E-text prepared by David Ceponis



Note: This e-book is a compilation of the five volumes of this work.
      Each volume is also available individually in the Project
      Gutenberg library.
      Book I: The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10701
      Book II:  From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the
                Union of Italy
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10702
      Book III: From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage
                and the Greek States
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10703
      Book IV:  The Revolution
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10704
      Book V:   The Establishment of the Military Monarchy
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/10705

      The original German version of this work, Roemische Geschichte,
      is also available in the Project Gutenberg library.
      Erstes Buch:   bis zur Abschaffung des roemischen Koenigtums
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3060
      Zweites Buch:  von der Abschaffung des roemischen Keonigtums bis
                     zur Einigung Italiens
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3061
      Drittes Buch:  von der Einigung Italiens bis auf die Unterwerfung
                     Karthagos und der griechischen Staaten
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3062
      Viertes Buch:  Die Revolution
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3063
      Fuenftes Buch: Die Begruendung der Militaermonarchie
         See https://www.gutenberg.org/etext/3064





THE HISTORY OF ROME

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

A New Edition Revised Throughout and Embodying Recent Additions






DEDICATIONS


The First Volume of the original bears the inscription:--

To My Friend

MORIZ HAUPT of Berin

The Second:--

To My Dear Associates

FERDINAND HITZIG of Zurich

and

KARL LUDWIG of Vienna 1852, 1853, 1854

And the Third:--

Dedicated with Old and Loyal Affection to

OTTO JAHN of Bonn




CONTENTS

BOOK I:  The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy

   CHAPTER

      I. Introduction

     II. The Earliest Migrations into Italy

    III. The Settlements of the Latins

     IV. The Beginnings of Rome

      V. The Original Constitution of Rome

     VI. The Non-Burgesses and the Reformed Constitution

    VII. The Hegemony of Rome in Latium

   VIII. The Umbro-Sabellian Stocks--Beginnings of the Samnites

     IX. The Etruscans

      X. The Hellenes in Italy--Maritime Supremacy of the Tuscans
         and Carthaginians

     XI. Law and Justice

    XII. Religion

   XIII. Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce

    XIV. Measuring and Writing

     XV. Art


BOOK II:  From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union
          of Italy

   CHAPTER

      I. Change of the Constitution--Limitation of the Power of the
         Magistrate

     II. The Tribunate of the Plebs and the Decemvirate

    III. The Equalization of the Orders, and the New Aristocracy

     IV. Fall of the Etruscan Power--the Celts

      V. Subjugation of the Latins and Campanians by Rome

     VI. Struggle of the Italians against Rome

    VII. Struggle Between Pyrrhus and Rome, and Union of Italy

   VIII. Law--Religion--Military System--Economic Condition--Nationality

     IX. Art and Science


BOOK III:  From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage
           and the Greek States

   CHAPTER

      I. Carthage

     II. The War between Rome and Carthage Concerning Sicily

    III. The Extension of Italy to Its Natural Boundaries

     IV. Hamilcar and Hannibal

      V. The War under Hannibal to the Battle of Cannae

     VI. The War under Hannibal from Cannae to Zama

    VII. The West from the Peace of Hannibal to the Close
         of the Third Period

   VIII. The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War

     IX. The War with Antiochus of Asia

      X. The Third Macedonian War

     XI. The Government and the Governed

    XII. The Management of Land and of Capital

   XIII. Faith and Manners

    XIV. Literature and Art


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 V:  The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

   CHAPTER

      I. Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius

     II. Rule of the Sullan Restoration

    III. The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius

     IV. Pompeius and the East

      V. The Struggle of Parties during the Absence of Pompeius

     VI. Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pretenders

    VII. The Subjugation of the West

   VIII. The Joint Rule of Pompeius and Caesar

     IX. Death of Crassus--Rupture between the Joint Rulers

      X. Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus

     XI. The Old Republic and the New Monarchy

    XII. Religion, Culture, Literature, and Art



     *        *        *         *        *



THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK I

The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy




Preparer's Note


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

1) 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-.

2) 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--

3) Simple unideographic 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.

4) (Especially for 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 picture
based on the following "xxxx"; which may be 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
one of lowercase.  Also, a construct such as --"id:E" indicates
a symbol that with ASCII resembles most closely a Roman uppercase
"E", but, in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.

5) 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.  The preparer of this document has appended to the end of
this combined text (Books I-V) a table of conversion between the
two systems.




PREFACE BY THE TRANSLATOR


When the first portion of this translation appeared in 1861, it was
accompanied by a Preface, for which I was indebted to the kindness
of the late Dr. Schmitz, introducing to the English reader the
work of an author whose name and merits, though already known to
scholars, were far less widely familiar than they are now.  After
thirty-three years such an introduction is no longer needed, but
none the less gratefully do I recall how much the book owed at the
outset to Dr. Schmitz's friendly offices.

The following extracts from my own "Prefatory Note" dated "December
1861" state the circumstances under which I undertook the translation,
and give some explanations as to its method and aims:--

"In requesting English scholars to receive with indulgence this first
portion of a translation of Dr. Mommsen's 'Romische Geschichte,'
I am somewhat in the position of Albinus; who, when appealing to
his readers to pardon the imperfections of the Roman History which
he had written in indifferent Greek, was met by Cato with the
rejoinder that he was not compelled to write at all--that, if the
Amphictyonic Council had laid their commands on him, the case would
have been different--but that it was quite out of place to ask the
indulgence of his readers when his task had been self-imposed.  I
may state, however, that I did not undertake this task, until
I had sought to ascertain whether it was likely to be taken up by
any one more qualified to do justice to it.  When Dr. Mommsen's
work accidentally came into my hands some years after its first
appearance, and revived my interest in studies which I had long
laid aside for others more strictly professional, I had little doubt
that its merits would have already attracted sufficient attention
amidst the learned leisure of Oxford to induce some of her great
scholars to clothe it in an English dress.  But it appeared on
inquiry that, while there was a great desire to see it translated,
and the purpose of translating it had been entertained in more
quarters than one, the projects had from various causes miscarried.
Mr. George Robertson published an excellent translation (to which,
so far as it goes, I desire to acknowledge my obligations) of the
introductory chapters on the early inhabitants of Italy; but other
studies and engagements did not permit him to proceed with it.  I
accordingly requested and obtained Dr. Mommsen's permission to
translate his work.

"The translation has been prepared from the third edition of the
original, published in the spring of the present year at Berlin.
The sheets have been transmitted to Dr. Mommsen, who has kindly
communicated to me such suggestions as occurred to him.  I have
thus been enabled, more especially in the first volume, to correct
those passages where I had misapprehended or failed to express the
author's meaning, and to incorporate in the English work various
additions and corrections which do not appear in the original.

"In executing the translation I have endeavoured to follow the original
as closely as is consistent with a due regard to the difference of
idiom.  Many of our translations from the German are so literal as
to reproduce the very order of the German sentence, so that they
are, if not altogether unintelligible to the English reader, at
least far from readable, while others deviate so entirely from the
form of the original as to be no longer translations in the proper
sense of the term.  I have sought to pursue a middle course between
a mere literal translation, which would be repulsive, and a loose
paraphrase, which would be in the case of such a work peculiarly
unsatisfactory.  Those who are most conversant with the difficulties
of such a task will probably be the most willing to show forbearance
towards the shortcomings of my performance, and in particular towards
the too numerous traces of the German idiom, which, on glancing
over the sheets, I find it still to retain.

"The reader may perhaps be startled by the occurrence now and then
of modes of expression more familiar and colloquial than is usually
the case in historical works.  This, however, is a characteristic
feature of the original, to which in fact it owes not a little
of its charm.  Dr. Mommsen often uses expressions that are not
to be found in the dictionary, and he freely takes advantage of
the unlimited facilities afforded by the German language for the
coinage or the combination of words.  I have not unfrequently, in
deference to his wishes, used such combinations as 'Carthagino-Sicilian,'
'Romano-Hellenic,' although less congenial to our English idiom,
for the sake of avoiding longer periphrases.

"In Dr. Mommsen's book, as in every other German work that has
occasion to touch on abstract matters, there occur sentences couched
in a peculiar terminology and not very susceptible of translation.
There are one or two sentences of this sort, more especially in
the chapter on Religion in the 1st volume, and in the critique of
Euripides as to which I am not very confident that I have seized
or succeeded in expressing the meaning.  In these cases I have
translated literally.

"In the spelling of proper names I have generally adopted the Latin
orthography as more familiar to scholars in this country, except
in cases where the spelling adopted by Dr. Mommsen is marked by any
special peculiarity.  At the same time entire uniformity in this
respect has not been aimed at.

"I have ventured in various instances to break up the paragraphs of
the original and to furnish them with additional marginal headings,
and have carried out more fully the notation of the years B.C. on
the margin.

"It is due to Dr. Schmitz, who has kindly encouraged me in
this undertaking, that I should state that I alone am responsible
for the execution of the translation.  Whatever may be thought of
it in other respects, I venture to hope that it may convey to the
English reader a tolerably accurate impression of the contents and
general spirit of the book."

In a new Library edition, which appeared in 1868, I incorporated all
the additions and alterations which were introduced in the fourth
edition of the German, some of which were of considerable importance;
and I took the opportunity of revising the translation, so as to
make the rendering more accurate and consistent.

Since that time no change has been made, except the issue in 1870
of an Index.  But, as Dr. Mommsen was good enough some time ago
to send to me a copy in which he had taken the trouble to mark the
alterations introduced in the more recent editions of the original,
I thought it due to him and to the favour with which the translation
had been received that I should subject it to such a fresh revision
as should bring it into conformity with the last form (eighth
edition) of the German, on which, as I learn from him, he hardly
contemplates further change.  As compared with the first English
edition, the more considerable alterations of addition, omission,
or substitution amount, I should think, to well-nigh a hundred pages.
I have corrected various errors in renderings, names, and dates
(though not without some misgiving that others may have escaped
notice or been incurred afresh); and I have still further broken
up the text into paragraphs and added marginal headings.

The Index, which was not issued for the German book till nine years
after the English translation was published, has now been greatly
enlarged from its more recent German form, and has been, at the
expenditure of no small labour, adapted to the altered paging of
the English.  I have also prepared, as an accompaniment to it, a
collation of pagings, which will materially facilitate the finding of
references made to the original or to the previous English editions.

I have had much reason to be gratified by the favour with which
my translation has been received on the part alike of Dr. Mommsen
himself and of the numerous English scholars who have made it the
basis of their references to his work.(1)  I trust that in the
altered form and new dress, for which the book is indebted to the
printers, it may still further meet the convenience of the reader.

September 1894.




Notes for Preface



1. It has, I believe, been largely in use at Oxford for the last
thirty years; but it has not apparently had the good fortune to
have come to the knowledge of the writer of an article on "Roman
History" published in the Encyclopedia Britannica in 1886, which at
least makes no mention of its existence, or yet of Mr. Baring-Gould,
who in his Tragedy of the Caesars (vol. 1. p. 104f.) has presented
Dr. Mommsen's well-known "character" of Caesar in an independent
version.  His rendering is often more spirited than accurate.  While
in several cases important words, clauses, or even sentences, are
omitted, in others the meaning is loosely or imperfectly conveyed--e.g.
in "Hellenistic" for "Hellenic"; "success" for "plenitude of power";
"attempts" or "operations" for "achievements"; "prompt to recover"
for "ready to strike"; "swashbuckler" for "brilliant"; "many" for
"unyielding"; "accessible to all" for "complaisant towards every
one"; "smallest fibre" for "Inmost core"; "ideas" for "ideals";
"unstained with blood" for "as bloodless as possible"; "described"
for "apprehended"; "purity" for "clearness"; "smug" for "plain"
(or homely); "avoid" for "avert"; "taking his dark course" for
"stealing towards his aim by paths of darkness"; "rose" for "transformed
himself"; "checked everything like a praetorian domination" for
"allowed no hierarchy of marshals or government of praetorians
to come into existence"; and in one case the meaning is exactly
reversed, when "never sought to soothe, where he could not cure,
intractable evils" stands for "never disdained at least to mitigate
by palliatives evils that were incurable."




INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY DR. MOMMSEN



The Varronian computation by years of the City is retained in the
text; the figures on the margin indicate the corresponding year
before the birth of Christ.

In calculating the corresponding years, the year 1 of the City has
been assumed as identical with the year 753 B.C., and with Olymp.
6, 4; although, if we take into account the circumstance that the
Roman solar year began with the 1st day of March, and the Greek
with the 1st day of July, the year 1 of the City would, according
to more exact calculation, correspond to the last ten months of 753
and the first two months of 752 B.C., and to the last four months
of Ol. 6, 3 and the first eight of Ol. 6, 4.

The Roman and Greek money has uniformly been commuted on the basis
of assuming the libral as and sestertius, and the denarius and
Attic drachma, respectively as equal, and taking for all sums above
100 denarii the present value in gold, and for all sums under 100
denarii the present value in silver, of the corresponding weight.
The Roman pound (=327.45 grammes) of gold, equal to 4000 sesterces,
has thus, according to the ratio of gold to silver 1:15.5, been
reckoned at 304 1/2 Prussian thalers [about 43 pounds sterling],
and the denarius, according to the value of silver, at 7 Prussian
groschen [about 8d.].(1)

Kiepert's map will give a clearer idea of the military consolidation
of Italy than can be conveyed by any description.

1. I have deemed it, in general, sufficient to give the value of
the Roman money approximately in round numbers, assuming for that
purpose 100 sesterces as equivalent to 1 pound sterling.--TR.




CONTENTS

BOOK I:  The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy

   CHAPTER

      I. Introduction

     II. The Earliest Migrations into Italy

    III. The Settlements of the Latins

     IV. The Beginnings of Rome

      V. The Original Constitution of Rome

     VI. The Non-Burgesses and the Reformed Constitution

    VII. The Hegemony of Rome in Latium

   VIII. The Umbro-Sabellian Stocks--Beginnings of the Samnites

     IX. The Etruscans

      X. The Hellenes in Italy--Maritime Supremacy of the Tuscans
         and Carthaginians

     XI. Law and Justice

    XII. Religion

   XIII. Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce

    XIV. Measuring and Writing

     XV. Art




BOOK FIRST

The Period Anterior to the Abolition of the Monarchy




--Ta palaiotera saphos men eurein dia chronou pleithos adunata
ein ek de tekmeirion on epi makrotaton skopounti moi pisteusai
xumbainei ou megala nomizo genesthai oute kata tous polemous oute
es ta alla.--

Thucydides.




CHAPTER I

Introduction



Ancient History


The Mediterranean Sea with its various branches, penetrating far
into the great Continent, forms the largest gulf of the ocean,
and, alternately narrowed by islands or projections of the land and
expanding to considerable breadth, at once separates and connects
the three divisions of the Old World.  The shores of this inland
sea were in ancient times peopled by various nations belonging in
an ethnographical and philological point of view to different races,
but constituting in their historical aspect one whole.  This historic
whole has been usually, but not very appropriately, entitled the
history of the ancient world.  It is in reality the history of
civilization among the Mediterranean nations; and, as it passes
before us in its successive stages, it presents four great phases
of development--the history of the Coptic or Egyptian stock dwelling
on the southern shore, the history of the Aramaean or Syrian nation
which occupied the east coast and extended into the interior of
Asia as far as the Euphrates and Tigris, and the histories of the
twin-peoples, the Hellenes and Italians, who received as their heritage
the countries on the European shore.  Each of these histories was
in its earlier stages connected with other regions and with other
cycles of historical evolution; but each soon entered on its own
distinctive career.  The surrounding nations of alien or even of
kindred extraction--the Berbers and Negroes of Africa, the Arabs,
Persians, and Indians of Asia, the Celts and Germans of Europe--came
into manifold contact with the peoples inhabiting the borders of
the Mediterranean, but they neither imparted unto them nor received
from them any influences exercising decisive effect on their
respective destinies.  So far, therefore, as cycles of culture admit
of demarcation at all, the cycle which has its culminating points
denoted by the names Thebes, Carthage, Athens, and Rome, may be
regarded as an unity.  The four nations represented by these names,
after each of them had attained in a path of its own a peculiar
and noble civilization, mingled with one another in the most varied
relations of reciprocal intercourse, and skilfully elaborated and
richly developed all the elements of human nature.  At length their
cycle was accomplished.  New peoples who hitherto had only laved
the territories of the states of the Mediterranean, as waves lave
the beach, overflowed both its shores, severed the history of its
south coast from that of the north, and transferred the centre of
civilization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic Ocean.  The
distinction between ancient and modern history, therefore, is no
mere accident, nor yet a mere matter of chronological convenience.
What is called modern history is in reality the formation of a new
cycle of culture, connected in several stages of its development
with the perishing or perished civilization of the Mediterranean
states, as this was connected with the primitive civilization of
the Indo-Germanic stock, but destined, like the earlier cycle, to
traverse an orbit of its own.  It too is destined to experience in
full measure the vicissitudes of national weal and woe, the periods
of growth, of maturity, and of age, the blessedness of creative
effort in religion, polity, and art, the comfort of enjoying the
material and intellectual acquisitions which it has won, perhaps
also, some day, the decay of productive power in the satiety of
contentment with the goal attained.  And yet this goal will only
be temporary: the grandest system of civilization has its orbit,
and may complete its course but not so the human race, to which,
just when it seems to have reached its goal, the old task is ever
set anew with a wider range and with a deeper meaning.


Italy


Our aim is to exhibit the last act of this great historical drama,
to relate the ancient history of the central peninsula projecting
from the northern continent into the Mediterranean.  It is formed
by the mountain-system of the Apennines branching off in a southern
direction from the western Alps.  The Apennines take in the first
instance a south-eastern course between the broader gulf of the
Mediterranean on the west, and the narrow one on the east; and in the
close vicinity of the latter they attain their greatest elevation,
which, however, scarce reaches the line of perpetual snow, in
the Abruzzi.  From the Abruzzi the chain continues in a southern
direction, at first undivided and of considerable height; after
a depression which formsa hill-country, it splits into a somewhat
flattened succession of heights towards the south-east and a more
rugged chain towards the south, and in both directions terminates
in the formation of narrow peninsulas.

The flat country on the north, extending between the Alps and the
Apennines as far down as the Abruzzi, does not belong geographically,
nor until a very late period even historically, to the southern land
of mountain and hill, the Italy whose history is here to engage
our attention.  It was not till the seventh century of the city
that the coast-district from Sinigaglia to Rimini, and not till the
eighth that the basin of the Po, became incorporated with Italy.
The ancient boundary of Italy on the north was not the Alps but
the Apennines.  This mountain-system nowhere rises abruptly into
a precipitous chain, but, spreading broadly over the land and
enclosing many valleys and table-lands connected by easy passes,
presents conditions which well adapt it to become the settlement of
man.  Still more suitable in this respect are the adjacent slopes
and the coast-districts on the east, south, and west.  On the
east coast the plain of Apulia, shut in towards the north by the
mountain-block of the Abruzzi and only broken by the steep isolated
ridge of Garganus, stretches in a uniform level with but a scanty
development of coast and stream.  On the south coast, between the
two peninsulas in which the Apennines terminate, extensive lowlands,
poorly provided with harbours but well watered and fertile,
adjoin the hill-country of the interior.  The west coast presents
a far-stretching domain intersected by considerable streams, in
particular by the Tiber, and shaped by the action of the waves and
of the once numerous volcanoes into manifold variety of hill and
valley, harbour and island.  Here the regions of Etruria, Latium,
and Campania form the very flower of the land of Italy.  South of
Campania, the land in front of the mountains gradually diminishes,
and the Tyrrhenian Sea almost washes their base.  Moreover, as
the Peloponnesus is attached to Greece, so the island of Sicily is
attached to Italy--the largest and fairest isle of the Mediterranean,
having a mountainous and partly desert interior, but girt, especially
on the east and south, by a broad belt of the finest coast-land,
mainly the result of volcanic action.  Geographically the Sicilian
mountains are a continuation of the Apennines, hardly interrupted
by the narrow "rent" --Pegion--of the straits; and in its historical
relations Sicily was in earlier times quite as decidedly a part of
Italy as the Peloponnesus was of Greece, a field for the struggles
of the same races, and the seat of a similar superior civilization.

The Italian peninsula resembles the Grecian in the temperate climate
and wholesome air that prevail on the hills of moderate height, and
on the whole, also, in the valleys and plains.  In development of
coast it is inferior; it wants, in particular, the island-studded
sea which made the Hellenes a seafaring nation.  Italy on the
other hand excels its neighbour in the rich alluvial plains and
the fertile and grassy mountain-slopes, which are requisite for
agriculture and the rearing of cattle.  Like Greece, it is a noble
land which calls forth and rewards the energies of man, opening
up alike for restless adventure the way to distant lands and for
quiet exertion modes of peaceful gain at home.

But, while the Grecian peninsula is turned towards the east, the
Italian is turned towards the west.  As the coasts of Epirus and
Acarnania had but a subordinate importance in the case of Hellas,
so had the Apulian and Messapian coasts in that of Italy; and, while
the regions on which the historical development of Greece has been
mainly dependent--Attica and Macedonia--look to the east, Etruria,
Latium, and Campania look to the west.  In this way the two peninsulas,
so close neighbours and almost sisters, stand as it were averted
from each other.  Although the naked eye can discern from Otranto
the Acroceraunian mountains, the Italians and Hellenes came into
earlier and closer contact on every other pathway rather than on the
nearest across the Adriatic Sea, In their instance, as has happened
so often, the historical vocation of the nations was prefigured
in the relations of the ground which they occupied; the two great
stocks, on which the civilization of the ancient world grew, threw
their shadow as well as their seed, the one towards the east, the
other towards the west.


Italian History


We intend here to relate the history of Italy, not simply the history
of the city of Rome.  Although, in the formal sense of political
law, it was the civic community of Rome which gained the sovereignty
first of Italy and then of the world, such a view cannot be held
to express the higher and real meaning of history.  What has been
called the subjugation of Italy by the Romans appears rather,
when viewed in its true light, as the consolidation into an united
state of the whole Italian stock--a stock of which the Romans were
doubtless the most powerful branch, but still were only a branch.

The history of Italy falls into two main sections: (1) its internal
history down to its union under the leadership of the Latin stock,
and (2) the history of its sovereignty over the world.  Under the
first section, which will occupy the first two books, we shall have
to set forth the settlement of the Italian stock in the peninsula;
the imperilling of its national and political existence, and
its partial subjugation, by nations of other descent and older
civilization, Greeks and Etruscans; the revolt of the Italians
against the strangers, and the annihilation or subjection of the
latter; finally, the struggles between the two chief Italian stocks,
the Latins and the Samnites, for the hegemony of the peninsula, and
the victory of the Latins at the end of the fourth century before
the birth of Christ--or of the fifth century of the city. The second
section opens with the Punic wars; it embraces the rapid extension
of the dominion of Rome up to and beyond the natural boundaries of
Italy, the long status quo of the imperial period, and the collapse
of the mighty empire.  These events will be narrated in the third
and following books.




Notes for Book I Chapter I


1.  The dates as hereafter inserted in the text are years of the
City (A.U.C.); those in the margin give the corresponding years
B.C.




CHAPTER II

The Earliest Migrations into Italy



Primitive Races of Italy


We have no information, not even a tradition, concerning the first
migration of the human race into Italy.  It was the universal
belief of antiquity that in Italy, as well as elsewhere, the first
population had sprung from the soil.  We leave it to the province
of the naturalist to decide the question of the origin of different
races, and of the influence of climate in producing their diversities.
In a historical point of view it is neither possible, nor is it of
any importance, to determine whether the oldest recorded population
of a country were autochthones or immigrants.  But it is incumbent
on the historical inquirer to bring to light the successive strata of
population in the country of which he treats, in order to trace,
from as remote an epoch as possible, the gradual progress of
civilization to more perfect forms, and the suppression of races
less capable of, or less advanced in, culture by nations of higher
standing.

Italy is singularly poor in memorials of the primitive period, and
presents in this respect a remarkable contrast to other fields of
civilization.  The results of German archaeological research lead
to the conclusion that in England, France, the North of Germany
and Scandinavia, before the settlement of the Indo-Germans in those
lands, there must have dwelt, or rather roamed, a people, perhaps
of Mongolian race, gaining their subsistence by hunting and fishing,
making their implements of stone, clay, or bones, adorning themselves
with the teeth of animals and with amber, but unacquainted with
agriculture and the use of the metals.  In India, in like manner, the
Indo-Germanic settlers were preceded by a dark-coloured population
less susceptible of culture.  But in Italy we neither meet with
fragments of a supplanted nation, such as the Finns and Lapps in the
Celto-Germanic domain and the black tribes in the Indian mountains;
nor have any remains of an extinct primitive people been hitherto
pointed out there, such as appear to be revealed in the peculiarly-formed
skeletons, the places of assembling, and the burial mounds of what
is called the stone-period of Germanic antiquity.  Nothing has
hitherto been brought to light to warrant the supposition that
mankind existed in Italy at a period anterior to the knowledge of
agriculture and of the smelting of the metals; and if the human
race ever within the bounds of Italy really occupied the level of
that primitive stage of culture which we are accustomed to call
the savage state, every trace of such a fact has disappeared.

Individual tribes, or in other words, races or stocks, are the
constituent elements of the earliest history.  Among the stocks which
in later times we meet with in Italy, the immigration of some, of
the Hellenes for instance, and the denationalization of others,
such as the Bruttians and the inhabitants of the Sabine territory,
are historically attested.  Setting aside both these classes, there
remain a number of stocks whose wanderings can no longer be traced
by means of historical testimony, but only by a priori inference,
and whose nationality cannot be shown to have undergone any radical
change from external causes.  To establish the national individuality
of these is the first aim of our inquiry.  In such an inquiry,
had we nothing to fall back upon but the chaotic mass of names of
tribes and the confusion of what professes to be historical tradition,
the task might well be abandoned as hopeless.  The conventionally
received tradition, which assumes the name of history, is composed
of a few serviceable notices by civilized travellers, and a mass
of mostly worthless legends, which have usually been combined with
little discrimination of the true character either of legend or
of history.  But there is another source of tradition to which we
may resort, and which yields information fragmentary but authentic;
we mean the indigenous languages of the stocks settled in Italy from
time immemorial.  These languages, which have grown with the growth
of the peoples themselves, have had the stamp of their process
of growth impressed upon them too deeply to be wholly effaced
by subsequent civilization.  One only of the Italian languages is
known to us completely; but the remains which have been preserved
of several of the others are sufficient to afford a basis for
historical inquiry regarding the existence, and the degrees, of
family relationship among the several languages and peoples.

In this way philological research teaches us to distinguish three
primitive Italian stocks, the Iapygian, the Etruscan, and that
which we shall call the Italian.  The last is divided into two main
branches,--the Latin branch, and that to which the dialects of the
Umbri, Marsi, Volsci, and Samnites belong.


Iapygians


As to the Iapygian stock, we have but little information.  At the
south-eastern extremity of Italy, in the Messapian or Calabrian
peninsula, inscriptions in a peculiar extinct language(1) have been
found in considerable numbers; undoubtedly remains of the dialect
of the Iapygians, who are very distinctly pronounced by tradition
also to have been different from the Latin and Samnite stocks.
Statements deserving of credit and numerous indications lead to the
conclusion that the same language and the same stock were indigenous
also in Apulia.  What we at present know of this people suffices
to show clearly that they were distinct from the other Italians,
but does not suffice to determine what position should be assigned
to them and to their language in the history of the human race.  The
inscriptions have not yet been, and it is scarcely to be expected
that they ever will be, deciphered.  The genitive forms, -aihi- and
-ihi-, corresponding to the Sanscrit -asya- and the Greek --oio--,
appear to indicate that the dialect belongs to the Indo-Germanic
family.  Other indications, such as the use of the aspirated consonants
and the avoiding of the letters m and t as terminal sounds, show
that this Iapygian dialect was essentially different from the
Italian and corresponded in some respects to the Greek dialects.
The supposition of an especially close affinity between the Iapygian
nation and the Hellenes finds further support in the frequent
occurrence of the names of Greek divinities in the inscriptions,
and in the surprising facility with which that people became
Hellenized, presenting a striking contrast to the shyness in this
respect of the other Italian nations.  Apulia, which in the time
of Timaeus (400) was still described as a barbarous land, had in
the sixth century of the city become a province thoroughly Greek,
although no direct colonization from Greece had taken place;
and even among the ruder stock of the Messapii there are various
indications of a similar tendency.  With the recognition of such
a general family relationship or peculiar affinity between the
Iapygians and Hellenes (a recognition, however, which by no means
goes so far as to warrant our taking the Iapygian language to be a
rude dialect of Greek), investigation must rest content, at least
in the meantime, until some more precise and better assured result
be attainable.(2)  The lack of information, however, is not much
felt; for this race, already on the decline at the period when
our history begins, comes before us only when it is giving way and
disappearing.  The character of the Iapygian people, little capable
of resistance, easily merging into other nationalities, agrees
well with the hypothesis, to which their geographical position adds
probability, that they were the oldest immigrants or the historical
autochthones of Italy.  There can be no doubt that all the primitive
migrations of nations took place by land; especially such as were
directed towards Italy, the coast of which was accessible by sea
only to skilful sailors and on that account was still in Homer's
time wholly unknown to the Hellenes.  But if the earlier settlers
came over the Apennines, then, as the geologist infers the origin
of mountains from their stratification, the historical inquirer
may hazard the conjecture that the stocks pushed furthest towards
the south were the oldest inhabitants of Italy; and it is just
at its extreme south-eastern verge that we meet with the Iapygian
nation.


Italians


The middle of the peninsula was inhabited, as far back as trustworthy
tradition reaches, by two peoples or rather two branches of the
same people, whose position in the Indo-Germanic family admits of
being determined with greater precision than that of the Iapygian
nation.  We may with propriety call this people the Italian, since
upon it rests the historical significance of the peninsula.  It is
divided into the two branch-stocks of the Latins and the Umbrians;
the latter including their southern offshoots, the Marsians and
Samnites, and the colonies sent forth by the Samnites in historical
times.  The philological analysis of the idioms of these stocks
has shown that they together constitute a link in the Indo-Germanic
chain of languages, and that the epoch in which they still formed
an unity is a comparatively late one.  In their system of sounds
there appears the peculiar spirant -f, in the use of which they
agree with the Etruscans, but decidedly differ from all Hellenic
and Helleno-barbaric races as well as from the Sanscrit itself.
The aspirates, again, which are retained by the Greeks throughout,
and the harsher of them also by the Etruscans, were originally
foreign to the Italians, and are represented among them by one of
their elements--either by the media, or by the breathing alone -f
or -h.  The finer spirants, -s, -w, -j, which the Greeks dispense
with as much as possible, have been retained in the Italian languages
almost unimpaired, and have been in some instances still further
developed.  The throwing back of the accent and the consequent
destruction of terminations are common to the Italians with some
Greek stocks and with the Etruscans; but among the Italians this
was done to a greater extent than among the former, and to a lesser
extent than among the latter.  The excessive disorder of the
terminations in the Umbrian certainly had no foundation in the
original spirit of the language, but was a corruption of later date,
which appeared in a similar although weaker tendency also at Rome.
Accordingly in the Italian languages short vowels are regularly
dropped in the final sound, long ones frequently: the concluding
consonants, on the other hand, have been tenaciously retained in
the Latin and still more so in the Samnite; while the Umbrian drops
even these.  In connection with this we find that the middle voice
has left but slight traces in the Italian languages, and a peculiar
passive formed by the addition of -r takes its place; and further
that the majority of the tenses are formed by composition with the
roots -es and -fu, while the richer terminational system of the
Greeks along with the augment enables them in great part to dispense
with auxiliary verbs.  While the Italian languages, like the Aeolic
dialect, gave up the dual, they retained universally the ablative
which the Greeks lost, and in great part also the locative.  The
rigorous logic of the Italians appears to have taken offence at
the splitting of the idea of plurality into that of duality and
of multitude; while they have continued with much precision to
express the relations of words by inflections.  A feature peculiarly
Italian, and unknown even to the Sanscrit, is the mode of imparting
a substantive character to the verb by gerunds and supines,--a
process carried out more completely here than in any other language.


Relation of the Italians to the Greeks


These examples selected from a great abundance of analogous phenomena
suffice to establish the individuality of the Italian stock as
distinguished from the other members of the Indo-Germanic family,
and at the same time show it to be linguistically the nearest
relative, as it is geographically the next neighbour, of the Greek.
The Greek and the Italian are brothers; the Celt, the German, and
the Slavonian are their cousins.  The essential unity of all the
Italian as of all the Greek dialects and stocks must have dawned
early and clearly on the consciousness of the two great nations
themselves; for we find in the Roman language a very ancient word
of enigmatical origin, -Graius-or -Graicus-, which is applied to
every Greek, and in like manner amongst the Greeks the analogous
appellation --Opikos-- which is applied to all the Latin and
Samnite stocks known to the Greeks in earlier times, but never to
the Iapygians or Etruscans.


Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites


Among the languages of the Italian stock, again, the Latin stands
in marked contrast with the Umbro-Samnite dialects.  It is true
that of these only two, the Umbrian and the Samnite or Oscan, are
in some degree known to us, and these even in a manner extremely
defective and uncertain.  Of the rest some, such as the Marsian
and the Volscian, have reached us in fragments too scanty to enable
us to form any conception of their individual peculiarities or to
classify the varieties of dialect themselves with certainty and
precision, while others, like the Sabine, have, with the exception
of a few traces preserved as dialectic peculiarities in provincial
Latin, completely disappeared.  A conjoint view, however, of the
facts of language and of history leaves no doubt that all these
dialects belonged to the Umbro-Samnite branch of the great Italian
stock, and that this branch, although much more closely related to
Latin than to Greek, was very decidedly distinct from the Latin.
In the pronoun and other cases frequently the Samnite and Umbrian
used -p where the Roman used -q, as -pis- for -quis-; just as languages
otherwise closely related are found to differ; for instance, -p
is peculiar to the Celtic in Brittany and Wales, -k to the Gaelic
and Erse.  Among the vowel sounds the diphthongs in Latin, and
in the northern dialects generally, appear very much destroyed,
whereas in the southern Italian dialects they have suffered little;
and connected with this is the fact, that in composition the Roman
weakens the radical vowel otherwise so strictly preserved,--a
modification which does not take place in the kindred group of
languages.  The genitive of words in -a is in this group as among
the Greeks -as, among the Romans in the matured language -ae;
that of words in -us is in the Samnite -eis, in the Umbrian -es,
among the Romans -ei; the locative disappeared more and more from
the language of the latter, while it continued in full use in the
other Italian dialects; the dative plural in -bus is extant only
in Latin.  The Umbro-Samnite infinitive in -um is foreign to the
Romans; while the Osco-Umbrian future formed from the root -es after
the Greek fashion (-her-est- like --leg-so--) has almost, perhaps
altogether, disappeared in Latin, and its place is supplied by
the optative of the simple verb or by analogous formations from
-fuo-(-amabo-).  In many of these instances, however--in the forms
of the cases, for example--the differences only exist in the two
languages when fully formed, while at the outset they coincide.  It
thus appears that, while the Italian language holds an independent
position by the side of the Greek, the Latin dialect within it
bears a relation to the Umbro-Samnite somewhat similar to that of
the Ionic to the Doric; and the differences of the Oscan and Umbrian
and kindred dialects may be compared with the differences between
the Dorism of Sicily and the Dorism of Sparta.

Each of these linguistic phenomena is the result and the attestation
of an historical event.  With perfect certainty they guide us to
the conclusion, that from the common cradle of peoples and languages
there issued a stock which embraced in common the ancestors of the
Greeks and the Italians; that from this, at a subsequent period,
the Italians branched off; and that these again divided into the
western and eastern stocks, while at a still later date the eastern
became subdivided into Umbrians and Oscans.

When and where these separations took place, language of course
cannot tell; and scarce may adventurous thought attempt to grope
its conjectural way along the course of those revolutions, the
earliest of which undoubtedly took place long before that migration
which brought the ancestors of the Italians across the Apennines.
On the other hand the comparison of languages, when conducted with
accuracy and caution, may give us an approximate idea of the degree
of culture which the people had reached when these separations took
place, and so furnish us with the beginnings of history, which is
nothing but the development of civilization.  For language, especially
in the period of its formation, is the true image and organ of the
degree of civilization attained; its archives preserve evidence of
the great revolutions in arts and in manners, and from its records
the future will not fail to draw information as to those times
regarding which the voice of direct tradition is dumb.


Indo-Germanic Culture


During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations which are now
separated still formed one stock speaking the same language, they
attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary
corresponding to it.  This vocabulary the several nations carried
along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a common
dowry and a foundation for further structures of their own.  In it
we find not merely the simplest terms denoting existence, actions,
perceptions, such as -sum-, -do-, -pater-, the original echo of the
impression which the external world made on the mind of man, but
also a number of words indicative of culture (not only as respects
their roots, but in a form stamped upon them by custom) which are
the common property of the Indo-Germanic family, and which cannot
be explained either on the principle of an uniform development
in the several languages, or on the supposition of their having
subsequently borrowed one from another.  In this way we possess
evidence of the development of pastoral life at that remote epoch
in the unalterably fixed names of domestic animals; the Sanscrit
-gaus- is the Latin -bos-, the Greek --bous--; Sanscrit -avis- is
the Latin -ovis-, Greek --ois--; Sanscrit -asvas-, Latin -equus-,
Greek --ippos--; Sanscrit -hansas-, Latin -anser-, Greek --chein--;
Sanscrit -atis-, Latin -anas-, Greek --neissa--; in like manner
-pecus-, -sus-, -porcus-, -taurus-, -canis-, are Sanscrit words.
Even at this remote period accordingly the stock, on which from the
days of Homer down to our own time the intellectual development of
mankind has been dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest
stage of civilization, the hunting and fishing epoch, and had
attained at least comparative fixity of abode.  On the other hand,
we have as yet no certain proofs of the existence of agriculture
at this period.  Language rather favours the negative view.  Of the
Latin-Greek names of grain none occurs in Sanscrit with the single
exception of --zea--, which philologically represents the Sanscrit
-yavas-, but denotes in the Indian barley, in Greek spelt.  It must
indeed be granted that this diversity in the names of cultivated
plants, which so strongly contrasts with the essential agreement in
the appellations of domestic animals, does not absolutely preclude
the supposition of a common original agriculture.  In the circumstances
of primitive times transport and acclimatizing are more difficult
in the case of plants than of animals; and the cultivation of rice
among the Indians, that of wheat and spelt among the Greeks and
Romans, and that of rye and oats among the Germans and Celts, may
all be traceable to a common system of primitive tillage.  On the
other hand the name of one cereal common to the Greeks and Indians
only proves, at the most, that before the separation of the stocks
they gathered and ate the grains of barley and spelt growing wild
in Mesopotamia,(3) not that they already cultivated grain.  While,
however, we reach no decisive result in this way, a further light
is thrown on the subject by our observing that a number of the most
important words bearing on this province of culture occur certainly
in Sanscrit, but all of them in a more general signification.
-Agras-among the Indians denotes a level surface in general; -kurnu-,
anything pounded; -aritram-, oar and ship; -venas-, that which is
pleasant in general, particularly a pleasant drink.  The words are
thus very ancient; but their more definite application to the field
(-ager-), to the grain to be ground (-granum-), to the implement
which furrows the soil as the ship furrows the surface of the sea
(-aratrum-), to the juice of the grape (-vinum-), had not yet taken
place when the earliest division of the stocks occurred, and it
is not to be wondered at that their subsequent applications came
to be in some instances very different, and that, for example, the
corn intended to be ground, as well as the mill for grinding it
(Gothic -quairinus-, Lithuanian -girnos-,(4)) received their names
from the Sanscrit -kurnu-.  We may accordingly assume it as probable,
that the primeval Indo-Germanic people were not yet acquainted with
agriculture, and as certain, that, if they were so, it played but
a very subordinate part in their economy; for had it at that time
held the place which it afterwards held among the Greeks and Romans,
it would have left a deeper impression upon the language.

On the other hand the building of houses and huts by the Indo-Germans
is attested by the Sanscrit -dam(as)-, Latin -domus-, Greek --domos--;
Sanscrit -vesas-, Latin -vicus-, Greek --oikos--; Sanscrit -dvaras-,
Latin -fores-, Greek --thura--; further, the building of oar-boats
by the names of the boat, Sanscrit -naus-, Latin -navis-, Greek
--naus--, and of the oar, Sanscrit -aritram-, Greek --eretmos--,
Latin -remus-, -tri-res-mis-; and the use of waggons and the breaking
in of animals for draught and transport by the Sanscrit -akshas-
(axle and cart), Latin -axis-, Greek --axon--, --am-axa--; Sanscrit
-iugam-, Latin -iugum-, Greek --zugon--.  The words that denote
clothing- Sanscrit -vastra-, Latin -vestis-, Greek --esthes--; as
well as those that denote sewing and spinning-Sanscrit -siv-, Latin
-suo-; Sanscrit -nah-, Latin -neo-, Greek --netho--, are alike
in all Indo-Germanic languages.  This cannot, however, be equally
affirmed of the higher art of weaving.(5)  The knowledge of the
use of fire in preparing food, and of salt for seasoning it, is a
primeval heritage of the Indo-Germanic nations; and the same may
be affirmed regarding the knowledge of the earliest metals employed
as implements or ornaments by man.  At least the names of copper
(-aes-) and silver (-argentum-), perhaps also of gold, are met with
in Sanscrit, and these names can scarcely have originated before
man had learned to separate and to utilize the ores; the Sanscrit
-asis-, Latin -ensis-, points in fact to the primeval use of metallic
weapons.

No less do we find extending back into those times the fundamental
ideas on which the development of all Indo-Germanic states ultimately
rests; the relative position of husband and wife, the arrangement
in clans, the priesthood of the father of the household and the
absence of a special sacerdotal class as well as of all distinctions
of caste in general, slavery as a legitimate institution, the days
of publicly dispensing justice at the new and full moon.  On the
other hand the positive organization of the body politic, the decision
of the questions between regal sovereignty and the sovereignty of
the community, between the hereditary privilege of royal and noble
houses and the unconditional legal equality of the citizens, belong
altogether to a later age.

Even the elements of science and religion show traces of a community
of origin.  The numbers are the same up to one hundred (Sanscrit
-satam-, -ekasatam-, Latin -centum-, Greek --e-katon--, Gothic
-hund-); and the moon receives her name in all languages from the
fact that men measure time by her (-mensis-).  The idea of Deity
itself (Sanscrit -devas-, Latin -deus-, Greek --theos--), and many
of the oldest conceptions of religion and of natural symbolism,
belong to the common inheritance of the nations.  The conception,
for example, of heaven as the father and of earth as the mother of
being, the festal expeditions of the gods who proceed from place
to place in their own chariots along carefully levelled paths,
the shadowy continuation of the soul's existence after death, are
fundamental ideas of the Indian as well as of the Greek and Roman
mythologies.  Several of the gods of the Ganges coincide even
in name with those worshipped on the Ilissus and the Tiber:--thus
the Uranus of the Greeks is the Varunas, their Zeus, Jovis pater,
Diespiter is the Djaus pita of the Vedas.  An unexpected light has
been thrown on various enigmatical forms in the Hellenic mythology
by recent researches regarding the earlier divinities of India.  The
hoary mysterious forms of the Erinnyes are no Hellenic invention;
they were immigrants along with the oldest settlers from the East.
The divine greyhound Sarama, who guards for the Lord of heaven the
golden herd of stars and sunbeams and collects for him the nourishing
rain-clouds as the cows of heaven to the milking, and who moreover
faithfully conducts the pious dead into the world of the blessed,
becomes in the hands of the Greeks the son of Sarama, Sarameyas,
or Hermeias; and the enigmatical Hellenic story of the stealing
of the cattle of Helios, which is beyond doubt connected with the
Roman legend about Cacus, is now seen to be a last echo (with the
meaning no longer understood) of that old fanciful and significant
conception of nature.


Graeco-Italian Culture


The task, however, of determining the degree of culture which
the Indo-Germans had attained before the separation of the stocks
properly belongs to the general history of the ancient world.  It
is on the other hand the special task of Italian history to ascertain,
so far as it is possible, what was the state of the Graeco-Italian
nation when the Hellenes and the Italians parted.  Nor is this
a superfluous labour; we reach by means of it the stage at which
Italian civilization commenced, the starting-point of the national
history.


Agriculture


While it is probable that the Indo-Germans led a pastoral life
and were acquainted with the cereals, if at all, only in their wild
state, all indications point to the conclusion that the Graeco-Italians
were a grain-cultivating, perhaps even a vine-cultivating, people.
The evidence of this is not simply the knowledge of agriculture
itself common to both, for this does not upon the whole warrant
the inference of community of origin in the peoples who may exhibit
it.  An historical connection between the Indo-Germanic agriculture
and that of the Chinese, Aramaean, and Egyptian stocks can hardly be
disputed; and yet these stocks are either alien to the Indo-Germans,
or at any rate became separated from them at a time when agriculture
was certainly still unknown.  The truth is, that the more advanced
races in ancient times were, as at the present day, constantly
exchanging the implements and the plants employed in cultivation;
and when the annals of China refer the origin of Chinese agriculture
to the introduction of five species of grain that took place under
a particular king in a particular year, the story undoubtedly depicts
correctly, at least in a general way, the relations subsisting in
the earliest epochs of civilization.  A common knowledge of agriculture,
like a common knowledge of the alphabet, of war chariots, of purple,
and other implements and ornaments, far more frequently warrants the
inference of an ancient intercourse between nations than of their
original unity.  But as regards the Greeks and Italians, whose
mutual relations are comparatively well known, the hypothesis that
agriculture as well as writing and coinage first came to Italy by
means of the Hellenes may be characterized as wholly inadmissible.
On the other hand, the existence of a most intimate connection
between the agriculture of the one country and that of the other is
attested by their possessing in common all the oldest expressions
relating to it; -ager-, --agros--; -aro aratrum-, --aroo arotron--;
-ligo-alongside of --lachaino--; -hortus-, --chortos--; -hordeum-,
--krithei--; -milium-, --melinei--; -rapa-, --raphanis-; -malva-,
--malachei--; -vinum-, --oinos--.  It is likewise attested by
the agreement of Greek and Italian agriculture in the form of the
plough, which appears of the same shape on the old Attic and the old
Roman monuments; in the choice of the most ancient kinds of grain,
millet, barley, spelt; in the custom of cutting the ears with the
sickle and having them trodden out by cattle on the smooth-beaten
threshing-floor; lastly, in the mode of preparing the grain -puls-
--poltos--, -pinso- --ptisso--, -mola- --mulei--; for baking was
of more recent origin, and on that account dough or pap was always
used in the Roman ritual instead of bread.  That the culture of the
vine too in Italy was anterior to the earliest Greek immigration,
is shown by the appellation "wine-land" (--Oinotria--), which
appears to reach back to the oldest visits of Greek voyagers.  It
would thus appear that the transition from pastoral life to agriculture,
or, to speak more correctly, the combination of agriculture with the
earlier pastoral economy, must have taken place after the Indians
had departed from the common cradle of the nations, but before the
Hellenes and Italians dissolved their ancient communion.  Moreover,
at the time when agriculture originated, the Hellenes and Italians
appear to have been united as one national whole not merely with
each other, but with other members of the great family; at least,
it is a fact, that the most important of those terms of cultivation,
while they are foreign to the Asiatic members of the Indo-Germanic
family, are used by the Romans and Greeks in common with the Celtic
as well as the Germanic, Slavonic, and Lithuanian stocks.(6)

The distinction between the common inheritance of the nations and
their own subsequent acquisitions in manners and in language is
still far from having been wrought out in all the variety of its
details and gradations.  The investigation of languages with this
view has scarcely begun, and history still in the main derives its
representation of primitive times, not from the rich mine of language,
but from what must be called for the most part the rubbish-heap of
tradition.  For the present, therefore, it must suffice to indicate
the differences between the culture of the Indo-Germanic family in
its oldest undivided form, and the culture of that epoch when the
Graeco-Italians still lived together.  The task of discriminating
the results of culture which are common to the European members of
this family, but foreign to its Asiatic members, from those which
the several European groups, such as the Graeco-Italian and the
Germano-Slavonic, have wrought out for themselves, can only be
accomplished, if at all, after greater progress has been made in
linguistic and historical inquiries.  But there can be no doubt
that, with the Graeco-Italians as with all other nations, agriculture
became and in the mind of the people remained the germ and core of
their national and of their private life.  The house and the fixed
hearth, which the husbandman constructs instead of the light hut
and shifting fireplace of the shepherd, are represented in the
spiritual domain and idealized in the goddess Vesta or --Estia--
almost the only divinity not Indo-Germanic yet from the first
common to both nations.  One of the oldest legends of the Italian
stock ascribes to king Italus, or, as the Italians must have
pronounced the word, Vitalus or Vitulus, the introduction of the
change from a pastoral to an agricultural life, and shrewdly connects
with it the original Italian legislation.  We have simply another
version of the same belief in the legend of the Samnite stock which
makes the ox the leader of their primitive colonies, and in the
oldest Latin national names which designate the people as reapers
(-Siculi-, perhaps also -Sicani-), or as field-labourers (-Opsci-).
It is one of the characteristic incongruities which attach to the
so-called legend of the origin of Rome, that it represents a pastoral
and hunting people as founding a city.  Legend and faith, laws and
manners, among the Italians as among the Hellenes are throughout
associated with agriculture.(7)

Cultivation of the soil cannot be conceived without some measurement
of it, however rude.  Accordingly, the measures of surface and the
mode of setting off boundaries rest, like agriculture itself, on
a  like basis among both peoples.  The Oscan and Umbrian -vorsus-
of one hundred square feet corresponds exactly with the Greek
--plethron--.  The principle of marking off boundaries was also
the same.  The land-measurer adjusted his position with reference
to one of the cardinal points, and proceeded to draw in the first
place two lines, one from north to south, and another from east to
west, his station being at their point of intersection (-templum-,
--temenos-- from --temno--); then he drew at certain fixed distances
lines parallel to these, and by this process produced a series of
rectangular pieces of ground, the corners of which were marked by
boundary posts (-termini-, in Sicilian inscriptions -termones-,
usually --oroi--).  This mode of defining boundaries, which is
probably also Etruscan but is hardly of Etruscan origin, we find
among the Romans, Umbrians, Samnites, and also in very ancient
records of the Tarentine Heracleots, who are as little likely to have
borrowed it from the Italians as the Italians from the Tarentines:
it is an ancient possession common to all.  A peculiar characteristic
of the Romans, on the other hand, was their rigid carrying out of
the principle of the square; even where the sea or a river formed
a natural boundary, they did not accept it, but wound up their
allocation of the land with the last complete square.


Other Features of Their Economy


It is not solely in agriculture, however, that the especially close
relationship of the Greeks and Italians appears; it is unmistakably
manifest also in the other provinces of man's earliest activity.
The Greek house, as described by Homer, differs little from the
model which was always adhered to in Italy.  The essential portion,
which originally formed the whole interior accommodation of the
Latin house, was the -atrium-, that is, the "blackened" chamber,
with the household altar, the marriage bed, the table for meals,
and the hearth; and precisely similar is the Homeric --megaron--,
with its household altar and hearth and smoke-begrimed roof.  We
cannot say the same of ship-building.  The boat with oars was an
old common possession of the Indo-Germans; but the advance to the
use of sailing vessels can scarcely be considered to have taken
place during the Graeco-Italian period, for we find no nautical
terms originally common to the Greeks and Italians except such
as are also general among the Indo-Germanic family.  On the other
hand the primitive Italian custom of the husbandmen having common
midday meals, the origin of which the myth connects with the
introduction of agriculture, is compared by Aristotle with the
Cretan Syssitia; and the earliest Romans further agreed with the
Cretans and Laconians in taking their meals not, as was afterwards
the custom among both peoples, in a reclining, but in a sitting
posture.  The mode of kindling fire by the friction of two pieces
of wood of different kinds is common to all peoples; but it is
certainly no mere accident that the Greeks and Italians agree in the
appellations which they give to the two portions of the touch-wood,
"the rubber" (--trypanon--, -terebra-), and the "under-layer"
(--storeus--, --eschara--, -tabula-, probably from -tendere-,
--tetamai--).  In like manner the dress of the two peoples
is essentially identical, for the -tunica- quite corresponds with
the --chiton--, and the -toga- is nothing but a fuller --himation--.
Even as regards weapons of war, liable as they are to frequent change,
the two peoples have this much at least in common, that their two
principal weapons of attack were the javelin and the bow,--a fact
which is clearly expressed, as far as Rome is concerned, in the
earliest names for warriors (-pilumni--arquites-),(8) and is in
keeping with the oldest mode of fighting which was not properly
adapted to a close struggle.  Thus, in the language and manners of
Greeks and Italians, all that relates to the material foundations
of human existence may be traced back to the same primary elements;
the oldest problems which the world proposes to man had been
jointly solved by the two peoples at a time when they still formed
one nation.


Difference of the Italian and the Greek Character


It was otherwise in the mental domain.  The great problem of man--how
to live in conscious harmony with himself, with his neighbour, and
with the whole to which he belongs--admits of as many solutions
as there are provinces in our Father's kingdom; and it is in this,
and not in the material sphere, that individuals and nations display
their divergences of character.  The exciting causes which gave
rise to this intrinsic contrast must have been in the Graeco-Italian
period as yet wanting; it was not until the Hellenes and Italians
had separated that that deep-seated diversity of mental character
became manifest, the effects of which continue to the present day.
The family and the state, religion and art, received in Italy and
in Greece respectively a development so peculiar and so thoroughly
national, that the common basis, on which in these respects also
the two peoples rested, has been so overgrown as to be almost
concealed from our view.  That Hellenic character, which sacrificed
the whole to its individual elements, the nation to the township,
and the township to the citizen; which sought its ideal of life in
the beautiful and the good, and, but too often, in the enjoyment of
idleness; which attained its political development by intensifying
the original individuality of the several cantons, and at length
produced the internal dissolution of even local authority; which in
its view of religion first invested the gods with human attributes,
and then denied their existence; which allowed full play to the
limbs in the sports of the naked youth, and gave free scope to
thought in all its grandeur and in all its awfulness;--and that
Roman character, which solemnly bound the son to reverence the
father, the citizen to reverence the ruler, and all to reverence the
gods; which required nothing and honoured nothing but the useful
act, and compelled every citizen to fill up every moment of his
brief life with unceasing work; which made it a duty even in the
boy modestly to cover the body; which deemed every one a bad citizen
who wished to be different from his fellows; which regarded the
state as all in all, and a desire for the state's extension as the
only aspiration not liable to censure,--who can in thought trace
back these sharply-marked contrasts to that original unity which
embraced them both, prepared the way for their development, and at
length produced them?  It would be foolish presumption to desire
to lift this veil; we shall only endeavour to indicate in brief
outline the beginnings of Italian nationality and its connections
with an earlier period--to direct the guesses of the discerning
reader rather than to express them.


The Family and the State


All that may be called the patriarchal element in the state rested
in Greece and Italy on the same foundations.  Under this head comes
especially the moral and decorous arrangement of social life,(9)
which enjoined monogamy on the husband and visited with heavy
penalties the infidelity of the wife, and which recognized the
equality of the sexes and the sanctity of marriage in the high
position which it assigned to the mother within the domestic circle.
On the other hand the rigorous development of the marital and still
more of the paternal authority, regardless of the natural rights of
persons as such, was a feature foreign to the Greeks and peculiarly
Italian; it was in Italy alone that moral subjection became
transformed into legal slavery.  In the same way the principle of
the slave being completely destitute of legal rights--a principle
involved in the very nature of slavery--was maintained by the Romans
with merciless rigour and carried out to all its consequences;
whereas among the Greeks alleviations of its harshness were early
introduced both in practice and in legislation, the marriage of
slaves, for example, being recognized as a legal relation.

On the household was based the clan, that is, the community of the
descendants of the same progenitor; and out of the clan among the
Greeks as well as the Italians arose the state.  But while under
the weaker political development of Greece the clan-bond maintained
itself as a corporate power in contradistinction to that of
the state far even into historical times, the state in Italy made
its appearance at once complete, in so far as in presence of its
authority the clans were quite neutralized and it exhibited an
association not of clans, but of citizens.  Conversely, again, the
individual attained, in presence of the clan, an inward independence
and freedom of personal development far earlier and more completely
in Greece than in Rome--a fact reflected with great clearness in
the Greek and Roman proper names, which, originally similar, came
to assume very different forms.  In the more ancient Greek names
the name of the clan was very frequently added in an adjective form
to that of the individual; while, conversely, Roman scholars were
aware that their ancestors bore originally only one name, the later
-praenomen-.  But while in Greece the adjectival clan-name early
disappeared, it became, among the Italians generally and not merely
among the Romans, the principal name; and the distinctive individual
name, the -praenomen-, became subordinate.  It seems as if the small
and ever diminishing number and the meaningless character of the
Italian, and particularly of the Roman, individual names, compared
with the luxuriant and poetical fulness of those of the Greeks,
were intended to illustrate the truth that it was characteristic
of the one nation to reduce all to a level, of the other to promote
the free development of personality.  The association in communities
of families under patriarchal chiefs, which we may conceive to
have prevailed in the Graeco-Italian period, may appear different
enough from the later forms of Italian and Hellenic polities; yet
it must have already contained the germs out of which the future
laws of both nations were moulded.  The "laws of king Italus,"
which were still applied in the time of Aristotle, may denote the
institutions essentially common to both.  These laws must have
provided for the maintenance of peace and the execution of justice
within the community, for military organization and martial law
in reference to its external relations, for its government by a
patriarchal chief, for a council of elders, for assemblies of the
freemen capable of bearing arms, and for some sort of constitution.
Judicial procedure (-crimen-, --krinein--, expiation (-poena-,
--poinei--), retaliation (-talio-, --talao--, --tleinai--, are
Graeco-Italian ideas.  The stern law of debt, by which the debtor
was directly responsible with his person for the repayment of what
he had received, is common to the Italians, for example, with
the Tarentine Heracleots.  The fundamental ideas of the Roman
constitution--a king, a senate, and an assembly entitled simply to
ratify or to reject the proposals which the king and senate should
submit to it--are scarcely anywhere expressed so distinctly as
in Aristotle's account of the earlier constitution of Crete.  The
germs of larger state-confederacies in the political fraternizing
or even amalgamation of several previously independent stocks
(symmachy, synoikismos) are in like manner common to both nations.
The more stress is to be laid on this fact of the common foundations
of Hellenic and Italian polity, that it is not found to extend to
the other Indo-Germanic stocks; the organization of the Germanic
community, for example, by no means starts, like that of the Greeks
and Romans, from an elective monarchy.  But how different the
polities were that were constructed on this common basis in Italy
and Greece, and how completely the whole course of their political
development belongs to each as its distinctive property,(10) it
will be the business of the sequel to show.


Religion


It is the same in religion.  In Italy, as in Hellas, there lies
at the foundation of the popular faith the same common treasure
of symbolic and allegorical views of nature: on this rests that
general analogy between the Roman and the Greek world of gods and
of spirits, which was to become of so much importance in later
stages of development.  In many of their particular conceptions
also,--in the already mentioned forms of Zeus-Diovis and Hestia-Vesta,
in the idea of the holy space (--temenos--, -templum-), in various
offerings and ceremonies--the two modes of worship do not by mere
accident coincide.  Yet in Hellas, as in Italy, they assumed a shape
so thoroughly national and peculiar, that but little even of the
ancient common inheritance was preserved in a recognizable form, and
that little was for the most part misunderstood or not understood
at all.  It could not be otherwise; for, just as in the peoples
themselves the great contrasts, which during the Graeco-Italian
period had lain side by side undeveloped, were after their division
distinctly evolved, so in their religion also a separation took
place between the idea and the image, which had hitherto been but
one whole in the soul.  Those old tillers of the ground, when the
clouds were driving along the sky, probably expressed to themselves
the phenomenon by saying that the hound of the gods was driving
together the startled cows of the herd.  The Greek forgot that the
cows were really the clouds, and converted the son of the hound
of the gods--a form devised merely for the particular purposes of
that conception--into the adroit messenger of the gods ready for
every service.  When the thunder rolled among the mountains, he
saw Zeus brandishing his bolts on Olympus; when the blue sky again
smiled upon him, he gazed into the bright eye of Athenaea, the
daughter of Zeus; and so powerful over him was the influence of the
forms which he had thus created, that he soon saw nothing in them
but human beings invested and illumined with the splendour of
nature's power, and freely formed and transformed them according to
the laws of beauty.  It was in another fashion, but not less strongly,
that the deeply implanted religious feeling of the Italian race
manifested itself; it held firmly by the idea and did not suffer
the form to obscure it.  As the Greek, when he sacrificed, raised
his eyes to heaven, so the Roman veiled his head; for the prayer
of the former was contemplation, that of the latter reflection.
Throughout the whole of nature he adored the spiritual and the
universal.  To everything existing, to the man and to the tree, to
the state and to the store-room, was assigned a spirit which came
into being with it and perished along with it, the counterpart of
the natural phenomenon in the spiritual domain; to the man the male
Genius, to the woman the female Juno, to the boundary Terminus,
to the forest Silvanus, to the circling year Vertumnus, and so on
to every object after its kind.  In occupations the very steps of
the process were spiritualized: thus, for example, in the prayer
for the husbandman there was invoked the spirit of fallowing, of
ploughing, of furrowing, sowing, covering-in, harrowing, and so
forth down to that of the in-bringing, up-storing, and opening of
the granaries.  In like manner marriage, birth, and every other
natural event were endowed with a sacred life.  The larger the
sphere embraced in the abstraction, the higher rose the god and the
reverence paid by man.  Thus Jupiter and Juno are the abstractions
of manhood and womanhood; Dea Dia or Ceres, the creative power;
Minerva, the power of memory; Dea Bona, or among the Samnites
Dea Cupra, the good deity.  While to the Greek everything assumed
a concrete and corporeal shape, the Roman could only make use of
abstract, completely transparent formulae; and while the Greek for
the most part threw aside the old legendary treasures of primitive
times, because they embodied the idea in too transparent a form, the
Roman could still less retain them, because the sacred conceptions
seemed to him dimmed even by the lightest veil of allegory.  Not
a trace has been preserved among the Romans even of the oldest and
most generally diffused myths, such as that current among the Indians,
the Greeks, and even the Semites, regarding a great flood and its
survivor, the common ancestor of the present human race.  Their
gods could not marry and beget children, like those of the Hellenes;
they did not walk about unseen among mortals; and they needed no
nectar.  But that they, nevertheless, in their spirituality--which
only appears tame to dull apprehension--gained a powerful hold on
men's minds, a hold more powerful perhaps than that of the gods of
Hellas created after the image of man, would be attested, even if
history were silent on the subject, by the Roman designation of faith
(the word and the idea alike foreign to the Hellenes), -Religlo-,
that is to say, "that which binds." As India and Iran developed from
one and the same inherited store, the former, the richly varied
forms of its sacred epics, the latter, the abstractions of the
Zend-Avesta; so in the Greek mythology the person is predominant,
in the Roman the idea, in the former freedom, in the latter necessity.


Art


Lastly, what holds good of real life is true also of its counterfeit
in jest and play, which everywhere, and especially in the earliest
period of full and simple existence, do not exclude the serious,
but veil it.  The simplest elements of art are in Latium and Hellas
quite the same; the decorous armed dance, the "leap" (-triumpus-,
--thriambos--, --di-thyrambos--); the masquerade of the "full people"
(--satyroi--, -satura-), who, wrapped in the skins of sheep and
goats, wound up the festival with their jokes; lastly, the pipe,
which with suitable strains accompanied and regulated the solemn
as well as the merry dance.  Nowhere, perhaps, does the especially
close relationship of the Hellenes and Italians come to light so
clearly as here; and yet in no other direction did the two nations
manifest greater divergence as they became developed.  The training
of youth remained in Latium strictly confined to the narrow limits
of domestic education; in Greece the yearning after a varied
yet harmonious training of mind and body created the sciences of
Gymnastics and Paideia, which were cherished by the nation and by
individuals as their highest good.  Latium in the poverty of its
artistic development stands almost on a level with uncivilized
peoples; Hellas developed with incredible rapidity out of its
religious conceptions the myth and the worshipped idol, and out of
these that marvellous world of poetry and sculpture, the like of
which history has not again to show.  In Latium no other influences
were powerful in public and private life but prudence, riches, and
strength; it was reserved for the Hellenes to feel the blissful
ascendency of beauty, to minister to the fair boy-friend with an
enthusiasm half sensuous, half ideal, and to reanimate their lost
courage with the war-songs of the divine singer.

Thus the two nations in which the civilization of antiquity
culminated stand side by side, as different in development as they
were in origin identical.  The points in which the Hellenes excel
the Italians are more universally intelligible and reflect a more
brilliant lustre; but the deep feeling in each individual that he
was only a part of the community, a rare devotedness and power of
self-sacrifice for the common weal, an earnest faith in its own
gods, form the rich treasure of the Italian nation.  Both nations
underwent a one-sided, and therefore each a complete, development;
it is only a pitiful narrow-mindedness that will object to the
Athenian that he did not know how to mould his state like the Fabii
and the Valerii, or to the Roman that he did not learn to carve
like Pheidias and to write like Aristophanes.  It was in fact the
most peculiar and the best feature in the character of the Greek
people, that rendered it impossible for them to advance from national
to political unity without at the same time exchanging their polity
for despotism.  The ideal world of beauty was all in all to the
Greeks, and compensated them to some extent for what they wanted
in reality.  Wherever in Hellas a tendency towards national union
appeared, it was based not on elements directly political, but
on games and art: the contests at Olympia, the poems of Homer,
the tragedies of Euripides, were the only bonds that held Hellas
together.  Resolutely, on the other hand, the Italian surrendered
his own personal will for the sake of freedom, and learned to obey
his father that he might know how to obey the state.  Amidst this
subjection individual development might be marred, and the germs
of fairest promise in man might be arrested in the bud; the Italian
gained in their stead a feeling of fatherland and of patriotism
such as the Greek never knew, and alone among all the civilized
nations of antiquity succeeded in working out national unity in
connection with a constitution based on self-government--a national
unity, which at last placed in his hands the mastery not only over
the divided Hellenic stock, but over the whole known world.




Notes for Book I Chapter II


1.  Some of the epitaphs may give us an idea of its sound;
as -theotoras artahiaihi bennarrihino- and -dasiihonas platorrihi
bollihi-.

2.  The hypothesis has been put forward of an affinity between
the Iapygian language and the modern Albanian; based, however, on
points of linguistic comparison that are but little satisfactory
in any case, and least of all where a fact of such importance is
involved.  Should this relationship be confirmed, and should the
Albanians on the other hand--a race also Indo-Germanic and on a par
with the Hellenic and Italian races--be really a remnant of that
Hellene-barbaric nationality traces of which occur throughout all
Greece and especially in the northern provinces, the nation that
preceded the Hellenes would be demonstrated as identical with
that which preceded the Italians.  Still the inference would not
immediately follow that the Iapygian immigration to Italy had taken
place across the Adriatic Sea.

3.  Barley, wheat, and spelt were found growing together in a wild
state on the right bank of the Euphrates, north-west from Anah
(Alph.  de Candolle, Geographie botanique raisonnee, ii. p. 934).
The growth of barley and wheat in a wild state in Mesopotamia had
already been mentioned by the Babylonian historian Berosus (ap.
Georg. Syncell.  p. 50 Bonn.).

4.  Scotch -quern-.  Mr. Robertson.

5.  If the Latin -vieo-, -vimen-, belong to the same root as our
weave (German -weben-) and kindred words, the word must still, when
the Greeks and Italians separated, have had the general meaning "to
plait," and it cannot have been until a later period, and probably
in different regions independently of each other, that it assumed
that of "weaving." The cultivation of flax, old as it is, does not
reach back to this period, for the Indians, though well acquainted
with the flax-plant, up to the present day use it only for the
preparation of linseed-oil.  Hemp probably became known to the
Italians at a still later period than flax; at least -cannabis-
looks quite like a borrowed word of later date.

6.  Thus -aro-, -aratrum- reappear in the old German -aran-
(to plough, dialectically -eren-), -erida-, in Slavonian -orati-,
-oradlo-, in Lithuanian -arti-, -arimnas-, in Celtic -ar-, -aradar-.
Thus alongside of -ligo- stands our rake (German -rechen-), of
-hortus- our garden (German -garten-), of -mola- our mill (German
-muhle-, Slavonic -mlyn-, Lithuanian -malunas-, Celtic -malin-).

With all these facts before us, we cannot allow that there ever was
a time when the Greeks in all Hellenic cantons subsisted by purely
pastoral husbandry.  If it was the possession of cattle, and not of
land, which in Greece as in Italy formed the basis and the standard
of all private property, the reason of this was not that agriculture
was of later introduction, but that it was at first conducted on
the system of joint possession.  Of course a purely agricultural
economy cannot have existed anywhere before the separation of
the stocks; on the contrary, pastoral husbandry was (more or less
according to locality) combined with it to an extent relatively
greater than was the case in later times.

7.  Nothing is more significant in this respect than the close connection
of agriculture with marriage and the foundation of cities during
the earliest epoch of culture.  Thus the gods in Italy immediately
concerned with marriage are Ceres and (or?) Tellus (Plutarch,
Romul. 22; Servius on Aen. iv. 166; Rossbach, Rom. Ehe, 257, 301),
in Greece Demeter (Plutarch, Conjug. Praec. init.); in old Greek
formulas the procreation of children is called --arotos--(ii.
The Family and the State, note); indeed the oldest Roman formof
marriage, -confarreatio-, derives its name and its ceremony from
the cultivation of corn.  The use of the plough in the founding of
cities is well known.

8.  Among the oldest names of weapons on both sides scarcely any
can be shown to be certainly related; -lancea-, although doubtless
connected with -logchei-, is, as a Roman word, recent, and perhaps
borrowed from the Germans or Spaniards.

9.  Even in details this agreement appears; e.g., in the designation of
lawful wedlock as "marriage concluded for the obtaining of lawful
children" (--gauos epi paidon gneision aroto--, -matrimonium
liberorum quaerendorum causa-).

10.  Only we must, of course, not forget that like pre-existing
conditions lead everywhere to like institutions.  For instance,
nothing is more certain than that the Roman plebeians were a growth
originating within the Roman commonwealth, and yet they everywhere
find their counterpart where a body of -metoeci- has arisen alongside
of a body of burgesses.  As a matter of course, chance also plays
in such cases its provoking game.




CHAPTER III

The Settlements of the Latins



Indo-Germanic Migrations


The home of the Indo-Germanic stock lay in the western portion of
central Asia; from this it spread partly in a south-eastern direction
over India, partly in a northwestern over Europe.  It is difficult
to determine the primitive seat of the Indo-Germans more precisely:
it must, however, at any rate have been inland and remote from
the sea, as there is no name for the sea common to the Asiatic and
European branches.  Many indications point more particularly to the
regions of the Euphrates; so that, singularly enough, the primitive
seats of the two most important civilized stocks, --the Indo-Germanic
and the Aramaean,--almost coincide as regards locality.  This
circumstance gives support to the hypothesis that these races also
were originally connected, although, if there was such a connection,
it certainly must have been anterior to all traceable development
of culture and language.  We cannot define more exactly their original
locality, nor are we able to accompany the individual stocks in the
course of their migrations.  The European branch probably lingered
in Persia and Armenia for some considerable time after the departure
of the Indians; for, according to all appearance, that region has
been the cradle of agriculture and of the culture of the vine.
Barley, spelt, and wheat are indigenous in Mesopotamia, and the
vine tothe south of the Caucasus and of the Caspian Sea: there too
the plum, the walnut, and others of the more easily transplanted
fruit trees are native.  It is worthy of notice that the name for
the sea is common to most of the European stocks--Latins, Celts,
Germans, and Slavonians; they must probably therefore before their
separation have reached the coast of the Black Sea or of the Caspian.
By what route from those regions the Italians reached the chain
of the Alps, and where in particular they were settled while still
united with the Hellenes alone, are questions that can only be
answered when the problem is solved by what route--whether from
Asia Minor or from the regions of the Danube--the Hellenes arrived
in Greece.  It may at all events be regarded as certain that the
Italians, like the Indians, migrated into their peninsula from the
north.(1)

The advance of the Umbro-Sabellian stock along the central
mountain-ridge of Italy, in a direction from north to south, can
still be clearly traced; indeed its last phases belong to purely
historical times.  Less is known regarding the route which the Latin
migration followed.  Probably it proceeded in a similar direction
along the west coast, long, in all likelihood, before the first
Sabellian stocks began to move.  The stream only overflows the heights
when the lower grounds are already occupied; and only through the
supposition that there were Latin stocks already settled on the coast
are we able to explain why  the Sabellians should have contented
themselves with the rougher mountain districts, from which they
afterwards issued and intruded, wherever it was possible, between
the Latin tribes.


Extension of the Latins in Italy


It is well known that a Latin stock inhabited the country from
the left bank of the Tiber to the Volscian mountains; but these
mountains themselves, which appear to have been neglected on occasion
of the first immigration when the plains of Latium and Campania
still lay open to the settlers, were, as the Volscian inscriptions
show, occupied by a stock more nearly related to the Sabellians
than to the Latins.  On the other hand, Latins probably dwelt in
Campania before the Greek and Samnite immigrations; for the Italian
names Novla or Nola (newtown), Campani Capua, Volturnus (from
-volvere-, like -Iuturna- from -iuvare-), Opsci (labourers), are
demonstrably older than the Samnite invasion, and show that, at the
time when Cumae was founded by the Greeks, an Italian and probably
Latin stock, the Ausones, were in possession of Campania.  The
primitive inhabitants of the districts which the Lucani and Bruttii
subsequently occupied, the Itali proper (inhabitants of the land of
oxen), are associated by the best observers not with the Iapygian,
but with the Italian stock; and there is nothing to hinder our regarding
them as belonging to its Latin branch, although the Hellenizing of
these districts which took place even before the commencement of
the political development of Italy, and their subsequent inundation
by Samnite hordes, have in this instance totally obliterated the
traces of the older nationality.  Very ancient legends bring the
similarly extinct stock of the Siculi into relation with Rome.  For
instance, the earliest historian of Italy Antiochus of Syracuse
tells us that a man named Sikelos came a fugitive from Rome to
Morges king of Italia (i. e. the Bruttian peninsula).  Such stories
appear to be founded on the identity of race recognized by the
narrators as subsisting between the Siculi (of whom there were
some still in Italy in the time of Thucydides) and the Latins.  The
striking affinity of certain dialectic peculiarities of Sicilian
Greek with the Latin is probably to be explained rather by the old
commercial connections subsisting between Rome and the Sicilian
Greeks, than by the ancient identity of the languages of the Siculi
and the Romans.  According to all indications, however, not only
Latium, but probably also the Campanian and Lucanian districts,
the Italia proper between the gulfs of Tarentum and Laus, and the
eastern half of Sicily were in primitive times inhabited by different
branches of the Latin nation.

Destinies very dissimilar awaited these different branches.  Those
settled in Sicily, Magna Graecia, and Campania came into contact
with the Greeks at a period when they were unable to offer resistance
to their civilization, and were either completely Hellenized, as in
the case of Sicily, or at any rate so weakened that they succumbed
without marked resistance to the fresh energy of the Sabine tribes.
In this way the Siculi, the Itali and Morgetes, and the Ausonians
never came to play an active part in the history of the peninsula.
It was otherwise with Latium, where no Greek colonies were
founded, and the inhabitants after hard struggles were successful
in maintaining their ground against the Sabines as well as against
their northern neighbours.  Let us cast a glance at this district,
which was destined more than any other to influence the fortunes
of the ancient world.


Latium


The plain of Latium must have been in primeval times the scene of
the grandest conflicts of nature, while the slowly formative agency
of water deposited, and the eruptions of mighty volcanoes upheaved,
the successive strata of that soil on which was to be decided the
question to what people the sovereignty of the world should belong.
Latium is bounded on the east by the mountains of the Sabines and
Aequi which form part of the Apennines; and on the south by the
Volscian range rising to the height of 4000 feet, which is separated
from the main chain of the Apennines by the ancient territory of
the Hernici, the tableland of the Sacco (Trerus, a tributary of the
Liris), and stretching in a westerly direction terminates in the
promontory of Terracina.  On the west its boundary is the sea, which
on this part of the coast forms but few and indifferent harbours.
On the north it imperceptibly merges into the broad hill-land
of Etruria.  The region thus enclosed forms a magnificent plain
traversed by the Tiber, the "mountain-stream" which issues from
the Umbrian, and by the Anio, which rises in the Sabine mountains.
Hills here and there emerge, like islands, from the plain; some
of them steep limestone cliffs, such as that of Soracte in the
north-east, and that of the Circeian promontory on the south-west,
as well as the similar though lower height of the Janiculum near
Rome; others volcanic elevations, whose extinct craters had become
converted into lakes which in some cases still exist; the most
important of these is the Alban range, which, free on every side,
stands forth from the plain between the Volscian chain and the
river Tiber.

Here settled the stock which is known to history under the name
of the Latins, or, as they were subsequently called by way of
distinction from the Latin communities beyond the bounds of Latium,
the "Old Latins" (-prisci Latini-).  But the territory occupied
by them, the district of Latium, was only a small portion of the
central plain of Italy.  All the country north of the Tiber was to
the Latins a foreign and even hostile domain, with whose inhabitants
no lasting alliance, no public peace, was possible, and such armistices
as were concluded appear always to have been for a limited period.
The Tiber formed the northern boundary from early times; and neither
in history nor in the more reliable traditions has any reminiscence
been preserved as to the period or occasion of the establishment
of a frontier line so important in its results.  We find, at the
time when our history begins, the flat and marshy tracts to the
south of the Alban range in the hands of Umbro-Sabellian stocks, the
Rutuli and Volsci; Ardea and Velitrae are no longer in the number
of originally Latin towns.  Only the central portion of that region
between the Tiber, the spurs of the Apennines, the Alban Mount, and
the sea--a district of about 700 square miles, not much larger than
the present canton of Zurich--was Latium proper,  the "plain,"(2)
as it appears to the eye of the observer from the heights of Monte
Cavo.  Though the country is a plain, it is not monotonously flat.
With the exception of the sea-beach which is sandy and formed in
part by the accumulations of the Tiber, the level is everywhere
broken by hills of tufa moderate in height though often somewhat
steep, and by deep fissures of the ground.  These alternating
elevations and depressions of the surface lead to the formation
of lakes in winter; and the exhalations proceeding in the heat of
summer from the putrescent organic substances which they contain
engender that noxious fever-laden atmosphere, which in ancient
times tainted the district as it taints it at the present day.  It
is a mistake to suppose that these miasmata were first occasioned
by the neglect of cultivation, which was the result of the misgovernment
in the last century of the Republic and under the Papacy.  Their
cause lies rather in the want of natural outlets for the water;
and it operates now as it operated thousands of years ago.  It is
true, however, that the malaria may to a certain extent be banished
by thoroughness of tillage--a fact which has not yet received its
full explanation, but may be partly accounted for by the circumstance
that the working of the surface accelerates the drying up of the
stagnant waters.  It must always remain a remarkable phenomenon,
that a dense agricultural population should have arisen in regions
where no healthy population can at present subsist, and where the
traveller is unwilling to tarry even for a single night, such as
the plain of Latium and the lowlands of Sybaris and Metapontum.
We must bear in mind that man in a low stage of civilization
has generally a quicker perception of what nature demands, and a
greater readiness in conforming to her requirements; perhaps, also,
a more elastic physical constitution, which accommodates itself
more readily to the conditions of the soil where he dwells.  In
Sardinia agriculture is prosecuted under physical conditions
precisely similar even at the present day; the pestilential atmosphere
exists, but the peasant avoids its injurious effects by caution in
reference to clothing, food, and the choice of his hours of labour.
In fact, nothing is so certain a protection against the "aria cattiva"
as wearing the fleece of animals and keeping a blazing fire; which
explains why the Roman countryman went constantly clothed in heavy
woollen stuffs, and never allowed the fire on his hearth to be
extinguished.  In other respects the district must have appeared
attractive to an immigrant agricultural people: the soil is easily
laboured with mattock and hoe and is productive even without
being manured, although, tried by an Italian standard, it does not
yield any extraordinary return: wheat yields on an average about
five-fold.(3) Good water is not abundant; the higher and more
sacred on that account was the esteem in which every fresh spring
was held by the inhabitants.


Latin Settlements


No accounts have been preserved of the mode in which the settlements
of the Latins took place in the district which has since borne
their name; and we are left to gather what we can almost exclusively
from a posteriori inference regarding them.  Some knowledge may,
however, in this way be gained, or at any rate some conjectures
that wear an aspect of probability.


Clan-Villages


The Roman territory was divided in the earliest times into a number
of clan-districts, which were subsequently employed in the formation
of the earliest "rural wards" (-tribus rusticae-).  Tradition
informs us as to the -tribus Claudia-, that it originated from
the settlement of the Claudian clansmen on the Anio; and that the
other districts of the earliest division originated in a similar
manner is indicated quite as certainly by their names.  These
names are not, like those of the districts added at a later period,
derived from the localities, but are formed without exception from
the names of clans; and the clans who thus gave their names to
the wards of the original Roman territory are, so far as they have
not become entirely extinct (as is the case with the -Camilii-,
-Galerii-, -Lemonii-, -Pollii-, -Pupinii-, -Voltinii-), the very
oldest patrician families of Rome, the -Aemilii-, -Cornelii-, -Fabii-,
-Horatii-, -Menenii-, -Papirii-, -Romilii-, -Sergii-, -Voturii-.
It is worthy of remark, that not one of these clans can be shown to
have taken up its settlement in Rome only at a later epoch.  Every
Italian, and doubtless also every Hellenic, canton must, like the
Roman, have been divided into a number of groups associated at once
by locality and by clanship; such a clan-settlement is the "house"
(--oikia--) of the Greeks, from which very frequently the --komai--
and --demoi-- originated among them, like the tribus in Rome.  The
corresponding Italian terms "house" -vicus-or "district" (-pagus-,
from -pangere-) indicate, in like manner, the joint settlement
of the members of a clan, and thence come by an easily understood
transition to signify in common use hamlet or village.  As each
household had its own portion of land, so the clan-household or
village had a clan-land belonging to it, which, as will afterwards
be shown, was managed up to a comparatively late period after the
analogy of household--land, that is, on the system of joint-possession.
Whether it was in Latium itself that the clan-households became
developed into clan-villages, or whether the Latins were already
associated in clans when they immigrated into Latium, are questions
which we are just as little able to answer as we are to determine
what was the form assumed by the management on joint account,
which such an arrangement required,(4) or how far, in addition to
the original ground of common ancestry, the clan may have been based
on the incorporation or co-ordination from without of individuals
not related to it by blood.


Cantons


These clanships, however, were from the beginning regarded not as
independent societies, but as the integral parts of a political
community (-civitas-, -populus-).  This first presents itself as an
aggregate of a number of clan-villages of the same stock, language,
and manners, bound to mutual observance of law and mutual legal
redress and to united action in aggression and defence.  A fixed
local centre was quite as necessary in the case of such a canton
as in that of a clanship; but as the members of the clan, or in
other words the constituent elements of the canton, dwelt in their
villages, the centre of the canton cannot have been a place of joint
settlement in the strict sense--a town.  It must, on the contrary,
have been simply a place of common assembly, containing the seat of
justice and the common sanctuary of the canton, where the members
of the canton met every eighth day for purposes of intercourse and
amusement, and where, in case of war, they obtained for themselves
and their cattle a safer shelter from the invading enemy than in
the villages: in ordinary circumstances this place of meeting was
not at all or but scantily inhabited.  Ancient places of refuge,
of a kind quite similar, may still be recognized at the present
day on the tops of several of the hills in the highlands of east
Switzerland.  Such a place was called in Italy "height" (-capitolium-,
like --akra--, the mountain-top), or "stronghold" (-arx-, from
-arcere-); it was not a town at first, but it became the nucleus of
one, as houses naturally gathered round the stronghold and were
afterwards surrounded with the "ring" (-urbs-, connected with
-urvus-, -rurvus-, perhaps also with -orbis-).  The stronghold and
town were visibly distinguished from each other by the number of
gates, of which the stronghold has as few as possible, and the town
many, the former ordinarily but one, the latter at least three.
Such fortresses were the bases of that cantonal constitution which
prevailed in Italy anterior to the existence of towns: a constitution,
the nature of which may still be recognized with some degree of
clearness in those provinces of Italy which did not until a late
period reach, and in some cases have not yet fully reached, the
stage of aggregation in towns, such as the land of the Marsi and
the small cantons of the Abruzzi.  The country if the Aequiculi,
who even in the imperial period dwelt not in towns, but in numerous
open hamlets, presents a number of ancient ring-walls, which,
regarded as "deserted towns" with their solitary temples, excited
the astonishment of the Roman as well as of modern archaeologists,
who have fancied that they could find accommodation there, the
former for their "primitive inhabitants" (-aborigines-), the latter
for their Pelasgians.  We shall certainly be nearer the truth in
recognizing these structures not as walled towns, but as places of
refuge for the inhabitants of the district, such as were doubtless
found in more ancient times over all Italy, although constructed
in less artistic style.  It was natural that at the period when the
stocks that had made the transition to urban life were surrounding
their towns with stone walls, those districts whose inhabitants
continued to dwell in open hamlets should replace the earthen ramparts
and palisades of their strongholds with buildings of stone.  When
peace came to be securely established throughout the land and
such fortresses were no longer needed, these places of refuge were
abandoned and soon became a riddle to after generations.


Localities of the Oldest Cantons


These cantons accordingly, having their rendezvous in some
stronghold, and including a certain number of clanships, form the
primitive political unities with which Italian history begins.  At
what period, and to what extent, such cantons were formed in Latium,
cannot be determined with precision; nor is it a matter of special
historical interest The isolated Alban range, that natural stronghold
of Latium, which offered to settlers the most wholesome air, the
freshest springs, and the most secure position, would doubtless be
first occupied by the new comers.


Alba


Here accordingly, along the narrow plateau above Palazzuola, between
the Alban lake (-Lago di Castello-) and the Alban mount (-Monte
Cavo-), extended the town of Alba, which was universally regarded
as the primitive seat of the Latin stock, and the mother-city of
Rome as well as of all the other Old Latin communities; here, too,
on the slopes lay the very ancient Latin canton-centres of Lanuvium,
Aricia, and Tusculum.  Here are found some of those primitive works
of masonry, which usually mark the beginnings of civilization and
seem to stand as a witness to posterity that in reality Pallas
Athena when she does appear, comes into the world full grown.  Such
is the escarpment of the wall of rock below Alba in the direction
of Palazzuola, whereby the place, which is rendered naturally
inaccessible by the steep declivities of Monte Cavo on the south,
is rendered equally unapproachable on the north, and only the two
narrow approaches on the east and west, which are capable of being
easily defended, are left open for traffic.  Such, above all, is
the large subterranean tunnel cut--so that a man can stand upright
within it--through the hard wall of lava, 6000 feet thick, by which
the waters of the lake formed in the old crater of the Alban Mount
were reduced to their present level and a considerable space was
gained for tillage on the mountain itself.

The summits of the last offshoots of the Sabine range form natural
fastnesses of the Latin plain; and the canton-strongholds there
gave rise at a later period to the considerable towns of Tibur and
Praeneste.  Labici too, Gabii, and Nomentum in the plain between the
Alban and Sabine hills and the Tiber, Rome on the Tiber, Laurentum
and Lavinium on the coast, were all more or less ancient centres
of Latin colonization, not to speak of many others less famous and
in some cases almost forgotten.


The Latin League


All these cantons were in primitive times politically sovereign,
and each of them was governed by its prince with the co-operation
of the council of elders and the assembly of warriors.  Nevertheless
the feeling of fellowship based on community of descent and of
language not only pervaded the whole of them, but manifested itself
in an important religious and political institution--the perpetual
league of the collective Latin cantons.  The presidency belonged
originally, according to the universal Italian as well as Hellenic
usage, to that canton within whose bounds lay the meeting-place of
the league; in this case it was the canton of Alba, which, as we
have said, was generally regarded as the oldest and most eminent
of the Latin cantons.  The communities entitled to participate in
the league were in the beginning thirty--a number which we find
occurring with singular frequency as the sum of the constituent
parts of a commonwealth in Greece and Italy.  What cantons originally
made up the number of the thirty old Latin communities or, as with
reference to the metropolitan rights of Alba they are also called,
the thirty Alban colonies, tradition has not recorded, and we can
no longer ascertain.  The rendezvous of this union was, like the
Pamboeotia and the Panionia among the similar confederacies of the
Greeks, the "Latin festival" (-feriae Latinae-), at which, on the
"Mount of Alba" (-Mons Albanus-, -Monte Cavo-), upon a day annually
appointed by the chief magistrate for the purpose, an ox was
offered in sacrifice by the assembled Latin stock to the "Latin god"
(-Jupiter Latiaris-).  Each community taking part in the ceremony
had to contribute to the sacrificial feast its fixed proportion
of cattle, milk, and cheese, and to receive in return a portion of
the roasted victim.  These usages continued down to a late period,
and are well known: respecting the more important legal bearings
of this association we can do little else than institute conjectures.

From the most ancient times there were held, in connection with
the religious festival on the Mount of Alba, assemblies of the
representatives of the several communities at the neighbouring
Latin seat of justice at the source of the Ferentina (near Marino).
Indeed such a confederacy cannot be conceived to exist without
having a certain power of superintendence over the associated body,
and without possessing a system of law binding on all.  Tradition
records, and we may well believe, that the league exercised
jurisdiction in reference to violations of federal law, and that
it could in such cases pronounce even sentence of death.  The later
communion of legal rights and, in some sense, of marriage that
subsisted among the Latin communities may perhaps be regarded as
an integral part of the primitive law of the league, so that any
Latin man could beget lawful children with any Latin woman and
acquire landed property and carry on trade in any part of Latium.
The league may have also provided a federal tribunal of arbitration
for the mutual disputes of the cantons; on the other hand, there
is no proof that the league imposed any limitation on the sovereign
right of each community to make peace or war.  In like manner
there can be no doubt that the constitution of the league implied
the possibility of its waging defensive or even aggressive war
in its own name; in which case, of course, it would be necessary
to have a federal commander-in-chief.  But we have no reason to
suppose that in such an event each community was compelled by law
to furnish a contingent for the army, or that, conversely, any
one was interdicted from undertaking a war on its own account even
against a member of the league.  There are, however, indications
that during the Latin festival, just as was the case during the
festivals of the Hellenic leagues, "a truce of God" was observed
throughout all Latium;(5) and probably on that occasion even tribes
at feud granted safe-conducts to each other.

It is still less in our power to define the range of the privileges
of the presiding canton; only we may safely affirm that there is
no reason for recognizing in the Alban presidency a real political
hegemony over Latium, and that possibly, nay probably, it had no
more significance in Latium than the honorary presidency of Elis
had in Greece.(6)  On the whole it is probable that the extent of
this Latin league, and the amount of its jurisdiction, were somewhat
unsettled and fluctuating; yet it remained throughout not an
accidental aggregate of various communities more or less alien to
each other, but the just and necessary expression of the relationship
of the Latin stock.  The Latin league may not have at all times
included all Latin communities, but it never at any rate granted
the privilege of membership to any that were not Latin.  Its
counterpart in Greece was not the Delphic Amphictyony, but the
Boeotian or Aetolian confederacy.

These very general outlines must suffice: any attempt to draw the
lines more sharply would only falsify the picture.  The manifold play
of mutual attraction and repulsion among those earliest political
atoms, the cantons, passed away in Latium without witnesses competent
to tell the tale.  We must now be content to realise the one great
abiding fact that they possessed a common centre, to which they
did not sacrifice their individual independence, but by means of
which they cherished and increased the feeling of their belonging
collectively to the same nation.  By such a common possession the
way was prepared for their advance from that cantonal individuality,
with which the history of every people necessarily begins, to the
national union with which the history of every people ends or at
any rate ought to end.




