With the view of producing a change in the state of African affairs,

which excited uneasiness, the Romans resorted to the extraordinary

measure of entrusting the conduct of the war to the only man who had

as yet brought home honour from the Libyan plains, and who was

recommended for this war by his very name. Instead of calling Scipio

to the aedileship for which he was a candidate, they gave to him

the consulship before the usual time, setting aside the laws to the

contrary effect, and committed to him by special decree the conduct

of the African war. He arrived (607) in Utica at a moment when much

was at stake. The Roman admiral Mancinus, charged by Piso with the

nominal continuance of the siege of the capital, had occupied a steep

cliff, far remote from the inhabited district and scarcely defended,

on the almost inaccessible seaward side of the suburb of Magalia, and

had united nearly his whole not very numerous force there, in the hope

of being able to penetrate thence into the outer town. In fact the

assailants had been for a moment within its gates and the camp-

followers had flocked forward in a body in the hope of spoil, when

they were again driven back to the cliff and, being without supplies

and almost cut off, were in the greatest danger. Scipio found matters

in that position. He had hardly arrived when he despatched the

troops which he had brought with him and the militia of Utica by sea

to the threatened point, and succeeded in saving its garrison and

holding the cliff itself. After this danger was averted, the general

proceeded to the camp of Piso to take over the army and bring it back

to Carthage. Hasdrubal and Bithyas availed themselves of his absence

to move their camp immediately up to the city, and to renew the

attack on the garrison of the cliff before Magalia; but even now

Scipio appeared with the vanguard of the main army in sufficient time

to afford assistance to the post. Then the siege began afresh and

more earnestly. First of all Scipio cleared the camp of the mass of

camp-followers and sutlers and once more tightened the relaxed reins

of discipline. Military operations were soon resumed with increased

vigour. In an attack by night on the suburb the Romans succeeded in

passing from a tower--placed in front of the walls and equal to them

in height--on to the battlements, and opened a little gate through

which the whole army entered. The Carthaginians abandoned the

suburb and their camp before the gates, and gave the chief command

of the garrison of the city, amounting to 30,000 men, to Hasdrubal.

The new commander displayed his energy in the first instance by

giving orders that all the Roman prisoners should be brought to the

battlements and, after undergoing cruel tortures, should be thrown

over before the eyes of the besieging army; and, when voices were

raised in disapproval of the act, a reign of terror was introduced

with reference to the citizens also. Scipio, meanwhile, after having

confined the besieged to the city itself, sought totally to cut off

their intercourse with the outer world. He took up his head-quarters

on the ridge by which the Carthaginian peninsula was connected with

the mainland, and, notwithstanding the various attempts of the

Carthaginians to disturb his operations, constructed a great camp

across the whole breadth of the isthmus, which completely blockaded

the city from the landward side. Nevertheless ships with provisions

still ran into the harbour, partly bold merchantmen allured by the

great gain, partly vessels of Bithyas, who availed himself of every

favourable wind to convey supplies to the city from Nepheris at the

end of the lake of Tunes; whatever might now be the sufferings of the

citizens, the garrison was still sufficiently provided for. Scipio

therefore constructed a stone mole, 96 feet broad, running from the

tongue of land between the lake and gulf into the latter, so as thus

to close the mouth of the harbour. The city seemed lost, when the

success of this undertaking, which was at first ridiculed by the

Carthaginians as impracticable, became evident. But one surprise

was balanced by another. While the Roman labourers were constructing

the mole, work was going forward night and day for two months

in the Carthaginian harbour, without even the deserters being

able to tell what were the designs of the besieged. All of a

sudden, just as the Romans had completed the bar across the entrance

to the harbour, fifty Carthaginian triremes and a number of boats and

skiffs sailed forth from that same harbour into the gulf--while the

enemy were closing the old mouth of the harbour towards the south,

the Carthaginians had by means of a canal formed in an easterly

direction procured for themselves a new outlet, which owing to the

depth of the sea at that spot could not possibly be closed. Had the

Carthaginians, instead of resting content with a mere demonstration,

thrown themselves at once and resolutely on the half-dismantled and

wholly unprepared Roman fleet, it must have been lost; when they

returned on the third day to give the naval battle, they found the

Romans in readiness. The conflict came off without decisive result;

but on their return the Carthaginian vessels so ran foul of each

other in and before the entrance of the harbour, that the damage thus

occasioned was equivalent to a defeat. Scipio now directed his

attacks against the outer quay, which lay outside of the city walls

and was only protected for the exigency by an earthen rampart of recent

construction. The machines were stationed on the tongue of land,

and a breach was easily made; but with unexampled intrepidity the

Carthaginians, wading through the shallows, assailed the besieging

implements, chased away the covering force which ran off in such a

manner that Scipio was obliged to make his own troopers cut them

down, and destroyed the machines. In this way they gained time to

close the breach. Scipio, however, again established the machines

and set on fire the wooden towers of the enemy; by which means he

obtained possession of the quay and of the outer harbour along

with it. A rampart equalling the city wall in height was here

constructed, and the town was now at length completely blockaded

by land and sea, for the inner harbour could only be reached through

the outer. To ensure the completeness of the blockade, Scipio

ordered Gaius Laelius to attack the camp at Nepheris, where Diogenes

now held the command; it was captured by a fortunate stratagem,

and the whole countless multitude assembled there were put to

death or taken prisoners. Winter had now arrived and Scipio

suspended his operations, leaving famine and pestilence to

complete what he had begun.

Capture of the City

How fearfully these mighty agencies had laboured in the work of

destruction during the interval while Hasdrubal continued to vaunt

and to gormandize, appeared so soon as the Roman army proceeded in

the spring of 608 to attack the inner town. Hasdrubal gave orders

to set fire to the outer harbour and made himself ready to repel

the expected assault on the Cothon; but Laelius succeeded in scaling

the wall, hardly longer defended by the famished garrison, at a point

farther up and thus penetrated into the inner harbour. The city

was captured, but the struggle was still by no means at an end.

The assailants occupied the market-place contiguous to the small

harbour, and slowly pushed their way along the three narrow streets

leading from this to the citadel--slowly, for the huge houses of

six stories in height had to be taken one by one; on the roofs or

on beams laid over the street the soldiers penetrated from one of

these fortress-like buildings to that which was adjoining or opposite,

and cut down whatever they encountered there. Thus six days

elapsed, terrible for the inhabitants of the city and full of

difficulty and danger also for the assailants; at length they

arrived in front of the steep citadel-rock, whither Hasdrubal and

the force still surviving had retreated. To procure a wider approach,

Scipio gave orders to set fire to the captured streets and to level

the ruins; on which occasion a number of persons unable to fight, who

were concealed in the houses, miserably perished. Then at last the

remnant of the population, crowded together in the citadel, besought

for mercy. Bare life was conceded to them, and they appeared before

the victor, 30,000 men and 25,000 women, not the tenth part of the

former population. The Roman deserters alone, 900 in number, and

the general Hasdrubal with his wife and his two children had thrown

themselves into the temple of the God of Healing; for them--for

soldiers who had deserted their posts, and for the murderer of the

Roman prisoners--there were no terms. But when, yielding to famine,

the most resolute of them set fire to the temple, Hasdrubal could

not endure to face death; alone he ran forth to the victor and

falling upon his knees pleaded for his life. It was granted; but,

when his wife who with her children was among the rest on the roof

of the temple saw him at the feet of Scipio, her proud heart swelled

at this disgrace brought on her dear perishing home, and, with bitter

words bidding her husband be careful to save his life, she plunged

first her sons and then herself into the flames. The struggle was

at an end. The joy in the camp and at Rome was boundless; the

noblest of the people alone were in secret ashamed of the most recent

grand achievement of the nation. The prisoners were mostly sold as

slaves; several were allowed to languish in prison; the most notable,

Hasdrubal and Bithyas, were sent to the interior of Italy as Roman

state-prisoners and tolerably treated. The moveable property, with

the exception of gold, silver, and votive gifts, was abandoned to

the pillage of the soldiers. As to the temple treasures, the booty

that had been in better times carried off by the Carthaginians from

the Sicilian towns was restored to them; the bull of Phalaris,

for example, was returned to the Agrigentines; the rest fell

to the Roman state.

Destruction of Carthage

But by far the larger portion of the city still remained standing.

