up her naval establishments, and she sold her marine equipments to the
dealers in marine stores, at a ruinous sacrifice. Carthage, therefore,
became mistress of the seas; but the mistress being unable to pay the
wages she owed, began borrowing money of her neighbours. Ptolemy of
Egypt was applied to, but he civilly laid his hand on his heart,
declaring he had nothing to lend, and kept his money--if he had any--in
his pocket. In this dilemma, the command of the Carthaginians fell upon
Hamilcar, surnamed Barca, or the lightning, from his being one of the
fastest men of the day; and though any general, equal to the general
run, might head a force with plenty of money to pay the troops, a genius
was required to keep an army going, or rather to keep up a standing
army, with empty pockets. He found the mercenaries in a state of
insubordination for want of their customary emolument; but, having no
money of his own, he made Bruttium and Locri his bankers, and gave his
soldiers a general authority to draw, with their swords, for whatever
they required. Taking his position on Mount Hercte, now the Monte
Pelegrino, he maintained himself and his army for three years, enabling
his troops to carry out the principle of spending half-a-crown out of
sixpence a day--the sixpence being their own, and the half-crown being
anybody else's, from whom it could be most conveniently taken. After
remaining three years at Hercte, he removed to the town of Eryx,
intending to tire the Romans out; but like many others who attempt to
exhaust the patience of others, he found his own stock rapidly
diminishing. He was drawn into an engagement, in which he lost so many
of his soldiers, that he was obliged to ask for a truce to bury the
dead; but the Roman general would give him no undertaking not to proceed
during the funerals. A short time afterwards, when the fortune of war
had changed, Hamilcar was asked to give a similar permission, and, by
allowing the burials to proceed, he has raised a monument to his own
magnanimity.
The Romans, who were as fickle on the subject of a fleet as the element
to which it was destined, resolved a third time to have a naval force;
but ships were out of the question, when raising the wind was quite
impossible. The state being without funds, appealed to the merchants,
who consented to sink a large sum in an entirely new navy, with the
understanding that if the tide of fortune should turn in their favour,
they were to receive their money back again. The Romans had by this time
become better sailors than before, while the Carthaginian tars had
greatly deteriorated for want of practice. The ships of the latter were
so heavily laden with corn that they could not proceed like chaff before
the wind; and the sailors, encumbered by the cargo, found themselves
going continually against the grain in attempting to work the vessels.
The Romans obtained an easy victory, but it could not have been so easy
to dispose of its results; for, after killing 14,000 men, they found
themselves still saddled with 34,000 prisoners. A peace was concluded;
one of the conditions being, that Carthage should pay to Rome 200
talents by instalments extending over twenty years--an arrangement
equivalent to the discharge of a liability at the rate of one shilling
per annum in the pound, and the extinction of the whole debt by simply
paying the interest.
The first Punic War was now at an end, and it was high time it should
be, for the losses sustained on both sides were enough to have exhausted
the Roman as well as the Carthaginian population; and our history would
then have come to an abrupt termination, like the tragedy of the youth,
who was obliged to drop his curtain in the second act, in consequence of
his having killed all his characters. It is fortunate, therefore, that
the classical authorities, after "cutting to pieces" their thousands and
drowning their hundreds, in a day, should have paused in their career of
devastation just in time to leave something to go on with, to the
conscientious historian.
While, however, war killed everything else, it kept itself alive in the
most extraordinary manner; for though brought to a temporary pause by
having swallowed up all its usual articles of consumption, fresh food
was speedily found, and the jaws of destruction were again on active
service.
The Romans having subdued Sicily, proceeded to prepare a constitution,
or, in other words, having rendered the place subservient to
themselves, they took measures for supplying a livery. Being tired of
the old pattern, they devised something new, and produced an article of
the following fashion:--They made Sicily a province; but those whose
province it is to say what a province was, have left us in some doubt as
to its precise meaning. The best definition is that which derives the
word from Providentia, a duty, or a thing that ought to be done, and the
provinces of the Romans were sometimes done indeed, though in a sense
more modern and familiar than classical. A province, instead of becoming
a part of Rome, retained its national existence, though such existence
was scarcely worth having, for it was accompanied by a loss of
sovereignty,--a condition that may be compared to that of a body living
after its head was off.
