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THE HISTORY OF ROME, BOOK IV

The Revolution

by

THEODOR MOMMSEN

Translated with the Sanction of the Author

by

William Purdie Dickson, D.D., LL.D.
Professor of Divinity in the University of Glasgow






Preparer's Note

This work contains many literal citations of and references to words,
sounds, and alphabetic symbols drawn from many languages, including
Gothic and Phoenician, but chiefly Latin and Greek.  This English
language Gutenberg edition, constrained within the scope of 7-bit
ASCII code, adopts the following orthographic conventions:

1) Words and phrases regarded as "foreign imports", italicized in the
original text published in 1903; but which in the intervening century
have become "naturalized" into English; words such as "de jure",
"en masse", etc. are not given any special typographic distinction.

2) Except for Greek, all literally cited non-English words that do
not refer to texts cited as academic references, words that in the
source manuscript appear italicized, are rendered with a single
preceding, and a single following dash; thus, -xxxx-.

3) Greek words, first transliterated into Roman alphabetic equivalents,
are rendered with a preceding and a following double-dash; thus, --xxxx--.
Note that in some cases the root word itself is a compound form such as
xxx-xxxx, and is rendered as --xxx-xxx--

4) Simple non-ideographic references to vocalic sounds, single letters,
or alphabeic dipthongs; and prefixes, suffixes, and syllabic references
are represented by a single preceding dash; thus, -x, or -xxx.

5) The following refers particularly to the complex discussion of
alphabetic evolution in Ch. XIV: Measuring And Writing).  Ideographic
references, meaning pointers to the form of representation itself rather
than to its content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-.  "id:" stands for
"ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a mental picture
based on the "xxxx" following the colon.  "xxxx" may represent a single
symbol, a word, or an attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters.
E. g. --"id:GAMMA gamma"-- indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-form
Followed by the form in lowercase.  Some such exotic parsing as this
is necessary to explain alphabetic development because a single symbol
may have been used for a number of sounds in a number of languages,
or even for a number of sounds in the same language at different
times.  Thus, -"id:GAMMA gamma" might very well refer to a Phoenician
construct that in appearance resembles the form that eventually
stabilized as an uppercase Greek "gamma" juxtaposed to another one
of lowercase.  Also, a construct such as --"id:E" indicates a symbol
that in graphic form most closely resembles an ASCII uppercase "E",
but, in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.

6) The numerous subheading references, of the form "XX. XX. Topic"
found in the appended section of endnotes are to be taken as "proximate"
rather than topical indicators.  That is, the information contained
in the endnote indicates primarily the location in the main text
of the closest indexing "handle", a subheading, which may or may not
echo congruent subject matter.

The reason for this is that in the translation from an original
paged manuscript to an unpaged "cyberscroll", page numbers are lost.
In this edition subheadings are the only remaining indexing "handles"
of sub-chapter scale.  Unfortunately, in some stretches of text these
subheadings may be as sparse as merely one in three pages.  Therefore,
it would seem to make best sense to save the reader time and temper
by adopting a shortest path method to indicate the desired reference.

7) Dr. Mommsen has given his dates in terms of Roman usage, A.U.C.;
that is, from the founding of Rome, conventionally taken to be 753 B. C.
To the end of each volume is appended a table of conversion between
the two systems.




CONTENTS

BOOK IV:  The Revolution

   CHAPTER

      I. The Subject Countries Down to the Times of the Gracchi

     II. The Reform Movement and Tiberius Gracchus

    III. The Revolution and Gaius Gracchus

     IV. The Rule of the Restoration

      V. The Peoples of the North

     VI. The Attempt of Marius at Revolution and the Attempt
         of Drusus at Reform

    VII. The Revolt of the Italian Subjects, and the Sulpician
         Revolution

   VIII. The East and King Mithradates

     IX. Cinna and Sulla

      X. The Sullan Constitution

     XI. The Commonwealth and Its Economy

    XII. Nationality, Religion, and Education

   XIII. Literature and Art




BOOK FOURTH

The Revolution




"-Aber sie treiben's toll;
Ich furcht', es breche."
Nicht jeden Wochenschluss
Macht Gott die Zeche-.

Goethe.




Chapter I

The Subject Countries Down to the Times of the Gracchi

The Subjects

With the abolition of the Macedonian monarchy the supremacy of Rome
not only became an established fact from the Pillars of Hercules to
the mouths of the Nile and the Orontes, but, as if it were the final
decree of fate, it weighed on the nations with all the pressure of
an inevitable necessity, and seemed to leave them merely the choice
of perishing in hopeless resistance or in hopeless endurance.
If history were not entitled to insist that the earnest reader
should accompany her through good and evil days, through landscapes
of winter as well as of spring, the historian might be tempted to shun
the cheerless task of tracing the manifold and yet monotonous turns
of this struggle between superior power and utter weakness, both in
the Spanish provinces already annexed to the Roman empire and in the
African, Hellenic, and Asiatic territories which were still treated
as clients of Rome.  But, however unimportant and subordinate the
individual conflicts may appear, they have collectively a deep
historical significance; and, in particular, the state of things
in Italy at this period only becomes intelligible in the light of
the reaction which the provinces exercised over the mother-country.

Spain

Except in the territories which may be regarded as natural appendages
of Italy--in which, however, the natives were still far from being
completely subdued, and, not greatly to the credit of Rome, Ligurians,
Sardinians, and Corsicans were continually furnishing occasion for
"village triumphs"--the formal sovereignty of Rome at the commencement
of this period was established only in the two Spanish provinces,
which embraced the larger eastern and southern portions of the
peninsula beyond the Pyrenees.  We have already(1) attempted to
describe the state of matters in the peninsula.  Iberians and Celts,
Phoenicians, Hellenes, and Romans were there confusedly intermingled.
The most diverse kinds and stages of civilization subsisted there
simultaneously and at various points crossed each other, the ancient
Iberian culture side by side with utter barbarism, the civilized
relations of Phoenician and Greek mercantile cities side by side with
an incipient process of Latinizing, which was especially promote
by the numerous Italians employed in the silver mines and by the
large standing garrison.  In this respect the Roman township of
Italica (near Seville) and the Latin colony of Carteia (on the bay
Of Gibraltar) deserve mention--the latter being the first transmarine
urban community of Latin tongue and Italian constitution.  Italica
was founded by the elder Scipio, before he left Spain (548), for
his veterans who were inclined to remain in the peninsula--probably,
however, not as a burgess-community, but merely as a market-place.(2)
Carteia was founded in 583 and owed its existence to the multitude of
camp-children--the offspring of Roman soldiers and Spanish slaves--who
grew up as slaves de jure but as free Italians de facto, and were now
manumitted on behalf of the state and constituted, along with the old
inhabitants of Carteia, into a Latin colony.  For nearly thirty years
after the organizing of the province of the Ebro by Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus (575, 576)(3) the Spanish provinces, on the whole, enjoyed the
blessings of peace undisturbed, although mention is made of one or two
expeditions against the Celtiberians and Lusitanians.

Lusitanian War

But more serious events occurred in 600.  The Lusitanians, under the
leadership of a chief called Punicus, invaded the Roman territory,
defeated the two Roman governors who had united to oppose them, and
slew a great number of their troops.  The Vettones (between the Tagus
and the Upper Douro) were thereby induced to make common cause with
the Lusitanians; and these, thus reinforced, were enabled to extend
their excursions as far as the Mediterranean, and to pillage even
the territory of the Bastulo-Phoenicians not far from the Roman
capital New Carthage (Cartagena).  The Romans at home took the matter
seriously enough to resolve on sending a consul to Spain, a step
which had not been taken since 559; and, in order to accelerate the
despatch of aid, they even made the new consuls enter on office two
months and a half before the legal time.  For this reason the day for
the consuls entering on office was shifted from the 15th of March
to the 1st of January; and thus was established the beginning of the
year, which we still make use of at the present day.  But, before
the consul Quintus Fulvius Nobilior with his army arrived, a very
serious encounter took place on the right bank of the Tagus between
the praetor Lucius Mummius, governor of Further Spain, and the
Lusitanians, now led after the fall of Punicus by his successor
Caesarus (601).  Fortune was at first favourable to the Romans; the
Lusitanian army was broken and their camp was taken.  But the Romans,
partly already fatigued by their march and partly broken up in the
disorder of the pursuit, were at length completely beaten by their
already vanquished antagonists, and lost their own camp in addition
to that of the enemy, as well as 9000 dead.

Celtiberian War

The flame of war now blazed up far and wide.  The Lusitanians on
the left bank of the Tagus, led by Caucaenus, threw themselves on
the Celtici subject to the Romans (in Alentejo), and took away their
town Conistorgis.  The Lusitanians sent the standards taken from
Mummius to the Celtiberians at once as an announcement of victory
and as a warning; and among these, too, there was no want of ferment.
Two small Celtiberian tribes in the neighbourhood of the powerful
Arevacae (about the sources of the Douro and Tagus), the Belli and
the Titthi, had resolved to settle together in Segeda, one of their
towns.  While they were occupied in building the walls, the Romans
ordered them to desist, because the Sempronian regulations prohibited
the subject communities from founding towns at their own discretion;
and they at the same time required the contribution of money and men
which was due by treaty but for a considerable period had not been
demanded.  The Spaniards refused to obey either command, alleging
that they were engaged merely in enlarging, not in founding, a city,
and that the contribution had not been merely suspended, but
remitted by the Romans.  Thereupon Nobilior appeared in Hither
Spain with an army of nearly 30,000 men, including some Numidian
horsemen and ten elephants.  The walls of the new town of Segeda
still stood unfinished: most of the inhabitants submitted.  But the
most resolute men fled with their wives and children to the powerful
Arevacae, and summoned these to make common cause with them against
the Romans.  The Arevacae, emboldened by the victory of the
Lusitanians over Mummius, consented, and chose Carus, one of the
Segedan refugees, as their general.  On the third day after his
election the valiant leader had fallen, but the Roman army was
defeated and nearly 6000 Roman burgesses were slain; the 23rd day of
August, the festival of the Volcanalia, was thenceforth held in sad
remembrance by the Romans.  The fall of their general, however,
induced the Arevacae to retreat into their strongest town Numantia
(Guarray, a Spanish league to the north of Soria on the Douro),
whither Nobilior followed them.  Under the walls of the town a second
engagement took place, in which the Romans at first by means of their
elephants drove the Spaniards back into the town; but while doing
so they were thrown into confusion in consequence of one of the
animals being wounded, and sustained a second defeat at the hands of
the enemy again issuing from the walls.  This and other misfortunes--
such as the destruction of a corps of Roman cavalry despatched to
call forth the contingents--imparted to the affairs of the Romans in
the Hither province so unfavourable an aspect that the fortress of
Ocilis, where the Romans had their chest and their stores, passed
over to the enemy, and the Arevacae were in a position to think,
although without success, of dictating peace to the Romans.  These
disadvantages, however, were in some measure counterbalanced by the
successes which Mummius achieved in the southern province.  Weakened
though his army was by the disaster which it had suffered, he yet
succeeded with it in defeating the Lusitanians who had imprudently
dispersed themselves on the right bank of the Tagus; and passing
over to the left bank, where the Lusitanians had overrun the whole
Roman territory, and had even made a foray into Africa, he cleared
the southern province of the enemy.

Marcellus

To the northern province in the following year (602) the senate sent
considerable reinforcements and a new commander-in-chief in the place
of the incapable Nobilior, the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who
had already, when praetor in 586, distinguished himself in Spain, and
had since that time given proof of his talents as a general in two
consulships.  His skilful leadership, and still more his clemency,
speedily changed the position of affairs: Ocilis at once surrendered
to him; and even the Arevacae, confirmed by Marcellus in the hope
that peace would be granted to them on payment of a moderate fine,
concluded an armistice and sent envoys to Rome.  Marcellus could thus
proceed to the southern province, where the Vettones and Lusitanians
had professed submission to the praetor Marcus Atilius so long as he
remained within their bounds, but after his departure had immediately
revolted afresh and chastised the allies of Rome.  The arrival of
the consul restored tranquillity, and, while he spent the winter
in Corduba, hostilities were suspended throughout the peninsula.
Meanwhile the question of peace with the Arevacae was discussed at
Rome.  It is a significant indication of the relations subsisting
among the Spaniards themselves, that the emissaries of the Roman
party subsisting among the Arevacae were the chief occasion of the
rejection of the proposals of peace at Rome, by representing that,
if the Romans were not willing to sacrifice the Spaniards friendly
to their interests, they had no alternative save either to send a
consul with a corresponding army every year to the peninsula or to
make an emphatic example now.  In consequence of this, the ambassadors
of the Arevacae were dismissed without a decisive answer, and it was
resolved that the war should be prosecuted with vigour.  Marcellus
accordingly found himself compelled in the following spring (603) to
resume the war against the Arevacae.  But--either, as was asserted,
from his unwillingness to leave to his successor, who was to be
expected soon, the glory of terminating the war, or, as is perhaps
more probable, from his believing like Gracchus that a humane
treatment of the Spaniards was the first thing requisite for a lasting
peace--the Roman general after holding a secret conference with the
most influential men of the Arevacae concluded a treaty under the
walls of Numantia, by which the Arevacae surrendered to the Romans
at discretion, but were reinstated in their former rights according
to treaty on their undertaking to pay money and furnish hostages.

Lucullus

When the new commander-in-chief, the consul Lucius Lucullus, arrived
at head-quarters, he found the war which he had come to conduct already
terminated by a formally concluded peace, and his hopes of bringing
home honour and more especially money from Spain were apparently
frustrated.  But there was a means of surmounting this difficulty.
Lucullus of his own accord attacked the western neighbours of the
Arevacae, the Vaccaei, a Celtiberian nation still independent which
was living on the best understanding with the Romans.  The question
of the Spaniards as to what fault they had committed was answered by
a sudden attack on the town of Cauca (Coca, eight Spanish leagues to
the west of Segovia); and, while the terrified town believed that it
had purchased a capitulation by heavy sacrifices of money, Roman
troops marched in and enslaved or slaughtered the inhabitants without
any pretext at all.  After this heroic feat, which is said to have
cost the lives of some 20,000 defenceless men, the army proceeded
on its march.  Far and wide the villages and townships were abandoned
or, as in the case of the strong Intercatia and Pallantia (Palencia)
the capital of the Vaccaei, closed their gates against the Roman army.
Covetousness was caught in its own net; there was no community
That would venture to conclude a capitulation with the perfidious
commander, and the general flight of the inhabitants not only
rendered booty scarce, but made it almost impossible for him
to remain for any length of time in these inhospitable regions.
In front of Intercatia, Scipio Aemilianus, an esteemed military tribune,
the son of the victor of Pydna and the adopted grandson of the victor
of Zama, succeeded, by pledging his word of honour when that of the
general no longer availed, in inducing the inhabitants to conclude an
agreement by virtue of which the Roman army departed on receiving a
supply of cattle and clothing.  But the siege of Pallantia had to
be raised for want of provisions, and the Roman army in its retreat
was pursued by the Vaccaei as far as the Douro.  Lucullus thereupon
proceeded to the southern province, where in the same year the
praetor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, had allowed himself to be defeated
by the Lusitanians.  They spent the winter not far from each other--
Lucullus in the territory of the Turdetani, Galba at Conistorgis--
And in the following year (604) jointly attacked the Lusitanians.
Lucullus gained some advantages over them near the straits of Gades.
Galba performed a greater achievement, for he concluded a treaty with
three Lusitanian tribes on the right bank of the Tagus and promised
to transfer them to better settlements; whereupon the barbarians,
who to the number of 7000 came to him for the sake of the expected
lands, were separated into three divisions, disarmed, and partly
carried off into slavery, partly massacred.  War has hardly ever
been waged with so much perfidy, cruelty, and avarice as by these
two generals; who yet by means of their criminally acquired treasures
escaped the one from condemnation, and the other even from impeachment.
The veteran Cato in his eighty-fifth year, a few months before his
death, attempted to bring Galba to account before the burgesses;
but the weeping children of the general, and the gold which he had
brought home with him, proved to the Roman people his innocence.

Variathus

It was not so much the inglorious successes which Lucullus and Galba
had attained in Spain, as the outbreak of the fourth Macedonian
and of the third Carthaginian war in 605, which induced the Romans
again to leave Spanish affairs in the first instance to the ordinary
governors.  Accordingly the Lusitanians, exasperated rather than
humbled by the perfidy of Galba, immediately overran afresh the rich
territory of the Turdetani.  The Roman governor Gaius Vetilius
(607-8?)(4) marched against them, and not only defeated them, but
drove the whole host towards a hill where it seemed lost irretrievably.
The capitulation was virtually concluded, when Viriathus--a man of
humble origin, who formerly, when a youth, had bravely defended
his flock from wild beasts and robbers and was now in more serious
conflictsa dreaded guerilla chief, and who was one of the few that had
accidentally escaped from the perfidious onslaught of Galba--warned his
countrymen against relying on the Roman word of honour, and promised
them deliverance if they would follow him.  His language and his
example produced a deep effect: the army entrusted him with the
supreme command.  Viriathus gave orders to the mass of his men to
proceed in detached parties, by different routes, to the appointed
rendezvous; he himself formed the best mounted and most trustworthy
into a corps of 1000 horse, with which he covered the departure of
his men.  The Romans, who wanted light cavalry, did not venture to
disperse for the pursuit under the eyes of the enemy's horsemen.
After Viriathus and his band had for two whole days held in check
the entire Roman army he suddenly disappeared during the night and
hastened to the general rendezvous.  The Roman general followed him,
but fell into an adroitly-laid ambush, in which he lost the half of
his army and was himself captured and slain; with difficulty the
rest of the troops escaped to the colony of Carteia on the Straits.
In all haste 5000 men of the Spanish militia were despatched from the
Ebro to reinforce the defeated Romans; but Viriathus destroyed the
corps while still on its march, and commanded so absolutely the whole
interior of Carpetania that the Romans did not even venture to seek
him there.  Viriathus, now recognized as lord and king of all the
Lusitanians, knew how to combine the full dignity of his princely
position with the homely habits of a shepherd.  No badge distinguished
him from the common soldier: he rose from the richly adorned marriage-
table of his father-in-law, the prince Astolpa in Roman Spain, without
having touched the golden plate and the sumptuous fare, lifted his bride
on horseback, and rode back with her to his mountains.  He never took
more of the spoil than the share which he allotted to each of his
comrades.  The soldier recognized the general simply by his tall
figure, by his striking sallies of wit, and above all by the fact
that he surpassed every one of his men in temperance as well as in toil,
sleeping always in full armour and fighting in front of all in battle.
It seemed as if in that thoroughly prosaic age one of the Homeric
heroes had reappeared: the name of Viriathus resounded far and wide
through Spain; and the brave nation conceived that in him it had
at length found the man who was destined to break the fetters
of alien domination.

His Successors

Extraordinary successes in northern and in southern Spain marked the
next years of his generalship.  After destroying the vanguard of the
praetor Gaius Plautius (608-9), Viriathus had the skill to lure him
over to the right bank of the Tagus, and there to defeat him so
emphatically that the Roman general went into winter quarters in
the middle of summer--on which account he was afterwards charged
before the people with having disgraced the Roman community, and was
compelled to live in exile.  In like manner the army of the governor--
apparently of the Hither province--Claudius Unimanus was destroyed,
that of Gaius Negidius was vanquished, and the level country was
pillaged far and wide.  Trophies of victory, decorated with the insignia
of the Roman governors and the arms of the legions, were erected on the
Spanish mountains; people at Rome heard with shame and consternation
of the victories of the barbarian king.  The conduct of the Spanish
war was now committed to a trustworthy officer, the consul Quintus
Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, the second son of the victor of Pydna
(609).  But the Romans no longer ventured to send the experienced
veterans, who bad just returned from Macedonia and Asia, forth anew
tothe detested Spanish war; the two legions, which Maximus brought
with him, were new levies and scarcely more to be trusted than the
old utterly demoralized Spanish army.  After the first conflicts had
again issued favourably for the Lusitanians, the prudent general
kept together his troops for the remainder of the year in the camp
at Urso (Osuna, south-east from Seville) without accepting the
enemy's offer of battle, and only took the field afresh in the
following year (610), after his troops had by petty warfare become
qualified for fighting; he was then enabled to maintain the
superiority, and after successful feats of arms went into winter
quarters at Corduba.  But when the cowardly and incapable praetor
Quinctius took the command in room of Maximus, the Romans again
suffered defeat after defeat, and their general in the middle of
summer shut himself up in Corduba, while the bands of Viriathus
overran the southern province (611).

His successor, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, the adopted brother
of Maximus Aemilianus, sent to the peninsula with two fresh legions
and ten elephants, endeavoured to penetrate into the Lusitanian
country, but after a series of indecisive conflicts and an assault
on the Roman camp, which was with difficulty repulsed, found himself
compelled to retreat to the Roman territory.  Viriathus followed him
into the province, but as his troops after the wont of Spanish
insurrectionary armies suddenly melted away, he was obliged to return
to Lusitania (612).  Next year (613) Servilianus resumed the offensive,
traversed the districts on the Baetis and Anas, and then advancing
into Lusitania occupied a number of townships.  A large number of the
insurgents fell into his hands; the leaders--of whom there were about
500--were executed; those who had gone over from Roman territory to
the enemy had their hands cut off; the remaining mass were sold into
slavery.  But on this occasion also the Spanish war proved true to
its fickle and capricious character.  After all these successes the
Roman army was attacked by Viriathus while it was besieging Erisane,
defeated, and driven to a rock where it was wholly in the power of the
enemy.  Viriathus, however, was content, like the Samnite general
formerly at the Caudine passes, to conclude a peace with Servilianus,
in which the community of the Lusitanians was recognized as sovereign
and Viriathus acknowledged as its king.  The power of the Romans had
not risen more than the national sense of honour had sunk; in the
capital men were glad to be rid of the irksome war, and the senate
and people ratified the treaty.  But Quintus Servilius Caepio, the
full brother of Servilianus and his successor in office, was far
from satisfied with this complaisance; and the senate was weak
enough at first to authorize the consul to undertake secret
machinations against Viriathus, and then to view at least with
indulgence the open breach of his pledged word for which there was
no palliation.  So Caepio invaded Lusitania, and traversed the land
as far as the territories of the Vettones and Callaeci; Viriathus
declined a conflict with the superior force, and by dexterous movements
evaded his antagonist (614).  But when in the ensuing year (615)
Caepio renewed the attack, and in addition the army, which had in
The meantime become available in the northern province, made its
appearance under Marcus Popillius in Lusitania, Viriathus sued for
peace on any terms.  He was required to give up to the Romans all
who had passed over to him from the Roman territory, amongst whom
was his own father-in-law; he did so, and the Romans ordered them
to be executed or to have their hands cut off.  But this was not
sufficient; the Romans were not in the habit of announcing to the
vanquished all at once their destined fate.

His Death

One behest after another was issued to the Lusitanians, each successive
demand more intolerable than its predecessors; and at length they were
required even to surrender their arms.  Then Viriathus recollected
the fate of his countrymen whom Galba had caused to be disarmed, and
grasped his sword afresh.  But it was too late.  His wavering had
sown the seeds of treachery among those who were immediately around
him; three of his confidants, Audas, Ditalco, and Minucius from Urso,
despairing of the possibility of renewed victory, procured from the
king permission once more to enter into negotiations for peace with
Caepio, and employed it for the purpose of selling the life of the
Lusitanian hero to the foreigners in return for the assurance of
personal amnesty and further rewards.  On their return to the camp
they assured the king of the favourable issue of their negotiations,
and in the following night stabbed him while asleep in his tent.
The Lusitanians honoured the illustrious chief by an unparalleled
funeral solemnity at which two hundred pairs of champions fought in
the funeral games; and still more highly by the fact, that they did
not renounce the struggle, but nominated Tautamus as their commander-
in-chief in room of the fallen hero.  The plan projected by the
latter for wresting Saguntum from the Romans was sufficiently bold;
but the new general possessed neither the wise moderation nor the
military skill of his predecessor.  The expedition utterly broke
down, and the army on its return was attacked in crossing the Baetis
and compelled to surrender unconditionally.  Thus was Lusitania
subdued, far more by treachery and assassination on the part of
foreigners and natives than by honourable war.

Numantia

While the southern province was scourged by Viriathus and the
Lusitanians, a second and not less serious war had, not without
their help, broken out in the northern province among the Celtiberian
nations.  The brilliant successes of Viriathus induced the Arevacae
likewise in 610 to rise against the Romans; and for this reason the
consul Quintus Caecilius Metellus, who was sent to Spain to relieve
Maximus Aemilianus, did hot proceed to the southern province, but
turned against the Celtiberians.  In the contest with them, and
more especially during the siege of the town of Contrebia which was
deemed impregnable, he showed the same ability which he had displayed
in vanquishing the Macedonian pretender; after his two years'
administration (611, 612) the northern province was reduced to
obedience.  The two towns of Termantia and Numantia alone had not
yet opened their gates to the Romans; but in their case also a
capitulation had been almost concluded, and the greater part of
the conditions had been fulfilled by the Spaniards.  When required,
however, to deliver up their arms, they were restrained like
Viriathus by their genuine Spanish pride in the possession of a well-
wielded sword, and they resolved to continue the war under the daring
Megaravicus.  It seemed folly: the consular army, the command of
which was taken up in 613 by the consul Quintus Pompeius, was four
times as numerous as the whole population capable of bearing arms in
Numantia.  But the general, who was wholly unacquainted with war,
sustained defeats so severe under the walls of the two cities (613,
614), that he preferred at length to procure by means of negotiations
the peace which he could not compel.  With Termantia a definitive
agreement must have taken place.  In the case of the Numantines the
Roman general liberated their captives, and summoned the community
under the secret promise of favourable treatment to surrender to him
at discretion.  The Numantines, weary of the war, consented, and
the general actually limited his demands to the smallest possible
measure.  Prisoners of war, deserters, and hostages were delivered up,
and the stipulated sum of money was mostly paid, when in 615 the new
general Marcus Popillius Laenas arrived in the camp.  As soon as
Pompeius saw the burden of command devolve on other shoulders, he,
with a view to escape from the reckoning that awaited him at Rome
for a peace which was according to Roman ideas disgraceful, lighted
on the expedient of not merely breaking, but of disowning his word;
and when the Numantines came to make their last payment, in the
presence of their officers and his own he flatly denied the conclusion
of the agreement.  The matter was referred for judicial decision to
the senate at Rome.  While it was discussed there, the war before
Numantia was suspended, and Laenas occupied himself with an expedition
to Lusitania where he helped to accelerate the catastrophe of
Viriathus, and with a foray against the Lusones, neighbours of the
Numantines.  When at length the decision of the senate arrived, its
purport was that the war should be continued--the state became thus
a party to the knavery of Pompeius.

Mancinus

With unimpaired courage and increased resentment the Numantines
resumed the struggle; Laenas fought against them unsuccessfully,
nor was his successor Gaius Hostilius Mancinus more fortunate (617).
But the catastrophe was brought about not so much by the arms of the
Numantines, as by the lax and wretched military discipline of the Roman
generals and by--what was its natural consequence--the annually-
increasing dissoluteness, insubordination, and cowardice of the Roman
soldiers.  The mere rumour, which moreover was false, that the
Cantabri and Vaccaei were advancing to the relief of Numantia,
induced the Roman army to evacuate the camp by night without orders,
and to seek shelter in the entrenchments constructed sixteen years
before by Nobilior.(5)  The Numantines, informed of their sudden
departure, hotly pursued the fugitive army, and surrounded it:
there remained to it no choice save to fight its way with sword in
hand through the enemy, or to conclude peace on the terms laid down
by the Numantines.  Although the consul was personally a man of
honour, he was weak and little known.  Tiberius Gracchus, who served
in the army as quaestor, had more influence with the Celtiberians from
the hereditary respect in which he was held on account of his father
who had so wisely organized the province of the Ebro, and induced the
Numantines to be content with an equitable treaty of peace sworn to
by all the staff-officers.  But the senate not only recalled the
general immediately, but after long deliberation caused a proposal to
be submitted to the burgesses that the convention should be treated
as they had formerly treated that of Caudium, in other words, that
they should refuse to ratify it and should devolve the responsibility
for it on those by whom it had been concluded.  By right this
category ought to have included all the officers who had sworn to the
treaty; but Gracchus and the others were saved by their connections.
Mancinus alone, who did not belong to the circles of the highest
aristocracy, was destined to pay the penalty for his own and others'
guilt.  Stripped of his insignia, the Roman consular was conducted to
the enemy's outposts, and, when the Numantines refused to receive him
that they might not on their part acknowledge the treaty as null,
the late commander-in-chief stood in his shirt and with his hands tied
behind his back for a whole day before the gates of Numantia, a
pitiful spectacle to friend and foe.  Yet the bitter lesson seemed
utterly lost on the successor of Mancinus, his colleague in the
consulship, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus.  While the discussions as to
the treaty with Mancinus were pending in Rome, he attacked the free
people of the Vaccaei under frivolous pretexts just as Lucullus had
done sixteen years before, and began in concert with the general of
the Further province to besiege Pallantia (618).  A decree of the
senate enjoined him to desist from the war; nevertheless, under the
pretext that the circumstances had meanwhile changed, he continued
the siege.  In doing so he showed himself as bad a soldier as he was
a bad citizen.  After lying so long before the large and strong city
that his supplies in that rugged and hostile country failed, he was
obliged to leave behind all the sick and wounded and to undertake a
retreat, in which the pursuing Pallantines destroyed half of his
soldiers, and, if they had not broken off the pursuit too early,
would probably have utterly annihilated the Roman army, which was
already in full course of dissolution.  For this conduct a fine was
imposed on the high-born general at his return.  His successors
Lucius Furius Philus (618) and Gaius Calpurnius Piso (619) had
again to wage war against the Numantines; and, inasmuch as they
did nothing at all, they fortunately came home without defeat.

Scipio Aemilianus

Even the Roman government began at length to perceive that matters
could no longer continue on this footing; they resolved to entrust
the subjugation of the small Spanish country-town, as an extraordinary
measure, to the first general of Rome, Scipio Aemilianus.  The pecuniary
means for carrying on the war were indeed doled out to him with
preposterous parsimony, and the permission to levy soldiers, which
he asked, was even directly refused--a result towards which coterie-
intrigues and the fear of being burdensome to the sovereign people may
have co-operated.  But a great number of friends and clients voluntarily
accompanied him; among them was his brother Maximus Aemilianus, whosome
years before had commanded with distinction against Viriathus.  Supported
by this trusty band, which was formed into a guard for the general, Scipio
began to reorganize the deeply disordered army (620).  First of all, the
camp-followers had to take their departure--there were found as many as
2000 courtesans, and an endless number of soothsayers and priests of all
sorts--and, if the soldier was not available for fighting, he had at
least to work in the trenches and to march.  During the first summer
the general avoided any conflict with the Numantines; he contented
himself with destroying the stores in the surrounding country, and with
chastising the Vaccaei who sold corn to the Numantines, and compelling
them to acknowledge the supremacy of Rome.  It was only towards winter
that Scipio drew together his army round Numantia.  Besides the Numidian
contingent of horsemen, infantry, and twelve elephants led by the
prince Jugurtha, and the numerous Spanish contingents, there were
four legions, in all a force of 60,000 men investing a city whose
citizens capable of bearing arms did not exceed 8000 at the most.
Nevertheless the besieged frequently offered battle; but Scipio,
perceiving clearly that the disorganization of many years was not to
be repaired all at once, refused to accept it, and, when conflicts
did occur in connection with the sallies of the besieged, the
cowardly flight of the legionaries, checked with difficulty by
the appearance of the general in person, justified such tactics
only too forcibly.  Never did a general treat his soldiers more
contemptuously than Scipio treated the Numantine army; and he showed
his opinion of it not only by bitter speeches, but above all by his
course of action.  For the first time the Romans waged war by means of
mattock and spade, where it depended on themselves alone whether they
should use the sword.  Around the whole circuit of the city wall,
which was nearly three miles in length, there was constructed a double
line of circumvallation of twice that extent, provided with walls,
towers, and ditches; and the river Douro, by which at first some
supplies had reached the besieged through the efforts of bold boatmen
and divers, was at length closed.  Thus the town, which they did not
venture to assault, could not well fail to be reduced through famine;
the more so, as it had not been possible for the citizens to lay in
provisions during the last summer.  The Numantines soon suffered from
want of everything.  One of their boldest men, Retogenes, cut his
way with a few companions through the lines of the enemy, and his
touching entreaty that kinsmen should not be allowed to perish without
help produced a great effect in Lutia at least, one of the towns
of the Arevacae.  But before the citizens of Lutia had come to a
decision, Scipio, having received information from the partisans of
Rome in the town, appeared with a superior force before its walls, and
compelled the authorities to deliver up to him the leaders of the
movement, 400 of the flower of the youth, whose hands were all cut
off by order of the Roman general.  The Numantines, thus deprived of
their last hope, sent to Scipio to negotiate as to their submission
and called on the brave man to spare the brave; but when the envoys
on their return announced that Scipio required unconditional surrender,
they were torn in pieces by the furious multitude, and a fresh term
elapsed before famine and pestilence had completed their work.
At length a second message was sent to the Roman headquarters,
that the town was now ready to submit at discretion.  When the citizens
were accordingly instructed to appear on the following day before the
gates, they asked for some days delay, to allow those of their number
who had determined not to survive the loss of liberty time to die.
It was granted, and not a few took advantage of it.  At last the
miserable remnant appeared before the gates.  Scipio chose fifty of
the most eminent to form part of his triumphal procession; the rest
were sold into slavery, the city was levelled with the ground, and
its territory was distributed among the neighbouring towns.  This
occurred in the autumn of 621, fifteen months after Scipio had
assumed the chief command.

The fall of Numantia struck at the root of the opposition that was
still here and there stirring against Rome; military demonstrations
and the imposition of fines sufficed to secure the acknowledgment of
the Roman supremacy in all Hither Spain.

The Callaeci Conquered
New Organization of Spain

In Further Spain the Roman dominion was confirmed and extended by
the subjugation of the Lusitanians.  The consul Decimus Junius Brutus,
who came in Caepio's room, settled the Lusitanian war-captives in
the neighbourhood of Saguntum, and gave to their new town Valentia
(Valencia), like Carteia, a Latin constitution (616); he moreover
(616-618) traversed the Iberian west coast in various directions,
and was the first of the Romans to reach the shore of the Atlantic Ocean.
The towns of the Lusitanians dwelling there, which were obstinately
defended by their inhabitants, both men and women, were subdued by
him; and the hitherto independent Callaeci were united with the Roman
province after a great battle, in which 50,000 of them are said to
have fallen.  After the subjugation of the Vaccaei, Lusitanians, and
Callaeci, the whole peninsula, with the exception of the north coast,
was now at least nominally subject to the Romans.

A senatorial commission was sent to Spain in order to organize, in
concert with Scipio, the newly-won provincial territory after the Roman
method; and Scipio did what he could to obviate the effects of the
infamous and stupid policy of his predecessors.  The Caucani for
instance, whose shameful maltreatment by Lucullus he had been obliged
to witness nineteen years before when a military tribune, were invited
by him to return to their town and to rebuild it.  Spain began again
to experience more tolerable times.  The suppression of piracy, which
found dangerous lurking-places in the Baleares, through the occupation
of these islands by Quintus Caecilius Metellus in 631, was singularly
conducive, to the prosperity of Spanish commerce; and in other respects
also the fertile islands, inhabited by a dense population which was
unsurpassed in the use of the sling, were a valuable possession.
How numerous the Latin-speaking population in the peninsula was even
then, is shown by the settlement of 3000 Spanish Latins in the towns
of Palma and Pollentia (Pollenza) in the newly-acquired islands.
In spite of various grave evils the Roman administration of Spain
preserved on the whole the stamp which the Catonian period, and
primarily Tiberius Gracchus, had impressed on it.  It is true that
the Roman frontier territory had not a little to suffer from the
inroads of the tribes, but half subdued or not subdued at all, on
the north and west.  Among the Lusitanians in particular the poorer
youths regularly congregated as banditti, and in large gangs levied
contributions from their countrymen or their neighbours, for which
reason, even at a much later period, the isolated homesteads in this
region were constructed in the style of fortresses, and were, in case
of need, capable of defence; nor did the Romans succeed in putting
an end to these predatory habits in the inhospitable and almost
inaccessible Lusitanian mountains.  But what had previously been wars
assumed more and more the character of brigandage, which every tolerably
efficient governor was able to repress with his ordinary resources;
and in spite of such inflictions on the border districts Spain was
the most flourishing and best-organized country in all the Roman
dominions; the system of tenths and the middlemen were there
unknown; the population was numerous, and the country was rich
in corn and cattle.

The Protected States

Far more insupportable was the condition--intermediate between formal
sovereignty and actual subjection--of the African, Greek, and Asiatic
states which were brought within the sphere of Roman hegemony through
the wars of Rome with Carthage, Macedonia, and Syria, and their
consequences.  An independent state does not pay too dear a price
for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it
cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find
at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures
for it peace with its neighbours.  But these client states of Rome
had neither independence nor peace.  In Africa there practically
subsisted a perpetual border-war between Carthage and Numidia.
In Egypt Roman arbitration had settled the dispute as to the
succession between the two brothers Ptolemy Philometor and Ptolemy
the Fat; nevertheless the new rulers of Egypt and Cyrene waged war
for the possession of Cyprus.  In Asia not only were most of the
kingdoms--Bithynia, Cappadocia, Syria--likewise torn by internal
quarrels as to the succession and by the interventions of
neighbouring states to which these quarrels gave rise, but various
and severe wars were carried on between the Attalids and the
Galatians, between the Attalids and the kings of Bithynia, and even
between Rhodes and Crete.  In Hellas proper, in like manner, the
pigmy feuds which were customary there continued to smoulder; and
even Macedonia, formerly so tranquil, consumed its strength in the
intestine strife that arose out of its new democratic constitutions.
It was the fault of the rulers as well as the ruled, that the last
vital energies and the last prosperity of the nations were expended
in these aimless feuds.  The client states ought to have perceived
that a state which cannot wage war against every one cannot wage war
at all, and that, as the possessions and power enjoyed by all these
states were practically under Roman guarantee, they had in the event
of any difference no alternative but to settle the matter amicably
with their neighbours or to call in the Romans as arbiters.  When the
Achaean diet was urged by the Rhodians and Cretans to grant them the
aid of the league, and seriously deliberated as to sending it (601),
it was simply a political farce; the principle which the leader of the
party friendly to Rome then laid down--that the Achaeans were no
longer at liberty to wage war without the permission of the Romans--
expressed, doubtless with disagreeable precision, the simple truth
that the sovereignty of the dependent states was merely a formal
one, and that any attempt to give life to the shadow must necessarily
lead to the destruction of the shadow itself.  But the ruling
community deserves a censure more severe than that directed against
the ruled.  It is no easy task for a man--any more than for a
state--to own to insignificance; it is the duty and right of the
ruler either to renounce his authority, or by the display of an
imposing material superiority to compel the ruled to resignation.
The Roman senate did neither.  Invoked and importuned on all hands,
the senate interfered incessantly in the course of African, Hellenic,
Asiatic, and Egyptian affairs; but it did so after so inconstant
and loose a fashion, that its attempts to settle matters usually only
rendered the confusion worse.  It was the epoch of commissions.
Commissioners of the senate were constantly going to Carthage and
Alexandria, to the Achaean diet, and to the courts of the rulers of
western Asia; they investigated, inhibited, reported, and yet
decisive steps were not unfrequently taken in the most important
matters without the knowledge, or against the wishes, of the senate.
It might happen that Cyprus, for instance, which the senate had
assigned to the kingdom of Cyrene, was nevertheless retained by Egypt;
that a Syrian prince ascended the throne of his ancestors under the
pretext that he had obtained a promise of it from the Romans, while
the senate had in fact expressly refused to give it to him, and he
himself had only escaped from Rome by breaking their interdict; that
even the open murder of a Roman commissioner, who under the orders of
the senate administered as guardian the government of Syria, passed
totally unpunished.  The Asiatics were very well aware that they
were not in a position to resist the Roman legions; but they were
no less aware that the senate was but little inclined to give the
burgesses orders to march for the Euphrates or the Nile.  Thus the
state of these remote countries resembled that of the schoolroom
when the teacher is absent or lax; and the government of Rome
deprived the nations at once of the blessings of freedom and of
the blessings of order.  For the Romans themselves, moreover, this
state of matters was so far perilous that it to a certain extent left
their northern and eastern frontier exposed.  In these quarters
kingdoms might be formed by the aid of the inland countries situated
beyond the limits of the Roman hegemony and in antagonism to the weak
states under Roman protection, without Rome being able directly or
speedily to interfere, and might develop a power dangerous to, and
entering sooner or later into rivalry with, Rome.  No doubt the
condition of the bordering nations--everywhere split into fragments
and nowhere favourable to political development on a great scale--
formed some sort of protection against this danger; yet we very
clearly perceive in the history of the east, that at this period the
Euphrates was no longer guarded by the phalanx of Seleucus and was
not yet watched by the legions of Augustus.  It was high time to put
an end to this state of indecision.  But the only possible way of
ending it was by converting the client states into Roman provinces.
This could be done all the more easily, that the Roman provincial
constitution in substance only concentrated military power in the
hands of the Roman governor, while administration and jurisdiction
in the main were, or at any rate were intended to be, retained by
the communities, so that as much of the old political independence as
was at all capable of life might be preserved in the form of communal
freedom.  The necessity for this administrative reform could not
well be mistaken; the only question was, whether the senate would
delay and mar it, or whether it would have the courage and the power
clearly to discern and energetically to execute what was needful.

Carthage and Numidia

Let us first glance at Africa.  The order of things established by
the Romans in Libya rested in substance on a balance of power between
the Nomad kingdom of Massinissa and the city of Carthage.  While the
former was enlarged, confirmed, and civilized under the vigorous
and sagacious government of Massinissa,(6) Carthage in consequence
simply of a state of peace became once more, at least in wealth and
population, what it had been at the height of its political power.
The Romans saw with ill-concealed and envious fear the apparently
indestructible prosperity of their old rival; while hitherto they had
refused to grant to it any real protection against the constantly
continued encroachments of Massinissa, they now began openly to
interfere in favour of the neighbouring prince.  The dispute which
had been pending for more than thirty years between the city and the
king as to the possession of the province of Emporia on the Lesser
Syrtis, one of the most fertile in the Carthaginian territory, was
at length (about 594) decided by Roman commissioners to the effect
that the Carthaginians should evacuate those towns of Eniporia which
still remained in their possession, and should pay 500 talents
(120,000 pounds) to the king as compensation for the illegal enjoyment
of the territory.  The consequence was, that Massinissa immediately
seized another Carthaginian district on the western frontier of
their territory, the town of Tusca and the great plains near the
Bagradas; no course was left to the Carthaginians but to commence
another hopeless process at Rome.  After long and, beyond doubt,
intentional delay a second commission appeared in Africa (597);
but, when the Carthaginians were unwilling to commit themselves
unconditionally to a decision to be pronounced by it as arbiter
without an exact preliminary investigation into the question of
legal right, and insisted on a thorough discussion of the latter
question, the commissioners without further ceremony returned to Rome.

The Destruction of Carthage Resolved on at Rome

The question of right between Carthage and Massinissa thus remained
unsettled; but the mission gave rise to a more important decision.
The head of this commission had been the old Marcus Cato, at that
time perhaps the most influential man in the senate, and, as a
veteran survivor from the Hannibalic war, still filled with thorough
hatred and thorough dread of the Phoenicians.  With surprise and
jealousy Cato had seen with his own eyes the flourishing state of
the hereditary foes of Rome, the luxuriant country and the crowded
streets, the immense stores of arms in the magazines and the rich
materials for a fleet; already he in spirit beheld a second
Hannibal wielding all these resources against Rome.  In his honest
and manly, but thoroughly narrow-minded, fashion, he came to the
conclusion that Rome could not be secure until Carthage had
disappeared from the face of the earth, and immediately after his
return set forth this view in the senate.  Those of the aristocracy
whose ideas were more enlarged, and especially Scipio Nasica,
opposed this paltry policy with great earnestness; and showed how
blind were the fears entertained regarding a mercantile city whose
Phoenician inhabitants were becoming more and more disused to warlike
arts and ideas, and how the existence of that rich commercial city
was quite compatible with the political supremacy of Rome.  Even the
conversion of Carthage into a Roman provincial town would have been
practicable, and indeed, compared with the present condition of the
Phoenicians, perhaps even not unwelcome.  Cato, however, desired not
the submission, but the destruction of the hated city.  His policy,
as it would seem, found allies partly in the statesmen who were
inclined to bring the transmarine territories into immediate
dependence on Rome, partly and especially in the mighty influence
of the Roman bankers and great capitalists on whom, after the
destruction of the rich moneyed and mercantile city, its inheritance
would necessarily devolve.  The majority resolved at the first fitting
opportunity--respect for public opinion required that they should
wait for such--to bring about war with Carthage, or rather the
destruction of the city.

War between Massinissa and Carthage

The desired occasion was soon found.  The provoking violations of
right on the part of Massinissa and the Romans brought to the helm
in Carthage Hasdrubal and Carthalo, the leaders of the patriotic
party, which was not indeed, like the Achaean, disposed to revolt
against the Roman supremacy, but was at least resolved to defend,
if necessary, by arms against Massinissa the rights belonging by
treaty to the Carthaginians.  The patriots ordered forty of the most
decided partisans of Massinissa to be banished from the city, and made
the people swear that they would on no account ever permit their return;
at the same time, in order to repel the attacks that might be expected
from Massinissa, they formed out of the free Numidians a numerous army
under Arcobarzanes, the grandson of Syphax (about 600).  Massinissa,
however, was prudent enough not to take arms now, but to submit
himself unconditionally to the decision of the Romans respecting
the disputed territory on the Bagradas; and thus the Romans could
assert with some plausibility that the Carthaginian preparations must
have been directed against them, and could insist on the immediate
dismissal of the army and destruction of the naval stores.
The Carthaginian senate was disposed to consent, but the multitude
prevented the execution of the decree, and the Roman envoys, who
had brought this order to Carthage, were in peril of their lives.
Massinissa sent his son Gulussa to Rome to report the continuance of
the Carthaginian warlike preparations by land and sea, and to hasten
the declaration of war.  After a further embassy of ten men had
confirmed the statement that Carthage was in reality arming (602),
the senate rejected the demand of Cato for an absolute declaration
of war, but resolved in a secret sitting that war should be declared
if the Carthaginians would not consent to dismiss their army and
to burn their materials for a fleet.  Meanwhile the conflict had
already begun in Africa.  Massinissa had sent back the men whom the
Carthaginians had banished, under the escort of his son Gulussa, to
the city.  When the Carthaginians closed their gates against them and
killed also some of the Numidians returning home, Massinissa put his
troops in motion, and the patriot party in Carthage also prepared
for the struggle.  But Hasdrubal, who was placed at the head of their
army, was one of the usual army-destroyers whom the Carthaginians
were in the habit of employing as generals; strutting about in his
general's purple like a theatrical king, and pampering his portly
person even in the camp, that vain and unwieldy man was little
fitted to render help in an exigency which perhaps even the genius
of Hamilcar and the arm of Hannibal could have no longer averted.
Before the eyes of Scipio Aemilanus, who at that time a military tribune
in the Spanish army, had been sent to Massinissa to bring over African
elephants for his commander, and who on this occasion looked down on
the conflict from a mountain "like Zeus from Ida," the Carthaginians
and Numidians fought a great battle, in which the former, though
reinforced by 6000 Numidian horsemen brought to them by discontented
captains of Massinissa, and superior in number to the enemy, were
worsted.  After this defeat the Carthaginians offered to make
cessions of territory and payments of money to Massinissa, and
Scipio at their solicitation attempted to bring about an agreement;
but the project of peace was frustrated by the refusal of the
Carthaginian patriots to surrender the deserters.  Hasdrubal,
however, closely hemmed in by the troops of his antagonist, was
compelled to grant to the latter all that he demanded--the surrender
of the deserters, the return of the exiles, the delivery of arms,
the marching off under the yoke, the payment of 100 talents (24,000
pounds) annually for the next fifty years.  But even this agreement
was not kept by the Numidians; on the contrary the disarmed remnant
of the Carthaginian army was cut to pieces by them on the way home.

Declaration of War by Rome

The Romans, who had carefully abstained from preventing the war
Itself by seasonable interposition, had now what they wished: namely,
A serviceable pretext for war--for the Carthaginians had certainly
Now transgressed the stipulations of the treaty, that they should not
wage war against the allies of Rome or beyond their own bounds(7)--
and an antagonist already beaten beforehand.  The Italian contingents
were already summoned to Rome, and the ships were assembled; the
declaration of war might issue at any moment.  The Carthaginians made
every effort to avert the impending blow.  Hasdrubal and Carthalo,
the leaders of the patriot party, were condemned to death, and an
embassy was sent to Rome to throw the responsibility on them.
But at the same time envoys from Utica, the second city of the
Libyan Phoenicians, arrived there with full powers to surrender
their Community wholly to the Romans--compared with such obliging
submissiveness, it seemed almost an insolence that the Carthaginians
had rested content with ordering, unbidden, the execution of their most
eminent men.  The senate declared that the excuse of the Carthaginians
was found insufficient; to the question, what in that case would suffice,
the reply was given that the Carthaginians knew that themselves.  They
might, no doubt, have known what the Romans wished; but yet it seemed
impossible to believe that the last hour of their loved native city had
really come.  Once more Carthaginian envoys--on this occasion thirty
in number and with unlimited powers--were sent to Rome.  When they
arrived, war was already declared (beginning of 605), and the double
consular army had embarked.  Yet they even now attempted to dispel
the storm by complete submission.  The senate replied that Rome was
ready to guarantee to the Carthaginian community its territory, its
municipal freedom and its laws, its public and private property,
provided that it would furnish to the consuls who had just departed for
Sicily within the space of a month at Lilybaeum 300 hostages from the
children of the leading families, and would fulfil the further orders
which the consuls in conformity with their instructions should issue
to them.  The reply has been called ambiguous; but very erroneously,
as even at the time clearsighted men among the Carthaginians themselves
pointed out.  The circumstance that everything which they could ask
was guaranteed with the single exception of the city, and that
nothing was said as to stopping the embarkation of the troops for
Africa, showed very clearly what the Roman intentions were; the
senate acted with fearful harshness, but it did not assume the
semblance of concession.  The Carthaginians, however, would not open
their eyes; there was no statesman found, who had the power to move
the unstable multitude of the city either to thorough resistance or
to thorough resignation.  When they heard at the same time of the
horrible decree of war and of the endurable demand for hostages, they
complied immediately with the latter, and still clung to hope, because
they had not the courage fully to realize the import of surrendering
themselves beforehand to the arbitrary will of a mortal foe.
The consuls sent back the hostages from Lilybaeum to Rome, and informed
the Carthaginian envoys that they would learn further particulars in
Africa.  The landing was accomplished without resistance, and the
provisions demanded were supplied.  When the gerusia of Carthage
appeared in a body at the head-quarters in Utica to receive the
further orders, the consuls required in the first instance the
disarming of the city.  To the question of the Carthaginians, who
was in that case to protect them even against their own emigrants--
against the army, which had swelled to 20,000 men, under the command
of Husdrubal who had saved himself from the sentence of death by
flight--it was replied, that this would be the concern of the Romans.
Accordingly the council of the city obsequiously appeared before the
consuls, with all their fleet-material, all the military stores of the
public magazines, all the arms that were found in the possession of
private persons--to the number of 3000 catapults and 200,000 sets of
armour--and inquired whether anything more was desired.  Then the
consul Lucius Marcius Censorinus rose and announced to the council,
that in accordance with the instructions given by the senate the
existing city was to be destroyed, but that the inhabitants were
at liberty to settle anew in their territory wherever they chose,
provided it were at a distance of at least ten miles from the sea.

Resistance of the Carthaginians

This fearful command aroused in the Phoenicians all the--shall
we say magnanimous or frenzied?--enthusiasm, which was displayed
previously by the Tyrians against Alexander, and subsequently by the
Jews against Vespasian.  Unparalleled as was the patience with which
this nation could endure bondage and oppression, as unparalleled was
now the furious rising of that mercantile and seafaring population,
when the things at stake were not the state and freedom, but the
beloved soil of their ancestral city and their venerated and dear
home beside the sea.  Hope and deliverance were out of the question;
political discretion enjoined even now an unconditional submission.
But the voice of the few who counselled the acceptance of what was
inevitable was, like the call of the pilot during a hurricane,
drowned amidst the furious yells of the multitude; which, in its
frantic rage, laid hands on the magistrates of the city who had
counselled the surrender of the hostages and arms, made such of the
innocent bearers of the news as had ventured at all to return home
expiate their terrible tidings, and tore in pieces the Italians who
chanced to be sojourning in the city by way of avenging beforehand,
at least on them, the destruction of its native home.  No resolution
was passed to defend themselves; unarmed as they were, this was
a matter of course.  The gates were closed; stones were carried
to the battlements of the walls that had been stripped of the
catapults; the chief command was entrusted to Hasdrubal, the grandson
of Massinissa; the slaves in a body were declared free.  The army
of refugees under the fugitive Hasdrubal--which was in possession of
the whole Carthaginian territory with the exception of the towns on
the east coast occupied by the Romans, viz.  Hadrumetum, Little
Leptis, Thapsus and Achulla, and the city of Utica, and offered an
invaluable support for the defence--was entreated not to refuse its
aid to the commonwealth in this dire emergency.  At the same time,
concealing in true Phoenician style the most unbounded resentment
under the cloak of humility, they attempted to deceive the enemy.
A message was sent to the consuls to request a thirty days'
armistice for the despatch of an embassy to Rome.  The Carthaginians
were well aware that the generals neither would nor could grant this
request, which had been refused once already; but the consuls were
confirmed by it in the natural supposition that after the first outbreak
of despair the utterly defenceless city would submit, and accordingly
postponed the attack.  The precious interval was employed in preparing
catapults and armour; day and night all, without distinction of age or
sex, were occupied in constructing machines and forging arms; the public
buildings were torn down to procure timber and metal; women cut off
their hair to furnish the strings indispensable for the catapults; in
an incredibly short time the walls and the men were once more armed.
That all this could be done without the consuls, who were but a few
miles off, learning anything of it, is not the least marvellous feature
in this marvellous movement sustained by a truly enthusiastic, and in
fact superhuman, national hatred.  When at length the consuls, weary
of waiting, broke up from their camp at Utica, and thought that they
should be able to scale the bare walls with ladders, they found to their
surprise and horror the battlements crowned anew with catapults, and
the large populous city which they had hoped to occupy like an open
village, able and ready to defend itself to the last man.

Situation of Carthage

Carthage was rendered very strong both by the nature of its
situation(8) and by the art of its inhabitants, who had very often
to depend on the protection of its walls.  Into the broad gulf of
Tunis, which is bounded on the west by Cape Farina and on the east
by Cape Bon, there projects in a direction from west to east a
promontory, which is encompassed on three sides by the sea and is
connected with the mainland only towards the west.  This promontory,
at its narrowest part only about two miles broad and on the whole flat,
again expands towards the gulf, and terminates there in the two
heights of Jebel-Khawi and Sidi bu Said, between which extends
the plain of El Mersa.  On its southern portion which ends in the
height of Sidi bu Said lay the city of Carthage.  The pretty steep
declivity of that height towards the gulf and its numerous rocks and
shallows gave natural strength to the side of the city next to the
gulf, and a simple circumvallation was sufficient there.  On the
wall along the west or landward side, on the other hand, where nature
afforded no protection, every appliance within the power of the art
of fortification in those times was expended.  It consisted, as its
recently discovered remains exactly tallying with the description of
Polybius have shown, of an outer wall 6 1/2 feet thick and immense
casemates attached to it behind, probably along its whole extent;
these were separated from the outer wall by a covered way 6 feet
broad, and had a depth of 14 feet, exclusive of the front and back
walls, each of which was fully 3 feet broad.(9)  This enormous wall,
composed throughout of large hewn blocks, rose in two stories,
exclusive of the battlements and the huge towers four stories high,
to a height of 45 feet,(10) and furnished in the lower range of the
casemates stables and provender-stores for 300 elephants, in the upper
range stalls for horses, magazines, and barracks.(11)  The citadel-hill,
the Byrsa (Syriac, birtha = citadel), a comparatively considerable
rock having a height of 188 feet and at its base a circumference
of fully 2000 double paces,(12) was joined to this wall at its
southern end, just as the rock-wall of the Capitol was joined
to the city-wall of Rome.  Its summit bore the huge temple of the
God of Healing, resting on a basement of sixty steps.  The south
side of the city was washed partly by the shallow lake of Tunes towards
the south-west, which was separated almost wholly from the gulf by a
narrow and low tongue of land running southwards from the Carthaginian
peninsula,(13) partly by the open gulf towards the south-east.
At this last spot was situated the double harbour of the city,
a work of human hands; the outer or commercial harbour, a longish
rectangle with the narrow end turned to the sea, from whose entrance,
only 70 feet wide, broad quays stretched along the water on both sides,
and the inner circular war-harbour, the Cothon,(14) with the island
containing the admiral's house in the middle, which was approached
through the outer harbour.  Between the two passed the city wall,
which turning eastward from the Byrsa excluded the tongue of
land and the outer harbour, but included the war-harbour, so that
the entrance to the latter must be conceived as capable of being
closed like a gate.  Not far from the war-harbour lay the
marketplace, which was connected by three narrow streets with
the citadel open on the side towards the town.  To the north of,
and beyond, the city proper, the pretty considerable space of
the modern El Mersa, even at that time occupied in great part by
villas and well-watered gardens, and then called Magalia, had a
circumvallation of its own joining on to the city wall.  On the
opposite point of the peninsula, the Jebel-Khawi near the modern
village of Ghamart, lay the necropolis.  These three--the old
city, the suburb, and the necropolis--together filled the whole
breadth of the promontory on its side next the gulf, and were only
accessible by the two highways leading to Utica and Tunes along
that narrow tongue of land, which, although not closed by a wall,
yet afforded a most advantageous position for the armies taking
their stand under the protection of the capital with the view of
protecting it in return.

The difficult task of reducing so well fortified a city was rendered
still more difficult by the fact, that the resources of the capital
itself and of its territory which still included 800 townships and
was mostly under the power of the emigrant party on the one hand,
and the numerous tribes of the free or half-free Libyans hostile to
Massinissa on the other, enabled the Carthaginians simultaneously
with their defence of the city to keep a numerous army in the field--
an army which, from the desperate temper of the emigrants and the
serviceableness of the light Numidian cavalry, the besiegers could
not afford to disregard.

The Siege

The consuls accordingly had by no means an easy task to perform,
when they now found themselves compelled to commence a regular siege.
Manius Manilius, who commanded the land army, pitched his camp
opposite the wall of the citadel, while Lucius Censorinus stationed
himself with the fleet on the lake and there began operations on the
tongue of land.  The Carthaginian army, under Hasdrubal, encamped on
the other side of the lake near the fortress of Nepheris, whence it
obstructed the labours of the Roman soldiers despatched to cut
timber for constructing machines, and the able cavalry-leader in
particular, Himilco Phameas, slew many of the Romans.  Censorinus
fitted up two large battering-rams on the tongue, and made a
breach with them at this weakest place of the wall; but, as evening
had set in, the assault had to be postponed.  During the night the
besieged succeeded in filling up a great part of the breach, and in
so damaging the Roman machines by a sortie that they could not work
next day.  Nevertheless the Romans ventured on the assault; but
they found the breach and the portions of the wall and houses in the
neighbourhood so strongly occupied, and advanced with such imprudence,
that they were repulsed with severe loss and would have suffered
still greater damage, had not the military tribune Scipio Aemilianus,
foreseeing the issue of the foolhardy attack, kept together his men
in front of the walls and with them intercepted the fugitives.
Manilius accomplished still less against the impregnable wall of
the citadel.  The siege thus lingered on.  The diseases engendered in
the camp by the heat of summer, the departure of Censorinus the abler
general, the ill-humour and inaction of Massinissa who was naturally
far from pleased to see the Romans taking for themselves the booty
which he had long coveted, and the death of the king at the age of
ninety which ensued soon after (end of 605), utterly arrested the
offensive operations of the Romans.  They had enough to do in
protecting their ships against the Carthaginian incendiaries and
their camp against nocturnal surprises, and in securing food for
their men and horses by the construction of a harbour-fort and by
forays in the neighbourhood.  Two expeditions directed against
Hasdrubal remained without success; and in fact the first, badly
led over difficult ground, had almost terminated in a formal defeat.
But, while the course of the war was inglorious for the general
and the army, the military tribune Scipio achieved in it brilliant
distinction.  It was he who, on occasion of a nocturnal attack by
the enemy on the Roman camp, starting with some squadrons of horse
and taking the enemy in rear, compelled him to retreat.  On the
first expedition to Nepheris, when the passage of the river had
taken place in opposition to his advice and had almost occasioned
the destruction of the army, by a bold attack in flank he relieved
the pressure on the retreating troops, and by his devoted and
heroic courage rescued a division which had been given up as
lost While the other officers, and the consul in particular,
by their perfidy deterred the towns and party-leaders that were
inclined to negotiate, Scipio succeeded in inducing one of the
ablest of the latter, Himilco Phameas, to pass over to the Romans
with 2200 cavalry.  Lastly, after he had in fulfilment of the charge
of the dying Massinissa divided his kingdom among his three sons,
Micipsa, Gulussa, and Mastanabal, he brought to the Roman army in
Gulussa a cavalry-leader worthy of his father, and thereby remedied
the want, which had hitherto been seriously felt, of light cavalry.
His refined and yet simple demeanour, which recalled rather his own
father than him whose name he bore, overcame even envy, and in the
camp as in the capital the name of Scipio was on the lips of all.
Even Cato, who was not liberal with his praise, a few months before
his death--he died at the end of 605 without having seen the wish of
his life, the destruction of Carthage, accomplished--applied to the
young officer and to his incapable comrades the Homeric line:--

He only is a living man, the rest are gliding shades.(15)

While these events were passing, the close of the year had come
and with it a change of commanders; the consul Lucius Piso (606)
was somewhat late in appearing and took the command of the land
army, while Lucius Mancinus took charge of the fleet.  But, if their
predecessors had done little, these did nothing at all.  Instead of
prosecuting the siege of Carthage or subduing the army of Hasdrubal,
Piso employed himself in attacking the small maritime towns of the
Phoenicians, and that mostly without success.  Clupea, for example,
repulsed him, and he was obliged to retire in disgrace from Hippo
Diarrhytus, after having lost the whole summer in front of it and
having had his besieging apparatus twice burnt.  Neapolis was no
doubt taken; but the pillage of the town in opposition to his pledged
word of honour was not specially favourable to the progress of
the Roman arms.  The courage of the Carthaginians rose.  Bithyas,
a Numidian sheik, passed over to them with 800 horse; Carthaginian
envoys were enabled to attempt negotiations with the kings of Numidia
and Mauretania and even with Philip the Macedonian pretender.
It was perhaps internal intrigues--Hasdrubal the emigrant brought
the general of the same name, who commanded in the city, into
suspicion on account of his relationship with Massinissa, and
caused him to be put to death in the senate-house--rather than
the activity of the Romans, that prevented things from assuming
a turn still more favourable for Carthage.

Scipio Aemilianus

With the view of producing a change in the state of African affairs,
which excited uneasiness, the Romans resorted to the extraordinary
measure of entrusting the conduct of the war to the only man who had
as yet brought home honour from the Libyan plains, and who was
recommended for this war by his very name.  Instead of calling Scipio
to the aedileship for which he was a candidate, they gave to him
the consulship before the usual time, setting aside the laws to the
contrary effect, and committed to him by special decree the conduct
of the African war.  He arrived (607) in Utica at a moment when much
was at stake.  The Roman admiral Mancinus, charged by Piso with the
nominal continuance of the siege of the capital, had occupied a steep
cliff, far remote from the inhabited district and scarcely defended,
on the almost inaccessible seaward side of the suburb of Magalia, and
had united nearly his whole not very numerous force there, in the hope
of being able to penetrate thence into the outer town.  In fact the
assailants had been for a moment within its gates and the camp-
followers had flocked forward in a body in the hope of spoil, when
they were again driven back to the cliff and, being without supplies
and almost cut off, were in the greatest danger.  Scipio found matters
in that position.  He had hardly arrived when he despatched the
troops which he had brought with him and the militia of Utica by sea
to the threatened point, and succeeded in saving its garrison and
holding the cliff itself.  After this danger was averted, the general
proceeded to the camp of Piso to take over the army and bring it back
to Carthage.  Hasdrubal and Bithyas availed themselves of his absence
to move their camp immediately up to the city, and to renew the
attack on the garrison of the cliff before Magalia; but even now
Scipio appeared with the vanguard of the main army in sufficient time
to afford assistance to the post.  Then the siege began afresh and
more earnestly.  First of all Scipio cleared the camp of the mass of
camp-followers and sutlers and once more tightened the relaxed reins
of discipline.  Military operations were soon resumed with increased
vigour.  In an attack by night on the suburb the Romans succeeded in
passing from a tower--placed in front of the walls and equal to them
in height--on to the battlements, and opened a little gate through
which the whole army entered.  The Carthaginians abandoned the
suburb and their camp before the gates, and gave the chief command
of the garrison of the city, amounting to 30,000 men, to Hasdrubal.
The new commander displayed his energy in the first instance by
giving orders that all the Roman prisoners should be brought to the
battlements and, after undergoing cruel tortures, should be thrown
over before the eyes of the besieging army; and, when voices were
raised in disapproval of the act, a reign of terror was introduced
with reference to the citizens also.  Scipio, meanwhile, after having
confined the besieged to the city itself, sought totally to cut off
their intercourse with the outer world.  He took up his head-quarters
on the ridge by which the Carthaginian peninsula was connected with
the mainland, and, notwithstanding the various attempts of the
Carthaginians to disturb his operations, constructed a great camp
across the whole breadth of the isthmus, which completely blockaded
the city from the landward side.  Nevertheless ships with provisions
still ran into the harbour, partly bold merchantmen allured by the
great gain, partly vessels of Bithyas, who availed himself of every
favourable wind to convey supplies to the city from Nepheris at the
end of the lake of Tunes; whatever might now be the sufferings of the
citizens, the garrison was still sufficiently provided for.  Scipio
therefore constructed a stone mole, 96 feet broad, running from the
tongue of land between the lake and gulf into the latter, so as thus
to close the mouth of the harbour.  The city seemed lost, when the
success of this undertaking, which was at first ridiculed by the
Carthaginians as impracticable, became evident.  But one surprise
was balanced by another.  While the Roman labourers were constructing
the mole, work was going forward night and day for two months
in the Carthaginian harbour, without even the deserters being
able to tell what were the designs of the besieged.  All of a
sudden, just as the Romans had completed the bar across the entrance
to the harbour, fifty Carthaginian triremes and a number of boats and
skiffs sailed forth from that same harbour into the gulf--while the
enemy were closing the old mouth of the harbour towards the south,
the Carthaginians had by means of a canal formed in an easterly
direction procured for themselves a new outlet, which owing to the
depth of the sea at that spot could not possibly be closed.  Had the
Carthaginians, instead of resting content with a mere demonstration,
thrown themselves at once and resolutely on the half-dismantled and
wholly unprepared Roman fleet, it must have been lost; when they
returned on the third day to give the naval battle, they found the
Romans in readiness.  The conflict came off without decisive result;
but on their return the Carthaginian vessels so ran foul of each
other in and before the entrance of the harbour, that the damage thus
occasioned was equivalent to a defeat.  Scipio now directed his
attacks against the outer quay, which lay outside of the city walls
and was only protected for the exigency by an earthen rampart of recent
construction.  The machines were stationed on the tongue of land,
and a breach was easily made; but with unexampled intrepidity the
Carthaginians, wading through the shallows, assailed the besieging
implements, chased away the covering force which ran off in such a
manner that Scipio was obliged to make his own troopers cut them
down, and destroyed the machines.  In this way they gained time to
close the breach.  Scipio, however, again established the machines
and set on fire the wooden towers of the enemy; by which means he
obtained possession of the quay and of the outer harbour along
with it.  A rampart equalling the city wall in height was here
constructed, and the town was now at length completely blockaded
by land and sea, for the inner harbour could only be reached through
the outer.  To ensure the completeness of the blockade, Scipio
ordered Gaius Laelius to attack the camp at Nepheris, where Diogenes
now held the command; it was captured by a fortunate stratagem,
and the whole countless multitude assembled there were put to
death or taken prisoners.  Winter had now arrived and Scipio
suspended his operations, leaving famine and pestilence to
complete what he had begun.

Capture of the City

How fearfully these mighty agencies had laboured in the work of
destruction during the interval while Hasdrubal continued to vaunt
and to gormandize, appeared so soon as the Roman army proceeded in
the spring of 608 to attack the inner town.  Hasdrubal gave orders
to set fire to the outer harbour and made himself ready to repel
the expected assault on the Cothon; but Laelius succeeded in scaling
the wall, hardly longer defended by the famished garrison, at a point
farther up and thus penetrated into the inner harbour.  The city
was captured, but the struggle was still by no means at an end.
The assailants occupied the market-place contiguous to the small
harbour, and slowly pushed their way along the three narrow streets
leading from this to the citadel--slowly, for the huge houses of
six stories in height had to be taken one by one; on the roofs or
on beams laid over the street the soldiers penetrated from one of
these fortress-like buildings to that which was adjoining or opposite,
and cut down whatever they encountered there.  Thus six days
elapsed, terrible for the inhabitants of the city and full of
difficulty and danger also for the assailants; at length they
arrived in front of the steep citadel-rock, whither Hasdrubal and
the force still surviving had retreated.  To procure a wider approach,
Scipio gave orders to set fire to the captured streets and to level
the ruins; on which occasion a number of persons unable to fight, who
were concealed in the houses, miserably perished.  Then at last the
remnant of the population, crowded together in the citadel, besought
for mercy.  Bare life was conceded to them, and they appeared before
the victor, 30,000 men and 25,000 women, not the tenth part of the
former population.  The Roman deserters alone, 900 in number, and
the general Hasdrubal with his wife and his two children had thrown
themselves into the temple of the God of Healing; for them--for
soldiers who had deserted their posts, and for the murderer of the
Roman prisoners--there were no terms.  But when, yielding to famine,
the most resolute of them set fire to the temple, Hasdrubal could
not endure to face death; alone he ran forth to the victor and
falling upon his knees pleaded for his life.  It was granted; but,
when his wife who with her children was among the rest on the roof
of the temple saw him at the feet of Scipio, her proud heart swelled
at this disgrace brought on her dear perishing home, and, with bitter
words bidding her husband be careful to save his life, she plunged
first her sons and then herself into the flames.  The struggle was
at an end.  The joy in the camp and at Rome was boundless; the
noblest of the people alone were in secret ashamed of the most recent
grand achievement of the nation.  The prisoners were mostly sold as
slaves; several were allowed to languish in prison; the most notable,
Hasdrubal and Bithyas, were sent to the interior of Italy as Roman
state-prisoners and tolerably treated.  The moveable property, with
the exception of gold, silver, and votive gifts, was abandoned to
the pillage of the soldiers.  As to the temple treasures, the booty
that had been in better times carried off by the Carthaginians from
the Sicilian towns was restored to them; the bull of Phalaris,
for example, was returned to the Agrigentines; the rest fell
to the Roman state.

Destruction of Carthage

But by far the larger portion of the city still remained standing.
We may believe that Scipio desired its preservation; at least he
addressed a special inquiry to the senate on the subject.  Scipio
Nasica once more attempted to gain a hearing for the demands of
reason and honour; but in vain.  The senate ordered the general
to level the city of Carthage and the suburb of Magalia with the
ground, and to do the same with all the townships which had held by
Carthage to the last; and thereafter to pass the plough over the site
of Carthage so as to put an end in legal form to the existence of
the city, and to curse the soil and site for ever, that neither
house nor cornfield might ever reappear on the spot.  The command was
punctually obeyed.  The ruins burned for seventeen days: recently,
when the remains of the Carthaginian city wall were excavated, they
were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet
deep, filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron,
and projectiles.  Where the industrious Phoenicians had bustled and
trafficked for five hundred years, Roman slaves henceforth pastured
the herds of their distant masters.  Scipio, however, whom nature
had destined for a nobler part than that of an executioner, gazed
with horror on his own work; and, instead of the joy of victory,
the victor himself was haunted by a presentiment of the retribution
that would inevitably follow such a misdeed.

Province of Africa

There remained the work of arranging the future organization of
the country.  The earlier plan of investing the allies of Rome with
the transmarine possessions that she acquired was no longer viewed
with favour.  Micipsa and his brothers retained in substance their
former territory, including the districts recently wrested from the
Carthaginians on the Bagradas and in Emporia; their long-cherished
hope of obtaining Carthage as a capital was for ever frustrated;
the senate presented them instead with the Carthaginian libraries.
The Carthaginian territory as possessed by the city in its last days--
viz.  The narrow border of the African coast lying immediately opposite
to Sicily, from the river Tusca (near Thabraca) to Thaenae (opposite
to the island of Karkenah)--became a Roman province.  In the interior,
where the constant encroachments of Massinissa had more and more
narrowed the Carthaginian dominions and Bulla, Zama, and Aquae
already belonged to the kings, the Numidians retained what they
possessed.  But the careful regulation of the boundary between the
Roman province and the Numidian kingdom, which enclosed it on three
sides, showed that Rome would by no means tolerate in reference
to herself what she had permitted in reference to Carthage; while
the name of the new province, Africa, on the other hand appeared
to indicate that Rome did not at all regard the boundary now marked
off as a definitive one.  The supreme administration of the new
province was entrusted to a Roman governor, who had his seat at Utica.
Its frontier did not need any regular defence, as the allied Numidian
kingdom everywhere separated it from the inhabitants of the desert.
In the matter of taxes Rome dealt on the whole with moderation.
Those communities which from the beginning of the war had taken part
with Rome--viz.  Only the maritime towns of Utica, Hadrumetum, Little
Leptis, Thapsus, Achulla, and Usalis, and the inland town of Theudalis--
retained their territory and became free cities; which was also the
case with the newly-founded community of deserters.  The territory
of the city of Carthage--with the exception of a tract presented to
Utica--and that of the other destroyed townships became Roman domain-
land, which was let on lease.  The remaining townships likewise
forfeited in law their property in the soil and their municipal
liberties; but their land and their constitution were for the time
being, and until further orders from the Roman government, left to
them as a possession liable to be recalled, and the communities paid
annually to Rome for the use of their soil which had become Roman a
once-for-all fixed tribute (stipendium), which they in their turn
collected by means of a property-tax levied from the individuals
liable.  The real gainers, however, by this destruction of the
first commercial city of the west were the Roman merchants, who, as
soon as Carthage lay in ashes, flocked in troops to Utica, and from
this as their head-quarters began to turn to profitable account not
only the Roman province, but also the Numidian and Gaetulian regions
which had hitherto been closed to them.

Macedonia and the Pseudo-Phillip
Victory of Metellus

Macedonia also disappeared about the same time as Carthage from
the ranks of the nations.  The four small confederacies, into which
the wisdom of the Roman senate had parcelled out the ancient kingdom,
could not live at peace either internally or one with another.
How matters stood in the country appears from a single accidentally
mentioned occurrence at Phacus, where the whole governing council
of one of these confederacies were murdered on the instigation of
one Damasippus.  Neither the commissions sent by the senate (590),
nor the foreign arbiters, such as Scipio Aemilianus (603) called in
after the Greek fashion by the Macedonians, were able to establish
any tolerable order.  Suddenly there appeared in Thrace a young man,
who called himself Philip the son of king Perseus, whom he strikingly
resembled, and of the Syrian Laodice.  He had passed his youth
in the Mysian town of Adramytium; there he asserted that he had
preserved the sure proofs of his illustrious descent.  With these
he had, after a vain attempt to obtain recognition in his native
country, resorted to Demetrius Soter, king of Syria, his mother's
brother.  There were in fact some who believed the Adramytene or
professed to believe him, and urged the king either to reinstate
the prince in his hereditary kingdom or to cede to him the crown
of Syria; whereupon Demetrius, to put an end to the foolish proceedings,
arrested the pretender and sent him to the Romans.  But the senate
attached so little importance to the man, that it confined him in an
Italian town without taking steps to have him even seriously guarded.
Thus he had escaped to Miletus, where the civic authorities once more
seized him and asked the Roman commissioners what they should do with
the prisoner.  The latter advised them to let him go; and they did
so.  He now tried his fortune further in Thrace; and, singularly
enough, he obtained recognition and support there not only from
Teres the chief of the Thracian barbarians, the husband of his
father's sister, and Barsabas, but also from the prudent Byzantines.
With Thracian support the so-called Philip invaded Macedonia, and,
although he was defeated at first, he soon gained one victory over
the Macedonian militia in the district of Odomantice beyond the Strymon,
followed by a second on the west side of the river, which gave him
possession of all Macedonia.  Apocryphal as his story sounded, and
decidedly as it was established that the real Philip, the son of
Perseus, had died when eighteen years of age at Alba, and that this
man, so far from being a Macedonian prince, was Andriscus a fuller of
Adramytium, yet the Macedonians were too much accustomed to the rule
of a king not to be readily satisfied on the point of legitimacy and
to return with pleasure into the old track.  Messengers arrived
from the Thessalians, announcing that the pretender had advanced
into their territory; the Roman commissioner Nasica, who, in the
expectation that a word of earnest remonstrance would put an end
to the foolish enterprise, had been sent by the senate to Macedonia
without soldiers, was obliged to call out the Achaean and Pergamene
troops and to protect Thessaly against the superior force by
means of the Achaeans, as far as was practicable, till (605?)
the praetor Juventius appeared with a legion.  The latter attacked
the Macedonians with his small force; but he himself fell, his army
was almost wholly destroyed, and the greater part of Thessaly fell into
the power of the pseudo-Philip, who conducted his government there and
in Macedonia with cruelty and arrogance.  At length a stronger Roman
army under Quintus Caecilius Metellus appeared on the scene of
conflict, and, supported by the Pergamene fleet, advanced into
Macedonia.  In the first cavalry combat the Macedonians retained
the superiority; but soon dissensions and desertions occurred in the
Macedonian army, and the blunder of the pretender in dividing his
army and detaching half of it to Thessaly procured for the Romans an
easy and decisive victory (606).  Philip fled to the chieftain Byzes
in Thrace, whither Metellus followed him and after a second victory
obtained his surrender.

Province of Macedonia

The four Macedonian confederacies had not voluntarily submitted to
the pretender, but had simply yielded to force.  According to the
policy hitherto pursued there was therefore no reason for depriving
the Macedonians of the shadow of independence which the battle of
Pydna had still left to them; nevertheless the kingdom of Alexander
was now, by order of the senate, converted by Metellus into a Roman
province.  This case clearly showed that the Roman government had
changed its system, and had resolved to substitute for the relation
of clientship that of simple subjects; and accordingly the suppression
of the four Macedonian confederacies was felt throughout the whole range
of the client-states as a blow directed against all.  The possessions
in Epirus which were formerly after the first Roman victories detached
from Macedonia--the Ionian islands and the ports of Apollonia and
Epidamnus,(16) that had hitherto been under the jurisdiction of the
Italian magistrates--were now reunited with Macedonia, so that the latter,
probably as early as this period, reached on the north-west to a point
beyond Scodra, where Illyria began.  The protectorate which Rome claimed
over Greece proper likewise devolved, of itself, on the new governor of
Macedonia.  Thus Macedonia recovered its unity and nearly the same limits
which it had in its most flourishing times.  It had no longer, however,
the unity of a kingdom, but that of a province, retaining its communal
and even, as it would seem, its district organization, but placed under
an Italian governor and quaestor, whose names make their appearance
on the native coins along with the name of the country.  As tribute,
there was retained the old moderate land-tax, as Paullus had arranged
it(17)--a sum of 100 talents (24,000 pounds) which was allocated in
fixed proportions on the several communities.  Yet the land could not
forget its old glorious dynasty.  A few years after the subjugation
of the pseudo-Philip another pretended son of Perseus, Alexander,
raised the banner of insurrection on the Nestus (Karasu), and
had in a short time collected 1600 men; but the quaestor Lucius
Tremellius mastered the insurrection without difficulty and pursued
the fugitive pretender as far as Dardania (612).  This was the last
movement of the proud national spirit of Macedonia, which two
hundred years before had accomplished so great things in Hellas
and Asia.  Henceforward there is scarcely anything else to be told of
the Macedonians, save that they continued to reckon their inglorious
years from the date at which the country received its definitive
provincial organization (608).

Thenceforth the defence of the northern and eastern frontiers
of Macedonia or, in other words, of the frontier of Hellenic
civilization against the barbarians devolved on the Romans.  It was
conducted by them with inadequate forces and not, on the whole, with
befitting energy; but with a primary view to this military object
the great Egnatian highway was constructed, which as early as the
time of Polybius ran from Apollonia and Dyrrhachium, the two chief
ports on the west coast, across the interior to Thessalonica, and was
afterwards prolonged to the Hebrus (Maritza).(18)  The new province
became the natural basis, on the one hand for the movements against
the turbulent Dalmatians, and on the other hand for the numerous
expeditions against the Illyrian, Celtic, and Thracian tribes settled
to the north of the Grecian peninsula, which we shall afterwards
have to exhibit in their historical connection.

Greece

Greece proper had greater occasion than Macedonia to congratulate
herself on the favour of the ruling power; and the Philhellenes of
Rome might well be of opinion that the calamitous effects of the war
with Perseus were disappearing, and that the state of things in general
was improving there.  The bitterest abettors of the now dominant
party, Lyciscus the Aetolian, Mnasippus the Boeotian, Chrematas
the Acarnanian, the infamous Epirot Charops whom honourable Romans
forbade even to enter their houses, descended one after another to
the grave; another generation grew up, in which the old recollections
and the old antagonisms had faded.  The Roman senate thought that
the time for general forgiveness and oblivion had come, and in 604
released the survivors of those Achaean patriots who had been
confined for seventeen years in Italy, and whose liberation the
Achaean diet had never ceased to demand.  Nevertheless they were
mistaken.  How little the Romans with all their Philhellenism had
been successful in heartily conciliating Hellenic patriotism, was
nowhere more clearly apparent than in the attitude of the Greeks
towards the Attalids.  King Eumenes II had been, as a friend of
the Romans, extremely hated in Greece;(19) but scarcely had a
coldness arisen between him and the Romans, when he became suddenly
popular in Greece, and the Hellenic hopefuls expected the deliverer
from a foreign yoke to come now from Pergamus as formerly from
Macedonia.  Social disorganization more especially was visibly
on the increase among the petty states of Hellas now left to
themselves.  The country became desolate not through war and
pestilence, but through the daily increasing disinclination of
the higher classes to trouble themselves with wife and children;
on the other hand the criminal or the thoughtless flocked as
hitherto chiefly to Greece, there to await the recruiting officer.
The communities sank into daily deeper debt, and into financial
dishonour and a corresponding want of credit: some cities, more
especially Athens and Thebes, resorted in their financial distress
to direct robbery, and plundered the neighbouring communities.
The internal dissensions in the leagues also--e. g. between the
voluntary and the compulsory members of the Achaean confederacy--
were by no means composed.  If the Romans, as seems to have been
the case, believed what they wished and confided in the calm which
for the moment prevailed, they were soon to learn that the younger
generation in Hellas was in no respect better or wiser than the older.
The Greeks directly sought an opportunity of picking a quarrel
with the Romans.

Achaean War

In order to screen a foul transaction, Diaeus, the president of the
Achaean league for the time being, about 605 threw out in the diet
the assertion that the special privileges conceded by the Achaean
league to the Lacedaemonians as members--viz. their exemption from
the Achaean criminal jurisdiction, and the right to send separate
embassies to Rome--were not at all guaranteed to them by the Romans.
It was an audacious falsehood; but the diet naturally believed what
it wished, and, when the Achaeans showed themselves ready to make
good their assertions with arms in hand, the weaker Spartans yielded
for the time, or, to speak more correctly, those whose surrender was
demanded by the Achaeans left the city to appear as complainants
before the Roman senate.  The senate answered as usual that it would
send a commission to investigate the matter; but instead of reporting
this reply the envoys stated in Achaia as well as in Sparta, and in
both cases falsely, that the senate had decided in their favour.
The Achaeans, who felt more than ever their equality with Rome as
allies and their political importance on account of the aid which
the league had just rendered in Thessaly against the pseudo-Philip,
advanced in 606 under their -strategus- Damocritus into Laconia: in
vain a Roman embassy on its way to Asia, at the suggestion of Metellus,
admonished them to keep the peace and to await the commissioners of
the senate.  A battle took place, in which nearly 1000 Spartans
fell, and Sparta might have been taken if Damocritus had not been
equally incapable as an officer and as a statesman.  He was superseded,
and his successor Diaeus, the instigator of all this mischief,
zealously continued the war, while at the same time he gave to the
dreaded commandant of Macedonia assurances of the full loyalty of the
Achaean league.  Thereupon the long-expected Roman commission made its
appearance, with Aurelius Orestes at its head; hostilities were now
suspended, and the Achaean diet assembled at Corinth to receive its
communications.  They were of an unexpected and far from agreeable
character.  The Romans had resolved to cancel the unnatural and
forced(20) inclusion of Sparta among the Achaean states, and generally
to act with vigour against the Achaeans.  Some years before (591)
these had been obliged to release from their league the Aetolian
town of Pleuron;(21) now they were directed to renounce all the
acquisitions which they had made since the second Macedonian war--viz.
Corinth, Orchomenus, Argos, Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and Heraclea
near to Oeta--and to reduce their league to the condition in which it
stood at the end of the Hannibalic war.  When the Achaean deputies
learned this, they rushed immediately to the market-place without even
hearing the Romans to an end, and communicated the Roman demands to the
multitude; whereupon the governing and the governed rabble with one
voice resolved to arrest at once the whole Lacedaemonians present in
Corinth, because Sparta forsooth had brought on them this misfortune.
The arrest accordingly took place in the most tumultuary fashion,
so that the possession of Laconian names or Laconian shoes appeared
sufficient ground for imprisonment: in fact they even entered the
dwellings of the Roman envoys to seize the Lacedaemonians who had
taken shelter there, and hard words were uttered against the Romans,
although they did not lay hands on their persons.  The envoys
returned home in indignation, and made bitter and even exaggerated
complaints in the senate; but the latter, with the same moderation
which marked all its measures against the Greeks, confined itself at
first to representations.  In the mildest form, and hardly mentioning
satisfaction for the insults which they had endured, Sextus Julius
Caesar repeated the commands of the Romans at the diet in Aegium
(spring of 607).  But the leaders of affairs in Achaia with the new
-strategus- Critolaus at their head -strategus- (from May 607 to May
608), as men versed in state affairs and familiar with political arts,
merely drew from that fact the inference that the position of Rome
with reference to Carthage and Viriathus could not but be very
unfavourable, and continued at once to cheat and to affront the
Romans.  Caesar was requested to arrange a conference of deputies of
the contending parties at Tegea for the settlement of the question.
He did so; but, after Caesar and the Lacedaemonian envoys had waited
there long in vain for the Achaeans, Critolaus at last appeared
alone and informed them that the general assembly of the Achaeans
was solely competent in this matter, and that it could only be settled
at the diet or, in other words, in six months.  Caesar thereupon
returned to Rome; and the next national assembly of the Achaeans
on the proposal of Critolaus formally declared war against Sparta.
Even now Metellus made an attempt amicably to settle the quarrel, and
sent envoys to Corinth; but the noisy -ecclesia-, consisting mostly of
the populace of that wealthy commercial and manufacturing city, drowned
the voice of the Roman envoys and compelled them to leave the platform.
The declaration of Critolaus, that they wished the Romans to be their
friends but not their masters, was received with inexpressible delight;
and, when the members of the diet wished to interpose, the mob
protected the man after its own heart, and applauded the sarcasms
as to the high treason of the rich and the need of a military
dictatorship as well as the mysterious hints regarding an impending
insurrection of countless peoples and kings against Rome.  The spirit
animating the movement is shown by the two resolutions, that all clubs
should be permanent and all actions for debt should be suspended till
the restoration of peace.

The Achaeans thus had war; and they had even actual allies, namely
the Thebans and Boeotians and also the Chalcidians.  At the beginning
of 608 the Achaeans advanced into Thessaly to reduce to obedience
Heraclea near to Oeta, which, in accordance with the decree of
the senate, had detached itself from the Achaean league. The consul
Lucius Mummius, whom the senate had resolved to send to Greece,
had not yet arrived; accordingly Metellus undertook to protect
Heraclea with the Macedonian legions.  When the advance of the Romans
was announced to the Achaeo-Theban army, there was no more talk of
fighting; they deliberated only how they might best succeed in reaching
once more the secure Peloponnesus; in all haste the army made off,
and did not even attempt to hold the position at Thermopylae.
But Metellus quickened the pursuit, and overtook and defeated
the Greek army near Scarpheia in Locris.  The loss in prisoners and
dead was considerable; Critolaus was never heard of after the battle.
The remains of the defeated army wandered about Greece in single troops,
and everywhere sought admission in vain; the division of Patrae
was destroyed in Phocis, the Arcadian select corps at Chaeronea;
all northern Greece was evacuated, and only a small portion of
the Achaean army and of the citizens of Thebes, who fled in a body,
reached the Peloponnesus.  Metellus sought by the utmost moderation
to induce the Greeks to abandon their senseless resistance, and gave
orders, for example, that all the Thebans with a single exception,
should be allowed their liberty; his well-meant endeavours were
thwarted not by the energy of the people, but by the desperation of
the leaders apprehensive for their own safety.  Diaeus, who after
the fall of Critolaus had resumed the chief command, summoned all men
capable of bearing arms to the isthmus, and ordered 12,000 slaves,
natives of Greece, to be enrolled in the army; the rich were applied
to for advances, and the ranks of the friends of peace, so far as they
did not purchase their lives by bribing the ruling agents in this reign
of terror, were thinned by bloody prosecutions.  The war accordingly was
continued, and after the same style.  The Achaean vanguard, which, 4000
strong, was stationed under Alcamenes at Megara, dispersed as soon as
it saw the Roman standards.  Metellus was just about to order an
attack upon the main force on the isthmus, when the consul Lucius
Mummius with a few attendants arrived at the Roman head-quarters
and took the command.  Meanwhile the Achaeans, emboldened by a
successful attack on the too incautious Roman outposts, offered
battle to the Roman army, which was about twice as strong, at
Leucopetra on the isthmus.  The Romans were not slow to accept it.
At the very first the Achaean horsemen broke off en masse before the
Roman cavalry of six times their strength; the hoplites withstood the
enemy till a flank attack by the Roman select corps brought confusion
also into their ranks.  This terminated the resistance.  Diaeus fled
to his home, put his wife to death, and took poison himself.  All the
cities submitted without opposition; and even the impregnable Corinth,
into which Mummius for three days hesitated to enter because he
feared an ambush, was occupied by the Romans without a blow.

Province of Achaia

The renewed regulation of the affairs of Greece was entrusted to
a commission of ten senators in concert with the consul Mummius,
who left behind him on the whole a blessed memory in the conquered
country.  Doubtless it was, to say the least, a foolish thing in him
to assume the name of "Achaicus" on account of his feats of war and
victory, and to build in the fulness of his gratitude a temple to
Hercules Victor; but, as he had not been reared in aristocratic
luxury and aristocratic corruption but was a "new man" and
comparatively without means, he showed himself an upright and
indulgent administrator.  The statement, that none of the Achaeans
perished but Diaeus and none of the Boeotians but Pytheas, is a
rhetorical exaggeration: in Chalcis especially sad outrages occurred;
but yet on the whole moderation was observed in the infliction of
penalties.  Mummius rejected the proposal to throw down the statues
of Philopoemen, the founder of the Achaean patriotic party; the
fines imposed on the communities were destined not for the Roman
exchequer, but for the injured Greek cities, and were mostly
remitted afterwards; and the property of those traitors who had
parents or children was not sold on public account, but handed over
to their relatives.  The works of art alone were carried away from
Corinth, Thespiae, and other cities and were erected partly in the
capital, partly in the country towns of Italy:(22) several pieces were
also presented to the Isthmian, Delphic, and Olympic temples.  In the
definitive organization of the country also moderation was in general
displayed.  It is true that, as was implied in the very introduction
of the provincial constitution,(23) the special confederacies, and
the Achaean in particular, were as such dissolved; the communities were
isolated; and intercourse between them was hampered by the rule that no
one might acquire landed property simultaneously in two communities.
Moreover, as Flamininus had already attempted,(24) the democratic
constitutions of the towns were altogether set aside, and the
government in each community was placed in the hands of a council
composed of the wealthy.  A fixed land-tax to be paid to Rome was
imposed on each community; and they were all subordinated to the
governor of Macedonia in such a manner that the latter, as supreme
military chief, exercised a superintendence over administration and
justice, and could, for example, personally assume the decision of
the more important criminal processes.  Yet the Greek communities
retained "freedom," that is, a formal sovereignty--reduced, doubtless,
by the Roman hegemony to a name--which involved the property of the
soil and the right to a distinct administration and jurisdiction of
their own.(25)  Some years later not only were the old confederacies
again allowed to have a shadowy existence, but the oppressive
restriction on the alienation of landed property was removed.

Destruction of Corinth

The communities of Thebes, Chalcis, and Corinth experienced a treatment
more severe.  There is no ground for censure in the fact that the two
former were disarmed and converted by the demolition of their walls
into open villages; but the wholly uncalled-for destruction of
the flourishing Corinth, the first commercial city in Greece, remains
a dark stain on the annals of Rome.  By express orders from the senate
the Corinthian citizens were seized, and such as were not killed were
sold into slavery; the city itself was not only deprived of its walls
and its citadel--a measure which, if the Romans were not disposed
permanently to garrison it, was certainly inevitable--but was
levelled with the ground, and all rebuilding on the desolate site
was prohibited in the usual forms of accursing; part of its territory
was given to Sicyon under the obligation that the latter should
defray the costs of the Isthmian national festival in room of Corinth,
but the greater portion was declared to be public land of Rome.
Thus was extinguished "the eye of Hellas," the last precious ornament
of the Grecian land, once so rich in cities.  If, however, we review
the whole catastrophe, the impartial historian must acknowledge--
what the Greeks of this period themselves candidly confessed--that
the Romans were not to blame for the war itself, but that on the
contrary, the foolish perfidy and the feeble temerity of the Greeks
compelled the Roman intervention.  The abolition of the mock
sovereignty of the leagues and of all the vague and pernicious dreams
connected with them was a blessing for the country; and the government
of the Roman commander-in-chief of Macedonia, however much it fell
short of what was to be wished, was yet far better than the previous
confusion and misrule of Greek confederacies and Roman commissions.
The Peloponnesus ceased to be the great harbour of mercenaries;
it is affirmed, and may readily be believed, that with the direct
government of Rome security and prosperity in some measure returned.
The epigram of Themistocles, that ruin had averted ruin, was applied
by the Hellenes of that day not altogether without reason to the loss
of Greek independence.  The singular indulgence, which Rome even now
showed towards the Greeks, becomes fully apparent only when compared
with the contemporary conduct of the same authorities towards the
Spaniards and Phoenicians.  To treat barbarians with cruelty seemed
not unallowable, but the Romans of this period, like the emperor Trajan
in later times, deemed it "harsh and barbarous to deprive Athens
and Sparta of the shadow of freedom which they still retained." All
the more marked is the contrast between this general moderation and
the revolting treatment of Corinth--a treatment disapproved by the
orators who defended the destruction of Numantia and Carthage, and
far from justified, even according to Roman international law, by
the abusive language uttered against the Roman deputies in the streets
of Corinth.  And yet it by no means proceeded from the brutality
of any single individual, least of all of Mummius, but was a measure
deliberated and resolved on by the Roman senate.  We shall not err,
if we recognize it as the work of the mercantile party, which even thus
early began to interfere in politics by the side of the aristocracy
proper, and which in destroying Corinth got rid of a commercial
rival.  If the great merchants of Rome had anything to say in the
regulation of Greece, we can understand why Corinth was singled out for
punishment, and why the Romans not only destroyed the city as it stood,
but also prohibited any future settlement on a site so pre-eminently
favourable for commerce.  The Peloponnesian Argos thenceforth became
the rendezvous for the Roman merchants, who were very numerous even
in Greece.  For the Roman wholesale traffic, however, Delos was
of greater importance; a Roman free port as early as 586, it had
attracted a great part of the business of Rhodes,(26) and now
in a similar way entered on the heritage of Corinth.  This island
remained for a considerable time the chief emporium for merchandise
going from the east to the west.(27)

In the third and more distant continent the Roman dominion
exhibited a development more imperfect than in the African and
Macedono-Hellenic countries, which were separated from Italy
only by narrow seas.

Kingdom of Pergamus

In Asia Minor, after the Seleucids were driven back, the kingdom
of Pergamus had become the first power.  Not led astray by
the traditions of the Alexandrine monarchies, but sagacious and
dispassionate enough to renounce what was impossible, the Attalids
kept quiet; and endeavoured not to extend their bounds nor to
withdraw from the Roman hegemony, but to promote the prosperity of
their empire, so far as the Romans allowed, and to foster the arts
of peace.  Nevertheless they did not escape the jealousy and suspicion
of Rome.  In possession of the European shore of the Propontis,
of the west coast of Asia Minor, and of its interior as far as
the Cappadocian and Cilician frontiers, and in close connection with
the Syrian kings--one of whom, Antiochus Epiphanes (d. 590), had
ascendedthe throne by the aid of the Attalids--king Eumenes II had
by his power, which seemed still more considerable from the more and
more deep decline of Macedonia and Syria, instilled apprehension
in the minds even of its founders.  We have already related(28)
how the senate sought to humble and weaken this ally after the third
Macedonian war by unbecoming diplomatic arts.  The relations--
perplexing from the very nature of the case--of the rulers of
Pergamus towards the free or half-free commercial cities within
their kingdom, and towards their barbarous neighbours on its borders,
became complicated still more painfully by this ill humour on the part
of their patrons.  As it was not clear whether, according to the
treaty of peace in 565, the heights of the Taurus in Pamphylia and
Pisidia belonged to the kingdom of Syria or to that of Pergamus,(29)
the brave Selgians, nominally recognizing, as it would seem, the Syrian
supremacy, made a prolonged and energetic resistance to the kings
Eumenes II and Attalus II in the hardly accessible mountains of
Pisidia.  The Asiatic Celts also, who for a time with the permission
of the Romans had yielded allegiance to Pergamus, revolted from
Eumenes and, in concert with Prusias king of Bithynia the hereditary
enemy of the Attalids, suddenly began war against him about 587.
The king had had no time to hire mercenary troops; all his skill
and valour could not prevent the Celts from defeating the Asiatic
militia and overrunning his territory; the peculiar mediation, to which
the Romans condescended at the request of Eumenes, has already been
mentioned.(30) But, as soon as he had found time with the help of his
well-filled exchequer to raise an army capable of taking the field, he
speedily drove the wild hordes back over the frontier, and, although
Galatia remained lost to him, and his obstinately-continued attempts
to maintain his footing there were frustrated by Roman influence,(31)
he yet, in spite of all the open attacks and secret machinations which
his neighbours and the Romans directed against him, at his death
(about 595) left his kingdom in standing un-diminished.  His brother
Attalus II Philadelphia (d. 616) with Roman aid repelled the attempt
of Pharnaces king of Pontus to seize the guardianship of Eumenes'
son who was a minor, and reigned in the room of his nephew, like
Antigonus Doson, as guardian for life.  Adroit, able, pliant,
a genuine Attalid, he had the art to convince the suspicious senate
that the apprehensions which it had formerly cherished were baseless.
The anti-Roman party accused him of having to do with keeping the land
for the Romans, and of acquiescing in every insult and exaction at
their hands; but, sure of Roman protection, he was able to interfere
decisively in the disputes as to the succession to the throne in Syria,
Cappadocia, and Bithynia.  Even from the dangerous Bithynian war, which
king Prusias II, surnamed the Hunter (572?-605), a ruler who combined
in his own person all the vices of barbarism and of civilization,
began against him, Roman intervention saved him--although not until
he had been himself besieged in his capital, and a first warning given
by the Romans had remained unattended to, and had even been scoffed at,
by Prusias (598-600).  But, when his ward Attalus III Philometor
ascended the throne (616-621), the peaceful and moderate rule of
the citizen kings was replaced by the tyranny of an Asiatic sultan;
under which for instance, the king, with a view to rid himself of
the inconvenient counsel of his father's friends, assembled them in
the palace, and ordered his mercenaries to put to death first them,
and then their wives and children.  Along with such recreations he
wrote treatises on gardening, reared poisonous plants, and prepared
wax models, till a sudden death carried him off.

Province of Asia
War against Aristonicus

With him the house of the Attalids became extinct.  In such an event,
according to the constitutional law which held good at least for
the client-states of Rome, the last ruler might dispose of the
succession by testament.  Whether it was the insane rancour against
his subjects which had tormented the last Attalid during life that
now suggested to him the thought of bequeathing his kingdom by will
to the Romans, or whether his doing so was merely a further recognition
of the practical supremacy of Rome, cannot be determined.  The testament
was made;(32) the Romans accepted the bequest, and the question as to
the land and the treasure of the Attalids threw a new apple of contention
among the conflicting political parties in Rome.  In Asia also this
royal testament kindled a civil war.  Relying on the aversion of
the Asiatics to the foreign rule which awaited them, Aristonicus,
a natural son of Eumenes II, made his appearance in Leucae, a small
seaport between Smyrna and Phocaea, as a pretender to the crown.
Phocaea and other towns joined him, but he was defeated at sea off
Cyme by the Ephesians--who saw that a steady adherence to Rome
was the only possible way of preserving their privileges--and was
obliged to flee into the interior.  The movement was believed to
have died away when he suddenly reappeared at the head of the new
"citizens of the city of the sun,"(33) in other words, of the slaves
whom he had called to freedom en masse, mastered the Lydian towns of
Thyatira and Apollonis as well as a portion of the Attalic townships,
and summoned bands of Thracian free-lances to join his standard.
The struggle was serious.  There were no Roman troops in Asia;
the Asiatic free cities and the contingents of the client-princes
of Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Armenia, could not
withstand the pretender; he penetrated by force of arms into Colophon,
Samos, and Myndus, and already ruled over almost all his father's
kingdom, when at the close of 623 a Roman army landed in Asia.
Its commander, the consul and -pontifex maximus- Publius Licinius
Crassus Mucianus, one of the wealthiest and at the same time one of
the most cultivated men in Rome, equally distinguished as an orator
and as a jurist, was about to besiege the pretender in Leucae, but
during his preparations for that purpose allowed himself to be surprised
and defeated by his too-much-underrated opponent, and was made a prisoner
in person by a Thracian band.  But he did not allow such an enemy
the triumph of exhibiting the Roman commander-in-chief as a captive;
he provoked the barbarians, who had captured him without knowing
who he was, to put him to death (beginning of 624), and the consular
was only recognised when a corpse.  With him, as it would seem, fell
Ariarathes king of Cappadocia.  But not long after this victory
Aristonicus was attacked by Marcus Perpenna, the successor of
Crassus; his army was dispersed, he himself was besieged and taken
prisoner in Stratonicea, and was soon afterwards executed in Rome.
The subjugation of the last towns that still offered resistance
and the definitive regulation of the country were committed, after
the sudden death of Perpenna, to Manius Aquillius (625).  The same
policy was followed as in the case of the Carthaginian territory.

The eastern portion of the kingdom of the Attalids was assigned
to the client kings, so as to release the Romans from the protection
of the frontier and thereby from the necessity of maintaining a
standing force in Asia; Telmissus(34) went to the Lycian confederacy;
the European possessions in Thrace were annexed to the province of
Macedonia; the rest of the territory was organized as a new Roman
province, which like that of Carthage was, not without design,
designated by the name of the continent in which it lay.  The land
was released from the taxes which had been paid to Pergamus; and it
was treated with the same moderation as Hellas and Macedonia.  Thus
the most considerable state in Asia Minor became a Roman province.

Western Asia
Cappadocia

The numerous other small states and cities of western Asia--
the kingdom of Bithynia, the Paphlagonian and Gallic principalities,
the Lycian and Pamphylian confederacies, the free cities of Cyzicus
and Rhodes--continued in their former circumscribed relations.

Beyond the Halys Cappadocia--after king Ariarathes V Philopator
(591-624) had, chiefly by the aid of the Attalids, held his ground
against his brother and rival Holophernes who was supported by Syria--
followed substantially the Pergamene policy, as respected both absolute
devotion to Rome and the tendency to adopt Hellenic culture.  He was
the means of introducing that culture into the hitherto almost barbarous
Cappadocia, and along with it its extravagancies also, such as
the worship of Bacchus and the dissolute practices of the bands
of wandering actors--the "artists" as they were called.  In reward
for the fidelity to Rome, which had cost this prince his life in the
struggle with the Pergamene pretender, his youthful heir Ariarathes
VI was not only protected by the Romans against the usurpation
attempted by the king of Pontus, but received also the south-eastern
part of the kingdom of the Attalids, Lycaonia, along with the
district bordering on it to the eastward reckoned in earlier
times as part of Cilicia.

Pontus

In the remote north-east of Asia Minor "Cappadocia on the sea,"
or more briefly the "sea-state," Pontus, increased in extent and
importance.  Not long after the battle of Magnesia king Pharnaces I
had extended his dominion far beyond the Halys to Tius on the
frontier of Bithynia, and in particular had possessed himself of
the rich Sinope, which was converted from a Greek free city into the
residence of the kings of Pontus.  It is true that the neighbouring
states endangered by these encroachments, with king Eumenes II at
their head, had on that account waged war against him (571-575), and
under Roman mediation had exacted from him a promise to evacuate
Galatia and Paphlagonia; but the course of events shows that Pharnaces
as well as his successor Mithradates V.  Euergetes (598?-634),
faithful allies of Rome in the third Punic war as well as in the
struggle with Aristonicus, not only remained in possession beyond
the Halys, but also in substance retained the protectorate over
the Paphlagonian and Galatian dynasts.  It is only on this hypothesis
that we can explain how Mithradates, ostensibly for his brave
deeds in the war against Aristonicus, but in reality for
considerable sums paid to the Roman general, could receive Great
Phrygia from the latter after the dissolution of the Attalid
kingdom.  How far on the other hand the kingdom of Pontus about
this time extended in the direction of the Caucasus and the sources
of the Euphrates, cannot be precisely determined; but it seems
to have embraced the western part of Armenia about Enderes and
Divirigi, or what was called Lesser Armenia, as a dependent
satrapy, while the Greater Armenia and Sophene formed distinct
and independent kingdoms.

Syria and Egypt

While in the peninsula of Asia Minor Rome thus substantially conducted
the government and, although much was done without or in opposition
to her wishes, yet determined on the whole the state of possession,
the wide tracts on the other hand beyond the Taurus and the Upper
Euphrates as far down as the valley of the Nile continued to be mainly
left to themselves.  No doubt the principle which formed the basis of
the regulation of Oriental affairs in 565, viz.  That the Halys should
form the eastern boundary of the Roman client-states,(35) was not
adhered to by the senate and was in its very nature untenable.
The political horizon is a self-deception as well as the physical;
if the state of Syria had the number of ships of war and war-elephants
allowed to it prescribed in the treaty of peace,(36) and if the
Syrian army at the bidding of the Roman senate evacuated Egypt when
half-won(37), these things implied a complete recognition of hegemony
and of clientship.  Accordingly the disputes as to the throne in
Syria and in Egypt were referred for settlement to the Roman
government.  In the former after the death of Antiochus Epiphanes
(590) Demetrius afterwards named Soter, the son of Seleucus IV,
living as a hostage at Rome, and Antiochus Eupator, a minor, the son
of the last king Antiochus Epiphanes, contended for the crown; in
the latter Ptolemy Philometor (573-608), the elder of the two
brothers who had reigned jointly since 584, had been driven from
the country (590) by the younger Ptolemy Euergetes II or the Fat
(d. 637), and had appeared in person at Rome to procure his restoration.
Both affairs were arranged by the senate entirely through diplomatic
agency, and substantially in accordance with Roman advantage.
In Syria Demetrius, who had the better title, was set aside, and
Antiochus Eupator was recognized as king; while the guardianship of
the royal boy was entrusted by the senate to the Roman senator Gnaeus
Octavius, who, as was to be expected, governed thoroughly in the
interest of Rome, reduced the war-marine and the army of elephants
agreeably to the treaty of 565, and was in the fair way of completing
the military ruin of the country.  In Egypt not only was the
restoration of Philometor accomplished, but--partly in order to put
an end to the quarrel between the brothers, partly in order to weaken
the still considerable power of Egypt--Cyrene was separated from that
kingdom and assigned as a provision for Euergetes.  "The Romans make
kings of those whom they wish," a Jew wrote not long after this, "and
those whom they do not wish they chase away from land and people."
But this was the last occasion--for a long time--on which the Roman
senate came forward in the affairs of the east with that ability and
energy, which it had uniformly displayed in the complications with
Philip, Antiochus, and Perseus.  Though the internal decline of the
government was late in affecting the treatment of foreign affairs,
yet it did affect them at length.  The government became unsteady and
vacillating; they allowed the reins which they had just grasped to
slacken and almost to slip from their hands.  The guardian-regent
of Syria was murdered at Laodicea; the rejected pretender Demetrius
escaped from Rome and, setting aside the youthful prince, seized the
government of his ancestral kingdom under the bold pretext that the
Roman senate had fully empowered him to do so (592).  Soon afterwards
war broke out between the kings of Egypt and Cyrene respecting the
possession of the island of Cyprus, which the senate had assigned first
to the elder, then to the younger; and in opposition to the most
recent Roman decision it finally remained with Egypt.  Thus the
Roman government, in the plenitude of its power and during the most
profound inward and outward peace at home, had its decrees derided
by the impotent kings of the east; its name was misused, its ward
and its commissioner were murdered.  Seventy years before, when
the Illyrians had in a similar way laid hands on Roman envoys,
the senate of that day had erected a monument to the victim in the
market-place, and had with an army and fleet called the murderers to
account.  The senate of this period likewise ordered a monument to be
raised to Gnaeus Octavius, as ancestral custom prescribed; but instead
of embarking troops for Syria they recognized Demetrius as king of the
land.  They were forsooth now so powerful, that it seemed superfluous
to guard their own honour.  In like manner not only was Cyprus
retained by Egypt in spite of the decree of the senate to the
contrary, but, when after the death of Philometor (608) Euergetes
succeeded him and so reunited the divided kingdom, the senate
allowed this also to take place without opposition.

India, Bactria

After such occurrences the Roman influence in these countries was
practically shattered, and events pursued their course there for
the present without the help of the Romans; but it is necessary for
the right understanding of the sequel that we should not wholly omit
to notice the history of the nearer, and even of the more remote,
east.  While in Egypt, shut off as it is on all sides, the status quo
did not so easily admit of change, in Asia both to the west and
east of the Euphrates the peoples and states underwent essential
modifications during, and partly in consequence of, this temporary
suspension of the Roman superintendence.  Beyond the great desert
of Iran there had arisen not long after Alexander the Great
the kingdom of Palimbothra under Chandragupta (Sandracottus)
on the Indus, and the powerful Bactrian state on the upper Oxus,
both formed from a mixture of national elements with the most
eastern offshoots of Hellenic civilization.

Decline of the Kingdom of Asia

To the west of these began the kingdom of Asia, which, although
diminished under Antiochus the Great, still stretched its unwieldy
bulk from the Hellespont to the Median and Persian provinces, and
embraced the whole basin of the Euphrates and Tigris.  That king had
still carried his arms beyond the desert into the territory of the
Parthians and Bactrians; it was only under him that the vast state
had begun to melt away.  Not only had western Asia been lost in
consequence of the battle of Magnesia; the total emancipation of the
two Cappadocias and the two Armenias--Armenia proper in the northeast
and the region of Sophene in the south-west--and their conversion
from principalities dependent on Syria into independent kingdoms
also belong to this period.(38)  Of these states Great Armenia in
particular, under the Artaxiads, soon attained to a considerable
position.  Wounds perhaps still more dangerous were inflicted on the
empire by the foolish levelling policy of his successor Antiochus
Epiphanes (579-590).  Although it was true that his kingdom resembled
an aggregation of countries rather than a single state, and that the
differences of nationality and religion among his subjects placed the
most material obstacles in the way of the government, yet the plan
of introducing throughout his dominions Helleno-Roman manners and
Helleno-Roman worship and of equalizing the various peoples in a
political as well as a religious point of view was under any
circumstances a folly; and all the more so from the fact, that
this caricature of Joseph II  was personally far from equal to so
gigantic an enterprise, and introduced his reforms in the very worst
way by the pillage of temples on the greatest scale and the most
insane persecution of heretics.

The Jews

One consequence of this policy was, that the inhabitants of the
province next to the Egyptian frontier, the Jews, a people formerly
submissive even to humility and extremely active and industrious, were
driven by systematic religious persecution to open revolt (about 587).
The matter came to the senate; and, as it was just at that time with
good reason indignant at Demetrius Soter and apprehensive of a
combination between the Attalids and Seleucids, while the establishment
of a power intermediate between Syria and Egypt was at any rate for
the interest of Rome, it made no difficulty in at once recognizing
the freedom and autonomy of the insurgent nation (about 593).  Nothing,
however, was done by Rome for the Jews except what could be done
without personal exertion: in spite of the clause of the treaty
concluded between the Romans and the Jews which promised Roman aid to
the latter in the event of their being attacked, and in spite of the
injunction addressed to the kings of Syria and Egypt not to march
their troops through Judaea, it was of course entirely left to the Jews
themselves to hold their ground against the Syrian kings.  The brave
and prudent conduct of the insurrection by the heroic family of the
Maccabees and the internal dissension in the Syrian empire did more
for them than the letters of their powerful allies; during the strife
between the Syrian kings Trypho and Demetrius Nicator autonomy and
exemption from tribute were formally accorded to the Jews (612);
and soon afterwards the head of the Maccabaean house, Simon son of
Mattathias, was even formally acknowledged by the nation as well as by
the Syrian great-king as high priest and prince of Israel (615).(39)

The Parthian Empire

Of still more importance in the sequel than this insurrection of
the Israelites was the contemporary movement--probably originating
from the same cause--in the eastern provinces, where Antiochus Epiphanes
emptied the temples of the Persian gods just as he had emptied that at
Jerusalem, and doubtless accorded no better treatment there to the
adherents of Ahuramazda and Mithra than here to those of Jehovah.
Just as in Judaea--only with a wider range and ampler proportions--
the result was a reaction on the part of the native manners and
the native religion against Hellenism and the Hellenic gods; the
promoters of this movement were the Parthians, and out of it arose
the great Parthian empire.  The "Parthwa," or Parthians, who are early
met with as one of the numerous peoples merged in the great Persian
empire, at first in the modern Khorasan to the south-east of the
Caspian sea, appear after 500 under the Scythian, i. e. Turanian,
princely race of the Arsacids as an independent state; which,
however, only emerged from its obscurity about a century afterwards.
The sixth Arsaces, Mithradates I (579?-618?), was the real founder
of the Parthian as a great power.  To him succumbed the Bactrian
empire, in itself far more powerful, but already shaken to the very
foundation partly by hostilities with the hordes of Scythian horsemen
from Turan and with the states of the Indus, partly by internal
disorders.  He achieved almost equal successes in the countries
to the west of the great desert.  The Syrian empire was just then
in the utmost disorganization, partly through the failure of the
Hellenizing attempts of Antiochus Epiphanes, partly through the
troubles as to the succession that occurred after his death; and
the provinces of the interior were in full course of breaking off
from Antioch and the region of the coast.  In Commagene for instance,
the most northerly province of Syria on the Cappadocian frontier,
the satrap Ptolemaeus asserted his independence, as did also on
the opposite bank of the Euphrates the prince of Edessa in northern
Mesopotamia or the province of Osrhoene, and the satrap Timarchus in
the important province of Media; in fact the latter got his independence
confirmed by the Roman senate, and, supported by Armenia as his ally,
ruled as far down as Seleucia on the Tigris.  Disorders of this sort
were permanent features of the Asiatic empire: the provinces under
their partially or wholly independent satraps were in continual
revolt, as was also the capital with its unruly and refractory
populace resembling that of Rome or Alexandria.  The whole pack of
neighbouring kings--those of Egypt, Armenia, Cappadocia, Pergamus--
incessantly interfered in the affairs of Syria and fostered disputes
as to the succession, so that civil war and the division of the
sovereignty de facto among two or more pretenders became almost
standing calamities of the country.  The Roman protecting power,
if it did not instigate these neighbours, was an inactive spectator.
In addition to all this the new Parthian empire from the eastward
pressed hard on the aliens not merely with its material power, but
with the whole superiority of its national language and religion
and of its national military and political organization.  This is
not yet the place for a description of this regenerated empire of
Cyrus; it is sufficient to mention generally the fact that powerful
as was the influence of Hellenism in its composition, the Parthian
state, as compared with that of the Seleucids, was based on a national
and religious reaction, and that the old Iranian language, the order
of the Magi and the worship of Mithra, the Oriental feudatory system,
the cavalry of the desert and the bow and arrow, first emerged there
in renewed and superior opposition to Hellenism.  The position of the
imperial kings in presence of all this was really pitiable.  The family
of the Seleucids was by no means so enervated as that of the Lagids
for instance, and individuals among them were not deficient in
valour and ability; they reduced, it may be, one or another of those
numerous rebels, pretenders, and intermeddlers to due bounds; but
their dominion was so lacking in a firm foundation, that they were
unable to impose even a temporary check on anarchy.  The result was
inevitable.  The eastern provinces of Syria under their unprotected
or even insurgent satraps fell into subjection to the Parthians;
Persia, Babylonia, Media were for ever severed from the Syrian
empire; the new state of the Parthians reached on both sides of the
great desert from the Oxus and the Hindoo Coosh to the Tigris and
the Arabian desert--once more, like the Persian empire and all the
older great states of Asia, a pure continental monarchy, and once
more, just like the Persian empire, engaged in perpetual feud on
the one side with the peoples of Turan, on the other with the
Occidentals.  The Syrian state embraced at the most Mesopotamia
in addition to the region of the coast, and disappeared, more in
consequence of its internal disorganization than of its diminished
size, for ever from the ranks of the great states.  If the danger--
which was repeatedly imminent--of a total subjugation of the land by
the Parthians was averted, that result must be ascribed not to the
resistance of the last Seleucids and still less to the influence of
Rome, but rather to the manifold internal disturbances in the Parthian
empire itself, and above all to the incursions of the peoples of the
Turanian steppes into its eastern provinces.

Reaction of the East against the West

This revolution in the relations of the peoples in the interior of
Asia is the turning-point in the history of antiquity.  The tide of
national movement, which had hitherto poured from the west to the east
and had found in Alexander the Great its last and highest expression,
was followed by the ebb.  On the establishment of the Parthian state
not only were such Hellenic elements, as may still perhaps have
been preserved in Bactria and on the Indus, lost, but western Iran
also relapsed into the track which had been abandoned for centuries
but was not yet obliterated.  The Roman senate sacrificed the first
essential result of the policy of Alexander, and thereby paved the
way for that retrograde movement, whose last offshoots ended in
the Alhambra of Granada and in the great Mosque of Constantinople.
So long as the country from Ragae and Persepolis to the Mediterranean
obeyed the king of Antioch, the power of Rome extended to the border
of the great desert; the Parthian state could never take its place
among the dependencies of the Mediterranean empire, not because
it was so very powerful, but because it had its centre far from
the coast, in the interior of Asia.  Since the time of Alexander
the world had obeyed the Occidentals alone, and the east seemed to
be for these merely what America and Australia afterwards became
for the Europeans; with Mithradates I the east re-entered the sphere
of political movement.  The world had again two masters.

Maritime Relations
Piracy

It remains that we glance at the maritime relations of this period;
although there is hardly anything else to be said, than that there
no longer existed anywhere a naval power.  Carthage was annihilated;
the war-fleet of Syria was destroyed in accordance with the treaty;
the war-marine of Egypt, once so powerful, was under its present
indolent rulers in deep decay.  The minor states, and particularly
the mercantile cities, had doubtless some armed transports; but
these were not even adequate for the task--so difficult in the
Mediterranean--of repressing piracy.  This task necessarily devolved
on Rome as the leading power in the Mediterranean.  While a century
previously the Romans had come forward in this matter with especial
and salutary decision, and had in particular introduced their supremacy
in the east by a maritime police energetically handled for the general
good,(40) the complete nullity of this police at the very beginning
of this period as distinctly betokens the fearfully rapid decline of
the aristocratic government.  Rome no longer possessed a fleet of
her own; she was content to make requisitions for ships, when it
seemed necessary, from the maritime towns of Italy, Asia Minor,
and elsewhere.  The consequence naturally was, that buccaneering
became organized and consolidated.  Something, perhaps, though
not enough, was done towards its suppression, so far as the direct
power of the Romans extended, in the Adriatic and Tyrrhene seas.
The expeditions  directed  against the Dalmatian and Ligurian coasts
at this epoch aimed especially at the suppression of piracy in the
two Italian seas; for the same reason the Balearic islands were
occupied in 631.(41)  But in the Mauretanian and Greek waters the
inhabitants along the coast and the mariners were left to settle
matters with the corsairs in one way or another, as they best
could; for Roman policy adhered to the principle of troubling
itself as little as possible about these more remote regions.
The disorganized and bankrupt commonwealths in the states along
the coast thus left to themselves naturally became places of refuge
for the corsairs; and there was no want of such, especially in Asia.

