70. II. IX. Language
71. See the lines already quoted at III. II. The War on the Coasts of
Sicily and Sardinia.
The formation of the name -poeta- from the vulgar Greek --poetes--
instead of --poietes-- --as --epoesen-- was in use among the Attic
potters--is characteristic. We may add that -poeta- technically
denotes only the author of epic or recitative poems, not the composer
for the stage, who at this time was styled -scriba- (III. XIV. Audience;
Festus, s. v., p. 333 M.).
72. Even subordinate figures from the legends of Troy and of Herakles
niake their appearance, e. g. Talthybius (Stich. 305), Autolycus
(Bacch. 275), Parthaon (Men. 745). Moreover the most general outlines
must have been known in the case of the Theban and the Argonautic
legends, and of the stories of Bellerophon (Bacch. 810), Pentheus
(Merc. 467), Procne and Philomela (Rud. 604). Sappho and Phaon (Mil.
1247).
73. "As to these Greeks," he says to his son Marcus, "I shall tell at
the proper place, what I came to learn regarding them at Athens; and
shall show that it is useful to look into their writings, but not to
study them thoroughly. They are an utterly corrupt and ungovernable
race--believe me, this is true as an oracle; if that people bring
hither its culture, it will ruin everything, and most especially if
it send hither its physicians. They have conspired to despatch all
barbarians by their physicking, but they get themselves paid for it,
that people may trust them and that they may the more easily bring us
to ruin. They call us also barbarians, and indeed revile us by the
still more vulgar name of Opicans. I interdict thee, therefore, from
all dealings with the practitioners of the healing art."
Cato in his zeal was not aware that the name of Opicans, which had in
Latin an obnoxious meaning, was in Greek quite unobjectionable, and
that the Greeks had in the most innocent way come to designate the
Italians by that term (I. X. Time of the Greek Immigration).
74. II. IX. Censure of Art
75. III. II. War between the Romans and Carthaginians and Syracusans
76. Plautius belongs to this or to the beginning of the following
period, for the inscription on his pictures (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 10,
115), being hexametrical, cannot well be older than Ennius, and the
bestowal of the citizenship of Ardea must have taken place before the
Social War, through which Ardea lost its independence.
End of Book III
* * * * *
THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK IV
The Revolution
Preparer's Note
This work contains many literal citations of and references to words,
sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many languages, including
Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and Greek. This English
language Gutenberg edition, constrained within the scope of 7-bit
ASCII code, adopts the following orthographic conventions:
1) Words and phrases regarded as "foreign imports", italicized in the
original text published in 1903; but which in the intervening century
have become "naturalized" into English; words such as "de jure",
"en masse", etc. are not given any special typographic distinction.
2) Except for Greek, all literally cited non-English words that do
not refer to texts cited as academic references, words that in the
source manuscript appear italicized, are rendered with a single
preceding, and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.
3) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic equivalents,
are rendered with a preceding and a following double-dash; thus, --xxxx--.
Note that in some cases the root word itself is a compound form such as
xxx-xxxx, and is rendered as --xxx-xxx--
4) Simple non-ideographic references to vocalic sounds, single letters,
or alphabeic dipthongs; and prefixes, suffixes, and syllabic references
are represented by a single preceding dash; thus, -x, or -xxx.
5) The following refers particularly to the complex discussion of
alphabetic evolution in Ch. XIV: Measuring And Writing). Ideographic
references, meaning pointers to the form of representation itself rather
than to its content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-. "id:" stands for
"ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a mental picture
based on the "xxxx" following the colon. "xxxx" may represent a single
symbol, a word, or an attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters.
E. g. --"id:GAMMA gamma"-- indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-form
Followed by the form in lowercase. Some such exotic parsing as this
is necessary to explain alphabetic development because a single symbol
may have been used for a number of sounds in a number of languages,
or even for a number of sounds in the same language at different
times. Thus, -"id:GAMMA gamma" might very well refer to a Phoenician
construct that in appearance resembles the form that eventually
stabilized as an uppercase Greek "gamma" juxtaposed to another one
of lowercase. Also, a construct such as --"id:E" indicates a symbol
that in graphic form most closely resembles an ASCII uppercase "E",
but, in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.
6) The numerous subheading references, of the form "XX. XX. Topic"
found in the appended section of endnotes are to be taken as "proximate"
rather than topical indicators. That is, the information contained
in the endnote indicates primarily the location in the main text
of the closest indexing "handle", a subheading, which may or may not
echo congruent subject matter.
The reason for this is that in the translation from an original
paged manuscript to an unpaged "cyberscroll", page numbers are lost.
In this edition subheadings are the only remaining indexing "handles"
of sub-chapter scale. Unfortunately, in some stretches of text these
subheadings may be as sparse as merely one in three pages. Therefore,
it would seem to make best sense to save the reader time and temper
by adopting a shortest path method to indicate the desired reference.
7) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.;
that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be 753 B. C.
To the end of each volume is appended a table of conversion between
the two systems.
CONTENTS
BOOK IV: The Revolution
CHAPTER
I. The Subject Countries Down to the Times of the Gracchi
II. The Reform Movement and Tiberius Gracchus
III. The Revolution and Gaius Gracchus
IV. The Rule of the Restoration
V. The Peoples of the North
VI. The Attempt of Marius at Revolution and the Attempt
of Drusus at Reform
VII. The Revolt of the Italian Subjects, and the Sulpician
Revolution
VIII. The East and King Mithradates
IX. Cinna and Sulla
X. The Sullan Constitution
XI. The Commonwealth and Its Economy
XII. Nationality, Religion, and Education
XIII. Literature and Art
BOOK FOURTH
The Revolution
"-Aber sie treiben's toll;
Ich furcht', es breche."
Nicht jeden Wochenschluss
Macht Gott die Zeche-.
Goethe.
CHAPTER I
The Subject Countries Down to the Times of the Gracchi
The Subjects
With the abolition of the Macedonian monarchy the supremacy of Rome
not only became an established fact from the Pillars of Hercules to
the mouths of the Nile and the Orontes, but, as if it were the final
decree of fate, it weighed on the nations with all the pressure of
an inevitable necessity, and seemed to leave them merely the choice
of perishing in hopeless resistance or in hopeless endurance.
If history were not entitled to insist that the earnest reader
should accompany her through good and evil days, through landscapes
of winter as well as of spring, the historian might be tempted to shun
the cheerless task of tracing the manifold and yet monotonous turns
of this struggle between superior power and utter weakness, both in
the Spanish provinces already annexed to the Roman empire and in the
African, Hellenic, and Asiatic territories which were still treated
as clients of Rome. But, however unimportant and subordinate the
individual conflicts may appear, they have collectively a deep
historical significance; and, in particular, the state of things
in Italy at this period only becomes intelligible in the light of
the reaction which the provinces exercised over the mother-country.
Spain
Except in the territories which may be regarded as natural appendages
of Italy--in which, however, the natives were still far from being
completely subdued, and, not greatly to the credit of Rome, Ligurians,
Sardinians, and Corsicans were continually furnishing occasion for
"village triumphs"--the formal sovereignty of Rome at the commencement
of this period was established only in the two Spanish provinces,
which embraced the larger eastern and southern portions of the
peninsula beyond the Pyrenees. We have already(1) attempted to
describe the state of matters in the peninsula. Iberians and Celts,
Phoenicians, Hellenes, and Romans were there confusedly intermingled.
The most diverse kinds and stages of civilization subsisted there
simultaneously and at various points crossed each other, the ancient
Iberian culture side by side with utter barbarism, the civilized
relations of Phoenician and Greek mercantile cities side by side with
an incipient process of Latinizing, which was especially promote
by the numerous Italians employed in the silver mines and by the
large standing garrison. In this respect the Roman township of
Italica (near Seville) and the Latin colony of Carteia (on the bay
Of Gibraltar) deserve mention--the latter being the first transmarine
urban community of Latin tongue and Italian constitution. Italica
was founded by the elder Scipio, before he left Spain (548), for
his veterans who were inclined to remain in the peninsula--probably,
however, not as a burgess-community, but merely as a market-place.(2)
Carteia was founded in 583 and owed its existence to the multitude of
camp-children--the offspring of Roman soldiers and Spanish slaves--who
grew up as slaves de jure but as free Italians de facto, and were now
manumitted on behalf of the state and constituted, along with the old
inhabitants of Carteia, into a Latin colony. For nearly thirty years
after the organizing of the province of the Ebro by Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus (575, 576)(3) the Spanish provinces, on the whole, enjoyed the
blessings of peace undisturbed, although mention is made of one or two
expeditions against the Celtiberians and Lusitanians.
Lusitanian War
But more serious events occurred in 600. The Lusitanians, under the
leadership of a chief called Punicus, invaded the Roman territory,
defeated the two Roman governors who had united to oppose them, and
slew a great number of their troops. The Vettones (between the Tagus
and the Upper Douro) were thereby induced to make common cause with
the Lusitanians; and these, thus reinforced, were enabled to extend
their excursions as far as the Mediterranean, and to pillage even
the territory of the Bastulo-Phoenicians not far from the Roman
capital New Carthage (Cartagena). The Romans at home took the matter
seriously enough to resolve on sending a consul to Spain, a step
which had not been taken since 559; and, in order to accelerate the
despatch of aid, they even made the new consuls enter on office two
months and a half before the legal time. For this reason the day for
the consuls entering on office was shifted from the 15th of March
to the 1st of January; and thus was established the beginning of the
year, which we still make use of at the present day. But, before
the consul Quintus Fulvius Nobilior with his army arrived, a very
serious encounter took place on the right bank of the Tagus between
the praetor Lucius Mummius, governor of Further Spain, and the
Lusitanians, now led after the fall of Punicus by his successor
Caesarus (601). Fortune was at first favourable to the Romans; the
Lusitanian army was broken and their camp was taken. But the Romans,
partly already fatigued by their march and partly broken up in the
disorder of the pursuit, were at length completely beaten by their
already vanquished antagonists, and lost their own camp in addition
to that of the enemy, as well as 9000 dead.
Celtiberian War
The flame of war now blazed up far and wide. The Lusitanians on
the left bank of the Tagus, led by Caucaenus, threw themselves on
the Celtici subject to the Romans (in Alentejo), and took away their
town Conistorgis. The Lusitanians sent the standards taken from
Mummius to the Celtiberians at once as an announcement of victory
and as a warning; and among these, too, there was no want of ferment.
Two small Celtiberian tribes in the neighbourhood of the powerful
Arevacae (about the sources of the Douro and Tagus), the Belli and
the Titthi, had resolved to settle together in Segeda, one of their
towns. While they were occupied in building the walls, the Romans
ordered them to desist, because the Sempronian regulations prohibited
the subject communities from founding towns at their own discretion;
and they at the same time required the contribution of money and men
which was due by treaty but for a considerable period had not been
demanded. The Spaniards refused to obey either command, alleging
that they were engaged merely in enlarging, not in founding, a city,
and that the contribution had not been merely suspended, but
remitted by the Romans. Thereupon Nobilior appeared in Hither
Spain with an army of nearly 30,000 men, including some Numidian
horsemen and ten elephants. The walls of the new town of Segeda
still stood unfinished: most of the inhabitants submitted. But the
most resolute men fled with their wives and children to the powerful
Arevacae, and summoned these to make common cause with them against
the Romans. The Arevacae, emboldened by the victory of the
Lusitanians over Mummius, consented, and chose Carus, one of the
Segedan refugees, as their general. On the third day after his
election the valiant leader had fallen, but the Roman army was
defeated and nearly 6000 Roman burgesses were slain; the 23rd day of
August, the festival of the Volcanalia, was thenceforth held in sad
remembrance by the Romans. The fall of their general, however,
induced the Arevacae to retreat into their strongest town Numantia
(Guarray, a Spanish league to the north of Soria on the Douro),
whither Nobilior followed them. Under the walls of the town a second
engagement took place, in which the Romans at first by means of their
elephants drove the Spaniards back into the town; but while doing
so they were thrown into confusion in consequence of one of the
animals being wounded, and sustained a second defeat at the hands of
the enemy again issuing from the walls. This and other misfortunes--
such as the destruction of a corps of Roman cavalry despatched to
call forth the contingents--imparted to the affairs of the Romans in
the Hither province so unfavourable an aspect that the fortress of
Ocilis, where the Romans had their chest and their stores, passed
over to the enemy, and the Arevacae were in a position to think,
although without success, of dictating peace to the Romans. These
disadvantages, however, were in some measure counterbalanced by the
successes which Mummius achieved in the southern province. Weakened
though his army was by the disaster which it had suffered, he yet
succeeded with it in defeating the Lusitanians who had imprudently
dispersed themselves on the right bank of the Tagus; and passing
over to the left bank, where the Lusitanians had overrun the whole
Roman territory, and had even made a foray into Africa, he cleared
the southern province of the enemy.