A governor was sent annually from Rome with a long train of officials,
and the appointment being only for a year, leaves no doubt that the
holder for the time being made the most he could of it. His staff
included two Quæstors or tax-collectors, and a number of Præcones or
auctioneers, who were always ready to sell off, in the event of a
seizure. Sicily was, in fact, in a state of complete servitude to Rome,
the only anomaly in the relationship consisting in the fact that the
master, or rather the mistress, received the wages, instead of paying
them. The amount was fixed at one-tenth of the wine, the oil, the
olives, and other products of the soil; so that much of the fat of the
land became the perquisite of the mistress of Sicily. These tenths were
called _decimæ_, and so ruinous was their effect on the place whence
they were drawn, that the words decimation and destruction have become
nearly synonymous.
The constitution of Rome had remained much the same during the period to
which the present chapter refers, though the aristocracy of birth was
beginning to give way to the far more objectionable aristocracy of
money. Such was the influence of wealth, that the Quæstors or
tax-collectors became members of the Senate as vacancies occurred, and
the enormous riches of these persons proved how much of the public
money, of which they had the entire handling, stuck to their fingers.
FOOTNOTES:
[41] The word "tyrant" meant, originally, nothing more than a sovereign
who had arrived at supreme power by rather irregular means; but, as
power thus obtained was most commonly abused, the words "tyrant" and
"tyranny" became universally odious.
[42] The curious reader, who is disposed to go over to Rome, will find
the work of art alluded to in the text at the southern extremity of the
vestibule, just at the foot of the staircase leading to the upper
apartments, and close to a marble statue of Augustus.
[43] The tale of this serpent has come down to us from Livy, and would,
no doubt, form a very suitable companion to the sea serpent, if the
latter could be found.
[44] Diodorus.
CHAPTER THE SIXTEENTH.
SOME MISCELLANEOUS WARS OF ROME.
[Illustration]
Prostrate greatness always offers an inviting mark to upstart
littleness; and the story of the Lion _couchant_ kicked by the Jackass
_rampant_, is as old, at least, as the days when Rome, exhausted by her
wars with Carthage, was attacked by the imbecile inhabitants of the
feeble city of Falerii.
Had the Faliscans dashed their heads deliberately against a brick wall,
they could not more effectually have shown how few brains they
possessed; and, to carry out the figure of the Lion and the Ass, a
switch of the former's tail soon told the latter's story. A few days
sufficed to lay the Faliscans in the dust they had so foolishly kicked
up, and in the clouds of which we very rapidly lose sight of them.
The Carthaginians had been compelled to evacuate Sicily, and the
mercenaries were of course to be paid off in one way or the other. On a
former occasion, some of the hired soldiers who had demanded their money
were taken to a bank--which proved to be a sand-bank in the sea--where,
at the rising of the tide, they, instead of their claims, were subjected
to immediate liquidation.[45] The army from Sicily took, however, a
firmer stand, and proceeded to Carthage with a determination to do
business in the city. It contained, as they knew, the spices and
luxuries of India on which they loved to live; the purple of Tyre, which
taught them how to dye; and the ebony and ivory which proclaim in black
and white the wealth of Ethiopia. The persons who poured into the place
formed an assemblage less pleasing than picturesque, for the group
comprised all sorts--except the right sort--of characters. Among the
mass might be seen the almost naked Gaul, who was outstripped in
barbarity by some of the other tribes; the light cavalry of dark
Numidians, and men who had their arms in slings; for such were the
weapons of the Balearic slingers. The mercenaries, immediately on their
arrival in Carthage, proceeded to the Treasury, where they found nobody
but Hanno, who in an appropriately hollow speech, announced the
emptiness of the public coffers. He regretted the necessity for
appearing before them in the character of an apologist; but while
admitting how much Carthage owed to the troops, he announced the
impossibility of paying them. The State, he said, was heavily taxed,
and, he added, with a feeble attempt to be facetious, that he must lay a
small tax upon their patience, by getting them to wait for their money.
The speaker was at once assailed with imprecations in ten different
languages; but he stood firm under the polyglot uproar. The cry of "Down
with him!" reached his ears in nearly a dozen different tongues; and
when he tried to remonstrate, through the medium of interpreters, the
worst interpretation was put on all that was said, and a good
understanding seemed quite impossible.