Crete

A bad pre-eminence in this respect belonged to Crete, which, from its
favourable situation and the weakness or laxity of the great states
of the west and east, was the only one of all the Greek settlements
that had preserved its independence.  Roman commissions doubtless came
and went to this island, but accomplished still less there than they
did even in Syria and Egypt.  It seemed almost as if fate had left
liberty to the Cretans only in order to show what was the result of
Hellenic independence.  It was a dreadful picture.  The old Doric
rigour of the Cretan institutions had become, just as in Tarentum,
changed into a licentious democracy, and the chivalrous spirit
of the inhabitants into a wild love of quarrelling and plunder;
a respectable Greek himself testifies, that in Crete alone nothing
was accounted disgraceful that was lucrative, and even the Apostle
Paul quotes with approval the saying of a Cretan poet,

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

Perpetual civil wars, notwithstanding the Roman efforts to bring
about peace, converted one flourishing township after another
on the old "island of the hundred cities" into heaps of ruins.
Its inhabitants roamed as robbers at home and abroad, by land and
by sea; the island became the recruiting ground for the surrounding
kingdoms, after that evil was no longer tolerated in the Peloponnesus,
and above all the true seat of piracy; about this period, for instance,
the island of Siphnus was thoroughly pillaged by a fleet of Cretan
corsairs.  Rhodes--which, besides, was unable to recover from the loss
of its possessions on the mainland and from the blows inflicted on its
commerce(42)--expended its last energies in the wars which it found
itself compelled to wage against the Cretans for the suppression of
piracy (about 600), and in which the Romans sought to mediate, but
without earnestness and apparently without success.

Cilicia

Along with Crete, Cilicia soon began to become a second home for
this buccaneering system.  Piracy there not only gained ground
owing to the impotence of the Syrian rulers, but the usurper Diodotus
Tryphon, who had risen from a slave to be king of Syria (608-615),
encouraged it by all means in his chief seat, the rugged or western
Cilicia, with a view to strengthen his throne by the aid of the
corsairs.  The uncommonly lucrative character of the traffic with
the pirates, who were at once the principal captors of, and dealers
in slaves, procured for them among the mercantile public, even in
Alexandria, Rhodes, and Delos, a certain toleration, in which the
very governments shared at least by inaction.  The evil was so
serious that the senate, about 611, sent its best man Scipio
Aemilianus to Alexandria and Syria, in order to ascertain on the spot
what could be done in the matter.  But diplomatic representations of
the Romans did not make weak governments strong; there was no other
remedy but that of directly maintaining a fleet in these waters, and
for this the Roman government lacked energy and perseverance.  So all
things just remained on the old footing; the piratic fleet was the
only considerable naval power in the Mediterranean; the capture of
men was the only trade that flourished there.  The Roman government
was an onlooker; but the Roman merchants, as the best customers in
the slave market, kept up an active and friendly traffic with the
pirate captains, as the most important wholesale dealers in that
commodity, at Delos and elsewhere.

General Result

We have followed the transformation of the outward relations of
Rome and the Romano-Hellenic world generally in its leading outlines,
from the battle of Pydna to the period of the Gracchi, from the Tagus
and the Bagradas to the Nile and the Euphrates.  It was a great and
difficult problem which Rome undertook, when she undertook to govern
this Romano-Hellenic world; it was not wholly misunderstood, but it
was by no means solved.  The untenableness of the idea of Cato's time--
that the state should be limited to Italy, and that its rule beyond
Italy should be only over clients--was doubtless discerned by the
leading men of the following generation; and the necessity of
substituting for this ruling by clientship a direct sovereignty
of Rome, that should preserve the liberties of the communities,
was doubtless recognized.  But instead of carrying out this new
arrangement firmly, speedily, and uniformly, they annexed isolated
provinces just as convenience, caprice, collateral advantage, or
accident led them to do so; whereas the greater portion of the
territory under clientship either remained in the intolerable
uncertainty of its former position, or even, as was the case with
Syria especially, withdrew entirely from the influence of Rome.
And even the government itself degenerated more and more into a feeble
and short-sighted selfishness.  They were content with governing from
one day to another, and merely transacting the current business as
exigency required.  They were stern masters towards the weak.  When
the city of Mylasa in Caria sent to Publius Crassus, consul in 623,
a beam for the construction of a battering-ram different from what
he had asked, the chief magistrate of the town was scourged for it;
and Crassus was not a bad man, and a strictly upright magistrate.
On the other hand sternness was wanting in those cases where it would
have been in place, as in dealing with the barbarians on the frontiers
and with the pirates.  When the central government renounced all
superintendence and all oversight of provincial affairs, it entirely
abandoned not only the interests of the subjects, but also those of
the state, to the governor of the day.  The events which occurred in
Spain, unimportant in themselves, are instructive in this respect.
In that country, where the government was less able than in other
provinces to confine itself to the part of a mere onlooker, the law
of nations was directly trampled under foot by the Roman governors;
and the honour of Rome was permanently dragged in the mire by a
faithlessness and treachery without parallel, by the most wanton
trifling with capitulations and treaties, by massacring people who
had submitted and instigating the assassination of the generals of
the enemy.  Nor was this all; war was even waged and peace concluded
against the expressed will of the supreme authority in Rome, and
unimportant incidents, such as the disobedience of the Numantines,
were developed by a rare combination of perversity and folly into
a crisis of fatal moment for the state.  And all this took place
without any effort to visit it with even a serious penalty in Rome.
Not only did the sympathies and rivalries of the different coteries
in the senate contribute to decide the filling up of the most
important places and the treatment of the most momentous political
questions; but even thus early the money of foreign dynasts found
its way to the senators of Rome.  Timarchus, the envoy of Antiochus
Epiphanes king of Syria (590), is mentioned as the first who
attempted with success to bribe the Roman senate; the bestowal of
presents from foreign kings on influential senators soon became so
common, that surprise was excited when Scipio Aemilianus cast into
the military chest the gifts from the king of Syria which reached
him in camp before Numantia.  The ancient principle, that rule was
its own sole reward and that such rule was as much a duty and a
burden as a privilege and a benefit, was allowed to fall wholly into
abeyance.  Thus there arose the new state-economy, which turned its
eyes away from the taxation of the burgesses, but regarded the body
of subjects, on the other hand, as a profitable possession of the
community, which it partly worked out for the public benefit, partly
handed over to be worked out by the burgesses.  Not only was free
scope allowed with criminal indulgence to the unscrupulous greed of
the Roman merchant in the provincial administration, but even the
commercial rivals who were disagreeable to him were cleared away by
the armies of the state, and the most glorious cities of neighbouring
lands were sacrificed, not to the barbarism of the lust of power, but
to the far more horrible barbarism of speculation.  By the ruin of
the earlier military organization, which certainly imposed heavy
burdens on the burgesses, the state, which was solely dependent in
the last resort on its military superiority, undermined its own
support.  The fleet was allowed to go to ruin; the system of land
warfare fell into the most incredible decay.  The duty of guarding
the Asiatic and African frontiers was devolved on the subjects; and
what could not be so devolved, such as the defence of the frontier
in Italy, Macedonia, and Spain, was managed after the most wretched
fashion.  The better classes began to disappear so much from the
army, that it was already difficult to raise the necessary number of
officers for the Spanish armies.  The daily increasing aversion to
the Spanish war-service in particular, combined with the partiality
shown by the magistrates in the levy, rendered it necessary in 602
to abandon the old practice of leaving the selection of the requisite
number of soldiers from the men liable to serve to the free discretion
of the officers, and to substitute for it the drawing lots on the
part of all the men liable to service--certainly not to the advantage
of the military esprit de corps, or of the warlike efficiency
of the individual divisions.  The authorities, instead of acting
with vigour and sternness, extended their pitiful flattery of the
people even to this field; whenever a consul in the discharge of
his duty instituted rigorous levies for the Spanish service, the
tribunes made use of their constitutional right to arrest him (603,
616); and it has been already observed, that Scipio's request that
he should be allowed a levy for the Numantine war was directly
rejected by the senate.  Accordingly the Roman armies before
Carthage or Numantia already remind one of those Syrian armies, in
which the number of bakers, cooks, actors, and other non-combatants
exceeded fourfold that of the so-called soldiers; already the Roman
generals are little behind their Carthaginian colleagues in the art
of ruining armies, and the wars in Africa as in Spain, in Macedonia
as in Asia, are regularly opened with defeats; the murder of Gnaeus
Octavius is now passed over in silence; the assassination of
Viriathus is now a masterpiece of Roman diplomacy; the conquest
of Numantia is now a great achievement.  How completely the idea
of national and manly honour was already lost among the Romans,
was shown with epigrammatic point by the statue of the stripped
and bound Mancinus, which he himself, proud of his patriotic
devotedness, caused to be erected in Rome.  Wherever we turn our
eyes, we find the internal energy as well as the external power
of Rome rapidly on the decline.  The ground won in gigantic struggles
is not extended, norin fact even maintained, in this period of peace.
The government of the world, which it was difficult to achieve, it
was still more difficult to preserve; the Roman senate had mastered
the former task, but it broke down under the latter.




Chapter II

The Reform Movement and Tiberius Gracchus

The Roman Government before the Period of the Gracchi

For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna the Roman state
enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by a ripple here and there
on the surface.  Its dominion extended over the three continents;
the lustre of the Roman power and the glory of the Roman name were
constantly on the increase; all eyes rested on Italy, all talents and
all riches flowed thither; it seemed as if a golden age of peaceful
prosperity and intellectual enjoyment of life could not but there
begin.  The Orientals of this period told each other with astonishment
of the mighty republic of the west, "which subdued kingdoms far and
near, and whoever heard its name trembled; but it kept good faith
with its friends and clients.  Such was the glory of the Romans, and
yet no one usurped the crown and no one paraded in purple dress; but
they obeyed whomsoever from year to year they made their master, and
there was among them neither envy nor discord."

Spread of Decay

So it seemed at a distance; matters wore a different aspect on a
closer view.  The government of the aristocracy was in full train
to destroy its own work.  Not that the sons and grandsons of the
vanquished at Cannae and of the victors at Zama had so utterly
degenerated from their fathers and grandfathers; the difference was
not so much in the men who now sat in the senate, as in the times.
Where a limited number of old families of established wealth and
hereditary political importance conducts the government, it will
display in seasons of danger an incomparable tenacity of purpose and
power of heroic self-sacrifice, just as in seasons of tranquillity
it will be shortsighted, selfish, and negligent--the germs of both
results are essentially involved in its hereditary and collegiate
character.  The morbid matter had been long in existence, but it
needed the sun of prosperity to develop it.  There was a profound
meaning in the question of Cato, "What was to become of Rome, when
she should no longer have any state to fear?" That point had now
been reached.  Every neighbour whom she might have feared was
politically annihilated; and of the men who had been reared under
the old order of things in the severe school of the Hannibalic war,
and whose words still sounded as echoes of that mighty epoch so long
as they survived, death called one after another away, till at length
even the voice of the last of them, the veteran Cato, ceased to be heard
in the senate-house and in the Forum.  A younger generation came to the
helm, and their policy was a sorry answer to that question of the old
patriot.  We have already spoken of the shape which the government of
the subjects and the external policy of Rome assumed in their hands.
In internal affairs they were, if possible, still more disposed to
let the ship drive before the wind: if we understand by internal
government more than the transaction of current business, there was at
this period no government in Rome at all.  The single leading thought
of the governing corporation was the maintenance and, if possible, the
increase of their usurped privileges.  It was not the state that had
a title to get the right and best man for its supreme magistracy;
but every member of the coterie had an inborn title to the highest
office of the state--a title not to be prejudiced either by the
unfair rivalry of men of his own class or by the encroachments of
the excluded.  Accordingly the clique proposed to itself, as its
most important political aim, the restriction of re-election to the
consulship and the exclusion of "new men"; and in fact it succeeded
in obtaining the legal prohibition of the former about 603,(1) and
in sufficing with a government of aristocratic nobodies.  Even the
inaction of the government in its outward relations was doubtless
connected with this policy of the nobility, exclusive towards
commoners, and distrustful towards the individual members of their
own order.  By no surer means could they keep commoners, whose deeds
were their patent of nobility, aloof from the pure circles of the
aristocracy than by giving no opportunity to any one to perform
deeds at all; to the existing government of general mediocrity
even an aristocratic conqueror of Syria or Egypt would have
proved extremely inconvenient.

Attempts at Reform
Permanent Criminal Commissions
Vote by Ballot
Exclusion of the Senators from the Equestrian Centuries
The Public Elections

It is true that now also there was no want of opposition, and it was
even to a certain extent effectual.  The administration of justice
was improved.  The administrative jurisdiction, which the senate
exercised either of itself or, on occasion, by extraordinary commissions,
over the provincial magistrates, was confessedly inadequate.  It was
an innovation with a momentous bearing on the whole public life of the
Roman community, when in 605, on the proposal of Lucius Calpurnius Piso,
a standing senatorial commission (-quaestio ordinaria-) was instituted to
try in judicial form the complaints of the provincials against the Roman
magistrates placed over them on the score of extortion.  An effort
was made to emancipate the comitia from the predominant influence
of the aristocracy.  The panacea of Roman democracy was secret voting
in the assemblies of the burgesses, which was introduced first for
the elections of magistrates by the Gabinian law (615), then for
the public tribunals by the Cassian law (617), lastly for the voting
on legislative proposals by the Papirian law (623).  In a similar
way soon afterwards (about 625) the senators were by decree of the
people enjoined on admission to the senate to surrender their public
horse, and thereby to renounce their privileged place in the voting
of the eighteen equestrian centuries.(2)  These measures, directed to
the emancipation of the electors from the ruling aristocratic order,
may perhaps have seemed to the party which suggested them the first
step towards a regeneration of the state; in fact they made not the
slightest change in the nullity and want of freedom of the legally
supreme organ of the Roman community; that nullity indeed was only
the more palpably evinced to all whom it did or did not concern.
Equally ostentatious and equally empty was the formal recognition
accorded to the independence and sovereignty of the burgesses by
the transference of their place of assembly from the old Comitium below
the senate-house to the Forum (about 609).  But this hostility between
the formal sovereignty of the people and the practically subsisting
constitution was in great part a semblance.  Party phrases were in
free circulation: of the parties themselves there was little trace in
matters really and directly practical.  Throughout the whole seventh
century the annual public elections to the civil magistracies,
especially to the consulship and censorship, formed the real standing
question of the day and the focus of political agitation; but it was
only in isolated and rare instances that the different candidates
represented opposite political principles; ordinarily the question
related purely to persons, and it was for the course of affairs a
matter of indifference whether the majority of the votes fell to a
Caecilian or to a Cornelian.  The Romans thus lacked that which
outweighs and compensates all the evils of party-life--the free and
common movement of the masses towards what they discern as a befitting
aim--and yet endured all those evils solely for the benefit of the
paltry game of the ruling coteries.

It was comparatively easy for the Roman noble to enter on the career
of office as quaestor or tribune of the people; but the consulship
and the censorship were attainable by him only through great exertions
prolonged for years.  The prizes were many, but those really worth
having were few; the competitors ran, as a Roman poet once said, as
it were over a racecourse wide at the starting-point but gradually
narrowing its dimensions.  This was right, so long as the magistracy
was--what it was called--an "honour" and men of military, political,
or juristic ability were rival competitors for the rare chaplets; but
now the practical closeness of the nobility did away with the benefit
of competition, and left only its disadvantages.  With few exceptions
the young men belonging to the ruling families crowded into the
political career, and hasty and premature ambition soon caught at
means more effective than was useful action for the common good.
The first requisite for a public career came to be powerful connections;
and therefore that career began, not as formerly in the camp, but in
the ante-chambers of influential men.  A new and genteel body of clients
now undertook--what had formerly been done only by dependents and
freedmen--to come and wait on their patron early in the morning, and
to appear publicly in his train.  But the mob also is a great lord,
and desires as such to receive attention.  The rabble began to demand
as its right that the future consul should recognize and honour the
sovereign people in every ragged idler of the street, and that every
candidate should in his "going round" (-ambitus-) salute every
individual voter by name and press his hand.  The world of quality
readily entered into this degrading canvass.  The true candidate
cringed not only in the palace, but also on the street, and
recommended himself to the multitude by flattering attentions,
indulgences, and civilities more or less refined.  Demagogism and
the cry for reforms were sedulously employed to attract the notice and
favour of the public; and they were the more effective, the more they
attacked not things but persons.  It became the custom for beardless
youths of genteel birth to introduce themselves with -eclat- into
public life by playing afresh the part of Cato with the immature
passion of their boyish eloquence, and by constituting and proclaiming
themselves state-attorneys, if possible, against some man of very
high standing and very great unpopularity; the Romans suffered the
grave institutions of criminal justice and of political police to
become a means of soliciting office.  The provision or, what was
still worse, the promise of magnificent popular amusements had long
been the, as it were legal, prerequisite to the obtaining of the
consulship;(3) now the votes of the electors began to be directly
purchased with money, as is shown by the prohibition issued against
this about 595.  Perhaps the worst consequence of the continual
courting of the favour of the multitude by the ruling aristocracy
was the incompatibility of such a begging and fawning part with
the position which the government should rightfully occupy in
relation to the governed.  The government was thus converted from
a blessing into a curse for the people.  They no longer ventured to
dispose of the property and blood of the burgesses, as exigency required,
for the good of their country.  They allowed the burgesses to become
habituated to the dangerous idea that they were legally exempt from
the payment of direct taxes even by way of advance--after the war
with Perseus no further advance had been asked from the community.
They allowed their military system to decay rather than compel the
burgesses to enter the odious transmarine service; how it fared
with the individual magistrates who attempted to carry out the
conscription according to the strict letter of the law, has
already been related.(4)

Optimates and Populares

In the Rome of this epoch the two evils of a degenerate oligarchy
and a democracy still undeveloped but already cankered in the bud
were interwoven in a manner pregnant with fatal results.  According
to their party names, which were first heard during this period,
the "Optimates" wished to give effect to the will of the best, the
"Populares" to that of the community; but in fact there was in the Rome
of that day neither a true aristocracy nor a truly self-determining
community.  Both parties contended alike for shadows, and numbered
in their ranks none but enthusiasts or hypocrites.  Both were equally
affected by political corruption, and both were in fact equally
worthless.  Both were necessarily tied down to the status quo, for
neither on the one side nor on the other was there found any political
idea--to say nothing of any political plan--reaching beyond the
existing state of things; and accordingly the two parties were so
entirely in agreement that they met at every step as respected both
means and ends, and a change of party was a change of political
tactics more than of political sentiments.  The commonwealth would
beyond doubt have been a gainer, if either the aristocracy had directly
introduced a hereditary rotation instead of election by the burgesses,
or the democracy had produced from within it a real demagogic government.
But these Optimates and these Populares of the beginning of the seventh
century were far too indispensable for eachother to wage such internecine
war; they not only could not destroy each other, but, even if they had
been able to do so, they would not have been willing.  Meanwhile the
commonwealth was politically and morally more and more unhinged, and
was verging towards utter disorganization.

Social Crisis

The crisis with which the Roman revolution was opened arose not out
of this paltry political conflict, but out of the economic and social
relations which the Roman government allowed, like everything else,
simply to take their course, and which thus found opportunity to
bring the morbid matter, that had been long fermenting, without
hindrance and with fearful rapidity and violence to maturity.  From
a very early period the Roman economy was based on the two factors
--always in quest of each other, and always at variance--the husbandry
of the small farmer and the money of the capitalist.  The latter in the
closest alliance with landholding on a great scale had already for
centuries waged against the farmer-class a war, which seemed as though
it could not but terminate in the destruction first of the farmers
and thereafter of the whole commonwealth, but was broken off without
being properly decided in consequence of the successful wars and the
comprehensive and ample distribution of domains for which these wars
gave facilities.  It has already been shown(5) that in the same age,
which renewed the distinction between patricians and plebeians under
altered names, the disproportionate accumulation of capital was
preparing a second assault on the farming system.  It is true that
the method was different.  Formerly the small farmer had been ruined
by advances of money, which practically reduced him to be the steward
of his creditor; now he was crushed by the competition of transmarine,
and especially of slave-grown, corn.  The capitalists kept pace with
the times; capital, while waging war against labour or in other words
against the liberty of the person, of course, as it had always done,
under the strictest form of law, waged it no longer in the unseemly
fashion which converted the free man on account of debt into a slave,
but, throughout, with slaves legitimately bought and paid; the former
usurer of the capital appeared in a shape conformable to the times
as the owner of industrial plantations.  But the ultimate result was
in both cases the same--the depreciation of the Italian farms; the
supplanting of the petty husbandry, first in a part of the provinces
and then in Italy, by the farming of large estates; the prevailing
tendency to devote the latter in Italy to the rearing of cattle and
the culture of the olive and vine; finally, the replacing of the
free labourers in the provinces as in Italy by slaves.  Just as the
nobility was more dangerous than the patriciate, because the former
could not, like the latter, be set aside by a change of the
constitution; so this new power of capital was more dangerous than
that of the fourth and fifth centuries, because nothing was to be
done against it by changes in the law of the land.

Slavery and Its Consequences

Before we attempt to describe the course of this second great
conflict between labour and capital, it is necessary to give here
some indication of the nature and extent of the system of slavery.
We have not now to do with the old, in some measure innocent, rural
slavery, under which the farmer either tilled the field along with
his slave, or, if he possessed more land than he could manage, placed
the slave--either as steward or as a sort of lessee obliged to render
up a portion of the produce--over a detached farm.(6)  Such relations
no doubt existed at all times--around Comum, for instance, they were
still the rule in the time of the empire--but as exceptional features
in privileged districts and on humanely-managed estates.  What we now
refer to is the system of slavery on a great scale, which in the Roman
state, as formerly in the Carthaginian, grew out of the ascendency
of capital.  While the captives taken in war and the hereditary
transmission of slavery sufficed to keep up the stock of slaves
during the earlier period, this system of slavery was, just like that
of America, based on the methodically-prosecuted hunting of man; for,
owing to the manner in which slaves were used with little regard to
their life or propagation, the slave population was constantly on
the wane, and even the wars which were always furnishing fresh
masses to the slave-market were not sufficient to cover the deficit.
No country where this species of game could be hunted remained exempt
from visitation; even in Italy it was a thing by no means unheard
of, that the poor freeman was placed by his employer among the slaves.
But the Negroland of that period was western Asia,(7) where the Cretan
and Cilician corsairs, the real professional slave-hunters and slave-
dealers, robbed the coasts of Syria and the Greek islands; and where,
emulating their feats, the Roman revenue-farmers instituted human hunts
in the client states and incorporated those whom they captured among
their slaves.  This was done to such an extent, that about 650 the king
of Bithynia declared himself unable to furnish the required contingent,
because all the people capable of labour had been dragged off from his
kingdom by the revenue-farmers.  At the great slave-market in Delos,
where the slave-dealers of Asia Minor disposed of their wares to
Italian speculators, on one day as many as 10,000 slaves are said to
have been disembarked in the morning and to have been all sold before
evening--a proof at once how enormous was the number of slaves
delivered, and how, notwithstanding, the demand still exceeded the
supply.  It was no wonder.  Already in describing the Roman economy
of the sixth century we have explained that it was based, like all
the large undertakings of antiquity generally, on the employment of
slaves.(8)  In whatever direction speculation applied itself, its
instrument was without exception man reduced in law to a beast of
burden.  Trades were in great part carried on by slaves, so that
the proceeds fell to the master.  The levying of the public revenues
in the lower grades was regularly conducted by the slaves of the
associations that leased them.  Servile hands performed the operations
of mining, making pitch, and others of a similar kind; it became early
the custom to send herds of slaves to the Spanish mines, whose
superintendents readily received them and paid a high rent for them.
The vine and olive harvest in Italy was not conducted by the people
on the estate, but was contracted for by a slave-owner.  The tending
of cattle was universally performed by slaves.  We have already
mentioned the armed, and frequently mounted, slave-herdsmen in
the great pastoral ranges of Italy;(9) and the same sort of pastoral
husbandry soon became in the provinces also a favourite object of Roman
speculation--Dalmatia, for instance, was hardly acquired (599) when
the Roman capitalists began to prosecute the rearing of cattle there on
a great scale after the Italian fashion.  But far worse in every respect
was the plantation-system proper--the cultivation of the fields by a
band of slaves not unfrequently branded with iron, who with shackles
on their legs performed the labours of the field under overseers
during the day, and were locked up together by night in the common,
frequently subterranean, labourers' prison.  This plantation-system
had migrated from the east to Carthage,(10) and seems to have been
brought by the Carthaginians to Sicily, where, probably for this reason,
it appears developed earlier and more completely than in any other part
of the Roman dominions.(11)  We find the territory of Leontini, about
30,000 -jugera- of arable land, which was let on lease as Roman
domain(12) by the censors, divided some decades after the time of the
Gracchi among not more than 84 lessees, to each of whom there thus fell
on an average 360 jugera, and among whom only one was a Leontine; the
rest were foreign, mostly Roman, speculators.  We see from this instance
with what zeal the Roman speculators there walked in the footsteps of
their predecessors, and what extensive dealings in Sicilian cattle
and Sicilian slave-corn must have been carried on by the Roman and
Non-Roman speculators who covered the fair island with their pastures
and plantations.  Italy however still remained for the present
substantially exempt from this worst form of slave-husbandry.  Although
in Etruria, where the plantation-system seems to have first emerged
in Italy, and where it existed most extensively at least forty years
afterwards, it is extremely probable that even now -ergastula- were
not wanting; yet Italian agriculture at this epoch was still chiefly
carried on by free persons or at any rate by non-fettered slaves,
while the greater tasks were frequently let out to contractors.
The difference between Italian and Sicilian slavery is very clearly
apparent from the fact, that the slaves of the Mamertine community,
which lived after the Italian fashion, were the only slaves who did
not take part in the Sicilian servile revolt of 619-622.

The abyss of misery and woe, which opens before our eyes in this most
miserable of all proletariates, may be fathomed by those who venture
to gaze into such depths; it is very possible that, compared with the
sufferings of the Roman slaves, the sum of all Negro sufferings is but
a drop.  Here we are not so much concerned with the hardships of the
slaves themselves as with the perils which they brought upon the Roman
state, and with the conduct of the government in confronting them.
It is plain that this proletariate was not called into existence by
the government and could not be directly set aside by it; this could
only have been accomplished by remedies which would have been still
worse than the disease.  The duty of the government was simply, on
the one hand, to avert the direct danger to property and life, with
which the slave-proletariate threatened the members of the state,
by an earnest system of police for securing order; and on the other
hand, to aim at the restriction of the proletariate, as far as possible,
by the elevation of free labour.  Let us see how the Roman aristocracy
executed these two tasks.

Insurrection of the Slaves
The First Sicilian Slave War

The servile conspiracies and servile wars, breaking out everywhere,
illustrate their management as respects police.  In Italy the scenes
of disorder, which were among the immediate painful consequences of
the Hannibalic war,(13) seemed now to be renewed; all at once the
Romans were obliged to seize and execute in the capital 150, in
Minturnae 450, in Sinuessa even 4000 slaves (621).  Still worse,
as may be conceived, was the state of the provinces.  At the great
slave-market at Delos and in the Attic silver-mines about the same
period the revolted slaves had to be put down by force of arms.
The war against Aristonicus and his "Heliopolites" in Asia Minor was
in substance a war of the landholders against the revolted slaves.(14)
But worst of all, naturally, was the condition of Sicily, the chosen
land of the plantation system.  Brigandage had long been a standing
evil there, especially in the interior; it began to swell into
insurrection.  Damophilus, a wealthy planter of Enna (Castrogiovanni),
who vied with the Italian lords in the industrial investment of his
living capital, was attacked and murdered by his exasperated rural
slaves; whereupon the savage band flocked into the town of Enna, and
there repeated the same process on a greater scale.  The slaves rose
in a body against their masters, killed or enslaved them, and summoned
to the head of the already considerable insurgent army a juggler
from Apamea in Syria who knew how to vomit fire and utter oracles,
formerly as a slave named Eunus, now as chief of the insurgents
styled Antiochus king of the Syrians.  And why not? A few years before
another Syrian slave, who was not even a prophet, had in Antioch
itself worn the royal diadem of the Seleucids.(15)  The Greek slave
Achaeus, the brave "general" of the new king, traversed the island,
and not only did the wild herdsmen flock from far and near to
the strange standards, but the free labourers also, who bore no
goodwill to the planters, made common cause with the revolted slaves.
In another district of Sicily Cleon, a Cilician slave, formerly in his
native land a daring bandit, followed the example which had been set
and occupied Agrigentum; and, when the leaders came to a mutual
understanding, after gaining various minor advantages they succeeded
in at last totally defeating the praetor Lucius Hypsaeus in person
and his army, consisting mostly of Sicilian militia, and in capturing
his camp.  By this means almost the whole island came into the power
of the insurgents, whose numbers, according to the most moderate
estimates, are alleged to have amounted to 70,000 men capable of
bearing arms.  The Romans found themselves compelled for three
successive years (620-622) to despatch consuls and consular armies
to Sicily, till, after several undecided and even some unfavourable
conflicts, the revolt was at length subdued by the capture of
Tauromenium and of Enna.  The most resolute men of the insurgents
threw themselves into the latter town, in order to hold their ground
in that impregnable position with the determination of men who
despair of deliverance or of pnrdon; the consuls Lucius Calpurnius
Piso and Publius Rupilius lay before it for two years, and reduced
it at last more by famine than by arms.(16)

These were the results of the police system for securing order, as
it was handled by the Roman senate and its officials in Italy and
the provinces.  While the task of getting quit of the proletariate
demands and only too often transcends the whole power and wisdom of
a government, its repression by measures of police on the other hand
is for any larger commonwealth comparatively easy.  It would be well
with states, if the unpropertied masses threatened them with no other
danger than that with which they are menaced by bears and wolves;
only the timid and those who trade upon the silly fears of the
multitude prophesy the destruction of civil order through servile
revolts or insurrections of the proletariate.  But even to this easier
task of restraining the oppressed masses the Roman government was by no
means equal, notwithstanding the profound peace and the inexhaustible
resources of the state.  This was a sign of its weakness; but not of
its weakness alone.  By law the Roman governor was bound to keep the
public roads clear and to have the robbers who were caught, if they were
slaves, crucified; and naturally, for slavery is not possible without a
reign of terror.  At this period in Sicily a razzia was occasionally
doubtless set on foot by the governor, when the roads became too
insecure; but, in order not to disoblige the Italian planters, the
captured robbers were ordinarily given up by the authorities to
their masters to be punished at their discretion; and those masters
were frugal people who, if their slave-herdsmen asked clothes, replied
with stripes and with the inquiry whether travellers journeyed through
the land naked.  The consequence of such connivance accordingly was,
that OH the subjugation of the slave-revolt the consul Publius Rupilius
ordered all that came into his hands alive--it is said upwards of
20,000 men--to be crucified.  It was in truth no longer possible
to spare capital.

The Italian Farmers

The care of the government for the elevation of free labour,
and by consequence for the restriction of the slave-proletariate,
promised fruits far more difficult to be gained but also far richer.
Unfortunately, in this respect there was nothing done at all.  In the
first social crisis the landlord had been enjoined by law to employ
a number of free labourers proportioned to the number of his slave
labourers.(17)  Now at the suggestion of the government a Punic
treatise on agriculture,(18) doubtless giving instructions in the
system of plantation after the Carthaginian mode, was translated
into Latin for the use and benefit of Italian speculators--the first
and only instance of a literary undertaking suggested by the Roman
senate! The same tendency showed itself in a more important matter,
or to speak more correctly in the vital question for Rome--the system
of colonization.  It needed no special wisdom, but merely a
recollection of the course of the first social crisis in Rome,
to perceive that the only real remedy against an agricultural
proletariate consisted in a comprehensive and duly-regulated system
of emigration;(19) for which the external relations of Rome offered
the most favourable opportunity.  Until nearly the close of the sixth
century, in fact, the continuous diminution of the small landholders
of Italy was counteracted by the continuous establishment of new
farm-allotments.(20)  This, it is true, was by no means done to the
extent to which it might and should have been done; not only was the
domain-land occupied from ancient times by private persons(21) not
recalled, but further occupations of newly-won land were permitted;
and other very important acquisitions, such as the territory of Capua,
while not abandoned to occupation, were yet not brought into
distribution, but were let on lease as usufructuary domains.
Nevertheless the assignation of land had operated beneficially--giving
help to many of the sufferers and hope to all.  But after the founding
of Luna (577) no trace of further assignations of land is to be met
with for a long time, with the exception of the isolated institution
of the Picenian colony of Auximum (Osimo) in 597.  The reason is
simple.  After the conquest of the Boii and Apuani no new territory was
acquired in Italy excepting the far from attractive Ligurian valleys;
therefore no other land existed for distribution there except the
leased or occupied domain-land, the laying hands on which was, as may
easily be conceived, just as little agreeable to the aristocracy now as
it was three hundred years before.  The distribution of the territory
acquired out of Italy appeared for political reasons inadmissible;
Italy was to remain the ruling country, and the wall of partition
between the Italian masters and their provincial servants was not
to be broken down.  Unless the government were willing to set aside
considerations of higher policy or even the interests of their order,
no course was left to them but to remain spectators of the ruin of
the Italian farmer-class; and this result accordingly ensued.
The capitalists continued to buy out the small landholders, or indeed,
if they remained obstinate, to seize their fields without title of
purchase; in which case, as may be supposed, matters were not always
amicably settled.  A peculiarly favourite method was to eject the wife
and children of the farmer from the homestead, while he was in the
field, and to bring him to compliance by means of the theory of
"accomplished fact." The landlords continued mainly to employ slaves
instead of free labourers, because the former could not like the
latter be called away to military service; and thus reduced the free
proletariate to the same level of misery with the slaves.  They
continued to supersede Italian grain in the market of the capital,
and to lessen its value over the whole peninsula, by selling Sicilian
slave-corn at a mere nominal price.  In Etruria the old native
aristocracy in league with the Roman capitalists had as early as 620
brought matters to such a pass, that there was no longer a free farmer
there.  It could be said aloud in the market of the capital, that the
beasts had their lairs but nothing was left to the burgesses save
the air and sunshine, and that those who were styled the masters
of the world had no longer a clod that they could call their own.
The census lists of the Roman burgesses furnished the commentary on
these words.  From the end of the Hannibalic war down to 595 the numbers
of the burgesses were steadily on the increase, the cause of which is
mainly to be sought in the continuous and considerable distributions
of domain-land:(22) after 595 again, when the census yielded 328,000
burgesses capable of bearing arms, there appears a regular falling-off,
for the list in 600 stood at 324,000, that in 607 at 322,000, that
in 623 at 319,000 burgesses fit for service--an alarming result for a
time of profound peace at home and abroad.  If matters were to go on
at this rate, the burgess-body would resolve itself into planters and
slaves; and the Roman state might at length, as was the case with the
Parthians, purchase its soldiers in the slave-market.

Ideas of Reform
Scipio Aemilianus

Such was the external and internal condition of Rome, when the state
entered on the seventh century of its existence.  Wherever the eye
turned, it encountered abuses and decay; the question could not
but force itself on every sagacious and well-disposed man, whether
this state of things was not capable of remedy or amendment.  There
was no want of such men in Rome; but no one seemed more called to the
great work of political and social reform than Publius Cornelius Scipio
Aemilianus Africanus (570-625), the favourite son of Aemilius Paullus
and the adopted grandson of the great Scipio, whose glorious surname
of Africanus he bore by virtue not merely of hereditary but of
personal right.  Like his father, he was a man temperate and
thoroughly healthy, never ailing in body, and never at a loss to
resolve on the immediate and necessary course of action.  Even
in his youth he had kept aloof from the usual proceedings of
political novices--the attending in the antechambers of prominent
senators and the delivery of forensic declamations.  On the other
hand he loved the chase--when a youth of seventeen, after having
served with distinction under his father in the campaign against
Perseus, he had asked as his reward the free range of the deer
forest of the kings of Macedonia which had been untouched for
four years--and he was especially fond of devoting his leisure to
scientific and literary enjoyment.  By the care of his father he had
been early initiated into that genuine Greek culture, which elevated
him above the insipid Hellenizing of the semi-culture commonly in
vogue; by his earnest and apt appreciation of the good and bad
qualities in the Greek character, and by his aristocratic carriage,
this Roman made an impression on the courts of the east and even on
the scoffing Alexandrians.  His Hellenism was especially recognizable
in the delicate irony of his discourse and in the classic purity of
his Latin.  Although not strictly an author, he yet, like Cato,
committed to writing his political speeches--they were, like the letters
of his adopted sister the mother of the Gracchi, esteemed by the later
-litteratores- as masterpieces of model prose--and took pleasure in
surrounding himself with the better Greek and Roman -litterati-,
a plebeian society which was doubtless regarded with no small
suspicion by those colleagues in the senate whose noble birth was
their sole distinction.  A man morally steadfast and trustworthy,
his word held good with friend and foe; he avoided buildings and
speculations, and lived with simplicity; while in money matters he
acted not merely honourably and disinterestedly, but also with a
tenderness and liberality which seemed singular to the mercantile
spirit of his contemporaries.  He was an able soldier and officer;
he brought home from the African war the honorary wreath which was
wont to be conferred on those who saved the lives of citizens in
danger at the peril of their own, and terminated as general the
war which he had begun as an officer; circumstances gave him no
opportunity of trying his skill as a general on tasks really
difficult.  Scipio was not, any more than his father, a man
of brilliant gifts--as is indicated by the very fact of his
predilection for Xenophon, the sober soldier and correct author-
but he was an honest and true man, who seemed pre-eminently called
to stem the incipient decay by organic reforms.  All the more
significant is the fact that he did not attempt it.  It is true
that he helped, as he had opportunity and means, to redress or
prevent abuses, and laboured in particular at the improvement of
the administration of justice.  It was chiefly by his assistance
that Lucius Cassius, an able man of the old Roman austerity and
uprightness, was enabled to carry against the most vehement
opposition of the Optimates his law as to voting, which introduced
vote by ballot for those popular tribunals which still embraced
the most important part of the criminal jurisdiction.(23)  In like
manner, although he had not chosen to take part in boyish
impeachments, he himself in his mature years put upon their trial
several of the guiltiest of the aristocracy.  In a like spirit, when
commanding before Carthage and Numantia, he drove forth the women
and priests to the gates of the camp, and subjected the rabble of
soldiers once more to the iron yoke of the old military discipline;
and when censor (612), he cleared away the smooth-chinned coxcombs
among the world of quality and in earnest language urged the
citizens to adhere more faithfully to the honest customs of their
fathers.  But no one, and least of all he himself, could fail to
see that increased stringency in the administration of justice and
isolated interference were not even first steps towards the healing
of the organic evils under which the state laboured.  These Scipio did
not touch.  Gaius Laelius (consul in 614), Scipio's elder friend and
his political instructor and confidant, had conceived the plan of
proposing the resumption of the Italian domain-land which had not
been given away but had been temporarily occupied, and of giving
relief by its distribution to the visibly decaying Italian farmers;
but he desisted from the project when he saw what a storm he was
going to raise, and was thenceforth named the "Judicious." Scipio was
of the same opinion.  He was fully persuaded of the greatness of the
evil, and with a courage deserving of honour he without respect of
persons remorselessly assailed it and carried his point, where he
risked himself alone; but he was also persuaded that the country
could only be relieved at the price of a revolution similar to that
which in the fourth and fifth centuries had sprung out of the question
of reform, and, rightly or wrongly, the remedy seemed to him worse than
the disease.  So with the small circle of his friends he held a middle
position between the aristocrats, who never forgave him for his advocacy
of the Cassian law, and the democrats, whom he neither satisfied nor
wished to satisfy; solitary during his life, praised after his death
by both parties, now as the champion of the aristocracy, now as
the promoter of reform.  Down to his time the censors on laying
down their office had called upon the gods to grant greater power
and glory to the state: the censor Scipio prayed that they might
deign to preserve the state.  His whole confession of faith lies
in that painful exclamation.

Tiberius Gracchus

But where the man who had twice led the Roman army from deep decline
to victory despaired, a youth without achievements had the boldness to
give himself forth as the saviour of Italy.  He was called Tiberius
Sempronius Gracchus (591-621).  His father who bore the same name
(consul in 577, 591; censor in 585), was the true model of a Roman
aristocrat.  The brilliant magnificence of his aedilician games, not
produced without oppressing the dependent communities, had drawn upon
him the severe and deserved censure of the senate;(24) his interference
in the pitiful process directed against the Scipios who were personally
hostile to him(25) gave proof of his chivalrous feeling, and perhaps of
his regard for his own order; and his energetic action against the
freedmen in his censorship(26) evinced his conservative disposition.
As governor, moreover, of the province of the Ebro,(27) by his bravery
and above all by his integrity he rendered a permanent service to his
country, and at the same time raised to himself in the hearts of
the subject nation an enduring monument of reverence and affection.

His mother Cornelia was the daughter of the conqueror of Zama, who,
simply on account of that generous intervention, had chosen his former
opponent as a son-in-law; she herself was a highly cultivated and
notable woman, who after the death of her much older husband had
refused the hand of the king of Egypt and reared her three surviving
children in memory of her husband and her father.  Tiberius, the
elder of the two sons, was of a good and moral disposition, of
gentle aspect and quiet bearing, apparently fitted for anything rather
than for an agitator of the masses.  In all his relations and views
he belonged to the Scipionic circle, whose refined and thorough
culture, Greek and national, he and his brother and sister shared.
Scipio Aemilianus was at once his cousin and his sister's husband;
under him Tiberius, at the age of eighteen, had taken part in the
storming of Carthage, and had by his valour acquired the commendation
of the stern general and warlike distinctions.  It was natural
that the able young man should, with all the vivacity and all the
stringent precision of youth, adopt and intensify the views as to
the pervading decay of the state which were prevalent in that circle,
and more especially their ideas as to the elevation of the Italian
farmers.  Nor was it merely to the young men that the shrinking of
Laelius from the execution of his ideas of reform seemed to be not
judicious, but weak.  Appius Claudius, who had already been consul
(611) and censor (618), one of the most respected men in the senate,
censured the Scipionic circle for having so soon abandoned the scheme
of distributing the domain-lands with all the passionate vehemence
which was the hereditary characteristic of the Claudian house; and with
the greater bitterness, apparently because he had come into personal
conflict with Scipio Aemilianus in his candidature for the censorship.
Similar views were expressed by Publius Crassus Mucianus,(28) the
-pontifex maximus- of the day, who was held in universal honour by
the senate and the citizens as a man and a jurist.  Even his brother
Publius Mucius Scaevola, the founder of scientific jurisprudence in
Rome, seemed not averse to the plan of reform; and his voice was of
the greater weight, as he stood in some measure aloof from the parties.
Similar were the sentiments of Quintus Metellus, the conqueror of
Macedonia and of the Achaeans, but respected not so much on account of
his warlike deeds as because he was a model of the old discipline and
manners alike in his domestic and his public life.  Tiberius Gracchus
was closely connected with these men, particularly with Appius whose
daughter he had married, and with Mucianus whose daughter was married
to his brother.  It was no wonder that he cherished the idea of
resuming in person the scheme of reform, so soon as he should find
himself in a position which would constitutionally allow him the
initiative.  Personal motives may have strengthened this resolution.
The treaty of peace which Mancinus concluded with the Numantines in
617, was in substance the work of Gracchus;(29) the recollection that
the senate had cancelled it, that the general had been on its account
surrendered to the enemy, and that Gracchus with the other superior
officers had only escaped a like fate through the greater favour
which he enjoyed among the burgesses, could not put the young,
upright, and proud man in better humour with the ruling aristocracy.
The Hellenic rhetoricians with whom he was fond of discussing philosophy
and politics, Diophanes of Mytilene and Gaius Blossius of Cumae,
nourished within his soul the ideals over which he brooded: when his
intentions became known in wider circles, there was no want of approving
voices, and many a public placard summoned the grandson of Africanus to
think of the poor people and the deliverance of Italy.

Tribunate of Gracchus
His Agrarian Law

Tiberius Gracchus was invested with the tribunate of the people on
the 10th of December, 620.  The fearful consequences of the previous
misgovernment, the political, military, economic, and moral decay of
the burgesses, were just at that time naked and open to the eyes of
all.  Of the two consuls of this year one fought without success in
Sicily against the revolted slaves, and the other, Scipio Aemilianus,
was employed for months not in conquering, but in crushing a small
Spanish country town.  If Gracchus still needed a special summons to
carry his resolution into effect, he found it in this state of matters
which filled the mind of every patriot with unspeakable anxiety.
His father-in-law promised assistance in counsel and action; the support
of the jurist Scaevola, who had shortly before been elected consul for
621, might be hoped for.  So Gracchus, immediately after entering on
office, proposed the enactment of an agrarian law, which in a certain
sense was nothing but a renewal of the Licinio-Sextian law of 387.(30)
Under it all the state-lands which were occupied and enjoyed by
the possessors without remuneration--those that were let on lease,
such as the territory of Capua, were not affected by the law--were to
be resumed on behalf of the state; but with the restriction, that
each occupier should reserve for himself 500 -jugera- and for each son
250 (so as not, however, to exceed 1000 -jugera- in all) in permanent
and guaranteed possession, or should be entitled to claim compensation
in land to that extent.  Indemnification appears to have been
granted for any improvements executed by the former holders, such
as buildings and plantations.  The domain-land thus resumed was to
be broken up into lots of 30 jugera; and these were to be distributed
partly to burgesses, partly to Italian allies, not as their own free
property, but as inalienable heritable leaseholds, whose holders bound
themselves to use the land for agriculture and to pay a moderate
rent to the state-chest.  A -collegium- of three men, who were
regarded as ordinary and standing magistrates of the state and were
annually elected by the assembly of the people, was entrusted with
the work of resumption and distribution; to which was afterwards added
the important and difficult function of legally settling what was
domain-land and what was private property.  The distribution was
accordingly designed to go on for an indefinite period until the
Italian domains which were very extensive and difficult of adjustment
should be regulated.  The new features in the Sempronian agrarian law,
as compared with the Licinio-Sextian, were, first, the clause in favour
of the hereditary possessors; secondly, the leasehold and inalienable
tenure proposed for the new allotments; thirdly and especially, the
regulated and permanent executive, the want of which under the older
law had been the chief reason why it had remained without lasting
practical application.

War was thus declared against the great landholders, who now, as
three centuries ago, found substantially their organ in the senate;
and once more, after a long interval, a single magistrate stood forth
in earnest opposition to the aristocratic government.  It took up the
conflict in the mode--sanctioned by use and wont for such cases--of
paralyzing the excesses of the magistrates by means of the magistracy
itself.(31)  A colleague of Gracchus, Marcus Octavius, a resolute man
who was seriously persuaded of the objectionable character of the
proposed domain law, interposed his veto when it was about to be put
to the vote; a step, the constitutional effect of which was to set
aside the proposal.  Gracchus in his turn suspended the business
of the state and the administration of justice, and placed his seal
on the public chest; the government acquiesced--it was inconvenient,
but the year would draw to an end.  Gracchus, in perplexity, brought his
law to the vote a second time.  Octavius of course repeated his -veto-;
and to the urgent entreaty of his colleague and former friend, that
he would not obstruct the salvation of Italy, he might reply that on
that very question, as to how Italy could be saved, opinions differed,
but that his constitutional right to use his veto against the proposal
of his colleague was beyond all doubt.  The senate now made an attempt
to open up to Gracchus a tolerable retreat; two consulars challenged
him to discuss the matter further in the senate house, and the tribune
entered into the scheme with zeal.  He sought to construe this
proposal as implying that the senate had conceded the principle of
distributing the domain-land; but neither was this implied in it,
nor was the senate at all disposed to yield in the matter; the
discussions ended without any result.  Constitutional means were
exhausted.  In earlier times under such circumstances men were not
indisposed to let the proposal go to sleep for the current year, and
to take it up again in each succeeding one, till the earnestness of
the demand and the pressure of public opinion overbore resistance.
Now things were carried with a higher hand.  Gracchus seemed to himself
to have reached the point when he must either wholly renounce his
reform or begin a revolution.  He chose the latter course; for he
came before the burgesses with the declaration that either he or
Octavius must retire from the college, and suggested to Octavius
that a vote of the burgesses should be taken as to which of them
they wished to dismiss.  Octavius naturally refused to consent to
this strange challenge; the -intercessio- existed for the very purpose
of giving scope to such differences of opinion among colleagues.  Then
Gracchus broke off the discussion with his colleague, and turned to
the assembled multitude with the question whether a tribune of the
people, who acted in opposition to the people, had not forfeited his
office; and the assembly, long accustomed to assent to all proposals
presented to it, and for the most part composed of the agricultural
proletariate which had flocked in from the country and was
personally interested in the carrying of the law, gave almost
unanimously an affirmative answer.  Marcus Octavius was at the bidding
of Gracchus removed by the lictors from the tribunes' bench; and then,
amidst universal rejoicing, the agrarian law was carried and the
first allotment-commissioners were nominated.  The votes fell on the
author of the law along with his brother Gaius, who was only twenty
years of age, and his father-in-law Appius Claudius.  Such a family-
selection augmented the exasperation of the aristocracy.  When the
new magistrates applied as usual to the senate to obtain the moneys
for their equipment and for their daily allowance, the former was
refused, and a daily allowance was assigned to them of 24 -asses-
(1 shilling).  The feud spread daily more and more, and became
more envenomed and more personal.  The difficult and intricate task
of defining, resuming, and distributing the domains carried strife
into every burgess-community, and even into the allied Italian towns.

Further Plans of Gracchus

The aristocracy made no secret that, while they would acquiesce perhaps
in the law because they could not do otherwise, the officious legislator
should never escape their vengeance; and the announcement of Quintus
Pompeius, that he would impeach Gracchus on the very day of his
resigning his tribunate, was far from being the worst of the threats
thrown out against the tribune.  Gracchus believed, probably with
reason, that his personal safety was imperilled, and no longer
appeared in the Forum without a retinue of 3000 or 4000 men--a step
which drew down on him bitter expressions in the senate, even from
Metellus who was not averse to reform in itself.  Altogether, if
he had expected to reach the goal by the carrying of his agrarian
law, he had now to learn that he was only at the starting-point.
The "people" owed him gratitude; but he was a lost man, if he had
no farther protection than this gratitude of the people, if he did
not continue indispensable to them and did not constantly attach
to himself fresh interests and hopes by means of other and more
comprehensive proposals.  Just at that time the kingdom and wealth
of the Attalids had fallen to the Romans by the testament of the
last king of Pergamus;(32) Gracchus proposed to the people that the
Pergamene treasure should be distributed among the new landholders for
the procuring of the requisite implements and stock, and vindicated
generally, in opposition to the existing practice, the right of the
burgesses to decide definitively as to the new province.  He is said
to have prepared farther popular measures, for shortening the period
of service, for extending the right of appeal, for abolishing the
prerogative of the senators exclusively to do duty as civil jurymen,
and even for the admission of the Italian allies to Roman
citizenship.  How far his projects in reality reached, cannot be
ascertained; this alone is certain, that Gracchus saw that his only
safety lay in inducing the burgesses to confer on him for a second
year the office which protected him, and that, with a view to obtain
this unconstitutional prolongation, he held forth a prospect of
further reforms.  If at first he had risked himself in order to save
the commonwealth, he was now obliged to put the commonwealth at stake
in order to his own safety.

He Solicits Re-election to the Tribunate

The tribes met to elect the tribunes for the ensuing year, and
the first divisions gave their votes for Gracchus; but the opposite
party in the end prevailed with their veto, so far at least that
the assembly broke up without having accomplished its object, and
the decision was postponed to the following day.  For this day Gracchus
put in motion all means legitimate and illegitimate; he appeared to the
people dressed in mourning, and commended to them his youthful son;
anticipating that the election would once more be disturbed by the
veto, he made provision for expelling the adherents of the aristocracy
by force from the place of assembly in front of the Capitoline
temple.  So the second day of election came on; the votes fell as on
the preceding day, and again the veto was exercised; the tumult began.
The burgesses dispersed; the elective assembly was practically dissolved;
the Capitoline temple was closed; it was rumoured in the city, now that
Tiberius had deposed all the tribunes, now that he had resolved to
continue his magistracy without reelection.

Death of Gracchus

The senate assembled in the temple of Fidelity, close by the temple
of Jupiter; the bitterest opponents of Gracchus spoke in the sitting;
when Tiberius moved his hand towards his forehead to signify
to the people, amidst the wild tumult, that his head was in danger,
it was said that he was already summoning the people to adorn his
brow with the regal chaplet.  The consul Scaevola was urged to have
the traitor put to death at once.  When that temperate man, by no
means averse to reform in itself, indignantly refused the equally
irrational and barbarous request, the consular Publius Scipio Nasica,
a harsh and vehement aristocrat, summoned those who shared his views
to arm themselves as they could and to follow him.  Almost none of the
country people had come into town for the elections; the people of the
city timidly gave way, when they saw men of quality rushing along with
fury in their eyes, and legs of chairs and clubs in their hands.
Gracchus attempted with a few attendants to escape.  But in his
flight he fell on the slope of the Capitol, and was killed by a
blow on the temples from the bludgeon of one of his furious pursuers
--Publius Satureius and Lucius Rufus afterwards contested the infamous
honour--before the statues of the seven kings at the temple of
Fidelity; with him three hundred others were slain, not one by
weapons of iron.  When evening had come on, the bodies were thrown
into the Tiber; Gaius vainly entreated that the corpse of his
brother might be granted to him for burial.  Such a day had never
before been seen by Rome.  The party-strife lasting for more than
a century during the first social crisis had led to no such
catastrophe as that with which the second began.  The better portion
of the aristocracy might shudder, but they could no longer recede.
They had no choice save to abandon a great number of their most
trusty partisans to the vengeance of the multitude, or to assume
collectively the responsibility of the outrage: the latter course was
adopted.  They gave official sanction to the assertion that Gracchus
had wished to seize the crown, and justified this latest crime by
the primitive precedent of Ahala;(33) in fact, they even committed
the duty of further investigation as to the accomplices of Gracchus
to a special commission and made its head, the consul Publius Popillius,
take care that a sort of legal stamp should be supplementarily impressed
on the murder of Gracchus by bloody sentences directed against a large
number of inferior persons (622).  Nasica, against whom above all
others the multitude breathed vengeance, and who had at least the
courage openly to avow his deed before the people and to defend it,
was under honourable pretexts despatched to Asia, and soon afterwards
(624) invested, during his absence, with the office of Pontifex
Maximus.  Nor did the moderate party dissociate themselves from these
proceedings of their colleagues.  Gaius Laelius bore a part in the
investigations adverse to the partisans of Gracchus; Publius Scaevola,
who had attempted to prevent the murder, afterwards defended it in the
senate; when Scipio Aemilianus, after his return from Spain (622), was
challenged publicly to declare whether he did or did not approve the
killing of his brother-in-law, he gave the at least ambiguous reply
that, so far as Tiberius had aspired to the crown, he had been
justly put to death.

The Domain Question Viewed in Itself

Let us endeavour to form a judgment regarding these momentous events.
The appointment of an official commission, which had to counteract
the dangerous diminution of the farmer-class by the comprehensive
establishment of new small holdings from the whole Italian landed
property at the disposal of the state, was doubtless no sign of a
healthy condition of the national economy; but it was, under the
existing circumstances political and social, suited to its purpose.
The distribution of the domains, moreover, was in itself no political
party-question; it might have been carried out to the last sod without
changing the existing constitution or at all shaking the government
of the aristocracy.  As little could there be, in that case, any
complaint of a violation of rights.  The state was confessedly
the owner of the occupied land; the holder as a possessor on mere
sufferance could not, as a rule, ascribe to himself even a bonafide
proprietary tenure, and, in the exceptional instances where he could
do so, he was confronted by the fact that by the Roman law prescription
did not run against the state.  The distribution of the domains was not
an abolition, but an exercise, of the right of property; all jurists
were agreed as to its formal legality.  But the attempt now to carry
out these legal claims of the state was far from being politically
warranted by the circumstance that the distribution of the domains
neither infringed the existing constitution nor involved a violation
of right.  Such objections as have been now and then raised in our
day, when a great landlord suddenly begins to assert in all their
compass claims belonging to him in law but suffered for a long period
to lie dormant in practice, might with equal and better right be
advanced against the rogation of Gracchus.  These occupied domains
had been undeniably in heritable private possession, some of them for
three hundred years; the state's proprietorship of the soil, which
from its very nature loses more readily than that of the burgess the
character of a private right, had in the case of these lands become
virtually extinct, and the present holders had universally come
to their possessions by purchase or other onerous acquisition.
The jurist might say what he would; to men of business the measure
appeared to be an ejection of the great landholders for the benefit
of the agricultural proletariate; and in fact no statesman could give
it any other name.  That the leading men of the Catonian epoch formed
no other judgment, is very clearly shown by their treatment of a similar
case that occurred in their time.  The territory of Capua and the
neighbouring towns, which was annexed as domain in 543, had for
the most part practically passed into private possession during
the following unsettled times.  In the last years of the sixth
century, when in various respects, especially through the influence
of Cato, the reins of government were drawn tighter, the burgesses
resolved to resume the Campanian territory and to let it out for
the benefit of the treasury (582).  The possession in this instance
rested on an occupation justified not by previous invitation but
at the most by the connivance of the authorities, and had continued
in no case much beyond a generation; but the holders were not
dispossessed except in consideration of a compensatory sum disbursed
under the orders of the senate by the urban praetor Publius Lentulus
(c. 589).(34)  Less objectionable perhaps, but still not without
hazard, was the arrangement by which the new allotments bore
the character of heritable leaseholds and were inalienable.  The most
liberal principles in regard to freedom of dealing had made Rome
great; and it was very little consonant to the spirit of the Roman
institutions, that these new farmers were peremptorily bound down
to cultivate their portions of land in a definite manner, and that
their allotments were subject to rights of revocation and all the
cramping measures associated with commercial restriction.

It will be granted that these objections to the Sempronian agrarian
law were of no small weight.  Yet they are not decisive.  Such a
practical eviction of the holders of the domains was certainly a
great evil; yet it was the only means of checking, at least for a
long time, an evil much greater still and in fact directly destructive
to the state--the decline of the Italian farmer-class.  We can well
understand therefore why the most distinguished and patriotic men
even of the conservative party, headed by Gaius Laelius and Scipio
Aemilianus, approved and desired the distribution of the domains
viewed in itself.

The Domain Question before the Burgesses

But, if the aim of Tiberius Gracchus probably appeared to
the great majority of the discerning friends of their country
good and salutary, the method which he adopted, on the other hand,
did not and could not meet with the approval of a single man of note
and of patriotism.  Rome about this period was governed by the senate.
Any one who carried a measure of administration against the majority
of the senate made a revolution.  It was revolution against the spirit
of the constitution, when Gracchus submitted the domain question to the
people; and revolution also against the letter, when he destroyed not
only for the moment but for all time coming the tribunician veto--
the corrective of the state machine, through which the senate
constitutionally got rid of interferences with its government--by the
deposition of his colleague, which he justified with unworthy sophistry.
But it was not in this step that the moral and political mistake of
the action of Gracchus lay.  There are no set forms of high treason
in history; whoever provokes one power in the state to conflict with
another is certainly a revolutionist, but he may be at the same time
a discerning and praiseworthy statesman.  The essential defect of the
Gracchan revolution lay in a fact only too frequently overlooked--in
the nature of the then existing burgess-assemblies.  The agrarian law
of Spurius Cassius(35) and that of Tiberius Gracchus had in the main
the same tenor and the same object; but the enterprises of the two
men were as different, as the former Roman burgess-body which shared
the Volscian spoil with the Latins and Hernici was different from
the present which erected the provinces of Asia and Africa.  The former
was an urban community, which could meet together and act together;
the latter was a great state, as to which the attempt to unite those
belonging to it in one and the same primary assembly, and to leave to
this assembly the decision, yielded a result as lamentable as it was
ridiculous.(36)  The fundamental defect of the policy of antiquity
--that it never fully advanced from the urban form of constitution to
that of a state or, which is the same thing, from the system of
primary assemblies to a parliamentary system--in this case avenged
itself.  The sovereign assembly of Rome was what the sovereign
assembly in England would be, if instead of sending representatives
all the electors of England should meet together as a parliament--an
unwieldy mass, wildly agitated by all interests and all passions, in
which intelligence was totally lost; a body, which was neither able
to take a comprehensive view of things nor even to form a resolution
of its own; a body above all, in which, saving in rare exceptional
cases, a couple of hundred or thousand individuals accidentally
picked up from the streets of the capital acted and voted in name of
the burgesses.  The burgesses found themselves, as a rule, nearly as
satisfactorily represented by their de facto representatives in the
tribes and centuries as by the thirty lictors who de jure represented
them in the curies; and just as what was called the decree of the
curies was nothing but a decree of the magistrate who convoked the
lictors, so the decree of the tribes and centuries at this time was
in substance simply a decree of the proposing magistrate, legalised
by some consentients indispensable for the occasion.  But while in
these voting-assemblies, the -comitia-, though they were far from
dealing strictly in the matter of qualification, it was on the whole
burgesses alone that appeared, in the mere popular assemblages on the
other hand--the -contiones---every one in the shape of a man was
entitled to take his place and to shout, Egyptians and Jews, street-
boys and slaves.  Such a "meeting" certainly had no significance
in the eyes of the law; it could neither vote nor decree.  But it
practically ruled the street, and already the opinion of the street
was a power in Rome, so that it was of some importance whether this
confused mass received the communications made to it with silence or
shouts, whether it applauded and rejoiced or hissed and howled at
the orator.  Not many had the courage to lord it over the populace
as Scipio Aemilianus did, when they hissed him on account of his
expression as to the death of his brother-in-law.  "Ye," he said,
"to whom Italy is not mother but step-mother, ought to keep silence!"
and when their fury grew still louder, "Surely you do not think
that I will fear those let loose, whom I have sent in chains
to the slave-market?"

That the rusty machinery of the comitia should be made use of for the
elections and for legislation, was already bad enough.  But when those
masses--the -comitia- primarily, and practically also the -contiones---
were permitted to interfere in the administration, and the instrument
which the senate employed to prevent such interferences was wrested out
of its hands; when this so-called burgess-body was allowed to decree
to itself lands along with all their appurtenances out of the public
purse; when any one, whom circumstances and his influence with the
proletariate enabled to command the streets for a few hours, found it
possible to impress on his projects the legal stamp of the sovereign
people's will, Rome had reached not the beginning, but the end of
popular freedom--had arrived not at democracy, but at monarchy.
For that reason in the previous period Cato and those who shared
his views never brought such questions before the burgesses,
but discussed them solely in the senate.(37)  For that reason
contemporaries of Gracchus, the men of the Scipionic circle,
described the Flaminian agrarian law of 522--the first step in
that fatal career--as the beginning of the decline of Roman greatness.
For that reason they allowed the author of the domain-distribution
to fall, and saw in his dreadful end, as it were, a rampart against
similar attempts in future, while yet they maintained and turned
to account with all their energy the domain-distribution itself
which he had carried through--so sad was the state of things in
Rome that honest patriots were forced into the horrible hypocrisy
of abandoning the evil-doer and yet appropriating the fruit of
the evil deed.  For that reason too the opponents of Gracchus were
in a certain sense not wrong, when they accused him of aspiring to the
crown.  For him it is a fresh impeachment rather than a justification,
that he himself was probably a stranger to any such thought.
The aristocratic government was so thoroughly pernicious, that
the citizen, who was able to depose the senate and to put
himself in its place, might perhaps benefit the commonwealth
more than he injured it.

Results

But such a bold player Tiberius Gracchus was not.  He was a tolerably
capable, thoroughly well-meaning, conservative patriot, who simply
did not know what he was doing; who in the fullest belief that he
was calling the people evoked the rabble, and grasped at the crown
without being himself aware of it, until the inexorable sequence of
events urged him irresistibly into the career of the demagogue-tyrant;
until the family commission, the interferences with the public
finances, the further "reforms" exacted by necessity and despair,
the bodyguard from the pavement, and the conflicts in the streets
betrayed the lamentable usurper more and more clearly to himself and
others; until at length the unchained spirits of revolution seized and
devoured the incapable conjurer.  The infamous butchery, through which
he perished, condemns itself, as it condemns the aristocratic faction
whence it issued; but the glory of martyrdom, with which it has
embellished the name of Tiberius Gracchus, came in this instance,
as usually, to the wrong man.  The best of his contemporaries judged
otherwise.  When the catastrophe was announced to Scipio Aemilianus,
he uttered the words of Homer:

"--Os apoloito kai allos, otis toiauta ge pezoi--"

and when the younger brother of Tiberius seemed disposed to come forward
in the same career, his own mother wrote to him: "Shall then our house
have no end of madness?  Where shall be the limit?  Have we not yet
enough to be ashamed of, in having confused and disorganized the state?"
So spoke not the anxious mother, but the daughter of the conqueror of
Carthage, who knew and experienced a misfortune yet greater than the
death of her children.




Chapter III

The Revolution and Gaius Gracchus

The Commisssion for Distributing the Domains

Tiberius Gracchus was dead; but his two works, the distribution
of land and the revolution, survived their author.  In presence
of the starving agricultural proletariate the senate might venture
on a murder, but it could not make use of that murder to annul
the Sempronian agrarian law; the law itself had been far more
strengthened than shaken by the frantic outbreak of party fury.
The party of the aristocracy friendly towards reform, which openly
favoured the distribution of the domains--headed by Quintus Metellus,
just about this time (623) censor, and Publius Scaevola--in concert with
the party of Scipio Aemilianus, which was at least not disinclined to
reform, gained the upper hand for the time being even in the senate;
and a decree of the senate expressly directed the triumvirs to begin
their labours.  According to the Sempronian law these were to be
nominated annually by the community, and this was probably done: but
from the nature of their task it was natural that the election should
fall again and again on the same men, and new elections in the proper
sense occurred only when a place became vacant through death.  Thus in
the place of Tiberius Gracchus there was appointed the father-in-law
of his brother Gaius, Publius Crassus Mucianus; and after the fall of
Mucianus in 624(1) and the death of Appius Claudius, the business of
distribution was managed in concert with the young Gaius Gracchus by
two of the most active leaders of the movement party, Marcus Fulvius
Flaccus and Gaius Papirius Carbo.  The very names of these men are
vouchers that the work of resuming and distributing the occupied
domain-land was prosecuted with zeal and energy; and, in fact, proofs
to that effect are not wanting.  As early as 622 the consul of that
year, Publius Popillius, the same who directed the prosecutions of
the adherents of Tiberius Gracchus, recorded on a public monument that
he was "the first who had turned the shepherds out of the domains and
installed farmers in their stead"; and tradition otherwise affirms that
the distribution extended over all Italy, and that in the formerly
existing communities the number of farms was everywhere augmented--for
it was the design of the Sempronian agrarian law to elevate the farmer-
class not by the founding of new communities, but by the strengthening
of those already in existence.  The extent and the comprehensive effect
of these distributions are attested by the numerous arrangements
in the Roman art of land-measuring that go back to the Gracchan
assignations of land; for instance, a due placing of boundary-stones
so as to obviate future mistakes appears to have been first called
into existence by the Gracchan courts for demarcation and the land-
distributions.  But the numbers on the burgess-rolls give the
clearest evidence.  The census, which was published in 623 and actually
took place probably in the beginning of 622, yielded not more than
319,000 burgesses capable of bearing arms, whereas six years afterwards
(629) in place of the previous falling-off(2) the number rises to
395,000, that is 76,000 of an increase--beyond all doubt solely
in consequence of what the allotment-commission did for the Roman
burgesses.  Whether it multiplied the farms among the Italians in
the same proportion maybe doubted; at any rate what it did accomplish
yielded a great and beneficent result.  It is true that this
result was not achieved without various violations of respectable
interests and existing rights.  The allotment-commission, composed
of the most decided partisans, and absolute judge in its own cause,
proceeded with its labours in a reckless and even tumultuary fashion;
public notices summoned every one, who was able, to give information
regarding the extent of the domain-lands; the old land-registers were
inexorably referred to, and not only was occupation new and old
revoked without distinction, but in various cases real private
property, as to which the holder was unable satisfactorily to prove
his tenure, was included in the confiscation.  Loud and for the most
part well founded as were the complaints, the senate allowed the
distributors to pursue their course; it was clear that, if the
domain question was to be settled at all, the matter could not
be carried through without such unceremonious vigour of action.

Its Suspension by Scipio Aemilianus

But this acquiescence had its limit.  The Italian domain-land was not
solely in the hands of Roman burgesses; large tracts of it had been
assigned in exclusive usufruct to particular allied communities by
decrees of the people or senate, and other portions had been occupied
with or without permission by Latin burgesses.  The allotment-
commission at length attacked these possessions also.  The resumption
of the portions simply occupied by non-burgesses was no doubt allowable
in formal law, and not less presumably the resumption of the domain-land
handed over by decrees of the senate or even by resolutions of the
burgesses to the Italian communities, since thereby the state by no
means renounced its ownership and to all appearance gave its grants
to communities, just as to private persons, subject to revocation.
But the complaints of these allied or subject communities, that Rome
did not keep the settlements that were in force, could not be simply
disregarded like the complaints of the Roman citizens injured by the
action of the commissioners.  Legally the former might be no better
founded than the latter; but, while in the latter case the matter
at stake was the private interests of members of the state, in
reference to the Latin possessions the question arose, whether it was
politically right to give fresh offence to communities so important in
a military point of view and already so greatly estranged from Rome by
numerous disabilities de jure and de facto(3) through this keenly-felt
injury to their material interests.  The decision lay in the hands
of the middle party; it was that party which after the fall of
Gracchus had, in league with his adherents, protected reform against
the oligarchy, and it alone was now able in concert with the oligarchy
to set a limit to reform.  The Latins resorted personally to the
most prominent man of this party, Scipio Aemilianus, with a request
that he would protect their rights.  He promised to do so; and
mainly through his influence,(4) in 625, a decree of the people
withdrew from the commission its jurisdiction, and remitted the
decision respecting what were domanial and what private possessions
to the censors and, as proxies for them, the consuls, to whom according
to the general principles of law it pertained.  This was simply a
suspension of further domain-distribution under a mild form.  The consul
Tuditanus, by no means Gracchan in his views and little inclined to
occupy himself with the difficult task of agrarian definition,
embraced the opportunity of going off to the Illyrian army and leaving
the duty entrusted to him unfulfilled.  The allotment-commission no
doubt continued to subsist, but, as the judicial regulation of the
domain-land was at a standstill, it was compelled to remain inactive.

Assassination of Aemilianus

The reform-party was deeply indignant.  Even men like Publius Mucius
and Quintus Metellus disapproved of the intervention of Scipio.  Other
circles were not content with expressing disapproval.  Scipio had
announced for one of the following days an address respecting the
relations of the Latins; on the morning of that day he was found dead
in his bed.  He was but fifty-six years of age, and in full health
and vigour; he had spoken in public the day before, and then in the
evening had retired earlier than usual to his bedchamber with a view
to prepare the outline of his speech for the following day.  That he
had been the victim of a political assassination, cannot be doubted;
he himself shortly before had publicly mentioned the plots formed
to murder him.  What assassin's hand had during the night slain
the first statesman and the first general of his age, was never
discovered; and it does not become history either to repeat the
reports handed down from the contemporary gossip of the city, or
to set about the childish attempt to ascertain the truth out of such
materials.  This much only is clear, that the instigator of the deed
must have belonged to the Gracchan party; the assassination of Scipio
was the democratic reply to the aristocratic massacre at the temple
of Fidelity.  The tribunals did not interfere.  The popular party,
justly fearing that its leaders Gaius Gracchus, Flaccus, and Carbo,
whether guilty or not, might be involved in the prosecution, opposed
with all its might the institution of an inquiry; and the aristocracy,
which lost in Scipio quite as much an antagonist as an ally, was not
unwilling to let the matter sleep.  The multitude and men of moderate
views were shocked; none more so than Quintus Metellus, who had
disapproved of Scipio's interference against reform, but turned away
with horror from such confederates, and ordered his four sons to carry
the bier of his great antagonist to the funeral pile.  The funeral
was hurried over; with veiled head the last of the family of the
conqueror of Zama was borne forth, without any one having been
previously allowed to see the face of the deceased, and the flames
of the funeral pile consumed with the remains of the illustrious
man the traces at the same time of the crime.

The history of Rome presents various men of greater genius than Scipio
Aemilianus, but none equalling him in moral purity, in the utter
absence of political selfishness, in generous love of his country,
and none, perhaps, to whom destiny has assigned a more tragic part.
Conscious of the best intentions and of no common abilities, he was
doomed to see the ruin of his country carried out before his eyes,
and to repress within him every earnest attempt to save it, because
he clearly perceived that he should only thereby make the evil worse;
doomed to the necessity of sanctioning outrages like that of Nasica,
and at the same time of defending the work of the victim against
his murderers.  Yet he might say that he had not lived in vain.
It was to him, at least quite as much as to the author of the
Sempronian law, that the Roman burgesses were indebted for an increase
of nearly 80,000 new farm-allotments; he it was too who put a stop to
this distribution of the domains, when it had produced such benefit
as it could produce.  That it was time to break it off, was no doubt
disputed at the moment even by well-meaning men; but the fact that
Gaius Gracchus did not seriously recur to those possessions which
might have been, and yet were not, distributed under the law of his
brother, tells very much in favour of the belief that Scipio hit
substantially the right moment.  Both measures were extorted from
the parties--the first from the aristocracy, the second from the
friends of reform; for each its author paid with his life.  It was
Scipio's lot to fight for his country on many a battle-field and to
return home uninjured, that he might perish there by the hand of an
assassin; but in his quiet chamber he no less died for Rome than if
he had fallen before the walls of Carthage.

Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus

The distribution of land was at an end; the revolution went on.
The revolutionary party, which possessed in the allotment-commission
as it were a constituted leadership, had even in the lifetime of Scipio
skirmished now and then with the existing government.  Carbo, in
particular, one of the most distinguished men of his time in oratorical
talent, had as tribune of the people in 623 given no small trouble to
the senate; had carried voting by ballot in the burgess-assemblies, so
far as it had not been introduced already;(5) and had even made the
significant proposal to leave the tribunes of the people free to
reappear as candidates for the same office in the year immediately
following, and thus legally to remove the obstacle by which Tiberius
Gracchus had primarily been thwarted.  The scheme had been at that
time frustrated by the resistance of Scipio; some years later,
apparently after his death, the law was reintroduced and carried
through, although with limiting clauses.(6) The principal object
of the party, however, was to revive the action of the allotment-
commission which had been practically suspended; the leaders seriously
talked of removing the obstacles which the Italian allies interposed
to the scheme by conferring on them the rights of citizenship, and the
agitation assumed mainly that direction.  In order to meet it, the
senate in 628 got the tribune of the people Marcus Junius Pennus to
propose the dismissal of all non-burgesses from the capital, and
in spite of the resistance of the democrats, particularly of Gaius
Gracchus, and of the ferment occasioned by this odious measure in the
Latin communities, the proposal was carried.  Marcus Fulvius Flaccus
retorted in the following year (629) as consul with the proposal to
facilitate the acquisition of burgess-rights by the burgesses of the
allied communities, and to concede even to those who had not acquired
them an appeal to the Roman comitia against penal judgments.  But he
stood almost alone--Carbo had meanwhile changed his colours and was
now a zealous aristocrat, Gaius Gracchus was absent as quaestor in
Sardinia--and the project was frustrated by the resistance not of the
senate merely, but also of the burgesses, who were but little inclined
to extend their privileges to still wider circles.  Flaccus left Rome
to undertake the supreme command against the Celts; by his Transalpine
conquests he prepared the way for the great schemes of the democracy,
while he at the same time withdrew out of the difficulty of having to
bear arms against the allies instigated by himself.

Destruction of Fregallae

Fregellae, situated on the borders of Latium and Campania at the
principal passage of the Liris in the midst of a large and fertile
territory, at that time perhaps the second city of Italy and in the
discussions with Rome the usual mouthpiece of all the Latin colonies,
began war against Rome in consequence of the rejection of the proposal
brought in by Flaccus--the first instance which had occurred for a
hundred and fifty years of a serious insurrection, not brought about
by foreign powers, in Italy against the Roman hegemony.  But on this
occasion the fire was successfully extinguished before it had caught
hold of other allied communities.  Not through the superiority of
the Roman arms, but through the treachery of a Fregellan Quintus
Numitorius Pullus, the praetor Lucius Opimius quickly became master
of the revolted city, which lost its civic privileges and its walls
and was converted like Capua into a village.  The colony of Fabrateria
was founded on a part of its territory in 630; the remainder and
the former city itself were distributed among the surrounding
communities.  This rapid and fearful punishment alarmed the
allies, and endless impeachments for high treason pursued not only
the Fregellans, but also the leaders of the popular party in Rome,
who naturally were regarded by the aristocracy as accomplices in
this insurrection.  Meanwhile Gaius Gracchus reappeared in Rome.
The aristocracy had first sought to detain the object of their dread
in Sardinia by omitting to provide the usual relief, and then, when
without caring for that point he returned, had brought him to trial
as one of the authors of the Fregellan revolt (629-30).  But the
burgesses acquitted him; and now he too threw down the gauntlet,
became a candidate for the tribuneship of the people, and was
nominated to that office for the year 631 in an elective assembly
attended by unusual numbers.  War was thus declared.  The democratic
party, always poor in leaders of ability, had from sheer necessity
remained virtually at rest for nine years; now the truce was at an
end, and this time it was headed by a man who, with more honesty
than Carbo and with more talent than Flaccus, was in every respect
called to take the lead.

Gaius Gracchus

Gaius Gracchus (601-633) was very different from his brother, who
was about nine years older.  Like the latter, he had no relish for
vulgar pleasures and vulgar pursuits; he was a man of thorough
culture and a brave soldier; he had served with distinction before
Numantia under his brother-in-law, and afterwards in Sardinia.
But in talent, in character, and above all in passion he was decidedly
superior to Tiberius.  The clearness and self-possession, which the
young man afterwards displayed amidst the pressure of all the varied
labours requisite for the practical carrying out of his numerous laws,
betokened his genuine statesmanly talent; as the passionate devotedness
faithful even to death, with which his intimate friends clung to
him, evinced the loveable nature of that noble mind.  The discipline
of suffering which he had undergone, and his compulsory reserve during
the last nine years, augmented his energy of purpose and action; the
indignation repressed within the depths of his breast only glowed there
with an intensified fervour against the party which had disorganized
his country and murdered his brother.  By virtue of this fearful
vehemence of temperament he became the foremost orator that Rome ever
had; without it, we should probably have been able to reckon him among
the first statesmen of all times.  Among the few remains of his
recorded orations several are, even in their present condition, of
heart-stirring power;(7) and we can well understand how those who heard
or even merely read them were carried away by the impetuous torrent
of his words.  Yet, great master as he was of speech, he was himself
not unfrequently mastered by anger, so that the utterance of the
brilliant speaker became confused or faltering.  It was the true image
of his political acting and suffering.  In the nature of Gaius there was
no vein, such as his brother had, of that somewhat sentimental but very
short-sighted and confused good-nature, which would have desired to
change the mind of a political opponent by entreaties and tears; with
full assurance he entered on the career of revolution and strove to
reach the goal of vengeance.  "To me too," his mother wrote to him,
"nothing seems finer and more glorious than to retaliate on an enemy,
so far as it can be done without the country's ruin.  But if this is
not possible, then may our enemies continue and remain what they are,
a thousand times rather than that our country should perish."
Cornelia knew her son; his creed was just the reverse.  Vengeance he
would wreak on the wretched government, vengeance at any price, though
he himself and even the commonwealth were to be ruined by it--the
presentiment, that fate would overtake him as certainly as his brother,
drove him only to make haste like a man mortally wounded who throws
himself on the foe.  The mother thought more nobly; but the son--
with his deeply provoked, passionately excited, thoroughly Italian
nature--has been more lamented than blamed by posterity, and posterity
has been right in its judgment.

Alterations on the Constituion by Gaius Gracchus
Distribution of Grain
Change in the Order of Voting

Tiberius Gracchus had come before the burgesses with a single
administrative reform.  What Gaius introduced in a series of separate
proposals was nothing else than an entirely new constitution; the
foundation-stone of which was furnished by the innovation previously
carried through, that a tribune of the people should be at liberty to
solicit re-election for the following year.(8) While this step enabled
the popular chief to acquire a permanent position and one which
protected its holder, the next object was to secure for him material
power or, in other words, to attach the multitude of the capital--for
that no reliance was to be placed on the country people coming only
from time to time to the city, had been sufficiently apparent--with its
interests steadfastly to its leader.  This purpose was served, first of
all, by introducing distributions of corn in the capital.  The grain
accruing to the state from the provincial tenths had already been
frequently given away at nominal prices to the burgesses.(9) Gracchus
enacted that every burgess who should personally present himself in the
capital should thenceforth be allowed monthly a definite quantity--
apparently 5 -modii- (1 1/4 bushel)--from the public stores, at 6 1/3
-asses- (3d.) for the -modius-, or not quite the half of a low average
price;(10) for which purpose the public corn-stores were enlarged by the
construction of the new Sempronian granaries.  This distribution--which
consequently excluded the burgesses living out of the capital, and
could not but attract to Rome the whole mass of the burgess-
proletariate--was designed to bring the burgess-proletariate of the
capital, which hitherto had mainly depended on the aristocracy, into
dependence on the leaders of the movement-party, and thus to supply
the new master of the state at once with a body-guard and with a firm
majority in the comitia.  For greater security as regards the latter,
moreover, the order of voting still subsisting in the -comitia
centuriata-, according to which the five property-classes in each
tribe gave their votes one after another,(11) was done away; instead
of this, all the centuries were in future to vote promiscuously in an
order of succession to be fixed on each occasion by lot.  While these
enactments were mainly designed to procure for the new chief of the
state by means of the city-proletariate the complete command of the
capital and thereby of the state, the amplest control over the comitial
machinery, and the possibility in case of need of striking terror into
the senate and magistrates, the legislator certainly at the same
time set himself with earnestness and energy to redress the
existing social evils.

Agrarian Laws
Colony of Capua
Transmarine Colonialization

It is true that the Italian domain question was in a certain sense
settled.  The agrarian law of Tiberius and even theallotment-commission
still continued legally in force; the agrarian law carried by Gracchus
can have enacted nothing new save the restoration to the commissioners
of the jurisdiction which they had lost.  That the object of this step
was only to save the principle, and that the distribution of lands,
if resumed at all, was resumed only to a very limited extent, is
shown by the burgess-roll, which gives exactly the same number of
persons for the years 629 and 639.  Gaius beyond doubt did not
proceed further in this matter, because the domain-land taken
into possession by Roman burgesses was already in substance distributed,
and the question as to the domains enjoyed by the Latins could only
be taken up anew in connection with the very difficult question as
to the extension of Roman citizenship.  On the other hand he took an
important step beyond the agrarian law of Tiberius, when he proposed
the establishment of colonies in Italy--at Tarentum, and more
especially at Capua--and by that course rendered the domain-land,
which had been let on lease by the state and was hitherto excluded
from distribution, liable to be also parcelled out, not, however,
according to the previous method, which excluded the founding of new
communities,(12) but according to the colonial system.  Beyond doubt
these colonies were also designed to aid in permanently defending the
revolution to which they owed their existence.  Still more significant
and momentous was the measure, by which Gaius Gracchus first proceeded
to provide for the Italian proletariate in the transmarine territories
of the state.  He despatched to the site on which Carthage had stood
6000 colonists selected perhaps not merely from Roman burgesses but
also from the Italian allies, and conferred on the new town Junonia
the rights of a Roman burgess-colony.  The foundation was important,
but still more important was the principle of transmarine emigration
thereby laid down.  It opened up for the Italian proletariate a
permanent outlet, and a relief in fact more than provisional; but
it certainly abandoned the principle of state-law hitherto in force,
by which Italy was regarded as exclusively the governing, and the
provincial territory as exclusively the governed, land.

Modifications of the Penal Law

To these measures having immediate reference to the great question of
the proletariate there was added a series of enactments, which arose
out of the general tendency to introduce principles milder and more
accordant with the spirit of the age than the antiquated severity of
the existing constitution.  To this head belong the modifications in
the military system.  As to the length of the period of service there
existed under the ancient law no other limit, except that no citizen
was liable to ordinary service in the field before completing his
seventeenth or after completing his forty-sixth year.  When, in
consequence of the occupation of Spain, the service began to become
permanent,(13) it seems to have been first legally enacted that any
one who had been in the field for six successive years acquired thereby
a right to discharge, although this discharge did not protect him from
being called out again afterwards.  At a later period, perhaps about
the beginning of this century, the rule arose, that a service of
twenty years in the infantry or ten years in the cavalry gave exemption
from further military service.(14) Gracchus renewed the rule--which
presumably was often violently infringed--that no burgess should be
enlisted in the army before the commencement of his eighteenth year;
and also, apparently, restricted the number of campaigns requisite
for full exemption from military duty.  Besides, the clothing of the
soldiers, the value of which had hitherto been deducted from their pay,
was henceforward furnished gratuitously by the state.

To this head belongs, moreover, the tendency which is on various
occasions apparent in the Gracchan legislation, if not to abolish
capital punishment, at any rate to restrict it still further than had
been done before--a tendency, which to some extent made itself felt even
in military jurisdiction.  From the very introduction of the republic
the magistrate had lost the right of inflicting capital punishment on
the burgess without consulting the community, except under martial
law;(15) if this right of appeal by the burgess appears soon after
the period of the Gracchi available even in the camp, and the right
of the general to inflict capital punishments appears restricted to
allies and subjects, the source of the change is probably to be sought
in the law of Gaius Gracchus -de provocatione- But the right of the
community to inflict or rather to confirm sentence of death was
indirectly yet essentially limited by the fact, that Gracchus withdrew
the cognizance of those public crimes which most frequently gave
occasion to capital sentences--poisoning and murder generally--
from the burgesses, and entrusted it to permanent judicial commissions.
These could not, like the tribunals of the people, be broken up by
the intercession of a tribune, and there not only lay no appeal from
them to the community, but their sentences were as little subject to
be annulled by the community as those of the long-established civil
jurymen.  In the burgess-tribunals it had, especially in strictly
political processes, no doubt long been the rule that the accused
remained at liberty during his trial, and was allowed by
surrendering his burgess-rights to save at least life and freedom;
for the fine laid on property, as well as the civil condemnation,
might still affect even the exiled.  But preliminary arrest and
complete execution of the sentence remained in such cases at least
legally possible, and were still sometimes carried into effect even
against persons of rank; for instance, Lucius Hostilius Tubulus,
praetor of 612, who was capitally impeached for a heinous crime,
was refused the privilege of exile, arrested, and executed.  On the
other hand the judicial commissions, which originated out of the civil
procedure, probably could not at the outset touch the liberty or
life of the citizen, but at the most could only pronounce sentence
of exile; this, which had hitherto been a mitigation of punishment
accorded to one who was found guilty, now became for the first time a
formal penalty This involuntary exile however, like the voluntary, left
to the person banished his property, so far as it was not exhausted
in satisfying claims for compensation and money-fines.  Lastly, in
the matter of debt Gaius Gracchus made no alteration; but very
respectable authorities assert that he held out to those in debt the
hope of a diminution or remission of claims--which, if it is correct,
must likewise be reckoned among those radically popular measures.

Elevation of the Equestrian Order

While Gracchus thus leaned on the support of the multitude, which
partly expected, partly received from him a material improvement
of its position, he laboured with equal energy at the ruin of the
aristocracy.  Perceiving clearly how insecure was the rule of the
head of the state built merely on the proletariate, he applied himself
above all to split the aristocracy and to draw a part of it over to
his interests.  The elements of such a rupture were already in
existence.  The aristocracy of the rich, which had risen as one man
against Tiberius Gracchus, consisted in fact of two essentially
dissimilar bodies, which may be in some measure compared to the
peerage and the city aristocracy of England.  The one embraced the
practically closed circle of the governing senatorial families who
kept aloof from direct speculation and invested their immense capital
partly in landed property, partly as sleeping partners in the great
associations.  The core of the second class was composed of the
speculators, who, as managers of these companies, or on their own
account, conducted the large mercantile and pecuniary transactions
throughout the range of the Roman hegemony.  We have already shown(16)
how the latter class, especially in the course of the sixth century,
gradually took its place by the side of the senatorial aristocracy,
and how the legal exclusion of the senators from mercantile pursuits
by the Claudian enactment, suggested by Gaius Flaminius the precursor
of the Gracchi, drew an outward line of demarcation between the senators
and the mercantile and moneyed men.  In the present epoch the mercantile
aristocracy began, under the name of the -equites-, to exercise a
decisive influence in political affairs.  This appellation, which
originally belonged only to the burgess-cavalry on service, came
gradually to be transferred, at any rate in ordinary use, to all
those who, as possessors of an estate of at least 400,000 sesterces,
were liable to cavalry service in general, and thus comprehended the
whole of the upper society, senatorial and non-senatorial, in Rome.
But not long before the time of Gaius Gracchus the law had declared
a seat in the senate incompatible with service in the cavalry,(17) and
the senators were thus eliminated from those qualified to be equites;
and accordingly the equestrian order, taken as a whole, might be regarded
as representing the aristocracy of speculators in contradistinction
to the senate.  Nevertheless those members of senatorial families who
had not entered the senate, especially the younger members, did not
cease to serve as equites and consequently to bear the name; and,
in fact, the burgess-cavalry properly so called--that is, the
eighteen equestrian centuries--in consequence of being made up
by the censors continued to be chiefly filled up from the young
senatorial aristocracy.(18)

This order of the equites--that is to say, substantially, of the
wealthy merchants--in various ways came roughly into contact with
the governing senate.  There was a natural antipathy between the
genteel aristocrats and the men to whom money had brought rank.
The ruling lords, especially the better class of them, stood just
as much aloof from speculations, as the men of material interests
were indifferent to political questions and coterie-feuds.  The two
classes had already frequently come into sharp collision, particularly
in the provinces; for, though in general the provincials had far more
reason than the Roman capitalists had to complain of the partiality of
the Roman magistrates, yet the ruling lords of the senate did not lend
countenance to the greedy and unjust doings of the moneyed men, at
the expense of the subjects, so thoroughly and absolutely as those
capitalists desired.  In spite of their concord in opposing a common
foe such as was Tiberius Gracchus, a deep gulf lay between the nobility
and the moneyed aristocracy; and Gaius, more adroit than his brother,
enlarged it till the alliance was broken up and the mercantile class
ranged itself on his side.

Insignia of the Equites

That the external privileges, through which afterwards the men of
equestrian census were distinguished from the rest of the multitude--
the golden finger-ring instead of the ordinary ring of iron or copper,
and the separate and better place at the burgess-festivals--were first
conferred on the equites by Gaius Gracchus, is not certain, but is not
improbable.  For they emerged at any rate about this period, and, as
the extension of these hitherto mainly senatorial privileges(19) to
the equestrian order which he brought into prominence was quite in
the style of Gracchus, so it was in very truth his aim to impress on
the equites the stamp of an order, similarly close and privileged,
intermediate between the senatorial aristocracy and the common multitude;
and this same aim was more promoted by those class-insignia, trifling
though they were in themselves and though many qualified to be equites
might not avail themselves of them, than by many an ordinance far
more intrinsically important.  But the party of material interests,
though it by no means despised such honours, was yet not to be
gained through these alone.  Gracchus perceived well that it would
doubtless duly fall to the highest bidder, but that it needed a high
and substantial bidding; and so he offered to it the revenues of Asia
and the jury courts.

Taxation of Asia

The system of Roman financial administration, under which the indirect
taxes as well as the domain-revenues were levied by means of
middlemen, in itself granted to the Roman capitalist-class the most
extensive advantages at the expense of those liable to taxation.
But the direct taxes consisted either, as in most provinces, of fixed
sums of money payable by the communities--which of itself excluded
the intervention of Roman capitalists--or, as in Sicily and Sardinia,
of a ground-tenth, the levying of which for each particular community
was leased in the provinces themselves, so that wealthy provincials
regularly, and the tributary communities themselves very frequently,
farmed the tenth of their districts and thereby kept at a distance
the dangerous Roman middlemen.  Six years before, when the province
of Asia had fallen to the Romans, the senate had organized it
substantially according to the first system.(20) Gaius Gracchus(21)
overturned this arrangement by a decree of the people, and not only
burdened the province, which had hitherto been almost free from
taxation, with the most extensive indirect and direct taxes,
particularly the ground-tenth, but also enacted that these taxes
should be exposed to auction for the province as a whole and in Rome--
a rule which practically excluded the provincials from participation,
and called into existence in the body of middlemen for the -decumae-,
-scriptura-, and -vectigalia- of the province of Asia an association of
capitalists of colossal magnitude.  A significant indication, moreover,
of the endeavour of Gracchus to make the order of capitalists
independent of the senate was the enactment, that the entire or
partial remission of the stipulated rent was no longer, as hitherto,
to be granted by the senate at discretion, but was under definite
contingencies to be accorded by law.

Jury Courts

While a gold mine was thus opened for the mercantile class, and the
members of the new partnership constituted a great financial power
imposing even for the government--a "senate of merchants"-a definite
sphere of public action was at the same time assigned to them in
the jury courts.  The field of the criminal procedure, which by right
came before the burgesses, was among the Romans from the first very
narrow, and was, as we have already stated,(22) still further narrowed
by Gracchus; most processes--both such as related to public crimes, and
civil causes--were decided either by single jurymen [-indices-], or by
commissions partly permanent, partly extraordinary.  Hitherto both the
former and the latter had been exclusively taken from the senate;
Gracchus transferred the functions of jurymen--both in strictly civil
processes, and in the case of the standing and temporary commissions--
to the equestrian order, directing a new list of jurymen to be
annually formed after the analogy of the equestrian centuries from
all persons of equestrian rating, and excluding the senators
directly, and the young men of senatorial families by the fixing of
a certain limit of age, from such judicial functions.(23) It is not
improbable that the selection of jurymen was chiefly made to fall
on the same men who played the leading part in the great mercantile
associations, particularly those farming the revenues in Asia and
elsewhere, just because these had a very close personal interest in
sitting in the courts; and, if the lists of jurymen and the societies
of -publicani- thus coincided as regards their chiefs, we can all
the better understand the significance of the counter-senate thus
constituted.  The substantial effect of this was, that, while hitherto
there had been only two authorities in the state--the government as the
administering and controlling, and the burgesses as the legislative,
authority--and the courts had been divided between them, now the moneyed
aristocracy was not only united into a compact and privileged class on
the solid basis of material interests, but also, as a judicial and
controlling power, formed part of the state and took its place almost
on a footing of equality by the side of the ruling aristocracy.  All
the old antipathies of the merchants against the nobility could not
but thenceforth find only too practical an expression in the sentences
of the jurymen; above all, when the provincial governors were called
to a reckoning, the senator had to await a decision involving his
civic existence at the hands no longer as formerly of his peers,
but of great merchants and bankers.  The feuds between the Roman
capitalists and the Roman governors were transplanted from the
provincial administration to the dangerous field of these processes
of reckoning.  Not only was the aristocracy of the rich divided, but
care was taken that the variance should always find fresh nourishment
and easy expression.

Monarchical Government Substituted for That of the Senate

With his weapons--the proletariate and the mercantile class--thus
prepared, Gracchus set about his main work, the overthrow of the
ruling aristocracy.  The overthrow of the senate meant, on the one
hand, the depriving it of its essential functions by legislative
alterations; and on the other hand, the ruining of the existing
aristocracy by measures of a more personal and transient kind.
Gracchus did both.  The function of administration, in particular,
had hitherto belonged exclusively to the senate; Gracchus took it away,
partly by settling the most important administrative questions by means
of comitial laws or, in other words, practically through tribunician
dictation, partly by restricting the senate as much as possible
in current affairs, partly by taking business after the most
comprehensive fashion into his own hands.  The measures of the
former kind have been mentioned already: the new master of the state
without consulting the senate dealt with the state-chest, by imposing
a permanent and oppressive burden on the public finances in the
distribution of corn; dealt with the domains, by sending out colonies
not as hitherto by decree of the senate and people, but by decree of
the people alone; and dealt with the provincial administration, by
overturning through a law of the people the financial constitution given
by the senate to the province of Asia and substituting for it one
altogether different.  One of the most important of the current duties
of the senate--that of fixing at its pleasure the functions for the
time being of the two consuls--was not withdrawn from it; but the
indirect pressure hitherto exercised in this way over the supreme
magistrates was limited by directing the senate to fix these functions
before the consuls concerned were elected.  With unrivalled
activity, lastly, Gaius concentrated the most varied and most
complicated functions of government in his own person.  He himself
watched over the distribution of grain, selected the jurymen, founded
the colonies in person notwithstanding that his magistracy legally
chained him to the city, regulated the highways and concluded building-
contracts, led the discussions of the senate, settled the consular
elections--in short, he accustomed the people to the fact that one man
was foremost in all things, and threw the lax and lame administration
of the senatorial college into the shade by the vigour and versatility
of his personal rule.  Gracchus interfered with the judicial
omnipotence, still more energetically than with the administration,
of the senate.  We have already mentioned that he set aside the
senators as jurymen; the same course was taken with the jurisdiction
which the senate as the supreme administrative board allowed to itself
in exceptional cases.  Under severe penalties he prohibited--
apparently in his renewal of the law -de provocatione-(24)--the
appointment of extraordinary commissions of high treason by decree
of the senate, such as that which after his brother's murder had sat
in judgment on his adherents.  The aggregate effect of these measures
was, that the senate wholly lost the power of control, and retained
only so much of administration as the head of the state thought fit
to leave to it.  But these constitutive measures were not enough; the
governing aristocracy for the time being was also directly assailed.
It was a mere act of revenge, which assigned retrospective effect to
the last-mentioned law and thereby compelled Publius Popillius--the
aristocrat who after the death of Nasica, which had occurred in the
interval, was chiefly obnoxious to the democrats--to go into exile.
It is remarkable that this proposal was only carried by 18 to 17
votes in the assembly of the tribes--a sign how much the influence
of the aristocracy still availed with the multitude, at least in
questions of a personal interest.  A similar but far less justifiable
decree--the proposal, directed against Marcus Octavius, that whoever
had been deprived of his office by decree of the people should be
for ever incapable of filling a public post--was recalled by Gaius
at the request of his mother; and he was thus spared the disgrace
of openly mocking justice by legalizing a notorious violation of
the constitution, and of taking base vengeance on a man of honour,
who had not spoken an angry word against Tiberius and had only acted
constitutionally and in accordance with what he conceived to be
his duty.  But of very different importance from these measures was
the scheme of Gaius--which, it is true, was hardly carried into effect--
to strengthen the senate by 300 new members, that is, by just about as
many as it hitherto had contained, and to have them elected from the
equestrian order by the comitia--a creation of peers after the most
comprehensive style, which would have reduced the senate into the most
complete dependence on the chief of the state.

Character of the Constitution of Gaius Gracchus

This was the political constitution which Gaius Gracchus projected
and, in its most essential points, carried out during the two years
of his tribunate (631, 632), without, so far as we can see,
encountering any resistance worthy of mention, and without requiring
to apply force for the attainment of his ends.  The order of sequence
in which these measures were carried can no longer be recognized in
the confused accounts handed down to us, and various questions that
suggest themselves have to remain unanswered.  But it does not seem
as if, in what is missing, many elements of material importance have
escaped us; for as to the principal matters we have quite trustworthy
information, and Gaius was by no means, like his brother, urged on
further and further by the current of events, but evidently had a well-
considered and comprehensive plan, the substance of which he fully
embodied in a series of special laws.  Now the Sempronian constitution
itself shows very clearly to every one who is able and willing to
see, that Gaius Gracchus did not at all, as many good-natured
people in ancient and modern times have supposed, wish to place
the Roman republic on new democratic bases, but that on the contrary
he wished to abolish it and to introduce in its stead a -tyrannis---
that is, in modern language, a monarchy not of the feudal or of the
theocratic, but of the Napoleonic absolute, type--in the form of a
magistracy continued for life by regular re-election and rendered
absolute by an unconditional control over the formally sovereign
comitia, an unlimited tribuneship of the people for life.  In fact
if Gracchus, as his words and still more his works plainly testify,
aimed at the overthrow of the government of the senate, what other
political organization but the -tyrannis- remained possible, after
overthrowing the aristocratic government, in a commonwealth which
had outgrown primary assemblies and for which parliamentary government
did not exist? Dreamers such as was his predecessor, and knaves such
as after-times produced, might call this in question; but Gaius
Gracchus was a statesman, and though the formal shape, which that great
man had inwardly projected for his great work, has not been handed
down to us and may be conceived of very variously, yet he was beyond
doubt aware of what he was doing.  Little as the intention of
usurping monarchical power can be mistaken, as little will those
who survey the whole circumstances on this account blame Gracchus.
An absolute monarchy is a great misfortune for a nation, but it is
a less misfortune than an absolute oligarchy; and history cannot
censure one who imposes on a nation the lesser suffering instead
of the greater, least of all in the case of a nature so vehemently
earnest and so far aloof from all that is vulgar as was that of Gaius
Gracchus.  Nevertheless it may not conceal the fact that his whole
legislation was pervaded in a most pernicious way by conflicting
aims; for on the one hand it aimed at the public good, while on the
other hand it ministered to the personal objects and in fact the
personal vengeance of the ruler.  Gracchus earnestly laboured to find
a remedy for social evils, and to check the spread of pauperism; yet
he at the same time intentionally reared up a street proletariate of
the worst kind in the capital by his distributions of corn, which were
designed to be, and became, a premium to all the lazy and hungry civic
rabble.  Gracchus censured in the bitterest terms the venality of
the senate, and in particular laid bare with unsparing and just
severity the scandalous traffic which Manius Aquillius had driven with
the provinces of Asia Minor;(25) yet it was through the efforts of
the same man that the sovereign populace of the capital got itself
alimented, in return for its cares of government, by the body of its
subjects.  Gracchus warmly disapproved the disgraceful spoliation of
the provinces, and not only instituted proceedings of wholesome
severity in particular cases, but also procured the abolition of the
thoroughly insufficient senatorial courts, before which even Scipio
Aemilianus had vainly staked his whole influence to bring the most
decided criminals to punishment.  Yet he at the same time, by the
introduction of courts composed of merchants, surrendered the
provincials with their hands fettered to the party of material
interests, and thereby to a despotism still more unscrupulous than
that of the aristocracy had been; and he introduced into Asia a
taxation, compared with which even the form of taxation current after
the Carthaginian model in Sicily might be called mild and humane--
just because on the one hand he needed the party of moneyed men,
and on the other hand required new and comprehensive resources to
meet his distributions of grain and the other burdens newly imposed
on the finances.  Gracchus beyond doubt desired a firm administration
and a well-regulated dispensing of justice, as numerous thoroughly
judicious ordinances testify; yet his new system of administration
rested on a continuous series of individual usurpations only formally
legalized, and he intentionally drew the judicial system--which every
well-ordered state will endeavour as far as possible to place, if not
above political parties, at any rate aloof from them--into the midst
of the whirlpool of revolution.  Certainly the blame of these
conflicting tendencies in Gaius Gracchus is chargeable to a very great
extent on his position rather than on himself personally.  On the
very threshold of the -tyrannis- he was confronted by the fatal
dilemma, moral and political, that the same man had at one and the
same time to maintain his ground, we may say, as a robber-chieftain
and to lead the state as its first citizen--a dilemma to which
Pericles, Caesar, and Napoleon had also to make dangerous sacrifices.
But the conduct of Gaius Gracchus cannot be wholly explained from
this necessity; along with it there worked in him the consuming
passion, the glowing revenge, which foreseeing its own destruction
hurls the firebrand into the house of the foe.  He has himself
expressed what he thought of his ordinance as to the jurymen and similar
measures intended to divide the aristocracy; he called them daggers
which he had thrown into the Forum that the burgesses--the men of
rank, obviously--might lacerate each other with them.  He was a
political incendiary.  Not only was the hundred years' revolution which
dates from him, so far as it was one man's work, the work of Gaius
Gracchus, but he was above all the true founder of that terrible
urban proletariate flattered and paid by the classes above it, which
through its aggregation in the capital--the natural consequence of
the largesses of corn--became at once utterly demoralized and aware
of its power, and which--with its demands, sometimes stupid, sometimes
knavish, and its talk of the sovereignty of the people--lay like
an incubus for five hundred years upon the Roman commonwealth and
only perished along with it And yet--this greatest of political
transgressors was in turn the regenerator of his country.  There is
scarce a structural idea in Roman monarchy, which is not traceable
to Gaius Gracchus.  From him proceeded the maxim--founded doubtless
in a certain sense in the nature of the old traditional laws of war,
but yet, in the extension and practical application now given to it,
foreign to the older state-law--that all the land of the subject
communities was to be regarded as the private property of the state;
a maxim, which was primarily employed to vindicate the right of the
state to tax that land at pleasure, as was the case in Asia, or to
apply it for the institution of colonies, as was done in Africa,
and which became afterwards a fundamental principle of law under the
empire.  From him proceeded the tactics, whereby demagogues and
tyrants, leaning for support on material interests, break down the
governing Aristocracy, but subsequently legitimize the change of
constitution by substituting a strict and efficient administration
for the previous misgovernment.  To him, in particular, are traceable
the first steps towards such a reconciliation between Rome and the
provinces as the establishment of monarchy could not but bring in its
train; the attempt to rebuild Carthage destroyed by Italian rivalry
and generally to open the way for Italian emigration towards the
provinces, formed the first link in the long chain of that momentous
and beneficial course of action.  Right and wrong, fortune and
misfortune were so inextricably blended in this singular man
and in this marvellous political constellation, that it may well
beseem history in this case--though it beseems her but seldom--
to reserve her judgment.

The Question As to the Allies

When Gracchus had substantially completed the new constitution
projected by him for the state, he applied himself to a second and
more difficult work.  The question as to the Italian allies was still
undecided.  What were the views of the democratic leaders regarding
it, had been rendered sufficiently apparent.(26) They naturally
desired the utmost possible extension of the Roman franchise, not
merely that they might bring in the domains occupied by the Latins for
distribution, but above all that they might strengthen their body of
adherents by the enormous mass of the new burgesses, might bring the
comitial machine still more fully under their power by widening the
body of privileged electors, and generally might abolish a distinction
which had now with the fall of the republican constitution lost all
serious importance.  But here they encountered resistance from their
own party, and especially from that band which otherwise readily gave
its sovereign assent to all which it did or did not understand.
For the simple reason that Roman citizenship seemed to these people,
so to speak, like a partnership which gave them a claim to share in
sundry very tangible profits, direct and indirect, they were not at
all disposed to enlarge the number of the partners.  The rejection
of the Fulvian law in 629, and the insurrection of the Fregellans
arising out of it, were significant indications both of the obstinate
perseverance of the fraction of the burgesses that ruled the comitia,
and of the impatient urgency of the allies.  Towards the end of his
second tribunate (632) Gracchus, probably urged by obligations which
he had undertaken towards the allies, ventured on a second attempt.
In concert with Marcus Flaccus--who, although a consular, had again
taken the tribuneship of the people, in order now to carry the law
which he had formerly proposed without success--he made a proposal
to grant to the Latins the full franchise, and to the other Italian
allies the former rights of the Latins.  But the proposal encountered
the united opposition of the senate and the mob of the capital.
The nature of this coalition and its mode of conflict are clearly and
distinctly seen from an accidentally preserved fragment of the speech
which the consul Gaius Fannius made to the burgesses in opposition to
the proposal.  "Do you then think," said the Optimate, "that, if you
confer the franchise on the Latins, you will be able to find a place
in future--just as you are now standing there in front of me--in the
burgess-assembly, or at the games and popular amusements? Do you not
believe, on the contrary, that those people will occupy every spot?"
Among the burgesses of the fifth century, who on one day conferred
the franchise on all the Sabines, such an orator might perhaps have
been hissed; those of the seventh found his reasoning uncommonly clear
and the price of the assignation of the Latin domains, which was
offered to it by Gracchus, far too low.  The very circumstance, that
the senate carried a permission to eject from the city all non-
burgesses before the day for the decisive vote, showed the fate in
store for the proposal.  And when before the voting Livius Drusus,
a colleague of Gracchus, interposed his veto against the law, the
people received the veto in such a way that Gracchus could not
venture to proceed further or even to prepare for Drusus the fate
of Marcus Octavius.

Overthrow of Gracchus

It was, apparently, this success which emboldened the senate to
attempt the overthrow of the victorious demagogue.  The weapons of
attack were substantially the same with which Gracchus himself had
formerly operated.  The power of Gracchus rested on the mercantile
class and the proletariate; 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
proletariate 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 Gaius Gracchus.
The institutions of Gracchus stood, for the moment at least,
immoveably 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.

Rival Demagogism of the Senate
The Livian Laws

As a matter of course, the senate offered to the proletariate 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,(27) and to declare their allotments to be free and
alienable property; and, further, to provide for the proletariate
not in transmarine, but in twelve Italian, colonies, each of 3000
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
honourable 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
now existed 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 endeavour to draw
the fair bond between the nobles and the proletariate 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
for 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 actings.  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
re-elect him when he stood for the third time as a candidate for the
tribunate for the year 633; on which occasion, however, there are
alleged to have been unjust proceedings on the part of the tribune
presiding at the election, who had been formerly 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, who as
praetor in 629 had conquered Fregellae, one of the most decided
and least scrupulous chiefs of the strict aristocratic party,
and a man firmly resolved to get rid of their dangerous antagonist
at the earliest opportunity.

Attack on the Transmarine Colonialization
Downfall of Gracchus

Such an opportunity soon occurred.  On the 10th of December, 632,
Gracchus ceased to be tribune of the people; on the 1st of January,
633, Opimius entered on his office.  The first attack, as was fair,
was directed against the most useful and the most unpopular measure of
Gracchus, the re-establishment of Carthage.  While the transmarine
colonies had hitherto been only indirectly assailed through the
greater allurements of the Italian, African hyaenas, 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
Junonia.  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, and amidst 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 hand, haughtily
ordered the "bad citizens" to quit the porch, and seemed as though he
would lay hands on Gaius 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 sacrilegious 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,(28) 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 the section of the equites adhering to them--who by order
of the consul had all appeared in arms and each attended by two
armed slaves.  None of the aristocracy were 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 entrusted 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 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 entrenched
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 proclamation to be
made in the streets that the government would give to whosoever should
bring the head of Gracchus or of Flaccus its literal weight in gold,
and that they would guarantee complete indemnity to every one who
should leave the Aventine before the beginning of the conflict.
The ranks on the Aventine speedily thinned; the valiant nobility in
union with the Cretans and the slaves stormed the almost undefended
mount, and killed all whom they found, about 250 persons, mostly of
humble rank.  Marcus Flaccus fled with his eldest son to a place of
concealment, where they were soon afterwards 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 to face
his pursuers and allowed themselves to be cut down, 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
singly withstood 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, were afterwards 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; 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 3000 of them are said
to have been strangled in prison, amongst 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(29) and
other shrines erected on similar occasions to Concord were situated,
these 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 the conqueror of Zama, all of whom--first Tiberius
Gracchus, then Scipio Aemilianus, and lastly the youngest and the
mightiest, Gaius 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 towards the two
noble brothers and especially towards Gaius during their life, was
touchingly displayed also after their death in the almost religious
veneration which the multitude, in spite of all precautions of
police, continued to pay to their memory and to the spots where
they had fallen.

CHAPTER IV

The Rule of the Restoration

Vacancy in the Government

The new structure, which Gaius Gracchus had reared, became on
his death a ruin.  His death indeed, like that of his brother, was
primarily a mere act of vengeance; but it was at the same time a very
material step towards the restoration of the old constitution, when
the person of the monarch was taken away from the monarchy, just as
it was on the point of being established.  It was all the more so in
the present instance, because after the fall of Gaius and the sweeping
and bloody prosecutions of Opimius there existed at the moment
absolutely no one, who, either by blood-relationship to the fallen
chief of the state or by preeminent ability, might feel himself
warranted in even attempting to occupy the vacant place.  Gaius
had departed from the world childless, and the son whom Tiberius
had left behind him died before reaching manhood; the whole popular
party, as it was called, was literally without any one who could be
named as leader.  The Gracchan constitution resembled a fortress
without a commander; the walls and garrison were uninjured, but
the general was wanting, and there was no one to take possession of
the vacant place save the very government which had been overthrown.

The Restored Aristocracy

So it accordingly happened.  After the decease of Gaius Gracchus
without heirs, the government of the senate as it were spontaneously
resumed its place; and this was the more natural, that it had not
been, in the strict sense, formally abolished by the tribune, but
had merely been reduced to a practical nullity by his exceptional
proceedings.  Yet we should greatly err, if we should discern in
this restoration nothing further than a relapse of the state-machine
into the old track which had been trodden and worn for centuries.
Restoration is always revolution; but in this case it was not so
much the old government as the old governor that was restored.
The oligarchy made its appearance newly equipped in the armour of
the -tyrannis- which had been overthrown.  As the senate had beaten
Gracchus from the field with his own weapons, so it continued in the
most essential points to govern with the constitution of the Gracchi;
though certainly with the ulterior idea, if not of setting it aside
entirely, at any rate of thoroughly purging it in due time from the
elements really hostile to the ruling aristocracy.

Prosecutions of the Democrats

At first the reaction was mainly directed against persons.  Publius
Popillius was recalled from banishment after the enactments relating
to him had been cancelled (633), and a warfare of prosecution was
waged against the adherents of Gracchus; whereas the attempt of
the popular party to have Lucius Opimius after his resignation of
office condemned for high treason was frustrated by the partisans
of the government (634).  The character of this government of
the restoration is significantly indicated by the progress of the
aristocracy in soundness of sentiment.  Gaius Carbo, once the ally
of the Gracchi, had for long been a convert,(1) and had but recently
shown his zeal and his usefulness as defender of Opimius.  But he
remained the renegade; when the same accusation was raised against him
by the democrats as against Opimius, the government were not unwilling
to let him fall, and Carbo, seeing himself lost between the two
parties, died by his own hand.  Thus the men of the reaction showed
themselves in personal questions pure aristocrats.  But the reaction
did not immediately attack the distributions of grain, the taxation
of the province of Asia, or the Gracchan arrangement as to the jurymen
and courts; on the contrary, it not only spared the mercantile
class and the proletariate of the capital, but continued to render
homage, as it had already done in the introduction of the Livian
laws, to these powers and especially to the proletariate far more
decidedly than had been done by the Gracchi.  This course was not
adopted merely because the Gracchan revolution still thrilled for
long the minds of its contemporaries and protected its creations;
the fostering and cherishing at least of the interests of the populace
was in fact perfectly compatible with the personal advantage of
the aristocracy, and thereby nothing further was sacrificed than
merely the public weal.

The Domain Question under the Restoration

All those measures which were devised by Gaius Gracchus for the
promotion of the public welfare--the best but, as may readily be
conceived, also the most unpopular part of his legislation--were
allowed by the aristocracy to drop.  Nothing was so speedily and so
successfully assailed as the noblest of his projects, the scheme of
introducing a legal equality first between the Roman burgesses and
Italy, and thereafter between Italy and the provinces, and--inasmuch
as the distinction between the merely ruling and consuming and the
merely serving and working members of the state was thus done away--
at the same time solving the social question by the most comprehensive
and systematic emigration known in history.  With all the determination
and all the peevish obstinacy of dotage the restored oligarchy
obtruded the principle of deceased generations--that Italy must
remain the ruling land and Rome the ruling city in Italy--afresh
on the present.  Even in the lifetime of Gracchus the claims of
the Italian allies had been decidedly rejected, and the great idea of
transmarine colonization had been subjected to a very serious attack,
which became the immediate cause of Gracchus' fall.  After his
death the scheme of restoring Carthage was set aside with little
difficulty by the government party, although the individual allotments
already distributed there were left to the recipients.  It is true
that they could not prevent a similar foundation by the democratic
party from succeeding at another point: in the course of the conquests
beyond the Alps which Marcus Flaccus had begun, the colony of Narbo
(Narbonne) was founded there in 636, the oldest transmarine burgess-
city in the Roman empire, which, in spite of manifold attacks by the
government party and in spite of a proposal directly made by the
senate to abolish it, permanently held its ground, protected, as it
probably was, by the mercantile interests that were concerned.  But,
apart from this exception--in its isolation not very important--the
government was uniformly successful in preventing the assignation
of land out of Italy.

The Italian domain-question was settled in a similar spirit.
The Italian colonies of Gaius, especially Capua, were cancelled,
and such of them as had already been planted were again broken up;
only the unimportant one of Tarentum was allowed to subsist in the
form of the new town Neptunia placed alongside of the former Greek
community.  So much of the domains as had already been distributed
by non-colonial assignation remained in the hands of the recipients;
the restrictions imposed on them by Gracchus in the interest of the
commonwealth--the ground-rent and the prohibition of alienation--had
already been abolished by Marcus Drusus.  With reference on the other
hand to the domains still possessed by right of occupation--which,
over and above the domain-land enjoyed by the Latins, must have mostly
consisted of the estates left with their holders in accordance with
the Gracchan maximum(2)--it was resolved definitively to secure them to
those who had hitherto been occupants and to preclude the possibility
of future distribution.  It was primarily from these lands, no doubt,
that the 36,000 new farm-allotments promised by Drusus were to have
been formed; but they saved themselves the trouble of inquiring where
those hundreds of thousands of acres of Italian domain-land were to
be found, and tacitly shelved the Livian colonial law, which had
served its purpose;--only perhaps the small colony of Scolacium
(Squillace) may be referred to the colonial law of Drusus.  On the
other hand by a law, which the tribune of the people Spurius Thorius
carried under the instructions of the senate, the allotment-commission
was abolished in 635, and there was imposed on the occupants of the
domain-land a fixed rent, the proceeds of which went to the benefit
of the populace of the capital--apparently by forming part of the fund
for the distribution of corn; proposals going still further, including
perhaps an increase of the largesses of grain, were averted by the
judicious tribune of the people Gaius Marius.  The final step was
taken eight years afterwards (643), when by a new decree of the
people(3) the occupied domain-land was directly converted into the
rent-free private property of the former occupants.  It was added,
that in future domain-land was not to be occupied at all, but was
either to be leased or to lie open as public pasture; in the latter
case provision was made by the fixing of a very low maximum of ten
head of large and fifty head of small cattle, that the large herd-
owner should not practically exclude the small.  In these judicious
regulations the injurious character of the occupation-system, which
moreover was long ago given up,(4) was at length officially recognized,
but unhappily they were only adopted when it had already deprived the
state in substance of its domanial possessions.  While the Roman
aristocracy thus took care of itself and got whatever occupied land
was still in its hands converted into its own property, it at the same
time pacified the Italian allies, not indeed by conferring on them the
property of the Latin domain-land which they and more especially their
municipal aristocracy enjoyed, but by preserving unimpaired the rights
in relation to it guaranteed to them by their charters.  The opposite
party was in the unfortunate position, that in the most important
material questions the interests of the Italians ran diametrically
counter to those of the opposition in the capital; in fact the
Italians entered into a species of league with the Roman government,
and sought and found protection from the senate against the
extravagant designs of various Roman demagogues.

The Proletariate and the Equestrian Order under the Restoration

While the restored government was thus careful thoroughly to eradicate
the germs of improvement which existed in the Gracchan constitution,
it remained completely powerless in presence of the hostile powers
that had been, not for the general weal, aroused by Gracchus.
The proletariate of the capital continued to have a recognized title
to aliment; the senate likewise acquiesced in the taking of the jurymen
from the mercantile order, repugnant though this yoke was to the
better and prouder portion of the aristocracy.  The fetters which
the aristocracy wore did not beseem its dignity; but we do not find
that it seriously set itself to get rid of them.  The law of Marcus
Aemilius Scaurus in 632, which at least enforced the constitutional
restrictions on the suffrage of freedmen, was for long the only
attempt--and that a very tame one--on the part of the senatorial
government once more to restrain their mob-tyrants.  The proposal,
which the consul Quintus Caepio seventeen years after the introduction
of the equestrian tribunals (648) brought in for again entrusting the
trials to senatorial jurymen, showed what the government wished; but
showed also how little it could do, when the question was one not
of squandering domains but of carrying a measure in the face of
an influential order.  It broke down.(5)  The government was not
emancipated from the inconvenient associates who shared its power;
but these measures probably contributed still further to disturb the
never sincere agreement of the ruling aristocracy with the merchant-
class and the proletariate.  Both were very well aware, that the
senate granted all its concessions only from fear and with reluctance;
permanently attached to the rule of the senate by considerations
neither of gratitude nor of interest, both were very ready to render
similar services to any other master who offered them more or even as
much, and had no objection, if an opportunity occurred, to cheat or
to thwart the senate.  Thus the restoration continued to govern with
the desires and sentiments of a legitimate aristocracy, and with
the constitution and means of government of a -tyrannis-.  Its rule
not only rested on the same bases as that of Gracchus, but it was
equally ill, and in fact still worse, consolidated; it was strong,
when in league with the populace it overthrew serviceable
institutions, but it was utterly powerless, when it had to face the
bands of the streets or the interests of the merchants.  It sat on
the vacated throne with an evil conscience and divided hopes, indignant
at the institutions of the state which it ruled and yet incapable of
even systematically assailing them, vacillating in all its conduct
except where its own material advantage prompted a decision, a picture
of faithlessness towards its own as well as the opposite party, of
inward inconsistency, of the most pitiful impotence, of the meanest
selfishness--an unsurpassed ideal of misrule.