Notes for Book I Chapter III


1.  I. II. Italians

2.  Like -latus- (side) and --platus-- (flat); it denotes therefore
the flat country in contrast to the Sabine mountain-land, just
as Campania, the "plain," forms the contrast to Samnium.  Latus,
formerly -stlatus-, has no connection with Latium.

3.  A French statist, Dureau de la Malle (-Econ. Pol. des Romains-,
ii. 226), compares with the Roman Campagna the district of Limagne
in Auvergne, which is likewise a wide, much intersected, and uneven
plain, with a superficial soil of decomposed lava and ashes--the
remains of extinct volcanoes.  The population, at least 2500
to the square league, is one of the densest to be found in purely
agricultural districts: property is subdivided to an extraordinary
extent.  Tillage is carried on almost entirely by manual labour,
with spade, hoe, or mattock; only in exceptional cases a light
plough is substituted drawn by two cows, the wife of the peasant
not unfrequently taking the place of one of them in the yoke.  The
team serves at once to furnish milk and to till the land.  They
have two harvests in the year, corn and vegetables; there is no
fallow.  The average yearly rent for an arpent of arable land is
100 francs.  If instead Of such an arrangement this same land were
to be divided among six or seven large landholders, and a system
of management by stewards and day labourers were to supersede the
husbandry of the small proprietors, in a hundred years the Limagne
would doubtless be as waste, forsaken, and miserable as the Campagna
di Roma is at the present day.

4.  In Slavonia, where the patriarchal economy is retained up to
the present day, the whole family, often to the number of fifty
or even a hundred persons, remains together in the same house under
the orders of the house-father (Goszpodar) chosen by the whole
family for life.  The property of the household, which consists
chiefly in cattle, is administered by the house-father; the
surplus is distributed according to the family-branches.  Private
acquisitions by industry and trade remain separate property.
Instances of quitting the household occur, in the case even of men,
e. g. by marrying into a stranger household (Csaplovies, -Slavonien-,
i. 106, 179).  --Under such circumstances, which are probably
not very widely different from the earliest Roman conditions, the
household approximates in character to the community.

5.  The Latin festival is expressly called "armistice" (-indutiae-,
Macrob. Sat. i. 16; --ekecheipiai--, Dionys. iv. 49); and a war
was not allowed to be begun during its continuance (Macrob. l. c.)

6.  The assertion often made in ancient and modern times, that
Alba once ruled over Latium under the forms of a symmachy, nowhere
finds on closer investigation sufficient support.  All history
begins not with the union, but with the disunion of a nation; and
it is very improbable that the problem of the union of Latium, which
Rome finally solved after some centuries of conflict, should have
been already solved at an earlier period by Alba.  It deserves to
be remarked too that Rome never asserted in the capacity of heiress
of Alba any claims of sovereignty proper over the Latin communities,
but contented herself with an honorary presidency; which no doubt,
when it became combined with material power, afforded a handle for
her pretensions of hegemony.  Testimonies, strictly so called, can
scarcely be adduced on such a question; and least of all do such
passages as Festus -v.  praetor-, p. 241, and Dionys. iii. 10,
suffice to stamp Alba as a Latin Athens.




CHAPTER IV

The Beginnings of Rome



Ramnes


About fourteen miles up from the mouth of the river Tiber hills of
moderate elevation rise on both banks of the stream, higher on the
right, lower on the left bank. With the latter group there has been
closely associated for at least two thousand five hundred years the
name of the Romans. We are unable, of course, to tell how or when
that name arose; this much only is certain, that in the oldest
form of it known to us the inhabitants of the canton are called not
Romans, but Ramnians (Ramnes); and this shifting of sound, which
frequently occurs in the older period of a language, but fell very
early into abeyance in Latin,(1) is an expressive testimony to the
immemorial antiquity of the name. Its derivation cannot be given with
certainty; possibly "Ramnes" may mean "the people on the stream."


Tities, Luceres


But they were not the only dwellers on the hills by the bank
of the Tiber. In the earliest division of the burgesses of Rome a
trace has been preserved of the fact that that body arose out of
the amalgamation of three cantons once probably independent, the
Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, into a single commonwealth--in other
words, out of such a  --synoikismos-- as that from which Athens
arose in Attica.(2)  The great antiquity of this threefold division
of the community(3) is perhaps best evinced by the fact that the
Romans, in matters especially of constitutional law, regularly
used the forms -tribuere- ("to divide into three") and -tribus-
("a third") in the general sense of "to divide" and "a part," and
the latter expression (-tribus-), like our "quarter," early lost
its original signification of number. After the union each of these
three communities--once separate, but now forming subdivisions of
a single community--still possessed its third of the common domain,
and had its proportional representation in the burgess-force and
in the council of the elders.  In ritual also, the number divisible
by three of the members of almost all the oldest colleges--of the
Vestal Virgins, the Salii, the Arval Brethren, the Luperci, the
Augurs-- probably had reference to that three-fold partition. These
three elements into which the primitive body of burgesses in Rome
was divided have had theories of the most extravagant absurdity
engrafted upon them. The irrational opinion that the Roman nation
was a mongrel people finds its support in that division, and its
advocates have striven by various means to represent the three
great Italian races as elements entering into the composition of
the primitive Rome, and to transform a people which has exhibited
in language, polity, and religion, a pure and national development
such as few have equalled, into a confused aggregate of Etruscan
and Sabine, Hellenic and, forsooth! even Pelasgian fragments.

Setting aside self-contradictory and unfounded hypotheses, we may
sum up in a few words all that can be said respecting the nationality
of the component elements of the primitive Roman commonwealth.
That the Ramnians were a Latin stock cannot be doubted, for they
gave their name to the new Roman commonwealth and therefore must have
substantially determined the nationality of the united community.
Respecting the origin of the Luceres nothing can be affirmed, except
that there is no difficulty in the way of our assigning them, like
the Ramnians, to the Latin stock. The second of these communities,
on the other hand, is with one consent derived from Sabina; and
this view can at least be traced to a tradition preserved in the
Titian brotherhood, which represented that priestly college as
having been instituted, on occasion of the Tities being admitted
into the collective community, for the preservation of their
distinctive Sabine ritual. It may be, therefore, that at a period
very remote, when the Latin and Sabellian stocks were beyond question
far less sharply contrasted in language, manners, and customs than
were the Roman and the Samnite of a later age, a Sabellian community
entered into a Latin canton-union; and, as in the older and more
credible traditions without exception the Tities take precedence
of the Ramnians, it is probable that the intruding Tities compelled
the older Ramnians to accept the  --synoikismos--.  A mixture
of different nationalities certainly therefore took place; but
it hardly exercised an influence greater than the migration, for
example, which occurred some centuries afterwards of the Sabine
Attus Clauzus or Appius Claudius and his clansmen and clients to
Rome.  The earlier admission of the Tities among the Ramnians does
not entitle us to class the community among mongrel peoples any
more than does that subsequent reception of the Claudii among the
Romans. With the exception, perhaps, of isolated national institutions
handed down in connection with ritual, the existence of Sabellian
elements can nowhere be pointed out in Rome; and the Latin
language in particular furnishes absolutely no support to any such
hypothesis.(4)  It would in fact be more than surprising, if the
Latin nation should have had its nationality in any sensible degree
affected by the insertion of a single community from a stock so
very closely related to it; and, besides, it must not be forgotten
that at the time when the Tides settled beside the Ramnians, Latin
nationality rested on Latium as its basis, and not on Rome. The new
tripartite Roman commonwealth was, notwithstanding some incidental
elements which were originally Sabellian, just what the community
of the Ramnians had previously been--a portion of the Latin nation.


Rome the Emporium of Latium


Long, in all probability, before an urban settlement arose on the
Tiber, these Ramnians, Tities, and Luceres, at first separate,
afterwards united, had their stronghold on the Roman hills, and
tilled their fields from the surrounding villages. The "wolf-festival"
(Lupercalia) which the gens of the Quinctii celebrated on the
Palatine hill, was probably a tradition from these primitive times--a
festival of husbandmen and shepherds, which more than any other
preserved the homely pastimes of patriarchal simplicity, and,
singularly enough, maintained itself longer than all the other
heathen festivals in Christian Rome,


Character of Its Site


From these settlements the later Rome arose. The founding of a city
in the strict sense, such as the legend assumes, is of course to
be reckoned altogether out of the question: Rome was not built in
a day.  But the serious consideration of the historian may well be
directed to the inquiry, in what way Rome can have so early attained
the prominent political position which it held in Latium--so
different from what the physical character of the locality would
have led us to anticipate.  The site of Rome is less healthy and
less fertile than that of most of the old Latin towns. Neither the
vine nor the fig succeed well in the immediate environs, and there
is a want of springs yielding a good supply of water; for neither
the otherwise excellent fountain of the Camenae before the Porta
Capena, nor the Capitoline well, afterwards enclosed within the
Tullianum, furnish it in any abundance. Another disadvantage arises
from the frequency with which the river overflows its banks. Its
very slight fall renders it unable to carry off the water, which
during the rainy season descends in large quantities from the
mountains, with sufficient rapidity to the sea, and in consequence
it floods the low-lying lands and the valleys that open between the
hills, and converts them into swamps. For a settler the locality
was anything but attractive. In antiquity itself an opinion was
expressed that the first body of immigrant cultivators could scarce
have spontaneously resorted in search of a suitable settlement to
that unhealthy and unfruitful spot in a region otherwise so highly
favoured, and that it must have been necessity, or rather some
special motive, which led to the establishment of a city there.
Even the legend betrays its sense of the strangeness of the fact:
the story of the foundation of Rome by refugees from Alba under
the leadership of the sons of an Alban prince, Romulus and Remus,
is nothing but a naive attempt of primitive quasi-history to explain
the singular circumstance of the place having arisen on a site so
unfavourable, and to connect at the same time the origin of Rome
with the general metropolis of Latium. Such tales, which profess
to be historical but are merely improvised explanations of no very
ingenious character, it is the first duty of history to dismiss; but
it may perhaps be allowed to go a step further, and after weighing
the special relations of the locality to propose a positive conjecture
not regarding the way in which the place originated, but regarding
the circumstances which occasioned its rapid and surprising prosperity
and led to its occupying its peculiar position in Latium.


Earliest Limits of the Roman Territory


Let us notice first of all the earliest boundaries of the Roman
territory. Towards the east the towns of Antemnae, Fidenae, Caenina,
and Gabii lie in the immediate neighbourhood, some of them not five
miles distant from the Servian ring-wall; and the boundary of the
canton must have been in the close vicinity of the city gates.
On the south we find at a distance of fourteen miles the powerful
communities of Tusculum and Alba; and the Roman territory appears
not to have extended in this direction beyond the -Fossa Cluilia-,
five miles from Rome. In like manner, towards the south-west, the
boundary betwixt Rome and Lavinium was at the sixth milestone.
While in a landward direction the Roman canton was thus everywhere
confined within the narrowest possible limits, from the earliest
times, on the other hand, it extended without hindrance on both
banks of the Tiber towards the sea. Between Rome and the coast there
occurs no locality that is mentioned as an ancient canton-centre,
and no trace of any ancient canton-boundary. The legend indeed,
which has its definite explanation of the origin of everything,
professes to tell us that the Roman possessions on the right bank of
the Tiber, the "seven hamlets" (-septem pagi-), and the important
salt-works at its mouth, were taken by king Romulus from the Veientes,
and that king Ancus fortified on the right bank the -tete de pont-,
the "mount of Janus" (-Janiculum-), and founded on the left the
Roman Peiraeus, the seaport at the river's "mouth" (-Ostia-). But
in fact we have evidence more trustworthy than that of legend, that
the possessions on the Etruscan bank of the Tiber must have belonged
to the original territory of Rome; for in this very quarter, at
the fourth milestone on the later road to the port, lay the grove
of the creative goddess (-Dea Dia-), the primitive chief seat of
the Arval festival and Arval brotherhood of Rome. Indeed from time
immemorial the clan of the Romilii, once the chief probably of all
the Roman clans, was settled in this very quarter; the Janiculum
formed a part of the city itself, and Ostia was a burgess colony
or, in other words, a suburb.


The Tiber and Its Traffic


This cannot have been the result of mere accident. The Tiber was
the natural highway for the traffic of Latium; and its mouth, on
a coast scantily provided with harbours, became necessarily the
anchorage of seafarers. Moreover, the Tiber formed from very ancient
times the frontier defence of the Latin stock against their northern
neighbours.  There was no place better fitted for an emporium of the
Latin river and sea traffic, and for a maritime frontier fortress
of Latium, than Rome. It combined the advantages of a strong position
and of immediate vicinity to the river; it commanded both banks of
the stream down to its mouth; it was so situated as to be equally
convenient for the river navigator descending the Tiber or the
Anio, and for the seafarer with vessels of so moderate a size as
those which were then used; and it afforded greater protection from
pirates than places situated immediately on the coast. That Rome
was indebted, if not for its origin, at any rate for its importance,
to these commercial and strategical advantages of its position,
there are accordingly numerous further indications, which are
of very different weight from the statements of quasi-historical
romances. Thence arose its very ancient relations with Caere, which
was to Etruria what Rome was to Latium, and accordingly became Rome's
most intimate neighbour and commercial ally. Thence arose the unusual
importance of the bridge over the Tiber, and of bridge-building
generally in the Roman commonwealth. Thence came the galley in the
city arms; thence, too, the very ancient Roman port-duties on the
exports and imports of Ostia, which were from the first levied only
on what was to be exposed for sale (-promercale-), not on what was
for the shipper's own use (-usuarium-), and which were therefore
in reality a tax upon commerce.  Thence, to anticipate, the
comparatively early occurrence in Rome of coined money, and of
commercial treaties with transmarine states. In this sense, then,
certainly Rome may have been, as the legend assumes, a creation
rather than a growth, and the youngest rather than the oldest among
the Latin cities. Beyond doubt the country was already in some
degree cultivated, and the Alban range as well as various other
heights of the Campagna were occupied by strongholds, when the Latin
frontier emporium arose on the Tiber. Whether it was a resolution
of the Latin confederacy, or the clear-sighted genius of some
unknown founder, or the natural development of traffic, that called
the city of Rome into being, it is vain even to surmise.


Early Urban Character of Rome


But in connection with this view of the position of Rome as the
emporium of Latium another observation suggests itself. At the time
when history begins to dawn on us, Rome appears, in contradistinction
to the league of the Latin communities, as a compact urban unity.
The Latin habit of dwelling in open villages, and of using the
common stronghold only for festivals and assemblies or in case of
special need, was subjected to restriction at a far earlier period,
probably, in the canton of Rome than anywhere else in Latium. The
Roman did not cease to manage his farm in person, or to regard it
as his proper home; but the unwholesome atmosphere of the Campagna
could not but induce him to take up his abode as much as possible
on the more airy and salubrious city hills; and by the side of the
cultivators of the soil there must have been a numerous non-agricultural
population, partly foreigners, partly native, settled there from
very early times.  This to some extent accounts for the dense
population of the old Roman territory, which may be estimated at
the utmost at 115 square miles, partly of marshy or sandy soil, and
which, even under the earliest constitution of the city, furnished
a force of 3300 freemen; so that it must have numbered at least
10,000 free inhabitants. But further, every one acquainted with
the Romans and their history is aware that it is their urban and
mercantile character which forms the basis of whatever is peculiar
in their public and private life, and that the distinction between
them and the other Latins and Italians in general is pre-eminently
the distinction between citizen and rustic. Rome, indeed, was
not a mercantile city like Corinth or Carthage; for Latium was an
essentially agricultural region, and Rome was in the first instance,
and continued to be, pre-eminently a Latin city. But the distinction
between Rome and the mass of the other Latin towns must certainly
be traced back to its commercial position, and to the type of
character produced by that position in its citizens. If Rome was
the emporium of the Latin districts, we can readily understand
how, along with and in addition to Latin husbandry, an urban life
should have attained vigorous and rapid development there and thus
have laid the foundation for its distinctive career.

It is far more important and more practicable to follow out the
course of this mercantile and strategical growth of the city of
Rome, than to attempt the useless task of chemically analysing the
insignificant and but little diversified communities of primitive
times. This urban development may still be so far recognized
in the traditions regarding the successive circumvallations and
fortifications of Rome, the formation of which necessarily kept
pace with the growth of the Roman commonwealth in importance as a
city.


The Palatine City


The town, which in the course of centuries grew up as Rome, in its
original form embraced according to trustworthy testimony only the
Palatine, or "square Rome" (-Roma quadrata-), as it was called in
later times from the irregularly quadrangular form of the Palatine
hill.  The gates and walls that enclosed this original city remained
visible down to the period of the empire: the sites of two of the
former, the Porta Romana near S. Giorgio in Velabro, and the Porta
Mugionis at the Arch of Titus, are still known to us, and the
Palatine ring-wall is described by Tacitus from his own observation
at least on the sides looking towards the Aventine and Caelian.
Many traces indicate that this was the centre and original seat of
the urban settlement. On the Palatine was to be found the sacred
symbol of that settlement, the "outfit-vault" (-mundus-) as it
was called, in which the first settlers deposited a sufficiency
of everything necessary for a household and added a clod of their
dear native earth. There, too, was situated the building in which
all the curies assembled for religious and other purposes, each at
its own hearth (-curiae veteres-). There stood the meetinghouse of
the "Leapers" (-curia Saliorum-) in which also the sacred shields
of Mars were preserved, the sanctuary of the "Wolves" (-Lupercal-),
and the dwelling of the priest of Jupiter. On and near this hill
the legend of the founding of the city placed the scenes of its
leading incidents, and the straw-covered house of Romulus, the
shepherd's hut of his foster-father Faustulus, the sacred fig-tree
towards which the cradle with the twins had floated, the cornelian
cherry-tree that sprang from the shaft of the spear which the
founder of the city had hurled from the Aventine over the valley of
the Circus into this enclosure, and other such sacred relics were
pointed out to the believer. Temples in the proper sense of the
term were still at this time unknown, and accordingly the Palatine
has nothing of that sort to show belonging to the primitive age.
The public assemblies of the community were early transferred to
another locality, so that their original site is unknown; only it
may be conjectured that the free space round the -mundus-, afterwards
called the -area Apollinis-, was the primitive place of assembly
for the burgesses and the senate, and the stage erected over the
-mundus- itself the primitive seat of justice of the Roman community.


The Seven Mounts


The "festival of the Seven Mounts" (-septimontium-), again, has
preserved the memory of the more extended settlement which gradually
formed round the Palatine. Suburbs grew up one after another, each
protected by its own separate though weaker circumvallation and
joined to the original ring-wall of the Palatine, as in fen districts
the outer dikes are joined on to the main dike. The "Seven Rings"
were, the Palatine itself; the Cermalus, the slope of the Palatine
in the direction of the morass that extended between it and the
Capitol towards the river (-velabrum-); the Velia, the ridge which
connected the Palatine with the Esquiline, but in subsequent times
was almost wholly obliterated by the buildings of the empire; the
Fagutal, the Oppius, and the Cispius, the three summits of the
Esquiline; lastly, the Sucusa, or Subura, a fortress constructed
outside of the earthen rampart which protected the new town on the
Carinae, in the depression between the Esquiline and the Quirinal
beneath S. Pietro in Vincoli.  These additions, manifestly the
results of a gradual growth, clearly reveal to a certain extent the
earliest history of the Palatine Rome, especially when we compare
with them the Servian arrangement of districts which was afterwards
formed on the basis of this earliest division.


Oldest Settlements in the Palatine and Suburan Regions


The Palatine was the original seat of the Roman community, the oldest
and originally the only ring-wall. The urban settlement, however,
began at Rome as well as elsewhere not within, but under the
protection of, the stronghold; and the oldest settlements with
which we are acquainted, and which afterwards formed the first and
second regions in the Servian division of the city, lay in a circle
round the Palatine. These included the settlement on the declivity
of the Cermalus with the "street of the Tuscans"--a name in which
there may have been preserved a reminiscence of the commercial
intercourse between the Caerites and Romans already perhaps carried
on with vigour in the Palatine city--and the settlement on the
Velia; both of which subsequently along with the stronghold-hill
itself constituted one region in the Servian city. Further, there
were the component elements of the subsequent second region--the
suburb on the Caelian, which probably embraced only its extreme point
above the Colosseum; that on the Carinae, the spur which projects
from the Esquiline towards the Palatine; and, lastly, the valley
and outwork of the Subura, from which the whole region received
its name. These two regions jointly constituted the incipient city;
and the Suburan district of it, which extended at the base of the
stronghold, nearly from the Arch of Constantine to S. Pietro in
Vincoli, and over the valley beneath, appears to have been more
considerable and perhaps older than the settlements incorporated
by the Servian arrangement in the Palatine district, because in the
order of the regions the former takes precedence of the latter. A
remarkable memorial of the distinction between these two portions
of the city was preserved in one of the oldest sacred customs of
the later Rome, the sacrifice of the October horse yearly offered
in the -Campus Martius-: down to a late period a struggle took
place at this festival for the horse's head between the men of the
Subura and those of the Via Sacra, and according as victory lay
with the former or with the latter, the head was nailed either to
the Mamilian Tower (site unknown) in the Subura, or to the king's
palace under the Palatine. It was the two halves of the old city
that thus competed with each other on equal terms. At that time,
accordingly, the Esquiliae (which name strictly used is exclusive
of the Carinae) were in reality what they were called, the "outer
buildings" (-exquiliae-, like -inquilinus-, from -colere-) or
suburb: this became the third region in the later city division,
and it was always held in inferior consideration as compared with
the Suburan and Palatine regions. Other neighbouring heights also,
such as the Capitol and the Aventine, may probably have been occupied
by the community of the Seven Mounts; the "bridge of piles" in
particular (-pons sublicius-), thrown over the natural pier of the
island in the Tiber, must have existed even then--the pontifical
college alone is sufficient evidence of this--and the  -tete de
pont- on the Etruscan bank, the height of the Janiculum, would not
be left unoccupied; but the community had not as yet brought either
within the circuit of its fortifications. The regulation which
was adhered to as a ritual rule down to the latest times, that the
bridge should be composed simply of wood without iron, manifestly
shows that in its original practical use it was to be merely a
flying bridge, which must be capable of being easily at any time
broken off or burnt. We recognize in this circumstance how insecure
for a long time and liable to interruption was the command of the
passage of the river on the part of the Roman community.

No relation is discoverable between the urban settlements thus
gradually formed and the three communities into which from an
immemorially early period the Roman commonwealth was in political
law divided. As the Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres appear to have
been communities originally independent, they must have had their
settlements originally apart; but they certainly did not dwell
in separate circumvallations on the Seven Hills, and all fictions
to this effect in ancient or modern times must be consigned by
the intelligent inquirer to the same fate with the charming tale
of Tarpeia and the battle of the Palatine. On the contrary each
of the three tribes of Ramnes, Tities, and Luceres must have been
distributed throughout the two regions of the oldest city, the
Subura and Palatine, and the suburban region as well: with this
may be connected the fact, that afterwards not only in the Suburan
and Palatine, but in each of the regions subsequently added to the
city, there were three pairs of Argean chapels. The Palatine city
of the Seven Mounts may have had a history of its own; no other
tradition of it has survived than simply that of its having once
existed. But as the leaves of the forest make room for the new
growth of spring, although they fall unseen by human eyes, so has
this unknown city of the Seven Mounts made room for the Rome of
history.


The Hill-Romans on the Quirinal


But the Palatine city was not the only one that in ancient times
existed within the circle afterwards enclosed by the Servian walls;
opposite to it, in its immediate vicinity, there lay a second city
on the Quirinal. The "old stronghold" (-Capitolium vetus-) with a
sanctuary of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and a temple of the goddess
of Fidelity in which state treaties were publicly deposited, forms
the evident counterpart of the later Capitol with its temple to
Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, and with its shrine of Fides Romana
likewise destined as it were for a repository of international
law, and furnishes a sure proof that the Quirinal also was once
the centre of an independent commonwealth. The same fact may be
inferred from the double worship of Mars on the Palatine and the
Quirinal; for Mars was the type of the warrior and the oldest chief
divinity of the burgess communities of Italy. With this is connected
the further circumstance that his ministers, the two primitive
colleges of the "Leapers" (-Salii-) and of the "Wolves" (-Luperci-)
existed in the later Rome in duplicate: by the side of the Salii
of the Palatine there were also Salii of the Quirinal; by the side
of the Quinctian Luperci of the Palatine there was a Fabian guild
of Luperci, which in all probability had their sanctuary on the
Quirinal.(5)

All these indications, which even in themselves are of great weight,
become more significant when we recollect that the accurately
known circuit of the Palatine city of the Seven Mounts excluded the
Quirinal, and that afterwards in the Servian Rome, while the first
three regions corresponded to the former Palatine city, a fourth
region was formed out of the Quirinal along with the neighbouring
Viminal. Thus, too, we discover an explanation of the reason why
the strong outwork of the Subura was constructed beyond the city
wall in the valley between the Esquiline and Quirinal; it was at
that point, in fact, that the two territories came into contact,
and the Palatine Romans, after having taken possession of the low
ground, were under the necessity of constructing a stronghold for
protection against those of the Quirinal.

Lastly, even the name has not been lost by which the men of the
Quirinal distinguished themselves from their Palatine neighbours.
As the Palatine city took the name of "the Seven Mounts," its
citizens called themselves the "mount-men" (-montani-), and the
term "mount," while applied to the other heights belonging to the
city, was above all associated with the Palatine; so the Quirinal
height--although not lower, but on the contrary somewhat higher,
than the former--as well as the adjacent Viminal never in the strict
use of the language received any other name than "hill" (collis).
In the ritual records, indeed, the Quirinal was not unfrequently
designated as the "hill" without further addition. In like manner
the gate leading out from this height was usually called the
"hill-gate" (-porta collina-); the priests of Mars settled there
were called those "of the hill" (-Salii collini-) in contrast to
those of the Palatium (-Salii Palatini-) and the fourth Servian
region formed out of this district was termed the hill-region
(-tribus collina-)(6) The name of Romans primarily associated with
the locality was probably appropriated by these "Hill-men" as well
as by those of the "Mounts;" and the former perhaps designated
themselves as "Romans of the Hill" (-Romani collini-).  That a
diversity of race may have lain at the foundation of this distinction
between the two neighbouring cities is possible; but evidence
sufficient to warrant our pronouncing a community established on
Latin soil to be of alien lineage is, in the case of the Quirinal
community, totally wanting.(7)


Relations between the Palatine and Quirinal Communities


Thus the site of the Roman commonwealth was still at this period
occupied by the Mount-Romans of the Palatine and the Hill-Romans
of the Quirinal as two separate communities confronting each other
and doubtless in many respects at feud, in some degree resembling
the Montigiani and the Trasteverini in modern Rome. That the
community of the Seven Mounts early attained a great preponderance
over that of the Quirinal may with certainty be inferred both from
the greater extent of its newer portions and suburbs, and from
the position of inferiority in which the former Hill-Romans were
obliged to acquiesce under the later Servian arrangement. But
even within the Palatine city there was hardly a true and complete
amalgamation of the different constituent elements of the settlement.
We have already mentioned how the Subura and the Palatine annually
contended for the horse's head; the several Mounts also, and even
the several curies (there was as yet no common hearth for the
city, but the various hearths of the curies subsisted side by side,
although in the same locality) probably felt themselves to be as
yet more separated than united; and Rome as a whole was probably
rather an aggregate of urban settlements than a single city. It
appears from many indications that the houses of the old and powerful
families were constructed somewhat after the manner of fortresses
and were rendered capable of defence--a precaution, it may be
presumed, not unnecessary. It was the magnificent structure ascribed
to king Servius Tullius that first surrounded not merely those two
cities of the Palatine and Quirinal, but also the heights of the
Capitol and the Aventine which were not comprehended within their
enclosure, with a single great ring-wall, and thereby created
the new Rome--the Rome of history. But ere this mighty work was
undertaken, the relations of Rome to the surrounding country had
beyond doubt undergone a complete revolution. As the period, during
which the husbandman guided his plough on the seven hills of Rome
just as on the other hills of Latium, and the usually unoccupied
places of refuge on particular summits alone presented the germs
of a more permanent settlement, corresponds to the earliest epoch
of the Latin stock without trace of traffic or achievement; as
thereafter the flourishing settlement on the Palatine and in the
"Seven Rings" was coincident with the occupation of the mouths of
the Tiber by the Roman community, and with the progress of the Latins
to a more stirring and freer intercourse, to an urban civilization
in Rome more especially, and perhaps also to a more consolidated
political union in the individual states as well as in the confederacy;
so the Servian wall, which was the foundation of a single great
city, was connected with the epoch at which the city of Rome was
able to contend for, and at length to achieve, the sovereignty of
the Latin league.




Notes for Book I Chapter IV


1.  A similar change of sound is exhibited in the case of the following
formations, all of them of a very ancient kind: -pars--portio-,
-Mars- -Mors-, -farreum- ancient form for -horreum-, -Fabii- -Fovii-,
-Valerius- -Volesus-, -vacuus- -vacivus-.

2.  The --synoikismos-- did not necessarily involve an actual
settlement together at one spot; but while each resided as formerly
on his own land, there was thenceforth only one council-hall and
court-house for the whole (Thucyd. ii. 15; Herodot. i. 170).

3.  We might even, looking to the Attic --trittus-- and the Umbrian
-trifo-, raise the question whether a triple division of the
community was not a fundamental principle of the Graeco-ltalians:
in that case the triple division of the Roman community would not be
referable to the amalgamation of several once independent tribes.
But, in order to the establishment of a hypothesis so much at
variance with tradition, such a threefold division would require to
present itself more generally throughout the Graeco-Italian field
than seems to be the case, and to appear uniformly everywhere as
the ground-scheme.  The Umbrians may possibly have adopted the word
-tribus- only when they came under the influence of Roman rule; it
cannot with certainty be traced in Oscan.

4.  Although the older opinion, that Latin is to be viewed as
a mixed language made up of Greek and non-Greek elements, has been
now abandoned on all sides, judicious inquirers even (e. g. Schwegler,
R. G. i. 184, 193) still seek to discover in Latin a mixture of
two nearly related Italian dialects. But we ask in vain for the
linguistic or historical facts which render such an hypothesis
necessary. When a language presents the appearance of being an
intermediate link between two others, every philologist knows that
the phenomenon may quite as probably depend, and more frequently
does depend, on organic development than on external intermixture.

5.  That the Quinctian Luperci had precedence in rank over the Fabian
is evident from the circumstance that the fabulists attribute the
Quinctii to Romulus, the Fabii to Remus (Ovid, Fast. ii. 373 seq.;
Vict. De Orig. 22). That the Fabii belonged to the Hill-Romans is
shown by the sacrifice of their -gens- on the Quirinal (Liv. v.
46, 52), whether that sacrifice may or may not have been connected
with the Lupercalia.

Moreover, the Lupercus of the former college is called in
inscriptions (Orelli, 2253) -Lupercus Quinctialis vetus-; and the
-praenomen-Kaeso, which was most probably connected with the Lupercal
worship (see Rom. Forschungen, i. 17), is found exclusively among
the Quinctii and Fabii: the form commonly occurring in authors,
-Lupercus Quinctilius- and -Quinctilianus-, is therefore a misnomer,
and the college belonged not to the comparatively recent Quinctilii,
but to the far older Quinctii. When, again, the Quinctii (Liv. i.
30), or Quinctilii (Dion. iii. 29), are named among the Alban clans,
the latter reading is here to be preferred, and the Quinctii are
to be regarded rather as an old Roman -gens-.

6.  Although the name "Hill of Quirinus" was afterwards ordinarily
used to designate the height where the Hill-Romans had their abode,
we need not at all on that account regard the name "Quirites" as
having been originally reserved for the burgesses on the Quirinal.
For, as has been shown, all the earliest indications point,
as regards these, to the name -Collini-; while it is indisputably
certain that the name Quirites denoted from the first, as well as
subsequently, simply the full burgess, and had no connection with
the distinction between montani and collini (comp. chap. v. infra).
The later designation of the Quirinal rests on the circumstance
that, while the -Mars quirinus-, the spear-bearing god of Death, was
originally worshipped as well on the Palatine as on the Quirinal--as
indeed the oldest inscriptions found at what was afterwards called
the Temple of Quirinus designate this divinity simply as Mars,--at
a later period for the sake of distinction the god of the Mount-Romans
more especially was called Mars, the god of the Hill Romans more
especially Quirinus.

When the Quirinal is called -collis agonalis-, "hill of sacrifice,"
it is so designated merely as the centre of the religious rites of
the Hill-Romans.

7.  The evidence alleged for this (comp. e. g. Schwegler, S. G. i.
480) mainly rests on an etymologico-historical hypothesis started
by Varro and as usual unanimously echoed by later writers, that the
Latin -quiris- and -quirinus- are akin to the name of the Sabine
town -Cures-, and that the Quirinal hill accordingly had been peopled
from -Cures-. Even if the linguistic affinity of these words were
more assured, there would be little warrant for deducing from it such
a historical inference. That the old sanctuaries on this eminence
(where, besides, there was also a "Collis Latiaris") were Sabine,
has been asserted, but has not been proved. Mars quirinus, Sol,
Salus, Flora, Semo Sancus or Deus fidius were doubtless Sabine,
but they were also Latin, divinities, formed evidently during the
epoch when Latins and Sabines still lived undivided. If a name like
that of Semo Sancus (which moreover occurs in connection with the
Tiber-island) is especially associated with the sacred places of
the Quirinal which afterwards diminished in its importance (comp.
the Porta Sanqualis deriving its name therefrom), every unbiassed
inquirer will recognize in such a circumstance only a proof of the
high antiquity of that worship, not a proof of its derivation from
a neighbouring land.  In so speaking we do not mean to deny that
it is possible that old distinctions of race may have co-operated
in producing this state of things; but if such was the case, they
have, so far as we are concerned, totally disappeared, and the views
current among our contemporaries as to the Sabine element in the
constitution of Rome are only fitted seriously to warn us against
such baseless speculations leading to no result.




CHAPTER V

The Original Constitution of Rome



The Roman House


Father and mother, sons and daughters, home and homestead,
servants and chattels--such are the natural elements constituting
the household in all cases, where polygamy has not obliterated the
distinctive position of the mother.  But the nations that have been
most susceptible of culture have diverged widely from each other
in their conception and treatment of the natural distinctions which
the household thus presents.  By some they have been apprehended
and wrought out more profoundly, by others more superficially;
by some more under their moral, by others more under their legal
aspects.  None has equalled the Roman in the simple but inexorable
embodiment in law of the principles pointed out by nature herself.


The House-father and His Household


The family formed an unity.  It consisted of the free man who upon
his father's death had become his own master, and the spouse whom
the priests by the ceremony of the sacred salted cake (-confarreatio-)
had solemnly wedded to share with him water and fire, with their son
and sons' sons and the lawful wives of these, and their unmarried
daughters and sons' daughters, along with all goods and substance
pertaining to any of its members.  The children of daughters on
the other hand were excluded, because, if born in wedlock, they
belonged to the family of the husband; and if begotten out of
wedlock, they had no place in a family at all.  To the Roman citizen
a house of his own and the blessing of children appeared the end
and essence of life.  The death of the individual was not an evil,
for it was a matter of necessity; but the extinction of a household
or of a clan was injurious to the community itself, which in the
earliest times therefore opened up to the childless the means of
avoiding such a fatality by their adopting the children of others
as their own.

The Roman family from the first contained within it the conditions
of a higher culture in the moral adjustment of the mutual relations of
its members.  Man alone could be head of a family.  Woman did not
indeed occupy a position inferior to man in the acquiring of property
and money; on the contrary the daughter inherited an equal share
with her brother, and the mother an equal share with her children.
But woman always and necessarily belonged to the household, not
to the community; and in the household itself she necessarily held
a position of domestic subjection--the daughter to her father,
the wife to her husband,(1) the fatherless unmarried woman to her
nearest male relatives; it was by these, and not by the king, that
in case of need woman was called to account.  Within the house,
however, woman was not servant but mistress.  Exempted from the
tasks of corn-grinding and cooking which according to Roman ideas
belonged to the menials, the Roman housewife devoted herself in
the main to the superintendence of her maid-servants, and to the
accompanying labours of the distaff, which was to woman what the
plough was to man.(2)  In like manner, the moral obligations of
parents towards their children were fully and deeply felt by the
Roman nation; and it was reckoned a heinous offence if a father
neglected or corrupted his child, or if he even squandered his
property to his child's disadvantage.

In a legal point of view, however, the family was absolutely guided
and governed by the single all-powerful will of the "father of
the household" (-pater familias-).  In relation to him all in the
household were destitute of legal rights--the wife and the child
no less than the bullock or the slave.  As the virgin became by the
free choice of her husband his wedded wife, so it rested with his
own free will to rear or not to rear the child which she bore to
him.  This maxim was not suggested by indifference to the possession
of a family; on the contrary, the conviction that the founding of
a house and the begetting of children were a moral necessity and a
public duty had a deep and earnest hold of the Roman mind.  Perhaps
the only instance of support accorded on the part of the community
in Rome is the enactment that aid should be given to the father who
had three children presented to him at a birth; while their ideas
regarding exposure are indicated by the prohibition of it so far
as concerned all the sons--deformed births excepted--and at least
the first daughter.  Injurious, however, to the public weal as
exposure might appear, the prohibition of it soon changed its form
from that of legal punishment into that of religious curse; for
the father was, above all, thoroughly and absolutely master in his
household.  The father of the household not only maintained the
strictest discipline over its members, but he had the right and duty
of exercising judicial authority over them and of punishing them as
he deemed fit in life and limb.  The grown-up son might establish
a separate household or, as the Romans expressed it, maintain his
"own cattle" (-peculium-) assigned to him by his father; but in
law all that the son acquired, whether by his own labour or by gift
from a stranger, whether in his father's household or in his own,
remained the father's property.  So long as the father lived, the
persons legally subject to him could never hold property of their
own, and therefore could not alienate unless by him so empowered,
or yet bequeath.  In this respect wife and child stood quite on
the same level with the slave, who was not unfrequently allowed
to manage a household of his own, and who was likewise entitled to
alienate when commissioned by his master.  Indeed a father might
convey his son as well as his slave in property to a third person:
if the purchaser was a foreigner, the son became his slave; if
he was a Roman, the son, while as a Roman he could not become a
Roman's slave, stood at least to his purchaser in a slave's stead
(-in mancipii causa-).  The paternal and marital power was subject
to a legal restriction, besides the one already mentioned on the
right Of exposure, only in so far as some of the worst abuses were
visited by legal punishment as well as by religious curse.  Thus
these penalties fell upon the man who sold his wife or married
son; and it was a matter of family usage that in the exercise of
domestic jurisdiction the father, and still more the husband, should
not pronounce sentence on child or wife without having previously
consulted the nearest blood-relatives, his wife's as well as his
own.  But the latter arrangement involved no legal diminution of
power, for the blood-relatives called in to the domestic judgment
had not to judge, but simply to advise the father of the household
in judging.

But not only was the power of the master of the house substantially
unlimited and responsible to no one on earth; it was also, as long
as he lived, unchangeable and indestructible.  According to the
Greek as well as Germanic laws the grown-up son, who was practically
independent of his father, was also independent legally; but the
power of the Roman father could not be dissolved during his life
either by age or by insanity, or even by his own free will, excepting
only that the person of the holder of the power might change, for
the child might certainly pass by way of adoption into the power
of another father, and the daughter might pass by a lawful marriage
out of the hand of her father into the hand of her husband and,
leaving her own -gens- and the protection of her own god to enter
into the -gens- of her husband and the protection of his god,
became thenceforth subject to him as she had hitherto been to her
father.  According to Roman law it was made easier for the slave to
obtain release from his master than for the son to obtain release
from his father; the manumission of the former was permitted at an
early period, and by simple forms; the release of the latter was
only rendered possible at a much later date, and by very circuitous
means.  Indeed, if a master sold his slave and a father his son
and the purchaser released both, the slave obtained his freedom,
but the son by the release simply reverted into his father's power
as before.  Thus the inexorable consistency with which the Romans
carried out their conception of the paternal and marital power
converted it into a real right of property.

Closely, however, as the power of the master of the household over
wife and child approximated to his proprietary power over slaves
and cattle, the members of the family were nevertheless separated
by a broad line of distinction, not merely in fact but in law, from
the family property.  The power of the house-master--even apart from
the fact that it appeared in operation only within the house--was
of a transient, and in some degree of a representative, character.
Wife and child did not exist merely for the house-father's sake in
the sense in which property exists only for the proprietor, or in
which the subjects of an absolute state exist only for the king;
they were the objects indeed of a legal right on his part, but they
had at the same time capacities of right of their own; they were
not things, but persons.  Their rights were dormant in respect of
exercise, simply because the unity of the household demanded that
it should be governed by a single representative; but when the
master of the household died, his sons at once came forward as its
masters and now obtained on their own account over the women and
children and property the rights hitherto exercised over these by
the father.  On the other hand the death of the master occasioned
no change in the legal position of the slave.


Family and Clan (-Gens-)


So strongly was the unity of the family realized, that even the
death of the master of the house did not entirely dissolve it.
The descendants, who were rendered by that occurrence independent,
regarded themselves as still in many respects an unity; a principle
which was made use of in arranging the succession of heirs and in
many other relations, but especially  in regulating the position
of the widow and unmarried daughters.  As according to the older
Roman view a woman was not capable of having power either over
others or over herself, the power over her, or, as it was in this
case more mildly expressed, the "guardianship" (-tutela-) remained
with the house to which she belonged, and was now exercised in the
room of the deceased house-master by the whole of the nearest male
members of the family; ordinarily, therefore, by sons over their
mother and by brothers over their sisters.  In this sense the
family, once founded, endured unchanged till the male stock of its
founder died out; only the bond of connection must of course have
become practically more lax from generation to generation, until
at length it became impossible to prove the original unity.  On
this, and on this alone, rested the distinction between family and
clan, or, according to the Roman expression, between -agnati- and
-gentiles-.  Both denoted the male stock; but the family embraced
only those individuals who, mounting up from generation to generation,
were able to set forth the successive steps of their descent from
a common progenitor; the clan (-gens-) on the other hand comprehended
also those who were merely able to lay claim to such descent from
a common ancestor, but could no longer point out fully the intermediate
links so as to establish the degree of their relationship.  This
is very clearly expressed in the Roman names: when they speak
of  "Quintus, son of Quintus, grandson of Quintus and so on,
the Quintian," the family reaches as far as the ascendants are
designated individually, and where the family terminates the clan
is introduced supplementary, indicating derivation from the common
ancestor who has bequeathed to all his descendants the name of the
"children of Quintus."


Dependents of the Household


To these strictly closed unities--the family or household united
under the control of a living master, and the clan which originated
out of the breaking-up of such households--there further belonged
the dependents or "listeners" (-clientes-, from -cluere-).  This
term denoted not the guests, that is, the members of other similar
circles who were temporarily sojourning in another household than
their own, and as little the slaves, who were looked upon in law
as the property of the household and not as members of it, but
those individuals who, while they were not free burgesses of any
commonwealth, yet lived within one in a condition of protected
freedom.  These included refugees who had found a reception with a
foreign protector, and those slaves in respect of whom their master
had for the time being waived the exercise of his rights, and so
conferred on them practical freedom.  This relation had not the
distinctive character of a strict relation -de jure-, like that of
a man to his guest: the client remained a man non-free, in whose
case good faith and use and wont alleviated the condition of
non-freedom.  Hence the "listeners" of the household (-clientes-)
together with the slaves strictly so called formed the "body
of servants" (-familia-) dependent on the will of the "burgess"
(-patronus-, like -patricius-).  Hence according to original right
the burgess was entitled partially or wholly to resume the property
of the client, to reduce him on emergency once more to the state
of slavery, to inflict even capital punishment on him; and it was
simply in virtue of a distinction -de facto-, that these patrimonial
rights were not asserted with the same rigour against the client
as against the actual slave, and that on the other hand the moral
obligation of the master to provide for his own people and to protect
them acquired a greater importance in the case of the client, who
was practically in a more free position, than in the case of the
slave.  Especially must the -de facto- freedom of the client have
approximated to freedom -de jure- in those cases where the relation
had subsisted for several generations: when the  releaser and the
released had themselves died, the -dominium- over the descendants
of the released person could not be without flagrant impiety claimed
by the heirs at law of the releaser; and thus there was gradually
formed within the household itself a class of persons in dependent
freedom, who were different alike from the slaves and from the
members of the -gens- entitled in the eye of the law to full and
equal rights.


The Roman Community


On this Roman household was based the Roman state, as respected
both its constituent elements and its form.  The community of the
Roman people arose out of the junction (in whatever way brought
about) of such ancient clanships as the Romilii, Voltinii, Fabii,
etc.; the Roman domain comprehended the united lands of those
clans.(3) Whoever belonged to one of these clans was a burgess
of Rome.  Every marriage concluded in the usual forms within this
circle was valid as a true Roman marriage, and conferred burgess-rights
on the children begotten of it.  Whoever was begotten in an illegal
marriage, or out of marriage, was excluded from the membership of
the community.  On this account the Roman burgesses assumed the name
of the "father's children" (-patricii-), inasmuch as they alone in
the eye of the law had a father.  The clans with all the families
that they contained were incorporated with the state just as
they stood.  The spheres of the household and the clan continued
to subsist within the state; but the position which a man held in
these did not affect his relations towards the state.  The son was
subject to the father within the household, but in political duties
and rights he stood on a footing of equality.  The position of the
protected dependents was naturally so far changed that the freedmen
and clients of every patron received on his account toleration in
the community at large; they continued indeed to be immediately
dependent on the protection of the family to which they belonged,
but the very nature of the case implied that the clients of members
of the community could not be wholly excluded from its worship and
its festivals, although, of course, they were not capable of the
proper rights or liable to the proper duties of burgesses.  This
remark applies still more to the case of the protected dependents
of the community at large.  The state thus consisted, like the
household, of persons properly belonging to it and of dependents--of
"burgesses" and of "inmates" or --metoeci--.


The King


As the clans resting upon a family basis were the constituent
elements of the state, so the form of the body-politic was modelled
after the family both generally and in detail.  The household was
provided by nature herself with a head in the person of the father
with whom it originated, and with whom it perished.  But in the
community of the people, which was designed to be imperishable,
there was no natural master; not at least in that of Rome, which
was composed of free and equal husbandmen and could not boast of a
nobility by the grace of God.  Accordingly one from its own ranks
became its "leader" (-rex-) and lord in the household of the Roman
community; as indeed at a later period there were to be found in or
near to his dwelling the always blazing hearth and the well-barred
store-chamber of the community, the Roman Vestas and  the Roman
Penates--indications of the visible unity of that supreme household
which included all Rome.  The regal office began at once and by
right, when the position had become vacant and the successor had
been designated; but the community did not owe full obedience to
the king until he had convoked the assembly of freemen capable of
bearing arms and had formally challenged its allegiance.  Then he
possessed in its entireness that power over the community which
belonged to the house-father in his household; and, like him, he
ruled for life.  He held intercourse with the gods of the community,
whom he consulted and appeased (-auspicia publica-), and he nominated
all the priests and priestesses.  The agreements which he concluded
in name of the community with foreigners were binding upon the whole
people; although in other instances no member of the community was
bound by an agreement with a non-member.  His "command" (-imperium-)
was all-powerful in peace and in war, on which account "messengers"
(-lictores-, from -licere-, to summon) preceded him with axes and
rods on all occasions when he appeared officially.  He alone had
the right of publicly addressing the burgesses, and it was he who
kept the keys of the public treasury.  He had the same right as a
father had to exercise discipline and jurisdiction.  He inflicted
penalties for breaches of order, and, in particular, flogging
for military offences.  He sat in judgment in all private and in
all criminal processes, and decided absolutely regarding life and
death as well as regarding freedom; he might hand over one burgess
to fill the place of a slave to another; he might even order
a burgess to be sold into actual slavery or, in other words, into
banishment.  When he had pronounced sentence of death, he was
entitled, but not obliged, to allow an appeal to the people for
pardon.  He called out the people for service in war and commanded
the army; but with these high functions he was no less bound, when
an alarm of fire was raised, to appear in person at the scene of
the burning.

As the house-master was not simply the greatest but the only power
in the house, so the king was not merely the first but the only
holder of power in the state.  He might indeed form colleges of
men of skill composed of those specially conversant with the rules
of sacred or of public law, and call upon them for their advice;
he might, to facilitate his exercise of power, entrust to others
particular functions, such as the making communications to the
burgesses, the command in war, the decision of processes of minor
importance, the inquisition of crimes; he might in particular, if
he was compelled to quit the bounds of the city, leave behind him
a "city-warden" (-praefectus urbi-) with the full powers of an
-alter ego-; but all official power existing by the side of the
king's was derived from the latter, and every official held his
office by the king's appointment and during the king's pleasure.  All
the officials of the earliest period, the extraordinary city-warden
as well as the "leaders of division" (-tribuni-, from -tribus-,
part) of the infantry (-milites-) and of the cavalry (-celeres-)
were merely commissioned by the king, and not magistrates in the
subsequent sense of the term.  The regal power had not and could
not have any external check imposed upon it by law: the master of
the community had no judge of his acts within the community, any
more than the housefather had a judge within his household.  Death
alone terminated his power.  The choice of the new king lay with the
council of elders, to which in case of a vacancy the interim-kingship
(-interregnum-) passed.  A formal cooperation in the election
of king pertained to the burgesses only after his nomination; -de
jure- the kingly office was based on the permanent college of the
Fathers (-patres-), which by means of the interim holder of the
power installed the new king for life.  Thus "the august blessing
of the gods, under which renowned Rome was founded," was transmitted
from its first regal recipient in constant succession to those that
followed him, and the unity of the state was preserved unchanged
notwithstanding the personal change of the holders of power.

This unity of the Roman people, represented in the field of
religion by the Roman Diovis, was in the field of law represented
by the prince, and therefore his costume was the same as that of
the supreme god; the chariot even in the city, where every one else
went on foot, the ivory sceptre with the eagle, the vermilion-painted
face, the chaplet of oaken leaves in gold, belonged alike to the
Roman god and to the Roman king.  It would be a great error, however,
to regard the Roman constitution on that account as a theocracy:
among the Italians the ideas of god and king never faded away into
each other, as they did in Egypt and the East.  The king was not
the god of the people; it were much more correct to designate him as
the proprietor of the state.  Accordingly the Romans knew nothing
of special divine grace granted to a particular family, or of
any other sort of mystical charm by which a king should be made
of different stuff from other men: noble descent and relationship
with earlier rulers were recommendations, but were not necessary
conditions; the office might be lawfully filled by any Roman come
to years of discretion and sound in body and mind.(4)  The king
was thus simply an ordinary burgess, whom merit or fortune, and
the primary necessity of having one as master in every house, had
placed as master over his equals--a husbandman set over husbandmen,
a warrior set over warriors.  As the son absolutely obeyed his father
and yet did not esteem himself inferior, so the burgess submitted
to his ruler without precisely accounting him his better.  This
constituted the moral and practical limitation of the regal power.
The king might, it is true, do much that was inconsistent with equity
without exactly breaking the law of the land: he might diminish his
fellow-combatants' share of the spoil; he might impose exorbitant
task-works or otherwise by his imposts unreasonably encroach upon
the property of the burgess; but if he did so, he forgot that his
plenary power came not from God, but under God's consent from the
people, whose representative he was; and who was there to protect
him, if the people should in return forget the oath of allegiance
which they had sworn? The legal limitation, again, of the king's
power lay in the principle that he was entitled only to execute the
law, not to alterit.  Every deviation from the law had to receive
the previous approval of the assembly of the people and the council
of elders; if it was not so approved, it was a null and tyrannical
act carrying no legal effect.  Thus the power of the king in Rome
was, both morally and legally, at bottom altogether different from
the sovereignty of the present day; and there is no counterpart at
all in modern life either to the Roman household or to the Roman
state.


The Community


The division of the body of burgesses was based on the "wardship,"
-curia- (probably related to -curare- =  -coerare-, --koiranos--);
ten wardships formed the community; every wardship furnished a
hundred men to the infantry (hence  -mil-es-, like -equ-es-, the
thousand-walker), ten horsemen and ten councillors.  When communities
combined, each of course appeared as a part (-tribus-) of the
whole community (-tota-in Umbrian and Oscan), and the original unit
became multiplied by the number of such parts.  This division had
reference primarily to the personal composition of the burgess-body,
but it was applied also to the domain so far as the latter was
apportioned at all.  That the curies had their lands as well as the
tribes, admits of the less doubt, since among the few names of the
Roman curies that have been handed down to us we find along with
some apparently derived from -gentes-, e. g. -Faucia-, others
certainly of local origin, e. g.  -Veliensis-; each one of them
embraced, in this primitive period of joint possession of land, a
number of clan-lands, of which we have already spoken.(5)

We find this constitution under its simplest form(6) in the scheme
of the Latin or burgess communities that subsequently sprang up
under the influence of Rome; these had uniformly the number of a
hundred councillors (-centumviri-).  But the same normal numbers make
their appearance throughout in the earliest tradition regarding the
tripartite Rome, which assigns to it thirty curies, three hundred
horsemen, three hundred senators, three thousand foot-soldiers.

Nothing is more certain than that this earliest constitutional
scheme did not originate in Rome; it was a primitive institution
common to all the Latins, and perhaps reached back to a period
anterior to the separation of the stocks.  The Roman constitutional
tradition quite deserving of credit in such matters, while it
accounts historically for the other divisions of the burgesses,
makes the division into curies alone originate with the origin of
the city; and in entire harmony with that view not only does the
curial constitution present itself in Rome, but in the recently
discovered scheme of the organization of the Latin communities it
appears as an essential part of the Latin municipal system.

The essence of this scheme was, and remained, the distribution
into curies.  The tribes ("parts") cannot have been an element of
essential importance for the simple reason that their occurrence
at all was, not less than their number, the result of accident;
where there were tribes, they certainly had no other significance
than that of preserving the remembrance of an epoch when such
"parts" had themselves been wholes.(7)  There is no tradition that
the individual tribes had special presiding magistrates or special
assemblies of their own; and it is highly probable that in the
interest of the unity of the commonwealth the tribes which had
joined together to form it were never in reality allowed to have
such institutions.  Even in the army, it is true, the infantry had
as many pairs of leaders as there were tribes; but each of these
pairs of military tribunes did not command the contingent of a
tribe; on the contrary each individual war-tribune, as well as all
in conjunction, exercised command over the whole infantry.  The
clans were distributed among the several curies; their limits and
those of the household were furnished by nature.  That the legislative
power interfered in these groups by way of modification, that it
subdivided the large clan and counted it as two, or joined several
weak ones together, there is no indication at all in Roman tradition;
at any rate this took place only in a way so limited that the
fundamental character of affinity belonging to the clan was not
thereby altered.  We may not therefore conceive the number of the
clans, and still less that of the households, as a legally fixed
one; if the -curia- had to furnish a hundred men on foot and ten
horsemen, it is not affirmed by tradition, nor is it credible, that
one horseman was taken from each clan and one foot-soldier from
each house.  The only member that discharged functions in the oldest
constitutional organization was the -curia-.  Of these there were
ten, or, where there were several tribes, ten to each tribe.  Such
a "wardship" was a real corporate unity, the members of which
assembled at least for holding common festivals.  Each wardship was
under the charge of a special warden (-curio-), and had a priest of
its own (-flamen curialis-); beyond doubt also levies and valuations
took place according to curies, and in judicial matters the burgesses
met by curies and voted by curies.  This organization, however,
cannot have been introduced primarily with a view to voting, for in
that case they would certainly have made the number of subdivisions
uneven.


Equality of the Burgesses


Sternly defined as was the contrast between burgess and non-burgess,
the equality of rights within the burgess-body was complete.  No
people has ever perhaps equalled that of Rome in the inexorable
rigour with which it has carried out these principles, the one as
fully as the other.  The strictness of the Roman distinction between
burgesses and non-burgesses is nowhere perhaps brought out with
such clearness as in the treatment of the primitive institution
of honorary citizenship, which was originally designed to mediate
between the two.  When a stranger was, by resolution of the community,
adopted into the circle of the burgesses, he might surrender his
previous citizenship, in which case he passed over wholly into the
new community; but he might also combine his former citizenship with
that which had just been granted to him.  Such was the primitive
custom, and such it always remained in Hellas, where in later
ages the same person not unfrequently held the freedom of several
communities at the same time.  But the greater vividness with which
the conception of the community as such was realized in Latium
could not tolerate the idea that a man might simultaneously belong
in the character of a burgess to two communities; and accordingly,
when the newly-chosen burgess did not intend to surrender his
previous franchise, it attached to the nominal honorary citizenship
no further meaning than that of an obligation to befriend and protect
the guest (-jus hospitii-), such as had always been recognized as
incumbent in reference to foreigners.  But this rigorous retention
of barriers against those that were without was accompanied by an
absolute banishment of all difference of rights among the members
included in the burgess community of Rome.  We have already mentioned
that the distinctions existing in the household, which of course
could not be set aside, were at least ignored in the community; the
son who as such was subject in property to his father might thus,
in the character of a burgess, come to have command over his father
as master.  There were no class-privileges: the fact that the Tities
took precedence of the Ramnes, and both ranked before the Luceres,
did not affect their equality in all legal rights.  The burgess
cavalry, which at this period was used for single combat in front
of the line on horseback or even on foot, and was rather a select
or reserve corps than a special arm of the service, and which
accordingly contained by far the wealthiest, best-armed, and
best-trained men, was naturally held in higher estimation than the
burgess infantry; but this was a distinction purely -de facto-, and
admittance to the cavalry was doubtless conceded to any patrician.
It was simply and solely the constitutional subdivision of the
burgess-body that gave rise to distinctions recognized by the law;
otherwise the legal equality of all the members of the community
was carried out even in their external appearance.  Dress indeed
served to distinguish the president of the community from its members,
the grown-up man under obligation of military service from the boy
not yet capable of enrolment; but otherwise the rich and the noble
as well as the poor and low-born were only allowed to appear in
public in the like simple wrapper (-toga-) of white woollen stuff.
This complete equality of rights among the burgesses had beyond
doubt its original basis in the Indo-Germanic type of constitution;
but in the precision with which it was thus apprehended and
embodied it formed one of the most characteristic and influential
peculiarities of the Latin nation.  And in connection with this we
may recall the fact that in Italy we do not meet with any race of
earlier settlers less capable of culture, that had become subject
to the Latin immigrants.(8)  They had no conquered race to deal
with, and therefore no such condition of things as that which gave
rise to the Indian system of caste, to the nobility of Thessaly
and Sparta and perhaps of Hellas generally, and probably also to
the Germanic distinction of ranks.


Burdens of the Burgesses


The maintenance of the state economy devolved, of course, upon
the burgesses.  The most important function of the burgess was his
service in the army; for the burgesses had the right and duty of
bearing arms.  The burgesses were at the same time the "body of
warriors" (-populus-, related to -populari-, to lay waste): in the
old litanies it is upon the "spear-armed body of warriors" (-pilumnus
poplus-) that the blessing of Mars is invoked; and even the designation
with which the king addresses them, that of Quirites,(9) is taken
as signifying "warrior."  We have already stated how the army of
aggression, the "gathering" (-legio-), was formed.  In the tripartite
Roman community it consisted of three "hundreds" (-centuriae-) of
horsemen (-celeres-, "the swift," or -flexuntes-, "the wheelers")
under the three leaders-of-division of the horsemen (-tribuni
celerum-)(10) and three "thousands" of footmen (-milties-) under
the three leaders-of-division of the infantry (-tribuni militum-),
the latter were probably from the first the flower of the general
levy.  To these there may perhaps have been added a number
of light-armed men, archers especially, fighting outside of the
ranks.(11)  The general was regularly the king himself.  Besides
service in war, other personal burdens might devolve upon the burgesses;
such as the obligation of undertaking the king's commissions in
peace and in war,(12) and the task-work of tilling the king's lands
or of constructing public buildings.  How heavily in particular the
burden of building the walls of the city pressed upon the community,
is evidenced by the fact that the ring-walls retained the name
of "tasks" (-moenia-).  There was no regular direct taxation, nor
was there any direct regular expenditure on the part of the state.
Taxation was not needed for defraying the burdens of the community,
since the state gave no recompense for serving in the army, for
task-work, or for public service generally; so far as there was any
such recompense at all, it was given to the person who performed
the service either by the district primarily concerned in it, or by
the person who could not or would not himself serve.  The victims
needed for the public service of the gods were procured by a tax
on actions at law; the defeated party in an ordinary process paid
down to the state a cattle-fine (-sacramentum-) proportioned to
the value of the object in dispute.  There is no mention of any
regular presents to the king on the part of the burgesses.  On the
other hand there flowed into the royal coffers the port-duties,(13)
as well as the income from the domains--in particular, the pasture
tribute (-scriptura-) from the cattle driven out upon the common
pasture, and the quotas of produce (-vectigalia-) which those
enjoying the use of the lands of the state had to pay instead of
rent.  To this was added the produce of cattle-fines and confiscations
and the gains of war.  In cases of need a contribution (-tributum-)
was imposed, which was looked upon, however, as a forced loan and
was repaid when the times improved; whether it fell upon the burgesses
generally, or only upon the --metoeci--, cannot be determined; the
latter supposition is, however, the more probable.

The king managed the finances.  The property of the state,
however, was not identified with the private property of the king;
which, judging from the statements regarding the extensive landed
possessions of the last Roman royal house, the Tarquins, must have
been considerable.  The ground won by arms, in particular, appears to
have been constantly regarded as property of the state.  Whether and
how far the king was restricted by use and wont in the administration
of the public property, can no longer be ascertained; only the
subsequent course of things shows that the burgesses can never have
been consulted regarding it, whereas it was probably the custom to
consult the senate in the imposition of the -tributum- and in the
distribution of the lands won in war.


Rights of the Burgesses


The Roman burgesses, however, do not merely come into view as
furnishing contributions and rendering service; they also bore a
part in the public government.  For this purpose all the members
of the community (with the exception of the women, and the children
still incapable of bearing arms)--in other words, the "spearmen"
(-quirites-) as in addressing them they were designated--assembled
at the seat of justice, when the king convoked them for the purpose
of making a communication (-conventio-, -contio-) or formally bade
them meet (-comitia-) for the third week (-in trinum noundinum-),
to consult them by curies.  He appointed such formal assemblies
of the community to be held regularly twice a year, on the 24th of
March and the 24th of May, and as often besides as seemed to him
necessary.  The burgesses, however, were always summoned not to
speak, but to hear; not to ask questions, but to answer.  No one
spoke in the assembly but the king, or he to whom the king saw
fit to grant liberty of speech; and the speaking of the burgesses
consisted of a simple answer to the question of the king,
without discussion, without reasons, without conditions, without
breaking up the question even into parts.  Nevertheless the Roman
burgess-community, like the Germanic and not improbably the primitive
Indo-Germanic communities in general, was the real and ultimate
basis of the political idea of sovereignty.  But in the ordinary
course of things this sovereignty was dormant, or only had its
expression in the fact that the burgess-body voluntarily bound
itself to render allegiance to its president.  For that purpose
the king, after he had entered on his office, addressed to the
assembled curies the question whether they would be true and loyal
to him and would according to use and wont acknowledge himself as
well as his messengers (-lictores-); a question, which undoubtedly
might no more be answered in the negative than the parallel homage
in the case of a hereditary monarchy might be refused.

It was in thorough consistency with constitutional principles that
the burgesses, just as being the sovereign power, should not on
ordinary occasions take part in the course of public business.  So
long as public action was confined to the carrying into execution
of the existing legal arrangements, the power which was, properly
speaking, sovereign in the state could not and might not interfere:
the laws governed, not the lawgiver.  But it was different where a
change of the existing legal arrangements or even a mere deviation
from them in a particular case was necessary; and here accordingly, under
the Roman constitution, the burgesses emerge without exception as
actors; so that each act of the sovereign authority is accomplished
by the co-operation of the burgesses and the king or -interrex-.
As the legal relation between ruler and ruled was itself sanctioned
after the manner of a contract by oral question and answer, so
every sovereign act of the community was accomplished by means of
a question (-rogatio-), which the king addressed to the burgesses,
and to which the majority of the curies gave an affirmative answer.
In this case their consent might undoubtedly be refused.  Among
the Romans, therefore, law was not primarily, as we conceive it,
a command addressed by the sovereign to the whole members of the
community, but primarily a contract concluded between the constitutive
powers of the state by address and counter-address.(14)  Such
a legislative contract was -de jure- requisite in all cases which
involved a deviation from the ordinary consistency of the legal
system.  In the ordinary course of law any one might without
restriction give away his property to whom he would, but only
upon condition of its immediate transfer: that the property should
continue for the time being with the owner, and at his death pass
over to another, was a legal impossibility--unless the community
should allow it; a permission which in this case the burgesses
could grant not only when assembled in their curies, but also when
drawn up for battle.  This was the origin of testaments.  In the
ordinary course of law the freeman could not lose or surrender the
inalienable blessing of freedom, and therefore one who was subject
to no housemaster could not subject himself to another in the place
of a son--unless the community should grant him leave to do so.  This
was the -abrogatio-.  In the ordinary course of law burgess-rights
could only be acquired by birth and could never be lost--unless
the community should confer the patriciate or allow its surrender;
neither of which acts, doubtless, could be validly done originally
without a decree of the curies.  In the ordinary course of law
the criminal whose crime deserved death, when once the king or his
deputy had pronounced sentence according to judgment and justice,
was inexorably executed; for the king could only judge, not
pardon--unless the condemned burgess appealed to the mercy of the
community and the judge allowed him the opportunity of pleading
for pardon.  This was the beginning of the -provocatio-, which for
that reason was especially permitted not to the transgressor who
had refused to plead guilty and had been convicted, but to him
who confessed his crime and urged reasons in palliation of it.  In
the ordinary course of law the perpetual treaty concluded with a
neighbouring state might not be broken--unless the burgesses deemed
themselves released from it on account of injuries inflicted on
them.  Hence it was necessary that they should be consulted when an
aggressive war was contemplated, but not on occasion of a defensive
war, where the other state had broken the treaty, nor on the
conclusion of peace; it appears, however, that the question was in
such a case addressed not to the usual assembly of the burgesses,
but to the army.  Thus, in general, it was necessary to consult the
burgesses whenever the king meditated any innovation, any change
of the existing public law; and in so far the right of legislation
was from antiquity not a right of the king, but a right of the king
and the community.  In these and all similar cases the king could
not act with legal effect without the cooperation of the community;
the man whom the king alone declared a patrician remained as before
a non-burgess, and the invalid act could only carry consequences
possibly -de facto-, not -de jure-.  Thus far the assembly of the
community, however restricted and bound at its emergence, was yet
from antiquity a constituent element of the Roman commonwealth,
and was in law superior to, rather than co-ordinate with, the king.


The Senate


But by the side of the king and of the burgess-assembly there
appears in the earliest constitution of the community a third
original power, not destined for acting like the former or for
resolving like the latter, and yet co-ordinate with both and within
its own rightful sphere placed over both.  This was the council
of elders or -senatus-.  Beyond doubt it had its origin in the
clan-constitution: the old tradition that in the original Rome the
senate was composed of all the heads of households is correct in
state-law to this extent, that each of the clans of the later Rome
which had not merely migrated thither at a more recent date referred
its origin to one of those household-fathers of the primitive
city as its ancestor and patriarch.  If, as is probable, there was
once in Rome or at any rate in Latium a time when, like the state
itself, each of its ultimate constituents, that is to say each
clan, had virtually a monarchical organization and was under the
rule of an elder--whether raised to that position by the choice
of the clansmen or of his predecessor, or in virtue of hereditary
succession--the senate of that time was nothing but the collective
body of these clan-elders, and accordingly an institution independent
of the king and of the burgess-assembly; in contradistinction to
the latter, which was directly composed of the whole body of the
burgesses, it was in some measure a representative assembly of
persons acting for the people.  Certainly that stage of independence
when each clan was virtually a state was surmounted in the Latin
stock at an immemorially early period, and the first and perhaps
most difficult step towards developing the community out of
the clan-organization--the setting aside of the clan-elders--had
possibly been taken in Latium long before the foundation of Rome;
the Roman clan, as we know it, is without any visible head, and no
one of the living clansmen is especially called to represent the
common patriarch from whom all the clansmen descend or profess to
descend so that even inheritance and guardianship, when they fall
by death to the clan, devolve on the clan-members as a whole.
Nevertheless the original character of the council of elders
bequeathed many and important legal consequences to the Roman
senate.  To express the matter briefly, the position of the senate
as something other and more than a mere state-council--than an
assemblage of a number of trusty men whose advice the king found
it fitting to obtain--hinged entirely on the fact that it was once
an assembly, like that described by Homer, of the princes and rulers
of the people sitting for deliberation in a circle round the king.
So long as the senate was formed by the aggregate of the heads
of clans, the number of the members cannot have been a fixed one,
since that of the clans was not so; but in the earliest, perhaps
even in pre-Roman, times the number of the members of the council
of elders for the community had been fixed without respect to
the number of the then existing clans at a hundred, so that the
amalgamation of the three primitive communities had in state-law
the necessary consequence of an increase of the seats in the senate
to what was thenceforth the fixed normal number of three hundred.
Moreover the senators were at all times called to sit for life; and
if at a later period the lifelong tenure subsisted more -de facto-
than -de jure-, and the revisions of the senatorial list that
took place from time to time afforded an opportunity to remove the
unworthy or the unacceptable senator, it can be shown that this
arrangement only arose in the course of time.  The selection of
the senators certainly, after there were no longer heads of clans,
lay with the king; but in this selection during the earlier epoch,
so long as the people retained a vivid sense of the individuality
of the clans, it was probably the rule that, when a senator died,
the king should call another experienced and aged man of the same
clanship to fill his place.  It was only, we may surmise, when the
community became more thoroughly amalgamated and inwardly united,
that this usage was departed from and the selection of the senators
was left entirely to the free judgment of the king, so that he was
only regarded as failing in his duty when he omitted to fill up
vacancies.


Prerogatives of the Senate.  The -Interregnum-


The prerogatives of this council of elders were based on the view
that the rule over the community composed of clans rightfully
belonged to the collective clan-elders, although in accordance
with the monarchical principle of the Romans, which already found
so stern an expression in the household, that rule could only be
exercised for the time being by one of these elders, namely the
king.  Every member of the senate accordingly was as such, not in
practice but in prerogative, likewise king of the community; and
therefore his insignia, though inferior to those of the king, were
of a similar character: he wore the red shoe like the king; only
that of the king was higher and more handsome than that of the
senator.  On this ground, moreover, as was already mentioned, the
royal power in the Roman community could never be left vacant When
the king died, the elders at once took his place and exercised the
prerogatives of regal power.  According to the immutable principle
however that only one can be master at a time, even now it was only
one of them that ruled, and such an "interim king" (-interrex-) was
distinguished from the king nominated for life simply in respect
to the duration, not in respect to the plenitude, of his authority.
The duration of the office of -interrex- was fixed for the individual
holders at not more than five days; it circulated accordingly among
the senators on the footing that, until the royal office was again
permanently filled up, the temporary holder at the expiry of that
term nominated a successor to himself, likewise for five days,
agreeably to the order of succession fixed by lot.  There was not,
as may readily be conceived, any declaration of allegiance to the
-interrex- on the part of the community.  Nevertheless the -interrex-
was entitled and bound not merely to perform all the official acts
otherwise pertaining to the king, but even to nominate a king for
life-- with the single exception, that this latter right was not
vested in the first who held the office, presumably because the
first was regarded as defectively appointed inasmuch as he was not
nominated by his predecessor.  Thus this assembly of elders was
the ultimate holder of the ruling power (-imperium-) and the divine
protection (-auspicia-) of the Roman commonwealth, and furnished
the guarantee for the uninterrupted continuance of that commonwealth
and of its monarchical--though not hereditarily monarchical--organization.
If therefore this senate subsequently seemed to the Greeks to be
an assembly of kings, this was only what was to be expected; it
had in fact been such originally.


The Senate and the Resolutions of the Community: -Patrum Auctoritas-


But it was not merely in so far as the idea of a perpetual kingdom
found its living expression in this assembly, that it was an essential
member of the Roman constitution.  The council of elders, indeed,
had no title to interfere with the official functions of the king.
The latter doubtless, in the event of his being unable personally
to lead the army or to decide a legal dispute, took his deputies
at all times from the senate; for which reason subsequently the
highest posts of command were regularly bestowed on senators alone,
and senators were likewise employed by preference as jurymen.  But
the senate, in its collective capacity, was never consulted in
the leading of the army or in the administration of justice; and
therefore there was no right of military command and no jurisdiction
vested in the senate of the later Rome.  On the other hand the
council of elders was held as called to the guardianship of the
existing constitution against encroachments by the king and the
burgesses.  On the senate devolved the duty of examining every
resolution adopted by the burgesses at the suggestion of the king,
and of refusing to confirm it if it seemed to violate existing
rights; or, which was the same thing, in all cases where a resolution
of the community was constitutionally requisite--as on every
alteration of the constitution, on the reception of new burgesses,
on the declaration of an aggressive war--the council of elders had
a right of veto.  This may not indeed be regarded in the light of
legislation pertaining jointly to the burgesses and the senate,
somewhat in the same way as to the two chambers in the constitutional
state of the present day; the senate was not so much law-maker as
law-guardian, and could only cancel a decree when the community
seemed to have exceeded its competence--to have violated by its
decree existing obligations towards the gods or towards foreign
states or organic institutions of the community.  But still it was
a matter of the greatest importance that--to take an example--when
the Roman king had proposed a declaration of war and the burgesses
had converted it into a decree, and when the satisfaction which
the foreign community seemed bound to furnish had been demanded in
vain, the Roman envoy invoked the gods as witnesses of the wrong
and concluded with the words, "But on these matters we shall consult
the elders at home how we may obtain our rights;" it was only when
the council of elders had declared its consent, that the war now
decreed by the burgesses and approved by the senate was formally
declared.  Certainly it was neither the design nor the effect of
this rule to occasion a constant interference of the senate with
the resolutions of the burgesses, and by such guardianship to divest
them of their sovereign power; but, as in the event of a vacancy
in the supreme office the senate secured the continuance of the
constitution, we find it here also as the shield of legal order in
opposition even to the supreme power--the community.


The Senate As State-Council


With this arrangement was probably connected the apparently very
ancient usage, in virtue of which the king previously submitted
to the senate the proposals that were to be brought before the
burgesses, and caused all its members one after another to give their
opinion on the subject.  As the senate had the right of cancelling
the resolution adopted, it was natural for the king to assure
himself beforehand that no opposition was to be apprehended from
that quarter; as indeed in general, on the one hand, it was in
accordance with Roman habits not to decide matters of importance
without having taken counsel with other men, and on the other hand
the senate was called, in virtue of its very composition, to act as
a state-council to the ruler of the community.  It was from this
usage of giving counsel, far more than from the prerogatives which
we have previously described, that the subsequent extensive powers
of the senate were developed; but it was in its origin insignificant
and really amounted only to the prerogative of the senators to
answer, when they were asked a question.  It may have been usual
to ask the previous opinion of the senate in affairs of importance
which were neither judicial nor military, as, for instance--apart
from the proposals to be submitted to the assembly of the people--in
the imposition of task-works and taxes, in the summoning of the
burgesses to war-service, and in the disposal of the conquered
territory; but such a previous consultation, though usual, was not
legally necessary.  The king convoked the senate when he pleased,
and laid before it his questions; no senator might declare his
opinion unasked, still less might the senate meet without being
summoned, except in the single case of its meeting on occasion
of a vacancy to settle the order of succession in the office of
-interrex-.  That the king was moreover at liberty to call in and
consult other men whom he trusted alongside of, and at the same
time with, the senators, is in a high degree probable.  The advice,
accordingly, was not a command; the king might omit to comply with
it, while the senate had no other means for giving practical effect
to its views except the already-mentioned right of cassation, which
was far from being universally applicable.  "I have chosen you,
not that ye may be my guides, but that ye may do my bidding:" these
words, which a later author puts into the mouth of king Romulus,
certainly express with substantial correctness the position of the
senate in this respect.


The Original Constitution of Rome


Let us now sum up the results.  Sovereignty, as conceived by
the Romans, was inherent in the community of burgesses; but the
burgess-body was never entitled to act alone, and was only entitled
to co-operate in action, when there was to be a departure from
existing rules.  By its side stood the assembly of the elders of
the community appointed for life, virtually a college of magistrates
with regal power, called in the event of a vacancy in the royal
office to administer it by means of their own members until it
should be once more definitively filled, and entitled to overturn
the illegal decrees of the community.  The royal power itself was,
as Sallust says, at once absolute and limited by the laws (-imperium
legitimum-); absolute, in so far as the king's command, whether
righteous or not, must in the first instance be unconditionally
obeyed; limited, in so far as a command contravening established
usage and not sanctioned by the true sovereign--the people--carried
no permanent legal consequences.  The oldest constitution of Rome
was thus in some measure constitutional monarchy inverted.  In
that form of government the king is regarded as the possessor and
vehicle of the plenary power of the state, and accordingly acts of
grace, for example, proceed solely from him, while the administration
of the state belongs to the representatives of the people and to
the executive responsible to them.  In the Roman constitution the
community of the people exercised very much the same functions as
belong to the king in England: the right of pardon, which in England
is a prerogative of the crown, was in Rome a prerogative of the
community; while all government was vested in the president of the
state.

If, in conclusion, we inquire as to the relation of the state itself
to its individual members, we find the Roman polity equally remote
from the laxity of a mere defensive combination and from the
modern idea of an absolute omnipotence of the state.  The community
doubtless exercised power over the person of the burgess in the
imposition of public burdens, and in the punishment of offences and
crimes; but any special law inflicting, or threatening to inflict,
punishment on an individual on account of acts not universally
recognized as penal always appeared to the Romans, even when there
was no flaw in point of form, an arbitrary and unjust proceeding.
Far more restricted still was the power of the community in respect
of the rights of property and the rights of family which were
coincident, rather than merely connected, with these; in Rome the
household was not absolutely annihilated and the community aggrandized
at its expense, as was the case in the police organization of
Lycurgus.  It was one of the most undeniable as well as one of the
most remarkable principles of the primitive constitution of Rome,
that the state might imprison or hang the burgess, but might not take
away from him his son or his field or even lay permanent taxation
on him.  In these and similar things the community itself was
restricted from encroaching on the burgess, nor was this restriction
merely ideal; it found its expression and its practical application
in the constitutional veto of the senate, which was certainly entitled
and bound to annul any resolution of the community contravening
such an original right.  No community was so all-powerful within
its own sphere as the Roman; but in no community did the burgess
who conducted himself un-blameably live in an equally absolute
security from the risk of encroachment on the part either of his
fellow-burgesses or of the state itself.

These were the principles on which the community of Rome governed
itself--a free people, understanding the duty of obedience, clearly
disowning all mystical priestly delusion, absolutely equal in the
eye of the law and one with another, bearing the sharply-defined
impress of a nationality of their own, while at the same time (as
will be afterwards shown) they wisely as well as magnanimously
opened their gates wide for intercourse with other lands.  This
constitution was neither manufactured nor borrowed; it grew up
amidst and along with the Roman people.  It was based, of course,
upon the earlier constitutions--the Italian, the Graeco-Italian,
and the Indo-Germanic; but a long succession of phases of political
development must have intervened between such constitutions as the
poems of Homer and the Germania of Tacitus delineate and the oldest
organization of the Roman community.  In the acclamation of the
Hellenic and in the shield-striking of the Germanic assemblies there
was involved an expression of the sovereign power of the community;
but a wide interval separated forms such as these from the organized
jurisdiction and the regulated declaration of opinion of the Latin
assembly of curies.  It is possible, moreover, that as the Roman
kings certainly borrowed the purple mantle and the ivory sceptre
from the Greeks (not from the Etruscans), the twelve lictors also
and various other external arrangements were introduced from abroad.
But that the development of the Roman constitutional law belonged
decidedly to Rome or, at any rate, to Latium, and that the borrowed
elements in it are but small and unimportant, is clearly demonstrated
by the fact that all its ideas are uniformly expressed by words of
Latin coinage.  This constitution practically established for all
time the fundamental conceptions of the Roman state; for, as long
as there existed a Roman community, in spite of changes of form
it was always held that the magistrate had absolute command, that
the council of elders was the highest authority in the state, and
that every exceptional resolution required the sanction of the
sovereign or, in other words, of the community of the people.




Notes for Book I Chapter V


1.  This was not merely the case under the old religious marriage
(-matrimonium confarreatione-); the civil marriage also (-matrimonium
consensu-), although not in itself giving to the husband proprietary
power over his wife, opened up the way for his acquiring this
proprietary power, inasmuch as the legal ideas of "formal delivery"
(-coemptio-), and "prescription" (-usus-), were applied without
ceremony to such a marriage.  Till he acquired it, and in particular
therefore during the period which elapsed before the completion of
the prescription, the wife was (just as in the later marriage by
-causae probatio-, until that took place), not -uxor-, but -pro
uxore-.  Down to the period when Roman jurisprudence became a
completed system the principle maintained its ground, that the wife
who was not in her husband's power was not a married wife, but only
passed as such (-uxor tantummodo habetur-.  Cicero, Top. 3, 14).

2.  The following epitaph, although belonging to a much later period,
is not unworthy to have a place here.  It is the stone that speaks:--

-Hospes, quod deico, paullum est.  Asta ac pellige.  Heic est
sepulcrum haud pulcrum pulcrai feminae, Nomen parentes nominarunt
Claudiam, Suom mareitum corde dilexit sovo, Gnatos duos creavit,
horunc alterum In terra linquit, alium sub terra locat; Sermone
lepido, tum autem incessu commodo, Domum servavit, lanam fecit.
Dixi.  Abei.-

(Corp. Inscr. Lat. 1007.)

Still more characteristic, perhaps, is the introduction of wool-spinning
among purely moral qualities; which is no very unusual occurrence
in Roman epitaphs.  Orelli, 4639: -optima et pulcherrima, lanifica
pia pudica frugi casta domiseda-.  Orelli, 4861: -modestia probitate
pudicitia obsequio lanificio diligentia fide par similisque cetereis
probeis femina fuit-.  Epitaph of Turia, i. 30: domestica bona
pudicitiae, opsequi, comitatis, facilitatis, lanificiis [tuis
adsiduitatis, religionis] sine superstitione, ornatus non conspiciendi,
cultus modici.

3.  I. III. Clan-villages

4.  Dionysius affirms (v. 25) that lameness excluded from the supreme
magistracy.  That Roman citizenship was a condition for the regal
office as well as for the consulate, is so very self-evident as to
make it scarcely worth while to repudiate expressly the fictions
respecting the burgess of Cures.

5.  I. III. Clan-villages

6.  Even in Rome, where the simple constitution of ten curies otherwise
early disappeared, we still discover one practical application of
it, and that singularly enough in the very same formality which we
have other reasons for regarding as the oldest of all those that
are mentioned in our legal traditions, the -confarreatio-.  It seems
scarcely doubtful that the ten witnesses in that ceremony had the
same relation to the constitution of ten curies the thirty lictors
had to the constitution of thirty curies.

7.  This is implied in their very name.  The "part" (-tribus-) is,
as jurists know, simply that which has once been or may hereafter
come to be a whole, and so has no real standing of its own in the
present.

8.  I. II. Primitive Races of Italy

9.  -Quiris-, -quiritis-, or -quirinus- is interpreted by the
ancients as "lance-bearer," from -quiris- or -curis- = lance and
-ire-, and so far in their view agrees with -samnis-, -samnitis-
and -sabinus-, which also among the ancients was derived from
--saunion--, spear.  This etymology, which associates the word
with -arquites-, -milites-, -pedites-, -equites-, -velites- --those
respectively who go with the bow, in bodies of a thousand, on
foot, on horseback, without armour in their mere over-garment--may
be incorrect, but it is bound up with the Roman conception of a
burgess.  So too Juno quiritis, (Mars) quirinus, Janus quirinus,
are conceived as divinities that hurl the spear; and, employed in
reference to men, -quiris- is the warrior, that is, the full burgess.
With this view the -usus loquendi- coincides.  Where the locality
was to be referred to, "Quirites" was never used, but always "Rome"
and "Romans" (-urbs Roma-, -populus-, -civis-, -ager Romanus-),
because the term -quiris- had as little of a local meaning as
-civis- or -miles-.  For the same reason these designations could
not be combined; they did not say -civis quiris-, because both
denoted, though from different points of view, the same legal
conception.  On the other hand the solemn announcement of the
funeral of a burgess ran in the words "this warrior has departed
in death" (-ollus quiris leto datus-); and in like manner the king
addressed the assembled community by this name, and, when he sat in
judgment, gave sentence according to the law of the warrior-freemen
(-ex iure quiritium-, quite similar to the later -ex iure civili-).
The phrase -populus Romanus-, -quirites- (-populus Romanus quiritium-is
not sufficiently attested), thus means "the community and the
individual burgesses," and therefore in an old formula (Liv. i.
32) to the -populus Romanus- are opposed the -prisci Latini-, to
the -quirites- the -homines prisci Latini- (Becker, Handb. ii. 20
seq.)

In the face of these facts nothing but ignorance of language and of
history can still adhere to the idea that the Roman community was
once confronted by a Quirite community of a similar kind, and that
after their incorporation the name of the newly received community
supplanted in ritual and legal phraseology that of the receiver.--Comp.
iv. The Hill-Romans On The Quirinal, note.

10.  Among the eight ritual institutions of Numa, Dionysius (ii. 64)
after naming the Curiones and Flamines, specifies as the third the
leaders of the horsemen (--oi eigemones ton Kelerion--).  According to
the Praenestine calendar a festival was celebrated at the Comitium
on the 19th March [adstantibus pon]tificibus et trib(unis) celer(um).
Valerius Antias (in Dionys. i. 13, comp. iii. 41) assigns to
the earliest Roman cavalry a leader, Celer, and three centurions;
whereas in the treatise De viris ill. i, Celer himself is termed
-centurio-.  Moreover Brutus is affirmed to have been -tribunus
celerum- at the expulsion of the kings (Liv. i. 59), and according
to Dionysius (iv.  71) to have even by virtue of this office made the
proposal to banish the Tarquins.  And, lastly, Pomponius (Dig. i.
2, 2, 15, 19) and Lydus in a similar way, partly perhaps borrowing
from him (De Mag.  i. 14, 37), identify the -tribunus celerum- with
the Celer of Antias, the -magister equitum- of the dictator under
the republic, and the -Praefectus praetorio- of the empire.

Of these-the only statements which are extant regarding the -tribuni
celerum- --the last mentioned not only proceeds from late and quite
untrustworthy authorities, but is inconsistent with the meaning of
the term, which can only signify "divisional leaders of horsemen,"
and above all the master of the horse of the republican period, who
was nominated only on extraordinary occasions and was in later times
no longer nominated at all, cannot possibly have been identical with
the magistracy that was required for the annual festival of the
19th March and was consequently a standing office.  Laying aside, as
we necessarily must, the account of Pomponius, which has evidently
arisen solely out of the anecdote of Brutus dressed up with
ever-increasing ignorance as history, we reach the simple result that
the -tribuni celerum- entirely correspond in number and character
to the -tribuni militum-, and that they were the leaders-of-division
of the horsemen, consequently quite distinct from the -magister
equitum-.

11.  This is indicated by the evidently very old forms -velites-and
-arquites-and by the subsequent organization of the legion.

12.  I. V. The King

13.  I. IV. The Tibur and Its Traffic

14.  -Lex- ("that which binds," related to -legare-, "to bind
to something") denotes, as is well known, a contract in general,
along, however, with the connotation of a contract whose terms the
proposer dictates and the other party simply accepts or declines;
as was usually the case, e. g. with public -licitationes-.  In the
-lex publica populi Romani- the proposer was the king, the acceptor
the people; the limited co-operation of the latter was thus
significantly indicated in the very language.




CHAPTER VI

The Non-Burgesses and the Reformed Constitution



Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities


The history of every nation, and of Italy more especially, is a
--synoikismos-- on a great scale.  Rome, in the earliest form in
which we have any knowledge of it, was already triune, and similar
incorporations only ceased when the spirit of Roman vigour had wholly
died away.  Apart from that primitive process of amalgamation of
the Ramnes, Titles, and Luceres, of which hardly anything beyond the
bare fact is known, the earliest act of incorporation of this sort
was that by which the Hill-burgesses became merged in the Palatine
Rome.  The organization of the two communities, when they were
about to be amalgamated, may be conceived to have been substantially
similar; and in solving the problem of union they would have to
choose between the alternatives of retaining duplicate institutions
or of abolishing one set of these and extending the other to the whole
united community.  They adopted the former course with respect to
all sanctuaries and priesthoods.  Thenceforth the Roman community
had its two guilds of Salii and two of Luperci, and as it had
two forms of Mars, it had also two priests for that divinity--the
Palatine priest, who afterwards usually took the designation of
priest of Mars, and the Colline, who was termed priest of Quirinus.
It is likely, although it can no longer be proved, that all the
old Latin priesthoods of Rome--the Augurs, Pontifices, Vestals,
and Fetials--originated in the same way from a combination of the
priestly colleges of the Palatine and Quirinal communities.  In
the division into local regions the town on the Quirinal hill was
added as a fourth region to the three belonging to the Palatine
city, viz. the Suburan, Palatine, and suburban (-Esquiliae-).  In
the case of the original --synoikismos-- the annexed community was
recognized after the union as at least a tribe (part) of the new
burgess-body, and thus had in some sense a continued political
existence; but this course was not followed in the case of the
Hill-Romans or in any of the later processes of annexation.  After
the union the Roman community continued to be divided as formerly
into three tribes, each containing ten wardships (-curiae-); and the
Hill-Romans--whether they were or were not previously distributed
into tribes of their own--must have been inserted into the existing
tribes and wardships.  This insertion was probably so arranged that,
while each tribe and wardship received its assigned proportion of
the new burgesses, the new burgesses in these divisions were not
amalgamated completely with the old; the tribes henceforth presented
two ranks: the Tities, Ramnes, and Luceres being respectively
subdivided into first and second (-priores-, -posteriores-).  With
this division was connected in all probability that arrangement
of the organic institutions of the community in pairs, which meets
us everywhere.  The three pairs of Sacred Virgins are expressly
described as representatives of the three tribes with their first
and second ranks; and it may be conjectured that the pair of Lares
worshipped in each street had a similar origin.  This arrangement
is especially apparent in the army: after the union each half-tribe
of the tripartite community furnished a hundred horsemen, and the
Roman burgess cavalry was thus raised to six "hundreds," and the
number of its captains probably from three to six.  There is no
tradition of any corresponding increase to the infantry; but to
this origin we may refer the subsequent custom of calling out the
legions regularly two by two, and this doubling of the levy probably
led to the rule of having not three, as was perhaps originally
the case, but six leaders-of-division to command the legion.  It
is certain that no corresponding increase of seats in the senate
took place: on the contrary, the primitive number of three hundred
senators remained the normal number down to the seventh century;
with which it is quite compatible that a number of the more prominent
men of the newly annexed community may have been received into the
senate of the Palatine city.  The same course was followed with
the magistracies: a single king presided over the united community,
and there was no change as to his principal deputies, particularly
the warden of the city.  It thus appears that the ritual institutions
of the Hill-city were continued, and that the doubled burgess-body
was required to furnish a military force of double the numerical
strength; but in other respects the incorporation of the Quirinal
city into the Palatine was really a subordination of the former to
the latter.  If we have rightly assumed that the contrast between
the Palatine old and the Quirinal new burgesses was identical
with the contrast between the first and second Tities, Ramnes, and
Luceres, it was thus the -gentes-of the Quirinal city that formed
the "second" or the "lesser."  The distinction, however, was
certainly more an honorary than a legal precedence.  At the taking
of the vote in the senate the senators taken from the old clans
were asked before those of the "lesser." In like manner the Colline
region ranked as inferior even to the suburban (Esquiline) region
of the Palatine city; the priest of the Quirinal Mars as inferior
to the priest of the Palatine Mars; the Quirinal Salii and Luperci
as inferior to those of the Palatine.  It thus appears that the
--synoikismos--, by which the Palatine community incorporated that
of the Quirinal, marked an intermediate stage between the earliest
--synoikismos-- by which the Tities, Ramnes, and Luceres became
blended, and all those that took place afterwards.  The annexed
community was no longer allowed to form a separate tribe in the new
whole, but it was permitted to furnish at least a distinct portion
of each tribe; and its ritual institutions were not only allowed to
subsist--as was afterwards done in other cases, after the capture
of Alba for example--but were elevated into institutions of the
united community, a course which was not pursued in any subsequent
instance.