[Illustration: Hanno announcing to the Mercenaries the emptiness of the
Public Coffers.]
An attempt was then made to stop the mouths of the mercenaries with
food; and provisions were sent in abundance; but the only reply was, an
unprovisional demand for the money owing. At length the pay had been got
together, and was about to be distributed, when an Italian slave, named
Spendius, who had probably spent by anticipation all he had to receive,
advised his companions to decline the offer, on the ground that if they
refused what was due, their policy might obtain for them a large
additional bonus. The suggestion was popular with the mercenaries, who
held a meeting to discuss the point, and who, to save the time of the
meeting, overwhelmed with a shower of stones anybody who rose to speak
on either side. The resolution was soon carried; but it was by the aid
of what may be termed the casting votes of those who sent up, in the
impressive form of a plumper, the first missile they could lay their
hands upon. For three years these intestine disturbances raged in
Africa, and reduced it to the lowest point of exhaustion, till at length
the malady wore itself out, though Hamilcar Barca, by intercepting the
supplies of the rebels, assisted greatly in depriving treachery of the
food it lived upon.
The pecuniary panic of Carthage spread in nearly every direction, and
the mercenaries at Sardinia, affected by the tightness of money, called
upon the African colonists to pay with their lives the debt they could
not discharge with their pockets. While the Sardinians and Carthaginians
were reducing each other to a state of such weakness that neither could
make any further effort, Rome stepped in, and like the lawyer between
the exhausted litigants, carried off the whole of what they had been
fighting for. Sardinia became a Roman province; when Carthage, whose bad
faith has passed into a proverb, complained bitterly of the treachery of
Rome: for we find the story of the kettle accused of blackness by the
pot, is as old as the earliest pothooks employed in the writing of
history. Hamilcar, who was the patriotic mouthpiece of the day, declared
that he would raise his country; and it must be admitted, to his honour,
that he did not take the means employed by self-styled patriots, who
pretend to raise a country by stirring it up from the lowest dregs, but
he tried to elevate it by all the honourable means in his power.
Rome had at this time her hands tolerably full, and found employment for
her arms in all directions; when, to add to her embarrassment, the
Cisalpine Gauls were set in a flame by one of the many irons that she
had in the fire. An Agrarian law, proposed by the tribune, C.
Flaminius--whose name savours of the firebrand--was the cause of the
outbreak. The measure enacted, that the land taken from the Gauls should
be distributed among the Romans; and accordingly some settlers were sent
out, who unsettled everything. The Cisalpines commenced negotiations
with their Transalpine allies; but though the negotiations were carried
a very long way, they eventually came to nothing.
Rome was so occupied with foes, that she had scarcely time to turn
round; but when she did turn round, she discovered that some very
objectionable proceedings were being carried on behind her back by a set
of people called the Illyrians. These persons picked up a dishonest
living as pirates, and had plundered, among others, some Italian
merchants who supplied the Italian warehouses of Rome and its
neighbourhood. The Illyrians were ruled over by a woman, named Teuta,
who, when applied to for reparation, observed that she was sorry for
what had occurred, but that piracy was what her subjects got their
living by, and she did not see how she could interfere with the manners
and customs of her people. The Roman ambassadors answered, that the
custom of their country was to protect the injured; but on this
occasion, at least, the country failed in its Protectionist principles,
for the ambassadors were slain before they could get home again. When
their death was known at Rome, every exertion was made to afford them
that protection which came too late to be of any use, and a large army
was sent into the country of the Illyrians. The Roman arms were
perfectly successful, and Teuta was glad to obtain peace by promising to
put down piracy, and by actually putting down a very large sum of money
by way of tribute. Rome had done considerable service to the Isles of
Greece by checking the disreputable trade of piracy; and as the Romans
took evident pride in being noticed by the Greeks, the latter paid the
former for their military aid, by some of those civil attentions which
cost nothing. At Athens, as well as at Corinth, Roman embassies were
received; and though the ambassadors might be considered rather too
venerable for sport, they were allowed to take part in the Isthmian
Games, as well as in the Eleusinian Mysteries.
The Isthmian Games were the same as those at Olympia, of which we
furnish a brief outline for the information of those who feel an
interest in the sporting annals of antiquity.
