THE GREAT EVENTS BY FAMOUS HISTORIANS

VOLUME II

A COMPREHENSIVE AND READABLE ACCOUNT OF THE WORLD'S HISTORY. EMPHASIZING
THE MORE IMPORTANT EVENTS, AND PRESENTING THESE AS COMPLETE NARRATIVES
IN THE MASTER-WORDS OF THE MOST EMINENT HISTORIANS

  NON-SECTARIAN        NON-PARTISAN         NON-SECTIONAL

ON THE PLAN EVOLVED FROM A CONSENSUS OF OPINIONS GATHERED FROM THE MOST
DISTINGUISHED SCHOLARS OF AMERICA AND EUROPE, INCLUDING BRIEF
INTRODUCTIONS BY SPECIALISTS TO CONNECT AND EXPLAIN THE CELEBRATED
NARRATIVES, ARRANGED CHRONOLOGICALLY, WITH THOROUGH INDICES,
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, CHRONOLOGIES, AND COURSES OF READING

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

ROSSITER JOHNSON, LL.D.

ASSOCIATE EDITORS

CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.
JOHN RUDD, LL.D.

1905







BINDING

Vol. II

The binding of this volume is a facsimile of the original on exhibition
in the Bibliothèque Nationale.

It was executed by the Royal Binder, Clovis Eve, for Marie de' Médicis,
Queen Consort of Henry IV of France. She was a great lover of fine arts,
and especially of rich bindings. The one here shown was her special
pride. It shows her arms--the arms of France and Tuscany--surrounded
with the cordelière, the sign of her widowhood, accompanied by the
monogram M.M. (Marie Médicis). She was exiled by Cardinal Richelieu in
1631.




CONTENTS


VOLUME II

An Outline Narrative of the Great Events,
    CHARLES F. HORNE

Institution and Fall of the Decemvirate in Rome (B.C. 450),
    HENRY G. LIDDELL

Pericles Rules in Athens (B.C. 444),
    PLUTARCH

Great Plague at Athens (B.C. 430),
    GEORGE GROTE

Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse (B.C. 413),
    SIR EDWARD S. CREASY

Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks (B.C. 401-399),
    XENOPHON

Condemnation and Death of Socrates (B.C. 399),
    PLATO

Brennus Burns Rome (B.C. 388),
    BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR

Tartar Invasion of China by Meha (B.C. 341),
    DEMETRIUS CHARLES BOULGER

Alexander Reduces Tyre, Later Founds Alexandria (B.C. 332),
    OLIVER GOLDSMITH

The Battle of Arbela (B.C. 331),
    SIR EDWARD S. CREASY

First Battle Between Greeks and Romans (B.C. 280-279),
    PLUTARCH

The Punic Wars (B.C. 264-219-149),
    FLORUS

Battle of the Metaurus (B.C. 2O7),
    SIR EDWARD S. CREASY

Scipio Africanus Crushes Hannibal at Zama and Subjugates Carthage (B.C.
202),
    LIVY

Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea (B.C. 165-141),
    JOSEPHUS

The Gracchi and Their Reforms (B.C. 133),
    THEODOR MOMMSEN

Caesar Conquers Gaul (B.C. 58-50),
    NAPOLEON III

Roman Invasion and Conquest of Britain (B.C. 55-A.D. 79),
    OLIVER GOLDSMITH

Cleopatra's Conquest of Caesar and Antony (B.C. 51-30),
    JOHN P. MAHAFFY

Assassination of Caesar (B.C. 44),
    NIEBUHR
    PLUTARCH

Rome Becomes a Monarchy
Death of Antony and Cleopatra (B.C. 44-30),
    HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL

Germans under Arminius Revolt Against Rome (A.D. 9),
    SIR EDWARD S. CREASY

Universal Chronology (B.C. 450-A.D. 12),
    JOHN RUDD




ILLUSTRATIONS

VOLUME II

Blind Appius Claudius led into the Roman Senate Chamber to vote on the
proposition of peace or war with Pyrrhus (page 174),

Painting by Prof, A. Maccari.


Oracle of Delphi,

Painting by Claudius Harper.


Death of Alexander the Great after a prolonged debauch,

Painting by Carl von Piloty.




AN OUTLINE NARRATIVE


TRACING BRIEFLY THE CAUSES, CONNECTIONS, AND CONSEQUENCES OF

THE GREAT EVENTS

(FROM THE RISE OF GREECE TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA)

CHARLES F. HORNE, Ph.D.


Earth's upward struggle has been baffled by so many stumbles that
critics have not been lacking to suggest that we do not advance at all,
but only swing in circles, like a squirrel in its cage. Certain it is
that each ancient civilization seemed to bear in itself the seeds of its
own destruction. Yet it may be held with equal truth that each new
power, rising above the ruins of the last, held something nobler, was
borne upward by some truth its rival could not reach.

At no period is this more evident than in the five centuries immediately
preceding the Christian era. Persia, Greece, Carthage, Rome, each in
turn was with some justice proclaimed lord of the world; each in turn
felt the impulse of her glory and advanced rapidly in culture and
knowledge of the arts; and each in turn succumbed to the temptations
that beset unlimited success. They degenerated not only in physical
strength, but in moral honesty.

Let us recognize, however, that the term "world-ruler" as applied to
even the greatest of these nations has but a restricted sense. When the
Persian monarch called himself lord of the sun and moon, he only meant
in a figurative way that he was acquainted with no other king so
powerful as himself; that beyond his own dominions he heard only of
feeble colonies, and beyond those the wilderness. Alexander, when he
sighed for more worlds to conquer, had in reality made himself lord of
less than a quarter of Asia and of about one-sixtieth part of Europe.

No man and no nation has ever yet been intrusted with the government of
the entire globe. None has proved sufficiently fitted for the giant
task. Each empire has been, as it were, but an experiment; and beyond
the border line of seas and deserts which ringed each boastful
conqueror, there were always other races developing along slower, and it
may be surer, lines.

In those old days our world was in truth too big for conquest. Armies
marched on foot. Provisions could not be carried in any quantity, unless
a general clung to the sea-shore and depended on his ships. What
Alexander might with more truth have sighed for, was some modern means
of swift transportation, possessed of which he might still have enjoyed
many interesting, bloody battles in more distant lands.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE GREEKS

Taking the idea "world power" in the restricted sense suggested, Persia
lost it to Greece at Salamis. As the Asiatic hordes fled behind their
panic-stricken king, the Greeks, looking round their limited horizon,
could see no power that might vie with them. The idea of pressing home
their success and overthrowing the entire unwieldy Persian empire was at
once conceived.

But the Greeks were of all races least like to weld earth into one
dominion. They could not even unite among themselves. In short it cannot
be too emphatically pointed out that the work of Greece was not to
consolidate, but to separate, to teach the value of each individual man.
Asia had made monarchies in plenty. King after king had passed in
splendid, glittering pomp across her plains, circled by a crowd of
obsequious courtiers, trampling on a nameless multitude of slaves.
Europe was to make democracies, or at least to try her hand at them.

It has been well said that a democracy is the strongest government for
defence, the weakest for attack. Every little Greek city clung jealously
to its own freedom, and to its equally obvious right to dominate its
neighbors. The supreme danger of the Persian invasion united them for a
moment; but as soon as safety was assured, they recommenced their
bickering. Sparta with her record of ancient leadership, Athens with her
new-won glory against the common foe, each tried to draw the other
cities in her train. There was no one man who could dominate them all
and concentrate their strength against the enemy. So for a time Persia
continued to exist; she even by degrees regained something of her former
influence over the divided cities.

Among these Athens held the foremost rank. She was, as we have
previously seen, far more truly representative of the Greek spirit than
her rival. Sparta was aristocratic and conservative; Athens democratic
and progressive. The genius of her leaders gathered the lesser towns
into a great naval league, in which she grew ever more powerful. Her
allies sank to be dependent and unwilling vassals, forced to contribute
large sums to the treasury of their overlord.

This was the age of Pericles.[1] As Athens became wealthy, her citizens
became cultured. Statues, temples, theatres made the city beautiful.
Dramatists, orators, and poets made her intellectually renowned. A
marvellous outburst, this of Athens! Displaying for the first time in
history the full capacity of the human mind! Had there been similar
flowerings of genius amid forgotten Asiatic times? One doubts it; doubts
if such brilliancy could ever anywhere have passed, and left no clearer
record of its triumphs.

[Footnote 1: See _Pericles Rules in Athens_, page 12.]

Amid such splendor it seems captious to point out the flaw. Yet Athenian
and all Greek civilization did ultimately decline. It represented
intellectual, but not moral culture. The Greeks delighted intensely in
the purely physical life about them; they had small conception of
anything beyond. To enjoy, to be successful, that was all their goal;
the means scarce counted. The Athenians called Aristides the Just; but
so little did they honor his high rectitude that they banished him for a
decade. His title, or it may have been his insistence on the subject,
bored them.

His rival, Themistocles, was more suited to their taste, a clever scamp,
who must always be dealing with both sides in every quarrel, and
outwitting both. Athens was driven to banish him also at last, at his
too flagrant treachery. But he was not dismissed with the scathing scorn
our modern age would heap upon a traitor. He was sent regretfully, as
one turns from a charming but too persistently lawless friend. The
banishment was only for ten years, and he had his nest already prepared
with the Persian King. If you would understand the Greek spirit in its
fullest perfection, study Themistocles. Rampant individualism, seeking
personal pleasure, clamorous for the admiration of its fellows, but not
restrained from secret falsity by any strong moral sense--that was what
the Greeks developed in the end.

Neither must Athens be regarded as a democracy in the modern sense. She
was only so by contrast with Persia or with Sparta. Not every man in the
beautiful city voted, or enjoyed the riches that flowed into her
coffers, and could thus afford, free from pecuniary care, to devote
himself to art. Athens probably had never more than thirty thousand
"citizens." The rest of the adult male population, vastly outnumbering
these, were slaves, or foreigners attracted by the city's splendor.

But those thirty thousand were certainly men. "There were giants in
those days." One sometimes stands in wonder at their boldness. What all
Greece could not do, what Persia had completely failed in, they
undertook. Athens alone should conquer the world. By force of arms they
would found an empire of intellect. They fought Persia and Sparta, both
at once. Plague swept their city, yet they would not yield.[2] Their own
subject allies turned against them; and they fought those too. They sent
fleets and armies against Syracuse, the mightiest power of the West. It
was Athens against all mankind!

[Footnote 2: See _Great Plague at Athens_, page 34.]

She was unequal to the task, superbly unequal to it. The destruction of
her army at Syracuse[3] was only the foremost of a series of inevitable
disasters, which left her helpless. After that, Sparta, and then Thebes,
became the leading city of Greece. Athens slowly regained her fighting
strength; her intellectual supremacy she had not lost. Socrates,[4]
greatest of her sons, endeavored to teach a morality higher than earth
had yet received, higher than his contemporaries could grasp. Plato gave
to thought a scientific basis.

[Footnote 3: See _Defeat of the Athenians at Syracuse_, page 48.]

[Footnote 4: See _Condemnation and Death of Socrates_, page 87.]

Then Macedonia, a border kingdom of ancient kinship to the Greeks, but
not recognized as belonging among them, began to obtrude herself in
their affairs, and at length won that leadership for which they had all
contended. A hundred and fifty years had elapsed since the Greeks had
stood united against Persia. During all that time their strength had
been turned against themselves. Now at last the internecine wars were
checked, and all the power of the sturdy race was directed by one man,
Alexander, King of Macedon. Democracy had made the Greeks intellectually
glorious, but politically weak. Monarchy rose from the ruin they had
wrought.

As though that ancient invasion of Xerxes had been a crime of yesterday,
Alexander proclaimed his intention of avenging it; and the Greeks
applauded. They understood Persia now far better than in the elder days;
they saw what a feeble mass the huge heterogeneous empire had become.
Its people were slaves, its soldiers mercenaries. The Greeks themselves
had been hired to suppress more than one Persian rebellion,[5] and to
foment these also. They had learned the enormous advantage their
stronger personality gave them against the masses of sheeplike Asiatics.

[Footnote 5: See _Retreat of the Ten Thousand Greeks_, page 68.]

So it was in holiday mood that they followed Alexander, and in schoolboy
roughness that they trampled on the civilization of the East. In fact,
it is worth noting that the most vigorous resistance they encountered
was not from the Persians, but from a remnant of the Semites, the
merchants of the Phoenician city of Tyre.[6] In less than eight years,
B.C. 331-323, Alexander overran the whole known world of the East,[7]
only stopping when, on the border of India, his soldiers broke into open
revolt, not against fighting, but against further wandering.

[Footnote 6: See _Alexander Reduces Tyre_, page 133.]

[Footnote 7: See _The Battle of Arbela_, page 141.]

If this invasion had been the mere outcome of one man's ambition, it
might scarce be worth recording. But Alexander was only the topmost wave
in the surging of a long imminent, inevitable racial movement. Its
effect upon civilization, upon the world, was incalculably vast.
Alexander and his successors were city-builders, administrators. As such
they spread Greek culture, the Greek idea of individualism, over all
their world.

How deep was the change, made upon the imbruted Asiatics, we may perhaps
question. Our own age has seen how much of education may be lavished on
an inferior race without materially altering the brute instincts within.
The building-up of the soul in man is not a matter of individuals, but
of centuries. Yet in at least a superficial way Greek thought became the
thought of all mankind. We may dismiss Alexander's savage conquests with
a sigh of pity; but we cannot deny him recognition as a most potent
teacher of the world.

His empire did not last. It was in too obvious opposition to all that we
have recognized as the Grecian spirit. At his death the same impulse
seems to have stirred each one of his subordinates, to snatch for
himself a kingdom from the confusion. Instead of one there were soon
three, four, and then a dozen semi-Grecian states in Asia. The Greek
element in each grew very faint.

From this time onward Asia takes a less prominent place in world
affairs. Her ancient leadership in the march of civilization had long
been yielded to the Greeks. Now her semblance of military power
disappeared as well. Only two further happenings in all Asia seem worth
noting, down to the birth of Christ. One of these was the Tartar
conquest of China, an event which coalesced the Tartars, helped make
them a nation.[8] It was thus fraught with most disastrous consequences
for the Europe of the future. The other was the revolt of the Hebrews
under Judas Maccabaeus, against their Grecian rulers. This was a
religious revolt, a religious war. Here for the first time we find a
people who will believe, who can believe, in no god but their own, who
will die sooner than give worship to another. We approach the borders of
an age where the spirit is more valued than the body, where the mental
is stronger than the physical, where facts are dominated by ideas.[9]

[Footnote 8: See _Tartar Invasion of China_, page 126.]

[Footnote 9: See _Judas Maccabaeus Liberates Judea_, page 245.]

Had Alexander even at the moment of his greatest strength directed his
forces westward instead of east, he would have found a different world
and encountered a sturdier resistance. He himself recognized this, and
during his last years was gathering all the resources of his unwieldy
empire, to hurl them against Carthage and against Italy. What the issue
might have been no man can say. Alexander's death ended forever the
impossible attempt to unite his race. Once more and until the end,
Grecian strength was wasted against itself.

This gave opportunity to the growing powers of the West. Alexander is
scarce gone ere we hear Carthage boasting that the Mediterranean is but
a private lake in her possession. She rules all Western Africa and
Spain, Sardinia and Corsica. She masters the Greeks of Sicily, against
whom Athens failed. Rome is compelled to sign treaties with her as an
inferior.

THE GROWTH OF ROME

Rome was only husbanding her strength; the little republic of B.C. 510
had grown much during the two centuries of Grecian splendor. Her people
had become far better fitted for conquest than their eastern kinsmen. It
is presumable that here too it was the difference of surroundings which
had differentiated the race. The ancient Etrurian (non-Aryan)
civilization on which the Latins intruded, was apparently more advanced
than their own. For centuries their utmost prowess scarce sufficed to
maintain their independence. Thus it was not possible for them to become
too self-satisfied, to stand afar off and look down on their neighbors
with Grecian scorn. The _ego_ was less prominently developed; the
necessity of mutual dependence and united action was more deeply taught.
Their records display less of brilliancy, but more of patient
persistency, than those of Greece, less of spectacular individualism,
more of truly patriotic self-suppression. In Rome, even more than in
Sparta, the "State" was everything. During the early days men found
their highest glory in making their city glorious; their proudest boast
was to be "citizens of Rome."

To trace the slow steps by which the tiny republic grew to be mistress
of all Italy would take too long. She settled her internal difficulties
as all such difficulties must be settled, if the race is to progress;
that is, she became more democratic.[10] As the lower classes advanced
in knowledge and intelligence they insisted on a share of the
government. They fought their way to it. They united Rome, mastered the
other Latin cities, and admitted them to partnership in her power. She
conquered the Etruscans and the Samnites. For a moment we find her
almost overwhelmed by an inroad of the wild Celtic tribes from the
forests of Central Europe;[11] but, fortunately for her, the other
Italian states were equally crushed. It was weakness against weakness,
and the Romans retained their foremost place.

[Footnote 10: See _Institution and Fall of the Decemvirate in Rome_,
page 1.]

[Footnote 11: See _Brennus Burns Rome_, page 110.]

Not till more than a century later were they brought into serious
conflict with the Greeks. In the year B.C. 280, Pyrrhus, King of Epirus,
who had won a temporary leadership over a portion of the Grecian land,
undertook the conquest of the West.[12] Fifty years before, Alexander
with far greater power might have been victorious over a feebler Rome.
Pyrrhus failed completely. If the Romans had less dash and a less wide
experience of varied warfare than his followers, they had far more of
true, heroic endurance. The Greeks had reached that stage of individual
culture where they were much too selfishly intelligent to be willing to
die in battle. Pyrrhus withdrew from Italy. Grecian brilliancy was
helpless against Roman strength of union.

[Footnote 12: See _First Battle between Greeks and Romans_, page 166.]

Then came the far more serious contest between Rome and Carthage.[13]
Carthage was a Phoenician, a Semite state; and hers was the last, the
most gigantic struggle made by Semitism to recover its waning
superiority, to dominate the ancient world. Three times in three
tremendous wars did she and Rome put forth their utmost strength against
each other. Hannibal, perhaps the greatest military genius who ever
lived, fought upon the side of Carthage. At one time Rome seemed
crushed, helpless before him.[14] Yet in the end Rome won.[15] It was
not by the brilliancy of her commanders, not by the superiority of her
resources. It was the grim, cool courage of the Aryan mind, showing
strongest and calmest when face to face with ruin.

[Footnote 13: See _The Punic Wars_, page 179.]

[Footnote 14: See _Battle of the Metaurus_, page 195.]

[Footnote 15: See _Scipio Africanus Crushes Hannibal at Zama and
Subjugates Carthage_, page 224.]

Our modern philosophers, being Aryan, assure us that the victory of
Carthage would have been an irretrievable disaster to mankind; that her
falsity, her narrow selfishness, her bloody inhumanity, would have
stifled all progress; that her dominion would have been the tyranny of a
few heartless masters over a world of tortured slaves. On the other
hand, Rome up to this point had certainly been a generous mistress to
her subjects. She had left them peace and prosperity among themselves;
she had given them as much political freedom as was consistent with her
sovereignty; she had wellnigh succeeded in welding all Italy into a
Roman nation. It is noteworthy that the large majority of the Italian
cities clung to her, even in the darkest straits to which she was
reduced by Hannibal.

Yet when the fall of her last great rival left Rome irresistible abroad,
her methods changed. It is hard to see how even Carthaginians could have
been more cruel, more grasping, more corrupt than the Roman rulers of
the provinces. Having conquered the governments of the world, Rome had
to face outbreak after outbreak from the unarmed, unsheltered masses of
the people. Her barbarity drove them to mad despair. "Servile" wars,
slave outbreaks are dotted over all the last century of the Roman
Republic.

The good, if there was any good, that Roman dominion brought the world
at that period was the spreading of Greek culture across the western
half of the world. As Rome mastered the Greek states one by one, their
genius won a subtler triumph over the conqueror. Her generals recognized
and admired a culture superior to their own. They carried off the
statues of Greece for the adornment of their villas, and with equal
eagerness they appropriated her manners and her thought, her literature
and her gods.

But this superficial culture could not save the Roman Republic from the
dry-rot that sapped her vitals from within. As a mere matter of numbers,
the actual citizens of Rome or even of the semi-Roman districts close
around her were too few to continue fighting over all the vast empire
they controlled. The sturdy peasant population of Italy slowly
disappeared. The actual inhabitants of the capital came to consist of a
few thousand vastly wealthy families, who held all the power, a few
thousand more of poorer citizens dependent on the rich, and then a vast
swarm of slaves and foreigners, feeders on the crumbs of the Roman
table.

In the battles against Carthage, the mass of Rome's armies had consisted
of her own citizens or of allies closely united to them in blood and
fortune. Her later victories were won by hired troops, men gathered from
every clime and every race. Roman generals still might lead them, Roman
laws environ them, Roman gold employ them. Yet the fact remained, that
in these armies lay the strength of the Republic, no longer within her
own walls, no longer in the stout hearts of her citizens.

Perhaps the world itself was slow in seeing this degeneration. The
Gracchi brothers tried to stem the tide, and they were slain, sacrificed
by the nation they sought to save.[16] Cornelius Sulla was the man who
completed, and at the same time made plain to all, the change that had
been growing up. Having bitter grievances against his enemies in the
capital, he appealed for redress, not to the Roman senate, not to the
votes of the populace, but to the swords of the legions he commanded.
Twice he marched his soldiers against Rome. He brushed aside the feeble
resistance that was offered, and entered the city like a conqueror. The
blood of those who had opposed his wishes flowed in streams. Three
thousand senators and knights, the flower of the Roman aristocracy, were
slain at his nod. Of the common folk and of the Italians throughout the
peninsula, the slaughter was immeasurable. And when his bloody vengeance
was at last glutted, Sulla ruled as an extravagant, conscienceless,
licentious dictator. Rome had found a fitting master.

[Footnote 16: See _The Gracchi and Their Reforms_, page 259.]

THE STRUGGLE OF INDIVIDUALS FOR SUPREMACY

The Roman people, the mighty race who had defied a Hannibal at their
gates, were clearly come to an end. Sulla had proved the power of the
Republic to be an empty shell. After his death, men used the empty forms
awhile; but the surviving aristocrats had learned their awful lesson.
They put no further faith in the strength of the city; they watched the
armies and the generals; they intrigued for the various commands. It was
an exciting game. Life and fortune were the stakes they risked; the
prize--the mastery of a helpless world, waiting to be plundered.

Pompey and Caesar proved the ablest players. Pompey overthrew what was
left of the Greek Asiatic kingdoms and returned to Rome the idol of his
troops, wellnigh as powerful as had been Sulla. Caesar, looking in his
turn for a place to build up an army devoted to himself, selected Gaul
and spent eight years in subduing and civilizing what was in a way the
most important of all Rome's conquests. In Gaul he came in contact with
another, fresher Aryan race.[17] Rome received new soldiers for her
legions, new brains fitted to understand and carry on the work of
civilizing the world.

[Footnote 17: See _Caesar Conquers Gaul_, page 267.]

When Caesar, turning away from Britain,[18] marched these new-formed
legions back against Rome, even as Sulla had done, it was almost like
another Gallic invasion of the South. Pompey fled. He gathered his
legions from Asia; and the world resounded once more to the clash of
arms.

[Footnote 18: See _Roman Invasion and Conquest of Britain_, page 285.]

This, then, was the third and final stage of the huge struggle for
empire. War was still the business of the world. Rome had first defeated
foreign nations; then she had to defeat the uprisings of the subject
peoples; now her chiefs, finding her exhausted, fought among themselves
for the supreme power. Armies of Asiatics, armies of Gauls, each
claiming to represent Rome, battled over her helpless body.

Caesar was victorious. But when the conquering power which had once
belonged to the united nation became embodied in a single man, there was
a new way by which it might be checked. The government of Rome, like
that of the Greek and Asiatic tyrannies, became a "despotism tempered by
assassination"; and Caesar was its foremost victim.[19]

[Footnote 19: See _Assassination of Caesar_, page 313.]

His death did not stop the fascinating gamble for empire. It only added
one more move to the possible complexities of the game. The lesser
players had their chance. They intrigued and they fought. Egypt, the
last remaining civilized state outside of Rome, was drawn into the
whirlpool also.[20] Cleopatra and Antony acted their reckless parts, and
at length out of the world-wide tumult emerged "young Octavius," to
assume his _rôle_ as "Augustus Caesar," acknowledged emperor of the
world.[21]

[Footnote 20: See _Cleopatra's Conquest of Caesar and Antony_, page
295.]

[Footnote 21: See _Rome Becomes a Monarchy_, page 333.]

Note, however, that the term "world" is still one of boast, not truth.
Emperor over many men, Augustus was; but the powers of nature still shut
many races safe beyond his mastery. The ocean bounded his dominion on
the west; the deserts to the south and east; the German forests to the
north. These last he did essay to conquer, but they proved beyond him.
The wild German tribes having no cities, which they must defend at any
cost, could afford to flee or hide. Choosing their own time and place
they rose suddenly, smote the legions of Augustus, and melted into the
wilderness again.[22]

[Footnote 22: See _Germans Under Arminius Revolt against Rome_, page
362.]

Rome was checked at last. No civilized nation had been able to stand
against her; but the wild tribes of the Germans and the Parthians did.
Barbarism had still by far the larger portion of the world wherein to
live and develop, and gather brain and brawn. Rome could not conquer the
wilderness.

(For the next section of this general survey see Volume III.)




INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME

B.C. 450

HENRY G. LIDDELL


(When wars and pestilence had laid a heavy burden upon the Roman people,
there appears to have been a period in which internal commotions and
civil strife were stilled, and the quarrels of patricians and plebeians
gave way to temporary truce. On the inevitable renewal of the old
struggle the college of tribunes adopted a measure favorable to the
plebeians in so far as it provided means for checking the abuse of power
on the part of consuls in punishing members of that class in connection
with the prosecution of suits against them.

The passage of this measure had the effect of reopening former
conflicts, the patrician elements becoming greatly alarmed at what they
regarded as a fresh encroachment upon their hereditary rights. The
contest was long and bitter, each side either bringing forward or
rejecting again and again the same measures or the same representatives.

Finally, compromises were made, and in the year B.C. 452 a commission of
ten men, called _decemvirs_, constituting the _Decemvirate_, was chosen,
consisting wholly of patricians, who entered with great efficiency upon
the discharge of legislative duties which resulted in the production of
a new code. This was approved by the senate and by the popular
representatives, and was published in the form of ten copper plates or
tables, which were affixed to the speaker's pulpit in the Forum. Among
the new decemvirs appointed in the year B.C. 450 were several plebeians,
the first official representatives of the entire people who were chosen
from that class.)


The patrician burgesses endeavored to wrest independence from the
"plebs" after the battle of Lake Regillus; and the latter, ruined by
constant wars with the neighboring nations, being compelled to make good
their losses by borrowing money from patrician creditors, and liable to
become bondsmen in default of payment, at length deserted the city, and
only returned on condition of being protected by tribunes of their own;
they then, by the firmness of Publilius Volero and Lætorius, obtained
the right of electing these tribunes at their own assembly, the "Comitia
of the Tribes." Finally the great consul Spurius Cassius endeavored to
relieve the commonalty by an agrarian law, so as to better their
condition permanently.

The execution of the Agrarian law was constantly evaded. But on the
conquest of Antium from the Volscians, in the year B.C. 468, a colony
was sent thither, and this was one of the first examples of a
distribution of public land to poorer citizens; which answered two
purposes--the improvement of their condition, and the defence of the
place against the enemy.

Nor did the tribunes, now made altogether independent of the patricians,
fail to assert their power. One of the first persons who felt the force
of their arm was the second Appius Claudius. This Sabine noble,
following his father's example, had, after the departure of the Fabii,
led the opposition to the Publilian law. When he took the field against
the Volscians, his soldiers would not fight, and the stern commander put
to death every tenth man in his legions. For the acts of his consulship
he was brought to trial by the tribunes M. Duillius and C. Sicinius.
Seeing that conviction was certain, the proud patrician avoided
humiliation by suicide.

Nevertheless the border wars still continued, and the plebeians suffered
much. To the evils of debt and want were added about this time the
horrors of pestilential disease, which visited the Roman territory
several times at that period. In one year (B.C. 464) the two consuls,
two of the four augurs, and the curio Maximus, who was the head of all
the patricians, were swept off--a fact which implies the death of a vast
number of less distinguished persons. The government was administered by
the plebeian aediles, under the control of senatorial interreges. The
Volscians and Aequians ravaged the country up to the walls of Rome; and
the safety of the city must be attributed to the Latins and Hernici, not
to the men of Rome.

Meantime the tribunes had in vain demanded a full execution of the
Agrarian law. But in the year B.C. 462, one of the Sacred College, by
name C. Terentilius Harsa, came forward with a bill, the object of which
was to give the plebeians a surer footing in the state. This man
perceived that as long as the consuls retained their almost despotic
power, and were elected by the influence of the patricians, this order
had it in its power to thwart all measures, even after they were passed,
which tended to advance the interests of the plebeians. He therefore no
longer demanded the execution of the Agrarian law, but proposed that a
commission of ten men (_decemviri_) should be appointed to draw up
constitutional laws for regulating the future relations of the
patricians and plebeians.

The Reform Bill of Terentilius was, as might be supposed, vehemently
resisted by the patrician burgesses. But the plebeians supported their
champion no less warmly. For five consecutive years the same tribunes
were reelected and in vain endeavored to carry the bill. This was the
time which least fulfils the character which we have claimed for the
Roman people--patience and temperance, combined with firmness in their
demands. To prevent the tribunes from carrying their law, the younger
patricians thronged to the assemblies and interfered with all
proceedings; Terentilius, they said, was endeavoring to confound all
distinction between the orders. Some scenes occurred which seem to show
that both sides were prepared for civil war.

In the year B.C. 460 the city was alarmed by hearing that the Capitol
had been seized by a band of Sabines and exiled Romans, under the
command of one Herdonius. Who these exiles were is uncertain. But we
know, by the legend of Cincinnatus, that Cæso Quinctius, the son of that
old hero, was an exile. It has been inferred, therefore, that he was
among them, that the tribunes had succeeded in banishing from the city
the most violent of their opponents, and that these persons had not
scrupled to associate themselves with Sabines to recover their homes.
The consul Valerius, aided by the Latins of Tusculum, levied an army to
attack the insurgents, on condition that after success the law should be
fully considered. The exiles were driven out and Herdonius was killed.
But the consul fell in the assault, and the patricians, led by old
Cincinnatus, refused to fulfil his promises.

Then followed the danger of the Æquian invasion, to which the legend of
Cincinnatus, as given above, refers. The stern old man used his
dictatorial power quite as much to crush the tribunes at home as to
conquer the enemies abroad.

One of the historians tells us that in this period of seditious violence
many of the leading plebeians were assassinated (as the tribune Genucius
had been), and to this time only can be attributed the horrible story,
mentioned by more than one writer, that nine tribunes were burned alive
at the instance of their colleague Mucius. Society was utterly
disorganized. The two orders were on the brink of civil war. It seemed
as if Rome was to become the city of discord, not of law. Happily, there
were moderate men in both orders. Now, as at the time of the secession,
their voices prevailed, and a compromise was arranged.

In the eighth year after the first promulgation of the Terentilian law,
this compromise was made (B.C. 454). The law itself was no longer
pressed by the tribunes. The patricians, on the other hand, so far gave
way as to allow three men (_triumviri_) to be appointed, who were to
travel into Greece, and bring back a copy of the laws of Solon, as well
as the laws and institutes of any other Greek states which they might
deem good and useful. These were to be the groundwork of a new code of
laws, such as should give fair and equal rights to both orders and
restrain the arbitrary power of the patrician magistrates.

Another concession made by the patrician lords was a small installment of
the Agrarian law. L. Icilius, tribune of the plebs, proposed that all
the Aventine hill, being public land, should be made over to the plebs,
to be their quarter forever, as the other hills were occupied by the
patricians and their clients. This hill, it will be remembered, was
consecrated to the goddess Diana (Jana), and though included in the
walls of Servius, was yet not within the sacred limits (_pomoerium_) of
the patrician city. After some opposition the patricians suffered this
Icilian law to pass, in hopes of soothing the anger of the plebeians.
The land was parcelled out into building-sites. But as there was not
enough to give a separate plot to every plebeian householder that wished
to live in the city, one allotment was assigned to several persons, who
built a joint house _flats_ or stories, each of which was inhabited--as
in Edinburgh and in most foreign towns--by a separate family.

The three men who had been sent into Greece returned in the third year
(B.C. 452). They found the city free from domestic strife, partly from
the concessions already made, partly from expectation of what was now to
follow, and partly from the effect of a pestilence which had broken out
anew.

So far did moderate counsels now prevail among the patricians, that
after some little delay they agreed to suspend the ordinary government
by the consuls and other officers, and in their stead to appoint a
council of ten, who were, during their existence, to be intrusted with
all the functions of government. But they were to have a double duty:
they were not only an administrative, but also a legislative council. On
the one hand, they were to conduct the government, administer justice,
and command the armies. On the other, they were to draw up a code of
laws by which equal justice was to be dealt out to the whole Roman
people, to patricians and plebeians alike, and by which especially the
authority to be exercised by the consuls, or chief magistrates, was to
be clearly determined and settled.

This supreme council of ten, or decemvirs, was first appointed in the
year B.C. 450. They were all patricians. At their head stood Appius
Claudius and T. Genucius, who had already been chosen consuls for this
memorable year. This Appius Claudius (the third of his name) was son and
grandson of those two patrician chiefs who had opposed the leaders of
the plebeians so vehemently in the matter of the tribunate. But he
affected a different conduct from his sires. He was the most popular man
of the whole council, and became in fact the sovereign of Rome. At first
he used his great power well, and the first year's government of the
decemvirs was famed for justice and moderation.

They also applied themselves diligently to their great work of
law-making, and before the end of the year had drawn up a code of ten
tables, which were posted in the Forum, that all citizens might examine
them and suggest amendments to the decemvirs. After due time thus spent,
the ten tables were confirmed and made law at the Comitia of the
Centuries. By this code equal justice was to be administered to both
orders without distinction of persons.

At the close of the year the first decemvirs laid down their office,
just as the consuls and other officers of state had been accustomed to
do before. They were succeeded by a second set of ten, who, for the next
year at least, were to conduct the government like their predecessors.
The only one of the old decemvirs reelected was Appius Claudius. The
patricians, indeed, endeavored to prevent even this, and to this end he
was himself appointed to preside at the new elections; for it was held
impossible for a chief magistrate to return his own name, when he was
himself presiding. But Appius scorned precedents. He returned himself as
elected, together with nine others, men of no name, while two of the
great Quinctian gens, who offered themselves, were rejected.

Of the new decemvirs, it is certain that three--and it is probable that
five--were plebeians. Appius, with the plebeian Oppius, held the
judicial office, and remained in the city; and these two seem to have
been regarded as the chiefs. The other six commanded the armies and
discharged the duties previously assigned to the quæstors and ædiles.

The first decemvirs had earned the respect and esteem of their
fellow-citizens. The new Council of Ten deserved the hatred which has
ever since cloven to their name. Appius now threw off the mask which he
had so long worn, and assumed his natural character--the same as had
distinguished his sire and grandsire, of unhappy memory. He became an
absolute despot. His brethren in the council offered no hinderance to
his will; even the plebeian decemvirs, bribed by power, fell into his
way of action and supported his tyranny. They each had twelve lictors,
who carried fasces with the axes in them the symbol of absolute power,
as in the times of the kings; so that it was said, "Rome had now twelve
Tarquins instead of one, and one hundred and twenty armed lictors
instead of twelve!" All freedom of speech ceased. The senate was seldom
called together. The leading men, patricians and plebeians, left the
city. The outward aspect of things was that of perfect calm and peace,
but an opportunity only was wanting for the discontent which was
smouldering in all men's hearts to break out and show itself.

By the end of the year the decemvirs had added two more tables to the
code, so that there were now twelve tables. But these two last were of a
most oppressive and arbitrary kind, devoted chiefly to restore the
ancient privileges of the patrician caste. Of these tables, it should be
observed that they were made laws not by the vote of the people, but by
the simple edict of the decemvirs.

It was, no doubt, expected that the second decemvirs also would have
held _comitia_ for the election of successors. But Appius and his
colleagues showed no such intention, and when the year came to a close
they continued to hold office as if they had been reelected. So firmly
did their power seem to be established that we hear of no endeavor being
made to induce them to resign.

In the course of this next year (B.C. 449), the border wars were
renewed. On the north the Sabines, and the Æquians on the northeast,
invaded the Roman country at the same time. The latter penetrated as far
as Mount Algidus, as in B.C. 458, when they were routed by old
Cincinnatus. The decemvirs probably, like the patrician burgesses in
former times, regarded these inroads not without satisfaction; for they
turned away the mind of the people from their sufferings at home. Yet
from these very wars sprung the events which overturned their power and
destroyed themselves.

Two armies were levied, one to check the Sabines, the other to oppose
the Æquians, and these were commanded by the six military decemvirs.
Appius and Oppius remained to administer affairs at home. But there was
no spirit in the armies. Both were defeated; and that which was opposed
to the Æquians was compelled to take refuge within the walls of
Tusculum.

Then followed two events which were preserved in well-known legends, and
which give the popular narrative of the manner in which the power of the
decemvirs was at last overthrown.

LEGEND OF SICCIUS DENTATUS

In the army sent against the Sabines, Siccius Dentatus was known as the
bravest man. He was then serving as a centurion; he had fought in one
hundred and twenty battles; he had slain eight champions in single
combat; had saved the lives of fourteen citizens; had received forty
wounds, all in front; had followed in nine triumphal processions, and
had won crowns and decorations without number. This gallant veteran had
taken an active part in the civil contests between the two orders, and
was now suspected, by the decemvirs commanding the Sabine army, of
plotting against them. Accordingly they determined to get rid of him;
and for this end they sent him out as if to reconnoitre, with a party of
soldiers, who were secretly instructed to murder him. Having discovered
their design, he set his back against a rock and resolved to sell his
life dearly. More than one of his assailants fell and the rest stood at
bay around him, not venturing to come within sword's length, when one
wretch climbed up the rock behind and crushed the brave old man with a
massive stone. But the manner of his death could not be hidden from the
army, and the generals only prevented an outbreak by honoring him with a
magnificent funeral.

Such was the state of things in the Sabine army.

LEGEND OF VIRGINIA[23]

[Footnote 23: Dionysius is the authority for this legend.]

The other army had a still grosser outrage to complain of. In this there
was a notable centurion, Virginius by name. His daughter Virginia, just
ripening into womanhood, beautiful as the day, was betrothed to L.
Icilius, the tribune who had carried the law for allotting the Aventine
hill to the plebeians. Appius Claudius, the decemvir, saw her and lusted
to make her his own. And with this intent he ordered one of his clients,
M. Claudius by name, to lay hands upon her as she was going to her
school in the Forum, and to claim her as his slave. The man did so; and
when the cries of her nurse brought a crowd round them, M. Claudius
insisted on taking her before the decemvir, in order, as he said, to
have the case fairly tried. Her friends consented; and no sooner had
Appius heard the matter than he gave judgment that the maiden should be
delivered up to the claimant, who should be bound to produce her in case
her alleged father appeared to gainsay the claim. Now this judgment was
directly against one of the laws of the twelve tables, which Appius
himself had framed; for therein it was provided that any person being at
freedom should continue free till it was proved that such person was a
slave. Icilius, therefore, with Numitorius, the uncle of the maiden,
boldly argued against the legality of the judgment, and at length
Appius, fearing a tumult, agreed to leave the girl in their hands on
condition of their giving bail to bring her before him next morning; and
then, if Virginius did not appear, he would at once, he said, give her
up to her pretended master. To this Icilius consented, but he delayed
giving bail, pretending that he could not procure it readily; and in the
mean time he sent off a secret message to the camp on Algidus, to inform
Virginius of what had happened. As soon as the bail was given, Appius
also sent a message to the decemvirs in command of that army, ordering
them to refuse leave of absence to Virginius. But when this last message
arrived, Virginius was already halfway on his road to Rome; for the
distance was not more than twenty miles, and he had started at
nightfall.

Next morning, early, Virginius entered the Forum, leading his daughter
by the hand, both clad in mean attire. A great number of friends and
matrons attended him, and he went about among the people entreating them
to support him against the tyranny of Appius. So when Appius came to
take his place on the judgment seat he found the Forum full of people,
all friendly to Virginius and his cause. But he inherited the boldness
as well as the vices of his sires, and though he saw Virginius standing
there ready to prove that he was the maiden's father, he at once gave
judgment, against his own law, that Virginia should be given up to M.
Claudius till it should be proved that she was free. The wretch came up
to seize her, and the lictors kept the people from him. Virginius, now
despairing of deliverance, begged Appius to allow him to ask the maiden
whether she were indeed his daughter or not. "If," said he, "I find I am
not her father, I shall bear her loss the lighter." Under this pretence
he drew her aside to a spot upon the northern side of the Forum,
afterward called the "_Nova Tabernce_" and here, snatching up a knife
from a butcher's stall, he cried: "In this way only can I keep thee
free!"--and so saying, stabbed her to the heart. Then he turned to the
tribunal and said, "On thee, Appius, and on thy head be this blood!"
Appius cried out to seize "the murderer," but the crowd made way for
Virginius, and he passed through them holding up the bloody knife, and
went out at the gate and made straight for the army. There, when the
soldiers had heard his tale, they at once abandoned their decemviral
generals and marched to Rome. They were soon followed by the other army
from the Sabine frontier; for to them Icilius had gone, and Numitorius;
and they found willing ears among men who were already enraged by the
murder of old Siccius Dentatus. So the two armies joined their banners,
elected new generals, and encamped upon the Aventine hill, the quarter
of the plebeians.

Meantime the people at home had risen against Appius, and after driving
him from the Forum they joined their armed fellow-citizens upon the
Aventine. There the whole body of the commons, armed and unarmed, hung
like a dark cloud ready to burst upon the city.

Whatever may be the truth of the legends of Siccius and Virginia, there
can be no doubt that the conduct of the decemvirs had brought matters to
the verge of civil war. At this juncture the senate met, and the
moderate party so far prevailed as to send their own leaders, M.
Horatius Barbatus and L. Valerius Potitus, to negotiate with the
insurgents. The plebeians were ready to listen to the voices of these
men; for they remembered that the consuls of the first year of the
Republic, when the patrician burgesses were friends to the plebeians,
were named Valerius and Horatius; and so they appointed M. Duillius, a
former tribune, to be their spokesman. But no good came of it; and
Duillius persuaded the plebeians to leave the city, and once more to
occupy the Sacred Mount.

Then remembrances of the great secession came back upon the minds of the
patricians, and the senate, observing the calm and resolute bearing of
the plebeian leaders, compelled the decemvirs to resign, and sent back
Valerius and Horatius to negotiate anew.

The leaders of the plebeians demanded: First, that the tribuneship
should be restored, and the _Comitia Tributa_ recognized; secondly, that
a right of appeal to the people against the power of the supreme
magistrate should be secured; thirdly, that full indemnity should be
granted to the movers and promoters of the late secession; fourthly,
that the decemvirs should be burnt alive.

Of these demands the deputies of the senate agreed to the three first;
but the fourth, they said, was unworthy of a free people; it was a piece
of tyranny, as bad as any of the worst acts of the late government; and
it was needless, because anyone who had reason of complaint against the
late decemvirs might proceed against them according to law. The
plebeians listened to these words of wisdom, and withdrew their savage
demand. The other three were confirmed by the fathers, and the plebeians
returned to their quarters on the Aventine. Here they held an assembly
according to their tribes, in which the pontifex Maximus presided; and
they now, for the first time, elected ten tribunes--first Virginius,
Numitorius, and Icilius, then Duillius and six others: so full were
their minds of the wrong done to the daughter of Virginius; so entirely
was it the blood of young Virginia that overthrew the decemvirs, even as
that of Lucretia had driven out the Tarquins.

The plebeians had now returned to the city, headed by their ten
tribunes, a number which was never again altered so long as the
tribunate continued in existence. It remained for the patricians to
redeem the pledges given by their agents Valerius and Horatius on the
other demands of the plebeian leaders.

The first thing to settle was the election of the supreme magistrates.
The decemvirs had fallen, and the state was without any executive
government.

It has been supposed, as we have said above, that the government of the
decemvirs was intended to be perpetual. The patricians gave up their
consuls, and the plebeians their tribunes, on condition that each order
was to be admitted to an equal share in the new decemviral college. But
the tribunes were now restored in augmented number, and it was but
natural that the patricians should insist on again occupying all places
in the supreme magistracy. By common consent, as it would seem, the
Comitia of the Centuries met and elected to the consulate the two
patricians who had shown themselves the friends of both orders: L.
Valerius Potitus and M. Horatius Barbatus. Thus ended the government of
the decemvirate.




PERICLES RULES IN ATHENS

B.C. 444

PLUTARCH


(Under the sway of Pericles many changes occurred in the civil affairs
of Athens affecting the constitution of the state and the character and
administration of its laws. Events of magnitude marked the struggles of
the Athenians with other powers. The development of art and learning was
carried to an unprecedented height, and the Age of Pericles is the most
illustrious in ancient history.

Pericles began his career by opposing the aristocratic party of Athens,
led by Cimon. In this policy he was aided by complications arising with
Sparta and Argos. Directing his attack particularly against the
Areopagus, he succeeded in greatly modifying the composition of that
body and diminishing its powers. The exile of Cimon, the strengthening
of Athens by new alliances, and the vigorous prosecution of wars against
Persia and Corinth combined to establish his supremacy, which was still
further confirmed by the building of the long walls connecting Athens
with the sea, and by the acquisition of neighboring territory.

A favorable convention was concluded with Persia, Athens resumed a state
of general peace, and Pericles found himself at the head of a powerful
empire formed out of a confederacy previously existing. The strength of
this empire was indeed soon impaired by ill-judged military movements,
against the advice of Pericles himself, but during six years of peace
which followed he succeeded in perfecting a state whose preeminence in
intellectual, political, and artistic development has had no rival.

In the later wars of Athens the renown of Pericles was still further
enhanced; but his chief glory arose from the architectural adornment of
the city, and especially from the building of the Parthenon and the
splendid decoration of the Acropolis; while his work of judicial reform
remains an added monument to his fame, and among the masters of
eloquence his orations preserve for him a foremost place.)


Pericles was of the tribe Acamantis, and of the township of Cholargos,
and was descended from the noblest families in Athens, on both his
father's and mother's side. His father, Xanthippus, defeated the Persian
generals at Mycale, while his mother, Agariste, was a descendant of
Clisthenes, who drove the sons of Pisistratus out of Athens, put an end
to their despotic rule, and established a new constitution admirably
calculated to reconcile all parties and save the country. She dreamed
that she had brought forth a lion, and a few days afterward was
delivered of Pericles. His body was symmetrical, but his head was long,
out of all proportion; for which reason, in nearly all his statues he is
represented wearing a helmet, as the sculptors did not wish, I suppose,
to reproach him with this blemish. The Attic poets called him
squill-head, and the comic poet Cratinus, in his play _Chirones_, says;

  "From Chronos old and faction
    Is sprung a tyrant dread,
  And all Olympus calls him
    The man-compelling head."

And again in the play of _Nemesis_:

  "Come, hospitable Zeus, with lofty head."

Teleclides, too, speaks of him as sitting

                         "Bowed down
           With a dreadful frown,
  Because matters of state have gone wrong,
           Until at last,
           From his head so vast,
  His ideas burst forth in a throng."

And Eupolis, in his play of _Demoi_, asking questions about each of the
great orators as they come up from the other world one after the other,
when at last Pericles ascends, says:

  "The great headpiece of those below."

Most writers tell us that his tutor in music was Damon, whose name they
say should be pronounced with the first syllable short. Aristotle,
however, says that he studied under Pythoclides. This Damon, it seems,
was a sophist of the highest order, who used the name of music to
conceal this accomplishment from the world, but who really trained
Pericles for his political contests just as a trainer prepares an
athlete for the games. However, Damon's use of music as a pretext did
not impose upon the Athenians, who banished him by ostracism, as a
busybody and lover of despotism.

Pericles greatly admired Anaxagoras, and became deeply interested in
grand speculations, which gave him a haughty spirit and a lofty style of
oratory far removed from vulgarity and low buffoonery, and also an
imperturbable gravity of countenance and a calmness of demeanor and
appearance which no incident could disturb as he was speaking, while the
tone of his voice never showed that he heeded any interruption. These
advantages greatly impressed the people. The poet Ion, however, says
that Pericles was overbearing and insolent in conversation, and that his
pride had in it a great deal of contempt for others, while he praises
Cimon's civil, sensible, and polished address. But we may disregard Ion
as a mere dramatic poet who always sees in great men something upon
which to exercise his satiric vein; whereas Zeno used to invite those
who called the haughtiness of Pericles a mere courting of popularity and
affectation of grandeur, to court popularity themselves in the same
fashion, since the acting of such a part might insensibly mould their
dispositions until they resembled that of their model.

Pericles when young greatly feared the people. He had a certain personal
likeness to the despot Pisistratus; and as his own voice was sweet, and
he was ready and fluent in speech, old men who had known Pisistratus
were struck by his resemblance to him. He was also rich, of noble birth,
and had powerful friends, so that he feared he might be banished by
ostracism, and consequently held aloof from politics, but proved himself
a brave and daring soldier in the wars. But when Aristides was dead,
Themistocles banished, and Cimon generally absent on distant campaigns,
Pericles engaged in public affairs, taking the popular side, that of the
poor and many, against that of the rich and few; quite contrary to his
own feelings, which were entirely aristocratic. He feared, it seems,
that he might be suspected of a design to make himself despot, and
seeing that Cimon took the side of the nobility, and was much beloved by
them, he betook himself to the people, as a means of obtaining safety
for himself, and a strong party to combat that of Cimon. He immediately
altered his mode of life; was never seen in any street except that which
led to the market-place and the national assembly, and declined all
invitations to dinner and such like social gatherings. But Pericles
feared to make himself too common even with the people, and only
addressed them after long intervals; not speaking upon every subject,
and not constantly addressing them, but, as Critolaus says, keeping
himself like the Salaminian trireme for great crises, and allowing his
friends and the other orators to manage matters of less moment.

Wishing to adopt a style of speaking consonant with his haughty manner
and lofty spirit, Pericles made free use of the instrument which
Anaxagoras, as it were, put into his hand, and often tinged his oratory
with natural philosophy. He far surpassed all others by using this
"lofty intelligence and power of universal consummation," as the divine
Plato calls it; in addition to his natural advantages, adorning his
oratory with apt illustrations drawn from physical science. For this
reason some think that he was nicknamed the Olympian; though some refer
this to his improvement of the city by new and beautiful buildings, and
others from his power both as a politician and a general. It is not by
any means unlikely that these causes all combined to produce the name.

Pericles was very cautious about his words, and, whenever he ascended
the tribune to speak, used first to pray to the gods that nothing
unfitted for the present occasion might fall from his lips. He left no
writings, except the measures which he brought forward, and very few of
his sayings are recorded.

Thucydides represents the constitution under Pericles as a democracy in
name, but really an aristocracy, because the government was all in the
hands of one leading citizen. But as many other writers tell us that,
during his administration, the people received grants of land abroad,
and were indulged with dramatic entertainments, and payments for their
services, in consequence of which they fell into bad habits, and became
extravagant and licentious, instead of sober hard-working people as they
had been before, let us consider the history of this change, viewing it
by the light of the facts themselves. First of all, Pericles had to
measure himself with Cimon, and to transfer the affections of the people
from Cimon to himself. As he was not so rich a man as Cimon, who used
from his own ample means to give a dinner daily to any poor Athenian who
required it, clothe aged persons, and take away the fences round his
property, so that anyone might gather the fruit, Pericles, unable to vie
with him in this, turned his attention to a distribution of the public
funds among the people, at the suggestion, we are told by Aristotle, of
Damonides of Oia. By the money paid for public spectacles, for citizens
acting as jurymen, and other paid offices, and largesses, he soon won
over the people to his side, so that he was able to use them in his
attack upon the senate of the Areopagus, of which he himself was not a
member, never having been chosen _archon_, or _thesmothete_, or _king
archon_, or _polemarch_. These offices had from ancient times been
obtained by lot, and it was only through them that those who had
approved themselves in the discharge of them were advanced to the
Areopagus. For this reason it was that Pericles, when he gained strength
with the populace, destroyed this senate, making Ephialtes bring forward
a bill which restricted its judicial powers, while he himself succeeded
in getting Cimon banished by ostracism, as a friend of Sparta and a
hater of the people, although he was second to no Athenian in birth or
fortune, and won most brilliant victories over the Persians, and had
filled Athens with plunder and spoils of war. So great was the power of
Pericles with the common people.

One of the provisions of ostracism was that the person banished should
remain in exile for ten years. But during this period the Lacedæmonians
with a great force invaded the territory of Tanagra, and, as the
Athenians at once marched out to attack them, Cimon came back from
exile, took his place in full armor among the ranks of his own tribe,
and hoped by distinguishing himself in the battle among his
fellow-citizens to prove the falsehood of the Laconian sympathies with
which he had been charged. However, the friends of Pericles drove him
away, as an exile. On the other hand, Pericles fought more bravely in
that battle than he had ever fought before, and surpassed everyone in
reckless daring. The friends of Cimon also, whom Pericles had accused of
Laconian leanings, fell, all together, in their ranks; and the Athenians
felt great sorrow for their treatment of Cimon, and a great longing for
his restoration, now that they had lost a great battle on the frontier,
and expected to be hard pressed during the summer by the Lacedaemonians.
Pericles, perceiving this, lost no time in gratifying the popular wish,
but himself proposed the decree for his recall; and Cimon on his return
reconciled the two states, for he was on familiar terms with the
Spartans, who were hated by Pericles and the other leaders of the common
people. Some say that, before Cimon's recall by Pericles, a secret
compact was made with him by Elpinice, Cimon's sister, that Cimon was to
proceed on foreign service against the Persians with a fleet of two
hundred ships, while Pericles was to retain his power in the city. It is
also said that, when Cimon was being tried for his life, Elpinice
softened the resentment of Pericles, who was one of those appointed to
impeach him. When Elpinice came to beg her brother's life of him, he
answered with a smile, "Elpinice, you are too old to meddle in affairs
of this sort." But, for all that, he spoke only once, for form's sake,
and pressed Cimon less than any of his other prosecutors. How, then, can
one put any faith in Idomeneus, when he accuses Pericles of procuring
the assassination of his friend and colleague Ephialtes, because he was
jealous of his reputation? This seems an ignoble calumny which Idomeneus
has drawn from some obscure source to fling at a man who, no doubt, was
not faultless, but of a generous spirit and noble mind, incapable of
entertaining so savage and brutal a design. Ephialtes was disliked and
feared by the nobles, and was inexorable in punishing those who wronged
the people; wherefore his enemies had him assassinated by means of
Aristodicus of Tanagra. This we are told by Aristotle. Cimon died in
Cyprus while in command of the Athenian forces.

The nobles now perceived that Pericles was the most important man in the
state, and far more powerful than any other citizen; wherefore, as they
still hoped to check his authority, and not allow him to be omnipotent,
they set up Thucydides, of the township of Alopecae, as his rival, a man
of good sense and a relative of Cimon, but less of a warrior and more of
a politician, who, by watching his opportunities, and opposing Pericles
in debate, soon brought about a balance of power. He did not allow the
nobles to mix themselves up with the people in the public assembly as
they had been wont to do, so that their dignity was lost among the
masses; but he collected them into a separate body, and by thus
concentrating their strength was able to use it to counterbalance that
of the other party. From the beginning these two factions had been but
imperfectly welded together, because their tendencies were different;
but now the struggle for power between Pericles and Thucydides drew a
sharp line of demarcation between them, and one was called the party of
the Many, the other that of the Few. Pericles now courted the people in
every way, constantly arranging public spectacles, festivals, and
processions in the city, by which he educated the Athenians to take
pleasure in refined amusements; and also he sent out sixty triremes to
cruise every year, in which many of the people served for hire for eight
months, learning and practising seamanship. Besides this he sent a
thousand settlers to the Chersonese, five hundred to Naxos, half as many
to Andros, a thousand to dwell among the Thracian tribe of the Bisaltae,
and others to the new colony in Italy founded by the city of Sybaris,
which was named Thurii. By this means he relieved the state of numerous
idle agitators, assisted the necessitous, and overawed the allies of
Athens by placing his colonists near them to watch their behavior.

The building of the temples, by which Athens was adorned, the people
delighted, and the rest of the world astonished, and which now alone
prove that the tales of the ancient power and glory of Greece are no
fables, was what particularly excited the spleen of the opposite
faction, who inveighed against him in the public assembly, declaring
that the Athenians had disgraced themselves by transferring the common
treasury of the Greeks from the island of Delos to their own custody.
"Pericles himself," they urged, "has taken away the only possible excuse
for such an act--the fear that it might be exposed to the attacks of the
Persians when at Delos, whereas it would be safe at Athens. Greece has
been outraged, and feels itself openly tyrannized over, when it sees us
using the funds--which we extorted from it for the war against the
Persians--for gilding and beautifying our city as if it were a vain
woman, and adorning it with precious marbles and statues and temples
worth a thousand talents." To this Pericles replied that the allies had
no right to consider how their money was spent, so long as Athens
defended them from the Persians; while they supplied neither horses,
ships, nor men, but merely money, which the Athenians had a right to
spend as they pleased, provided they afforded them that security which
it purchased. It was right, he argued, that after the city had provided
all that was necessary for war, it should devote its surplus money to
the erection of buildings which would be a glory to it for all ages,
while these works would create plenty by leaving no man unemployed, and
encouraging all sorts of handicraft, so that nearly the whole city would
earn wages, and thus derive both its beauty and its profit from itself.
For those who were in the flower of their age, military service offered
a means of earning money from the common stock; while, as he did not
wish the mechanics and lower classes to be without their share, nor yet
to see them receive it without doing work for it, he had laid the
foundations of great edifices which would require industries of every
kind to complete them; and he had done this in the interests of the
lower classes, who thus, although they remained at home, would have just
as good a claim to their share of the public funds as those who were
serving at sea, in garrison, or in the field. The different materials
used, such as stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony, cypress-wood, and so
forth, would require special artisans for each, such as carpenters,
modelers, smiths, stone-masons, dyers, melters and moulders of gold,
and ivory painters, embroiderers, workers in relief; and also men to
bring them to the city, such as sailors and captains of ships and pilots
for such as came by sea; and, for those who came by land, carriage
builders, horse breeders, drivers, ropemakers, linen manufacturers,
shoemakers, road menders, and miners. Each trade, moreover, employed a
number of unskilled laborers, so that, in a word, there would be work
for persons of every age and every class, and general prosperity would
be the result.

These buildings were of immense size, and unequalled in beauty and
grace, as the workmen endeavored to make the execution surpass the
design in beauty; but what was most remarkable was the speed with which
they were built. All these edifices, each of which one would have
thought it would have taken many generations to complete, were all
finished during the most brilliant period of one man's administration.
In beauty each of them at once appeared venerable as soon as it was
built; but even at the present day the work looks as fresh as ever, for
they bloom with an eternal freshness which defies time, and seems to
make the work instinct with an unfading spirit of youth.

The overseer and manager of the whole was Phidias, although there were
other excellent architects and workmen, such as Callicrates and Ictinus,
who built the Parthenon on the site of the old Hecatompedon, which had
been destroyed by the Persians, and Coroebus, who began to build the
Temple of Initiation at Eleusis, but who only lived to see the columns
erected and the architraves placed upon them. On his death, Metagenes,
of Xypete, added the frieze and the upper row of columns, and Xenocles,
of Cholargos, crowned it with the domed roof over the shrine. As to the
long wall, about which Socrates says that he heard Pericles bring
forward a motion, Callicrates undertook to build it. The Odeum, which
internally consisted of many rows of seats and many columns, and
externally of a roof sloping on all sides from a central point, was said
to have been built in imitation of the king of Persia's tent, and was
built under Pericles' direction.

The Propylaea, before the Acropolis, were finished in five years by
Mnesicles the architect; and a miraculous incident during the work
seemed to show that the goddess did not disapprove, but rather
encouraged and assisted the building. The most energetic and active of
the workmen fell from a great height, and lay in a dangerous condition,
given over by his doctors. Pericles grieved much for him; but the
goddess appeared to him in a dream, and suggested a course of treatment
by which Pericles quickly healed the workman. In consequence of this, he
set up the brazen statue of Athene the Healer, near the old altar in the
Acropolis. The golden statue of the goddess was made by Phidias, and his
name appears upon the basement in the inscription. Almost everything was
in his hands, and he gave his orders to all the workmen--as has been
said before--because of his friendship with Pericles.

When the speakers of Thucydides' party complained that Pericles had
wasted the public money, and destroyed the revenue, he asked the people
in the assembly whether they thought he had spent much. When they
answered, "Very much indeed," he said in reply; "Do not, then, put it
down to the public account, but to mine; and I will inscribe my name
upon all the public buildings." When Pericles said this, the people,
either in admiration of his magnificence of manner, or being eager to
bear their share in the glory of the new buildings, shouted to him with
one accord to take what money he pleased from the treasury, and spend it
as he pleased, without stint. And finally, he underwent the trial of
ostracism with Thucydides, and not only succeeded in driving him into
exile, but broke up his party.

As now there was no opposition to encounter in the city, and all parties
had been blended into one, Pericles undertook the sole administration of
the home and foreign affairs of Athens, dealing with the public revenue,
the army, the navy, the islands and maritime affairs, and the great
sources of strength which Athens derived from her alliances, as well
with Greek as with foreign princes and states. Henceforth he became
quite a different man: he no longer gave way to the people, and ceased
to watch the breath of popular favor; but he changed the loose and
licentious democracy which had hitherto existed, into a stricter
aristocratic, or rather monarchical, form of government. This he used
honorably and unswervingly for the public benefit, finding the people,
as a rule, willing to second the measures which he explained to them to
be necessary and to which he asked their consent, but occasionally
having to use violence, and to force them, much against their will, to
do what was expedient; like a physician dealing with some complicated
disorder, who at one time allows his patient innocent recreation, and at
another inflicts upon him sharp pains and bitter though salutary
draughts. Every possible kind of disorder was to be found among a people
possessing so great an empire as the Athenians, and he alone was able to
bring them into harmony by playing alternately upon their hopes and
fears, checking them when overconfident, and raising their spirits when
they were cast down and disheartened. Thus, as Plato says, he was able
to prove that oratory is the art of influencing men's minds, and to use
it in its highest application, when it deals with men's passions and
characters, which, like certain strings of a musical instrument, require
a skilful and delicate touch. The secret of his power is to be found,
however, as Thucydides says, not so much in his mere oratory as in his
pure and blameless life, because he was so well known to be
incorruptible, and indifferent to money; for though he made the city,
which was a great one, into the greatest and richest city of Greece, and
though he himself became more powerful than many independent sovereigns,
who were able to leave their kingdoms to their sons, yet Pericles did
not increase by one single drachma the estate which he received from his
father. For forty years he held the first place among such men as
Ephialtes, Leocrates, Myronides, Cimon, Tolmides, and Thucydides; and,
after the fall and banishment of Thucydides by ostracism, he united in
himself for five-and-twenty years all the various offices of state,
which were supposed to last only for one year; and yet during the whole
of that period proved himself incorruptible by bribes.

As the Lacedaemonians began to be jealous of the prosperity of the
Athenians, Pericles, wishing to raise the spirit of the people and to
make them feel capable of immense operations, passed a decree, inviting
all the Greeks, whether inhabiting Europe or Asia, whether living in
large cities or small ones, to send representatives to a meeting at
Athens to deliberate about the restoration of the Greek temples which
had been burned by the barbarians, about the sacrifices which were due
in consequence of the vows which they had made to the gods on behalf of
Greece before joining battle, and about the sea, that all men might be
able to sail upon it in peace and without fear. To carry out this decree
twenty men, selected from the citizens over fifty years of age, were
sent out, five of whom invited the Ionian and Dorian Greeks in Asia and
the islands as far as Lesbos and Rhodes, five went to the inhabitants of
the Hellespont and Thrace as far as Byzantium, and five more proceeded
to Boeotia, Phocis, and Peloponnesus, passing from thence through Locris
to the neighboring continent as far as Acarnania and Ambracia; while the
remainder journeyed through Euboea to the Oetaeans and the Malian Gulf,
and to the Achaeans of Phthia and the Thessalians, urging them to join
the assembly and take part in the deliberations concerning the peace and
well-being of Greece. However, nothing was effected, and the cities
never assembled, in consequence it is said of the covert hostility of
the Lacedaemonians, and because the attempt was first made in
Peloponnesus and failed there: yet I have inserted an account of it in
order to show the lofty spirit and the magnificent designs of Pericles.

In his campaigns he was chiefly remarkable for caution, for he would
not, if he could help it, begin a battle of which the issue was
doubtful; nor did he wish to emulate those generals who have won
themselves a great reputation by running risks and trusting to good
luck. But he ever used to say to his countrymen, that none of them
should come by their deaths through any act of his. Observing that
Tolmides, the son of Tolmaeus, elated by previous successes and by the
credit which he had gained as a general, was about to invade Boeotia in
a reckless manner, and had persuaded a thousand young men to follow him
without any support whatever, he endeavored to stop him, and made that
memorable saying in the public assembly, that if Tolmides would not take
the advice of Pericles, he would at any rate do well to consult that
best of advisers, Time. This speech had but little success at the time;
but when, a few days afterward, the news came that Tolmides had fallen
in action at Coronea, and many noble citizens with him, Pericles was
greatly respected and admired as a wise and patriotic man.

His most successful campaign was that in the Chersonesus, which proved
the salvation of the Greeks residing there: for he not only settled a
thousand colonists there, and thus increased the available force of the
cities, but built a continuous line of fortifications reaching across
the isthmus from one sea to the other, by which he shut off the
Thracians, who had previously ravaged the peninsula, and put an end to a
constant and harassing border warfare to which the settlers were
exposed, as they had for neighbors tribes of wild plundering barbarians.

But that by which he obtained most glory and renown was when he started
from Pegae, in the Megarian territory, and sailed round the Peloponnesus
with a fleet of a hundred triremes; for he not only laid waste much of
the country near the coast, as Tolmides had previously done, but he
proceeded far inland, away from his ships, leading the troops who were
on board, and terrified the inhabitants so much that they shut
themselves up in their strongholds. The men of Sicyon alone ventured to
meet him at Nemea, and them he overthrew in a pitched battle, and
erected a trophy. Next he took on board troops from the friendly
district of Achaia, and, crossing over to the opposite side of the
Corinthian Gulf, coasted along past the mouth of the river Achelous,
overran Acarnania, drove the people of Oeneadae to the shelter of their
city walls, and after ravaging the country returned home, having made
himself a terror to his enemies, and done good service to Athens; for
not the least casualty, even by accident, befell the troops under his
command.

When he sailed into the Black Sea with a great and splendidly equipped
fleet, he assisted the Greek cities there, and treated them with
consideration, and showed the neighboring savage tribes and their chiefs
the greatness of his force, and his confidence in his power, by sailing
where he pleased, and taking complete control over that sea. He left at
Sinope thirteen ships, and a land force under the command of Lamachus,
to act against Timesileon, who had made himself despot of that city.
When he and his party were driven out, Pericles passed a decree that six
hundred Athenian volunteers should sail to Sinope, and become citizens
there, receiving the houses and lands which had formerly been in the
possession of the despot and his party. But in other cases he would not
agree to the impulsive proposals of the Athenians, and he opposed them
when, elated by their power and good fortune, they talked of recovering
Egypt and attacking the seaboard of the Persian empire. Many, too, were
inflamed with that ill-starred notion of an attempt on Sicily, which was
afterward blown into a flame by Alcibiades and other orators. Some even
dreamed of the conquest of Etruria and Carthage, in consequence of the
greatness which the Athenian empire had already reached, and the full
tide of success which seemed to attend it.

Pericles, however, restrained these outbursts, and would not allow the
people to meddle with foreign states, but used the power of Athens
chiefly to preserve and guard her already existing empire, thinking it
to be of paramount importance to oppose the Lacedaemonians, a task to
which he bent all his energies, as is proved by many of his acts,
especially in connection with the Sacred War. In this war the
Lacedaemonians sent a force to Delphi, and made the Phocians, who held
it, give it up to the people of Delphi: but as soon as they were gone
Pericles made an expedition into the country, and restored the temple to
the Phocians; and as the Lacedaemonians had scratched the oracle which
the Delphians had given them, on the forehead of the brazen wolf there,
Pericles got a response from the oracle for the Athenians, and carved it
on the right side of the same wolf.

Events proved that Pericles was right in confining the Athenian empire
to Greece. First of all Euboea revolted, and he was obliged to lead an
army to subdue that island. Shortly after this, news came that the
Megarians had become hostile, and that an army, under the command of
Plistoanax, king of the Lacedaemonians, was menacing the frontier of
Attica. Pericles now in all haste withdrew his troops from Euboea, to
meet the invader. He did not venture on an engagement with the numerous
and warlike forces of the enemy, although repeatedly invited by them to
fight: but, observing that Plistoanax was a very young man, and entirely
under the influence of Cleandrides, whom the _ephors_ had sent to act as
his tutor and counsellor because of his tender years, he opened secret
negotiations with the latter, who at once, for a bribe, agreed to
withdraw the Peloponnesians from Attica. When their army returned and
dispersed, the Lacedaemonians were so incensed that they imposed a fine
on their king, and condemned Cleandrides, who fled the country, to be
put to death. This Cleandrides was the father of Gylippus, who caused
the ruin of the Athenian expedition in Sicily. Avarice seems to have
been hereditary in the family, for Gylippus himself, after brilliant
exploits in war, was convicted of taking bribes, and banished from
Sparta in disgrace.

When Pericles submitted the accounts of the campaign to the people,
there was an item of ten talents, "for a necessary purpose," which the
people passed without any questioning, or any curiosity to learn the
secret. Some historians, among whom is Theophrastus the philosopher, say
that Pericles sent ten talents annually to Sparta, by means of which he
bribed the chief magistrates to defer the war, thus not buying peace,
but time to make preparations for a better defence. He immediately
turned his attention to the insurgents in Euboea, and proceeding thither
with a fleet of fifty sail, and five thousand heavy armed troops, he
reduced their cities to submission. He banished from Chalcis the
"equestrian order," as it was called, consisting of men of wealth and
station; and he drove all the inhabitants of Hestiaea out of their
country, replacing them by Athenian settlers. He treated these people
with this pitiless severity, because they had captured an Athenian ship,
and put its crew to the sword. After this, as the Athenians and
Lacedaemonians made a truce for thirty years, Pericles decreed the
expedition against Samos, on the pretext that they had disregarded the
commands of the Athenians to cease from their war with the Milesians.

Pericles is accused of going to war with Samos to save the Milesians.
These states were at war about the possession of the city of Priene, and
the Samians, who were victorious, would not lay down their arms and
allow the Athenians to settle the matter by arbitration, as they ordered
them to do. For this reason Pericles proceeded to Samos, put an end to
the oligarchical form of government there, and sent fifty hostages and
as many children to Lemnos, to insure the good behavior of the leading
men. It is said that each of these hostages offered him a talent for his
own freedom, and that much more was offered by that party which was
loath to see a democracy established in the city. Besides all this,
Pissuthnes the Persian, who had a liking for the Samians, sent and
offered him ten thousand pieces of gold if he would spare the city.
Pericles, however, took none of these bribes, but dealt with Samos as he
had previously determined, and returned to Athens. The Samians now at
once revolted, as Pissuthnes managed to get them back their hostages,
and furnished them with the means of carrying on the war. Pericles now
made a second expedition against them, and found them in no mind to
submit quietly, but determined to dispute the empire of the seas with
the Athenians. Pericles gained a signal victory over them in a sea-fight
off the Goats' Island, beating a fleet of seventy ships with only
forty-four, twenty of which were transports.

Simultaneously with his victory and the flight of the enemy he obtained
command of the harbor of Samos, and besieged the Samians in their city.
They, in spite of their defeat, still possessed courage enough to sally
out and fight a battle under the walls; but soon a larger force arrived
from Athens, and the Samians were completely blockaded.

Pericles now with sixty ships sailed out of the Archipelago into the
Mediterranean, according to the most current report intending to meet
the Phoenician fleet which was coming to help the Samians, but,
according to Stesimbrotus, with the intention of attacking Cyprus, which
seems improbable. Whatever his intention may have been, his expedition
was a failure, for Melissus, the son of Ithagenes, a man of culture, who
was then in command of the Samian forces, conceiving a contempt for the
small force of the Athenians and the want of experience of their leaders
after Pericles' departure, persuaded his countrymen to attack them. In
the battle the Samians proved victorious, taking many Athenians
prisoners, and destroying many of their ships. By this victory they
obtained command of the sea, and were able to supply themselves with
more warlike stores than they had possessed before. Aristotle even says
that Pericles himself was before this beaten by Melissus in a sea-fight.
The Samians branded the figure of an owl on the foreheads of their
Athenian prisoners, to revenge themselves for the branding of their own
prisoners by the Athenians with the figure of a _samaina_. This is a
ship having a beak turned up like a swine's snout, but with a roomy
hull, so as both to carry a large cargo and sail fast. This class of
vessel is called _samaina_ because it was first built at Samos by
Polycrates, the despot of that island.

When Pericles heard of the disaster which had befallen his army, he
returned in all haste to assist them. He beat Melissus, who came out to
meet him, and, after putting the enemy to rout, at once built a wall
round their city, preferring to reduce it by blockade to risking the
lives of his countrymen in an assault. In the ninth month of the siege
the Samians surrendered. Pericles demolished their walls, confiscated
their fleet, and imposed a heavy fine upon them, some part of which was
paid at once by the Samians, who gave hostages for the payment of the
remainder at fixed periods.

Pericles, after the reduction of Samos, returned to Athens, where he
buried those who had fallen in the war in a magnificent manner, and was
much admired for the funeral oration which, as is customary, was spoken
by him over the graves of his countrymen. Ion says that his victory over
the Samians wonderfully flattered his vanity. Agamemnon, he was wont to
say, took ten years to take a barbarian city, but he in nine months had
made himself master of the first and most powerful city in Ionia. And
the comparison was not an unjust one, for truly the war was a very great
undertaking, and its issue quite uncertain, since, as Thucydides tells
us, the Samians came very near to wresting the empire of the sea from
the Athenians.

After these events, as the clouds were gathering for the Peloponnesian
war, Pericles persuaded the Athenians to send assistance to the people
of Corcyra, who were at war with the Corinthians, and thus to attach to
their own side an island with a powerful naval force, at a moment when
the Peloponnesians had all but declared war against them.

When the people passed this decree, Pericles sent only ten ships under
the command of Lacedaemonius, the son of Cimon, as if he designed a
deliberate insult; for the house of Cimon was on peculiarly friendly
terms with the Lacedaemonians. His design in sending Lacedaemonius out,
against his will, and with so few ships, was that if he performed
nothing brilliant he might be accused, even more than he was already, of
leaning to the side of the Spartans. Indeed, by all means in his power,
he always threw obstacles in the way of the advancement of Cimon's
family, representing that by their very names they were aliens, one son
being named Lacedaemonius, another Thessalus, another Elius. Moreover,
the mother of all three was an Arcadian.

Now Pericles was much reproached for sending these ten ships, which were
of little value to the Corcyreans, and gave a great handle to his
enemies to use against him, and in consequence sent a larger force after
them to Corcyra, which arrived there after the battle. The Corinthians,
enraged at this, complained in the congress of Sparta of the conduct of
the Athenians, as did also the Megarians, who said that they were
excluded from every market and every harbor which was in Athenian hands,
contrary to the ancient rights and common privileges of the Hellenic
race. The people of Aegina also considered themselves to be oppressed
and ill-treated, and secretly bemoaned their grievances in the ears of
the Spartans, for they dared not openly bring any charges against the
Athenians. At this time, too, Potidaea, a city subject to Athens, but a
colony of Corinth, revolted, and its siege materially hastened the
outbreak of the war. Archidamus, indeed, the king of the Lacedaemonians,
sent ambassadors to Athens, was willing to submit all disputed points to
arbitration, and endeavored to moderate the excitement of his allies, so
that war probably would not have broken out if the Athenians could have
been persuaded to rescind their decree of exclusion against the
Megarians, and to come to terms with them. And, for this reason,
Pericles, who was particularly opposed to this, and urged the people not
to give way to the Megarians, alone bore the blame of having begun the
war.

Pericles passed a decree for a herald to be sent to the Megarians, and
then to go on to the Lacedaemonians to complain of their conduct. This
decree of Pericles is worded in a candid and reasonable manner; but the
herald, Anthemocritus, was thought to have met his death at the hands of
the Megarians, and Charinus passed a decree to the effect that Athens
should wage war against them to the death, without truce or armistice;
that any Megarian found in Attica should be punished with death, and
that the generals, when taking the usual oath for each year, should
swear in addition that they would invade the Megarian territory twice
every year; and that Anthemocritus should be buried near the city gate
leading into the Thriasian plain, which is now called the Double Gate.
How the dispute originated it is hard to say, but all writers agree in
throwing on Pericles the blame of refusing to reverse the decree.

Now, as the Lacedaemonians knew that if he could be removed from power
they would find the Athenians much more easy to deal with, they bade
them "drive forth the accursed thing," alluding to Pericles' descent
from the Alcmaeonidae by his mother's side, as we are told by Thucydides
the historian. But this attempt had just the contrary effect to that
which they intended; for, instead of suspicion and dislike, Pericles met
with much greater honor and respect from his countrymen than before,
because they saw that he was an object of especial dislike to the enemy.
For this reason, before the Peloponnesians, under Archidamus, invaded
Attica, he warned the Athenians that if Archidamus, when he laid waste
everything else, spared his own private estate because of the friendly
private relations existing between them, or in order to give his
personal enemies a ground for impeaching him, he should give both the
land and the farm buildings upon it to the state.

The Lacedaemonians invaded Attica with a great host of their own troops
and those of their allies, led by Archidamus, their king. They
proceeded, ravaging the country as they went, as far as Acharnae (close
to Athens), where they encamped, imagining that the Athenians would
never endure to see them there, but would be driven by pride and shame
to come out and fight them. However, Pericles thought that it would be a
very serious matter to fight for the very existence of Athens against
sixty thousand Peloponnesian and Boeotian heavy-armed troops, and so he
pacified those who were dissatisfied at his inactivity by pointing out
that trees when cut down quickly grow again, but that when the men of a
state are lost, it is hard to raise up others to take their place. He
would not call an assembly of the people, because he feared that they
would force him to act against his better judgment, but, just as the
captain of a ship, when a storm comes on at sea, places everything in
the best trim to meet it, and trusting to his own skill and seamanship,
disregarding the tears and entreaties of the seasick and terrified
passengers, so did Pericles shut the gates of Athens, place sufficient
forces to insure the safety of the city at all points, and calmly carry
out his own policy, taking little heed of the noisy grumblings of the
discontented. Many of his friends besought him to attack, many of his
enemies threatened him and abused him, and many songs and offensive
jests were written about him, speaking of him as a coward, and one who
was betraying the city to its enemies. Cleon too attacked him, using the
anger which the citizens felt against him to advance his own personal
popularity.

Pericles was unmoved by any of these attacks, but quietly endured all
this storm of obloquy. He sent a fleet of a hundred ships to attack
Peloponnesus, but did not sail with it himself, remaining at home to
keep a tight hand over Athens until the Peloponnesians drew off their
forces. He regained his popularity with the common people, who suffered
much from the war, by giving them allowances of money from the public
revenue, and grants of land; for he drove out the entire population of
the island of Aegina, and divided the land by lot among the Athenians. A
certain amount of relief also was experienced by reflecting upon the
injuries which they were inflicting on the enemy; for the fleet as it
sailed round Peloponnesus destroyed many small villages and cities, and
ravaged a great extent of country, while Pericles himself led an
expedition into the territory of Megara and laid it all waste. By this
it is clear that the allies, although they did much damage to the
Athenians, yet suffered equally themselves, and never could have
protracted the war for such a length of time as it really lasted, but,
as Pericles foretold, must soon have desisted had not Providence
interfered and confounded human counsels. For now the pestilence fell
among the Athenians, and cut off the flower of their youth. Suffering
both in body and mind they raved against Pericles, just as people when
delirious with disease attack their fathers or their physicians. They
endeavored to ruin him, urged on by his personal enemies, who assured
them that he was the author of the plague, because he had brought all
the country people into the city, where they were compelled to live
during the heat of summer, crowded together in small rooms and stifling
tents, living an idle life too, and breathing foul air instead of the
pure country breeze to which they were accustomed. The cause of this,
they said, was the man who, when the war began, admitted the masses of
the country people into the city, and then made no use of them, but
allowed them to be penned up together like cattle, and transmit the
contagion from one to another, without devising any remedy or
alleviation of their sufferings.

Hoping to relieve them somewhat, and also to annoy the enemy, Pericles
manned a hundred and fifty ships, placed on board, besides the sailors,
many brave infantry and cavalry soldiers, and was about to put to sea.
The Athenians conceived great hopes, and the enemy no less terror from
so large an armament. When all was ready, and Pericles himself had just
embarked in his own trireme, an eclipse of the sun took place, producing
total darkness, and all men were terrified at so great a portent.
Pericles sailed with the fleet, but did nothing worthy of so great a
force. He besieged the sacred city of Epidaurus, but, although he had
great hopes of taking it, he failed on account of the plague, which
destroyed not only his own men, but every one who came in contact with
them. After this he again endeavored to encourage the Athenians, to whom
he had become an object of dislike. However, he did not succeed in
pacifying them, but they condemned him by a public vote to be general no
more, and to pay a fine which is stated at the lowest estimate to have
been fifteen talents, and at the highest fifty. This was carried,
according to Idomeneus, by Cleon, but, according to Theophrastus, by
Simmias; while Heraclides of Pontus says that it was effected by
Lacratides.

He soon regained his public position, for the people's outburst of anger
was quenched by the blow they had dealt him, just as a bee leaves its
sting in the wound; but his private affairs were in great distress and
disorder, as he had lost many of his relatives during the plague, while
others were estranged from him on political grounds. Yet he would not
yield, nor abate his firmness and constancy of spirit because of these
afflictions, but was not observed to weep or mourn, or attend the
funeral of any of his relations, until he lost Paralus, the last of his
legitimate offspring. Crushed by this blow, he tried in vain to keep up
his grand air of indifference, and when carrying a garland to lay upon
the corpse he was overpowered by his feelings, so as to burst into a
passion of tears and sobs, which he had never done before in his whole
life.

Athens made trial of her other generals and public men to conduct her
affairs, but none appeared to be of sufficient weight or reputation to
have such a charge intrusted to him. The city longed for Pericles, and
invited him again to lead its counsels and direct its armies; and he,
although dejected in spirits and living in seclusion in his own house,
was yet persuaded by Alcibiades and his other friends to resume the
direction of affairs.

After this it appears that Pericles was attacked by the plague, not
acutely or continuously, as in most cases, but in a slow wasting
fashion, exhibiting many varieties of symptoms, and gradually
undermining his strength. As he was now on his death-bed, the most
distinguished of the citizens and his surviving friends collected round
him and spoke admiringly of his nobleness and immense power, enumerating
also the number of his exploits, and the trophies which he had set up
for victories gained; for while in chief command he had won no less than
nine victories for Athens.

Events soon made the loss of Pericles felt and regretted by the
Athenians. Those who during his lifetime had complained that his power
completely threw them into the shade, when after his death they had made
trial of other orators and statesmen, were obliged to confess that with
all his arrogance no man ever was really more moderate, and that his
real mildness in dealing with men was as remarkable as his apparent
pride and assumption. His power, which had been so grudged and envied,
and called monarchy and despotism, now was proved to have been the
saving of the State; such an amount of corrupt dealing and wickedness
suddenly broke out in public affairs, which he before had crushed and
forced to hide itself, and so prevented its becoming incurable through
impunity and license.




GREAT PLAGUE AT ATHENS

B.C. 430

GEORGE GROTE


(Almost at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war, when the prosperity
of Athens had placed her at the height of her power and given her
unquestioned supremacy among the Grecian states, her strength was
greatly impaired by a visitation against which there was nothing in
military prowess or patriotic pride and devotion that could prevail.

It is one of the tragic contrasts of history--the picture of Athens, in
her full triumph and glory, smitten, at a moment when she needed to put
forth her full strength, by a deadly foe against whose might mortal arms
were vain. Her citizens were rejoicing in her social no less than her
military preëminence, and they had already been trained in the hardships
necessary to be endured in defence of an invaded country. Again they
were prepared to undergo whatever service might be laid upon them in her
behalf. They could foresee the arduous tasks and inevitable sufferings
of a great war, but had no warning of an impending calamity far worse
than those which even war, though always attended with horrors, usually
entails. Pericles had lately delivered his great funeral oration at the
public interment of soldiers who had fallen for Athens. "The bright
colors and tone of cheerful confidence," says Grote, whose account of
the plague follows, "which pervaded the discourse of Pericles, appear
the more striking from being in immediate antecedence to the awful
description of this distemper."

The death of Pericles himself, who directly or indirectly fell a victim
to the prevailing pestilence, marked a grievous crisis for Athens in
what was already become a measureless public woe. During the autumn of
the year B.C. 427 the epidemic again broke out, after a considerable
intermission, and for one year continued, "to the sad ruin both of the
strength and the comfort of the city.")


At the close of one year after the attempted surprise of Plataea by the
Thebans, the belligerent parties in Greece remained in an unaltered
position as to relative strength. Nothing decisive had been accomplished
on either side, either by the invasion of Attica or by the flying
descents round the coast of Peloponnesus. In spite of mutual damage
inflicted--doubtless in the greatest measure upon Attica--no progress
was yet made toward the fulfilment of those objects which had induced
the Peloponnesians to go to war. Especially the most pressing among all
their wishes--the relief of Potidaea--was in no way advanced; for the
Athenians had not found it necessary to relax the blockade of that city,
The result of the first year's operations had thus been to disappoint
the hopes of the Corinthians and the other ardent instigators of war,
while it justified the anticipations both of Pericles and of Archidamus.

A second devastation of Attica was resolved upon for the commencement of
spring; and measures were taken for carrying it all over that territory,
since the settled policy of Athens, not to hazard a battle with the
invaders, was now ascertained. About the end of March or beginning of
April the entire Peloponnesian force--two-thirds from each confederate
city as before--was assembled under the command of Archidamus and
marched into Attica. This time they carried the work of systematic
destruction not merely over the Thriasian plain and the plain
immediately near to Athens, as before; but also to the more southerly
portions of Attica, down even as far as the mines of Laurium. They
traversed and ravaged both the eastern and the western coast, remaining
not less than forty days in the country. They found the territory
deserted as before, all the population having retired within the walls.

In regard to this second invasion, Pericles recommended the same
defensive policy as he had applied to the first; and apparently the
citizens had now come to acquiesce in it, if not willingly, at least
with a full conviction of its necessity. But a new visitation had now
occurred, diverting their attention from the invader, though enormously
aggravating their sufferings. A few days after Archidamus entered
Attica, a pestilence or epidemic sickness broke out unexpectedly at
Athens.

It appears that this terrific disorder had been raging for some time
throughout the regions round the Mediterranean; having begun, as was
believed, in Ethiopia--thence passing into Egypt and Libya, and
overrunning a considerable portion of Asia under the Persian government.
About sixteen years before, there had been a similar calamity in Rome
and in various parts of Italy. Recently it had been felt in Lemnos and
some other islands of the Aegean, yet seemingly not with such intensity
as to excite much notice generally in the Grecian world: at length it
passed to Athens, and first showed itself in the Piraeus. The progress
of the disease was as rapid and destructive as its appearance had been
sudden; while the extraordinary accumulation of people within the city
and long walls, in consequence of the presence of the invaders in the
country, was but too favorable to every form of contagion. Families
crowded together in close cabins and places of temporary
shelter--throughout a city constructed, like most of those in Greece,
with little regard to the conditions of salubrity and in a state of
mental chagrin from the forced abandonment and sacrifice of their
properties in the country, transmitted the disorder with fatal facility
from one to the other. Beginning as it did about the middle of April,
the increasing heat of summer further aided the disorder, the symptoms
of which, alike violent and sudden, made themselves the more remarked
because the year was particularly exempt from maladies of every other
description.

Of this plague--or, more properly, eruptive typhoid fever, distinct
from, yet analogous to, the smallpox--a description no less clear than
impressive has been left by the historian Thucydides, himself not only a
spectator but a sufferer. It is not one of the least of his merits, that
his notice of the symptoms, given at so early a stage of medical science
and observation, is such as to instruct the medical reader of the
present age, and to enable the malady to be understood and identified.
The observations with which that notice is ushered in deserve particular
attention. "In respect to this distemper (he says), let every man,
physician or not, say what he thinks respecting the source from whence
it may probably have arisen, and respecting the causes which he deems
sufficiently powerful to have produced so great a revolution. But I,
having myself had the distemper, and having seen others suffering under
it, will state _what it actually was_, and will indicate in addition
such other matters as will furnish any man, who lays them to heart, with
knowledge and the means of calculation beforehand, in case the same
misfortune should ever occur again."

To record past facts, as a basis for rational prevision in regard to the
future--the same sentiment which Thucydides mentions in his preface, as
having animated him to the composition of his history--was at that time
a duty so little understood that we have reason to admire not less the
manner in which he performs it in practice than the distinctness with
which he conceives it in theory. We infer from his language that
speculation in his day was active respecting the causes of this plague,
according to the vague and fanciful physics, and scanty stock of
ascertained facts, which was all that could then be consulted. By
resisting the itch of theorizing from one of those loose hypotheses
which then appeared plausibly to explain everything, he probably
renounced the point of view from which most credit and interest would be
derivable at the time. But his simple and precise summary of observed
facts carries with it an imperishable value, and even affords grounds
for imagining that he was no stranger to the habits and training of his
contemporary Hippocrates, and the other Asclepiads of Cos.

It is hardly within the province of a historian of Greece to repeat
after Thucydides the painful enumeration of symptoms, violent in the
extreme and pervading every portion of the bodily system, which marked
this fearful disorder. Beginning in Piraeus, it quickly passed into the
city, and both the one and the other was speedily filled with sickness
and suffering, the like of which had never before been known. The
seizures were sudden, and a large proportion of the sufferers perished
after deplorable agonies on the seventh or on the ninth day. Others,
whose strength of constitution carried them over this period, found
themselves the victims of exhausting and incurable diarrhoea afterward;
with others again, after traversing both these stages, the distemper
fixed itself in some particular member, the eyes, the genitals, the
hands, or the feet, which were rendered permanently useless, or in some
cases amputated, even where the patient himself recovered.

There were also some whose recovery was attended with a total loss of
memory, so that they no more knew themselves or recognized their
friends. No treatment or remedy appearing, except in accidental cases,
to produce any beneficial effect, the physicians or surgeons whose aid
was invoked became completely at fault. While trying their accustomed
means without avail, they soon ended by catching the malady themselves
and perishing. The charms and incantations, to which the unhappy patient
resorted, were not likely to be more efficacious. While some asserted
that the Peloponnesians had poisoned the cisterns of water, others
referred the visitation to the wrath of the gods, and especially to
Apollo, known by hearers of the _Iliad_ as author of pestilence in the
Greek host before Troy. It was remembered that this Delphian god had
promised the Lacedaemonians, in reply to their application immediately
before the war, that he would assist them whether invoked or uninvoked;
and the disorder now raging was ascribed to the intervention of their
irresistible ally; while the elderly men further called to mind an
oracular verse sung in the time of their youth: "The Dorian war will
come, and pestilence along with it." Under the distress which suggested,
and was reciprocally aggravated by these gloomy ideas, prophets were
consulted, and supplications with solemn procession were held at the
temples, to appease the divine wrath.

When it was found that neither the priest nor the physician could retard
the spread or mitigate the intensity of the disorder, the Athenians
abandoned themselves to despair, and the space within the walls became a
scene of desolating misery. Every man attacked with the malady at once
lost his courage--a state of depression itself among the worst features
of the case, which made him lie down and die, without any attempt to
seek for preservatives. And although at first friends and relatives lent
their aid to tend the sick with the usual family sympathies, yet so
terrible was the number of these attendants who perished, "like sheep,"
from such contact, that at length no man would thus expose himself;
while the most generous spirits, who persisted longest in the discharge
of their duty, were carried off in the greatest numbers. The patient was
thus left to die alone and unheeded. Sometimes all the inmates of a
house were swept away one after the other, no man being willing to go
near it: desertion on the one hand, attendance on the other, both tended
to aggravate the calamity. There remained only those who, having had the
disorder and recovered, were willing to tend the sufferers.

These men formed the single exception to the all-pervading misery of the
time--for the disorder seldom attacked anyone twice, and when it did the
second attack was never fatal. Elate with their own escape, they deemed
themselves out of the reach of all disease, and were full of
compassionate kindness for others whose sufferings were just beginning.
It was from them too that the principal attention to the bodies of
deceased victims proceeded: for such was the state of dismay and sorrow
that even the nearest relatives neglected the sepulchral duties, sacred
beyond all others in the eyes of a Greek. Nor is there any circumstance
which conveys to us so vivid an idea of the prevalent agony and despair
as when we read, in the words of an eyewitness, that the deaths took
place among this close-packed crowd without the smallest decencies of
attention--that the dead and the dying lay piled one upon another not
merely in the public roads, but even in the temples, in spite of the
understood defilement of the sacred building--that half-dead sufferers
were seen lying round all the springs, from insupportable thirst--that
the numerous corpses thus unburied and exposed were in such a condition
that the dogs which meddled with them died in consequence, while no
vultures or other birds of the like habits ever came near.

Those bodies which escaped entire neglect were burnt or buried without
the customary mourning, and with unseemly carelessness. In some cases
the bearers of a body, passing by a funeral pile on which another body
was burning, would put their own there to be burnt also; or perhaps, if
the pile was prepared ready for a body not yet arrived, would deposit
their own upon it, set fire to the pile, and then depart. Such indecent
confusion would have been intolerable to the feelings of the Athenians
in any ordinary times.

To all these scenes of physical suffering, death, and reckless despair
was superadded another evil, which affected those who were fortunate
enough to escape the rest. The bonds both of law and morality became
relaxed, amid such total uncertainty of every man both for his own life
and that of others. Men cared not to abstain from wrong, under
circumstances in which punishment was not likely to overtake them, nor
to put a check upon their passions, and endure privations, in obedience
even to their strongest conviction, when the chance was so small of
their living to reap reward or enjoy any future esteem. An interval,
short and sweet, before their doom was realized--before they became
plunged in the widespread misery which they witnessed around, and which
affected indiscriminately the virtuous and the profligate--was all that
they looked to enjoy; embracing with avidity the immediate pleasures of
sense, as well as such positive gains, however ill-gotten, as could be
made the means of procuring them, and throwing aside all thought both of
honor and of long-sighted advantage. Life and property being alike
ephemeral, there was no hope left but to snatch a moment of enjoyment,
before the outstretched hand of destiny should fall upon its victims.