We may believe that Scipio desired its preservation; at least he

addressed a special inquiry to the senate on the subject. Scipio

Nasica once more attempted to gain a hearing for the demands of

reason and honour; but in vain. The senate ordered the general

to level the city of Carthage and the suburb of Magalia with the

ground, and to do the same with all the townships which had held by

Carthage to the last; and thereafter to pass the plough over the site

of Carthage so as to put an end in legal form to the existence of

the city, and to curse the soil and site for ever, that neither

house nor cornfield might ever reappear on the spot. The command was

punctually obeyed. The ruins burned for seventeen days: recently,

when the remains of the Carthaginian city wall were excavated, they

were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet

deep, filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron,

and projectiles. Where the industrious Phoenicians had bustled and

trafficked for five hundred years, Roman slaves henceforth pastured

the herds of their distant masters. Scipio, however, whom nature

had destined for a nobler part than that of an executioner, gazed

with horror on his own work; and, instead of the joy of victory,

the victor himself was haunted by a presentiment of the retribution

that would inevitably follow such a misdeed.

Province of Africa

There remained the work of arranging the future organization of

the country. The earlier plan of investing the allies of Rome with

the transmarine possessions that she acquired was no longer viewed

with favour. Micipsa and his brothers retained in substance their

former territory, including the districts recently wrested from the

Carthaginians on the Bagradas and in Emporia; their long-cherished

hope of obtaining Carthage as a capital was for ever frustrated;

the senate presented them instead with the Carthaginian libraries.

The Carthaginian territory as possessed by the city in its last days--

viz. The narrow border of the African coast lying immediately opposite

to Sicily, from the river Tusca (near Thabraca) to Thaenae (opposite

to the island of Karkenah)--became a Roman province. In the interior,

where the constant encroachments of Massinissa had more and more

narrowed the Carthaginian dominions and Bulla, Zama, and Aquae

already belonged to the kings, the Numidians retained what they

possessed. But the careful regulation of the boundary between the

Roman province and the Numidian kingdom, which enclosed it on three

sides, showed that Rome would by no means tolerate in reference

to herself what she had permitted in reference to Carthage; while

the name of the new province, Africa, on the other hand appeared

to indicate that Rome did not at all regard the boundary now marked

off as a definitive one. The supreme administration of the new

province was entrusted to a Roman governor, who had his seat at Utica.

Its frontier did not need any regular defence, as the allied Numidian

kingdom everywhere separated it from the inhabitants of the desert.

In the matter of taxes Rome dealt on the whole with moderation.

Those communities which from the beginning of the war had taken part

with Rome--viz. Only the maritime towns of Utica, Hadrumetum, Little

Leptis, Thapsus, Achulla, and Usalis, and the inland town of Theudalis--

retained their territory and became free cities; which was also the

case with the newly-founded community of deserters. The territory

of the city of Carthage--with the exception of a tract presented to

Utica--and that of the other destroyed townships became Roman domain-

land, which was let on lease. The remaining townships likewise

forfeited in law their property in the soil and their municipal

liberties; but their land and their constitution were for the time

being, and until further orders from the Roman government, left to

them as a possession liable to be recalled, and the communities paid

annually to Rome for the use of their soil which had become Roman a

once-for-all fixed tribute (stipendium), which they in their turn

collected by means of a property-tax levied from the individuals

liable. The real gainers, however, by this destruction of the

first commercial city of the west were the Roman merchants, who, as

soon as Carthage lay in ashes, flocked in troops to Utica, and from

this as their head-quarters began to turn to profitable account not

only the Roman province, but also the Numidian and Gaetulian regions

which had hitherto been closed to them.

Macedonia and the Pseudo-Phillip

Victory of Metellus

Macedonia also disappeared about the same time as Carthage from

the ranks of the nations. The four small confederacies, into which

the wisdom of the Roman senate had parcelled out the ancient kingdom,

could not live at peace either internally or one with another.

How matters stood in the country appears from a single accidentally

mentioned occurrence at Phacus, where the whole governing council

of one of these confederacies were murdered on the instigation of

one Damasippus. Neither the commissions sent by the senate (590),

nor the foreign arbiters, such as Scipio Aemilianus (603) called in

after the Greek fashion by the Macedonians, were able to establish

any tolerable order. Suddenly there appeared in Thrace a young man,

who called himself Philip the son of king Perseus, whom he strikingly

resembled, and of the Syrian Laodice. He had passed his youth

in the Mysian town of Adramytium; there he asserted that he had

preserved the sure proofs of his illustrious descent. With these

he had, after a vain attempt to obtain recognition in his native

country, resorted to Demetrius Soter, king of Syria, his mother's

brother. There were in fact some who believed the Adramytene or

professed to believe him, and urged the king either to reinstate

the prince in his hereditary kingdom or to cede to him the crown

of Syria; whereupon Demetrius, to put an end to the foolish proceedings,

arrested the pretender and sent him to the Romans. But the senate

attached so little importance to the man, that it confined him in an

Italian town without taking steps to have him even seriously guarded.

Thus he had escaped to Miletus, where the civic authorities once more

seized him and asked the Roman commissioners what they should do with

the prisoner. The latter advised them to let him go; and they did

so. He now tried his fortune further in Thrace; and, singularly

enough, he obtained recognition and support there not only from

Teres the chief of the Thracian barbarians, the husband of his

father's sister, and Barsabas, but also from the prudent Byzantines.

With Thracian support the so-called Philip invaded Macedonia, and,

although he was defeated at first, he soon gained one victory over

the Macedonian militia in the district of Odomantice beyond the Strymon,

followed by a second on the west side of the river, which gave him

possession of all Macedonia. Apocryphal as his story sounded, and

decidedly as it was established that the real Philip, the son of

Perseus, had died when eighteen years of age at Alba, and that this

man, so far from being a Macedonian prince, was Andriscus a fuller of

Adramytium, yet the Macedonians were too much accustomed to the rule

of a king not to be readily satisfied on the point of legitimacy and

to return with pleasure into the old track. Messengers arrived

from the Thessalians, announcing that the pretender had advanced

into their territory; the Roman commissioner Nasica, who, in the

expectation that a word of earnest remonstrance would put an end

to the foolish enterprise, had been sent by the senate to Macedonia

without soldiers, was obliged to call out the Achaean and Pergamene

troops and to protect Thessaly against the superior force by

means of the Achaeans, as far as was practicable, till (605?)

the praetor Juventius appeared with a legion. The latter attacked

the Macedonians with his small force; but he himself fell, his army

was almost wholly destroyed, and the greater part of Thessaly fell into

the power of the pseudo-Philip, who conducted his government there and

in Macedonia with cruelty and arrogance. At length a stronger Roman

army under Quintus Caecilius Metellus appeared on the scene of

conflict, and, supported by the Pergamene fleet, advanced into

Macedonia. In the first cavalry combat the Macedonians retained

the superiority; but soon dissensions and desertions occurred in the

Macedonian army, and the blunder of the pretender in dividing his

army and detaching half of it to Thessaly procured for the Romans an

easy and decisive victory (606). Philip fled to the chieftain Byzes

in Thrace, whither Metellus followed him and after a second victory

obtained his surrender.

Province of Macedonia

The four Macedonian confederacies had not voluntarily submitted to

the pretender, but had simply yielded to force. According to the

policy hitherto pursued there was therefore no reason for depriving

the Macedonians of the shadow of independence which the battle of

Pydna had still left to them; nevertheless the kingdom of Alexander

was now, by order of the senate, converted by Metellus into a Roman

province. This case clearly showed that the Roman government had

changed its system, and had resolved to substitute for the relation

of clientship that of simple subjects; and accordingly the suppression

of the four Macedonian confederacies was felt throughout the whole range

of the client-states as a blow directed against all. The possessions

in Epirus which were formerly after the first Roman victories detached

from Macedonia--the Ionian islands and the ports of Apollonia and

Epidamnus,(16) that had hitherto been under the jurisdiction of the

Italian magistrates--were now reunited with Macedonia, so that the latter,

probably as early as this period, reached on the north-west to a point

beyond Scodra, where Illyria began. The protectorate which Rome claimed

over Greece proper likewise devolved, of itself, on the new governor of

Macedonia. Thus Macedonia recovered its unity and nearly the same limits

which it had in its most flourishing times. It had no longer, however,

the unity of a kingdom, but that of a province, retaining its communal

and even, as it would seem, its district organization, but placed under

an Italian governor and quaestor, whose names make their appearance

on the native coins along with the name of the country. As tribute,

there was retained the old moderate land-tax, as Paullus had arranged

it(17)--a sum of 100 talents (24,000 pounds) which was allocated in

fixed proportions on the several communities. Yet the land could not

forget its old glorious dynasty. A few years after the subjugation

of the pseudo-Philip another pretended son of Perseus, Alexander,

raised the banner of insurrection on the Nestus (Karasu), and

had in a short time collected 1600 men; but the quaestor Lucius

Tremellius mastered the insurrection without difficulty and pursued

the fugitive pretender as far as Dardania (612). This was the last

movement of the proud national spirit of Macedonia, which two

hundred years before had accomplished so great things in Hellas

and Asia. Henceforward there is scarcely anything else to be told of

the Macedonians, save that they continued to reckon their inglorious

years from the date at which the country received its definitive

provincial organization (608).