The Men of the Restoration

It could not be otherwise; the whole nation was in a state of
intellectual and moral decline, but especially the upper classes.
The aristocracy before the period of the Gracchi was truly not over-
rich in talent, and the benches of the senate were crowded by a pack
of cowardly and dissolute nobles; nevertheless there sat in it Scipio
Aemilianus, Gaius Laelius, Quintus Metellus, Publius Crassus, Publius
Scaevola and numerous other respectable and able men, and an observer
favourably predisposed might be of opinion that the senate maintained
a certain moderation in injustice and a certain decorum in
misgovernment.  This aristocracy had been overthrown and then
reinstated; henceforth there rested on it the curse of restoration.
While the aristocracy had formerly governed for good or ill, and for
more than a century without any sensible opposition, the crisis which
it had now passed through revealed to it, like a flash of lightning
in a dark night, the abyss which yawned before its feet.  Was it any
wonder that henceforward rancour always, and terror wherever they
durst, characterized the government of the lords of the old
nobility? that those who governed confronted as an united and compact
party, with far more sternness and violence than hitherto, the non-
governing multitude? that family-policy now prevailed once more, just
as in the worst times of the patriciate, so that e. g. the four
sons and (probably) the two nephews of Quintus Metellus--with a
single exception persons utterly insignificant and some of them called
to office on account of their very simplicity--attained within fifteen
years (631-645) all of them to the consulship, and all with one
exception also to triumphs--to say nothing of sons-in-law and so
forth? that the more violent and cruel the bearing of any of their
partisans towards the opposite party, he received the more signal
honour, and every outrage and every infamy were pardoned in the
genuine aristocrat? that the rulers and the ruled resembled two
parties at war in every respect, save in the fact that in their
warfare no international law was recognized? It was unhappily only
too palpable that, if the old aristocracy beat the people with rods,
this restored aristocracy chastised it with scorpions.  It returned
to power; but it returned neither wiser nor better.  Never hitherto
had the Roman aristocracy been so utterly deficient in men of
statesmanly and military capacity, as it was during this epoch
of restoration between the Gracchan and the Cinnan revolutions.

Marcus Aemilius Scaurus

A significant illustration of this is afforded by the chief of the
senatorial party at this time, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus.  The son of
highly aristocratic but not wealthy parents, and thus compelled to
make use of his far from mean talents, he raised himself to the
consulship (639) and censorship (645), was long the chief of the
senate and the political oracle of his order, and immortalized his
name not only as an orator and author, but also as the originator
of some of the principal public buildings executed in this century.
But, if we look at him more closely, his greatly praised achievements
amount merely to this much, that, as a general, he gained some
cheap village triumphs in the Alps, and, as a statesman, won by his
laws about voting and luxury some victories nearly as serious over
the revolutionary spirit of the times.  His real talent consisted
in this, that, while he was quite as accessible and bribable as any
other upright senator, he discerned with some cunning the moment when
the matter began to be hazardous, and above all by virtue of his
superior and venerable appearance acted the part of Fabricius before
the public.  In a military point of view, no doubt, we find some
honourable exceptions of able officers belonging to the highest
circles of the aristocracy; but the rule was, that the lords of
quality, when they were to assume the command of armies, hastily
read up from the Greek military manuals and the Roman annals as much
as was required for holding a military conversation, and then, when
in the field, acted most wisely by entrusting the real command to an
officer of humble lineage but of tried capacity and tried discretion.
In fact, if a couple of centuries earlier the senate resembled an
assembly of kings, these their successors played not ill the part of
princes.  But the incapacity of these restored aristocrats was fully
equalled by their political and moral worthlessness.  If the state
of religion, to which we shall revert, did not present a faithful
reflection of the wild dissoluteness of this epoch, and if the
external history of the period did not exhibit the utter depravity of
the Roman nobles as one of its most essential elements, the horrible
crimes, which came to light in rapid succession among the highest
circles of Rome, would alone suffice to indicate their character.

Administration under the Restoration
Social State of Italy

The administration, internal and external, was what was to be
expected under such a government.  The social ruin of Italy spread
with alarming rapidity; since the aristocracy had given itself legal
permission to buy out the small holders, and in its new arrogance
allowed itself with growing frequency to drive them out, the farms
disappeared like raindrops in the sea.  That the economic oligarchy
at least kept pace with the political, is shown by the opinion
expressed about 650 by Lucius Marcius Philippus, a man of moderate
democratic views, that there were among the whole burgesses hardly
2000 families of substantial means.  A practical commentary on this
state of things was once more furnished by the servile insurrections,
which during the first years of the Cimbrian war broke out annually
in Italy, e. g. at Nuceria, at Capua, and in the territory of
Thurii.  This last conspiracy was so important that the urban
praetor had to march with a legion against it and yet overcame
the insurrection not by force of arms, but only by insidious treachery.
It was moreover a suspicious circumstance, that the insurrection was
headed not by a slave, but by the Roman knight Titus Vettius, whom
his debts had driven to the insane step of manumitting his slaves
and declaring himself their king (650).  The apprehensions of the
government with reference to the accumulation of masses of slaves in
Italy are shown by the measures of precaution respecting the gold-
washings of Victumulae, which were carried on after 611 on account of
the Roman government: the lessees were at first bound not to employ
more than 5000 labourers, and subsequently the workings were totally
stopped by decree of the senate.  Under such a government as the
present there was every reason in fact for fear, if, as was very
possible, a Transalpine host should penetrate into Italy and summon
the slaves, who were in great part of kindred lineage, to arms.

The Provinces
Occupation of Cilicia

The provinces suffered still more in comparison.  We shall have an
idea of the condition of Sicily and Asia, if we endeavour to realize
what would be the aspect of matters in the East Indies provided the
English aristocracy were similar to the Roman aristocracy of that
day.  The legislation, which entrusted the mercantile class with
control over the magistrates, compelled the latter to make common cause
to a certain extent with the former, and to purchase for themselves
unlimited liberty of plundering and protection from impeachment by
unconditional indulgence towards the capitalists in the provinces.
In addition to these official and semi-official robbers, freebooters
and pirates pillaged all the countries of the Mediterranean.  In the
Asiatic waters more especially the buccaneers carried their outrages
so far that even the Roman government found itself under the necessity
in 652 of despatching to Cilicia a fleet, mainly composed of the vessels
of the dependent mercantile cities, under the praetor Marcus Antonius,
who was invested with proconsular powers.  This fleet captured a number
of corsair-vessels and destroyed some rock-strongholds and not only so,
but the Romans even settled themselves permanently there, and in order
to the suppression of piracy in its chief seat, the Rugged or western
Cilicia occupied strong military positions--the first step towards the
 establishment of the province of Cilicia, which thenceforth appears
among the Roman magistracies.(7)  The design was commendable, and the
scheme in itself was suitable for its purpose; only, the continuance
and the increase of the evil of piracy in the Asiatic waters, and
especiallyin Cilicia, unhappily showed with how inadequate means
the pirates were combated from the newly-acquired position.

Revolt of the Slaves

But nowhere did the impotence and perversity of the Roman provincial
administration come to light so conspicuously as in the insurrections
of the slave proletariate, which seemed to have revived on their
former footing simultaneously with the restoration of the aristocracy.
These insurrections of the slaves swelling from revolts into wars--
which had emerged just about 620 as one, and that perhaps the proximate,
cause of the Gracchan revolution--were renewed and repeated with dreary
uniformity.  Again, as thirty years before, a ferment pervaded the body
of slaves throughout the Roman empire.  We have already mentioned
the Italian conspiracies.  The miners in the Attic silver-mines rose
in revolt, occupied the promontory of Sunium, and issuing thence
pillaged for a length of time the surrounding country.  Similar
movements appeared at other places.

The Second Sicilian Slave-War

But the chief seat of these fearful commotions was once more Sicily
with its plantations and its hordes of slaves brought thither from
Asia Minor.  It is significant of the greatness of the evil, that
an attempt of the government to check the worst iniquities of the
slaveholders was the immediate cause of the new insurrection.  That
the free proletarians in Sicily were little better than the slaves,
had been shown by their attitude in the first insurrection;(8)
after it was subdued, the Roman speculators took their revenge and
reduced numbers of the free provincials into slavery.  In consequence
of a sharp enactment issued against this by the senate in 650, Publius
Licinius Nerva, the governor of Sicily at the time, appointed a court
for deciding on claims of freedom to sit in Syracuse.  The court
went earnestly to work; in a short time decision was given in eight
hundred processes against the slave-owners, and the number of causes in
dependence was daily on the increase.  The terrified planters hastened
to Syracuse, to compel the Roman governor to suspend such unparalleled
administration of justice; Nerva was weak enough to let himself be
terrified, and in harsh language informed the non-free persons
requesting trial that they should forgo their troublesome demand for
right and justice and should instantly return to those who called
themselves their masters.  Those who were thus dismissed, instead of
doing as he bade them, formed a conspiracy and went to the mountains.

The governor was not prepared for military measures, and even the
wretched militia of the island was not immediately at hand; so that he
concluded an alliance with one of the best known captains of banditti
in the island, and induced him by the promise of personal pardon to
betray the revolted slaves into the hands of the Romans.  He thus
gained the mastery over this band.  But another band of runaway
slaves succeeded in defeating a division of the garrison of Enna
(Castrogiovanni); and this first success procured for the insurgents--
what they especially needed--arms and a conflux of associates.
The armour of their fallen or fugitive opponents furnished the first
basis of their military organization, and the number of the insurgents
soon swelled to many thousands.  These Syrians in a foreign land
already, like their predecessors, seemed to themselves not unworthy
to be governed by kings, as were their countrymen at home; and--
parodying the trumpery king of their native land down to the very
name--they placed the slave Salvius at their head as king Tryphon.
In the district between Enna and Leontini (Lentini) where these bands
had their head-quarters, the open country was wholly in the hands of
the insurgents and Morgantia and other walled towns were already
besieged by them, when the Roman governor with his hastily-collected
Sicilian and Italian troops fell upon the slave-army in front
of Morgantia.  He occupied the undefended camp; but the slaves,
although surprised, made a stand.  In the combat that ensued the
levy of the island not only gave way at the first onset, but, as the
slaves allowed every one who threw down his arms to escape unhindered,
the militia almost without exception embraced the good opportunity
of taking their departure, and the Roman army completely dispersed.
Had the slaves in Morgantia been willing to make common cause with
their comrades before the gates, the town was lost; but they preferred
to accept the gift of freedom in legal form from their masters, and by
their valour helped them to save the town--whereupon the Roman governor
declared the promise of liberty solemnly given to the slaves by the
masters to be void in law, as having been illegally extorted.

Athenion

While the revolt thus spread after an alarming manner in the interior
of the island, a second broke out on the west coast.  It was headed
by Athenion.  He had formerly been, just like Cleon, a dreaded
captain of banditti in his native country of Cilicia, and had been
carried thence as a slave to Sicily.  He secured, just as his
predecessors had done, the adherence of the Greeks and Syrians
especially by prophesyings and other edifying impostures; but skilled
in war and sagacious as he was, he did not, like the other leaders, arm
the whole mass that flocked to him, but formed out of the men able for
warfare an organized army, while he assigned the remainder to peaceful
employment.  In consequence of his strict discipline, which repressed
all vacillation and all insubordinate movement in his troops, and his
gentle treatment of the peaceful inhabitants of the country and even of
the captives, he gained rapid and great successes.  The Romans were on
this occasion disappointed in the hope that the two leaders would fall
out; Athenion voluntarily submitted to the far less capable king
Tryphon, and thus preserved unity among the insurgents.  These soon
ruled with virtually absolute power over the flat country, where
the free proletarians again took part more or less openly with the
slaves; the Roman authorities were not in a position to take the field
against them, and had to rest content with protecting the towns,
which were in the most lamentable plight, by means of the militia of
Sicily and that of Africa brought over in all haste.  The administration
of justice was suspended over the whole island, and force was
the only law.  As no cultivator living in town ventured any longer
beyond the gates, and no countryman ventured into the towns, the most
fearful famine set in, and the town-population of this island which
formerly fed Italy had to be supported by the Roman authorities
sending supplies of grain.  Moreover, conspiracies of the town-
slaves everywhere threatened to break out within, while the insurgent
armies lay before, the walls; even Messana was within a hair's breadth
of being conquered by Athenion.

Aquillius

Difficult as it was for the government during the serious war with
the Cimbri to place a second army in the field, it could not avoid
sending in 651 an army of 14,000 Romans and Italians, not including
the transmarine militia, under the praetor Lucius Lucullus to the
island.  The united slave-army was stationed in the mountains above
Sciacca, and accepted the battle which Lucullus offered.  The better
military organization of the Romans gave them the victory; Athenion
was left for dead on the field, Tryphon had to throw himself into the
mountain-fortress of Triocala; the insurgents deliberated earnestly
whether it was possible to continue the struggle longer.  But the
party, which was resolved to hold out to the last man, retained the
upper hand; Athenion, who had been saved in a marvellous manner,
reappeared among his troops and revived their sunken courage; above
all Lucullus with incredible negligence took not the smallest step
to follow up his victory; in fact, he is said to have intentionally
disorganized the army and to have burned his field baggage, with a
view to screen the total inefficacy of his administration and not to
be cast into the shade by his successor.  Whether this was true or
not, his successor Gaius Servilius (652) obtained no better results;
and both generals were afterwards criminally impeached and condemned
for their conduct in office--which, however, was not at all a certain
proof of their guilt.  Athenion, who after the death of Tryphon
(652) was invested with the sole command, stood victorious at the
head of a considerable army, when in 653 Manius Aquillius, who had
during the previous year distinguished himself under Marius in the
war with the Teutones, was as consul and governor entrusted with the
conduct of the war.  After two years of hard conflicts--Aquillius is
said to have fought in person with Athenion, and to have killed him
in single combat--the Roman general at length put down the desperate
resistance, and vanquished the insurgents in their last retreats by
famine.  The slaves on the island were prohibited from bearing arms
and peace was again restored to it, or, in other words, its recent
tormentors were relieved by those of former use and wont; in fact,
the victor himself occupied a prominent place among the numerous
and energetic robber-magistrates of this period.  Any one who still
required a proof of the internal quality of the government of
the restored aristocracy might be referred to the origin and
to the conduct of this second Sicilian slave-war, which,
lasted for five years.

The Dependent States

But wherever the eye might turn throughout the wide sphere of Roman
administration, the same causes and the same effects appeared.
If the Sicilian slave-war showed how far the government was from
being equal to even its simplest task of keeping in check the
proletariate, contemporary events in Africa displayed the skill with
which the Romans now governed the client-states.  About the very time
when the Sicilian slave-war broke out, there was exhibited before
the eyes of the astonished world the spectacle of an unimportant
client-prince able to carry out a fourteen years' usurpation and
insurrection against the mighty republic which had shattered the
kingdoms of Macedonia and Asia with one blow of its weighty arm--
and that not by means of arms, but through the pitiful character
of its rulers.

Numidia
Jugurtha

The kingdom of Numidia stretched from the river Molochath to
the great Syrtis,(9) bordering on the one side with the Mauretanian
kingdom of Tingis (the modern Morocco) and on the other with Cyrene
and Egypt, and surrounding on the west, south, and east the narrow
district of coast which formed the Roman province of Africa.
In addition to the old possessions of the Numidian chiefs, it embraced
by far the greatest portion of the territory which Carthage had possessed
in Africa during the times of its prosperity--including several
important Old-Phoenician cities, such as Hippo Regius (Bona) and Great
Leptis (Lebidah)--altogether the largest and best part of the rich
seaboard of northern Africa.  Numidia was beyond question, next to
Egypt, the most considerable of all the Roman client-states.  After the
death of Massinissa (605), Scipio had divided the sovereign functions
of that prince among his three sons, the kings Micipsa, Gulussa, and
Mastanabal, in such a way that the firstborn obtained the residency
and the state-chest, the second the charge of war, and the third the
administration of justice.(10) Now after the death of his two brothers
Massinissa's eldest son, Micipsa,(11) reigned alone, a feeble peaceful
old man, who was fond of occupying himself more with the study of
Greek philosophy than with affairs of state.  As his sons were not
yet grown up, the reins of government were practically held by an
illegitimate nephew of the king, the prince Jugurtha.  Jugurtha was
no unworthy grandson of Massinissa.  He was a handsome man and a
skilled and courageous rider and hunter; his countrymen held him
in high honour as a clear and sagacious administrator, and he had
displayed his military ability as leader of the Numidian contingent
before Numantia under the eyes of Scipio.  His position in the
kingdom, and the influence which he possessed with the Roman
government by means of his numerous friends and war-comrades, made
it appear to king Micipsa advisable to adopt him (634), and to arrange
in his testament that his own two elder sons Adherbal and Hiempsal,
and his adopted son Jugurtha along with them, should jointly inherit
and govern the kingdom, just as he himself had done with his two
brothers.  For greater security this arrangement was placed under
the guarantee of the Roman government.

The War for the Numidian Succession

Soon afterwards, in 636, king Micipsa died.  The testament came into
force: but the two sons of Micipsa--the vehement Hiempsal still more
than his weak elder brother--soon came into so violent collision
with their cousin whom they looked on as an intruder into the
legitimate line of succession, that the idea of a joint reign of the
three kings had to be abandoned.  An attempt was made to carry out
a division of the heritage; but the quarrelling kings could not agree
as to their quotas of land and treasure, and the protecting power, to
which in this case the decisive word by right belonged, gave itself,
as usual, no concern about this affair.  A rupture took place;
Adherbal and Hiempsal were disposed to characterize their father's
testament as surreptitious and altogether to dispute Jugurtha's right
of joint inheritance, while on the other hand Jugurtha came forward
as a pretender to the whole kingdom.  While the discussions as to the
partition were still going on, Hiempsal was made away with by hired
assassins; then a civil war arose between Adherbal and Jugurtha, in
which all Numidia took part.  With his less numerous but better
disciplined and better led troops Jugurtha conquered, and seized the
whole territory of the kingdom, subjecting the chiefs who adhered to
his cousin to the most cruel persecution.  Adherbal escaped to the
Roman province and proceeded to Rome to make his complaint there.
Jugurtha had expected this, and had made his arrangements to meet the
threatened intervention.  In the camp before Numantia he had learned
more from Rome than Roman tactics; the Numidian prince, introduced
to the circles of the Roman aristocracy, had at the same time been
initiated into the intrigues of Roman coteries, and had studied at
the fountain-head what might be expected from Roman nobles.  Even
then, sixteen years before Micipsa's death, he had entered into
disloyal negotiations as to the Numidian succession with Roman
comrades of rank, and Scipio had been under the necessity of gravely
reminding him that it was becoming in foreign princes to be on terms
of friendship with the Roman state rather than with individual
Roman citizens.  The envoys of Jugurtha appeared in Rome, furnished
with something more than words: that they had chosen the right means
of diplomatic persuasion, was shown by the result.  The most zealous
champions of Adherbal's just title were with incredible rapidity
convinced that Hiempsal had been put to death by his subjects on
account of his cruelty, and that the originator of the war as to the
succession was not Jugurtha, but Adherbal.  Even the leading men in
the senate were shocked at the scandal; Marcus Scaurus sought to
check it, but in vain.  The senate passed over what had taken place
in silence, and ordained that the two surviving testamentary heirs
should have the kingdom equally divided between them, and that, for
the prevention of fresh quarrels, the division should be undertaken
by a commission of the senate.  This was done: the consular Lucius
Opimius, well known through his services in setting aside the
revolution, had embraced the opportunity of gathering the reward
of his patriotism, and had got himself placed at the head of the
commission.  The division turned out thoroughly in favour of Jugurtha,
and not to the disadvantage of the commissioners; Cirta (Constantine)
the capital with its port of Rusicade (Philippeville) was no doubt
given to Adherbal, but by that very arrangement the portion which
fell to him was the eastern part of the kingdom consisting almost
wholly of sandy deserts, while Jugurtha obtained the fertile
and populous western half (what was afterwards Mauretania
Caesariensis and Sitifensis).

Siege of Cirta

This was bad; but matters soon became worse.  In order to be able
under the semblance of self-defence to defraud Adherbal of his portion,
Jugurtha provoked him to war; but when the weak man, rendered wiser
by experience, allowed Jugurtha's horsemen to ravage his territory
unhindered and contented himself with lodging complaints at Rome,
Jugurtha, impatient of these ceremonies, began the war even without
pretext.  Adherbal was totally defeated in the region of the modern
Philippeville, and threw himself into his capital of Cirta in the
immediate vicinity.  While the siege was in progress, and Jugurtha's
troops were daily skirmishing with the numerous Italians who were
settled in Cirta and who took a more vigorous part in the defence of
the city than the Africans themselves, the commission despatched by
the Roman senate on Adherbal's first complaint made its appearance;
composed, of course, of young inexperienced men, such as the
government of those times regularly employed in the ordinary missions
of the state.  The envoys demanded that Jugurtha should allow them
as deputed by the protecting power to Adherbal to enter the city,
and generally that he should suspend hostilities and accept their
mediation.  Jugurtha summarily rejected both demands, and the envoys
hastily returned home--like boys, as they were--to report to the
fathers of the city.  The fathers listened to the report, and
allowed their countrymen in Cirta just to fight on as long as they
pleased.  It was not till, in the fifth month of the siege, a
messenger of Adherbal stole through the entrenchments of the enemy
and a letter of the king full of the most urgent entreaties reached
the senate, that the latter roused itself and actually adopted a
resolution--not to declare war as the minority demanded but to send a
new embassy--an embassy, however, headed by Marcus Scaurus, the great
conqueror of the Taurisci and the freedmen, the imposing hero of
the aristocracy, whose mere appearance would suffice to bring the
refractory king to a different mind.  In fact Jugurtha appeared, as
he was bidden, at Utica to discuss the matter with Scaurus; endless
debates were held; when at length the conference was concluded, not
the slightest result had been obtained.  The embassy returned to Rome
without having declared war, and the king went off again to the
siege of Cirta.  Adherbal found himself reduced to extremities and
despaired of Roman support; the Italians in Cirta moreover, weary of
the siege and firmly relying for their own safety on the terror of the
Roman name, urged a surrender.  So the town capitulated.  Jugurtha
ordered his adopted brother to be executed amid cruel tortures, and
all the adult male population of the town, Africans as well as
Italians, to be put to the sword (642).

Roman Intervention
Treaty between Rome and Numidia

A cry of indignation rose throughout Italy.  The minority in the
senate itself and every one out of the senate unanimously condemned
the government, with whom the honour and interest of the country
seemed mere commodities for sale; loudest of all was the outcry of
the mercantile class, which was most directly affected by the sacrifice
of the Roman and Italian merchants at Cirta.  It is true that the
majority of the senate still even now struggled; they appealed to
the class-interests of the aristocracy, and set in motion all the
contrivances of collegiate procrastination, with a view to preserve
still longer the peace which they loved.  But when Gaius Memmius,
designated as tribune of the people for next year, an active and
eloquent man, brought the matter publicly forward and threatened in
his capacity of tribune to call the worst offenders to judicial account,
the senate permitted war to be declared against Jugurtha (642-3).
The step seemed taken in earnest.  The envoys of Jugurtha were dismissed
from Italy without being admitted to an audience; the new consul
Lucius Calpurnius Bestia, who was distinguished, among the members of
his order at least, by judgment and activity, prosecuted the warlike
preparations with energy; Marcus Scaurus himself took the post of a
commander in the African army.  In a short time a Roman army was on
African ground, and marching upward along the Bagradas (Mejerdah)
advanced into the Numidian kingdom, where the towns most remote from
the seat of the royal power, such as Great Leptis, already voluntarily
sent in their submission, while Bocchus king of Mauretania, although
his daughter was married to Jugurtha, offered friendship and alliance
to the Romans.  Jugurtha himself lost courage, and sent envoys to the
Roman headquarters to request an armistice.  The end of the contest
seemed near, and came still more rapidly than was expected.  The treaty
with Bocchus broke down, because the king, unacquainted with Roman
customs, had conceived that he should be able to conclude a treaty so
advantageous for the Romans without any gratuity, and therefore had
neglected to furnish his envoys with the usual market price of Roman
alliances.  Jugurtha at all events knew Roman institutions better,
and had not omitted to support his proposals for an armistice by a
due accompaniment of money; but he too was deceived.  After the first
negotiations it turned out that not an armistice merely but a peace
was purchaseable at the Roman head-quarters.  The royal treasury
was still well filled with the savings of Massinissa; the transaction
was soon settled.  The treaty was concluded, after it had been for the
sake of form submitted to a council of war whose consent was procured
after an irregular and extremely summary discussion.  Jugurtha
submitted at discretion; but the victor was merciful and gave him back
his kingdom undiminished, in consideration of his paying a moderate
fine and delivering up the Roman deserters and the war elephants
(643); the greater part of the latter the king afterwards repurchased
by bargaining with the individual Roman commandants and officers.

On the news of this peace the storm once more broke forth in Rome.
Everybody knew how the peace had been brought about; even Scaurus was
evidently open to bribery, only at a price higher than the ordinary
senatorial average.  The legal validity of the peace was seriously
assailed in the senate; Gaius Memmius declared that the king, if he
had really submitted unconditionally, could not refuse to appear in
Rome, and that he should accordingly be summoned before them, with
the view of ascertaining how the matter actually stood as to the
thoroughly irregular negotiations for peace by hearing both the
contracting parties.  They yielded to the inconvenient demand: but
at the same time granted a safe-conduct to the king inconsistently
with the law, for he came not as an enemy, but as one who had made
his submission.  Thereupon the king actually appeared at Rome and
presented himself to be heard before the assembled people, which was
with difficulty induced to respect the safe-conduct and to refrain
from tearing in pieces on the spot the murderer of the Italians at
Cirta.  But scarcely had Gaius Memmius addressed his first question
to the king, when one of his colleagues interfered in virtue of his
veto and enjoined the king to be silent.  Here too African gold was
more powerful than the will of the sovereign people and of its
supreme magistrates.  Meanwhile the discussions respecting the
validity of the peace so concluded went on in the senate, and the
new consul Spurius Postumius Albinus zealously supported the proposal
to cancel it, in the expectation that in that case the chief command
in Africa would devolve on him.  This induced Massiva, a grandson of
Massinissa living in Rome, to assert before the senate his claims
to the vacant Numidian kingdom; upon which Bomilcar, one of the
confidants of king Jugurtha, doubtless under his instructions made
away with the rival of his master by assassination, and, when he was
prosecuted on account of it, escaped with Jugurtha's aid from Rome.

Cancelling of the Treaty
Declaration of War
Capitulation of the Romans
Second Peace

This new outrage perpetrated under the eyes of the Roman government
was at least so far effectual, that the senate now cancelled the
peace and dismissed the king from the city (winter of 643-644).
The war was accordingly resumed, and the consul Spurius Albinus was
invested with the command (644).  But the African army down to its
lowest ranks was in a state of disorganization corresponding to such
a political and military superintendence.  Not only had discipline
ceased and the spoliation of Numidian townships and even of the
Roman provincial territory become during the suspension of hostilities
the chief business of the Roman soldiery, but not a few officers
and soldiers had as well as their generals entered into secret
understanding with the enemy.  It is easy to see that such an army
could do nothing in the field; and if Jugurtha on this occasion
bribed the Roman general into inaction, as was afterwards judicially
asserted against the latter, he did in truth what was superfluous.
Spurius Albinus therefore contented himself with doing nothing.
On the other hand his brother who after his departure assumed the
interim command--the equally foolhardy and incapable Aulus Postumius--
in the middle of winter fell on the idea of seizing by a bold coup de
main the treasures of the king, which were kept in the town of Suthul
(afterwards Calama, now Guelma) difficult of access and still more
difficult of conquest.  The army set out thither and reached the
town; but the siege was unsuccessful and without prospect of result,
and, when the king who had remained for a time with his troops in
front of the town went into the desert, the Roman general preferred
to pursue him.  This was precisely what Jugurtha intended in a
nocturnal assault, which was favoured by the difficulties of the
ground and the secret understanding which Jugurtha had with some in
the Roman army, the Numidians captured the Roman camp, and drove
the Romans, many of whom were unarmed, before them in the most
complete and disgraceful rout.  The consequence was a capitulation,
the terms of which--the marching off of the Roman army under the yoke,
the immediate evacuation of the whole Numidian territory, and the
renewal of the treaty cancelled by the senate--were dictated by
Jugurtha and accepted by the Romans (in the beginning of 645).

Dissatisfaction in the Capital

This was too much to be borne.  While the Africans were exulting and
the prospect--thus suddenly opened up--of such an overthrow of the
alien domination as had been reckoned scarcely possible was bringing
numerous tribes of the free and half-free inhabitants of the desert
to the standards of the victorious king, public opinion in Italy was
vehemently aroused against the equally corrupt and pernicious governing
aristocracy, and broke out in a storm of prosecutions which, fostered
by the exasperation of the mercantile class, swept away a succession
of victims from the highest circles of the nobility.  On the proposal
of the tribune of the people Gaius Mamilius Limetanus, in spite of the
timid attempts of the senate to avert the threatened punishment, an
extraordinary jury-commission was appointed to investigate the high
treason that had occurred in connection with the question of the
Numidian succession; and its sentences sent the two former commanders-
in-chief Gaius Bestia and Spurius Albinus as well as Lucius Opimius,
the head of the first African commission and the executioner withal
of Gaius Gracchus, along with numerous other less notable men of the
government party, guilty and innocent, into exile.  That these
prosecutions, however, were only intended to appease the excitement
of public opinion, in the capitalist circles more especially, by the
sacrifice of some of the persons most compromised, and that there was
in them not the slightest trace of a rising of popular indignation
against the government itself, void as it was of right and honour,
is shown very clearly by the fact that no one ventured to attack
the guiltiest of the guilty, the prudent and powerful Scaurus; on
the contrary he was about this very time elected censor and also,
incredible as it may seem, chosen as one of the presidents of the
extraordinary commission of treason.  Still less was any attempt even
made to interfere with the functions of the government, and it was
left solely to the senate to put an end to the Numidian scandal in a
manner as gentle as possible for the aristocracy; for that it was
time to do so, even the most aristocratic aristocrat probably began
to perceive.

Cancelling of the Second Treaty
Metellus Appointed to the Command
Renewal of the War

The senate in the first place cancelled the second treaty of peace--
to surrender to the enemy the commander who had concluded it, as was
done some thirty years before, seemed according to the new ideas of
the sanctity of treaties no longer necessary--and determined, this
time in all earnest, to renew the war.  The supreme command in Africa
was entrusted, as was natural, to an aristocrat, but yet to one of
the few men of quality who in a military and moral point of view were
equal to the task.  The choice fell on Quintus Metellus.  He was,
like the whole powerful family to which he belonged, in principle a
rigid and unscrupulous aristocrat; as a magistrate, he, no doubt,
reckoned it honourable to hire assassins for the good of the state and
would presumably have ridiculed the act of Fabricius towards Pyrrhus
as unpractical knight errantry, but he was an inflexible administrator
accessible neither to fear nor to corruption, and a judicious and
experienced warrior.  In this respect he was so far free from the
prejudices of his order that he selected as his lieutenants not men
of rank, but the excellent officer Publius Rutilius Rufus, who was
esteemed in military circles for his exemplary discipline and as the
author of an altered and improved system of drill, and the brave Latin
farmer's son Gaius Marius, who had risen from the pike.  Attended by
these and other able officers, Metellus presented himself in the course
of 645 as consul and commander-in-chief to the African army, which he
found in such disorder that the generals had not hitherto ventured
to lead it into the enemy's territory and it was formidable to none
save the unhappy inhabitants of the Roman province.  It was
sternly and speedily reorganized, and in the spring of 646.(12)

Metellus led it over the Numidian frontier.  When Jugurtha
perceived the altered state of things, he gave himself up as lost,
and, before the struggle began, made earnest proposals for an
accommodation, requesting ultimately nothing more than a guarantee for
his life.  Metellus, however, was resolved and perhaps even instructed
not to terminate the war except with the unconditional subjugation and
execution of the daring client-prince; which was in fact the only
issue that could satisfy the Romans.  Jugurtha since the victory over
Albinus was regarded as the deliverer of Libya from the rule of the
hated foreigners; unscrupulous and cunning as he was, and unwieldy
as was the Roman government, he might at any time even after a peace
rekindle the war in his native country; tranquillity would not be
secured, and the removal of the African army would not be possible,
until king Jugurtha should cease to exist.  Officially Metellus gave
evasive answers to the proposals of the king; secretly he instigated
the envoys to deliver their master living or dead to the Romans.  But,
when the Roman general undertook to compete with the African in the
field of assassination, he there met his master; Jugurtha saw
through the plan, and, when he could not do otherwise, prepared
for a desperate resistance.

Battle on the Muthul

Beyond the utterly barren mountain-range, over which lay the route of
the Romans into the interior, a plain of eighteen miles in breadth
extended as far as the river Muthul, which ran parallel to the
mountain-chain.  The plain was destitute of water and of trees except
in the immediate vicinity of the river, and was only intersected by
a hill-ridge covered with low brushwood.  On this ridge Jugurtha
awaited the Roman army.  His troops were arranged in two masses;
the one, including a part of the infantry and the elephants, under
Bomilcar at the point where the ridge abutted on the river, the
other, embracing the flower of the infantry and all the cavalry,
higher up towards the mountain-range, concealed by the bushes.
On debouching from the mountains, the Romans saw the enemy in a
position completely commanding their right flank; and, as they could
not possibly remain on the bare and arid crest of the chain and were
under the necessity of reaching the river, they had to solve the
difficult problem of gaining the stream through the entirely open plain
of eighteen miles in breadth, under the eyes of the enemy's horsemen and
without light cavalry of their own.  Metellus despatched a detachment
under Rufus straight towards the river, to pitch a camp there;
the main body marched from the defiles of the mountain-chain in an
oblique direction through the plain towards the hill-ridge, with a
view to dislodge the enemy from the latter.  But this march in the
plain threatened to become the destruction of the army; for, while
Numidian infantry occupied the mountain defiles in the rear of the
Romans as the latter evacuated them, the Roman attacking column found
itself assailed on all sides by swarms of the enemy's horse, who
charged down on it from the ridge.  The constant onset of the
hostile swarms hindered the advance, and the battle threatened to
resolve itself into a number of confused and detached conflicts;
while at the same time Bomilcar with his division detained the corps
under Rufus, to prevent it from hastening to the help of the hard-
pressed Roman main army.  Nevertheless Metellus and Marius with a
couple of thousand soldiers succeeded in reaching the foot of the
ridge; and the Numidian infantry which defended the heights, in
spite of their superior numbers and favourable position, fled almost
without resistance when the legionaries charged at a rapid pace
up the hill.  The Numidian infantry held its ground equally ill
against Rufus; it was scattered at the first charge, and the
elephants were all killed or captured on the broken ground.  Late
in the evening the two Roman divisions, each victorious on its
own part and each anxious as to the fate of the other, met between
the two fields of battle.  It was a battle attesting alike the
uncommon military talent of Jugurtha and the indestructible solidity
of the Roman infantry, which alone had converted their strategical
defeat into a victory.  Jugurtha sent home a great part of his troops
after the battle, and restricted himself to a guerilla warfare, which
he likewise managed with skill.

Numidia Occupied by the Romans

The two Roman columns, the one led by Metellus, the other by Marius--
who, although by birth and rank the humblest, occupied since the
battle on the Muthul the first place among the chiefs of the staff--
traversed the Numidian territory, occupied the towns, and, when any
place did not readily open its gates, put to death the adult male
population.  But the most considerable among the eastern inland
towns, Zama, opposed to the Romans a serious resistance, which the
king energetically supported.  He was even successful in surprising
the Roman camp; and the Romans found themselves at last compelled to
abandon the siege and to go into winter quarters.  For the sake of
more easily provisioning his army Metellus, leaving behind garrisons
in the conquered towns, transferred it into the Roman province, and
employed the opportunity of suspended hostilities to institute fresh
negotiations, showing a disposition to grant to the king a peace on
tolerable terms.  Jugurtha readily entered into them; he had at
once bound himself to pay 200,000 pounds of silver, and had even
delivered up his elephants and 300 hostages, as well as 3000 Roman
deserters, who were immediately put to death.  At the same time,
however, the king's most confidential counsellor, Bomilcar--who not
unreasonably apprehended that, if peace should ensue, Jugurtha would
deliver him up as the murderer of Massiva to the Roman courts--was
gained by Metellus and induced, in consideration of an assurance of
impunity as respected that murder and of great rewards, to promise
that he would deliver the king alive or dead into the hands of the
Romans.  But neither that official negotiation nor this intrigue
led to the desired result.  When Metellus brought forward the
suggestion that the king should give himself up in person as a
prisoner, the latter broke off the negotiations; Bomilcar's
intercourse with the enemy was discovered, and he was arrested and
executed.  These diplomatic cabals of the meanest kind admit of no
apology; but the Romans had every reason to aim at the possession of
the person of their antagonist.  The war had reached a point, at which
it could neither be carried farther nor abandoned.  The state of
feeling in Numidia was evinced by the revolt of Vaga,(13) the most
considerable of the cities occupied by the Romans, in the winter of
646-7; on which occasion the whole Roman garrison, officers and men,
were put to death with the exception of the commandant Titus Turpilius
Silanus, who was afterwards--whether rightly or wrongly, we cannot
tell--condemned to death by a Roman court-martial and executed for
having an understanding with the enemy.  The town was surprised
by Metellus on the second day after its revolt, and given over to
all the rigour of martial law; but if such was the temper of the
easy to be reached and comparatively submissive dwellers on the
banks of the Bagradas, what might be looked for farther inland and
among the roving tribes of the desert? Jugurtha was the idol of
the Africans, who readily overlooked the double fratricide in the
liberator and avenger of their nation.  Twenty years afterwards a
Numidian corps which was fighting in Italy for the Romans had to
be sent back in all haste to Africa, when the son of Jugurtha
appeared in the enemy's ranks; we may infer from this, how great
was the influence which he himself exercised over his people.
What prospect was there of a termination of the struggle in regions
where the combined peculiarities of the population and of the soil
allowed a leader, who had once secured the sympathies of the
nation, to protract the war in endless guerilla conflicts, or even
to let it sleep for a time in order to revive it at the right moment
with renewed vigour?

War in the Desert
Mauretanian Complications

When Metellus again took the field in 647, Jugurtha nowhere held
his ground against him; he appeared now at one point, now at another
far distant; it seemed as if they would as easily get the better of
the lions as of these horsemen of the desert.  A battle was fought,
a victory was won; but it was difficult to say what had been
gained by the victory.  The king had vanished out of sight in
the distance.  In the interior of the modern beylik of Tunis,
close on the edge of the great desert, there lay on an oasis
provided with springs the strong place Thala;(14) thither Jugurtha
had retired with his children, his treasures, and the flower of his
troops, there to await better times.  Metellus ventured to follow the
king through a desert, in which his troops had to carry water along
with them in skins forty-five miles; Thala was reached and fell after
a forty days' siege; but the Roman deserters destroyed the most
valuable part of the booty along with the building in which they
burnt themselves after the capture of the town, and--what was of more
consequence--king Jugurtha escaped with his children and his chest.
Numidia was no doubt virtually in the hands of the Romans; but,
instead of their object being thereby gained, the war seemed only
to extend over a field wider and wider.  In the south the free
Gaetulian tribes of the desert began at the call of Jugurtha a
national war against the Romans.  In the west Bocchus king of
Mauretania, whose friendship the Romans had in earlier times
despised, seemed now not indisposed to make common cause with his
son-in-law against them; he not only received him in his court, but,
uniting to Jugurtha's followers his own numberless swarms of horsemen,
he marched into the region of Cirta, where Metellus was in winter
quarters.  They began to negotiate: it was clear that in the
person of Jugurtha he held in his hands the real prize of the
struggle for Rome.  But what were his intentions--whether to sell
his son-in-law dear to the Romans, or to take up the national war
in concert with that son-in-law--neither the Romans nor Jugurtha
nor perhaps even the king himself knew; and he was in no hurry
to abandon his ambiguous position.

Marius Commander-in-Chief

Thereupon Metellus left the province, which he had been compelled by
decree of the people to give up to his former lieutenant Marius who
was now consul; and the latter assumed the supreme command for the
next campaign in 648.  He was indebted for it in some degree to a
revolution.  Relying on the services which he had rendered and at
the same time on oracles which had been communicated to him, he had
resolved to come forward as a candidate for the consulship.  If the
aristocracy had supported the constitutional, and in other respects
quite justifiable, candidature of this able man, who was not at all
inclined to take part with the opposition, nothing would have come
of the matter but the enrolment of a new family in the consular
Fasti.  Instead of this the man of non-noble birth, who aspired to
the highest public dignity, was reviled by the whole governing caste
as a daring innovator and revolutionist; just as the plebeian
candidate had been formerly treated by the patricians, but now
without any formal ground in law.  The brave officer was sneered at
in sharp language by Metellus--Marius was told that he might wait with
his candidature till Metellus' son, a beardless boy, could be his
colleague--and he was with the worst grace suffered to leave almost
at the last moment, that he might appear in the capital as a candidate
for the consulship of 647.  There he amply retaliated on his
general the wrong which he had suffered, by criticising before the
gaping multitude the conduct of the war and the administration of
Metellus in Africa in a manner as unmilitary as it was disgracefully
unfair; and he did not even disdain to serve up to the darling
populace--always whispering about secret conspiracies equally
unprecedented and indubitable on the part of their noble masters--
the silly story, that Metellus was designedly protracting the war
in order to remain as long as possible commander-in-chief.  To the
idlers of the streets this was quite clear: numerous persons
unfriendly for reasons good or bad to the government, and especially
the justly-indignant mercantile order, desired nothing better than such
an opportunity of annoying the aristocracy in its most sensitive point:
he was elected to the consulship by an enormous majority, and not only
so, but, while in other cases by the law of Gaius Gracchus the
decision as to the respective functions to be assigned to the consuls
lay with the senate (p.  355), the arrangement made by the senate
which left Metellus at his post was overthrown, and by decree of
the sovereign comitia the supreme command in the African war
was committed to Marius.

Conflicts without Result

Accordingly he took the place of Metellus in the course of 647;
and held the command in the campaign of the following year; but his
confident promise to do better than his predecessor and to deliver
Jugurtha bound hand and foot with all speed at Rome was more easily
given than fulfilled.  Marius carried on a desultory warfare with
the Gaetulians; he reduced several towns that had not previously been
occupied; he undertook an expedition to Capsa (Gafsa) in the extreme
south-east of the kingdom, which surpassed even that of Thala in
difficulty, took the town by capitulation, and in spite of the
convention caused all the adult men in it to be slain--the only
means, no doubt, of preventing the renewed revolt of that remote city
of the desert; he attacked a mountain-stronghold--situated on the
river Molochath, which separated the Numidian territory from the
Mauretanian--whither Jugurtha had conveyed his treasure-chest, and,
just as he was about to desist from the siege in despair of success,
fortunately gained possession of the impregnable fastness through
the coup de main of some daring climbers.  Had his object merely
been to harden the army by bold razzias and to procure booty for the
soldiers, or even to eclipse the march of Metellus into the desert
by an expedition going still farther, this method of warfare might
be allowed to pass unchallenged; but the main object to be aimed at,
and which Metellus had steadfastly and perseveringly kept in view--
the capture of Jugurtha--was in this way utterly set aside.
The expedition of Marius to Capsa was a venture as aimless, as
that of Metellus to Thala had been judicious; but the expedition
to the Molochath, which passed along the border of, if not into,
the Mauretanian territory, was directly repugnant to sound policy.
King Bocchus, in whose power it lay to bring the war to an issue
favourable for the Romans or endlessly to prolong it, now concluded
with Jugurtha a treaty, in which the latter ceded to him a part of
his kingdom and Bocchus promised actively to support his son-in-law
against Rome.  The Roman army, which was returning from the river
Molochath, found itself one evening suddenly surrounded by immense
masses of Mauretanian and Numidian cavalry; they were obliged to fight
just as the divisions stood without forming in a proper order of battle
or carrying out any leading command, and had to deem themselves
fortunate when their sadly-thinned troops were brought into temporary
safety for the night on two hills not far remote from each other.
But the culpable negligence of the Africans intoxicated with victory
wrested from them its consequences; they allowed themselves to be
surprised in a deep sleep during the morning twilight by the Roman
troops which had been in some measure reorganized during the night,
and were fortunately dispersed.  Thereupon the Roman army continued
its retreat in better order and with greater caution; but it was
yet again assailed simultaneously on ail the four sides and was in
great danger, till the cavalry officer Lucius Cornelius Sulla first
dispersed the squadrons opposed to him and then, rapidly returning
from their pursuit, threw himself also on Jugurtha and Bocchus at
the point where they in person pressed hard on the rear of the
Roman infantry.  Thus this attack also was successfully repelled;
Marius brought his army back to Cirta, and took up his winter
quarters there (648-9).

Negotiations with Bocchus

Strange as it may seem, we can yet understand why the Romans now,
after king Bocchus had commenced the war, began to make most zealous
exertions to secure his friendship, which they had at first slighted
and thereafter had at least not specially sought; by doing so they
gained this advantage, that no formal declaration of war took place
on the part of Mauretania.  King Bocchus was not unwilling to return
to his old ambiguous position: without dissolving his agreement with
Jugurtha or dismissing him, he entered into negotiations with the
Roman general respecting the terms of an alliance with Rome.  When
they were agreed or seemed to be so, the king requested that, for
the purpose of concluding the treaty and receiving the royal captive,
Marius would send to him Lucius Sulla, who was known and acceptable
to the king partly from his having formerly appeared as envoy of
the senate at the Mauretanian court, partly from the commendations of
the Mauretanian envoys destined for Rome to whom Sulla had rendered
services on their way.  Marius was in an awkward position.
His declining the suggestion would probably lead to a breach; his
accepting it would throw his most aristocratic and bravest officer
into the hands of a man more than untrustworthy, who, as every one
knew, played a double game with the Romans and with Jugurtha, and
who seemed almost to have contrived the scheme for the purpose of
obtaining for himself provisional hostages from both sides in the
persons of Jugurtha and Sulla.  But the wish to terminate the war
outweighed every other consideration, and Sulla agreed to undertake
the perilous task which Marius suggested to him.  He boldly departed
under the guidance of Volux the son of king Bocchus, nor did his
resolution waver even when his guide led him through the midst of
Jugurtha's camp.  He rejected the pusillanimous proposals of flight
that came from his attendants, and marched, with the king's son at
his side, uninjured through the enemy.  The daring officer evinced
the same decision in the discussions with the sultan, and induced
him at length seriously to make his choice.

Surrender and Execution of Jugurtha

Jugurtha was sacrificed.  Under the pretext that all his requests were
to be granted, he was allured by his own father-in-law into an ambush,
his attendants were killed, and he himself was taken prisoner.
The great traitor thus fell by the treachery of his nearest relatives.
Lucius Sulla brought the crafty and restless African in chains along
with his children to the Roman headquarters; and the war which had
lasted for seven years was at an end.  The victory was primarily
associated with the name of Marius.  King Jugurtha in royal robes
and in chains, along with his two sons, preceded the triumphal chariot
of the victor, when he entered Rome on the 1st of January 650: by
his orders the son of the desert perished a few days afterwards in
the subterranean city-prison, the old -tullianum- at the Capitol--
the "bath of ice," as the African called it, when he crossed the
threshold in order either to be strangled or to perish from cold and
hunger there.  But it could not be denied that Marius had the least
important share in the actual successes: the conquest of Numidia up
to the edge of the desert was the work of Metellus, the capture of
Jugurtha was the work of Sulla, and between the two Marius played a
part somewhat compromising the dignity of an ambitious upstart.
Marius reluctantly tolerated the assumption by his predecessor of the
name of conqueror of Numidia; he flew into a violent rage when king
Bocchus afterwards consecrated a golden effigy at the Capitol, which
represented the surrender of Jugurtha to Sulla; and yet in the eyes
of unprejudiced judges the services of these two threw the generalship
of Marius very much into the shade--more especially Sulla's brilliant
expedition to the desert, which had made his courage, his presence of
mind, his acuteness, his power over men to be recognized by the
general himself and by the whole army.  In themselves these military
rivalries would have been of little moment, if they had not been mixed
up with the conflict of political parties, if the opposition had not
supplanted the senatorial general by Marius, and if the party of the
government had not, with the deliberate intention of exasperating,
praised Metellus and still more Sulla as the military celebrities
and preferred them to the nominal victor.  We shall have to return
to the fatal consequences of these animosities when narrating
the internal history.

Reorganization of Numidia

Otherwise, this insurrection of the Numidian client-state passed
away without producing any noticeable change either in political
relations generally or even in those of the African province.
By a deviation from the policy elsewhere followed at this period
Numidia was not converted into a Roman province; evidently because
the country could not be held without an army to protect the frontier
against the barbarians of the desert, and the Romans were by no
means disposed to maintain a standing army in Africa.  They
contented themselves accordingly with annexing the most westerly
district of Numidia, probably the tract from the river Molochath to
the harbour of Saldae (Bougie)--the later Mauretania Caesariensis
(province of Algiers)--to the kingdom of Bocchus, and with handing
over the kingdom of Numidia thus diminished to the last legitimate
grandson of Massinissa still surviving, Gauda the half-brother of
Jugurtha, feeble in body and mind, who had already in 646 at the
suggestion of Marius asserted his claims before the senate.(15)
At the same time the Gaetulian tribes in the interior of Africa were
received as free allies into the number of the independent nations
that had treaties with Rome.

Political Issues

Of greater importance than this regulation of African clientship were
the political consequences of the Jugurthine war or rather of the
Jugurthine insurrection, although these have been frequently estimated
too highly.  Certainly all the evils of the government were therein
brought to light in all their nakedness; it was now not merely
notorious but, so to speak, judicially established, that among the
governing lords of Rome everything was treated as venal--the treaty
of peace and the right of intercession, the rampart of the camp and
the life of the soldier; the African had said no more than the simple
truth, when on his departure from Rome he declared that, if he
had only gold enough, he would undertake to buy the city itself.
But the whole external and internal government of this period bore
the same stamp of miserable baseness.  In our case the accidental fact,
that the war in Africa is brought nearer to us by means of better
accounts than the other contemporary military and political events,
shifts the true perspective; contemporaries learned by these
revelations nothing but what everybody knew long before and every
intrepid patriot had long been in a position to support by facts.
The circumstance, however, that they were now furnished with some fresh,
still stronger and still more irrefutable, proofs of the baseness of
the restored senatorial government--a baseness only surpassed by its
incapacity--might have been of importance, had there been an opposition
and a public opinion with which the government would have found
it necessary to come to terms.  But this war had in fact exposed the
corruption of the government no less than it had revealed the utter
nullity of the opposition.  It was not possible to govern worse than
the restoration governed in the years 637-645; it was not possible
to stand forth more defenceless and forlorn than was the Roman
senate in 645: had there been in Rome a real opposition, that is to
say, a party which wished and urged a fundamental alteration of the
constitution, it must necessarily have now made at least an attempt
to overturn the restored senate.  No such attempt took place; the
political question was converted into a personal one, the generals
were changed, and one or two useless and unimportant people were
banished.  It was thus settled, that the so-called popular party
as such neither could nor would govern; that only two forms of
government were at all possible in Rome, a -tyrannis- or an
oligarchy; that, so long as there happened to be nobody sufficiently
well known, if not sufficiently important, to usurp the regency of
the state, the worst mismanagement endangered at the most individual
oligarchs, but never the oligarchy; that on the other hand, so soon
as such a pretender appeared, nothing was easier than to shake the
rotten curule chairs.  In this respect the coming forward of Marius
was significant, just because it was in itself so utterly unwarranted.
If the burgesses had stormed the senate-house after the defeat of
Albinus, it would have been a natural, not to say a proper course; but
after the turn which Metellus had given to the Numidian war, nothing
more could be said of mismanagement, and still less of danger to the
commonwealth, at least in this respect; and yet the first ambitious
officer who turned up succeeded in doing that with which the older
Africanus had once threatened the government,(16) and procured for
himself one of the principal military commands against the distinctly-
expressed will of the governing body.  Public opinion, unavailing in
the hands of the so-called popular party, became an irresistible
weapon in the hands of the future king of Rome.  We do not mean to say
that Marius intended to play the pretender, at least at the time when
he canvassed the people for the supreme command in Africa; but,
whether he did or did not understand what he was doing, there was
evidently an end of the restored aristocratic government when the
comitial machine began to make generals, or, which was nearly the
same thing, when every popular officer was able in legal fashion to
nominate himself as general.  Only one new element emerged in these
preliminary crises; this was the introduction of military men and of
military power into the political revolution.  Whether the coming
forward of Marius would be the immediate prelude of a new attempt
to supersede the oligarchy by the -tyrannis-, or whether it would,
as in various similar cases, pass away without further consequence
as an isolated encroachment on the prerogative of the government,
could not yet be determined; but it could well be foreseen that, if
these rudiments of a second -tyrannis- should attain any development,
it was not a statesman like Gaius Gracchus, but an officer that would
become its head.  The contemporary reorganization of the military
system--which Marius introduced when, in forming his army destined
for Africa, he disregarded the property-qualification hitherto
required, and allowed even the poorest burgess, if he was otherwise
serviceable, to enter the legion as a volunteer--may have been
projected by its author on purely military grounds; but it was none
the less on that account a momentous political event, that the army
was no longer, as formerly, composed of those who had much, no
longer even, as in the most recent times, composed of those who had
something, to lose, but became gradually converted into a host of
people who had nothing but their arms and what the general bestowed
on them.  The aristocracy ruled in 650 just as absolutely as in 620;
but the signs of the impending catastrophe had multiplied, and on
the political horizon the sword had begun to appear by the side
of the crown.




Chapter V

The Peoples of the North

Relations of Rome to the North
The Country between the Alps and the Pyrenees
Conflicts with the Ligurians and the Salassi

From the close of the sixth century the Roman community ruled over
the three great peninsulas projecting from the northern continent into
the Mediterranean, at least taken as a whole.  Even there however--in
the north and west of Spain, in the valleys of the Ligurian Apennines
and the Alps, and in the mountains of Macedonia and Thrace--tribes
wholly or partially free continued to defy the lax Roman government.
Moreover the continental communication between Spain and Italy as
well as between Italy and Macedonia was very superficially provided
for, and the countries beyond the Pyrenees, the Alps, and the Balkan
chain--the great river basins of the Rhone, the Rhine, and the Danube--
in the main lay beyond the political horizon of the Romans.  We have
now to set forth what steps were taken on the part of Rome to secure
and to round off her empire in this direction, and how at the same
time the great masses of peoples, who were ever moving to and fro
behind that mighty mountain-screen, began to beat at the gates of the
northern mountains and rudely to remind the Graeco-Roman world that
it was mistaken in believing itself the sole possessor of the earth.

Let us first glance at the region between the western Alps and the
Pyrenees.  The Romans had for long commanded this part of the coast
of the Mediterranean through their client city of Massilia, one of
the oldest, most faithful, and most powerful of the allied communities
dependent on Rome.  Its maritime stations, Agatha (Agde) and Rhoda
(Rosas) to the westward, and Tauroentium (Ciotat), Olbia (Hyeres?),
Antipolis (Antibes), and Nicaea (Nice) on the east secured the
navigation of the coast as well as the land-route from the Pyrenees
to the Alps; and its mercantile and political connections reached far
into the interior.  An expedition into the Alps above Nice and Antibes,
directed against the Ligurian Oxybii and Decietae, was undertaken by
the Romans in 600 partly at the request of the Massiliots, partly
in their own interest; and after hot conflicts, some of which were
attended with much loss, this district of the mountains was compelled
to furnish thenceforth standing hostages to the Massiliots and to pay
them a yearly tribute.  It is not improbable that about this same
period the cultivation of the vine and olive, which flourished in this
quarter after the model set by the Massiliots, was in the interest
of the Italian landholders and merchants simultaneously prohibited
throughout the territory beyond the Alps dependent on Massilia.(1)
A similar character of financial speculation marks the war, which was
waged by the Romans under the consul Appius Claudius in 611 against the
Salassi respecting the gold mines and gold washings of Victumulae (in
the district of Vercelli and Bard and in the whole valley of the Dorea
Baltea).  The great extent of these washings, which deprived the
inhabitants of the country lying lower down of water for their fields,
first gave rise to an attempt at mediation and then to the armed
intervention of the Romans.  The war, although the Romans began it
like all the other wars of this period with a defeat, led at last to
the subjugation of the Salassi, and the cession of the gold district
to the Roman treasury.  Some forty years afterwards (654) the colony of
Eporedia (Ivrea) was instituted on the territory thus gained, chiefly
doubtless with a view to command the western, as Aquileia commanded
the eastern, passage of the Alps.

Transalpine Relations of Rome
The Arverni

These Alpine wars first assumed a more serious character, when Marcus
Fulvius Flaccus, the faithful ally of Gaius Gracchus, took the chief
command in this quarter as consul in 629.  He was the first to enter
on the career of Transalpine conquest.  In the much-divided Celtic
nation at this period the canton of the Bituriges had lost its
real hegemony and retained merely an honorary presidency, and the
actually leading canton in the region from the Pyrenees to the Rhine
and from the Mediterranean to the Western Ocean was that of the
Arverni;(2) so that the statement seems not quite an exaggeration,
that it could bring into the field as many as 180,000 men.  With
them the Haedui (about Autun) carried on an unequal rivalry for the
hegemony; while in north-eastern Gaul the kings of the Suessiones
(about Soissons) united under their protectorate the league of the
Belgic tribes extending as far as Britain.  Greek travellers of
that period had much to tell of the magnificent state maintained by
Luerius, king of the Arvernians--how, surrounded by his brilliant train
of clansmen, his huntsmen with their pack of hounds in leash and his
band of wandering minstrels, he travelled in a silver-mounted chariot
through the towns of his kingdom, scattering the gold with a full
hand among the multitude, and gladdening above all the heart of the
minstrel with the glittering shower.  The descriptions of the open
table which he kept in an enclosure of 1500 double paces square, and
to which every one who came in the way was invited, vividly remind us
of the marriage table of Camacho.  In fact, the numerous Arvernian
gold coins of this period still extant show that the canton of the
Arvernians had attained to extraordinary wealth and a comparatively
high standard of civilization.

War with Allobroges and Arverni

The attack of Flaccus, however, fell in the first instance not on
the Arverni, but on the smaller tribes in the district between the Alps
and the Rhone, where the original Ligurian inhabitants had become mixed
with subsequent arrivals of Celtic bands, and there had arisen a
Celto-Ligurian population that may in this respect be compared to the
Celtiberian.  He fought (629, 630) with success against the Salyes
or Salluvii in the region of Aix and in the valley of the Durance,
and against their northern neighbours the Vocontii (in the departments
of Vaucluse and Drome); and so did his successor Gaius Sextius Calvinus
(631, 632) against the Allobroges, a powerful Celtic clan in the rich
valley of the Isere, which had come at the request of the fugitive
king of the Salyes, Tutomotulus, to help him to reconquer his land, but
was defeated in the district of Aix.  When the Allobroges nevertheless
refused to surrender the king of the Salyes, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus,
the successor of Calvinus, penetrated into their own territory (632).
Up to this period the leading Celtic tribe had been spectators of the
encroachments of their Italian neighbours; the Arvernian king Betuitus,
son of the Luerius already mentioned, seemed not much inclined to enter
on a dangerous war for the sake of the loose relation of clientship
in which the eastern cantons might stand to him.  But when the Romans
showed signs of attacking the Allobroges in their own territory,
he offered his mediation, the rejection of which was followed by
his taking the field with all his forces to help the Allobroges;
whereas the Haedui embraced the side of the Romans.  On receiving
accounts of the rising of the Arverni, the Romans sent the consul
of 633, Quintus Fabius Maximus, to meet in concert with Ahenobarbus
the impending attack.  On the southern border of the canton of the
Allobroges at the confluence of the Isere with the Rhone, on the
8th of August 633, the battle was fought which decided the mastery
of southern Gaul.  King Betuitus, when he saw the innumerable
hosts of the dependent clans marching over to him on the bridge
of boats thrown across the Rhone and the Romans who had not a
third of their numbers forming in array against them, is said to have
exclaimed that there were not enough of the latter to satisfy the dogs
of the Celtic army.  Nevertheless Maximus, a grandson of the victor
of Pydna, achieved a decisive victory, which, as the bridge of boats
broke down under the mass of the fugitives, ended in the destruction
of the greater part of the Arvernian army.  The Allobroges, to whom
the king of the Arverni declared himself unable to render further
assistance, and whom he advised to make their peace with Maximus,
submitted to the consul; whereupon the latter, thenceforth called
Allobrogicus, returned to Italy and left to Ahenobarbus the no longer
distant termination of the Arvernian war.  Ahenobarbus, personally
exasperated at king Betuitus because he had induced the Allobroges
to surrender to Maximus and not to him, possessed himself
treacherously of the person of the king and sent him to Rome, where
the senate, although disapproving the breach of fidelity, not only kept
the men betrayed, but gave orders that his son, Congonnetiacus, should
likewise be sent to Rome.  This seems to have been the reason why
the Arvernian war, already almost at an end, once more broke out, and
a second appeal to arms took place at Vindalium (above Avignon) at
the confluence of the Sorgue with the Rhone.  The result was not
different from that of the first: on this occasion it was chiefly
the African elephants that scattered the Celtic army.  Thereupon
the Arverni submitted to peace, and tranquillity was re-established
in the land of the Celts.(3)

Province of Narbo

The result of these military operations was the institution of a
new Roman province between the maritime Alps and the Pyrenees.
All the tribes between the Alps and the Rhone became dependent
on the Romans and, so far as they did not pay tribute to Massilia,
presumably became now tributary to Rome.  In the country between
the Rhone and the Pyrenees the Arverni retained freedom and were not
bound to pay tribute to the Romans; but they had to cede to Rome
the most southerly portion of their direct or indirect territory-
the district to the south of the Cevennes as far as the Mediterranean,
and the upper course of the Garonne as far as Tolosa (Toulouse).
As the primary object of these occupations was the establishment of
a land communication between Italy and Spain, arrangements were made
immediately thereafter for the construction of the road along the
coast.  For this purpose a belt of coast from the Alps to the Rhone,
from 1 to 1 3/4 of a mile in breadth, was handed over to the Massiliots,
who already had a series of maritime stations along this coast, with
the obligation of keeping the road in proper condition; while from
the Rhone to the Pyrenees the Romans themselves laid out a military
highway, which obtained from its originator Ahenobarbus the name
of the -Via Domitia-.

Roman Settlements in the Region of the Rhone

As usual, the formation of new fortresses was combined with
the construction of roads.  In the eastern portion the Romans chose
the spot where Gaius Sextius had defeated the Celts, and where the
pleasantness and fertility of the region as well as the numerous hot
and cold springs invited them to settlement; a Roman township sprang
up there--the "baths of Sextius," Aquae Sextiae (Aix).  To the west
of the Rhone the Romans settled in Narbo, an ancient Celtic town on the
navigable river Atax (Aude) at a small distance from the sea, which is
already mentioned by Hecataeus, and which even before its occupation
by the Romans vied with Massilia as a place of stirring commerce, and
as sharing the trade in British tin.  Aquae did not obtain civic rights,
but remained a standing camp;(4) whereas Narbo, although in like
manner founded mainly as a watch and outpost against the Celts,
became as "Mars' town," a Roman burgess-colony and the usual seat
of the governor of the new Transalpine Celtic province or, as it
was more frequently called, the province of Narbo.

The Advance of the Romans Checked by the Policy of the Restoration

The Gracchan party, which suggested these extensions of territory
beyond the Alps, evidently wished to open up there a new and
immeasurable field for their plans of colonization,--a field which
offered the same advantages as Sicily and Africa, and could be more
easily wrested from the natives than he Sicilian and Libyan estates
from the Italian capitalists.  The fall of Gaius Gracchus, no doubt,
made itself felt here also in the restriction of acquisitions of
territory and still more of the founding of towns; but, if the design
was not carried out in its full extent, it was at any rate not wholly
frustrated.  The territory acquired and, still more, the foundation of
Narbo--a settlement for which the senate vainly endeavoured to prepare
the fate of that at Carthage--remained standing as parts of an
unfinished structure, exhorting the future successor of Gracchus
to continue the building.  It is evident that the Roman mercantile
class, which was able to compete with Massilia in the Gallo-Britannic
traffic at Narbo alone, protected that settlement from the assaults
of the Optimates.

Illyria
Dalmatians
Their Subjugation

A problem similar to that in the north-west had to be dealt
with in the north-east of Italy; it was in like manner not wholly
neglected, but was solved still more imperfectly than the former.
With the foundation of Aquileia (571) the Istrian peninsula came
into possession of the Romans;(5) in part of Epirus and the former
territory of the lords of Scodra they had already ruled for some
considerable time previously.  But nowhere did their dominion reach
into the interior; and even on the coast they exercised scarcely a
nominal sway over the inhospitable shore-belt between Istria and
Epirus, which, with its wild series of mountain-caldrons broken neither
by river-valleys nor by coast-plains and arranged like scales one above
another, and with its chain of rocky islands stretching along the
shore, separates more than it connects Italy and Greece.  Around the
town of Delminium (on the Cettina near Trigl) clustered the confederacy
of the Delmatians or Dalmatians, whose manners were rough as their
mountains.  While the neighbouring peoples had already attained a
high degree of culture, the Dalmatians were as yet unacquainted with
money, and divided their land, without recognizing any special right
of property in it, afresh every eight years among the members of
the community.  Brigandage and piracy were the only native trades.
These tribes had in earlier times stood in a loose relation of
dependence on the rulers of Scodra, and had so far shared in the
chastisement inflicted by the Roman expeditions against queen
Teuta(6) and Demetrius of Pharos;(7) but on the accession of king
Genthius they had revolted and had thus escaped the fate which involved
southern Illyria in the fall of the Macedonian empire and rendered it
permanently dependent on Rome.(8)  The Romans were glad to leave the
far from attractive region to itself.  But the complaints of the Roman
Illyrians, particularly of the Daorsi, who dwelt on the Narenta to
the south of the Dalmatians, and of the inhabitants of the islands of
Issa (Lissa), whose continental stations Tragyrium (Trau) and Epetium
(near Spalato) suffered severely from the natives, compelled the Roman
government to despatch an embassy to the latter, and on receiving the
reply that the Dalmatians had neither troubled themselves hitherto
about the Romans nor would do so in future, to send thither an army
in 598 under the consul Gaius Marcius Figulus.  He penetrated into
Dalmatia, but was again driven back as far as the Roman territory.
It was not till his successor Publius Scipio Nasica took the large
and strong town of Delminium in 599, that the confederacy conformed
and professed itself subject to the Romans.  But the poor and only
superficially subdued country was not sufficiently important to be
erected into a distinct province: the Romans contented themselves, as
they had already done in the case of the more important possessions in
Epirus, with having it administered from Italy along with Cisalpine
Gaul; an arrangement which was, at least as a rule, retained even
when the province of Macedonia had been erected in 608 and its north
western frontier had been fixed to the northward of Scodra.(9)

The Romans in Macedonia and Thrace

But this very conversion of Macedonia into a province directly
dependent on Rome gave to the relations of Rome with the peoples
on the north-east greater importance, by imposing on the Romans
the obligation of defending the everywhere exposed frontier on
the north and east against the adjacent barbarian tribes; and in
a similar way not long afterwards (621) the acquisition by Rome of
the Thracian Chersonese (peninsula of Gallipoli) previously belonging
to the kingdom of the Attalids devolved on the Romans the obligation
hitherto resting on the kings of Pergamus to protect the Hellenes here
against the Thracians.  From the double basis furnished by the valley
of the Po and the province of Macedonia the Romans could now advance
in earnest towards the region of the headwaters of the Rhine and towards
the Danube, and possess themselves of the northern mountains at least
so far as was requisite for the security of the lands to the south.

The Tribes at the Sources of the Rhine and along the Danube
Helvetii
Boii
Taurisci
Cerni
Raeti, Euganei, Veneti

In these regions the most powerful nation at that time was the great
Celtic people, which according to the native tradition(10) had issued
from its settlements on the Western Ocean and poured itself about the
same time into the valley of the Po on the south of the main chain of
the Alps and into the regions on the Upper Rhine and on the Danube to
the north of that chain.  Among their various tribes, both banks of
the Upper Rhine were occupied by the powerful and rich Helvetii, who
nowhere came into immediate contact with the Romans and so lived in
peace and in treaty with them: at this time they seem to have stretched
from the lake of Geneva to the river Main, and to have occupied the
modern Switzerland, Suabia, and Franconia Adjacent to them dwelt
the Boii, whose settlements were probably in the modern Bavaria and
Bohemia.(11)  To the south-east of these we meet with another Celtic
stock, which made its appearance in Styria and Carinthia under the
name of the Taurisci and afterwards of the Norici, in Friuli, Carniola,
and Istria under that of the Carni.  Their city Noreia (not far from
St.  Veit to the north of Klagenfurt) was flourishing and widely known
from the iron mines that were even at that time zealously worked
in those regions; still more were the Italians at this very period
allured thither by the rich seams of gold brought to light, till the
natives excluded them and took this California of that day wholly into
their own hands.  These Celtic hordes streaming along on both sides of
the Alps had after their fashion occupied chiefly the flat and hill
country; the Alpine regions proper and likewise the districts along
the Adige and the Lower Po were not occupied by them, and remained
in the hands of the earlier indigenous population.  Nothing certain
has yet been ascertained as to the nationality of the latter; but they
appear under the name of the Raeti in the mountains of East Switzerland
and the Tyrol, and under that of the Euganei and Veneti about Padua
and Venice; so that at this last point the two great Celtic streams
almost touched each other, and only a narrow belt of native population
separated the Celtic Cenomani about Brescia from the Celtic Carnians
in Friuli.  The Euganei and Veneti had long been peaceful subjects of
the Romans; whereas the peoples of the Alps proper were not only still
free, but made regular forays down from their mountains into the
plain between the Alps and the Po, where they were not content with
levying contributions, but conducted themselves with fearful cruelty
in the townships which they captured, not unfrequently slaughtering
the whole male population down to the infant in the cradle--the practical
answer, it may be presumed, to the Roman razzias in the Alpine valleys.
How dangerous these Raetian inroads were, appears from the fact that
one of them about 660 destroyed the considerable township of Comum.

Illyrian Peoples
Japydes
Scordisci

If these Celtic and non-Celtic tribes having their settlements upon and
beyond the Alpine chain were already variously intermingled, there was,
as may easily be conceived, a still more comprehensive intermixture
of peoples in the countries on the Lower Danube, where there were no
high mountain ranges, as in the more western regions, to serve as
natural walls of partition.  The original Illyrian population, of
which the modern Albanians seem to be the last pure survivors, was
throughout, at least in the interior, largely mixed with Celtic
elements, and the Celtic armour and Celtic method of warfare were
probably everywhere introduced in that quarter.  Next to the Taurisci
came the Japydes, who had their settlements on the Julian Alps in the
modern Croatia as far down as Fiume and Zeng,--a tribe originally
doubtless Illyrian, but largely mixed with Celts.  Bordering with these
along the coast were the already-mentioned Dalmatians, into whose rugged
mountains the Celts do not seem to have penetrated; whereas in the
interior the Celtic Scordisci, to whom the tribe of the Triballi
formerly especially powerful in that quarter had succumbed, and who
had played a principal part in the Celtic expeditions to Delphi,
were about this time the leading nation along the Lower Save as far
as the Morava in the modern Bosnia and Servia.  They roamed far and
wide towards Moesia, Thrace, and Macedonia, and fearful tales were
told of their savage valour and cruel customs.  Their chief place of
arms was the strong Segestica or Siscia at the point where the Kulpa
falls into the Save.  The peoples who were at that time settled in
Hungary, Transylvania, Roumania, and Bulgaria still remained for the
present beyond the horizon of the Romans; the latter came into contact
only with the Thracians on the eastern frontier of Macedonia in
the Rhodope mountains.

Conflicts on the Frontier
In the Alps

It would have been no easy task for a government more energetic than was
the Roman government of that day to establish an organized and adequate
defence of the frontier against these wide domains of barbarism; what
was done for this important object under the auspices of the government
ment of the restoration, did not come up to even the most moderate
requirements.  There seems to have been no want of expeditions against
the inhabitants of the Alps: in 636 there was a triumph over the Stoeni,
who were probably settled in the mountains above Verona; in 659 the consul
Lucius Crassus caused the Alpine valleys far and wide to De ransacked
and the inhabitants to be put to death, and yet he did not succeed in
killing enough of them to enable him to celebrate a village triumph and
to couple the laurels of the victor with his oratorical fame.  But as
the Romans remained satisfied with razzias of this sort which merely
exasperated the natives without rendering them harmless, and, apparently,
withdrew the troops again after every such inroad, the state of matters
in the region beyond the Po remained substantially the same as before.

In Thrace

On the opposite Thracian frontier they appear to have given themselves
little concern about their neighbours; except that there is mention
made in 651 of conflicts with the Thracians, and in 657 of others with
the Maedi in the border mountains between Macedonia and Thrace.

In Illyria

More serious conflicts took place in the Illyrian land, where complaints
were constantly made as to the turbulent Dalmatians by their neighbours
and those who navigated the Adriatic; and along the wholly exposed
northern frontier of Macedonia, which, according to the significant
expression of a Roman, extended as far as the Roman swords and spears
reached, the conflicts with the barbarians never ceased.  In 619 an
expedition was undertaken against the Ardyaei or Vardaei and the Pleraei
or Paralii, a Dalmatian tribe on the coast to the north of the mouth
of the Narenta, which was incessantly perpetrating outrages on the sea
and on the opposite coast: by order of the Romans they removed from
the coast and settled in the interior, the modern Herzegovina, where
they began to cultivate the soil, but, unused to their new calling,
pined away in that inclement region.  At the same time an attack was
directed from Macedonia against the Scordisci, who had, it may be
presumed, made common cause with the assailed inhabitants of the coast.
Soon afterwards (625) the consul Tuditanus in connection with the able
Decimus Brutus, the conqueror of the Spanish Callaeci, humbled
the Japydes, and, after sustaining a defeat at the outset, at length
carried the Roman arms into the heart of Dalmatia as far as the river
Kerka, 115 miles distant from Aquileia; the Japydes thenceforth appear
as a nation at peace and on friendly terms with Rome.  But ten years
later (635) the Dalmatians rose afresh, once more in concert with
the Scordisci.  While the consul Lucius Cotta fought against the latter
and in doing so advanced apparently as far as Segestica, his colleague
Lucius Metellus afterwards named Dalmaticus, the elder brother of the
conqueror of Numidia, marched against the Dalmatians, conquered them
and passed the winter in Salona (Spalato), which town henceforth
appears as the chief stronghold of the Romans in that region.  It is
not improbable that the construction of the Via Gabinia, which led
from Salona in an easterly direction to Andetrium (near Much)
and thence farther into the interior, falls within this period.

The Romans Cross the Eastern Alps and Reach the Danube

The expedition of the consul of 639, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus, against
the Taurisci(12) presented more the character of a war of conquest.
He was the first of the Romans to cross the chain of the eastern Alps
where it falls lowest between Trieste and Laybach, and contracted
hospitable relations with the Taurisci; which secured a not
unimportant commercial intercourse without involving the Romans,
as a formal subjugation would have involved them, in the movements
of the peoples to the north of the Alps.  Of the conflicts with the
Scordisci, which have passed almost wholly into oblivion, a page,
which speaks clearly even in its isolation, has recently been brought
to light through a memorial stone from the year 636 lately discovered
in the neighbourhood of Thessalonica.  According to it, in this year
the governor of Macedonia Sextus Pompeius fell near Argos (not far from
Stobi on the upper Axius or Vardar) in a battle fought with these
Celts; and, after his quaestor Marcus Annius had come up with his
troops and in some measure mastered the enemy, these same Celts in
connection with Tipas the king of the Maedi (on the upper Strymon)
soon made a fresh irruption in still larger masses, and it was with
difficulty that the Romans defended themselves against the onset of
the barbarians.(13)  Things soon assumed so threatening a shape that
it became necessary to despatch consular armies to Macedonia.(14)
A few years afterwards the consul of 640 Gaius Porcius Cato was
surprised in the Servian mountains by the same Scordisci, and his
army completely destroyed, while he himself with a few attendants
disgracefully fled; with difficulty the praetor Marcus Didius
protected the Roman frontier.  His successors fought with better
fortune, Gaius Metellus Caprarius (641-642), Marcus Livius Drusus
(642-643), the first Roman general to reach the Danube, and Quintus
Minucius Rufus (644-647) who carried his arms along the Morava(15) and
thoroughly defeated the Scordisci.  Nevertheless they soon afterwards
in league with the Maedi and the Dardani invaded the Roman territory
and plundered even the sanctuary at Delphi; it was not till then
that Lucius Scipio put an end to the thirty-two years' warfare with
the Scordisci and drove the remnant over to the left bank of the
Danube.(16)  Thenceforth in their stead the just-named Dardani
(in Servia) begin to play the first part in the territory between
the northern frontier of Macedonia and the Danube.

The Cimbri

But these victories had an effect which the victors did not
anticipate.  For a considerable period an "unsettled people" had
been wandering along the northern verge of the country occupied by
the Celts on both sides of the Danube.  They called themselves the
Cimbri, that is, the Chempho, the champions or, as their enemies
translated it, the robbers; a designation, however, which to all
appearance had become the name of the people even before their
migration.  They came from the north, and the first Celtic people
with whom they came in contact were, so far as is known, the Boii,
probably in Bohemia.  More exact details as to the cause and
the direction of their migration have not been recorded by
contemporaries,(17) and cannot be supplied by conjecture, since the
state of things in those times to the north of Bohemia and the Main
and to the east of the Lower Rhine lies wholly beyond our knowledge.
But the hypothesis that the Cimbri, as well as the similar horde of
the Teutones which afterwards joined them, belonged essentially not
to the Celtic nation, to which the Romans at first assigned them,
but to the Germanic, is supported by the most definite facts: viz.,
by the appearance of two small tribes of the same name--remnants
apparently left behind in their primitive seats--the Cimbri in
the modern Denmark, the Teutones in the north-east of Germany in
the neighbourhood of the Baltic, where Pytheas, a contemporary of
Alexander the Great, makes mention of them thus early in connection
with the amber trade; by the insertion of the Cimbri and Teutones in
the list of the Germanic peoples among the Ingaevones alongside of
the Chauci; by the judgment of Caesar, who first made the Romans
acquainted with the distinction betweenthe Ge rmans and the Celts,
and who includes the Cimbri, many of whom he must himself have seen,
among the Germans; and lastly, by the very names of the peoples and
the statements as to their physical appearance and habits in other
respects, which, while applying to the men of the north generally,
are especially applicable to the Germans.  On the other hand it is
conceivable enough that such a horde, after having been engaged in
wandering perhaps for many years and having in its movements near to
or within the land of the Celts doubtless welcomed every brother-in-arms
who joined it, would include a certain amount of Celtic elements; so
that it is not surprising that men of Celtic name should be at
the head of the Cimbri, or that the Romans should employ spies
speaking the Celtic tongue to gain information among them.  It was
a marvellous movement, the like of which the Romans had not yet seen;
not a predatory expedition of men equipped for the purpose, nor
a "-ver sacrum-" of young men migrating to a foreign land, but a
migratory people that had set out with their women and children, with
their goods and chattels, to seek a new home.  The waggon, which had
everywhere among the still not fully settled peoples of the north a
different importance from what it had among the Hellenes and the
Italians, and which universally accompanied the Celts also in their
encampments, was among the Cimbri as it were their house, where,
beneath the leather covering stretched over it, a place was found for
the wife and children and even for the house-dog as well as for the
furniture.  The men of the south beheld with astonishment those tall
lank figures with the fair locks and bright blue eyes, the hardy and
stately women who were little inferior in size and strength to the
men, and the children with old men's hair, as the amazed Italians
called the flaxen-haired youths of the north.  Their system of warfare
was substantially that of the Celts of this period, who no longer
fought, as the Italian Celts had formerly done, bareheaded and with
merely sword and dagger, but with copper helmets often richly adorned
and with a peculiar missile weapon, the -materis-; the large sword was
retained and the long narrow shield, along with which they probably
wore also a coat of mail.  They were not destitute of cavalry; but
the Romans were superior to them in that arm.  Their order of battle
was as formerly a rude phalanx professedly drawn up with just as many
ranks in depth as in breadth, the first rank of which in dangerous
combats not unfrequently tied together their metallic girdles with
cords.  Their manners were rude.  Flesh was frequently devoured raw.
The bravest and, if possible, the tallest man was king of the host.
Not unfrequently, after the manner of the Celts and of barbarians
generally, the time and place of the combat were previously arranged
with the enemy, and sometimes also, before the battle began, an individual
opponent was challenged to single combat.  The conflict was ushered
in by their insulting the enemy with unseemly gestures, and by a
horrible noise--the men raising their battle-shout, and the women
and children increasing the din by drumming on the leathern covers
of the waggons.  The Cimbrian fought bravely--death on the bed of
honour was deemed by him the only death worthy of a free man--but
after the victory he indemnified himself by the most savage brutality,
and sometimes promised beforehand to present to the gods of
battle whatever victory should place in the power of the victor.
The effects of the enemy were broken in pieces, the horses were killed,
the prisoners were hanged or preserved only to be sacrificed to the gods.
It was the priestesses--grey-haired women in white linen dresses and
unshod--who, like Iphigenia in Scythia, offered these sacrifices, and
prophesied the future from the streaming blood of the prisoner of war
or the criminal who formed the victim.  How much in these customs was
the universal usage of the northern barbarians, how much was borrowed
from the Celts, and how much was peculiar to the Germans, cannot
be ascertained; but the practice of having the army accompanied
and directed not by priests, but by priestesses, may be pronounced
an undoubtedly Germanic custom.  Thus marched the Cimbri into
the unknown land--an immense multitude of various origin which had
congregated round a nucleus of Germanic emigrants from the Baltic--
not without resemblance to the great bodies of emigrants, that in our
own times cross the ocean similarly burdened and similarly mingled, and
with aims not much less vague; carrying their lumbering waggon-castle,
with the dexterity which a long migratory life imparts, over streams
and mountains; dangerous to more civilized nations like the sea-wave
and the hurricane, and like these capricious and unaccountable, now
rapidly advancing, now suddenly pausing, turning aside, or receding.
They came and struck like lightning; like lightning they vanished;
and unhappily, in the dull age in which they appeared, there was
no observer who deemed it worth while accurately to describe the
marvellous meteor.  When men afterwards began to trace the chain,
of which this emigration, the first Germanic movement which touched
the orbit of ancient civilization, was a link, the direct and living
knowledge of it had long passed away.

Cimbrian Movements and Conflicts
Defeat of Carbo

This homeless people of the Cimbri, which hitherto had been
prevented from advancing to the south by the Celts on the Danube,
more especially by the Boii, broke through that barrier in consequence
of the attacks directed by the Romans against the Danubian Celts;
either because the latter invoked the aid of their Cimbrian
antagonists against the advancing legions, or because the Roman attack
prevented them from protecting as hitherto their northern frontiers.
Advancing through the territory of the Scordisci into the Tauriscan
country, they approached in 641 the passes of the Carnian Alps, to
protect which the consul Gnaeus Papirius Carbo took up a position
on the heights not far from Aquileia.  Here, seventy years before,
Celtic tribes had attempted to settle on the south of the Alps, but
at the bidding of the Romans had evacuated without resistance the
ground which they had already occupied;(18) even now the dread of
the Transalpine peoples at the Roman name showed itself strongly.
The Cimbri did not attack; indeed, when Carbo ordered them to evacuate
the territory of the Taurisci who were in relations of hospitality
with Rome--an order which the treaty with the latter by no means bound
him to make--they complied and followed the guides whom Carbo had
assigned to them to escort them over the frontier.  But these guides
were in fact instructed to lure the Cimbri into an ambush, where the
consul awaited them.  Accordingly an engagement took place not far
from Noreia in the modern Carinthia, in which the betrayed gained
the victory over the betrayer and inflicted on him considerable loss;
a storm, which separated the combatants, alone prevented the complete
annihilation of the Roman army.  The Cimbri might have immediately
directed their attack towards Italy; they preferred to turn to the
westward.  By treaty with the Helvetii and the Sequani rather than by
force of arms they made their way to the left bank of the Rhine and
over the Jura, and there some years after the defeat of Carbo once
more threatened the Roman territory by their immediate vicinity.

Defeat of Silanus

With a view to cover the frontier of the Rhine and the immediately
threatened territory of the Allobroges, a Roman army under Marcus
Junius Silanus appeared in 645 in Southern Gaul.  The Cimbri
requested that land might be assigned to them where they might
peacefully settle--a request which certainly could not be granted.
The consul instead of replying attacked them; he was utterly defeated
and the Roman camp was taken.  The new levies which were occasioned
by this misfortune were already attended with so much difficulty, that
the senate procured the abolition of the laws--presumably proceeding
from Gaius Gracchus--which limited the obligation to military service
in point of time.(19)  But the Cimbri, instead of following up their
victory over the Romans, sent to the senate at Rome to repeat their
request for the assignment of land, and meanwhile employed themselves,
apparently, in the subjugation of the surrounding Celtic cantons.

Inroad of the Helvetii into Southern Gaul
Defeat of Longinus

Thus the Roman province and the new Roman army were left for the
moment undisturbed by the Germans; but a new enemy arose in Gaul
itself.  The Helvetii, who had suffered much in the constant conflicts
with their north-eastern neighbours, felt themselves stimulated by
the example of the Cimbri to seek in their turn for more quiet and
fertile settlements in western Gaul, and had perhaps, even when the
Cimbrian hosts marched through their land, formed an alliance with
them for that purpose.  Now under the leadership of Divico the forces
of the Tougeni (position unknown) and of the Tigorini (on the lake
of Murten) crossed the Jura,(20) and reached the territory of the
Nitiobroges (about Agen on the Garonne).  The Roman army under the
consul Lucius Cassius Longinus, which they here encountered, allowed
itself to be decoyed by the Helvetii into an ambush, in which the
general himself and his legate, the consular Lucius Piso, along with
the greater portion of the soldiers met their death; Gaius Popillius,
the interim commander-in-chief of the force which had escaped to
the camp, was allowed to withdraw under the yoke on condition of
surrendering half the property which the troops carried with them
and furnishing hostages (647).  So perilous was the state of things
for the Romans, that one of the most important towns in their
own province, Tolosa, rose against them and placed the Roman
garrison in chains.

But, as the Cimbri continued to employ themselves elsewhere, and
the Helvetii did not further molest for the moment the Roman province,
the new Roman commander-in-chief, Quintus Servilius Caepio, had full
time to recover possession of the town of Tolosa by treachery and to
empty at leisure the immense treasures accumulated in the old and
famous sanctuary of the Celtic Apollo.  It was a desirable gain for
the embarrassed exchequer, but unfortunately the gold and silver vessels
on the way from Tolosa to Massilia were taken from the weak escort by
a band of robbers, and totally disappeared: the consul himself and
his staff were, it was alleged, the instigators of this onset (648).
Meanwhile they confined themselves to the strictest defensive
as regarded the chief enemy, and guarded the Roman province
with three strong armies, till it should please the Cimbri
to repeat their attack.

Defeat of Arausio

They came in 649 under their king Boiorix, on this occasion seriously
meditating an inroad into Italy.  They were opposed on the right bank
of the Rhone by the proconsul Caepio, on the left by the consul Gnaeus
Mallius Maximus and by his legate, the consular Marcus Aurelius
Scaurus, under him at the head of a detached corps.  The first onset
fell on the latter; he was totally defeated and brought in person as
a prisoner to the enemy's head-quarters, where the Cimbrian king,
indignant at the proud warning given to him by the captive Roman
not to venture with his army into Italy, put him to death.  Maximus
thereupon ordered his colleague to bring his army over the Rhone:
the latter complying with reluctance at length appeared at Arausio
(Orange) on the left bank of the river, where the whole Roman force
now stood confronting the Cimbrian army, and is alleged to have made
such an impression by its considerable numbers that the Cimbri began
to negotiate.  But the two leaders lived in the most vehement discord.
Maximus, an insignificant and incapable man, was as consul the legal
superior of his prouder and better born, but not better qualified,
proconsular colleague Caepio; but the latter refused to occupy a
common camp and to devise operations in concert with him, and still,
as formerly, maintained his independent command.  In vain deputies from
the Roman senate endeavoured to effect a reconciliation; a personal
conference between the generals, on which the officers insisted, only
widened the breach.  When Caepio saw Maximus negotiating with the
envoys of the Cimbri, he fancied that the latter wished to gain the
sole credit of their subjugation, and threw himself with his portion of
the army alone in all haste on the enemy.  He was utterly annihilated,
so that even his camp fell into the hands of the enemy (6 Oct. 649);
and his destruction was followed by the no less complete defeat
of the second Roman army.  It is asserted that 80,000 Roman soldiers
and half as many of the immense and helpless body of camp-followers
perished, and that only ten men escaped: this much is certain, that only
a few out of the two armies succeeded in escaping, for the Romans had
fought with the river in their rear.  It was a calamity which materially
and morally far surpassed the day of Cannae.  The defeats of Carbo,
of Silanus, and of Longinus had passed without producing any permanent
impression on the Italians.  They were accustomed to open every war
with disasters; the invincibleness of the Roman arms was so firmly
established, that it seemed superfluous to attend to the pretty numerous
exceptions.  But the battle of Arausio, the alarming proximity of
the victorious Cimbrian army to the undefended passes of the Alps,
the insurrections breaking out afresh and with increased force both
in the Roman territory beyond the Alps and among the Lusitanians,
the defenceless condition of Italy, produced a sudden and fearful
awakening from these dreams.  Men recalled the never wholly forgotten
Celtic inroads of the fourth century, the day on the Allia and
the burning of Rome: with the double force at once of the oldest
remembrance and of the freshest alarm the terror of the Gauls came
upon Italy; through all the west people seemed to be aware that
the Roman empire was beginning to totter.  As after the battle
of Cannae, the period of mourning was shortened by decree of
the senate.(21)  The new enlistments brought out the most painful
scarcity of men.  All Italians capable of bearing arms had to swear
that they would not leave Italy; the captains of the vessels lying
in the Italian ports were instructed not to take on board any man fit
for service.  It is impossible to tell what might have happened, had
the Cimbri immediately after their double victory advanced through
the gates of the Alps into Italy.  But they first overran the territory
of the Arverni, who with difficulty defended themselves in their
fortresses against the enemy; and soon, weary of sieges, set out
from thence, not to Italy, but westward to the Pyrenees.

The Roman Opposition
Warfare of Prosecutions

If the torpid organism of the Roman polity could still of itself reach
a crisis of wholesome reaction, that reaction could not but set in
now, when, by one of the marvellous pieces of good fortune, in which
the history of Rome is so rich, the danger was sufficiently imminent
to rouse all the energy and all the patriotism of the burgesses, and
yet did not burst upon them so suddenly as to leave no space for the
development of their resources.  But the very same phenomena, which
had occurred four years previously after the African defeats, presented
themselves afresh.  In fact the African and Gallic disasters were
essentially of the same kind.  It may be that primarily the blame
of the former fell more on the oligarchy as a whole, that of the
latter more on individual magistrates; but public opinion justly
recognized in both, above all things, the bankruptcy of the government,
which in its progressive development imperilled first the honour and
now the very existence of the state.  People just as little deceived
themselves then as now regarding the true seat of the evil, but
as little now as then did they make even an attempt to apply the
remedy at the proper point.  They saw well that the system was
to blame; but on this occasion also they adhered to the method
of calling individuals to account--only no doubt this second storm
discharged itself on the heads of the oligarchy so much the more
heavily, as the calamity of 649 exceeded in extent and peril that of
645.  The sure instinctive feeling of the public, that there was no
resource against the oligarchy except the -tyrannis-, was once more
apparent in their readily entering into every attempt by officers
of note to force the hand of the government and, under one form
or another, to overturn the oligarchic rule by a dictatorship.

It was against Quintus Caepio that their attacks were first
directed; and justly, in so far as he had primarily occasioned the
defeat of Arausio by his insubordination, even apart from the probably
well-founded but not proved charge of embezzling the Tolosan booty;
but the fury which the opposition displayed against him was essentially
augmented by the fact, that he had as consul ventured on an attempt
to wrest the posts of jurymen from the capitalists.(22)  On his account
the old venerable principle, that the sacredness of the magistracy
should be respected even in the person of its worst occupant, was
violated; and, while the censure due to the author of the calamitous
day of Cannae had been silently repressed within the breast, the author
of the defeat of Arausio was by decree of the people unconstitutionally
deprived of his proconsulship, and--what had not occurred since
the crisis in which the monarchy had perished--his property was
confiscated to the state-chest (649?).  Not long afterwards he was
by a second decree of the burgesses expelled from the senate (650).
But this was not enough; more victims were desired, and above all
Caepio's blood.  A number of tribunes of the people favourable to the
opposition, with Lucius Appuleius Saturninus and Gaius Norbanus at their
head, proposed in 651 to appoint an extraordinary judicial commission in
reference to the embezzlement and treason perpetrated in Gaul; in spite
of the de facto abolition of arrest during investigation and of the
punishment of death for political offences, Caepio was arrested and
the intention of pronouncing and executing in his case sentence of
death was openly expressed.  The government party attempted to get
rid of the proposal by tribunician intervention; but the interceding
tribunes were violently driven from the assembly, and in the furious
tumult the first men of the senate were assailed with stones.
The investigation could not be prevented, and the warfare of
prosecutions pursued its course in 651 as it had done six years
before; Caepio himself, his colleague in the supreme command Gnaeus
Mallius Maximus, and numerous other men of note were condemned: a
tribune of the people, who was a friend of Caepio, with difficulty
succeeded by the sacrifice of his own civic existence in saving at
least the life of the chief persons accused.(23)

Marius Commander-in-Chief

Of more importance than this measure of revenge was the question how
the dangerous war beyond the Alps was to be further carried on, and
first of all to whom the supreme command in it was to be committed.
With an unprejudiced treatment of the matter it was not difficult to
make a fitting choice.  Rome was doubtless, in comparison with earlier
times, not rich in military notabilities; yet Quintus Maximus had
commanded with distinction in Gaul, Marcus Aemilius Scaurus and
Quintus Minucius in the regions of the Danube, Quintus Metellus,
Publius Rutilius Rufus, Gaius Marius in Africa; and the object
proposed was not to defeat a Pyrrhus or a Hannibal, but again
to make good the often-tried superiority of Roman arms and Roman
tactics in opposition to the barbarians of the north--an object which
required no genius, but merely a stern and capable soldier.  But it
was precisely a time when nothing was so difficult as the unprejudiced
settlement of a question of administration.  The government was, as
it could not but be and as the Jugurthine war had already shown, so
utterly bankrupt in public opinion, that its ablest generals had to
retire in the full career of victory, whenever it occurred to an
officer of mark to revile them before the people and to get himself as
the candidate of the opposition appointed by the latter to the head of
affairs.  It was no wonder that what took place after the victories of
Metellus was repeated on a greater scale after the defeats of Gnaeus
Mallius and Quintus Caepio.  Once more Gaius Marius came forward, in
spite of the law which prohibited the holding of the consulship more
than once, as a candidate for the supreme magistracy; and not only was
he nominated as consul and charged with the chief command in the Gallic
war, while he was still in Africa at the head of the army there, but
he was reinvested with the consulship for five years in succession
(650-654)--in a way, which looked like an intentional mockery of
the exclusive spirit that the nobility had exhibited in reference
to this very man in all its folly and shortsightedness, but was also
unparalleled in the annals of the republic, and in fact absolutely
incompatible with the spirit of the free constitution of Rome.
In the Roman military system in particular--the transformation of which
from a burgess-militia into a body of mercenaries, begun in the African
war, was continued and completed by Marius during his five years of a
supreme command unlimited through the exigencies of the time still more
than through the terms of his appointment--the profound traces of this
unconstitutional commandership-in-chief of the first democratic general
remained visible for all time.

Roman Defensive

The new commander-in-chief, Gaius Marius, appeared in 650 beyond the
Alps, followed by a number of experienced officers--among whom the
bold captor of Jugurtha, Lucius Sulla, soon acquired fresh distinction--
and by a numerous host of Italian and allied soldiers.  At first he
did not find the enemy against whom he was sent.  The singular people,
who had conquered at Arausio, had in the meantime (as we have
already mentioned), after plundering the country to the west of
the Rhone, crossed the Pyrenees and were carrying on a desultory
warfare in Spain with the brave inhabitants of the northern coast
and of the interior; it seemed as if the Germans wished at their very
first appearance in the field of history to display their lack of
persistent grasp.  So Marius found ample time on the one hand to
reduce the revolted Tectosages to obedience, to confirm afresh the
wavering fidelity of the subject Gallic and Ligurian cantons, and to
obtain support and contingents within and without the Roman province
from the allies who were equally with the Romans placed in peril by
the Cimbri, such as the Massiliots, the Allobroges, and the Sequani;
and on the other hand, to discipline the army entrusted to him by
strict training and impartial justice towards all whether high or
humble, and to prepare the soldiers for the more serious labours of
war by marches and extensive works of entrenching--particularly the
construction of a canal of the Rhone, afterwards handed over to the
Massiliots, for facilitating the transit of the supplies sent from
Italy to the army.  He maintained a strictly defensive attitude,
and did not cross the bounds of the Roman province.

The Cimbri, Teutones, and Helvetii Unite
Expedition to Italy Resolved on
Teutones in the Province of Gaul

At length, apparently in the course of 651, the wave of the Cimbri,
after having broken itself in Spain on the brave resistance of the
native tribes and especially of the Celtiberians, flowed back again
over the Pyrenees and thence, as it appears, passed along the shore
of the Atlantic Ocean, where everything from the Pyrenees to the
Seine submitted to the terrible invaders.  There, on the confines
of the brave confederacy of the Belgae, they first encountered serious
resistance; but there also, while they were in the territory of the
Vellocassi (near Rouen), considerable reinforcements reached them.
Not only three cantons of the Helvetii, including the Tigorini
and Tougeni who had formerly fought against the Romans at the Garonne,
associated themselves, apparently about this period, with the Cimbri,
but these were also joined by the kindred Teutones under their king
Teutobod, who had been driven by events which tradition has not
recorded from their home on the Baltic sea to appear now on the
Seine.(24)  But even the united hordes were unable to overcome the
brave resistance of the Belgae.  The leaders accordingly resolved,
now that their numbers were thus swelled, to enter in all earnest on
the expedition to Italy which they had several times contemplated.
In order not to encumber themselves with the spoil which they had
heretofore collected, they left it behind under the protection of a
division of 6000 men, which after many wanderings subsequently gave
rise to the tribe of the Aduatuci on the Sambre.  But, whether from
the difficulty of finding supplies on the Alpine routes or from other
reasons, the mass again broke up into two hosts, one of which,
composed of the Cimbri and Tigorini, was to recross the Rhine
and to invade Italy through the passes of the eastern Alps already
reconnoitred in 641, and the other, composed of the newly-arrived
Teutones, the Tougeni, and the Ambrones--the flower of the Cimbrian
host already tried in the battle of Arausio--was to invade Italy
through Roman Gaul and the western passes.  It was this second
division, which in the summer of 652 once more crossed the Rhone
without hindrance, and on its left bank resumed, after a pause of
nearly three years, the struggle with the Romans.  Marius awaited them
in a well-chosen and well-provisioned camp at the confluence of the
Isere with the Rhone, in which position he intercepted the passage
of the barbarians by either of the only two military routes to Italy
then practicable, that over the Little St.  Bernard, and that along
the coast.  The Teutones attacked the camp which obstructed their
passage; for three consecutive days the assault of the barbarians
raged around the Roman entrenchments, but their wild courage was
thwarted by the superiority of the Romans in fortress-warfare and by
the prudence of the general.  After severe loss the bold associates
resolved to give up the assault, and to march onward to Italy past
the camp.  For six successive days they continued to defile--a proof
of the cumbrousness of their baggage still more than of the immensity
of their numbers.  The general permitted the march to proceed without
attacking them.  We can easily understand why he did not allow himself
to be led astray by the insulting inquiries of the enemy whether the
Romans had no commissions for their wives at home; but the fact, that
he did not take advantage of this audacious defiling of the hostile
columns in front of the concentrated Roman troops for the purpose of
attack, shows how little he trusted his unpractised soldiers.

Battle of Aquae Sextiae

When the march was over, he broke up his encampment and followed
in the steps of the enemy, preserving rigorous order and carefully
entrenching himself night after night.  The Teutones, who were striving
to gain the coast road, marching down the banks of the Rhone reached
the district of Aquae Sextiae, followed by the Romans.  The light
Ligurian troops of the Romans, as they were drawing water, here came
into collision with the Celtic rear-guard, the Ambrones; the conflict
soon became general; after a hot struggle the Romans conquered and
pursued the retreating enemy up to their waggon-stronghold.  This first
successful collision elevated the spirits of the general as well as of
the soldiers; on the third day after it Marius drew up his array for
a decisive battle on the hill, the summit of which bore the Roman
camp.  The Teutones, long impatient to measure themselves against
their antagonists, immediately rushed up the hill and began the
conflict.  It was severe and protracted: up to midday the Germans
stood like walls; but the unwonted heat of the Provengal sun
relaxed their energies, and a false alarm in their rear, where a
band of Roman camp-boys ran forth from a wooded ambuscade with loud
shouts, utterly decided the breaking up of the wavering ranks.
The whole horde was scattered, and, as was to be expected in a foreign
land, either put to death or taken prisoners.  Among the captives
was king Teutobod; among the killed a multitude of women, who, not
unacquainted with the treatment which awaited them as slaves, had
caused themselves to be slain in desperate resistance at their
waggons, or had put themselves to death in captivity, after having
vainly requested to be dedicated to the service of the gods and of
the sacred virgins of Vesta (summer of 652).

Cimbrians in Italy

Thus Gaul was relieved from the Germans; and it was time, for
their brothers-in-arms were already on the south side of the Alps.
In alliance with the Helvetii, the Cimbri had without difficulty passed
from the Seine to the upper valley of the Rhine, had crossed the chain
of the Alps by the Brenner pass, and had descended thence through
the valleys of the Eisach and Adige into the Italian plain.  Here
the consul Quintus Lutatius Catulus was to guard the passes; but
not fully acquainted with the country and afraid of having his flank
turned, he had not ventured to advance into the Alps themselves, but
had posted himself below Trent on the left bank of the Adige, and had
secured in any event his retreat to the right bank by the construction
of a bridge.  When the Cimbri, however, pushed forward in dense
masses from the mountains, a panic seized the Roman army, and
legionaries and horsemen ran off, the latter straight for the capital,
the former to the nearest height which seemed to afford security.
With great difficulty Catulus brought at least the greater portion of
his army by a stratagem back to the river and over the bridge, before
the enemy, who commanded the upper course of the Adige and were
already floating down trees and beams against the bridge, succeeded
in destroying it and thereby cutting off the retreat of the army.
But the general had to leave behind a legion on the other bank, and
the cowardly tribune who led it was already disposed to capitulate,
when the centurion Gnaeus Petreius of Atina, struck him down and cut
his way through the midst of the enemy to the main army on the right
bank of the Adige.  Thus the army, and in some degree even the
honour of their arms, was saved; but the consequences of the neglect
to occupy the passes and of the too hasty retreat were yet very
seriously felt Catulus was obliged to withdraw to the right bank of
the Po and to leave the whole plain between the Po and the Alps in
the power of the Cimbri, so that communication was maintained with
Aquileia only by sea.  This took place in the summer of 652, about
the same time when the decisive battle between the Teutones and the
Romans occurred at Aquae Sextiae.  Had the Cimbri continued their
attack without interruption, Rome might have been greatly embarrassed;
but on this occasion also they remained faithful to their custom of
resting in winter, and all the more, because the rich country, the
unwonted quarters under the shelter of a roof, the warm baths, and
the new and abundant supplies for eating and drinking invited them
to make themselves comfortable for the moment.  Thereby the Romans
gained time to encounter them with united forces in Italy.  It was
no season to resume--as the democratic general would perhaps otherwise
have done--the interrupted scheme of conquest in Gaul, such as Gaius
Gracchus had probably projected.  From the battle-field of Aix the
victorious army was conducted to the Po; and after a brief stay in
the capital, where Marius refused the triumph offered to him until
he had utterly subdued the barbarians, he arrived in person at the
united armies.  In the spring of 653 they again crossed the Po,
50,000 strong, under the consul Marius and the proconsul Catulus,
and marched against the Cimbri, who on their part seem to have marched
up the river with a view to cross the mighty stream at its source.

Battle on the Raudine Plain

The two armies met below Vercellae not far from the confluence of
the Sesia with the Po,(25) just at the spot where Hannibal had fought
his first battle on Italian soil.  The Cimbri desired battle, and
according to their custom sent to the Romans to settle the time and
place for it; Marius gratified them and named the next day--it was
the 30th July 653--and the Raudine plain, a wide level space, which
the superior Roman cavalry found advantageous for their movements.
Here they fell upon the enemy expecting them and yet taken by
surprise; for in the dense morning mist the Cimbrian cavalry found
itself in hand-to-hand conflict with the stronger cavalry of the
Romans before it anticipated attack, and was thereby thrown back
upon the infantry which was just making its dispositions for battle.
A complete victory was gained with slight loss, and the Cimbri were
annihilated.  Those might be deemed fortunate who met death in the
battle, as most did, including the brave king Boiorix; more fortunate
at least than those who afterwards in despair laid hands on themselves,
or were obliged to seek in the slave-market of Rome the master who
might retaliate on the individual Northman for the audacity of having
coveted the beauteous south before it was time.  The Tigorini, who had
remained behind in the passes of the Alps with the view of subsequently
following the Cimbri, ran off on the news of the defeat to their native
land.  The human avalanche, which for thirteen years had alarmed the
nations from the Danube to the Ebro, from the Seine to the Po, rested
beneath the sod or toiled under the yoke of slavery; the forlorn hope
of the German migrations had performed its duty; the homeless people
of the Cimbri and their comrades were no more.

The Victory and the Parties

The political parties of Rome continued their pitiful quarrels over
the carcase, without troubling themselves about the great chapter in
the world's history the first page of which was thus opened, without
even giving way to the pure feeling that on this day Rome's aristocrats
as well as Rome's democrats had done their duty.  The rivalry of
the two generals--who were not only political antagonists, but were
also set at variance in a military point of view by the so different
results of the two campaigns of the previous year--broke out immediately
after the battle in the most offensive form.  Catulus might with
justice assert that the centre division which he commanded had
decided the victory, and that his troops had captured thirty-one
standards, while those of Marius had brought in only two, his
soldiers led even the deputies of the town of Parma through the heaps
of the dead to show to them that Marius had slain his thousand, but
Catulus his ten thousand.  Nevertheless Marius was regarded as the real
conqueror of the Cimbri, and justly; not merely because by virtue of
his higher rank he had held the chief command on the decisive day,
and was in military gifts and experience beyond doubt far superior to
his colleague, but especially because the second victory at Vercellae
had in fact been rendered possible only by the first victory at Aquae
Sextiae.  But at that period it was considerations of political
partisanship rather than of military merit which attached the glory
of having saved Rome from the Cimbri and Teutones entirely to the name
of Marius.  Catulus was a polished and clever man, so graceful a
speaker that his euphonious language sounded almost like eloquence,
a tolerable writer of memoirs and occasional poems, and an excellent
connoisseur and critic of art; but he was anything but a man of the
people, and his victory was a victory of the aristocracy.  The battles
of the rough farmer on the other hand, who had been raised to honour
by the common people and had led the common people to victory, were
not merely defeats of the Cimbri and Teutones, but also defeats of the
government: there were associated with them hopes far different from
that of being able once more to carry on mercantile transactions on
the one side of the Alps or to cultivate the fields without molestation
on the other.  Twenty years had elapsed since the bloody corpse of
Gaius Gracchus had been flung into the Tiber; for twenty years the
government of the restored oligarchy had been endured and cursed;
still there had risen no avenger for Gracchus, no second master to
prosecute the building which he had begun.  There were many who
hated and hoped, many of the worst and many of the best citizens
of the state: was the man, who knew how to accomplish this vengeance
and these wishes, found at last in the son of the day-labourer of
Arpinum? Were they really on the threshold of the new much-dreaded
and much-desired second revolution?




Chapter VI

The Attempt of Marius at Revolution and the Attempt of Drusus at Reform

Marius

Gaius Marius, the son of a poor day-labourer, was born in 599 at the
village of Cereatae then belonging to Arpinum, which afterwards obtained
municipal rights as Cereatae Marianae and still at the present day bears
the name of "Marius' home" (Casamare).  He was reared at the plough,
in circumstances so humble that they seemed to preclude him from access
even to the municipal offices of Arpinum: he learned early--what he
practised afterwards even when a general--to bear hunger and thirst,
the heat of summer and the cold of winter, and to sleep on the hard
ground. As soon as his age allowed him, he had entered the army and
through service in the severe school of the Spanish wars had rapidly
risen to be an officer.  In Scipio's Numantine war he, at that time
twenty-three years of age, attracted the notice of the stern general
by the neatness with which he kept his horse and his accoutrements,
as well as by his bravery in combat and his decorous demeanour in camp.
He had returned home with honourable scars and warlike distinctions,
and with the ardent wish to make himself a name in the career on which
he had gloriously entered; but, as matters then stood, a man of even the
highest merit could not attain those political offices, which alone led
to the higher military posts, without wealth and without connections.
The young officer acquired both by fortunate commercial speculations and
by his union with a maiden of the ancient patrician clan of the Julii.
So by dint of great efforts and after various miscarriages he succeeded,
in 639, in attaining the praetorship, in which he found opportunity of
displaying afresh his military ability as governor of Further Spain.
How he thereafter in spite of the aristocracy received the consulship in
647 and, as proconsul (648, 649), terminated the African war; and how,
called after the calamitous day of Arausio to the superintendence of
the war against the Germans, he had his consulship renewed for four
successive years from 650 to 653 (a thing unexampled in the annals of
the republic) and vanquished and annihilated the Cimbri in Cisalpine,
and the Teutones in Transalpine, Gaul--has been already related.  In his
military position he had shown himself a brave and upright man, who
administered justice impartially, disposed of the spoil with rare
honesty and disinterestedness, and was thoroughly incorruptible; a
skilful organizer, who had brought the somewhat rusty machinery of the
Roman military system once more into a state of efficiency; an able
general, who kept the soldier under discipline and withal in good humour
and at the same time won his affections in comrade-like intercourse, but
looked the enemy boldly in the face and joined issue with him at the
proper time.  He was not, as far as we can judge, a man of eminent
military capacity; but the very respectable qualities which he possessed
were quite sufficient under the existing circumstances to procure for
him the reputation of such capacity, and by virtue of it he had taken
his place in a fashion of unparalleled honour among the consulars and
the triumphators.  But he was none the better fitted on that account for
the brilliant circle.  His voice remained harsh and loud, and his look
wild, as if he still saw before him Libyans or Cimbrians, and not well-
bred and perfumed colleagues.  That he was superstitious like a genuine
soldier of fortune; that he was induced to become a candidate for his
first consulship, not by the impulse of his talents, but primarily by
the utterances of an Etruscan -haruspex-; and that in the campaign with
the Teutones a Syrian prophetess Martha lent the aid of her oracles
to the council of war,--these things were not, in the strict sense,
unaristocratic: in such matters, then as at all times, the highest and
lowest strata of society met.  But the want of political culture was
unpardonable; it was commendable, no doubt, that he had the skill to
defeat the barbarians, but what was to be thought of a consul who was so
ignorant of constitutional etiquette as to appear in triumphal costume
in the senate! In other respects too the plebeian character clung to
him.  He was not merely--according to aristocratic phraseology--a poor
man, but, what was worse, frugal and a declared enemy of all bribery and
corruption.  After the manner of soldiers he was not nice, but was fond
of his cups, especially in his later years; he knew not the art of
giving feasts, and kept a bad cook.  It was likewise awkward that the
consular understood nothing but Latin and had to decline conversing
in Greek; that he felt the Greek plays wearisome might pass--he was
presumably not the only one who did so--but to confess to the feeling of
weariness was naive.  Thus he remained throughout life a countryman cast
adrift among aristocrats, and annoyed by the keenly-felt sarcasms and
still more keenly--felt commiseration of his colleagues, which he
had not the self-command to despise as he despised themselves.

Political Position of Marius

Marius stood aloof from the parties not much less than from society.
The measures which he carried in his tribunate of the people (635)--a
better control over the delivery of the voting-tablets with a view to
do away with the scandalous frauds that were therein practised, and the
prevention of extravagant proposals for largesses to the people(1)--do
not bear the stamp of a party, least of all that of the democratic, but
merely show that he hated what was unjust and irrational; and how could
a man like this, a farmer by birth and a soldier by inclination, have
been from the first a revolutionist? The hostile attacks of the
aristocracy had no doubt driven him subsequently into the camp of
the opponents of the government; and there he speedily found himself
elevated in the first instance to be general of the opposition, and
destined perhaps for still higher things hereafter.  But this was far
more the effect of the stringent force of circumstances and of the
general need which the opposition had for a chief, than his own work;
he had at any rate since his departure for Africa in 647-8 hardly
tarried, in passing, for a brief period in the capital.  It was not till
the latter half of 653 that he returned to Rome, victor over the Teutones
as over the Cimbri, to celebrate his postponed triumph now with double
honours--decidedly the first man in Rome, and yet at the same time a
novice in politics.  It was certain beyond dispute, not only that Marius
had saved Rome, but that he was the only man who could have saved it;
his name was on every one's lips; the men of quality acknowledged his
services; with the people he was more popular than any one before or
after him, popular alike by his virtues and by his faults, by his
unaristocratic disinterestedness no less than by his boorish roughness;
he was called by the multitude a third Romulus and a second Camillus;
libations were poured forth to him like the gods.  It was no wonder that
the head of the peasant's son grew giddy at times with all this glory;
that he compared his march from Africa to Gaul to the victorious
processions of Dionysus from continent to continent, and had a cup--none
of the smallest--manufactured for his use after the model of that of
Bacchus.  There was just as much of hope as of gratitude in this
delirious enthusiasm of the people, which might well have led astray
a man of colder blood and more mature political experience.  The work
of Marius seemed to his admirers by no means finished.  The wretched
government oppressed the land more heavily than did the barbarians: on
him, the first man of Rome, the favourite of the people, the head of the
opposition, devolved the task of once more delivering Rome.  It is true
that to one who was a rustic and a soldier the political proceedings
of the capital were strange and incongruous: he spoke as ill as he
commanded well, and displayed a far firmer bearing in presence of
the lances and swords of the enemy than in presence of the applause
or hisses of the multitude; but his inclinations were of little moment.
The hopes of which he was the object constrained him.  His military
and political position was such that, if he would not break with the
glorious past, if he would not deceive the expectations of his party and
in fact of the nation, if he would not be unfaithful to his own sense of
duty, he must check the maladministration of public affairs and put an
end to the government of the restoration; and if he only possessed the
internal qualities of a head of the people, he might certainly dispense
with those which he lacked as a popular leader.

The New Military Organization

He held in his hand a formidable weapon in the newly organized army.
Previously to his time the fundamental principle of the Servian
constitution--by which the levy was limited entirely to the burgesses
possessed of property, and the distinctions as to armour were regulated
solely by the property qualification(2)--had necessarily been in various
respects relaxed.  The minimum census of 11,000 -asses- (43 pounds),
which bound its possessor to enter the burgess-army, had been lowered to
4000 (17 pounds;(3)).  The older six property-classes, distinguished by
their respective kinds of armour, had been restricted to three; for,
while in accordance with the Servian organization they selected the
cavalry from the wealthiest, and the light-armed from the poorest,
of those liable to serve, they arranged the middle class, the proper
infantry of the line, no longer according to property but according to
age of service, in the three divisions of -hastati-, -principes-, and
-triarii-.  They had, moreover, long ago brought in the Italian allies
to share to a very great extent in war-service; but in their case too,
just as among the Roman burgesses, military duty was chiefly imposed
on the propertied classes.  Nevertheless the Roman military system down
to the time of Marius rested in the main on that primitive organization
of the burgess-militia.  But it was no longer suited for the altered
circumstances.  The better classes of society kept aloof more and more
from service in the army, and the Roman and Italic middle class in
general was disappearing; while on the other hand the considerable
military resources of the extra-Italian allies and subjects had become
available, and the Italian proletariate also, properly applied, afforded
at least a very useful material for military objects.  The burgess-
cavalry,(4) which was meant to be formed from the class of the wealthy,
had practically ceased from service in the field even before the time of
Marius.  It is last mentioned as an actual corps d'armee in the Spanish
campaign of 614, when it drove the general to despair by its insolent
arrogance and its insubordination, and a war broke out between
the troopers and the general, waged on both sides with equal
unscrupulousness.  In the Jugurthine war it continues to appear merely
as a sort of guard of honour for the general and foreign princes;
thenceforth it wholly disappears.  In like manner the filling up of the
complement of the legions with properly qualified persons bound to serve
proved in the ordinary course of things difficult; so that exertions,
such as were necessary after the battle of Arausio, would have been in
all probability really impracticable with the retention of the existing
rules as to the obligation of service.  On the other hand even before
the time of Marius, especially in the cavalry and the light infantry,
extra-Italian subjects--the heavy mounted troopers of Thrace, the light
African cavalry, the excellent light infantry of the nimble Ligurians,
the slingers from the Baleares--were employed in ever-increasing numbers
even beyond their own provinces for the Roman armies; and at the same
time, while there was a want of qualified burgess-recruits, the non-
qualified poorer burgesses pressed forward unbidden to enter the army;
in fact, from the mass of the civic rabble without work or averse
to it, and from the considerable advantages which the Roman war-service
yielded, the enlistment of volunteers could not be difficult.  It was
therefore simply a necessary consequence of the political and social
changes in the state, that its military arrangements should exhibit
a transition from the system of the burgess-levy to the system of
contingents and enlisting; that the cavalry and light troops should
be essentially formed out of the contingents of the subjects--in the
Cimbrian campaign, for instance, contingents were summoned from as far
as Bithynia; and that in the case of the infantry of the line, while
the former arrangement of obligation to service was not abolished,
every free-born burgess should at the same time be permitted voluntarily
to enter the army as was first done by Marius in 647.

To this was added the reducing the infantry of the line to a level,
which is likewise to be referred to Marius.  The Roman method of
aristocratic classification had hitherto prevailed also within the
legion.  Each of the four divisions of the -velites-, the -hastati-,
the -principes-, and the -triarii---or, as we may say, the vanguard,
the first, second, and third line--had hitherto possessed its special
qualification for service, as respected property or age, and in great
part also its distinctive equipment; each had its definite place once
for all assigned in the order of battle; each had its definite military
rank and its own standard.  All these distinctions were now superseded.
Any one admitted as a legionary at all needed no further qualification
in order to serve in any division; the discretion of the officers alone
decided as to his place.  All distinctions of armour were set aside, and
consequently all recruits were uniformly trained.  Connected, doubtless,
with this change were the various improvements which Marius introduced
in the armament, the carrying of the baggage, and similar matters, and
which furnish an honourable evidence of his insight into the practical
details of the business of war and of his care for his soldiers; and
more especially the new method of drill devised by Publius Rutilius
Rufus (consul 649) the comrade of Marius in the African war.  It is a
significant fact, that this method considerably increased the military
culture of the individual soldier, and was essentially based upon the
training of the future gladiators which was usual in the fighting-
schools of the time.  The arrangement of the legion became totally
different.  The thirty companies (-manipuli-) of heavy infantry, which--
each in two sections (-centuriae-) composed respectively of 60 men in
the first two, and of 30 men in the third, division--had hitherto formed
the tactical unit, were replaced by 10 cohorts (-cohortes-) each with
its own standard and each of 6, or often only of 5, sections of 100
men apiece; so that, although at the same time 1200 men were saved by
the suppression of the light infantry of the legion, yet the total
numbers of the legion were raised from 4200 to from 5000 to 6000 men.
The custom of fighting in three divisions was retained, but, while
previously each division had formed a distinct corps, it was in future
left to the general to distribute the cohorts, of which he had the
disposal, in the three lines as he thought best.  Military rank was
determined solely by the numerical order of the soldiers and of the
divisions.  The four standards of the several parts of the legion--the
wolf, the ox with a man's head, the horse, the boar--which had hitherto
probably been carried before the cavalry and the three divisions of
heavy infantry, disappeared; there came instead the ensigns of the new
cohorts, and the new standard which Marius gave to the legion as a
whole--the silver eagle.  While within the legion every trace of the
previous civic and aristocratic classification thus disappeared, and the
only distinctions henceforth occurring among the legionaries were purely
military, accidental circumstances had some decades earlier given
rise to a privileged division of the army alongside of the legions--
the bodyguard of the general.  Hitherto selected men from the allied
contingents had formed the personal escort of the general; the
employment of Roman legionaries, or even men voluntarily offering
themselves, for personal service with him was at variance with the
stern disciplinary obligations of the mighty commonwealth.  But when the
Numantine war had reared an army demoralized beyond parallel, and Scipio
Aemilianus, who was called to check the wild disorder, had not been able
to prevail on the government to call entirely new troops under arms, he
was at least allowed to form, in addition to a number of men whom the
dependent kings and free cities outside of the Roman bounds placed at
his disposal, a personal escort of 500 men composed of volunteer Roman
burgesses (p.  230).  This cohort drawn partly from the better classes,
partly from the humbler personal clients of the general, and hence
called sometimes that of the friends, sometimes that of the headquarters
(-praetoriani-), had the duty of serving in the latter (-praetorium-)
in return for which it was exempt from camp and entrenching service
and enjoyed higher pay and greater repute.

