round Carthage.]
The Greeks, being unable to appreciate the sort of independence they had
received at the hands of Rome, sent an invitation to Antiochus; for it
is the characteristic of slavery, as a moral disease, to seek relief
from the existing cause of oppression by the introduction of some more
violent form of the same malady.[55]
As the interference of strangers will usually lead to family quarrels,
so the effect of foreign influence on Greece was to keep the people
continually involved in disputes with each other. Part of the population
would have welcomed Antiochus warmly, while others received him coldly;
and the king, who had penetrated into Thessaly, had sufficient
penetration to see that he had better go a considerable part of the way
back again.
By way of narrowing the ground of dispute, he took his position in the
Pass of Thermopylæ, and had, for some time, maintained an advantage over
the Romans, when M. Porcius Cato, ascending the heights, ran round to
the rear, and, by a decisive blow on the enemy's back, changed the whole
face of the engagement. Antiochus fled in dismay, and never stopped to
look behind him, until he reached Asia Minor, when he sat down, and took
a gloomy retrospect of all that had happened. While he met with reverses
on land, he heard of the reverse, or rather the same thing, that had
happened to his fleet at sea; and he fairly gave up, not only his cause,
but the Chersonesus, Lysimachia, Sestos, and Abydos, with all their
contents and non-contents; the latter of which included the inhabitants.
Antiochus, though subdued in spirit, was not quite beaten in form; and a
large army was sent to Asia, under the command of the two consuls, L.
Cornelius Scipio and C. Lælius. L. C. Scipio, though without any
acknowledged merit of his own, had the good fortune to be the brother of
the celebrated Scipio Africanus, who got him the place; but it is
manifest that such an illegitimate step to an appointment will often end
in a grievous disappointment of one kind or another. To provide against
the ill consequences of this flagrant job, the celebrated Scipio went
out in the capacity of legate, to counteract the consequences of his
brother's general incapacity in the capacity of general. The Romans had
20,000 men, who, having arrived in Asia, met 70,000 soldiers of
Antiochus, at Magnesia, where the latter received a dose from which they
never recovered. Peace was granted to them on very humiliating terms;
but, however bitter the cup prescribed for Antiochus, so disagreeable
was the recollection of Magnesia, that he was obliged to swallow almost
anything that came after it.
Rome continued her system of giving independence to various places and
people, many of whom seemed so little to appreciate the proffered boon,
that in some cases money was tendered and accepted as the price of
exemption from the proposed advantages. The Cappadocians were so alarmed
at the prospect of their new freedom, that, being still free to confess
their dislike to it, they sent 200 talents to the Romans, who, no doubt,
mentally impressed with the proverbial baseness of the "slave who pays,"
quietly pocketed the money.
While the principles of independence were being promulgated in the East,
the Romans were also employed in carrying their notions of emancipation
into the North, where several tribes were cut to pieces, in order that
they might feel the interest which Rome condescended to take in them.
In some places the old inhabitants were rooted up like old trees, while
the younger branches were transplanted to other soils; and a large
quantity of Ligurian offshoots were carried off from their parent stems
to fill some vacant ground at Samnium. Many places were thoroughly
destroyed; and among others, Cremona was so unmercifully played upon,
that it was utterly broken up, and the lamentations of its inhabitants
were regarded no more than the moanings of a set of old fiddle-strings.
Not satisfied with being the masters of Italy and the tyrants of Greece,
the Romans aimed at establishing their dominion in Spain, which was
partly achieved by the treachery of some of the inhabitants, and the
cowardice of others. Some of its most powerful men entered into an
alliance with Rome, and were treated as insurgents or rebels, when they
dared to revolt against the foreign authority that had either cowed or
corrupted them.