Thenceforth the defence of the northern and eastern frontiers

of Macedonia or, in other words, of the frontier of Hellenic

civilization against the barbarians devolved on the Romans. It was

conducted by them with inadequate forces and not, on the whole, with

befitting energy; but with a primary view to this military object

the great Egnatian highway was constructed, which as early as the

time of Polybius ran from Apollonia and Dyrrhachium, the two chief

ports on the west coast, across the interior to Thessalonica, and was

afterwards prolonged to the Hebrus (Maritza).(18) The new province

became the natural basis, on the one hand for the movements against

the turbulent Dalmatians, and on the other hand for the numerous

expeditions against the Illyrian, Celtic, and Thracian tribes settled

to the north of the Grecian peninsula, which we shall afterwards

have to exhibit in their historical connection.

Greece

Greece proper had greater occasion than Macedonia to congratulate

herself on the favour of the ruling power; and the Philhellenes of

Rome might well be of opinion that the calamitous effects of the war

with Perseus were disappearing, and that the state of things in general

was improving there. The bitterest abettors of the now dominant

party, Lyciscus the Aetolian, Mnasippus the Boeotian, Chrematas

the Acarnanian, the infamous Epirot Charops whom honourable Romans

forbade even to enter their houses, descended one after another to

the grave; another generation grew up, in which the old recollections

and the old antagonisms had faded. The Roman senate thought that

the time for general forgiveness and oblivion had come, and in 604

released the survivors of those Achaean patriots who had been

confined for seventeen years in Italy, and whose liberation the

Achaean diet had never ceased to demand. Nevertheless they were

mistaken. How little the Romans with all their Philhellenism had

been successful in heartily conciliating Hellenic patriotism, was

nowhere more clearly apparent than in the attitude of the Greeks

towards the Attalids. King Eumenes II had been, as a friend of

the Romans, extremely hated in Greece;(19) but scarcely had a

coldness arisen between him and the Romans, when he became suddenly

popular in Greece, and the Hellenic hopefuls expected the deliverer

from a foreign yoke to come now from Pergamus as formerly from

Macedonia. Social disorganization more especially was visibly

on the increase among the petty states of Hellas now left to

themselves. The country became desolate not through war and

pestilence, but through the daily increasing disinclination of

the higher classes to trouble themselves with wife and children;

on the other hand the criminal or the thoughtless flocked as

hitherto chiefly to Greece, there to await the recruiting officer.

The communities sank into daily deeper debt, and into financial

dishonour and a corresponding want of credit: some cities, more

especially Athens and Thebes, resorted in their financial distress

to direct robbery, and plundered the neighbouring communities.

The internal dissensions in the leagues also--e. g. between the

voluntary and the compulsory members of the Achaean confederacy--

were by no means composed. If the Romans, as seems to have been

the case, believed what they wished and confided in the calm which

for the moment prevailed, they were soon to learn that the younger

generation in Hellas was in no respect better or wiser than the older.

The Greeks directly sought an opportunity of picking a quarrel

with the Romans.

Achaean War

In order to screen a foul transaction, Diaeus, the president of the

Achaean league for the time being, about 605 threw out in the diet

the assertion that the special privileges conceded by the Achaean

league to the Lacedaemonians as members--viz. their exemption from

the Achaean criminal jurisdiction, and the right to send separate

embassies to Rome--were not at all guaranteed to them by the Romans.

It was an audacious falsehood; but the diet naturally believed what

it wished, and, when the Achaeans showed themselves ready to make

good their assertions with arms in hand, the weaker Spartans yielded

for the time, or, to speak more correctly, those whose surrender was

demanded by the Achaeans left the city to appear as complainants

before the Roman senate. The senate answered as usual that it would

send a commission to investigate the matter; but instead of reporting

this reply the envoys stated in Achaia as well as in Sparta, and in

both cases falsely, that the senate had decided in their favour.

The Achaeans, who felt more than ever their equality with Rome as

allies and their political importance on account of the aid which

the league had just rendered in Thessaly against the pseudo-Philip,

advanced in 606 under their -strategus- Damocritus into Laconia: in

vain a Roman embassy on its way to Asia, at the suggestion of Metellus,

admonished them to keep the peace and to await the commissioners of

the senate. A battle took place, in which nearly 1000 Spartans

fell, and Sparta might have been taken if Damocritus had not been

equally incapable as an officer and as a statesman. He was superseded,

and his successor Diaeus, the instigator of all this mischief,

zealously continued the war, while at the same time he gave to the

dreaded commandant of Macedonia assurances of the full loyalty of the

Achaean league. Thereupon the long-expected Roman commission made its

appearance, with Aurelius Orestes at its head; hostilities were now

suspended, and the Achaean diet assembled at Corinth to receive its

communications. They were of an unexpected and far from agreeable

character. The Romans had resolved to cancel the unnatural and

forced(20) inclusion of Sparta among the Achaean states, and generally

to act with vigour against the Achaeans. Some years before (591)

these had been obliged to release from their league the Aetolian

town of Pleuron;(21) now they were directed to renounce all the

acquisitions which they had made since the second Macedonian war--viz.

Corinth, Orchomenus, Argos, Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and Heraclea

near to Oeta--and to reduce their league to the condition in which it

stood at the end of the Hannibalic war. When the Achaean deputies

learned this, they rushed immediately to the market-place without even

hearing the Romans to an end, and communicated the Roman demands to the

multitude; whereupon the governing and the governed rabble with one

voice resolved to arrest at once the whole Lacedaemonians present in

Corinth, because Sparta forsooth had brought on them this misfortune.

The arrest accordingly took place in the most tumultuary fashion,

so that the possession of Laconian names or Laconian shoes appeared

sufficient ground for imprisonment: in fact they even entered the

dwellings of the Roman envoys to seize the Lacedaemonians who had

taken shelter there, and hard words were uttered against the Romans,

although they did not lay hands on their persons. The envoys

returned home in indignation, and made bitter and even exaggerated

complaints in the senate; but the latter, with the same moderation

which marked all its measures against the Greeks, confined itself at

first to representations. In the mildest form, and hardly mentioning

satisfaction for the insults which they had endured, Sextus Julius

Caesar repeated the commands of the Romans at the diet in Aegium

(spring of 607). But the leaders of affairs in Achaia with the new

-strategus- Critolaus at their head -strategus- (from May 607 to May

608), as men versed in state affairs and familiar with political arts,

merely drew from that fact the inference that the position of Rome

with reference to Carthage and Viriathus could not but be very

unfavourable, and continued at once to cheat and to affront the

Romans. Caesar was requested to arrange a conference of deputies of

the contending parties at Tegea for the settlement of the question.

He did so; but, after Caesar and the Lacedaemonian envoys had waited

there long in vain for the Achaeans, Critolaus at last appeared

alone and informed them that the general assembly of the Achaeans

was solely competent in this matter, and that it could only be settled

at the diet or, in other words, in six months. Caesar thereupon

returned to Rome; and the next national assembly of the Achaeans

on the proposal of Critolaus formally declared war against Sparta.

Even now Metellus made an attempt amicably to settle the quarrel, and

sent envoys to Corinth; but the noisy -ecclesia-, consisting mostly of

the populace of that wealthy commercial and manufacturing city, drowned

the voice of the Roman envoys and compelled them to leave the platform.

The declaration of Critolaus, that they wished the Romans to be their

friends but not their masters, was received with inexpressible delight;

and, when the members of the diet wished to interpose, the mob

protected the man after its own heart, and applauded the sarcasms

as to the high treason of the rich and the need of a military

dictatorship as well as the mysterious hints regarding an impending

insurrection of countless peoples and kings against Rome. The spirit

animating the movement is shown by the two resolutions, that all clubs

should be permanent and all actions for debt should be suspended till

the restoration of peace.

