was up, and, retreating to Samothrace, he consigned his weary head to
the shelter of Castor, in whose temple he hid himself. He had managed to
carry about with him a large supply of treasure, which he was anxious to
save, and had hired a mariner to take him to Crete; but the money having
been first sent on board, the crafty seaman, out of curiosity, weighed
the gold, and immediately weighed anchor. Perseus having gone down to
the beach, to embark, saw the ship in the offing, and, having watched
it, he perceived that it was fairly, or rather unfairly off, with all
his treasure. As he paced the shore, he felt himself quite aground, and,
having no lodging for the night, or the means of obtaining one, he
returned to the solitary chambers of the temple. Having a wife and
family to provide for, he threw himself on the generosity of Æmilius,
who gave him a subsistence, but loaded him with chains, that he might
feel the weight of his obligations. The unhappy Perseus was made to walk
in a triumph before the car of his conqueror; and though he had
entreated that he might not be so lowered, he was still further let
down, by cruel confinement in a subterranean dungeon. His
fellow-prisoners are said to have offered him a sword, to end his days,
but, on looking at the weapon, he very properly declined to bring his
sufferings to a point, by an act of folly and wickedness. He eventually
found his way to Alba, where he died in about two years; his son,
Alexander, having adopted the trade of a turner, with the laudable view
of turning an honest penny.
Paulus Æmilius exercised the usual privilege of a conqueror, by robbing
the vanquished of all they had possessed; and Macedonia was declared
free, in the customary manner, by placing it entirely under the
government of its foreign victors.
The triumph of Paulus Æmilius was one of the most magnificent shows that
had ever been seen, and lasted three days, during which a perpetual fair
was kept up; for, among the Romans, "None but the brave deserve the
fair" was a maxim literally followed. On the first day there was a
procession of pictures, showing the exploits of Æmilius in the brightest
colours. The second day was devoted to the carrying of the trophies and
the silver coin; but, on the third, which was the grandest day of all,
the gold was paraded, followed by 120 bulls, which seem to be suggestive
of nothing belonging to war but its butchery. After these came the
unhappy Perseus, loaded with fetters, and having about him some other
links of a far more affecting kind, in the shape of his three children.
The fame spread by the fate of Perseus was general among the kings of
the earth, who flocked like sheep, or rather, crawled like curs, to do
homage to the Roman Senate. Perseus arrived with his head shaved, as if
to show that he owed not only his crown, but his hair and all, to Rome;
and he wore the tattered garments of a freed slave, as if to prove that
he had not a rag to his back, but what he held at the pleasure of his
masters.
All who had shown any sympathy with the cause of Perseus were cruelly
persecuted, and the unfortunate Rhodians were so terrified with the bare
anticipation of their fate, that they began to anticipate it in reality,
by making away with themselves and with one another. On the few who
remained the hardest conditions were imposed, which made their own
condition the more deplorable. Carthage and the Achaian League were the
only two powers that seemed to stand in the way of Rome, and of these
the latter was thought so contemptible, that some Achaians who had been
detained in Italy were saved by a sarcasm of Cato on their feebleness
and decrepitude. "We have only to decide," said he, "whether these poor
creatures shall be buried by their own grave-diggers, or by ours;" a
cruel pleasantry, which, however, had a humane result, for it was
decided that they should be at liberty to go home and yield to their
native undertakers the profit--or loss--attendant on their funerals.
The Carthaginians had been for some years at peace with Rome, but had
been much harassed by some of her allies, and particularly by
Massinissa, their neighbour, in Numidia. It was annoying enough to be
subjected to attack, but it was still more provoking to be unable to
return the blow, which was the case with Carthage, whose hands were tied
by a bond prohibiting her from going to war without Rome's permission.
An appeal was addressed to Rome, which sent ambassadors, who were
instructed to hear the Carthaginians, but to decide in favour of
Massinissa. Carthage at length grew tired of allowing Rome to hold the
scales of justice; for, though the scales might have been true, a false
weight was always attached to one side, which gave it a vast
preponderance.