The subjugation of Spain was mainly effected by M. Porcius Cato, who
took a rather remarkable way of reducing the country to submission; for
he induced several places to commit a sort of moral suicide; and after
condemning them in his own mind, he arranged that they should become, as
it were, their own executioners. He sent circulars to a large number of
fortified towns in Spain, with instructions that the communications were
not to be looked into before a certain day; and the inhabitants of every
town experienced the agony of suspense, in the fear that their doom was
sealed in a letter they were not allowed to open. At length, when the
day arrived for penetrating the envelope in which the mystery was
enclosed, every circular was found to contain a command that the walls
of the town to which it was addressed should be razed to the ground, or,
in case of disobedience, that the heaviest punishment should light on
its inhabitants. The authorities not being able to communicate with each
other, fancied their own town the only one that was doomed, and
proceeded to pull the place about their own ears, until it was reduced
to a heap of dry rubbish.
When the mischief was done, it was too late to discover that it need not
have been done at all; and though unity is in ordinary cases strength,
the unity with which the Spaniards had acted in demolishing their own
towns, had reduced them to a condition of utter feebleness.
For some time they lived in peace, though their homes were knocked to
pieces; but a war broke out again, in the year of the City 572 (B.C.
181). The Spaniards, however, were not thoroughly reduced until four
years after, though they were being continually killed, beaten, cut to
pieces, and otherwise dealt with, in a manner from which their reduction
would seem to flow as a natural consequence. It was Tib. Sempronius
Gracchus--the father of the two great Gracchi, of whom we shall have
something to say hereafter--that concluded peace with several of the
Spanish tribes, who were brought down so low, that their being otherwise
than peaceable was almost impossible.
The Romans continued to intrude themselves and their system on
different parts of Europe, and planted a colony at Aquileia, in Istria,
which caused the Istrians to try and put a full stop to the disposition
which Rome had shown to colon-ise. A war ensued, which resulted in the
loss of three towns and one king, when the Istrians came to the
conclusion that they had had enough of it, and immediately submitted to
the Roman authority.
[Illustration: Hannibal requesting the Cretan Priests to become his
Bankers.]
Having, for a time, lost sight of the illustrious Hannibal, we begin to
look about for him once more, and find him living in a Court, kept by
one Prusias, the greedy and needy king of Bithynia. After the treaty
made by Antiochus and the Romans, Hannibal had fled to Crete, where he
could not long remain; and, though history is silent as to the cause, we
may conjecture something from the fact, that he effected a clandestine
removal of all his wealth, though he pretended to leave behind him a
vast amount of treasure. Tradition states that, having procured a number
of earthen jars, he filled them with lead, and, strewing a little gold,
or loose silver, over the top, he carried them to the temple of Diana,
and requested the Cretan priests to become his bankers, for the purpose
of his entrusting to them this valuable deposit. The priests assured
him, with many protestations, that he would find it all right on his
return; and Hannibal, having previously packed all his real gold into
the hollow insides of some statues of brass, which he pretended to carry
with him, in his character of an admirer of the arts, got clear off with
all his money.
He continued to travel from place to place, and had spent the contents
of nearly all his statues, except a small one, so that his means had
literally come down to the lowest figure. In this dilemma he found
himself at Bithynia, where Prusias gave him house-room for a short time;
taking advantage of the visit, to render his guest useful in a war that
was being carried on against Eumenes, king of Pergamus. Hannibal,
however, could not persuade the parsimonious Prusias to go to the
expense of conducting hostilities in an effective style; and, indeed,
there being no money to carry on the war, it was impossible to do so
with credit; for nobody would make any advance on the security of a bad
sovereign. The Romans regarding Hannibal as a dangerous agitator, which
he had indeed proved himself to be, required that he should be given up;
but Prusias, declining to be at the expense of carriage, intimated that
whoever wanted Hannibal had better come for him. The Carthaginian
general, foreseeing his fate, endeavoured to make his escape by one of
seven secret passages leading from his house; but his enemies had found
them out, and were therefore certain of finding him at home; for they
had taken care to bar his egress.
[Illustration: Hannibal makes the usual neat and appropriate Speech
previous to killing himself.]