Dependents and Guests


This amalgamation of two substantially similar commonwealths
produced rather an increase in the size than a change in the
intrinsic character of the existing community.  A second process
of incorporation, which was carried out far more gradually and had
far deeper effects, may be traced back, so far as the first steps
in it are concerned, to this epoch; we refer to the amalgamation
of the burgesses and the --metoeci--.  At all times there existed
side by side with the burgesses in the Roman community persons who
were protected, the "listeners" (-clientes-), as they were called
from their being dependents on the several burgess-households, or
the "multitude" (-plebes-, from -pleo-, -plenus-), as they were
termed negatively with reference to their want of political rights.(1)
The elements of this intermediate stage between the freeman and
the slave were, as has been shown(2) already in existence in the
Roman household: but in the community this class necessarily acquired
greater importance -de facto- and -de jure-, and that from two
reasons.  In the first place the community might itself possess
half-free clients as well as slaves; especially after the conquest
of a town and the breaking up of its commonwealth it might often
appear to the conquering community advisable not to sell the mass
of the burgesses formally as slaves, but to allow them the continued
possession of freedom -de facto-, so that in the capacity as it
were of freedmen of the community they entered into relations of
clientship whether to the clans, or to the king.  In the second
place by means of the community and its power over the individual
burgesses, there was given the possibility of protecting the clients
against an abusive exercise of the -dominium- still subsisting in
law.  At an immemorially early period there was introduced into
Roman law the principle on which rested the whole legal position
of the --metoeci--, that, when a master on occasion of a public
legal act--such as in the making of a testament, in an action at law,
or in the census--expressly or tacitly surrendered his -dominium-,
neither he himself nor his lawful successors should ever have power
arbitrarily to recall that resignation or reassert a claim to the
person of the freedman himself or of his descendants.  The clients
and their posterity did not by virtue of their position possess
either the rights of burgesses or those of guests: for to constitute
a burgess a formal bestowal of the privilege was requisite on the
part of the community, while the relation of guest presumed the
holding of burgess-rights in a community which had a treaty with
Rome.  What they did obtain was a legally protected possession of
freedom, while they continued to be -de jure- non-free.  Accordingly
for a lengthened period their relations in all matters of property
seem to have been, like those of slaves, regarded in law as
relations of the patron, so that it was necessary that the latter
should represent them in processes at law; in connection with which
the patron might levy contributions from them in case of need, and
call them to account before him criminally.  By degrees, however,
the body of --metoeci-- outgrew these fetters; they began to
acquire and to alienate in their own name, and to claim and obtain
legal redress from the Roman burgess-tribunals without the formal
intervention of their patron.

In matters of marriage and inheritance, equality of rights with the
burgesses was far sooner conceded to foreigners(3) than to those
who were strictly non-free and belonged to no community; but the
latter could not well be prohibited from contracting marriages in
their own circle and from forming the legal relations arising out
of marriage--those of marital and paternal power, of -agnatio- and
-gentilitas- of heritage and of tutelage--after the model of the
corresponding relations among the burgesses.

Similar consequences to some extent were produced by the exercise
of the -ius hospitii-, in so far as by virtue of it foreigners settled
permanently in Rome and established a domestic position there.  In
this respect the most liberal principles must have prevailed in
Rome from primitive times.  The Roman law knew no distinctions of
quality in inheritance and no locking up of estates.  It allowed
on the one hand to every man capable of making a disposition the
entirely unlimited disposal of his property during his lifetime; and
on the other hand, so far as we know, to every one who was at all
entitled to have dealings with Roman burgesses, even to the foreigner
and the client, the unlimited right of acquiring moveable, and
(from the time when immoveables could be held as private property
at all) within certain limits also immoveable, estate in Rome.  Rome
was in fact a commercial city, which was indebted for the commencement
of its importance to international commerce, and which with a noble
liberality granted the privilege of settlement to every child of an
unequal marriage, to every manumitted slave, and to every stranger
who surrendering his rights in his native land emigrated to Rome.


Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the Community


At first, therefore, the burgesses were in reality the protectors,
the non-burgesses were the protected; but in Rome as in all communities
which freely admit settlement but do not throw open the rights of
citizenship, it soon became a matter of increasing difficulty to
harmonize this relation -de jure- with the actual state of things.
The flourishing of commerce, the full equality of private rights
guaranteed to all Latins by the Latin league (including even the
acquisition of landed property), the greater frequency of manumissions
as prosperity increased, necessarily occasioned even in peace a
disproportionate increase of the number of --metoeci--.  That number
was further augmented by the greater part of the population of the
neighbouring towns subdued by force of arms and incorporated with
Rome; which, whether it removed to the city or remained in its old
home now reduced to the rank of a village, ordinarily exchanged its
native burgess-rights for those of a Roman --metoikos--.  Moreover
the burdens of war fell exclusively on the old burgesses and were
constantly thinning the ranks of their patrician descendants, while
the --metoeci-- shared in the results of victory without having to
pay for it with their blood.

Under such circumstances the only wonder is that the Roman patriciate
did not disappear much more rapidly than it actually did.  The fact
of its still continuing for a prolonged period a numerous community
can scarcely be accounted for by the bestowal of Roman burgess-rights
on several distinguished foreign clans, which after emigrating
from their homes or after the conquest of their cities received
the Roman franchise--for such grants appear to have occurred but
sparingly from the first, and to have become always the more rare
as the franchise increased in value.  A cause of greater influence,
in all likelihood, was the introduction of the civil marriage,
by which a child begotten of patrician parents living together as
married persons, although without -confarreatio-, acquired full
burgess-rights equally with the child of a -confarreatio- marriage.
It is at least probable that the civil marriage, which already
existed in Rome before the Twelve Tables but was certainly not an
original institution, was introduced for the purpose of preventing
the disappearance of the patriciate.(4)  To this connection
belong also the measures which were already in the earliest times
adopted with a view to maintain a numerous posterity in the several
households.(5)

Nevertheless the number of the --metoeci-- was of necessity
constantly on the increase and liable to no diminution, while that
of the burgesses was at the utmost perhaps not decreasing; and in
consequence the --metoeci-- necessarily acquired by imperceptible
degrees another and a freer position.  The non-burgesses were no
longer merely emancipated slaves or strangers needing protection;
their ranks included the former burgesses of the Latin communities
vanquished in war, and more especially the Latin settlers who lived
in Rome not by the favour of the king or of any other burgess, but
by federal right.  Legally unrestricted in the acquiring of property,
they gained money and estate in their new home, and bequeathed, like
the burgesses, their homesteads to their children and children's
children.  The vexatious relation of dependence on particular
burgess-households became gradually relaxed.  If the liberated slave
or the immigrant stranger still held an entirely isolated position
in the state, such was no longer the case with his children, still
less with his grandchildren, and this very circumstance of itself
rendered their relations to the patron of less moment.  While in
earlier times the client was exclusively left dependent for legal
protection on the intervention of the patron, the more the state
became consolidated and the importance of the clanships and households
in consequence diminished, the more frequently must the individual
client have obtained justice and redress of injury, even without
the intervention of his patron, from the king.  A great number of
the non-burgesses, particularly the members of the dissolved Latin
communities, had, as we have already said, probably from the outset
not any place as clients of the royal or other great clans, and
obeyed the king nearly in the same manner as did the burgesses.  The
king, whose sovereignty over the burgesses was in truth ultimately
dependent on the good-will of those obeying, must have welcomed the
means of forming out of his own -proteges- essentially dependent
on him a body bound to him by closer ties.


Plebs


Thus there grew up by the side of the burgesses a second community
in Rome: out of the clients arose the Plebs.  This change of name
is significant.  In law there was no difference between the client
and the plebeian, the "dependent" and the "man of the multitude;"
but in fact there was a very important one, for the former term
brought into prominence the relation of dependence on a member of
the politically privileged class; the latter suggested merely the
want of political rights.  As the feeling of special dependence
diminished, that of political inferiority forced itself on the
thoughts of the free --metoeci--; and it was only the sovereignty
of the king ruling equally over all that prevented the outbreak of
political conflict between the privileged and the non-privileged
classes.


The Servian Constitution


The first step, however, towards the amalgamation of the two
portions of the people scarcely took place in the revolutionary
way which their antagonism appeared to foreshadow.  The reform of
the constitution, which bears the name of king Servius Tullius, is
indeed, as to its historical origin, involved in the same darkness
with all the events of a period respecting which we learn whatever
we know not by means of historical tradition, but solely by means of
inference from the institutions of later times.  But its character
testifies that it cannot have been a change demanded by the
plebeians, for the new constitution assigned to them duties alone,
and not rights.  It must rather have owed its origin either to the
wisdom of one of the Roman kings, or to the urgency of the burgesses
that they should be delivered from exclusive liability to burdens,
and that the non-burgesses should be made to share on the one hand
in taxation--that is, in the obligation to make advances to the
state (the -tributum-)--and rendering task-work, and on the other
hand in the levy.  Both were comprehended in the Servian constitution,
but they hardly took place at the same time.  The bringing in of
the non-burgesses presumably arose out of the economic burdens;
these were early extended to such as were "possessed of means"
(-locupletes-) or "settled people" (-adsidui-, freeholders), and only
those wholly without means, the "children-producers" (-proletarii-,
-capite censi-) remained free from them.  Thereupon followed the
politically more important step of bringing in the non-burgesses
to military duty.  This was thenceforth laid not upon the burgesses
as such, but upon the possessors of land, the -tribules-, whether
they might be burgesses or mere --metoeci--; service in the army
was changed from a personal burden into a burden on property.  The
details of the arrangement were as follow.


The Five Classes


Every freeholder from the eighteenth to the sixtieth year of his
age, including children in the household of freeholder fathers,
without distinction of birth, was under obligation of service, so
that even the manumitted slave had to serve, if in an exceptional
case he had come into possession of landed  property.  The Latins
also possessing land--others from without were not allowed to acquire
Roman soil--were called in to service, so far as they had, as was
beyond doubt the case with most of them, taken up their abode on
Roman territory.  The body of men liable to serve was distributed,
according to the size of their portions of land, into those bound
to full service or the possessors of a full hide,(6) who were obliged
to appear in complete armour and in so far formed pre-eminently
the war army (-classis-), and the four following ranks of smaller
landholders--the possessors respectively of three fourths, of
a half, of a quarter, or of an eighth of a whole farm--from whom
was required fulfilment of service, but not equipment in complete
armour, and they thus had a position below the full rate (-infra
classem-).  As the land happened to be at that time apportioned,
almost the half of the farms were full hides, while each of the
classes possessing respectively three-fourths, the half, and the
quarter of a hide, amounted to scarcely an eighth of the freeholders,
and those again holding an eighth of a hide amounted to fully an
eighth.  It was accordingly laid down as a rule that in the case
of the infantry the levy should be in the proportion of eighty
holders of a full hide, twenty from each of the three next ranks,
and twenty-eight from the last.


Cavalry


The cavalry was similarly dealt with.  The number of divisions
in it was tripled, and the only difference in this case was that
the six divisions already existing with the old names (-Tities-,
-Ramnes-, -Luceres- -primi- and -secundi-) were left to the
patricians, while the twelve new divisions were formed chiefly from
the non-burgesses.  The reason for this difference is probably to
be sought in the fact that at that period the infantry were formed
anew for each campaign and discharged on their return home, whereas
the cavalry with their horses were on military grounds kept together
also in time of peace, and held their regular drills, which continued
to subsist as festivals of the Roman equites down to the latest
times.(7)  Accordingly the squadrons once constituted were allowed,
even under this reform, to keep their ancient names.  In order to
make the cavalry accessible to every burgess, the unmarried women
and orphans under age, so far as they had possession of land,
were bound instead of personal service to provide the horses for
particular troopers (each trooper had two of them), and to furnish
them with fodder.  On the whole there was one horseman to nine
foot-soldiers; but in actual service the horsemen were used more
sparingly.

The non-freeholders (-adcensi-, people standing at the side of the
list of those owing military service) had to supply the army with
workmen and musicians as well as with a number of substitutes
who marched with the army unarmed (-velati-), and, when vacancies
occurred in the field, took their places in the ranks equipped with
the weapons of the sick or of the fallen.


Levy-Districts


To facilitate the levying of the infantry, the city was distributed
into four "parts" (-tribus-); by which the old triple division was
superseded, at least so far as concerned its local significance.
These were the Palatine, which comprehended the height of that name
along with the Velia; the Suburan, to which the street so named, the
Carinae, and the Caelian belonged; the Esquiline; and the Colline,
formed by the Quirinal and Viminal, the "hills" as contrasted with
the "mounts" of the Capitol and Palatine.  We have already spoken
of the formation of these regions(8) and shown how they originated
out of the ancient double city of the Palatine and the Quirinal.
By what process it came to pass that every freeholder burgess
belonged to one of those city-districts, we cannot tell; but this
was now the case; and that the four regions were nearly on an
equality in point of numbers, is evident from their being equally
drawn upon in the levy.  This division, which had primary reference to
the soil alone and applied only inferentially to those who possessed
it, was merely for administrative purposes, and in particular
never had any religious significance attached to it; for the fact
that in each of the city-districts there were six chapels of the
enigmatical Argei no more confers upon them the character of ritual
districts than the erection of an altar to the Lares in each street
implies such a character in the streets.

Each of these four levy-districts had to furnish approximately the
fourth part not only of the force as a whole, but of each of its
military subdivisions, so that each legion and each century numbered
an equal proportion of conscripts from each region, in order to
merge all distinctions of a gentile and local nature in the one
common levy of the community and, especially through the powerful
levelling influence of the military spirit, to blend the --metoeci--
and the burgesses into one people.


Organization of the Army


In a military point of view, the male population capable of
bearing arms was divided into a first and second levy, the former
of which, the "juniors" from the commencement of the eighteenth to
the completion of the forty-sixth year, were especially employed
for service in the field, while the "seniors" guarded the walls at
home.  The military unit came to be in the infantry the now doubled
legion(9)--a phalanx, arranged and armed completely in the old
Doric style, of 6000 men who, six file deep, formed a front of 1000
heavy-armed soldiers; to which were attached 2400 "unarmed".(10)
The four first ranks of the phalanx, the -classis-, were formed by
the fully-armed hoplites of those possessing a full hide; in the
fifth and sixth were placed the less completely equipped farmers of
the second and third division; the two last divisions were annexed
as rear ranks to the phalanx or fought by its side as light-armed
troops.  Provision was made for readily supplying the accidental
gaps which were so injurious to the phalanx.  Thus there served in
it 84 centuries or 8400 men, of whom 6000 were hoplites, 4000 of
the first division, 1000 from each of the two following, and 2400
light-armed, of whom 1000 belonged to the fourth, and 1200 to the
fifth division; approximately each levy-district furnished to the
phalanx 2100, and to each century 25 men.  This phalanx was the army
destined for the field, while a like force of troops was reckoned
for the seniors who remained behind to defend the city.  In this way
the normal amount of the infantry came to 16,800 men, 80 centuries
of the first division, 20 from each of the three following, and 28
from the last division--not taking into account the two centuries
of substitutes or those of the workmen or the musicians.  To all
these fell to be added the cavalry, which consisted of 1800 horse;
often when the army took the field, however, only the third part
of the whole number was attached to it.  The normal amount of the
Roman army of the first and second levy rose accordingly to close
upon 20,000 men: which number must beyond doubt have corresponded
on the whole to the effective strength of the Roman population
capable of arms, as it stood at the time when this new organization
was introduced.  As the population increased the number of centuries
was not augmented, but the several divisions were strengthened by
persons added, without altogether losing sight, however, of the
fundamental number.  Indeed the Roman corporations in general, closed
as to numbers, very frequently evaded the limit imposed upon them
by admitting supernumerary members.


Census


This new organization of the army was accompanied by a more careful
supervision of landed property on the part of the state.  It was
now either ordained for the first time or, if not, at any rate
defined more carefully, that a land-register should be established,
in which the several proprietors of land should have their fields
with all their appurtenances, servitudes, slaves, beasts of draught
and of burden, duly recorded.  Every act of alienation, which did
not take place publicly and before witnesses, was declared null;
and a revision of the register of landed property, which was at
the same time the levy-roll, was directed to be made every fourth
year.  The -mancipatio- and the -census- thus arose out of the
Servian military organization.


Political Effects of the Servian Military Organization


It is evident at a glance that this whole institution was from the
outset of a military nature.  In the whole detailed scheme we do
not encounter a single feature suggestive of any destination of the
centuries to other than purely military purposes; and this alone
must, with every one accustomed to consider such matters, form
a sufficient reason for pronouncing its application to political
objects a later innovation.  If, as is probable, in the earliest
period every one who had passed his sixtieth year was excluded from
the centuries, this has no meaning, so far as they were intended
from the first to form a representation of the burgess-community
similar to and parallel with the curies.  Although, however, the
organization of the centuries was introduced merely to enlarge
the military resources of the burgesses by the inclusion of
the --metoeci-- and, in so far, there is no greater error than to
exhibit the Servian organization as the introduction of a timocracy
in Rome--yet the new obligation imposed upon the inhabitants to
bear arms exercised in its consequences a material influence on
their political position.  He who is obliged to become a soldier
must also, so long as the state is not rotten, have it in his power
to become an officer; beyond question plebeians also could now be
nominated in Rome as centurions and as military tribunes.  Although,
moreover, the institution of the centuries was not intended
to curtail the political privileges exclusively possessed by the
burgesses as hitherto represented in the curies, yet it was inevitable
that those rights, which the burgesses hitherto had exercised not
as the assembly of curies, but as the burgess-levy, should pass over
to the new centuries of burgesses and --metoeci--.  Henceforward,
accordingly, it was the centuries whose consent the king had
to ask before beginning an aggressive war.(11)  It is important,
on account of the subsequent course of development, to note these
first steps towards the centuries taking part in public affairs;
but the centuries came to acquire such rights at first more in the
way of natural sequence than of direct design, and subsequently
to the Servian reform, as before, the assembly of the curies was
regarded as the proper burgess-community, whose homage bound the
whole people in allegiance to the king.  By the side of these new
landowning full-burgesses stood the domiciled foreigners from the
allied Latium, as participating in the public burdens, tribute and
task-works (hence -municipes-); while the burgesses not domiciled,
who were beyond the pale of the tribes, and had not the right
to serve in war and vote, came into view only as "owing tribute"
(-aerarii-).

In this way, while hitherto there had been distinguished only two
classes of members of the community, burgesses and clients, there
were now established those three political classes, which exercised
a dominant influence over the constitutional law of Rome for many
centuries.


Time and Occasion of the Reform


When and how this new military organization of the Roman community
came into existence, can only be conjectured.  It presupposes the
existence of the four regions; in other words, the Servian wall must
have been erected before the reform took place.  But the territory
of the city must also have considerably exceeded its original limits,
when it could furnish 8000 holders of full hides and as many who
held lesser portions, or sons of such holders.  We are not acquainted
with the superficial extent of the normal Roman farm; but it is
not possible to estimate it as under twenty -jugera-.(12)  If we
reckon as a minimum 10,000 full hides, this would imply a superficies
of 190 square miles of arable land; and on this calculation, if we
make a very moderate allowance for pasture, the space occupied by
houses, and ground not capable of culture, the territory, at the
period when this reform was carried out, must have had at least
an extent of 420 square miles, probably an extent still more
considerable.  If we follow tradition, we must assume a number of
84,000 burgesses who were freeholders and capable of bearing arms;
for such, we are told, were the numbers ascertained by Servius at
the first census.  A glance at the map, however, shows that this
number must be fabulous; it is not even a genuine tradition, but
a conjectural calculation, by which the 16,800 capable of bearing
arms who constituted the normal strength of the infantry appeared
to yield, on an average of five persons to each family, the number
of 84,000 burgesses, and this number was confounded with that
of those capable of bearing arms.  But even according to the more
moderate estimates laid down above, with a territory of some 16,000
hides containing a population of nearly 20,000 capable of bearing
arms and at least three times that number of women, children, and
old men, persons who had no land, and slaves, it is necessary to
assume not merely that the region between the Tiber and Anio had
been acquired, but that the Alban territory had also been conquered,
before the Servian constitution was established; a result with
which tradition agrees.  What were the numerical proportions of
patricians and plebeians originally in the army, cannot be ascertained.

Upon the whole it is plain that this Servian institution did not
originate in a conflict between the orders.  On the contrary, it
bears the stamp of a reforming legislator like the constitutions of
Lycurgus, Solon, and Zaleucus; and it has evidently been produced
under Greek influence.  Particular analogies may be deceptive, such
as the coincidence noticed by the ancients that in Corinth also
widows and orphans were charged with the provision of horses for
the cavalry; but the adoption of the armour and arrangements of
the Greek hoplite system was certainly no accidental coincidence.
Now if we consider the fact that it was in the second century of
the city that the Greek states in Lower Italy advanced from the pure
clan-constitution to a modified one, which placed the preponderance
in the hands of the landholders, we shall recognize in that movement
the impulse which called forth in Rome the Servian reform--a change
of constitution resting in the main on the same fundamental idea,
and only directed into a somewhat different course by the strictly
monarchical form of the Roman state.(13)




Notes for Book I Chapter VI


1.  I. V. Dependents of the Household

2.  -Habuit plebem in clientelas principium descriptam-.  Cicero,
de Rep. ii. 9.

3.  I. III. The Latin League

4.  The enactments of the Twelve Tables respecting -usus- show
clearly that they found the civil marriage already in existence.
In like manner the high antiquity of the civil marriage is clearly
evident from the fact that it, equally with the religious marriage,
necessarily involved the marital power (v. The House-father and
His Household), and only differed from the religious marriage as
respected the manner in which that power was acquired.  The religious
marriage itself was held as the proprietary and legally necessary
form of acquiring a wife; whereas, in the case of civil marriage,
one of the general forms of acquiring property used on other
occasions--delivery on the part of a person entitled to give away,
or prescription--was requisite in order to lay the foundation of
a valid marital power.

5.  I. V. The House-father and His Household.

6.  -Hufe-, hide, as much as can be properly tilled with one plough,
called in Scotland a plough-gate.

7.  For the same reason, when the levy was enlarged after
the admission of the Hill-Romans, the equites were doubled, while
in the infantry force instead of the single "gathering" (-legio-)
two legions were called out (vi. Amalgamation of the Palatine and
Quirinal Cities).

8.  I. IV. Oldest Settlements In the Palatine and Suburan Regions

9.  I. V. Burdens of the Burgesses

10.  -velites-, see v. Burdens of the Burgesses, note

11.  I. V. Rights of the Burgesses

12.  Even about 480, allotments of land of seven -jugera- appeared
to those that received them small (Val. Max. iii. 3, 5; Colum. i,
praef.  14; i. 3, ii; Plin. H. N. xviii. 3, 18: fourteen -jugera-,
Victor, 33; Plutarch, Apophth. Reg. et Imp. p. 235 Dubner, in
accordance with which Plutarch, Crass. 2, is to be corrected).

A comparison of the Germanic proportions gives the same result.
The -jugerum- and the -morgen- [nearly 5/8 of an English acre],
both originally measures rather of labour than of surface, may be
looked upon as originally identical.  As the German hide consisted
ordinarily of 30, but not unfrequently of 20 or 40 -morgen-, and
the homestead frequently, at least among the Anglo-Saxons, amounted
to a tenth of the hide, it will appear, taking into account the
diversity of climate and the size of the Roman -heredium- of 2
-jugera-, that the hypothesis of a Roman hide of 20 -jugera- is not
unsuitable to the circumstances of the case.  It is to be regretted
certainly that on this very point tradition leaves us without
precise information.

13.  The analogy also between the so-called Servian constitution and
the treatment of the Attic --metoeci-- deserves to be particularly
noticed.  Athens, like Rome, opened her gates at a comparatively
early period to the --metoeci--, and afterwards summoned them also
to share the burdens of the state.  We cannot suppose that any
direct connection existed in this instance between Athens and Rome;
but the coincidence serves all the more distinctly to show how the
same causes--urban centralization and urban development--everywhere
and of necessity produce similar effects.




CHAPTER VII

The Hegemony of Rome in Latium



Extension of the Roman Territory


The brave and impassioned Italian race doubtless never lacked
feuds among themselves and with their neighbours: as the country
flourished and civilization advanced, feuds must have become
gradually changed into war and raids for pillage into conquest,
and political powers must have begun to assume shape.  No Italian
Homer, however, has preserved for us a picture of these earliest
frays and plundering excursions, in which the character of nations
is moulded and expressed like the mind of the man in the sports
and enterprises of the boy; nor does historical tradition enable
us to form a judgment, with even approximate accuracy, as to the
outward development of power and the comparative resources of the
several Latin cantons.  It is only in the case of Rome, at the
utmost, that we can trace in some degree the extension of its power
and of its territory.  The earliest demonstrable boundaries of the
united Roman community have been already stated;(1) in the landward
direction they were on an average just about five miles distant
from the capital of the canton, and it was only toward the coast
that they extended as far as the mouth of the Tiber (-Ostia-), at
a distance of somewhat more than fourteen miles from Rome.  "The
new city," says Strabo, in his description of the primitive Rome,
"was surrounded by larger and smaller tribes, some of whom dwelt
in independent villages and were not subordinate to any national
union."  It seems to have been at the expense of these neighbours
of kindred lineage in the first instance that the earliest extensions
of the Roman territory took place.


Territory on the Anio--Alba


The Latin communities situated on the upper Tiber and between the
Tiber and the Anio-Antemnae, Crustumerium, Ficulnea, Medullia,
Caenina, Corniculum, Cameria, Collatia,--were those which pressed
most closely and sorely on Rome, and they appear to have forfeited
their independence in very early times to the arms of the Romans.
The only community that subsequently appears as independent in this
district was Nomentum; which perhaps saved its freedom by alliance
with Rome.  The possession of Fidenae, the -tete de pont- of the
Etruscans on the left bank of the Tiber, was contested between the
Latins and the Etruscans--in other words, between the Romans and
Veientes--with varying results.  The struggle with Gabii, which
held the plain between the Anio and the Alban hills, was for a
long period equally balanced: down to late times the Gabine dress
was deemed synonymous with that of war, and Gabine ground the
prototype of hostile soil.(2) By these conquests the Roman territory
was probably extended to about 190 square miles.  Another very
early achievement of the Roman arms was preserved, although in a
legendary dress, in the memory of posterity with greater vividness
than those obsolete struggles: Alba, the ancient sacred metropolis
of Latium, was conquered and destroyed by Roman troops.  How the
collision arose, and how it was decided, tradition does not tell:
the battle of the three Roman with the three Alban brothers born at
one birth is nothing but a personification of the struggle between
two powerful and closely related cantons, of which the Roman at
least was triune.  We know nothing at all beyond the naked fact of
the subjugation and destruction of Alba by Rome.(3)

It is not improbable, although wholly a matter of conjecture, that,
at the same period when Rome was establishing herself on the Anio
and on the Alban hills, Praeneste, which appears at a later date
as mistress of eight neighbouring townships, Tibur, and others of
the Latin communities were similarly occupied in enlarging their
territory and laying the foundations of their subsequent far from
inconsiderable power.


Treatment of the Earliest Acquisitons


We feel the want of accurate information as to the legal character
and legal effects of these early Latin conquests, still more than
we miss the records of the wars in which they were won.  Upon the
whole it is not to be doubted that they were treated in accordance
with the system of incorporation, out of which the tripartite community
of Rome had arisen; excepting that the cantons who were compelled
by arms to enter the combination did not, like the primitive three,
preserve some sort of relative independence as separate regions
in the new united community, but became so entirely merged in the
general whole as to be no longer traced.(4)  However far the power
of a Latin canton might extend, in the earliest times it tolerated
no political centre except the proper capital; and still less
founded independent settlements, such as the Phoenicians and the
Greeks established, thereby creating in their colonies clients
for the time being and future rivals to the mother city.  In this
respect, the treatment which Ostia experienced from Rome deserves
special notice: the Romans could not and did not wish to prevent
the rise -de facto- of a town at that spot, but they allowed the
place no political independence, and accordingly they did not bestow
on those who settled there any local burgess-rights, but merely
allowed them to retain, if they already possessed, the general
burgess-rights of Rome.(5)  This principle also determined the
fate of the weaker cantons, which by force of arms or by voluntary
submission became subject to a stronger.  The stronghold of the canton
was razed, its domain was added to the domain of the conquerors,
and a new home was instituted for the inhabitants as well as for
their gods in the capital of the victorious canton.  This must not
be understood absolutely to imply a formal transportation of the
conquered inhabitants to the new capital, such as was the rule at
the founding of cities in the East.  The towns of Latium at this
time can have been little more than the strongholds and weekly
markets of the husbandmen: it was sufficient in general that the
market and the seat of justice should be transferred to the new
capital.  That even the temples often remained at the old spot
is shown in the instances of Alba and of Caenina, towns which must
still after their destruction have retained some semblance of
existence in connection with religion.  Even where the strength
of the place that was razed rendered it really necessary to remove
the inhabitants, they would be frequently settled, with a view
to the cultivation of the soil, in the open hamlets of their old
domain.  That the conquered, however, were not unfrequently compelled
either as a whole or in part to settle in their new capital,
is proved, more satisfactorily than all the several stories from
the legendary period of Latium could prove it, by the maxim of
Roman state-law, that only he who had extended the boundaries of
the territory was entitled to advance the wall of the city (the
-pomerium-).  Of course the conquered, whether transferred or not,
were ordinarily compelled to occupy the legal position of clients;(6)
but particular individuals or clans occasionally had burgess-rights
or, in other words, the patriciate conferred upon them.  In the
time of the empire there were still recognized Alban clans which
were introduced among the burgesses of Rome after the fall of their
native seat; amongst these were the Julii, Servilii, Quinctilii,
Cloelii, Geganii, Curiatii, Metilii: the memory of their descent was
preserved by their Alban family shrines, among which the sanctuary
of the -gens- of the Julii at Bovillae again rose under the empire
into great repute.

This centralizing process, by which several small communities
became absorbed in a larger one, of course was far from being an
idea specially Roman.  Not only did the development of Latium and
of the Sabellian stocks hinge upon the distinction between national
centralization and cantonal independence; the case was the same
with the development of the Hellenes.  Rome in Latium and Athens
in Attica arose out of a like amalgamation of many cantons into
one state; and the wise Thales suggested a similar fusion to the
hard-pressed league of the Ionic cities as the only means of saving
their nationality.  But Rome adhered to this principle of unity with
more consistency, earnestness, and success than any other Italian
canton; and just as the prominent position of Athens in Hellas
was the effect of her early centralization, so Rome was indebted
for her greatness solely to the same system, in her case far more
energetically applied,


The Hegemony of Rome over Latium--Alba


While the conquests of Rome in Latium may be mainly regarded as
direct extensions of her territory and people presenting the same
general features, a further and special significance attached to
the conquest of Alba.  It was not merely the problematical size and
presumed riches of Alba that led tradition to assign a prominence
so peculiar to its capture.  Alba was regarded as the metropolis
of the Latin confederacy, and had the right of presiding among the
thirty communities that belonged to it.  The destruction of Alba,
of course, no more dissolved the league itself than the destruction
of Thebes dissolved the Boeotian confederacy;(7) but, in entire
consistency with the strict application of the -ius privatum- which
was characteristic of the Latin laws of war, Rome now claimed the
presidency of the league as the heir-at-law of Alba.  What sort
of crises, if any, preceded or followed the acknowledgment of this
claim, we cannot tell.  Upon the whole the hegemony of Rome over
Latium appears to have been speedily and generally recognized,
although particular communities, such as Labici and above all
Gabii, may for a time have declined to own it.  Even at that time
Rome was probably a maritime power in contrast to the Latin "land,"
a city in contrast to the Latin villages, and a single state in
contrast to the Latin confederacy; even at that time it was only in
conjunction with and by means of Rome that the Latins could defend
their coasts against Carthaginians, Hellenes, and Etruscans, and
maintain and extend their landward frontier in opposition to their
restless neighbours of the Sabellian stock.  Whether the accession
to her material resources which Rome obtained by the subjugation
of Alba was greater than the increase of her power obtained by
the capture of Antemnae or Collatia, cannot be ascertained: it is
quite possible that it was not by the conquest of Alba that Rome
was first constituted the most powerful community in Latium; she
may have been so long before; but she did gain in consequence of
that event the presidency at the Latin festival, which became the
basis of the future hegemony of the Roman community over the whole
Latin confederacy.  It is important to indicate as definitely as
possible the nature of a relation so influential.


Relation of Rome to Latium


The form of the Roman hegemony over Latium was, in general, that
of an alliance on equal terms between the Roman community on the
one hand and the Latin confederacy on the other, establishing a
perpetual peace throughout the whole domain and a perpetual league
for offence and defence.  "There shall be peace between the Romans
and all communities of the Latins, as long as heaven and earth
endure; they shall not wage war with each other, nor call enemies
into the land, nor grant passage to enemies: help shall be rendered
by all in concert to any community assailed, and whatever is won
in joint warfare shall be equally distributed." The stipulated
equality of rights in trade and exchange, in commercial credit
and in inheritance, tended, by the manifold relations of business
intercourse to which it led, still further to interweave the
interests of communities already connected by the ties of similar
language and manners, and in this way produced an effect somewhat
similar to that of the abolition of customs-restrictions in our own
day.  Each community certainly retained in form its own law: down
to the time of the Social war Latin law was not necessarily identical
with Roman: we find, for example, that the enforcing of betrothal
by action at law, which was abolished at an early period in Rome,
continued to subsist in the Latin communities.  But the simple and
purely national development of Latin law, and the endeavour to
maintain as far as possible uniformity of rights, led at length
to the result, that the law of private relations was in matter and
form substantially the same throughout all Latium.  This uniformity
of rights comes most distinctly into view in the rules laid down
regarding the loss and recovery of freedom on the part of the
individual burgess.  According to an ancient and venerable maxim
of law among the Latin stock no burgess could become a slave
in the state wherein he had been free, or suffer the loss of his
burgess-rights while he remained within it: if he was to be punished
with the loss of freedom and of burgess-rights (which was the same
thing), it was necessary that he should be expelled from the state
and should enter on the condition of slavery among strangers.  This
maxim of law was now extended to the whole territory of the league;
no member of any of the federal states might live as a slave within
the bounds of the league.  Applications of this principle are seen
in the enactment embodied in the Twelve Tables, that the insolvent
debtor, in the event of his creditor wishing to sell him, must be
sold beyond the boundary of the Tiber, in other words, beyond the
territory of the league; and in the clause of the second treaty
between Rome and Carthage, that an ally of Rome who might be taken
prisoner by the Carthaginians should be free so soon as he entered
a Roman seaport.  Although there did not probably subsist a general
intercommunion of marriage within the league, yet, as has been
already remarked(8) intermarriage between the different communities
frequently occurred.  Each Latin could primarily exercise political
rights only where he was enrolled as a burgess; but on the other
hand it was implied in an equality of private rights, that any Latin
could take up his abode in any place within the Latin bounds; or,
to use the phraseology of the present day, there existed, side by
side with the special burgess-rights of the individual communities,
a general right of settlement co-extensive with the confederacy;
and, after the plebeian was acknowledged in Rome as a burgess,
this right became converted as regards Rome into full freedom of
settlement.  It is easy to understand how this should have turned
materially to the advantage of the capital, which alone in Latium
offered the means of urban intercourse, urban acquisition, and urban
enjoyments; and how the number of --metoeci-- in Rome should have
increased with remarkable rapidity, after the Latin land came to
live in perpetual peace with Rome.

In constitution and administration the several communities not
only remained independent and sovereign, so far as the federal
obligations did not interfere, but, what was of more importance,
the league of the thirty communities as such retained its autonomy
in contradistinction to Rome.  When we are assured that the position
of Alba towards the federal communities was a position superior
to that of Rome, and that on the fall of Alba these communities
attained autonomy, this may well have been the case, in so far as
Alba was essentially a member of the league, while Rome from the
first had rather the position of a separate state confronting the
league than of a member included in it; but, just as the states
of the confederation of the Rhine were formally sovereign, while
those of the German empire had a master, the presidency of Alba may
have been in reality an honorary right(9) like that of the German
emperors, and the protectorate of Rome from the first a supremacy
like that of Napoleon.  In fact Alba appears to have exercised the
right of presiding in the federal council, while Rome allowed the
Latin deputies to hold their consultations by themselves under the
guidance, as it appears, of a president selected from their own
number, and contented herself with the honorary presidency at the
federal festival where sacrifice was offered for Rome and Latium,
and with the erection of a second federal sanctuary in Rome--the
temple of Diana on the Aventine--so that thenceforth sacrifice was
offered both on Roman soil for Rome and Latium, and on Latin soil
for Latium and Rome.  With equal deference to the interests of
the league the Romans in the treaty with Latium bound themselves
not to enter into a separate alliance with any Latin community--a
stipulation which very clearly reveals the apprehensions entertained,
doubtless not without reason, by the confederacy with reference to
the powerful community taking the lead.  The position of Rome not
within, but alongside of Latium, is most clearly apparent in the
arrangements for warfare.  The fighting force of the league was
composed, as the later mode of making the levy incontrovertibly
shows, of two masses of equal strength, a Roman and a Latin.  The
supreme command lay once for all with the Roman generals; year by
year the Latin contingent had to appear  before the gates of Rome,
and there saluted the elected commander by acclamation as its
general, after the Romans commissioned by the Latin federal council
to take the auspices had thereby assured themselves of the contentment
of the gods with the choice that had been made.  Whatever land or
property was acquired in the wars of the league was apportioned
among its members according to the judgment of the Romans.  That
the Romano-Latin federation was represented as regards its external
relations solely by Rome, cannot with certainty be maintained.
The federal agreement did not prohibit either Rome or Latium from
undertaking an aggressive war on their own behoof; and if a war
was waged by the league, whether pursuant to a resolution of its
own or in consequence of a hostile attack, the Latin federal council
may have been legally entitled to take part in the conduct as well
as in the termination of the war.  Practically indeed Rome must
have possessed the hegemony even then, for, wherever a single state
and a federation enter into a permanent connection with each other,
the preponderance usually falls to the side of the former.


Extension of the Roman Territory after the Fall of Alba--Hernici--Rutulli
and Volscii


The steps by which after the fall of Alba Rome--now mistress of a
territory comparatively considerable, and presumably the leading
power in the Latin confederacy--extended still further her direct
and indirect dominion, can no longer be traced.  There was no lack
of feuds with the Etruscans and with the Veientes in particular,
chiefly respecting the possession of Fidenae; but it does not appear
that the Romans were successful in acquiring permanent mastery over
that Etruscan outpost, which was situated on the Latin bank of the
river not much more than five miles from Rome, or in dislodging
the Veientes from that formidable basis of offensive operations.
On the other hand they maintained apparently undisputed possession
of the Janiculum and of both banks of the mouth of the Tiber.  As
regards the Sabines and Aequi Rome appears in a more advantageous
position; the connection which afterwards became so intimate with
the more distant Hernici must have had at least its beginning
under the monarchy, and the united Latins and Hernici enclosed on
two sides and held in check their eastern neighbours.  But on the
south frontier the territory of the Rutuli and still more that of
the Volsci were scenes of perpetual war.  The earliest extension
of the Latin land took place in this direction, and it is here that
we first encounter those communities founded by Rome and Latium
on the enemy's soil and constituted as autonomous members of the
Latin confederacy--the Latin colonies, as they were called--the
oldest of which appear to reach back to the regal period.  How
far, however, the territory reduced under the power of the Romans
extended at the close of the monarchy, can by no means be determined.
Of feuds with the neighbouring Latin and Volscian communities the
Roman annals of the regal period recount more than enough; but
only a few detached notices, such as that perhaps of the capture
of Suessa in the Pomptine plain, can be held to contain a nucleus
of historical fact.  That the regal period laid not only the
political foundations of Rome, but the foundations also of her
external power, cannot be doubted; the position of the city of
Rome as contradistinguished from, rather than forming part of, the
league of Latin states is already decidedly marked at the beginning
of the republic, and enables us to perceive that an energetic
development of external power must have taken place in Rome during
the time of the kings.  Certainly great deeds, uncommon achievements
have in this case passed into oblivion; but the splendour of them
lingers over the regal period of Rome, especially over the royal
house of the Tarquins, like a distant evening twilight in which
outlines disappear.


Enlargement of the City of Rome--Servian Wall


While the Latin stock was thus tending towards union under the
leadership of Rome and was at the same time extending its territory
on the east and south, Rome itself, by the favour of fortune and
the energy of its citizens, had been converted from a stirring
commercial and rural town into the powerful capital of a flourishing
country.  The remodelling of the Roman military system and the
political reform of which it contained the germ, known to us by
the name of the Servian constitution, stand in intimate connection
with this internal change in the character of the Roman community.
But externally also the character of the city cannot but have changed
with the influx of ampler resources, with the rising requirements
of its position, and with the extension of its political horizon.
The amalgamation of the adjoining community on the Quirinal with
that on the Palatine must have been already accomplished when the
Servian reform, as it is called, took place; and after this reform
had united and consolidated the military strength of the community,
the burgesses could no longer rest content with entrenching the
several hills, as one after another they were filled with buildings,
and with possibly also keeping the island in the Tiber and the
height on the opposite bank occupied so that they might command
the course of the river.  The capital of Latium required another
and more complete system of defence; they proceeded to construct
the Servian wall.  The new continuous city-wall began at the river
below the Aventine, and included that hill, on which there have been
brought to light recently (1855) at two different places, the one
on the western slope towards the river, the other on the opposite
eastern slope, colossal remains of those primitive fortifications--portions
of wall as high as the walls of Alatri and Ferentino, built of large
square hewn blocks of tufo in courses of unequal height--emerging
as it were from the tomb to testify to the might of an epoch, whose
buildings subsist imperishably in these walls of rock, and whose
intellectual achievements will continue to exercise an influence
more lasting even than these.  The ring-wall further embraced the
Caelian and the whole space of the Esquiline, Viminal, and Quirinal,
where a structure likewise but recently brought to light on a
great scale (1862)--on the outside composed of blocks of peperino
and protected by a moat in front, on the inside forming a huge
earthen rampart sloped towards the city and imposing even at the
present day--supplied the want of natural means of defence.  From
thence it ran to the Capitoline, the steep declivity of which towards
the Campus Martius served as part of the city-wall, and it again
abutted on the river above the island in the Tiber.  The Tiber
island with the bridge of piles and the Janiculum did not belong
strictly to the city, but the latter height was probably a fortified
outwork.  Hitherto the Palatine had been the stronghold, but now
this hill was left open to be built upon by the growing city; and on
the other hand upon the Tarpeian Hill, standing free on every side,
and from its moderate extent easily defensible, there was constructed
the new "stronghold" (-arx-, -capitolium-(10)), containing the
stronghold-spring, the carefully enclosed "well-house" (-tullianum-),
the treasury (-aerarium-), the prison, and the most ancient place
of assemblage for the burgesses (-area Capitolina-), where still in
after times the regular announcements of the changes of the moon
continued to be made.  Private dwellings of a permanent kind,
on the other hand, were not tolerated in earlier times on the
stronghold-hill;(11) and the space between the two summits of the
hill, the sanctuary of the evil god (-Ve-diovis-), or as it was
termed in the later Hellenizing epoch, the Asylum, was covered with
wood and presumably intended for the reception of the husbandmen
and their herds, when inundation or war drove them from the plain.
The Capitol was in reality as well as in name the Acropolis of Rome,
an independent castle capable of being defended even after the city
had fallen: its gate lay probably towards what was afterwards the
Forum.(12)  The Aventine seems to have been fortified in a similar
style, although less strongly, and to have been preserved free from
permanent occupation.  With this is connected the fact, that for
purposes strictly urban, such as the distribution of the introduced
water, the inhabitants of Rome were divided into the inhabitants
of the city proper (-montani-), and those of the districts situated
within the general ring-wall, but yet not reckoned as strictly
belonging to the city (-pagani Aventinensis-, -Ianiculenses-,
-collegia Capitolinorum et Mercurialium-).(13)  The space enclosed
by the new city wall thus embraced, in addition to the former
Palatine and Quirinal cities, the two federal strongholds of the
Capitol and the Aventine, and also the Janiculum;(14) the Palatine,
as the oldest and proper city, was enclosed by the other heights
along which the wall was carried, as if encircled with a wreath,
and the two castles occupied the middle.

The work, however, was not complete so long as the ground, protected
by so laborious exertions from outward foes, was not also reclaimed
from the dominion of the water, which permanently occupied the
valley between the Palatine and the Capitol, so that there was
perhaps even a ferry there, and which converted the valleys between
the Capitol and the Velia and between the Palatine and the Aventine
into marshes.  The subterranean drains still existing at the
present day, composed of magnificent square blocks, which excited
the astonishment of posterity as a marvellous work of regal Rome,
must rather be reckoned to belong to the following epoch, for
travertine is the material employed and we have many accounts of
new structures of the kind in the times of the republic; but the
scheme itself belongs beyond doubt to the regal period, although
presumably to a later epoch than the designing of the Servian wall
and the Capitoline stronghold.  The spots thus drained or dried
supplied large open spaces such as were needed by the new enlarged
city.  The assembling-place of the community, which had hitherto been
the Area Capitolina at the stronghold itself, was now transferred to
the flat space, where the ground fell from the stronghold towards
the city (-comitium-), and which stretched thence between the
Palatine and the Carinae, in the direction of the Velia.  At that
side of the -comitium- which adjoined the stronghold, and upon the
stronghold-wall which arose above the -comitium- in the fashion
of a balcony, the members of the senate and the guests of the city
had the place of honour assigned to them on occasion of festivals
and assemblies of the people; and at the place of assembly itself
was erected the senate-house, which afterwards bore the name of the
Curia Hostilia.  The platform for the judgment-seat (-tribunal-),
and the stage whence the burgesses were addressed (the later rostra),
were likewise erected on the -comitium- itself.  Its prolongation in
the direction of the Velia became the new market (-forum Romanum-).
At the end of the latter, beneath the Palatine, rose the
community-house, which included the official dwelling of the king
(-regia-) and the common hearth of the city, the rotunda forming
the temple of Vesta; at no great distance, on the south side of the
Forum, there was erected a second round building connected with the
former, the store-room of the community or temple of the Penates,
which still stands at the present day as the porch of the church
Santi Cosma e Damiano.  It is a feature significant of the new city
now united in a way very different from the settlement of the "seven
mounts," that, over and above the hearths of the thirty curies
which the Palatine Rome had been content with associating in one
building, the Servian Rome presented this general and single hearth
for the city at large.(15)  Along the two longer sides of the Forum
butchers' shops and other traders' stalls were arranged.  In the
valley between the Palatine and Aventine a "ring" was staked off
for races; this became the Circus.  The cattle-market was laid out
immediately adjoining the river, and this soon became one of the
most densely peopled quarters of Rome.  Temples and sanctuaries
arose on all the summits, above all the federal sanctuary of Diana on
the Aventine,(16) and on the summit of the stronghold the far-seen
temple of Father Diovis, who had given to his people all this glory,
and who now, when the Romans were triumphing over the surrounding
nations, triumphed along with them over the subject gods of the
vanquished.

The names of the men, at whose bidding these great buildings of
the city arose, are almost as completely lost in oblivion as those
of the leaders in the earliest battles and victories of Rome.
Tradition indeed assigns the different works to different kings--the
senate-house to Tullus Hostilius, the Janiculum and the wooden
bridge to Ancus Marcius, the great Cloaca, the Circus, and the
temple of Jupiter to the elder Tarquinius, the temple of Diana and
the ring-wall to Servius Tullius.  Some of these statements may
perhaps be correct; and it is apparently not the result of accident
that the building of the new ring-wall is associated both as to date
and author with the new organization of the army, which in fact bore
special reference to the regular defence of the city walls.  But
upon the whole we must be content to learn from this tradition--what
is indeed evident of itself--that this second creation of Rome stood
in intimate connection with the commencement of her hegemony over
Latium and with the remodelling of her burgess-army, and that, while
it originated in one and the same great conception, its execution
was not the work either of a single man or of a single generation.
It is impossible to doubt that Hellenic influences exercised
a powerful effect on this remodelling of the Roman community, but
it is equally impossible to demonstrate the mode or the degree of
their operation.  It has already been observed that the Servian
military constitution is essentially of an Hellenic type;(17)
and it will be afterwards shown that the games of the Circus were
organized on an Hellenic model.  The new -regia-with the city hearth
was quite a Greek --prytaneion--, and the round temple of Vesta,
looking towards the east and not so much as consecrated by the
augurs, was constructed in no respect according to Italian, but
wholly in accordance with Hellenic, ritual.  With these facts before
us, the statement of tradition appears not at all incredible that
the Ionian confederacy in Asia Minor to some extent served as a model
for the Romano-Latin league, and that the new federal sanctuary on
the Aventine was for that reason constructed in imitation of the
Artemision at Ephesus.




Notes for Book I Chapter VII


1.  I. IV. Earliest Limits of the Roman Territory

2.  The formulae of accursing for Gabii and Fidenae are quite
as characteristic (Macrob. Sat. iii. 9).  It cannot, however, be
proved and is extremely improbable that, as respects these towns,
there was an actual historical accursing of the ground on which
they were built, such as really took place at Veii, Carthage, and
Fregellae.  It may be conjectured that old accursing formularies
were applied to those two hated towns, and were considered by later
antiquaries as historical documents.

3.  But there seems to be no good ground for the doubt recently
expressed in a quarter deserving of respect as to the destruction
of Alba having really been the act of Rome.  It is true, indeed,
that the account of the destruction of Alba is in its details a
series of improbabilities and impossibilities; but that is true of
every historical fact inwoven into legend.  To the question as to
the attitude of the rest of Latium towards the struggle between
Rome and Alba, we are unable to give an answer; but the question
itself rests on a false assumption, for it is not proved that the
constitution of the Latin league absolutely prohibited a separate
war between two Latin communities (I. III. The Latin League).  Still
less is the fact that a number of Alban families were received
into the burgess-union of Rome inconsistent with the destruction
of Alba by the Romans.  Why may there not have been a Roman party
in Alba just as there was in Capua? The circumstance, however,
of Rome claiming to be in a religious and political point of view
the heir-at-law of Alba may be regarded as decisive of the matter;
for such a claim could not be based on the migration of individual
clans to Rome, but could only be based, as it actually was, on the
conquest of the town.

4.  I. VI.  Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities

5.  Hence was developed the conception, in political law, of the
maritime colony or colony of burgesses (-colonia civium Romanorum-),
that is, of a community separate in fact, but not independent or
possessing a will of its own in law; a community which merged in
the capital as the -peculium- of the son merged in the property
of the father, and which as a standing garrison was exempt from
serving in the legion.

6.  To this the enactment of the Twelve Tables undoubtedly has
reference: -Nex[i mancipiique] forti sanatique idem ius esto-,
that is, in dealings of private law the "sound" and the "recovered"
shall be on a footing of equality.  The Latin allies cannot be here
referred to, because their legal position was defined by federal
treaties, and the law of the Twelve Tables treated only of the law
of Rome.  The -sanates- were the -Latini prisci cives Romani-, or
in other words, the communities of Latium compelled by the Romans
to enter the plebeiate.

7.  The community of Bovillae appears even to have been formed out
of part of the Alban domain, and to have been admitted in room of
Alba among the autonomous Latin towns.  Its Alban origin is attested
by its having been the seat of worship for the Julian gens and by
the name -Albani Longani Bovillenses- (Orelli-Henzen, 119, 2252,
6019); its autonomy by Dionysius, v. 61, and Cicero, pro Plancio,
9, 23.

8.  I. III. The Latin League

9.  I. III. The Latin League

10.  Both names, although afterwards employed as local names
(-capitolium- being applied to the summit of the stronghold-hill
that lay next to the river, -arx- to that next to the Quirinal),
were originally appellatives, corresponding exactly to the Greek
--akra-- and --koruphei-- every Latin town had its -capitolium-as
well as Rome.  The local name of the Roman stronghold-hill was
-mons Tarpeius-.

11.  The enactment -ne quis patricius in arce aut capitolio
habitaret-probably prohibited only the conversion of the ground into
private property, not the construction of dwelling-houses.  Comp.
Becker, Top. p. 386.

12.  For the chief thoroughfare, the -Via Sacra-, led from that
quarter to the stronghold; and the bending in towards the gate may
still be clearly recognized in the turn which this makes to the
left at the arch of Severus.  The gate itself must have disappeared
under the huge structures which were raised in after ages on the
Clivus.  The so-called gate at the steepest part of the Capitoline
Mount, which is known by the name of Janualis or Saturnia, or the
"open," and which had to stand always open in times of war, evidently
had merely a religious significance, and never was a real gate.

13.  Four such guilds are mentioned (1) the -Capitolini- (Cicero,
ad Q. fr. ii. 5, 2), with -magistri- of their own (Henzen, 6010,
6011), and annual games (Liv. v. 50; comp.  Corp. Inscr. Lat. i. n.
805); (2) the -Mercuriales- (Liv. ii. 27; Cicero, l. c.; Preller,
Myth.  p. 597) likewise with -magistri- (Henzen, 6010), the guild
from the valley of the Circus, where the temple of Mercury stood;
(3) the -pagani Aventinenses- likewise with -magistri- (Henzen,
6010); and (4) the -pagani pagi Ianiculensis- likewise with -magistri-
(C. I. L.  i. n. 801, 802).  It is certainly not accidental that
these four guilds, the only ones of the sort that occur in Rome,
belong to the very two hills excluded from the four local tribes
but enclosed by the Servian wall, the Capitol and the Aventine, and
the Janiculum belonging to the same fortification; and connected
with this is the further fact that the expression -montani paganive-
is employed as a designation of the whole inhabitants in connection
with the city (comp. besides the well-known passage, Cic. de Domo,
28, 74, especially the law as to the city aqueducts in Festus, v.
sifus, p. 340; [-mon]tani paganive si[fis aquam dividunto-]).  The
-montani-, properly the inhabitants of the three regions of the
Palatine town (iv. The Hill-Romans On the Quirinal), appear to be
here put -a potiori- for the whole population of the four regions
of the city proper.  The -pagani- are, undoubtedly, the residents
of the Aventine and Janiculum not included in the tribes, and the
analogous -collegia- of the Capitol and the Circus valley.

14.  The "Seven-hill-city" in the proper and religious sense was
and continued to be the narrower Old-Rome of the Palatine (iv. The
Palatine City).  Certainly the Servian Rome also regarded itself,
at least as early as the time of Cicero (comp. e. g. Cic. ad Att.
vi. 5, 2; Plutarch, Q. Rom. 69), as "Seven-hill-city," probably
because the festival of the Septimontium, which was celebrated
with great zeal even under the Empire, began to be regarded as a
festival for the city generally; but there was hardly any definite
agreement reached as to which of the heights embraced by the
Servian ring-wall belonged to the "seven." The enumeration of the
Seven Mounts familiar to us, viz. Palatine, Aventine, Caelian,
Esquiline, Viminal, Quirinal, Capitoline, is not given by any
ancient author.  It is put together from the traditional narrative
of the gradual rise of the city (Jordan, Topographie, ii. 206 seq.),
and the Janiculum is passed over in it, simply because otherwise
the number would come out as eight.  The earliest authority that
enumerates the Seven Mounts (-montes-) of Rome is the description
of the city from the age of Constantine the Great.  It names as
such the Palatine, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, Tarpeian, Vatican,
and Janiculum,--where the Quirinal and Viminal are, evidently as
-colles-, omitted, and in their stead two "-montes-" are introduced
from the right bank of the Tiber, including even the Vatican which
lay outside of the Servian wall.  Other still later lists are
given by Servius (ad Aen. vi. 783), the Berne Scholia to Virgil's
Georgics (ii. 535), and Lydus (de Mens.  p. 118, Bekker).

15.  Both the situation of the two temples, and the express testimony
of Dionysius, ii. 65, that the temple of Vesta lay outside of the
Roma quadrata, prove that these structures were connected with the
foundation not of the Palatine, but of the second (Servian) city.
Posterity reckoned this -regia- with the temple of Vesta as a scheme
of Numa; but the cause which gave rise to that hypothesis is too
manifest to allow of our attaching any weight to it.

16.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

17.  I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform




CHAPTER VIII

The Umbro-Sabellian Stocks--Beginnings of the Samnites



Umbro-Sabellian Migration


The migration of the Umbrian stocks appears to have begun at
a period later than that of the Latins.  Like the Latin, it moved
in a southerly direction, but it kept more in the centre of the
peninsula and towards the east coast.  It is painful to speak of
it; for our information regarding it comes to us like the sound
of bells from a town that has been sunk in the sea.  The Umbrian
people extended according to Herodotus as far as the Alps, and
it is not improbable that in very ancient times they occupied the
whole of Northern Italy, to the point where the settlements of the
Illyrian stocks began on the east, and those of the Ligurians on
the west.  As to the latter, there are traditions of their conflicts
with the Umbrians, and we may perhaps draw an inference regarding
their extension in very early times towards the south from isolated
names, such as that of the island of Ilva (Elba) compared with the
Ligurian Ilvates.  To this period of Umbrian greatness the evidently
Italian names of the most ancient settlements in the valley of the
Po, Atria (black-town), and Spina (thorn-town), probably owe their
origin, as well as the numerous traces of Umbrians in southern
Etruria (such as the river Umbro, Camars the old name of Clusium,
Castrum Amerinum).  Such indications of an Italian population
having preceded the Etruscan especially occur in the most southern
portion of Etruria, the district between the Ciminian Forest (below
Viterbo) and the Tiber.  In Falerii, the town of Etruria nearest
to the frontier of Umbria and the Sabine country, according to
the testimony of Strabo a language was spoken different from the
Etruscan, and inscriptions bearing out that statement have recently
been brought to light there, the alphabet and language of which,
while presenting points of contact with the Etruscan, exhibit
a general resemblance to the Latin.(1)  The local worship also
presents traces of a Sabellian character; and a similar inference
is suggested by the primitive relations subsisting in sacred as
well as other matters between Caere and Rome.  It is probable that
the Etruscans wrested those southern districts from the Umbrians
at a period considerably subsequent to their occupation of the
country on the north of the Ciminian Forest, and that an Umbrian
population maintained itself there even after the Tuscan conquest.
In this fact we may presumably find the ultimate explanation of
the surprising rapidity with which the southern portion of Etruria
became Latinized, as compared with the tenacious retention of the
Etruscan language and manners in northern Etruria, after the Roman
conquest.  That the Umbrians were after obstinate struggles driven
back from the north and west into the narrow mountainous country
between the two arms of the Apennines which they subsequently
held, is clearly indicated by the very fact of their geographical
position, just as the position of the inhabitants of the Grisons
and that of the Basques at the present day indicates the similar
fate that has befallen them.  Tradition also has to report that the
Tuscans wrested from the Umbrians three hundred towns; and, what
is of more importance as evidence, in the national prayers of the
Umbrian Iguvini, which we still possess, along with other stocks
the Tuscans especially are cursed as public foes.

In consequence, as may be presumed, of this pressure exerted upon
them from the north, the Umbrians advanced towards the south,
keeping in general upon the heights, because they found the plains
already occupied by Latin stocks, but beyond doubt frequently
making inroads and encroachments on the territory of the kindred
race, and intermingling with them the more readily, that the
distinction in language and habits could not have been at all so
marked then as we find it afterwards.  To the class of such inroads
belongs the tradition of the irruption of the Reatini and Sabines
into Latium and their conflicts with the Romans; similar phenomena
were probably repeated all along the west coast.  Upon the whole
the Sabines maintained their footing in the mountains, as in the
district bordering on Latium which has since been called by their
name, and so too in the Volscian land, presumably because the Latin
population did not extend thither or was there less dense; while
on the other hand the well-peopled plains were better able to offer
resistance to the invaders, although they were not in all cases
able or desirous to prevent isolated bands from gaining a footing,
such as the Tities and afterwards the Claudii in Rome.(2)  In this
way the stocks here became variously mingled, a state of things
which serves to explain the numerous relations that subsisted
between the Volscians and Latins, and how it happened that their
district, as well as Sabina, afterwards became so early and speedily
Latinized.


Samnites


The chief branch, however, of the Umbrian stock threw itself eastward
from Sabina into the mountains of the Abruzzi, and the adjacent
hill-country to the south of them.  Here, as on the west coast,
they occupied the mountainous districts, whose thinly scattered
population gave way before the immigrants or submitted to their
yoke; while in the plain along the Apulian coast the ancient native
population, the Iapygians, upon the whole maintained their ground,
although involved in constant feuds, especially on the northern
frontier about Luceria and Arpi.  When these migrations took place,
cannot of course be determined; but it was presumably about the
time when kings ruled in Rome.  Tradition reports that the Sabines,
pressed by the Umbrians, vowed a -ver sacrum-, that is, swore
that they would give up and send beyond their bounds the sons and
daughters born in the year of war, so soon as these should reach
maturity, that the gods might at their pleasure destroy them
or bestow upon them new abodes in other lands.  One band was led
by the ox of Mars; these were the Safini or Samnites, who in the
first instance established themselves on the mountains adjoining
the river Sagrus, and at a later period proceeded to occupy the
beautiful plain on the east of the Matese chain, near the sources
of the Tifernus.  Both in their old and in their new territory
they named their place of public assembly--which in the one case
was situated near Agnone, in the other near Bojano--from the ox
which led them Bovianum.  A second band was led by the woodpecker
of Mars; these were the Picentes, "the woodpecker-people," who
took possession of what is now the March of Ancona.  A third band
was led by the wolf (-hirpus-) into the region of Beneventum;
these were the Hirpini.  In a similar manner the other small tribes
branched off from the common stock--the Praetuttii near Teramo; the
Vestini on the Gran Sasso; the Marrucini near Chieti; the Frentani
on the frontier of Apulia; the Paeligni on the Majella mountains;
and lastly the Marsi on the Fucine lake, coming in contact with
the Volscians and Latins.  All of these tribes retained, as these
legends clearly show, a vivid sense of their relationship and of
their having come forth from the Sabine land.  While the Umbrians
succumbed in the unequal struggle and the western offshoots of the
same stock became amalgamated with the Latin or Hellenic population,
the Sabellian tribes prospered in the seclusion of their distant
mountain land, equally remote from collision with the Etruscans,
the Latins, and the Greeks.  There was little or no development
of an urban life amongst them; their geographical position almost
wholly precluded them from engaging in commercial intercourse, and
the mountain-tops and strongholds sufficed for the necessities of
defence, while the husbandmen continued to dwell in open hamlets
or wherever each found the well-spring and the forest or pasture
that he desired.  In such circumstances their constitution remained
stationary; like the similarly situated Arcadians in Greece, their
communities never became incorporated into a single state; at the
utmost they only formed confederacies more or less loosely connected.
In the Abruzzi especially, the strict seclusion of the mountain
valleys seems to have debarred the several cantons from intercourse
either with each other or with the outer world.  They maintained but
little connection with each other and continued to live in complete
isolation from the rest of Italy; and in consequence, notwithstanding
the bravery of their inhabitants, they exercised less influence
than any other portion of the Italian nation on the development of
the history of the peninsula.


Their Political Development


On the other hand the Samnite people decidedly exhibited the highest
political development among the eastern Italian stock, as the Latin
nation did among the western.  From an early period, perhaps from
its first immigration, a comparatively strong political bond held
together the Samnite nation, and gave to it the strength which
subsequently enabled it to contend with Rome on equal terms for the
first place in Italy.  We are as ignorant of the time and manner of
the formation of the bond, as we are of its federal constitution;
but it is clear that in Samnium no single community was preponderant,
and still less was there any town to serve as a central rallying
point and bond of union for the Samnite stock, such as Rome was
for the Latins.  The strength of the land lay in its -communes-
of husbandmen, and authority was vested in the assembly formed of
their representatives; it was this assembly which in case of need
nominated a federal commander-in-chief.  In consequence of its
constitution the policy of this confederacy was not aggressive like
the Roman, but was limited to the defence of its own bounds; only
where the state forms a unity is power so concentrated and passion
so strong, that the extension of territory can be systematically
pursued.  Accordingly the whole history of the two nations is
prefigured in their diametrically opposite systems of colonization.
Whatever the Romans gained, was a gain to the state: the conquests
of the Samnites were achieved by bands of volunteers who went
forth in search of plunder and, whether they prospered or were
unfortunate, were left to their own resources by their native home.
The conquests, however, which the Samnites made on the coasts of
the Tyrrhenian and Ionic seas, belong to a later age; during the
regal period in Rome they seem to have been only gaining possession
of the settlements in which we afterwards find them.  As a single
incident in the series of movements among the neighbouring peoples
caused by this Samnite settlement may be mentioned the surprise of
Cumae by Tyrrhenians from the Upper Sea, Umbrians, and Daunians in
the year 230.  If we may give credit to the accounts of the matter
which present certainly a considerable colouring of romance, it
would appear that in this instance, as was often the case in such
expeditions, the intruders and those whom they supplanted combined
to form one army, the Etruscans joining with their Umbrian enemies,
and these again joined by the Iapygians whom the Umbrian settlers
had driven towards the south.  Nevertheless the undertaking proved
a failure: on this occasion at least the Hellenic superiority in
the art of war, and the bravery of the tyrant Aristodemus, succeeded
in repelling the barbarian assault on the beautiful seaport.




Notes for Book I Chapter VIII


1.  In the alphabet the -"id:r" especially deserves notice, being
of the Latin (-"id:R") and not of the Etruscan form (-"id:D"),
and also the -"id:z" (--"id:XI"); it can only be derived from
the primitive Latin, and must very faithfully represent it.  The
language likewise has close affinity with the oldest Latin; -Marci
Acarcelini he cupa-, that is, -Marcius Acarcelinius heic cubat-:
-Menerva A. Cotena La.  f...zenatuo sentem..dedet cuando..cuncaptum-,
that is, -Minervae A(ulus?) Cotena La(rtis) f(ilius) de senatus
sententia dedit quando (perhaps=olim) conceptum-.  At the same
time with these and similar inscriptions there have been found some
others in a different character and language, undoubtedly Etruscan.

2.  I. IV. Tities, Luceres




CHAPTER IX

The Etruscans



Etruscan Nationality


The Etruscan people, or Ras,(1) as they called themselves, present
a most striking contrast to the Latin and Sabellian Italians as well
as to the Greeks.  They were distinguished from these nations by
their very bodily structure: instead of the slender and symmetrical
proportions of the Greeks and Italians, the sculptures of the Etruscans
exhibit only short sturdy figures with large head and thick arms.
Their manners and customs also, so far as we are acquainted with
them, point to a deep and original diversity from the Graeco-Italian
stocks.  The religion of the Tuscans in particular, presenting a
gloomy fantastic character and delighting in the mystical handling
of numbers and in wild and horrible speculations and practices,
is equally remote from the clear rationalism of the Romans and the
genial image-worship of the Hellenes.  The conclusion which these
facts suggest is confirmed by the most important and authoritative
evidence of nationality, the evidence of language.  The remains
of the Etruscan tongue which have reached us, numerous as they are
and presenting as they do various data to aid in deciphering it,
occupy a position of isolation so complete, that not only has no
one hitherto succeeded in interpreting these remains, but no one
has been able even to determine precisely the place of Etruscan in
the classification of languages.  Two periods in the development
of the language may be clearly distinguished.  In the older period
the vocalization of the language was completely carried out,
and the collision of two consonants was almost without exception
avoided.(2)  By throwing off the vocal and consonantal terminations,
and by the weakening or rejection of the vowels, this soft and
melodious language was gradually changed in character, and became
intolerably harsh and rugged.(3)  They changed for example -ramu*af-
into -ram*a-, Tarquinius into -Tarchnaf-, Minerva into -Menrva-,
Menelaos, Polydeukes, Alexandros, into -Menle-, -Pultuke-, -Elchsentre-.
The indistinct and rugged nature of their pronunciation is shown
most clearly by the fact that at a very early period the Etruscans
made no distinction of -o from -u, -b from -p, -c from -g, -d
from -t.  At the same time the accent was, as in Latin and in the
more rugged Greek dialects, uniformly thrown back upon the initial
syllable.  The aspirate consonants were treated in a similar
fashion; while the Italians rejected them with the exception of
the aspirated -b or the -f, and the Greeks, reversing the case,
rejected this sound and retained the others --theta, --phi, --chi,
the Etruscans allowed the softest and most pleasing of them, the
--phi, to drop entirely except in words borrowed from other languages,
but made use of the other three to an extraordinary extent, even
where they had no proper place; Thetis for example became -Thethis-,
Telephus -Thelaphe-, Odysseus -Utuze- or -Uthuze-.  Of the few
terminations and words, whose meaning has been ascertained, the
greater part are far remote from all Graeco-Italian analogies; such
as, all the numerals; the termination -al employed as a designation
of descent, frequently of descent from the mother, e. g.  -Cania-,
which on a bilingual inscription of Chiusi is translated by -Cainnia
natus-; and the termination -sa in the names of women, used to
indicate the clan into which they have married, e. g.  -Lecnesa-
denoting the spouse of a -Licinius-.  So -cela- or -clan- with the
inflection -clensi- means son; -se(--chi)- daughter; -ril- year;
the god Hermes becomes -Turms-, Aphrodite -Turan-, Hephaestos
-Sethlans-, Bakchos -Fufluns-.  Alongside of these strange forms and
sounds there certainly occur isolated analogies between the Etruscan
and the Italian languages.  Proper names are formed, substantially,
after the general Italian system.  The frequent gentile termination
-enas or -ena(4) recurs in the termination -enus which is likewise
of frequent occurrence in Italian, especially in Sabellian clan-names;
thus the Etruscan names -Maecenas- and -Spurinna- correspond
closely to the Roman -Maecius-and -Spurius-.  A number of names
of divinities, which occur as Etruscan on Etruscan monuments or
in authors, have in their roots, and to some extent even in their
terminations, a form so thoroughly Latin, that, if these names
were really originally Etruscan, the two languages must have been
closely related; such as -Usil- (sun and dawn, connected with
-ausum-, -aurum-, -aurora-, -sol-), -Minerva-(-menervare-) -Lasa-
(-lascivus-), -Neptunus-, -Voltumna-.  As these analogies, however,
may have had their origin only in the subsequent political and
religious relations between the Etruscans and Latins, and in the
accommodations and borrowings to which these relations gave rise,
they do not invalidate the conclusion to which we are led by the
other observed phenomena, that the Tuscan language differed at least
as widely from all the Graeco-Italian dialects as did the language
of the Celts or of the Slavonians.  So at least it sounded to the
Roman ear; "Tuscan and Gallic" were the languages of barbarians,
"Oscan and Volscian" were but rustic dialects.

But, while the Etruscans differed thus widely from the Graeco-Italian
family of languages, no one has yet succeeded in connecting them
with any other known race.  All sorts of dialects have been examined
with a view to discover affinity with the Etruscan, sometimes by simple
interrogation, sometimes by torture, but all without exception in
vain.  The geographical position of the Basque nation would naturally
suggest it for comparison; but even in the Basque language no
analogies of a decisive character have been brought forward.  As
little do the scanty remains of the Ligurian language which have
reached our time, consisting of local and personal names, indicate
any connection with the Tuscans.  Even the extinct nation which has
constructed those enigmatical sepulchral towers, called -Nuraghe-,
by thousands in the islands of the Tuscan Sea, especially in
Sardinia, cannot well be connected with the Etruscans, for not a
single structure of the same character is to be met with in Etruscan
territory.  The utmost we can say is that several traces, that seem
tolerably trustworthy, point to the conclusion that the Etruscans
may be on the whole numbered with the Indo-Germans.  Thus -mi- in the
beginning of many of the older inscriptions is certainly --emi--,
--eimi--, and the genitive form of consonantal stems veneruf -rafuvuf-is
exactly reproduced in old Latin, corresponding to the old Sanscrit
termination -as.  In like manner the name of the Etruscan Zeus,
-Tina-or -Tinia-, is probably connected with the Sanscrit -dina-,
meaning day, as --Zan-- is connected with the synonymous -diwan-.
But, even granting this, the Etruscan people appears withal scarcely
less isolated "The Etruscans," Dionysius said long ago, "are like
no other nation in language and manners;" and we have nothing to
add to his statement.


Home of the Etruscans


It is equally difficult to determine from what quarter the Etruscans
migrated into Italy; nor is much lost through our inability to
answer the question, for this migration belonged at any rate to
the infancy of the people, and their historical development began
and ended in Italy.  No question, however, has been handled with
greater zeal than this, in accordance with the principle which induces
antiquaries especially to inquire into what is neither capable of
being known nor worth the knowing--to inquire "who was Hecuba's
mother," as the emperor Tiberius professed to do.  As the oldest
and most important Etruscan towns lay far inland--in fact we find
not a single Etruscan town of any note immediately on the coast
except Populonia, which we know for certain was not one of the old
twelve cities-- and the movement of the Etruscans in historical
times was from north to south, it seems probable that they migrated
into the peninsula by land.  Indeed the low stage of civilization,
in which we find them at first, would ill accord with the hypothesis
of immigration by sea.  Nations even in the earliest times crossed
a strait as they would a stream; but to land on the west coast of
Italy was a very different matter.  We must therefore seek for the
earlier home of the Etruscans to the west or north of Italy.  It is
not wholly improbable that the Etruscans may have come into Italy
over the Raetian Alps; for the oldest traceable settlers in the
Grisons and Tyrol, the Raeti, spoke Etruscan down to historical
times, and their name sounds similar to that of the Ras.  These
may no doubt have been a remnant of the Etruscan settlements on
the Po; but it is at least quite as likely that they may have been
a portion of the people which remained behind in its earlier abode.


Story of Their Lydian Origin


In glaring contradiction to this simple and natural view stands
the story that the Etruscans were Lydians who had emigrated from
Asia.  It is very ancient: it occurs even in Herodotus; and it
reappears in later writers with innumerable changes and additions,
although several intelligent inquirers, such as Dionysius, emphatically
declared their disbelief in it, and pointed to the fact that there
was not the slightest apparent similarity between the Lydians and
Etruscans in religion, laws, manners, or language.  It is possible
that an isolated band of pirates from Asia Minor may have reached
Etruria, and that their adventure may have given rise to such tales;
but more probably the whole story rests on a mere verbal mistake.
The Italian Etruscans or the -Turs-ennae- (for this appears to
be the original form and the basis of the Greek --Turs-einnoi--,
--Turreinoi--, of the Umbrian -Turs-ci-, and of the two Roman forms
-Tusci-, -Etrusci-) nearly coincide in name with the Lydian people
of the --Torreiboi-- or perhaps also --Turr-einoi--, so named from
the town --Turra--, This manifestly accidental resemblance in name
seems to be in reality the only foundation for that hypothesis--not
rendered more trustworthy by its great antiquity--and for all the
pile of crude historical speculations that has been reared upon
it.  By connecting the ancient maritime commerce of the Etruscans
with the piracy of the Lydians, and then by confounding (Thucydides
is the first who has demonstrably done so) the Torrhebian pirates,
whether rightly or wrongly, with the bucaneering Pelasgians who
roamed and plundered on every sea, there has been produced one of
the most mischievous complications of historical tradition.  The
term Tyrrhenians denotes sometimes the Lydian Torrhebi--as is the
case in the earliest sources, such as the Homeric hymns; sometimes
under the form Tyrrheno-Pelasgians or simply that of Tyrrhenians,
the Pelasgian nation; sometimes, in fine, the Italian Etruscans,
although the latter never came into lasting contact with the
Pelasgians or Torrhebians, or were at all connected with them by
common descent.


Settlements of the Etruscans in Italy


It is, on the other hand, a matter of historical interest to
determine what were the oldest traceable abodes of the Etruscans,
and what were their further movements when they issued thence.
Various circumstances attest that before the great Celtic invasion
they dwelt in the district to the north of the Po, being conterminous
on the east along the Adige with the Veneti of Illyrian (Albanian?)
descent, on the west with the Ligurians.  This is proved in particular
by the already-mentioned rugged Etruscan dialect, which was still
spoken in the time of Livy by the inhabitants of the Raetian Alps,
and by the fact that Mantua remained Tuscan down to a late period.
To the south of the Po and at the mouths of that river Etruscans
and Umbrians were mingled, the former as the dominant, the latter
as the older race, which had founded the old commercial towns of
Atria and Spina, while the Tuscans appear to have been the founders
of Felsina (Bologna) and Ravenna.  A long time elapsed ere the
Celts crossed the Po; hence the Etruscans and Umbrians left deeper
traces of their existence on the right bank of the river than they
had done on the left, which they had to abandon at an early period.
All the regions, however, to the north of the Apennines passed too
rapidly out of the hands of one nation into those of another to
permit the formation of any continuous national development there.


Etruria


Far more important in an historical point of view was the great
settlement of the Tuscans in the land which still bears their name.
Although Ligurians or Umbrians were probably at one time(5) settled
there, the traces of them have been almost wholly effaced by the
Etruscan occupation and civilization.  In this region, which extends
along the coast from Pisae to Tarquinii and is shut in on the east
by the Apennines, the Etruscan nationality found its permanent abode
and maintained itself with great tenacity down to the time of the
empire.  The northern boundary of the proper Tuscan territory was
formed by the Arnus; the region north from the Arnus as far as the
mouth of the Macra and the Apennines was a debateable border land
in the possession sometimes of Ligurians, sometimes of Etruscans,
and for this reason larger settlements were not successful there.
The southern boundary was probably formed at first by the Ciminian
Forest, a chain of hills south of Viterbo, and at a later period by
the Tiber.  We have already(6) noticed the fact that the territory
between the Ciminian range and the Tiber with the towns of Sutrium,
Nepete, Falerii, Veii, and Caere appears not to have been taken
possession of by the Etruscans till a period considerably later
than the more northern districts, possibly not earlier than in the
second century of Rome, and that the original Italian population must
have maintained its ground in this region, especially in Falerii,
although in a relation of dependence.


Relations of the Etruscans to Latium


From the time at which the river Tiber became the line of demarcation
between Etruria on the one side and Umbria and Latium on the other,
peaceful relations probably upon the whole prevailed in that quarter,
and no essential change seems to have taken place in the boundary
line, at least so far as concerned the Latin frontier.  Vividly
as the Romans were impressed by the feeling that the Etruscan was
a foreigner, while the Latin was their countryman, they yet seem
to have stood in much less fear of attack or of danger from the
right bank of the river than, for example, from their kinsmen in
Gabii and Alba; and this was natural, for they were protected in
that direction not merely by the broad stream which formed a natural
boundary, but also by the circumstance, so momentous in its bearing
on the mercantile and political development of Rome, that none of
the more powerful Etruscan towns lay immediately on the river, as
did Rome on the Latin bank.  The Veientes were the nearest to the
Tiber, and it was with them that Rome and Latium came most frequently
into serious conflict, especially for the possession of Fidenae,
which served the Veientes as a sort of -tete de pont- on the left
bank just as the Janiculum served the Romans on the right, and
which was sometimes in the hands of the Latins, sometimes in those
of the Etruscans.  The relations of Rome with the somewhat more
distant Caere were on the whole far more peaceful and friendly than
those which we usually find subsisting between neighbours in early
times.  There are doubtless vague legends, reaching back to times
of distant antiquity, about conflicts between Latium and Caere;
Mezentius the king of Caere, for instance, is asserted to have
obtained great victories over the Latins, and to have imposed upon
them a wine-tax; but evidence much more definite than that which
attests a former state of feud is supplied by tradition as to
an especially close connection between the two ancient centres of
commercial and maritime intercourse in Latium and Etruria.  Sure
traces of any advance of the Etruscans beyond the Tiber, by land,
are altogether wanting.  It is true that Etruscans are named
in the first ranks of the great barbarian host, which Aristodemus
annihilated in 230 under the walls of Cumae;(7) but, even if
we regard this account as deserving credit in all its details, it
only shows that the Etruscans had taken part in a great plundering
expedition.  It is far more important to observe that south of the
Tiber no Etruscan settlement can be pointed out as having owed its
origin to founders who came by land; and that no indication whatever
is discernible of any serious pressure by the Etruscans upon the
Latin nation.  The possession of the Janiculum and of both banks of
the mouth of the Tiber remained, so far as we can see, undisputed
in the hands of the Romans.  As to the migrations of bodies of
Etruscans to Rome, we find an isolated statement drawn from Tuscan
annals, that a Tuscan band, led by Caelius Vivenna of Volsinii and
after his death by his faithful companion Mastarna, was conducted
by the latter to Rome.  This may be trustworthy, although the
derivation of the name of the Caelian Mount from this Caelius is
evidently a philological invention, and even the addition that this
Mastarna became king in Rome under the name of Servius Tullius is
certainly nothing but an improbable conjecture of the archaeologists
who busied themselves with legendary parallels.  The name of the
"Tuscan quarter" at the foot of the Palatine(8) points further to
Etruscan settlements in Rome.


The Tarquins


It can hardly, moreover, be doubted that the last regal family which
ruled over Rome, that of the Tarquins, was of Etruscan origin,
whether it belonged to Tarquinii, as the legend asserts, or
to Caere, where the family tomb of the Tarchnas has recently been
discovered.  The female name Tanaquil or Tanchvil interwoven with
the legend, while it is not Latin, is common in Etruria.  But
the traditional story--according to which Tarquin was the son of
a Greek who had migrated from Corinth to Tarquinii, and came to
settle in Rome as a --metoikos-- is neither history nor legend,
and the historical chain of events is manifestly in this instance
not confused merely, but completely torn asunder.  If anything more
can be deduced from this tradition beyond the bare and at bottom
indifferent fact that at last a family of Tuscan descent swayed the
regal sceptre in Rome, it can only be held as implying that this
dominion of a man of Tuscan origin ought not to be viewed either
as a dominion of the Tuscans or of any one Tuscan community over
Rome, or conversely as the dominion of Rome over southern Etruria.
There is, in fact, no sufficient ground either for the one hypothesis
or for the other.  The history of the Tarquins had its arena in
Latium, not in Etruria; and Etruria, so far as we can see, during
the whole regal period exercised no influence of any essential
moment on either the language or customs of Rome, and did not at
all interrupt the regular development of the Roman state or of the
Latin league.

The cause of this comparatively passive attitude of Etruria towards
the neighbouring land of Latium is probably to be sought partly
in the struggles of the Etruscans with the Celts on the Po, which
presumably the Celts did not cross until after the expulsion of the
kings from Rome, and partly in the tendency of the Etruscan people
towards seafaring and the acquisition of supremacy on the sea and
seaboard--a tendency decidedly exhibited in their settlements in
Campania, and of which we shall speak more fully in the next chapter.


The Etruscan Constitution


The Tuscan constitution, like the Greek and Latin, was based on the
gradual transition of the community to an urban life.  The early
direction of the national energies towards navigation, trade, and
manufactures appears to have called into existence urban commonwealths,
in the strict sense of the term, earlier in Etruria than elsewhere
in Italy.  Caere is the first of all the Italian towns that is
mentioned in Greek records.  On the other hand we find that the
Etruscans had on the whole less of the ability and the disposition
for war than the Romans and Sabellians: the un-Italian custom of
employing mercenaries for fighting occurs among the Etruscans at
a very early period.  The oldest constitution of the communities
must in its general outlines have resembled that of Rome.  Kings or
Lucumones ruled, possessing similar insignia and probably therefore
a similar plenitude of power with the Roman kings.  A strict line
of demarcation separated the nobles from the common people.  The
resemblance in the clan-organization is attested by the analogy
of the system of names; only, among the Etruscans, descent on the
mother's side received much more consideration than in Roman law.
The constitution of their league appears to have been very lax.  It
did not embrace the whole nation; the northern and the Campanian
Etruscans were associated in confederacies of their own, just
in the same way as the communities of Etruria proper.  Each of
these leagues consisted of twelve communities, which recognized a
metropolis, especially for purposes of worship, and a federal head
or rather a high priest, but appear to have been substantially equal
in respect of rights; while some of them at least were so powerful
that neither could a hegemony establish itself, nor could the
central authority attain consolidation.  In Etruria proper Volsinii
was the metropolis; of the rest of its twelve towns we know by
trustworthy tradition only Perusia, Vetulonium, Volci, and Tarquinii.
It was, however, quite as unusual for the Etruscans really to act
in concert, as it was for the Latin confederacy to do otherwise.
Wars were ordinarily carried on by a single community, which
endeavoured to interest in its cause such of its neighbours as
it could; and when an exceptional case occurred in which war was
resolved on by the league, individual towns very frequently kept
aloof from it.  The Etruscan confederations appear to have been
from the first--still more than the other Italian leagues formed
on a similar basis of national affinity--deficient in a firm and
paramount central authority.




Notes for Book I Chapter IX


1.  -Ras-ennac-, with the gentile termination mentioned below.

2.  To this period belong e. g. inscriptions on the clay vases of




umaramlisia(--"id:theta")ipurenaie(--"id:theta")eeraisieepanamine
(--"id:theta")unastavhelefu- or -mi ramu(--"id:theta")af kaiufinaia-.

3.  We may form some idea of the sound which the language now had
from the commencement of the great inscription of Perusia; -eulat
tanna laresul ameva(--"id:chi")r lautn vel(--"id:theta")inase
stlaafunas slele(--"id:theta")caru-.

4.  Such as Maecenas, Porsena, Vivenna, Caecina, Spurinna.  The
vowel in the penult is originally long, but in consequence of the
throwing back of the accent upon the initial syllable is frequently
shortened and even rejected.  Thus we find Porse(n)na as well as
Porsena, and Ceicne as well as Caecina.

5.  I. VIII. Umbro-Sabellian Migration

6.  I. VIII. Their Political Development

7.  I. VIII. Their Political Development

8.  I. IV. Oldest Settlements in the Palatine and Suburan Regions




CHAPTER X

The Hellenes in Italy--Maritime Supremacy of the Tuscans and
Carthaginians



Relations of Italy with Other Lands


In the history of the nations of antiquity a gradual dawn ushered
in the day; and in their case too the dawn was in the east.  While
the Italian peninsula still lay enveloped in the dim twilight of
morning, the regions of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean had
already emerged into the full light of a varied and richly developed
civilization.  It falls to the lot of most nations in the early
stages of their development to be taught and trained by some rival
sister-nation; and such was destined to be in an eminent degree the
lot of the peoples of Italy.  The circumstances of its geographical
position, however, prevented this influence from being brought to
bear upon the peninsula by land.  No trace is to be found of any
resort in early times to the difficult route by land between Italy
and Greece.  There were in all probability from time immemorial
tracks for purposes of traffic, leading from Italy to the lands
beyond the Alps; the oldest route of the amber trade from the Baltic
joined the Mediterranean at the mouth of the Po--on which account
the delta of the Po appears in Greek legend as the home of amber--and
this route was joined by another leading across the peninsula
over the Apennines to Pisae; but from these regions no elements
of civilization could come to the Italians.  It was the seafaring
nations of the east that brought to Italy whatever foreign culture
reached it in early times.


Phoenicians in Italy


The oldest civilized nation on the shores of the Mediterranean, the
Egyptians, were not a seafaring people, and therefore exercised no
influence on Italy.  But the same may be with almost equal truth
affirmed of the Phoenicians.  It is true that, issuing from their
narrow home on the extreme eastern verge of the Mediterranean,
they were the first of all known races to venture forth in floating
houses on the bosom of the deep, at first for the purpose of
fishing and dredging, but soon also for the prosecution of trade.
They were the first to open up maritime commerce; and at an incredibly
early period they traversed the Mediterranean even to its furthest
extremity in the west.  Maritime stations of the Phoenicians appear
on almost all its coasts earlier than those of the Hellenes: in
Hellas itself, in Crete and Cyprus, in Egypt, Libya, and Spain, and
likewise on the western Italian main.  Thucydides tells us that all
around Sicily, before the Greeks came thither or at least before
they had established themselves there in any considerable numbers,
the Phoenicians had set up their factories on the headlands
and islets, not with a view to gain territory, but for the sake
of trading with the natives.  But it was otherwise in the case of
continental Italy.  No sure proof has hitherto been given of the
existence of any Phoenician settlement there excepting one, a Punic
factory at Caere, the memory of which has been preserved partly by
the appellation -Punicum- given to a little village on the Caerite
coast, partly by the other name of the town of Caere itself,
-Agylla-, which is not, as idle fiction asserts, of Pelasgic origin,
but is a Phoenician word signifying the "round town"--precisely
the appearance which Caere presents when seen from the sea.  That
this station and any similar establishments which may have elsewhere
existed on the coasts of Italy were neither of much importance nor
of long standing, is evident from their having disappeared almost
without leaving a trace.  We have not the smallest reason to think
them older than the Hellenic settlements of a similar kind on the
same coasts.  An evidence of no slight weight that Latium at least
first became acquainted with the men of Canaan through the medium
of the Hellenes is furnished by the Latin appellation "Poeni," which
is borrowed from the Greek.  All the oldest relations, indeed, of
the Italians to the civilization of the east point decidedly towards
Greece; and the rise of the Phoenician factory at Caere may be very
well explained, without resorting to the pre-Hellenic period, by
the subsequent well-known relations between the commercial state
of Caere and Carthage.  In fact, when we recall the circumstance
that the earliest navigation was and continued to be essentially
of a coasting character, it is plain that scarcely any country on
the Mediterranean lay so remote from the Phoenicians as the Italian
mainland.  They could only reach it either from the west coast
of Greece or from Sicily; and it may well be believed that the
seamanship of the Hellenes became developed early enough to anticipate
the Phoenicians in braving the dangers of the Adriatic and of the
Tyrrhene seas.  There is no ground therefore for the assumption that
any direct influence was originally exercised by the Phoenicians over
the Italians.  To the subsequent relations between the Phoenicians
holding the supremacy of the western Mediterranean and the Italians
inhabiting the shores of the Tyrrhene sea our narrative will return
in the sequel.


Greeks in Italy--Home of the Greek Immigrants


To all appearance, therefore, the Hellenic mariners were the first
among the inhabitants of the eastern basin of the Mediterranean to
navigate the coasts of Italy.  Of the important questions however
as to the region from which, and as to the period at which, the Greek
seafarers came thither, only the former admits of being answered
with some degree of precision and fulness.  The Aeolian and Ionian
coast of Asia Minor was the region where Hellenic maritime traffic
first became developed on a large scale, and whence issued the
Greeks who explored the interior of the Black Sea on the one hand
and the coasts of Italy on the other.  The name of the Ionian Sea,
which was retained by the waters intervening between Epirus and
Sicily, and that of the Ionian gulf, the term by which the Greeks
in earlier times designated the Adriatic Sea, are memorials of
the fact that the southern and eastern coasts of Italy were once
discovered by seafarers from Ionia.  The oldest Greek settlement in
Italy, Kyme, was, as its name and legend tell, founded by the town
of the same name on the Anatolian coast.  According to trustworthy
Hellenic tradition, the Phocaeans of Asia Minor were the first of
the Hellenes to traverse the more remote western sea.  Other Greeks
soon followed in the paths which those of Asia Minor had opened up;
lonians from Naxos and from Chalcis in Euboea, Achaeans, Locrians,
Rhodians, Corinthians, Megarians, Messenians, Spartans.  After the
discovery of America the civilized nations of Europe vied with one
another in sending out expeditions and forming settlements there;
and the new settlers when located amidst barbarians recognized their
common character and common interests as civilized Europeans more
strongly than they had done in their former home.  So it was with
the new discovery of the Greeks.  The privilege of navigating the
western waters and settling on the western land was not the exclusive
property of a single Greek province or of a single Greek stock,
but a common good for the whole Hellenic nation; and, just as in
the formation of the new North American world, English and French,
Dutch and German settlements became mingled and blended, Greek Sicily
and "Great Greece" became peopled by a mixture of all sorts of
Hellenic races often so amalgamated as to be no longer distinguishable.
Leaving out of account some settlements occupying a more isolated
position--such as that of the Locrians with its offsets Hipponium
and Medama, and the settlement of the Phocaeans which was not founded
till towards the close of this period, Hyele (Velia, Elea)--we may
distinguish in a general view three leading groups.  The original
Ionian group, comprehended under the name of the Chalcidian towns,
included in Italy Cumae with the other Greek settlements at Vesuvius
and Rhegium, and in Sicily Zankle (afterwards Messana), Naxos,
Catana, Leontini, and Himera.  The Achaean group embraced Sybaris
and the greater part of the cities of Magna Graecia.  The Dorian
group comprehended Syracuse, Gela, Agrigentum, and the majority
of the Sicilian colonies, while in Italy nothing belonged to it
but Taras (Tarentum) and its offset Heraclea.  On the whole the
preponderance lay with the immigrants who belonged to the more
ancient Hellenic influx, that of the lonians and the stocks settled
in the Peloponnesus before the Doric immigration.  Among the Dorians
only the communities with a mixed population, such as Corinth and
Megara, took a special part, whereas the purely Doric provinces had
but a subordinate share in the movement.  This result was naturally
to be expected, for the lonians were from ancient times a trading
and sea-faring people, while it was only at a comparatively late
period that the Dorian stocks descended from their inland mountains
to the seaboard, and they always kept aloof from maritime commerce.
The different groups of immigrants are very clearly distinguishable,
especially by their monetary standards.  The Phocaean settlers coined
according to the Babylonian standard which prevailed in Asia.  The
Chalcidian towns followed in the earliest times the Aeginetan, in
other words, that which originally prevailed throughout all European
Greece, and more especially the modification of it which is found
occurring in Euboea.  The Achaean communities coined by the Corinthian
standard; and lastly the Doric colonies followed that which Solon
introduced in Attica in the year of Rome 160, with the exception
of Tarentum and Heraclea, which in their principal pieces adopted
rather the standard of their Achaean neighbours than that of the
Dorians in Sicily.