The Carthaginians, therefore, took up arms against Massinissa, who,
though ninety years of age, fought with great determination; for he
felt, probably, that he was too old to fly, and that his only chance was
to make that determined stand so well adapted to a time of life when
progress is somewhat difficult. The Carthaginians were worsted, but they
were not yet quite at their worst, until Rome was seized with the idea
of destroying their city. Cato was especially bent upon this design, or
rather he pursued it with unbending obstinacy, for he finished every
speech with the words "_Delenda est Carthago_," which may be freely
rendered into "Carthage must be smashed." Whatever might have been the
commencement of his oration, he always ended with the same words, and
whether he spoke in the Senate, the market-place, or his own house,
though the premises might be different, he always came to the same
conclusion. He went about as a man with one idea, and his conduct was
almost that of a monomaniac; for, if he met a friend in the street, and
conversed on different or indifferent subjects, he would take his
farewell with the accustomed words, "_Valete; delenda est
Carthago_,"--"Good-bye; we must smash Carthage." During a debate in the
Senate he pulled some figs out of his pocket, which he exhibited to some
of his brother members as being "remarkably fine." As the fruit was
being examined, he observed, that he had "picked them up in Africa;"
that "they were capital;" that "there were plenty more where those came
from," and, in a word, he added, "_Delenda est Carthago_"--"We really
must smash Carthage."
Rome agreed with Cato, more especially when he pointed out that the
place was exceedingly rich; for the Romans, whenever there was anything
to be got by robbery, were quite prepared for violence. The Consuls, M.
Manilius and L. Marcius Censorinus, assembled with a large force in
Sicily, where some ambassadors appeared from Carthage; but the only
result of negotiation was an order that 300 members of the best
Carthaginian families should be sent over by way of hostages. The Romans
then passed over into Utica, where the Carthaginian ambassadors again
tried to treat, but the treatment they experienced was a demand for the
instant giving up of all their arms and ammunition. Commissioners were
sent into the city to see the orders carried out, which comprised the
carrying out of 200,000 suits of armour, and 3000 catapults.[62] The
Carthaginians appear to have lost the use of their heads when they so
quietly resigned their arms; but when they were told that they must, in
the next place, abandon Carthage, and build another city ten miles off,
they began to feel--somewhat too late--that it was time to defend
themselves.
The Carthaginian ambassadors proceeded to the usual expression of
anguish by tearing their hair out by the roots, instead of trying to
pluck up a little courage. Some, who were already bald, rolled
themselves in the dust; and only a few went, like sensible men, to
communicate to the Carthaginians the doom with which their city was
threatened.
The receipt of the news seems to have deprived the Carthaginians of all
their natural intelligence; for their first step was to maltreat the
envoys. An effort was then made to save the city, by shutting the gates;
and the citizens armed themselves with stones, having determined to set
their lives upon the cast of these unwarlike missiles. It is impossible
not to respect and admire the heroism displayed under the very trying
circumstances; but, unfortunately, trying was of little use, for the
chances were all against the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal, who had been
living in exile, at the head of 20,000 men--a somewhat large party to
remain in banishment--was sent for to take the command, and occupied a
post outside the city. The inhabitants, having given up all their
ordinary arms to the enemy, supplied fresh ammunition by devoting all
their gold and silver to the furnace; and it was a melting sight to see
their treasure sacrificed for this patriotic object. The women cut off
their hair, to devote it to the making of crossbows, and the sex took a
characteristic pride in furnishing as many strings to a bow as possible.
They worked so energetically, that they are said to have fabricated as
many as 500 javelins, 140 bucklers, and 300 swords each day; but this
statement seems to involve so much of fabrication, that we find
difficulty in believing it.
The resistance of Carthage was obstinate; and the confidence of Rome led
to a sort of indolence on the part of the latter, which protracted the
siege, until a new life was put into the affair, by the appointment of
young P. C. Scipio, the son of Paulus Æmilius, to the Consulship. The
Carthaginians also were urged to fresh exertion, and a party of 300
waded through the harbour, with torches in their hands, to burn some
engines; but the water damped their efforts, which might be compared to
an attempt to set the Thames on fire; and all who were not drowned were
glad to make their way back again. The suggestion of the use of flame
was an unfortunate one for Carthage, since it seemed to cause the
breaking in of a new light upon the Romans, who had recourse to
incendiarism in their turn for the accomplishment of their object.
