The invasion of the Gauls is a great notch in the line of the Roman
annals. From this epoch to the time of the complete subjugation of the
peninsula by the Romans (365-490, or――B. C. 389-264) is a period of
125 years. Of this period, the first fifty years were spent in
repairing the shattered Commonwealth. Her strength having been fairly
renewed, the republic shook off all impediments, announced to Latins
and Hernicans that she required their coöperation no longer, and
boldly declared her resolution to conquer central Italy. The series of
wars against Etruscans, Latins, Hernicans, Gauls, Volscians, and
Samnites, sometimes singly, sometimes in combination, by which she
carried her resolution into effect, is usually known in Roman history
by the general designation of ‘the Samnite Wars’ (412-463), the
Samnites being the leaders in this onset of the nations on Rome, the
issue of which was to determine whether Rome or Samnium should govern
Italy. Extricating herself by her valor from this confused conflict of
nations, Rome, about the year 463, found herself mistress of Central
Italy――Samnites, Latins, etc., all her subjects. A consequence of the
conduct of the Latins and Hernicans during these Samnite wars was,
that the famous triple confederacy between these two nations and the
Romans was brought to an end precisely when it had fully served its
purpose, and when its longer continuance would have impeded the growth
in Italy of that Roman unity which it had fostered. ‘The Samnite Wars’
were succeeded by a short but brisk war, designated in Roman history
‘the War with Pyrrhus and the Greeks in Italy.’ Pyrrhus was an able
and enterprising Greek prince, whom the Greek towns of southern
Italy――fearful of being overwhelmed by the conquering barbarians, as
they called them, of the Tiber, before whom even the Samnites had
given way――had invited over from his native kingdom of Epirus, that he
might place himself at the head of a confederacy which they were
forming against Rome. Full of enmity towards their conquerers, all the
recently-subdued nations of Central and Northern Italy welcomed the
arrival of Pyrrhus; and all Southern Italy followed his standard. His
enterprise, however, failed, notwithstanding several victories; and
about the year B. C. 275, Pyrrhus having withdrawn from Italy, the
confederacy against the Roman Commonwealth crumbled to pieces, and the
whole peninsula lay at their mercy. Before describing the manner in
which the peninsula, thus acquired, was laid out and governed by the
Romans, it will be necessary to continue our narrative of the gradual
development of the constitution within, during the period which had
elapsed since the Gaulish invasion.
The situation of Rome after the Gaulish invasion was extremely similar
to what it had been after the expulsion of the kings――the plebeians
distressed, and many of them in slavery for debt, and the patricians
disposed to tyrannize. As on the former occasion there had risen up,
as the best friend of the plebs, the noble patrician Spurius Cassius,
so on this occasion there appeared as their champion a prudent and
brave plebeian, Caius Licinius Stolo, a tribune of the people. His
measures were very similar to those of Spurius Cassius――namely, a
compromise on the subject of debts (not, however, an abolition of
them); and an agrarian law, prohibiting any citizen from occupying any
more than five hundred jugera (about 330 acres) of the public land,
and depriving all who exceeded that quantity of the surplus for
distribution among indigent commons. To these he added a proposal for
constitutional reform――namely, that the military tribunate should be
abolished, and that the consulship should be reverted to, one of the
consuls to be of necessity a plebeian. After a hard struggle, these
important measures were carried in the year 384, nineteen years after
the Gaulish invasion. Under these Licinian Laws, as they were called,
the state enjoyed tolerable repose for a long period of years――the
principal source of disturbance being the attempts of the wealthy
citizens to evade the operation of the agrarian law. The next great
movement was in the year of the city 416, when, under the auspices of
a plebeian dictator (for the dictatorship had also been thrown open to
the plebeians), a considerable simplification of the constitution was
effected. It was now rendered essential that one of the censors should
be a plebeian; and the old patrician body of the curies was struck out
of the machinery of the legislature, so as to leave the business of
the state in the hands of the senate (itself become partly a plebeian
body) and the people. Met in their centuries, the people could only