Time of the Greek Immigration


The dates of the earlier voyages and settlements will probably always
remain enveloped in darkness.  We may still, however, distinctly
recognize a certain order of sequence.  In the oldest Greek document,
which belongs, like the earliest intercourse with the west, to
the lonians of Asia Minor--the Homeric poems--the horizon scarcely
extends beyond the eastern basin of the Mediterranean.  Sailors
driven by storms into the western sea might have brought to Asia
Minor accounts of the existence of a western land and possibly
also of its whirlpools and island-mountains vomiting fire: but in
the age of the Homeric poetry there was an utter want of trustworthy
information respecting Sicily and Italy, even in that Greek land
which was the earliest to enter into intercourse with the west;
and the story-tellers and poets of the east could without fear of
contradiction fill the vacant realms of the west, as those of the
west in their turn filled the fabulous east, with their castles in
the air.  In the poems of Hesiod the outlines of Italy and Sicily
appear better defined; there is some acquaintance with the native
names of tribes, mountains, and cities in both countries; but Italy
is still regarded as a group of islands.  On the other hand, in
all the literature subsequent to Hesiod, Sicily and even the whole
coast of Italy appear as known, at least in a general sense, to the
Hellenes.  The order of succession of the Greek settlements may in
like manner be ascertained with some degree of precision.  Thucydides
evidently regarded Cumae as the earliest settlement of note in the
west; and certainly he was not mistaken.  It is true that many a
landing-place lay nearer at hand for the Greek mariner, but none
were so well protected from storms and from barbarians as the island
of Ischia, upon which the town was originally situated; and that
such were the prevailing considerations that led to this settlement,
is evident from the very position which was subsequently selected
for it on the mainland--the steep but well-protected cliff, which
still bears to the present day the venerable name of the Anatolian
mother-city.  Nowhere in Italy, accordingly, were the scenes of
the legends of Asia Minor so vividly and tenaciously localized as
in the district of Cumae, where the earliest voyagers to the west,
full of those legends of western wonders, first stepped upon the
fabled land and left the traces of that world of story, which they
believed that they were treading, in the rocks of the Sirens and
the lake of Avernus leading to the lower world.  On the supposition,
moreover, that it was in Cumae that the Greeks first became the
neighbours of the Italians, it is easy to explain why the name
of that Italian stock which was settled immediately around Cumae,
the name of Opicans, came to be employed by them for centuries
afterwards to designate the Italians collectively.  There is a
further credible tradition, that a considerable interval elapsed
between the settlement at Cumae and the main Hellenic immigration
into Lower Italy and Sicily, and that in this immigration Ionians
from Chalcis and from Naxos took the lead.  Naxos in Sicily is said
to have been the oldest of all the Greek towns founded by strict
colonization in Italy or Sicily; the Achaean and Dorian colonizations
followed, but not until a later period.

It appears, however, to be quite impossible to fix the dates of
this series of events with even approximate accuracy.  The founding
of the Achaean city of Sybaris in 33, and that of the Dorian city
Tarentum in 46, are probably the most ancient dates in Italian
history, the correctness, or at least approximation to correctness,
of which may be looked upon as established.  But how far beyond
that epoch the sending forth of the earlier Ionian colonies reached
back, is quite as uncertain as is the age which gave birth to the
poems of Hesiod or even of Homer.  If Herodotus is correct in the
period which he assigns to Homer, the Greeks were still unacquainted
with Italy a century before the foundation of Rome.  The date thus
assigned however, like all other statements respecting the Homeric
age, is matter not of testimony, but of inference; and any one who
carefully weighs the history of the Italian alphabets as well as
the remarkable fact that the Italians had become acquainted with
the Greek people before the name "Hellenes" had emerged for the
race, and the Italians borrowed their designation for the Hellenes
from the stock of the -Grai- or -Graeci- that early fell into
abeyance in Hellas,(1) will be inclined to carry back the earliest
intercourse of the Italians with the Greeks to an age considerably
mere remote.


Character of the Greek Immigration


The history of the Italian and Sicilian Greeks forms no part of
the history of Italy; the Hellenic colonists of the west always
retained the closest connection with their original home and
participated in the national festivals and privileges of Hellenes.
But it is of importance even as bearing on Italy, that we should
indicate the diversities of character that prevailed in the Greek
settlements there, and at least exhibit some of the leading features
which enabled the Greek colonization to exercise so varied an
influence on Italy.


The League of the Achaen Cities


Of all the Greek settlements, that which retained most thoroughly
its distinctive character and was least affected by influences from
without was the settlement which gave birth to the league of the
Achaean cities, composed of the towns of Siris, Pandosia, Metabus
or Metapontum, Sybaris with its offsets Posidonia and Laus, Croton,
Caulonia, Temesa, Terina, and Pyxus.  These colonists, taken as a
whole, belonged to a Greek stock which steadfastly adhered to its
own peculiar dialect, having closest affinity with the Doric, and
for long retained no less steadfastly the old national Hellenic
mode of writing, instead of adopting the more recent alphabet which
had elsewhere come into general use; and which preserved its own
nationality, as distinguished alike from the barbarians and from other
Greeks, by the firm bond of a federal constitution.  The language
of Polybius regarding the Achaean symmachy in the Peloponnesus may
be applied also to these Italian Achaeans; "Not only did they live
in federal and friendly communion, but they made use of like laws,
like weights, measures, and coins, as well as of the same magistrates,
councillors, and judges."

This league of the Achaean cities was strictly a colonization.  The
cities had no harbours--Croton alone had a paltry roadstead--and
they had no commerce of their own; the Sybarite prided himself on
growing gray between the bridges of his lagoon-city, and Milesians
and Etruscans bought and sold for him.  These Achaean Greeks,
however, were not merely in possession of a narrow belt along the
coast, but ruled from sea to sea in the "land of wine" and "of
oxen" (--Oinotria--, --Italia--) or the "great Hellas;" the native
agricultural population was compelled to farm their lands and to
pay to them tribute in the character of clients or even of serfs.
Sybaris--in its time the largest city in Italy--exercised dominion
over four barbarian tribes and five-and-twenty townships, and was
able to found Laus and Posidonia on the other sea.  The exceedingly
fertile low grounds of the Crathis and Bradanus yielded a superabundant
produce to the Sybarites and Metapontines--it was there perhaps
that grain was first cultivated for exportation.  The height of
prosperity which these states in an incredibly short time attained
is strikingly attested by the only surviving works of art of
these Italian Achaeans, their coins of chaste antiquely beautiful
workmanship--the earliest monuments of art and writing in Italy
which we possess, as it can be shown that they had already begun to
be coined in 174.  These coins show that the Achaeans of the west
did not simply participate in the noble development of plastic art
that was at this very time taking place in the motherland, but were
even superior in technical skill.  For, while the silver pieces
which were in use about that time in Greece proper and among the
Dorians in Italy were thick, often stamped only on one side, and
in general without inscription, the Italian Achaeans with great
and independent skill struck from two similar dies partly cut in
relief, partly sunk, large thin silver coins always furnished with
inscriptions, and displaying the advanced organization of a civilized
state in the mode of impression, by which they were carefully
protected from the process of counterfeiting usual in that age--the
plating of inferior metal with thin silver-foil.

Nevertheless this rapid bloom bore no fruit.  Even Greeks speedily
lost all elasticity of body and of mind in a life of indolence, in
which their energies were never tried either by vigorous resistance
on the part of the natives or by hard labour of their own.  None
of the brilliant names in Greek art or literature shed glory on the
Italian Achaeans, while Sicily could claim ever so many of them,
and even in Italy the Chalcidian Rhegium could produce its Ibycus
and the Doric Tarentum its Archytas.  With this people, among whom
the spit was for ever turning on the hearth, nothing flourished from
the outset but boxing.  The rigid aristocracy which early gained
the helm in the several communities, and which found in case of need
a sure reserve of support in the federal power, prevented the rise
of tyrants; but the danger to be apprehended was that the government
of the best might be converted into a government of the few,
especially if the privileged families in the different communities
should combine to assist each other in carrying out their designs.
Such was the predominant aim in the combination of mutually
pledged "friends" which bore the name of Pythagoras.  It enjoined
the principle that the ruling class should be "honoured like gods,"
and that the subject class should be "held in subservience like
beasts," and by such theory and practice provoked a formidable
reaction, which terminated in the annihilation of the Pythagorean
"friends" and the renewal of the ancient federal constitution.  But
frantic party feuds, insurrections en masse of the slaves, social
abuses of all sorts, attempts to supply in practice an impracticable
state-philosophy, in short, all the evils of demoralized civilization
never ceased to rage in the Achaean communities, till under the
accumulated pressure their political power utterly broke down.

It is no matter of wonder therefore that the Achaeans settled in
Italy exercised less influence on its civilization than the other
Greek settlements.  An agricultural people, they had less occasion
than those engaged in commerce to extend their influence beyond
their political bounds.  Within their own dominions they enslaved
the native population and crushed the germs of their national
development as Italians, while they refused to open up to them
by means of complete Hellenization a new career.  In this way the
Greek characteristics, which were able elsewhere to retain a vigorous
vitality notwithstanding all political misfortunes, disappeared
more rapidly, more completely, and more ingloriously in Sybaris
and Metapontum, in Croton and Posidonia, than in any other region;
and the bilingual mongrel peoples, that arose in subsequent times
out of the remains of the native Italians and Achaeans and the more
recent immigrants of Sabellian descent, never attained any real
prosperity.  This catastrophe, however, belongs in point of time
to the succeeding period.


Iono-Dorian Towns


The settlements of the other Greeks were of a different character,
and exercised a very different effect upon Italy.  They by no means
despised agriculture and the acquisition of territory; it was not
the wont of the Hellenes, at least when they had reached their full
vigour, to rest content after the manner of the Phoenicians with a
fortified factory in the midst of a barbarian land.  But all their
cities were founded primarily and especially for the sake of trade,
and accordingly, altogether differing from those of the Achaeans,
they were uniformly established beside the best harbours and
lading-places.  These cities were very various in their origin and
in the occasion and period of their respective foundations; but
there subsisted between them a certain fellowship, as in the common
use by all of these towns of certain modern forms of the alphabet,(2)
and in the very Dorism of their language, which made its way at an
early date even into those towns that, like Cumae for example,(3)
originally spoke the soft Ionic dialect.  These settlements were
of very various degrees of importance in their bearing on the
development of Italy: it is sufficient at present to mention those
which exercised a decided influence over the destinies of the
Italian races, the Doric Tarentum and the Ionic Cumae.


Tarentum


Of all the Hellenic settlements in Italy, Tarentum was destined
to play the most brilliant part.  The excellent harbour, the only
good one on the whole southern coast, rendered the city the natural
emporium for the traffic of the south of Italy, and for some portion
even of the commerce of the Adriatic.  The rich fisheries of its
gulf, the production and manufacture of its excellent wool, and
the dyeing of it with the purple juice of the Tarentine -murex-,
which rivalled that of Tyre--both branches of industry introduced
there from Miletus in Asia Minor--employed thousands of hands, and
added to the carrying trade a traffic of export.  The coins struck
at Tarentum in greater quantity than anywhere else in Grecian
Italy, and struck pretty numerously even in gold, furnish to us a
significant attestation of the lively and widely extended commerce
of the Tarentines.  At this epoch, when Tarentum was still contending
with Sybaris for the first place among the Greek cities of Lower
Italy, its extensive commercial connections must have been already
forming; but the Tarentines seem never to have steadily and
successfully directed their efforts to a substantial extension of
their territory after the manner of the Achaean cities.


Greek Cities Near Vesuvius


While the most easterly of the Greek settlements in Italy thus rapidly
rose into splendour, those which lay furthest to the north, in the
neighbourhood of Vesuvius, attained a more moderate prosperity.
There the Cumaeans had crossed from the fertile island of Aenaria
(Ischia) to the mainland, and had built a second home on a hill
close by the sea, from whence they founded the seaport of Dicaearchia
(afterwards Puteoli) and, moreover, the "new city" Neapolis.  They
lived, like the Chalcidian cities generally in Italy and Sicily,
in conformity with the laws which Charondas of Catana (about 100)
had established, under a constitution democratic but modified by
a high census, which placed the power in the hands of a council
of members selected from the wealthiest men--a constitution which
proved lasting and kept these cities free, upon the whole, from
the tyranny alike of usurpers and of the mob.  We know little as to
the external relations of these Campanian Greeks.  They remained,
whether from necessity or from choice, confined to a district of
even narrower limits than the Tarentines; and issuing from it not
for purposes of conquest and oppression, but for the holding of
peaceful commercial intercourse with the natives, they created the
means of a prosperous existence for themselves, and at the same time
took the foremost place among the missionaries of Greek civilization
in Italy.


Relations of the Adriatic Regions to the Greeks


While on the one side of the straits of Rhegium the whole southern
coast of the mainland and its western coast as far as Vesuvius,
and on the other the larger eastern half of the island of Sicily,
were Greek territory, the west coast of Italy northward of Vesuvius
and the whole of the east coast were in a position essentially
different.  No Greek settlements arose on the Italian seaboard of
the Adriatic; and with this we may evidently connect the comparatively
small number and subordinate importance of the Greek colonies
planted on the opposite Illyrian shore and on the numerous adjacent
islands.  Two considerable mercantile towns, Epidamnus or Dyrrachium
(now Durazzo, 127), and Apollonia (near Avlona, about 167), were
founded upon the portion of this coast nearest to Greece during
the regal period of Rome; but no old Greek colony can be pointed
out further to the north, with the exception perhaps of the
insignificant settlement at Black Corcyra (Curzola, about 174?).  No
adequate explanation has yet been given why the Greek colonization
developed itself in this direction to so meagre an extent.  Nature
herself appeared to direct the Hellenes thither, and in fact from
the earliest times there existed a regular traffic to that region
from Corinth and still more from the settlement at Corcyra (Corfu)
founded not long after Rome (about 44); a traffic, which had as its
emporia on the Italian coast the towns of Spina and Atria, situated
at the mouth of the Po.  The storms of the Adriatic, the inhospitable
character at least of the Illyrian coasts, and the barbarism of
the natives are manifestly not in themselves sufficient to explain
this fact.  But it was a circumstance fraught with the most momentous
consequences for Italy, that the elements of civilization which
came from the east did not exert their influence on its eastern
provinces directly, but reached them only through the medium of those
that lay to the west.  The Adriatic commerce carried on by Corinth
and Corcyra was shared by the most easterly mercantile city of
Magna Graecia, the Doric Tarentum, which by the possession of Hydrus
(Otranto) had the command, on the Italian side, of the entrance of
the Adriatic.  Since, with the exception of the ports at the mouth
of the Po, there were in those times no emporia worthy of mention
along the whole east coast--the rise of Ancona belongs to a far
later period, and later still the rise of Brundisium--it may well
be conceived that the mariners of Epidamnus and Apollonia frequently
discharged their cargoes at Tarentum.  The Tarentines had also much
intercourse with Apulia by land; all the Greek civilization to be
met with in the south-east of Italy owed its existence to them.
That civilization, however, was during the present period only in
its infancy; it was not until a later epoch that the Hellenism of
Apulia was developed.


Relations of the Western Italians to the Greeks


It cannot be doubted, on the other hand, that the west coast
of Italy northward of Vesuvius was frequented in very early times
by the Hellenes, and that there were Hellenic factories on its
promontories and islands.  Probably the earliest evidence of such
voyages is the localizing of the legend of Odysseus on the coasts
of the Tyrrhene Sea.(4)  When men discovered the isles of Aeolus
in the Lipari islands, when they pointed out at the Lacinian cape
the isle of Calypso, at the cape of Misenum that of the Sirens,
at the cape of Circeii that of Circe, when they recognized in the
steep promontory of Terracina the towering burial-mound of Elpenor,
when the Laestrygones were provided with haunts near Caieta and
Formiae, when the two sons of Ulysses and Circe, Agrius, that is
the "wild," and Latinus, were made to rule over the Tyrrhenians in
the "inmost recess of the holy islands," or, according to a more
recent version, Latinus was called the son of Ulysses and Circe,
and Auson the son of Ulysses and Calypso--we recognize in these
legends ancient sailors' tales of the seafarers of Ionia, who
thought of their native home as they traversed the Tyrrhene Sea.
The same noble vividness of feeling, which pervades the Ionic poem
of the voyages of Odysseus, is discernible in this fresh localization
of the same legend at Cumae itself and throughout the regions
frequented by the Cumaean mariners.

Other traces of these very ancient voyages are to be found in the
Greek name of the island Aethalia (Ilva, Elba), which appears to
have been (after Aenaria) one of the places earliest occupied by
Greeks, perhaps also in that of the seaport Telamon in Etruria;
and further in the two townships on the Caerite coast, Pyrgi (near
S.  Severa) and Alsium (near Palo), the Greek origin of which is
indicated beyond possibility of mistake not only by their names,
but also by the peculiar architecture of the walls of Pyrgi, which
differs essentially in character from that of the walls of Caere
and the Etruscan cities generally.  Aethalia, the "fire-island,"
with its rich mines of copper and especially of iron, probably
sustained the chief part in this commerce, and there in all likelihood
the foreigners had their central settlement and seat of traffic
with the natives; the more especially as they could not have found
the means of smelting the ores on the small and not well-wooded
island without intercourse with the mainland.  The silver mines
of Populonia also on the headland opposite to Elba were perhaps
already known to the Greeks and wrought by them.

If, as was undoubtedly the case, the foreigners, ever in those times
intent on piracy and plunder as well as trade, did not fail, when
opportunity offered, to levy contributions on the natives and to
carry them off as slaves, the natives on their part exercised the
right of retaliation; and that the Latins and Tyrrhenes retaliated
with greater energy and better fortune than their neighbours in
the south of Italy, is attested not merely by the legends to that
effect, but by the actual results.  In these regions the Italians
succeeded in resisting the foreigners and in retaining, or at any
rate soon resuming, the mastery not merely of their own mercantile
cities and mercantile ports, but also of their own sea.  The same
Hellenic invasion which crushed and denationalized the races of
the south of Italy, directed the energies of the peoples of Central
Italy--very much indeed against the will of their instructors--towards
navigation and the founding of towns.  It must have been in this
quarter that the Italians first exchanged the raft and the boat for
the oared galley of the Phoenicians and Greeks.  Here too we first
encounter great mercantile cities, particularly Caere in southern
Etruria and Rome on the Tiber, which, if we may judge from their
Italian names as well as from their being situated at some distance
from the sea, were--like the exactly similar commercial towns at
the mouth of the Po, Spina and Atria, and Ariminum further to the
south--certainly not Greek, but Italian foundations.  It is not
in our power, as may easily be supposed, to exhibit the historical
course of this earliest reaction of Italian nationality against
foreign aggression; but we can still recognize the fact, which was
of the greatest importance as bearing upon the further development
of Italy, that this reaction took a different course in Latium and
in southern Etruria from that which it exhibited in the properly
Tuscan and adjoining provinces.


Hellenes and Latins


Legend itself contrasts in a significant manner the Latin with
the "wild Tyrrhenian," and the peaceful beach at the mouth of the
Tiber with the inhospitable shore of the Volsci.  This cannot mean
that Greek colonization was tolerated in some of the provinces of
Central Italy, but not permitted in others.  Northward of Vesuvius
there existed no independent Greek community at all in historical
times; if Pyrgi once was such, it must have already reverted,
before the period at which our tradition begins, into the hands of
the Italians or in other words of the Caerites.  But in southern
Etruria, in Latium, and likewise on the east coast, peaceful intercourse
with the foreign merchants was protected and encouraged; and such
was not the case elsewhere.  The position of Caere was especially
remarkable.  "The Caerites," says Strabo, "were held in much repute
among the Hellenes for their bravery and integrity, and because,
powerful though they were, they abstained from robbery."  It is
not piracy that is thus referred to, for in this the merchant of
Caere must have indulged like every other.  But Caere was a sort
of free port for Phoenicians as well as Greeks.  We have already
mentioned the Phoenician station--subsequently called Punicum--and
the two Hellenic stations of Pyrgi and Alsium.(5)  It was these
ports that the Caerites refrained from robbing, and it was beyond
doubt through this tolerant attitude that Caere, which possessed
but a wretched roadstead and had no mines in its neighbourhood,
early attained so great prosperity and acquired, in reference to
the earliest Greek commerce, an importance even greater than the
cities of the Italians destined by nature as emporia at the mouths
of the Tiber and Po.  The cities we have just named are those which
appear as holding primitive religious intercourse with Greece.  The
first of all barbarians to present gifts to the Olympian Zeus was
the Tuscan king Arimnus, perhaps a ruler of Ariminum.  Spina and
Caere had their special treasuries in the temple of the Delphic
Apollo, like other communities that had regular dealings with the
shrine; and the sanctuary at Delphi, as well as the Cumaean oracle,
is interwoven with the earliest traditions of Caere and of Rome.
These cities, where the Italians held peaceful sway and carried
on friendly traffic with the foreign merchant, became preeminently
wealthy and powerful, and were genuine marts not only for Hellenic
merchandise, but also for the germs of Hellenic civilization.


Hellenes and Etruscans--Etruscan Maritime Power


Matters stood on a different footing with the "wild Tyrrhenians."
The same causes, which in the province of Latium, and in the districts
on the right bank of the Tiber and along the lower course of the
Po that were perhaps rather subject to Etruscan supremacy than
strictly Etruscan, had led to the emancipation of the natives
from the maritime power of the foreigner, led in Etruria proper to
the development of piracy and maritime ascendency, in consequence
possibly of the difference of national character disposing the people
to violence and pillage, or it may be for other reasons with which
we are not acquainted.  The Etruscans were not content with dislodging
the Greeks from Aethalia and Populonia; even the individual trader
was apparently not tolerated by them, and soon Etruscan privateers
roamed over the sea far and wide, and rendered the name of the
Tyrrhenians a terror to the Greeks.  It was not without reason that
the Greeks reckoned the grapnel as an Etruscan invention, and called
the western sea of Italy the sea of the Tuscans.  The rapidity
with which these wild corsairs multiplied and the violence of their
proceedings in the Tyrrhene Sea in particular, are very clearly
shown by their establishment on the Latin and Campanian coasts.
The Latins indeed maintained their ground in Latium proper, and
the Greeks at Vesuvius; but between them and by their side the
Etruscans held sway in Antium and in Surrentum.  The Volscians became
clients of the Etruscans; their forests contributed the keels for
the Etruscan galleys; and seeing that the piracy of the Antiates was
only terminated by the Roman occupation, it is easy to understand
why the coast of the southern Volscians bore among Greek mariners
the name of the Laestrygones.  The high promontory of Sorrento with
the cliff of Capri which is still more precipitous but destitute
of any harbour--a station thoroughly adapted for corsairs on the
watch, commanding a prospect of the Tyrrhene Sea between the bays
of Naples and Salerno--was early occupied by the Etruscans.  They are
affirmed even to have founded a "league of twelve towns" of their
own in Campania, and communities speaking Etruscan still existed in
its inland districts in times quite historical.  These settlements
were probably indirect results of the maritime dominion of
the Etruscans in the Campanian sea, and of their rivalry with the
Cumaeans at Vesuvius.


Etruscan Commerce


The Etruscans however by no means confined themselves to robbery
and pillage.  The peaceful intercourse which they held with Greek
towns is attested by the gold and silver coins which, at least from
the year 200, were struck by the Etruscan cities, and in particular
by Populonia, after a Greek model and a Greek standard.  The
circumstance, moreover, that these coins are modelled not upon
those of Magna Graecia, but rather upon those of Attica and even
Asia Minor, is perhaps an indication of the hostile attitude in
which the Etruscans stood towards the Italian Greeks.  For commerce
they in fact enjoyed the most favourable position, far more
advantageous than that of the inhabitants of Latium.  Inhabiting
the country from sea to sea, they commanded the great Italian free
ports on the western waters, the mouths of the Po and the Venice
of that time on the eastern sea, and the land route which from
ancient times led from Pisa on the Tyrrhene Sea to Spina on the
Adriatic, while in the south of Italy they commanded the rich plains
of Capua and Nola.  They were the holders of the most important
Italian articles of export, the iron of Aethalia, the copper
of Volaterrae and Campania, the silver of Populonia, and even the
amber which was brought to them from the Baltic.(6)  Under the
protection of their piracy, which constituted as it were a rude
navigation act, their own commerce could not fail to flourish.
It need not surprise us to find Etruscan and Milesian merchants
competing in the market of Sybaris, nor need we be astonished to
learn that the combination of privateering and commerce on a great
scale generated the unbounded and senseless luxury, in which the
vigour of Etruria early wasted away.


Rivalry between the Phoenicians and Hellenes


While in Italy the Etruscans and, although in a lesser degree, the
Latins thus stood opposed to the Hellenes, warding them off and
partly treating them as enemies, this antagonism to some extent
necessarily affected the rivalry which then above all dominated the
commerce and navigation of the Mediterranean--the rivalry between
the Phoenicians and Hellenes.  This is not the place to set forth
in detail how, during the regal period of Rome, these two great nations
contended for supremacy on all the shores of the Mediterranean, in
Greece even and Asia Minor, in Crete and Cyprus, on the African,
Spanish, and Celtic coasts.  This struggle did not take place directly
on Italian soil, but its effects were deeply and permanently felt
in Italy.  The fresh energies and more universal endowments of
the younger competitor had at first the advantage everywhere.  Not
only did the Hellenes rid themselves of the Phoenician factories
in their own European and Asiatic homes, but they dislodged the
Phoenicians also from Crete and Cyprus, gained a footing in Egypt
and Cyrene, and possessed themselves of Lower Italy and the larger
eastern half of the island of Sicily.  On all hands the small trading
stations of the Phoenicians gave way before the more energetic
colonization of the Greeks.  Selinus (126) and Agrigentum (174)
were founded in western Sicily; the more remote western sea was
traversed, Massilia was built on the Celtic coast (about 150), and
the shores of Spain were explored, by the bold Phocaeans from Asia
Minor.  But about the middle of the second century the progress of
Hellenic colonization was suddenly arrested; and there is no doubt
that the cause of this arrest was the contemporary rapid rise of
Carthage, the most powerful of the Phoenician cities in Libya--a
rise manifestly due to the danger with which Hellenic aggression
threatened the whole Phoenician race.  If the nation which had
opened up maritime commerce on the Mediterranean had been already
dislodged by its younger rival from the sole command of the western
half, from the possession of both lines of communication between
the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean, and from the
monopoly of the carrying trade between east and west, the sovereignty
at least of the seas to the west of Sardinia and Sicily might
still be saved for the Orientals; and to its maintenance Carthage
applied all the tenacious and circumspect energy peculiar to the
Aramaean race.  Phoenician colonization and Phoenician resistance
assumed an entirely different character.  The earlier Phoenician
settlements, such as those in Sicily described by Thucydides, were
mercantile factories: Carthage subdued extensive territories with
numerous subjects and powerful fortresses.  Hitherto the Phoenician
settlements had stood isolated in opposition to the Greeks; now
the powerful Libyan city centralized within its sphere the whole
warlike resources of those akin to it in race with a vigour to
which the history of the Greeks can produce nothing parallel.


Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes


Perhaps the element in this reaction which exercised the most
momentous influence in the sequel was the close relation into which
the weaker Phoenicians entered with the natives of Sicily and Italy
in order to resist the Hellenes.  When the Cnidians and Rhodians
made an attempt about 175 to establish themselves at Lilybaeum, the
centre of the Phoenician settlements in Sicily, they were expelled
by the natives--the Elymi of Segeste--in concert with the Phoenicians.
When the Phocaeans settled about 217 at Alalia (Aleria) in Corsica
opposite to Caere, there appeared for the purpose of expelling
them a combined fleet of Etruscans and Carthaginians, numbering
a hundred and twenty sail; and although in the naval battle that
ensued--one of the earliest known in history-the fleet of the
Phocaeans, which was only half as strong, claimed the victory, the
Carthaginians and Etruscans gained the object which they had in
view in the attack; the Phocaeans abandoned Corsica, and preferred
to settle at Hyde (Velia) on the less exposed coast of Lucania.  A
treaty between Etruria and Carthage not only established regulations
regarding the import of goods and the giving due effect to rights,
but included also an alliance-in-arms (--summachia--), the serious
import of which is shown by that very battle of Alalia.  It is a
significant indication of the position of the Caerites, that they
stoned the Phocaean captives in the market at Caere and then sent
an embassy to the Delphic Apollo to atone for the crime.

Latium did not join in these hostilities against the Hellenes; on
the contrary, we find friendly relations subsisting in very ancient
times between the Romans and the Phocaeans in Velia as well as in
Massilia, and the Ardeates are even said to have founded in concert
with the Zacynthians a colony in Spain, the later Saguntum.  Much
less, however, did the Latins range themselves on the side of
the Hellenes: the neutrality of their position in this respect is
attested by the close relations maintained between Caere and Rome,
as well as by the traces of ancient intercourse between the Latins
and the Carthaginians.  It was through the medium of the Hellenes
that the Cannanite race became known to the Romans, for, as we have
already seen,(7) they always designated it by its Greek name; but
the fact that they did not borrow from the Greeks either the name
for the city of Carthage(8) or the national name of the -Afri-,(9)
and the circumstance that among the earlier Romans Tyrian wares were
designated by the adjective -Sarranus-,(10) which in like manner
precludes the idea of Greek intervention, demonstrate--what the
treaties of a later period concur in proving--the direct commercial
intercourse anciently subsisting between Latium and Carthage.

The combined power of the Italians and Phoenicians actually succeeded
in substantially retaining the western half of the Mediterranean
in their hands.  The northwestern portion of Sicily, with the
important ports of Soluntum and Panormus on the north coast, and
Motya at the point which looks towards Africa, remained in the
direct or indirect possession of the Carthaginians.  About the
age of Cyrus and Croesus, just when the wise Bias was endeavouring
to induce the Ionians to emigrate in a body from Asia Minor and
settle in Sardinia (about 200), the Carthaginian general Malchus
anticipated them, and subdued a considerable portion of that important
island by force of arms; half a century later, the whole coast of
Sardinia appears in the undisputed possession of the Carthaginian
community.  Corsica on the other hand, with the towns of Alalia
and Nicaea, fell to the Etruscans, and the natives paid to these
tribute of the products of their poor island, pitch, wax, and honey.
In the Adriatic sea, moreover, the allied Etruscans and Carthaginians
ruled, as in the waters to the west of Sicily and Sardinia.  The
Greeks, indeed, did not give up the struggle.  Those Rhodians and
Cnidians, who had been driven out of Lilybaeum, established themselves
on the islands between Sicily and Italy and founded there the town
of Lipara (175).  Massilia flourished in spite of its isolation, and
soon monopolized the trade of the region from Nice to the Pyrenees.
At the Pyrenees themselves Rhoda (now Rosas) was established as an
offset from Lipara, and it is affirmed that Zacynthians settled in
Saguntum, and even that Greek dynasts ruled at Tingis (Tangiers)
in Mauretania.  But the Hellenes no longer gained ground; after
the foundation of Agrigentum they did not succeed in acquiring any
important additions of territory on the Adriatic or on the western
sea, and they remained excluded from the Spanish waters as well
as from the Atlantic Ocean.  Every year the Liparaeans had their
conflicts with the Tuscan "sea-robbers," and the Carthaginians with
the Massiliots, the Cyrenaeans, and above all with the Sicilian
Greeks; but no results of permanent moment were on either side
achieved, and the issue of struggles which lasted for centuries
was, on the whole, the simple maintenance of the -status quo-.

Thus Italy was--if but indirectly--indebted to the Phoenicians for
the exemption of at least her central and northern provinces from
colonization, and for the counter-development of a national maritime
power there, especially in Etruria.  But there are not wanting
indications that the Phoenicians already found it worth while
to manifest that jealousy which is usually associated with naval
domination, if not in reference to their Latin allies, at any rate
in reference to their Etruscan confederates, whose naval power was
greater.  The statement as to the Carthaginians having prohibited
the sending forth of an Etruscan colony to the Canary islands, whether
true or false, reveals the existence of a rivalry of interests in
the matter.




Notes for Book I Chapter X


1.  Whether the name of Graeci was originally associated with the
interior of Epirus and the region of Dodona, or pertained rather
to the Aetolians who perhaps earlier reached the western sea, may
be left an open question; it must at a remote period have belonged
to a prominent stock or aggregate of stocks of Greece proper and
have passed over from these to the nation as a whole.  In the Eoai
of Hesiod it appears as the older collective name for the nation,
although it is manifest that it is intentionally thrust aside and
subordinated to that of Hellenes.  The latter does not occur in
Homer, but, in addition to Hesiod, it is found in Archilochus about
the year 50, and it may very well have come into use considerably
earlier (Duncker, Gesch. d. Alt. iii. 18, 556).  Already before this
period, therefore, the Italians were so widely acquainted with the
Greeks that that name, which early fell into abeyance in Hellas,
was retained by them as a collective name for the Greek nation,
even when the latter itself adopted other modes of self-designation.
It was withal only natural that foreigners should have attained to
an earlier and clearer consciousness of the fact that the Hellenic
stocks belonged to one race than the latter themselves, and that
hence the collective designation should have become more definitely
fixed among the former than with the latter--not the less, that it
was not taken directly from the well-known Hellenes who dwelt the
nearest to them.  It is difficult to see how we can reconcile with
this fact the statement that a century before the foundation of
Rome Italy was still quite unknown to the Greeks of Asia Minor.
We shall speak of the alphabet below; its history yields entirely
similar results.  It may perhaps be characterized as a rash step
to reject the statement of Herodotus respecting the age of Homer
on the strength of such considerations; but is there no rashness
in following implicitly the guidance of tradition in questions of
this kind?

2.  Thus the three old Oriental forms of the --"id:i" (--"id:S"),
--"id:l" (--"id:/\") and --"id:r" (--"id:P"), for which as apt to
be confounded with the forms of the --"id:s", --"id:g", and --"id:p"
the signs --"id:I") --"id:L" --"id:R") were early proposed to be
substituted, remained either in exclusive or in very preponderant
use among the Achaean colonies, while the other Greeks of Italy
and Sicily without distinction of race used exclusively or at any
rate chiefly the more recent forms.

3.  E. g. the inscription on an earthen vase of Cumae runs thus:----Tataies
emi lequthos Fos d' an me  klephsei thuphlos estai--.

4.  Among Greek writers this Tyrrhene legend of Odysseus makes its
earliest appearance in the Theogony of Hesiod, in one of its more
recent sections, and thereafter in authors of the period shortly
before Alexander, Ephorus (from whom the so-called Scymnus drew his
materials), and the writer known as Scylax.  The first of these
sources belongs to an age when Italy was still regarded by the
Greeks as a group of islands, and is certainly therefore very old;
so that the origin of these legends may, on the whole, be confidently
placed in the regal period of Rome.

5.  I. X. Phoenicians in Italy, I. X. Relations of the Western
Italians to the Greeks

6.  I. X. Relations of Italy with Other Lands

7.  I. X. Phoenicians in Italy

8.  The Phoenician name was Karthada; the Greek, Karchedon; the
Roman, Cartago.

9.  The name -Afri-, already current in the days of Ennius and Cato
(comp. -Scipio Africanus-), is certainly not Greek, and is most
probably cognate with that of the Hebrews.

10.  The adjective -Sarranus- was from early times applied by the
Romans to the Tyrian purple and the Tyrian flute; and -Sarranus-was
in use also as a surname, at least from the time of the war with
Hannibal.  -Sarra-, which occurs in Ennius and Plautus as the name
of the city, was perhaps formed from -Sarranus-, not directly from
the native name -Sor-.  The Greek form, -Tyrus-, -Tyrius-, seems
not to occur in any Roman author anterior to Afranius (ap. Fest.
p. 355 M.).  Compare Movers, Phon. ii. x, 174.




CHAPTER XI

Law and Justice



Modern Character of Italian Culture


History, as such, cannot reproduce the life of a people in the
infinite variety of its details; it must be content with exhibiting
the development of that life as a whole.  The doings and dealings,
the thoughts and imaginings of the individual, however strongly
they may reflect the characteristics of the national mind, form
no part of history.  Nevertheless it seems necessary to make some
attempt to indicate--only in the most general outlines--the features
of individual life in the case of those earlier ages which are,
so far as history is concerned, all but lost in oblivion; for it
is in this field of research alone that we acquire some idea of
the breadth of the gulf which separates our modes of thinking and
feeling from those of the civilized nations of antiquity.  Tradition,
with its confused mass of national names and its dim legends,
resembles withered leaves which with difficulty we recognize to
have once been green.  Instead of threading that dreary maze and
attempting to classify those shreds of humanity, the Chones and
Oenotrians, the Siculi and the Pelasgi, it will be more to the
purpose to inquire how the real life of the people in ancient Italy
expressed itself in their law, and their ideal life in religion;
how they farmed and how they traded; and whence the several nations
derived the art of writing and other elements of culture.  Scanty
as our knowledge in this respect is in reference to the Roman people
and still more so in reference to the Sabellians and Etruscans,
even the slight and very defective information which is attainable
will enable the mind to associate with these names some more or
less clear glimpse of the once living reality.  The chief result of
such a view (as we may here mention by way of anticipation) may be
summed up in saying that fewer traces comparatively of the primitive
state of things have been preserved in the case of the Italians,
and of the Romans in particular, than in the case of any other
Indo-Germanic race.  The bow and arrow, the war-chariot, the incapacity
of women to hold property, the acquiring of wives by purchase,
the primitive form of burial, blood-revenge, the clan-constitution
conflicting with the authority of the community, a vivid natural
symbolism --all these, and numerous phenomena of a kindred character,
must be presumed to have lain at the foundation of civilization in
Italy as well as elsewhere; but at the epoch when that civilization
comes clearly into view they have already wholly disappeared, and
only the comparison of kindred races informs us that such things
once existed.  In this respect Italian history begins at a far
later stage of civilization than e.g. the Greek or the Germanic,
and from the first it exhibits a comparatively modern character.

The laws of most of the Italian stocks are lost in oblivion.  Some
information regarding the law of the Latin land alone has survived
in Roman tradition.


Jurisdiction


All jurisdiction was vested in the community or, in other words,
in the king, who administered justice or "command" (-ius-) on
the "days of utterance" (-dies fasti-) at the "judgment platform"
(-tribunal-) in the place of public assembly, sitting on the
"chariot-seat" (-sella curulis-);(1) by his side stood his "messengers"
(-lictores-), and before him the person accused or the "parties"
(-rei-).  No doubt in the case of slaves the decision lay primarily
with the master, and in the case of women with the father, husband,
or nearest male relative;(2) but slaves and women were not primarily
reckoned as members of the community.  Over sons and grandsons who
were -in potestate- the power of the -pater familias- subsisted
concurrently with the royal jurisdiction; that power, however,
was not a jurisdiction in the proper sense of the term, but simply
a consequence of the father's inherent right of property in his
children.  We find no traces of any jurisdiction appertaining to
the clans as such, or of any judicature at all that did not derive
its authority from the king.  As regards the right of self-redress
and in particular the avenging of blood, we still find perhaps in
legends an echo of the original principle that a murderer, or any
one who should illegally protect a murderer, might justifiably be
slain by the kinsmen of the person murdered; but these very legends
characterize this principle as objectionable,(3) and from their
statements blood-revenge would appear to have been very early
suppressed in Rome through the energetic assertion of the authority
of the community.  In like manner we perceive in the earliest Roman
law no trace of that influence which under the oldest Germanic
institutions the comrades of the accused and the people present
were entitled to exercise over the pronouncing of judgment; nor
do we find in the former any evidence of the usage so frequent in
the latter, by which the mere will and power to maintain a claim
with arms in hand were treated as judicially necessary or at any
rate admissible.


Crimes


Judicial procedure took the form of a public or a private process,
according as the king interposed of his own motion or only when
appealed to by the injured party.  The former course was taken
only in cases which involved a breach of the public peace.  First
of all, therefore, it was applicable in the case of public treason
or communion with the public enemy (-proditio-), and in that of
violent rebellion against the magistracy (-perduellio-).  But the
public peace was also broken by the foul murderer (-parricida-),
the sodomite, the violator of a maiden's or matron's chastity, the
incendiary, the false witness, by those, moreover, who with evil
spells conjured away the harvest, or who without due title cut
the corn by night in the field entrusted to the protection of the
gods and of the people; all of these were therefore dealt with as
though they had been guilty of high treason.  The king opened and
conducted the process, and pronounced sentence after conferring with
the senators whom he had called in to advise with him.  He was at
liberty, however, after he had initiated the process, to commit
the further handling and the adjudication of the matter to deputies
who were, as a rule, taken from the senate.  The later extraordinary
deputies, the two men for adjudicating on rebellion (-duoviri
perduellionis-) and the later standing deputies the "trackers of
murder" (-quaestores parricidii-) whose primary duty was to search
out and arrest murderers, and who therefore exercised in some
measure police functions, do not belong to the regal period, but may
probably have sprung out of, or been suggested by, certain of its
institutions.  Imprisonment while the case was undergoing investigation
was the rule; the accused might, however, be released on bail.
Torture to compel confession was only applied to slaves.  Every one
convicted of having broken the public peace expiated his offence with
his life.  The modes of inflicting capital punishment were various:
the false witness, for example, was hurled from the stronghold-rock;
the harvest-thief was hanged; the incendiary was burnt.  The king
could not grant pardon, for that power was vested in the community
alone; but the king might grant or refuse to the condemned permission
to appeal for mercy (-provocatio-).  In addition to this, the law
recognized an intervention of the gods in favour of the condemned
criminal.  He who had made a genuflection before the priest of
Jupiter might not be scourged on the same day; any one under fetters
who set foot in his house had to be released from his bonds; and
the life of a criminal was spared, if on his way to execution he
accidentally met one of the sacred virgins of Vesta.


Punishment of Offenses against Order


The king inflicted at his discretion fines payable to the state for
trespasses against order and for police offences; they consisted
in a definite number (hence the name -multa-) of cattle or sheep.
It was in his power also to pronounce sentence of scourging.


Law of Private Offenses


In all other cases, where the individual alone was injured and
not the public peace, the state only interposed upon the appeal of
the party injured, who caused his opponent, or in case of need by
laying violent hands on him compelled him, to appear personally along
with himself before the king.  When both parties had appeared and
the plaintiff had orally stated his demand, while the defendant had
in similar fashion refused to comply with it, the king might either
investigate the cause himself or have it disposed of by a deputy
acting in his name.  The regular form of satisfaction for such an
injury was a compromise arranged between the injurer and the injured;
the state only interfered supplementarily, when the aggressor did
not satisfy the party aggrieved by an adequate expiation (-poena-),
when any one had his property detained or his just demand was not
fulfilled.


Theft


Under what circumstances during this epoch theft was regarded as
at all expiable, and what in such an event the person injured was
entitled to demand from the thief, cannot be ascertained.  But
the injured party with reason demanded heavier compensation from
a thief caught in the very act than from one detected afterwards,
since the feeling of exasperation which had to be appeased was more
vehement in the case of the former than in that of the latter.  If
the theft appeared incapable of expiation, or if the thief was not
in a position to pay the value demanded by the injured party and
approved by the judge, he was by the judge assigned as a bondsman
to the person from whom he had stolen.


Injuries


In cases of damage (-iniuria-) to person or to property, where the
injury was not of a very serious description, the aggrieved party
was probably obliged unconditionally to accept compensation; if,
on the other hand, any member was lost in consequence of it, the
maimed person could demand eye for eye and tooth for tooth.


Property


Since the arable land among the Romans was long cultivated upon
the system of joint possession and was not distributed until a
comparatively late age, the idea of property was primarily associated
not with immoveable estate, but with "estate in slaves and cattle"
(-familia pecuniaque-).  It was not the right of the stronger that
was regarded as the foundation of a title to it; on the contrary,
all property was considered as conferred by the community upon the
individual burgess for his exclusive possession and use; and therefore
it was only the burgess, and such as the community accounted in
this respect as equal to burgesses, that were capable of holding
property.  All property passed freely from hand to hand.  The Roman
law made no substantial distinction between moveable and immoveable
estate  (from the time that the latter was regarded as private
property at all), and recognized no absolute vested interest of
children or other relatives in the paternal or family property.
Nevertheless it was not in the power of the father arbitrarily
to deprive his children of their right of inheritance, because he
could neither dissolve the paternal power nor execute a testament
except with consent of the whole community, which might be, and
certainly under such circumstances often was, refused.  In his
lifetime no doubt the father might make dispositions disadvantageous
to his children; for the law was sparing of personal restrictions
on the proprietor and allowed, upon the whole, every grown-up
man freely to dispose of his property.  The regulation, however,
under which he who alienated his hereditary property and deprived
his children of it was placed by order of the magistrate under
guardianship like a lunatic, was probably as ancient as the period
when the arable land was first divided and thereby private property
generally acquired greater importance for the commonwealth.  In
this way the two antagonistic principles--the unlimited right of
the owner to dispose of his own, and the preservation of the family
property unbroken--were as far as possible harmonized in the Roman
law.  Permanent restrictions on property were in no case allowed,
with the exception of servitudes such as those indispensable in
husbandry.  Heritable leases and ground-rents charged upon property
could not legally exist.  The law as little recognized mortgaging;
but the same purpose was served by the immediate delivery of the
property in pledge to the creditor as if he were its purchaser,
who thereupon gave his word of honour (-fiducia-) that he would not
alienate the object pledged until the payment fell due, and would
restore it to his debtor when the sum advanced had been repaid.


Contracts


Contracts concluded between the state and a burgess, particularly
the obligation given by those who became sureties for a payment
to the state (-praevides-, -praedes-), were valid without further
formality.  On the other hand, contracts between private persons
under ordinary circumstances gave no claim for legal aid on the
part of the state.  The only protection of the creditor was the
debtor's word of honour which was held in high esteem after the
wont of merchants, and possibly also, in those frequent cases where
an oath had been added, the fear of the gods who avenged perjury.
The only contracts legally actionable were those of betrothal (the
effect of which was that the father, in the event of his failing
to give the promised bride, had to furnish satisfaction and
compensation), of purchase (-mancipatio-), and of loan (-nexum-).
A purchase was held to be legally concluded when the seller delivered
the article purchased into the hand of the buyer (-mancipare-) and
the buyer at the same time paid to the seller the stipulated price
in presence of witnesses.  This was done, after copper superseded
sheep and cattle as the regular standard of value, by weighing out
the stipulated quantity of copper in a balance adjusted by a neutral
person.(4)  These conditions having been complied with, the seller
had to answer for his being the owner, and in addition seller and
purchaser had to fulfil every stipulation specially agreed on; the
party failing to do so made reparation to the other, just as if he
had deprived him of the article in question.  But a purchase only
founded an action in the event of its being a transaction for
ready money: a purchase on credit neither gave nor took away the
right of property, and constituted no ground of action.  A loan
was negotiated in a similar way; the creditor weighed over to the
debtor in presence of witnesses the stipulated quantity of copper
under the obligation (-nexum-) of repayment.  In addition to
the capital the debtor had to pay interest, which under ordinary
circumstances probably amounted to ten per cent per annum.(5) The
repayment of the loan took place, when the time came, with similar
forms.


Private Process


If a debtor to the state did not fulfil his obligations, he was
without further ceremony sold with all that he had; the simple
demand on the part of the state was sufficient to establish the
debt.  If on the other hand a private person informed the king of
any violation of his property (-vindiciae-) or if repayment of the
loan received did not duly take place, the procedure depended on
whether the facts relating to the cause needed to be established,
which was ordinarily the case with actions as to property, or were
already clearly apparent, which in the case of actions as to loans
could easily be accomplished according to the current rules of law
by means of the witnesses.  The establishment of the facts assumed
the form of a wager, in which each party made a deposit (-sacramentum-)
against the contingency of his being worsted; in important causes
when the value involved was greater than ten oxen, a deposit of
five oxen, in causes of less amount, a deposit of five sheep.  The
judge then decided who had gained the wager, whereupon the deposit
of the losing party fell to the priests for behoof of the public
sacrifices.  The party who lost the wager and allowed thirty days
to elapse without giving due satisfaction to his opponent, and the
party whose obligation to pay was established from the first--consequently,
as a rule, the debtor who had got a loan and had not witnesses to
attest its repayment--became liable to proceedings in execution
"by laying on of hands" (-manus iniectio-); the plaintiff seized
him wherever he found him, and brought him to the bar of the judge
simply to satisfy the acknowledged debt.  The party seized was not
allowed to defend himself; a third person might indeed intercede for
him and represent this act of violence as unwarranted (-vindex-),
in which case the proceedings were stayed; but such an intercession
rendered the intercessor personally responsible, for which reason
the proletarian could not be intercessor for the tribute-paying
burgess.  If neither satisfaction nor intercession took place, the
king adjudged the party seized to his creditor, so that the latter
could lead him away and keep him like a slave.  After the expiry
of sixty days during which the debtor had been three times exposed
in the market-place and proclamation had been made to ascertain
whether any one would have compassion upon him, if these steps were
without effect, his creditors had the right to put him to death
and to divide his carcase, or to sell him with his children and his
effects into foreign slavery, or to keep him at home in a slave's
stead; for such an one could not by the Roman law, so long as he
remained within the bounds of the Roman community, become completely
a slave.(6)  Thus the Roman community protected every man's estate
and effects with unrelenting rigour as well from the thief and
the injurer, as from the unauthorized possessor and the insolvent
debtor.


Guardianship


Protection was in like manner provided for the estate of persons
not capable of bearing arms and therefore not capable of protecting
their own property, such as minors and lunatics, and above all
for that of women; in these cases the nearest heirs were called to
undertake the guardianship.


Law of Inheritance


After a man's death his property fell to the nearest heirs: in the
division all who were equal in proximity of relationship--women
included--shared alike, and the widow along with her children was
admitted to her proportional share.  A dispensation from the legal
order of succession could only be granted by the assembly of the
people; previous to which the consent of the priests had to be
obtained on account of the ritual obligations attaching to succession.
Such dispensations appear nevertheless to have become at an early
period very frequent.  In the event of a dispensation not being
procured, the want of it might be in some measure remedied by
means of the completely free control which every one had over his
property during his lifetime.  His whole property was transferred
to a friend, who distributed it after death according to the wishes
of the deceased.


Manumission


Manumission was unknown to the law of very early times.  The owner
might indeed refrain from exercising his proprietary rights; but
this did not cancel the existing impossibility of master and slave
coming under mutual obligations; still less did it enable the slave
to acquire, in relation to the community, the rights of a guest
or of a burgess.  Accordingly manumission must have been at first
simply -de facto-, not -de jure-; and the master cannot have been
debarred from the possibility of again at pleasure treating the
freedman as a slave.  But there was a departure from this principle
in cases where the master came under obligation not merely towards
the slave, but towards the community, to leave him in possession
of freedom.  There was no special legal form, however, for thus
binding the master--the best proof that there was at first no
such thing as a manumission,--but those methods were employed for
this object which the law otherwise presented, testament, action,
or census.  If the master had either declared his slave free when
executing his last will in the assembly of the people, or had allowed
his slave to claim freedom in his own presence before a judge or
to get his name inscribed in the valuation-roll, the freedman was
regarded not indeed as a burgess, but as personally free in relation
to his former master and his heirs, and was accordingly looked upon
at first as a client, and in later times as a plebeian.(7)

The emancipation of a son encountered greater difficulties than
that of a slave; for while the relation of master to slave was
accidental and therefore capable of being dissolved at will, the
father could never cease to be father.  Accordingly in later times
the son was obliged, in order to get free from the father, first
to enter into slavery and then to be set free out of this latter
state; but in the period now before us no emancipation of sons can
have as yet existed.


Clients and Foreigners


Such were the laws under which burgesses and clients lived in Rome.
Between these two classes, so far as we can see, there subsisted from
the beginning complete equality of private rights.  The foreigner
on the other hand, if he had not submitted to a Roman patron and thus
lived as a client, was beyond the pale of the law both in person
and in property.  Whatever the Roman burgess took from him was
as rightfully acquired as was the shellfish, belonging to nobody,
which was picked up by the sea-shore; but in the case of ground
lying beyond the Roman bounds, while the Roman burgess might take
practical possession, he could not be regarded as in a legal sense
its proprietor; for the individual burgess was not entitled to
advance the bounds of the community.  The case was different in
war: whatever the soldier who was fighting in the ranks of the levy
gained, whether moveable or immoveable property, fell not to him,
but to the state, and accordingly here too it depended upon the
state whether it would advance or contract its bounds.

Exceptions from these general rules were created by special
state-treaties, which secured certain rights to the members of
foreign communities within the Roman state.  In particular, the
perpetual league between Rome and Latium declared all contracts
between Romans and Latins to be valid in law, and at the same time
instituted in their case an accelerated civil process before sworn
"recoverers" (-reciperatores-).  As, contrary to Roman usage,
which in other instances committed the decision to a single judge,
these always sat in plural number and that number uneven, they are
probably to be conceived as a court for the cognizance of commercial
dealings, composed of arbiters from both nations and an umpire.
They sat in judgment at the place where the contract was entered
into, and were obliged to have the process terminated at latest
in ten days.  The forms, under which the dealings between Romans
and Latins were conducted, were of course the general forms which
regulated the mutual dealings of patricians and plebeians; for
the -mancipatio- and the -nexum- were originally not at all formal
acts, but the significant expression of legal ideas which held a
sway at least as extensive as the range of the Latin language.

Dealings with countries strictly foreign were carried on in a
different fashion and by means of other forms.  In very early times
treaties as to commerce and legal redress must have been entered
into with the Caerites and other friendly peoples, and must have
formed the basis of the international private law (-ius gentium-),
which gradually became developed in Rome alongside of the law of
the land.  An indication of the formation of such a law is found
in the remarkable -mutuum-, "the exchange" (from -mutare- like
-dividuus-)--a form of loan, which was not based like the -nexum-
upon a binding declaration of the debtor expressly emitted before
witnesses, but upon the mere transit of the money from one hand
to another, and which as evidently originated in dealings with
foreigners as the -nexum- in business dealings at home.  It is
accordingly a significant fact that the word reappears in Sicilian
Greek as --moiton--; and with this is to be connected the reappearance
of the Latin -carcer- in the Sicilian --karkaron--.  Since it is
philologically certain that both words were originally Latin, their
occurrence in the local dialect of Sicily becomes an important
testimony to the frequency of the dealings of Latin traders in
the island, which led to their borrowing money there and becoming
liable to that imprisonment for debt, which was everywhere in the
earlier systems of law the consequence of the non-repayment of a
loan.  Conversely, the name of the Syracusan prison, "stone-quarries"
or --latomiai--, was transferred at an early period to the enlarged
Roman state-prison, the -lautumiae-.


Character of the Roman Law


We have derived our outline of these institutions mainly from
the earliest record of the Roman common law prepared about half a
century after the abolition of the monarchy; and their existence in
the regal period, while doubtful perhaps as to particular points of
detail, cannot be doubted in the main.  Surveying them as a whole,
we recognize the law of a far-advanced agricultural and mercantile
city, marked alike by its liberality and its consistency.  In
its case the conventional language of symbols, such as e. g. the
Germanic laws exhibit, has already quite disappeared.  There is no
doubt that such a symbolic language must have existed at one time
among the Italians.  Remarkable instances of it are to be found in
the form of searching a house, wherein the searcher must, according
to the Roman as well as the Germanic custom, appear without upper
garment merely in his shirt; and especially in the primitive
Latin formula for declaring war, in which we meet with two symbols
occurring at least also among the Celts and the Germans--the "pure
herb" (-herba pura-, Franconian -chrene chruda-) as a symbol of
the native soil, and the singed bloody staff as a sign of commencing
war.  But with a few exceptions, in which reasons of religion
protected the ancient usages--to which class the -confarreatio-
as well as the declaration of war by the college of Fetiales
belonged--the Roman law, as we know it, uniformly and on principle
rejects the symbol, and requires in all cases neither more nor
less than the full and pure expression of will.  The delivery of an
article, the summons to bear witness, the conclusion of marriage,
were complete as soon as the parties had in an intelligible manner
declared their purpose; it was usual, indeed, to deliver the article
into the hand of the new owner, to pull the person summoned as
a witness by the ear, to veil the bride's head and to lead her in
solemn procession to her husband's house; but all these primitive
practices were already, under the oldest national law of the
Romans, customs legally worthless.  In a way entirely analogous to
the setting aside of allegory and along with it of personification
in religion, every sort of symbolism was on principle expelled from
their law.  In like manner that earliest state of things presented
to us by the Hellenic as well as the Germanic institutions, wherein
the power of the community still contends with the authority of
the smaller associations of clans or cantons that are merged in
it, is in Roman law wholly superseded; there is no alliance for the
vindication of rights within the state, to supplement the state's
imperfect aid, by mutual offence and defence; nor is there any
serious trace of vengeance for bloodshed, or of the family property
restricting the individual's power of disposal.  Such institutions
must probably at one time have existed among the Italians; traces
of them may perhaps be found in particular institutions of ritual,
e. g. in the expiatory goat, which the involuntary homicide was
obliged to give to the nearest of kin to the slain; but even at the
earliest period of Rome which we can conceive this stage had long
been transcended.  The clan and the family doubtless were not
annihilated in the Roman community; but the theoretical as well
as the practical omnipotence of the state in its own sphere was no
more limited by them than by the freedom which the state granted
and guaranteed to the burgess.  The ultimate foundation of law was
in all cases the state; freedom was simply another expression for
the right of citizenship in its widest sense; all property was
based on express or tacit transference by the community to the
individual; a contract was valid only so far as the community by
its representatives attested it, a testament only so far as the
community confirmed it.  The provinces of public and private law were
definitely and clearly discriminated: the former having reference
to crimes against the state, which immediately called for the
judgment of the state and always involved capital punishment; the
latter having reference to offences against a fellow-burgess or a
guest, which were mainly disposed of in the way of compromise by
expiation or satisfaction made to the party injured, and were never
punished with the forfeit of life, but, at most, with the loss of
freedom.  The greatest liberality in the permission of commerce and
the most rigorous procedure in execution went hand in hand; just
as in commercial states at the present day the universal right to
draw bills of exchange appears in conjunction with a strict procedure
in regard to them.  The burgess and the client stood in their
dealings on a footing of entire equality; state-treaties conceded
a comprehensive equality of rights also to the guest; women were
placed completely on a level in point of legal capacity with men,
although restricted in action; the boy had scarcely grown up when
he received at once the most comprehensive powers in the disposal
of his estate, and every one who could dispose at all was as
sovereign in his own sphere as was the state in public affairs.  A
feature eminently characteristic was the system of credit.  There
did not exist any credit on landed security, but instead of a debt
on mortgage the step which constitutes at present the final stage
in mortgage-procedure --the delivery of the property from the debtor
to the creditor--took place at once.  On the other hand personal
credit was guaranteed in the most summary, not to say extravagant
fashion; for the lawgiver entitled the creditor to treat his insolvent
debtor like a thief, and granted to him in entire legislative earnest
what Shylock, half in jest, stipulated for from his mortal enemy,
guarding indeed by special clauses the point as to the cutting off
too much more carefully than did the Jew.  The law could not have
more clearly expressed its design, which was to establish at once
an independent agriculture free of debt and a mercantile credit,
and to suppress with stringent energy all merely nominal ownership
and all breaches of fidelity.  If we further take into consideration
the right of settlement recognized at an early date as belonging
to all the Latins,(8) and the validity which was likewise early
pronounced to belong to civil marriage,(9) we shall perceive that
this state, which made the highest demands on its burgesses and
carried the idea of subordinating the individual to the interest of
the whole further than any state before or since has done, only did
and only could do so by itself removing the barriers to intercourse
and unshackling liberty quite as much as it subjected it to
restriction.  In permission or in prohibition the law was always
absolute.  As the foreigner who had none to intercede for him was
like the hunted deer, so the guest was on a footing of equality
with the burgess.  A contract did not ordinarily furnish a ground
of action, but where the right of the creditor was acknowledged,
it was so all-powerful that there was no deliverance for the poor
debtor, and no humane or equitable consideration was shown towards
him.  It seemed as if the law found a pleasure in presenting on all
sides its sharpest spikes, in drawing the most extreme consequences,
in forcibly obtruding on the bluntest understanding the tyrannic
nature of the idea of right.  The poetical form and the genial
symbolism, which so pleasingly prevail in the Germanic legal
ordinances, were foreign to the Roman; in his law all was clear and
precise; no symbol was employed, no institution was superfluous.
It was not cruel; everything necessary was performed without much
ceremony, even the punishment of death; that a free man could not
be tortured was a primitive maxim of Roman law, to obtain which
other peoples have had to struggle for thousands of years.  Yet this
law was frightful in its inexorable severity, which we cannot suppose
to have been very greatly mitigated by humanity in practice, for
it was really the law of the people; more terrible than Venetian
-piombi- and chambers of torture was that series of living entombments
which the poor man saw yawning before him in the debtors' towers
of the rich.  But the greatness of Rome was involved in, and was
based upon, the fact that the Roman people ordained for itself and
endured a system of law, in which the eternal principles of freedom
and of subordination, of property and of legal redress, reigned
and still at the present day reign unadulterated and unmodified.




Notes for Book I Chapter XI


1.  This "chariot-seat"--philologically no other explanation can
well be given (comp. Servius ad Aen. i. 16)--is most simply explained
by supposing that the king alone was entitled to ride in a chariot
within the city (v. The King)--whence originated the privilege
subsequently accorded to the chief magistrate on solemn occasions--and
that originally, so long as there was no elevated tribunal, he
gave judgment, at the comitium or wherever else he wished, from
the chariot-seat.

2.  I. V. The Housefather and His Household

3.  The story of the death of king Tatius, as given by Plutarch
(Rom.  23, 24), viz. that kinsmen of Tatius had killed envoys from
Laurentum; that Tatius had refused the complaint of the kinsmen
of the slain for redress; that they then put Tatius to death; that
Romulus acquitted the murderers of Tatius, on the ground that murder
had been expiated by murder; but that, in consequence of the penal
judgments of the gods that simultaneously fell upon Rome and
Laurentum, the perpetrators of both murders were in the sequel
subjected to righteous punishment--this story looks quite like a
historical version of the abolition of blood-revenge, just as the
introduction of the -provocatio- lies at the foundation of the myth
of the Horatii. The versions of the same story that occur elsewhere
certainly present considerable variations, but they seem to be
confused or dressed up.

4.  The -mancipatio- in its developed form must have been more recent
than the Servian reform, as the selection of mancipable objects,
which had for its aim the fixing of agricultural property, shows,
and as even tradition must have assumed, for it makes Servius the
inventor of the balance. But in its origin the -mancipatio- must
be far more ancient; for it primarily applies only to objects which
are acquired by grasping with the hand, and must therefore in its
earliest form have belonged to the epoch when property consisted
essentially in slaves and cattle (-familia pecuniaque-). The enumeration
of those objects which had to be acquired by -mancipatio-, falls
accordingly to be ranked as a Servian innovation; the -mancipatio-
itself, and consequently the use also of the balance and of copper,
are older.  Beyond doubt -mancipatio- was originally the universal
form of purchase, and occurred in the case of all articles even
after the Servian reform; it was only a misunderstanding of later
ages which put upon the rule, that certain articles had to be
transferred by -mancipatio-, the construction that these articles
only and no others could be so transferred.

5.  Viz. for the year of ten months one twelfth part of the capital
(-uncia-), which amounts to 8 1/3 per cent for the year of ten,
and 10 per cent for the fear of twelve, months.

6.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

7.  I. VI. Dependents and Guests.

8.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

9.  I. VI. Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the
Community




CHAPTER XII

Religion



Roman Religion


The Roman world of gods, as we have already indicated,(1) was a
higher counterpart, an ideal reflection, of the earthly Rome, in
which the little and the great were alike repeated with painstaking
exactness.  The state and the clan, the individual phenomenon of
nature as well as the individual mental operation, every man, every
place and object, every act even falling within the sphere of Roman
law, reappeared in the Roman world of gods; and, as earthly things
come and go in perpetual flux, the circle of the gods underwent
a corresponding fluctuation.  The tutelary spirit, which presided
over the individual act, lasted no longer than that act itself: the
tutelary spirit of the individual man lived and died with the man;
and eternal duration belonged to divinities of this sort only in
so far as similar acts and similarly constituted men and therefore
spirits of a similar kind were ever coming into existence afresh.
As the Roman gods ruled over the Roman community, so every foreign
community was presided over by its own gods; but sharp as was the
distinction between the burgess and non-burgess, between the Roman
and the foreign god, both foreign men and foreign divinities could
be admitted by resolution of the community to the freedom of Rome,
and when the citizens of a conquered city were transported to Rome,
the gods of that city were also invited to take up their new abode
there.


Oldest Table of Roman Festivals


We obtain information regarding the original cycle of the gods, as
it stood in Rome previous to any contact with the Greeks, from the
list of the public and duly named festival-days (-feriae publicae-)
of the Roman community, which is preserved in its calendar and is
beyond all question the oldest document which has reached us from
Roman antiquity.  The first place in it is occupied by the gods
Jupiter and Mars along with the duplicate of the latter, Quirinus.
To Jupiter all the days of full moon (-idus-) are sacred, besides
all the wine-festivals and various other days to be mentioned
afterwards; the 21st May (-agonalia-) is dedicated to his counterpart,
the "bad Jovis" (-Ve-diovis-).  To Mars belongs the new-year of the
1st March, and generally the great warrior-festival in this month
which derived its very name from the god; this festival, introduced
by the horse-racing (-equirria-) on the 27th February, had during
March its principal solemnities on the days of the shield-forging
(-equirria- or -Mamuralia-, March 14), of the armed dance at the
Comitium (-quinquatrus-, March 19), and of the consecration of
trumpets (-tubilustrium-, March 23).  As, when a war was to be waged,
it began with this festival, so after the close of the campaign
in autumn there followed a further festival of Mars, that of
the consecration of arms (-armilustrium-, October 19).  Lastly,
to the second Mars, Quirinus, the 17th February was appropriated
(-Quirinalia-).  Among the other festivals those which related to
the culture of corn and wine hold the first place, while the pastoral
feasts play a subordinate part.  To this class belongs especially
the great series of spring-festivals in April, in the course of
which sacrifices were offered on the 15th to Tellus, the nourishing
earth (-fordicidia-, sacrifice of the pregnant cow), on the 19th
to Ceres, the goddess of germination and growth (-Cerialia-) on the
21st to Pales, the fecundating goddess of the flocks (-Parilia-),
on the 23rd to Jupiter, as the protector of the vines and of the
vats of the previous year's vintage which were first opened on this
day (-Vinalia-), and on the 25th to the bad enemy of the crops, rust
(-Robigus-: -Robigalia-).  So after the completion of the work of
the fields and the fortunate ingathering of their produce double
festivals were celebrated in honour of the god and goddess of
inbringing and harvest, Census (from -condere-) and Ops; the first,
immediately after the completion of cutting (August 21, -Consualia-;
August 25, -Opiconsiva-); and the second, in the middle of winter,
when the blessings of the granary are especially manifest (December
15, -Consualia-; December 19, -Opalia-); between these two latter
days the thoughtfulness of the old arrangers of the festivals inserted
that of seed-sowing (Saturnalia from -Saeturnus- or -Saturnus-,
December 17).  In like manner the festival of must or of healing
(-meditrinalia-, October 11), so called because a healing virtue
was attributed to the fresh must, was dedicated to Jovis as the
wine-god after the completion of the vintage; the original reference
of the third wine-feast (-Vinalia-, August 19) is not clear.  To
these festivals were added at the close of the year the wolf-festival
(-Lupercalia-, February 17) of the shepherds in honour of the
good god, Faunus, and the boundary-stone festival (-Terminalia-,
February 23) of the husbandmen, as also the summer grove-festival
of two days (-Lucaria-, July 19, 21) which may have had reference
to the forest-gods (-Silvani-), the fountain-festival (-Fontinalia-,
October 13), and the festival of the shortest day, which brings in
the new sun (-An-geronalia-, -Divalia-, December 21).

Of not less importance--as was to be expected in the case of the
port of Latium--were the mariner-festivals of the divinities of the
sea (-Neptunalia-, July 23), of the harbour (-Portunalia-, August
17), and of the Tiber stream (-Volturnalia-, August 27).

Handicraft and art, on the other hand, are represented in this cycle
of the gods only by the god of fire and of smith's work, Vulcanus,
to whom besides the day named after him (-Volcanalia-, August 23)
the second festival of the consecration of trumpets was dedicated
(-tubilustrium-, May 23), and eventually also by the festival of
Carmentis (-Carmentalia- January 11, 15), who probably was adored
originally as the goddess of spells and of song and only inferentially
as protectress of births.

Domestic and family life in general were represented by the festival
of the goddess of the house and of the spirits of the storechamber,
Vesta and the Penates (-Vestalia-, June 9); the festival of the
goddess of birth(2) (-Matralia-, June 11); the festival of the
blessing of children, dedicated to Liber and Libera (-Liberalia-,
March 17), the festival of departed spirits (-Feralia-, February
21), and the three days' ghost-celebration (-Lemuria- May 9,
11, 13); while those having reference to civil relations were the
two--otherwise to us somewhat obscure--festivals of the king's
flight (-Regifugium-, February 24) and of the people's flight
(-Poplifugia-, July 5), of which at least the last day was devoted
to Jupiter, and the festival of the Seven Mounts (-Agonia- or
-Septimontium-, December 11).  A special day (-agonia-, January
9) was also consecrated to Janus, the god of beginning.  The real
nature of some other days--that of Furrina (July 25), and that
of the Larentalia devoted to Jupiter and Acca Larentia, perhaps a
feast of the Lares (December 23)--is no longer known.

This table is  complete  for the immoveable  public festivals;
and--although by the side of these standing festal days there
certainly occurred from the earliest times changeable and occasional
festivals--this document, in what it says as well as in what it
omits, opens up to us an insight into a primitive age otherwise
almost wholly lost to us.  The union of the Old Roman community and
the Hill-Romans had indeed already taken place when this table of
festivals was formed, for we find in it Quirinus alongside of Mars;
but, when this festival-list was drawn up, the Capitoline temple
was not yet in existence, for Juno and Minerva are absent; nor was
the temple of Diana erected on the Aventine; nor was any notion of
worship borrowed from the Greeks.


Mars and Jupiter


The central object not only of Roman but of Italian worship generally
in that epoch when the Italian stock still dwelt by itself in the
peninsula was, according to all indications, the god Maurs or Mars,
the killing god,(3) preeminently regarded as the divine champion
of the burgesses, hurling the spear, protecting the flock,
and overthrowing the foe.  Each community of course possessed its
own Mars, and deemed him to be the strongest and holiest of all;
and accordingly every "-ver sacrum-" setting out to found a new
community marched under the protection of its own Mars.  To Mars
was dedicated the first month not only in the Roman calendar of
the months, which in no other instance takes notice of the gods,
but also probably in all the other Latin and Sabellian calendars:
among the Roman proper names, which in like manner contain no allusion
to any gods, Marcus, Mamercus, and Mamurius appear in prevailing
use from very early times; with Mars and his sacred woodpecker was
connected the oldest Italian prophecy; the wolf, the animal sacred
to Mars, was the badge of the Roman burgesses, and such sacred
national legends as the Roman imagination was able to produce
referred exclusively to the god Mars and to his duplicate Quirinus.
In the list of festivals certainly Father Diovis--a purer and
more civil than military reflection of the character of the Roman
community--occupies a larger space than Mars, just as the priest
of Jupiter has precedence over the two priests of the god of war;
but the latter still plays a very prominent part in the list, and
it is even quite likely that, when this arrangement of festivals
was established, Jovis stood by the side of Mars like Ahuramazda
by the side of Mithra, and that the worship of the warlike Roman
community still really centred at this time in the martial god of
death and his March festival, while it was not the "care-destroyer"
afterwards introduced by the Greeks, but Father Jovis himself, who
was regarded as the god of the heart-gladdening wine.


Nature of the Roman Gods


It is no part of our present task to consider the Roman deities in
detail; but it is important, even in an historical point of view,
to call attention to the peculiar character at once of shallowness
and of fervour that marked the Roman faith.  Abstraction
and personification lay at the root of the Roman as well as of
the Hellenic mythology: the Hellenic as well as the Roman god was
originally suggested by some natural phenomenon or some mental
conception, and to the Roman just as to the Greek every divinity
appeared a person.  This is evident from their apprehending the
individual gods as male or female; from their style of appeal to
an unknown deity,--"Be thou god or goddess, man or woman;" and from
the deeply cherished belief that the name of the proper tutelary
spirit of the community ought to remain for ever unpronounced, lest
an enemy should come to learn it and calling the god by his name
should entice him beyond the bounds.  A remnant of this strongly
sensuous mode of apprehension clung to Mars in particular, the
oldest and most national form of divinity in Italy.  But while
abstraction, which lies at the foundation of every religion, elsewhere
endeavoured to rise to wider and more enlarged conceptions and to
penetrate ever more deeply into the essence of things, the forms
of the Roman faith remained at, or sank to, a singularly low level
of conception and of insight.  While in the case of the Greek
every influential motive speedily expanded into a group of forms
and gathered around it a circle of legends and ideas, in the case
of the Roman the fundamental thought remained stationary in its
original naked rigidity.  The religion of Rome had nothing of its
own presenting even a remote resemblance to the religion of Apollo
investing earthly morality with a halo of glory, to the divine
intoxication of Dionysus, or to the Chthonian and mystical worships
with their profound and hidden meanings.  It had indeed its "bad
god" (-Ve-diovis-), its apparitions and ghosts (-lemures-), and
afterwards its deities of foul air, of fever, of diseases, perhaps even
of theft (-laverna-); but it was unable to excite that mysterious
awe after which the human heart has always a longing, or thoroughly
to embody the incomprehensible and even the malignant elements
in nature and in man, which must not be wanting in religion if it
would reflect man as a whole.  In the religion of Rome there was
hardly anything secret except possibly the names of the gods of
the city, the Penates; the real character, moreover, even of these
gods was manifest to every one.

The national Roman theology sought on all hands to form distinct
conceptions of important phenomena and qualities, to express them
in its terminology, and to classify them systematically--in the
first instance, according to that division of persons and things
which also formed the basis of private law--that it might thus be
able in due fashion to invoke the gods individually or by classes,
and to point out (-indigitare-) to the multitude the modes of
appropriate invocation.  Of such notions, the products of outward
abstraction--of the homeliest simplicity, sometimes venerable,
sometimes ridiculous--Roman theology was in substance made up.
Conceptions such as sowing (-saeturnus-) and field-labour (-ops-)
ground (-tellus-) and boundary-stone (-terminus-), were among
the oldest and most sacred of Roman divinities.  Perhaps the most
peculiar of all the forms of deity in Rome, and probably the only
one for whose worship there was devised an effigy peculiarly Italian,
was the double-headed lanus; and yet it was simply suggestive of the
idea so characteristic of the scrupulous spirit of Roman religion,
that at the commencement of every act the "spirit of opening" should
first be invoked, while it above all betokened the deep conviction
that it was as indispensable to combine the Roman gods in sets as
it was necessary that the more personal gods of the Hellenes should
stand singly and apart.(4)  Of all the worships of Rome that which
perhaps had the deepest hold was the worship of the tutelary spirits
that presided in and over the household and the storechamber: these
were in public worship Vesta and the Penates, in family worship
the gods of forest and field, the Silvani, and above all the gods
of the household in its strict sense, the Lases or Lares, to whom
their share of the family meal was regularly assigned, and before
whom it was, even in the time of Cato the Elder, the first duty
of the father of the household on returning home to perform his
devotions.  In the ranking of the gods, however, these spirits
of the house and of the field occupied the lowest rather than the
highest place; it was--and it could not be otherwise with a religion
which renounced all attempts to idealize--not the broadest and
most general, but the simplest and most individual abstraction, in
which the pious heart found most nourishment.

This indifference to ideal elements in the Roman religion was
accompanied by a practical and utilitarian tendency, as is clearly
enough apparent in the table of festivals which has been already
explained.  Increase of substance and of prosperity by husbandry
and the rearing of flocks and herds, by seafaring and commerce--this
was what the Roman desired from his gods; and it very well accords
with this view, that the god of good faith (-deus fidius-), the
goddess of chance and good luck (-fors fortuna-), and the god of
traffic (-mercurius-), all originating out of their daily dealings,
although not occurring in that ancient table of festivals, appear
very early as adored far and near by the Romans.  Strict frugality
and mercantile speculation were rooted in the Roman character too
deeply not to find their thorough reflection in its divine counterpart.


Spirits


Respecting the world of spirits little can be said.  The departed
souls of mortal men, the "good" (-manes-) continued to exist as
shades haunting the spot where the body reposed (-dii inferi-), and
received meat and drink from the survivors.  But they dwelt in the
depths beneath, and there was no bridge that led from the lower
world either to men ruling on earth or upward to the gods above.
The hero-worship of the Greeks was wholly foreign to the Romans,
and the late origin and poor invention of the legend as to the
foundation of Rome are shown by the thoroughly unRoman transformation
of king Romulus into the god Quirinus.  Numa, the oldest and most
venerable name in Roman tradition, never received the honours of
a god in Rome as Theseus did in Athens.


Priests


The most ancient priesthoods in the community bore reference to
Mars; especially the priest of the god of the community, nominated
for life, "the kindler of Mars" (-flamen Martialis-) as he was
designated from presenting burnt-offerings, and the twelve "leapers"
(-salii-), a band of young men who in March performed the war-dance
in honour of Mars and accompanied it by song.  We have already
explained(5) how the amalgamation of the Hill-community with that
of the Palatine gave rise to the duplication of the Roman Mars,
and thereby to the introduction of a second priest of Mars--the
-flamen Quirinalis- --and a second guild of dancers--the -salii
collini-.

To these were added other public worships (some of which probably
had an origin far earlier than that of Rome), for which either
single priests were appointed--as those of Carmentis, of Volcanus,
of the god of the harbour and the river--or the celebration of
which was committed to particular colleges or clans in name of the
people.  Such a college was probably that of the twelve "field-brethren"
(-fratres arvales-) who invoked the "creative goddess" (-dea dia-) in
May to bless the growth of the seed; although it is very doubtful
whether they already at this period enjoyed that peculiar consideration
which we find subsequently accorded to them in the time of the
empire.  These were accompanied by the Titian brotherhood, which
had to preserve and to attend to the distinctive -cultus- of the
Roman Sabines,(6) and by the thirty "curial kindlers" (-flamines
curiales-), instituted for the hearth of the thirty curies.  The
"wolf festival" (-lupercalia-) already mentioned was celebrated for
the protection of the flocks and herds in honour of the "favourable
god" (-faunus-) by the Quinctian clan and the Fabii who were
associated with them after the admission of the Hill-Romans, in
the month of February--a genuine shepherds' carnival, in which the
"Wolves" (-luperci-) jumped about naked with a girdle of goatskin,
and whipped with thongs those whom they met.  In like manner the
community may be conceived as represented and participating in the
case of other gentile worships.

To this earliest worship of the Roman community new rites were
gradually added.  The most important of these worships had reference
to the city as newly united and virtually founded afresh by the
construction of the great wall and stronghold.  In it the highest
and best lovis of the Capitol--that is, the genius of the Roman
people--was placed at the head of all the Roman divinities, and
his "kindler" thenceforth appointed, the -flamen Dialis-, formed
in conjunction with the two priests of Mars the sacred triad
of high-priests.  Contemporaneously began the -cultus- of the new
single city-hearth--Vesta--and the kindred -cultus- of the Penates
of the community.(7)  Six chaste virgins, daughters as it were of
the household of the Roman people, attended to that pious service,
and had to maintain the wholesome fire of the common hearth always
blazing as an example(8) and an omen to the burgesses.  This
worship, half-domestic, half-public, was the most sacred of all in
Rome, and it accordingly was the latest of all the heathen worships
there to give way before the ban of Christianity.  The Aventine,
moreover, was assigned to Diana as the representative of the Latin
confederacy,(9) but for that very reason no special Roman priesthood
was appointed for her; and the community gradually became accustomed
to render definite homage to numerous other deified abstractions
by means of general festivals or by representative priesthoods
specially destined for their service; in particular instances--such
as those of the goddess of flowers (-Flora-) and of fruits (-Pomona-)--it
appointed also special -flamines-, so that the number of these was
at length fifteen.  But among them they carefully distinguished
those three "great kindlers" (-flamines maiores-), who down to the
latest times could only be taken from the ranks of the old burgesses,
just as the old incorporations of the Palatine and Quirinal -Salii-
always asserted precedence over all the other colleges of priests.
Thus the necessary and stated observances due to the gods of the
community were entrusted once for all by the state to fixed colleges
or regular ministers; and the expense of sacrifices, which was
presumably not inconsiderable, was covered partly by the assignation
of certain lands to particular temples, partly by the fines.(10)

It cannot be doubted that the public worship of the other Latin,
and presumably also of the Sabellian, communities was essentially
similar in character.  At any rate it can be shown that the Flamines,
Salii, Luperci, and Vestales were institutions not special to Rome,
but general among the Latins, and at least the first three colleges
appear to have been formed in the kindred communities independently
of the Roman model.

Lastly, as the state made arrangements for the cycle of its gods,
so each burgess might make similar arrangements within his individual
sphere, and might not only present sacrifices, but might also
consecrate set places and ministers, to his own divinities.


Colleges of Sacred Lore


There was thus enough of priesthood and of priests in Rome.  Those,
however, who had business with a god resorted to the god, and not
to the priest.  Every suppliant and inquirer addressed himself
directly to the divinity--the community of course by the king as its
mouthpiece, just as the -curia- by the -curio- and the -equites-by
their colonels; no intervention of a priest was allowed to conceal
or to obscure this original and simple relation.  But it was no
easy matter to hold converse with a god.  The god had his own way
of speaking, which was intelligible only to the man acquainted
with it; but one who did rightly understand it knew not only how
to ascertain, but also how to manage, the will of the god, and even
in case of need to overreach or to constrain him.  It was natural,
therefore, that the worshipper of the god should regularly consult
such men of skill and listen to their advice; and thence arose
the corporations or colleges of men specially skilled in religious
lore, a thoroughly national Italian institution, which had a far
more important influence on political development than the individual
priests and priesthoods.  These colleges have been often, but
erroneously, confounded with the priesthoods.  The priesthoods
were charged with the worship of a specific divinity; the skilled
colleges, on the other hand, were charged with the preservation of
traditional rules regarding those more general religious observances,
the proper fulfilment of which implied a certain amount of knowledge
and rendered it necessary that the state in its own interest should
provide for the faithful transmission of that knowledge.  These
close corporations supplying their own vacancies, of course from
the ranks of the burgesses, became in this way the depositaries of
skilled arts and sciences.


Augurs--Pontifices


Under the Roman constitution and that of the Latin communities in
general there were originally but two such colleges; that of the
augurs and that of the Pontifices.(11)

The six "bird-carriers" (-augures-) were skilled in interpreting
the language of the gods from the flight of birds; an art which was
prosecuted with great earnestness and reduced to a quasi-scientific
system.  The six "bridge-builders" (-Pontifices-) derived their
name from their function, as sacred as it was politically important,
of conducting the building and demolition of the bridge over the
Tiber.  They were the Roman engineers, who understood the mystery
of measures and numbers; whence there devolved upon them also the
duty of managing the calendar of the state, of proclaiming to the
people the time of new and full moon and the days of festivals, and
of seeing that every religious and every judicial act took place
on the right day.  As they had thus an especial supervision of all
religious observances, it was to them in case of need--on occasion
of marriage, testament, and -adrogatio- --that the preliminary
question was addressed, whether the business proposed did not in
any respect offend against divine law; and it was they who fixed
and promulgated the general exoteric precepts of ritual, which
were known under the name of the "royal laws." Thus they acquired
(although not probably to the full extent till after the abolition
of the monarchy) the general oversight of Roman worship and of
whatever was connected with it--and what was there that was not so
connected?  They themselves described the sum of their knowledge
as "the science of things divine and human."  In fact the rudiments
of spiritual and temporal jurisprudence as well as of historical
recording proceeded from this college.  For all writing of history
was associated with the calendar and the book of annals; and, as
from the organization of the Roman courts of law no tradition could
originate in these courts themselves, it was necessary that the
knowledge of legal principles and procedure should be traditionally
preserved in the college of the Pontifices, which alone was competent
to give an opinion respecting court-days and questions of religious
law.


Fetiales


By the side of these two oldest and most eminent corporations of men
versed in spiritual lore may be to some extent ranked the college
of the twenty state-heralds (-fetiales-, of uncertain derivation),
destined as a living repository to preserve traditionally the
remembrance of the treaties concluded with neighbouring communities,
to pronounce an authoritative opinion on alleged infractions of
treaty-rights, and in case of need to attempt reconciliation or
declare war.  They had precisely the same position with reference
to international, as the Pontifices had with reference to religious,
law; and were therefore, like the latter, entitled to point out
the law, although not to administer it.

But in however high repute these colleges were, and important and
comprehensive as were the functions assigned to them, it was never
forgotten--least of all in the case of those which held the highest
position--that their duty was not to command, but to tender skilled
advice, not directly to obtain the answer of the gods, but to
explain the answer when obtained to the inquirer.  Thus the highest
of the priests was not merely inferior in rank to the king, but
might not even give advice to him unasked.  It was the province of
the king to determine whether and when he would take an observation
of birds; the "bird-seer" simply stood beside him and interpreted
to him, when necessary, the language of the messengers of heaven.
In like manner the Fetialis and the Pontifex could not interfere in
matters of international or common law except when those concerned
therewith desired it.  The Romans, notwithstanding all their zeal
for religion, adhered with unbending strictness to the principle
that the priest ought to remain completely powerless in the state
and--excluded from all command-- ought like any other burgess to
render obedience to the humblest magistrate.


Character of the -Cultus-


The Latin worship was grounded essentially on man's enjoyment of
earthly pleasures, and only in a subordinate degree on his fear
of the wild forces of nature; it consisted pre-eminently therefore
in expressions of joy, in lays and songs, in games and dances, and
above all in banquets.  In Italy, as everywhere among agricultural
tribes whose ordinary food consists of vegetables, the slaughter
of cattle was at once a household feast and an act of worship: a
pig was the most acceptable offering to the gods, just because it
was the usual roast for a feast.  But all extravagance of expense
as well as all excess of rejoicing was inconsistent with the solid
character of the Romans.  Frugality in relation to the gods was
one of the most prominent traits of the primitive Latin worship;
and the free play of imagination was repressed with iron severity
by the moral self-discipline which the nation maintained.  In
consequence the Latins remained strangers to the excesses which
grow out of unrestrained indulgence.  At the very core of the Latin
religion there lay that profound moral impulse which leads men to
bring earthly guilt and earthly punishment into relation with the
world of the gods, and to view the former as a crime against the
gods, and the latter as its expiation.  The execution of the criminal
condemned to death was as much an expiatory sacrifice offered to
the divinity as was the killing of an enemy in just war; the thief
who by night stole the fruits of the field paid the penalty to
Ceres on the gallows just as the enemy paid it to mother earth and
the good spirits on the field of battle.  The profound and fearful
idea of substitution also meets us here: when the gods of the
community were angry and nobody could be laid hold of as definitely
guilty, they might be appeased by one who voluntarily gave himself
up (-devovere se-); noxious chasms in the ground were closed,
and battles half lost were converted into victories, when a brave
burgess threw himself as an expiatory offering into the abyss or
upon the foe.  The "sacred spring" was based on a similar view;
all the offspring whether of cattle or of men within a specified
period were presented to the gods.  If acts of this nature are to
be called human sacrifices, then such sacrifices belonged to the
essence of the Latin faith; but we are bound to add that, far back
as our view reaches into the past, this immolation, so far as life
was concerned, was limited to the guilty who had been convicted
before a civil tribunal, or to the innocent who voluntarily chose
to die.  Human sacrifices of a different description run counter
to the fundamental idea of a sacrificial act, and, wherever they
occur among the Indo-Germanic stocks at least, are based on later
degeneracy and barbarism.  They never gained admission among the
Romans; hardly in a single instance were superstition and despair
induced, even in times of extreme distress, to seek an extraordinary
deliverance through means so revolting.  Of belief in ghosts, fear
of enchantments, or dealing in mysteries, comparatively slight
traces are to be found among the Romans.  Oracles and prophecy never
acquired the importance in Italy which they obtained in Greece,
and never were able to exercise a serious control over private or
public life.  But on the other hand the Latin religion sank into
an incredible insipidity and dulness, and early became shrivelled
into an anxious and dreary round of ceremonies.  The god of the
Italian was, as we have already said, above all things an instrument
for helping him to the attainment of very substantial earthly aims;
this turn was given to the religious views of the Italian by his
tendency towards the palpable and the real, and is no less distinctly
apparent in the saint-worship of the modern inhabitants of Italy.
The gods confronted man just as a creditor confronted his debtor;
each of them had a duly acquired right to certain performances and
payments; and as the number of the gods was as great as the number
of the incidents in earthly life, and the neglect or wrong performance
of the worship of each god revenged itself in the corresponding incident,
it was a laborious and difficult task even to gain a knowledge of
a man's religious obligations, and the priests who were skilled
in the law of divine things and pointed out its requirements--the
-Pontifices- --could not fail to attain an extraordinary influence.
The upright man fulfilled the requirements of sacred ritual with
the same mercantile punctuality with which he met his earthly
obligations, and at times did more than was due, if the god had
done so on his part.  Man even dealt in speculation with his god;
a vow was in reality as in name a formal contract between the god
and the man, by which the latter promised to the former for a certain
service to be rendered a certain equivalent return; and the Roman
legal principle that no contract could be concluded by deputy was
not the least important of the reasons on account of which all
priestly mediation remained excluded from the religious concerns
of man in Latium.  Nay, as the Roman merchant was entitled, without
injury to his conventional rectitude, to fulfil his contract merely
in the letter, so in dealing with the gods, according to the teaching
of Roman theology, the copy of an object was given and received
instead of the object itself.  They presented to the lord of the sky
heads of onions and poppies, that he might launch his lightnings at
these rather than at the heads of men.  In payment of the offering
annually demanded by father Tiber, thirty puppets plaited of rushes
were annually thrown into the stream.(12)  The ideas of divine mercy
and placability were in these instances inseparably mixed up with
a pious cunning, which tried to delude and to pacify so formidable
a master by means of a sham satisfaction.  The Roman fear of the
gods accordingly exercised powerful influence over the minds of the
multitude; but it was by no means that sense of awe in the presence
of an all-controlling nature or of an almighty God, that lies at the
foundation of the views of pantheism and monotheism respectively;
on the contrary, it was of a very earthly character, and scarcely
different in any material respect from the trembling with which the
Roman debtor approached his just, but very strict and very powerful
creditor.  It is plain that such a religion was fitted rather to
stifle than to foster artistic and speculative views.  When the
Greek had clothed the simple thoughts of primitive times with human
flesh and blood, the ideas of the gods so formed not only became
the elements of plastic and poetic art, but acquired also that
universality and elasticity which are the profoundest characteristics
of human nature and for this very reason are essential to all
religions that aspire to rule the world.  Through such means the
simple view of nature became expanded into the conception of a
cosmogony, the homely moral notion became enlarged into a principle
of universal humanity; and for a long period the Greek religion
was enabled to embrace within it the physical and metaphysical
views--the whole ideal development of the nation--and to expand
in depth and breadth with the increase of its contents, until
imagination and speculation rent asunder the vessel which had
nursed them.  But in Latium the embodiment of the conceptions of
deity continued so wholly transparent that it afforded no opportunity
for the training either of artist or poet, and the Latin religion
always held a distant and even hostile attitude towards art As the
god was not and could not be aught else than the spiritualizattion
of an earthly phenomenon, this same earthly counterpart naturally
formed his place of abode (-templum-) and his image; walls and
effigies made by the hands of men seemed only to obscure and to
embarrass the spiritual conception.  Accordingly the original Roman
worship had no images of the gods or houses set apart for them;
and although the god was at an early period worshipped in Latium,
probably in imitation of the Greeks, by means of an image, and
had a little chapel (-aedicula-) built for him, such a figurative
representation was reckoned contrary to the laws of Numa and was
generally regarded as an impure and foreign innovation.  The Roman
religion could exhibit no image of a god peculiar to it, with the
exception, perhaps, of the double-headed Ianus; and Varro even
in his time derided the desire of the multitude for puppets and
effigies.  The utter want of productive power in the Roman religion
was likewise the ultimate cause of the thorough poverty which always
marked Roman poetry and still more Roman speculation.

