of the Greek confederacies,

viz. that of Amphipolis in the eastern regions, that of Thessalonica

with the Chalcidian peninsula, that of Pella on the frontiers of

Thessaly, and that of Pelagonia in the interior. Intermarriages

between persons belonging to different confederacies were to be

invalid, and no one might be a freeholder in more than one of them.

All royal officials, as well as their grown-up sons, were obliged to

leave the country and resort to Italy on pain of death; the Romans

still dreaded, and with reason, the throbbings of the ancient loyalty.

The law of the land and the former constitution otherwise remained in

force; the magistrates were of course nominated by election in each

community, and the power in the communities as well as in the

confederacies was placed in the hands of the upper class. The royal

domains and royalties were not granted to the confederacies, and these

were specially prohibited from working the gold and silvei mines,

a chief source of the national wealth; but in 596 they were again

permitted to work at least the silver-mines.(6) The import of salt,

and the export of timber for shipbuilding, were prohibited. The land-

tax hitherto paid to the king ceased, and the confederacies and

communities were left to tax themselves; but these had to pay to Rome

half of the former land-tax, according to a rate fixed once for all,

amounting in all to 100 talents annually (24,000 pounds).(7) The

whole land was for ever disarmed, and the fortress of Demetrias was

razed; on the northern frontier alone a chain of posts was to be

retained to guard against the incursions of the barbarians. Of the

arms given up, the copper shields were sent to Rome, and the rest

were burnt.

The Romans gained their object. The Macedonian land still on two

occasions took up arms at the call of princes of the old reigning

house; but otherwise from that time to the present day it has remained

without a history.

Illyria Broken Up

Illyria was treated in a similar way. The kingdom of Genthius was

split up into three small free states. There too the freeholders paid

the half of the former land-tax to their new masters, with the

exception of the towns, which had adhered to Rome and in return

obtained exemption from land-tax--an exception, which there was no

opportunity to make in the case of Macedonia. The Illyrian piratic

fleet was confiscated, and presented to the more reputable Greek

communities along that coast. The constant annoyances, which the

Illyrians inflicted on the neighbours by their corsairs, were in this

way put an end to, at least for a lengthened period.

Cotys

Cotys in Thrace, who was difficult to be reached and might

conveniently be used against Eumenes, obtained pardon and received

back his captive son.

Thus the affairs of the north were settled, and Macedonia also was at

last released from the yoke of monarchy--in fact Greece was more free

than ever; a king no longer existed anywhere.

Humiliation of the Greeks in General

Course Pursued with Pergamus

But the Romans did not confine themselves to cutting the nerves and

sinews of Macedonia. The senate resolved at once to render all the

Hellenic states, friend and foe, for ever incapable of harm, and to

reduce all of them alike to the same humble clientship. The course

pursued may itself admit of justification; but the mode in which it

was carried out in the case of the more powerful of the Greek client-

states was unworthy of a great power, and showed that the epoch of

the Fabii and the Scipios was at an end.

The state most affected by this change in the position of parties was

the kingdom of the Attalids, which had been created and fostered by

Rome to keep Macedonia in check, and which now, after the destruction

of Macedonia, was forsooth no longer needed. It was not easy to find

a tolerable pretext for depriving the prudent and considerate Eumenes

of his privileged position, and allowing him to fall into disfavour.

All at once, about the time when the Romans were encamped at

Heracleum, strange reports were circulated regarding him--that he was

in secret intercourse with Perseus; that his fleet had been suddenly,

as it were, wafted away; that 500 talents had been offered for his

non-participation in the campaign and 1500 for his mediation to

procure peace, and that the agreement had only broken down through the

avarice of Perseus. As to the Pergamene fleet, the king, after having

paid his respects to the consul, went home with it at the same time

that the Roman fleet went into winter quarters. The story about

corruption was as certainly a fable as any newspaper canard of the

present day; for that the rich, cunning, and consistent Attalid, who

had primarily occasioned the breach between Rome and Macedonia by

his journey in 582 and had been on that account wellnigh assassinated

by the banditti of Perseus, should--at the moment when the real

difficulties of a war, of whose final issue, moreover, he could never

have had any serious doubt, were overcome--have sold to the instigator

of the murder his share in the spoil for a few talents, and should

have perilled the work of long years for so pitiful a consideration,

may be set down not merely as a fabrication, but as a very silly one.

That no proof was found either in the papers of Perseus or elsewhere,

is sufficiently certain; for even the Romans did not venture to

express those suspicions aloud, But they gained their object. Their

wishes appeared in the behaviour of the Roman grandees towards

Attalus, the brother of Eumenes, who had commanded the Pergamene

auxiliary troops in Greece. Their brave and faithful comrade was

received in Rome with open arms and invited to ask not for his

brother, but for himself--the senate would be glad to give him a

kingdom of his own. Attalus asked nothing but Aenus and Maronea. The

senate thought that this was only a preliminary request, and granted

it with great politeness. But when he took his departure without

having made any further demands, and the senate came to perceive that

the reigning family in Pergamus did not live on such terms with each

other as were customary in princely houses, Aenus and Maronea were

declared free cities. The Pergamenes obtained not a foot's breadth

of territory out of the spoil of Macedonia; if after the victory over

Antiochus the Romans had still saved forms as respected Philip, they

were now disposed to hurt and to humiliate. About this time the

senate appears to have declared Pamphylia, for the possession of which

Eumenes and Antiochus had hitherto contended, independent. What was

of more importance, the Galatians--who had been substantially in the

power of Eumenes, ever since he had expelled the king of Pontus by

force of arms from Caiatia and had on making peace extorted from him

the promise that he would maintain no further communication with the

Galatian princes--now, reckoning beyond doubt on the variance that had

taken place between Eumenes and the Romans, if not directly instigated

by the latter, rose against Eumenes, overran his kingdom, and brought

him into great danger. Eumenes besought the mediation of the Romans;

the Roman envoy declared his readiness to mediate, but thought it

better that Attalus, who commanded the Pergamene army, should not

accompany him lest the barbarians might be put into ill humour.

Singularly enough, he accomplished nothing; in fact, he told on

his return that his mediation had only exasperated the barbarians.

No long time elapsed before the independence of the Galatians was

expressly recognized and guaranteed by the senate. Eumenes determined

to proceed to Rome in person, and to plead his cause in the senate.

But the latter, as if troubled by an evil conscience, suddenly decreed

that in future kings should not be allowed to come to Rome; and

despatched a quaestor to meet him at Brundisium, to lay before him

this decree of the senate, to ask him what he wanted, and to hint to

him that they would be glad to see his speedy departure. The king was

long silent; at length he said that he desired nothing farther, and

re-embarked. He saw how matters stood: the epoch of half-powerful and

half-free alliance was at an end; that of impotent subjection began.

Humiliation of Rhodes

Similar treatment befell the Rhodians. They had a singularly

privileged position: their relation to Rome assumed the form not of

symmachy properly so called, but of friendly equality; it did not

prevent them from entering into alliances of any kind, and did not

compel them to supply the Romans with a contingent on demand. This

very circumstance was presumably the real reason why their good

understanding with Rome had already for some time been impaired.

The first dissensions with Rome had arisen in consequence of the

rising of the Lycians, who were handed over to Rhodes after the defeat

of Antiochus, against their oppressors who had (576) cruelly reduced

them to slavery as revolted subjects; the Lycians, however, asserted

that they were not subjects but allies of the Rhodians, and prevailed

with this plea in the Roman senate, which was invited to settle the

doubtful meaning of the instrument of peace. But in this result a

justifiable sympathy with the victims of grievous oppression had

perhaps the chief share; at least nothing further was done on the part

of the Romans, who left this as well as other Hellenic quarrels to

take their course. When the war with Perseus broke out, the Rhodians,

like all other sensible Greeks, viewed it with regret, and blamed

Eumenes in particular as the instigator of it, so that his festal

embassy was not even permitted to be present at the festival of Helios

in Rhodes. But this did not prevent them from adhering to Rome and

keeping the Macedonian party, which existed in Rhodes as well as

everywhere else, aloof from the helm of affairs. The permission given

to them in 585 to export grain from Sicily shows the continuance of

the good understanding with Rome. All of a sudden, shortly before the

battle of Pydna, Rhodian envoys appeared at the Roman head-quarters

and in the Roman senate, announcing that the Rhodians would no longer

tolerate this war which was injurious to their Macedonian traffic and

their revenue from port-dues, that they were disposed themselves to

declare war against the party which should refuse to make peace, and

that with this view they had already concluded an alliance with Crete

and with the Asiatic cities. Many caprices are possible in a republic

governed by primary assemblies; but this insane intervention of a

commercial city--which can only have been resolved on after the

fall of the pass of Tempe was known at Rhodes--requires special

explanation. The key to it is furnished by the well-attested account

that the consul Quintus Marcius, that master of the "new-fashioned

diplomacy," had in the camp at Heracleum (and therefore after the

occupation of the pass of Tempe) loaded the Rhodian envoy Agepolis

with civilities and made an underhand request to him to mediate a

peace. Republican wrongheadedness and vanity did the rest; the

Rhodians fancied that the Romans had given themselves up as lost;

they were eager to play the part of mediator among four great powers

at once; communications were entered into with Perseus; Rhodian envoys

with Macedonian sympathies said more than they should have said; and

they were caught. The senate, which doubtless was itself for the most

part unaware of those intrigues, heard the strange announcement, as

may be conceived, with indignation, and was glad of the favourable

opportunity to humble the haughty mercantile city. A warlike praetor

went even so far as to propose to the people a declaration of war

against Rhodes. In vain the Rhodian ambassadors repeatedly on their

knees adjured the senate to think of the friendship of a hundred and

forty years rather than of the one offence; in vain they sent the

heads of the Macedonian party to the scaffold or to Rome; in vain they

sent a massive wreath of gold in token of their gratitude for the non-

declaration of war. The upright Cato indeed showed that strictly the

Rhodians had committed no offence and asked whether the Romans were

desirous to undertake the punishment of wishes and thoughts, and

whether they could blame the nations for being apprehensive that Rome

might allow herself all license if she had no longer any one to fear?

His words and warnings were in vain. The senate deprived the Rhodians

of their possessions on the mainland, which yielded a yearly produce

of 120 talents (29,000 pounds). Still heavier were the blows aimed at

the Rhodian commerce. The very prohibition of the import of salt to,

and of the export of shipbuilding timber from, Macedonia appears to

have been directed against Rhodes. Rhodian commerce was still more

directly affected by the erection of the free port at Delos; the

Rhodian customs-dues, which hitherto had produced 1,000,000 drachmae

(41,000 pounds) annually, sank in a very brief period to 150,000

drachmae (6180 pounds). Generally, the Rhodians were paralyzed in

their freedom of action and in their liberal and bold commercial

policy, and the state began to languish. Even the alliance asked

for was at first refused, and was only renewed in 590 after urgent

entreaties. The equally guilty but powerless Cretans escaped with

a sharp rebuke.

Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War

With Syria and Egypt the Romans could go to work more summarily.

War had broken out between them; and Coelesyria and Palaestina formed

once more the subject of dispute. According to the assertion of the

Egyptians, those provinces had been ceded to Egypt on the marriage of

the Syrian Cleopatra: this however the court of Babylon, which was in

actual possession, disputed. Apparently the charging of her dowry on

the taxes of the Coelesyrian cities gave occasion to the quarrel, and

the Syrian side was in the right; the breaking out of the war was

occasioned by the death of Cleopatra in 581, with which at latest the

payments of revenue terminated. The war appears to have been begun by

Egypt; but king Antiochus Epiphanes gladly embraced the opportunity

of once more--and for the last time--endeavouring to achieve the

traditional aim of the policy of the Seleucidae, the acquisition of

Egypt, while the Romans were employed in Macedonia. Fortune seemed

favourable to him. The king of Egypt at that time, Ptolemy VI,

Philometor, the son of Cleopatra, had hardly passed the age of boyhood

and had bad advisers; after a great victory on the Syro-Egyptian

frontier Antiochus was able to advance into the territories of his

nephew in the same year in which the legions landed in Greece (583),

and soon had the person of the king in his power. Matters began to

look as if Antiochus wished to possess himself of all Egypt in

Philometor's name; Alexandria accordingly closed its gates against

him, deposed Philometor, and nominated as king in his stead his

younger brother, named Euergetes II, or the Fat. Disturbances in his

own kingdom recalled the Syrian king from Egypt; when he returned, he

found that the brothers had come to an understanding during his

absence; and he then continued the war against both. Just as he lay

before Alexandria, not long after the battle of Pydna (586), the Roman

envoy Gaius Popillius, a harsh rude man, arrived, and intimated to him

the command of the senate that he should restore all that he had

conquered and should evacuate Egypt within a set term. Antiochus

asked time for consideration; but the consular drew with his staff a

circle round the king, and bade him declare his intentions before he

stepped beyond the circle. Antiochus replied that he would comply;

and marched off to his capital that he might there, in his character

of "the god, the brilliant bringer of victory," celebrate in Roman

fashion his conquest of Egypt and parody the triumph of Paullus.

Measures of Security in Greece

Egypt voluntarily submitted to the Roman protectorate; and thereupon

the kings of Babylon also desisted from the last attempt to maintain

their independence against Rome. As with Macedonia in the war waged

by Perseus, the Seleucidae in the war regarding Coelesyria made a

similar and similarly final effort to recover their former power; but

it is a significant indication of the difference between the two

kingdoms, that in the former case the legions, in the latter the

abrupt language of a diplomatist, decided the controversy. In Greece

itself, as the two Boeotian cities had already paid more than a

sufficient penalty, the Molottians alone remained to be punished as

allies of Perseus. Acting on secret orders from the senate, Paullus

in one day gave up seventy townships in Epirus to plunder, and sold

the inhabitants, 150,000 in number, into slavery. The Aetolians lost

Amphipolis, and the Acarnanians Leucas, on account of their equivocal

behaviour; whereas the Athenians, who continued to play the part of

the begging poet in their own Aristophanes, not only obtained a gift

of Delos and Lemnos, but were not ashamed even to petition for the

deserted site of Haliartus, which was assigned to them accordingly.

Thus something was done for the Muses; but more had to be done for

justice. There was a Macedonian party in every city, and therefore

trials for high treason began in all parts of Greece. Whoever had

served in the army of Perseus was immediately executed, whoever was

compromised by the papers of the king or the statements of political

opponents who flocked to lodge informations, was despatched to Rome;

the Achaean Callicrates and the Aetolian Lyciscus distinguished

themselves in the trade of informers. In this way the more

conspicuous patriots among the Thessalians, Aetolians, Acarnanians,

Lesbians and so forth, were removed from their native land; and,

in particular, more than a thousand Achaeans were thus disposed of

--a step taken with the view not so much of prosecuting those who were

carried off, as of silencing the childish opposition of the Hellenes.

To the Achaeans, who, as usual, were not content till they got the

answer which they anticipated, the senate, wearied by constant

requests for the commencement of the investigation, at length roundly

declared that till further orders the persons concerned were to remain

in Italy. There they were placed in country towns in the interior,

and tolerably well treated; but attempts to escape were punished with

death. The position of the former officials removed from Macedonia

was, in all probability, similar. This expedient, violent as it was,

was still, as things stood, the most lenient, and the enraged Greeks

of the Roman party were far from content with the paucity of the

executions. Lyciscus had accordingly deemed it proper, by way of

preliminary, to have 500 of the leading men of the Aetolian patriotic

party slain at the meeting of the diet; the Roman commission, which

needed the man, suffered the deed to pass unpunished, and merely

censured the employment of Roman soldiers in the execution of this

Hellenic usage. We may presume, however, that the Romans instituted

the system of deportation to Italy partly in order to prevent such

horrors. As in Greece proper no power existed even of such importance

as Rhodes or Pergamus, there was no need in its case for any further

humiliation; the steps taken were taken only in the exercise of

justice--in the Roman sense, no doubt, of that term--and for

the prevention of the most scandalous and palpable outbreaks of

party discord.

Rome and Her Dependencies

All the Hellenistic states had thus been completely subjected to the

protectorate of Rome, and the whole empire of Alexander the Great had

fallen to the Roman commonwealth just as if the city had inherited it

from his heirs. From all sides kings and ambassadors flocked to Rome

to congratulate her; and they showed that fawning is never more abject

than when kings are in the antechamber. King Massinissa, who only

desisted from presenting himself in person on being expressly

prohibited from doing so, ordered his son to declare that he

regarded himself as merely the beneficiary, and the Romans as the true

proprietors, of his kingdom, and that he would always be content with

what they were willing to leave to him. There was at least truth

in this. But Prusias king of Bithynia, who had to atone for his

neutrality, bore off the palm in this contest of flattery; he fell on

his face when he was conducted into the senate, and did homage to "the

delivering gods." As he was so thoroughly contemptible, Polybius tells

us, they gave him a polite reply, and presented him with the fleet

of Perseus.

The moment was at least well chosen for such acts of homage. Polybius

dates from the battle of Pydna the full establishment of the universal

empire of Rome. It was in fact the last battle in which a civilized

state confronted Rome in the field on a footing of equality with her

as a great power; all subsequent struggles were rebellions or wars

with peoples beyond the pale of the Romano-Greek civilization

--with barbarians, as they were called. The whole civilized world

thenceforth recognized in the Roman senate the supreme tribunal, whose

commissions decided in the last resort between kings and nations; and

to acquire its language and manners foreign princes and youths of

quality resided in Rome. A clear and earnest attempt to get rid of

this dominion was in reality made only once--by the great Mithradates

of Pontus. The battle of Pydna, moreover, marks the last occasion on

which the senate still adhered to the state-maxim that they should, if

possible, hold no possessions and maintain no garrisons beyond the

Italian seas, but should keep the numerous states dependent on them in

order by a mere political supremacy. The aim of their policy was that

these states should neither decline into utter weakness and anarchy,

as had nevertheless happened in Greece nor emerge out of their half-

free position into complete independence, as Macedonia had attempted

to do not without success. No state was to be allowed utterly to

perish, but no one was to be permitted to stand on its own resources.

Accordingly the vanquished foe held at least an equal, often a better,

position with the Roman diplomatists than the faithful ally; and,

while a defeated opponent was reinstated, those who attempted to

reinstate themselves were abased--as the Aetolians, Macedonia after

the Asiatic war, Rhodes, and Pergamus learned by experience. But not

only did this part of protector soon prove as irksome to the masters

as to the servants; the Roman protectorate, with its ungrateful

Sisyphian toil that continually needed to be begun afresh, showed

itself to be intrinsically untenable. Indications of a change of

system, and of an increasing disinclination on the part of Rome to

tolerate by its side intermediate states even in such independence as

was possible for them, were very clearly given in the destruction of

the Macedonian monarchy after the battle of Pydna, The more and more

frequent and more and more unavoidable intervention in the internal

affairs of the petty Greek states through their misgovernment and

their political and social anarchy; the disarming of Macedonia, where

the northern frontier at any rate urgently required a defence

different from that of mere posts; and, lastly, the introduction of

the payment of land-tax to Rome from Macedonia and Illyria, were so

many symptoms of the approaching conversion of the client states

into subjects of Rome.

The Italian and Extra-Italian Policy of Rome

If, in conclusion, we glance back at the career of Rome from the union

of Italy to the dismemberment of Macedonia, the universal empire of

Rome, far from appearing as a gigantic plan contrived and carried out

by an insatiable thirst for territorial aggrandizement, appears to

have been a result which forced itself on the Roman government

without, and even in opposition to, its wish. It is true that the

former view naturally suggests itself--Sallust is right when he makes

Mithradates say that the wars of Rome with tribes, cities, and kings

originated in one and the same prime cause, the insatiable longing

after dominion and riches; but it is an error to give forth this

judgment--influenced by passion and the event--as a historical fact.