Marcellus
To the northern province in the following year (602) the senate sent
considerable reinforcements and a new commander-in-chief in the place
of the incapable Nobilior, the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who
had already, when praetor in 586, distinguished himself in Spain, and
had since that time given proof of his talents as a general in two
consulships. His skilful leadership, and still more his clemency,
speedily changed the position of affairs: Ocilis at once surrendered
to him; and even the Arevacae, confirmed by Marcellus in the hope
that peace would be granted to them on payment of a moderate fine,
concluded an armistice and sent envoys to Rome. Marcellus could thus
proceed to the southern province, where the Vettones and Lusitanians
had professed submission to the praetor Marcus Atilius so long as he
remained within their bounds, but after his departure had immediately
revolted afresh and chastised the allies of Rome. The arrival of
the consul restored tranquillity, and, while he spent the winter
in Corduba, hostilities were suspended throughout the peninsula.
Meanwhile the question of peace with the Arevacae was discussed at
Rome. It is a significant indication of the relations subsisting
among the Spaniards themselves, that the emissaries of the Roman
party subsisting among the Arevacae were the chief occasion of the
rejection of the proposals of peace at Rome, by representing that,
if the Romans were not willing to sacrifice the Spaniards friendly
to their interests, they had no alternative save either to send a
consul with a corresponding army every year to the peninsula or to
make an emphatic example now. In consequence of this, the ambassadors
of the Arevacae were dismissed without a decisive answer, and it was
resolved that the war should be prosecuted with vigour. Marcellus
accordingly found himself compelled in the following spring (603) to
resume the war against the Arevacae. But--either, as was asserted,
from his unwillingness to leave to his successor, who was to be
expected soon, the glory of terminating the war, or, as is perhaps
more probable, from his believing like Gracchus that a humane
treatment of the Spaniards was the first thing requisite for a lasting
peace--the Roman general after holding a secret conference with the
most influential men of the Arevacae concluded a treaty under the
walls of Numantia, by which the Arevacae surrendered to the Romans
at discretion, but were reinstated in their former rights according
to treaty on their undertaking to pay money and furnish hostages.
Lucullus
When the new commander-in-chief, the consul Lucius Lucullus, arrived
at head-quarters, he found the war which he had come to conduct already
terminated by a formally concluded peace, and his hopes of bringing
home honour and more especially money from Spain were apparently
frustrated. But there was a means of surmounting this difficulty.
Lucullus of his own accord attacked the western neighbours of the
Arevacae, the Vaccaei, a Celtiberian nation still independent which
was living on the best understanding with the Romans. The question
of the Spaniards as to what fault they had committed was answered by
a sudden attack on the town of Cauca (Coca, eight Spanish leagues to
the west of Segovia); and, while the terrified town believed that it
had purchased a capitulation by heavy sacrifices of money, Roman
troops marched in and enslaved or slaughtered the inhabitants without
any pretext at all. After this heroic feat, which is said to have
cost the lives of some 20,000 defenceless men, the army proceeded
on its march. Far and wide the villages and townships were abandoned
or, as in the case of the strong Intercatia and Pallantia (Palencia)
the capital of the Vaccaei, closed their gates against the Roman army.
Covetousness was caught in its own net; there was no community
That would venture to conclude a capitulation with the perfidious
commander, and the general flight of the inhabitants not only
rendered booty scarce, but made it almost impossible for him
to remain for any length of time in these inhospitable regions.
In front of Intercatia, Scipio Aemilianus, an esteemed military tribune,
the son of the victor of Pydna and the adopted grandson of the victor
of Zama, succeeded, by pledging his word of honour when that of the
general no longer availed, in inducing the inhabitants to conclude an
agreement by virtue of which the Roman army departed on receiving a
supply of cattle and clothing. But the siege of Pallantia had to
be raised for want of provisions, and the Roman army in its retreat
was pursued by the Vaccaei as far as the Douro. Lucullus thereupon
proceeded to the southern province, where in the same year the
praetor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, had allowed himself to be defeated
by the Lusitanians. They spent the winter not far from each other--
Lucullus in the territory of the Turdetani, Galba at Conistorgis--
And in the following year (604) jointly attacked the Lusitanians.
Lucullus gained some advantages over them near the straits of Gades.
Galba performed a greater achievement, for he concluded a treaty with
three Lusitanian tribes on the right bank of the Tagus and promised
to transfer them to better settlements; whereupon the barbarians,
who to the number of 7000 came to him for the sake of the expected
lands, were separated into three divisions, disarmed, and partly
carried off into slavery, partly massacred. War has hardly ever
been waged with so much perfidy, cruelty, and avarice as by these
two generals; who yet by means of their criminally acquired treasures
escaped the one from condemnation, and the other even from impeachment.
The veteran Cato in his eighty-fifth year, a few months before his
death, attempted to bring Galba to account before the burgesses;
but the weeping children of the general, and the gold which he had
brought home with him, proved to the Roman people his innocence.
Variathus
It was not so much the inglorious successes which Lucullus and Galba
had attained in Spain, as the outbreak of the fourth Macedonian
and of the third Carthaginian war in 605, which induced the Romans
again to leave Spanish affairs in the first instance to the ordinary
governors. Accordingly the Lusitanians, exasperated rather than
humbled by the perfidy of Galba, immediately overran afresh the rich
territory of the Turdetani. The Roman governor Gaius Vetilius
(607-8?)(4) marched against them, and not only defeated them, but
drove the whole host towards a hill where it seemed lost irretrievably.
The capitulation was virtually concluded, when Viriathus--a man of
humble origin, who formerly, when a youth, had bravely defended
his flock from wild beasts and robbers and was now in more serious
conflictsa dreaded guerilla chief, and who was one of the few that had
accidentally escaped from the perfidious onslaught of Galba--warned his
countrymen against relying on the Roman word of honour, and promised
them deliverance if they would follow him. His language and his
example produced a deep effect: the army entrusted him with the
supreme command. Viriathus gave orders to the mass of his men to
proceed in detached parties, by different routes, to the appointed
rendezvous; he himself formed the best mounted and most trustworthy
into a corps of 1000 horse, with which he covered the departure of
his men. The Romans, who wanted light cavalry, did not venture to
disperse for the pursuit under the eyes of the enemy's horsemen.
After Viriathus and his band had for two whole days held in check
the entire Roman army he suddenly disappeared during the night and
hastened to the general rendezvous. The Roman general followed him,
but fell into an adroitly-laid ambush, in which he lost the half of
his army and was himself captured and slain; with difficulty the
rest of the troops escaped to the colony of Carteia on the Straits.
In all haste 5000 men of the Spanish militia were despatched from the
Ebro to reinforce the defeated Romans; but Viriathus destroyed the
corps while still on its march, and commanded so absolutely the whole
interior of Carpetania that the Romans did not even venture to seek
him there. Viriathus, now recognized as lord and king of all the
Lusitanians, knew how to combine the full dignity of his princely
position with the homely habits of a shepherd. No badge distinguished
him from the common soldier: he rose from the richly adorned marriage-
table of his father-in-law, the prince Astolpa in Roman Spain, without
having touched the golden plate and the sumptuous fare, lifted his bride
on horseback, and rode back with her to his mountains. He never took
more of the spoil than the share which he allotted to each of his
comrades. The soldier recognized the general simply by his tall
figure, by his striking sallies of wit, and above all by the fact
that he surpassed every one of his men in temperance as well as in toil,
sleeping always in full armour and fighting in front of all in battle.
It seemed as if in that thoroughly prosaic age one of the Homeric
heroes had reappeared: the name of Viriathus resounded far and wide
through Spain; and the brave nation conceived that in him it had
at length found the man who was destined to break the fetters
of alien domination.
His Successors
Extraordinary successes in northern and in southern Spain marked the
next years of his generalship. After destroying the vanguard of the
praetor Gaius Plautius (608-9), Viriathus had the skill to lure him
over to the right bank of the Tagus, and there to defeat him so
emphatically that the Roman general went into winter quarters in
the middle of summer--on which account he was afterwards charged
before the people with having disgraced the Roman community, and was
compelled to live in exile. In like manner the army of the governor--
apparently of the Hither province--Claudius Unimanus was destroyed,
that of Gaius Negidius was vanquished, and the level country was
pillaged far and wide. Trophies of victory, decorated with the insignia
of the Roman governors and the arms of the legions, were erected on the
Spanish mountains; people at Rome heard with shame and consternation
of the victories of the barbarian king. The conduct of the Spanish
war was now committed to a trustworthy officer, the consul Quintus
Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, the second son of the victor of Pydna
(609). But the Romans no longer ventured to send the experienced
veterans, who bad just returned from Macedonia and Asia, forth anew
tothe detested Spanish war; the two legions, which Maximus brought
with him, were new levies and scarcely more to be trusted than the
old utterly demoralized Spanish army. After the first conflicts had
again issued favourably for the Lusitanians, the prudent general
kept together his troops for the remainder of the year in the camp
at Urso (Osuna, south-east from Seville) without accepting the
enemy's offer of battle, and only took the field afresh in the
following year (610), after his troops had by petty warfare become
qualified for fighting; he was then enabled to maintain the
superiority, and after successful feats of arms went into winter
quarters at Corduba. But when the cowardly and incapable praetor
Quinctius took the command in room of Maximus, the Romans again
suffered defeat after defeat, and their general in the middle of
summer shut himself up in Corduba, while the bands of Viriathus
overran the southern province (611).
His successor, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, the adopted brother
of Maximus Aemilianus, sent to the peninsula with two fresh legions
and ten elephants, endeavoured to penetrate into the Lusitanian
country, but after a series of indecisive conflicts and an assault
on the Roman camp, which was with difficulty repulsed, found himself
compelled to retreat to the Roman territory. Viriathus followed him
into the province, but as his troops after the wont of Spanish
insurrectionary armies suddenly melted away, he was obliged to return
to Lusitania (612). Next year (613) Servilianus resumed the offensive,
traversed the districts on the Baetis and Anas, and then advancing
into Lusitania occupied a number of townships. A large number of the
insurgents fell into his hands; the leaders--of whom there were about
500--were executed; those who had gone over from Roman territory to
the enemy had their hands cut off; the remaining mass were sold into
slavery. But on this occasion also the Spanish war proved true to
its fickle and capricious character. After all these successes the
Roman army was attacked by Viriathus while it was besieging Erisane,
defeated, and driven to a rock where it was wholly in the power of the
enemy. Viriathus, however, was content, like the Samnite general
formerly at the Caudine passes, to conclude a peace with Servilianus,
in which the community of the Lusitanians was recognized as sovereign
and Viriathus acknowledged as its king. The power of the Romans had
not risen more than the national sense of honour had sunk; in the
capital men were glad to be rid of the irksome war, and the senate
and people ratified the treaty. But Quintus Servilius Caepio, the
full brother of Servilianus and his successor in office, was far
from satisfied with this complaisance; and the senate was weak
enough at first to authorize the consul to undertake secret
machinations against Viriathus, and then to view at least with
indulgence the open breach of his pledged word for which there was
no palliation. So Caepio invaded Lusitania, and traversed the land
as far as the territories of the Vettones and Callaeci; Viriathus
declined a conflict with the superior force, and by dexterous movements
evaded his antagonist (614). But when in the ensuing year (615)
Caepio renewed the attack, and in addition the army, which had in
The meantime become available in the northern province, made its
appearance under Marcus Popillius in Lusitania, Viriathus sued for
peace on any terms. He was required to give up to the Romans all
who had passed over to him from the Roman territory, amongst whom
was his own father-in-law; he did so, and the Romans ordered them
to be executed or to have their hands cut off. But this was not
sufficient; the Romans were not in the habit of announcing to the
vanquished all at once their destined fate.