The Achaeans thus had war; and they had even actual allies, namely

the Thebans and Boeotians and also the Chalcidians. At the beginning

of 608 the Achaeans advanced into Thessaly to reduce to obedience

Heraclea near to Oeta, which, in accordance with the decree of

the senate, had detached itself from the Achaean league. The consul

Lucius Mummius, whom the senate had resolved to send to Greece,

had not yet arrived; accordingly Metellus undertook to protect

Heraclea with the Macedonian legions. When the advance of the Romans

was announced to the Achaeo-Theban army, there was no more talk of

fighting; they deliberated only how they might best succeed in reaching

once more the secure Peloponnesus; in all haste the army made off,

and did not even attempt to hold the position at Thermopylae.

But Metellus quickened the pursuit, and overtook and defeated

the Greek army near Scarpheia in Locris. The loss in prisoners and

dead was considerable; Critolaus was never heard of after the battle.

The remains of the defeated army wandered about Greece in single troops,

and everywhere sought admission in vain; the division of Patrae

was destroyed in Phocis, the Arcadian select corps at Chaeronea;

all northern Greece was evacuated, and only a small portion of

the Achaean army and of the citizens of Thebes, who fled in a body,

reached the Peloponnesus. Metellus sought by the utmost moderation

to induce the Greeks to abandon their senseless resistance, and gave

orders, for example, that all the Thebans with a single exception,

should be allowed their liberty; his well-meant endeavours were

thwarted not by the energy of the people, but by the desperation of

the leaders apprehensive for their own safety. Diaeus, who after

the fall of Critolaus had resumed the chief command, summoned all men

capable of bearing arms to the isthmus, and ordered 12,000 slaves,

natives of Greece, to be enrolled in the army; the rich were applied

to for advances, and the ranks of the friends of peace, so far as they

did not purchase their lives by bribing the ruling agents in this reign

of terror, were thinned by bloody prosecutions. The war accordingly was

continued, and after the same style. The Achaean vanguard, which, 4000

strong, was stationed under Alcamenes at Megara, dispersed as soon as

it saw the Roman standards. Metellus was just about to order an

attack upon the main force on the isthmus, when the consul Lucius

Mummius with a few attendants arrived at the Roman head-quarters

and took the command. Meanwhile the Achaeans, emboldened by a

successful attack on the too incautious Roman outposts, offered

battle to the Roman army, which was about twice as strong, at

Leucopetra on the isthmus. The Romans were not slow to accept it.

At the very first the Achaean horsemen broke off en masse before the

Roman cavalry of six times their strength; the hoplites withstood the

enemy till a flank attack by the Roman select corps brought confusion

also into their ranks. This terminated the resistance. Diaeus fled

to his home, put his wife to death, and took poison himself. All the

cities submitted without opposition; and even the impregnable Corinth,

into which Mummius for three days hesitated to enter because he

feared an ambush, was occupied by the Romans without a blow.

Province of Achaia

The renewed regulation of the affairs of Greece was entrusted to

a commission of ten senators in concert with the consul Mummius,

who left behind him on the whole a blessed memory in the conquered

country. Doubtless it was, to say the least, a foolish thing in him

to assume the name of "Achaicus" on account of his feats of war and

victory, and to build in the fulness of his gratitude a temple to

Hercules Victor; but, as he had not been reared in aristocratic

luxury and aristocratic corruption but was a "new man" and

comparatively without means, he showed himself an upright and

indulgent administrator. The statement, that none of the Achaeans

perished but Diaeus and none of the Boeotians but Pytheas, is a

rhetorical exaggeration: in Chalcis especially sad outrages occurred;

but yet on the whole moderation was observed in the infliction of

penalties. Mummius rejected the proposal to throw down the statues

of Philopoemen, the founder of the Achaean patriotic party; the

fines imposed on the communities were destined not for the Roman

exchequer, but for the injured Greek cities, and were mostly

remitted afterwards; and the property of those traitors who had

parents or children was not sold on public account, but handed over

to their relatives. The works of art alone were carried away from

Corinth, Thespiae, and other cities and were erected partly in the

capital, partly in the country towns of Italy:(22) several pieces were

also presented to the Isthmian, Delphic, and Olympic temples. In the

definitive organization of the country also moderation was in general

displayed. It is true that, as was implied in the very introduction

of the provincial constitution,(23) the special confederacies, and

the Achaean in particular, were as such dissolved; the communities were

isolated; and intercourse between them was hampered by the rule that no

one might acquire landed property simultaneously in two communities.

Moreover, as Flamininus had already attempted,(24) the democratic

constitutions of the towns were altogether set aside, and the

government in each community was placed in the hands of a council

composed of the wealthy. A fixed land-tax to be paid to Rome was

imposed on each community; and they were all subordinated to the

governor of Macedonia in such a manner that the latter, as supreme

military chief, exercised a superintendence over administration and

justice, and could, for example, personally assume the decision of

the more important criminal processes. Yet the Greek communities

retained "freedom," that is, a formal sovereignty--reduced, doubtless,

by the Roman hegemony to a name--which involved the property of the

soil and the right to a distinct administration and jurisdiction of

their own.(25) Some years later not only were the old confederacies

again allowed to have a shadowy existence, but the oppressive

restriction on the alienation of landed property was removed.

Destruction of Corinth

The communities of Thebes, Chalcis, and Corinth experienced a treatment

more severe. There is no ground for censure in the fact that the two

former were disarmed and converted by the demolition of their walls

into open villages; but the wholly uncalled-for destruction of

the flourishing Corinth, the first commercial city in Greece, remains

a dark stain on the annals of Rome. By express orders from the senate

the Corinthian citizens were seized, and such as were not killed were

sold into slavery; the city itself was not only deprived of its walls

and its citadel--a measure which, if the Romans were not disposed

permanently to garrison it, was certainly inevitable--but was

levelled with the ground, and all rebuilding on the desolate site

was prohibited in the usual forms of accursing; part of its territory

was given to Sicyon under the obligation that the latter should

defray the costs of the Isthmian national festival in room of Corinth,

but the greater portion was declared to be public land of Rome.

Thus was extinguished "the eye of Hellas," the last precious ornament

of the Grecian land, once so rich in cities. If, however, we review

the whole catastrophe, the impartial historian must acknowledge--

what the Greeks of this period themselves candidly confessed--that

the Romans were not to blame for the war itself, but that on the

contrary, the foolish perfidy and the feeble temerity of the Greeks

compelled the Roman intervention. The abolition of the mock

sovereignty of the leagues and of all the vague and pernicious dreams

connected with them was a blessing for the country; and the government

of the Roman commander-in-chief of Macedonia, however much it fell

short of what was to be wished, was yet far better than the previous

confusion and misrule of Greek confederacies and Roman commissions.

The Peloponnesus ceased to be the great harbour of mercenaries;

it is affirmed, and may readily be believed, that with the direct

government of Rome security and prosperity in some measure returned.

The epigram of Themistocles, that ruin had averted ruin, was applied

by the Hellenes of that day not altogether without reason to the loss

of Greek independence. The singular indulgence, which Rome even now

showed towards the Greeks, becomes fully apparent only when compared

with the contemporary conduct of the same authorities towards the

Spaniards and Phoenicians. To treat barbarians with cruelty seemed

not unallowable, but the Romans of this period, like the emperor Trajan

in later times, deemed it "harsh and barbarous to deprive Athens

and Sparta of the shadow of freedom which they still retained." All

the more marked is the contrast between this general moderation and

the revolting treatment of Corinth--a treatment disapproved by the

orators who defended the destruction of Numantia and Carthage, and

far from justified, even according to Roman international law, by

the abusive language uttered against the Roman deputies in the streets

of Corinth. And yet it by no means proceeded from the brutality

of any single individual, least of all of Mummius, but was a measure

deliberated and resolved on by the Roman senate. We shall not err,

if we recognize it as the work of the mercantile party, which even thus

early began to interfere in politics by the side of the aristocracy

proper, and which in destroying Corinth got rid of a commercial

rival. If the great merchants of Rome had anything to say in the

regulation of Greece, we can understand why Corinth was singled out for

punishment, and why the Romans not only destroyed the city as it stood,

but also prohibited any future settlement on a site so pre-eminently

favourable for commerce. The Peloponnesian Argos thenceforth became

the rendezvous for the Roman merchants, who were very numerous even

in Greece. For the Roman wholesale traffic, however, Delos was

of greater importance; a Roman free port as early as 586, it had

attracted a great part of the business of Rhodes,(26) and now

in a similar way entered on the heritage of Corinth. This island

remained for a considerable time the chief emporium for merchandise

going from the east to the west.(27)

In the third and more distant continent the Roman dominion

exhibited a development more imperfect than in the African and

Macedono-Hellenic countries, which were separated from Italy

only by narrow seas.