Having got within the walls, they ignited several houses, and, carrying
fire from street to street, they invested their cause with a glare which
is none the less hateful for having been the glare of victory.
After nearly everybody had been killed, 50,000 men and women came forth
with olive branches to meet the conqueror; and 900 Roman deserters were
still stowed away in the citadel. Hasdrubal yielded; but his wife, who
was a strong-minded woman, reviled him in a speech from the ramparts,
and, parading her poor helpless children up and down for a few minutes,
she threw them before her, and ultimately flung herself into the burning
ruins. Preceding historians have expressed their admiration of this
frantic female, for the act of murder and suicide which we have
described; but we must confess our total inability to appreciate the
heroism of a piece of cruelty and cowardice, involving a large amount of
brutal daring, but wholly destitute of moral fortitude.
Carthage was now utterly destroyed, and Scipio, who had been the main
instrument of its having been set on fire, is said to have shed tears
over its smouldering ashes; but we should be inclined to attribute the
fact to the smoke having got into his eyes, rather than to any feeling
of humanity. Even those who give him credit for sensibility, accuse him
of selfishness, for they say that he alluded to the possibility that the
same fate would befal his own country; and they add that, while thinking
of his home, he quoted Homer, who had foretold the doom of Troy through
the mouth of Hector.[63] The Romans having possession of the place,
razed to the ground every part that had escaped the flames; but they
lowered themselves even still more completely than they levelled the
city. Thus fell a place which had maintained a noble rivalry with Rome,
and which, in many respects, surpassed her proud competitor.
The greatness of Carthage had been, undoubtedly, the cause of that
littleness of feeling which had been manifested towards it by Cato, who
could not bear the idea that there should exist a city rivalling in
grandeur the place he inhabited. The walls, which were triple, were
divided into two stories, the upper for men, and the lower for brutes;
the former comprising barracks for soldiers, and the latter being fitted
up as stables for elephants.
The chief glory of the place was, however, to be found in its aqueducts,
which ran in a long line of seventy miles, and of which the people had
more reason to be proud than of even a still longer line of ancestors.
That a place surrounded almost by aqueducts should have been destroyed
by fire, is an extraordinary fact, though it is possible that turncocks
may have been neglectful, and if called upon to turn the water on, they
may have turned it off in favour of some more agreeable engagement.
There were not so many spoils as had been expected, for everything was
spoilt by the mischief that had been done, and though there had been
plenty of gold, the fearful amount of violent change had so scattered
the gold, that there was not so much remaining as there otherwise would
have been. With a touch of that honour which the proverb says is to be
found among thieves, Scipio called upon the places formerly plundered by
Carthage to reclaim their goods; and the people of Agrigentum demanded a
brazen Bull they had once used as an instrument of torture, though the
invention was so discreditable to humanity, that its inventors ought to
have been ashamed to ask for it back again. Among the prizes secured by
the Romans, was a very small parcel of books, including a little work on
agriculture, by Mago, which had taught the Carthaginians to till the
earth, though not how to keep their ground, for they had lost every foot
of it.
Carthage became a province of Rome, under the name of Africa, and
Scipio, who subsequently styled himself Africanus, enjoyed one of those
triumphs, which were in fact disgraces to the object they were designed
to honour. Part of the "triumph" consisted in the barbarity of throwing
as food to lions the fugitives that had fallen into his hands, and games
were celebrated, in which death to the conquered was the chief sport to
the conqueror.
Macedonia, which was groaning under the freedom forced upon it by Rome,
was glad to become the slave of everybody who offered to ease it of the
obnoxious burden. The Macedonians, therefore, became the dupes of three
impostors in succession, who, with all their imposition, were less
objectionable than the hardships imposed by Rome in her character of
liberator to the world in general. The impostors--one of whom was a
runaway gladiator--were in turn subdued, and Macedonia was swallowed up
by Rome's insatiable appetite for conquest.