His Death
One behest after another was issued to the Lusitanians, each successive
demand more intolerable than its predecessors; and at length they were
required even to surrender their arms. Then Viriathus recollected
the fate of his countrymen whom Galba had caused to be disarmed, and
grasped his sword afresh. But it was too late. His wavering had
sown the seeds of treachery among those who were immediately around
him; three of his confidants, Audas, Ditalco, and Minucius from Urso,
despairing of the possibility of renewed victory, procured from the
king permission once more to enter into negotiations for peace with
Caepio, and employed it for the purpose of selling the life of the
Lusitanian hero to the foreigners in return for the assurance of
personal amnesty and further rewards. On their return to the camp
they assured the king of the favourable issue of their negotiations,
and in the following night stabbed him while asleep in his tent.
The Lusitanians honoured the illustrious chief by an unparalleled
funeral solemnity at which two hundred pairs of champions fought in
the funeral games; and still more highly by the fact, that they did
not renounce the struggle, but nominated Tautamus as their commander-
in-chief in room of the fallen hero. The plan projected by the
latter for wresting Saguntum from the Romans was sufficiently bold;
but the new general possessed neither the wise moderation nor the
military skill of his predecessor. The expedition utterly broke
down, and the army on its return was attacked in crossing the Baetis
and compelled to surrender unconditionally. Thus was Lusitania
subdued, far more by treachery and assassination on the part of
foreigners and natives than by honourable war.
Numantia
While the southern province was scourged by Viriathus and the
Lusitanians, a second and not less serious war had, not without
their help, broken out in the northern province among the Celtiberian
nations. The brilliant successes of Viriathus induced the Arevacae
likewise in 610 to rise against the Romans; and for this reason the
consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, who was sent to Spain to relieve
Maximus Aemilianus, did hot proceed to the southern province, but
turned against the Celtiberians. In the contest with them, and
more especially during the siege of the town of Contrebia which was
deemed impregnable, he showed the same ability which he had displayed
in vanquishing the Macedonian pretender; after his two years'
administration (611, 612) the northern province was reduced to
obedience. The two towns of Termantia and Numantia alone had not
yet opened their gates to the Romans; but in their case also a
capitulation had been almost concluded, and the greater part of
the conditions had been fulfilled by the Spaniards. When required,
however, to deliver up their arms, they were restrained like
Viriathus by their genuine Spanish pride in the possession of a well-
wielded sword, and they resolved to continue the war under the daring
Megaravicus. It seemed folly: the consular army, the command of
which was taken up in 613 by the consul Quintus Pompeius, was four
times as numerous as the whole population capable of bearing arms in
Numantia. But the general, who was wholly unacquainted with war,
sustained defeats so severe under the walls of the two cities (613,
614), that he preferred at length to procure by means of negotiations
the peace which he could not compel. With Termantia a definitive
agreement must have taken place. In the case of the Numantines the
Roman general liberated their captives, and summoned the community
under the secret promise of favourable treatment to surrender to him
at discretion. The Numantines, weary of the war, consented, and
the general actually limited his demands to the smallest possible
measure. Prisoners of war, deserters, and hostages were delivered up,
and the stipulated sum of money was mostly paid, when in 615 the new
general Marcus Popillius Laenas arrived in the camp. As soon as
Pompeius saw the burden of command devolve on other shoulders, he,
with a view to escape from the reckoning that awaited him at Rome
for a peace which was according to Roman ideas disgraceful, lighted
on the expedient of not merely breaking, but of disowning his word;
and when the Numantines came to make their last payment, in the
presence of their officers and his own he flatly denied the conclusion
of the agreement. The matter was referred for judicial decision to
the senate at Rome. While it was discussed there, the war before
Numantia was suspended, and Laenas occupied himself with an expedition
to Lusitania where he helped to accelerate the catastrophe of
Viriathus, and with a foray against the Lusones, neighbours of the
Numantines. When at length the decision of the senate arrived, its
purport was that the war should be continued--the state became thus
a party to the knavery of Pompeius.
Mancinus
With unimpaired courage and increased resentment the Numantines
resumed the struggle; Laenas fought against them unsuccessfully,
nor was his successor Gaius Hostilius Mancinus more fortunate (617).
But the catastrophe was brought about not so much by the arms of the
Numantines, as by the lax and wretched military discipline of the Roman
generals and by--what was its natural consequence--the annually-
increasing dissoluteness, insubordination, and cowardice of the Roman
soldiers. The mere rumour, which moreover was false, that the
Cantabri and Vaccaei were advancing to the relief of Numantia,
induced the Roman army to evacuate the camp by night without orders,
and to seek shelter in the entrenchments constructed sixteen years
before by Nobilior.(5) The Numantines, informed of their sudden
departure, hotly pursued the fugitive army, and surrounded it:
there remained to it no choice save to fight its way with sword in
hand through the enemy, or to conclude peace on the terms laid down
by the Numantines. Although the consul was personally a man of
honour, he was weak and little known. Tiberius Gracchus, who served
in the army as quaestor, had more influence with the Celtiberians from
the hereditary respect in which he was held on account of his father
who had so wisely organized the province of the Ebro, and induced the
Numantines to be content with an equitable treaty of peace sworn to
by all the staff-officers. But the senate not only recalled the
general immediately, but after long deliberation caused a proposal to
be submitted to the burgesses that the convention should be treated
as they had formerly treated that of Caudium, in other words, that
they should refuse to ratify it and should devolve the responsibility
for it on those by whom it had been concluded. By right this
category ought to have included all the officers who had sworn to the
treaty; but Gracchus and the others were saved by their connections.
Mancinus alone, who did not belong to the circles of the highest
aristocracy, was destined to pay the penalty for his own and others'
guilt. Stripped of his insignia, the Roman consular was conducted to
the enemy's outposts, and, when the Numantines refused to receive him
that they might not on their part acknowledge the treaty as null,
the late commander-in-chief stood in his shirt and with his hands tied
behind his back for a whole day before the gates of Numantia, a
pitiful spectacle to friend and foe. Yet the bitter lesson seemed
utterly lost on the successor of Mancinus, his colleague in the
consulship, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus. While the discussions as to
the treaty with Mancinus were pending in Rome, he attacked the free
people of the Vaccaei under frivolous pretexts just as Lucullus had
done sixteen years before, and began in concert with the general of
the Further province to besiege Pallantia (618). A decree of the
senate enjoined him to desist from the war; nevertheless, under the
pretext that the circumstances had meanwhile changed, he continued
the siege. In doing so he showed himself as bad a soldier as he was
a bad citizen. After lying so long before the large and strong city
that his supplies in that rugged and hostile country failed, he was
obliged to leave behind all the sick and wounded and to undertake a
retreat, in which the pursuing Pallantines destroyed half of his
soldiers, and, if they had not broken off the pursuit too early,
would probably have utterly annihilated the Roman army, which was
already in full course of dissolution. For this conduct a fine was
imposed on the high-born general at his return. His successors
Lucius Furius Philus (618) and Gaius Calpurnius Piso (619) had
again to wage war against the Numantines; and, inasmuch as they
did nothing at all, they fortunately came home without defeat.
Scipio Aemilianus
Even the Roman government began at length to perceive that matters
could no longer continue on this footing; they resolved to entrust
the subjugation of the small Spanish country-town, as an extraordinary
measure, to the first general of Rome, Scipio Aemilianus. The pecuniary
means for carrying on the war were indeed doled out to him with
preposterous parsimony, and the permission to levy soldiers, which
he asked, was even directly refused--a result towards which coterie-
intrigues and the fear of being burdensome to the sovereign people may
have co-operated. But a great number of friends and clients voluntarily
accompanied him; among them was his brother Maximus Aemilianus, whosome
years before had commanded with distinction against Viriathus. Supported
by this trusty band, which was formed into a guard for the general, Scipio
began to reorganize the deeply disordered army (620). First of all, the
camp-followers had to take their departure--there were found as many as
2000 courtesans, and an endless number of soothsayers and priests of all
sorts--and, if the soldier was not available for fighting, he had at
least to work in the trenches and to march. During the first summer
the general avoided any conflict with the Numantines; he contented
himself with destroying the stores in the surrounding country, and with
chastising the Vaccaei who sold corn to the Numantines, and compelling
them to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome. It was only towards winter
that Scipio drew together his army round Numantia. Besides the Numidian
contingent of horsemen, infantry, and twelve elephants led by the
prince Jugurtha, and the numerous Spanish contingents, there were
four legions, in all a force of 60,000 men investing a city whose
citizens capable of bearing arms did not exceed 8000 at the most.
Nevertheless the besieged frequently offered battle; but Scipio,
perceiving clearly that the disorganization of many years was not to
be repaired all at once, refused to accept it, and, when conflicts
did occur in connection with the sallies of the besieged, the
cowardly flight of the legionaries, checked with difficulty by
the appearance of the general in person, justified such tactics
only too forcibly. Never did a general treat his soldiers more
contemptuously than Scipio treated the Numantine army; and he showed
his opinion of it not only by bitter speeches, but above all by his
course of action. For the first time the Romans waged war by means of
mattock and spade, where it depended on themselves alone whether they
should use the sword. Around the whole circuit of the city wall,
which was nearly three miles in length, there was constructed a double
line of circumvallation of twice that extent, provided with walls,
towers, and ditches; and the river Douro, by which at first some
supplies had reached the besieged through the efforts of bold boatmen
and divers, was at length closed. Thus the town, which they did not
venture to assault, could not well fail to be reduced through famine;
the more so, as it had not been possible for the citizens to lay in
provisions during the last summer. The Numantines soon suffered from
want of everything. One of their boldest men, Retogenes, cut his
way with a few companions through the lines of the enemy, and his
touching entreaty that kinsmen should not be allowed to perish without
help produced a great effect in Lutia at least, one of the towns
of the Arevacae. But before the citizens of Lutia had come to a
decision, Scipio, having received information from the partisans of
Rome in the town, appeared with a superior force before its walls, and
compelled the authorities to deliver up to him the leaders of the
movement, 400 of the flower of the youth, whose hands were all cut
off by order of the Roman general. The Numantines, thus deprived of
their last hope, sent to Scipio to negotiate as to their submission
and called on the brave man to spare the brave; but when the envoys
on their return announced that Scipio required unconditional surrender,
they were torn in pieces by the furious multitude, and a fresh term
elapsed before famine and pestilence had completed their work.
At length a second message was sent to the Roman headquarters,
that the town was now ready to submit at discretion. When the citizens
were accordingly instructed to appear on the following day before the
gates, they asked for some days delay, to allow those of their number
who had determined not to survive the loss of liberty time to die.
It was granted, and not a few took advantage of it. At last the
miserable remnant appeared before the gates. Scipio chose fifty of
the most eminent to form part of his triumphal procession; the rest
were sold into slavery, the city was levelled with the ground, and
its territory was distributed among the neighbouring towns. This
occurred in the autumn of 621, fifteen months after Scipio had
assumed the chief command.
The fall of Numantia struck at the root of the opposition that was
still here and there stirring against Rome; military demonstrations
and the imposition of fines sufficed to secure the acknowledgment of
the Roman supremacy in all Hither Spain.
The Callaeci Conquered
New Organization of Spain
In Further Spain the Roman dominion was confirmed and extended by
the subjugation of the Lusitanians. The consul Decimus Junius Brutus,
who came in Caepio's room, settled the Lusitanian war-captives in
the neighbourhood of Saguntum, and gave to their new town Valentia
(Valencia), like Carteia, a Latin constitution (616); he moreover
(616-618) traversed the Iberian west coast in various directions,
and was the first of the Romans to reach the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.