Political Significance of the Marian Military Reform

This complete revolution in the constitution of the Roman army seems
certainly in substance to have originated from purely military motives;
and on the whole to have been not so much the work of an individual,
least of all of a man of calculating ambition, as the remodelling which
the force of circumstances enjoined in arrangements which had become
untenable.  It is probable that the introduction of the system of inland
enlistment by Marius saved the state in a military point of view from
destruction, just as several centuries afterwards Arbogast and Stilicho
prolonged its existence for a time by the introduction of foreign
enlistment.  Nevertheless, it involved a complete--although not yet
developed--political revolution.  The republican constitution was
essentially based on the view that the citizen was at the same time
a soldier, and that the soldier was above all a citizen; there was an
end of it, so soon as a soldier-class was formed.  To this issue the
new system of drill, with its routine borrowed from the professional
gladiator, could not but lead; the military service became gradually
a profession.  Far more rapid was the effect of the admission--though
but limited--of the proletariate to participate in military service;
especially in connection with the primitive maxims, which conceded to
the general an arbitrary right of rewarding his soldiers compatible only
with very solid republican institutions, and gave to the capable and
successful soldier a sort of title to demand from the general a share
of the moveable spoil and from the stale a portion of the soil that had
been won.  While the burgess or farmer called out under the levy saw in
military service nothing but a burden to be undertaken for the public
good, and in the gains of war nothing but a slight compensation for the
far more considerable loss brought upon him by serving, it was otherwise
with the enlisted proletarian.  Not only was he for the moment solely
dependent upon his pay, but, as there was no Hotel des Invalides nor
even a poorhouse to receive him after his discharge, for the future
also he could not but wish to abide by his standard, and not to leave
it otherwise than with the establishment of his civic status, His only
home was the camp, his only science war, his only hope the general--what
this implied, is clear.  When Marius after the engagement on the Raudine
plain unconstitutionally gave Roman citizenship on the very field
of battle to two cohorts of Italian allies en masse for their brave
conduct, he justified himself afterwards by saying that amidst the noise
of battle he had not been able to distinguish the voice of the laws.
If once in more important questions the interest of the army and that
of the general should concur to produce unconstitutional demands,
who could be security that then other laws also would not cease to
be heard amid the clashing of swords? They had now the standing army,
the soldier-class, the bodyguard; as in the civil constitution, so also
in the military, all the pillars of the future monarchy were already
in existence: the monarch alone was wanting.  When the twelve eagles
circled round the Palatine hill, they ushered in the reign of the Kings;
the new eagle which Gaius Marius bestowed on the legions proclaimed
the near advent of the Emperors.

Political Projects of Marius

There is hardly any doubt that Marius entered into the brilliant
prospects which his military and political position opened up to him.
It was a sad and troubled time.  Men had peace, but they were not glad
of having it; the state of things was not now such as it had formerly
been after the first mighty onset of the men of the north on Rome, when,
so soon as the crisis was over, all energies were roused anew in the
fresh consciousness of recovered health, and had by their vigorous
development rapidly and amply made up for what was lost.  Every one felt
that, though able generals might still once and again avert immediate
destruction, the commonwealth was only the more surely on the way to
ruin under the government of the restored oligarchy; but every one felt
also that the time was past when in such cases the burgess-body came to
its own help, and that there was no amendment so long as the place of
Gaius Gracchus remained empty.  How deeply the multitude felt the blank
that was left after the disappearance of those two illustrious youths
who had opened the gates to revolution, and how childishly in fact it
grasped at any shadow of a substitute, was shown by the case of the
pretended son of Tiberius Gracchus, who, although the very sister of
the two Gracchi charged him with fraud in the open Forum, was yet chosen
by the people in 655 as tribune solely on account of his usurped name.
In the same spirit the multitude exulted in the presence of Gaius
Marius; how should it not? He, if any one, seemed the right man--he
was at any rate the first general and the most popular name of his time,
confessedly brave and upright, and recommended as regenerator of the
state by his very position aloof from the proceedings of party--how
should not the people, how should not he himself, have held that he was
so! Public opinion as decidedly as possible favoured the opposition.
It was a significant indication of this, that the proposal to have the
vacant stalls in the chief priestly colleges filled up by the burgesses
instead of the colleges themselves--which the government had frustrated
in the comitia in 609 by the suggestion of religious scruples--was
carried in 650 by Gnaeus Domitius without the senate having been able
even to venture a serious resistance.  On the whole it seemed as if
nothing was wanted but a chief, who should give to the opposition a firm
rallying point and a practical aim; and this was now found in Marius.

For the execution of his task two methods of operation offered
themselves; Marius might attempt to overthrow the oligarchy either as
-imperator- at the head of the army, or in the mode prescribed by the
constitution for constitutional changes: his own past career pointed to
the former course, the precedent of Gracchus to the latter.  It is easy
to understand why he did not adopt the former plan, perhaps did not even
think of the possibility of adopting it The senate was or seemed so
powerless and helpless, so hated and despised, that Marius conceived
himself scarcely to need any other support in opposing it than his
immense popularity, but hoped in case of necessity to find such a
support, notwithstanding the dissolution of the army, in the soldiers
discharged and waiting for their rewards.  It is probable that Marius,
looking to Gracchus' easy and apparently almost complete victory and to
his own resources far surpassing those of Gracchus, deemed the overthrow
of a constitution four hundred years old, and intimately bound up with
the manifold habits and interests of the body-politic arranged in a
complicated hierarchy, a far easier task than it was.  But any one, who
looked more deeply into the difficulties of the enterprise than Marius
probably did, might reflect that the army, although in the course of
transition from a militia to a body of mercenaries, was still during
this state of transition by no means adapted for the blind instrument of
a coup d'etat, and that an attempt to set aside the resisting elements
by military means would have probably augmented the power of resistance
in his antagonists.  To mix up the organized armed force in the struggle
could not but appear at the first glance superfluous and at the second
hazardous; they were just at the beginning of the crisis, and the
antagonistic elements were still far from having reached their last,
shortest, and simplest expression.

The Popular Party

Marius therefore discharged the army after his triumph in accordance
with the existing regulation, and entered on the course traced out by
Gaius Gracchus for procuring to himself supremacy in the state by
undertaking its constitutional magistracies.  In this enterprise he
found himself dependent for support on what was called the popular
party, and sought his allies in its leaders for the time being all
the more, that the victorious general by no means possessed the gifts
and experiences requisite for the command of the streets.  Thus the
democratic party after long insignificance suddenly regained political
importance.  It had, in the long interval from Gaius Gracchus to Marius,
materially deteriorated.  Perhaps the dissatisfaction with the
senatorial government was not now less than it was then; but several
of the hopes, which had brought to the Gracchi their most faithful
adherents, had in the meanwhile been recognized as illusory, and there
had sprung up in many minds a misgiving that this Gracchan agitation
tended towards an issue whither a very large portion of the discontented
were by no means willing to follow it.  In fact, amidst the chase and
turmoil of twenty years there had been rubbed off and worn away very
much of the fresh enthusiasm, the steadfast faith, the moral purity
of effort, which mark the early stages of revolutions.  But, if the
democratic party was no longer what it had been under Gaius Gracchus,
the leaders of the intervening period were now as far beneath their
party as Gaius Gracchus had been exalted above it.  This was implied
in the nature of the case.  Until there should emerge a man having
the boldness like Gaius Gracchus to grasp at the supremacy of the state,
the leaders could only be stopgaps: either political novices, who gave
furious vent to their youthful love of opposition and then, when duly
accredited as fiery declaimers and favourite speakers, effected with
more or less dexterity their retreat to the camp of the government
party; or people who had nothing to lose in respect of property and
influence, and usually not even anything to gain in respect of honour,
and who made it their business to obstruct and annoy the government
from personal exasperation or even from the mere pleasure of creating a
noise.  To the former sort belonged, for instance, Gaius Memmius(5) and
the well-known orator Lucius Crassus, who turned the oratorical laurels
which they had won in the ranks of the opposition to account in the
sequel as zealous partisans of the government.

Glaucia
Saturninus

But the most notable leaders of the popular party about this time were
men of the second sort.  Such were Gaius Servilius Glaucia, called by
Cicero the Roman Hyperbolus, a vulgar fellow of the lowest origin and of
the most shameless street-eloquence, but effective and even dreaded by
reason of his pungent wit; and his better and abler associate, Lucius
Appuleius Saturninus, who even according to the accounts of his enemies
was a fiery and impressive speaker, and was at least not guided by
motives of vulgar selfishness.  When he was quaestor, the charge of the
importation of corn, which had fallen to him in the usual way, had been
withdrawn from him by decree of the senate, not so much perhaps on
account of maladministration, as in order to confer this--just at that
time popular--office on one of the heads of the government party, Marcus
Scaurus, rather than upon an unknown young man belonging to none of
the ruling families.  This mortification had driven the aspiring and
sensitive man into the ranks of the opposition; and as tribune of
the people in 651 he repaid what he had received with interest.
One scandalous affair had at that time followed hard upon another.
He had spoken in the open market of the briberies practised in Rome
by the envoys of king Mithradates--these revelations, compromising in
the highest degree the senate, had wellnigh cost the bold tribune his
life.  He had excited a tumult against the conqueror of Numidia, Quintus
Metellus, when he was a candidate for the censorship in 652, and kept
him besieged in the Capitol till the equites liberated him not without
bloodshed; the retaliatory measure of the censor Metellus--the expulsion
with infamy of Saturninus and of Glaucia from the senate on occasion of
the revision of the senatorial roll--had only miscarried through the
remissness of the colleague assigned to Metellus.  Saturninus mainly had
carried that exceptional commission against Caepio and his associates(6)
in spite of the most vehement resistance by the government party; and in
opposition to the same he had carried the keenly-contested re-election
of Marius as consul for 652.  Saturninus was decidedly the most
energetic enemy of the senate and the most active and eloquent leader
of the popular party since Gaius Gracchus; but he was also violent
and unscrupulous beyond any of his predecessors, always ready to
descend into the street and to refute his antagonist with blows
instead of words.

Such were the two leaders of the so-called popular party, who now made
common cause with the victorious general.  It was natural that they
should do so; their interests and aims coincided, and even in the
earlier candidatures of Marius Saturninus at least had most decidedly
and most effectively taken his side.  It was agreed between them that
for 654 Marius should become a candidate for a sixth consulship,
Saturninus for a second tribunate, Glaucia for the praetorship, in order
that, possessed of these offices, they might carry out the intended
revolution in the state.  The senate acquiesced in the nomination of
the less dangerous Glaucia, but did what it could to hinder the election
of Marius and Saturninus, or at least to associate with the former a
determined antagonist in the person of Quintus Metellus as his colleague
in the consulship.  All appliances, lawful and unlawful, were put in
motion by both parties; but the senate was not successful in arresting
the dangerous conspiracy in the bud.  Marius did not disdain in person
to solicit votes and, it was said, even to purchase them; in fact, at
the tribunician elections when nine men from the list of the government
party were proclaimed, and the tenth place seemed already secured for a
respectable man of the same complexion Quintus Nunnius, the latter was
set upon and slain by a savage band, which is said to have been mainly
composed of discharged soldiers of Marius.  Thus the conspirators gained
their object, although by the most violent means.  Marius was chosen as
consul, Glaucia as praetor, Saturninus as tribune of the people for 654;
the second consular place was obtained not by Quintus Metellus, but by
an insignificant man, Lucius Valerius Flaccus: the confederates might
proceed to put into execution the further schemes which they
contemplated and to complete the work broken off in 633.

The Appuleian Laws

Let us recall the objects which Gaius Gracchus pursued, and the means
by which he pursued them.  His object was to break down the oligarchy
within and without.  He aimed, on the one hand, to restore the power of
the magistrates, which had become completely dependent on the senate, to
its original sovereign rights, and to re-convert the senatorial assembly
from a governing into a deliberative board; and, on the other hand, to
put an end to the aristocratic division of the state into the three
classes of the ruling burgesses, the Italian allies, and the subjects,
by the gradual equalization of those distinctions which were
incompatible with a government not oligarchical.  These ideas the three
confederates revived in the colonial laws, which Saturninus as tribune
of the people had partly introduced already (651), partly now introduced
(654).(7) As early as the former year the interrupted distribution of
the Carthaginian territory had been resumed primarily for the benefit of
the soldiers of Marius--not the burgesses only but, as it would seem,
also the Italian allies--and each of these veterans had been promised an
allotment of 100 -jugera-, or about five times the size of an ordinary
Italian farm, in the province of Africa.  Now not only was the
provincial land already available claimed in its widest extent for
the Romano-Italian emigration, but also all the land of the still
independent Celtic tribes beyond the Alps, by virtue of the legal
fiction that through the conquest of the Cimbri all the territory
occupied by these had been acquired de jure by the Romans.  Gaius Marius
was called to conduct the assignations of land and the farther measures
that might appear necessary in this behalf; and the temple-treasures of
Tolosa, which had been embezzled but were refunded or had still to be
refunded by the guilty aristocrats, were destined for the outfit of the
new receivers of land.  This law therefore not only revived the plans of
conquest beyond the Alps and the projects of Transalpine and transmarine
colonization, which Gaius Gracchus and Flaccus had sketched, on the most
extensive scale; but, by admitting the Italians along with the Romans
to emigration and yet undoubtedly prescribing the erection of all the
new communities as burgess-colonies, it formed a first step towards
satisfying the claims--to which it was so difficult to give effect, and
which yet could not be in the long run refused--of the Italians to be
placed on an equality with the Romans.  First of all, however, if the
law passed and Marius was called to the independent carrying out of
these immense schemes of conquest and assignation, he would become
practically--until those plans should be realized or rather, considering
their indefinite and unlimited character, for his lifetime--monarch of
Rome; with which view it may be presumed that Marius intended to have
his consulship annually renewed, like the tribunate of Gracchus.  But,
amidst the agreement of the political positions marked out for the
younger Gracchus and for Marius in all other essential particulars,
there was yet a very material distinction between the land-assigning
tribune and the land-assigning consul in the fact, that the former was
to occupy a purely civil position, the latter a military position as
well; a distinction, which partly but by no means solely arose out of
the personal circumstances under which the two men had risen to the head
of the state.  While such was the nature of the aim which Marius and his
comrades had proposed to themselves, the next question related to the
means by which they purposed to break down the resistance--which might
be anticipated to be obstinate--of the government party.  Gaius Gracchus
had fought his battles with the aid of the capitalist class and the
proletariate.  His successors did not neglect to make advances likewise
to these.  The equites were not only left in possession of the
tribunals, but their power as jurymen was considerably increased, partly
by a stricter ordinance regarding the standing commission--especially
important to the merchants--as to extortions on the part of the public
magistrates in the provinces, which Glaucia carried probably in this
year, partly by the special tribunal, appointed doubtless as early as
651 on the proposal of Saturninus, respecting the embezzlements and
other official malversations that had occurred during the Cimbrian
movement in Gaul.  For the benefit, moreover, of the proletariate of
the capital the sum below cost price, which hitherto had to be paid on
occasion of the distributions of grain for the -modius-, was lowered
from 6 1/3 -asses- to a mere nominal charge of 5/6 of an -as-.
But although they did not despise the alliance with the equites and
the proletariate of the capital, the real power by which the confederates
enforced their measures lay not in these, but in the discharged soldiers
of the Marian army, who for that very reason had been provided for in
the colonial laws themselves after so extravagant a fashion.  In this
also was evinced the predominating military character, which forms
the chief distinction between this attempt at revolution and that
which preceded it.

Violent Proceedings in the Voting

They went to work accordingly.  The corn and colonial laws encountered,
as was to be expected, the keenest opposition from the government.
They proved in the senate by striking figures, that the former must
make the public treasury bankrupt; Saturninus did not trouble himself
about that.  They brought tribunician intercession to bear against
both laws; Saturninus ordered the voting to go on.  They informed
the magistrates presiding at the voting that a peal of thunder had
been heard, a portent by which according to ancient belief the gods
enjoined the dismissal of the public assembly; Saturninus remarked
to the messengers that the senate would do well to keep quiet, otherwise
the thunder might very easily be followed by hail.  Lastly the urban
quaestor, Quintus Caepio, the son, it may be presumed, of the general
condemned three years before,(8) and like his father a vehement
antagonist of the popular party, with a band of devoted partisans
dispersed the comitia by violence.  But the tough soldiers of Marius,
who had flocked in crowds to Rome to vote on this occasion, quickly
rallied and dispersed the city bands, and on the voting ground thus
reconquered the vote on the Appuleian laws was successfully brought to
an end.  The scandal was grievous; but when it came to the question
whether the senate would comply with the clause of the law that
within five days after its passing every senator should on pain of
forfeiting his senatorial seat take an oath faithfully to observe it,
all the senators took the oath with the single exception of Quintus
Metellus, who preferred to go into exile.  Marius and Saturninus
were not displeased to see the best general and the ablest man among
the opposing party removed from the state by voluntary banishment.

The Fall of the Revolutionary Party

Their object seemed to be attained; but even now to those who saw
more clearly the enterprise could not but appear a failure.  The cause
of the failure lay mainly in the awkward alliance between a politically
incapable general and a street-demagogue, capable but recklessly
violent, and filled with passion rather than with the aims of a
statesman.  They had agreed excellently, so long as the question related
only to plans.  But when the plans came to be executed, it was very soon
apparent that the celebrated general was in politics utterly incapable;
that his ambition was that of the farmer who would cope with and,
if possible, surpass the aristocrats in titles, and not that of the
statesman who desires to govern because he feels within him the power
to do so; that every enterprise, which was based on his personal standing
as a politician, must necessarily even under the most favourable
circumstances be ruined by himself.

Opposition of the Whole Aristocracy

He knew neither the art of gaining his antagonists, nor that of keeping
his own party in subjection.  The opposition against him and his
comrades was even of itself sufficiently considerable; for not only did
the government party belong to it in a body, but also a great part of
the burgesses, who guarded with jealous eyes their exclusive privileges
against the Italians; and by the course which things took the whole
class of the wealthy was also driven over to the government.  Saturninus
and Glaucia were from the first masters and servants of the proletariate
and therefore not at all on a good footing with the moneyed aristocracy,
which had no objection now and then to keep the senate in check by means
of the rabble, but had no liking for street-riots and violent outrages.
As early as the first tribunate of Saturninus his armed bands had their
skirmishes with the equites; the vehement opposition which his election
as tribune for 654 encountered shows clearly how small was the party
favourable to him.  It should have been the endeavour of Marius to avail
himself of the dangerous help of such associates only in moderation,
and to convince all and sundry that they were destined not to rule, but
to serve him as the ruler.  As he did precisely the contrary, and the
matter came to look quite as if the object was to place the government
in the hands not of an intelligent and vigorous master, but of the mere
-canaille-, the men of material interests, terrified to death at the
prospect of such confusion, again attached themselves closely to the
senate in presence of this common danger.  While Gaius Gracchus, clearly
perceiving that no government could be overthrown by means of the
proletariate alone, had especially sought to gain over to his side
the propertied classes, those who desired to continue his work began by
producing a reconciliation between the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie.

Variance between Marius and the Demogogues

But the ruin of the enterprise was brought about, still more rapidly
than by this reconciliation of enemies, through the dissension which
the more than ambiguous behaviour of Marius necessarily produced among
its promoters.  While the decisive proposals were brought forward by
his associates and carried after a struggle by his soldiers, Marius
maintained an attitude wholly passive, just as if the political leader
was not bound quite as much as the military, when the brunt of battle
came, to present himself everywhere and foremost in person.  Nor was
this all; he was terrified at, and fled from the presence of, the
spirits which he had himself evoked.  When his associates resorted to
expedients which an honourable man could not approve, but without which
in fact the object of their efforts could not be attained, he attempted,
in the fashion usual with men whose ideas of political morality are
confused, to wash his hands of participation in those crimes and at the
same time to profit by their results.  There is a story that the general
once conducted secret negotiations in two different rooms of his house,
with Saturninus and his partisans in the one, and with the deputies of
the oligarchy in the other, talking with the former of striking a blow
against the senate, and with the latter of interfering against the
revolt, and that under a pretext which was in keeping with the anxiety
of the situation he went to and fro between the two conferences--a story
as certainly invented, and as certainly appropriate, as any incident in
Aristophanes.  The ambiguous attitude of Marius became notorious in the
question of the oath.  At first he seemed as though he would himself
refuse the oath required by the Appuleian laws on account of the
informalities that had occurred at their passing, and then swore it with
the reservation, "so far as the laws were really valid"; a reservation
which annulled the oath itself, and which of course all the senators
likewise adopted in swearing, so that by this mode of taking the oath
the validity of the laws was not secured, but on the contrary was for
the first time really called in question.

The consequences of this behaviour--stupid beyond parallel--on the part
of the celebrated general soon developed themselves.  Saturninus and
Glaucia had not undertaken the revolution and procured for Marius
the supremacy of the state, in order that they might be disowned and
sacrificed by him; if Glaucia, the favourite jester of the people, had
hitherto lavished on Marius the gayest flowers of his jovial eloquence,
the garlands which he now wove for him were by no means redolent of
roses and violets.  A total rupture took place, by which both parties
were lost; for Marius had not a footing sufficiently firm singly to
maintain the colonial law which he had himself called in question and
to possess himself of the position which it assigned to him, nor were
Saturninus and Glaucia in a condition to continue on their own account
the work which Marius had begun.

Saturninus Isolated
Saturninus Assailed and Overpowered

But the two demagogues were so compromised that they could not recede;
they had no alternative save to resign their offices in the usual way
and thereby to deliver themselves with their hands bound to their
exasperated opponents, or now to grasp the sceptre for themselves,
although they felt that they could not bear its weight.  They resolved
on the latter course; Saturninus would come forward once more as a
candidate for the tribunate of the people for 655, Glaucia, although
praetor and not eligible for the consulship till two years had elapsed,
would become a candidate for the latter.  In fact the tribunician
elections were decided entirely to their mind, and the attempt of
Marius to prevent the spurious Tiberius Gracchus from soliciting the
tribuneship served only to show the celebrated man what was now the
worth of his popularity; the multitude broke the doors of the prison in
which Gracchus was confined, bore him in triumph through the streets,
and elected him by a great majority as their tribune.  Saturninus and
Glaucia sought to control the more important consular election by the
expedient for the removal of inconvenient competitors which had been
tried in the previous year; the counter-candidate of the government
party, Gaius Memmius--the same who eleven years before had led the
opposition against them(9)--was suddenly assailed by a band of ruffians
and beaten to death.  But the government party had only waited for a
striking event of this sort in order to employ force.  The senate
required the consul Gaius Marius to interfere, and the latter in reality
professed his readiness now to draw for the conservative party the
sword, which he had obtained from the democracy and had promised to
wield on its behalf.  The young men were hastily called out, equipped
with arms from the public buildings, and drawn up in military array; the
senate itself appeared under arms in the Forum, with its venerable chief
Marcus Scaurus at its head.  The opposite party were doubtless superior
in a street-riot, but were not prepared for such an attack; they had now
to defend themselves as they could.  They broke open the doors of the
prisons, and called the slaves to liberty and to arms; they proclaimed--
so it was said at any rate--Saturninus as king or general; on the day
when the new tribunes of the people had to enter on their office, the
10th of December 654, a battle occurred in the great market-place--the
first which, since Rome existed, had ever been fought within the walls
of the capital.  The issue was not for a moment doubtful.  The Populares
were beaten and driven up to the Capitol, where the supply of water was
cut off from them and they were thus compelled to surrender.  Marius,
who held the chief command, would gladly have saved the lives of his
former allies who were now his prisoners; Saturninus proclaimed to the
multitude that all which he had proposed had been done in concert with
the consul: even a worse man than Marius was could not but shudder at
the inglorious part which he played on this day.  But he had long ceased
to be master of affairs.  Without orders the youth of rank climbed
the roof of the senate-house in the Forum where the prisoners were
temporarily confined, stripped off the tiles, and with these stoned
their victims.  Thus Saturninus perished with most of the more notable
prisoners.  Glaucia was found in a lurking-place and likewise put
to death.  Without sentence or trial there died on this day four
magistrates of the Roman people--a praetor, a quaestor, and two
tribunes of the people--and a number of other well-known men, some of
whom belonged to good families.  In spite of the grave faults by which
the chiefs had invited on themselves this bloody retribution, we may
nevertheless lament them: they fell like advanced posts, which are left
unsupported by the main army and are forced to perish without aim in
a conflict of despair.

Ascendency of the Government
Marius Politically Annihilated

Never had the government party achieved a more complete victory, never
had the opposition suffered a more severe defeat, than on this 10th of
December.  It was the least part of the success that they had got rid
of some troublesome brawlers, whose places might be supplied any day by
associates of a like stamp; it was of greater moment that the only man,
who was then in a position to become dangerous to the government, had
publicly and completely effected his own annihilation; and most
important of all that the two elements of the opposition, the capitalist
order and the proletariate, emerged from the strife wholly at variance.
It is true that this was not the work of the government; the fabric
which had been put together by the adroit hands of Gaius Gracchus
had been broken up, partly by the force of circumstances, partly
and especially by the coarse and boorish management of his incapable
successor; but in the result it mattered not whether calculation or good
fortune helped the government to its victory.  A more pitiful position
can hardly be conceived than that occupied by the hero of Aquae and
Vercellae after such a disaster--all the more pitiful, because people
could not but compare it with the lustre which only a few months before
surrounded the same man.  No one either on the aristocratic or the
democratic side any longer thought of the victorious general on occasion
of filling up the magistracies; the hero of six consulships could not
even venture to become a candidate in 656 for the censorship.  He went
away to the east, ostensibly for the purpose of fulfilling a vow there,
but in reality that he might not be a witness of the triumphant return
of his mortal foe Quintus Metellus; he was allowed to go.  He returned
and opened his house; his halls stood empty.  He always hoped that
conflicts and battles would occur and that the people would once
more need his experienced arm; he thought to provide himself with an
opportunity for war in the east, where the Romans might certainly have
found sufficient occasion for energetic interference.  But this also
miscarried, like every other of his wishes; profound peace continued
to prevail.  Yet the longing after honours once aroused within him,
the oftener it was disappointed, ate the more deeply into his heart.
Superstitious as he was, he cherished in his bosom an old oracular
saying which had promised him seven consulships, and in gloomy
meditation brooded over the means by which this utterance was to
obtain its fulfilment and he his revenge, while he appeared to all,
himself alone excepted, insignificant and innocuous.

The Equestrian Party

Still more important in its consequences than the setting aside of the
dangerous man was the deep exasperation against the Populares, as they
were called, which the insurrection of Saturninus left behind in the
party of material interests.  With the most remorseless severity the
equestrian tribunals condemned every one who professed oppositional
views; Sextus Titius, for instance, was condemned not so much on
account of his agrarian law as because he had in his house a statue of
Saturninus; Gaius Appuleius Decianus was condemned, because he had as
tribune of the people characterized the proceedings against Saturninus
as illegal.  Even for earlier injuries inflicted by the Populares on
the aristocracy satisfaction was now demanded, not without prospect of
success, before the equestrian tribunals.  Because Gaius Norbanus had
eight years previously in concert with Saturninus driven the consular
Quintus Caepio into exile(10) he was now (659) on the ground of his own
law accused of high treason, and the jurymen hesitated long--not whether
the accused was guilty or innocent, but whether his ally Saturninus
or his enemy Caepio was to be regarded as the most deserving of their
hate--till at last they decided for acquittal.  Even if people were not
more favourably disposed towards the government in itself than before,
yet, after having found themselves, although but for a moment, on the
verge of a real mob-rule, all men who had anything to lose viewed the
existing government in a different light; it was notoriously wretched
and pernicious for the state, but the anxious dread of the still more
wretched and still more pernicious government of the proletariate had
conferred on it a relative value.  The current now set so much in that
direction that the multitude tore in pieces a tribune of the people
who had ventured to postpone the return of Quintus Metellus, and the
democrats began to seek their safety in league with murderers and
poisoners--ridding themselves, for example, of the hated Metellus
by poison--or even in league with the public enemy, several of them
already taking refuge at the court of king Mithradates who was secretly
preparing for war against Rome.  External relations also assumed an
aspect favourable for the government.  The Roman arms were employed but
little in the period from the Cimbrian to the Social war, but everywhere
with honour.  The only serious conflict was in Spain, where, during
the recent years so trying for Rome (649 seq.), the Lusitanians and
Celtiberians had risen with unwonted vehemence against the Romans.
In the years 656-661 the consul Titus Didius in the northern and the consul
Publius Crassus in the southern province not only re-established with
valour and good fortune the ascendency of the Roman arms, but also razed
the refractory towns and, where it seemed necessary, transplanted the
population of the strong mountain-towns to the plains.  We shall show in
the sequel that about the same time the Roman government again directed
its attention to the east which had been for a generation neglected,
and displayed greater energy than had for long been heard of in Cyrene,
Syria, and Asia Minor.  Never since the commencement of the revolution
had the government of the restoration been so firmly established, or so
popular.  Consular laws were substituted for tribunician; restrictions
on liberty replaced measures of progress.  The cancelling of the laws of
Saturninus was a matter of course; the transmarine colonies of Marius
disappeared down to a single petty settlement on the barbarous island
of Corsica.  When the tribune of the people Sextus Titius--a caricatured
Alcibiades, who was greater in dancing and ball-playing than in
politics, and whose most prominent talent consisted in breaking the
images of the gods in the streets at night--re-introduced and carried
the Appuleian agrarian law in 655, the senate was able to annul the new
law on a religious pretext without any one even attempting to defend it;
the author of it was punished, as we have already mentioned, by the
equites in their tribunals.  Next year (656) a law brought in by the
two consuls made the usual four-and-twenty days' interval between the
introduction and the passing of a project of law obligatory, and forbade
the combination of several enactments different in their nature in one
proposal; by which means the unreasonable extension of the initiative
in legislation was at least somewhat restricted, and the government was
prevented from being openly taken by surprise with new laws.  It became
daily more evident that the Gracchan constitution, which had survived
the fall of its author, was now, since the multitude and the moneyed
aristocracy no longer went together, tottering to its foundations.
As that constitution had been based on division in the ranks of
the aristocracy, so it seemed that dissensions in the ranks of the
opposition could not but bring about its fall.  Now, if ever, the
time had come for completing the unfinished work of restoration of 633,
for making the Gracchan constitution share the fate of the tyrant,
and for replacing the governing oligarchy in the sole possession
of political power.

Collision between the Senate and Equites in the Administration of
the Provinces

Everything depended on recovering the nomination of the jurymen.
The administration of the provinces--the chief foundation of the
senatorial government--had become dependent on the jury courts, more
particularly on the commission regarding exactions, to such a degree
that the governor of a province seemed to administer it no longer for
the senate, but for the order of capitalists and merchants.  Ready as
the moneyed aristocracy always was to meet the views of the government
when measures against the democrats were in question, it sternly
resented every attempt to restrict it in this its well-acquired right
of unlimited sway in the provinces.  Several such attempts were now
made; the governing aristocracy began again to come to itself, and
its very best men reckoned themselves bound, at least for their
own part, to oppose the dreadful maladministration in the provinces.
The most resolute in this respect was Quintus Mucius Scaevola, like
his father Publius -pontifex maximus- and in 659 consul, the foremost
jurist and one of the most excellent men of his time.  As praetorian
governor (about 656) of Asia, the richest and worst-abused of all the
provinces, he--in concert with his older friend, distinguished as an
officer, jurist, and historian, the consular Publius Rutilius Rufus--
set a severe and deterring example.  Without making any distinction
between Italians and provincials, noble and ignoble, he took up every
complaint, and not only compelled the Roman merchants and state-lessees
to give full pecuniary compensation for proven injuries, but, when some
of their most important and most unscrupulous agents were found guilty
of crimes deserving death, deaf to all offers of bribery he ordered them
to be duly crucified.  The senate approved his conduct, and even made it
an instruction afterwards to the governors of Asia that they should take
as their model the principles of Scaevola's administration; but the
equites, although they did not venture to meddle with that highly
aristocratic and influential statesman himself, brought to trial his
associates and ultimately (about 662) even the most considerable of
them, his legate Publius Rufus, who was defended only by his merits
and recognized integrity, not by family connection.  The charge that
such a man had allowed himself to perpetrate exactions in Asia, almost
broke down under its own absurdity and under the infamy of the accuser,
one Apicius; yet the welcome opportunity of humbling the consular was
not allowed to pass, and, when the latter, disdaining false rhetoric,
mourning robes, and tears, defended himself briefly, simply, and to
the point, and proudly refused the homage which the sovereign capitalists
desired, he was actually condemned, and his moderate property was
confiscated to satisfy fictitious claims for compensation.  The condemned
resorted to the province which he was alleged to have plundered, and
there, welcomed by all the communities with honorary deputations, and
praised and beloved during his lifetime, he spent in literary leisure
his remaining days.  And this disgraceful condemnation, while perhaps
the worst, was by no means the only case of the sort.  The senatorial
party was exasperated, not so much perhaps by such abuse of justice in
the case of men of stainless walk but of new nobility, as by the fact
that the purest nobility no longer sufficed to cover possible stains
on its honour.  Scarcely was Rufus out of the country, when the most
respected of all aristocrats, for twenty years the chief of the senate,
Marcus Scaurus at seventy years of age was brought to trial for exactions;
a sacrilege according to aristocratic notions, even if he were guilty.
The office of accuser began to be exercised professionally by worthless
fellows, and neither irreproachable character, nor rank, nor age longer
furnished protection from the most wicked and most dangerous attacks.
The commission regarding exactions was converted from a shield of the
provincials into their worst scourge; the most notorious robber escaped
with impunity, if he only indulged his fellow-robbers and did not refuse
to allow part of the sums exacted to reach the jury; but any attempt
to respond to the equitable demands of the provincials for right and
justice sufficed for condemnation.  It seemed as if the intention was to
bring the Roman government into the same dependence on the controlling
court, as that in which the college of judges at Carthage had formerly
held the council there.  The prescient expression of Gaius Gracchus was
finding fearful fulfilment, that with the dagger of his law as to the
jurymen the world of quality would lacerate itself.

Livius Drusus

An attack on the equestrian courts was inevitable.  Every one in the
government party who was still alive to the fact that governing implies
not merely rights but also duties, every one in fact who still felt any
nobler or prouder ambition within him, could not but rise in revolt
against this oppressive and disgraceful political control, which
precluded any possibility of upright administration.  The scandalous
condemnation of Rutilius Rufus seemed a summons to begin the attack at
once, and Marcus Livius Drusus, who was tribune of the people in 663,
regarded that summons as specially addressed to himself.  Son of the man
of the same name, who thirty years before had primarily caused the
overthrow of Gaius Gracchus(11) and had afterwards made himself a name
as an officer by the subjugation of the Scordisci,(12) Drusus was, like
his father, of strictly conservative views, and had already given
practical proof that such were his sentiments in the insurrection of
Saturninus.  He belonged to the circle of the highest nobility, and was
the possessor of a colossal fortune; in disposition too he was a genuine
aristocrat--a man emphatically proud, who scorned to bedeck himself with
the insignia of his offices, but declared on his death-bed that there
would not soon arise a citizen like to him; a man with whom the
beautiful saying, that nobility implies obligation, was and continued
to be the rule of his life.  With all the vehement earnestness of his
temperament he had turned away from the frivolity and venality that
marked the nobles of the common stamp; trustworthy and strict in morals,
he was respected rather than properly beloved on the part of the common
people, to whom his door and his purse were always open, and
notwithstanding his youth, he was through the personal dignity of his
character a man of weight in the senate as in the Forum.  Nor did he
stand alone.  Marcus Scaurus had the courage on occasion of his defence
in the trial for extortion publicly to summon Drusus to undertake a
reform of the judicial arrangements; he and the famous orator, Lucius
Crassus, were in the senate the most zealous champions of his proposals,
and were perhaps associated with him in originating them.  But the mass
of the governing aristocracy was by no means of the same mind with
Drusus, Scaurus, and Crassus.  There were not wanting in the senate
decided adherents of the capitalist party, among whom in particular a
conspicuous place belonged to the consul of the day, Lucius Marcius
Philippus, who maintained the cause of the equestrian order as he had
formerly maintained that of the democracy(13) with zeal and prudence,
and to the daring and reckless Quintus Caepio, who was induced to this
opposition primarily by his personal hostility to Drusus and Scaurus.
More dangerous, however, than these decided opponents was the cowardly
and corrupt mass of the aristocracy, who no doubt would have preferred
to plunder the provinces alone, but in the end had not much objection to
share the spoil with the equites, and, instead of taking in hand the
grave and perilous struggle against the haughty capitalists, reckoned
it far more equitable and easy to purchase impunity at their hands by
fair words and by an occasional prostration or even by a round sum.
The result alone could show how far success would attend the attempt to
carry along with the movement this body, without which it was impossible
to attain the desired end.

Attempt at Reform on the Part of the Moderate Party

Drusus drew up a proposal to withdraw the functions of jurymen from
the burgesses of equestrian rating and to restore them to the senate,
which at the same time was to be put in a position to meet its increased
obligations by the admission of 300 new members; a special criminal
commission was to be appointed for pronouncing judgment in the case
of those jurymen who had been or should be guilty of accepting bribes.
By this means the immediate object was gained; the capitalists were
deprived of their political exclusive rights, and were rendered
responsible for the perpetration of injustice.  But the proposals
and designs of Drusus were by no means limited to this; his projects
were not measures adapted merely for the occasion, but a comprehensive
and thoroughly-considered plan of reform.  He proposed, moreover,
to increase the largesses of grain and to cover the increased expense
by the permanent issue of a proportional number of copper plated,
alongside of the silver, -denarii-; and then to set apart all the
still undistributed arable land of Italy--thus including in particular
the Campanian domains--and the best part of Sicily for the settlement
of burgess-colonists.  Lastly, he entered into the most distinct
obligations towards the Italian allies to procure for them the Roman
franchise.  Thus the very same supports of power and the very same ideas
of reform, on which the constitution of Gaius Gracchus had rested,
presented themselves now on the side of the aristocracy--a singular,
and yet easily intelligible coincidence.  It was only to be expected
that, as the -tyrannis- had rested for its support against the oligarchy,
so the latter should rest for its support against the moneyed aristocracy,
on the paid and in some degree organized proletariate; while the
government had formerly accepted the feeding of the proletariate at
the expense of the state as an inevitable evil, Drusus now thought of
employing it, at least for the moment, against the moneyed aristocracy.
It was only to be expected that the better part of the aristocracy, just
as it formerly consented to the agrarian law of Tiberius Gracchus, would
now readily consent to all those measures of reform, which, without
touching the question of a supreme head, only aimed at the cure of the
old evils of the state.  In the question of emigration and colonization,
it is true, they could not go so far as the democracy, since the power
of the oligarchy mainly rested on their free control over the provinces
and was endangered by any permanent military command; the ideas of
equalizing Italy and the provinces and of making conquests beyond the
Alps were not compatible with conservative principles.  But the senate
might very well sacrifice the Latin and even the Campanian domains
as well as Sicily in order to raise the Italian farmer class, and
yet retain the government as before; to which fell to be added the
consideration, that they could not more effectually obviate future
agitations than by providing that all the land at all disposable should
be brought to distribution by the aristocracy itself, and that according
to Drusus' own expression, nothing should be left for future demagogues
to distribute but "the street-dirt and the daylight." In like manner it
was for the government--whether that might be a monarch, or a close
number of ruling families--very much a matter of indifference whether
the half or the whole of Italy possessed the Roman franchise; and hence
the reforming men on both sides probably could not but coincide in the
idea of averting the danger of a recurrence of the insurrection of
Fregellae on a larger scale by a judicious and reasonable extension of
the franchise, and of seeking allies, moreover, for their plans in the
numerous and influential Italians.  Sharply as in the question of the
headship of the state the views and designs of the two great political
parties differed, the best men of both camps had many points of contact
in their means of operation and in their reforming tendencies; and, as
Scipio Aemilianus may be named alike among the adversaries of Tiberius
Gracchus and among the promoters of his reforming efforts, so Drusus
was the successor and disciple no less than the antagonist of Gaius.
The two high-born and high-minded youthful reformers had a greater
resemblance than was apparent at the first glance; and, personally also,
the two were not unworthy to meet, as respects the substance of their
patriotic endeavours, in purer and higher views above the obscuring
mists of prejudiced partisanship.

Discussions on the Livian Laws

The question at stake was the passing of the laws drawn up by Drusus.
Of these the proposer, just like Gaius Gracchus, kept in reserve for
the moment the hazardous project of conferring the Roman franchise on
the Italian allies, and brought forward at first only the laws as to
the jurymen, the assignation of land, and the distribution of grain.
The capitalist party offered the most vehement resistance, and, in
consequence of the irresolution of the greater part of the aristocracy
and the vacillation of the comitia, would beyond question have carried
the rejection of the law as to jurymen, if it had been put to the vote
by itself.  Drusus accordingly embraced all his proposals in one law;
and, as thus all the burgesses interested in the distributions of grain
and land were compelled to vote also for the law as to jurymen, he
succeeded in carrying the law with their help and that of the Italians,
who stood firmly by Drusus with the exception of the large landowners,
particularly those in Umbria and Etruria, whose domanial possessions
were threatened.  It was not carried, however, until Drusus had caused
the consul Philippus, who would not desist from opposition, to be
arrested and carried off to prison by a bailiff.  The people celebrated
the tribune as their benefactor, and received him in the theatre by
rising up and applauding; but the voting had not so much decided the
struggle as transferred it to another ground, for the opposite party
justly characterized the proposal of Drusus as contrary to the law
of 656(14) and therefore as null.




Chapter VII

The Revolt of the Italian Subjects, and the Sulpician Revolution

Romans and Italians

From the time when the defeat of Pyrrhus had put an end to the last
war which the Italians had waged for their independence--or, in other
words, for nearly two hundred years--the Roman primacy had now
subsisted in Italy, without having been once shaken in its
foundations even under circumstances of the utmost peril.  Vainly
had the heroic family of the Barcides, vainly had the successors
of Alexander the Great and of the Achaemenids, endeavoured to rouse
the Italian nation to contend with the too powerful capital; it had
obsequiously appeared in the fields of battle on the Guadalquivir
and on the Mejerdah, at the pass of Tempe and at Mount Sipylus, and
with the best blood of its youth had helped its masters to achieve
the subjugation of three continents.  Its own position meanwhile had
changed, but had deteriorated rather than improved.  In a material
point of view, doubtless, it had in general not much ground to
complain.  Though the small and intermediate landholders throughout
Italy suffered in consequence of the injudicious Roman legislation
as to corn, the larger landlords and still more the mercantile and
capitalist class were flourishing, for the Italians enjoyed, as
respected the turning of the provinces to financial account,
substantially the same protection and the same privileges as
Roman burgesses, and thus shared to a great extent in the material
advantages of the political ascendency of the Romans.  In general,
the economic and social condition of Italy was not primarily dependent
on political distinctions; there were allied districts, such as Umbria
and Etruria, in which the class of free farmers had mostly disappeared,
while in others, such as the valleys of the Abruzzi, the same
class had still maintained a tolerable footing or remained almost
unaffected--just as a similar diversity could be pointed out in the
different Roman burgess-districts.  On the other hand the political
inferiority of Italy was daily displayed more harshly and more
abruptly.  No formal open breach of right indeed occurred, at
least in the principal questions.  The communal freedom, which
under the name of sovereignty was accorded by treaty to the Italian
communities, was on the whole respected by the Roman government;
the attack, which the Roman reform party at the commencement of the
agrarian agitation made on the Roman domains guaranteed to the
communities of better position, had not only been earnestly opposed
by the strictly conservative as well as by the middle party in Rome,
but had been very soon abandoned by the Roman opposition itself.

Disabilities and Wrongs of the Subjects

But the rights, which belonged and could not but belong to Rome as
the leading community--the supreme conduct of war-affairs, and the
superintendence of the whole administration--were exercised in a way
which was almost as bad as if the allies had been directly declared
to be subjects devoid of rights.  The numerous modifications of the
fearfully severe martial law of Rome, which were introduced there in
the course of the seventh century, seem to have remained on the whole
limited to the Roman burgess-soldiers: this is certain as to the most
important, the abolition of executions by martial law,(1) and we may
easily conceive the impression which was produced when, as happened
in the Jugurthine war, Latin officers of repute were beheaded by
sentence of the Roman council of war, while the lowest burgess-soldier
had in the like case the right of presenting an appeal to the civil
tribunals of Rome.  The proportions in which the burgesses and
Italian allies were to be drawn for military service had, as was fair,
remained undefined by treaty; but, while in earlier times the two had
furnished on an average equal numbers of soldiers,(2) now, although the
proportions of the population had changed probably in favour of the
burgesses rather than to their disadvantage, the demands on the allies
were by degrees increased disproportionately,(3) so that on the one
hand they had the chief burden of the heavier and more costly service
imposed on them, and on the other hand there were two allies now
regularly levied for one burgess.  In like manner with this military
supremacy the civil superintendence, which (including the supreme
administrative jurisdiction which could hardly be separated from it)
the Roman government had always and rightly reserved to itself over
the dependent Italian communities, was extended in such a way that
the Italians were hardly less than the provincials abandoned without
protection to the caprice of any one of the numberless Roman
magistrates.  In Teanum Sidicinum, one of the most considerable
of the allied towns, a consul had ordered the chief magistrate of
the town to be scourged with rods at the stake in the marketplace,
because, on the consul's wife expressing a desire to bathe in the
men's bath, the municipal officers had not driven forth the bathers
quickly enough, and the bath appeared to her not to be clean.
Similar scenes had taken place in Ferentinum, likewise a town
holding the best position in law, and even in the old and important
Latin colony of Cales.  In the Latin colony of Venusia a free peasant
had been seized by a young Roman diplomatist not holding office but
passing through the town, on account of a jest which he had allowed
himself to make on the Roman's litter, had been thrown down, and
whipped to death with the straps of the litter.  These occurrences are
incidentally mentioned about the time of the Fregellan insurrection;
it admits of no doubt that similar outrages frequently occurred, and
of as little that no real satisfaction for such misdeeds could anywhere
be obtained, whereas the right of appeal--not lightly violated with
impunity--protected in some measure at least the life and limbs of the
Roman burgess.  In consequence of this treatment of the Italians on the
part of the Roman government, the variance, which the wisdom of their
ancestors had carefully fostered between the Latin and the other
Italian communities, could not fail, if not to disappear, at any
rate to undergo abatement.(4)  The curb-fortresses of Rome and the
districts kept to their allegiance by these fortresses lived now under
the like oppression; the Latin could remind the Picentine that they
were both in like manner "subject to the fasces"; the overseers and
the slaves of former days were now united by a common hatred towards
the common despot.

While the present state of the Italian allies was thus transformed from
a tolerable relation of dependence into the most oppressive bondage,
they were at the same time deprived of every prospect of obtaining
better rights.  With the subjugation of Italy the Roman burgess-body
had closed its ranks; the bestowal of the franchise on whole
communities was totally given up, its bestowal on individuals was
greatly restricted.(5)  They now advanced a step farther: on occasion
of the agitation which contemplated the extension of the Roman franchise
to all Italy in the years 628, 632, the right of migration to Rome was
itself attacked, and all the non-burgesses resident in Rome were
directly ejected by decree of the people and of the senate from the
capital(6)--a measure as odious on account of its illiberality, as
dangerous from the various private interests which it injuriously
affected.  In short, while the Italian allies had formerly stood to
the Romans partly in the relation of brothers under tutelage, protected
rather than ruled and not destined to perpetual minority, partly in
that of slaves tolerably treated and not utterly deprived of the hope
of manumission, they were now all of them subject nearly in equal
degree, and with equal hopelessness, to the rods and axes of their
Roman masters, and might at the utmost presume like privileged
slaves to transmit the kicks received from their masters onward
to the poor provincials.

The Rupture
Fregellan War
Difficulty of a General Insurrection

It belongs to the nature of such differences that, restrained by the
sense of national unity and by the remembrance of dangers surmounted
in common, they make their appearance at first gently and as it were
modestly, till the breach gradually widens and the relation between
the rulers, whose might is their sole right, and the ruled, whose
obedience reaches no farther than their fears, manifests at length
undisguisedly the character of force.  Down to the revolt and razing
of Fregellae in 629, which as it were officially attested the altered
character of the Roman rule, the ferment among the Italians did not
properly wear a revolutionary character.  The longing after equal
rights had gradually risen from a silent wish to a loud request,
only to be the more decidedly rejected, the more distinctly it was
put forward.  It was very soon apparent that a voluntary concession
was not to be hoped for, and the wish to extort what was refused
would not be wanting; but the position of Rome at that time hardly
permitted them to entertain any idea of realizing that wish.  Although
the numerical proportions of the burgesses and non-burgesses in Italy
cannot be properly ascertained, it may be regarded as certain that
the number of the burgesses was not very much less than that of the
Italian allies; for nearly 400,000 burgesses capable of bearing arms
there were at least 500,000, probably 600,000 allies.(7)  So long
as with such proportions the burgesses were united and there was no
outward enemy worthy of mention, the Italian allies, split up into
an endless number of isolated urban and cantonal communities, and
connected with Rome by a thousand relations public and private,
could never attain to common action; and with moderate prudence the
government could not fail to control their troublesome and indignant
subjects partly by the compact mass of the burgesses, partly by the very
considerable resources which the provinces afforded, partly by setting
one community against another.

The Italian and the Roman Parties

Accordingly the Italians kept themselves quiet, till the revolution
began to shake Rome; but, as soon as this had broken out, they too
mingled in the movements and agitations of the Roman parties, with a
view to obtain equality of rights by means of the one or the other.
They had made common cause first with the popular and then with the
senatorial party, and gained equally little by either.  They had been
driven to the conviction that, while the best men of both parties
acknowledged the justice and equity of their claims, these best men,
aristocrats as well as Populares, had equally little power to
procure ahearing for those claims with the mass of their party.
They had also observed that the most gifted, most energetic, and most
celebrated statesmen of Rome had found themselves, at the very moment
when they came forward as advocates of the Italians, deserted by their
own adherents and had been accordingly overthrown.  In all the
vicissitudes of the thirty years of revolution and restoration
governments enough had been installed and deposed, but, however
the programme might vary, a short-sighted and narrow-minded spirit
sat always at the helm.

The Italians and the Oligarchy
The Licinio-Mucian Law

Above all, the recent occurrences had clearly shown how vain was the
expectation of the Italians that their claims would be attended to
by Rome.  So long as the demands of the Italians were mixed up with
those of the revolutionary party and had in the hands of the latter
been thwarted by the folly of the masses, they might still resign
themselves to the belief that the oligarchy had been hostile merely
to the proposers, not to the proposal itself, and that there was still
a possibility that the mere intelligent senate would accept a measure
which was compatible with the nature of the oligarchy and salutary
for the state.  But the recent years, in which the senate once more
ruled almost absolutely, had shed only too disagreeable a light on
the designs of the Roman oligarchy also.  Instead of the expected
modifications, there was issued in 659 a consular law which most
strictly prohibited the non-burgesses from laying claim to the
franchise and threatened transgressors with trial and punishment--a
law which threw back a large number of most respectable persons who
were deeply interested in the question of equalization from the ranks
of Romans into those of Italians, and which in point of indisputable
legality and of political folly stands completely on a parallel with
that famous act which laid the foundation for the separation of North
America from the mother-country; in fact it became, just like that
act, the proximate cause of the civil war.  It was only so much
the worse, that the authors of this law by no means belonged to
the obstinate and incorrigible Optimates; they were no other than
the sagacious and universally honoured Quintus Scaevola, destined,
like George Grenville, by nature to be a jurist and by fate to be
a statesman--who by his equally honourable and pernicious rectitude
inflamed more than any one else first the war between senate and
equites, and then that between Romans and Italians--and the orator
Lucius Crassus, the friend and ally of Drusus and altogether one of
the most moderate and judicious of the Optimates.

The Italians and Drusus

Amidst the vehement ferment, which this law and the numerous processes
arising out of it called forth throughout Italy, the star of hope once
more appeared to arise for the Italians in the person of Marcus
Drusus.  That which had been deemed almost impossible--that a
conservative should take up the reforming ideas of the Gracchi,
and should become the champion of equal rights for the Italians--had
nevertheless occurred; a man of the high aristocracy had resolved to
emancipate the Italians from the Sicilian Straits to the Alps and
the government at one and the same time, and to apply all his earnest
zeal, all his trusty devotedness to these generous plans of reform.
Whether he actually, as was reported, placed himself at the head of
a secret league, whose threads ramified through Italy and whose
members bound themselves by an oath(8) to stand by each other
for Drusus and for the common cause, cannot be ascertained; but,
even if he did not lend himself to acts so dangerous and in fact
unwarrantable for a Roman magistrate, yet it is certain that he did
not keep to mere general promises, and that dangerous connections were
formed in his name, although perhaps without his consent and against
his will.  With joy the Italians heard that Drusus had carried his
first proposals with the consent of the great majority of the senate;
with still greater joy all the communities of Italy celebrated not long
afterwards the recovery of the tribune, who had been suddenly attacked
by severe illness.  But as the further designs of Drusus became
unveiled, a change took place; he could not venture to bring in
his chief law; he had to postpone, he had to delay, he had soon
to retire.  It was reported that the majority of the senate were
vacillating and threatened to fall away from their leader; in rapid
succession the tidings ran through the communities of Italy, that the
law which had passed was annulled, that the capitalists ruled more
absolutely than ever, that the tribune had been struck by the hand
of an assassin, that he was dead (autumn of 663).

Preparations for General Revolt against Rome

The last hope that the Italians might obtain admission to Roman
citizenship by agreement was buried with Marcus Drusus.  A measure,
which that conservative and energetic man had not been able under the
most favourable circumstances to induce his own party to adopt, was
not to be gained at all by amicable means.  The Italians had no
course left save to submit patiently or to repeat once more, and
if possible with their united strength, the attempt which had been
crushed in the bud five-and-thirty years before by the destruction
of Fregellae--so as by force of arms either to destroy Rome and
succeed to her heritage, or at least to compel her to grant equality
of rights.  The latter resolution was no doubt a resolution of
despair; as matters stood, the revolt of the isolated urban communities
against the Roman government might well appear still more hopeless
than the revolt of the American colonies against the British empire;
to all appearance the Roman government might with moderate attention
and energy of action prepare for this second insurrection the fate
of its predecessor.  But was it less a resolution of despair, to sit
still and allow things to take their course? When they recollected
how the Romans had been in the habit of behaving in Italy without
provocation, what could they expect now that the most considerable
men in every Italian town had or were alleged to have had--the
consequences on either supposition being pretty much the same--an
understanding with Drusus, which was immediately directed against the
party now victorious and might well be characterized as treason? All
those who had taken part in this secret league, all in fact who
might be merely suspected of participation, had no choice left
save to begin the war or to bend their neck beneath the axe
of the executioner.

Moreover, the present moment presented comparatively favourable
prospects for a general insurrection throughout Italy.  We are not
exactly informed how far the Romans had carried out the dissolution
of the larger Italian confederacies;(9) but it is not improbable that
the Marsians, the Paelignians, and perhaps even the Samnites and
Lucanians still were associated in their old communal leagues, though
these had lost their political significance and were in some cases
probably reduced to mere fellowship of festivals and sacrifices.
The insurrection, if it should now begin, would still find a rallying
point in these unions; but who could say how soon the Romans would
for that very reason proceed to abolish these also? The secret
league, moreover, which was alleged to be headed by Drusus, had lost
in him its actual or expected chief, but it continued to exist and
afforded an important nucleus for the political organization of the
insurrection; while its military organization might be based on the
fact that each allied town possessed its own armament and experienced
soldiers.  In Rome on the other hand no serious preparations had
been made.  It was reported, indeed, that restless movements were
occurring in Italy, and that the communities of the allies maintained
a remarkable intercourse with each other; but instead of calling the
citizens in all haste to arms, the governing corporation contented
itself with exhorting the magistrates in the customary fashion to
watchfulness and with sending out spies to learn farther particulars.
The capital was so totally undefended, that a resolute Marsian officer
Quintus Pompaedius Silo, one of the most intimate friends of Drusus,
is said to have formed the design of stealing into the city at the
head of a band of trusty associates carrying swords under their
clothes, and of seizing it by a coup de main.  Preparations were
accordingly made for a revolt; treaties were concluded, and arming
went on silently but actively, till at last, as usual, the insurrection
broke out through an accident somewhat earlier than the leading
men had intended.

Outbreak of the Insurrection in Asculum

Marsians and Sabellians
Central and Southern Italy

The Roman praetor with proconsular powers, Gaius Servilius, informed
by his spies that the town of Asculum (Ascoli) in the Abruzzi was
sending hostages to the neighbouring communities, proceeded thither
with his legate Fonteius and a small escort, and addressed to the
multitude, which was just then assembled in the theatre for the
celebration of the great games, a vehement and menacing harangue.
The sight of the axes known only too well, the proclamation of
threats that were only too seriously meant, threw the spark into
the fuel of bitter hatred that had been accumulating for centuries;
the Roman magistrates were torn to pieces by the multitude in the
theatre itself, and immediately, as if it were their intention by a
fearful outrage to break down every bridge of reconciliation, the
gates were closed by command of the magistracy, all the Romans
residing in Asculum were put to death, and their property was
plundered.  The revolt ran through the peninsula like the flame
through the steppe.  The brave and numerous people of the Marsians
took the lead, in connection with the small but hardy confederacies
in the Abruzzi--the Paeligni, Marrucini, Frentani, and Vestini.
The brave and sagacious Quintus Silo, already mentioned, was here
the soul of the movement.  The Marsians were the first formally to
declare against the Romans, whence the war retained afterwards the
name of the Marsian war.  The example thus given was followed by
the Samnite communities, and generally by the mass of the communities
from the Liris and the Abruzzi down to Calabria and Apulia; so that
all Central and Southern Italy was soon in arms against Rome.

Italians Friendly to Rome

The Etruscans and Umbrians on the other hand held by Rome, as they
had already taken part with the equites against Drusus.(10)  It is
a significant fact, that in these regions the landed and moneyed
aristocracy had from ancient times preponderated and the middle class
had totally disappeared, whereas among and near the Abruzzi the
farmer-class had preserved its purity and vigour better than anywhere
else in Italy: it was from the farmers accordingly and the middle
class in general that the revolt substantially proceeded, whereas the
municipal aristocracy still went hand in hand with the government of
the capital.  This also readily explains the fact, that there were in
the insurgent districts isolated communities, and in the insurgent
communities minorities, adhering to the Roman alliance; the Vestinian
town Pinna, for instance, sustained a severe siege for Rome, and a
corps of loyalists that was formed in the Hirpinian country under
Minatius Magius of Aeclanum supported the Roman operations in Campania.
Lastly, there adhered to Rome the allied communities of best legal
position--in Campania Nola and Nuceria and the Greek maritime towns
Neapolis and Rhegium, and in like manner at least most of the Latin
colonies, such as Alba and Aesernia--just as in the Hannibalic war
the Latin and Greek towns on the whole had taken part with, and the
Sabellian towns against, Rome.  The forefathers of the city had
based their dominion over Italy on an aristocratic classification,
and with skilful adjustment of the degrees of dependence had kept in
subjection the less privileged communities by means of those with
better rights, and the burgesses within each community by means of
the municipal aristocracy.  It was only now, under the incomparably
wretched government of the oligarchy, that the solidity and strength
with which the statesmen of the fourth and fifth centuries had joined
together the stones of their structure were thoroughly put to the test;
the building, though shaken in various ways, still held out against
this storm.  When we say, however, that the towns of better position
did not at the first shock abandon Rome, we by no means affirm that
they would now, as in the Hannibalic war, hold out for a length of
time and after severe defeats, without wavering in their allegiance
to Rome; that fiery trial had not yet been endured.

Impression As to the Insurrection in Rome
Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation
Commission of High Treason

The first blood was thus shed, and Italy was divided into two great
military camps.  It is true, as we have seen, that the insurrection
was still very far from being a general rising of the Italian allies;
but it had already acquired an extent exceeding perhaps the hopes of
the leaders themselves, and the insurgents might without arrogance
think of offering to the Roman government a fair accommodation.  They
sent envoys to Rome, and bound themselves to lay down their arms in
return for admission to citizenship; it was in vain.  The public
spirit, which had been so long wanting in Rome, seemed suddenly to
have returned, when the question was one of obstructing with stubborn
narrow-mindedness a demand of the subjects just in itself and now
supported by a considerable force.  The immediate effect of the
Italian insurrection was, just as was the case after the defeats
which the policy of the government had suffered in Africa and Gaul,(11)
the commencement of a warfare of prosecutions, by means of which
the aristocracy of judges took vengeance on those men of the government
whom they, rightly or wrongly, looked upon as the primary cause
of this mischief.  On the proposal of the tribune Quintus Varius,
in spite of the resistance of the Optimates and in spite of tribunician
interference, a special commission of high treason--formed, of course,
from the equestrian order which contended for the proposal with
open violence--was appointed for the investigation of the conspiracy
instigated by Drusus and widely ramified in Italy as well as in Rome,
out of which the insurrection had originated, and which now, when
the half of Italy was under arms, appeared to the whole of the indignant
and alarmed burgesses as undoubted treason.  The sentences of this
commission largely thinned the ranks of the senatorial party favourable
to mediation: among other men of note Drusus' intimate friend, the young
and talented Gaius Cotta, was sent into banishment, and with difficulty
the grey-haired Marcus Scaurus escaped the same fate.  Suspicion went
so far against the senators favourable to the reforms of Drusus, that
soon afterwards the consul Lupus reported from the camp to the senate
regarding the communications that were constantly maintained between
the Optimates in his camp and the enemy; a suspicion which, it is true,
was soon shown to be unfounded by the arrestof Marsian spies.  So far
king Mithradates might not without reason assert, that the mutual
enmities of the factions were more destructive to the Roman state
than the Social War itself.

Energetic Decrees

In the first instance, however, the outbreak of the insurrection,
and the terrorism which the commission of high treason exercised,
produced at least a semblance of unity and vigour.  Party feuds were
silent; able officers of all shades--democrats like Gaius Marius,
aristocrats like Lucius Sulla, friends of Drusus like Publius
Sulpicius Rafus--placed themselves at the disposal of the government.
The largesses of corn were, apparently about this time, materially
abridged by decree of the people with a view to husband the financial
resources of the state for the war; which was the more necessary, as,
owing to the threatening attitude of king Mithradates, the province of
Asia might at any moment fall into the hand of the enemy and thus one
of the chief sources of the Roman revenue be dried up.  The courts,
with the exception of the commission of high treason, in accordance
with a decree of the senate temporarily suspended their action; all
business stood still, and nothing was attended to but the levying of
soldiers and the manufacture of arms.

Political Organizatin of the Insurrection
Opposition--Rome

While the leading state thus collected its energies in the prospect
of the severe war impending, the insurgents had to solve the more
difficult task of acquiring political organization during the
struggle.  In the territory of the Paeligni situated in the centre
of the Marsian, Samnite, Marrucinian, and Vestinian cantons and
consequently in the heart of the insurgent districts, in the beautiful
plain on the river Pescara, the town of Corfinium was selected as the
Opposition-Rome or city of Italia, whose citizenship was conferred on
the burgesses of all the insurgent communities; there a Forum and a
senate-house were staked off on a suitable scale.  A senate of five
hundred members was charged with the settlement of the constitution
and the superintendence of the war.  In accordance with its directions
the burgesses selected from the men of senatorial rank two consuls and
twelve praetors, who, just like the two consuls and six praetors of
Rome, were invested with the supreme authority in war and peace.
The Latin language, which was even then the prevailing language among
the Marsians and Picentes, continued in official use, but the Samnite
language which predominated in Southern Italy was placed side by
side with it on a footing of equality; and the two were made use of
alternately on the silver pieces which the new Italian state began to
coin in its own name after Roman models and after the Roman standard,
thus appropriating likewise the monopoly of coinage which Rome had
exercised for two centuries.  It is evident from these arrangements--
and was, indeed a matter of course-that the Italians now no longer
thought of wresting equality of rights from the Romans, but purposed
to annihilate or subdue them and to form a new state.  But it is also
obvious that their constitution was nothing but a pure copy of that
of Rome or, in other words, was the ancient polity handed down by
tradition among the Italian nations from time immemorial:--the
organization of a city instead of the constitution of a state, with
primary assemblies as unwieldy and useless as the Roman comitia, with
a governing corporation which contained within it the same elements
of oligarchy as the Roman senate, with an executive administered in
like manner by a plurality of coordinate supreme magistrates.  This
imitation descended to the minutest details; for instance, the title
of consul or praetor held by the magistrate in chief command was
after a victory exchanged by the general of the Italians also for
the title of Imperator.  Nothing in fact was changed but the name;
on the coins of the insurgents the same image of the gods appears, the
inscription only being changed from Roma to Italia.  This Rome of the
insurgents was distinguished--not to its advantage--from the original
Rome merely by the circumstance, that, while the latter had at any
rate an urban development, and its unnatural position intermediate
between a city and a state had formed itself at least in a natural
way, the new Italia was nothing at all but a place of congress
for the insurgents, and it was by a pure fiction of law that the
inhabitants of the peninsula were stamped as burgesses of this new
capital.  But it is significant that in this case, where the sudden
amalgamation of a number of isolated cantons into a new political unity
might have so naturally suggested the idea of a representative
constitution in the modern sense, no trace of any such idea occurs;
in fact the very opposite course was followed,(12) and the communal
organization was simply reproduced in a far more absurd manner than
before.  Nowhere perhaps is it so clearly apparent as in this
instance, that in the view of antiquity a free constitution was
inseparable from the appearance of the sovereign people in person in
the primary assemblies, or from a city; and that the great fundamental
idea of the modern republican-constitutional state, viz. the expression
of the sovereignty of the people by a representative assembly--an idea
without which a free state would be a chaos--is wholly modern.  Even
the Italian polity, although in its somewhat representative senates
and in the diminished importance of the comitia it approximated to a
free state, never was able in the case either of Rome or of Italia
to cross the boundary-line.

Warlike Preparations

Thus began, a few months after the death of Drusus, in the winter of
663-4, the struggle--as one of the coins of the insurgents represents
it--of the Sabellian ox against the Roman she-wolf.  Both sides made
zealous preparations: in Italia great stores of arms, provisions, and
money were accumulated; in Rome the requisite supplies were drawn from
the provinces and particularly from Sicily, and the long-neglected walls
were put in a state of defence against any contingency.  The forces
were in some measure equally balanced.  The Romans filled up the
blanks in their Italian contingents partly by increased levies from
the burgesses and from the inhabitants--already almost wholly Romanized--
of the Celtic districts on the south of the Alps, of whom 10,000
served in the Campanian army alone,(13) partly by the contingents
of the Numidians and other transmarine nations; and with the aid
of the free cities in Greece and Asia Minor they collected a war
fleet.(14)  On both sides, without reckoning garrisons, as many as
100,000 soldiers were brought into the field,(15) and in the ability
of their men, in military tactics and armament, the Italians were
nowise inferior to the Romans.

Subdivision of the Armies on Either Side

The conduct of the war was very difficult both for the insurgents and
for the Romans, because the territory in revolt was very extensive and
a great number of fortresses adhering to Rome were scattered up and
down in it: so that on the one hand the insurgents found themselves
compelled to combine a siege-warfare, which broke up their forces
and consumed their time, with the protection of an extended frontier;
and on the other hand the Romans could not well do otherwise than
combat the insurrection, which had no proper centre, simultaneously
in all the insurgent districts.  In a military point of view the
insurgent country fell into two divisions; in the northern, which
reached from Picenum and the Abruzzi to the northern border of
Campania and embraced the districts speaking Latin, the chief command
was held on the Italian side by the Marsian Quintus Silo, on the Roman
side by Publius Rutilius Lupus, both as consuls; in the southern,
which included Campania, Samnium, and generally the regions speaking
Sabellian, the Samnite Gaius Papius Mutilus commanded as consul of the
insurgents, and Lucius Julius Caesar as the Roman consul.  With each
of the two commanders-in-chief there were associated on the Italian
side six, on the Roman side five, lieutenant-commanders, each of whom
conducted the attack or defence in a definite district, while the
consular armies were destined to act more freely and to strike the
decisive blow.  The most esteemed Roman officers, such as Gaius
Marius, Quintus Catulus, and the two consulars of experience in the
Spanish war, Titus Didius and Publius Crassus, placed themselves at
the disposal of the consuls for these posts; and though the Italians
had not names so celebrated to oppose to them, yet the result
showed that their leaders were in a military point of view nowise
inferior to the Romans.

The offensive in this thoroughly desultory war was on the whole on the
side of the Romans, but was nowhere decisively assumed even on their
part.  It is surprising that the Romans did not collect their troops
for the purpose of attacking the insurgents with a superior force,
and that the insurgents made no attempt to advance into Latium and to
throw themselves on the hostile capital.  We are how ever too little
acquainted with their respective circumstances to judge whether or
how they could have acted otherwise, or to what extent the remissness
of the Roman government on the one hand and the looseness of the
connection among the federate communities on the other contributed
to this want of unity in the conduct of the war.  It is easy to see
that with such a system there would doubtless be victories and defeats,
but the final settlement might be very long delayed; and it is no less
plain that a clear and vivid picture of such a war--which resolved
itself into a series of engagements on the part of individual corps
operating at the same time, sometimes separately, sometimes in
combination--cannot be prepared out of the remarkably fragmentary
accounts which have come down to us.

Commencement of the War
The Fortresses
Caesar in Campania and Samnium
Aesernia Taken by the Insurgents
As also Nola
Campania for the Most Part Lost to the Romans

The first assault, as a matter of course, fell on the fortresses
adhering to Rome in the insurgent districts, which in all haste
closed their gates and carried in their moveable property from the
country.  Silo threw himself on the fortress designed to hold in
check the Marsians, the strong Alba, Mutilus on the Latin town of
Aesernia established in the heart of Samnium: in both cases they
encountered the most resolute resistance.  Similar conflicts probably
raged in the north around Firmum, Atria, Pinna, in the south around
Luceria, Beneventum, Nola, Paestum, before and while the Roman armies
gathered on the borders of the insurgent country.  After the southern
army under Caesar had assembled in the spring of 664 in Campania which
for the most part held by Rome, and had provided Capua--with its
domain so important for the Roman finances--as well as the more
important allied cities with garrisons, it attempted to assume the
offensive and to come to the aid of the smaller divisions sent on
before it to Samnium and Lucania under Marcus Marcellus and Publius
Crassus.  But Caesar was repulsed by the Samnites and Marsians under
Publius Vettius Scato with severe loss, and the important town of
Venafrum thereupon passed over to the insurgents, into whose hands
it delivered its Roman garrison.  By the defection of this town,
which lay on the military road from Campania to Samnium, Aesernia was
isolated, and that fortress already vigorously assailed found itself now
exclusively dependent on the courage and perseverance of its defenders
and their commandant Marcellus.  It is true that an incursion, which
Sulla happily carried out with the same artful audacity as formerly
his expedition to Bocchus, relieved the hard-pressed Aesernians for a
moment; nevertheless they were after an obstinate resistance compelled
by the extremity of famine to capitulate towards the end of the year.
In Lucania too Publius Crassus was defeated by Marcus Lamponius, and
compelled to shut himself up in Grumentum, which fell after a long
and obstinate siege.  With these exceptions, they had been obliged
to leave Apulia and the southern districts totally to themselves.
The insurrection spread; when Mutilus advanced into Campania at the
head of the Samnite army, the citizens of Nola surrendered to him
their city and delivered up the Roman garrison, whose commander was
executed by the orders of Mutilus, while the men were distributed
through the victorious army.  With the single exception of Nuceria,
which adhered firmly to Rome, all Campania as far as Vesuvius was lost
to the Romans; Salernum, Stabiae, Pompeii, Herculaneum declared for
the insurgents; Mutilus was able to advance into the region to the
north of Vesuvius, and to besiege Acerrae with his Samnito-Lucanian
army.  The Numidians, who were in great numbers in Caesar's army,
began to pass over in troops to Mutilus or rather to Oxyntas, the son
of Jugurtha, who on the surrender of Venusia had fallen into the hands
of the Samnites and now appeared among their ranks in regal purple;
so that Caesar found himself compelled to send home the whole
African corps.  Mutilus ventured even to attack the Roman camp;
but he was repulsed, and the Samnites, who while retreating were
assailed in the rear by the Roman cavalry, left nearly 6000 dead on
the field of battle.  It was the first notable success which the Romans
gained in this war; the army proclaimed the general -imperator-, and
the sunken courage of the capital began to revive.  It is true that
not long afterwards the victorious army was attacked in crossing a
river by Marius Egnatius, and so emphatically defeated that it had
to retreat as far as Teanum and to be reorganized there; but the
exertions of the active consul succeeded in restoring his army to
a serviceable condition even before the arrival of winter, and he
reoccupied his old position under the walls of Acerrae, which the
Samnite main army under Mutilus continued to besiege.

Combats with the Marsians
Defeat and Death of Lupus

At the same time operations had also begun in Central Italy, where
the revolt of the Abruzzi and the region of the Fucine lake threatened
the capital in dangerous proximity.  An independent corps under Gnaeus
Pompeius Strabo was sent into Picenum in order that, resting for
support on Firmum and Falerio, it might threaten Asculum; but the
main body of the Roman northern army took its position under the
consul Lupus on the borders of the Latin and Marsian territories,
where the Valerian and Salarian highways brought the enemy nearest to
the capital; the rivulet Tolenus (Turano), which crosses the Valerian
road between Tibur and Alba and falls into the Velino at Rieti,
separated the two armies.  The consul Lupus impatiently pressed for
a decision, and did not listen to the disagreeable advice of Marius
that he should exercise his men--unaccustomed to service--in the first
instance in petty warfare.  At the very outset the division of Gaius
Perpenna, 10,000 strong, was totally defeated.  The commander-in-
chief deposed the defeated general from his command and united the
remnant of the corps with that which was under the orders of Marius,
but did not allow himself to be deterred from assuming the offensive
and crossing the Tolenus in two divisions, led partly by himself,
partly by Marius, on two bridges constructed not far from each other.
Publius Scato with the Marsians confronted them; he had pitched his
camp at the spot where Marius crossed the brook, but, before the
passage took place, he had withdrawn thence, leaving behind the mere
posts that guarded the camp, and had taken a position in ambush
farther up the river.  There he attacked the other Roman corps under
Lupus unexpectedly during the crossing, and partly cut it down, partly
drove it into the river (11th June 664).  The consul in person and
8000 of his troops fell.  It could scarcely be called a compensation
that Marius, becoming at length aware of Scato's departure, had crossed
the river and not without loss to the enemy occupied their camp.
Yet this passage of the river, and a victory at the same time obtained
over the Paelignians by the general Servius Sulpicius, compelled the
Marsians to draw their line of defence somewhat back, and Marius, who
by decree of the senate succeeded Lupus as commander-in-chief, at least
prevented the enemy from gaining further successes.  But, when Quintus
Caepio was soon afterwards associated in the command with equal powers,
not so much on account of a conflict which he had successfully
sustained, as because he had recommended himself to the equites then
leading the politics of Rome by his vehement opposition to Drusus,
he allowed himself to be lured into an ambush by Silo on the pretext
that the latter wished to betray to him his army, and was cut to
pieces with a great part of his force by the Marsians and Vestinians.
Marius, after Caepio's fall once more sole commander-in-chief, through
his tenacious resistance prevented his antagonist from profiting by
the advantages which he had gained, and gradually penetrated far into
the Marsian territory.  He long refused battle; when he at length
gave it, he vanquished his impetuous opponent, who left on the battle--
field among other dead Herius Asinius the chieftain of the Marrucini.
In a second engagement the army of Marius and the corps of Sulla
which belonged to the army of the south co-operated to inflict on
the Marsians a still more considerable defeat, which cost them 6000 men;
but the glory of this day remained with the younger officer, for, while
Marius had given and gained the battle, Sulla had intercepted the retreat
of the fugitives and destroyed them.

Picenian War

While the conflict was proceeding thus warmly and with varying success
at the Fucine lake, the Picenian corps under Strabo had also fought
with alternations of fortune.  The insurgent chiefs, Gaius Iudacilius
from Asculum, Publius Vettius Scato, and Titus Lafrenius, had
assailed it with their united forces, defeated it, and compelled it
to throw itself into Firmum, where Lafrenius kept Strabo besieged,
while Iudacilius moved into Apulia and induced Canusium, Venusia, and
the other towns still adhering to Rome in that quarter to join the
insurgents.  But on the Roman side Servius Sulpicius by his victory
over the Paeligni cleared the way for his advancing into Picenum and
rendering aid to Strabo; Lafrenius was attacked by Strabo in front
and taken in rear by Sulpicius, and his camp was set on fire; he
himself fell, the remnant of his troops fled in disorder and threw
themselves into Asculum.  So completely had the state of affairs
changed in Picenum, that the Italians now found themselves confined
to Asculum as the Romans were previously to Firmum, and the war was
thus once more converted into a siege.

Umbro-Etruscan Conflicts

Lastly, there was added in the course of the year to the two difficult
and straggling wars in southern and central Italy a third in the
north.  The state of matters apparently so dangerous for Rome after
the first months of the war had induced a great portion of the
Umbrian, and isolated Etruscan, communities to declare for the
insurrection; so that it became necessary to despatch against the
Umbrians Aulus Plotius, and against the Etruscans Lucius Porcius Cato.
Here however the Romans encountered a far less energetic resistance
than in the Marsian and Samnite countries, and maintained a most
decided superiority in the field.

Disadvantageous Aggregate Result of the First Year of the War

Thus the severe first year of the war came to an end, leaving behind
it, both in a military and political point of view, sorrowful
memories and dubious prospects.  In a military point of view both
armies of the Romans, the Marsian as well as the Campanian, had been
weakened and discouraged by severe defeats; the northern army had
been compelled especially to attend to the protection of the capital,
the southern army at Neapolis had been seriously threatened in its
communications, as the insurgents could without much difficulty break
forth from the Marsian or Samnite territory and establish themselves
between Rome and Naples; for which reason it was found necessary to
draw at least a chain of posts from Cumae to Rome.  In a political
point of view, the insurrection had gained ground on all sides during
this first year of the war; the secession of Nola, the rapid
capitulation of the strong and large Latin colony of Venusia, and
the Umbro-Etruscan revolt were suspicious signs that the Roman symmachy
was tottering to its very base and was not in a position to hold out
against this last trial.  They had already made the utmost demands on
the burgesses; they had already, with a view to form that chain of
posts along the Latino-Campanian coast, incorporated nearly 6000
freedmen in the burgess-militia; they had already required the
severest sacrifices from the allies that still remained faithful;
it was not possible to draw the string of the bow any tighter
without hazarding everything.

Despondency of the Romans

The temper of the burgesses was singularly depressed.  After the
battle on the Tolenus, when the dead bodies of the consul and the
numerous citizens of note who had fallen with him were brought back
from the neighbouring battlefield to the capital and were buried there;
when the magistrates in token of public mourning laid aside their
purple and insignia; when the government issued orders to the
inhabitants of the capital to arm en masse; not a few had resigned
themselves to despair and given up all as lost.  It is true that the
worst despondency had somewhat abated after the victories achieved by
Caesar at Acerrae and by Strabo in Picenum: on the news of the former
the wardress in the capital had been once more exchanged for the dress
of the citizen, on the news of the second the signs of public mourning
had been laid aside; but it was not doubtful that on the whole the
Romans had been worsted in this passage of arms: and above all the
senate and the burgesses had lost the spirit, which had formerly
borne them to victory through all the crises of the Hannibalic war.
They still doubtless began war with the same defiant arrogance as then,
but they knew not how to end it as they had then done; rigid obstinacy,
tenacious persistence had given place to a remiss and cowardly
disposition.  Already after the first year of war their outward and
inward policy became suddenly changed, and betook itself to compromise.
There is no doubt that in this they did the wisest thing which could
be done; not however because, compelled by the immediate force of
arms, they could not avoid acquiescing in disadvantageous conditions,
but because the subject-matter of dispute--the perpetuation of the
political precedence of the Romans over the other Italians--was
injurious rather than beneficial to the commonwealth itself.
It sometimes happens in public life that one error compensates another;
in this case cowardice in some measure remedied the mischief which
obstinacy had incurred.

Revolution in Political Processes

The year 664 had begun with a most abrupt rejection of the
compromise offered by the insurgents and with the opening of a war
of prosecutions, in which the most passionate defenders of patriotic
selfishness, the capitalists, took vengeance on all those who were
suspected of having counselled moderation and seasonable concession.
On the other hand the tribune Marcus Plautius Silvanus, who entered
on his office on the 10th of December of the same year, carried a
law which took the commission of high treason out of the hands
of the capitalist jurymen, and entrusted it to other jurymen who
were nominated by the free choice of the tribes without class--
qualification; the effect of which was, that this commission was
converted from a scourge of the moderate party into a scourge of the
ultras, and sent into exile among others its own author, Quintus
Varius, who was blamed by the public voice for the worst democratic
outrages--the poisoning of Quintus Metellus and the murder of Drusus.

Bestowal of the Franchise on the Italians Who Remained Faithful--
or Submitted

Of greater importance than this singularly candid political
recantation, was the change in the course of their policy toward
the Italians.  Exactly three hundred years had passed since Rome had
last been obliged to submit to the dictation of peace; Rome was now
worsted once more, and the peace which she desired could only be got
by yielding in part at least to the terms of her antagonists.  With
the communities, doubtless, which had already risen in arms to subdue
and to destroy Rome, the feud had become too bitter for the Romans to
prevail on themselves to make the required concessions; and, had they
done so, these terms would now perhaps have been rejected by the other
side.  But, if the original demands were conceded under certain
limitations to the communities that had hitherto remained faithful,
such a course would on the one hand preserve the semblance of voluntary
concession, while on the other hand it would prevent the otherwise
inevitable consolidation of the confederacy and thereby pave the way
for its subjugation.  Accordingly the gates of Roman citizenship, which
had so long remained closed against entreaty, now suddenly opened when
the sword knocked at them; yet even now not fully and wholly, but in
a manner reluctant and annoying even for those admitted.  A law carried
by the consul Lucius Caesar(16) conferred the Roman franchise on the
burgesses of all those communities of Italian allies which had not up
to that time openly declared against Rome; a second, emanating from
the tribunes of the people Marcus Plautius Silvanus and Gaius Papirius
Carbo, laid down for every man who had citizenship and domicile in
Italy a term of two months, within which he was to be allowed to acquire
the Roman franchise by presenting himself before a Roman magistrate.
But these new burgesses were to be restricted as to the right of
voting in a way similar to the freedmen, inasmuch as they could only
be enrolled in eight, as the freedmen only in four, of the thirty-five
tribes; whether the restriction was personal or, as it would seem,
hereditary, cannot be determined with certainty.

Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts

This measure related primarily to Italy proper, which at that time
extended northward little beyond Ancona and Florence.  In Cisalpine
Gaul, which was in the eye of the law a foreign country, but in
administration and colonization had long passed as part of Italy,
all the Latin colonies were treated like the Italian communities.
Otherwise on the south side of the Po the greatest portion of the
soil was, after the dissolution of the old Celtic tribal communities,
not organized according to the municipal system, but remained withal in
the ownership of Roman burgesses mostly dwelling together in market-
villages (-fora-).  The not numerous allied townships to the south of
the Po, particularly Ravenna, as well as the whole country between the
Po and the Alps was, in consequence of a law brought in by the consul
Strabo in 665, organized after the Italian urban constitution, so that
the communities not adapted for this, more especially the townships in
the Alpine valleys, were assigned to particular towns as dependent and
tributary villages.  These new town-communities, however, were not
presented with the Roman franchise, but, by means of the legal fiction
that they were Latin colonies, were invested with those rights which
had hitherto belonged to the Latin towns of inferior legal position.
Thus Italy at that time ended practically at the Po, while the
Transpadane country was treated as an outlying dependency.  Here
to the north of the Po, with the exception of Cremona, Eporedia
and Aquileia, there were no burgess or Latin colonies, and even
the native tribes here had been by no means dislodged as they were
to the south of the Po.  The abolition of the Celtic cantonal, and
the introduction of the Italian urban, constitution paved the way
for the Romanizing of the rich and important territory; this was the
first step in the long and momentous transformation of the Gallic stock--
which once stood contrasted with Italy, and the assaults of which
Italy had rallied to repel--into comrades of their Italian masters.

Considerable as these concessions were, if we compare them with the
rigid exclusiveness which the Roman burgess-body had retained for
more than a hundred and fifty years, they were far from involving a
capitulation with the actual insurgents; they were on the contrary
intended partly to retain the communities that were wavering and
threatening to revolt, partly to draw over as many deserters as
possible from the ranks of the enemy.  To what extent these laws and
especially the most important of them--that of Caesar--were applied,
cannot be accurately stated, as we are only able to specify in general
terms the extent of the insurrection at the time when the law was
issued.  The main matter at any rate was that the communities hitherto
Latin--not only the survivors of the old Latin confederacy, such as
Tibur and Praeneste, but more especially the Latin colonies, with the
exception of the few that passed over to the insurgents--were thereby
admitted to Roman citizenship.  Besides, the law was applied to the
allied cities that remained faithful in Etruria and especially in
Southern Italy, such as Nuceria and Neapolis.  It was natural that
individual communities, hitherto specially privileged, should hesitate
as to the acceptance of the franchise; that Neapolis, for example,
should scruple to give up its former treaty with Rome--which
guaranteed to its citizens exemption from land-service and their
Greek constitution, and perhaps domanial advantages besides--for
the restricted rights of new burgesses.  It was probably in virtue of
conventions concluded on account of these scruples that this city, as
well as Rhegium and perhaps other Greek communities in Italy, even
after their admission to Roman citizenship retained unchanged their
former communal constitution and Greek as their official language.
At all events, as a consequence of these laws, the circle of Roman
burgesses was extraordinarily enlarged by the merging into it of
numerous and important urban communities scattered from the Sicilian
Straits to the Po; and, further, the country between the Po and the
Alps was, by the bestowal of the best rights of allies, as it were
invested with the legal expectancy of full citizenship.

Second Year of the War
Etruria and Umbria Tranquillized

On the strength of these concessions to the wavering communities, the
Romans resumed with fresh courage the conflict against the insurgent
districts.  They had pulled down as much of the existing political
institutions as seemed necessary to arrest the extension of the
conflagration; the insurrection thenceforth at least spread no
farther.  In Etruria and Umbria especially, where it was just
beginning, it was subdued with singular rapidity, still more, probably,
by means of the Julian law than through the success of the Roman arms.
In the former Latin colonies, and in the thickly-peopled region of the
Po, there were opened up copious and now trustworthy sources of aid:
with these, and with the resources of the burgesses themselves, they
could proceed to subdue the now isolated conflagration.  The two former
commanders-in-chief returned to Rome, Caesar as censor elect, Marius
because his conduct of the war was blamed as vacillating and slow, and
the man of sixty-six was declared to be in his dotage.  This objection
was very probably groundless; Marius showed at least his bodily
vigour by appearing daily in the circus at Rome, and even as
commander-in-chief he seems to have displayed on the whole his old
ability in the last campaign; but he had not achieved the brilliant
successes by which alone after his political bankruptcy he could have
rehabilitated himself in public opinion, and so the celebrated champion
was to his bitter vexation now, even as an officer, unceremoniously laid
aside as useless.  The place of Marius in the Marsian army was taken
by the consul of this year, Lucius Porcius Cato, who had fought with
distinction in Etruria, and that of Caesar in the Campanian army by
his lieutenant, Lucius Sulla, to whom were due some of the most
material successes of the previous campaign; Gnaeus Strabo retained--
now as consul--the command which he had held so successfully in
the Picenian territory.

War in Picenum
Asculum Besieged
And Conquered
Subjugation of the Sabellians and Marsians

Thus began the second campaign in 665.  The insurgents opened it,
even before winter was over, by the bold attempt--recalling the grand
passages of the Samnite wars--to send a Marsian army of 15,000 men to
Etruria with a view to aid the insurrection brewing in Northern Italy.
But Strabo, through whose district it had to pass, intercepted
and totally defeated it; only a few got back to their far distant
home.  When at length the season allowed the Roman armies to assume
the offensive, Cato entered the Marsian territory and advanced,
successfully encountering the enemy there; but he fell in the region
of the Fucine lake during an attack on the enemy's camp, so that the
exclusive superintendence of the operations in Central Italy devolved
on Strabo.  The latter employed himself partly in continuing the
siege of Asculum, partly in the subjugation of the Marsian, Sabellian,
and Apulian districts.  To relieve his hard-pressed native town,
Iudacilius appeared before Asculum with the Picentine levy and
attacked the besieging army, while at the same time the garrison
sallied forth and threw itself on the Roman lines.  It is said that
75,000 Romans fought on this day against 60,000 Italians.  Victory
remained with the Romans, but Iudacilius succeeded in throwing himself
with a part of the relieving army into the town.  The siege resumed
its course; it was protracted(17) by the strength of the place and the
desperate defence of the inhabitants, who fought with a recollection of
the terrible declaration of war within its walls.  When Iudacilius
at length after a brave defence of several months saw the day of
capitulation approach, he ordered the chiefs of that section of
the citizens which was favourable to Rome to be put to death under
torture, and then died by his own hand.  So the gates were opened,
and Roman executions were substituted for Italian; all officers and
all the respectable citizens were executed, the rest were driven forth
to beggary, and all their property was confiscated on account of
the state.  During the siege and after the fall of Asculum numerous
Roman corps marched through the adjacent rebel districts, and induced
one after another to submit.  The Marrucini yielded, after Servius
Sulpicius had defeated them decidedly at Teate (Chieti).  The praetor
Gaius Cosconius penetrated into Apulia, took Salapia and Cannae, and
besieged Canusium.  A Samnite corps under Marius Egnatius came to the
help of the unwarlike region and actually drove back the Romans, but
the Roman general succeeded in defeating it at the passage of the
Aufidus; Egnatius fell, and the rest of the army had to seek shelter
behind the walls of Canusium.  The Romans again advanced as far
as Venusia and Rubi, and became masters of all Apulia.  Along the
Fucine lake also and at the Majella mountains--the chief seats of
the insurrection--the Romans re-established their mastery; the Marsians
succumbed to Strabo's lieutenants, Quintus Metellus Pius and Gaius
Cinna, the Vestinians and Paelignians in the following year (666) to
Strabo himself; Italia the capital of the insurgents became once more
the modest Paelignian country-town of Corfinium; the remnant of the
Italian senate fled to the Samnite territory.

Subjugation of Campania As Far As Nola
Sulla in Samnium

The Roman southern army, which was now under the command of Lucius
Sulla, had at the same time assumed the offensive and had penetrated
into southern Campania which was occupied by the enemy.  Stabiae was
taken and destroyed by Sulla in person (30 April 665) and Herculaneum
by Titus Didius, who however fell himself (11 June) apparently at the
assault on that city.  Pompeii resisted longer.  The Samnite general
Lucius Cluentius came up to bring relief to the town, but he was
repulsed by Sulla; and when, reinforced by bands of Celts, he
renewed his attempt, he was, chiefly owing to the wavering of these
untrustworthy associates, so totally defeated that his camp was taken
and he himself was cut down with the greater part of his troops on
their flight towards Nola.  The grateful Roman army conferred on its
general the grass-wreath--the homely badge with which the usage of
the camp decorated the soldier who had by his capacity saved a division
of his comrades.  Without pausing to undertake the siege of Nola and
of the other Campanian towns still occupied by the Samnites, Sulla
at once advanced into the interior, which was the head-quarters of
the insurrection.  The speedy capture and fearful punishment of
Aeclanum spread terror throughout the Hirpinian country; it submitted
even before the arrival of the Lucanian contingent which had set itself
in motion to render help, and Sulla was able to advance unhindered as
far as the territory of the Samnite confederacy.  The pass, where the
Samnite militia under Mutilus awaited him, was turned, the Samnite army
was attacked in rear, and defeated; the camp was lost, the general
escaped wounded to Aesernia.  Sulla advanced to Bovianum, the capital of
the Samnite country, and compelled it to surrender by a second victory
achieved beneath its walls.  The advanced season alone put an end
to the campaign there.

The Insurrection on the Whole Overpowered

The position of affairs had undergone a most complete change.
Powerful, victorious, aggressive as was the insurrection when it
began the campaign of 665, it emerged from it deeply humbled, everywhere
beaten, and utterly hopeless.  All northern Italy was pacified.
In central Italy both coasts were wholly in the Roman power, and the
Abruzzi almost entirely; Apulia as far as Venusia, and Campania as far
as Nola, were in the hands of the Romans; and by the occupation of the
Hirpinian territory the communication was broken off between the only
two regions still persevering in open resistance, the Samnite and the
Lucano-Bruttian.  The field of the insurrection resembled the scene
of an immense conflagration dying out; everywhere the eye fell on
ashes and ruins and smouldering brands; here and there the flame
still blazed up among the ruins, but the fire was everywhere mastered,
and there was no further threatening of danger.  It is to be
regretted that we no longer sufficiently discern in the superficial
accounts handed down to us the causes of this sudden revolution.
While undoubtedly the dexterous leadership of Strabo and still more
of Sulla, and especially the more energetic concentration of the
Roman forces, and their more rapid offensive contributed materially
to that result, political causes may have been at work along with the
military in producing the singularly rapid fall of the power of the
insurgents; the law of Silvanus and Carbo may have fulfilled its design
in carrying defection and treason to the common cause into the ranks
of the enemy; and misfortune, as has so frequently happened, may
have fallen as an apple of discord among the loosely-connected
insurgent communities.

Perseverance of the Samnites

We see only--and this fact points to an internal breaking up of Italia,
that must certainly have been attended by violent convulsions--that
the Samnites, perhaps under the leadership of the Marsian Quintus Silo
who had been from the first the soul of the insurrection and after the
capitulation of the Marsians had gone as a fugitive to the neighbouring
people, now assumed another organization purely confined to their
own land, and, after "Italia" was vanquished, undertook to continue
the struggle as "Safini" or Samnites.(18) The strong Aesernia was
converted from the fortress that had curbed, into the last retreat
that sheltered, Samnite freedom; an army assembled consisting, it was
said, of 30,000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, and was strengthened by the
manumission and incorporation of 20,000 slaves; five generals were
placed at its head, among whom Silo was the first and Mutilus next to
him.  With astonishment men saw the Samnite wars beginning anew after
a pause of two hundred years, and the resolute nation of farmers making
a fresh attempt, just as in the fifth century, after the Italian
confederation was shattered, to force Rome with their own hand to
recognize their country's independence.  But this resolution of the
bravest despair made not much change in the main result; although the
mountain-war in Samnium and Lucania might still require some time and
some sacrifices, the insurrection was nevertheless already
substantially at an end.

Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

In the meanwhile, certainly, there had occurred a fresh complication,
for the Asiatic difficulties had rendered it imperatively necessary
to declare war against Mithradates king of Pontus, and for next year
(666) to destine the one consul and a consular army to Asia Minor.
Had this war broken out a year earlier, the contemporary revolt of
the half of Italy and of the most important of the provinces would have
formed an immense peril to the Roman state.  Now that the marvellous
good fortune of Rome had once more been evinced in the rapid collapse
of the Italian insurrection, this Asiatic war just beginning was,
notwithstanding its being mixed up with the expiring Italian
struggle, not of a really dangerous character; and the less so,
because Mithradates in his arrogance refused the invitation of the
Italians that he should afford them direct assistance.  Still it
was in a high degree inconvenient.  The times had gone by, when
they without hesitation carried on simultaneously an Italian and
a transmarine war, the state-chest was already after two years of
warfare utterly exhausted, and the formation of a new army in addition
to that already in the field seemed scarcely practicable.  But they
resorted to such expedients as they could.  The sale of the sites
that had from ancient times(19) remained unoccupied on and near the
citadel to persons desirous of building, which yielded 9000 pounds of
gold (360,000 pounds), furnished the requisite pecuniary means.  No new
army was formed, but that which was under Sulla in Campania was destined
to embark for Asia, as soon as the state of things in southern Italy
should allow its departure; which might be expected, from the progress
of the army operating in the north under Strabo, to happen soon.

Third Campaign
Capture of Venusia
Fall of Silo

So the third campaign in 666 began amidst favourable prospects for
Rome.  Strabo put down the last resistance which was still offered
in the Abruzzi.  In Apulia the successor of Cosconius, Quintus Metellus
Pius, son of the conqueror of Numidia and not unlike his father in
his strongly conservative views as well as in military endowments,
put an end to the resistance by the capture of Venusia, at which 3000
armed men were taken prisoners.  In Samnium Silo no doubt succeeded
in retaking Bovianum; but in a battle, in which he engaged the Roman
general Mamercus Aemilius, the Romans conquered, and--what was more
important than the victory itself--Silo was among the 6000 dead whom
the Samnites left on the field.  In Campania the smaller townships,
which the Samnites still occupied, were wrested from them by Sulla,
and Nola was invested.  The Roman general Aulus Gabinius penetrated
also into Lucania and gained no small advantages; but, after he had
fallen in an attack on the enemy's camp, Lamponius the insurgent
leader and his followers once more held almost undisturbed command
over the wide and desolate Lucano-Bruttian country.  He even made an
attempt to seize Rhegium, which was frustrated, however, by the Sicilian
governor Gaius Norbanus.  Notwithstanding isolated mischances the Romans
were constantly drawing nearer to the attainment of their end; the fall
of Nola, the submission of Samnium, the possibility of rendering
considerable forces available for Asia appeared no longer distant,
when the turn taken by affairs in the capital unexpectedly gave fresh
life to the well-nigh extinguished insurrection.

Ferment in Rome
The Bestowal of the Franchise and Its Limitations
Secondary Effect of the Political Prosecutions
Marius

Rome was in a fearful ferment.  The attack of Drusus upon the
equestrian courts and his sudden downfall brought about by the
equestrian party, followed by the two-edged Varian warfare of
prosecutions, had sown the bitterest discord between the aristocracy
and the bourgeoisie as well as between the moderates and the ultras.
Events had completely justified the party of concession; what it had
proposed voluntarily to bestow, men had been more than half compelled
to concede; but the mode in which the concession was made bore, just
like the earlier refusal, the stamp of obstinate and shortsighted
envy.  Instead of granting equality of rights to all Italian
communities, they had only expressed the inferiority in another form.
They had received a great number of Italian communities into Roman
citizenship, but had attached to what they thus conferred an offensive
stigma, by placing the new burgesses alongside of the old on nearly
the same footing as the freedmen occupied alongside of the freeborn.
They had irritated rather than pacified the communities between the
Po and the Alps by the concession of Latin rights.  Lastly, they had
withheld the franchise from a considerable, and that not the worst,
portion of the Italians--the whole of the insurgent communities
which had again submitted; and not only so, but, instead of legally
re-establishing the former treaties annulled by the insurrection, they
had at most renewed them as a matter of favour and subject to revocation
at pleasure.(20)  The disability as regarded the right of voting
gave the deeper offence, that it was--as the comitia were then
constituted--politically absurd, and the hypocritical care of the
government for the unstained purity of the electors appeared to every
unprejudiced person ridiculous; but all these restrictions were
dangerous, inasmuch as they invited every demagogue to carry his
ulterior objects by taking up the more or less just demands of the
new burgesses and of the Italians excluded from the franchise.  While
accordingly the more clear-seeing of the aristocracy could not but find
these partial and grudging concessions as inadequate as did the new
burgesses and the excluded themselves, they further painfully felt
the absence from their ranks of the numerous and excellent men whom
the Varian commission of high treason had exiled, and whom it was the
more difficult to recall because they had been condemned by the verdict
not of the people but of the jury-courts; for, while there was little
hesitation as to cancelling a decree of the people even of a judicial
character by means of a second, the cancelling of a verdict of
jurymen bythe people appeared to the betterportion of the aristocracy
as a very dangerous precedent.  Thus neither the ultras nor the
moderates were content with the issue of the Italian crisis.  But still
deeper indignation swelled the heart of the old man, who had gone
forth to the Italian war with freshened hopes and had come back from
it reluctantly, with the consciousness of having rendered new services
and of having received in return new and most severe mortifications,
with the bitter feeling of being no longer dreaded but despised by
his enemies, with that gnawing spirit of vengeance in his heart,
which feeds on its own poison.  It was true of him also, as of the
new burgesses and the excluded; incapable and awkward as he had shown
himself to be, his popular name was still a formidable weapon in
the hand of a demagogue.

Decay of Military Discipline

With these elements of political convulsion was combined the rapidly
spreading decay of decorous soldierly habits and of military
discipline.  The seeds, which were sown by the enrolment of the
proletariate in the army, developed themselves with alarming rapidity
during the demoralizing insurrectionary war, which compelled Rome
to admit to the service every man capable of bearing arms without
distinction, and which above all carried political partizanship
directly into the headquarters and into the soldiers' tent.
The effects soon appeared in the slackening of all the bonds of
the military hierarchy.  During the siege of Pompeii the commander
of the Sullan besieging corps, the consular Aulus Postumius Albinus,
was put to death with stones and bludgeons by his soldiers, who believed
themselves betrayed by their general to the enemy; and Sulla the
commander-in-chief contented himself with exhorting the troops to efface
the memory of that occurrence by their brave conduct in presence of
the enemy.  The authors of that deed were the marines, from of old
the least respectable of the troops.  A division of legionaries raised
chiefly from the city populace soon followed the example thus given.
Instigated by Gaius Titius, one of the heroes of the market-place, it
laid hands on the consul Cato.  By an accident he escaped death on
this occasion; Titius was arrested, but was not punished.  When Cato
soon afterwards actually perished in a combat, his own officers, and
particularly the younger Gaius Marius, were--whether justly or unjustly,
cannot be ascertained--designated as the authors of his death.

Economic Crisis
Murder of Asellio

To the political and military crisis thus beginning fell to be added
the economic crisis--perhaps still more terrible--which set in upon the
Roman capitalists in consequence of the Social war and the Asiatic
troubles.  The debtors, unable even to raise the interest due and yet
inexorably pressed by their creditors, had on the one hand entreated
from the proper judicial authority, the urban praetor Asellio, a
respite to enable them to dispose of their possessions, and on the
other hand had searched out once more the old obsolete laws as to
usury(21) and, according to the rule established in olden times,
had sued their creditors for fourfold the amount of the interest
paid to them contrary to the law.  Asellio lent himself to bend the
actually existing law into conformity with the letter, and put into
shape in the usual way the desired actions for interest; whereupon
the offended creditors assembled in the Forum under the leadership of
the tribune of the people Lucius Cassius, and attacked and killed the
praetor in front of the temple of Concord, just as in his priestly
robes he was presenting a sacrifice--an outrage which was not even
made a subject of investigation (665).  On the other hand it was
said in the circles of the debtors, that the suffering multitude could
not be relieved otherwise than by "new account-books," that is, by
legally cancelling the claims of all creditors against all debtors.
Matters stood again exactly as they had stood during the strife
of the orders; once more the capitalists in league with the
prejudiced aristocracy made war against, and prosecuted, the oppressed
multitude and the middle party which advised a modification of the
rigour of the law; once more Rome stood on the verge of that abyss
into which the despairing debtor drags his creditor along with him.
Only, since that time the simple civil and moral organization of a
great agricultural city had been succeeded by the social antagonisms
of a capital of many nations, and by that demoralization in which
the prince and the beggar meet; now all incongruities had come to be
on a broader, more abrupt, and fearfully grander scale.  When the
Social war brought all the political and social elements fermenting
among the citizens into collision with each other, it laid the
foundation for a new resolution.  An accident led to its outbreak.

The Sulpician Laws
Sulpicius Rufus

It was the tribune of the people Publius Sulpicius Rufus who in 666
proposed to the burgesses to declare that every senator, who owed more
than 2000 -denarii- (82 pounds), should forfeit his seat in the senate;
to grant to the burgesses condemned by non-free jury courts liberty
to return home; to distribute the new burgesses among all the tribes,
and likewise to allow the right of voting in all tribes to the
freedmen.  They were proposals which from the mouth of such a man
were at least somewhat surprising.  Publius Sulpicius Rufus (born in
630) owed his political importance not so much to his noble birth, his
important connections, and his hereditary wealth, as to his remarkable
oratorical talent, in which none of his contemporaries equalled him.
His powerful voice, his lively gestures sometimes bordering on
theatrical display, the luxuriant copiousness of his flow of words
arrested, even if they did not convince, his hearers.  As a partisan
he was from the outset on the side of the senate, and his first public
appearance (659) had been the impeachment of Norbanus who was mortally
hated by the government party.(22)  Among the conservatives he belonged
to the section of Crassus and Drusus.  We do not know what primarily
gave occasion to his soliciting the tribuneship of the people for 666,
and on its account renouncing his patrician nobility; but he seems
to have been by no means rendered a revolutionist through the
fact that he, like the whole middle party, had been persecuted as
revolutionary by the conservatives, and to have by no means intended
an overthrow of the constitution in the sense of Gaius Gracchus.
It would rather seem that, as the only man of note belonging to
the party of Crassus and Drusus who had come forth uninjured from
the storm of the Varian prosecutions, he felt himself called on
to complete the work of Drusus and finally to set aside the still
subsisting disabilities of the new burgesses--for which purpose he
needed the tribunate.  Several acts of his even during his tribuneship
are mentioned, which betray the very opposite of demagogic designs.
For instance, he prevented by his veto one of his colleagues from
cancelling through a decree of the people the sentences of jurymen
issued under the Varian law; and when the late aedile Gaius Caesar,
passing over the praetorship, unconstitutionally became a candidate
for the consulship for 667, with the design, it was alleged, of getting
the charge of the Asiatic war afterwards entrusted to him, Sulpicius
opposed him more resolutely and sharply than any one else.  Entirely
in the spirit of Drusus, he thus demanded from himself as from
others primarily and especially the maintenance of the constitution.
But in fact he was as little able as was Drusus to reconcile things
that were incompatible, and to carry out in strict form of law the
change of the constitution which he had in view--a change judicious
in itself, but never to be obtained from the great majority of the
old burgesses by amicable means.  His breach with the powerful
family of the Julii--among whom in particular the consular Lucius
Caesar, the brother of Gaius, was very influential in the senate--
and withthesectionof the aristocracy adhering to it, beyond doubt
materially cooperated and carried the irascible man through personal
exasperation beyond his original design.

Tendency of These Laws

Yet the proposals brought in by him were of such a nature as
to be by no means out of keeping with the personal character and
the previous party-position of their author.  The equalization of
the new burgesses with the old was simply a partial resumption of
the proposals drawn up by Drusus in favour of the Italians; and,
like these, only carried out the requirements of a sound policy.
The recall of those condemned by the Varian jurymen no doubt sacrificed
the principle of the inviolability of such a sentence, in defence of
which Sulpicius himself had just practically interposed; but it mainly
benefited in the first instance the members of the proposer's own
party, the moderate conservatives, and it may be very well conceived
that so impetuous a man might when first coming forward decidedly
combat such a measure and then, indignant at the resistance which
he encountered, propose it himself.  The measure against the
insolvency of senators was doubtless called forth by the exposure
of the economic condition of the ruling families--so deeply embarrassed
notwithstanding all their outward splendour--on occasion of the last
financial crisis.  It was painful doubtless, but yet of itself
conducive to the rightly understood interest of the aristocracy,
if, as could not but be the effect of the Sulpician proposal, all
individuals should withdraw from the senate who were unable speedily
to meet their liabilities, and if the coterie-system, which found its
main support in the insolvency of many senators and their consequent
dependence on their wealthy colleagues, should be checked by the
removal of the notoriously venal pack of the senators.  At the same
time, of course, we do not mean to deny that such a purification
of the senate-house so abruptly and invidiously exposing the senate,
as Rufus proposed, would certainly never have been proposed without
his personal quarrels with the ruling coterie-heads.  Lastly, the
regulationin favour of the freedmen had undoubtedly for its primary
object to make its proposer master of the street; but in itself it
was neither unwarranted nor incompatible with the aristocratic
constitution.  Since the freedmen had begun to be drawn upon for
military service, their demand for the right of voting was so far
justified, as the right of voting and the obligation of service had
always gone hand in hand.  Moreover, looking to the nullity of the
comitia, it was politically of very little moment whether one sewer
more emptied itself into that slough.  The difficulty which the
oligarchy felt in governing with the comitia was lessened rather than
increased by the unlimited admission of the freedmen, who were to a
very great extent personally and financially dependent on the ruling
families and, if rightly used, might quite furnish the government with
a means of controlling the elections more thoroughly than before.
This measure certainly, like every other political favour shown to
the proletariate, ran counter to the tendencies of the aristocracy
friendly to reform; but it was for Rufus hardly anything else
than what the corn-law had been for Drusus--a means of drawing
the proletariate over to his side and of breaking down with its aid
the opposition against the truly beneficial reforms which he meditated.
It was easy to foresee that this opposition would not be slight; that
the narrow-minded aristocracy and the narrow-minded bourgeoisie would
display the same stupid jealousy after the subduing of the insurrection
as they had displayed before its outbreak; that the great majority
of all parties would secretly or even openly characterize the partial
concessions made at the moment of the most formidable danger as
unseasonable compliances, and would passionately resist every attempt
to extend them.  The example of Drusus had shown what came of
undertakingto carry conservative reforms solely in reliance on the
majority of the senate; it was a course quite intelligible, that his
friend who shared his views should attempt to carry out kindred designs
in opposition to that majority and under the forms of demagogism.
Rufus accordingly gave himself no trouble to gain the senate over to
his views by the bait of the jury courts.  He found a better support
in the freedmen and above all in the armed retinue--consisting,
according to the report of his opponents, of 3000 hired men and an
"opposition-senate" of 600 young men from the better class--with
which he appeared in the streets and in the Forum.

Resistance of the Government
Riots
Position of Sulla

His proposals accordingly met with the most decided resistance from
the majority of the senate, which first, to gain time, induced the
consuls Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Quintus Pompeius Rufus, both declared
opponents of demagogism, to enjoin extraordinary religious observances,
during which the popular assemblies were suspended.  Sulpicius
replied by a violent tumult, in which among other victims the young
Quintus Pompeius, son of the one and son-in-law of the other consul,
met his death and the lives of both consuls themselves were seriously
threatened--Sulla is said even to have escaped only by Marius
opening to him his house.  They were obliged to yield; Sulla agreed
to countermand the announced solemnities, and the Sulpician proposals
now passed without further difficulty.  But this was far from
determining their fate.  Though the aristocracy in the capital might
own its defeat, there was now--for the first time since the commencement
of the revolution--yet another power in Italy which could not be
overlooked, viz. the two strong and victorious armies of the proconsul
Strabo and the consul Sulla.  The political position of Strabo might
be ambiguous, but Sulla, although he had given way to open violence
for the moment, was on the best terms with the majority of the senate;
and not only so, but he had, immediately after countermanding
the solemnities, departed for Campania to join his army. To terrify
the unarmed consul by bludgeon-men or the defenceless capital by
the swords of the legions, amounted to the same thing in the end:
Sulpicius assumed that his opponent, now when he could, would
requite violence with violence and return to the capital at the head
of his legions to overthrow the conservative demagogue and his laws
along with him.  Perhaps he was mistaken.  Sulla was just as eager
for the war against Mithradates as he was probably averse to the
political exhalations of the capital; considering his original spirit
of indifference and his unrivalled political nonchalance, there is
great probability that he by no means intended the coup d'etat which
Sulpicius expected, and that, if he had been let alone, he would have
embarked without delay with his troops for Asia so soon as he had
captured Nola, with the siege of which he was still occupied.

Marius Nominated Commander-in-Chief in Sulla's Stead

But, be this as it might, Sulpicius, with a view to parry the presumed
blow, conceived the scheme of taking the supreme command from Sulla;
and for this purpose joined with Marius, whose name was still
sufficiently popular to make a proposal to transfer to him the chief
command in the Asiatic war appear plausible to the multitude, and
whose military position and ability might prove a support in the
event of a rupture with Sulla.  Sulpicius probably did not overlook
the danger involved in placing that old man--not less incapable than
vengeful and ambitious--at the head of the Campanian army, and as little
the scandalous irregularity of entrusting an extraordinary supreme
command by decree of the people to a private man; but the very tried
incapacity of Marius as a statesman gave a sort of guarantee that he
would not be able seriously to endanger the constitution, and above
all the personal position of Sulpicius, if he formed a correct
estimate of Sulla's designs, was one of so imminent peril that such
considerations could hardly be longer heeded.  That the worn-out
hero himself readily met the wishes of any one who would employ him
as a -condottiere-, was a matter of course; his heart had now for
many years longed for the command in an Asiatic war, and not less
perhaps for an opportunity of once settling accounts thoroughly with
the majority of the senate.  Accordingly on the proposal of Sulpicius
Gaius Marius was by decree of the people invested with extraordinary
supreme, or as it was called proconsular, power, and obtained the
command of the Campanian army and the superintendence of the war
against Mithradates; and two tribunes of the people were despatched
to the camp at Nola, to take over the army from Sulla.

Sulla's Recall

Sulla was not the man to yield to such a summons.  If any one had a
vocation to the chief command in the Asiatic war, it was Sulla.  He
had a few years before commanded with the greatest success in the
same theatre of war; he had contributed more than any other man to
the subjugation of the dangerous Italian insurrection; as consul of
the year in which the Asiatic war broke out, he had been invested with
the command in it after the customary way and with the full consent
of his colleague, who was on friendly terms with him and related to
him by marriage.  It was expecting a great deal to suppose that he
would, in accordance with a decree of the sovereign burgesses of
Rome, give up a command undertaken in such circumstances to an old
military and political antagonist, in whose hands the army might be
turned to none could tell what violent and preposterous proceedings.
Sulla was neither good-natured enough to comply voluntarily with such
an order, nor dependent enough to need to do so.  His army was--
partly in consequence of the alterations of the military system
which originated with Marius, partly from the moral laxity and the
military strictness of its discipline in the hands of Sulla--little
more than a body of mercenaries absolutely devoted to their leader
and indifferent to political affairs.  Sulla himself was a hardened,
cool, and clearheaded man, in whose eyes the sovereign Roman burgesses
were a rabble, the hero of Aquae Sextiae a bankrupt swindler,
formal legality a phrase, Rome itself a city without a garrison
and with its walls half in ruins, which could be far more easily
captured than Nola.

Sulla's March on Rome

On these views he acted.  He assembled his soldiers--there were six
legions, or about 35,000 men--and explained to them the summons that
had arrived from Rome, not forgetting to hint that the new commander-
in-chief would undoubtedly lead to Asia Minor not the army as it stood,
but another formed of fresh troops.  The superior officers, who still
had more of the citizen than the soldier, kept aloof, and only one
of them followed the general towards the capital; but the soldiers,
who in accordance with earlier experiences(23) hoped to find in Asia an
easy war and endless booty, were furious; in a moment the two tribunes
that had come from Rome were torn in pieces, and from all sides the
cry arose that the general should lead them to Rome.  Without delay
the consul started, and forming a junction with his like-minded
colleague by the way, he arrived by quick marches--little troubling
himself about the deputies who hastened from Rome to meet and
attempted to detain him--beneath the walls of the capital.  Suddenly
the Romans beheld columns of Sulla's army take their station at the
bridge over the Tiber and at the Colline and Esquiline gates; and then
two legions in battle array, with their standards at their head, passed
the sacred ring-wall within which the law had forbidden war to enter.
Many a worse quarrel, many an important feud had been brought to a
settlement within those walls, without any need for a Roman army
breaking the sacred peace of the city; that step was now taken,
primarily for thesake of the miserable question whether this or
that officer was called to command in the east.

Rome Occupied

The entering legions advanced as far as the height of the Esquiline;
when the missiles and stones descending in showers from the roofs made
the soldiers waver and they began to give way, Sulla himself brandished
a blazing torch, and with firebrands and threats of setting the houses
on fire the legions cleared their way to the Esquiline market-place
(not far from S.  Maria Maggiore).  There the force hastily collected
by Marius and Sulpicius awaited them, and by its superior numbers
repelled the first invading columns.  But reinforcements came up from
the gates; another division of the Sullans made preparations for
turning the defenders by the street of the Subura; the latter were
obliged to retire.  At the temple of Tellus, where the Esquiline
begins to slope towards the great Forum, Marius attempted once more
to make a stand; he adjured the senate and equites and all the citizens
to throw themselves across the path of the legions.  But he himself
had transformed them from citizens to mercenaries; his own work turned
against him: they obeyed not the government, but their general.  Even
when the slaves were summoned to arm under the promise of freedom,
not more than three of them appeared.  Nothing remained for the
leaders but to escape in all haste through the still unoccupied gates;
after a few hours Sulla was absolute master of Rome.  That night
the watchfires of the legions blazed in the great market-place
of the capital.

First Sullan Restoration
Death of Sulpicius
Flight of Marius

The first military intervention in civil feuds had made it quite
evident, not only that the political struggles had reached the point
at which nothing save open and direct force proves decisive, but
also that the power of the bludgeon was of no avail against the
power of the sword.  It was the conservative party which first drew
the sword, and which accordingly in due time experienced the truth
of the ominous words of the Gospel as to those who first have recourse
to it.  For the present it triumphed completely and might put the
victory into formal shape at its pleasure.  As a matter of course,
the Sulpician laws were characterized as legally null.  Their author
and his most notable adherents had fled; they were, twelve in number,
proscribed by the senate for arrest and execution as enemies of their
country.  Publius Sulpicius was accordingly seized at Laurentum and
put to death; and the head of the tribune, sent to Sulla, was by
his orders exposed in the Forum at the very rostra where he himself had
stood but a few days before in the full vigour of youth and eloquence.
The rest of the proscribed were pursued; the assassins were on the
track of even the old Gaius Marius.  Although the general might have
clouded the memory of his glorious days by a succession of pitiful
proceedings, now that the deliverer of his country was running for
his life, he was once more the victor of Vercellae, and with breathless
suspense all Italy listened to the incidents of his marvellous
flight.  At Ostia he had gone on board a transport with the view of
sailing for Africa; but adverse winds and want of provisions compelled
him to land at the Circeian promontory and to wander at random.
With few attendants and without trusting himself under a roof, the
grey-haired consular, often suffering from hunger, found his way on
foot to the neighbourhood of the Roman colony of Minturnae at the mouth
of the Garigliano.  There the pursuing cavalry were seen in the
distance; with great difficulty he reached the shore, and a trading--
vessel lying there withdrew him from his pursuers; but the timid
mariners soon put him ashore again and made off, while Marius stole
along the beach.  His pursuers found him in the salt-marsh of
Minturnae sunk to the girdle in the mud and with his head concealed
amidst a quantity of reeds, and delivered him to the civic authorities
of Minturnae.  He was placed in prison, and the town-executioner, a
Cimbrian slave, was sent to put him to death; but the German trembled
before the flashing eyes of his old conqueror and the axe fell from
his hands, when the general with his powerful voice haughtily demanded
whether he dared to kill Gaius Marius.  When they learned this, the
magistrates of Minturnae were ashamed that the deliverer of Rome should
meet with greater reverence from slaves to whom he had brought bondage
than from his fellow-citizens to whom he had brought freedom; they
loosed his fetters, gave him a vessel and money for travelling expenses,
and sent him to Aenaria (Ischia).  The proscribed with the exception
of Sulpicius gradually met in those waters; they landed at Eryx and
at what was formerly Carthage, but the Roman magistrates both in
Sicily and in Africa sent them away.  So they escaped to Numidia,
whose desert sand-dunes gave them a place of refuge for the winter.
But the king Hiempsal II, whom they hoped to gain and who had seemed
for a while willing to unite with them, had only done so to lull them
into security, and now attempted to seize their persons.  With great
difficulty the fugitives escaped from his cavalry, and found a temporary
refuge in the little island of Cercina (Kerkena) on the coast of Tunis.
We know not whether Sulla thanked his fortunate star that he had been
spared the odium of putting to death the victor of the Cimbrians; at any
rate it does not appear that the magistrates of Minturnae were punished.