Of the three pretenders just alluded to, the only one who had been able
to maintain his ground--though, by the way, the ground was never his to
maintain--was a young man, who declared himself to be Philip, the son of
Perseus. The youth was certainly very like his alleged father; and, upon
the strength of the resemblance in features, he put upon his claim such
a bold face, that the Macedonians favoured it. They put their crown upon
his head, and the kingly name seemed to have invested the young
adventurer with a tower of strength; for he was successful in an attack
upon the Romans, under the consul Juventius. The impostor, however, soon
lost control over himself, and there was at once an end to his influence
over his new subjects. They threw him off, and he was compelled to take
refuge in a Court inhabited by one Bysas, a petty Thracian prince, who
gave up, or, more probably, sold, the fugitive, who had sought his
hospitality. The pretender, who had led away so many others, was
eventually led away himself, and made to march as a "frightful example"
in the triumph of Metellus.
About this time the Achaians, who had entered into a league, began to
quarrel among themselves; for Sparta, like a spoiled child, wanted to
have its own way, and sulked, as it were, alone in a corner, apart from
the rest of the confederacy. Rome was appealed to for advice, and Roman
ambassadors came to Corinth; but they were so unpopular, that on a visit
to the theatre, where they had gone, expecting fair play, they were
insulted and pelted by the audience. This irritated the Romans, and an
army was sent, under Mummius, to encounter the Greek general Diæus, who
made so certain of victory, that he had seats erected for the women and
children to see him win a battle. He had prepared everything in the
neighbourhood of Corinth, and appropriating the privilege of the brave
who are said to deserve the fair, he clustered a large bevy of female
beauty round the spot of his intended achievement. The ladies were all
expectation, and Diæus was all confidence, until Mummius made his
appearance, and in a very few minutes sent Diæus flying towards
Megalopolis. Here he entered his own abode, and setting fire to the
premises, celebrated, with the most dismal of house-warmings, the defeat
that took the place of his intended victory.
Mummius, thinking it idle to pursue the fugitive, preferred following up
his advantage, and arrived at the gates of Corinth, which had been left
wide open by the citizens. The place was deserted; and Mummius not only
sacked its palaces, but ransacked its private houses, and, looking into
its magazines, extracted from them some very valuable articles. So
little, however, did he understand or appreciate art, that when sending
valuable pictures or pieces of sculpture to Rome, he told the sailors,
that if any damage was done on the voyage, he would make them execute
objects precisely similar to those with which he entrusted them. Among
the pictures was the celebrated "Bacchus" of Aristides,--which was so
perfect as to be looked upon as one of the wonders of the world--and,
when consigning it as part of a cargo of curiosities, he declared that,
if any injury was done to it, the ship's painter should immediately
paint another. Such was the barbarism of the destroyers of Corinth, that
this picture was only rescued by Polybius from the hands of the
soldiers, who were gambling on its face, and who, with every throw of
the die, took off a portion of its colour.
The scenes enacted during the pillage of Corinth were barbarous in the
extreme, and involved the total destruction of what may have been termed
one of the chief pillars of civilisation--or, at all events, its
Corinthian capital. Many of the Roman soldiers, intoxicated with success
and something more, perished in the flames, to which the city was doomed
by the barbarous order of Mummius. When the conflagration first
commenced, it is said that a liquid metal was seen to flow through the
streets, which induced the invaders to rush forward in the hope of
profiting by such a strange metallic currency. Those, however, who laid
their hands upon the tempting issue, as it ran from the banks on either
side of the thoroughfare, found it a mass of floating fire, with which
they terribly burned their fingers. On cooler examination the material
proved to be a fusion of beautiful ores, to which the name of Corinthian
brass has since been given.
[Illustration: Bacchanalian Group, from a very old Vase.]