accept or reject the measures proposed by the senate; but met in their
tribes, they could originate a measure, and oblige the senate to
consider it. Thus sometimes in the shape of a matured scheme
descending from the senate to the people, sometimes in the shape of a
popular resolution sent up to the senate, a measure became law. From
this simplification of the constitution commences, according to
historians, the golden age of Roman politics. The extension of
dominion in the Samnite wars, by providing a large subject-population
inferior both to patricians and plebeians, disposed these bodies to
forget their differences, and to fall back upon their common
consciousness of Roman citizenship. During the Samnite wars, however,
a third party appeared in the field claiming political rights. These
were the _Ærarians_, the name applied to all those residents in town
pursuing mechanical occupations, who, as not belonging to any of the
tribes (now thirty-three in number), did not rank as citizens. The
claims of this class――the city rabble, as both patricians and
plebeians called it――were supported by a daring and able patrician,
Appius Claudius, who, during his censorship, admitted ærarians into
all the tribes indiscriminately. Eventually, however, a compromise was
effected: the ærarians were enrolled in the four city tribes, thus
obtaining some influence, but not so much as Appius seemed to destine
for them. It appears to have been at some period also during the
Samnite wars that a modification took place in the constitution of the
comitia centuriata, the leading feature of which seems to have been a
blending of the tribes with the centuries, so as to accommodate the
assembly to the altered state of society and the altered scale of
wealth. Of the precise nature of this change, however, as of the
precise time at which it occurred, we are ignorant. It may be
considered, nevertheless, to have perfected the Roman constitution,
and to have adapted it for the function of maintaining the government
of the entire peninsula.
Italy, once fairly subjugated and laid out by the Romans (B. C. 266),
its population may be considered as having been distributed into three
political divisions――the _Populus Romanus_, or citizens of Rome,
properly so called; the _Socii_, or inhabitants of the allied and
dependent Italian states; and the _Nomen Latinum_, or citizens of the
‘Latin name.’
The first of these, the Populus Romanus, included the whole body of
the free inhabitants of the thirty-three tribes or parishes north and
south of the Tiber, which constituted the Roman territory strictly so
called, together with a considerable number of persons scattered over
the other parts of Italy, who were also accounted citizens, either
because they were colonists of Roman descent, or because the title had
been conferred on them as an honorary distinction. The total number of
adult Roman citizens towards the close of the fifth century was under
300,000――a small proportion, evidently, of the vast Italian mass,
which consisted, including the slaves, of about 5,000,000. Nor were
all these equal in point of civil rights, many of them having the
_franchise_, as it was called, or legal rights of citizens, without
the _suffrage_, or political rights. The citizens with suffrage, those
who voted on public questions――the real governing power, therefore, by
whose impulses all Italy, with its millions of inhabitants, was
swayed, as the body is moved by the beats of the heart――were a mere
handful of men, such as might be assembled with ease in any public
park or square.
The Italian subjects were the inhabitants of the allied or dependent
states. The list of these was a long one, including, as it did, the
various communities which made up the populations of Etruria, Umbria,
the Sabine territory, Samnium, Campania, Apulia, Lucania, Messapia,
and Bruttium. All the allies, however, were not equally subject to
Rome: the relations in which they stood to it were determined by the
particular treaties which formed the separate alliances, and these, of
course, varied according to the circumstances under which they had
been concluded. Almost all the allied states, however, were permitted
to retain their own laws, their own municipal arrangements, their own
judges, etc. Throughout the peninsula, however, care was taken to
destroy every vestige of nationality or national legislature among the
allies of the same race. Upon the whole, this change from independence
to subjection to Rome was beneficial to the Italian nations. Not the
least benefit attending it was the total abolition of those wars
between neighboring states which, while the peninsula was subdivided
into small independent territories, had raged incessantly and
fiercely.