The picture of society under the pressure of a murderous epidemic, with
its train of physical torments, wretchedness, and demoralization, has
been drawn by more than one eminent author, but by none with more
impressive fidelity and conciseness than by Thucydides, who had no
predecessor, nor anything but the reality, to copy from. We may remark
that amid all the melancholy accompaniments of the time there are no
human sacrifices, such as those offered up at Carthage during pestilence
to appease the anger of the gods--there are no cruel persecutions
against imaginary authors of the disease, such as those against the
Untori (anointers of doors) in the plague of Milan in 1630.

Three years altogether did this calamity desolate Athens: continuously,
during the entire second and third years of the war--after which
followed a period of marked abatement for a year and a half; but it then
revived again, and lasted for another year, with the same fury as at
first. The public loss, over and above the private misery, which this
unexpected enemy inflicted upon Athens, was incalculable. Out of twelve
hundred horsemen, all among the rich men of the state, three hundred
died of the epidemic; besides forty-four hundred _hoplites_ out of the
roll formally kept, and a number of the poorer population so great as to
defy computation. No efforts of the Peloponnesians could have done so
much to ruin Athens, or to bring the war to a termination such as they
desired: and the distemper told the more in their favor, as it never
spread at all into Peloponnesus, though it passed from Athens to some of
the more populous islands. The Lacedaemonian army was withdrawn from
Attica somewhat earlier than it would otherwise have been, for fear of
taking the contagion.

But it was while the Lacedaemonians were yet in Attica, and during the
first freshness of the terrible malady, that Pericles equipped and
conducted from Piraeus an armament of one hundred triremes and four
thousand hoplites to attack the coasts of Peloponnesus; three hundred
horsemen were also carried in some horse-transports, prepared for the
occasion out of old triremes. To diminish the crowd accumulated in the
city was doubtless of beneficial tendency, and perhaps those who went
aboard might consider it as a chance of escape to quit an infected home.
But unhappily they carried the infection along with them, which
desolated the fleet not less than the city, and crippled all its
efforts. Reenforced by fifty ships of war from Chios and Lesbos, the
Athenians first landed near Epidaurus in Peloponnesus, ravaging the
territory and making an unavailing attempt upon the city; next they made
like incursions on the most southerly portions of the Argolic
peninsula--Troezen, Halieis, and Hermione--and lastly attacked and
captured Prasiae, on the eastern coast of Laconia. On returning to
Athens, the same armament was immediately conducted under Agnon and
Cleopompus, to press the siege of Potidaea, the blockade of which still
continued without any visible progress. On arriving there an attack was
made on the walls by battering engines and by the other aggressive
methods then practised; but nothing whatever was achieved. In fact, the
armament became incompetent for all serious effort, from the aggravated
character which the distemper here assumed, communicated by the soldiers
fresh from Athens even to those who had before been free from it at
Potidaea. So frightful was the mortality that out of the four thousand
hoplites under Agnon no fewer than one thousand and fifty died in the
short space of forty days. The armament was brought back in this
distressed condition to Athens, while the reduction of Potidaea was left
as before, to the slow course of blockade.

On returning from the expedition against Peloponnesus, Pericles found
his countrymen almost distracted with their manifold sufferings. Over
and above the raging epidemic they had just gone over Attica and
ascertained the devastations committed by the invaders throughout all
the territory--except the Marathonian Tetrapolis and Deceleia, districts
spared, as we are told, through indulgence founded on an ancient
legendary sympathy--during their long stay of forty days. The rich had
found their comfortable mansions and farms, the poor their modest
cottages, in the various _demes_, torn down and ruined. Death, sickness,
loss of property, and despair of the future now rendered the Athenians
angry and intractable to the last degree. They vented their feelings
against Pericles as the cause not merely of the war, but also of all
that they were now enduring. Either with or without his consent, they
sent envoys to Sparta to open negotiations for peace, but the Spartans
turned a deaf ear to the proposition. This new disappointment rendered
them still more furious against Pericles, whose long-standing political
enemies now doubtless found strong sympathy in their denunciations of
his character and policy. That unshaken and majestic firmness, which
ranked first among his many eminent qualities, was never more
imperiously required and never more effectively manifested.

In his capacity of _strategus_, or general, Pericles convoked a formal
assembly of the people, for the purpose of vindicating himself publicly
against the prevailing sentiment, and recommending perseverance in his
line of policy. The speeches made by his opponents, assuredly very
bitter, are not given by Thucydides; but that of Pericles himself is set
down at considerable length, and a memorable discourse it is. It
strikingly brings into relief both the character of the man and the
impress of actual circumstances--an impregnable mind conscious not only
of right purposes, but of just and reasonable anticipations, and bearing
up with manliness, or even defiance, against the natural difficulty of
the case, heightened by an extreme of incalculable misfortune. He had
foreseen, while advising the war originally, the probable impatience of
his countrymen under its first hardships, but he could not foresee the
epidemic by which that impatience had been exasperated into madness: and
he now addressed them not merely with unabated adherence to his own
deliberate convictions, but also in a tone of reproachful remonstrance
against their unmerited change of sentiment toward him--seeking at the
same time to combat that uncontrolled despair which for the moment
overlaid both their pride and their patriotism. Far from humbling
himself before the present sentiment, it is at this time that he sets
forth his titles to their esteem in the most direct and unqualified
manner, and claims the continuance of that which they had so long
accorded, as something belonging to him by acquired right.

His main object, through this discourse, is to fill the minds of his
audience with patriotic sympathy for the weal of the entire city, so as
to counterbalance the absorbing sense of private woe. If the collective
city flourishes, he argues, private misfortunes may at least be borne;
but no amount of private prosperity will avail if the collective city
falls--a proposition literally true in ancient times and under the
circumstances of ancient warfare, though less true at present.
"Distracted by domestic calamity, ye are now angry both with me who
advised you to go to war, and with yourselves who followed the advice.
Ye listened to me, considering me superior to others in judgment, in
speech, in patriotism, and in incorruptible probity--nor ought I now to
be treated as culpable for giving such advice, when in point of fact the
war was unavoidable and there would have been still greater danger in
shrinking from it. I am the same man, still unchanged--but ye in your
misfortunes cannot stand to the convictions which ye adopted when yet
unhurt. Extreme and unforeseen, indeed, are the sorrows which have
fallen upon you: yet inhabiting as ye do a great city, and brought up in
dispositions suitable to it, ye must also resolve to bear up against the
utmost pressure of adversity, and never to surrender your dignity. I
have often explained to you that ye have no reason to doubt of eventual
success in the war, but I will now remind you, more emphatically than
before, and even with a degree of ostentation suitable as a stimulus to
your present unnatural depression, that your naval force makes you
masters not only of your allies, but of the entire sea--one-half of the
visible field for action and employment. Compared with so vast a power
as this, the temporary use of your houses and territory is a mere
trifle, an ornamental accessory not worth considering: and this too, if
ye preserve your freedom, ye will quickly recover. It was your fathers
who first gained this empire, without any of the advantages which ye now
enjoy; ye must not disgrace yourselves by losing what they acquired.

"Delighting as ye all do in the honor and empire enjoyed by the city, ye
must not shrink from the toils whereby alone that honor is sustained:
moreover, ye now fight, not merely for freedom instead of slavery, but
for empire against loss of empire, with all the perils arising out of
imperial unpopularity. It is not safe for you now to abdicate, even if
ye chose to do so; for ye hold your empire like a despotism--unjust
perhaps in the original acquisition, but ruinous to part with when once
acquired. Be not angry with me, whose advice ye followed in going to
war, because the enemy have done such damage as might be expected from
them: still less on account of this unforeseen distemper: I know that
this makes me an object of your special present hatred, though very
unjustly, unless ye will consent to give me credit also for any
unexpected good-luck which may occur. Our city derives its particular
glory from unshaken bearing up against misfortune: her power, her name,
her empire of Greeks over Greeks, are such as have never before been
seen; and if we choose to be great, we must take the consequence of that
temporary envy and hatred which is the necessary price of permanent
renown. Behave ye now in a manner worthy of that glory: display that
courage which is essential to protect you against disgrace at present,
as well as to guarantee your honor for the future. Send no further
embassy to Sparta, and bear your misfortunes without showing symptoms of
distress."

The irresistible reason, as well as the proud and resolute bearing of
this discourse, set forth with an eloquence which it was not possible
for Thucydides to reproduce--together with the age and character of
Pericles--carried the assent of the assembled people, who when in the
Pnyx, and engaged according to habit on public matters, would for a
moment forget their private sufferings in considerations of the safety
and grandeur of Athens. Possibly, indeed, those sufferings, though still
continuing, might become somewhat alleviated when the invaders quitted
Attica, and when it was no longer indispensable for all the population
to confine itself within the walls. Accordingly, the assembly resolved
that no further propositions should be made for peace, and that the war
should be prosecuted with vigor.

But though the public resolution thus adopted showed the ancient habit
of deference to the authority of Pericles, the sentiments of individuals
taken separately were still those of anger against him as the author of
that system which had brought them into so much distress. His political
opponents--Cleon, Simmias, or Lacratidas, perhaps all three in
conjunction--took care to provide an opportunity for this prevalent
irritation to manifest itself in act, by bringing an accusation against
him before the _dicastery_. The accusation is said to have been
preferred on the ground of pecuniary malversation, and ended by his
being sentenced to pay a considerable fine, the amount of which is
differently reported--fifteen, fifty, or eighty talents, by different
authors. The accusing party thus appeared to have carried their point,
and to have disgraced, as well as excluded from reelection, the veteran
statesman. The event, however, disappointed their expectations. The
imposition of the fine not only satiated all the irritation of the
people against him, but even occasioned a serious reaction in his favor,
and brought back as strongly as ever the ancient sentiment of esteem and
admiration. It was quickly found that those who had succeeded Pericles
as generals neither possessed nor deserved in an equal degree the public
confidence. He was accordingly soon reelected, with as much power and
influence as he had ever in his life enjoyed.

But that life, long, honorable, and useful, had already been prolonged
considerably beyond the sixtieth year, and there were but too many
circumstances, besides the recent fine, which tended to hasten as well
as to embitter its close. At the very moment when Pericles was preaching
to his countrymen, in a tone almost reproachful, the necessity of manful
and unabated devotion to the common country in the midst of private
suffering, he was himself among the greatest of sufferers, and most
hardly pressed to set the example of observing his own precepts. The
epidemic carried off not merely his two sons--the only two legitimate,
Xanthippus and Paralus--but also his sister, several other relatives,
and his best and most useful political friends. Amid this train of
domestic calamities, and in the funeral obsequies of so many of his
dearest friends, he remained master of his grief, and maintained his
habitual self-command, until the last misfortune--the death of his
favorite son Paralus, which left his house without any legitimate
representative to maintain the family and the hereditary sacred rites.
On this final blow, though he strove to command himself as before, yet
at the obsequies of the young man, when it became his duty to place a
wreath on the dead body, his grief became uncontrollable, and he burst
out, for the first time in his life, into profuse tears and sobbing.

In the midst of these several personal trials he received the
intimation, through Alcibiades and some other friends, of the restored
confidence of the people toward him, and of his reelection to the office
of strategus. But it was not without difficulty that he was persuaded to
present himself again at the public assembly and resume the direction of
affairs. The regret of the people was formally expressed to him for the
recent sentence--perhaps, indeed, the fine may have been repaid to him,
or some evasion of it permitted, saving the forms of law--in the present
temper of the city; which was further displayed toward him by the grant
of a remarkable exemption from a law of his own original proposition.

He had himself, some years before, been the author of that law whereby
the citizenship of Athens was restricted to persons born both of
Athenian fathers and Athenian mothers, under which restriction several
thousand persons, illegitimate on the mother's side, are said to have
been deprived of the citizenship, on occasion of a public distribution
of corn. Invidious as it appeared to grant, to Pericles singly, an
exemption from a law which had been strictly enforced against so many
others, the people were now moved not less by compassion than by anxiety
to redress their own previous severity. Without a legitimate heir, the
house of Pericles, one branch of the great Alcmaeonid gens by his
mother's side, would be left deserted, and the continuity of the family
sacred rites would be broken--a misfortune painfully felt by every
Athenian family, as calculated to wrong all the deceased members, and
provoke their posthumous displeasure toward the city. Accordingly,
permission was granted to Pericles to legitimize, and to inscribe in his
own gens and phratry, his natural son by Aspasia, who bore his own name.

It was thus that Pericles was reinstated in his post of strategus as
well as in his ascendency over the public counsels--seemingly about
August or September, B.C. 430. He lived about one year longer, and seems
to have maintained his influence as long as his health permitted. Yet we
hear nothing of him after this moment, and he fell a victim, not to the
violent symptoms of the epidemic, but to a slow and wearing fever, which
undermined his strength as well as his capacity. To a friend who came to
ask after him when in this disease, Pericles replied by showing a charm
or amulet which his female relations had hung about his neck--a proof
how low he was reduced, and how completely he had become a passive
subject in the hands of others.

And according to another anecdote which we read--yet more interesting
and equally illustrative of his character--it was during his last
moments, when he was lying apparently unconscious and insensible, that
the friends around his bed were passing in review the acts of his life,
and the nine trophies which he had erected at different times for so
many victories. He heard what they said, though they fancied that he was
past hearing, and interrupted them by remarking: "What you praise in my
life belongs partly to good fortune--and is, at best, common to me with
many other generals. But the peculiarity of which I am most proud, you
have not noticed--no Athenian has ever put on mourning through any
action of mine."




DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE

B.C. 413

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY


(That great writer of the history of the Romans, Thomas Arnold, says of
the defeat of the Athenian fleet at Syracuse: "The Romans knew not, and
could not know, how deeply the greatness of their own posterity, and the
fate of the whole western world, were involved in the destruction of the
fleet of Athens in the harbor of Syracuse. Had that great expedition
proved victorious, the energies of Greece during the next eventful
century would have found their field in the West no less than in the
East; Greece, and not Rome; might have conquered Carthage; Greek instead
of Latin might have been at this day the principal element of the
language of Spain, of France, and of Italy; and the laws of Athens,
rather than of Rome, might be the foundation of the law of the civilized
world."

The foregoing, the author's own selection, really sums up all that need
be said as to the importance of the great event so finely treated by
Creasy.)


Few cities have undergone more memorable sieges during ancient and
mediaeval times than has the city of Syracuse. Athenian, Carthaginian,
Roman, Vandal, Byzantine, Saracen, and Norman have in turns beleaguered
her walls; and the resistance which she successfully opposed to some of
her early assailants was of the deepest importance, not only to the
fortunes of the generations then in being, but to all the subsequent
current of human events. To adopt the eloquent expressions of Arnold
respecting the check which she gave to the Carthaginian arms, "Syracuse
was a breakwater which God's providence raised up to protect the yet
immature strength of Rome." And her triumphant repulse of the great
Athenian expedition against her was of even more widespread and enduring
importance. It forms a decisive epoch in the strife for universal
empire, in which all the great states of antiquity successively engaged
and failed.

The present city of Syracuse is a place of little or no military
strength, as the fire of artillery from the neighboring heights would
almost completely command it. But in ancient warfare its position, and
the care bestowed on its walls, rendered it formidably strong against
the means of offence which were then employed by besieging armies.

The ancient city, in its most prosperous times, was chiefly built on the
knob of land which projects into the sea on the eastern coast of Sicily,
between two bays; one of which, to the north, was called the Bay of
Thapsus, while the southern one formed the great harbor of the city of
Syracuse itself. A small island, or peninsula (for such it soon was
rendered), lies at the southeastern extremity of this knob of land,
stretching almost entirely across the mouth of the great harbor, and
rendering it nearly land-locked. This island comprised the original
settlement of the first Greek colonists from Corinth, who founded
Syracuse two thousand five hundred years ago; and the modern city has
shrunk again into these primary limits. But, in the fifth century before
our era, the growing wealth and population of the Syracusans had led
them to occupy and include within their city walls portion after portion
of the mainland lying next to the little isle, so that at the time of
the Athenian expedition the seaward part of the land between the two
bays already spoken of was built over, and fortified from bay to bay,
and constituted the larger part of Syracuse.

The landward wall, therefore, of this district of the city traversed
this knob of land, which continues to slope upward from the sea, and
which, to the west of the old fortifications, that is, toward the
interior of Sicily, rises rapidly for a mile or two, but diminishes in
width, and finally terminates in a long narrow ridge, between which and
Mount Hybla a succession of chasms and uneven low ground extends. On
each flank of this ridge the descent is steep and precipitous from its
summits to the strips of level land that lie immediately below it, both
to the southwest and northwest.

The usual mode of assailing fortified towns in the time of the
Peloponnesian war was to build a double wall round them sufficiently
strong to check any sally of the garrison from within or any attack of a
relieving force from without. The interval within the two walls of the
circumvallation was roofed over, and formed barracks, in which the
besiegers posted themselves, and awaited the effects of want or
treachery among the besieged in producing a surrender; and in every
Greek city of those days, as in every Italian republic of the Middle
Ages, the rage of domestic sedition between aristocrats and democrats
ran high. Rancorous refugees swarmed in the camp of every invading
enemy; and every blockaded city was sure to contain within its walls a
body of intriguing malcontents, who were eager to purchase a party
triumph at the expense of a national disaster. Famine and faction were
the allies on whom besiegers relied. The generals of that time trusted
to the operation of these sure confederates as soon as they could
establish a complete blockade. They rarely ventured on the attempt to
storm any fortified post, for the military engines of antiquity were
feeble in breaching masonry before the improvements which the first
Dionysius effected in the mechanics of destruction; and the lives of
spearmen the boldest and most high-trained would, of course, have been
idly spent in charges against unshattered walls.

A city built close to the sea, like Syracuse, was impregnable save by
the combined operations of a superior hostile fleet and a superior
hostile army; and Syracuse, from her size, her population, and her
military and naval resources, not unnaturally thought herself secure
from finding in another Greek city a foe capable of sending a sufficient
armament to menace her with capture and subjection. But in the spring of
B.C. 414 the Athenian navy was mistress of her harbor and the adjacent
seas; an Athenian army had defeated her troops, and cooped them within
the town; and from bay to bay a blockading wall was being rapidly
carried across the strips of level ground and the high ridge outside the
city (then termed Epipolae), which, if completed, would have cut the
Syracusans off from all succor from the interior of Sicily, and have
left them at the mercy of the Athenian generals. The besiegers' works
were, indeed, unfinished; but every day the unfortified interval in
their lines grew narrower, and with it diminished all apparent hope of
safety for the beleaguered town.

Athens was now staking the flower of her forces, and the accumulated
fruits of seventy years of glory, on one bold throw for the dominion of
the western world. As Napoleon from Mount Coeur de Lion pointed to St.
Jean d'Acre, and told his staff that the capture of that town would
decide his destiny and would change the face of the world, so the
Athenian officers, from the heights of Epipolae, must have looked on
Syracuse, and felt that with its fall all the known powers of the earth
would fall beneath them. They must have felt also that Athens, if
repulsed there, must pause forever from her career of conquest, and sink
from an imperial republic into a ruined and subservient community.

At Marathon, the first in date of the great battles of the world, we
beheld Athens struggling for self-preservation against the invading
armies of the East. At Syracuse she appears as the ambitious and
oppressive invader of others. In her, as in other republics of old and
of modern times, the same energy that had inspired the most heroic
efforts in defence of the national independence soon learned to employ
itself in daring and unscrupulous schemes of self-aggrandizement at the
expense of neighboring nations. In the interval between the Persian and
the Peloponnesian wars she had rapidly grown into a conquering and
dominant state, the chief of a thousand tributary cities, and the
mistress of the largest and best-manned navy that the Mediterranean had
yet beheld. The occupations of her territory by Xerxes and Mardonius, in
the second Persian war, had forced her whole population to become
marines; and the glorious results of that struggle confirmed them in
their zeal for their country's service at sea.

The voluntary suffrage of the Greek cities of the coasts and islands of
the Aegean first placed Athens at the head of the confederation formed
for the further prosecution of the war against Persia. But this titular
ascendency was soon converted by her into practical and arbitrary
dominion. She protected them from piracy and the Persian power, which
soon fell into decrepitude and decay, but she exacted in return implicit
obedience to herself. She claimed and enforced a prerogative of taxing
them at her discretion, and proudly refused to be accountable for her
mode of expending their supplies. Remonstrance against her assessments
was treated as factious disloyalty, and refusal to pay was promptly
punished as revolt. Permitting and encouraging her subject allies to
furnish all their contingents in money, instead of part consisting of
ships and men, the sovereign republic gained the double object of
training her own citizens by constant and well-paid service in her
fleets, and of seeing her confederates lose their skill and discipline
by inaction, and become more and more passive and powerless under her
yoke. Their towns were generally dismantled, while the imperial city
herself was fortified with the greatest care and sumptuousness; the
accumulated revenues from her tributaries serving to strengthen and
adorn to the utmost her havens, her docks, her arsenals, her theatres,
and her shrines, and to array her in that plenitude of architectural
magnificence the ruins of which still attest the intellectual grandeur
of the age and people which produced a Pericles to plan and a Phidias to
execute.

All republics that acquire supremacy over other nations rule them
selfishly and oppressively. There is no exception to this in either
ancient or modern times. Carthage, Rome, Venice, Genoa, Florence, Pisa,
Holland, and republican France, all tyrannized over every province and
subject state where they gained authority. But none of them openly
avowed their system of doing so upon principle with the candor which the
Athenian republicans displayed when any remonstrance was made against
the severe exactions which they imposed upon their vassal allies. They
avowed that their empire was a tyranny, and frankly stated that they
solely trusted to force and terror to uphold it. They appealed to what
they called "the eternal law of nature, that the weak should be coerced
by the strong." Sometimes they stated, and not without some truth, that
the unjust hatred of Sparta against themselves forced them to be unjust
to others in self-defence. To be safe, they must be powerful; and to be
powerful, they must plunder and coerce their neighbors. They never
dreamed of communicating any franchise, or share in office, to their
dependants, but jealously monopolized every post of command and all
political and judicial power; exposing themselves to every risk with
unflinching gallantry; embarking readily in every ambitious scheme; and
never suffering difficulty or disaster to shake their tenacity of
purpose: in the hope of acquiring unbounded empire for their country,
and the means of maintaining each of the thirty thousand citizens who
made up the sovereign republic, in exclusive devotion to military
occupations, and to those brilliant sciences and arts in which Athens
already had reached the meridian of intellectual splendor.

Her great political dramatist speaks of the Athenian empire as
comprehending a thousand states. The language of the stage must not be
taken too literally; but the number of the dependencies of Athens, at
the time when the Peloponnesian confederacy attacked her, was
undoubtedly very great. With a few trifling exceptions, all the islands
of the Aegean, and all the Greek cities which in that age fringed the
coasts of Asia Minor, the Hellespont, and Thrace, paid tribute to
Athens, and implicitly obeyed her orders. The Aegean Sea was an Attic
lake. Westward of Greece, her influence, though strong, was not equally
predominant. She had colonies and allies among the wealthy and populous
Greek settlements in Sicily and South Italy, but she had no organized
system of confederates in those regions; and her galleys brought her no
tribute from the Western seas. The extension of her empire over Sicily
was the favorite project of her ambitious orators and generals. While
her great statesman, Pericles, lived, his commanding genius kept his
countrymen under control, and forbade them to risk the fortunes of
Athens in distant enterprises, while they had unsubdued and powerful
enemies at their own doors. He taught Athens this maxim; but he also
taught her to know and to use her own strength; and when Pericles had
departed, the bold spirit which he had fostered overleaped the salutary
limits which he had prescribed.

When her bitter enemies, the Corinthians, succeeded, B.C. 431, in
inducing Sparta to attack her, and a confederacy was formed of
five-sixths of the continental Greeks, all animated by anxious jealousy
and bitter hatred of Athens; when armies far superior in numbers and
equipment to those which had marched against the Persians were poured
into the Athenian territory, and laid it waste to the city walls, the
general opinion was that Athens would be reduced, in two or three years
at the furthest, to submit to the requisitions of her invaders. But her
strong fortifications, by which she was girt and linked to her principal
haven, gave her, in those ages, almost all the advantages of an insular
position. Pericles had made her trust to her empire of the seas. Every
Athenian in those days was a practised seaman. A state, indeed, whose
members, of an age fit for service, at no time exceeded thirty thousand,
could only have acquired such a naval dominion as Athens once held by
devoting and zealously training all its sons to service in its fleets.
In order to man the numerous galleys which she sent out, she necessarily
employed large numbers of hired mariners and slaves at the oar; but the
staple of her crews was Athenian, and all posts of command were held by
native citizens. It was by reminding them of this, of their long
practice in seamanship, and the certain superiority which their
discipline gave them over the enemy's marine, that their great minister
mainly encouraged them to resist the combined power of Lacedaemon and
her allies. He taught them that Athens might thus reap the fruit of her
zealous devotion to maritime affairs ever since the invasion of the
Medes; "she had not, indeed, perfected herself; but the reward of her
superior training was the rule of the sea--a mighty dominion, for it
gave her the rule of much fair land beyond its waves, safe from the idle
ravages with which the Lacedaemonians might harass Attica, but never
could subdue Athens."

Athens accepted the war with which her enemies threatened her rather
than descend from her pride of place; and though the awful visitation of
the plague came upon her, and swept away more of her citizens than the
Dorian spear laid low, she held her own gallantly against her enemies.
If the Peloponnesian armies in irresistible strength wasted every spring
her corn-lands, her vineyards, and her olive groves with fire and sword,
she retaliated on their coasts with her fleets; which, if resisted, were
only resisted to display the preëminent skill and bravery of her seamen.
Some of her subject allies revolted, but the revolts were in general
sternly and promptly quelled. The genius of one enemy had indeed
inflicted blows on her power in Thrace which she was unable to remedy;
but he fell in battle in the tenth year of the war, and with the loss of
Brasidas the Lacedaemonians seemed to have lost all energy and judgment.
Both sides at length grew weary of the war, and in 421 a truce for fifty
years was concluded, which, though ill kept, and though many of the
confederates of Sparta refused to recognize it, and hostilities still
continued in many parts of Greece, protected the Athenian territory from
the ravages of enemies, and enabled Athens to accumulate large sums out
of the proceeds of her annual revenues. So also, as a few years passed
by, the havoc which the pestilence and the sword had made in her
population was repaired; and in 415 Athens was full of bold and restless
spirits, who longed for some field of distant enterprise wherein they
might signalize themselves and aggrandize the state, and who looked on
the alarm of Spartan hostility as a mere old-woman's tale. When Sparta
had wasted their territory she had done her worst; and the fact of its
always being in her power to do so seemed a strong reason for seeking to
increase the transmarine dominion of Athens.

The West was now the quarter toward which the thoughts of every aspiring
Athenian were directed. From the very beginning of the war Athens had
kept up an interest in Sicily, and her squadron had, from time to time,
appeared on its coasts and taken part in the dissensions in which the
Sicilian Greeks were universally engaged one against the other. There
were plausible grounds for a direct quarrel, and an open attack by the
Athenians upon Syracuse.

With the capture of Syracuse, all Sicily, it was hoped, would be
secured. Carthage and Italy were next to be attacked. With large levies
of Iberian mercenaries she then meant to overwhelm her Peloponnesian
enemies. The Persian monarchy lay in hopeless imbecility, inviting Greek
invasion; nor did the known world contain the power that seemed capable
of checking the growing might of Athens, if Syracuse once should be
hers.

The national historian of Rome has left us an episode of his great work,
a disquisition on the probable effects that would have followed if
Alexander the Great had invaded Italy. Posterity has generally regarded
that disquisition as proving Livy's patriotism more strongly than his
impartiality or acuteness. Yet, right or wrong, the speculations of the
Roman writer were directed to the consideration of a very remote
possibility. To whatever age Alexander's life might have been prolonged,
the East would have furnished full occupation for his martial ambition,
as well as for those schemes of commercial grandeur and imperial
amalgamation of nations in which the truly great qualities of his mind
loved to display themselves. With his death the dismemberment of his
empire among his generals was certain, even as the dismemberment of
Napoleon's empire among his marshals would certainly have ensued if he
had been cut off in the zenith of his power. Rome, also, was far weaker
when the Athenians were in Sicily than she was a century afterward in
Alexander's time. There can be little doubt but that Rome would have
been blotted out from the independent powers of the West, had she been
attacked at the end of the fifth century B.C. by an Athenian army,
largely aided by Spanish mercenaries, and flushed with triumphs over
Sicily and Africa, instead of the collision between her and Greece
having been deferred until the latter had sunk into decrepitude, and the
Roman Mars had grown into full vigor.

The armament which the Athenians equipped against Syracuse was in every
way worthy of the state which formed such projects of universal empire,
and it has been truly termed "the noblest that ever yet had been sent
forth by a free and civilized commonwealth." The fleet consisted of one
hundred and thirty-four war-galleys, with a multitude of storeships. A
powerful force of the best heavy-armed infantry that Athens and her
allies could furnish was sent on board it, together with a smaller
number of slingers and bowmen. The quality of the forces was even more
remarkable than the number. The zeal of individuals vied with that of
the republic in giving every galley the best possible crew and every
troop the most perfect accoutrements. And with private as well as public
wealth eagerly lavished on all that could give splendor as well as
efficiency to the expedition, the fated fleet began its voyage for the
Sicilian shores in the summer of 415.

The Syracusans themselves, at the time of the Peloponnesian war, were a
bold and turbulent democracy, tyrannizing over the weaker Greek cities
in Sicily, and trying to gain in that island the same arbitrary
supremacy which Athens maintained along the eastern coast of the
Mediterranean. In numbers and in spirit they were fully equal to the
Athenians, but far inferior to them in military and naval discipline.
When the probability of an Athenian invasion was first publicly
discussed at Syracuse, and efforts were made by some of the wiser
citizens to improve the state of the national defences and prepare for
the impending danger, the rumors of coming war and the proposal for
preparation were received by the mass of the Syracusans with scornful
incredulity. The speech of one of their popular orators is preserved to
us in Thucydides.

The Syracusan orator told his countrymen to dismiss with scorn the
visionary terrors which a set of designing men among themselves strove
to excite, in order to get power and influence thrown into their own
hands. He told them that Athens knew her own interest too well to think
of wantonly provoking their hostility: "Even if the enemies were to
come," said he, "so distant from their resources, and opposed to such a
power as ours, their destruction would be easy and inevitable. Their
ships will have enough to do to get to our island at all, and to carry
such stores of all sorts as will be needed. They cannot therefore carry,
besides, an army large enough to cope with such a population as ours.
They will have no fortified place from which to commence their
operations, but must rest them on no better base than a set of wretched
tents, and such means as the necessities of the moment will allow them.
But, in truth, I do not believe that they would even be able to effect a
disembarkation. Let us, therefore, set at naught these reports as
altogether of home manufacture; and be sure that if any enemy does come,
the state will know how to defend itself in a manner worthy of the
national honor."

Such assertions pleased the Syracusan assembly; but the invaders of
Syracuse came, made good their landing in Sicily; and if they had
promptly attacked the city itself, instead of wasting nearly a year in
desultory operations in other parts of Sicily, the Syracusans must have
paid the penalty of their self-sufficient carelessness in submission to
the Athenian yoke. But, of the three generals who led the Athenian
expedition, two only were men of ability, and one was most weak and
incompetent. Fortunately for Syracuse, Alcibiades, the most skilful of
the three, was soon deposed from his command by a factious and fanatic
vote of his fellow-countrymen, and the other competent one, Lamachus,
fell early in a skirmish; while, more fortunately still for her, the
feeble and vacillating Nicias remained unrecalled and unhurt, to assume
the undivided leadership of the Athenian army and fleet, and to mar, by
alternate over-caution and over-carelessness, every chance of success
which the early part of the operations offered. Still, even under him,
the Athenians nearly won the town. They defeated the raw levies of the
Syracusans, cooped them within the walls, and, as before mentioned,
almost effected a continuous fortification from bay to bay over
Epipolae, the completion of which would certainly have been followed by
a capitulation.

Alcibiades--the most complete example of genius without principle that
history produces; the Bolingbroke of antiquity, but with high military
talents superadded to diplomatic and oratorical powers--on being
summoned home from his command in Sicily to take his trial before the
Athenian tribunal, had escaped to Sparta, and had exerted himself there
with all the selfish rancor of a renegade to renew the war with Athens
and to send instant assistance to Syracuse.

When we read his words in the pages of Thucydides--who was himself an
exile from Athens at this period, and may probably have been at Sparta,
and heard Alcibiades speak--we are at a loss whether most to admire or
abhor his subtle counsels. After an artful exordium, in which he tried
to disarm the suspicions which he felt must be entertained of him, and
to point out to the Spartans how completely his interests and theirs
were identified, through hatred of the Athenian democracy, he thus
proceeded:

"Hear me, at any rate, on the matters which require your grave
attention, and which I, from the personal knowledge that I have of them,
can and ought to bring before you. We Athenians sailed to Sicily with
the design of subduing, first the Greek cities there, and next those in
Italy. Then we intended to make an attempt on the dominions of Carthage,
and on Carthage itself.[24] If all these projects succeeded--nor did we
limit ourselves to them in these quarters--we intended to increase our
fleet with the inexhaustible supplies of ship timber which Italy
affords, to put in requisition the whole military force of the conquered
Greek states, and also to hire large armies of the barbarians, of the
Iberians,[25] and others in those regions, who are allowed to make the
best possible soldiers. _Then_, when we had done all this, we intended
to assail Peloponnesus with our collected force. Our fleets would
blockade you by sea and desolate your coasts, our armies would be landed
at different points and assail your cities. Some of these we expected to
storm,[26] and others we meant to take by surrounding them with
fortified lines. We thought that it would thus be an easy matter
thoroughly to war you down; and then we should become the masters of the
whole Greek race. As for expense, we reckoned that each conquered state
would give us supplies of money and provisions sufficient to pay for its
own conquest, and furnish the means for the conquest of its neighbors."

[Footnote 24: Arnold, in his notes on this passage, well reminds the
reader that Agathocles, with a Greek force far inferior to that of the
Athenians at this period, did, some years afterward, very nearly conquer
Carthage.]

[Footnote 25: It will be remembered that Spanish infantry were the
staple of the Carthaginian armies. Doubtless Alcibiades and other
leading Athenians had made themselves acquainted with the Carthaginian
system of carrying on war, and meant to adopt it. With the marvellous
powers which Alcibiades possessed of ingratiating himself with men of
every class and every nation, and his high military genius, he would
have been as formidable a chief of an army of _condottieri_ as Hannibal
afterward was.]

[Footnote 26: Alcibiades here alluded to Sparta itself, which was
unfortified. His Spartan hearers must have glanced round them at these
words with mixed alarm and indignation.]

"Such are the designs of the present Athenian expedition to Sicily, and
you have heard them from the lips of the man who, of all men living, is
most accurately acquainted with them. The other Athenian generals, who
remain with the expedition, will endeavor to carry out these plans. And
be sure that without your speedy interference they will all be
accomplished. The Sicilian Greeks are deficient in military training;
but still, if they could at once be brought to combine in an organized
resistance to Athens, they might even now be saved. But as for the
Syracusans resisting Athens by themselves, they have already, with the
whole strength of their population, fought a battle and been beaten;
they cannot face the Athenians at sea; and it is quite impossible for
them to hold out against the force of their invaders. And if this city
falls into the hands of the Athenians, all Sicily is theirs, and
presently Italy also; and the danger, which I warned you of from that
quarter, will soon fall upon yourselves. You must, therefore, in Sicily,
fight for the safety of Peloponnesus. Send some galleys thither
instantly. Put men on board who can work their own way over, and who, as
soon as they land, can do duty as regular troops. But, above all, let
one of yourselves, let a man of Sparta, go over to take the chief
command, to bring into order and effective discipline the forces that
are in Syracuse, and urge those who at present hang back to come forward
and aid the Syracusans. The presence of a Spartan general at this crisis
will do more to save the city than a whole army."

The renegade then proceeded to urge on them the necessity of encouraging
their friends in Sicily, by showing that they themselves were in earnest
in hostility to Athens. He exhorted them not only to march their armies
into Attica again, but to take up a permanent fortified position in the
country; and he gave them in detail information of all that the
Athenians most dreaded, and how his country might receive the most
distressing and enduring injury at their hands.

The Spartans resolved to act on his advice, and appointed Gylippus to
the Sicilian command. Gylippus was a man who, to the national bravery
and military skill of a Spartan united political sagacity that was
worthy of his great fellow-countryman Brasidas; but his merits were
debased by mean and sordid vices; and his is one of the cases in which
history has been austerely just, and where little or no fame has been
accorded to the successful but venal soldier. But for the purpose for
which he was required in Sicily, an abler man could not have been found
in Lacedaemon. His country gave him neither men nor money, but she gave
him her authority; and the influence of her name and of his own talents
was speedily seen in the zeal with which the Corinthians and other
Peloponnesian Greeks began to equip a squadron to act under him for the
rescue of Sicily. As soon as four galleys were ready, he hurried over
with them to the southern coast of Italy, and there, though he received
such evil tidings of the state of Syracuse that he abandoned all hope of
saving that city, he determined to remain on the coast, and do what he
could in preserving the Italian cities from the Athenians.

So nearly, indeed, had Nicias completed his beleaguering lines, and so
utterly desperate had the state of Syracuse seemingly become, that an
assembly of the Syracusans was actually convened, and they were
discussing the terms on which they should offer to capitulate, when a
galley was seen dashing into the great harbor, and making her way toward
the town with all the speed which her rowers could supply. From her
shunning the part of the harbor where the Athenian fleet lay, and making
straight for the Syracusan side, it was clear that she was a friend; the
enemy's cruisers, careless through confidence of success, made no
attempt to cut her off; she touched the beach, and a Corinthian captain,
springing on shore from her, was eagerly conducted to the assembly of
the Syracusan people just in time to prevent the fatal vote being put
for a surrender.

Providentially for Syracuse, Gongylus, the commander of the galley, had
been prevented by an Athenian squadron from following Gylippus to South
Italy, and he had been obliged to push direct for Syracuse from Greece.

The sight of actual succor, and the promise of more, revived the
drooping spirits of the Syracusans. They felt that they were not left
desolate to perish, and the tidings that a Spartan was coming to command
them confirmed their resolution to continue their resistance. Gylippus
was already near the city. He had learned at Locri that the first report
which had reached him of the state of Syracuse was exaggerated, and that
there was unfinished space in the besiegers' lines through which it was
barely possible to introduce reënforcements into the town. Crossing the
Straits of Messina, which the culpable negligence of Nicias had left
unguarded, Gylippus landed on the northern coast of Sicily, and there
began to collect from the Greek cities an army, of which the regular
troops that he brought from Peloponnesus formed the nucleus. Such was
the influence of the name of Sparta, and such were his own abilities and
activity, that he succeeded in raising a force of about two thousand
fully armed infantry, with a larger number of irregular troops. Nicias,
as if infatuated, made no attempt to counteract his operation, nor, when
Gylippus marched his little army toward Syracuse, did the Athenian
commander endeavor to check him. The Syracusans marched out to meet him;
and while the Athenians were solely intent on completing their
fortifications on the southern side toward the harbor, Gylippus turned
their position by occupying the high ground in the extreme rear of
Epipolae. He then marched through the unfortified interval of Nicias'
lines into the besieged town, and joining his troops with the Syracusan
forces, after some engagements with varying success, gained the mastery
over Nicias, drove the Athenians from Epipolae, and hemmed them into a
disadvantageous position in the low grounds near the great harbor.

The attention of all Greece was now fixed on Syracuse, and every enemy
of Athens felt the importance of the opportunity now offered of checking
her ambition, and, perhaps, of striking a deadly blow at her power.
Larger reinforcements from Corinth, Thebes, and other cities now reached
the Syracusans, while the baffled and dispirited Athenian general
earnestly besought his countrymen to recall him, and represented the
further prosecution of the siege as hopeless.

But Athens had made it a maxim never to let difficulty or disaster drive
her back from any enterprise once undertaken, so long as she possessed
the means of making any effort, however desperate, for its
accomplishment. With indomitable pertinacity, she now decreed, instead
of recalling her first armament from before Syracuse, to send out a
second, though her enemies near home had now renewed open warfare
against her, and by occupying a permanent fortification in her territory
had severely distressed her population, and were pressing her with
almost all the hardships of an actual siege. She still was mistress of
the sea, and she sent forth another fleet of seventy galleys, and
another army, which seemed to drain almost the last reserves of her
military population, to try if Syracuse could not yet be won, and the
honor of the Athenian arms be preserved from the stigma of a retreat.
Hers was, indeed, a spirit that might be broken, but never would bend.
At the head of this second expedition she wisely placed her best
general, Demosthenes, one of the most distinguished officers that the
long Peloponnesian war had produced, and who, if he had originally held
the Sicilian command, would soon have brought Syracuse to submission.

The fame of Demosthenes the general has been dimmed by the superior
lustre of his great countryman, Demosthenes the orator. When the name of
Demosthenes is mentioned, it is the latter alone that is thought of. The
soldier has found no biographer. Yet out of the long list of great men
whom the Athenian republic produced, there are few that deserve to stand
higher than this brave, though finally unsuccessful leader of her fleets
and armies in the first half of the Peloponnesian war. In his first
campaign in Aetolia he had shown some of the rashness of youth, and had
received a lesson of caution by which he profited throughout the rest of
his career, but without losing any of his natural energy in enterprise
or in execution. He had performed the distinguished service of rescuing
Naupactus from a powerful hostile armament in the seventh year of the
war; he had then, at the request of the Acarnanian republics, taken on
himself the office of commander-in-chief of all their forces, and at
their head he had gained some important advantages over the enemies of
Athens in Western Greece. His most celebrated exploits had been the
occupation of Pylos on the Messenian coast, the successful defence of
that place against the fleet and armies of Lacedaemon, and the
subsequent capture of the Spartan forces on the isle of Sphacteria,
which was the severest blow dealt to Sparta throughout the war, and
which had mainly caused her to humble herself to make the truce with
Athens.

Demosthenes was as honorably unknown in the war of party politics at
Athens as he was eminent in the war against the foreign enemy. We read
of no intrigues of his on either the aristocratic or democratic side. He
was neither in the interest of Nicias nor of Cleon. His private
character was free from any of the stains which polluted that of
Alcibiades. On all these points the silence of the comic dramatist is
decisive evidence in his favor. He had also the moral courage, not
always combined with physical, of seeking to do his duty to his country,
irrespective of any odium that he himself might incur, and unhampered by
any petty jealousy of those who were associated with him in command.
There are few men named in ancient history of whom posterity would
gladly know more or whom we sympathize with more deeply in the
calamities that befell them than Demosthenes, the son of Alcisthenes,
who, in the spring of the year 413, left Piraeus at the head of the
second Athenian expedition against Sicily.

His arrival was critically timed; for Gylippus had encouraged the
Syracusans to attack the Athenians under Nicias by sea as well as by
land, and by one able stratagem of Ariston, one of the admirals of the
Corinthian auxiliary squadron, the Syracusans and their confederates had
inflicted on the fleet of Nicias the first defeat that the Athenian navy
had ever sustained from a numerically inferior enemy. Gylippus was
preparing to follow up his advantage by fresh attacks on the Athenians
on both elements, when the arrival of Demosthenes completely changed the
aspect of affairs and restored the superiority to the invaders. With
seventy-three war-galleys in the highest state of efficiency, and
brilliantly equipped, with a force of five thousand picked men of the
regular infantry of Athens and her allies, and a still larger number of
bowmen, javelin-men, and slingers on board, Demosthenes rowed round the
great harbor with loud cheers and martial music, as if in defiance of
the Syracusans and their confederates. His arrival had indeed changed
their newly born hopes into the deepest consternation.

The resources of Athens seemed inexhaustible, and resistance to her
hopeless. They had been told that she was reduced to the last
extremities, and that her territory was occupied by an enemy; and yet
here they saw her sending forth, as if in prodigality of power, a second
armament, to make foreign conquests, not inferior to that with which
Nicias had first landed on the Sicilian shores.

With the intuitive decision of a great commander, Demosthenes at once
saw that the possession of Epipolae was the key to the possession of
Syracuse, and he resolved to make a prompt and vigorous attempt to
recover that position while his force was unimpaired and the
consternation which its arrival had produced among the besieged remained
unabated. The Syracusans and their allies had run out an outwork along
Epipolae from the city walls, intersecting the fortified lines of
circumvallation which Nicias had commenced, but from which he had been
driven by Gylippus. Could Demosthenes succeed in storming this outwork,
and in reëstablishing the Athenian troops on the high ground, he might
fairly hope to be able to resume the circumvallation of the city and
become the conqueror of Syracuse; for when once the besiegers' lines
were completed, the number of the troops with which Gylippus had
garrisoned the place would only tend to exhaust the stores of provisions
and accelerate its downfall.

An easily repelled attack was first made on the outwork in the daytime,
probably more with the view of blinding the besieged to the nature of
the main operations than with any expectation of succeeding in an open
assault, with every disadvantage of the ground to contend against. But,
when the darkness had set in, Demosthenes formed his men in columns,
each soldier taking with him five days' provisions, and the engineers
and workmen of the camp following the troops with their tools and all
portable implements of fortification, so as at once to secure any
advantage of ground that the army might gain. Thus equipped and
prepared, he led his men along by the foot of the southern flank of
Epipolae, in a direction toward the interior of the island, till he came
immediately below the narrow ridge that forms the extremity of the high
ground looking westward. He then wheeled his vanguard to the right, sent
them rapidly up the paths that wind along the face of the cliff, and
succeeded in completely surprising the Syracusan outposts, and in
placing his troops fairly on the extreme summit of the all-important
Epipolae. Thence the Athenians marched eagerly down the slope toward the
town, routing some Syracusan detachments that were quartered in their
way, and vigorously assailing the unprotected side of the outwork.

All at first favored them. The outwork was abandoned by its garrison,
and the Athenian engineers began to dismantle it. In vain Gylippus
brought up fresh troops to check the assault; the Athenians broke and
drove them back, and continued to press hotly forward, in the full
confidence of victory. But, amid the general consternation of the
Syracusans and their confederates, one body of infantry stood firm. This
was a brigade of their Boeotian allies, which was posted low down the
slope of Epipolae, outside the city walls. Coolly and steadily the
Boeotian infantry formed their line, and, undismayed by the current of
flight around them, advanced against the advancing Athenians. This was
the crisis of the battle. But the Athenian van was disorganized by its
own previous successes; and, yielding to the unexpected charge thus made
on it by troops in perfect order, and of the most obstinate courage, it
was driven back in confusion upon the other divisions of the army that
still continued to press forward. When once the tide was thus turned,
the Syracusans passed rapidly from the extreme of panic to the extreme
of vengeful daring, and with all their forces they now fiercely assailed
the embarrassed and receding Athenians. In vain did the officers of the
latter strive to reform their line. Amid the din and the shouting of the
fight, and the confusion inseparable upon a night engagement, especially
one where many thousand combatants were pent and whirled together in a
narrow and uneven area, the necessary manoeuvres were impracticable; and
though many companies still fought on desperately, wherever the
moonlight showed them the semblance of a foe, they fought without
concert or subordination; and not infrequently, amid the deadly chaos,
Athenian troops assailed each other. Keeping their ranks close, the
Syracusans and their allies pressed on against the disorganized masses
of the besiegers, and at length drove them, with heavy slaughter, over
the cliffs, which an hour or two before they had scaled full of hope and
apparently certain of success.

This defeat was decisive of the event of the siege. The Athenians
afterward struggled only to protect themselves from the vengeance which
the Syracusans sought to wreak in the complete destruction of their
invaders. Never, however, was vengeance more complete and terrible. A
series of sea-fights followed, in which the Athenian galleys were
utterly destroyed or captured. The mariners and soldiers who escaped
death in disastrous engagements, and a vain attempt to force a retreat
into the interior of the island, became prisoners of war. Nicias and
Demosthenes were put to death in cold blood, and their men either
perished miserably in the Syracusan dungeons or were sold into slavery
to the very persons whom, in their pride of power, they had crossed the
seas to enslave.

All danger from Athens to the independent nations of the West was now
forever at an end. She, indeed, continued to struggle against her
combined enemies and revolted allies with unparalleled gallantry, and
many more years of varying warfare passed away before she surrendered to
their arms. But no success in subsequent contests could ever have
restored her to the preëminence in enterprise, resources, and maritime
skill which she had acquired before her fatal reverses in Sicily. Nor
among the rival Greek republics, whom her own rashness aided to crush
her, was there any capable of reorganizing her empire, or resuming her
schemes of conquest. The dominion of Western Europe was left for Rome
and Carthage to dispute two centuries later, in conflicts still more
terrible, and with even higher displays of military daring and genius
than Athens had witnessed either in her rise, her meridian, or her fall.




RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS

B.C. 401-399

XENOPHON


(The expedition of the Greeks, generally known as the "Retreat of the
Ten Thousand," was conducted by Xenophon, a Greek historian, essayist,
and military commander. Xenophon was a pupil of Socrates, of whom he
left a famous memoir. In B.C. 401 he accepted the invitation of his
friend Proxenus of Boeotia, a general of Greek mercenaries, to take
service under Cyrus the Younger, brother of Artaxerxes Mnemon, king of
Persia.

Cyrus had considered himself as deeply wronged by his elder brother, who
had thrown him into prison on the death of their father, Darius.
Escaping from prison, he formed a design to wrest the throne from
Artaxerxes. For this purpose he engaged the forces of Proxenus, and to
this army Xenophon attached himself. The rendezvous was Sardis, from
which the army marched east under the pretext of chastising the
revolting mountaineers of Pisidia. Instead of attacking the Pisidians,
the followers of Cyrus proceeded east through Asia and Babylonia till
they met the forces of Artaxerxes at Cunaxa. A furious battle took
place, and the rout of the king's army had begun when Cyrus, elated with
the victory that seemed just within his grasp, challenged his brother to
single combat. In the duel that ensued Cyrus was slain. Proxenus had
already fallen, and the virtual command of the Greek army soon devolved
upon Xenophon, who thereupon began the famous retreat.

A vivid account of battles, and of hardships endured from the cold, in
the struggle through mountain snows, through almost impassable forests,
and across bridgeless rivers, is given in Xenophon's _Anabasis_, the
celebrated work, in seven books, which forms the classical narrative of
the campaign and the retreat. Soon after the death of Cyrus, in
September, B.C. 401, the seizure and murder of the leading Greek
generals by the treacherous Persian satrap, Tissaphernes, placed the
Greek army in great peril. Xenophon, who now took practical command,
counselled and exhorted the surviving leaders, and on the next day the
Greeks formed in a hollow square, the baggage in the centre, and began
their retreat, which led them along the Tigris to the territory of the
Carduchi [Kurds], through Armenia, and across Georgia, the enemy often
harassing them.

At the point where the climax of the story, which is presented here, may
be said to begin, the Greeks have entered Armenia, passed the sources of
the Tigris, and reached the Teleboas. Having made a treaty with
Tiribazus, governor of the province, and discovered his insincerity, and
that he was ready to attack them in their passage over the mountains,
they resolved upon a quick resumption of their march.

When, in the fifth month of the retreat the Greeks at last from a
hilltop beheld the Euxine, they sent up a cry, "The sea! the sea!" which
has echoed through succeeding ages as one of the great historic
jubilations of humanity. At the end of the retreat their numbers were
reduced to about six thousand, and from the starting-point at Cunaxa to
the middle of the southern coast of the Black Sea they had travelled as
much as two thousand miles. From Ephesus to Cunaxa and thence to the
Black Sea region they had marched in fifteen months [February, B.C. 401,
to June, 400], and nine months more passed before they joined the
Spartan army in Asia Minor, and their task was fully accomplished. Their
great performance is regarded as having prepared the way for Alexander's
triumphant advances in the East. The young conqueror, on the eve of the
battle of Issus, declared that he owed inspiration to the feat of the
Ten Thousand.)


It was thought necessary to march away as fast as possible, before the
enemy's force should be reassembled, and get possession of the pass.

Collecting their baggage at once, therefore, they set forward through a
deep snow, taking with them several guides, and, having the same day
passed the height on which Tiribazus had intended to attack them, they
encamped. Hence they proceeded three days' journey through a desert
tract of country, a distance of fifteen _parasangs_, to the river
Euphrates, and passed it without being wet higher than the middle. The
sources of the river were said not to be far off. From hence they
advanced three days' march, through much snow and a level plain, a
distance of fifteen parasangs; the third day's march was extremely
troublesome, as the north wind blew full in their faces, completely
parching up everything and benumbing the men. One of the augurs, in
consequence, advised that they should sacrifice to the wind, and a
sacrifice was accordingly offered, when the vehemence of the wind
appeared to everyone manifestly to abate. The depth of the snow was a
fathom, so that many of the baggage cattle and slaves perished, with
about thirty of the soldiers.

They continued to burn fires through the whole night, for there was
plenty of wood at the place of encampment. But those who came up late
could get no wood; those, therefore, who had arrived before and had
kindled fires would not admit the late comers to the fire unless they
gave them a share of the corn or other provisions that they had brought.
Thus they shared with each other what they respectively had. In the
places where the fires were made, as the snow melted, there were formed
large pits that reached down to the ground, and here there was
accordingly opportunity to measure the depth of the snow.

From hence they marched through snow the whole of the following day, and
many of the men contracted the _bulimia_.[28] Xenophon, who commanded in
the rear, finding in his way such of the men as had fallen down with it,
knew not what disease it was. But as one of these acquainted with it
told him that they were evidently affected with bulimia, and that they
would get up if they had something to eat, he went round among the
baggage and wherever he saw anything eatable he gave it out, and sent
such as were able to run to distribute it among those diseased, who, as
soon as they had eaten, rose up and continued their march. As they
proceeded, Chirisophus came, just as it grew dark, to a village, and
found, at a spring in front of the rampart, some women and girls
belonging to the place fetching water. The women asked them who they
were, and the interpreter answered, in the Persian language, that they
were people going from the king to the satrap. They replied that he was
not there, but about a parasang off.

[Footnote 28: Spelman quotes a description of the bulimia from Galen, in
which it is said to be "a disease in which the patient frequently craves
for food, loses the use of his limbs, falls down, turns pale, feels his
extremities become cold, his stomach oppressed, and his pulse feeble."
Here, however, it seems to mean little more than a faintness from long
fasting.]

However, as it was late, they went with the water-carriers within the
rampart, to the head man of the village, and here Chirisophus and as
many of the troops as could come up encamped; but of the rest, such as
were unable to get to the end of the journey spent the night on the way
without food or fire, and some of the soldiers lost their lives on that
occasion. Some of the enemy too, who had collected themselves into a
body, pursued our rear, and seized any of the baggage-cattle that were
unable to proceed, fighting with one another for the possession of them.
Such of the soldiers also as had lost their sight from the effects of
the snow, or had their toes mortified by the cold, were left behind. It
was found to be a relief to the eyes against the snow, if the soldiers
kept something black before them on the march, and to the feet, if they
kept constantly in motion, and allowed themselves no rest, and if they
took off their shoes in the night. But as to such as slept with their
shoes on, the straps worked into their feet, and the soles were frozen
about them, for when their old shoes had failed them, shoes of raw hides
had been made by the men themselves from the newly skinned oxen.

From such unavoidable sufferings some of the soldiers were left behind,
who, seeing a piece of ground of a black appearance, from the snow
having disappeared there, conjectured that it must have melted, and it
had in fact melted in the spot from the effect of a fountain, which was
sending up vapor in a wooded hollow close at hand. Turning aside
thither, they sat down and refused to proceed farther. Xenophon, who was
with the rear-guard, as soon as he heard this tried to prevail on them
by every art and means not to be left behind, telling them, at the same
time, that the enemy were collected and pursuing them in great numbers.
At last he grew angry, and they told him to kill them, as they were
quite unable to go forward. He then thought it the best course to strike
a terror, if possible, into the enemy that were behind, lest they should
fall upon the exhausted soldiers. It was now dark, and the enemy were
advancing with a great noise, quarrelling about the booty that they had
taken, when such of the rear-guard as were not disabled started up and
rushed toward them, while the tired men, shouting as loud as they could,
clashed their spears against their shields. The enemy, struck with
alarm, threw themselves among the snow into the hollow, and no one of
them afterward made himself heard from any quarter.

Xenophon and those with him, telling the sick men that a party should
come to their relief next day, proceeded on their march, but before they
had gone four _stadia_ they found other soldiers resting by the way in
the snow, and covered up with it, no guard being stationed over them.
They roused them up, but they said that the head of the army was not
moving forward. Xenophon, going past them and sending on some of the
ablest of the _peltasts_, ordered them to ascertain what it was that
hindered their progress. They brought word that the whole army was in
that manner taking rest. Xenophon and his men, therefore, stationing
such a guard as they could, took up their quarters there without fire or
supper. When it was near day, he sent the youngest of his men to the
sick, telling them to rouse them and oblige them to proceed. At this
juncture Chirisophus sent some of his people from the village to see how
the rear were faring. The young men were rejoiced to see them, and gave
them the sick to conduct to the camp, while they themselves went
forward, and, before they had gone twenty stadia, found themselves at
the village in which Chirisophus was quartered. When they came together,
it was thought safe enough to lodge the troops up and down in the
village. Chirisophus accordingly remained where he was, and the other
officers, appropriating by lot the several villages that they had in
sight, went to their respective quarters with their men.

Here Polycrates, an Athenian captain, requested leave of absence, and
taking with him the most active of his men, and hastening to the village
to which Xenophon had been allotted, surprised all the villagers and
their head man in their houses, together with seventeen colts that were
bred as a tribute for the king, and the head man's daughter, who had
been but nine days married; her husband was gone out to hunt hares, and
was not found in any of the villages. Their houses were underground, the
entrance like the mouth of a well, but spacious below; there were
passages dug into them for the cattle, but the people descended by
ladders. In the houses were goats, sheep, cows, and fowls, with their
young; all the cattle were kept on fodder within the walls.[29] There
were also wheat, barley, leguminous vegetables, and barley wine[30] in
large bowls; the grains of barley floated in it even with the brim of
the vessels, and reeds also lay in it, some larger and some smaller,
without joints; and these, when any one was thirsty, he was to take in
his mouth and suck.[31] The liquor was very strong, unless one mixed
water with it, and a very pleasant drink to those accustomed to it.

[Footnote 29: This description of a village on the Armenian uplands
applies itself to many that I visited in the present day. The descent by
wells is now rare, but is still to be met with; but in exposed and
elevated situations the houses are uniformly semi-subterraneous and
entered by as small an aperture as possible, to prevent the cold getting
in. Whatever the kind of cottage used, cows, sheep, goats, and fowls
participate with the family in the warmth and protection thereof.]

[Footnote 30: Something like our ale.]

[Footnote 31: The reeds were used, says Krueger, that none of the grains
of barley might be taken into the mouth.]

Xenophon made the chief man of his village sup with him, and told him to
be of good courage, assuring him that he should not be deprived of his
children, and that they would not go away without filling his house with
provisions in return for what they took, if he would but prove himself
the author of some service to the army till they should reach another
tribe. This he promised, and, to show his good-will, pointed out where
some wine[32] was buried. This night, therefore, the soldiers rested in
their several quarters in the midst of great abundance, setting a guard
over the chief, and keeping his children at the same time under their
eye. The following day Xenophon took the head man and went with him to
Chirisophus, and wherever he passed by a village he turned aside to
visit those who were quartered in it, and found them in all parts
feasting and enjoying themselves; nor would they anywhere let them go
till they had set refreshments before them; and they placed everywhere
upon the same table lamb, kid, pork, veal, and fowl, with plenty of
bread, both of wheat and barley. Whenever any person, to pay a
compliment, wished to drink to another, he took him to the large bowl,
where he had to stoop down and drink, sucking like an ox. The chief they
allowed to take whatever he pleased, but he accepted nothing from them;
where he found any of his relatives, however, he took them with him.

[Footnote 32: Xenophon seems to mean _grape_ wine, rather than to refer
to the barley wine just before mentioned, of which the taste does not
appear to have been much liked by the Greeks. Wine from grapes was not
made, it is probable, in these parts, on account of the cold, but Strabo
speaks of the fruit wine of Armenia Minor as not inferior to any of the
Greek wines.--_Schneider_.]

When they came to Chirisophus, they found his men also feasting in their
quarters, crowned with wreaths made of hay, and Armenian boys, in their
barbarian dress, waiting upon them, to whom they made signs what they
were to do as if they had been deaf and dumb. When Chirisophus and
Xenophon had saluted one another, they both asked the chief man, through
the interpreter who spoke the Persian language, what country it was. He
replied that it was Armenia. They then asked him for whom the horses
were bred, and he said that they were a tribute for the king, and added
that the neighboring country was that of Chalybes, and told them in what
direction the road lay. Xenophon then went away, conducting the chief
back to his family, giving him the horse that he had taken, which was
rather old, to fatten and offer in sacrifice (for he had heard that it
had been consecrated to the sun), being afraid, indeed, that it might
die, as it had been injured by the journey. He then took some of the
young horses, and gave one of them to each of the other generals and
captains. The horses in this country were smaller than those of Persia,
but far more spirited. The chief instructed the men to tie little bags
round the feet of the horses and other cattle when they drove them
through the snow, for without such bags they sunk up to their bellies.

When the eighth day was come, Xenophon committed the guide to
Chirisophus. He left the chief[33] all the members of his family, except
his son, a youth just coming to mature age; him he gave in charge to
Episthenes of Amphipolis, in order that if the father should conduct
them properly he might return home with him. At the same time they
carried to his house as many provisions as they could, and then broke up
their camp and resumed their march. The chief conducted them through the
snow, walking at liberty. When he came to the end of the third day's
march, Chirisophus was angry at him for not guiding them to some
villages. He said that there was none in that part of the country.
Chirisophus then struck him, but did not confine him, and in consequence
he ran off in the night, leaving his son behind him. This affair, the
ill-treatment and neglect of the guide, was the only cause of dissension
between Chirisophus and Xenophon during the march. Episthenes conceived
an affection for the youth, and, taking him home, found him extremely
attached to him.

[Footnote 33: This is rather oddly expressed, for the guide and the
chief were the same person.]

After this occurrence they proceeded seven days' journey, five parasangs
each day, till they came to the river Phasis, the breadth of which is a
_plethrum_. Hence they advanced two days' journey, ten parasangs, when,
on the pass that led over the mountains into the plain, the Chalybes,
Taochi, and Phasians were drawn up to oppose their progress.
Chirisophus, seeing these enemies in possession of the height, came to a
halt, at the distance of about thirty stadia, that he might not approach
them while leading the army in a column. He accordingly ordered the
other officers to bring up their companies, that the whole force might
be formed in line.

When the rear-guard was come up, he called together the generals and
captains and spoke to them as follows: "The enemy, as you see, is in
possession of the pass over the mountains, and it is proper for us to
consider how we may encounter them to the best advantage. It is my
opinion, therefore, that we should direct the troops to get their dinner
and that we ourselves should hold a council, in the mean time, whether
it is advisable to cross the mountain to-day or to-morrow."

"It seems best to me," exclaimed Cleanor, "to march at once, as soon as
we have dined and resumed our arms, against the enemy; for if we waste
the present day in inaction the enemy, who are now looking down upon us,
will grow bolder, and it is likely that, as their confidence is
increased, others will join them in greater numbers."

After him Xenophon said: "I am of opinion that if it be necessary to
fight, we ought to make our arrangements so as to fight with the
greatest advantage; but that if we propose to pass the mountains as
easily as possible, we ought to consider how we may incur the fewest
wounds and lose the fewest men. The range of hills, as far as we see,
extends more than sixty stadia in length; but the people nowhere seem to
be watching us except along the line of road; and it is, therefore,
better, I think, to endeavor to try to seize unobserved some part of the
unguarded range, and to get possession of it, if we can, beforehand,
than to attack a strong post and men prepared to resist us, for it is
far less difficult to march up a steep ascent without fighting than
along a level road with enemies on each side; and in the night, if men
are not obliged to fight, they can see better what is before them than
by day if engaged with enemies; while a rough road is easier to the feet
to those who are marching without molestation than a smooth one to those
who are pelted on the head with missiles. Nor do I think it at all
impracticable for us to steal a way for ourselves, as we can march by
night, so as not to be seen, and can keep at such a distance from the
enemy as to allow no possibility of being heard. We seem likely, too, in
my opinion, if we make a pretended attack on this point, to find the
rest of the range still less guarded, for the enemy will so much the
more probably stay where they are. But why should I speak doubtfully
about stealing? For I hear that you Lacedaemonians, O Chirisophus, such
of you at least as are of the better class, practise stealing from your
boyhood, and it is not a disgrace, but an honor, to steal whatever the
law does not forbid; while, in order that you may steal with the utmost
dexterity, and strive to escape discovery, it is appointed by law that,
if you are caught stealing, you are scourged. It is now high time for
you, therefore, to give proof of your education, and to take care that
we may not receive many stripes."

"But I hear that you Athenians also," rejoined Chirisophus, "are very
clever at stealing the public money, though great danger threatens him
that steals it; and that your best men steal it most, if indeed your
best men are thought worthy to be your magistrates; so that it is time
for you likewise to give proof of your education."

"I am then ready," exclaimed Xenophon, "to march with the rear-guard, as
soon as we have supped, to take possession of the hills. I have guides
too, for our light-armed men captured some of the marauders following
us, by lying in ambush, and from them I learn that the mountains are not
impassable, but are grazed over by goats and oxen, so that if we once
gain possession of any part of the range, there will be tracks also for
our baggage cattle. I expect also that the enemy will no longer keep
their ground, when they see us upon a level with them on the heights,
for they will not now come down to be upon a level with us." Chirisophus
then said: "But why should you go, and leave the charge of the rear?
Rather send others, unless some volunteers present themselves." Upon
this Aristonymus of Methydria came forward with his heavy-armed men, and
Aristeas of Chios and Nichomachus of Oeta with their light-armed; and
they made an arrangement that as soon as they should reach the top they
should light a number of fires. Having settled these points, they went
to dinner; and after dinner Chirisophus led forward the whole army ten
stadia toward the enemy, that he might appear to be fully resolved to
march against them on that quarter.

When they had taken their supper, and night came on, those appointed for
the service went forward and got possession of the hills; the other
troops rested where they were. The enemy, when they saw the heights
occupied, kept watch and burned a number of fires all night. As soon as
it was day, Chirisophus, after having offered sacrifice, marched forward
along the road; while those who had gained the heights advanced by the
ridge. Most of the enemy, meanwhile, stayed at the pass, but a part went
to meet the troops coming along the heights. But before the main bodies
came together, those on the ridge closed with one another, and the
Greeks had the advantage, and put the enemy to flight. At the same time
the Grecian peltasts ran up from the plain to attack the enemy drawn up
to receive them, and Chirisophus followed at a quick pace with the
heavy-armed men. The enemy at the pass, however, when they saw those
above defeated, took to flight. Not many of them were killed, but a
great number of shields were taken, which the Greeks, by hacking them
with their swords, rendered useless. As soon as they had gained the
ascent, and had sacrificed and erected a trophy, they went down into the
plain before them, and arrived at a number of villages stored with
abundance of excellent provisions.

From hence they marched five days' journey, thirty parasangs, to the
country of the Taochi, where provisions began to fail them; for the
Taochi inhabited strong fastnesses, in which they had laid up all their
supplies. Having at length, however, arrived at one place which had no
city or houses attached to it, but in which men and women and a great
number of cattle were assembled, Chirisophus, as soon as he came before
it, made it the object of an attack; and when the first division that
assailed it began to be tired, another succeeded, and then another, for
it was not possible for them to surround it in a body, as there was a
river about it. When Xenophon came up with his rear-guard, peltasts, and
heavy-armed men, Chirisophus exclaimed: "You come seasonably, for we
must take this place, as there are no provisions for the army unless we
take it."

They then deliberated together, and Xenophon asking what hindered them
from taking the place, Chirisophus replied: "The only approach to it is
the one which you see; but when any of our men attempt to pass along it,
the enemy roll down stones over yonder impending rock, and whoever is
struck is treated as you behold;" and he pointed, at the same moment, to
some of the men who had had their legs and ribs broken. "But if they
expend all their stones," rejoined Xenophon, "is there anything else to
prevent us from advancing? For we see, in front of us, only a few men,
and but two or three of them armed. The space, too, through which we
have to pass under exposure to the stones is, as you see, only about a
hundred and fifty feet in length; and of this about a hundred feet is
covered with large pine trees in groups, against which, if the men place
themselves, what would they suffer either from the flying stones or the
rolling ones? The remaining part of the space is not above fifty feet,
over which, when the stones cease, we must pass at a running pace."

"But," said Chirisophus, "the instant we offer to go to the part covered
with trees, the stones fly in great numbers."

"That," cried Xenophon, "would be the very thing we want, for thus they
will exhaust their stones the sooner. Let us then advance, if we can, to
the point whence we shall have but a short way to run, and from which we
may, if we please, easily retreat."

Chirisophus and Xenophon, with Callimachus of Parrhasia, one of the
captains, who had that day the lead of all the other captains of the
rear-guard, then went forward, all the rest of the captains remaining
out of danger. Next, about seventy of the men advanced under the trees,
not in a body, but one by one, each sheltering himself as he could.
Agasias of Stymphalus, and Aristonymus of Methydria, who were also
captains of the rear-guard, with some others were at the same time
standing behind, without the trees, for it was not safe for more than
one company to stand under them. Callimachus then adopted the following
stratagem: he ran forward two or three paces from the tree under which
he was sheltered, and when the stones began to be hurled, hastily drew
back; and at each of his sallies more than ten cartloads of stones were
spent.

Agasias, observing what Callimachus was doing, and that the eyes of the
whole army were upon him, and fearing that he himself might not be the
first to enter the place, began to advance alone--neither calling to
Aristonymus who was next him, nor to Eurylochus of Lusia, both of whom
were his intimate friends, nor to any other person--and passed by all
the rest. Callimachus, seeing him rushing by, caught hold of the rim of
his shield, and at that moment Aristonymus of Methydria ran past them
both, and after him Eurylochus of Lusia, for all these sought
distinction for valor, and were rivals to one another; and thus, in
mutual emulation, they got possession of the place, for when they had
once rushed in, not a stone was hurled from above. But a dreadful
spectacle was then to be seen; for the women, flinging their children
over the precipice, threw themselves after them; and the men followed
their example. Æneas of Stymphalus, a captain, seeing one of them, who
had on a rich garment, running to throw himself over, caught hold of it
with intent to stop him. But the man dragged him forward, and they both
went rolling down the rocks together, and were killed. Thus very few
prisoners were taken, but a great number of oxen, asses, and sheep.

Hence they advanced, seven days' journey, a distance of fifty parasangs,
through the country of the Chalybes. These were the most warlike people
of all that they passed through, and came to close combat with them.
They had linen cuirasses, reaching down to the groin, and, instead of
skirts, thick cords twisted. They had also greaves and helmets, and at
their girdles a short falchion, as large as a Spartan crooked dagger,
with which they cut the throats of all whom they could master, and then,
cutting off their heads, carried them away with them. They sang and
danced when the enemy were likely to see them. They carried also a spear
of about fifteen cubits in length, having one spike.[34] They stayed in
their villages till the Greeks had passed by, when they pursued and
perpetually harassed them. They had their dwellings in strong places, in
which they had also laid up their provisions, so that the Greeks could
get nothing from that country, but lived upon the cattle which they had
taken from the Taochi.

[Footnote 34: Having one iron point at the upper end, and no point at
the lower for fixing the spear in the ground.]

The Greeks next arrived at the river Harpasus, the breadth of which was
four _plethra_. Hence they proceeded through the territory of the
Scythini, four days' journey, making twenty parasangs, over a level
tract, until they came to some villages, in which they halted three days
and collected provisions. From this place they advanced four days'
journey, twenty parasangs, to a large, rich and populous city, called
Gymnias, from which the governor of the country sent the Greeks a guide
to conduct them through a region at war with his own people. The guide,
when he came, said that he would take them in five days to a place
whence they should see the sea; if not, he would consent to be put to
death. When, as he proceeded, he entered the country of their enemies,
he exhorted them to burn and lay waste the lands; whence it was evident
that he had come for this very purpose, and not from any good-will to
the Greeks.

On the fifth day they came to the mountain; and the name of it was
Theches. When the men who were in the front had mounted the height, and
looked down upon the sea, a great shout proceeded from them; and
Xenophon and the rearguard, on hearing it, thought that some new enemies
were assailing the front, for in the rear, too, the people from the
country that they had burned were following them, and the rear-guard, by
placing an ambuscade, had killed some, and taken others prisoners, and
had captured about twenty shields made of raw ox-hides with the hair on.
But as the noise still increased, and drew nearer, and as those who came
up from time to time kept running at full speed to join those who were
continually shouting, the cries becoming louder as the men became more
numerous, it appeared to Xenophon that it must be something of very
great moment. Mounting his horse, therefore, and taking with him Lycius
and the cavalry, he hastened forward to give aid, when presently they
heard the soldiers shouting, "The sea, the sea!" and cheering on one
another. They then all began to run, the rear-guard as well as the rest,
and the baggage-cattle and horses were put to their speed; and when they
had all arrived at the top, the men embraced one another and their
generals and captains, with tears in their eyes. Suddenly, whoever it
was that suggested it, the soldiers brought stones, and raised a large
mound, on which they laid a number of raw ox-hides, staves, and shields
taken from the enemy. The shields the guide himself hacked in pieces,
and exhorted the rest to do the same. Soon after, the Greeks sent away
the guide, giving him presents from the common stock: a horse, a silver
cup, a Persian robe, and ten _darics_; but he showed most desire for the
rings on their fingers, and obtained many of them from the soldiers.
Having then pointed out to them a village where they might take up their
quarters, and the road by which they were to proceed to the Macrones,
when the evening came on he departed, pursuing his way during the night.

Hence the Greeks advanced three days' journey, a distance of ten
parasangs, through the country of the Macrones. On the first day they
came to a river which divides the territories of the Macrones from those
of the Scythini. On their right they had an eminence extremely difficult
of access, and on their left another river, into which the boundary
river, which they had to cross, empties itself. This stream was thickly
edged with trees, not indeed large, but growing closely together. These
the Greeks, as soon as they came to the spot, cut down,[35] being in
haste to get out of the country as soon as possible. The Macrones,
however, equipped with wicker shields, and spears, and hair tunics, were
drawn up on the opposite side of the crossing-place; they were animating
one another and throwing stones into the river.[36] They did not hit our
men or cause them any inconvenience.

[Footnote 35: The Greeks cut down the trees in order to throw them into
the stream, and form a kind of bridge on which they might cross.]

[Footnote 36: They threw stones into the river that they might stand on
them and approach nearer to the Greeks, so as to use their weapons with
more effect.]

At this juncture one of the peltasts came up to Xenophon, saying that he
had been a slave at Athens, and adding that he knew the language of
these men. "I think, indeed," said he, "that this is my country, and, if
there is nothing to prevent, I should wish to speak to the people."

"There is nothing to prevent," replied Xenophon; "so speak to them, and
first ascertain what people they are." When he asked them, they said
that they were the Macrones. "Inquire, then," said Xenophon, "why they
are drawn up to oppose us and wish to be our enemies." They replied,
"Because you come against our country." The generals then told him to
acquaint them that we were not come with any wish to do them injury, but
that we were returning to Greece after having been engaged in war with
the king, and that we were desirous to reach the sea. They asked if the
Greeks would give pledges to this effect; and the Greeks replied that
they were willing both to give and receive them. The Macrones
accordingly presented the Greeks with a barbarian lance, and the Greeks
gave them a Grecian one; for they said that such were their usual
pledges. Both parties called the gods to witness.

After these mutual assurances, the Macrones immediately assisted them in
cutting away the trees and made a passage for them as if to bring them
over, mingling freely among the Greeks; they also gave such facilities
as they could for buying provisions, and conducted them through their
country for three days, until they brought them to the confines of the
Colchians. Here was a range of hills, high, but accessible, and upon
them the Colchians were drawn up in array. The Greeks, at first, drew up
against them in a line, with the intention of marching up the hill in
this disposition; but afterward the generals thought proper to assemble
and deliberate how they might engage with the best effect.

Xenophon then said it appeared to him that they ought to relinquish the
arrangement in line, and to dispose the troops in columns; "for a line,"
pursued he, "will be broken at once, as we shall find the hills in some
parts impassable, though in others easy of access; and this disruption
will immediately produce despondency in the men, when, after being
ranged in a regular line, they find it dispersed. Again, if we advance
drawn up very many deep, the enemy will stretch beyond us on both sides,
and will employ the parts that outreach us in any way they may think
proper; and if we advance only a few deep, it would not be at all
surprising if our line be broken through by showers of missiles and men
falling upon us in large bodies. If this happen in any part, it will be
ill for the whole extent of the line. I think, then, that having formed
our companies in columns, we should keep them so far apart from each
other as that the last companies on each side may be beyond the enemy's
wings. Thus our extreme companies will both outflank the line of the
enemy, and, as we march in file, the bravest of our men will close with
the enemy first, and wherever the ascent is easiest, there each division
will direct its course. Nor will it be easy for the enemy to penetrate
into the intervening spaces when there are companies on each side, nor
will it be easy to break through a column as it advances; while, if any
one of the companies be hard pressed, the neighboring one will support
it; and if but one of the companies can by any path attain the summit,
the enemy will no longer stand their ground."

This plan was approved, and they threw the companies into columns.
Xenophon, riding along from the right wing to the left, said: "Soldiers,
the enemy whom you see before you is now the only obstacle to hinder us
from being where we have long been eager to be. These, if we can, we
must eat up alive."

When the men were all in their places, and they had formed the companies
into columns, there were about eighty companies of heavy-armed men, and
each company consisted of about eighty men. The peltasts and archers
they divided into three bodies, each about six hundred men, one of which
they placed beyond the left wing, another beyond the right, and the
third in the centre. The generals then desired the soldiers to make
their vows to the gods; and having made them, and sung the paean, they
moved forward. Chirisophus and Xenophon, and the peltasts that they had
with them, who were beyond the enemy's flanks, pushed on; and the enemy,
observing their motions, and hurrying forward to receive them, was drawn
off, some to the right and others to the left, and left a great void in
the centre of the line; when the peltasts in the Arcadian division, whom
Aeschines the Acarnanian commanded, seeing the Colchians separate, ran
forward in all haste, thinking that they were taking to flight; and
these were the first that reached the summit. The Arcadian heavy-armed
troop, of which Clearnor the Orchomenian was captain, followed them. But
the enemy, when once the Greeks began to run, no longer stood its
ground, but went off in flight, some one way and some another.

Having passed the summit, the Greeks encamped in a number of villages
containing abundance of provisions. As to other things here, there was
nothing at which they were surprised; but the number of bee-hives was
extraordinary, and all the soldiers that ate of the combs lost their
senses, vomited, and were affected with purging, and not any of them was
able to stand upright; such as had eaten a little were like men greatly
intoxicated, and such as had eaten much were like madmen, and some like
persons at the point of death. They lay upon the ground, in consequence,
in great numbers, as if there had been a defeat; and there was general
dejection. The next day no one of them was found dead; and they
recovered their senses about the same hour that they had lost them on
the preceding day; and on the third and fourth days they got up as if
after having taken physic.[37]

[Footnote 37: That there was honey in these parts, with intoxicating
qualities, was well known to antiquity. Pliny mentions two sorts of it,
one produced at Heraclea in Pontus, and the other among the Sanni or
Macrones. The peculiarities of the honey arose from the herbs to which
the bees resorted; the first came from the flower of a plant called
_oegolethron_, or goatsbane; the other from a species of rhododendron.
Tournefort, when he was in that country, saw honey of this description.
Ainsworth found that the intoxicating honey had a bitter taste. This
honey is also mentioned by Dioscorides.]

From hence they proceeded two days' march, seven parasangs, and arrived
at Trebizond, a Greek city, of large population, on the Euxine Sea; a
colony of Sinope, but lying in the territory of the Colchians. Here they
stayed about thirty days, encamping in the villages of the Colchians,
whence they made excursions and plundered the country of Colchis. The
people of Trebizond provided a market for the Greeks in the camp, and
entertained them in the city; and made them presents of oxen,
barley-meal, and wine. They negotiated with them also on behalf of the
neighboring Colchians, those especially who dwelt in the plain, and from
them too were brought presents of oxen.

Soon after, they prepared to perform the sacrifice which they had vowed.
Oxen enough had been brought them to offer to Jupiter the Preserver, and
to Hercules, for their safe conduct, and whatever they had vowed to the
other gods. They also celebrated gymnastic games upon the hill where
they were encamped, and chose Dracontius, a Spartan--who had become an
exile from his country when quite a boy, for having involuntarily killed
a child by striking him with a dagger--to prepare the course and preside
at the contests. When the sacrifice was ended, they gave the hides[38]
to Dracontius, and desired him to conduct them to the place where he had
made the course. Dracontius, pointing to the place where they were
standing, said, "This hill is an excellent place for running, in
whatever direction the men may wish."

[Footnote 38: Lion and Kuehner have a notion that these skins were to be
given as prizes to the victors, referring to Herodotus, who says that
the Egyptians, in certain games which they celebrate in honor of
Perseus, offer as prizes cattle, cloaks, and hides. Krueger doubts
whether they were intended for prizes, or were given as a present to
Dracontius.]

"But how will they be able," said they, "to wrestle on ground so rough
and bushy?"

"He that falls," said he, "will suffer the more." Boys, most of them
from among the prisoners, contended in the short course, and in the long
course above sixty Cretans ran; while others were matched in wrestling,
boxing, and the _pancratium_. It was a fine sight; for many entered the
lists, and as their friends were spectators, there was great emulation.
Horses also ran; and they had to gallop down the steep, and, turning
round in the sea, to come up again to the altar. In the descent, many
rolled down; but in the ascent, against the exceedingly steep ground,
the horses could scarcely get up at a walking pace. There was
consequently great shouting and laughter and cheering from the people.




CONDEMNATION AND DEATH OF SOCRATES

B.C. 399

PLATO


(The death of Socrates was brought about under the restored democracy by
three of his enemies--Lycon, Meletus, and Anytus, the last a man of high
rank and reputation in the state. Socrates was accused by them of
despising the ancient gods of the state, introducing new divinities and
corrupting the youth of Athens. He was charged with having taught his
followers, young men of the first Athenian families, to despise the
established government, to be turbulent and seditious, and his accusors
pointed to Alcibiades and Critias, notorious for their lawlessness, as
examples of the fruits of his teaching.

It is quite certain that Socrates disliked the Athenian government and
considered democracy as tyrannical as despotism. But there was no law at
Athens by which he could be put to death for his words and actions, and
the vague charge could never have been made unless the whole trial of
the philosopher had been a party movement, headed by men like Lycon and
Anytus, whose support of the unjust measure made the condemnation of
Socrates a foregone conclusion. Xenophon, the pupil and admirer of the
philosopher, expresses in his _Memorabilia of Socrates_ his surprise
that the Athenians should have condemned to death a man of such exalted
character and transparent innocence. But the influence of the teacher
with his pupils, most of them sons of the wealthiest citizens, might
well have been dreaded by those in office and engaged in the conduct of
public business. By them, the common politicians of the day, Socrates,
with his keen and witty criticism of political corruption and
demagogism, must have been considered a formidable adversary.

Accordingly, by the decision of the Athenian court, the philosopher was
sentenced to death by drinking a cup of hemlock. Although it was usual
for criminals to be executed the day following their condemnation, he
enjoyed a respite of thirty days, during which time his friends had
access to his prison cell. It was the time when the ceremonial galley
was crowned and sent on her pilgrimage to the holy Isle of Delos, and no
criminal could be executed until her return. Socrates exhibited heroic
constancy and cheerfulness during this interval, and repudiated the
offers of his friends to aid in his escape, though they had chartered a
ship to carry him to Thessaly. With calm composure he reasoned on the
immortality of the soul, and cheered his visitors with words of hope.

The literary portraits of Socrates furnished by himself, and the
writings of Plato, are among the most precious monuments of antiquity,
and the life and death of such a man form a memorable era in the moral
and intellectual history of mankind.

Plato, in his _Phædo, or the Immortality of the Soul_, gives the
following dialogue between Echecrates and Phædo--two friends and
disciples of the late philosopher--evidently with no other purpose in
view than to lend to the account of the great teacher's last hours, and
the last words his followers were to hear from his lips, the additional
force and dramatic value of a personal narrative in the mouth of a
loving pupil and an actual eyewitness of his death.)


Echecrates. Were you personally present, Phaedo, with Socrates on that
day when he drank the poison in prison? or did you hear an account of it
from someone else?

_Phæd._ I was there myself, Echecrates.

_Ech._ What then did he say before his death? and how did he die? for I
should be glad to hear; for scarcely any citizen of Phlius[39] ever
visits Athens now, nor has any stranger for a long time come from
thence, who was able to give us a clear account of the particulars,
except that he died from drinking poison; but he was unable to tell us
anything more.

[Footnote 39: Phlius, to which Echecrates belonged, was a town of
Sicyonia in Peloponnesus.]

_Phæd._ And did you not hear about the trial how it went off?

_Ech._ Yes; some one told me this; and I wondered, that as it took place
so long ago, he appears to have died long afterward. What was the reason
of this, Phaedo?

_Phæd._ An accidental circumstance happened in his favor, Echecrates:
for the poop of the ship which the Athenians send to Delos, chanced to
be crowned on the day before the trial.

_Ech._ But what is this ship?

_Phæd._ It is the ship, as the Athenians say, in which Theseus formerly
conveyed the fourteen boys and girls to Crete and saved both them and
himself. They, therefore, made a vow to Apollo on that occasion, as it
is said, that if they were saved they would every year despatch a solemn
embassy to Delos; which, from that time to the present, they send yearly
to the god. When they begin the preparations for this solemn embassy,
they have a law that the city shall be purified during this period, and
that no public execution shall take place until the ship has reached
Delos, and returned to Athens: and this occasionally takes a long time,
when the winds happen to impede their passage. The commencement of the
embassy is when the priest of Apollo has crowned the poop of the ship.
And this was done, as I said, on the day before the trial: on this
account Socrates had a long interval in prison between the trial and his
death.

_Ech._ And what, Phædo, were the circumstances of his death? what was
said and done? and who of his friends were with him? or would not the
magistrates allow them to be present, but did he die destitute of
friends?

_Phæd._ By no means; but some, indeed several, were present.

_Ech._ Take the trouble, then, to relate to me all the particulars as
clearly as you can, unless you have any pressing business.

_Phæd._ I am at leisure, and will endeavor to give you a full account:
for to call Socrates to mind, whether speaking myself or listening to
some one else, is always most delightful to me.

_Ech._ And indeed, Phaedo, you have others to listen to you who are of
the same mind. However, endeavor to relate everything as accurately as
you can.

_Phæd._ I was indeed wonderfully affected by being present, for I was
not impressed with a feeling of pity, like one present at the death of a
friend; for the man appeared to me to be happy, Echecrates, both from
his manner and discourse, so fearlessly and nobly did he meet his death:
so much so that it occurred to me that in going to Hades he was not
going without a divine destiny, but that when he arrived there he would
be happy, if anyone ever was. For this reason I was entirely
uninfluenced by any feeling of pity, as would seem likely to be the case
with one present on so mournful an occasion; nor was I affected by
pleasure from being engaged in philosophical discussions, as was our
custom; for our conversation was of that kind. But an altogether
unaccountable feeling possessed me, a kind of unusual mixture compounded
of pleasure and pain together, when I considered that he was immediately
about to die. And all of us who were present were affected in much the
same manner, at one time laughing, at another weeping one of us
especially, Apollodorus, for you know the man and his manner.

_Ech._ How should I not?

_Phæd._ He, then, was entirely overcome by these emotions; and I too was
troubled, as well as the others.

_Ech._ But who were present, Phaedo?

_Phæd._ Of his fellow-countrymen, this Apollodorus was present, and
Critobulus, and his father Crito, moreover Hermogenes, Epigenes,
Æschines, and Antisthenes; Ctesippus the Pæanian, Menexenus, and some
other of his countrymen were also there: Plato I think was sick.

_Ech._ Were any strangers present?

_Phæd._ Yes: Simmias the Theban, Cebes, and Phaedondes: and from Megara,
Euclides and Terpsion.

_Ech._ But what! were not Aristippus and Cleombrotus present?

_Phæd._ No: for they were said to be at Ægina.

_Ech._ Was anyone else there?

_Phæd._ I think that these were nearly all who were present.

_Ech._ Well, now, what do you say was the subject of conversation?

_Phæd._ I will endeavor to relate the whole to you from the beginning.
On the preceding days I and the others were constantly in the habit of
visiting Socrates, meeting early in the morning at the court-house where
the trial took place, for it was near the prison. Here then we waited
every day till the prison was opened, conversing with each other; for it
was not opened very early, but, as soon as it was opened we went in to
Socrates, and usually spent the day with him. On that occasion, however,
we met earlier than usual; for on the preceding day, when we left the
prison in the evening, we heard that the ship had arrived from Delos. We
therefore urged each other to come as early as possible to the
accustomed place; accordingly we came, and the porter, who used to admit
us, coming out, told us to wait, and not enter until he called us.
"For," he said, "the Eleven are now freeing Socrates from his bonds, and
announcing to him that he must die to-day." But in no long time he
returned, and bade us enter.

When we entered, we found Socrates just freed from his bonds, and
Xantippe (you know her), holding his little boy and sitting by him. As
soon as Xantippe saw us, she wept aloud and said such things as women
usually do on such occasions, as, "Socrates, your friends will now
converse with you for the last time, and you with them." But Socrates,
looking toward Crito, said, "Crito, let some one take her home." Upon
which some of Crito's attendants led her away, wailing and beating
herself.

But Socrates, sitting up in bed, drew up his leg and rubbed it with his
hand, and as he rubbed it said: "What an unaccountable thing, my
friends, that seems to be which men call pleasure; and how wonderfully
is it related toward that which appears to be its contrary, pain; in
that they will not both be present to a man at the same time, yet, if
anyone pursues and attains the one, he is almost always compelled to
receive the other, as if they were both united together from one head.

"And it seems to me," he said, "that if Æsop had observed this he would
have made a fable from it, how the Deity, wishing to reconcile these
warring principles, when he could not do so, united their heads
together, and from hence whomsoever the one visits the other attends
immediately after; as appears to be the case with me, since I suffered
pain in my leg before from the chain, but now pleasure seems to have
succeeded."

Hereupon Cebes, interrupting him, said: "By Jupiter, Socrates, you have
done well in reminding me. With respect to the poems which you made, by
putting into metre those Fables of Æsop and the hymn to Apollo, several
other persons asked me, and especially Evenus recently, with what design
you made them after you came here, whereas before, you had never made
any. If, therefore, you care at all that I should be able to answer
Evenus when he asks me again--for I am sure he will do so--tell me what
I must say to him."

"Tell him the truth then, Cebes," he replied, "that I did not make them
from a wish to compete with him, or his poems, for I knew that this
would be no easy matter; but that I might discover the meaning of
certain dreams, and discharge my conscience, if this should happen to be
the music which they have often ordered me to apply myself to. For they
were to the following purport: often in my past life the same dream
visited me, appearing at different times in different forms, yet always
saying the same thing. 'Socrates,' it said, 'apply yourself to and
practise music.' And I formerly supposed that it exhorted and encouraged
me to continue the pursuit I was engaged in, as those who cheer on
racers, so that the dream encouraged me to continue the pursuit I was
engaged in, namely, to apply myself to music, since philosophy is the
highest music, and I was devoted to it. But now since my trial took
place, and the festival of the god retarded my death, it appeared to me
that, if by chance the dream so frequently enjoined me to apply myself
to popular music, I ought not to disobey it but do so, for that it would
be safer for me not to depart hence before I had discharged my
conscience by making some poems in obedience to the dream. Thus, then, I
first of all composed a hymn to the god whose festival was present, and
after the god, considering that a poet, if he means to be a poet, ought
to make fables and not discourses, and knowing that I was not skilled in
making fables, I therefore put into verse those fables of Æsop, which
were at hand, and were known to me, and which first occurred to me.

"Tell this then to Evenus, Cebes, and bid him farewell, and, if he is
wise, to follow me as soon as he can. But I depart, as it seems, to-day;
for so the Athenians order."

To this Simmias said: "What is this, Socrates, which you exhort Evenus
to do? for I often meet with him; and from what I know of him, I am
pretty certain that he will not at all be willing to comply with your
advice."

"What then," said he, "is not Evenus a philosopher?"

"To me he seems to be so," said Simmias.

"Then he will be willing," rejoined Socrates, "and so will everyone who
worthily engages in this study; perhaps indeed he will not commit
violence on himself, for that they say is not allowable." And as he said
this he let down his leg from the bed on the ground, and in this posture
continued during the remainder of the discussion.

Cebes then asked him: "What do you mean, Socrates, by saying that it is
not lawful to commit violence on one's self, but that a philosopher
should be willing to follow one who is dying?"

"What, Cebes, have not you and Simmias, who have conversed familiarly
with Philolaus[40] on this subject, heard?"

[Footnote 40: A Pythagorean of Crotona.]

"Nothing very clearly, Socrates."

"I however speak only from hearsay; what then I have heard I have no
scruple in telling. And perhaps it is most becoming for one who is about
to travel there, to inquire and speculate about the journey thither,
what kind we think it is. What else can one do in the interval before
sunset?"

"Why, then, Socrates, do they say that it is not allowable to kill one's
self? for I, as you asked just now, have heard both Philolaus, when he
lived with us, and several others say that it was not right to do this;
but I never heard anything clear upon the subject from anyone."

"Then you should consider it attentively," said Socrates, "for perhaps
you may hear: probably, however, it will appear wonderful to you, if
this alone of all other things is an universal truth,[41] and it never
happens to a man, as is the case in all other things, that at some times
and to some persons only it is better to die than to live; yet that
these men for whom it is better to die--this probably will appear
wonderful to you--may not, without impiety, do this good to themselves,
but must await another benefactor."

[Footnote 41: Namely, "that it is better to die than live."]

Then Cebes, gently smiling, said, speaking in his own dialect, "Jove be
witness."

"And indeed," said Socrates, "it would appear to be unreasonable, yet
still perhaps it has some reason on its side. The maxim indeed given on
this subject in the mystical doctrines,[42] that we men are in a kind of
prison, and that we ought not to free ourselves from it and escape,
appears to me difficult to be understood, and not easy to penetrate.
This however appears to me, Cebes, to be well said, that the gods take
care of us, and that we men are one of their possessions. Does it not
seem so to you?"

[Footnote 42: Of Pythagoras.]

"It does," replied Cebes.