The same distinctive character was manifest, moreover, in the domain
of its practical use.  The practical gain which accrued to the Roman
community from their religion was a code of moral law gradually
developed by the priests, and the -Pontifices- in particular,
which on the one hand supplied the place of police regulations
at a time when the state was still far from providing any direct
police-guardianship for its citizens, and on the other hand brought
to the bar of the gods and visited with divine penalties the breach
of moral obligations.  To the regulations of the former class
belonged the religious inculcation of a due observance of holidays
and of a cultivation of the fields and vineyards according to the
rules of good husbandry--which we shall have occasion to notice
more fully in the sequel--as well as the worship of the heath or
of the Lares which was connected with considerations of sanitary
police,(13) and above all the practice of burning the bodies of
the dead, adopted among the Romans at a singularly early period,
far earlier than among the Greeks--a practice implying a rational
conception of life and of death, which was foreign to primitive
times and is even foreign to ourselves at the present day.  It must
be reckoned no small achievement that the national religion of the
Latins was able to carry out these and similar improvements.  But
the civilizing effect of this law was still more important.  If
a husband sold his wife, or a father sold his married son; if a
child struck his father, or a daughter-in-law her father-in-law;
if a patron violated his obligation to keep faith with his guest
or dependent; if an unjust neighbour displaced a boundary-stone, or
the thief laid hands by night on the grain entrusted to the common
good faith; the burden of the curse of the gods lay thenceforth
on the head of the offender.  Not that the person thus accursed
(-sacer-) was outlawed; such an outlawry, inconsistent in its
nature with all civil order, was only an exceptional occurrence--an
aggravation of the religious curse in Rome at the time of the quarrels
between the orders.  It was not the province of the individual
burgess, or even of the wholly powerless priest, to carry into
effect such a divine curse.  Primarily the person thus accursed
became liable to the divine penal judgment, not to human caprice;
and the pious popular faith, on which that curse was based, must
have had power even over natures frivolous and wicked.  But the
banning was not confined to this; the king was in reality entitled
and bound to carry the ban into execution, and, after the fact, on
which the law set its curse, had been according to his conscientious
conviction established, to slay the person under ban, as it were,
as a victim offered up to the injured deity (-supplicium-), and thus
to purify the community from the crime of the individual.  If the
crime was of a minor nature, for the slaying of the guilty there
was substituted a ransom through the presenting of a sacrificial
victim or of similar gifts.  Thus the whole criminal law rested as
to its ultimate basis on the religious idea of expiation.

But religion performed no higher service in Latium than the furtherance
of civil order and morality by such means as these.  In this field
Hellas had an unspeakable advantage over Latium; it owed to its
religion not merely its whole intellectual development, but also
its national union, so far as such an union was attained at all;
the oracles and festivals of the gods, Delphi and Olympia, and the
Muses, daughters of faith, were the centres round which revolved all
that was great in Hellenic life and all in it that was the common
heritage of the nation.  And yet even here Latium had, as compared
with Hellas, its own advantages.  The Latin religion, reduced
as it was to the level of ordinary perception, was completely
intelligible to every one and accessible in common to all; and
therefore the Roman community preserved the equality of its citizens,
while Hellas, where religion rose to the level of the highest
thought, had from the earliest times to endure all the blessing
and curse of an aristocracy of intellect.  The Latin religion like
every other had its origin in the effort of faith to fathom the
infinite; it is only to a superficial view, which is deceived as to
the depth of the stream because it is clear, that its transparent
spirit-world can appear to be shallow.  This fervid faith disappeared
with the progress of time as necessarily as the dew of morning
disappears  before the rising sun, and thus the Latin religion came
subsequently to wither; but the Latins  preserved their simplicity
of belief longer than most peoples and longer especially than the
Greeks.  As colours are effects of light and at the same time dim
it, so art and science are not merely the creations but also the
destroyers of faith; and, much as this process at once of development
and of destruction is swayed by necessity, by the same law of
nature certain results have been reserved to the epoch of early
simplicity--results which subsequent epochs make vain endeavours
to attain.  The mighty intellectual development of the Hellenes,
which created their religious and literary unity (ever imperfect
as that unity was), was the very thing that made it impossible
for them to attain to a genuine political union; they sacrificed
thereby the simplicity, the flexibility, the self-devotion, the
power of amalgamation, which constitute the conditions of any such
union.  It is time therefore to desist from that childish view of
history which believes that it can commend the Greeks only at the
expense of the Romans, or the Romans only at the expense of the
Greeks; and, as we allow the oak to hold its own beside the rose,
so should we abstain from praising or censuring the two noblest
organizations which antiquity has produced, and comprehend the truth
that their distinctive excellences have a necessary connection with
their respective defects.  The deepest and ultimate reason of the
diversity between the two nations lay beyond doubt in the fact that
Latium did not, and that Hellas did, during the season of growth
come into contact with the East.  No people on earth was great
enough by its own efforts to create either the marvel of Hellenic
or at a later period the marvel of Christian culture; history
has produced these most brilliant results only where the ideas of
Aramaic religion have sunk into an Indo-Germanic soil.  But if for
this reason Hellas is the prototype of purely human, Latium is not
less for all time the prototype of national, development; and it
is the duty of us their successors to honour both and to learn from
both.


Foreign Worships


Such was the nature and such the influence of the Roman religion
in its pure, unhampered, and thoroughly national development.  Its
national character was not infringed by the fact that, from the
earliest times, modes and systems of worship were introduced from
abroad; no more than the bestowal of the rights of citizenship on
individual foreigners denationalized the Roman state.  An exchange
of gods as well as of goods with the Latins in older time must
have been a matter of course; the transplantation to Rome of gods
and worships belonging to less cognate races is more remarkable.
Of the distinctive Sabine worship maintained by the Tities we
have already spoken.(14)  Whether any conceptions of the gods were
borrowed from Etruria is more doubtful: for the Lases, the older
designation of the genii (from -lascivus-), and Minerva the goddess
of memory (-mens-, -menervare-), which it is customary to describe
as originally Etruscan, were on the contrary, judging from philological
grounds, indigenous to Latium.  It is at any rate certain, and in
keeping with all that we otherwise know of Roman intercourse that
the Greek worship received earlier and more extensive attention
in Rome than any other of foreign origin.  The Greek oracles
furnished the earliest occasion of its introduction.  The language
of the Roman gods was on the whole confined to Yea and Nay or at
the most to the making their will known by the method of casting
lots, which appears in its origin Italian;(15) while from very ancient
times--although not apparently until the impulse was received from
the East--the more talkative gods of the Greeks imparted actual
utterances of prophecy.  The Romans made efforts, even at an early
period, to treasure up such counsels, and copies of the leaves of
the soothsaying priestess of Apollo, the Cumaean Sibyl, were accordingly
a highly valued gift on the part of their Greek guest-friends from
Campania.  For the reading and interpretation of the fortune-telling
book a special college, inferior in rank only to the augurs and
Pontifices, was instituted in early times, consisting of two men
of lore (-duoviri sacris faciundis-), who were furnished at the
expense of the state with two slaves acquainted with the Greek
language.  To these custodiers of oracles the people resorted in
cases of doubt, when an act of worship was needed in order to avoid
some impending evil and they did not know to which of the gods or
with what rites it was to be performed.  But Romans in search of
advice early betook themselves also to the Delphic Apollo himself.
Besides the legends relating to such an intercourse already
mentioned,(16) it is attested partly by the reception of the word
-thesaurus- so closely connected with the Delphic oracle into all
the Italian languages with which we are acquainted, and partly by
the oldest Roman form of the name of Apollo, -Aperta-, the "opener,"
an etymologizing alteration of the Doric Apellon, the antiquity of
which is betrayed by its very barbarism.  The Greek Herakles was
naturalized in Italy as Herclus, Hercoles, Hercules, at an early
period and under a peculiar conception of his character, apparently
in the first instance as the god of gains of adventure and of any
extraordinary increase of wealth; for which reason the general was
wont to present the tenth of the spoil which he had procured, and
the merchant the tenth of the substance which he had obtained, to
Hercules at the chief altar (-ara maxima-) in the cattle-market.
Accordingly he became the god of mercantile covenants generally,
which in early times were frequently concluded at this altar and
confirmed by oath, and in so far was identified with the old Latin
god of good faith (-deus fidius-).  The worship of Hercules was
from an early date among the most widely diffused; he was, to use
the words of an ancient author, adored in every hamlet of Italy,
and altars were everywhere erected to him in the streets of the
cities and along the country roads.  The gods also of the mariner,
Castor and Polydeukes or, in Roman form, Pollux, the god of traffic
Hermes--the Roman Mercurius--and the god of healing, Asklapios or
Aesculapius, became early known to the Romans, although their public
worship only began at a later period.  The name of the festival
of the "good goddess" (-bona dea-) -damium-, corresponding to the
Greek --damion-- or --deimion--, may likewise reach back as far as
this epoch.  It must be the result also of ancient borrowing, that
the old -Liber pater- of the Romans was afterwards conceived as
"father deliverer" and identified with the wine-god of the Greeks,
the "releaser" (-Lyaeos-), and that the Roman god of the lower
regions was called the "dispenser of riches" (-Pluto- - -Dis pater-),
while his spouse Persephone became converted at once by change of
the initial sound and by transference of the idea into the Roman
Proserpina, that is, "germinatrix."  Even the goddess of the
Romano-Latin league, Diana of the Aventine, seems to have been
copied from the federal goddess of the lonians of Asia Minor, the
Ephesian Artemis; at least her carved image in the Roman temple
was formed after the Ephesian type.(17) It was in this way alone,
through the myths of Apollo, Dionysus, Pluto, Herakles, and Artemis,
which were early pervaded by Oriental ideas, that the Aramaic
religion exercised at this period a remote and indirect influence
on Italy.  We clearly perceive from these facts that the introduction
of the Greek religion was especially due to commercial intercourse,
and that it was traders and mariners who primarily brought the
Greek gods to Italy.

These individual cases however of derivation from abroad were but
of secondary moment, while the remains of the natural symbolism
of primeval times, of which the legend of the oxen of Cacus may
perhaps be a specimen,(18) had virtually disappeared.  In all its
leading features the Roman religion was an organic creation of the
people among whom we find it.


Religion of the Sabellians


The Sabellian and Umbrian worship, judging from the little we know
of it, rested upon quite the same fundamental views as the Latin
with local variations of colour and form.  That it was different
from the Latin is very distinctly apparent from the founding
of a special college at Rome for the preservation of the Sabine
rites;(19) but that very fact affords an instructive illustration
of the nature of the difference.  Observation of the flight of
birds was with both stocks the regular mode of consulting the gods;
but the Tities observed different birds from the Ramnian augurs.
Similar relations present themselves, wherever we have opportunity
of comparing them.  Both stocks in common regarded the gods as
abstractions of the earthly and as of an impersonal nature; they
differed in expression and ritual.  It was natural that these
diversities should appear of importance to the worshippers of those
days; we are no longer able to apprehend what was the characteristic
distinction, if any really existed.


Religion of the Etruscans


But the remains of the sacred ritual of the Etruscans that have
reached us are marked by a different spirit.  Their prevailing
characteristics are a gloomy and withal tiresome mysticism, ringing
the changes on numbers, soothsaying, and that solemn enthroning of
pure absurdity which at all times finds its own circle of devotees.
We are far from knowing the Etruscan worship in such completeness
and purity as we know the Latin; and it is not improbable--indeed
it cannot well be doubted--that several of its features were only
imported into it by the minute subtlety of a later period, and that
the gloomy and fantastic principles, which were most alien to the
Latin worship, are those that have been especially handed down to
us by tradition.  But enough still remains to show that the mysticism
and barbarism of this worship had their foundation in the essential
character of the Etruscan people.

With our very unsatisfactory knowledge we cannot grasp the intrinsic
contrast subsisting between the Etruscan conceptions of deity and
the Italian; but it is clear that the most prominent among the
Etruscan gods were the malignant and the mischievous; as indeed
their worship was cruel, and included in particular the sacrifice
of their captives; thus at Caere they slaughtered the Phocaean, and
at Traquinii the Roman, prisoners.  Instead of a tranquil world of
departed "good spirits" ruling peacefully in the realms beneath,
such as the Latins had conceived, the Etruscan religion presented
a veritable hell, in which the poor souls were doomed to be tortured
by mallets and serpents, and to which they were conveyed by the
conductor of the dead, a savage semi-brutal figure of an old man
with wings and a large hammer--a figure which afterwards served in
the gladiatorial games at Rome as a model for the costume of the
man who removed the corpses of the slain from the arena.  So fixed
was the association of torture with this condition of the shades,
that there was even provided a redemption from it, which after certain
mysterious offerings transferred the poor soul to the society of
the gods above.  It is remarkable that, in order to people their
lower world, the Etruscans early borrowed from the Greeks their
gloomiest notions, such as the doctrine of Acheron and Charon,
which play an important part in the Etruscan discipline.

But the Etruscan occupied himself above all in the interpretation
of signs and portents.  The Romans heard the voice of the gods
in nature; but their bird-seer understood only the signs in their
simplicity, and knew only in general whether the occurrence boded
good or ill.  Disturbances of the ordinary course of nature were
regarded by him as boding evil, and put a stop to the business in
hand, as when for example a storm of thunder and lightning dispersed
the comitia; and he probably sought to get rid of them, as, for
example, in the case of monstrous births, which were put to death
as speedily as possible.  But beyond the Tiber matters were carried
much further.  The profound Etruscan read off to the believer his
future fortunes in detail from the lightning and from the entrails
of animals offered in sacrifice; and the more singular the language
of the gods, the more startling the portent or prodigy, the more
confidently did he declare what they foretold and the means by
which it was possible to avert the mischief.  Thus arose the lore
of lightning, the art of inspecting entrails, the interpretation
of prodigies--all of them, and the science of lightning especially,
devised with the hair-splitting subtlety which characterizes the
mind in pursuit of absurdities.  A dwarf called Tages with the
figure of a child but with gray hairs, who had been ploughed up
by a peasant in a field near Tarquinii--we might almost fancy that
practices at once so childish and so drivelling had sought to present
in this figure a caricature of themselves--betrayed the secret of
this lore to the Etruscans, and then straightway died.  His disciples
and successors taught what gods were in the habit of hurling the
lightning; how the lightning of each god might be recognized by
its colour and the quarter of the heavens whence it came; whether
the lightning boded a permanent state of things or a single event;
and in the latter case whether the event was one unalterably fixed,
or whether it could be up to a certain limit artificially postponed:
how they might convey the lightning away when it struck, or compel
the threatening lightning to strike, and various marvellous arts
of the like kind, with which there was incidentally conjoined no
small desire of pocketing fees.  How deeply repugnant this jugglery
was to the Roman character is shown by the fact that, even when
people came at a later period to employ the Etruscan lore in Rome,
no attempt was made to naturalize it; during our present period
the Romans were probably still content with their own, and with
the Greek oracles.

The Etruscan religion occupied a higher level than the Roman, in
so far as it developed at least the rudiments of what was wholly
wanting among the Romans--a speculation veiled under religious
forms.  Over the world and its gods there ruled the veiled gods
(-Dii involuti-), consulted by the Etruscan Jupiter himself; that
world moreover was finite, and, as it had come into being, so was
it again to pass away after the expiry of a definite period of time,
whose sections were the -saecula-.  Respecting the intellectual
value which may once have belonged to this Etruscan cosmogony and
philosophy, it is difficult to form a judgment; they appear however
to have been from the very first characterized by a dull fatalism
and an insipid play upon number.




Notes for Book I Chapter XII


1.  I. II.  Religion

2.  This was, to all appearance, the original nature of the
"morning-mother" or -Mater matuta-; in connection with which we may
recall the circumstance that, as the names Lucius and especially
-Manius- show, the morning hour was reckoned as lucky for birth.
-Mater matuta-probably became a goddess of sea and harbour only
at a later epoch under the influence of the myth of Leucothea; the
fact that the goddess was chiefly worshipped by women tells against
the view that she was originally a harbour-goddess.

3.  From -Maurs-, which is the oldest form handed down by tradition,
there have been developed by different treatment of the -u -Mars-,
-Mavors-, -Mors-; the transition to -o (similar to -Paula-, -Pola-,
and the like) appears also in the double form Mar-Mor (comp.
-Ma-murius-) alongside of -Mar-Mor- and -Ma-Mers-.

4.  The facts, that gates and doors and the morning (-ianus
matutinus-) were sacred to Ianus, and that he was always invoked
before any other god and was even represented in the series of
coins before Jupiter and the other gods, indicate unmistakeably that
he was the abstraction of opening and beginning.  The double-head
looking both ways was connected with the gate that opened both ways.
To make him god of the sun and of the year is the less justifiable,
because the month that bears his name was originally the eleventh,
not the first; that month seems rather to have derived its name
from the circumstance, that at this season after the rest of the
middle of winter the cycle of the labours of the field began afresh.
It was, however, a matter of course that the opening of the year
should also be included in the sphere of Ianus, especially after
Ianuarius came to be placed at its head.

5.  I. IV.  Tities and Luceres

6.  I. VI.  Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities

7.  I. VII.  Servian Wall

8.  I. III.  Latium

9.  I. VII.  Relation of Rome to Latium

10.  I. V.  Burdens of the Burgesses, I. XI.  Crimes

11.  The clearest evidence of this is the fact, that in the
communities organized on the Latin scheme augurs and Pontifices
occur everywhere (e. g. Cic. de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96, and numerous
inscriptions), as does likewise the -pater patratus- of the Fetiales
in Laurentum (Orelli, 2276), but the other colleges do not.  The
former, therefore, stand on the same footing with the constitution of
ten curies and the Flamines, Salii, and Luperci, as very ancient
heirlooms of the Latin stock; whereas the Duoviri -sacris faciundis-,
and the other colleges, like the thirty curies and the Servian tribes
and centuries, originated in, and remained therefore confined to,
Rome.  But in the case of the second college--the pontifices--the
influence of Rome probably led to the introduction of that name
into the general Latin scheme instead of some earlier--perhaps
more than one--designation; or--a hypothesis which philologically
has much in its favour-- -pons- originally signified not "bridge,"
but "way" generally, and -pontifex- therefore meant "constructor
of ways."

The statements regarding the original number of the augurs in
particular vary.  The view that it was necessary for the number to
be an odd one is refuted by Cicero (de Lege Agr. ii. 35, 96); and
Livy (x. 6) does not say so, but only states that the number of
Roman augurs had to be divisible by three, and so must have had
an odd number as its basis.  According to Livy (l. c.) the number
was six down to the Ogulnian law, and the same is virtually
affirmed by Cicero (de Rep. ii. 9, 14) when he represents Romulus
as instituting four, and Numa two, augural stalls.  On the number
of the pontifices comp. Staatsrecht, ii. 20.

12.  It is only an unreflecting misconception  that can discover
in this usage a reminiscence of ancient human sacrifices.

13.  I. XII.  Nature of the Roman Gods

14.  I. XII.  Priests

15.  -Sors- from -serere-, to place in row.  The -sortes- were
probably small wooden tablets arranged upon a string, which when
thrown formed figures of various kinds; an arrangement which puts
one in mind of the Runic characters.

16.  I. X.  Hellenes and Latins

17.  I. VII.  Servian Wall

18.  I. II.  Indo-Germanic Culture

19.  I. IV.  Tities and Luceres




CHAPTER XIII

Agriculture, Trade, and Commerce



Agriculture and commerce are so intimately bound up with the
constitution and the external history of states, that the former
must frequently be noticed in the course of describing the latter.
We shall here endeavour to supplement the detached notices which
we have already given, by exhibiting a summary view of Italian and
particularly of Roman economics.


Agriculture


It has been already observed(1) that the transition from a pastoral
to an agricultural economy preceded the immigration of the Italians
into the peninsula.  Agriculture continued to be the main support
of all the communities in Italy, of the Sabellians and Etruscans
no less than of the Latins.  There were no purely pastoral tribes
in Italy during historical times, although of course the various
races everywhere combined pastoral husbandry, to a greater or less
extent according to the nature of the locality, with the cultivation
of the soil.  The beautiful custom of commencing the formation of
new cities by tracing a furrow with the plough along the line of
the future ring-wall shows how deeply rooted was the feeling that
every commonwealth is dependent on agriculture.  In the case of
Rome in particular--and it is only in its case that we can speak of
agrarian relations with any sort of certainty--the Servian reform
shows very clearly not only that the agricultural class originally
preponderated in the state, but also that an effort was made
permanently to maintain the collective body of freeholders as the
pith and marrow of the community.  When in the course of time a
large portion of the landed property in Rome had passed into the
hands of non-burgesses and thus the rights and duties of burgesses
were no longer bound up with freehold property, the reformed
constitution obviated this incongruous state of things, and the
perils which it threatened, not merely temporarily but permanently,
by treating the members of the community without reference to their
political position once for all according to their freeholding,
and imposing the common burden of war-service on the freeholders--a
step which in the natural course of things could not but be followed
by the concession of public rights.  The whole policy of Roman war
and conquest rested, like the constitution itself, on the basis of
the freehold system; as the freeholder alone was of value in the
state, the aim of war was to increase the number of its freehold
members.  The vanquished community was either compelled to
merge entirely into the yeomanry of Rome, or, if not reduced to
this extremity, it was required, not to pay a war-contribution or
a fixed tribute, but to cede a portion, usually a third part, of
its domain, which was thereupon regularly occupied by Roman farms.
Many nations have gained victories and made conquests as the Romans
did; but none has equalled the Roman in thus making the ground
he had won his own by the sweat of his brow, and in securing by
the ploughshare what had been gained by the lance.  That which is
gained by war may be wrested from the grasp by war again, but it
is not so with the conquests made by the plough; while the Romans
lost many battles, they scarcely ever on making peace ceded Roman
soil, and for this result they were indebted to the tenacity with
which the farmers clung to their fields and homesteads.  The strength
of man and of the state lies in their dominion over the soil; the
greatness of Rome was built on the most extensive and immediate
mastery of her citizens over her soil, and on the compact unity of
the body which thus acquired so firm a hold.


System of Joint Cultivation


We have already indicated(2) that in the earliest times the arable
land was cultivated in common, probably by the several clans; each
clan tilled its own land, and thereafter distributed the produce
among the several households belonging to it.  There exists indeed
an intimate connection between the system of joint tillage and the
clan form of society, and even subsequently in Rome joint residence
and joint management were of very frequent occurrence in the case
of co-proprietors.(3)  Even the traditions of Roman law furnish
the information that wealth consisted at first in cattle and the
usufruct of the soil, and that it was not till later that land
came to be distributed among the burgesses as their own special
property.(4) Better evidence that such was the case is afforded
by the earliest designation of wealth as "cattle-stock" or
"slave-and-cattle-stock" (-pecunia-, -familia pecuniaque-), and of
the separate possessions of the children of the household and of
slaves as "small cattle" (-peculium-) also by the earliest form
of acquiring property through laying hold of it with the hand
(-mancipatio-), which was only appropriate to the case of moveable
articles;(5) and above all by the earliest measure of "land of one's
own" (-heredium-, from -herus-lord), consisting of two -jugera-
(about an acre and a quarter), which can only have applied to
garden-ground, and not to the hide.(6)  When and how the distribution
of the arable land took place, can no longer be ascertained.  This
much only is certain, that the oldest form of the constitution was
based not on freehold settlement, but on clanship as a substitute
for it, whereas the Servian constitution presupposes the distribution
of the land.  It is evident from the same constitution that the
great bulk of the landed property consisted of middle-sized farms,
which provided work and subsistence for a family and admitted of
the keeping of cattle for tillage as well as of the application of
the plough.  The ordinary extent of such a Roman full hide has not
been ascertained with precision, but can scarcely, as has already
been shown,(7) be estimated at less than twenty -jugera-(12 1/2
acres nearly).


Culture of Grain


Their husbandry was mainly occupied with the culture of the cereals.
The usual grain was spelt (-far-);(8) but different kinds of pulse,
roots, and vegetables were also diligently cultivated.


Culture of the Vine


That the culture of the vine was not introduced for the first time
into Italy by Greek settlers,(9) is shown by the list of the festivals
of the Roman community which reaches back to a time preceding the
Greeks, and which presents three wine-festivals to be celebrated in
honour of "father Jovis," not in honour of the wine-god of more
recent times who was borrowed from the Greeks, the "father deliverer."
The very ancient legend which represents Mezentius king of Caere as
levying a wine-tax from the Latins or the Rutuli, and the various
versions of the widely-spread Italian story which affirms that the
Celts were induced to cross the Alps in consequence of their coming
to the knowledge of the noble fruits of Italy, especially of the
grape and of wine, are indications of the pride of the Latins in
their glorious vine, the envy of all their neighbours.  A careful
system of vine-husbandry was early and generally inculcated by the
Latin priests.  In Rome the vintage did not begin until the supreme
priest of the community, the -flamen- of Jupiter, had granted
permission for it and had himself made a beginning; in like manner a
Tusculan ordinance forbade the sale of new wine, until the priest
had proclaimed the festival of opening the casks.  The early
prevalence of the culture of the vine is likewise attested not
only by the general adoption of wine-libations in the sacrificial
ritual, but also by the precept of the Roman priests promulgated
as a law of king Numa, that men should present in libation to the
gods no wine obtained from uncut grapes; just as, to introduce
the beneficial practice of drying the grain, they prohibited the
offering of grain undried.


Culture of the Olive


The culture of the olive was of later introduction, and certainly
was first brought to Italy by the Greeks.(10)  The olive is said to
have been first planted on the shores of the western Mediterranean
towards the close of the second century of the city; and this view
accords with the fact that the olive-branch and the olive occupy
in the Roman ritual a place very subordinate to the juice of the
vine.  The esteem in which both noble trees were held by the Romans
is shown by the vine and the olive-tree which were planted in the
middle of the Forum, not far from the Curtian lake.


The Fig


The principal fruit-tree planted was the nutritious fig, which was
probably a native of Italy.  The legend of the origin of Rome wove
its threads most closely around the old fig-trees, several of which
stood near to and in the Roman Forum.(11)


Management of the Farm


It was the farmer and his sons who guided the plough, and performed
generally the labours of husbandry: it is not probable that slaves
or free day-labourers were regularly employed in the work of
the ordinary farm.  The plough was drawn by the ox or by the cow;
horses, asses, and mules served as beasts of burden.  The rearing
of cattle for the sake of meat or of milk did not exist at all as
a distinct branch of husbandry, or was prosecuted only to a very
limited extent, at least on the land which remained the property of
the clan; but, in addition to the smaller cattle which were driven
out together to the common pasture, swine and poultry, particularly
geese, were kept at the farm-yard.  As a general rule, there was no
end of ploughing and re-ploughing: a field was reckoned imperfectly
tilled, in which the furrows were not drawn so close that harrowing
could be dispensed with; but the management was more earnest than
intelligent, and no improvement took place in the defective plough
or in the imperfect processes of reaping and of threshing.  This
result is probably attributable rather to the scanty development
of rational mechanics than to the obstinate clinging of the farmers
to use and wont; for mere kindly attachment to the system of tillage
transmitted with the patrimonial soil was far from influencing the
practical Italian, and obvious improvements in agriculture, such
as the cultivation of fodder-plants and the irrigation of meadows,
may have been early adopted from neighbouring peoples or independently
developed--Roman literature itself in fact began with the discussion
of the theory of agriculture.  Welcome rest followed diligent and
judicious labour; and here too religion asserted her right to soothe
the toils of life even to the humble by pauses for recreation and
for freer human movement and intercourse.  Every eighth day (-nonae-),
and therefore on an average four times a month, the farmer went
to town to buy and sell and transact his other business.  But rest
from labour, in the strict sense, took place only on the several
festival days, and especially in the holiday-month after the completion
of the winter sowing (-feriae sementivae-): during these set times
the plough rested by command of the gods, and not the farmer only,
but also his slave and his ox, reposed in holiday idleness.

Such, probably, was the way in which the ordinary Roman farm was
cultivated in the earliest times.  The next heirs had no protection
against bad management except the right of having the spendthrift
who squandered his inherited estate placed under wardship as if he
were a lunatic.(12)  Women moreover were in substance divested of
their personal right of disposal, and, if they married, a member
of the same clan was ordinarily assigned as husband, in order to
retain the estate within the clan.  The law sought to check the
overburdening of landed property with debt partly by ordaining, in
the case of a debt secured over the land, the provisional transference
of the ownership of the object pledged from the debtor to the
creditor, partly, in the case of a simple loan, by the rigour of the
proceedings in execution which speedily led to actual bankruptcy;
the latter means however, as the sequel will show, attained its
object but very imperfectly.  No restriction was imposed by law on
the free divisibility of property.  Desirable as it might be that
co-heirs should remain in the undivided possession of their heritage,
even the oldest law was careful to keep the power of dissolving
such a partnership open at any time to any partner; it was good that
brethren should dwell together in peace, but to compel them to do
so was foreign to the liberal spirit of Roman law.  The Servian
constitution moreover shows that even in the regal period of Rome
there were not wanting cottagers and garden-proprietors, with whom
the mattock took the place of the plough.  It was left to custom and
the sound sense of the population to prevent excessive subdivision
of the soil; and that their confidence in this respect was not
misplaced and the landed estates ordinarily remained entire, is
proved by the universal Roman custom of designating them by permanent
individual names.  The community exercised only an indirect influence
in the matter by the sending forth of colonies, which regularly led
to the establishment of a number of new full hides, and frequently
doubtless also to the suppression of a number of cottage holdings,
the small landholders being sent forth as colonists.


Landed Proprietors


It is far more difficult to perceive how matters stood with landed
property on a larger scale.  The fact that such larger properties
existed to no inconsiderable extent, cannot be doubted from the
early development of the -equites-, and may be easily explained
partly by the distribution of the clan-lands, which of itself
could not but call into existence a class of larger landowners
in consequence of the necessary inequality in the numbers of
the persons belonging to the several clans and participating in
the distribution, and partly by the abundant influx of mercantile
capital to Rome.  But farming on a large scale in the proper
sense, implying a considerable establishment of slaves, such as we
afterwards meet with at Rome, cannot be supposed to have existed
during this period.  On the contrary, to this period we must refer
the ancient definition, which represents the senators as called
fathers from the fields which they parcelled out among the common
people as a father among his children; and originally the landowner
must have distributed that portion of his land which he was unable
to farm in person, or even his whole estate, into little parcels
among his dependents to be cultivated by them, as is the general
practice in Italy at the present day.  The recipient might be the
house-child or slave of the granter; if he was a free man, his
position was that which subsequently went by the name of "occupancy
on sufferance" (-precarium-).  The recipient retained his occupancy
during the pleasure of the granter, and had no legal means of
protecting himself in possession against him; on the contrary, the
granter could eject him at any time when he pleased.  The relation
did not necessarily involve any payment on the part of the person
who had the usufruct of the soil to its proprietor; but such
a payment beyond doubt frequently took place and may, as a rule,
have consisted in the delivery of a portion of the produce.  The
relation in this case approximated to the lease of subsequent times,
but remained always distinguished from it partly by the absence of
a fixed term for its expiry, partly by its non-actionable character
on either side and the legal protection of the claim for rent depending
entirely on the lessor's right of ejection.  It is plain that it
was essentially a relation based on mutual fidelity, which could
not subsist without the help of the powerful sanction of custom
consecrated by religion; and this was not wanting.  The institution
of clientship, altogether of a moral-religious nature, beyond
doubt rested fundamentally on this assignation of the profits of
the soil.  Nor was the introduction of such an assignation dependent
on the abolition of the system of common tillage; for, just as
after this abolition the individual, so previous to it the clan
might grant to dependents a joint use of its lands; and beyond
doubt with this very state of things was connected the fact that
the Roman clientship was not personal, but that from the outset
the client along with his clan entrusted himself for protection
and fealty to the patron and his clan.  This earliest form of Roman
landholding serves to explain how there sprang from the great
landlords in Rome a landed, and not an urban, nobility.  As the
pernicious institution of middlemen remained foreign to the Romans,
the Roman landlord found himself not much less chained to his land
than was the tenant and the farmer; he inspected and took part in
everything himself, and the wealthy Roman esteemed it his highest
praise to be reckoned a good landlord.  His house was in the country;
in the city he had only a lodging for the purpose of attending to
his business there, and perhaps of breathing the purer air that
prevailed there during the hot season.  Above all, however, these
arrangements furnished a moral basis for the relation between the
upper class and the common people, and so materially lessened its
dangers.  The free tenants-on-sufferance, sprung from families of
decayed farmers, dependents, and freedmen, formed the great bulk
of the proletariate,(13) and were not much more dependent on the
landlord than the petty leaseholder inevitably is with reference to
the great proprietor.  The slaves tilling the fields for a master
were beyond doubt far less numerous than the free tenants.  In all
cases where an immigrant nation has not at once reduced to slavery
a population -en masse-, slaves seem to have existed at first only
to a very limited amount, and consequently free labourers seem to
have played a very different part in the state from that in which
they subsequently appear.  In Greece "day-labourers" (--theites--)
in various instances during the earlier period occupy the place
of the slaves of a later age, and in some communities, among the
Locrians for instance, there was no slavery down to historical times.
Even the slave, moreover, was ordinarily of Italian descent; the
Volscian, Sabine, or Etruscan war-captive must have stood in a
different relation towards his master from the Syrian and the Celt
of later times.  Besides as a tenant he had in fact, though not
in law, land and cattle, wife and child, as the landlord had, and
after manumission was introduced(14) there was a possibility, not
remote, of working out his freedom.  If such then was the footing
on which landholding on a large scale stood in the earliest times,
it was far from being an open sore in the commonwealth; on the
contrary, it was of most material service to it.  Not only did it
provide subsistence, although scantier upon the whole, for as many
families in proportion as the intermediate and smaller properties;
but the landlords moreover, occupying a comparatively elevated and
free position, supplied the community with its natural leaders and
rulers, while the agricultural and unpropertied tenants-on-sufferance
furnished the genuine material for the Roman policy of colonization,
without which it never would have succeeded; for while the state
may furnish land to him who has none, it cannot impart to one who
knows nothing of agriculture the spirit and the energy to wield
the plough.


Pastoral Husbandry


Ground under pasture was not affected by the distribution of the
land.  The state, and not the clanship, was regarded as the owner
of the common pastures.  It made use of them in part for its
own flocks and herds, which were intended for sacrifice and other
purposes and were always kept up by means of the cattle-fines; and
it gave to the possessors of cattle the privilege of driving them
out upon the common pasture for a moderate payment (-scriptura-).
The right of pasturage on the public domains may have originally
borne some relation -de facto- to the possession of land, but no
connection -de jure- can ever have subsisted in Rome between the
particular hides of land and a definite proportional use of the
common pasture; because property could be acquired even by the
--metoikos--, but the right to use the common pasture was only
granted exceptionally to the --metoikos-- by the royal favour.
At this period, however, the public land seems to have held but
a subordinate place in the national economy generally, for the
original common pasturage was not perhaps very extensive, and the
conquered territory was probably for the most part distributed
immediately as arable land among the clans or at a later period
among individuals.


Handicrafts


While agriculture was the chief and most extensively prosecuted
occupation in Rome, other branches of industry did not fail to
accompany it, as might be expected from the early development of
urban life in that emporium of the Latins.  In fact eight guilds of
craftsmen were numbered among the institutions of king Numa, that
is, among the institutions that had existed in Rome from time
immemorial.  These were the flute-blowers, the goldsmiths, the
coppersmiths, the carpenters, the fullers, the dyers, the potters,
and the shoemakers--a list which would substantially exhaust the
class of tradesmen working to order on account of others in the very
early times, when the baking of bread and the professional art of
healing were not yet known and wool was spun into clothing by the
women of the household themselves.  It is remarkable that there
appears no special guild of workers in iron.  This affords a
fresh confirmation of the fact that the manufacture of iron was of
comparatively late introduction in Latium; and on this account in
matters of ritual down to the latest times copper alone might be
used, e.g.  for the sacred plough and the shear-knife of the priests.
These bodies of craftsmen must have been of great importance in
early times for the urban life of Rome and for its position towards
the Latin land--an importance not to be measured by the depressed
condition of Roman handicraft in later times, when it was injuriously
affected by the multitude of artisan-slaves working for their
master or on his account, and by the increased import of articles
of luxury.  The oldest lays of Rome celebrated not only the mighty
war-god Mamers, but also the skilled armourer Mamurius, who understood
the art of forging for his fellow-burgesses shields similar to the
divine model shield that had fallen from heaven; Volcanus the god
of fire and of the forge already appears in the primitive list of
Roman festivals.(15)  Thus in the earliest Rome, as everywhere,
the arts of forging and of wielding the ploughshare and the sword
went hand in hand, and there was nothing of that arrogant contempt
for handicrafts which we afterwards meet with there.  After the
Servian organization, however, imposed the duty of serving in the
army exclusively on the freeholders, the industrial classes were
excluded not by any law, but practically in consequence of their
general want of a freehold qualification, from the privilege of
bearing arms, except in the case of special subdivisions chosen
from the carpenters, coppersmiths, and certain classes of musicians
and attached with a military organization to the army; and this may
perhaps have been the origin of the subsequent habit of depreciating
the manual arts and of the position of political inferiority assigned
to them.  The institution of guilds doubtless had the same object
as the colleges of priests that resembled them in name; the men of
skill associated themselves in order more permanently and securely
to preserve the tradition of their art.  That there was some mode
of excluding unskilled persons is probable; but no traces are to be
met with either of monopolizing tendencies or of protective steps
against inferior manufactures.  There is no aspect, however, of
the life of the Roman people respecting which our information is
so scanty as that of the Roman trades.


Inland Commerce of the Italians


Italian commerce must, it is obvious, have been limited in the
earliest epoch to the mutual dealings of the Italians themselves.
Fairs (-mercatus-), which must be distinguished from the usual weekly
markets (-nundinae-) were of great antiquity in Latium.  Probably
they were at first associated with international gatherings and
festivals, and so perhaps were connected in Rome with the festival
at the federal temple on the Aventine; the Latins, who came for this
purpose to Rome every year on the 13th August, may have embraced
at the same time the opportunity of transacting their business
in Rome and of purchasing what they needed there.  A similar and
perhaps still greater importance belonged in the case of Etruria
to the annual general assembly at the temple of Voltumna (perhaps
near Montefiascone) in the territory of Volsinii; it served at the
same time as a fair and was regularly frequented by Roman traders.
But the most important of all the Italian fairs was that which was
held at Soracte in the grove of Feronia, a situation than which
none could be found more favourable for the exchange of commodities
among the three great nations.  That high isolated mountain, which
appears to have been set down by nature herself in the midst of the
plain of the Tiber as a goal for the traveller, lay on the boundary
which separated the Etruscan and Sabine lands (to the latter
of which it appears mostly to have belonged), and it was likewise
easily accessible from Latium and Umbria.  Roman merchants regularly
made their appearance there, and the wrongs of which they complained
gave rise to many a quarrel with the Sabines.

Beyond doubt dealings of barter and traffic were carried on at these
fairs long before the first Greek or Phoenician vessel entered the
western sea.  When bad harvests had occurred, different districts
supplied each other at these fairs with grain; there, too, they
exchanged cattle, slaves, metals, and whatever other articles were
deemed needful or desirable in those primitive times.  Oxen and
sheep formed the oldest medium of exchange, ten sheep being reckoned
equivalent to one ox.  The recognition of these objects as universal
legal representatives of value or in other words as money, as well
as the scale of proportion between the large and smaller cattle,
may be traced back--as the recurrence of both especially among the
Germans shows--not merely to the Graeco-Italian period, but beyond
this even to the epoch of a purely pastoral economy.(16)  In
Italy, where metal in considerable quantity was everywhere required
especially for agricultural purposes and for armour, but few of its
provinces themselves produced the requisite metals, copper (-aes-)
very early made its appearance alongside of cattle as a second
medium of exchange; and so the Latins, who were poor in copper,
designated valuation itself as "coppering" (-aestimatio-).  This
establishment of copper as a general equivalent recognized throughout
the whole peninsula, as well as the simplest numeral signs of
Italian invention to be mentioned more particularly below(17) and
the Italian duodecimal system, may be regarded as traces of this
earliest international intercourse of the Italian peoples while
they still had the peninsula to themselves.


Transmarine Traffic of the Italians


We have already indicated generally the nature of the influence
exercised by transmarine commerce on the Italians who continued
independent.  The Sabellian stocks remained almost wholly unaffected
by it.  They were in possession of but a small and inhospitable
belt of coast, and received whatever reached them from foreign
nations--the alphabet for instance--only through the medium of the
Tuscans or Latins; a circumstance which accounts for their want of
urban development.  The intercourse of Tarentum with the Apulians
and Messapians appears to have been at this epoch still unimportant.
It was otherwise along the west coast.  In Campania the Greeks and
Italians dwelt peacefully side by side, and in Latium, and still
more in Etruria, an extensive and regular exchange of commodities
took place.  What were the earliest articles of import, may
be inferred partly from the objects found in the primitive tombs,
particularly those at Caere, partly from indications preserved in
the language and institutions of the Romans, partly and chiefly from
the stimulus given to Italian industry; for of course they bought
foreign manufactures for a considerable time before they began
to imitate them.  We cannot determine how far the development of
handicrafts had advanced before the separation of the stocks, or
what progress it thereafter made while Italy remained left to its
own resources; it is uncertain how far the Italian fullers, dyers,
tanners, and potters received their impulse from Greece or Phoenicia
or had their own independent development But certainly the trade
of the goldsmiths, which existed in Rome from time immemorial, can
only have arisen after transmarine commerce had begun and ornaments
of gold had to some extent found sale among the inhabitants of the
peninsula.  We find, accordingly, in the oldest sepulchral chambers
of Caere and Vulci in Etruria and of Praeneste in Latium, plates
of gold with winged lions stamped upon them, and similar ornaments
of Babylonian manufacture.  It may be a question in reference to
the particular object found, whether it has been introduced from
abroad or is a native imitation; but on the whole it admits of
no doubt that all the west coast of Italy in early times imported
metallic wares from the East.  It will be shown still more clearly
in the sequel, when we come to speak of the exercise of art, that
architecture and modelling in clay and metal received a powerful
stimulus in very early times through Greek influence, or, in
other words, that the oldest tools and the oldest models came from
Greece.  In the sepulchral chambers just mentioned, besides the
gold ornaments, there were deposited vessels of bluish enamel or
greenish clay, which, judging from the materials and style as well
as from the hieroglyphics impressed upon them, were of Egyptian
origin;(18) perfume-vases of Oriental alabaster, several of them
in the form of Isis; ostrich-eggs with painted or carved sphinxes
and griffins; beads of glass and amber.  These last may have come
by the land-route from the north; but the other objects prove the
import of perfumes and articles of ornament of all sorts from the
East.  Thence came linen and purple, ivory and frankincense, as is
proved by the early use of linen fillets, of the purple dress and
ivory sceptre for the king, and of frankincense in sacrifice, as
well as by the very ancient borrowed names for them (--linon--,
-linum-; --porphura--, -purpura-; --skeiptron--, --skipon--, -scipio-;
perhaps also --elephas--, -ebur-; --thuos--, -thus-).  Of similar
significance is the derivation of a number of words relating to
articles used in eating and drinking, particularly the names of
oil,(19) of jugs (--amphoreus--, -amp(h)ora-, -ampulla-, --krateir--,
-cratera-), of feasting (--komazo--, -comissari-), of a dainty dish
(--opsonion--, -opsonium-) of dough (--maza--, -massa-), and various
names of cakes (--glukons--, -lucuns-; --plakons--, -placenta-;
--turons--, -turunda-); while conversely the Latin names for dishes
(-patina-, --patanei--) and for lard (-arvina-, --arbinei--) have
found admission into Sicilian Greek.  The later custom of placing
in the tomb beside the dead Attic, Corcyrean, and Campanian vases
proves, what these testimonies from language likewise show, the
early market for Greek pottery in Italy.  That Greek leather-work
made its way into Latium at least in the shape of armour is apparent
from the application of the Greek word for leather --skutos-- to
signify among the Latins a shield (-scutum-; like -lorica-, from
-lorum-).  Finally, we deduce a similar inference from the numerous
nautical terms borrowed from the Greek (although it is remarkable
that the chief technical expressions in navigation--the terms
for the sail, mast, and yard--are pure Latin forms);(20) and from
the recurrence in Latin of the Greek designations for a letter
(--epistolei--, -epistula-), a token (-tessera-, from --tessara--(21)),
a balance (--stateir--, -statera-), and earnest-money (--arrabon--,
-arrabo-, -arra-); and conversely from the adoption of Italian
law-terms in Sicilian Greek,(22) as well as from the exchange of
the proportions and names of coins, weights, and measures, which
we shall notice in the sequel.  The character of barbarism which
all these borrowed terms obviously present, and especially the
characteristic formation of the nominative from the accusative
(-placenta- = --plakounta--; -ampora- = --amphorea--; -statera-=
--stateira--), constitute the clearest evidence of their great
antiquity.  The worship of the god of traffic (-Mercurius-) also
appears to have been from the first influenced by Greek conceptions;
and his annual festival seems even to have been fixed on the ides
of May, because the Hellenic poets celebrated him as the son of
the beautiful Maia.


Commerce, in Latium Passive, in Etruria Active


It thus appears that Italy in very ancient times derived
its articles of luxury, just as imperial Rome did, from the East,
before it attempted to manufacture for itself after the models which
it imported.  In exchange it had nothing to offer except its raw
produce, consisting especially of its copper, silver, and iron,
but including also slaves and timber for shipbuilding, amber from
the Baltic, and, in the event of bad harvests occurring abroad, its
grain.  From this state of things as to the commodities in demand
and the equivalents to be offered in return, we have already
explained why Italian traffic assumed in Latium a form so differing
from that which it presented in Etruria.  The Latins, who were
deficient in all the chief articles of export, could carry on only
a passive traffic, and were obliged even in the earliest times to
procure the copper of which they had need from the Etruscans in
exchange for cattle or slaves--we have already mentioned the very
ancient practice of selling the latter on the right bank of the
Tiber.(23)  On the other hand the Tuscan balance of trade must
have been necessarily favourable in Caere as in Populonia, in Capua
as in Spina.  Hence the rapid development of prosperity in these
regions and their powerful commercial position; whereas Latium
remained preeminently an agricultural country.  The same contrast
recurs in all their individual relations.  The oldest tombs constructed
and furnished in the Greek fashion, but with an extravagance to which
the Greeks were strangers, are to be found at Caere, while--with the
exception of Praeneste, which appears to have occupied a peculiar
position and to have been very intimately connected with Falerii
and southern Etruria--the Latin land exhibits only slight ornaments
for the dead of foreign origin, and not a single tomb of luxury
proper belonging to the earlier times; there as among the Sabellians
a simple turf ordinarily sufficed as a covering for the dead.  The
most ancient coins, of a time not much later than those of Magna
Graecia, belong to Etruria, and to Populonia in particular: during
the whole regal period Latium had to be content with copper by
weight, and had not even introduced foreign coins, for the instances
are extremely rare in which such coins (e.g.  one of Posidonia)
have been found there.  In architecture, plastic art, and embossing,
the same stimulants acted on Etruria and on Latium, but it was only
in the case of the former that capital was everywhere brought to
bear on them and led to their being pursued extensively and with
growing technical skill.  The commodities were upon the whole the
same, which were bought, sold, and manufactured in Latium and in
Etruria; but the southern land was far inferior to its northern
neighbours in the energy with which its commerce was plied.  The
contrast between them in this respect is shown in the fact that
the articles of luxury manufactured after Greek models in Etruria
found a market in Latium, particularly at Praeneste, and even in
Greece itself, while Latium hardly ever exported anything of the
kind.


Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce


A distinction not less remarkable between the commerce of the Latins
and that of the Etruscans appears in their respective routes or
lines of traffic.  As to the earliest commerce of the Etruscans
in the Adriatic we can hardly do more than express the conjecture
that it was directed from Spina and Atria chiefly to Corcyra.
We have already mentioned(24) that the western Etruscans ventured
boldly into the eastern seas, and trafficked not merely with Sicily,
but also with Greece proper.  An ancient intercourse with Attica
is indicated by the Attic clay vases, which are so numerous in the
more recent Etruscan tombs, and had been perhaps even at this time
introduced for other purposes than the already-mentioned decoration
of tombs, while conversely Tyrrhenian bronze candlesticks and gold
cups were articles early in request in Attica.  Still more definitely
is such an intercourse indicated by the coins.  The silver pieces
of Populonia were struck after the pattern of a very old silver
piece stamped on one side with the Gorgoneion, on the other merely
presenting an incuse square, which has been found at Athens and
on the old amber-route in the district of Posen, and which was in
all probability the very coin struck by order of Solon in Athens.
We have mentioned already that the Etruscans had also dealings, and
perhaps after the development of the Etrusco-Carthaginian maritime
alliance their principal dealings, with the Carthaginians.  It is
a remarkable circumstance that in the oldest tombs of Caere, besides
native vessels of bronze and silver, there have been found chiefly
Oriental articles, which may certainly have come from Greek merchants,
but more probably were introduced by Phoenician traders.  We must
not, however, attribute too great importance to this Phoenician trade,
and in particular we must not overlook the fact that the alphabet,
as well as the other influences that stimulated and matured native
culture, were brought to Etruria by the Greeks, and not by the
Phoenicians.

Latin commerce assumed a different direction.  Rarely as we have
opportunity of instituting comparisons between the Romans and the
Etruscans as regards the reception of Hellenic elements, the cases
in which such comparisons can be instituted exhibit the two nations
as completely independent of each other.  This is most clearly
apparent in the case of the alphabet.  The Greek alphabet brought
to the Etruscans from the Chalcidico-Doric colonies in Sicily or
Campania varies not immaterially from that which the Latins derived
from the same quarter, so that, although both peoples have drawn
from the same source, they have done so at different times and
different places.  The same phenomenon appears in particular words:
the Roman Pollux and the Tuscan Pultuke are independent corruptions
of the Greek Polydeukes; the Tuscan Utuze or Uthuze is formed from
Odysseus, the Roman Ulixes is an exact reproduction of the form of
the name usual in Sicily; in like manner the Tuscan Aivas corresponds
to the old Greek form of this name, the Roman Aiax to a secondary
form that was probably also Sicilian; the Roman Aperta or Apello
and the Samnite Appellun have sprung from the Doric Apellon, the
Tuscan Apulu from Apollon.  Thus the language and writing of Latium
indicate that the direction of Latin commerce was exclusively towards
the Cumaeans and Siceliots.  Every other trace which has survived
from so remote an age leads to the same conclusion: such as, the
coin of Posidonia found in Latium; the purchase of grain, when
a failure of the harvest occurred in Rome, from the Volscians,
Cumaeans, and Siceliots (and, as was natural, from the Etruscans
as well); above all, the relations subsisting between the Latin
and Sicilian monetary systems.  As the local Dorico-Chalcidian
designation of silver coin --nomos--, and the Sicilian measure
--eimina--, were transferred with the same meaning to Latium as
-nummus- and -hemina-, so conversely the Italian designations of
weight, -libra-, -triens-, -quadrans-, -sextans-, -uncia-, which
arose in Latium for the measurement of the copper which was used
by weight instead of money, had found their way into the common
speech of Sicily in the third century of the city under the corrupt
and hybrid forms, --litra--, --trias--, --tetras--, --exas--,
--ougkia--.  Indeed, among all the Greek systems of weights and
moneys, the Sicilian alone was brought into a determinate relation
to the Italian copper-system; not only was the value of silver set
down conventionally and perhaps legally as two hundred and fifty
times that of copper, but the equivalent on this computation of a
Sicilian pound of copper (1/120th of the Attic talent, 2/3 of the
Roman pound) was in very early times struck, especially at Syracuse,
as a silver coin (--litra argurion--, i.e.  "copper-pound in
silver").  Accordingly it cannot be doubted that Italian bars of
copper circulated also in Sicily instead of money; and this exactly
harmonizes with the hypothesis that the commerce of the Latins
with Sicily was a passive commerce, in consequence of which Latin
money was drained away thither.  Other proofs of ancient intercourse
between Sicily and Italy, especially the adoption in the Sicilian
dialect of the Italian expressions for a commercial loan, a prison,
and a dish, and the converse reception of Sicilian terms in Italy,
have been already mentioned.(25)  We meet also with several, though
less definite, traces of an ancient intercourse of the Latins with
the Chalcidian cities in Lower Italy, Cumae and Neapolis, and with
the Phocaeans in Velia and Massilia.  That it was however far less
active than that with the Siceliots is shown by the well-known
fact that all the Greek words which made their way in earlier times
to Latium exhibit Doric forms--we need only recall -Aesculapius-,
-Latona-, -Aperta-, -machina-.  Had their dealings with the originally
Ionian cities, such as Cumae(26) and the Phocaean settlements,
been even merely on a similar scale with those which they had with
the Sicilian Dorians, Ionic forms would at least have made their
appearance along with the others; although certainly Dorism early
penetrated even into these Ionic colonies themselves, and their
dialect varied greatly.  While all the facts thus combine to attest
the stirring traffic of the Latins with the Greeks of the western
main generally, and especially with the Sicilians, there hardly
occurred any immediate intercourse with the Asiatic Phoenicians,
and the intercourse with those of Africa, which is sufficiently
attested by statements of authors and by articles found, can only
have occupied a secondary position as affecting the state of culture
in Latium; in particular it is significant that--if we leave out of
account some local names--there is an utter absence of any evidence
from language as to ancient intercourse between the Latins and the
nations speaking the Aramaic tongue.(27)

If we further inquire how this traffic was mainly carried on, whether
by Italian merchants abroad or by foreign merchants in Italy, the
former supposition has all the probabilities in its favour, at
least so far as Latium is concerned.  It is scarcely conceivable
that those Latin terms denoting the substitute for money and the
commercial loan could have found their way into general use in the
language of the inhabitants of Sicily through the mere resort of
Sicilian merchants to Ostia and their receipt of copper in exchange
for ornaments.  Lastly, in regard to the persons and classes
by whom this traffic was carried on in Italy, no special superior
class of merchants distinct from and independent of the class of
landed proprietors developed itself in Rome.  The reason of this
surprising phenomenon was, that the wholesale commerce of Latium was
from the beginning in the hands of the large landed proprietors--a
hypothesis which is not so singular as it seems.  It was natural
that in a country intersected by several navigable rivers the great
landholder, who was paid by his tenants their quotas of produce in
kind, should come at an early period to possess barks; and there is
evidence that such was the case.  The transmarine traffic conducted
on the trader's own account must therefore have fallen into the
hands of the great landholder, seeing that he alone possessed the
vessels for it and--in his produce--the articles for export.(28)
In fact the distinction between a landed and a moneyed aristocracy
was unknown to the Romans of earlier times; the great landholders
were at the same time the speculators and the capitalists.  In
the case of a very energetic commerce such a combination certainly
could not have been maintained; but, as the previous representation
shows, while there was a comparatively vigorous traffic in Rome in
consequence of the trade of the Latin land being there concentrated,
Rome was by no means essentially a commercial city like Caere or
Tarentum, but was and continued to be the centre of an agricultural
community.




Notes for Book I Chapter XIII


1.  I. II. Agriculture

2.  I. III. Clan Villages, I. V. The Community

3.  The system which we meet with in the case of the Germanic joint
tillage, combining a partition of the land in property among the
clansmen with its joint cultivation by the clan, can hardly ever
have existed in Italy.  Had each clansman been regarded in Italy,
as among the Germans, in the light of proprietor of a particular
spot in each portion of the collective domain that was marked off
for tillage, the separate husbandry of later times would probably
have set out from a minute subdivision of hides.  But the very
opposite was the case; the individual names of the Roman hides
(-fundus Cornelianus-) show clearly that the Roman proprietor owned
from the beginning a possession not broken up but united.

4.  Cicero (de Rep. ii. 9, 14, comp. Plutarch, Q. Rom. 15) states:
-Tum (in the time of Romulus) erat res in pecore et locorum
possessionibus, ex quo pecuniosi et locupletes vocabantur--(Numa)
primum agros, quos bello Romulus ceperat, divisit viritim civibus-.
In like manner Dionysius represents Romulus as dividing the land into
thirty curial districts, and Numa as establishing boundary-stones
and introducing the festival of the Terminalia (i. 7, ii. 74; and
thence Plutarch, -Numa-, 16).

5.  I. XI. Contracts

6.  Since this assertion still continues to be disputed, we
shall let the numbers speak for themselves.  The Roman writers on
agriculture of the later republic and the imperial period reckon on
an average five -modii- of wheat as sufficient to sow a -jugerum-, and
the produce as fivefold.  The produce of a -heredium- accordingly
(even when, without taking into view the space occupied by
the dwelling-house and farm-yard, we regard it as entirely arable
land, and make no account of years of fallow) amounts to fifty, or
deducting the seed forty, modii.  For an adult hard-working slave
Cato (c. 56) reckons fifty-one -modii-of wheat as the annual
consumption.  These data enable any one to answer for himself the
question whether a Roman family could or could not subsist on the
produce of a -heredium-.  The attempted proof to the contrary is
based on the ground that the slave of later times subsisted more
exclusively on corn than the free farmer of the earlier epoch, and
that the assumption of a fivefold return is one too low for this
earlier epoch; both assumptions are probably correct, but for both
there is a limit.  Doubtless the subsidiary produce yielded by
the arable land itself and by the common pasture, such as figs,
vegetables, milk, flesh (especially as derived from the old and
zealously pursued rearing of swine), and the like, are specially
to be taken into account for the older period; but the older Roman
pastoral husbandry, though not unimportant, was withal of subordinate
importance, and the chief subsistence of the people was always
notoriously grain.  We may, moreover, on account of the thoroughness
of the earlier cultivation obtain a very considerable increase,
especially of the gross produce--and beyond doubt the farmers of
this period drew a larger produce from their lands than the great
landholders of the later republic and the empire obtained (iii.
Latium); but moderation must be exercised in forming such estimates,
because we have to deal with a question of averages and with a mode
of husbandry conducted neither methodically nor with large capital.
The assumption of a tenfold instead of a fivefold return will be
the utmost limit, and yet it is far from sufficing.  In no case
can the enormous deficit, which is left even according to those
estimates between the produce of the -heredium- and the requirements
of the household, be covered by mere superiority of cultivation.
In fact the counter-proof can only be regarded as successful, when
it shall have produced a methodical calculation based on rural
economics, according to which among a population chiefly subsisting
on vegetables the produce of a piece of land of an acre and a quarter
proves sufficient on an average for the subsistence of a family.

It is indeed asserted that instances occur even in historical times
of colonies founded with allotments of two -jugera-; but the only
instance of the kind (Liv. iv. 47) is that of the colony of Labici
in the year 336--an instance, which will certainly not be reckoned
(by such scholars as are worth the arguing with) to belong to the
class of traditions that are trustworthy in their historical details,
and which is beset by other very serious difficulties (see book
ii. ch. 5, note).  It is no doubt true that in the non-colonial
assignation of land to the burgesses collectively (-adsignatio
viritana-) sometimes only a few -jugera- were granted (as e. g.
Liv. viii. ii, 21).  In these cases however it was the intention
not to create new farms with the allotments, but rather, as a rule,
to add to the existing farms new parcels from the conquered lands
(comp. C. I. L. i. p. 88).  At any rate, any supposition is better
than a hypothesis which requires us to believe as it were in
a miraculous multiplication of the food of the Roman household.
The Roman farmers were far less modest in their requirements than
their historiographers; they themselves conceived that they could
not subsist even on allotments of seven -jugera- or a produce of
one hundred and forty -modii-.

7.  I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform

8.  Perhaps the latest, although probably not the last, attempt
to prove that a Latin farmer's family might have subsisted on two
-jugera- of land, finds its chief support in the argument that Varro
(de R. R. i. 44, i) reckons the seed requisite for the -jugerum-
at five -modii- of wheat but ten -modii- of spelt, and estimates
the produce as corresponding to this, whence it is inferred that
the cultivation of spelt yielded a produce, if not double, at least
considerably higher than that of wheat.  But the converse is more
correct, and the nominally higher quantity sown and reaped is simply
to be explained by the fact that the Romans garnered and sowed the
wheat already shelled, but the spelt still in the husk (Pliny, H.
N.  xviii. 7, 61), which in this case was not separated from the
fruit by threshing.  For the same reason spelt is at the present
day sown twice as thickly as wheat, and gives a produce twice as
great by measure, but less after deduction of the husks.  According
to Wurtemberg estimates furnished to me by G. Hanssen, the average
produce of the Wurtemberg -morgen- is reckoned in the case of
wheat (with a sowing of 1/4 to 1/2 -scheffel-) at 3 -scheffel- of
the medium weight of 275 Ibs. (= 825 Ibs.); in the case of spelt
(with a sowing of 1/2 to 1 1/2 -scheffel-) at least 7 -scheffel- of
the medium weight of 150 lbs.  ( = 1050 Ibs.), which are reduced
by shelling to about 4 -scheffel-.  Thus spelt compared with wheat
yields in the gross more than double, with equally good soil perhaps
triple the crop, but--by specific weight--before the shelling not
much above, after shelling (as "kernel") less than, the half.  It
was not by mistake, as has been asserted, but because it was fitting
in computations of this sort to start from estimates of a like
nature handed down to us, that the calculation instituted above was
based on wheat; it may stand, because, when transferred to spelt,
it does not essentially differ and the produce rather falls than
rises.  Spelt is less nice as to soil and climate, and exposed
to fewer risks than wheat; but the latter yields on the whole,
especially when we take into account the not inconsiderable expenses
of shelling, a higher net produce (on an average of fifty years in
the district of Frankenthal in Rhenish Bavaria the -malter- of wheat
stands at 11 -gulden- 3 krz., the -malter- of spelt at 4 -gulden-30
krz.), and, as in South Germany, where the soil admits, the growing
of wheat is preferred and generally with the progress of cultivation
comes to supersede that of spelt, so the analogous transition of
Italian agriculture from the culture of spelt to that of wheat was
undeniably a progress.

9.  I. II. Agriculture

10.  -Oleum- and -oliva- are derived from --elaion--, --elaia--,
and -amurca- (oil-less) from --amorgei--.

11.  But there is no proper authority for the statement that the
fig-tree which stood in front of the temple of Saturn was cut down
in the year 260 (Plin. H. N. xv. 18, 77); the date CCLX. is wanting
in all good manuscripts, and has been interpolated, probably with
reference to Liv. ii. 21.

12.  I. XI. Property

13.  I. VI. Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the
Community

14.  I. XI. Guardianship

15.  I. XII. Oldest Table of Roman Festivals

16.  The comparative legal value of sheep and oxen, as is well known,
is proved by the fact that, when the cattle-fines were converted
into money-fines, the sheep was rated at ten, and the ox at a
hundred asses (Festus, v. -peculatus-, p. 237, comp. pp. 34, 144;
Gell. xi. i; Plutarch, Poplicola, ii).  By a similar adjustment the
Icelandic law makes twelve rams equivalent to a cow; only in this
as in other instances the Germanic law has substituted the duodecimal
for the older decimal system.

It is well known that the term denoting cattle was transferred to
denote money both among the Latins (-pecunia-) and among the Germans
(English fee).

17.  I. XIV. Decimal System

18.  There has lately been found at Praeneste a silver mixing-jug,
with a Phoenician and a hieroglyphic inscription (Mon. dell Inst.
x.  plate 32), which directly proves that such Egyptian wares as
come to light in Italy have found their way thither through the
medium of the Phoenicians.

19.  comp. I. XIII. Culture of the Olive

20.  -Velum- is certainly of Latin origin; so is -malus-, especially
as that term denotes not merely the mast, but the tree in general:
-antenna- likewise may come from --ana-- (-anhelare-, -antestari-),
and -tendere- = -supertensa-.  Of Greek origin, on the other
hand, are -gubenare-, to steer (--kubernan--); -ancora-, anchor
(--agkura--); -prora-, ship's bow (--prora--); -aplustre-,
ship's stern (--aphlaston--); -anquina-, the rope fastening the
yards (--agkoina--); -nausea-, sea-sickness (--nausia--).  The
four chief winds of the ancients- -aquilo-, the "eagle-wind," the
north-easterly Tramontana; -voltumus- (of uncertain derivation,
perhaps the "vulture-wind"), the south-easterly; -auster- the
"scorching" southwest wind, the Sirocco; -favonius-, the "favourable"
north-west wind blowing from the Tyrrhene Sea--have indigenous
names bearing no reference to navigation; but all the other Latin
names for winds are Greek (such as -eurus-, -notus-), or translations
from the Greek (e.g. -solanus- = --apelioteis--, -Africus- =
--lips--).

21.  This meant in the first instance the tokens used in the service
of the camp, the --xuleiphia kata phulakein brachea teleos echonta
charakteira-- (Polyb. vi. 35, 7); the four -vigiliae- of the
night-service gave name to the tokens generally.  The fourfold
division of the night for the service of watching is Greek as well
as Roman; the military science of the Greeks may well have exercised
an influence--possibly through Pyrrhus (Liv. xxxv. 14)--in the
organization of the measures for security in the Roman camp.  The
employment of the non-Doric form speaks for the comparatively late
date at which theword was taken over.

22.  I. XI. Character of the Roman Law

23.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

24.  I. X. Etruscan Commerce

25.  I. XI. Clients and Foreigners, I. XIII. Commerce, in Latium
Passive, in Etruria Active

26.  I. X. Greek Cities Near Vesuvius

27.  If we leave out of view -Sarranus-, -Afer-, and other local
designations (I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the
Hellenes), the Latin language appears not to possess a single word
immediately derived in early times from the Phoenician.  The very
few words from Phoenician roots which occur in it, such as -arrabo-
or -arra- and perhaps also -murra-, -nardus-, and the like, are
plainly borrowed proximately from the Greek, which has a considerable
number of such words of Oriental extraction as indications of its
primitive intercourse with the Aramaeans.  That --elephas-- and
-ebur- should have come from the same Phoenician original with or
without the addition of the article, and thus have been each formed
independently, is a linguistic impossibility, as the Phoenician
article is in reality -ha-, and is not so employed; besides the
Oriental primitive word has not as yet been found.  The same holds
true of the enigmatical word -thesaurus-; whether it may have been
originally Greek or borrowed by the Greeks from the Phoenician
or Persian, it is at any rate, as a Latin word, derived from the
Greek, as the very retaining of its aspiration proves (xii. Foreign
Worships).

28.  Quintus Claudius, in a law issued shortly before 534, prohibited
the senators from having sea-going vessels holding more than 300
-amphorae- (1 amph. = nearly 6 gallons): -id satis habitum ad fructus
ex agris vectandos; quaestus omnis patribus indecorus visus- (Liv.
xxi. 63).  It was thus an ancient usage, and was still permitted,
that the senators should possess sea-going vessels for the transport
of the produce of their estates: on the other hand, transmarine
mercantile speculation (-quaestus-, traffic, fitting-out of vessels,
&c.) on their part was prohibited.  It is a curious fact that the
ancient Greeks as well as the Romans expressed the tonnage of their
sea-going ships constantly in amphorae; the reason evidently being,
that Greece as well as Italy exported wine at a comparatively early
period, and on a larger scale than any other bulky article.




CHAPTER XIV

Measuring and Writing



The art of measuring brings the world into subjection to man;
the art of writing prevents his knowledge from perishing along
with himself; together they make man--what nature has not made
him--all-powerful and eternal.  It is the privilege and duty of
history to trace the course of national progress along these paths
also.


Italian Measures


Measurement necessarily presupposes the development of the several
ideas of units of time, of space, and of weight, and of a whole
consisting of equal parts, or in other words of number and of
a numeral system.  The most obvious bases presented by nature for
this purpose are, in reference to time, the periodic returns of
the sun and moon, or the day and the month; in reference to space,
the length of the human foot, which is more easily applied in
measuring than the arm; in reference to gravity, the burden which
a man is able to poise (-librare-) on his hand while he holds
his arm stretched out, or the "weight" (-libra-).  As a basis for
the notion of a whole made up of equal parts, nothing so readily
suggests itself as the hand with its five, or the hands with their
ten, fingers; upon this rests the decimal system.  We have already
observed that these elements of all numeration and measuring
reach back not merely beyond the separation of the Greek and Latin
stocks, but even to the most remote primeval times.  The antiquity
in particular of the measurement of time by the moon is demonstrated
by language;(1) even the mode of reckoning the days that elapse
between the several phases of the moon, not forward from the phase
on which it had entered last, but backward from that which was
next to be expected, is at least older than the separation of the
Greeks and Latins.


Decimal System


The most definite evidence of the antiquity and original exclusive
use of the decimal system among the Indo-Germans is furnished by
the well-known agreement of all Indo-Germanic languages in respect
to the numerals as far as a hundred inclusive.(2)  In the case of
Italy the decimal system pervaded all the earliest arrangements: it
may be sufficient to recall the number ten so usual in the case of
witnesses, securities, envoys, and magistrates, the legal equivalence
of one ox and ten sheep, the partition of the canton into ten curies
and the pervading application generally of the decurial system, the
-limitatio-, the tenth in offerings and in agriculture, decimation,
and the praenomen -Decimus-.  Among the applications of this most
ancient decimal system in the sphere of measuring and of writing,
the remarkable Italian ciphers claim a primary place.  When the Greeks
and Italians separated, there were still evidently no conventional
signs of number.  On the other hand we find the three oldest and
most indispensable numerals, one, five, and ten, represented by
three signs--I, V or /\, X, manifestly imitations of the outstretched
finger, and the open hand single and double--which were not derived
either from the Hellenes or the Phoenicians, but were common to
the Romans, Sabellians, and Etruscans.  They were the first steps
towards the formation of a national Italian writing, and at the same
time evidences of the liveliness of that earlier inland intercourse
among the Italians which preceded their transmarine commerce.(3)
Which of the Italian stocks invented, and which of them borrowed,
these signs, can of course no longer be ascertained.  Other traces
of the pure decimal system occur but sparingly in this field;
among them are the -versus-, the Sabellian measure of surface of
100 square feet,(4) and the Roman year of 10 months.


The Duodecimal System


Otherwise generally in the case of those Italian measures, which
were not connected with Greek standards and were probably developed
by the Italians before they came into contact with the Greeks, there
prevailed the partition of the "whole" (-as-) into twelve "units"
(-unciae-).  The very earliest Latin priesthoods, the colleges of
the Salii and Arvales,(5) as well as the leagues of the Etruscan
cities, were organized on the basis of the number twelve.  The
same number predominated in the Roman system of weights and in the
measures of length, where the pound (-libra-) and the foot (-pes-)
were usually subdivided into twelve parts; the unit of the Roman
measures of surface was the "driving" (-actus-) of 120 square feet,
a combination of the decimal and duodecimal systems.(6)  Similar
arrangements as to the measures of capacity may have passed into
oblivion.

If we inquire into the basis of the duodecimal system and consider
how it can have happened that, in addition to ten, twelve should
have been so early and universally singled out from the equal series
of numbers, we shall probably be able to find no other source to
which it can be referred than a comparison of the solar and lunar
periods.  Still more than the double hand of ten fingers did the
solar cycle of nearly twelve lunar periods first suggest to man
the profound conception of an unit composed of equal units, and
thereby originate the idea of a system of numbers, the first step
towards mathematical thought.  The consistent duodecimal development
of this idea appears to have belonged to the Italian nation, and
to have preceded the first contact with the Greeks.


Hellenic Measures in Italy


But when at length the Hellenic trader had opened up the route to
the west coast of Italy, the measures of surface remained unaffected,
but the measures of length, of weight, and above all of capacity--in
other words those definite standards without which barter and traffic
are impossible--experienced the effects of the new international
intercourse.  The oldest Roman foot has disappeared; that which we
know, and which was in use at a very early period among the Romans,
was borrowed from Greece, and was, in addition to its new Roman
subdivision into twelfths, divided after the Greek fashion into four
hand-breadths (-palmus-) and sixteen finger-breadths (-digitus-).
Further, the Roman weights were brought into a fixed proportional
relation to the Attic system, which prevailed throughout Sicily
but not in Cumae--another significant proof that the Latin traffic
was chiefly directed to the island; four Roman pounds were assumed as
equal to three Attic -minae-, or rather the Roman pound was assumed
as equal to one and a half of the Sicilian -litrae- or half-minae.(7)
But the most singular and chequered aspect is presented by the
Roman measures of capacity, as regards both their names and their
proportions.  Their names have come from the Greek terms either by
corruption (-amphora-, -modius- after --medimnos--, -congius- from
--choeus--, -hemina-, -cyathus-) or by translation (-acetabulum-from
--ozubaphon--); while conversely --zesteis-- is a corruption of
-sextarius-.  All the measures are not identical, but those in most
common use are so; among liquid measures the -congius- or -chus-,
the -sextarius-, and the -cyathus-, the two last also for dry
goods; the Roman -amphora- was equalized in water-weight to the
Attic talent, and at the same time stood to the Greek --metretes--
in the fixed ratio of 3:2, and to the Greek --medimnos-- of 2:1.  To
one who can decipher the significance of such records, these names
and numerical proportions fully reveal the activity and importance
of the intercourse between the Sicilians and the Latins.  The Greek
numeral signs were not adopted; but the Roman probably availed
himself of the Greek alphabet, when it reached him, to form ciphers
for 50 and 1000, perhaps also for 100, out of the signs for the
three aspirated letters which he had no use for.  In Etruria the
sign for 100 at least appears to have been obtained in a similar
way.  Afterwards, as usually happens, the systems of notation among
the two neighbouring nations became assimilated by the adoption in
substance of the Roman system in Etruria.


The Italian Calendar before the Period of Greek Influence in Italy


In like manner the Roman calendar--and probably that of the Italians
generally--began with an independent development of its own, but
subsequently came under the influence of the Greeks.  In the division
of time the returns of sunrise and sunset, and of the new and full
moon, most directly arrest the attention of man; and accordingly
the day and the month, determined not by cyclic calculation but
by direct observation, were long the exclusive measures of time.
Down to a late age sunrise and sunset were proclaimed in the Roman
market-place by the public crier, and in like manner it may be
presumed that in earlier times, at each of the four phases of the
moon, the number of days that would elapse from that phase until
the next was proclaimed by the priests.  The mode of reckoning
therefore in Latium--and the like mode, it may be presumed, was in
use not merely among the Sabellians, but also among the Etruscans--was
by days, which, as already mentioned, were counted not forward
from the phase that had last occurred, but backward from that which
was next expected; by lunar weeks, which varied in length between
7 and 8 days, the average length being 7 3/8; and by lunar months
which in like manner were sometimes of 29, sometimes of 30 days,
the average duration of the synodical month being 29 days 12 hours
44 minutes.  For some time the day continued to be among the Italians
the smallest, and the month the largest, division of time.  It was
not until afterwards that they began to distribute day and night
respectively into four portions, and it was much later still when
they began to employ the division into hours; which explains why
even stocks otherwise closely related differed in their mode of
fixing the commencement of day, the Romans placing it at midnight,
the Sabellians and the Etruscans at noon.  No calendar of the year
had, at least when the Greeks separated from the Italians, as yet
been organized, for the names for the year and its divisions in the
two languages have been formed quite independently of each other.
Nevertheless the Italians appear to have already in the pre-Hellenic
period advanced, if not to the arrangement of a fixed calendar,
at any rate to the institution of two larger units of time.  The
simplifying of the reckoning according to lunar months by the
application of the decimal system, which was usual among the Romans,
and the designation of a term of ten months as a "ring" (-annus-)
or complete year, bear in them all the traces of a high antiquity.
Later, but still at a period very early and undoubtedly previous
to the operation of Greek influences, the duodecimal system (as
we have already stated) was developed in Italy, and, as it derived
its very origin from the observation of the fact that the solar
period was equal to twelve lunar periods, it was certainly applied
in the first instance to the reckoning of time.  This view accords
with the fact that the individual names of the months--which can
only have originated after the month was viewed as part of a solar
year--particularly those of March and of May, were similar among
the different branches of the Italian stock, while there was
no similarity between the Italian names and the Greek.  It is not
improbable therefore that the problem of laying down a practical
calendar which should correspond at once to the moon and the sun--a
problem which may be compared in some sense to the quadrature of the
circle, and the solution of which was only recognized as impossible
and abandoned after the lapse of many centuries--had already employed
the minds of men in Italy before the epoch at which their contact
with the Greeks began; these purely national attempts to solve it,
however, have passed into oblivion.


The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar


What we know of the oldest calendar of Rome and of some other Latin
cities--as to the Sabellian and Etruscan measurement of time we
have no traditional information--is decidedly based on the oldest
Greek arrangement of the year, which was intended to answer both
to the phases of the moon and to the seasons of the solar year,
constructed on the assumption of a lunar period of 29 1/2 days and
a solar period of 12 1/2 lunar months or 368 3/4 days, and on the
regular alternation of a full month or month of thirty days with a
hollow month or month of twenty-nine days and of a year of twelve
with a year of thirteen months, but at the same time maintained
in some sort of harmony with the actual celestial phenomena by
arbitrary curtailments and intercalations.  It is possible that
this Greek arrangement of the year in the first instance came into
use among the Latins without undergoing any alteration; but the
oldest form of the Roman year which can be historically recognized
varied from its model, not indeed in the cyclical result nor yet in
the alternation of years of twelve with years of thirteen months,
but materially in the designation and in the measuring off of the
individual months.  The Roman year began with the beginning of
spring; the first month in it and the only one which bears the name
of a god, was named from Mars (-Martius-), the three following from
sprouting (-aprilis-) growing (-maius-), and thriving (-iunius-),
the fifth onward to the tenth from their ordinal numbers (-quinctilis-,
-sextilis-, -september-, -october-, -november-, -december), the
eleventh from commencing (-ianuarius-),(8) with reference presumably
to the renewal of agricultural operations that followed midwinter
and the season of rest, the twelfth, and in an ordinary year the
last, from cleansing (-februarius-).  To this series recurring
in regular succession there was added in the intercalary year a
nameless "labour-month" (-mercedonius-) at the close of the year,
viz. after February.  And, as the Roman calendar was independent
as respected the names of the months which were probably taken from
the old national ones, it was also independent as regarded their
duration.  Instead of the four years of the Greek cycle, each
composed of six months of 30 and six of 29 days and an intercalary
month inserted every second year alternately of 29 and 30 days (354 +
384 + 354 + 383 = 1475 days), the Roman calendar substituted four
years, each containing four months--the first, third, fifth, and
eighth--of 31 days and seven of 29 days, with a February of 28
days during three years and of 29 in the fourth, and an intercalary
month of 27 days inserted every second year (355 + 383 + 355 +
382 = 1475 days).  In like manner this calendar departed from the
original division of the month into four weeks, sometimes of 7,
sometimes of 8 days; it made the eight-day-week run on through the
years without regard to the other relations of the calendar, as our
Sundays do, and placed the weekly market on the day with which it
began (-noundinae-).  Along with this it once for all fixed the
first quarter in the months of 31 days on the seventh, in those
of 29 on the fifth day, and the full moon in the former on the
fifteenth, in the latter on the thirteenth day.  As the course of
the months was thus permanently arranged, it was henceforth necessary
to proclaim only the number of days lying between the new moon and
the first quarter; thence the day of the newmoon received the name
of "proclamation-day" (-kalendae-).  The first day of the second
section of the month, uniformly of 8 days, was--in conformity with
the Roman custom of reckoning, which included the -terminus ad
quem- --designated as "nine-day" (-nonae-).  The day of the full
moon retained the old name of -idus- (perhaps "dividing-day").
The motive lying at the bottom of this strange remodelling of the
calendar seems chiefly to have been a belief in the salutary virtue
of odd numbers;(9) and while in general it is based on the oldest
form of the Greek year, its variations from that form distinctly
exhibit the influence of the doctrines of Pythagoras, which were
then paramount in Lower Italy, and which especially turned upon a
mystic view of numbers.  But the consequence was that this Roman
calendar, clearly as it bears traces of the desire that it should
harmonize with the course both of sun and moon, in reality by
no means so corresponded with the lunar course as did at least on
the whole its Greek model, while, like the oldest Greek cycle, it
could only follow the solar seasons by means of frequent arbitrary
excisions, and did in all probability follow them but very imperfectly,
for it is scarcely likely that the calendar would be handled with
greater skill than was manifested in its original arrangement.
The retention moreover of the reckoning by months or--which is the
same thing--by years of ten months implies a tacit, but not to be
misunderstood, confession of the irregularity and untrustworthiness
of the oldest Roman solar year.  This Roman calendar may be regarded,
at least in its essential features, as that generally current
among the Latins.  When we consider how generally the beginning of
the year and the names of the months are liable to change, minor
variations in the numbering and designations are quite compatible
with the hypothesis of a common basis; and with such a calendar-system,
which practically was irrespective of the lunar course, the Latins
might easily come to have their months of arbitrary length, possibly
marked off by annual festivals--as in the case of the Alban months,
which varied between 16 and 36 days.  It would appear probable
therefore that the Greek --trieteris-- had early been introduced
from Lower Italy at least into Latium and perhaps also among the
other Italian stocks, and had thereafter been subjected in the
calendars of the several cities to further subordinate alterations.

For the measuring of periods of more than one year the regnal years
of the kings might have been employed: but it is doubtful whether
that method of dating, which was in use in the East, occurred in Greece
or Italy during earlier times.  On the other hand the intercalary
period recurring every four years, and the census and lustration
of the community connected with it, appear to have suggested
a reckoning by -lustra- similar in plan to the Greek reckoning by
Olympiads--a method, however, which early lost its chronological
significance in consequence of the irregularity that now prevailed
as to the due holding of the census at the right time.


Introduction of Hellenic Alphabets into Italy


The art of expressing sounds by written signs was of later origin
than the art of measurement.  The Italians did not any more than
the Hellenes develop such an art of themselves, although we may
discover attempts at such a development in the Italian numeral
signs,(10) and possibly also in the primitive Italian custom--formed
independently of Hellenic influence--of drawing lots by means
of wooden tablets.  The difficulty which must have attended the
first individualizing of sounds--occurring as they do in so great
a variety of combinations--is best demonstrated by the fact that a
single alphabet propagated from people to people and from generation
to generation has sufficed, and still suffices, for the whole of
Aramaic, Indian, Graeco-Roman, and modern civilization; and this
most important product of the human intellect was the joint creation
of the Aramaeans and the Indo-Germans.  The Semitic family of
languages, in which the vowel has a subordinate character and never
can begin a word, facilitates on that very account the individualizing
of the consonants; and it was among the Semites accordingly that
the first alphabet--in which the vowels were still wanting--was
invented.  It was the Indians and Greeks who first independently
of each other and by very divergent methods created, out of the
Aramaean consonantal writing brought to them by commerce, a complete
alphabet by the addition of the vowels--which was effected by the
application of four letters, which the Greeks did not use as consonantal
signs, for the four vowels -a -e -i -o, and by the formation of a
new sign for -u --in other words by the introduction of the syllable
into writing instead of the mere consonant, or, as Palamedes says
in Euripides,

--Ta teis ge leitheis pharmak orthosas monos
Aphona kai phonounta, sullabas te theis,
Ezeupon anthropoisi grammat eidenai.--

This Aramaeo-Hellenic alphabet was accordingly brought to the
Italians through the medium, doubtless, of the Italian Hellenes;
not, however, through the agricultural colonies of Magna Graecia,
but through the merchants possibly of Cumae or Tarentum, by whom it
would be brought in the first instance to the very ancient emporia
of international traffic in Latium and Etruria--to Rome and Caere.
The alphabet received by the Italians was by no means the oldest
Hellenic one; it had already experienced several modifications,
particularly the addition of the three letters --"id:xi", --"id:phi",
--"id:chi" and the alteration of the signs for --"id:iota",
--"id:gamma", --"id:lambda".(11)  We have already observed(12) that
the Etruscan and Latin alphabets were not derived the one from the
other, but both directly from the Greek; in fact the Greek alphabet
came to Etruria in a form materially different from that which
reached Latium.  The Etruscan alphabet has a double sign -s (sigma
-"id:s" and san -"id:sh") and only a single -k,(13) and of the
-r only the older form -"id:P"; the Latin has, so far as we know,
only a single -s, but a double sign for -k (kappa -"id:k" and koppa
-"id:q") and of the -r almost solely the more recent form -"id:R".
The oldest Etruscan writing shows no knowledge of lines, and winds
like the coiling of a snake; the more recent employs parallel
broken-off lines from right to left: the Latin writing, as far as
our monuments reach back, exhibits only the latter form of parallel
lines, which originally perhaps may have run at pleasure from left
to right or from right to left, but subsequently ran among the Romans
in the former, and among the Faliscans in the latter direction.
The model alphabet brought to Etruria must notwithstanding its
comparatively remodelled character reach back to an epoch very ancient,
though not positively to be determined; for, as the two sibilants
sigma and san were always used by the Etruscans as different
sounds side by side, the Greek alphabet which came to Etruria must
doubtless still have possessed both of them in this way as living
signs of sound; but among all the monuments of the Greek language
known to us not one presents sigma and san in simultaneous use.

The Latin alphabet certainly, as we know it, bears on the whole
a more recent character; and it is not improbable that the Latins
did not simply receive the alphabet once for all, as was the case
in Etruria, but in consequence of their lively intercourse with
their Greek neighbours kept pace for a considerable period with
the alphabet in use among these, and followed its variations.  We
find, for instance, that the forms -"id:/\/\/", -"id:P",(14) and
-"id:SIGMA" were not unknown to the Romans, but were superseded
in common use by the later forms -"id:/\/\", -"id:R", and -"id:S"
--a circumstance which can only be explained by supposing that
the Latins employed for a considerable period the Greek alphabet
as such in writing either their mother-tongue or Greek.  It is
dangerous therefore to draw from the more recent character of the
Greek alphabet which we meet with in Rome, as compared with the
older character of that brought to Etruria, the inference that
writing was practised earlier in Etruria than in Rome.

The powerful impression produced by the acquisition of the treasure
of letters on those who received them, and the vividness with which
they realized the power that slumbered in those humble signs, are
illustrated by a remarkable vase from a sepulchral chamber of Caere
built before the invention of the arch, which exhibits the old
Greek model alphabet as it came to Etruria, and also an Etruscan
syllabarium formed from it, which may be compared to that
of Palamedes--evidently a sacred relic of the introduction and
acclimatization of alphabetic writing in Etruria.


Development of Alphabets in Italy


Not less important for history than the derivation of the alphabet
is the further course of its development on Italian soil: perhaps
it is even of more importance; for by means of it a gleam of light
is thrown upon the inland commerce of Italy, which is involved
in far greater darkness than the commerce with foreigners on its
coasts.  In the earliest epoch of Etruscan writing, when the alphabet
was used without material alteration as it had been introduced, its
use appears to have been restricted to the Etruscans on the Po and
in what is now Tuscany.  In course of time this alphabet, manifestly
diffusing itself from Atria and Spina, reached southward along
the east coast as far as the Abruzzi, northward to the Veneti and
subsequently even to the Celts at the foot of, among, and indeed
beyond the Alps, so that its last offshoots reached as far as the
Tyrol and Styria.  The more recent epoch starts with a reform of
the alphabet, the chief features of which were the introduction of
writing in broken-off lines, the suppression of the -"id:o", which
was no longer distinguished in pronunciation from the -"id:u", and
the introduction of a new letter -"id:f" for which the alphabet as
received by them had no corresponding sign.  This reform evidently
arose among the western Etruscans, and while it did not find
reception beyond the Apennines, became naturalized among all the
Sabellian tribes, and especially among the Umbrians.  In its further
course the alphabet experienced various fortunes in connection with
the several stocks, the Etruscans on the Arno and around Capua, the
Umbrians and the Samnites; frequently the mediae were entirely or
partially lost, while elsewhere again new vowels and consonants
were developed.  But that West-Etruscan reform of the alphabet
was not merely as old as the oldest tombs found in Etruria; it was
considerably older, for the syllabarium just mentioned as found
probably in one of these tombs already presents the reformed
alphabet in an essentially modified and modernized shape; and, as
the reformed alphabet itself is relatively recent as compared with
the primitive one, the mind almost fails in the effort to reach back
to the time when that alphabet came to Italy.  While the Etruscans
thus appear as the instruments in diffusing the alphabet in the
north, east, and south of the peninsula, the Latin alphabet on
the other hand was confined to Latium, and maintained its ground,
upon the whole, there with but few alterations; only the letters
-"id:gamma" -"id:kappa" and -"id:zeta" -"id:sigma" gradually
became coincident in sound, the consequence of which was, that in
each case one of the homophonous signs (-"id:kappa" -"id:zeta")
disappeared from writing.  In Rome it can be shown that these were
already laid aside before the end of the fourth century of the
city,(15) and the whole monumental and literary tradition that has
reached us knows nothing of them, with a single exception.(16)  Now
when we consider that in the oldest abbreviations the distinction
between -"id:gamma" -"id:c" and -"id:kappa" -"id:k" is still
regularly maintained;(17) that the period, accordingly, when the
sounds became in pronunciation coincident, and before that again
the period during which the abbreviations became fixed, lies beyond
the beginning of the Samnite wars; and lastly, that a considerable
interval must necessarily have elapsed between the introduction
of writing and the establishment of a conventional system of
abbreviation; we must, both as regards Etruria and Latium, carry
back the commencement of the art of writing to an epoch which
more closely approximates to the first incidence of the Egyptian
Sirius-period within historical times, the year 1321 B.C., than to
the year 776, with which the chronology of the Olympiads began in
Greece.(18)  The high antiquity of the art of writing in Rome is
evinced otherwise by numerous and plain indications.  The existence
of documents of the regal period is sufficiently attested; such
was the special treaty between Rome and Gabii, which was concluded
by a king Tarquinius and probably not by the last of that name,
and which, written on the skin of the bullock sacrificed on the
occasion, was preserved in the temple of Sancus on the Quirinal,
which was rich in antiquities and probably escaped the conflagration
of the Gauls; and such was the alliance which king Servius Tullius
concluded with Latium, and which Dionysius saw on a copper tablet
in the temple of Diana on the Aventine.  What he saw, however, was
probably a copy restored after the fire with the help of a Latin
exemplar, for it was not likely that engraving on metal was practised
as early as the time of the kings.  The charters of foundation of
the imperial period still refer to the charter founding this temple
as the oldest document of the kind in Rome and the common model for
all.  But even then they scratched (-exarare-, -scribere-, akin to
-scrobes- (19)) or painted (-linere-, thence -littera-) on leaves
(-folium-), inner bark (-liber-), or wooden tablets (-tabula-,
-album-), afterwards also on leather and linen.  The sacred records
of the Samnites as well as of the priesthood of Anagnia were
inscribed on linen rolls, and so were the oldest lists of the Roman
magistrates preserved in the temple of the goddess of recollection
(-Iuno moneta-) on the Capitol.  It is scarcely necessary to recall
further proofs in the primitive marking of the pastured cattle
(-scriptura-), in the mode of addressing the senate, "fathers and
enrolled" (-patres conscripti-), and in the great antiquity of
the books of oracles, the clan-registers, and the Alban and Roman
calendars.  When Roman tradition speaks of halls in the Forum,
where the boys and girls of quality were taught to read and write,
already in the earliest times of the republic, the statement may
be, but is not necessarily to be deemed, an invention.  We have
been deprived of information as to the early Roman history, not in
consequence of the want of a knowledge of writing, or even perhaps
of the lack of documents, but in consequence of the incapacity of
the historians of the succeeding age, which was called to investigate
the history, to work out the materials furnished by the archives,
and of the perversity which led them to desire for the earliest
epoch a delineation of motives and of characters, accounts of
battles and narratives of revolutions, and while engaged in inventing
these, to neglect what the extant written tradition would not have
refused to yield to the serious and self-denying inquirer.