Kingdom of Pergamus

In Asia Minor, after the Seleucids were driven back, the kingdom

of Pergamus had become the first power. Not led astray by

the traditions of the Alexandrine monarchies, but sagacious and

dispassionate enough to renounce what was impossible, the Attalids

kept quiet; and endeavoured not to extend their bounds nor to

withdraw from the Roman hegemony, but to promote the prosperity of

their empire, so far as the Romans allowed, and to foster the arts

of peace. Nevertheless they did not escape the jealousy and suspicion

of Rome. In possession of the European shore of the Propontis,

of the west coast of Asia Minor, and of its interior as far as

the Cappadocian and Cilician frontiers, and in close connection with

the Syrian kings--one of whom, Antiochus Epiphanes (d. 590), had

ascendedthe throne by the aid of the Attalids--king Eumenes II had

by his power, which seemed still more considerable from the more and

more deep decline of Macedonia and Syria, instilled apprehension

in the minds even of its founders. We have already related(28)

how the senate sought to humble and weaken this ally after the third

Macedonian war by unbecoming diplomatic arts. The relations--

perplexing from the very nature of the case--of the rulers of

Pergamus towards the free or half-free commercial cities within

their kingdom, and towards their barbarous neighbours on its borders,

became complicated still more painfully by this ill humour on the part

of their patrons. As it was not clear whether, according to the

treaty of peace in 565, the heights of the Taurus in Pamphylia and

Pisidia belonged to the kingdom of Syria or to that of Pergamus,(29)

the brave Selgians, nominally recognizing, as it would seem, the Syrian

supremacy, made a prolonged and energetic resistance to the kings

Eumenes II and Attalus II in the hardly accessible mountains of

Pisidia. The Asiatic Celts also, who for a time with the permission

of the Romans had yielded allegiance to Pergamus, revolted from

Eumenes and, in concert with Prusias king of Bithynia the hereditary

enemy of the Attalids, suddenly began war against him about 587.

The king had had no time to hire mercenary troops; all his skill

and valour could not prevent the Celts from defeating the Asiatic

militia and overrunning his territory; the peculiar mediation, to which

the Romans condescended at the request of Eumenes, has already been

mentioned.(30) But, as soon as he had found time with the help of his

well-filled exchequer to raise an army capable of taking the field, he

speedily drove the wild hordes back over the frontier, and, although

Galatia remained lost to him, and his obstinately-continued attempts

to maintain his footing there were frustrated by Roman influence,(31)

he yet, in spite of all the open attacks and secret machinations which

his neighbours and the Romans directed against him, at his death

(about 595) left his kingdom in standing un-diminished. His brother

Attalus II Philadelphia (d. 616) with Roman aid repelled the attempt

of Pharnaces king of Pontus to seize the guardianship of Eumenes'

son who was a minor, and reigned in the room of his nephew, like

Antigonus Doson, as guardian for life. Adroit, able, pliant,

a genuine Attalid, he had the art to convince the suspicious senate

that the apprehensions which it had formerly cherished were baseless.

The anti-Roman party accused him of having to do with keeping the land

for the Romans, and of acquiescing in every insult and exaction at

their hands; but, sure of Roman protection, he was able to interfere

decisively in the disputes as to the succession to the throne in Syria,

Cappadocia, and Bithynia. Even from the dangerous Bithynian war, which

king Prusias II, surnamed the Hunter (572?-605), a ruler who combined

in his own person all the vices of barbarism and of civilization,

began against him, Roman intervention saved him--although not until

he had been himself besieged in his capital, and a first warning given

by the Romans had remained unattended to, and had even been scoffed at,

by Prusias (598-600). But, when his ward Attalus III Philometor

ascended the throne (616-621), the peaceful and moderate rule of

the citizen kings was replaced by the tyranny of an Asiatic sultan;

under which for instance, the king, with a view to rid himself of

the inconvenient counsel of his father's friends, assembled them in

the palace, and ordered his mercenaries to put to death first them,

and then their wives and children. Along with such recreations he

wrote treatises on gardening, reared poisonous plants, and prepared

wax models, till a sudden death carried him off.

Province of Asia

War against Aristonicus

With him the house of the Attalids became extinct. In such an event,

according to the constitutional law which held good at least for

the client-states of Rome, the last ruler might dispose of the

succession by testament. Whether it was the insane rancour against

his subjects which had tormented the last Attalid during life that

now suggested to him the thought of bequeathing his kingdom by will

to the Romans, or whether his doing so was merely a further recognition

of the practical supremacy of Rome, cannot be determined. The testament

was made;(32) the Romans accepted the bequest, and the question as to

the land and the treasure of the Attalids threw a new apple of contention

among the conflicting political parties in Rome. In Asia also this

royal testament kindled a civil war. Relying on the aversion of

the Asiatics to the foreign rule which awaited them, Aristonicus,

a natural son of Eumenes II, made his appearance in Leucae, a small

seaport between Smyrna and Phocaea, as a pretender to the crown.

Phocaea and other towns joined him, but he was defeated at sea off

Cyme by the Ephesians--who saw that a steady adherence to Rome

was the only possible way of preserving their privileges--and was

obliged to flee into the interior. The movement was believed to

have died away when he suddenly reappeared at the head of the new

"citizens of the city of the sun,"(33) in other words, of the slaves

whom he had called to freedom en masse, mastered the Lydian towns of

Thyatira and Apollonis as well as a portion of the Attalic townships,

and summoned bands of Thracian free-lances to join his standard.

The struggle was serious. There were no Roman troops in Asia;

the Asiatic free cities and the contingents of the client-princes

of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, could not

withstand the pretender; he penetrated by force of arms into Colophon,

Samos, and Myndus, and already ruled over almost all his father's

kingdom, when at the close of 623 a Roman army landed in Asia.

Its commander, the consul and -pontifex maximus- Publius Licinius

Crassus Mucianus, one of the wealthiest and at the same time one of

the most cultivated men in Rome, equally distinguished as an orator

and as a jurist, was about to besiege the pretender in Leucae, but

during his preparations for that purpose allowed himself to be surprised

and defeated by his too-much-underrated opponent, and was made a prisoner

in person by a Thracian band. But he did not allow such an enemy

the triumph of exhibiting the Roman commander-in-chief as a captive;

he provoked the barbarians, who had captured him without knowing

who he was, to put him to death (beginning of 624), and the consular

was only recognised when a corpse. With him, as it would seem, fell

Ariarathes king of Cappadocia. But not long after this victory

Aristonicus was attacked by Marcus Perpenna, the successor of

Crassus; his army was dispersed, he himself was besieged and taken

prisoner in Stratonicea, and was soon afterwards executed in Rome.

The subjugation of the last towns that still offered resistance

and the definitive regulation of the country were committed, after

the sudden death of Perpenna, to Manius Aquillius (625). The same

policy was followed as in the case of the Carthaginian territory.

The eastern portion of the kingdom of the Attalids was assigned

to the client kings, so as to release the Romans from the protection

of the frontier and thereby from the necessity of maintaining a

standing force in Asia; Telmissus(34) went to the Lycian confederacy;

the European possessions in Thrace were annexed to the province of

Macedonia; the rest of the territory was organized as a new Roman

province, which like that of Carthage was, not without design,

designated by the name of the continent in which it lay. The land

was released from the taxes which had been paid to Pergamus; and it

was treated with the same moderation as Hellas and Macedonia. Thus

the most considerable state in Asia Minor became a Roman province.

Western Asia

Cappadocia

The numerous other small states and cities of western Asia--

the kingdom of Bithynia, the Paphlagonian and Gallic principalities,

the Lycian and Pamphylian confederacies, the free cities of Cyzicus

and Rhodes--continued in their former circumscribed relations.

Beyond the Halys Cappadocia--after king Ariarathes V Philopator

(591-624) had, chiefly by the aid of the Attalids, held his ground

against his brother and rival Holophernes who was supported by Syria--

followed substantially the Pergamene policy, as respected both absolute

devotion to Rome and the tendency to adopt Hellenic culture. He was

the means of introducing that culture into the hitherto almost barbarous

Cappadocia, and along with it its extravagancies also, such as

the worship of Bacchus and the dissolute practices of the bands

of wandering actors--the "artists" as they were called. In reward

for the fidelity to Rome, which had cost this prince his life in the

struggle with the Pergamene pretender, his youthful heir Ariarathes

VI was not only protected by the Romans against the usurpation

attempted by the king of Pontus, but received also the south-eastern

part of the kingdom of the Attalids, Lycaonia, along with the

district bordering on it to the eastward reckoned in earlier

times as part of Cilicia.