"Therefore," said he, "if one of your slaves were to kill himself,
without your having intimated that you wished him to die, should you not
be angry with him, and should you not punish him if you could?"

"Certainly," he replied.

"Perhaps then, in this point of view, it is not unreasonable to assert,
that a man ought not to kill himself before the deity lays him under a
necessity of doing so, such as that now laid on me."

"This, indeed," said Cebes, "appears to be probable. But what you said
just now, Socrates, that philosophers should be very willing to die,
appears to be an absurdity, if what we said just now is agreeable to
reason, that it is God who takes care of us, and that we are his
property. For that the wisest men should not be grieved at leaving that
service in which they govern them who are the best of all masters,
namely, the gods, is not consistent with reason. For surely he cannot
think that he will take better care of himself when he has become free:
but a foolish man might perhaps think thus, that he should fly from his
master, and would not reflect that he ought not to fly from a good one,
but should cling to him as much as possible, therefore he would fly
against all reason; but a man of sense would desire to be constantly
with one better than himself. Thus, Socrates, the contrary of what you
just now said is likely to be the case; for it becomes the wise to be
grieved at dying, but the foolish to rejoice."

Socrates, on hearing this, appeared to me to be pleased with the
pertinacity of Cebes, and looking toward us said: "Cebes, you see,
always searches out arguments, and is not at all willing to admit at
once anything one has said."

Whereupon Simmias replied: "But indeed, Socrates, Cebes appears to me,
now, to say something to the purpose; for with what design should men
really wise fly from masters who are better than themselves, and so
readily leave them? And Cebes appears to me to direct his argument
against you, because you so easily endure to abandon both us and those
good rulers--as you yourself confess--the gods."

"You speak justly," said Socrates, "for I think you mean that I ought to
make my defence to this charge, as if I were in a court of justice."

"Certainly," replied Simmias.

"Come then," said he, "I will endeavor to defend myself more
successfully before you than before the judges. For," he proceeded,
"Simmias and Cebes, if I did not think that I should go first of all
among other deities who are both wise and good, and next among men who
have departed this life better than any here, I should be wrong in not
grieving at death: but now be assured, I hope to go among good men,
though I would not positively assert it; that, however, I shall go among
gods who are perfectly good masters, be assured I can positively assert
this, if I can anything of the kind. So that, on this account, I am not
so much troubled, but I entertain a good hope that something awaits
those who die, and that, as was said long since, it will be far better
for the good than the evil."

"What then, Socrates," said Simmias, "would you go away keeping this
persuasion to yourself, or would you impart it to us? For this good
appears to me to be also common to us; and at the same time it will be
an apology for you, if you can persuade us to believe what you say."

"I will endeavor to do so," he said. "But first let us attend to Crito
here, and see what it is he seems to have for some time wished to say."

"What else, Socrates," said Crito, "but what he who is to give you the
poison told me some time ago, that I should tell you to speak as little
as possible? For he says that men become too much heated by speaking,
and that nothing of this kind ought to interfere with the poison, and
that, otherwise, those who did so were sometimes compelled to drink two
or three times."

To which Socrates replied: "Let him alone, and let him attend to his own
business, and prepare to give it me twice, or, if occasion requires,
even thrice."

"I was almost certain what you would say," answered Crito, "but he has
been some time pestering me."

"Never mind him," he rejoined.

"But now I wish to render an account to you, my judges, of the reason
why a man who has really devoted his life to philosophy, when he is
about to die appears to me, on good grounds, to have confidence, and to
entertain a firm hope that the greatest good will befall him in the
other world, when he has departed this life. How then this comes to
pass, Simmias and Cebes, I will endeavor to explain.

"For as many as rightly apply themselves to philosophy seem to have left
all others in ignorance, that they aim at nothing else than to die and
be dead. If this then is true, it would surely be absurd to be anxious
about nothing else than this during their whole life, but when it
arrives, to be grieved at what they have been long anxious about and
aimed at."

Upon this, Simmias, smiling, said: "By Jupiter, Socrates, though I am
not now at all inclined to smile, you have made me do so; for I think
that the multitude, if they heard this, would think it was very well
said in reference to philosophers, and that our countrymen particularly
would agree with you, that true philosophers do desire death, and that
they are by no means ignorant that they deserve to suffer it."

"And indeed, Simmias, they would speak the truth, except in asserting
that they are not ignorant; for they are ignorant of the sense in which
true philosophers desire to die, and in what sense they deserve death,
and what kind of death. But," he said, "let us take leave of them, and
speak to one another. Do we think that death is anything?"

"Certainly," replied Simmias.

"Is it anything else than the separation of the soul from the body? and
is not this to die, for the body to be apart by itself separated from
the soul, and for the soul to subsist apart by itself separated from the
body? Is death anything else than this?"

"No, but this," he replied.

"Consider then, my good friend, whether you are of the same opinion as
me; for thus I think we shall understand better the subject we are
considering. Does it appear to you to be becoming in a philosopher to be
anxious about pleasures, as they are called, such as meats and drinks?"

"By no means, Socrates," said Simmias.

"But what? about the pleasures of love?"

"Not at all"

"What then? does such a man appear to you to think other bodily
indulgences of value? for instance, does he seem to you to value or
despise the possession of magnificent garments and sandals, and other
ornaments of the body, except so far as necessity compels him to use
them?"

"The true philosopher," he answered, "appears to me to despise them."

"Does not, then," he continued, "the whole employment of such a man
appear to you to be, not about the body, but to separate himself from it
as much as possible, and be occupied about his soul?"

"It does."

"First of all, then, in such matters, does not the philosopher, above
all other men, evidently free his soul as much as he can from communion
with the body?"

"It appears so."

"And it appears, Simmias, to the generality of men, that he who takes no
pleasure in such things, and who does not use them, does not deserve to
live; but that he nearly approaches to death who cares nothing for the
pleasures that subsist through the body."

"You speak very truly."

"But what with respect to the acquisition of wisdom, is the body an
impediment or not, if anyone takes it with him as a partner in the
search? What I mean is this: Do sight and hearing convey any truth to
men, or are they such as the poets constantly sing, who say that we
neither hear nor see anything with accuracy? If, however, these bodily
senses are neither accurate nor clear, much less can the others be so:
for they are all far inferior to these. Do they not seem so to you?"

"Certainly," he replied.

"When, then," said he, "does the soul light on the truth? for, when it
attempts to consider anything in conjunction with the body, it is plain
that it is then led astray by it."

"You say truly."

"Must it not then be by reasoning, if at all, that any of the things
that really are become known to it?"

"Yes."

"And surely the soul then reasons best when none of these things
disturbs it, neither hearing, nor sight, nor pain, nor pleasure of any
kind, but it retires as much as possible within itself, taking leave of
the body, and, as far as it can, not communicating or being in contact
with it, it aims at the discovery of that which is."

"Such is the case."

"Does not then the soul of the philosopher, in these cases, despise the
body, and flee from it, and seek to retire within itself?"

"It appears so."

"But what as to such things as these, Simmias? Do we say that justice
itself is something or nothing?"

"We say it is something, by Jupiter."

"And that beauty and goodness are something?"

"How not?"

"Now, then, have you ever seen anything of this kind with your eyes?"

"By no means," he replied.

"Did you ever lay hold of them by any other bodily sense? but I speak
generally, as of magnitude, health, strength, and, in a word, of the
essence of everything, that is to say, what each is. Is then the exact
truth of these perceived by means of the body, or is it thus, whoever
among us habituates himself to reflect most deeply and accurately on
each several thing about which he is considering, he will make the
nearest approach to the knowledge of it?"

"Certainly."

"Would not he, then, do this with the utmost purity, who should in the
highest degree approach each subject by means of the mere mental
faculties, neither employing the sight in conjunction with the
reflective faculty, nor introducing any other sense together with
reasoning; but who, using pure reflection by itself, should attempt to
search out each essence purely by itself, freed as much as possible from
the eyes and ears, and, in a word, from the whole body, as disturbing
the soul, and not suffering it to acquire truth and wisdom, when it is
in communion with it. Is not he the person, Simmias, if any one can, who
will arrive at the knowledge of that which is?"

"You speak with wonderful truth, Socrates," replied Simmias.

"Wherefore," he said, "it necessarily follows from all this, that some
such opinion as this should be entertained by genuine philosophers, so
that they should speak among themselves as follows: 'A by-path, as it
were, seems to lead us on in our researches undertaken by reason,'
because as long as we are encumbered with the body, and our soul is
contaminated with such an evil, we can never fully attain to what we
desire; and this, we say, is truth. For the body subjects us to
innumerable hinderances on account of its necessary support, and
moreover if any diseases befall us, they impede us in our search after
that which is; and it fills us with longings, desires, fears, all kinds
of fancies, and a multitude of absurdities, so that, as it is said in
real truth, by reason of the body it is never possible for us to make
any advances in wisdom.

"For nothing else but the body and its desires occasions wars,
seditions, and contests; for all wars among us arise on account of our
desire to acquire wealth; and we are compelled to acquire wealth on
account of the body, being enslaved to its service; and consequently on
all these accounts we are hindered in the pursuit of philosophy. But the
worst of all is, that if it leaves us any leisure, and we apply
ourselves to the consideration of any subject, it constantly obtrudes
itself in the midst of our researches, and occasions trouble and
disturbance, and confounds us so that we are not able by reason of it to
discern the truth. It has then in reality been demonstrated to us, that
if we are ever to know anything purely, we must be separated from the
body, and contemplate the things themselves by the mere soul. And then,
as it seems, we shall obtain that which we desire, and which we profess
ourselves to be lovers of, wisdom, when we are dead, as reason shows,
but not while we are alive. For if it is not possible to know anything
purely in conjunction with the body, one of these two things must
follow, either that we can never acquire knowledge, or only after we are
dead; for then the soul will subsist apart by itself, separate from the
body, but not before. And while we live, we shall thus, as it seems,
approach nearest to knowledge, if we hold no intercourse or communion at
all with the body, except what absolute necessity requires, nor suffer
ourselves to be polluted by its nature, but purify ourselves from it,
until God himself shall release us. And thus being pure, and freed from
the folly of body, we shall in all likelihood be with others like
ourselves, and shall of ourselves know the whole real essence, and that
probably is truth; for it is not allowable for the impure to attain to
the pure. Such things, I think, Simmias, all true lovers of wisdom must
both think and say to one another. Does it not seem so to you?"

"Most assuredly, Socrates."

"If this, then," said Socrates, "is true, my friend, there is great hope
for one who arrives where I am going, there, if anywhere, to acquire
that perfection for the sake of which we have taken so much pains during
our past life; so that the journey now appointed me is set out upon with
good hope, and will be so by any other man who thinks that his mind has
been as it were purified.

"This earth and the whole region here are decayed and corroded, as
things in the sea by the saltness; for nothing of any value grows in the
sea, nor, in a word, does it contain anything perfect, but there are
caverns, and sand, and mud in abundance, and filth in whatever parts of
the sea there is earth, nor are they at all worthy to be compared with
the beautiful things with us. But, on the other hand, those things in
the upper regions of the earth would appear far more to excel the things
with us. For, if we may tell a beautiful fable, it is well worth
hearing, Simmias, what kind the things are on the earth beneath the
heavens."

"Indeed, Socrates," said Simmias, "we should be very glad to hear that
fable."

"First of all, then, my friend," he continued, "this earth, if anyone
should survey it from above, is said to have the appearance of balls
covered with twelve different pieces of leather, variegated and
distinguished with colors, of which the colors found here, and which
painters use, are as it were copies. But there the whole earth is
composed of such, and far more brilliant and pure than these; for one
part of it is purple, and of wonderful beauty, part of a golden color,
and part of white, more white than chalk or snow, and in like manner
composed of other colors, and those more in number and more beautiful
than any we have ever beheld. And those very hollow parts of the earth,
though filled with water and air, exhibit a certain species of color,
shining among the variety of other colors, so that one continually
variegated aspect presents itself to the view. In this earth, being
such, all things that grow grow in a manner proportioned to its
nature--trees, flowers, and fruits; and again, in like manner, its
mountains and stones possess, in the same proportion, smoothness and
transparency and more beautiful colors; of which the well-known stones
here that are so highly prized are but fragments, such as sardin-stones,
jaspers, and emeralds, and all of that kind. But there, there is nothing
subsists that is not of this character, and even more beautiful than
these.

"But the reason of this is, because the stones there are pure, and not
eaten up and decayed, like those here, by rottenness and saltness, which
flow down hither together, and which produce deformity and disease in
the stones and the earth, and in other things, even animals and plants.
But that earth is adorned with all these, and moreover with gold and
silver, and other things of the kind: for they are naturally
conspicuous, being numerous and large, and in all parts of the earth; so
that to behold it is a sight for the blessed. There are also many other
animals and men upon it, some dwelling in mid-earth, others about the
air, as we do about the sea, and others in islands which the air flows
round, and which are near the continent: and in one word, what water and
the sea are to us for our necessities, the air is to them; and what air
is to us, that ether is to them.

"But their seasons are of such a temperament that they are free from
disease, and live for a much longer time than those here, and surpass us
in sight, hearing, and smelling, and everything of this kind, as much as
air excels water, and ether air, in purity. Moreover, they have abodes
and temples of the gods, in which gods really dwell, and voices and
oracles, and sensible visions of the gods, and such-like intercourse
with them; the sun, too, and moon, and stars, are seen by them such as
they really are, and their felicity in other respects is correspondent
with these things.

"And such, indeed, is the nature of the whole earth and the parts about
the earth; but there are many places all round it throughout its
cavities, some deeper and more open than that in which we dwell: but
others that are deeper have less chasm than in our region, and other are
shallower in depth than they are here, and broader.

"But all these are in many places perforated one into another under the
earth, some with narrower and some with wider channels, and have
passages through, by which a great quantity of water flows from one into
another, as into basins, and there are immense bulks of ever-flowing
rivers under the earth, both of hot and cold water, and a great quantity
of fire, and mighty rivers of fire, and many of liquid mire, some purer
and some more miry, as in Sicily there are rivers of mud that flow
before the lava, and the lava itself, and from these the several places
are filled, according as the overflow from time to time happens to come
to each of them. But all these move up and down as it were by a certain
oscillation existing in the earth. And this oscillation proceeds from
such natural cause as this: one of the chasms of the earth is
exceedingly large, and perforated through the entire earth, and is that
which Homer[43] speaks of, 'very far off, where is the most profound
abyss beneath the earth,' which elsewhere both he and many other poets
have called Tartarus. For into this chasm all rivers flow together, and
from it flow out again, but they severally derive their character from
the earth through which they flow."

[Footnote 43: _Iliad_, lib. viii., v. 14.]

"And the reason why all streams flow out from thence and flow into it is
because this liquid has neither bottom nor base. Therefore it oscillates
and fluctuates up and down, and the air and the wind around it do the
same; for they accompany it, both when it rushes to those parts of the
earth, and when to these. And as in respiration the flowing breath is
continually breathed out and drawn in, so there the wind, oscillating
with the liquid, causes certain vehement and irresistible winds both as
it enters and goes out. When, therefore, the water rushing in descends
to the place which we call the lower region, it flows through the earth
into the streams there and fills them, just as men pump up water. But
when again it leaves those regions and rushes hither, it again fills the
rivers here, and these, when filled, flow through channels and through
the earth, and having severally reached the several places to which they
are journeying, they make seas, lakes, rivers, and fountains.

"Then sinking again from thence beneath the earth, some of them having
gone round longer and more numerous places, and others round fewer and
shorter, they again discharge themselves into Tartarus, some much lower
than they were drawn up, others only a little so, but all of them flow
in again beneath the point at which they flowed out. And some issue out
directly opposite the place by which they flow in, others on the same
side: there are also some which having gone round altogether in a
circle, folding themselves once or several times round the earth, like
serpents, when they had descended as low as possible, discharge
themselves again; and it is possible for them to descend on either side
as far as the middle, but not beyond; for in each direction there is an
acclivity to the streams both ways.

"Now there are many other large and various streams, and among this
great number there are four certain streams, of which the largest, and
that which flows most outwardly round the earth, is called Ocean, but
directly opposite this, and flowing in a contrary direction, is Acheron,
which flows through other desert places, and moreover passing under the
earth, reaches the Acherusian lake, where the souls of most who die
arrive, and having remained there for certain destined periods, some
longer and some shorter, are again sent forth into the generations of
animals. A third river issues midway between these, and near its source
falls into a vast region, burning with abundance of fire, and forms a
lake larger than our sea, boiling with water and mud; from hence it
proceeds in a circle, turbulent and muddy, and folding itself round it
reaches both other places and the extremity of the Acherusian lake, but
does not mingle with its water; but folding itself oftentimes beneath
the earth, it discharges itself into the lower parts of Tartarus. And
this is the river which they call Pyriphlegethon, whose burning streams
emit dissevered fragments in whatever part of the earth they happen to
be. Opposite to this again the fourth river first falls into a place
dreadful and savage, as it is said, having its whole color like
_cyanus_: this they call Stygian, and the lake which the river forms by
its discharge, Styx. This river having fallen in here, and received
awful power in the water, sinking beneath the earth, proceeds, folding
itself round, in an opposite course to Pyriphlegethon, and meets it in
the Acherusian lake from a contrary direction. Neither does the water of
this river mingle with any other, but it, too, having gone round in a
circle, discharges itself into Tartarus opposite to Pyriphlegethon. Its
name, as the poets say, is Cocytus.

"These things being thus constituted, when the dead arrive at the place
to which their demon leads them severally, first of all they are judged,
as well those who have lived well and piously as those who have not. And
those who appear to have passed a middle kind of life, proceeding to
Acheron, and embarking in the vessels they have, on these arrive at the
lake, and there dwell, and when they are purified, and have suffered
punishment for the iniquities they may have committed, they are set
free, and each receives the reward of his good deeds, according to his
deserts: but those who appear to be incurable, through the magnitude of
their offences, either from having committed many and great sacrileges,
or many unjust and lawless murders, or other similar crimes, these a
suitable destiny hurls into Tartarus, whence they never come forth.

"But those who appear to have been guilty of curable yet great offences,
such as those who through anger have committed any violence against
father or mother, and have lived the remainder of their life in a state
of penitence, or they who have become homicides in a similar manner,
these must of necessity fall into Tartarus, but after they have fallen,
and have been there for a year, the wave casts them forth, the homicides
into Cocytus, but the parricides and matricides into Pyriphlegethon: but
when, being borne along, they arrive at the Acherusian lake, there they
cry out to and invoke, some those whom they slew, others those whom they
injured, and invoking them they entreat and implore them to suffer them
to go out into the lake, and to receive them, and if they persuade them
they go out and are freed from their sufferings; but if not, they are
borne back to Tartarus, and thence again to the rivers, and they do not
cease from suffering this until they have persuaded those whom they have
injured, for this sentence was imposed on them by the judges.

"But those who are found to have lived an eminently holy life, these are
they who, being freed and set at large from these regions in the earth,
as from a prison, arrive at the pure abode above, and dwell on the upper
parts of the earth. And among these, they who have sufficiently purified
themselves by philosophy shall live without bodies, throughout all
future time, and shall arrive at habitations yet more beautiful than
these, which it is neither easy to describe nor at present is there
sufficient time for the purpose.

"But for the sake of these things which we have described, we should use
every endeavor, Simmias, so as to acquire virtue and wisdom in this
life; for the reward is noble, and the hope great.

"To affirm positively, indeed, that these things are exactly as I have
described them does not become a man of sense; that however either this
or something of the kind takes place with respect to our souls and their
habitations--since our soul is certainly immortal--this appears to me
most fitting to be believed, and worthy the hazard for one who trusts in
its reality; for the hazard is noble, and it is right to allure
ourselves with such things, as with enchantments; for which reason I
have prolonged my story to such a length.

"On account of these things, then, a man ought to be confident about his
soul who during this life has disregarded all the pleasures and
ornaments of the body as foreign from his nature, and who, having
thought that they do more harm than good, has zealously applied himself
to the acquirement of knowledge, and who having adorned his soul not
with a foreign but its own proper ornament--temperance, justice,
fortitude, freedom, and truth--thus waits for his passage to Hades, as
one who is ready to depart whenever destiny shall summon him. You,
then," he continued, "Simmias and Cebes, and the rest, will each of you
depart at some future time; but now 'destiny summons me,' as a tragic
writer would say, and it is nearly time for me to betake myself to the
bath; for it appears to me to be better to drink the poison after I have
bathed myself, and not to trouble the women with washing my dead body."

When he had thus spoken, Crito said: "So be it, Socrates, but what
commands have you to give to these or to me, either respecting your
children or any other matter, in attending to which we can most oblige
you?"

"What I always say, Crito," he replied, "nothing new; that by taking
care of yourselves you will oblige both me and mine and yourselves,
whatever you do, though you should not now promise it; but if you
neglect yourselves, and will not live as it were in the footsteps of
what has been now and formerly said, even though you should promise much
at present, and that earnestly, you will do no good at all."

"We will endeavor then so to do," he said; "but how shall we bury you?"

"Just as you please," he said, "if only you can catch me, and I do not
escape from you." And at the same time smiling gently, and looking round
on us, he said: "I cannot persuade Crito, my friends, that I am that
Socrates who is now conversing with you, and who methodizes each part of
the discourse; but he thinks that I am he whom he will shortly behold
dead, and asks how he should bury me. But that which I some time since
argued at length, that when I have drunk the poison I shall no longer
remain with you, but shall depart to some happy state of the blessed,
this I seem to have urged to him in vain, though I meant at the same
time to console both you and myself. Be ye then my sureties to Crito,"
he said, "in an obligation contrary to that which he made to the judges;
for he undertook that I should remain; but do you be sureties that, when
I die, I shall not remain, but shall depart, that Crito may more easily
bear it, and when he sees my body either burnt or buried, may not be
afflicted for me, as if I suffered some dreadful thing, nor say at my
interment that Socrates is laid out, or is carried out, or is buried.

"For be well assured," he said, "most excellent Crito, that to speak
improperly is not only culpable as to the thing itself, but likewise
occasions some injury to our souls. You must have a good courage, then,
and say that you bury my body, and bury it in such a manner as is
pleasing to you, and as you think is most agreeable to our laws."

When he had said thus he rose and went into a chamber to bathe, and
Crito followed him, but he directed us to wait for him. We waited,
therefore, conversing among ourselves about what had been said, and
considering it again, and sometimes speaking about our calamity, how
severe it would be to us, sincerely thinking that, like those who are
deprived of a father, we should pass the rest of our life as orphans.
When he had bathed, and his children were brought to him, for he had two
little sons, and one grown up; and the women belonging to his family
were come, having conversed with them in the presence of Crito and given
them such injunctions as he wished, he directed the women and children
to go away, and then returned to us. And it was now near sunset; for he
spent a considerable time within.

But when he came from bathing he sat down, and did not speak much
afterward; then the officer of the Eleven came in, and standing near
him, said: "Socrates, I shall not have to find that fault with you that
I do with others, that they are angry with me and curse me, when, by
order of the archons, I bid them drink the poison. But you, on all other
occasions during the time you have been here, I have found to be the
most noble, meek, and excellent man of all that ever came into this
place; and therefore I am now well convinced that you will not be angry
with me (for you know who are to blame) but with them. Now, then, for
you know what I came to announce to you, farewell; and endeavor to bear
what is inevitable as easily as possible." And at the same time,
bursting into tears, he turned away and withdrew.

And Socrates, looking after him, said: "And thou too, farewell; we will
do as you direct." At the same time turning to us, he said: "How
courteous the man is; during the whole time I have been here he has
visited me, and conversed with me sometimes, and proved the worthiest of
men; and now how generously he weeps for me. But come, Crito, let us
obey him, and let some one bring the poison, if it is ready pounded, but
if not, let the man pound it."

Then Crito said: "But I think, Socrates, that the sun is still on the
mountains and has not yet set. Besides, I know that others have drunk
the poison very late, after it had been announced to them, and have
supped and drunk freely, and some even have enjoyed the objects of their
love. Do not hasten, then, for there is yet time."

Upon this Socrates replied: "These men whom you mention, Crito, do these
things with good reason, for they think they shall gain by so doing, and
I too with good reason shall not do so; for I think I shall gain nothing
by drinking a little later, except to become ridiculous to myself, in
being so fond of life, and sparing of it when none any longer remains.
Go, then," he said, "obey, and do not resist."

Crito having heard this, nodded to the boy that stood near. And the boy
having gone out, and stayed for some time, came, bringing with him the
man that was to administer the poison, who brought it ready pounded in a
cup. And Socrates, on seeing the man, said: "Well, my good friend, as
you are skilled in these matters, what must I do?"

"Nothing else," he replied, "than when you have drunk it walk about
until there is a heaviness in your legs, then lie down; thus it will do
its purpose." And at the same time he held out the cup to Socrates. And
he having received it very cheerfully, Echecrates, neither trembling nor
changing at all in color or countenance, but, as he was wont, looking
steadfastly at the man, said: "What say you of this potion, with respect
to making a libation to anyone, is it lawful or not?"

"We only pound so much, Socrates," he said, "as we think sufficient to
drink."

"I understand you," he said; "but it is certainly both lawful and right
to pray to the gods, that my departure hence thither may be happy; which
therefore I pray, and so may it be." And as he said this he drank it off
readily and calmly. Thus far, most of us were with difficulty able to
restrain ourselves from weeping, but when we saw him drinking, and
having finished the draught, we could do so no longer; but in spite of
myself the tears came in full torrent, so that, covering my face, I wept
for myself, for I did not weep for him, but for my own fortune, in being
deprived of such a friend. But Crito, even before me when he could not
restrain his tears, had risen up.

But Apollodorus, even before this, had not ceased weeping, and then
bursting into an agony of grief, weeping and lamenting, he pierced the
heart of everyone present except Socrates himself. But he said: "What
are you doing, my admirable friends? I indeed, for this reason chiefly,
sent away the women that they might not commit any folly of this kind.
For I have heard that it is right to die with good omens. Be quiet,
therefore, and bear up."

When we heard this we were ashamed and restrained our tears. But he,
having walked about, when he said that his legs were growing heavy, laid
down on his back; for the man so directed him. And at the same time he
who gave him the poison, taking hold of him, after a short interval
examined his feet and legs; and then having pressed his foot hard, he
asked if he felt it.

He said that he did not.

And after this he pressed his thighs; and thus going higher, he showed
us that he was growing cold and stiff.

Then Socrates touched himself, and said that when the poison reached his
heart he should then depart.

But now the parts around the lower belly were almost cold; when,
uncovering himself (for he had been covered over), he said, and they
were his last words: "Crito, we owe a cock to Aesculapius; pay it,
therefore, and do not neglect it!"

"It shall be done," said Crito; "but consider whether you have anything
else to say?"

To this question he gave no reply; but shortly after he gave a
convulsive movement, and the man covered him, and his eyes were fixed;
and Crito, perceiving it, closed his mouth and eyes.

This, Echecrates, was the end of our friend, a man, as we may say, the
best of all of his time that we have known, and, moreover, the most wise
and just.




BRENNUS BURNS ROME

B.C. 388

BARTHOLD GEORG NIEBUHR


(Julius Caesar is the first writer who gives us an authentic and
enlightening account of the Gauls, whom he divided into three groups.
The Gauls were the chief branch of the great original stock of Celts.
They were a nomadic people, and from their home in Western Europe they
spread to Britain, invaded Spain, and swarmed over the Alps into Italy,
and it is from the latter event that this tall, fair, and fighting
nation first came into the region of history.

Before the Gauls had come within the borders of Italy, Camillus, the
Dictator, had dealt the death-blow to the Etruscan League through his
capture and destruction of its stronghold, Veii. But at the very summit
of his triumph he lost the grace of his countrymen by demanding a tenth
of their spoil taken at Veii, and which he claimed to have vowed to
Apollo. It was popularly considered a ruse to increase his private
fortune. Furthermore, a counter-claim was brought against him for
appropriating bronze gates, which in Rome at that time were nothing less
than actual money--bronze being the medium of currency. Camillus went
into exile in consequence of the accusation. His parting prayer was that
his country might feel his need and call him back. His desire was
fulfilled, for soon after "the Gaul was at the gates" under the
leadership of the haughty Brennus, who had come upon the Romans at a
most opportune moment. This event of the overthrow of the Romans on the
Alia has been the occasion for the well-known tale of the cackling of
the geese in the temple of Juno, which alarmed the garrison. The episode
also gave rise to the saying of the conqueror, Brennus, who, when
reproached by his antagonists with using false weights, cast his sword
into the scale, crying, "Woe to the conquered!")


At that time no Roman foresaw the calamity which was threatening the
empire. Rome had become great, because the country which she had
conquered was weak through its oligarchical institutions; the subjects
of the other states gladly joined the Romans, because under them their
lot was more favorable, and probably because they were kindred nations.
But matters went with the Romans as they did with Basilius, who subdued
the Armenians when they were threatened by the Turks, and who soon after
attacked the whole Greek empire and took away far more than had been
gained before.

The expedition of the Gauls into Italy must be regarded as a migration,
and not as an invasion for the purpose of conquest: as for the
historical account of it, we must adhere to Polybius and Diodorus, who
place it shortly before the taking of Rome by the Gauls. We can attach
no importance to the statement of Livy that they had come into Italy as
early as the time of Tarquinius Priscus, having been driven from their
country by a famine. It undoubtedly arose from the fact that some Greek
writer, perhaps Timaeus, connected this migration with the settlement of
the Phocians at Massilia. It is possible that Livy even here made use of
Dionysius; and that the latter followed Timaeus; for as Livy made use of
Dionysius in the eighth book, why not also in the fifth? He himself knew
very little of Greek history;[44] but Justin's account is here evidently
opposed to Livy.

[Footnote 44: Comp. _Hist. of Rome_, vol. iii. n. 485.]

Trogus Pompeius was born in the neighborhood of Massilia, and in writing
his forty-third book he obviously made use of native chronicles, for
from no other source could he derive the account of the _decreta
honorifica_ of the Romans to the Massilians for the friendship which the
latter had shown to the Romans during the Gallic war; and from the same
source must he have obtained his information about the maritime wars of
Massilia against Carthage. Trogus knows nothing of the story that the
Gauls assisted the Phocians on their arrival; but according to him, they
met with a kind reception among the Ligurians, who continued to inhabit
those parts for a long time after. Even the story of the _lucumo_ who is
said to have invited the Gauls is opposed to him, and if it were
referred to Clusium alone it would be absurd. Polybius places the
passage of the Gauls across the Alps about ten or twenty years before
the taking of Rome; and Diodorus describes them as advancing toward Rome
by an uninterrupted march. It is further stated that Melpum in the
country of the Insubrians was destroyed on the same day as Veii: without
admitting this coincidence, we have no reason to doubt that the
statement is substantially true; and it is made by Cornelius Nepos, who,
as a native of Gallia Transpadana, might possess accurate information,
and whose chronological accounts were highly esteemed by the Romans.

There was no other passage for the Gauls except either across the Little
St. Bernard or across the Simplon; it is not probable that they took the
former road, because their country extended only as far as the Ticinus,
and if they had come across the Little St. Bernard, they would naturally
have occupied also all the country between that mountain and the
Ticinus. The Salassi may indeed have been a Gallic people, but it is by
no means certain; moreover, between them and the Gauls who had come
across the Alps the Laevi also lived; and there can be no doubt that at
that time Ligurians still continued to dwell on the Ticinus.

Melpum must have been situated in the district of Milan. The latter
place has an uncommonly happy situation: often as it has been destroyed,
it has always been restored, so that it is not impossible that Melpum
may have been situated on the very spot afterward occupied by Milan. The
Gallic migration undoubtedly passed by like a torrent with irresistible
rapidity: how then is it possible to suppose that Melpum resisted them
for two centuries, or that they conquered it and yet did not disturb the
Etruscans for two hundred years? It would be absurd to believe it,
merely to save an uncritical expression of Livy. According to the common
chronology, the Triballi, who in the time of Herodotus inhabited the
plains, and were afterward expelled by the Gauls, appeared in Thrace
twelve years after the taking of Rome--according to a more correct
chronology it was only nine years after that event. It was the same
movement assuredly which led the Gauls to the countries through which
the middle course of the Danube extends, and to the Po; and could the
people who came in a few days from Clusium to Rome, and afterward
appeared in Apulia, have been sitting quiet in a corner of Italy for two
hundred years? If they had remained there because they had not the power
to advance, they would have been cut to pieces by the Etruscans. We must
therefore look upon it as an established fact, that the migration took
place at the late period mentioned by Polybius and Diodorus.

These Gauls were partly Celts, and partly (indeed principally) Belgae or
Cymri, as may be perceived from the circumstance that their king, as
well as the one who appeared before Delphi, is called Brennus. _Brenin_,
according to Adelung, in his _Mithridates_, signifies in the language of
Wales and Lower Brittany a _king_. But what caused this whole
emigration? The statement of Livy, that the Gauls were compelled by
famine to leave their country, is quite in keeping with the nature of
all traditions about migrations, such as we find them in Saxo
Grammaticus, in Paul Warnefried from the sagas of the Swedes, in the
Tyrrhenian traditions of Lydia, and others. However, in the case of a
people like the Celts, every specific statement of this kind, in which
even the names of their leaders are mentioned, is of no more value than
the traditions of other barbarous nations which were unacquainted with
the art of writing. It is indeed, well known that the Celts in writing
used the Greek alphabet, but they probably employed it only in the
transactions of daily life; for we know that they were not allowed to
commit their ancient songs to writing.

During the Gallic migration we are again made aware how little we know
of the history of Italy generally: our knowledge is limited to Rome, so
that we are in the same predicament there, as if of all the historical
authorities of the whole German empire we had nothing but the annals of
a single imperial city. According to Livy's account, it would seem as if
the only object of the Gauls had been to march to Rome; and yet this
immigration changed the whole aspect of Italy. After the Gauls had once
crossed the Apennines, there was no further obstacle to prevent their
marching to the south of Italy by any road they pleased; and it is in
fact mentioned that they did proceed farther south. The Umbrians still
inhabited the country on the lower Po, in the modern Romagna and Urbino,
parts of which were occupied by Liburnians. Polybius says that many
people there became tributary to the Gauls, and that this was the case
with the Umbrians is quite certain.

The first historical appearance of the Gauls is at Clusium, whither a
noble Clusine is said to have invited them for the purpose of taking
vengeance on his native city. Whether this account is true, however,
must remain undecided, and if there is any truth in it, it is more
probable that the offended Clusine went across the Apennines and fetched
his avengers. Clusium has not been mentioned since the time of Porsena;
the fact of the Clusines soliciting the aid of Rome is a proof how
little that northern city of Etruria was concerned about the fate of the
southern towns, and makes us even suspect that it was allied with Rome;
however, the danger was so great that all jealousy must have been
suppressed. The natural road for the Gauls would have been along the
Adriatic, then through the country of Umbrians who were tributary to
them and already quite broken down, and thence through the Romagna
across the Apennines.

But the Apennines which separate Tuscany from the Romagna are very
difficult to cross, especially for sumpter-horses; as therefore the
Gauls could not enter Etruria on that side--which the Etruscans had
intentionally allowed to grow wild--and as they had been convinced of
this in an unsuccessful attempt, they crossed the Apennines in the
neighborhood of Clusium, and appeared before that city. Clusium was the
great bulwark of the valley of the Tiber; and if it were taken, the
roads along the Tiber and the Arno would be open, and the Gauls might
reach Arezzo from the rear: the Romans therefore looked upon the fate of
Clusium as decisive of their own. The Clusines sued for a treaty with
the mighty city of Rome, and the Romans were wise enough readily to
accept the offer: they sent ambassadors to the Gauls, ordering them to
withdraw. According to a very probable account, the Gauls had demanded
of the Clusines a division of their territory as the condition of peace,
and not, as was customary with the Romans, as a tax upon a people
already subdued: if this is correct, the Romans sent the embassy
confiding in their own strength. But the Gauls scorned the ambassadors,
and the latter, allowing themselves to be carried away by their warlike
disposition, joined the Etruscans in a fight against the Gauls. This was
probably only an insignificant and isolated engagement. Such is the
account of Livy, who goes on to say that the Gauls, as soon as they
perceived this violation in the law of nations, gave the signal for a
retreat, and, having called upon the gods to avenge the wrong, marched
against Rome.

This is evidently a mere fiction, for a barbarous nation like the Gauls
cannot possibly have had such ideas, nor was there in reality any
violation of the law of nations, as the Romans stood in no kind of
connection with the Gauls. But it was a natural feeling with the Romans
to look upon the fall of their city as the consequence of a _nefas_
which no human power could resist. Roman vanity also is at work here,
inasmuch as the Roman ambassadors are said to have so distinguished
themselves that they were recognized by the barbarians among the hosts
of Etruscans. Now, according to another tradition directly opposed to
these statements, the Gauls sent to Rome to demand the surrender of
those ambassadors: as the senate was hesitating and left the decision to
the people, the latter not only rejected the demand, but appointed the
same ambassadors to the office of military tribunes, whereupon the Gauls
with all their forces at once marched toward Rome.

Livy here again speaks of the _populus_ as the people to whom the senate
left the decision: this must have been the patricians only, for they
alone had the right to decide upon the fate of the members of their own
order. It is not fair to accuse the Romans on that occasion of
dishonesty; but this account assuredly originated with later writers,
who transferred to barbarians the right belonging to a nation standing
in a legal relation to another. The statement that the three
ambassadors, all of whom were Fabii, were appointed military tribunes,
is not even the usual one, for there is another in Diodorus, who must
here have used Roman authorities written in Greek, that is, Fabius;
since he calls the Cærites [Greek: Kairioi] and not [Greek: Agullaioi].
He speaks of a single ambassador, who being a son of a military tribune
fought against the Gauls. This is at least a sign how uncertain history
yet is. The battle on the Alia was fought on the 16th of July; the
military tribunes entered upon their office on the first of that month;
and the distance between Clusium and Rome is only three good days'
marches. It is impossible to restore the true history, but we can
discern what is fabulous from what is really historical.

An innumerable host of Gauls now marched from Clusium toward Rome. For a
long time the Gauls were most formidable to the Romans, as well as to
all other nations with whom they came in contact, even as far east as
the Ukraine; as to Rome, we see this as late as the Cisalpine war of the
year A.U. 527. Polybius and Diodorus are our best guides in seeking for
information about the manners of the Gauls, for in the time of Caesar
they had already become changed. In the description of their persons we
partly recognize the modern Gael, or the inhabitants of the Highlands of
Scotland: huge bodies, blue eyes, bristly hair; even their dress and
armor are those of the Highlanders, for they wore the checked and
variegated tartans; their arms consisted of the broad, unpointed
battle-sword, the same weapon as the claymore among the Highlanders.
They had a vast number of horns, which were used in the Highlands for
many centuries after, and threw themselves upon the enemy in immense
irregular masses with terrible fury, those standing behind impelling
those stationed in front, whereby they became irresistible by the
tactics of those times.

The Romans ought to have used against them their phalanx and doubled it,
until they were accustomed to this enemy and were enabled by their
greater skill to repel them. If the Romans had been able to withstand
their first shock, the Gauls would have easily been thrown into
disorder, and put to flight. The Gauls who were subsequently conquered
by the Romans were the descendants of such as were born in Italy, and
had lost much of their courage and strength. The Goths under Vitiges,
not fifty years after the immigration of Theodoric into Italy, were
cowards, and unable to resist the twenty thousand men of Belisarius:
showing how easily barbarians degenerate in such climates.

The Gauls, moreover, were terrible on account of their inhuman cruelty,
for, wherever they settled, the original towns and their inhabitants
completely disappeared from the face of the earth. In their own country
they had the feudal system and a priestly government: the Druids were
their only rulers, who avenged the oppressed people on the lords, but in
their turn became tyrants: all the people were in the condition of
serfs, a proof that the Gauls, in their own country too, were the
conquerors who had subdued an earlier population. We always find mention
of the wealth of the Gauls in gold, and yet France has no rivers that
carry gold-sand, and the Pyrenees were then no longer in their
possession: the gold must therefore have been obtained by barter. Much
may be exaggeration; and the fact of some noble individuals wearing gold
chains was probably transferred by ancient poets to the whole nation,
since popular poetry takes great liberty, especially in such
embellishments.

Pliny states that previous to the Gallic calamity the census amounted to
one hundred and fifty thousand persons, which probably refers only to
men entitled to vote in the assemblies, and does not comprise women,
children, slaves, and strangers. If this be correct, the number of
citizens was enormous; but it must not be supposed to include the
inhabitants of the city only, the population of which was doubtless much
smaller. The statement of Diodorus that all men were called to arms to
resist the Gauls, and that the number amounted to forty thousand, is by
no means improbable: according to the testimony of Polybius, Latins and
Hernicans also were enlisted. Another account makes the Romans take the
field against the Gauls with twenty-four thousand men, that is, with
four field legions and four civic legions: the field legions were formed
only of plebeians, and served, according to the order of the classes,
probably in _maniples_; the civic legions contained all those who
belonged neither to the patricians nor to the plebeians, that is, all
the _aerarii, proletarii_, freedmen, and artisans who had never before
faced an enemy. They were certainly not armed with the _pilum_, nor
drawn up in _maniples_; but used pikes and were employed in phalanxes.

Now as for the field legions, each consisted half of Latins and half of
Romans, there being in each _maniple_ one century of Roman and one of
Latins. There were at that time four legions, and as a legion, including
the reserve troops, contained three thousand men, the total is twelve
thousand; now the account which mentions twenty-four thousand men must
have presumed that there were four field legions and four irregular
civic ones. There would accordingly have been no more than six thousand
plebeians, and, even if the legions were all made up of Romans, only
twelve thousand; if in addition to these we take twelve thousand
irregular troops and sixteen thousand allies, the number of forty
thousand would be completed. In this case, the population of Rome would
not have been as large as that of Athens in the Peloponnesian war, and
this is indeed very probable. The cavalry is not included in this
calculation: but forty thousand must be taken as the maximum of the
whole army. There seems to be no exaggeration in this statement, and the
battle on the Alia, speaking generally, is an historical event.

It is surprising that the Romans did not appoint a dictator to command
in the battle; it cannot be said indeed that they regarded this war as
an ordinary one, for in that case they would not have raised so great a
force, but they cannot have comprehended the danger in all its
greatness. New swarms continued to come across the Alps; the Senones
also now appeared to seek habitations for themselves; they, like the
Germans in after-times, demanded land, as they found the Insubrians,
Boians, and others already settled; the latter had taken up their abode
in Umbria, but only until they should find a more extensive and suitable
territory.

The Romans committed the great mistake of fighting with their hurriedly
collected troops a battle against an enemy who had hitherto been
invincible. The hills along which the right wing is said to have been
drawn up are no longer discernible, and they were probably nothing but
little mounds of earth: at any rate it was senseless to draw up a long
line against the immense mass of enemies. The Gauls, on the other hand,
were enabled without any difficulty to turn off to the left. They
proceeded to a higher part of the river, where it was more easily
fordable, and with great prudence threw themselves with all their force
upon the right wing, consisting of the civic legions. The latter at
first resisted, but not long; and when they fled, the whole remaining
line, which until then seems to have been useless and inactive, was
seized with a panic.

Terror preceded the Gauls as they laid waste everything on their way,
and this paralyzed the courage of the Romans, instead of rousing them to
a desperate resistance. The Romans therefore were defeated on the Alia
in the most inglorious manner. The Gauls had taken them in their rear,
and cut off their return to Rome. A portion fled toward the Tiber, where
some effected a retreat across the river, and others were drowned;
another part escaped into a forest. The loss of life must have been
prodigious, and it is inconceivable how Livy could have attached so much
importance to the mere disgrace. If the Roman army had not been almost
annihilated, it would not have been necessary to give up the defence of
the city, as was done, for the city was left undefended and deserted by
all. Many fled to Veii instead of returning to Rome: only a few, who had
escaped along the high road, entered the city by the Colline gate.

Rome was exhausted, her power shattered, her legions defenceless, and
her warlike allies had partly been beaten in the same battle, and were
partly awaiting the fearful enemy in their own countries. At Rome it was
believed that the whole army was destroyed, for nothing was known of
those who had reached Veii. In the city itself there were only old men,
women, and children, so that there was no possibility of defending it.
It is, however, inconceivable that the gates should have been left open,
and that the Gauls, from fear of a stratagem, should have encamped for
several days outside the gates. A more probable account is that the
gates were shut and barricaded. We may form a vivid conception of the
condition of Rome after this battle, by comparing it with that of Moscow
before the conflagration: the people were convinced that a long defence
was impossible, since there was probably a want of provisions.

Livy gives a false notion of the evacuation of the city, as if the
defenceless citizens had remained immovable in their consternation, and
only a few had been received into the Capitol. The determination, in
fact, was to defend the Capitol, and the tribune Sulpicius had taken
refuge there, with about one thousand men. There was on the Capitol an
ancient well which still exists, and without which the garrison would
soon have perished. This well remained unknown to all antiquaries, till
I discovered it by means of information gathered from the people who
live there. Its depth in the rock descends to the level of the Tiber,
but the water is now not fit to drink. The Capitol was a rock which had
been hewn steep, and thereby made inaccessible, but a _clivus_, closed
by gates both below and above, led up from the Forum and the Sacred Way.
The rock, indeed, was not so steep as in later times, as is clear from
the account of the attempt to storm it; but the Capitol was nevertheless
very strong. Whether some few remained in the city, as at Moscow, who in
their stupefaction did not consider what kind of enemy they had before
them, cannot be decided. The narrative is very beautiful, and reminds us
of the taking of the Acropolis of Athens by the Persians, where,
likewise, the old men allowed themselves to be cut down by the Persians.

Notwithstanding the improbability of the matter, I am inclined to
believe that a number of aged patricians--their number may not be
exactly historical--sat down in the Forum, in their official robes, on
their curule chairs, and that the chief pontiff devoted them to death.
Such devotions are a well-known Roman custom. It is certainly not
improbable that the Gauls were amazed when they found the city deserted,
and only these old men sitting immovable, that they took them for
statues or supernatural visions, and did nothing to them, until one of
them struck a Gaul who touched him, whereupon all were slaughtered. To
commit suicide was repugnant to the customs of the Romans, who were
guided in many things by feelings more correct and more resembling our
own, than many other ancient nations. The old men, indeed, had given up
the hope of their country being saved; but the Capitol might be
maintained, and the survivors preferred dying in the attempt of
self-defence to taking refuge at Veii, where after all they could not
have maintained themselves in the end.

The sacred treasures were removed to Caere, and the hope of the Romans
now was that the barbarians would be tired of the long siege. Provisions
for a time had been conveyed to the Capitol, where a couple of thousand
men may have been assembled, and where all buildings, temples, as well
as public and private houses, were used as habitations. The Gauls made
fearful havoc at Rome, even more fearful than the Spaniards and Germans
did in the year 1527. Soldiers plunder, and when they find no human
beings they engage in the work of destruction; and fires break out, as
at Moscow, without the existence of any intention to cause a
conflagration. The whole city was changed into a heap of ashes, with the
exception of a few houses on the Palatine, which were occupied by the
leaders of the Gauls. It is astonishing to find, nevertheless, that a
few monuments of the preceding period, such as statues, situated at some
distance from the Capitol, are mentioned as having been preserved; but
we must remember that _travertino_ is tolerably fireproof. That Rome was
burned down is certain; and when it was rebuilt, not even the ancient
streets were restored.

The Gauls were now encamped in the city. At first they attempted to
storm the _clivus_, but were repelled with great loss, which is
surprising, since we know that at an earlier time the Romans succeeded
in storming it against Appius Herdonius. Afterward they discovered the
footsteps of a messenger who had been sent from Veii, in order that the
State might be taken care of in due form; for the Romans in the Capitol
were patricians, and represented the _curies_ and the Government,
whereas those assembled at Veii represented the tribes, but had no
leaders. The latter had resolved to recall Camillus, and raise him to
the dictatorship. For this reason Pontius Cominius had been sent to Rome
to obtain the sanction of the senate and the curies. This was quite in
the spirit of the ancient times. If the curies had interdicted him _aqua
et igni_, they alone could recall him, if they previously obtained a
resolution of the senate authorizing them to do so; but if he had gone
into voluntary exile, and had given up his Roman franchise by becoming a
citizen of Ardea before a sentence had been passed upon him by the
centuries, it was again in the power of the curies alone, he being a
patrician, to recall him as a citizen; and otherwise he could not have
become dictator, nor could he have regarded himself as such.

It was the time of the dog-days when the Gauls came to Rome, and as the
summer at Rome is always pestilential, especially during the two months
and a half before the first of September, the unavoidable consequence
must have been, as Livy relates, that the barbarians, bivouacking on the
ruins of the city in the open air, were attacked by disease and carried
off, like the army of Frederick Barbarossa when encamped before the
castle of St. Angelo. The whole army of the Gauls, however, was not in
the city, but only as many as were necessary to blockade the garrison of
the Capitol; the rest were scattered far and wide over the face of the
country, and were ravaging all the unprotected places and isolated farms
in Latium; many an ancient town, which is no longer mentioned after this
time, may have been destroyed by the Gauls. None but fortified places
like Ostia, which could obtain supplies by sea, made a successful
resistance, for the Gauls were unacquainted with the art of besieging.

The Ardeatans, whose territory was likewise invaded by the Gauls,
opposed them, under the command of Camillus; the Etruscans would seem to
have endeavored to avail themselves of the opportunity of recovering
Veii, for we are told that the Romans at Veii, commanded by Caedicius,
gained a battle against them, and that, encouraged by this success, they
began to entertain a hope of regaining Rome, since by this victory they
got possession of arms.

A Roman of the name of Fabius Dorso is said to have offered up, in broad
daylight, a _gentilician_ sacrifice on the Quirinal; and the astonished
Gauls are said to have done him no harm--a tradition which is not
improbable.

The provisions in the Capitol were exhausted, but the Gauls themselves
being seized with epidemic diseases became tired of their conquests, and
were not inclined to settle in a country so far away from their own
home. They once more attempted to take the Capitol by storm, having
observed that the messenger from Veii had ascended the rock, and come
down again near the Porta Carmentalis, below Araceli. The ancient rock
is now covered with rubbish, and no longer discernible. The besieged did
not think of a storm on that side; it may be that formerly there had in
that part been a wall, which had become decayed; and in southern
countries an abundant vegetation always springs up between the stones,
and if this had actually been neglected it cannot have been very
difficult to climb up. The Gauls had already gained a firm footing, as
there was no wall at the top--the rock which they stormed was not the
Tarpeian, but the Arx--when Manlius, who lived there, was roused by the
screaming of the geese: he came to the spot and thrust down those who
were climbing up.

This rendered the Gauls still more inclined to commence negotiations;
they were, moreover, called back by an inroad of some Alpine tribes into
Lombardy, where they had left their wives and children: they offered to
depart if the Romans would pay them a ransom of a thousand pounds of
gold, to be taken no doubt from the Capitoline treasury. Considering the
value of money at that time, the sum was enormous: in the time of
Theodosius, indeed, there were people at Rome who possessed several
hundredweight of gold, nay, one is said to have had an annual revenue of
two hundredweight. There can be no doubt that the Gauls received the sum
they demanded, and quitted Rome; that in weighing it they scornfully
imposed upon the Romans is very possible, and the _vae victis_ too may
be true: we ourselves have seen similar things before the year 1813.

But there can be no truth in the story told by Livy, that while they
were disputing Camillus appeared with an army and stopped the
proceedings, because the military tribunes had had no right to conclude
the treaty. He is there said to have driven the Gauls from the city, and
afterward in a twofold battle to have so completely defeated them that
not even a messenger escaped. Beaufort, inspired by Gallic patriotism,
has most excellently shown what a complete fable this story is. To
attempt to disguise the misfortunes of our forefathers by substituting
fables in their place is mere childishness. This charge does not affect
Livy, indeed, for he copied only what others had written before him; but
he did not allow his own conviction to appear as he generally does, for
he treats the whole of the early history with a sort of irony, half
believing, half disbelieving it.

According to another account in Diodorus, the Gauls besieged a town
allied with Rome--its name seems to be mis-written, but is probably
intended for Vulsinii--and the Romans relieved it and took back from the
Gauls the gold which they had paid them; but this siege of Vulsinii is
quite unknown to Livy. A third account in Strabo and also mentioned by
Diodorus does not allow this honor to the Romans, but states that the
Caerites pursued the Gauls, attacked them in the country of the Sabines,
and completely annihilated them. In like manner the Greeks endeavored to
disguise the fact that the Gauls took the money from the Delphic
treasury, and that in a quite historical period (Olymp. 120). The true
explanation is undoubtedly the one found in Polybius, that the Gauls
were induced to quit Rome by an insurrection of the Alpine tribes, after
it had experienced the extremity of humiliation.

Whatever the enemy had taken as booty was consumed; they had not made
any conquests, but only indulged in plunder and devastation; they had
been staying at Rome for seven or eight months, and could have gained
nothing further than the Capitol and the very money which they received
without taking that fortress. The account of Polybius throws light upon
many discrepant statements, and all of them, not even excepting Livy's
fairy-tale-like embellishment, may be explained by means of it. The
Romans attempted to prove that the Gauls had actually been defeated, by
relating that the gold afterward taken from the Gauls and buried in the
Capitol was double the sum paid to them as a ransom; but it is much more
probable that the Romans paid their ransom out of the treasury of the
temple of the Capitoline Jupiter and of other temples, and that
afterward double this sum was made up by a tax; which agrees with a
statement in the history of Manlius, that a tax was imposed for the
purpose of raising the Gallic ransom: surely this could not have been
done at the time of the siege, when the Romans were scattered in all
parts of the country, but must have taken place afterward for the
purpose of restoring the money that had been taken. Now if at a later
time there actually existed in the Capitol such a quantity of gold, it
is clear that it was believed to be a proof that the Gauls had not kept
the gold which was paid to them.

Even as late as the time of Cicero and Caesar, the spot was shown at
Rome in the Carinae, where the Gauls had heaped up and burned their
dead; it was called _busta Gallica_, which was corrupted in the Middle
Ages into Protogallo, whence the church which was built there was in
reality called _S. Andreas in bustis Gallicis_, or, according to the
later Latinity, _in busta Gallica--busta Gallica_ not being declined.

The Gauls departed with their gold, which the Romans had been compelled
to pay on account of the famine that prevailed in the Capitol, which was
so great that they pulled the leather from their shields and cooked it,
just as was done during the siege of Jerusalem. The Gauls were certainly
not destroyed. Justin has preserved the remarkable statement that the
same Gauls who sacked Rome went to Apulia, and there offered for money
their assistance to the elder Dionysius of Syracuse. From this important
statement it is at any rate clear that they traversed all Italy, and
then probably returned along the shore of the Adriatic: their
devastations extended over many parts of Italy, and there is no doubt
that the Æquians received their death-blow at that time, for henceforth
we hear no more of the hostilities of the Æquians against Rome.
Praeneste, on the other hand, which must formerly have been subject to
the Æquians, now appears as an independent town. The Æquians, who
inhabited small and easily destructible towns, must have been
annihilated during the progress of the Gauls.

There is nothing so strange in the history of Livy as his view of the
consequences of the Gallic calamity; he must have conceived it as a
transitory storm by which Rome was humbled but not broken. The army,
according to him, was only scattered, and the Romans appear afterward
just as they had been before, as if the preceding period had only been
an evil dream, and as if there had been nothing to do but to rebuild the
city. But assuredly the devastation must have been tremendous throughout
the Roman territory: for eight months the barbarians had been ravaging
the country, every trace of cultivation, every farmer's house, all the
temples and public buildings were destroyed; the walls of the city had
been purposely pulled down, a large number of its inhabitants were led
into slavery, the rest were living in great misery at Veii; and what
they had saved scarcely sufficed to buy their bread. In this condition
they returned to Rome. Camillus as dictator is called a second Romulus,
and to him is due the glory of not having despaired in those distressing
circumstances.




TARTAR INVASION OF CHINA BY MEHA

B.C. 341

DEMETRIUS CHARLES BOULGER


(The first Chinese are supposed to have been a nomad tribe in the
provinces of Shensi, which lies in the northwest of China, and among
them at last appeared a ruler, Fohi, whose name at least has been
preserved. His deeds and his person are mythical, but he is credited
with having given his country its first regular institutions.

The annalists of the Chinese chronicles placed the date of the Creation
at a point of time two millions of years before Confucius; this interval
they filled up with lines of dynasties. Preceding the Chow dynasty the
chronicles give ten epochs--prior to the eighth of these there is no
authentic history. Yew-chow She [the "Nest-having"] taught the people to
build huts of the boughs of trees. Fire was discovered by Say-jin She
[the "Fire producer"]. Fuh-he [B.C. 2862] was the discoverer of iron.
With Yaou [B.C. 2356] is the period whence Confucius begins his story.
He says of that epoch: "The house door could safely be left open." Yaou
greatly extended and strengthened the empire and established fairs and
marts over the land.

One of China's most notable rulers was Tsin Chi Hwangti, who was
studious in providing for the security of his empire, and with this
object began the construction of a fortified wall across the northern
frontier to serve as a defence against the troublesome Hiongnou tribes,
who are identified with the Huns of Attila. This wall, which he began in
the first years of his reign--about the close of the third century
B.C.--was finished before his death. It still exists, known as the Great
Wall of China, and has long been considered one of the wonders of the
world. Every third man of the whole empire was employed on this work. It
is said that five hundred thousand of them died of starvation. The
contents of the Great Wall would be enough to build two walls six feet
high and two feet thick around the equator. It is the largest artificial
structure in the world; carried for fourteen hundred miles over height
and hollow, reaching in one place the level of five thousand
feet--nearly one mile--above the sea. Earth, gravel, brick, and stone
were used in its construction.

The weak successors of Hwangti finally gave way to the usurper, Kaotsou,
who had been originally the ruler of a small town, and had borne the
name of Lieou Pang.

The reign of Kaotsou was distinguished by the consolidation of the
empire; the connection of Western with Eastern China by high walls and
bridges, some of which are still in perfect condition, and the
institution of an elaborate code of court etiquette. His attention to
these things was, however, rudely interrupted by an irruption of the
Hiongnou Tartars.)


The death of Tsin Chi Hwangti proved the signal for the outbreak of
disturbances throughout the realm. Within a few months five princes had
founded as many kingdoms, each hoping, if not to become supreme, at
least to remain independent. Moungtien, beloved by the army, and at the
head, as he tells us in his own words, of three hundred thousand
soldiers, might have been the arbiter of the empire; but a weak feeling
of respect for the imperial authority induced him to obey an order, sent
by Eulchi, Hwangti's son and successor, commanding him "to drink the
waters of eternal life." Eulchi's brief reign of three years was a
succession of misfortunes. The reins of office were held by the eunuch
Chow-kow, who first murdered the minister Lissep and then Eulchi
himself.

Ing Wang, a grandson of Hwangti, was the next and last of the Tsin
emperors. On coming to power, he at once caused Chow-kow, whose crimes
had been discovered, to be arrested and executed. This vigorous
commencement proved very transitory, for when he had enjoyed nominal
authority during six weeks, Ing Wang's troops, after a reverse in the
field, went over in a body to Lieou Pang, the leader of a rebel force.
Ing Wang put an end to his existence, thus terminating, in a manner not
less ignominious than any of its predecessors, the dynasty of the Tsins,
which Hwangti had hoped to place permanently on the throne of China, and
to which his genius gave a lustre far surpassing that of many other
families who had enjoyed the same privilege during a much longer period.

The crisis in the history of the country had afforded one of those great
men who rise periodically from the ranks of the people to give law to
nations the opportunity for advancing his personal interests at the same
time that he made them appear to be identical with the public weal. Of
such geniuses, if the test applied be the work accomplished, there have
been few with higher claims to respectful and admiring consideration
than Lieou Pang, who after the fall of the Tsins became the founder of
the Han dynasty under the style of Kaotsou. Originally the governor of a
small town, he had, soon after the death of Hwangti, gathered round him
the nucleus of a formidable army, and while nominally serving under one
of the greater princes, he scarcely affected to conceal that he was
fighting for his own interest. On the other hand, he was no mere soldier
of fortune, and the moderation which he showed after victory enhanced
his reputation as a general. The path to the throne being thus cleared,
the successful general became emperor.

His first act was to proclaim an amnesty to all those who had borne arms
against him. In a public proclamation he expressed his regret at the
suffering of the people "from the evils which follow in the train of
war." During the earlier years of his reign he chose the city of Loyang
as his capital--now the flourishing and populous town of Honan--but at a
later period he removed it to Singanfoo, in the western province of
Shensi. His dynasty became known by the name of the small state where he
was born, and which had fallen early in his career into his hands.

Kaotsou sanctioned or personally undertook various important public
works, which in many places still exist to testify to the greatness of
his character. Prominent among those must be placed the bridges
constructed along the great roads of Western China. Some of them are
still believed to be in perfect condition. No act of Kaotsou's reign
places him higher in the scale of sovereigns than the improvement of the
roads and the construction of those remarkable bridges. Kaotsou loved
splendor and sought to make his receptions and banquets imposing by
their brilliance. He drew up a special ceremonial which must have proved
a trying ordeal for his courtiers, and dire was the offence if it were
infringed in the smallest particular. He kept up festivities at
Singanfoo for several weeks, and on one of these occasions he exclaimed:
"To-day I feel I am emperor and perceive all the difference between a
subject and his master."

Kaotsou's attention was rudely summoned away from these trivialities by
the outbreak of revolts against his authority and by inroads on the part
of the Tartars. The latter were the more serious. The disturbances that
followed Hwangti's death were a fresh inducement to these clans to again
gather round a common head and prey upon the weakness of China, for
Kaotsou's authority was not yet recognized in many of the tributary
states which had been fain to admit the supremacy of the great Tsin
emperor. About this time the Hiongnou[45] Tartars were governed by two
chiefs in particular, one named Tonghou, the other Meha or Mehe. Of
these the former appears to have been instigated by a reckless ambition
or an overweening arrogance, and at first it seemed that the forbearance
of Meha would allow his pretensions[46] to pass unchallenged.

[Footnote 45: Probably the same race as the Huns.]

[Footnote 46: Meha had become chief of his clan by murdering his father,
Teou-man, who was on the point of ordering his son's assassination when
thus forestalled in his intention. Tonghou sent to demand from him a
favorite horse, which Meha sent him. His kinsmen advised him to refuse
compliance; but he replied: "What! Would you quarrel with your neighbors
for a horse?" Shortly afterward Tonghou sent to ask for one of the wives
of the former chief. This also Meha granted, saying: "Why should we
undertake a war for the sake of a woman?" It was only when Tonghou
menaced his possessions that Meha took up arms.]

Meha's successes followed rapidly upon each other. Issuing from the
desert, and marching in the direction of China, he wrested many fertile
districts from the feeble hands of those who held them; and while
establishing his personal authority on the banks of the Hoangho, his
lieutenants returned laden with plunder from expeditions into the rich
provinces of Shensi and Szchuen. He won back all the territory lost by
his ancestors to Hwangti and Moungtien, and he paved the way to greater
success by the siege and capture of the city of Maye, thus obtaining
possession of the key of the road to Tsinyang. Several of the border
chiefs and of the Emperor's lieutenants, dreading the punishment
allotted in China to want of success, went over to the Tartars, and took
service under Meha.

The Emperor, fully aroused to the gravity of the danger, assembled his
army, and placing himself at its head marched against the Tartars.
Encouraged by the result of several preliminary encounters, the Emperor
was eager to engage Meha's main army, and after some weeks' searching
and manoeuvring, the two forces halted in front of each other. Kaotsou,
imagining that victory was within his grasp, and believing the stories
brought to him by spies of the weakness of the Tartar army, resolved on
an immediate attack. He turned a deaf ear to the cautious advice of one
of his generals, who warned him that "in war we should never despise an
enemy," and marched in person at the head of his advance guard to find
the Tartars. Meha, who had been at all these pains to throw dust in the
Emperor's eyes and to conceal his true strength, no sooner saw how well
his stratagem had succeeded, and that Kaotsou was rushing into the trap
so elaborately laid for him, than by a skilful movement he cut off his
communications with the main body of his army, and, surrounding him with
an overwhelming force, compelled him to take refuge in the city of
Pingching in Shensi.

With a very short supply of provisions, and hopelessly outnumbered, it
looked as if the Chinese Emperor could not possibly escape the grasp of
the desert chief. In this strait one of his officers suggested as a last
chance that the most beautiful virgin in the town should be discovered,
and sent as a present to mollify the conqueror. Kaotsou seized at this
suggestion, as the drowning man will catch at a straw, and the story is
preserved, though her name has passed into oblivion, of how the young
Chinese girl entered into the plan and devoted all her wits to charming
the Tartar conqueror. She succeeded as much as their fondest hopes could
have led them to believe; and Meha permitted Kaotsou, after signing an
ignominious treaty, to leave his place of confinement and rejoin his
army, glad to welcome the return of the Emperor, yet without him
helpless to stir a hand to effect his release. Meha retired to his own
territory, well satisfied with the material results of the war and the
rich booty which had been obtained in the sack of Chinese cities, while
Kaotsou, like the ordinary type of an oriental ruler, vented his
discomfiture on his subordinates.

The closing acts of the war were the lavishing of rewards on the head of
the general to whose warnings he had paid no heed, and the execution of
the scouts who had been misled by the wiles of Meha.

The success which had attended this incursion and the spoil of war were
potent inducements to the Tartars to repeat the invasion. While Kaotsou
was meditating over the possibility of revenge, and considering schemes
for the better protection of his frontier, the Tartars, disregarding the
truce that had been concluded, retraced their steps, and pillaged the
border districts with impunity. In this year (B.C. 199) they were
carrying everything before them, and the Emperor, either unnerved by
recent disaster or appalled at the apparently irresistible energy of the
followers of Meha, remained apathetic in his palace. The representations
of his ministers and generals failed to rouse him from his stupor, and
the weapon to which he resorted was the abuse of his opponent, and not
his prompt chastisement. Meha was "a wicked and faithless man, who had
risen to power by the murder of his father, and one with whom oaths and
treaties carried no weight." In the mean while the Tartars were
continuing their victorious career. The capital itself could not be
pronounced safe from their assaults, or from the insult of their
presence.

In this crisis counsels of craft and dissimulation alone found favor in
the Emperor's cabinet. No voice was raised in support of the bold and
only true course of going forth to meet the national enemy. The
capitulation of Pingching had for the time destroyed the manhood of the
race, and Kaotsou held in esteem the advice of men widely different to
those who had placed him on the throne. Kaotsou opened fresh
negotiations with Meha, who concluded a treaty on condition of the
Emperor's daughter being given to him in marriage, and on the assumption
that he was an independent ruler. With these terms Kaotsou felt obliged
to comply, and thus for the first time this never-ceasing collision
between the tribes of the desert and the agriculturists of the plains of
China closed with the admitted triumph of the former. The contest was
soon to be renewed with different results, but the triumph of Meha was
beyond question.[47]

[Footnote 47: One historian had the courage to declare that "Never was
so great a shame inflicted on the Middle Kingdom, which then lost its
dignity and honor."]

The weakness thus shown against a foreign foe brought its own punishment
in domestic troubles. The palace became the scene of broils, plots, and
counterplots, and so badly did Kaotsou manage his affairs at this epoch
that one of his favorite generals raised the standard of revolt against
him through apparently a mere misunderstanding. In this instance Kaotsou
easily put down the rising, but others followed which, if not pregnant
with danger, were at the least extremely troublesome. The murder of
Hansin, to whose aid Kaotsou owed his elevation to the throne as much as
to any other, by order of the empress, during a reception at the palace,
shook confidence still more in the ruler, and many of his followers were
forced into open rebellion through dread of personal danger. What wonder
that, as he has said, "the very name of revolt inspired Kaotsou with
apprehension."

In B.C. 195 we find Kaotsou going out of his way to visit the tomb of
Confucius. Shortly after this event it became evident that he was
approaching his end. His eldest son Hiaohoei was proclaimed heir
apparent. Kaotsou died in the fifty-third year of his age, having
reigned as emperor during eight years. The close of his reign did not
bear out all the promise of its commencement; and the extent of his
authority was greatly curtailed by the disastrous effects of the war
with the Tartars and the subsequent revolts among his generals.

Despite these reverses there remains much in favor of his character. He
had performed his part in the consolidation of the Hans; it remained for
those who came after him to complete what he left half finished.

Under Hoeiti, the Tartar King Meha sent an envoy to the capital, but
either the form or the substance of his message enraged the
empress-mother, who ordered his execution. The two peoples were thus
again brought to the brink of war, but eventually the difference was
sunk for the time, and the Chinese chroniclers have represented that the
satisfactory turn in the question was due to Meha seeing the error of
his ways.[48] Not long afterward the Tartar King died, and was succeeded
by his son Lao Chang.

[Footnote 48: Meha's letter of excuse is thus given: "In the barbarous
country which I govern both virtue and the decencies of life are
unknown. I have been unable to free myself from them, and, therefore, I
blush. China has her wise men; that is a happiness which I envy. They
would have prevented my being wanting in the respect due to your rank."]




ALEXANDER REDUCES TYRE: LATER FOUNDS ALEXANDRIA

B.C. 332

OLIVER GOLDSMITH


(The master spirit who could sigh for more worlds to conquer was at this
time high in his dazzling flight. Alexander has always been considered
one of the most striking and picturesque characters of history. His
personality was pleasing, his endurance remarkable, and courage
dauntless. Educated by Aristotle, his keen mind was well trained. He was
skilled in horsemanship, and his control over the fiery Bucephalus,
untamable by others, has become a household tale in all lands. There
never was a more kingly prince.

A king at twenty, his career has been an object of wonder to succeeding
generations. He shot like a meteor across the sky of ancient
civilization. His military achievements were remarkable for quickness of
conception and rapidity of execution; his life was a progress from
conquest to conquest. Alexander's army, with its solid phalanx, its
darting cavalry, and light troops, had become irresistible. He possessed
Napoleon's ability to select good generals and to make the most of his
talents. In battle Alexander was entirely devoid of fear. After a
victory his chief thoughts were for the wounded. Like Napoleon, he also
possessed that personal equation of absolute popularity with his
soldiers. Their devotion to him was simply complete.

After Thebes came the invasion of Asia. The invincible Macedonian had
fought and won the battle of the Granicus. In this battle nearly all of
the Persian leaders were slain, and its result spread terror throughout
Persia. Halicarnassus was next reduced. The march of Alexander was ever
onward. In the citadel of Gordium he cut the "Gordian knot," and
prophecy marked him for the lord of Asia.

And now Darius marched to meet him, making a fatally bad choice of
battle-ground. Darius was totally defeated at the celebrated battle of
Issus, although he had anticipated a victory. After the Persian rout and
the flight of Darius, whose numbers counted for nothing before the
Macedonian's skill, Lindon welcomed the invaders, and Alexander
determined to take Tyre. This was accomplished after a siege, which was
attended with much cruelty.

The siege of Gaza followed, in which nearly all of the citizens
perished. In B.C. 332 Alexander began his expedition to Egypt. He
conciliated the natives by paying honors to their gods. In his progress
he was struck by the advantages of a certain site for a city, and
founded there the town which is now called Alexandria.)


All Phoenicia was subdued except Tyre, the capital city. This city was
justly entitled the "Queen of the Sea," that element bringing to it the
tribute of all nations. She boasted of having first invented navigation
and taught mankind the art of braving the winds and waves by the
assistance of a frail bark. The happy situation of Tyre, at the upper
end of the Mediterranean; the conveniency of its ports, which were both
safe and capacious; and the character of its inhabitants, who were
industrious, laborious, patient, and extremely courteous to strangers,
invited thither merchants from all parts of the globe; so that it might
be considered, not so much a city belonging to any particular nation, as
the common city of all nations and the centre of their commerce.

Alexander thought it necessary, both for his glory and his interest, to
take this city. The spring was now coming on. Tyre was at that time
seated on an island of the sea, about a quarter of a league from the
continent. It was surrounded by a strong wall, a hundred and fifty feet
high, which the waves of the sea washed; and the Carthaginians, a colony
from Tyre, a mighty people, and sovereigns of the ocean, promised to
come to the assistance of their parent State. Encouraged, therefore, by
these favorable circumstances, the Tyrians determined not to surrender,
but to hold out the place to the last extremity. This resolution,
however imprudent, was certainly magnanimous, but it was soon after
followed by an act which was as blamable as the other was praiseworthy.

Alexander was desirous of gaining the place rather by treaty than by
force of arms, and with this in view sent heralds into the town with
offers of peace; but the inhabitants were so far from listening to his
proposals, or endeavoring to avert his resentment by any kind of
concession, that they actually killed his ambassadors and threw their
bodies from the top of the walls into the sea. It is easy to imagine
what effect so shocking an outrage must produce in a mind like
Alexander's. He instantly resolved to besiege the place, and not to
desist until he had made himself master of it and razed it to the
ground.

As Tyre was divided from the continent by an arm of the sea, there was
necessity for filling up the intermediate space with a bank or pier,
before the place could be closely invested. This work, accordingly, was
immediately undertaken and in a great measure completed; when all the
wood, of which it was principally composed, was unexpectedly burned by
means of a fire-ship sent in by the enemy. The damage, however, was very
soon repaired, and the mole rendered more perfect than formerly, and
carried nearer to the town, when all of a sudden a furious tempest
arose, which, undermining the stonework that supported the wood, laid
the whole at once in the bottom of the sea.

Two such disasters, following so closely on the heels of each other,
would have cooled the ardor of any man except Alexander, but nothing
could daunt his invincible spirit, or make him relinquish an enterprise
he had once undertaken. He, therefore, resolved to prosecute the siege;
and in order to encourage his men to second his views, he took care to
inspire them with the belief that heaven was on their side and would
soon crown their labors with the wished-for success. At one time he gave
out that Apollo was about to abandon the Tyrians to their doom, and
that, to prevent his flight, they had bound him to his pedestal with a
golden chain; at another, he pretended that Hercules, the tutelar deity
of Macedon, had appeared to him, and, having opened prospects of the
most glorious kind, had invited him to proceed to take possession of
Tyre.

These favorable circumstances were announced by the augurs as
intimations from above; and every heart was in consequence cheered. The
soldiers, as if that moment arrived before the city, forgetting all the
toils they had undergone and the disappointments they had suffered,
began to raise a new mole, at which they worked incessantly.

To protect them from being annoyed by the ships of the enemy, Alexander
fitted out a fleet, with which he not only secured his own men, but
offered the Tyrians battle, which, however, they thought proper to
decline, and withdrew all their galleys into the harbor.

The besiegers, now allowed to proceed unmolested, went on with the work
with the utmost vigor, and in a little time completed it and brought it
close to the walls. A general attack was therefore resolved on, both by
sea and land, and with this in view the King, having manned his galleys
and joined them together with strong cables, ordered them to approach
the walls about midnight and attack the city with resolution. But just
as the assault was going to begin, a dreadful storm arose, which not
only shook the ships asunder, but even shattered them in a terrible
manner, so that they were all obliged to be towed toward the shore,
without having made the least impression on the city.

The Tyrians were elated with this gleam of good fortune; but that joy
was of short duration, for in a little time they received intelligence
from Carthage that they must expect no assistance from that quarter, as
the Carthaginians themselves were then overawed by a powerful army of
Syracusans, who had invaded their country. Reduced, therefore, to the
hard necessity of depending entirely upon their own strength and their
own resources, the Tyrians sent all their women and children to
Carthage, and prepared to encounter the very last extremities. For now
the enemy was attacking the place with greater spirit and activity than
ever. And, to do the Tyrians justice, it must be acknowledged that they
employed a number of methods of defence which, considering the rude
state of the art of war at that early period, were really astonishing.
They warded off the darts discharged from the ballisters against them,
by the assistance of turning wheels, which either broke them to pieces
or carried them another way. They deadened the violence of the stones
that were hurled at them, by setting up sails and curtains made of a
soft substance which easily gave way.

To annoy the ships which advanced against their walls, they fixed
grappling irons and scythes to joists or beams; then, straining their
catapultas--an enormous kind of crossbow--they laid those great pieces
of timber upon them instead of arrows, and shot them off on a sudden at
the enemy. These crushed some of their ships by their great weight, and,
by means of the hooks or hanging scythes, tore others to pieces. They
also had brazen shields, which they drew red-hot out of the fire; and
filling these with burning sand, hurled them in an instant from the top
of the wall upon the enemy.

There was nothing the Macedonians dreaded so much as this fatal
instrument; for the moment the burning sand got to the flesh through the
crevices of the armor, it penetrated to the very bone, and stuck so
close that there was no pulling it off; so that the soldiers, throwing
down their arms, and tearing their clothes to pieces, were in this
manner exposed, naked and defenceless, to the shot of the enemy.

Alexander, finding the resources and even the courage of the Tyrians
increased in proportion as the siege continued, resolved to make a last
effort, and attack them at once both by sea and land, in order, if
possible, to overwhelm them with the multiplicity of dangers to which
they would be thus exposed. With this view, having manned his galleys
with some of the bravest of his troops, he commanded them to advance
against the enemy's fleet, while he himself took his post at the head of
his men on the mole.

And now the attack began on all sides with irresistible and unremitting
fury. Wherever the battering-rams had beat down any part of the wall,
and the bridges were thrown out, instantly the argyraspides mounted the
breach with the utmost valor, being led on by Admetus, one of the
bravest officers in the army, who was killed by the thrust of a spear as
he was encouraging his soldiers.

The presence of the King, and the example he set, fired his troops with
unusual bravery. He himself ascended one of the towers on the mole,
which was of a prodigious height, and there was exposed to the greatest
dangers he had ever yet encountered; for being immediately known by his
insignia and the richness of his armor, he served as a mark for all the
arrows of the enemy. On this occasion he performed wonders, killing with
javelins several of those who defended the wall; then, advancing nearer
to them, he forced some with his sword, and others with his shield,
either into the city or the sea, the tower on which he fought almost
touching the wall.

He soon ascended the wall, followed by his principal officers, and
possessed himself of two towers and the space between them. The
battering-rams had already made several breaches; the fleet had forced
its way into the harbor; and some of the Macedonians had possessed
themselves of the towers which were abandoned. The Tyrians, seeing the
enemy masters of their rampart, retired toward an open place, called
Agenor, and there stood their ground; but Alexander, marching up with
his regiment of bodyguards, killed part of them and obliged the rest to
fly.

At the same time, Tyre being taken on that side which lay toward the
harbor, a general carnage of the citizens ensued, and none was spared,
except the few that fell into the hands of the Siclonians in Alexander's
army, who--considering the Tyrians as countrymen--granted them
protection and carried them privately on board their ships.

The number that was slaughtered on this occasion is almost incredible;
even after conquest, the victor's resentment did not subside. He ordered
no less than five thousand men, who were taken in the storming, to be
nailed to crosses along the shore. The number of prisoners amounted to
thirty thousand and were all sold as slaves in different parts of the
world. Thus fell Tyre, that had been for many ages the most flourishing
city in the world, and had spread the arts and commerce into the
remotest regions.

While Alexander was employed in the siege of Tyre he received a second
letter from Darius, in which that monarch treated him with greater
respect than before. He now gave him the title of king; he offered him
ten thousand talents as a ransom for his captive mother and queen; and
he promised him his daughter Statira in marriage, with all the country
he had conquered, as far as the river Euphrates, provided he would agree
to a peace. These terms were so advantageous that, when the King debated
upon them in council, Parmenio, one of his generals, could not help
observing that he would certainly accept of them were he Alexander. "And
so would I," replied the King, "were I Parmenio!" But deeming it
inconsistent with his dignity to listen to any proposals from a man whom
he had so lately overcome, he haughtily rejected them, and scorned to
accept of that as a favor which he already considered his own by
conquest.

From Tyre, Alexander marched to Jerusalem, fully determined to punish
that city for having refused to supply his army with provisions during
the siege; but his resentment was mollified by a deputation of the
citizens coming out to meet him, with their high priest, Taddua, before
them, dressed in white, and having a mitre on his head, on the front of
which the name of God was written. The moment the King perceived the
high priest, he advanced toward him with an air of the most profound
respect, bowed his body, adored the august name upon his front, and
saluted him who wore it with religious veneration.

And when some of his courtiers expressed their surprise that he, who was
adored by everyone, should adore the high priest of the Jews: "I do
not," said he, "adore the high priest, but the God whose minister he is;
for while I was at Dium in Macedonia, my mind wholly fixed on the great
design of the Persian war, as I was revolving the methods how to conquer
Asia, this very man, dressed in the same robes, appeared to me in a
dream, exhorted me to banish my fear, bade me cross the Hellespont
boldly, and assured me that God would march at the head of my army and
give me the victory over the Persians." This speech, delivered with an
air of sincerity, no doubt had its effect in encouraging the army and
establishing an opinion that his mission was from heaven.

From Jerusalem he went to Gaza, where, having met with a more obstinate
resistance than he expected, he cut to pieces the whole garrison,
consisting of ten thousand men. Not satisfied with this act of cruelty,
he caused holes to be bored through the heels of Boetis, the governor,
and tying him with cords to the back of his chariot dragged him in this
manner around the walls of the city. This he did in imitation of
Achilles, whom Homer describes as having dragged Hector around the walls
of Troy in the same manner. It was reading the past to very little, or
rather, indeed, to very bad purpose, to imitate this hero in the most
unworthy part of his character.

Alexander, having left a garrison in Gaza, turned his arms toward Egypt;
of which he made himself master without opposition. Here he formed the
design of visiting the temple of Jupiter, which was situated in the
sandy deserts of Lybia at the distance of twelve days' journey from
Memphis, the capital of Egypt. His chief object in going thither was to
get himself acknowledged the son of Jupiter, an honor he had long
aspired to. In this journey he founded the city of Alexandria, which
soon became one of the greatest towns in the world for commerce.

Nothing could be more dreary than the desert through which he passed,
nor anything more charming--according to the fabulous accounts of the
poets--than the particular spot where the temple was situated.

It was a perfect paradise in the midst of an immeasurable wilderness. At
last, having reached the place, and appeared before the altar of the
deity, the priest, who was no stranger to Alexander's wishes, declared
him to be the son of Jupiter.

The conqueror, elated with this high compliment, asked whether he should
have success in his expedition. The priest answered that he should be
monarch of the world. The conqueror inquired if his father's murderers
were punished. The priest replied that his father Jupiter was immortal,
but that the murderers of Philip had all been extirpated.




THE BATTLE OF ARBELA

B.C. 331

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY


(When Alexander, having returned from his campaign against the
barbarians of the North, had suppressed a revolt which meanwhile had
broken out in Greece, he found himself free for undertaking those great
foreign conquests which he had planned. When he left Greece to conquer
the world, he said farewell to his own country forever. Crossing the
Hellespont into Asia Minor with a small but well equipped and
disciplined army, he advanced unopposed until he reached the river
Granicus, where he found himself confronted with a Persian host. Upon
this army he inflicted a defeat so signal as to bring at once to
submission nearly the whole of Asia Minor. He next advanced into Syria
and met the Persian king, Darius III, who in person commanded an immense
body of soldiers, against which the young conqueror fought at Issus,
winning a decisive victory. He not only captured the Persian camp, but
also secured the King's treasures and took his family prisoners. From
this time Alexander held complete mastery of the western dominions of
Darius, whom the conqueror afterward dethroned.

After he had next invaded and subjugated Egypt and there founded the
city of Alexandria, he pursued King Darius, who had taken flight, into
the very heart of his empire, where the Persian monarch, on the plains
of Gaugamela, near the village of Arbela, made his last stand against
his invincible foe. Of the battle to which Arbela gave its name, and
which proved the death-blow of the Persian empire, Creasy's narrative
furnishes a realistic description.)


A long and not uninstructive list might be made out of illustrious men
whose characters have been vindicated during recent times from
aspersions which for centuries had been thrown on them. The spirit of
modern inquiry, and the tendency of modern scholarship, both of which
are often said to be solely negative and destructive, have, in truth,
restored to splendor, and almost created anew, far more than they have
assailed with censure or dismissed from consideration as unreal.

The truth of many a brilliant narrative of brilliant exploits has of
late years been triumphantly demonstrated, and the shallowness of the
sceptical scoffs with which little minds have carped at the great minds
of antiquity has been in many instances decisively exposed. The laws,
the politics, and the lines of action adopted or recommended by eminent
men and powerful nations have been examined with keener investigation
and considered with more comprehensive judgment than formerly were
brought to bear on these subjects. The result has been at least as often
favorable as unfavorable to the persons and the states so scrutinized,
and many an oft-repeated slander against both measures and men has thus
been silenced, we may hope forever.

The veracity of Herodotus, the pure patriotism of Pericles, of
Demosthenes, and of the Gracchi, the wisdom of Clisthenes and of
Licinius as constitutional reformers, may be mentioned as facts which
recent writers have cleared from unjust suspicion and censure. And it
might be easily shown that the defensive tendency which distinguishes
the present and recent great writers of Germany, France, and England has
been equally manifested in the spirit in which they have treated the
heroes of thought and heroes of action who lived during what we term the
Middle Ages, and whom it was so long the fashion to sneer at or neglect.

The name of the victor of Arbela has led to these reflections; for,
although the rapidity and extent of Alexander's conquests have through
all ages challenged admiration and amazement, the grandeur of genius
which he displayed in his schemes of commerce, civilization, and of
comprehensive union and unity among nations, has, until lately, been
comparatively unhonored. This long-continued depreciation was of early
date. The ancient rhetoricians--a class of babblers, a school for lies
and scandal, as Niebuhr justly termed them--chose, among the stock
themes for their commonplaces, the character and exploits of Alexander.

They had their followers in every age; and, until a very recent period,
all who wished to "point a moral or adorn a tale," about unreasoning
ambition, extravagant pride, and the formidable frenzies of free will
when leagued with free power, have never failed to blazon forth the
so-called madman of Macedonia as one of the most glaring examples.
Without doubt, many of these writers adopted with implicit credence
traditional ideas, and supposed, with uninquiring philanthropy, that in
blackening Alexander they were doing humanity good service. But also,
without doubt, many of his assailants, like those of other great men,
have been mainly instigated by "that strongest of all antipathies, the
antipathy of a second-rate mind to a first-rate one," and by the envy
which talent too often bears to genius.

Arrian, who wrote his history of Alexander when Hadrian was emperor of
the Roman world, and when the spirit of declamation and dogmatism was at
its full height, but who was himself, unlike the dreaming pedants of the
schools, a statesman and a soldier of practical and proved ability, well
rebuked the malevolent aspersions which he heard continually thrown upon
the memory of the great conqueror of the East.

He truly says: "Let the man who speaks evil of Alexander not merely
bring forward those passages of Alexander's life which were really evil,
but let him collect and review _all_ the actions of Alexander, and then
let him thoroughly consider first who and what manner of man he himself
is, and what has been his own career; and then let him consider who and
what manner of man Alexander was, and to what an eminence of human
grandeur _he_ arrived. Let him consider that Alexander was a king, and
the undisputed lord of the two continents, and that his name is renowned
throughout the whole earth.

"Let the evil-speaker against Alexander bear all this in mind, and then
let him reflect on his own insignificance, the pettiness of his own
circumstances and affairs, and the blunders that he makes about these,
paltry and trifling as they are. Let him then ask himself whether he is
a fit person to censure and revile such a man as Alexander. I believe
that there was in his time no nation of men, no city, nay, no single
individual with whom Alexander's name had not become a familiar word. I
therefore hold that such a man, who was like no ordinary mortal, was not
born into the world without some special providence."

And one of the most distinguished soldiers and writers, Sir Walter
Raleigh, though he failed to estimate justly the full merits of
Alexander, has expressed his sense of the grandeur of the part played in
the world by "the great Emathian conqueror" in language that well
deserves quotation:

"So much hath the spirit of some one man excelled as it hath undertaken
and effected the alteration of the greatest states and commonweals, the
erection of monarchies, the conquest of kingdoms and empires, guided
handfuls of men against multitudes of equal bodily strength, contrived
victories beyond all hope and discourse of reason, converted the fearful
passions of his own followers into magnanimity, and the valor of his
enemies into cowardice; such spirits have been stirred up in sundry ages
of the world, and in divers parts thereof, to erect and cast down again,
to establish and to destroy, and to bring all things, persons, and
states to the same certain ends which the infinite spirit of the
_Universal_, piercing, moving, and governing all things, hath ordained.
Certainly, the things that this King did were marvellous and would
hardly have been undertaken by anyone else; and though his father had
determined to have invaded the Lesser Asia, it is like enough that he
would have contented himself with some part thereof, and not have
discovered the river of Indus, as this man did."

A higher authority than either Arrian or Raleigh may now be referred to
by those who wish to know the real merit of Alexander as a general, and
how far the commonplace assertions are true that his successes were the
mere results of fortunate rashness and unreasoning pugnacity. Napoleon
selected Alexander as one of the seven greatest generals whose noble
deeds history has handed down to us, and from the study of whose
campaigns the principles of war are to be learned. The critique of the
greatest conqueror of modern times on the military career of the great
conqueror of the Old World is no less graphic than true:

"Alexander crossed the Dardanelles B.C. 334, with an army of about forty
thousand men, of which one-eighth was cavalry; he forced the passage of
the Granicus in opposition to an army under Memnon, the Greek, who
commanded for Darius on the coast of Asia, and he spent the whole of the
year 333 in establishing his power in Asia Minor. He was seconded by the
Greek colonies, who dwelt on the borders of the Black Sea and on the
Mediterranean, and in Sardis, Ephesus, Tarsus, Miletus, etc. The kings
of Persia left their provinces and towns to be governed according to
their own particular laws. Their empire was a union of confederated
states, and did not form one nation; this facilitated its conquest. As
Alexander only wished for the throne of the monarch, he easily effected
the change by respecting the customs, manners, and laws of the people,
who experienced no change in their condition.

"In the year 332 he met with Darius at the head of sixty thousand men,
who had taken up a position near Tarsus, on the banks of the Issus, in
the province of Cilicia. He defeated him, entered Syria, took Damascus,
which contained all the riches of the Great King, and laid siege to
Tyre. This superb metropolis of the commerce of the world detained him
nine months.

"He took Gaza after a siege of two months; crossed the desert in seven
days; entered Pelusium and Memphis, and founded Alexandria. In less than
two years, after two battles and four or five sieges, the coasts of the
Black Sea, from Phasis to Byzantium, those of the Mediterranean as far
as Alexandria, all Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt, had submitted to his
arms.

"In 331 he repassed the desert, encamped in Tyre, re-crossed Syria,
entered Damascus, passed the Euphrates and Tigris, and defeated Darius
on the field of Arbela when he was at the head of a still stronger army
than that which he commanded on the Issus, and Babylon opened her gates
to him. In 330 he overran Susa and took that city, Persepolis, and
Pasargada, which contained the tomb of Cyrus. In 329 he directed his
course northward, entered Ecbatana, and extended his conquests to the
coasts of the Caspian, punished Bessus, the cowardly assassin of Darius,
penetrated into Scythia, and subdued the Scythians.

"In 328 he forced the passage of the Oxus, received sixteen thousand
recruits from Macedonia, and reduced the neighboring people to
subjection. In 327 he crossed the Indus, vanquished Porus in a pitched
battle, took him prisoner, and treated him as a king. He contemplated
passing the Ganges, but his army refused. He sailed down the Indus, in
the year 326, with eight hundred vessels; having arrived at the ocean,
he sent Nearchus with a fleet to run along the coasts of the Indian
Ocean and the Persian Gulf as far as the mouth of the Euphrates. In 325
he took sixty days in crossing from Gedrosia, entered Keramania,
returned to Pasargada, Persepolis, and Susa, and married Statira, the
daughter of Darius. In 324 he marched once more to the north, passed
Echatana, and terminated his career at Babylon."

The enduring importance of Alexander's conquests is to be estimated, not
by the duration of his own life and empire, or even by the duration of
the kingdoms which his generals after his death formed out of the
fragments of that mighty dominion. In every region of the world that he
traversed, Alexander planted Greek settlements and founded cities, in
the populations of which the Greek element at once asserted its
predominance. Among his successors, the Seleucidae and the Ptolemies
imitated their great captain in blending schemes of civilization, of
commercial intercourse, and of literary and scientific research with all
their enterprises of military aggrandizement and with all their systems
of civil administration.

Such was the ascendency of the Greek genius, so wonderfully
comprehensive and assimilating was the cultivation which it introduced,
that, within thirty years after Alexander crossed the Hellespont, the
Greek language was spoken in every country from the shores of the Ægean
to the Indus, and also throughout Egypt--not, indeed, wholly to the
extirpation of the native dialects, but it became the language of every
court, of all literature, of every judicial and political function, and
formed a medium of communication among the many myriads of mankind
inhabiting these large portions of the Old World.

Throughout Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt the Hellenic character that was
thus imparted remained in full vigor down to the time of the Mahometan
conquests. The infinite value of this to humanity in the highest and
holiest point of view has often been pointed out, and the workings of
the finger of Providence have been gratefully recognized by those who
have observed how the early growth and progress of Christianity were
aided by that diffusion of the Greek language and civilization
throughout Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt which had been caused by the
Macedonian conquest of the East.

In Upper Asia, beyond the Euphrates, the direct and material influence
of Greek ascendency was more short-lived. Yet, during the existence of
the Hellenic kingdoms in these regions, especially of the Greek kingdom
of Bactria, the modern Bokhara, very important effects were produced on
the intellectual tendencies and tastes of the inhabitants of those
countries, and of the adjacent ones, by the animating contact of the
Grecian spirit. Much of Hindu science and philosophy, much of the
literature of the later Persian kingdom of the Arsacidæ, either
originated from or was largely modified by Grecian influences. So, also,
the learning and science of the Arabians were in a far less degree the
result of original invention and genius than the reproduction, in an
altered form, of the Greek philosophy and the Greek lore acquired by the
Saracenic conquerors, together with their acquisition of the provinces
which Alexander had subjugated, nearly a thousand years before the armed
disciples of Mahomet commenced their career in the East.

It is well known that Western Europe in the Middle Ages drew its
philosophy, its arts, and its science principally from Arabian teachers.
And thus we see how the intellectual influence of ancient Greece, poured
on the Eastern world by Alexander's victories, and then brought back to
bear on mediæval Europe by the spread of the Saracenic powers, has
exerted its action on the elements of modern civilization by this
powerful though indirect channel, as well as by the more obvious effects
of the remnants of classic civilization which survived in Italy, Gaul,
Britain, and Spain, after the irruption of the Germanic nations.

These considerations invest the Macedonian triumphs in the East with
never-dying interest, such as the most showy and sanguinary successes of
mere "low ambition and the pride of kings," however they may dazzle for
a moment, can never retain with posterity. Whether the old Persian
empire which Cyrus founded could have survived much longer than it did,
even if Darius had been victorious at Arbela, may safely be disputed.
That ancient dominion, like the Turkish at the present time, labored
under every cause of decay and dissolution. The satraps, like the modern
pachas, continually rebelled against the central power, and Egypt in
particular was almost always in a state of insurrection against its
nominal sovereign. There was no longer any effective central control, or
any internal principle of unity fused through the huge mass of the
empire, and binding it together.