The Nomen Latinum, or Latin name, was a fictitious designation applied
to a number of colonies scattered through the peninsula, and which, in
respect of privileges, stood in an intermediate position between the
Roman citizens and the Italians. The name probably originated in the
circumstance, that the original colonists of this description were
Latins.
It is a curious fact, that even after Rome had attained the supremacy
of the peninsula, there did not exist such a thing as even a dawning
Roman literature, although the state had now existed nearly five
hundred years; so much earlier than their literary faculty did the
native talent of the Romans for governing mankind develop itself. It
was by their massive character, more than by their powers of
speculation or expression, that they were to impress the world.
THE PUNIC WARS――SUBJUGATION OF FOREIGN NATIONS――ADMINISTRATION OF THE
PROVINCES.
Masters of Italy, it was not long before the Romans found themselves
in collision with the nations surrounding the great basin of the
Mediterranean; and as the last 125 years of the existence of the Roman
state had been spent in the gradual conquest of the Italic nations, so
the next 130 years (Y. R. 490-620, or B. C. 264-134) were spent in a
series of conquests, by which various foreign countries were reduced
to the condition of mere provinces of Italy. This series of conquests
may be designated generally by the title of ‘the Punic Wars, and the
Wars with the Greek States.’ A bare enumeration of them, with a
statement of their results, is all that our limits will allow.
The first foreign people with which the Romans came into collision
were the Carthaginians――a people of Phœnician lineage, who, settling
in that part of Africa now called Tunis, and building a city there,
about a century before Rome was founded, had in the interval become a
great commercial nation, with ships sailing to all parts of the
Mediterranean, and with colonies along the coasts of Algiers, in
Sardinia and Corsica, and even in Spain. They had recently gained a
footing in Sicily, and now shared it with the Greeks of Syracuse; and
it was on this rich island as a battlefield that the Romans first came
into conflict with the merchant-people of Africa. Invited over by the
Mamertines, a robber-people who inhabited the north-eastern corner of
the island, the Roman soldiers fought the armies of mercenaries hired
by the Carthaginians. The war thus begun, the ‘First Punic War,’ as it
is called, lasted twenty-three years (Y. R. 490-513, or B. C.
264-241). During it the Romans first learned to build ships of war,
and to fight naval battles; and they were soon able to defeat the
Carthaginians on their own element. On land they were sure of victory
against mere mercenaries, collected, as these were, from all nations,
and commanded by Carthaginian generals of ordinary capacity. In 249 B.
C., however, the Carthaginians sent over the great Hamilcar Barca to
command their forces in Sicily; and his efforts checked the Romans,
who, meanwhile, had invaded Africa, and been repulsed. A victory or
two, however, gained by the Romans over other generals than Hamilcar,
disposed the Carthaginians for peace, who accordingly agreed (B. C.
241) to evacuate Sicily, and to pay the victors a large sum of money.
The Romans then made themselves masters of Sicily; and shortly
afterwards they found a pretext for wresting Corsica and Sardinia from
the Carthaginians. For twenty-two years after these conquests (B. C.
241-119) the Romans were engaged in wars with the Cisalpine Gauls and
other nations in the north of Italy, the effect of which was to extend
their dominion to the foot of the Alps. Beyond the Alps, also,
Illyria, a country skirting the east coast of the Adriatic, was at
this time annexed to the dominions of the Commonwealth.