It is evident to every one whose observation is not superficial, that

the Roman government during this whole period wished and desired

nothing but the sovereignty of Italy; that they were simply desirous

not to have too powerful neighbours alongside of them; and that--not

out of humanity towards the vanquished, but from the very sound view

that they ought not to suffer the kernel of their empire to be stifled

by the shell--they earnestly opposed the introduction first of Africa,

then of Greece, and lastly of Asia into the sphere of the Roman

protectorate, till circumstances in each case compelled, or at least

suggested with irresistible force, the extension of that sphere. The

Romans always asserted that they did not pursue a policy of conquest,

and that they were always the party assailed; and this was something

more, at any rate, than a mere phrase. They were in fact driven to

all their great wars with the exception of that concerning Sicily--to

those with Hannibal and Antiochus, no less than to those with Philip

and Perseus--either by a direct aggression or by an unparalleled

disturbance of the existing political relations; and hence they were

ordinarily taken by surprise on their outbreak. That they did not

after victory exhibit the moderation which they ought to have done in

the interest more especially of Italy itself; that the retention of

Spain, for instance, the undertaking of the guardianship of Africa,

and above all the half-fanciful scheme of bringing liberty everywhere

to the Greeks, were in the light of Italian policy grave errors, is

sufficiently clear. But the causes of these errors were, on the

one hand a blind dread of Carthage, on the other a still blinder

enthusiasm for Hellenic liberty; so little did the Romans exhibit

during this period the lust of conquest, that they, on the contrary,

displayed a very judicious dread of it. The policy of Rome throughout

was not projected by a single mightly intellect and bequeathed

traditionally from generation to generation; it was the policy of a

very able but somewhat narrow-minded deliberative assembly, which had

far too little power of grand combination, and far too much of a right

instinct for the preservation of its own commonwealth, to devise

projects in the spirit of a Caesar or a Napoleon. The universal

empire of Rome had its ultimate ground in the political development of

antiquity in general. The ancient world knew nothing of a balance of

power among nations; and therefore every nation which had attained

internal unity strove either directly to subdue its neighbors, as did

the Hellenic states, or at any rate to render them innocuous, as Rome

did,--an effort, it is true, which also issued ultimately in

subjugation. Egypt was perhaps the only great power in antiquity

which seriously pursued a system of equilibrium; on the opposite

system Seleucus and Antigonous, Hannibal and Scipio, came into

collision. And, if it seems to us sad that all the other richly-

endowed and highly-developed nations of antiquity had to perish in

order to enrich a single one out of the whole, and that all in the

long run appear to have only arisen to contribute to the greatness

of Italy and to the decay involved in that greatness, yet historical

justice must acknowledge that this result was not produced by the

military superiority of the legion over the phalanx, but was the

necessary development of the international relations of antiquity

generally-so that the issue was not decided by provoking chance,

but was the fulfillment of an unchangeable, and therefore

endurable, destiny.

Notes for Chapter X

1. --Ide gar prasde panth alion ammi dedukein-- (i. 102).

2. II. VII. Last Struggles in Italy

3. The legal dissolution of the Boeotian confederacy, however, took

place not at this time, but only after the destruction of Corinth

(Pausan. vii. 14, 4; xvi. 6).

4. The recently discovered decree of the senate of 9th Oct. 584, which

regulates the legal relations of Thisbae (Ephemeris epigraphica, 1872,

p. 278, fig.; Mitth. d. arch. Inst., in Athen, iv. 235, fig.), gives

a clear insight into these relations.

5. The story, that the Romans, in order at once to keep the promise

which had guaranteed his life and to take vengeance on him, put him

to death by depriving him of sleep, is certainly a fable.

6. The statement of Cassiodorus, that the Macedonian mines were

reopened in 596, receives its more exact interpretation by means of

the coins. No gold coins of the four Macedonias are extant; either

therefore the gold-mines remained closed, or the gold extracted was

converted into bars. On the other hand there certainly exist silver

coins of Macedonia -prima- (Amphipolis) in which district the silver-

mines were situated. For the brief period, during which they must

have been struck (596-608), the number of them is remarkably great,

and proves either that the mines were very energetically worked, or

that the old royal money was recoined in large quantity.

7. The statement that the Macedonian commonwealth was "relieved of

seignorial imposts and taxes" by the Romans (Polyb. xxxvii. 4) does

not necessarily require us to assume a subsequent remission of these

taxes: it is sufficient, for the explanation of Polybius' words, to

assume that the hitherto seignorial tax now became a public one. The

continuance of the constitution granted to the province of Macedonia

by Paullus down to at least the Augustan age (Liv. xlv. 32; Justin,

xxxiii. 2), would, it is true, be compatible also with the remission

of the taxes.

CHAPTER XI

The Government and the Governed

Formation of New Parties

The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth

of its aristocratic character. We have already(1) indicated that the

plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well

as, and in some sense still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for,

while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights

prevailed, the new constitution set out from a distinction between

the senatorial houses who were privileged in point of burgess

rights and of burgess usufructs, and the mass of the other citizens.

Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the

formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a

corresponding opposition were formed; and we have already shown how

the former engrafted itself as it were on the fallen patriciate, and

how, accordingly, the first movements of the new party of progress

were mixed up with the last movements of the old opposition between

the orders.(2) The formation of these new parties began in the fifth

century, but they assumed their definite shape only in the century

which followed. The development of this internal change is, as it

were, drowned amidst the noise of the great wars and victories, and

not merely so, but the process of formation is in this case more

withdrawn from view than any other in Roman history. Like a crust

of ice gathering imperceptibly over the surface of a stream and

imperceptibly confining it more and more, this new Roman aristocracy

silently arose; and not less imperceptibly, like the current

concealing itself beneath and slowly extending, there arose in

opposition to it the new party of progress. It is very difficult

to sum up in a general historical view the several, individually

insignificant, traces of these two antagonistic movements, which do

not for the present yield their historical product in any distinct

actual catastrophe. But the freedom hitherto enjoyed in the

commonwealth was undermined, and the foundation for future revolutions

was laid, during this epoch; and the delineation of these as well as

of the development of Rome in general would remain imperfect, if we

should fail to give some idea of the strength of that encrusting ice,

of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and

cracking that foretold the mighty breaking up which was at hand.

Germs of the Nobility in the Patriciate

The Roman nobility attached itself, in form, to earlier institutions

belonging to the times of the patriciate. Persons who once had filled

the highest ordinary magistracies of the state not only, as a matter

of course, practically enjoyed all along a higher honour, but also had

at an early period certain honorary privileges associated with their

position. The most ancient of these was doubtless the permission

given to the descendants of such magistrates to place the wax images

of these illustrious ancestors after their death in the family hall,

along the wall where the pedigree was painted, and to have these

images carried, on occasion of the death of members of the family,

in the funeral procession.(3) To appreciate the importance of this

distinction, we must recollect that the honouring of images was

regarded in the Italo-Hellenic view as unrepublican, and on that

account the Roman state-police did not at all tolerate the exhibition

of effigies of the living, and strictly superintended that of effigies

of the dead. With this privilege were associated various external

insignia, reserved by law or custom for such magistrates and their

descendants:--the golden finger-ring of the men, the silver-mounted

trappings of the youths, the purple border on the toga and the golden

amulet-case of the boys (4)--trifling matters, but still important in

a community where civic equality even in external appearance was so

strictly adhered to,(5) and where, even during the second Punic war,

a burgess was arrested and kept for years in prison because he had

appeared in public, in a manner not sanctioned by law, with a garland

of roses upon his head.(6)

Patricio-Plebian Nobility

These distinctions may perhaps have already existed partially in the

time of the patrician government, and, so long as families of higher

and humbler rank were distinguished within the patriciate, may have

served as external insignia for the former; but they certainly only

acquired political importance in consequence of the change of

constitution in 387, by which the plebeian families that attained

the consulate were placed on a footing of equal privilege with the

patrician families, all of whom were now probably entitled to carry

images of their ancestors. Moreover, it was now settled that the

offices of state to which these hereditary privileges were attached

should include neither the lower nor the extraordinary magistracies

nor the tribunate of the plebs, but merely the consulship, the

praetorship which stood on the same level with it,(7) and the curule

aedileship, which bore a part in the administration of public justice

and consequently in the exercise of the sovereign powers of the

state.(8) Although this plebeian nobility, in the strict sense of the

term, could only be formed after the curule offices were opened to

plebeians, yet it exhibited in a short time, if not at the very first,

a certain compactness of organization--doubtless because such a

nobility had long been prefigured in the old senatorial plebeian

families. The result of the Licinian laws in reality therefore

amounted nearly to what we should now call the creation of a batch of

peers. Now that the plebeian families ennobled by their curule

ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and

acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the

commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they

had started; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy

and a hereditary nobility--both of which in fact had never

disappeared--but there was a governing hereditary nobility, and the

feud between the gentes in possession of the government and the

commons rising in revolt against the gentes could not but begin

afresh. And matters very soon reached that stage. The nobility was

not content with its honorary privileges which were matters of

comparative indifference, but strove after separate and sole political

power, and sought to convert the most important institutions of the

state--the senate and the equestrian order--from organs of the

commonwealth into organs of the plebeio-patrician aristocracy.

The Nobility in Possession of the Senate

The dependence -de jure- of the Roman senate of the republic, more

especially of the larger patricio-plebeian senate, on the magistracy

had rapidly become lax, and had in fact been converted into

independence. The subordination of the public magistracies to

the state-council, introduced by the revolution of 244;(9) the

transference of the right of summoning men to the senate from the

consul to the censor;(10) lastly, and above all, the legal recognition

of the right of those who had been curule magistrates to a seat and

vote in the senate,(11) had converted the senate from a council

summoned by the magistrates and in many respects dependent on them

into a governing corporation virtually independent, and in a certain

sense filling up its own ranks; for the two modes by which its members

obtained admission--election to a curule office and summoning by the

censor--were both virtually in the power of the governing board

itself. The burgesses, no doubt, at this epoch were still too

independent to allow the entire exclusion of non-nobles from the

senate, and the nobility were perhaps still too judicious even to wish

for this; but, owing to the strictly aristocratic gradations in the

senate itself--in which those who had been curule magistrates were

sharply distinguished, according to their respective classes of

-consulares-, -praetorii-, and -aedilicii-, from the senators who

had not entered the senate through a curule office and were therefore

excluded from debate--the non-nobles, although they probably sat in

considerable numbers in the senate, were reduced to an insignificant

and comparatively uninfluential position in it, and the senate became

substantially a mainstay of the nobility.

The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries

The institution of the equites was developed into a second, less

important but yet far from unimportant, organ of the nobility. As the

new hereditary nobility had not the power to usurp sole possession of

the comitia, it necessarily became in the highest degree desirable

that it should obtain at least a separate position within the body

representing the community. In the assembly of the tribes there

was no method of managing this; but the equestrian centuries under

the Servian organization seemed as it were created for the very

purpose. The 1800 horses which the community furnished(12) were

constitutionally disposed of likewise by the censors. It was, no

doubt, the duty of these to select the equites on military grounds and

at their musters to insist that all horsemen incapacitated by age or

otherwise, or at all unserviceable, should surrender their public

horse; but the very nature of the institution implied that the

equestrian horses should be given especially to men of means, and it

was not at all easy to hinder the censors from looking to genteel

birth more than to capacity, and from allowing men of standing who

were once admitted, senators particularly, to retain their horse

beyond the proper time. Perhaps it was even fixed by law that the

senator might retain it as long as he wished. Accordingly it became

at least practically the rule for the senators to vote in the eighteen

equestrian centuries, and the other places in these were assigned

chiefly to the young men of the nobility. The military system, of

course, suffered from this not so much through the unfitness for

effective service of no small part of the legionary cavalry, as

through the destruction of military equality to which the change gave

rise, inasmuch as the young men of rank more and more withdrew from

service in the infantry. The closed aristocratic corps of the equites

proper came to set the tone for the whole legionary cavalry, taken

from the citizens who were of highest position by descent and wealth.