Persia was evidently about to fall; but, had it not been for Alexander's
invasion of Asia, she would most probably have fallen beneath some other
oriental power, as Media and Babylon had formerly fallen before herself,
and as, in after-times, the Parthian supremacy gave way to the revived
ascendency of Persia in the East, under the sceptres of the Arsacidæ. A
revolution that merely substituted one Eastern power for another would
have been utterly barren and unprofitable to mankind.

Alexander's victory at Arbela not only overthrew an oriental dynasty,
but established European rulers in its stead. It broke the monotony of
the eastern world by the impression of western energy and superior
civilization, even as England's present mission is to break up the
mental and moral stagnation of India and Cathay by pouring upon and
through them the impulsive current of Anglo-Saxon commerce and conquest.

Arbela, the city which has furnished its name to the decisive battle
which gave Asia to Alexander, lies more than twenty miles from the
actual scene of conflict. The little village, then named Gaugamela, is
close to the spot where the armies met, but has ceded the honor of
naming the battle to its more euphonious neighbor. Gaugamela is situated
in one of the wide plains that lie between the Tigris and the mountains
of Kurdistan. A few undulating hillocks diversify the surface of this
sandy tract; but the ground is generally level and admirably qualified
for the evolutions of cavalry, and also calculated to give the larger of
two armies the full advantage of numerical superiority.

The Persian King--who, before he came to the throne, had proved his
personal valor as a soldier and his skill as a general--had wisely
selected this region for the third and decisive encounter between his
forces and the invader. The previous defeats of his troops, however
severe they had been, were not looked on as irreparable. The Granicus
had been fought by his generals rashly and without mutual concert; and,
though Darius himself had commanded and been beaten at Issus, that
defeat might be attributed to the disadvantageous nature of the ground,
where, cooped up between the mountains, the river, and the sea, the
numbers of the Persians confused and clogged alike the general's skill
and the soldiers' prowess, and their very strength had been made their
weakness. Here, on the broad plains of Kurdistan, there was scope for
Asia's largest host to array its lines, to wheel, to skirmish, to
condense or expand its squadrons, to manoeuvre, and to charge at will.
Should Alexander and his scanty band dare to plunge into that living sea
of war, their destruction seemed inevitable.

Darius felt, however, the critical nature to himself as well as to his
adversary of the coming encounter. He could not hope to retrieve the
consequences of a third overthrow. The great cities of Mesopotamia and
Upper Asia, the central provinces of the Persian empire, were certain to
be at the mercy of the victor. Darius knew also the Asiatic character
well enough to be aware how it yields to _prestige_ of success and the
apparent career of destiny. He felt that the diadem was now either to be
firmly replaced on his own brow or to be irrevocably transferred to the
head of his European conqueror. He, therefore, during the long interval
left him after the battle of Issus, while Alexander was subjugating
Syria and Egypt, assiduously busied himself in selecting the best troops
which his vast empire supplied, and in training his varied forces to act
together with some uniformity of discipline and system.

The hardy mountaineers of Afghanistan, Bokhara, Khiva, and Tibet were
then, as at present, far different from the generality of Asiatics in
warlike spirit and endurance. From these districts Darius collected
large bodies of admirable infantry; and the countries of the modern
Kurds and Turkomans supplied, as they do now, squadrons of horsemen,
hardy, skilful, bold, and trained to a life of constant activity and
warfare. It is not uninteresting to notice that the ancestors of our own
late enemies, the Sikhs, served as allies of Darius against the
Macedonians. They are spoken of in Arrian as Indians who dwelt near
Bactria. They were attached to the troops of that satrapy, and their
cavalry was one of the most formidable forces in the whole Persian army.

Besides these picked troops, contingents also came in from the numerous
other provinces that yet obeyed the Great King. Altogether, the horse
are said to have been forty thousand, the scythe-bearing chariots two
hundred, and the armed elephants fifteen in number. The amount of the
infantry is uncertain; but the knowledge which both ancient and modern
times supply of the usual character of oriental armies, and of their
populations of camp-followers, may warrant us in believing that many
myriads were prepared to fight or to encumber those who fought for the
last Darius.

The position of the Persian King near Mesopotamia was chosen with great
military skill. It was certain that Alexander, on his return from Egypt,
must march northward along the Syrian coast before he attacked the
central provinces of the Persian empire. A direct eastward march from
the lower part of Palestine across the great Syrian Desert was then, as
ever, utterly impracticable. Marching eastward from Syria, Alexander
would, on crossing the Euphrates, arrive at the vast Mesopotamian
plains. The wealthy capitals of the empire, Babylon, Susa, and
Persepolis, would then lie to the south; and if he marched down through
Mesopotamia to attack them, Darius might reasonably hope to follow the
Macedonians with his immense force of cavalry, and, without even risking
a pitched battle, to harass and finally overwhelm them.

We may remember that three centuries afterward a Roman army under
Crassus was thus actually destroyed by the oriental archers and horsemen
in these very plains, and that the ancestors of the Parthians who thus
vanquished the Roman legions served by thousands under King Darius. If,
on the contrary, Alexander should defer his march against Babylon, and
first seek an encounter with the Persian army, the country on each side
of the Tigris in this latitude was highly advantageous for such an army
as Darius commanded, and he had close in his rear the mountainous
districts of Northern Media, where he himself had in early life been
satrap, where he had acquired reputation as a soldier and a general, and
where he justly expected to find loyalty to his person, and a safe
refuge in case of defeat.[49]

[Footnote 49: Mitford's remarks on the strategy of Darius in his last
campaign are very just. After having been unduly admired as a historian,
Mitford is now unduly neglected. His partiality and his deficiency in
scholarship have been exposed sufficiently to make him no longer a
dangerous guide as to Greek politics, while the clearness and brilliance
of his narrative, and the strong common sense of his remarks (where his
party prejudices do not interfere), must always make his volumes
valuable as well as entertaining.]

His great antagonist came on across the Euphrates against him, at the
head of an army which Arrian, copying from the journals of Macedonian
officers, states to have consisted of forty thousand foot and seven
thousand horse. In studying the campaigns of Alexander, we possess the
peculiar advantage of deriving our information from two of Alexander's
generals of division, who bore an important part in all his enterprises.
Aristobulus and Ptolemy--who afterward became king of Egypt--kept
regular journals of the military events which they witnessed, and these
journals were in the possession of Arrian when he drew up his history of
Alexander's expedition.

The high character of Arrian for integrity makes us confident that he
used them fairly, and his comments on the occasional discrepancies
between the two Macedonian narratives prove that he used them sensibly.
He frequently quotes the very words of his authorities; and his history
thus acquires a charm such as very few ancient or modern military
narratives possess. The anecdotes and expressions which he records we
fairly believe to be genuine, and not to be the coinage of a
rhetorician, like those in Curtius. In fact, in reading Arrian, we read
General Aristobulus and General Ptolemy on the campaigns of the
Macedonians, and it is like reading General Jomini or General Foy on the
campaigns of the French.

The estimate which we find in Arrian of the strength of Alexander's army
seems reasonable enough, when we take into account both the losses which
he had sustained and the reënforcements which he had received since he
left Europe. Indeed, to Englishmen, who know with what mere handfuls of
men our own generals have, at Plassy, at Assaye, at Meeanee, and other
Indian battles, routed large hosts of Asiatics, the disparity of numbers
that we read of in the victories won by the Macedonians over the
Persians presents nothing incredible. The army which Alexander now led
was wholly composed of veteran troops in the highest possible state of
equipment and discipline, enthusiastically devoted to their leader, and
full of confidence in his military genius and his victorious destiny.

The celebrated Macedonian phalanx formed the main strength of his
infantry. This force had been raised and organized by his father,
Philip, who, on his accession to the Macedonian throne, needed a
numerous and quickly formed army, and who, by lengthening the spear of
the ordinary Greek phalanx, and increasing the depth of the files,
brought the tactics of armed masses to the highest extent of which it
was capable with such materials as he possessed. He formed his men
sixteen deep, and placed in their grasp the _sarissa_, as the Macedonian
pike was called, which was four-and-twenty feet in length, and, when
couched for action, reached eighteen feet in front of the soldier; so
that, as a space of about two feet was allowed between the ranks, the
spears of the five files behind him projected in front of each
front-rank man.

The phalangite soldier was fully equipped in the defensive armor of the
regular Greek infantry. And thus the phalanx presented a ponderous and
bristling mass, which, as long as its order was kept compact, was sure
to bear down all opposition. The defects of such an organization are
obvious, and were proved in after-years, when the Macedonians were
opposed to the Roman legions. But it is clear that under Alexander the
phalanx was not the cumbrous, unwieldy body which it was at Cynoscephate
and Pydna. His men were veterans; and he could obtain from them an
accuracy of movement and steadiness of evolution such as probably the
recruits of his father would only have floundered in attempting, and
such as certainly were impracticable in the phalanx when handled by his
successors, especially as under them it ceased to be a standing force,
and became only a militia.

Under Alexander the phalanx consisted of an aggregate of eighteen
thousand men, who were divided into six brigades of three thousand each.
These were again subdivided into regiments and companies; and the men
were carefully trained to wheel, to face about, to take more ground, or
to close up, as the emergencies of the battle required. Alexander also
arrayed troops armed in a different manner in the intervals of the
regiments of his phalangites, who could prevent their line from being
pierced and their companies taken in flank, when the nature of the
ground prevented a close formation, and who could be withdrawn when a
favorable opportunity arrived for closing up the phalanx or any of its
brigades for a charge, or when it was necessary to prepare to receive
cavalry.

Besides the phalanx, Alexander had a considerable force of infantry who
were called shield-bearers: they were not so heavily armed as the
phalangites, or as was the case with the Greek regular infantry in
general, but they were equipped for close fight as well as for
skirmishing, and were far superior to the ordinary irregular troops of
Greek warfare. They were about six thousand strong. Besides these, he
had several bodies of Greek regular infantry; and he had archers,
slingers, and javelin-men, who fought also with broadsword and target,
and who were principally supplied him by the highlanders of Illyria and
Thracia.

The main strength of his cavalry consisted in two chosen regiments of
cuirassiers, one Macedonian and one Thessalian, each of which was about
fifteen hundred strong. They were provided with long lances and heavy
swords, and horse as well as man was fully equipped with defensive
armor. Other regiments of regular cavalry were less heavily armed, and
there were several bodies of light-horsemen, whom Alexander's conquests
in Egypt and Syria had enabled him to mount superbly.

A little before the end of August, Alexander crossed the Euphrates at
Thapsacus, a small corps of Persian cavalry under Mazaeus retiring
before him. Alexander was too prudent to march down through the
Mesopotamian deserts, and continued to advance eastward with the
intention of passing the Tigris, and then, if he was unable to find
Darius and bring him to action, of marching southward on the left side
of that river along the skirts of a mountainous district where his men
would suffer less from heat and thirst, and where provisions would be
more abundant.

Darius, finding that his adversary was not to be enticed into the march
through Mesopotamia against his capital, determined to remain on the
battle-ground, which he had chosen on the left of the Tigris; where, if
his enemy met a defeat or a check, the destruction of the invaders would
be certain with two such rivers as the Euphrates and the Tigris in their
rear.

The Persian King availed himself to the utmost of every advantage in his
power. He caused a large space of ground to be carefully levelled for
the operation of his scythe-armed chariots; and he deposited his
military stores in the strong town of Arbela, about twenty miles in his
rear. The rhetoricians of after-ages have loved to describe Darius
Codomanus as a second Xerxes in ostentation and imbecility; but a fair
examination of his generalship in this his last campaign shows that he
was worthy of bearing the same name as his great predecessor, the royal
son of Hystaspes.

On learning that Darius was with a large army on the left of the Tigris,
Alexander hurried forward and crossed that river without opposition. He
was at first unable to procure any certain intelligence of the precise
position of the enemy, and after giving his army a short interval of
rest he marched for four days down the left bank of the river.

A moralist may pause upon the fact that Alexander must in this march
have passed within a few miles of the ruins of Nineveh, the great city
of the primæval conquerors of the human race. Neither the Macedonian
King nor any of his followers knew what those vast mounds had once been.
They had already sunk into utter destruction; and it is only within the
last few years that the intellectual energy of one of our own countrymen
has rescued Nineveh from its long centuries of oblivion.

On the fourth day of Alexander's southward march, his advance guard
reported that a body of the enemy's cavalry was in sight. He instantly
formed his army in order for battle, and directing them to advance
steadily he rode forward at the head of some squadrons of cavalry and
charged the Persian horse, whom he found before him. This was a mere
reconnoitring party, and they broke and fled immediately; but the
Macedonians made some prisoners, and from them Alexander found that
Darius was posted only a few miles off, and learned the strength of the
army that he had with him. On receiving this news Alexander halted, and
gave his men repose for four days, so that they should go into action
fresh and vigorous. He also fortified his camp and deposited in it all
his military stores and all his sick and disabled soldiers, intending to
advance upon the enemy with the serviceable part of his army perfectly
unencumbered.

After this halt, he moved forward, while it was yet dark, with the
intention of reaching the enemy, and attacking them at break of day.
About half way between the camps there were some undulations of the
ground, which concealed the two armies from each other's view; but, on
Alexander arriving at their summit, he saw, by the early light, the
Persian host arrayed before him, and he probably also observed traces of
some engineering operation having been carried on along part of the
ground in front of them.

Not knowing that these marks had been caused by the Persians having
levelled the ground for the free use of their war chariots, Alexander
suspected that hidden pitfalls had been prepared with a view of
disordering the approach of his cavalry. He summoned a council of war
forthwith. Some of the officers were for attacking instantly, at all
hazards; but the more prudent opinion of Parmenio prevailed, and it was
determined not to advance farther till the battle-ground had been
carefully surveyed.

Alexander halted his army on the heights, and, taking with him some
light-armed infantry and some cavalry, he passed part of the day in
reconnoitring the enemy and observing the nature of the ground which he
had to fight on. Darius wisely refrained from moving from his position
to attack the Macedonians on the eminences which they occupied, and the
two armies remained until night without molesting each other.

On Alexander's return to his headquarters, he summoned his generals and
superior officers together, and telling them that he knew well that
_their_ zeal wanted no exhortation, he besought them to do their utmost
in encouraging and instructing those whom each commanded, to do their
best in the next day's battle. They were to remind them that they were
now not going to fight for a province as they had hitherto fought, but
they were about to decide by their swords the dominion of all Asia. Each
officer ought to impress this upon his subalterns, and they should urge
it on their men. Their natural courage required no long words to excite
its ardor; but they should be reminded of the paramount importance of
steadiness in action. The silence in the ranks must be unbroken as long
as silence was proper; but when the time came for the charge, the shout
and the cheer must be full of terror for the foe. The officers were to
be alert in receiving and communicating orders; and everyone was to act
as if he felt that the whole result of the battle depended on his own
single good conduct.

Having thus briefly instructed his generals, Alexander ordered that the
army should sup and take their rest for the night.

Darkness had closed over the tents of the Macedonians when Alexander's
veteran general, Parmenio, came to him and proposed that they should
make a night attack on the Persians. The King is said to have answered
that he scorned to filch a victory, and that Alexander must conquer
openly and fairly. Arrian justly remarks that Alexander's resolution was
as wise as it was spirited. Besides the confusion and uncertainty which
are inseparable from night engagements, the value of Alexander's victory
would have been impaired if gained under circumstances which might
supply the enemy with any excuse for his defeat, and encourage him to
renew the contest. It was necessary for Alexander not only to beat
Darius, but to gain such a victory as should leave his rival without
apology and without hope of recovery.

The Persians, in fact, expected and were prepared to meet a night
attack. Such was the apprehension that Darius entertained of it that he
formed his troops at evening in order of battle, and kept them under
arms all night. The effect of this was that the morning found them jaded
and dispirited, while it brought their adversaries all fresh and
vigorous against them.

The written order of battle which Darius himself caused to be drawn up
fell into the hands of the Macedonians after the engagement, and
Aristobulus copied it into his journal. We thus possess, through Arrian,
unusually authentic information as to the composition and arrangement of
the Persian army. On the extreme left were the Bactrian, Daan, and
Arachosian cavalry. Next to these Darius placed the troops from Persia
proper, both horse and foot. Then came the Susians, and next to these
the Cadusians. These forces made up the left wing.

Darius' own station was in the centre. This was composed of the Indians,
the Carians, the Mardian archers, and the division of Persians who were
distinguished by the golden apples that formed the knobs of their
spears. Here also were stationed the bodyguard of the Persian nobility.
Besides these, there were, in the centre, formed in deep order, the
Uxian and Babylonian troops and the soldiers from the Red Sea. The
brigade of Greek mercenaries whom Darius had in his service, and who
alone were considered fit to stand the charge of the Macedonian phalanx,
was drawn up on either side of the royal chariot.

The right wing was composed of the Coelosyrians and Mesopotamians, the
Medes, the Parthians, the Sacians, the Tapurians, Hyrcanians, Albanians,
and Sacesinae. In advance of the line on the left wing were placed the
Scythian cavalry, with a thousand of the Bactrian horse and a hundred
scythe-armed chariots. The elephants and fifty scythe-armed chariots
were ranged in front of the centre; and fifty more chariots, with the
Armenian and Cappadocian cavalry, were drawn up in advance of the right
wing.

Thus arrayed, the great host of King Darius passed the night that to
many thousands of them was the last of their existence. The morning of
the first of October[50] dawned slowly to their wearied watching, and
they could hear the note of the Macedonian trumpet sounding to arms, and
could see King Alexander's forces descend from their tents on the
heights and form in order of battle on the plain.

[Footnote 50: The battle was fought eleven days after an eclipse of the
moon, which gives the means of fixing the precise date.]

There was deep need of skill, as well as of valor, on Alexander's side;
and few battle-fields have witnessed more consummate generalship than
was now displayed by the Macedonian King. There were no natural barriers
by which he could protect his flanks; and not only was he certain to be
overlapped on either wing by the vast lines of the Persian army, but
there was imminent risk of their circling round him, and charging him in
the rear, while he advanced against their centre. He formed, therefore,
a second, or reserve line, which was to wheel round, if required, or to
detach troops to either flank, as the enemy's movements might
necessitate; and thus, with their whole army ready at any moment to be
thrown into one vast hollow square, the Macedonians advanced in two
lines against the enemy, Alexander himself leading on the right wing,
and the renowned phalanx forming the centre, while Parmenio commanded on
the left.

Such was the general nature of the disposition which Alexander made of
his army. But we have in Arrian the details of the position of each
brigade and regiment; and as we know that these details were taken from
the journals of Macedonian generals, it is interesting to examine them,
and to read the names and stations of King Alexander's generals and
colonels in this the greatest of his battles.

The eight regiments of the royal horse-guards formed the right of
Alexander's line. Their colonels were Clitus--whose regiment was on the
extreme right, the post of peculiar danger--Glaucias, Ariston, Sopolis,
Heraclides, Demetrias, Meleager, and Hegelochus. Philotas was general of
the whole division. Then came the shield-bearing infantry: Nicanor was
their general. Then came the phalanx in six brigades. Coenus' brigade
was on the right, and nearest to the shield-bearers; next to this stood
the brigade of Perdiccas, then Meleager's, then Polysperchon's; and then
the brigade of Amynias, but which was now commanded by Simmias, as
Amynias had been sent to Macedonia to levy recruits. Then came the
infantry of the left wing, under the command of Craterus.

Next to Craterus' infantry were placed the cavalry regiments of the
allies, with Eriguius for their general. The Thessalian cavalry,
commanded by Philippus, were next, and held the extreme left of the
whole army. The whole left wing was intrusted to the command of
Parmenio, who had round his person the Pharsalian regiment of cavalry,
which was the strongest and best of all the Thessalian horse regiments.

The centre of the second line was occupied by a body of phalangite
infantry, formed of companies which were drafted for this purpose from
each of the brigades of their phalanx. The officers in command of this
corps were ordered to be ready to face about if the enemy should succeed
in gaining the rear of the army. On the right of this reserve of
infantry, in the second line, and behind the royal horse-guards,
Alexander placed half the Agrian light-armed infantry under Attalus, and
with them Brison's body of Macedonian archers and Cleander's regiment of
foot. He also placed in this part of his army Menidas' squadron of
cavalry and Aretes' and Ariston's light horse. Menidas was ordered to
watch if the enemy's cavalry tried to turn their flank, and, if they did
so, to charge them before they wheeled completely round, and so take
them in flank themselves.

A similar force was arranged on the left of the second line for the same
purpose. The Thracian infantry of Sitalces were placed there, and
Coeranus' regiment of the cavalry of the Greek allies, and Agathon's
troops of the Odrysian irregular horse. The extreme left of the second
line in this quarter was held by Andromachus' cavalry. A division of
Thracian infantry was left in guard of the camp. In advance of the right
wing and centre was scattered a number of light-armed troops, of
javelin-men and bowmen, with the intention of warding off the charge of
the armed chariots.[51]

[Footnote 51: Kleber's arrangement of his troops at the battle of
Heliopolis, where, with ten thousand Europeans, he had to encounter
eighty thousand Asiatics in an open plain, is worth comparing with
Alexander's tactics at Arbela. See Thiers' _Histoire du Consulat_.]

Conspicuous by the brilliancy of his armor, and by the chosen band of
officers who were round his person, Alexander took his own station, as
his custom was, in the right wing, at the head of his cavalry; and when
all the arrangements for the battle were complete, and his generals were
fully instructed how to act in each probable emergency, he began to lead
his men toward the enemy.

It was ever his custom to expose his life freely in battle, and to
emulate the personal prowess of his great ancestor, Achilles. Perhaps,
in the bold enterprise of conquering Persia, it was politic for
Alexander to raise his army's daring to the utmost by the example of his
own heroic valor; and, in his subsequent campaigns, the love of the
excitement, of "the raptures of the strife," may have made him, like
Murat, continue from choice a custom which he commenced from duty. But
he never suffered the ardor of the soldier to make him lose the coolness
of the general.

Great reliance had been placed by the Persian King on the effects of the
scythe-bearing chariots. It was designed to launch these against the
Macedonian phalanx, and to follow them up by a heavy charge of cavalry,
which, it was hoped, would find the ranks of the spearmen disordered by
the rush of the chariots, and easily destroy this most formidable part
of Alexander's force. In front, therefore, of the Persian centre, where
Darius took his station, and which it was supposed that the phalanx
would attack, the ground had been carefully levelled and smoothed, so as
to allow the chariots to charge over it with their full sweep and speed.

As the Macedonian army approached the Persian, Alexander found that the
front of his whole line barely equalled the front of the Persian centre,
so that he was outflanked on his right by the entire left wing of the
enemy, and by their entire right wing on his left. His tactics were to
assail some one point of the hostile army, and gain a decisive
advantage, while he refused, as far as possible, the encounter along the
rest of the line. He therefore inclined his order of march to the right,
so as to enable his right wing and centre to come into collision with
the enemy on as favorable terms as possible, although the manoeuvre
might in some respect compromise his left.

The effect of this oblique movement was to bring the phalanx and his own
wing nearly beyond the limits of the ground which the Persians had
prepared for the operations of the chariots; and Darius, fearing to lose
the benefit of this arm against the most important parts of the
Macedonian force, ordered the Scythian and Bactrian cavalry, who were
drawn up in advance on his extreme left, to charge round upon
Alexander's right wing, and check its farther lateral progress. Against
these assailants Alexander sent from his second line Menidas' cavalry.
As these proved too few to make head against the enemy, he ordered
Ariston also from the second line with his right horse, and Cleander
with his foot, in support of Menidas.

The Bactrians and Scythians now began to give way; but Darius reenforced
them by the mass of Bactrian cavalry from his main line, and an
obstinate cavalry fight now took place. The Bactrians and Scythians were
numerous, and were better armed than the horsemen under Menidas and
Ariston; and the loss at first was heaviest on the Macedonian side. But
still the European cavalry stood the charge of the Asiatics, and at
last, by their superior discipline, and by acting in squadrons that
supported each other,[52] instead of fighting in a confused mass like
the barbarians, the Macedonians broke their adversaries and drove them
off the field.

[Footnote 52: The best explanation of this may be found in Napoleon's
account of the cavalry fights between the French and the mamelukes: "Two
mamelukes were able to make head against three Frenchmen, because they
were better armed, better mounted, and better trained; they had two pair
of pistols, a blunderbuss, a carbine, a helmet with a visor, and a coat
of mail; they had several horses, and several attendants on foot. One
hundred cuirassiers, however, were not afraid of one hundred mamelukes;
three hundred could beat an equal number, and one thousand could easily
put to the rout fifteen hundred, so great is the influence of tactics,
order, and evolutions! Leclerc and Lasalle presented their men to the
mamelukes in several lines. When the Arabs were on the point of
overwhelming the first, the second came to its assistance on the right
and left; the mamelukes then halted and wheeled, in order to turn the
wings of this new line; this moment was always seized upon to charge
them, and they were uniformly broken."]

Darius now directed the scythe-armed chariots to be driven against
Alexander's horse-guards and the phalanx, and these formidable vehicles
were accordingly sent rattling across the plain, against the Macedonian
line. When we remember the alarm which the war chariots of the Britons
created among Cæsar's legions, we shall not be prone to deride this arm
of ancient warfare as always useless. The object of the chariots was to
create unsteadiness in the ranks against which they were driven, and
squadrons of cavalry followed close upon them to profit by such
disorder. But the Asiatic chariots were rendered ineffective at Arbela
by the light-armed troops, whom Alexander had specially appointed for
the service, and who, wounding the horses and drivers with their missile
weapons, and running alongside so as to cut the traces or seize the
reins, marred the intended charge; and the few chariots that reached the
phalanx passed harmlessly through the internals which the spearmen
opened for them, and were easily captured in the rear.

A mass of the Asiatic cavalry was now, for the second time, collected
against Alexander's extreme right, and moved round it, with the view of
gaining the flank of his army. At the critical moment, when their own
flanks were exposed by this evolution, Aretes dashed on the Persian
squadrons with his horsemen from Alexander's second line. While
Alexander thus met and baffled all the flanking attacks of the enemy
with troops brought up from his second line, he kept his own
horse-guards and the rest of the front line of his wing fresh, and ready
to take advantage of the first opportunity for striking a decisive blow.

This soon came. A large body of horse, who were posted on the Persian
left wing nearest to the centre, quitted their station, and rode off to
help their comrades in the cavalry fight that still was going on at the
extreme right of Alexander's wing against the detachments from his
second line. This made a huge gap in the Persian array, and into this
space Alexander instantly charged with his guard and all the cavalry of
his wing; and then, pressing toward his left, he soon began to make
havoc in the left flank of the Persian centre. The shield-bearing
infantry now charged also among the reeling masses of the Asiatics; and
five of the brigades of the phalanx, with the irresistible might of
their sarissas, bore down the Greek mercenaries of Darius, and dug their
way through the Persian centre.

In the early part of the battle Darius had showed skill and energy; and
he now, for some time, encouraged his men, by voice and example, to keep
firm. But the lances of Alexander's cavalry and the pikes of the phalanx
now pressed nearer and nearer to him. His charioteer was struck down by
a javelin at his side; and at last Darius' nerve failed him, and,
descending from his chariot, he mounted on a fleet horse and galloped
from the plain, regardless of the state of the battle in other parts of
the field, where matters were going on much more favorably for his
cause, and where his presence might have done much toward gaining a
victory.

Alexander's operations with his right and centre had exposed his left to
an immensely preponderating force of the enemy. Parmenio kept out of
action as long as possible; but Mazaeus, who commanded the Persian right
wing, advanced against him, completely outflanked him, and pressed him
severely with reiterated charges by superior numbers.

Seeing the distress of Parmenio's wing, Simmias, who commanded the sixth
brigade of the phalanx, which was next to the left wing, did not advance
with the other brigades in the great charge upon the Persian centre, but
kept back to cover Parmenio's troops on their right flank, as otherwise
they would have been completely surrounded and cut off from the rest of
the Macedonian army. By so doing, Simmias had unavoidably opened a gap
in the Macedonian left centre; and a large column of Indian and Persian
horse, from the Persian right centre, had galloped forward through this
interval, and right through the troops of the Macedonian second line.
Instead of then wheeling round upon Parmenio, or upon the rear of
Alexander's conquering wing, the Indian and Persian cavalry rode
straight on to the Macedonian camp, overpowered the Thracians who were
left in charge of it, and began to plunder. This was stopped by the
phalangite troops of the second line, who, after the enemy's horsemen
had rushed by them, faced about, countermarched upon the camp, killed
many of the Indians and Persians in the act of plundering, and forced
the rest to ride off again.

Just at this crisis, Alexander had been recalled from his pursuit of
Darius by tidings of the distress of Parmenio and of his inability to
bear up any longer against the hot attacks of Mazaeus. Taking his
horse-guards with him, Alexander rode toward the part of the field where
his left wing was fighting; but on his way thither he encountered the
Persian and Indian cavalry on their return from his camp.

These men now saw that their only chance of safety was to cut their way
through, and in one huge column they charged desperately upon the
Macedonian regiments. There was here a close hand-to-hand fight, which
lasted some time, and sixty of the royal horse-guards fell, and three
generals, who fought close to Alexander's side, were wounded. At length
the Macedonian discipline and valor again prevailed, and a large number
of the Persian and Indian horsemen were cut down, some few only
succeeding in breaking through and riding away.

Relieved of these obstinate enemies, Alexander again formed his
regiments of horse-guards, and led them toward Parmenio; but by this
time that general also was victorious. Probably the news of Darius'
flight had reached Mazæus, and had damped the ardor of the Persian right
wing, while the tidings of their comrades' success must have
proportionally encouraged the Macedonian forces under Parmenio. His
Thessalian cavalry particularly distinguished themselves by their
gallantry and persevering good conduct; and by the time that Alexander
had ridden up to Parmenio, the whole Persian army was in full flight
from the field.

It was of the deepest importance to Alexander to secure the person of
Darius, and he now urged on the pursuit. The river Lycus was between the
field of battle and the city of Arbela, whither the fugitives directed
their course, and the passage of this river was even more destructive to
the Persians than the swords and spears of the Macedonians had been in
the engagement.[53]

[Footnote 53: I purposely omit any statement of the loss in the battle.
There is a palpable error of the transcribers in the numbers which we
find in our present manuscripts of Arrian, and Curtius is of no
authority.]

The narrow bridge was soon choked up by the flying thousands who rushed
toward it, and vast numbers of the Persians threw themselves, or were
hurried by others, into the rapid stream, and perished in its waters.
Darius had crossed it, and had ridden on through Arbela without halting.
Alexander reached the city on the next day, and made himself master of
all Darius' treasure and stores; but the Persian King, unfortunately for
himself, had fled too fast for his conqueror, but had only escaped to
perish by the treachery of his Bactrian satrap, Bessus.

A few days after the battle Alexander entered Babylon, "the oldest seat
of earthly empire" then in existence, as its acknowledged lord and
master. There were yet some campaigns of his brief and bright career to
be accomplished. Central Asia was yet to witness the march of his
phalanx. He was yet to effect that conquest of Afghanistan in which
England since has failed. His generalship, as well as his valor, was yet
to be signalized on the banks of the Hydaspes and the field of
Chillianwallah; and he was yet to precede the queen of England in
annexing the Punjab to the dominions of a European sovereign. But the
crisis of his career was reached; the great object of his mission was
accomplished; and the ancient Persian empire, which once menaced all the
nations of the earth with subjection, was irreparably crushed when
Alexander had won his crowning victory at Arbela.




FIRST BATTLE BETWEEN GREEKS AND ROMANS

B.C. 280-279

PLUTARCH


(The Romans, in B.C. 290, had conquered the Samnites and this extended
the Roman power to the very gates of the Grecian cities on the Gulf of
Tarentine. Tarentum, the chief city among them, was almost totally
controlled by a party which advised a peaceful submission to the Roman
conquerors. The opposing party of patriots, against such cowardly
measures, looked abroad for aid and found a ready ally in Pyrrhus, the
Molossian king of Epirus. He was warlike and adventurous, and a member
of the royal family of Macedonia, through Olympias, who was the mother
of Alexander the Great.

Pyrrhus had established a reputation for fighting. Not alone had he
fought at the memorable battle of Ipsus, in Phrygia, but he had proven a
formidable opponent to Demetinus, king of Macedonia, having forced the
latter powerful monarch to conclude a truce with him, though afterward
he had been conquered and driven back to his little kingdom of Epirus.
At the time the Tarentines sent to him to help them against Rome he was
eager for a field in which he might do something to prove his mettle.
This was the greatest opportunity of his life, and he seized upon it.
The campaign is memorable for having brought the Romans and Greeks into
conflict on the battle-field for the first time.)


Pyrrhus, now that he had lost Macedonia, might have spent his days
peacefully ruling his own subjects in Epirus; but he could not endure
repose, thinking that not to trouble others and be troubled by them was
a life of unbearable ennui, and, like Achilles in the _Iliad_,

    "he could not rest in indolence at home,
  He longed for battle, and the joys of war."

As he desired some new adventures he embraced the following opportunity.
The Romans were at war with the Tarentines; and as that people were not
sufficiently powerful to carry on the war, and yet were not allowed by
the audacious folly of their mob orators to make peace, they proposed to
make Pyrrhus their leader and to invite him to be their ally in the war,
because he was more at leisure than any of the other kings, and also was
the best general of them all. Of the older and more sensible citizens
some endeavored to oppose this fatal decision, but were overwhelmed by
the clamor of the war party, while the rest, observing this, ceased to
attend the public assembly.

There was one citizen of good repute, named Meton, who, on the day when
the final decision was to be made, when the people were all assembled,
took a withered garland and a torch, and like a drunkard, reeled into
the assembly with a girl playing the flute before him. At this, as one
may expect in a disorderly popular meeting, some applauded and some
laughed, but no one stopped him. They next bade the girl play, and Meton
come forward and dance to the music; and he made as though he would do
so. When he had obtained silence he said: "Men of Tarentum, you do well
in encouraging those who wish to be merry and amuse themselves while
they may. If you are wise you will all enjoy your freedom now, for when
Pyrrhus is come to our city you will have very different things to think
of and will live very differently." By these words he made an impression
on the mass of the Tarentine people, and a murmur ran through the crowd
that he had spoken well. But those politicians who feared that if peace
were made they should be delivered up to the Romans, reproached the
people for allowing anyone to insult them by such a disgraceful
exhibition, and prevailed on them to turn Meton out of the assembly.

Thus the vote for war was passed, and ambassadors were sent to Epirus,
not from Tarentum alone, but from the other Greek cities in Italy,
carrying with them presents for Pyrrhus, with instructions to tell him
that they required a leader of skill and renown, and that they possessed
a force of Lucanians, Messapians, Samnites, and Tarentines, which
amounted to twenty thousand cavalry and three hundred and fifty thousand
infantry. This not only excited Pyrrhus, but also made all the Epirotes
eager to take part in the campaign.

There was one Cineas, a Thessalian, who was thought to be a man of good
sense, and who, having heard Demosthenes the orator speak, was better
able than any of the speakers of his age to delight his hearers with an
imitation of the eloquence of that great master of rhetoric. He was now
in the service of Pyrrhus, and being sent about to various cities,
proved the truth of the Euripidean saw, that

    "All can be done by words
  Which foemen wish to do with conquering swords."

Pyrrhus at any rate used to say that more cities were won for him by
Cineas with words than he himself won by force of arms. This man,
observing that Pyrrhus was eagerly preparing for his Italian expedition,
once when he was at leisure conversed with him in the following manner.
"Pyrrhus," said he, "the Romans are said to be good soldiers, and to
rule over many warlike nations. Now, if heaven grants us the victory
over them, what use shall we make of it?"

"You ask what is self-evident," answered Pyrrhus. "If we can conquer the
Romans, there is no city, Greek or barbarian, that can resist us, and we
shall gain possession of the whole of Italy, a country whose size,
richness, and power no one knows better than yourself." Cineas then,
after waiting for a short time, said: "O King, when we have taken Italy,
what shall we do then?"

Pyrrhus, not yet seeing his drift, answered: "Close to it Sicily invites
us, a noble and populous island, and one which is very easy to conquer;
for, my Cineas, now that Agathocles is dead, there is nothing there but
revolution and faction and the violence of party spirit."

"What you say," answered Cineas, "is very probably true. But is this
conquest of Sicily to be the extreme limit of our campaign?"

"Heaven," answered Pyrrhus, "alone can give us victory and success; but
these conquests would merely prove to us the stepping-stones to greater
things. Who could refrain from making an attempt upon Carthage and Libya
when he was so close to them, countries which were all but conquered by
Agathocles when he ran away from Syracuse with only a few ships? and if
we were masters of these countries, none of the enemies who now give
themselves such airs at our expense will dare to resist us."

"Certainly not," answered Cineas; "with such a force at our disposal we
clearly could recover Macedonia, and have the whole of Greece at our
feet. And after we have made all these conquests, what shall we do
then?"

Pyrrhus laughing answered: "We will take our ease and carouse every day,
and enjoy pleasant conversation with one another."

Having brought Pyrrhus to say this, Cineas asked in reply: "But what
prevents our carousing and taking our ease now, since we have already at
hand all those things which we propose to obtain with much bloodshed,
and great toils and perils, and after suffering much ourselves and
causing much suffering to others?"

By talking in this manner Cineas vexed Pyrrhus, because he made him
reflect on the pleasant home which he was leaving, but his reasoning had
no effect in turning him from his purpose.

He first despatched Cineas to Tarentum with three thousand men; next he
collected from Tarentum many horse-transports, decked vessels, and boats
of all sorts, and embarked upon them twenty elephants, twenty-three
thousand cavalry, twenty-two thousand infantry, and five hundred
slingers. When all was ready he put to sea; and when half way across a
storm burst upon him from the north, which was unusual at that season of
the year. He himself, though his ship was carried away by the tempest,
yet, by the great pains and skill of the sailors and pilots, resisted it
and reached the land, with great toil to the rowers, and beyond
everyone's expectation; for the rest of the fleet was overpowered by the
gale and scattered. Some ships were driven off the Italian coast
altogether, and forced into the Libyan and Sicilian seas, and some which
could not weather the Iapygian Cape were overtaken by night, and being
dashed by a violent and boisterous sea against that harborless coast
were utterly lost, except only the King's ship. She was so large and
strongly built as to resist the waves as long as they broke upon her
from the seaward; but when the wind changed and blew directly off the
shore, the ship, which now met the waves directly with her head, was in
great danger of going to pieces, while to let her drive out to sea again
now that it was so rough, and the wind changed so frequently, seemed
more terrible than to remain where they were.

Pyrrhus rose and leaped into the water, and at once was eagerly followed
by his friends and his bodyguard. The darkness of night and the violent
recoil of the roaring waves made it hard for them to help him, and it
was not until daybreak, when the wind abated, that he reached the land,
faint and helpless in body, but with his spirit invincible in
misfortune. The Messapians, upon whose coast he had been thrown, now
assembled from the neighboring villages and offered their help, while
some of the ships which had outlived the storm appeared, bringing a few
horsemen, about two thousand foot, and two elephants.

With these Pyrrhus marched to Tarentum; Cineas, as soon as he heard of
his arrival, bringing out the Tarentine army to meet him. When he
reached the city he did nothing to displease the Tarentines until his
fleet returned to the coast and he had assembled the greater part of his
army. But then, as he saw that the populace, unless ruled by a strong
hand, could neither help him nor help themselves, but intended to stay
idling about their baths and entertainments at home, while he fought
their battles in the field, he closed the gymnasia and public walks, in
which the people were wont to waste their time in empty talk about the
war. He forbade all drinking, feasting, and unseasonable revels, and
forced the people to take up arms, proving himself inexorable to
everyone who was on the muster-roll of able-bodied citizens. This
conduct made him much disliked, and many of the Tarentines left the city
in disgust; for they were so unused to discipline that they considered
that not to be able to pass their lives as they chose was no better than
slavery.

When news came that Laevinus, the Roman consul, was marching to attack
him with a large force, and was plundering the country of Lucania as he
advanced, while Pyrrhus' allies had not yet arrived, he thought it a
shameful thing to allow the enemy to proceed any farther, and marched
out with his army. He sent before him a herald to the Roman general,
informing him that he was willing to act as arbitrator in the dispute
between the Romans and the Greek cities of Italy, if they chose to
terminate it peacefully. On receiving for an answer that the Romans
neither wished for Pyrrhus as an arbitrator, nor feared him as an enemy,
he marched forward, and encamped in the plain between the city of
Pandosia and Heraclea.

Learning that the Romans were close by, and were encamping on the
farther side of the river Siris (the river Aciris, now called Agri), he
rode up to the river to view them; and when he observed their even
ranks, their orderly movements, and their well-arranged camp, he was
surprised, and said to the nearest of his friends: "These barbarians,
Megacles, have nothing barbarous in their military discipline; but we
shall soon learn what they can do." He began indeed already to feel some
uncertainty as to the issue of the campaign, and determined to wait
until his allies came up, and till then to observe the movements of the
Romans, and prevent their crossing the river. They, however, perceiving
his object, at once crossed the river, the infantry at a ford, the
cavalry at many points at once, so that the Greeks feared they might be
surrounded, and drew back. Pyrrhus, perceiving this, ordered his
officers instantly to form the troops in order of battle and wait under
arms while he himself charged with the cavalry, three thousand strong,
hoping to catch the Romans in the act of crossing the river and
consequently in disorder.

When he saw many shields of the Roman infantry appearing over the river
bank, and their horsemen all ranged in order, he closed up his own ranks
and charged them first himself, a conspicuous figure in his beautiful
glittering armor, and proving by his exploits that he deserved his high
reputation; especially as although he fought personally, and engaged in
combat with the enemy, yet he continually watched the whole battle, and
handled his troops with as much facility as though he were not in the
thick of the fight, appearing always wherever his presence was required,
and reenforcing those who seemed likely to give way. In this battle
Leonnatus the Macedonian, observing one of the Italians watching Pyrrhus
and constantly following him about the field, said to him: "My King, do
you see that barbarian on the black horse with white feet? He seems to
be meditating some desperate deed. He is a man of spirit and courage,
and he never takes his eyes off you, and takes no notice of anyone else.
Beware of that man."

Pyrrhus answered: "Leonnatus, no man can avoid his fate; but neither
that Italian nor anyone else who attacks me will do so with impunity."
While they were yet talking the Italian levelled his lance and urged his
horse in full career against Pyrrhus. He struck the King's horse with
his spear, and at the same instant his own horse was struck a sidelong
blow by Leonnatus. Both horses fell; Pyrrhus was saved by his friends,
and the Italian perished fighting. He was of the nation of the Frentani,
Hoplacus by name, and was the captain of a troop of horse.

This incident taught Pyrrhus to be more cautious. He observed that his
cavalry were inclined to give way, and therefore sent for his phalanx,
and arrayed it against the enemy. Then he gave his cloak and armor to
one of his companions, Megacles, and after partially disguising himself
in those of his friend, led his main body to attack the Roman army. The
Romans stoutly resisted him, and an obstinate battle took place, for it
is said that the combatants alternately yielded and again pressed
forward no less than seven distinct times. The King's exchange of armor,
too, though it saved his life, yet very nearly lost him the victory: for
many attacked Megacles, and the man who first struck him down, who was
named Decius, snatched up his cloak and helmet, and rode with them to
Lævinus, displaying them and shouting aloud that he had slain Pyrrhus.

The Romans, when they saw these spoils carried in triumph along their
ranks, raised a joyful cry, while the Greeks were correspondingly
disheartened, until Pyrrhus, learning what had taken place, rode along
the line with his head bare, stretching out his hands to his soldiers
and telling them that he was safe. At length he was victorious, chiefly
by means of a sudden charge of his Thessalian horse on the Romans after
they had been thrown into disorder by the advance of the elephants. The
Roman horses were terrified at these animals, and, long before they came
near, ran away with their riders in panic. The slaughter was very great:
Dionysius says that of the Romans there fell but little short of fifteen
thousand, but Hieronymus reduces this to seven thousand, while on
Pyrrhus' side there fell, according to Dionysius, thirteen thousand, but
according to Hieronymus less than four thousand.

These, however, were the very flower of Pyrrhus' army; for he lost all
his most trusty officers and his most intimate personal friends. Still,
he captured the Roman camp, which was abandoned by the enemy, induced
several of their allied cities to join him, plundered a vast extent of
country, and advanced within three hundred stades--less than forty
English miles--of Rome itself. After the battle many of the Lucanians
and Samnites came up; these allies he reproached for their dilatory
movements, but was evidently well pleased at having conquered the great
Roman army with no other forces but his own Epirotes and the Tarentines.

The Romans did not remove Laevinus from his office of consul, although
Caius Fabricius is reported to have said that it was not the Epirotes
who had conquered the Romans, but Pyrrhus who had conquered Laevinus;
meaning that he thought that the defeat was owing not to the greater
force but the superior generalship of the enemy. They astonished Pyrrhus
by quickly filling up their ranks with fresh levies, and talking about
the war in a spirit of fearless confidence. He decided to try whether
they were disposed to make terms with him, as he perceived that to
capture Rome and utterly subdue the Roman people would be a work of no
small difficulty, and that it would be vain to attempt it with the force
at his disposal, while after his victory he could make peace on terms
which would reflect great lustre on himself. Cineas was sent as
ambassador to conduct this negotiation.

He conversed with the leading men of Rome, and offered their wives and
children presents from the King. No one, however, would accept them, but
they all, men and women alike, replied that if peace were publicly
concluded with the King, they would then have no objection to regard him
as a friend. And when Cineas spoke before the senate in a winning and
persuasive manner he could not make any impression upon his audience,
although he announced to them that Pyrrhus would restore the prisoners
he had taken without any ransom, and would assist them in subduing all
Italy, while all that he asked in return was that he should be regarded
as a friend, and that the people of Tarentum should not be molested. The
common people, however, were evidently eager for peace, in consequence
of their having been defeated in one great battle, and expecting that
they would have to fight another against a larger force, because the
Italian states would join Pyrrhus.

At this crisis Appius Claudius, an illustrious man, but who had long
since been prevented by old age and blindness from taking any active
part in politics, when he heard of the proposals of Pyrrhus, and that
the question of peace or war was about to be voted upon by the senate,
could no longer endure to remain at home, but caused his slaves to carry
him through the Forum to the senate house in a litter. When he reached
the doors of the senate house his sons and sons-in-law supported him and
guided him into the house, while all the assembly observed a respectful
silence.

Speaking from where he stood, he addressed them as follows: "My
countrymen, I used to grieve at the loss of my sight, but now I am sorry
not to be deaf also, when I hear the disgraceful propositions with which
you are tarnishing the glory of Rome. What has become of that boast
which we were so fond of making before all mankind, that if Alexander
the Great had invaded Italy, and had met us when we were young, and our
fathers when they were in the prime of life, he would not have been
reputed invincible, but would either have fled or perhaps even have
fallen, and added to the glory of Rome?

"You now prove that this was mere empty vaporing, by your terror of
these Chaonians and Molossians, nations who have always been a prey and
a spoil to the Macedonians, and by your fear of this Pyrrhus, who used
formerly to dance attendance on one of Alexander's bodyguards,[54] and
who has now wandered hither not so much in order to assist the Greeks in
Italy as to escape from his enemies at home, and promises to be our
friend and protector, forsooth, when the army he commands did not
suffice to keep for him the least portion of that Macedonia which he
once acquired. Do not imagine that you will get rid of this man by
making a treaty with him. Rather you will encourage other Greek princes
to invade you, for they will despise you and think you an easy prey to
all men if you let Pyrrhus go home again without paying the penalty of
his outrages upon you, nay, with the power to boast that he has made
Rome a laughing-stock for Tarentines and Samnites."

[Footnote 54: Demetrius.]

By these words Appius roused a warlike spirit in the Romans, and they
dismissed Cineas with the answer that if Pyrrhus would leave Italy they
would, if he wished, discuss the question of an alliance with him, but
that while he remained in arms in their country the Romans would fight
him to the death, however many Laevinuses he might defeat. It is related
that Cineas, during his mission to Rome, took great interest in
observing the national life of the Romans, and fully appreciated the
excellence of their political constitution, which he learned by
conversing with many of the leading men of the State. On his return he
told Pyrrhus that the senate seemed to him like an assembly of kings,
and that as to the populace he feared that the Greeks might find in them
a new Lernæan hydra; for twice as many troops had been enrolled in the
consul's army as he had before, and yet there remained many more Romans
capable of bearing arms.

After this Caius Fabricius came to arrange terms for the exchange of
prisoners; a man whom Cineas said the Romans especially valued for his
virtue and bravery, but who was excessively poor. Pyrrhus, in
consequence of this, entertained Fabricius privately, and made him an
offer of money, not as a bribe for any act of baseness, but speaking of
it as a pledge of friendship and sincerity. As Fabricius refused this,
Pyrrhus waited till the next day, when, desirous of making an impression
on him, as he had never seen an elephant, he had his largest elephant
placed behind Fabricius during their conference, concealed by a curtain.
At a given signal, the curtain was withdrawn, and the creature reached
out his trunk over the head of Fabricius with a harsh and terrible cry.
Fabricius, however, quietly turned round, and then said to Pyrrhus with
a smile, "You could not move me by your gold yesterday, nor can you with
your beast to-day."

At table that day they conversed upon all subjects, but chiefly about
Greece and Greek philosophy. Cineas repeated the opinion of Epicurus and
his school, about the gods, and the practice of political life, and the
objects at which we should aim, how they considered pleasure to be the
highest good, and held aloof from taking any active part in politics,
because it spoiled and destroyed perfect happiness; and about how they
thought that the gods lived far removed from hopes and fears, and
interest in human affairs, in a placid state of eternal fruition.[55]
While he was speaking in this strain Fabricius burst out: "Hercules!"
cried he, "may Pyrrhus and the Samnites continue to waste their time on
these speculations as long as they remain at war with us!" Pyrrhus, at
this, was struck by the spirit and noble disposition of Fabricius, and
longed more than ever to make Rome his friend instead of his enemy. He
begged him to arrange terms of peace, and after they were concluded to
come and live with him as the first of his friends and officers.

[Footnote 55: I have translated the above passages almost literally from
the Greek. Yet I am inclined to think that Arnold has penetrated the
true meaning, and shows us the reason for Fabricius' exclamation when he
states the Epicurean philosophy, as expounded by Cineas, to be "that war
and state affairs were but toil and trouble, and that the wise man
should imitate the blissful rest of the gods, who, dwelling in their own
divinity, regarded not the vain turmoil of this lower world."]

Fabricius is said to have quietly answered: "That, O King, will not be
to your advantage; for those who now obey you, and look up to you, if
they had any experience of me, would prefer me to you for their king."
Pyrrhus was not angry at this speech, but spoke to all his friends about
the magnanimous conduct of Fabricius, and intrusted the prisoners to him
alone, on the condition that, if the senate refused to make peace, they
should be allowed to embrace their friends, and spend the festival of
the Saturnalia with them, and then be sent back to him. And they were
sent back after the Saturnalia, for the senate decreed that any of them
who remained behind should be put to death.

After this, when C. Fabricius was consul, a man came into his camp
bringing a letter from King Pyrrhus' physician, in which he offered to
poison the King if he could be assured of a suitable reward for his
services in thus bringing the war to an end without a blow. Fabricius,
disgusted at the man's treachery, brought his colleague to share his
views, and in haste sent off a letter to Pyrrhus, bidding him be on his
guard. The letter ran as follows: "Caius Fabricius and Quintus Æmilius,
the Roman consuls, greet King Pyrrhus. You appear to be a bad judge both
of your friends and of your enemies. You will perceive, by reading the
enclosed letter which has been sent to us, that you are fighting against
good and virtuous men, and trusting to wicked and treacherous ones. We
do not give you this information out of any love we bear you, but for
fear that we might be charged with having assassinated you and be
thought to have brought the war to a close by treachery because we could
not do so by manhood."

Pyrrhus on receiving this letter, and discovering the plot against his
life, punished his physician, and, in return for the kindness of
Fabricius and the Romans, delivered up their prisoners without ransom,
and sent Cineas a second time to arrange terms of peace. However, the
Romans refused to receive their prisoners back without ransom, being
unwilling either to receive a favor from their enemy or to be rewarded
for having abstained from treachery toward him, but set free an equal
number of Tarentines and Samnites, and sent them to him. As to terms of
peace, they refused to entertain the question unless Pyrrhus first
placed his entire armament on board the ships in which it came, and
sailed back to Epirus with it.

As it was now necessary that Pyrrhus should fight another battle, he
advanced with his army to the city of Asculum, and attacked the Romans.
Here he was forced to fight on rough ground, near the swampy banks of a
river, where his elephants and cavalry were of no service, and he was
forced to attack with his phalanx. After a drawn battle, in which many
fell, night parted the combatants. Next day Pyrrhus manoeuvred so as to
bring the Romans fairly into the plain, where his elephants could act
upon the enemy's line. He occupied the rough ground on either side,
placed many archers and slingers among his elephants, and advanced with
his phalanx in close order and irresistible strength.

The Romans, who were unable on the level ground to practise the
bush-fighting and skirmishing of the previous day, were compelled to
attack the phalanx in front. They endeavored to force their way through
that hedge of spears before the elephants could come up, and showed
marvellous courage in hacking at the spears with their swords, exposing
themselves recklessly, careless of wounds or death. After a long
struggle, it is said that they first gave way at the point where Pyrrhus
was urging on his soldiers in person, though the defeat was chiefly due
to the weight and crushing charge of the elephants. The Romans could not
find any opportunity in this sort of battle for the display of their
courage, but thought it their duty to stand aside and save themselves
from a useless death, just as they would have done in the case of a wave
of the sea or an earthquake coming upon them. In the flight to their
camp, which was not far off, Hieronymus says that six thousand Romans
perished, and that in Pyrrhus' commentaries his loss is stated at three
thousand five hundred and five.

Dionysius, on the other hand, does not admit that there were two battles
at Asculum, or that the Romans suffered a defeat, but tells us that they
fought the whole of one day until sunset, and then separated, Pyrrhus
being wounded in the arm by a javelin, and the Samnites having plundered
his baggage. He also states the total loss on both sides to be above
fifteen thousand.

The armies separated after the battle, and it is said that Pyrrhus, when
congratulated on his victory by his friends, said in reply: "If we win
one more such victory over the Romans, we shall be utterly ruined." For
a large part of the force which he had brought with him had perished,
and very nearly all his friends and officers, and there were no more to
send for at home.




THE PUNIC WARS

B.C. 264-219-149

FLORUS


(The three Punic wars stand out in history as a mighty "duel _à
l'outrance_" [a fight to the death], as Victor Hugo says, in the final
scene of which Rome, having herself been brought near to defeat, "rises
again, uses the limits of her strength in a last blow, throws herself on
Carthage, and effaces her from the world."

Jealousy and antagonism had long existed between Rome and Carthage, but
it was the preeminence of the African city which held Roman ambition in
check and for generations deferred the final struggle. But when at last
Rome had acquired the strength she needed in order to assert her
rivalry, it was only a question of actual preparation, and the first
cause of quarrel was sure to be seized upon by either party, especially
by the growing and haughty Italian Power.

The immediate object of contention was the island of Sicily, lying
between the territory of Rome and that of Carthage. In Sicily the First
Punic War, lasting about twenty-three years, was mainly carried on by
the Romans with success, while on the sea Carthage for a long time
maintained superiority.

During the intervals between the Punic wars two things appear with
striking force in the history of these events--the passive strength and
recuperative power of Carthage, which enabled her to return again and
again to the struggle from almost crushing defeat, and the marvellous
development of resources and aggressive vigor on the part of Rome, in
whose case the rise of powerful individual leaders more than offset the
weight of long-accumulated energies, supplemented as these were by the
genius and achievement of great Carthaginian warriors.

The wars progressed in a spirit of deadly hatred, constantly intensified
on both sides, and the Roman determination, of which Cato was the
mouthpiece, that Carthage must be destroyed, met its stubborn answer in
the endeavors of the Carthaginians to turn this vengeance against Rome
herself.

Carthage had been mistress of the world, the richest and most powerful
of cities. Her naval supremacy alone had sufficed to secure her safety
and superiority over all rivals or possible combinations of force. But
the strength of her government lay not so much in her people, or even in
her statesmen and soldiers, as in her men of wealth. A political
establishment founded upon such supports was peculiarly liable to all
the dangers of corruption and of public ignorance and apathy in the
conduct of affairs. These causes appear conspicuously in the history of
the Punic wars, as contributing largely to the overthrow and final
extinguishment of Carthage, which left to her successful rival the open
way to universal dominion.

The account of Florus presents in a style at once comprehensive and
succinct a splendid narrative of these wars, with their decisive and
world-changing events.)


THE FIRST PUNIC WAR

The victor-people of Italy, having now spread over the land as far as
the sea, checked its course for a little, like a fire, which, having
consumed the woods lying in its track, is stopped by some intervening
river. But soon after, seeing at no great distance a rich prey, which
seemed in a manner detached and torn away from their own Italy, they
were so inflamed with a desire to possess it that, since it could
neither be joined to their country by a mole or bridge, they resolved
that it should be secured by arms and war, and reunited, as it were, to
their continent. And behold! as if the Fates themselves opened a way for
them, an opportunity was not wanting, for Messana, a city of Sicily in
alliance with them, happened then to make a complaint concerning the
tyranny of the Carthaginians.

As the Romans coveted Sicily, so likewise did the people of Carthage;
and both at the same time, with equal desires and equal forces,
contemplated the attainment of the empire of the world. Under the
pretext, therefore, of assisting their allies, but in reality being
allured by the prey, that rude people, that people sprung from
shepherds, and merely accustomed to the land, made it appear, though the
strangeness of the attempt startled them (yet such confidence is there
in true courage), that to the brave it is indifferent whether a battle
be fought on horseback or in ships, by land or by sea.

It was in the consulship of Appius Claudius that they first ventured
upon that strait which has so ill a name from the strange things related
of it, and so impetuous a current. But they were so far from being
affrighted, that they regarded the violence of the rushing tide as
something in their favor, and, sailing forward immediately and without
delay, they defeated Hiero, king of Syracuse, with so much rapidity that
he owned he was conquered before he saw the enemy. In the consulship of
Duilius and Cornelius, they likewise had courage to engage at sea, and
then the expedition used in equipping the fleet was a presage of
victory; for within sixty days after the timber was felled, a navy of a
hundred and sixty ships lay at anchor; so that the vessels did not seem
to have been made by art, but the trees themselves appeared to have been
turned into ships by the aid of the gods. The aspect of the battle, too,
was wonderful; as the heavy and slow ships of the Romans closed with the
swift and nimble barks of the enemy. Little availed their naval arts,
such as breaking off the oars of a ship, and eluding the beaks of the
enemy by turning aside; for the grappling-irons and other instruments,
which, before the engagement, had been greatly derided by the enemy,
were fastened upon their ships, and they were compelled to fight as on
solid ground. Being victorious, therefore, at Liparæ, by sinking and
scattering the enemy's fleet, they celebrated their first naval triumph.
And how great was the exultation at it! Duilius, the commander, not
content with one day's triumph, ordered, during all the rest of his
life, when he returned from supper, lighted torches to be carried, and
flutes to play, before him, as if he would triumph every day. The loss
in this battle was trifling, in comparison with the greatness of the
victory; though the other consul, Cornelius Asina, was cut off, being
invited by the enemy to a pretended conference, and put to death; an
instance of Carthaginian perfidy.

Under the dictatorship of Calatinus, the Romans expelled almost all the
garrisons of the Carthaginians from Agrigentum, Drepanum, Panormus,
Eryx, and Lilybæum. Some alarm was experienced at the forest of
Camarina, but we were rescued by the extraordinary valor of Calpurnius
Flamma, a tribune of the soldiers, who, with a choice troop of three
hundred men, seized upon an eminence occupied by the enemy, to our
annoyance, and so kept them in play till the whole army escaped; thus,
by eminent success, equalling the fame of Thermopylæ and Leonidas,
though our hero was indeed more illustrious, inasmuch as he escaped and
outlived so great an effort, notwithstanding he wrote nothing with his
blood.

In the consulship of Lucius Cornelius Scipio, when Sicily was become as
a suburban province of the Roman people, and the war was spreading
farther, they crossed over into Sardinia, and into Corsica, which lies
near it. In the latter they terrified the natives by the destruction of
the city of Olbia, in the former by that of Aleria; and so effectually
humbled the Carthaginians, both by land and sea, that nothing remained
to be conquered but Africa itself. Accordingly, under the leadership of
Marcus Atilius Regulus, the war passed over into Africa. Nor were there
wanting some on the occasion who mutinied at the mere name and dread of
the Punic sea, a tribune named Mannius increasing their alarm; but the
general, threatening him with the axe if he did not obey, produced
courage for the voyage by the terror of death. They then hastened their
course by the aid of winds and oars, and such was the terror of the
Africans at the approach of the enemy that Carthage was almost surprised
with its gates opened.

The first prize taken in the war was the city of Clypea, which juts out
from the Carthaginian shore as a fortress or watch-tower. Both this and
more than three hundred fortresses besides were destroyed. Nor had the
Romans to contend only with men, but with monsters also; for a serpent
of vast size, born, as it were, to avenge Africa, harassed their camp on
the Bagrada. But Regulus, who overcame all obstacles, having spread the
terror of his name far and wide, having killed or taken prisoners a
great number of the enemy's force, and their captains themselves, and
having despatched his fleet, laden with much spoil and stored with
materials for a triumph, to Rome, proceeded to besiege Carthage itself,
the origin of the war, and took his position close to the gates of it.
Here fortune was a little changed; but it was only that more proofs of
Roman fortitude might be given, the greatness of which was generally
best shown in calamities. For the enemy applying for foreign assistance,
and Lacedaemon having sent them Xanthippus as a general, we were
defeated by a captain so eminently skilled in military affairs. It was
then that by an ignominious defeat, such as the Romans had never before
experienced, their most valiant commander fell alive into the enemy's
hands. But he was a man able to endure so great a calamity; as he was
neither humbled by his imprisonment at Carthage nor by the deputation
which he headed to Rome; for he advised what was contrary to the
injunctions of the enemy, and recommended that no peace should be made,
and no exchange of prisoners admitted. Even by his voluntary return to
his enemies, and by his last sufferings, whether in prison or on the
cross, the dignity of the man was not at all obscured. But being
rendered, by all these occurrences, even more worthy of admiration, what
can be said of him but that, when conquered, he was superior to his
conquerors, and that, though Carthage had not submitted, he triumphed
over Fortune herself?

The Roman people were now much keener and more ardent to revenge the
fate of Regulus than to obtain victory. Under the consul Metellus,
therefore, when the Carthaginians were growing insolent, and when the
war had returned into Sicily, they gave the enemy such a defeat at
Panormus that they thought no more of that island. A proof of the
greatness of this victory was the capture of about a hundred elephants,
a vast prey, even if they had taken that number, not in war, but in
hunting.[56] Under the consulship of Appius Claudius, they were
overcome, not by the enemy, but by the gods themselves, whose auspices
they had despised, their fleet being sunk in that very place where the
consul had ordered the chickens to be thrown overboard, because he was
warned by them not to fight. Under the consulship of Marcus Fabius
Buteo, they overthrew, near Ægimurus, in the African sea, a fleet of the
enemy which was just sailing for Italy. But, oh! how great materials for
a triumph were then lost by a storm, when the Roman fleet, richly laden
with spoil, and driven by contrary winds, covered with its wreck the
coasts of Africa and the Syrtes, and of all the islands lying amid those
seas! A great calamity! But not without some honor to this eminent
people, from the circumstance that their victory was intercepted only by
a storm, and that the matter for their triumph was lost only by a
shipwreck. Yet, though the Punic spoils were scattered abroad, and
thrown up by the waves on every promontory and island, the Romans still
celebrated a triumph. In the consulship of Lutatius Catulus, an end was
at last put to the war near the islands named Ægates. Nor was there any
greater fight during this war; for the fleet of the enemy was laden with
provisions, troops, towers, and arms; indeed, all Carthage, as it were,
was in it; a state of things which proved its destruction, as the Roman
fleet, on the contrary, being active, light, free from encumbrance, and
in some degree resembling a land-camp, was wheeled about by its oars
like cavalry in a battle by their reins; and the beaks of the vessels,
directed now against one part of the enemy and now against another,
presented the appearance of living creatures. In a very short time,
accordingly, the ships of the enemy were shattered to pieces, and filled
the whole sea between Sicily and Sardinia with their wrecks. So great,
indeed, was the victory that there was no thought of demolishing the
enemy's city; since it seemed superfluous to pour their fury on towers
and walls, when Carthage had already been destroyed at sea.

[Footnote 56: "A vast prey--not in war, but in hunting." The sense is,
it would have been a considerable capture if he had taken these hundred
elephants, not in battle, but in hunting, in which more are often
taken.]


THE SECOND PUNIC WAR

After the first Carthaginian war there was scarcely a rest of four
years, when there was another war, inferior, indeed, in length of time,
for it occupied but eighteen years, but so much more terrible, from the
direfulness of its havoc, that if anyone compares the losses on both
sides, the people that conquered was more like one defeated. What
provoked this noble people was that the command of the sea was forced
from them, that their islands were taken, and that they were obliged to
pay tribute which they had before been accustomed to impose. Hannibal,
when but a boy, swore to his father, before an altar, to take revenge on
the Romans; nor was he backward to execute his oath. Saguntum,
accordingly, was made the occasion of a war; an old and wealthy city of
Spain, and a great but sad example of fidelity to the Romans. This city,
though granted, by the common treaty, the special privilege of enjoying
its liberty, Hannibal, seeking pretences for new disturbances, destroyed
with his own hands and those of its inhabitants, in order that, by an
infraction of the compact, he might open a passage for himself into
Italy.

Among the Romans there is the highest regard to treaties, and
consequently, on hearing of the siege of an allied city, and
remembering, too, the compact made with the Carthaginians, they did not
at once have recourse to arms, but chose rather to expostulate on legal
grounds. In the mean time the Saguntines, exhausted with famine, the
assaults of machines, and the sword, and their fidelity being at last
carried to desperation, raised a vast pile in the market-place, on which
they destroyed, with fire and sword, themselves, their wives and
children, and all that they possessed. Hannibal, the cause of this great
destruction, was required to be given up. The Carthaginians hesitating
to comply, Fabius, who was at the head of the embassy, exclaimed: "What
is the meaning of this delay? In the fold of this garment I carry war
and peace; which of the two do you choose?" As they cried out "War,"
"Take war, then," he rejoined, and, shaking out the fore-part of his
toga in the middle of the senate house, as if he really carried war in
its folds, he spread it abroad, not without awe on the part of the
spectators.

The sequel of the war was in conformity with its commencement; for, as
if the last imprecations of the Saguntines, at their public
self-immolation and burning of the city, had required such obsequies to
be performed to them, atonement was made to their _manes_ by the
devastation of Italy, the reduction of Africa, and the destruction of
the leaders and kings who engaged in that contest. When once, therefore,
that sad and dismal force and storm of the Punic War had arisen in
Spain, and had forged, in the fire of Saguntum, the thunderbolt long
before intended for the Romans, it immediately burst, as if hurried
along by resistless violence, through the middle of the Alps, and
descended, from those snows of incredible altitude, on the plains of
Italy, as if it had been hurled from the skies. The violence of its
first assault burst, with a mighty sound, between the Po and the
Ticinus. There the army under Scipio was routed; and the general
himself, being wounded, would have fallen into the hands of the enemy,
had not his son, then quite a boy, covered his father with his shield,
and rescued him from death. This was the Scipio who grew up for the
conquest of Africa, and who was to receive a name from its ill-fortune.

To Ticinus succeeded Trebia, where, in the consulship of Sempronius, the
second outburst of the Punic War was spent. On that occasion, the crafty
enemy, having chosen a cold and snowy day, and having first warmed
themselves at their fires, and anointed their bodies with oil, conquered
us, though they were men that came from the south and a warm sun, by the
aid (strange to say!) of our own winter.

The third thunderbolt of Hannibal fell at the Trasimene lake, when
Flaminius was commander. There also was employed a new stratagem of
Carthaginian subtlety; for a body of cavalry, being concealed by a mist
rising from the lake, and by the osiers growing in the fens, fell upon
the rear of the Romans as they were fighting. Nor can we complain of the
gods; for swarms of bees settling upon the standards, the reluctance of
the eagles to move forward, and a great earthquake that happened at the
commencement of the battle--unless, indeed, it was the tramping of horse
and foot, and the violent concussion of arms, that produced this
trembling of the ground--had forewarned the rash leader of approaching
defeat.

The fourth and almost mortal wound of the Roman Empire was at Cannæ, an
obscure village of Apulia; which, however, became famous by the
greatness of the defeat, its celebrity being acquired by the slaughter
of forty thousand men. Here the general, the ground, the face of heaven,
the day, indeed, all nature conspired together for the destruction of
the unfortunate army. For Hannibal, the most artful of generals, not
content with sending pretended deserters among the Romans, who fell upon
their rear as they were fighting, but having also noted the nature of
the ground in those open plains, where the heat of the sun is extremely
violent, the dust very great, and the wind blows constantly, and as it
were statedly, from the east, drew up his army in such a position that,
while the Romans were exposed to all these inconveniences, he himself,
having heaven, as it were, on his side, fought with wind, dust, and sun
in his favor. Two vast armies, in consequence, were slaughtered till the
enemy were satiated, and till Hannibal said to his soldiers, "Put up
your swords." Of the two commanders, one escaped, the other was slain;
which of them showed the greater spirit is doubtful. Paulus was ashamed
to survive; Varrodid not despair. Of the greatness of the slaughter the
following proofs may be noticed: that the Aufidus was for some time red
with blood; that a bridge was made of dead bodies, by order of Hannibal,
over the torrent of Vergellus, and that two _modii_ of rings were sent
to Carthage, and the equestrian dignity estimated by measure.

It was afterward not doubted but that Rome might have seen its last day,
and that Hannibal, within five days, might have feasted in the Capitol,
if--as they say that Adherbal, the Carthaginian, the son of Bomilcar,
observed--"he had known as well how to use his victory as how to gain
it." But at that crisis, as is generally said, either the fate of the
city that was to be empress of the world, or his own want of judgment,
and the influence of deities unfavorable to Carthage, carried him in a
different direction. When he might have taken advantage of his victory,
he chose rather to seek enjoyment from it, and, leaving Rome, to march
into Campania and to Tarentum, where both he and his army soon lost
their vigor, so that it was justly remarked that "Capua proved a Cannæ
to Hannibal"; since the sunshine of Campania and the warm springs of
Baiæ subdued--who could have believed it?--him who had been unconquered
by the Alps and unshaken in the field. In the mean time the Romans began
to recover and to rise, as it were, from the dead. They had no arms, but
they took them down from the temples; men were wanting, but slaves were
freed to take the oath of service; the treasury was exhausted, but the
senate willingly offered their wealth for the public service, leaving
themselves no gold but what was contained in their children's
_bullæ_[57] and in their own belts and rings. The knights followed their
example, and the common people that of the knights; so that when the
wealth of private persons was brought to the public treasury--in the
consulship of Lævinus and Marcellus--the registers scarcely sufficed to
contain the account of it, or the hands of the clerks to record it.

[Footnote 57: A sort of ornament suspended from the necks of children,
which, among the wealthy, was made of gold. It was in the shape of a
bubble on water, or, as Pliny says, of a heart.]

But how can I sufficiently praise the wisdom of the centuries in the
choice of magistrates, when the younger sought advice from the elder as
to what consuls should be created? They saw that against an enemy so
often victorious, and so full of subtlety, it was necessary to contend,
not only with courage, but with his own wiles. The first hope of the
empire now recovering, and, if I may use the expression, coming to life
again, was Fabius, who found a new mode of conquering Hannibal, which
was, _not to fight_. Hence he received that new name, so salutary to the
commonwealth, of _Cunctator_, or Delayer. Hence too it happened that he
was called by the people _the shield of the empire_. Through the whole
of Samnium, and through the Falerian and Gauran forests, he so harassed
Hannibal that he who could not be reduced by valor was weakened by
delay. The Romans then ventured, under the command of Claudius
Marcellus, to engage him; they came to close quarters with him, drove
him out of his dear Campania, and forced him to raise the siege of Nola.
They ventured likewise, under the leadership of Sempronius Gracchus, to
pursue him through Lucania, and to press hard upon his rear as he
retired; though they then fought him (sad dishonor!) with a body of
slaves, for to this extremity had so many disasters reduced them, but
they were rewarded with liberty, and from slaves they made them Romans.

O amazing confidence in the midst of so much adversity! O extraordinary
courage and spirit of the Roman people in such oppressive and
distressing circumstances! At a time when they were uncertain of
preserving their own Italy, they yet ventured to look to other
countries; and when the enemy were at their throat, flying through
Campania and Apulia, and making an Africa in the middle of Italy, they
at the same time both withstood that enemy and dispersed their arms over
the earth into Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain.

Sicily was assigned to Marcellus, and did not long resist his efforts;
for the whole island was conquered in the conquest of one city.
Syracuse, its great and, till that period, unconquered capital, though
defended by the genius of Archimedes, was at last obliged to yield. Its
triple wall and three citadels, its marble harbor and the celebrated
fountain of Arethusa, were no defence to it, except so far as to procure
consideration for its beauty when it was conquered.

Sardinia Gracchus reduced; the savageness of the inhabitants, and the
vastness of its Mad Mountains--for so they are called--availed it
nothing. Great severity was exercised upon its cities, and upon Caralis,
the city of its cities, that a nation, obstinate and regardless of
death, might at least be humbled by concern for the soil of its country.

Into Spain were sent the two Scipios, Cnaeus, and Publius, who wrested
almost the whole of it from the Carthaginians; but, being surprised by
the artifices of Punic subtlety, they again lost it, even after they had
slaughtered the enemy's forces in great battles. The wiles of the
Carthaginians cut off one of them by the sword as he was pitching his
camp, and the other by surrounding him with lighted fagots after he had
made his escape into a tower. But the other Scipio, to whom the Fates
had decreed so great a name from Africa, being sent with an army to
revenge the death of his father and uncle, recovered all that warlike
country of Spain, so famous for its men and arms, that seminary of the
enemy's force, that instructress of Hannibal, from the Pyrenean
mountains--the account is scarcely credible--to the Pillars of Hercules
and the ocean, whether with greater speed or good fortune is difficult
to decide; how great was his speed, four years bear witness; how
remarkable his good fortune, even one city proves, for it was taken on
the same day in which siege was laid to it, and it was an omen of the
conquest of Africa that Carthage in Spain was so easily reduced. It is
certain, however, that what most contributed to make the province submit
was the eminent virtue of the general, who restored to the barbarians
certain captive youths and maidens of extraordinary beauty, not allowing
them even to be brought into his sight, that he might not seem, even by
a single glance, to have detracted from their virgin purity.

These actions the Romans performed in different parts of the world, yet
were they unable, notwithstanding, to remove Hannibal, who was lodged in
the heart of Italy. Most of the towns had revolted to the enemy, whose
vigorous commander used even the strength of Italy against the Romans.
However, we had now forced him out of many towns and districts. Tarentum
had returned to our side; and Capua, the seat, home, and second country
of Hannibal, was again in our hands; the loss of which caused the Punic
leader so much affliction that he then directed all his force against
Rome.

O people worthy of the empire of the world, worthy of the favor and
admiration of all, not only men, but gods! Though they were brought into
the greatest alarm, they desisted not from their original design; though
they were concerned for their own city, they did not abandon their
attempts on Capua; but, part of their army being left there with the
consul Appius, and part having followed Flaccus to Rome, they fought
both at home and abroad at the same time. Why then should we wonder that
the gods themselves, the gods, I say--nor shall I be ashamed[58] to
admit it--again opposed Hannibal as he was preparing to march forward
when at three miles' distance from Rome. For, at every movement of his
force, so copious a flood of rain descended, and such a violent storm of
wind arose, that it was evident the enemy was repulsed by divine
influence, and the tempest proceeded, not from heaven, but from the
walls of the city and the Capitol. He therefore fled and departed, and
withdrew to the farthest corner of Italy, leaving the city in a manner
adored. It is but a small matter to mention, yet sufficiently indicative
of the magnanimity of the Roman people, that during those very days in
which the city was besieged, the ground which Hannibal occupied with his
camp was offered for sale at Rome, and, being put up to auction,
actually found a purchaser. Hannibal, on the other side, wished to
imitate such confidence, and put up for sale the bankers' houses in the
city; but no buyer was found; so that it was evident that the Fates had
their presages.

[Footnote 58: Why should he be ashamed to admit that Rome was saved by
the aid of the gods? To receive assistance from the gods was a proof of
merit. The gods help those who help themselves, says the proverb. When
he says that the gods "_again_ opposed Hannibal," he seems to refer to
what he said above in speaking of the battle of Cannae, that the
deities, averse to Carthage, prevented Hannibal from marching at that
time to Rome.]

But as yet nothing had been effectually accomplished by so much valor,
or even through such eminent favor from the gods; for Hasdrubal, the
brother of Hannibal, was approaching with a new army, new strength, and
every fresh requisite for war. There had doubtless been an end of Rome,
if that general had united himself with his brother; but Claudius Nero,
in conjunction with Livius Salinator, overthrew him as he was pitching
his camp. Nero was at that time keeping Hannibal at bay in the farthest
corner of Italy; while Livius had marched to the very opposite quarter,
that is, to the very entrance and confines of Italy; and of the ability
and expedition with which the consuls joined their forces--though so
vast a space, that is, the whole of Italy where it is longest, lay
between them--and defeated the enemy with their combined strength, when
they expected no attack, and without the knowledge of Hannibal, it is
difficult to give a notion. When Hannibal, however, had knowledge of the
matter, and saw his brother's head thrown down before his camp, he
exclaimed, "I perceive the evil destiny of Carthage." This was his first
confession of that kind, not without a sure presage of his approaching
fate; and it was now certain, even from his own acknowledgment, that
Hannibal might be conquered. But the Roman people, full of confidence
from so many successes, thought it would be a noble enterprise to subdue
such a desperate enemy in his own Africa. Directing their whole force,
therefore, under the leadership of Scipio, upon Africa itself, they
began to imitate Hannibal, and to avenge upon Africa the sufferings of
their own Italy. What forces of Hasdrubal (good gods!), what armies of
Syphax, did that commander put to flight! How great were the camps of
both that he destroyed in one night by casting firebrands into them! At
last, not at three miles distance, but by a close siege, he shook the
very gates of Carthage itself. And thus he succeeded in drawing off
Hannibal when he was still clinging to and brooding over Italy. There
was no more remarkable day, during the whole course of the Roman Empire,
than that on which those two generals, the greatest of all that ever
lived, whether before or after them, the one the conqueror of Italy, and
the other of Spain, drew up their forces for a close engagement. But
previously a conference was held between them concerning conditions of
peace. They stood motionless awhile in admiration of each other. When
they could not agree on a peace, they gave the signal for battle. It is
certain, from the confession of both, that no troops could have been
better drawn up, and no fight more obstinately maintained. This Hannibal
acknowledged concerning the army of Scipio, and Scipio concerning that
of Hannibal. But Hannibal was forced to yield, and Africa became the
prize of the victory; and the whole earth soon followed the fate of
Africa.


THE THIRD PUNIC WAR

The third war with Africa was both short in its duration--for it was
finished in four years--and, compared with those that preceded it, of
much less difficulty; as we had to fight not so much against troops in
the field as against the city itself; but it was far the greatest of the
three in its consequences, for in it Carthage was at last destroyed. And
if anyone contemplates the events of the three periods, he will
understand that the war was begun in the first, greatly advanced in the
second, and entirely finished in the third.

The cause of this war was that Carthage, in violation of an article in
the treaty, had once fitted out a fleet and army against the Numidians,
and had frequently threatened the frontiers of Masinissa. But the Romans
were partial to this good king, who was also their ally.

When the war had been determined upon, they had to consider about the
end of it. Cato, even when his opinion was asked on any other subject,
pronounced, with implacable enmity, that Carthage should be destroyed.
Scipio Nasica gave his voice for its preservation, lest, if the fear of
the rival city were removed, the exultation of Rome should grow
extravagant. The senate decided on a middle course, resolving that the
city should only be removed from its place; for nothing appeared to them
more glorious than that there should be a Carthage which should not be
feared. In the consulship of Manlius and Censorinus, therefore, the
Roman people having attacked Carthage, but giving them some hopes of
peace, burned their fleet, which they voluntarily delivered up, in sight
of the city. Having next summoned the chief men, they commanded them to
quit the place if they wished to preserve their lives. This requisition,
from its cruelty, so incensed them that they chose rather to submit to
the utmost extremities. They accordingly bewailed their necessities
publicly, and shouted with one voice _to arms_; and a resolution was
made to resist the enemy by every means in their power; not because any
hope of success was left, but because they had rather their birthplace
should be destroyed by the hands of the enemy than by their own. With
what spirit they resumed the war may be understood from the facts that
they pulled down their roofs and houses for the equipment of a new
fleet; that gold and silver, instead of brass and iron, were melted in
their forges for the construction of arms; and that the women parted
with their hair to make cordage for the engines of war.

Under the command of the consul Mancinus, the siege was warmly conducted
both by land and sea. The harbor was dismantled of its works, and a
first, second, and even third wall taken, while nevertheless the Byrsa,
which was the name of the citadel, held out like another city. But
though the destruction of the place was thus very far advanced, it was
the name of the Scipios only that seemed fatal to Africa. The
Government, accordingly, applying to another Scipio, desired from him a
termination of the war. This Scipio, the son of Paulus Macedonicus, the
son of the great Africanus had adopted as an honor to his family, and,
as it appeared, with this destiny, that the grandson should overthrow
the city which the grandfather had shaken. But as the bites of dying
beasts are wont to be most fatal, so there was more trouble with
Carthage half-ruined than when it was in its full strength. The Romans
having shut the enemy up in their single fortress, had also blockaded
the harbor; but upon this they dug another harbor on the other side of
the city, not with a design to escape, but because no one supposed that
they could even force an outlet there. Here a new fleet, as if just
born, started forth; and, in the mean while, sometimes by day and
sometimes by night, some new mole, some new machine, some new band of
desperate men perpetually started up, like a sudden flame from a fire
sunk in ashes. At last, their affairs becoming desperate, forty thousand
men, and (what is hardly credible) with Hasdrubal at their head,
surrendered themselves. How much more nobly did a woman behave, the wife
of the general, who, taking hold of her two children, threw herself from
the top of her house into the midst of the flames, imitating the queen
that built Carthage. How great a city was then destroyed is shown, to
say nothing of other things, by the duration of the fire, for the flames
could scarcely be extinguished at the end of seventeen days; flames
which the enemy themselves had raised in their houses and temples, that,
since the city could not be rescued from the Romans, all matter for
triumph might at least be burned.




BATTLE OF THE METAURUS

B.C. 207

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY


(During the closing years of the Second Punic War the resources of the
Romans were drained to such an extent as to bring great disheartenment
to their rulers and generals. Under the stress of financial
difficulties, the cost of living greatly increased, and the State was
compelled to resort to loans of various kinds, and to levy upon citizens
of means for the pay of seamen. This scheme for raising Roman "ship
money" was one of the most significant indications of the extreme weight
resting upon the republic in the prosecution of this arduous war. A war
with Sicily was fortunately terminated, releasing some additional force
for employment against the Carthaginians; but for some time little
headway was made by the Roman commanders, and when, in B.C. 207, the
people were called upon to elect consuls, their affairs were still in a
condition which caused serious anxiety. The consuls chosen in that year
were Marcus Livius and Caius Claudius Nero, and without delay they went
to take command in southern Italy, which the Carthaginians under
Hannibal, though not in much strength, had invaded.

But when, later in the season, Hasdrubal crossed the Alps from the north
to join his brother, Hannibal, the aspect of the war became still more
grave in the eyes of the Romans. Hasdrubal solicited the support of the
Gauls, but to little purpose. Meanwhile Hannibal made skilful use of his
small forces in eluding the consul Nero; but the capture by the Romans
of despatches from Hasdrubal disclosed his plans, and Nero at once
formed his own for intercepting him. The result was that Nero and Livius
joined their forces in Hasdrubal's front, and to the Carthaginian they
offered immediate battle. Hasdrubal attempted a retreat, but was
compelled to give battle on the banks of the Metaurus. Of this, one of
the "decisive battles of the world," Creasy has left an authoritative
and graphic account, which here follows. The part of the consul Nero in
the campaign is thus remarked upon by Lord Byron:

"The consul Nero, who made the unequalled march which deceived Hannibal
and deceived Hasdrubal, thereby accomplished an achievement almost
unrivalled in military annals. The first intelligence of his return, to
Hannibal, was the sight of Hasdrubal's head thrown into his camp. When
Hannibal saw this, he exclaimed, with a sigh, that 'Rome would now be
the mistress of the world.' To this victory of Nero's it might be owing
that his imperial namesake reigned at all. But the infamy of the one has
eclipsed the glory of the other. When the name of Nero is heard, who
thinks of the consul? But such are human things.")


About midway between Rimini and Ancona a little river falls into the
Adriatic, after traversing one of those districts of Italy in which a
vain attempt has lately been made to revive, after long centuries of
servitude and shame, the spirit of Italian nationality and the energy of
free institutions. That stream is still called the Metauro, and wakens
by its name the recollections of the resolute daring of ancient Rome,
and of the slaughter that stained its current two thousand and
sixty-three years ago, when the combined consular armies of Livius and
Nero encountered and crushed near its banks the varied hosts which
Hannibal's brother was leading from the Pyrenees, the Rhone, the Alps,
and the Po, to aid the great Carthaginian in his stern struggle to
annihilate the growing might of the Roman republic, and make the Punic
power supreme over all the nations of the world.

The Roman historian,[59] who termed that struggle the most memorable of
all wars that ever were carried on, wrote in no spirit of exaggeration;
for it is not in ancient, but in modern history that parallels for its
incidents and its heroes are to be found. The similitude between the
contest which Rome maintained against Hannibal, and that which England
was for many years engaged in against Napoleon, has not passed
unobserved by recent historians. "Twice," says Arnold, "has there been
witnessed the struggle of the highest individual genius against the
resources and institutions of a great nation, and in both cases the
nation has been victorious. For seventeen years Hannibal strove against
Rome; for sixteen years Napoleon Bonaparte strove against England: the
efforts of the first ended in Zama; those of the second in Waterloo."

[Footnote 59: Livy.]

One point, however, of the similitude between the two wars has scarcely
been adequately dwelt on; that is, the remarkable parallel between the
Roman general who finally defeated the great Carthaginian, and the
English general who gave the last deadly overthrow to the French
Emperor. Scipio and Wellington both held for many years commands of high
importance, but distant from the main theatres of warfare. The same
country was the scene of the principal military career of each. It was
in Spain that Scipio, like Wellington, successively encountered and
overthrew nearly all the subordinate generals of the enemy before being
opposed to the chief champion and conqueror himself. Both Scipio and
Wellington restored their countrymen's confidence in arms when shaken by
a series of reverses, and each of them closed a long and perilous war by
a complete and overwhelming defeat of the chosen leader and the chosen
veterans of the foe.

Nor is the parallel between them limited to their military characters
and exploits. Scipio, like Wellington, became an important leader of the
aristocratic party among his countrymen, and was exposed to the
unmeasured invectives of the violent section of his political
antagonists. When, early in the last reign, an infuriated mob assaulted
the Duke of Wellington in the streets of the English capital on the
anniversary of Waterloo, England was even more disgraced by that outrage
than Rome was by the factious accusations which demagogues brought
against Scipio, but which he proudly repelled on the day of trial by
reminding the assembled people that it was the anniversary of the battle
of Zama. Happily, a wiser and a better spirit has now for years pervaded
all classes of our community, and we shall be spared the ignominy of
having worked out to the end the parallel of national ingratitude.
Scipio died a voluntary exile from the malevolent turbulence of Rome.
Englishmen of all ranks and politics have now long united in
affectionate admiration of our modern Scipio; and even those who have
most widely differed from the duke on legislative or administrative
questions, forget what they deem the political errors of that
time-honored head, while they gratefully call to mind the laurels that
have wreathed it.

Scipio at Zama trampled in the dust the power of Carthage, but that
power had been already irreparably shattered in another field, where
neither Scipio nor Hannibal commanded. When the Metaurus witnessed the
defeat and death of Hasdrubal, it witnessed the ruin of the scheme by
which alone Carthage could hope to organize decisive success--the scheme
of enveloping Rome at once from the north and the south of Italy by two
chosen armies, led by two sons of Hamilcar. That battle was the
determining crisis of the contest, not merely between Rome and Carthage,
but between the two great families of the world, which then made Italy
the arena of their oft-renewed contest for preëminence.

The French historian, Michelet, whose _Histoire Romaine_ would have been
invaluable if the general industry and accuracy of the writer had in any
degree equalled his originality and brilliancy, eloquently remarks: "It
is not without reason that so universal and vivid a remembrance of the
Punic wars has dwelt in the memories of men. They formed no mere
struggle to determine the lot of two cities or two empires; but it was a
strife on the event of which depended the fate of two races of mankind,
whether the dominion of the world should belong to the Indo-Germanic or
to the Semitic family of nations. Bear in mind that the first of these
comprises, besides the Indians and the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans,
and the Germans. In the other are ranked the Jews and the Arabs, the
Phoenicians and the Carthaginians. On the one side is the genius of
heroism, of art, and legislation; on the other is the spirit of
industry, of commerce, of navigation.

"The two opposite races have everywhere come into contact, everywhere
into hostility. In the primitive history of Persia and Chaldaea, the
heroes are perpetually engaged in combat with their industrious and
perfidious neighbors. The struggle is renewed between the Phoenicians
and the Greeks on every coast of the Mediterranean. The Greek supplants
the Phoenician in all his factories, all his colonies in the East: soon
will the Roman come, and do likewise in the West. Alexander did far more
against Tyre than Shalmaneser or Nebuchadnezzar had done. Not content
with crushing her, he took care that she never should revive; for he
founded Alexandria as her substitute, and changed forever the track of
the commerce of the world. There remained Carthage--the great Carthage,
and her mighty empire--mighty in a far different degree than Phoenicia's
had been. Rome annihilated it. Then occurred that which has no parallel
in history--an entire civilization perished at one blow--banished, like
a falling star. The _Periplus_ of Hanno, a few coins, a score of lines
in Plautus, and, lo, all that remains of the Carthaginian world!

"Many generations must needs pass away before the struggle between the
two races could be renewed; and the Arabs, that formidable rear-guard of
the Semitic world, dashed forth from their deserts. The conflict between
the two races then became the conflict of two religions. Fortunate was
it that those daring Saracenic cavaliers encountered in the East the
impregnable walls of Constantinople, in the West the chivalrous valor of
Charles Martel and the sword of the Cid. The crusades were the natural
reprisals for the Arab invasions, and form the last epoch of that great
struggle between the two principal families of the human race."

It is difficult, amid the glimmering light supplied by the allusions of
the classical writers, to gain a full idea of the character and
institutions of Rome's great rival. But we can perceive how inferior
Carthage was to her competitor in military resources, and how far less
fitted than Rome she was to become the founder of centralized and
centralizing dominion that should endure for centuries, and fuse into
imperial unity the narrow nationalities of the ancient races that dwelt
around and near the shores of the Mediterranean Sea?

Carthage was originally neither the most ancient nor the most powerful
of the numerous colonies which the Phoenicians planted on the coast of
Northern Africa. But her advantageous position, the excellence of her
constitution--of which, though ill-informed as to its details, we know
that it commanded the admiration of Aristotle--and the commercial and
political energy of her citizens gave her the ascendency over Hippo,
Utica, Leptis, and her other sister Phoenician cities in those regions;
and she finally reduced them to a condition of dependency similar to
that which the subject allies of Athens occupied relatively to that once
imperial city. When Tyre and Sidon and the other cities of Phoenicia
itself sank from independent republics into mere vassal states of the
great Asiatic monarchies, and obeyed by turns a Babylonian, a Persian,
and a Macedonian master, their power and their traffic rapidly declined,
and Carthage succeeded to the important maritime and commercial
character which they had previously maintained.

The Carthaginians did not seek to compete with the Greeks on the
northeastern shores of the Mediterranean, or in the three inland seas
which are connected with it; but they maintained an active intercourse
with the Phoenicians, and through them with Lower and Central Asia; and
they, and they alone, after the decline and fall of Tyre, navigated the
waters of the Atlantic. They had the monopoly of all the commerce of the
world that was carried on beyond the Straits of Gibraltar. We have yet
extant (in a Greek translation) the narrative of the voyage of Hanno,
one of their admirals, along the western coast of Africa as far as
Sierra Leone; and in the Latin poem of Festus Avienus frequent
references are made to the records of the voyages of another celebrated
Carthaginian admiral, Himilco, who had explored the northwestern coast
of Europe. Our own islands are mentioned by Himilco as the lands of the
Hiberni and Albioni. It is indeed certain that the Carthaginians
frequented the Cornish coast--as the Phoenicians had done before
them--for the purpose of procuring tin; and there is every reason to
believe that they sailed as far as the coasts of the Baltic for amber.
When it is remembered that the mariner's compass was unknown in those
ages, the boldness and skill of the seamen of Carthage, and the
enterprise of her merchants, may be paralleled with any achievements
that the history of modern navigation and commerce can produce.

In their Atlantic voyages along the African shores the Carthaginians
followed the double object of traffic and colonization. The numerous
settlements that were planted by them along the coast from Morocco to
Senegal provided for the needy members of the constantly increasing
population of a great commercial capital, and also strengthened the
influence which Carthage exercised among the tribes of the African
coast. Besides her fleets, her caravans gave her a large and lucrative
trade with the native Africans; nor must we limit our belief of the
extent of the Carthaginian trade with the tribes of Central and Western
Africa by the narrowness of the commercial intercourse which civilized
nations of modern times have been able to create in those regions.

Although essentially a mercantile and seafaring people, the
Carthaginians by no means neglected agriculture. On the contrary, the
whole of their territory was cultivated like a garden. The fertility of
the soil repaid the skill and toil bestowed on it; and every invader,
from Agathocles to Scipio Æmilianus, was struck with admiration at the
rich pasture lands carefully irrigated, the abundant harvests, the
luxuriant vineyards, the plantations of fig and olive trees, the
thriving villages, the populous towns, and the splendid villas of the
wealthy Carthaginians, through which his march lay, as long as he was on
Carthaginian ground.

Although the Carthaginians abandoned the Ægean and the Pontus to the
Greek, they were by no means disposed to relinquish to those rivals the
commerce and the dominion of the coasts of the Mediterranean westward of
Italy. For centuries the Carthaginians strove to make themselves masters
of the islands that lie between Italy and Spain. They acquired the
Balearic Islands, where the principal harbor, Port Mahon, still bears
the name of a Carthaginian admiral. They succeeded in reducing the
greater part of Sardinia; but Sicily could never be brought into their
power. They repeatedly invaded that island, and nearly overran it; but
the resistance which was opposed to them by the Syracusans under Gelon,
Dionysius, Timoleon, and Agathocles preserved the island from becoming
Punic, though many of its cities remained under the Carthaginian rule
until Rome finally settled the question to whom Sicily was to belong by
conquering it for herself.