The towns of the Lusitanians dwelling there, which were obstinately
defended by their inhabitants, both men and women, were subdued by
him; and the hitherto independent Callaeci were united with the Roman
province after a great battle, in which 50,000 of them are said to
have fallen. After the subjugation of the Vaccaei, Lusitanians, and
Callaeci, the whole peninsula, with the exception of the north coast,
was now at least nominally subject to the Romans.
A senatorial commission was sent to Spain in order to organize, in
concert with Scipio, the newly-won provincial territory after the Roman
method; and Scipio did what he could to obviate the effects of the
infamous and stupid policy of his predecessors. The Caucani for
instance, whose shameful maltreatment by Lucullus he had been obliged
to witness nineteen years before when a military tribune, were invited
by him to return to their town and to rebuild it. Spain began again
to experience more tolerable times. The suppression of piracy, which
found dangerous lurking-places in the Baleares, through the occupation
of these islands by Quintus Caecilius Metellus in 631, was singularly
conducive, to the prosperity of Spanish commerce; and in other respects
also the fertile islands, inhabited by a dense population which was
unsurpassed in the use of the sling, were a valuable possession.
How numerous the Latin-speaking population in the peninsula was even
then, is shown by the settlement of 3000 Spanish Latins in the towns
of Palma and Pollentia (Pollenza) in the newly-acquired islands.
In spite of various grave evils the Roman administration of Spain
preserved on the whole the stamp which the Catonian period, and
primarily Tiberius Gracchus, had impressed on it. It is true that
the Roman frontier territory had not a little to suffer from the
inroads of the tribes, but half subdued or not subdued at all, on
the north and west. Among the Lusitanians in particular the poorer
youths regularly congregated as banditti, and in large gangs levied
contributions from their countrymen or their neighbours, for which
reason, even at a much later period, the isolated homesteads in this
region were constructed in the style of fortresses, and were, in case
of need, capable of defence; nor did the Romans succeed in putting
an end to these predatory habits in the inhospitable and almost
inaccessible Lusitanian mountains. But what had previously been wars
assumed more and more the character of brigandage, which every tolerably
efficient governor was able to repress with his ordinary resources;
and in spite of such inflictions on the border districts Spain was
the most flourishing and best-organized country in all the Roman
dominions; the system of tenths and the middlemen were there
unknown; the population was numerous, and the country was rich
in corn and cattle.
The Protected States
Far more insupportable was the condition--intermediate between formal
sovereignty and actual subjection--of the African, Greek, and Asiatic
states which were brought within the sphere of Roman hegemony through
the wars of Rome with Carthage, Macedonia, and Syria, and their
consequences. An independent state does not pay too dear a price
for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it
cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find
at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures
for it peace with its neighbours. But these client states of Rome
had neither independence nor peace. In Africa there practically
subsisted a perpetual border-war between Carthage and Numidia.
In Egypt Roman arbitration had settled the dispute as to the
succession between the two brothers Ptolemy Philometor and Ptolemy
the Fat; nevertheless the new rulers of Egypt and Cyrene waged war
for the possession of Cyprus. In Asia not only were most of the
kingdoms--Bithynia, Cappadocia, Syria--likewise torn by internal
quarrels as to the succession and by the interventions of
neighbouring states to which these quarrels gave rise, but various
and severe wars were carried on between the Attalids and the
Galatians, between the Attalids and the kings of Bithynia, and even
between Rhodes and Crete. In Hellas proper, in like manner, the
pigmy feuds which were customary there continued to smoulder; and
even Macedonia, formerly so tranquil, consumed its strength in the
intestine strife that arose out of its new democratic constitutions.
It was the fault of the rulers as well as the ruled, that the last
vital energies and the last prosperity of the nations were expended
in these aimless feuds. The client states ought to have perceived
that a state which cannot wage war against every one cannot wage war
at all, and that, as the possessions and power enjoyed by all these
states were practically under Roman guarantee, they had in the event
of any difference no alternative but to settle the matter amicably
with their neighbours or to call in the Romans as arbiters. When the
Achaean diet was urged by the Rhodians and Cretans to grant them the
aid of the league, and seriously deliberated as to sending it (601),
it was simply a political farce; the principle which the leader of the
party friendly to Rome then laid down--that the Achaeans were no
longer at liberty to wage war without the permission of the Romans--
expressed, doubtless with disagreeable precision, the simple truth
that the sovereignty of the dependent states was merely a formal
one, and that any attempt to give life to the shadow must necessarily
lead to the destruction of the shadow itself. But the ruling
community deserves a censure more severe than that directed against
the ruled. It is no easy task for a man--any more than for a
state--to own to insignificance; it is the duty and right of the
ruler either to renounce his authority, or by the display of an
imposing material superiority to compel the ruled to resignation.
The Roman senate did neither. Invoked and importuned on all hands,
the senate interfered incessantly in the course of African, Hellenic,
Asiatic, and Egyptian affairs; but it did so after so inconstant
and loose a fashion, that its attempts to settle matters usually only
rendered the confusion worse. It was the epoch of commissions.
Commissioners of the senate were constantly going to Carthage and
Alexandria, to the Achaean diet, and to the courts of the rulers of
western Asia; they investigated, inhibited, reported, and yet
decisive steps were not unfrequently taken in the most important
matters without the knowledge, or against the wishes, of the senate.
It might happen that Cyprus, for instance, which the senate had
assigned to the kingdom of Cyrene, was nevertheless retained by Egypt;
that a Syrian prince ascended the throne of his ancestors under the
pretext that he had obtained a promise of it from the Romans, while
the senate had in fact expressly refused to give it to him, and he
himself had only escaped from Rome by breaking their interdict; that
even the open murder of a Roman commissioner, who under the orders of
the senate administered as guardian the government of Syria, passed
totally unpunished. The Asiatics were very well aware that they
were not in a position to resist the Roman legions; but they were
no less aware that the senate was but little inclined to give the
burgesses orders to march for the Euphrates or the Nile. Thus the
state of these remote countries resembled that of the schoolroom
when the teacher is absent or lax; and the government of Rome
deprived the nations at once of the blessings of freedom and of
the blessings of order. For the Romans themselves, moreover, this
state of matters was so far perilous that it to a certain extent left
their northern and eastern frontier exposed. In these quarters
kingdoms might be formed by the aid of the inland countries situated
beyond the limits of the Roman hegemony and in antagonism to the weak
states under Roman protection, without Rome being able directly or
speedily to interfere, and might develop a power dangerous to, and
entering sooner or later into rivalry with, Rome. No doubt the
condition of the bordering nations--everywhere split into fragments
and nowhere favourable to political development on a great scale--
formed some sort of protection against this danger; yet we very
clearly perceive in the history of the east, that at this period the
Euphrates was no longer guarded by the phalanx of Seleucus and was
not yet watched by the legions of Augustus. It was high time to put
an end to this state of indecision. But the only possible way of
ending it was by converting the client states into Roman provinces.
This could be done all the more easily, that the Roman provincial
constitution in substance only concentrated military power in the
hands of the Roman governor, while administration and jurisdiction
in the main were, or at any rate were intended to be, retained by
the communities, so that as much of the old political independence as
was at all capable of life might be preserved in the form of communal
freedom. The necessity for this administrative reform could not
well be mistaken; the only question was, whether the senate would
delay and mar it, or whether it would have the courage and the power
clearly to discern and energetically to execute what was needful.
Carthage and Numidia
Let us first glance at Africa. The order of things established by
the Romans in Libya rested in substance on a balance of power between
the Nomad kingdom of Massinissa and the city of Carthage. While the
former was enlarged, confirmed, and civilized under the vigorous
and sagacious government of Massinissa,(6) Carthage in consequence
simply of a state of peace became once more, at least in wealth and
population, what it had been at the height of its political power.
The Romans saw with ill-concealed and envious fear the apparently
indestructible prosperity of their old rival; while hitherto they had
refused to grant to it any real protection against the constantly
continued encroachments of Massinissa, they now began openly to
interfere in favour of the neighbouring prince. The dispute which
had been pending for more than thirty years between the city and the
king as to the possession of the province of Emporia on the Lesser
Syrtis, one of the most fertile in the Carthaginian territory, was
at length (about 594) decided by Roman commissioners to the effect
that the Carthaginians should evacuate those towns of Eniporia which
still remained in their possession, and should pay 500 talents
(120,000 pounds) to the king as compensation for the illegal enjoyment
of the territory. The consequence was, that Massinissa immediately
seized another Carthaginian district on the western frontier of
their territory, the town of Tusca and the great plains near the
Bagradas; no course was left to the Carthaginians but to commence
another hopeless process at Rome. After long and, beyond doubt,
intentional delay a second commission appeared in Africa (597);
but, when the Carthaginians were unwilling to commit themselves
unconditionally to a decision to be pronounced by it as arbiter
without an exact preliminary investigation into the question of
legal right, and insisted on a thorough discussion of the latter
question, the commissioners without further ceremony returned to Rome.
The Destruction of Carthage Resolved on at Rome
The question of right between Carthage and Massinissa thus remained
unsettled; but the mission gave rise to a more important decision.
The head of this commission had been the old Marcus Cato, at that
time perhaps the most influential man in the senate, and, as a
veteran survivor from the Hannibalic war, still filled with thorough
hatred and thorough dread of the Phoenicians. With surprise and
jealousy Cato had seen with his own eyes the flourishing state of
the hereditary foes of Rome, the luxuriant country and the crowded
streets, the immense stores of arms in the magazines and the rich
materials for a fleet; already he in spirit beheld a second
Hannibal wielding all these resources against Rome. In his honest
and manly, but thoroughly narrow-minded, fashion, he came to the
conclusion that Rome could not be secure until Carthage had
disappeared from the face of the earth, and immediately after his
return set forth this view in the senate. Those of the aristocracy
whose ideas were more enlarged, and especially Scipio Nasica,
opposed this paltry policy with great earnestness; and showed how
blind were the fears entertained regarding a mercantile city whose
Phoenician inhabitants were becoming more and more disused to warlike
arts and ideas, and how the existence of that rich commercial city
was quite compatible with the political supremacy of Rome. Even the
conversion of Carthage into a Roman provincial town would have been
practicable, and indeed, compared with the present condition of the
Phoenicians, perhaps even not unwelcome. Cato, however, desired not
the submission, but the destruction of the hated city. His policy,
as it would seem, found allies partly in the statesmen who were
inclined to bring the transmarine territories into immediate
dependence on Rome, partly and especially in the mighty influence
of the Roman bankers and great capitalists on whom, after the
destruction of the rich moneyed and mercantile city, its inheritance
would necessarily devolve. The majority resolved at the first fitting
opportunity--respect for public opinion required that they should
wait for such--to bring about war with Carthage, or rather the
destruction of the city.
War between Massinissa and Carthage
The desired occasion was soon found. The provoking violations of
right on the part of Massinissa and the Romans brought to the helm
in Carthage Hasdrubal and Carthalo, the leaders of the patriotic
party, which was not indeed, like the Achaean, disposed to revolt
against the Roman supremacy, but was at least resolved to defend,
if necessary, by arms against Massinissa the rights belonging by
treaty to the Carthaginians. The patriots ordered forty of the most
decided partisans of Massinissa to be banished from the city, and made
the people swear that they would on no account ever permit their return;
at the same time, in order to repel the attacks that might be expected
from Massinissa, they formed out of the free Numidians a numerous army
under Arcobarzanes, the grandson of Syphax (about 600). Massinissa,
however, was prudent enough not to take arms now, but to submit
himself unconditionally to the decision of the Romans respecting
the disputed territory on the Bagradas; and thus the Romans could
assert with some plausibility that the Carthaginian preparations must
have been directed against them, and could insist on the immediate
dismissal of the army and destruction of the naval stores.