Meanwhile the Carthaginians had not been idle. During several years
they had, in accordance with the advice of Hamilcar, been establishing
their dominion in Spain, intending to repay themselves with that fine
peninsula for the loss of Sicily and Sardinia. Killed in battle by a
native tribe, Hamilcar was succeeded in Spain by his son-in-law
Hasdrubal; and on his death, which took place soon after, Hannibal
Barca, the son of Hamilcar, and then only twenty-six years of age, was
appointed to the command. The siege by him of Saguntum, an independent
Spanish town, which had claimed the assistance of the Romans, led to
the Second Punic War (B. C. 218-201). Little did the Romans know what
a war it was to be! Crossing the Pyrenees, the young Carthaginian
general, the greatest military commander probably, and certainly one
of the ablest men the world ever saw, pushed his way through the
Gallic tribes, and effecting the passage of the Alps, descended into
Italy with an army of 12,000 Africans, 8,000 Spaniards, and 6,000
Carthaginian horse. Rousing the Cisalpine Gauls, and defeating in
several successive battles the Roman generals sent against him, he
made his way into the south of Italy (B. C. 217); and having in the
following year inflicted on the Romans at Cannæ the greatest defeat
they had ever received, he remained in Italy fifteen years (B. C.
217-202), moving hither and thither, keeping seven or eight Roman
generals, and among them the wary Fabius and the bold Marcellus,
continually employed, scattering the Romans like chaff wherever he
appeared, exhausting the finances of the state, and detaching the
Italian nations from their allegiance. Had he received reinforcements,
as he expected, from Spain, where he had left his brother Hasdrubal in
command, Rome might have fallen. Fortunately, however, for the Romans,
while they were manfully opposing Hannibal in Italy, one of their
generals, the great Scipio, was busily engaged in Spain. To prevent
Spain from falling into Scipio’s hands, Hasdrubal was obliged to
remain in it; and it was not till B. C. 207, when all hope of
retaining his footing in that peninsula was lost, that he set out to
join his brother. He crossed the Alps in safety, but was attacked,
defeated and slain on his march through Italy; and Hannibal was left
to his own resources. These, however, were exhaustless; and with the
assistance of the Italian nations, who, especially the unprivileged
classes, were friendly to the Carthaginians, and hated Rome, he might
still have shattered the Commonwealth in pieces, had not Scipio passed
over from Spain into Africa, and defeating the Carthaginians in
several battles, with the help of a Numidian prince named Masinissa,
compelled them to recall their greatest man for the defense of his
native city. In B. C. 202, or the year of the city 552, Hannibal
quitted Italy, where he had spent the best period of his life. Not
long after his landing in Africa, he was defeated by Scipio at Zama,
and his countrymen were obliged in consequence to agree to a peace on
very severe terms.
The Second Punic War concluded, and Italy once more pacified, the
Romans made war on Philip III. king of Macedonia, and virtual ruler of
all the Greek states, who had offended them by entering into a treaty
with Hannibal. The war was protracted over seventeen years (B. C.
214-197), but ended in the reduction of Macedonia, and the
proclamation by the Romans of the independence of the other Greek
states. Seized with a desire to assume the place which the Macedonian
king had been unable to maintain, Antiochus the Great, king of Syria,
and representative therefore of the Greek empire in Asia, crossed into
Greece, where he joined the Ætolians against the Romans. Defeated,
however, in Greece, and forsaken by the Ætolians, he was pursued into
Asia, and after the loss of a great battle at Magnesia, obliged to
submit to the Romans, who thus became virtual masters of the various
kingdoms and states of Asia Minor (B. C. 188). Meanwhile they had been
engaged in suppressing various movements among the Ligurians, Boians,
Istrians, and other nations in the north of Italy, as well as among
the Spanish tribes and the savages of Sardinia. A declaration of
hostilities by Perseus, the successor of Philip in Macedonia, in
conjunction with Genthius, king of Illyria, led to another war against
these countries, which terminated in their complete subjugation (B. C.