Legislation of Sulla

With a view to remove existing evils and to prevent future
revolutions, Sulla suggested a series of new legislative enactments.
For the hard-pressed debtors nothing seems to have been done, except
that the rules as to the maximum of interest were enforced;(24)
directions moreover were given for the sending out of a number of
colonies.  The senate which had been greatly thinned by the battles
and prosecutions of the Social war was filled up by the admission of
300 new senators, who were naturally selected in the interest of the
Optimates.  Lastly, material changes were adopted in respect to the
mode of election and the initiative of legislation.  The old Servian
arrangement for voting in the centuriate comitia, under which the
first class, with an estate of 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds) or
upwards, alone possessed almost half of the votes, again took the
place of the arrangements introduced in 513 to mitigate the
preponderance of the first class.(25)  Practically there was thus
introduced for the election of consuls, praetors, and censors, a
census which really excluded the non-wealthy from exercising the
suffrage.  The legislative initiative in the case of the tribunes
of the people was restricted by the rule, that every proposal had
henceforth to be submitted by them in the first instance to
the senate and could only come before the people in the event
of the senate approving it.

These enactments which were called forth by the Sulpician attempt at
revolution from the man who then came forward as the shield and sword
of the constitutional party--the consul Sulla--bear an altogether
peculiar character.  Sulla ventured, without consulting the burgesses
or jurymen, to pronounce sentence of death on twelve of the most
distinguished men, including magistrates actually in office and
the most famous general of his time, and publicly to defend these
proscriptions; a violation of the venerable and sacred laws of appeal,
which met with severe censure even from very conservative men, such
as Quintus Scaevola.  He ventured to overthrow an arrangement as to
the elections which had subsisted for a century and a half, and to
re-establish the electoral census which had been long obsolete and
proscribed.  He ventured practically to withdraw the right of
legislation from its two primitive factors, the magistrates and the
comitia, and to transfer it to a board which had at no time possessed
formally any other privilege in this respect than that of being asked
for its advice.(26)  Hardly had any democrat ever exercised justice
in forms so tyrannical, or disturbed and remodelled the foundations of
the constitution with so reckless an audacity, as this conservative
reformer.  But if we look at the substance instead of the form, we
reach very different results.  Revolutions have nowhere ended, and
least of all in Rome, without demanding a certain number of victims,
who under forms more or less borrowed from justice atone for the fault
of being vanquished as though it were a crime.  Any one who recalls
the succession of prosecutions carried on by the victorious party
after the fall of the Gracchi and Saturninus(27) will be inclined
to yield to the victor of the Esquiline market the praise of candour
and comparative moderation, in so far as, first he without ceremony
accepted as war what was really such and proscribed the men who were
defeated as enemies beyond the pale of the law, and, secondly, he
limited as far as possible the number of victims and allowed at least
no offensive outbreak of fury against inferior persons.  A similar
moderation appears in the political arrangements.  The innovation as
respects legislation--the most important and apparently the most
comprehensive--in fact only brought the letter of the constitution
into harmony with its spirit.  The Roman legislation, under which
any consul, praetor, or tribune could propose to the burgesses any
measure at pleasure and bring it to the vote without debate, had from
the first been, irrational and had become daily more so with the
growing nullity of the comitia; it was only tolerated, because in
practice the senate had claimed for itself the right of previous
deliberation and regularly crushed any proposal, if put to the vote
without such previous deliberation, by means of the political or
religious veto.(28)  The revolution hadswept away thesebarriers;
andin consequence that absurd system now began fully to develop its
results, and to put it in the power of any petulant knave to overthrow
the state in due form of law.  What was under such circumstances more
natural, more necessary, more truly conservative, than now to recognize
formally and expressly the legislation of the senate to which effect
had been hitherto given by a circuitous process? Something similar
may be said of the renewal of the electoral census.  The earlier
constitution was throughout based on it; even the reform of 513 had
merely restricted the privileges of the men of wealth.  But since that
year there had occurred an immense financial revolution, which might
well justify a raising of the electoral census.  The new timocracy
thus changed the letter of the constitution only to remain faithful
to its spirit, while it at the same time in the mildest possible form
attempted at least to check the disgraceful purchase of votes with all
the evils therewith connected.  Lastly, the regulations in favour of
debtors and the resumption of the schemes of colonization gave express
proof that Sulla, although not disposed to approve the impetuous
proposals of Sulpicius, was yet, like Sulpicius and Drusus and all the
more far-seeing aristocrats in general, favourable to material reforms
in themselves; as to which we may not overlook the circumstance, that
he proposed these measures after the victory and entirely of his own
free will.  If we combine with such considerations the fact, that Sulla
allowed the principal foundations of the Gracchan constitution to
stand and disturbed neither the equestrian courts nor the largesses
of grain, we shall find warrant for the opinion that the Sullan
arrangement of 666 substantially adhered to the status quo subsisting
since the fall of Gaius Gracchus; he merely, on the one hand, altered
as the times required the traditional rules that primarily threatened
danger to the existing government, and, on the other hand, sought to
remedy according to his power the existing social evils, so far as
either could be done without touching ills that lay deeper.  Emphatic
contempt for constitutional formalism in connection with a vivid
appreciation of the intrinsic value of existing arrangements, clear
perceptions, and praiseworthy intentions mark this legislation
throughout.  But it bears also a certain frivolous and superficial
character; it needed in particular a great amount of good nature
to believe that the fixing a maximum of interest would remedy the
confused relations of credit, and that the right of previous
deliberation on the part of the senate would prove more capable
of resisting future demagogism than the right of veto and religion
had previously been.

New Complications
Cinna
Strabo
Sulla Embarks for Asia

In reality new clouds very soon began to overcast the clear sky
of the conservatives.  The relations of Asia assumed daily a more
threatening character.  The state had already suffered the utmost
injury through the delay which the Sulpician revolution had
occasioned in the departure of the army for Asia; the embarkation
could on no account be longer postponed.  Meanwhile Sulla hoped to
leave behind him guarantees against a new assault on the oligarchy
in Italy, partly in the consuls who would be elected under the new
electoral arrangement, partly and especially in the armies employed
in suppressing the remains of the Italian insurrection.  In the
consular comitia, however, the choice did not fall on the candidates
set up by Sulla, but Lucius Cornelius Cinna, who belonged to the most
determined opposition, was associated with Gnaeus Octavius, a man
certainly of strictly Optimate views.  It may be presumed that it
was chiefly the capitalist party, which by this choice retaliated
on the author of the law as to interest.  Sulla accepted the
unpleasant election with the declaration that he was glad to see
the burgesses making use of their constitutional liberty of choice,
and contented himself with exacting from both consuls an oath that they
would faithfully observe the existing constitution.  Of the armies,
the one on which the matter chiefly depended was that of the north,
as the greater part of the Campanian army was destined to depart for
Asia.  Sulla got the command of the former entrusted by decree of the
people to his devoted colleague Quintus Rufus, and procured the recall
of the former general Gnaeus Strabo in such a manner as to spare as far
as possible his feelings--the more so, because the latter belonged to
the equestrian party and his passive attitude during the Sulpician
troubles had occasioned no small anxiety to the aristocracy.  Rufus
arrived at the army and took the chief command in Strabo's stead;
but a few days afterwards he was killed by the soldiers, and Strabo
returned to the command which he had hardly abdicated.  He was
regarded as the instigator of the murder; it is certain that he
was a man from whom such a deed might be expected, that he reaped the
fruits of the crime, and that he punished the well-known originators
of it only with words.  The removal of Rufus and the commandership of
Strabo formed a new and serious danger for Sulla; yet he did nothing
to deprive the latter of his command.  Soon afterwards, when his
consulship expired, he found himself on the one hand urged by his
successor Cinna to depart at length for Asia where his presence was
certainly urgently needed, and on the other hand cited by one of
the new tribunes before the bar of the people; it was clear to
the dullest eye, that a new attack on him and his party was in
preparation, and that his opponents wished his removal.  Sulla had
no alternative save either to push the matter to a breach with Cinna
and perhaps with Strabo and once more to march on Rome, or to leave
Italian affairs to take their course and to remove to another
continent.  Sulla decided--whether more from patriotism or more from
indifference, will never be ascertained--for the latter alternative;
handed over the corps left behind in Samnium to the trustworthy and
experienced soldier, Quintus Metellus Pius, who was invested in
Sulla's stead with the proconsular commandership-in-chief over Lower
Italy; gave the conduct of the siege of Nola to the propraetor Appius
Claudius; and in the beginning of 667 embarked with his legions for
the Hellenic East.




Chapter VIII

The East and King Mithradates

State of the East

The state of breathless excitement, in which the revolution kept
the Roman government by perpetually renewing the alarm of fire and
the cry to quench it, made them lose sight of provincial matters
generally; and that most of all in the case of the Asiatic lands,
whose remote and unwarlike nations did not thrust themselves so
directly on the attention of the government as Africa, Spain, and
its Transalpine neighbours.  After the annexation of the kingdom of
Attalus, which took place contemporaneously with the outbreak of
the revolution, for a whole generation there is hardly any evidence
of Rome taking a serious part in Oriental affairs--with the exception
of the establishment of the province of Cilicia in 652,(1) to which
the Romans were driven by the boundless audacity of the Cilician
pirates, and which was in reality nothing more than the institution
of a permanent station for a small division of the Roman army and
fleet in the eastern waters.  It was not till the downfall of Marius
in 654 had in some measure consolidated the government of the
restoration, that the Roman authorities began anew to bestow
some attention on the events in the east

Cyrene Romans

In many respects matters still stood as they had done thirty years
ago.  The kingdom of Egypt with its two appendages of Cyrene and
Cyprus was broken up, partly de jure, partly de facto, on the death
of Euergetes II (637).  Cyrene went to his natural son, Ptolemaeus
Apion, and was for ever separated from Egypt.  The sovereignty of
the latter formed a subject of contention between the widow of
the last king Cleopatra (665), and his two sons Soter II Lathyrus
(673) and Alexander I (666); which gave occasion to Cyprus also to
separate itself for a considerable period from Egypt.  The Romans
did not interfere in these complications; in fact, when the
Cyrenaean kingdom fell to them in 658 by the testament of the
childless king Apion, while not directly rejecting the acquisition,
they left the country in substance to itself by declaring the Greek
towns of the kingdom, Cyrene, Ptolemais, and Berenice, free cities
and even handing over to them the use of the royal domains.
The supervision of the governor of Africa over this territory was
from its remoteness merely nominal, far more so than that of the
governor of Macedonia over the Hellenic free cities.  The consequences
of this measure--which beyond doubt originated not in Philhellenism,
but simply in the weakness and negligence of the Roman government--
were substantially similar to those which had occurred under the like
circumstances in Hellas; civil wars and usurpations so rent the land
that, when a Roman officer of rank accidentally made his appearance
there in 668, the inhabitants urgently besought him to regulate
their affairs and to establish a permanent government among them.

In Syria also during the interval there had not been much change,
and still less any improvement.  During the twenty years' war of
succession between the two half-brothers Antiochus Grypus (658) and
Antiochus of Cyzicus(659), which after their death was inherited by
their sons, the kingdom which was the object of contention became
almost an empty name, inasmuch as the Cilician sea-kings, the Arab
sheiks of the Syrian desert, the princes of the Jews, and the
magistrates of the larger towns had ordinarily more to say than the
wearers of the diadem.  Meanwhile the Romans established themselves
in western Cilicia, and the important Mesopotamia passed over
definitively to the Parthians.

The Parthian State
Armenia

The monarchy of the Arsacids had to pass through a dangerous crisis
about the time of the Gracchi, chiefly in consequence of the inroads
of Turanian tribes.  The ninth Arsacid, Mithradates II or the Great
(630?-667?), had recovered for the state its position of ascendency
in the interior of Asia, repulsed the Scythians, and advanced the
frontier of the kingdom towards Syria and Armenia; but towards the
end of his life new troubles disturbed his reign; and, while the
grandees of the kingdom including his own brother Orodes rebelled
against the king and at length that brother overthrew him and had
put him to death, the hitherto unimportant Armenia rose into power.
This country, which since its declaration of independence(2) had
been divided into the north-eastern portion or Armenia proper, the
kingdom of the Artaxiads, and the south-western or Sophene, the
kingdom of the Zariadrids, was for the first time united into one
kingdom by the Artaxiad Tigranes (who had reigned since 660); and
this doubling of his power on the one hand, and the weakness of the
Parthian rule on the other, enabled the new king of all Armenia not
only to free himself from dependence on the Parthians and to recover
the provinces formerly ceded to them, but even to bring to Armenia
the titular supremacy of Asia, as it had passed from the Achaemenids
to the Seleucids and from the Seleucids to the Arsacids.

Asia Minor

Lastly in Asia Minor the territorial arrangements, which had been
made under Roman influence after the dissolution of the kingdom of
Attalus,(3) still subsisted in the main unchanged.  In the condition
of the dependent states--the kingdoms of Bithynia, Cappadocia,
Pontus, the principalities of Paphlagonia and Galatia, the numerous
city-leagues and free towns--no outward change was at first
discernible.  But, intrinsically, the character of the Roman rule
had certainly undergone everywhere a material alteration.  Partly
through the constant growth of oppression naturally incident to every
tyrannic government, partly through the indirect operation of the
Roman revolution--in the seizure, for instance, of the property of
the soil in the province of Asia by Gaius Gracchus, in the Roman
tenths and customs, and in the human hunts which the collectors of
the revenue added to their other avocations there--the Roman rule,
barely tolerable even from the first, pressed so heavily on Asia
that neither the crown of the king nor the hut of the peasant there
was any longer safe from confiscation, that every stalk of corn
seemed to grow for the Roman -decumanus-, and every child of free
parents seemed to be born for the Roman slave-drivers.  It is true
that the Asiatic bore even this torture with his inexhaustible
passive endurance; but it was not patience and reflection that
made him bear it peacefully.  It was rather the peculiarly Oriental
lack of initiative; and in these peaceful lands, amidst these
effeminate nations, strange and terrible things might happen,
if once there should appear among them a man who knew how to
give the signal for revolt.

Mithradates Eupator

There reigned at that time in the kingdom of Pontus Mithradates VI
surnamed Eupator (born about 624, 691) who traced back his lineage on
the father's side in the sixteenth generation to king Darius the son
of Hystaspes and in the eighth to Mithradates I the founder of the
Pontic kingdom, and was on the mother's side descended from the
Alexandrids and the Seleucids.  After the early death of his father
Mithradates Euergetes, who fell by the hand of an assassin at Sinope,
he had received the title of king about 634, when a boy of eleven
years of age; but the diadem brought to him only trouble and danger.
His guardians, and even as it would seem his own mother called to
take a part in the government by his father's will, conspired against
the boy-king's life.  It is said that, in order to escape from the
daggers of his legal protectors, he became of his own accord a
wanderer, and during seven years, changing his resting-place night
after night, a fugitive in his own kingdom, led the homeless life
of a hunter.  Thus the boy grew into a powerful man.  Although our
accounts regarding him are in substance traceable to written
records of contemporaries, yet the legendary tradition, which is
generated in the east with the rapidity of lightning, early adorned
the mighty king with many of the traits of its Samsons and Rustems.
These traits, however, belong to the character, just as the crown of
clouds belongs to the character of the highest mountain-peaks; the
outlines of the figure appear in both cases only more coloured and
fantastic, not disturbed or essentially altered.  The armour, which
fitted the gigantic frame of king Mithradates, excited the wonder of
the Asiatics and still more that of the Italians.  As a runner he
overtook the swiftest deer; as a rider he broke in the wild steed,
and was able by changing horses to accomplish 120 miles in a day;
as a charioteer he drove with sixteen in hand, and gained in
competition many a prize--it was dangerous, no doubt, in such sport
to carry off victory from the king.  In hunting on horseback, he hit
the game at full gallop and never missed his aim.  He challenged
competition at table also--he arranged banqueting matches and carried
off in person the prizes proposed for the most substantial eater and
the hardest drinker--and not less so in the pleasures of the harem,
as was shown among other things by the licentious letters of his Greek
mistresses, which were found among his papers.  His intellectual
wants he satisfied by the wildest superstition--the interpretation of
dreams and the Greek mysteries occupied not a few of the king's hours--
and by a rude adoption of Hellenic civilization.  He was fond of
Greek art and music; that is to say, he collected precious articles,
rich furniture, old Persian and Greek objects of luxury--his cabinet
of rings was famous--he had constantly Greek historians, philosophers,
and poets in his train, and proposed prizes at his court-festivals not
only for the greatest eaters and drinkers, but also for the merriest
jester and the best singer.  Such was the man; the sultan
corresponded.  In the east, where the relation between the ruler
and the ruled bears the character of natural rather than of moral
law, the subject resembles the dog alike in fidelity and in
falsehood, the ruler is cruel and distrustful.  In both respects
Mithradates has hardly been surpassed.  By his orders there died
or pined in perpetual captivity for real or alleged treason his
mother, his brother, his sister espoused to him, three of his sons
and as many of his daughters.  Still more revolting perhaps is the
fact, that among his secret papers were found sentences of death,
drawn up beforehand, against several of his most confidential
servants.  In like manner it was a genuine trait of the sultan, that
he afterwards, for the mere purpose of withdrawing from his enemies
the trophies of victory, caused his two Greek wives, his sister and
his whole harem to be put to death, and merely left to the women
the choice of the mode of dying.  He prosecuted the experimental
study of poisons and antidotes as an important branch of the
business of government, and tried to inure his body to particular
poisons.  He had early learned to look for treason and assassination
at the hands of everybody and especially of his nearest relatives,
and he had early learned to practise them against everybody and
most of all against those nearest to him; of which the necessary
consequence--attested by all his history--was, that all his
undertakings finally miscarried through the perfidy of those whom
he trusted.  At the same time we doubtless meet with isolated
traits of high-minded justice: when he punished traitors, he
ordinarily spared those who had become involved in the crime simply
from their personal relations with the leading culprit; but such fits
of equity are not wholly wanting in every barbarous tyrant.  What
really distinguishes Mithradates amidst the multitude of similar
sultans, is his boundless activity.  He disappeared one fine morning
from his palace and remained unheard of for months, so that he was
given over as lost; when he returned, he had wandered incognito
through all western Asia and reconnoitred everywhere the country
and the people.  In like manner he was not only in general a man of
fluent speech, but he administered justice to each of the twenty-two
nations over which he ruled in its own language without needing
an interpreter--a trait significant of the versatile ruler of
the many-tongued east.  His whole activity as a ruler bears
the same character.  So far as we know (for our authorities are
unfortunately altogether silent as to his internal administration)
his energies, like those of every other sultan, were spent in
collecting treasures, in assembling armies--which were usually,
in his earlier years at least, led against the enemy not by the king
in person, but by some Greek -condottiere---in efforts to add new
satrapies to the old.  Of higher elements--desire to advance
civilization, earnest leadership of the national opposition, special
gifts of genius--there are found, in our traditional accounts at
least, no distinct traces in Mithradates, and we have no reason to
place him on a level even with the great rulers of the Osmans, such
as Mohammed II and Suleiman.  Notwithstanding his Hellenic culture,
which sat on him not much better than the Roman armour sat on his
Cappadocians, he was throughout an Oriental of the ordinary stamp,
coarse, full of the most sensual appetites, superstitious, cruel,
perfidious, and unscrupulous, but so vigorous in organization, so
powerful in physical endowments, that his defiant laying about him
and his unshaken courage in resistance look frequently like talent,
sometimes even like genius.  Granting that during the death-struggle
of the republic it was easier to offer resistance to Rome than in the
times of Scipio or Trajan, and that it was only the complication of the
Asiatic events with the internal commotions of Italy which rendered
it possible for Mithradates to resist the Romans twice as long as
Jugurtha did, it remains nevertheless true that before the Parthian
wars he was the only enemy who gave serious trouble to the Romans in
the east, and that he defended himself against them as the lion of the
desert defends himself against the hunter.  Still we are not entitled,
in accordance with what we know, to recognize in him more than the
resistance to be expected from so vigorous a nature.  But, whatever
judgment we may form as to the individual character of the king,
his historical position remains in a high degree significant.
The Mithradatic wars formed at once the last movement of the political
opposition offered by Hellas to Rome, and the beginning of a revolt
against the Roman supremacy resting on very different and far deeper
grounds of antagonism--the national reaction of the Asiatics against
the Occidentals.  The empire of Mithradates was, like himself,
Oriental; polygamy and the system of the harem prevailed at court
and generally among persons of rank; the religion of the inhabitants
of the country as well as the official religion of the court was
pre-eminently the old national worship; the Hellenism there was
little different from the Hellenism of the Armenian Tigranids and
the Arsacids of the Parthian empire.  The Greeks of Asia Minor
might imagine for a brief moment that they had found in this king a
support for their political dreams; his battles were really fought
for matters very different from those which were decided on the fields
of Magnesia and Pydna.  They formed--after a long truce--a new
passage in the huge duel between the west and the east, which has
been transmitted from the conflicts at Marathon to the present
generation and will perhaps reckon its future by thousands of
years as it has reckoned its past.

The Nationalities of Asia Minor

Manifest however as is the foreign and un-Hellenic character of
the whole life and action of the Cappadocian king, it is difficult
definitely to specify the national element preponderating in it,
nor will research perhaps ever succeed in getting beyondbgeneralities
or in attaining clear views on this point.  In the whole circle
of ancient civilization there is no region where the stocks
subsisting side by side or crossing each other were so numerous,
so heterogeneous, so variously from the remotest times intermingled,
and where in consequence the relations of the nationalities were
less clear than in Asia Minor.  The Semitic population continued in
an unbroken chain from Syria to Cyprus and Cilicia, and to it the
original stock of the population along the west coast in the regions
of Caria and Lydia seems also to have belonged, while the north-
western point was occupied by the Bithynians, who were akin to
the Thracians in Europe.  The interior and the north coast, on
the other hand, were filled chiefly by Indo-Germanic peoples most
nearly cognate to the Iranian.  In the case of the Armenian and
Phrygian languages(4) it is ascertained, in that of the Cappadocian
it is highly probable, that they had immediate affinity with the Zend;
and the statement made as to the Mysians, that among them the Lydian
and Phrygian languages met, just denotes a mixed Semitic-Iranian
population that may be compared perhaps with that of Assyria.  As to
the regions stretching between Cilicia and Caria, more especially
Lydia, there is still, notwithstanding the full remains of the
native language and writing that are in this particular instance
extant, a want of assured results, and it is merely probable that
these tribes ought to be reckoned among the Indo-Germans rather
than the Semites.  How all this confused mass of peoples was
overlaid first with a net of Greek mercantile cities, and then
with the Hellenism called into life by the military as well
as intellectual ascendency of the Greek nation, has been set
forth in outline already.

Pontus

In these regions ruled king Mithradates, and that first of all in
Cappadocia on the Black Sea or Pontus as it was called, a district
in which, situated as it was at the northeastern extremity of Asia
Minor towards Armenia and in constant contact with the latter, the
Iranian nationality presumably preserved itself with less admixture
than anywhere else in Asia Minor.  Not even Hellenism had penetrated
far into that region.  With the exception of the coast where several
originally Greek settlements subsisted--especially the important
commercial marts Trapezus, Amisus, and above all Sinope, the birthplace
and residence of Mithradates and the most flourishing city of the
empire--the country was still in a very primitive condition.  Not that
it had lain waste; on the contrary, as the region of Pontus is still
one of the most fertile on the face of the earth, with its fields of
grain alternating with forests of wild fruit trees, it was beyond
doubt even in the time of Mithradates well cultivated and also
comparatively populous.  But there were hardly any towns properly
so called; the country possessed nothing but strongholds, which
served the peasants as places of refuge and the king as treasuries
for the custody of the revenues which accrued to him; in the Lesser
Armenia alone, in fact, there were counted seventy-five of these
little royal forts.  We do not find that Mithradates materially
contributed to promote the growth of towns in his empire; and situated
as he was,--in practical, though not perhaps on his own part quite
conscious, reaction against Hellenism,--this is easily conceivable.

Acquisitions of Territory by Mithradates
Colchis
Northern Shores of the Black Sea

He appears more actively employed--likewise quite in the Oriental
style--in enlarging on all sides his kingdom, which was even then not
small, though its compass is probably over-stated at 2300 miles; we find
his armies, his fleets, and his envoys busy along the Black Sea as well
as towards Armenia and towards Asia Minor.  But nowhere did so free and
ample an arena present itself to him as on the eastern and northern
shores of the Black Sea, the state of which at that time we must not
omit to glance at, however difficult or in fact impossible it is to
give a really distinct idea of it.  On the eastern coast of the Black
Sea--which, previously almost unknown, was first opened up to more
general knowledge by Mithradates--the region of Colchis on the
Phasis (Mingrelia and Imeretia) with the important commercial town
of Dioscurias was wrested from the native princes and converted into
a satrapy of Pontus.  Of still greater moment were his enterprises in
the northern regions.(5)  The wide steppes destitute of hills and
trees, which stretch to the north of the Black Sea, of the Caucasus,
and of the Caspian, are by reason of their natural conditions--more
especially from the variations of temperature fluctuating between
the climate of Stockholm and that of Madeira, and from the absolute
destitution of rain or snow which occurs not unfrequently and lasts
for a period of twenty-two months or longer--little adapted for
agriculture or for permanent settlement at all; and they always were
so, although two thousand years ago the state of the climate was
presumably somewhat less unfavourable than it is at the present
day.(6)  The various tribes, whose wandering impulse led them into
these regions, submitted to this ordinance of nature and led (and still
to some extent lead) a wandering pastoral life with their herds of oxen
or still more frequently of horses, changing their places of abode and
pasture, and carrying their effects along with them in waggon-houses.
Their equipment and style of fighting were consonant to this mode of
life; the inhabitants of these steppes fought in great measure on
horseback and always in loose array, equipped with helmet and coat
of mail of leather and leather-covered shield, armed with sword,
lance, and bow--the ancestors of the modern Cossacks.  The Scythians
originally settled there, who seem to have been of Mongolian race
and akin in their habits and physical appearance to the present
inhabitants of Siberia, had been followed up by Sarmatian tribes
advancing from east to west,--Sauromatae, Roxolani, Jazyges,--who are
commonly reckoned of Slavonian descent, although the proper names, which
we are entitled to ascribe to them, show more affinity with Median
and Persian names and those peoples perhaps belonged rather to the
great Zend stock.  Thracian tribes moved in the opposite direction,
particularly the Getae, who reached as far as the Dniester.  Between
the two there intruded themselves--probably as offsets of the great
Germanic migration, the main body of which seems not to have touched
the Black Sea--the Celts, as they were called, on the Dnieper, the
Bastarnae in the same quarter, and the Peucini at the mouth of the
Danube.  A state, in the proper sense, was nowhere formed; every
tribe lived by itself under its princes and elders.

Hellenism in That Quarter

In sharp contrast to all these barbarians stood the Hellenic
settlements, which at the time of the mighty impetus given to Greek
commerce had been founded chiefly by the efforts of Miletus on these
coasts, partly as trading-marts, partly as stations for prosecuting
important fisheries and even for agriculture, for which, as we have
already said, the north-western shores of the Black Sea presented in
antiquity conditions less unfavourable than at the present day.
For the use of the soil the Hellenes paid here, like the Phoenicians
in Libya, tax and ground-rent to the native rulers.  The most important
of these settlements were the free city of Chersonesus (not far from
Sebastopol), built on the territory of the Scythians in the Tauric
peninsula (Crimea), and maintaining itself in moderate prosperity,
under circumstances far from favourable, by virtue of its good
constitution and the public spirit of its citizens; and Panticapaeum
(Kertch) at the opposite side of the peninsula on the straits leading
from the Black Sea to the Sea of Azov, governed since the year 457
by hereditary burgomasters, afterwards called kings of the Bosporus,
the Archaeanactidae, Spartocidae, and Paerisadae.  The culture of
corn and the fisheries of the Sea of Azov had rapidly raised the
city to prosperity.  Its territory still in the time of Mithradates
embraced the lesser eastern division of the Crimea including the town
of Theodosia, and on the opposite Asiatic continent the town of
Phanagoria and the district of Sindica.  In better times the lords
of Panticapaeum had by land ruled the peoples on the east coast
of the Sea of Azov and the valley of the Kuban, and had commanded
the Black Sea with their fleet; but Panticapaeum was no longer what
it had been.  Nowhere was the sad decline of the Hellenic nation felt
more deeply than at these distant outposts.  Athens in its good times
had been the only Greek state which fulfilled there the duties of a
leading power--duties which certainly were specially brought home to
the Athenians by their need of Pontic grain.  After the downfall of
the Attic maritime power these regions were, on the whole, left to
themselves.  The Greek land-powers never got so far as to intervene
seriously there, although Philip the father of Alexander and
Lysimachus sometimes attempted it; and the Romans, on whom with the
conquest of Macedonia and Asia Minor devolved the political obligation
of becoming the strong protectors of Greek civilization at the point
where it needed such protection, utterly neglected the summons of
interest as well as of honour.  The fall of Sinope, the decline of
Rhodes, completed the isolation of the Hellenes on the northern
shore of the Black Sea.  A vivid picture of their position with
reference to the roving barbarians is given to us by an inscription
of Olbia (near Oczakow not far from the mouth of the Dnieper), which
apparently may be placed not long before the time of Mithradates.
The citizens had not only to send annual tribute to the court-camp
of the barbarian king, but also to make him a gift when he encamped
before the town or even simply passed by, and in a similar way to
buy off minor chieftains and in fact sometimes the whole horde with
presents; and it fared ill with them if the gift appeared too small.
The treasury of the town was bankrupt and they had to pledge the
temple-jewels.  Meanwhile the savage tribes were thronging without in
front of the gates; the territory was laid waste, the field-labourers
were dragged away en masse, and, what was worst of all, the weaker
of their barbarian neighbours, the Scythians, sought, in order
to shelter themselves from the pressure of the more savage Celts,
to obtain possession of the walled town, so that numerous
citizens were leaving it and the inhabitants already contemplated
its entire surrender.

Mithradates Master of the Bosphoran Kingdom

Such was the state in which Mithradates found matters, when his
Macedonian phalanx crossing the ridge of the Caucasus descended into
the valleys of the Kuban and Terek and his fleet at the same time
appeared in the Crimean waters.  No wonder that here too, as had
already been the case in Dioscurias, the Hellenes everywhere received
the king of Pontus with open arms and regarded the half-Hellene and
his Cappadocians armed in Greek fashion as their deliverers.  What
Rome had here neglected, became apparent.  The demands on the rulers
of Panticapaeum for tribute had just then been raised to an exorbitant
height; the town of Chersonesus found itself hard pressed by Scilurus
king of the Scythians dwelling in the peninsula and his fifty sons;
the former were glad to surrender their hereditary lordship, and
the latter their long-preserved freedom, in order to save their
last possession, their Hellenism.  It was not in vain.  Mithradates'
brave generals, Diophantus and Neoptolemus, and his disciplined troops
easily got the better of the peoples of the steppes.  Neoptolemus
defeated them at the straits of Panticapaeum partly by water, partly
in winter on the ice; Chersonesus was delivered, the strongholds of
the Taurians were broken, and the possession of the peninsula was
secured by judiciously constructed fortresses.  Diophantus marched
against the Reuxinales or, as they were afterwards called, the Roxolani
(between the Dnieper and Don) who came forward to the aid of the Taurians;
50,000 of them fled before his 6000 phalangites, and the Pontic arms
penetrated as far as the Dnieper.(7)  Thus Mithradates acquired here
a second kingdom combined with that of Pontus and, like the latter,
mainly based on a number of Greek commercial towns.  It was called
the kingdom of the Bosporus; it embraced the modern Crimea with the
opposite Asiatic promontory, and annually furnished to the royal
chests and magazines 200 talents (48,000 pounds) and 270,000 bushels
of grain.  The tribes of the steppe themselves from the north slope
of the Caucasus to the mouth of the Danube entered, at least in great
part, into relations of dependence on, or treaty with, the Pontic
king and, if they furnished him with no other aid, afforded at any
rate an inexhaustible field for recruiting his armies.

Lesser Armenia
Alliance with Tigranes

While thus the most important successes were gained towards the north,
the king at the same time extended his dominions towards the east and
the west.  The Lesser Armenia was annexed by him and converted from a
dependent principality into an integral part of the Pontic kingdom;
but still more important was the close connection which he formed with
the king of the Greater Armenia.  He not only gave his daughter
Cleopatra in marriage to Tigranes, but it was mainly through his
support that Tigranes shook off the yoke of the Arsacids and took
their place in Asia.  An agreement seems to have been made between
the two to the effect that Tigranes should take in hand to occupy
Syria and the interior of Asia, and Mithradates Asia Minor and
the coasts of the Black Sea, under promise of mutual support;
and it was beyond doubt the more active and capable Mithradates
who brought about this agreement with a view to cover his rear
and to secure a powerful ally.

Paphlagonia and Cappadocia Acquired

Lastly, in Asia Minor the king turned his eyes towards the interior
of Paphlagonia--the coast had for long belonged to the Pontic empire--
and towards Cappadocia.(8)  The former was claimed on the part of
Pontus as having been bequeathed by the testament of the last of
the Pylaemenids to king Mithradates Euergetes: against this, however,
legitimate or illegitimate pretenders and the land itself protested.
As to Cappadocia, the Pontic rulers had not forgotten that this
country and Cappadocia on the sea had been formerly united, and
continually cherished ideas of reunion.  Paphlagonia was occupied by
Mithradates in concert with Nicomedes king of Bithynia, with whom he
shared the land.  When the senate raised objections to this course,
Mithradates yielded to its remonstrance, while Nicomedes equipped one
of his sons with the name of Pylaemenes and under this title retained
the country to himself.  The policy of the allies adopted still worse
expedients in Cappadocia.  King Ariarathes VI was killed by Gordius,
it was said by the orders, at any rate in the interest, of Ariarathes'
brother-in-law Mithradates Eupator: his young son Ariarathes knew no
means of meeting the encroachments of the king of Bithynia except
the ambiguous help of his uncle, in return for which the latter then
suggested to him that he should allow the murderer of his father,
who had taken flight, to return to Cappadocia.  This led to a rupture
and to war; but when the two armies confronted each other ready for
battle, the uncle requested a previous conference with the nephew and
thereupon cut down the unarmed youth with his own hand.  Gordius, the
murderer of the father, then undertook the government by the directions
of Mithradates; and although the indignant population rose against
him and called the younger son of the last king to the throne, the
latter was unable to offer any permanent resistance to the superior
forces of Mithradates.  The speedy death of the youth placed by the
people on the throne gave to the Pontic king the greater liberty of
action, because with that youth the Cappadocian royal house became
extinct.  A pseudo-Ariarathes was proclaimed as nominal regent,
just as had been done in Paphlagonia; under whose name Gordius
administered the kingdom as lieutenant of Mithradates.

Empire of Mithradates

Mightier than any native monarch for many a day had been,
Mithradates bore rule alike over the northern and the southern
shores of the Black Sea and far into the interior of Asia Minor.
The resources of the king for war by land and by sea seemed
immeasurable.  His recruiting field stretched from the mouth of
the Danube to the Caucasus and the Caspian Sea; Thracians, Scythians,
Sauromatae, Bastarnae, Colchians, Iberians (in the modern Georgia)
crowded under his banners; above all he recruited his war-hosts from
the brave Bastarnae.  For his fleet the satrapy of Colchis supplied
him with the most excellent timber, which was floated down from the
Caucasus, besides flax, hemp, pitch, and wax; pilots and officers
were hired in Phoenicia and Syria.  The king, it was said, had
marched into Cappadocia with 600 scythe-chariots, 10,000 horse,
80,000 foot; and he had by no means mustered for this war all his
resources.  In the absence of any Roman or other naval power worth
mentioning, the Pontic fleet, with Sinope and the ports of the Crimea
as its rallying points, had exclusive command of the Black Sea.

The Romans and Mithradates
Intervention of the Senate

That the Roman senate asserted its general policy--of keeping down
the states more or less dependent on it--also in dealing with that
of Pontus, is shown by its attitude on occasion of the succession to
the throne after the sudden death of Mithradates V.  From the boy in
minority who followed him there was taken away Great Phrygia, which
had been conferred on his father for his taking part in the war
against Aristonicus or rather for his good money,(9) and this region
was added to the territory immediately subject to Rome.(10)  But,
after this boy had at length attained majority, the same senate
showed utter passiveness towards his aggressions on all sides and
towards the formation of this imposing power, the development of
which occupies perhaps a period of twenty years.  It was passive,
while one of its dependent states became developed into a great
military power, having at command more than a hundred thousand
armed men; while the ruler of that state entered into the closest
connection with the new great-king of the east, who was placed partly
by his aid at the head of the states in the interior of Asia; while
he annexed the neighbouring Asiatic kingdoms and principalities under
pretexts which sounded almost like a mockery of the ill-informed
and far-distant protecting power; while, in fine, he even
established himself in Europe and ruled as king over the Tauric
peninsula, and as lord-protector almost to the Macedono-Thracian
frontier.  These circumstances indeed formed the subject of
discussion in the senate; but when the illustrious corporation
consoled itself in the affair of the Paphlagonian succession with
the fact that Nicomedes appealed to his pseudo-Pylaemenes, it was
evidently not so much deceived as grateful for any pretext which
spared it from serious interference.  Meanwhile the complaints
became daily more numerous and more urgent.  The princes of the
Tauric Scythians, whom Mithradates had driven from the Crimea,
turned for help to Rome; those of the senators who at all reflected
on the traditional maxims of Roman policy could not but recollect
that formerly, under circumstances so wholly different, the crossing
of king Antiochus to Europe and the occupation of the Thracian
Chersonese by his troops had become the signal for the Asiatic
war,(11) and could not but see that the occupation of the Tauric
Chersonese by the Pontic king ought still less to be tolerated now.
The scale was at last turned by the practical reunion of the kingdom
of Cappadocia, respecting which, moreover, Nicomedes of Bithynia--
who on his part had hoped to gain possession of Cappadocia by
another pseudo-Ariarathes, and now saw that the Pontic pretender
excluded his own--would hardly fail to urge the Roman government to
intervention.  The senate resolved that Mithradates should reinstate
the Scythian princes--so far were they driven out of the track of
right policy by their negligent style of government, that instead of
supporting the Hellenes against the barbarians they had now on the
contrary to support the Scythians against those who were half their
countrymen.  Paphlagonia was declared independent, and the pseudo-
Pylaemenes of Nicomedes was directed to evacuate the country.
In like manner the pseudo-Ariarathes of Mithradates was to retire
from Cappadocia, and, as the representatives of the country refused
the freedom proffered to it, a king was once more to be appointed
by free popular election.

Sulla Sent to Cappadocia

The decrees sounded energetic enough; only it was an error, that
instead of sending an army they directed the governor of Cilicia,
Lucius Sulla, with the handful of troops whom he commanded there
against the pirates and robbers, to intervene in Cappadocia.
Fortunately the remembrance of the former energy of the Romans
defended their interests in the east better than their present
government did, and the energy and dexterity of the governor supplied
what the senate lacked in both respects.  Mithradates kept back and
contented himself with inducing Tigranes the great-king of Armenia,
who held a more free position with reference to the Romans than he
did, to send troops to Cappadocia.  Sulla quickly collected his
forces and the contingents of the Asiatic allies, crossed the
Taurus, and drove the governor Gordius along with his Armenian
auxiliaries out of Cappadocia.  This proved effectual.  Mithradates
yielded on all points; Gordius had to assume the blame of the
Cappadocian troubles, and the pseudo-Ariarathes disappeared;
the election of king, which the Pontic faction had vainly
attempted to direct towards Gordius, fell on the respected
Cappadocian Ariobarzanes.

First Contact between the Romans and the Parthians

When Sulla in following out his expedition arrived in the region of
the Euphrates, in whose waters the Roman standards were then first
mirrored, the Romans came for the first time into contact with the
Parthians, who in consequence of the variance between them and Tigranes
had occasion to make approaches to the Romans.  On both sides there
seemed a feeling that it was of some moment, in this first contact
between the two great powers of the east and the west, that neither
should renounce its claims to the sovereignty of the world; but Sulla,
bolder than the Parthian envoy, assumed and maintained in the
conference the place of honour between the king of Cappadocia and
the Parthian ambassador.  Sulla's fame was more increased by this
greatly celebrated conference on the Euphrates than by his victories
in the east; on its account the Parthian envoy afterwards forfeited
his life to his masters resentment.  But for the moment this contact
had no further result.  Nicomedes in reliance on the favour of
the Romans omitted to evacuate Paphlagonia, but the decrees adopted
by the senate against Mithradates were carried further into effect,
the reinstatement of the Scythian chieftains was at least promised by
him; the earlier status quo in the east seemed to be restored (662).

New Aggressions of Mithradates

So it was alleged; but in fact there was little trace of any real
return of the former order of things.  Scarce had Sulla left Asia,
when Tigranes king of Great Armenia fell upon Ariobarzanes the new
king of Cappadocia, expelled him, and reinstated in his stead the
Pontic pretender Ariarathes.  In Bithynia, where after the death
of the old king Nicomedes II (about 663) his son Nicomedes III
Philopator had been recognized by the people and by the Roman senate
as legitimate king, his younger brother Socrates came forward as
pretender to the crown and possessed himself of the sovereignty.
It was clear that the real author of the Cappadocian as of the Bithynian
troubles was no other than Mithradates, although he refrained from
taking any open part.  Every one knew that Tigranes only acted at
his beck; but Socrates also had marched into Bithynia with Pontic
troops, and the legitimate king's life was threatened by the
assassins of Mithradates.  In the Crimea even and the neighbouring
countries the Pontic king had no thought of receding, but on the
contrary carried his arms farther and farther.

Aquillius Sent to Asia

The Roman government, appealed to for aid by the kings Ariobarzanes
and Nicomedes in person, despatched to Asia Minor in support of
Lucius Cassius who was governor there the consular Manius Aquillius--
an officer tried in the Cimbrian and Sicilian wars--not, however,
as general at the head of an army, but as an ambassador, and
directed the Asiatic client states and Mithradates in particular
to lend armed assistance in case of need.  The result was as
it had been two years before.  The Roman officer accomplished the
commission entrusted to him with the aid of the small Roman corps
which the governor of the province of Asia had at his disposal, and
of the levy of the Phrygians and Galatians; king Nicomedes and king
Ariobarzanes again ascended their tottering thrones; Mithradates
under various pretexts evaded the summons to furnish contingents,
but gave to the Romans no open resistance; on the contrary
the Bithynian pretender Socrates was even put to death by
his orders (664).

The State of Things Intermediate between War and Peace

It was a singular complication.  Mithradates was fully convinced
that he could do nothing against the Romans in open conflict, and
was therefore firmly resolved not to allow matters to come to an
open rupture and war with them.  Had he not been so resolved, there
was no more favourable opportunity for beginning the struggle than
the present: just at the time when Aquillius marched into Bithynia
and Cappadocia, the Italian insurrection was at the height of its
power and might encourage even the weak to declare against Rome;
yet Mithradates allowed the year 664 to pass without profiting by
the opportunity.  Nevertheless he pursued with equal tenacity and
activity his plan of extending his territory in Asia Minor.  This
strange combination of a policy of peace at any price with a policy
of conquest was certainly in itself untenable, and was simply a
fresh proof that Mithradates did not belong to the class of genuine
statesmen; he knew neither how to prepare for conflict like king
Philip nor how to submit like king Attalus, but in the true style
of a sultan was perpetually fluctuating between a greedy desire of
conquest and the sense of his own weakness.  But even in this point
of view his proceedings can only be understood, when we recollect
that Mithradates had become acquainted by twenty years' experience
with the Roman policy of that day.  He knew very well that the Roman
government were far from desirous of war; that they in fact, looking
to the serious danger which threatened their rule from any general
of reputation, and with the fresh remembrance of the Cimbrian war
and Marius, dreaded war still more if possible than he did himself.
He acted accordingly.  He was not afraid to demean himself in a way
which would have given to any energetic government not fettered by
selfish considerations manifold ground and occasion for declaring war;
but he carefully avoided any open rupture which would have placed the
senate under the necessity of declaring it.  As soon as men appeared
to be in earnest he drew back, before Sulla as well as before
Aquillius; he hoped, doubtless, that he would not always be
confronted by energetic generals, that he too would, as well as
Jugurtha, fall in with his Scaurus or Albinus.  It must be owned
that this hope was not without reason; although the very example
of Jugurtha had on the other hand shown how foolish it was to
confound the bribery of a Roman commander and the corruption
of a Roman army with the conquest of the Roman people.

Aquillius Brings about War
Nicomedes

Thus matters stood between peace and war, and looked quite as if
they would drag on for long in the same indecisive position.  But
it was not the intention of Aquillius to allow this; and, as he could
not compel his government to declare war against Mithradates, he
made use of Nicomedes for that purpose.  The latter, who was under
the power of the Roman general and was, moreover, his debtor for
the accumulated war expenses and for sums promised to the general in
person, could not avoid complying with the suggestion that he should
begin war with Mithradates.  The declaration of war by Bithynia
took place; but, even when the vessels of Nicomedes closed the
Bosporus against those of Pontus, and his troops marched into the
frontier districts of Pontus and laid waste the region of Amastris,
Mithradates remained still unshaken in his policy of peace; instead
of driving the Bithynians over the frontier, he lodged a complaint
with the Roman envoys and asked them either to mediate or to allow
him the privilege of self-defence.  But he was informed by
Aquillius, that he must under all circumstances refrain from war
against Nicomedes.  That indeed was plain.  They had employed
exactly the same policy against Carthage; they allowed the victim
to be set upon by the Roman hounds and forbade its defending itself
against them.  Mithradates reckoned himself lost, just as the
Carthaginians had done; but, while the Phoenicians yielded from
despair, the king of Sinope did the very opposite and assembled
his troops and ships.  "Does not even he who must succumb," he is
reported to have said, "defend himself against the robber?" His son
Ariobarzanes received orders to advance into Cappadocia; a message
was sent once more to the Roman envoys to inform them of the step
to which necessity had driven the king, and to demand their
ultimatum.  It was to the effect which was to be anticipated.
Although neither the Roman senate nor king Mithradates nor king
Nicomedes had desired the rupture, Aquillius desired it and war
ensued (end of 665).

Preparations of Mithradates

Mithradates prosecuted the political and military preparations for
the passage of arms thus forced upon him with all his characteristic
energy.  First of all he drew closer his alliance with Tigranes king
of Armenia, and obtained from him the promise of an auxiliary army
which was to march into western Asia and to take possession of the
soil there for king Mithradates and of the moveable property for
king Tigranes.  The Parthian king, offended by the haughty carriage
of Sulla, though not exactly coming forward as an antagonist to
the Romans, did not act as their ally.  To the Greeks the king
endeavoured to present himself in the character of Philip and
Perseus, as the defender of the Greek nation against the alien rule
of the Romans.  Pontic envoys were sent to the king of Egypt and to
the last remnant of free Greece, the league of the Cretan cities,
and adjured those for whom Rome had already forged her chains to rise
now at the last moment and save Hellenic nationality; the attempt was
in the case of Crete at least not wholly in vain, and numerous Cretans
took service in the Pontic army.  Hopes were entertained that the
lesser and least of the protected states--Numidia, Syria, the Hellenic
republics--would successively rebel, and that the provinces would
revolt, particularly the west of Asia Minor, the victim of unbounded
oppression.  Efforts were made to excite a Thracian rising, and even
to arouse Macedonia to revolt.  Piracy, which even previously was
flourishing, was now everywhere let loose as a most welcome ally,
and with alarming rapidity squadrons of corsairs, calling themselves
Pontic privateers, filled the Mediterranean far and wide.  With
eagerness and delight accounts were received of the commotions among
the Roman burgesses, and of the Italian insurrection subdued yet far
from extinguished.  No direct relations, however, were formed with
the discontented and the insurgents in Italy; except that a foreign
corps armed and organized in the Roman fashion was created in Asia,
the flower of which consisted of Roman and Italian refugees.
Forces like those of Mithradates had not been seen in Asia since
the Persian wars.  The statements that, leaving out of account the
Armenian auxiliary army, he took the field with 250,000 infantry and
40,000 cavalry, and that 300 Pontic decked and 100 open vessels put
to sea, seem not too exaggerated in the case of a warlike sovereign
who had at his disposal the numberless inhabitants of the steppes.
His generals, particularly the brothers Neoptolemus and Archelaus,
were experienced and cautious Greek captains; among the soldiers of
the king there was no want of brave men who despised death; and the
armour glittering with gold and silver and the rich dresses of the
Scythians and Medes mingled gaily with the bronze and steel of the
Greek troopers.  No unity of military organization, it is true,
bound together these party-coloured masses; the army of Mithradates
was just one of those unwieldy Asiatic war-machines, which had so often
already--on the last occasion exactly a century before at Magnesia--
succumbed to a superior military organization; but still the east was
in arms against the Romans, while in the western half of the empire
also matters looked far from peaceful.

Weak Counterpreparatons of the Romans

However much it was in itself a political necessity for Rome to
declare war against Mithradates, yet the particular moment was as
unhappily chosen as possible; and for this reason it is very probable
that Manius Aquillius brought about the rupture between Rome and
Mithradates at this precise time primarily from regard to his own
interests.  For the moment they had no other troops at their disposal
in Asia than the small Roman division under Lucius Cassius and the
militia of western Asia, and, owing to the military and financial
distress in which they were placed at home in consequence of the
insurrectionary war, a Roman army could not in the most favourable
case land in Asia before the summer of 666.  Hitherto the Roman
magistrates there had a difficult position; but they hoped to
protect the Roman province and to be able to hold their ground as
they stood--the Bithynian army under king Nicomedes in its position
taken up in the previous year in the Paphlagonian territory between
Amastris and Sinope, and the divisions under Lucius Cassius, Manius
Aquillius, and Quintus Oppius, farther back in the Bithynian, Galatian,
and Cappadocian territories, while the Bithyno-Roman fleet continued
to blockade the Bosporus.

Mithradates Occupies Asia Minor
Anti-Roman Movements There

In the beginning of the spring of 666 Mithradates assumed the
offensive.  On a tributary of the Halys, the Amnias (near the modern
Tesch Kopri), the Pontic vanguard of cavalry and light-armed
troops encountered the Bithynian army, and notwithstanding its very
superior numbers so broke it at the first onset that the beaten army
dispersed and the camp and military chest fell into the hands of the
victors.  It was mainly to Neoptolemus and Archelaus that the king
was indebted for this brilliant success.  The far more wretched
Asiatic militia, stationed farther back, thereupon gave themselves
up as vanquished, even before they encountered the enemy; when the
generals of Mithradates approached them, they dispersed.  A Roman
division was defeated in Cappadocia; Cassius sought to keep the field
in Phrygia with the militia, but he discharged it again without
venturing on a battle, and threw himself with his few trustworthy
troops into the townships on the upper Maeander, particularly into
Apamea.  Oppius in like manner evacuated Pamphylia and shut himself
up in the Phrygian Laodicea; Aquillius was overtaken while retreating
at the Sangarius in the Bithynian territory, and so totally defeated
that he lost his camp and had to seek refuge at Pergamus in the Roman
province; the latter also was soon overrun, and Pergamus itself fell
into the hands of the king, as likewise the Bosporus and the ships
that were there.  After each victory Mithradates had dismissed all
the prisoners belonging to the militia of Asia Minor, and had
neglected no step to raise to a higher pitch the national sympathies
that were from the first turned towards him.  Now the whole country
as far as the Maeander was with the exception of a few fortresses in
his power; and news at the same time arrived, that a new revolution
had broken out at Rome, that the consul Sulla destined to act
against Mithradates had instead of embarking for Asia marched on
Rome, that the most celebrated Roman generals were fighting battles
with each other in order to settle to whom the chief command in the
Asiatic war should belong.  Rome seemed zealously employed in the
work of self-destruction: it is no wonder that, though even now
minorities everywhere adhered to Rome, the great body of the natives
of Asia Minor joined the Pontic king.  Hellenes and Asiatics united
in the rejoicing which welcomed the deliverer; it became usual to
compliment the king, in whom as in the divine conqueror of the
Indians Asia and Hellas once more found a common meeting-point, under
the name of the new Dionysus.  The cities and islands sent messengers
to meet him, wherever he went, and to invite "the delivering god"
to visit them; and in festal attire the citizens flocked forth in
front of their gates to receive him.  Several places delivered the
Roman officers sojourning among them in chains to the king; Laodicea
thus surrendered Quintus Oppius, the commandant of the town, and
Mytilene in Lesbos the consular Manius Aquillius.(12)  The whole
fury of the barbarian, who gets the man before whom he has trembled
into his power, discharged itself on the unhappy author of the war.
The aged man was led throughout Asia Minor, sometimes on foot chained
to a powerful mounted Bastarnian, sometimes bound on an ass and
proclaiming his own name; and, when at length the pitiful spectacle
again arrived at the royal quarters in Pergamus, by the king's
orders molten gold was poured down his throat--in order to
satiate his avarice, which had really occasioned the war--
till he expired in torture.

Orders Issued from Ephesus for a General Massacre

But the king was not content with this savage mockery, which alone
suffices to erase its author's name from the roll of true nobility.
From Ephesus king Mithradates issued orders to all the governors
and cities dependent on him to put to death on one and the same day
all Italians residing within their bounds, whether free or slaves,
without distinction of sex or age, and on no account, under severe
penalties, to aid any of the proscribed to escape; to cast forth
the corpses of the slain as a prey to the birds; to confiscate their
property and to hand over one half of it to the murderers, and the
other half to the king.  The horrible orders were--excepting in a
few districts, such as the island of Cos--punctually executed,
and eighty, or according to other accounts one hundred and fifty,
thousand--if not innocent, at least defenceless--men, women, and
children were slaughtered in cold blood in one day in Asia Minor;
a fearful execution, in which the good opportunity of getting
rid of debts and the Asiatic servile willingness to perform any
executioner's office at the bidding of the sultan had at least
as much part as the comparatively noble feeling of revenge.  In a
political point of view this measure was not only without any rational
object--for its financial purpose might have been attained without
this bloody edict, and the natives of Asia Minor were not to be driven
into warlike zeal even by the consciousness of the most blood-stained
guilt--but even opposed to the king's designs, for on the one hand
it compelled the Roman senate, so far as it was still capable of
energy at all, to an energetic prosecution of the war, and on the
other hand it struck at not the Romans merely, but the king's natural
allies as well, the non-Roman Italians.  This Ephesian massacre
was altogether a mere meaningless act of brutally blind revenge,
which obtains a false semblance of grandeur simply through the
colossal proportions in which the character of sultanic rule
was here displayed.

Organization of the Conquered Provinces

The king's views altogether grew high; he had begun the war from
despair, but the unexpectedly easy victory and the non-arrival of
the dreaded Sulla occasioned a transition to the most highflown hopes.
He set up his home in the west of Asia Minor; Pergamus the seat
of the Roman governor became his new capital, the old kingdom
of Sinope was handed over to the king's son Mithradates to be
administered as a viceroyship; Cappadocia, Phrygia, Bithynia were
organized as Pontic satrapies.  The grandees of the empire and the
king's favourites were loaded with rich gifts and fiefs, and not
only were the arrears of taxes remitted, but exemption from
taxation for five years was promised, to all the communities-
a measure which was as much a mistake as the massacre of the
Romans, if the king expected thereby to secure the fidelity of
the inhabitants of Asia Minor.

The king's treasury was, no doubt, copiously replenished otherwise
by the immense sums which accrued from the property of the Italians
and other confiscations; for instance in Cos alone 800 talents
(195,000 pounds) which the Jews had deposited there were carried
of by Mithradates.  The northern portion of Asia Minor and most of
the islands belonging to it were in the king's power; except some petty
Paphlagonian dynasts, there was hardly a district which still adhered
to Rome; the whole Aegean Sea was commanded by his fleets.  The south-
west alone, the city-leagues of Caria and Lycia and the city of Rhodes,
resisted him.  In Caria, no doubt, Stratonicea was reduced by force
of arms; but Magnesia on the Sipylus successfully withstood a severe
siege, in which Mithradates' ablest officer Archelaus was defeated and
wounded.  Rhodes, the asylum of the Romans who had escaped from Asia
with the governor Lucius Cassius among them, was assailed on the part
of Mithradates by sea and land with immense superiority of force.
But his sailors, courageously as they did their duty under the eyes
of the king, were awkward novices, and so Rhodian squadrons
vanquished those of Pontus four times as strong and returned home
with captured vessels.  By land also the siege made no progress;
after a part of the works had been destroyed, Mithradates abandoned
the enterprise, and the important island as well as the mainland
opposite remained in the hands of the Romans.

Pontic Invasion of Europe
Predatory Inroads of the Thracians
Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies
Pontic Fleet in the Aegean

But not only was the Asiatic province occupied by Mithradates almost
without defending itself, chiefly in consequence of the Sulpician
revolution breaking out at a most unfavourable time; Mithradates
even directed an attack against Europe.  Already since 662 the
neighbours of Macedonia on her northern and eastern frontier had been
renewing their incursions with remarkable vehemence and perseverance;
in the years 664, 665 the Thracians overran Macedonia and all Epirus
and plundered the temple of Dodona.  Still more singular was the
circumstance, that with these movements was combined a renewed
attempt to place a pretender on the Macedonian throne in the person
of one Euphenes.  Mithradates, who from the Crimea maintained
connections with the Thracians, was hardly a stranger to all these
events.  The praetor Gaius Sentius defended himself, it is true,
against these intruders with the aid of the Thracian Dentheletae;
but it was not long before mightier opponents came against him.
Mithradates, carried away by his successes, had formed the bold
resolution that he would, like Antiochus, bring the war for the
sovereignty of Asia to a decision in Greece, and had by land and sea
directed thither the flower of his troops.  His son Ariarathes
penetrated from Thrace into the weakly-defended Macedonia, subduing
the country as he advanced and parcelling it into Pontic satrapies.
Abdera and Philippi became the principal bases for the operations of
the Pontic arms in Europe.  The Pontic fleet, commanded by
Mithradates' best general Archelaus, appeared in the Aegean Sea,
where scarce a Roman sail was to be found.  Delos, the emporium of
the Roman commerce in those waters, was occupied and nearly 20,000
men, mostly Italians, were massacred there; Euboea suffered a similar
fate; all the islands to the east of the Malean promontory were soon
in the hands of the enemy; they might proceed to attack the mainland
itself.  The assault, no doubt, which the Pontic fleet made from
Euboea on the important Demetrias, was repelled by Bruttius Sura, the
brave lieutenant of the governor of Macedonia, with his handful of
troops and a few vessels hurriedly collected, and he even occupied
the island of Sciathus; but he could not prevent the enemy from
establishing himself in Greece proper.

The Pontic Proceedings in Greece

There Mithradates carried on his operations not only by arms, but
at the same time by national propagandism.  His chief instrument
for Athens was one Aristion, by birth an Attic slave, by profession
formerly a teacher of the Epicurean philosophy, now a minion of
Mithradates; an excellent master of persuasion, who by the brilliant
career which he pursued at court knew how to dazzle the mob, and
with due gravity to assure them that help was already on the way
to Mithradates from Carthage, which had been for about sixty years
lying in ruins.  These addresses of the new Pericles were so far
effectual that, while the few persons possessed of judgment escaped
from Athens, the mob and one or two literati whose heads were turned
formally renounced the Roman rule.  So the ex-philosopher became a
despot who, supported by his bands of Pontic mercenaries, commenced
an infamous and bloody rule; and the Piraeeus was converted into
a Pontic harbour.  As soon as the troops of Mithradates gained a
footing on the Greek continent, most of the small free states--the
Achaeans, Laconians, Boeotians--as far as Thessaly joined them.
Sura, after having drawn some reinforcements from Macedonia, advanced
into Boeotia to bring help to the besieged Thespiae and engaged in
conflicts with Archelaus and Aristion during three days at Chaeronea;
but they led to no decision and Sura was obliged to retire when
the Pontic reinforcements from the Peloponnesus approached (end of
666, beg. of 667).  So commanding was the position of Mithradates,
particularly by sea, that an embassy of Italian insurgents could invite
him to make an attempt to land in Italy; but their cause was already
by that time lost, and the king rejected the suggestion.

Position of the Romans

The position of the Roman government began to be critical.  Asia
Minor and Hellas were wholly, Macedonia to a considerable extent,
in the enemy's hands; by sea the Pontic flag ruled without a rival.
Then there was the Italian insurrection, which, though baffled on
the whole, still held the undisputed command of wide districts of
Italy; the barely hushed revolution, which threatened every moment
to break out afresh and more formidably; and, lastly, the alarming
commercial and monetary crisis(13) occasioned by the internal
troubles of Italy and the enormous losses of the Asiatic
capitalists, and the want of trustworthy troops.  The government
would have required three armies, to keep down the revolution in
Rome, to crush completely the insurrection in Italy, and to wage
war in Asia; it had but one, that of Sulla; for the northern army
was, under the untrustworthy Gnaeus Strabo, simply an additional
embarrassment.  Sulla had to choose which of these three tasks he
would undertake; he decided, as we have seen, for the Asiatic war.
It was no trifling matter--we should perhaps say, it was a great
act of patriotism--that in this conflict between the general interest
of his country and the special interest of his party the former
retained the ascendency; and that Sulla, in spite of the dangers
which his removal from Italy involved for his constitution and his
party, landed in the spring of 667 on the coast of Epirus.

Sulla's Landing
Greece Occupied

But he came not, as Roman commanders-in-chief had been wont to
make their appearance in the East.  That his army of five legions
or of at most 30,000 men,(14) was little stronger than an ordinary
consular army, was the least element of difference.  Formerly in
the eastern wars a Roman fleet had never been wanting, and had in
fact without exception commanded the sea; Sulla, sent to reconquer
two continents and the islands of the Aegean sea, arrived without a
single vessel of war.  Formerly the general had brought with him a
full chest and drawn the greatest portion of his supplies by sea
from home; Sulla came with empty hands--for the sums raised with
difficulty for the campaign of 666 were expended in Italy--and
found himself exclusively left dependent on requisitions.  Formerly
the general had found his only opponent in the enemy's camp, and
since the close of the struggle between the orders political
factions had without exception been united in opposing the public
foe; but Romans of note fought under the standards of Mithradates,
large districts of Italy desired to enter into alliance with him,
and it was at least doubtful whether the democratic party would follow
the glorious example that Sulla had set before it, and keep truce with
him so long as he was fighting against the Asiatic king.  But the
vigorous general, who had to contend with all these embarrassments,
was not accustomed to trouble himself about more remote dangers
before finishing the task immediately in hand.  When his proposals
of peace addressed to the king, which substantially amounted to a
restoration of the state of matters before the war, met with no
acceptance, he advanced just as he had landed, from the harbours of
Epirus to Boeotia, defeated the generals of the enemy Archelaus and
Aristion there at Mount Tilphossium, and after that victory
possessed himself almost without resistance of the whole Grecian
mainland with the exception of the fortresses of Athens and the
Piraeeus, into which Aristion and Archelaus had thrown themselves,
and which he failed to carry by a coup de main.  A Roman division
under Lucius Hortensius occupied Thessaly and made incursions into
Macedonia; another under Munatius stationed itself before Chalcis,
to keep off the enemy's corps under Neoptolemus in Euboea; Sulla
himself formed a camp at Eleusis and Megara, from which he
commanded Greece and the Peloponnesus, and prosecuted the siege of
the city and harbour of Athens.  The Hellenic cities, governed as
they always were by their immediate fears, submitted unconditionally
to the Romans, and were glad when they were allowed to ransom
themselves from more severe punishment by supplying provisions
and men and paying fines.

Protracted Siege of Athens and the Piraeus
Athens Falls

The sieges in Attica advanced less rapidly.  Sulla found himself
compelled to prepare all sorts of heavy besieging implements for
which the trees of the Academy and the Lyceum had to supply the
timber.  Archelaus conducted the defence with equal vigour and
judgment; he armed the crews of his vessels, and thus reinforced
repelled the attacks of the Romans with superior strength and made
frequent and not seldom successful sorties.  The Pontic army of
Dromichaetes advancing to the relief of the city was defeated under
the walls of Athens by the Romans after a severe struggle, in which
Sulla's brave legate Lucius Licinius Murena particularly distinguished
himself; but the siege did not on that account advance more rapidly.
From Macedonia, where the Cappadocians had meanwhile definitively
established themselves, plentiful and regular supplies arrived by
sea, which Sulla was not in a condition to cut off from the harbour-
fortress; in Athens no doubt provisions were beginning to fail, but
from the proximity of the two fortresses Archelaus was enabled to
make various attempts to throw quantities of grain into Athens, which
were not wholly unsuccessful.  So the winter of 667-8 passed away
tediously without result.  As soon as the season allowed, Sulla threw
himself with vehemence on the Piraeus; he in fact succeeded by
missiles and mines in making a breach in part of the strong walls of
Pericles, and immediately the Romans advanced to the assault; but it
was repulsed, and on its being renewed crescent-shaped entrenchments
were found constructed behind the fallen walls, from which the
invaders found themselves assailed on three sides with missiles
and compelled to retire.  Sulla then raised the siege, and contented
himself with a blockade.  In the meanwhile the provisions in Athens
were wholly exhausted; the garrison attempted to procure a capitulation,
but Sulla sent back their fluent envoys with the hint that he stood
before them not as a student but as a general, and would accept only
unconditional surrender.  When Aristion, well knowing what fate was
in store for him, delayed compliance, the ladders were applied and
the city, hardly any longer defended, was taken by storm (1 March
668).  Aristion threw himself into the Acropolis, where he soon
afterwards surrendered.  The Roman general left the soldiery to
murder and plunder in the captured city and the more considerable
ringleaders of the revolt to be executed; but the city itself
obtained back from him its liberty and its possessions--
even the important Delos,--and was thus once more saved
by its illustrious dead.

Critical Position of Sulla
Want of a Fleet

The Epicurean schoolmaster had thus been vanquished; but the position
of Sulla remained in the highest degree difficult, and even
desperate.  He had now been more than a year in the field without
having advanced a step worth mentioning; a single port mocked all
his exertions, while Asia was utterly left to itself, and the conquest
of Macedonia by Mithradates' lieutenants had recently been completed
by the capture of Amphipolis.  Without a fleet--it was becoming daily
more apparent--it was not only impossible to secure his communications
and supplies in presence of the ships of the enemy and the numerous
pirates, but impossible to recover even the Piraeeus, to say
nothing of Asia and the islands; and yet it was difficult to see
how ships of war were to be got.  As early as the winter of 667-8
Sulla had despatched one of his ablest and most dexterous officers,
Lucius Licinius Lucullus, into the eastern waters, to raise ships
there if possible.  Lucullus put to sea with six open boats, which he
had borrowed from the Rhodians and other small communities; he himself
merely by an accident escaped from a piratic squadron, which captured
most of his boats; deceiving the enemy by changing his vessels he
arrived by way of Crete and Cyrene at Alexandria; but the Egyptian
court rejected his request for the support of ships of war with equal
courtesy and decision.  Hardly anything illustrates so clearly as
does this fact the sad decay of the Roman state, which had once
been able gratefully to decline the offer of the kings of Egypt to
assist the Romans with all their naval force, and now itself seemed
to the Alexandrian statesmen bankrupt.  To all this fell to be added
the financial embarrassment; Sulla had already been obliged to empty
the treasuries of the Olympian Zeus, of the Delphic Apollo, and of
the Epidaurian Asklepios, for which the gods were compensated by
the moiety, confiscated by way of penalty, of the Theban territory.
But far worse than all this military and financial perplexity was
the reaction of the political revolution in Rome; the rapid, sweeping,
violent accomplishment of which had far surpassed the worst
apprehensions.  The revolution conducted the government in the
capital; Sulla had been deposed, his Asiatic command had been
entrusted to the democratic consul Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who
might be daily looked for in Greece.  The soldiers had no doubt
adhered to Sulla, who made every effort to keep them in good humour;
but what could be expected, when money and supplies were wanting,
when the general was deposed and proscribed, when his successor
was on the way, and, in addition to all this, the war against
the tough antagonist who commanded the sea was protracted without
prospect of a close?

Pontic Armies Enter Greece
Evacuation of the Piraeus

King Mithradates undertook to deliver his antagonist from his
perilous position.  He it was, to all appearance, who disapproved
the defensive system of his generals and sent orders to them to
vanquish the enemy with the utmost speed.  As early as 667 his son
Ariarathes had started from Macedonia to combat Sulla in Greece
proper; only the sudden death, which overtook the prince on the march
at the Tisaean promontory in Thessaly, had at that time led to the
abandonment of the expedition.  His successor Taxiles now appeared
(668), driving before him the Roman corps stationed in Thessaly,
with an army of, it is said, 100,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry at
Thermopylae.  Dromichaetes joined him.  Archelaus also--compelled,
apparently, not so much by Sulla's arms as by his master's orders--
evacuated the Piraeeus first partially and then entirely, and joined
the Pontic main army in Boeotia.  Sulla, after the Piraeeus with
all its greatly-admired fortifications had been by his orders
destroyed, followed the Pontic army, in the hope of being able
to fight a pitched battle before the arrival of Flaccus.  In vain
Archelaus advised that they should avoid such a battle, but should
keep the sea and the coast occupied and the enemy in suspense.
Now just as formerly under Darius and Antiochus, the masses of
the Orientals, like animals terrified in the midst of a fire, flung
themselves hastily and blindly into battle; and did so on this
occasion more foolishly than ever, since the Asiatics might perhaps
have needed to wait but a few months in order to be the spectators
of a battle between Sulla and Flaccus.

Battle of Chaerones

In the plain of the Cephissus not far from Chaeronea, in March 668,
the armies met.  Even including the division driven back from
Thessaly, which had succeeded in accomplishing its junction with
the Roman main army, and including the Greek contingents, the Roman
army found itself opposed to a foe three times as strong and
particularly to a cavalry fur superior and from the nature of
the field of battle very dangerous, against which Sulla found it
necessary to protect his flanks by digging trenches, while in front
he caused a chain of palisades to be introduced between his first and
second lines for protection against the enemy's war-chariots.  When
the war chariots rolled on to open the battle, the first line of the
Romans withdrew behind this row of stakes: the chariots, rebounding
from it and scared by the Roman slingers and archers, threw themselves
on their own line and carried confusion both into the Macedonian
phalanx and into the corps of the Italian refugees.  Archelaus
brought up in haste his cavalry from both flanks and sent it to
engage the enemy, with a view to gain time for rearranging his infantry;
it charged with great fury and broke through the Roman ranks; but
the Roman infantry rapidly formed in close masses and courageously
withstood the horsemen assailing them on every side.  Meanwhile Sulla
himself on the right wing led his cavalry against the exposed flank
of the enemy; the Asiatic infantry gave way before it was even properly
engaged, and its giving way carried confusion also into the masses
of the cavalry.  A general attack of the Roman infantry, which
through the wavering demeanour of the hostile cavalry gained time
to breathe, decided the victory.  The closing of the gates of the
camp which Archelaus ordered to check the flight, only increased
the slaughter, and when the gates at length were opened, the Romans
entered at the same time with the Asiatics.  It is said that
Archelaus brought not a twelfth part of his force in safety to
Chalcis; Sulla followed him to the Euripus; he was not in a position
to cross that narrow arm of the sea.

Slight Effect of the Victory
Sulla and Flaccus

It was a great victory, but the results were trifling, partly
because of the want of a fleet, partly because the Roman conqueror,
instead of pursuing the vanquished, was under the necessity in the
first instance of protecting himself against his own countrymen.
The sea was still exclusively covered by Pontic squadrons, which
now showed themselves even to the westward of the Malean promontory;
even after the battle of Chaeronea Archelaus landed troops on
Zacynthus and made an attempt to establish himself on that island.
Moreover Lucius Flaccus had in the meanwhile actually landed with two
legions in Epirus, not without having sustained severe loss on the
way from storms and from the war-vessels of the enemy cruising in
the Adriatic; his troops were already in Thessaly; thither Sulla had
in the first instance to turn.  The two Roman armies encamped over
against each other at Melitaea on the northern slope of Mount
Othrys; a collision seemed inevitable.  But Flaccus, after he had
opportunity of convincing himself that Sulla's soldiers were by no
means inclined to betray their victorious leader to the totally
unknown democratic commander-in chief, but that on the contrary his
own advanced guard began to desert to Sulla's camp, evaded a conflict
to which he was in no respect equal, and set out towards the north,
with the view of getting through Macedonia and Thrace to Asia and
there paving the way for further results by subduing Mithradates.
That Sulla should have allowed his weaker opponent to depart without
hindrance, and instead of following him should have returned to
Athens, where he seems to have passed the winter of 668-9, is in
a military point of view surprising.  We may suppose perhaps that
in this also he was guided by political motives, and that he was
sufficiently moderate and patriotic in his views willingly to forgo
a victory over his countrymen, at least so long as they had
still the Asiatics to deal with, and to find the most tolerable
solution of the unhappy dilemma in allowing the armies of the
revolution in Asia and of the oligarchy in Europe to fight
against the common foe.

Second Pontic Army Sent to Greece
Battle of Orchomenus

In the spring of 669 there was again fresh work in Europe.
Mithradates, who continued his preparations indefatigably in Asia
Minor, had sent an army not much less than that which had been
extirpated at Chaeronea, under Dorylaus to Euboea; thence it had,
after a junction with the remains of the army of Archelaus, passed
over the Euripus to Boeotia.  The Pontic king, who judged of what his
army could do by the standard of victories over the Bithynian and
Cappadocian militia, did not understand the unfavourable turn which
things had taken in Europe; the circles of the courtiers were
already whispering as to the treason of Archelaus; peremptory orders
were issued to fight a second battle at once with the new army, and
not to fail on this occasion to annihilate the Romans.  The master's
will was carried out, if not in conquering, at least in fighting.
The Romans and Asiatics met once more in the plain of the Cephissus,
near Orchomenus.  The numerous and excellent cavalry of the latter
flung itself impetuously on the Roman infantry, which began to waver
and give way: the danger was so urgent, that Sulla seized a standard
and advancing with his adjutants and orderlies against the enemy
called out with a loud voice to the soldiers that, if they should
be asked at home where they had abandoned their general, they
might reply--at Orchomenus.  This had its effect; the legions
rallied and vanquished the enemy's horse, after which the infantry
were overthrown with little difficulty.  On the following day the camp
of the Asiatics was surrounded and stormed; far the greatest portion
of them fell or perished in the Copaic marshes; a few only,
Archelaus among the rest, reached Euboea.  The Boeotian communities
had severely to pay for their renewed revolt from Rome, some of
them even to annihilation.  Nothing opposed the advance into
Macedonia and Thrace; Philippi was occupied, Abdera was voluntarily
evacuated by the Pontic garrison, the European continent in general
was cleared of the enemy.  At the end of the third year of the war
(669) Sulla was able to take up winter-quarters in Thessaly, with a
view to begin the Asiatic campaign in the spring of 670,(15) for
which purpose he gave orders to build ships in the Thessalian ports.

Reaction in Asia Minor against Mithradates

Meanwhile the circumstances of Asia Minor also had undergone a
material change.  If king Mithradates had once come forward as the
liberator of the Hellenes, if he had introduced his rule with the
recognition of civic independence and with remission of taxes, they
had after this brief ecstasy been but too rapidly and too bitterly
undeceived.  He had very soon emerged in his true character, and
had begun to exercise a despotism far surpassing the tyranny of
the Roman governors--a despotism which drove even the patient
inhabitants of Asia Minor to open revolt.  The sultan again resorted
to the most violent expedients.  His decrees granted independence
to the townships which turned to him, citizenship to the -metoeci-,
full remission of debts to the debtors, lands to those that had none,
freedom to the slaves; nearly 15,000 such manumitted slaves fought
in the army of Archelaus.  The most fearful scenes were the result
of this high-handed subversion of all existing order.  The most
considerable mercantile cities, Smyrna, Colophon, Ephesus, Tralles,
Sardes, closed their gates against the king's governors or put
them to death, and declared for Rome.(16)  On the other hand the
king's lieutenant Diodorus, a philosopher of note like Aristion, of
another school, but equally available for the worst subservience,
under the instructions of his master caused the whole town-council
of Adramyttium to be put to death.  The Chians, who were suspected
of an inclination to Rome, were fined in the first instance in 2000
talents (480,000 pounds) and, when the payment was found not correct,
they were en masse put on board ship and deported in chains under
the charge of their own slaves to the coast of Colchis, while their
island was occupied with Pontic colonists. The king gave orders that
the chiefs of the Celts in Asia Minor should all be put to death along
with their wives and children in one day, and that Galatia should be
converted into a Pontic satrapy.  Most of these bloody edicts were
carried into effect either at Mithradates' own headquarters or in
Galatia, but the few who escaped placed themselves at the head of
their powerful tribes and expelled Eumachus, the governor of the king,
out of their bounds.  It may readily be conceived that such a king
would be pursued by the daggers of assassins; sixteen hundred men
were condemned to death by the royal courts of inquisition as having
been implicated in such conspiracies.

Lucullus and the Fleet on the Asiatic Coast

While the king was thus by his suicidal fury provoking his
temporary subjects to rise in arms against him, he was at the same
time hard pressed by the Romans in Asia, both by sea and by land.
Lucullus, after the failure of his attempt to lead forth the Egyptian
fleet against Mithradates, had with better success repeated his
efforts to procure vessels of war in the Syrian maritime towns, and
reinforced his nascent fleet in the ports of Cyprus, Pamphylia, and
Rhodes till he found himself strong enough to proceed to the attack.
He dexterously avoided measuring himself against superior forces and
yet obtained no inconsiderable advantages.  The Cnidian island and
peninsula were occupied by him, Samos was assailed, Colophon and
Chios were wrested from the enemy.

Flaccus Arrives in Asia
Fimbria
Fimbria's Victory at Miletopolis
Perilous Position of Mithradates

Meanwhile Flaccus had proceeded with his army through Macedonia and
Thrace to Byzantium, and thence, passing the straits, had reached
Chalcedon (end of 668).  There a military insurrection broke out
against the general, ostensibly because he embezzled the spoil
from the soldiers.  The soul of it was one of the chief officers
of the army, a man whose name had become a proverb in Rome for a
true mob-orator, Gaius Flavius Fimbria, who, after having differed
with his commander-in-chief, transferred the demagogic practices
which he had begun in the Forum to the camp.  Flaccus was deposed
by the army and soon afterwards put to death at Nicomedia, not far
from Chalcedon; Fimbria was installed by decree of the soldiers
in his stead.  As a matter of course he allowed his troops every
indulgence; in the friendly Cyzicus, for instance, the citizens
were ordered to surrender all their property to the soldiers on pain
of death, and by way of warning example two of the most respectable
citizens were at once executed.  Nevertheless in a military point
of view the change of commander-in-chief was a gain; Fimbria was not,
like Flaccus, an incapable general, but energetic and talented.
At Miletopolis (on the Rhyndacus to the west of Brussa) he defeated
the younger Mithradates, who as governor of the satrapy of Pontus had
marched against him, completely in a nocturnal assault, and by this
victory opened his way to Pergamus, the capital formerly of the
Roman province and now of the Pontic king, whence he dislodged the
king and compelled him to take flight to the port of Pitane not far
off, with the view of there embarking.  Just at that moment Lucullus
appeared in those waters with his fleet; Fimbria adjured him to
render assistance so that he might be enabled to capture the king.
But the Optimate was stronger in Lucullus than the patriot; he
sailed onward and the king escaped to Mitylene.  The situation
of Mithradates was even thus sufficiently embarrassed.  At the end
of 669 Europe was lost, Asia Minor was partly in rebellion against
him, partly occupied by a Roman army; and he was himself threatened
by the latter in his immediate vicinity.  The Roman fleet under
Lucullus had maintained its position on the Trojan coast by two
successful naval engagements at the promontory of Lectum and at
the island of Tenedos; it was joined there by the ships which had
in the meanwhile been built by Sulla's orders in Thessaly, and by
it position commanding the Hellespont it secured to the general of
the Roman senatorial army a safe and easy passage next spring to Asia.

Negotiations for Peace

Mithradates attempted to negotiate.  Under other circumstances no
doubt the author of the edict for the Ephesian massacre could never
have cherished the hope of being admitted at all to terms of peace
with Rome; but amidst the internal convulsions of the Roman
republic, when the ruling government had declared the general sent
against Mithradates an outlaw and subjected his partisans at home to
the most fearful persecutions, when one Roman general opposed the
other and yet both stood opposed to the same foe, he hoped that he
should be able to obtain not merely a peace, but a favourable peace.
He had the choice of applying to Sulla or to Fimbria; he caused
negotiations to be instituted with both, yet it seems from the first
to have been his design to come to terms with Sulla, who, at least
from the king's point of view, seemed decidedly superior to his
rival.  His general Archelaus, a instructed by his master, asked
Sulla to cede Asia to the king and to expect in return the king's
aid against the democratic party in Rome.  But Sulla, cool and
clear as ever, while urgently desiring a speedy settlement of
Asiatic affairs on account of the position of things in Italy,
estimated the advantages of the Cappadocian alliance for
the war impending over him in Italy as very slight, and was
altogether too much of a Roman to consent to so disgraceful
and so injurious a concession.

Preliminaries of Delium

In the peace conferences, which took place in the winter of 669-70,
at Delium on the coast of Boeotia opposite to Euboea, Sulla distinctly
refused to cede even a foot's-breadth of land, but, with good
reason faithful to the old Roman custom of not increasing after
victory the demands made before battle, did not go beyond the
conditions previously laid down.  He required the restoration of
all the conquests made by the king and not wrested from him again--
Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, Bithynia, Asia Minor and the
islands--the surrender of prisoners and deserters, the delivering
up of the eighty war-vessels of Archelaus to reinforce the still
insignificant Roman fleet; lastly, pay and provisions for the army
and the very moderate sum of 3000 talents (720,000 pounds) as
indemnity for the expenses of the war.  The Chians carried off to
the Black Sea were to be sent home, the families of the Macedonians
who were friendly to Rome and had become refugees were to be
restored, and a number of war-vessels were to be delivered to the
cities in alliance with Rome.  Respecting Tigranes, who in strictness
should likewise have been included in the peace, there was silence on
both sides, since neither of the contracting parties cared for the
endless further steps which would be occasioned by making him a party.
The king thus retained the state of possession which he had before
the war, nor was he subjected to any humiliation affecting his
honour.(17)  Archelaus, clearly perceiving that much comparatively
beyond expectation was obtained and that more was not obtainable,
concluded the preliminaries and an armistice on these conditions,
and withdrew the troops from the places which the Asiatics
still possessed in Europe.

New Difficulties
Sulla Proceeds to Asia

But Mithradates rejected the peace and demanded at least that
the Romans should not insist on the surrender of the war-vessels
and should concede to him Paphlagonia; while he at the same time
asserted that Fimbria was ready to grant him far more favourable
conditions.  Sulla, offended by this placing of his offers on an
equal footing with those of an unofficial adventurer, and having
already gone to the utmost measure of concession, broke off the
negotiations.  He had employed the interval to reorganize Macedonia
and to chastise the Dardani, Sinti, and Maedi, in doing which he at
once procured booty for his army and drew nearer Asia; for he was
resolved at any rate to go thither, in order to come to a reckoning
with Fimbria.  He now at once put his legions stationed in Thrace as
well as his fleet in motion towards the Hellespont.  Then at length
Archelaus succeeded in wringing from his obstinate master a reluctant
consent to the treaty; for which he was subsequently regarded with
an evil eye at court as the author of the injurious peace, and even
accused of treason, so that some time afterwards he found himself
compelled to leave the country and to take refuge with the Romans,
who readily received him and loaded him with honours.  The Roman
soldiers also murmured; their disappointment doubtless at not
receiving the expected spoil of Asia probably contributed to that
murmuring more than their indignation--in itself very justifiable--
that the barbarian prince, who had murdered eighty thousand of their
countrymen and had brought unspeakable misery on Italy and Asia,
should be allowed to return home unpunished with the greatest part
of the treasures which he had collected by the pillage of Asia.
Sulla himself may have been painfully sensible that the political
complications thwarted in a most vexatious way a task which was
in a military point of view so simple, and compelled him after
such victories to content himself with such a peace.  But the self-
denial and the sagacity with which he had conducted this whole war
were only displayed afresh in the conclusion of this peace; for war
with a prince, to whom almost the whole coast of the Black Sea
belonged, and whose obstinacy was clearly displayed by the very last
negotiations, would still under the most favourable circumstances
require years, and the situation of Italy was such that it seemed
almost too late even for Sulla to oppose the party in power there
with the few legions which he possessed.(18)  Before this could be
done, however, it was absolutely necessary to overthrow the bold
officer who was at the head of the democratic army in Asia, in order
that he might not at some future time come from Asia to the help of
the Italian revolution, just as Sulla now hoped to return from Asia
and crush it.  At Cypsela on the Hebrus Sulla obtained accounts of
the ratification of the peace by Mithradates; but the march to Asia
went on.  The king, it was said, desired personally to confer with
the Roman general and to cement the peace with him; it may be
presumed that this was simply a convenient pretext for transferring
the army to Asia and there putting an end to Fimbria.

Peace at Dardanus
Sulla against Fimbria
Fimbria's Death

So Sulla, attended by his legions and by Archelaus, crossed the
Hellespont; after he had met with Mithradates on its Asiatic shore
at Dardanus and had orally concluded the treaty, he made his army
continue its march till he came upon the camp of Fimbria at
Thyatira not far from Pergamus, and pitched his own close beside
it.  The Sullan soldiers, far superior to the Fimbrians in number,
discipline, leadership, and ability, looked with contempt on the
dispirited and demoralized troops and their uncalled commander-in-
chief.  Desertions from the ranks of the Fimbrians became daily more
numerous.  When Fimbria ordered an attack, the soldiers refused to
fight against their fellow-citizens, or even to take the oath which he
required that they would stand faithfully by each other in battle.
An attempt to assassinate Sulla miscarried; at the conference which
Fimbria requested Sulla did not make his appearance, but contented
himself with suggesting to him through one of his officers a means of
personal escape.  Fimbria was of an insolent temperament, but he was
no poltroon; instead of accepting the vessel which Sulla offered to
him and fleeing to the barbarians, he went to Pergamus and fell on
his own sword in the temple of Asklepios.  Those who were most
compromised in his army resorted to Mithradates or to the pirates,
with whom they found ready reception; the main body placed itself
under the orders of Sulla.

Regulation of Asiatic Affairs

Sulla determined to leave these two legions, whom he did not trust
for the impending war, behind in Asia, where the fearful crisis
left for long its lingering traces in the several cities and
districts.  The command of this corps and the governorship of Roman
Asia he committed to his best officer, Lucius Licinius Murena.
The revolutionary measures of Mithradates, such as the liberation
of the slaves and the annulling of debts, were of course cancelled;
a restoration, which in many places could not be carried into effect
without force of arms.  The towns of the territory on the eastern
frontier underwent a comprehensive reorganization, and reckoned
from the year 670 as the date of their being constituted.  Justice
moreover was exercised, as the victors understood the term.
The most noted adherents of Mithradates and the authors of the
massacre of the Italians were punished with death.  The persons
liable to taxes were obliged immediately to pay down in cash according
to valuation the whole arrears of tenths and customs for the last five
years; besides which they had to pay a war-indemnity of 20,000
talents (4,800,000 pounds), for the collection of which Lucius
Lucullus was left behind. These were measures fearful in their rigour
and dreadful in their effects; but when we recall the Ephesian decree
and its execution, we feel inclined to regard them as a comparatively
mild retaliation.  That the exactions in other respects were not
unusually oppressive, is shown by the value of the spoil afterwards
carried in triumph, which amounted in precious metal to only about
1,000,000 pounds.  The few communities on the other hand that had
remained faithful--particularly the island of Rhodes, the region of
Lycia, Magnesia on the Maeander--were richly rewarded: Rhodes received
back at least a portion of the possessions withdrawn from it after
the war against Perseus.(19)  In like manner compensation was made
as far as possible by free charters and special favours to the Chians
for the hardships which they had borne, and to the Ilienses for the
insanely cruel maltreatment inflicted on them by Fimbria on account
of the negotiations into which they had entered with Sulla.  Sulla
had already brought the kings of Bithynia and Cappadocia to meet
the Pontic king at Dardanus, and had made them all promise to live
in peace and good neighbourhood; on which occasion, however, the
haughty Mithradates had refused to admit Ariobarzanes who was not
descended of royal blood--the slave, as he called him--to his
presence.  Gaius Scribonius Curio was commissioned to superintend
the restoration of the legal order of things in the two kingdoms
evacuated by Mithradates.

Sulla Embarks for Italy

The goal was thus attained.  After four years of war the Pontic
king was again a client of the Romans, and a single and settled
government was re-established in Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor;
the requirements of interest and honour were satisfied, if not
adequately, yet so far as circumstances would allow; Sulla had not
only brilliantly distinguished himself as a soldier and general, but
had the skill, in his path crossed by a thousand obstacles, to preserve
the difficult mean between bold perseverance and prudent concession.
Almost like Hannibal he had fought and conquered, in order that
with the forces, which the first victory gave him, he might prepare
forthwith for a second and severer struggle.  After he had in some
degree compensated his soldiers for the fatigues which they had
undergone by luxurious winter-quarters in the rich west of Asia Minor,
he in the spring of 671 transferred them in 1600 vessels from
Ephesus to the Piraeeus and thence by the land route to Patrae,
where the vessels again lay ready to convey the troops to Brundisium.
His arrival was preceded by a report addressed to the senate
respecting his campaigns in Greece and Asia, the writer of which
appeared to know nothing of his deposition; it was the mute herald
of the impending restoration.




Chapter IX

Cinna and Sulla

Ferment in Italy

This state of suspense and uncertainty existing in Italy when
Sulla took his departure for Greece in the beginning of 667 has been
already described: the half-suppressed insurrection, the principal
army under the more than half-usurped command of a general whose
politics were very doubtful, the confusion and the manifold
activity of intrigue in the capital.  The victory of the oligarchy
by force of arms had, in spite or because of its moderation,
engendered manifold discontent.  The capitalists, painfully
affected by the blows of the most severe financial crisis which
Rome had yet witnessed, were indignant at the government on account
of the law which it had issued as to interest, and on account
of the Italian and Asiatic wars which it had not prevented.
The insurgents, so far as they had laid down their arms, bewailed
not only the disappointment of their proud hopes of obtaining equal
rights with the ruling burgesses, but also the forfeiture of their
venerable treaties, and their new position as subjects utterly
destitute of rights.  The communities between the Alps and the Po
were likewise discontented with the partial concessions made to
them, and the new burgesses and freedmen were exasperated by
the cancelling of the Sulpician laws.  The populace of the city
suffered amid the general distress, and found it intolerable that
the government of the sabre was no longer disposed to acquiesce in
the constitutional rule of the bludgeon.  The adherents, resident
in the capital, of those outlawed after the Sulpician revolution--
adherents who remained very numerous in consequence of the
remarkable moderation of Sulla--laboured zealously to procure
permission for the outlaws to return home; and in particular some
ladies of wealth and distinction spared for this purpose neither
trouble nor money.  None of these grounds of ill-humour were such
as to furnish any immediate prospect of a fresh violent collision
between the parties; they were in great part of an aimless and
temporary nature; but they all fed the general discontent, and had
already been more or less concerned in producing the murder of
Rufus, the repeated attempts to assassinate Sulla, the issue
of the consular and tribunician elections for 667 partly in
favour of the opposition.

Cinna
Carbo
Sertorius

The name of the man whom the discontented had summoned to the head
of the state, Lucius Cornelius Cinna, had been hitherto scarcely
heard of, except so far as he had borne himself well as an officer
in the Social war.  We have less information regarding the
personality and the original designs of Cinna than regarding those
of any other party leader in the Roman revolution.  The reason is,
to all appearance, simply that this man, altogether vulgar and
guided by the lowest selfishness, had from the first no ulterior
political plans whatever.  It was asserted at his very first
appearance that he had sold himself for a round sum of money to
the new burgesses and the coterie of Marius, and the charge looks
very credible; but even were it false, it remains nevertheless
significant that a suspicion of the sort, such as was never
expressed against Saturninus and Sulpicius, attached to Cinna.
In fact the movement, at the head of which he put himself, has
altogether the appearance of worthlessness both as to motives and
as to aims.  It proceeded not so much from a party as from a number
of malcontents without proper political aims or notable support,
who had mainly undertaken to effect the recall of the exiles by
legal or illegal means.  Cinna seems to have been admitted into the
conspiracy only by an afterthought and merely because the intrigue,
which in consequence of the restriction of the tribunician powers
needed a consul to bring forward its proposals, saw in him among
the consular candidates for 667 its fittest instrument and so
pushed him forward as consul.  Among the leaders appearing in the
second rank of the movement were some abler heads; such was the
tribune of the people Gnaeus Papirius Carbo, who had made himself
a name by his impetuous popular eloquence, and above all Quintus
Sertorius, one of the most talented of Roman officers and a man
in every respect excellent, who since his candidature for the
tribunate of the people had been a personal enemy to Sulla and had
been led by this quarrel into the ranks of the disaffected to which
he did not at all by nature belong.  The proconsul Strabo, although
at variance with the government, was yet far from going along
with this faction.

Outbreak of the Cinnan Revolution
Victory of the Government

So long as Sulla was in Italy, the confederates for good reasons
remained quiet.  But when the dreaded proconsul, yielding not to
the exhortations of the consul Cinna but to the urgent state of
matters in the east, had embarked, Cinna, supported by the majority
of the college of tribunes, immediately submitted the projects
of law which had been concerted as a partial reaction against
the Sullan restoration of 666.  They embraced the political
equalization of the new burgesses and the freedmen, as Sulpicius
had proposed it, and the restitution of those who had been banished
in consequence of the Sulpician revolution to their former status.
The new burgesses flocked en masse to the capital, that along with
the freedmen they might terrify, and in case of need force, their
opponents into compliance.  But the government party was determined
not to yield, consul stood against consul, Gnaeus Octavius against
Lucius Cinna, and tribune against tribune; both sides appeared in
great part armed on the day and at the place of voting.  The
tribunes of the senatorial party interposed their veto; when swords
were drawn against them even on the rostra, Octavius employed force
against force.  His compact bands of armed men not only cleared the
Via Sacra and the Forum, but also, disregarding the commands of
their more gentle-minded leader, exercised horrible atrocities
against the assembled multitude.  The Forum swam with blood on this
"Octavius' day," as it never did before or afterwards--the number
of corpses was estimated at ten thousand.  Cinna called on the
slaves to purchase freedom for themselves by sharing in the
struggle; but his appeal was as unsuccessful as the like appeal of
Marius in the previous year, and no course was left to the leaders
of the movement but to take flight.  The constitution supplied no
means of proceeding farther against the chiefs of the conspiracy,
so long as their year of office lasted.  But a prophet presumably
more loyal than pious had announced that the banishment of the
consul Cinna and of the six tribunes of the people adhering to
him would restore peace and tranquillity to the country; and,
in conformity not with the constitution but with this counsel of
the gods fortunately laid hold of by the custodiers of oracles,
the consul Cinna was by decree of the senate deprived of his office,
Lucius Cornelius Merula was chosen in his stead, and outlawry was
pronounced against the chiefs who had fled.  It seemed as if the
whole crisis were about to end in a few additions to the number
of the men who were exiles in Numidia.

The Cinnans in Italy
Landing of Marius

Beyond doubt nothing further would have come of the movement, had
not the senate on the one hand with its usual remissness omitted to
compel the fugitives at least rapidly to quit Italy, and had the
latter on the other hand been, as champions of the emancipation of
the new burgesses, in a position to renew to some extent in their
own favour the revolt of the Italians.  Without obstruction they
appeared in Tibur, in Praeneste, in all the important communities
of new burgesses in Latium and Campania, and asked and obtained
everywhere money and men for the furtherance of the common cause.
Thus supported, they made their appearance at the army besieging
Nola, The armies of this period were democratic and revolutionary
in their views, wherever the general did not attach them to himself
by the weight of his personal influence; the speeches of the
fugitive magistrates, some of whom, especially Cinna and Sertorius,
were favourably remembered by the soldiers in connection with the
last campaigns, made a deep impression; the unconstitutional
deposition of the popular consul and the interference of the senate
with the rights of the sovereign people told on the common soldier,
and the gold of the consul or rather of the new burgesses made the
breach of the constitution clear to the officers.  The Campanian
army recognized Cinna as consul and swore the oath of fidelity to
him man by man; it became a nucleus for the bands that flocked in
from the new burgesses and even from the allied communities; a
considerable army, though consisting mostly of recruits, soon moved
from Campania towards the capital.  Other bands approached it from
the north.  On the invitation of Cinna those who had been banished
in the previous year had landed at Telamon on the Etruscan coast.
There were not more than some 500 armed men, for the most part
slaves of the refugees and enlisted Numidian horsemen; but, as
Gaius Marius had in the previous year been willing to fraternize
with the rabble of the capital, so he now ordered the -ergastula-
in which the landholders of this region shut up their field-
labourers during the night to be broken open, and the arms which
he offered to these for the purpose of achieving their freedom were
not despised.  Reinforced by these men and the contingents of the
new burgesses, as well as by the exiles who flocked to him with
their partisans from all sides, he soon numbered 6000 men under his
eagles and was able to man forty ships, which took their station
before the mouth of the Tiber and gave chase to the corn-ships
sailing towards Rome.  With these he placed himself at the disposal
of the "consul" Cinna.  The leaders of the Campanian army
hesitated; the more sagacious, Sertorius in particular, seriously
pointed out the danger of too closely connecting themselves with
a man whose name would necessarily place him at the head of
the movement, and who yet was notoriously incapable of any
statesmanlike action and haunted by an insane thirst for revenge;
but Cinna disregarded these scruples, and confirmed Marius in the
supreme command in Etruria and at sea with proconsular powers.

Dubious Attitude of Strabo
The Cinnans around Rome

Thus the storm gathered around the capital, and the government
could no longer delay bringing forward their troops to protect
it.(1)  But the forces of Metellus were detained by the Italians
in Samnium and before Nola; Strabo alone was in a position to hasten
to the help of the capital.  He appeared and pitched his camp at
the Colline gate: with his numerous and experienced army he might
doubtless have rapidly and totally annihilated the still weak bands
of insurgents; but this seemed to be no part of his design.  On the
contrary he allowed Rome to be actually invested by the insurgents.
Cinna with his corps and that of Carbo took post on the right bank
of the Tiber opposite to the Janiculum, Sertorius on the left bank
confronting Pompeius over against the Servian wall.  Marius with
his band which had gradually increased to three legions, and in
possession of a number of war-vessels, occupied one place on the
coast after another till at length even Ostia fell into his hands
through treachery, and, by way of prelude as it were to the
approaching reign of terror, was abandoned by the general to
the savage band for massacre and pillage.  The capital was placed,
even by the mere obstruction of traffic, in great danger; by command
of the senate the walls and gates were put in a state of defence and
the burgess-levy was ordered to the Janiculum.  The inaction of
Strabo excited among all classes alike surprise and indignation.
The suspicion that he was negotiating secretly with Cinna was
natural, but was probably without foundation.  A serious conflict
in which he engaged the band of Sertorius, and the support which
he gave to the consul Octavius when Marius had by an understanding
with one of the officers of the garrison penetrated into the
Janiculum, and by which in fact the insurgents were successfully
beaten off again with much loss, showed that he was far from
intending to unite with, or rather to place himself under, the
leaders of the insurgents.  It seems rather to have been his design
to sell his assistance in subduing the insurrection to the alarmed
government and citizens of the capital at the price of the
consulship for the next year, and thereby to get the reins
of government into his own hands.

Negotiations of Parties with the Italians
Death of Strabo

The senate was not, however, inclined to throw itself into the
arms of one usurper in order to escape from another, and sought
help elsewhere.  The franchise was by decree of the senate
supplementarily conferred on all the Italian communities involved
in the Social war, which had laid down their arms and had in
consequence thereof forfeited their old alliance.(2)  It seemed as
it were their intention officially to demonstrate that Rome in the
war against the Italians had staked her existence for the sake not
of a great object but of her own vanity: in the first momentary
embarrassment, for the purpose of bringing into the field an
additional thousand or two of soldiers, she sacrificed everything
which had been gained at so terribly dear a cost in the Social war.
In fact, troops arrived from the communities who were benefited by
this concession; but instead of the many legions promised, their
contingent on the whole amounted to not more than, at most, ten
thousand men.  It would have been of more moment that an agreement
should be come to with the Samnites and Nolans, so that the troops
of the thoroughly trustworthy Metellus might be employed for the
protection of the capital.  But the Samnites made demands which
recalled the yoke of Caudium--restitution of the spoil taken from
the Samnites and of their prisoners and deserters, renunciation of
the booty wrested by the Samnites from the Romans, the bestowal of
the franchise on the Samnites themselves as well as on the Romans
who had passed over to them.  The senate rejected even in this
emergency terms of peace so disgraceful, but instructed Metellus to
leave behind a small division and to lead in person all the troops
that could at all be dispensed with in southern Italy as quickly as
possible to Rome.  He obeyed.  But the consequence was, that the
Samnites attacked and defeated Plautius the legate left behind by
Metellus and his weak band; that the garrison of Nola marched out
and set on fire the neighbouring town of Abella in alliance with
Rome; that Cinna and Marius, moreover, granted to the Samnites
everything they asked--what mattered Roman honour to them!--and a
Samnite contingent reinforced the ranks of the insurgents.  It was
a severe loss also, when after a combat unfavourable to the troops
of the government Ariminum was occupied by the insurgents and thus
the important communication between Rome and the valley of the Po,
whence men and supplies were expected, was interrupted.  Scarcity
and famine set in.  The large populous city numerously garrisoned
with troops was but inadequately supplied with provisions; and
Marius in particular took care to cut off its supplies more and
more.  He had already blocked up the Tiber by a bridge of ships;
now by the capture of Antium, Lanuvium, Aricia, and other townships
he gained control over the means of land communication still open,
and at the same time appeased temporarily his revenge by causing
all the citizens, wherever resistance was offered, to be put to
the sword with the exception of those who had possibly betrayed
to him the town.  Contagious diseases followed on the distress and
committed dreadful ravages among the masses of soldiers densely
crowded round the capital; of Strabo's veteran army 11,000, and of
the troops of Octavius 6000 are said to have fallen victims to
them.  Yet the government did not despair; and the sudden death of
Strabo was a fortunate event for it.  He died of the pestilence;(3)
the masses, exasperated on many grounds against him, tore his
corpse from the bier and dragged it through the streets.
The remnant of his troops was incorporated by the consul
Octavius with his army.

Vacillation of the Government
Rome Capitulates

After the arrival of Metellus and the decease of Strabo the army
of the government was again at least a match for its antagonists,
and was able to array itself for battle against the insurgents at
the Alban Mount.  But the minds of the soldiers of the government
were deeply agitated; when Cinna appeared in front of them, they
received him with acclamation as if he were still their general and
consul; Metellus deemed it advisable not to allow the battle to
come on, but to lead back the troops to their camp.  The Optimates
themselves wavered, and fell at variance with each other.  While
one party, with the honourable but stubborn and shortsighted consul
Octavius at their head, perseveringly opposed all concession,
Metellus more experienced in war and more judicious attempted to
bring about a compromise; but his conference with Cinna excited
the wrath of the extreme men on both sides: Cinna was called by
Marius a weakling, Metellus was called by Octavius a traitor.
The soldiers, unsettled otherwise and not without cause distrusting
the leadership of the untried Octavius, suggested to Metellus that
he should assume the chief command, and, when he refused, began
in crowds to throw away their arms or even to desert to the enemy.
The temper of the burgesses became daily more depressed and
troublesome.  On the proclamation of the heralds of Cinna
guaranteeing freedom to the slaves who should desert, these flocked
in troops from the capital to the enemy's camp.  But the proposal
that the senate should guarantee freedom to the slaves willing to
enter the army was decidedly resisted by Octavius.  The government
could not conceal from itself that it was defeated, and that
nothing remained but to come to terms if possible with the leaders
of the band, as the overpowered traveller comes to terms with
the captain of banditti.  Envoys went to Cinna; but, while they
foolishly made difficulties as to recognizing him as consul, and
Cinna in the interval thus prolonged transferred his camp close to
the city-gates, the desertion spread to so great an extent that it
was no longer possible to settle any terms.  The senate submitted
itself unconditionally to the outlawed consul, adding only a
request that he would refrain from bloodshed, Cinna promised this,
but refused to ratify his promise by an oath; Marius, who kept by
his side during the negotiations, maintained a sullen silence.

Marian Reign of Terror

The gates of the capital were opened.  The consul marched in with
his legions; but Marius, scoffingly recalling the law of outlawry,
refused to set foot in the city until the law allowed him to do
so and the burgesses hastily assembled in the Forum to pass the
annulling decree.  He then entered, and with him the reign of
terror.  It was determined not to select individual victims, but
to have all the notable men of the Optimate party put to death and
to confiscate their property.  The gates were closed; for five days
and five nights the slaughter continued without interruption; even
afterwards the execution of individuals who had escaped or been
overlooked was of daily occurrence, and for months the bloody
persecution went on throughout Italy.  The consul Gnaeus Octavius
was the first victim.  True to his often-expressed principle, that
he would rather suffer death than make the smallest concession to
men acting illegally, he refused even now to take flight, and in
his consular robes awaited at the Janiculum the assassin, who was
not slow to appear.  Among the slain were Lucius Caesar (consul in
664) the celebrated victor of Acerrae;(4) his brother Gaius, whose
unseasonable ambition had provoked the Sulpician tumult,(5) well
known as an orator and poet and as an amiable companion; Marcus
Antonius (consul in 655), after the death of Lucius Crassus beyond
dispute the first pleader of his time; Publius Crassus (consul
in 657) who had commanded with distinction in the Spanish and in
the Social wars and also during the siege of Rome; and a multitude
of the most considerable men of the government party, among whom
the wealthy were traced out with especial zeal by the greedy
executioners.  Peculiarly sad seemed the death of Lucius Merula,
who very much against his own wish had become Cinna's successor,
and who now, when criminally impeached on that account and cited
before the comitia, in order to anticipate the inevitable
condemnation opened his veins, and at the altar of the Supreme
Jupiter whose priest he was, after laying aside the priestly
headband as the religious duty of the dying Flamen required,
breathed his last; and still more the death of Quintus Catulus
(consul in 652), once in better days the associate of the most
glorious victory and triumph of that same Marius who now had no
other answer for the suppliant relatives of his aged colleague
than the monosyllabic order, "He must die."

The Last Days of Marius

The originator of all these outrages was Gaius Marius.
He designated the victims and the executioners--only in exceptional
cases, as in those of Merula and Catulus, was any form of law
observed; not unfrequently a glance or the silence with which he
received those who saluted him formed the sentence of death, which
was always executed at once.  His revenge was not satisfied even
with the death of his victim; he forbade the burial of the dead
bodies: he gave orders--anticipated, it is true, in this respect
by Sulla--that the heads of the senators slain should be fixed to
the rostra in the Forum; he ordered particular corpses to be dragged
through the Forum, and that of Gaius Caesar to be stabbed afresh
at the tomb of Quintus Varius, whom Caesar presumably had once
impeached;(6) he publicly embraced the man who delivered to him
as he sat at table the head of Antonius, whom he had been with
difficulty restrained from seeking out in his hiding-place,
an slaying with his own hand.  His legions of slaves, and in
particular a division of Ardyaeans,(7) chiefly served as his
executioners, and did not neglect, amidst these Saturnalia of
their new freedom, to plunder the houses of their former masters
and to dishonour and murder all whom they met with there.  His own
associates were in despair at this insane fury; Sertorius adjured
the consul to put a stop to it at any price, and even Cinna was
alarmed.  But in times such as these were, madness itself becomes
a power; man hurls himself into the abyss, to save himself from
giddiness.  It was not easy to restrain the furious old man and
his band, and least of all had Cinna the courage to do so; on the
contrary, he chose Marius as his colleague in the consulship for
the next year.  The reign of terror alarmed the more moderate of
the victors not much less than the defeated party; the capitalists
alone were not displeased to see that another hand lent itself to
the work of thoroughly humbling for once the haughty oligarchs,
and that at the same time, in consequence of the extensive
confiscations and auctions, the best part of the spoil came to
themselves--in these times of terror they acquired from the people
the surname of the "hoarders."

Death of Marius

Fate had thus granted to the author of this reign of terror,
the old Gaius Marius, his two chief wishes.  He had taken vengeance
on the whole genteel pack that had embittered his victories and
envenomed his defeats; he had been enabled to retaliate for every
sarcasm by a stroke of the dagger.  Moreover he entered on the new
year once more as consul; the vision of a seventh consulate, which
the oracle had promised him, and which he had sought for thirteen
years to grasp, had now been realized.  The gods had granted to him
what he wished; but now too, as in the old legendary period, they
practised the fatal irony of destroying man by the fulfilment of
his wishes.  In his early consulates the pride, in his sixth the
laughing-stock, of his fellow-citizens, he was now in his seventh
loaded with the execration of all parties, with the hatred of the
whole nation; he, the originally upright, capable, gallant man, was
branded as the crackbrained chief of a reckless band of robbers.
He himself seemed to feel it.  His days were passed as in delirium,
and by night his couch denied him rest, so that he grasped the
wine-cup in order merely to drown thought.  A burning fever seized
him; after being stretched for seven days on a sick bed, in the
wild fancies of which he was fighting on the fields of Asia Minor
the battles of which the laurels were destined for Sulla, he
expired on the 13th Jan. 668.  He died, more than seventy years
old, in full possession of what he called power and honour, and in
his bed; but Nemesis assumes various shapes, and does not always
expiate blood with blood.  Was there no sort of retaliation in the
fact, that Rome and Italy now breathed more freely on the news of
the death of the famous saviour of the people than at the tidings
of the battle on the Raudine plain?

Even after his death individual incidents no doubt occurred, which
recalled that time of terror; Gaius Fimbria, for instance, who more
than any other during the Marian butcheries had dipped his hand in
blood, made an attempt at the very funeral of Marius to kill the
universally revered -pontifex maximus- Quintus Scaevola (consul in
659) who had been spared even by Marius, and then, when Scaevola
recovered from the wound he had received, indicted him criminally
on account of the offence, as Fimbria jestingly expressed it, of
having not been willing to let himself be murdered.  But the orgies
of murder at any rate were over.  Sertorius called together the
Marian bandits, under pretext of giving them their pay, surrounded
them with his trusty Celtic troops, and caused them to be cut down
en masse to the number, according to the lowest estimate, of 4000.

Government of Cinna

Along with the reign of terror came the -tyrannis-.  Cinna not
only stood at the head of the state for four years in succession
(667-670) as consul, but he regularly nominated himself and his
colleagues without consulting the people; it seemed as if these
democrats set aside the sovereign popular assembly with intentional
contempt.  No other chief of the popular party, before or
afterwards, possessed so perfectly absolute a power in Italy
and in the greater part of the provinces for so long a time almost
undisturbed, as Cinna; but no one can be named, whose government
was so utterly worthless and aimless.  The law proposed by
Sulpicius and thereafter by Cinna himself, which promised to
the new burgesses and the freedmen equality of suffrage with the
old burgesses, was naturally revived; and it was formally confirmed
by a decree of the senate as valid in law (670).  Censors were
nominated (668) for the purpose of distributing all the Italians,
in accordance with it, into the thirty-five burgess-districts--by a
singular conjuncture, in consequence of a want of qualified
candidates for the censorship the same Philippus, who when consul
in 663 had chiefly occasioned the miscarriage of the plan of Drusus
for bestowing the franchise on the Italians,(8) was now selected
as censor to inscribe them in the burgess-rolls.  The reactionary
institutions established by Sulla in 666 were of course overthrown.
Some steps were taken to please the proletariate--for instance,
the restrictions on the distribution of grain introduced some years
ago,(9) were probably now once more removed; the design of Gaius
Gracchus to found a colony at Capua was in reality carried out
in the spring of 671 on the proposal of the tribune of the people,
Marcus Junius Brutus; Lucius Valerius Flaccus the younger
introduced a law as to debt, which reduced every private claim to
the fourth part of its nominal amount and cancelled three fourths
in favour of the debtors.  But these measures, the only positive
ones during the whole Cinnan government, were without exception the
dictates of the moment; they were based--and this is perhaps the
most shocking feature in this whole catastrophe--not on a plan
possibly erroneous, but on no political plan at all.  The populace
were caressed, and at the same time offended in a very unnecessary
way by a meaningless disregard of the constitutional arrangements
for election.  The capitalist party might have furnished a support,
but it was injured in the most sensitive point by the law as to
debt.  The true mainstay of the government was--wholly without
any cooperation on its part--the new burgesses; their assistance
was acquiesced in, but nothing was done to regulate the strange
position of the Samnites, who were now nominally Roman citizens,
but evidently regarded their country's independence as practically
the real object and prize of the struggle and remained in arms
to defend it against all and sundry.  Illustrious senators were
struck down like mad dogs; but not the smallest step was taken to
reorganize the senate in the interest of the government, or even
permanently to terrify it; so that the government was by no means
sure of its aid.  Gaius Gracchus had not understood the fall of the
oligarchy as implying that the new master might conduct himself on
his self-created throne, as legitimate cipher-kings think proper to
do.  But this Cinna had been elevated to power not by his will, but
by pure accident; was there any wonder that he remained where the
storm-wave of revolution had washed him up, till a second wave came
to sweep him away again?

Cinna and Sulla
Italy and the Provinces in Favour of the Government

The same union of the mightiest plenitude of power with the most
utter impotence and incapacity in those who held it, was apparent
in the warfare waged by the revolutionary government against the
oligarchy--a warfare on which withal its existence primarily
depended.  In Italy it ruled with absolute sway.  Of the old
burgesses a very large portion were on principle favourable to
democratic views; and the still greater mass of quiet people, while
disapproving the Marian horrors, saw in an oligarchic restoration
simply the commencement of a second reign of terror by the opposite
party.  The impression of the outrages of 667 on the nation at
large had been comparatively slight, as they had chiefly affected
the mere aristocracy of the capital; and it was moreover somewhat
effaced by the three years of tolerably peaceful government that
ensued.  Lastly the whole mass of the new burgesses--three-fifths
perhaps of the Italians--were decidedly, if not favourable to the
present government, yet opposed to the oligarchy.

Like Italy, most of the provinces adhered to the oligarchy--
Sicily, Sardinia, the two Gauls, the two Spains.  In Africa
Quintus Metellus, who had fortunately escaped the murderers, made
an attempt to hold that province for the Optimates; Marcus Crassus,
the youngest son of the Publius Crassus who had perished in the
Marian massacre, resorted to him from Spain, and reinforced him
by a band which he had collected there.  But on their quarrelling
with each other they were obliged to yield to Gaius Fabius Hadrianus,
the governor appointed by the revolutionary government.  Asia
was in the hands of Mithradates; consequently the province of
Macedonia, so far as it was in the power of Sulla, remained the
only asylum of the exiled oligarchy.  Sulla's wife and children
who had with difficulty escaped death, and not a few senators
who had made their escape, sought refuge there, so that a sort
of senate was soon formed at his head-quarters.

Measures against Sulla

The government did not fail to issue decrees against the oligarchic
proconsul.  Sulla was deprived by the comitia of his command and of
his other honours and dignities and outlawed, as was also the case
with Metellus, Appius Claudius, and other refugees of note; his
house in Rome was razed, his country estates were laid waste.
But such proceedings did not settle the matter.  Had Gaius Marius
lived longer, he would doubtless have marched in person against Sulla
to those fields whither the fevered visions of his death-bed drew him;
the measures which the government took after his death have been
stated already.  Lucius Valerius Flaccus the younger,(10) who after
Marius' death was invested with the consulship and the command in
the east (668), was neither soldier nor officer; Gaius Fimbria who
accompanied him was not without ability, but insubordinate; the
army assigned to them was even in numbers three times weaker than
the army of Sulla.  Tidings successively arrived, that Flaccus, in
order not to be crushed by Sulla, had marched past him onward to
Asia (668); that Fimbria had set him aside and installed himself
in his room (beg. of 669); that Sulla had concluded peace with
Mithradates (669-670).  Hitherto Sulla had been silent so far as
the authorities ruling in the capital were concerned.  Now a letter
from him reached the senate, in which he reported the termination
of the war and announced his return to Italy; he stated that he
would respect the rights conferred on the new burgesses, and that,
while penal measures were inevitable, they would light not on the
masses, but on the authors of the mischief.  This announcement
frightened Cinna out of his inaction: while he had hitherto taken
no step against Sulla except the placing some men under arms and
collecting a number of vessels in the Adriatic, he now resolved to
cross in all haste to Greece.

Attempts at a Compromise
Death of Cinna
Carbo and the New Burgesses Arm against Sulla

On the other hand Sulla's letter, which in the circumstances might
be called extremely moderate, awakened in the middle-party hopes
of a peaceful adjustment.  The majority of the senate resolved,
on the proposal of the elder Flaccus, to set on foot an attempt
at reconciliation, and with that view to summon Sulla to come under
the guarantee of a safe-conduct to Italy, and to suggest to the
consuls Cinna and Carbo that they should suspend their preparations
till the arrival of Sulla's answer.  Sulla did not absolutely
reject the proposals.  Of course he did not come in person, but
he sent a message that he asked nothing but the restoration of
the banished to their former status and the judicial punishment of
the crimes that had been perpetrated, and moreover that he did not
desire security to be provided for himself, but proposed to bring
it to those who were at home.  His envoys found the state of things
in Italy essentially altered.  Cinna had, without concerning
himself further about that decree of the senate, immediately after
the termination of its sitting proceeded to the army and urged
it embarkation.  The summons to trust themselves to the sea at
that unfavourable season of the year provoked among the already
dissatisfied troops in the head-quarters at Ancona a mutiny, to
which Cinna fell a victim (beg. of 670); whereupon his colleague
Carbo found himself compelled to bring back the divisions that had
already crossed and, abandoning the idea of taking up the war in
Greece, to enter into winter-quarters in Ariminum.  But Sulla's
offers met no better reception on that account; the senate rejected
his proposals without even allowing the envoys to enter Rome, and
enjoined him summarily to lay down arms.  It was not the coterie of
the Marians which primarily brought about this resolute attitude.
That faction was obliged to abandon its hitherto usurped occupation
of the supreme magistracy at the very time when it was of moment,
and again to institute consular elections for the decisive year
671.  The suffrages on this occasion were united not in favour
of the former consul Carbo or of any of the able officers of the
hitherto ruling clique, such as Quintus Sertorius or Gaius Marius
the younger, but in favour of Lucius Scipio and Gaius Norbanus,
two incapables, neither of whom knew how to fight and Scipio not
even how to speak; the former of these recommended himself to the
multitude only as the great-grandson of the conqueror of Antiochus,
and the latter as a political opponent of the oligarchy.(11)  The
Marians were not so much abhorred for their misdeeds as despised
for their incapacity; but if the nation would have nothing to do
with these, the great majority of it would have still less to do
with Sulla and an oligarchic restoration.  Earnest measures of
self-defence were contemplated.  While Sulla crossed to Asia and
induced such defection in the army of Fimbria that its leader
fell by his own hand, the government in Italy employed the further
interval of a year granted to it by these steps of Sulla in
energetic preparations; it is said that at Sulla's landing 100,000
men, and afterwards even double that number of troops, were arrayed
in arms against him.

Difficult Position of Sulla

Against this Italian force Sulla had nothing to place in the scale
except his five legions, which, even including some contingents
levied in Macedonia and the Peloponnesus, probably amounted to
scarce 40,000 men.  It is true that this army had been, during
its seven years' conflicts in Italy, Greece, and Asia, weaned from
politics, and adhered to its general--who pardoned everything in
his soldiers, debauchery, brutality, even mutiny against their
officers, required nothing but valour and fidelity towards their
general, and set before them the prospect of the most extravagant
rewards in the event of victory--with all that soldierly
enthusiasm, which is the more powerful that the noblest and the
meanest passions often combine to produce it in the same breast.
The soldiers of Sulla voluntarily according to the Roman custom
swore mutual oaths that they would stand firmly by each other, and
each voluntarily brought to the general his savings as a contribution
to the costs of the war.  But considerable as was the weight
of this solid and select body of troops in comparison with the
masses of the enemy, Sulla saw very well that Italy could not
be subdued with five legions if it remained united in resolute
resistance.  To settle accounts with the popular party and their
incapable autocrats would not have been difficult; but he saw
opposed to him and united with that party the whole mass of those
who desired no oligarchic restoration with its terrors, and above
all the whole body of new burgesses--both those who had been
withheld by the Julian law from taking part in the insurrection,
and those whose revolt a few years before had brought Rome to
the brink of ruin.