During the first thirteen Olympiads, the only game was the foot-race, of
which the spectators and the competitors, but especially the latter, if
they selected it as their walk of life, must have been at last
thoroughly tired. Wrestling was next introduced under the name of πάλη,
or Lucta; and though wrestlers have for centuries been endeavouring to
throw each other, they have not yet fallen to the ground, for they still
maintain a footing in the sports and pastimes of our own people. Next
came the Pentathlon, a sort of five-in-one, which comprised, in addition
to the foot-race and wrestling, the practice of leaping, in which much
vaulting ambition was displayed; and throwing of the discus, as well as
of the spear--an exercise that required the utmost pitch of strength and
dexterity. Subsequently boxing was introduced, under the name of
Pugilatus, and it seems to have resembled pretty closely our own
pugilistic encounters; for in ancient works of art we find the boxers
represented with faces whose indentures witness their apprenticeship to
the degrading trade they followed. The physicians of the period are said
to have recommended boxing as a remedy for headache;[46] but this
application of the theory of counter irritation is not adopted in modern
practice. Another feature of the Olympian and Isthmian Games was the
Pancratium, a contest calling for all the powers of the combatant. In
this exercise biting and scratching were allowed--a disgraceful license
which leaves us in no doubt as to the classical source whence the vulgar
phrase of "going at it tooth and nail" is derivable. Horse and chariot
races were also introduced, as well as contests of trumpeters, who dealt
out blows of the most harmless description against each other.
[Illustration: Early Roman Gladiator and his Patron.]
Such were the games in which the Roman visitors to Corinth were allowed
to take part; and we will now proceed to confer on the reader the
privilege once peculiar to the inhabitants of Athens, by initiating him
into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Their celebration lasted several days,
the first of which was occupied in getting together the mystæ, or
initiated, whose qualification consisted in their having sacrificed a
sow--an act less worthy of a priest than of a pork-butcher. On the
second day the mystæ went in solemn procession to the sea-coast, where
they took a bath, by way of wetting the public curiosity. On the third
day they went through the interesting ceremony of a fast, which, to the
looker-on, must have been a somewhat slow process. The fourth day was
devoted to the carrying about of a basket containing poppy seeds; and
this literally seedy procession was closed by a number of women, each
holding in her hand a mystic case, the contents of which were in no case
allowed to be visible. On the fifth day the mystæ went, with lighted
torches, to the temple of Demeter, at Eleusis, where they spent the
night; but the torches throw no light upon what they were looking for.
The sixth was the grandest day of all, and was employed in carrying
about a statue of the son of Demeter; in whose honour the mysteries were
held; because, when wandering about in search of her daughter, she had
supplied corn--though nobody can say how she carried it about with
her--to the inhabitants of Athens. During the night of this important
day the mystæ were taken, in the dark, to see what nobody appears to
have seen at all; and we are therefore spared the trouble of describing
it. On the seventh day the initiated returned to Athens, and stopped on
their way at a bridge over the Cephisus, from which they indulged in
jests at the passers-by; and the obscurity of the jokes would, no doubt,
if they had come down to us, have been thoroughly in keeping with the
mysteries they were intended to celebrate.
Such were the games and mysteries to which the Romans were admitted in
Athens and Corinth, though they had, at about this time, established
among themselves a sport exceeding in ferocity the scratchings and
bitings of the Greek Pancratiastæ, or the ear-flattening and nose
breaking efforts of the Corinthian pugilists.
Until the Punic War commenced, the state had found money for the public
games at Rome; but war having exhausted the treasury, the expense of
amusing the people was thrown upon the Ædiles, who made the matter a
medium of corruption, for they vied with each other in their outlays, in
order to catch the votes of the people. The Ædile who had carried on the
most extravagant games was the most likely to get elected to higher
dignities; for popularity has ever been, and it is to be feared ever
will be, the prize of those who possess the art of dazzling, rather than
permanently enlightening the people. That their taste was degraded by
those who sought their suffrages, we learn from the fact, that at about
this time the sanguinary conflicts of the gladiators[47] were first
added to the amusements of the populace.