168). The next twenty years were spent in securing these conquests,
and in establishing relations, virtually those of sovereignty, with
various states of Asia Minor, such as Bithynia and Rhodes; and with
various others of Africa, as Egypt and Numidia. The whole circuit of
the Mediterranean in their power, and their ships respected in all its
ports, as belonging to the ‘sovereign people of Italy,’ the Romans at
length executed their long-cherished project, and pounced upon
Carthage (B. C. 149), whose existence, even in its fallen condition of
a mere commercial capital, they could not tolerate. Hannibal had been
dead more than thirty years; but under such generals as they had, the
wretched Carthaginians offered a desperate resistance to the Roman
commanders. After a horrible siege, the city, containing a population
of 700,000, was taken and sacked by Scipio Æmilianus, the adopted son
of the son of the great Scipio (B. C. 146). The houses were razed to
the ground, and the province of Africa was the prize of this third
‘Punic war.’ The fall of Greece was cotemporary with that of Carthage.
The Achaian League, a confederacy of cities in Greece proper and the
Peloponnesus, showing a disposition to be independent of the Romans,
provoked their vengeance; and the destruction of Corinth in the same
year as that of Carthage extinguished the last sparks of liberty in
Greece. The whole of the Greek countries were parceled out into Roman
provinces, and from that time Greeks became the slave teachers of the
Romans, their secretaries, their sycophants, their household wits. Yet
out of Greece thus ruined there afterwards arose many great spirits;
for no degradation, no series of misfortunes, could eradicate the
wondrous intellect which lurked in the fine Greek organization. The
last scene in this long series of wars was enacted in Spain, where,
roused by a noble patriot called Viriathus――the Wallace of that
day――the native tribes had revolted against the Romans. The fate of
Spain, however, was sealed by the destruction of Numantia by Scipio
Æmilianus (B. C. 133).
By the wars of 130 years which we have thus enumerated, the following
countries had become subject to Rome:――Sicily, Sardinia, Corsica, and
the smaller islands of the Mediterranean; Macedonia; Illyricum, with
Thessaly and Epirus; Greece, including Greece proper and the
Peloponnesus; Spain; and the whole northern coast of Africa. The
Romans had likewise established their influence in Asia. The conquered
countries were divided into provinces, so that the designation for the
Roman dominion became ‘Italy and the Provinces.’ The provinces
received each an organization at the time of its formation, according
to its circumstances. Retaining their national habits, religion, laws,
etc., the inhabitants of every province were governed by a military
president, sent from Rome, with a staff of officials. Unlike the
Italic nations, who furnished only subsidies of men to the sovereign
states, the provincials were required to pay taxes in money and kind;
and these taxes, were farmed out by the censors――Roman citizens, who,
under the name of _Publicans_, settled in the various districts of the
provinces, and proved a great scourge by their avarice and rapacity.
To some towns and localities in the provinces, the Italic franchise
was extended as a token of favor. Altogether, the government of the
provinces was one which, although it led to beneficial results, in
binding together a large mass of the human race, and carrying on
various races and languages simultaneously in a career of
civilization, yet gave great scope for oppression. Like a network
proceeding from a centre, the political system of the Romans pervaded
the mass of millions of human beings inhabiting the shores of the
Mediterranean, holding them together by its mechanical tenacity, and
slowly working them into union by its own powers of impregnation as
well as by means of those ideas and moral agencies whose dissemination
and operation over large areas at once it so marvellously facilitated.
What a career was thus opened up for those who occupied the centre of
this network――the population of Rome! What a grand thing in those days
to be a Roman citizen; so that, wherever one walked――in Spain, in
Africa, or even in once great Athens――one was followed, feasted,
flattered to one’s face, and mocked behind one’s back! What means of
moneymaking in the provinces for the avaricious Romans! What
opportunities for well-doing for the philanthropic! Alas! a
philanthropic Roman was almost a contradiction in terms. To be
patriotic was the highest virtue; and if a Roman, along with his
patriotism, possessed a just disposition, those who were under his
government might consider themselves fortunate. Nor was the career of
administration in the provinces open to all Roman citizens. The
following passage, which we translate from a French work――(‘Etudes sur
l’Histoire Romaine, par Prosper Mérimée, Paris, 1844,’)――will give an
idea of the manner in which a Roman citizen attained to public honors,
and will illustrate the general spirit of the Roman administration.