Though possessing all the courage of a soldier, he was miserably
destitute of a superior kind of fortitude, and he always carried a
bottle of poison about with him. Finding escape impossible, he drew the
fatal phial from his pocket, and, as he shook it up, he indulged in one
of those speeches which are usually attributed by classical historians
to men on the point of suicide. "I will," he said--or is said to have
said, for nobody could have heard him, as he was quite alone, and nobody
could have been listening, or the bottle would have been snatched out of
his hand; "I will deliver the Romans from the dread which has so long
tormented them, since they think it too long to wait for the decease of
a worn-out old man." Here he may be supposed to have paused; and, after
giving the bottle another final shake, to have continued as follows:
"Flaminius's victory over a foe, unarmed and betrayed, will not redound
much to his honour;" and, with a mental once, twice, thrice, and away,
the wretched Hannibal may be imagined to have raised the nauseous
draught to his lips, and to have tossed it off with desperate energy.
Hannibal had certainly, in his lifetime, shown proofs of greatness,
though, in the manner of his death, he gave evidence of lamentable
littleness. On the admirable principle of "look to the end," we are
unable to agree with those classical enthusiasts who regard Hannibal as
one of the most illustrious of mankind, because he was more daring and
more skilful in the art of exterminating his fellow-creatures than many
of his competitors. His personal ambition brought misery on his own, as
well as other countries, and his obstinate hatred to Rome was not
justified by his juvenile oath, for the taking of which he deserved
rather the birch than the laurel. The first public act of his life was
to swear when he was too young to have known what he was about, and the
last act was to poison himself at the age of sixty-two, when he was
quite old enough to have known better. He made a bad beginning, but a
worse ending, and he proved that, though aspiring to rule over others,
he was unable to command himself, and was in nearly every respect a
melancholy specimen of ill-regulated humanity.
Within about a year of Hannibal's death, Scipio Africanus also died in
exile. This great man, as it has been customary to call him, because he
was a large destroyer of the human race, was taken up before the Senate
on a charge of embezzlement. The case happened to be appointed for
hearing on the anniversary of some battle he had won, when he declared
the day was ill-suited for litigation, and the people, who are always
ready for an excuse for a holiday, immediately agreed with him. His
brother Lucius was involved in the same accusation, which he met by
producing his accounts; but, the popular idol seizing the books,
declared it was shabby for a nation to be too particular with those who
had served it so well, and tore up the whole of the financial statement.
Lucius Scipio remained in Rome; but Africanus ran away to a villa in
Campania, leaving his brother to undergo the confiscation of the whole
of his property. The innocence of Lucius was subsequently established,
and, though no "money returned," is generally the motto of the law, he
succeeded in getting back a part of what he had been unjustly deprived
of. He, however, having lived without his income, had no sooner got the
means restored to him of living within it, than he died, with the
melancholy satisfaction of having had justice done when it was too late
to be of the smallest earthly use to him.
The merits and demerits of Scipio Africanus have been differently
estimated by different authorities; and though it is charitable to give
to any man the benefit of a doubt, no one would be thankful for the
admission that his was a doubtful character. Scipio Africanus was a
great patron of letters; but he seems to have been a despiser of
figures, if the story relating to his contempt for the accuracy of his
accounts is to be relied upon. Cicero has spoken eloquently of the
simple habits of Scipio Africanus, in his marine retirement, throwing
stones into the sea, and skimming with them the surface of the water;
but this innocent pastime does not relieve him from the accusation of
making "ducks and drakes" of the public money, which was the charge that
Cato had endeavoured to bring home to him.
He is said to have been generous to his relatives; but to help them,
after freely helping himself, may have been nothing more than nepotism,
under the disguise of a domestic virtue. It is stated that he showed his
disregard for wealth by relinquishing to his brother his own share of
his patrimony; but there is little merit in his having despised the
comparatively mean contents of his family purse, if he was unscrupulous
during the time that he had the public pocket to dip into.
FOOTNOTE:
[55] This is, in fact, the homœopathic principle applied to politics;
the counteracting of like by like, _similia similibus_.
CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH.
PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS. MORALS, MANNERS, CUSTOMS, AND STATE OF THE DRAMA AND
LITERATURE AMONG THE ROMANS.
[Illustration]
It is customary with the grandiloquent to declare that the page of
history is stained with gore; but we limit ourselves to ink, which
perhaps, after all, furnishes a decent type of mourning over the deeds
we are compelled to chronicle. It is true that history has too often
wars for her principal facts, and the numbers of dead for her figures;
but she is apt to speak rather figuratively in estimating the thousands
upon thousands who are said to have fallen, sword in hand, or to have
been terribly put to it.
The weapon of war cuts, however, both ways; and a nation cannot play
with edged tools more safely than an individual can indulge in such
dangerous pastime.
The state of war in which Rome habitually lived, had encouraged the
worst passions of the people; and nearly every vice had taken an iron
hold of them. By continually fighting, they had become familiar with
murder and violence, while the practice of plunder had accustomed them
to robbery. Military stratagem--which was the very essence of
strategy--had taught them to regard cunning as a virtue; and he was a
hero, in their opinion, who would face the swords and spears of a foe,
but sought in poison a cowardly refuge from the "slings and arrows" of
his own conscience. The wealth taken by force was often appropriated by
fraud; and a successful leader thought nothing of putting into his own
pocket an enormous sum, declaring that it was unreasonable to expect a
general to be particular.[56] The few became enormously rich, while the
many were miserably poor. The higher orders grasped everything, leaving
nothing to those beneath, and the consequence was a state of
top-heaviness, which, when existing in the social column, exposes base
and capital--but especially the latter--to extreme danger. Money had
been acquired by some, who did not know its use; and its abuse was the
inevitable result; for the improper employment of gold leads to every
kind of guilt on the part of those who are possessed of it.
With the wealth of other nations, foreign fashions were imported, and
Roman simplicity was superseded by the art and cunning of the Grecian
craftsmen. The pleasures of the table were carried to a gluttonous
excess; and a slave who, in the capacity of a cook, could set before his
master an agreeable kind of sauce, was often allowed impunity for
insolence.
Extravagance began to prevail to such an extent among the Roman women,
that those females whose wardrobe was of a gaudy hue, were virtually
condemned to dye, for a law was passed by the tribune Appius,
prohibiting them from wearing dresses of a gay colour. The same law
limited them to half-an-ounce of gold; but this was unnecessary; for the
extravagantly-disposed would spend all they had; and they were further
restricted from riding at or near Rome, or any other city, in a carriage
drawn by two horses; for it was considered that with one the road to
ruin could be quite rapidly enough travelled. This law occasioned some
violent agitation among the Roman women, who manifested the force of
female influence so effectually, that in a few years the law was
repealed.
[Illustration: Roman Lady "Shopping."]
The stern necessities of historical truth compel us to attribute to what
is termed the gentler sex, the introduction, among the Romans, of some
vices so foul, as to be at variance with all our notions of the fair.
One of the worst of these enormities was the celebration of the
Bacchanalia, introduced from Etruria; and recent discoveries[57] in that
locality have initiated us into the secret of what are usually termed
the Bacchic mysteries. The mystification of the votaries was
accomplished by drink; under the influence of which they wound up their
festivities with a reel, such as may be traced in ancient paintings; and
round every such reel there is twined some important thread of history.