Pontus

In the remote north-east of Asia Minor "Cappadocia on the sea,"

or more briefly the "sea-state," Pontus, increased in extent and

importance. Not long after the battle of Magnesia king Pharnaces I

had extended his dominion far beyond the Halys to Tius on the

frontier of Bithynia, and in particular had possessed himself of

the rich Sinope, which was converted from a Greek free city into the

residence of the kings of Pontus. It is true that the neighbouring

states endangered by these encroachments, with king Eumenes II at

their head, had on that account waged war against him (571-575), and

under Roman mediation had exacted from him a promise to evacuate

Galatia and Paphlagonia; but the course of events shows that Pharnaces

as well as his successor Mithradates V. Euergetes (598?-634),

faithful allies of Rome in the third Punic war as well as in the

struggle with Aristonicus, not only remained in possession beyond

the Halys, but also in substance retained the protectorate over

the Paphlagonian and Galatian dynasts. It is only on this hypothesis

that we can explain how Mithradates, ostensibly for his brave

deeds in the war against Aristonicus, but in reality for

considerable sums paid to the Roman general, could receive Great

Phrygia from the latter after the dissolution of the Attalid

kingdom. How far on the other hand the kingdom of Pontus about

this time extended in the direction of the Caucasus and the sources

of the Euphrates, cannot be precisely determined; but it seems

to have embraced the western part of Armenia about Enderes and

Divirigi, or what was called Lesser Armenia, as a dependent

satrapy, while the Greater Armenia and Sophene formed distinct

and independent kingdoms.

Syria and Egypt

While in the peninsula of Asia Minor Rome thus substantially conducted

the government and, although much was done without or in opposition

to her wishes, yet determined on the whole the state of possession,

the wide tracts on the other hand beyond the Taurus and the Upper

Euphrates as far down as the valley of the Nile continued to be mainly

left to themselves. No doubt the principle which formed the basis of

the regulation of Oriental affairs in 565, viz. That the Halys should

form the eastern boundary of the Roman client-states,(35) was not

adhered to by the senate and was in its very nature untenable.

The political horizon is a self-deception as well as the physical;

if the state of Syria had the number of ships of war and war-elephants

allowed to it prescribed in the treaty of peace,(36) and if the

Syrian army at the bidding of the Roman senate evacuated Egypt when

half-won(37), these things implied a complete recognition of hegemony

and of clientship. Accordingly the disputes as to the throne in

Syria and in Egypt were referred for settlement to the Roman

government. In the former after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes

(590) Demetrius afterwards named Soter, the son of Seleucus IV,

living as a hostage at Rome, and Antiochus Eupator, a minor, the son

of the last king Antiochus Epiphanes, contended for the crown; in

the latter Ptolemy Philometor (573-608), the elder of the two

brothers who had reigned jointly since 584, had been driven from

the country (590) by the younger Ptolemy Euergetes II or the Fat

(d. 637), and had appeared in person at Rome to procure his restoration.

Both affairs were arranged by the senate entirely through diplomatic

agency, and substantially in accordance with Roman advantage.

In Syria Demetrius, who had the better title, was set aside, and

Antiochus Eupator was recognized as king; while the guardianship of

the royal boy was entrusted by the senate to the Roman senator Gnaeus

Octavius, who, as was to be expected, governed thoroughly in the

interest of Rome, reduced the war-marine and the army of elephants

agreeably to the treaty of 565, and was in the fair way of completing

the military ruin of the country. In Egypt not only was the

restoration of Philometor accomplished, but--partly in order to put

an end to the quarrel between the brothers, partly in order to weaken

the still considerable power of Egypt--Cyrene was separated from that

kingdom and assigned as a provision for Euergetes. "The Romans make

kings of those whom they wish," a Jew wrote not long after this, "and

those whom they do not wish they chase away from land and people."

But this was the last occasion--for a long time--on which the Roman

senate came forward in the affairs of the east with that ability and

energy, which it had uniformly displayed in the complications with

Philip, Antiochus, and Perseus. Though the internal decline of the

government was late in affecting the treatment of foreign affairs,

yet it did affect them at length. The government became unsteady and

vacillating; they allowed the reins which they had just grasped to

slacken and almost to slip from their hands. The guardian-regent

of Syria was murdered at Laodicea; the rejected pretender Demetrius

escaped from Rome and, setting aside the youthful prince, seized the

government of his ancestral kingdom under the bold pretext that the

Roman senate had fully empowered him to do so (592). Soon afterwards

war broke out between the kings of Egypt and Cyrene respecting the

possession of the island of Cyprus, which the senate had assigned first

to the elder, then to the younger; and in opposition to the most

recent Roman decision it finally remained with Egypt. Thus the

Roman government, in the plenitude of its power and during the most

profound inward and outward peace at home, had its decrees derided

by the impotent kings of the east; its name was misused, its ward

and its commissioner were murdered. Seventy years before, when

the Illyrians had in a similar way laid hands on Roman envoys,

the senate of that day had erected a monument to the victim in the

market-place, and had with an army and fleet called the murderers to

account. The senate of this period likewise ordered a monument to be

raised to Gnaeus Octavius, as ancestral custom prescribed; but instead

of embarking troops for Syria they recognized Demetrius as king of the

land. They were forsooth now so powerful, that it seemed superfluous

to guard their own honour. In like manner not only was Cyprus

retained by Egypt in spite of the decree of the senate to the

contrary, but, when after the death of Philometor (608) Euergetes

succeeded him and so reunited the divided kingdom, the senate

allowed this also to take place without opposition.

India, Bactria

After such occurrences the Roman influence in these countries was

practically shattered, and events pursued their course there for

the present without the help of the Romans; but it is necessary for

the right understanding of the sequel that we should not wholly omit

to notice the history of the nearer, and even of the more remote,

east. While in Egypt, shut off as it is on all sides, the status quo

did not so easily admit of change, in Asia both to the west and

east of the Euphrates the peoples and states underwent essential

modifications during, and partly in consequence of, this temporary

suspension of the Roman superintendence. Beyond the great desert

of Iran there had arisen not long after Alexander the Great

the kingdom of Palimbothra under Chandragupta (Sandracottus)

on the Indus, and the powerful Bactrian state on the upper Oxus,

both formed from a mixture of national elements with the most

eastern offshoots of Hellenic civilization.

Decline of the Kingdom of Asia

To the west of these began the kingdom of Asia, which, although

diminished under Antiochus the Great, still stretched its unwieldy

bulk from the Hellespont to the Median and Persian provinces, and

embraced the whole basin of the Euphrates and Tigris. That king had

still carried his arms beyond the desert into the territory of the

Parthians and Bactrians; it was only under him that the vast state

had begun to melt away. Not only had western Asia been lost in

consequence of the battle of Magnesia; the total emancipation of the

two Cappadocias and the two Armenias--Armenia proper in the northeast

and the region of Sophene in the south-west--and their conversion

from principalities dependent on Syria into independent kingdoms

also belong to this period.(38) Of these states Great Armenia in

particular, under the Artaxiads, soon attained to a considerable

position. Wounds perhaps still more dangerous were inflicted on the

empire by the foolish levelling policy of his successor Antiochus

Epiphanes (579-590). Although it was true that his kingdom resembled

an aggregation of countries rather than a single state, and that the

differences of nationality and religion among his subjects placed the

most material obstacles in the way of the government, yet the plan

of introducing throughout his dominions Helleno-Roman manners and

Helleno-Roman worship and of equalizing the various peoples in a

political as well as a religious point of view was under any

circumstances a folly; and all the more so from the fact, that

this caricature of Joseph II was personally far from equal to so

gigantic an enterprise, and introduced his reforms in the very worst

way by the pillage of temples on the greatest scale and the most

insane persecution of heretics.

The Jews

One consequence of this policy was, that the inhabitants of the

province next to the Egyptian frontier, the Jews, a people formerly

submissive even to humility and extremely active and industrious, were

driven by systematic religious persecution to open revolt (about 587).