Results


The history of Italian writing thus furnishes in the first place
a confirmation of the weak and indirect influence exercised by the
Hellenic character over the Sabellians as compared with the more
western peoples.  The fact that the former received their alphabet
from the Etruscans and not from the Romans is probably to be
explained by supposing that they already possessed it before they
entered upon their migration along the ridge of the Apennines, and
that therefore the Sabines as well as Samnites carried it along
with them from the mother-land to their new abodes.  On the other
hand this history of writing contains a salutary warning against the
adoption of the hypothesis, originated by the later Roman culture
in its devotedness to Etruscan mysticism and antiquarian trifling,
and patiently repeated by modern and even very recent inquirers,
that Roman civilization derived its germ and its pith from Etruria.
If this were the truth, some trace of it ought to be more especially
apparent in this field; but on the contrary the germ of the Latin
art of writing was Greek, and its development was so national,
that it did not even adopt the very desirable Etruscan sign for
-"id:f".(20)  Indeed, where there is an appearance of borrowing,
as in the numeral signs, it is on the part of the Etruscans, who
took over from the Romans at least the sign for 50.


Corruption of Language and Writing


Lastly it is a significant fact, that among all the Italian stocks
the development of the Greek alphabet primarily consisted in a
process of corruption.  Thus the -mediae- disappeared in the whole
of the Etruscan dialects, while the Umbrians lost -"id:gamma" and
-"id:d", the Samnites -"id:d", and the Romans -"id:gamma"; and among
the latter -"id:d" also threatened to amalgamate with -"id:r".
In like manner among the Etruscans -"id:o" and -"id:u" early
coalesced, and even among the Latins we meet with a tendency to
the same corruption.  Nearly the converse occurred in the case of
the sibilants; for while the Etruscan retained the three signs
-"id:z", -"id:s", -"id:sh", and the Umbrian rejected the last but
developed two new sibilants in its room, the Samnite and the Faliscan
confined themselves like the Greek to -"id:s" and -"id:z", and the
Roman of later times even to -"id:s" alone.  It is plain that the
more delicate distinctions of sound were duly felt by the introducers
of the alphabet, men of culture and masters of two languages;
but after the national writing Became wholly detached from the
Hellenic mother-alphabet, the -mediae- and their -tenues- gradually
came to coincide, and the sibilants and vowels were thrown into
disorder--transpositions or rather destructions of sound, of which
the first in particular is entirely foreign to the Greek.  The
destruction of the forms of flexion and derivation went hand in
hand with this corruption of sounds.  The cause of this barbarization
was thus, upon the whole, simply the necessary process of
corruption which is continuously eating away every language, where
its progress is not stemmed by literature and reason; only in this
case indications of what has elsewhere passed away without leaving a
trace have been preserved in the writing of sounds.  The circumstance
that this barbarizing process affected the Etruscans more strongly
than any other of the Italian stocks adds to the numerous proofs
of their inferior capacity for culture.  The fact on the other hand
that, among the Italians, the Umbrians apparently were the most
affected by a similar corruption of language, the Romans less so,
the southern Sabellians least of all, probably finds its explanation,
at least in part, in the more lively intercourse maintained by the
former with the Etruscans, and by the latter with the Greeks.




Notes for Book I Chapter XIV


1.  I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture

2.  I. II. Indo-Germanic Culture

3.  I. XII. Inland Commerce of the Italians

4.  I. II. Agriculture

5.  I. XII. Priests

6.  Originally both the -actus-, "riving," and its still more
frequently occurring duplicate, the -jugerum-, "yoking," were,
like the German "morgen," not measures of surface, but measures of
labour; the latter denoting the day's work, the former the half-day's
work, with reference to the sharp division of the day especially
in Italy by the ploughman's rest at noon.

7.  I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

8.  I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

9.  From the same cause all the festival-days are odd, as well those
recurring every month (-kalendae- on the 1st.  -nonae- on the 5th
or 7th, -idus- on the 13th or 15th), as also, with but two exceptions,
those of the 45 annual festivals mentioned above (xii. Oldest Table
Of Roman Festivals).  This is carried so far, that in the case of
festivals of several days the intervening even days were dropped
out, and so, for example, that of Carmentis was celebrated on Jan.
11, 15, that of the Grove-festival (-Lucaria-) on July 19, 21, and
that of the Ghosts-festival on May 9, 11, and 13.

10.  I. XIV. Decimal System

11.  The history of the alphabet among the Hellenes turns essentially
on the fact that--assuming the primitive alphabet of 23 letters,
that is to say, the Phoenician alphabet vocalized and enlarged by
the addition of the -"id:u" --proposals of very various kinds were
made to supplement and improve it, and each of these proposals has
a history of its own.  The most important of these, which it is
interesting to keep in view as bearing on the history of Italian
writing, are the following:--I. The introduction of special signs
for the sounds --"id:xi" --"id:phi" --"id:chi".  This proposal
is so old that all the Greek alphabets--with the single exception
of that of the islands Thera, Melos, and Crete--and all alphabets
derived from the Greek without exception, exhibit its influence.
At first probably the aim was to append the signs --"id:CHI"
= --"id:xi iota", --"id:PHI" = --"id:phi iota", and --"id:PSI"=
--"id:chi iota" to the close of the alphabet, and in this shape it
was adopted on the mainland of Hellas--with the exception of Athens
and Corinth--and also among the Sicilian and Italian Greeks.  The
Greeks of Asia Minor on the other hand, and those of the islands of
the Archipelago, and also the Corinthians on the mainland appear,
when this proposal reached them, to have already had in use for the
sound --"id:xi iota" the fifteenth sign of the Phoenician alphabet
--"id:XI" (Samech); accordingly of the three new signs they adopted
the --"id:PHI" for --"id:phi iota", but employed the --"id:CHI"
not for --"id:xi iota", but for --"id:chi iota".  The third sign
originally invented for --"id:chi iota" was probably allowed in
most instances to drop; only on the mainland of Asia Minor it was
retained, but received the value of --"id:psi iota".  The mode of
writing adopted in Asia Minor was followed also by Athens; only in
its case not merely the --"id:psi iota", but the --"id:xi iota" also,
was not received and in their room the two consonants continued to
be written as before.--II.  Equally early, if not still earlier,
an effort was made to obviate the confusion that might so easily
occur between the forms for --"id:iota S" and for --"id:s E"; for
all the Greek alphabets known to us bear traces of the endeavour to
distinguish them otherwise and more precisely.  Already in very
early times two such proposals of change must have been made,
each of which found a field for its diffusion.  In the one case
they employed for the sibilant--for which the Phoenician alphabet
furnished two signs, the fourteenth ( --"id:/\/\") for --"id:sh" and
the eighteenth (--"id:E") for --"id:s" --not the latter, which was
in sound the more suitable, but the former; and such was in earlier
times the mode of writing in the eastern islands, in Corinth and
Corcyra, and among the Italian Achaeans.  In the other case they
substituted for the sign of --"id:i" the simple stroke --"id:I",
which was by far the more usual, and at no very late date became
at least so far general that the broken --"id:iota S" everywhere
disappeared, although individual communities retained the --"id:s"
in the form --"id:/\/\" alongside of the --"I".--III.  Of later
date is the substitution of --"id:\/" for --"id:/\" (--"id:lambda")
which might readily be confounded with --"id:GAMMA gamma".  This we
meet with in Athens and Boeotia, while Corinth and the communities
dependent on Corinth attained the same object by giving
to the --"id:gamma" the semicircular form --"id:C" instead of the
hook-shape.--IV.  The forms for --"id:p" --"id:P (with broken-loop)"
and --"id:r" --"id:P", likewise very liable to be confounded, were
distinguished by transforming the latter into --"id:R"; which more
recent form was not used by the Greeks of Asia Minor, the Cretans,
the Italian Achaeans, and a few other districts, but on the other
hand greatly preponderated both in Greece proper and in Magna
Graecia and Sicily.  Still the older form of the --"id:r" --"id:P"
did not so early and so completely disappear there as the older
form of the --"id:l"; this alteration therefore beyond doubt is to
be placed later.--V.  The differentiating of the long and short -e
and the long and short -o remained in the earlier times confined
to the Greeks of Asia Minor and of the islands of the Aegean Sea.

All these technical improvements are of a like nature and from a
historical point of view of like value, in so far as each of them
arose at a definite time and at a definite place and thereafter
took its own mode of diffusion and found its special development.
The excellent investigation of Kirchhoff (-Studien zur Geschichte
des griechischen Alphabets-), which has thrown a clear light on
the previously so obscure history of the Hellenic alphabet, and has
also furnished essential data for the earliest relations between the
Hellenes and Italians--establishing, in particular, incontrovertibly
the previously uncertain home of the Etruscan alphabet--is affected
by a certain one-sidedness in so far as it lays proportionally too
great stress on a single one of these proposals.  If systems are
here to be distinguished at all, we may not divide the alphabets into
two classes according to the value of the --"id:X" as --"id:zeta"
or as --"id:chi", but we shall have to distinguish the alphabet
of 23 from that of 25 or 26 letters, and perhaps further in this
latter case to distinguish the Ionic of Asia Minor, from which the
later common alphabet proceeded, from the common Greek of earlier
times.  In dealing, however, with the different proposals for
the modification of the alphabet the several districts followed
an essentially eclectic course, so that one was received here and
another there; and it is just in this respect that the history of
the Greek alphabet is so instructive, because it shows how particular
groups of the Greek lands exchanged improvements in handicraft
and art, while others exhibited no such reciprocity.  As to Italy
in particular we have already called attention to the remarkable
contrast between the Achaean agricultural towns and the Chalcidic
and Doric colonies of a more mercantile character (x. Iono-Dorian
Towns); in the former the primitive forms were throughout retained,
in the latter the improved forms were adopted, even those which
coming from different quarters were somewhat inconsistent, such
as the --"id:C" --"id:gamma" alongside of the --"id:\/" --"id:l".
The Italian alphabets proceed, as Kirchhoff has shown, wholly
from the alphabet of the Italian Greeks and in fact from the
Chalcidico-Doric; but that the Etruscans and Latins received their
alphabet not the one from the other but both directly from the
Greeks, is placed beyond doubt especially by the different form of
the --"id:r".  For, while of the four modifications of the alphabet
above described which concern the Italian Greeks (the fifth
was confined to Asia Minor) the first three were already carried
out before the alphabet passed to the Etruscans and Latins, the
differentiation of --"id:p" and --"id:r" had not yet taken place
when it came to Etruria, but on the other hand had at least begun
when the Latins received it; for which reason the Etruscans do
not at all know the form -"id:R" for -"id:r", whereas among the
Faliscans and the Latins, with the single exception of the Dressel
vase (xiv. Note 14 ), the younger form is met with exclusively.

12.  I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

13.  That the Etruscans always were without the koppa, seems
not doubtful; for not only is no sure trace of it to be met with
elsewhere, but it is wanting in the model alphabet of the Galassi
vase.  The attempt to show its presence in the syllabarium of the
latter is at any rate mistaken, for the syllabarium can and does
only take notice of the Etruscan letters that were afterwards
in common use, and to these the koppa notoriously did not belong;
moreover the sign placed at the close cannot well from its position
have any other value than that of the -f, which was in fact the last
letter in the Etruscan alphabet, and which could not be omitted in
a syllabarium exhibiting the variations of that alphabet from its
model.  It is certainly surprising that the koppa should be absent
from the Greek alphabet that came to Etruria, when it otherwise
so long maintained its place in the Chalcidico-Doric ; but this
may well have been a local peculiarity of the town whose alphabet
first reached Etruria.  Caprice and accident have at all times had
a share in determining whether a sign becoming superfluous shall
be retained or dropped from the alphabet; thus the Attic alphabet
lost the eighteenth Phoenician sign, but retained the others which
had disappeared from the -u.

14.  The golden bracelet of Praeneste recently brought to light
(Mitth. der rom. Inst. 1887), far the oldest of the intelligible
monuments of the Latin language and Latin writing, shows the older
form of the -"id:m"; the enigmatic clay vase from the Quirinal
(published by Dressel in the Annali dell Instituto, 1880) shows
the older form of the -"id:r".

15.  At this period we shall have to place that recorded form of the
Twelve Tables, which subsequently lay before the Roman philologues,
and of which we possess fragments.  Beyond doubt the code was
at its very origin committed to writing; but that those scholars
themselves referred their text not to the original exemplar, but to
an official document written down after the Gallic conflagration,
is proved by the story of the Tables having undergone reproduction
at that time.  This enables us easily to explain how their text by
no means exhibited the oldest orthography, which was not unknown to
them; even apart from the consideration that in the case of such
a written document, employed, moreover, for the purpose of being
committed to memory by the young, a philologically exact transmission
cannot possibly be assumed.

16.  This is the inscription of the bracelet of Praeneste which
has been mentioned at xiv, note 14.  On the other hand even on the
Ficoroni cista -"id:C" has the later form of -"id:K".

17.  Thus -"id:C" represents -Gaius-; -"id:CN" -Gnaeus-; while
-"id:K" stands for -Kaeso-.  With the more recent abbreviations of
course this is not the case; in these -"id:gamma" is represented
not by -"id:C", but by -"id:G" (-GAL- -Galeria-), --"id:kappa", as
a rule, by -"id:C" (-C- -centum- -COS- -consul; -COL -Collina-), or
before -"id:a" by -"id:K" (-KAR- -karmetalia-; -MERK- -merkatus-).
For they expressed for a time the sound --k before the vowels -e
-i -o and before all consonants by -"id:C", before -a on the other
hand by -"id:K", before -u by the old sign of the koppa -"id:Q".

18.  If this view is correct, the origin of the Homeric poems (though
of course not exactly that of the redaction in which we now have
them) must have been far anterior to the age which Herodotus assigns
for the flourishing of Homer (100 before Rome); for the introduction
of the Hellenic alphabet into Italy, as well as the beginning of
intercourse at all between Hellas and Italy, belongs only to the
post-Homeric period.

19.  Just as the old Saxon -writan- signifies properly to tear,
thence to write.

20.  The enigma as to how the Latins came to employ the Greek sign
corresponding to -v for the -f quite different in sound, has been
solved by the bracelet of Praeneste (xiv. Developments Of Alphabets
in Italy, note) with its -fhefhaked- for -fecit-, and thereby at the
same time the derivation of the Latin alphabet from the Chalcidian
colonies of Lower Italy has been confirmed.  For in a Boeotian
inscription belonging to the same alphabet we find in the word
-fhekadamoe-(Gustav Meyer, Griech. Grammatik, sec. 244, ap. fin.)
the same combination of sound, and an aspirated v might certainly
approximate in sound to the Latin -f.

20.  -Ratio Tuscanica,: cavum aedium Tuscanicum.-

21.  When Varro (ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31; comp. Plutarch
Num. 8) affirms that the Romans for more than one hundred and
seventy years worshipped the gods without images, he is evidently
thinking of this primitive piece of carving, which, according to
the conventional chronology, was dedicated between 176 and 219, and,
beyond doubt, was the first statue of the gods, the consecration
of which was mentioned in the authorities which Varro had before
him.  Comp, above, XIV.  Development of Alphabets in Italy.

22.  I. XIII. Handicrafts

23.  I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

24.  I. XII. Pontifices




Chapter XV

Art



Artistic Endowment of the Italians


Poetry is impassioned language, and its modulation is melody.  While
in this sense no people is without poetry and music, some nations
have received a pre-eminent endowment of poetic gifts.  The Italian
nation, however, was not and is not one of these.  The Italian is
deficient in the passion of the heart, in the longing to idealize
what is human and to confer humanity on what is lifeless, which
form the very essence of poetic art.  His acuteness of perception
and his graceful versatility enabled him to excel in irony and in
the vein of tale-telling which we find in Horace and Boccaccio,
in the humorous pleasantries of love and song which are presented
in Catullus and in the good popular songs of Naples, above all in
the lower comedy and in farce.  Italian soil gave birth in ancient
times to burlesque tragedy, and in modern times to mock-heroic
poetry.  In rhetoric and histrionic art especially no other nation
equalled or equals the Italians.  But in the more perfect kinds of
art they have hardly advanced beyond dexterity of execution, and
no epoch of their literature has produced a true epos or a genuine
drama.  The very highest literary works that have been successfully
produced in Italy, divine poems like Dante's Commedia, and historical
treatises such as those of Sallust and Macchiavelli, of Tacitus and
Colletta, are pervaded by a passion more rhetorical than spontaneous.
Even in music, both in ancient and modern times, really creative
talent has been far less conspicuous than the accomplishment which
speedily assumes the character of virtuosoship, and enthrones in
the room of genuine and genial art a hollow and heart-withering
idol.  The field of the inward in art--so far as we may in the case
of art distinguish an inward and an outward at all--is not that
which has fallen to the Italian as his special province; the power
of beauty, to have its full effect upon him, must be placed not
ideally before his mind, but sensuously before his eyes.  Accordingly
he is thoroughly at home in architecture, painting, and sculpture;
in these he was during the epoch of ancient culture the best disciple
of the Hellenes, and in modern times he has become the master of
all nations.


Dance, Music, and Song in Latium


From the defectiveness of our traditional information it is
not possible to trace the development of artistic ideas among the
several groups of nations in Italy; and in particular we are no
longer in a position to speak of the poetry of Italy; we can only
speak of that of Latium.  Latin poetry, like that of every other
nation, began in the lyrical form, or, to speak more correctly,
sprang out of those primitive festal rejoicings, in which dance,
music, and song were still inseparably blended.  It is remarkable,
however, that in the most ancient religious usages dancing, and
next to dancing instrumental music, were far more prominent than
song.  In the great procession, with which the Roman festival of
victory was opened, the chief place, next to the images of the gods
and the champions, was assigned to the dancers grave and merry.
The grave dancers were arranged in three groups of men, youths,
and boys, all clad in red tunics with copper belts, with swords
and short lances, the men being moreover furnished with helmets,
and generally in full armed attire.  The merry dancers were divided
into two companies--"the sheep" in sheep-skins with a party-coloured
over-garment, and "the goats" naked down to the waist, with a buck's
skin thrown over them.  In like manner the "leapers" (-salii-)
were perhaps the most ancient and sacred of all the priesthoods,(1)
and dancers (-ludii-, -ludiones-) were indispensable in all public
processions, and particularly at funeral solemnities; so that
dancing became even in ancient times a common trade.  But, wherever
the dancers made their appearance, there appeared also the musicians
or--which was in the earliest times the same thing--the pipers.
They too were never wanting at a sacrifice, at a marriage, or at
a funeral; and by the side of the primitive public priesthood of
the "leapers" there was ranged, of equal antiquity although of far
inferior rank, the guild of the "pipers" (-collegium tibicinum-(2)),
whose true character as strolling musicians is evinced by their
ancient privilege--maintained even in spite of the strictness
of Roman police--of wandering through the streets at their annual
festival, wearing masks and full of sweet wine.  While dancing thus
presents itself as an honourable function and music as one subordinate
but still necessary, so that public corporations were instituted
for both of them, poetry appears more as a matter incidental and,
in some measure, indifferent, whether it may have come into existence
on its own account or to serve as an accompaniment to the movements
of the dancers.


Religious Chants


The earliest chant, in the view of the Romans, was that which the
leaves sang to themselves in the green solitude of the forest.  The
whispers and pipings of the "favourable spirit" (-faunus-, from
-favere-) in the grove were reproduced for men, by those who had
the gift of listening to him, in rhythmically measured language
(-casmen-, afterwards -carmen-, from -canere-).  Of a kindred nature
to these soothsaying songs of inspired men and women (-vates-) were
the incantations properly so called, the formulae for conjuring
away diseases and other troubles, and the evil spells by which they
prevented rain and called down lightning or even enticed the seed
from one field to another; only in these instances, probably from
the outset, formulae of mere sounds appear side by side with formulae
of words.(3)  More firmly rooted in tradition and equally ancient
were the religious litanies which were sung and danced by the Salii
and other priesthoods; the only one of which that has come down to
us, a dance-chant of the Arval Brethren in honour of Mars probably
composed to be sung in alternate parts, deserves a place here.

-Enos, Lases, iuvate!
Ne velue rue, Marmar, sins incurrere in pleores!
Satur fu, fere Mars! limen sali! sta! berber!
Semunis alternei advocapit conctos!
Enos, Marmar, iuvato!
Triumpe!-

Which may be thus interpreted:

To the gods:
-Nos, Lares, iuvate!
Ne veluem (= malam luem) ruem (= ruinam), Mamers,
   sinas incurrere in plures!
Satur esto, fere Mars!

To the individual brethren:
In limen insili! sta! verbera (limen?)!

To all the brethren:
Semones alterni advocate cunctos!

To the god:
Nos, Mamers, iuvato!

To the individual brethren:
Tripudia!-(4)

The Latin of this chant and of kindred fragments of the Salian
songs, which were regarded even by the philologues of the Augustan
age as the oldest documents of their mother-tongue, is related
to the Latin of the Twelve Tables somewhat as the language of the
Nibelungen is related to the language of Luther; and we may perhaps
compare these venerable litanies, as respects both language and
contents, with the Indian Vedas.


Panegyrics and Lampoons


Lyrical panegyrics and lampoons belonged to a later epoch.  We might
infer from the national character of the Italians that satirical
songs must have abounded in Latium in ancient times, even if their
prevalence had not been attested by the very ancient measures of
police directed against them.  But the panegyrical chants became
of more importance.  When a burgess was borne to burial, the bier
was followed by a female relative or friend, who, accompanied by a
piper, sang his dirge (-nenia-).  In like manner at banquets boys,
who according to the fashion of those days attended their fathers
even at feasts out of their own houses, sang by turns songs in
praise of their ancestors, sometimes to the pipe, sometimes simply
reciting them without accompaniment (-assa voce canere-).  The custom
of men singing in succession at banquets was presumably borrowed
from the Greeks, and that not till a later age.  We know no further
particulars of these ancestral lays; but it is self-evident that
they must have attempted description and narration and thus have
developed, along with and out of the lyrical element, the features
of epic poetry.


The Masked Farce


Other elements of poetry were called into action in the primitive
popular carnival, the comic dance or -satura-,(5) which beyond
doubt reached back to a period anterior to the separation of the
stocks.  On such occasions song would never be wanting; and the
circumstances under which such pastimes were exhibited, chiefly
at public festivals and marriages, as well as the mainly practical
shape which they certainly assumed, naturally suggested that several
dancers, or sets of dancers, should take up reciprocal parts;
so that the singing thus came to be associated with a species of
acting, which of course was chiefly of a comical and often of a
licentious character.  In this way there arose not merely alternative
chants, such as afterwards went by the name of Fescennine songs, but
also the elements of a popular comedy--which were in this instance
planted in a soil admirably adapted for their growth, as an acute
sense of the outward and the comic, and a delight in gesticulation
and masquerade have ever been leading traits of Italian character.

No remains have been preserved of these -incunabula- of the Roman
epos and drama.  That the ancestral lays were traditional is
self-evident, and is abundantly demonstrated by the fact that they
were regularly recited by children; but even in the time of Cato
the Elder they had completely passed into oblivion.  The comedies
again, if it be allowable so to name them, were at this period and
long afterwards altogether improvised.  Consequently nothing of
this popular poetry and popular melody could be handed down but
the measure, the accompaniment of music and choral dancing, and
perhaps the masks.


Metre


Whether what we call metre existed in the earlier times is doubtful;
the litany of the Arval Brethren scarcely accommodates itself to
an outwardly fixed metrical system, and presents to us rather the
appearance of an animated recitation.  On the other hand we find in
subsequent times a very ancient rhythm, the so-called Saturnian(6)
or Faunian metre, which is foreign to the Greeks, and may be
conjectured to have arisen contemporaneously with the oldest Latin
popular poetry.  The following poem, belonging, it is true, to a
far later age, may give an idea of it:--


Quod re sua difeidens--aspere afleicta

Parens timens heic vovit--voto hoc soluto
___
Decuma facta poloucta--leibereis lubentis
                 ____          _____
Donu danunt__hercolei--maxsume--mereto
      _____
Semol te orant se voti--crebro con__demnes.

__--'__--'__--'__^/ __--'__--'__--'_^


That which, misfortune dreading--sharply to afflict him, An anxious
parent vowed here,--when his wish was granted, A sacred tenth for
banquet--gladly give his children to Hercules a tribute--most of
all deserving; And now they thee beseech, that--often thou wouldst
hear them.

Panegyrics as well as comic songs appear to have been uniformly
sung in Saturnian metre, of course to the pipe, and presumably in
such a way that the -caesura- in particular in each line was strongly
marked; and in alternate singing the second singer probably took
up the verse at this point.  The Saturnian measure is, like every
other occurring in Roman and Greek antiquity, based on quantity;
but of all the antique metres perhaps it is the least thoroughly
elaborated, for besides many other liberties it allows itself the
greatest license in omitting the short syllables, and it is at the
same time the most imperfect in construction, for these iambic and
trochaic half-lines opposed to each other were but little fitted
to develop a rhythmical structure adequate for the purposes of the
higher poetry.


Melody


The fundamental elements of the national music and choral dancing
in Latium, which must likewise have been established during this
period, are buried for us in oblivion; except that the Latin pipe
is reported to have been a short and slender instrument, provided
with only four holes, and originally, as the name shows, made out
of the light thighbone of some animal.


Masks


Lastly, the masks used in after times for the standing characters
of the Latin popular comedy or the Atellana, as it was called:
Maccus the harlequin, Bucco the glutton, Pappus the good papa, and
the wise Dossennus--masks which have been cleverly and strikingly
compared to the two servants, the -pantalon- and the -dottore-, in
the Italian comedy of Pulcinello--already belonged to the earliest
Latin popular art.  That they did so cannot of course be strictly
proved; but as the use of masks for the face in Latium in the case
of the national drama was of immemorial antiquity, while the Greek
drama in Rome did not adopt them for a century after its first
establishment, as, moreover, those Atellane masks were of decidedly
Italian origin, and as, in fine, the origination as well as
the execution of improvised pieces cannot well be conceived apart
from fixed masks assigning once for all to the player his proper
position throughout the piece, we must associate fixed masks with
the rudiments of the Roman drama, or rather regard them as constituting
those rudiments themselves.


Earliest Hellenic Influences


If our information respecting the earliest indigenous culture and
art of Latium is so scanty, it may easily be conceived that our
knowledge will be still scantier regarding the earliest impulses
imparted in this respect to the Romans from without.  In a certain
sense we may include under this head their becoming acquainted with
foreign languages, particularly the Greek.  To this latter language, of
course, the Latins generally were strangers, as was shown by their
enactment in respect to the Sibylline oracles;(7) but an acquaintance
with it must have been not at all uncommon in the case of merchants.
The same may be affirmed of the knowledge of reading and writing,
closely connected as it was with the knowledge of Greek.(8)  The
culture of the ancient world, however, was not based either
on the knowledge of foreign languages or on elementary technical
accomplishments.  An influence more important than any thus imparted
was exercised over the development of Latium by the elements of the
fine arts, which were already in very early times received from the
Hellenes.  For it was the Hellenes alone, and not the Phoenicians
or the Etruscans, that in this respect exercised an influence on
the Italians.  We nowhere find among the latter any stimulus of
the fine arts which can be referred to Carthage or Caere, and the
Phoenician and Etruscan forms of civilization may be in general
perhaps classed with those that are hybrid, and for that reason
not further productive.(9)  But the influence of Greece did not
fail to bear fruit.  The Greek seven-stringed lyre, the "strings"
(-fides-, from --sphidei--, gut; also -barbitus-, --barbitos--),
was not like the pipe indigenous in Latium, and was always regarded
there as an instrument of foreign origin; but the early period at
which it gained a footing is demonstrated partly by the barbarous
mutilation of its Greek name, partly by its being employed even in
ritual.(10)  That some of the legendary stores of the Greeks during
this period found their way into Latium, is shown by the ready
reception of Greek works of sculpture with their representations
based so thoroughly upon the poetical treasures of the nation; and
the old Latin barbarous conversions of Persephone into Prosepna,
Bellerophontes into Melerpanta, Kyklops into Cocles, Laomedon into
Alumentus, Ganymedes into Catamitus, Neilos into Melus, Semele into
Stimula, enable us to perceive at how remote a period such stories
had been heard and repeated by the Latins.  Lastly and especially,
the Roman chief festival or festival of the city (-ludi maximi-,
-Romani-) must in all probability have owed, if not its origin,
at any rate its later arrangements to Greek influence.  It was an
extraordinary thanksgiving festival celebrated in honour of the
Capitoline Jupiter and the gods dwelling along with him, ordinarily
in pursuance of a vow made by the general before battle, and
therefore usually observed on the return home of the burgess-force
in autumn.  A festal procession proceeded toward the Circus staked
off between the Palatine and Aventine, and furnished with an arena
and places for spectators; in front the whole boys of Rome, arranged
according to the divisions of the burgess-force, on horseback and
on foot; then the champions and the groups of dancers which we have
described above, each with their own music; thereafter the servants
of the gods with vessels of frankincense and other sacred utensils;
lastly the biers with the images of the gods themselves.  The
spectacle itself was the counterpart of war as it was waged in
primitive times, a contest on chariots, on horseback, and on foot.
First there ran the war-chariots, each of which carried in Homeric
fashion a charioteer and a combatant; then the combatants who had
leaped off; then the horsemen, each of whom appeared after the Roman
style of fighting with a horse which he rode and another led by the
hand (-desultor-); lastly, the champions on foot, naked to the girdle
round their loins, measured their powers in racing, wrestling, and
boxing.  In each species of contest there was but one competition,
and that between not more than two competitors.  A chaplet rewarded
the victor, and the honour in which the simple branch which formed
the wreath was held is shown by the law permitting it to be laid
on the bier of the victor when he died.  The festival thus lasted
only one day, and the competitions probably still left sufficient
time on that day for the carnival proper, at which the groups of
dancers may have displayed their art and above all exhibited their
farces; and doubtless other representations also, such as competitions
in juvenile horsemanship, found a place.(11)  The honours won in
real war also played their part in this festival; the brave warrior
exhibited on this day the equipments of the antagonist whom he had
slain, and was decorated with a chaplet by the grateful community
just as was the victor in the competition.

Such was the nature of the Roman festival of victory or city-festival;
and the other public festivities of Rome may be conceived to
have been of a similar character, although less ample in point of
resources.  At the celebration of a public funeral dancers regularly
bore a part, and along with them, if there was to be any further
exhibition, horse-racers; in that case the burgesses were specially
invited beforehand to the funeral by the public crier.

But this city-festival, so intimately bound up with the manners
and exercises of the Romans, coincides in all essentials with the
Hellenic national festivals: more especially in the fundamental
idea of combining a religious solemnity and a competition in warlike
sports; in the selection of the several exercises, which at the
Olympic festival, according to Pindar's testimony, consisted from
the first in running, wrestling, boxing, chariot-racing, and throwing
the spear and stone; in the nature of the prize of victory, which
in Rome as well as in the Greek national festivals was a chaplet,
and in the one case as well as in the other was assigned not to the
charioteer, but to the owner of the team; and lastly in introducing
the feats and rewards of general patriotism in connection with
the general national festival.  This agreement cannot have been
accidental, but must have been either a remnant of the primitive
connection between the peoples, or a result of the earliest
international intercourse; and the probabilities preponderate in
favour of the latter hypothesis.  The city-festival, in the form
in which we are acquainted with it, was not one of the oldest
institutions of Rome, for the Circus itself was only laid out in the
later regal period;(12) and just as the reform of the constitution
then took place under Greek influence,(13) the city-festival may
have been at the same time so far transformed as to combine Greek
races with, and eventually to a certain extent to substitute them
for, an older mode of amusement--the "leap" (-triumpus-,(14)), and
possibly swinging, which was a primitive Italian custom and long
continued in use at the festival on the Alban mount.  Moreover,
while there is some trace of the use of the war-chariot in actual
warfare in Hellas, no such trace exists in Latium.  Lastly, the
Greek term --stadion-- (Doric --spadion--) was at a very early period
transferred to the Latin language, retaining its signification,
as -spatium-; and there exists even an express statement that the
Romans derived their horse and chariot races from the people of
Thurii, although, it is true, another account derives them from
Etruria.  It thus appears that, in addition to the impulses imparted
by the Hellenes in music and poetry, the Romans were indebted to
them for the fruitful idea of gymnastic competitions.


Character of Poetry and of Education in Latium


Thus there not only existed in Latium the same fundamental elements
out of which Hellenic culture and art grew, but Hellenic culture
and art themselves exercised a powerful influence over Latium in
very early times.  Not only did the Latins possess the elements
of gymnastic training, in so far as the Roman boy learned like
every farmer's son to manage horses and waggon and to handle the
hunting-spear, and as in Rome every burgess was at the same time
a soldier; but the art of dancing was from the first an object
of public care, and a powerful impulse was further given to such
culture at an early period by the introduction of the Hellenic
games.  The lyrical poetry and tragedy of Hellas grew out of songs
similar to the festal lays of Rome; the ancestral lay contained the
germs of epos, the masked farce the germs of comedy; and in this
field also Grecian influences were not wanting.

In such circumstances it is the more remarkable that these germs
either did not spring up at all, or were soon arrested in their
growth.  The bodily training of the Latin youth continued to be
solid and substantial, but far removed from the idea of artistic
culture for the body, such as was the aim of Hellenic gymnastics.
The public games of the Hellenes when introduced into Italy, changed
not so much their formal rules as their essential character.  While
they were intended to be competitions of burgesses and beyond doubt
were so at first in Rome, they became contests of professional
riders and professional boxers, and, while the proof of free and
Hellenic descent formed the first condition for participating in
the Greek festal games, those of Rome soon passed into the hands
of freedmen and foreigners and even of persons not free at all.
Consequently the circle of fellow-competitors became converted into
a public of spectators, and the chaplet of the victorious champion,
which has been with justice called the badge of Hellas, was afterwards
hardly ever mentioned in Latium.

A similar fate befel poetry and her sisters.  The Greeks and Germans
alone possess a fountain of song that wells up spontaneously; from
the golden vase of the Muses only a few drops have fallen on the
green soil of Italy.  There was no formation of legend in the strict
sense there.  The Italian gods were abstractions and remained such;
they never became elevated into or, as some may prefer to say,
obscured under, a true personal shape.  In like manner men, even the
greatest and noblest, remained in the view of the Italian without
exception mortal, and were not, as in the longing recollection
and affectionately cherished tradition of Greece, elevated in the
conception of the multitude into god-like heroes.  But above all
no development of national poetry took place in Latium.  It is
the deepest and noblest effect of the fine arts and above all of
poetry, that they break down the barriers of civil communities and
create out of tribes a nation and out of the nations a world.  As
in the present day by means of our cosmopolitan literature the
distinctions of civilized nations are done away, so Greek poetic
art transformed the narrow and egoistic sense of tribal relationship
into the consciousness of Hellenic nationality, and this again
into the consciousness of a common humanity.  But in Latium nothing
similar occurred.  There might be poets in Alba and in Rome, but there
arose no Latin epos, nor even--what were still more conceivable--a
catechism for the Latin farmer of a kind similar to the "Works and
Days" of Hesiod.  The Latin federal festival might well have become
a national festival of the fine arts, like the Olympian and Isthmian
games of the Greeks.  A cycle of legends might well have gathered
around the fall of Alba, such as was woven around the conquest of
Ilion, and every community and every noble clan of Latium might
have discovered in it, or imported into it, the story of its own
origin.  But neither of these results took place, and Italy remained
without national poetry or art.

The inference which of necessity follows from these facts, that the
development of the fine arts in Latium was rather a shrivelling up
than an expanding into bloom, is confirmed in a manner even now not
to be mistaken by tradition.  The beginnings of poetry everywhere,
perhaps, belong rather to women than to men; the spell of incantation
and the chant for the dead pertain pre-eminently to the former,
and not without reason the spirits of song, the Casmenae or Camenae
and the Carmentis of Latium, like the Muses of Hellas, were conceived
as feminine.  But the time came in Hellas, when the poet relieved
the songstress and Apollo took his place at the head of the Muses.
In Latium there was no national god of song, and the older Latin
language had no designation for the poet.(15)  The power of song
emerging there was out of all proportion weaker, and was rapidly
arrested in its growth.  The exercise of the fine arts was there
early restricted, partly to women and children, partly to incorporated
or unincorporated tradesmen.  We have already mentioned that funeral
chants were sung by women and banquet-lays by boys; the religious
litanies also were chiefly executed by children.  The musicians formed
an incorporated, the dancers and the wailing women (-praeficae-)
unincorporated, trades.  While dancing, music, and singing remained
constantly in Greece--as they were originally also in Latium--reputable
employments redounding to the honour of the burgess and of the
community to which he belonged, in Latium the better portion of the
burgesses drew more and more aloof from these vain arts, and that
the more decidedly, in proportion as art came to be more publicly
exhibited and more thoroughly penetrated by the quickening impulses
derived from other lands.  The use of the native pipe was sanctioned,
but the lyre remained despised; and while the national amusement of
masks was allowed, the foreign amusements of the -palaestra- were
not only regarded with indifference, but esteemed disgraceful.  While
the fine arts in Greece became more and more the common property of
the Hellenes individually and collectively and thereby became the
means of developing a universal culture, they gradually disappeared
in Latium from the thoughts and feelings of the people; and, as
they degenerated into utterly insignificant handicrafts, the idea
of a general national culture to be communicated to youth never
suggested itself at all.  The education of youth remained entirely
confined within the limits of the narrowest domesticity.  The boy
never left his father's side, and accompanied him not only to the
field with the plough and the sickle, but also to the house of
a friend or to the council-hall, when his father was invited as a
guest or summoned to the senate.  This domestic education was well
adapted to preserve man wholly for the household and wholly for
the state.  The permanent intercommunion of life between father
and son, and the mutual reverence felt by adolescence for ripened
manhood and by the mature man for the innocence of youth, lay at the
root of the steadfastness of the domestic and political traditions,
of the closeness of the family bond, and in general of the grave
earnestness (-gravitas-) and character of moral worth in Roman life.
This mode of educating youth was in truth one of those institutions
of homely and almost unconscious wisdom, which are as simple as
they are profound.  But amidst the admiration which it awakens we
may not overlook the fact that it could only be carried out, and
was only carried out, by the sacrifice of true individual culture
and by a complete renunciation of the equally charming and perilous
gifts of the Muses.


Dance, Music, and Song among the Sabellians and Etruscans


Regarding the development of the fine arts among the Etruscans
and Sabellians our knowledge is little better than none.(16)  We
can only notice the fact that in Etruria the dancers (-histri-,
-histriones-) and the pipe-players (-subulones-) early made a trade
of their art, probably earlier even than in Rome, and exhibited
themselves in public not only at home, but also in Rome for small
remuneration and less honour.  It is a circumstance more remarkable
that at the Etruscan national festival, in the exhibition of which
the whole twelve cities were represented by a federal priest, games
were given like those of the Roman city-festival; we are, however,
no longer in a position to answer the question which it suggests,
how far the Etruscans were more successful than the Latins in
attaining a national form of fine art beyond that of the individual
communities.  On the other hand a foundation probably was laid in
Etruria, even in early times, for that insipid accumulation of learned
lumber, particularly of a theological and astrological nature, by
virtue of which afterwards, when amidst the general decay antiquarian
dilettantism began to flourish, the Tuscans divided with the Jews,
Chaldeans, and Egyptians the honour of being admired as primitive
sources of divine wisdom.  We know still less, if possible, of
Sabellian art; but that of course by no means warrants the inference
that it was inferior to that of the neighbouring stocks.  On the
contrary, it may be conjectured from what we otherwise know of
the character of the three chief races of Italy, that in artistic
gifts the Samnites approached nearest to the Hellenes and the
Etruscans were farthest removed from them; and a sort of confirmation
of this hypothesis is furnished by the fact, that the most gifted
and most original of the Roman poets, such as Naevius, Ennius,
Lucilius, and Horace, belonged to the Samnite lands, whereas
Etruria has almost no representatives in Roman literature except
the Arretine Maecenas, the most insufferable of all heart-withered
and affected(17) court-poets, and the Volaterran Persius, the true
ideal of a conceited and languid, poetry-smitten, youth.


Earliest Italian Architecture


The elements of architecture were, as has been already indicated,
a primitive common possession of the stocks.  The dwelling-house
constitutes the first attempt of structural art; and it was the
same among Greeks and Italians.  Built of wood, and covered with a
pointed roof of straw or shingles it formed a square dwelling-chamber,
which let out the smoke and let in the light by an opening in the
roof corresponding with a hole for carrying off the rain in the
ground (-cavum aedium-).  Under this "black roof" (-atrium-) the
meals were prepared and consumed; there the household gods were
worshipped, and the marriage bed and the bier were set out; there
the husband received his guests, and the wife sat spinning amid the
circle of her maidens.  The house had no porch, unless we take as
such the uncovered space between the house door and the street,
which obtained its name -vestibulum-, i. e.  dressing-place, from
the circumstance that the Romans were in the habit of going about
within doors in their tunics, and only wrapped the toga around
them when they went abroad.  There was, moreover, no division of
apartments except that sleeping and store closets might be provided
around the dwelling-room; and still less were there stairs, or
stories placed one above another.


Earliest Hellenic Influence


Whether, or to what extent, a national Italian architecture arose
o ut of these beginnings can scarcely be determined, for in this
field Greek influence, even in the earliest times, had a very
powerful effect and almost wholly overgrew such national attempts
as possibly had preceded it.  The very oldest Italian architecture
with which we are acquainted is not much less under the influence
of that of Greece than the architecture of the Augustan age.  The
primitive tombs of Caere and Alsium, and probably the oldest one
also of those recently discovered at Praeneste, have been, exactly
like the --thesauroi--of Orchomenos and Mycenae, roofed over with
courses of stone placed one above another, gradually overlapping,
and closed by a large stone cover.  A very ancient building at
the city wall of Tusculum was roofed in the same way, and so was
originally the well-house (-tullianum-) at the foot of the Capitol,
till the top was pulled down to make room for another building.
The gates constructed on the same system are entirely similar in
Arpinum and in Mycenae.  The tunnel which drains the Alban lake(18)
presents the greatest resemblance to that of lake Copais.  What are
called Cyclopean ring-walls frequently occur in Italy, especially
in Etruria, Umbria, Latium, and Sabina, and decidedly belong in
point of design to the most ancient buildings of Italy, although
the greater portion of those now extant were probably not executed
till a much later age, several of them certainly not till the
seventh century of the city.  They are, just like those of Greece,
sometimes quite roughly formed of large unwrought blocks of rock
with smaller stones inserted between them, sometimes disposed
in square horizontal courses,(19) sometimes composed of polygonal
dressed blocks fitting into each other.  The selection of one or
other of these systems was doubtless ordinarily determined by the
material, and accordingly the polygonal masonry does not occur in
Rome, where in the most ancient times tufo alone was employed for
building.  The resemblance in the case of the two former and simpler
styles may perhaps be traceable to the similarity of the materials
employed and of the object in view in building; but it can hardly
be deemed accidental that the artistic polygonal wall-masonry, and
the gate with the path leading up to it universally bending to the
left and so exposing the unshielded right side of the assailant to
the defenders, belong to the Italian fortresses as well as to the
Greek.  The facts are significant that in that portion of Italy
which was not reduced to subjection by the Hellenes but yet was
in lively intercourse with them, the true polygonal masonry was at
home, and it is found in Etruria only at Pyrgi and at the towns,
not very far distant from it, of Cosa and Saturnia; as the design
of the walls of Pyrgi, especially when we take into account the
significant name ("towers"), may just as certainly be ascribed to
the Greeks as that of the walls of Tiryns, in them most probably
there still stands before our eyes one of the models from which
the Italians learned how to build their walls.  The temple in fine,
which in the period of the empire was called the Tuscanic and was
regarded as a kind of style co-ordinate with the various Greek
temple-structures, not only generally resembled the Greek temple
in being an enclosed space (-cello-) usually quadrangular, over
which walls and columns raised aloft a sloping roof, but was also
in details, especially in the column itself and its architectural
features, thoroughly dependent on the Greek system.  It is in accordance
with all these facts probable, as it is credible of itself, that
Italian architecture previous to its contact with the Hellenes was
confined to wooden huts, abattis, and mounds of earth and stones,
and that construction in stone was only adopted in consequence of
the example and the better tools of the Greeks.  It is scarcely
to be doubted that the Italians first learned from them the use of
iron, and derived from them the preparation of mortar (-cal[e]x-,
-calecare-, from --chaliz--), the machine (-machina-, --meichanei--),
the measuring-rod (-groma-, a corruption from --gnomon--, --gnoma--),
and the artificial latticework (-clathri-, --kleithron--).  Accordingly
we can scarcely speak of an architecture peculiarly Italian.  Yet
in the woodwork of the Italian dwelling-house--alongside of
alterations produced by Greek influence--various peculiarities may
have been retained or even for the first time developed, and these
again may have exercised a reflex influence on the building of
the Italian temples.  The architectural development of the house
proceeded in Italy from the Etruscans.  The Latin and even the
Sabellian still adhered to the hereditary wooden hut and to the
good old custom of assigning to the god or spirit not a consecrated
dwelling, but only a consecrated space, while the Etruscan had
already begun artistically to transform his dwelling-house, and to
erect after the model of the dwelling-house of man a temple also
for the god and a sepulchral chamber for the spirit.  That the
advance to such luxurious structures in Latium first took place
under Etruscan influence, is proved by the designation of the
oldest style of temple architecture and of the oldest style of house
architecture respectively as Tuscanic.(20) As concerns the character
of this transference, the Grecian temple probably imitated the
general outlines of the tent or dwelling-house; but it was essentially
built of hewn stone and covered with tiles, and the nature of the
stone and the baked clay suggested to the Greek the laws of necessity
and beauty.  The Etruscan on the other hand remained a stranger to
the strict Greek distinction between the dwelling of man necessarily
erected of wood and the dwelling of the gods necessarily formed
of stone.  The peculiar characteristics of the Tuscan temple--the
outline approaching nearer to a square, the higher gable, the
greater breadth of the intervals between the columns, above all,
the increased inclination of the roof and the singular projection
of the roof-corbels beyond the supporting columns--all arose out
of the greater approximation of the temple to the dwelling-house,
and out of the peculiarities of wooden architecture.


Plastic Art in Italy


The plastic and delineative arts are more recent than architecture;
the house must be built before any attempt is made to decorate
gable and walls.  It is not probable that these arts really gained
a place in Italy during the regal period of Rome; it was only
in Etruria, where commerce and piracy early gave rise to a great
concentration of riches, that art or handicraft--if the term be
preferred--obtained a footing in the earliest times.  Greek art,
when it acted on Etruria, was still, as its copy shows, at a very
primitive stage, and the Etruscans may have learned from the Greeks
the art of working in clay and metal at a period not much later than
that at which they borrowed from them the alphabet.  The silver
coins of Populonia, almost the only works that can be with any
precision assigned to this period, give no very high idea of Etruscan
artistic skill as it then stood; yet the best of the Etruscan works
in bronze, to which the later critics of art assigned so high a
place, may have belonged to this primitive age; and the Etruscan
terra-cottas also cannot have been altogether despicable, for the
oldest works in baked clay placed in the Roman temples--the statue
of the Capitoline Jupiter, and the four-horse chariot on the roof
of his temple--were executed in Veii, and the large ornaments of a
similar kind placed on the roofs of temples passed generally among
the later Romans under the name of "Tuscanic works."

On the other hand, among the Italians--not among the Sabellian
stocks merely, but even among the Latins--native sculpture and
design were at this period only coming into existence.  The most
considerable works of art appear to have been executed abroad.
We have just mentioned the statues of clay alleged to have been
executed in Veii; and very recent excavations have shown that works
in bronze made in Etruria, and furnished with Etruscan inscriptions,
circulated in Praeneste at least, if not generally throughout
Latium.  The statue of Diana in the Romano-Latin federal temple on
the Aventine, which was considered the oldest statue of a divinity
in Rome,(21) exactly resembled the Massiliot statue of the Ephesian
Artemis, and was perhaps manufactured in Velia or Massilia.  The
guilds, which from ancient times existed in Rome, of potters,
coppersmiths, and goldsmiths,(22) are almost the only proofs of
the existence of native sculpture and design there; respecting the
position of their art it is no longer possible to gain any clear
idea.

Artistic Relations and Endowments of the Etruscans and Italians

If we endeavour to obtain historical results from the archives of
the tradition and practice of primitive art, it is in the first place
manifest that Italian art, like the Italian measures and Italian
writing, developed itself not under Phoenician, but exclusively
under Hellenic influence.  There is not a single one of the aspects
of Italian art which has not found its definite model in the art
of ancient Greece; and, so far, the legend is fully warranted which
traces the manufacture of painted clay figures, beyond doubt the
most ancient form of art in Italy, to the three Greek artists,
the "moulder," "fitter," and "draughtsman," Eucheir, Diopos, and
Eugrammos, although it is more than doubtful whether this art came
directly from Corinth or came directly to Tarquinii.  There is
as little trace of any immediate imitation of oriental models as
there is of an independently-developed form of art.  The Etruscan
lapidaries adhered to the form of the beetle or -scarabaeus-, which
was originally Egyptian; but --scarabaei-- were also used as models
for carving in Greece in very early times (e. g. such a beetle-stone,
with a very ancient Greek inscription, has been found in Aegina),
and therefore they may very well have come to the Etruscans through
the Greeks.  The Italians may have bought from the Phoenician; they
learned only from the Greek.

To the further question, from what Greek stock the Etruscans in
the first instance received their art-models, a categorical answer
cannot be given; yet relations of a remarkable kind subsist between
the Etruscan and the oldest Attic art.  The three forms of art, which
were practised in Etruria at least in after times very extensively,
but in Greece only to an extent very limited, tomb-painting,
mirror-designing, and graving on stone, have been hitherto met with
on Grecian soil only in Athens and Aegina.  The Tuscan temple does
not correspond exactly either to the Doric or to the Ionic; but in
the more important points of distinction, in the course of columns
carried round the -cella-, as well as in the placing of a separate
pedestal under each particular column, the Etruscan style follows
the more recent Ionic; and it is this same Iono-Attic style of
building still pervaded by a Doric element, which in its general
design stands nearest of all the Greek styles to the Tuscan.  In
the case of Latium there is an almost total absence of any certain
traces of intercourse bearing on the history of art.  If it was--as
is indeed almost self-evident--the general relations of traffic
and intercourse that determined also the introduction of models
in art, it may be assumed with certainty that the Campanian and
Sicilian Hellenes were the instructors of Latium in art, as in
the alphabet; and the analogy between the Aventine Diana and the
Ephesian Artemis is at least not inconsistent with such an hypothesis.
Of course the older Etruscan art also served as a model for Latium.
As to the Sabellian tribes, if Greek architectural and plastic art
reached them at all, it must, like the Greek alphabet, have come
to them only through the medium of the more western Italian stocks.

If, in conclusion, we are to form a judgment respecting the artistic
endowments of the different Italian nations, we already at this
stage perceive--what becomes indeed far more obvious in the later
stages of the history of art--that while the Etruscans attained to
the practice of art at an earlier period and produced more massive
and rich workmanship, their works are inferior to those of the
Latins and Sabellians in appropriateness and utility no less than
in spirit and beauty.  This certainly is apparent, in the case of
our present epoch, only in architecture.  The polygonal wall-masonry,
as appropriate to its object as it was beautiful, was frequent in
Latium and in the inland country behind it; while in Etruria it was
rare, and not even the walls of Caere are constructed of polygonal
blocks.  Even in the religious prominence--remarkable also as
respects the history of art--assigned to the arch(23) and to the
bridge(24) in Latium, we may be allowed to perceive, as it were,
an anticipation of the future aqueducts and consular highways of
Rome.  On the other hand, the Etruscans repeated, and at the same
time corrupted, the ornamental architecture of the Greeks: for
while they transferred the laws established for building in stone
to architecture in wood, they displayed no thorough skill of
adaptation, and by the lowness of their roof and the wide intervals
between their columns gave to their temples, to use the language
of an ancient architect, a "heavy, mean, straggling, and clumsy
appearance."  The Latins found in the rich stores of Greek art
but very little that was congenial to their thoroughly realistic
tastes; but what they did adopt they appropriated truly and
heartily as their own, and in the development of the polygonal
wall-architecture perhaps excelled their instructors.  Etruscan art
is a remarkable evidence of accomplishments mechanically acquired
and mechanically retained, but it is, as little as the Chinese, an
evidence even of genial receptivity.  As scholars have long since
desisted from the attempt to derive Greek art from that of the
Etruscans, so they must, with whatever reluctance, make up their
minds to transfer the Etruscans from the first to the lowest place
in the history of Italian art.




Notes for Book I Chapter XV


1.  I. XII.  Priests

2.  I. XIII. Handicrafts

3.  Thus Cato the Elder (de R. R. 160) gives as potent against sprains
the formula: -hauat hauat hauat ista pista sista damia bodannaustra-,
which was presumably quite as obscure to its inventor as it is to
us.  Of course, along with these there were also formulae of words;
e. g.  it was a remedy for gout, to think, while fasting, on some
other person, and thrice nine times to utter the words, touching
the earth at the same time and spitting:--"I think of thee, mend
my feet.  Let the earth receive the ill, let health with me dwell"
(-terra pestem teneto, salus hie maneto-.  Varro de R. R. i. 2,
27).

4.  Each of the first five lines was repeated thrice, and the call
at the close five times.  Various  points in the interpretation are
uncertain, particularly as respects the third line.  --The three
inscriptions of the clay vase from the Quirinal (p. 277, note)
run thus: -iove sat deiuosqoi med mitat nei ted endo gosmis uirgo
sied--asted noisi ope toilesiai pakariuois--duenos med faked
(=bonus me fecit) enmanom einom dze noine (probably=die noni) med
malo statod.-Only individual words admit of being understood with
certainty; it is especially noteworthy that forms, which we have
hitherto known only as Umbrian and Oscan, like the adjective -pacer-
and the particle -einom with the value of -et, here probably meet
us withal as old-Latin.

5.  I. II. Art

6.  The name  probably  denotes  nothing but "the chant-measure,"
inasmuch as the -satura- was originally the chant sung at the
carnival (II. Art).  The god of sowing, -Saeturnus- or -Saiturnus-,
afterwards -Saturnus-, received his name from the same root; his
feast, the Saturnalia, was certainly a sort of carnival, and it is
possible that the farces were originally exhibited chiefly at this
feast.  But there are no proofs of a relation between the Satura
and the Saturnalia, and it may be presumed that the immediate
association of the -versus saturnius- with the god Saturn, and the
lengthening of the first syllable in connection with that view,
belong only to later times.

7.  I. XII. Foreign Worships

8.  I. XIV. Introduction of Hellenic Alphabets into Italy

9.  The statement that "formerly the Roman boys were trained in
Etruscan culture, as they were in later times in Greek" (Liv. ix.
36), is quite irreconcilable with the original character of the
Roman training of youth, and it is not easy to see what the Roman
boys could have learned in Etruria.  Even the most zealous modern
partizans of Tages-worship will not maintain that the study of the
Etruscan language played such a part in Rome then as the learning
of French does now with us; that a non-Etruscan should understand
anything of the art of the Etruscan -haruspices- was considered,
even by those who availed themselves of that art, to be a disgrace
or rather an impossibility (Muller, Etr. ii. 4).  Perhaps the
statement was concocted by the Etruscizing antiquaries of the last
age of the republic out of stories of the older annals, aiming
at a causal explanation of facts, such as that which makes Mucius
Scaevola learn Etruscan when a child for the sake of his conversation
with Porsena (Dionysius, v. 28; Plutarch, Poplicola, 17; comp.
Dionysius, iii. 70).  But there was at any rate an epoch when the
dominion of Rome over Italy demanded a certain knowledge of the
language of the country on the part of Romans of rank.

10.  The employment of the lyre in ritual is attested by Cicero
de Orat. iii. 51, 197; Tusc. iv. 2, 4; Dionysius, vii. 72; Appian,
Pun.  66; and the inscription in Orelli, 2448, comp. 1803.  It
was likewise used at the -neniae- (Varro ap. Nonium, v. -nenia-
and -praeficae-).  But playing on the lyre remained none the less
unbecoming (Scipio ap.  Macrob. Sat. ii. 10, et al.).  The prohibition
of music in 639 exempted only the "Latin player on the pipe along
with the singer," not the player on the lyre, and the guests at meals
sang only to the pipe (Cato in Cic. Tusc. i. 2, 3; iv. 2, 3; Varro
ap. Nonium, v. -assa voce-; Horace, Carm. iv. 15, 30).  Quintilian,
who asserts the reverse (Inst. i. 10, 20), has inaccurately
transferred to private banquets what Cicero (de Orat. iii. 51)
states in reference to the feasts of the gods.

11.  The city festival can have only lasted at first for a single
day, for in the sixth century it still consisted of four days of
scenic and one day of Circensian sports (Ritschl, Parerga, i. 313)
and it is well known that the scenic amusements were only a subsequent
addition.  That in each kind of contest there was originally
only one competition, follows from Livy, xliv. 9; the running
of five-and-twenty pairs of chariots in succession on one day was
a subsequent innovation (Varro ap. Serv. Georg. iii. 18).  That
only two chariots--and likewise beyond doubt only two horsemen
and two wrestlers--strove for the prize, may be inferred from the
circumstance, that at all periods in the Roman chariot-races only
as many chariots competed as there were so-called factions; and of
these there were originally only two, the white and the red.  The
horsemanship-competition of patrician youths which belonged to
the Circensian games, the so-called Troia, was, as is well known,
revived by Caesar; beyond doubt it was connected with the cavalcade
of the boy-militia, which Dionysius mentions (vii. 72).

12.  I. VII. Servian Wall

13.  I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform

14.  I. II. Religion

15.  -Vates- probably denoted in the first instance the "leader of
the singing" (for so the -vates- of the Salii must be understood)
and thereafter in its older usage approximated to the Greek
--propheiteis--; it was a word be longing to religious ritual,
and even when subsequently used of the poet, always retained the
accessory idea of a divinely-inspired singer--the priest of the
Muses.

16.  We shall show in due time that the Atellanae and Fescenninae
belonged not to Campanian and Etruscan, but to Latin art.

17.  Literally "word-crisping," in allusion to the -calamistri
Maecenatis-.

18.  I. III. Alba

19.  Of this character were the Servian walls.  They consisted
partly of a strengthening of the hill-slopes by facing them with
lining-walls as much as 4 metres thick, partly--in the intervals,
above all on the Viminal and Quirinal, where from the Esquiline
to the Colline gate there was an absence of natural defence--of an
earthen mound, which was finished off on the outside by a similar
lining-wall.  On these lining-walls rested the breastwork.  A trench,
according to trustworthy statements of the ancients 30 feet deep
and 100 feet broad, stretched along in front of the wall, for
which the earth was taken from this same trench.--The breastwork
has nowhere been preserved; of the lining-walls extensive remains
have recently been brought to light.  The blocks of tufo composing
them are hewn in longish rectangles, on an average of 60 centimetres
(= 2 Roman feet) in height and breadth, while the length varies
from 70 centimetres to 3 metres, and they are, without application
of mortar, laid together in several rows, alternately with the long
and with the narrow side outermost.

The portion of the Servian wall near the Viminal gate, discovered in
the year 1862 at the Villa Negroni, rests on a foundation of huge
blocks of tufo of 3 to 4 metres in height and breadth, on which was
then raised the outer wall from blocks of the same material and of
the same size as those elsewhere employed in the wall.  The earthen
rampart piled up behind appears to have had on the upper surface
a breadth extending about 13 metres or fully 40 Roman feet, and
the whole wall-defence, including the outer wall of freestone, to
have had a breadth of as much as 15 metres or 50 Roman feet.  The
portions formed of peperino blocks, which are bound with iron
clamps, have only been added in connection with subsequent labours
of repair.--Essentially similar to the Servian walls are those
discovered in the Vigna Nussiner, on the slope of the Palatine
towards the side of the Capitol, and at other points of the Palatine,
which have been declared by Jordan (Topographic, ii. 173), probably
with reason, to be remnants of the citadel-wall of the Palatine
Rome,

20.  -Ratio Tuscanica,: cavum aedium Tuscanicum.-

21.  When Varro (ap. Augustin. De Civ. Dei, iv. 31; comp. Plutarch
Num. 8) affirms that the Romans for more than one hundred and
seventy years worshipped the gods without images, he is evidently
thinking of this primitive piece of carving, which, according to
the conventional chronology, was dedicated between 176 and 219, and,
beyond doubt, was the first statue of the gods, the consecration
of which was mentioned in the authorities which Varro had before
him.  Comp, above, XIV.  Development of Alphabets in Italy.

22.  I. XIII. Handicrafts

23.  I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

24.  I. XII. Pontifices



End of Book I



     *        *        *         *        *



THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK II

From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of Italy




Preparer's Note

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

1) 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-.

2) 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--

3) Simple unideographic 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.

4) Ideographic references, referring to signs of representation rather
than to content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-.  "id:" stands for
"ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a picture based
on the following "xxxx"; which may be a single symbol, a word, or an
attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters.  For example,
 --"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 one of
lowercase.  Also, a construct such as --"id:E" indicates a symbol
that with ASCII resembles most closely a Roman uppercase "E", but,
in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.

5) 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.  The preparer of this document, has appended to the end
of this combined text (Books I-V) a table of conversion between the
two systems.




CONTENTS

BOOK II:  From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union
          of Italy

   CHAPTER

      I. Change of the Constitution--Limitation of the Power of the
         Magistrate

     II. The Tribunate of the Plebs and the Decemvirate

    III. The Equalization of the Orders, and the New Aristocracy

     IV. Fall of the Etruscan Power--the Celts

      V. Subjugation of the Latins and Campanians by Rome

     VI. Struggle of the Italians against Rome

    VII. Struggle Between Pyrrhus and Rome, and Union of Italy

   VIII. Law--Religion--Military System--Economic Condition--Nationality

     IX. Art and Science




BOOK SECOND

From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of Italy




--dei ouk ekpleittein ton suggraphea terateuomenon dia teis iotopias
tous entugchanontas.--

Polybius.




CHAPTER I

Change of the Constitution--
Limitation of the Power of the Magistrate


Political and Social Distinctions in Rome

The strict conception of the unity and omnipotence of the state in
all matters pertaining to it, which was the central principle of the
Italian constitutions, placed in the hands of the single president
nominated for life a formidable power, which was felt doubtless by the
enemies of the land, but was not less heavily felt by its citizens.
Abuse and oppression could not fail to ensue, and, as a necessary
consequence, efforts were made to lessen that power.  It was,
however, the grand distinction of the endeavours after reform and
the revolutions in Rome, that there was no attempt either to impose
limitations on the community as such or even to deprive it of
corresponding organs of expression--that there never was any
endeavour to assert the so-called natural rights of the individual in
contradistinction to the community--that, on the contrary, the attack
was wholly directed against the form in which the community was
represented.  From the times of the Tarquins down to those of
the Gracchi the cry of the party of progress in Rome was not for
limitation of the power of the state, but for limitation of the power
of the magistrates: nor amidst that cry was the truth ever forgotten,
that the people ought not to govern, but to be governed.

This struggle was carried on within the burgess-body.  Side by
side with it another movement developed itself--the cry of the
non-burgesses for equality of political privileges.  Under this head
are included the agitations of the plebeians, the Latins, the Italians,
and the freedmen, all of whom--whether they may have borne the name
of burgesses, as did the plebeians and the freedmen, or not, as was
the case with the Latins and Italians--were destitute of, and desired,
political equality.

A third distinction was one of a still more general nature; the
distinction between the wealthy and the poor, especially such as had
been dispossessed or were endangered in possession.  The legal and
political relations of Rome led to the rise of a numerous class of
farmers--partly small proprietors who were dependent on the mercy of
the capitalist, partly small temporary lessees who were dependent on
the mercy of the landlord--and in many instances deprived individuals
as well as whole communities of the lands which they held, without
affecting their personal freedom.  By these means the agricultural
proletariate became at an early period so powerful as to have a
material influence on the destinies of the community.  The urban
proletariate did not acquire political importance till a much later
epoch.

On these distinctions hinged the internal history of Rome, and, as
may be presumed, not less the history--totally lost to us--of the
other Italian communities.  The political movement within the
fully-privileged burgess-body, the warfare between the excluded and
excluding classes, and the social conflicts between the possessors
and the non-possessors of land--variously as they crossed and
interlaced, and singular as were the alliances they often produced
--were nevertheless essentially and fundamentally distinct.

Abolition of the Life-Presidency of the Community

As the Servian reform, which placed the --metoikos-- on a footing of
equality in a military point of view with the burgess, appears to have
originated from considerations of an administrative nature rather than
from any political party-tendency, we may assume that the first of the
movements which led to internal crises and changes of the constitution
was that which sought to limit the magistracy.  The earliest
achievement of this, the most ancient opposition in Rome, consisted
in the abolition of the life-tenure of the presidency of the
community; in other words, in the abolition of the monarchy.  How
necessarily this was the result of the natural development of things,
is most strikingly demonstrated by the fact, that the same change of
constitution took place in an analogous manner through the whole
circuit of the Italo-Grecian world.  Not only in Rome, but likewise
among the other Latins as well as among the Sabellians, Etruscans,
and Apulians--and generally, in all the Italian communities, just as
in those of Greece--we find the rulers for life of an earlier epoch
superseded in after times by annual magistrates.  In the case of the
Lucanian canton there is evidence that it had a democratic government
in time of peace, and it was only in the event of war that the
magistrates appointed a king, that is, an official similar to the
Roman dictator.  The Sabellian civic communities, such as those of
Capua and Pompeii, in like manner were in later times governed by
a "community-manager" (-medix tuticus-) changed from year to year,
and we may assume that similar institutions existed among the other
national and civic communities of Italy.  In this light the reasons
which led to the substitution of consuls for kings in Rome need no
explanation.  The organism of the ancient Greek and Italian polity
developed of itself by a sort of natural necessity the limitation of
the life-presidency to a shortened, and for the most part an annual,
term.  Simple, however, as was the cause of this change, it might be
brought about in various ways; a resolution might be adopted on the
death of one life-ruler not to elect another--a course which the
Roman senate is said to have attempted after the death of Romulus;
or the ruler might voluntarily abdicate, as is alleged to have been
the intention of king Servius Tullius; or the people might rise in
rebellion against a tyrannical ruler, and expel him.

Expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome

It was in this latter way that the monarchy was terminated in Rome.
For however much the history of the expulsion of the last Tarquinius,
"the proud," may have been interwoven with anecdotes and spun out into
a romance, it is not in its leading outlines to be called in question.
Tradition credibly enough indicates as the causes of the revolt, that
the king neglected to consult the senate and to complete its numbers;
that he pronounced sentences of capital punishment and confiscation
without advising with his counsellors; that he accumulated immense
stores of grain in his granaries, and exacted from the burgesses
military labour and task-work beyond what was due.  The exasperation
of the people is attested by the formal vow which they made man by
man for themselves and for their posterity that thenceforth they would
never tolerate a king; by the blind hatred with which the name of king
was ever afterwards regarded in Rome; and above all by the enactment
that the "king for offering sacrifice" (-rex sacrorum- or
-sacrificulus-) --whom they considered it their duty to create that the
gods might not miss their accustomed mediator--should be disqualified
from holding any further office, so that this man became the foremost
indeed, but also the most powerless in the Roman commonwealth.  Along
with the last king all the members of his clan were banished--a proof
how close at that time gentile ties still were.  The Tarquinii
thereupon transferred themselves to Caere, perhaps their ancient
home,(1) where their family tomb has recently been discovered.
In the room of the one president holding office for life two
annual rulers were now placed at the head of the Roman community.

This is all that can be looked upon as historically certain in
reference to this important event.(2)  It is conceivable that in
a great community with extensive dominion like the Roman the royal
power, particularly if it had been in the same family for several
generations, would be more capable of resistance, and the struggle
would thus be keener, than in the smaller states; but there is no
certain indication of any interference by foreign states in the
struggle.  The great war with Etruria--which possibly, moreover,
has been placed so close upon the expulsion of the Tarquins only in
consequence of chronological confusion in the Roman annals--cannot
be regarded as an intervention of Etruria in favour of a countryman
who had been injured in Rome, for the very sufficient reason that the
Etruscans notwithstanding their complete victory neither restored the
Roman monarchy, nor even brought back the Tarquinian family.

Powers of the Consuls

If we are left in ignorance of the historical connections of this
important event, we are fortunately in possession of clearer light as
to the nature of the change which was made in the constitution.  The
royal power was by no means abolished, as is shown by the very fact
that, when a vacancy occurred afterwards as before, an "interim king"
(-interrex-) was nominated.  The one life-king was simply replaced
by two year-kings, who called themselves generals (-praetores-),
or judges (-iudices-), or merely colleagues (consules).(3)
The principles of collegiate tenure and of annual duration are those
which distinguish the republic from the monarchy, and they first meet
us here.

Collegiate Arrangement

The collegiate principle, from which the third and subsequently most
current name of the annual kings was derived, assumed in their case an
altogether peculiar form.  The supreme power was not entrusted to the
two magistrates conjointly, but each consul possessed and exercised it
for himself as fully and wholly as it had been possessed and exercised
by the king.  This was carried so far that, instead of one of the two
colleagues undertaking perhaps the administration of justice, and
the other the command of the army, they both administered justice
simultaneously in the city just as they both set out together to
the army; in case of collision the matter was decided by a rotation
measured by months or days.  A certain partition of functions withal,
at least in the supreme military command, might doubtless take place
from the outset--the one consul for example taking the field against
the Aequi, and the other against the Volsci--but it had in no wise
binding force, and each of the colleagues was legally at liberty to
interfere at any time in the province of the other.  When, therefore,
supreme power confronted supreme power and the one colleague forbade
what the other enjoined, the consular commands neutralized each other.
This peculiarly Latin, if not peculiarly Roman, institution of
co-ordinate supreme authorities--which in the Roman commonwealth on
the whole approved itself as practicable, but to which it will be
difficult to find a parallel in any other considerable state
--manifestly sprang out of the endeavour to retain the regal power
in legally undiminished fulness.  They were thus led not to break
up the royal office into parts or to transfer it from an individual
to a college, but simply to double it and thereby, if necessary,
to neutralize it through its own action.

Term of Office

As regards the termination of their tenure of office, the earlier
-interregnum- of five days furnished a legal precedent.  The ordinary
presidents of the community were bound not to remain in office
longer than a year reckoned from the day of their entering on their
functions;(4) and they ceased -de jure- to be magistrates upon the
expiry of the year, just as the interrex on the expiry of the five
days.  Through this set termination of the supreme office the
practical irresponsibility of the king was lost in the case of the
consul.  It is true that the king was always in the Roman commonwealth
subject, and not superior, to the law; but, as according to the Roman
view the supreme judge could not be prosecuted at his own bar, the
king might doubtless have committed a crime, but there was for him no
tribunal and no punishment.  The consul, again, if he had committed
murder or treason, was protected by his office, but only so long as
it lasted; on his retirement he was liable to the ordinary penal
jurisdiction like any other burgess.

To these leading changes, affecting the principles of the
constitution, other restrictions were added of a subordinate and more
external character, some of which nevertheless produced a deep effect
The privilege of the king to have his fields tilled by task-work
of the burgesses, and the special relation of clientship in which
the --metoeci-- as a body must have stood to the king, ceased of
themselves with the life tenure of the office.

Right of Appeal

Hitherto in criminal processes as well as in fines and corporal
punishments it had been the province of the king not only to
investigate and decide the cause, but also to decide whether the
person found guilty should or should not be allowed to appeal for
pardon.  The Valerian law now (in 245) enacted that the consul must
allow the appeal of the condemned, where sentence of capital or
corporal punishment had been pronounced otherwise than by martial
law--a regulation which by a later law (of uncertain date, but passed
before 303) was extended to heavy fines.  In token of this right of
appeal, when the consul appeared in the capacity of judge and not
of general, the consular lictors laid aside the axes which they had
previously carried by virtue of the penal jurisdiction belonging to
their master.  The law however threatened the magistrate, who did
not allow due course to the -provocatio-, with no other penalty than
infamy--which, as matters then stood, was essentially nothing but a
moral stain, and at the utmost only had the effect of disqualifying
the infamous person from giving testimony.  Here too the course
followed was based on the same view, that it was in law impossible
to diminish the old regal powers, and that the checks imposed upon the
holder of the supreme authority in consequence of the revolution had,
strictly viewed, only a practical and moral value.  When therefore the
consul acted within the old regal jurisdiction, he might in so acting
perpetrate an injustice, but he committed no crime and consequently
was not amenable for what he did to the penal judge.

A limitation similar in its tendency took place in the civil
jurisdiction; for probably there was taken from the consuls at
the very outset the right of deciding at their discretion a legal
dispute between private persons.

Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers

The remodelling of the criminal as of civil procedure stood in
connection with a general arrangement respecting the transference
of magisterial power to deputies or successors.  While the king had
been absolutely at liberty to nominate deputies but had never been
compelled to do so, the consuls exercised the right of delegating
power in an essentially different way.  No doubt the rule that, if
the supreme magistrate left the city, he had to appoint a warden there
for the administration of justice,(5) remained in force also for the
consuls, and the collegiate arrangement was not even extended to such
delegation; on the contrary this appointment was laid on the consul
who was the last to leave the city.  But the right of delegation
for the time when the consuls remained in the city was probably
restricted, upon the very introduction of this office, by providing
that delegation should be prescribed to the consul for definite
cases, but should be prohibited for all cases in which it was not so
prescribed.  According to this principle, as we have said, the whole
judicial system was organized.  The consul could certainly exercise
criminal jurisdiction also as to a capital process in the way of
submitting his sentence to the community and having it thereupon
confirmed or rejected; but he never, so far as we see, exercised
this right, perhaps was soon not allowed to exercise it, and possibly
pronounced a criminal judgment only in the case of appeal to the
community being for any reason excluded.  Direct conflict between
the supreme magistrate of the community and the community itself was
avoided, and the criminal procedure was organized really in such a
way, that the supreme magistracy remained only in theory competent,
but always acted through deputies who were necessary though appointed
by himself.  These were the two--not standing--pronouncers-of-judgment
for revolt and high treason (-duoviri perduellionis-) and the two
standing trackers of murder, the -quaestores parricidii-.  Something
similar may perhaps have occurred in the regal period, where the
king had himself represented in such processes;(6) but the standing
character of the latter institution, and the collegiate principle
carried out in both, belong at any rate to the republic.  The latter
arrangement became of great importance also, in so far that thereby
for the first time alongside of the two standing supreme magistrates
were placed two assistants, whom each supreme magistrate nominated at
his entrance on office, and who in due course also went out with him
on his leaving it--whose position thus, like the supreme magistracy
itself, was organized according to the principles of a standing
office, of a collegiate form, and of an annual tenure.  This was not
indeed as yet the inferior magistracy itself, at least not in the
sense which the republic associated with the magisterial position,
inasmuch as the commissioners did not emanate from the choice of
the community; but it doubtless became the starting-point for the
institution of subordinate magistrates, which was afterwards developed
in so manifold ways.

In a similar way the decision in civil procedure was withdrawn from
the supreme magistracy, inasmuch as the right of the king to transfer
an individual process for decision to a deputy was converted into the
duty of the consul, after settling the legitimate title of the party
and the object of the suit, to refer the disposal of it to a private
man to be selected by him and furnished by him with instructions.

In like manner there was left to the consuls the important
administration of the state-treasure and of the state-archives;
nevertheless probably at once, or at least very early, there were
associated with them standing assistants in that duty, namely, those
quaestors who, doubtless, had in exercising this function absolutely
to obey them, but without whose previous knowledge and co-operation
the consuls could not act.

Where on the other hand such directions were not in existence, the
president of the community in the capital had personally to intervene;
as indeed, for example, at the introductory steps of a process he
could not under any circumstances let himself be represented by
deputy.

This double restriction of the consular right of delegation subsisted
for the government of the city, and primarily for the administration
of justice and of the state-chest.  As commander-in-chief, on the
other hand, the consul retained the right of handing over all or any
of the duties devolving on him.  This diversity in the treatment of
civil and military delegation explains why in the government of the
Roman community proper no delegated magisterial authority (-pro
magistrate-) was possible, nor were purely urban magistrates ever
represented by non-magistrates; and why, on the other hand, military
deputies (-pro consuls-, -pro praetore-, -pro quaestore-) were
excluded from all action within the community proper.

Nominating a Successor

The right of nominating a successor had not been possessed by the
king, but only by the interrex.(7)  The consul was in this respect
placed on a like footing with the latter; nevertheless, in the event
of his not having exercised the power, the interrex stepped in as
before, and the necessary continuity of the office subsisted still
undiminished under the republican government.  The right of
nomination, however, was materially restricted in favour of the
burgesses, as the consul was bound to procure the assent of the
burgesses for the successors designated by him, and, in the sequel,
to nominate only those whom the community designated to him.  Through
this binding right of proposal the nomination of the ordinary supreme
magistrates doubtless in a certain sense passed substantially into the
hands of the community; practically, however, there still existed a
very considerable distinction between that right of proposal and the
right of formal nomination.  The consul conducting the election was by
no means a mere returning officer; he could still, e. g. by virtue of
his old royal prerogative reject particular candidates and disregard
the votes tendered for them; at first he might even limit the choice
to a list of candidates proposed by himself; and--what was of
still more consequence--when the collegiate consulship was to be
supplemented by the dictator, of whom we shall speak immediately,
in so supplementing it the community was not consulted, but on the
contrary the consul in that case appointed his colleague with the
same freedom, wherewith the interrex had once appointed the king.

Change in the Nomination of Priests

The nomination of the priests, which had been a prerogative of the
kings,(8) was not transferred to the consuls; but the colleges of
priests filled up the vacancies in their own ranks, while the Vestals
and single priests were nominated by the pontifical college, on which
devolved also the exercise of the paternal jurisdiction, so to speak,
of the community over the priestesses of Vesta.  With a view to the
performance of these acts, which could only be properly performed by
a single individual, the college probably about this period first
nominated a president, the -Pontifex maximus-.  This separation of the
supreme authority in things sacred from the civil power--while the
already-mentioned "king for sacrifice" had neither the civil nor the
sacred powers of the king, but simply the title, conferred upon him
--and the semi-magisterial position of the new high priest, so decidedly
contrasting with the character which otherwise marked the priesthood
in Rome, form one of the most significant and important peculiarities
of this state-revolution, the aim of which was to impose limits on the
powers of the magistrates mainly in the interest of the aristocracy.

We have already mentioned that the outward state of the consul was
far inferior to that of the regal office hedged round as it was
with reverence and terror, that the regal name and the priestly
consecration were withheld from him, and that the axe was taken away
from his attendants.  We have to add that, instead of the purple
robe which the king had worn, the consul was distinguished from the
ordinary burgess simply by the purple border of his toga, and that,
while the king perhaps regularly appeared in public in his chariot,
the consul was bound to accommodate himself to the general rule and
like every other burgess to go within the city on foot.

The Dictator

These limitations, however, of the plenary power and of the insignia
of the magistracy applied in the main only to the ordinary presidency
of the community.  In extraordinary cases, alongside of, and in a
certain sense instead of, the two presidents chosen by the community
there emerged a single one, the master of the army (-magister populi-)
usually designated as the -dictator-.  In the choice of dictator the
community exercised no influence at all, but it proceeded solely
from the free resolve of one of the consuls for the time being, whose
action neither his colleague nor any other authority could hinder.
There was no appeal from his sentence any more than from that of the
king, unless he chose to allow it.  As soon as he was nominated, all
the other magistrates were by right subject to his authority.  On the
other hand the duration of the dictator's office was limited in two
ways: first, as the official colleague of those consuls, one of whom
had nominated him, he might not remain in office beyond their legal
term; and secondly, a period of six months was fixed as the absolute
maximum for the duration of his office.  It was a further arrangement
peculiar to the dictatorship, that the "master of the army" was bound
to nominate for himself immediately a "master of horse" (-magister
equitum-), who acted along with him as a dependent assistant somewhat
as did the quaestor along with the consul, and with him retired from
office--an arrangement undoubtedly connected with the fact that
the dictator, presumably as being the leader of the infantry, was
constitutionally prohibited from mounting on horseback.  In the light
of these regulations the dictatorship is doubtless to be conceived as
an institution which arose at the same time with the consulship, and
which was designed, especially in the event of war, to obviate for a
time the disadvantages of divided power and to revive temporarily the
regal authority; for in war more particularly the equality of rights
in the consuls could not but appear fraught with danger; and not only
positive testimonies, but above all the oldest names given to the
magistrate himself and his assistant, as well as the limitation of the
office to the duration of a summer campaign, and the exclusion of the
-provocatio- attest the pre-eminently military design of the original
dictatorship.

On the whole, therefore, the consuls continued to be, as the kings had
been, the supreme administrators, judges, and generals; and even in a
religious point of view it was not the -rex sacrorum- (who was only
nominated that the name might be preserved), but the consul, who
offered prayers and sacrifices for the community, and in its name
ascertained the will of the gods with the aid of those skilled in
sacred lore.  Against cases of emergency, moreover, a power was
retained of reviving at any moment, without previous consultation of
the community, the full and unlimited regal authority, so as to set
aside the limitations imposed by the collegiate arrangement and by
the special curtailments of jurisdiction.  In this way the problem of
legally retaining and practically restricting the regal authority was
solved in genuine Roman fashion with equal acuteness and simplicity
by the nameless statesmen who worked out this revolution.

Centuries and Curies

The community thus acquired by the change of constitution rights
of the greatest importance: the right of annually designating its
presidents, and that of deciding in the last instance regarding the
life or death of the burgess.  But the body which acquired these
rights could not possibly be the community as it had been hitherto
constituted--the patriciate which had practically become an order of
nobility.  The strength of the nation lay in the "multitude" (-plebs-)
which already comprehended in large numbers people of note and of
wealth.  The exclusion of this multitude from the public assembly,
although it bore part of the public burdens, might be tolerated as
long as that public assembly itself had no very material share in
the working of the state machine, and as long as the royal power by
the very fact of its high and free position remained almost equally
formidable to the burgesses and to the --metoeci-- and thereby
maintained equality of legal redress in the nation.  But when the
community itself was called regularly to elect and to decide, and the
president was practically reduced from its master to its commissioner
for a set term, this relation could no longer be maintained as it
stood; least of all when the state had to be remodelled on the morrow
of a revolution, which could only have been carried out by the
co-operation of the patricians and the --metoeci--.  An extension of
that community was inevitable; and it was accomplished in the most
comprehensive manner, inasmuch as the collective plebeiate, that is,
all the non-burgesses who were neither slaves nor citizens of
extraneous communities living at Rome under the -ius hospitii-,
were admitted into the burgess-body.  The curiate assembly of the
old burgesses, which hitherto had been legally and practically the
first authority in the state, was almost totally deprived of its
constitutional prerogatives.  It was to retain its previous powers
only in acts purely formal or in those which affected clan-relations
--such as the vow of allegiance to be taken to the consul or to
the dictator when they entered on office just as previously to the
king,(9) and the legal dispensations requisite for an -arrogatio- or
a testament--but it was not in future to perform any act of a properly
political character.  Soon even the plebeians were admitted to the
right of voting also in the curies, and by that step the old
burgess-body lost the right of meeting and of resolving at all.
The curial organization was virtually rooted out, in so far as it
was based on the clan-organization and this latter was to be found
in its purity exclusively among the old burgesses.  When the plebeians
were admitted into the curies, they were certainly also allowed to
constitute themselves -de jure- as--what in the earlier period they
could only have been -de facto-(10)--families and clans; but it is
distinctly recorded by tradition and in itself also very conceivable,
that only a portion of the plebeians proceeded so far as to constitute
-gentes-, and thus the new curiate assembly, in opposition to its original
character, included numerous members who belonged to no clan.

All the political prerogatives of the public assembly--as well the
decision on appeals in criminal causes, which indeed were essentially
political processes, as the nomination of magistrates and the adoption
or rejection of laws--were transferred to, or were now acquired by,
the assembled levy of those bound to military service; so that the
centuries now received the rights, as they had previously borne the
burdens, of citizens.  In this way the small initial movements made by
the Servian constitution--such as, in particular, the handing over to
the army the right of assenting to the declaration of an aggressive
war(11)--attained such a development that the curies were completely
and for ever cast into the shade by the assembly of the centuries, and
people became accustomed to regard the latter as the sovereign people.
In this assembly debate took place merely when the presiding
magistrate chose himself to speak or bade others do so; of course
in cases of appeal both parties had to be heard.  A simple majority
of the centuries was decisive.

As in the curiate assembly those who were entitled to vote at all were
on a footing of entire equality, and therefore after the admission
of all the plebeians into the curies the result would have been a
complete democracy, it may be easily conceived that the decision of
political questions continued to be withheld from the curies; the
centuriate assembly placed the preponderating influence, not in the
hands of the nobles certainly, but in those of the possessors of
property, and the important privilege of priority in voting, which
often practically decided the election, placed it in the hands of
the -equites- or, in other words, of the rich.

Senate

The senate was not affected by the reform of the constitution in the
same way as the community.  The previously existing college of elders
not only continued exclusively patrician, but retained also its
essential prerogatives--the right of appointing the interrex, and of
confirming or rejecting the resolutions adopted by the community as
constitutional or unconstitutional.  In fact these prerogatives were
enhanced by the reform of the constitution, because the appointment
of the magistrates also, which fell to be made by election of the
community, was thenceforth subject to the confirmation or rejection
of the patrician senate.  In cases of appeal alone its confirmation,
so far as we know, was never deemed requisite, because in these the
matter at stake was the pardon of the guilty and, when this was
granted by the sovereign assembly of the people, any cancelling
of such an act was wholly out of the question.

But, although by the abolition of the monarchy the constitutional
rights of the patrician senate were increased rather than diminished,
there yet took place--and that, according to tradition, immediately on
the abolition of the monarchy--so far as regards other affairs which
fell to be discussed in the senate and admitted of a freer treatment,
an enlargement of that body, which brought into it plebeians also, and
which in its consequences led to a complete remodelling of the whole.
From the earliest times the senate had acted also, although not solely
or especially, as a state-council; and, while probably even in the
time of the kings it was not regarded as unconstitutional for non-
senators in this case to take part in the assembly,(12) it was now
arranged that for such discussions there should be associated with
the patrician senate (-patres-) a number of non-patricians "added to
the roll" (-conscripti-).  This did not at all put them on a footing
of equality; the plebeians in the senate did not become senators, but
remained members of the equestrian order, were not designated -patres-
but were even now -conscripti-, and had no right to the badge of
senatorial dignity, the red shoe.(13)  Moreover, they not only
remained absolutely excluded from the exercise of the magisterial
prerogatives belonging to the senate (-auctoritas-), but were obliged,
even where the question had reference merely to an advice (-consilium-),
to rest content with the privilege of being present in silence
while the question was put to the patricians in turn, and of only
indicating their opinion by adding to the numbers when the division
was taken--voting with the feet (-pedibus in sententiam ire-,
-pedarii-) as the proud nobility expressed it.  Nevertheless,
the plebeians found their way through the new constitution not
merely to the Forum, but also to the senate-house, and the first
and most difficult step towards equality of rights was taken in
this quarter also.

Otherwise there was no material change in the arrangements affecting
the senate.  Among the patrician members a distinction of rank soon
came to be recognized, especially in putting the vote: those who were
proximately designated for the supreme magistracy, or who had already
administered it, were entered on the list and were called upon to vote
before the rest; and the position of the first of them, the foreman of
the senate (-princeps senatus-) soon became a highly coveted place of
honour.  The consul in office, on the other hand, no more ranked as a
member of senate than did the king, and therefore in taking the votes
did not include his own.  The selection of the members--both of the
narrower patrician senate and of those merely added to the roll--fell
to be made by the consuls just as formerly by the kings; but the
nature of the case implied that, while the king had still perhaps some
measure of regard to the representation of the several clans in the
senate, this consideration was of no account so far as concerned
the plebeians, among whom the clan-organization was but imperfectly
developed, and consequently the relation of the senate to that
organization in general fell more and more into abeyance.  We have no
information that the electing consuls were restricted from admitting
more than a definite number of plebeians to the senate; nor was there
need for such a regulation, because the consuls themselves belonged to
the nobility.  On the other hand probably from the outset the consul
was in virtue of his very position practically far less free, and
far more bound by the opinions of his order and by custom, in the
appointment of senators than the king.  The rule in particular, that
the holding of the consulship should necessarily be followed by
admission to the senate for life, if, as was probably the case at
this time, the consul was not yet a member of it at the time of
his election, must have in all probability very early acquired
consuetudinary force.  In like manner it seems to have become early
the custom not to fill up the senators' places immediately on their
falling vacant, but to revise and complete the roll of the senate on
occasion of the census, consequently, as a rule, every fourth year;
which also involved a not unimportant restriction on the authority
entrusted with the selection.  The whole number of the senators
remained as before, and in this the -conscripti- were also included;
from which fact we are probably entitled to infer the numerical
falling off of the patriciate.(14)

Conservative Character of the Revolution

We thus see that in the Roman commonwealth, even on the conversion of
the monarchy into a republic, the old was as far as possible retained.
So far as a revolution in a state can be conservative at all, this one
was so; not one of the constituent elements of the commonwealth was
really overthrown by it.  This circumstance indicates the character
of the whole movement.  The expulsion of the Tarquins was not, as the
pitiful and deeply falsified accounts of it represent, the work of a
people carried away by sympathy and enthusiasm for liberty, but the
work of two great political parties already engaged in conflict, and
clearly aware that their conflict would steadily continue--the old
burgesses and the --metoeci-- --who, like the English Whigs and
Tories in 1688, were for a moment united by the common danger which
threatened to convert the commonwealth into the arbitrary government
of a despot, and differed again as soon as the danger was over.
The old burgesses could not get rid of the monarchy without the
cooperation of the new burgesses; but the new burgesses were far from
being sufficiently strong to wrest the power out of the hands of the
former at one blow.  Compromises of this sort are necessarily limited
to the smallest measure of mutual concessions obtained by tedious
bargaining; and they leave the future to decide which of the
constituent elements shall eventually preponderate, and whether they
will work harmoniously together or counteract one another.  To look
therefore merely to the direct innovations, possibly to the mere
change in the duration of the supreme magistracy, is altogether to
mistake the broad import of the first Roman revolution: its indirect
effects were by far the most important, and vaster doubtless than
even its authors anticipated.