His Moderation

Sulla fully surveyed the situation of affairs, and was far
removed from the blind exasperation and the obstinate rigour which
characterized the majority of his party.  While the edifice of the
state was in flames, while his friends were being murdered, his
houses destroyed, his family driven into exile, he had remained
undisturbed at his post till the public foe was conquered and the
Roman frontier was secured.  He now treated Italian affairs in the
same spirit of patriotic and judicious moderation, and did whatever
he could to pacify the moderate party and the new burgesses, and
to prevent the civil war from assuming the far more dangerous form
of a fresh war between the Old Romans and the Italian allies.
The first letter which Sulla addressed to the senate had asked
nothing but what was right and just, and had expressly disclaimed
a reign of terror.  In harmony with its terms, he now presented
the prospect of unconditional pardon to all those who should even
now break off from the revolutionary government, and caused his
soldiers man by man to swear that they would meet the Italians
thoroughly as friends and fellow-citizens.  The most binding
declarations secured to the new burgesses the political rights
which they had acquired; so that Carbo, for that reason, wished
hostages to be furnished to him by every civic community in Italy,
but the proposal broke down under general indignation and under the
opposition of the senate.  The chief difficulty in the position of
Sulla really consisted in the fact, that in consequence of the
faithlessness and perfidy which prevailed the new burgesses had
every reason, if not to suspect his personal designs, to doubt at
any rate whether he would be able to induce his party to keep their
word after the victory.

Sulla Lands in Italy
And Is Reinforced by Partisans and Deserters

In the spring of 671 Sulla landed with his legions in the port
of Brundisium.  The senate, on receiving the news, declared the
commonwealth in danger, and committed to the consuls unlimited
powers; but these incapable leaders had not looked before them,
and were surprised by a landing which had nevertheless been
foreseen for years.  The army was still at Ariminum, the ports
were not garrisoned, and--what is almost incredible--there was
not a man under arms at all along the whole south-eastern coast.
The consequences were soon apparent Brundisium itself, a considerable
community of new burgesses, at once opened its gates without
resistance to the oligarchic general, and all Messapia and Apulia
followed its example.  The army marched through these regions as
through a friendly country, and mindful of its oath uniformly
maintained the strictest discipline.  From all sides the scattered
remnant of the Optimate party flocked to the camp of Sulla.
Quintus Metellus came from the mountain ravines of Liguria, whither
he had made his escape from Africa, and resumed, as colleague of
Sulla, the proconsular command committed to him in 667,(12) and
withdrawn from him by the revolution.  Marcus Crassus in like
manner appeared from Africa with a small band of armed men.  Most
of the Optimates, indeed, came as emigrants of quality with great
pretensions and small desire for fighting, so that they had to
listen to bitter language from Sulla himself regarding the noble
lords who wished to have themselves preserved for the good of the
state and could not even be brought to arm their slaves.  It was of
more importance, that deserters already made their appearance from
the democratic camp--for instance, the refined and respected Lucius
Philippus, who was, along with one or two notoriously incapable
persons, the only consular that had come to terms with the
revolutionary government and accepted offices under it He met with
the most gracious reception from Sulla, and obtained the honourable
and easy charge of occupying for him the province of Sardinia.
Quintus Lucretius Ofella and other serviceable officers were
likewise received and at once employed; even Publius Cethegus,
one of the senators banished after the Sulpician -emeute- by Sulla,
obtained pardon and a position in the army.

Pompeius

Still more important than these individual accessions was the gain
of the district of Picenum, which was substantially due to the son
of Strabo, the young Gnaeus Pompeius.  The latter, like his father
originally no adherent of the oligarchy, had acknowledged the
revolutionary government and even taken service in Cinna's army;
but in his case the fact was not forgotten, that his father had
borne arms against the revolution; he found himself assailed in
various forms and even threatened with the loss of his very
considerable wealth by an indictment charging him to give up
the booty which was, or was alleged to have been, embezzled by his
father after the capture of Asculum.  The protection of the consul
Carbo, who was personally attached to him, still more than the
eloquence of the consular Lucius Philippus and of the young
Quintus Hortensius, averted from him financial ruin; but the
dissatisfaction remained.  On the news of Sulla's landing he
went to Picenum, where he had extensive possessions and the best
municipal connections derived from his father and the Social war,
and set up the standard of the Optimate party in Auximum (Osimo).
The district, which was mostly inhabited by old burgesses, joined
him; the young men, many of whom had served with him under his
father, readily ranged themselves under the courageous leader who,
not yet twenty-three years of age, was as much soldier as general,
sprang to the front of his cavalry in combat, and vigorously
assailed the enemy along with them.  The corps of Picenian
volunteers soon grew to three legions; divisions under Cloelius,
Gaius Carrinas, Lucius Junius Brutus Damasippus,(13) were
despatched from the capital to put down the Picenian insurrection,
but the extemporized general, dexterously taking advantage of the
dissensions that arose among them, had the skill to evade them or
to beat them in detail and to effect his junction with the main
army of Sulla, apparently in Apulia.  Sulla saluted him as
-imperator-, that is, as an officer commanding in his own name
and not subordinate but co-ordinate, and distinguished the youth
by marks of honour such as he showed to none of his noble
clients--presumably not without the collateral design of thereby
administering an indirect rebuke to the lack of energetic character
among his own partisans.

Sulla in Campania Opposed by Norbanus and Scipio
Sulla Gains a Victory over Norbanus at Mount Tifata
Defection of Scipio's Army

Reinforced thus considerably both in a moral and material point
of view, Sulla and Metellus marched from Apulia through the still
insurgent Samnite districts towards Campania.  The main force of
the enemy also proceeded thither, and it seemed as if the matter
could not but there be brought to a decision.  The army of the
consul Gaius Norbanus was already at Capua, where the new colony
had just established itself with all democratic pomp; the second
consular army was likewise advancing along the Appian road.  But,
before it arrived, Sulla was in front of Norbanus.  A last attempt
at mediation, which Sulla made, led only to the arrest of his
envoys.  With fresh indignation his veteran troops threw themselves
on the enemy; their vehement charge down from Mount Tifata at the
first onset broke the enemy drawn up in the plain; with the remnant
of his force Norbanus threw himself into the revolutionary colony
of Capua and the new-burgess town of Neapolis, and allowed himself
to be blockaded there.  Sulla's troops, hitherto not without
apprehension as they compared their weak numbers with the masses
of the enemy, had by this victory gained a full conviction of their
military superiority, instead of pausing to besiege the remains of
the defeated army, Sulla left the towns where they took shelter to
be invested, and advanced along the Appian highway against Teanum,
where Scipio was posted.  To him also, before beginning battle,
he made fresh proposals for peace; apparently in good earnest.
Scipio, weak as he was, entered into them; an armistice was
concluded; between Cales and Teanum the two generals, both members
of the same noble -gens-, both men of culture and refinement
and for many years colleagues in the senate, met in personal
conference; they entered upon the several questions; they had
already made such progress, that Scipio despatched a messenger
to Capua to procure the opinion of his colleague.  Meanwhile the
soldiers of the two camps mingled; the Sullans, copiously furnished
with money by their general, had no great difficulty in persuading
the recruits--not too eager for warfare--over their cups that it
was better to have them as comrades than as foes; in vain Sertorius
warned the general to put a stop to this dangerous intercourse.
The agreement, which had seemed so near, was not effected; it was
Scipio who denounced the armistice.  But Sulla maintained that it
was too late and that the agreement had been already concluded;
whereupon Scipio's soldiers, under the pretext that their general
had wrongfully denounced the armistice, passed over en masse to the
ranks of the enemy.  The scene closed with an universal embracing,
at which the commanding officers of the revolutionary army had to
look on.  Sulla gave orders that the consul should be summoned to
resign his office--which he did--and should along with his staff be
escorted by his cavalry to whatever point they desired; but Scipio
was hardly set at liberty when he resumed the insignia of his
dignity and began afresh to collect troops, without however
executing anything further of moment.  Sulla and Metellus took
up winter-quarters in Campania and, after the failure of a second
attempt to come to terms with Norbanus, maintained the blockade
of Capua during the winter.

Preparations on Either Side

The results of the first campaign in favour of Sulla were the
submission of Apulia, Picenum, and Campania, the dissolution of
the one, and the vanquishing and blockading of the other, consular
army.  The Italian communities, compelled severally to choose
between their twofold oppressors, already in numerous instances
entered into negotiations with him, and caused the political
rights, which had been won from the opposition party, to be
guaranteed to them by formal separate treaties on the part
of the general of the oligarchy.  Sulla cherished the distinct
expectation, and intentionally made boast of it, that he would
overthrow the revolutionary government in the next campaign and
again march into Rome.

But despair seemed to furnish the revolution with fresh energies.
The consulship was committed to two of its most decided leaders,
to Carbo for the third time and to Gaius Marius the younger; the
circumstance that the latter, who was just twenty years of age,
could not legally be invested with the consulship, was as little
heeded as any other point of the constitution.  Quintus Sertorius,
who in this and other matters proved an inconvenient critic, was
ordered to proceed to Etruria with a view to procure new levies,
and thence to his province Hither Spain.  To replenish the
treasury, the senate was obliged to decree the melting down of
the gold and silver vessels of the temples in the capital; how
considerable the produce was, is clear from the fact that after
several months' warfare there was still on hand nearly 600,000
pounds (14,000 pounds of gold and 6000 pounds of silver).  In the
considerable portion of Italy, which still voluntarily or under
compulsion adhered to the revolution, warlike preparations were
prosecuted with vigour.  Newly-formed divisions of some strength
came from Etruria, where the communities of new burgesses were very
numerous, and from the region of the Po.  The veterans of Marius
in great numbers ranged themselves under the standards at the call
of his son.  But nowhere were preparations made for the struggle
against Sulla with such eagerness as in the insurgent Samnium and
some districts of Lucania.  It was owing to anything but devotion
towards the revolutionary Roman government, that numerous
contingents from the Oscan districts reinforced their armies;
but it was well understood there that an oligarchy restored by
Sulla would not acquiesce, like the lax Cinnan government, in
the independence of these lands as now de facto subsisting; and
therefore the primitive rivalry between the Sabellians and
the Latins was roused afresh in the struggle against Sulla.
For Samnium and Latium this war was as much a national struggle
as the wars of the fifth century; they strove not for a greater
or less amount of political rights, but for the purpose of appeasing
long-suppressed hate by the annihilation of their antagonist.
It was no wonder, therefore, that the war in this region bore
a character altogether different from the conflicts elsewhere,
that no compromise was attempted there, that no quarter was given
or taken, and that the pursuit was continued to the very uttermost.

Thus the campaign of 672 was begun on both sides with augmented
military resources and increased animosity.  The revolution in
particular threw away the scabbard: at the suggestion of Carbo
the Roman comitia outlawed all the senators that should be found
in Sulla's camp.  Sulla was silent; he probably thought that
they were pronouncing sentence beforehand on themselves.

Sulla Proceeds to Latium to Oppose the Younger Marius
His Victory at Sacriportus
Democratic Massacres in Rome

The army of the Optimates was divided.  The proconsul Metellus
undertook, resting on the support of the Picenian insurrection, to
advance to Upper Italy, while Sulla marched from Campania straight
against the capital.  Carbo threw himself in the way of the former;
Marius would encounter the main army of the enemy in Latium.
Advancing along the Via Latina, Sulla fell in with the enemy not
far from Signia; they retired before him as far as the so-called
"Port of Sacer," between Signia and the chief stronghold of the
Marians, the strong Praeneste.  There Marius drew up his force for
battle.  His army was about 40,000 strong, and he was in savage
fury and personal bravery the true son of his father; but his
troops were not the well trained bands with which the latter had
fought his battles, and still less might this inexperienced young
man bear comparison with the old master of war.  His troops soon
gave way; the defection of a division even during the battle
accelerated the defeat.  More than the half of the Marians were
dead or prisoners; the remnant, unable either to keep the field or
to gain the other bank of the Tiber, was compelled to seek
protection in the neighbouring fortresses; the capital, which they
had neglected to provision, was irrecoverably lost.  In consequence
of this Marius gave orders to Lucius Brutus Damasippus, the praetor
commanding there, to evacuate it, but before doing so to put to
death all the esteemed men, hitherto spared, of the opposite party.
This injunction, by which the son even outdid the proscriptions of
his father, was carried into effect; Damasippus made a pretext for
convoking the senate, and the marked men were struck down partly in
the sitting itself, partly on their flight from the senate-house.
Notwithstanding the thorough clearance previously effected, there
were still found several victims of note.  Such were the former
aedile Publius Antistius, the father-in-law of Gnaeus Pompeius,
and the former praetor Gaius Carbo, son of the well-known friend
and subsequent opponent of the Gracchi,(14) since the death of
so many men of more distinguished talent the two best orators in
the judicial courts of the desolated Forum; the consular Lucius
Domitius, and above all the venerable -pontifex maximus- Quintus
Scaevola, who had escaped the dagger of Fimbria only to bleed to
death during these last throes of the revolution in the vestibule
of the temple of Vesta entrusted to his guardianship.  With
speechlesshorror the multitude saw the corpses of these last
victims of the reign of terror dragged through the streets,
and thrown into the river.

Siege of Praeneste
Occupation of Rome

The broken bands of Marius threw themselves into the neighbouring
and strong cities of new burgesses Norba and Praeneste: Marius in
person with the treasure and the greater part of the fugitives
entered the latter.  Sulla left an able officer, Quintus Ofella,
before Praeneste just as he had done in the previous year before
Capua, with instructions not to expend his strength in the siege
of the strong town, but to enclose it with an extended line of
blockade and starve it into surrender.  He himself advanced from
different sides upon the capital, which as well as the whole
surrounding district he found abandoned by the enemy, and occupied
without resistance.  He barely took time to compose the minds of
the people by an address and to make the most necessary arrangements,
and immediately passed on to Etruria, that in concert with Metellus
he might dislodge his antagonists from Northern Italy.

Metellus against Carbo in Northern Italy
Carbo Assailed on Three Sides of Etruria

Metellus had meanwhile encountered and defeated Carbo's lieutenant
Carrinas at the river Aesis (Esino between Ancona and Sinigaglia),
which separated the district of Picenum from the Gallic province;
when Carbo in person came up with his superior army, Metellus had
been obliged to abstain from any farther advance.  But on the news
of the battle at Sacriportus, Carbo, anxious about his communications,
had retreated to the Flaminian road, with a view to take up his
headquarters at the meeting-point of Ariminum, and from that point
to hold the passes of the Apennines on the one hand and the valley
of the Po on the other.  In this retrograde movement different
divisions fell into the hands of the enemy, and not only so,
but Sena Gallica was stormed and Carbo's rearguard was broken
in a brilliant cavalry engagement by Pompeius; nevertheless Carbo
attained on the whole his object.  The consular Norbanus took
the command in the valley of the Po; Carbo himself proceeded to
Etruria.  But the march of Sulla with his victorious legions to
Etruria altered the position of affairs; soon three Sullan armies
from Gaul, Umbria, and Rome established communications with each
other.  Metellus with the fleet went past Ariminum to Ravenna, and
at Faventia cut off the communication between Ariminum and the
valley of the Po, into which he sent forward a division along the
great road to Placentia under Marcus Lucullus, the quaestor of
Sulla and brother of his admiral in the Mithradatic war.  The young
Pompeius and his contemporary and rival Crassus penetrated from
Picenum by mountain-paths into Umbria and gained the Flaminian road
at Spoletium, where they defeated Carbo's legate Carrinas and shut
him up in the town; he succeeded, however, in escaping from it on
a rainy night and making his way, though not without loss, to the
army of Carbo.  Sulla himself marched from Rome into Etruria with
his army in two divisions, one of which advancing along the coast
defeated the corps opposed to it at Saturnia (between the rivers
Ombrone and Albegna); the second led by Sulla in person fell in
with the army of Carbo in the valley of the Clanis, and sustained
a successful conflict with his Spanish cavalry.  But the pitched
battle which was fought between Carbo and Sulla in the region of
Chiusi, although it ended without being properly decisive, was
so far at any rate in favour of Carbo that Sulla's victorious
advance was checked.

Conflicts about Praeneste

In the vicinity of Rome also events appeared to assume a more
favourable turn for the revolutionary party, and the war seemed
as if it would again be drawn chiefly towards this region.
For, while the oligarchic party were concentrating all their
energies on Etruria, the democracy everywhere put forth the utmost
efforts to break the blockade of Praeneste.  Even the governor of
Sicily Marcus Perpenna set out for that purpose; it does not appear,
however, that he reached Praeneste.  Nor was the very considerable
corps under Marcius, detached by Carbo, more successful in this;
assailed and defeated by the troops of the enemy which were at
Spoletium, demoralized by disorder, want of supplies, and mutiny,
one portion went back to Carbo, another to Ariminum; the rest
dispersed.  Help in earnest on the other hand came from Southern
Italy.  There the Samnites under Pontius of Telesia, and the
Lucanians under their experienced general Marcus Lamponius, set
out without its being possible to prevent their departure, were
joined in Campania where Capua still held out by a division of
the garrison under Gutta, and thus to the number, it was said, of
70,000 marched upon Praeneste.  Thereupon Sulla himself, leaving
behind a corps against Carbo, returned to Latium and took up a
well-chosen position in the defiles in front of Praeneste, where
he barred the route of the relieving army.(15)  In vain the garrison
attempted to break through the lines of Ofella, in vain the
relieving army attempted to dislodge Sulla; both remained
immoveable in their strong positions, even after Damasippus,
sent by Carbo, had reinforced the relieving army with two legions.

Successes of the Sullans in Upper Italy
Etruria Occupied by the Sullans

But while the war stood still in Etruria and in Latium, matters
came to a decision in the valley of the Po.  There the general of
the democracy, Gaius Norbanus, had hitherto maintained the upper
hand, had attacked Marcus Lucullus the legate of Metellus with
superior force and compelled him to shut himself up in Placentia,
and had at length turned against Metellus in person.  He encountered
the latter at Faventia, and immediately made his attack late in
the afternoon with his troops fatigued by their march; the consequence
was a complete defeat and the total breaking up of his corps, of which
only about 1000 men returned to Etruria.  On the news of this battle
Lucullus sallied from Placentia, and defeated the division left behind
to oppose him at Fidentia (between Piacenza and Parma).  The Lucanian
troops of Albinovanus deserted in a body: their leader made up
for his hesitation at first by inviting the chief officers of
the revolutionary army to banquet with him and causing them to be
put to death; in general every one, who at all could, now concluded
his peace.  Ariminum with all its stores and treasures fell into the
power of Metellus; Norbanus embarked for Rhodes; the whole land between
the Alps and Apennines acknowledged the government of the Optimates.
The troops hitherto employed there were enabled to turn to the attack
of Etruria, the last province where their antagonists still kept
the field.  When Carbo received this news in the camp at Clusium,
he lost his self-command; although he had still a considerable body
of troops under his orders, he secretly escaped from his headquarters
and embarked for Africa.  Part of his abandoned troops followed the
example which their general had set, and went home; part of them were
destroyed by Pompeius: Carrinas gathered together the remainder and
led them to Latium to join the army of Praeneste.  There no change
had in the meanwhile taken place; and the final decision drew nigh.
The troops of Carrinas were not numerous enough to shake Sulla's
position; the vanguard of the army of the oligarchic party,
hitherto employed in Etruria, was approaching under Pompeius;
in a few days the net would be drawn tight around the army of
the democrats and the Samnites.

The Samnites and Democrats Attack Rome
Battle at the Colline Gate
Slaughter of the Prisoners

Its leaders then determined to desist from the relief of Praeneste
and to throw themselves with all their united strength on Rome,
which was only a good day's march distant.  By so doing they were,
in a military point of view, ruined; their line of retreat, the
Latin road, would by such a movement fall into Sulla's hands;
and even if they got possession of Rome, they would be infallibly
crushed there, enclosed within a city by no means fitted for
defence, and wedged in between the far superior armies of Metellus
and Sulla.  Safety, however, was no longer thought of; revenge
alone dictated this march to Rome, the last outbreak of fury in
the passionate revolutionists and especially in the despairing
Sabellian nation.  Pontius of Telesia was in earnest, when he
called out to his followers that, in order to get rid of the wolves
which had robbed Italy of freedom, the forest in which they
harboured must be destroyed.  Never was Rome in a more fearful
peril than on the 1st November 672, when Pontius, Lamponius,
Carrinas, Damasippus advanced along the Latin road towards Rome,
and encamped about a mile from the Colline gate.  It was threatened
with a day like the 20th July 365 u. c. or the 15th June 455 a. d.--
the days of the Celts and the Vandals.  The time was gone by when
a coup de main against Rome was a foolish enterprise, and the
assailants could have no want of connections in the capital.
The band of volunteers which sallied from the city, mostly youths
of quality, was scattered like chaff before the immense superiority
of force.  The only hope of safety rested on Sulla.  The latter,
on receiving accounts of the departure of the Samnite army in
the direction of Rome, had likewise set out in all haste to the
assistance of the capital.  The appearance of his foremost horsemen
under Balbus in the course of the morning revived the sinking
courage of the citizens; about midday he appeared in person with
his main force, and immediately drew up his ranks for battle at
the temple of the Erycine Aphrodite before the Colline gate (not
far from Porta Pia).  His lieutenants adjured him not to send the
troops exhausted by the forced march at once into action; but Sulla
took into consideration what the night might bring on Rome, and,
late as it was in the afternoon, ordered the attack.  The battle
was obstinately contested and bloody.  The left wing of Sulla,
which he led in person, gave way as far as the city wall, so that
it became necessary to close the city gates; stragglers even
brought accounts to Ofella that the battle was lost.  But on the
right wing Marcus Crassus overthrew the enemy and pursued him as
far as Antemnae; this somewhat relieved the left wing also, and an
hour after sunset it in turn began to advance.  The fight continued
the whole night and even on the following morning; it was only the
defection of a division of 3000 men, who immediately turned their
arms against their former comrades, that put an end to the
struggle.  Rome was saved.  The army of the insurgents, for which
there was no retreat, was completely extirpated.  The prisoners
taken in the battle--between 3000 and 4000 in number, including the
generals Damasippus, Carrinas, and the severely-wounded Pontius--
were by Sulla's orders on the third day after the battle brought to
the Villa Publica in the Campus Martius and there massacred to the
last man, so that the clatter of arms and the groans of the dying
were distinctly heard in the neighbouring temple of Bellona, where
Sulla was just holding a meeting of the senate.  It was a ghastly
execution, and it ought not to be excused; but it is not right to
forget that those very men who perished there had fallen like a
band of robbers on the capital and the burgesses, and, had they
found time, would have destroyed them as far as fire and sword
can destroy a city and its citizens.

Sieges
Praeneste
Norba
Nola

With this battle the war was, in the main, at an end.  The garrison
of Praeneste surrendered, when it learned the issue of the battle
of Rome from the heads of Carrinas and other officers thrown over
the walls.  The leaders, the consul Gaius Marius and the son of
Pontius, after having failed in an attempt to escape, fell on each
other's swords.  The multitude cherished the hope, in which it
was confirmed by Cethegus, that the victor would even now have
mercy upon them.  But the times of mercy were past.  The more
unconditionally Sulla had up to the last moment granted full pardon
to those who came over to him, the more inexorable he showed
himself toward the leaders and communities that had held out to
the end.  Of the Praenestine prisoners, 12,000 in number, most
of the Romans and individual Praenestines as well as the women
and children were released, but the Roman senators, almost all
the Praenestines and the whole of the Samnites, were disarmed and
cut to pieces; and the rich city was given up to pillage.  It was
natural that, after such an occurrence, the cities of new burgesses
which had not yet passed over should continue their resistance with
the utmost obstinacy.  In the Latin town of Norba for instance,
when Aemilius Lepidus got into it by treason, the citizens killed
each other and set fire themselves to their town, solely in order
to deprive their executioners of vengeance and of booty.  In Lower
Italy Neapolis had already been taken by assault, and Capua had,
as it would seem, been voluntarily surrendered; but Nola was only
evacuated by the Samnites in 674.  On his flight from Nola the last
surviving leader of note among the Italians, the consul of the
insurgents in the hopeful year 664, Gaius Papius Mutilus, disowned
by his wife to whom he had stolen in disguise and with whom he had
hoped to find an asylum, fell on his sword in Teanum before the
door of his own house.  As to the Samnites, the dictator declared
that Rome would have no rest so long as Samnium existed, and that
the Samnite name must therefore be extirpated from the earth; and,
as he verified these words in terrible fashion on the prisoners
taken before Rome and in Praeneste, so he appears to have also
undertaken a raid for the purpose of laying waste the country,
to have captured Aesernia(16) (674?), and to have converted that
hitherto flourishing and populous region into the desert which it
has since remained.  In the same manner Tuder in Umbria was stormed
by Marcus Crassus.  A longer resistance was offered in Etruria
by Populonium and above all by the impregnable Volaterrae, which
gathered out of the remains of the beaten party an army of four
legions, and stood a two years' siege conducted first by Sulla
in person and then by the former praetor Gaius Carbo, the brother
of the democratic consul, till at length in the third year after
the battle at the Colline gate (675) the garrison capitulated on
condition of free departure.  But in this terrible time neither
military law nor military discipline was regarded; the soldiers
raised a cry of treason and stoned their too compliant general; a
troop of horse sent by the Roman government cut down the garrison
as it withdrew in terms of the capitulation.  The victorious army
was distributed throughout Italy, and all the insecure townships
were furnished with strong garrisons: under the iron hand of the
Sullan officers the last palpitations of the revolutionary and
national opposition slowly died away.

The Provinces

There was still work to be done in the provinces.  Sardinia had
been speedily wrested by Lucius Philippus from the governor of the
revolutionary government Quintus Antonius (672), and Transalpine
Gaul offered little or no resistance; but in Sicily, Spain, and
Africa the cause of the party defeated in Italy seemed still by
no means lost.  Sicily was held for them by the trustworthy governor
Marcus Perpenna.  Quintus Sertorius had the skill to attach to
himself the provincials in Hither Spain, and to form from among the
Romans settled in that quarter a not inconsiderable army, which in
the first instance closed the passes of the Pyrenees: in this he
had given fresh proof that, wherever he was stationed, he was in
his place, and amidst all the incapables of the revolution was the
only man practically useful.  In Africa the governor Hadrianus, who
followed out the work of revolutionizing too thoroughly and began
to give liberty to the slaves, had been, on occasion of a tumult
instigated by the Roman merchants of Utica, attacked in his
official residence and burnt with his attendants (672); nevertheless
the province adhered to the revolutionary government, and Cinna's
son-in-law, the young and able Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus,
was invested with the supreme command there.  Propagandism had
even been carried from thence into the client-states, Numidia
and Mauretania.  Their legitimate rulers, Hiempsal II son of Gauda,
and Bogud son of Bocchus, adhered doubtless to Sulla; but with the
aid of the Cinnans the former had been dethroned by the democratic
pretender Hiarbas, and similar feuds agitated the Mauretanian
kingdom.  The consul Carbo who had fled from Italy tarried on the
island Cossyra (Pantellaria) between Africa and Sicily, at a loss,
apparently, whether he should flee to Egypt or should attempt to
renew the struggle in one of the faithful provinces.

Spain
Sertorius Embarks

Sulla sent to Spain Gaius Annius and Gaius Valerius Flaccus,
the former as governor of Further Spain, the latter as governor
of the province of the Ebro.  They were spared the difficult task
of opening up the passes of the Pyrenees by force, in consequence
of the general who was sent thither by Sertorius having been killed
by one of his officers and his troops having thereafter melted away.
Sertorius, much too weak to maintain an equal struggle, hastily
collected the nearest divisions and embarked at New Carthage--for
what destination he knew not himself, perhaps for the coast of
Africa, or for the Canary Islands--it mattered little whither,
provided only Sulla's arm did not reach him.  Spain then willingly
submitted to the Sullan magistrates (about 673) and Flaccus fought
successfully with the Celts, through whose territory he marched,
and with the Spanish Celtiberians (674).

Sicily

Gnaeus Pompeius was sent as propraetor to Sicily, and, when he
appeared on the coast with 120 sail and six legions, the island was
evacuated by Perpenna without resistance.  Pompeius sent a squadron
thence to Cossyra, which captured the Marian officers sojourning
there.  Marcus Brutus and the others were immediately executed;
but Pompeius had enjoined that the consul Carbo should be brought
before himself at Lilybaeum in order that, unmindful of the
protection accorded to him in a season of peril by that very
man,(17) he might personally hand him over to the executioner (672).

Africa

Having been ordered to go on to Africa, Pompeius with his
army which was certainly far more numerous, defeated the not
inconsiderable forces collected by Ahenobarbus and Hiarbas, and,
declining for the time to be saluted as -imperator-, he at once
gave the signal for assault on the hostile camp.  He thus became
master of the enemy in one day; Ahenobarbus was among the fallen:
with the aid of king Bogud, Hiarbas was seized and slain at Bulla,
and Hiempsal was reinstated in his hereditary kingdom; a great
razzia against the inhabitants of the desert, among whom a number
of Gaetulian tribes recognized as free by Marius were made subject
to Hiempsal, revived in Africa also the fallen repute of the Roman
name: in forty days after the landing of Pompeius in Africa all was
at an end (674?).  The senate instructed him to break up his army--
an implied hint that he was not to be allowed a triumph, to which
as an extraordinary magistrate he could according to precedent make
no claim.  The general murmured secretly, the soldiers loudly; it
seemed for a moment as if the African army would revolt against the
senate and Sulla would have to take the field against his son-in-
law.  But Sulla yielded, and allowed the young man to boast of
being the only Roman who had become a triumphator before he was
a senator (12 March 675); in fact the "Fortunate," not perhaps
without a touch of irony, saluted the youth on his return from
these easy exploits as the "Great."

Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

In the east also, after the embarkation of Sulla in the spring of
671, there had been no cessation of warfare.  The restoration of
the old state of things and the subjugation of individual towns
cost in Asia as in Italy various bloody struggles.  Against the
free city of Mytilene in particular Lucius Lucullus was obliged
at length to bring up troops, after having exhausted all gentler
measures; and even a victory in the open field did not put an end
to the obstinate resistance of the citizens.

Meanwhile the Roman governor of Asia, Lucius Murena, had fallen
into fresh difficulties with king Mithradates.  The latter had
since the peace busied himself in strengthening anew his rule,
which was shaken even in the northern provinces; he had pacified
the Colchians by appointing his able son Mithradates as their
governor; he had then made away with that son, and was now preparing
for an expedition into his Bosporan kingdom.  The assurances of
Archelaus who had meanwhile been obliged to seek an asylum with
Murena,(18) that these preparations were directed against Rome,
induced Murena, under the pretext that Mithradates still kept
possession of Cappadocian frontier districts, to move his troops
towards the Cappadocian Comana and thus to violate the Pontic
frontier (671).  Mithradates contented himself with complaining
to Murena and, when this was in vain, to the Roman government.
In fact commissioners from Sulla made their appearance to dissuade
the governor, but he did not submit; on the contrary he crossed
the Halys and entered on the undisputed territory of Pontus,
whereupon Mithradates resolved to repel force by force.  His general
Gordius had to detain the Roman army till the king came up with
far superior forces and compelled battle; Murena was vanquished
and with great loss driven back over the Roman frontier to Phrygia,
and the Roman garrisons were expelled from all Cappadocia.  Murena
had the effrontery, no doubt, to call himself the victor and to
assume the title of -imperator- on account of these events (672);
but the sharp lesson and a second admonition from Sulla induced
him at last to push the matter no farther; the peace between
Rome and Mithradates was renewed (673).

Second Peace
Capture of Mytilene

This foolish feud, while it lasted, had postponed the reduction
of the Mytilenaeans; it was only after a long siege by land and
by sea, in which the Bithynian fleet rendered good service, that
Murena's successor succeeded in taking the city by storm (675).

General Peace

The ten years' revolution and insurrection were at an end in the
west and in the east; the state had once more unity of government
and peace without and within.  After the terrible convulsions of
the last years even this rest was a relief.  Whether it was to
furnish more than a mere relief; whether the remarkable man, who
had succeeded in the difficult task of vanquishing the public foe
and in the more difficult work of subduing the revolution, would
be able to meet satisfactorily the most difficult task of all--
the re-establishing of social and political order shaken to its
very foundations--could not but be speedily decided




Chapter X

The Sullan Constitution

The Restoration

About the time when the first pitched battle was fought between
Romans and Romans, in the night of the 6th July 671, the venerable
temple, which had been erected by the kings, dedicated by the
youthful republic, and spared by the storms of five hundred years--
the temple of the Roman Jupiter in the Capitol--perished in the flames.
It was no augury, but it was an image of the state of the Roman
constitution.  This, too, lay in ruins and needed reconstruction.
The revolution was no doubt vanquished, but the victory was far
from implying as a matter of course the restoration of the old
government.  The mass of the aristocracy certainly was of opinion
that now, after the death of the two revolutionary consuls, it would
be sufficient to make arrangements for the ordinary supplemental
election and to leave it to the senate to take such steps as should
seem farther requisite for the rewarding of the victorious army, for
the punishment of the most guilty revolutionists, and possibly also
for the prevention of similar outbreaks.  But Sulla, in whose hands
the victory had concentrated for the moment all power, formed a
more correct judgment of affairs and of men.  The aristocracy of
Rome in its best epoch had not risen above an adherence--partly
noble and partly narrow--to traditional forms; how should the clumsy
collegiate government of this period be in a position to carry out
with energy and thoroughness a comprehensive reform of the state?
And at the present moment, when the last crisis had swept away
almost all the leading men of the senate, the vigour and intelligence
requisite for such an enterprise were less than ever to be found there.
How thoroughly useless was the pure aristocratic blood, and how little
doubt Sulla had as to its worthlessness, is shown by the fact that,
with the exception of Quintus Metellus who was related to him by marriage,
he selected all his instruments out of what was previously the middle
party and the deserters from the democratic camp--such as Lucius
Flaccus, Lucius Philippus, Quintus Ofella, Gnaeus Pompeius.
Sulla was as much in earnest about the re-establishment of the old
constitution as the most vehement aristocratic emigrant; he understood
however, not perhaps to the full extent--for how in that case could
he have put hand to the work at all?--but better at any rate than
his party, the enormous difficulties which attended this work of
restoration.  Comprehensive concessions so far as concession was
possible without affecting the essence of oligarchy, and the
establishment of an energetic system of repression and prevention,
were regarded by him as unavoidable; and he saw clearly that the senate
as it stood would refuse or mutilate every concession, and would
parliamentarily ruin every systematic reconstruction.  If Sulla had
already after the Sulpician revolution carried out what he deemed
necessary in both respects without asking much of their advice, he
was now determined, under circumstances of far more severe and intense
excitement, to restore the oligarchy--not with the aid, but in spite,
of the oligarchs--by his own hand.

Sulla Regent of Rome

Sulla, however, was not now consul as he had been then, but was
furnished merely with proconsular, that is to say, purely military
power: he needed an authority keeping as near as possible to
constitutional forms, but yet extraordinary, in order to impose his
reform on friends and foes.  In a letter to the senate he announced
to them that it seemed to him indispensable that they should place
the regulation of the state in the hands of a single man equipped
with unlimited plenitude of power, and that he deemed himself qualified
to fulfil this difficult task.  This proposal, disagreeable as it was
to many, was under the existing circumstances a command.  By direction
of the senate its chief, the interrex Lucius Valerius Flaccus the
father, as interim holder of the supreme power, submitted to the
burgesses the proposal that the proconsul Lucius Cornelius Sulla
should receive for the past a supplementary approval of all the
official acts performed by him as consul and proconsul, and should
for the future be empowered to adjudicate without appeal on the life
and property of the burgesses, to deal at his pleasure with the
state-domains, to shift at discretion the boundaries of Rome, of
Italy, and of the state, to dissolve or establish urban communities
in Italy, to dispose of the provinces and dependent states, to confer
the supreme -imperium- instead of the people and to nominate proconsuls
and propraetors, and lastly to regulate the state for the future by
means of new laws; that it should be left to his own judgment to
determine when he had fulfilled his task and might deem it time to
resign this extraordinary magistracy; and, in fine, that during its
continuance it should depend on his pleasure whether the ordinary
supreme magistracy should subsist side by side with his own or should
remain in abeyance.  As a matter of course, the proposal was adopted
without opposition (Nov. 672); and now the new master of the state,
who hitherto had as proconsul avoided entering the capital, appeared
for the first time within the walls of Rome.  This new office derived
its name from the dictatorship, which had been practically abolished
since the Hannibalic war;(1) but, as besides his armed retinue he was
preceded by twice as many lictors as the dictator of earlier times,
this new "dictatorship for the making of laws and the regulation of
the commonwealth," as its official title ran, was in fact altogether
different from the earlier magistracy which had been limited in point
of duration and of powers, had not excluded appeal to the burgesses,
and had not annulled the ordinary magistracy.  It much more resembled
that of the -decemviri legibus scribundis-, who likewise came forward
as an extraordinary government with unlimited fulness of powers
superseding the ordinary magistracy, and practically at least
administered their office as one which was unlimited in point of
time.  Or, we should rather say, this new office, with its absolute
power based on a decree of the people and restrained by no set term
or colleague, was no other than the old monarchy, which in fact just
rested on the free engagement of the burgesses to obey one of their
number as absolute lord.  It was urged even by contemporaries in
vindication of Sulla that a king is better than a bad constitution,(2)
and presumably the title of dictator was only chosen to indicate
that, as the former dictatorship implied a reassumptionwith various
limitations,(3) so this new dictatorship involved a complete
reassumption, of the regal power.  Thus, singularly enough,
the course of Sulla here also coincided with that on which Gaius
Gracchus had entered with so wholly different a design.  In this
respect too the conservative party had to borrow from its opponents;
the protector of the oligarchic constitution had himself to
come forward as a tyrant, in order to avert the ever-impending
-tyrannis-.  There was not a little of defeat in this last victory
of the oligarchy.

Executions

Sulla had not sought and had not desired the difficult and dreadful
labour of the work of restoration; out, as no other choice was left
to him but either to leave it to utterly incapable hands or to
undertake it in person, he set himself to it with remorseless energy.
First of all a settlement had to be effected in respect to the guilty.
Sulla was personally inclined to pardon.  Sanguine as he was in
temperament, he could doubtless break forth into violent rage, and
well might those beware who saw his eye gleam and his cheeks colour;
but the chronic vindictiveness, which characterized Marius in the
embitterment of his old age, was altogether foreign to Sulla's easy
disposition.  Not only had he borne himself with comparatively great
moderation after the revolution of 666;(4) even the second revolution,
which had perpetrated so fearful outrages and had affected him in
person so severely, had not disturbed his equilibrium.  At the same
time that the executioner was dragging the bodies of his friends
through the streets of the capital, he had sought to save the life of
the blood-stained Fimbria, and, when the latter died by his own hand,
had given orders for his decent burial.  On landing in Italy he had
earnestly offered to forgive and to forget, and no one who came to
make his peace had been rejected.  Even after the first successes
he had negotiated in this spirit with Lucius Scipio; it was the
revolutionary party, which had not only broken off these negotiations,
but had subsequently, at the last moment before their downfall,
resumed the massacres afresh and more fearfully than ever, and had
in fact conspired with the inveterate foes of their country for the
destruction of the city of Rome.  The cup was now full.  By virtue
of his new official authority Sulla, immediately after assuming the
regency, outlawed as enemies of their country all the civil and
military officials who had taken an active part in favour of the
revolution after the convention with Scipio (which according to
Sulla's assertion was validly concluded), and such of the other
burgesses as had in any marked manner aided its cause.  Whoever
killed one of these outlaws was not only exempt from punishment like
an executioner duly fulfilling his office, but also obtained for the
execution a compensation of 12,000 -denarii- (480 pounds); any one on
the contrary who befriended an outlaw, even the nearest relative, was
liable to the severest punishment.  The property of the proscribed
was forfeited to the state like the spoil of an enemy; their children
and grandchildren were excluded from a political career, and yet,
so far as they were of senatorial rank, were bound to undertake their
share of senatorial burdens.  The last enactments also applied to the
estates and the descendants of those who had fallen in conflict for
the revolution--penalties which went even beyond those enjoined by
the earliest law in the case of such as had borne arms against their
fatherland.  The most terrible feature in this system of terror was
the indefiniteness of the proposed categories, against which there was
immediate remonstrance in the senate, and which Sulla himself sought
to remedy by directing the names of the proscribed to be publicly
posted up and fixing the 1st June 673 as the final term for closing
the lists of proscription.

Proscription-Lists

Much as this bloody roll, swelling from day to day and amounting
at last to 4700 names,(5) excited the just horror of the multitude,
it at any rate checked in some degree the mere caprice of the
executioners.  It was not at least to the personal resentment of
the regent that the mass of these victims were sacrificed; his furious
hatred was directed solely against the Marians, the authors of the
hideous massacres of 667 and 672.  By his command the tomb of the
victor of Aquae Sextiae was broken open and his ashes were scattered
in the Anio, the monuments of his victories over Africans and Germans
were overthrown, and, as death had snatched himself and his son from
Sulla's vengeance, his adopted nephew Marcus Marius Gratidianus,
who had been twice praetor and was a great favourite with the Roman
burgesses, was executed amid the most cruel tortures at the tomb
of Catulus, who most deserved to be regretted of all the Marian
victims.  In other cases also death had already swept away the most
notable of his opponents: of the leaders there survived only Gaius
Norbanus, who laid hands on himself at Rhodes, while the -ecclesia-
was deliberating on his surrender; Lucius Scipio, for whom his
insignificance and probably also his noble birth procured indulgence
and permission to end his days in peace at his retreat in Massilia;
and Quintus Sertorius, who was wandering about as an exile on the
coast of Mauretania.  But yet the heads of slaughtered senators were
piled up at the Servilian Basin, at the point where the -Vicus
Jugarius- opened into the Forum, where the dictator had ordered them
to be publicly exposed; and among men of the second and third rank in
particular death reaped a fearful harvest.  In addition to those who
were placed on the list for their services in or on behalf of the
revolutionary army with little discrimination, sometimes on account of
money advanced to one of its officers or on account of relations of
hospitality formed with such an one, the retaliation fell specially on
those capitalists who had sat in judgment on the senators and had
speculated in Marian confiscations--the "hoarders"; about 1600 of
the equites, as they were called,(6) were inscribed on the proscription-
list.  In like manner the professional accusers, the worst scourge of
the nobility, who made it their trade to bring men of the senatorial
order before the equestrian courts, had now to suffer for it--"how
comes it to pass," an advocate soon after asked, "that they have left
to us the courts, when they were putting to death the accusers and
judges?" The most savage and disgraceful passions raged without
restraint for many months throughout Italy.  In the capital a Celtic
band was primarily charged with the executions, and Sullan soldiers
and subaltern officers traversed for the same purpose the different
districts of Italy; but every volunteer was also welcome, and the
rabble high and low pressed forward not only to earn the rewards
of murder, but also to gratify their own vindictive or covetous
dispositions under the mantle of political prosecution.  It sometimes
happened that the assassination did not follow, but preceded, the
placing of the name on the list of the proscribed.  One example shows
the way in which these executions took place.  At Larinum, a town of
new burgesses and favourable to Marian views, one Statius Albius
Oppianicus, who had fled to Sulla's headquarters to avoid a charge
of murder, made his appearance after the victory as commissioner of
the regent, deposed the magistrates of the town, installed himself
and his friends in their room, and caused the person who had
threatened to accuse him, along with his nearest relatives and
friends, to be outlawed and killed.  Countless persons--including
not a few decided adherents of the oligarchy--thus fell as the victims
of private hostility or of their own riches: the fearful confusion,
and the culpable indulgence which Sulla displayed in this as in every
instance towards those more closely connected with him, prevented
any punishment even of the ordinary crimes that were perpetrated
amidst the disorder.

Confiscations

The confiscated property was dealt with in a similar way.  Sulla
from political considerations sought to induce the respectable
burgesses to take part in its purchase; a great portion of them,
moreover, voluntarily pressed forward, and none more zealously than
the young Marcus Crassus.  Under the existing circumstances the
utmost depreciation was inevitable; indeed, to some extent it was the
necessary result of the Roman plan of selling the property confiscated
by the state for a round sum payable in ready money.  Moreover, the
regent did not forget himself; while his wife Metella more especially
and other persons high and low closely connected with him, even
freedmen and boon-companions, were sometimes allowed to purchase without
competition, sometimes had the purchase-money wholly or partially
remitted.  One of his freedmen, for instance, is said to have
purchased a property of 6,000,000 sesterces (60,000 pounds) for 2000
(20 pounds), and one of his subalterns is said to have acquired by
such speculations an estate of 10,000,000 sesterces (100,000 pounds).
The indignation was great and just; even during Sulla's regency an
advocate asked whether the nobility had waged civil war solely for the
purpose of enriching their freedmen and slaves.  But in spite of this
depreciation the whole proceeds of the confiscated estates amounted to
not less than 350,000,000 sesterces (3,500,000 pounds), which gives
an approximate idea of the enormous extent of these confiscations
falling chiefly on the wealthiest portion of the burgesses.  It was
altogether a fearful punishment.  There was no longer any process or
any pardon; mute terror lay like a weight of lead on the land, and
free speech was silenced in the market-place alike of the capital and
of the country-town.  The oligarchic reign of terror bore doubtless a
different stamp from that of the revolution; while Marius had glutted
his personal vengeance in the blood of his enemies, Sulla seemed
to account terrorism in the abstract, if we may so speak, a thing
necessary to the introduction of the new despotism, and to prosecute
and make others prosecute the work of massacre almost with indifference.
But the reign of terror presented an appearance all the more horrible,
when it proceeded from the conservative side and was in some measure
devoid of passion; the commonwealth seemed all the more irretrievably
lost, when the frenzy and the crime on both sides were equally balanced.

Maintenance of the Burgess-Rights Previously Conferred

In regulating the relations of Italy and of the capital, Sulla--
although he otherwise in general treated as null all state-acts done
during the revolution except in the transaction of current business--
firmly adhered to the principle, which it had laid down, that every
burgess of an Italian community was by that very fact a burgess also
of Rome; the distinctions between burgesses and Italian allies,
between old burgesses with better, and new burgesses with more
restricted, rights, were abolished, and remained so.  In the case
of the freedmen alone the unrestricted right of suffrage was again
withdrawn, and for them the old state of matters was restored.
To the aristocratic ultras this might seem a great concession;
Sulla perceived that it was necessary to wrest these mighty levers
out of the hands of the revolutionary chiefs, and that the rule
of the oligarchy was not materially endangered by increasing
the number of the burgesses.

Punishments Inflicted on Particular Communities

But with this concession in principle was combined a most rigid
inquisition, conducted by special commissioners with the co-operation
of the garrisons distributed throughout Italy, in respect to
particular communities in all districts of the land.  Several towns
were rewarded; for instance Brundisium, the first community which
had joined Sulla, now obtained the exemption from customs so
important for such a seaport; more were punished.  The less guilty
were required to pay fines, to pull down their walls, to raze their
citadels; in the case of those whose opposition had been most
obstinate the regent confiscated a part of their territory, in some
cases even the whole of it--as it certainly might be regarded in law as
forfeited, whether they were to be treated as burgess-communities which
had borne arms against their fatherland, or as allied states which had
waged war with Rome contrary to their treaties of perpetual peace.
In this case all the dispossessed burgesses--but these only--were
deprived of their municipal, and at the same time of the Roman,
franchise, receiving in return the lowest Latin rights.(7)  Sulla
thus avoided furnishing the opposition with a nucleus in Italian
subject-communities of inferior rights; the homeless dispossessed
of necessity were soon lost in the mass of the proletariate.
In Campania not only was the democratic colony of Capua done away
and its domain given back to the state, as was naturally to be
expected, but the island of Aenaria (Ischia) was also, probably
about this time, withdrawn from the community of Neapolis.  In Latium
the whole territory of the large and wealthy city of Praeneste and
presumably of Norba also was confiscated, as was likewise that of
Spoletium in Umbria.  Sulmo in the Paelignian district was even
razed.  But the iron arm of the regent fell with especial weight
on the two regions which had offered a serious resistance up to
the end and even after the battle at the Colline gate--Etruria and
Samnium.  There a number of the most considerable communes, such
as Florentia, Faesulae, Arretium, Volaterrae, were visited with total
confiscation.  Of the fate of Samnium we have already spoken; there
was no confiscation there, but the land was laid waste for ever, its
flourishing towns, even the former Latin colony of Aesernia, were left
in ruins, and the country was placed on the same footing with the
Bruttian and Lucanian regions.

Assignations to the Soldiers

These arrangements as to the property of the Italian soil placed
on the one hand those Roman domain-lands which had been handed
over in usufruct to the former allied communities and now on their
dissolution reverted to the Roman government, and on the other hand
the confiscated territories of the communities incurring punishment,
at the disposal of the regent; and he employed them for the purpose
of settling thereon the soldiers of the victorious army.  Most of these
new settlements were directed towards Etruria, as for instance to
Faesulae and Arretium, others to Latium and Campania, where Praeneste
and Pompeii among other places became Sullan colonies.  To repeople
Samnium was, as we have said, no part of the regent's design.
A great part of these assignations took place after the Gracchan
mode, so that the settlers were attached to an already-existing urban
community.  The comprehensiveness of this settlement is shown by the
number of land-allotments distributed, which is stated at 120,000;
while yet some portions of land withal were otherwise applied, as
in the case of the lands bestowed on the temple of Diana at Mount
Tifata; others, such as the Volaterran domain and a part of the
Arretine, remained undistributed; others in fine, according to
the old abuse legally forbidden(8) but now reviving, were taken
possession of on the part of Sulla's favourites by the right of
occupation.  The objects which Sulla aimed at in this colonization
were of a varied kind.  In the first place, he thereby redeemed
the pledge given to his soldiers.  Secondly, he in so doing adopted
the idea, in which the reform-party and the moderate conservatives
concurred, and in accordance with which he had himself as early
as 666 arranged the establishment of a number of colonies--
the idea namely of augmenting the number of the small agricultural
proprietors in Italy by a breaking up of the larger possessions
on the part of the government; how seriously he had this at heart
is shown by the renewed prohibition of the throwing together of
allotments.  Lastly and especially, he saw in these settled
soldiers as it were standing garrisons, who would protect his new
constitution along with their own right of property.  For this
reason, where the whole territory was not confiscated, as at Pompeii,
the colonists were not amalgamated with the urban-community, but
the old burgesses and the colonists were constituted as two bodies
of burgesses associated within the same enclosing wall.  In other
respects these colonial foundations were based, doubtless, like the
older ones, on a decree of the people, but only indirectly, in so
far as the regent constituted them by virtue of the clause of the
Valerian law to that effect; in reality they originated from the
ruler's plenitude of power, and so far recalled the freedom with
which the former regal authority disposed of the state-property.
But, in so far as the contrast between the soldier and the burgess,
which was in other instances done away by the very sending out of
the soldiers or colonists, was intended to remain, and did remain,
in force in the Sullan colonies even after their establishment,
and these colonists formed, as it were, the standing array of the
senate, they are not incorrectly designated, in contradistinction
to the older ones, as military colonies.

The Cornelian Freedmen in Rome

Akin to this practical constituting of a standing army for the senate
was the measure by which the regent selected from the slaves of the
proscribed upwards of 10,000 of the youngest and most vigorous men,
and manumitted them in a body.  These new Cornelians, whose civil
existence was linked to the legal validity of the institutions of their
patron, were designed to be a sort of bodyguard for the oligarchy and
to help it to command the city populace, on which, indeed, in the
absence of a garrison everything in the capital now primarily depended.

Abolition of the Gracchan Institutions

These extraordinary supports on which the regent made the oligarchy
primarily to rest, weak and ephemeral as they doubtless might appear
even to their author, were yet its only possible buttresses, unless
expedients were to be resorted to--such as the formal institution
of a standing army in Rome and other similar measures--which would
have put an end to the oligarchy far sooner than the attacks of
demagogues.  The permanent foundation of the ordinary governing
power of the oligarchy of course could not but be the senate,
with a power so increased and so concentrated that it presented a
superiority to its non-organized opponents at every single point
of attack.  The system of compromises followed for forty years was
at an end.  The Gracchan constitution, still spared in the first
Sullan reform of 666, was now utterly set aside.  Since the time of
Gaius Gracchus the government had conceded, as it were, the right of
-'emeute- to the proletariate of the capital, and bought it off by
regular distributions of corn to the burgesses domiciled there;
Sulla abolished these largesses.  Gaius Gracchus had organized and
consolidated the order of capitalists by the letting of the tenths
and customs of the province of Asia in Rome; Sulla abolished the
system of middlemen, and converted the former contributions of the
Asiatics into fixed taxes, which were assessed on the several
districts according to the valuation-rolls drawn up for the purpose
of gathering in the arrears.(9)  Gaius Gracchus had by entrusting
the posts of jurymen to men of equestrian census procured for
the capitalist class an indirect share in administering and in
governing, which proved itself not seldom stronger than the official
adminis-tration and government; Sulla abolished the equestrian and
restored the senatorial courts.  Gaius Gracchus or at any rate the
Gracchan period had conceded to the equites a special place at the
popular festivals, such as the senators had for long possessed;(10)
Sulla abolished it and relegated the equites to the plebeian benches.(11)
The equestrian order, created as such by Gaius Gracchus, was deprived
of its political existence by Sulla.  The senate was to exercise
the supreme power in legislation, administration, and jurisdiction,
unconditionally, indivisibly, and permanently, and was to be
distinguished also by outward tokens not merely as a privileged,
but as the only privileged, order.

Reorganization of the Senate
Its Complement Filled Up by Extraordinary Election
Admission to the Senate through the Quaestorship
Abolition of the Censorial Supervision of the Senate

For this purpose the governing board had, first of all, to have its
ranks filled up and to be itself placed on a footing of independence.
The numbers of the senators had been fearfully reduced by the recent
crises.  Sulla no doubt now gave to those who were exiled by the
equestrian courts liberty to return, for instance to the consular
Publius Rutilius Rufus,(12) who however made no use of the permission,
and to Gaius Cotta the friend of Drusus;(13) but this made only slight
amends for the gaps which the revolutionary and reactionary reigns
of terror had created in the ranks of the senate.  Accordingly by
Sulla's directions the senate had its complement extraordinarily made
up by about 300 new senators, whom the assembly of the tribes had
to nominate from among men of equestrian census, and whom they
selected, as may be conceived, chiefly from the younger men of the
senatorial houses on the one hand, and from Sullan officers and
others brought into prominence by the last revolution on the other.
For the future also the mode of admission to the senate was
regulated anew and placed on an essentially different basis.
As the constitution had hitherto stood, men entered the senate
either through the summons of the censors, which was the proper and
ordinary way, or through the holding of one of the three curule
magistracies--the consulship, the praetorship, or the aedileship--
to which since the passing of the Ovinian law a seat and vote in
the senate had been de jure attached.(14)  The holding of an inferior
magistracy, of the tribunate or the quaestorship, gave doubtless a
claim de facto to a place in the senate--inasmuch as the censorial
selection especially turned towards the men who had held such
offices--but by no means a reversion de jure.  Of these two modes
of admission, Sulla abolished the former by setting aside--at least
practically--the censorship, and altered the latter to the effect
that the right of admission to the senate was attached to the
quaestorship instead of the aedileship, and at the same time
the number of quaestors to be annually nominated was raised to
twenty.(15)  The prerogative hitherto legally pertaining to the
censors, although practically no longer exercised in its original
serious sense--of deleting any senator from the roll, with a
statement of the reasons for doing so, at the revisals which
took place every five years (16)--likewise fell into abeyance for
the future; the irremoveable character which had hitherto de facto
belonged to the senators was thus finally fixed by Sulla.
The total number of senators, which hitherto had presumably not
much exceeded the old normal number of 300 and often perhaps had
not even reached it, was by these means considerably augmented,
perhaps on an average doubled(17)--an augmentation which was rendered
necessary by the great increase of the duties of the senate through
the transference to it of the functions of jurymen.  As, moreover,
both the extraordinarily admitted senators and the quaestors were
nominated by the -comitia tributa-, the senate, hitherto resting
indirectly on the election of the people,(18) was now based throughout
on direct popular election; and thus made as close an approach to a
representative government as was compatible with the nature of the
oligarchy and the notions of antiquity generally.  The senate had in
course of time been converted from a corporation intended merely to
advise the magistrates into a board commanding the magistrates and
self-governing; it was only a consistent advance in the same direction,
when the right of nominating and cancelling senators originally
belonging to the magistrates was withdrawn from them, and the senate
was placed on the same legal basis on which the magistrates' power
itself rested.  The extravagant prerogative of the censors to revise
the list of the senate and to erase or add names at pleasure was
in reality incompatible with an organized oligarchic constitution.
As provision was now made for a sufficient regular recruiting of its
ranks by the election of the quaestors, the censorial revisions became
superfluous; and by their abeyance the essential principle at the
bottom of every oligarchy, the irremoveable character and life-tenure
of the members of the ruling order who obtained seat and vote,
was definitively consolidated.

Regulations As to the Burgesses

In respect to legislation Sulla contented himself with reviving the
regulations made in 666, and securing to the senate the legislative
initiative, which had long belonged to it practically, by legal
enactment at least as against the tribunes.  The burgess-body
remained formally sovereign; but so far as its primary assemblies
were concerned, while it seemed to the regent necessary carefully
to preserve the form, he was still more careful to prevent any real
activity on their part.  Sulla dealt even with the franchise itself
in the most contemptuous manner; he made no difficulty either in
conceding it to the new burgess-communities, or in bestowing it on
Spaniards and Celts en masse; in fact, probably not without design,
no steps were taken at all for the adjustment of the burgess-roll,
which nevertheless after so violent revolutions stood in urgent
need of a revision, if the government was still at all in earnest
with the legal privileges attaching to it.  The legislative functions
of the comitia, however, were not directly restricted; there was
no need in fact for doing so, for in consequence of the better-
secured initiative of the senate the people could not readily
against the will of the government intermeddle with administration,
finance, or criminal jurisdiction, and its legislative co-operation
was once more reduced in substance to the right of giving assent to
alterations of the constitution.

Co-optation Restored in the Priestly Colleges
Regulating of the Qualifications for Office

Of greater moment was the participation of the burgesses in the
elections--a participation, with which they seemed not to be able to
dispense without disturbing more than Sulla's superficial restoration
could or would disturb.  The interferences of the movement party in
the sacerdotal elections were set aside; not only the Domitian law
of 650, which transferred the election of the supreme priesthoods
generally to the people,(19) but also the similar older enactments
as to the -Pontifex Maximus- and the -Curio Maximus-(20) were
cancelled by Sulla, and the colleges of priests received back the
right of self-completion in its original absoluteness.  In the case
of elections to the offices of state, the mode hitherto pursued was
on the whole retained; except in so far as the new regulation of
the military command to be mentioned immediately certainly involved
as its consequence a material restriction of the powers of the
burgesses, and indeed in some measure transferred the right of
bestowing the appointment of generals from the burgesses to the
senate.  It does not even appear that Sulla now resumed the previously
attempted restoration of the Servian voting-arrangement;(21) whether
it was that he regarded the particular composition of the voting-
divisions as altogether a matter of indifference, or whether it was
that this older arrangement seemed to him to augment the dangerous
influence of the capitalists.  Only the qualifications were restored
and partially raised.  The limit of age requisite for the holding
of each office was enforced afresh; as was also the enactment that
every candidate for the consulship should have previously held the
praetorship, and every candidate for the praetorship should have
previously held the quaestorship, whereas the aedileship was
allowed to be passed over.  The various attempts that had been
recently made to establish a -tyrannis- under the form of a
consulship continued for several successive years led to special
rigour in dealing with this abuse; and it was enacted that at
least two years should elapse between the holding of one magistracy
and the holding of another, and at least ten years should elapse
before the same office could be held a second time.  In this
latter enactment the earlier ordinance of 412 (22) was revived,
instead of the absolute prohibition of all re-election to the
consulship, which had been the favourite idea of the most recent
ultra-oligarchical epoch.(23)  On the whole, however, Sulla left
the elections to take their course, and sought merely to fetter the
power of the magistrates in such a way that--let the incalculable
caprice of the comitia call to office whomsoever it might--the person
elected should not be in a position to rebel against the oligarchy.

Weakening of the Tribunate of the People

The supreme magistrates of the state were at this period practically
the three colleges of the tribunes of the people, the consuls and
praetors, and the censors.  They all emerged from the Sullan
restoration with materially diminished rights, more especially
the tribunician office, which appeared to the regent an instrument
indispensable doubtless for senatorial government, but yet--
as generated by revolution and having a constant tendency to
generate fresh revolutions in its turn--requiring to be rigorously
and permanently shackled.  The tribunician authority had arisen out
of the right to annul the official acts of the magistrates by veto,
and, eventually, to fine any one who should oppose that right and to
take steps for his farther punishment; this was still left to the
tribunes, excepting that a heavy fine, destroying as a rule a man's
civil existence, was imposed on the abuse of the right of intercession.
The further prerogative of the tribune to have dealings with the
people at pleasure, partly for the purpose of bringing up accusations
and especially of calling former magistrates to account at the bar
of the people, partly for the purpose of submitting laws to the vote,
had been the lever by which the Gracchi, Saturninus, and Sulpicius
had revolutionized the state; it was not abolished, but its exercise
was probably made dependent on a permission to be previously requested
from the senate.(24)  Lastly it was added that the holding of
the tribunate should in future disqualify for the undertaking of
a higher office--an enactment which, like many other points in Sulla's
restoration, once more reverted to the old patrician maxims, and,
just as in the times before the admission of the plebeians to
the civil magistracies, declared the tribunate and the curule
offices to be mutually incompatible.  In this way the legislator
of the oligarchy hoped to check tribunician demagogism and to keep
all ambitious and aspiring men aloof from the tribunate, but to
retain it as an instrument of the senate both for mediating
between it and the burgesses, and, should circumstances require,
for keeping in check the magistrates; and, as the authority of the
king and afterwards of the republican magistrates over the burgesses
scarcely anywhere comes to light so clearly as in the principle
that they exclusively had the right of addressing the people,
so the supremacy of the senate, now first legally established,
is most distinctly apparent in this permission which the leader
of the people had to ask from the senate for every transaction
with his constituents.

Limitation of the Supreme Magistracy
Regulation of the Consular and Praetorian Functions before--
The Time of Sulla

The consulship and praetorship also, although viewed by the
aristocratic regenerator of Rome with a more favourable eye than
the tribunate liable in itself to be regarded with suspicion, by
no means escaped that distrust towards its own instruments which is
throughout characteristic of oligarchy.  They were restricted with
more tenderness in point of form, but in a way very sensibly felt.
Sulla here began with the partition of functions.  At the beginning
of this period the arrangement in that respect stood as follows.
As formerly there had devolved on the two consuls the collective
functions of the supreme magistracy, so there still devolved on them
all those official duties for which distinct functionaries had not
been by law established.  This latter course had been adopted with
the administration of justice in the capital, in which the consuls,
according to a rule inviolably adhered to, might not interfere, and
with the transmarine provinces then existing--Sicily, Sardinia, and
the two Spains--in which, while the consul might no doubt exercise
his -imperium-, he did so only exceptionally.  In the ordinary course
of things, accordingly, the six fields of special jurisdiction--
the two judicial appointments in the capital and the four transmarine
provinces--were apportioned among the six praetors, while there devolved
on the two consuls, by virtue of their general powers, the management
of the non-judicial business of the capital and the military command
in the continental possessions.  Now as this field of general powers
was thus doubly occupied, the one consul in reality remained at the
disposal of the government; and in ordinary times accordingly those
eight supreme annual magistrates fully, and in fact amply, sufficed.
For extraordinary cases moreover power was reserved on the one
hand to conjoin the non-military functions, and on the other hand
to prolong the military powers beyond the term of their expiry
(-prorogare-).  It was not unusual to commit the two judicial offices
to the same praetor, and to have the business of the capital, which
in ordinary circumstances had to be transacted by the consuls,
managed by the -praetor urbanus-; whereas, as far as possible, the
combination of several commands in the same hand was judiciously
avoided.  For this case in reality a remedy was provided by the
rule that there was no interregnum in the military -imperium-, so
that, although it had its legal term, it yet continued after the
arrival of that term de jure, until the successor appeared and
relieved his predecessor of the command; or--which is the same thing--
the commanding consul or praetor after the expiry of his term of
office, if a successor did not appear, might continue to act, and was
bound to do so, in the consul's or praetor's stead.  The influence
of the senate on this apportionment of functions consisted in its
having by use and wont the power of either giving effect to the
ordinary rule--so that the six praetors allotted among themselves
the six special departments and the consuls managed the continental
non-judicial business--or prescribing some deviation from it; it
might assign to the consul a transmarine command of especial importance
at the moment, or include an extraordinary military or judicial
commission--such as the command of the fleet or an important criminal
inquiry--among the departments to be distributed, and might arrange
the further cumulations and extensions of term thereby rendered
necessary.  In this case, however, it was simply the demarcation of
the respective consular and praetorian functions on each occasion
which belonged to the senate, not the designation of the persons to
assume the particular office; the latter uniformly took place by
agreement among the magistrates concerned or by lot.  The burgesses
in the earlier period were doubtless resorted to for the purpose
of legitimising by special decree of the community the practical
prolongation of command that was involved in the non-arrival of
relief;(25) but this was required rather by the spirit than by the
letter of the constitution, and soon the burgesses ceased from
intervention in the matter.  In the course of the seventh century
there were gradually added to the six special departments already
existing six others, viz. the five new governorships of Macedonia,
Africa, Asia, Narbo, and Cilicia, and the presidency of the standing
commission respecting exactions.(26)  With the daily extending sphere
of action of the Roman government, moreover, it was a case of more
and more frequent occurrence, that the supreme magistrates were
called to undertake extraordinary military or judicial commissions.
Nevertheless the number of the ordinary supreme annual magistrates
was not enlarged; and there thus devolved on eight magistrates to
be annually nominated--apart from all else--at least twelve special
departments to be annually occupied.  Of course it was no mere
accident, that this deficiency was not covered once for all by
the creation of new praetorships.  According to the letter of
the constitution all the supreme magistrates were to be nominated
annually by the burgesses; according to the new order or rather
disorder--under which the vacancies that arose were filled up mainly
by prolonging the term of office, and a second year was as a rule
added by the senate to the magistrates legally serving for one year,
but might also at discretion be refused--the most important and
most lucrative places in the state were filled up no longer by the
burgesses, but by the senate out of a list of competitors formed by
the burgess-elections.  Since among these positions the transmarine
commands were especially sought after as being the most lucrative,
it was usual to entrust a transmarine command on the expiry of
their official year to those magistrates whom their office confined
either in law or at any rate in fact to the capital, that is, to the
two praetors administering justice in the city and frequently also
to the consuls; a course which was compatible with the nature of
prorogation, since the official authority of supreme magistrates
acting in Rome and in the provinces respectively, although differently
entered on, was not in strict state-law different in kind.

Regulation of Their Functions by Sulla
Separation of the Political and Military Authority
Cisalpine Gaul Erected into a Province

Such was the state of things which Sulla found existing, and which
formed the basis of his new arrangement.  Its main principles were,
a complete separation between the political authority which governed
in the burgess-districts and the military authority which governed in
the non-burgess-districts, and an uniform extension of the duration of
the supreme magistracy from one year to two, the first of which was
devoted to civil, and the second to military affairs.  Locally the
civil and the military authority had certainly been long separated
by the constitution, and the former ended at the -pomerium-, where
the latter began; but still the same man held the supreme political
and the supreme military power united in his hand.  In future the
consul and praetor were to deal with the senate and burgesses, the
proconsul and propraetor were to command the army; but all military
power was cut off by law from the former, and all political action
from the latter.  This primarily led to the political separation of
the region of Northern Italy from Italy proper.  Hitherto they had
stood doubtless in a national antagonism, inasmuch as Northern Italy
was inhabited chiefly by Ligurians and Celts, Central and Southern
Italy by Italians; but, in a political and administrative point of
view, the whole continental territory of the Roman state from the
Straits to the Alps including the Illyrian possessions--burgess,
Latin, and non-Italian communities without exception--was in the
ordinary course of things under the administration of the supreme
magistrates who were acting in Rome, as in fact her colonial
foundations extended through all this territory.  According to Sulla's
arrangement Italy proper, the northern boundary of which was at the
same time changed from the Aesis to the Rubico, was--as a region now
inhabited without exception by Roman citizens--made subject to the
ordinary Roman authorities; and it became one of the fundamental
principles of Roman state-law, that no troops and no commandant
should ordinarily be stationed in this district.  The Celtic
country south of the Alps on the other hand, in which a military
command could not be dispensed with on account of the continued
incursions of the Alpine tribes, was constituted a distinct
governorship after the model of the older transmarine commands.(27)

Lastly, as the number of praetors to be nominated yearly was raised
from six to eight, the new arrangement of the duties was such, that
the ten chief magistrates to be nominated yearly devoted themselves,
during their first year of office, as consuls or praetors to
the business of the capital--the two consuls to government and
administration, two of the praetors to the administration of civil
law, the remaining six to the reorganized administration of criminal
justice--and, during their second year of office, were as proconsuls
or propraetors invested with the command in one of the ten
governorships: Sicily, Sardinia, the two Spains, Macedonia, Asia,
Africa, Narbo, Cilicia, and Italian Gaul.  The already-mentioned
augmentation of the number of quaestors by Sulla to twenty was
likewise connected with this arrangement.(28)

Better Arrangement of Business
Increase of the Power of the Senate

By this plan, in the first instance, a clear and fixed rule was
substituted for the irregular mode of distributing offices hitherto
adopted, a mode which invited all manner of vile manoeuvres and
intrigues; and, secondly, the excesses of magisterial authority were
as far as possible obviated and the influence of the supreme governing
board was materially increased.  According to the previous
arrangement the only legal distinction in the empire was that drawn
between the city which was surrounded by the ring-wall, and the
country beyond the -pomerium-; the new arrangement substituted for
the city the new Italy henceforth, as in perpetual peace, withdrawn
from the regular -imperium-,(29) and placed in contrast to it the
continental and transmarine territories, which were, on the other hand,
necessarily placed under military commandants--the provinces as they
were henceforth called.  According to the former arrangement the
same man had very frequently remained two, and often more years in
the same office.  The new arrangement restricted the magistracies
of the capital as well as the governorships throughout to one year;
and the special enactment that every governor should without fail
leave his province within thirty days after his successor's arrival
there, shows very clearly--particularly if we take along with it the
formerly-mentioned prohibition of the immediate re-election of the
late magistrate to the same or another public office--what the
tendency of these arrangements was.  It was the time-honoured maxim
by which the senate had at one time made the monarchy subject to
it, that the limitation of the magistracy in point of function
was favourable to democracy, and its limitation in point of time
favourable to oligarchy.  According to the previous arrangement
Gaius Marius had acted at once as head of the senate and as
commander-in-chief of the state; if he had his own unskilfulness
alone to blame for his failure to overthrow the oligarchy by means
of this double official power, care seemed now taken to prevent
some possibly wiser successor from making a better use of the
same lever.  According to the previous arrangement the magistrate
immediately nominated by the people might have had a military
position; the Sullan arrangement, on the other hand, reserved
such a position exclusively for those magistrates whom the senate
confirmed in their official authority by prolonging their term
of office.  No doubt this prolongation of office had now become
a standing usage; but it still--so far as respects the auspices
and the name, and constitutional form in general--continued to be
treated as an extraordinary extension of their term.  This was no
matter of indifference.  The burgesses alone could depose the consul
or praetor from his office; the proconsul and propraetor were
nominated and dismissed by the senate, so that by this enactment
the whole military power, on which withal everything ultimately
depended, became formally at least dependent on the senate.

Shelving of the Censorship

Lastly we have already observed that the highest of all magistracies,
the censorship, though not formally abolished, was shelved in the
same way as the dictatorship had previously been.  Practically it
might certainly be dispensed with.  Provision was otherwise made
for filling up the senate.  From the time that Italy was practically
tax-free and the army was substantially formed by enlistment, the
register of those liable to taxation and service lost in the main
its significance; and, if disorder prevailed in the equestrian roll
or the list of those entitled to the suffrage, that disorder was
probably not altogether unwelcome.  There thus remained only the current
financial functions which the consuls had hitherto discharged when,
as frequently happened, no election of censors had taken place, and
which they now took as a part of their ordinary official duties.
Compared with the substantial gain that by the shelving of the
censorship the magistracy lost its crowning dignity, it was a matter
of little moment and was not at all prejudicial to the sole dominion
of the supreme governing corporation, that--with a view to satisfy
the ambition of the senators now so much more numerous--the number
of the pontifices and that of the augurs was increased from
nine,(30) that of the custodiers of oracles from ten,(31) to fifteen
each, and that of the banquet-masters from three(32) to seven.

Regulation of the Finances

In financial matters even under the former constitution the decisive
voice lay with the senate; the only point to be dealt with, accordingly,
was the re-establishment of an orderly administration.  Sulla had found
himself at first in no small difficulty as to money; the sums brought
with him from Asia Minor were soon expended for the pay of his numerous
and constantly swelling army.  Even after thevictory at the Colline gate
the senate, seeing that the state-chest had been carried off to Praeneste,
had been obliged to resort to urgent measures.  Various building-sites
in the capital and several portions of the Campanian domains were exposed
to sale, the client kings, the freed and allied communities, were laid
under extraordinary contribution, their landed property and their
customs-revenues were in some cases confiscated, and in others new
privileges were granted to them for money.  But the residue of nearly
600,000 pounds found in the public chest on the surrender of Praeneste,
the public auctions which soon began, and other extraordinary resources,
relieved the embarrassment of the moment.  Provision was made for
the future not so much by the reform in the Asiatic revenues, under
which the tax-payers were the principal gainers, and the state chest
was perhaps at most no loser, as by the resumption of the Campanian
domains, to which Aenaria was now added,(33) and above all by the
abolition of the largesses of grain, which since the time of Gaius
Gracchus had eaten like a canker into the Roman finances.

Reorganization of the Judicial System.
Previous Arrangements
Ordinary Procedure
Permanent and Special -Quaestiones-
Centumviral Court

The judicial system on the other hand was essentially revolutionized,
partly from political considerations, partly with a view to
introduce greater unity and usefulness into the previous very
insufficient and unconnected legislation on the subject.  According
to the arrangements hitherto subsisting, processes fell to be decided
partly by the burgesses, partly by jurymen.  The judicial cases in
which the whole burgesses decided on appeal from the judgment of
the magistrate were, down to the time of Sulla, placed in the
hands primarily of the tribunes of the people, secondarily of the
aediles, inasmuch as all the processes, through which a person
entrusted with an office or commission by the community was brought
to answer for his conduct of its affairs, whether they involved
life and limb or money-fines, had to be in the first instance dealt
with by the tribunes of the people, and all the other processes in
which ultimately the people decided, were in the first instance
adjudicated on, in the second presided over, by the curule or plebeian
aediles.  Sulla, if he did not directly abolish the tribunician
process of calling to account, yet made it dependent, just like
the initiative of the tribunes in legislation, on the previous
consent of the senate, and presumably also limited in like manner
the aedilician penal procedure.  On the other hand he enlarged the
jurisdiction of the jury courts.  There existed at that time two
sorts of procedure before jurymen.  The ordinary procedure, which
was applicable in all cases adapted according to our view for a
criminal or civil process with the exception of crimes immediately
directed against the state, consisted in this, that one of the two
praetors of the capital technically adjusted the cause and a juryman
(-iudex-) nominated by him decided it on the basis of this adjustment.
The extraordinary jury-procedure again was applicable in particular
civil or criminal cases of importance, for which, instead of
the single juryman, a special jury-court had been appointed by
special laws.  Of this sort were the special tribunals constituted
for individual cases;(34) the standing commissional tribunals, such
as had been appointed for exactions,(35) for poisoning and murder,(36)
perhaps also for bribery at elections and other crimes, in the course
of the seventh century; and lastly, the two courts of the "Ten-men"
for processes affecting freedom, and the "Hundred and five," or more
briefly, the "Hundred-men," for processes affecting inheritance,
also called, from the shaft of a spear employed in all disputes
as to property, the "spear-court" (-hasta-).  The court of Ten-men
(-decemviri litibus iudicandis-) was a very ancient institution for
the protection of the plebeians against their masters.(37)  The period
and circumstances in which the spear-court originated are involved in
obscurity; but they must, it may be presumed, have been nearly the
same as in the case of the essentially similar criminal commissions
mentioned above.  As to the presidency of these different tribunals
there were different regulations in the respective ordinances
appointing them: thus there presided over the tribunal as to
exactions a praetor, over the court for murder a president specially
nominated from those who had been aediles, over the spear-court several
directors taken from the former quaestors.  The jurymen at least for
the ordinary as for the extraordinary procedure were, in accordance
with the Gracchan arrangement, taken from the non-senatorial men
of equestrian census; the selection belonged in general to the
magistrates who had the conducting of the courts, yet on such a
footing that they, in entering upon their office, had to set
forth once for all the list of jurymen, and then the jury for an
individual case was formed from these, not by free choice of the
magistrate, but by drawing lots, and by rejection on behalf of the
parties.  From the choice of the people there came only the "Ten-men"
for procedure affecting freedom.

Sullan -Quaestiones-

Sulla's leading reforms were of a threefold character.  First, he
very considerably increased the number of the jury-courts.  There
were henceforth separate judicial commissions for exactions; for
murder, including arson and perjury; for bribery at elections; for
high treason and any dishonour done to the Roman name; for the most
heinous cases of fraud--the forging of wills and of money; for
adultery; for the most heinous violations of honour, particularly
for injuries to the person and disturbance of the domestic peace;
perhaps also for embezzlement of public moneys, for usury and other
crimes; and at least the greater number of these courts were either
found in existence or called into life by Sulla, and were provided
by him with special ordinances setting forth the crime and form of
criminal procedure.  The government, moreover, was not deprived of
the right to appoint in case of emergency special courts for
particular groups of crimes.  As a result of these arrangements,
the popular tribunals were in substance done away with, processes
of high treason in particular were consigned to the new high treason
commission, and the ordinary jury procedure was considerably
restricted, for the more serious falsifications and injuries were
withdrawn from it.  Secondly, as respects the presidency of the courts,
six praetors, as we have already mentioned, were now available for
the superintendence of the different jury-courts, and to these were
added a number of other directors in the care of the commission
which was most frequently called into action--that for dealing with
murder.  Thirdly, the senators were once more installed in the
office of jurymen in room of the Gracchan equites.

The political aim of these enactments--to put an end to the share
which the equites had hitherto had in the government--is clear as
day; but it as little admits of doubt, that these were not mere
measures of a political tendency, but that they formed the first
attempt to amend the Roman criminal procedure and criminal law, which
had since the struggle between the orders fallen more and more into
confusion.  From this Sullan legislation dates the distinction--
substantially unknown to the earlier law--between civil and criminal
causes, in the sense which we now attach to these expressions;
henceforth a criminal cause appears as that which comes before the
bench of jurymen under the presidency of the praetor, a civil cause
as the procedure, in which the juryman or jurymen do not discharge
their duties under praetorian presidency.  The whole body of the
Sullan ordinances as to the -quaestiones- may be characterized
at once as the first Roman code after the Twelve Tables, and as
the first criminal code ever specially issued at all.  But in
the details also there appears a laudable and liberal spirit.
Singular as it may sound regarding the author of the proscriptions,
it remains nevertheless true that he abolished the punishment
of death for political offences; for, as according to the Roman
custom which even Sulla retained unchanged the people only, and
not the jury-commission, could sentence to forfeiture of life or
to imprisonment,(38) the transference of processes of high treason
from the burgesses to a standing commission amounted to the abolition
of capital punishment for such offences.  On the other hand, the
restriction of the pernicious special commissions for particular cases
of high treason, of which the Varian commission(39) in the Social war
had been a specimen, likewise involved an improvement.  The whole
reform was of singular and lasting benefit, and a permanent monument
of the practical, moderate, statesmanly spirit, which made its author
well worthy, like the old decemvirs, to step forward between the
parties as sovereign mediator with his code of law.

Police Laws

We may regard as an appendix to these criminal laws the police
ordinances, by which Sulla, putting the law in place of the censor,
again enforced good discipline and strict manners, and, by
establishing new maximum rates instead of the old ones which
had long been antiquated, attempted to restrain luxury at banquets,
funerals, and otherwise.

The Roman Municipal System

Lastly, the development of an independent Roman municipal system
was the work, if not of Sulla, at any rate of the Sullan epoch.
The idea of organically incorporating the community as a subordinate
political unit in the higher unity of the state was originally
foreign to antiquity; the despotism of the east knew nothing of urban
commonwealths in the strict sense of the word, and city and state
were throughout the Helleno-Italic world necessarily coincident.
In so far there was no proper municipal system from the outset either
in Greece or in Italy.  The Roman polity especially adhered to this
view with its peculiar tenacious consistency; even in the sixth
century the dependent communities of Italy were either, in order to
their keeping their municipal constitution, constituted as formally
sovereign states of non-burgesses, or, if they obtained the Roman
franchise, were--although not prevented from organizing themselves
as collective bodies--deprived of properly municipal rights, so that
in all burgess-colonies and burgess--municipia- even the administration
of justice and the charge of buildings devolved on the Roman praetors
and censors.  The utmost to which Rome consented was to allow at
least the most urgent lawsuits to be settled on the spot by a
deputy (-praefectus-) of the praetor nominated from Rome.(40)
The provinces were similarly dealt with, except that the governor
there came in place of the authorities of the capital.  In the free,
that is, formally sovereign towns the civil and criminal jurisdiction
was administered by the municipal magistrates according to the local
statutes; only, unless altogether special privileges stood in the
way, every Roman might either as defendant or as plaintiff request
to have his cause decided before Italian judges according to Italian
law For the ordinary provincial communities the Roman governor was
the only regular judicial authority, on whom devolved the direction
of all processes.  It was a great matter when, as in Sicily, in the
event of the defendant being a Sicilian, the governor was bound by the
provincial statute to give a native juryman and to allow him to decide
according to local usage; in most of the provinces this seems to
have depended on the pleasure of the directing magistrate.

In the seventh century this absolute centralization of the public
life of the Roman community in the one focus of Rome was given up,
so far as Italy at least was concerned.  Now that Italy was a
single civic community and the civic territory reached from the Arnus
and Rubico down to the Sicilian Straits,(41) it was necessary to
consent to the formation of smaller civic communities within that
larger unit.  So Italy was organized into communities of full
burgesses; on which occasion also the larger cantons that were
dangerous from their size were probably broken up, so far as this
had not been done already, into several smaller town-districts.(42)
The position of these new communities of full burgesses was a compromise
between that which had belonged to them hitherto as allied states,
and that which by the earlier law would have belonged to them as
integral parts of the Roman community.  Their basis was in general
the constitution of the former formally sovereign Latin community, or,
so far as their constitution in its principles resembled the Roman,
that of the Roman old-patrician-consular community; only care was
taken to apply to the same institutions in the -municipium- names
different from, and inferior to, those used in the capital, or,
in other words, in the state.  A burgess-assembly was placed at
the head, with the prerogative of issuing municipal statutes and
nominating the municipal magistrates.  A municipal council of a
hundred members acted the part of the Roman senate.  The administration
of justice was conducted by four magistrates, two regular judges
corresponding to the two consuls, and two market-judges corresponding
to the curule aediles.  The functions of the censorship, which
recurred, as in Rome, every five years and, to all appearance,
consisted chiefly in the superintendence of public buildings, were also
undertaken by the supreme magistrates of the community, namely the
ordinary -duumviri-, who in this case assumed the distinctive title
of -duumviri- "with censorial or quinquennial power."  The municipal
funds were managed by two quaestors.  Religious functions primarily
devolved on the two colleges of men of priestly lore alone known to
the earliest Latin constitution, the municipal pontifices and augurs.

Relation of the -Municipium- to the State

With reference to the relation of this secondary political organism
to the primary organism of the state, political prerogatives in
general belonged completely to the former as well as to the latter,
and consequently the municipal decree and the -imperium- of the
municipal magistrates bound the municipal burgess just as the
decree of the people and the consular -imperium- bound the Roman.
This led, on the whole, to a co-ordinate exercise of power by the
authorities of the state and of the town; both had, for instance,
the right of valuation and taxation, so that in the case of any
municipal valuations and taxes those prescribed by Rome were not
taken into account, and vice versa; public buildings might be
instituted both by the Roman magistrates throughout Italy and by
the municipal authorities in their own district, and so in other
cases.  In the event of collision, of course the community yielded
to the state and the decree of the people invalidated the municipal
decree.  A formal division of functions probably took place only in
the administration of justice, where the system of pure co-ordination
would have led to the greatest confusion.  In criminal procedure
presumably all capital causes, and in civil procedure those more
difficult cases which presumed an independent action on the part
of the directing magistrate, were reserved for the authorities and
jurymen of the capital, and the Italian municipal courts were
restricted to the minor and less complicated lawsuits, or to those
which were very urgent.

Rise of the -Municipium-

The origin of this Italian municipal system has not been recorded
by tradition.  It is probable that its germs may be traced to
exceptional regulations for the great burgess-colonies, which were
founded at the end of the sixth century;(43) at least several, in
themselves indifferent, formal differences between burgess-colonies
and burgess--municipia- tend to show that the new burgess-colony,
which at that time practically took the place of the Latin, had
originally a better position in state-law than the far older burgess-
-municipium-, and the advantage doubtless can only have consisted in a
municipal constitution approximating to the Latin, such as afterwards
belonged to all burgess-colonies and burgess--municipia-.  The new
organization is first distinctly demonstrable for the revolutionary
colony of Capua;(44) and it admits of no doubt that it was first
fully applied, when all the hitherto sovereign towns of Italy had
to be organized, in consequence of the Social war, as burgess-
communities.  Whether it was the Julian law, or the censors of 668,
or Sulla, that first arranged the details, cannot be determined:
the entrusting of the censorial functions to the -duumviri- seems
indeed to have been introduced after the analogy of the Sullan
ordinance superseding the censorship, but may be equally well
referred to the oldest Latin constitution to which also the
censorship was unknown.  In any case this municipal constitution--
inserted in, and subordinate to, the state proper--is one of the
most remarkable and momentous products of the Sullan period, and
of the life of the Roman state generally.  Antiquity was certainly
as little able to dovetail the city into the state as to develop
of itself representative government and other great principles of
our modern state-life; but it carried its political development
up to those limits at which it outgrows and bursts its assigned
dimensions, and this was the case especially with Rome, which in
every respect stands on the line of separation and connection between
the old and the new intellectual worlds.  In the Sullan constitution
the primary assembly and the urban character of the commonwealth
of Rome, on the one hand, vanished almost into a meaningless form;
the community subsisting within the state on the other hand was
already completely developed in the Italian -municipium-.  Down
to the name, which in such cases no doubt is the half of the matter,
this last constitution of the free republic carried out the
representative system and the idea of the state built upon the
basis of the municipalities.

The municipal system in the provinces was not altered by this
movement; the municipal authorities of the non-free towns continued--
special exceptions apart--to be confined to administration and
police, and to such jurisdiction as the Roman authorities did
not prefer to take into their own hands.

Impression Produced by the Sullan Reorganization
Opposition of the Officers

Such was the constitution which Lucius Cornelius Sulla gave to
the commonwealth of Rome.  The senate and equestrian order, the
burgesses and proletariate, Italians and provincials, accepted it
as it was dictated to them by the regent, if not without grumbling,
at any rate without rebelling: not so the Sullan officers.  The Roman
army had totally changed its character.  It had certainly been
rendered by the Marian reform more ready for action and more
militarily useful than when it did not fight before the walls of
Numantia; but it had at the same time been converted from a burgess-
force into a set of mercenaries who showed no fidelity to the state
at all, and proved faithful to the officer only if he had the skill
personally to gain their attachment.  The civil war had given fearful
evidence of this total revolution in the spirit of the army: six
generals in command, Albinus,(45) Cato,(46) Rufus,(47) Flaccus,(48)
Cinna,(49) and Gaius Carbo,(50) had fallen during its course by the
hands of their soldiers: Sulla alone had hitherto been able to
retain the mastery of the dangerous crew, and that only, in fact,
by giving the rein to all their wild desires as no Roman general
before him had ever done.  If the blame of destroying the old
military discipline is on this account attached to him, the
censure is not exactly without ground, but yet without justice;
he was indeed the first Roman magistrate who was only enabled to
discharge his military and political task by coming forward as a
-condottiere-.  He had not however taken the military dictatorship
for the purpose of making the state subject to the soldiery, but
rather for the purpose of compelling everything in the state, and
especially the army and the officers, to submit once more to the
authority of civil order.  When this became evident, an opposition
arose against him among his own staff.  The oligarchy might play
the tyrant as respected other citizens; but that the generals also,
who with their good swords had replaced the overthrown senators in
their seats, should now be summoned to yield implicit obedience to
this very senate, seemed intolerable.  The very two officers in
whom Sulla had placed most confidence resisted the new order of
things.  When Gnaeus Pompeius, whom Sulla had entrusted with the
conquest of Sicily and Africa and had selected for his son-in-law,
after accomplishing his task received orders from the senate to
dismiss his army, he omitted to comply and fell little short
of open insurrection.

Quintus Ofella, to whose firm perseverance in front of Praeneste
the success of the last and most severe campaign was essentially
due in equally open violation of the newly issued ordinances became
a candidate for the consulship without having held the inferior
magistracies.  With Pompeius there was effected, if not a cordial
reconciliation, at any rate a compromise.  Sulla, who knew his man
sufficiently not to fear him, did not resent the impertinent remark
which Pompeius uttered to his face, that more people concerned
themselves with the rising than with the setting sun; and accorded
to the vain youth the empty marks of honour to which his heart
clung.(51)  If in this instance he appeared lenient, he showed on
the other hand in the case of Ofella that he was not disposed to
allow his marshals to take advantage of him; as soon as the latter
had appeared unconstitutionally as candidate, Sulla had him cut down
in the public market-place, and then explained to the assembled citizens
that the deed was done by his orders and the reason for doing it.
So this significant opposition of the staff to the new order of things
was no doubt silenced for the present; but it continued to subsist
and furnished the practical commentary on Sulla's saying, that what
he did on this occasion could not be done a second time.

Re-establishment of Constitutional Order

One thing still remained--perhaps the most difficult of all:
to bring the exceptional state of things into accordance with
the paths prescribed by the new or old laws.  It was facilitated
by the circumstance, that Sulla never lost sight of this as his
ultimate aim.  Although the Valerian law gave him absolute power
and gave to each of his ordinances the force of law, he had nevertheless
availed himself of this extraordinary prerogative only in the case of
measures, which were of transient importance, and to take part in
which would simply have uselessly compromised the senate and burgesses,
especially in the case of the proscriptions.

Sulla Resigns the Regency

Ordinarily he had himself observed those regulations, which he
prescribed for the future.  That the people were consulted, we read
in the law as to the quaestors which is still in part extant; and the
same is attested of other laws, e. g. the sumptuary law and those
regarding the confiscation of domains.  In like manner the senate
was previously consulted in the more important administrative acts,
such as in the sending forth and recall of the African army and in
the conferring of the charters of towns.  In the same spirit Sulla
caused consuls to be elected even for 673, through which at least
the odious custom of dating officially by the regency was avoided;
nevertheless the power still lay exclusively with the regent, and
the election was directed so as to fall on secondary personages.
But in the following year (674) Sulla revived the ordinary constitution
in full efficiency, and administered the state as consul in concert
with his comrade in arms Quintus Metellus, retaining the regency, but
allowing it for the time to lie dormant.  He saw well how dangerous
it was for his own very institutions to perpetuate the military
dictatorship.  When the new state of things seemed likely to hold
its ground and the largest and most important portion of the
new arrangements had been completed, although various matters,
particularly in colonization, still remained to be done, he allowed
the elections for 675 to have free course, declined re-election to
the consulship as incompatible with his own ordinances, and at the
beginning of 675 resigned the regency, soon after the new consuls
Publius Servilius and Appius Claudius had entered on office.  Even
callous hearts were impressed, when the man who had hitherto dealt
at his pleasure with the life and property of millions, at whose nod
so many heads had fallen, who had mortal enemies dwelling in every
street of Rome and in every town of Italy, and who without an ally
of equal standing and even, strictly speaking, without the support
of a fixed party had brought to an end his work of reorganizing
the state, a work offending a thousand interests and opinions--when
this man appeared in the market-place of the capital, voluntarily
renounced his plenitude of power, discharged his armed attendants,
dismissed his lictors, and summoned the dense throng of burgesses to
speak, if any one desired from him a reckoning.  All were silent: Sulla
descended from the rostra, and on foot, attended only by his friends,
returned to his dwelling through the midst of that very populace which
eight years before had razed his house to the ground.

Character of Sulla

Posterity has not justly appreciated either Sulla himself or his work
of reorganization, as indeed it is wont to judge unfairly of persons
who oppose themselves to the current of the times.  In fact Sulla
is one of the most marvellous characters--we may even say a unique
phenomenon--in history.  Physically and mentally of sanguine
temperament, blue-eyed, fair, of a complexion singularly white but
blushing with every passionate emotion--though otherwise a handsome
man with piercing eyes--he seemed hardly destined to be of more
moment to the state than his ancestors, who since the days of his
great-great-grandfather Publius Cornelius Rufinus (consul in 464, 477),
one of the most distinguished generals and at the same time the
most ostentatious man of the times of Pyrrhus, had remained in second-
rate positions.  He desired from life nothing but serene enjoyment.
Reared in the refinement of such cultivated luxury as was at that
time naturalized even in the less wealthy senatorial families of
Rome, he speedily and adroitly possessed himself of all the fulness of
sensuous and intellectual enjoyments which the combination of Hellenic
polish and Roman wealth could secure.  He was equally welcome as a
pleasant companion in the aristocratic saloon and as a good comrade
in the tented field; his acquaintances, high and low, found in him a
sympathizing friend and a ready helper in time of need, who gave his
gold with far more pleasure to his embarrassed comrade than to his
wealthy creditor.  Passionate was his homage to the wine-cup, still
more passionate to women; even in his later years he was no longer
the regent, when after the business of the day was finished he
took his place at table.  A vein of irony--we might perhaps say
of buffoonery--pervaded his whole nature.  Even when regent he gave
orders, while conducting the public sale of the property of the
proscribed, that a donation from the spoil should be given to the
author of a wretched panegyric which was handed to him, on condition
that the writer should promise never to sing his praises again.
When he justified before the burgesses the execution of Ofella,
he did so by relating to the people the fable of the countryman and
the lice.  He delighted to choose his companions among actors, and
was fond of sitting at wine not only with Quintus Roscius--the Roman
Talma--but also with far inferior players; indeed he was himself not
a bad singer, and even wrote farces for performance within his own
circle.  Yet amidst these jovial Bacchanalia he lost neither bodily
nor mental vigour, in the rural leisure of his last years he was
still zealously devoted to the chase, and the circumstance that he
brought the writings of Aristotle from conquered Athens to Rome
attests withal his interest in more serious reading.  The specific
type of Roman character rather repelled him.  Sulla had nothing
of the blunt hauteur which the grandees of Rome were fond of
displaying in presence of the Greeks, or of the pomposity of
narrow-minded great men; on the contrary he freely indulged his
humour, appeared, to the scandal doubtless of many of his countrymen,
in Greek towns in the Greek dress, or induced his aristocratic
companions to drive their chariots personally at the games.
He retained still less of those half-patriotic, half-selfish hopes,
which in countries of free constitution allure every youth of talent
into the political arena, and which he too like all others probably
at one time felt.  In such a life as his was, oscillating between
passionate intoxication and more than sober awaking, illusions are
speedily dissipated.  Wishing and striving probably appeared to him
folly in a world which withal was absolutely governed by chance, and
in which, if men were to strive after anything at all, this chance
could be the only aim of their efforts.  He followed the general
tendency of the age in addicting himself at once to unbelief and
to superstition.  His whimsical credulity was not the plebeian
superstition of Marius, who got a priest to prophesy to him for money
and determined his actions accordingly; still less was it the sullen
belief of the fanatic in destiny; it was that faith in the absurd,
which necessarily makes its appearance in every man who has out and
out ceased to believe in a connected order of things--the superstition
of the fortunate player, who deems himself privileged by fate to throw
on each and every occasion the right number.  In practical questions
Sulla understood very well how to satisfy ironically the demands of
religion.  When he emptied the treasuries of the Greek temples, he
declared that the man could never fail whose chest was replenished
by the gods themselves.  When the Delphic priests reported to him
that they were afraid to send the treasures which he asked, because
the harp of the god emitted a clear sound when they touched it,
he returned the reply that they might now send them all the more
readily, as the god evidently approved his design.  Nevertheless
he fondly flattered himself with the idea that he was the chosen
favourite of the gods, and in an altogether special manner of that
goddess, to whom down to his latest years he assigned the pre-
eminence, Aphrodite.  In his conversations as well as in his
autobiography he often plumed himself on the intercourse which
the immortals held with him in dreams and omens.  He had more right
than most men to be proud of his achievements he was not so, but he
was proud of his uniquely faithful fortune.  He was wont to say that
every improvised enterprise turned out better with him than those
which were systematically planned; and one of his strangest whims--
that of regularly stating the number of those who had fallen on his
side in battle as nil--was nothing but the childishness of a child of
fortune.  It was but the utterance of his natural disposition, when,
having reached the culminating point of his career and seeing all
his contemporaries at a dizzy depth beneath him, he assumed the
designation of the Fortunate--Sulla Felix--as a formal surname,
and bestowed corresponding appellations on his children,

Sulla's Political Career

Nothing lay farther from Sulla than systematic ambition.  He had too
much sense to regard, like the average aristocrats of his time, the
inscription of his name in the roll of the consuls as the aim of his
life; he was too indifferent and too little of an ideologue to be
disposed voluntarily to engage in the reform of the rotten structure
of the state.  He remained--where birth and culture placed him--in the
circle of genteel society, and passed through the usual routine of
offices; he had no occasion to exert himself, and left such exertion
to the political working bees, of whom there was in truth no lack.
Thus in 647, on the allotment of the quaestorial places, accident
brought him to Africa to the headquarters of Gaius Marius.
The untried man-of-fashion from the capital was not very well received
by the rough boorish general and his experienced staff.  Provoked
by this reception Sulla, fearless and skilful as he was, rapidly
made himself master of the profession of arms, and in his daring
expedition to Mauretania first displayed that peculiar combination
of audacity and cunning with reference to which his contemporaries
said of him that he was half lion half fox, and that the fox in him
was more dangerous than the lion.  To the young, highborn, brilliant
officer, who was confessedly the real means of ending the vexatious
Numidian war, the most splendid career now lay open; he took part
also in the Cimbrian war, and manifested his singular talent for
organization in the management of the difficult task of providing
supplies; yet even now the pleasures of life in the capital had far
more attraction for him than war or even politics.  During his
praetorship, which office he held in 661 after having failed in a
previous candidature, it once more chanced that in his province,
the least important of all, the first victory over king Mithradates
and the first treaty with the mighty Arsacids, as well as their first
humiliation, occurred.  The Civil war followed.  It was Sulla
mainly, who decided the first act of it--the Italian insurrection--
in favour of Rome, and thus won for himself the consulship by his
sword; it was he, moreover, who when consul suppressed with
energetic rapidity the Sulpician revolt.  Fortune seemed to make
it her business to eclipse the old hero Marius by means of this
younger officer.  The capture of Jugurtha, the vanquishing of
Mithradates, both of which Marius had striven for in vain, were
accomplished in subordinate positions by Sulla: in the Social war,
in which Marius lost his renown as a general and was deposed,
Sulla established his military repute and rose to the consulship;
the revolution of 666, which was at the same time and above all a
personal conflict between the two generals, ended with the outlawry
and flight of Marius.  Almost without desiring it, Sulla had
become the most famous general of his time and the shield of the
oligarchy.  New and more formidable crises ensued--the Mithradatic war,
the Cinnan revolution; the star of Sulla continued always in the
ascendant.  Like the captain who seeks not to quench the flames of
his burning ship but continues to fire on the enemy, Sulla, while
the revolution was raging in Italy, persevered unshaken in Asia
till the public foe was subdued.  So soon as he had done with that
foe, he crushed anarchy and saved the capital from the firebrands of
the desperate Samnites and revolutionists.  The moment of his return
home was for Sulla an overpowering one in joy and in pain: he himself
relates in his memoirs that during his first night in Rome he had
not been able to close an eye, and we may well believe it.
But still his task was not at an end; his star was destined to
rise still higher.  Absolute autocrat as was ever any king, and
yet constantly abiding on the ground of formal right, he bridled
the ultra-reactionary party, annihilated the Gracchan constitution
which had for forty years limited the oligarchy, and compelled first
the powers of the capitalists and of the urban proletariate which
had entered into rivalry with the oligarchy, and ultimately the
arrogance of the sword which had grown up in the bosom of his own
staff, to yield once more to the law which he strengthened afresh.
He established the oligarchy on a more independent footing than ever,
placed the magisterial power as a ministering instrument in its
hands, committed to it the legislation, the courts, the supreme
military and financial power, and furnished it with a sort of
bodyguard in the liberated slaves and with a sort of army in the
settled military colonists.  Lastly, when the work was finished,
the creator gave way to his own creation; the absolute autocrat
became of his own accord once more a simple senator.  In all this
long military and political career Sulla never lost a battle, was
never compelled to retrace a single step, and, led astray neither
by friends nor by foes, brought his work to the goal which he had
himself proposed.  He had reason, indeed, to thank his star.
The capricious goddess of fortune seemed in his case for once to
have exchanged caprice for steadfastness, and to have taken a
pleasure in loading her favourite with successes and honours--
whether he desired them or not.  But history must be more just
towards him than he was towards himself, and must place him in a
higher rank than that of the mere favourites of fortune.

Sulla and His Work

We do not mean that the Sullan constitution was a work of political
genius, such as those of Gracchus and Caesar.  There does not occur
in it--as is, indeed, implied in its very nature as a restoration--a
single new idea in statesmanship.  All its most essential features--
admission to the senate by the holding of the quaestorship, the
abolition of the censorial right to eject a senator from the senate,
the initiative of the senate in legislation, the conversion of the
tribunician office into an instrument of the senate for fettering
the -imperium-, the prolonging of the duration of the supreme
office to two years, the transference of the command from the
popularly-elected magistrate to the senatorial proconsul or
propraetor, and even the new criminal and municipal arrangements--
were not created by Sulla, but were institutions which had
previously grown out of the oligarchic government, and which he
merely regulated and fixed.  And even as to the horrors attaching
to his restoration, the proscriptions and confiscations--are they,
compared with the doings of Nasica, Popillius, Opimius, Caepio and
so on, anything else than the legal embodiment of the customary
oligarchic mode of getting rid of opponents? On the Roman
oligarchy of this period no judgment can be passed save one of
inexorable and remorseless condemnation; and, like everything, else
connected with it, the Sullan constitution is completely involved in
that condemnation.  To accord praise which the genius of a bad man
bribes us into bestowing is to sin against the sacred character of
history; but we may be allowed to bear in mind that Sulla was far
less answerable for the Sullan restoration than the body of the
Roman aristocracy, which had ruled as a clique for centuries and had
every year become more enervated and embittered by age, and that all
that was hollow and all that was nefarious therein is ultimately
traceable to that aristocracy.  Sulla reorganized the state--not,
however, as the master of the house who puts his shattered estate
and household in order according to his own discretion, but as
the temporary business-manager who faithfully complies with his
instructions; it is superficial and false in such a case to devolve
the final and essential responsibility from the master upon the
manager.  We estimate the importance of Sulla much too highly, or
rather we dispose of those terrible proscriptions, ejections, and
restorations--for which there never could be and never was any
reparation--on far too easy terms, when we regard them as the work
of a bloodthirsty tyrant whom accident had placed at the head of
the state.  These and the terrorism of the restoration were the
deeds of the aristocracy, and Sulla was nothing more in the matter
than, to use the poet's expression, the executioner's axe following
the conscious thought as its unconscious instrument.  Sulla carried
out that part with rare, in fact superhuman, perfection; but within
the limits which it laid down for him, his working was not only
grand but even useful.  Never has any aristocracy deeply decayed
and decaying still farther from day to day, such as was the Roman
aristocracy of that time, found a guardian so willing and able as
Sulla to wield for it the sword of the general and the pen of the
legislator without any regard to the gain of power for himself.
There is no doubt a difference between the case of an officer who
refuses the sceptre from public spirit and that of one who throws it
away from a cloyed appetite; but, so far as concerns the total absence
of political selfishness--although, it is true, in this one respect
only--Sulla deserves to be named side by side with Washington.

Value of the Sullan Constitution

But the whole country--and not the aristocracy merely--was more
indebted to him than posterity was willing to confess.  Sulla
definitely terminated the Italian revolution, in so far as it was
based on the disabilities of individual less privileged districts
as compared with others of better rights, and, by compelling himself
and his party to recognize the equality of the rights of all
Italians in presence of the law, he became the real and final
author of the full political unity of Italy--a gain which was
not too dearly purchased by ever so many troubles and streams
of blood.  Sulla however did more.  For more than half a century
the power of Rome had been declining, and anarchy had been her
permanent condition: for the government of the senate with the
Gracchan constitution was anarchy, and the government of Cinna and
Carbo was a yet far worse illustration of the absence of a master-
hand (the sad image of which is most clearly reflected in that
equally confused and unnatural league with the Samnites), the most
uncertain, most intolerable, and most mischievous of all
conceivable political conditions--in fact the beginning of the
end.  We do not go too far when we assert that the long-undermined
Roman commonwealth must have necessarily fallen to pieces, had not
Sulla by his intervention in Asia and Italy saved its existence.
It is true that the constitution of Sulla had as little endurance
as that of Cromwell, and it was not difficult to see that his
structure was no solid one; but it is arrant thoughtlessness to
overlook the fact that without Sulla most probably the very site of
the building would have been swept away by the waves; and even the
blame of its want of stability does not fall primarily on Sulla.
The statesman builds only so much as in the sphere assigned to him
he can build.  What a man of conservative views could do to save the
old constitution, Sulla did; and he himself had a foreboding that,
while he might doubtless erect a fortress, he would be unable to
create a garrison, and that the utter worthlessness of the oligarchs
would render any attempt to save the oligarchy vain.  His constitution
resembled a temporary dike thrown into the raging breakers; it was
no reproach to the builder, if some ten years afterwards the waves
swallowed up a structure at variance with nature and not defended
even by those whom it sheltered.  The statesman has no need to be
referred to highly commendable isolated reforms, such as those of
the Asiatic revenue-system and of criminal justice, that he may not
summarily dismiss Sulla's ephemeral restoration: he will admire it
as a reorganization of the Roman commonwealth judiciously planned
and on the whole consistently carried out under infinite difficulties,
and he will place the deliverer of Rome and the accomplisher of Italian
unity below, but yet by the side of, Cromwell.

Immoral and Superficial Nature of the Sullan Restoration

It is not, however, the statesman alone who has a voice in
judging the dead; and with justice outraged human feeling will
never reconcile itself to what Sulla did or suffered others to do.
Sulla not only established his despotic power by unscrupulous violence,
but in doing so called things by their right name with a certain cynical
frankness, through which he has irreparably offended the great mass
of the weakhearted who are more revolted at the name than at the
thing, but through which, from the cool and dispassionate character
of his crimes, he certainly appears to the moral judgment more
revolting than the criminal acting from passion.  Outlawries, rewards
to executioners, confiscations of goods, summary procedure with
insubordinate officers had occurred a hundred times, and the obtuse
political morality of ancient civilization had for such things
only lukewarm censure; but it was unexampled that the names of
the outlaws should be publicly posted up and their heads publicly
exposed, that a set sum should be fixed for the bandits who slew them
and that it should be duly entered in the public account-books, that
the confiscated property should be brought to the hammer like the spoil
of an enemy in the public market, that the general should order a
refractory officer to be at once cut down and acknowledge the deed
before all the people.  This public mockery of humanity was also
a political error; it contributed not a little to envenom later
revolutionary crises beforehand, and on that account even now
a dark shadow deservedly rests on the memory of the author
of the proscriptions.

Sulla may moreover be justly blamed that, while in all important
matters he acted with remorseless vigour, in subordinate and more
especially in personal questions he very frequently yielded to
his sanguine temperament and dealt according to his likings or
dislikings.  Wherever he really felt hatred, as for instance against
the Marians, he allowed it to take its course without restraint even
against the innocent, and boasted of himself that no one had better
requited friends and foes.(52)  He did not disdain on occasion of
his plenitude of power to accumulate a colossal fortune.  The first
absolute monarch of the Roman state, he verified the maxim of
absolutism--that the laws do not bind the prince--forthwith in
the case of those laws which he himself issued as to adultery and
extravagance.  But his lenity towards his own party and his own
circle was more pernicious for the state than his indulgence towards
himself.  The laxity of his military discipline, although it was
partly enjoined by his political exigencies, may be reckoned as
coming under this category; but far more pernicious was his indulgence
towards his political adherents.  The extent of his occasional
forbearance is hardly credible: for instance Lacius Murena was not only
released from punishment for defeats which he sustained through arrant
perversity and insubordination,(53) but was even allowed a triumph;
Gnaeus Pompeius, who had behaved still worse, was still more
extravagantly honoured by Sulla.(54)  The extensive range and
the worst enormities of the proscriptions and confiscations probably
arose not so much from Sulla's own wish as from this spirit of
indifference, which in his position indeed was hardly more pardonable.
That Sulla with his intrinsically energetic and yet withal indifferent
temperament should conduct himself very variously, sometimes with
incredible indulgence, sometimes with inexorable severity, may readily
be conceived.  The saying repeated a thousand times, that he was before
his regency a good-natured, mild man, but when regent a bloodthirsty
tyrant, carries in it its own refutation; if he as regent displayed
the reverse of his earlier gentleness, it must rather be said that
he punished with the same careless nonchalance with which he
pardoned.  This half-ironical frivolity pervades his whole
political action.  It is always as if the victor, just as it
pleased him to call his merit in gaining victory good fortune,
esteemed the victory itself of no value; as if he had a partial
presentiment of the vanity and perishableness of his own work; as
if after the manner of a steward he preferred making repairs to
pulling down and rebuilding, and allowed himself in the end to
be content with a sorry plastering to conceal the flaws.

Sulla after His Retirement

But, such as he was, this Don Juan of politics was a man of one
mould.  His whole life attests the internal equilibrium of his
nature; in the most diverse situations Sulla remained unchangeably
the same.  It was the same temper, which after the brilliant
successes in Africa made him seek once more the idleness of the
capital, and after the full possession of absolute power made him
find rest and refreshment in his Cuman villa.  In his mouth the
saying, that public affairs were a burden which he threw off so
soon as he might and could, was no mere phrase.  After his resignation
he remained entirely like himself, without peevishness and without
affectation, glad to be rid of public affairs and yet interfering
now and then when opportunity offered.  Hunting and fishing and
the composition of his memoirs occupied his leisure hours; by way
of interlude he arranged, at the request of the discordant citizens,
the internal affairs of the neighbouring colony of Puteoli as
confidently and speedily as he had formerly arranged those of
the capital.  His last action on his sickbed had reference to the
collection of a contribution for the rebuilding of the Capitoline
temple, of which he was not allowed to witness the completion.

Death of Sulla

Little more than a year after his retirement, in the sixtieth year
of his life, while yet vigorous in body and mind, he was overtaken by
death; after a brief confinement to a sick-bed--he was writing at his
autobiography two days even before his death--the rupture of a blood-
vessel(55) carried him off (676).  His faithful fortune did not
desert him even in death.  He could have no wish to be drawn once
more into the disagreeable vortex of party struggles, and to be
obliged to lead his old warriors once more against a new revolution;
yet such was the state of matters at his death in Spain and in
Italy, that he could hardly have been spared this task had his life
been prolonged.  Even now when it was suggested that he should have a
public funeral in the capital, numerous voices there, which had been
silent in his lifetime, were raised against the last honour which it
was proposed to show to the tyrant.  But his memory was still too
fresh and the dread of his old soldiers too vivid: it was resolved
that the body should be conveyed to the capital and that the obsequies
should be celebrated there.

His Funeral

Italy never witnessed a grander funeral solemnity.  In every place
through which the deceased was borne in regal attire, with his well-
known standards and fasces before him, the inhabitants and above all
his old soldiers joined the mourning train: it seemed as if the whole
army would once more meet round the hero in death, who had in life
led it so often and never except to victory.  So the endless
funeral procession reached the capital, where the courts kept
holiday and all business was suspended, and two thousand golden
chaplets awaited the dead--the last honorary gifts of the faithful
legions, of the cities, and of his more intimate friends.  Sulla,
faithful to the usage of the Cornelian house, had ordered that his
body should be buried without being burnt; but others were more
mindful than he was of what past days had done and future days
might do: by command of the senate the corpse of the man who had
disturbed the bones of Marius from their rest in the grave was
committed to the flames.  Headed by all the magistrates and the
whole senate, by the priests and priestesses in their official robes
and the band of noble youths in equestrian armour, the procession
arrived at the great market-place; at this spot, filled by his
achievements and almost by the sound as yet of his dreaded words,
the funeral oration was delivered over the deceased; and thence the
bier was borne on the shoulders of senators to the Campus Martius,
where the funeral pile was erected.  While the flames were blazing,
the equites and the soldiers held their race of honour round
the corpse; the ashes of the regent were deposited in the Campus
Martius beside the tombs of the old kings, and the Roman women
mourned him for a year.




Chapter XI

The Commonwealth and Its Economy

External and Internal Bankruptcy of the Roman State

We have traversed a period of ninety years--forty years of profound
peace, fifty of an almost constant revolution.  It is the most
inglorious epoch known in Roman history.  It is true that the Alps
were crossed both in an easterly and westerly direction,(1) and the
Roman arms reached in the Spanish peninsula as far as the Atlantic
Ocean(2) and in the Macedono-Grecian peninsula as far as the
Danube;(3) but the laurels thus gained were as cheap as they were
barren.  The circle of the "extraneous peoples under the will,
sway, dominion, or friendship of the Roman burgesses,"(4) was not
materially extended; men were content to realize the gains of a
better age and to bring the communities, annexed to Rome in laxer
forms of dependence, more and more into full subjection.  Behind
the brilliant screen of provincial reunions was concealed a very
sensible decline of Roman power.  While the whole ancient civilization
was daily more and more distinctly embraced in the Roman state,
and embodied there in forms of more general validity, the nations
excluded from it began simultaneously beyond the Alps and beyond
the Euphrates to pass from defence to aggression.  On the battle-
fields of Aquae Sextiae and Vercellae, of Chaeronea and Orchomenus,
were heard the first peals of that thunderstorm, which the Germanic
tribes and the Asiatic hordes were destined to bring upon the Italo-
Grecian world, and the last dull rolling of which has reached
almost to our own times.  But in internal development also this
epoch bears the same character.  The old organization collapses
irretrievably.  The Roman commonwealth was planned as an urban
community, which through its free burgess-body gave to itself
rulers and laws; which was governed by these well-advised rulers
within these legal limits with kingly freedom; and around which
the Italian confederacy, as an aggregate of free urban communities
essentially homogeneous and cognate with the Roman, and the body
of extra-Italian allies, as an aggregate of Greek free cities and
barbaric peoples and principalities--both more superintended, than
domineered over, by the community of Rome--formed a double circle.
It was the final result of the revolution--and both parties, the
nominally conservative as well as the democratic party, had co-
operated towards it and concurred in it--that of this venerable
structure, which at the beginning of the present epoch, though full
of chinks and tottering, still stood erect, not one stone was at
its close left upon another.  The holder of sovereign power was
now either a single man, or a close oligarchy--now of rank, now
of riches.  The burgesses had lost all legitimate share in the
government.  The magistrates were instruments without independence
in the hands of the holder of power for the time being.  The urban
community of Rome had broken down by its unnatural enlargement.
The Italian confederacy had been merged in the urban community.
The body of extra-Italian allies was in full course of being
converted into a body of subjects.  The whole organic classification
of the Roman commonwealth had gone to wreck, and nothing was left
but a crude mass of more or less disparate elements.

The Prospect

The state of matters threatened to end in utter anarchy and in
the inward and outward dissolution of the state.  The political
movement tended thoroughly towards the goal of despotism; the only
point still in dispute was whether the close circle of the families
of rank, or the senate of capitalists, or a monarch was to be the
despot.  The political movement followed thoroughly the paths that
led to despotism; the fundamental principle of a free commonwealth--
that the contending powers should reciprocally confine themselves
to indirect coercion--had become effete in the eyes of all parties
alike, and on both sides the fight for power began to be carried on
first by the bludgeon, and soon by the sword.  The revolution, at
an end in so far as the old constitution was recognized by both
sides as finally set aside and the aim and method of the new
political development were clearly settled, had yet up to this
time discovered nothing but provisional solutions for this problem
of the reorganization of the state; neither the Gracchan nor the
Sullan constitution of the community bore the stamp of finality.
But the bitterest feature of this bitter time was that even hope
and effort failed the clear-seeing patriot.  The sun of freedom
with all its endless store of blessings was constantly drawing
nearer to its setting, and the twilight was settling over the
very world that was still so brilliant.  It was no accidental
catastrophe which patriotism and genius might have warded off;
it was ancient social evils--at the bottom of all, the ruin of
the middle class by the slave proletariate--that brought destruction
on the Roman commonwealth.  The most sagacious statesman was in the
plight of the physician to whom it is equally painful to prolong or
to abridge the agony of his patient.  Beyond doubt it was the
better for the interests of Rome, the more quickly and thoroughly
a despot set aside all remnants of the ancient free constitution,
and invented new forms and expressions for the moderate measure
of human prosperity for which in absolutism there is room: the
intrinsic advantage, which belonged to monarchy under the given
circumstances as compared with any oligarchy, lay mainly in the
very circumstance that such a despotism, energetic in pulling
down and energetic in building up, could never be exercised by
a collegiate board.  But such calm considerations do not mould
history; it is not reason it is passion alone, that builds for
the future.  The Romans had just to wait and to see how long their
commonwealth would continue unable to live and unable to die, and
whether it would ultimately find its master and, so far as might
be possible, its regenerator, in a man of mighty gifts, or would
collapse in misery and weakness.

Finances of the State

It remains that we should notice the economic and social relations
of the period before us, so far as we have not already done so.

Italian Revenues

The finances of the state were from the commencement of this
epoch substantially dependent on the revenues from the provinces.
In Italy the land-tax, which had always occurred there merely as
an extraordinary impost by the side of the ordinary domanial and
other revenues, had not been levied since the battle of Pydna,
so that absolute freedom from land-tax began to be regarded as a
constitutional privilege of the Roman landowner.  The royalties of
the state, such as the salt monopoly(5) and the right of coinage,
were not now at least, if ever at all, treated as sources of income.
The new tax on inheritance(6) was allowed to fall into abeyance or
was perhaps directly abolished.  Accordingly the Roman exchequer
drew from Italy including Cisalpine Gaul nothing but the produce
of the domains, particularly of the Campanian territory and of
the gold mines in the land of the Celts, and the revenue from
manumissions and from goods imported by sea into the Roman civic
territory not for the personal consumption of the importer.  Both
of these may be regarded essentially as taxes on luxury, and they
certainly must have been considerably augmented by the extension
of the field of Roman citizenship and at the same time of Roman
customs-dues to all Italy, probably including Cisalpine Gaul.

Provincial Revenues

In the provinces the Roman state claimed directly as its private
property, on the one hand, in the states annulled by martial law
the whole domain, on the other hand in those states, where the
Roman government came in room of the former rulers, the landed
property possessed by the latter.  By virtue of this right the
territories of Leontini, Carthage, and Corinth, the domanial
property of the kings of Macedonia, Pergamus, and Cyrene, the mines
in Spain and Macedonia were regarded as Roman domains; and, in like
manner with the territory of Capua, were leased by the Roman
censors to private contractors in return for the delivery of a
proportion of the produce or a fixed sum of money.  We have already
explained that Gaius Gracchus went still farther, claimed the whole
land of the provinces as domain, and in the case of the province of
Asia practically carried out this principle; inasmuch as he legally
justified the -decumae-, -scriptura-, and -vectigalia- levied there
on the ground of the Roman state's right of property in the land,
pasture, and coasts of the province, whether these had previously
belonged to the king or private persons.(7)

There do not appear to have been at this period any royalties
from which the state derived profit, as respected the provinces;
the prohibition of the culture of the vine and olive in Transalpine
Gaul did not benefit the state-chest as such.  On the other hand
direct and indirect taxes were levied to a great extent.  The client
states recognized as fully sovereign--such as the kingdoms of Numidia
and Cappadocia, the allied states (-civitates foederatae-) of Rhodes,
Messana, Tauromenium, Massilia, Gades--were legally exempt from taxation,
and merely bound by their treaties to support the Roman republic in times
of war by regularly furnishing a fixed number of ships or men at their
own expense, and, as a matter of course in case of need, by rendering
extraordinary aid of any kind.