The matter came to the senate; and, as it was just at that time with

good reason indignant at Demetrius Soter and apprehensive of a

combination between the Attalids and Seleucids, while the establishment

of a power intermediate between Syria and Egypt was at any rate for

the interest of Rome, it made no difficulty in at once recognizing

the freedom and autonomy of the insurgent nation (about 593). Nothing,

however, was done by Rome for the Jews except what could be done

without personal exertion: in spite of the clause of the treaty

concluded between the Romans and the Jews which promised Roman aid to

the latter in the event of their being attacked, and in spite of the

injunction addressed to the kings of Syria and Egypt not to march

their troops through Judaea, it was of course entirely left to the Jews

themselves to hold their ground against the Syrian kings. The brave

and prudent conduct of the insurrection by the heroic family of the

Maccabees and the internal dissension in the Syrian empire did more

for them than the letters of their powerful allies; during the strife

between the Syrian kings Trypho and Demetrius Nicator autonomy and

exemption from tribute were formally accorded to the Jews (612);

and soon afterwards the head of the Maccabaean house, Simon son of

Mattathias, was even formally acknowledged by the nation as well as by

the Syrian great-king as high priest and prince of Israel (615).(39)

The Parthian Empire

Of still more importance in the sequel than this insurrection of

the Israelites was the contemporary movement--probably originating

from the same cause--in the eastern provinces, where Antiochus Epiphanes

emptied the temples of the Persian gods just as he had emptied that at

Jerusalem, and doubtless accorded no better treatment there to the

adherents of Ahuramazda and Mithra than here to those of Jehovah.

Just as in Judaea--only with a wider range and ampler proportions--

the result was a reaction on the part of the native manners and

the native religion against Hellenism and the Hellenic gods; the

promoters of this movement were the Parthians, and out of it arose

the great Parthian empire. The "Parthwa," or Parthians, who are early

met with as one of the numerous peoples merged in the great Persian

empire, at first in the modern Khorasan to the south-east of the

Caspian sea, appear after 500 under the Scythian, i. e. Turanian,

princely race of the Arsacids as an independent state; which,

however, only emerged from its obscurity about a century afterwards.

The sixth Arsaces, Mithradates I (579?-618?), was the real founder

of the Parthian as a great power. To him succumbed the Bactrian

empire, in itself far more powerful, but already shaken to the very

foundation partly by hostilities with the hordes of Scythian horsemen

from Turan and with the states of the Indus, partly by internal

disorders. He achieved almost equal successes in the countries

to the west of the great desert. The Syrian empire was just then

in the utmost disorganization, partly through the failure of the

Hellenizing attempts of Antiochus Epiphanes, partly through the

troubles as to the succession that occurred after his death; and

the provinces of the interior were in full course of breaking off

from Antioch and the region of the coast. In Commagene for instance,

the most northerly province of Syria on the Cappadocian frontier,

the satrap Ptolemaeus asserted his independence, as did also on

the opposite bank of the Euphrates the prince of Edessa in northern

Mesopotamia or the province of Osrhoene, and the satrap Timarchus in

the important province of Media; in fact the latter got his independence

confirmed by the Roman senate, and, supported by Armenia as his ally,

ruled as far down as Seleucia on the Tigris. Disorders of this sort

were permanent features of the Asiatic empire: the provinces under

their partially or wholly independent satraps were in continual

revolt, as was also the capital with its unruly and refractory

populace resembling that of Rome or Alexandria. The whole pack of

neighbouring kings--those of Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Pergamus--

incessantly interfered in the affairs of Syria and fostered disputes

as to the succession, so that civil war and the division of the

sovereignty de facto among two or more pretenders became almost

standing calamities of the country. The Roman protecting power,

if it did not instigate these neighbours, was an inactive spectator.

In addition to all this the new Parthian empire from the eastward

pressed hard on the aliens not merely with its material power, but

with the whole superiority of its national language and religion

and of its national military and political organization. This is

not yet the place for a description of this regenerated empire of

Cyrus; it is sufficient to mention generally the fact that powerful

as was the influence of Hellenism in its composition, the Parthian

state, as compared with that of the Seleucids, was based on a national

and religious reaction, and that the old Iranian language, the order

of the Magi and the worship of Mithra, the Oriental feudatory system,

the cavalry of the desert and the bow and arrow, first emerged there

in renewed and superior opposition to Hellenism. The position of the

imperial kings in presence of all this was really pitiable. The family

of the Seleucids was by no means so enervated as that of the Lagids

for instance, and individuals among them were not deficient in

valour and ability; they reduced, it may be, one or another of those

numerous rebels, pretenders, and intermeddlers to due bounds; but

their dominion was so lacking in a firm foundation, that they were

unable to impose even a temporary check on anarchy. The result was

inevitable. The eastern provinces of Syria under their unprotected

or even insurgent satraps fell into subjection to the Parthians;

Persia, Babylonia, Media were for ever severed from the Syrian

empire; the new state of the Parthians reached on both sides of the

great desert from the Oxus and the Hindoo Coosh to the Tigris and

the Arabian desert--once more, like the Persian empire and all the

older great states of Asia, a pure continental monarchy, and once

more, just like the Persian empire, engaged in perpetual feud on

the one side with the peoples of Turan, on the other with the

Occidentals. The Syrian state embraced at the most Mesopotamia

in addition to the region of the coast, and disappeared, more in

consequence of its internal disorganization than of its diminished

size, for ever from the ranks of the great states. If the danger--

which was repeatedly imminent--of a total subjugation of the land by

the Parthians was averted, that result must be ascribed not to the

resistance of the last Seleucids and still less to the influence of

Rome, but rather to the manifold internal disturbances in the Parthian

empire itself, and above all to the incursions of the peoples of the

Turanian steppes into its eastern provinces.

Reaction of the East against the West

This revolution in the relations of the peoples in the interior of

Asia is the turning-point in the history of antiquity. The tide of

national movement, which had hitherto poured from the west to the east

and had found in Alexander the Great its last and highest expression,

was followed by the ebb. On the establishment of the Parthian state

not only were such Hellenic elements, as may still perhaps have

been preserved in Bactria and on the Indus, lost, but western Iran

also relapsed into the track which had been abandoned for centuries

but was not yet obliterated. The Roman senate sacrificed the first

essential result of the policy of Alexander, and thereby paved the

way for that retrograde movement, whose last offshoots ended in

the Alhambra of Granada and in the great Mosque of Constantinople.

So long as the country from Ragae and Persepolis to the Mediterranean

obeyed the king of Antioch, the power of Rome extended to the border

of the great desert; the Parthian state could never take its place

among the dependencies of the Mediterranean empire, not because

it was so very powerful, but because it had its centre far from

the coast, in the interior of Asia. Since the time of Alexander

the world had obeyed the Occidentals alone, and the east seemed to

be for these merely what America and Australia afterwards became

for the Europeans; with Mithradates I the east re-entered the sphere

of political movement. The world had again two masters.

Maritime Relations

Piracy

It remains that we glance at the maritime relations of this period;

although there is hardly anything else to be said, than that there

no longer existed anywhere a naval power. Carthage was annihilated;

the war-fleet of Syria was destroyed in accordance with the treaty;

the war-marine of Egypt, once so powerful, was under its present

indolent rulers in deep decay. The minor states, and particularly

the mercantile cities, had doubtless some armed transports; but

these were not even adequate for the task--so difficult in the

Mediterranean--of repressing piracy. This task necessarily devolved

on Rome as the leading power in the Mediterranean. While a century

previously the Romans had come forward in this matter with especial

and salutary decision, and had in particular introduced their supremacy

in the east by a maritime police energetically handled for the general

good,(40) the complete nullity of this police at the very beginning

of this period as distinctly betokens the fearfully rapid decline of

the aristocratic government. Rome no longer possessed a fleet of

her own; she was content to make requisitions for ships, when it

seemed necessary, from the maritime towns of Italy, Asia Minor,

and elsewhere. The consequence naturally was, that buccaneering

became organized and consolidated. Something, perhaps, though

not enough, was done towards its suppression, so far as the direct

power of the Romans extended, in the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas.

The expeditions directed against the Dalmatian and Ligurian coasts

at this epoch aimed especially at the suppression of piracy in the

two Italian seas; for the same reason the Balearic islands were

occupied in 631.(41) But in the Mauretanian and Greek waters the

inhabitants along the coast and the mariners were left to settle

matters with the corsairs in one way or another, as they best

could; for Roman policy adhered to the principle of troubling

itself as little as possible about these more remote regions.

The disorganized and bankrupt commonwealths in the states along

the coast thus left to themselves naturally became places of refuge

for the corsairs; and there was no want of such, especially in Asia.

Crete

A bad pre-eminence in this respect belonged to Crete, which, from its

favourable situation and the weakness or laxity of the great states

of the west and east, was the only one of all the Greek settlements

that had preserved its independence. Roman commissions doubtless came

and went to this island, but accomplished still less there than they

did even in Syria and Egypt. It seemed almost as if fate had left

liberty to the Cretans only in order to show what was the result of

Hellenic independence. It was a dreadful picture. The old Doric

rigour of the Cretan institutions had become, just as in Tarentum,

changed into a licentious democracy, and the chivalrous spirit

of the inhabitants into a wild love of quarrelling and plunder;

a respectable Greek himself testifies, that in Crete alone nothing

was accounted disgraceful that was lucrative, and even the Apostle

Paul quotes with approval the saying of a Cretan poet,

--Kretes aei pseustai, kaka theria, gasteres argai--.