With so many elements of success, with almost unbounded wealth, with
commercial and maritime activity, with a fertile territory, with a
capital city of almost impregnable strength, with a constitution that
insured for centuries the blessing of social order, with an aristocracy
singularly fertile in men of the highest genius, Carthage yet failed
signally and calamitously in her contest for power with Rome. One of the
immediate causes of this may seem to have been the want of firmness
among her citizens, which made them terminate the First Punic War by
begging peace, sooner than endure any longer the hardships and burdens
caused by a state of warfare, although their antagonists had suffered
far more severely than themselves. Another cause was the spirit of
faction among their leading men, which prevented Hannibal in the second
war from being properly reënforced and supported. But there were also
more general causes why Carthage proved inferior to Rome. These were her
position relatively to the mass of the inhabitants of the country which
she ruled, and her habit of trusting to mercenary armies in her wars.

Our clearest information as to the different races of men in and about
Carthage is derived from Diodorus Siculus. That historian enumerates
four different races: first, he mentions the Phoenicians who dwelt in
Carthage; next, he speaks of the Liby-Phoenicians: these, he tells us,
dwelt in many of the maritime cities, and were connected by
intermarriage with the Phoenicians, which was the cause of their
compound name; thirdly, he mentions the Libyans, the bulk and the most
ancient part of the population, hating the Carthaginians intensely on
account of the oppressiveness of their domination; lastly, he names the
Numidians, the nomad tribes of the frontier.

It is evident, from this description, that the native Libyans were a
subject class, without franchise or political rights; and, accordingly,
we find no instance specified in history of a Libyan holding political
office or military command. The half-castes, the Liby-Phoenicians, seem
to have been sometimes sent out as colonists; but it may be inferred,
from what Diodorus says of their residence, that they had not the right
of the citizenship of Carthage; and only a single solitary case occurs
of one of this race being intrusted with authority, and that, too, not
emanating from the home government. This is the instance of the officer
sent by Hannibal to Sicily after the fall of Syracuse, whom Polybius
calls Myttinus the Libyan, but whom, from the fuller account in Livy, we
find to have been a Liby-Phoenician; and it is expressly mentioned what
indignation was felt by the Carthaginian commanders in the island that
this half-caste should control their operations.

With respect to the composition of their armies, it is observable that,
though thirsting for extended empire, and though some of her leading men
became generals of the highest order, the Carthaginians, as a people,
were anything but personally warlike. As long as they could hire
mercenaries to fight for them, they had little appetite for the irksome
training and the loss of valuable time which military service would have
entailed on themselves.

As Michelet remarks: "The life of an industrious merchant, of a
Carthaginian, was too precious to be risked, as long as it was possible
to substitute advantageously for it that of a barbarian from Spain or
Gaul. Carthage knew, and could tell to a drachma, what the life of a man
of each nation came to. A Greek was worth more than a Campanian, a
Campanian worth more than a Gaul or a Spaniard. When once this tariff of
blood was correctly made out, Carthage began a war as a mercantile
speculation. She tried to make conquests in the hope of getting new
mines to work or to open fresh markets for her exports. In one venture
she could afford to spend fifty thousand mercenaries, in another rather
more. If the returns were good, there was no regret felt for the capital
that had been sunk in the investment; more money got more men, and all
went on well."

Armies composed of foreign mercenaries have in all ages been as
formidable to their employers as to the enemy against whom they were
directed. We know of one occasion--between the First and Second Punic
wars--when Carthage was brought to the very brink of destruction by a
revolt of her foreign troops. Other mutinies of the same kind must from
time to time have occurred. Probably one of these was the cause of the
comparative weakness of Carthage at the time of the Athenian expedition
against Syracuse, so different from the energy with which she attacked
Gelon half a century earlier and Dionysius half a century later. And
even when we consider her armies with reference only to their efficiency
in warfare, we perceive at once the inferiority of such bands of
_condottieri_, brought together without any common bond of origin,
tactics, or cause, to the legions of Rome, which, at the time of the
Punic wars, were raised from the very flower of a hardy agricultural
population, trained in the strictest discipline, habituated to victory,
and animated by the most resolute patriotism.

And this shows, also, the transcendency of the genius of Hannibal, which
could form such discordant materials into a compact organized force, and
inspire them with the spirit of patient discipline and loyalty to their
chief, so that they were true to him in his adverse as well as in his
prosperous fortunes; and throughout the checkered series of his
campaigns no panic rout ever disgraced a division under his command, no
mutiny, or even attempt at mutiny, was ever known in his camp; and
finally, after fifteen years of Italian warfare, his men followed their
old leader to Zama, "with no fear and little hope,"[60] and there, on
that disastrous field, stood firm around him, his Old Guard, till
Scipio's Numidian allies came up on their flank, when at last,
surrounded and overpowered, the veteran battalions sealed their devotion
to their general by their blood!

[Footnote 60: "We advanced to Waterloo as the Greeks did to Thermopylae:
all of us without fear, and most of us without hope."--_Speech of
General Foy._]

"But if Hannibal's genius may be likened to the Homeric god, who, in his
hatred to the Trojans, rises from the deep to rally the fainting Greeks
and to lead them against the enemy, so the calm courage with which
Hector met his more than human adversary in his country's cause is no
unworthy image of the unyielding magnanimity displayed by the
aristocracy of Rome. As Hannibal utterly eclipses Carthage, so, on the
contrary, Fabius, Marcellus, Claudius Nero, even Scipio himself, are as
nothing when compared to the spirit and wisdom and power of Rome. The
senate, which voted its thanks to its political enemy, Varro, after his
disastrous defeat, 'because he had not despaired of the commonwealth,'
and which disdained either to solicit or to reprove or to threaten or in
any way to notice the twelve colonies which had refused their accustomed
supplies of men for the army, is far more to be honored than the
conqueror of Zama. This we should the more carefully bear in mind
because our tendency is to admire individual greatness far more than
national; and, as no single Roman will bear comparison to Hannibal, we
are apt to murmur at the event of the contest, and to think that the
victory was awarded to the least worthy of the combatants. On the
contrary, never was the wisdom of God's providence more manifest than in
the issue of the struggle between Rome and Carthage.

"It was clearly for the good of mankind that Hannibal should be
conquered; his triumph would have stopped the progress of the world; for
great men can only act permanently by forming great nations; and no one
man, even though it were Hannibal himself, can in one generation effect
such a work. But where the nation has been merely enkindled for a while
by a great man's spirit, the light passes away with him who communicated
it; and the nation, when he is gone, is like a dead body to which magic
power had for a moment given unnatural life: when the charm has ceased,
the body is cold and stiff as before. He who grieves over the battle of
Zama should carry on his thoughts to a period thirty years later, when
Hannibal must in the course of nature have been dead, and consider how
the isolated Phoenician city of Carthage was fitted to receive and to
consolidate the civilization of Greece, or by its laws and institutions
to bind together barbarians of every race and language into an organized
empire, and prepare them for becoming, when that empire was dissolved,
the free members of the commonwealth of Christian Europe."[61]

[Footnote 61: Arnold.]

It was in the spring of 207 B.C. that Hasdrubal, after skilfully
disentangling himself from the Roman forces in Spain, and after a march
conducted with great judgment and little loss through the interior of
Gaul and the passes of the Alps, appeared in the country that now is the
north of Lombardy, at the head of troops which he had partly brought out
of Spain and partly levied among the Gauls and Ligurians on his way. At
this time Hannibal, with his unconquered and seemingly unconquerable
army, had been eight years in Italy, executing with strenuous ferocity
the vow of hatred to Rome which had been sworn by him while yet a child
at the bidding of his father, Hamilcar, who, as he boasted, had trained
up his three sons, Hannibal, Hasdrubal, and Mago, like three lion's
whelps, to prey upon the Romans. But Hannibal's latter campaigns had not
been signalized by any such great victories as marked the first years of
his invasion of Italy. The stern spirit of Roman resolution, ever
highest in disaster and danger, had neither bent nor despaired beneath
the merciless blows which "the dire African" dealt her in rapid
succession at Trebia, at Thrasymene, and at Cannae. Her population was
thinned by repeated slaughter in the field; poverty and actual scarcity
ground down the survivors, through the fearful ravages which Hannibal's
cavalry spread through their cornfields, their pasture lands, and their
vineyards; many of her allies went over to the invader's side, and new
clouds of foreign war threatened her from Macedonia and Gaul. But Rome
receded not. Rich and poor among her citizens vied with each other in
devotion to their country. The wealthy placed their stores, and all
placed their lives, at the State's disposal. And though Hannibal could
not be driven out of Italy, though every year brought its sufferings and
sacrifices, Rome felt that her constancy had not been exerted in vain.
If she was weakened by the continued strife, so was Hannibal also; and
it was clear that the unaided resources of his army were unequal to the
task of her destruction. The single deerhound could not pull down the
quarry which he had so furiously assailed. Rome not only stood fiercely
at bay, but had pressed back and gored her antagonist, that still,
however, watched her in act to spring. She was weary, and bleeding at
every pore; and there seemed to be little hope of her escape if the
other hound of old Hamilcar's race should come up in time to aid his
brother in the death grapple.

Hasdrubal had commanded the Carthaginian armies in Spain for some time
with varying but generally unfavorable fortune. He had not the full
authority over the Punic forces in that country which his brother and
his father had previously exercised. The faction at Carthage, which was
at feud with his family, succeeded in fettering and interfering with his
power; and other generals were from time to time sent into Spain, whose
errors and misconduct caused the reverses that Hasdrubal met with. This
is expressly attested by the Greek historian Polybius, who was the
intimate friend of the younger Africanus, and drew his information
respecting the Second Punic War from the best possible authorities. Livy
gives a long narrative of campaigns between the Roman commanders in
Spain and Hasdrubal, which is so palpably deformed by fictions and
exaggerations as to be hardly deserving of attention. It is clear that
in the year B.C. 208, at least, Hasdrubal outmanoeuvred Publius Scipio,
who held the command of the Roman forces in Spain, and whose object was
to prevent him from passing the Pyrenees and marching upon Italy. Scipio
expected that Hasdrubal would attempt the nearest route along the coast
of the Mediterranean, and he therefore carefully fortified and guarded
the passes of the eastern Pyrenees. But Hasdrubal passed these mountains
near their western extremity; and then, with a considerable force of
Spanish infantry, with a small number of African troops, with some
elephants and much treasure, he marched, not directly toward the coast
of the Mediterranean, but in a northeastern line toward the centre of
Gaul. He halted for the winter in the territory of the Arverni, the
modern Auvergne, and conciliated or purchased the goodwill of the Gauls
in that region so far that he not only found friendly winter quarters
among them, but great numbers of them enlisted under him, and, on the
approach of spring, marched with him to invade Italy.

By thus entering Gaul at the southwest, and avoiding its southern
maritime districts, Hasdrubal kept the Romans in complete ignorance of
his precise operations and movements in that country; all that they knew
was that Hasdrubal had baffled Scipio's attempts to detain him in Spain;
that he had crossed the Pyrenees with soldiers, elephants, and money,
and that he was raising fresh forces among the Gauls. The spring was
sure to bring him into Italy, and then would come the real tempest of
the war, when from the north and from the south the two Carthaginian
armies, each under a son of the Thunderbolt[62], were to gather together
around the seven hills of Rome.

[Footnote 62: Hamilcar was surnamed Barca, which means the Thunderbolt.
Sultan Bajazet had the similar surname of Yilderim.]

In this emergency the Romans looked among themselves earnestly and
anxiously for leaders fit to meet the perils of the coming campaign.

The senate recommended the people to elect, as one of their consuls,
Caius Claudius Nero, a patrician of one of the families of the great
Claudian house. Nero had served during the preceding years of the war
both against Hannibal in Italy and against Hasdrubal in Spain; but it is
remarkable that the histories which we possess record no successes as
having been achieved by him either before or after his great campaign of
the Metaurus. It proves much for the sagacity of the leading men of the
senate that they recognized in Nero the energy and spirit which were
required at this crisis, and it is equally creditable to the patriotism
of the people that they followed the advice of the senate by electing a
general who had no showy exploits to recommend him to their choice.

It was a matter of greater difficulty to find a second consul; the laws
required that one consul should be a plebeian; and the plebeian nobility
had been fearfully thinned by the events of the war. While the senators
anxiously deliberated among themselves what fit colleague for Nero could
be nominated at the coming comitia, and sorrowfully recalled the names
of Marcellus, Gracchus, and other plebeian generals who were no more,
one taciturn and moody old man sat in sullen apathy among the conscript
fathers. This was Marcus Livius, who had been consul in the year before
the beginning of this war, and had then gained a victory over the
Illyrians. After his consulship he had been impeached before the people
on a charge of peculation and unfair division of the spoils among his
soldiers; the verdict was unjustly given against him, and the sense of
this wrong, and of the indignity thus put upon him, had rankled
unceasingly in the bosom of Livius, so that for eight years after his
trial he had lived in seclusion in his country seat, taking no part in
any affairs of State. Latterly the censors had compelled him to come to
Rome and resume his place in the senate, where he used to sit gloomily
apart, giving only a silent vote. At last an unjust accusation against
one of his near kinsmen made him break silence, and he harangued the
house in words of weight and sense, which drew attention to him and
taught the senators that a strong spirit dwelt beneath that unimposing
exterior.

Now, while they were debating on what noble of a plebeian house was fit
to assume the perilous honors of the consulate, some of the elder of
them looked on Marcus Livius, and remembered that in the very last
triumph which had been celebrated in the streets of Rome, this grim old
man had sat in the car of victory, and that he had offered the last
thanksgiving sacrifice for the success of the Roman arms which had bled
before Capitoline Jove. There had been no triumphs since Hannibal came
into Italy. The Illyrian campaign of Livius was the last that had been
so honored; perhaps it might be destined for him now to renew the
long-interrupted series. The senators resolved that Livius should be put
in nomination as consul with Nero; the people were willing to elect him:
the only opposition came from himself. He taunted them with their
inconsistency in honoring the man whom they had convicted of a base
crime. "If I am innocent," said he, "why did you place such a stain on
me? If I am guilty, why am I more fit for a second consulship than I was
for my first one?" The other senators remonstrated with him, urging the
example of the great Camillus, who, after an unjust condemnation on a
similar charge, both served and saved his country. At last Livius ceased
to object; and Caius Claudius Nero and Marcus Livius were chosen consuls
of Rome.

A quarrel had long existed between the two consuls, and the senators
strove to effect a reconciliation between them before the campaign. Here
again Livius for a long time obstinately resisted the wish of his
fellow-senators. He said it was best for the State that he and Nero
should continue to hate one another. Each would do his duty better when
he knew that he was watched by an enemy in the person of his own
colleague. At last the entreaties of the senate prevailed, and Livius
consented to forego the feud, and to cooperate with Nero in preparing
for the coming struggle.

As soon as the winter snows were thawed, Hasdrubal commenced his march
from Auvergne to the Alps. He experienced none of the difficulties which
his brother had met with from the mountain tribes. Hannibal's army had
been the first body of regular troops that had ever traversed their
regions; and, as wild animals assail a traveller, the natives rose
against it instinctively, in imagined defence of their own habitations,
which they supposed to be the objects of Carthaginian ambition. But the
fame of the war, with which Italy had now been convulsed for twelve
years, had penetrated into the Alpine passes, and the mountaineers now
understood that a mighty city southward of the Alps was to be attacked
by the troops whom they saw marching among them. They now not only
opposed no resistance to the passage of Hasdrubal, but many of them, out
of love of enterprise and plunder, or allured by the high pay that he
offered, took service with him; and thus he advanced upon Italy with an
army that gathered strength at every league. It is said, also, that some
of the most important engineering works which Hannibal had constructed
were found by Hasdrubal still in existence, and materially favored the
speed of his advance. He thus emerged into Italy from the Alpine valleys
much sooner than had been anticipated. Many warriors of the Ligurian
tribes joined him; and, crossing the River Po, he marched down its
southern bank to the city of Placentia, which he wished to secure as a
base for his future operations. Placentia resisted him as bravely as it
had resisted Hannibal twelve years before, and for some time Hasdrubal
was occupied with a fruitless siege before its walls.

Six armies were levied for the defence of Italy when the long-dreaded
approach of Hasdrubal was announced. Seventy thousand Romans served in
the fifteen legions of which, with an equal number of Italian allies,
those armies and the garrisons were composed. Upward of thirty thousand
more Romans were serving in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain. The whole
number of Roman citizens of an age fit for military duty scarcely
exceeded a hundred and thirty thousand. The census taken before the
commencement of the war had shown a total of two hundred and seventy
thousand, which had been diminished by more than half during twelve
years. These numbers are fearfully emphatic of the extremity to which
Rome was reduced, and of her gigantic efforts in that great agony of her
fate. Not merely men, but money and military stores, were drained to the
utmost, and if the armies of that year should be swept off by a
repetition of the slaughters of Thrasymene and Cannae all felt that Rome
would cease to exist.

Even if the campaign were to be marked by no decisive success on either
side her ruin seemed certain. In South Italy, Hannibal had either
detached Rome's allies from her or had impoverished them by the ravages
of his army. If Hasdrubal could have done the same in Upper Italy; if
Etruria, Umbria, and Northern Latium had either revolted or been laid
waste, Rome must have sunk beneath sheer starvation, for the hostile or
desolated territory would have yielded no supplies of corn for her
population, and money to purchase it from abroad there was none. Instant
victory was a matter of life or death. Three of her six armies were
ordered to the North, but the first of these was required to overawe the
disaffected Etruscan. The second army of the North was pushed forward,
under Porcius, the praetor, to meet and keep in check the advanced
troops of Hasdrubal; while the third, the grand army of the North, which
was to be under the immediate command of the consul Livius, who had the
chief command in all North Italy, advanced more slowly in its support.
There were similarly three armies in the South, under the orders of the
other consul, Claudius Nero.

The lot had decided that Livius was to be opposed to Hasdrubal, and that
Nero should face Hannibal. And "when all was ordered as themselves
thought best, the two consuls went forth from the city, each his several
way. The people of Rome were now quite otherwise affected than they had
been when L. Æmilius Paulus and C. Terentius Varro were sent against
Hannibal. They did no longer take upon them to direct their generals, or
bid them despatch and win the victory betimes, but rather they stood in
fear lest all diligence, wisdom, and valor should prove too little; for
since few years had passed wherein some one of their generals had not
been slain, and since it was manifest that, if either of these present
consuls were defeated or put to the worst, the two Carthaginians would
forthwith join, and make short work with the other, it seemed a greater
happiness than could be expected that each of them should return home
victor, and come off with honor from such mighty opposition as he was
like to find. With extreme difficulty had Rome held up her head ever
since the battle of Cannae; though it were so, that Hannibal alone, with
little help from Carthage, had continued the war in Italy. But there was
now arrived another son of Hamilcar, and one that in his present
expedition had seemed a man of more sufficiency than Hannibal himself;
for whereas, in that long and dangerous march through barbarous nations,
over great rivers and mountains that were thought unpassable, Hannibal
had lost a great part of his army, this Hasdrubal, in the same places,
had multiplied his numbers, and gathering the people that he found in
the way, descended from the Alps like a rolling snowball, far greater
than he came over the Pyrenees at his first setting out of Spain. These
considerations and the like, of which fear presented many unto them,
caused the people of Rome to wait upon their consuls out of the town,
like a pensive train of mourners, thinking upon Marcellus and Crispinus,
upon whom, in the like sort, they had given attendance the last year,
but saw neither of them return alive from a less dangerous war.
Particularly old Q. Fabius gave his accustomed advice to M. Livius, that
he should abstain from giving or taking battle until he well understood
the enemy's condition. But the consul made him a froward answer, and
said that he would fight the very first day, for that he thought it long
till he should either recover his honor by victory, or, by seeing the
overthrow of his own unjust citizens, satisfy himself with the joy of a
great though not an honest revenge. But his meaning was better than his
words."

Hannibal at this period occupied with his veteran but much-reduced
forces the extreme south of Italy. It had not been expected either by
friend or foe that Hasdrubal would effect his passage of the Alps so
early in the year as actually occurred. And even when Hannibal learned
that his brother was in Italy, and had advanced as far as Placentia, he
was obliged to pause for further intelligence before he himself
commenced active operations, as he could not tell whether his brother
might not be invited into Etruria, to aid the party there that was
disaffected to Rome, or whether he would march down by the Adriatic Sea.
Hannibal led his troops out of their winter quarters in Bruttium, and
marched northward as far as Canusium. Nero had his head-quarters near
Venusia, with an army which he had increased to forty thousand foot and
two thousand five hundred horse, by incorporating under his own command
some of the legions which had been intended to act under other generals
in the South. There was another Roman army, twenty thousand strong,
south of Hannibal at Tarentum. The strength of that city secured this
Roman force from any attack by Hannibal, and it was a serious matter to
march northward and leave it in his rear, free to act against all his
depots and allies in the friendly part of Italy, which for the two or
three last campaigns had served him for a base of his operations.
Moreover, Nero's army was so strong that Hannibal could not concentrate
troops enough to assume the offensive against it without weakening his
garrisons and relinquishing, at least for a time, his grasp upon the
southern provinces. To do this before he was certainly informed of his
brother's operations would have been a useless sacrifice, as Nero could
retreat before him upon the other Roman armies near the capital, and
Hannibal knew by experience that a mere advance of his army upon the
walls of Rome would have no effect on the fortunes of the war. In the
hope, probably, of inducing Nero to follow him and of gaining an
opportunity of outmanoeuvring the Roman consul and attacking him on his
march, Hannibal moved into Lucania, and then back into Apulia; he again
marched down into Bruttium, and strengthened his army by a levy of
recruits in that district. Nero followed him, but gave him no chance of
assailing him at a disadvantage. Some partial encounters seem to have
taken place; but the consul could not prevent Hannibal's junction with
his Bruttian levies, nor could Hannibal gain an opportunity of
surprising and crushing the consul.[63] Hannibal returned to his former
headquarters at Canusium, and halted there in expectation of further
tidings of his brother's movements. Nero also resumed his former
position in observation of the Carthaginian army.

[Footnote 63: The annalists whom Livy copied spoke of Nero's gaining
repeated victories over Hannibal, and killing and taking his men by tens
of thousands. The falsehood of all this is self-evident. If Nero could
thus always beat Hannibal, the Romans would not have been in such an
agony of dread about Hasdrubal as all writers describe. Indeed, we have
the express testimony of Polybius that the statements which we read in
Livy of Marcellus, Nero, and others gaining victories over Hannibal in
Italy must be all fabrications of Roman vanity. Polybius states that
Hannibal was never defeated before the battle of Zama; and in another
passage he mentions that after the defeats which Hannibal inflicted on
the Romans in the early years of the war, they no longer dared face his
army in a pitched battle on a fair field, and yet they resolutely
maintained the war. He rightly explains this by referring to the
superiority of Hannibal's cavalry, the arm which gained him all his
victories. By keeping within fortified lines, or close to the sides of
the mountains when Hannibal approached them, the Romans rendered his
cavalry ineffective; and a glance at the geography of Italy will show
how an army can traverse the greater part of that country without
venturing far from the high grounds.]

Meanwhile, Hasdrubal had raised the siege of Placentia, and was
advancing toward Ariminum on the Adriatic, and driving before him the
Roman army under Porcius. Nor when the consul Livius had come up, and
united the second and third armies of the North, could he make head
against the invaders. The Romans still fell back before Hasdrubal beyond
Ariminum, beyond the Metaurus, and as far as the little town of Sena, to
the southeast of that river. Hasdrubal was not unmindful of the
necessity of acting in concert with his brother. He sent messengers to
Hannibal to announce his own line of march, and to propose that they
should unite their armies in South Umbria and then wheel round against
Rome. Those messengers traversed the greater part of Italy in safety,
but, when close to the object of their mission, were captured by a Roman
detachment; and Hasdrubal's letter, detailing his whole plan of the
campaign, was laid, not in his brother's hands, but in those of the
commander of the Roman armies of the South. Nero saw at once the full
importance of the crisis. The two sons of Hamilcar were now within two
hundred miles of each other, and if Rome were to be saved the brothers
must never meet alive. Nero instantly ordered seven thousand picked men,
a thousand being cavalry, to hold themselves in readiness for a secret
expedition against one of Hannibal's garrisons, and as soon as night had
set in he hurried forward on his bold enterprise; but he quickly left
the southern road toward Lucania, and, wheeling round, pressed northward
with the utmost rapidity toward Picenum. He had, during the preceding
afternoon, sent messengers to Rome, who were to lay Hasdrubal's letters
before the senate. There was a law forbidding a consul to make war or
march his army beyond the limits of the province assigned to him; but in
such an emergency, Nero did not wait for the permission of the senate to
execute his project, but informed them that he was already on his march
to join Livius against Hasdrubal. He advised them to send the two
legions which formed the home garrison on to Narnia, so as to defend
that pass of the Flaminian road against Hasdrubal, in case he should
march upon Rome before the consular armies could attack him. They were
to supply the place of these two legions at Rome by a levy _en masse_ in
the city, and by ordering up the reserve legion from Capua. These were
his communications to the senate. He also sent horsemen forward along
his line of march, with orders to the local authorities to bring stores
of provisions and refreshment of every kind to the roadside, and to have
relays of carriages ready for the conveyance of the wearied soldiers.
Such were the precautions which he took for accelerating his march; and
when he had advanced some little distance from his camp, he briefly
informed his soldiers of the real object of their expedition. He told
them that never was there a design more seemingly audacious and more
really safe. He said he was leading them to a certain victory, for his
colleague had an army large enough to balance the enemy already, so that
_their_ swords would decisively turn the scale. The very rumor that a
fresh consul and a fresh army had come up, when heard on the
battle-field--and he would take care that they should not be heard of
before they were seen and felt--would settle the business. They would
have all the credit of the victory and of having dealt the final
decisive blow. He appealed to the enthusiastic reception which they
already met with on their line of march as a proof and an omen of their
good fortune. And, indeed, their whole path was amid the vows and
prayers and praises of their countrymen. The entire population of the
districts through which they passed flocked to the roadside to see and
bless the deliverers of their country. Food, drink, and refreshments of
every kind were eagerly pressed on their acceptance. Each peasant
thought a favor was conferred on him if one of Nero's chosen band would
accept aught at his hands. The soldiers caught the full spirit of their
leader. Night and day they marched forward, taking their hurried meals
in the ranks, and resting by relay in the wagons which the zeal of the
country people provided, and which followed in the rear of the column.

Meanwhile, at Rome, the news of Nero's expedition had caused the
greatest excitement and alarm. All men felt the full audacity of the
enterprise, but hesitated what epithet to apply to it. It was evident
that Nero's conduct would be judged of by the event, that most unfair
criterion, as the Roman historian truly terms it. People reasoned on the
perilous state in which Nero had left the rest of his army, without a
general, and deprived of the core of its strength, in the vicinity of
the terrible Hannibal. They speculated on how long it would take
Hannibal to pursue and overtake Nero himself, and his expeditionary
force. They talked over the former disasters of the war, and the fall of
both the consuls of the last year. All these calamities had come on them
while they had only one Carthaginian general and army to deal with in
Italy. Now they had two Punic wars at a time. They had two Carthaginian
armies, they had almost two Hannibals, in Italy. Hasdrubal was sprung
from the same father; trained up in the same hostility to Rome; equally
practised in battle against their legions; and, if the comparative speed
and success with which he had crossed the Alps were a fair test, he was
even a better general than his brother. With fear for their interpreter
of every rumor, they exaggerated the strength of their enemy's forces in
every quarter, and criticised and distrusted their own.

Fortunately for Rome, while she was thus a prey to terror and anxiety,
her consul's nerves were stout and strong, and he resolutely urged on
his march toward Sena, where his colleague Livius and the praetor
Porcius were encamped, Hasdrubal's army being in position about half a
mile to their north. Nero had sent couriers forward to apprise his
colleague of his project and of his approach; and by the advice of
Livius, Nero so timed his final march as to reach the camp at Sena by
night. According to a previous arrangement, Nero's men were received
silently into the tents of their comrades, each according to his rank.
By these means there was no enlargement of the camp that could betray to
Hasdrubal the accession of force which the Romans had received. This was
considerable, as Nero's numbers had been increased on the march by the
volunteers, who offered themselves in crowds, and from whom he selected
the most promising men, and especially the veterans of former campaigns.
A council of war was held on the morning after his arrival, in which
some advised that time should be given for Nero's men to refresh
themselves after the fatigue of such a march. But Nero vehemently
opposed all delay. "The officer," said he, "who is for giving time to my
men here to rest themselves is for giving time to Hannibal to attack my
men, whom I have left in the camp in Apulia. He is for giving time to
Hannibal and Hasdrubal to discover my march, and to manoeuvre for a
junction with each other in Cisalpine Gaul at their leisure. We must
fight instantly, while both the foe here and the foe in the South are
ignorant of our movements. We must destroy this Hasdrubal, and I must be
back in Apulia before Hannibal awakes from his torpor." Nero's advice
prevailed. It was resolved to fight directly; and before the consuls and
praetor left the tent of Livius, the red ensign, which was the signal to
prepare for immediate action, was hoisted, and the Romans forthwith drew
up in battle array outside the camp.

Hasdrubal had been anxious to bring Livius and Porcius to battle, though
he had not judged it expedient to attack them in their lines. And now,
on hearing that the Romans offered battle, he also drew up his men and
advanced toward them. No spy or deserter had informed him of Nero's
arrival, nor had he received any direct information that he had more
than his old enemies to deal with. But as he rode forward to reconnoitre
the Roman line, he thought that their numbers seemed to have increased,
and that the armor of some of them was unusually dull and stained. He
noticed, also, that the horses of some of the cavalry appeared to be
rough and out of condition, as if they had just come from a succession
of forced marches. So also, though, owing to the precaution of Livius,
the Roman camp showed no change of size, it had not escaped the quick
ear of the Carthaginian general that the trumpet which gave the signal
to the Roman legions sounded that morning once oftener than usual, as if
directing the troops of some additional superior officer. Hasdrubal,
from his Spanish campaigns, was well acquainted with all the sounds and
signals of Roman war, and from all that he heard and saw he felt
convinced that both the Roman consuls were before him. In doubt and
difficulty as to what might have taken place between the armies of the
South, and probably hoping that Hannibal also was approaching, Hasdrubal
determined to avoid an encounter with the combined Roman forces, and to
endeavor to retreat upon Insubrian Gaul, where he would be in a friendly
country, and could endeavor to reopen his communication with his
brother. He therefore led his troops back into their camp; and as the
Romans did not venture on an assault upon his intrenchments, and
Hasdrubal did not choose to commence his retreat in their sight, the day
passed away in inaction. At the first watch of the night Hasdrubal led
his men silently out of their camp, and moved northward toward the
Metaurus, in the hope of placing that river between himself and the
Romans before his retreat was discovered. His guides betrayed him; and
having purposely led him away from the part of the river that was
fordable, they made their escape in the dark, and left Hasdrubal and his
army wandering in confusion along the steep bank, and seeking in vain
for a spot where the stream could be safely crossed. At last they
halted; and when day dawned on them, Hasdrubal found that great numbers
of his men, in their fatigue and impatience, had lost all discipline and
subordination, and that many of his Gallic auxiliaries had got drunk,
and were lying helpless in their quarters. The Roman cavalry was soon
seen coming up in pursuit, followed at no great distance by the legions,
which marched in readiness for an instant engagement. It was hopeless
for Hasdrubal to think of continuing his retreat before them. The
prospect of immediate battle might recall the disordered part of his
troops to a sense of duty, and revive the instinct of discipline. He
therefore ordered his men to prepare for action instantly, and made the
best arrangement of them that the nature of the ground would permit.

Heeren has well described the general appearance of a Carthaginian army.
He says: "It was an assemblage of the most opposite races of the human
species from the farthest parts of the globe. Hordes of half-naked Gauls
were ranged next to companies of white-clothed Iberians, and savage
Ligurians next to the far-travelled Nasamones and Lotophagi.
Carthaginians and Phoenici-Africans formed the centre, while innumerable
troops of Numidian horsemen, taken from all the tribes of the Desert,
swarmed about on unsaddled horses, and formed the wings; the van was
composed of Balearic slingers; and a line of colossal elephants, with
their Ethiopian guides, formed, as it were, a chain of moving fortresses
before the whole army."

Such were the usual materials and arrangements of the hosts that fought
for Carthage; but the troops under Hasdrubal were not in all respects
thus constituted or thus stationed. He seems to have been especially
deficient in cavalry, and he had few African troops, though some
Carthaginians of high rank were with him. His veteran Spanish infantry,
armed with helmets and shields, and short cut-and-thrust swords, were
the best part of his army. These and his few Africans he drew up on his
right wing, under his own personal command. In the centre he placed his
Ligurian infantry, and on the left wing he placed or retained the Gauls,
who were armed with long javelins and with huge broadswords and targets.
The rugged nature of the ground in front and on the flank of this part
of his line made him hope that the Roman right wing would be unable to
come to close quarters with these unserviceable barbarians before he
could make some impression with his Spanish veterans on the Roman left.
This was the only chance that he had of victory or safety, and he seems
to have done everything that good generalship could do to secure it. He
placed his elephants in advance of his centre and right wing. He had
caused the driver of each of them to be provided with a sharp iron spike
and a mallet, and had given orders that every beast that became
unmanageable, and ran back upon his own ranks, should be instantly
killed by driving the spike into the vertebra at the junction of the
head and the spine. Hasdrubal's elephants were ten in number. We have no
trustworthy information as to the amount of his infantry, but it is
quite clear that he was greatly outnumbered by the combined Roman
forces.

The tactics of the Roman legions had not yet acquired that perfection
which they received from the military genius of Marius,[64] and which we
read of in the first chapter of Gibbon. We possess, in that great work,
an account of the Roman legions at the end of the commonwealth, and
during the early ages of the empire, which those alone can adequately
admire who have attempted a similar description. We have also, in the
sixth and seventeenth books of Polybius, an elaborate discussion on the
military system of the Romans in his time, which was not far distant
from the time of the battle of the Metaurus. But the subject is beset
with difficulties; and instead of entering into minute but inconclusive
details, I would refer to Gibbon's first chapter as serving for a
general description of the Roman army in its period of perfection, and
remark that the training and armor which the whole legion received in
the time of Augustus were, two centuries earlier, only partially
introduced. Two divisions of troops, called _hastati_ and _principes_,
formed the bulk of each Roman legion in the Second Punic War. Each of
these divisions was twelve hundred strong. The hastatus and the princeps
legionary bore a breastplate or coat of mail, brazen greaves, and a
brazen helmet with a lofty upright crest of scarlet or black feathers.
He had a large oblong shield; and, as weapons of offence, two javelins,
one of which was light and slender, but the other was a strong and
massive weapon, with a shaft about four feet long and an iron head of
equal length. The sword was carried on the right thigh, and was a short
cut-and-thrust weapon, like that which was used by the Spaniards. Thus
armed, the hastati formed the front division of the legion, and the
principes the second. Each division was drawn up about ten deep, a space
of three feet being allowed between the files as well as the ranks, so
as to give each legionary ample room for the use of his javelins and of
his sword and shield. The men in the second rank did not stand
immediately behind those in the first rank, but the files were
alternate, like the position of the men on a draught-board. This was
termed the _quincunx_ order.

[Footnote 64: Most probably during the period of his prolonged
consulship, from B.C. 104 to B.C. 101, while he was training his army
against the Cimbri and the Teutons.]

Niebuhr considers that this arrangement enabled the legion to keep up a
shower of javelins on the enemy for some considerable time. He says:
"When the first line had hurled its _pila_, it probably stepped back
between those who stood behind it, and two steps forward restored the
front nearly to its first position; a movement which, on account of the
arrangement of the quincunx, could be executed without losing a moment.
Thus one line succeeded the other in the front till it was time to draw
the swords; nay, when it was found expedient, the lines which had
already been in the front might repeat this change, since the stores of
pila were surely not confined to the two which each soldier took with
him into battle.

"The same charge must have taken place in fighting with the sword,
which, when the same tactics were adopted on both sides, was anything
but a confused _mêlée_; on the contrary, it was a series of single
combats." He adds that a military man of experience had been consulted
by him on the subject and had given it as his opinion "that the change
of the lines as described above was by no means impracticable; but, in
the absence of the deafening noise of gunpowder, it cannot have had even
any difficulty with well-trained troops."

The third division of the legion was six hundred strong and acted as a
reserve. It was always composed of veteran soldiers, who were called the
_triarii_. Their arms were the same as these of the principes and
hastati, except that each _triarian_ carried a spear instead of
javelins. The rest of the legion consisted of light-armed troops, who
acted as skirmishers. The cavalry of each legion was at this period
about three hundred strong. The Italian allies who were attached to the
legion seem to have been similarly armed and equipped, but their
numerical proportion of cavalry was much larger.

Such was the nature of the forces that advanced on the Roman side to the
battle of the Metaurus. Nero commanded the right wing, Livius the left,
and the praetor Porcius had the command of the centre. "Both Romans and
Carthaginians well understood how much depended upon the fortune of this
day, and how little hope of safety there was for the vanquished. Only
the Romans herein seemed to have had the better in conceit and opinion
that they were to fight with men desirous to have fled from them; and
according to this presumption came Livius the consul, with a proud
bravery, to give charge on the Spaniards and Africans, by whom he was so
sharply entertained that the victory seemed very doubtful. The Africans
and Spaniards were stout soldiers, and well acquainted with the manner
of the Roman fight. The Ligurians also were a hardy nation, and not
accustomed to give ground, which they needed the less, or were able now
to do, being placed in the midst. Livius, therefore, and Porcius found
great opposition; and with great slaughter on both sides prevailed
little or nothing. Besides other difficulties, they were exceedingly
troubled by the elephants, that brake their first ranks and put them in
such disorder as the Roman ensigns were driven to fall back; all this
while Claudius Nero, laboring in vain against a steep hill, was unable
to come to blows with the Gauls that stood opposite him, but out of
danger. This made Hasdrubal the more confident, who, seeing his own left
wing safe, did the more boldly and fiercely make impression on the other
side upon the left wing of the Romans."[65]

[Footnote 65: Sir Walter Raleigh: _Historie of the World_.]

But at last Nero, who found that Hasdrubal refused his left wing, and
who could not overcome the difficulties of the ground in the quarter
assigned to him, decided the battle by another stroke of that military
genius which had inspired his march. Wheeling a brigade of his best men
round the rear of the rest of the Roman army, Nero fiercely charged the
flank of the Spaniards and Africans. The charge was as successful as it
was sudden. Rolled back in disorder upon each other, and overwhelmed by
numbers, the Spaniards and Ligurians died, fighting gallantly to the
last. The Gauls, who had taken little or no part in the strife of the
day, were then surrounded, and butchered almost without resistance.
Hasdrubal, after having, by the confession of his enemies, done all that
a general could do, when he saw that the victory was irreparably lost,
scorning to survive the gallant host which he had led, and to gratify,
as a captive, Roman cruelty and pride, spurred his horse into the midst
of a Roman cohort, and sword in hand, met the death that was worthy of
the son of Hamilcar and the brother of Hannibal.

Success the most complete had crowned Nero's enterprise. Returning as
rapidly as he had advanced, he was again facing the inactive enemies in
the South before they even knew of his march. But he brought with him a
ghastly trophy of what he had done. In the true spirit of that savage
brutality which deformed the Roman national character, Nero ordered
Hasdrubal's head to be flung into his brother's camp. Ten years had
passed since Hannibal had last gazed on those features. The sons of
Hamilcar had then planned their system of warfare against Rome which
they had so nearly brought to successful accomplishment. Year after year
had Hannibal been struggling in Italy, in the hope of one day hailing
the arrival of him whom he had left in Spain, and of seeing his
brother's eye flash with affection and pride at the junction of their
irresistible hosts. He now saw that eye glazed in death, and in the
agony of his heart the great Carthaginian groaned aloud that he
recognized his country's destiny.

Meanwhile, at the tidings of the great battle, Rome at once rose from
the thrill of anxiety and terror to the full confidence of triumph.
Hannibal might retain his hold on Southern Italy for a few years longer,
but the imperial city and her allies were no longer in danger from his
arms; and, after Hannibal's downfall, the great military republic of the
ancient world met in her career of conquest no other worthy competitor.
Byron has termed Nero's march "unequalled," and, in the magnitude of its
consequences, it is so. Viewed only as a military exploit, it remains
unparalleled save by Marlborough's bold march from Flanders to the
Danube in the campaign of Blenheim, and perhaps also by the Archduke
Charles' lateral march in 1796, by which he overwhelmed the French under
Jourdan, and then, driving Moreau through the Black Forest and across
the Rhine, for a while freed Germany from her invaders.




SCIPIO AFRICANUS CRUSHES HANNIBAL AT ZAMA AND SUBJUGATES CARTHAGE

B.C. 202

LIVY


(Sprung from a colony of Tyre, Carthage, founded about B.C. 800, rapidly
developed, through a wonderful system of colonization, into a dominating
power, her rule extending through Northwestern Africa and Western
Europe. In B.C. 509 Carthage made her first treaty with Rome. But the
rivalry which grew up between the two Powers developed into a stubborn
contest for the empire of the world, culminating in the three Punic
wars. The first of these lasted from B.C. 264 to 241; the second, from
B.C. 218 to 201. In the interval between these two wars Rome acquired
the northern part of Italy, whence she sent victorious armies against
the barbarians in Gaul. Meanwhile, under Hamilcar Barcar, the
Carthaginians had effected the conquest of Southern Spain, which they
reduced to the condition of a dependency.

Hamilcar's greater son, Hannibal, was compelled by his father to swear
eternal enmity to Rome. Having established the Carthaginian empire in
Spain, at the age of twenty-six he took the Spanish city of Saguntum, an
ally of Rome, and this was the immediate cause of the Second Punic War,
which the Romans declared. The passage of the Alps by Hannibal is
regarded as one of the greatest military performances in history. He was
welcomed by the Gauls as a deliverer, and was soon operating in Northern
Italy, his appearance there being a complete surprise to the Romans. He
won victories over them at the rivers Ticinus and Trebia, B.C. 218;
another in 217 at Lake Trasimenus; a great triumph at Cannae in 216;
took Capua in the same year, and wintered there; in 212 captured
Tarentum; marched against Rome in 211; and in 203 was recalled to
Africa.

In the mean time the Romans had decided to carry the war into Africa,
although in 215 they had beaten Hannibal, and in 211 had retaken Capua.
Publius Cornelius Scipio [Scipio Africanus Major] in B.C. 210-206 drove
the Carthaginians out of Spain. In 205 he was made consul, and the next
year invaded Africa. Landing on the coast, he was met by the forces of
the Numidian King, who became his allies against Carthage. In 203 he
defeated Syphax and Hasdrubal. Hannibal now having returned to Carthage,
he took command of the forces which she opposed to the Roman invaders,
but in B.C. 202 suffered final overthrow at Zama, in the battle that
ended the Second Punic War. Livy's account of the closing scenes of that
war, which here follows, gives the reader a clear understanding of the
sequence and conclusion of the events related.)


Marcus Servilius and Tiberius Claudius, having assembled the senate,
consulted them respecting the provinces. As both were desirous of having
Africa, they wished Italy and Africa to be disposed of by lots; but,
principally in consequence of the exertions of Quintus Metellus, Africa
was neither assigned to anyone nor withheld. The consuls were ordered to
make application to the tribunes of the people, to the effect that, if
they thought proper, they should put it to the people to decide whom
they wished to conduct the war in Africa. All the tribes nominated
Publius Scipio. Nevertheless, the consuls put the province of Africa to
the lot, for so the senate had decreed. Africa fell to the lot of
Tiberius Claudius, who was to cross over into Africa with a fleet of
fifty ships, all quinqueremes, and have an equal command with Scipio.
Marcus Servilius obtained Etruria. Caius Servilius was continued in
command in the same province, in case the senate resolved that the
consul should remain at the city. Of the praetors, Marcus Sextus
obtained Gaul, which province, together with two legions, Publius
Quinctilius Varus was to deliver to him; Caius Livius obtained Bruttium,
with the two legions which Publius Sempronius, the proconsul, had
commanded the former year; Cneius Tremellius had Sicily, and was to
receive the province and two legions from Publius Villius Tappulus, a
praetor of the former year; Villius, as propraetor, was to protect the
coast of Sicily with twenty men-of-war and a thousand soldiers; and
Marcus Pomponius was to convey thence to Rome one thousand five hundred
soldiers, with the remaining twenty ships. The city jurisdiction fell to
Caius Aurelius Cotta; and the rest of the praetors were continued in
command of the respective provinces and armies which they then had. Not
more than sixteen legions were employed this year in the defence of the
empire. And, that they might have the gods favorably disposed toward
them in all their undertakings and proceedings, it was ordered that the
consuls, before they set out to the war, should celebrate those games
and sacrifice those victims of the larger sort which, in the consulate
of Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Titus Quinctius, Titus Manlius the
dictator had vowed, provided the commonwealth should continue in the
same state for the next five years. The games were exhibited in the
circus during four days, and the victims sacrificed to those deities to
whom they had been vowed.

Meanwhile, hope and anxiety daily and simultaneously increased; nor
could the minds of men be brought to any fixed conclusion, whether it
was a fit subject for rejoicing that Hannibal had now at length, after
the sixteenth year, departed from Italy and left the Romans in the
unmolested possession of it or whether they had not greater cause to
fear from his having transported his army in safety into Africa. They
said that the scene of action certainly was changed, but not the danger.
That Quintus Fabius, lately deceased, who had foretold how arduous the
contest would be, was used to predict, not without good reason, that
Hannibal would prove a more formidable enemy in his own country than he
had been in a foreign one; and that Scipio would have to encounter, not
Syphax, a king of undisciplined barbarians whose armies Statorius, a man
little better than a soldier's drudge, was used to lead, nor his
father-in-law Hasdrubal, that most fugacious general, nor tumultuary
armies hastily collected out of a crowd of half-armed rustics, but
Hannibal, born in a manner in the pavilion of his father, that bravest
of generals, nurtured and educated in the midst of arms, who served as a
soldier formerly, when a boy, and became a general when he had scarcely
attained the age of manhood; who, having grown old in victory, had
filled Spain, Gaul, and Italy, from the Alps to the strait, with
monuments of his vast achievements; who commanded troops who had served
as long as he had himself; troops hardened by the endurance of every
species of suffering, such as it is scarcely credible that men could
have supported; stained a thousand times with Roman blood, and bearing
with them the spoils not only of soldiers, but of generals. That many
would meet the eyes of Scipio in battle who had with their own hands
slain Roman praetors, generals, and consuls; many decorated with crowns
in reward for having scaled walls and crossed ramparts; many who had
traversed the captured camps and cities of the Romans. That the
magistrates of the Roman people had not then so many fasces as Hannibal
could have carried before him, having taken them from generals whom he
had slain. While their minds were harassed by these apprehensions, their
anxiety and fears were further increased from the circumstance that,
whereas they had been accustomed to carry on war for several years in
different parts of Italy, and within their view, with languid hopes and
without the prospect of bringing it to a speedy termination, Scipio and
Hannibal had stimulated the minds of all, as generals prepared for a
final contest. Even those persons whose confidence in Scipio and hopes
of victory were great, were affected with anxiety, increasing in
proportion as they saw their completion approaching. The state of
feeling among the Carthaginians was much the same; for when they turned
their eyes on Hannibal, and the greatness of his achievements, they
repented having solicited peace; but when again they reflected that they
had been twice defeated in a pitched battle, that Syphax had been made
prisoner, that they had been driven out of Spain and Italy, and that all
this had been effected by the valor and conduct of Scipio alone, they
regarded him with horror, as a general marked out by destiny, and born
for their destruction.

Hannibal had by this time arrived at Adrumetum, from which place, after
employing a few days there in refreshing his soldiers, who had suffered
from the motion by sea, he proceeded by forced marches to Zama, roused
by the alarming statements of messengers who brought word that all the
country around Carthage was filled with armed troops. Zama is distant
from Carthage a five days' journey. Some spies whom he sent out from
this place, being intercepted by the Roman guard and brought before
Scipio, he directed that they should be handed over to the military
tribunes, and after having been desired fearlessly to survey everything,
to be conducted through the camp wherever they chose; then, asking them
whether they had examined everything to their satisfaction, he assigned
them an escort and sent them back to Hannibal.

Hannibal received none of the circumstances which were reported to him
with feelings of joy, for they brought word that, as it happened,
Masinissa had joined the enemy that very day with six thousand infantry
and four thousand horse; but he was principally dispirited by the
confidence of his enemy, which, doubtless, was not conceived without
some ground. Accordingly, though he himself was the originator of the
war, and by his coming had upset the truce which had been entered into,
and cut off all hopes of a treaty, yet concluding that more favorable
terms might be obtained if he solicited peace while his strength was
unimpaired than when vanquished, he sent a message to Scipio requesting
permission to confer with him.

Scipio took up his position not far from the city of Naragara, in a
situation convenient not only for other purposes, but also because there
was a watering-place within a dart's throw. Hannibal took possession of
an eminence four miles thence, safe and convenient in every respect,
except that he had a long way to go for water. Here in the intermediate
space a place was chosen open to view from all sides, that there might
be no opportunity for treachery.

Their armed attendants having retired to an equal distance, they met,
each attended by one interpreter, being the greatest generals not only
of their own times, but of any to be found in the records of the times
preceding them, and equal to any of the kings or generals of any nation
whatever. When they came within sight of each other they remained silent
for a short time, thunderstruck, as it were, with mutual admiration. At
length Hannibal thus began: "Since fate hath so ordained it that I, who
was the first to wage war upon the Romans, and who have so often had
victory almost within my reach, should voluntarily come to sue for
peace, I rejoice that it is you, above all others, from whom it is my
lot to solicit it. To you, also, amid the many distinguished events of
your life, it will not be esteemed one of the least glorious that
Hannibal, to whom the gods had so often granted victory over the Roman
generals, should have yielded to you; and that you should have put an
end to this war, which has been rendered remarkable by your calamities
before it was by ours.

"Peace is proposed at a time when you have the advantage. We who
negotiate it are the persons whom it most concerns to obtain it, and we
are persons whose arrangements, be they what they will, our states will
ratify. You have recovered Spain, which had been lost, after driving
thence four Carthaginian armies. When elected consul, though all others
wanted courage to defend Italy, you crossed over into Africa, where
having cut to pieces two armies, having at once captured and burnt two
camps in the same hour, having made prisoner Syphax, a most powerful
king, and seized so many towns of his dominions and so many of ours, you
have dragged me from Italy, the possession of which I had firmly held
for now sixteen years. While your affairs are in a favorable and ours in
a dubious state, you would derive honor and splendor from granting
peace; while to us, who solicit it, it would be considered as necessary
rather than honorable.

"It is indeed the right of him who grants, and not of him who solicits
it, to dictate the terms of peace, but perhaps we may not be unworthy to
impose upon ourselves the fine. We do not refuse that all those
possessions on account of which the war was begun should be yours;
Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, with all the islands lying in any part of the
sea, between Africa and Italy. Let us Carthaginians, confined within the
shores of Africa, behold you, since such is the pleasure of the gods,
extending your empire over foreign nations both by sea and land. I
cannot deny that you have reason to suspect the Carthaginian faith, in
consequence of their insincerity lately in soliciting a peace and while
awaiting the decision. The sincerity with which a peace will be observed
depends much, Scipio, on the person by whom it is sought. Your senate,
as I hear, refused to grant a peace in some measure because the deputies
were deficient in respectability. It is I, Hannibal, who now solicit
peace; who would neither ask for it unless I believed it expedient, nor
will I fail to observe it for the same reason of expedience on account
of which I have solicited it. And in the same manner as I, because the
war was commenced by me, brought it to pass that no one regretted it
till the gods began to regard me with displeasure; so will I also exert
myself that no one may regret the peace procured by my means."

In answer to these things the Roman general spoke nearly to the
following effect: "I was aware that it was in consequence of the
expectation of your arrival that the Carthaginians violated the existing
faith of the truce and broke off all hope of a peace. Nor, indeed, do
you conceal the fact, inasmuch as you artfully withdraw from the former
conditions of peace every concession except what relates to those things
which have for a long time been in our own power. But as it is your
object that your countrymen should be sensible how great a burden they
are relieved from by your means, so it is incumbent upon me to endeavor
that they may not receive, as the reward of their perfidy, the
concessions which they formerly stipulated, by expunging them now from
the conditions of the peace. Though you do not deserve to be allowed the
same conditions as before, you now request even to be benefited by your
treachery.

"Neither did our fathers first make war respecting Sicily, nor did we
respecting Spain. In the former case the danger which threatened our
allies the Mamertines, and in the present the destruction of Saguntum,
girded us with just and pious arms. That you were the aggressors, both
you yourselves confess and the gods are witnesses, who determined the
issue of the former war, and who are now determining and will determine
the issue of the present according to right and justice. As to myself, I
am not forgetful of the instability of human affairs, but consider the
influence of fortune, and am well aware that all our measures are liable
to a thousand casualties. But as I should acknowledge that my conduct
would savor of insolence and oppression if I rejected you on your coming
in person to solicit peace before I crossed over into Africa, you
voluntarily retiring from Italy, and after you had embarked your troops,
so now, when I have dragged you into Africa almost by manual force,
notwithstanding your resistance and evasions, I am not bound to treat
you with any respect. Wherefore, if in addition to those stipulations on
which it was considered that a peace would at that time have been agreed
upon, and what they are you are informed, a compensation is proposed for
having seized our ships together with their stores during a truce, and
for the violence offered to our ambassadors, I shall then have matter to
lay before my council. But if these things also appear oppressive,
prepare for war, since you could not brook the conditions of peace."

Thus, without effecting an accommodation, when they had returned from
the conference to their armies, they informed them that words had been
bandied to no purpose, that the question must be decided by arms, and
that they must accept that fortune which the gods assigned them.

When they had arrived at their camps, they both issued orders that their
soldiers should get their arms in readiness and prepare their minds for
the final contest; in which, if fortune should favor them, they would
continue victorious, not for a single day, but forever. "Before
to-morrow night," they said, "they would know whether Rome or Carthage
should give laws to the world, and that neither Africa nor Italy, but
the whole world, would be the prize of victory. That the dangers which
threatened those who had the misfortune to be defeated were proportioned
to the rewards of the victors." For the Romans had not any place of
refuge in an unknown and foreign land, and immediate destruction seemed
to await Carthage if the troops which formed her last reliance were
defeated. To this important contest, the day following, two generals, by
far the most renowned of any, and belonging to two of the most powerful
nations in the world, advanced either to crown or overthrow on that day
the many honors they had previously acquired.

Scipio drew up his troops, posting the hastati in front, the principes
behind them, and closing his rear line with the triarii. He did not draw
up his cohorts in close order, but each before their respective
standards; placing the companies at some distance from each other, so as
to leave a space through which the elephants of the enemy passing might
not at all break their ranks. Laelius, whom he had employed before as
lieutenant-general, but this year as quaestor, by special appointment,
according to a decree of the senate, he posted with the Italian cavalry
in the left wing, Masinissa and the Numidians in the right. The open
spaces between the companies of those in the van he filled with velites,
which then formed the Roman light-armed troops, with an injunction that
on the charge of the elephants they should either retire behind the
files, which extended in a right line, or, running to the right and left
and placing themselves by the side of those in the van, afford a passage
by which the elephants might rush in between weapons on both sides.

Hannibal, in order to terrify the enemy, drew up his elephants in front,
and he had eighty of them, being more than he had ever had in any
battle; behind these his Ligurian and Gallic auxiliaries, with
Balearians and Moors intermixed. In the second line he placed the
Carthaginians, Africans, and a legion of Macedonians; then, leaving a
moderate interval, he formed a reserve of Italian troops, consisting
principally of Bruttians, more of whom had followed him on his departure
from Italy by compulsion and necessity than by choice. His cavalry also
he placed in the wings, the Carthaginian occupying the right, the
Numidian the left. Various were the means of exhortation employed in an
army consisting of a mixture of so many different kinds of men; men
differing in language, customs, laws, arms, dress, and appearance, and
in the motives for serving. To the auxiliaries, the prospect both of
their present pay and many times more from the spoils was held out. The
Gauls were stimulated by their peculiar and inherent animosity against
the Romans. To the Ligurians the hope was held out of enjoying the
fertile plains of Italy, and quitting their rugged mountains, if
victorious. The Moors and Numidians were terrified with subjection to
the government of Masinissa, which he would exercise with despotic
severity.

Different grounds of hope and fear were represented to different
persons. The view of the Carthaginians was directed to the walls of
their city, their household gods, the sepulchres of their ancestors,
their children and parents, and their trembling wives; they were told
that either the destruction of their city and slavery or the empire of
the world awaited them; that there was nothing intermediate which they
could hope for or fear.

While the general was thus busily employed among the Carthaginians, and
the captains of the respective nations among their countrymen, most of
them employing interpreters among troops intermixed with those of
different nations, the trumpets and cornets of the Romans sounded; and
such a clamor arose that the elephants, especially those in the left
wing, turned round upon their own party, the Moors and Numidians.
Masinissa had no difficulty in increasing the alarm of the terrified
enemy, and deprived them of the aid of their cavalry in that wing. A
few, however, of the beasts which were driven against the enemy, and
were not turned back through fear, made great havoc among the ranks of
the velites, though not without receiving many wounds themselves; for
when the velites, retiring to the companies, had made way for the
elephants, that they might not be trampled down, they discharged their
darts at them; exposed as they were to wounds on both sides, those in
the van also keeping up a continual discharge of javelins, until driven
out of the Roman line by the weapons which fell upon them from all
quarters, these elephants also put to flight even the cavalry of the
Carthaginians posted in their right wing. Laelius, when he saw the enemy
in disorder, struck additional terror into them in their confusion.

The Carthaginian line was deprived of the cavalry on both sides, when
the infantry, who were now not a match for the Romans in confidence or
strength, engaged. In addition to this there was one circumstance,
trifling in itself, but at the same time producing important
consequences in the action. On the part of the Romans the shout was
uniform, and on that account louder and more terrific, while the voices
of the enemy, consisting as they did of many nations of different
languages, were dissonant. The Romans used the stationary kind of fight,
pressing upon the enemy with their own weight and that of their arms;
but on the other side there was more of skirmishing and rapid movement
than force. Accordingly, on the first charge, the Romans immediately
drove back the line of their opponents; then pushing them with their
elbows and the bosses of their shields, and pressing forward into the
places from which they had pushed them, they advanced a considerable
space, as though there had been no one to resist them, those who formed
the rear urging forward those in front when they perceived the line of
the enemy giving way, which circumstance itself gave great additional
force in repelling them.

On the side of the enemy, the second line, consisting of the Africans
and Carthaginians, were so far from supporting the first line when
giving ground, that on the contrary they even retired, lest their enemy,
by slaying those who made a firm resistance, should penetrate to
themselves also. Accordingly the auxiliaries suddenly turned their
backs, and facing about upon their own party, fled, some of them into
the second line, while others slew those who did not receive them into
their ranks, since before they did not support them, and now refused to
receive them. And now there were, in a manner, two contests going on
together, the Carthaginians being compelled to fight at once with the
enemy and with their own party. Not even then, however, did they receive
into their line the terrified and exasperated troops, but, closing their
ranks, drove them out of the scene of action to the wings and the
surrounding plain, lest they should mingle these soldiers, terrified
with defeat and wounds, with that part of their line which was firm and
fresh.

But such a heap of men and arms had filled the space in which the
auxiliaries a little while ago had stood that it was almost more
difficult to pass through it than through a close line of troops. The
spearmen, therefore, who formed the front line, pursuing the enemy as
each could find a way through the heap of arms and men and streams of
blood, threw into complete disorder the battalions and companies. The
standards also of the principes had begun to waver when they saw the
line before them driven from their ground. Scipio, perceiving this,
promptly ordered the signal to be given for the spearmen to retreat, and
having taken his wounded into the rear, brought the principes and
triarii to the wings in order that the line of spearmen in the centre
might be more strong and secure. Thus a fresh and renewed battle
commenced, inasmuch as they had penetrated to their real antagonists,
men equal to them in the nature of their arms, in their experience in
war, in the fame of their achievements, and the greatness of their hopes
and fears. But the Romans were superior both in numbers and courage, for
they had now routed both the cavalry and the elephants, and, having
already defeated the front line, were fighting against the second.

Lælius and Masinissa, who had pursued the routed cavalry through a
considerable space, returning very opportunely, charged the rear of the
enemy's line. This attack of the cavalry at length routed them. Many of
them, being surrounded, were slain in the field; and many, dispersed in
flight through the open plain around, were slain on all hands, as the
cavalry were in possession of every part. Of the Carthaginians and their
allies, above twenty thousand were slain on that day; about an equal
number were captured, with a hundred and thirty-three military standards
and eleven elephants. Of the victors as many as two thousand fell.

Hannibal, slipping off during the confusion, with a few horsemen, came
to Adrumetum, not quitting the field till he had tried every expedient
both in the battle and before the engagement; having, according to the
admission of Scipio and everyone skilled in military science, acquired
the fame of having marshalled his troops on that day with singular
judgment. He placed his elephants in the front, in order that their
desultory attack and insupportable violence might prevent the Romans
from following their standards and preserving their ranks, on which they
placed their principal dependence. Then he posted his auxiliaries before
the line of Carthaginians, in order that men who were made up of the
refuse of all nations, and who were not bound by honor but by gain,
might not have any retreat open to them in case they fled; at the same
time that the first ardor and impetuosity might be exhausted upon them,
and, if they could render no other service, that the weapons of the
enemy might be blunted in wounding them. Next he placed the Carthaginian
and African soldiers, on whom he placed all his hopes, in order that,
being equal to the enemy in every other respect, they might have the
advantage of them inasmuch as, being fresh and unimpaired in strength
themselves, they would fight with those who were fatigued and wounded.
The Italians he removed into the rear, separating them also by an
intervening space, as he knew not with certainty whether they were
friends or enemies. Hannibal, after performing this as it were his last
work of valor, fled to Adrumetum, whence, having been summoned to
Carthage, he returned thither in the sixth and thirtieth year after he
had left it when a boy, and confessed in the senate house that he was
defeated, not only in the battle, but in the war, and that there was no
hope of safety in anything but in obtaining peace.

Immediately after the battle, Scipio, having taken and plundered the
enemy's camp, returned to the sea and his ships with an immense booty,
news having reached him that Publius Lentulus had arrived at Utica with
fifty men-of-war, and a hundred transports laden with every kind of
stores. Concluding that he ought to bring before Carthage everything
which could increase the consternation already existing there, after
sending Laelius to Rome to report his victory, he ordered Cneius
Octavius to conduct the legions thither by land, and setting out himself
from Utica with the fresh fleet of Lentulus added to his former one,
made for the harbor of Carthage. When he had arrived within a short
distance he was met by a Carthaginian ship decked with fillets and
branches of olive. There were ten deputies, the leading men in the
State, sent at the instance of Hannibal to solicit peace, to whom, when
they had come up to the stern of the general's ship, holding out the
badges of suppliants, entreating and imploring the protection and
compassion of Scipio, the only answer given was that they must come to
Tunis, to which place he would move his camp. After taking a view of the
site of Carthage, not so much for the sake of acquainting himself with
it for any present object as to dispirit the enemy, he returned to
Utica, having recalled Octavius to the same place.

As they were proceeding thence to Tunis, they received intelligence that
Vermina, the son of Syphax, with a greater number of horse than foot,
was coming to the assistance of the Carthaginians. A part of his
infantry with all the cavalry having attacked them on their march on the
first day of the Saturnalia, routed the Numidians with little
opposition, and as every way by which they could escape in flight was
blocked up, for the cavalry surrounded them on all sides, fifteen
thousand men were slain, twelve hundred were taken alive, with fifteen
hundred Numidian horses and seventy-two military standards. The prince
himself fled from the field with a few attendants during the confusion.
The camp was then pitched near Tunis in the same place as before, and
thirty ambassadors came to Scipio from Carthage. These behaved in a
manner even more calculated to excite compassion than the former, in
proportion as their situation was more pressing; but from the
recollection of their recent perfidy, they were heard with considerably
less pity. In the council, though all were impelled by just resentment
to demolish Carthage, yet, when they reflected upon the magnitude of the
undertaking and the length of time which would be consumed in the siege
of so well fortified and strong a city, while Scipio himself was uneasy
in consequence of the expectation of a successor, who would come in for
the glory of having terminated the war, though it was accomplished
already by the exertions and danger of another, the minds of all were
inclined to peace.

The next day the ambassadors being called in again, and with many
rebukes of their perfidy, warned that instructed by so many disasters
they would at length believe in the existence of the gods and the
obligation of an oath, these conditions of the peace were stated to
them: "That they should enjoy their liberty and live under their own
laws; that they should possess such cities and territories as they had
enjoyed before the war, and with the same boundaries, and that the
Romans should on that day desist from devastation. That they should
restore to the Romans all deserters and fugitives, giving up all their
ships-of-war except ten triremes, with such tamed elephants as they had,
and that they should not tame any more. That they should not carry on
war in or out of Africa without the permission of the Roman people. That
they should make restitution to Masinissa, and form a league with him.
That they should furnish corn, and pay for the auxiliaries until the
ambassadors had returned from Rome. That they should pay ten thousand
talents of silver in equal annual installments distributed over fifty
years. That they should give a hundred hostages, according to the
pleasure of Scipio, not younger than fourteen nor older than thirty.
That he would grant them a truce on condition that the transports,
together with their cargoes, which had been seized during the former
truce, were restored. Otherwise they would have no truce, nor any hope
of a peace." When the ambassadors who were ordered to bear these
conditions home reported them in an assembly, and Gisgo had stood forth
to dissuade them from the terms, and was being listened to by the
multitude, who were at once indisposed for peace and unfit for war,
Hannibal, indignant that such language should be held and listened to at
such a juncture, laid hold of Gisgo with his own hand and dragged him
from his elevated position.

This unusual sight in a free State having raised a murmur among the
people, the soldier, disconcerted at the liberties which the citizens
took, thus addressed them: "Having left you when nine years old, I have
returned after a lapse of thirty-six years. I flatter myself I am well
acquainted with the qualifications of a soldier, having been instructed
in them from my childhood, sometimes by my own situation and sometimes
by that of my country. The privileges, the laws, and customs of the city
and the forum you ought to teach me." Having thus apologized for his
indiscretion, he discoursed largely concerning the peace, showing how
inoppressive the terms were, and how necessary it was. The greatest
difficulty was that of the ships which had been seized during the truce
nothing was to be found except the ships themselves, nor was it easy to
collect the property, because those who were charged with having it were
opposed to the peace. It was resolved that the ships should be restored
and that the men at least should be looked up; and as to whatever else
was missing, that it should be left to Scipio to put a value upon it,
and that the Carthaginians should make compensation accordingly in
money. There are those who say that Hannibal went from the field of
battle to the sea-coast; whence he immediately sailed in a ship, which
he had ready for the purpose, to king Antiochus; and that when Scipio
demanded above everything that Hannibal should be given up to him,
answer was made that Hannibal was not in Africa.

After the ambassadors returned to Scipio, the quaestors were ordered to
give in an account, made out from the public registers, of the public
property which had been in the ships; and the owners to make a return of
the private property. For the amount of the value twenty-five thousand
pounds of silver were required to be paid down; and a truce for three
months was granted to the Carthaginians. It was added that during the
time of the truce they should not send ambassadors anywhere else than to
Rome; and that whatever ambassadors came to Carthage, they should not
dismiss them before informing the Roman general who they were and what
they sought. With the Carthaginian ambassadors, Lucius Veturius Philo,
Marcus Marcius Ralla, and Lucius Scipio, brother of the general, were
sent to Rome.

The Roman, together with the Carthaginian, ambassadors having arrived at
Rome from Africa, the senate was assembled at the temple of Bellona;
when Lucius Veturius Philo stated, to the great joy of the senate, that
a battle had been fought with Hannibal which was decisive of the fate of
the Carthaginians, and that a period was at length put to that
calamitous war. He added what formed a small accession to their
successes, that Vermina, the son of Syphax, had been vanquished. He was
then ordered to go forth to the public assembly and impart the joyful
tidings to the people. Then, a thanksgiving having been appointed, all
the temples in the city were thrown open and supplications for three
days were decreed. Publius Scipio was continued in command in the
province of Africa with the armies which he then had. The Carthaginian
ambassadors were called before the senate. On observing their ages and
dignified appearance, for they were by far the first men of the State,
all promptly declared their conviction that now they were sincere in
their desire to effect a peace. Hasdrubal, however, surnamed by his
countrymen Haedus, who had invariably recommended peace and was opposed
to the Barcine faction, was regarded with greater interest than the
rest.

On these accounts the greater weight was attached to him when
transferring the blame of the war from the State at large to the
cupidity of a few. After a speech of varied character, in which he
sometimes refuted the charges which had been brought, at other times
admitted some, lest by imprudently denying what was manifestly true
their forgiveness might be the more difficult; and then, even
admonishing the conscript fathers to be guided by the rules of decorum
and moderation in their prosperity, he said that if the Carthaginians
had listened to himself and Hanno, and had been disposed to make a
proper use of circumstances, they would themselves have dictated terms
of peace, instead of begging it as they now did. That it rarely happened
that good fortune and a sound judgment were bestowed upon men at the
same time. That the Roman people were therefore invincible, because when
successful they forgot not the maxims of wisdom and prudence; and indeed
it would have been matter of astonishment did they act otherwise. That
those persons to whom success was a new and uncommon thing proceeded to
a pitch of madness in their ungoverned transports in consequence of
their not being accustomed to it. That to the Roman people the joy
arising from victory was a matter of common occurrence, and was now
almost become old-fashioned. That they had extended their empire more by
sparing the vanquished than by conquering.

The language employed by the others was of a nature more calculated to
excite compassion; they represented from what a height of power the
Carthaginian affairs had fallen. That nothing besides the walls of
Carthage remained to those who a little time ago held almost the whole
world in subjection by their arms; that shut up within these, they could
see nothing anywhere on sea or land which owned their authority. That
they would retain possession of their city itself and their household
gods only in case the Roman people should refrain from venting their
indignation upon these, which is all that remains for them to do. When
it was manifest that the fathers were moved by compassion, it is said
that one of the senators, violently incensed at the perfidy of the
Carthaginians, immediately asked with a loud voice by what gods they
would swear in striking the league, since they had broken their faith
with those by whom they swore in striking the former one? By those same,
replied Hasdrubal, who have shown such determined hostility to the
violators of treaties.

The minds of all being disposed to peace, Cneius Lentulus, whose
province the fleet was, protested against the decree of the senate. Upon
this, Manius Acilius and Quintus Minucius, tribunes of the people, put
the question to the people whether they willed and ordered that the
senate should decree that peace should be made with the Carthaginians?
whom they ordered to grant that peace, and whom to conduct the army out
of Africa? All the tribes ordered respecting the peace according as the
question had been put. That Publius Scipio should grant the peace, and
that he also should conduct the army home. Agreeably to this order, the
senate decreed that Publius Scipio, acting according to the opinion of
the ten deputies, should make peace with the Carthaginian people on what
terms he pleased. The Carthaginians then returned thanks to the senate,
and requested that they might be allowed to enter the city and converse
with their countrymen who had been made prisoners and were in custody of
the State; observing that some of them were their relations and friends,
and men of rank, and some, persons to whom they were charged with
messages from their relations.

Having obtained these requests, they again asked permission to ransom
such of them as they pleased; when they were desired to give in their
names. Having given in a list of about two hundred, a decree of the
senate was passed to the effect that the Carthaginian ambassadors should
be allowed to take away into Africa to Publius Cornelius Scipio two
hundred of the Carthaginian prisoners, selecting whom they pleased; and
that they should convey to him a message that if the peace were
concluded he should restore them to the Carthaginians without ransom.
The heralds being ordered to go into Africa to strike the league, at
their own desire the senate passed a decree that they should take with
them flint stones of their own and vervain of their own; that the Roman
praetor should command them to strike the league, and that they should
demand of him herbs. The description of herb usually given to the
heralds is taken from the Capitol. Thus the Carthaginians being allowed
to depart from Rome, when they had gone into Africa to Scipio concluded
the peace on the terms before mentioned. They delivered up their
men-of-war, their elephants, deserters, fugitives, and four thousand
prisoners, among whom was Quintus Terentius Culleo, a senator. The ships
he ordered to be taken out into the main and burned. Some say there were
five hundred of every description of those which are worked with oars,
and that the sudden sight of these when burning occasioned as deep a
sensation of grief to the Carthaginians as if Carthage had been in
flames. The measures adopted respecting the deserters were more severe
than those respecting the fugitives. Those who were of the Latin
confederacy were decapitated; the Romans were crucified.

The last peace with the Carthaginians was made forty years before this
in the consulate of Quintus Lutatius and Aulus Manlius. The war
commenced twenty-three years afterward in the consulate of Publius
Cornelius and Tiberius Sempronius. It was concluded in the seventeenth
year, in the consulate of Cneius Cornelius and Publius Aelius Paetus. It
is related that Scipio frequently said afterward, that first the
ambition of Tiberius Claudius, and afterward of Cneius Cornelius, were
the causes which prevented his terminating the war by the destruction of
Carthage.

The Carthaginians finding difficulty in raising the first sum of money
to be paid, as their finances were exhausted by a protracted war, and in
consequence great lamentation and grief arising in the senate house, it
is said that Hannibal was observed laughing, and when Hasdrubal Haedus
rebuked him for laughing amid the public grief, when he himself was the
occasion of the tears which were shed, he said: "If, as the expression
of the countenance is discerned by the sight, so the inward feelings of
the mind could be distinguished, it would clearly appear to you that
that laughter which you censure came from a heart not elated with joy,
but frantic with misfortunes. And yet it is not so ill-timed as those
absurd and inconsistent tears of yours. Then you ought to have wept when
our arms were taken from us, our ships burned, and we were forbidden to
engage in foreign wars, for that was the wound by which we fell. Nor is
it just that you should suppose that the measures which the Romans have
adopted toward you have been dictated by animosity. No great state can
remain at rest long together. If it has no enemy abroad it finds one at
home in the same manner as over-robust bodies seem secure from external
causes, but are encumbered with their own strength. So far, forsooth, we
are affected with the public calamities as they reach our private
affairs; nor is there any circumstance attending them which is felt more
acutely than the loss of money. Accordingly, when the spoils were torn
down from vanquished Carthage, when you beheld her left unarmed and
defenceless amid so many armed nations of Africa, none heaved a sigh.
Now, because a tribute is to be levied from private property you lament
with one accord, as though at the funeral of the State. How much do I
dread lest you should soon be made sensible that you have shed tears
this day for the lightest of your misfortunes!"

Such were the sentiments which Hannibal delivered to the Carthaginians.
Scipio, having summoned an assembly, presented Masinissa, in addition to
his paternal dominions, with the town of Cirta, and the other cities and
territories which had passed from the kingdom of Syphax into the
possession of the Romans. He ordered Cneius Octavius to conduct the
fleet to Sicily and deliver it to Cneius Cornelius the consul, and
directed the Carthaginian ambassadors to go to Rome, that the
arrangements he had made with the advice of the ten deputies might be
ratified by the sanction of the fathers and the order of the people.

Peace having been established by sea and land, he embarked his troops
and crossed over to Lilybæum in Sicily, whence, having sent a great part
of his soldiers by ships, he himself proceeded through Italy, which was
rejoicing not less on account of the peace than the victory; while not
only the inhabitants of the cities poured out to show him honor, but
crowds of rustics thronged the roads. He arrived at Rome and entered the
city in a triumph of unparalleled splendor. He brought into the treasury
one hundred and twenty-three thousand pounds of silver. He distributed
to each of his soldiers four hundred asses out of the spoils. By the
death of Syphax, which took place but a short time before at Tibur,
whither he had been removed from Alba, a diminution was occasioned in
the interest of the pageant rather than in the glory of him who
triumphed. His death, however, was attended with circumstances which
produced a strong sensation, for he was buried at the public expense.
Polybius, an author by no means to be despised, asserts that this King
was led in the triumph. Quintus Terentius Culleo followed Scipio in his
triumph with a cap of liberty on his head, and during the remainder of
his life treated him with the respect due to him as the author of his
freedom. I have not been able to ascertain whether the partiality of the
soldiers or the favor of the people fixed upon him the surname of
Africanus, or whether in the same manner as Felix was applied to Sulla,
and Magnus to Pompey, in the memory of our fathers, it originated in the
flattery of his friends. He was doubtless the first general who was
distinguished by a name derived from the nation which he had conquered.
Afterward, in imitation of his example, some, by no means his equals in
his victories, affixed splendid inscriptions on their statues and gave
honorable surnames to their families.




JUDAS MACCAÆBUS LIBERATES JUDEA

B.C. 165

JOSEPHUS


(The noble-minded Judas Maccabaeus was the hero of Jewish independence--
the deliverer of Judea and Judaism during the bloody persecutions of the
Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes, in the second century B.C. This King
was attempting to destroy in Palestine the national religion. For this
purpose pagan altars were set up among the Jews and pagan sacrifices
enjoined upon the worshippers of Jehovah. Many Jews fled from their own
towns and villages into the uninhabited wilderness, in order that they
might have liberty to worship the God of their fathers; but a few
conformed to the ordinances of Antiochus. Soon, however, open resistance
to the decrees of the pagan ruler began to manifest itself among the
faithful.

The first protest in the shape of active opposition was made by
Mattathias, a priest living at Modin. When the servants of Antiochus
came to that retired village and commanded Mattathias to do sacrifice to
the heathen gods, he refused; he went so far as to strike down at the
altar a Jew who was preparing to offer such a sacrifice. Then he escaped
to the mountains with his five sons and a band of followers. These
followers grew in numbers and activity, overthrowing pagan altars,
circumcising heathen children, and putting to the sword both apostates
and unbelievers. When Mattathias died, in B.C. 166, he was succeeded as
leader by his son Judas, called Maccabaeus, "the Hammer"; as Charles,
who defeated the Saracens at Tours, is called Martel or hammer.

The successes of Judas were uninterrupted, and culminated B.C. 165 in
the repulse of Lysias, the general of Antiochus, at Bethzur, where a
large Syrian force gathered in the expectation of crushing the patriotic
army of Judas. After this victory Judas led his followers into Jerusalem
and proceeded to restore the Temple and the worship of the national
religion, and to cleanse the Temple from all traces of pagan worship.
The great altar was rebuilt; new sacred vessels provided; and an
eight-days' dedication festival begun on the very day when, three years
before, the altar of Jehovah had been desecrated by a heathen sacrifice.
This Feast of the Dedication was ever afterward observed in the Temple
at Jerusalem and is mentioned in the gospels [John x. 22]. Judas
established a dynasty of priest-kings, which lasted until supplanted by
Herod, with the aid of the Romans, in B.C. 40; and gave by his genuinely
heroic bearing his name to this whole glorious epoch of Jewish history.)


Now at this time there was one whose name was Mattathias, who dwelt at
Modin, the son of John, the son of Simeon, the son of Asamoneus, a
priest of the order of Joarib, and a citizen of Jerusalem. He had five
sons: John, who was called Gaddis, and Simon, who was called Matthes,
and Judas, who was called Maccabæus,[66] and Eleazar, who was called
Auran, and Jonathan, who was called Apphus. Now this Mattathias lamented
to his children the sad state of their affairs, and the ravage made in
the city, and the plundering of the Temple, and the calamities the
multitude were under; and he told them that it was better for them to
die for the laws of their country than to live so ingloriously as they
then did.

[Footnote 66: That this appellation of Maccabee was not first of all
given to Judas Maccabæaus, nor was derived from any initial letters of
the Hebrew words on his banner, _Mi Kamoka Be Elim, Jehovah_? ("Who is
like unto thee among the gods, O Jehovah?"), Exod. xv. II, as the modern
rabbins vainly pretend, see _Authent. Rec._, part i., pp. 205, 206. Only
we may note, by the way, that the original name of these Maccabees and
their posterity was Asamoneans, which was derived from Asamoneus, the
great-grandfather of Mattathias, as Josephus here informs us.]

But when those that were appointed by the King were come to Modin that
they might compel the Jews to do what they were commanded, and to enjoin
those that were there to offer sacrifice, as the King had commanded,
they desired that Mattathias, a person of the greatest character among
them, both on other accounts and particularly on account of such a
numerous and so deserving a family of children, would begin the
sacrifice, because his fellow-citizens would follow his example, and
because such a procedure would make him honored by the King. But
Mattathias said that he would not do it, and that if all the other
nations would obey the commands of Antiochus, either out of fear or to
please him, yet would not he nor his sons leave the religious worship of
their country; but as soon as he had ended his speech there came one of
the Jews into the midst of them and sacrificed as Antiochus had
commanded. At which Mattathias had great indignation, and ran upon him
violently with his sons, who had swords with them, and slew both the man
himself that sacrificed and Apelles, the King's general who compelled
him to sacrifice, with a few of his soldiers.

He also overthrew the idol altar and cried out, "If," said he, "anyone
be zealous for the laws of his country and for the worship of God, let
him follow me"; and when he had said this he made haste into the desert
with his sons, and left all his substance in the village. Many others
did the same also, and fled with their children and wives into the
desert and dwelt in caves; but when the King's generals heard this, they
took all the forces they then had in the citadel at Jerusalem, and
pursued the Jews into the desert; and when they had overtaken them, they
in the first place endeavored to persuade them to repent, and to choose
what was most for their advantage and not put them to the necessity of
using them according to the law of war; but when they would not comply
with their persuasions, but continued to be of a different mind, they
fought against them on the Sabbath day, and they burned them as they
were in the caves, without resistance, and without so much as stopping
up the entrances of the caves. And they avoided to defend themselves on
that day because they were not willing to break in upon the honor they
owed the Sabbath, even in such distresses; for our law requires that we
rest upon that day.

There were about a thousand, with their wives and children, who were
smothered and died in these caves; but many of those that escaped joined
themselves to Mattathias and appointed him to be their ruler, who taught
them to fight even on the Sabbath day, and told them that unless they
would do so they would become their own enemies by observing the law [so
rigorously] while their adversaries would still assault them on this
day, and they would not then defend themselves; and that nothing could
then hinder but they must all perish without fighting. This speech
persuaded them, and this rule continues among us to this day, that if
there be a necessity we may fight on Sabbath days. So Mattathias got a
great army about him and overthrew their idol altars and slew those that
broke the laws, even all that he could get under his power; for many of
them were dispersed among the nations round about them for fear of him.
He also commanded that those boys who were not yet circumcised should be
circumcised now; and he drove those away that were appointed to hinder
such their circumcision.

But when he had ruled one year and was fallen into a distemper, he
called for his sons and set them round about him, and said: "O my sons,
I am going the way of all the earth; and I recommend to you my
resolution and beseech you not to be negligent in keeping it, but to be
mindful of the desires of him who begat you and brought you up, and to
preserve the customs of your country, and to recover your ancient form
of government which is in danger of being overturned, and not to be
carried away with those that either by their own inclination or out of
necessity betray it, but to become such sons as are worthy of me; to be
above all force and necessity, and so to dispose your souls as to be
ready when it shall be necessary to die for your laws, as sensible of
this, by just reasoning, that if God see that you are so disposed he
will not overlook you, but will have a great value for your virtue, and
will restore to you again what you have lost and will return to you that
freedom in which you shall live quietly and enjoy your own customs.

"Your bodies are mortal and subject to fate; but they receive a sort of
immortality by the remembrance of what actions they have done; and I
would have you so in love with this immortality that you may pursue
after glory, and that when you have undergone the greatest difficulties
you may not scruple for such things to lose your lives. I exhort you
especially to agree one with another, and in what excellency any one of
you exceeds another, to yield to him so far, and by that means to reap
the advantage of everyone's own virtues. Do you then esteem Simon as
your father because he is a man of extraordinary prudence, and be
governed by him in what counsels he gives you. Take Maccabaeus for the
general of your army, because of his courage and strength, for he will
avenge your nation and will bring vengeance on your enemies. Admit among
you the righteous and religious, and augment their power."

When Mattathias had thus discoursed to his sons and had prayed to God to
be their assistant and to recover to the people their former
constitution, he died a little afterward, and was buried at Modin, all
the people making great lamentation for him. Whereupon his son Judas
took upon him the administration of public affairs, in the hundred and
forty-sixth year; and thus, by the ready assistance of his brethren and
of others, Judas cast their enemies out of the country and put those of
their own country to death who had transgressed its laws, and purified
the land of all the pollutions that were in it.

When Apollonius, the general of the Samaritan forces, heard this he took
his army and made haste to go against Judas, who met him and joined
battle with him, and beat him and slew many of his men, and among them
Apollonius himself, their general, whose sword, being that which he
happened then to wear, he seized upon and kept for himself; but he
wounded more than he slew, and took a great deal of prey from the
enemy's camp, and went his way; but when Seron, who was general of the
army of Celesyria, heard that many had joined themselves to Judas, and
that he had about him an army sufficient for fighting and for making
war, he determined to make an expedition against him, as thinking it
became him to endeavor to punish those that transgressed the King's
injunctions. He then got together an army as large as he was able, and
joined to it the renegade and wicked Jews, and came against Judas.

He then came as far as Bethoron, a village of Judea, and there pitched
his camp; upon which Judas met him, and when he intended to give him
battle he saw that his soldiers were backward to fight because their
number was small and because they wanted food, for they were fasting. He
encouraged them and said to them that victory and conquest of enemies
are not derived from the multitude in armies, but in the exercise of
piety toward God; and that they had the plainest instances in their
forefathers, who, by their righteousness and exerting themselves on
behalf of their own laws and their own children, had frequently
conquered many ten thousands, for innocence is the strongest army. By
this speech he induced his men to contemn the multitude of the enemy,
and to fall upon Seron; and upon joining battle with him he beat the
Syrians; and when their general fell among the rest they all ran away
with speed, as thinking that to be their best way of escaping. So he
pursued them unto the plain and slew about eight hundred of the enemy,
but the rest escaped to the region which lay near to the sea.

When king Antiochus heard of these things he was very angry at what had
happened; so he got together all his own army, with many mercenaries
whom he had hired from the islands, and took them with him, and prepared
to break into Judea about the beginning of the spring; but when, upon
his mustering his soldiers, he perceived that his treasures were
deficient, and there was a want of money in them, for all the taxes were
not paid, by reason of the seditions there had been among the nations,
he having been so magnanimous and so liberal that what he had was not
sufficient for him, he therefore resolved first to go into Persia and
collect the taxes of that country. Hereupon he left one whose name was
Lysias, who was in great repute with him, governor of the kingdom, as
far as the bounds of Egypt and of the Lower Asia and reaching from the
river Euphrates, and committed to him a certain part of his forces and
of his elephants and charged him to bring up his son Antiochus with all
possible care until he came back; and that he should conquer Judea and
take its inhabitants for slaves and utterly destroy Jerusalem, and
abolish the whole nation; and when king Antiochus had given these things
in charge to Lysias, he went into Persia, and in the hundred and
forty-seventh year he passed over Euphrates and went to the superior
provinces.

Upon this Lysias chose Ptolemy the son of Dorymenes, and Nicanor, and
Gorgias, very potent men among the King's friends, and delivered to them
forty thousand foot-soldiers and seven thousand horsemen, and sent them
against Judea, who came as far as the city Emmaus and pitched their camp
in the plain country. There came also to them auxiliaries out of Syria
and the country round about, as also many of the renegade Jews; and
besides these came some merchants to buy those that should be carried
captives--having bonds with them to bind those that should be made
prisoners--with that silver and gold which they were to pay for their
price; and when Judas saw their camp and how numerous their enemies
were, he persuaded his own soldiers to be of good courage, and exhorted
them to place their hopes of victory in God and to make supplication to
him, according to the custom of their country, clothed in sackcloth, and
to show what was their usual habit of supplication in the greatest
dangers, and thereby to prevail with God to grant them the victory over
their enemies. So he set them in their ancient order of battle used by
their forefathers, under their captains of thousands, and other
officers, and dismissed such as were newly married, as well as those
that had newly gained possessions, that they might not fight in a
cowardly manner out of an inordinate love of life, in order to enjoy
those blessings.

When he had thus disposed his soldiers he encouraged them to fight by
the following speech, which he made to them: "O my fellow-soldiers, no
other time remains more opportune than the present for courage and
contempt of dangers; for if you now fight manfully you may recover your
liberty, which, as it is a thing of itself agreeable to all men, so it
proves to be to us much more desirable, by its affording us the liberty
of worshipping God. Since, therefore, you are in such circumstances at
present, you must either recover that liberty and so regain a happy and
blessed way of living, which is that according to our laws and the
customs of our country, or to submit to the most opprobrious sufferings;
nor will any seed of your nation remain if you be beat in this battle.
Fight therefore manfully, and suppose that you must die though you do
not fight; but believe that besides such glorious rewards as those of
the liberty of your country, of your laws, of your religion, you shall
then obtain everlasting glory. Prepare yourselves, therefore, and put
yourselves into such an agreeable posture that you may be ready to fight
with the enemy as soon as it is day to-morrow morning."

And this was the speech which Judas made to encourage them. But when the
enemy sent Gorgias with five thousand foot and one thousand horse, that
he might fall upon Judas by night, and had for that purpose certain of
the renegade Jews as guides, the son of Mattathias perceived it and
resolved to fall upon those enemies that were in their camp, now their
forces were divided. When they had therefore supped in good time and had
left many fires in their camp he marched all night to those enemies that
were at Emmaus; so that when Gorgias found no enemy in their camp, but
suspected that they were retired and had hidden themselves among the
mountains, he resolved to go and seek them wheresoever they were.

But about break of day Judas appeared to those enemies that were at
Emmaus, with only three thousand men, and those ill-armed by reason of
their poverty; and when he saw the enemy very well and skilfully
fortified in their camp he encouraged the Jews and told them that they
ought to fight, though it were with their naked bodies, for that God had
sometimes of old given such men strength, and that against such as were
more in number, and were armed also, out of regard to their great
courage. So he commanded the trumpeters to sound for the battle, and by
thus falling upon the enemy when they did not expect it, and thereby
astonishing and disturbing their minds, he slew many of those that
resisted him and went on pursuing the rest as far as Gadara and the
plains of Idumea, and Ashdod, and Jamnia; and of these there fell about
three thousand. Yet did Judas exhort his soldiers not to be too desirous
of the spoils, for that still they must have a contest and battle with
Gorgias and the forces that were with him, but that when they had once
overcome them then they might securely plunder the camp because they
were the only enemies remaining, and they expected no others.

And just as he was speaking to his soldiers, Gorigas' men looked down
into that army which they left in their camp and saw that it was
overthrown and the camp burned; for the smoke that arose from it showed
them, even when they were a great way off, what had happened. When,
therefore, those that were with Gorgias understood that things were in
this posture, and perceived that those that were with Judas were ready
to fight them, they also were affrighted and put to flight; but then
Judas, as though he had already beaten Gorgias' soldiers without
fighting, returned and seized on the spoils. He took a great quantity of
gold and silver and purple and blue, and then returned home with joy,
and singing hymns to God for their good success; for this victory
greatly contributed to the recovery of their liberty.

Hereupon Lysias was confounded at the defeat of the army which he had
sent, and the next year he got together sixty thousand chosen men. He
also took five thousand horsemen and fell upon Judea, and he went up to
the hill country of Bethsur, a village of Judea, and pitched his camp
there, where Judas met him with ten thousand men; and when he saw the
great number of his enemies, he prayed to God that he would assist him,
and joined battle with the first of the enemy that appeared and beat
them and slew about five thousand of them, and thereby became terrible
to the rest of them. Nay, indeed, Lysias observing the great spirit of
the Jews, how they were prepared to die rather than lose their liberty,
and being afraid of their desperate way of fighting, as if it were real
strength, he took the rest of the army back with him and returned to
Antioch.

When, therefore, the generals of Antiochus' armies had been beaten so
often, Judas assembled the people together, and told them that after
these many victories which God had given them, they ought to go up to
Jerusalem and purify the Temple and offer the appointed sacrifices. But
as soon as he with the whole multitude was come to Jerusalem and found
the Temple deserted and its gates burned down and plants growing in the
Temple of their own accord on account of its desertion, he and those
that were with him began to lament and were quite confounded at the
sight of the Temple; so he chose out some of his soldiers and gave them
orders to fight against those guards that were in the citadel until he
should have purified the Temple. When therefore he had carefully purged
it and had brought in new vessels, the candlestick, the table [of
shewbread], and the altar [of incense], which were made of gold, he hung
up the veils at the gates and added doors to them.

He also took down the altar [of burnt-offering], and built a new one of
stones that he gathered together and not of such as were hewn with iron
tools. So on the five-and-twentieth day of the month of Casleu, which
the Macedonians call Apelleus, they lighted the lamps that were on the
candlestick and offered incense upon the altar [of incense], and laid
the loaves upon the table [of shew-bread], and offered burnt-offerings
upon the new altar [of burnt-offering]. Now it so fell out that these
things were done on the very same day on which their divine worship had
fallen off and was reduced to a profane and common use after three
years' time; for so it was, that the Temple was made desolate by
Antiochus, and so continued for three years. This desolation happened to
the Temple in the hundred forty and fifth year, on the twenty-fifth day
of the month Apelleus, and on the hundred and fifty-third Olympiad; but
it was dedicated anew, on the same day, the twenty-fifth of the month
Apelleus, in the hundred and forty-eighth year, and on the hundred and
fifty-fourth Olympiad. And this desolation came to pass according to the
prophecy of Daniel, which was given four hundred and eight years before,
for he declared that the Macedonians would dissolve that worship [for
some time].

Now Judas celebrated the festival of the restoration of the sacrifices
of the Temple for eight days, and omitted no sort of pleasures thereon;
but he feasted them upon very rich and splendid sacrifices, and he
honored God and delighted them by hymns and psalms. Nay, they were so
very glad at the revival of their customs, when after a long time of
intermission they unexpectedly had regained the freedom of their
worship, that they made it a law for their posterity that they should
keep a festival, on account of the restoration of their Temple worship,
for eight days. And from that time to this we celebrate this festival
and call it Lights. I suppose the reason was, because this liberty
beyond our hopes appeared to us, and that thence was the name given to
that festival. Judas also rebuilt the walls round about the city, and
reared towers of great height against the incursions of enemies, and set
guards therein. He also fortified the city Bethsura that it might serve
as a citadel against any distresses that might come from our enemies.