The New Community

This, in short, was the time when the Roman burgess-body in the
later sense of the term originated.  The plebeians had hitherto been
--metoeci-- who were subjected to their share of taxes and burdens,
but who were nevertheless in the eye of the law really nothing but
tolerated aliens, between whose position and that of foreigners proper
it may have seemed hardly necessary to draw a definite line of
distinction.  They were now enrolled in the lists as burgesses liable
to military service, and, although they were still far from being on
a footing of legal equality--although the old burgesses still remained
exclusively entitled to perform the acts of authority constitutionally
pertaining to the council of elders, and exclusively eligible to the
civil magistracies and priesthoods, nay even by preference entitled to
participate in the usufructs of burgesses, such as the joint use of
the public pasture--yet the first and most difficult step towards
complete equalization was gained from the time when the plebeians no
longer served merely in the common levy, but also voted in the common
assembly and in the common council when its opinion was asked, and the
head and back of the poorest --metoikos-- were as well protected by
the right of appeal as those of the noblest of the old burgesses.

One consequence of this amalgamation of the patricians and plebeians
in a new corporation of Roman burgesses was the conversion of the
old burgesses into a clan-nobility, which was incapable of receiving
additions or even of filling up its own ranks, since the nobles no
longer possessed the right of passing decrees in common assembly
and the adoption of new families into the nobility by decree of the
community appeared still less admissible.  Under the kings the ranks
of the Roman nobility had not been thus closed, and the admission of
new clans was no very rare occurrence: now this genuine characteristic
of patricianism made its appearance as the sure herald of the speedy
loss of its political privileges and of its exclusive estimation
in the community.  The exclusion of the plebeians from all public
magistracies and public priesthoods--while they were admissible to
the position of officers and senators--and the maintenance, with
perverse obstinacy, of the legal impossibility of marriage between old
burgesses and plebeians, further impressed on the patriciate from the
outset the stamp of an exclusive and wrongly privileged aristocracy.

A second consequence of the new union of the burgesses must have been
a more definite regulation of the right of settlement, with reference
both to the Latin confederates and to other states.  It became
necessary--not so much on account of the right of suffrage in the
centuries (which indeed belonged only to the freeholder) as on
account of the right of appeal, which was intended to be conceded
to the plebeian, but not to the foreigner dwelling for a time or
even permanently in Rome--to express more precisely the conditions
of the acquisition of plebeian rights, and to mark off the enlarged
burgess-body in its turn from those who were now the non-burgesses.
To thisepoch therefore we may trace back--in the views and feelings
of the people--both the invidiousness of the distinction between
patricians and plebeians, and the strict and haughty line of demarcation
between -cives Romani- and aliens.  But the former civic distinction was
in its nature transient, while the latter political one was permanent;
and the sense of political unity and rising greatness, which was thus
implanted in the heart of the nation, was expansive enough first
to undermine and then to carry away with its mighty current those
paltry distinctions.

Law and Edict

It was at this period, moreover, that law and edict were separated.
The distinction indeed had its foundation in the essential character
of the Roman state; for even the regal power in Rome was subordinate,
not superior, to the law of the land.  But the profound and practical
veneration, which the Romans, like every other people of political
capacity, cherished for the principle of authority, gave birth to the
remarkable rule of Roman constitutional and private law, that every
command of the magistrate not based upon a law was at least valid
during his tenure of office, although it expired with that tenure.
It is evident that in this view, so long as the presidents were
nominated for life, the distinction between law and edict must have
practically been almost lost sight of, and the legislative activity
of the public assembly could acquire no development.  On the other
hand it obtained a wide field of action after the presidents were
changed annually; and the fact was now by no means void of practical
importance, that, if the consul in deciding a process committed a
legal informality, his successor could institute a fresh trial of
the cause.

Civil and Military Authority

It was at this period, finally, that the provinces of civil and
military authority were separated.  In the former the law ruled,
in the latter the axe: the former was governed by the constitutional
checks of the right of appeal and of regulated delegation; in the
latter the general held an absolute sway like the king.(15)  It was
an established principle, that the general and the army as such should
not under ordinary circumstances enter the city proper.  That organic
and permanently operative enactments could only be made under the
authority of the civil power, was implied in the spirit, if not in the
letter, of the constitution.  Instances indeed occasionally occurred
where the general, disregarding this principle, convoked his forces
in the camp as a burgess assembly, nor was a decree passed under
such circumstances legally void; but custom disapproved of such
a proceeding, and it soon fell into disuse as though it had been
forbidden.  The distinction between Quirites and soldiers became
more and more deeply rooted in the minds of the burgesses.

Government of the Patriciate

Time however was required for the development of these consequences
of the new republicanism; vividly as posterity felt its effects,
the revolution probably appeared to the contemporary world at first
in a different light.  The non-burgesses indeed gained by it
burgess-rights, and the new burgess-body acquired in the -comitia
centuriata- comprehensive prerogatives; but the right of rejection on
the part of the patrician senate, which in firm and serried ranks
confronted the -comitia- as if it were an Upper House, legally hampered
their freedom of movement precisely in the most important matters, and
although not in a position to thwart the serious will of the collective
body, could yet practically delay and cripple it.  If the nobility in
giving up their claim to be the sole embodiment of the community did not
seem to have lost much, they had in other respects decidedly gained.
The king, it is true, was a patrician as well as the consul, and the
right of nominating the members of the senate belonged to the latter as
to the former; but while his exceptional position raised the former no
less above the patricians than above the plebeians, and while cases
might easily occur in which he would be obliged to lean upon the
support of the multitude even against the nobility, the consul--ruling
for a brief term, but before and after that term simply one of the
nobility, and obeying to-morrow the noble fellow-burgess whom he had
commanded to-day--by no means occupied a position aloof from his
order, and the spirit of the noble in him must have been far more
powerful than that of the magistrate.  Indeed, if at any time by
way of exception a patrician disinclined to the rule of the nobility
was called to the government, his official authority was paralyzed
partly by the priestly colleges, which were pervaded by an intense
aristocratic spirit, partly by his colleague, and was easily suspended
by the dictatorship; and, what was of still more moment, he wanted
the first element of political power, time.  The president of a
commonwealth, whatever plenary authority may be conceded to him,
will never gain possession of political power, if he does not continue
for some considerable time at the head of affairs; for a necessary
condition of every dominion is duration.  Consequently the senate
appointed for life inevitably acquired--and that by virtue chiefly
of its title to advise the magistrate in all points, so that we speak
not of the narrower patrician, but of the enlarged patricio-plebeian,
senate--so great an influence as contrasted with the annual rulers,
that their legal relations became precisely inverted; the senate
substantially assumed to itself the powers of government, and
the former ruler sank into a president acting as its chairman and
executing its decrees.  In the case of every proposal to be submitted
to the community for acceptance or rejection the practice of
previously consulting the whole senate and obtaining its approval,
while not constitutionally necessary, was consecrated by use and wont;
and it was not lightly or willingly departed from.  The same course
was followed in the case of important state-treaties, of the
management and distribution of the public lands, and generally of
every act the effects of which extended beyond the official year;
and nothing was left to the consul but the transaction of current
business, the initial steps in civil processes, and the command in
war.  Especially important in its consequences was the change in
virtue of which neither the consul, nor even the otherwise absolute
dictator, was permitted to touch the public treasure except with the
consent and by the will of the senate.  The senate made it obligatory
on the consuls to commit the administration of the public chest, which
the king had managed or might at any rate have managed himself, to two
standing subordinate magistrates, who were nominated no doubt by the
consuls and had to obey them, but were, as may easily be conceived,
much more dependent than the consuls themselves on the senate.(16)
It thus drew into its own hands the management of finance; and this
right of sanctioning the expenditure of money on the part of the
Roman senate may be placed on a parallel in its effects with the
right of sanctioning taxation in the constitutional monarchies
of the present day.

The consequences followed as a matter of course.  The first and
most essential condition of all aristocratic government is, that
the plenary power of the state be vested not in an individual but
in a corporation.  Now a preponderantly aristocratic corporation,
the senate, had appropriated to itself the government, and at the
same time the executive power not only remained in the hands of the
nobility, but was also entirely subject to the governing corporation.
It is true that a considerable number of men not belonging to the
nobility sat in the senate; but as they were incapable of holding
magistracies or even of taking part in the debates, and thus were
excluded from all practical share in the government, they necessarily
played a subordinate part in the senate, and were moreover kept in
pecuniary dependence on the corporation through the economically
important privilege of using the public pasture.  The gradually
recognized right of the patrician consuls to revise and modify the
senatorial list at least every fourth year, ineffective as presumably
it was over against the nobility, might very well be employed in their
interest, and an obnoxious plebeian might by means of it be kept out
of the senate or even be removed from its ranks.

The Plebeian Opposition

It is therefore quite true that the immediate effect of the revolution
was to establish the aristocratic government.  It is not, however, the
whole truth.  While the majority of contemporaries probably thought
that the revolution had brought upon the plebeians only a more rigid
despotism, we who come afterwards discern in that very revolution the
germs of young liberty.  What the patricians gained was gained at the
expense not of the community, but of the magistrate's power.  It is
true that the community gained only a few narrowly restricted rights,
which were far less practical and palpable than the acquisitions
of the nobility, and which not one in a thousand probably had the
wisdom to value; but they formed a pledge and earnest of the future.
Hitherto the --metoeci-- had been politically nothing, the old
burgesses had been everything; now that the former were embraced
in the community, the old burgesses were overcome; for, however much
might still be wanting to full civil equality, it is the first breach,
not the occupation of the last post, that decides the fall of the
fortress.  With justice therefore the Roman community dated its
political existence from the beginning of the consulate.

While however the republican revolution may, notwithstanding the
aristocratic rule which in the first instance it established, be
justly called a victory of the former --metoeci-- or the -plebs-,
the revolution even in this respect bore by no means the character
which we are accustomed in the present day to designate as democratic.
Pure personal merit without the support of birth and wealth could
perhaps gain influence and consideration more easily under the regal
government than under that of the patriciate.  Then admission to
the patriciate was not in law foreclosed; now the highest object of
plebeian ambition was to be admitted into the dumb appendage of
the senate.  The nature of the case implied that the governing
aristocratic order, so far as it admitted plebeians at all, would
grant the right of occupying seats in the senate not absolutely to
the best men, but chiefly to the heads of the wealthy and notable
plebeian families; and the families thus admitted jealously guarded
the possession of the senatorial stalls.  While a complete legal
equality therefore had subsisted within the old burgess-body, the
new burgess-body or former --metoeci-- came to be in this way divided
from the first into a number of privileged families and a multitude
kept in a position of inferiority.  But the power of the community now
according to the centuriate organization came into the hands of that
class which since the Servian reform of the army and of taxation had
borne mainly the burdens of the state, namely the freeholders, and
indeed not so much into the hands of the great proprietors or into
those of the small cottagers, as into those of the intermediate class
of farmers--an arrangement in which the seniors were still so far
privileged that, although less numerous, they had as many voting-
divisions as the juniors.  While in this way the axe was laid to the
root of the old burgess-body and their clan-nobility, and the basis
of a new burgess-body was laid, the preponderance in the latter rested
on the possession of land and on age, and the first beginnings were
already visible of a new aristocracy based primarily on the actual
consideration in which the families were held--the future nobility.
There could be no clearer indication of the fundamentally conservative
character of the Roman commonwealth than the fact, that the revolution
which gave birth to the republic laid down at the same time the
primary outlines of a new organization of the state, which was in
like manner conservative and in like manner aristocratic.




Notes for Book II Chapter I


1.  I. IX. The Tarquins

2.  The well-known fable for the most part refutes itself.  To a
considerable extent it has been concocted for the explanation of
surnames (-Brutus-, -Poplicola-, -Scaevola-).  But even its apparently
historical ingredients are found on closer examination to have been
invented.  Of this character is the statement that Brutus was captain
of the horsemen (-tribunus celerum-) and in that capacity proposed
the decree of the people as to the banishment of the Tarquins; for,
according to the Roman constitution, it is quite impossible that a
mere officer should have had the right to convoke the curies.  The
whole of this statement has evidently been invented with the view of
furnishing a legal basis for the Roman republic; and very ill invented
it is, for in its case the -tribunus celerum- is confounded with the
entirely different -magister equitum- (V.  Burdens Of The Burgesses
f.), and then the right of convoking the centuries which pertained
to the latter by virtue of his praetorian rank is made to apply to
the assembly of the curies.

3.  -Consules- are those who "leap or dance together," as -praesul- is
one who "leaps before," -exsul-, one who "leaps out" (--o ekpeson--),
-insula-, a "leap into," primarily applied to a mass of rock fallen
into the sea.

4.  The day of entering on office did not coincide with the beginning
of the year (1st March), and was not at all fixed.  The day of
retiring was regulated by it, except when a consul was elected
expressly in room of one who had dropped out (-consul suffectus-);
in which case the substitute succeeded to the rights and consequently
to the term of him whom he replaced.  But these supplementary consuls
in the earlier period only occurred when merely one of the consuls had
dropped out: pairs of supplementary consuls are not found until the
later ages of the republic.  Ordinarily, therefore, the official year
of a consul consisted of unequal portions of two civil years.

5.  I. V. The King

6.  I. XI. Crimes

7.  I. V. Prerogatives of the Senate

8.  I. V. The King

9.  I. V. The King

10.  I. VI. Dependents and Guests

11.  I. VI. Political Effects of the Servian Military Organization

12.  I. V. The Senate as State Council

13.  I. V. Prerogatives of the Senate

14.  That the first consuls admitted to the senate 164 plebeians, is
hardly to be regarded as a historical fact, but rather as a proof that
the later Roman archaeologists were unable to point out more than 136
-gentes- of the Roman nobility (Rom, Forsch. i. 121).

15.  It may not be superfluous to remark, that the -iudicium
legitimum-, as well as that -quod imperio continetur-, rested on
the imperium of the directing magistrate, and the distinction only
consisted in the circumstance that the -imperium- was in the former
case limited by the -lex-, while in the latter it was free.

16.  II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers




CHAPTER II

The Tribunate of the Plebs and the Decemvirate


Material Interests

Under the new organization of the commonwealth the old burgesses had
attained by legal means to the full possession of political power.
Governing through the magistracy which had been reduced to be their
servant, preponderating in the Senate, in sole possession of all
public offices and priesthoods, armed with exclusive cognizance of
things human and divine and familiar with the whole routine of
political procedure, influential in the public assembly through the
large number of pliant adherents attached to the several families,
and, lastly, entitled to examine and to reject every decree of the
community,--the patricians might have long preserved their practical
power, just because they had at the right time abandoned their claim
to sole legal authority.  It is true that the plebeians could not but
be painfully sensible of their political disabilities; but undoubtedly
in the first instance the nobility had not much to fear from a purely
political opposition, if it understood the art of keeping the
multitude, which desired nothing but equitable administration and
protection of its material interests, aloof from political strife.
In fact during the first period after the expulsion of the kings we
meet with various measures which were intended, or at any rate seemed
to be intended, to gain the favour of the commons for the government
of the nobility especially on economic grounds.  The port-dues were
reduced; when the price of grain was high, large quantities of corn
were purchased on account of the state, and the trade in salt was made
a state-monopoly, in order to supply the citizens with corn and salt
at reasonable prices; lastly, the national festival was prolonged for
an additional day.  Of the same character was the ordinance which we
have already mentioned respecting property fines,(1) which was not
merely intended in general to set limits to the dangerous
fining-prerogative of the magistrates, but was also, in a significant
manner, calculated for the especial protection of the man of small means.
The magistrate was prohibited from fining the same man on the same
day to an extent beyond two sheep or beyond thirty oxen, without
granting leave to appeal; and the reason of these singular rates
can only perhaps be found in the fact, that in the case of the man of
small means possessing only a few sheep a different maximum appeared
necessary from that fixed for the wealthy proprietor of herds of oxen
--a considerate regard to the wealth or poverty of the person fined,
from which modern legislators might take a lesson.

But these regulations were merely superficial; the main current flowed
in the opposite direction.  With the change in the constitution
there was introduced a comprehensive revolution in the financial and
economic relations of Rome, The government of the kings had probably
abstained on principle from enhancing the power of capital, and had
promoted as far as it could an increase in the number of farms.
The new aristocratic government, again, appears to have aimed from
the first at the destruction of the middle classes, particularly of
the intermediate and smaller holdings of land, and at the development
of a domination of landed and moneyed lords on the one hand, and of
an agricultural proletariate on the other.

Rising Power of the Capitalists

The reduction of the port-dues, although upon the whole a popular
measure, chiefly benefited the great merchant.   But a much greater
accession to the power of capital was supplied by the indirect system
of finance-administration.  It is difficult to say what were the
remote causes that gave rise to it: but, while its origin may
probably be referred to the regal period, after the introduction of
the consulate the importance of the intervention of private agency
must have been greatly increased, partly by the rapid succession of
magistrates in Rome, partly by the extension of the financial action
of the treasury to such matters as the purchase and sale of grain and
salt; and thus the foundation must have been laid for that system of
farming the finances, the development of which became so momentous and
so pernicious for the Roman commonwealth.  The state gradually put
all its indirect revenues and all its more complicated payments and
transactions into the hands of middlemen, who gave or received a round
sum and then managed the matter for their own benefit.  Of course only
considerable capitalists and, as the state looked strictly to tangible
security, in the main only large landholders, could enter into such
engagements: and thus there grew up a class of tax-farmers and
contractors, who, in the rapid growth of their wealth, in their
power over the state to which they appeared to be servants, and
in the absurd and sterile basis of their moneyed dominion, quite
admit of comparison with the speculators on the stock exchange
of the present day.

Public Land

The concentrated aspect assumed by the administration of finance
showed itself first and most palpably in the treatment of the public
lands, which tended almost directly to accomplish the material and
moral annihilation of the middle classes.  The use of the public
pasture and of the state-domains generally was from its very nature
a privilege of burgesses; formal law excluded the plebeian from
the joint use of the common pasture.  As however, apart from
the conversion of the public land into private property or its
assignation, Roman law knew no fixed rights of usufruct on the part
of individual burgesses to be respected like those of property, it
depended solely on the pleasure of the king, so long as the public
land remained such, to grant and to define its joint enjoyment; and it
is not to be doubted that he frequently made use of his right, or at
least his power, as to this matter in favour of plebeians.  But on the
introduction of the republic the principle was again strictly insisted
on, that the use of the common pasture belonged in law merely to the
burgess of best right, or in other words to the patrician; and, though
the senate still as before allowed exceptions in favour of the wealthy
plebeian houses represented in it, the small plebeian landholders and
the day-labourers, who stood most in need of the common pasture, had
its joint enjoyment injuriously withheld from them.  Moreover there
had hitherto been paid for the cattle driven out on the common pasture
a grazing-tax, which was moderate enough to make the right of using
that pasture still be regarded as a privilege, and yet yielded no
inconsiderable revenue to the public purse.  The patrician quaestors
were now remiss and indulgent in levying it, and gradually allowed it
to fall into desuetude.  Hitherto, particularly when new domains were
acquired by conquest, allocations of land had been regularly arranged,
in which all the poorer burgesses and --metoeci-- were provided for;
it was only the land which was not suitable for agriculture that was
annexed to the common pasture.  The ruling class did not venture
wholly to give up such assignations, and still less to propose them
merely in favour of the rich; but they became fewer and scantier, and
were replaced by the pernicious system of occupation-that is to say,
the cession of domain-lands, not in property or under formal lease for
a definite term, but in special usufruct until further notice, to the
first occupant and his heirs-at-law, so that the state was at any time
entitled to resume them, and the occupier had to pay the tenth sheaf,
or in oil and wine the fifth part of the produce, to the exchequer.
This was simply the -precarium- already described(2) applied to the
state-domains, and may have been already in use as to the public land
at an earlier period, particularly as a temporary arrangement until
its assignation should be carried out.  Now, however, not only did
this occupation-tenure become permanent, but, as was natural, none but
privileged persons or their favourites participated, and the tenth and
fifth were collected with the same negligence as the grazing-money.
A threefold blow was thus struck at the intermediate and smaller
landholders: they were deprived of the common usufructs of burgesses;
the burden of taxation was increased in consequence of the domain
revenues no longer flowing regularly into the public chest; and those
land-allocations were stopped, which had provided a constant outlet
for the agricultural proletariate somewhat as a great and well-regulated
system of emigration would do at the present day.  To these
evils was added the farming on a large scale, which was probably
already beginning to come into vogue, dispossessing the small agrarian
clients, and in their stead cultivating the estates by rural slaves;
a blow, which was more difficult to avert and perhaps more pernicious
than all those political usurpations put together.  The burdensome and
partly unfortunate wars, and the exorbitant taxes and task-works to
which these gave rise, filled up the measure of calamity, so as either
to deprive the possessor directly of his farm and to make him the
bondsman if not the slave of his creditor-lord, or to reduce him
through encumbrances practically to the condition of a temporary
lessee of his creditor.  The capitalists, to whom a new field was
here opened of lucrative speculation unattended by trouble or risk,
sometimes augmented in this way their landed property; sometimes they
left to the farmer, whose person and estate the law of debt placed in
their hands, nominal proprietorship and actual possession.  The latter
course was probably the most common as well as the most pernicious;
for while utter ruin might thereby be averted from the individual,
this precarious position of the farmer, dependent at all times on the
mercy of his creditor--a position in which he knew nothing of property
but its burdens--threatened to demoralise and politically to
annihilate the whole farmer-class.  The intention of the legislator,
when instead of mortgaging he prescribed the immediate transfer of
the property to the creditor with a view to prevent insolvency and to
devolve the burdens of the state on the real holders of the soil,(3)
was evaded by the rigorous system of personal credit, which might
be very suitable for merchants, but ruined the farmers.  The free
divisibility of the soil always involved the risk of an insolvent
agricultural proletariate; and under such circumstances, when all
burdens were increasing and all means of deliverance were foreclosed,
distress and despair could not but spread with fearful rapidity among
the agricultural middle class.

Relations of the Social Question to the Question between Orders

The distinction between rich and poor, which arose out of these
relations, by no means coincided with that between the clans and the
plebeians.  If far the greater part of the patricians were wealthy
landholders, opulent and considerable families were, of course,
not wanting among the plebeians; and as the senate, which even then
perhaps consisted in greater part of plebeians, had assumed the
superintendence of the finances to the exclusion even of the patrician
magistrates, it was natural that all those economic advantages, for
which the political privileges of the nobility were abused, should go
to the benefit of the wealthy collectively; and the pressure fell the
more heavily upon the commons, since those who were the ablest and
the most capable of resistance were by their admission to the senate
transferred from the class of the oppressed to the ranks of
the oppressors.

But this state of things prevented the political position of the
aristocracy from being permanently tenable.  Had it possessed the
self-control to govern justly and to protect the middle class--as
individual consuls from its ranks endeavoured, but from the reduced
position of the magistracy were unable effectually, to do--it might
have long maintained itself in sole possession of the offices of
state.  Had it been willing to admit the wealthy and respectable
plebeians to full equality of rights--possibly by connecting the
acquisition of the patriciate with admission into the senate--both
might long have governed and speculated with impunity.  But neither
of these courses was adopted; the narrowness of mind and short-
sightedness, which are the proper and inalienable privileges of
all genuine patricianism, were true to their character also in Rome,
and rent the powerful commonwealth asunder in useless, aimless,
and inglorious strife.

Secession to the Sacred Mount

The immediate crisis however proceeded not from those who felt the
disabilities of their order, but from the distress of the farmers.
The rectified annals place the political revolution in the year 244,
the social in the years 259 and 260; they certainly appear to have
followed close upon each other, but the interval was probably longer.
The strict enforcement of the law of debt--so runs the story--excited
the indignation of the farmers at large.  When in the year 259 the
levy was called forth for a dangerous war, the men bound to serve
refused to obey the command.  Thereupon the consul Publius Servilius
suspended for a time the application of the debtor-laws, and gave
orders to liberate the persons already imprisoned for debt as well as
prohibited further arrests; so that the farmers took their places in
the ranks and helped to secure the victory.  On their return from the
field of battle the peace, which had been achieved by their exertions,
brought back their prison and their chains: with merciless rigour
the second consul, Appius Claudius, enforced the debtor-laws and his
colleague, to whom his former soldiers appealed for aid, dared not
offer opposition.  It seemed as if collegiate rule had been introduced
not for the protection of the people, but to facilitate breach of
faith and despotism; they endured, however, what could not be changed.
But when in the following year the war was renewed, the word of the
consul availed no longer.  It was not till Manius Valerius was
nominated dictator that the farmers submitted, partly from their awe
of the higher magisterial authority, partly from their confidence in
his friendly feeling to the popular cause--for the Valerii were one of
those old patrician clans by whom government was esteemed a privilege
and an honour, not a source of gain.  The victory was again with the
Roman standards; but when the victors came home and the dictator
submitted his proposals of reform to the senate, they were thwarted
by its obstinate opposition.  The army still stood in its array, as
usual, before the gates of the city.  When the news arrived, the long
threatening storm burst forth; the -esprit de corps- and the compact
military organization carried even the timid and the indifferent along
with the movement.  The army abandoned its general and its encampment,
and under the leadership of the commanders of the legions--the
military tribunes, who were at least in great part plebeians--marched
in martial order into the district of Crustumeria between the Tiber
and the Anio, where it occupied a hill and threatened to establish
in this most fertile part of the Roman territory a new plebeian city.
This secession showed in a palpable manner even to the most obstinate
of the oppressors that such a civil war must end with economic ruin
to themselves; and the senate gave way.  The dictator negotiated an
agreement; the citizens returned within the city walls; unity was
outwardly restored.  The people gave Manius Valerius thenceforth the
name of "the great" (-maximus-)--and called the mount beyond the Anio
"the sacred mount."  There was something mighty and elevating in such
a revolution, undertaken by the multitude itself without definite
guidance under generals whom accident supplied, and accomplished
without bloodshed; and with pleasure and pride the citizens recalled
its memory.  Its consequences were felt for many centuries: it was
the origin of the tribunate of the plebs.

Plebian Tribunes and Plebian Aediles

In addition to temporary enactments, particularly for remedying the
most urgent distress occasioned by debt, and for providing for a
number of the rural population by the founding of various colonies,
the dictator carried in constitutional form a law, which he moreover
--doubtless in order to secure amnesty to the burgesses for the
breach of their military oath--caused every individual member of the
community to swear to, and then had it deposited in a temple under the
charge and custody of two magistrates specially appointed from the
plebs for the purpose, the two "house-masters" (-aediles-).  This law
placed by the side of the two patrician consuls two plebeian tribunes,
who were to be elected by the plebeians assembled in curies.  The
power of the tribunes was of no avail in opposition to the military
-imperium-, that is, in opposition to the authority of the dictator
everywhere or to that of the consuls beyond the city; but it
confronted, on a footing of independence and equality, the ordinary
civil powers which the consuls exercised.  There was, however, no
partition of powers.  The tribunes obtained the right which pertained
to the consul against his fellow-consul and all the more against an
inferior magistrate,(4) namely, the right to cancel any command issued
by a magistrate, as to which the burgess whom it affected held himself
aggrieved and lodged a complaint, through their protest timeously
and personally interposed, and likewise of hindering or cancelling
at discretion any proposal made by a magistrate to the burgesses,
in other words, the right of intercession or the so-called
tribunician veto.

Intercession

The power of the tribunes, therefore, primarily involved the right
of putting a stop to administration and to judicial action at their
pleasure, of enabling a person bound to military service to withhold
himself from the levy with impunity, of preventing or cancelling the
raising of an action and legal execution against the debtor, the
initiation of a criminal process and the arrest of the accused while
the investigation was pending, and other powers of the same sort.
That this legal help might not be frustrated by the absence of the
helpers, it was further ordained that the tribune should not spend
a night out of the city, and that his door must stand open day and
night.  Moreover, it lay in the power of the tribunate of the people
through a single word of a single tribune to restrain the adoption
of a resolution by the community, which otherwise by virtue of its
sovereign right might have without ceremony recalled the privileges
conferred by it on the plebs.

But these rights would have been ineffective, if there had not
belonged to the tribune of the people an instantaneously operative
and irresistible power of enforcing them against him who did not
regard them, and especially against the magistrate contravening them.
This was conferred in such a form that the acting in opposition to
the tribune when making use of his right, above all things the laying
hands on his person, which at the Sacred Mount every plebeian, man by
man for himself and his descendants, had sworn to protect now and in
all time to come from all harm, should be a capital crime; and the
exercise of this criminal justice was committed not to the magistrates
of the community but to those of the plebs.  The tribune might in
virtue of this his judicial office call to account any burgess,
especially the consul in office, have him seized if he should not
voluntarily submit, place him under arrest during investigation or
allow him to find bail, and then sentence him to death or to a fine.
For this purpose the two plebeian aediles appointed at the same
time were attached to the tribunes as their servants and assistants,
primarily to effect arrest, on which account the same inviolable
character was assured to them also by the collective oath of the
plebeians.  Moreover the aediles themselves had judicial powers like
the tribunes, but only for the minor causes that might be settled by
fines.  If an appeal was lodged against the decision of tribune or
aedile, it was addressed not to the whole body of the burgesses, with
which the officials of the plebs were not entitled at all to transact
business, but to the whole body of the plebeians, which in this case
met by curies and finally decided by majority of votes.

This procedure certainly savoured of violence rather than of justice,
especially when it was adopted against a non-plebeian, as must in fact
have been ordinarily the case.  It was not to be reconciled either
with the letter or the spirit of the constitution that a patrician
should be called to account by authorities who presided not over the
body of burgesses, but over an association formed within it, and that
he should be compelled to appeal, not to the burgesses, but to this
very association.  This was originally without question Lynch justice;
but the self-help was doubtless carried into effect from early times
in form of law, and was after the legal recognition of the tribunate
of the plebs regarded as lawfully admissible.

In point of intention this new jurisdiction of the tribunes and the
aediles, and the appellate decision of the plebeian assembly therein
originating, were beyond doubt just as much bound to the laws as the
jurisdiction of the consuls and quaestors and the judgment of the
centuries on appeal; the legal conceptions of crime against the
community(5) and of offences against order(6) were transferred from
the community and its magistrates to the plebs and its champions.
But these conceptions were themselves so little fixed, and their
statutory definition was so difficult and indeed impossible, that
the administration of justice under these categories from its very
nature bore almost inevitably the stamp of arbitrariness.  And now
when the very idea of right had become obscured amidst the struggles
of the orders, and when the legal party--leaders on both sides were
furnished with a co-ordinate jurisdiction, this jurisdiction must have
more and more approximated to a mere arbitrary police.  It affected
in particular the magistrate.  Hitherto the latter according to
Roman state law, so long as he was a magistrate, was amenable to no
jurisdiction at all, and, although after demitting his office he might
have been legally made responsible for each of his acts, the exercise
of this right lay withal in the hands of the members of his own order
and ultimately of the collective community, to which these likewise
belonged.  Now in the tribunician jurisdiction there emerged a new
power, which on the one hand might interfere against the supreme
magistrate even during his tenure of office, and on the other hand
was wielded against the noble burgesses exclusively by the non-noble,
and which was the more oppressive that neither the crime nor its
punishment was formally defined by law.  In reality through the
co-ordinate jurisdiction of the plebs and the community the estates,
limbs, and lives of the burgesses were abandoned to the arbitrary
pleasure of the party assemblies.

In civil jurisdiction the plebeian institutions interfered only so
far, that in the processes affecting freedom, which were so important
for the plebs, the nomination of jurymen was withdrawn from the
consuls, and the decisions in such cases were pronounced by the
"ten-men-judges" destined specially for that purpose (-iudices-,
-decemviri-, afterwards -decemviri litibus iudicandis-).

Legislation

With this co-ordinate jurisdiction there was further associated a
co-ordinate initiative in legislation.  The right of assembling the
members and of procuring decrees on their part already pertained to
the tribunes, in so far as no association at all can be conceived
without such a right.  But it was conferred upon them, in a marked
way, by legally securing that the autonomous right of the plebs to
assemble and pass resolutions should not be interfered with on the
part of the magistrates of the community or, in fact, of the community
itself.  At all events it was the necessary preliminary to the legal
recognition of the plebs generally, that the tribunes could not be
hindered from having their successors elected by the assembly of the
plebs and from procuring the confirmation of their criminal sentences
by the same body; and this right accordingly was further specially
guaranteed to them by the Icilian law (262), which threatened with
severe punishment any one who should interrupt the tribune while
speaking, or should bid the assembly disperse.  It is evident that
under such circumstances the tribune could not well be prevented from
taking a vote on other proposals than the choice of his successor and
the confirmation of his sentences.  Such "resolves of the multitude"
(-plebi scita-) were not indeed strictly valid decrees of the
people; on the contrary, they were at first little more than are
the resolutions of our modern public meetings; but, as the distinction
between the comitia of the people and the councils of the multitude
was of a formal nature rather than aught else, the validity of these
resolves as autonomous determinations of the community was at once
claimed at least on the part of the plebeians, and the Icilian law for
instance was immediately carried in this way.  Thus was the tribune of
the people appointed as a shield and protection for the individual,
and as leader and manager for all, provided with unlimited judicial
power in criminal proceedings, that in this way he might give emphasis
to his command, and lastly even pronounced to be in his person
inviolable (-sacrosanctus-), inasmuch as whoever laid hands upon
him or his servant was not merely regarded as incurring the vengeance
of the gods, but was also among men accounted as if, after legally
proven crime, deserving of death.

Relation of the Tribune to the Consul

The tribunes of the multitude (-tribuni plebis-) arose out
of the military tribunes and derived from them their name; but
constitutionally they had no further relation to them.  On the
contrary, in respect of powers the tribunes of the plebs stood on a
level with the consuls.  The appeal from the consul to the tribune,
and the tribune's right of intercession in opposition to the consul,
were, as has been already said, precisely of the same nature with the
appeal from consul to consul and the intercession of the one consul in
opposition to the other; and both cases were simply applications of
the general principle of law that, where two equal authorities differ,
the veto prevails over the command.  Moreover the original number
(which indeed was soon augmented), and the annual duration of the
magistracy, which in the case of the tribunes changed its occupants
on the 10th of December, were common to the tribunes and the consuls.
They shared also the peculiar collegiate arrangement, which placed the
full powers of the office in the hands of each individual consul and
of each individual tribune, and, when collisions occurred within the
college, did not count the votes, but gave the Nay precedence over
the Yea; for which reason, when a tribune forbade, the veto of the
individual was sufficient notwithstanding the opposition of his
colleagues, while on the other hand, when he brought an accusation,
he could be thwarted by any one of those colleagues.  Both consuls and
tribunes had full and co-ordinate criminal jurisdiction, although the
former exercised it indirectly, and the latter directly; as the two
quaestors were attached to the former, the two aediles were associated
with the latter.(7)  The consuls were necessarily patricians, the
tribunes necessarily plebeians.  The former had the ampler power, the
latter the more unlimited, for the consul submitted to the prohibition
and the judgment of the tribunes, but the tribune did not submit
himself to the consul.  Thus the tribunician power was a copy of the
consular; but it was none the less a contrast to it.  The power of
the consuls was essentially positive, that of the tribunes essentially
negative.  The consuls alone were magistrates of the Roman people, not
the tribunes; for the former were elected by the whole burgesses, the
latter only by the plebeian association.  In token of this the consul
appeared in public with the apparel and retinue pertaining to state-
officials; the tribunes sat on a stool instead of the "chariot seat,"
and lacked the official attendants, the purple border, and generally
all the insignia of magistracy: even in the senate the tribune had
neither presidency nor so much as a seat.  Thus in this remarkable
institution absolute prohibition was in the most stern and abrupt
fashion opposed to absolute command; the quarrel was settled by
legally recognizing and regulating the discord between rich and poor.

Political Value of the Tribunate

But what was gained by a measure which broke up the unity of the
state; which subjected the magistrates to a controlling authority
unsteady in its action and dependent on all the passions of
the moment; which in the hour of peril might have brought the
administration to a dead-lock at the bidding of any one of the
opposition chiefs elevated to the rival throne; and which, by
investing all the magistrates with co-ordinate jurisdiction in
the administration of criminal law, as it were formally transferred
that administration from the domain of law to that of politics
and corrupted it for all time coming? It is true indeed that the
tribunate, if it did not directly contribute to the political
equalization of the orders, served as a powerful weapon in the hands
of the plebeians when these soon afterwards desired admission to the
offices of state.  But this was not the real design of the tribunate.
It was a concession wrung not from the politically privileged order,
but from the rich landlords and capitalists; it was designed to ensure
to the commons equitable administration of law, and to promote a more
judicious administration of finance.  This design it did not, and
could not, fulfil.  The tribune might put a stop to particular
iniquities, to individual instances of crying hardship; but the fault
lay not in the unfair working of a righteous law, but in a law which
was itself unrighteous, and how could the tribune regularly obstruct
the ordinary course of justice?  Could he have done so, it would have
served little to remedy the evil, unless the sources of impoverishment
were stopped--the perverse taxation, the wretched system of credit,
and the pernicious occupation of the domain-lands.  But such measures
were not attempted, evidently because the wealthy plebeians themselves
had no less interest in these abuses than the patricians.  So this
singular magistracy was instituted, which presented to the commons an
obvious and available aid, and yet could not possibly carry out the
necessary economic reform.  It was no proof of political wisdom, but a
wretched compromise between the wealthy aristocracy and the leaderless
multitude.  It has been affirmed that the tribunate of the people
preserved Rome from tyranny.  Were it true, it would be of little
moment: a change in the form of the state is not in itself an evil
for a people; on the contrary, it was a misfortune for the Romans
that monarchy was introduced too late, after the physical and mental
energies of the nation were exhausted.  But the assertion is not
even correct; as is shown by the circumstance that the Italian states
remained as regularly free from tyrants as the Hellenic states
regularly witnessed their emergence.  The reason lies simply in the
fact that tyranny is everywhere the result of universal suffrage,
and that the Italians excluded the burgesses who had no land from
their public assemblies longer than the Greeks did: when Rome departed
from this course, monarchy did not fail to emerge, and was in fact
associated with this very tribunician orifice.  That the tribunate had
its use, in pointing out legitimate paths of opposition and averting
many a wrong, no one will fail to acknowledge; but it is equally
evident that, where it did prove useful, it was employed for very
different objects from those for which it had been established.
The bold experiment of allowing the leaders of the opposition a
constitutional veto, and of investing them with power to assert it
regardless of the consequences, proved to be an expedient by which
the state was politically unhinged; and social evils were prolonged
by the application of useless palliatives.

Further Dissensions

Now that civil war was organized, it pursued its course.  The parties
stood face to face as if drawn up for battle, each under its leaders.
Restriction of the consular and extension of the tribunician power
were the objects contended for on the one side; the annihilation of
the tribunate was sought on the other.  Legal impunity secured for
insubordination, refusal to enter the ranks for the defence of the
land, impeachments involving fines and penalties directed specially
against magistrates who had violated the rights of the commons or
who had simply provoked their displeasure, were the weapons of the
plebeians; and to these the patricians opposed violence, concert with
the public foes, and occasionally also the dagger of the assassin.
Hand-to-hand conflicts took place in the streets, and on both sides
the sacredness of the magistrate's person was violated.  Many families
of burgesses are said to have migrated, and to have sought more
peaceful abodes in neighbouring communities; and we may well believe
it.  The strong patriotism of the people is obvious from the fact,
not that they adopted this constitution, but that they endured it,
and that the community, notwithstanding the most vehement convulsions,
still held together.

Coriolanus

The best-known incident in these conflicts of the orders is the
history of Gnaeus Marcius, a brave aristocrat, who derived his
surname from the storming of Corioli.  Indignant at the refusal of
the centuries to entrust to him the consulate in the year 263, he is
reported to have proposed, according to one version, the suspension of
the sales of corn from the state-stores, till the hungry people should
give up the tribunate; according to another version, the direct
abolition of the tribunate itself.  Impeached by the tribunes so that
his life was in peril, it is said that he left the city, but only to
return at the head of a Volscian army; that when he was on the point
of conquering the city of his fathers for the public foe, the earnest
appeal of his mother touched his conscience; and that thus he expiated
his first treason by a second, and both by death.  How much of this
is true cannot be determined; but the story, over which the naive
misrepresentations of the Roman annalists have shed a patriotic glory,
affords a glimpse of the deep moral and political disgrace of these
conflicts between the orders.  Of a similar stamp was the surprise
of the Capitol by a band of political refugees, led by a Sabine chief,
Appius Herdonius, in the year 294; they summoned the slaves to arms,
and it was only after a violent conflict, and by the aid of the
Tusculans who hastened to render help, that the Roman burgess-force
overcame the Catilinarian band.  The same character of fanatical
exasperation marks other events of this epoch, the historical
significance of which can no longer be apprehended in the lying
family narratives; such as the predominance of the Fabian clan which
furnished one of the two consuls from 269 to 275, and the reaction
against it, the emigration of the Fabii from Rome, and their
annihilation by the Etruscans on the Cremera (277).  Still more odious
was the murder of the tribune of the people, Gnaeus Genucius, who had
ventured to call two consulars to account, and who on the morning of
the day fixed for the impeachment was found dead in bed (281).  The
immediate effect of this misdeed was the Publilian law (283), one of
the most momentous in its consequences with which Roman history has to
deal.  Two of the most important arrangements--the introduction of the
plebeian assembly of tribes, and the placing of the -plebiscitum- on
a level, although conditionally, with the formal law sanctioned by the
whole community--are to be referred, the former certainly, the latter
probably, to the proposal of Volero Publilius the tribune of the
people in 283.  The plebs had hitherto adopted its resolutions by
curies; accordingly in these its separate assemblies, on the one hand,
the voting had been by mere number without distinction of wealth or
of freehold property, and, on the other hand, in consequence of that
standing side by side on the part of the clansmen, which was implied
in the very nature of the curial assembly, the clients of the great
patrician families had voted with one another in the assembly of the
plebeians.  These two circumstances had given to the nobility various
opportunities of exercising influence on that assembly, and especially
of managing the election of tribunes according to their views; and
both were henceforth done away by means of the new method of voting
according to tribes.  Of these, four had been formed under the Servian
constitution for the purposes of the levy, embracing town and country
alike;(8) subsequently-perhaps in the year 259--the Roman territory
had been divided into twenty districts, of which the first four
embraced the city and its immediate environs, while the other sixteen
were formed out of the rural territory on the basis of the clan-cantons
of the earliest Roman domain.(9)  To these was added--probably
only in consequence of the Publilian law, and with a view to bring
about the inequality, which was desirable for voting purposes, in
the total number of the divisions--as a twenty-first tribe the
Crustuminian, which derived its name from the place where the plebs
had constituted itself as such and had established the tribunate;(10)
and thenceforth the special assemblies of the plebs took place, no
longer by curies, but by tribes.  In these divisions, which were based
throughout on the possession of land, the voters were exclusively
freeholders: but they voted without distinction as to the size of
their possession, and just as they dwelt together in villages and
hamlets.  Consequently, this assembly of the tribes, which otherwise
was externally modelled on that of the curies, was in reality an
assembly of the independent middle class, from which, on the one hand,
the great majority of freedmen and clients were excluded as not being
freeholders, and in which, on the other hand, the larger landholders
had no such preponderance as in the centuries.  This "meeting of the
multitude" (-concilium plebis-) was even less a general assembly of
the burgesses than the plebeian assembly by curies had been, for it
not only, like the latter, excluded all the patricians, but also the
plebeians who had no land; but the multitude was powerful enough to
carry the point that its decree should have equal legal validity
with that adopted by the centuries, in the event of its having been
previously approved by the whole senate.  That this last regulation
had the force of established law before the issuing of the Twelve
Tables, is certain; whether it was directly introduced on occasion
of the Publilian -plebiscitum-, or whether it had already been called
into existence by some other--now forgotten--statute, and was only
applied to the Publilian -plebiscitum- cannot be any longer
ascertained.  In like manner it remains uncertain whether the number
of tribunes was raised by this law from two to four, or whether that
increase had taken place previously.

Agrarian Law of Spurius Cassius

More sagacious in plan than all these party steps was the attempt
of Spurius Cassius to break down the financial omnipotence of the
rich, and so to put a stop to the true source of the evil.  He was
a patrician, and none in his order surpassed him in rank and renown.
After two triumphs, in his third consulate (268), he submitted to the
burgesses a proposal to have the public domain measured and to lease
part of it for the benefit of the public treasury, while a further
portion was to be distributed among the necessitous.  In other words,
he attempted to wrest the control of the public lands from the senate,
and, with the support of the burgesses, to put an end to the selfish
system of occupation.  He probably imagined that his personal
distinction, and the equity and wisdom of the measure, might carry
it even amidst that stormy sea of passion and of weakness.  But he
was mistaken.  The nobles rose as one man; the rich plebeians took
part with them; the commons were displeased because Spurius Cassius
desired, in accordance with federal rights and equity, to give to
the Latin confederates their share in the assignation.  Cassius had
to die.  There is some truth in the charge that he had usurped regal
power, for he had indeed endeavoured like the kings to protect the
free commons against his own order.  His law was buried along with
him; but its spectre thenceforward incessantly haunted the eyes of
the rich, and again and again it rose from the tomb against them,
until amidst the conflicts to which it led the commonwealth perished.

Decemvirs

A further attempt was made to get rid of the tribunician power by
securing to the plebeians equality of rights in a more regular and
more effectual way.  The tribune of the people, Gaius Terentilius
Arsa, proposed in 292 the nomination of a commission of five men to
prepare a general code of law by which the consuls should in future be
bound in exercising their judicial powers.  But the senate refused to
sanction this proposal, and ten years elapsed ere it was carried into
effect--years of vehement strife between the orders, and variously
agitated moreover by wars and internal troubles.  With equal obstinacy
the party of the nobles hindered the concession of the law in the
senate, and the plebs nominated again and again the same men as
tribunes.  Attempts were made to obviate the attack by other
concessions.  In the year 297 an increase of the tribunes from four to
ten was sanctioned--a very dubious gain; and in the following year, by
an Icilian -plebiscitum- which was admitted among the sworn privileges
of the plebs, the Aventine, which had hitherto been a temple-grove and
uninhabited, was distributed among the poorer burgesses as sites for
buildings in heritable occupancy.  The plebs took what was offered
to them, but never ceased to insist in their demand for a legal code.
At length, in the year 300, a compromise was effected; the senate in
substance gave way.  The preparation of a legal code was resolved
upon; for that purpose, as an extraordinary measure, the centuries
were to choose ten men who were at the same time to act as supreme
magistrates in room of the consuls (-decemviri consulari imperio
legibus scribundls-), and to this office not merely patricians, but
plebeians also might be elected.  These were here for the first time
designated as eligible, though only for an extraordinary office.  This
was a great step in the progress towards full political equality; and
it was not too dearly purchased, when the tribunate of the people as
well as the right of appeal were suspended while the decemvirate
lasted, and the decemvirs were simply bound not to infringe the sworn
liberties of the community.  Previously however an embassy was sent
to Greece to bring home the laws of Solon and other Greek laws; and
it was only on its return that the decemvirs were chosen for the year
303.  Although they were at liberty to elect plebeians, the choice
fell on patricians alone--so powerful was the nobility still--and
it was only when a second election became necessary for 304, that
some plebeians were chosen--the first non-patrician magistrates that
the Roman community had.

Taking a connected view of these measures, we can scarcely attribute
to them any other design than that of substituting for tribunician
intercession a limitation of the consular powers by written law.
On both sides there must have been a conviction that things could not
remain as they were, and the perpetuation of anarchy, while it ruined
the commonwealth, was in reality of no benefit to any one.  People in
earnest could not but discern that the interference of the tribunes
in administration and their action as prosecutors had an absolutely
pernicious effect; and the only real gain which the tribunate brought
to the plebeians was the protection which it afforded against a
partial administration of justice, by operating as a sort of court
of cassation to check the caprice of the magistrate.  Beyond doubt,
when the plebeians desired a written code, the patricians replied that
in that event the legal protection of tribunes would be superfluous;
and upon this there appears to have been concession by both sides.
Perhaps there was never anything definitely expressed as to what
was to be done after the drawing up of the code; but that the plebs
definitely renounced the tribunate is not to be doubted, since it was
brought by the decemvirate into such a position that it could not get
back the tribunate otherwise than by illegal means.  The promise given
to the plebs that its sworn liberties should not be touched, may be
referred to the rights of the plebeians independent of the tribunate,
such as the -provocatio- and the possession of the Aventine.  The
intention seems to have been that the decemvirs should, on their
retiring, propose to the people to re-elect the consuls who should
now judge no longer according to their arbitrary pleasure but
according to written law.

Legislation of the Twelve Tables

The plan, if it should stand, was a wise one; all depended on whether
men's minds exasperated on either side with passion would accept that
peaceful adjustment.  The decemvirs of the year 303 submitted their
law to the people, and it was confirmed by them, engraven on ten
tables of copper, and affixed in the Forum to the rostra in front
of the senate-house.  But as a supplement appeared necessary,
decemvirs were again nominated in the year 304, who added two more
tables.  Thus originated the first and only Roman code, the law of the
Twelve Tables.  It proceeded from a compromise between parties, and
for that very reason could not well have contained any changes in the
existing law of a comprehensive nature, going beyond the regulation of
secondary matters and of the mere adaptation of means and ends.  Even
in the system of credit no further alleviation was introduced than the
establishment of a--probably low--maximum of interest (10 per cent)
and the threatening of heavy penalties against the usurer-penalties,
characteristically enough, far heavier than those of the thief; the
harsh procedure in actions of debt remained at least in its leading
features unaltered.  Still less, as may easily be conceived, were
changes contemplated in the rights of the orders.  On the contrary the
legal distinction between burgesses liable to be taxed and those who
were without estate, and the invalidity of marriage between patricians
and plebeians, were confirmed anew in the law of the city.  In like
manner, with a view to restrict the caprice of the magistrate and
to protect the burgess, it was expressly enacted that the later law
should uniformly have precedence over the earlier, and that no decree
of the people should be issued against a single burgess.  The most
remarkable feature was the exclusion of appeal to the -comitia
tributa- in capital causes, while the privilege of appeal to the
centuries was guaranteed; which admits of explanation from the
circumstance that the penal jurisdiction was in fact usurped by the
plebs and its presidents,(11) and with the tribunate there necessarily
fell the tribunician capital process, while it was perhaps the
intention to retain the aedilician process of fine (-multa-).
The essential political significance of the measure resided far less
in the contents of the legislation than in the formal obligation now
laid upon the consuls to administer justice according to these forms
of process and these rules of law, and in the public exhibition of
the code, by which the administration of justice was subjected to the
control of publicity and the consul was compelled to dispense equal
and truly common justice to all.

Fall of the Decemvirs

The end of the decemvirate is involved in much obscurity.  It only
remained--so runs the story--for the decemvirs to publish the last
two tables, and then to give place to the ordinary magistracy.  But
they delayed to do so: under the pretext that the laws were not yet
ready, they themselves prolonged their magistracy after the expiry
of their official year--which was so far possible, as under Roman
constitutional law the magistracy called in an extraordinary way to
the revision of the constitution could not become legally bound by
the term set for its ending.  The moderate section of the aristocracy,
with the Valerii and Horatii at their head, are said to have attempted
in the senate to compel the abdication of the decemvirate; but the
head of the decemvirs Appius Claudius, originally a rigid aristocrat,
but now changing into a demagogue and a tyrant, gained the ascendancy
in the senate, and the people submitted.  The levy of two armies
was accomplished without opposition, and war was begun against the
Volscians as well as against the Sabines.  Thereupon the former
tribune of the people, Lucius Siccius Dentatus, the bravest man in
Rome, who had fought in a hundred and twenty battles and had forty-five
honourable scars to show, was found dead in front of the camp,
foully murdered, as it was said, at the instigation of the decemvirs.
A revolution was fermenting in men's minds; and its outbreak was
hastened by the unjust sentence pronounced by Appius in the process as
to the freedom of the daughter of the centurion Lucius Verginius, the
bride of the former tribune of the people Lucius Icilius--a sentence
which wrested the maiden from her relatives with a view to make her
non-free and beyond the pale of the law, and induced her father
himself to plunge his knife into the heart of his daughter in the
open Forum, to rescue her from certain shame.  While the people in
amazement at the unprecedented deed surrounded the dead body of the
fair maiden, the decemvir commanded his lictors to bring the father
and then the bridegroom before his tribunal, in order to render to
him, from whose decision there lay no appeal, immediate account
for their rebellion against his authority.  The cup was now full.
Protected by the furious multitude, the father and the bridegroom of
the maiden made their escape from the lictors of the despot, and
while the senate trembled and wavered in Rome, the pair presented
themselves, with numerous witnesses of the fearful deed, in the two
camps.  The unparalleled tale was told; the eyes of all were opened
to the gap which the absence of tribunician protection had made in the
security of law; and what the fathers had done their sons repeated.
Once more the armies abandoned their leaders: they marched in warlike
order through the city, and proceeded once more to the Sacred Mount,
where they again nominated their own tribunes.  Still the decemvirs
refused to lay down their power; then the army with its tribunes
appeared in the city, and encamped on the Aventine.  Now at length,
when civil war was imminent and the conflict in the streets might
hourly begin, the decemvirs renounced their usurped and dishonoured
power; and the consuls Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius negotiated
a second compromise, by which the tribunate of the plebs was again
established.  The impeachment of the decemvirs terminated in the two
most guilty, Appius Claudius and Spurius Oppius, committing suicide
in prison, while the other eight went into exile and the state
confiscated their property.  The prudent and moderate tribune of
the plebs, Marcus Duilius, prevented further judicial prosecutions
by a seasonable use of his veto.

So runs the story as recorded by the pen of the Roman aristocrats;
but, even leaving out of view the accessory circumstances, the great
crisis out of which the Twelve Tables arose cannot possibly have
ended in such romantic adventures, and in political issues so
incomprehensible.  The decemvirate was, after the abolition of the
monarchy and the institution of the tribunate of the people, the
third great victory of the plebs; and the exasperation of the opposite
party against the institution and against its head Appius Claudius
is sufficiently intelligible.  The plebeians had through its means
secured the right of eligibility to the highest magistracy of the
community and a general code of law; and it was not they that had
reason to rebel against the new magistracy, and to restore the
purely patrician consular government by force of arms.  This end
can only have been pursued by the party of the nobility, and if the
patricio-plebeian decemvirs made the attempt to maintain themselves
in office beyond their time, the nobility were certainly the first to
enter the lists against them; on which occasion doubtless the nobles
would not neglect to urge that the stipulated rights of the plebs should
be curtailed and the tribunate, in particular, should be taken from it.
If the nobility thereupon succeeded in setting aside the decemvirs,
it is certainly conceivable that after their fall the plebs should
once more assemble in arms with a view to secure the results both
of the earlier revolution of 260 and of the latest movement; and the
Valerio-Horatian laws of 305 can only be understood as forming a
compromise in this conflict.

The Valerio-Horatian Laws

The compromise, as was natural, proved very favourable to the
plebeians, and again imposed severely felt restrictions on the
power of the nobility.  As a matter of course the tribunate of the
people was restored, the code of law wrung from the aristocracy was
definitively retained, and the consuls were obliged to judge according
to it.  Through the code indeed the tribes lost their usurped
jurisdiction in capital causes; but the tribunes got it back, as a way
was found by which it was possible for them to transact business as
to such cases with the centuries.  Besides they retained, in the right
to award fines without limitation and to submit this sentence to the
-comitia tributa-, a sufficient means of putting an end to the civic
existence of a patrician opponent.  Further, it was on the proposition
of the consuls decreed by the centuries that in future every
magistrate--and therefore the dictator among the rest--should be bound
at his nomination to allow the right of appeal: any one who should
nominate a magistrate on other terms was to expiate the offence with
his life.  In other respects the dictator retained his former powers;
and in particular his official acts could not, like those of the
consuls, be cancelled by a tribune.

The plenitude of the consular power was further restricted in so far
as the administration of the military chest was committed to two
paymasters (-quaestores-) chosen by the community, who were nominated
for the first time in 307.  The nomination as well of the two new
paymasters for war as of the two administering the city-chest now
passed over to the community; the consul retained merely the conduct
of the election instead of the election itself.  The assembly in which
the paymasters were elected was that of the whole patricio-plebeian
freeholders, and voted by districts; an arrangement which likewise
involved a concession to the plebeian farmers, who had far more
command of these assemblies than of the centuriate -comitia-.

A concession of still greater consequence was that which allowed the
tribunes to share in the discussions of the senate.  To admit the
tribunes to the hall where the senate sat, appeared to that body
beneath its dignity; so a bench was placed for them at the door that
they might from that spot follow its proceedings.  The tribunician
right of intercession had extended also to the decrees of the senate
as a collective body, after the latter had become not merely a
deliberative but a decretory board, which probably occurred at first
in the case of a -plebiscitum- that was meant to be binding for the
whole community;(12) it was natural that there should thenceforth be
conceded to the tribunes a certain participation in the discussions
of the senate-house.  In order also to secure the decrees of the
senate-- with the validity of which indeed that of the most important
-plebiscita- was bound up--from being tampered with or forged, it
was enacted that in future they should be deposited not merely under
charge of the patrician -quaestores urbani- in the temple of Saturn,
but also under that of the plebian aediles in the temple of Ceres.
Thus this struggle, which was begun in order to get rid of the
tribunician power, terminated in the renewed and now definitive
sanctioning of its right to annul not only particular acts of
administration on the appeal of the person aggrieved, but also any
resolution of the constituent powers of the state at pleasure.
The persons of the tribunes, and the uninterrupted maintenance of
the college at its full number, were once more secured by the most
sacred oaths and by every element of reverence that religion could
present, and not less by the most formal laws.  No attempt to abolish
this magistracy was ever from this time forward made in Rome.




Notes for Book II Chapter II


1.  II. I. Right of Appeal

2.  I. XIII. Landed proprietors

3.  I. VI. Character of the Roman Law

4.  II. I. Collegiate Arrangement

5.  I. XI. Property

6.  I. XI. Punishment of Offenses against Order

7.  That the plebeian aediles were formed after the model of the
patrician quaestors in the same way as the plebeian tribunes after
the model of the patrician consuls, is evident both as regards their
criminal functions (in which the distinction between the two
magistracies seems to have lain in their tendencies only, not in their
powers) and as regards their charge of the archives.  The temple of
Ceres was to the aediles what the temple of Saturn was to the
quaestors, and from the former they derived their name.  Significant
in this respect is the enactment of the law of 305 (Liv. iii. 55),
that the decrees of the senate should be delivered over to the aediles
there (p. 369), whereas, as is well known, according to the ancient
--and subsequently after the settlement of the struggles between the
orders, again preponderant--practice those decrees were committed to
the quaestors for preservation in the temple of Saturn.

8.  I. VI. Levy Districts

9.  I. III. Clan-Villages

10.  II. II. Secession to the Sacred mount

11.  II. II. Intercession

12.  II. II. Legislation




CHAPTER III

The Equalization of the Orders, and the New Aristocracy


Union of the Plebians

The tribunician movements appear to have mainly originated in social
rather than political discontent, and there is good reason to suppose
that some of the wealthy plebeians admitted to the senate were no
less opposed to these movements than the patricians.  For they too
benefited by the privileges against which the agitation was mainly
directed; and although in other respects they found themselves treated
as inferior, it probably seemed to them by no means an appropriate
time for asserting their claim to participate in the magistracies,
when the exclusive financial power of the whole senate was assailed.
This explains why during the first fifty years of the republic no step
was taken aiming directly at the political equalization of the orders.

But this league between the patricians and the wealthy plebeians by no
means bore within itself any guarantee of permanence.  Beyond doubt
from the very first a portion of the leading plebeian families had
attached themselves to the movement-party, partly from a sense of what
was due to the fellow-members of their order, partly in consequence
of the natural bond which unites all who are treated as inferior,
and partly because they perceived that concessions to the multitude
were inevitable in the issue, and that, if turned to due account,
they would result in the abrogation of the exclusive rights of
the patriciate and would thereby give to the plebeian aristocracy a
decisive preponderance in the state.  Should this conviction become
--as was inevitable--more and more prevalent, and should the plebeian
aristocracy at the head of its order take up the struggle with the
patrician nobility, it would wield in the tribunate a legalized
instrument of civil warfare, and it might, with the weapon of social
distress, so fight its battles as to dictate to the nobility the terms
of peace and, in the position of mediator between the two parties,
compel its own admission to the offices of state.

Such a crisis in the position of parties occurred after the fall of
the decemvirate.  It had now become perfectly clear that the tribunate
of the plebs could never be set aside; the plebeian aristocracy could
not do better than seize this powerful lever and employ it for the
removal of the political disabilities of their order.

Throwing Open of Marriage and of Magistracies--
Military Tribunes with Consular Powers

Nothing shows so clearly the defencelessness of the clan-nobility
when opposed to the united plebs, as the fact that the fundamental
principle of the exclusive party--the invalidity of marriage between
patricians and plebeians--fell at the first blow scarcely four years
after the decemviral revolution.  In the year 309 it was enacted by
the Canuleian plebiscite, that a marriage between a patrician and
a plebeian should be valid as a true Roman marriage, and that the
children begotten of such a marriage should follow the rank of the
father.  At the same time it was further carried that, in place of
consuls, military tribunes--of these there were at that time, before
the division of the army into legions, six, and the number of these
magistrates was adjusted accordingly-with consular powers(1) and
consular duration of office should be elected by the centuries.
The proximate cause was of a military nature, as the various wars
required a greater number of generals in chief command than the
consular constitution allowed; but the change came to be of essential
importance for the conflicts of the orders, and it may be that
that military object was rather the pretext than the reason for
this arrangement.  According to the ancient law every burgess or
--metoikos-- liable to service might attain the post of an officer,(2)
and in virtue of that principle the supreme magistracy, after having
been temporarily opened up to the plebeians in the decemvirate, was
now after a more comprehensive fashion rendered equally accessible to
all freeborn burgesses.  The question naturally occurs, what interest
the aristocracy could have--now that it was under the necessity of
abandoning its exclusive possession of the supreme magistracy and of
yielding in the matter--in refusing to the plebeians the title, and
conceding to them the consulate under this singular form?(3)  But,
in the first place, there were associated with the holding of the
supreme magistracy various honorary rights, partly personal, partly
hereditary; thus the honour of a triumph was regarded as legally
dependent on the occupancy of the supreme magistracy, and was never
given to an officer who had not administered the latter office in
person; and the descendants of a curule magistrate were at liberty to
set up the image of such an ancestor in the family hall and to exhibit
it in public on fitting occasions, while this was not allowed in the
case of other ancestors.(4)  It is as easy to be explained as it is
difficult to be vindicated, that the governing aristocratic order
should have allowed the government itself to be wrested from their
hands far sooner than the honorary rights associated with it,
especially such as were hereditary; and therefore, when it was obliged
to share the former with the plebeians, it gave to the actual supreme
magistrate the legal standing not of the holder of a curule chair, but
of a simple staff-officer, whose distinction was one purely personal.
Of greater political importance, however, than the refusal of the
-ius imaginum- and of the honour of a triumph was the circumstance,
that the exclusion of the plebeians sitting in the senate from
debate necessarily ceased in respect to those of their number who,
as designated or former consuls, ranked among the senators whose
opinion had to be asked before the rest; so far it was certainly
of great importance for the nobility to admit the plebeian only to
a consular office, and not to the consulate itself.

Opposition of the Patriciate

But notwithstanding these vexatious disabilities the privileges of the
clans, so far as they had a political value, were legally superseded
by the new institution; and, had the Roman nobility been worthy of its
name, it must now have given up the struggle.  But it did not.  Though
a rational and legal resistance was thenceforth impossible, spiteful
opposition still found a wide field of petty expedients, of chicanery
and intrigue; and, far from honourable or politically prudent as such
resistance was, it was still in a certain sense fruitful of results.
It certainly procured at length for the commons concessions which
could not easily have been wrung from the united Roman aristocracy;
but it also prolonged civil war for another century and enabled
the nobility, in defiance of those laws, practically to retain the
government in their exclusive possession for several generations
longer.

Their Expedients

The expedients of which the nobility availed themselves were as
various as political paltriness could suggest.  Instead of deciding
at once the question as to the admission or exclusion of the plebeians
at the elections, they conceded what they were compelled to concede
only with reference to the elections immediately impending.  The vain
struggle was thus annually renewed whether patrician consuls or
military tribunes from both orders with consular powers should be
nominated; and among the weapons of the aristocracy this mode of
conquering an opponent by wearying and annoying him proved by no
means the least effective.

Subdivision of the Magistracy--
Censorship

Moreover they broke up the supreme power which had hitherto been
undivided, in order to delay their inevitable defeat by multiplying
the points to be assailed.  Thus the adjustment of the budget and of
the burgess--and taxation-rolls, which ordinarily took place every
fourth year and had hitherto been managed by the consuls, was
entrusted as early as the year 319 to two valuators (-censores-),
nominated by the centuries from among the nobles for a period, at
the most, of eighteen months.  The new office gradually became the
palladium of the aristocratic party, not so much on account of its
financial influence as on account of the right annexed to it of
filling up the vacancies in the senate and in the equites, and of
removing individuals from the lists of the senate, equites, and
burgesses on occasion of their adjustment.  At this epoch, however,
the censorship by no means possessed the great importance and moral
supremacy which afterwards were associated with it.

Quaestorship

But the important change made in the year 333 in respect to the
quaestorship amply compensated for this success of the patrician
party.  The patricio-plebeian assembly of the tribes--perhaps taking
up the ground that at least the two military paymasters were in fact
officers rather than civil functionaries, and that so far the plebeian
appeared as well entitled to the quaestorship as to the military
tribuneship--carried the point that plebeian candidates also were
admitted for the quaestorial elections, and thereby acquired for
the first time the privilege of eligibility as well as the right of
election for one of the ordinary magistracies.  With justice it was
felt on the one side as a great victory, on the other as a severe
defeat, that thenceforth patrician and plebeian were equally capable
of electing and being elected to the military as well as to the urban
quaestorship.

Attempts at Counterrevolution

The nobility, in spite of the most obstinate resistance, only
sustained loss after loss; and their exasperation increased as their
power decreased.  Attempts were doubtless still made directly to
assail the rights secured by agreement to the commons; but such
attempts were not so much the well-calculated manoeuvres of party as
the acts of an impotent thirst for vengeance.  Such in particular was
the process against Maelius as reported by the tradition--certainly
not very trustworthy--that has come down to us.  Spurius Maelius,
a wealthy plebeian, during a severe dearth (315) sold corn at such
prices as to put to shame and annoy the patrician store-president
(-praefectus annonae-) Gaius Minucius.  The latter accused him of
aspiring to kingly power; with what amount of reason we cannot decide,
but it is scarcely credible that a man who had not even filled the
tribunate should have seriously thought of sovereignty.  Nevertheless
the authorities took up the matter in earnest, and the cry of "King"
always produced on the multitude in Rome an effect similar to that
of the cry of "Pope" on the masses in England.  Titus Quinctius
Capitolinus, who was for the sixth time consul, nominated Lucius
Quinctius Cincinnatus, who was eighty years of age, as dictator
without appeal, in open violation of the solemnly sworn laws.(5)
Maelius, summoned before him, seemed disposed to disregard the
summons; and the dictator's master of the horse, Gaius Servilius
Ahala, slew him with his own hand.  The house of the murdered man was
pulled down, the corn from his granaries was distributed gratuitously
to the people, and those who threatened to avenge his death were
secretly made away with.  This disgraceful judicial murder--a disgrace
even more to the credulous and blind people than to the malignant
party of young patricians--passed unpunished; but if that party had
hoped by such means to undermine the right of appeal, it violated
the laws and shed innocent blood in vain.

Intrigues of the Nobility

Electioneering intrigues and priestly trickery proved in the hands
of the nobility more efficient than any other weapons.  The extent
to which the former must have prevailed is best seen in the fact
that in 322 it appeared necessary to issue a special law against
electioneering practices, which of course was of little avail.  When
the voters could not be influenced by corruption or threatening, the
presiding magistrates stretched their powers--admitting, for example,
so many plebeian candidates that the votes of the opposition were
thrown away amongst them, or omitting from the list of candidates
those whom the majority were disposed to choose.  If in spite of all
this an obnoxious election was carried, the priests were consulted
whether no vitiating circumstance had occurred in the auspices or
other religious ceremonies on the occasion; and some such flaw they
seldom failed to discover.  Taking no thought as to the consequences
and unmindful of the wise example of their ancestors, the people
allowed the principle to be established that the opinion of the
skilled colleges of priests as to omens of birds, portents, and the
like was legally binding on the magistrate, and thus put it into their
power to cancel any state-act--whether the consecration of a temple
or any other act of administration, whether law or election--on the
ground of religious informality.  In this way it became possible that,
although the eligibility of plebeians had been established by law
already in 333 for the quaestorship and thenceforward continued to
be legally recognized, it was only in 345 that the first plebeian
attained the quaestorship; in like manner patricians almost
exclusively held the military tribunate with consular powers down
to 354.  It was apparent that the legal abolition of the privileges of
the nobles had by no means really and practically placed the plebeian
aristocracy on a footing of equality with the clan-nobility.  Many
causes contributed to this result: the tenacious opposition of the
nobility far more easily allowed itself to be theoretically superseded
in a moment of excitement, than to be permanently kept down in the
annually recurring elections; but the main cause was the inward
disunion between the chiefs of the plebeian aristocracy and the mass
of the farmers.  The middle class, whose votes were decisive in the
comitia, did not feel itself specially called on to advance the
interests of genteel non-patricians, so long as its own demands were
disregarded by the plebeian no less than by the patrician aristocracy.

The Suffering Farmers

During these political struggles social questions had lain on the
whole dormant, or were discussed at any rate with less energy.  After
the plebeian aristocracy had gained possession of the tribunate for
its own ends, no serious notice was taken either of the question of
the domains or of a reform in the system of credit; although there was
no lack either of newly acquired lands or of impoverished or decaying
farmers.  Instances indeed of assignations took place, particularly in
the recently conquered border-territories, such as those of the domain
of Ardea in 312, of Labici in 336, and of Veii in 361--more however on
military grounds than for the relief of the farmer, and by no means to
an adequate extent.  Individual tribunes doubtless attempted to revive
the law of Cassius--for instance Spurius Maecilius and Spurius
Metilius instituted in the year 337 a proposal for the distribution
of the whole state-lands--but they were thwarted, in a manner
characteristic of the existing state of parties, by the opposition
of their own colleagues or in other words of the plebeian aristocracy.
Some of the patricians also attempted to remedy the common distress;
but with no better success than had formerly attended Spurius Cassius.
A patrician like Cassius and like him distinguished by military renown
and personal valour, Marcus Manlius, the saviour of the Capitol during
the Gallic siege, is said to have come forward as the champion of
the oppressed people, with whom he was connected by the ties of
comradeship in war and of bitter hatred towards his rival, the
celebrated general and leader of the optimate party, Marcus Furius
Camillus.  When a brave officer was about to be led away to a debtor's
prison, Manlius interceded for him and released him with his own
money; at the same time he offered his lands to sale, declaring
loudly that, as long as he possessed a foot's breadth of land, such
iniquities should not occur.  This was more than enough to unite the
whole government party, patricians as well as plebeians, against the
dangerous innovator.  The trial for high treason, the charge of having
meditated a renewal of the monarchy, wrought on the blind multitude
with the insidious charm which belongs to stereotyped party-phrases.
They themselves condemned him to death, and his renown availed him
nothing save that it was deemed expedient to assemble the people for
the bloody assize at a spot whence the voters could not see the rock
of the citadel--the dumb monitor which might remind them how their
fatherland had been saved from the extremity of danger by the hands of
the very man whom they were now consigning to the executioner (370).

While the attempts at reformation were thus arrested in the bud,
the social disorders became still more crying; for on the one
hand the domain-possessions were ever extending in consequence of
successful wars, and on the other hand debt and impoverishment were
ever spreading more widely among the farmers, particularly from the
effects of the severe war with Veii (348-358) and of the burning of
the capital in the Gallic invasion (364).  It is true that, when in
the Veientine war it became necessary to prolong the term of service
of the soldiers and to keep them under arms not--as hitherto at the
utmost--only during summer, but also throughout the winter, and when
the farmers, foreseeing their utter economic ruin, were on the point
of refusing their consent to the declaration of war, the senate
resolved on making an important concession.  It charged the pay, which
hitherto the tribes had defrayed by contribution, on the state-chest,
or in other words, on the produce of the indirect revenues and the
domains (348).  It was only in the event of the state-chest being at
the moment empty that a general contribution (-tributum-) was imposed
on account of the pay; and in that case it was considered as a forced
loan and was afterwards repaid by the community.  The arrangement was
equitable and wise; but, as it was not placed upon the essential
foundation of turning the domains to proper account for the benefit
of the exchequer, there were added to the increased burden of service
frequent contributions, which were none the less ruinous to the man
of small means that they were officially regarded not as taxes
but as advances.

Combination of the Plebian Aristocracy and the Farmers against the
Nobility--
Licinio-Sextian Laws

Under such circumstances, when the plebeian aristocracy saw itself
practically excluded by the opposition of the nobility and the
indifference of the commons from equality of political rights,
and the suffering farmers were powerless as opposed to the close
aristocracy, it was natural that they should help each other by a
compromise.  With this view the tribunes of the people, Gaius Licinius
and Lucius Sextius, submitted to the commons proposals to the
following effect: first, to abolish the consular tribunate; secondly,
to lay it down as a rule that at least one of the consuls should be
a plebeian; thirdly, to open up to the plebeians admission to one
of the three great colleges of priests--that of the custodiers of
oracles, whose number was to be increased to ten (-duoviri-,
afterwards -decemviri sacris faciundis-(6)); fourthly, as respected
the domains, to allow no burgess to maintain upon the common pasture
more than a hundred oxen and five hundred sheep, or to hold more than
five hundred -jugera- (about 300 acres) of the domain lands left free
for occupation; fifthly, to oblige the landlords to employ in the
labours of the field a number of free labourers proportioned to that
of their rural slaves; and lastly, to procure alleviation for debtors
by deduction of the interest which had been paid from the capital,
and by the arrangement of set terms for the payment of arrears.

The tendency of these enactments is obvious.  They were designed
to deprive the nobles of their exclusive possession of the curule
magistracies and of the hereditary distinctions of nobility therewith
associated; which, it was characteristically conceived, could only be
accomplished by the legal exclusion of the nobles from the place of
second consul.  They were designed, as a consequence, to emancipate
the plebeian members of the senate from the subordinate position which
they occupied as silent by-sitters,(7) in so far as those of them at
least who had filled the consulate thereby acquired a title to deliver
their opinion with the patrician consulars before the other patrician
senators.(8)  They were intended, moreover, to withdraw from the
nobles the exclusive possession of spiritual dignities; and in
carrying out this purpose for reasons sufficiently obvious the old
Latin priesthoods of the augurs and Pontifices were left to the old
burgesses, but these were obliged to open up to the new burgesses the
third great college of more recent origin and belonging to a worship
that was originally foreign.  They were intended, in fine, to procure
a share in the common usufructs of burgesses for the poorer commons,
alleviation for the suffering debtors, and employment for the
day-labourers that were destitute of work.  Abolition of privileges,
civil equality, social reform--these were the three great ideas, of
which it was the design of this movement to secure the recognition.
Vainly the patricians exerted all the means at their command in
opposition to these legislative proposals; even the dictatorship and
the old military hero Camillus were able only to delay, not to avert
their accomplishment.  Willingly would the people have separated the
proposals; of what moment to it were the consulate and custodiership
of oracles, if only the burden of debt were lightened and the public
lands were free!  But it was not for nothing that the plebeian
nobility had adopted the popular cause; it included the proposals in
one single project of law, and after a long struggle--it is said of
eleven years--the senate at length gave its consent and they passed
in the year 387.

Political Abolition of the Patriciate

With the election of the first non-patrician consul--the choice fell
on one of the authors of this reform, the late tribune of the people,
Lucius Sextius Lateranus--the clan-aristocracy ceased both in fact and
in law to be numbered among the political institutions of Rome.  When
after the final passing of these laws the former champion of the
clans, Marcus Furius Camillus, founded a sanctuary of Concord at the
foot of the Capitol--upon an elevated platform, where the senate was
wont frequently to meet, above the old meeting-place of the burgesses,
the Comitium--we gladly cherish the belief that he recognized in the
legislation thus completed the close of a dissension only too long
continued.  The religious consecration of the new concord of the
community was the last public act of the old warrior and statesman,
and a worthy termination of his long and glorious career.  He was
not wholly mistaken; the more judicious portion of the clans
evidently from this time forward looked upon their exclusive political
privileges as lost, and were content to share the government with the
plebeian aristocracy.  In the majority, however, the patrician spirit
proved true to its incorrigible character.  On the strength of the
privilege which the champions of legitimacy have at all times claimed
of obeying the laws only when these coincide with their party
interests, the Roman nobles on various occasions ventured, in open
violation of the stipulated arrangement, to nominate two patrician
consuls.  But, when by way of answer to an election of that sort for
the year 411 the community in the year following formally resolved
to allow both consular positions to be filled by non-patricians, they
understood the implied threat, and still doubtless desired, but never
again ventured, to touch the second consular place.

Praetorship--
Curule Aedileship--
Complete Opening Up of Magistracies and Priesthoods

In like manner the aristocracy simply injured itself by the attempt
which it made, on the passing of the Licinian laws, to save at least
some remnant of its ancient privileges by means of a system of
political clipping and paring.  Under the pretext that the nobility
were exclusively cognizant of law, the administration of justice was
detached from the consulate when the latter had to be thrown open
to the plebeians; and for this purpose there was nominated a special
third consul, or, as he was commonly called, a praetor.  In like
manner the supervision of the market and the judicial police-duties
connected with it, as well as the celebration of the city-festival,
were assigned to two newly nominated aediles, who--by way of
distinction from the plebeian aediles--were named from their standing
jurisdiction "aediles of the judgment seat" (-aediles curules-).
But the curule aedileship became immediately so far accessible to
the plebeians, that it was held by patricians and plebeians
alternately.  Moreover the dictatorship was thrown open to plebeians
in 398, as the mastership of the horse had already been in the year
before the Licinian laws (386); both the censorships were thrown open
in 403, and the praetorship in 417; and about the same time (415) the
nobility were by law excluded from one of the censorships, as they
had previously been from one of the consulships.  It was to no purpose
that once more a patrician augur detected secret flaws, hidden from
the eyes of the uninitiated, in the election of a plebeian dictator
(427), and that the patrician censor did not up to the close of our
present period (474) permit his colleague to present the solemn
sacrifice with which the census closed; such chicanery served merely
to show the ill humour of patricianism.  Of as little avail were the
complaints which the patrician presidents of the senate would not fail
to raise regarding the participation of the plebeians in its debates;
it became a settled rule that no longer the patrician members,
but those who had attained to one of the three supreme ordinary
magistracies--the consulship, praetorship, and curule aedileship
--should be summoned to give their opinion in this order and without
distinction of class, while the senators who had held none of these
offices still even now took part merely in the division.  The right,
in fine, of the patrician senate to reject a decree of the community
as unconstitutional--a right, however, which in all probability it
rarely ventured to exercise--was withdrawn from it by the Publilian
law of 415 and by the Maenian law which was not passed before the
middle of the fifth century, in so far that it had to bring forward
its constitutional objections, if it had any such, when the list
of candidates was exhibited or the project of law was brought in;
which practically amounted to a regular announcement of its consent
beforehand.  In this character, as a purely formal right, the
confirmation of the decrees of the people still continued in
the hands of the nobility down to the last age of the republic.

The clans retained, as may naturally be conceived, their religious
privileges longer.  Indeed, several of these, which were destitute
of political importance, were never interfered with, such as their
exclusive eligibility to the offices of the three supreme -flamines-
and that of -rex sacrorum- as well as to the membership of the
colleges of Salii.  On the other hand the two colleges of Pontifices
and of augurs, with which a considerable influence over the courts
and the comitia were associated, were too important to remain in the
exclusive possession of the patricians.  The Ogulnian law of 454
accordingly threw these also open to plebeians, by increasing the
number both of the pontifices and of the augurs from six to nine, and
equally distributing the stalls in the two colleges between patricians
and plebeians.

Equivalence of Law and Plebiscitum

The two hundred years' strife was brought at length to: a close by the
law of the dictator Q. Hortensius (465, 468) which was occasioned by a
dangerous popular insurrection, and which declared that the decrees of
the plebs should stand on an absolute footing of equality--instead of
their earlier conditional equivalence--with those of the whole
community.  So greatly had the state of things been changed that
that portion of the burgesses which had once possessed exclusively
the right of voting was thenceforth, under the usual form of taking
votes binding for the whole burgess-body, no longer so much as asked
the question.

The Later Patricianism

The struggle between the Roman clans and commons was thus
substantially at an end.  While the nobility still preserved out
of its comprehensive privileges the -de facto- possession of one of
the consulships and one of the censorships, it was excluded by law
from the tribunate, the plebeian aedileship, the second consulship
and censorship, and from participation in the votes of the plebs
which were legally equivalent to votes of the whole body of burgesses.
As a righteous retribution for its perverse and stubborn resistance,
the patriciate had seen its former privileges converted into so many
disabilities.  The Roman clan-nobility, however, by no means
disappeared because it had become an empty name.  The less the
significance and power of the nobility, the more purely and
exclusively the patrician spirit developed itself.  The haughtiness
of the "Ramnians" survived the last of their class-privileges for
centuries; after they had steadfastly striven "to rescue the consulate
from the plebeian filth" and had at length become reluctantly
convinced of the impossibility of such an achievement, they continued
at least rudely and spitefully to display their aristocratic spirit.
To understand rightly the history of Rome in the fifth and sixth
centuries, we must never overlook this sulking patricianism; it could
indeed do little more than irritate itself and others, but this it
did to the best of its ability.  Some years after the passing of the
Ogulnian law (458) a characteristic instance of this sort occurred.
A patrician matron, who was married to a leading plebeian that had
attained to the highest dignities of the state, was on account of this
misalliance expelled from the circle of noble dames and was refused
admission to the common festival of Chastity; and in consequence of
that exclusion separate patrician and plebeian goddesses of Chastity
were thenceforward worshipped in Rome.  Doubtless caprices of this
sort were of very little moment, and the better portion of the
clans kept themselves entirely aloof from this miserable policy of
peevishness; but it left behind on both sides a feeling of discontent,
and, while the struggle of the commons against the clans was in itself
a political and even moral necessity, these convulsive efforts to
prolong the strife--the aimless combats of the rear-guard after the
battle had been decided, as well as the empty squabbles as to rank
and standing--needlessly irritated and disturbed the public and
private life of the Roman community.

The Social Distress, and the Attempt to Relieve It

Nevertheless one object of the compromise concluded by the two
portions of the plebs in 387, the abolition of the patriciate, had
in all material points been completely attained.  The question next
arises, how far the same can be affirmed of the two positive objects
aimed at in the compromise?--whether the new order of things in
reality checked social distress and established political equality?
The two were intimately connected; for, if economic embarrassments
ruined the middle class and broke up the burgesses into a minority of
rich men and a suffering proletariate, such a state of things would at
once annihilate civil equality and in reality destroy the republican
commonwealth.  The preservation and increase of the middle class, and
in particular of the farmers, formed therefore for every patriotic
statesman of Rome a problem not merely important, but the most
important of all.  The plebeians, moreover, recently called to take
part in the government, greatly indebted as they were for their new
political rights to the proletariate which was suffering and expecting
help at their hands, were politically and morally under special
obligation to attempt its relief by means of government measures,
so far as relief was by such means at all attainable.

The Licinian Agrarian Laws

Let us first consider how far any real relief was contained in that
part of the legislation of 387 which bore upon the question.  That
the enactment in favour of the free day-labourers could not possibly
accomplish its object--namely, to check the system of farming on
a large scale and by means of slaves, and to secure to the free
proletarians at least a share of work--is self-evident.  In this
matter legislation could afford no relief, without shaking the
foundations of the civil organization of the period in a way that
would reach far beyond its immediate horizon.  In the question of the
domains, on the other hand, it was quite possible for legislation to
effect a change; but what was done was manifestly inadequate.  The new
domain-arrangement, by granting the right of driving very considerable
flocks and herds upon the public pastures, and that of occupying
domain-land not laid out in pasture up to a maximum fixed on a
high scale, conceded to the wealthy an important and perhaps even
disproportionate prior share in the produce of the domains; and by
the latter regulation conferred upon the domain-tenure, although it
remained in law liable to pay a tenth and revocable at pleasure,
as well as upon the system of occupation itself, somewhat of a legal
sanction.  It was a circumstance still more suspicious, that the
new legislation neither supplemented the existing and manifestly
unsatisfactory provisions for the collection of the pasture-money
and the tenth by compulsory measures of a more effective kind, nor
prescribed any thorough revision of the domanial possessions, nor
appointed a magistracy charged with the carrying of the new laws into
effect.  The distribution of the existing occupied domain-land partly
among the holders up to a fair maximum, partly among the plebeians
who had no property, in both cases in full ownership; the abolition
in future of the system of occupation; and the institution of
an authority empowered to make immediate distribution of any
future acquisitions of territory, were so clearly demanded by the
circumstances of the case, that it certainly was not through want
of discernment that these comprehensive measures were neglected.
We cannot fail to recollect that it was the plebeian aristocracy,
in other words, a portion of the very class that was practically
privileged in respect to the usufructs of the domains, which proposed
the new arrangement, and that one of its very authors, Gaius Licinius
Stolo, was among the first to be condemned for having exceeded the
agrarian maximum; and we cannot but ask whether the legislators dealt
altogether honourably, and whether they did not on the contrary
designedly evade a solution, really tending to the common benefit,
of the unhappy question of the domains.  We do not mean, however, to
express any doubt that the regulations of the Licinian laws, such as
they were, might and did substantially benefit the small farmer and
the day-labourer.  It must, moreover, be acknowledged that in the
period immediately succeeding the passing of the law the authorities
watched with at least comparative strictness over the observance of
its rules as to the maximum, and frequently condemned the possessors
of large herds and the occupiers of the domains to heavy fines.

Laws Imposing Taxes--
Laws of Credit

In the system of taxation and of credit also efforts were made with
greater energy at this period than at any before or subsequent to it
to remedy the evils of the national economy, so far as legal measures
could do so.  The duty levied in 397 of five per cent on the value of
slaves that were to be manumitted was--irrespective of the fact that
it imposed a check on the undesirable multiplication of freedmen--the
first tax in Rome that was really laid upon the rich.  In like manner
efforts were made to remedy the system of credit.  The usury laws,
which the Twelve Tables had established,(9) were renewed and gradually
rendered more stringent, so that the maximum of interest was
successively lowered from 10 per cent (enforced in 397) to 5 per cent
(in 407) for the year of twelve months, and at length (412) the taking
of interest was altogether forbidden.  The latter foolish law remained
formally in force, but, of course, it was practically inoperative; the
standard rate of interest afterwards usual, viz. 1 per cent per month,
or 12 per cent for the civil common year--which, according to the
value of money in antiquity, was probably at that time nearly the same
as, according to its modern value, a rate of 5 or 6 per cent--must
have been already about this period established as the maximum of
appropriate interest.  Any action at law for higher rates must have
been refused, perhaps even judicial claims for repayment may have been
allowed; moreover notorious usurers were not unfrequently summoned
before the bar of the people and readily condemned by the tribes to
heavy fines.  Still more important was the alteration of the procedure
in cases of debt by the Poetelian law (428 or 441).  On the one hand
it allowed every debtor who declared on oath his solvency to save his
personal freedom by the cession of his property; on the other hand it
abolished the former summary proceedings in execution on a loan-debt,
and laid down the rule that no Roman burgess could be led away to
bondage except upon the sentence of jurymen.

Continued Distress

It is plain that all these expedients might perhaps in some respects
mitigate, but could not remove, the existing economic disorders.
The continuance of the distress is shown by the appointment of a
bank-commission to regulate the relations of credit and to provide
advances from the state-chest in 402, by the fixing of legal payment
by instalments in 407, and above all by the dangerous popular
insurrection about 467, when the people, unable to obtain new
facilities for the payment of debts, marched out to the Janiculum,
and nothing but a seasonable attack by external enemies, and the
concessions contained in the Hortensian law,(10) restored peace to
the community.  It is, however, very unjust to reproach these earnest
attempts to check the impoverishment of the middle class with their
inadequacy.  The belief that it is useless to employ partial and
palliative means against radical evils, because they only remedy
them in part, is an article of faith never preached unsuccessfully
by baseness to simplicity, but it is none the less absurd.  On the
contrary, we may ask whether the vile spirit of demagogism had not
even thus early laid hold of this matter, and whether expedients were
really needed so violent and dangerous as, for example, the deduction
of the interest paid from the capital.  Our documents do not enable
us to decide the question of right or wrong in the case.  But we
recognize clearly enough that the middle class of freeholders
still continued economically in a perilous and critical position;
that various endeavours were made by those in power to remedy it by
prohibitory laws and by respites, but of course in vain; and that the
aristocratic ruling class continued to be too weak in point of control
over its members, and too much entangled in the selfish interests of
its order, to relieve the middle class by the only effectual means at
the disposal of the government--the entire and unreserved abolition
of the system of occupying the state-lands--and by that course to free
the government from the reproach of turning to its own advantage the
oppressed position of the governed.

Influence of the Extension of the Roman Dominion in Elevating the
Farmer-Class

A more effectual relief than any which the government was willing
or able to give was derived by the middle classes from the political
successes of the Roman community and the gradual consolidation of the
Roman sovereignty over Italy.  The numerous and large colonies which
it was necessary to found for the securing of that sovereignty, the
greater part of which were sent forth in the fifth century, furnished
a portion of the agricultural proletariate with farms of their own,
while the efflux gave relief to such as remained at home.  The
increase of the indirect and extraordinary sources of revenue, and
the flourishing condition of the Roman finances in general, rendered
it but seldom necessary to levy any contribution from the farmers in
the form of a forced loan.  While the earlier small holdings were
probably lost beyond recovery, the rising average of Roman prosperity
must have converted the former larger landholders into farmers, and
in so far added new members to the middle class.  People of rank
sought principally to secure the large newly-acquired districts for
occupation; the mass of wealth which flowed to Rome through war and
commerce must have reduced the rate of interest; the increase in the
population of the capital benefited the farmer throughout Latium;
a wise system of incorporation united a number of neighbouring and
formerly subject communities with the Roman state, and thereby
strengthened especially the middle class; finally, the glorious
victories and their mighty results silenced faction.  If the distress
of the farmers was by no means removed and still less were its sources
stopped, it yet admits of no doubt that at the close of this period
the Roman middle class was on the whole in a far less oppressed
condition than in the first century after the expulsion of the kings.

Civic Equality

Lastly civic equality was in a certain sense undoubtedly attained
or rather restored by the reform of 387, and the development of its
legitimate consequences.  As formerly, when the patricians still in
fact formed the burgesses, these had stood upon a footing of absolute
equality in rights and duties, so now in the enlarged burgess-body
there existed in the eye of the law no arbitrary distinctions.
The gradations to which differences of age, sagacity, cultivation, and
wealth necessarily give rise in civil society, naturally also pervaded
the sphere of public life; but the spirit animating the burgesses and
the policy of the government uniformly operated so as to render these
differences as little conspicuous as possible.  The whole system of
Rome tended to train up her burgesses on an average as sound and
capable, but not to bring into prominence the gifts of genius.  The
growth of culture among the Romans did not at all keep pace with the
development of the power of their community, and it was instinctively
repressed rather than promoted by those in power.  That there should
be rich and poor, could not be prevented; but (as in a genuine
community of farmers) the farmer as well as the day-labourer
personally guided the plough, and even for the rich the good economic
rule held good that they should live with uniform frugality and above
all should hoard no unproductive capital at home--excepting the
salt-cellar and the sacrificial ladle, no silver articles were at
this period seen in any Roman house.  Nor was this of little moment.
In the mighty successes which the Roman community externally achieved
during the century from the last Veientine down to the Pyrrhic war we
perceive that the patriciate has now given place to the farmers; that
the fall of the highborn Fabian would have been not more and not less
lamented by the whole community than the fall of the plebeian Decian
was lamented alike by plebeians and patricians; that the consulate did
not of itself fall even to the wealthiest aristocrat; and that a poor
husbandman from Sabina, Manius Curius, could conquer king Pyrrhus in
the field of battle and chase him out of Italy, without ceasing to be
a simple Sabine farmer and to cultivate in person his own bread-corn.