Perpetual civil wars, notwithstanding the Roman efforts to bring

about peace, converted one flourishing township after another

on the old "island of the hundred cities" into heaps of ruins.

Its inhabitants roamed as robbers at home and abroad, by land and

by sea; the island became the recruiting ground for the surrounding

kingdoms, after that evil was no longer tolerated in the Peloponnesus,

and above all the true seat of piracy; about this period, for instance,

the island of Siphnus was thoroughly pillaged by a fleet of Cretan

corsairs. Rhodes--which, besides, was unable to recover from the loss

of its possessions on the mainland and from the blows inflicted on its

commerce(42)--expended its last energies in the wars which it found

itself compelled to wage against the Cretans for the suppression of

piracy (about 600), and in which the Romans sought to mediate, but

without earnestness and apparently without success.

Cilicia

Along with Crete, Cilicia soon began to become a second home for

this buccaneering system. Piracy there not only gained ground

owing to the impotence of the Syrian rulers, but the usurper Diodotus

Tryphon, who had risen from a slave to be king of Syria (608-615),

encouraged it by all means in his chief seat, the rugged or western

Cilicia, with a view to strengthen his throne by the aid of the

corsairs. The uncommonly lucrative character of the traffic with

the pirates, who were at once the principal captors of, and dealers

in slaves, procured for them among the mercantile public, even in

Alexandria, Rhodes, and Delos, a certain toleration, in which the

very governments shared at least by inaction. The evil was so

serious that the senate, about 611, sent its best man Scipio

Aemilianus to Alexandria and Syria, in order to ascertain on the spot

what could be done in the matter. But diplomatic representations of

the Romans did not make weak governments strong; there was no other

remedy but that of directly maintaining a fleet in these waters, and

for this the Roman government lacked energy and perseverance. So all

things just remained on the old footing; the piratic fleet was the

only considerable naval power in the Mediterranean; the capture of

men was the only trade that flourished there. The Roman government

was an onlooker; but the Roman merchants, as the best customers in

the slave market, kept up an active and friendly traffic with the

pirate captains, as the most important wholesale dealers in that

commodity, at Delos and elsewhere.

General Result

We have followed the transformation of the outward relations of

Rome and the Romano-Hellenic world generally in its leading outlines,

from the battle of Pydna to the period of the Gracchi, from the Tagus

and the Bagradas to the Nile and the Euphrates. It was a great and

difficult problem which Rome undertook, when she undertook to govern

this Romano-Hellenic world; it was not wholly misunderstood, but it

was by no means solved. The untenableness of the idea of Cato's time--

that the state should be limited to Italy, and that its rule beyond

Italy should be only over clients--was doubtless discerned by the

leading men of the following generation; and the necessity of

substituting for this ruling by clientship a direct sovereignty

of Rome, that should preserve the liberties of the communities,

was doubtless recognized. But instead of carrying out this new

arrangement firmly, speedily, and uniformly, they annexed isolated

provinces just as convenience, caprice, collateral advantage, or

accident led them to do so; whereas the greater portion of the

territory under clientship either remained in the intolerable

uncertainty of its former position, or even, as was the case with

Syria especially, withdrew entirely from the influence of Rome.

And even the government itself degenerated more and more into a feeble

and short-sighted selfishness. They were content with governing from

one day to another, and merely transacting the current business as

exigency required. They were stern masters towards the weak. When

the city of Mylasa in Caria sent to Publius Crassus, consul in 623,

a beam for the construction of a battering-ram different from what

he had asked, the chief magistrate of the town was scourged for it;

and Crassus was not a bad man, and a strictly upright magistrate.

On the other hand sternness was wanting in those cases where it would

have been in place, as in dealing with the barbarians on the frontiers

and with the pirates. When the central government renounced all

superintendence and all oversight of provincial affairs, it entirely

abandoned not only the interests of the subjects, but also those of

the state, to the governor of the day. The events which occurred in

Spain, unimportant in themselves, are instructive in this respect.

In that country, where the government was less able than in other

provinces to confine itself to the part of a mere onlooker, the law

of nations was directly trampled under foot by the Roman governors;

and the honour of Rome was permanently dragged in the mire by a

faithlessness and treachery without parallel, by the most wanton

trifling with capitulations and treaties, by massacring people who

had submitted and instigating the assassination of the generals of

the enemy. Nor was this all; war was even waged and peace concluded

against the expressed will of the supreme authority in Rome, and

unimportant incidents, such as the disobedience of the Numantines,

were developed by a rare combination of perversity and folly into

a crisis of fatal moment for the state. And all this took place

without any effort to visit it with even a serious penalty in Rome.

Not only did the sympathies and rivalries of the different coteries

in the senate contribute to decide the filling up of the most

important places and the treatment of the most momentous political

questions; but even thus early the money of foreign dynasts found

its way to the senators of Rome. Timarchus, the envoy of Antiochus

Epiphanes king of Syria (590), is mentioned as the first who

attempted with success to bribe the Roman senate; the bestowal of

presents from foreign kings on influential senators soon became so

common, that surprise was excited when Scipio Aemilianus cast into

the military chest the gifts from the king of Syria which reached

him in camp before Numantia. The ancient principle, that rule was

its own sole reward and that such rule was as much a duty and a

burden as a privilege and a benefit, was allowed to fall wholly into

abeyance. Thus there arose the new state-economy, which turned its

eyes away from the taxation of the burgesses, but regarded the body

of subjects, on the other hand, as a profitable possession of the

community, which it partly worked out for the public benefit, partly

handed over to be worked out by the burgesses. Not only was free

scope allowed with criminal indulgence to the unscrupulous greed of

the Roman merchant in the provincial administration, but even the

commercial rivals who were disagreeable to him were cleared away by

the armies of the state, and the most glorious cities of neighbouring

lands were sacrificed, not to the barbarism of the lust of power, but

to the far more horrible barbarism of speculation. By the ruin of

the earlier military organization, which certainly imposed heavy

burdens on the burgesses, the state, which was solely dependent in

the last resort on its military superiority, undermined its own

support. The fleet was allowed to go to ruin; the system of land

warfare fell into the most incredible decay. The duty of guarding

the Asiatic and African frontiers was devolved on the subjects; and

what could not be so devolved, such as the defence of the frontier

in Italy, Macedonia, and Spain, was managed after the most wretched

fashion. The better classes began to disappear so much from the

army, that it was already difficult to raise the necessary number of

officers for the Spanish armies. The daily increasing aversion to

the Spanish war-service in particular, combined with the partiality

shown by the magistrates in the levy, rendered it necessary in 602

to abandon the old practice of leaving the selection of the requisite

number of soldiers from the men liable to serve to the free discretion

of the officers, and to substitute for it the drawing lots on the

part of all the men liable to service--certainly not to the advantage

of the military esprit de corps, or of the warlike efficiency

of the individual divisions. The authorities, instead of acting

with vigour and sternness, extended their pitiful flattery of the

people even to this field; whenever a consul in the discharge of

his duty instituted rigorous levies for the Spanish service, the

tribunes made use of their constitutional right to arrest him (603,

616); and it has been already observed, that Scipio's request that

he should be allowed a levy for the Numantine war was directly

rejected by the senate. Accordingly the Roman armies before

Carthage or Numantia already remind one of those Syrian armies, in

which the number of bakers, cooks, actors, and other non-combatants

exceeded fourfold that of the so-called soldiers; already the Roman

generals are little behind their Carthaginian colleagues in the art

of ruining armies, and the wars in Africa as in Spain, in Macedonia

as in Asia, are regularly opened with defeats; the murder of Gnaeus

Octavius is now passed over in silence; the assassination of

Viriathus is now a masterpiece of Roman diplomacy; the conquest

of Numantia is now a great achievement. How completely the idea

of national and manly honour was already lost among the Romans,

was shown with epigrammatic point by the statue of the stripped

and bound Mancinus, which he himself, proud of his patriotic

devotedness, caused to be erected in Rome. Wherever we turn our

eyes, we find the internal energy as well as the external power

of Rome rapidly on the decline. The ground won in gigantic struggles

is not extended, norin fact even maintained, in this period of peace.

The government of the world, which it was difficult to achieve, it

was still more difficult to preserve; the Roman senate had mastered

the former task, but it broke down under the latter.