This enables us in some degree to understand why the equites during

the Sicilian war refused to obey the order of the consul Gaius

Aurelius Cotta that they should work at the trenches with the

legionaries (502), and why Cato, when commander-in-chief of the army

in Spain, found himself under the necessity of addressing a severe

reprimand to his cavalry. But this conversion of the burgess-cavalry

into a mounted guard of nobles redounded not more decidedly to the

injury of the commonwealth than to the advantage of the nobility,

which acquired in the eighteen equestrian centuries a suffrage not

merely separate but giving the tone to the rest.

Separation of the Orders in the Theatre

Of a kindred character was the formal separation of the places

assigned to the senatorial order from those occupied by the rest of

the multitude as spectators at the national festivals. It was the

great Scipio, who effected this change in his second consulship in

560. The national festival was as much an assembly of the people as

were the centuries convoked for voting; and the circumstance that the

former had no resolutions to pass made the official announcement of a

distinction between the ruling order and the body of subjects--which

the separation implied--all the more significant. The innovation

accordingly met with much censure even from the ruling class, because

it was simply invidious and not useful, and because it gave a very

manifest contradiction to the efforts of the more prudent portion of

the aristocracy to conceal their exclusive government under the forms

of civil equality.

The Censorship a Prop of the Nobility

These circumstances explain, why the censorship became the pivot of

the later republican constitution; why an office, originally standing

by no means in the first rank, came to be gradually invested with

external insignia which did not at all belong to it in itself and with

an altogether unique aristocratic-republican glory, and was viewed as

the crown and completion of a well-conducted public career; and why

the government looked upon every attempt of the opposition to

introduce their men into this office, or even to hold the censor

responsible to the people for his administration during or after his

term of office, as an attack on their palladium, and presented a

united front of resistance to every such attempt. It is sufficient

in this respect to mention the storm which the candidature of Cato for

the censorship provoked, and the measures, so extraordinarily reckless

and in violation of all form, by which the senate prevented the

judicial prosecution of the two unpopular censors of the year 550.

But with their magnifying the glory of the censorship the government

combined a characteristic distrust of this, their most important and

for that very reason most dangerous, instrument. It was thoroughly

necessary to leave to the censors absolute control over the personal

composition of the senate and the equites; for the right of exclusion

could not well be separated from the right of summoning, and it was

indispensable to retain such a right, not so much for the purpose of

removing from the senate capable men of the opposition--a course which

the smooth-going government of that age cautiously avoided--as for the

purpose of preserving around the aristocracy that moral halo, without

which it must have speedily become a prey to the opposition. The

right of ejection was retained; but what they chiefly needed was the

glitter of the naked blade--the edge of it, which they feared, they

took care to blunt. Besides the check involved in the nature of the

office--under which the lists of the members of the aristocratic

corporations were liable to revision only at intervals of five years

--and besides the limitations resulting from the right of veto vested

in the colleague and the right of cancelling vested in the successor,

there was added a farther check which exercised a very sensible

influence; a usage equivalent to law made it the duty of the censor

not to erase from the list any senator or knight without specifying in

writing the grounds for his decision, or, in other words, adopting, as

a rule, a quasi-judicial procedure.

Remodelling of the Constitution According to the Views of the Nobility

Inadequate Number of Magistrates

In this political position--mainly based on the senate, the equites,

and the censorship--the nobility not only usurped in substance the

government, but also remodelled the constitution according to their

own views. It was part of their policy, with a view to keep up the

appreciation of the public magistracies, to add to the number of these

as little as possible, and to keep it far below what was required by

the extension of territory and the increase of business. Only the

most urgent exigencies were barely met by the division of the judicial

functions hitherto discharged by a single praetor between two judges

--one of whom tried the lawsuits between Roman burgesses, and the

other those that arose between non-burgesses or between burgess and

non-burgess--in 511, and by the nomination of four auxiliary consuls

for the four transmarine provinces of Sicily (527), Sardinia including

Corsica (527), and Hither and Further Spain (557). The far too

summary mode of initialing processes in Rome, as well as the

increasing influence of the official staff, are doubtless traceable

in great measure to the practically inadequate numbers of the

Roman magistracy.

Election of Officers in the Comitia

Among the innovations originated by the government--which were none

the less innovations, that almost uniformly they changed not the

letter, but merely the practice of the existing constitution--the most

prominent were the measures by which the filling up of officers' posts

as well as of civil magistracies was made to depend not, as the letter

of the constitution allowed and its spirit required, simply on merit

and ability, but more and more on birth and seniority. As regards the

nomination of staff-officers this was done not in form, but all the

more in substance. It had already, in the course of the previous

period, been in great part transferred from the general to the

burgesses;(13) in this period came the further step, that the whole

staff-officers of the regular yearly levy--the twenty-four military

tribunes of the four ordinary legions--were nominated in the -comitia

tributa-. Thus a line of demarcation more and more insurmountable was

drawn between the subalterns, who gained their promotion from the

general by punctual and brave service, and the staff, which obtained

its privileged position by canvassing the burgesses.(14) With a view

to check simply the worst abuses in this respect and to prevent young

men quite untried from holding these important posts, it became

necessary to require, as a preliminary to the bestowal of staff

appointments, evidence of a certain number of years of service.

Nevertheless, when once the military tribunate, the true pillar of the

Roman military system, was laid down as the first stepping-stone in

the political career of the young aristocrats, the obligation of

service inevitably came to be frequently eluded, and the election of

officers became liable to all the evils of democratic canvassing and

of aristocratic exclusiveness. It was a cutting commentary on the new

institution, that in serious wars (as in 583) it was found necessary

to suspend this democratic mode of electing officers, and to leave

once more to the general the nomination of his staff.

Restrictions on the Election of Consuls and Censors

In the case of civil offices, the first and chief object was to

limit re-election to the supreme magistracies. This was certainly

necessary, if the presidency of annual kings was not to be an empty

name; and even in the preceding period reelection to the consulship

was not permitted till after the lapse often years, while in the case

if the censorship it was altogether forbidden.(15) No farther law was

passed in the period before us; but an increased stringency in its

application is obvious from the fact that, while the law as to the ten

years' interval was suspended in 537 during the continuance of the war

in Italy, there was no farther dispensation from it afterwards, and

indeed towards the close of this period re-election seldom occurred at

all. Moreover, towards the end of this epoch (574) a decree of the

people was issued, binding the candidates for public magistracies to

undertake them in a fixed order of succession, and to observe certain

intervals between the offices, and certain limits of age. Custom,

indeed, had long prescribed both of these; but it was a sensibly

felt restriction of the freedom of election, when the customary

qualification was raised into a legal requirement, and the right of

disregarding such requirements in extraordinary cases was withdrawn

from the elective body. In general, admission to the senate was

thrown open to persons belonging to the ruling families without

distinction as to ability, while not only were the poorer and humbler

ranks of the population utterly precluded from access to the offices

of government, but all Roman burgesses not belonging to the hereditary

aristocracy were practically excluded, not indeed exactly from the

senate, but from the two highest magistracies, the consulship and the

censorship. After Manius Curius and Gaius Fabricius,(16) no instance

can be pointed out of a consul who did not belong to the social

aristocracy, and probably no instance of the kind occurred at all.

But the number of the -gentes-, which appear for the first time in the

lists of consuls and censors in the half-century from the beginning of

the war with Hannibal to the close of that with Perseus, is extremely

limited; and by far the most of these, such as the Flaminii, Terentii,

Porcii, Acilii, and Laelii, may be referred to elections by the

opposition, or are traceable to special aristocratic connections.

The election of Gaius Laelius in 564, for instance, was evidently

due to the Scipios. The exclusion of the poorer classes from the

government was, no doubt, required by the altered circumstances of the

case. Now that Rome had ceased to be a purely Italian state and had

adopted Hellenic culture, it was no longer possible to take a small

farmer from the plough and to set him at the head of the community.

But it was neither necessary nor beneficial that the elections should

almost without exception be confined to the narrow circle of the

curule houses, and that a "new man" could only make his way into that

circle by a sort of usurpation.(17) No doubt a certain hereditary

character was inherent not merely in the nature of the senate as

an institution, in so far as it rested from the outset on a

representation of the clans,(18) but in the nature of aristocracy

generally, in so far as statesmanly wisdom and statesmanly experience

are bequeathed from the able father to the able son, and the inspiring

spirit of an illustrious ancestry fans every noble spark within the

human breast into speedier and more brilliant flame. In this sense

the Roman aristocracy had been at all times hereditary; in fact, it

had displayed its hereditary character with great naivete in the old

custom of the senator taking his sons with him to the senate, and of

the public magistrate decorating his sons, as it were by anticipation,

with the insignia of the highest official honour--the purple border of

the consular, and the golden amulet-case of the triumphator. But,

while in the earlier period the hereditariness of the outward dignity

had been to a certain extent conditioned by the inheritance of

intrinsic worth, and the senatorial aristocracy had guided the state

not primarily by virtue of hereditary right, but by virtue of the

highest of all rights of representation--the right of the excellent,

as contrasted with the ordinary, man--it sank in this epoch (and with

specially great rapidity after the end of the Hannibalic war) from its

original high position, as the aggregate of those in the community who

were most experienced in counsel and action, down to an order of lords

filling up its ranks by hereditary succession, and exercising

collegiate misrule.

Family Government

Indeed, matters had already at this time reached such a height, that

out of the grave evil of oligarchy there emerged the still worse evil

of usurpation of power by particular families. We have already

spoken(19) of the offensive family-policy of the conqueror of Zama,

and of his unhappily successful efforts to cover with his own laurels

the incapacity and pitifulness of his brother; and the nepotism of the

Flaminini was, if possible, still more shameless and scandalous than

that of the Scipios. Absolute freedom of election in fact turned to

the advantage of such coteries far more than of the electing body.

The election of Marcus Valerius Corvus to the consulship at twenty-

three had doubtless been for the benefit of the state; but now, when

Scipio obtained the aedileship at twenty-three and the consulate at

thirty, and Flamininus, while not yet thirty years of age, rose from

the quaestorship to the consulship, such proceedings involved serious

danger to the republic. Things had already reached such a pass, that

the only effective barrier against family rule and its consequences

had to be found in a government strictly oligarchical; and this was

the reason why even the party otherwise opposed to the oligarchy

agreed to restrict the freedom of election.