The Carthaginian senate was disposed to consent, but the multitude
prevented the execution of the decree, and the Roman envoys, who
had brought this order to Carthage, were in peril of their lives.
Massinissa sent his son Gulussa to Rome to report the continuance of
the Carthaginian warlike preparations by land and sea, and to hasten
the declaration of war. After a further embassy of ten men had
confirmed the statement that Carthage was in reality arming (602),
the senate rejected the demand of Cato for an absolute declaration
of war, but resolved in a secret sitting that war should be declared
if the Carthaginians would not consent to dismiss their army and
to burn their materials for a fleet. Meanwhile the conflict had
already begun in Africa. Massinissa had sent back the men whom the
Carthaginians had banished, under the escort of his son Gulussa, to
the city. When the Carthaginians closed their gates against them and
killed also some of the Numidians returning home, Massinissa put his
troops in motion, and the patriot party in Carthage also prepared
for the struggle. But Hasdrubal, who was placed at the head of their
army, was one of the usual army-destroyers whom the Carthaginians
were in the habit of employing as generals; strutting about in his
general's purple like a theatrical king, and pampering his portly
person even in the camp, that vain and unwieldy man was little
fitted to render help in an exigency which perhaps even the genius
of Hamilcar and the arm of Hannibal could have no longer averted.
Before the eyes of Scipio Aemilanus, who at that time a military tribune
in the Spanish army, had been sent to Massinissa to bring over African
elephants for his commander, and who on this occasion looked down on
the conflict from a mountain "like Zeus from Ida," the Carthaginians
and Numidians fought a great battle, in which the former, though
reinforced by 6000 Numidian horsemen brought to them by discontented
captains of Massinissa, and superior in number to the enemy, were
worsted. After this defeat the Carthaginians offered to make
cessions of territory and payments of money to Massinissa, and
Scipio at their solicitation attempted to bring about an agreement;
but the project of peace was frustrated by the refusal of the
Carthaginian patriots to surrender the deserters. Hasdrubal,
however, closely hemmed in by the troops of his antagonist, was
compelled to grant to the latter all that he demanded--the surrender
of the deserters, the return of the exiles, the delivery of arms,
the marching off under the yoke, the payment of 100 talents (24,000
pounds) annually for the next fifty years. But even this agreement
was not kept by the Numidians; on the contrary the disarmed remnant
of the Carthaginian army was cut to pieces by them on the way home.
Declaration of War by Rome
The Romans, who had carefully abstained from preventing the war
Itself by seasonable interposition, had now what they wished: namely,
A serviceable pretext for war--for the Carthaginians had certainly
Now transgressed the stipulations of the treaty, that they should not
wage war against the allies of Rome or beyond their own bounds(7)--
and an antagonist already beaten beforehand. The Italian contingents
were already summoned to Rome, and the ships were assembled; the
declaration of war might issue at any moment. The Carthaginians made
every effort to avert the impending blow. Hasdrubal and Carthalo,
the leaders of the patriot party, were condemned to death, and an
embassy was sent to Rome to throw the responsibility on them.
But at the same time envoys from Utica, the second city of the
Libyan Phoenicians, arrived there with full powers to surrender
their Community wholly to the Romans--compared with such obliging
submissiveness, it seemed almost an insolence that the Carthaginians
had rested content with ordering, unbidden, the execution of their most
eminent men. The senate declared that the excuse of the Carthaginians
was found insufficient; to the question, what in that case would suffice,
the reply was given that the Carthaginians knew that themselves. They
might, no doubt, have known what the Romans wished; but yet it seemed
impossible to believe that the last hour of their loved native city had
really come. Once more Carthaginian envoys--on this occasion thirty
in number and with unlimited powers--were sent to Rome. When they
arrived, war was already declared (beginning of 605), and the double
consular army had embarked. Yet they even now attempted to dispel
the storm by complete submission. The senate replied that Rome was
ready to guarantee to the Carthaginian community its territory, its
municipal freedom and its laws, its public and private property,
provided that it would furnish to the consuls who had just departed for
Sicily within the space of a month at Lilybaeum 300 hostages from the
children of the leading families, and would fulfil the further orders
which the consuls in conformity with their instructions should issue
to them. The reply has been called ambiguous; but very erroneously,
as even at the time clearsighted men among the Carthaginians themselves
pointed out. The circumstance that everything which they could ask
was guaranteed with the single exception of the city, and that
nothing was said as to stopping the embarkation of the troops for
Africa, showed very clearly what the Roman intentions were; the
senate acted with fearful harshness, but it did not assume the
semblance of concession. The Carthaginians, however, would not open
their eyes; there was no statesman found, who had the power to move
the unstable multitude of the city either to thorough resistance or
to thorough resignation. When they heard at the same time of the
horrible decree of war and of the endurable demand for hostages, they
complied immediately with the latter, and still clung to hope, because
they had not the courage fully to realize the import of surrendering
themselves beforehand to the arbitrary will of a mortal foe.
The consuls sent back the hostages from Lilybaeum to Rome, and informed
the Carthaginian envoys that they would learn further particulars in
Africa. The landing was accomplished without resistance, and the
provisions demanded were supplied. When the gerusia of Carthage
appeared in a body at the head-quarters in Utica to receive the
further orders, the consuls required in the first instance the
disarming of the city. To the question of the Carthaginians, who
was in that case to protect them even against their own emigrants--
against the army, which had swelled to 20,000 men, under the command
of Husdrubal who had saved himself from the sentence of death by
flight--it was replied, that this would be the concern of the Romans.
Accordingly the council of the city obsequiously appeared before the
consuls, with all their fleet-material, all the military stores of the
public magazines, all the arms that were found in the possession of
private persons--to the number of 3000 catapults and 200,000 sets of
armour--and inquired whether anything more was desired. Then the
consul Lucius Marcius Censorinus rose and announced to the council,
that in accordance with the instructions given by the senate the
existing city was to be destroyed, but that the inhabitants were
at liberty to settle anew in their territory wherever they chose,
provided it were at a distance of at least ten miles from the sea.
Resistance of the Carthaginians
This fearful command aroused in the Phoenicians all the--shall
we say magnanimous or frenzied?--enthusiasm, which was displayed
previously by the Tyrians against Alexander, and subsequently by the
Jews against Vespasian. Unparalleled as was the patience with which
this nation could endure bondage and oppression, as unparalleled was
now the furious rising of that mercantile and seafaring population,
when the things at stake were not the state and freedom, but the
beloved soil of their ancestral city and their venerated and dear
home beside the sea. Hope and deliverance were out of the question;
political discretion enjoined even now an unconditional submission.
But the voice of the few who counselled the acceptance of what was
inevitable was, like the call of the pilot during a hurricane,
drowned amidst the furious yells of the multitude; which, in its
frantic rage, laid hands on the magistrates of the city who had
counselled the surrender of the hostages and arms, made such of the
innocent bearers of the news as had ventured at all to return home
expiate their terrible tidings, and tore in pieces the Italians who
chanced to be sojourning in the city by way of avenging beforehand,
at least on them, the destruction of its native home. No resolution
was passed to defend themselves; unarmed as they were, this was
a matter of course. The gates were closed; stones were carried
to the battlements of the walls that had been stripped of the
catapults; the chief command was entrusted to Hasdrubal, the grandson
of Massinissa; the slaves in a body were declared free. The army
of refugees under the fugitive Hasdrubal--which was in possession of
the whole Carthaginian territory with the exception of the towns on
the east coast occupied by the Romans, viz. Hadrumetum, Little
Leptis, Thapsus and Achulla, and the city of Utica, and offered an
invaluable support for the defence--was entreated not to refuse its
aid to the commonwealth in this dire emergency. At the same time,
concealing in true Phoenician style the most unbounded resentment
under the cloak of humility, they attempted to deceive the enemy.
A message was sent to the consuls to request a thirty days'
armistice for the despatch of an embassy to Rome. The Carthaginians
were well aware that the generals neither would nor could grant this
request, which had been refused once already; but the consuls were
confirmed by it in the natural supposition that after the first outbreak
of despair the utterly defenceless city would submit, and accordingly
postponed the attack. The precious interval was employed in preparing
catapults and armour; day and night all, without distinction of age or
sex, were occupied in constructing machines and forging arms; the public
buildings were torn down to procure timber and metal; women cut off
their hair to furnish the strings indispensable for the catapults; in
an incredibly short time the walls and the men were once more armed.
That all this could be done without the consuls, who were but a few
miles off, learning anything of it, is not the least marvellous feature
in this marvellous movement sustained by a truly enthusiastic, and in
fact superhuman, national hatred. When at length the consuls, weary
of waiting, broke up from their camp at Utica, and thought that they
should be able to scale the bare walls with ladders, they found to their
surprise and horror the battlements crowned anew with catapults, and
the large populous city which they had hoped to occupy like an open
village, able and ready to defend itself to the last man.
Situation of Carthage
Carthage was rendered very strong both by the nature of its
situation(8) and by the art of its inhabitants, who had very often
to depend on the protection of its walls. Into the broad gulf of
Tunis, which is bounded on the west by Cape Farina and on the east
by Cape Bon, there projects in a direction from west to east a
promontory, which is encompassed on three sides by the sea and is
connected with the mainland only towards the west. This promontory,
at its narrowest part only about two miles broad and on the whole flat,
again expands towards the gulf, and terminates there in the two
heights of Jebel-Khawi and Sidi bu Said, between which extends
the plain of El Mersa. On its southern portion which ends in the
height of Sidi bu Said lay the city of Carthage. The pretty steep
declivity of that height towards the gulf and its numerous rocks and
shallows gave natural strength to the side of the city next to the
gulf, and a simple circumvallation was sufficient there. On the
wall along the west or landward side, on the other hand, where nature
afforded no protection, every appliance within the power of the art
of fortification in those times was expended. It consisted, as its
recently discovered remains exactly tallying with the description of
Polybius have shown, of an outer wall 6 1/2 feet thick and immense
casemates attached to it behind, probably along its whole extent;
these were separated from the outer wall by a covered way 6 feet
broad, and had a depth of 14 feet, exclusive of the front and back
walls, each of which was fully 3 feet broad.(9) This enormous wall,
composed throughout of large hewn blocks, rose in two stories,
exclusive of the battlements and the huge towers four stories high,
to a height of 45 feet,(10) and furnished in the lower range of the
casemates stables and provender-stores for 300 elephants, in the upper
range stalls for horses, magazines, and barracks.(11) The citadel-hill,
the Byrsa (Syriac, birtha = citadel), a comparatively considerable
rock having a height of 188 feet and at its base a circumference
of fully 2000 double paces,(12) was joined to this wall at its
southern end, just as the rock-wall of the Capitol was joined
to the city-wall of Rome. Its summit bore the huge temple of the
God of Healing, resting on a basement of sixty steps. The south
side of the city was washed partly by the shallow lake of Tunes towards
the south-west, which was separated almost wholly from the gulf by a
narrow and low tongue of land running southwards from the Carthaginian
peninsula,(13) partly by the open gulf towards the south-east.
At this last spot was situated the double harbour of the city,
a work of human hands; the outer or commercial harbour, a longish
rectangle with the narrow end turned to the sea, from whose entrance,
only 70 feet wide, broad quays stretched along the water on both sides,
and the inner circular war-harbour, the Cothon,(14) with the island
containing the admiral's house in the middle, which was approached
through the outer harbour. Between the two passed the city wall,
which turning eastward from the Byrsa excluded the tongue of
land and the outer harbour, but included the war-harbour, so that
the entrance to the latter must be conceived as capable of being
closed like a gate. Not far from the war-harbour lay the
marketplace, which was connected by three narrow streets with
the citadel open on the side towards the town. To the north of,
and beyond, the city proper, the pretty considerable space of
the modern El Mersa, even at that time occupied in great part by
villas and well-watered gardens, and then called Magalia, had a
circumvallation of its own joining on to the city wall. On the
opposite point of the peninsula, the Jebel-Khawi near the modern
village of Ghamart, lay the necropolis. These three--the old
city, the suburb, and the necropolis--together filled the whole
breadth of the promontory on its side next the gulf, and were only
accessible by the two highways leading to Utica and Tunes along
that narrow tongue of land, which, although not closed by a wall,
yet afforded a most advantageous position for the armies taking
their stand under the protection of the capital with the view of
protecting it in return.