When these things were over, the nations round about the Jews were very
uneasy at the revival of their power and rose up together and destroyed
many of them, as gaining advantage over them by laying snares for them
and making secret conspiracies against them. Judas made perpetual
expeditions against these men, and endeavored to restrain them from
those incursions and to prevent the mischiefs they did to the Jews. So
he fell upon the Idumeans, the posterity of Esau, at Acra-battene, and
slew a great many of them and took their spoils. He also shut up the
sons of Bean, that laid wait for the Jews; and he sat down about them,
and besieged them, and burned their towers and destroyed the men [that
were in them]. After this he went thence in haste against the Ammonites
who had a great and a numerous army, of which Timotheus was the
commander. And when he had subdued them he seized on the city of Jazer,
and took their wives and their children captives and burned the city and
then returned into Judea. But when the neighboring nations understood
that he was returned they got together in great numbers in the land of
Gilead and came against those Jews that were at their borders, who then
fled to the garrison of Dathema, and sent to Judas to inform him that
Timotheus was endeavoring to take the place whither they were fled. And
as these epistles were reading, there came other messengers out of
Galilee who informed him that the inhabitants of Ptolemais, and of Tyre
and Sidon, and strangers of Galilee, were gotten together.

Accordingly Judas, upon considering what was fit to be done with
relation to the necessity both these cases required, gave order that
Simon his brother should take three thousand chosen men and go to the
assistance of the Jews in Galilee, while he and another of his brothers,
Jonathan, made haste into the land of Gilead with eight thousand
soldiers. And he left Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, to be
over the rest of the forces, and charged them to keep Judea very
carefully and to fight no battles with any persons whomsoever until his
return. Accordingly Simon went into Galilee and fought the enemy and put
them to flight, and pursued them to the very gates of Ptolemais, and
slew about three thousand of them, and took the spoils of those that
were slain and those Jews whom they had made captives, with their
baggage, and then returned home.

Now as for Judas Maccabaeus and his brother Jonathan, they passed over
the river Jordan, and when they had gone three days' journey they
lighted upon the Nabateans, who came to meet them peaceably and who told
them how the affairs of those in the land of Galilee stood and how many
of them were in distress and driven into garrisons and into the cities
of Galilee, and exhorted him to make haste to go against the foreigners,
and to endeavor to save his own countrymen out of their hands. To this
exhortation Judas hearkened and returned into the wilderness, and in the
first place fell upon the inhabitants of Bosor, and took the city, and
beat the inhabitants, and destroyed all the males, and all that were
able to fight, and burned the city. Nor did he stop even when night came
on, but he journeyed in it to the garrison where the Jews happened to be
then shut up, and where Timotheus lay round the place with his army; and
Judas came upon the city in the morning, and when he found that the
enemy were making an assault upon the walls, and that some of them
brought ladders on which they might get upon those walls, and that
others brought engines [to batter them], he bid the trumpeter to sound
his trumpet, and he encouraged his soldiers cheerfully to undergo
dangers for the sake of their brethren and kindred; he also parted his
army into three bodies and fell upon the backs of their enemies. But
when Timotheus' men perceived that it was Maccabaeus that was upon them,
of both whose courage and good success in war they had formerly had
sufficient experience, they were put to flight; but Judas followed them
with his army and slew about eight thousand of them. He then turned
aside to a city of the foreigners called Malle, and took it, and slew
all the males and burned the city itself. He then removed from thence,
and overthrew Casphom and Bosor, and many other cities of the land of
Gilead.

But not long after this Timotheus prepared a great army, and took many
others as auxiliaries, and induced some of the Arabians by the promise
of rewards to go with him in this expedition, and came with his army
beyond the brook over against the city Raphon; and he encouraged his
soldiers, if it came to a battle with the Jews, to fight courageously,
and to hinder their passing over the brook; for he said to them
beforehand that "if they come over it we shall be beaten." And when
Judas heard that Timotheus prepared himself to fight he took all his own
army and went in haste against Timotheus, his enemy; and when he had
passed over the brook he fell upon his enemies, and some of them met
him, whom he slew, and others of them he so terrified that he compelled
them to throw down their arms and fly, and some of them escaped; but
some of them fled to what was called the temple of Carnaim, and hoped
thereby to preserve themselves, but Judas took the city and slew them
and burned the temple, and so used several ways of destroying his
enemies.

When he had done this he gathered the Jews together with their children
and wives and the substance that belonged to them, and was going to
bring them back into Judea. But as soon as he was come to a certain city
the name of which was Ephron, that lay upon the road--and as it was not
possible for him to go any other way, so he was not willing to go back
again--he then sent to the inhabitants, and desired that they would open
their gates and permit them to go on their way through the city; for
they had stopped up the gates with stones and cut off their passage
through it. And when the inhabitants of Ephron would not agree to this
proposal, he encouraged those that were with him, and encompassed the
city round and besieged it, and lying round it by day and night took the
city and slew every male in it and burned it all down, and so obtained a
way through it; and the multitude of those that were slain was so great
that they went over the dead bodies. So they came over Jordan and
arrived at the great plain over against which is situate the city
Bethshan, which is called by the Greeks Scythopolis.[67] And going away
hastily from thence, they came into Judea, singing psalms and hymns as
they went, and indulging such tokens of mirth as are usual in triumphs
upon victory. They also offered thank-offerings both for their good
success and for the preservation of their army, for not one of the Jews
was slain in these battles.

[Footnote 67: The reason why Bethshan was called Scythopolis is well
known from Herodotus, b. i., p. 105, and Syncellus, p. 214, that the
Scythians, where they overran Asia, in the days of Josiah, seized on
this city, and kept it as long as they continued in Asia; from which
time it retained the name of Scythopolis, or the City of the Scythians.]

But as to Joseph, the son of Zacharias, and Azarias, whom Judas left
generals [of the rest of his forces] at the same time when Simon was in
Galilee fighting against the people of Ptolemais, and Judas himself and
his brother Jonathan were in the land of Gilead, did these men also
affect the glory of being courageous generals in war, in order whereto
they took the army that was under their command and came to Jamnia.
There Gorgias, the general of the forces of Jamnia, met them, and upon
joining battle with him they lost two thousand of their army and fled
away, and were pursued to the very borders of Judea. And this misfortune
befell them by their disobedience to what injunctions Judas had given
them not to fight with anyone before his return. For besides the rest of
Judas' sagacious counsels, one may well wonder at this concerning the
misfortune that befell the forces commanded by Joseph and Azarias, which
he understood would happen if they broke any of the injunctions he had
given them. But Judas and his brethren did not leave off fighting with
the Idumeans, but pressed upon them on all sides, and took from them the
city of Hebron, and demolished all its fortifications and set all its
towers on fire, and burned the country of the foreigners and the city
Marissa. They came also to Ashdod, and took it, and laid it waste, and
took away a great deal of the spoils and prey that were in it and
returned to Judea.




THE GRACCHI AND THEIR REFORMS

B.C. 133

THEODOR MOMMSEN


(Cornelia, whose father was Scipio Africanus, preferred to be called
"Mother of the Gracchi" rather than daughter of the conqueror of
Numantia. Tiberius and Caius Gracchus, her sons, were born at a time
when the social condition of Rome was rank with corruption. The small
farmer class were deprived of holdings, the soil was being worked by
slaves, and its products wasted on pleasure and debauchery by the rich;
the law courts were controlled by the wealthy and powerful, while
oppression, bribery, and fraud were generally rampant in the city.

On December 10, B.C. 133, Tiberius Gracchus entered upon the office of
tribune, to which he had been elected, and pledged himself to the
abolition of crying abuses. His first movement was in the direction of
agrarian legislation. He proposed to vest all public lands in the hands
of three commissioners [triumviri], who were to distribute the public
lands, at that time largely monopolized by the wealthy, to all citizens
in needy circumstances. The bill met with bitter opposition from the
rich landholders, but was eventually passed, and Gracchus rose to the
summit of popular power. He also brought forward a measure limiting the
necessary period of military service; a second bill was drawn up by him
for the reformation of the law courts, and a third established a right
of appeal from the law courts to the popular assembly. These measures
were afterward carried by his brother Caius. Tiberius Gracchus was
killed in a tumult which was raised in the Forum by the nobles and their
partisans, and three hundred of his followers lost their lives in the
fray.

Caius Gracchus, his brother, returned to Rome B.C. 124 from Sardinia,
where he had been engaged in subduing the mountaineers. For ten years he
had kept aloof from public life, but was at once elected tribune, in the
discharge of which office he showed distinguished powers as an orator.
He brought forth the important measures known as the Sempronian Laws,
the provisions of which were quite revolutionary in character. The first
of these laws renewed and extended the agrarian laws of his brother and
instituted new colonies in Italy and the provinces. By the second
Sempronian law the State undertook to furnish corn at a low price to all
Roman citizens.

Other measures aimed at diminishing the great administrative power of
the senate, which had so far monopolized all judicial offices. By the
law of Gracchus the administration of justice was entirely transferred
to a body of three hundred persons who possessed the equestrian rate of
property. The Sempronian law for the assignment of consular provinces,
which hitherto had been left to the senate, made the allotment of two
designated provinces to be decided by the newly elected consuls
themselves. The power of the senate was also crippled by the law of
Gracchus in which he transferred to the tribunes the burden of improving
the roads of Italy, contracts for which had hitherto been awarded by the
censor under the approval of the senate. These movements were all in the
direction of increasing popular and democratic power, and the work of
the Gracchi tended to the extension of political freedom. In the history
of politics these social struggles are among the most important events
illustrative of the gradual dawn of civil liberty among a people which
had been dominated and oppressed by a selfish aristocracy.)


The power of Gracchus rested on the mercantile class and the
proletariat; primarily on the latter, which in this conflict--wherein
neither side had any military reserve--acted, as it were, the part of an
army. It was clear that the senate was not powerful enough to wrest
either from the merchants or from the proletariat their new privileges;
any attempt to assail the corn laws or the new jury arrangement would
have led under a somewhat grosser or somewhat more civilized form to a
street riot, in presence of which the senate was utterly defenceless.
But it was no less clear that Gracchus himself and these merchants and
proletarians were only kept together by mutual advantage, and that the
men of material interests were ready to accept their posts, and the
populace, strictly so called, its bread, quite as well from any other as
from Caius Gracchus.

The institutions of Gracchus stood, for the moment at least, immovably
firm, with the exception of a single one--his own supremacy. The
weakness of the latter lay in the fact that in the constitution of
Gracchus there was no relation of allegiance subsisting at all between
the chief and the army; and, while the new constitution possessed all
other elements of vitality, it lacked one--the moral tie between ruler
and ruled, without which every state rests on a pedestal of clay. In the
rejection of the proposal to admit the Latins to the franchise it had
been demonstrated with decisive clearness that the multitude in fact
never voted for Gracchus, but always simply for itself. The aristocracy
conceived the plan of offering battle to the author of the corn
largesses and land assignations on his own ground.

As a matter of course the senate offered to the proletariat not merely
the same advantages as Gracchus had already assured to it in corn and
otherwise, but advantages still greater. Commissioned by the senate, the
tribune of the people, Marcus Livius Drusus, proposed to relieve those
who received land under the laws of Gracchus from the rent imposed on
them, and to declare their allotments to be free and alienable property;
and, further, to provide for the proletariat not in transmarine, but in
twelve Italian, colonies, each of three thousand colonists, for the
planting of which the people might nominate suitable men; only Drusus
himself declined--in contrast with the family complexion of the Gracchan
commission--to take part in this honorable duty. Presumably the Latins
were named as those who would have to bear the costs of the plan, for
there does not appear to have existed then in Italy other occupied
domain land of any extent save that which was enjoyed by them.

We find isolated enactments of Drusus--such as the regulation that the
punishment of scourging might only be inflicted on the Latin soldier by
the Latin officer set over him, and not by the Roman officer--which were
to all appearance intended to indemnify the Latins for other losses. The
plan was not the most refined. The attempt at rivalry was too clear; the
endeavor to draw the fair bond between the nobles and the proletariat
still closer by their exercising jointly a tyranny over the Latins was
too transparent; the inquiry suggested itself too readily.

In what part of the peninsula, now that the Italian domains had been
mainly given away already--even granting that the whole domains assigned
to the Latins were confiscated--was the occupied domain land requisite
for the formation of twelve new, numerous, and compact burgess
communities to be discovered? Lastly, the declaration of Drusus that he
would have nothing to do with the execution of his law was so dreadfully
prudent as to border on sheer folly. But the clumsy snare was quite
suited to the stupid game which they wished to catch. There was the
additional and perhaps decisive consideration that Gracchus, on whose
personal influence everything depended, was just then establishing the
Carthaginian colony in Africa, and that his lieutenant in the capital,
Marcus Flaccus, played into the hands of his opponents by his vehement
and maladroit acts. The "people" accordingly ratified the Livian laws as
readily as it had before ratified the Sempronian. It then as usual
repaid its latest by inflicting a gentle blow on its earlier benefactor,
declining to reëlect him when he stood for the third time as a candidate
for the tribunate for the year B.C. 120. On this occasion, however,
there are alleged to have been unjust proceedings on the part of the
tribune presiding at the election, who had been offended by Gracchus.

Thus the foundation of his despotism gave way beneath him. A second blow
was inflicted on him by the consular elections, which not only proved,
in a general sense, adverse to the democracy, but which placed at the
head of the State Lucius Opimius, one of the least scrupulous chiefs of
the strict aristocratic party and a man firmly resolved to get rid of
their dangerous antagonist at the earliest opportunity. Such an
opportunity soon occurred. On the 10th of December, B.C. 121, Gracchus
ceased to be tribune of the people. On the 1st of January, B.C. 120,
Opimius entered upon his office.

The first attack, as was fair, was directed against the most useful and
the most unpopular measure of Gracchus, the reëstablishment of Carthage,
while the transmarine colonies had hitherto been only indirectly
assailed through the greater allurements of the Italian. African hyenas,
it was now alleged, dug up the newly placed boundary stones of Carthage,
and the Roman priests when requested certified that such signs and
portents ought to form an express warning against rebuilding on a site
accursed by the gods. The senate thereby found itself in its conscience
compelled to have a law proposed which prohibited the planting of the
colony of Sunonia. Gracchus, who with the other men nominated to
establish it was just then selecting the colonists, appeared on the day
of voting at the Capitol, whither the burgesses were convoked, with a
view to procure by means of his adherents the rejection of the law.

He wished to shun acts of violence that he might not himself supply his
opponents with the pretext which they sought, but he had not been able
to prevent a great portion of his faithful partisans--who remembered the
catastrophe of Tiberius, and were well acquainted with the designs of
the aristocracy--from appearing in arms, fearing that, amid the immense
excitement on both sides, quarrels could hardly be avoided. The consul
Lucius Opimius offered the usual sacrifice in the porch of the
Capitoline temple, one of the attendants assisting at the ceremony.
Quintus Antullius, with the holy entrails in his hands, haughtily
ordered the "bad citizens" to quit the porch, and seemed as though he
would lay hands on Caius himself; whereupon a zealous Gracchan drew his
sword and cut the man down. A fearful tumult arose. Gracchus vainly
sought to address the people and to disclaim the responsibility for the
sacreligious murder; he only furnished his antagonists with a further
formal ground of accusation, as, without being aware of it in the
confusion, he interrupted a tribune in the act of speaking to the
people--an offence for which an obsolete statute, originating at the
time of the old dissensions between the orders (I. 353), had prescribed
the severest penalty. The consul Lucius Opimius took his measures to put
down by force of arms the insurrection for the overthrow of the
republican constitution, as they were fond of designating the events of
this day. He himself passed the night in the temple of Castor in the
Forum. At early dawn the Capitol was filled with Cretan archers, the
senate house and Forum with the men of the government party (the
senators and that section of the _equites_ adhering to them), who by
order of the consul had all appeared in arms, each attended by two armed
slaves. None of the aristocracy was absent; even the aged and venerable
Quintus Metellus, well disposed to reform, had appeared with shield and
sword. An officer of ability and experience acquired in the Spanish
wars, Decimus Brutus, was intrusted with the command of the armed force;
the senate assembled in the senate house. The bier with the corpse of
Antullius was deposited in front of it, the senate as if surprised
appeared _en masse_ at the door in order to view the dead body, and then
retired to determine what should be done.

The leaders of the democracy had gone from the Capitol to their houses;
Marcus Flaccus had spent the night in preparing for the war in the
streets, while Gracchus apparently disdained to strive with destiny.
Next morning when they learned of the preparations made by their
opponents at the Capitol and the Forum, both proceeded to the Aventine,
the old stronghold of the popular party in the struggles between the
patricians and the plebeians. Gracchus went thither silent and unarmed.
Flaccus called the slaves to arms and intrenched himself in the temple
of Diana, while he at the same time sent his younger son Quintus to the
enemy's camp in order if possible to arrange a compromise. The latter
returned with the announcement that the aristocracy demanded
unconditional surrender. At the same time he brought a summons from the
senate to Gracchus and Flaccus to appear before it and to answer for
their violation of the majesty of the tribunes.

Gracchus wished to comply with the summons, but Flaccus prevented him
from doing so, and repeated the equally weak and mistaken attempt to
move such antagonists to a compromise. When instead of the two cited
leaders the young Quintus Flaccus once more presented himself alone, the
consul treated their refusal to appear as the beginning of open
insurrection against the Government. He ordered the messenger to be
arrested and gave the signal for attack on the Aventine, while at the
same time he caused proclamations to be made in the streets that the
Government would give to whomsoever should bring the head of Gracchus or
of Flaccus its literal weight in gold; and that they would guarantee
complete indemnity to everyone who should leave the Aventine before the
beginning of the conflict. The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned;
the valiant nobility in conjunction with the Cretans and the slaves
stormed the almost undefended mount, and killed all whom they
found--about two hundred and fifty persons, mostly of humble rank.
Marcus Flaccus fled with his eldest son to a place of concealment, where
they were soon afterward hunted out and put to death. Gracchus had at
the beginning of the conflict retired into the temple of Minerva and was
there about to pierce himself with his sword when his friend Publius
Laetorius seized his arm and besought him to preserve himself, if
possible, for better times.

Gracchus was induced to make an attempt to escape to the other bank of
the Tiber, but when hastening down the hill he fell and sprained his
foot. To gain time for him to escape, his two attendants turned, and
facing his pursuers allowed themselves to be cut down. As Marcus
Pomponius at the Porta Trigemina under the Aventine; Publius Laetorius
at the bridge over the Tiber--where Horatius Cocles was said to have
once withstood, singly, the Etruscan army--so Gracchus, attended only by
his slave Euporus, reached the suburb on the right bank of the Tiber.

There, in the grove of Furrina, afterward were found the two dead
bodies. It seemed as if the slave had put to death first his master, and
then himself. The heads of the two fallen leaders were handed over to
the Government as required. The stipulated price, and more, was paid to
Lucius Septumuleius, a man of quality, the bearer of the head of
Gracchus; while the murderers of Flaccus, persons of humble rank, were
sent away with empty hands. The bodies of the dead were thrown into the
river, and the houses of the leaders were abandoned to the pillage of
the multitude. The warfare of prosecution against the partisans of
Gracchus began on the grandest scale; as many as three thousand of them
are said to have been strangled in prison, among whom was Quintus
Flaccus, eighteen years of age, who had taken no part in the conflict,
and was universally lamented on account of his youth and his amiable
disposition. On the open space beneath the Capitol, where the altar
consecrated by Camillus after the restoration of internal peace (I.
382), and other shrines--erected on similar occasions to Concord--were
situated, the small chapels were pulled down, and out of the property of
the killed or condemned traitors--which was confiscated, even to the
portions of their wives--a new and splendid temple of Concord, with the
basilica belonging to it, was erected in accordance with a decree of the
senate by the consul Lucius Opimius.

Certainly it was an act in accordance with the spirit of the age to
remove the memorials of the old and to inaugurate a new Concord over the
remains of the three grandsons of Zama, all of whom--first, Tiberius
Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the
mightiest, Caius Gracchus--had now been engulfed by the revolution. The
memory of the Gracchi remained officially proscribed; Cornelia was not
allowed even to put on mourning for the death of her last son; but the
passionate attachment which very many had felt toward the two noble
brothers, and especially toward Caius, during their life, was touchingly
displayed also after their death, in the almost religious veneration
which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of the police,
continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where they had fallen.




CAESAR CONQUERS GAUL[68]


B.C. 58-50

NAPOLEON III


[Footnote 68: From Louis Napoleon's Julius Caesar, by permission of
Harper & Brothers.]

(In Caesar's military performances the Gallic war plays the most
important part, as shown in his _Commentaries_, his sole extant literary
work and almost the only authority for this part of Roman history.


Cisalpine Gaul--that portion lying on the southern or Italian side of
the Alps--came partly under the dominion of Rome as early as B.C. 282,
when a Roman colony was founded at Sena Gallica. This division of Gaul
was wholly conquered by B.C. 191; and in B.C. 43, having been made a
Roman province, it became a part of Italy.

Transalpine Gaul--that part lying north and northwest of the Alps from
Rome--comprised in Caesar's day three divisions: Aquitaine to the
southwest, Celtic Gaul in the middle, and Belgic Gaul to the northwest.
The region was inhabited by various tribes having neither unity of race
nor of customs whereby nationality becomes distinguished. Toward the
close of the second century B.C. the Romans made their first settlements
in Transalpine Gaul, in the southeastern part. At the time when Caesar
became proconsul in Gaul, B.C. 58, the province was in a state of
tranquillity, but Fortune seemed determined that he should have great
opportunities for the display of his military genius, and, when Asia had
been subdued by Pompey, "conferred what remained to be done in Europe
upon Caesar." The attempt of the Helvetii to leave their homes in the
Alps for new dwelling-places in Gaul served him as an occasion for war.
As they were crossing the Arar [now Saone] he attacked and routed them,
later defeated them again, and at last drove them back to their own
country.

The story of the long war, with its various campaigns, has become
familiar to the world's readers through the masterly account of Caesar
himself, known to "every schoolboy" who advances to the dignity of
classical studies. In the end the country between the Pyrenees and the
Rhine was subjugated, and for several centuries it remained a Roman
province.

At the time when the history is taken up in the following narrative by
Napoleon III, the great rebellion, B.C. 52, had sustained a heavy blow
in the surrender of Alesia, and the capture of the heroic chief and
leader of the insurrection, Vercingetorix, whom Caesar exhibited in his
triumph at Rome, B.C. 46, and then caused to be put to death.

The distinguished author of the article says he wrote "for the purpose
of proving that when Providence raises up such men as Caesar,
Charlemagne, and Napoleon it is to trace out to peoples the path they
ought to follow, to stamp with the seal of their genius a new era, and
to accomplish in a few years the work of many centuries." The work was
prepared [_vide Manual of Historical Literature_: Adams] with the utmost
care--a care which extended in some instances to special surveys, to
insure perfect accuracy in the descriptions, etc.)


The capture of Alesia and that of Vercingetorix, in spite of the united
efforts of all Gaul, naturally gave Caesar hopes of a general
submission; and he therefore believed that he could leave his army
during the winter to rest quietly in its quarters from the hard labors
which had lasted without interruption during the whole of the past
summer. But the spirit of insurrection was not extinct among the Gauls;
and convinced by experience that whatever might be their number they
could not in a body cope with troops inured to war, they resolved, by
partial insurrections raised on all points at once, to divide the
attention and the forces of the Romans as their only chance of resisting
them with advantage.

Caesar was unwilling to leave them time to realize this new plan, but
gave the command of his winter quarters to his quaestor, Mark Antony;
quitted Bibracte on the day before the Calends of January (the 25th of
December) with an escort of cavalry, joined the Thirteenth legion, which
was in winter quarters among the Bituriges, not far from the frontier of
the Aldui, and called to him the Eleventh legion, which was the nearest
at hand. Having left two cohorts of each legion to guard the baggage, he
proceeded toward the fertile country of the Bituriges, a vast territory,
where the presence of a single legion was insufficient to put a stop to
the preparations for insurrection.

His sudden arrival in the midst of men without distrust, who were spread
over the open country, produced the result which he expected. They were
surprised before they could enter into their _oppidae_--for Caesar had
strictly forbidden everything which might have raised their suspicion;
especially the application of fire, which usually betrays the sudden
presence of an enemy. Several thousands of captives were made. Those who
succeeded in escaping sought in vain a refuge among the neighboring
nations. Caesar, by forced marches, came up with them everywhere and
obliged each tribe to think of its own safety before that of others.

This activity held the populations in their fidelity, and through fear
engaged the wavering to submit to the conditions of peace. Thus the
Bituriges, seeing that Caesar offered them an easy way to recover his
protection, and that the neighboring states had suffered no other
chastisement than that of having to deliver hostages, did not hesitate
in submitting.

The soldiers of the Eleventh and Thirteenth legions had, during the
winter, supported with rare constancy the fatigues of very difficult
marches in intolerable cold. To reward them he promised to give by way
of prize-money two hundred _sestertii_ to each soldier and two thousand
to each centurion. He then sent them into their winter quarters and
returned to Bibracte after an absence of forty days. While he was there,
dispensing justice, the Bituriges came to implore his support against
the attacks of the Carnutes. Although it was only eighteen days since he
returned, he marched again at the head of two legions--the Sixth and the
Fourteenth--which had been placed on the Saone to insure the supply of
provisions.

On his approach the Carnutes, taught by the fate of others, abandoned
their miserable huts--which they had erected on the site of their burgs
and oppida destroyed in the last campaign--and fled in every direction.

Caesar, unwilling to expose his soldiers to the rigor of the season,
established his camp at Genabum (Gien), and lodged them partly in the
huts which had remained undestroyed, partly in tents under penthouses
covered with straw. The cavalry and auxiliary infantry were sent in
pursuit of the Carnutes, who, hunted down everywhere, and without
shelter, took refuge in the neighboring counties.

After having dispersed some rebellious meetings and stifled the germs of
an insurrection, Caesar believed that the summer would pass without any
serious war. He left therefore at Genabum the two legions he had with
him, and gave the command of them to C. Trebonius.

Nevertheless, he learned by several intimations from the Remi that the
Bellovaci and neighboring peoples, with Correus and Commius at their
head, were collecting troops to make an inroad on the territory of the
Suessiones, who had been placed--since the campaign of 697--under the
dependence of the Remi.

He considered that he regarded his interest as well as his dignity in
protecting allies who had deserved so well of the republic. He again
drew the Eleventh legion from its winter quarters, sent written orders
to C. Fabius, who was encamped in the country of the Remi, to bring into
that of the Suessiones the two legions under his command, and demanded
one of his legions from Labienus, who was at Besançon. Thus without
taking any rest himself he shared the fatigues among the legions by
turns, as far as the position of the winter quarters and the necessities
of the war permitted.

When this army was assembled he marched against the Bellovaci,
established his camp on their territory, and sent cavalry in every
direction in order to make some prisoners and learn from them the
designs of the enemy. The cavalry reported that the emigration was
general, and that the few inhabitants who were to be seen were not
remaining behind in order to apply themselves to agriculture, but to act
as spies upon the Romans.

Caesar by interrogating the prisoners learned that all the Bellovaci
able to fight had assembled on one spot, and that they had been joined
by the Ambiani, the Aulerci, the Caletes, the Veliocasses, and the
Atrebates. Their camp was in a forest on a height surrounded by
marshes--Mont Saint Marc, in the forest of Compiègne; their baggage had
been transported to more distant woods. The command was divided among
several chiefs, but the greater part obeyed Correus on account of his
well-known hatred of the Romans. Commius had a few days before gone to
seek succor from the numerous Germans who lived in great numbers in the
neighboring counties--probably those on the banks of the Meuse.

The Bellovaci resolved with one accord to give Caesar battle, if, as
report said, he was advancing with only three legions; for they would
not run the risk of having afterward to encounter his entire army. If,
on the contrary, the Romans were advancing with more considerable forces
they proposed to keep their positions and confine themselves to
intercepting, by means of ambuscades, the provisions and forage, which
were very scarce at that season.

This plan, confirmed by many reports, seemed to Caesar full of prudence
and altogether contrary to the usual rashness of the barbarians. He took
therefore every possible care to dissimulate as to the number of his
troops. He had with him the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth legions, composed
of old soldiers of tried valor, and the Eleventh, which, formed of
picked young men who had gone through eight campaigns, deserved his
confidence, although it could not be compared with the others with
regard to bravery and experience in war. In order to deceive the enemy
by showing them only three legions--the only number they were willing to
fight--he placed the Seventh, Eighth, and Ninth in one line; while the
baggage, which was not very considerable, was placed behind under the
protection of the Eleventh legion, which closed the march. In this
order, which formed almost a square, he came unawares in sight of the
Bellovaci. At the unexpected view of the legions, which advanced in
order of battle and with a firm step, they lost their courage and,
instead of attacking, as they had engaged to do, they confined
themselves to drawing themselves up before their camp without leaving
the height. A valley deeper than it was wide separated the two armies.

On account of this obstacle and the numerical superiority of the
barbarians, Caesar, though he had wished for battle, abandoned the idea
of attacking them and placed his camp opposite that of the Gauls in a
strong position. He caused it to be surrounded with a parapet twelve
feet high, surmounted by accessory works proportioned to the importance
of the retrenchment and preceded by a double fosse fifteen feet wide,
with a square bottom. Towers of three stories were constructed from
distance to distance and united together by covered bridges, the
exterior parts of which were protected by hurdle-work. In this manner
the camp was protected not only by a double fosse, but also by a double
row of defenders, some of whom, placed on the bridges, could from this
elevated and sheltered position throw their missiles farther and with a
better aim; while the others, placed on the _vallum_, nearer to the
enemy, were protected by the bridges from the missiles which showered
down upon them. The entrances were defended by means of higher towers
and were closed with gates.

These formidable retrenchments had a double aim--to increase the
confidence of the barbarians by making them believe that they were
feared, and next to allow the number of the garrison to be reduced with
safety when they had to go far for provisions. For some days there were
no serious engagements, but slight skirmishes in the marshy plain which
extended between the two camps. The capture, however, of a few foragers
did not fail to swell the presumption of the barbarians, which was still
more increased by the arrival of Commius, although he had brought only
five hundred German cavalry.

The enemy remained for several days shut up in its impregnable position.
Caesar judged that an assault would cost too many lives; an investment
alone seemed to him opportune, but it would require a greater number of
troops.

He wrote thereupon to Trebonius to send him as soon as possible the
Thirteenth legion, which, under the command of T. Sextius, was in winter
quarters among the Bituriges, to join it with the Sixth and the
Fourteenth (which the first of these lieutenants commanded at Genabum),
and to come himself with these three legions by forced marches.

During this time he employed the numerous cavalry of the Remi, the
Lingones and the other allies, to protect the foragers and to prevent
surprises, but this daily service, as is often the case, ended by being
negligently performed. And one day the Remi, pursuing the Bellovaci with
too much ardor, fell into an ambuscade. In withdrawing they were
surrounded by foot-soldiers in the midst of whom Vertiscus, their chief,
met with his death. True to his Gaulish nature, he would not allow his
age to exempt him from commanding and mounting on horseback, although he
was hardly able to keep his seat. His death and this feeble advantage
raised the self-confidence of the barbarians still more, but it rendered
the Romans more circumspect.

Nevertheless, in one of the skirmishes which were continually taking
place within sight of the two camps about the fordable places of the
marsh, the German infantry--which Caesar had sent for from beyond the
Rhine in order to mix them with the cavalry--joined in a body, boldly
crossed the marsh, and, meeting with little resistance, continued the
pursuit with such impetuosity that fear seized not only the enemy who
fought, but even those who were in reserve. Instead of availing
themselves of the advantages of the ground, all fled in a cowardly
manner. They did not stop until they were within their camp, and some
even were not ashamed to fly beyond it. This defeat caused a general
discouragement, for the Gauls were as easily daunted by the least
reverse as they were made arrogant by the smallest success.

Day after day was passing in this manner when Caesar was informed of the
arrival of C. Trebonius and his troops, which raised the number of his
legions to seven. The chiefs of the Bellovaci then feared an investment
like that of Alesia, and resolved to quit their position. They sent away
by night the old men, the infirm, the unarmed men, and the part of the
baggage which they had kept with them. Scarcely was this confused
multitude in motion--embarrassed by its own mass and its numerous
chariots--when daylight surprised it, and the troops had to be drawn up
in line before the camp to give the column time to move away. Caesar saw
no advantage either in giving battle to those who were in position, nor,
on account of the steepness of the hill, in pursuing those who were
making their retreat; he resolved, nevertheless, to make two legions
advance in order to disturb the enemy in its retreat. Having observed
that the mountain on which the Gauls were established was connected with
another height (Mont Collet), from which it was only separated by a
narrow valley, he ordered bridges to be thrown across the marsh. The
legions crossed over them and soon attained the summit of the height,
which was defended on both sides by abrupt declivities.

There he collected his troops and advanced in order of battle up to the
extremity of the plateau, whence the engines placed in battery could
reach the masses of the enemy with their missiles.

The barbarians, rendered confident by the advantage of their position,
were ready to accept battle if the Romans dared to attack the mountain;
besides, they were afraid to withdraw their troops successively, as, if
divided, they might have been thrown into disorder. This attitude led
Cæsar to resolve upon leaving twenty cohorts under arms, and on tracing
a camp on this spot and retrenching it. When the works were completed
the legions were placed before the retrenchments and the cavalry
distributed with their horses bridled at the outposts. The Bellovaci had
recourse to a stratagem in order to effect their retreat. They passed
from hand to hand the fascines and the straw on which, according to the
Gaulish custom, they were in the habit of sitting, preserving at the
same time their order of battle; placed them in front of the camp, and
toward the close of the day, on a preconcerted signal, set fire to them.
Immediately a vast flame concealed from the Romans the Gaulish troops,
who fled in haste.

Although the fire prevented Cæsar from seeing the retreat of the enemy
he suspected it. He ordered his legions to advance, and sent the cavalry
in pursuit, but he marched slowly in fear of some stratagem, suspecting
the barbarians to have formed the design of drawing the Romans to
disadvantageous ground. Besides, the cavalry did not dare to ride
through the smoke and flames; and thus the Bellovaci were able to pass
over a distance of ten miles and halt in a place strongly fortified by
nature (Mont Ganelon), where they pitched their camp. In this position
they confined themselves to placing cavalry and infantry in frequent
ambuscades, thus inflicting great damage on the Romans when they went to
forage. After several encounters of this kind Cæsar learned by a
prisoner that Correus, chief of the Bellovaci, with six thousand picked
infantry and one thousand horsemen, was preparing an ambuscade in places
where the abundance of corn and forage was likely to attract the Romans.
In consequence of this information he sent forward the cavalry, which
was always employed to protect the foragers, and joined with them some
light-armed auxiliaries, while he himself, with a greater number of
legions, followed them as closely as possible.

The enemy had posted themselves in a plain--that of Choisy-au-Bac--of
about one thousand paces in length and the same in breadth, surrounded
on one side by forests, on the other by a river which was difficult to
pass (the Aisne). The cavalry becoming acquainted with the designs of
the Gauls and feeling themselves supported, advanced resolutely in
squadrons toward this plain, which was surrounded with ambushes on all
sides.

Correus, seeing them arrive in this manner, believed the opportunity
favorable for the execution of his plan and began by attacking the first
squadrons with a few men. The Romans sustained the shock without
concentrating themselves in a mass on the same point, "which," says
Hirtius, "usually happens in cavalry engagements, and leads always to a
dangerous confusion." There, on the contrary, the squadrons, remaining
separated, fought in detached bodies, and when one of them advanced, its
flanks were protected by the others. Correus then ordered the rest of
his cavalry to issue from the woods. An obstinate combat began on all
sides without any decisive result until the enemy's infantry, debouching
from the forest in close ranks, forced the Roman cavalry to fall back.
The lightly armed soldiers who preceded the legions placed themselves
between the squadrons and restored the fortune of the combat. After a
certain time the troops, animated by the approach of the legions and the
arrival of Caesar, and ambitious of obtaining alone the honor of the
victory, redoubled their efforts and gained the advantage. The enemy, on
the other hand, were discouraged and took to flight, but were stopped by
the very obstacles which they intended to throw in the way of the
Romans. A small number, nevertheless, escaped through the forest and
crossed the river. Correus, who remained unshaken under this
catastrophe, obstinately refused to surrender, and fell pierced with
wounds. After this success Caesar hoped that if he continued his march
the enemy in dismay would abandon his camp, which was only eight miles
from the field of battle. He therefore crossed the Aisne, though not
without great difficulties.

The Bellovaci and their allies, informed by the fugitives of the death
of Correus, of the loss of their cavalry and the flower of their
infantry, and fearing every moment to see the Romans appear, convoked by
sound of trumpet a general assembly and decided by acclamation to send
deputies and hostages to the proconsul. The barbarians implored
forgiveness, alleging that this last defeat had ruined their power, and
that the death of Correus, the instigator of the war, delivered them
from oppression, for, during his life, it was not the senate which
governed, but an ignorant multitude. To their prayers Caesar replied
that last year the Bellovaci had revolted in concert with the other
Gaulish peoples, but that _they_ alone had persisted in the revolt. It
was very convenient to throw their faults upon those who were dead, but
how could it be believed that with nothing but the help of a weak
populace a man should have had sufficient influence to raise and sustain
a war contrary to the will of the chiefs, the decision of the senate,
and the desire of honest people? However, the evil which they had drawn
upon themselves was for him a sufficient reparation.

The following night the Bellovaci and their allies submitted, with the
exception of Commius, who fled to the country from which he had but
recently drawn support. He had not dared to trust the Romans for the
following reason: "The year before, in the absence of Caesar, T.
Labienus, informed that Commius was conspiring and preparing an
insurrection, thought that without accusing him of bad faith," says
Hirtius, "he could repress his treason." ("Under pretext of an interview
he sent C. Volusenus Quadratus, with some centurions, to kill him; but
when they were in the presence of the Gaulish chief the centurion who
was to strike him missed his blow and only wounded him; swords were
drawn on both sides and Commius had time to escape.")

The most warlike tribes had been vanquished and none of them dreamed of
further revolt. Nevertheless, many inhabitants of the newly conquered
countries abandoned the towns and the fields in order to withdraw
themselves from the Roman dominion. Caesar, in order to put a stop to
this emigration, distributed his army in different countries. He ordered
the quaestor, Mark Antony, to come to him with the Twelfth legion, and
sent the lieutenant Fabius with twenty-five cohorts into an opposite
part of Gaul--to the country situated between the Creuse and the
Vienne--where it was said that several tribes were in arms, and where
the lieutenant, Caninius Rebilus, who commanded with two legions, did
not appear to be sufficiently strong. Lastly, he ordered T. Labienus to
join him in person and to send the Fifteenth legion, which he had under
his command, into Cisalpine Gaul to protect the colonies of Roman
citizens there against the sudden inroads of the barbarians, who the
summer before had attacked the Tergestini (the inhabitants of Trieste).

As for Cæsar, he proceeded with four legions to the territory of the
Eburones to lay it waste. As he could not secure Ambiorix, who was still
wandering at large, he thought it advisable to destroy everything by
fire and sword, persuaded that this chief would never dare to return to
a country upon which he had brought such a terrible calamity. The
legions and the auxiliaries were charged with the execution of this
plan. Then he sent Labienus, with two legions, to the country of the
Treviri, who, always at war with the Germans, were only kept in
obedience by the presence of a Roman army.

During this time Caninius Rebilus, who had first been appointed to go
into the country of the Ruteni, but who had been detained by petty
insurrections in the region situated between the Creuse and the Vienne,
learned that numerous hostile bands were assembling in the country of
the Pictones. He was informed of this by letters from Duratius, their
king, who, amid the defection of a part of his people, had remained
invariably faithful to the Romans. He started immediately for Lemonum
(Poitiers). On the road he learned from prisoners that Duratius was shut
up there and besieged by several thousand men under the orders of
Dumnacus, chief of the Andes.

Rebilus, at the head of two weak legions, did not dare to measure his
strength with the enemy; he contented himself with establishing his camp
in a strong position. At the news of his approach, Dumnacus raised the
siege, and marched to meet the legions, but after several days of
fruitless attempts to force their camp he returned to attack Lemonum.

Meanwhile, the lieutenant, Caius Fabius, occupied in pacifying several
other tribes, learned from Caninius Rebilus what was going on in the
country of the Pictones and marched without delay to the assistance of
Duratius. The news of the march of Fabius deprived Dumnacus of all hope
of opposing, at the same time, the troops shut up in Lemonum and the
relieving army. He abandoned the siege again in great haste, not
thinking himself safe until he had placed the Loire between himself and
the Romans; but he could only pass that river where there was a bridge
(at Saumur). Before he had joined Rebilus, before he had even obtained a
sight of the enemy, Fabius, who came from the North, and had lost no
time, doubted not, from what he heard from the people of the country,
that Dumnacus, in his fear, had taken the road which led to that bridge.
He therefore marched thither with his legions, preceded at a short
distance by his cavalry. The latter surprised the column of Dumnacus on
its march, dispersed it, and returned to the camp laden with booty.

During the night of the following day Fabius again sent his cavalry
forward with orders to delay the march of the enemy so as to give time
for the arrival of the infantry. The two bodies of cavalry were soon
engaged, but the enemy, thinking he had to contend with only the same
troops as the day before, drew up his infantry in line so as to support
the squadrons, when suddenly the Roman legions appeared in order of
battle. At this sight the barbarians were struck with terror, the long
train of baggage thrown into confusion, and the infantry dispersed. More
than twelve thousand men were killed and all the baggage fell into the
hands of the Romans.

Only five thousand fugitives escaped from this rout; they were received
by the Senonan, Drappes, the same who in the first revolt of the Gauls
had collected a crowd of vagabonds, slaves, exiles, and robbers to
intercept the convoys of the Romans.

They took the direction of the Narbonnese with the Cadurcan Lucterius
who had before attempted a similar invasion.

Rebilus pursued them with two legions in order to avoid the shame of
seeing the province suffering any injury from such a contemptible
rabble. As for Fabius, he led the twenty-five cohorts against the
Carnutes and the other tribes whose forces had already been reduced by
the defeat they had suffered from Dumnacus. The Carnutes, though often
beaten, had never been completely subdued. They gave hostages, and the
Armoricans followed their example. Dumnacus, driven out of his own
territory, went to seek a refuge in the remotest part of Gaul.

Drappes and Lucterius, when they learned that they were pursued by
Rebilus and his two legions, gave up the design of penetrating into the
province; they halted in the country of the Cadurci and threw themselves
into the _oppidum_ of Uxellodunum (Puy-d'Issolu, near Varac), an
exceedingly strong place formerly under the dependence of Lucterius, who
soon incited the inhabitants to revolt.

Rebilus appeared immediately before the town, which, surrounded on all
sides by steep rocks, was, even without being defended, difficult of
access to armed men. Knowing that there was in the oppidum so great a
quantity of baggage that the besieged could not send it away secretly
without being detected and overtaken by the cavalry, and even by the
infantry, he divided his cohorts into three bodies and established three
camps on the highest points. Next he ordered a countervallation to be
made. On seeing these preparations the besieged remembered the
ill-fortune of Alesia, and feared a similar fate. Lucterius, who had
witnessed the horrors of famine during the investment of that town, now
took especial care of the provisions.

During this time the garrison of the oppidum attacked the redoubts of
Rebilus several times, which obliged him to interrupt the work of the
countervallation, which, indeed, he had not sufficient forces to defend.

Drappes and Lucterius established themselves at a distance of ten miles
from the oppidum, with the intention of introducing the provisions
gradually. They shared the duties between them. Drappes remained with
part of the troops to protect the camp. Lucterius, during the
night-time, endeavored to introduce beasts of burden into the town by a
narrow and wooded path. The noise of their march gave warning to the
sentries. Rebilus, informed of what was going on, ordered the cohorts to
sally from the neighboring redoubts, and at daybreak fell upon the
convoy, the escort of which was slaughtered. Lucterius, having escaped
with a small number of his followers, was unable to rejoin Drappes.

Rebilus soon learned from prisoners that the rest of the troops which
had left the oppidum were with Drappes at a distance of twelve miles,
and that by a fortunate chance not one fugitive had taken that direction
to carry him news of the last combat. The Roman general sent in advance
all the cavalry and the light German infantry; he followed them with one
legion, without baggage, leaving the other as a guard to the three
camps. When he came near the enemy he learned, by his scouts, that the
barbarians--according to their custom of neglecting the heights--had
placed their camp on the banks of a river (probably the Dordogne); that
the Germans and the cavalry had surprised them, and that they were
already fighting. Rebilus then advanced rapidly at the head of the
legion drawn up in order of battle and took possession of the heights.

As soon as the ensigns appeared, the cavalry redoubled its ardor; the
cohorts rushed forward from all sides and the Gauls were taken or
killed. The booty was immense and Drappes fell into the hands of the
Romans.

Rebilus, after this successful exploit, which cost him but a few
wounded, returned under the walls of Uxellodunum. Fearing no longer any
attack from without, he set resolutely to work to continue his
circumvallation. The day after, C. Fabius arrived, followed by his
troops, and shared with him the labors of the siege. While the south of
Gaul was the scene of serious trouble, Cæsar left the quaestor, Mark
Antony, with fifteen cohorts in the country of the Bellovaci. To deprive
the Belgæ of all idea of revolt he had proceeded to the neighboring
countries with two legions; had exacted hostages, and restored
confidence by his conciliating speeches. When he arrived among the
Carnutes--who the year before had been the first to revolt--he saw that
the remembrance of their conduct kept them in great alarm, and he
resolved to put an end to it by causing his vengeance to fall only upon
Gutruatus, the instigator of the war.

This man was brought in and delivered up. Although Cæsar was naturally
inclined to be indulgent, he could not resist the tumultuous entreaties
of his soldiers, who made that chief responsible for all the dangers
they had run and for all the misery they had suffered. Gutruatus died
under the stripes and was afterward beheaded.

It was in the land of the Carnutes that Cæsar received news, by the
letters of Rebilus, of the events which had taken place at Uxellodunum
and of the resistance of the besieged. Although a handful of men shut up
in a fortress was not very formidable, he judged it necessary to punish
their obstinacy, for fear that the Gauls should entertain the conviction
that it was not strength, but constancy, which had failed them in
resisting the Romans; and lest this example might encourage the other
states which possessed fortresses advantageously situated, to recover
their independence.

Moreover, it was known everywhere among the Gauls that Cæsar had only
one more summer to hold his command, and that after that time they would
have nothing more to fear. He left therefore the lieutenant Quintus
Calenus at the head of his two legions, with orders to follow him by
ordinary marches, and, with his cavalry, hastened by long marches toward
Uxellodunum. Cæsar, arriving unexpectedly before the town, found it
completely defended at all accessible points. He judged that it could
not be taken by assault (_neque ab oppugnatione recedi vidaret ulla
conditione posse_), and, as it was abundantly provided with provisions,
conceived the project of depriving the inhabitants of water.

The mountain was surrounded almost on every side by very low ground, but
on one side there existed a valley through which a river (the Tourmente)
ran. As it flowed at the foot of two precipitous mountains the
disposition of the localities did not admit of turning it aside and
conducting it into lower channels. It was difficult for the besieged to
come down to it, and the Romans rendered the approaches to it still more
dangerous. They placed posts of archers and slingers, and brought
engines which commanded all the slopes which gave access to the river.
The besieged had thenceforth no other means of procuring water but by
carrying it from an abundant spring which arose at the foot of the wall
three hundred feet from the channel of the Tourmente. Cæsar resolved to
drain this spring, and for this purpose he did not hesitate to attempt a
laborious undertaking. Opposite the point where it rose he ordered
covered galleries to be pushed forward against the mountain, and under
protection of these a terrace to be raised--labors which were carried on
in the midst of continual fighting and weariness.

Although the besieged from their elevated position fought without danger
and wounded many Romans, yet the latter did not yield to discouragement,
but continued the work. At the same time they made a subterranean
gallery, which, running from the covered galleries, was intended to lead
up to the spring. This work, carried on free from all danger, was
executed without being perceived by the enemy. The terrace attained a
height of sixty feet and was surmounted by a tower of ten stories,
which, without equalling the elevation of the wall--a result it was
impossible to obtain--still commanded the fountain. Its approaches,
battered by engines from the top of this tower, became inaccessible. In
consequence of this, many men and animals in the place died of thirst.
The besieged, terrified at this mortality, filled barrels with pitch,
grease, and shavings, and rolled them flaming upon the Roman works,
making at the same time a sally to prevent them from extinguishing the
fire. Soon it spread to the covered galleries and the terrace, which
stopped the progress of the inflammable materials.

Notwithstanding the difficult nature of the ground and the increasing
danger, the Romans still persevered in their struggle. The battle took
place on a height within sight of the army. Loud cries were raised on
both sides. Each individual sought to rival his fellow in zeal, and the
more he was exposed to view the more courageously he faced the missiles
and the fire.

Caesar, as he was sustaining great loss, determined to feign an assault.
In order to create a diversion he ordered some cohorts to climb the hill
on all sides, uttering loud cries. This movement terrified the besieged,
who, fearing to be attacked at other points, called back to the defence
of the wall those who were setting fire to the works. Then the Romans
were enabled to extinguish the flames. The Gauls, although exhausted by
thirst and reduced to a small number, ceased not to defend themselves
vigorously. At length the subterranean gallery having reached the source
of the spring, the supply was turned aside. The besieged, beholding the
fountain suddenly become dry, believed in their despair that it was an
intervention of the gods, and, submitting to necessity, surrendered.

Caesar considered that the pacification of Gaul would never be completed
if as strong a resistance was encountered in other towns. He thought it
advisable to spread terror by a severe example--so much the more so as
"the well-known mildness of his temper," says Hirtius, "would not allow
this necessary rigor to be ascribed to cruelty." He ordered that all
those who had borne arms should have their hands cut off, and sent them
away living examples of the punishment reserved for rebels.

Drappes, who had been taken prisoner, starved himself to death;
Lucterius, who had been arrested by the Arvernan Epasnactus (a friend of
the Romans), was delivered up to Caesar. While these events were taking
place on the banks of the Dordogne, Labienus, in a cavalry engagement,
had gained a decisive advantage over a part of the Treviri and Germans;
had taken prisoner their chief, and thus subjected a people who were
always ready to support any insurrection against the Romans. The Aeduan
Surus fell also into his hands. He was a chief distinguished for his
courage and birth, and the only one of that nation who had not yet laid
down his arms.

From that moment Caesar considered Gaul to be completely pacified. He
resolved, however, to go himself to Aquitaine, which he had not yet
visited and which Publius Crassus had partly conquered. Arriving there
at the head of two legions, he obtained the complete submission of that
country without difficulty. All the tribes sent him hostages. He
proceeded next to Narbonne with a detachment of cavalry and charged his
lieutenants to put the army into winter quarters. Four legions, under
the orders of Mark Antony, Caius Trebonius, Publius Vatinius, and Q.
Tullius, were quartered in Belgium, two among the Aedui and two among
the Turones on the frontier of the Carnutes, to hold in check all the
countries bordering on the ocean.

These two last legions took up their winter quarters on the territory of
the Lemovices, not far from the Arverni, so that no part of Gaul should
be without troops. Caesar remained but a short time in the province,
presiding hastily over the assemblies, determining cases of public
dispute, and rewarding those who had served him well. He had had
occasion more than anyone to know their sentiments individually, because
during the general revolt of Gaul the fidelity and succor of the
province had aided him in triumphing over it. When these affairs were
settled he returned to his legions in Belgium and took up his winter
quarters at Nemetocenna (Arras).

There he was informed of the last attempts of Commius, who, continuing a
partisan war at the head of a small number of cavalry, intercepted the
Roman convoys. Mark Antony had charged C. Volusenus Quadratus, prefect
of the cavalry, to pursue him. He had accepted the task eagerly in the
hope of succeeding the second time better than the first, but Commius,
taking advantage of the rash ardor with which his enemy had rushed upon
him, had wounded him seriously and escaped. He was discouraged, however,
and had promised Mark Antony to retire to any spot which should be
appointed him on condition that he should never be compelled to appear
before a Roman. This condition having been accepted, he had given
hostages. Gaul was hereby subjugated. Death or slavery had carried off
its principal citizens. Of all the chiefs who had fought for its
independence only two survived--Commius and Ambiorix.

Banished far from their country they died in obscurity.




ROMAN INVASION AND CONQUEST OF BRITAIN

B.C. 55 - A.D. 79

OLIVER GOLDSMITH


(When Julius Caesar received the province of Gaul as his government,
B.C. 58, it was only a small portion of the territory inhabited by the
Gauls or Celts, being almost conterminous with the mediaeval Provence.
It was also at peace, and there seemed no excuse for making an extension
of Roman territory among the three tribes or races between which
Northern and Western Gaul were divided. But the Helvetii, who occupied
that part of the Alps known to-day as Switzerland, meditated an
emigration into the plains of Gaul, and, as their shortest route lay
across the Roman provinces, they asked leave of Caesar to pass three
hundred and sixty thousand souls in all, counting women and children,
through the imperial territory.

The Roman commander, after giving them an evasive answer, met them in
the territory of the Sequani and Aedui and defeated them, driving them
back to their mountains. He next went to the aid of the Aedui, ancient
allies of Rome, against the Arverni and Sequani, who had invaded the
Aeduan territory under a German chieftain, Ariovistus. The result was
that Ariovistus was defeated and driven eastward across the Rhine. He
then defeated the Belgae, who, in B.C. 57, took up arms against the
garrisons which he had left in the country of the Sequani [dwellers on
the Seine]. He continued his conquest of the Belgic territory, and
subjected the three nations who occupied it, finally entering the
country of the warlike Nervii, whom he only conquered after a stubborn
and bloody battle. As soon as he had subjugated the whole of Gaul, he
crossed the Rhine for the purpose of intimidating the Germans and
teaching them to keep within their own boundaries.

He pursued the same policy with regard to the Britons, who, according to
information received by him, had sent aid to the Gauls in their struggle
with Rome. His ships were brought round from the Loire to that part of
the French coast now known as Boulogne, and he set out for Britain,
where he landed, and eventually received the submission of the British
chieftains.)


The Britons in their rude and barbarous state seemed to stand in need of
more polished instructors; and indeed whatever evils may attend the
conquest of heroes, their success has generally produced one good effect
in disseminating the arts of refinement and humanity. It ever happens
when a barbarous nation is conquered by another more advanced in the
arts of peace, that it gains in elegance a recompense for what it loses
in liberty.

The Britons had long remained in this rude but independent state, when
Cæsar, having overrun Gaul with his victories, and willing still further
to extend his fame, determined upon the conquest of a country that
seemed to promise an easy triumph. He was allured neither by the riches
nor by the renown of the inhabitants; but being ambitious rather of
splendid than of useful conquests, he was willing to carry the Roman
arms into a country the remote situation of which would add seeming
difficulty to the enterprise and consequently produce an increase of
reputation. His pretence was to punish these islanders for having sent
succors to the Gauls while he waged war against that nation, as well as
for granting an asylum to such of the enemy as had sought protection
from his resentment.

The natives, informed of his intention, were sensible of the unequal
contest and endeavored to appease him by submission. He received their
ambassadors with great complacency, and having exhorted them to continue
steadfast in the same sentiments, in the mean time made preparations for
the execution of his design. When the troops designed for the expedition
were embarked he set sail for Britain about midnight, and the next
morning arrived on the coast near Dover, where he saw the rocks and
cliffs covered with armed men to oppose his landing.

Finding it impracticable to gain the shore where he first intended, from
the agitation of the sea and the impending mountains, he resolved to
choose a landing-place of greater security. The place he chose was about
eight miles farther on (some suppose at Deal), where an inclining shore
and a level country invited his attempts. The poor, naked, ill-armed
Britons we may well suppose were but an unequal match for the
disciplined Romans who had before conquered Gaul and afterward became
the conquerors of the world. However, they made a brave opposition
against the veteran army; the conflicts between them were fierce, the
losses mutual, and the success various.

The Britons had chosen Cassibelaunus for their commander-in-chief; but
the petty princes under his command, either desiring his station or
suspecting his fidelity, threw off their allegiance. Some of them fled
with their forces into the internal parts of the kingdom, others
submitted to Caesar; till at length Cassibelaunus himself, weakened by
so many desertions, resolved upon making what terms he was able while
yet he had power to keep the field. The conditions offered by Caesar and
accepted by him were that he should send to the Continent double the
number of hostages at first demanded and that he should acknowledge
subjection to the Romans.

The Romans were pleased with the name of this new and remote conquest,
and the senate decreed a supplication of twenty days in consequence of
their general's success. Having therefore in this manner rather
discovered than subdued the southern parts of the island, Caesar
returned into Gaul with his forces and left the Britons to enjoy their
customs, religion, and laws. But the inhabitants, thus relieved from the
terror of his arms, neglected the performance of their stipulations, and
only two of their states sent over hostages according to the treaty.
Caesar, it is likely, was not much displeased at the omission, as it
furnished him with a pretext for visiting the island once more and
completing a conquest which he had only begun.

Accordingly the ensuing spring he set sail for Britain with eight
hundred ships,[69] and arriving at the place of his descent he landed
without opposition. The islanders being apprised of his invasion had
assembled an army and marched down to the sea-side to oppose him, but
seeing the number of his forces, and the whole sea, as it were, covered
with his shipping, they were struck with consternation and retired to
their places of security. The Romans, however, pursued them to their
retreats until at last common danger induced these poor barbarians to
forget their former dissensions and to unite their whole strength for
the mutual defence of their liberty and possessions.

[Footnote 69: With regard to these Roman _ships_, let not our readers be
misled by a familiar notion or a pompous name. They were but little more
than rowboats, as may be easily imagined from the fact that Cicero
instances for its uncommon magnitude a _ship_ of only fifty-six tons!
These ancient vessels were occasionally sheathed with leather or lead,
and had the prow decorated with paint and gilding, while the stern was
sometimes carved in the figure of a shield, elaborately adorned. Upon a
staff there erected hung ribbons distinctive of the ship and serving at
the same time to show the direction of the wind. There, too, stood the
_tutela_, or chosen patron of the ship, to whom prayers and sacrifices
were daily offered. The selection of this deity was guided by either
private or professional reasons, and as merchants committed themselves
to the protection of Mercury, or lovers to the care of Cupid, warriors,
it will at once be surmised, made Mars the object of their pious
supplication.

At a later period than the epoch to which our present note attaches,
when Constantius removed from Heliopolis to Rome an enormous obelisk,
weighing fifteen hundred tons, the vessel on board of which it was
shipped also carried _eleven hundred and thirty-eight tons_ of pulse;
but such vast and unmanageable masses were regarded as monsters, and
owed their existence to the absolute urgency of a remarkable purpose,
backed by the despotic institutions of the times.]

Cassibelaunus was chosen to conduct the common cause, and for some time
he harassed the Romans in their march and revived the desponding hopes
of his countrymen. But no opposition that undisciplined strength could
make was able to repress the vigor and intrepidity of Cæsar. He
discomfited the Britons in every action; he advanced into the country,
passed the Thames in the face of the enemy, took and burned the capital
city of Cassibelaunus, established his ally Mandubratius as sovereign of
the Trinobantes; and having obliged the inhabitants to make new
submissions, he again returned with his army into Gaul, having made
himself rather the nominal than the real possessor of the island.

Whatever the stipulated tribute might have been, it is more than
probable, as there was no authority left to exact it, that it was but
indifferently paid. Upon the accession of Augustus, that Emperor had
formed a design of visiting Britain, but was diverted from it by an
unexpected revolt of the Pannonians. Some years after he resumed his
design; but being met in his way by the British ambassadors, who
promised the accustomed tribute and made the usual submissions, he
desisted from his intention. The year following, finding them remiss in
their supplies and untrue to their former professions, he once more
prepared for the invasion of the country; but a well-timed embassy again
averted his indignation, and the submissions he received seemed to
satisfy his resentment; upon his death-bed he appeared sensible of the
overgrown extent of the Roman Empire and recommended it to his
successors never to enlarge their territories.

Tiberius followed the maxims of Augustus and, wisely judging the empire
already too extensive, made no attempt upon Britain. Some Roman soldiers
having been wrecked on the British coast the inhabitants not only
assisted them with the greatest humanity, but sent them in safety back
to their general. In consequence of these friendly dispositions, a
constant intercourse of good offices subsisted between the two nations;
the principal British nobility resorted to Rome, and many received their
education there.

From that time the Britons began to improve in all the arts which
contribute to the advancement of human nature. The first art which a
savage people is generally taught by politer neighbors is that of war.
The Britons thenceforward, though not wholly addicted to the Roman
method of fighting, nevertheless adopted several of their improvements,
as well in their arms as in their arrangement in the field. Their
ferocity to strangers, for which they had been always remarkable, was
mitigated and they began to permit an intercourse of commerce even in
the internal parts of the country. They still, however, continued to
live as herdsmen and hunters; a manifest proof that the country was yet
but thinly inhabited. A nation of hunters can never be populous, as
their subsistence is necessarily diffused over a large tract of country,
while the husbandman converts every part of nature to human use, and
flourishes most by the vicinity of those whom he is to support.

The wild extravagances of Caligula by which he threatened Britain with
an invasion served rather to expose him to ridicule than the island to
danger. The Britons therefore for almost a century enjoyed their liberty
unmolested, till at length the Romans in the reign of Claudius began to
think seriously of reducing them under their dominion. The expedition
for this purpose was conducted in the beginning by Plautius and other
commanders, with that success which usually attended the Roman arms.

Claudius himself, finding affairs sufficiently prepared for his
reception, made a journey thither and received the submission of such
states as living by commerce were willing to purchase tranquillity at
the expense of freedom. It is true that many of the inland provinces
preferred their native simplicity to imported elegance and, rather than
bow their necks to the Roman yoke, offered their bosoms to the sword.
But the southern coast with all the adjacent inland country was seized
by the conquerors, who secured the possession by fortifying camps,
building fortresses, and planting colonies. The other parts of the
country, either thought themselves in no danger or continued patient
spectators of the approaching devastation.

Caractacus was the first who seemed willing, by a vigorous effort, to
rescue his country and repel its insulting and rapacious conquerors.[70]
The venality and corruption of the Roman prætors and officers, who were
appointed to levy the contributions in Britain, served to excite the
indignation of the natives and give spirit to his attempts. This rude
soldier, though with inferior forces, continued for about the space of
nine years to oppose and harass the Romans; so that at length Ostorius
Scapula was sent over to command their armies. He was more successful
than his predecessors. He advanced the Roman conquest over Britain,
pierced the country of the Silures, a warlike nation along the banks of
the Severn, and at length came up with Caractacus, who had taken
possession of a very advantageous post upon an almost inaccessible
mountain, washed by a deep and rapid stream.

[Footnote 70: The character of this hero has been powerfully depicted by
Beaumont and Fletcher, in one of their noblest dramas.]

The unfortunate British general, when he saw the enemy approaching, drew
up his army, composed of different tribes, and going from rank to rank
exhorted them to strike the last blow for liberty, safety, and life. To
these exhortations his soldiers replied with shouts of determined valor.
But what could undisciplined bravery avail against the attack of an army
skilled in all the arts of war and inspired by a long train of
conquests? The Britons were, after an obstinate resistance, totally
routed, and a few days after Caractacus himself was delivered up to the
conquerors by Cartismandua, queen of the Brigantes, with whom he had
taken refuge. The capture of this general was received with such joy at
Rome that Claudius commanded that he should be brought from Britain in
order to be exhibited as a spectacle to the Roman people. Accordingly,
on the day appointed for that purpose, the Emperor, ascending his
throne, ordered the captives and Caractacus among the number to be
brought into his presence. The vassals of the British King, with the
spoils taken in war, were first brought forward; these were followed by
his family, who, with abject lamentations, were seen to implore for
mercy.

Last of all came Caractacus with an undaunted air and a dignified
aspect. He appeared no way dejected at the amazing concourse of
spectators that were gathered upon this occasion, but, casting his eyes
on the splendors that surrounded him, "Alas!" cried he, "how is it
possible that a people possessed of such magnificence at home could envy
me an humble cottage in Britain?" When brought into the Emperor's
presence he is said to have addressed him in the following manner: "Had
my moderation been equal to my birth and fortune, I had arrived in this
city not as a captive, but as a friend. But my present misfortunes
redound as much to your honor as to my disgrace; and the obstinacy of my
opposition serves to increase the splendor of your victory. Had I
surrendered myself in the beginning of the contest, neither my disgrace
nor your glory would have attracted the attention of the world, and my
fate would have been buried in general oblivion. I am now at your mercy;
but if my life be spared, I shall remain an eternal monument of your
clemency and moderation." The Emperor was affected with the British
hero's misfortunes and won by his address. He ordered him to be
unchained upon the spot, with the rest of the captives, and the first
use they made of their liberty was to go and prostrate themselves before
the empress Agrippina, who as some suppose had been an intercessor for
their freedom.

Notwithstanding these misfortunes, the Britons were not subdued, and
this island was regarded by the ambitious Romans as a field in which
military honor might still be acquired. The Britons made one expiring
effort to recover their liberty in the time of Nero, taking advantage of
the absence of Paulinus, the Roman general, who was employed in subduing
the isle of Anglesey. That small island, separated from Britain by a
narrow channel, still continued the chief seat of the Druidical
superstition, and constantly afforded a retreat to their defeated
forces. It was thought necessary therefore to subdue that place, in
order to extirpate a religion that disdained submission to foreign laws
or leaders; and Paulinus, the greatest general of his age, undertook the
task.

The Britons endeavored to obstruct his landing on that last retreat of
their superstitions and liberties, both by the force of their arms and
the terrors of their religion. The priests and islanders were drawn up
in order of battle upon the shore, to oppose his landing. The women,
dressed like Furies, with dishevelled hair, and torches in their hands,
poured forth the most terrible execrations. Such a sight at first
confounded the Romans and fixed them motionless on the spot; so that
they received the first assault without opposition. But Paulinus,
exhorting his troops to despise the menaces of an absurd superstition,
impelled them to the attack, drove the Britons off the field, burned the
Druids in the same fires they had prepared for their captive enemies,
and destroyed all their consecrated groves and altars.

In the mean time the Britons, taking advantage of his absence, resolved,
by a general insurrection, to free themselves from that state of abject
servitude to which they were reduced by the Romans. They had many
motives to aggravate their resentment--the greatness of their taxes,
which were levied with unremitting severity; the cruel insolence of
their conquerors, who reproached that very poverty which they had
caused, but particularly the barbarous treatment of Boadicea, queen of
the Iceni, drove them at last into open rebellion.

Prasatagus, king of the Iceni, at his death had bequeathed one-half of
his dominions to the Romans, and the other to his daughters; thus hoping
by the sacrifice of a part to secure the rest in his family; but it had
a different effect; for the Roman procurator immediately took possession
of the whole, and when Boadicea, the widow of the deceased, attempted to
remonstrate, he ordered her to be scourged like a slave, and violated
the chastity of her daughters. These outrages were sufficient to produce
a revolt through the whole island. The Iceni, being the most deeply
interested in the quarrel, were the first to take arms; all the other
states soon followed the example, and Boadicea, a woman of great beauty
and masculine spirit, was appointed to head the common forces, which
amounted to two hundred and thirty thousand fighting men.

These, exasperated by their wrongs, attacked several of the Roman
settlements and colonies with success, Paulinus hastened to relieve
London, which was already a flourishing colony; but found on his arrival
that it would be requisite, for the general safety, to abandon that
place to the merciless fury of the enemy. London was therefore soon
reduced to ashes; such of the inhabitants as remained in it were
massacred; and the Romans with all other strangers to the number of
seventy thousand were cruelly put to the sword. Flushed with these
successes the Britons no longer sought to avoid the enemy, but boldly
came to the place where Paulinus awaited their arrival, posted in a very
advantageous manner with a body of ten thousand men. The battle was
obstinate and bloody. Boadicea herself appeared in a chariot with her
two daughters and harangued her army with masculine firmness; but the
irregular and undisciplined bravery of her troops was unable to resist
the cool intrepidity of the Romans. They were routed with great
slaughter; eighty thousand perished in the field, and an infinite number
were made prisoners, while Boadicea herself, fearing to fall into the
hands of the enraged victor, put an end to her life by poison. Nero soon
after recalled Paulinus from a government where, by suffering and
inflicting so many severities, he was judged improper to compose the
angry and alarmed minds of the natives.

After an interval, Cerealis received the command from Vespasian, and by
his bravery propagated the terror of the Roman arms. Julius Frontinus
succeeded Cerealis both in authority and reputation. The general who
finally established the dominion of the Romans in this island was Julius
Agricola, who governed it during the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and
Domitian, and distinguished himself as well by his courage as humanity.

Agricola, who is considered as one of the greatest characters in
history, formed a regular plan for subduing and civilizing the island,
and thus rendering the acquisition useful to the conquerors. As the
northern part of the country was least tractable, he carried his
victorious arms thither, and defeated the undisciplined enemy in every
encounter. He pierced into the formerly inaccessible forests and
mountains of Caledonia; he drove onward all those fierce and intractable
spirits who preferred famine to slavery, and who, rather than submit,
chose to remain in perpetual hostility. Nor was it without opposition
that he thus made his way into a country rude and impervious by nature.

He was opposed by Galgacus at the head of a numerous army, whom he
defeated in a decisive action, in which considerable numbers were slain.
Being thus successful, he did not think proper to pursue the enemy into
their retreats; but embarking a body of troops on board his fleet, he
ordered the commander to surround the whole coast of Britain, which had
not been discovered to be an island till the preceding year. This
armament, pursuant to his orders, steered to the northward, and there
subdued the Orkneys; then making the tour of the whole island, it
arrived in the port of Sandwich, without having met with the least
disaster.

During these military enterprises, Agricola was ever attentive to the
arts of peace. He attempted to humanize the fierceness of those who
acknowledged his power, by introducing the Roman laws, habits, manners,
and learning. He taught them to desire and raise all the conveniences of
life, instructed them in the arts of agriculture, and, in order to
protect them in their peaceable possessions, he drew a rampart, and
fixed a train of garrisons between them and their northern neighbors,
thus cutting off the ruder and more barren parts of the island and
securing the Roman province from the invasion of a fierce and
necessitous enemy. In this manner the Britons, being almost totally
subdued, now began to throw off all hopes of recovering their former
liberty, and, having often experienced the superiority of the Romans,
consented to submit, and were content with safety. From that time the
Romans seemed more desirous of securing what they possessed than of
making new conquests, and were employed rather in repressing than
punishing their restless northern invaders.




CLEOPATRA'S CONQUEST OF CÆSAR AND
ANTONY

B.C. 51-30

JOHN P. MAHAFFY


(Several Egyptian princesses of the line of the Ptolemies bore the name
of Cleopatra, but history, romance, and tragedy are all illumined with
the story of one--Cleopatra the daughter of Ptolemy Auletes. Born at
Alexandria, B.C. 69, she ruled jointly with her brother Ptolemy from 51
to 48. Being then expelled by her colleague, she entered upon the
performance of her part in Roman history when her cause was espoused by
Julius Cæsar, whom she had captivated by her charms. Her reinstatement
by the help of Cæsar, as well as all that followed in her relations with
Roman rulers, was due primarily to personal considerations, rather than
political or military causes; and among women whose lives have vitally
influenced the conduct of great historic leaders, and thereby affected
the course of events, Cleopatra holds a place at once the most
conspicuous and most unique.

Like Cæsar, Mark Antony, at his first interview with Cleopatra,
succumbed to the fascinations of the "Rare Egyptian," and he never after
ceased to be her slave. Not long after Cæsar's death Antony had married
Fulvia, whom he deserted for the "enchanting queen." From this point to
its culmination in overwhelming disaster and the tragic death of this
celebrated pair of lovers, the romantic drama of Cleopatra's conquests
becomes even more important in literature than in history. This
extraordinary voluptuary, whose beauty and witcheries have interested
mankind for almost twenty centuries, has been the subject of some thirty
tragedies in various languages; and in _Antony and Cleopatra_--one of
his greatest plays--Shakespeare, closely following the narratives of
Plutarch and other classical writers, has invested her with a potency of
charm unparalleled among literary creations.

She matches Antony in qualities of intellect, while she dazzles him with
her coquettish arts. "A queen, a siren," says Thomas Campbell, "a
Shakespeare's Cleopatra alone could have entangled Shakespeare's
Antony." And Shakespeare alone, as declared by Mrs. Jameson, "has dared
to exhibit the Egyptian Queen with all her greatness and all her
littleness, all her paltry arts and dissolute passions, yet awakened our
pity for fallen grandeur without once beguiling us into sympathy with
guilt."

Yet the plain history of this "Sorceress of the Nile," with her
"infinite variety," as told by Plutarch and the other ancients, and
retold, with whatever advantages gained from critical research, by the
modern masters, makes the same impression of moral contrast and
inscrutability as that imparted by the greatest poet who has dramatized
the character of Cleopatra.)


Now at last Egypt, coming into close connection with the world's
masters, becomes the stage for some of the most striking scenes in
ancient history. They seem to most readers something new and
strange--the pageants and passions of the fratricide Cleopatra as
something unparalleled--and yet she was one of a race in which almost
every reigning princess for the last two hundred years had been swayed
by like storms of passion, or had been guilty of like daring violations
of common humanity. What Arsinoë, what Cleopatra, from the first to the
last, had hesitated to murder a brother or a husband, to assume the
throne, to raise and command armies, to discard or adopt a partner of
her throne from caprice in policy, or policy in caprice? But hitherto
this desperate gambling with life had been carried on in Egypt and
Syria; the play had been with Hellenistic pawns--Egyptian or Syrian
princes; the last Cleopatra came to play with Roman pieces, easier
apparently to move than the others, but implying higher stakes, greater
glory in the victory, greater disaster in the defeat. Therefore is it
that this last Cleopatra, probably no more than an average specimen of
the beauty, talent, daring, and cruelty of her ancestors, has taken an
unique place among them in the imagination of the world, and holds her
own even now and forever as a familiar name throughout the world.

Ptolemy Auletes, when dying, had taken great care not to bequeath his
mortgaged kingdom to his Roman creditors. In his will he had named as
his heirs the elder of his two sons, and his daughter, who was the
eldest of the family. Nobody thought of claiming Egypt for a heritage of
the Roman Republic, when the whole world was the prize proposed in the
civil conflict, for though the war of Cæsar and Pompey had not actually
broken out, the political sky was lowering with blackness, and the
coming tempest was muttering its thunder through the sultry air. So
Cleopatra, now about sixteen or seventeen years of age, and her much
younger brother (about ten) assumed the throne as was traditional,
without any tumult or controversy,

The opening discords came from within the royal family. The tutors and
advisers of the young King, among whom Pothinos, a eunuch brought up
with him as his playmate, according to the custom of the court, was the
ablest and most influential, persuaded him to assume sole direction of
affairs and to depose his elder sister. Cleopatra was not able to
maintain herself in Alexandria, but went to Syria as an exile, where she
promptly collected an army, as was the wont of these Egyptian
princesses, who seem to have resources always under their control, and
returned--within a few months, says Cæsar--by way of Pelusium, to
reconquer her lawful share in the throne. This happened in the fourth
year of their so-called joint reign, B.C. 48, at the very time that
Pompey and Cæsar were engaged in their conflict for a far greater
kingdom.

Cæsar expressed his opinion that the quarrel of the sovereigns in Egypt
concerned the Roman people, and himself as consul, the more so as it was
in his previous consulate that the recognition of and alliance with
their father had taken place. So he signified his decision that Ptolemy
and Cleopatra should dismiss their armies, and should discuss their
claims before him by argument and not by arms. All our authorities,
except Dio Cassius, state that he sent for Cleopatra that she might
personally urge her claims; but Dio tells us, with far more detail and I
think greater probability, "that at first the quarrel with her brother
was argued for her by friends, till she, learning the amorous character
of Cæsar, sent him word that her case was being mismanaged by her
advocates, and she desired to plead it herself, She was then in the
flower of her age (about twenty) and celebrated for her beauty.
Moreover, she had the sweetest of voices, and every charm of
conversation, so that she was likely to ensnare even the most obdurate
and elderly man. These gifts she regarded as her claims upon Cæsar. She
prayed therefore for an interview, and adorned herself in a garb most
becoming, but likely to arouse his pity, and so came secretly by night
to visit him."

If she indeed arrived secretly and was carried into the palace by one
faithful follower as a bale of carpet, it was from fear of assassination
by the party of Pothinos. She knew that as soon as she had reached
Cæsar's sentries she was safe; as the event proved, she was more than
safe, for in the brief interval of peace, and perhaps even of apparent
jollity, while the royal dispute was under discussion, she gained an
influence over Cæsar which she retained till his death. Cæsar
adjudicated the throne according to the will of Auletes; he even
restored Cyprus to Egypt, and proposed to send the younger brother and
his sister Arsinoë to govern it; but he also insisted on a repayment, in
part at least, of the enormous outstanding debt of Auletes to him and
his party.

A few months after Cæsar's departure from Egypt Cleopatra gave birth to
a son, whom she alleged, without any immediate contradiction, to be the
dictator's. The Alexandrians called him Cæsarion, and she never swerved
from asserting for him royal privileges. We hear of no other lover,
though it is impossible to imagine Cleopatra arriving at the age of
twenty without providing herself with this luxury. She was, however,
afraid to let Cæsar live far from her influence, and some time before
his assassination--that is to say, some time between B.C. 48 and 44--she
came with the young King her brother to Rome, where she was received in
Cæsar's palace beyond the Tiber, causing by her residence there
considerable scandal among the stricter Romans. Cicero confesses that he
went to see her, but protests that his reasons for doing so were
absolutely nonpolitical. Cicero found her haughty; he does not say she
was beautiful and fascinating. We do not hear of any political activity
on her part, though Cicero evidently suspects it; it is well-nigh
impossible that she can have preferred her very doubtful position at
Rome to her brilliant life in the East. She was suspected of urging
Cæsar to move eastward the capital of his new empire, to desert Rome,
and choose either Ilium, the imaginary cradle of his race, or
Alexandria, as his residence. She is likely to have encouraged at all
events his expedition against the Parthians, which would bring him to
Syria, whence she hoped to gain new territory for her son. The whole
situation is eloquently, perhaps too eloquently, described by Merivale,
for he weaves in many conjectures of his own, as if they were
ascertained facts.

The colors of this imitation of a hateful original [the oriental despot]
were heightened by the demeanor of Cleopatra, who followed her lover to
Rome at his invitation. She came with the younger Ptolemæus, who now
shared her throne, and her ostensible object was to negotiate a treaty
between her kingdom and the Commonwealth. While the Egyptian nation was
formally admitted to the friendship and alliance of Rome, its sovereign
was lodged in Cæsar's villa on the other side of the Tiber, and the
statue of the most fascinating of women was erected in the temple of the
Goddess of Love and Beauty. The connection which subsisted between her
and the dictator was unblushingly avowed. Public opinion demanded no
concessions to its delicacy; the feelings of the injured Calpurnia had
been blunted by repeated outrage, and Cleopatra was encouraged to
proclaim openly that her child Cæsarion was the son of her Roman
admirer. A tribune, named Helvius Cinna, ventured, it is said, to assert
among his friends that he was prepared to propose a law, with the
dictator's sanction, to enable him to marry more wives than one, for the
sake of progeny, and to disregard in his choice the legitimate
qualification of Roman descent. The Romans, however, were spared this
last insult to their prejudices. The queen of Egypt felt bitterly the
scorn with which she was popularly regarded as the representative of an
effeminate and licentious people. It is not improbable that she employed
her fatal influence to withdraw her lover from the Roman capital, and
urged him to schemes of oriental conquest to bring him more completely
within her toils. In the mean while the haughtiness of her demeanor
corresponded with the splendid anticipations in which she indulged. She
held a court in the suburbs of the city, at which the adherents of the
dictator's policy were not the only attendants. Even his opponents and
concealed enemies were glad to bask in the sunshine of her smiles.

When Cæsar was assassinated, she was still at Rome, and had some wild
hopes of having her son recognized by the Cæsareans. But failing in this
she escaped secretly, and sailed to Egypt, not without causing
satisfaction to cautious men like Cicero that she was gone. The passage
in which he seems to allude to a rumor that she was about to have
another child--another misfortune to the State--does not bear that
interpretation. As he says not a word concerning the young king Ptolemy,
we may assume that the youth was already dead, and that he died at Rome.
The common belief was that Cleopatra poisoned him as soon as his
increasing years made him troublesome to her. In her reign four years
are assigned to a joint rule with her elder brother, four more to that
with her younger, so that this latter must have died in the same year as
Cæsar.

Cleopatra, watching from Egypt the great civil war which ensued,
summoned and commanded by the various leaders to send aid in ships and
money, threatened with plunder and confiscation by those who were now
exhausting Asia Minor and the islands with monstrous exactions, had
ample occupation for her talents in steering safely among these constant
dangers. Appian says she pleaded famine and pestilence in her country in
declining the demands of Cassius for subsidies. The latter was on the
point of invading Egypt, at the moment denuded of defending forces and
_wasted with famine_, when he was summoned to Philippi by Brutus.

It was not till B.C. 41, after the decisive battle of Philippi, that the
victorious Antony, turning to subdue the East to the Cæsarean cause,
held his _joyeuse entrée_ into Ephesus, and then proceeded to drain all
Asia Minor of money for the satisfaction of his greedy legionaries and
his own still more greedy vices. Reaching Cilicia, he sent an order to
the queen of Egypt to come before him and explain her conduct during the
late war, for she was reported to have sent aid to Cassius. The sequel
may be told in Plutarch's famous narrative:

"Dellius, who was sent on this message, had no sooner seen her face, and
remarked her adroitness and subtlety in speech, than he felt convinced
that Antony would not so much as think of giving any molestation to a
woman like this. On the contrary, she would be the first in favor with
him. So he set himself at once to pay his court to the Egyptian, and
gave her his advice, 'to go,' in the Homeric style, to Cilicia, 'in her
best attire,' and bade her fear nothing from Antony, the gentlest and
kindest of soldiers. She had some faith in the words of Dellius, but
more in her own attractions, which, having formerly recommended her to
Cæsar and the young Cnaeus Pompey, she did not doubt might yet prove
more successful with Antony. Their acquaintance was with her when a
girl, young, and ignorant of the world, but she was to meet Antony in
the time of life when women's beauty is most splendid and their
intellects are in full maturity. She made great preparation for her
journey, of money, gifts, and ornaments of value, such as so wealthy a
kingdom might afford, but she brought with her her surest hopes in her
own magic arts and charms.

"She received several letters, both from Antony and from his friends, to
summon her, but she took no account of these orders; and at last, as if
in mockery of them, she came sailing up the river Cydnus, in a barge
with gilded stern and outspread sails of purple, while oars of silver
beat time to the music of flutes and fifes and harps. She herself lay
all along, under a canopy of cloth of gold, dressed as Venus in a
picture, and beautiful young boys, like painted cupids, stood on each
side to fan her. Her maids were dressed like sea nymphs and graces, some
steering at the rudder, some working at the ropes.[71] The perfumes
diffused themselves from the vessel to the shore, which was covered with
multitudes, part following the galley up the river on either bank, part
running out of the city to see the sight. The market-place was quite
emptied, and Antony at last was left alone sitting upon the tribunal,
while the word went through all the multitude that Venus was come to
feast with Bacchus, for the common good of Asia.[72] On her arrival,
Antony sent to invite her to supper. She thought it fitter he should
come to her; so, willing to show his good humor and courtesy, he
complied, and went. He found the preparations to receive him magnificent
beyond expression, but nothing so admirable as the great number of
lights, for on a sudden there was let down altogether so great a number
of branches with lights in them so ingeniously disposed, some in squares
and some in circles, that the whole thing was a spectacle that has
seldom been equalled for beauty."

[Footnote 71: There was no Egyptian feature in this show, which was
purely Hellenistic.]

[Footnote 72: How easily such a belief started up in the minds of a
crowd in the Asia Minor of that day appears from Acts xiv. 11 _seq_.,
where the crowd at Iconium, on seeing a cripple cured, at once exclaim
that the gods are come down to them in the likeness of men, and call
Barnabas Jupiter, and Paul Mercurius, because he was the chief speaker,
bringing sacrifices to offer to the apostles.]

"The next day Antony invited her to supper, and was very desirous to
outdo her as well in magnificence as contrivance; but he found he was
altogether beaten in both, and was so well convinced of it that he was
himself the first to jest and mock at his poverty of wit and his rustic
awkwardness. She, perceiving that his raillery was broad and gross and
savored more of the soldier than the courtier, rejoined in the same
taste, and fell into it at once, without any sort of reluctance or
reserve, for her actual beauty, it is said, was not in itself so
remarkable that none could be compared with her, or that no one could
see her without being struck by it, but the contact of her presence, if
you lived with her, was irresistible; the attraction of her person,
joining with the charm of her conversation and the character that
attended all she said or did, was something bewitching. It was a
pleasure merely to hear the sound of her voice, with which, like an
instrument of many strings, she could pass from one language to another;
so that there were few of the barbarian nations that she answered by an
interpreter. To most of them she spoke herself, as to the Ethiopians,
troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabians, Syrians, Medes, Parthians, and many
others, whose language she had learned;[73] which was all the more
surprising, because most of the kings her predecessors scarcely gave
themselves the trouble to acquire the Egyptian tongue, and several of
them quite abandoned the Macedonian."

[Footnote 73: We have here the usual lies of courtiers.]

"Antony was so captivated by her that, while Fulvia, his wife,
maintained his quarrels in Rome against Cæsar by actual force of arms,
and the Parthian troops, commanded by Labienus--the King's generals
having made him commander-in-chief--were assembled in Mesopotamia, and
ready to enter Syria, he could yet suffer himself to be carried away by
her to Alexandria, there to keep holiday, like a boy, in play and
diversion, squandering and fooling away in enjoyments that most costly,
as Antiphon says, of all valuables, time. They had a sort of company, to
which they gave a particular name, calling it that of the 'Inimitable
Livers.' The members entertained one another daily in turn, with an
extravagance of expenditure beyond measure or belief. Philotas, a
physician of Amphissa, who was at that time a student of medicine in
Alexandria, used to tell my grandfather Lamprias that, having some
acquaintance with one of the royal cooks, he was invited by him, being a
young man, to come and see the sumptuous preparations for dinner. So he
was taken into the kitchen, where he admired the prodigious variety of
all things, but, particularly seeing eight wild boars roasting whole,
says he, 'Surely you have a great number of guests.' The cook laughed at
his simplicity, and told him there were not above twelve to dine, but
that every dish was to be served up just roasted to a turn, and if
anything was but one minute ill-timed it was spoiled. 'And,' said he,
'maybe Antony will dine just now, maybe not this hour, maybe he will
call for wine, or begin to talk, and will put it off. So that,' he
continued, 'it is not one, but many dinners, must be had in readiness,
as it is impossible to guess at his hour.'"

Plato admits four sorts of flattery, but Cleopatra had a thousand. Were
Antony serious or disposed to mirth she had any moment some new delight
or charm to meet his wishes. At every turn she was upon him, and let him
escape her neither by day nor by night. She played at dice with him,
drank with him, hunted with him, and when he exercised in arms she was
there to see. At night she would go rambling with him to joke with
people at their doors and windows, dressed like a servant woman, for
Antony also went in servant's disguise, and from these expeditions he
always came home very scurvily answered, and sometimes even beaten
severely, though most people guessed who it was. However, the
Alexandrians in general liked it all well enough, and joined
good-humoredly and kindly in his frolic and play, saying they were much
obliged to Antony for acting his tragic parts at Rome and keeping his
comedy for them. It would be trifling without end to be particular in
relating his follies, but his fishing must not be forgotten. He went out
one day to angle with Cleopatra, and being so unfortunate as to catch
nothing in the presence of his mistress, he gave secret orders to the
fishermen to dive under water and put fishes that had been already taken
upon his hooks, and these he drew in so fast that the Egyptian perceived
it. But feigning great admiration, she told everybody how dexterous
Antony was, and invited them next day to come and see him again. So when
a number of them had come on board the fishing boats, as soon as he had
let down his hook, one of her servants was beforehand with his divers
and fixed upon his hook a salted fish from Pontus. Antony, feeling his
line taut, drew up the prey, and when, as may be imagined, great
laughter ensued, "Leave," said Cleopatra, "the fishing rod, autocrat, to
us poor sovereigns of Pharos and Canopus; your game is cities, kingdoms,
and continents."

Plutarch does not mention the most tragic and the most characteristic
proof of Cleopatra's complete conquest of Antony. Among his other crimes
of obedience he sent by her orders and put to death the Princess
Arsinoë, who, knowing well her danger, had taken refuge as a suppliant
in the temple of Artemis Leucophryne at Miletus.

It is not our duty to follow the various complications of war and
diplomacy, accompanied by the marriage with the serious and gentle
Octavia, whereby the brilliant but dissolute Antony was weaned, as it
were, from his follies, and persuaded to live a life of public activity.
Whether the wily Octavian did not foresee the result, whether he did not
even sacrifice his sister to accumulate odium against his dangerous
rival, is not for us to determine. But when it was arranged (in B.C. 36)
that Antony should lead an expedition against the Parthians, any man of
ordinary sense must have known that he would come within the reach of
the eastern siren, and was sure to be again attracted by her fatal
voice. It is hard to account for her strange patience during these four
years. She had borne twins to Antony, probably after the meeting in
Cilicia. Though she still maintained the claims of her eldest son
Cæsarion to be the divine Julius' only direct heir, we do not hear of
her sending requests to Antony to support him, or that any agents were
working in her interests at Rome. She was too subtle a woman to solicit
his return to Alexandria. There are mistaken insinuations that she
thought the chances of Sextus Pompey, with his naval supremacy, better
than those of Antony, but these stories refer to his brother Cnaeus, who
visited Egypt before Pharsalia.

It is probably to this pause in her life, as we know it, that we may
refer her activity in repairing and enlarging the national temples. The
splendid edifice at Dendera, at present among the most perfect of
Egyptian temples, bears no older names than those of Cleopatra and her
son Cæsarion, and their portraits represent the latter as a growing lad,
his mother as an essentially Egyptian figure, conventionally drawn
according to the rules which had determined the figures of gods and
kings for fifteen hundred years. Under these circumstances it is idle to
speak of this well-known relief picture as a portrait of the Queen. It
is no more so than the granite statues in the Vatican are portraits of
Philadelphus and Arsinoë. The artist had probably never seen the Queen,
and if he had, it would not have produced the slightest alteration in
his drawing.

Plutarch expressly says that it was not in peerless beauty that her
fascination lay, but in the combination of more than average beauty with
many other personal attractions. The Egyptian portrait is likely to
confirm in the spectator's mind the impression derived from
Shakespeare's play, that Cleopatra was a swarthy Egyptian, in strong
contrast to the fair Roman ladies, and suggesting a wide difference of
race. She was no more an Egyptian than she was an Indian, but a pure
Macedonian, of a race akin to, and perhaps fairer than, the Greeks.

No sooner had Antony reached Syria than the fell influence of the
Egyptian Queen revived. In the words of Plutarch:

"But the mischief that thus long had lain still, the passion for
Cleopatra, which better thoughts had seemed to have lulled and charmed
into oblivion, upon his approach to Syria, gathered strength again, and
broke out into a flame. And in fine, like Plato's restive and rebellious
horse of the human soul, flinging off all good and wholesome counsel and
breaking fairly loose, he sent Fonteius Capito to bring Cleopatra into
Syria; to whom at her arrival he made no small or trifling
present--Phoenicia, Coele-Syria, Cyprus, great part of Cilicia, that
side of Judea which produces balm, that part of Arabia where the
Nabathaeans extend to the outer sea--profuse gifts which much displeased
the Romans. For although he had invested several private persons with
great governments and kingdoms, and bereaved many kings of theirs, as
Antigonus of Judea, whose head he caused to be struck off--the first
example of that punishment being inflicted on a king--yet nothing stung
the Romans like the shame of these honors paid to Cleopatra. Their
dissatisfaction was augmented also by his acknowledging as his own the
twin children he had by her, giving them the names of Alexander and
Cleopatra, and adding, as their surnames, the titles of Sun and Moon."

After much dallying the triumvir really started for the wild East,
whither it is not our business to follow him. Cleopatra he sent home to
Egypt, to await his victorious return, and it was on this occasion that
she came in state to Jerusalem to visit Herod the Great--probably the
most brilliant scene of the kind which had taken place since the queen
of Sheba came to learn the wisdom of Solomon. But it was a very
different wisdom that Herod professed, and in which he was verily a high
authority, nor was the subtle daughter of the Ptolemies a docile pupil,
but a practised expert in the same arts of cruelty and cunning;
wherewith both pursued their several courses of ambition and sought to
wheedle from their Roman masters cities and provinces. The reunion of
Antony and Cleopatra must have greatly alarmed Herod, whose plans were
directly thwarted by the freaks of Antony, and he must have been
preparing at the time to make his case with Octavian, and seek from his
favor protection against the new caprices of the then lord of the East.

"The scene at Herod's palace must have been inimitable. The display of
counter-fascinations between these two tigers; their voluptuous natures
mutually attracted; their hatred giving to each that deep interest in
the other which so often turns to mutual passion while it incites to
conquest; the grace and finish of their manners, concealing a ruthless
ferocity; the splendor of their appointments--what more dramatic picture
can we imagine in history?

"We hear that she actually attempted to seduce Herod, but failed, owing
to his deep devotion to his wife Mariamne. The prosaic Josephus adds
that Herod consulted his council whether he should not put her to death
for this attempt upon his virtue. He was dissuaded by them on the ground
that Antony would listen to no arguments, not even from the most
persuasive of the world's princes, and would take awful vengeance when
he heard of her death. So she was escorted with great gifts and
politenesses back to Egypt."

Such, then, was the character of this notorious Queen. But her violation
of temples, and even of ancient tombs, for the sake of treasure must
have been a far more public and odious exhibition of that want of
respect for the sentiment of others which is the essence of bad
manners.[74]

[Footnote 74: _The Greek World under Roman Sway._]

As is well known, the first campaign of Antony against Armenians and
Parthians was a signal failure, and it was only with great difficulty
that he escaped the fate of Crassus. But Cleopatra was ready to meet him
in Syria with provisions and clothes for his distressed and ragged
battalions, and he returned with her to spend the winter (B.C. 36-35) at
Alexandria. She thus snatched him again from his noble wife, Octavia,
who had come from Rome to Athens with succors even greater than
Cleopatra had brought. This at least is the word of the historians who
write in the interest of the Romans, and regard the queen of Egypt with
horror and with fear.

The new campaign of Antony (B.C. 34) was apparently more prosperous, but
it was only carried far enough to warrant his holding a Roman triumph at
Alexandria--perhaps the only novelty in pomp which the triumvir could
exhibit to the Alexandrian populace, while it gave the most poignant
offence at Rome. It was apparently now that he made that formal
distribution of provinces which Octavian used as his chief _casus
belli_.