Government of the Nobility

Internal Administration

The government bore the stamp of this gradual change in the spirit of

the governing class. It is true that the administration of external

affairs was still dominated at this epoch by that consistency and

energy, by which the rule of the Roman community over Italy had been

established. During the severe disciplinary times of the war as to

Sicily the Roman aristocracy had gradually raised itself to the height

of its new position; and if it unconstitutionally usurped for the

senate functions of government which by right foil to be shared

between the magistrates and the comitia alone, it vindicated the step

by its certainly far from brilliant, but sure and steady, pilotage

of the vessel of the state during the Hannibalic storm and the

complications thence arising, and showed to the world that the Roman

senate was alone able, and in many respects alone deserved, to rule

the wide circle of the Italo-Hellenic states. But admitting the noble

attitude of the ruling Roman senate in opposition to the outward foe

--an attitude crowned with the noblest results--we may not overlook

the fact, that in the less conspicuous, and yet far more important

and far more difficult, administration of the internal affairs of the

state, both the treatment of the existing arrangements and the new

institutions betray an almost opposite spirit, or, to speak more

correctly, indicate that the opposite tendency has already acquired

the predominance in this field.

Decline in the Administration

In relation, first of all, to the individual burgess the government

was no longer what it had been. The term "magistrate" meant a man who

was more than other men; and, if he was the servant of the community,

he was for that very reason the master of every burgess. But the

tightness of the rein was now visibly relaxed. Where coteries and

canvassing flourish as they did in the Rome of that age, men are chary

of forfeiting the reciprocal services of their fellows or the favour

of the multitude by stern words and impartial discharge of official

duty. If now and then magistrates appeared who displayed the gravity

and the sternness of the olden time, they were ordinarily, like Cotta

(502) and Cato, new men who had not sprung from the bosom of the

ruling class. It was already something singular, when Paullus, who

had been named commander-in-chief against Perseus, instead of

tendering his thanks in the usual manner to the burgesses, declared

to them that he presumed they had chosen him as general because

they accounted him the most capable of command, and requested them

accordingly not to help him to command, but to be silent and obey.

As to Military Discipline and Administration of Justice

The supremacy and hegemony of Rome in the territories of the

Mediterranean rested not least on the strictness of her military

discipline and her administration of justice. Undoubtedly she was

still, on the whole, at that time infinitely superior in these

respects to the Hellenic, Phoenician, and Oriental states, which were

without exception thoroughly disorganized; nevertheless grave abuses

were already occurring in Rome. We have previously(20) pointed out

how the wretched character of the commanders-in-chief--and that not

merely in the case of demagogues chosen perhaps by the opposition,

like Gaius Flaminius and Gaius Varro, but of men who were good

aristocrats--had already in the third Macedonian war imperilled the

weal of the state. And the mode in which justice was occasionally

administered is shown by the scene in the camp of the consul Lucius

Quinctius Flamininus at Placentia (562). To compensate a favourite

youth for the gladiatorial games of the capital, which through his

attendance on the consul he had missed the opportunity of seeing, that

great lord had ordered a Boian of rank who had taken refuge in the

Roman camp to be summoned, and had killed him at a banquet with his

own hand. Still worse than the occurrence itself, to which various

parallels might be adduced, was the fact that the perpetrator was not

brought to trial; and not only so, but when the censor Cato on account

of it erased his name from the roll of the senate, his fellow-senators

invited the expelled to resume his senatorial stall in the theatre

--he was, no doubt, the brother of the liberator of the Greeks,

and one of the most powerful coterie-leaders in the senate.

As to the Management of Finances

The financial system of the Roman community also retrograded rather

than advanced during this epoch. The amount of their revenues,

indeed, was visibly on the increase. The indirect taxes--there were

no direct taxes in Rome--increased in consequence of the enlargement

of the Roman territory, which rendered it necessary, for example, to

institute new customs-offices along the Campanian and Bruttian coasts

at Puteoli, Castra (Squillace), and elsewhere, in 555 and 575. The

same reason led to the new salt-tariff of 550 fixing the scale of

prices at which salt was to be sold in the different districts of

Italy, as it was no longer possible to furnish salt at one and the

same price to the Roman burgesses now scattered throughout the land;

but, as the Roman government probably supplied the burgesses with salt

at cost price, if not below it, this financial measure yielded no gain

to the state. Still more considerable was the increase in the produce

of the domains. The duty indeed, which of right was payable to the

treasury from the Italian domain-lands granted for occupation, was in

the great majority of cases neither demanded nor paid. On the other

hand the -scriptura- was retained; and not only so, but the domains

recently acquired in the second Punic war, particularly the greater

portion of the territory of Capua(21) and that of Leontini,(22)

instead of being given up to occupation, were parcelled out and let to

petty temporary lessees, and the attempts at occupation made in these

cases were opposed with more than usual energy by the government; by

which means the state acquired a considerable and secure source of

income. The mines of the state also, particularly the important

Spanish mines, were turned to profit on lease. Lastly, the revenue

was augmented by the tribute of the transmarine subjects. From

extraordinary sources very considerable sums accrued during this epoch

to the state treasury, particularly the produce of the spoil in the

war with Antiochus, 200 millions of sesterces (2,000,000 pounds), and

that of the war with Perseus, 210 millions of sesterces (2,100,000

pounds)--the latter, the largest sum in cash which ever came at one

time into the Roman treasury.

But this increase of revenue was for the most part counterbalanced by

the increasing expenditure. The provinces, Sicily perhaps excepted,

probably cost nearly as much as they yielded; the expenditure on

highways and other structures rose in proportion to the extension of

territory; the repayment also of the advances (-tributa-) received

from the freeholder burgesses during times of severe war formed a

burden for many a year afterwards on the Roman treasury. To these

fell to be added very considerable losses occasioned to the revenue

by the mismanagement, negligence, or connivance of the supreme

magistrates. Of the conduct of the officials in the provinces, of

their luxurious living at the expense of the public purse, of their

embezzlement more especially of the spoil, of the incipient system of

bribery and extortion, we shall speak in the sequel. How the state

fared generally as regarded the farming of its revenues and the

contracts for supplies and buildings, may be estimated from the

circumstance, that the senate resolved in 587 to desist from the

working of the Macedonian mines that had fallen to Rome, because the

lessees of the minerals would either plunder the subjects or cheat

the exchequer--truly a naive confession of impotence, in which the

controlling board pronounced its own censure. Not only was the duty

from the occupied domain-land allowed tacitly to fall into abeyance,

as has been already mentioned, but private buildings in the capital

and elsewhere were suffered to encroach on ground which was public

property, and the water from the public aqueducts was diverted to

private purposes: great dissatisfaction was created on one occasion

when a censor took serious steps against such trespassers, and

compelled them either to desist from the separate use of the public

property, or to pay the legal rate for the ground and water. The

conscience of the Romans, otherwise in economic matters so scrupulous,

showed, so far as the community was concerned, a remarkable laxity.

"He who steals from a burgess," said Cato, "ends his days in chains

and fetters; but he who steals from the community ends them in gold

and purple." If, notwithstanding the fact that the public property

of the Roman community was fearlessly and with impunity plundered by

officials and speculators, Polybius still lays stress on the rarity

of embezzlement in Rome, while Greece could hardly produce a single

official who had not touched the public money, and on the honesty with

which a Roman commissioner or magistrate would upon his simple word of

honour administer enormous sums, while in the case of the paltriest

sum in Greece ten letters were sealed and twenty witnesses were

required and yet everybody cheated, this merely implies that social

and economic demoralization had advanced much further in Greece than

in Rome, and in particular, that direct and palpable peculation was

not as yet so flourishing in the one case as in the other. The

general financial result is most clearly exhibited to us by the state

of the public buildings, and by the amount of cash in the treasury.

We find in times of peace a fifth, in times of war a tenth, of the

revenues expended on public buildings; which, in the circumstances,

does not seem to have been a very copious outlay. With these sums, as

well as with fines which were not directly payable into the treasury,

much was doubtless done for the repair of the highways in and near the

capital, for the formation of the chief Italian roads,(23) and for the

construction of public buildings. Perhaps the most important of the

building operations in the capital, known to belong to this period,

was the great repair and extension of the network of sewers throughout

the city, contracted for probably in 570, for which 24,000,000

sesterces (240,000 pounds) were set apart at once, and to which it may

be presumed that the portions of the -cloacae- still extant, at least

in the main, belong. To all appearance however, even apart from the

severe pressure of war, this period was inferior to the last section

of the preceding epoch in respect of public buildings; between 482 and

607 no new aqueduct was constructed at Rome. The treasure of the

state, no doubt, increased; the last reserve in 545, when: they found

themselves under the necessity of laying hands on it, amounted only to

164,000 pounds (4000 pounds of gold);(24) whereas a short time after

the close of this period (597) close on 860,000 pounds in precious

metals were stored in the treasury. But, when we take into account

the enormous extraordinary revenues which in the generation after the

close of the Hannibalic war came into the Roman treasury, the latter

sum surprises us rather by its smallness than by its magnitude. So

far as with the extremely meagre statements before us it is allowable

to speak of results, the finances of the Roman state exhibit doubtless

an excess of income over expenditure, but are far from presenting a

brilliant result as a whole.

Italian Subjects

Passive Burgesses

The change in the spirit of the government was most distinctly

apparent in the treatment of the Italian and extra-Italian subjects of

the Roman community. Formerly there had been distinguished in Italy

the ordinary, and the Latin, allied communities, the Roman burgesses

-sine suffragio- and the Roman burgesses with the full franchise. Of

these four classes the third was in the course of this period almost

completely set aside, inasmuch as the course which had been earlier

taken with the communities of passive burgesses in Latium and Sabina,

was now applied also to those of the former Volscian territory, and

these gradually--the last perhaps being in the year 566 Arpinum,

Fundi, and Formiae--obtained full burgess-rights. In Campania Capua

along with a number of minor communities in the neighbourhood was

broken up in consequence of its revolt from Rome in the Hannibalic

war. Although some few communities, such as Velitrae in the Volscian

territory, Teanum and Cumae in Campania, may have remained on their

earlier legal footing, yet, looking at the matter in the main, this

franchise of a passive character may be held as now superseded.