There seems to have existed in almost all ages and countries a morbid
appetite, similar to that which formerly gorged itself on the spectacle
of human beings "butchered to make a Roman holiday." When the
brute-tamer promises to thrust his head into the mouth of the lion, or
the "intrepid aëronaut" is about to risk the dashing to pieces which
some previous aëronauts have experienced, and from which others have
narrowly escaped, the crowds who flock to be present are actuated by the
same sanguinary thirst for brutal excitement which filled the Roman
amphitheatre when an encounter of gladiators was advertised. The
attraction was great enough on ordinary occasions, but an overflow could
always be secured by announcing an entertainment _sine missione_, which
implied that the lives of the conquered were not to be spared. It is to
be feared that many of those who have never been at Rome are
nevertheless prepared to do as Rome did on the occasions alluded to; and
if the certainty, instead of the mere chance, of a sacrifice of human
life were to be announced as an entertainment, the largest place of
amusement in the metropolis would, in all probability, be thronged,
though the ordinary charge for admission should be doubled.
The early Roman gladiators were either captives or malefactors, and were
fed on a particular kind of diet, as brutes in the present day are
fattened for the prize-show and the shambles. To give as much variety as
possible to the sport, the gladiators were divided into different
classes, and, with an excess of ferocity almost incredible, measures
were adopted to give a dash of mirth to the frightful encounters. Some
of the combatants, called Andabatæ, wore helmets without any apertures
for the eyes, so that "roars of laughter" might be excited at an
occasional display of blind fury. Others, called Retiarii, carried nets
to throw over the heads of their antagonists, and when caught in these
nets, their lives hung upon a thread; for, if the net did not break,
their defeat was unavoidable.[48]
The foes of Rome were just about this time so numerous, that whichever
way she looked, she had in her eye the sword of an enemy. The Boians,
the Tauriscans, and the Insubrians, with a number of miscellaneous
tribes, entered into an alliance, and threatened to enter into Rome
itself, where a prophecy was current, that the Gauls and Greeks would
take the city. Having consulted the book of fate, the Romans found
instructions for burying alive in the forum two Gauls and two Greeks; a
proceeding which, but for its connection with the grave, would border on
the ludicrous. An army, under the Consul L. Æmilius Papus, was sent to
Ariminum; but the Gauls, ignoring the movement, advanced within three
days' march of Rome, and ultimately found themselves between the army
just mentioned and another army that had been stationed in Etruria.
Flight was their only resource; and though the cavalry took to their
horses' heels, and the infantry took to their own, forty thousand are
said to have fallen on the field; but even imagination, which is
accustomed to wander in very wide fields, can scarcely find one
sufficiently extensive for such an incident.
It would seem that population in those days partook of the nature of
corn; for however thoroughly a people might be cut down and thrashed in
one year, there was always an abundant supply for the sword of an enemy
to go to work upon in the year following. The Gauls were accordingly to
be found in full force within twelve months after their having been
destroyed, and the consul, C. Flaminius, killed them all over again; but
they still were numerous enough in body, and sufficiently poor in
spirit, to acknowledge the sovereignty of their conquerors.
While the attention of Rome had been divided among her numerous foes,
the remnant of the Carthaginians had been expanding with the usual
rapidity, and had extended to Spain, where, under Hamilcar Barca, a
Carthaginian empire was in the course of being established. Hamilcar's
policy towards the Spaniards was bold and rather original, for he
determined to win their affections by thoroughly beating them. Every
blow he aimed produced a favourable impression, and the Spaniards were
as ready as so many spaniels to lick the hands that were continually
smiting them.
The system of Hamilcar was followed after his death by his son-in-law,
Hasdrubal, who ruled in Spain for eight years, and who proved so good a
ruler, that matters were kept as straight as could be desired. He was,
however, assassinated at last by some culprit, who has eluded the
vigilance of the historical detectives, for not even Niebuhr, who stands
acknowledged as A 1, has been able to lay his finger on the criminal.
Hasdrubal was succeeded by the son of Hamilcar Barca, a young man, named
Hannibal, whose precocity as a lad was exemplified by an awful oath,
which he took at nine years old, under the direction of his father.
Whether it was judicious of a parent to teach his son to swear, is a
question for the moralist; but whether a child of nine could have
understood the nature of an oath, is usually a question for a judge; and
any intelligent reader may safely act as a judge in the matter alluded
to.