The difficult task of reducing so well fortified a city was rendered
still more difficult by the fact, that the resources of the capital
itself and of its territory which still included 800 townships and
was mostly under the power of the emigrant party on the one hand,
and the numerous tribes of the free or half-free Libyans hostile to
Massinissa on the other, enabled the Carthaginians simultaneously
with their defence of the city to keep a numerous army in the field--
an army which, from the desperate temper of the emigrants and the
serviceableness of the light Numidian cavalry, the besiegers could
not afford to disregard.
The Siege
The consuls accordingly had by no means an easy task to perform,
when they now found themselves compelled to commence a regular siege.
Manius Manilius, who commanded the land army, pitched his camp
opposite the wall of the citadel, while Lucius Censorinus stationed
himself with the fleet on the lake and there began operations on the
tongue of land. The Carthaginian army, under Hasdrubal, encamped on
the other side of the lake near the fortress of Nepheris, whence it
obstructed the labours of the Roman soldiers despatched to cut
timber for constructing machines, and the able cavalry-leader in
particular, Himilco Phameas, slew many of the Romans. Censorinus
fitted up two large battering-rams on the tongue, and made a
breach with them at this weakest place of the wall; but, as evening
had set in, the assault had to be postponed. During the night the
besieged succeeded in filling up a great part of the breach, and in
so damaging the Roman machines by a sortie that they could not work
next day. Nevertheless the Romans ventured on the assault; but
they found the breach and the portions of the wall and houses in the
neighbourhood so strongly occupied, and advanced with such imprudence,
that they were repulsed with severe loss and would have suffered
still greater damage, had not the military tribune Scipio Aemilianus,
foreseeing the issue of the foolhardy attack, kept together his men
in front of the walls and with them intercepted the fugitives.
Manilius accomplished still less against the impregnable wall of
the citadel. The siege thus lingered on. The diseases engendered in
the camp by the heat of summer, the departure of Censorinus the abler
general, the ill-humour and inaction of Massinissa who was naturally
far from pleased to see the Romans taking for themselves the booty
which he had long coveted, and the death of the king at the age of
ninety which ensued soon after (end of 605), utterly arrested the
offensive operations of the Romans. They had enough to do in
protecting their ships against the Carthaginian incendiaries and
their camp against nocturnal surprises, and in securing food for
their men and horses by the construction of a harbour-fort and by
forays in the neighbourhood. Two expeditions directed against
Hasdrubal remained without success; and in fact the first, badly
led over difficult ground, had almost terminated in a formal defeat.
But, while the course of the war was inglorious for the general
and the army, the military tribune Scipio achieved in it brilliant
distinction. It was he who, on occasion of a nocturnal attack by
the enemy on the Roman camp, starting with some squadrons of horse
and taking the enemy in rear, compelled him to retreat. On the
first expedition to Nepheris, when the passage of the river had
taken place in opposition to his advice and had almost occasioned
the destruction of the army, by a bold attack in flank he relieved
the pressure on the retreating troops, and by his devoted and
heroic courage rescued a division which had been given up as
lost While the other officers, and the consul in particular,
by their perfidy deterred the towns and party-leaders that were
inclined to negotiate, Scipio succeeded in inducing one of the
ablest of the latter, Himilco Phameas, to pass over to the Romans
with 2200 cavalry. Lastly, after he had in fulfilment of the charge
of the dying Massinissa divided his kingdom among his three sons,
Micipsa, Gulussa, and Mastanabal, he brought to the Roman army in
Gulussa a cavalry-leader worthy of his father, and thereby remedied
the want, which had hitherto been seriously felt, of light cavalry.
His refined and yet simple demeanour, which recalled rather his own
father than him whose name he bore, overcame even envy, and in the
camp as in the capital the name of Scipio was on the lips of all.
Even Cato, who was not liberal with his praise, a few months before
his death--he died at the end of 605 without having seen the wish of
his life, the destruction of Carthage, accomplished--applied to the
young officer and to his incapable comrades the Homeric line:--
He only is a living man, the rest are gliding shades.(15)
While these events were passing, the close of the year had come
and with it a change of commanders; the consul Lucius Piso (606)
was somewhat late in appearing and took the command of the land
army, while Lucius Mancinus took charge of the fleet. But, if their
predecessors had done little, these did nothing at all. Instead of
prosecuting the siege of Carthage or subduing the army of Hasdrubal,
Piso employed himself in attacking the small maritime towns of the
Phoenicians, and that mostly without success. Clupea, for example,
repulsed him, and he was obliged to retire in disgrace from Hippo
Diarrhytus, after having lost the whole summer in front of it and
having had his besieging apparatus twice burnt. Neapolis was no
doubt taken; but the pillage of the town in opposition to his pledged
word of honour was not specially favourable to the progress of
the Roman arms. The courage of the Carthaginians rose. Bithyas,
a Numidian sheik, passed over to them with 800 horse; Carthaginian
envoys were enabled to attempt negotiations with the kings of Numidia
and Mauretania and even with Philip the Macedonian pretender.
It was perhaps internal intrigues--Hasdrubal the emigrant brought
the general of the same name, who commanded in the city, into
suspicion on account of his relationship with Massinissa, and
caused him to be put to death in the senate-house--rather than
the activity of the Romans, that prevented things from assuming
a turn still more favourable for Carthage.
Scipio Aemilianus
With the view of producing a change in the state of African affairs,
which excited uneasiness, the Romans resorted to the extraordinary
measure of entrusting the conduct of the war to the only man who had
as yet brought home honour from the Libyan plains, and who was
recommended for this war by his very name. Instead of calling Scipio
to the aedileship for which he was a candidate, they gave to him
the consulship before the usual time, setting aside the laws to the
contrary effect, and committed to him by special decree the conduct
of the African war. He arrived (607) in Utica at a moment when much
was at stake. The Roman admiral Mancinus, charged by Piso with the
nominal continuance of the siege of the capital, had occupied a steep
cliff, far remote from the inhabited district and scarcely defended,
on the almost inaccessible seaward side of the suburb of Magalia, and
had united nearly his whole not very numerous force there, in the hope
of being able to penetrate thence into the outer town. In fact the
assailants had been for a moment within its gates and the camp-
followers had flocked forward in a body in the hope of spoil, when
they were again driven back to the cliff and, being without supplies
and almost cut off, were in the greatest danger. Scipio found matters
in that position. He had hardly arrived when he despatched the
troops which he had brought with him and the militia of Utica by sea
to the threatened point, and succeeded in saving its garrison and
holding the cliff itself. After this danger was averted, the general
proceeded to the camp of Piso to take over the army and bring it back
to Carthage. Hasdrubal and Bithyas availed themselves of his absence
to move their camp immediately up to the city, and to renew the
attack on the garrison of the cliff before Magalia; but even now
Scipio appeared with the vanguard of the main army in sufficient time
to afford assistance to the post. Then the siege began afresh and
more earnestly. First of all Scipio cleared the camp of the mass of
camp-followers and sutlers and once more tightened the relaxed reins
of discipline. Military operations were soon resumed with increased
vigour. In an attack by night on the suburb the Romans succeeded in
passing from a tower--placed in front of the walls and equal to them
in height--on to the battlements, and opened a little gate through
which the whole army entered. The Carthaginians abandoned the
suburb and their camp before the gates, and gave the chief command
of the garrison of the city, amounting to 30,000 men, to Hasdrubal.
The new commander displayed his energy in the first instance by
giving orders that all the Roman prisoners should be brought to the
battlements and, after undergoing cruel tortures, should be thrown
over before the eyes of the besieging army; and, when voices were
raised in disapproval of the act, a reign of terror was introduced
with reference to the citizens also. Scipio, meanwhile, after having
confined the besieged to the city itself, sought totally to cut off
their intercourse with the outer world. He took up his head-quarters
on the ridge by which the Carthaginian peninsula was connected with
the mainland, and, notwithstanding the various attempts of the
Carthaginians to disturb his operations, constructed a great camp
across the whole breadth of the isthmus, which completely blockaded
the city from the landward side. Nevertheless ships with provisions
still ran into the harbour, partly bold merchantmen allured by the
great gain, partly vessels of Bithyas, who availed himself of every
favourable wind to convey supplies to the city from Nepheris at the
end of the lake of Tunes; whatever might now be the sufferings of the
citizens, the garrison was still sufficiently provided for. Scipio
therefore constructed a stone mole, 96 feet broad, running from the
tongue of land between the lake and gulf into the latter, so as thus
to close the mouth of the harbour. The city seemed lost, when the
success of this undertaking, which was at first ridiculed by the
Carthaginians as impracticable, became evident. But one surprise
was balanced by another. While the Roman labourers were constructing
the mole, work was going forward night and day for two months
in the Carthaginian harbour, without even the deserters being
able to tell what were the designs of the besieged. All of a
sudden, just as the Romans had completed the bar across the entrance
to the harbour, fifty Carthaginian triremes and a number of boats and
skiffs sailed forth from that same harbour into the gulf--while the
enemy were closing the old mouth of the harbour towards the south,
the Carthaginians had by means of a canal formed in an easterly
direction procured for themselves a new outlet, which owing to the
depth of the sea at that spot could not possibly be closed. Had the
Carthaginians, instead of resting content with a mere demonstration,
thrown themselves at once and resolutely on the half-dismantled and
wholly unprepared Roman fleet, it must have been lost; when they
returned on the third day to give the naval battle, they found the
Romans in readiness. The conflict came off without decisive result;
but on their return the Carthaginian vessels so ran foul of each
other in and before the entrance of the harbour, that the damage thus
occasioned was equivalent to a defeat. Scipio now directed his
attacks against the outer quay, which lay outside of the city walls
and was only protected for the exigency by an earthen rampart of recent
construction. The machines were stationed on the tongue of land,
and a breach was easily made; but with unexampled intrepidity the
Carthaginians, wading through the shallows, assailed the besieging
implements, chased away the covering force which ran off in such a
manner that Scipio was obliged to make his own troopers cut them
down, and destroyed the machines. In this way they gained time to
close the breach. Scipio, however, again established the machines
and set on fire the wooden towers of the enemy; by which means he
obtained possession of the quay and of the outer harbour along
with it. A rampart equalling the city wall in height was here
constructed, and the town was now at length completely blockaded
by land and sea, for the inner harbour could only be reached through
the outer. To ensure the completeness of the blockade, Scipio
ordered Gaius Laelius to attack the camp at Nepheris, where Diogenes
now held the command; it was captured by a fortunate stratagem,
and the whole countless multitude assembled there were put to
death or taken prisoners. Winter had now arrived and Scipio
suspended his operations, leaving famine and pestilence to
complete what he had begun.
Capture of the City
How fearfully these mighty agencies had laboured in the work of
destruction during the interval while Hasdrubal continued to vaunt
and to gormandize, appeared so soon as the Roman army proceeded in
the spring of 608 to attack the inner town. Hasdrubal gave orders
to set fire to the outer harbour and made himself ready to repel
the expected assault on the Cothon; but Laelius succeeded in scaling
the wall, hardly longer defended by the famished garrison, at a point
farther up and thus penetrated into the inner harbour. The city
was captured, but the struggle was still by no means at an end.