Dediticii

On the other hand there emerged a new class in a position of

peculiar inferiority, without communal freedom and the right to

carry arms, and, in part, treated almost like public slaves

(-peregrini dediticii-); to which, in particular, the members of

the former Campanian, southern Picentine, and Bruttian communities,

that had been in alliance with Hannibal,(25) belonged. To these were

added the Celtic tribes tolerated on the south side of the Alps, whose

position in relation to the Italian confederacy is indeed only known

imperfectly, but is sufficiently characterized as inferior by the

clause embodied in their treaties of alliance with Rome, that no

member of these communities should ever be allowed to acquire

Roman citizenship.(26)

Allies

The position of the non-Latin allies had, as we have mentioned

before,(27) undergone a change greatly to their disadvantage in

consequence of the Hannibalic war. Only a few communities in this

category, such as Neapolis, Nola, Rhegium, and Heraclea, had during

all the vicissitudes of that war remained steadfastly on the Roman

side, and therefore retained their former rights as allies unaltered;

by far the greater portion were obliged in consequence of having

changed sides to acquiesce in a revision of the existing treaties to

their disadvantage. The reduced position of the non-Latin allies is

attested by the emigration from their communities into the Latin:

when in 577 the Samnites and Paelignians applied to the senate for a

reduction of their contingents, their request was based on the ground

that during late years 4000 Samnite and Paelignian families had

migrated to the Latin colony of Fregellae.

Latins

That the Latins--which term now denoted the few towns in old Latium

that were not included in the Roman burgess-union, such as Tibur and

Praeneste, the allied cities placed in law on the same footing with

them, such as several of the Hernican towns, and the Latin colonies

dispersed throughout Italy--were still at this time in a better

position, is implied in their very name; but they too had, in

proportion, hardly less deteriorated. The burdens imposed on them

were unjustly increased, and the pressure of military service was more

and more devolved from the burgesses upon them and the other Italian

allies. For instance, in 536, nearly twice as many of the allies were

called out as of the burgesses: after the end of the Hannibalic war

all the burgesses received their discharge, but not all the allies;

the latter were chiefly employed for garrison duty and for the odious

service in Spain; in the triumphal largess of 577 the allies received

not as formerly an equal share with the burgesses, but only the half,

so that amidst the unrestrained rejoicing of that soldiers' carnival

the divisions thus treated as inferior followed the chariot of victory

in sullen silence: in the assignations of land in northern Italy the

burgesses received ten jugera of arable land each, the non-burgesses

three -jugera- each. The unlimited liberty of migration had already

at an earlier period been taken from the Latin communities, and

migration to Rome was only allowed to them in the event of their

leaving behind children of their own and a portion of their estate in

the community which had been their home.(28) But these burdensome

requirements were in various ways evaded or transgressed; and the

crowding of the burgesses of Latin townships to Rome, and the

complaints of their magistrates as to the increasing depopulation

of the cities and the impossibility under such circumstances of

furnishing the fixed contingent, led the Roman government to institute

police-ejections from the capital on a large scale (567, 577). The

measure might be unavoidable, but it was none the less severely felt.

Moreover, the towns laid out by Rome in the interior of Italy began

towards the close of this period to receive instead of Latin rights

the full franchise, which previously had only been given to the

maritime colonies; and the enlargement of the Latin body by the

accession of new communities, which hitherto had gone on so regularly,

thus came to an end. Aquileia, the establishment of which began in

571, was the latest of the Italian colonies of Rome that received

Latin rights; the full franchise was given to the colonies, sent forth

nearly at the same time, of Potentia, Pisaurum, Mutina, Parma, and

Luna (570-577). The reason for this evidently lay in the decline of

the Latin as compared with the Roman franchise. The colonists

conducted to the new settlements were always, and now more than ever,

chosen in preponderating number from the Roman burgesses; and even

among the poorer portion of these there was a lack of people willing,

for the sake even of acquiring considerable material advantages, to

exchange their rights as burgesses for those of the Latin franchise.

Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

Lastly, in the case of non-burgesses--communities as well as

individuals--admission to the Roman franchise was almost completely

foreclosed. The earlier course incorporating the subject communities

in that of Rome had been dropped about 400, that the Roman burgess

body might not be too much decentralized by its undue extension; and

therefore communities of half-burgesses were instituted.(29) Now

the centralization of the community was abandoned, partly through

the admission of the half-burgess communities to the full franchise,

partly through the accession of numerous more remote burgess-colonies

to its ranks; but the older system of incorporation was not resumed

with reference to the allied communities. It cannot be shown that

after the complete subjugation of Italy even a single Italian

community exchanged its position as an ally for the Roman franchise;

probably none after that date in reality acquired it Even the

transition of individual Italians to the Roman franchise was confined

almost solely to the case of magistrates of the Latin communities(30)

and, by special favour, of individual non-burgesses admitted to share

it at the founding of burgess-colonies.(31)

It cannot be denied that these changes -de facto- and -de jure- in

the relations of the Italian subjects exhibit at least an intimate

connection and consistency. The situation of the subject classes was

throughout deteriorated in proportion to the gradations previously

subsisting, and, while the government had formerly endeavoured to

soften the distinctions and to provide means of transition from one to

another, now the intermediate links were everywhere set aside and the

connecting bridges were broken down. As within the Roman burgess-body

the ruling class separated itself from the people, uniformly withdrew

from public burdens, and uniformly took for itself the honours and

advantages, so the burgesses in their turn asserted their distinction

from the Italian confederacy, and excluded it more and more from the

joint enjoyment of rule, while transferring to it a double or triple

share in the common burdens. As the nobility, in relation to the

plebeians, returned to the close exclusiveness of the declining

patriciate, so did the burgesses in relation to the non-burgesses;

the plebeiate, which had become great through the liberality of

its institutions, now wrapped itself up in the rigid maxims of

patricianism. The abolition of the passive burgesses cannot in itself

be censured, and, so far as concerned the motive which led to it,

belongs presumably to another connection to be discussed afterwards;

but through its abolition an intermediate link was lost. Far more

fraught with peril, however, was the disappearance of the distinction

between the Latin and the other Italian communities. The privileged

position of the Latin nation within Italy was the foundation of the

Roman power; that foundation gave way, when the Latin towns began to

feel that they were no longer privileged partakers in the dominion of

the powerful cognate community, but substantially subjects of Rome

like the rest, and when all the Italians began to find their position

equally intolerable. It is true, that there were still distinctions:

the Bruttians and their companions in misery were already treated

exactly like slaves and conducted themselves accordingly, deserting,

for instance, from the fleet in which they served as galley-slaves,

whenever they could, and gladly taking service against Rome; and the

Celtic, and above all the transmarine, subjects formed by the side of

the Italians a class still more oppressed and intentionally abandoned

by the government to contempt and maltreatment at the hands of the

Italians. But such distinctions, while implying a gradation of

classes among the subjects, could not withal afford even a remote

compensation for the earlier contrast between the cognate, and the

alien, Italian subjects. A profound dissatisfaction prevailed through

the whole Italian confederacy, and fear alone prevented it from

finding loud expression. The proposal made in the senate after the

battle at Cannae, to give the Roman franchise and a seat in the senate

to two men from each Latin community, was made at an unseasonable

time, and was rightly rejected; but it shows the apprehension with

which men in the ruling community even then viewed the relations

between Latium and Rome. Had a second Hannibal now carried the war to

Italy, it may be doubted whether he would have again been thwarted by

the steadfast resistance of the Latin name to a foreign domination.

The Provinces

But by far the most important institution which this epoch introduced

into the Roman commonwealth, and that at the same time which involved

the most decided and fatal deviation from the course hitherto pursued,

was the new provincial magistracies. The earlier state-law of Rome

knew nothing of tributary subjects: the conquered communities were

either sold into slavery, or merged in the Roman commonwealth, or

lastly, admitted to an alliance which secured to them at least

communal independence and freedom from taxation. But the Carthaginian

possessions in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, as well as the kingdom of

Hiero, had paid tribute and rent to their former masters: if Rome was

desirous of retaining these possessions at all, it was in the judgment

of the short-sighted the most judicious, and undoubtedly the most

convenient, course to administer the new territories entirely in

accordance with the rules heretofore observed. Accordingly the Romans

simply retained the Carthagino-Hieronic provincial constitution, and

organized in accordance with it those provinces also, such as Hither

Spain, which they wrested from the barbarians. It was the shirt of

Nessus which they inherited from the enemy. Beyond doubt at first

the Roman government intended, in imposing taxes on their subjects,

not strictly to enrich themselves, but only to cover the cost of

administration and defence; but they already deviated from this

course, when they made Macedonia and Illyria tributary without

undertaking the government or the guardianship of the frontier there.

The fact, however, that they still maintained moderation in the

imposition of burdens was of little consequence, as compared with the

conversion of their sovereignty into a right yielding profit at all;

the fall was the same, whether a single apple was taken or the tree

was plundered.

Position of the Governors

Punishment followed in the steps of wrong. The new provincial

system necessitated the appointment of governors, whose position was

absolutely incompatible not only with the welfare of the provinces,

but with the Roman constitution. As the Roman community in the

provinces took the place of the former ruler of the land, so their

governor appeared there in the king's stead; the Sicilian praetor, for

example, resided in the palace of Hiero at Syracuse. It is true, that

by right the governor nevertheless ought to administer his office with

republican honesty and frugality. Cato, when governor of Sardinia,

appeared in the towns subject to him on foot and attended by a single

servant, who carried his coat and sacrificial ladle; and, when he

returned home from his Spanish governorship, he sold his war-horse

beforehand, because he did not hold himself entitled to charge the

state with the expenses of its transport. There is no question that

the Roman governors--although certainly but few of them pushed their

conscientiousness, like Cato, to the verge of being niggardly and

ridiculous--made in many cases a powerful impression on the subjects,

more especially on the frivolous and unstable Greeks, by their old-

fashioned piety, by the reverential stillness prevailing at their

repasts, by their comparatively upright administration of office and

of justice, especially by their proper severity towards the worst

bloodsuckers of the provincials--the Roman revenue-farmers and

bankers--and in general by the gravity and dignity of their

deportment. The provincials found their government comparatively

tolerable. They had not been pampered by their Carthaginian stewards

and Syracusan masters, and they were soon to find occasion for

recalling with gratitude the present rods as compared with the coming

scorpions: it is easy to understand how, in later times, the sixth

century of the city appeared as the golden era of provincial rule.

But it was not practicable for any length of time to be at once

republican and king. Playing the part of governors demoralized the

Roman ruling class \vith fearful rapidity. Haughtiness and arrogance

towards the provincials were so natural in the circumstances, as

scarcely to form matter of reproach against the individual magistrate.

But already it was a rare thing--and the rarer, because the government

adhered rigidly to the old principle of not paying public officials

--that a governor returned with quite clean hands from his province;

it was already remarked upon as something singular that Paullus, the

conqueror of Pydna, did not take money. The bad custom of delivering

to the governor "honorary wine" and other "voluntary" gifts seems as

old as the provincial constitution itself, and may perhaps have been

a legacy from the Carthaginians; even Cato in his administration of

Sardinia in 556 had to content himself with regulating and moderating

such contributions. The right of the magistrates, and of those

travelling on the business of the state generally, to free quarters

and free conveyance was already employed as a pretext for exactions.