"Nor was the division he made among his sons at Alexandria less
unpopular. It seemed a theatrical piece of insolence and contempt of his
country, for, assembling the people in the exercise ground, and causing
two golden thrones to be placed on a platform of silver, the one for him
and the other for Cleopatra, and at their feet lower thrones for their
children, he proclaimed Cleopatra queen of Egypt, Cyprus, Libya, and
Coele-Syria, and with her conjointly Cæsarion, the reputed son of the
former Cæsar. His own sons by Cleopatra were to have the style of 'King
of Kings'; to Alexander he gave Armenia and Media, with Parthia so soon
as it should be overcome; to Ptolemy Phoenicia, Syria, and Cilicia.
Alexander was brought out before the people in Median costume, the tiara
and upright peak, and Ptolemy in boots and mantle and Macedonian cap
done about with the diadem; for this was the habit of the successors of
Alexander, as the other was of the Medes and Armenians. And, as soon as
they had saluted their parents, the one was received by a guard of
Macedonians, the other by one of Armenians. Cleopatra was then, as at
other times when she appeared in public, dressed in the habit of the
goddess Isis, and gave audience to the people under the name of the New
Isis.

"This over, he gave Priene to his players for a habitation, and set sail
for Athens, where fresh sports and play-acting employed him. Cleopatra,
jealous of the honors Octavia had received at Athens--for Octavia was
much beloved by the Athenians--courted the favor of the people with all
sorts of attentions. The Athenians, in requital, having decreed her
public honors, deputed several of the citizens to wait upon her at her
house, among whom went Antony as one, he being an Athenian citizen, and
he it was that made the speech.

"The speed and extent of Antony's preparations alarmed Cæsar, who feared
he might be forced to fight the decisive battle that summer, for he
wanted many necessaries, and the people grudged very much to pay the
taxes; freemen being called upon to pay a fourth part of their incomes,
and freed slaves an eighth of their property, so that there were loud
outcries against him, and disturbances throughout all Italy. And this is
looked upon as one of the greatest of Antony's oversights that he did
not then press the war, for he allowed time at once for Cæsar to make
his preparations, and for the commotions to pass over, for while people
were having their money called for they were mutinous and violent; but,
having paid it, they held their peace.

"Titius and Plancus, men of consular dignity and friends to Antony,
having been ill-used by Cleopatra, whom they had most resisted in her
design of being present in the war, came over to Cæsar, and gave
information of the contents of Antony's will, with which they were
acquainted. It was deposited in the hands of the vestal virgins, who
refused to deliver it up, and sent Cæsar word, if he pleased, he should
come and seize it himself, which he did. And, reading it over to
himself, he noted those places that were most for his purpose, and,
having summoned the senate, read them publicly. Many were scandalized at
the proceeding, thinking it out of reason and equity to call a man to
account for what was not to be until after his death. Cæsar specially
pressed what Antony said in his will about his burial, for he had
ordered that even if he died in the city of Rome, his body, after being
carried in state through the Forum, should be sent to Cleopatra at
Alexandria.

"Calvisius, a dependent of Cæsar's, urged other charges in connection
with Cleopatra against Antony: that he had given her the library of
Pergamus, containing two hundred thousand distinct volumes; that at a
great banquet, in the presence of many guests, he had risen up and
rubbed her feet, to fulfil some wager or promise; that he had suffered
the Ephesians to salute her as their queen; that he had frequently at
the public audience of kings and princes received amorous messages
written in tablets made of onyx and crystal, and read them openly on the
tribunal; that when Furnius, a man of great authority and eloquence
among the Romans, was pleading, Cleopatra happening to pass by in her
litter, Antony started up and left them in the middle of their cause, to
follow at her side and attend her home."[75]

[Footnote 75: Plutarch: _Antony_.]

When war was declared, Antony sought to gain the support of the East in
the conflict. He made alliance with a Median king who betrothed his
daughter to Cleopatra's infant son Alexander; but he made the fatal
mistake of allowing Cleopatra to accompany him to Samos, where he
gathered his army, and even to Actium, where she led the way in flying
from the fight, and so persuading the infatuated Antony to leave his
army and join in her disgraceful escape.

Historians have regarded this act of Cleopatra as the mere cowardice of
a woman who feared to look upon an armed conflict and join in the din of
battle. But she was surely made of sterner stuff. She had probably
computed with the utmost care the chances of the rivals, and had made up
her mind that, in spite of Antony's gallantry, his cause was lost.[76]
If she fought out the battle with her strong contingent of ships, she
would probably fall into Octavian's hands as a prisoner, and would have
no choice between suicide or death in the Roman prison, after being
exhibited to the mob in Octavian's triumph. There was no chance whatever
that she would have been spared, as was her sister Arsinoë after Julius
Cæsar's triumph, nor would such clemency be less hateful than death. But
there was still a chance, if Antony were killed or taken prisoner, that
she might negotiate with the victor as queen of Egypt, with her fleet,
army, and treasures intact, and who could tell what effect her charms,
though now full ripe, might have upon the conqueror? Two great Romans
had yielded to her, why not the third, who seemed a smaller man?

[Footnote 76: Dion says that Antony was of the same opinion, and went
into the battle intending to fly; but this does not agree with his
character or with the facts.]

This view implies that she was already false to Antony, and it may well
be asked how such a charge is compatible with the affecting scenes which
followed at Alexandria, where her policy seemed defeated by her passion,
and she felt her old love too strong even for her heartless ambition? I
will say in answer that there is no more frequent anomaly in the
psychology of female love than a strong passion coexisting with selfish
ambition, so that each takes the lead in turn; nay, even the
consciousness of treachery may so intensify the passion as to make a
woman embrace with keener transports the lover whom she has betrayed
than one whom she has no thought of surrendering. There are, moreover,
in these tragedies unexpected accidents, which so affect even the
hardest nature that calculations are cast aside, and the old loyalty
resumes a temporary sway. Nor must we fail to insist again upon the
traditions wherein this last Cleopatra was born and bred. She came from
a stock whose women played with love and with life as if they were mere
counters. To hesitate whether such a scion of such a house would have
delayed to discard Antony and to assume another passion is to show small
appreciation of the effects of heredity and of example. Dion tells us
that she arrived in Alexandria before the news of her defeat, pretended
a victory, and took the occasion of committing many murders, in order to
get rid of secret opponents, and also to gather wealth by confiscation
of their goods, for both she and Antony, who came along the coast of
Libya, seem still to have thought of defending the inaccessible Egypt,
and making terms for themselves and their children with the conqueror.
But Antony's efforts completely failed; no one would rally to his
standard. And meanwhile the false Queen had begun to send presents to
Cæsar and encourage him to treat with her. But when he bluntly proposed
to her to murder Antony as the price of her reconciliation with himself,
and when he even declared by proxy that he was in love with her, he
clearly made a rash move in this game of diplomacy, though Dion says he
persuaded her of his love, and that accordingly she betrayed to him the
fortress of Pelusium, the key of the country. Dion also differs from
Plutarch in repeatedly ascribing to Octavian great anxiety to secure the
treasures which Cleopatra had with her, and which she was likely to
destroy by fire if driven to despair.

The historian may well leave to the biographer, nay, to the poet, the
affecting details of the closing scenes of Cleopatra's life. In the
fourth and fifth acts of _Antony and Cleopatra_ Shakespeare has
reproduced every detail of Plutarch's narrative, which was drawn from
that of her physician Olympos. Her fascinations were not dead, for they
swayed Dolabella to play false to his master so far as to warn her of
his intentions, and leave her time for her dignified and royal end. But
if these Hellenistic queens knew how to die, they knew not how to live.
Even the penultimate scene of the tragedy, when she presents an
inventory of her treasures to Octavian, and is charged by her steward
with dishonesty, shows her in uncivilized violence striking the man in
the face and bursting into indecent fury, such as an Athenian, still
less a Roman, matron would have been ashamed to exhibit. Nor is there
any reason to doubt the genuineness of this scene, though we must not be
weary of cautioning ourselves against the hostile witnesses who have
reported to us her life. They praise nothing in her but her bewitching
presence and her majestic death.

"After her repast Cleopatra sent to Cæsar a letter which she had written
and sealed, and, putting everybody out of the monument but her two
women, she shut the doors. Cæsar, opening her letter, and finding
pathetic prayers and entreaties that she might be buried in the same
tomb with Antony, soon guessed what was doing. At first he was going
himself in all haste; but, changing his mind, he sent others to see. The
thing had been quickly done. The messengers came at full speed, and
found the guards apprehensive of nothing; but on opening the doors they
saw her stone dead, lying upon a bed of gold, set out in all her royal
ornaments. Iras, one of her women, lay dying at her feet, and Charmion,
just ready to fall, scarce able to hold up her head, was adjusting her
mistress' diadem. And when one that came in said angrily, 'Was this well
done of your lady, Charmion?' 'Perfectly well,' she answered, 'and as
became the daughter of so many kings'; and as she said this she fell
down dead by the bedside."

Even the hostile accounts cannot conceal from us that both in physique
and in intellect she was a very remarkable figure, exceptional in her
own, exceptional had she been born in any other, age. She is a speaking
instance of the falsehood of a prevailing belief, that the intermarriage
of near relations invariably produces a decadence in the human race. The
whole dynasty of the Ptolemies contradicts this current theory, and
exhibits in the last of the series the most signal exception. Cleopatra
VI was descended from many generations of breeding-in, of which four
exhibit marriages of full brother and sister. And yet she was deficient
in no quality, physical or intellectual, which goes to make up a
well-bred and well-developed human being. Her morals were indeed those
of her ancestors, and as bad as could be, but I am not aware that it is
degeneration in this direction which is assumed by the theory in
question, except as a consequence of physical decay. Physically,
however, Cleopatra was perfect. She was not only beautiful, but
prolific, and retained her vigor, and apparently her beauty, to the time
of her death, when she was nearly forty years old.




ASSASSINATION OF CÆSAR

B.C. 44

NIEBUHR and PLUTARCH


(Cæsar's assassination forms the groundwork of one of Shakespeare's most
notable tragedies. The "itching palm" of Cassius, Brutus' rectitude and
honesty of purpose, and Mark Antony's oration will ever live while the
English language endures. When the great Cæsar was struck down, the
civil war was over and he was master of the world. The month of the year
B.C. 100 in which he was born, Quinctilis, was afterward called in his
honor, July.

Caius Julius Cæsar was one of the greatest figures in history, and early
took a prominent part in the affairs of Rome. He was a rival of Cicero
in forensic eloquence and highly esteemed as a writer, his
_Commentaries_ being universally admired. Ransomed from pirates who had
captured him on his way to study philosophy at Rhodes, he attacked them
in turn, took them to Pergamus, and crucified them.

After various successful engagements Cæsar marched against Pharnaces,
now established in the kingdom of the Bosphorus, gaining at Zela, in
Pontus, the decisive victory which he announced in the famous despatch,
_Veni, vidi, vici_ ["I came, I saw, I conquered"].

His unbounded affability, his liveliness and cordiality, his unaffected
kindness to his friends had made him popular with the high as well as
the low. His ambition began to show itself. During the wrangles over the
election of Afranius as consul, Cæsar returned from his brilliant
successes in Spain. The troops saluted him as imperator and the senate
voted a thanksgiving in his honor. He was now strong enough to take his
place as the leader of the popular party. He was elected consul in spite
of the hostility of the senate.

A coalition was formed between Cæsar and Pompey. Cæsar's agrarian law
added to his popularity with the people, and he gained the influence of
the _equites_ by relief of one-third of the farmed taxes of Asia. He now
became proconsul of Illyricum and Gaul for five years. This suited his
ambition. At this time Pompey was the absolute master of Rome. And now
arose his duel for power with Cæsar. For a time he opposed the latter's
election as consul, but later yielded.

Cæsar had achieved his brilliant success beyond the Alps. He had won
victories in Gaul and Britain; but in the mean time his enemies had been
active at Rome. Still believing that the senate would permit his quiet
election to the consulship, he refused to strike any blow at their
authority. But the senate had determined to humble Cæsar. Both Pompey
and Cæsar were removed from leadership, but the Consul Marcellus refused
to execute the decree. Cæsar was directed by the senate to disband his
army by a fixed day, on pain of being considered a public enemy. Pompey
sided with the senate. This meant civil war. Antony and Cassius fled to
the camp of Cæsar, who was enthusiastically supported by his soldiers
and "crossed the Rubicon."

Having become master of all Italy in three months without a battle,
Cæsar reëntered Rome. Pompey had fled, and at the battle of Pharsalia
was utterly routed, and took refuge in Egypt, where he was murdered a
few days before the arrival of Cæsar.

Upon receipt of the news of Pompey's death Cæsar was named dictator for
one year. The government was now placed without disguise in his hands.
He was invested with the tribunician power for life. He was also again
elected consul and named dictator.

Cæsar had now become a demi-god, and was named dictator for ten years,
being awarded a fourfold triumph, and a thanksgiving being decreed for
forty days. He was also made censor. This was in B.C. 46. After
defeating the remnant of the Pompeians, he returned to Rome in
September, B.C. 45, and was named imperator, and appointed consul for
ten years and dictator for life, being hailed as _Parens Patriæ_.

All these triumphs had caused jealousies. It was thought that he aspired
to become king, and this led to his fall.)


NIEBUHR

It is one of the inestimable advantages of a hereditary government
commonly called the legitimate, whatever its form may be, that it may be
formally inactive in regard to the state and the population--that it may
reserve its interference until it is absolutely necessary, and
apparently leave things to take their own course. If we look around us
and observe the various constitutions, we shall scarcely perceive the
interference of the government; the greater part of the time passes away
without those who have the reins in their hands being obliged to pay any
particular attention to what they are doing, and a very large amount of
individual liberty may be enjoyed. But if the government is what we call
a usurpation, the ruler has not only to take care to maintain his power,
but in all that he undertakes he has to consider by what means and in
what ways he can establish his right to govern, and his own personal
qualifications for it. Men who are in such a position are urged on to
act by a very sad necessity, from which they cannot escape, and such was
the position of Cæsar at Rome.

In our European States, men have wide and extensive spheres in which
they can act and move. The much-decried system of centralization has
indeed many disadvantages; but it has this advantage for the ruler, that
he can exert an activity which shows its influence far and wide. But
what could Cæsar do, in the centre of nearly the whole of the known
world? He could not hope to effect any material improvements either in
Italy or in the provinces. He had been accustomed from his youth, and
more especially during the last fifteen years, to an enormous activity,
and idleness was intolerable to him. At the close of the civil war he
would have had little or nothing to do unless he had turned his
attention to some foreign enterprise. He was obliged to venture upon
something that would occupy his whole soul, for he could not rest. His
thoughts were therefore again directed to war, and that in a quarter
where the most brilliant triumphs awaited him, where the bones of the
legions of Crassus lay unavenged--to a war against the Parthians. About
this time the Getae also had spread in Thrace, and he intended to check
their progress likewise. But his main problem was to destroy the
Parthian empire and to extend the Roman dominion as far as India, a plan
in which he would certainly have been successful; and he himself felt so
sure of this that he was already thinking of what he should undertake
afterward.

It is by no means incredible that, as we are told, he intended on his
return to march through the passes of the Caucasus, and through ancient
Scythia into the country of the Getae, and thence through Germany and
Gaul into Italy. Besides this expedition, he entertained other plans of
no less gigantic dimensions. The port of Ostia was bad, and in reality
little better than a mere roadstead, so that great ships could not come
up the river. Accordingly it is said that Cæsar intended to dig a canal
for sea-ships, from the Tiber, above or below Rome, through the Pomptine
marshes as far as Terracina. He further contemplated to cut through the
Isthmus of Corinth. It is not easy to see in what manner he would have
accomplished this, considering the state of hydraulic architecture in
those times. The Roman canals were mere _fossæ_, and canals with
sluices, though not unknown to the Romans, were not constructed by
them.[77]

[Footnote 77: The first canals with sluices were executed by the Dutch
in the fifteenth century.]

The fact of Cæsar forming such enormous plans is not very surprising;
but we can scarcely comprehend how it was possible for him to accomplish
so much of what he undertook in the short time of five months preceding
his death. Following the unfortunate system of Sulla, Cæsar founded
throughout Italy a number of colonies of veterans. The old Sullanian
colonists were treated with great severity, and many of them and their
children were expelled from their lands, and were thus punished for the
cruelty which they or their fathers had committed against the
inhabitants of the municipia. In like manner colonies were established
in Southern Gaul, Italy, Africa, and other parts; I may mention in
particular the colonies founded at Carthage and Corinth. The latter,
however, was a _colonia libertinorum_, and never rose to any importance.
We do not know the details of its foundation, but one would imagine that
Cæsar would have preferred restoring the place as a purely Greek town.
This, however, he did not do. Its population was and remained a mixed
one, and Corinth never rose to a state of real prosperity.

Cæsar made various new arrangements in the State, and among others he
restored the full franchise, or the _jus honorum_, to the sons of those
who had been proscribed in the time of Sulla. He had obtained for
himself the title of imperator and the dictatorship for life and the
consulship for ten years. Half of the offices of the republic to which
persons had before been elected by the centuries were in his gift, and
for the other half he usually recommended candidates; so that the
elections were merely nominal.

The tribes seem to have retained their rights of election uncurtailed,
and the last tribunes must have been elected by the people. But although
Cæsar did not himself confer the consulship, yet the whole republic was
reduced to a mere form and appearance. Cæsar made various new laws and
regulations; for example, to lighten the burdens of debtors and the
like; but the changes he introduced in the form of the constitution were
of little importance. He increased the number of prætors, which Sulla
had raised to eight, successively to ten, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen,
and the number of quaestors was increased to forty. Hence the number of
persons from whom the senate was to be filled up became greater than
that of the vacancies, and Cæsar accordingly increased the number of
senators, though it is uncertain what number he fixed upon, and raised a
great many of his friends to the dignity of senators. In this, as in
many other cases, he acted very arbitrarily; for he elected into the
senate whomsoever he pleased, and conferred the franchise in a manner
equally arbitrary. These things did not fail to create much discontent.
It is a remarkable fact that, notwithstanding his mode of filling up the
senate, not even the majority of senators were attached to his cause
after his death.

If we consider the changes and regulations which Cæsar introduced, it
must strike us as a singular circumstance that among all his measures
there is no trace of any indicating that he thought of modifying the
constitution for the purpose of putting an end to the anarchy, for all
his changes are in reality not essential or of great importance. Sulla
felt the necessity of remodelling the constitution, but he did not
attain his end; and the manner, too, in which he set about it was that
of a short-sighted man; but he was at least intelligent enough to see
that the constitution as it then was could not continue to exist. In the
regulations of Cæsar we see no trace of such a conviction; and I think
that he despaired of the possibility of effecting any real good by
constitutional reforms. Hence, among all his laws there is not one that
had any relation to the constitution. The fact of his increasing the
number of patrician families had no reference to the constitution; so
far in fact were the patricians from having any advantages over the
plebeians that the office of the two _oediles Cereales_, which Cæsar
instituted, was confined to the plebeians--a regulation which was
opposed to the very nature of the patriciate.

His raising persons to the rank of patricians was neither more nor less
than the modern practice of raising a family to the rank of nobility; he
picked out an individual and gave him the rank of patrician for himself
and his descendants, but did not elevate a whole gens. The distinction
itself was merely a nominal one and conferred no privilege upon a person
except that of holding certain priestly offices, which could be filled
by none but patricians, and for which their number was scarcely
sufficient. If Cæsar had died quietly the republic would have been in
the same, nay, in a much worse, state of dissolution than if he had not
existed at all. I consider it a proof of the wisdom and good sense of
Cæsar that he did not, like Sulla, think an improvement in the state of
public affairs so near at hand or a matter of so little difficulty. The
cure of the disease lay yet at a very great distance, and the first
condition on which it could be undertaken was the sovereignty of Cæsar,
a condition which would have been quite unbearable even to many of his
followers, who as rebels did not scruple to go along with him. But Rome
could no longer exist as a republic.

It is curious to see in Cicero's work, _de Republica_, the consciousness
running through it that Rome, as it then stood, required the strong hand
of a king. Cicero had surely often owned this to himself; but he saw no
one who would have entered into such an idea. The title of king had a
great fascination for Cæsar, as it had for Cromwell--a surprising
phenomenon in a practical mind like that of Cæsar. Everyone knows the
fact that while Cæsar was sitting on the _suggestum_, during the
celebration of the _Lupercalia_, Antony presented to him the diadem, to
try how the people would take it. Cæsar saw the great alarm which the
act created and declined the diadem for the sake of appearance; but had
the people been silent, Cæsar would unquestionably have accepted it. His
refusal was accompanied by loud shouts of acclamation, which for the
present rendered all further attempts impossible. Antony then had a
statue of Cæsar adorned with the diadem; but two tribunes of the people,
L. Caesetius Flavus and Epidius Marullus, took it away: and here Cæsar
showed the real state of his feelings, for he treated the conduct of the
tribunes as a personal insult toward himself. He had lost his
self-possession and his fate carried him irresistibly onward. He wished
to have the tribunes imprisoned, but was prevailed upon to be satisfied
with their being stripped of their office and sent into exile.

This created a great sensation at Rome. Cæsar had also been guilty of an
act of thoughtlessness, or perhaps merely of distraction, as might
happen very easily to a man in his circumstances. When the senate had
made its last decrees, conferring upon Cæsar unlimited powers, the
senators, consuls, and prætors, or the whole senate, in festal attire,
presented the decrees to him, and Cæsar at the moment forgot to show his
respect for the senators; he did not rise from his _sella curulis_, but
received the decrees in an unceremonious manner. This want of politeness
was never forgiven by the persons who had not scrupled to make him their
master; for it had been expected that he would at least behave politely
and be grateful for such decrees.[78] Cæsar himself had no design in the
act, which was merely the consequence of distraction or thoughtlessness;
but it made the senate his irreconcilable enemies. The affair with the
tribunes, moreover, had made a deep impression upon the people. We must,
however, remember that the people under such circumstances are most
sensible to anything affecting their honor, as we have seen at the
beginning of the French Revolution.

[Footnote 78: I have known an instance of a man of rank and influence
who could never forgive another man, who was by far his superior in
every respect, for having forgotten to take off his hat during a visit.]

In the year of Cæsar's death, Brutus and Cassius were prætors. Both had
been generals under Pompey. Brutus' mother, Servilia, was a half-sister
of Cato, for after the death of her first husband Cato's mother had
married Servilius Caepio. She was a remarkable woman, but very immoral,
and unworthy of her son; not even the honor of her own daughter was
sacred to her. The family of Brutus derived its origin from L. Junius
Brutus, and from the time of its first appearance among the plebeians it
had had few men of importance to boast of. During the period subsequent
to the passing of the Licinian laws we meet with some Junii in the
Fasti, but not one of them acquired any great reputation. The family had
become reduced and almost contemptible. One M. Brutus in particular
disgraced his family by sycophancy in the time of Sulla and was
afterward killed in Gaul by Pompey. Although no Roman family belonged to
a more illustrious gens, yet Brutus was not by any means one of those
men who are raised by fortunate circumstances. The education, however,
which he received had a great influence upon him. His uncle Cato, whose
daughter Porcia he married--whether in Cato's lifetime or afterward is
doubtful--had initiated him from his early youth in the Stoic
philosophy, and had instilled into his mind a veneration for it, as
though it had been a religion.

Brutus had qualities which Cato did not possess. The latter had
something of an ascetic nature, and was, if I may say so, a scrupulously
pious character; but Brutus had no such scrupulous timidity; his mind
was more flexible and lovable. Cato spoke well, but could not be
reckoned among the eloquent men of his time. Brutus' great talents had
been developed with the utmost care, and if he had lived longer and in
peace he would have become a classical writer of the highest order. He
had been known to Cicero from his early age, and Cicero felt a fatherly
attachment to him; he saw in him a young man who he hoped would exert a
beneficial influence upon the next generation.

Cæsar too had known and loved him from his childhood; but the stories
which are related to account for this attachment must be rejected as
foolish inventions of idle persons; for nothing is more natural than
that Cæsar should look with great fondness upon a young man of such
extraordinary and amiable qualities. The absence of envy was one of the
distinguishing features in the character of Cæsar, as it was in that of
Cicero. In the battle of Pharsalus, Brutus served in the army of Pompey,
and after the battle he wrote a letter to Cæsar, who had inquired after
him; and when Cæsar heard of his safety he was delighted, and invited
him to his camp. Cæsar afterward gave him the administration of
Cisalpine Gaul, where Brutus distinguished himself in a very
extraordinary manner by his love of justice.

Cassius was related to Brutus, and had likewise belonged to the Pompeian
party, but he was very unlike Brutus; he was much older, and a
distinguished military officer. After the death of Crassus he had
maintained himself as quaestor in Syria against the Parthians, and he
enjoyed a very great reputation in the army, but he was after all no
better than an ordinary officer of Cæsar. After the battle of Pharsalus,
Cæsar did not at first know whither Pompey was gone. Cassius was at the
time stationed with some galleys in the Hellespont, notwithstanding
which Cæsar with his usual boldness took a boat to sail across that
strait, and on meeting Cassius called upon him to embrace his party.
Cassius readily complied, and Cæsar forgave him, as he forgave all his
adversaries: even Marcellus, who had mortally offended him, was pardoned
at the request of Cicero. Cæsar thus endeavored to efface all
recollections of the civil war.

Cæsar had appointed both Brutus and Cassius prætors for that year. With
the exception of the office of _prætor urbanus_, which was honorable and
lucrative, the prætorship was a burdensome office and conferred little
distinction, since the other prætors were only the presidents of the
courts. Formerly they had been elected by lot, but the office was now
altogether in the gift of Cæsar. Both Brutus and Cassius had wished for
the prætura urbana, and, when Cæsar gave that office to Brutus, Cassius
was not only indignant at Cæsar, but began quarrelling with Brutus also.
While Cassius was in this state of exasperation, a meeting of the senate
was announced for the 15th of March, on which day, as the report went, a
proposal was to be made to offer Cæsar the crown. This was a welcome
opportunity for Cassius, who resolved to take vengeance, for he had even
before entertained a personal hatred of Cæsar, and was now disappointed
at not having obtained the city prætorship. He first sounded Brutus and,
finding that he was safe, made direct overtures to him. During the night
some one wrote on the tribunal and the house of Brutus the words,
"Remember that thou art Brutus."

Brutus became reconciled to Cassius, offered his assistance, and gained
over several other persons to join the conspiracy. All party differences
seemed to have vanished all at once; two of the conspirators were old
generals of Cæsar, C. Trebonius and Decimus Brutus, both of whom had
fought with him in Gaul, and against Massilia, and had been raised to
high honors by their chief. There were among the conspirators persons of
all parties. Men who had fought against one another at Pharsalus now
went hand-in-hand and intrusted their lives to one another. No proposals
were made to Cicero, the reasons usually assigned for which are of the
most calumniatory kind. It is generally said that the conspirators had
no confidence in Cicero, an opinion which is perfectly contemptible.
Cicero would not have betrayed them for any consideration, but what they
feared were his objections. Brutus had as noble a soul as anyone, but he
was passionate; Cicero, on the other hand, who was at an advanced age,
had many sad experiences, and his feelings were so exceedingly delicate
that he could not have consented to take away the life of him to whom he
himself owed his own, who had always behaved most nobly toward him, and
had intentionally drawn him before the world as his friend.

Cæsar's conduct toward those who had fought in the ranks of Pompey and
afterward returned to him was extremely noble, and he regarded the
reconciliation of those men as a personal favor conferred upon himself.
All who knew Cicero must have been convinced that he would not have
given his consent to the plan of the conspirators; and if they ever did
give the matter a serious thought, they must have owned to themselves
that every wise man would have dissuaded them from it; for it was in
fact the most complete absurdity to fancy that the republic could be
restored by Cæsar's death. Goethe says somewhere that the murder of
Cæsar was the most senseless act that the Romans ever committed; and a
truer word was never spoken. The result of it could not possibly be any
other than that which did follow the deed.

Cæsar was cautioned by Hirtius and Pansa, both wise men of noble
character, especially the former, who saw that the republic must become
consolidated and not thrown into fresh convulsions. They advised Cæsar
to be careful, and to take a bodyguard; but he replied that he would
rather not live at all than be in constant fear of losing his life.
Cæsar once expressed to some of his friends his conviction that Brutus
was capable of harboring a murderous design, but he added that as he,
Cæsar, could not live much longer, Brutus would wait, and not be guilty
of such a crime. Cæsar's health was at that time weak, and the general
opinion was that he intended to surrender his power to Brutus as the
most worthy. While the conspirators were making their preparations,
Porcia, the wife of Brutus, inferred from the excitement and
restlessness of her husband that some fearful secret was pressing on his
mind; but as he did not show her any confidence, she seriously wounded
herself with a knife and was seized with a violent wound-fever. No one
knew the cause of her illness; and it was not till after many entreaties
of her husband that at length she revealed it to him, saying that as she
had been able to conceal the cause of her illness, so she could also
keep any secret that might be intrusted to her. Her entreaties induced
Brutus to communicate to her the plan of the conspirators. Cæsar was
also cautioned by the haruspices, by a dream of his wife, and by his own
forebodings, which we have no reason for doubting. But on the morning of
the 15th of March, the day fixed upon for assassinating Cæsar, Decimus
Brutus treacherously enticed him to go with him to the Curia, as it was
impossible to delay the deed any longer.

The conspirators were at first seized with fear lest their plan should
be betrayed; but on Cæsar's entrance into the senate house, C. Tillius
(not Tullius) Cimber made his way up to him, and insulted him with his
importunities, and Casca gave the first stroke. Cæsar fell covered with
twenty-three wounds. He was either in his fifty-sixth year or had
completed it; I am not quite certain on this point, though, if we judge
by the time of his first consulship, he must have been fifty-six years
old. His birthday, which is not generally known, was the 11th of
Quinctilis, which month was afterward called Julius, and his death took
place on the 15th of March, between eleven and twelve o'clock.


PLUTARCH

At one time the senate having decreed Cæsar some extravagant honors, the
consuls and prætors, attended by the whole body of patricians, went to
inform him of what they had done. When they came, he did not rise to
receive them, but kept his seat, as if they had been persons in a
private station, and his answer to their address was, "that there was
more need to retrench his honors than to enlarge them." This haughtiness
gave pain not only to the senate, but the people, who thought the
contempt of that body reflected dishonor upon the whole Commonwealth;
for all who could decently withdraw went off greatly dejected.

Perceiving the false step he had taken, he retired immediately to his
own house, and, laying his neck bare, told his friends "he was ready for
the first hand that would strike." He then bethought himself of alleging
his distemper as an excuse; and asserted that those who are under its
influence are apt to find their faculties fail them when they speak
standing, a trembling and giddiness coming upon them, which bereave them
of their senses. This, however, was not really the case; for it is said
he was desirous to rise to the senate; but Cornelius Balbus, one of his
friends, or rather flatterers, held him, and had servility enough to
say, "Will you not remember that you are Cæsar, and suffer them to pay
their court to you as their superior?"

These discontents were greatly increased by the indignity with which he
treated the tribunes of the people. In the Lupercalia, which, according
to most writers, is an ancient pastoral feast, and which answers in many
respects to the _Lycaea_ among the Arcadians, young men of noble
families, and indeed many of the magistrates, run about the streets
naked, and, by way of diversion, strike all they meet with leathern
thongs with the hair upon them. Numbers of women of the first quality
put themselves in their way, and present their hands for stripes--as
scholars do to a master--being persuaded that the pregnant gain an easy
delivery by it, and that the barren are enabled to conceive. Cæsar wore
a triumphal robe that day, and seated himself in a golden chair upon the
_rostra_, to see the ceremony.

Antony ran among the rest, in compliance with the rules of the festival,
for he was consul. When he came into the Forum, and the crowd had made
way for him, he approached Cæsar, and offered him a diadem wreathed with
laurel. Upon this some plaudits were heard, but very feeble, because
they proceeded only from persons placed there on purpose. Cæsar refused
it, and then the plaudits were loud and general. Antony presented it
once more, and few applauded his officiousness; but when Cæsar rejected
it again, the applause again was general. Cæsar, undeceived by his
second trial, rose up and ordered the diadem to be consecrated in the
Capitol.

A few days after, his statues were seen adorned with royal diadems; and
Flavius and Marullus, two of the tribunes, went and tore them off. They
also found out the persons who first saluted Cæsar king, and committed
them to prison. The people followed with cheerful acclamations, and
called them Brutuses, because Brutus was the man who expelled the kings
and put the government in the hands of the senate and people. Cæsar,
highly incensed at their behavior, deposed the tribunes, and by way of
reprimand to them, as well as insult to the people, called them several
times _Brutes_ and _Cumceans_.

Upon this, many applied to Marcus Brutus, who, by the father's side, was
supposed to be a descendant of that ancient Brutus, and whose mother was
of the illustrious house of the Servilli. He was also nephew and
son-in-law to Cato. No man was more inclined than he to lift his hand
against monarchy, but he was withheld by the honors and favors he had
received from Cæsar, who had not only given him his life after the
defeat of Pompey at Pharsalia, and pardoned many of his friends at his
request, but continued to honor him with his confidence. That very year
he had procured him the most honorable prætorship, and he had named him
for the consulship four years after, in preference to Cassius, who was
his competitor; on which occasion Cæsar is reported to have said,
"Cassius assigns the strongest reasons, but I cannot refuse Brutus."

Some impeached Brutus after the conspiracy was formed; but, instead of
listening to them, he laid his hand on his body and said, "Brutus will
wait for this skin"; intimating that though the virtue of Brutus
rendered him worthy of empire, he would not be guilty of any ingratitude
or baseness to obtain it. Those, however, who were desirous of a change
kept their eyes upon him only, or principally at least; and as they
durst not speak out plain, they put billets night after night in the
tribunal and seat which he used as prætor, mostly in these terms: "Thou
sleepest, Brutus," or, "Thou art not Brutus."

Cassius, perceiving his friend's ambition a little stimulated by these
papers, began to ply him closer than before, and spur him on to the
great enterprise; for he had a particular enmity against Cæsar. Cæsar,
too, had some suspicion of him, and he even said one day to his friends:
"What think you of Cassius? I do not like his pale looks." Another time,
when Antony and Dolabella were accused of some designs against his
person and government, he said: "I have no apprehensions from those fat
and sleek men; I rather fear the pale and lean ones," meaning Cassius
and Brutus.

It seems, from this instance, that fate is not so secret as it is
inevitable; for we are told there were strong signs and presages of the
death of Cæsar. As to the lights in the heavens, the strange noises
heard in various quarters by night, and the appearance of solitary birds
in the Forum, perhaps they deserve not our notice in so great an event
as this. But some attention should be given to Strabo the philosopher.
According to him there were seen in the air men of fire encountering
each other; such a flame appeared to issue from the hand of a soldier's
servant that all the spectators thought it must be burned, yet, when it
was over, he found no harm; and one of the victims which Cæsar offered
was found without a heart. The latter was certainly a most alarming
prodigy; for, according to the rules of nature, no creature can exist
without a heart. What is still more extraordinary, many report that a
certain soothsayer forewarned him of a great danger which threatened him
on the ides of March, and that when the day was come, as he was going to
the senate house, he called to the soothsayer, and said, laughing, "The
ides of March are come"; to which he answered softly, "Yes; but they are
not gone."

The evening before, he supped with Marcus Lepidus, and signed, according
to custom, a number of letters, as he sat at table. While he was so
employed, there arose a question, "What kind of death was the best?" and
Cæsar, answering before them all, cried out, "A sudden one." The same
night, as he was in bed with his wife, the doors and windows of the room
flew open at once. Disturbed both with the noise and the light, he
observed, by moonshine, Calpurnia in a deep sleep, uttering broken words
and inarticulate groans. She dreamed that she was weeping over him, as
she held him, murdered, in her arms. Others say she dreamed that the
pinnacle was fallen, which, as Livy tells us, the senate had ordered to
be erected upon Cæsar's house by way of ornament and distinction; and
that it was the fall of it which she lamented and wept for. Be that as
it may, the next morning she conjured Cæsar not to go out that day if he
could possibly avoid it, but to adjourn the senate; and, if he had no
regard to her dreams, to have recourse to some other species of
divination, or to sacrifices, for information as to his fate. This gave
him some suspicion and alarm; for he had never known before, in
Calpurnia, anything of the weakness or superstition of her sex, though
she was now so much affected.

He therefore offered a number of sacrifices, and, as the diviners found
no auspicious tokens in any of them, he sent Antony to dismiss the
senate. In the mean time Decius Brutus, surnamed Albinus, came in. He
was a person in whom Cæsar placed such confidence that he had appointed
him his second heir, yet he was engaged in the conspiracy with the other
Brutus and Cassius. This man, fearing that if Cæsar adjourned the senate
to another day the affair might be discovered, laughed at the diviners,
and told Cæsar he would be highly to blame if by such a slight he gave
the senate an occasion of complaint against him. "For they were met," he
said, "at his summons, and came prepared with one voice to honor him
with the title of king in the provinces, and to grant that he should
wear the diadem both by sea and land everywhere out of Italy. But if
anyone go and tell them, now they have taken their places, they must go
home again, and return when Calpurnia happens to have better dreams,
what room will your enemies have to launch out against you? Or who will
hear your friends when they attempt to show that this is not an open
servitude on the one hand and tyranny on the other? If you are
absolutely persuaded that this is an unlucky day, it is certainly better
to go yourself and tell them you have strong reasons for putting off
business till another time." So saying he took Cæsar by the hand and led
him out.

He was not gone far from the door when a slave, who belonged to some
other person, attempted to get up to speak to him, but finding it
impossible, by reason of the crowd that was about him, he made his way
into the house, and putting himself into the hands of Calpurnia desired
her to keep him safe till Cæsar's return, because he had matters of
great importance to communicate.

Artemidorus the Cnidian, who, by teaching the Greek eloquence, became
acquainted with some of Brutus' friends, and had got intelligence of
most of the transactions, approached Cæsar with a paper explaining what
he had to discover. Observing that he gave the papers, as fast as he
received them, to his officers, he got up as close as possible and said:
"Cæsar, read this to yourself, and quickly, for it contains matters of
great consequence and of the last concern to you." He took it and
attempted several times to read it, but was always prevented by one
application or other. He therefore kept that paper, and that only, in
his hand, when he entered the house. Some say it was delivered to him by
another man, Artemidorus being kept from approaching him all the way by
the crowd.

These things might, indeed, fall out by chance; but as in the place
where the senate was that day assembled, and which proved the scene of
that tragedy, there was a statue of Pompey, and it was an edifice which
Pompey had consecrated for an ornament to his theatre, nothing can be
clearer than that some deity conducted the whole business and directed
the execution of it to that very spot. Even Cassius himself, though
inclined to the doctrines of Epicurus, turned his eye to the statue of
Pompey, and secretly invoked his aid, before the great attempt. The
arduous occasion, it seems, overruled his former sentiments, and laid
them open to all the influence of enthusiasm. Antony, who was a faithful
friend to Cæsar, and a man of great strength, was held in discourse
without, by Brutus Albinus, who had contrived a long story to detain
him.

When Cæsar entered the house, the senate rose to do him honor. Some of
Brutus' accomplices came up behind his chair, and others before it,
pretending to intercede, along with Metillius Cimber, for the recall of
his brother from exile. They continued their instances till he came to
his seat. When he was seated he gave them a positive denial; and as they
continued their importunities with an air of compulsion, he grew angry.
Cimber, then, with both hands, pulled his gown off his neck, which was
the signal for the attack. Casca gave him the first blow. It was a
stroke upon the neck with his sword, but the wound was not dangerous;
for in the beginning of so tremendous an enterprise he was probably in
some disorder. Cæsar therefore turned upon him and laid hold of his
sword. At the same time they both cried out, the one in Latin, "Villain!
Casca! what dost thou mean?" and the other in Greek, to his brother,
"Brother, help!"

After such a beginning, those who knew nothing of the conspiracy were
seized with consternation and horror, insomuch that they durst neither
fly nor assist, nor even utter a word. All the conspirators now drew
their swords, and surrounded him in such a manner that, whatever way he
turned, he saw nothing but steel gleaming in his face, and met nothing
but wounds. Like some savage beast attacked by the hunters, he found
every hand lifted against him, for they all agreed to have a share in
the sacrifice and a taste of his blood. Therefore Brutus himself gave
him a stroke in the groin. Some say he opposed the rest, and continued
struggling and crying out till he perceived the sword of Brutus; then he
drew his robe over his face and yielded to his fate. Either by accident
or pushed thither by the conspirators, he expired on the pedestal of
Pompey's statue, and dyed it with his blood; so that Pompey seemed to
preside over the work of vengeance, to tread his enemy under his feet,
and to enjoy his agonies. Those agonies were great, for he received no
less than three-and-twenty wounds. And many of the conspirators wounded
each other as they were aiming their blows at him.

Cæsar thus despatched, Brutus advanced to speak to the senate and to
assign his reasons for what he had done, but they could not bear to hear
him; they fled out of the house and filled the people with inexpressible
horror and dismay. Some shut up their houses; others left their shops
and counters. All were in motion; one was running to see the spectacle;
another running back. Antony and Lepidus, Cæsar's principal friends,
withdrew, and hid themselves in other people's houses. Meantime Brutus
and his confederates, yet warm from the slaughter, marched in a body
with their bloody swords in their hands, from the senate house to the
Capitol, not like men that fled, but with an air of gayety and
confidence, calling the people to liberty, and stopping to talk with
every man of consequence whom they met. There were some who even joined
them and mingled with their train, desirous of appearing to have had a
share in the action and hoping for one in the glory. Of this number were
Caius Octavius and Lentulus Spinther, who afterward paid dear for their
vanity, being put to death by Antony and young Cæsar; so that they
gained not even the honor for which they lost their lives, for nobody
believed that they had any part in the enterprise; and they were
punished, not for the deed, but for the will.

Next day Brutus and the rest of the conspirators came down from the
Capitol and addressed the people, who attended to their discourse
without expressing either dislike or approbation of what was done. But
by their silence it appeared that they pitied Cæsar, at the same time
that they revered Brutus. The senate passed a general amnesty; and, to
reconcile all parties, they decreed Cæsar divine honors and confirmed
all the acts of his dictatorship; while on Brutus and his friends they
bestowed governments and such honors as were suitable; so that it was
generally imagined the Commonwealth was firmly established again, and
all brought into the best order.

But when, upon the opening of Cæsar's will, it was found that he had
left every Roman citizen a considerable legacy, and they beheld the
body, as it was carried through the Forum, all mangled with wounds, the
multitude could no longer be kept within bounds. They stopped the
procession, and, tearing up the benches, with the doors and tables,
heaped them into a pile, and burned the corpse there. Then snatching
flaming brands from the pile, some ran to burn the houses of the
assassins, while others ranged the city to find the conspirators
themselves and tear them in pieces; but they had taken such care to
secure themselves that they could not meet with one of them.

One Cinna, a friend of Cæsar's, had a strange dream the preceding night.
He dreamed--as they tell us--that Cæsar invited him to supper, and, upon
his refusal to go, caught him by the hand and drew him after him, in
spite of all the resistance he could make. Hearing, however, that the
body of Cæsar was to be burned in the Forum, he went to assist in doing
him the last honors, though he had a fever upon him, the consequence of
his uneasiness about his dream. On his coming up, one of the populace
asked who that was? and having learned his name, told it to his next
neighbor. A report immediately spread through the whole company that it
was one of Cæsar's murderers; and, indeed, one of the conspirators was
named Cinna. The multitude, taking this for the man, fell upon him, and
tore him to pieces upon the spot. Brutus and Cassius were so terrified
at this rage of the populace that a few days after they left the city.
An account of their subsequent actions, sufferings, and death may be
found in the life of Brutus.

Cæsar died at the age of fifty-six, and did not survive Pompey above
four years. His object was sovereign power and authority, which he
pursued through innumerable dangers, and by prodigious efforts he gained
it at last. But he reaped no other fruit from it than an empty and
invidious title. It is true the divine Power, which conducted him
through life, attended him after his death as his avenger, pursued and
hunted out the assassins over sea and land, and rested not till there
was not a man left, either of those who dipped their hands in his blood
or of those who gave their sanction to the deed.

The most remarkable of natural events relative to this affair was that
Cassius, after he had lost the battle of Philippi, killed himself with
the same dagger which he had made use of against Cæsar; and the most
signal phenomenon in the heavens was that of a great comet, which shone
very bright for seven nights after Cæsar's death, and then disappeared;
to which we may add the fading of the sun's lustre; for his orb looked
pale all that year; he rose not with a sparkling radiance, nor had the
heat he afforded its usual strength. The air, of course, was dark and
heavy, for want of that vigorous heat which clears and rarefies it; and
the fruits were so crude and unconcocted that they pined away and
decayed, through the chilliness of the atmosphere.

We have a proof still more striking that the assassination of Cæsar was
displeasing to the gods, in the phantom that appeared to Brutus. The
story of it is this: Brutus was on the point of transporting his army
from Abydos to the opposite continent; and the night before, he lay in
his tent awake, according to custom, and in deep thought about what
might be the event of the war; for it was natural for him to watch a
great part of the night, and no general ever required so little sleep.
With all his senses about him, he heard a noise at the door of his tent,
and looking toward the light, which was now burned very low, he saw a
terrible appearance in the human form, but of prodigious stature and the
most hideous aspect. At first he was struck with astonishment; but when
he saw it neither did nor spoke anything to him, but stood in silence by
his bed, he asked it who it was? The spectre answered: "I am thy evil
genius, Brutus; thou shalt see me at Philippi." Brutus answered boldly,
"I'll meet thee there"; and the spectre immediately vanished.

Some time after, he engaged Antony and Octavius Cæsar at Philippi, and
the first day was victorious, carrying all before him, where he fought
in person, and even pillaging Cæsar's camp. The night before he was to
fight the second battle the same spectre appeared to him again, but
spoke not a word. Brutus, however, understood that his last hour was
near, and courted danger with all the violence of despair. Yet he did
not fall in the action; but seeing all was lost, he retired to the top
of a rock, where he presented his naked sword to his breast, and a
friend, as they tell us, assisting the thrust, he died upon the spot.




ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY

DEATH OF ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA

B.C. 44-30

HENRY GEORGE LIDDELL


(After the death of Cæsar, Rome was in confusion; consternation seized
the people, and the "liberators" failed to rally them to their own
support. In possession of Cæsar's treasure, Antony, the surviving
consul, bided his time. His oration at Cæsar's funeral stirred the
populace against the "liberators," and made him for the moment master of
Rome; but his self-seeking soon turned the people against him. The young
Octavius, Cæsar's heir, had become popular with the army. He returned to
Rome and claimed his inheritance, demanded from Antony Cæsar's moneys,
but in vain, and assumed the title of Cæsar. The rivalry between the two
leaders rapidly approached a crisis. The partisans of Antony and
Octavius began to clash, and civil war followed. Defeated, Antony
retreated across the Alps. Octavius was elected consul, and began
negotiations with Antony and Lepidus, which resulted in the three new
masters constituting themselves a triumvirate--the Second
Triumvirate--to settle the affairs of the Commonwealth. They divided the
powers of government, and a partition of territory was made between
them. Their next business was to put out of the way, by proscription,
the enemies of this new order of things. Three hundred senators,
including Cicero, were massacred, as well as two thousand knights.

When the terrified senate had legalized the self-assumed authority of
the triumvirs, they turned their attention to Brutus and Cassius in the
East, whither they had gone after the assassination of Cæsar and
established and maintained themselves in power. At the battle of
Philippi in Macedonia [B.C. 42] Antony and Octavius defeated Brutus and
Cassius, both of whom died by their own hands. The Roman world was now
in the hands of the triumvirs. Antony ruled in the East, Octavius in the
West, and Lepidus in Africa, B.C. 42-36. In the latter year Lepidus was
deposed by Octavius after a short conflict. And only a year after
Philippi a war between Octavius and Antony was threatened because of a
revolt in Italy, raised by Antony's brother Lucius and Fulvia, wife of
Antony; but it was prevented by a treaty of peace, sealed by the
marriage of Antony to Octavia, sister of Octavius. This peace lasted for
ten years, during which time, however, there was constant friction
between them.

At Tarsus, in B.C. 41, Antony received a visit from Cleopatra, to whose
charms he had yielded years before. This was the turning-point in his
career; he went with her to Alexandria. By his oppression of the people
of the East, and his dalliance with Cleopatra, he made himself the
object of hatred and contempt. His army met with a series of defeats. In
the mean time Octavius was constantly strengthening himself. The rivalry
between them finally reached the point where both prepared for war. The
great sea fight near Actium, September 2d, B.C. 31, resulted in the
destruction of Antony's fleet after he had followed Cleopatra in her
flight. A year later occurred the death of both. This important battle
established Octavius as the sole ruler of the Roman possessions, and
historians regard it as marking the end of the republic and the
beginning of the empire.)


While the conspirators were at their bloody work [of slaying Cæsar], the
mass of the senators rushed in confused terror to the doors; and when
Brutus turned to address his peers in defence of the deed, the hall was
well-nigh empty. Cicero, who had been present, answered not, though he
was called by name; Antony had hurried away to exchange his consular
robes for the garb of a slave. Disappointed of obtaining the sanction of
the senate, the conspirators sallied out into the Forum to win the ear
of the people. But here, too, they were disappointed. Not knowing what
massacre might be in store, every man had fled to his own house; and in
vain the conspirators paraded the Forum, holding up their blood-stained
weapons and proclaiming themselves the liberators of Rome.
Disappointment was not their only feeling: they were not without fear.
They knew that Lepidus, being on the eve of departure for his province
of Narbonnese Gaul, had a legion encamped on the island of the Tiber:
and if he were to unite with Antony against them, Cæsar would quickly be
avenged. In all haste, therefore, they retired to the Capitol. Meanwhile
three of Cæsar's slaves placed their master's body upon a stretcher and
carried it to his house on the south side of the Forum, with one arm
dangling from the unsupported corner. In this condition the widowed
Calpurnia received the lifeless clay of him who had lately been
sovereign of the world.

Lepidus moved his troops to the Campus Martius. But Antony had no
thoughts of using force; for in that case probably Lepidus would have
become master of Rome. During the night he took possession of the
treasure which Cæsar had collected to defray the expenses of his
Parthian campaign, and persuaded Calpurnia to put into his hands all the
dictator's papers. Possessed of these securities, he barricaded his
house on the Carinae, and determined to watch the course of events.

In the evening Cicero, with other senators, visited the self-styled
liberators in the Capitol. They had not communicated their plot to the
orator, through fear (they said) of his irresolute counsels; but now
that the deed was done, he extolled it as a godlike act. Next morning,
Dolabella, Cicero's son-in-law, whom Cæsar had promised should be his
successor in the consulship, assumed the consular fasces and joined the
liberators; while Cinna, son of the old Marian leader and therefore
brother-in-law to Cæsar, threw aside his praetorian robes, declaring he
would no longer wear the tyrant's livery. Dec. Brutus, a good soldier,
had taken a band of gladiators into pay, to serve as a bodyguard of the
liberators. Thus strengthened, they ventured again to descend into the
Forum. Brutus mounted the tribune, and addressed the people in a
dispassionate speech, which produced little effect. But when Cinna
assailed the memory of the dictator, the crowd broke out into menacing
cries, and the liberators again retired to the Capitol.

That same night they entered into negotiations with Antony, and the
result appeared next morning, the second after the murder. The senate,
summoned to meet, obeyed the call in large numbers. Antony and Dolabella
attended in their consular robes, and Cinna resumed his praetorian garb.
It was soon apparent that a reconciliation had been effected: for Antony
moved that a general amnesty should be granted, and Cicero seconded the
motion in an animated speech. It was carried; and Antony next moved that
all the acts of the dictator should be recognized as law. He had his own
purposes here; but the liberators also saw in the motion an advantage to
themselves; for they were actually in possession of some of the chief
magistracies, and had received appointments to some of the richest
provinces of the empire. This proposal, therefore, was favorably
received; but it was adjourned to the next day, together with the
important question of Cæsar's funeral.

On the next day Cæsar's acts were formally confirmed, and among them his
will was declared valid, though its provisions were yet unknown. After
this, it was difficult to reject the proposal that the dictator should
have a public burial. Old senators remembered the riots that attended
the funeral of Clodius and shook their heads. Cassius opposed it. But
Brutus, with imprudent magnanimity, decided in favor of allowing it. To
seal the reconciliation, Lepidus entertained Brutus at dinner and
Cassius was feasted by Mark Antony.

The will was immediately made public. Cleopatra was still in Rome, and
entertained hopes that the boy Cæsarion would be declared the dictator's
heir; for though he had been married thrice, there was no one of his
lineage surviving. But Cæsar was too much a Roman, and knew the Romans
too well, to be guilty of this folly. Young C. Octavius, his sister's
son, was declared his heir. Legacies were left to all his supposed
friends, among whom were several of those who had assassinated him. His
noble gardens beyond the Tiber were devised to the use of the public,
and every Roman citizen was to receive a donation of three hundred
sesterces--between ten and fifteen dollars. The effect of this recital
was electric. Devotion to the memory of the dictator and hatred for his
murderers at once filled every breast.

Two or three days after this followed the funeral. The body was to be
burned, and the ashes deposited in the Campus Martius, near the tomb of
his daughter Julia. But it was first brought into the Forum upon a bier
inlaid with ivory and covered with rich tapestries, which was carried by
men high in rank and office. There Antony, as consul, rose to pronounce
the funeral oration. He ran through the chief acts of Cæsar's life,
recited his will, and then spoke of the death which had rewarded him. To
make this more vividly present to the excitable Italians he displayed a
waxen image marked with the three-and-twenty wounds, and produced the
very robe which he had worn, all rent and blood-stained. Soul-stirring
dirges added to the solemn horror of the scene. But to us the memorable
speech which Shakespeare puts into Antony's mouth will give the
liveliest notion of the art used and the impression produced. That
impression was instantaneous. The senator friends of the liberators who
had attended the ceremony looked on in moody silence. Soon the menacing
gestures of the crowd made them look to their safety. They fled; and the
multitude insisted on burning the body, as they had burned the body of
Clodius, in the sacred precincts of the Forum. Some of the veterans who
attended the funeral set fire to the bier; benches and firewood heaped
round it soon made a sufficient pile.

From the blazing pyre the crowd rushed, eager for vengeance, to the
houses of the conspirators. But all had fled betimes. One poor wretch
fell a victim to the fury of the mob--Helvius Cinna, a poet who had
devoted his art to the service of the dictator. He was mistaken for L.
Cornelius Cinna the prætor, and was torn to pieces before the mistake
could be explained.[79]

[Footnote 79: This story is, however, rendered somewhat doubtful by the
manner in which Cinna is mentioned in Vergil's ninth _Eclogue_, which
was certainly written in or after the year B.C. 40.]

Antony was now the real master of Rome. The treasure which he had seized
gave him the means of purchasing good will, and of securing the
attachment of the veterans stationed in various parts of Italy. He did
not, however, proceed in the course which, from the tone of his funeral
harangue, might have been expected. He renewed friendly intercourse with
Brutus and Cassius, who were encouraged to visit Rome once at least, if
not oftener, after that day; and Dec. Brutus, with his gladiators, was
suffered to remain in the city. Antony went still further. He gratified
the senate by passing a law to abolish the dictatorship forever. He then
left Rome to win the favor of the Italian communities and try the temper
of the veterans.

Meanwhile another actor appeared upon the scene. This was young
Octavius. He had been but six months in the camp at Apollonia; but in
that short time he had formed a close friendship with M. Vipsanius
Agrippa, a young man of his own age, who possessed great abilities for
active life, but could not boast of any distinguished ancestry. As soon
as the news of his uncle's assassination reached the camp, his friend
Agrippa recommended him to appeal to the troops and march upon Rome. But
the youth, with a wariness above his years, resisted these bold
counsels. Landing near Brundusium almost alone, he there first heard
that Cæsar's will had been published and that he was declared Cæsar's
heir. He at once accepted the dangerous honor. As he travelled slowly
toward the city he stayed some days at Puteoli with his mother, Atia,
who was now married to L. Philippus. Both mother and stepfather
attempted to dissuade him from the perilous business of claiming his
inheritance. At the same place he had an interview with Cicero, who had
quitted Rome in despair after the funeral, and left the orator under the
impression that he might be won to what was deemed the patriotic party.

He arrived at Rome about the beginning of May, and demanded from Antony,
who had now returned from his Italian tour, an account of the moneys of
which the consul had taken possession, in order that he might discharge
the obligations laid upon him by his uncle's will. But Antony had
already spent great part of the money in bribing Dolabella and other
influential persons; nor was he willing to give up any portion of his
spoil. Octavius therefore sold what remained of his uncle's property,
raised money on his own credit, and paid all legacies with great
exactness. This act earned him much popularity. Antony began to fear
this boy of eighteen, whom he had hitherto despised, and the senate
learned to look on him as a person to be conciliated.

Still Antony remained in possession of all actual power. Cicero, not
remarkable for political firmness, in this crisis displayed a vigor
worthy of his earlier days. He had at one moment made up his mind to
retire from public life and end his days at Athens in learned leisure.
In the course of this summer he continued to employ himself on some of
his most elaborate treatises. His works on the _Nature of the Gods_ and
on _Divination_, his _Offices_, his _Dialogue on Old Age_, and several
other essays belong to this period and mark the restless activity of his
mind. But though he twice set sail from Italy, he was driven back to
port at Velia, where he found Brutus and Cassius. Here he received
letters from Au. Hirtius and other friends of Cæsar, which gave him
hopes that, in the name of Octavius, they might successfully oppose
Antony and restore constitutional government. He determined to return,
and announced his purpose to Brutus and Cassius, who commended him and
took leave of him. They went their way to the east to raise armies
against Antony; he repaired to Rome to fight the battles of his party in
the senate house.

Meanwhile Antony had been running riot. In possession of Cæsar's papers,
with no one to check him, he produced ready warrant for every measure
which he wished to carry, and pleaded the vote of the senate which
confirmed all the acts of Cæsar. When he could not produce a genuine
paper, he interpolated or forged what was needful.

On the day after Cicero's return (September 1st) there was a meeting of
the senate. But the orator did not attend, and Antony threatened to send
men to drag him from his house. Next day Cicero was in his place, but
now Antony was absent. The orator arose and addressed the senate in what
is called his _First Philippic_. This was a measured attack upon the
government and policy of Antony, but personalities were carefully
eschewed: the tone of the whole speech, indeed, is such as might be
delivered by a leader of opposition in parliament at the present day.
But Antony, enraged at his boldness, summoned a meeting for the 19th of
September, which Cicero did not think it prudent to attend. He then
attacked the absent orator in the strongest language of personal abuse
and menace. Cicero sat down and composed his famous _Second Philippic_,
which is written as if it were delivered on the same day, in reply to
Antony's invective. At present, however, he contented himself with
sending a copy of it to Atticus, enjoining secrecy.

Matters quickly drew to a head between Antony and Octavius. The latter
had succeeded in securing a thousand men of his uncle's veterans who had
settled in Campania; and by great exertions in the different towns of
Italy had levied a considerable force. Meantime four of the Epirote
legions had just landed at Brundusium, and Antony hastened to attach
them to his cause. But the largess which he offered them was only a
hundred _denaries_ a man, and the soldiers laughed in his face. Antony,
enraged at their conduct, seized the ringleaders and decimated them. But
this severity only served to change their open insolence into sullen
anger, and emissaries from Octavius were ready to draw them over to the
side of their young master. They had so far obeyed Antony as to march
northward to Ariminum, while he repaired to Rome. But as he entered the
senate house he heard that two of the four legions had deserted to his
rival, and in great alarm he hastened to the camp just in time to keep
the remainder of the troops under his standard by distributing to every
man five hundred denaries.

The persons to hold the consulship for the next year had been designated
by Cæsar. They were both old officers of the Gallic army, C. Vibius
Pansa and Au. Hirtius, the reputed author of the Eighth Book of the
_History of the Gallic War_. Cicero was ready to believe that they had
become patriots, because, disgusted with the arrogance of Antony, they
had declared for Octavius and the senate. Antony began to fear that all
parties might combine to crush him. He determined, therefore, no longer
to remain inactive; and about the end of November, having now collected
all his troops at Ariminum, he marched along the Æmilian road to drive
Dec. Brutus out of Cisalpine Gaul. Decimus was obliged to throw himself
into Mutina (Modena), and Antony blockaded the place. As soon as his
back was turned, Cicero published the famous _Second Philippic_, in
which he lashed the consul with the most unsparing hand, going through
the history of his past life, exaggerating the debaucheries, which were
common to Antony with great part of the Roman youth, and painting in the
strongest colors the profligate use he had made of Cæsar's papers. Its
effect was great, and Cicero followed up the blow by the following
twelve _Philippics_, which were speeches delivered in the senate house
and Forum, at intervals from December (44) to April in the next year.

Cicero was anxious to break with Antony at once, by declaring him a
public enemy. But the latter was still regarded by many senators as the
head of the Cæsarean party, and it was resolved to treat with him. But
the demands of Antony were so extravagant that negotiations were at once
broken off, and nothing remained but to try the fortune of arms. The
consuls proceeded to levy troops; but so exhausted was the treasury that
now for the first time since the triumph of Æmilius Paullus it was found
necessary to levy a property tax on the citizens of Rome.

Octavius and the consuls assembled their forces at Alba. On the first
day of the new year (43) Hirtius marched for Mutina, with Octavius under
his command. The other consul, Pansa, remained at Rome to raise new
levies; but by the end of March he also marched to form a junction with
Hirtius. Both parties pretended to be acting in Cæsar's name.

Antony left his brother Lucius in the trenches before Mutina, and took
the field against Hirtius and Octavius. For three months the opponents
lay watching each other. But when Antony learned that Pansa was coming
up, he made a rapid movement southward with two of his veteran legions
and attacked him. A sharp conflict followed, in which Pansa's troops
were defeated, and the consul himself was carried, mortally wounded, off
the field. But Hirtius was on the alert, and assaulted Antony's wearied
troops on their way back to their camp, with some advantage. This was on
the 15th of April, and on the 27th Hirtius drew Antony from his
intrenchments before Mutina. A fierce battle followed, which ended in
the troops of Antony being driven back into their lines. Hirtius
followed close upon the flying enemy; the camp was carried by storm, and
a complete victory would have been won had not Hirtius himself fallen.
Upon this disaster Octavius drew off the troops. The news of the first
battle had been reported at Rome as a victory, and gave rise to
extravagant rejoicings. The second battle was really a victory, but all
rejoicing was damped by the news that one consul was dead and the other
dying. No such fatal mischance had happened since the Second Punic War,
when Marcellus and Crispinus fell in one day.

After his defeat Antony felt it impossible to maintain the siege of
Mutina. With Dec. Brutus in the town behind him, and the victorious
legions of Octavius before him, his position was critical. He therefore
prepared to retreat, and effected this purpose like a good soldier. His
destination was the province of Narbonnese Gaul, where Lepidus had
assumed the government and had promised him support. But the senate also
had hopes in the same quarter. L. Munatius Plancus commanded in Northern
Gaul, and C. Asinius Pollio in Southern Spain. Sext. Pompeius had made
good his ground in the latter country, and had almost expelled Pollio
from Bætica. Plancus and Pollio, both friends and favorites of Cæsar,
had as yet declared neither for Antony nor Octavius. If they would
declare for the senate, Lepidus, a feeble and fickle man, might desert
Antony; or if Octavius would join with Dec. Brutus, and pursue him,
Antony might not be able to escape from Italy at all. But these
political combinations failed. Plancus and Pollio stood aloof, waiting
for the course of events. Dec. Brutus was not strong enough to pursue
Antony by himself, and Octavius was unwilling, perhaps unable, to unite
the veterans of Cæsar with troops commanded by one of Cæsar's murderers.
And so it happened that Antony effected his retreat across the Alps, but
not without extreme hardships, which he bore in common with the meanest
soldier. It was at such times that his good qualities always showed
themselves, and his gallant endurance of misery endeared him to every
man under his command. On his arrival in Narbonnese Gaul he met Lepidus
at Forum Julii (Frejus), and here the two commanders agreed on a plan of
operations.

The conduct of Octavius gave rise to grave suspicions. It was even said
that the consuls had been killed by his agents. Cicero, who had hitherto
maintained his cause, was silent. He had delivered his _Fourteenth_ and
last _Philippic_ on the news of the first victory gained by Hirtius. But
now he talked in private of "removing" the boy of whom he had hoped to
make a tool. Octavius, however, had taken his part, and was not to be
removed. Secretly he entered into negotiations with Antony. After some
vain efforts on the part of the senate to thwart him, he appeared in the
Campus Martius with his legions. Cicero and most of the senators
disappeared, and the fickle populace greeted the young heir of Cæsar
with applause. Though he was not yet twenty he demanded the consulship,
having been previously relieved from the provisions of the _Lex Annalis_
by a decree of the senate, and he was elected to the first office in the
State, with his cousin, Q. Pedius.[80]

[Footnote 80: Pedius was son of Cæsar's second sister, Julia minor, and
therefore first cousin (once removed) to Octavius.]

A curiate law passed, by which Octavius was adopted into the patrician
gens of the Julii, and was put into legal possession of the name which
he had already assumed--C. Julius Cæsar Octavianus. We shall henceforth
call him Octavian.

The change in his policy was soon indicated by a law in which he
formally separated himself from the senate. Pedius brought it forward.
By its provisions all Cæsar's murderers were summoned to take their
trial. Of course none of them appeared and they were condemned by
default. By the end of September Octavian was again in Cisalpine Gaul
and in close negotiation with Antony and Lepidus. The fruits of his
conduct soon appeared. Plancus and Pollio declared against Cæsar's
murderers. Dec. Brutus, deserted by his soldiery, attempted to escape
into Macedonia through Illyricum; but he was overtaken near Aquileia and
slain by order of Antony.

Italy and Gaul being now clear of the senatorial party, Lepidus, as
mediator, arranged a meeting between Octavian and Antony, upon an island
in a small river near Bononia (Bologna). Here the three potentates
agreed that they should assume a joint and coordinate authority, under
the name of "Triumvirs for settling the affairs of the Commonwealth."
Antony was to have the two Gauls, except the Narbonnese district, which,
with Spain, was assigned to Lepidus; Octavian received Sicily, Sardinia,
and Africa. Italy was for the present to be left to the consuls of the
year, and for the ensuing year Lepidus, with Plancus, received promise
of this high office. In return, Lepidus gave up his military force,
while Octavian and Antony, each at the head of ten legions, prepared to
conquer the Eastern part of the empire, which could not yet be divided
like the Western provinces, because it was in possession of Brutus and
Cassius.

But before they began war, the triumvirs agreed to follow the example
set by Sylla--to extirpate their opponents by a proscription, and to
raise money by confiscation. They framed a list of all men's names whose
death could be regarded as advantageous to any of the three, and on this
list each in turn pricked a name. Antony had made many personal enemies
by his proceedings at Rome, and was at no loss for victims. Octavian had
few direct enemies; but the boy-despot discerned with precocious
sagacity those who were likely to impede his ambitious projects, and
chose his victims with little hesitation. Lepidus would not be left
behind in the bloody work. The author of the _Philippics_ was one of
Antony's first victims; Octavian gave him up, and took as an equivalent
for his late friend the life of L. Cæsar, uncle of Antony. Lepidus
surrendered his brother Paullus for some similar favor. So the work went
on. Not fewer than three hundred senators and two thousand knights were
on the list. Q. Pedius, an honest and upright man, died in his
consulship, overcome by vexation and shame at being implicated in these
transactions.

As soon as their secret business was ended, the triumvirs determined to
enter Rome publicly. Hitherto they had not published more than seventeen
names of the proscribed. They made their entrance severally on three
successive days, each attended by a legion. A law was immediately
brought in to invest them formally with the supreme authority, which
they had assumed. This was followed by the promulgation of successive
lists, each larger than its predecessor.

Among the victims, far the most conspicuous was Cicero. With his brother
Quintus, the old orator had retired to his Tusculan villa after the
battle of Mutina; and now they endeavored to escape in the hope of
joining Brutus in Macedonia; for the orator's only son was serving as a
tribune in the liberator's army. After many changes of domicile they
reached Astura, a little island near Antium, where they found themselves
short of money, and Quintus ventured to Rome to procure the necessary
supply. Here he was recognized and seized, together with his son. Each
desired to die first, and the mournful claim to precedence was settled
by the soldiers killing both at the same moment.

Meantime Cicero had put to sea. But even in this extremity he could not
make up his mind to leave Italy, and put to land at Circeii. After
further hesitation he again embarked, and again sought the Italian shore
near Formiae. For the night he stayed at his villa near that place, and
next morning would not move, exclaiming: "Let me die in my own
country--that country which I have so often saved." But his faithful
slaves forced him into a litter and carried him again toward the coast.
Scarcely were they gone when a band of Antony's bloodhounds reached his
villa, and were put upon the track of their victim by a young man who
owed everything to the Ciceros. The old orator from his litter saw the
pursuers coming up. His own followers were strong enough to have made
resistance, but he desired them to set the litter down. Then, raising
himself on his elbow, he calmly waited for the ruffians and offered his
neck to the sword. He was soon despatched. The chief of the band, by
Antony's express orders, hewed off the head and hands and carried them
to Rome. Fulvia, the widow of Clodius and now the wife of Antony, drove
her hairpin through the tongue which had denounced the iniquities of
both her husbands. The head which had given birth to the _Second
Philippic_, and the hands which had written it, were nailed to the
Rostra, the home of their eloquence. The sight and the associations
raised feelings of horror and pity in every heart. Cicero died in his
sixty-fourth year.

Brutus and Cassius left Italy in the autumn of B.C. 44 and repaired to
the provinces which had been allotted to them, though by Antony's
influence the senate had transferred Macedonia from Brutus to his own
brother Caius, and Syria from Cassius to Dolabella. C. Antonius was
already in possession of parts of Macedonia; but Brutus succeeded in
dislodging him. Meanwhile Cassius, already well known in Syria for his
successful conduct of the Parthian War, had established himself in that
province before he heard of the approach of Dolabella. This worthless
man left Italy about the same time as Brutus and Cassius, and at the
head of several legions marched without opposition through Macedonia
into Asia Minor. Here C. Trebonius had already arrived. But he was
unable to cope with Dolabella; and the latter surprised him and took him
prisoner at Smyrna. He was put to death with unseemly contumely in
Dolabella's presence. This was in February, 43; and thus two of Cæsar's
murderers, in less than a year's time, felt the blow of retributive
justice. When the news of this piece of butchery reached Rome, Cicero,
believing that Octavian was a puppet in his hands, was ruling Rome by
the eloquence of his _Philippics_. On his motion Dolabella was declared
a public enemy.[81] Cassius lost no time in marching his legions into
Asia, to execute the behest of the senate, though he had been
dispossessed of his province by the senate itself. Dolabella threw
himself into Laodicea, where he sought a voluntary death.

[Footnote 81: He had divorced Tullia, the orator's daughter, before he
left Italy.]

By the end of B.C. 43, therefore, the whole of the East was in the hands
of Brutus and Cassius. But instead of making preparations for war with
Antony, the two commanders spent the early part of the year 42 in
plundering the miserable cities of Asia Minor. Brutus demanded men and
money of the Lycians; and, when they refused, he laid siege to Xanthus,
their principal city. The Xanthians made the same brave resistance which
they had offered five hundred years before to the Persian invaders. They
burned their city and put themselves to death rather than submit. Brutus
wept over their fate and abstained from further exactions. But Cassius
showed less moderation; from the Rhodians alone, though they were allies
of Rome, he demanded all their precious metals. After this campaign of
plunder, the two chiefs met at Sardis and renewed the altercations which
Cicero had deplored in Italy. It is probable that war might have broken
out between them had not the preparations of the triumvirs waked them
from their dream of security. It was as he was passing over into Europe
that Brutus, who continued his studious habits amid all disquietudes,
and limited his time of sleep to a period too small for the requirements
of health, was dispirited by the vision which Shakespeare, after
Plutarch, has made famous. It was no doubt the result of a diseased
frame, though it was universally held to be a divine visitation. As he
sat in his tent in the dead of night, he thought a huge and shadowy form
stood by him; and when he calmly asked, "What and whence art thou?" it
answered, or seemed to answer: "I am thine evil genius, Brutus: we shall
meet again at Philippi."

Meantime Antony's lieutenants had crossed the Ionian Sea and penetrated
without opposition into Thrace. The republican leaders found them at
Philippi. The army of Brutus and Cassius amounted to at least eighty
thousand infantry, supported by twenty thousand horse; but they were
ill-supplied with experienced officers. For M. Valerius Messalla, a
young man of twenty-eight, held the chief command after Brutus and
Cassius; and Horace, who was but three-and-twenty, the son of a
freedman, and a youth of feeble constitution, was appointed a legionary
tribune. The forces opposed to them would have been at once overpowered
had not Antony himself opportunely arrived with the second corps of the
triumviral army. Octavian was detained by illness at Dyrrhachium, but he
ordered himself to be carried on a litter to join his legions. The army
of the triumvirs was now superior to the enemy; but their cavalry,
counting only thirteen thousand, was considerably weaker than the force
opposed to it. The republicans were strongly posted upon two hills, with
intrenchments between: the camp of Cassius upon the left next the sea,
that of Brutus inland on the right. The triumviral army lay upon the
open plain before them, in a position rendered unhealthy by marshes;
Antony, on the right, was opposed to Cassius; Octavian, on the left,
fronted Brutus. But they were ill-supplied with provisions and anxious
for a decisive battle. The republicans, however, kept to their
intrenchments, and the other party began to suffer severely from famine.

Determined to bring on an action, Antony began works for the purpose of
cutting off Cassius from the sea. Cassius had always opposed a general
action, but Brutus insisted on putting an end to the suspense, and his
colleague yielded. The day of the attack was probably in October. Brutus
attacked Octavian's army, while Cassius assaulted the working parties of
Antony. Cassius' assault was beaten back with loss, but he succeeded in
regaining his camp in safety. Meanwhile, Messalla, who commanded the
right wing of Brutus' army, had defeated the host of Octavian, who was
still too ill to appear on the field, and the republican soldiers
penetrated into the triumvirs' camp. Presently his litter was brought in
stained with blood, and the corpse of a young man found near it was
supposed to be Octavian's. But Brutus, not receiving any tidings of the
movements of Cassius, became so anxious for his fate that he sent off a
party of horse to make inquiries, and neglected to support the
successful assaults of Messalla.

Cassius, on his part, discouraged at his ill-success, was unable to
ascertain the progress of Brutus. When he saw the party of horse he
hastily concluded that they belonged to the enemy, and retired into his
tent with his freedman Pindarus. What passed there we know not for
certain. Cassius was found dead, with the head severed from the body.
Pindarus was never seen again. It was generally believed that Pindarus
slew his master in obedience to orders; but many thought that he had
dealt a felon blow. The intelligence of Cassius' death was a heavy blow
to Brutus. He forgot his own success, and pronounced the elegy of
Cassius in the well-known words, "There lies the last of the Romans."
The praise was ill-deserved. Except in his conduct of the war against
the Parthians, Cassius had never played a worthy part.

After the first battle of Philippi it would have still been politic in
Brutus to abstain from battle. The triumviral armies were in great
distress, and every day increased their losses. Reinforcements coming to
their aid by sea were intercepted--a proof of the neglect of the
republican leaders in not sooner bringing their fleet into action. Nor
did Brutus ever hear of this success. He was ill-fitted for the life of
the camp, and after the death of Cassius he only kept his men together
by largesse and promises of plunder. Twenty days after the first battle
he led them out again. Both armies faced one another. There was little
manoeuvring. The second battle was decided by numbers and force, not by
skill; and it was decided in favor of the triumvirs. Brutus retired with
four legions to a strong position in the rear, while the rest of his
broken army sought refuge in the camp. Octavian remained to watch them,
while Antony pursued the republican chief. Next day Brutus endeavored to
rouse his men to another effort; but they sullenly refused to fight; and
Brutus withdrew with a few friends into a neighboring wood. Here he took
them aside one by one, and prayed each to do him the last service that a
Roman could render to his friend. All refused with horror; till at
nightfall a trusty Greek freedman named Strato held the sword, and his
master threw himself upon it. Most of his friends followed the sad
example. The body of Brutus was sent by Antony to his mother. His wife
Portia, the daughter of Cato, refused all comfort; and being too closely
watched to be able to slay herself by ordinary means, she suffocated
herself by thrusting burning charcoal into her mouth. Massalla, with a
number of other fugitives, sought safety in the island of Thasos, and
soon after made submission to Antony.

The name of Brutus has, by Plutarch's beautiful narrative, sublimed by
Shakespeare, become a byword for self-devoted patriotism. This exalted
opinion is now generally confessed to be unjust. Brutus was not a
patriot, unless devotion to the party of the senate be patriotism.
Toward the provincials he was a true Roman, harsh and oppressive. He was
free from the sensuality and profligacy of his age, but for public life
he was unfit. His habits were those of a student. His application was
great, his memory remarkable. But he possessed little power of turning
his acquirements to account; and to the last he was rather a learned man
than a man improved by learning. In comparison with Cassius, he was
humane and generous; but in all respects his character is contrasted for
the worse with that of the great man from whom he accepted favors and
then became his murderer.

The battle of Philippi was in reality the closing scene of the
republican drama. But the rivalship of the triumvirs prolonged for
several years the divided state of the Roman world; and it was not till
after the crowning victory of Actium that the imperial government was
established in its unity. We shall, therefore, here add a rapid
narrative of the events which led to that consummation.

The hopeless state of the republican or rather the senatorial party was
such that almost all hastened to make submission to the conquerors:
those whose sturdy spirit still disdained submission resorted to Sext.
Pompeius in Sicily. Octavian, still suffering from ill-health, was
anxious to return to Italy; but before he parted from Antony, they
agreed to a second distribution of the provinces of the empire. Antony
was to have the Eastern world; Octavian the Western provinces. To
Lepidus, who was not consulted in this second division, Africa alone was
left. Sext. Pompeius remained in possession of Sicily.

Antony at once proceeded to make a tour through Western Asia, in order
to exact money from its unfortunate people. About midsummer (B.C. 41) he
arrived at Tarsus, and here he received a visit which determined the
future course of his life and influenced Roman history for the next ten
years.

Antony had visited Alexandria fourteen years before, and had been
smitten by the charms of Cleopatra, then a girl of fifteen. She became
Cæsar's paramour, and from the time of the dictator's death Antony had
never seen her. She now came to meet him in Cilicia. The galley which
carried her up the Cydnus was of more than oriental gorgeousness: the
sails of purple; oars of silver, moving to the sound of music; the
raised poop burnished with gold. There she lay upon a splendid couch,
shaded by a spangled canopy; her attire was that of Venus; around her
flitted attendant cupids and graces. At the news of her approach to
Tarsus, the triumvir found his tribunal deserted by the people. She
invited him to her ship, and he complied. From that moment he was her
slave. He accompanied her to Alexandria, exchanged the Roman garb for
the Graeco-Egyptian costume of the court, and lent his power to the
Queen to execute all her caprices.

Meanwhile Octavian was not without his difficulties. He was so ill at
Brundusium that his death was reported at Rome. The veterans, eager for
their promised rewards, were on the eve of mutiny. In a short time
Octavian was sufficiently recovered to show himself. But he could find
no other means of satisfying the greedy soldiery than by a confiscation
of lands more sweeping than that which followed the proscription of
Sylla. The towns of Cisalpine Gaul were accused of favoring Dec. Brutus,
and saw nearly all their lands handed over to new possessors. The young
poet, Vergil, lost his little patrimony, but was reinstated at the
instance of Pollio and Maecenas, and showed his gratitude in his _First
Eclogue_. Other parts of Italy also suffered: Apulia, for example, as we
learn from Horace's friend Ofellus, who became the tenant of the estate
which had formerly been his own.

But these violent measures deferred rather than obviated the difficulty.
The expulsion of so many persons threw thousands loose upon society,
ripe for any crime. Many of the veterans were ready to join any new
leader who promised them booty. Such a leader was at hand.

Fulvia, wife of Antony, was a woman of fierce passions and ambitious
spirit. She had not been invited to follow her husband to the East. She
saw that in his absence imperial power would fall into the hands of
Octavian. Lucius, brother of Mark Antony, was consul for the year, and
at her instigation he raised his standard at Præneste. But L. Antonius
knew not how to use his strength; and young Agrippa, to whom Octavian
intrusted the command, obliged Antonius and Fulvia to retire northward
and shut themselves up in Perusia. Their store of provisions was so
small that it sufficed only for the soldiery. Early in the next year
Perusia surrendered, on condition that the lives of the leaders should
be spared. The town was sacked; the conduct of L. Antonius alienated all
Italy from his brother.

While his wife, his brother, and his friends were quitting Italy in
confusion, the arms of Antony suffered a still heavier blow in the
Eastern provinces, which were under his special government. After the
battle of Philippi, Q. Labienus, son of Cæsar's old lieutenant Titus,
sought refuge at the court of Orodes, king of Parthia. Encouraged by the
proffered aid of a Roman officer, Pacorus (the King's son) led a
formidable army into Syria. Antony's lieutenant was entirely routed; and
while Pacorus with one army poured into Palestine and Phoenicia, Q.
Labienus with another broke into Cilicia. Here he found no opposition;
and, overrunning all Asia Minor even to the Ionian Sea, he assumed the
name of Parthicus, as if he had been a Roman conqueror of the people
whom he served.

These complicated disasters roused Antony from his lethargy. He sailed
to Tyre, intending to take the field against the Parthians; but the
season was too far advanced, and he therefore crossed the Ægean to
Athens, where he found Fulvia and his brother, accompanied by Pollio,
Plancus, and others, all discontented with Octavian's government.
Octavian was absent in Gaul, and their representation of the state of
Italy encouraged him to make another attempt. Late in the year (41)
Antony formed a league with Sext. Pompeius; and while that chief
blockaded Thurii and Consentia, Antony assailed Brundusium. Agrippa was
preparing to meet this new combination; and a fresh civil war was
imminent. But the soldiery was weary of war: both armies compelled their
leaders to make pacific overtures, and the new year was ushered in by a
general peace, which was rendered easier by the death of Fulvia. Antony
and Octavian renewed their professions of amity, and entered Rome
together in joint ovation to celebrate the restoration of peace. They
now made a third division of the provinces, by which Scodra (Scutari) in
Illyricum was fixed as the boundary of the West and East; Lepidus was
still left in possession of Africa. It was further agreed that Octavian
was to drive Sext. Pompeius, lately the ally of Antony, out of Sicily;
while Antony renewed his pledges to recover the standards of Crassus
from the Parthians. The new compact was sealed by the marriage of Antony
with Octavia, his colleague's sister, a virtuous and beautiful lady,
worthy of a better consort. These auspicious events were celebrated by
the lofty verse of Vergil's _Fourth Eclogue_.

Sext. Pompeius had reason to complain. By the peace of Brundusium he was
abandoned by his late friend to Octavian. He was not a man to brook
ungenerous treatment. Of late years his possession of Sicily had given
him command of the Roman corn market. During the winter which followed
the peace of Brundusium (B.C. 40-39), Sextus blockaded Italy so closely
that Rome was threatened with a positive dearth. Riots arose; the
triumvirs were pelted with stones in the Forum, and they deemed it
prudent to temporize by inviting Pompey to enter their league. He met
them at Misenum, and the two chiefs went on board his ship to settle the
terms of alliance. It is said that one of his chief officers, a Greek
named Menas or Menodorus, suggested to him the expediency of putting to
sea with the great prize, and then making his own terms. Sextus rejected
the advice with the characteristic words, "You should have done it
without asking me." It was agreed that Sicily, Sardinia, and Corsica
should be given up to his absolute rule, and that Achaia should be added
to his portion; so that the Roman world was now partitioned among four:
Octavian, Antony, Lepidus, and Sext. Pompeius. On their return the
triumvirs were received with vociferous applause.

Before winter, Antony sailed for Athens in company with Octavia, who for
the time seems to have banished Cleopatra from his thoughts. But he
disgusted all true Romans by assuming the attributes of Grecian gods and
indulging in Grecian orgies.

He found the state of things in the East greatly changed since his
departure. He had commissioned P. Ventidius Bassus, an officer who had
followed Fulvia from Italy, to hold the Parthians in check till his
return. Ventidius was son of a Picenian nobleman of Asculum, who had
been brought to Rome as a captive in the Social War. In his youth he had
been a contractor to supply mules for the use of the Roman commissariat.
But in the civil wars which followed, men of military talent easily rose
to command; and such was the lot of Ventidius. While Antony was absent
in Italy, he drove Q. Labienus into the defiles of Taurus, and here that
adventurer was defeated and slain. The conqueror then marched rapidly
into Syria, and forced Pacorus also to withdraw to the eastern bank of
the Euphrates.

In the following year (38) he repelled a fresh invasion of the
Parthians, and defeated them in three battles. In the last of these
engagements Pacorus himself was slain on the fifteenth anniversary of
the death of Crassus. Antony found Ventidius laying siege to Samosata,
and displaced him, only to abandon the siege and return to Athens.
Ventidius repaired to Rome, where he was honored with a well-deserved
triumph. He had left it as a mule jobber; he returned with the laurel
round his brows. He was the first, and almost the last, Roman general
who could claim such a distinction for victory over the Parthians.

The alliance with Sext. Pompeius was not intended to last, and it did
not last. Antony refused to put him in possession of Achaia, and to
avenge himself for this breach of faith Pompeius again began to
intercept the Italian corn fleets. Fresh discontent appeared at Rome,
and Octavian equipped a second fleet to sail against the naval chief;
but after two battles of doubtful result, the fleet was destroyed by a
storm, and Sextus was again left in undisputed mastery of the sea.
Octavian, however, was never daunted by reverses, and he gave his
favorite Agrippa full powers to conduct the war against Pompeius. This
able commander set about his work with that resolution that marked a man
determined not to fail. As a harbor for his fleet, he executed a plan of
the great Cæsar; namely, to make a good and secure harbor on the coast
of Latium, which then, as now, offered no shelter to ships. For this
purpose he cut a passage through the narrow necks of land which
separated Lake Lucrinus from the sea, and Lake Avernus from Lake
Lucrinus, and faced the outer barrier with stone. This was the famous
Julian Port. In the whole of the two years B.C. 38 and 37 Agrippa was
occupied in this work and in preparing a sufficient force of ships.
Every dockyard in Italy was called into requisition. A large body of
slaves was set free that they might be trained to serve as rowers.

On the 1st of July, B.C. 36, the fleet put to sea. Octavian himself,
with one division, purposed to attack the northern coast of Sicily,
while a second squadron was assembled at Tarentum for the purpose of
assailing the eastern side. Lepidus, with a third fleet from Africa, was
to assault Lilybaeum. But the winds were again adverse; and, though
Lepidus effected a landing on the southern coast, Octavian's two fleets
were driven back to Italy with great damage. But the injured ships were
refitted, and Agrippa was sent westward toward Panormus, while Octavian
himself kept guard near Messana. Off Mylae, a place famous for having
witnessed the first naval victory of the Romans, Agrippa encountered the
fleet of Sext. Pompeius; but Sextus, with the larger portion of his
ships, gave Agrippa the slip, and sailing eastward fell suddenly upon
Octavian's squadron off Tauromenium. A desperate conflict followed,
which ended in the complete triumph of Sextus, and Octavian escaped to
Italy with a few ships only. But Agrippa was soon upon the traces of the
enemy. On the 3d of September Sextus was obliged once more to accept
battle near the Straits of Messana, and suffered an irretrievable
defeat. His troops on land were attacked and dispersed by an army which
had been landed on the eastern coast by the indefatigable Octavian; and
Sextus sailed off to Lesbos, where he had found refuge as a boy during
the campaign of Pharsalia, to seek protection from the jealousy of
Antony.

Lepidus had assisted in the campaign; but after the departure of Sextus
he openly declared himself independent of his brother triumvirs.
Octavian, with prompt and prudent boldness, entered the camp of Lepidus
in person with a few attendants. The soldiers deserted in crowds, and in
a few hours Lepidus was fain to sue for pardon, where he had hoped to
rule. He was treated with contemptuous indifference, Africa was taken
from him; but he was allowed to live and die at Rome in quiet enjoyment
of the chief pontificate.

It was fortunate for Octavian that during this campaign Antony was on
friendly terms with him. In B.C. 37 the ruler of the East again visited
Italy, and a meeting between the two chiefs was arranged at Tarentum.
The five years for which the triumvirs were originally appointed were
now fast expiring; and it was settled that their authority should be
renewed by the subservient senate and people for a second period of the
same duration. They parted good friends; and Octavian undertook his
campaign against Sext. Pompeius without fear from Antony. This was
proved by the fate of the fugitive. From Lesbos Sextus passed over to
Asia, where he was taken prisoner by Antony's lieutenants and put to
death.

Hitherto Octavia had retained her influence over Antony. But presently,
after his last interview with her brother, the fickle triumvir abruptly
quitted a wife who was too good for him, and returned to the fascinating
presence of the Egyptian Queen, whom he had not seen for three years.
From this time forth he made no attempt to break the silken chain of her
enchantments. During the next summer, indeed, he attempted a new
Parthian campaign. But his advance was made with reckless indifference
to the safety of his troops. Provisions failed; disease broke out; and
after great suffering he was forced to seek safety by a precipitate
retreat into the Armenian mountains. In the next year he contented
himself with a campaign in Armenia, to punish the King of that country
for alleged treachery in the last campaign. The King fell into his
hands; and with this trophy Antony returned to Alexandria, where the
Romans were disgusted to see the streets of a Graeco-Egyptian town
honored by a mimicry of a Roman triumph.

For the next three years he surrendered himself absolutely to the will
of the enchantress. To this period belong those tales of luxurious
indulgence which are known to every reader. The brave soldier, who in
the perils of war could shake off all luxurious habits and could rival
the commonest man in the cheerfulness with which he underwent every
hardship, was seen no more. He sunk into an indolent voluptuary, pleased
by childish amusements. At one time he would lounge in a boat at a
fishing party, and laugh when he drew up pieces of salt fish which by
the Queen's order had been attached to his hook by divers. At another
time she wagered that she would consume ten million sesterces at one
meal, and won her wager by dissolving in vinegar a pearl of unknown
value. While Cleopatra bore the character of the goddess Isis, her lover
appeared as Osiris. Her head was placed conjointly with his own on the
coins which he issued as a Roman magistrate. He disposed of the kingdoms
and principalities of the East by his sole word. By his influence Herod,
son of Antipater, the Idumæan minister of Hyrcanus, the late sovereign
of Judea, was made king to the exclusion of the rightful heir. Polemo,
his own son by Cleopatra, was invested with the sceptre of Armenia.
Encouraged by the absolute submission of her lover, Cleopatra fixed her
eye upon the Capitol, and dreamed of winning by means of Antony that
imperial crown which she had vainly sought from Cæsar.

While Antony was engaged in voluptuous dalliance, Octavian was
resolutely pursuing the work of consolidating his power in the West. His
patience, his industry, his attention to business, his affability, were
winning golden opinions and rapidly obliterating all memory of the
bloody work by which he had risen to power. He had won little glory in
war; but so long as the corn fleets arrived daily from Sicily and
Africa, the populace cared little whether the victory had been won by
Octavian or by his generals. In Agrippa he possessed a consummate
captain, in Maecenas a wise and temperate minister. It is much to his
credit that he never showed any jealousy of the men to whom he owed so
much. He flattered the people with the hope that he would, when Antony
had fulfilled his mission of recovering the standards of Crassus, engage
him to join in putting an end to their sovereign power and restoring
constitutional liberty.

In point of fidelity to his marriage vows Octavian was little better
than Antony. He renounced his marriage with Clodia, the daughter of
Fulvia, when her mother attempted to raise Italy against him. He
divorced Scribonia, when it no longer suited him to court the favor of
her kinsman. To replace this second wife, he forcibly took away Livia
from her husband, T. Claudius Nero, though she was at that time pregnant
of her second son. But in this and other less pardonable immoralities
there was nothing to shock the feelings of Romans.

But Octavian never suffered pleasure to divert him from business. If he
could not be a successful general, he resolved at least to show that he
could be a hardy soldier. While Antony in his Egyptian palace was
neglecting the Parthian War, his rival led his legions in more than one
dangerous campaign against the barbarous Dalmatians and Pannonians, who
had been for some time infesting the province of Illyricum. In the year
B.C. 33 he announced that the limits of the empire had been extended
northward to the banks of the Save.

Octavian now began to feel that any appearance of friendship with Antony
was a source of weakness rather than of strength at Rome.
Misunderstandings had already broken out. Antony complained that
Octavian had given him no share in the provinces wrested from Sext.
Pompeius and Lepidus. Octavian retorted by accusing his colleague of
appropriating Egypt and Armenia, and of increasing Cleopatra's power at
the expense of the Roman Empire. Popular indignation rose to its height
when Plancus and Titius, who had been admitted to Antony's confidence,
passed over to Octavian, and disclosed the contents of their master's
will. In that document Antony ordered that his body should be buried at
Alexandria, in the mausoleum of Cleopatra. Men began to fancy that
Cleopatra had already planted her throne upon the Capitol. These
suspicions were sedulously encouraged by Octavian.

Before the close of B.C. 32, Octavian, by the authority of the senate,
declared war nominally against Cleopatra. Antony, roused from his sleep
by reports from Rome, passed over to Athens, issuing orders everywhere
to levy men and collect ships for the impending struggle. At Athens he
received news of the declaration of war, and replied by divorcing
Octavia. His fleet was ordered to assemble at Corcyra; and his legions
in the early spring prepared to pour into Epirus. He established his
head-quarters at Patræ on the Corinthian Gulf.

But Antony, though his fleet was superior to that of Octavian, allowed
Agrippa to sweep the Ionian Sea, and to take possession of Methone, in
Messenia, as a station for a flying squadron to intercept Antony's
communications with the East, nay, even to occupy Corcyra, which had
been destined for his own place of rendezvous. Antony's fleet now
anchored in the waters of the Ambracian Gulf, while his legions encamped
on a spot of land which forms the northern horn of that spacious inlet.
But the place chosen for the camp was unhealthy; and in the heats of
early summer his army suffered greatly from disease. Agrippa lay close
at hand watching his opportunity. In the course of the spring Octavian
joined him in person.

Early in the season Antony had repaired from Patræ to his army, so as to
be ready either to cross over into Italy or to meet the enemy if they
attempted to land in Epirus. At first he showed something of his old
military spirit, and the soldiers, who always loved his military
frankness, warmed into enthusiasm; but his chief officers, won by
Octavian or disgusted by the influence of Cleopatra, deserted him in
such numbers that he knew not whom to trust, and gave up all thoughts of
maintaining the contest with energy. Urged by Cleopatra, he resolved to
carry off his fleet and abandon the army. All preparations were made in
secret, and the great fleet put to sea on the 28th of August. For the
four following days there was a strong gale from the south. Neither
could Antony escape nor could Octavian put to sea against him from
Corcyra. On the 2d of September, however, the wind fell, and Octavian's
light vessels, by using their oars, easily came up with the unwieldy
galleys of the eastern fleet. A battle was now inevitable.