The assailants occupied the market-place contiguous to the small
harbour, and slowly pushed their way along the three narrow streets
leading from this to the citadel--slowly, for the huge houses of
six stories in height had to be taken one by one; on the roofs or
on beams laid over the street the soldiers penetrated from one of
these fortress-like buildings to that which was adjoining or opposite,
and cut down whatever they encountered there. Thus six days
elapsed, terrible for the inhabitants of the city and full of
difficulty and danger also for the assailants; at length they
arrived in front of the steep citadel-rock, whither Hasdrubal and
the force still surviving had retreated. To procure a wider approach,
Scipio gave orders to set fire to the captured streets and to level
the ruins; on which occasion a number of persons unable to fight, who
were concealed in the houses, miserably perished. Then at last the
remnant of the population, crowded together in the citadel, besought
for mercy. Bare life was conceded to them, and they appeared before
the victor, 30,000 men and 25,000 women, not the tenth part of the
former population. The Roman deserters alone, 900 in number, and
the general Hasdrubal with his wife and his two children had thrown
themselves into the temple of the God of Healing; for them--for
soldiers who had deserted their posts, and for the murderer of the
Roman prisoners--there were no terms. But when, yielding to famine,
the most resolute of them set fire to the temple, Hasdrubal could
not endure to face death; alone he ran forth to the victor and
falling upon his knees pleaded for his life. It was granted; but,
when his wife who with her children was among the rest on the roof
of the temple saw him at the feet of Scipio, her proud heart swelled
at this disgrace brought on her dear perishing home, and, with bitter
words bidding her husband be careful to save his life, she plunged
first her sons and then herself into the flames. The struggle was
at an end. The joy in the camp and at Rome was boundless; the
noblest of the people alone were in secret ashamed of the most recent
grand achievement of the nation. The prisoners were mostly sold as
slaves; several were allowed to languish in prison; the most notable,
Hasdrubal and Bithyas, were sent to the interior of Italy as Roman
state-prisoners and tolerably treated. The moveable property, with
the exception of gold, silver, and votive gifts, was abandoned to
the pillage of the soldiers. As to the temple treasures, the booty
that had been in better times carried off by the Carthaginians from
the Sicilian towns was restored to them; the bull of Phalaris,
for example, was returned to the Agrigentines; the rest fell
to the Roman state.
Destruction of Carthage
But by far the larger portion of the city still remained standing.
We may believe that Scipio desired its preservation; at least he
addressed a special inquiry to the senate on the subject. Scipio
Nasica once more attempted to gain a hearing for the demands of
reason and honour; but in vain. The senate ordered the general
to level the city of Carthage and the suburb of Magalia with the
ground, and to do the same with all the townships which had held by
Carthage to the last; and thereafter to pass the plough over the site
of Carthage so as to put an end in legal form to the existence of
the city, and to curse the soil and site for ever, that neither
house nor cornfield might ever reappear on the spot. The command was
punctually obeyed. The ruins burned for seventeen days: recently,
when the remains of the Carthaginian city wall were excavated, they
were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet
deep, filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron,
and projectiles. Where the industrious Phoenicians had bustled and
trafficked for five hundred years, Roman slaves henceforth pastured
the herds of their distant masters. Scipio, however, whom nature
had destined for a nobler part than that of an executioner, gazed
with horror on his own work; and, instead of the joy of victory,
the victor himself was haunted by a presentiment of the retribution
that would inevitably follow such a misdeed.
Province of Africa
There remained the work of arranging the future organization of
the country. The earlier plan of investing the allies of Rome with
the transmarine possessions that she acquired was no longer viewed
with favour. Micipsa and his brothers retained in substance their
former territory, including the districts recently wrested from the
Carthaginians on the Bagradas and in Emporia; their long-cherished
hope of obtaining Carthage as a capital was for ever frustrated;
the senate presented them instead with the Carthaginian libraries.
The Carthaginian territory as possessed by the city in its last days--
viz. The narrow border of the African coast lying immediately opposite
to Sicily, from the river Tusca (near Thabraca) to Thaenae (opposite
to the island of Karkenah)--became a Roman province. In the interior,
where the constant encroachments of Massinissa had more and more
narrowed the Carthaginian dominions and Bulla, Zama, and Aquae
already belonged to the kings, the Numidians retained what they
possessed. But the careful regulation of the boundary between the
Roman province and the Numidian kingdom, which enclosed it on three
sides, showed that Rome would by no means tolerate in reference
to herself what she had permitted in reference to Carthage; while
the name of the new province, Africa, on the other hand appeared
to indicate that Rome did not at all regard the boundary now marked
off as a definitive one. The supreme administration of the new
province was entrusted to a Roman governor, who had his seat at Utica.
Its frontier did not need any regular defence, as the allied Numidian
kingdom everywhere separated it from the inhabitants of the desert.
In the matter of taxes Rome dealt on the whole with moderation.
Those communities which from the beginning of the war had taken part
with Rome--viz. Only the maritime towns of Utica, Hadrumetum, Little
Leptis, Thapsus, Achulla, and Usalis, and the inland town of Theudalis--
retained their territory and became free cities; which was also the
case with the newly-founded community of deserters. The territory
of the city of Carthage--with the exception of a tract presented to
Utica--and that of the other destroyed townships became Roman domain-
land, which was let on lease. The remaining townships likewise
forfeited in law their property in the soil and their municipal
liberties; but their land and their constitution were for the time
being, and until further orders from the Roman government, left to
them as a possession liable to be recalled, and the communities paid
annually to Rome for the use of their soil which had become Roman a
once-for-all fixed tribute (stipendium), which they in their turn
collected by means of a property-tax levied from the individuals
liable. The real gainers, however, by this destruction of the
first commercial city of the west were the Roman merchants, who, as
soon as Carthage lay in ashes, flocked in troops to Utica, and from
this as their head-quarters began to turn to profitable account not
only the Roman province, but also the Numidian and Gaetulian regions
which had hitherto been closed to them.
Macedonia and the Pseudo-Phillip
Victory of Metellus
Macedonia also disappeared about the same time as Carthage from
the ranks of the nations. The four small confederacies, into which
the wisdom of the Roman senate had parcelled out the ancient kingdom,
could not live at peace either internally or one with another.
How matters stood in the country appears from a single accidentally
mentioned occurrence at Phacus, where the whole governing council
of one of these confederacies were murdered on the instigation of
one Damasippus. Neither the commissions sent by the senate (590),
nor the foreign arbiters, such as Scipio Aemilianus (603) called in
after the Greek fashion by the Macedonians, were able to establish
any tolerable order. Suddenly there appeared in Thrace a young man,
who called himself Philip the son of king Perseus, whom he strikingly
resembled, and of the Syrian Laodice. He had passed his youth
in the Mysian town of Adramytium; there he asserted that he had
preserved the sure proofs of his illustrious descent. With these
he had, after a vain attempt to obtain recognition in his native
country, resorted to Demetrius Soter, king of Syria, his mother's
brother. There were in fact some who believed the Adramytene or
professed to believe him, and urged the king either to reinstate
the prince in his hereditary kingdom or to cede to him the crown
of Syria; whereupon Demetrius, to put an end to the foolish proceedings,
arrested the pretender and sent him to the Romans. But the senate
attached so little importance to the man, that it confined him in an
Italian town without taking steps to have him even seriously guarded.
Thus he had escaped to Miletus, where the civic authorities once more
seized him and asked the Roman commissioners what they should do with
the prisoner. The latter advised them to let him go; and they did
so. He now tried his fortune further in Thrace; and, singularly
enough, he obtained recognition and support there not only from
Teres the chief of the Thracian barbarians, the husband of his
father's sister, and Barsabas, but also from the prudent Byzantines.
With Thracian support the so-called Philip invaded Macedonia, and,
although he was defeated at first, he soon gained one victory over
the Macedonian militia in the district of Odomantice beyond the Strymon,
followed by a second on the west side of the river, which gave him
possession of all Macedonia. Apocryphal as his story sounded, and
decidedly as it was established that the real Philip, the son of
Perseus, had died when eighteen years of age at Alba, and that this
man, so far from being a Macedonian prince, was Andriscus a fuller of
Adramytium, yet the Macedonians were too much accustomed to the rule
of a king not to be readily satisfied on the point of legitimacy and
to return with pleasure into the old track. Messengers arrived
from the Thessalians, announcing that the pretender had advanced
into their territory; the Roman commissioner Nasica, who, in the
expectation that a word of earnest remonstrance would put an end
to the foolish enterprise, had been sent by the senate to Macedonia
without soldiers, was obliged to call out the Achaean and Pergamene
troops and to protect Thessaly against the superior force by
means of the Achaeans, as far as was practicable, till (605?)
the praetor Juventius appeared with a legion. The latter attacked
the Macedonians with his small force; but he himself fell, his army
was almost wholly destroyed, and the greater part of Thessaly fell into
the power of the pseudo-Philip, who conducted his government there and
in Macedonia with cruelty and arrogance. At length a stronger Roman
army under Quintus Caecilius Metellus appeared on the scene of
conflict, and, supported by the Pergamene fleet, advanced into
Macedonia. In the first cavalry combat the Macedonians retained
the superiority; but soon dissensions and desertions occurred in the
Macedonian army, and the blunder of the pretender in dividing his
army and detaching half of it to Thessaly procured for the Romans an
easy and decisive victory (606). Philip fled to the chieftain Byzes
in Thrace, whither Metellus followed him and after a second victory
obtained his surrender.
Province of Macedonia
The four Macedonian confederacies had not voluntarily submitted to
the pretender, but had simply yielded to force. According to the
policy hitherto pursued there was therefore no reason for depriving
the Macedonians of the shadow of independence which the battle of
Pydna had still left to them; nevertheless the kingdom of Alexander
was now, by order of the senate, converted by Metellus into a Roman
province. This case clearly showed that the Roman government had
changed its system, and had resolved to substitute for the relation
of clientship that of simple subjects; and accordingly the suppression
of the four Macedonian confederacies was felt throughout the whole range
of the client-states as a blow directed against all. The possessions
in Epirus which were formerly after the first Roman victories detached
from Macedonia--the Ionian islands and the ports of Apollonia and
Epidamnus,(16) that had hitherto been under the jurisdiction of the
Italian magistrates--were now reunited with Macedonia, so that the latter,
probably as early as this period, reached on the north-west to a point
beyond Scodra, where Illyria began. The protectorate which Rome claimed
over Greece proper likewise devolved, of itself, on the new governor of
Macedonia. Thus Macedonia recovered its unity and nearly the same limits
which it had in its most flourishing times. It had no longer, however,
the unity of a kingdom, but that of a province, retaining its communal
and even, as it would seem, its district organization, but placed under
an Italian governor and quaestor, whose names make their appearance
on the native coins along with the name of the country. As tribute,
there was retained the old moderate land-tax, as Paullus had arranged
it(17)--a sum of 100 talents (24,000 pounds) which was allocated in
fixed proportions on the several communities. Yet the land could not
forget its old glorious dynasty. A few years after the subjugation
of the pseudo-Philip another pretended son of Perseus, Alexander,
raised the banner of insurrection on the Nestus (Karasu), and
had in a short time collected 1600 men; but the quaestor Lucius
Tremellius mastered the insurrection without difficulty and pursued
the fugitive pretender as far as Dardania (612). This was the last
movement of the proud national spirit of Macedonia, which two
hundred years before had accomplished so great things in Hellas
and Asia. Henceforward there is scarcely anything else to be told of
the Macedonians, save that they continued to reckon their inglorious
years from the date at which the country received its definitive
provincial organization (608).
Thenceforth the defence of the northern and eastern frontiers
of Macedonia or, in other words, of the frontier of Hellenic
civilization against the barbarians devolved on the Romans. It was
conducted by them with inadequate forces and not, on the whole, with
befitting energy; but with a primary view to this military object
the great Egnatian highway was constructed, which as early as the
time of Polybius ran from Apollonia and Dyrrhachium, the two chief
ports on the west coast, across the interior to Thessalonica, and was
afterwards prolonged to the Hebrus (Maritza).(18) The new province
became the natural basis, on the one hand for the movements against
the turbulent Dalmatians, and on the other hand for the numerous
expeditions against the Illyrian, Celtic, and Thracian tribes settled
to the north of the Grecian peninsula, which we shall afterwards
have to exhibit in their historical connection.