Imitation is seldom respectable in any case; for even merit loses half
its value when it is not original; but nothing can be more contemptible
than a people putting on bad habits at second-hand. Such, however, was
the practice of the Romans, who borrowed nearly all their iniquities
from Athens or other cities, and who wilfully brought upon themselves
the moral stain of Greece. Cruelty, which goes hand in hand with
depravity, had reached such an infamous excess, that it was practised
openly by those whom the people delighted to honour. Among other
instances, may be cited the example of the Consul L. Quinctius
Flaminius, who, while encamped in Gaul, happened to be feasting with one
of his degraded creatures, when the latter lamented he had never seen a
gladiator killed. A noble Boian entering at the moment, to ask for
shelter, Flaminius observed that, though unable to treat his friend to
the sight of a dying gladiator, he might satisfy his appetite for
cruelty by the exhibition of a dying Gaul. The "creature" had no sooner
expressed his readiness to accept the lighter relish as a substitute for
the more substantial meal, than Flaminius, drawing his sword, smote the
unfortunate Boian on the head, and ran him through the body. So
brutalised had the people become by continual war, that no notice was
taken of this occurrence until eight years afterwards, when Cato, the
Censor, brought up the charge, with a variety of others, more or less
weighty, against Flaminius, and caused his expulsion from the Senate.
The name of Cato the Censor, naturally induces a few observations on the
character of this ancient specimen of the
"Fine old Roman gentleman all of the olden time."
He was the son of a respectable Sabine farmer, and passed his earliest
years in the country, where he followed the plough--a peaceful pursuit,
which imprints no early furrows on the forehead, but leaves many on the
earth it at once improves and lacerates. At seventeen, every Roman
became, of necessity, a soldier; and though in the game of life fortune
had dealt him a spade, he was obliged to throw it out of his hand. Such
was the lot of young Marcus Porcius Priscus; for that was in reality his
name, though he afterwards had the title of Cato, or the "knowing one,"
bestowed on him. His military duties were performed with credit, though
he preferred cultivating any other seeds than the seeds of dissension;
and he was more at home in a trench dug for celery, than in one designed
for undermining a fort.
After returning from the wars, he took some ground adjoining that which
had been occupied by Dentatus; and regarding that individual as a model
farmer, Cato tried to make his own a model farm. So thoroughly did he
throw himself into his agrarian occupation, that he may be said to have
buried himself in his land. He wrote a work on Agriculture,[58] which
included much miscellaneous information, from the mode of buying an
estate to the art of making a cheesecake, the curing of a side of bacon,
and the setting of a dislocated bone. While attending to his own
business, he found leisure to attend to that of his neighbours; and in
all their petty disputes before the local tribunals, he was in the habit
of attending the hearing of summonses for and against his friends. He
had a word of advice or a maxim to meet every circumstance in which his
advice was asked or offered; and he could always cut through a
difficulty with one of his wise saws. Some might be disposed to term him
a busybody and a meddler; but at all events a young patrician, named
Valerius Flaccus, considered him to be a meddler well worth
transplanting, and persuaded him to go to Rome, "as," in the language of
Plutarch, "a plant that deserved a better soil." Here he "put up" for
various places in the public service, and we find him climbing
successively to several very high posts, where the example he set by his
externally virtuous mode of living, formed a decent contrast to the
undisguised vices of the age.
Such was Cato in his earlier years; but the melancholy fact must be
stated, that, though flattery paints only one side of every picture,
there is none to which truth may not be called upon to add a reverse. In
his youthful days Cato had worked with his labourers; had partaken of
the same fare with them at the same board, and drank nothing stronger
than water; but, in after-life, he contracted a disreputable marriage,
and, giving himself up to the dissipations of the table, might have
found himself occasionally under it. So thoroughly utilitarian was he in
his political philosophy, that he looked upon a labourer as a mere
machine, which, when worn out, he contended ought to be got rid of as
speedily as possible. Cato the Censor owes much of his reputation for
morality to the fact of his having set himself up as a professional
moralist. Though he was useful as a castigator of the vices of his age,
there was nothing very amiable in the rancorous and uncharitable spirit
in which he performed his office. He had a keen appetite for an abuse or
a piece of scandal, but, while crime or error excited his hatred, virtue
and generosity seemed to rouse less of his admiration than his jealousy.
If he had lived in modern times, he would, probably, have been a common
informer, a rigid observer of all the outward appearances of virtue, and
a discounter of bills; for it is said of Cato, that he advanced money at
exorbitant interest to those whose necessities or recklessness induced
them to comply with his terms.