Antony's ships were like impregnable fortresses to the assault of the
slight vessels of Octavian; and, though they lay nearly motionless in
the calm sea, little impression was made upon them. But about noon a
breeze sprung up from the west; and Cleopatra, followed by sixty
Egyptian ships, made sail in a southerly direction. Antony immediately
sprang from his ship-of-war into a light galley and followed. Deserted
by their commander, the captains of Antony's ships continued to resist
desperately; nor was it till the greater part of them were set on fire
that the contest was decided. Before evening closed, the whole fleet was
destroyed; most of the men and all the treasure on board perished. A few
days after, when the shameful flight of Antony was made known to his
army, all his legions went over to the conqueror.

It was not for eleven months after the battle of Actium that Octavian
entered the open gates of Alexandria. He had been employed in the
interval in founding the city of Nicopolis to celebrate his victory on
the northern horn of the Ambracian Gulf, in rewarding his soldiers, and
settling the affairs of the provinces of the East. In the winter he
returned to Italy, and it was midsummer, B.C. 30, before he arrived in
Egypt.

When Antony and Cleopatra arrived off Alexandria they put a bold face
upon the matter. Some time passed before the real state of the case was
known; but it soon became plain that Egypt was at the mercy of the
conqueror. The Queen formed all kinds of wild designs. One was to
transport the ships that she had saved across the Isthmus of Suez and
seek refuge in some distant land where the name of Rome was yet unknown.
Some ships were actually drawn across, but they were destroyed by the
Arabs, and the plan was abandoned. She now flattered herself that her
powers of fascination, proved so potent over Cæsar and Antony, might
subdue Octavian. Secret messages passed between the conqueror and the
Queen; nor were Octavian's answers such as to banish hope.

Antony, full of repentance and despair, shut himself up in Pharos, and
there remained in gloomy isolation.

In July, B.C. 30, Octavian appeared before Pelusium. The place was
surrendered without a blow. Yet, at the approach of the conqueror,
Antony put himself at the head of a division of cavalry and gained some
advantage. But on his return to Alexandria he found that Cleopatra had
given up all her ships; and no more opposition was offered. On the 1st
of August (Sextilis, as it was then called) Octavian entered the open
gates of Alexandria. Both Antony and Cleopatra sought to win him.
Antony's messengers the conqueror refused to see; but he still used fair
words to Cleopatra. The Queen had shut herself up in a sort of mausoleum
built to receive her body after death, which was not approachable by any
door; and it was given out that she was really dead. All the tenderness
of old times revived in Antony's heart. He stabbed himself, and in a
dying state ordered himself to be laid by the side of Cleopatra. The
Queen, touched by pity, ordered her expiring lover to be drawn up by
cords into her retreat, and bathed his temples with her tears.

After he had breathed his last, she consented to see Octavian. Her
penetration soon told her that she had nothing to hope from him. She saw
that his fair words were only intended to prevent her from desperate
acts and reserve her for the degradation of his triumph. This impression
was confirmed when all instruments by which death could be inflicted
were found to have been removed from her apartments. But she was not to
be so baffled. She pretended all submission; but when the ministers of
Octavian came to carry her away, they found her lying dead upon her
couch, attended by her faithful waiting-women, Iras and Charmion. The
manner of her death was never ascertained; popular belief ascribed it to
the bite of an asp which had been conveyed to her in a basket of fruit.

Thus died Antony and Cleopatra. Antony was by nature a genial,
open-hearted Roman, a good soldier, quick, resolute, and vigorous, but
reckless and self-indulgent, devoid alike of prudence and of principle.
The corruptions of the age, the seductions of power, and the evil
influence of Cleopatra paralyzed a nature capable of better things. We
know him chiefly through the exaggerated assaults of Cicero in his
_Philippic_, and the narratives of writers devoted to Octavian. But
after all deductions for partial representation, enough remains to show
that Antony had all the faults of Cæsar, with little of his redeeming
greatness.

Cleopatra was an extraordinary person. At her death she was but
thirty-eight years of age. Her power rested not so much on actual beauty
as on her fascinating manners and her extreme readiness of wit. In her
follies there was a certain magnificence which excites even a dull
imagination. We may estimate the real power of her mental qualities by
observing the impression her character made upon the Roman poets of the
time. No meditated praises could have borne such testimony to her
greatness as the lofty strain in which Horace celebrates her fall and
congratulates the Roman world on its escape from the ruin which she was
threatening to the Capitol.

Octavian dated the years of his imperial monarchy from the day of the
battle of Actium. But it was not till two years after (the summer of
B.C. 29) that he established himself in Rome as ruler of the Roman
world. Then he celebrated three magnificent triumphs, after the example
of his uncle the great dictator, for his victories in Dalmatia, at
Actium, and in Egypt. At the same time the temple of Janus was
closed--notwithstanding that border wars still continued in Gaul and
Spain--for the first time since the year B.C. 235. All men drew breath
more freely, and all except the soldiery looked forward to a time of
tranquillity. Liberty and independence were forgotten words. After the
terrible disorders of the last century, the general cry was for quiet at
any price. Octavian was a person admirably fitted to fulfil these
aspirations. His uncle Julius was too fond of active exertion to play
such a part well. Octavian never shone in war, while his vigilant and
patient mind was well fitted for the discharge of business. He avoided
shocking popular feeling by assuming any title savoring of royalty; but
he enjoyed by universal consent an authority more than regal.




GERMANS UNDER ARMINIUS REVOLT AGAINST ROME

A.D. 9

SIR EDWARD SHEPHERD CREASY


(The German race was beginning to make itself felt to a greater extent
than hitherto in its efforts for freedom from the Roman rule. Research
shows that from the earliest days there were two distinct peoples under
this designation of _German_--the northern or Scandinavian, and the
southern, being more truly the German. Both consisted of numerous
tribes, the Romans giving separate names to each: from this arose the
generic titles of _Franks, Bavarians, Alamanni_, and the rest.

They were great fighters and, as a natural sequence, mighty hunters.
When warfare did not occupy their attention, hunting, feasting, and
drinking took its place. Tacitus writes: "To drink continuously, night
and day, was no shame for them." Their chief beverage was barley beer,
though, in the South, wine was used to some extent.

Rome had garrisons throughout the whole land, and the fortunes of the
Germans were at a low ebb. Freedom seemed stifled forever when Arminius
led his forces against the Roman hosts in the forest of Teutoburgium.
Rightly does Creasy rate this important battle so highly, for it meant
the final uplifting of the Teuton, and with him the English-speaking
races of a later time.)


To a truly illustrious Frenchman, whose reverses as a minister can never
obscure his achievements in the world of letters, we are indebted for
the most profound and most eloquent estimate that we possess of the
importance of the Germanic element in European civilization, and of the
extent to which the human race is indebted to those brave warriors who
long were the unconquered antagonists, and finally became the
conquerors, of imperial Rome.

Twenty-three eventful years have passed away since M. Guizot[82]
delivered from the chair of modern history, at Paris, his course of
lectures on the history of civilization in Europe. During those years
the spirit of earnest inquiry into the germs and primary developments of
existing institutions has become more and more active and universal, and
the merited celebrity of M. Guizot's work has proportionally increased.
Its admirable analysis of the complex political and social organizations
of which the modern civilized world is made up must have led thousands
to trace with keener interest the great crises of times past, by which
the characteristics of the present were determined. The narrative of one
of these great crises, of the epoch A.D. 9, when Germany took up arms
for her independence against Roman invasion, has for us this special
attraction--that it forms part of our own national history. Had Arminius
been supine or unsuccessful, our Germanic ancestors would have been
enslaved or exterminated in their original seats along the Eider and the
Elbe. This island would never have borne the name of England, and "we,
this great English nation, whose race and language are now overrunning
the earth, from one end of it to the other," would have been utterly cut
off from existence.

[Footnote 82: Guizot was minister of foreign affairs, and later (1848)
prime minister, under Louis Philippe.]

Arnold may, indeed, go too far in holding that we are wholly unconnected
in race with the Romans and Britons who inhabited this country before
the coming over of the Saxons; that, "nationally speaking, the history
of Cæsar's invasion has no more to do with us than the natural history
of the animals which then inhabited our forests." There seems ample
evidence to prove that the Romanized Celts whom our Teutonic forefathers
found here influenced materially the character of our nation. But the
main stream of our people was, and is, Germanic. Our language alone
decisively proves this. Arminius is far more truly one of our national
heroes than Caractacus; and it was our own primeval fatherland that the
brave German rescued when he slaughtered the Roman legions, eighteen
centuries ago, in the marshy glens between the Lippe and the Ems.

Dark and disheartening, even to heroic spirits, must have seemed the
prospects of Germany when Arminius planned the general rising of his
countrymen against Rome. Half the land was occupied by Roman garrisons;
and, what was worse, many of the Germans seemed patiently acquiescent in
their state of bondage. The braver portion, whose patriotism could be
relied on, was ill-armed and undisciplined, while the enemy's troops
consisted of veterans in the highest state of equipment and training,
familiarized with victory and commanded by officers of proved skill and
valor. The resources of Rome seemed boundless; her tenacity of purpose
was believed to be invincible. There was no hope of foreign sympathy or
aid; for "the self-governing powers that had filled the Old World had
bent one after another before the rising power of Rome, and had
vanished. The earth seemed left void of independent nations."

The German chieftain knew well the gigantic power of the oppressor.
Arminius was no rude savage, fighting out of mere animal instinct or in
ignorance of the might of his adversary. He was familiar with the Roman
language and civilization; he had served in the Roman armies; he had
been admitted to the Roman citizenship, and raised to the rank of the
equestrian order. It was part of the subtle policy of Rome to confer
rank and privileges on the youth of the leading families in the nations
which she wished to enslave. Among other young German chieftains,
Arminius and his brother, who were the heads of the noblest house in the
tribe of the Cherusci, had been selected as fit objects for the exercise
of this insidious system. Roman refinements and dignities succeeded in
denationalizing the brother, who assumed the Roman name of Flavius, and
adhered to Rome throughout all her wars against his country. Arminius
remained unbought by honors or wealth, uncorrupted by refinement or
luxury. He aspired to and obtained from Roman enmity a higher title than
ever could have been given him by Roman favor. It is in the page of
Rome's greatest historian that his name has come down to us with the
proud addition of "_Liberator hand dubie Germaniae_."

Often must the young chieftain, while meditating the exploit which has
thus immortalized him, have anxiously revolved in his mind the fate of
the many great men who had been crushed in the attempt which he was
about to renew--the attempt to stay the chariot wheels of triumphant
Rome. Could he hope to succeed where Hannibal and Mithradates had
perished? What had been the doom of Viriathus? and what warning against
vain valor was written on the desolate site where Numantia once had
flourished? Nor was a caution wanting in scenes nearer home and more
recent times. The Gauls had fruitlessly struggled for eight years
against Cæsar; and the gallant Vercingetorix, who in the last year of
the war had roused all his countrymen to insurrection, who had cut off
Roman detachments, and brought Cæsar himself to the extreme of peril at
Alesia--he, too, had finally succumbed, had been led captive in Cæsar's
triumph, and had then been butchered in cold blood in a Roman dungeon.

It was true that Rome was no longer the great military republic which
for so many ages had shattered the kingdoms of the world. Her system of
government was changed, and, after a century of revolution and civil
war, she had placed herself under the despotism of a single ruler. But
the discipline of her troops was yet unimpaired and her warlike spirit
seemed unabated. The first year of the empire had been signalized by
conquests as valuable as any gained by the republic in a corresponding
period. It is a great fallacy--though apparently sanctioned by great
authorities--to suppose that the foreign policy pursued by Augustus was
pacific; he certainly recommended such a policy to his successors
(_incertum metu an per invidiam_: Tac., _Ann_., i. 11), but he himself,
until Arminius broke his spirit, had followed a very different course.
Besides his Spanish wars, his generals, in a series of generally
aggressive campaigns, had extended the Roman frontier from the Alps to
the Danube, and had reduced into subjection the large and important
countries that now form the territories of all Austria south of that
river, and of East Switzerland, Lower Wuertemberg, Bavaria, the
Valtelline, and the Tyrol.

While the progress of the Roman arms thus pressed the Germans from the
south, still more formidable inroads had been made by the imperial
legions on the west. Roman armies, moving from the province of Gaul,
established a chain of fortresses along the right as well as the left
bank of the Rhine, and, in a series of victorious campaigns, advanced
their eagles as far as the Elbe, which now seemed added to the list of
vassal rivers, to the Nile, the Rhine, the Rhone, the Danube, the Tagus,
the Seine, and many more, that acknowledged the supremacy of the Tiber.
Roman fleets also, sailing from the harbors of Gaul along the German
coasts and up the estuaries, coöperated with the land forces of the
empire, and seemed to display, even more decisively than her armies, her
overwhelming superiority over the rude Germanic tribes. Throughout the
territory thus invaded the Romans had with their usual military skill
established fortified posts; and a powerful army of occupation was kept
on foot, ready to move instantly on any spot where a popular outbreak
might be attempted.

Vast, however, and admirably organized as the fabric of Roman power
appeared on the frontiers and in the provinces, there was rottenness at
the core. In Rome's unceasing hostilities with foreign foes, and still
more in her long series of desolating civil wars, the free middle
classes of Italy had almost wholly disappeared. Above the position which
they had occupied, an oligarchy of wealth had reared itself; beneath
that position a degraded mass of poverty and misery was fermenting.
Slaves; the chance sweepings of every conquered country; shoals of
Africans, Sardinians, Asiatics, Illyrians, and others made up the bulk
of the population of the Italian peninsula.

The foulest profligacy of manners was general in all ranks. In universal
weariness of revolution and civil war, and in consciousness of being too
debased for self-government, the nation had submitted itself to the
absolute authority of Augustus. Adulation was now the chief function of
the senate; and the gifts of genius and accomplishments of art were
devoted to the elaboration of eloquently false panegyrics upon the
prince and his favorite courtiers. With bitter indignation must the
German chieftain have beheld all this and contrasted with it the rough
worth of his own countrymen: their bravery, their fidelity to their
word, their manly independence of spirit, their love of their national
free institutions, and their loathing of every pollution and meanness.
Above all, he must have thought of the domestic virtues that hallowed a
German home; of the respect there shown to the female character, and of
the pure affection by which that respect was repaid. His soul must have
burned within him at the contemplation of such a race yielding to these
debased Italians.

Still, to persuade the Germans to combine, in spite of the frequent
feuds among themselves, in one sudden outbreak against Rome; to keep the
scheme concealed from the Romans until the hour for action arrived; and
then, without possessing a single walled town, without military stores,
without training, to teach his insurgent countrymen to defeat veteran
armies and storm fortifications, seemed so perilous an enterprise that
probably Arminius would have receded from it had not a stronger feeling
even than patriotism urged him on. Among the Germans of high rank who
had most readily submitted to the invaders and become zealous partisans
of Roman authority was a chieftain named Segestes. His daughter,
Thusnelda, was preeminent among the noble maidens of Germany. Arminius
had sought her hand in marriage; but Segestes, who probably discerned
the young chief's disaffection to Rome, forbade his suit, and strove to
preclude all communication between him and his daughter. Thusnelda,
however, sympathized far more with the heroic spirit of her lover than
with the timeserving policy of her father. An elopement baffled the
precautions of Segestes, who, disappointed in his hope of preventing the
marriage, accused Arminius before the Roman governor of having carried
off his daughter and of planning treason against Rome. Thus assailed,
and dreading to see his bride torn from him by the officials of the
foreign oppressor, Arminius delayed no longer, but bent all his energies
to organize and execute a general insurrection of the great mass of his
countrymen, who hitherto had submitted in sullen hatred to the Roman
dominion.

A change of governors had recently taken place, which, while it
materially favored the ultimate success of the insurgents, served, by
the immediate aggravation of the Roman oppressions which it produced, to
make the native population more universally eager to take arms.
Tiberius, who was afterward emperor, had recently been recalled from the
command in Germany and sent into Pannonia to put down a dangerous revolt
which had broken out against the Romans in that province. The German
patriots were thus delivered from the stern supervision of one of the
most suspicious of mankind, and were also relieved from having to
contend against the high military talents of a veteran commander, who
thoroughly understood their national character, and also the nature of
the country, which he himself had principally subdued.

In the room of Tiberius, Augustus sent into Germany Quintilius Varus,
who had lately returned from the proconsulate of Syria. Varus was a true
representative of the higher classes of the Romans, among whom a general
taste for literature, a keen susceptibility to all intellectual
gratifications, a minute acquaintance with the principles and practice
of their own national jurisprudence, a careful training in the schools
of the rhetoricians, and a fondness for either partaking in or watching
the intellectual strife of forensic oratory had become generally
diffused, without, however, having humanized the old Roman spirit of
cruel indifference to human feelings and human sufferings, and without
acting as the least checks on unprincipled avarice and ambition or on
habitual and gross profligacy. Accustomed to govern the depraved and
debased natives of Syria--a country where courage in man and virtue in
woman had for centuries been unknown--Varus thought that he might
gratify his licentious and rapacious passions with equal impunity among
the high-minded sons and pure-spirited daughters of Germany. When the
general of an army sets the example of outrages of this description, he
is soon faithfully imitated by his officers, and surpassed by his still
more brutal soldiery. The Romans now habitually indulged in those
violations of the sanctity of the domestic shrine, and those insults
upon honor and modesty, by which far less gallant spirits than those of
our Teutonic ancestors have often been maddened into insurrection.

Arminius found among the other German chiefs many who sympathized with
him in his indignation at their country's abasement, and many whom
private wrongs had stung yet more deeply. There was little difficulty in
collecting bold leaders for an attack on the oppressors, and little fear
of the population not rising readily at those leaders' call. But to
declare open war against Rome and to encounter Varus' army in a pitched
battle would have been merely rushing upon certain destruction. Varus
had three legions under him, a force which, after allowing for
detachments, cannot be estimated at less than fourteen thousand Roman
infantry. He had also eight or nine hundred Roman cavalry, and at least
an equal number of horse and foot sent from the allied states, or raised
among those provincials who had not received the Roman franchise.

It was not merely the number, but the quality of this force that made
them formidable; and, however contemptible Varus might be as a general,
Arminius well knew how admirably the Roman armies were organized and
officered, and how perfectly the legionaries understood every manoeuvre
and every duty which the varying emergencies of a stricken field might
require. Stratagem was, therefore, indispensable; and it was necessary
to blind Varus to their schemes until a favorable opportunity should
arrive for striking a decisive blow.

For this purpose, the German confederates frequented the head-quarters
of Varus, which seem to have been near the centre of the modern country
of Westphalia, where the Roman general conducted himself with all the
arrogant security of the governor of a perfectly submissive province.
There Varus gratified at once his vanity, his rhetorical tastes, and his
avarice, by holding courts, to which he summoned the Germans for the
settlement of all their disputes, while a bar of Roman advocates
attended to argue the cases before the tribunal of Varus, who did not
omit the opportunity of exacting court fees and accepting bribes. Varus
trusted implicitly to the respect which the Germans pretended to pay to
his abilities as a judge, and to the interest which they affected to
take in the forensic eloquence of their conquerors.

Meanwhile a succession of heavy rains rendered the country more
difficult for the operations of regular troops, and Arminius, seeing
that the infatuation of Varus was complete, secretly directed the tribes
near the Weser and the Ems to take up arms in open revolt against the
Romans. This was represented to Varus as an occasion which required his
prompt attendance at the spot; but he was kept in studied ignorance of
its being part of a concerted national rising; and he still looked on
Arminius as his submissive vassal, whose aid he might rely on in
facilitating the march of his troops against the rebels and in
extinguishing the local disturbance. He therefore set his army in
motion, and marched eastward in a line parallel to the course of the
Lippe. For some distance his route lay along a level plain; but on
arriving at the tract between the curve of the upper part of that stream
and the sources of the Ems, the country assumes a very different
character; and here, in the territory of the modern little principality
of Lippe, it was that Arminius had fixed the scene of his enterprise.

A wooded and hilly region intervenes between the heads of the two
rivers, and forms the water-shed of their streams. This region still
retains the name (Teutobergenwald = _Teutobergiensis saltus_) which it
bore in the days of Arminius. The nature of the ground has probably also
remained unaltered. The eastern part of it, round Detmold, the modern
capital of the principality of Lippe, is described by a modern German
scholar, Dr. Plate, as being a "table-land intersected by numerous deep
and narrow valleys, which in some places form small plains, surrounded
by steep mountains and rocks, and only accessible by narrow defiles. All
the valleys are traversed by rapid streams, shallow in the dry season,
but subject to sudden swellings in autumn and winter. The vast forests
which cover the summits and slopes of the hills consist chiefly of oak;
there is little underwood, and both men and horse would move with ease
in the forests if the ground were not broken by gulleys or rendered
impracticable by fallen trees." This is the district to which Varus is
supposed to have marched; and Dr. Plate adds that "the names of several
localities on and near that spot seem to indicate that a great battle
had once been fought there. We find the names '_das Winnefeld_' (the
field of victory), '_die Knochenbahn_' (the bone-lane), '_die
Knochenleke_' (the bone-brook), '_der Mordkessel_' (the kettle of
slaughter), and others."

Contrary to the usual strict principles of Roman discipline, Varus had
suffered his army to be accompanied and impeded by an immense train of
baggage wagons and by a rabble of camp followers, as if his troops had
been merely changing their quarters in a friendly country. When the long
array quitted the firm, level ground and began to wind its way among the
woods, the marshes, and the ravines, the difficulties of the march, even
without the intervention of an armed foe, became fearfully apparent. In
many places the soil, sodden with rain, was impracticable for cavalry
and even for infantry, until trees had been felled and a rude causeway
formed through the morass.

The duties of the engineer were familiar to all who served in the Roman
armies. But the crowd and confusion of the columns embarrassed the
working parties of the soldiery, and in the midst of their toil and
disorder the word was suddenly passed through their ranks that the
rear-guard was attacked by the barbarians. Varus resolved on pressing
forward; but a heavy discharge of missiles from the woods on either
flank taught him how serious was the peril, and he saw his best men
falling round him without the opportunity of retaliation; for his
light-armed auxiliaries, who were principally of Germanic race, now
rapidly deserted, and it was impossible to deploy the legionaries on
such broken ground for a charge against the enemy.

Choosing one of the most open and firm spots which they could force
their way to, the Romans halted for the night; and, faithful to their
national discipline and tactics, formed their camp amid the harassing
attacks of the rapidly thronging foes with the elaborate toil and
systematic skill the traces of which are impressed permanently on the
soil of so many European countries, attesting the presence in the olden
time of the imperial eagles.

On the morrow the Romans renewed their march, the veteran officers who
served under Varus now probably directing the operations and hoping to
find the Germans drawn up to meet them, in which case they relied on
their own superior discipline and tactics for such a victory as should
reassure the supremacy of Rome. But Arminius was far too sage a
commander to lead on his followers, with their unwieldy broadswords and
inefficient defensive armor, against the Roman legionaries, fully armed
with helmet, cuirass, greaves, and shield, who were skilled to commence
the conflict with a murderous volley of heavy javelins hurled upon the
foe when a few yards distant, and then, with their short cut-and-thrust
swords, to hew their way through all opposition, preserving the utmost
steadiness and coolness, and obeying each word of command in the midst
of strife and slaughter with the same precision and alertness as if upon
parade. Arminius suffered the Romans to march out from their camp, to
form first in line for action and then in column for marching, without
the show of opposition.

For some distance Varus was allowed to move on, only harassed by slight
skirmishes, but struggling with difficulty through the broken ground,
the toil and distress of his men being aggravated by heavy torrents of
rain, which burst upon the devoted legions, as if the angry gods of
Germany were pouring out the vials of their wrath upon the invaders.
After some little time their van approached a ridge of high wooded
ground, which is one of the offshoots of the great Hercynian forest, and
is situated between the modern villages of Driburg and Bielefeld.
Arminius had caused barricades of hewn trees to be formed here, so as to
add to the natural difficulties of the passage. Fatigue and
discouragement now began to betray themselves in the Roman ranks. Their
line became less steady; baggage wagons were abandoned from the
impossibility of forcing them along; and, as this happened, many
soldiers left their ranks and crowded round the wagons to secure the
most valuable portions of their property; each was busy about his own
affairs, and purposely slow in hearing the word of command from his
officers.

Arminius now gave the signal for a general attack. The fierce shouts of
the Germans pealed through the gloom of the forests, and in thronging
multitudes they assailed the flanks of the invaders, pouring in clouds
of darts on the encumbered legionaries as they struggled up the glens or
floundered in the morasses, and watching every opportunity of charging
through the intervals of the disjointed column, and so cutting off the
communication between its several brigades. Arminius, with a chosen band
of personal retainers round him, cheered on his countrymen by voice and
example. He and his men aimed their weapons particularly at the horses
of the Roman cavalry. The wounded animals, slipping about in the mire
and their own blood, threw their riders and plunged among the ranks of
the legions, disordering all round them. Varus now ordered the troops to
be countermarched, in the hope of reaching the nearest Roman garrison on
the Lippe.

But retreat now was as impracticable as advance; and the falling back of
the Romans only augmented the courage of their assailants and caused
fiercer and more frequent charges on the flanks of the disheartened
army. The Roman officer who commanded the cavalry, Numonius Vala, rode
off with his squadrons in the vain hope of escaping by thus abandoning
his comrades. Unable to keep together or force their way across the
woods and swamps, the horsemen were overpowered in detail and
slaughtered to the last man. The Roman infantry still held together and
resisted, but more through the instinct of discipline and bravery than
from any hope of success or escape.

Varus, after being severely wounded in a charge of the Germans against
his part of the column, committed suicide to avoid falling into the
hands of those whom he had exasperated by his oppressions. One of the
lieutenants-general of the army fell fighting; the other surrendered to
the enemy. But mercy to a fallen foe had never been a Roman virtue, and
those among her legions who now laid down their arms in hope of quarter,
drank deep of the cup of suffering, which Rome had held to the lips of
many a brave but unfortunate enemy. The infuriated Germans slaughtered
their oppressors with deliberate ferocity, and those prisoners who were
not hewn to pieces on the spot were only preserved to perish by a more
cruel death in cold blood.

The bulk of the Roman army fought steadily and stubbornly, frequently
repelling the masses of assailants, but gradually losing the compactness
of their array and becoming weaker and weaker beneath the incessant
shower of darts and the reiterated assaults of the vigorous and
unencumbered Germans. At last, in a series of desperate attacks, the
column was pierced through and through, two of the eagles captured, and
the Roman host, which on the morning before had marched forth in such
pride and might--now broken up into confused fragments--either fell
fighting beneath the overpowering numbers of the enemy or perished in
the swamps and woods in unavailing efforts at flight. Few, very few,
ever saw again the left bank of the Rhine. One body of brave veterans,
arraying themselves in a ring on a little mound, beat off every charge
of the Germans, and prolonged their honorable resistance to the close of
that dreadful day. The traces of a feeble attempt at forming a ditch and
mound attested in after-years the spot where the last of the Romans
passed their night of suffering and despair. But on the morrow this
remnant also, worn out with hunger, wounds, and toil, was charged by the
victorious Germans, and either massacred on the spot or offered up in
fearful rites on the altars of the deities of the old mythology of the
North.

A gorge in the mountain ridge, through which runs the modern road
between Paderborn and Pyrmont, leads from the spot where the heat of the
battle raged to the Extersteine--a cluster of bold and grotesque rocks
of sandstone--near which is a small sheet of water, overshadowed by a
grove of aged trees. According to local tradition, this was one of the
sacred groves of the ancient Germans, and it was here that the Roman
captives were slain in sacrifice by the victorious warriors of Arminius.

Never was victory more decisive; never was the liberation of an
oppressed people more instantaneous and complete. Throughout Germany the
Roman garrisons were assailed and cut off; and within a few weeks after
Varus had fallen, the German soil was freed from the foot of an invader.

At Rome the tidings of the battle were received with an agony of terror,
the reports of which we would deem exaggerated did they not come from
Roman historians themselves. They not only tell emphatically how great
was the awe which the Romans felt of the prowess of the Germans if their
various tribes could be brought to unite for a common purpose,[83] but
they also reveal how weakened and debased the population of Italy had
become. Dion Cassius says: "Then Augustus, when he heard the calamity of
Varus, rent his garment, and was in great affliction for the troops he
had lost, and for terror respecting the Germans and the Gauls. And his
chief alarm was that he expected them to push on against Italy and Rome;
and there remained no Roman youth fit for military duty that were worth
speaking of, and the allied populations, that were at all serviceable,
had been wasted away. Yet he prepared for the emergency as well as his
means allowed; and when none of the citizens of military age were
willing to enlist, he made them cast lots, and punished, by confiscation
of goods and disfranchisement, every fifth man among those under
thirty-five and every tenth man of those above that age. At last, when
he found that not even thus could he make many come forward, he put some
of them to death. So he made a conscription of discharged veterans and
of emancipated slaves, and, collecting as large a force as he could,
sent it, under Tiberius, with all speed into Germany."

[Footnote 83: It is clear that the Romans followed the policy of
fomenting dissensions and wars of the Germans among themselves.]

Dion mentions also a number of terrific portents that were believed to
have occurred at the time, and the narration of which is not immaterial,
as it shows the state of the public mind when such things were so
believed in and so interpreted. The summits of the Alps were said to
have fallen, and three columns of fire to have blazed up from them. In
the Campus Martius, the temple of the war-god, from whom the founder of
Rome had sprung, was struck by a thunderbolt. The nightly heavens glowed
several times as if on fire. Many comets blazed forth together; and
fiery meteors, shaped like spears, had shot from the northern quarter of
the sky down into the Roman camps. It was said, too, that a statue of
Victory, which had stood at a place on the frontier, pointing the way
toward Germany, had of its own accord turned round, and now pointed to
Italy. These and other prodigies were believed by the multitude to
accompany the slaughter of Varus' legions and to manifest the anger of
the gods against Rome.

Augustus himself was not free from superstition; but on this occasion no
supernatural terrors were needed to increase the alarm and grief that he
felt, and which made him, even months after the news of the battle had
arrived, often beat his head against the wall and exclaim, "Quintilius
Varus, give me back my legions." We learn this from his biographer
Suetonius; and, indeed, every ancient writer who alludes to the
overthrow of Varus attests the importance of the blow against the Roman
power, and the bitterness with which it was felt.

The Germans did not pursue their victory beyond their own territory; but
that victory secured at once and forever the independence of the
Teutonic race. Rome sent, indeed, her legions again into Germany, to
parade a temporary superiority, but all hopes of permanent conquests
were abandoned by Augustus and his successors.

The blow which Arminius had struck never was forgotten. Roman fear
disguised itself under the specious title of moderation, and the Rhine
became the acknowledged boundary of the two nations until the fifth
century of our era, when the Germans became the assailants, and carved
with their conquering swords the provinces of imperial Rome into the
kingdoms of modern Europe.


ARMINIUS

I have said above that the great Cheruscan is more truly one of our
national heroes than Caractacus is. It may be added that an Englishman
is entitled to claim a closer degree of relationship with Arminius than
can be claimed by any German of modern Germany. The proof of this
depends on the proof of four facts: First, that the Cheruscans were Old
Saxons, or Saxons of the interior of Germany; secondly, that the
Anglo-Saxons, or Saxons of the coast of Germany, were more closely akin
than other German tribes were to the Cheruscan Saxons; thirdly, that the
Old Saxons were almost exterminated by Charlemagne; fourthly, that the
Anglo-Saxons are our immediate ancestors. The last of these may be
assumed as an axiom in English history. The proofs of the other three
are partly philological and partly historical. It may be, however, here
remarked that the present Saxons of Germany are of the _High_ Germanic
division of the German race, whereas both the Anglo-Saxon and Old Saxon
were of the _Low_ Germanic.

Being thus the nearest heirs of the glory of Arminius, we may fairly
devote more attention to his career than, in such a work as the present,
could be allowed to any individual leader; and it is interesting to
trace how far his fame survived during the Middle Ages, both among the
Germans of the Continent and among ourselves.

It seems probable that the jealousy with which Maroboduus, the king of
the Suevi and Marcomanni, regarded Arminius, and which ultimately broke
out into open hostilities between those German tribes and the Cherusci,
prevented Arminius from leading the confederate Germans to attack Italy
after his first victory. Perhaps he may have had the rare moderation of
being content with the liberation of his country, without seeking to
retaliate on her former oppressors. When Tiberius marched into Germany
in the year 10, Arminius was too cautious to attack him on ground
favorable to the legions, and Tiberius was too skilful to entangle his
troops in the difficult parts of the country. His march and countermarch
were as unresisted as they were unproductive. A few years later, when a
dangerous revolt of the Roman legions near the frontier caused their
generals to find them active employment by leading them into the
interior of Germany, we find Arminius again active in his country's
defence. The old quarrel between him and his father-in-law, Segestes,
had broken out afresh.

Segestes now called in the aid of the Roman general, Germanicus, to whom
he surrendered himself; and by his contrivance, his daughter, Thusnelda,
the wife of Arminius, also came into the hands of the Romans, she being
far advanced in pregnancy. She showed, as Tacitus relates, more of the
spirit of her husband than of her father, a spirit that could not be
subdued into tears or supplications. She was sent to Ravenna, and there
gave birth to a son, whose life we know, from an allusion in Tacitus, to
have been eventful and unhappy; but the part of the great historian's
work which narrated his fate has perished, and we only know from another
quarter that the son of Arminius was, at the age of four years, led
captive in a triumphal pageant along the streets of Rome.

The high spirit of Arminius was goaded almost into frenzy by these
bereavements. The fate of his wife, thus torn from him, and of his babe
doomed to bondage even before its birth, inflamed the eloquent
invectives with which he roused his countrymen against the
home-traitors, and against their invaders, who thus made war upon women
and children. Germanicus had marched his army to the place where Varus
had perished, and had there paid funeral honors to the ghastly relics of
his predecessor's legions that he found heaped around him.[84] Arminius
lured him to advance a little farther into the country, and then
assailed him, and fought a battle, which, by the Roman accounts, was a
drawn one.

[Footnote 84: In the Museum of Rhenish Antiquities at Bonn there is a
Roman sepulchral monument the inscription on which records that it was
erected to the memory of M. Coelius, who fell "_Bella Variano_."]

The effect of it was to make Germanicus resolve on retreating to the
Rhine. He himself, with part of his troops, embarked in some vessels on
the Ems, and returned by that river, and then by sea; but part of his
forces were intrusted to a Roman general named Caecina, to lead them
back by land to the Rhine. Arminius followed this division on its march,
and fought several battles with it, in which he inflicted heavy loss on
the Romans, captured the greater part of their baggage, and would have
destroyed them completely had not his skilful system of operations been
finally thwarted by the haste of Inguiomerus, a confederate German
chief, who insisted on assaulting the Romans in their camp, instead of
waiting till they were entangled in the difficulties of the country, and
assailing their columns on the march.

In the following year the Romans were inactive, but in the year
afterward Germanicus led a fresh invasion. He placed his army on
shipboard and sailed to the mouth of the Ems, where he disembarked and
marched to the Weser, there encamping, probably in the neighborhood of
Minden. Arminius had collected his army on the other side of the river;
and a scene occurred, which is powerfully told by Tacitus, and which is
the subject of a beautiful poem by Praed. It has been already mentioned
that the brother of Arminius, like himself, had been trained up while
young to serve in the Roman armies; but, unlike Arminius, he not only
refused to quit the Roman service for that of his country, but fought
against his country with the legions of Germanicus. He had assumed the
Roman name of Flavius, and had gained considerable distinction in the
Roman service, in which he had lost an eye from a wound in battle. When
the Roman outposts approached the river Weser, Arminius called out to
them from the opposite bank and expressed a wish to see his brother.
Flavius stepped forward, and Arminius ordered his own followers to
retire, and requested that the archers should be removed from the Roman
bank of the river. This was done; and the brothers, who apparently had
not seen each other for some years, began a conversation from the
opposite sides of the stream, in which Arminius questioned his brother
respecting the loss of his eye, and what battle it had been lost in, and
what reward he had received for his wound. Flavius told him how the eye
was lost, and mentioned the increased pay that he had on account of its
loss, and showed the collar and other military decorations that had been
given him. Arminius mocked at these as badges of slavery; and then each
began to try to win the other over--Flavius boasting the power of Rome
and her generosity to the submissive; Arminius appealing to him in the
name of their country's gods, of the mother that had borne them, and by
the holy names of fatherland and freedom, not to prefer being the
betrayer to being the champion of his country. They soon proceeded to
mutual taunts and menaces, and Flavius called aloud for his horse and
his arms, that he might dash across the river and attack his brother;
nor would he have been checked from doing so had not the Roman general
Stertinius run up to him and forcibly detained him. Arminius stood on
the other bank, threatening the renegade, and defying him to battle.

I shall not be thought to need apology for quoting here the stanzas in
which Praed has described this scene--a scene among the most affecting,
as well as the most striking, that history supplies. It makes us reflect
on the desolate position of Arminius, with his wife and child captives
in the enemy's hands, and with his brother a renegade in arms against
him. The great liberator of our German race was there, with every source
of human happiness denied him except the consciousness of doing his duty
to his country.

  "Back, back! he fears not foaming flood
    Who fears not steel-clad line:
  No warrior thou of German blood,
    No brother thou of mine.
  Go, earn Rome's chain to load thy neck,
    Her gems to deck thy hilt;
  And blazon honor's hapless wreck
    With all the gauds of guilt.

  "But wouldst thou have _me_ share the prey?
    By all that I have done,
  The Varian bones that day by day
    Lie whitening in the sun,
  The legion's trampled panoply,
    The eagle's shatter'd wing--
  I would not be for earth or sky
    So scorn'd and mean a thing.

  "Ho, call me here the wizard, boy,
    Of dark and subtle skill,
  To agonize but not destroy,
    To torture, not to kill.
  When swords are out and shriek and shout
    Leave little room for prayer,
  No fetter on man's arm or heart
    Hangs half so heavy there.

  "I curse him by the gifts the land
    Hath won from him and Rome,
  The riving axe, the wasting brand,
    Rent forest, blazing home.
  I curse him by our country's gods,
    The terrible, the dark,
  The breakers of the Roman rods,
    The smiters of the bark.

  "Oh, misery that such a ban
    On such a brow should be!
  Why comes he not in battle's van
    His country's chief to be?
  To stand a comrade by my side,
    The sharer of my fame,
  And worthy of a brother's pride
    And of a brother's name?

  "But it is past! where heroes press
    And cowards bend the knee,
  Arminius is not brotherless,
    His brethren are the free.
  They come around: one hour, and light
    Will fade from turf and tide,
  Then onward, onward to the fight,
    With darkness for our guide.

  "To-night, to-night, when we shall meet
    In combat face to face,
  Then only would Arminius greet
    The renegade's embrace.
  The canker of Rome's guilt shall be
    Upon his dying name;
  And as he lived in slavery,
    So shall he fall in shame."

On the day after the Romans had reached the Weser, Germanicus led his
army across that river, and a partial encounter took place, in which
Arminius was successful. But on the succeeding day a general action was
fought, in which Arminius was severely wounded and the German infantry
routed with heavy loss. The horsemen of the two armies encountered
without either party gaining the advantage. But the Roman army remained
master of the ground and claimed a complete victory. Germanicus erected
a trophy in the field, with a vaunting inscription that the nations
between the Rhine and the Elbe had been thoroughly conquered by his
army. But that army speedily made a final retreat to the left bank of
the Rhine; nor was the effect of their campaign more durable than their
trophy. The sarcasm with which Tacitus speaks of certain other triumphs
of Roman generals over Germans may apply to the pageant which Germanicus
celebrated on his return to Rome from his command of the Roman army of
the Rhine. The Germans were "_triumphati potius quam victi_."

After the Romans had abandoned their attempts on Germany, we find
Arminius engaged in hostilities with Maroboduus, king of the Suevi and
Marcomanni, who was endeavoring to bring the other German tribes into a
state of dependency on him. Arminius was at the head of the Germans who
took up arms against this home invader of their liberties. After some
minor engagements a pitched battle was fought between the two
confederacies (A.D. 19) in which the loss on each side was equal, but
Maroboduus confessed the ascendency of his antagonist by avoiding a
renewal of the engagement and by imploring the intervention of the
Romans in his defence. The younger Drusus then commanded the Roman
legions in the province of Illyricum, and by his mediation a peace was
concluded between Arminius and Maroboduus, by the terms of which it is
evident that the latter must have renounced his ambitious schemes
against the freedom of the other German tribes.

Arminius did not long survive this second war of independence, which he
successfully waged for his country. He was assassinated in the
thirty-seventh year of his age by some of his own kinsmen, who conspired
against him. Tacitus says that this happened while he was engaged in a
civil war, which had been caused by his attempts to make himself king
over his countrymen. It is far more probable, as one of the best
biographers[85] has observed, that Tacitus misunderstood an attempt of
Arminius to extend his influence as elective war chieftain of the
Cherusci and other tribes, for an attempt to obtain the royal dignity.

[Footnote 85: Dr. Plate, in _Biographical Dictionary_.]

When we remember that his father-in-law and his brother were renegades,
we can well understand that a party among his kinsmen may have been
bitterly hostile to him, and have opposed his authority with the tribe
by open violence, and, when that seemed ineffectual, by secret
assassination.

Arminius left a name which the historians of the nation against which he
combated so long and so gloriously have delighted to honor. It is from
the most indisputable source, from the lips of enemies, that we know his
exploits.[86] His countrymen made history, but did not write it. But his
memory lived among them in the days of their bards, who recorded

  "The deeds he did, the fields he won,
  The freedom he restored."

Tacitus, writing years after the death of Arminius, says of him,
"_Canitur adhuc barbaras apud gentes_." As time passed on, the gratitude
of ancient Germany to her great deliverer grew into adoration, and
divine honors were paid for centuries to Arminius by every tribe of the
Low Germanic division of the Teutonic races. The _Irmin-sul_, or the
column of Herman, near Eresburgh (the modern Stadtberg), was the chosen
object of worship to the descendants of the Cherusci (the Old Saxons),
and in defence of which they fought most desperately against Charlemagne
and his Christianized Franks. "Irmin, in the cloudy Olympus of Teutonic
belief, appears as a king and a warrior; and the pillar, the
'Irmin-sul,' bearing the statue, and considered as the symbol of the
deity, was the Palladium of the Saxon nation until the temple of
Eresburgh was destroyed by Charlemagne, and the column itself
transferred to the monastery of Corbey, where perhaps a portion of the
rude rock idol yet remains, covered by the ornaments of the Gothic
era."[87] Traces of the worship of Arminius are to be found among our
Anglo-Saxon ancestors after their settlement in this island. One of the
four great highways was held to be under the protection of the deity,
and was called the "Irmin street." The name _Arminius_ is, of course,
the mere Latinized form of _Herman_, the name by which the hero and the
deity were known by every man of Low German blood on either side of the
German Sea. It means, etymologically, the _War-man_, the _man of hosts_.
No other explanation of the worship of the Irmin-sul, and of the name of
the Irmin street, is so satisfactory as that which connects them with
the deified Arminius. We know for certain of the existence of other
columns of an analogous character. Thus there was the _Roland-seule_ in
North Germany; there was a _Thor-seule_ in Sweden, and (what is more
important) there was an _Athelstan-seule_ in Saxon England.[88]

[Footnote 86: Tacitus: _Annales_.]

[Footnote 87: Palgrave: _English Commonwealth_.]

[Footnote 88: Lappenburg: _Anglo-Saxons_.]




CHRONOLOGY OF UNIVERSAL HISTORY

EMBRACING THE PERIOD COVERED IN THIS VOLUME B.C. 450-A.D. 12

JOHN RUDD, LL.D.


Events treated at length are here indicated in large type; the numerals
following give volume and page.

Separate chronologies of the various nations, and of the careers of
famous persons, will be found in the INDEX VOLUME, with volume and page
references showing where the several events are fully treated.

"Est" means date uncertain.

B.C.

450. The decemvirate instituted at Rome; the Twelve Tables of law
framed. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1.

Alcibiades born.[Est]

448. First Sacred War between the Phocians and Delphians for the
possession of the temple at Delphi.

The decemvirate abolished at Rome. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE
DECEMVIRATE IN ROME," ii, 1.

Athens is now the principal seat of Greek philosophy, literature, and
art.

447. The Boeotians defeat the Athenians at Coronea; the conflict was
brought about by Athens breaking the truce arranged between the Greek
states to endure for five years, in order to combine against Persia. The
result was the loss to Athens of Boeotia, Phocis, and Locris.

445.[Est] Nehemiah begins the rebuilding of the walls of Jerusalem.

Peace of Callias between the Greeks and Persians.

Birth of Xenophon, general and historian.

444. Ascendency of Pericles at Athens.[Est] See "PERICLES RULES IN
ATHENS," ii, 12.

The military tribunes instituted at Rome. The consulship was in no sense
abolished; until the passage of the Licinian Rogations (when it
reappeared as a permanent annual magistracy) it alternated irregularly
with the military tribunes. See "INSTITUTION AND FALL OF THE DECEMVIRATE
IN ROME," ii, 1.

Thucydides exiled Athens.

443. An Athenian colony planted at Thurium, near Sybarius; it is
accompanied by Herodotus and Lysias.

442. Pericles, guided by Phidias the sculptor, adorns Athens; the
Parthenon, Propylæa, and Odeum built.

440. Samos resists the Athenian sway; is besieged by Pericles and
Sophocles; Melissus defends the city, but surrenders after a siege of
nine months.

Comedies prohibited performance at Athens.

439. Great famine in Rome; Sp. Mælius distributes corn to the citizens,
for which he is accused of wishing to be king, and is assassinated by
Servilius Ahala.

438. Spartacus becomes king of Bosporus.

Ahala impeached and exiled Rome.

437. The prohibition of comedy repealed at Athens.

Syracuse, the predominant state in Sicily, reaches the height of its
prosperity. See "DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE," ii, 48.

436. Commencement of the dispute between Corinth and Corcyra regarding
the city of Epidamnus, in which Athens supported the latter; this led to
the Peloponnesian War.

435. Naval victory over the Corinthians by the Corcyræans, near Actium.

432. Ambassadors from Corcyra implore the aid of Athens, which series a
fleet to defend the island against the Corinthian attack. Corinth
incites Potidæa to revolt from Athens.

431. Beginning of the Peloponnesian War. Sparta declares on the side of
Corinth and makes war on Athens. The real cause of the war--which was to
be so disastrous to Greece--was that Sparta and its allies were jealous
of the great power Athens had attained. Sparta was an oligarchy and a
friend of the nobles everywhere; Athens was a democracy and the friend
of the common people; so that the war was to some extent a struggle
between these classes all over Greece.

430. "GREAT PLAGUE AT ATHENS." See ii, 34. The physician Hippocrates
distinguishes himself by extraordinary cures of the sick.

Second invasion of Attica by the Spartans.

429. Death of Pericles, during the plague, at Athens.

Potidæa reduced by the Athenians.

Birth of Plato.

428. Attica invaded the third time.

Lesbos revolts from the Athenian confederacy; on this the Athenians
besiege Mitylene.

427. Mitylene reduced; Athens becomes master of Lesbos. Platæa, the ally
of Athens, after being besieged, surrenders to the Peloponnesians and is
destroyed.

Attica again invaded.

425. Agis begins the fifth invasion of Attica; he retires on learning
that the Athenians under Cleon had taken Pylos and Sapachteria.

Mount Æetna in eruption.

On the death of Artaxerxes I, his son, Xerxes II, succeeds him as ruler
of Persia; he reigns only forty-five days, being slain by his brother
Sogdianus, who usurps the throne.

424. The island of Cythera taken by the Athenians. Brasidas, the Spartan
general, captures Amphipolis, defeating Thucydides.

Ochus (Darius Nothus) rids himself of Sogdianus and succeeds him on the
Persian throne.

423. The Athenians banish Thucydides for having suffered Amphipolis to
be taken.

422. The Athenians send Cleon to recover Amphipolis; he is defeated by
Brasidas; both fall in the battle.

421. Peace of Nicias between Sparta and Athens. End of the first period
of the Peloponnesian War.

420. Alcibiades negotiates an alliance between Athens and Argos.
Amphipolis retained by the Spartans.

419. An Athenian expedition is led into the Peloponnesus by Alcibiades.

418. Victory of the Spartans at Mantinea.

The league between Athens and Argos dissolved.

416. The island of Melos, which had remained neutral, is conquered by
the Athenians; its inhabitants are treated with extreme cruelty.

415. The Athenians send an expedition against Syracuse under Nicias,
Lamachus, and Alcibiades; the latter is recalled to answer an accusation
of having broken some statues of Mercury in Athens; he takes refuge in
Sparta. Andocides, the orator, implicated in the same charge, is
imprisoned and exiled.

414. Syracuse is invested by the Athenians under Nicias; being hard
pressed, Syracuse appeals to the other Greek states; Cylippus, the
Spartan commander, comes with a fleet to the aid of the city. See
"DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE," ii, 48.

The Romans capture Bolae, an Æquian town; the division of the booty
causes a mutiny among the soldiers, who slay the quaestor and the
military tribune, M. Postumius.

413. On Alcibiades' advice the Spartans fortify a position at Decelea,
in Attica.

"DEFEAT OF THE ATHENIANS AT SYRACUSE." See ii, 48.

412. Alcibiades visits the Persian satrap Tissaphernes, with whose aid
he negotiates an alliance between Persia and Sparta.

411. Owing to the machinations of Alcibiades a revolt is organized in
Athens, by the aid of the clubs of the nobles and rich men; its object
being to overthrow the democracy and establish an oligarchy. The rising
is successful and the "Reign of the Four Hundred" ensues; it lasts four
months; its framer, Antipho, is put to death. Alcibiades is recalled.

410. The Spartans are defeated by Alcibiades in a naval encounter at
Cyzicus. Sparta makes overtures for peace.

409. The Carthaginians invade Sicily; they reduce Silenus and Himera.

408. Alcibiades takes Selymbria and Byzantium.

Psammeticus is king of Egypt.

Roman plebs first admitted to the quaestorship.

407. Lysander, the Spartan admiral, defeats the Athenian fleet at
Notium; in consequence of this defeat, Alcibiades, who had been received
with great honor, is banished, and ten generals are nominated to succeed
him.

406. The Athenians vanquish the Spartan fleet under Callicratidas, at
Arginusae. The Athenian generals are executed at Athens for not saving
the shattered vessels and the bodies of the slain.

Dionysius the Elder becomes ruler of Syracuse.

Anxur and other towns captured by the Romans, who now first give their
soldiers a regular pay.

405. The Spartan under Lysander, who had been restored to command,
annihilate the Athenian navy at Aegospotami.

Artaxerxes II succeeds Darius II on the Persian throne.

Successful revolt of the Egyptians against the Persians; the
independence of Egypt secured.

404. Athens taken by Lysander and dismantled; thirty tyrants appointed
by him. Lysias and other orators banished. End of the Peloponnesian War.

403. Democracy is restored in Athens by Thrasybulus; he publishes an act
of amnesty. The Ionian alphabet adopted at Athens.

401. Cyrus rebels against his brother Artaxerxes, of Persia; he is
defeated and slain at the battle of Cunaxa.

400. The Ten Thousand Greek auxiliaries of Cyrus effect their retreat to
the sea. See "RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS," ii, 68.

399. Sparta and Persia engage in war.

"CONDEMNATION AND DEATH OF SOCRATES." See ii, 87.

396. Agesilaus, the Spartan general, begins his victorious campaigns
against the Persians.

The Romans, headed by Camillus, capture Veii, after a ten years' siege.

395. Corinth, Thebes, Argos, and Athens combine against Sparta; the
Spartans are defeated at Haliartus; Lysander is slain.

Tissaphernes' Persian army is defeated by Agesilaus, near Sardis.

394. The Athenian admiral Conon, in charge of the Persian fleet,
crushingly defeats that of the Spartans, under Pisander, off Cnidus.

Agesilaus is recalled from Asia; commanding the Spartans, he gains a
victory over the confederate Greeks at Coronea.

393. Conon undertakes the rebuilding of the walls in Athens and restores
the fortifications.

392. Conon excites the jealousy of the Persians; he retires into Cyprus,
where he dies.

391. Camillus banished from Rome, charged with misappropriating the
booty secured at Veii, but really on account of his patrician
haughtiness; he dies at Ardea, whither he had withdrawn.

389. Aeschines born; he was accounted in Athens second only to
Demosthenes as an orator.

388[89] (387). Brennus, commanding the Gauls, burns Rome. See "BRENNUS
BURNS ROME," ii, 110.

[Footnote 89: By the old chronological reckoning this event occurred
B.C. 390.]

387. Through the mediation of Persia, Sparta compels the Greek states to
accept the peace of Antalcidas, which leaves the Ionian cities and
Cyprus at his mercy; this enables Sparta to maintain her supremacy in
Greece.

385.[Est] Birth of Demosthenes, the famous Greek orator and general.

384. Aristotle born.

383. War of Syracuse with Carthage.

Thebes is betrayed to Sparta, during her war against Olynthus.

379. The Olynthians are forced to submission by the Spartans. Pelopidas
and his associates drive the Spartans from Thebes.

378. Athens declares in favor of Thebes against Sparta.

376. Cleombrotus leads the Spartans into Boeotia; the Spartan fleet,
under Pollis, is overwhelmed off Maxos, by Chabrias.

371. Congress of Sparta, Thebes being excluded from the treaty of peace;
Pelopidas and Epaminondas gain the great victory of Leuctra, in which
Cleombrotus, King of Sparta, is slain. Thebes becomes the dominant power
in Greece.

The Arcadian union formed. One of the first effects of the battle of
Leuctra was to emancipate the Arcadians, and a plan was formed to raise
them in the political affairs of Greece.

370. Epaminondas, the Theban general, heads his first expedition into
the Peloponnesus; he threatens Sparta, which Agesilaus saves.

369. The Thebans advance into Laconia; they restore the independence of
the Messenians. Epaminondas and Pelopidas are condemned for having
retained their command beyond the term allowed by the laws of Thebes;
they are pardoned and reappointed.

The Arcadians found Megalopolis, which they make the capital of the
Arcadian confederacy.

368. The Thebans again enter the Peloponnesus, but retreat before the
arrival of succor sent by Dionysius to the Lacedaemonians. Pelopidas,
treacherously made prisoner by Alexander of Pherae, is rescued by
Epaminondas. A congress, under the mediation of Persia, is held at
Delphi; it fails, because the Thebans will not abandon the Messenians.

The Carthaginians at war with Dionysius; but, after losing Selinus and
other towns, they make peace.

Camillus, more than eighty years old, appointed dictator at Rome; he
persuades the patricians to assent to the demands of the plebs, and
builds the temple of Concord.

A celestial globe brought into Greece from Egypt.

367. The Licinian Rogations, Rome; three bills introduced by Licinius,
decreeing: 1. That interest on loans be deducted from the principal; 2.
Limiting the public land held by any individual to 500 jugera (320
acres); 3. Ordering that one of the two consuls should be a plebeian.
Institution of the praetorship.

364. Pelopidas attacks Alexander of Pherae; during the battle of
Cymoscephale his soldiers are alarmed at an eclipse of the sun, and he
is slain.

362. The Spartans and allies defeated at Mantinea by Epaminondas; he is
slain.

361 (359). Artaxerxes II of Persia succeeded by Artaxerxes III (Ochus).

359. Philip ascends the throne of Macedon; he concludes peace with the
Athenians.

358.[Est] Athens involves herself in the Social War with Cos, Rhodes,
Chios, and Byzantium.

Amphipolis captured by Philip of Macedon; he loses his right eye by an
arrow from Astor.

357. Outbreak of the Ten Years' Sacred War, caused by the Crissians
levying grievous taxes on those who went to consult the oracle of
Delphi.

356. Burning of the temple of Diana at Ephesus; this building was
accounted one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

Birth of Alexander the Great.

Dion frees Syracuse from Dionysius the Younger; he is expelled from
Sicily.

355. The Social War ends in Greece. Athens recognizes the independence
of the confederated states.

353. Final conquest of Egypt by the Persians.

352. Philip of Macedon interferes in the Greek Sacred War; Demosthenes
delivers his First Philippic encouraging the Greeks to resist the
Macedonians; Philip's attempt to seize Thermopylae is defeated.

Two thousand colonists are sent from Athens to Samos.

347. Philip of Macedon captures and destroys Olynthus.

346. Phocis occupied by Philip of Macedon; this ends the Sacred War.

Dionysius the Younger again assumes power in Syracuse.

343 (340). Timoleon effects the deliverance of Syracuse from Dionysius
the Younger.

Rome engages in the First Samnite War.

341 (338). End of the First Samnite War.

Invasion of China by Meha the Hun. See "TARTAR INVASION OF CHINA BY
MEHA," ii, 126.[Est]

340. Adoption of the Publilian laws in Rome, which further restricted
the power of the patricians.

The Romans make war upon the Latins; the latter are subjugated. Manlius,
one of the Roman consuls, condemns his son to death for a breach of
discipline.

338. Athens and Thebes form an alliance to resist Philip of Macedon, who
had passed Thermopylae and seized Elatea. The allied forces are
overwhelmed at Chaeronea, and Philip establishes the Macedonian dominion
in Greece.

Artaxerxes III is succeeded by Arses in Persia.

337. Philip of Macedon declares himself commander of the Greeks against
the Persians; he repudiates his wife Olympias; their son Alexander
attends his mother into Epirus.

336. Assassination of Philip of Macedon, by Pausanias at Aegae, while
preparing to invade Persia; he is succeeded by his son, Alexander the
Great.

Arses is succeeded by Darius III (Codomannus) in Persia.

335. Thebes, revolting against the Macedonian authority, is subdued and
destroyed by Alexander, who, however, spares the house of Pindar the
poet.

Rome concludes a peace with Gaul.

334. Alexander enters upon the conquest of Persia; he is victorious over
Darius at the Granicus.

333. Lycia and Syria reduced by Alexander; Damascus captured by
Parmenio, Alexander's general, and the siege of Tyre begun.

Darius is defeated at Issus; his family are among Alexander's captives.

332. "ALEXANDER REDUCES TYRE: LATER FOUNDS ALEXANDRIA." See ii, 133. He
takes Gaza and occupies Egypt.

The Lucanians and Bruttians defeat and slay Alexander of Epirus, his
ambitious designs in Italy having been betrayed.

331. "THE BATTLE OF ARBELA," in which Alexander the Great conquers
Darius and overthrows the Persian empire. See ii, 141.

330. The Spartans, under Agis III, revolt against the Macedonians;
Antipater defeats the Spartans and their allies at Megalopolis; Agis is
slain.

Darius is seized and laden with chains by Bessus, a Bactrian satrap who
soon after slays him.

Alexander captures Bessus and delivers him to Oxathres, the brother of
Darius, by whom he is executed.

Alexander pursues his conquests in Parthia, Media, Bactria, and on the
shores of the Caspian.

329. The Oxus and Jaxartes are crossed by Alexander; he drives back the
Scythians; he founds new cities in the countries adjacent, and winters
in Bactria.

The consuls at Rome are granted a triumph and the surname of
"Privernas," for the conquest of Privernum.

328. Sogdiana, Central Asia, occupies Alexander during this, his seventh
campaign, and he winters there at Nautaca.

327. Marriage of Alexander to Roxana, daughter of Oxyartes, a Bactrian
ruler.

326. Alexander invades India and defeats Porus; his soldiers refuse to
proceed farther.

Rome begins the Second Samnite War.

325-4. Alexander marches from the Indus to Persepolis; his fleet is
sailed to the Euphrates by Nearchus.

Harpalus flees from Babylon with immense treasures, which he conveys to
Athens.

323. Death of Alexander the Great at Babylon. His principal generals
endeavored to obtain, each for himself, a portion of his empire. Ptolemy
first secures Egypt and establishes his dynasty firmly there. Philip
Aridaeus, half-brother of Alexander, succeeds him on the throne of
Macedon, with Perdiccas as regent. Demosthenes returns to Athens and
rouses the Greek states to recover their freedom; under Leosthenes they
overpower Antipater, who takes refuge in Lamia, whence this is called
the Lamian War.

The Samnites sue for peace, but reject the terms on which it is offered
by the Romans.

322. The body of Alexander is entombed at Alexandria.

The confederate Greeks are defeated by Antipater at Crannon; end of the
Lamian War.

Demosthenes, who was accused by the Macedonians of being privy to the
looting of the treasury by Harpalus, after the battle of Crannon fled to
Calauria; he was captured by the Macedonian troops and thereupon
poisoned himself.

321. Beginning of the wars between Alexander's successors; Perdiccas and
Eumenes oppose themselves to Antipater, Craterus, Antigonus, and
Ptolemy.

Perdiccas assails Ptolemy in Egypt; Perdiccas is slain in a mutiny. In
Asia Minor, Eumenes triumphs over Craterus, who is killed.

Victory of the Samnites over the Romans at the Caudine Forks. These were
two narrow gorges, united by a range of mountains on each side. The
Romans went through the first pass, but found the second blocked up; on
returning they found the first similarly obstructed. Being thus hemmed
in they passed under the yoke.

320. Eumenes, defeated by Antigonus, shuts himself up in the castle of
Nora, where he sustains a year's siege.

319. Polysperchon is appointed by Antipater to succeed him as regent for
Philip Arrhidaeus and Alexander Aegus, half-brother and son of Alexander
the Great, on his, Antipater's, death.

Polysperchon's elevation to power is followed by a league against him,
formed by Antipater's son Cassander, Antigonus, and Ptolemy. Eumenes
lends his support to Polysperchon, after escaping from Nora.

318. The Romans and Samnites make a truce.

Polysperchon prevailed over by Cassander in the struggle for power in
Greece and Macedonia. Athens he places under the rule of Phalereus.

317. Phocion, an Athenian general who wisely advised in vain for peace
with Antipater, became regarded as a traitor; he fled to Phocis, entered
into the intrigues of Cassander, who delivered him up to the Athenians,
who condemned him to drink hemlock. Olympias, mother of Alexander the
Great, aided by Polysperchon and the Epirotes, seizes Macedonia.

Olympias is put to death by Cassander. Eumenes, being betrayed to
Antigonus, is put to death; Antigonus holds the supreme power in Asia.

315. The rebuilding of Thebes undertaken by Cassander.

314. Commencement of the struggle against Antigonus waged by Cassander,
Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus.

313. Tyre surrenders to Antigonus. Ptolemy engages with him and conquers
Cyprus.

The Romans take Fregellae and other towns from the Samnites.

312. Seleucus Nicator establishes the realm of the Seleucidae, the army
of Antigonus, under his son Demetrius Poliorcetes, being defeated by
Ptolemy and Seleucus. Babylon is made the capital.

Ptolemy conquers Judea; he transplants many Jews to Alexandria and
Cyrene, where their industry is encouraged and their religion protected.

At Rome Appius Claudius, the blind, constructs the Via Appia, the first
aqueduct, and a canal through the Pontine marshes.

Zeno institutes the sect of Stoics at Athens.

311. A temporary peace among the competitors for power in Asia. Greece
is declared to be free, and Ptolemy resigns Phoenicia to Antigonus.

Roxana, the widow of Alexander the Great, and her young son Alexander
Aegas, are put to death by Cassander.

The Roman consul Bubulcus penetrates into Samnium, where he is
surrounded, and cuts his way through with great courage.

310. Agathocles, the Syracusan ruler, defeated by the Carthaginians at
Himera, passes over to Africa and carries the war into their own
country.

The Etruscans take up arms in favor of the Samnites.

Civil war in the little kingdom of Bosporus; Satyrus II, king for a few
months, falls in battle.

An eclipse of the sun, August 15th.

309. Hercules, a natural son of Alexander, proclaimed king of Macedon;
he is murdered by Cassander.

The Romans are victorious over the Samnites and the Etruscans.

308. The Romans, under Fabius, compel the Etruscans to make peace;
Fabius then turns against the Samnites, whom he defeats.

307. Demetrius Poliorcetes, son of Antigonus, arrives with a fleet at
Athens, expels Demetrius Phalereus, and restores the democracy, the
Athenians throw down Phalereus' statues and condemn him to death.

306. Ptolemy's fleet is destroyed by Demetrius Poliorcetes at Salamis;
but Antigonus fails in his attempt on Egypt. Antigonus assumes the title
of king of Asia; Ptolemy Lagi, Lysimachus, and Seleucus, the rulers of
Egypt, Thrace, and that part of Alexander's empire east of the
Euphrates, likewise assume the royal title. Cassander of Macedon is
hailed king by his subjects.

305. War between Seleucus and India, under Sandrocottus, ends in a
treaty of amity.

Flavius reconciles all orders of the Roman state and erects a temple of
Concord.

Demetrius Poliorcetes besieges Rome.

304. The Romans triumphantly end the Second Samnite War.

302. The priesthood at Rome is opened to the plebs.

300.[90] Battle of Ipsus. Seleucus and Lysimachus overwhelm the army of
Antigonus and his son, Demetrius Poliorcetes; Antigonus is slain. His
dominions are divided among the victors. Lysimachus takes a large
portion of Asia Minor; Seleucus appropriates Upper Syria, Capuadocia,
and other territory.

[Footnote 90: The date is usually given as 301.]

Seleucus Nicator builds Antioch, which he makes the capital of his
kingdom of Syria.

299. Rome engages in the Third Samnite War, which becomes one of
extermination, but the Samnites bravely resist in their mountain holds.

295. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, espouses Antigone of the house of Ptolemy;
he returns to his dominions, out of which he had been driven by the
Molossi.

The Samnites, Etruscans, Umbrians, and Gauls unite against Rome. Q.
Fabius Rullianus and P. Decimo Mus defeat the Samnites and Gauls at
Sentinum.

Demetrius Poliorcetes retakes Athens; Lysimachus and Ptolemy deprive him
of all he possesses.

294. The Macedonian throne is seized by Demetrius Poliorcetes; by
violence or treachery the sons of Cassander are slain.

293. Many towns of the Samnites are so utterly destroyed by the Romans
that their sites are unknown; a portion of the spoil is cast into a
brazen colossus, and placed in front of the Roman Capitol.

The Roman census is 272,308 citizens.

The first sun-dial at Rome is placed on the temple of Quirinus.

290. The end of the Third Samnite War, which results in the submission
of the Samnites to Rome.

287. Birth of Archimedes, celebrated mathematician.[Est]

Lysimachus and Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, wrest Macedonia from Demetrius
Poliorcetes; immediately after, Lysimachus expels Pyrrhus.

286. The Hortensian law, passed by Q. Hortensino, affirmed the
legislative power granted the plebeians B.C. 446 and 336.

285. Completion of the Septuagint, a Greek version of the Scriptures,
called "the Alexandrian."

The length of the solar year first accurately determined by Dionysius,
in the astronomical canon.

283. Death of Ptolemy Lagi (Ptolemy Soter); Ptolemy Philadelphus
(jointly on the throne with his father since 295) succeeds him as King
of Egypt. He further encourages the immigration of the Jews, who
flourish exceedingly.

282. The Tarentines attack a Roman fleet and insult the ambassadors, who
demand satisfaction. Rome prepares for war; the Tarentines engage
Pyrrhus to assist them.

281. Lysimachus, at war with Seleucus Nicator, is defeated and slain in
Phrygia.

The Roman consul Aemilius invades the territory of Tarentum.

280. Pyrrhus, King of Epirus, invades Italy; he makes the cause of
Tarentum his own and wars on Rome. Laevinus, the Roman consul, is
defeated. See "FIRST BATTLE BETWEEN GREEKS AND ROMANS," ii, 166.

Revival of the Achaean League. The Achaei originally inhabited the
neighborhood of Argos; when driven thence by the Heraclidae, they
retired among the Ionians, expelled the natives, and seized their
thirteen cities, forming the Achaean League.

279. Pyrrhus, who had tried to mediate between Tarentum and Rome,
meeting with non-success, advances on Rome. He fails to make any
impression and returns to Tarentum; the Romans follow him, and he gains
an unimportant victory over them at Asculum. See "FIRST BATTLE BETWEEN
GREEKS AND ROMANS," ii, 166.

Irruption of Gauls into Macedonia; King Ptolemy Ceraunus offers battle
to them, in which he is killed.[91]

[Footnote 91: The date usually given is B.C. 280.]

278. The Gauls under Brennus invade Greece; they are cut to pieces near
Delphi.

Alliance formed between Rome and Carthage.

Pyrrhus wars against Carthage in Sicily.

277. A body of Gauls enter Northern Phrygia, of which they take
possession.

Pyrrhus expels the Carthaginians from most of their possessions in
Sicily.

276. Other Grecian cities join the Achaean League.

275. Pyrrhus, on the arrival of Carthaginian reenforcements, returns to
Italy; he is totally defeated by M. Curius Dentatus (at Beneventum), who
exhibits in his triumphs the first elephants ever seen in Rome.

273. Ptolemy Philadelphus, of Egypt, sends an embassy to congratulate
the Romans on their victory and to ask an alliance with them.

272. Pyrrhus attempts the siege of Sparta; he is repulsed. In an attack
on Argos, Pyrrhus is slain.

Tarentum surrenders to the Romans.

Lucania and Brittium also submit to Rome.

269. The first silver coinage at Rome.

266. The Romans capture and destroy Volsinii; Rome controls all Italy.

264. War between Rome and Carthage. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179.

Gladiators first introduced into Rome.

263. Antigonus Gonatus, King of Macedon, captures Athens.

The Romans compel Hiero, King of Syracuse, to withdraw from the support
of Carthage. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179.

Philetaerus at his death appoints his nephew, Eumenes, King of Pergamus;
the competition for books between him and Ptolemy Philadelphus causes
the latter to prohibit the export of papyrus from Egypt; this leads to
the invention of parchment at Pergamus, whence it takes its name.

Hiero makes peace with the Romans; he becomes their most trusted ally.

260. Ships-of-war first built by the Romans; the naval power of Rome
inaugurated by the decisive victory of Duilius over the Carthaginians at
Mylae. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179.

259. The Romans invade Corsica; they carry off much rich spoil from
thence and Sardinia, but make no permanent conquests. The island of
Melita (Malta) is captured by the Romans.

258. Atilius, the Roman consul, surrounded by the Carthaginians in
Sicily, escapes with difficulty.

257. A drawn battle between the fleets of Rome and Carthage off Tyndaris
causes the Romans to prepare larger ships, in order to strike a decisive
blow.

256. Total defeat of the Carthaginian fleet near Ecnomus; the victorious
Roman consuls land in Africa. The Carthaginians hire troops from Greece
and give the command to Xanthippus. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179.

255. Regelus and his Roman legions are vanquished by Xanthippus; Regelus
is taken captive. The Romans fit out a large fleet, which gains another
victory and brings off the remains of the army from Africa. Many of the
ships are wrecked.

254. Another fleet consisting of 220 ships is equipped in three months
by the Romans; Panormus (Palermo) is captured. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii,
179.

253. The Romans again land in Africa and ravage many Carthaginian coast
cities; on their return most of their ships are wrecked; the Romans
resolve to abstain from naval warfare.

252. Birth of Philopoemen, called the "Last of the Greeks."

251. Aratus restores the freedom of Sicyon; joins the Achaean League,
which becomes a powerful body.

250. Arsaceo founds the kingdom of Parthia.

The Romans begin the siege of Lilybaeum; the Carthaginians successfully
defend it till the close of the war. Metellus, the Roman proconsul,
commanding in Sicily, gains a great victory over Hasdrubal near
Panoramus; over one hundred elephants form part of his triumphal
procession.

249. Naval victory of the Carthaginians over the Romans at Drepanum.

Regelus is sent to Rome to propose an exchange of prisoners; on his
return the Carthaginians put him to death with the utmost cruelty.

The war between Syria and Egypt, which had been ruinous to the former,
is ended by a treaty between Antiochus II and Ptolemy Philadelphus. One
of the conditions was that Antiochus repudiate Laodice and marry
Berenice, Ptolemy's daughter.

248. Parthia becomes an independent kingdom.

247. Birth of Hannibal, the famous Carthaginian general.

Ptolemy Euergetes succeeds his father Ptolemy Philadelphus on the throne
of Egypt.

243. Corinth, delivered by Aratus from the yoke of Macedon, joins the
Achaean League; other states follow the example.

241. Agis IV, of Sparta, assists the Achaeans in their war against the
Aetolians.

Rome, having again assembled a great fleet, under Lutatius Catalus,
vanquishes the Carthaginians in a naval encounter off the Aegates. End
of the First Punic War; Sicily is relinquished by Carthage to Rome.

240. The Carthaginian mercenaries in Africa revolt; Hamilcar Barca
crushes it out.

237. Carthage is compelled to cede Sardinia to Rome.

236-221. Celomenes III of Sparta institutes great political reforms and
engages in a struggle with the Achaean League.

236-220. Hamilcar Barca and Hasdrubal, his son-in-law, conquer a great
part of Spain.

235. Rome, at peace with all the world, closes the temple of Janus, for
the first time since Numa, according to legend, the second king of Rome.

234. Birth of Cato the Elder.

Scipio Africanus born.

230. Ambassadors sent by Rome to protest against the piracies of the
Illyrians are murdered by the order of Queen Teuta.

229. A successful war is waged by the Romans against the Greek kingdom
of Illyria; the Roman power is extended across the Adriatic.

On the death of Hamilcar, his son-in-law, Hasdrubal, takes his place in
Spain; he founds Carthago Nova (Carthagena).

227. Sparta makes war with the Achaean League.

225-222. Cisalpine Gaul is conquered by the Romans.

221. Cleomenes III is crushed by Antigonus Doson, ruler of Macedon, at
Sellasia; the Spartan power is utterly destroyed.

220. Social war; the war made by the Aetolian League on the Achaean
League.

219. Hannibal lays siege to Saguntum, which he destroys; this is the
real commencement of the Second Punic War. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii,
179.

Philip V, of Macedon, is victorious in his campaigns against the
Aetolian League.

218. Hannibal crosses the Alps into Italy; he defeats the Romans on the
Ticinus and Trebia. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179.

217. Philip V continues his victorious way against the Aetolian League.

Hannibal defeats the Romans at the Trasimene Lake.

Antiochus the Great cedes Coele-Syria and Palestine to Egypt.

216. Crushing defeat of the Romans by Hannibal at Cannae. See "THE PUNIC
WARS," ii, 179.

214. Rome has her first encounter with Macedon; Philip V allies himself
with Hannibal and begins the war.

Marcellus is sent into Sicily and besieges Syracuse, which had declared
against Rome.

213. Aratus, strategus of the Achaean League, is poisoned by Philip V of
Macedon; this alienates from him many Greek states.

Hwangti crushes out literature in China.

212. After a two-years' siege the Romans under Marcellus take Syracuse.

The two Scipios defeated and killed in Spain. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii,
179.

211. Hannibal before the gates of Rome. See "THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179.

The Aetolian League with its allies assists Rome against Macedon.

210. Aegina taken by the Romans; the inhabitants reduced to slavery.

Agrigentum, being conquered by Caevinus, places all Sicily again under
Roman subjection.

Scipio, victorious in Spain, takes Carthago Nova. See "THE PUNIC WARS,"
ii, 179.

208. Suspension of his operations against Scipio--the future Scipio
Africanus--in Spain by Hasdrubal, son of Hamilcar, who sets out to
relieve his brother Hannibal in Italy.

207. Hasdrubal is defeated and slain on the Metaurus. See "BATTLE OF THE
METAURUS," ii, 195.

A signal victory is achieved by Philopoemen, general of the Achaean
League, with Macedon, over the Spartans at Matinea.

206. Birth of Polybius, Greek historian.

The Carthaginian power in Spain completely destroyed by Scipio.

205. End of the first Romo-Macedonian war.

204. Scipio carries the war into Africa; he defeats the Carthaginians
and the Numidians.

203. Hannibal, recalled from Italy, arrives at Carthage.

202. The Carthaginian power is completely broken, ending the Second
Punic War. See "SCIPIO AFRICANUS CRUSHES HANNIBAL AT ZAMA AND SUBJUGATES
CARTHAGE," ii, 224.

201. A war is begun by Rome for the resubjugation of the Boii and
Insubres of Cisalpine Gaul, who had attained freedom owing to the
Carthaginian invasion.

The Jews become subject to the Seleucid monarchy.

200. Declaration of war by Rome against Macedon; the second Macedonian
war.

198. Antiochus the Great, of Syria, conquers Palestine and Coele-Syria
from Egypt, defeating Scopas and the Aetolian allies.

197. Decisive Roman victory over the Macedonians at Cynoscephale; Philip
V of Macedon makes a humiliating peace.

196. The Roman general Flaminius proclaims the freedom of the Greeks.

195.[Est] Birth of Terrence, Roman comic poet.

Ptolemy V, Epiphanes, King of Egypt. See i, 1, "The Rosetta Stone."

192. In concert with the Aetolians, Antiochus the Great takes up arms
against Rome.

191. Antiochus is defeated by the Romans under Acilius Glabrio, at
Thermopylae, in Greece. The resubjugation of Cisalpine Gaul is completed
by Rome.

All the Peloponnesus is included in the Achaean League, which attains
its apogee.

190. Scipio Asiaticus takes command of the Romans in Greece, with his
brother Africanus as lieutenant; Antiochus is vanquished at Magnesia and
he is compelled to release his hold on the greater part of Asia Minor.
Most of the conquered territory is annexed to Pergamus. Scipio Asiaticus
takes his surname for the courage and ability he showed.

189. Fall of the Aetolian League.

185. Birth of Scipio Africanus the Younger.

179. Death of Philip V of Macedon. His son Perseus negotiates secretly
with other states against Rome. The Celtiberians and Lusitanians lay
down their arms.

177. Rome suppresses a revolt in Sardinia. A colony settled at Lucca.
The Achaeans contract an alliance with Rome.

Thessaly relapses under the Macedonian influence.

176. The consul Scipio dies, and C. Valerius Laevinus takes his place
for the rest of the year. His colleague Petilius is slain in battle
against the Ligurians. The Orchian and other sumptuary laws fail to
repress the luxury of the Romans.

175. Disgraceful struggles for the high-priesthood of Jerusalem;
Antiochus sells it to Jason, the brother of Onias, who is deposed.

174. Masinissa, after many encroachments, seizes the Carthaginian
provinces of Tyssa, with fifty cities; Roman ambassadors sent to settle
the dispute. Others deputed to ascertain the intentions of Perseus.

Mithridates VI of the Arsacidae begins his reign and prepares the
elevation of Parthia to great power.

173. The Roman ambassadors return, Perseus having refused to receive
them.

Death of Cleopatra, who, in the name of her young son, had been regent
of Egypt.

172. The Ligurians are subdued and Northern Italy filled with Roman
colonies. Eumenes honorably received at Rome; on his way back he is
attacked by assassins near Delphi.

Menelaus, another brother, supplants Jason in the high-priesthood of
Jerusalem.

171. Commencement of the Third Macedonian War; King Perseus begins his
struggle with Rome.

Antiochus invades Egypt and takes Memphis.

170. Hostilius, who takes the command in Macedon, makes no progress; the
Roman fleet ravages the sea-coast.

Perseus negotiates with Antiochus, Prusias, and many Greek states to
form a coalition against Rome; even Eumenes begins to treat with him.

Ptolemy Physcon is associated with his brother as joint King of Egypt.

169. The manoeuvres of Marcius Philippus drive Perseus from his strong
position in Tempe.

Antiochus lays siege to Alexandria; the Egyptians apply to Rome for aid.

168. Battle of Pydna; complete defeat of Perseus, King of Macedon, by
the Romans, under L. Aenilius Paulas. Macedon becomes a Roman province.

Antiochus, awed by the Roman ambassador Popillius and the fate of
Perseus, evacuates Egypt. In his retreat he plunders Jerusalem and
despoils the Temple, in which he sets up the statue of Jupiter Olympias.

167. Deportation of a thousand Achaeans to Rome; among them is Polybius,
the historian, who there finds patrons and friends. The first library
opened in Rome, consisting of books plundered from Macedon.

Arms are taken up by the Asmoneans against Antiochus, King of Syria.

165. Judas Maccabaeus enters Jerusalem; he purifies the Temple. See
"JUDAS MACCABEUS LIBERATES JUDEA," ii, 245.

160. Defeat and death of Judas Maccabaeus in battle.

158. Roman citizens are almost entirely relieved of direct taxation by
the revenues from Macedon and other conquests.

149. Commencement of the Third Punic War between Rome and Carthage. See
"THE PUNIC WARS," ii, 179.

First Roman law against bribery at elections.

147.[Est] Viriathus, the Lusitanian leader, has his first great victory
over the Romans.

146. Scipio Africanus the Younger completely destroys Carthage.

Mummius, commanding in Greece, defeats the Archaeans at Leucopetra; he
captures and destroys Corinth. The treasures of Grecian art conveyed to
Rome. Greece becomes a Roman province.

Demetrius Nicator slays Alexander Bala in battle and becomes king of
Syria.

141. Simon Maccabaeus captures the citadel of Jerusalem.

Silanus, accused by the Macedonians of corrupt practices, is condemned
by his father, Torquatus, and takes his own life.

140. The Jews proclaim Simon Maccabaeus hereditary prince; with this
dignity is united the office of high-priest.

[Est]Viriathus, the Lusitanian leader against the Romans in Spain, is
assassinated by order of the consul Caepio.

135. Simon Maccabaeus is assassinated; John Hyrcanus, his son, succeeds
him as ruler at Jerusalem.

134-133. Antiochus Tidetes, King of Syria, besieges Jerusalem; he is
repulsed.

134-132. Servile War in Sicily, caused by the inhuman treatment of the
slaves by their owners; two great battles were fought before the rising
was suppressed.

133. Tiberius Gracchus attempts his great political and agrarian reforms
in Rome. See "THE GRACCHI AND THEIR REFORMS," ii, 259.

Scipio Africanus the Younger reduces Numantia.

Attalus III of Pergamus bequeaths his kingdom, which embraces a great
part of Asia Minor, to the Romans.

125-121. The southeastern portion of Transalpine Gaul conquered by the
Romans.

123-122. Caius Gracchus commences his agrarian reforms in Rome. See "THE
GRACCHI AND THEIR REFORMS," ii, 259.

118. Rome extends her dominion beyond the Rhone; the colony of Narbo
Martius (Narbonne) founded.

113. Hordes of the Cimbri and Teutons threaten the Rome dominion by an
invasion of Illyrium.

112. Jugurtha, King of Numidia, kills Adherbal, who has been restored to
the throne of Numidia after being driven thence by Jugurtha.

111. The consul Calpurnius proceeds with a Roman army into Numidia;
bribed by Jugurtha, he makes a peace and withdraws his forces.

109. Jugurtha is opposed in Numidia by the Roman army headed by
Metellus.

John Hyrcanus, the Jewish Prince and high-priest, defeats Ptolemy
Lathyrus and captures Samaria.[Est]

The Cimbri request an allotment of land from the Romans, whereon to
settle; it is refused; they ravage the country, but are checked in
Thrace by Nimicus Rufus.

108. Metellus, as proconsul, continues the war in Numidia.

The Cimbri defeat the consul Scaurus in Gaul.

Mithridates of Pontus secretly prepares to regain by force the province
of Phrygia, which the Romans took from him during his minority.

107. Marius vigorously carries on the war against Jugurtha; Marius is
consul, Sylla his quaestor.

Cassius, Roman consul, is defeated and slain by the Cimbri in Gaul.

106. Birth of Cicero. Birth of Pompey the Great.

Jugurtha is betrayed by Bocchus, King of Mauretania, into the hands of
the Romans, which ends the Jugurthine War.

105. The Cimbri and Teutones defeat the consul Manilius and proconsul
Caepio, near the Rhone, with great loss.

Aristobulus, son of John Hyrcanus, succeeds his father and assumes the
title of king of Judea.

104. Alexander Jannaeus succeeds his brother Aristobulus in Judea.

102. Marius overwhelmingly defeats the Teutones, while they were
retreating from Spain, at Aquae Sextiae (Aix).

Another revolt of the slaves in Sicily (Second Servile War).

101. Marius utterly crushes the Cimbri on the Raudian Fields, after they
had previously defeated the proconsul Lutatius Catulus.

100. The Second Servile War continues.

Birth of Julius Cæsar.

99. M. Aquilius finally crushes out the slave uprising in Sicily.

94. Mithridates makes his son king of Cappadocia.

93. Cappadocians appeal to the Romans, who give them Ariobarzanes for
their king. Mithridates seizes Galatia.

92. Sulla is sent by the Romans into Cappadocia to observe Mithridates'
proceedings; ambassadors from Parthia meet him there.

91. M. Livius Drussus, people's tribune, advocates giving the rights of
citizenship to the Roman allies; he is assassinated.

90. Social or Marsic War, a conflict of the Italian states against Rome,
begins, the cause being the refusal of the franchise by Rome. Cæsar, the
consul, is unfortunate against the Samnites, and Rutilius is defeated
and slain by the Marsi. Marius retrieves these disasters. Citizenship
granted to the states which remain faithful to Rome.

The Roman senate promises aid to Cappadocia against Mithridates.

89. The consul Pompeius (father of Pompey the Great) gains decided
victories over the Picentines; his colleague, Cato, defeats the Marsi,
but is killed in the battle; Sulla takes the command, and is so
successful that he is elected consul for the ensuing year. Cicero is a
cadet in the army of Pompeius.

Cleopatra is put to death by her son Alexander, who is expelled from
Egypt, and Ptolemy Soter restored.

88. End of the Social War. Most of the refractory states admitted to
Roman citizenship.

Mithridates, King of Pontus, occupies Phrygia; he asks all Asia Minor to
join him; a general massacre of the Romans occurs.

Quarrel between Sulla and Marius which causes war between them for the
control of the Roman army. The first Roman civil war.

87. Sulla proceeds to Greece to conduct the war against Mithridates;
Sulla besieges Athens.

The consul Cinna, deposed by the senate, calls Marius from Africa,
raises an Italian army, and reinstates himself in office; bloody
proscriptions by Marius and Cinna follow.

86. Death of Marius, in the beginning of his seventh consulate; Flaccus,
appointed in his place, is assassinated on his march to the east, by C.
Fimbria, who assumes command of the Roman army.

Sulla captures the revolted city of Athens and defeats the army of
Mithridates under Archelaus.

A sedition of the Jews is quelled with merciless severity by Alexander
Jannaeus.

85. The Romans are successful against Mithridates in Asia.

84. End of the First Mithridatic War; Mithridates, finding himself
between two victorious Roman armies, agrees to peace and relinquishes
all his acquisitions.

83. Sulla makes war against the Marian party in Italy.

The Roman senate refuses to send Mithridates a formal ratification of
the treaty. He retains a part of Cappadocia. The Second Mithridatic War
begins.

82. Sulla becomes dictator at Rome, after crushing the Marian party; he
inflicts a bloody vengeance on his enemies.

End of the Second Mithridatic War.

81. Pompey, having been successful in Africa, is granted a triumph in
Rome.

80. Sertorius, the Marian leader, sets up an independent state in Spain.

Cæsar serves as a cadet at the siege of Mitylene; he receives a civic
crown for saving the life of a citizen.

79. Sulla resigns the dictatorship, but remains master of Rome.

Alexander Jannaeus, King of Judea, is succeeded on his death by his
widow Alexandra.

78. Death of Sulla.

76. Pompey is sent into Spain to oppose Sertorius.

74. Mithridates renews hostilities; he enters into an abortive alliance
with Sertorius. Third Mithridatic War. Lucullus commands the Roman
forces.

73. Lucullus routs the army of Mithridates.

Rising of the gladiators; Spartacus collects, on Mount Vesuvius, a
numerous army of slaves and gladiators; they overcome the forces sent
against them and ravage Southern Italy. The Third Servile War.

72. Sertorius is assassinated in Spain; the Spaniards submit to Pompey.

King Mithridates is driven from his dominions by Lucullus; the King
takes refuge in Armenia.

71. Crassus defeats and slays Spartacus; the gladiators are crushed.

70. Death of Alexandra, widow of Jannaeus; she nominates her son,
Hyrcanus, as her successor; but his brother, Aristobulus, usurps the
throne of Judea.

Pompey and Crassus, previously at variance, are reconciled during their
joint consulship.

Cicero's six orations (the first only being actually delivered) against
Verres, who, when governor of Sicily, had plundered the island of
property, art treasures, etc.

Birth of Vergil.

69. Lucullus crosses the Euphrates, captures Tigranocerta, and defeats
Tigranes, who had succored Mithridates in Armenia.

68. Lucullus defeats Tigranes and takes Nisibis.

67. A mutiny in the Roman army caused by the appointment of Glabrio to
succeed Lucullus.

Pompey crushes the pirates of Cilicia and makes it a Roman province.

Julius Cæsar is quaestor in Spain.

Metellus completes the conquest of Crete for the Romans.

Mithridates makes a successful advance.

66. Pompey, after a conference with Lucullus, completely crushes
Mithridates and drives him over the Cimmerian Bosporus.

65. End of the Third Mithridatic War.

Antiochus XIII is deposed by Pompey; this puts an end to the kingdom of
the Seleucidas (Syria).

Hyrcanus takes up arms against his brother Aristobulus in Judea.

64. Pompey takes possession of Syria; he is recalled thence to oppose
Mithridates, who, returned to his states, prepares for further
resistance.

63. Having intervened between the brothers John Hyrcanus II and
Aristobulus II, and decided in favor of Hyrcanus, Pompey lays siege to
Jerusalem, where Aristobulus reigns, captures it, and makes Judea a
Roman province.

Mithridates, betrayed by his son, poisons himself.

Cicero frustrates the conspiracy of Catiline, having for its object the
cancellation of debts, the proscription of the wealthy, and the
distribution among the conspirators of all the offices of honor and
emolument.

62. Catiline is defeated and slain, after having collected an army in
Etruria.

Discord arises between Cæsar, now prætor, and Cato, tribune of the
people.

60. First Triumvirate in Rome, formed of Pompey, Crassus, and Cæsar,
equally dividing the power.

59. Consulship of Cæsar at Rome; he carries his agrarian law and
ingratiates himself with the people; he is given the command in Gaul and
Illyrium for five years.

58. Cæsar begins his campaigns in Gaul. See "CÆSAR CONQUERS GAUL," ii,
267.

Cicero exiled from Rome; he had saved the Republic at the time of the
Catiline conspiracy, but had broken the constitution, which forbade
capital punishment without the sentence of the assembly of the people.

57. The Belgae conquered by Cæsar.

Cicero recalled to Rome.

56. Roman conquest of Aquitaine.

55. Cato is imprisoned for opposing the vote giving the triumvirs five
more years in their respective provinces: Pompey in Spain; Cæsar in
Gaul; Crassus in Syria. The triumvirs meet at Lucca.

Caesar's first expedition into Britain. See "ROMAN INVASION AND CONQUEST
OF BRITAIN," ii, 285.

54. First campaign of Crassus; he plunders the Temple of Jerusalem and
proceeds against the Parthians.

Mithridates of Parthia is murdered by his brother Orodes.

Cæsar's second invasion of Britain. See "ROMAN INVASION AND CONQUEST OF
BRITAIN," ii, 285.

53. Crassus defeated and slain in the war against the Parthians at
Carrhae.

52. Vercingetorix, at the head of various Gallic tribes, makes a
formidable effort to drive Cæsar out of Gaul; he is unsuccessful, and
Cæsar, besieging him in his stronghold Alesia, forces him to surrender.

51. Peace between Rome and Parthia. Cæsar completes his conquest of
Gaul.

Cleopatra, on the death of her father, Ptolemy Auletes, becomes queen of
Egypt. See "CLEOPATRA'S CONQUEST OF CÆSAR AND ANTONY," ii, 295.

50. Cæsar returns to Italy; jealousy between him and Pompey arouses the
people of Rome.

49. War breaks out between Cæsar and Pompey; the second civil war in
Rome.

48. Pompey is defeated by Cæsar at Pharsalia; Pompey flees to Egypt,
where he is assassinated.

47. The Roman senate appoints Cæsar dictator, M. Antony as his master of
the horse. Cæsar subdues Egypt.

46. Cæsar overwhelms the Pompeians in Africa at the battle of Thapsus;
Juba, King of Numidia, on the defeat, takes his own life.[92]

[Footnote 92: Other authorities say he fell in battle.]

Death of Cato.

The calendar is reformed by Cæsar.

45. Cæsar conquers the sons of Pompey at Munda, Spain. He is appointed
dictator for life.

44. Brutus, Cassius, and other conspirators murder Cæsar in Rome. See
"ASSASSINATION OF CÆSAR," ii, 313.

Conflict for power between Antony and Octavius; Cicero's oration secures
Octavius' success in Rome.

Antony resorts to arms to regain his lost ascendency. See "ROME BECOMES
A MONARCHY," ii, 333.

43. Second Triumvirate at Rome, formed by Octavius, Antony, and Lepidus.

Murder of Cicero. Birth of Ovid.

42. Brutus and Cassius are defeated at the two battles of Philippi. See
"ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii, 333.

41. Octavius and Antony's party war in Italy.

Fulvia, the wife of Antony, and the consul Lucius, his brother, oppose
Octavius, who drives them from Rome. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii,
333.

40. Herod I, in his absence at Rome, is proclaimed by Antony and
Octavius king of Judea.

Antony accompanies Cleopatra to Egypt. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY,"
ii, 333.

39. Herod lands in Syria to take the throne of Judea.

38. Pompey is defeated in a naval engagement and loses all his fleet.

37. Herod conquers Jerusalem; the Asmonean house ends.

36. Lepidus, aspiring to greater power, is deserted by his soldiers and
ejected from the triumvirate.

31. War of Antony and Octavius; Octavius is victorious at Actium: he
becomes master of the Roman dominions. Flight of Antony with Cleopatra
to Egypt. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii, 333.

30. Death of Antony and Cleopatra. See "ROME BECOMES A MONARCHY," ii,
333.

Egypt becomes a Roman province.

27. Octavius has a triumph at Rome and receives the title of Augustus.

The temple of Janus is closed.

24. Aelius Gallus, governor of Egypt, fails in an expedition into
Arabia.

19. Final subjugation of the Cantabri by Agrippa; the whole Spanish
peninsula subject to Rome.

15. The Rhaetians and Vindelicians subdued by Drassus and Tiberius, at
the head of the Roman troops.

12. Victorious advance of Drusus in Germany.

9. Pannonia completely subdued by Tiberius.

Last German campaign and death of Drusus.

4. Death of Herod the Great, King of Judea.

Probable date of the birth of Jesus.

A.D.

1. Beginning of the Christian era.

4. Emperor Tiberius' campaign in Germany.

6. Archelaus, the Herodian ethnarch, is deposed; Judea becomes a
district of the Roman prefecture of Syria.

9. Arminius annihilates the army of Varus in Teutoburg Forest. See
"GERMANS UNDER ARMINIUS REVOLT AGAINST ROME," ii, 362.

12. Tiberius leaves Germanicus to prosecute the war, and returns to
Rome.


END OF VOLUME II