Greece
Greece proper had greater occasion than Macedonia to congratulate
herself on the favour of the ruling power; and the Philhellenes of
Rome might well be of opinion that the calamitous effects of the war
with Perseus were disappearing, and that the state of things in general
was improving there. The bitterest abettors of the now dominant
party, Lyciscus the Aetolian, Mnasippus the Boeotian, Chrematas
the Acarnanian, the infamous Epirot Charops whom honourable Romans
forbade even to enter their houses, descended one after another to
the grave; another generation grew up, in which the old recollections
and the old antagonisms had faded. The Roman senate thought that
the time for general forgiveness and oblivion had come, and in 604
released the survivors of those Achaean patriots who had been
confined for seventeen years in Italy, and whose liberation the
Achaean diet had never ceased to demand. Nevertheless they were
mistaken. How little the Romans with all their Philhellenism had
been successful in heartily conciliating Hellenic patriotism, was
nowhere more clearly apparent than in the attitude of the Greeks
towards the Attalids. King Eumenes II had been, as a friend of
the Romans, extremely hated in Greece;(19) but scarcely had a
coldness arisen between him and the Romans, when he became suddenly
popular in Greece, and the Hellenic hopefuls expected the deliverer
from a foreign yoke to come now from Pergamus as formerly from
Macedonia. Social disorganization more especially was visibly
on the increase among the petty states of Hellas now left to
themselves. The country became desolate not through war and
pestilence, but through the daily increasing disinclination of
the higher classes to trouble themselves with wife and children;
on the other hand the criminal or the thoughtless flocked as
hitherto chiefly to Greece, there to await the recruiting officer.
The communities sank into daily deeper debt, and into financial
dishonour and a corresponding want of credit: some cities, more
especially Athens and Thebes, resorted in their financial distress
to direct robbery, and plundered the neighbouring communities.
The internal dissensions in the leagues also--e. g. between the
voluntary and the compulsory members of the Achaean confederacy--
were by no means composed. If the Romans, as seems to have been
the case, believed what they wished and confided in the calm which
for the moment prevailed, they were soon to learn that the younger
generation in Hellas was in no respect better or wiser than the older.
The Greeks directly sought an opportunity of picking a quarrel
with the Romans.
Achaean War
In order to screen a foul transaction, Diaeus, the president of the
Achaean league for the time being, about 605 threw out in the diet
the assertion that the special privileges conceded by the Achaean
league to the Lacedaemonians as members--viz. their exemption from
the Achaean criminal jurisdiction, and the right to send separate
embassies to Rome--were not at all guaranteed to them by the Romans.
It was an audacious falsehood; but the diet naturally believed what
it wished, and, when the Achaeans showed themselves ready to make
good their assertions with arms in hand, the weaker Spartans yielded
for the time, or, to speak more correctly, those whose surrender was
demanded by the Achaeans left the city to appear as complainants
before the Roman senate. The senate answered as usual that it would
send a commission to investigate the matter; but instead of reporting
this reply the envoys stated in Achaia as well as in Sparta, and in
both cases falsely, that the senate had decided in their favour.
The Achaeans, who felt more than ever their equality with Rome as
allies and their political importance on account of the aid which
the league had just rendered in Thessaly against the pseudo-Philip,
advanced in 606 under their -strategus- Damocritus into Laconia: in
vain a Roman embassy on its way to Asia, at the suggestion of Metellus,
admonished them to keep the peace and to await the commissioners of
the senate. A battle took place, in which nearly 1000 Spartans
fell, and Sparta might have been taken if Damocritus had not been
equally incapable as an officer and as a statesman. He was superseded,
and his successor Diaeus, the instigator of all this mischief,
zealously continued the war, while at the same time he gave to the
dreaded commandant of Macedonia assurances of the full loyalty of the
Achaean league. Thereupon the long-expected Roman commission made its
appearance, with Aurelius Orestes at its head; hostilities were now
suspended, and the Achaean diet assembled at Corinth to receive its
communications. They were of an unexpected and far from agreeable
character. The Romans had resolved to cancel the unnatural and
forced(20) inclusion of Sparta among the Achaean states, and generally
to act with vigour against the Achaeans. Some years before (591)
these had been obliged to release from their league the Aetolian
town of Pleuron;(21) now they were directed to renounce all the
acquisitions which they had made since the second Macedonian war--viz.
Corinth, Orchomenus, Argos, Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and Heraclea
near to Oeta--and to reduce their league to the condition in which it
stood at the end of the Hannibalic war. When the Achaean deputies
learned this, they rushed immediately to the market-place without even
hearing the Romans to an end, and communicated the Roman demands to the
multitude; whereupon the governing and the governed rabble with one
voice resolved to arrest at once the whole Lacedaemonians present in
Corinth, because Sparta forsooth had brought on them this misfortune.
The arrest accordingly took place in the most tumultuary fashion,
so that the possession of Laconian names or Laconian shoes appeared
sufficient ground for imprisonment: in fact they even entered the
dwellings of the Roman envoys to seize the Lacedaemonians who had
taken shelter there, and hard words were uttered against the Romans,
although they did not lay hands on their persons. The envoys
returned home in indignation, and made bitter and even exaggerated
complaints in the senate; but the latter, with the same moderation
which marked all its measures against the Greeks, confined itself at
first to representations. In the mildest form, and hardly mentioning
satisfaction for the insults which they had endured, Sextus Julius
Caesar repeated the commands of the Romans at the diet in Aegium
(spring of 607). But the leaders of affairs in Achaia with the new
-strategus- Critolaus at their head -strategus- (from May 607 to May
608), as men versed in state affairs and familiar with political arts,
merely drew from that fact the inference that the position of Rome
with reference to Carthage and Viriathus could not but be very
unfavourable, and continued at once to cheat and to affront the
Romans. Caesar was requested to arrange a conference of deputies of
the contending parties at Tegea for the settlement of the question.
He did so; but, after Caesar and the Lacedaemonian envoys had waited
there long in vain for the Achaeans, Critolaus at last appeared
alone and informed them that the general assembly of the Achaeans
was solely competent in this matter, and that it could only be settled
at the diet or, in other words, in six months. Caesar thereupon
returned to Rome; and the next national assembly of the Achaeans
on the proposal of Critolaus formally declared war against Sparta.
Even now Metellus made an attempt amicably to settle the quarrel, and
sent envoys to Corinth; but the noisy -ecclesia-, consisting mostly of
the populace of that wealthy commercial and manufacturing city, drowned
the voice of the Roman envoys and compelled them to leave the platform.
The declaration of Critolaus, that they wished the Romans to be their
friends but not their masters, was received with inexpressible delight;
and, when the members of the diet wished to interpose, the mob
protected the man after its own heart, and applauded the sarcasms
as to the high treason of the rich and the need of a military
dictatorship as well as the mysterious hints regarding an impending
insurrection of countless peoples and kings against Rome. The spirit
animating the movement is shown by the two resolutions, that all clubs
should be permanent and all actions for debt should be suspended till
the restoration of peace.
The Achaeans thus had war; and they had even actual allies, namely
the Thebans and Boeotians and also the Chalcidians. At the beginning
of 608 the Achaeans advanced into Thessaly to reduce to obedience
Heraclea near to Oeta, which, in accordance with the decree of
the senate, had detached itself from the Achaean league. The consul
Lucius Mummius, whom the senate had resolved to send to Greece,
had not yet arrived; accordingly Metellus undertook to protect
Heraclea with the Macedonian legions. When the advance of the Romans
was announced to the Achaeo-Theban army, there was no more talk of
fighting; they deliberated only how they might best succeed in reaching
once more the secure Peloponnesus; in all haste the army made off,
and did not even attempt to hold the position at Thermopylae.
But Metellus quickened the pursuit, and overtook and defeated
the Greek army near Scarpheia in Locris. The loss in prisoners and
dead was considerable; Critolaus was never heard of after the battle.
The remains of the defeated army wandered about Greece in single troops,
and everywhere sought admission in vain; the division of Patrae
was destroyed in Phocis, the Arcadian select corps at Chaeronea;
all northern Greece was evacuated, and only a small portion of
the Achaean army and of the citizens of Thebes, who fled in a body,
reached the Peloponnesus. Metellus sought by the utmost moderation
to induce the Greeks to abandon their senseless resistance, and gave
orders, for example, that all the Thebans with a single exception,
should be allowed their liberty; his well-meant endeavours were
thwarted not by the energy of the people, but by the desperation of
the leaders apprehensive for their own safety. Diaeus, who after
the fall of Critolaus had resumed the chief command, summoned all men
capable of bearing arms to the isthmus, and ordered 12,000 slaves,
natives of Greece, to be enrolled in the army; the rich were applied
to for advances, and the ranks of the friends of peace, so far as they
did not purchase their lives by bribing the ruling agents in this reign
of terror, were thinned by bloody prosecutions. The war accordingly was
continued, and after the same style. The Achaean vanguard, which, 4000
strong, was stationed under Alcamenes at Megara, dispersed as soon as
it saw the Roman standards. Metellus was just about to order an
attack upon the main force on the isthmus, when the consul Lucius
Mummius with a few attendants arrived at the Roman head-quarters
and took the command. Meanwhile the Achaeans, emboldened by a
successful attack on the too incautious Roman outposts, offered
battle to the Roman army, which was about twice as strong, at
Leucopetra on the isthmus. The Romans were not slow to accept it.
At the very first the Achaean horsemen broke off en masse before the
Roman cavalry of six times their strength; the hoplites withstood the
enemy till a flank attack by the Roman select corps brought confusion
also into their ranks. This terminated the resistance. Diaeus fled
to his home, put his wife to death, and took poison himself. All the
cities submitted without opposition; and even the impregnable Corinth,
into which Mummius for three days hesitated to enter because he
feared an ambush, was occupied by the Romans without a blow.
Province of Achaia
The renewed regulation of the affairs of Greece was entrusted to
a commission of ten senators in concert with the consul Mummius,
who left behind him on the whole a blessed memory in the conquered
country. Doubtless it was, to say the least, a foolish thing in him
to assume the name of "Achaicus" on account of his feats of war and
victory, and to build in the fulness of his gratitude a temple to
Hercules Victor; but, as he had not been reared in aristocratic
luxury and aristocratic corruption but was a "new man" and
comparatively without means, he showed himself an upright and
indulgent administrator. The statement, that none of the Achaeans
perished but Diaeus and none of the Boeotians but Pytheas, is a
rhetorical exaggeration: in Chalcis especially sad outrages occurred;
but yet on the whole moderation was observed in the infliction of
penalties. Mummius rejected the proposal to throw down the statues
of Philopoemen, the founder of the Achaean patriotic party; the
fines imposed on the communities were destined not for the Roman
exchequer, but for the injured Greek cities, and were mostly
remitted afterwards; and the property of those traitors who had
parents or children was not sold on public account, but handed over
to their relatives. The works of art alone were carried away from
Corinth, Thespiae, and other cities and were erected partly in the
capital, partly in the country towns of Italy:(22) several pieces were
also presented to the Isthmian, Delphic, and Olympic temples. In the
definitive organization of the country also moderation was in general
displayed. It is true that, as was implied in the very introduction
of the provincial constitution,(23) the special confederacies, and
the Achaean in particular, were as such dissolved; the communities were
isolated; and intercourse between them was hampered by the rule that no
one might acquire landed property simultaneously in two communities.
Moreover, as Flamininus had already attempted,(24) the democratic
constitutions of the towns were altogether set aside, and the
government in each community was placed in the hands of a council
composed of the wealthy. A fixed land-tax to be paid to Rome was
imposed on each community; and they were all subordinated to the
governor of Macedonia in such a manner that the latter, as supreme
military chief, exercised a superintendence over administration and
justice, and could, for example, personally assume the decision of
the more important criminal processes. Yet the Greek communities
retained "freedom," that is, a formal sovereignty--reduced, doubtless,
by the Roman hegemony to a name--which involved the property of the
soil and the right to a distinct administration and jurisdiction of
their own.(25) Some years later not only were the old confederacies
again allowed to have a shadowy existence, but the oppressive
restriction on the alienation of landed property was removed.
Destruction of Corinth