‘The laws,’ says this author, ‘opened to all the citizens the career
of magistracy; but in reality it was shut against all but those whom
fortune or family credit placed in an exceptional situation. As all
public offices were obtained by the suffrages of the people, it was of
the utmost importance to make creatures in every class of society. In
order to muster all these on the great day of election, there were no
labors, fatigues, and even meannesses to which Romans of illustrious
families did not submit from their earliest boyhood. Some offered the
patronage of their families to embarrassed pleaders; others opened
their purses to poor artisans; whoever had a vote in the comitia was
flattered and cajoled in every possible way. From the time that the
candidate had attained the age at which the law permitted him to stand
for the dignity of the quæstorship――that by which he must make his
debut in public life――he appeared in the Forum clothed in a white
robe, shook hands with all the country folks, and with the lowest
plebeians, solicited their votes, and often purchased them for money.
The quæstor, once appointed, found the doors of the senate open for
him. Ordinarily he was attached to the person of a consul, or a
magistrate of superior rank, becoming his lieutenant; sometimes he
obtained a little government for himself. In these offices he could
learn business habits and find occasions for distinguishing himself,
and for causing his name to be mentioned often in the senate or the
assemblies of the people.
After the quæstorship came the _Curule Edileship_, a purely civil
magistracy, whose duties consisted in watching the arrival of
provisions, guarding public monuments, seeing to the embellishment of
the city, and finally, in preparing the games and solemn shows. This
charge entailed enormous expense on those ediles who wished to make
themselves popular. They built temples and porticoes at their own
cost, opened roads, constructed aqueducts; above all, they tried to
surpass their predecessors by the magnificence of the games which they
caused to be celebrated, and the truly colossal expense which they in
part sustained. A happy man was that edile who had been able to
exhibit in the arena the deaths of an unusual number of able
gladiators, or who had presented to the people animals of a rare
species or unknown before. His name was in every mouth, and all
applauded his sprouting ambition. The edileship lasted a year. After
it came the prætorship. There were six prætors――two presided over the
tribunals at Rome, the others governed provinces or commanded armies.
Finally after having successively gone through the three previous
stages, one presented himself as a candidate for the consulship.
Intriguing, corruption, manœuvring of all kinds was now redoubled; for
this was the goal of a Roman’s ambition. The consuls presided over the
government of the republic, or directed important wars in person. At
the expiration of their magistracy――that is, after a year――they were
sent to a province with the title of Proconsuls; often to command
military expeditions, almost always to administer an extensive
government. In turn to amass and expend great wealth, was thus the
chief care of candidates for honors. The profits of the quæstorship
enabled one to make a brilliant curule edileship. Ruined by his
extravagance, the edile repaired his fortune in the prætorship, and
returned to Rome rich enough to buy votes at the consular election.
Frequently he staked his all on this last election, confident of more
than making it up again in the province which would be assigned him
after his consulship. In a word, the career of public employment was a
species of gambling, in which one’s profits were proportional to one’s
stakes.’
Such a state of things as is here described, implies that an immense
change had taken place in the character of the Roman society during
the rapid career of foreign conquest which had elevated Rome from the
position of metropolis of Italy to that of metropolis of the civilized
world. The distinction between patrician and plebeian was now scarcely
heard of (in B. C. 172 both consuls had been plebeians for the first
time); it was superseded by that between _illustrious_ and _obscure_;
_rich_ and _poor_. Although, however, the system of corruption was so
general, that scarcely any one could attain to office except by
unworthy means, yet there were at that time, and in the midst of that
system, many men of really noble character. Among these must not be
forgotten the honest old censor Cato, the enemy of Carthage, who kept
up a constant protest all his life against what he called the growing
luxury of his countrymen, and died declaring that they were a
degenerate race. Of equal integrity with Cato, although of altogether
a different form of character, were the two brothers of world-famous
name, whose actions we shall now briefly notice.