Taxes

The rest of the provincial territory on the other hand, even
including the free cities, was throughout liable to taxation; the
only exceptions were the cities invested with the Roman franchise,
such as Narbo, and the communities on which immunity from taxation
was specially conferred (-civitates immunes-), such as Centuripa
in Sicily.  The direct taxes consisted partly--as in Sicily and
Sardinia--of a title to the tenth(8) of the sheaves and other field
produce as of grapes and olives, or, if the land lay in pasture,
to a corresponding -scriptura-; partly--as in Macedonia, Achaia,
Cyrene, the greater part of Africa, the two Spains, and by Sulla's
arrangements also in Asia--of a fixed sum of money to be paid
annually by each community to Rome (-stipendium-, -tributum-).
This amounted, e. g. for all Macedonia, to 600,000 -denarii-
(24,000 pounds), for the small island of Gyaros near Andros to 150
-denarii- (6 pounds, 10 shillings), and was apparently on the whole
low and less than the tax paid before the Roman rule.  Those
ground-tenths and pasture-moneys the state farmed out to private
contractors on condition of their paying fixed quantities of grain
or fixed sums of money; with respect to the latter money-payments
the state drew upon the respective communities, and left it to
these to assess the amount, according to the general principles
laid down by the Roman government, on the persons liable, and to
collect it from them.(9)

Customs

The indirect taxes consisted--apart from the subordinate moneys
levied from roads, bridges, and canals--mainly of customs-duties.
The customs-duties of antiquity were, if not exclusively, at any
rate principally port-dues, less frequently frontier-dues, on
imports and exports destined for sale, and were levied by each
community in its ports and its territory at discretion.  The Romans
recognized this principle generally, in so far as their original
customs-domain did not extend farther than the range of the Roman
franchise and the limit of the customs was by no means coincident
with the limits of the empire, so that a general imperial tariff
was unknown: it was only by means of state-treaty that a total
exemption from customs-dues in the client communities was secured
for the Roman state, and in various cases at least favourable
term for the Roman burgess.  But in those districts, which had
not been admitted to alliance with Rome but were in the condition
of subjects proper and had not acquired immunity, the customs fell
as a matter of course to the proper sovereign, that is, to the Roman
community; and in consequence of this several larger regions within
the empire were constituted as separate Roman customs-districts, in
which the several communities allied or privileged with immunity
were marked off as exempt from Roman customs.  Thus Sicily even
from the Carthaginian period formed a closed customs-district, on
the frontier of which a tax of 5 per cent on the value was levied
from all imports or exports; thus on the frontiers of Asia there
was levied in consequence of the Sempronian law(10) a similar tax
of 21 per cent; in like manner the province of Narbo, exclusively
the domain of the Roman colony, was organized as a Roman customs-
district This arrangement, besides its fiscal objects, may have
been partly due to the commendable purpose of checking the
confusion inevitably arising out of a variety of communal tolls by
a uniform regulation of frontier-dues.  The levying of the customs,
like that of the tenths, was without exception leased to middlemen.

Costs of Collection

The ordinary burdens of Roman taxpayers were limited to these
imposts; but we may not overlook the fact, that the expenses of
collection were very considerable, and the contributors paid an
amount disproportionately great as compared with what the Roman
government received.  For, while the system of collecting taxes
by middlemen, and especially by general lessees, is in itself
the most expensive of all, in Rome effective competition was
rendered extremely difficult in consequence of the slight
extent to which the lettings were subdivided and the immense
association of capital.

Requisitions

To these ordinary burdens, however, fell to be added in the first
place the requisitions which were made.  The costs of military
administration were in law defrayed by the Roman community.
It provided the commandants of every province with the means of
transport and all other requisites; it paid and provisioned the
Roman soldiers in the province.  The provincial communities had to
furnish merely shelter, wood, hay, and similar articles free of
cost to the magistrates and soldiers; in fact the free towns were
even ordinarily exempted from the winter quartering of the troops--
permanent camps were not yet known.  If the governor therefore
needed grain, ships, slaves to man them, linen, leather, money,
or aught else, he was no doubt absolutely at liberty in time
of war--nor was it far otherwise in time of peace--to demand such
supplies according to his discretion and exigencies from the subject-
communities or the sovereign protected states; but these supplies
were, like the Roman land-tax, treated legally as purchases or
advances, and the value was immediately or afterwards made good by
the Roman exchequer.  Nevertheless these requisitions became, if
not in the theory of state-law, at any rate practically, one of the
most oppressive burdens of the provincials; and the more so, that
the amount of compensation was ordinarily settled by the government
or even by the governor after a one-sided fashion.  We meet indeed
with several legislative restrictions on this dangerous right of
requisition of the Roman superior magistrates: for instance, the
rule already mentioned, that in Spain there should not be taken
from the country people by requisitions for grain more than the
twentieth sheaf, and that the price even of this should be equitably
ascertained;(11) the fixing of a maximum quantity of grain to be
demanded by the governor for the wants of himself and his retinue;
the previous adjustment of a definite and high rate of compensation
for the grain which was frequently demanded, at least from Sicily,
for the wants of the capital.  But, while by fixing such rules
the pressure of those requisitions on the economy of the communities
and of individuals in the province was doubtless mitigated here
and there, it was by no means removed.  In extraordinary crises
this pressure unavoidably increased and often went beyond all bounds,
for then in fact the requisitions not unfrequently assumed the form
of a punishment imposed or that of voluntary contributions enforced,
and compensation was thus wholly withheld.  Thus Sulla in 670-671
compelled the provincials of Asia Minor, who certainly had very
gravely offended against Rome, to furnish to every common soldier
quartered among them forty-fold pay (per day 16 -denarii- = 11 shillings),
to every centurion seventy-five-fold pay, in addition to clothing
and meals along with the right to invite guests at pleasure; thus
the same Sulla soon afterwards imposed a general contribution on
the client and subject communities,(12) in which case nothing,
of course, was said of repayment.

Local Burdens

Further the local public burdens are not to be left out of view.
They must have been, comparatively, very considerable;(13) for the
costs of administration, the keeping of the public buildings in
repair, and generally all civil expenses were borne by the local
budget, and the Roman government simply undertook to defray the
military expenses from their coffers.  But even of this military
budget considerable items were devolved on the communities--such as
the expense of making and maintaining the non-Italian military
roads, the costs of the fleets in the non-Italian seas, nay even
in great part the outlays for the army, inasmuch as the forces of
the client-states as well as those of the subjects were regularly
liable to serve at the expense of their communities within their
province, and began to be employed with increasing frequency even
beyond it--Thracians in Africa, Africans in Italy, arid so on--at
the discretion of the Romans.(14)  If the provinces only and not
Italy paid direct taxes to the government, this was equitable in
a financial, if not in a political, aspect so long as Italy alone
bore the burdens and expense of the military system; but from the
time that this system was abandoned, the provincials were, in a
financial point of view, decidedly overburdened.

Extortions

Lastly we must not forget the great chapter of injustice by which
in manifold ways the Roman magistrates and farmers of the revenue
augmented the burden of taxation on the provinces.  Although every
present which the governor took might be treated legally as an
exaction, and even his right of purchase might be restricted by
law, yet the exercise of his public functions offered to him, if he
was disposed to do wrong, pretexts more than enough for doing so.
The quartering of the troops; the free lodging of the magistrates
and of the host of adjutants of senatorial or equestrian rank, of
clerks, lictors, heralds, physicians, and priests; the right which
the messengers of the state had to be forwarded free of cost; the
approval of, and providing transport for, the contributions payable
in kind; above all the forced sales and the requisitions--gave all
magistrates opportunity to bring home princely fortunes from the
provinces.  And the plundering became daily more general, the more
that the control of the government appeared to be worthless and
that of the capitalist-courts to be in reality dangerous to the
upright magistrate alone.  The institution of a standing commission
regarding the exactions of magistrates in the provinces, occasioned
by the frequency of complaints as to such cases, in 605,(15) and
the laws as to extortion following each other so rapidly and
constantly augmenting its penalties, show the daily increasing
height of the evil, as the Nilometer shows the rise of the flood.

Under all these circumstances even a taxation moderate in theory
might become extremely oppressive in its actual operation; and that
it was so is beyond doubt, although the financial oppression, which
the Italian merchants and bankers exercised over the provinces, was
probably felt as a far heavier burden than the taxation with all
the abuses that attached to it.

Aggregate Financial Result

If we sum up, the income which Rome drew from the provinces was
not properly a taxation of the subjects in the sense which we now
attach to that expression, but rather in the main a revenue that
may be compared with the Attic tributes, by means of which the
leading state defrayed the expense of the military system which
it maintained.  This explains the surprisingly small amount of the
gross as well as of the net proceeds.  There exists a statement,
according to which the income of Rome, exclusive, it may be
presumed, of the Italian revenues and of the grain delivered in
kind to Italy by the -decumani- up to 691 amounted to not more
than 200 millions of sesterces (2,000,000 pounds); that is, but
two-thirds of the sum which the king of Egypt drew from his country
annually.  The proportion can only seem strange at the first
glance.  The Ptolemies turned to account the valley of the Nile as
great, plantation-owners, and drew immense sums from their monopoly
of the commercial intercourse with the east; the Roman treasury was
not much more than the joint military chest of the communities
united under Rome's protection.  The net produce was probably still
less in proportion.  The only provinces yielding a considerable
surplus were perhaps Sicily, where the Carthaginian system of
taxation prevailed, and more especially Asia from the time that
Gaius Gracchus, in order to provide for his largesses of corn, had
carried out the confiscation of the soil and a general domanial
taxation there.  According to manifold testimonies the finances of
the Roman state were essentially dependent on the revenues of Asia.
The assertion sounds quite credible that the other provinces on an
average cost nearly as much as they brought in; in fact those which
required a considerable garrison, such as the two Spains,
Transalpine Gaul, and Macedonia, probably often cost more than they
yielded.  On the whole certainly the Roman treasury in ordinary
times possessed a surplus, which enabled them amply to defray the
expense of the buildings of the state and city, and to accumulate a
reserve-fund; but even the figures appearing for these objects,
when compared with the wide domain of the Roman rule, attest the
small amount of the net proceeds of the Roman taxes.  In a certain
sense therefore the old principle equally honourable and judicious--
that the political hegemony should not be treated as a privilege
yielding profit--still governed the financial administration of the
provinces as it had governed that of Rome in Italy.  What the Roman
community levied from its transmarine subjects was, as a rule, re-
expended for the military security of the transmarine possessions;
and if these Roman imposts fell more heavily on those who paid them
than the earlier taxation, in so far as they were in great part
expended abroad, the substitution, on the other hand, of a single
ruler and a centralized military administration for the many petty
rulers and armies involved a very considerable financial saving.
It is true, however, that this principle of a previous better age
came from the very first to be infringed and mutilated by the
numerous exceptions which were allowed to prevail.  The ground-
tenth levied by Hiero and Carthage in Sicily went far beyond the
amount of an annual war-contributioa With justice moreover Scipio
Aemilianus says in Cicero, that it was unbecoming for the Roman
burgess-body to be at the same time the ruler and the tax-gatherer
of the nations.  The appropriation of the customs-dues was not
compatible with the principle of disinterested hegemony, and the
high rates of the customs as well as the vexatious mode of levying
them were not fitted to allay the sense of the injustice thereby
inflicted.  Even as early probably as this period the name of
publican became synonymous among the eastern peoples with that of
rogue and robber: no burden contributed so much as this to make the
Roman name offensive and odious especially in the east.  But when
Gaius Gracchus and those who called themselves the "popular party"
in Rome came to the helm, political sovereignty was declared in
plain terms to be a right which entitled every one who shared in
it to a number of bushels of corn, the hegemony was converted into
a direct ownership of the soil, and the most complete system of
making the most of that ownership was not only introduced but
with shameless candour legally justified and proclaimed.  It was
certainly not a mere accident, that the hardest lot in this respect
fell precisely to the two least warlike provinces, Sicily and Asia.

The Finances and Public Buildings

An approximate measure of the condition of Roman finance at this
period is furnished, in the absence of definite statements, first
of all by the public buildings.  In the first decades of this epoch
these were prosecuted on the greatest scale, and the construction
of roads in particular had at no time been so energetically
pursued.  In Italy the great southern highway of presumably earlier
origin, which as a prolongation of the Appian road ran from Rome by
way of Capua, Beneventum, and Venusia to the ports of Tarentum and
Brundisium, had attached to it a branch-road from Capua to the
Sicilian straits, a work of Publius Popillius, consul in 622.
On the east coast, where hitherto only the section from Fanum to
Ariminum had been constructed as part of the Flaminian highway (ii.
229), the coast road was prolonged southward as far as Brundisium,
northward by way of Atria on the Po as far as Aquileia, and the
portion at least from Ariminum to Atria was formed by the Popillius
just mentioned in the same year.  The two great Etruscan highways--
the coast or Aurelian road from Rome to Pisa and Luna, which was in
course of formation in 631, and the Cassian road leading by way of
Sutrium and Clusium to Arretium and Florentia, which seems not to
have been constructed before 583--may as Roman public highways
belong only to this age.  About Rome itself new projects were
not required; but the Mulvian bridge (Ponte Molle), by which
the Flaminian road crossed the Tiber not far from Rome, was in 645
reconstructed of stone.  Lastly in Northern Italy, which hitherto
had possessed no other artificial road than the Flaminio-Aemilian
terminating at Placentia, the great Postumian road was constructed
in 606, which led from Genua by way of Dertona, where probably
a colony was founded at the same time, and onward by way of
Placentia, where it joined the Flaminio-Aemilian road, and of
Cremona and Verona to Aquileia, and thus connected the Tyrrhenian
and Adriatic seas; to which was added the communication established
in 645 by Marcus Aemilius Scaurus between Luna and Genua, which
connected the Postumian road directly with Rome.  Gaius Gracchus
exerted himself in another way for the improvement of the Italian
roads.  He secured the due repair of the great rural roads by
assigning, on occasion of his distribution of lands, pieces of
ground alongside of the roads, to which was attached the obligation
of keeping them in repair as an heritable burden.  To him,
moreover, or at any rate to the allotment-commission, the custom
of erecting milestones appears to be traceable, as well as that
of marking the limits of fields by regular boundary-stones.  Lastly
he provided for good -viae vicinales-, with the view of thereby
promoting agriculture.  But of still greater moment was the
construction of the imperial highways in the provinces, which
beyond doubt began in this epoch.  The Domitian highway after long
preparations(16) furnished a secure land-route from Italy to Spain,
and was closely connected with the founding of Aquae Sextiae and
Narbo;(17) the Gabinian(18) and the Egnatian (19) led from the
principal places on the east coast of the Adriatic sea--the former
from Salona, the latter from Apollonia and Dyrrhachium--into
the interior; the network of roads laid out by Manius Aquillius
immediately after the erection of the Asiatic province in 625
led from the capital Ephesus in different directions towards the
frontier.  Of the origin of these works no mention is to be found
in the fragmentary tradition of this epoch, but they were
nevertheless undoubtedly connected with the consolidation
of the Roman rule in Gaul, Dalmatia, Macedonia, and Asia Minor,
and came to be of the greatest importance for the centralization of
the state and the civilizing of the subjugated barbarian districts.

In Italy at least great works of drainage were prosecuted as well
as the formation of roads.  In 594 the drying of the Pomptine
marshes--a vital matter for Central Italy--was set about with great
energy and at least temporary success; in 645 the draining of the
low-lying lands between Parma and Placentia was effected in
connection with the construction of the north Italian highway.
Moreover, the government did much for the Roman aqueducts, as
indispensable for the health and comfort of the capital as they
were costly.  Not only were the two that had been in existence
since the years 442 and 492--the Appian and the Anio aqueducts--
thoroughly repaired in 610, but two new ones were formed; the
Marcian in 610, which remained afterwards unsurpassed for the
excellence and abundance of the water, and the Tepula as it was
called, nineteen years later.  The power of the Roman exchequer to
execute great operations by means of payments in pure cash without
making use of the system of credit, is very clearly shown by the
way in which the Marcian aqueduct was created: the sum required for
it of 180,000,000 sesterces (in gold nearly 2,000,000 pounds) was
raised and applied within three years.  This leads us to infer a
very considerable reserve in the treasury: in fact at the very
beginning of this period it amounted to almost 860,000 pounds,(20)
and was doubtless constantly on the increase.

All these facts taken together certainly lead to the inference that
the position of the Roman finances at this epoch was on the whole
favourable.  Only we may not in a financial point of view overlook
the fact that, while the government during the two earlier thirds
of this period executed splendid and magnificent buildings, it
neglected to make other outlays at least as necessary.  We have
already indicated how unsatisfactory were its military provisions;
the frontier countries and even the valley of the Po(21) were
pillaged by barbarians, and bands of robbers made havoc in the
interior even of Asia Minor, Sicily, and Italy.  The fleet even was
totally neglected; there was hardly any longer a Roman vessel of
war; and the war-vessels, which the subject cities were required to
build and maintain, were not sufficient, so that Rome was not only
absolutely unable to carry on a naval war, but was not even in a
position to check the trade of piracy.  In Rome itself a number of
the most necessary improvements were left untouched, and the river-
buildings in particular were singularly neglected.  The capital
still possessed no other bridge over the Tiber than the primitive
wooden gangway, which led over the Tiber island to the Janiculum;
the Tiber was still allowed to lay the streets every year under
water, and to demolish houses and in fact not unfrequently whole
districts, without anything being done to strengthen the banks;
mighty as was the growth of transmarine commerce, the roadstead
of Ostia--already by nature bad--was allowed to become more and
more sanded up.  A government, which under the most favourable
circumstances and in an epoch of forty years of peace abroad and
at home neglected such duties, might easily allow taxes to fall
into abeyance and yet obtain an annual surplus of income over
expenditure and a considerable reserve; but such a financial
administration by no means deserves commendation for its mere
semblance of brilliant results, but rather merits the same censure--
in respect of laxity, want of unity in management, mistaken
flattery of the people--as falls to be brought in every other
sphere of political life against the senatorial government
of this epoch.

The Finances in the Revolution

The financial condition of Rome of course assumed a far worse
aspect, when the storms of revolution set in.  The new and, even in
a mere financial point of view, extremely oppressive burden imposed
upon the state by the obligation under which Gaius Gracchus placed
it to furnish corn at nominal rates to the burgesses of the
capital, was certainly counterbalanced at first by the newly-opened
sources of income in the province of Asia.  Nevertheless the public
buildings seem from that time to have almost come to a standstill.
While the public works which can be shown to have been constructed
from the battle of Pydna down to the time of Gaius Gracchus were
numerous, from the period after 632 there is scarcely mention of
any other than the projects of bridges, roads, and drainage which
Marcus Aemilius Scaurus organized as censor in 645.  It must remain
a moot point whether this was the effect of the largesses of grain
or, as is perhaps more probable, the consequence of the system of
increased savings, such as befitted a government which became daily
more and more a rigid oligarchy, and such as is indicated by the
statement that the Roman reserve reached its highest point in 663.
The terrible storm of insurrection and revolution, in combination
with the five years' deficit of the revenues of Asia Minor, was the
first serious trial to which the Roman finances were subjected
after the Hannibalic war: they failed to sustain it.  Nothing
perhaps so clearly marks the difference of the times as the
circumstance that in the Hannibalic war it was not till the tenth
year of the struggle, when the burgesses were almost sinking under
taxation, that the reserve was touched;(22) whereas the Social war
was from the first supported by the balance in hand, and when this
was expended after two campaigns to the last penny, they preferred
to sell by auction the public sites in the capital(23) and to seize
the treasures of the temples(24) rather than levy a tax on the
burgesses.  The storm however, severe as it was, passed over;
Sulla, at the expense doubtless of enormous economic sacrifices
imposed on the subjects and Italian revolutionists in particular,
restored order to the finances and, by abolishing the largesses of
corn and retaining although in a reduced form the Asiatic revenues,
secured for the commonwealth a satisfactory economic condition, at
least in the sense of the ordinary expenditure remaining far below
the ordinary income.

Private Economics
Agriculture

In the private economics of this period hardly any new feature
emerges; the advantages and disadvantages formerly set forth as
incident to the social circumstances of Italy(25) were not altered,
but merely farther and more distinctly developed.  In agriculture
we have already seen that the growing power of Roman capital was
gradually absorbing the intermediate and small landed estates in
Italy as well as in the provinces, as the sun sucks up the drops of
rain.  The government not only looked on without preventing, but
even promoted this injurious division of the soil by particular
measures, especially by prohibiting the production of wine and oil
beyond the Alps with a view to favour the great Italian landlords
and merchants.(26)  It is true that both the opposition and the
section of the conservatives that entered into ideas of reform
worked energetically to counteract the evil; the two Gracchi, by
carrying out the distribution of almost the whole domain land, gave
to the state 80,000 new Italian farmers; Sulla, by settling 120,000
colonists in Italy, filled up at least in part the gaps which the
revolution and he himself had made in the ranks of the Italian
yeomen.  But, when a vessel is emptying itself by constant efflux,
the evil is to be remedied not by pouring in even considerable
quantities, but only by the establishment of a constant influx--
a remedy which was on various occasions attempted, but not with
success.  In the provinces, not even the smallest effort was made
to save the farmer class there from being bought out by the Roman
speculators; the provincials, forsooth, were merely men, and not a
party.  The consequence was, that even the rents of the soil beyond
Italy flowed more and more to Rome.  Moreover the plantation-
system, which about the middle of this epoch had already gained
the ascendant even in particular districts of Italy, such as Etruria,
had, through the co-operation of an energetic and methodical
management and abundant pecuniary resources, attained to a state
of high prosperity after its kind.  The production of Italian wine
in particular, which was artificially promoted partly by the opening
of forced markets in a portion of the provinces, partly by the
prohibition of foreign wines in Italy as expressed for instance
in the sumptuary law of 593, attained very considerable results:
the Aminean and Falernian wine began to be named by the side of the
Thasian and Chian, and the "Opimian wine" of 633, the Roman vintage
"Eleven," was long remembered after the last jar was exhausted.

Trades

Of trades and manufactur es there is nothing to be said, except
that the Italian nation in this respect persevered in an inaction
bordering on barbarism.  They destroyed the Corinthian factories,
the depositories of so many valuable industrial traditions--not
however that they might establish similar factories for themselves,
but that they might buy up at extravagant prices such Corinthian
vases of earthenware or copper and similar "antique works" as were
preserved in Greek houses.  The trades that were still somewhat
prosperous, such as those connected with building, were productive
of hardly any benefit for the commonwealth, because here too the
system of employing slaves in every more considerable undertaking
intervened: in the construction of the Marcian aqueduct, for
instance, the government concluded contracts for building and
materials simultaneously with 3000 master-tradesmen, each of whom
then performed the work contracted for with his band of slaves.

Money-Dealing and Commerce

The most brilliant, or rather the only brilliant, side of Roman
private economics was money-dealing and commerce.  First of all
stood the leasing of the domains and of the taxes, through which a
large, perhaps the larger, part of the income of the Roman state
flowed into the pockets of the Roman capitalists.  The money-
dealings, moreover, throughout the range of the Roman state were
monopolized by the Romans; every penny circulated in Gaul, it is
said in a writing issued soon after the end of this period, passes
through the books of the Roman merchants, and so it was doubtless
everywhere.  The co-operation of rude economic conditions and of
the unscrupulous employment of Rome's political ascendency for the
benefit of the private interests of every wealthy Roman rendered a
usurious system of interest universal, as is shown for example by
the treatment of the war-tax imposed by Sulla on the province of
Asia in 670, which the Roman capitalists advanced; it swelled with
paid and unpaid interest within fourteen years to sixfold its
original amount.  The communities had to sell their public buildings,
their works of art and jewels, parents had to sell their grown-up
children, in order to meet the claims of the Roman creditor: it
was no rare occurrence for the debtor to be not merely subjected
to moral torture, but directly placed upon the rack.  To these
sources of gain fell to be added the wholesale traffic.  The exports
and imports of Italy were very considerable.  The former consisted
chiefly of wine and oil, with which Italy and Greece almost
exclusively--for the production of wine in the Massiliot and
Turdetanian territories can at that time have been but small--
supplied the whole region of the Mediterranean; Italian wine was
sent in considerable quantities to the Balearic islands and
Celtiberia, to Africa, which was merely a corn and pasture country,
to Narbo and into the interior of Gaul.  Still more considerable
was the import to Italy, where at that time all luxury was
concentrated, and whither most articles of luxury for food, drink,
or clothing, ornaments, books, household furniture, works of art
were imported by sea.  The traffic in slaves, above all, received
through the ever-increasing demand of the Roman merchants an
impetus to which no parallel had been known in the region of the
Mediterranean, and which stood in the closest connection with the
flourishing of piracy.  All lands and all nations were laid under
contribution for slaves, but the places where they were chiefly
captured were Syria and the interior of Asia Minor.(27)

Ostia
Puteoli

In Italy the transmarine imports were chiefly concentrated in
the two great emporia on the Tyrrhene sea, Ostia and Puteoli.
The grain destined for the capital was brought to Ostia, which
was far from having a good roadstead, but, as being the nearest
port to Rome, was the most appropriate mart for less valuable wares;
whereas the traffic in luxuries with the east was directed mainly
to Puteoli, which recommended itself by its good harbour for ships
with valuable cargoes, and presented to merchants a market in its
immediate neighbourhood little inferior to that of the capital--
the district of Baiae, which came to be more and more filled with
villas.  For a long time this latter traffic was conducted through
Corinth and after its destruction through Delos, and in this sense
accordingly Puteoli is called by Lucilius the Italian "Little Delos";
but after the catastrophe which befel Delos in the Mithradatic war,(28)
and from which it never recovered, the Puteolans entered into direct
commercial connections with Syria and Alexandria, and their city became
more and more decidedly the first seat of transmarine commerce in Italy.
But it was not merely the gain which was made by the Italian exports
and imports, that fell mainly to the Italians; at Narbo they competed
in the Celtic trade with the Massiliots, and in general it admits of
no doubt that the Roman merchants to be met with everywhere, floating
or settled, took to themselves the best share of all speculations.

Capitalist Oligarchy

Putting together these phenomena, we recognize as the most prominent
feature in the private economy of this epoch the financial oligarchy
of Roman capitalists standing alongside of, and on a par with,
the political oligarchy.  In their hands were united the rents
of the soil of almost all Italy and of the best portions of
the provincial territory, the proceeds at usury of the capital
monopolized by them, the commercial gain from the whole empire,
and lastly, a very considerable part of the Roman state-revenue
in the form of profits accruing from the lease of that revenue.
The daily-increasing accumulation of capital is evident in the rise
of the average rate of wealth: 3,000,000 sesterces (30,000 pounds)
was now a moderate senatorial, 2,000,000 (20,000 pounds) was a decent
equestrian fortune; the property of the wealthiest man of the
Gracchan age, Publius Crassus consul in 623 was estimated at
100,000,000 sesterces (1,000,000 pounds).  It is no wonder,
that this capitalist order exercised a preponderant influence
on external policy; that it destroyed out of commercial rivalry
Carthage and Corinth(29) as the Etruscans had formerly destroyed
Alalia and the Syracusans Caere; that it in spite of the senate
upheld the colony of Narbo.(30)  It is likewise no wonder, that
this capitalist oligarchy engaged in earnest and often victorious
competition with the oligarchy of the nobles in internal politics.
But it is also no wonder, that ruined men of wealth put themselves
at the head of bands of revolted slaves,(31) and rudely reminded
the public that the transition is easy from the haunts of
fashionable debauchery to the robber's cave.  It is no wonder,
that that financial tower of Babel, with its foundation not purely
economic but borrowed from the political ascendency of Rome,
tottered at every serious political crisis nearly in the same
way as our very similar fabric of a paper currency.  The great
financial crisis, which in consequence of the Italo-Asiatic
commotions of 664 f.  set in upon the Roman capitalist-class,
the bankruptcy of the state and of private persons, the general
depreciation of landed property and of partnership-shares, can no
longer be traced out in detail; but their general nature and their
importance are placed beyond doubt by their results--the murder of
the praetor by a band of creditors,(32) the attempt to eject from
the senate all the senators not free of debt,(33) the renewal of
the maximum of interest by Sulla,(34) the cancelling of 75 per cent
of all debts by the revolutionary party.(35)  The consequence of
this system was naturally general impoverishment and depopulation
in the provinces, whereas the parasitic population of migratory
or temporarily settled Italians was everywhere on the increase.
In Asia Minor 80,000 men of Italian origin are said to have perished
in one day.(36)  How numerous they were in Delos, is evident from
the tombstones still extant on the island and from the statement
that 20,000 foreigners, mostly Italian merchants, were put to death
there by command of Mithradates.(37)  In Africa the Italians were
so many, that even the Numidian town of Cirta could be defended
mainly by them against Jugurtha.(38)  Gaul too, it is said, was
filled with Roman merchants; in the case of Spain alone--perhaps
not accidentally--no statements of this sort are found.  In Italy
itself, on the other hand, the condition of the free population
at this epoch had on the whole beyond doubt retrograded.  To this
result certainly the civil wars essentially contributed, which,
according to statements of a general kind and but littletrustworthy,
are alleged to have swept away from 100,000 to 150,000 of the Roman
burgesses and 300,000 of the Italian population generally; but still
worse was the effect of the economic ruin of the middle class, and of
the boundless extent of the mercantile emigration which induced a great
portion of the Italian youth to spend their most vigorous years abroad.

A compensation of very dubious value was afforded by the free
parasitic Helleno-Oriental population, which sojourned in the
capital as diplomatic agents for kings or communities, as physicians,
schoolmasters, priests, servants, parasites, and in the myriad
employments of sharpers and swindlers, or, as traders and
mariners, frequented especially Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium.
Still more hazardous was the disproportionate increase of the
multitude of slaves in the peninsula.  The Italian burgesses by
the census of 684 numbered 910,000 men capable of bearing arms, to
which number, in order to obtain the amount of the free population
in the peninsula, those accidentally passed over in the census,
the Latins in the district between the Alps and the Po, and the
foreigners domiciled in Italy, have to be added, while the Roman
burgesses domiciled abroad are to be deducted.  It will therefore
be scarcely possible to estimate the free population of the
peninsula at more than from 6 to 7 millions.  If its whole
population at this time was equal to that of the present day, we
should have to assume accordingly a mass of slaves amounting to 13
or 14 millions.  It needs however no such fallacious calculations
to render the dangerous tension of this state of things apparent;
this is loudly enough attested by the partial servile insurrections,
and by the appeal which from the beginning of the revolutions was
at the close of every outbreak addressed to the slaves to take
up arms against their masters and to fight out their liberty.
If we conceive of England with its lords, its squires, and
above all its City, but with its freeholders and lessees converted
into proletarians, and its labourers and sailors converted into slaves,
we shall gain an approximate image of the population of the Italian
peninsula in those days.

The economic relations of this epoch are clearly mirrored to
us even now in the Roman monetary system.  Its treatment shows
throughout the sagacious merchant.  For long gold and silver stood
side by side as general means of payment on such a footing that,
while for the purpose of general cash-balances a fixed ratio of
value was legally laid down between the two metals,(39) the giving
one metal for the other was not, as a rule, optional, but payment
was to be in gold or silver according to the tenor of the bond.
In this way the great evils were avoided, that are otherwise
inevitably associated with the setting up of two precious metals;
the severe gold crises--as about 600, for instance, when in
consequence of the discovery of the Tauriscan gold-seams(40) gold
as compared with silver fell at once in Italy about 33 1/3 per
cent--exercised at least no direct influence on the silver money
and retail transactions.  The nature of the case implied that,
the more transmarine traffic extended, gold the more decidedly
rose from the second place to the first; and that it did so, is
confirmed by the statements as to the balances in the treasury and
as to its transactions; but the government was not thereby induced
to introduce gold into the coinage.  The coining of gold attempted
in the exigency of the Hannibalic war(41) had been long allowed
to fall into abeyance; the few gold pieces which Sulla struck as
regent were scarcely more than pieces coined for the occasion
of his triumphal presents.  Silver still as before circulated
exclusively as actual money; gold, whether it, as was usual,
circulated in bars or bore the stamp of a foreign or possibly even
of an inland mint, was taken solely by weight.  Nevertheless gold
and silver were on a par as means of exchange, and the fraudulent
alloying of gold was treated in law, like the issuing of spurious
silver money, as a monetary offence.  They thus obtained the
immense advantage of precluding, in the case of the most important
medium of payment, even the possibility of monetary fraud and
monetary adulteration.  Otherwise the coinage was as copious as it
was of exemplary purity.  After the silver piece had been reduced
in the Hannibalic war from 1/72 (42) to 1/84 of a pound,(43) it
retained for more than three centuries quite the same weight
and the same quality; no alloying took place.  The copper money
became about the beginning of this period quite restricted to
small change, and ceased to be employed as formerly in large
transactions; for this reason the -as- was no longer coined after
perhaps the beginning of the seventh century, and the copper
coinage was confined to the smaller values of a -semis- (1/4 pence)
and under, which could not well be represented in silver.
The sorts of coins were arranged according to a simple principle,
and in the then smallest coin of the ordinary issue--the -quadrans-
(1/8 pence)--carried down to the limit of appreciable value.
It was a monetary system, which, for the judicious principles
on which it was based and for the iron rigour with which they
were applied, stands alone in antiquity and has been but rarely
paralleled even in modern times.

Yet it had also its weak point.  According to a custom, common
in all antiquity, but which reached its highest development at
Carthage,(44) the Roman government issued along with the good
silver -denarii- also -denarii- of copper plated with silver, which
had to be accepted like the former and were just a token-money
analogous to our paper currency, with compulsory circulation and
recourse on the public chest, inasmuch as it also was not entitled
to reject the plated pieces.  This was no more an official
adulteration of the coinage than our manufacture of paper-money,
for they practised the thing quite openly; Marcus Drusus proposed
in 663, with the view of gaining the means for his largesses of
grain, the sending forth of one plated -denarius- for every seven
silver ones issuing fresh from the mint; nevertheless this measure
not only offered a dangerous handle to private forgery, but
designedly left the public uncertain whether it was receiving
silver or token money, and to what total amount the latter was
in circulation.  In the embarrassed period of the civil war and
of the great financial crisis they seem to have so unduly availed
themselves of plating, that a monetary crisis accompanied the
financial one, and the quantity of spurious and really worthless
pieces rendered dealings extremely insecure.  Accordingly during
the Cinnan government an enactment was passed by the praetors and
tribunes, primarily by Marcus Marius Gratidianus,(45) for redeeming
all the token-money by silver, and for that purpose an assay-office
was established.  How far the calling-in was accomplished,
tradition has not told us; the coining of token-money itself
continued to subsist.

As to the provinces, in accordance with the setting aside of gold
money on principle, the coining of gold was nowhere permitted, not
even in the client-states; so that a gold coinage at this period
occurs only where Rome had nothing at all to say, especially among
the Celts to the north of the Cevennes and among the states in
revolt against Rome; the Italians, for instance, as well as
Mithradates Eupator struck gold coins.  The government seems to
have made efforts to bring the coinage of silver also more and more
into its hands, particularly in the west.  In Africa and Sardinia
the Carthaginian gold and silver money may have remained in
circulation even after the fall of the Carthaginian state; but
no coinage of precious metals took place there after either the
Carthaginian or the Roman standard, and certainly very soon after
the Romans took possession, the -denarius- introduced from Italy
acquired the predominance in the transactions of the two countries.
In Spain and Sicily, which came earlier to the Romans and
experienced altogether a milder treatment, silver was no doubt
coined under the Roman rule, and indeed in the former country the
silver coinage was first called into existence by the Romans and
based on the Roman standard;(46) but there exist good grounds for
the supposition, that even in these two countries, at least from
the beginning of the seventh century, the provincial and urban
mints were obliged to restrict their issues to copper small money.
Only in Narbonese Gaul the right of coining silver could not be
withdrawn from the old-allied and considerable free city of
Massilia; and the same was presumably true of the Greek cities in
Illyria, Apollonia and Dyrrhachium.  But the privilege of these
communities to coin money was restricted indirectly by the fact,
that the three-quarter -denarius-, which by ordinance of the Roman
government was coined both at Massilia and in Illyria, and which
had been under the name of -victoriatus- received into the Roman
monetary system,(47) was about the middle of the seventh century
set aside in the latter; the effect of which necessarily was, that
the Massiliot and Illyrian currency was driven out of Upper Italy
and only remained in circulation, over and above its native field,
perhaps in the regions of the Alps and the Danube.  Such progress
had thus been made already in this epoch, that the standard of the
-denarius- exclusively prevailed in the whole western division of
the Roman state; for Italy, Sicily--of which it is as respects the
beginning of the next period expressly attested, that no other
silver money circulated there but the -denarius---Sardinia, Africa,
used exclusively Roman silver money, and the provincial silver
still current in Spain as well as the silver money of the Massiliots
and Illyrians were at least struck after the standard of the -denarius-.

It was otherwise in the east.  Here, where the number of the states
coining money from olden times and the quantity of native coin in
circulation were very considerable, the -denarius- did not make its
way into wider acceptance, although it was perhaps declared a legal
tender.  On the contrary either the previous monetary standard
continued in use, as in Macedonia for instance, which still as
a province--although partially adding the names of the Roman
magistrates to that of the country--struck its Attic -tetradrachmae-
and certainly employed in substance no other money; or a peculiar
money-standard corresponding to the circumstances was introduced
under Roman authority, as on the institution of the province of Asia,
when a new -stater-, the -cistophorus- as it was called, was prescribed
by the Roman government and was thenceforth struck by the district-
capitals there under Roman superintendence.  This essential diversity
between the Occidental and Oriental systems of currency came to be
of the greatest historical importance: the Romanizing of the subject
lands found one of its mightiest levers in the adoption of Roman money,
and it was not through mere accident that what we have designated at
this epoch as the field of the -denarius- became afterwards the Latin,
while the field of the -drachma- became afterwards the Greek, half
of the empire.  Still at the present day the former field substantially
represents the sum of Romanic culture, whereas the latter has
severed itself from European civilization.

It is easy to form a general conception of the aspect which under
such economic conditions the social relations must have assumed;
but to follow out in detail the increase of luxury, of prices, of
fastidiousness and frivolity is neither pleasant nor instructive.
Extravagance and sensuous enjoyment formed the main object with
all, among the parvenus as well as among the Licinii and Metelli;
not the polished luxury which is the acme of civilization, but
that sort of luxury which had developed itself amidst the decaying
Hellenic civilization of Asia Minor and Alexandria, which degraded
everything beautiful and significant to the purpose of decoration
and studied enjoyment with a laborious pedantry, a precise
punctiliousness, rendering it equally nauseous to the man of fresh
feeling as to the man of fresh intellect.  As to the popular
festivals, the importation of transmarine wild beasts prohibited
in the time of Cato(48) was, apparently about the middle of this
century, formally permitted anew by a decree of the burgesses
proposed by Gnaeus Aufidius; the effect of which was, that animal-
hunts came into enthusiastic favour and formed a chief feature of
the burgess-festivals.  Several lions first appeared in the Roman
arena about 651, the first elephants about 655; Sulla when praetor
exhibited a hundred lions in 661.  The same holds true of
gladiatorial games.  If the forefathers had publicly exhibited
representations of great battles, their grandchildren began to
do the same with their gladiatorial games, and by means of such
leading or state performances of the age to make themselves a
laughing-stock to their descendants.  What sums were spent on these
and on funeral solemnities generally, may be inferred from the
testament of Marcus Aemilius Lepidus (consul in 567, 579; 602);
he gave orders to his children, forasmuch as the true last honours
consisted not in empty pomp but in the remembrance of personal
and ancestral services, to expend on his funeral not more than
1,000,000 -asses- (4000 pounds).  Luxury was on the increase also
as respected buildings and gardens; the splendid town house of the
orator Crassus (663), famous especially for the old trees of its
garden, was valued with the trees at 6,000,000 sesterces (60,000
pounds), without them at the half; while the value of an ordinary
dwelling-house in Rome may be estimated perhaps at 60,000 sesterces
(600 pounds).(49)  How quickly the prices of ornamental estates
increased, is shown by the instance of the Misenian villa, for
which Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, paid 75,000 sesterces
(750 pounds), and Lucius Lucullus, consul in 680, thirty-three
times that price.  The villas and the luxurious rural and sea-
bathing life rendered Baiae and generally the district around the
Bay of Naples the El Dorado of noble idleness.  Games of hazard,
in which the stake was no longer as in the Italian dice-playing a
trifle, became common, and as early as 639 a censorial edict was
issued against them.  Gauze fabrics, which displayed rather than
concealed the figure, and silken clothing began to displace the old
woollen dresses among women and even among men.  Against the insane
extravagance in the employment of foreign perfumery the sumptuary
laws interfered in vain.

But the real focus in which the brilliance of this genteel life was
concentrated was the table.  Extravagant prices--as much as 100,000
sesterces (1000 pounds)--were paid for an exquisite cook.  Houses
were constructed with special reference to this object, and the
villas in particular along the coast were provided with salt-water
tanks of their own, in order that they might furnish marine fishes
and oysters at any time fresh to the table.  A dinner was already
described as poor, at which the fowls were served up to the guests
entire and not merely the choice portions, and at which the guests
were expected to eat of the several dishes and not simply to taste
them.  They procured at a great expense foreign delicacies and
Greek wine, which had to be sent round at least once at every
respectable repast.  At banquets above all the Romans displayed
their hosts of slaves ministering to luxury, their bands of
musicians, their dancing-girls, their elegant furniture, their
carpets glittering with gold or pictorially embroidered, their
purple hangings, their antique bronzes, their rich silver plate.
Against such displays the sumptuary laws were primarily directed,
which were issued more frequently (593, 639, 665, 673) and in
greater detail than ever; a number of delicacies and wines were
therein totally prohibited, for others a maximum in weight and
price was fixed; the quantity of silver plate was likewise
restricted by law, and lastly general maximum rates were prescribed
for the expenses of ordinary and festal meals; these, for example,
were fixed in 593 at 10 and 100 sesterces (2 shillings and 1 pound)
in 673 at 30 and 300 sesterces (6 shillings and 3 pounds)
respectively.  Unfortunately truth requires us to add that, of all
the Romans of rank, not more than three--and these not including
the legislators themselves--are said to have complied with these
imposing laws; and in the case of these three it was the law of the
Stoa, and not that of the state, that curtailed the bill of fare.

It is worth while to dwell for a moment on the luxury that went
on increasing in defiance of these laws, as respects silver plate.
In the sixth century silver plate for the table was, with the
exception of the traditionary silver salt-dish, a rarity; the
Carthaginian ambassadors jested over the circumstance, that at
every house to which they were invited they had encountered the
same silver plate.(50)  Scipio Aemilianus possessed not more than
32 pounds (120 pounds) in wrought silver; his nephew Quintus Fabius
(consul in 633) first brought his plate up to 1000 pounds (4000
pounds), Marcus Drusus (tribune of the people in 663) reached
10,000 pounds (40,000 pounds); in Sulla's time there were already
counted in the capital about 150 silver state-dishes weighing 100
pounds each, several of which brought their possessors into the
lists of proscription.  To judge of the sums expended on these,
we must recollect that the workmanship also was paid for at enormous
rates; for instance Gaius Gracchus paid for choice articles of
silver fifteen times, and Lucius Crassus, consul in 659, eighteen
times the value of the metal, and the latter gave for a pair of
cups by a noted silversmith 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds).
So it was in proportion everywhere.

How it fared with marriage and the rearing of children, is shown
by the Gracchan agrarian laws, which first placed a premium on
these.(51)  Divorce, formerly in Rome almost unheard of, was now an
everyday occurrence; while in the oldest Roman marriage the husband
had purchased his wife, it might have been proposed to the Romans
of quality in the present times that, with the view of bringing
the name into accordance with the reality, they should introduce
marriage for hire.  Even a man like Metellus Macedonicus, who for
his honourable domestic life and his numerous host of children was
the admiration of his contemporaries, when censor in 623 enforced
the obligation of the burgesses to live in a state of matrimony by
describing it as an oppressive public burden, which patriots ought
nevertheless to undertake from a sense of duty.(52)

There were, certainly, exceptions.  The circles of the rural towns,
and particularly those of the larger landholders, had preserved
more faithfully the old honourable habits of the Latin nation.
In the capital, however, the Catonian opposition had become a mere
form of words; the modern tendency bore sovereign sway, and though
individuals of firm and refined organization, such as Scipio
Aemilianus, knew the art of combining Roman manners with Attic
culture, Hellenism was among the great multitude synonymous with
intellectual and moral corruption.  We must never lose sight of
the reaction exercised by these social evils on political life,
if we would understand the Roman revolution.  It was no matter
of indifference, that of the two men of rank, who in 662 acted
as supreme masters of morals to the community, the one publicly
reproached the other with having shed tears over the death of a
-muraena- the pride of his fishpond, and the latter retaliated on
the former that he had buried three wives and had shed tears over
none of them.  It was no matter of indifference, that in 593 an
orator could make sport in the open Forum with the following
description of a senatorial civil juryman, whom the time fixed
for the cause finds amidst the circle of his boon-companions.
"They play at hazard, delicately perfumed, surrounded by their
mistresses.  As the afternoon advances, they summon the servant
and bid him make enquiries on the Comitium, as to what has occurred
in the Forum, who has spoken in favour of or against the new project
of law, what tribes have voted for and what against it. At length
they go themselves to the judgment-seat, just early enough not to
bring the process down on their own neck.  On the way there is no
opportunity in any retired alley which they do not avail themselves
of, for they have gorged themselves with wine.  Reluctantly they
come to the tribunal and give audience to the parties.  Those who
are concerned bring forward their cause.  The juryman orders the
witnesses to come forward; he himself steps aside.  When he returns,
he declares that he has heard everything, and asks for the documents.
He looks into the writings; he can hardly keep his eyes open for wine.
When he thereupon withdraws to consider his sentence, he says to his
boon-companions, 'What concern have I with these tiresome people?
why should we not rather go to drink a cup of mulse mixed with Greek wine,
and accompany it with a fat fieldfare and a good fish, a veritable pike
from the Tiber island?'  Those who heard the orator laughed; but was it
not a very serious matter, that such things were subjects for laughter?"




Chapter XII

Nationality, Religion, and Education

Paramount Ascendency of Latinism and Hellenism

In the great struggle of the nationalities within the wide circuit
of the Roman empire, the secondary nations seem at this period on
the wane or disappearing.  The most important of them all, the
Phoenician, received through the destruction of Carthage a mortal
wound from which it slowly bled to death.  The districts of Italy
which had hitherto preserved their old language and manners,
Etruria and Samnium, were not only visited by the heaviest blows
of the Sullan reaction, but were compelled also by the political
levelling of Italy to adopt the Latin language and customs in
public intercourse, so that the old native languages were reduced
to popular dialects rapidly decaying.  There no longer appears
throughout the bounds of the Roman state any nationality entitled
even to compete with the Roman and the Greek.

Latinism

On the other hand the Latin nationality was, as respected both
the extent of its diffusion and the depth of its hold, in the most
decided ascendant.  As after the Social war any portion of Italian
soil might belong to any Italian in full Roman ownership, and any
god of an Italian temple might receive Roman gifts; as in all
Italy, with the exception of the region beyond the Po, the Roman
law thenceforth had exclusive authority, superseding all other
civic and local laws; so the Roman language at that time became
the universal language of business, and soon likewise the universal
language of cultivated intercourse, in the whole peninsula from the
Alps to the Sicilian Straits.  But it no longer restricted itself
to these natural limits.  The mass of capital accumulating in
Italy, the riches of its products, the intelligence of its
agriculturists, the versatility of its merchants, found no adequate
scope in the peninsula; these circumstances and the public service
carried the Italians in great numbers to the provinces.(1)  Their
privileged position there rendered the Roman language and the Roman
law privileged also, even where Romans were not merely transacting
business with each other.(2)  Everywhere the Italians kept together
as compact and organized masses, the soldiers in their legions, the
merchants of every larger town as special corporations, the Roman
burgesses domiciled or sojourning in the particular provincial
court-district as "circuits" (-conventus civium Romanorum-) with
their own list of jurymen and in some measure with a communal
constitution; and, though these provincial Romans ordinarily
returned sooner or later to Italy, they nevertheless gradually
laid the foundations of a fixed population in the provinces,
partly Roman, partly mixed, attaching itself to the Roman settlers.
We have already mentioned that it was in Spain, where the Roman army
first became a standing one, that distinct provincial towns with
Italian constitution were first organized--Carteia in 583,(3)
Valentia in 616,(4) and at a later date Palma and Pollentia.(5)
Although the interior was still far from civilized,--the territory
of the Vaccaeans, for instance, being still mentioned long after
this time as one of the rudest and most repulsive places of abode
for the cultivated Italian--authors and inscriptions attest that as
early as the middle of the seventh century the Latin language was
in common use around New Carthage and elsewhere along the coast.
Gracchus first distinctly developed the idea of colonizing, or in
other words of Romanizing, the provinces of the Roman state by
Italian emigration, and endeavoured to carry it out; and, although
the conservative opposition resisted the bold project, destroyed
for the most part its attempted beginnings, and prevented its
continuation, yet the colony of Narbo was preserved, important even
of itself as extending the domain of the Latin tongue, and far more
important still as the landmark of a great idea, the foundation-
stone of a mighty structure to come.  The ancient Gallic, and in
fact the modern French, type of character, sprang out of that
settlement, and are in their ultimate origin creations of Gaius
Gracchus.  But the Latin nationality not only filled the bounds
of Italy and began to pass beyond them; it came also to acquire
intrinsically a deeper intellectual basis.  We find it in the
course of creating a classical literature, and a higher instruction
of its own; and, though in comparison with the Hellenic classics
and Hellenic culture we may feel ourselves tempted to attach little
value to the feeble hothouse products of Italy, yet, so far as its
historical development was primarily concerned, the quality of
the Latin classical literature and the Latin culture was of far
less moment than the fact that they subsisted side by side with
the Greek; and, sunken as were the contemporary Hellenes in a
literary point of view, one might well apply in this case also
the saying of the poet, that the living day-labourer is better
than the dead Achilles.

Hellenism

But, however rapidly and vigorously the Latin language and
nationality gain ground, they at the same time recognize the
Hellenic nationality as having an entirely equal, indeed an earlier
and better title, and enter everywhere into the closest alliance
with it or become intermingled with it in a joint development.
The Italian revolution, which otherwise levelled all the non-Latin
nationalities in the peninsula, did not disturb the Greek cities of
Tarentum, Rhegium, Neapolis, Locri.(6)  In like manner Massilia,
although now enclosed by Roman territory, remained continuously
a Greek city and, just as such, firmly connected with Rome.  With
the complete Latinizing of Italy the growth of Hellenizing went hand
in hand.  In the higher circles of Italian society Greek training
became an integral element of their native culture.  The consul of 623,
the -pontifex maximus- Publius Crassus, excited the astonishment even
of the native Greeks, when as governor of Asia he delivered his judicial
decisions, as the case required, sometimes in ordinary Greek, sometimes
in one of the four dialects which had become written languages.  And if
the Italian literature and art for long looked steadily towards the east,
Hellenic literature and art now began to look towards the west.  Not only
did the Greek cities in Italy continue to maintain an active intellectual
intercourse with Greece, Asia Minor, and Egypt, and confer on the
Greek poets and actors who had acquired celebrity there the like
recognition and the like honours among themselves; in Rome also,
after the example set by the destroyer of Corinth at his triumph
in 608, the gymnastic and aesthetic recreations of the Greeks--
competitions in wrestling as well as in music, acting, reciting,
and declaiming--came into vogue.(7)  Greek men of letters even thus
early struck root in the noble society of Rome, especially in the
Scipionic circle, the most prominent Greek members of which--the
historian Polybius and the philosopher Panaetius--belong rather to
the history of Roman than of Greek development.  But even in other
less illustrious circles similar relations occur; we may mention
another contemporary of Scipio, the philosopher Clitomachus,
because his life at the same time presents a vivid view of the
great intermingling of nations at this epoch.  A native of
Carthage, then a disciple of Carneades at Athens, and afterwards
his successor in his professorship, Clitomachus held intercourse
from Athens with the most cultivated men of Italy, the historian
Aulus Albinus and the poet Lucilius, and dedicated on the one hand
a scientific work to Lucius Censorinus the Roman consul who opened
the siege of Carthage, and on the other hand a philosophic
consolatory treatise to his fellow-citizens who were conveyed to
Italy as slaves.  While Greek literary men of note had hitherto
taken up their abode temporarily in Rome as ambassadors, exiles,
or otherwise, they now began to settle there; for instance, the
already-mentioned Panaetius lived in the house of Scipio, and
the hexameter-maker Archias of Antioch settled at Rome in 652 and
supported himself respectably by the art of improvising and by epic
poems on Roman consulars.  Even Gaius Marius, who hardly understood
a line of his -carmen- and was altogether as ill adapted as
possible for a Maecenas, could not avoid patronizing the artist
in verse.  While intellectual and literary life thus brought the
more genteel, if not the purer, elements of the two nations into
connection with each other, on the other hand the arrival of troops
of slaves from Asia Minor and Syria and the mercantile immigration
from the Greek and half-Greek east brought the coarsest strata of
Hellenism--largely alloyed with Oriental and generally barbaric
ingredients--into contact with the Italian proletariate, and gave
to that also a Hellenic colouring.  The remark of Cicero, that new
phrases and new fashions first make their appearance in maritime
towns, probably had a primary reference to the semi-Hellenic
character of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium, where with foreign
wares foreign manners also first found admission and became thence
more widely diffused.

Mixture of Peoples

The immediate result of this complete revolution in the relations
of nationality was certainly far from pleasing.  Italy swarmed with
Greeks, Syrians, Phoenicians, Jews, Egyptians, while the provinces
swarmed with Romans; sharply defined national peculiarities
everywhere came into mutual contact, and were visibly worn off; it
seemed as if nothing was to be left behind but the general impress
of utilitarianism.  What the Latin character gained in diffusion
it lost in freshness; especially in Rome itself, where the middle
class disappeared the soonest and most entirely, and nothing was
left but the grandees and the beggars, both in like measure
cosmopolitan.  Cicero assures us that about 660 the general culture
in the Latin towns stood higher than in Rome; and this is confirmed
by the literature of this period, whose most pleasing, healthiest,
and most characteristic products, such as the national comedy and
the Lucilian satire, are with greater justice described as Latin,
than as Roman.  That the Italian Hellenism of the lower orders was
in reality nothing but a repulsive cosmopolitanism tainted at once
with all the extravagances of culture and with a superficially
whitewashed barbarism, is self-evident; but even in the case of
the better society the fine taste of the Scipionic circle did not
remain the permanent standard.  The more the mass of society began
to take interest in Greek life, the more decidedly it resorted not
to the classical literature, but to the most modern and frivolous
productions of the Greek mind; instead of moulding the Roman
character in the Hellenic spirit, they contented themselves with
borrowing that sort of pastime which set their own intellect to
work as little as possible.  In this sense the Arpinate landlord
Marcus Cicero, the father of the orator, said that among the
Romans, just as among Syrian slaves, each was the less worth,
the more he understood Greek.

National Decomposition

This national decomposition is, like the whole age, far from
pleasing, but also like that age significant and momentous.
The circle of peoples, which we are accustomed to call the ancient
world, advances from an outward union under the authority of Rome
to an inward union under the sway of the modern culture resting
essentially on Hellenic elements.  Over the ruins of peoples of the
second rank the great historical compromise between the two ruling
nations is silently completed; the Greek and Latin nationalities
conclude mutual peace.  The Greeks renounce exclusive claims for
their language in the field of culture, as do the Romans for theirs
in the field of politics; in instruction Latin is allowed to stand
on a footing of equality--restricted, it is true, and imperfect--
with Greek; on the other hand Sulla first allows foreign ambassadors
to speak Greek before the Roman senate without an interpreter.
The time heralds its approach, when the Roman commonwealth will
pass into a bilingual state and the true heir of the throne and
the ideas of Alexander the Great will arise in the west, at once
a Roman and a Greek.

The suppression of the secondary, and the mutual interpenetration
of the two primary nationalities, which are thus apparent on a
general survey of national relations, now fall to be more precisely
exhibited in detail in the several fields of religion, national
education, literature, and art.

Religion

The Roman religion was so intimately interwoven with the Roman
commonwealth and the Roman household--so thoroughly in fact the
pious reflection of the Roman burgess-world--that the political
and social revolution necessarily overturned also the fabric of
religion.  The ancient Italian popular faith fell to the ground;
over its ruins rose--like the oligarchy and the -tyrannis- rising
over the ruins of the political commonwealth--on the one side
unbelief, state-religion, Hellenism, and on the other side
superstition, sectarianism, the religion of the Orientals, The
germs certainly of both, as indeed the germs of the politico-social
revolution also, may be traced back to the previous epoch (iii.
109-117).  Even then the Hellenic culture of the higher circles was
secretly undermining their ancestral faith; Ennius introduced the
allegorizing and historical versions of the Hellenic religion into
Italy; the senate, which subdued Hannibal, had to sanction the
transference of the worship of Cybele from Asia Minor to Rome,
and to take the most serious steps against other still worse
superstitions, particularly the Bacchanalian scandal.  But, as
during the preceding period the revolution generally was rather
preparing its way in men's minds than assuming outward shape, so
the religious revolution was in substance, at any rate, the work
only of the Gracchan and Sullan age.

Greek Philosophy

Let us endeavour first to trace the tendency associating itself
with Hellenism.  The Hellenic nation, which bloomed and faded far
earlier than the Italian, had long ago passed the epoch of faith
and thenceforth moved exclusively in the sphere of speculation and
reflection; for long there had been no religion there--nothing but
philosophy.  But even the philosophic activity of the Hellenic mind
had, when it began to exert influence on Rome, already left the
epoch of productive speculation far behind it, and had arrived at
the stage at which there is not only no origination of truly new
systems, but even the power of apprehending the more perfect of
the older systems begins to wane and men restrict themselves to the
repetition, soon passing into the scholastic tradition, of the less
complete dogmas of their predecessors; at that stage, accordingly,
when philosophy, instead of giving greater depth and freedom to
the mind, rather renders it shallow and imposes on it the worst of
all chains--chains of its own forging.  The enchanted draught of
speculation, always dangerous, is, when diluted and stale, certain
poison.  The contemporary Greeks presented it thus flat and diluted
to the Romans, and these had not the judgment either to refuse it
or to go back from the living schoolmasters to the dead masters.
Plato and Aristotle, to say nothing of the sages before Socrates,
remained without material influence on the Roman culture, although
their illustrious names were freely used, and their more easily
understood writings were probably read and translated.  Accordingly
the Romans became in philosophy simply inferior scholars of bad
teachers.

Leading Schools
Newer Academy
Epicurus and Zeno

Besides the historico-rationalistic conception of religion, which
resolved the myths into biographies of various benefactors of the
human race living in the grey dawn of early times whom superstition
had transformed into gods, or Euhemerism as it was called,(8) there
were chiefly three philosophical schools that came to be of
importance for Italy; viz. the two dogmatic schools of Epicurus
(484) and Zeno (491) and the sceptical school of Arcesilaus (513)
and Carneades (541-625), or, to use the school-names, Epicureanism,
the Stoa, and the newer Academy.  The last of these schools, which
started from the impossibility of assured knowledge and in its
stead conceded as possible only a provisional opinion sufficient
for practical needs, presented mainly a polemical aspect, seeing
that it caught every proposition of positive faith or of
philosophic dogmatism in the meshes of its dilemmas.  So far it
stands nearly on a parallel with the older method of the sophists;
except that, as may be conceived, the sophists made war more
against the popular faith, Carneades and his disciples more against
their philosophical colleagues.  On the other hand Epicurus and
Zeno agreed both in their aim of rationally explaining the nature
of things, and in their physiological method, which set out from
the conception of matter.  They diverged, in so far as Epicurus,
following the atomic theory of Democritus, conceived the first
principle as rigid matter, and evolved the manifoldness of things
out of this matter merely by mechanical variations; whereas Zeno,
forming his views after the Ephesian Heraclitus, introduces even
into his primordial matter a dynamic antagonism and a movement
of fluctuation up and down.  From this are derived the further
distinctions--that in the Epicurean system the gods as it were did
not exist or were at the most a dream of dreams, while the Stoical
gods formed the ever-active soul of the world, and were as spirit,
as sun, as God powerful over the body, the earth, and nature; that
Epicurus did not, while Zeno did, recognize a government of the
world and a personal immortality of the soul; that the proper
object of human aspiration was according to Epicurus an absolute
equilibrium disturbed neither by bodily desire nor by mental
conflict, while it was according to Zeno a manly activity always
increased by the constant antagonistic efforts of the mind and
body, and striving after a harmony with nature perpetually in
conflict and perpetually at peace.  But in one point all these
schools were agreed with reference to religion, that faith as such
was nothing, and had necessarily to be supplemented by reflection--
whether this reflection might consciously despair of attaining any
result, as did the Academy; or might reject the conceptions of
the popular faith, as did the school of Epicurus; or might partly
retain them with explanation of the reasons for doing so, and
partly modify them, as did the Stoics.

Carneades at Rome

It was accordingly only a natural result, that the first contact of
Hellenic philosophy with the Roman nation equally firm in faith and
adverse to speculation should be of a thoroughly hostile character.
The Roman religion was entirely right in disdaining alike the
assaults and the reasoned support of these philosophical systems,
both of which did away with its proper character.  The Roman state,
which instinctively felt itself assailed when religion was
attacked, reasonably assumed towards the philosophers the attitude
which a fortress assumes towards the spies of the army advancing
to besiege it, and as early as 593 dismissed the Greek philosophers
along with the rhetoricians from Rome.  In fact the very first
debut of philosophy on a great scale in Rome was a formal
declaration of war against faith and morals.  It was occasioned
by the occupation of Oropus by the Athenians, a step which they
commissioned three of the most esteemed professors of philosophy,
including Carneades the master of the modern sophistical school,
to justify before the senate (599).  The selection was so far
appropriate, as the utterly scandalous transaction defied any
justification in common sense; whereas it was quite in keeping with
the circumstances of the case, when Carneades proved by thesis and
counter-thesis that exactly as many and as cogent reasons might be
adduced in praise of injustice as in praise of justice, and when
he showed in the best logical form that with equal propriety the
Athenians might be required to surrender Oropus and the Romans
to confine themselves once more to their old straw huts on the
Palatine.  The young men who were masters of the Greek language
were attracted in crowds by the scandal as well as by the rapid and
emphatic delivery of the celebrated man; but on this occasion at
least Cato could not be found fault with, when he not only bluntly
enough compared the dialectic arguments of the philosophers to
the tedious dirges of the wailing-women, but also insisted on the
senate dismissing a man who understood the art of making right
wrong and wrong right, and whose defence was in fact nothing but
a shameless and almost insulting confession of wrong.  But such
dismissals had no great effect, more especially as the Roman youth
could not be prevented from hearing philosophic discourses at
Rhodes and Athens.  Men became accustomed first to tolerate
philosophy at least as a necessary evil, and ere long to seek for
the Roman religion, which in its simplicity was no longer tenable,
a support in foreign philosophy--a support which no doubt ruined
it as faith, but in return at any rate allowed the man of culture
decorously to retain in some measure the names and forms of the
popular creed.  But this support could neither be Euhemerism, nor
the system of Carneades or of Epicurus.

Euhemerism Not an Adequate Support

The historical version of the myths came far too rudely into
collision with the popular faith, when it declared the gods
directly to be men; Carneades called even their existence in
question, and Epicurus denied to them at least any influence on
the destinies of men.  Between these systems and the Roman religion
no alliance was possible; they were proscribed and remained so.
Even in the writings of Cicero it is declared the duty of a citizen
to resist Euhemerism as prejudicial to religious worship; and if the
Academic and the Epicurean appear in his dialogues, the former has
to plead the excuse that, while as a philosopher he is a disciple
of Carneades, as a citizen and -pontifex- he is an orthodox
confessor of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the Epicurean has even
ultimately to surrender and be converted.  No one of these three
systems became in any proper sense popular.  The plain intelligible
character of Euhemerism exerted doubtless a certain power of
attraction over the Romans, and in particular produced only too
deep an effect on the conventional history of Rome with its at
once childish and senile conversion of fable into history; but it
remained without material influence on the Roman religion, because
the latter from the first dealt only in allegory and not in fable,
and it was not possible in Rome as in Hellas to write biographies
of Zeus the first, second, and third.  The modern sophistry could
only succeed where, as in Athens, clever volubility was indigenous,
and where, moreover, the long series of philosophical systems that
had come and gone had accumulated huge piles of intellectual
rubbish.  Against the Epicurean quietism, in fine, everything
revolted that was sound and honest in the Roman character so
thoroughly addressing itself to action.  Yet it found more
partisans than Euhemerism and the sophistic school, and this was
probably the reason why the police continued to wage war against
it longest and most seriously.  But this Roman Epicureanism was not
so much a philosophic system as a sort of philosophic mask, under
which--very much against the design of its strictly moral founder--
thoughtless sensual enjoyment disguised itself for good society;
one of the earliest adherents of this sect, for instance, Titus
Albucius, figures in the poems of Lucilius as the prototype of
a Roman Hellenizing to bad purpose.

Roman Stoa

Far different were the position and influence of the Stoic
philosophy in Italy.  In direct contrast to these schools it
attached itself to the religion of the land as closely as science
can at all accommodate itself to faith.  To the popular faith with
its gods and oracles the Stoic adhered on principle, in so far as
he recognized in it an instinctive knowledge, to which scientific
knowledge was bound to have regard and even in doubtful cases
to subordinate itself.  He believed in a different way from
the people rather than in different objects; the essentially true
and supreme God was in his view doubtless the world-soul, but every
manifestation of the primitive God was in its turn divine, the
stars above all, but also the earth, the vine, the soul of the
illustrious mortal whom the people honoured as a hero, and in fact
every departed spirit of a former man.  This philosophy was really
better adapted for Rome than for the land where it first arose.
The objection of the pious believer, that the god of the Stoic had
neither sex nor age nor corporeality and was converted from a
person into a conception, had a meaning in Greece, but not in
Rome.  The coarse allegorizing and moral purification, which were
characteristic of the Stoical doctrine of the gods, destroyed the
very marrow of the Hellenic mythology; but the plastic power of the
Romans, scanty even in their epoch of simplicity, had produced no
more than a light veil enveloping the original intuition or the
original conception, out of which the divinity had arisen--a veil
that might be stripped off without special damage.  Pallas Athene
might be indignant, when she found herself suddenly transmuted into
the conception of memory: Minerva had hitherto been in reality not
much more.  The supernatural Stoic, and the allegoric Roman,
theology coincided on the whole in their result.  But, even if
the philosopher was obliged to designate individual propositions
of the priestly lore as doubtful or as erroneous--as when the Stoics,
for example, rejecting the doctrine of apotheosis, saw in Hercules,
Castor, and Pollux nothing but the spirits of distinguished men, or
as when they could not allow the images of the gods to be regarded
as representations of divinity--it was at least not the habit of
the adherents of Zeno to make war on these erroneous doctrines
and to overthrow the false gods; on the contrary, they everywhere
evinced respect and reverence for the religion of the land even
in its weaknesses.  The inclination also of the Stoa towards a
casuistic morality and towards a systematic treatment of the
professional sciences was quite to the mind of the Romans,
especially of the Romans of this period, who no longer like their
fathers practised in unsophisticated fashion self-government and
good morals, but resolved the simple morality of their ancestors
into a catechism of allowable and non-allowable actions; whose
grammar and jurisprudence, moreover, urgently demanded a methodical
treatment, without possessing the ability to develop such a
treatment of themselves.

Wide Influence of Stoicism
Panaetius

So this philosophy thoroughly incorporated itself, as a plant
borrowed no doubt from abroad but acclimatized on Italian soil,
with the Roman national economy, and we meet its traces in the
most diversified spheres of action.  Its earliest appearance beyond
doubt goes further back; but the Stoa was first raised to full
influence in the higher ranks of Roman society by means of the
group which gathered round Scipio Aemilianus.  Panaetius of Rhodes,
the instructor of Scipio and of all Scipio's intimate friends in
the Stoic philosophy, who was constantly in his train and usually
attended him even on journeys, knew how to adapt the system to
clever men of the world, to keep its speculative side in the
background, and to modify in some measure the dryness of the
terminology and the insipidity of its moral catechism, more
particularly by calling in the aid of the earlier philosophers,
among whom Scipio himself had an especial predilection for the
Socrates of Xenophon.  Thenceforth the most noted statesmen and
scholars professed the Stoic philosophy--among others Stilo and
Quintus Scaevola, the founders of scientific philology and of
scientific jurisprudence.  The scholastic formality of system,
which thenceforth prevails at least externally in these
professional sciences and is especially associated with a fanciful,
charade-like, insipid method of etymologizing, descends from the
Stoa.  But infinitely more important was the new state-philosophy
and state-religion, which emanated from the blending of the Stoic
philosophy and the Roman religion.  The speculative element, from
the first impressed with but little energy on the system of Zeno,
and still further weakened when that system found admission to
Rome--after the Greek schoolmasters had already for a century been
busied in driving this philosophy into boys' heads and thereby
driving the spirit out of it--fell completely into the shade in
Rome, where nobody speculated but the money-changers; little more
was said as to the ideal development of the God ruling in the soul
of man, or of the divine world-law.  The Stoic philosophers showed
themselves not insensible to the very lucrative distinction of
seeing their system raised into the semi-official Roman state-
philosophy, and proved altogether more pliant than from their
rigorous principles we should have expected.  Their doctrine as to
the gods and the state soon exhibited a singular family resemblance
to the actual institutions of those who gave them bread; instead of
illustrating the cosmopolitan state of the philosopher, they made
their meditations turn on the wise arrangement of the Roman
magistracies; and while the more refined Stoics such as Panaetius
had left the question of divine revelation by wonders and signs
open as a thing conceivable but uncertain, and had decidedly
rejected astrology, his immediate successors contended for that
doctrine of revelation or, in other words, for the Roman augural
discipline as rigidly and firmly as for any other maxim of the
school, and made extremely unphilosophical concessions even to
astrology.  The leading feature of the system came more and more
to be its casuistic doctrine of duties.  It suited itself to the
hollow pride of virtue, in which the Romans of this period sought
their compensation amidst the various humbling circumstances of
their contact with the Greeks; and it put into formal shape a
befitting dogmatism of morality, which, like every well-bred system
of morals, combined with the most rigid precision as a whole the
most complaisant indulgence in the details.(9)  Its practical
results can hardly be estimated as much more than that, as
we have said, two or three families of rank ate poor fare
to please the Stoa.

State-Religion

Closely allied to this new state-philosophy--or, strictly speaking,
its other side--was the new state-religion; the essential
characteristic of which was the conscious retention, for reasons of
outward convenience, of the principles of the popular faith, which
were recognized as irrational.  One of the most prominent men of
the Scipionic circle, the Greek Polybius, candidly declares that
the strange and ponderous ceremonial of Roman religion was invented
solely on account of the multitude, which, as reason had no power
over it, required to be ruled by signs and wonders, while people of
intelligence had certainly no need of religion.  Beyond doubt the
Roman friends of Polybius substantially shared these sentiments,
although they did not oppose science and religion to each other
in so gross and downright a fashion.  Neither Laelius nor Scipio
Aemilianus can have looked on the augural discipline, which
Polybius has primarily in view, as anything else than a political
institution; yet the national spirit in them was too strong and
their sense of decorum too delicate to have permitted their coming
forward in public with such hazardous explanations.  But even in
the following generation the -pontifex maximus- Quintus Scaevola
(consul in 659;(10)) set forth at least in his oral instructions in
law without hesitation the propositions, that there were two sorts
of religion--one philosophic, adapted to the intellect, and one
traditional, not so adapted; that the former was not fitted for
the religion of the state, as it contained various things which
it was useless or even injurious for the people to know; and that
accordingly the traditional religion of the state ought to remain
as it stood.  The theology of Varro, in which the Roman religion
is treated throughout as a state institution, is merely a further
development of the same principle.  The state, according to his
teaching, was older than the gods of the state as the painter is
older than the picture; if the question related to making the gods
anew, it would certainly be well to make and to name them after a
manner more befitting and more in theoretic accordance with the
parts of the world-soul, and to lay aside the images of the gods
which only excited erroneous ideas,(11) and the mistaken system of
sacrifice; but, since these institutions had been once established,
every good citizen ought to own and follow them and do his part,
that the "common man" might learn rather to set a higher value on,
than to contemn, the gods.  That the common man, for whose benefit
the grandees thus surrendered their judgment, now despised this
faith and sought his remedy elsewhere, was a matter of course and
will be seen in the sequel.  Thus then the Roman "high church"
was ready, a sanctimonious body of priests and Levites, and an
unbelieving people.  The more openly the religion of the land was
declared a political institution, the more decidedly the political
parties regarded the field of the state-church as an arena for
attack and defence; which was especially, in a daily-increasing
measure, the case with augural science and with the elections to
the priestly colleges.  The old and natural practice of dismissing
the burgess-assembly, when a thunderstorm came on, had in the hands
of the Roman augurs grown into a prolix system of various celestial
omens and rules of conduct associated therewith; in the earlier
portion of this period it was even directly enacted by the Aelian
and Fufian law, that every popular assembly should be compelled
to disperse if it should occur to any of the higher magistrates
to look for signs of a thunderstorm in the sky; and the Roman
oligarchy was proud of the cunning device which enabled them
thenceforth by a single pious fraud to impress the stamp of
invalidity on any decree of the people.

Priestly Colleges

Conversely, the Roman opposition rebelled against the ancient
practice under which the four principal colleges of priests filled
up their own ranks when vacancies arose, and demanded the extension
of popular election to the stalls themselves, as it had been
previously introduced with reference to the presidents, of these
colleges.(12)  This was certainly inconsistent with the spirit of
these corporations; but they had no right to complain of it, after
they had become themselves untrue to their spirit, and had played
into the hands of the government at its request by furnishing
religious pretexts for the annulling of political proceedings.
This affair became an apple of contention between the parties:
the senate beat off the first attack in 609, on which occasion the
Scipionic circle especially turned the scale for the rejection of
the proposal; on the other hand the project passed in 650 with the
proviso already made in reference to the election of the presidents
for the benefit of scrupulous consciences, that not the whole
burgesses but only the lesser half of the tribes should make
the election;(13) finally Sulla restored the right of co-optation
in its full extent.(14)

Practical Use Made of Religion

With this care on the part of the conservatives for the pure
national religion, it was of course quite compatible that the
circles of the highest rank should openly make a jest of it.
The practical side of the Roman priesthood was the priestly cuisine;
the augural and pontifical banquets were as it were the official
gala-days in the life of a Roman epicure, and several of them
formed epochs in the history of gastronomy: the banquet on the
accession of the augur Quintus Hortensius for instance brought
roast peacocks into vogue.  Religion was also found very useful
in giving greater zest to scandal.  It was a favourite recreation
of the youth of quality to disfigure or mutilate the images of the
gods in the streets by night.(15)  Ordinary love affairs had for
long been common, and intrigues with married women began to become
so; but an amour with a Vestal virgin was as piquant as the
intrigues with nuns and the cloister-adventures in the world of
the Decamerone.  The scandalous affair of 640 seq. is well known,
in which three Vestals, daughters of the noblest families, and their
paramours, young men likewise of the best houses, were brought to
trial for unchastity first before the pontifical college, and then,
when it sought to hush up the matter, before an extraordinary court
instituted by special decree of the people, and were all condemned
to death.  Such scandals, it is true, sedate people could not
approve; but there was no objection to men finding positive
religion to be a folly in their familiar circle; the augurs might,
when one saw another performing his functions, smile in each
other's face without detriment to their religious duties.  We learn
to look favourably on the modest hypocrisy of kindred tendencies,
when we compare with it the coarse shamelessness of the Roman
priests and Levites.  The official religion was quite candidly
treated as a hollow framework, now serviceable only for political
machinists; in this respect with its numerous recesses and trapdoors
it might and did serve either party, as it happened.  Most of
all certainly the oligarchy recognized its palladium in the state-
religion, and particularly in the augural discipline; but the
opposite party also made no resistance in point of principle to
an institute, which had now merely a semblance of life; they rather
regarded it, on the whole, as a bulwark which might pass from the
possession of the enemy into their own.

Oriental Religions in Italy

In sharp contrast to this ghost of religion which we have just
described stand the different foreign worships, which this epoch
cherished and fostered, and which were at least undeniably
possessed of a very decided vitality.  They meet us everywhere,
among genteel ladies and lords as well as among the circles of
the slaves, in the general as in the trooper, in Italy as in the
provinces.  It is incredible to what a height this superstition
already reached.  When in the Cimbrian war a Syrian prophetess,
Martha, offered to furnish the senate with ways and means for the
vanquishing of the Germans, the senate dismissed her with contempt;
nevertheless the Roman matrons and Marius' own wife in particular
despatched her to his head-quarters, where the general readily
received her and carried her about with him till the Teutones were
defeated.  The leaders of very different parties in the civil war,
Marius, Octavius, Sulla, coincided in believing omens and oracles.
During its course even the senate was under the necessity, in the
troubles of 667, of consenting to issue directions in accordance
with the fancies of a crazy prophetess.  It is significant of
the ossification of the Romano-Hellenic religion as well as of
the increased craving of the multitude after stronger religious
stimulants, that superstition no longer, as in the Bacchic
mysteries, associates itself with the national religion; even
the Etruscan mysticism is already left behind; the worships matured
in the sultry regions of the east appear throughout in the foremost
rank.  The copious introduction of elements from Asia Minor and
Syria into the population, partly by the import of slaves, partly
by the augmented traffic of Italy with the east, contributed very
greatly to this result.

The power of these foreign religions is very distinctly apparent
in the revolts of the Sicilian slaves, who for the most part were
natives of Syria.  Eunus vomited fire, Athenion read the stars;
the plummets thrown by the slaves in these wars bear in great part
the names of gods, those of Zeus and Artemis, and especially that
of the mysterious Mother who had migrated from Crete to Sicily and
was zealously worshipped there.  A similar effect was produced by
commercial intercourse, particularly after the wares of Berytus and
Alexandria were conveyed directly to the Italian ports; Ostia and
Puteoli became the great marts not only for Syrian unguents and
Egyptian linen, but also for the faith of the east.  Everywhere
the mingling of religions was constantly on the increase along with
the mingling of nations.  Of all allowed worships the most popular
was that of the Pessinuntine Mother of the Gods, which made a deep
impression on the multitude by its eunuch-celibacy, its banquets,
its music, its begging processions, and all its sensuous pomp; the
collections from house to house were already felt as an economic
burden.  In the most dangerous time of the Cimbrian war Battaces
the high-priest of Pessinus appeared in person at Rome, in order
to defend the interests of the temple of his goddess there which
was alleged to have been profaned, addressed the Roman people by
the special orders of the Mother of the Gods, and performed also
various miracles.  Men of sense were scandalized, but the women
and the great multitude were not to be debarred from escorting
the prophet at his departure in great crowds.  Vows of pilgrimage
to the east were already no longer uncommon; Marius himself, for
instance, thus undertook a pilgrimage to Pessinus; in fact even
thus early (first in 653) Roman burgesses devoted themselves
to the eunuch-priesthood.

Secret Worships

But the unallowed and secret worships were naturally still more
popular.  As early as Cato's time the Chaldean horoscope-caster had
begun to come into competition with the Etruscan -haruspex- and the
Marsian bird-seer;(16) star-gazing and astrology were soon as much
at home in Italy as in their dreamy native land.  In 615 the Roman
-praetor peregrinus- directed all the Chaldeans to evacuate Rome
and Italy within ten days.  The same fate at the same time befel
the Jews, who had admitted Italian proselytes to their sabbath.
In like manner Scipio had to clear the camp before Numantia from
soothsayers and pious impostors of every sort.  Some forty years
afterwards (657) it was even found necessary to prohibit human
sacrifices.  The wild worship of the Cappadocian Ma, or, as the
Romans called her, Bellona, to whom the priests in their festal
processions shed their own blood as a sacrifice, and the gloomy
Egyptian worships began to make their appearance; the former
Cappadocian goddess appeared in a dream to Sulla, and of the later
Roman communities of Isis and Osiris the oldest traced their origin
to the Sullan period.  Men had become perplexed not merely as to
the old faith, but as to their very selves; the fearful crises of a
fifty years' revolution, the instinctive feeling that the civil war
was still far from being at an end, increased the anxious suspense,
the gloomy perplexity of the multitude.  Restlessly the wandering
imagination climbed every height and fathomed every abyss, where it
fancied that it might discover new prospects or new light amidst
the fatalities impending, might gain fresh hopes in the desperate
struggle against destiny, or perhaps might find merely fresh
alarms.  A portentous mysticism found in the general distraction--
political, economic, moral, religious--the soil which was adapted
for it, and grew with alarming rapidity; it was as if gigantic
trees had grown by night out of the earth, none knew whence
or whither, and this very marvellous rapidity of growth
worked new wonders and seized like an epidemic on all minds
not thoroughly fortified.

Education

Just as in the sphere of religion, the revolution begun in the
previous epoch was now completed also in the sphere of education
and culture.  We have already shown how the fundamental idea of
the Roman system--civil equality--had already during the sixth
century begun to be undermined in this field also.  Even in the
time of Pictor and Cato Greek culture was widely diffused in Rome,
and there was a native Roman culture; but neither of them had then
got beyond the initial stage.  Cato's encyclopaedia shows tolerably
what was understood at this period by a Romano-Greek model
training;(16) it was little more than an embodiment of the
knowledge of the old Roman householder, and truly, when compared
with the Hellenic culture of the period, scanty enough.  At how
low a stage the average instruction of youth in Rome still stood
at the beginning of the seventh century, may be inferred from
the expressions of Polybius, who in this one respect prominently
censures the criminal indifference of the Romans as compared
with the intelligent private and public care of his countrymen;
no Hellene, not even Polybius himself, could rightly enter
into the deeper idea of civil equality that lay at the root
of this indifference.

Now the case was altered.  Just as the naive popular faith was
superseded by an enlightened Stoic supernaturalism, so in education
alongside of the simple popular instruction a special training, an
exclusive -humanitas-, developed itself and eradicated the last
remnants of the old social equality.  It will not be superfluous
to cast a glance at the aspect assumed by the new instruction of
the young, both the Greek and the higher Latin.

Greek Instruction

It was a singular circumstance that the same man, who in a
political point of view definitively vanquished the Hellenic
nation, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, was at the same time the first or
one of the first who fully recognized the Hellenic civilization as--
what it has thenceforth continued to be beyond dispute--the
civilization of the ancient world.  He was himself indeed an old
man before it was granted to him, with the Homeric poems in his
mind, to stand before the Zeus of Phidias; but his heart was young
enough to carry home the full sunshine of Hellenic beauty and the
unconquerable longing after the golden apples of the Hesperides
in his soul; poets and artists had found in the foreigner a more
earnest and cordial devotee than was any of the wise men of the
Greece of those days.  He made no epigram on Homer or Phidias,
but he had his children introduced into the realms of intellect.
Without neglecting their national education, so far as there
was such, he made provision like the Greeks for the physical
development of his boys, not indeed by gymnastic exercises which
were according to Roman notions inadmissible, but by instruction in
the chase, which was among the Greeks developed almost like an art;
and he elevated their Greek instruction in such a way that the
language was no longer merely learned and practised for the sake
of speaking, but after the Greek fashion the whole subject-matter
of general higher culture was associated with the language and
developed out of it--embracing, first of all, the knowledge of
Greek literature with the mythological and historical information
necessary for understanding it, and then rhetoric and philosophy.
The library of king Perseus was the only portion of the Macedonian
spoil that Paullus took for himself, with the view of presenting it
to his sons.  Even Greek painters and sculptors were found in his
train and completed the aesthetic training of his children.  That
the time was past when men could in this field preserve a merely
repellent attitude as regarded Hellenism, had been felt even by
Cato; the better classes had probably now a presentiment that the
noble substance of Roman character was less endangered by Hellenism
as a whole, than by Hellenism mutilated and misshapen: the mass of
the upper society of Rome and Italy went along with the new mode.
There had been for long no want of Greek schoolmasters in Rome; now
they arrived in troops--and as teachers not merely of the language
but of literature and culture in general--at the newly-opened
lucrative market for the sale of their wisdom.  Greek tutors and
teachers of philosophy, who, even if they were not slaves, were
as a rule accounted as servants,(17) were now permanent inmates
in the palaces of Rome; people speculated in them, and there is
a statement that 200,000 sesterces (2000 pounds) were paid for
a Greek literary slave of the first rank.  As early as 593 there
existed in the capital a number of special establishments for
the practice of Greek declamation.  Several distinguished names
already occur among these Roman teachers; the philosopher Panaetius
has been already mentioned;(18) the esteemed grammarian Crates of
Mallus in Cilicia, the contemporary and equal rival of Aristarchus,
found about 585 at Rome an audience for the recitation and
illustration, language, and matter of the Homeric poems.  It is
true that this new mode of juvenile instruction, revolutionary
and anti-national as it was, encountered partially the resistance
of the government; but the edict of dismissal, which the authorities
in 593 fulminated against rhetoricians and philosophers, remained
(chiefly owing to the constant change of the Roman chief
magistrates) like all similar commands without any result worth
mentioning, and after the death of old Cato there were still
doubtless frequent complaints in accordance with his views, but
there was no further action.  The higher instruction in Greek and
in the sciences of Greek culture remained thenceforth recognized
as an essential part of Italian training.

Latin Instruction
Public Readings of Classical Works

But by its side there sprang up also a higher Latin instruction.
We have shown in the previous epoch how Latin elementary instruction
raised its character; how the place of the Twelve Tables was taken
by the Latin Odyssey as a sort of improved primer, and the Roman
boy was now trained to the knowledge and delivery of his mother-tongue
by means of this translation, as the Greek by means of the original:
how noted teachers of the Greek language and literature, Andronicus,
Ennius, and others, who already probably taught not children properly
so called, but boys growing up to maturity and young men, did not
disdain to give instruction in the mother-tongue along with the Greek.
These were the first steps towards a higher Latin instruction, but
they did not as yet form such an instruction itself.  Instruction
in a language cannot go beyond the elementary stage, so long as it
lacks a literature.  It was not until there were not merely Latin
schoolbooks but a Latin literature, and this literature already
somewhat rounded-off in the works of the classics of the sixth century,
that the mother-tongue and the native literature truly entered into
the circle of the elements of higher culture; and the emancipation
from the Greek schoolmasters was now not slow to follow.  Stirred up
by the Homeric prelections of Crates, cultivated Romans began to read
the recitative works of their own literature, the Punic War of Naevius,
the Annals of Ennius, and subsequently also the Poems of Lucilius first
to a select circle, and then in public on set days and in presence of
a great concourse, and occasionally also to treat them critically after
the precedent of the Homeric grammarians.  These literary prelections,
which cultivated -dilettanti- (-litterati-) held gratuitously, were not
formally a part of juvenile instruction, but were yet an essential means
of introducing the youth to the understanding and the discussion of
the classic Latin literature.

Rhetorical Exercises

The formation of Latin oratory took place in a similar way.
The Roman youth of rank, who were even at an early age incited
to come forward in public with panegyrics and forensic speeches,
can never have lacked exercises in oratory; but it was only at this
epoch, and in consequence of the new exclusive culture, that there
arose a rhetoric properly so called.  Marcus Lepidus Porcina (consul
in 617) is mentioned as the first Roman advocate who technically
handled the language and subject-matter; the two famous advocates
of the Marian age, the masculine and vigorous Marcus Antonius (611-
667) and the polished and chaste orator Lucius Crassus (614-663)
were already complete rhetoricians.  The exercises of the young men
in speaking increased naturally in extent and importance, but still
remained, just like the exercises in Latin literature, essentially
limited to the personal attendance of the beginner on the master of
the art so as to be trained by his example and his instructions.

Formal instruction both in Latin literature and in Latin rhetoric
was given first about 650 by Lucius Aelius Praeconinus of Lanuvium,
called the "penman" (-Stilo-), a distinguished Roman knight of
strict conservative views, who read Plautus and similar works with
a select circle of younger men--including Varro and Cicero--and
sometimes also went over outlines of speeches with the authors,
or put similar outlines into the hands of his friends.  This was
instruction, but Stilo was not a professional schoolmaster; he
taught literature and rhetoric, just as jurisprudence was taught
at Rome, in the character of a senior friend of aspiring young men,
not of a man hired and holding himself at every one's command.

Course of Literature and Rhetoric

But about his time began also the scholastic higher instruction
in Latin, separated as well from elementary Latin as from Greek
instruction, and imparted in special establishments by paid
masters, ordinarily manumitted slaves.  That its spirit and method
were throughout borrowed from the exercises in the Greek literature
and language, was a matter of course; and the scholars also consisted,
as at these exercises, of youths, and not of boys.  This Latin
instruction was soon divided like the Greek into two courses;
in so far as the Latin literature was first the subject of
scientific lectures, and then a technical introduction was given
to the preparation of panegyrics, public, and forensic orations.
The first Roman school of literature was opened about Stilo's time
by Marcus Saevius Nicanor Postumus, the first separate school for
Latin rhetoric about 660 by Lucius Plotius Gallus; but ordinarily
instructions in rhetoric were also given in the Latin schools of
literature.  This new Latin school-instruction was of the most
comprehensive importance.  The introduction to the knowledge of
Latin literature and Latin oratory, such as had formerly been
imparted by connoisseurs and masters of high position, had
preserved a certain independence in relation to the Greeks.
The judges of language and the masters of oratory were doubtless
under the influence of Hellenism, but not absolutely under that of
the Greek school-grammar and school-rhetoric; the latter in particular
was decidedly an object of dread.  The pride as well as the sound
common sense of the Romans demurred to the Greek assertion that
the ability to speak of things, which the orator understood and felt,
intelligibly and attractively to his peers in the mother-tongue
could be learned in the school by school-rules.  To the solid
practical advocate the procedure of the Greek rhetoricians, so
totally estranged from life, could not but appear worse for the
beginner than no preparation at all; to the man of thorough culture
and matured by the experience of life, the Greek rhetoric seemed
shallow and repulsive; while the man of serious conservative views
did not fail to observe the close affinity between a professionally
developed rhetoric and the trade of the demagogue.  Accordingly
the Scipionic circle had shown the most bitter hostility to the
rhetoricians, and, if Greek declamations before paid masters were
tolerated doubtless primarily as exercises in speaking Greek, Greek
rhetoric did not thereby find its way either into Latin oratory or
into Latin oratorical instruction.  But in the new Latin rhetorical
schools the Roman youths were trained as men and public orators by
discussing in pairs rhetorical themes; they accused Ulysses, who
was found beside the corpse of Ajax with the latter's bloody sword,
of the murder of his comrade in arms, or upheld his innocence; they
charged Orestes with the murder of his mother, or undertook to
defend him; or perhaps they helped Hannibal with a supplementary
good advice as to the question whether he would do better to comply
with the invitation to Rome, or to remain in Carthage, or to take
flight.  It was natural that the Catonian opposition should once
more bestir itself against these offensive and pernicious conflicts
of words.  The censors of 662 issued a warning to teachers and
parents not to allow the young men to spend the whole day in
exercises, whereof their ancestors had known nothing; and the man,
from whom this warning came, was no less than the first forensic
orator of his age, Lucius Licinius Crassus.  Of course the
Cassandra spoke in vain; declamatory exercises in Latin on the
current themes of the Greek schools became a permanent ingredient
in the education of Roman youth, and contributed their part to
educate the very boys as forensic and political players and to
stifle in the bud all earnest and true eloquence.

As the aggregate result of this modern Roman education there sprang
up the new idea of "humanity," as it was called, which consisted
partly of a more or less superficial appropriation of the aesthetic
culture of the Hellenes, partly of a privileged Latin culture as
an imitation or mutilated copy of the Greek.  This new humanity,
as the very name indicates, renounced the specific characteristics
of Roman life, nay even came forward in opposition to them, and
combined in itself, just like our closely kindred "general
culture," a nationally cosmopolitan and socially exclusive
character.  Here too we trace the revolution, which separated
classes and blended nations.




Chapter XIII

Literature and Art

Literary Reaction

The sixth century was, both in a political and a literary point of
view, a vigorous and great age.  It is true that we do not find in
the field of authorship any more than in that of politics a man of
the first rank; Naevius, Ennius, Plautus, Cato, gifted and lively
authors of distinctly-marked individuality, were not in the highest
sense men of creative talent; nevertheless we perceive in the
soaring, stirring, bold strain of their dramatic, epic, and
historic attempts, that these rest on the gigantic struggles of
the Punic wars.  Much is only artificially transplanted, there
are various faults in delineation and colouring, the form of art
and the language are deficient in purity of treatment, Greek and
national elements are quaintly conjoined; the whole performance
betrays the stamp of its scholastic origin and lacks independence
and completeness; yet there exists in the poets and authors of that
age, if not the full power to reach their high aim, at any rate
the courage to compete with and the hope of rivalling the Greeks.
It is otherwise in the epoch before us.  The morning mists fell;
what had been begun in the fresh feeling of the national strength
hardened amidst war, with youthful want of insight into the
difficulty of the undertaking and into the measure of their own
talent, but also with youthful delight in and love to the work,
could not be carried farther now, when on the one hand the dull
sultriness of the approaching revolutionary storm began to fill
the air, and on the other hand the eyes of the more intelligent
were gradually opened to the incomparable glory of Greek poetry and
art and to the very modest artistic endowments of their own nation.
The literature of the sixth century had arisen from the influence
of Greek art on half-cultivated, but excited and susceptible minds.
The increased Hellenic culture of the seventh called forth a literary
reaction, which destroyed the germs of promise contained in those
simple imitative attempts by the winter-frost of reflection, and rooted
up the wheat and the tares of the older type of literature together.

Scipionic Circle

This reaction proceeded primarily and chiefly from the circle
which assembled around Scipio Aemilianus, and whose most prominent
members among the Roman world of quality were, in addition to
Scipio himself, his elder friend and counsellor Gaius Laelius
(consul in 614) and Scipio's younger companions, Lucius Furius
Philus (consul in 618) and Spurius Mummius, the brother of the
destroyer of Corinth, among the Roman and Greek literati the
comedian Terence, the satirist Lucilius, the historian Polybius,
and the philosopher Panaetius.  Those who were familiar with the
Iliad, with Xenophon, and with Menander, could not be greatly
impressed by the Roman Homer, and still less by the bad
translations of the tragedies of Euripides which Ennius had
furnished and Pacuvius continued to furnish.  While patriotic
considerations might set bounds to criticism in reference to the
native chronicles, Lucilius at any rate directed very pointed
shafts against "the dismal figures from the complicated expositions
of Pacuvius"; and similar severe, but not unjust criticisms of
Ennius, Plautus, Pacuvius--all those poets "who appeared to have a
licence to talk pompously and to reason illogically"--are found in
the polished author of the Rhetoric dedicated to Herennius, written
at the close of this period.  People shrugged their shoulders at
the interpolations, with which the homely popular wit of Rome
had garnished the elegant comedies of Philemon and Diphilus.
Half smiling, half envious, they turned away from the inadequate
attempts of a dull age, which that circle probably regarded
somewhat as a mature man regards the poetical effusions of his
youth; despairing of the transplantation of the marvellous tree,
they allowed the higher species of art in poetry and prose
substantially to fall into abeyance, and restricted themselves
in these departments to an intelligent enjoyment of foreign
masterpieces.  The productiveness of this epoch displayed itself
chiefly in the subordinate fields of the lighter comedy, the
poetical miscellany, the political pamphlet, and the professional
sciences.  The literary cue was correctness, in the style of art
and especially in the language, which, as a more limited circle of
persons of culture became separated from the body of the people,
was in its turn divided into the classical Latin of higher society
and the vulgar Latin of the common people.  The prologues of
Terence promise "pure Latin"; warfare against faults of language
forms a chief element of the Lucilian satire; and with this
circumstance is connected the fact, that composition in Greek among
the Romans now falls decidedly into the shade.  In so far certainly
there is an improvement; inadequate efforts occur in this epoch far
less frequently; performances in their kind complete and thoroughly
pleasing occur far oftener than before or afterwards; in a
linguistic point of view Cicero calls the age of Laelius and Scipio
the golden age of pure unadulterated Latin.  In like manner
literary activity gradually rises in public opinion from a trade
to an art.  At the beginning of this period the preparation of
theatrical pieces at any rate, if not the publication of recitative
poems, was still regarded as not becoming for the Roman of quality;
Pacuvius and Terence lived by their pieces; the writing of dramas
was entirely a trade, and not one of golden produce.  About the time
of Sulla the state of matters had entirely changed. The remuneration
given to actors at this time proves that even the favourite dramatic
poet might then lay claim to a payment, the high amount of which
removed the stigma.  By this means composing for the stage was raised
into a liberal art; and we accordingly find men of the highest
aristocratic circles, such as Lucius Caesar (aedile in 664, 667),
engaged in writing for the Roman stage and proud of sitting in the Roman
"poet's club" by the side of the ancestorless Accius.  Art gains in
sympathy and honour; but the enthusiasm has departed in life and in
literature.  The fearless self-confidence, which makes the poet a poet,
and which is very decidedly apparent in Plautus especially, is found
in none of those that follow; the Epigoni of the men that fought with
Hannibal are correct, but feeble.

Tragedy
Pacuvius

Let us first glance at the Roman dramatic literature and the stage
itself.  Tragedy has now for the first time her specialists; the
tragic poets of this epoch do not, like those of the preceding,
cultivate comedy and epos side by side.  The appreciation of this
branch of art among the writing and reading circles was evidently
on the increase, but tragic poetry itself hardly improved.  We now
meet with the national tragedy (-praetexta-), the creation of
Naevius, only in the hands of Pacuvius to be mentioned immediately--
an after-growth of the Ennian epoch.  Among the probably numerous
poets who imitated Greek tragedies two alone acquired a
considerable name.  Marcus Pacuvius from Brundisium (535-c. 625)
who in his earlier years earned his livelihood in Rome by painting
and only composed tragedies when advanced in life, belongs as
respects both his years and his style to the sixth rather than
the seventh century, although his poetical activity falls within
the latter.  He composed on the whole after the manner of his
countryman, uncle, and master Ennius.  Polishing more carefully and
aspiring to a higher strain than his predecessor, he was regarded
by favourable critics of art afterwards as a model of artistic
poetry and of rich style: in the fragments, however, that have
reached us proofs are not wanting to justify the censure of the
poet's language by Cicero and the censure of his taste by Lucilius;
his language appears more rugged than that of his predecessor, his
style of composition pompous and punctilious.(1)  There are traces
that he like Ennius attached more value to philosophy than to
religion; but he did not at any rate, like the latter, prefer
dramas chiming in with neological views and preaching sensuous
passion or modern enlightenment, and drew without distinction from
Sophocles or from Euripides--of that poetry with a decided special
aim, which almost stamps Ennius with genius, there can have been
no vein in the younger poet.

Accius

More readable and adroit imitations of Greek tragedy were furnished
by Pacuvius' younger contemporary, Lucius Accius, son of a freedman
of Pisaurum (584-after 651), with the exception of Pacuvius the
only notable tragic poet of the seventh century.  An active author
also in the field of literary history and grammar, he doubtless
laboured to introduce instead of the crude manner of his
predecessors greater purity of language and style into Latin
tragedy; yet even his inequality and incorrectness were
emphatically censured by men of strict observance like Lucilius.

Greek Comedy
Terence

Far greater activity and far more important results are apparent
in the field of comedy.  At the very commencement of this period
a remarkable reaction set in against the sort of comedy hitherto
prevalent and popular.  Its representative Terentius (558-595) is
one of the most interesting phenomena, in a historical point of
view, in Roman literature.  Born in Phoenician Africa, brought in
early youth as a slave to Rome and there introduced to the Greek
culture of the day, he seemed from the very first destined for the
vocation of giving back to the new Attic comedy that cosmopolitan
character, which in its adaptation to the Roman public under the
rough hands of Naevius, Plautus, and their associates it had in
some measure lost.  Even in the selection and employment of models
the contrast is apparent between him and that predecessor whom
alone we can now compare with him.  Plautus chooses his pieces from
the whole range of the newer Attic comedy, and by no means disdains
the livelier and more popular comedians, such as Philemon; Terence
keeps almost exclusively to Menander, the most elegant, polished,
and chaste of all the poets of the newer comedy.  The method of
working up several Greek pieces into one Latin is retained by
Terence, because in fact from the state of the case it could not be
avoided by the Roman editors; but it is handled with incomparably
more skill and carefulness.  The Plautine dialogue beyond doubt
departed very frequently from its models; Terence boasts of the
verbal adherence of his imitations to the originals, by which
however we are not to understand a verbal translation in our sense.
The not unfrequently coarse, but always effective laying on of
Roman local tints over the Greek ground-work, which Plautus was
fond of, is completely and designedly banished from Terence;
not an allusion puts one in mind of Rome, not a proverb, hardly
a reminiscence;(2) even the Latin titles are replaced by Greek.
The same distinction shows itself in the artistic treatment.  First
of all the players receive back their appropriate masks, and greater
care is observed as to the scenic arrangements, so that it is no
longer the case, as with Plautus, that everything needs to take
place on the street, whether belonging to it or not.  Plautus ties
and unties the dramatic knot carelessly and loosely, but his plot
is droll and often striking; Terence, far less effective, keeps
everywhere account of probability, not unfrequently at the cost of
suspense, and wages emphatic war against the certainly somewhat
flat and insipid standing expedients of his predecessors, e. g.
against allegoric dreams.(3)  Plautus paints his characters with
broad strokes, often after a stock-model, always with a view to
the gross effect from a distance and on the whole; Terence handles
the psychological development with a careful and often excellent
miniature-painting, as in the -Adelphi- for instance, where the
two old men--the easy bachelor enjoying life in town, and the sadly
harassed not at all refined country-landlord--form a masterly
contrast.  The springs of action and the language of Plautus are
drawn from the tavern, those of Terence from the household of the
good citizen.  The lazy Plautine hostelry, the very unconstrained
but very charming damsels with the hosts duly corresponding,
the sabre-rattling troopers, the menial world painted with an
altogether peculiar humour, whose heaven is the cellar, and whose
fate is the lash, have disappeared in Terence or at any rate
undergone improvement.  In Plautus we find ourselves, on the whole,
among incipient or thorough rogues, in Terence again, as a rule,
among none but honest men; if occasionally a -leno- is plundered or
a young man taken to the brothel, it is done with a moral intent,
possibly out of brotherly love or to deter the boy from frequenting
improper haunts.  The Plautine pieces are pervaded by the significant
antagonism of the tavern to the house; everywhere wives are
visited with abuse, to the delight of all husbands temporarily
emancipated and not quite sure of an amiable salutation at home.
The comedies of Terence are pervaded by a conception not more
moral, but doubtless more becoming, of the feminine nature and of
married life.  As a rule, they end with a virtuous marriage, or,
if possible, with two--just as it was the glory of Menander that
he compensated for every seduction by a marriage.  The eulogies of
a bachelor life, which are so frequent in Menander, are repeated by
his Roman remodeller only with characteristic shyness,(4) whereas
the lover in his agony, the tender husband at the -accouchement-,
the loving sister by the death-bed in the -Eunuchus- and the
-Andria- are very gracefully delineated; in the -Hecyra- there even
appears at the close as a delivering angel a virtuous courtesan,
likewise a genuine Menandrian figure, which the Roman public, it is
true, very properly hissed.  In Plautus the fathers throughout only
exist for the purpose of being jeered and swindled by their sons;
with Terence in the -Heauton Timorumenos- the lost son is reformed
by his father's wisdom, and, as in general he is full of excellent
instructions as to education, so the point of the best of his
pieces, the -Adelphi-, turns on finding the right mean between the
too liberal training of the uncle and the too rigid training of the
father.  Plautus writes for the great multitude and gives utterance
to profane and sarcastic speeches, so far as the censorship of the
stage at all allowed; Terence on the contrary describes it as his
aim to please the good and, like Menander, to offend nobody.
Plautus is fond of vigorous, often noisy dialogue, and his pieces
require a lively play of gesture in the actors; Terence confines
himself to "quiet conversation." The language of Plautus abounds in
burlesque turns and verbal witticisms, in alliterations, in comic
coinages of new terms, Aristophanic combinations of words, pithy
expressions of the day jestingly borrowed from the Greek.  Terence
knows nothing of such caprices; his dialogue moves on with the
purest symmetry, and its points are elegant epigrammatic and
sententious turns.  The comedy of Terence is not to be called an
improvement, as compared with that of Plautus, either in a poetical
or in a moral point of view.  Originality cannot be affirmed of
either, but, if possible, there is less of it in Terence; and
the dubious praise of more correct copying is at least outweighed
by the circumstance that, while the younger poet reproduced the
agreeableness, he knew not how to reproduce the merriment of
Menander, so that the comedies of Plautus imitated from Menander,
such as the -Stichus-, the -Cistellaria-, the -Bacchides-, probably
preserve far more of the flowing charm of the original than the
comedies of the "-dimidiatus Menander-." And, while the aesthetic
critic cannot recognize an improvement in the transition from the
coarse to the dull, as little can the moralist in the transition
from the obscenity and indifference of Plautus to the accommodating
morality of Terence.  But in point of language an improvement
certainly took place.  Elegance of language was the pride of the
poet, and it was owing above all to its inimitable charm that the
most refined judges of art in aftertimes, such as Cicero, Caesar,
and Quinctilian, assigned the palm to him among all the Roman poets
of the republican age.  In so far it is perhaps justifiable to date
a new era in Roman literature--the real essence of which lay not
in the development of Latin poetry, but in the development of
the Latin language--from the comedies of Terence as the first
artistically pure imitation of Hellenic works of art.  The modern
comedy made its way amidst the most determined literary warfare.
The Plautine style of composing had taken root among the Roman
bourgeoisie; the comedies of Terence encountered the liveliest
opposition from the public, which found their "insipid language,"
their "feeble style," intolerable.  The, apparently, pretty
sensitive poet replied in his prologues--which properly were not
intended for any such purpose--with counter-criticisms full of
defensive and offensive polemics; and appealed from the multitude,
which had twice run off from his -Hecyra- to witness a band of
gladiators and rope-dancers, to the cultivated circles of the
genteel world.  He declared that he only aspired to the approval
of the "good"; in which doubtless there was not wanting a hint,
that it was not at all seemly to undervalue works of art which
had obtained the approval of the "few." He acquiesced in or even
favoured the report, that persons of quality aided him in composing
with their counsel or even with their cooperation.(5)  In reality
he carried his point; even in literature the oligarchy prevailed,
and the artistic comedy of the exclusives supplanted the comedy
of the people: we find that about 620 the pieces of Plautus
disappeared from the set of stock plays.  This is the more
significant, because after the early death of Terence no man of
conspicuous talent at all further occupied this field.  Respecting
the comedies of Turpilius (651 at an advanced age) and other stop-
gaps wholly or almost wholly forgotten, a connoisseur already at
the close of this period gave it as his opinion, that the new
comedies were even much worse than the bad new pennies.(6)

National Comedy
Afranius

We have formerly shown(7) that in all probability already in the
course of the sixth century a national Roman comedy (-togata-) was
added to the Graeco-Roman (-palliata-), as a portraiture not of the
distinctive life of the capital, but of the ways and doings of the
Latin land.  Of course the Terentian school rapidly took possession
of this species of comedy also; it was quite in accordance with
its spirit to naturalise Greek comedy in Italy on the one hand
by faithful translation, and on the other hand by pure Roman
imitation.  The chief representative of this school was Lucius
Afranius (who flourished about 66).  The fragments of his comedies
remaining give no distinct impression, but they are not
inconsistent with what the Roman critics of art remark regarding
him.  His numerous national comedies were in their construction
thoroughly formed on the model of the Greek intrigue-piece; only,
as was natural in imitation, they were simpler and shorter.  In the
details also he borrowed what pleased him partly from Menander,
partly from the older national literature.  But of the Latin local
tints, which are so distinctly marked in Titinius the creator of
this species of art, we find not much in Afranius;(8) his subjects
retain a very general character, and may well have been throughout
imitations of particular Greek comedies with merely an alteration
of costume.  A polished eclecticism and adroitness in composition--
literary allusions not unfrequently occur--are characteristic of
him as of Terence: the moral tendency too, in which his pieces
approximated to the drama, their inoffensive tenor in a police
point of view, their purity of language are common to him with the
latter.  Afranius is sufficiently indicated as of a kindred spirit
with Menander and Terence by the judgment of posterity that he wore
the -toga- as Menander would have worn it had he been an Italian,
and by his own expression that to his mind Terence surpassed
all other poets.

Atellanae

The farce appeared afresh at this period in the field of Roman
literature.  It was in itself very old:(9) long before Rome arose,
the merry youths of Latium may have improvised on festal occasions
in the masks once for all established for particular characters.
These pastimes obtained a fixed local background in the Latin
"asylum of fools," for which they selected the formerly Oscan
town of Atella, which was destroyed in the Hannibalic war and
was thereby handed over to comic use; thenceforth the name of
"Oscan plays" or "plays of Atella" was commonly used for these
exhibitions.(10)  But these pleasantries had nothing to do with
the stage(11) and with literature; they were performed by amateurs
where and when they pleased, and the text was not written or at any
rate was not published.  It was not until the present period that
the Atellan piece was handed over to actors properly so called,(12)
and was employed, like the Greek satyric drama, as an afterpiece
particularly after tragedies; a change which naturally suggested
the extension of literary activity to that field.  Whether this
authorship developed itself altogether independently, or whether
possibly the art-farce of Lower Italy, in various respects of
kindred character, gave the impulse to this Roman farce,(13) can
no longer be determined; that the several pieces were uniformly
original works, is certain.  The founder of this new species of
literature, Lucius Pomponius from the Latin colony of Bononia,
appeared in the first half of the seventh century;(14) and along
with his pieces those of another poet Novius soon became
favourites.  So far as the few remains and the reports of the old
-litteratores- allow us to form an opinion, they were short farces,
ordinarily perhaps of one act, the charm of which depended less on
the preposterous and loosely constructed plot than on the drastic
portraiture of particular classes and situations.  Festal days and
public acts were favourite subjects of comic delineation, such as
the "Marriage," the "First of March," "Harlequin Candidate";
so were also foreign nationalities--the Transalpine Gauls,
the Syrians; above all, the various trades frequently appear
on the boards.  The sacristan, the soothsayer, the bird-seer,
the physician, the publican, the painter, fisherman, baker, pass
across the stage; the public criers were severely assailed and still
more the fullers, who seem to have played in the Roman fool-world
the part of our tailors.  While the varied life of the city thus
received its due attention, the farmer with his joys and sorrows
was also represented in all aspects.  The copiousness of this rural
repertory may be guessed from the numerous titles of that nature,
such as "the Cow," "the Ass," "the Kid," "the Sow," "the Swine,"
"the Sick Boar," "the Farmer," "the Countryman," "Harlequin
Countryman," "the Cattle-herd," "the Vinedresser," "the Fig-
gatherer," "Woodcutting," "Pruning," "the Poultry-yard." In these
pieces it was always the standing figures of the stupid and the
artful servant, the good old man, the wise man, that delighted
the public; the first in particular might never be wanting--
the -Pulcinello- of this farce--the gluttonous filthy -Maccus-,
hideously ugly and yet eternally in love, always on the point
of stumbling across his own path, set upon by all with jeers
and with blows and eventually at the close the regular scapegoat.
The titles "-Maccus Miles-," "-Maccus Copo-," "-Maccus Virgo-,"
"-Maccus Exul-," "-Macci Gemini-" may furnish the good-humoured
reader with some conception of the variety of entertainment in the
Roman masquerade.  Although these farces, at least after they came
to be written, accommodated themselves to the general laws of
literature, and in their metres for instance followed the Greek
stage, they yet naturally retained a far more Latin and more
popular stamp than even the national comedy.  The farce resorted
to the Greek world only under the form of travestied tragedy;(15)
and this style appears to have been cultivated first by Novius,
and not very frequently in any case.  The farce of this poet moreover
ventured, if not to trespass on Olympus, at least to touch the most
human of the gods, Hercules: he wrote a -Hercules Auctionator-.
The tone, as a matter of course, was not the most refined; very
unambiguous ambiguities, coarse rustic obscenities, ghosts
frightening and occasionally devouring children, formed part of
the entertainment, and offensive personalities, even with the mention
of names, not unfrequently crept in.  But there was no want also of
vivid delineation, of grotesque incidents, of telling jokes, and of
pithy sayings; and the harlequinade rapidly won for itself no
inconsiderable position in the theatrical life of the capital
and even in literature.

Dramatic Arrangements

Lastly as regards the development of dramatic arrangements we are
not in a position to set forth in detail--what is clear on the
whole--that the general interest in dramatic performances was
constantly on the increase, and that they became more and more
frequent and magnificent.  Not only was there hardly any ordinary
or extraordinary popular festival that was now celebrated without
dramatic exhibitions; even in the country-towns and in private
houses representations by companies of hired actors were common.
It is true that, while probably various municipal towns already at
this time possessed theatres built of stone, the capital was still
without one; the building of a theatre, already contracted for,
had been again prohibited by the senate in 599 on the suggestion
of Publius Scipio Nasica.  It was quite in the spirit of the
sanctimonious policy of this age, that the building of a permanent
theatre was prohibited out of respect for the customs of their
ancestors, but nevertheless theatrical entertainments were allowed
rapidly to increase, and enormous sums were expended annually
in erecting and decorating structures of boards for them.
The arrangements of the stage became visibly better.  The improved
scenic arrangements and the reintroduction of masks about the time
of Terence are doubtless connected with the fact, that the erection
and maintenance of the stage and stage-apparatus were charged
in 580 on the public chest.(16) The plays which Lucius Mummius
produced after the capture of Corinth (609) formed an epoch in
the history of the theatre.  It was probably then that a theatre
acoustically constructed after the Greek fashion and provided with
seats was first erected, and more care generally was expended on
the exhibitions.(17)  Now also there is frequent mention of the
bestowal of a prize of victory--which implies the competition of
several pieces--of the audience taking a lively part for or against
the leading actors, of cliques and -claqueurs-.  The decorations
and machinery were improved; moveable scenery artfully painted
and audible theatrical thunder made their appearance under the
aedileship of Gaius Claudius Pulcher in 655;(18) and twenty years
later (675) under the aedileship of the brothers Lucius and Marcus
Lucullus came the changing of the decorations by shifting the
scenes.  To the close of this epoch belongs the greatest of Roman
actors, the freedman Quintus Roscius (d. about 692 at a great age),
throughout several generations the ornament and pride of the Roman
stage,(19) the friend and welcome boon-companion of Sulla--to whom
we shall have to recur in the sequel.

Satura

In recitative poetry the most surprising circumstance is the
insignificance of the Epos, which during the sixth century had
occupied decidedly the first place in the literature destined for
reading; it had numerous representatives in the seventh, but not a
single one who had even temporary success.  From the present epoch
there is hardly anything to be reported save a number of rude
attempts to translate Homer, and some continuations of the Ennian
Annals, such as the "Istrian War" of Hostius and the "Annals
(perhaps) of the Gallic War" by Aulus Furius (about 650), which to
all appearance took up the narrative at the very point where Ennius
had broken off--the description of the Istrian war of 576 and 577.
In didactic and elegiac poetry no prominent name appears.  The only
successes which the recitative poetry of this period has to show,
belong to the domain of what was called -Satura---a species of art,
which like the letter or the pamphlet allowed of any form and
admitted any sort of contents, and accordingly in default of all
proper generic characters derived its individual shape wholly from
the individuality of each poet, and occupied a position not merely
on the boundary between poetry and prose, but even more than half
beyond the bounds of literature proper.  The humorous poetical
epistles, which one of the younger men of the Scipionic circle,
Spurius Mummius, the brother of the destroyer of Corinth, sent home
from the camp of Corinth to his friends, were still read with
pleasure a century afterwards; and numerous poetical pleasantries
of that sort not destined for publication probably proceeded at
that time from the rich social and intellectual life of the
better circles of Rome.

Lucilius

Its representative in literature is Gaius Lucilius (606-651) sprung
of a respectable family in the Latin colony of Suessa, and likewise
a member of the Scipionic circle.  His poems are, as it were, open
letters to the public.  Their contents, as a clever successor
gracefully says, embrace the whole life of a cultivated man of
independence, who looks upon the events passing on the political
stage from the pit and occasionally from the side-scenes; who
converses with the best of his epoch as his equals; who follows
literature and science with sympathy and intelligence without
wishing personally to pass for a poet or scholar; and who, in fine,
makes his pocket-book the confidential receptacle for everything
good and bad that he meets with, for his political experiences and
expectations, for grammatical remarks and criticisms on art, for
incidents of his own life, visits, dinners, journeys, as well as
for anecdotes which he has heard.  Caustic, capricious, thoroughly
individual, the Lucilian poetry has yet the distinct stamp of an
oppositional and, so far, didactic aim in literature as well as in
morals and politics; there is in it something of the revolt of the
country against the capital; the Suessan's sense of his own purity
of speech and honesty of life asserts itself in antagonism to the
great Babel of mingled tongues and corrupt morals.  The aspiration
of the Scipionic circle after literary correctness, especially in
point of language, finds critically its most finished and most
clever representative in Lucilius.  He dedicated his very first
book to Lucius Stilo, the founder of Roman philology,(20) and
designated as the public for which he wrote not the cultivated
circles of pure and classical speech, but the Tarentines, the
Bruttians, the Siculi, or in other words the half-Greeks of Italy,
whose Latin certainly might well require a corrective.  Whole books
of his poems are occupied with the settlement of Latin orthography
and prosody, with the combating of Praenestine, Sabine, Etruscan
provincialisms, with the exposure of current solecisms; along with
which, however, the poet by no means forgets to ridicule the
insipidly systematic Isocratean purism of words and phrases,(21)
and even to reproach his friend Scipio in right earnest jest
with the exclusive fineness of his language.(22)  But the poet
inculcates purity of morals in public and private life far more
earnestly than he preaches pure and simple Latinity.  For this
his position gave him peculiar advantages.  Although by descent,
estate, and culture on a level with the genteel Romans of his time
and possessor of a handsome house in the capital, he was yet not a
Roman burgess, but a Latin; even his position towards Scipio, under
whom he had served in his early youth during the Numantine war, and
in whose house he was a frequent visitor, may be connected with the
fact, that Scipio stood in varied relations to the Latins and was
their patron in the political feuds of the time.(23)  He was thus
precluded from a public life, and he disdained the career of a
speculator--he had no desire, as he once said, to "cease to be
Lucilius in order to become an Asiatic revenue-farmer." So he lived
in the sultry age of the Gracchan reforms and the agitations preceding
the Social war, frequenting the palaces and villas of the Roman
grandees and yet not exactly their client, at once in the midst
of the strife of political coteries and parties and yet not directly
taking part with one or another; in a way similar to Beranger,
of whom there is much that reminds us in the political and poetical
position of Lucilius.  From this position he uttered his comments
on public life with a sound common sense that was not to be
shaken, with a good humour that was inexhaustible, and with
a wit perpetually gushing:

-Nunc vero a mane ad noctem, festo atque profesto
Toto itidem pariterque die populusque patresque
Iactare indu foro se omnes, decedere nusquam.
Uni se atque eidem studio omnes dedere et arti;
Verba dare ut caute possint, pugnare dolose,
Blanditia certare, bonum simulare virum se,
Insidias facere ut si hostes sint omnibus omnes-.

The illustrations of this inexhaustible text remorselessly, without
omitting his friends or even the poet himself, assailed the evils
of the age, the coterie-system, the endless Spanish war-service,
and the like; the very commencement of his Satires was a great
debate in the senate of the Olympian gods on the question, whether
Rome deserved to enjoy the continued protection of the celestials.
Corporations, classes, individuals, were everywhere severally
mentioned by name; the poetry of political polemics, shut out
from the Roman stage, was the true element and life-breath of
the Lucilian poems, which by the power of the most pungent wit
illustrated with the richest imagery--a power which still entrances
us even in the remains that survive--pierce and crush their
adversary "as by a drawn sword." In this--in the moral ascendency
and the proud sense of freedom of the poet of Suessa--lies the
reason why the refined Venusian, who in the Alexandrian age of
Roman poetry revived the Lucilian satire, in spite of all his
superiority in formal skill with true modesty yields to the earlier
poet as "his better." The language is that of a man of thorough
culture, Greek and Latin, who freely indulges his humour; a poet
like Lucilius, who is alleged to have made two hundred hexameters
before dinner and as many after it, is in far too great a hurry to
be nice; useless prolixity, slovenly repetition of the same turn,
culpable instances of carelessness frequently occur: the first
word, Latin or Greek, is always the best.  The metres are similarly
treated, particularly the very predominant hexameter: if we transpose
the words--his clever imitator says--no man would observe that
he had anything else before him than simple prose; in point of
effect they can only be compared to our doggerel verses.(24)
The poems of Terence and those of Lucilius stand on the same level
of culture, and have the same relation to each other as a carefully
prepared and polished literary work has to a letter written on the
spur of the moment.  But the incomparably higher intellectual gifts
and the freer view of life, which mark the knight of Suessa as
compared with the African slave, rendered his success as rapid
and brilliant as that of Terence had been laborious and doubtful;
Lucilius became immediately the favourite of the nation, and he
like Beranger could say of his poems that "they alone of all were
read by the people." The uncommon popularity of the Lucilian poem
is, in a historical point of view, a remarkable event; we see from
it that literature was already a power, and beyond doubt we should
fall in with various traces of its influence, if a thorough history
of this period had been preserved.  Posterity has only confirmed
the judgment of contemporaries; the Roman judges of art who were
opposed to the Alexandrian school assigned to Lucilius the first
rank among all the Latin poets.  So far as satire can be regarded
as a distinct form of art at all, Lucilius created it; and in it
created the only species of art which was peculiar to the Romans
and was bequeathed by them to posterity.