Greece was now at the feet of Rome, which trampled not only on her
fallen foe, but upon all the obligations of honour and morality. The
population and wealth of Corinth were disposed of--the former by murder,
and the latter by robbery. Greece was formed into a Roman province under
the title of Achaia, and Mummius, glorying in, rather than being
ashamed of, his share of the work, took the surname of Achaicus. We may
instance as a redeeming feature of the period, the erection at Rome of a
clock, which was in some degree at variance with the time; for the
useful arts were neglected amid the pursuits of war and rapine. The
clock consisted of a bottle with a narrow neck, filled with water,
divided into twelve measures, to mark the hours; but it was only a
minute observer that could ascertain the minutes. The only mode of
telling the time at Rome, had been previously by means of the sun-dial,
which was, of course, useless in the absence of sun, and those who were
particular to a shade, could derive from it no assistance in their
evening arrangements.
We dwell with some satisfaction on the introduction of the apparatus we
have described; for the mere manifestation of a desire to note the
progress of time is indicative of a wish to make an improved use of it.
The application of the bottle to a wholesome purpose must also be a
cheering symptom, when it is met with among those who had previously
looked at the bottle as the means of killing time, rather than as an
instrument for making its flight perceptible.
FOOTNOTES:
[62] A catapult was an instrument for throwing arrows to a considerable
distance. The arrows were called _Tormenta_, not from the torment they
inflicted, but from _torqueo_, to twist, because they were made of
twisted hair, and perhaps the sight of them was calculated to give a
turn to the enemy.
[63]
"The day shall come when Ilium's self shall fall,
With Priam and his strong-spear'd people all."--_Iliad_, vi. 446.
CHAPTER THE TWENTY-SECOND.
WARS IN SPAIN. VIRIATHUS. DESTRUCTION OF NUMANTIA. THE SERVILE WAR IN
SICILY. APPROPRIATION OF PERGAMUS.
War had become so familiar to the Romans, that they never felt at home
unless they were fighting abroad, and the sword was the only thing they
took in hand with real earnestness. The intoxication of success, like
other habits of intoxication, cannot be easily got rid of, and the
Romans sought to indulge their thirst for conquest in a manner wholly at
variance with sober judgment. Their design was to conquer Spain, and in
the execution of this design they cruelly executed large numbers of the
Lusitanians, who had laid down their arms, in consequence of a promise
that if they quitted the field of battle, they should be allowed quiet
possession of the fields of peaceful industry. On this assurance, they
divided themselves into three parts, and were then--as we are gravely
assured by the chroniclers--treacherously cut into several thousand
pieces. One of the few that escaped was Viriathus, who combined the
qualities of the wolf and the lamb, for he had turned a desperate
robber, after having been employed as a gentle shepherd. Abandoning the
honest hook of a pastoral life, he had adopted the more crooked ways of
the common thief; and he seems to have gradually stolen upon the
confidence of his countrymen, until they made him a general. He had
passed his early days among the mountains, and was prepared for the ups
and downs of life, which he afterwards experienced. His predatory
properties had taught him how to attack, and his practice as a
robber--which rendered it necessary for him frequently to keep out of
the way--had familiarised him with the art of avoiding an enemy. He
would appear suddenly from the thick of a thicket, and after doing
considerable mischief, he would find concealment in the hollow of some
rock which his companions would never split upon. Though he had
commenced his career as a poor country clown, he had trained himself to
perform feats of activity worthy of the most experienced Harlequin.
Life, which is a drama in the case of most men, was, in his case, a
series of scenes in a pantomime. He was here, there, and everywhere,
when he was not expected, and he was immediately nowhere when his
opponents were in pursuit of him. His policy was first to scatter, and
then to destroy; to divide an enemy _en gros_, and cut it to pieces _en
detail_. He had encountered Vitellius, the Roman Prætor, near a place
called Tribula, where the latter got into the utmost tribulation by
being led through briers and bushes into an ambush, where he lost half
his army. The other half lost him, for he was killed by the sword of
some one who did not know him, though, had he been known, the
acquaintance would, most probably, have been cut in the same barbarous
manner.
[Illustration: Assassination of Viriathus.]