The more important right of the magistrate to make requisitions of

grain in his province--partly for the maintenance of himself and his

retinue (-in cellam-) partly for the provisioning of the army in case

of war, or on other special occasions at a fair valuation--was already

so scandalously abused, that on the complaint of the Spaniards the

senate in 583 found it necessary to withdraw from the governors the

right of fixing the price of the supplies for either purpose.(32)

Requisitions had begun to be made on the subjects even for the popular

festivals in Rome; the unmeasured vexatious demands made on the

Italian as well as extra-Italian communities by the aedile Tiberius

Sempronius Gracchus, for the festival which he had to provide, induced

the senate officially to interfere against them (572). The liberties

which Roman magistrates at the close of this period allowed themselves

to take not only with the unhappy subjects, but even with the

dependent free-states and kingdoms, are illustrated by the raids of

Gaius Volso in Asia Minor,(33) and above all by the scandalous

proceedings in Greece during the war with Perseus.(34)

Control over the Governors

Supervision of the Senate over the Provinces and Their Governors

The government had no right to be surprised at such things, for it

provided no serious check on the excesses of this capricious military

administration. Judicial control, it is true, was not entirely

wanting. Although, according to the universal but more than

questionable rule of allowing no complaint to be brought against a

commander-in-chief during his term of office,(35) the Roman governor

could ordinarily be called to account only after the mischief had

been done, yet he was amenable both to a criminal and to a civil

prosecution. In order to the institution of the former, a tribune of

the people by virtue of the judicial power pertaining to him had to

take the case in hand and bring it to the bar of the people; the civil

action was remitted by the senator who administered the corresponding

praetorship to a jury appointed, according to the constitution of the

tribunal in those times, from the ranks of the senate. In both cases,

therefore, the control lay in the hands of the ruling class, and,

although the latter was still sufficiently upright and honourable not

absolutely to set aside well-founded complaints, and the senate even

in various instances, at the call of those aggrieved, condescended

itself to order the institution of a civil process, yet the complaints

of poor men and foreigners against powerful members of the ruling

aristocracy--submitted to judges and jurymen far remote from the scene

and, if not involved in the like guilt, at least belonging to the same

order as the accused--could from the first only reckon on success in

the event of the wrong being clear and crying; and to complain in vain

was almost certain destruction. The aggrieved no doubt found a sort

of support in the hereditary relations of clientship, which the

subject cities and provinces entered into with their conquerors and

other Romans brought into close contact with them. The Spanish

governors felt that no one could with impunity maltreat clients of

Cato; and the circumstance that the representatives of the three

nations conquered by Paullus--the Spaniards, Ligurians, and

Macedonians--would not forgo the privilege of carrying his bier to the

funeral pile, was the noblest dirge in honour of that noble man. But

not only did this special protection give the Greeks opportunity to

display in Rome all their talent for abasing themselves in presence of

their masters, and to demoralize even those masters by their ready

servility--the decrees of the Syracusans in honour of Marcellus, after

he had destroyed and plundered their city and they had complained of

his conduct in these respects to the senate in vain, form one of the

most scandalous pages in the far from honourable annals of Syracuse

--but, in connection with the already dangerous family-politics, this

patronage on the part of great houses had also its politically

perilous side. In this way the result perhaps was that the Roman

magistrates in some degree feared the gods and the senate, and for

the most part were moderate in their plundering; but they plundered

withal, and did so with impunity, if they but observed such

moderation. The mischievous rule became established, that in the case

of minor exactions and moderate violence the Roman magistrate acted in

some measure within his sphere and was in law exempt from punishment,

so that those who were aggrieved had to keep silence; and from this

rule succeeding ages did not fail to draw the fatal consequences.

Nevertheless, even though the tribunals had been as strict as they

were lax, the liability to a judicial reckoning could only check

the worst evils. The true security for a good administration lay

in a strict and uniform supervision by the supreme administrative

authority: and this the senate utterly failed to provide. It was

in this respect that the laxity and helplessness of the collegiate

government became earliest apparent. By right the governors ought to

have been subjected to an oversight far more strict and more special

than had sufficed for the administration of Italian municipal affairs;

and now, when the empire embraced great transmarine territories, the

arrangements, through which the government preserved to itself the

supervision of the whole, ought to have undergone a corresponding

expansion. In both respects the reverse was the case. The governors

ruled virtually as sovereign; and the most important of the

institutions serving for the latter purpose, the census of the empire,

was extended to Sicily alone, not to any of the provinces subsequently

acquired. This emancipation of the supreme administrative officials

from the central authority was more than hazardous. The Roman

governor, placed at the head of the armies of the state, and in

possession of considerable financial resources: subject to but a

lax judicial control, and practically independent of the supreme

administration; and impelled by a sort of necessity to separate the

interest of himself and of the people whom he governed from that of

the Roman community and to treat them as conflicting, far more

resembled a Persian satrap than one of the commissioners of the Roman

senate at the time of the Samnite wars. The man, moreover, who had

just conducted a legalized military tyranny abroad, could with

difficulty find his way back to the common civic level, which

distinguished between those who commanded and those who obeyed, but

not between masters and slaves. Even the government felt that their

two fundamental principles--equality within the aristocracy, and the

subordination of the power of the magistrates to the senatorial

college--began in this instance to give way in their hands. The

aversion of the government to the acquisition of new provinces and to

the whole provincial system; the institution of the provincial

quaestorships, which were intended to take at least the financial

power out of the hands of the governors; and the abolition of the

arrangement--in itself so judicious--for a longer tenure of such

offices,(36) very clearly evince the anxiety felt by the more far-

seeing of the Roman statesmen as to the fruits of the seed thus sown.

But diagnosis is not cure. The internal government of the nobility

continued to follow the direction once given to it; and the decay of

the administration and of the financial system--paving the way for

future revolutions and usurpations--steadily pursued its course,

if not unnoticed, yet unchecked.

The Opposition

If the new nobility was less sharply defined than the old aristocracy

of the clans, and if the encroachment on the other burgesses as

respected the joint enjoyment of political rights was in the one

case -de jure-, in the other only -de facto-, the second form of

inferiority was for that very reason worse to bear and worse to throw

off than the first. Attempts to throw it off were, as a matter of

course, not wanting. The opposition rested on the support of the

public assembly, as the nobility did on the senate: in order to

understand the opposition, we must first describe the Roman burgess-

body during this period as regards its spirit and its position in the

commonwealth.

Character of the Roman Burgess-Body

Whatever could be demanded of an assembly of burgesses like the Roman,

which was not the moving spring, but the firm foundation, of the whole

machinery--a sure perception of the common good, a sagacious deference

towards the right leader, a steadfast spirit in prosperous and evil

days, and, above all, the capacity of sacrificing the individual for

the general welfare and the comfort of the present for the advantage

of the future--all these qualities the Roman community exhibited in so

high a degree that, when we look to its conduct as a whole, all

censure is lost in reverent admiration. Even now good sense and

discretion still thoroughly predominated. The whole conduct of

the burgesses with reference to the government as well as to the

opposition shows quite clearly that the same mighty patriotism before

which even the genius of Hannibal had to quit the field prevailed also

in the Roman comitia. No doubt they often erred; but their errors

originated not in the mischievous impulses of a rabble, but in the

narrow views of burgesses and farmers. The machinery, however, by

means of which the burgesses intervened in the course of public

affairs became certainly more and more unwieldy, and the circumstances

in which they were placed through their own great deeds far outgrew

their power to deal with them. We have already stated, that in the

course of this epoch most of the former communities of passive

burgesses, as well as a considerable number of newly established

colonies, received the full Roman franchise.(37) At the close of this

period the Roman burgess-body, in a tolerably compact mass, filled

Latium in its widest sense, Sabina, and a part of Campania, so that it

reached on the west coast northward to Caere and southward to Cumae;

within this district there were only a few cities not included in it,

such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia, Norba, and Ferentinum. To this

fell to be added the maritime colonies on the coasts of Italy which

uniformly possessed the full Roman franchise, the Picenian and Trans-

Apennine colonies of the most recent times, to which the franchise

must have been conceded,(38) and a very considerable number of Roman

burgesses, who, without forming separate communities in a strict

sense, were scattered throughout Italy in market-villages and hamlets

(-fora et conciliabula-). To some extent the unwieldiness of a civic

community so constituted was remedied, for the purposes of justice(39)

and of administration, by the deputy judges previously mentioned;(40)

and already perhaps the maritime(41) and the new Picenian and Trans-

Apennine colonies exhibited at least the first lineaments of the

system under which afterwards smaller urban communities were organized

within the great city-commonwealth of Rome. But in all political

questions the primary assembly in the Roman Forum remained alone

entitled to act; and it is obvious at a glance, that this assembly

was no longer, in its composition or in its collective action, what

it had been when all the persons entitled to vote could exercise their

privilege as citizens by leaving their farms in the morning and

returning home the same evening. Moreover the government--whether

from want of judgment, from negligence, or from any evil design, we

cannot tell--no longer as formerly enrolled the communities admitted

to the franchise after 513 in newly instituted election-districts, but

included them along with others in the old; so that gradually each

tribe came to be composed of different townships scattered over the

whole Roman territory. Election-districts such as these, containing

on an average 8000--the urban naturally having more, the rural fewer

--persons entitled to vote, without local connection or inward unity,

no longer admitted of any definite leading or of any satisfactory

previous deliberation; disadvantages which must have been the more

felt, since the voting itself was not preceded by any free debate.

Moreover, while the burgesses had quite sufficient capacity to discern

their communal interests, it was foolish and utterly ridiculous to

leave the decision of the highest and most difficult questions which

the power that ruled the world had to solve to a well-disposed but

fortuitous concourse of Italian farmers, and to allow the nomination

of generals and the conclusion of treaties of state to be finally

judged of by people who understood neither the grounds nor the

consequences of their decrees. In all matters transcending mere

communal affairs the Roman primary assemblies accordingly played a

childish and even silly part. As a rule, the people stood and gave

assent to all proposals; and, when in exceptional instances they of

their own impulse refused assent, as on occasion of the declaration

of war against Macedonia in 554,(42) the policy of the market-place

certainly made a pitiful opposition--and with a pitiful issue--to the

policy of the state.