Of poetry attaching itself to the Alexandrian school nothing
occurs in Rome at this epoch except minor poems translated from or
modelled on Alexandrian epigrams, which deserve notice not on their
own account, but as the first harbingers of the later epoch of
Roman literature.  Leaving out of account some poets little known
and whose dates cannot be fixed with certainty, there belong to
this category Quintus Catulus, consul in 652(25) and Lucius
Manlius, an esteemed senator, who wrote in 657.  The latter seems
to have been the first to circulate among the Romans various
geographical tales current among the Greeks, such as the Delian
legend of Latona, the fables of Europa and of the marvellous bird
Phoenix; as it was likewise reserved for him on his travels to
discover at Dodona and to copy that remarkable tripod, on which
might be read the oracle imparted to the Pelasgians before their
migration into the land of the Siceli and Aborigines--a discovery
which the Roman annals did not neglect devoutly to register.

Historical Composition
Polybius

In historical composition this epoch is especially marked by the
emergence of an author who did not belong to Italy either by birth
or in respect of his intellectual and literary standpoint, but who
first or rather alone brought literary appreciation and description
to bear on Rome's place in the world, and to whom all subsequent
generations, and we too, owe the best part of our knowledge of
the Roman development.  Polybius (c. 546-c. 627) of Megalopolis in
the Peloponnesus, son of the Achaean statesman Lycortas, took part
apparently as early as 565 in the expedition of the Romans against
the Celts of Asia Minor, and was afterwards on various occasions,
especially during the third Macedonian war, employed by his
countrymen in military and diplomatic affairs.  After the crisis
occasioned by that war in Hellas he was carried off along with the
other Achaean hostages to Italy,(26) where he lived in exile for
seventeen years (587-604) and was introduced by the sons of Paullus
to the genteel circles of the capital.  By the sending back of
the Achaean hostages(27) he was restored to his home, where he
thenceforth acted as permanent mediator between his confederacy
and the Romans.  He was present at the destruction of Carthage
and of Corinth (608).  He seemed educated, as it were, by destiny
to comprehend the historical position of Rome more clearly than
the Romans of that day could themselves.  From the place which
he occupied, a Greek statesman and a Roman prisoner, esteemed and
occasionally envied for his Hellenic culture by Scipio Aemilianus
and the first men of Rome generally, he saw the streams, which had
so long flowed separately, meet together in the same channel and
the history of the states of the Mediterranean resolve itself into
the hegemony of Roman power and Greek culture.  Thus Polybius
became the first Greek of note, who embraced with serious
conviction the comprehensive view of the Scipionic circle, and
recognized the superiority of Hellenism in the sphere of intellect
and of the Roman character in the sphere of politics as facts,
regarding which history had given her final decision, and to which
people on both sides were entitled and bound to submit.  In this
spirit he acted as a practical statesman, and wrote his history.
If in his youth he had done homage to the honourable but
impracticable local patriotism of the Achaeans, during his later
years, with a clear discernment of inevitable necessity, he
advocated in the community to which he belonged the policy of the
closest adherence to Rome.  It was a policy in the highest degree
judicious and beyond doubt well-intentioned, but it was far from
being high-spirited or proud.  Nor was Polybius able wholly to
disengage himself from the vanity and paltriness of the Hellenic
statesmanship of the time.  He was hardly released from exile,
when he proposed to the senate that it should formally secure to
the released their former rank in their several homes; whereupon
Cato aptly remarked, that this looked to him as if Ulysses were to
return to the cave of Polyphemus to request from the giant his hat
and girdle.  He often made use of his relations with the great
men in Rome to benefit his countrymen; but the way in which he
submitted to, and boasted of, the illustrious protection somewhat
approaches fawning servility.  His literary activity breathes
throughout the same spirit as his practical action.  It was
the task of his life to write the history of the union of the
Mediterranean states under the hegemony of Rome.  From the first
Punic war down to the destruction of Carthage and Corinth his work
embraces the fortunes of all the civilized states--namely Greece,
Macedonia, Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Carthage, and Italy--and
exhibits in causal connection the mode in which they came under
the Roman protectorate; in so far he describes it as his object to
demonstrate the fitness and reasonableness of the Roman hegemony.
In design as in execution, this history stands in clear and
distinct contrast with the contemporary Roman as well as with the
contemporary Greek historiography.  In Rome history still remained
wholly at the stage of chronicle; there existed doubtless important
historical materials, but what was called historical composition
was restricted--with the exception of the very respectable but
purely individual writings of Cato, which at any rate did not reach
beyond the rudiments of research and narration--partly to nursery
tales, partly to collections of notices.  The Greeks had certainly
exhibited historical research and had written history; but the
conceptions of nation and state had been so completely lost amidst
the distracted times of the Diadochi, that none of the numerous
historians succeeded in following the steps of the great Attic
masters in spirit and in truth, or in treating from a general
point of view the matter of world-wide interest in the history
of the times.

Their histories were either purely outward records, or they were
pervaded by the verbiage and sophistries of Attic rhetoric and only
too often by the venality and vulgarity, the sycophancy and the
bitterness of the age.  Among the Romans as among the Greeks there
was nothing but histories of cities or of tribes.  Polybius,
a Peloponnesian, as has been justly  remarked, and holding
intellectually a position at least as far aloof from the Attics
as from the Romans, first stepped beyond these miserable limits,
treated the Roman materials with mature Hellenic criticism, and
furnished a history, which was not indeed universal, but which was
at any rate dissociated from the mere local states and laid hold of
the Romano-Greek state in the course of formation.  Never perhaps
has any historian united within himself all the advantages of an
author drawing from original sources so completely as Polybius.
The compass of his task is completely clear and present to him
at every moment; and his eye is fixed throughout on the real
historical connection of events.  The legend, the anecdote,
the mass of worthless chronicle-notices are thrown aside; the
description of countries and peoples, the representation of
political and mercantile relations--all the facts of so infinite
importance, which escape the annalist because they do not admit of
being nailed to a particular year--are put into possession of their
long-suspended rights.  In the procuring of historic materials
Polybius shows a caution and perseverance such as are not perhaps
paralleled in antiquity; he avails himself of documents, gives
comprehensive attention to the literature of different nations,
makes the most extensive use of his favourable position for
collecting the accounts of actors and eye-witnesses, and, in fine,
methodically travels over the whole domain of the Mediterranean
states and part of the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.(28)
Truthfulness is his nature.  In all great matters he has no
interest for one state or against another, for this man or against
that, but is singly and solely interested in the essential
connection of events, to present which in their true relation of
causes and effects seems to him not merely the first but the sole
task of the historian.  Lastly, the narrative is a model of
completeness, simplicity, and clearness.  Still all these uncommon
advantages by no means constitute a historian of the first rank.
Polybius grasps his literary task, as he grasped his practical,
with great understanding, but with the understanding alone.
History, the struggle of necessity and liberty, is a moral problem;
Polybius treats it as if it were a mechanical one.  The whole alone
has value for him, in nature as in the state; the particular event,
the individual man, however wonderful they may appear, are yet
properly mere single elements, insignificant wheels in the highly
artificial mechanism which is named the state.  So far Polybius was
certainly qualified as no other was to narrate the history of the
Roman people, which actually solved the marvellous problem of
raising itself to unparalleled internal and external greatness
without producing a single statesman of genius in the highest
sense, and which resting on its simple foundations developed itself
with wonderful almost mathematical consistency.  But the element of
moral freedom bears sway in the history of every people, and it was
not neglected by Polybius in the history of Rome with impunity.
His treatment of all questions, in which right, honour, religion
are involved, is not merely shallow, but radically false.  The same
holds true wherever a genetic construction is required; the purely
mechanical attempts at explanation, which Polybius substitutes,
are sometimes altogether desperate; there is hardly, for instance,
a more foolish political speculation than that which derives
the excellent constitution of Rome from a judicious mixture of
monarchical, aristocratic, and democratic elements, and deduces
the successes of Rome from the excellence of her constitution.
His conception of relations is everywhere dreadfully jejune and
destitute of imagination: his contemptuous and over-wise mode of
treating religious matters is altogether offensive.  The narrative,
preserving throughout an intentional contrast to the usual Greek
historiography with its artistic style, is doubtless correct and
clear, but flat and languid, digressing with undue frequency into
polemical discussions or into biographical, not seldom very self-
sufficient, description of his own experiences.  A controversial
vein pervades the whole work; the author destined his treatise
primarily for the Romans, and yet found among them only a very
small circle that understood him; he felt that he remained in the
eyes of the Romans a foreigner, in the eyes of his countrymen a
renegade, and that with his grand conception of his subject he
belonged more to the future than to the present Accordingly he was
not exempt from a certain ill-humour and personal bitterness, which
frequently appear after a quarrelsome and paltry fashion in his
attacks upon the superficial or even venal Greek and the uncritical
Roman historians, so that he degenerates from the tone of the
historian to that of the reviewer.  Polybius is not an attractive
author; but as truth and truthfulness are of more value than all
ornament and elegance, no other author of antiquity perhaps can
be named to whom we are indebted for so much real instruction.
His books are like the sun in the field of Roman history; at the point
where they begin the veil of mist which still envelops the Samnite
and Pyrrhic wars is raised, and at the point where they end a new
and, if possible, still more vexatious twilight begins.

Roman Chroniclers

In singular contrast to this grand conception and treatment of
Roman history by a foreigner stands the contemporary historical
literature of native growth.  At the beginning of this period we
still find some chronicles written in Greek such as that already
mentioned(29) of Aulus Postumius (consul in 603), full of wretched
rationalizing, and that of Gaius Acilius (who closed it at an
advanced age about 612).  Yet under the influence partly of
Catonian patriotism, partly of the more refined culture of
the Scipionic circle, the Latin language gained so decided an
ascendency in this field, that of the later historical works not
more than one or two occur written in Greek;(30) and not only so,
but the older Greek chronicles were translated into Latin and were
probably read mainly in these translations.  Unhappily beyond the
employment of the mother-tongue there is hardly anything else
deserving of commendation in the chronicles of this epoch composed
in Latin.  They were numerous and detailed enough--there are
mentioned, for example, those of Lucius Cassius Hemina (about 608),
of Lucius Calpurnius Piso (consul in 621), of Gaius Sempronius
Tuditanus (consul in 625), of Gaius Fannius (consul in 632).
To these falls to be added the digest of the official annals of
the city in eighty books, which Publius Mucius Scaevola (consul
in 621), a man esteemed also as a jurist, prepared and published
as -pontifex maximus-, thereby closing the city-chronicle in so
far as thenceforth the pontifical records, although not exactly
discontinued, were no longer at any rate, amidst the increasing
diligence of private chroniclers, taken account of in literature.
All these annals, whether they gave themselves forth as private or
as official works, were substantially similar compilations of the
extant historical and quasi-historical materials; and the value of
their authorities as well as their formal value declined beyond
doubt in the same proportion as their amplitude increased.
Chronicle certainly nowhere presents truth without fiction, and it
would be very foolish to quarrel with Naevius and Pictor because
they have not acted otherwise than Hecataeus and Saxo Grammaticus;
but the later attempts to build houses out of such castles in the
air put even the most tried patience to a severe test No blank in
tradition presents so wide a chasm, but that this system of smooth
and downright invention will fill it up with playful facility.
The eclipses of the sun, the numbers of the census, family-registers,
triumphs, are without hesitation carried back from the current year
up to the year One; it stands duly recorded, in what year, month,
and day king Romulus went up to heaven, and how king Servius
Tullius triumphed over the Etruscans first on the 25th November
183, and again on the 25th May 187, In entire harmony with such
details accordingly the vessel in which Aeneas had voyaged from
Ilion to Latium was shown in the Roman docks, and even the
identical sow, which had served as a guide to Aeneas, was preserved
well pickled in the Roman temple of Vesta.  With the lying
disposition of a poet these chroniclers of rank combine all the
tiresome exactness of a notary, and treat their great subject
throughout with the dulness which necessarily results from the
elimination at once of all poetical and all historical elements.
When we read, for instance, in Piso that Romulus avoided indulging
in his cups when he had a sitting of the senate next day; or that
Tarpeia betrayed the Capitol to the Sabines out of patriotism,
with a view to deprive the enemy of their shields; we cannot be
surprised at the judgment of intelligent contemporaries as to all
this sort of scribbling, "that it was not writing history, but
telling stories to children." Of far greater excellence were
isolated works on the history of the recent past and of the
present, particularly the history of the Hannibalic war by Lucius
Caelius Antipater (about 633) and the history of his own time
by Publius Sempronius Asellio, who was a little younger.  These
exhibited at least valuable materials and an earnest spirit of truth,
in the case of Antipater also a lively, although strongly affected,
style of narrative; yet, judging from all testimonies and fragments,
none of these books came up either in pithy form or in originality
to the "Origines" of Cato, who unhappily created as little of a school
in the field of history as in that of politics.

Memoirs and Speeches

The subordinate, more individual and ephemeral, species of
historical literature--memoirs, letters, and speeches--were
strongly represented also, at least as respects quantity.
The first statesmen of Rome already recorded in person their
experiences: such as Marcus Scaurus (consul in 639), Publius Rufus
(consul in 649), Quintus Catulus (consul in 652), and even the
regent Sulla; but none of these productions seem to have been of
importance for literature otherwise than by the substance of their
contents.  The collection of letters of Cornelia, the mother of
the Gracchi, was remarkable partly for the classical purity of
the language and the high spirit of the writer, partly as the first
correspondence published in Rome, and as the first literary
production of a Roman lady.  The literature of speeches preserved
at this period the stamp impressed on it by Cato; advocates'
pleadings were not yet looked on as literary productions, and such
speeches as were published were political pamphlets.  During the
revolutionary commotions this pamphlet-literature increased in
extent and importance, and among the mass of ephemeral productions
there were some which, like the Philippics of Demosthenes and
the fugitive pieces of Courier, acquired a permanent place in
literature from the important position of their authors or from
their own weight.  Such were the political speeches of Gaius
Laelius and of Scipio Aemilianus, masterpieces of excellent Latin
as of the noblest patriotism; such were the gushing speeches of
Gaius Titius, from whose pungent pictures of the place and the
time--his description of the senatorial juryman has been given
already(31)--the national comedy borrowed various points; such
above all were the numerous orations of Gaius Gracchus, whose
fiery words preserved in a faithful mirror the impassioned
earnestness, the aristocratic bearing, and the tragic destiny
of that lofty nature.

Sciences

In scientific literature the collection of juristic opinions by
Marcus Brutus, which was published about the year 600, presents
a remarkable attempt to transplant to Rome the method usual among
the Greeks of handling professional subjects by means of dialogue,
and to give to his treatise an artistic semi-dramatic form by a
machinery of conversation in which the persons, time, and place
were distinctly specified.  But the later men of science, such
as Stilo the philologist and Scaevola the jurist, laid aside
this method, more poetical than practical, both in the sciences
of general culture and in the special professional sciences.
The increasing value of science as such, and the preponderance
of a material interest in it at Rome, are clearly reflected in this
rapid rejection of the fetters of artistic form.  We have already
spoken(32) in detail of the sciences of general liberal culture,
grammar or rather philology, rhetoric and philosophy, in so far
as these now became essential elements of the usual Roman training
and thereby first began to be dissociated from the professional
sciences properly so called.

Philology

In the field of letters Latin philology flourished vigorously, in
close association with the philological treatment--long ago placed
on a sure basis--of Greek literature.  It was already mentioned
that about the beginning of this century the Latin epic poets found
their -diaskeuastae- and revisers of their text;(33) it was also
noticed, that not only did the Scipionic circle generally insist
on correctness above everything else, but several also of the most
noted poets, such as Accius and Lucilius, busied themselves with
the regulation of orthography and of grammar.  At the same period
we find isolated attempts to develop archaeology from the
historical side; although the dissertations of the unwieldy
annalists of this age, such as those of Hemina "on the Censors"
and of Tuditanus "on the Magistrates," can hardly have been better
than their chronicles.  Of more interest were the treatise on
the Magistracies by Marcus Junius the friend of Gaius Gracchus, as
the first attempt to make archaeological investigation serviceable
for political objects,(34) and the metrically composed -Didascaliae-
of the tragedian Accius, an essay towards a literary history of the
Latin drama.  But those early attempts at a scientific treatment
of the mother-tongue still bear very much a dilettante stamp, and
strikingly remind us of our orthographic literature in the Bodmer-
Klopstock period; and we may likewise without injustice assign but
a modest place to the antiquarian researches of this epoch.

Stilo

The Roman, who established the investigation of the Latin language
and antiquities in the spirit of the Alexandrian masters on a
scientific basis, was Lucius Aelius Stilo about 650.(35)  He first
went back to the oldest monuments of the language, and commented on
the Salian litanies and the Twelve Tables.  He devoted his special
attention to the comedy of the sixth century, and first formed a
list of the pieces of Plautus which in his opinion were genuine.
He sought, after the Greek fashion, to determine historically the
origin of every single phenomenon in the Roman life and dealings
and to ascertain in each case the "inventor," and at the same time
brought the whole annalistic tradition within the range of his
research.  The success, which he had among his contemporaries, is
attested by the dedication to him of the most important poetical,
and the most important historical, work of his time, the Satires
of Lucilius and the Annals of Antipater; and this first Roman
philologist influenced the studies of his nation for the future by
transmitting his spirit of investigation both into words and into
things to his disciple Varro.

Rhetoric

The literary activity in the field of Latin rhetoric was, as might
be expected, of a more subordinate kind.  There was nothing here to
be done but to write manuals and exercise-books after the model of
the Greek compendia of Hermagoras and others; and these accordingly
the schoolmasters did not fail to supply, partly on account of the
need for them, partly on account of vanity and money.  Such a
manual of rhetoric has been preserved to us, composed under Sulla's
dictatorship by an unknown author, who according to the fashion
then prevailing(36) taught simultaneously Latin literature and
Latin rhetoric, and wrote on both; a treatise remarkable not merely
for its terse, clear, and firm handling of the subject, but above
all for its comparative independence in presence of Greek models.
Although in method entirely dependent on the Greeks, the Roman yet
distinctly and even abruptly rejects all "the useless matter which
the Greeks had gathered together, solely in order that the science
might appear more difficult to learn." The bitterest censure is
bestowed on the hair-splitting dialectics--that "loquacious science
of inability to speak"--whose finished master, for sheer fear of
expressing himself ambiguously, at last no longer ventures to
pronounce his own name.  The Greek school-terminology is throughout
and intentionally avoided.  Very earnestly the author points out
the danger of many teachers, and inculcates the golden rule that
the scholar ought above all to be induced by the teacher to help
himself; with equal earnestness he recognizes the truth that the
school is a secondary, and life the main, matter, and gives in
his examples chosen with thorough independence an echo of those
forensic speeches which during the last decades had excited notice
in the Roman advocate-world.  It deserves attention, that the
opposition to the extravagances of Hellenism, which had formerly
sought to prevent the rise of a native Latin rhetoric,(37)
continued to influence it after it arose, and thereby secured
to Roman eloquence, as compared with the contemporary eloquence
of the Greeks, theoretically and practically a higher dignity
and a greater usefulness.

Philosophy

Philosophy, in fine, was not yet represented in literature,
since neither did an inward need develop a national Roman philosophy
nor did outward circumstances call forth a Latin philosophical
authorship.  It cannot even be shown with certainty that there
were Latin translations of popular summaries of philosophy
belonging to this period; those who pursued philosophy read
and disputed in Greek.

Professional Sciences
Jurisprudence

In the professional sciences there was but little activity.
Well as the Romans understood how to farm and how to calculate,
physical and mathematical research gained no hold among them.
The consequences of neglecting theory appeared practically in
the low state of medical knowledge and of a portion of the military
sciences.  Of all the professional sciences jurisprudence alone was
flourishing.  We cannot trace its internal development with
chronological accuracy.  On the whole ritual law fell more and
more into the shade, and at the end of this period stood nearly
in the same position as the canon law at the present day.  The finer
and more profound conception of law, on the other hand, which
substitutes for outward criteria the motive springs of action
within--such as the development of the ideas of offences arising
from intention and from carelessness respectively, and of
possession entitled to temporary protection--was not yet in
existence at the time of the Twelve Tables, but was so in the age
of Cicero, and probably owed its elaboration substantially to the
present epoch.  The reaction of political relations on the development
of law has been already indicated on several occasions; it was
not always advantageous.  By the institution of the tribunal of the
-Centumviri- to deal with inheritance,(38) for instance, there was
introduced in the law of property a college of jurymen, which, like
the criminal authorities, instead of simply applying the law placed
itself above it and with its so-called equity undermined the legal
institutions; one consequence of which among others was the
irrational principle, that any one, whom a relative had passed over
in his testament, was at liberty to propose that the testament
should be annulled by the court, and the court decided according
to its discretion.

The development of juristic literature admits of being more
distinctly recognized.  It had hitherto been restricted to
collections of formularies and explanations of terms in the laws;
at this period there was first formed a literature of opinions
(-responsa-), which answers nearly to our modern collections of
precedents.  These opinions--which were delivered no longer merely
by members of the pontifical college, but by every one who found
persons to consult him, at home or in the open market-place,
and with which were already associated rational and polemical
illustrations and the standing controversies peculiar to
jurisprudence--began to be noted down and to be promulgated in
collections about the beginning of the seventh century.  This was
done first by the younger Cato (d. about 600) and by Marcus Brutus
(nearly contemporary); and these collections were, as it would
appear, arranged in the order of matters.(39)  A strictly
systematic treatment of the law of the land soon followed.
Its founder was the -pontifex maximus- Quintus Mucius Scaevola
(consul in 659, d.  672),(40) in whose family jurisprudence was,
like the supreme priesthood, hereditary.  His eighteen books
on the -Ius Civile-, which embraced the positive materials of
jurisprudence--legislative enactments, judicial precedents, and
authorities--partly from the older collections, partly from oral
tradition in as great completeness as possible, formed the starting-
point and the model of the detailed systems of Roman law; in like
manner his compendious treatise of "Definitions" (--oroi--) became
the basis of juristic summaries and particularly of the books
of Rules.  Although this development of law proceeded of course
in the main independently of Hellenism, yet an acquaintance with
the philosophico-practical scheme-making of the Greeks beyond
doubt gave a general impulse to the more systematic treatment of
jurisprudence, as in fact the Greek influence is in the case of
the last-mentioned treatise apparent in the very title.  We have
already remarked that in several more external matters Roman
jurisprudence was influenced by the Stoa.(41)

Art exhibits still less pleasing results.  In architecture,
sculpture, and painting there was, no doubt, a more and more
general diffusion of a dilettante interest, but the exercise of
native art retrograded rather than advanced.  It became more and
more customary for those sojourning in Grecian lands personally to
inspect the works of art; for which in particular the winter-
quarters of Sulla's army in Asia Minor in 670-671 formed an epoch.
Connoisseur-ship developed itself also in Italy.  They had
commenced with articles in silver and bronze; about the commencement
of this epoch they began to esteem not merely Greek statues,
but also Greek pictures.  The first picture publicly exhibited in
Rome was the Bacchus of Aristides, which Lucius Mummius withdrew
from the sale of the Corinthian spoil, because king Attalus offered
as much as 6000 -denarii- (260 pounds) for it.  The buildings became
more splendid; and in particular transmarine, especially Hymettian,
marble (Cipollino) came into use for that purpose--the Italian
marble quarries were not yet in operation.  A magnificent colonnade
still admired in the time of the empire, which Quintus Metellus
(consul in 611) the conqueror of Macedonia constructed in the
Campus Martius, enclosed the first marble temple which the capital
had seen; it was soon followed by similar structures built on the
Capitol by Scipio Nasica (consul in 616), and near to the Circus by
Gnaeus Octavius (consul in 626).  The first private house adorned
with marble columns was that of the orator Lucius Crassus (d. 663)
on the Palatine.(42)  But where they could plunder or purchase,
instead of creating for themselves, they did so; it was a wretched
indication of the poverty of Roman architecture, that it already
began to employ the columns of the old Greek temples; the Roman
Capitol, for instance, was embellished by Sulla with those of the
temple of Zeus at Athens.  The works, that were produced in Rome,
proceeded from the hands of foreigners; the few Roman artists of
this period, who are particularly mentioned, are without exception
Italian or transmarine Greeks who had migrated thither.  Such was
the case with the architect Hermodorus from the Cyprian Salamis,
who among other works restored the Roman docks and built for
Quintus Metellus (consul in 611) the temple of Jupiter Stator
in the basilica constructed by him, and for Decimus Brutus (consul
in 616) the temple of Mars in the Flaminian circus; with the sculptor
Pasiteles (about 665) from Magna Graecia, who furnished images
of the gods in ivory for Roman temples; and with the painter
and philosopher Metrodorus of Athens, who was summoned to paint
the pictures for the triumph of Lucius Paullus (587).  It is
significant that the coins of this epoch exhibit in comparison
with those of the previous period a greater variety of types,
but a retrogression rather than an improvement in the cutting
of the dies.

Finally, music and dancing passed over in like manner from Hellas
to Rome, solely in order to be there applied to the enhancement of
decorative luxury.  Such foreign arts were certainly not new in
Rome; the state had from olden time allowed Etruscan flute-players
and dancers to appear at its festivals, and the freedmen and
the lowest class of the Roman people had previously followed
this trade.  But it was a novelty that Greek dances and musical
performances should form the regular accompaniment of a genteel
banquet.  Another novelty was a dancing-school, such as Scipio
Aemilianus full of indignation describes in one of his speeches,
in which upwards of five hundred boys and girls--the dregs of the
people and the children of magistrates and of dignitaries mixed up
together--received instruction from a ballet-master in far from
decorous castanet-dances, in corresponding songs, and in the use of
the proscribed Greek stringed instruments.  It was a novelty too--
not so much that a consular and -pontifex maximus- like Publius
Scaevola (consul in 621) should catch the balls in the circus as
nimbly as he solved the most complicated questions of law at home--
as that young Romans of rank should display their jockey-arts
before all the people at the festal games of Sulla.  The government
occasionally attempted to check such practices; as for instance in
639, when all musical instruments, with the exception of the simple
flute indigenous in Latium, were prohibited by the censors.
But Rome was no Sparta; the lax government by such prohibitions
rather drew attention to the evils than attempted to remedy them
by a sharp and consistent application of the laws.

If, in conclusion, we glance back at the picture as a whole which
the literature and art of Italy unfold to our view from the death
of Ennius to the beginning of the Ciceronian age, we find in these
respects as compared with the preceding epoch a most decided
decline of productiveness.  The higher kinds of literature--such
as epos, tragedy, history--have died out or have been arrested in
their development.  The subordinate kinds--the translation and
imitation of the intrigue-piece, the farce, the poetical and prose
brochure--alone are successful; in this last field of literature
swept by the full hurricane of revolution we meet with the two men
of greatest literary talent in this epoch, Gaius Gracchus and Gaius
Lucilius, who stand out amidst a number of more or less mediocre
writers just as in a similar epoch of French literature Courier
and Beranger stand out amidst a multitude of pretentious nullities.
In the plastic and delineative arts likewise the production,
always weak, is now utterly null.  On the other hand the receptive
enjoyment of art and literature flourished; as the Epigoni of
this period in the political field gathered in and used up the
inheritance that fell to their fathers, we find them in this field
also as diligent frequenters of plays, as patrons of literature,
as connoisseurs and still more as collectors in art.  The most
honourable aspect of this activity was its learned research,
which put forth a native intellectual energy, more especially in
jurisprudence and in linguistic and antiquarian investigation.
The foundation of these sciences which properly falls within the
present epoch, and the first small beginnings of an imitation of
the Alexandrian hothouse poetry, already herald the approaching
epoch of Roman Alexandrinism.  All the productions of the present
epoch are smoother, more free from faults, more systematic than
the creations of the sixth century.  The literati and the friends
of literature of this period not altogether unjustly looked down
on their predecessors as bungling novices: but while they ridiculed
or censured the defective labours of these novices, the very men
who were the most gifted among them may have confessed to themselves
that the season of the nation's youth was past, and may have
ever and anon perhaps felt in the still depths of the heart
a secret longing to stray once more in the delightful paths
of youthful error.



End of Volume IV



NOTES FOR VOLUME IV



Chapter I

1.  III. VII. The State of Culture in Spain.

2.   Italica must have been intended by Scipio to be what was called in
Italy forum et -conciliabulum civium Romanorum-; Aquae Sextiae in Gaul
had a similar origin afterwards.  The formation of transmarine burgess-
communities only began at a later date with Carthage and Narbo: yet
it is remarkable that Scipio already made a first step, in a certain
sense, in that direction.

3.  III. VII. Gracchus

4.  The chronology of the war with Viriathus is far from being
precisely settled.  It is certain that the appearance of Viriathus
dates from the conflict with Vetilius (Appian, Hisp. 61; Liv. lii.;
Oros. v. 4), and that he perished in 615 (Diod. Vat. p. 110, etc.);
the duration of his rule is reckoned at eight (Appian, Hisp. 63), ten
(Justin, xliv. 2), eleven (Diodorus, p. 597), fifteen (Liv. liv.;
Eutrop. iv. 16; Oros. v. 4; Flor. i. 33), and twenty years (Vellei.
ii. 90).  The first estimate possesses some probability, because the
appearance of Viriathus is connected both in Diodorus (p. 591; Vat.
p. 107, 108) and in Orosius (v. 4) with the destruction of Corinth.
Of the Roman governors, with whom Viriathus fought, several undoubtedly
belong to the northern province; for though Viriathus was at work
chiefly in the southern, he was not exclusively so (Liv. lii.);
consequently we must not calculate the number of the years of his
generalship by the number of these names.

5.  IV. I. Celtiberian War

6.  III. VII. Massinissa

7.  III. VI. Peace, III. VII. Carthage

8.  The line of the coast has been in the course of centuries so
much changed that the former local relations are but imperfectly
recognizable on the ancient site.  The name of the city is preserved
by Cape Cartagena--also called from the saint's tomb found there
Ras Sidi bu Said--the eastern headland of the peninsula, projecting
into the gulf with its highest point rising to 393 feet above
the level of the sea.

9.  The dimensions given by Beule (Fouilles a Carthage, 1861)
are as follows in metres and in Greek feet (1=0.309 metre):--

Outer wall                   2   metres = 6 1/2 feet.
Corridor                     1.9 "      = 6     "
Front wall of casemates      1   "      = 3 1/4 "
Casemate rooms               4.2 "      = 14    "
Back wall of casemates       1   "      = 3 1/4 "
                         ------------------------
Whole breadth of the walls  10.1 metres = 33    feet.

Or, as Diodorus (p. 522) states it, 22 cubits (1 Greek cubit = 1 1/2
feet), while Livy (ap. Oros. iv.  22) and Appian (Pun. 95), who seem
to have had before them another less accurate passage of Polybius,
state the breadth of the walls at 30 feet.  The triple wall of
Appian--as to which a false idea has hitherto been diffused by
Floras (i. 31)--denotes the outer wall, and the front and back walls
of the casemates.  That this coincidence is not accidental, and that
we have here in reality the remains of the famed walls of Carthage
before us, will be evident to every one: the objections of Davis
(Carthage and her Remains, p. 370 et seq.) only show how little
even the utmost zeal can adduce in opposition to the main results
of Beule.  Only we must maintain that all the ancient authorities
give the statements of which we are now speaking with reference not
to the citadel-wall, but to the city-wall on the landward side, of
which the wall along the south side of the citadel-hill was an
integral part (Oros. iv. 22).  In accordance with this view, the
excavations at the citadel-hill on the east, north, and west, have
shown no traces of fortifications, whereas on the south side they
have brought to light the very remains of this great wall.  There is
no reason for regarding these as the remains of a separate
fortification of the citadel distinct from the city wall; it may
be presumed that further excavations at a corresponding depth--the
foundation of the city wall discovered at the Byrsa lies fifty-six
feet beneath the present surface--will bring to light like, or at
any rate analogous, foundations along the whole landward side,
although it is probable that at the point where the walled suburb of
Magalia rested on the main wall the fortification was either weaker
from the first or was early neglected.  The length of the wall as a
whole cannot be stated with precision; but it must have been very
considerable, for three hundred elephants were stabled there, and
the stores for their fodder and perhaps other spaces also as well as
the gates are to be taken into account.  It is easy to conceive how
the inner city, within the walls of which the Byrsa was included,
should, especially by way of contrast to the suburb of Magalia which
had its separate circumvallation, be sometimes itself called Byrsa
(App. Pun. 117; Nepos, ap. Serv. Aen. i. 368).

10.  Such is the height given by Appian, l. c.; Diodorus gives
the height, probably inclusive of the battlements, at 40 cubits
or 60 feet.  The remnant preserved is still from 13 to 16 feet
(4-5 metres) high.

11.  The rooms of a horse-shoe shape brought to light in excavation
have a depth of 14, and a breadth of 11, Greek feet; the width of
the entrances is not specified.  Whether these dimensions and the
proportions of the corridor suffice for our recognizing them
as elephants' stalls, remains to be settled by a more accurate
investigation.  The partition-walls, which separate the apartments,
have a thickness of 1.1 metre = 3 1/2 feet.

12.  Oros. iv. 22.  Fully 2000 paces, or--as Polybius must have
said--16 stadia, are=about 3000 metres.  The citadel-hill, on which
the church of St.  Louis now stands, measures at the top about 1400,
half-way up about 2600, metres in circumference (Beule, p. 22); for
the circumference at the base that estimate will very well suffice.

13.  It now bears the fort Goletta.

14.  That this Phoenician word signifies a basin excavated in a
circular shape, is shown both by Diodorus (iii. 44), and by its
being employed by the Greeks to denote a "cup." It thus suits only
the inner harbour of Carthage, and in that sense it is used by Strabo
(xvii. 2, 14, where it is strictly applied to the admiral's island)
and Fest. Ep. v. -cothones-, p. 37.  Appian (Pun. 127) is not quite
accurate in describing the rectangular harbour in front of the Cothon
as part of it.

15.  --Oios pepnutai, toi de skiai aissousin--.

16.  III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria, III. IX. Macedonia

17.  III. X. Macedonia Broken Up

18.  This road was known already by the author of the pseudo-
Aristotelian treatise De Mirabilibus as a commercial route between
the Adriatic and Black seas, viz.  As that along which the wine jars
from Corcyra met halfway those from Thasos and Lesbos.  Even now
it runs substantially in the same direction from Durazzo, cutting
through the mountains of Bagora (Candavian chain) near the lake
of Ochrida (Lychnitis), by way of Monastir to Salonica.

19.  III. X. Greek National Party

20.  III. IX. The Achaeans

21.  III. IX. The Achaeans

22.  At Sabine townships, at Parma, and even at Italica in Spain
(p. 214), several pediments marked with the name of Mummius have
been brought to light, which once supported gifts forming part
of the spoil.

23.  III. III. Organization of the Provinces

24.  III. VIII. Final Regulation of Greece

25.  The question whether Greece did or did  not become  a Roman
province in 608, virtually runs into a dispute about words.  It is
certain that the Greek communities throughout remained "free" (C. I.
Gr. 1543, 15; Caesar, B. C. iii. 5; Appian, Mithr. 58; Zonar. ix.
31).  But it is no less certain that Greece was then "taken possession
of" by the Romans (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21; 1 Maccab. viii. 9, 10); that
thenceforth each community paid a fixed tribute to Rome (Pausan. vii.
16, 6; comp. Cic. De Prov. Cons. 3, 5), the little island of Gyarus,
for instance, paying 150 --drachmae-- annually (Strabo, x. 485);
that the "rods and axes" of the Roman governor thenceforth ruled
in Greece (Polyb. xxxviii. l. c.; comp. Cic. Verr. l. i. 21, 55),
and that he thenceforth exercised the superintendence over the
constitutions of the cities (C. I. Gr. 1543), as well as in certain
cases the criminal jurisdiction (C. I. Gr. 1543; Plut. Cim. 2), just
as the senate had hitherto done; and that, lastly, the Macedonian
provincial era was also in use in Greece. Between these facts there
is no inconsistency, or at any rate none further than is involved
in the position of the free cities generally, which are spoken of
sometimes as if excluded from the province (e. g. Sueton. Cats., 25;
Colum. xi. 3, 26), sometimes as assigned to it (e. g. Joseph. Ant.
Jud. xiv. 4, 4). The Roman domanial possessions in Greece were,
no doubt, restricted to the territory of Corinth and possibly some
portions of Euboea (C. I. Gr. 5879), and there were no subjects
in the strict sense there at all; yet if we look to the relations
practically subsisting between the Greek communities and the
Macedonian governor, Greece may be reckoned as included in the
province of Macedonia in the same manner as Massilia in the province
of Narbo or Dyrrhachium in that of Macedonia. We find even cases
that go much further: Cisalpine Gaul consisted after 665 of mere
burgess or Latin communities and was yet made a province by Sulla,
and in the time of Caesar we meet with regions which consisted
exclusively of burgess-communities and yet by no means ceased to
be provinces. In these cases the fundamental idea of the Roman
-provinicia- comes out very clearly; it was primarily nothing but
a "command," and all the administrative and judicial functions of
the commandant were originally collateral duties and corollaries
of his military position.

On the other hand, if we look to the formal sovereignty of the free
communities, it must be granted that the position of Greece was not
altered in point of constitutional law by the events of 608. It was
a difference de facto rather than de jure, when instead of the Achaean
league the individual communities of Achaia now appeared by the side
of Rome as tributary protected states, and when, after the erection
of Macedonia as a separate Roman province, the latter relieved the
authorities of the capital of the superintendence over the Greek
client-states. Greece therefore may or may not be regarded as a part
of the "command" of Macedonia, according as the practical or the
formal point of view preponderates; but the preponderance is justly
conceded to the former.

26.  III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War

27.  A remarkable proof of this is found in the names employed to
designate the fine bronze and copper wares of Greece, which in the time
of Cicero were called indiscriminately "Corinthian" or "Delian" copper.
Their designation in Italy was naturally derived not from the places
of manufacture but from those of export (Plin. H. N. xxxiv. 2, 9);
although, of course, we do not mean to deny that similar vases were
manufactured in Corinth and Delos themselves.

28.  III. X. Course Pursued with Pergamus

29.  III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

30.  III. X. Course Pursued with Pergamus

31.  Several letters recently brought to light (Munchener
Sitzungsberichte, 1860, p. 180 et seq.) from the kings Eumenes II,
and Attalus II to the priest of Pessinus, who was uniformly called
Attis (comp. Polyb. xxii. 20), very clearly illustrate these
relations.  The earliest of these and the only one with a date,
written in the 34th year of the reign of Eumenes on the 7th day
before the end of Gorpiaeus, and therefore in 590-1 u. c. offers to
the priest military aid in order to wrest from the Pesongi (not
otherwise known) temple-land occupied by them.  The following,
likewise from Eumenes, exhibits the king as a party in the feud
between the priest of Pessinus and his brother Aiorix.  Beyond doubt
both acts of Eumenes were included among those which were reported at
Rome in 590 et seq. as attempts on his part to interfere further in
Gallic affairs, and to support his partisans in that quarter (Polyb.
xxxi. 6, 9; xxxii. 3, 5).  On the other hand it is plain from one of
the letters of his successor Attalus that the times had changed and
his wishes had lowered their tone.  The priest Attis appears to have
at a conference at Apamea obtained once more from Attalus the promise
of armed assistance; but afterwards the king writes to him that in a
state council held for the purpose, at which Athenaeus (certainly the
known brother of the king), Sosander, Menogenes, Chlorus, and other
relatives (--anagkaioi--) had been present, after long hesitation the
majority had at length acceded to the opinion of Chlorus that nothing
should be done without previously consulting the Romans; for, even if
a success were obtained, they would expose themselves to its being lost
again, and to the evil suspicion "which they had cherished also
against his brother" (Eumenes II.).

32.  In the same testament the king gave to his city Pergamus
"freedom," that is the --demokratia--, urban self-government.
According to the tenor of a remarkable document that has recently
been found there (Staatsrecht, iii(3). p. 726) after the testament
was opened, but before its confirmation by the Romans, the Demos thus
constituted resolved to confer urban burgess-rights on the classes
of the population  hitherto excluded  from  them, especially on the
-paroeci- entered in the census and on the soldiers dwelling in town
and country, including the Macedonians, in order thus to bring
about a good understanding among the whole population.  Evidently
the burgesses, in confronting the Romans with this comprehensive
reconciliation as an accomplished fact, desired, before the Roman
rule was properly introduced, to prepare themselves against it
and to take away from the foreign rulers the possibility of using
the differences of rights within the population for breaking up
its municipal freedom.

33.  These strange "Heliopolites" may, according to the probable
opinion which a friend has expressed to me, be accounted for by supposing
that the liberated slaves constituted themselves citizens of a town
Heliopolis--not otherwise mentioned or perhaps having an existence
merely in imagination for the moment--which derived its name from
the God of the Sun so highly honoured in Syria.

34.  III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

35.  III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

36.  III. IX. Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

37.  III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War

38.  III. IX. Armenia

39.  From him proceed the coins with the inscription "Shekel
Israel," and the date of the "holy Jerusalem," or the "deliverance
of Sion." The similar coins with the name of Simon, the prince
(Nessi) of Israel, belong not to him, but to Bar-Cochba the leader
of the insurgents in the time of Hadrian.

40.  III. III. Illyrian Piracy

41.  IV. I. New Organization of Spain

42.  III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War



Chapter II

1.  In 537 the law restricting re-election to the consulship was
suspended during the continuance of the war in Italy, that is, down to
551 (p. 14; Liv.  xxvii. 6).  But after the death of Marcellus in 546
re-elections to the consulship, if we do not include the abdicating
consuls of 592, only occurred in the years 547, 554, 560, 579, 585, 586,
591, 596, 599, 602; consequently not oftener in those fifty-six years
than, for instance, in the ten years 401-410.  Only one of these, and
that the very last, took place in violation of the ten years' interval
(i.  402); and beyond doubt the singular election of Marcus Marcellus
who was consul in 588 and 599 to a third consulship in 602, with the
special circumstances of which we are not acquainted, gave occasion to
the law prohibiting re-election to the consulship altogether (Liv.  Ep.
56); especially as this proposal must have been introduced before 605,
seeing that it was supported by Cato (p.  55, Jordan).

2.  III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries

3.  III. XI. Festivals

4.  IV. I. General Results

5.  III. XII. Results

6.  I. XIII. Landed Proprietors

7.  It was asserted even then, that the human race in that quarter
was pre-eminently fitted for slavery by its especial power of
endurance.  Plautus (Trin.  542) commends the Syrians: -genus quod
patientissitmum est hominum-.

8.  III. XII. Rural Slaves ff., III. XII. Culture of Oil and Wine,
and Rearing of Cattle

9.  III. XII. Pastoral Husbandry

10.  III. I. The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa

11.  The hybrid Greek name for the workhouse (-ergastulum-, from
--ergaszomai--, after the analogy of -stabulum-, -operculum-) is
an indication that this mode of management came to the Romans from
a region where the Greek language was used, but at a period when
a thorough Hellenic culture was not yet attained.

12.  III. VI. Guerilla War in Sicily

13.  III. XII. Falling Off in the Population

14.  IV. I. War against Aristonicus

15.  IV. I. Cilicia

16.  Even now there are not unfrequently found in front of
Castrogiovanni, at the point where the ascent is least abrupt, Roman
projectiles with the name of the consul of 621: L. Piso L. f. cos.

17.  II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws

18.  III. I. Capital and Its Power in Carthage

19.  II. III. Influence of the Extension of the Roman Dominion in
Elevating the Farmer-Class

20.  III. XI. Assignations of Land

21.  II. II. Public Land

22.  III. XII. Falling Off of the Population

23.  IV. II. Permanent Criminal Commissions

24.  III. XI. Position of the Governors

25.  III. IX. Death of Scipio

26.  III. XI. Reform of the Centuries

27.  III. VII. Gracchus

28.  IV. I. War against Aristonicus

29.  IV. I. Mancinus

30.  II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws

31.  II. III. Its Influence in Legislation

32.  IV. I. War against Aristonicus

33.  II. III. Attempts at Counter-Revolution

34.  This fact, hitherto only partially known from Cicero (De L. Agr.
ii. 31. 82; comp.  Liv. xlii. 2, 19), is now more fully established
by the fragments of Licinianus, p. 4.  The two accounts are to be
combined to this effect, that Lentulus ejected the possessors in
consideration of a compensatory sum fixed by him, but accomplished
nothing with real landowners, as he was not entitled to dispossess
them and they would not consent to sell.

35.  II. II. Agrarian Law of Spurius Cassius

36.  III. XI. Rise of A City Rabble

37.  III. IX. Nullity of the Comitia



Chapter III

1.  IV. I. War against Aristonicus

2.  IV. II. Ideas of Reform

3.  III. VI. The African Expedition of Scipio

4.  To this occasion belongs his oration -contra legem iudiciariam-
Ti. Gracchi--which we are to understand as referring not, as has been
asserted, to a law as to the -indicia publica-, but to the supplementary
law annexed to his agrarian rogation: -ut triumviri iudicarent-, qua
publicus ager, qua privatus esset (Liv. Ep. lviii.; see IV. II.
Tribunate of Gracchus above).

5.  IV. II. Vote by Ballot

6.  The restriction, that the continuance should only be allowable if
there was a want of other qualified candidates (Appian, B. C. i. 21),
was not difficult of evasion. The law itself seems not to have belonged
to the older regulations (Staatsrecht, i. 473), but to have been
introduced for the first time by the Gracchans.

7.  Such are the words spoken on the announcement of his projects of
law:--"If I were to speak to you and ask of you--seeing that I am of
noble descent and have lost my brother on your account, and that there
is now no survivor of the descendants of Publius Africanus and Tiberius
Gracchus excepting only myself and a boy--to allow me to take rest for
the present, in order that our stock may not be extirpated and that
an offset of this family may still survive; you would perhaps readily
grant me such a request."

8.  IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus

9.  III. XII. Results. Competition of Transmarine Corn

10.  III. XII. Prices of Italian Corn

11.  III. XI. Reform of the Centuries

12.  IV. III. The Commission for Distributing the Domains

13.  III. VII. The Romans Maintain A Standing Army in Spain

14.  Thus the statement of Appian (Hisp. 78) that six years' service
entitled a man to demand his discharge, may perhaps be reconciled with
the better known statement of Polybius (vi. 19), respecting which
Marquardt (Handbuch, vi. 381) has formed a correct judgment. The time,
at which the two alterations were introduced, cannot be determined
further, than that the first was probably in existence as early as 603
(Nitzsch, Gracchen, p. 231), and the second certainly as early as the
time of Polybius. That Gracchus reduced the number of the legal years of
service, seems to follow from Asconius in Cornel, p. 68; comp. Plutarch,
Ti. Gracch. 16; Dio, Fr. 83, 7, Bekk.

15.  II. I. Right of Appeal; II. VIII. Changes in Procedure

16.  III. XII. Moneyed Aristocracy

17.  IV. II. Exclusion of the Senators from the Equestrian Centuries

18.  III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility

19.  III. XI. Patricio-Plebeian Nobility, III. XI. Family Government

20.  IV. I. Western Asia

21.  That he, and not Tiberius, was the author of this law, now appears
from Fronto in the letters to Verus, init. Comp. Gracchus ap. Gell. xi.
10; Cic. de. Rep. iii. 29, and Verr. iii. 6, 12; Vellei. ii. 6.

22.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

23.  We still possess a great portion of the new judicial ordinance--
primarily occasioned by this alteration in the personnel of the judges--
for the standing commission regarding extortion; it is known under the
name of the Servilian, or rather Acilian, law -de repetundis-.

24.  This and the law -ne quis iudicio circumveniatur- may
have been identical.

25.  A considerable fragment of a speech of Gracchus, still extant,
relates to this trafficking about the possession of Phrygia, which after
the annexation of the kingdom of Attalus was offered for sale by Manius
Aquillius to the kings of Bithynia and of Pontus, and was bought by the
latter as the highest bidder.(p. 280) In this speech he observes that
no senator troubled himself about public affairs for nothing, and adds
that with reference to the law under discussion (as to the bestowal
of Phrygia on king Mithradates) the senate was divisible into three
classes, viz. Those who were in favour of it, those who were against it,
and those who were silent: that the first were bribed by kingMithra dates,
the second by king Nicomedes, while the third were the most cunning,
for they accepted money from the envoys of both kings and made each
party believe that they were silent in its interest.

26.  IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus

27.  IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus

28.  II. II. Legislation

29.  II. III. Political Abolition of the Patriciate



Chapter IV

1.  IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus

2.  IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus

3.  It is in great part still extant and known under the erroneous
name, which has now been handed down for three hundred years,
of the Thorian agrarian law.

4.  II. VII. Attempts at Peace

5.  II. VII. Attempts at Peace

6.  This is apparent, as is well known, from the further course of
events. In opposition to this view stress has been laid on the fact
that in Valerius Maximus, vi. 9, 13, Quintus Caepio is called patron
of the senate; but on the one hand this does not prove enough, and on
the other hand what is there narrated does not at all suit the consul
of 648, so that there must be an error either in the name or in
the facts reported.

7.  It is assumed in many quarters that the establishment of the
province of Cilicia only took place after the Cilician expedition of
Publius Servilius in 676 et seq., but erroneously; for as early as 662
we find Sulla (Appian, Mithr. 57; B. C. i. 77; Victor, 75), and in
674, 675, Gnaeus Dolabella (Cic. Verr. i. 1, 16, 44) as governors of
Cilicia--which leaves no alternative but to place the establishment of
the province in 652. This view is further supported by the fact that
at this time the expeditions of the Romans against the corsairs--e. g.
the Balearic, Ligurian, and Dalmatian expeditions--appear to have been
regularly directed to the occupation of the points of the coast whence
piracy issued; and this was natural, for, as the Romans had no standing
fleet, the only means of effectually checking piracy was the occupation
of the coasts. It is to be remembered, moreover, that the idea of a
-provincia- did not absolutely involve possession of the country, but
in itself implied no more than an independent military command; it is
very possible, that the Romans in the first instance occupied nothing in
this rugged country save stations for their vessels and troops.

The plain of eastern Cilicia remained down to the war against Tigranes
attached to the Syrian empire (Appian, Syr. 48); the districts to
the north of the Taurus formerly reckoned as belonging to Cilicia--
Cappadocian Cilicia, as it was called, and Cataonia--belonged to
Cappadocia, the former from the time of the breaking up of the kingdom
of Attalus (Justin, xxxvii. 1; see above, IV. I. War against Aristonicus),
the latter probably even from the time of the peace with Antiochus.

8.  IV. II. Insurrections of the Slaves

9.  III. VII. Numidians

10.  IV. I The Siege

11.  The following table exhibits the genealogy of the Numidian princes:--

Massinissa
516-605
(238-149)
------------------------------------------------------
Micipsa                        Gulussa      Mastanabal
d. 636                         d. bef. 636  d. bef. 636
(118)                          (118)        (118)
----------------------------   -------     ---------------------
Adherbal Hiempsal I  Micipsa   Massiva     Gauda        Jugurtha
d. 642   d. c. 637   (Diod.    d. 643      d.bef. 666   d. 650
(112)    (117)       p. 607)   (111)       (88)         (104)
                                           -----------  -------
                                           Hiempsal II  Oxyntas
                                           ------
                                           Juba I
                                           -------
                                           Juba II

12.  In the exciting and clever description of this war by Sallust
the chronology has been unduly neglected. The war terminated in the
summer of 649 (c. 114); if therefore Marius began his management
of the war as consul in 647, he held the command there in three
campaigns. But the narrative describes only two, and rightly so.
For, just as Metellus to all appearance went to Africa as early as 645,
but, since he arrived late (c. 37, 44), and the reorganization of the
army cost time (c. 44), only began his operations in the following
year, in like manner Marius, who was likewise detained for a
considerable time in Italy by his military preparations (c. 84),
entered on the chief command either as consul in 647 late in the
season and after the close of the campaign, or only as proconsul in
648; so that the two campaigns of Metellus thus fall in 646, 647, and
those of Marius in 648, 649. It is in keeping with this that Metellus
did not triumph till the year 648 (Eph. epigr. iv. p. 277). With this
view the circumstance also very well accords, that the battle on the
Muthul and the siege of Zama must, from the relation in which they
stand to Marius' candidature for the consulship, be necessarily
placed in 646. In no case can the author be pronounced free from
inaccuracies; Marius, for instance, is even spoken of by him
as consul in 649.

The prolongation of the command of Metellus, which Sallust reports
(lxii. 10), can in accordance with the place at which it stands only
refer to the year 647; when in the summer of 646 on the footing of the
Sempronian law the provinces of the consuls to be elected for 647 were
to be fixed, the senate destined two other provinces and thus left
Numidia to Metellus. This resolve of the senate was overturned by
the plebiscitum mentioned at lxxii. 7. The following words which are
transmitted to us defectively in the best manuscripts of both families,
-sed paulo... decreverat; ea res frustra fuit,- must either have named
the provinces destined for the consuls by the senate, possibly -sed
paulo [ante ut consulibus Italia et Gallia provinciae essent senatus]
decreverat- or have run according to the way of filling up the
passage in the ordinary manuscripts; -sed paulo [ante senatus
Metello Numidiam] decreverat-.

13.  Now Beja on the Mejerdah.

14.  The locality has not been discovered. The earlier supposition
that Thelepte (near Feriana, to the northward of Capsa) was meant, is
arbitrary; and the identification with a locality still at the present
day named Thala to the east of Capsa is not duly made out.

15.  Sallust's political genre-painting of the Jugurthine war--the
only picture that has preserved its colours fresh in the otherwise
utterly faded and blanched tradition of this epoch--closes with the
fall of Jugurtha, faithful to its style of composition, poetical, not
historical; nor does there elsewhere exist any connected account of
the treatment of the Numidian kingdom. That Gauda became Jugurtha's
successor is indicated by Sallust, c. 65 and Dio. Fr. 79, 4, Bekk.,
and confirmed by an inscription of Carthagena (Orell. 630), which
calls him king and father of Hiempsal II. That on the east the
frontier relations subsisting between Numidia on the one hand and
Roman Africa and Cyrene on the other remained unchanged, is shown by
Caesar (B. C. ii. 38; B. Afr. 43, 77) and by the later provincial
constitution. On the other hand the nature of the case implied, and
Sallust (c. 97, 102, 111) indicates, that the kingdom of Bocchus was
considerably enlarged; with which is undoubtedly connected the fact,
that Mauretania, originally restricted to the region of Tingis
(Morocco), afterwards extended to the region of Caesarea (province
of Algiers) and to that of Sitifis (western half of the province of
Constantine). As Mauretania was twice enlarged by the Romans, first
in 649 after the surrender of Jugurtha, and then in 708 after the
breaking up of the Numidian kingdom, it is probable that the
region of Caesarea was added on the first, and that of Sitifis
on the second augmentation.

16.  III. VIII. Interference of the Community with the Finances



Chapter V

1.  If Cicero has not allowed himself to fall into an anachronism
when he makes Africanus say this as early as 625 (de Rep. iii. 9),
the view indicated in the text remains perhaps the only possible one.
This enactment did not refer to Northern Italy and Liguria, as the
cultivation of the vine by the Genuates in 637 (III. XII. Culture Of
Oil and Wine, and Rearing of Cattle, note) proves; and as little to
the immediate territory of Massilia (Just. xliii 4; Posidon. Fr. 25,
Mull.; Strabo, iv. 179).  The large export of wine and oil from
Italy to the region of the Rhone in the seventh century of the
city is well known.

2.  In Auvergne.  Their capital, Nemetum or Nemossus, lay not
far from Clermont.

3.  The battle at Vindalium is placed by the epitomator of Livy and by
Orosius before that on the Isara; but the reverse order is supported by
Floras and Strabo (iv. 191), and is confirmed partly by the circumstance
that Maximus, according to the epitome of Livy and Pliny, H. N. vii. 50,
conquered the Gauls when consul, partly and especially by the Capitoline
Fasti, according to which Maximus not only triumphed before Ahenobarbus,
but the former triumphed over the Allobroges and the king of the Arverni,
the latter only over the Arverni.  It is clear that the battle with
the Allobroges and Arverni must have taken place earlier than that
with the Arverni alone.

4.  Aquae was not a colony, as Livy says (Ep. 61), but a -castellum-
(Strabo, iv. 180; Velleius, i. 15; Madvig, Opusc. i. 303).  The same
holds true of Italica (p. 214), and of many other places--Vindonissa,
for instance, never was in law anything else than a Celtic village,
but was withal a fortified Roman camp, and a township of very
considerable importance.

5.  III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigrations of
the Transalpine Gauls

6.  III. III. Expedition against Scodra

7.  III. III. Impression in Greece and Macedonia

8.  III. X. Humiliation of the Greeks in General

9.  IV. I. Province of Macedonia. the Pirustae in the valleys of
the Drin belonged to the province of Macedonia, but made forays
into the neighbouring Illyricum (Caesar, B. G. v. 1).

10.  II. IV. the Celts Assail the Etruscans in Northern Italy

11.  "The Helvetii dwelt," Tacitus says (Germ. 28), "between the
Hercynian Forest (i. e. here probably the Rauhe Alp), the Rhine, and
the Main; the Boii farther on."  Posidonius also (ap. Strab. vii. 293)
states that the Boii, at the time when they repulsed the Cimbri,
inhabited the Hercynian Forest, i. e. the mountains from the Rauhe
Alp to the Bohmerwald The circumstance that Caesar transplants them
"beyond the Rhine" (B. G. i. 5) is by no means inconsistent with this,
for, as he there speaks from the Helvetian point of view, he may very
well mean the country to the north-east of the lake of Constance; which
quite accords with the fact, that Strabo (vii. 292) describes the former
Boian country as bordering on the lake of Constance, except that he is
not quite accurate in naming along with them the Vindelici as dwelling
by the lake of Constance, for the latter only established themselves
there after the Boii had evacuated these districts.  From these seats
of theirs the Boii were dispossessed by the Marcomani and other
Germanic tribes even before the time of Posidonius, consequently
before 650; detached portions of them in Caesar's time roamed about
in Carinthia (B. G. i. 5), and came thence to the Helvetii and into
western Gaul; another swarm found new settlements on the Plattensee,
where it was annihilated by the Getae; but the district--the "Boian
desert," as it was called--preserved the name of this the most harassed
of all the Celtic peoples (III. VII. Colonizing of The Region South
of The Po, note).

12.  They are called in the Triumphal Fasti -Galli Karni-; and in Victor
-Ligures Taurisci- (for such should be the reading instead of the
received -Ligures et Caurisci-).

13.  The quaestor of Macedonia M. Annius P. f., to whom the town of
Lete (Aivati four leagues to the north-west of Thessalonica) erected
in the year 29 of the province and 636 of the city this memorial stone
(Dittenberger, Syll. 247), is not otherwise known; the praetor Sex.
Pompeius whose fall is mentioned in it can be no other than the
grandfather of the Pompeius with whom Caesar fought and the brother-in-
law of the poet Lucilius.  The enemy are designated as --Galaton
ethnos--.  It is brought into prominence that Annius in order to spare
the provincials omitted to call out their contingents and repelled the
barbarians with the Roman troops alone.  To all appearance Macedonia
even at that time required a de facto standing Roman garrison.

14.  If Quintus Fabius Maximus Eburnus consul in 638 went to Macedonia
(C. I. Gr. 1534; Zumpt, Comm. Epigr. ii. 167), he too must have
suffered a misfortune there, since Cicero, in Pison. 16, 38, says:
-ex (Macedonia) aliquot praetorio imperio, consulari quidem nemo rediit,
qui incolumis fuerit, quin triumpharit-; for the triumphal list, which
is complete for this epoch, knows only the three Macedonian triumphs
of Metellus in 643, of Drusus in 644, and of Minucius in 648.

15.  As, according to Frontinus (ii. 43), Velleius and Eutropius, the
tribe conquered by Minucius was the Scordisci, it can only be through
an error on the part of Florus that he mentions the Hebrus (the Maritza)
instead of the Margus (Morava).

16.  This annihilation of the Scordisci, while the Maedi and Dardani
were admitted to treaty, is reported by Appian (Illyr. 5), and in fact
thence forth the Scordisci disappear from this region.  If the final
subjugation took place in the 32nd year --apo teis proteis es Keltous
peiras--, it would seem that this must be understood of a thirty-two
years' war between the Romans and the Scordisci, the commencement of
which presumably falls not long after the constituting of the province
of Macedonia (608) and of which the incidents in arms above recorded,
636-647, are a part.  It is obvious from Appian's narrative that the
conquest ensued shortly before the outbreak of the Italian civil wars,
and so probably at the latest in 663.  It falls between 650 and 656,
if a triumph followed it, for the triumphal list before and after is
complete; it is possible however that for some reason there was no
triumph.  The victor is not further known; perhaps it was no other than
the consul of the year 671; since the latter may well have been late
in attaining the consulate in consequence of the Cinnan-Marian troubles.

17.  The account that large tracts on the coasts of the North Sea
had been torn away by inundations, and that this had occasioned the
migration of the Cimbri in a body (Strabo, vii. 293), does not indeed
appear to us fabulous, as it seemed to those who recorded it; but
whether it was based on tradition or on conjecture, cannot be decided.

18.  III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigrations of
the Transalpine Gauls

19.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

20.  The usual hypothesis, that the Tougeni and Tigorini had advanced
at the same time with the Cimbri into Gaul, cannot be supported by
Strabo (vii. 293), and is little in harmony with the separate part acted
by the Helvetii.  Our traditional accounts of this war are, besides, so
fragmentary that, just as in the case of the Samnite wars, a connected
historical narration can only lay claim to approximate accuracy.

21.  To this, beyond doubt, the fragment of Diodorus (Vat. p. 122)
relates.

22.  IV. IV. The Proletariate and Equestrian Order under the Restoration

23.  The deposition from office of the proconsul Caepio, with which was
combined the confiscation of his property (Liv. Ep. 67), was probably
pronounced by the assembly of the people immediately after the battle
of Arausio (6th October 649).  That some time elapsed between the
deposition and his proper downfall, is clearly shown by the proposal
made in 650, and aimed at Caepio, that deposition from office should
involve the forfeiture of a seat in the senate (Asconius in Cornel,
p. 78).  The fragments of Licinianus (p. 10; -Cn. Manilius ob eandem
causam quam et Caepio L. Saturnini rogatione e civitate est cito [?]
eiectus-; which clears up the allusion in Cic. de Or. ii. 28, 125) now
inform us that a law proposed by Lucius Appuleius Saturninus brought
about this catastrophe.  This is evidently no other than the Appuleian
law as to the -minuta maiestas- of the Roman state (Cic. de Or. ii.
25, 107; 49, 201), or, as its tenor was already formerly explained
(ii. p. 143 of the first edition [of the German]), the proposal of
Saturninus for the appointment of an extraordinary commission to
investigate the treasons that had taken place during the Cimbrian
troubles.  The commission of inquiry as to the gold of Tolosa
(Cic. de N. D. iii. 30, 74) arose in quite a similar way out of
the Appuleian law, as the special courts of inquiry--further mentioned
in that passage--as to a scandalous bribery of judges out of the Mucian
law of 613, as to the occurrences with the Vestals out of the Peducaean
law of 641, and as to the Jugurthine war out of the Mamilian law of 644.
A comparison of these cases also shows that in such special
commissions--different in this respect from the ordinary ones--even
punishments affecting life and limb might be and were inflicted.  If
elsewhere the tribune of the people, Gaius Norbanus, is named as the
person who set agoing the proceedings against Caepio and was afterwards
brought to trial for doing so (Cic. de Or. ii. 40, 167; 48, 199; 49, 200;
Or. Part. 30, 105, et al.), this is not inconsistent with the view
given above; for the proposal proceeded as usual from several tribunes
of the people (ad Herenn. i. 14, 24; Cic. de Or. ii. 47, 197), and,
as Saturninus was already dead when the aristocratic party was in a
position to think of retaliation, they fastened on his colleague.
As to the period of this second and final condemnation of Caepio,
the usual very inconsiderate hypothesis, which places it in 659,
ten years after the battle of Arausio, has been already rejected.
It rests simply on the fact that Crassus when consul, consequently
in 659, spoke in favour of Caepio (Cic. Brut. 44, 162); which, however,
he manifestly did not as his advocate, but on the occasion when
Norbanus was brought to account by Publius Sulpicius Rufus for his
conduct toward Caepio in 659.  Formerly the year 650 was assumed for
this second accusation; now that we know that it originated from a
proposal of Saturninus, we can only hesitate between 651, when he was
tribune of the people for the first time (Plutarch, Mar. 14; Oros,
v. 17; App. i. 28; Diodor. p. 608, 631), and 654, when he held that
office a second time.  There are not materials for deciding the point
with entire certainty, but the great preponderance of probability is
in favour of the former year; partly because it was nearer to the
disastrous events in Gaul, partly because in the tolerably full
accounts of the second tribunate of Saturninus there is no mention
of Quintus Caepio the father and the acts of violence directed against
him.  The circumstance, that the sums paid back to the treasury in
consequence of the verdicts as to the embezzlement of the Tolosan
booty were claimed by Saturninus in his second tribunate for his
schemes of colonization (De Viris Ill. 73, 5, and thereon Orelli,
Ind. Legg. p. 137), is not in itself decisive, and may, moreover,
have been easily transferred by mistake from the first African to
the second general agrarian law of Saturninus.

The fact that afterwards, when Norbanus was impeached, his impeachment
proceeded on the very ground of the law which he had taken part in
suggesting, was an ironical incident common in the Roman political
procedure of this period (Cic. Brut. 89, 305) and should not mislead
us into the belief that the Appuleian law was, like the later
Cornelian, a general law of high treason.

24.  The view here presented rests in the main on the comparatively
trustworthy account in the Epitome of Livy (where we should read
-reversi in Gallium in Vellocassis se Teutonis coniunxerunt) and in
Obsequens; to the disregard of authorities of lesser weight, which
make the Teutones appear by the side of the Cimbri at an earlier date,
some of them, such as Appian, Celt. 13, even as early as the battle of
Noreia.  With these we connect the notices in Caesar (B. G. i. 33; ii.
4, 29); as the invasion of the Roman province and of Italy by the Cimbri
can only mean the expedition of 652.

25.  It is injudicious to deviate from the traditional account
and to transfer the field of battle to Verona: in so doing the fact
is overlooked that a whole winter and various movements of troops
intervened between the conflicts on the Adige and the decisive
engagement, and that Catulus, according to express statement (Plut. Mar.
24), had retreated as far as the right bank of the Po.  The statements
that the Cimbri were defeated on the Po (Hier. Chron.), and that they
were defeated where Stilicho afterwards defeated the Getae, i. e. at
Cherasco on the Tanaro, although both inaccurate, point at least to
Vercellae much rather than to Verona.



Chapter VI

1.  IV. IV. The Domain Question under the Restoration

2.  I. VI. The Servian Constitution, II. III. Its Composition

3.  III. XI. Reforms in the Military Service

4. III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries

5.  IV. IV. Treaty between Rome and Numidia

6.  IV. V. Warfare of Prosecutions

7.  It is not possible to distinguish exactly what belongs to the first
and what to the second tribunate of Saturninus; the more especially,
as in both he evidently followed out the same Gracchan tendencies.
The African agrarian law is definitely placed by the treatise De Viris Ill.
73, 1 in 651; and this date accords with the termination, which had
taken place just shortly before, of the Jugurthine war.  The second
agrarian law belongs beyond doubt to 654.  The treason-law and the corn-
law have been only conjecturally placed, the former in 651 (p. 442
note), the latter in 654.

8.  All indications point to this conclusion.  The elder Quintus Caepio
was consul in 648, the younger quaestor in 651 or 654, the former
consequently was born about or before 605, the latter about 624 or 627.
The fact that the former died without leaving sons (Strabo, iv. 188) is
not inconsistent with this view, for the younger Caepio fell in 664,
and the elder, who ended his life in exile at Smyrna, may very well
have survived him.

9.  IV. IV. Treaty between Rome and Numidia

10.  IV. V. Warfare of Prosecutions

11.  IV. IV. Rival Demagogism of the Senate.  The Livian Laws

12.  IV. V. And Reach the Danube

13.  IV. IV. Administration under the Restoration

14.  IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in
the Administration of the Provinces



Chapter VII

1.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

2.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium, II. V. As to the Officering
of the Army

3.  II. VII. Furnishing of Contingents; III. XI. Latins

4.  III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

5.  III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

6.  IV. III. Democratic Agitation under Carbo and Flaccus,
IV. III. Overthrow of Gracchus

7.  These figures are taken from the numbers of the census of 639 and
684; there were in the former year 394, 336 burgesses capable of bearing
arms, in the latter 910,000 (according to Phlegon Fr. 12 Mull., which
statement Clinton and his copyists erroneously refer to the census of
668; according to Liv. Ep. 98 the number was--by the correct reading--
900,000 persons).  The only figures known between these two--those of
the census of 668, which according to Hieronymus gave 463,000 persons--
probably turned out so low only because the census took place amidst
the crisis of the revolution.  As an increase of the population of Italy
is not conceivable in the period from 639 to 684, and even the Sullan
assignations of land can at the most have but filled the gaps which the
war had made, the surplus of fully 500,000 men capable of bearing arms
may be referred with certainty to the reception of the allies which had
taken place in the interval.  But it is possible, and even probable,
that in these fateful years the total amount of the Italian population
may have retrograded rather than advanced: if we reckon the total
deficit at 100,000 men capable of bearing arms, which seems not
excessive, there were at the time of the Social War in Italy three non-
burgesses for two burgesses.

8.  The form of oath is preserved (in Diodor. Vat. p. 116); it runs
thus: "I swear by the Capitoline Jupiter and by the Roman Vesta and by
the hereditary Mars and by the generative Sun and by the nourishing
Earth and by the divine founders and enlargers (the Penates) of the City
of Rome, that he shall be my friend and he shall be my foe who is friend
or foe to Drusus; also that I will spare neither mine own life nor the
life of my children or of my parents, except in so far as it is for the
good of Drusus and those who share this oath.  But if I should become a
burgess by the law of Drusus, I will esteem Rome as my home and Drusus
as the greatest of my benefactors.  I shall tender this oath to as many
of my fellow-citizens as I can; and if I swear truly, may it fare with
me well; if I swear falsely, may it fare with me ill." But we shall do
well to employ this account with caution; it is derived either from
the speeches delivered against Drusus by Philippus (which seems to
be indicated by the absurd title "oath of Philippus" prefixed by the
extractor of the formula) or at best from the documents of criminal
procedure subsequently drawn up respecting this conspiracy in Rome; and
even on the latter hypothesis it remains questionable, whether this form
of oath was elicited from the accused or imputed to them in the inquiry.

9.  II. VII. Dissolution of National Leagues

10.  IV. VI. Discussions on the Livian Laws

11.  IV. IV. Dissatisfaction in the Capital, IV. V. Warfare
of Prosecutions

12.  Even from our scanty information, the best part of which is
given by Diodorus, p. 538 and Strabo, v. 4, 2, this is very distinctly
apparent; for example, the latter expressly says that the burgess-body
chose the magistrates.  That the senate of Italia was meant to be formed
in another manner and to have different powers from that of Rome,
has been asserted, but has not been proved.  Of course in its first
composition care would be taken to have a representation in some degree
uniform of the insurgent cities; but that the senators were to be
regularly deputed by the communities, is nowhere stated.  As little
does the commission given to the senate to draw up a constitution exclude
its promulgation by the magistrates and ratification by the assembly
of the people.

13.  The bullets found at Asculum show that the Gauls were very
numerousalso in the army of Strabo.

14.  We still have a decree of the Roman senate of 22 May 676, which
grants honours and advantages on their discharge to three Greek ship-
captains of Carystus, Clazomenae, and Miletus for faithful services
renderedsince the commencement of the Italian war (664).  Of the same
nature is the account of Memnon, that two triremes were summoned from
Heraclea on the Black Sea for the Italian war, and that they returned
in the eleventh year with rich honorary gifts.

15.  That this statement of Appian is not exaggerated, is shown
by the bullets found at Asculum which name among others the
fifteenth legion.

16.  The Julian law must have been passed in the last months of 664,
for during the good season of the year Caesar was in the field;
the Plautian was probably passed, as was ordinarily the rule with
tribunician proposals, immediately after the tribunes entered on office,
consequently in Dec. 664 or Jan. 665.

17.  Leaden bullets with the name of the legion which threw them, and
sometimes with curses against the "runaway slaves"--and accordingly
Roman--or with the inscription "hit the Picentes" or "hit Pompeius"--
the former Roman, the latter Italian--are even now sometimes found,
belonging to that period, in the region of Ascoli.

18.  The rare -denarii- with -Safinim- and -G. Mutil- in Oscan
characters must belong to this period; for, as long as the designation
-Italia- was retained by the insurgents, no single canton could, as a
sovereign power, coin money with its own name.

19.  I. VII. Servian Wall

20.  Licinianus (p. 15) under the year 667 says: -dediticiis omnibus
[ci]vita[s] data; qui polliciti mult[a] milia militum vix XV... cohortes
miserunt-; a statement in which Livy's account (Epit. 80): -Italicis
populis a senatu civitas data est- reappears in a somewhat more precise
shape.  The -dediticii- were according to Roman state-law those
-peregrini liberi- (Gaius i. 13-15, 25, Ulp. xx. 14, xxii. 2) who
had become subject to the Romans and had not been admitted to alliance.
They not merely retain life, liberty, and property, but may be formed
into communities with a constitution of their own. --Apolides--,
-nullius certae civitatis cives- (Ulp. xx. 14; comp. Dig. xlviii. 19, 17,
i), were only the freedmen placed by legal fiction on the same footing
with the -dediticii qui dediticiorum numero sunt-, only by erroneous
usage and rarely by the better authors called directly -dediticii-; (Gai.
i. 12, Ulp. i. 14, Paul. iv. 12, 6) as well as the kindred -liberti
Latini Iuniani-.  But the -dediticii-nevertheless were destitute of
rights as respected the Roman state, in so far as by Roman state-law
every -deditio- was necessarily unconditional (Polyb, xxi. 1; comp. xx.
9, 10, xxxvi. 2) and all the privileges expressly or tacitly conceded to
them were conceded only -precario- and therefore revocable at pleasure
(Appian, Hisp. 44); so that the Roman state, what ever it might
immediately or afterwards decree regarding its -dediticii-, could never
perpetrate as respected them a violation of rights.  This destitution of
rights only ceased on the conclusion of a treaty of alliance (Liv.
xxxiv. 57).  Accordingly -deditio- and -foedus- appear in constitutional
law as contrasted terms excluding each other (Liv. iv. 30, xxviii. 34;
Cod. Theod. vii. 13, 16 and Gothofr. thereon), and of precisely the same
nature is the distinction current among the jurists between the -quasi-
dediticii- and the -quasi Latini-, for the Latins are just the
-foederati- in an eminent sense (Cic. pro Balb. 24, 54).

According to the older constitutional law there were, with the exception
of the not numerous communities that were declared to have forfeited
their treaties in consequence of the Hannibalic war (p. 24), no Italian
-dediticii-; in the Plautian law of 664-5 the description: -qui
foederatis civitatibus adscripti fuerunt- (Cic. pro Arch. 4, 7)
still included in substance all Italians.  But as the -dediticii-
who received the franchise supplementary in 667 cannot reasonably
be understood as embracing merely the Bruttii and Picentes, we may
assume that all the insurgents, so far as they had laid down their
arms and had not acquired the franchise under the Plautio-Papirian
law were treated as -dediticii-, or--which is the same thing--
that their treaties cancelled as a matter of course by the insurrection
(hence -qui foederati fuerunt- in the passage of Cicero cited) were
not legally renewed to them on their surrender.

21.  II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

22.  IV. VI. The Equestrian Party

23.  II. XI. Squandering of the Spoil

24.  It is not clear, what the -lex unciaria- of the consuls Sulla and
Rufus in the year 666 prescribed in this respect; but the simplest
hypothesis is that which regards it as a renewal of the law of 397 (i.
364), so that the highest allowable rate of interest was again 1 1/12th
of the capital for the year of ten months or 10 per cent for the year
of twelve months.

25.  III. XI. Reform of the Centuries

26.  II. III. Powers of the Senate

27.  IV. II. Death of Gracchus, IV. III. Attack on The Transmarine
Colonization.  Downfall of Gracchus, IV. VI. Saturninus Assailed

28.  II. III. The Tribunate of the People As an Instrument of Government



Chapter VIII

1.  IV. VIII. Occupation of Cilicia

2.  III. IX. Armenia

3.  IV. I. Western Asia

4.  The words quoted as Phrygian --Bagaios-- = Zeus and the old
royal name --Manis-- have been beyond doubt correctly referred to
the Zend -bagha- = God and the Germanic -Mannus-, Indian -Manus-
(Lassen, -Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenland-.  Gesellschaft,
vol. x. p. 329 f.).

5.  They are here grouped together, because, though they were in
part doubtless not executed till between the first and the second
war with Rome, they to some extent preceded even the first (Memn.
30; Justin, xxxviii. 7 ap. fin.; App. Mithr. 13; Eutrop. v. 5) and
a narrative in chronological order is in this case absolutely
impracticable.  Even the recently found decree of Chersonesus
(p. 17) has given no information in this respect According to it
Diophantus was twice sent against the Taurian Scythians; but that
the second insurrection of these is connected with the decree of
the Roman senate in favour of the Scythian princes (p. 21) is not
clear from the document, and is not even probable.

6.  It is very probable that the extraordinary drought, which
is the chief obstacle now to agriculture in the Crimea and in
these regions generally, has been greatly increased by the
disappearance of the forests of central and southern Russia,
which formerly to some extent protected the coast-provinces
from the parching northeast wind.

7.  The recently discovered decree of the town of Chersonesus in
honour of this Diophantus (Dittenberger, Syll. n. 252) thoroughly
confirms the traditional account.  It shows us the city in the
immediate vicinity--the port of Balaclava must at that time have
been in the power of the Tauri and Simferopol in that of the
Scythians--hard pressed partly by the Tauri on the south coast of
the Crimea, partly and especially by the Scythians who held in
their power the whole interior of the peninsula and the mainland
adjoining; it shows us further how the general of king Mithradates
relieves on all sides the Greek city, defeats the Tauri, and erects
in their territory a stronghold (probably Eupatorion), restores the
connection between the western and the eastern Hellenes of the
peninsula, overpowers in the west the dynasty of Scilurus, and in
the east Saumacus prince of the Scythians, pursues the Scythians
even to the mainland, and at length conquers them with the
Reuxinales--such is the name given to the later Roxolani here,
where they first appear--in the great pitched battle, which is
mentioned also in the traditional account.  There does not seem to
have been any formal subordination of the Greek city under the king;
Mithradates appears only as protecting ally, who fights the battles
against the Scythians that passed as invincible (--tous anupostatous
dokountas eimen--), on behalf of the Greek city, which probably
stood to him nearly in the relation of Massilia and Athens to Rome.
The Scythians on the other band in the Crimea become subjects
(--upakooi--) of Mithradates.

8.  The chronology of the following events can only be determined
approximately.  Mithradates Eupator seems to have practically
entered on the government somewhere about 640; Sulla's intervention
took place in 662 (Liv. Ep. 70) with which accords the calculation
assigning to the Mithradatic wars a period of thirty years (662-691)
(Plin. H. N. vii. 26, 97).  In the interval fell the quarrels as to
the Paphlagonian and Cappadocian succession, with which the bribery
attempted by Mithradates in Rome (Diod. 631) apparently in the first
tribunate of Saturninus in 651 (IV. VI. Saturninus) was probably
connected.  Marius, who left Rome in 665 and did not remain long
in the east, found Mithradates already in Cappadocia and negotiated
with him regarding his aggressions (Cic. ad Brut. i. 5; Plut. Mar. 31);
Ariarathes VI had consequently been by that time put to death.

9.  IV. III. Character of the Constitution of Gaius Gracchus

10.  A decree of the senate of the year 638 recently found in the
village Aresti to the south of Synnada (Viereck, -Sermo Graecus quo
senatus Romanus usus sit-, p. 51) confirms all the regulations made
by the king up to his death and thus shows that Great Phrygia after
the death of the father was not merely taken from the son, as Appian
also states, but was thereby brought directly under Roman allegiance.

11.  III. IX. Rupture between Antiochus and the Romans

12.  Retribution came upon the authors of the arrest and surrender
of Aquillius twenty-five years afterwards, when after Mithradates'
death his son Pharnaces handed them over to the Romans.

13.  IV. VII. Economic Crisis

14.  We must recollect that after the outbreak of the Social War
the legion had at least not more than half the number of men which it
had previously, as it was no longer accompanied by Italian contingents.

15.  The chronology of these events is, like all their details,
enveloped in an obscurity which investigation is able to dispel,
at most, only partially.  That the battle of Chaeronea took place,
if not on the same day as the storming of Athens (Pausan, i. 20),
at any rate soon afterwards, perhaps in March 668, is tolerably certain.
That the succeeding Thessalian and the second Boeotian campaign took
up not merely the remainder of 668 but also the whole of 669, is in
itself probable and is rendered still more so by the fact that Sulla's
enterprises in Asia are not sufficient to fill more than a single
campaign.  Licinianus also appears to indicate that Sulla returned to
Athens for the winter of 668-669 and there took in hand the work of
investigation and punishment; after which he relates the battle of
Orchomenus.  The crossing of Sulla to Asia has accordingly been
placed not in 669, but in 670.

16.  The resolution of the citizens of Ephesus to this effect has
recently been found (Waddington, Additions to Lebas, Inscr. iii.
136 a).  They had, according to their own declaration, fallen into
the power of Mithradates "the king of Cappadocia," being frightened
by the magnitude of his forces and the suddenness of his attack;
but, when opportunity offered, they declared war against him "for
the rule (--egemonia--) of the Romans and the common weal."

17.  The statement that Mithradates in the peace stipulated for
impunity to the towns which had embraced his side (Memnon, 35)
seems, looking to the character of the victor and of the
vanquished, far from credible, and it is not given by Appian
or by Licinianus.  They neglected to draw up the treaty of
peace in writing, and this neglect afterwards left room far
various misrepresentations.

18.  Armenian tradition also is acquainted with the first
Mithradatic war.  Ardasches king of Armenia--Moses of Chorene tells
us--was not content with the second rank which rightfully belonged
to him in the Persian (Parthian) empire, but compelled the Parthian
king Arschagan to cede to him the supreme power, whereupon he had a
palace built for himself in Persia and had coins struck there with
his own image.  He appointed Arschagan viceroy of Persia and his
son Dicran (Tigranes) viceroy of Armenia, and gave his daughter
Ardaschama in marriage to the great-prince of the Iberians
Mihrdates (Mithradates) who was descended from Mihrdates satrap
of Darius and governor appointed by Alexander over the conquered
Iberians, and ruled in the northern mountains as well as over the
Black Sea.  Ardasches then took Croesus the king of the Lydians
prisoner, subdued the mainland between the two great seas (Asia
Minor), and crossed the sea with innumerable vessels to subjugate
the west.  As there was anarchy at that time in Rome, he nowhere
encountered serious resistance, but his soldiers killed each other
and Ardasches fell by the hands of his own troops.  After
Ardasches' death his successor Dicran marched against the army of
the Greeks (i. e. the Romans) who now in turn invaded the Armenian
land; he set a limit to their advance, handed over to his brother-
in-law Mihrdates the administration of Madschag (Mazaca in
Cappadocia) and of the interior along with a considerable force,
and returned to Armenia.  Many years afterwards there were still
pointed out in the Armenian towns statues of Greek gods by well-
known masters, trophies of this campaign.

We have no difficulty in recognizing here various facts of
the first Mithradatic war, but the whole narrative is evidently
confused, furnished with heterogeneous additions, and in particular
transferred by patriotic falsification to Armenia.  In just the
same way the victory over Crassus is afterwards attributed to
the Armenians.  These Oriental accounts are to be received with all
the greater caution, that they are by no means mere popular legends;
on the contrary the accounts of Josephus, Eusebius, and other
authorities current among the Christians of the fifth century have been
amalgamated with the Armenian traditions, and the historical romances
of the Greeks and beyond doubt the patriotic fancies also of Moses
himself have been laid to a considerable extent under contribution.
Bad as is cur Occidental tradition in itself, to call in the aid of
Oriental tradition in this and similar cases--as has been attempted
for instance by the uncritical Saint-Martin--can only lead to
still further confusion.

19.  III. X. Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War



Chapter IX

1.  The whole of the representation that follows is based in
substance on the recently discovered account of Licinianus, which
communicates a number of facts previously unknown, and in
particular enables us to perceive the sequence and connection of
these events more clearly than was possible before.

2.  IV. VII. The Bestowal of the Franchise and Its Limitations.
That there was no confirmation by the comitia, is clear from
Cic. Phil. xii. 11, 27.  The senate seems to have made use of
the form of simply prolonging the term of the Plautio- Papirian
law (IV. VII. Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts),
a course which by use and wont (i. 409) was open to it and
practically amounted to conferring the franchise on all Italians.

3.  "-Ad flatus sidere-," as Livy (according to Obsequens, 56)
expresses it, means "seized by the pestilence" (Petron. Sat. 2;
Plin. H. N. ii. 41, 108; Liv. viii. 9, 12), not "struck by
lightning," as later writers have misunderstood it.

4.  IV. VII. Combats with the Marsians

5.  IV. VII. Sulpicius Rufus

6.  IV. VII. Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts

7.  IV. V. In Illyria

8.  IV. VI. Discussions on the Livian Laws

9.  IV. VII. Energetic Decrees

10.  Lucius Valerius Flaccus, whom the Fasti name as consul in 668,
was not the consul of 654, but a younger man of the same name,
perhaps son of the preceding.  For, first, the law which prohibited
re-election to the consulship remained legally in full force from
c. 603 (IV. II. Attempts at Reform) to 673, and it is not probable
that what was done in the case of Scipio Aemilianus and Marius was
done also for Flaccus.  Secondly, there is no mention anywhere, when
either Flaccus is named, of a double consulship, not even where it
was necessary as in Cic. pro Flacc. 32, 77.  Thirdly, the Lucius
Valerius Flaccus who was active in Rome in 669 as -princeps
senatus- and consequently of consular rank (Liv. 83), cannot have
been the consul of 668, for the latter had already at that time
departed for Asia and was probably already dead.  The consul of
654, censor in 657, is the person whom Cicero (ad Att. viii. 3, 6)
mentions among the consulars present in Rome in 667; he was in 669
beyond doubt the oldest of the old censors living and thus fitted
to be -princeps senatus-; he was also the -interrex- and the
-magister equitum- of 672.  On the other hand, the consul of 668,
who Perished at Nicomedia (p. 47), was the father of the Lucius
Flaccus defended by Cicero (pro Flacc. 25, 61, comp. 23, 55. 32, 77).

11.  IV. VI. The Equestrian Party

12.  IV. VII. Sulla Embarks for Asia

13.  We can only suppose this to be the Brutus referred to, since
Marcus Brutus the father of the so-called Liberator was tribune of
the people in 671, and therefore could not command in the field.

14.  IV. IV. Prosecutions of the Democrats

15.  It is stated, that Sulla occupied the defile by which alone
Praeneste was accessible (App. i. 90); and the further events
showed that the road to Rome was open to him as well as to the
relieving army.  Beyond doubt Sulla posted himself on the cross
road which turns off from the Via Latina, along which the Samnites
advanced, at Valmontone towards Palestrina; in this case Sulla
communicated with the capital by the Praenestine, and the enemy by
the Latin or Labican, road.

16.  Hardly any other name can well be concealed under the corrupt
reading in Liv. 89 -miam in Samnio-; comp. Strabo, v. 3, 10.

17.  IV. IX. Pompeius

18.  IV. VIII. New Difficulties



Chapter X

1.  III. XI. Abolition of the Dictatorship

2.  -Satius est uti regibus quam uti malis legibus- (Ad Herenn. ii.
36).

3.  II. I. The Dictator, II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws, II. III.
Limitation of the Dictatorship

4.  IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

5.  This total number is given by Valerius Maximus, ix. 2. 1.
According to Appian (B. C. i. 95), there were proscribed by Sulla
nearly 40 senators, which number subsequently received some
additions, and about 1600 equites; according to Florus (ii. 9,
whence Augustine de Civ. Dei, iii. 28), 2000 senators and equites.
According to Plutarch (Sull. 31), 520 names were placed on the list
in the first three days; according to Orosius (v. 21), 580 names
during the first days.  there is no material contradiction between
these various reports, for it was not senators and equites alone
that were put to death, and the list remained open for months.
When Appian, at another passage (i. 103), mentions as put to death
or banished by Sulla, 15 consulars, 90 senators, 2600 equites, he
there confounds, as the connection shows, the victims of the civil
war throughout with the victims of Sulla.  The 15 consulars were--
Quintus Catulus, consul in 652; Marcus Antonius, 655; Publius
Crassus, 657; Quintus Scaevola, 659; Lucius Domitius, 660; Lucius
Caesar, 664; Quintus Rufus, 666; Lucius Cinna, 667-670; Gnaeus
Octavius, 667; Lucius Merula, 667; Lucius Flaccus, 668; Gnaeus
Carbo, 669, 670, 672; Gaius Norbanus, 671; Lucius Scipio, 671;
Gaius Marius, 672; of whom fourteen were killed, and one, Lucius
Scipio, was banished.  When, on the other hand, the Livian account
in Eutropius (v. 9) and Orosius (v. 22) specifies as swept away
(-consumpti-) in the Social and Civil wars, 24 consulars, 7
praetorians, 60 aedilicians, 200 senators, the calculation includes
partly the men who fell in the Italian war, such as the consulars
Aulus Albinus, consul in 655; Titus Didius, 656; Publius Lupus,
664; Lucius Cato, 665; partly perhaps Quintus Metellus Numidicus
(IV. VI. Violent Proceedings in The Voting), Manius Aquillius,
Gaius Marius the father, Gnaeus Strabo, whom we may certainly regard
as also victims of that period, or other men whose fate is unknown to us.
Of the fourteen consulars killed, three--Rufus, Cinna, and Flaccus--
fell through military revolts, while eight Sullan and three Marian
consulars fell as victims to the opposite party.  On a comparison of
the figures given above, 50 senators and 1000 equites were regarded
as victims of Marius, 40 senators and 1600 equites as victims
of Sulla; this furnishes a standard--at least not altogether
arbitrary--for estimating the extent of the crimes on both sides.

6.  The Sextus Alfenus, frequently mentioned in Cicero's oration on
behalf of Publius Quinctius, was one of these.

7.  II. VII. Latins.  To this was added the peculiar aggravation that,
while in other instances the right of the Latins, like that of
the -peregrini-, implied membership in a definite Latin or foreign
community, in this case--just as with the later freedmen of Latin
and deditician rights (comp. IV. VII. The Bestowal of the Franchise and
Its Limitations. n.)--it was without any such right of urban membership.
The consequence was, that these Latins were destitute of the privileges
attaching to an urban constitution, and, strictly speaking, could not
even make a testament, since no one could execute a testament otherwise
than according to the law of his town; they could doubtless, however,
acquire under Roman testaments, and among the living could hold dealings
with each other and with Romans or Latins in the forms of Roman law.

8.  IV. IV. The Domain Question under the Restoration

9.  That Sulla's assessment of the five years' arrears and of the
war expenses levied on the communities of Asia (Appian, Mithr. 62
et al.) formed a standard for the future, is shown by the facts,
that the distribution of Asia into forty districts is referred to
Sulla (Cassiodor. Chron. 670) and that the Sullan apportionment
was assumed as a basis in the case of subsequent imposts (Cic. pro
Flacc. 14, 32), and by the further circumstance, that on occasion
of building a fleet in 672 the sums applied for that purpose were
deducted from the payment of tribute (-ex pecunia vectigali populo
Romano-: Cic. Verr. l. i. 35, 89).  Lastly, Cicero (ad Q. fr. i. i,
ii, 33) directly says, that the Greeks "were not in a position of
themselves to pay the tax imposed on them by Sulla without -publicani-."

10.  III. XI. Separation of the Orders in the Theatre

11.  IV. III. Insignia of the Equites.  Tradition has not indeed
informed us by whom that law was issued, which rendered it necessary
that the earlier privilege should be renewed by the Roscian theatre-law
of 687 (Becker-Friedlander, iv, 531); but under the circumstances
the author of that law was undoubtedly Sulla.

12.  IV. VI. Livius Drusus

13.  IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation

14.  III. XI. The Nobility in Possession of the Senate

15.  How many quaestors had been hitherto chosen annually, is not
known.  In 487 the number stood at eight--two urban, two military,
and four naval, quaestors (II. VII. Quaestors of the Fleet,
II. VII. Intermediate Fuctionaries); to which there fell to be added
the quaestors employed in the provinces (III. III. Provincial Praetors).
For the naval quaestors at Ostia, Cales, and so forth were by no means
discontinued, and the military quaestors could not be employed
elsewhere, since in that case the consul, when he appeared as
commander-in-chief, would have been without a quaestor.  Now, as
down to Sulla's time there were nine provinces, and moreover two
quaestors were sent to Sicily, he may possibly have found as many
as eighteen quaestors in existence.  But as the number of the
supreme magistrates of this period was considerably less than that
of their functions (p. 120), and the difficulty thus arising was
constantly remedied by extension of the term of office and other
expedients, and as generally the tendency of the Roman government
was to limit as much as possible the number of magistrates, there
may have been more quaestorial functions than quaestors, and it may
be even that at this period no quaestor at all was sent to small
provinces such as Cilicia.  Certainly however there were, already
before Sulla's time, more than eight quaestors.

16.  III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility

17.  We cannot strictly speak at all of a fixed number of senators.
Though the censors before Sulla prepared on each occasion a list of
300 persons, there always fell to be added to this list those non-
senators who filled a curule office between the time when the list
was drawn up and the preparation of the next one; and after Sulla
there were as many senators as there were surviving quaestorians
But it may be probably assumed that Sulla meant to bring the senate
up to 500 or 600 members; and this number results, if we assume
that 20 new members, at an average age of 30, were admitted
annually, and we estimate the average duration of the senatorial
dignity at from 25 to 30 years.  At a numerously attended sitting
of the senate in Cicero's time 417 members were present.

18.  II. III. The Senate. Its Composition

19.  IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius

20.  III. XI. Interference of the Community in War and Administration

21.  IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

22.  II. III. Restrictions As to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation
of Offices

23.  IV. II. Attempts at Reform

24.  To this the words of Lepidus in Sallust (Hist. i. 41, 11
Dietsch) refer: -populus Romanus excitus... iure agitandi-, to
which Tacitus (Ann. iii. 27) alludes: -statim turbidis Lepidi
rogationibus neque multo post tribunis reddita licentia quoquo
vellent populum agitandi-.  That the tribunes did not altogether
lose the right of discussing matters with the people is shown by
Cic. De Leg. iii. 4, 10 and more clearly by the -plebiscitum de
Thermensibus-, which however in the opening formula also designates
itself as issued -de senatus sententia-.  That the consuls on the
other hand could under the Sullan arrangements submit proposals to
the people without a previous resolution of the senate, is shown
not only by the silence of the authorities, but also by the course
of the revolutions of 667 and 676, whose leaders for this very
reason were not tribunes but consuls.  Accordingly we find at this
period consular laws upon secondary questions of administration,
such as the corn law of 681, for which at other times we should
have certainly found -plebiscita-.

25.  II. III. Influence of the Elections

26.  IV. II. Vote by Ballot

27.  For this hypothesis there is no other proof, except that
the Italian Celt-land was as decidedly not a province--in the sense
in which the word signifies a definite district administered by a
governor annually changed--in the earlier times, as it certainly was
one in the time of Caesar (comp. Licin. p. 39; -data erat et Sullae
provincia Gallia Cisalpina-).

The case is much the same with the advancement of the frontier;
we know that formerly the Aesis, and in Caesar's time the Rubico,
separated the Celtic land from Italy, but we do not know when the
boundary was shifted.  From the circumstance indeed, that Marcus
Terentius Varro Lucullus as propraetor undertook a regulation of
the frontier in the district between the Aesis and Rubico (Orelli,
Inscr. 570), it has been inferred that that must still have been
provincial land at least in the year after Lucullus' praetorship 679,
since the propraetor had nothing to do on Italian soil.  But it was
only within the -pomerium- that every prolonged -imperium- ceased of
itself; in Italy, on the other hand, such a prolonged -imperium- was
even under Sulla's arrangement--though not regularly existing--at
any rate allowable, and the office held by Lucullus was in any case
an extraordinary one.  But we are able moreover to show when and
how Lucullus held such an office in this quarter.  He was already
before the Sullan reorganization in 672 active as commanding
officer in this very district (p, 87), and was probably, just like
Pompeius, furnished by Sulla with propraetorian powers; in this
character he must have regulated the boundary in question in 672
or 673 (comp. Appian, i. 95).  No inference therefore may be drawn
from this inscription as to the legal position of North Italy, and
least of all for the time after Sulla's dictatorship.  On the other
hand a remarkable hint is contained in the statement, that Sulla
advanced the Roman -pomerium- (Seneca, de brev. vitae, 14; Dio,
xliii. 50); which distinction was by Roman state-law only accorded
to one who had advanced the bounds not of the empire, but of the
city--that is, the bounds of Italy (i. 128).

28.  As two quaestors were sent to Sicily, and one to each of the
other provinces, and as moreover the two urban quaestors, the two
attached to the consuls in conducting war, and the four quaestors
of the fleet continued to subsist, nineteen magistrates were
annually required for this office.  The department of the twentieth
quaestor cannot be ascertained.

29.  The Italian confederacy was much older (II. VII. Italy and
The Italians); but it was a league of states, not, like the Sullan
Italy, a state-domain marked off as an unit within the Roman empire.

30.  II. III. Complete Opening Up of Magistracies and Priesthoods

31.  II. III. Combination of The Plebian Aristocracy and The Farmers
against The Nobility

32.  III. XIII. Religious Economy

33.  IV. X. Punishments Inflicted on Particular Communities

34.  e. g. IV. IV. Dissatisfaction in the Capital, IV. V. Warfare of
Prosecutions

35.  IV. II. Vote by Ballot

36.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

37.  II. II. Intercession

38.  IV. III. Modifications of the Penal Law

39.  IV. VII. Rejection of the Proposals for an Accomodation

40.  II. VII. Subject Communities

41.  IV. X. Cisapline Gaul Erected into A Province

42.  IV. VII. Preparations for General Revolt against Rome

43.  III. XI. Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

44.  IV. IX. Government of Cinna

45.  IV. VII. Decay of Military Discipline

46.  IV. VII. Economic Crisis

47.  IV. VII. Strabo

48.  IV. VIII. Flaccus Arrives in Asia

49.  IV. IX. Death of Cinna

50.  IV. IX. Nola

51.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

52.  Euripides, Medea, 807:-- --Meideis me phaulein kasthenei
nomizeto Meid eisuchaian, alla thateron tropou Bareian echthrois
kai philoisin eumenei--.

53.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

54.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates, IV. X. Re-establishment
of Constitutional Order

55.  Not -pthiriasis-, as another account states; for the simple
reason that such a disease is entirely imaginary.



Chapter XI

1.  IV. V. Transalpine Relations of Rome, IV. V. The Romans Cross
the Eastern Alps

2.  IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered

3.  IV. V. And Reach the Danube

4.  -Exterae nationes in arbitratu dicione potestate amicitiave
populi Romani- (lex repet. v. i), the official designation of the
non-Italian subjects and clients as contrasted with the Italian
"allies and kinsmen" (-socii nominisve Latini-).

5.  III. XI. As to the Management of the Finances

6.  III. XII. Mercantile Spirit

7.  IV. III. Jury Courts, IV. III. Character of the Constitution
of Gaius Gracchus

8.  This tax-tenth, which the state levied from private landed
property, is to be clearly distinguished from the proprietor's
tenth, which it imposed on the domain-land.  The former was let in
Sicily, and was fixed once for all; the latter--especially that of
the territory of Leontini--was let by the censors in Rome, and the
proportion of produce payable and other conditions were regulated
at their discretion (Cic. Verr. iii. 6, 13; v. 21, 53; de leg. agr.
i. 2, 4; ii. 18, 48).  Comp, my Staatsrecht, iii. 730.

9.  The mode of proceeding was apparently as follows.  The Roman
government fixed in the first instance the kind and the amount of
the tax.  Thus in Asia, for instance, according to the arrangement
of Sulla and Caesar the tenth sheaf was levied (Appian. B. C. v.
4); thus the Jews by Caesar's edict contributed every second year
a fourth of the seed (Joseph, iv. 10, 6; comp. ii. 5); thus in
Cilicia and Syria subsequently there was paid 5 per cent from
estate (Appian. Syr. 50), and in Africa also an apparently similar
tax was paid--in which case, we may add, the estate seems to have
been valued according to certain presumptive indications, e. g. the
size of the land occupied, the number of doorways, the number of
head of children and slaves (-exactio capitum atque ostiorum-,
Cicero, Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5, with reference to Cilicia; --phoros epi
tei gei kai tois somasin--, Appian. Pun. 135, with reference to
Africa).  In accordance with this regulation the magistrates of
each community under the superintendence of the Roman governor
(Cic. ad Q. Fr. i. 1, 8; SC. de Asclep. 22, 23) settled who were
liable to the tax, and what was to be paid by each tributary (
-imperata- --epikephalia--, Cic. ad Att. v. 16); if any one did not
pay this in proper time, his tax-debt was sold just as in Rome, i.
e. it was handed over to a contractor with an adjudication to
collect it (-venditio tributorum-, Cic. Ad Fam. iii. 8, 5; --onas--
-omnium venditas-, Cic. ad Att. v. 16).  The produce of these taxes
flowed into the coffers of the leading communities--the Jews, for
instance, had to send their corn to Sidon--and from these coffers
the fixed amount in money was then conveyed to Rome.  These taxes
also were consequently raised indirectly, and the intermediate
agent either retained, according to circumstances, a part of the
produce of the taxes for himself, or advanced it from his own
substance; the distinction between this mode of raising and the
other by means of the -publicani- lay merely in the circumstance,
that in the former the public authorities of the contributors,
in the latter Roman private contractors, constituted the
intermediate agency.

10.  IV. III. Jury Courts

11.  III. VII. Administration of Spain

12.  IV. X. Regulation of the Finances

13.  For example, in Judaea the town of Joppa paid 26,075 -modii-
of corn, the other Jews the tenth sheaf, to the native princes; to
which fell to be added the temple-tribute and the Sidonian payment
destined for the Romans.  In Sicily too, in addition to the Roman
tenth, a very considerable local taxation was raised from property.

14.  IV. VI. The New Military Organization

15.  IV. II. Vote by Ballot

16.  III. VII. Liguria

17.  IV. V. Province of Narbo

18.  IV. V. In Illyria

19.  IV. I. Province of Macedonia

20.  III. XI. Italian Subjects, III. XII. Roman Wealth

21.  IV. V. Taurisci

22.  III. IV. Pressure of the War

23.  IV. VII. Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

24.  IV. IX. Preparations on Either Side

25.  III. XII. The Management of Land and of Capital

26.  IV. V. Conflicts with the Ligurians.  With this may be connected
the remark of the Roman agriculturist, Saserna, who lived after Cato
and before Varro (ap. Colum. i. 1, 5), that the culture of the vine
and olive was constantly moving farther to the north.--The decree of
the senate as to the translation of the treatise of Mago (IV. II.
The Italian Farmers) belongs also to this class of measures.

27.  IV. II. Slavery and Its Consequences

28.  IV. VIII. Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies.

29.  IV. I. Destruction of Carthage, IV. I. Destruction of Corinth

30.  IV. V. The Advance of the Romans Checked by the Policy
of the Restoration

31.  IV. IV. The Provinces

32.  IV. VII. Economic Crisis

33.  IV. VII. The Sulpician Laws

34.  IV. VII. Legislation of Sulla

35.  IV. IX. Government of Cinna

36.  IV. VIII. Orders Issued from Ephesus for A General Massacre

37.  IV. VIII. Thrace and Macedonia Occupied by the Pontic Armies.

38.  IV. VI. Roman Intervention

39.  III. XII. Roman Wealth

40.  IV. V. Taurisci

41.  III. VI. Pressure of the War

42.  II. VIII. Silver Standard of Value

43.  III. VI. Pressure of the War

44.  III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome

45.  IV. X. Proscription-Lists

46.  III. III. Autonomy, III. VII. the State of Culture in Spain,
III. XII. Coins and Moneys

47.  III. XII. Coins and Moneys

48.  III. XIII. Increase of Amusements

49.  In the house, which Sulla inhabited when a young man, he paid
for the ground-floor a rent of 3000 sesterces, and the tenant of
the upper story a rent of 2000 sesterces (Plutarch, Sull. 1);
which, capitalized at two-thirds of the usual interest on capital,
yields nearly the above amount.  This was a cheap dwelling.  That a
rent of 6000 sesterces (60 pounds) in the capital is called a high
one in the case of the year 629 (Vell. ii. 10) must have been due
to special circumstances.

50.  III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome

51.  IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus

52.  "If we could, citizens"--he said in his speech--"we should
indeed all keep clear of this burden.  But, as nature has so
arranged it that we cannot either live comfortably with wives
or live at all without them, it is proper to have regard rather
to the permanent weal than to our own brief comfort."



Chapter XII

1.  IV. XI. Money-Dealing and Commerce

2.  IV. X. The Roman Municipal System

3.  IV. I. The Subjects

4.  IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered

5.  IV. I. The New Organization of Spain

6.  IV. VII. Second Year of the War

7.  The statement that no "Greek games" were exhibited in Rome
before 608 (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21) is not accurate: Greek artists
(--technitai--) and athletes appeared as early as 568 (Liv. xxxix.
22), and Greek flute-players, tragedians, and pugilists in 587
(Pol. xxx, 13).

8.  III. XIII. Irreligious Spirit

9.  A delightful specimen may be found in Cicero de Officiis,
iii. 12, 13.

10.  IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the
Administration of the Provinces; IV. IX. Siege of Praeneste

11.  In Varro's satire, "The Aborigines," he sarcastically set
forth how the primitive men had not been content with the God
who alone is recognized by thought, but had longed after
puppets and effigies.

12.  III. XI. Interference of The Community in War and Administration

13.  IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius

14.  IV. X. Co-optation Restored in the Priestly Colleges

15.  IV. VI. The Equestrian Party

16.  III. XIV. Cato's Encyclopedia

17.  Cicero says that he treated his learned slave Dionysius more
respectfully than Scipio treated Panaetius, and in the same sense
it is said in Lucilius:--

-Paenula, si quaeris, canteriu', servu', segestre Utilior mihi,
quam sapiens-.

18.  IV. XII. Panaetius



Chapter XIII

1.  Thus in the -Paulus-, an original piece, the following line
occurred, probably in the description of the pass of Pythium
(III. X. Perseus Is Driven Back to Pydna):--

-Qua vix caprigeno generi gradilis gressio est-.

And in another piece the hearers are expected to understand the
following description--

-Quadrupes tardigrada agrestis humilis aspera, Capite brevi,
cervice anguina, aspectu truci, Eviscerata inanima cum
animali sono-.

To which they naturally reply--

-Ita saeptuosa dictione abs te datur, Quod conjectura sapiens aegre
contuit; Non intellegimus, nisi si aperte dixeris-.

Then follows the confession that the tortoise is referred to.
Such enigmas, moreover, were not wanting even among the Attic
tragedians, who on that account were often and sharply taken to
task by the Middle Comedy.

2.  Perhaps the only exception is in the -Andria- (iv. 5) the
answer to the question how matters go:--

"-Sic Ut quimus," aiunt, "quando ut volumus non licet-"

in allusion to the line of Caecilius, which is, indeed, also
imitated from a Greek proverb:--

-Vivas ut possis, quando non quis ut velis-.

The comedy is the oldest of Terence's, and was exhibited by
the theatrical authorities on the recommendation of Caecilius.
The gentle expression of gratitude is characteristic.

3.  A counterpart to the hind chased by dogs and with tears calling
on a young man for help, which Terence ridicules (Phorm. prol. 4),
may be recognized in the far from ingenious Plautine allegory of
the goat and the ape (Merc, ii. 1).  Such excrescences are
ultimately traceable to the rhetoric of Euripides (e. g.
Eurip. Hec. 90).

4.  Micio in the -Adelphi- (i. i) praises his good fortune in life,
more particularly because he has never had a wife, "which those
(the Greeks) reckon a piece of good fortune."

5.  In the prologue of the -Heauton Timorumenos- he puts
the objection into the mouth of his censors:--

-Repente ad studium hunc se applicasse musicum Amicum ingenio
fretum, haud natura sua-.

And in the later prologue (594) to the -Adelphi- he says--

-Nam quod isti dicunt malevoli, homines nobiles Eum adiutare,
adsidueque una scribere; Quod illi maledictum vehemens esse
existimant Eam laudem hic ducit maximam, quum illis placet Qui
vobis universis et populo placent; Quorum opera in bello, in otio,
in negotio, Suo quisque tempore usus est sine superbia-.

As early as the time of Cicero it was the general supposition that
Laelius and Scipio Aemilianus were here meant: the scenes were
designated which were alleged to proceed from them; stories were
told of the journeys of the poor poet with his genteel patrons to
their estates near Rome; and it was reckoned unpardonable that
they should have done nothing at all for the improvement of his
financial circumstances.  But the power which creates legend is,
as is well known, nowhere more potent than in the history of
literature.  It is clear, and even judicious Roman critics
acknowledged, that these lines could not possibly apply to Scipio
who was then twenty-five years of age, and to his friend Laelius
who was not much older.  Others with at least more judgment thought
of the poets of quality Quintus Labeo (consul in 571) and Marcus
Popillius (consul in 581), and of the learned patron of art and
mathematician, Lucius Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588); but this
too is evidently mere conjecture.  That Terence was in close
relations with the Scipionic house cannot, however, be doubted: it
is a significant fact, that the first exhibition of the -Adelphi-
and the second of the -Hecyra- took place at the funeral games of
Lucius Paullus, which were provided by his sons Scipio and Fabius.

6.  IV. XI. Token-Money

7.  III. XIV. National Comedy

8.  External circumstances also, it may be presumed, co-operated in
bringing about this change.  After all the Italian communities had
obtained the Roman franchise in consequence of the Social war, it
was no longer allowable to transfer the scene of a comedy to any
such community, and the poet had either to keep to general ground
or to choose places that had fallen into ruin or were situated
abroad.  Certainly this circumstance, which was taken into account
even in the production of the older comedies, exercised an
unfavourable effect on the national comedy.

9.  I. XV. Masks

10.  With these names there has been associated from ancient times
a series of errors.  The utter mistake of Greek reporters, that
these farces were played at Rome in the Oscan language, is now with
justice universally rejected; but it is, on a closer consideration,
little short of impossible to bring these pieces, which are laid in
the midst of Latin town and country life, into relation with the
national Oscan character at all.  The appellation of "Atellan play"
is to be explained in another way.  The Latin farce with its fixed
characters and standing jests needed a permanent scenery: the fool-
world everywhere seeks for itself a local habitation.  Of course
under the Roman stage-police none of the Roman communities, or of
the Latin communities allied with Rome, could be taken for this
purpose, although it was allowable to transfer the -togatae- to
these.  But Atella, which, although destroyed de jure along with
Capua in 543 (III. VI. Capua Capitulates, III. VI. In Italy),
continued practically to subsist as a village inhabited by Roman
farmers, was adapted in every respect for the purpose.  This conjecture
is changed into certainty by our observing that several of these farces
are laid in other communities within the domain of the Latin tongue,
which existed no longer at all, or no longer at any rate in the eye
of the law-such as the -Campani- of Pomponius and perhaps also his
-Adelphi- and his -Quinquatria- in Capua, and the -Milites Pometinenses-
of Novius in Suessa Pometia--while no existing community was subjected
to similar maltreatment.  The real home of these pieces was
therefore Latium, their poetical stage was the Latinized Oscan
land; with the Oscan nation they have no connection.  The statement
that a piece of Naevius (d. after 550) was for want of proper
actors performed by "Atellan players" and was therefore called
-personata- (Festus, s. v.), proves nothing against this view:
the appellation "Atellan players" comes to stand here proleptically,
and we might even conjecture from this passage that they were
formerly termed "masked players" (-personati-).

An explanation quite similar may be given of the "lays of
Fescennium," which likewise belong to the burlesque poetry of
the Romans and were localized in the South Etruscan village of
Fescennium; it is not necessary on that account to class them
with Etruscan poetry any more than the Atellanae with Oscan.
That Fescennium was in historical times not a town but a village,
cannot certainly be directly proved, but is in the highest degree
probable from the way in which authors mention the place and from
the silence of inscriptions.

11.  The close and original connection, which Livy in particular
represents as subsisting between the Atellan farce and the -satura-
with the drama thence developed, is not at all tenable.  The
difference between the -histrio- and the Atellan player was
just about as great as is at present the difference between a
professional actor and a man who goes to a masked ball; between the
dramatic piece, which down to Terence's time had no masks, and the
Atellan, which was essentially based on the character-mask, there
subsisted an original distinction in no way to be effaced.  The
drama arose out of the flute-piece, which at first without any
recitation was confined merely to song and dance, then acquired a
text (-satura-), and lastly obtained through Andronicus a libretto
borrowed from the Greek stage, in which the old flute-lays occupied
nearly the place of the Greek chorus.  This course of development
nowhere in its earlier stages comes into contact with the farce,
which was performed by amateurs.

12.  In the time of the empire the Atellana was represented by
professional actors (Friedlander in Becker's Handbuch. vi. 549).
The time at which these began to engage in it is not reported, but
it can hardly have been other than the time at which the Atellan
was admitted among the regular stage-plays, i. e. the epoch before
Cicero (Cic. ad Fam. ix. 16).  This view is not inconsistent with
the circumstance that still in Livy's time (vii. 2) the Atellan
players retained their honorary rights as contrasted with other
actors; for the statement that professional actors began to take
part in performing the Atellana for pay does not imply that
the Atellana was no longer performed, in the country towns
for instance, by unpaid amateurs, and the privilege therefore
still remained applicable,

13.  It deserves attention that the Greek farce was not only
especially at home in Lower Italy, but that several of its
pieces (e. g. among those of Sopater, the "Lentile-Porridge,"
the "Wooers of Bacchis," the "Valet of Mystakos," the "Bookworms,"
the "Physiologist") strikingly remind us of the Atellanae.
This composition of farces must have reached down to the time
at which the Greeks in and around Neapolis formed a circle
enclosed within the Latin-speaking Campania; for one of these
writers of farces, Blaesus of Capreae, bears even a Roman name
and wrote a farce "Saturnus."

14.  According to Eusebius, Pomponius flourished about 664;
Velleius calls him a contemporary of Lucius Crassus (614-663) and
Marcus Antonius (611-667).  The former statement is probably about
a generation too late; the reckoning by -victoriati- (p. 182) which
was discontinued about 650 still occurs in his -Pictores-, and
about the end of this period we already meet the mimes which
displaced the Atellanae from the stage.

15.  It was probably merry enough in this form.  In the
-Phoenissae- of Novius, for instance, there was the line:--

-Sume arma, iam te occidam clava scirpea-, Just as Menander's
--Pseudeirakleis-- makes his appearance.

16.  Hitherto the person providing the play had been obliged to fit
up the stage and scenic apparatus out of the round sum assigned to
him or at his own expense, and probably much money would not often
be expended on these.  But in 580 the censors made the erection of
the stage for the games of the praetors and aediles a matter of
special contract (Liv. xli. 27); the circumstance that the stage-
apparatus was now no longer erected merely for a single performance
must have led to a perceptible improvement of it.

17.  The attention given to the acoustic arrangements of the Greeks
may be inferred from Vitruv. v. 5, 8. Ritschl (Parerg. i. 227, xx.)
has discussed the question of the seats; but it is probable
(according to Plautus, Capt. prol. 11) that those only who were
not -capite censi- had a claim to a seat.  It is probable, moreover,
that the words of Horace that "captive Greece led captive her
conqueror" primarily refer to these epoch-making theatrical games
of Mummius (Tac. Ann. xiv. 21).

18.  The scenery of Pulcher must have been regularly painted, since
the birds are said to have attempted to perch on the tiles (Plin.
H. N. xxxv. 4, 23; Val. Max. ii. 4, 6).  Hitherto the machinery for
thunder had consisted in the shaking of nails and stones in a
copper kettle; Pulcher first produced a better thunder by rolling
stones, which was thenceforth named "Claudian thunder" (Festus,
v. Claudiana, p. 57).

19.  Among the few minor poems preserved from this epoch there
occurs the following epigram on this illustrious actor:--

-Constiteram, exorientem Auroram forte salutans, Cum subito a laeva
Roscius exoritur.  Pace mihi liceat, coelestes, dicere vestra;
Mortalis visust pulchrior esse deo-.

The author of this epigram, Greek in its tone and inspired by Greek
enthusiasm for art, was no less a man than the conqueror of the
Cimbri, Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul in 652.

20.  IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

21.  -Quam lepide --legeis-- compostae ut tesserulae omnes Arte
pavimento atque emblemate vermiculato-.

22.  The poet advises him--

-Quo facetior videare et scire plus quant ceteri---to say not
-pertaesum- but -pertisum-.

23.  IV. III. Its Suspension by Scipio Aemilianus

24.  The following longer fragment is a characteristic specimen of
the style and metrical treatment, the loose structure of which
cannot possibly be reproduced in German hexameters:--

-Virtus, Albine, est pretium persolvere verum
Queis in versamur, queis vivimu' rebu' potesse;
Virtus est homini scire quo quaeque habeat res;
Virtus scire homini rectum, utile, quid sit honestum,
Quae bona, quae mala item, quid inutile, turpe, inhonestum;
Virtus quaerendae finem rei scire modumque;
Virtus divitiis pretium persolvere posse;
Virtus id dare quod re ipsa debetur honori,
Hostem esse atque inimicum hominum morumque malorum,
Contra defensorem hominum morumque bonorum,
Hos magni facere, his bene velle, his vivere amicum;
Commoda praeterea patriai prima putare,
Deinde parentum, tertia iam postremaque nostra-.

25.  IV. XIII. Dramatic Arrangements, second note

26.  III. X. Measures of Security in Greece

27.  IV. I. Greece

28.  Such scientific travels were, however, nothing uncommon among
the Greeks of this period.  Thus in Plautus (Men. 248, comp. 235)
one who has navigated the whole Mediterranean asks--

-Quin nos hinc domum Redimus, nisi si historiam scripturi sumus-?

29.  III. XIV. National Opposition

30.  The only real exception, so far as we know, is the Greek
history of Gnaeus Aufidius, who flourished in Cicero's boyhood
(Tusc, v. 38, 112), that is, about 660.  The Greek memoirs of
Publius Rutilius Rufus (consul in 649) are hardly to be regarded
as an exception, since their author wrote them in exile at Smyrna.

31.  IV. XI. Hellenism and Its Results

32.  IV. XII. Education

33.  IV. XII. Latin Instruction

34.  The assertion, for instance, that the quaestors were
nominated in the regal period by the burgesses, not by the king,
is as certainly erroneous as it bears on its face the impress of
a partisan character.

35.  IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

36.  IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

37.  IV. XII. Course of Literature and Rhetoric

38.  IV. X. Permanent and Special -Quaestiones-

39.  Cato's book probably bore the title -De iuris disciplina-
(Gell. xiii. 20), that of Brutus the title -De iure civili- (Cic.
pro Cluent. 51, 141; De Orat. ii. 55, 223); that they were
essentially collections of opinions, is shown by Cicero (De Orat.
ii. 33, 142).

40.  IV. VI. Collision between the Senate and Equites in the
Administration of the Provinces, pp. 84, 205

41.  IV. XII. Roman Stoa f.

42.  IV. XI. Buildings



End of Book IV



TABLE OF CALENDAR EQUIVALENTS

A.U.C.*          B.C.  B.C.             A.U.C.
---------------------------------------------------------------
000              753   753              000
    025          728       750          003
        050      703           725      028
            075  678               700  053
100              653   675              078
    125          628       650          103
        150      603           625      128
            175  578               600  153
200              553   575              178
    225          528       550          203
        250      503           525      228
            275  478               500  253
300              453   475              278
    325          428       450          303
        350      303           425      328
            375  378               400  353
400              353   375              378
    425          328       350          403
        450      303           325      428
            475  278               300  453
500              253   275              478
    525          228       250          503
        550      203           225      528
            575  178               200  553
600              153   175              578
    625          128       150          603
        650      103           125      628
            675  078               100  653
700              053   075              678
    725          028       050          703
        750      003           025      728
            753  000               000  753

*A. U. C.--Ab Urbe Condita (from the founding of the City of Rome)