Rise of a City Rabble

At length the rabble of clients assumed a position, formally of

equality and often even, practically, of superiority, alongside of

the class of independent burgesses. The institutions out of which it

sprang were of great antiquity. From time immemorial the Roman of

quality exercised a sort of government over his freedmen and

dependents, and was consulted by them in all their more important

affairs; a client, for instance, was careful not to give his children

in marriage without having obtained the consent of his patron, and

very often the latter directly arranged the match. But as the

aristocracy became converted into a special ruling class concentrating

in its hands not only power but also wealth, the clients became

parasites and beggars; and the new adherents of the rich undermined

outwardly and inwardly the burgess class. The aristocracy not only

tolerated this sort of clientship, but worked it financially and

politically for their own advantage. Thus, for instance, the old

penny collections, which hitherto had taken place chiefly for

religious purposes and at the burial of men of merit, were now

employed by lords of high standing--for the first time by Lucius

Scipio, in 568, on occasion of a popular festival which he had in

contemplation--for the purpose of levying on extraordinary occasions a

contribution from the public. Presents were specially placed under

legal restriction (in 550), because the senators began under that name

to take regular tribute from their clients. But the retinue of

clients was above all serviceable to the ruling class as a means of

commanding the comitia; and the issue of the elections shows clearly

how powerfully the dependent rabble already at this epoch competed

with the independent middle class.

The very rapid increase of the rabble in the capital particularly,

which is thus presupposed, is also demonstrable otherwise. The

increasing number and importance of the freedmen are shown by the very

serious discussions that arose in the previous century,(43) and were

continued during the present, as to their right to vote in the public

assemblies, and by the remarkable resolution, adopted by the senate

during the Hannibalic war, to admit honourable freedwomen to a

participation in the public collections, and to grant to the

legitimate children of manumitted fathers the insignia hitherto

belonging only to the children of the free-born.(44) The majority of

the Hellenes and Orientals who settled in Rome were probably little

better than the freedmen, for national servility clung as indelibly

to the former as legal servility to the latter.

Systematic Corruption of the Multitude

Distributions of Grain

But not only did these natural causes co-operate to produce a

metropolitan rabble: neither the nobility nor the demagogues,

moreover, can be acquitted from the reproach of having systematically

nursed its growth, and of having undermined, so far as in them lay,

the old public spirit by flattery of the people and things still

worse. The electors as a body were still too respectable to admit of

direct electoral corruption showing itself on a great scale; but the

favour of those entitled to vote was indirectly courted by methods far

from commendable. The old obligation of the magistrates, particularly

of the aediles, to see that corn could be procured at a moderate price

and to superintend the games, began to degenerate into the state of

things which at length gave rise to the horrible cry of the city

populace under the Empire, "Bread for nothing and games for ever!"

Large supplies of grain, cither placed by the provincial governors at

the disposal of the Roman market officials, or delivered at Rome free

of cost by the provinces themselves for the purpose of procuring

favour with particular Roman magistrates, enabled the aediles, from

the middle of the sixth century, to furnish grain to the population of

the capital at very low prices. "It was no wonder," Cato considered,

"that the burgesses no longer listened to good advice--the belly

forsooth had no ears."

Festivals

Popular amusements increased to an alarming extent. For five hundred

years the community had been content with one festival in the year,

and with one circus. The first Roman demagogue by profession, Gaius

Flaminius, added a second festival and a second circus (534);(45) and

by these institutions--the tendency of which is sufficiently indicated

by the very name of the new festival, "the plebeian games"--he

probably purchased the permission to give battle at the Trasimene

lake. When the path was once opened, the evil made rapid progress.

The festival in honour of Ceres, the goddess who protected the

plebeian order,(46) must have been but little, if at all, later than

the plebeian games. On the suggestion of the Sibylline and Marcian

prophecies, moreover, a fourth festival was added in 542 in honour of

Apollo, and a fifth in 550 in honour of the "Great Mother" recently

transplanted from Phrygia to Rome. These were the severe years of

the Hannibalic war--on the first celebration of the games of Apollo

the burgesses were summoned from the circus itself to arms; the

superstitious fear peculiar to Italy was feverishly excited, and

persons were not wanting who took advantage of the opportunity to

circulate Sibylline and prophetic oracles and to recommend themselves

to the multitude through their contents and advocacy: we can scarcely

blame the government, which was obliged to call for so enormous

sacrifices from the burgesses, for yielding in such matters. But what

was once conceded had to be continued; indeed, even in more peaceful

times (581) there was added another festival, although of minor

importance--the games in honour of Flora. The cost of these new

festal amusements was defrayed by the magistrates entrusted with the

providing of the respective festivals from their own means: thus the

curule aediles had, over and above the old national festival, those

of the Mother of the Gods and of Flora; the plebeian aediles had the

plebeian festival and that of Ceres, and the urban praetor the

Apollinarian games. Those who sanctioned the new festivals perhaps

excused themselves in their own eyes by the reflection that they were

not at any rate a burden on the public purse; but it would have been

in reality far less injurious to burden the public budget with a

number of useless expenses, than to allow the providing of an

amusement for the people to become practically a qualification for

holding the highest office in the state. The future candidates for

the consulship soon entered into a mutual rivalry in their expenditure

on these games, which incredibly increased their cost; and, as may

well be conceived, it did no harm if the consul expectant gave,

over and above this as it were legal contribution, a voluntary

"performance" (-munus-), a gladiatorial show at his own expense for

the public benefit. The splendour of the games became gradually the

standard by which the electors measured the fitness of the candidates

for the consulship. The nobility had, in truth, to pay dear for their

honours--a gladiatorial show on a respectable scale cost 720,000

sesterces (7200 pounds)--but they paid willingly, since by this

means they absolutely precluded men who were not wealthy from a

political career.

Squandering of the Spoil

Corruption, however, was not restricted to the Forum; it was

transferred even to the camp. The old burgess militia had reckoned

themselves fortunate when they brought home a compensation for the

toil of war, and, in the event of success, a trifling gift as a

memorial of victory. The new generals, with Scipio Africanus at their

head, lavishly scattered amongst their troops the money of Rome as

well as the proceeds of the spoil: it was on this point, that Cato

quarrelled with Scipio during the last campaigns against Hannibal in

Africa. The veterans from the second Macedonian war and that waged in

Asia Minor already returned home throughout as wealthy men: even the

better class began to commend a general, who did not appropriate the

gifts of the provincials and the gains of war entirely to himself and

his immediate followers, and from whose camp not a few men returned

with gold, and many with silver, in their pockets: men began to forget

that the moveable spoil was the property of the state. When Lucius

Paullus again dealt with it in the old mode, his own soldiers,

especially the volunteers who had been allured in numbers by the

prospect of rich plunder, fell little short of refusing to the

victor of Pydna by popular decree the honour of a triumph--an honour

which they already threw away on every one who had subjugated three

Ligurian villages.

Decline of Warlike Spirit

How much the military discipline and the martial spirit of the

burgesses suffered from this conversion of war into a traffic in

plunder, may be traced in the campaigns against Perseus; and the

spread of cowardice was manifested in a way almost scandalous during

the insignificant Istrian war (in 576). On occasion of a trifling

skirmish magnified by rumour to gigantic dimensions, the land army

and the naval force of the Romans, and even the Italians, ran off

homeward, and Cato found it necessary to address a special reproof to

his countrymen for their cowardice. In this too the youth of quality

took precedence. Already during the Hannibalic war (545) the censors

found occasion to visit with severe penalties the remissness of those

who were liable to military service under the equestrian census.

Towards the close of this period (574?) a decree of the people

prescribed evidence of ten years' service as a qualification for

holding any public magistracy, with a view to compel the sons of

the nobility to enter the army.

Title-Hunting

But perhaps nothing so clearly evinces the decay of genuine pride and

genuine honour in high and low alike as the hunting after insignia and

titles, which appeared under different forms of expression, but with

substantial identity of character, among all ranks and classes. So

urgent was the demand for the honour of a triumph that there was

difficulty in upholding the old rule, which accorded a triumph only

to the ordinary supreme magistrate who augmented the power of the

commonwealth in open battle, and thereby, it is true, not unfrequently

excluded from that honour the very authors of the most important

successes. There was a necessity for acquiescence, while those

generals, who had in vain solicited, or had no prospect of attaining,

a triumph from the senate or the burgesses, marched in triumph on

their own account at least to the Alban Mount (first in 523). No

combat with a Ligurian or Corsican horde was too insignificant to be

made a pretext for demanding a triumph. In order to put an end to the

trade of peaceful triumphators, such as were the consuls of 574, the

granting of a triumph was made to depend on the producing proof of a

pitched battle which had cost the lives of at least 5000 of the enemy;

but this proof was frequently evaded by false bulletins--already in

houses of quality many an enemy's armour might be seen to glitter,

which had by no means come thither from the field of battle. While

formerly the commander-in-chief of the one year had reckoned it an

honour to serve next year on the staff of his successor, the fact that

the consular Cato took service as a military tribune under Tiberius

Sempronius Longus (560) and Manius Glabrio (563;(47)), was now

regarded as a demonstration against the new-fashioned arrogance.

Formerly the thanks of the community once for all had sufficed for

service rendered to the state: now every meritorious act seemed to

demand a permanent distinction. Already Gaius Duilius, the victor of

Mylae (494), had gained an exceptional permission that, when he walked

in the evening through the streets of the capital, he should be

preceded by a torch-bearer and a piper. Statues and monuments, very

often erected at the expense of the person whom they purported to

honour, became so common, that it was ironically pronounced a

distinction to have none. But such merely personal honours did not

long suffice. A custom came into vogue, by which the victor and his

descendants derived a permanent surname from the victories they had

won--a custom mainly established by the victor of Zama who got himself

designated as the hero of Africa, his brother as the hero of Asia, and

his cousin as the hero of Spain.(48) The example set by the higher

was followed by the humbler classes. When the ruling order did not

disdain to settle the funeral arrangements for different ranks and to

decree to the man who had been censor a purple winding-sheet, it could

not complain of the freedmen for desiring that their sons at any rate

might be decorated with the much-envied purple border. The robe, the

ring, and the amulet-case distinguished not only the burgess and the

burgess's wife from the foreigner and the slave, but also the person

who was free-born from one who had been a slave, the son of free-born,

from the son of manumitted, parents, the son of the knight and the

senator from the common burgess, the descendant of a curule house from

the common senator(49)--and this in a community where all that was

good and great was the work of civil equality!

The dissension in the community was reflected in the ranks of the

opposition. Resting on the support of the farmers, the patriots

raised a loud cry for reform; resting on the support of the mob in

the capital, demagogism began its work. Although the two tendencies

do not admit of being wholly separated but in various respects go hand

in hand, it will be necessary to consider them apart.

The Party of Reform

Cato