New Aristocracy

In regard however to this imposing republican equality we must not
overlook the fact that it was to a considerable extent only formal,
and that an aristocracy of a very decided stamp grew out of it or
rather was contained in it from the very first.  The non-patrician
families of wealth and consideration had long ago separated from the
plebs, and leagued themselves with the patriciate in the participation
of senatorial rights and in the prosecution of a policy distinct from
that of the plebs and very often counteracting it.  The Licinian laws
abrogated the legal distinctions within the ranks of the aristocracy,
and changed the character of the barrier which excluded the plebeian
from the government, so that it was no longer a hindrance unalterable
in law, but one, not indeed insurmountable, but yet difficult to be
surmounted in practice.  In both ways fresh blood was mingled with
the ruling order in Rome; but in itself the government still remained,
as before, aristocratic.  In this respect the Roman community was a
genuine farmer-commonwealth, in which the rich holder of a whole hide
was little distinguished externally from the poor cottager and held
intercourse with him on equal terms, but aristocracy nevertheless
exercised so all-powerful a sway that a man without means far sooner
rose to be master of the burgesses in the city than mayor in his own
village.  It was a very great and valuable gain, that under the new
legislation even the poorest burgess might fill the highest office
of the state; nevertheless it was a rare exception when a man from
the lower ranks of the population reached such a position,(11) and
not only so, but probably it was, at least towards the close of
this period, possible only by means of an election carried by
the opposition.

New Opposition

Every aristocratic government of itself calls forth a corresponding
opposition party; and as the formal equalization of the orders only
modified the aristocracy, and the new ruling order not only succeeded
the old patriciate but engrafted itself on it and intimately coalesced
with it, the opposition also continued to exist and in all respects
pursued a similar course.  As it was now no longer the plebeian
burgesses as such, but the common people, that were treated as
inferior, the new opposition professed from the first to be the
representative of the lower classes and particularly of the small
farmers; and as the new aristocracy attached itself to the patriciate,
so the first movements of this new opposition were interwoven with the
final struggles against the privileges of the patricians.  The first
names in the series of these new Roman popular leaders were Manius
Curius (consul 464, 479, 480; censor 481) and Gaius Fabricius (consul
472, 476, 481; censor 479); both of them men without ancestral lineage
and without wealth, both summoned--in opposition to the aristocratic
principle of restricting re-election to the highest office of the
state--thrice by the votes of the burgesses to the chief magistracy,
both, as tribunes, consuls, and censors, opponents of patrician
privileges and defenders of the small farmer-class against the
incipient arrogance of the leading houses.  The future parties were
already marked out; but the interests of party were still suspended
on both sides in presence of the interests of the commonweal.  The
patrician Appius Claudius and the farmer Manius Curius--vehement in
their personal antagonism--jointly by wise counsel and vigorous action
conquered king Pyrrhus; and while Gaius Fabricius as censor inflicted
penalties on Publius Cornelius Rufinus for his aristocratic sentiments
and aristocratic habits, this did not prevent him from supporting the
claim of Rufinus to a second consulate on account of his recognized
ability as a general.  The breach was already formed; but the
adversaries still shook hands across it.

The New Government

The termination of the struggles between the old and new burgesses,
the various and comparatively successful endeavours to relieve the
middle class, and the germs--already making their appearance amidst
the newly acquired civic equality--of the formation of a new
aristocratic and a new democratic party, have thus been passed
in review.  It remains that we describe the shape which the new
government assumed amidst these changes, and the positions in which
after the political abolition of the nobility the three elements of
the republican commonwealth--the burgesses, the magistrates, and
the senate--stood towards each other.

The Burgess-Body--
Its Composition

The burgesses in their ordinary assemblies continued as hitherto to
be the highest authority in the commonwealth and the legal sovereign.
But it was settled by law that--apart from the matters committed once
for all to the decision of the centuries, such as the election of
consuls and censors--voting by districts should be just as valid
as voting by centuries: a regulation introduced as regards the
patricio-plebeian assembly by the Valerio-Horatian law of 305(12) and
extended by the Publilian law of 415, but enacted as regards the
plebeian separate assembly by the Hortensian law about 467.(13)  We have
already noticed that the same individuals, on the whole, were entitled
to vote in both assemblies, but that--apart from the exclusion of
the patricians from the plebeian separate assembly--in the general
assembly of the districts all entitled to vote were on a footing of
equality, while in the centuriate comitia the working of the suffrage
was graduated with reference to the means of the voters, and in so
far, therefore, the change was certainly a levelling and democratic
innovation.  It was a circumstance of far greater importance that,
towards the end of this period, the primitive freehold basis of the
right of suffrage began for the first time to be called in question.
Appius Claudius, the boldest innovator known in Roman history, in his
censorship in 442 without consulting the senate or people so adjusted
the burgess-roll, that a man who had no land was received into
whatever tribe he chose and then according to his means into the
corresponding century.  But this alteration was too far in advance
of the spirit of the age to obtain full acceptance.  One of the
immediate successors of Appius, Quintus Fabius Rullianus, the famous
conqueror of the Samnites, undertook in his censorship of 450 not to
set it aside entirely, but to confine it within such limits that the
real power in the burgess-assemblies should continue to be vested in
the holders of land and of wealth.  He assigned those who had no land
collectively to the four city tribes, which were now made to rank not
as the first but as the last.  The rural tribes, on the other hand,
the number of which gradually increased between 367 and 513 from
seventeen to thirty-one--thus forming a majority, greatly
preponderating from the first and ever increasing in preponderance,
of the voting-divisions--were reserved by law for the whole of the
burgesses who were freeholders.  In the centuries the equalization of
the freeholders and non-freeholders remained as Appius had introduced
it.  In this manner provision was made for the preponderance of the
freeholders in the comitia of the tribes, while for the centuriate
comitia in themselves the wealthy already turned the scale.  By this
wise and moderate arrangement on the part of a man who for his warlike
feats and still more for this peaceful achievement justly received the
surname of the Great (-Maximus-), on the one hand the duty of bearing
arms was extended, as was fitting, also to the non-freehold burgesses;
on the other hand care was taken that their influence, especially
that of those who had once been slaves and who were for the most part
without property in land, should be subjected to that check which
is unfortunately, in a state allowing slavery, an indispensable
necessity.  A peculiar moral jurisdiction, moreover, which gradually
came to be associated with the census and the making up of the
burgess-roll, excluded from the burgess-body all individuals
notoriously unworthy, and guarded the full moral and political
purity of citizenship.

Increasing Powers of the Burgesses

The powers of the comitia exhibited during this period a tendency to
enlarge their range, but in a manner very gradual.  The increase in
the number of magistrates to be elected by the people falls, to some
extent, under this head; it is an especially significant fact that
from 392 the military tribunes of one legion, and from 443 four
tribunes in each of the first four legions respectively, were
nominated no longer by the general, but by the burgesses.  During this
period the burgesses did not on the whole interfere in administration;
only their right of declaring war was, as was reasonable, emphatically
maintained, and held to extend also to cases in which a prolonged
armistice concluded instead of a peace expired and what was not in
law but in fact a new war began (327).  In other instances a question
of administration was hardly submitted to the people except when the
governing authorities fell into collision and one of them referred
the matter to the people--as when the leaders of the moderate party
among the nobility, Lucius Valerius and Marcus Horatius, in 305, and
the first plebeian dictator, Gaius Marcius Rutilus, in 398, were not
allowed by the senate to receive the triumphs they had earned; when
the consuls of 459 could not agree as to their respective provinces of
jurisdiction; and when the senate, in 364, resolved to give up to the
Gauls an ambassador who had forgotten his duty, and a consular tribune
carried the matter to the community.  This was the first occasion on
which a decree of the senate was annulled by the people; and heavily
the community atoned for it.  Sometimes in difficult cases the
government left the decision to the people, as first, when Caere sued
for peace, after the people had declared war against it but before
war had actually begun (401); and at a subsequent period, when the
senate hesitated to reject unceremoniously the humble entreaty of
the Samnites for peace (436).  It is not till towards the close of
this epoch that we find a considerably extended intervention of the
-comitia tributa- in affairs of administration, particularly through
the practice of consulting it as to the conclusion of peace and of
alliances: this extension probably dates from the Hortensian law
of 467.

Decreasing Importance of the Burgess-Body

But notwithstanding these enlargements of the powers of the
burgess-assemblies, their practical influence on state affairs began,
particularly towards the close of this period, to wane.  First of all,
the extension of the bounds of Rome deprived her primary assembly of
its true basis.  As an assembly of the freeholders of the community,
it formerly might very well meet in sufficiently full numbers, and
might very well know its own wishes, even without discussion; but the
Roman burgess-body had now become less a civic community than a state.
The fact that those dwelling together voted also with each other, no
doubt, introduced into the Roman comitia, at least when the voting
was by tribes, a sort of inward connection and into the voting now
and then energy and independence; but under ordinary circumstances
the composition of the comitia and their decision were left dependent
on the person who presided or on accident, or were committed to the
hands of the burgesses domiciled in the capital.  It is, therefore,
quite easy to understand how the assemblies of the burgesses, which
had great practical importance during the first two centuries of
the republic, gradually became a mere instrument in the hands of
the presiding magistrate, and in truth a very dangerous instrument,
because the magistrates called to preside were so numerous, and
every resolution of the community was regarded as the ultimate legal
expression of the will of the people.  But the enlargement of the
constitutional rights of the burgesses was not of much moment,
inasmuch as these were less than formerly capable of a will and action
of their own, and there was as yet no demagogism, in the proper sense
of that term, in Rome.  Had any such demagogic spirit existed, it
would have attempted not to extend the powers of the burgesses, but to
remove the restrictions on political debate in their presence; whereas
throughout this whole period there was undeviating acquiescence in the
old maxims, that the magistrate alone could convoke the burgesses,
and that he was entitled to exclude all debate and all proposal
of amendments.  At the time this incipient breaking up of the
constitution made itself felt chiefly in the circumstance that
the primary assemblies assumed an essentially passive attitude,
and did not on the whole interfere in government either to help
or to hinder it.

The Magistrates.  Partition and Weakening of the Consular Powers

As regards the power of the magistrates, its diminution, although not
the direct design of the struggles between the old and new burgesses,
was doubtless one of their most important results.  At the beginning
of the struggle between the orders or, in other words, of the strife
for the possession of the consular power, the consulate was still
the one and indivisible, essentially regal, magistracy; and the
consul, like the king in former times, still had the appointment
of all subordinate functionaries left to his own free choice.
At the termination of that contest its most important functions
--jurisdiction, street-police, election of senators and equites,
the census and financial administration --were separated from the
consulship and transferred to magistrates, who like the consul
were nominated by the community and occupied a position far more
co-ordinate than subordinate.  The consulate, formerly the single
ordinary magistracy of the state, was now no longer even absolutely
the first.  In the new arrangement as to the ranking and usual order
of succession of the public offices the consulate stood indeed above
the praetorship, aedileship, and quaestorship, but beneath the
censorship, which--in addition to the most important financial duties
--was charged with the adjustment of the rolls of burgesses, equites,
and senators, and thereby wielded a wholly arbitrary moral control
over the entire community and every individual burgess, the humblest
as well as the most prominent.  The conception of limited magisterial
power or special function, which seemed to the original Roman state-law
irreconcilable with the conception of supreme office, gradually
gained a footing and mutilated and destroyed the earlier idea of the
one and indivisible -imperium-.  A first step was already taken in
this direction by the institution of the standing collateral offices,
particularly the quaestorship;(14) it was completely carried out by
the Licinian laws (387), which prescribed the functions of the three
supreme magistrates, and assigned administration and the conduct of
war to the two first, and the management of justice to the third.  But
the change did not stop here.  The consuls, although they were in law
wholly and everywhere co-ordinate, naturally from the earliest times
divided between them in practice the different departments of duty
(-provinciae-).  Originally this was done simply by mutual concert, or
in default of it by casting lots; but by degrees the other constituent
authorities in the commonwealth interfered with this practical
definition of functions.  It became usual for the senate to define
annually the spheres of duty; and, while it did not directly
distribute them among the co-ordinate magistrates, it exercised
decided influence on the personal distribution by advice and request.
In an extreme case the senate doubtless obtained a decree of the
community, definitively to settle the question of distribution;(15)
the government, however, very seldom employed this dangerous
expedient.  Further, the most important affairs, such as the
concluding of peace, were withdrawn from the consuls, and they
were in such matters obliged to have recourse to the senate and
to act according to its instructions.  Lastly, in cases of extremity
the senate could at any time suspend the consuls from office; for,
according to an usage never established by law but never violated
in practice, the creation of a dictatorship depended simply upon
the resolution of the senate, and the fixing of the person to be
nominated,  although constitutionally vested in the nominating
consul, really under ordinary circumstances lay with the senate.

Limitation of the Dictatorship

The old unity and plenary legal power of the -imperium- were retained
longer in the case of the dictatorship than in that of the consulship.
Although of course as an extraordinary magistracy it had in reality
from the first its special functions, it had in law far less of a
special character than the consulate.  But it also was gradually
affected by the new idea of definite powers and functions introduced
into the legal life of Rome.  In 391 we first meet with a dictator
expressly nominated from theological scruples for the mere
accomplishment of a religious ceremony; and though that dictator
himself, doubtless in formal accordance with the constitution,
treated the restriction of his powers as null and took the command
of the army in spite of it, such an opposition on the part of the
magistrate was not repeated on occasion of the subsequent similarly
restricted nominations, which occurred in 403 and thenceforward very
frequently.  On the contrary, the dictators thenceforth accounted
themselves bound by their powers as specially defined.

Restriction as to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation of Offices

Lastly, further seriously felt restrictions of the magistracy were
involved in the prohibition issued in 412 against the accumulation
of the ordinary curule offices, and in the enactment of the same date,
that the same person should not again administer the same office under
ordinary circumstances before an interval of ten years had elapsed, as
well as in the subsequent regulation that the office which practically
was the highest, the censorship, should not be held a second time
at all (489).  But the government was still strong enough not to be
afraid of its instruments or to desist purposely on that account
from employing those who were the most serviceable.  Brave officers
were very frequently released from these rules,(16) and cases still
occurred like those of Quintus Fabius Rullianus, who was five times
consul in twenty-eight years, and of Marcus Valerius Corvus (384-483)
who, after he had filled six consulships, the first in his twenty-third,
the last in his seventy-second year, and had been throughout three
generations the protector of his countrymen and the terror
of the foe, descended to the grave at the age of a hundred.

The Tribunate of the People as an Instrument of Government

While the Roman magistrate was thus more and more completely and
definitely transformed from the absolute lord into the limited
commissioner and administrator of the community, the old
counter-magistracy, the tribunate of the people, was undergoing at
the same time a similar transformation internal rather than external.
It served a double purpose in the commonwealth.  It had been from
the beginning intended to protect the humble and the weak by a
somewhat revolutionary assistance (-auxilium-) against the overbearing
violence of the magistrates; it had subsequently been employed to get
rid of the legal disabilities of the commons and the privileges of the
gentile nobility.  The latter end was attained.  The original object
was not only in itself a democratic ideal rather than a political
possibility, but it was also quite as obnoxious to the plebeian
aristocracy into whose hands the tribunate necessarily fell, and
quite as incompatible with the new organization which originated
in the equalization of the orders and had if possible a still more
decided aristocratic hue than that which preceded it, as it was
obnoxious to the gentile nobility and incompatible with the patrician
consular constitution.  But instead of abolishing the tribunate, they
preferred to convert it from a weapon of opposition into an instrument
of government, and now introduced the tribunes of the people, who were
originally excluded from all share in administration and were neither
magistrates nor members of the senate, into the class of governing
authorities.

While in jurisdiction they stood from the beginning on an equality
with the consuls and in the early stages of the conflicts between the
orders acquired like the consuls the right of initiating legislation,
they now received--we know not exactly when, but presumably at or soon
after the final equalization of the orders--a position of equality
with the consuls as confronting the practically governing authority,
the senate.  Hitherto they had been present at the proceedings of the
senate, sitting on a bench at the door; now they obtained, like the
other magistrates and by their side, a place in the senate itself and
the right to interpose their word in its discussions.  If they were
precluded from the right of voting, this was simply an application of
the general principle of Roman state-law, that those only should give
counsel who were not called to act; in accordance with which the whole
of the acting magistrates possessed during their year of office only a
seat, not a vote, in the council of the state.(17)  But concession did
not rest here.  The tribunes received the distinctive prerogative of
supreme magistracy, which among the ordinary magistrates belonged
only to the consuls and praetors besides--the right of convoking the
senate, of consulting it, and of procuring decrees from it.(18)  This
was only as it should be; the heads of the plebeian aristocracy
could not but be placed on an equality with those of the patrician
aristocracy in the senate, when once the government had passed
from the clan-nobility to the united aristocracy.  Now that this
opposition-college, originally excluded from all share in the public
administration, became--particularly with reference to strictly urban
affairs--a second supreme executive and one of the most usual and most
serviceable instruments of the government, or in other words of the
senate, for managing the burgesses and especially for checking the
excesses of the magistrates, it was certainly, as respected its
original character, absorbed and politically annihilated; but this
course was really enjoined by necessity.  Clearly as the defects of
the Roman aristocracy were apparent, and decidedly as the steady
growth of aristocratic ascendency was connected with the practical
setting aside of the tribunate, none can fail to see that government
could not be long carried on with an authority which was not only
aimless and virtually calculated to put off the suffering proletariate
with a deceitful prospect of relief, but was at the same time
decidedly revolutionary and possessed of a--strictly speaking
--anarchical prerogative of obstruction to the authority of the
magistrates and even of the state itself.  But that faith in an ideal,
which is the foundation of all the power and of all the impotence
of democracy, had come to be closely associated in the minds of the
Romans with the tribunate of the plebs; and we do not need to
recall the case of Cola Rienzi in order to perceive that, however
unsubstantial might be the advantage thence arising to the multitude,
it could not be abolished without a formidable convulsion of the
state.  Accordingly with genuine political prudence they contented
themselves with reducing it to a nullity under forms that should
attract as little attention as possible.  The mere name of this
essentially revolutionary magistracy was still retained within
the aristocratically governed commonwealth--an incongruity for the
present, and for the future, in the hands of a coming revolutionary
party, a sharp and dangerous weapon.  For the moment, however, and for
a long time to come the aristocracy was so absolutely powerful and
so completely possessed control over the tribunate, that no trace at
all is to be met with of a collegiate opposition on the part of
the tribunes to the senate; and the government overcame the forlorn
movements of opposition that now and then proceeded from individual
tribunes, always without difficulty, and ordinarily by means of
the tribunate itself.

The Senate.  Its Composition

In reality it was the senate that governed the commonwealth, and did
so almost without opposition after the equalization of the orders.
Its very composition had undergone a change.  The free prerogative of
the chief magistrates in this matter, as it had been exercised after
the setting aside of the old clan-representation,(19) had been already
subjected to very material restrictions on the abolition of the
presidency for life.(20)

A further step towards the emancipation of the senate from the power
of the magistrates took place, when the adjustment of the senatorial
lists was transferred from the supreme magistrates to subordinate
functionaries--from the consuls to the censors.(21)  Certainly,
whether immediately at that time or soon afterwards, the right of
the magistrate entrusted with the preparation of the list to omit
from it individual senators on account of a stain attaching to them
and thereby to exclude them from the senate was, if not introduced,
at least more precisely defined,(22) and in this way the foundations
were laid of that peculiar jurisdiction over morals on which the high
repute of the censors was chiefly based.(23)  But censures of that
sort--especially since the two censors had to be at one on the matter
--might doubtless serve to remove particular persons who did not
contribute to the credit of the assembly or were hostile to the spirit
prevailing there, but could not bring the body itself into dependence
on the magistracy.

But the right of the magistrates to constitute the senate according
to their judgment was decidedly restricted by the Ovinian law, which
was passed about the middle of this period, probably soon after the
Licinian laws.  That law at once conferred a seat and vote in the
senate provisionally on every one who had been curule aedile, praetor,
or consul, and bound the next censors either formally to inscribe
these expectants in the senatorial roll, or at any rate to exclude
them from the roll only for such reasons as sufficed for the rejection
of an actual senator.  The number of those, however, who had been
magistrates was far from sufficing to keep the senate up to the normal
number of three hundred; and below that point it could not be allowed
to fall, especially as the list of senators was at the same time that
of jurymen.  Considerable room was thus always left for the exercise
of the censorial right of election; but those senators who were chosen
not in consequence of having held office, but by selection on the part
of the censor--frequently burgesses who had filled a non-curule public
office, or distinguished themselves by personal valour, who had killed
an enemy in battle or saved the life of a burgess--took part in
voting, but not in debate.(24)  The main body of the senate, and
that portion of it into whose hands government and administration
were concentrated, was thus according to the Ovinian law substantially
based no longer on the arbitrary will of a magistrate, but indirectly
on election by the people.  The Roman state in this way made some
approach to, although it did not reach, the great institution of
modern times, representative popular government, while the aggregate
of the non-debating senators furnished--what it is so necessary and
yet so difficult to get in governing corporations--a compact mass
of members capable of forming and entitled to pronounce an opinion,
but voting in silence.

Powers of the Senate

The powers of the senate underwent scarcely any change in form.  The
senate carefully avoided giving a handle to opposition or to ambition
by unpopular changes, or manifest violations, of the constitution; it
permitted, though it did nor promote, the enlargement in a democratic
direction of the power of the burgesses.  But while the burgesses
acquired the semblance, the senate acquired the substance of power
--a decisive influence over legislation and the official elections,
and the whole control of the state.

Its Influence in Legislation

Every new project of law was subjected to a preliminary deliberation
in the senate, and scarcely ever did a magistrate venture to lay a
proposal before the community without or in opposition to the senate's
opinion.  If he did so, the senate had--in the intercessory powers of
the magistrates and the annulling powers of the priests--an ample set
of means at hand to nip in the bud, or subsequently to get rid of,
obnoxious proposals; and in case of extremity it had in its hands
as the supreme administrative authority not only the executing, but
the power of refusing to execute, the decrees of the community.  The
senate further with tacit consent of the community claimed the right
in urgent cases of absolving from the laws, under the reservation that
the community should ratify the proceeding--a reservation which from
the first was of little moment, and became by degrees so entirely a
form that in later times they did not even take the trouble to propose
the ratifying decree.

Influence on the Elections

As to the elections, they passed, so far as they depended on the
magistrates and were of political importance, practically into the
hands of the senate.  In this way it acquired, as has been mentioned
already,(25) the right to appoint the dictator.  Great regard had
certainly to be shown to the community; the right of bestowing the
public magistracies could not be withdrawn from it; but, as has
likewise been already observed, care was taken that this election of
magistrates should not be constructed into the conferring of definite
functions, especially of the posts of supreme command when war was
imminent.  Moreover the newly introduced idea of special functions on
the one hand, and on the other the right practically conceded to the
senate of dispensation from the laws, gave to it an important share
in official appointments.  Of the influence which the senate exercised
in settling the official spheres of the consuls in particular, we have
already spoken.(26)  One of the most important applications of the
dispensing right was the dispensation of the magistrate from the legal
term of his tenure of office--a dispensation which, as contrary to the
fundamental laws of the community, might not according to Roman state-law
be granted in the precincts of the city proper, but beyond these
was at least so far valid that the consul or praetor, whose term was
prolonged, continued after its expiry to discharge his functions
"in a consul's or praetor's stead" (-pro consule- -pro praetore-).
Of course this important right of extending the term of office
--essentially on a par with the right of nomination--belonged by
law to the community alone, and at the beginning was in fact exercised
by it; but in 447, and regularly thenceforward, the command of the
commander-in-chief was prolonged by mere decree of the senate.  To this
was added, in fine, the preponderating and skilfully concerted influence
of the aristocracy over the elections, which guided them ordinarily,
although not always, to the choice of candidates agreeable to
the government.

Senatorial Government

Finally as regards administration, war, peace and alliances, the
founding of colonies, the assignation of lands, building, in fact
every matter of permanent and general importance, and in particular
the whole system of finance, depended absolutely on the senate.
It was the senate which annually issued general instructions to the
magistrates, settling their spheres of duty and limiting the troops
and moneys to be placed at the disposal of each; and recourse was
had to its counsel in every case of importance.  The keepers of the
state-chest could make no payment to any magistrate with the exception
of the consul, or to any private person, unless authorized by a previous
decree of the senate.  In the management, however, of current affairs
and in the details of judicial and military administration the supreme
governing corporation did not interfere; the Roman aristocracy had too
much political judgment and tact to desire to convert the control of
the commonwealth into a guardianship over the individual official,
or to turn the instrument into a machine.

That this new government of the senate amidst all its retention
of existing forms involved a complete revolutionizing of the old
commonwealth, is clear.  That the free action of the burgesses should
be arrested and benumbed; that the magistrates should be reduced to
be the presidents of its sittings and its executive commissioners;
that a corporation for the mere tendering of advice should seize the
inheritance of both the authorities sanctioned by the constitution
and should become, although under very modest forms, the central
government of the state--these were steps of revolution and
usurpation.  Nevertheless, if any revolution or any usurpation appears
justified before the bar of history by exclusive ability to govern,
even its rigorous judgment must acknowledge that this corporation
timeously comprehended and worthily fulfilled its great task.  Called
to power not by the empty accident of birth, but substantially by the
free choice of the nation; confirmed every fifth year by the stern
moral judgment of the worthiest men; holding office for life, and so
not dependent on the expiration of its commission or on the varying
opinion of the people; having its ranks close and united ever after
the equalization of the orders; embracing in it all the political
intelligence and practical statesmanship that the people possessed;
absolute in dealing with all financial questions and in the guidance
of foreign policy; having complete power over the executive by virtue
of its brief duration and of the tribunician intercession which was
at the service of the senate after the termination of the quarrels
between the orders--the Roman senate was the noblest organ of the
nation, and in consistency and political sagacity, in unanimity and
patriotism, in grasp of power and unwavering courage, the foremost
political corporation of all times--still even now an "assembly of
kings," which knew well how to combine despotic energy with republican
self-devotion.  Never was a state represented in its external
relations more firmly and worthily than Rome in its best times by
its senate.  In matters of internal administration it certainly
cannot be concealed that the moneyed and landed aristocracy, which
was especially represented in the senate, acted with partiality in
affairs that bore upon its peculiar interests, and that the sagacity
and energy of the body were often in such cases employed far from
beneficially to the state.  Nevertheless the great principle
established amidst severe conflicts, that all Roman burgesses were
equal in the eye of the law as respected rights and duties, and the
opening up of a political career (or in other words, of admission
to the senate) to every one, which was the result of that principle,
concurred with the brilliance of military and political successes in
preserving the harmony of the state and of the nation, and relieved
the distinction of classes from that bitterness and malignity which
marked the struggle of the patricians and plebeians.  And, as the
fortunate turn taken by external politics had the effect of giving the
rich for more than a century ample space for themselves and rendered
it unnecessary that they should oppress the middle class, the Roman
people was enabled by means of its senate to carry out for a longer
term than is usually granted to a people the grandest of all human
undertakings--a wise and happy self-government.




Notes for Book II Chapter III


1.  The hypothesis that legally the full -imperium- belonged to the
patrician, and only the military -imperium- to the plebeian, consular
tribunes, not only provokes various questions to which there is no
answer--as to the course followed, for example, in the event of the
election falling, as was by law quite possible, wholly on plebeians
--but specially conflicts with the fundamental principle of Roman
constitutional law, that the -imperium-, that is to say, the right
of commanding the burgess in name of the community, was functionally
indivisible and capable of no other limitation at all than a
territorial one.  There was a province of urban law and a province
of military law, in the latter of which the -provocatio- and other
regulations of urban law were not applicable; there were magistrates,
such as the proconsuls, who were empowered to discharge functions
simply in the latter; but there were, in the strict sense of law,
no magistrates with merely jurisdictional, as there were none with
merely military, -imperium-.  The proconsul was in his province, just
like the consul, at once commander-in-chief and supreme judge, and was
entitled to send to trial actions not only between non-burgesses and
soldiers, but also between one burgess and another.  Even when, on the
institution of the praetorship, the idea rose of apportioning special
functions to the -magistratus maiores-, this division of powers had
more of a practical than of a strictly legal force; the -praetor
urbanus- was primarily indeed the supreme judge, but he could also
convoke the centuries, at least for certain cases, and could
command an army; the consul in the city held primarily the supreme
administration and the supreme command, but he too acted as a judge
in cases of emancipation and adoption--the functional indivisibility
of the supreme magistracy was therefore, even in these instances,
very strictly adhered to on both sides.  Thus the military as well as
jurisdictional authority, or, laying aside these abstractions foreign
to the Roman law of this period, the absolute magisterial power, must
have virtually pertained to the plebeian consular tribunes as well as
to the patrician.  But it may well be, as Becker supposes (Handb. ii.
2, 137), that, for the same reasons, for which at a subsequent period
there was placed alongside of the consulship common to both orders
the praetorship actually reserved for a considerable time for the
patricians, even during the consular tribunate the plebeian members
of the college were -de facto- kept aloof from jurisdiction, and so
far the consular tribunate prepared the way for the subsequent actual
division of jurisdiction between consuls and praetors.

2.  I. VI. Political Effects of the Servian Military Organization

3.  The defence, that the aristocracy clung to the exclusion of
the plebeians from religious prejudice, mistakes the fundamental
character of the Roman religion, and imports into antiquity the modern
distinction between church and state.  The admittance of a non-burgess
to a religious ceremony of the citizens could not indeed but appear
sinful to the orthodox Roman; but even the most rigid orthodoxy never
doubted that admittance to civic communion, which absolutely and
solely depended on the state, involved also full religious equality.
All such scruples of conscience, the honesty of which in themselves
we do not mean to doubt, were precluded, when once they granted to the
plebeians -en masse- at the right time the patriciate.  This only may
perhaps be alleged by way of excuse for the nobility, that after it
had neglected the right moment for this purpose at the abolition of
the monarchy, it was no longer in a position subsequently of itself
to retrieve the neglect (II. I. The New Community).

4.  Whether this distinction between these "curule houses" and the
other families embraced within the patriciate was ever of serious
political importance, cannot with certainty be either affirmed or
denied; and as little do we know whether at this epoch there really
was any considerable number of patrician families that were not yet
curule.

5.  II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws

6.  I. XII. Foreign Worships

7.  II. I. Senate,

8.  II. I. Senate, II. III. Opposition of the Patriciate

9.  II. II. Legislation of the Twelve Tables

10.  II. III. Equivalence Law and Plebiscitum

11.  The statements as to the poverty of the consulars of this period,
which play so great a part in the moral anecdote-books of a later age,
mainly rest on a misunderstanding on the one hand of the old frugal
economy--which might very well consist with considerable prosperity
--and on the other hand of the beautiful old custom of burying men who
had deserved well of the state from the proceeds of penny collections
--which was far from being a pauper burial.  The method also of
explaining surnames by etymological guess-work, which has imported
so many absurdities into Roman history, has furnished its quota to
this belief (-Serranus-).

12.  II. II. The Valerio-Horatian Laws

13.  II. III. Equivalence Law and Plebiscitum

14.  II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers

15.  II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses

16.  Any one who compares the consular Fasti before and after 412
will have no doubt as to the existence of the above-mentioned law
respecting re-election to the consulate; for, while before that year
a return to office, especially after three or four years, was a
common occurrence, afterwards intervals of ten years and more were
as frequent.  Exceptions, however, occur in very great numbers,
particularly during the severe years of war 434-443.  On the other
hand, the principle of not allowing a plurality of offices was
strictly adhered to.  There is no certain instance of the combination
of two of the three ordinary curule (Liv. xxxix. 39, 4) offices (the
consulate, praetorship, and curule aedileship), but instances occur
of other combinations, such as of the curule aedileship and the office
of master of the horse (Liv. xxiii. 24, 30); of the praetorship
and censorship (Fast. Cap. a. 501); of the praetorship and the
dictatorship (Liv. viii. 12); of the consulate and the dictatorship
(Liv. viii. 12).

17.  II. I. Senate

18.  Hence despatches intended for the senate were addressed to
Consuls, Praetors, Tribunes of the Plebs, and Senate (Cicero, ad
Fam. xv. 2, et al.)

19.  I. V. The Senate

20.  II. I. Senate

21.  II. III. Censorship

22.  This prerogative and the similar ones with reference to the
equestrian and burgess-lists were perhaps not formally and legally
assigned to the censors, but were always practically implied in
their powers.  It was the community, not the censor, that conferred
burgess-rights; but the person, to whom the latter in making up the
list of persons entitled to vote did not assign a place or assigned an
inferior one, did not lose his burgess-right, but could not exercise
the privileges of a burgess, or could only exercise them in the
inferior place, till the preparation of a new list.  The same was the
case with the senate; the person omitted by the censor from his list
ceased to attend the senate, as long as the list in question remained
valid--unless the presiding magistrate should reject it and reinstate
the earlier list.  Evidently therefore the important question in this
respect was not so much what was the legal liberty of the censors,
as how far their authority availed with those magistrates who had to
summon according to their lists.  Hence it is easy to understand
how this prerogative gradually rose in importance, and how with the
increasing consolidation of the nobility such erasures assumed
virtually the form of judicial decisions and were virtually respected
as such.  As to the adjustment of the senatorial list undoubtedly the
enactment of the Ovinian -plebiscitum- exercised a material share of
influence--that the censors should admit to the senate "the best men
out of all classes."

23.  II. III. The Burgess-Body.  Its Composition

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

25.  II. III. Restrictions as to the Accumulation and the Reoccupation
of Offices

26.  II. III. Partition and Weakening of Consular Powers




CHAPTER IV

Fall of the Etruscan Power-the Celts


Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy

In the previous chapters we have presented an outline of the
development of the Roman constitution during the first two centuries
of the republic; we now recur to the commencement of that epoch for
the purpose of tracing the external history of Rome and of Italy.
About the time of the expulsion of the Tarquins from Rome the Etruscan
power had reached its height.  The Tuscans, and the Carthaginians who
were in close alliance with them, possessed undisputed supremacy on
the Tyrrhene Sea.  Although Massilia amidst continual and severe
struggles maintained her independence, the seaports of Campania and
of the Volscian land, and after the battle of Alalia Corsica also,(1)
were in the possession of the Etruscans.  In Sardinia the sons of the
Carthaginian general Mago laid the foundation of the greatness both of
their house and of their city by the complete conquest of the island
(about 260); and in Sicily, while the Hellenic colonies were occupied
with their internal feuds, the Phoenicians retained possession of
the western half without material opposition.  The vessels of the
Etruscans were no less dominant in the Adriatic; and their pirates
were dreaded even in the more eastern waters.

Subjugation of Latium by Etruria

By land also their power seemed to be on the increase.  To acquire
possession of Latium was of the most decisive importance to Etruria,
which was separated by the Latins alone from the Volscian towns that
were dependent on it and from its possessions in Campania.  Hitherto
the firm bulwark of the Roman power had sufficiently protected Latium,
and had successfully maintained against Etruria the frontier line of
the Tiber.  But now, when the whole Tuscan league, taking advantage of
the confusion and the weakness of the Roman state after the expulsion
of the Tarquins, renewed its attack more energetically than before
under the king Lars Porsena of Clusium, it no longer encountered the
wonted resistance.  Rome surrendered, and in the peace (assigned to
247) not only ceded all her possessions on the right bank of the Tiber
to the adjacent Tuscan communities and thus abandoned her exclusive
command of the river, but also delivered to the conqueror all her
weapons of war and promised to make use of iron thenceforth only for
the ploughshare.  It seemed as if the union of Italy under Tuscan
supremacy was not far distant.

Etruscans Driven Back from Latium--
Fall of the Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy--
Victories of Salamis and Himera, and Their Effects

But the subjugation, with which the coalition of the Etruscan and
Carthaginian nations had threatened both Greeks and Italians, was
fortunately averted by the combination of peoples drawn towards each
other by family affinity as well as by common peril.  The Etruscan
army, which after the fall of Rome had penetrated into Latium, had
its victorious career checked in the first instance before the walls
of Aricia by the well-timed intervention of the Cumaeans who had
hastened to the succour of the Aricines (248).  We know not how the
war ended, nor, in particular, whether Rome even at that time tore up
the ruinous and disgraceful peace.  This much only is certain, that
on this occasion also the Tuscans were unable to maintain their ground
permanently on the left bank of the Tiber.

Soon the Hellenic nation was forced to engage in a still more
comprehensive and still more decisive conflict with the barbarians
both of the west and of the east.  It was about the time of the
Persian wars.  The relation in which the Tyrians stood to the great
king led Carthage also to follow in the wake of Persian policy
--there exists a credible tradition even as to an alliance between
the Carthaginians and Xerxes--and, along with the Carthaginians, the
Etruscans.  It was one of the grandest of political combinations which
simultaneously directed the Asiatic hosts against Greece, and the
Phoenician hosts against Sicily, to extirpate at a blow liberty and
civilization from the face of the earth.  The victory remained with
the Hellenes.  The battle of Salamis (274) saved and avenged Hellas
proper; and on the same day--so runs the story--the rulers of Syracuse
and Agrigentum, Gelon and Theron, vanquished the immense army of the
Carthaginian general Hamilcar, son of Mago, at Himera so completely,
that the war was thereby terminated, and the Phoenicians, who by no
means cherished at that time the project of subduing the whole of
Sicily on their own account, returned to their previous defensive
policy.  Some of the large silver pieces are still preserved which
were coined for this campaign from the ornaments of Damareta, the
wife of Gelon, and other noble Syracusan dames: and the latest times
gratefully remembered the gentle and brave king of Syracuse and
the glorious victory whose praises Simonides sang.

The immediate effect of the humiliation of Carthage was the fall of
the maritime supremacy of her Etruscan allies.  Anaxilas, ruler of
Rhegium and Zancle, had already closed the Sicilian straits against
their privateers by means of a standing fleet (about 272); soon
afterwards (280) the Cumaeans and Hiero of Syracuse achieved a
decisive victory near Cumae over the Tyrrhene fleet, to which the
Carthaginians vainly attempted to render aid.  This is the victory
which Pindar celebrates in his first Pythian ode; and there is still
extant an Etruscan helmet, which Hiero sent to Olympia, with the
inscription: "Hiaron son of Deinomenes and the Syrakosians to Zeus,
Tyrrhane spoil from Kyma."(2)

Maritime Supremacy of the Tarentines and Syracusans--
Dionysius of Syracuse

While these extraordinary successes against the Carthaginians and
Etruscans placed Syracuse at the head of the Greek cities in Sicily,
the Doric Tarentum rose to undisputed pre-eminence among the Italian
Hellenes, after the Achaean Sybaris had fallen about the time of the
expulsion of the kings from Rome (243).  The terrible defeat of the
Tarentines by the Iapygians (280), the most severe disaster which a
Greek army had hitherto sustained, served only, like the Persian
invasion of Hellas, to unshackle the whole might of the national
spirit in the development of an energetic democracy.  Thenceforth
the Carthaginians and the Etruscans were no longer paramount in the
Italian waters; the Tarentines predominated in the Adriatic and Ionic,
the Massiliots and Syracusans in the Tyrrhene, seas.  The latter in
particular restricted more and more the range of Etruscan piracy.
After the victory at Cumae, Hiero had occupied the island of Aenaria
(Ischia), and by that means interrupted the communication between the
Campanian and the northern Etruscans.  About the year 302, with a
view thoroughly to check Tuscan piracy, Syracuse sent forth a special
expedition, which ravaged the island of Corsica and the Etruscan
coast and occupied the island of Aethalia (Elba).  Although
Etrusco-Carthaginian piracy was not wholly repressed--Antium,
for example, having apparently continued a haunt of privateering down
to the beginning of the fifth century of Rome--the powerful Syracuse
formed a strong bulwark against the allied Tuscans and Phoenicians.
For a moment, indeed, it seemed as if the Syracusan power must be broken
by the attack of the Athenians, whose naval expedition against Syracuse
in the course of the Peloponnesian war (339-341) was supported by the
Etruscans, old commercial friends of Athens, with three fifty-oared
galleys.  But the victory remained, as is well known, both in the west
and in the east with the Dorians.  After the ignominious failure of
the Attic expedition, Syracuse became so indisputably the first Greek
maritime power that the men, who were there at the head of the state,
aspired to the sovereignty of Sicily and Lower Italy, and of both the
Italian seas; while on the other hand the Carthaginians, who saw their
dominion in Sicily now seriously in danger, were on their part also
obliged to make, and made, the subjugation of the Syracusans and the
reduction of the whole island the aim of their policy.  We cannot
here narrate the decline of the intermediate Sicilian states, and
the increase of the Carthaginian power in the island, which were the
immediate results of these struggles; we notice their effect only so
far as Etruria is concerned.  The new ruler of Syracuse, Dionysius
(who reigned 348-387), inflicted on Etruria blows which were severely
felt.  The far-scheming king laid the foundation of his new colonial
power especially in the sea to the east of Italy, the more northern
waters of which now became, for the first time, subject to a Greek
maritime power.  About the year 367, Dionysius occupied and colonized
the port of Lissus and island of Issa on the Illyrian coast, and the
ports of Ancona, Numana, and Atria, on the coast of Italy.  The memory
of the Syracusan dominion in this remote region is preserved not only
by the "trenches of Philistus," a canal constructed at the mouth
of the Po beyond doubt by the well-known historian and friend of
Dionysius who spent the years of his exile (368 et seq.) at Atria,
but also by the alteration in the name of the Italian eastern sea
itself, which from this time forth, instead of its earlier designation
of the "Ionic Gulf",(3) received the appellation still current at the
present day, and probably referable to these events, of the sea
"of Hadria."(4)  But not content with these attacks on the possessions
and commercial communications of the Etruscans in the eastern sea,
Dionysius assailed the very heart of the Etruscan power by storming
and plundering Pyrgi, the rich seaport of Caere (369).  From this blow
it never recovered.  When the internal disturbances that followed the
death of Dionysius in Syracuse gave the Carthaginians freer scope, and
their fleet resumed in the Tyrrhene sea that ascendency which with but
slight interruptions they thenceforth maintained, it proved a burden
no less grievous to Etruscans than to Greeks; so that, when Agathocles
of Syracuse in 444 was making preparations for war with Carthage, he
was even joined by eighteen Tuscan vessels of war.  The Etruscans
perhaps had their fears in regard to Corsica, which they probably
still at that time retained.  The old Etrusco-Phoenician symmachy,
which still existed in the time of Aristotle (370-432), was thus
broken up; but the Etruscans never recovered their maritime strength.

The Romans Opposed to the Etruscans in Veii

This rapid collapse of the Etruscan maritime power would be
inexplicable but for the circumstance that, at the very time when
the Sicilian Greeks were attacking them by sea, the Etruscans found
themselves assailed with the severest blows oil every side by land.
About the time of the battles of Salamis, Himera, and Cumae a furious
war raged for many years, according to the accounts of the Roman
annals, between Rome and Veii (271-280).  The Romans suffered in its
course severe defeats.  Tradition especially preserved the memory of
the catastrophe of the Fabii (277), who had in consequence of internal
commotions voluntarily banished themselves from the capital(4) and had
undertaken the defence of the frontier against Etruria, and who were
slain to the last man capable of bearing arms at the brook Cremera.
But the armistice for 400 months, which in room of a peace terminated
the war, was so far favourable to the Romans that it at least restored
the -status quo- of the regal period; the Etruscans gave up Fidenae
and the district won by them on the right bank of the Tiber.  We
cannot ascertain how far this Romano-Etruscan war was connected
directly with the war between the Hellenes and the Persians, and with
that between the Sicilians and Carthaginians; but whether the Romans
were or were not allies of the victors of Salamis and of Himera, there
was at any rate a coincidence of interests as well as of results.

The Samnites Opposed to the Etruscans in Campania

The Samnites as well as the Latins threw themselves upon the
Etruscans; and hardly had their Campanian settlement been cut off
from the motherland in consequence of the battle of Cumae, when it
found itself no longer able to resist the assaults of the Sabellian
mountain tribes.  Capua, the capital, fell in 330; and the Tuscan
population there was soon after the conquest extirpated or expelled by
the Samnites.  It is true that the Campanian Greeks also, isolated and
weakened, suffered severely from the same invasion: Cumae itself was
conquered by the Sabellians in 334.  But the Hellenes maintained their
ground at Neapolis especially, perhaps with the aid of the Syracusans,
while the Etruscan name in Campania disappeared from history
--excepting some detached Etruscan communities, which prolonged
a pitiful and forlorn existence there.

Events still more momentous, however, occurred about the same time in
Northern Italy.  A new nation was knocking at the gates of the Alps:
it was the Celts; and their first pressure fell on the Etruscans.

The Celtic, Galatian, or Gallic nation received from the common mother
endowments different from those of its Italian, Germanic, and Hellenic
sisters.  With various solid qualities and still more that were
brilliant, it was deficient in those deeper moral and political
qualifications which lie at the root of all that is good and great
in human development.  It was reckoned disgraceful, Cicero tells us,
for the free Celts to till their fields with their own hands.  They
preferred a pastoral life to agriculture; and even in the fertile
plains of the Po they chiefly practised the rearing of swine, feeding
on the flesh of their herds, and staying with them in the oak forests
day and night.  Attachment to their native soil, such as characterized
the Italians and the Germans, was wanting in the Celts; while on the
other hand they delighted to congregate in towns and villages, which
accordingly acquired magnitude and importance among the Celts earlier
apparently than in Italy.  Their political constitution was imperfect.
Not only was the national unity recognized but feebly as a bond of
connection--as is, in fact, the case with all nations at first--but
the individual communities were deficient in concord and firm
control, in earnest public spirit and consistency of aim.  The only
organization for which they were fitted was a military one, where the
bonds of discipline relieved the individual from the troublesome task
of self-control.  "The prominent qualities of the Celtic race," says
their historian Thierry, "were personal bravery, in which they
excelled all nations; an open impetuous temperament, accessible to
every impression; much intelligence, but at the same time extreme
mobility, want of perseverance, aversion to discipline and order,
ostentation and perpetual discord--the result of boundless vanity."
Cato the Elder more briefly describes them, nearly to the same effect;
"the Celts devote themselves mainly to two things--fighting and
-esprit-."(6)  Such qualities--those of good soldiers but of bad
citizens--explain the historical fact, that the Celts have shaken all
states and have founded none.  Everywhere we find them ready to rove
or, in other words, to march; preferring moveable property to landed
estate, and gold to everything else; following the profession of arms
as a system of organized pillage or even as a trade for hire, and
with such success at all events that even the Roman historian Sallust
acknowledges that the Celts bore off the prize from the Romans in
feats of arms.  They were the true soldiers-of-fortune of antiquity,
as figures and descriptions represent them: with big but not sinewy
bodies, with shaggy hair and long mustaches--quite a contrast to the
Greeks and Romans, who shaved the head and upper lip; in variegated
embroidered dresses, which in combat were not unfrequently thrown off;
with a broad gold ring round the neck; wearing no helmets and without
missile weapons of any sort, but furnished instead with an immense
shield, a long ill-tempered sword, a dagger and a lance--all
ornamented with gold, for they were not unskilful at working in
metals.  Everything was made subservient to ostentation, even wounds,
which were often subsequently enlarged for the purpose of boasting
a broader scar.  Usually they fought on foot, but certain tribes on
horseback, in which case every freeman was followed by two attendants
likewise mounted; war-chariots were early in use, as they were among
the Libyans and the Hellenes in the earliest times.  Various traits
remind us of the chivalry of the Middle Ages; particularly the custom
of single combat, which was foreign to the Greeks and Romans.  Not
only were they accustomed during war to challenge a single enemy to
fight, after having previously insulted him by words and gestures;
during peace also they fought with each other in splendid suits of
armour, as for life or death.  After such feats carousals followed as
a matter of course.  In this way they led, whether under their own or
a foreign banner, a restless soldier-life; they were dispersed from
Ireland and Spain to Asia Minor, constantly occupied in fighting and
so-called feats of heroism.  But all their enterprises melted away
like snow in spring; and nowhere did they create a great state or
develop a distinctive culture of their own.

Celtic Migrations--
The Celts Assail the Etruscans in Northern Italy

Such is the description which the ancients give us of this nation.
Its origin can only be conjectured.  Sprung from the same cradle from
which the Hellenic, Italian, and Germanic peoples issued,(7) the
Celts doubtless like these migrated from their eastern motherland into
Europe, where at a very early period they reached the western ocean
and established their headquarters in what is now France, crossing
to settle in the British isles on the north, and on the south passing
the Pyrenees and contending with the Iberian tribes for the possession
of the peninsula.  This, their first great migration, flowed past the
Alps, and it was from the lands to the westward that they first began
those movements of smaller masses in the opposite direction--movements
which carried them over the Alps and the Haemus and even over the
Bosporus, and by means of which they became and for many centuries
continued to be the terror of the whole civilized nations of
antiquity, till the victories of Caesar and the frontier defence
organized by Augustus for ever broke their power.

The native legend of their migrations, which has been preserved to us
mainly by Livy, relates the story of these later retrograde movements
as follows.(8)  The Gallic confederacy, which was headed then as in
the time of Caesar by the canton of the Bituriges (around Bourges),
sent forth in the days of king Ambiatus two great hosts led by the
two nephews of the king.  One of these nephews, Sigovesus, crossed
the Rhine and advanced in the direction of the Black Forest, while the
second, Bellovesus, crossed the Graian Alps (the Little St. Bernard)
and descended into the valley of the Po.  From the former proceeded
the Gallic settlement on the middle Danube; from the latter the oldest
Celtic settlement in the modern Lombardy, the canton of the Insubres
with Mediolanum (Milan) as its capital.  Another host soon followed,
which founded the canton of the Cenomani with the towns of Brixia
(Brescia) and Verona.  Ceaseless streams thenceforth poured over the
Alps into the beautiful plain; the Celtic tribes with the Ligurians
whom they dislodged and swept along with them wrested place after
place from the Etruscans, till the whole left bank of the Po was
in their hands.  After the fall of the rich Etruscan town Melpum
(presumably in the district of Milan), for the subjugation of which
the Celts already settled in the basin of the Po had united with newly
arrived tribes (358?), these latter crossed to the right bank of the
river and began to press upon the Umbrians and Etruscans in their
original abodes.  Those who did so were chiefly the Boii, who are
alleged to have penetrated into Italy by another route, over the
Poenine Alps (the Great St.  Bernard): they settled in the modern
Romagna, where the old Etruscan town Felsina, with its name changed
by its new masters to Bononia, became their capital.  Finally came
the Senones, the last of the larger Celtic tribes which made their
way over the Alps; they took up their abode along the coast of the
Adriatic from Rimini to Ancona.  But isolated bands of Celtic settlers
must have advanced even far in the direction of Umbria, and up to
the border of Etruria proper; for stone-inscriptions in the Celtic
language have been found even at Todi on the upper Tiber.  The limits
of Etruria on the north and east became more and more contracted,
and about the middle of the fourth century the Tuscan nation found
themselves substantially restricted to the territory which thenceforth
bore and still bears their name.

Attack on Etruria by the Romans

Subjected to these simultaneous and, as it were, concerted assaults on
the part of very different peoples--the Syracusans, Latins, Samnites,
and above all the Celts--the Etruscan nation, that had just acquired
so vast and sudden an ascendency in Latium and Campania and on both
the Italian seas, underwent a still more rapid and violent collapse.
The loss of their maritime supremacy and the subjugation of the
Campanian Etruscans belong to the same epoch as the settlement of
the Insubres and Cenomani on the Po; and about this same period the
Roman burgesses, who had not very many years before been humbled to
the utmost and almost reduced to bondage by Porsena, first assumed an
attitude of aggression towards Etruria.  By the armistice with Veii in
280 Rome had recovered its ground, and the two nations were restored
in the main to the state in which they had stood in the time of the
kings.  When it expired in the year 309, the warfare began afresh; but
it took the form of border frays and pillaging excursions which led to
no material result on either side.  Etruria was still too powerful for
Rome to be able seriously to attack it.  At length the revolt of the
Fidenates, who expelled the Roman garrison, murdered the Roman envoys,
and submitted to Lars Tolumnius, king of the Veientes, gave rise to
a more considerable war, which ended favourably for the Romans; the
king Tolumnius fell in combat by the hand of the Roman consul Aulus
Cornelius Cossus (326?), Fidenae was taken, and a new armistice for
200 months was concluded in 329.  During this truce the troubles of
Etruria became more and more aggravated, and the Celtic arms were
already approaching the settlements that hitherto had been spared on
the right bank of the Po.  When the armistice expired in the end of
346, the Romans on their part resolved to undertake a war of conquest
against Etruria; and on this occasion the war was carried on not
merely to vanquish Veii, but to crush it.

Conquest of Veii

The history of the war against the Veientes, Capenates, and Falisci,
and of the siege of Veii, which is said, like that of Troy, to have
lasted ten years, rests on evidence far from trustworthy.  Legend and
poetry have taken possession of these events as their own, and with
reason; for the struggle in this case was waged, with unprecedented
exertions, for an unprecedented prize.  It was the first occasion on
which a Roman army remained in the field summer and winter, year
after year, till its object was attained.  It was the first occasion
on which the community paid the levy from the resources of the state.
But it was also the first occasion on which the Romans attempted
to subdue a nation of alien stock, and carried their arms beyond
the ancient northern boundary of the Latin land.  The struggle was
vehement, but the issue was scarcely doubtful.  The Romans were
supported by the Latins and Hernici, to whom the overthrow of their
dreaded neighbour was productive of scarcely less satisfaction and
advantage than to the Romans themselves; whereas Veii was abandoned
by its own nation, and only the adjacent towns of Capena and Falerii,
along with Tarquinii, furnished contingents to its help.  The
contemporary attacks of the Celts would alone suffice to explain
the nonintervention of the northern communities; it is affirmed
however, and there is no reason to doubt, that this inaction of the
other Etruscans was primarily occasioned by internal factions in the
league of the Etruscan cities, and particularly by the opposition
which the regal form of government retained or restored by the
Veientes encountered from the aristocratic governments of the other
cities.  Had the Etruscan nation been able or willing to take part
in the conflict, the Roman community would hardly have been able
--undeveloped as was the art of besieging at that time--to accomplish
the gigantic task of subduing a large and strong city.  But isolated
and forsaken as Veii was, it succumbed (358) after a valiant
resistance to the persevering and heroic spirit of Marcus Furius
Camillus, who first opened up to his countrymen the brilliant and
perilous career of foreign conquest.  The joy which this great success
excited in Rome had its echo in the Roman custom, continued down to a
late age, of concluding the festal games with a "sale of Veientes," at
which, among the mock spoils submitted to auction, the most wretched
old cripple who could be procured wound up the sport in a purple
mantle and ornaments of gold as "king of the Veientes."  The city was
destroyed, and the soil was doomed to perpetual desolation.  Falerii
and Capena hastened to make peace; the powerful Volsinii, which with
federal indecision had remained quiet during the agony of Veii and
took up arms after its capture, likewise after a few years (363)
consented to peace.  The statement that the two bulwarks of the
Etruscan nation, Melpum and Veii, yielded on the same day, the former
to the Celts, the latter to the Romans, may be merely a melancholy
legend; but it at any rate involves a deep historical truth.  The
double assault from the north and from the south, and the fall of
the two frontier strongholds, were the beginning of the end of the
great Etruscan nation.

The Celts Attack Rome--
Battle on the Allia--
Capture of Rome

For a moment, however, it seemed as if the two peoples, through whose
co-operation Etruria saw her very existence put in jeopardy, were
about to destroy each other, and the reviving power of Rome was to
be trodden under foot by foreign barbarians.  This turn of things,
so contrary to what might naturally have been expected, the Romans
brought upon themselves by their own arrogance and shortsightedness.

The Celtic swarms, which had crossed the river after the fall of
Melpum, rapidly overflowed northern Italy--not merely the open country
on the right bank of the Po and along the shore of the Adriatic, but
also Etruria proper to the south of the Apennines.  A few years
afterwards (363) Clusium situated in the heart of Etruria (Chiusi, on
the borders of Tuscany and the Papal State) was besieged by the Celtic
Senones; and so humbled were the Etruscans that the Tuscan city in
its straits invoked aid from the destroyers of Veii.  Perhaps it would
have been wise to grant it and to reduce at once the Gauls by arms,
and the Etruscans by according to them protection, to a state of
dependence on Rome; but an intervention with aims so extensive, which
would have compelled the Romans to undertake a serious struggle on the
northern Tuscan frontier, lay beyond the horizon of the Roman policy
at that time.  No course was therefore left but to refrain from all
interference.  Foolishly, however, while declining to send auxiliary
troops, they despatched envoys.  With still greater folly these sought
to impose upon the Celts by haughty language, and, when this failed,
they conceived that they might with impunity violate the law of
nations in dealing with barbarians; in the ranks of the Clusines they
took part in a skirmish, and in the course of it one of them stabbed
and dismounted a Gallic officer.  The barbarians acted in this case
with moderation and prudence.  They sent in the first instance to the
Roman community to demand the surrender of those who had outraged the
law of nations, and the senate was ready to comply with the reasonable
request.  But with the multitude compassion for their countrymen
outweighed justice towards the foreigners; satisfaction was refused by
the burgesses; and according to some accounts they even nominated the
brave champions of their fatherland as consular tribunes for the
year 364,(9) which was to be so fatal in the Roman annals.  Then the
Brennus or, in other words, the "king of the army" of the Gauls broke
up the siege of Clusium, and the whole Celtic host--the numbers of
which are stated at 70,000 men--turned against Rome.  Such expeditions
into unknown land distant regions were not unusual for the Gauls, who
marched as bands of armed emigrants, troubling themselves little as
to the means of cover or of retreat; but it was evident that none in
Rome anticipated the dangers involved in so sudden and so mighty an
invasion.  It was not till the Gauls were marching upon Rome that a
Roman military force crossed the Tiber and sought to bar their way.
Not twelve miles from the gates, opposite to the confluence of the
rivulet Allia with the Tiber, the armies met, and a battle took place
on the 18th July, 364.  Even now they went into battle--not as against
an army, but as against freebooters--with arrogance and foolhardiness
and under inexperienced leaders, Camillus having in consequence of
the dissensions of the orders withdrawn from taking part in affairs.
Those against whom they were to fight were but barbarians; what need
was there of a camp, or of securing a retreat? These barbarians,
however, were men whose courage despised death, and their mode of
fighting was to the Italians as novel as it was terrible; sword in
hand the Celts precipitated themselves with furious onset on the Roman
phalanx, and shattered it at the first shock.  The overthrow was
complete; of the Romans, who had fought with the river in their rear,
a large portion met their death in the attempt to cross it; such as
escaped threw themselves by a flank movement into the neighbouring
Veii.  The victorious Celts stood between the remnant of the beaten
army and the capital.  The latter was irretrievably abandoned to the
enemy; the small force that was left behind, or that had fled thither,
was not sufficient to garrison the walls, and three days after the
battle the victors marched through the open gates into Rome.  Had they
done so at first, as they might have done, not only the city, but the
state also must have been lost; the brief interval gave opportunity
to carry away or to bury the sacred objects, and, what was more
important, to occupy the citadel and to furnish it with provisions for
the exigency.  No one was admitted to the citadel who was incapable of
bearing arms--there was not food for all.  The mass of the defenceless
dispersed among the neighbouring towns; but many, and in particular a
number of old men of high standing, would not survive the downfall
of the city and awaited death in their houses by the sword of the
barbarians.  They came, murdered all they met with, plundered whatever
property they found, and at length set the city on fire on all sides
before the eyes of the Roman garrison in the Capitol.  But they had
no knowledge of the art of besieging, and the blockade of the steep
citadel rock was tedious and difficult, because subsistence for the
great host could only be procured by armed foraging parties, and the
citizens of the neighbouring Latin cities, the Ardeates in particular,
frequently attacked the foragers with courage and success.
Nevertheless the Celts persevered, with an energy which in their
circumstances was unparalleled, for seven months beneath the rock,
and the garrison, which had escaped a surprise on a dark night only
in consequence of the cackling of the sacred geese in the Capitoline
temple and the accidental awaking of the brave Marcus Manlius, already
found its provisions beginning to fail, when the Celts received
information as to the Veneti having invaded the Senonian territory
recently acquired on the Po, and were thus induced to accept the
ransom money that was offered to procure their withdrawal.  The
scornful throwing down of the Gallic sword, that it might be
outweighed by Roman gold, indicated very truly how matters stood.
The iron of the barbarians had conquered, but they sold their
victory and by selling lost it.

Fruitlessness of the Celtic Victory

The fearful catastrophe of the defeat and the conflagration, the
18th of July and the rivulet of the Allia, the spot where the sacred
objects were buried, and the spot where the surprise of the citadel
had been repulsed--all the details of this unparalleled event--were
transferred from the recollection of contemporaries to the imagination
of posterity; and we can scarcely realize the fact that two thousand
years have actually elapsed since those world-renowned geese showed
greater vigilance than the sentinels at their posts.  And yet
--although there was an enactment in Rome that in future, on occasion
of a Celtic invasion no legal privilege should give exemption from
military service; although dates were reckoned by the years from
the conquest of the city; although the event resounded throughout
the whole of the then civilized world and found its way even into
the Grecian annals--the battle of the Allia and its results can
scarcely be numbered among those historical events that are fruitful
of consequences.  It made no alteration at all in political relations.
When the Gauls had marched off again with their gold--which only a
legend of late and wretched invention represents the hero Camillus as
having recovered for Rome--and when the fugitives had again made their
way home, the foolish idea suggested by some faint-hearted prudential
politicians, that the citizens should migrate to Veii, was set aside
by a spirited speech of Camillus; houses arose out of the ruins
hastily and irregularly--the narrow and crooked streets of Rome owed
their origin to this epoch; and Rome again stood in her old commanding
position.  Indeed it is not improbable that this occurrence
contributed materially, though not just at the moment, to diminish
the antagonism between Rome and Etruria, and above all to knit more
closely the ties of union between Latium and Rome.  The conflict
between the Gauls and the Romans was not, like that between Rome and
Etruria or between Rome and Samnium, a collision of two political
powers which affect and modify each other; it may be compared to
those catastrophes of nature, after which the organism, if it is not
destroyed, immediately resumes its equilibrium.  The Gauls often
returned to Latium: as in the year 387, when Camillus defeated them
at Alba--the last victory of the aged hero, who had been six times
military tribune with consular powers, and five times dictator, and
had four times marched in triumph to the Capitol; in the year 393,
when the dictator Titus Quinctius Pennus encamped opposite to them
not five miles from the city at the bridge of the Anio, but before any
encounter took place the Gallic host marched onward to Campania; in
the year 394, when the dictator Quintus Servilius Ahala fought in
front of the Colline gate with the hordes returning from Campania; in
the year 396, when the dictator Gaius Sulpicius Peticus inflicted on
them a signal defeat; in the year 404, when they even spent the winter
encamped upon the Alban mount and joined with the Greek pirates along
the coast for plunder, till Lucius Furius Camillus, the son of the
celebrated general, in the following year dislodged them--an incident
which came to the ears of Aristotle who was contemporary (370-432) in
Athens.  But these predatory expeditions, formidable and troublesome
as they may have been, were rather incidental misfortunes than events
of political significance; and their most essential result was, that
the Romans were more and more regarded by themselves and by foreigners
as the bulwark of the civilized nations of Italy against the onset
of the dreaded barbarians--a view which tended more than is usually
supposed to further their subsequent claim to universal empire.

Further Conquests of Rome in Etruria--
South Etruria Roman

The Tuscans, who had taken advantage of the Celtic attack on Rome to
assail Veii, had accomplished nothing, because they had appeared in
insufficient force; the barbarians had scarcely departed, when the
heavy arm of Latium descended on the Tuscans with undiminished weight.
After the Etruscans had been repeatedly defeated, the whole of
southern Etruria as far as the Ciminian hills remained in the hands
of the Romans, who formed four new tribes in the territories of Veii,
Capena, and Falerii (367), and secured the northern boundary by
establishing the fortresses of Sutrium (371) and Nepete (381).
With rapid steps this fertile region, covered with Roman colonists,
became completely Romanized.  About 396 the nearest Etruscan towns,
Tarquinii, Caere, and Falerii, attempted to revolt against the Roman
encroachments, and the deep exasperation which these had aroused in
Etruria was shown by the slaughter of the whole of the Roman prisoners
taken in the first campaign, three hundred and seven in number, in the
market-place of Tarquinii; but it was the exasperation of impotence.
In the peace (403) Caere, which as situated nearest to the Romans
suffered the heaviest retribution, was compelled to cede half its
territory to Rome, and with the diminished domain which was left
to it to withdraw from the Etruscan league, and to enter into the
relationship of subjects to Rome which had in the meanwhile been
constituted primarily for individual Latin communities.  It seemed,
however, not advisable to leave to this more remote community alien in
race from the Roman such communal independence as was still retained
by the subject communities of Latium; the Caerite community received
the Roman franchise not merely without the privilege of electing or
of being elected at Rome, but also subject to the withholding of
self-administration, so that the place of magistrates of its own
was as regards justice and the census taken by those of Rome, and
a representative (-praefectus-) of the Roman praetor conducted
the administration on the spot--a form of subjection, which in
state-law first meets us here, whereby a state which had hitherto
been independent became converted into a community continuing to
subsist -de jure-, but deprived of all power of movement on its own part.
Not long afterwards (411) Falerii, which had preserved its original
Latin nationality even under Tuscan rule, abandoned the Etruscan league
and entered into perpetual alliance with Rome; and thereby the whole
of southern Etruria became in one form or other subject to Roman
supremacy.  In the case of Tarquinii and perhaps of northern Etruria
generally, the Romans were content with restraining them for a
lengthened period by a treaty of peace for 400 months (403).

Pacification of Northern Italy

In northern Italy likewise the peoples that had come into collision
and conflict gradually settled on a permanent footing and within more
defined limits.  The migrations over the Alps ceased, partly perhaps
in consequence of the desperate defence which the Etruscans made
in their more restricted home, and of the serious resistance of the
powerful Romans, partly perhaps also in consequence of changes unknown
to us on the north of the Alps.  Between the Alps and the Apennines,
as far south as the Abruzzi, the Celts were now generally the ruling
nation, and they were masters more especially of the plains and rich
pastures; but from the lax and superficial nature of their settlement
their dominion took no deep root in the newly acquired land and by no
means assumed the shape of exclusive possession.  How matters stood in
the Alps, and to what extent Celtic settlers became mingled there with
earlier Etruscan or other stocks, our unsatisfactory information as
to the nationality of the later Alpine peoples does not permit us
to ascertain; only the Raeti in the modern Grisons and Tyrol may be
described as a probably Etruscan stock.  The Umbrians retained the
valleys of the Apennines, and the Veneti, speaking a different
language, kept possession of the north-eastern portion of the valley
of the Po.  Ligurian tribes maintained their footing in the western
mountains, dwelling as far south as Pisa and Arezzo, and separating
the Celt-land proper from Etruria.  The Celts dwelt only in the
intermediate flat country, the Insubres and Cenomani to the north
of the Po, the Boii to the south, and--not to mention smaller tribes
--the Senones on the coast of the Adriatic, from Ariminum to Ancona,
in the so-called "country of the Gauls" (-ager Gallicus-).  But even
there Etruscan settlements must have continued partially at least to
subsist, somewhat as Ephesus and Miletus remained Greek under the
supremacy of the Persians.  Mantua at any rate, which was protected
by its insular position, was a Tuscan city even in the time of the
empire, and Atria on the Po also, where numerous discoveries of vases
have been made, appears to have retained its Etruscan character; the
description of the coasts that goes under the name of Scylax, composed
about 418, calls the district of Atria and Spina Tuscan land.  This
alone, moreover, explains how Etruscan corsairs could render the
Adriatic unsafe till far into the fifth century, and why not only
Dionysius of Syracuse covered its coasts with colonies, but even
Athens, as a remarkable document recently discovered informs us,
resolved about 429 to establish a colony in the Adriatic for
the protection of seafarers against the Tyrrhene pirates.

But while more or less of an Etruscan character continued to mark
these regions, it was confined to isolated remnants and fragments of
their earlier power; the Etruscan nation no longer reaped the benefit
of such gains as were still acquired there by individuals in peaceful
commerce or in maritime war.  On the other hand it was probably
from these half-free Etruscans that the germs proceeded of such
civilization as we subsequently find among the Celts and Alpine
peoples in general.(10) The very fact that the Celtic hordes in
the plains of Lombardy, to use the language of the so-called Scylax,
abandoned their warrior-life and took to permanent settlement, must
in part be ascribed to this influence; the rudiments moreover of
handicrafts and arts and the alphabet came to the Celts in Lombardy,
and in fact to the Alpine peoples as far as the modern Styria,
through the medium of the Etruscans.

Etruria Proper at Peace and on the Decline

Thus the Etruscans, after the loss of their possessions in Campania
and of the whole district to the north of the Apennines and to the
south of the Ciminian Forest, remained restricted to very narrow
bounds; their season of power and of aspiration had for ever passed
away.  The closest reciprocal relations subsisted between this
external decline and the internal decay of the nation, the seeds
of which indeed were doubtless already deposited at a far earlier
period.  The Greek authors of this age are full of descriptions of
the unbounded luxury of Etruscan life: poets of Lower Italy in the
fifth century of the city celebrate the Tyrrhenian wine, and the
contemporary historians Timaeus and Theopompus delineate pictures of
Etruscan unchastity and of Etruscan banquets, such as fall nothing
short of the worst Byzantine or French demoralization.  Unattested as
may be the details in these accounts, the statement at least appears
to be well founded, that the detestable amusement of gladiatorial
combats--the gangrene of the later Rome and of the last epoch of
antiquity generally--first came into vogue among the Etruscans.  At
any rate on the whole they leave no doubt as to the deep degeneracy
of the nation.  It pervaded even its political condition.  As far
as our scanty information reaches, we find aristocratic tendencies
prevailing, in the same way as they did at the same period in Rome,
but more harshly and more perniciously.  The abolition of royalty,
which appears to have been carried out in all the cities of Etruria
about the time of the siege of Veii, called into existence in the
several cities a patrician government, which experienced but slight
restraint from the laxity of the federal bond.  That bond but seldom
succeeded in combining all the Etruscan cities even for the defence of
the land, and the nominal hegemony of Volsinii does not admit of the
most remote comparison with the energetic vigour which the leadership
of Rome communicated to the Latin nation.  The struggle against the
exclusive claim put forward by the old burgesses to all public offices
and to all public usufructs, which must have destroyed even the Roman
state, had not its external successes enabled it in some measure to
satisfy the demands of the oppressed proletariate at the expense of
foreign nations and to open up other paths to ambition--that struggle
against the exclusive rule and (what was specially prominent in
Etruria) the priestly monopoly of the clan-nobility--must have ruined
Etruria politically, economically, and morally.  Enormous wealth,
particularly in landed property, became concentrated in the hands of a
few nobles, while the masses were impoverished; the social revolutions
which thence arose increased the distress which they sought to remedy;
and, in consequence of the impotence of the central power, no course
at last remained to the distressed aristocrats-- e. g. in Arretium
in 453, and in Volsinii in 488--but to call in the aid of the Romans,
who accordingly put an end to the disorder but at the same time
extinguished the remnant of independence.  The energies of the nation
were broken from the day of Veii and Melpum.  Earnest attempts were
still once or twice made to escape from the Roman supremacy, but in
such instances the stimulus was communicated to the Etruscans from
without--from another Italian stock, the Samnites.




Notes for Book II Chapter IV


1.  I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes

2.  --Fiaron o Deinomeneos kai toi Surakosioi toi Di Turan
apo Kumas.--

3.  I. X. Home of the Greek Immigrants

4.  Hecataeus (after 257 u. c.) and Herodotus also (270-after 345)
only know Hatrias as the delta of the Po and the sea that washes
its shores (O. Muller, Etrusker, i. p. 140; Geogr. Graeci min. ed.
C. Muller, i. p. 23).  The appellation of Adriatic sea, in its more
extended sense, first occurs in the so-called Scylax about 418 U. C.

5.  II. II. Coriolanus

6.  -Pleraque Gallia duas res industriosissime persequitur: rem
militarem et argute loqui- (Cato, Orig, l. ii. fr. 2. Jordan).

7.  It has recently been maintained by expert philologists that there
is a closer affinity between the Celts and Italians than there is even
between the latter and the Hellenes.  In other words they hold that
the branch of the great tree, from which the peoples of Indo-Germanic
extraction in the west and south of Europe have sprung, divided itself
in the first instance into Greeks and Italo-Celts, and that the latter
at a considerably later period became subdivided into Italians and
Celts.  This hypothesis commends itself much to acceptance in a
geographical point of view, and the facts which history presents may
perhaps be likewise brought into harmony with it, because what has
hitherto been regarded as Graeco-Italian civilization may very
well have been Graeco-Celto-Italian--in fact we know nothing of the
earliest stage of Celtic culture.  Linguistic investigation, however,
seems not to have made as yet such progress as to warrant the
insertion of its results in the primitive history of the peoples.

8.  The legend is related by Livy, v. 34, and Justin, xxiv. 4, and
Caesar also has had it in view (B. G. vi. 24).  But the association
of the migration of Bellovesus with the founding of Massilia, by which
the former is chronologically fixed down to the middle of the second
century of Rome, undoubtedly belongs not to the native legend, which
of course did not specify dates, but to later chronologizing research;
and it deserves no credit.  Isolated incursions and immigrations may
have taken place at a very early period; but the great overflowing of
northern Italy by the Celts cannot be placed before the age of the
decay of the Etruscan power, that is, not before the second half
of the third century of the city.

In like manner, after the judicious investigations of Wickham and
Cramer, we cannot doubt that the line of march of Bellovesus, like
that of Hannibal, lay not over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre) and
through the territory of the Taurini, but over the Graian Alps (the
Little St. Bernard) and through the territory of the Salassi.  The
name of the mountain is given by Livy doubtless not on the authority
of the legend, but on his own conjecture.

Whether the representation that the Italian Boii came through the more
easterly pass of the Poenine Alps rested on the ground of a genuine
legendary reminiscence, or only on the ground of an assumed connection
with the Boii dwelling to the north of the Danube, is a question that
must remain undecided.

9.  This is according to the current computation 390 B. C.; but, in
fact, the capture of Rome occurred in Ol. 98, 1 = 388 B. C., and has
been thrown out of its proper place merely by the confusion of the
Roman calendar.

10.  I. XIV. Development of Alphabets in Italy




CHAPTER V

Subjugation of the Latins and Campanians by Rome


The Hegemony of Rome over Latium Shaken and Re-established

The great achievement of the regal period was the establishment of the
sovereignty of Rome over Latium under the form of hegemony.  It is in
the nature of the case evident that the change in the constitution of
Rome could not but powerfully affect both the relations of the Roman
state towards Latium and the internal organization of the Latin
communities themselves; and that it did so, is obvious from tradition.
The fluctuations which the revolution in Rome occasioned in the
Romano-Latin confederacy are attested by the legend, unusually vivid
and various in its hues, of the victory at the lake Regillus, which
the dictator or consul Aulus Postumius (255? 258?) is said to have
gained over the Latins with the help of the Dioscuri, and still more
definitely by the renewal of the perpetual league between Rome and
Latium by Spurius Cassius in his second consulate (261).  These
narratives, however, give us no information as to the main matter,
the legal relation between the new Roman republic and the Latin
confederacy; and what from other sources we learn regarding that
relation comes to us without date, and can only be inserted here
with an approximation to probability.

Original Equality of Rights between Rome and Latium

The nature of a hegemony implies that it becomes gradually converted
into sovereignty by the mere inward force of circumstances; and the
Roman hegemony over Latium formed no exception to the rule.  It was
based upon the essential equality of rights between the Roman state
on the one side and the Latin confederacy on the other;(1) but at
least in matters of war and in the treatment of the acquisitions
thereby made this relation between the single state on the one hand
and the league of states on the other virtually involved a hegemony.
According to the original constitution of the league not only was the
right of making wars and treaties with foreign states--in other words,
the full right of political self-determination--reserved in all
probability both to Rome and to the individual towns of the Latin
league; and when a joint war took place, Rome and Latium probably
furnished the like contingent, each, as a rule, an "army" of 8400
men;(2) but the chief command was held by the Roman general, who then
nominated the officers of the staff, and so the leaders-of-division
(-tribuni militum-), according to his own choice.  In case of victory
the moveable part of the spoil, as well as the conquered territory,
was shared between Rome and the confederacy; when the establishment of
fortresses in the conquered territory was resolved on, their garrisons
and population were composed partly of Roman, partly of confederate
colonists; and not only so, but the newly-founded community was
received as a sovereign federal state into the Latin confederacy
and furnished with a seat and vote in the Latin diet.

Encroachments on That Equality of Rights--
As to Wars and Treaties--
As to the Officering of the Army--
As to Acquisitions in War

These stipulations must probably even in the regal period, certainly
in the republican epoch, have undergone alteration more and more to
the disadvantage of the confederacy and to the further development of
the hegemony of Rome.  The earliest that fell into abeyance was beyond
doubt the right of the confederacy to make wars and treaties with
foreigners;(3) the decision of war and treaty passed once for all to
Rome.  The staff officers for the Latin troops must doubtless in
earlier times have been likewise Latins; afterwards for that
purpose Roman citizens were taken, if not exclusively, at any rate
predominantly.(4)  On the other hand, afterwards as formerly, no
stronger contingent could be demanded from the Latin confederacy
as a whole than was furnished by the Roman community; and the Roman
commander-in-chief was likewise bound not to break up the Latin
contingents, but to keep the contingent sent by each community as a
separate division of the army under the leader whom that community had
appointed.(5)  The right of the Latin confederacy to an equal share in
the moveable spoil and in the conquered land continued to subsist in
form; in reality, however, the substantial fruits of war beyond doubt
went, even at an early period, to the leading state.  Even in the
founding of the federal fortresses or the so-called Latin colonies
as a rule presumably most, and not unfrequently all, of the colonists
were Romans; and although by the transference they were converted from
Roman burgesses into members of an allied community, the newly planted
township in all probability frequently retained a preponderant--and
for the confederacy dangerous--attachment to the real mother-city.

Private Rights

The rights, on the contrary, which were secured by the federal
treaties to the individual burgess of one of the allied communities
in every city belonging to the league, underwent no restriction.
These included, in particular, full equality of rights as to the
acquisition of landed property and moveable estate, as to traffic
and exchange, marriage and testament, and an unlimited liberty of
migration; so that not only was a man who had burgess-rights in a
town of the league legally entitled to settle in any other, but
whereever he settled, he as a right-sharer (-municeps-) participated
in all private and political rights and duties with the exception of
eligibility to office, and was even--although in a limited fashion
--entitled to vote at least in the -comitia tributa-.(6)

Of some such nature, in all probability, was the relation between
the Roman community and the Latin confederacy in the first period
of the republic.  We cannot, however ascertain what elements are
to be referred to earlier stipulations, and what to the revision
of the alliance in 261.

With somewhat greater certainty the remodelling of the arrangements of
the several communities belonging to the Latin confederacy, after the
pattern of the consular constitution in Rome, may be characterized as
an innovation and introduced in this connection.  For, although the
different communities may very well have arrived at the abolition
of royalty in itself independently of each other,(7) the identity
in the appellation of the new annual kings in the Roman and other
commonwealths of Latium, and the comprehensive application of the
peculiar principle of collegiateness,(8) evidently point to some
external connection.  At some time or other after the expulsion of
the Tarquins from Rome the arrangements of the Latin communities must
have been throughout revised in accordance with the scheme of the
consular constitution.  This adjustment of the Latin constitutions in
conformity with that of the leading city may possibly belong only to a
later period; but internal probability rather favours the supposition
that the Roman nobility, after having effected the abolition of
royalty for life at home, suggested a similar change of constitution
to the communities of the Latin confederacy, and at length introduced
aristocratic government everywhere in Latium-- notwithstanding the
serious resistance, imperilling the stability of the Romano-Latin
league itself, which seems to have been offered on the one hand by
the expelled Tarquins, and on the other by the royal clans and by
partisans well affected to monarchy in the other communities of
Latium.  The mighty development of the power of Etruria that occurred
at this very time, the constant assaults of the Veientes, and the
expedition of Porsena, may have materially contributed to secure the
adherence of the Latin nation to the once-established form of union,
or, in other words, to the continued recognition of the supremacy
of Rome, and disposed them for its sake to acquiesce in a change
of constitution for which, beyond doubt, the way had been in many
respects prepared even in the bosom of the Latin communities, nay
perhaps to submit even to an enlargement of the rights of hegemony.

Extension of Rome and Latium to the East and South

The permanently united nation was able not only to maintain, but
also to extend on all sides its power.  We have already(9) mentioned
that the Etruscans remained only for a short time in possession of
supremacy over Latium, and that the relations there soon returned to
the position in which they stood during the regal period; but it was
not till more than a century after the expulsion of the kings from
Rome that any real extension of the Roman boundaries took place
in this direction.

With the Sabines who occupied the middle mountain range from the
borders of the Umbrians down to the region between the Tiber and
the Anio, and who, at the epoch when the history of Rome begins,
penetrated fighting and conquering as far as Latium itself, the
Romans notwithstanding their immediate neighbourhood subsequently came
comparatively little into contact.  The feeble sympathy of the Sabines
with the desperate resistance offered by the neighbouring peoples in
the east and south, is evident even from the accounts of the annals;
and--what is of more importance--we find here no fortresses to keep
the land in subjection, such as were so numerously established
especially in the Volscian plain.  Perhaps this lack of opposition
was connected with the fact that the Sabine hordes probably about
this very time poured themselves over Lower Italy.  Allured by the
pleasantness of the settlements on the Tifernus and Volturnus, they
appear to have interfered but little in the conflicts of which the
region to the south of the Tiber was the arena.

At the Expense of the Aequi and Volsci--
League with the Hernici

Far more vehement and lasting was the resistance of the Aequi, who,
having their settlements to the eastward of Rome as far as the valleys
of the Turano and Salto and on the northern verge of the Fucine lake,
bordered with the Sabines and Marsi,(10) and of the Volsci, who to the
south of the Rutuli settled around Ardea, and of the Latins extending
southward as far as Cora, possessed the coast almost as far as the
river Liris along with the adjacent islands and in the interior the
whole region drained by the Liris.  We do not intend to narrate the
feuds annually renewed with these two peoples--feuds which are related
in the Roman chronicles in such a way that the most insignificant
foray is scarcely distinguishable from a momentous war, and historical
connection is totally disregarded; it is sufficient to indicate the
permanent results.  We plainly perceive that it was the especial aim
of the Romans and Latins to separate the Aequi from the Volsci, and
to become masters of the communications between them; in the region
between the southern slope of the Alban range, the Volscian mountains
and the Pomptine marshes, moreover, the Latins and the Volscians
appear to have come first into contact and to have even had their
settlements intermingled.(11)  In this region the Latins took
the first steps beyond the bounds of their own land, and federal
fortresses on foreign soil--Latin colonies, as they were called--were
first established, namely: in the plain Velitrae (as is alleged, about
260) beneath the Alban range itself, and Suessa in the Pomptine low
lands, in the mountains Norba (as is alleged, in 262) and Signia
(alleged to have been strengthened in 259), both of which lie at
the points of connection between the Aequian and Volscian territories.
The object was attained still more fully by the accession of the
Hernici to the league of the Romans and Latins (268), an accession
which isolated the Volscians completely, and provided the league with
a bulwark against the Sabellian tribes dwelling on the south and east;
it is easy therefore to perceive why this little people obtained the
concession of full equality with the two others in counsel and in
distribution of the spoil.  The feebler Aequi were thenceforth but
little formidable; it was sufficient to undertake from time to time
a plundering expedition against them.  The Rutuli also, who bordered
with Latium on the south in the plain along the coast, early
succumbed; their town Ardea was converted into a Latin colony as
early as 312.(12)  The Volscians opposed a more serious resistance.
The first notable success, after those mentioned above, achieved over
them by the Romans was, remarkably enough, the foundation of Circeii
in 361, which, as long as Antium and Tarracina continued free, can
only have held communication with Latium by sea.  Attempts were often
made to occupy Antium, and one was temporarily successful in 287; but
in 295 the town recovered its freedom, and it was not till after the
Gallic conflagration that, in consequence of a violent war of thirteen
years (365-377), the Romans gained a decided superiority in the
Antiate and Pomptine territory.  Satricum, not far from Antium, was
occupied with a Latin colony in 369, and not long afterwards probably
Antium itself as well as Tarracina.(13)  The Pomptine territory was
secured by the founding of the fortress Setia (372, strengthened in
375), and was distributed into farm-allotments and burgess-districts
in the year 371 and following years.  After this date the Volscians
still perhaps rose in revolt, but they waged no further wars
against Rome.

Crises within the Romano-Latin League

But the more decided the successes that the league of Romans, Latins,
and Hernici achieved against the Etruscans, Aequi, Volsci, and Rutuli,
the more that league became liable to disunion.  The reason lay
partly in the increase of the hegemonic power of Rome, of which
we have already spoken as necessarily springing out of the existing
circumstances, but which nevertheless was felt as a heavy burden in
Latium; partly in particular acts of odious injustice perpetrated by
the leading community.  Of this nature was especially the infamous
sentence of arbitration between the Aricini and the Rutuli in Ardea
in 308, in which the Romans, called in to be arbiters regarding a
border territory in dispute between the two communities, took it to
themselves; and when this decision occasioned in Ardea internal
dissensions in which the people wished to join the Volsci, while
the nobility adhered to Rome, these dissensions were still more
disgracefully employed as a pretext for the--already mentioned
--sending of Roman colonists into the wealthy city, amongst whom the
lands of the adherents of the party opposed to Rome were distributed
(312).  The main cause however of the internal breaking up of the
league was the very subjugation of the common foe; forbearance ceased
on one side, devotedness ceased on the other, from the time when they
thought that they had no longer need of each other.  The open breach
between the Latins and Hernici on the one hand and the Romans on the
other was more immediately occasioned partly by the capture of Rome
by the Celts and the momentary weakness which it produced, partly by
the definitive occupation and distribution of the Pomptine territory.
The former allies soon stood opposed in the field.  Already Latin
volunteers in great numbers had taken part in the last despairing
struggle of the Antiates: now the most famous of the Latin cities,
Lanuvium (371), Praeneste (372-374, 400), Tusculum (373), Tibur (394,
400), and even several of the fortresses established in the Volscian
land by the Romano-Latin league, such as Velitrae and Circeii, had to
be subdued by force of arms, and the Tiburtines were not afraid even
to make common cause against Rome with the once more advancing hordes
of the Gauls.  No concerted revolt however took place, and Rome
mastered the individual towns without much trouble.

Tusculum was even compelled (in 373) to give up its political
independence, and to enter into the burgess-union of Rome as a
subject community (-civitas sine suffragio-) so that the town
retained its walls and an--although limited--self-administration,
including magistrates and a burgess-assembly of its own, whereas
its burgesses as Romans lacked the right of electing or being elected
--the first instance of a whole burgess-body being incorporated as
a dependent community with the Roman commonwealth.

Renewal of the Treaties of Alliance

The struggle with the Hernici was more severe (392-396); the first
consular commander-in-chief belonging to the plebs, Lucius Genucius,
fell in it; but here too the Romans were victorious.  The crisis
terminated with the renewal of the treaties between Rome and the Latin
and Hernican confederacies in 396.  The precise contents of these
treaties are not known, but it is evident that both confederacies
submitted once more, and probably on harder terms, to the Roman
hegemony.  The institution which took place in the same year of two
new tribes in the Pomptine territory shows clearly the mighty
advances made by the Roman power.

Closing of the Latin Confederation

In manifest connection with this crisis in the relations between Rome
and Latium stands the closing of the Latin confederation,(14) which
took place about the year 370, although we cannot precisely determine
whether it was the effect or, as is more probable, the cause of the
revolt of Latium against Rome which we have just described.  As the
law had hitherto stood, every sovereign city founded by Rome and
Latium took its place among the communes entitled to participate
in the federal festival and federal diet, whereas every community
incorporated with another city and thereby politically annihilated
was erased from the ranks of the members of the league.  At the same
time, however, according to Latin use and wont the number once fixed
of thirty confederate communities was so adhered to, that of the
participating cities never more and never less than thirty were
entitled to vote, and a number of the communities that were of later
admission, or were disqualified for their slight importance or for the
crimes they had committed, were without the right of voting.  In this
way the confederacy was constituted about 370 as follows.  Of old
Latin townships there were--besides some which have now fallen into
oblivion, or whose sites are unknown--still autonomous and entitled to
vote, Nomentum, between the Tiber and the Anio; Tibur, Gabii, Scaptia,
Labici,(15) Pedum, and Praeneste, between the Anio and the Alban
range; Corbio, Tusculum, Bovillae, Aricia, Corioli, and Lanuvium on
the Alban range; Cora in the Volscian mountains, and lastly, Laurentum
in the plain along the coast.  To these fell to be added the colonies
instituted by Rome and the Latin league; Ardea in the former territory
of the Rutuli, and Satricum, Velitrae, Norba, Signia, Setia and
Circeii in that of the Volsci.  Besides, seventeen other townships,
whose names are not known with certainty, had the privilege of
participating in the Latin festival without the right of voting.
On this footing--of forty-seven townships entitled to participate and
thirty entitled to vote--the Latin confederacy continued henceforward
unalterably fixed.  The Latin communities founded subsequently, such
as Sutrium, Nepete,(16) Antium, Tarracina,(17) and Gales, were not
admitted into the confederacy, nor were the Latin communities
subsequently divested of their autonomy, such as Tusculum and
Lanuvium, erased from the list.

Fixing of the Limits of Latium

With this closing of the confederacy was connected the geographical
settlement of the limits of Latium.  So long as the Latin confederacy
continued open, the bounds of Latium had advanced with the
establishment of new federal cities: but as the later Latin
colonies had no share in the Alban festival, they were not regarded
geographically as part of Latium.  For this reason doubtless Ardea
and Circeii were reckoned as belonging to Latium, but not Sutrium
or Tarracina.

Isolation of the Later Latin Cities as Respected Private Rights

But not only were the places on which Latin privileges were bestowed
after 370 kept aloof from the federal association; they were isolated
also from one another as respected private rights.  While each of
them was allowed to have reciprocity of commercial dealings and
probably also of marriage (-commercium et conubium-) with Rome,
no such reciprocity was permitted with the other Latin communities.
The burgess of Satrium, for example, might possess in full property
a piece of ground in Rome, but not in Praeneste; and might have
legitimate children with a Roman, but not with a Tiburtine, wife.(18)

Prevention of Special Leagues

If hitherto considerable freedom of movement had been allowed within
the confederacy, and for example the six old Latin communities,
Aricia, Tusculum, Tibur, Lanuvium, Cora, and Laurentum, and the two
new Latin, Ardea and Suessa Pometia, had been permitted to found in
common a shrine for the Aricine Diana; it is doubtless not the mere
result of accident that we find no further instance in later times
of similar separate confederations fraught with danger to the hegemony
of Rome.

Revision of the Municipal Constitutions.  Police Judges

We may likewise assign to this epoch the further remodelling which
the Latin municipal constitutions underwent, and their complete
assimilation to the constitution of Rome.  If in after times two
aediles, intrusted with the police-supervision of markets and highways
and the administration of justice in connection therewith, make their
appearance side by side with the two praetors as necessary elements
of the Latin magistracy, the institution of these urban police
functionaries, which evidently took place at the same time and at
the instigation of the leading power in all the federal communities,
certainly cannot have preceded the establishment of the curule
aedileship in Rome, which occurred in 387; probably it took place
about that very time.  Beyond doubt this arrangement was only one
of a series of measures curtailing the liberties and modifying
the organization of the federal communities in the interest of
aristocratic policy.

Domination of the Romans; Exasperation of the Latins--
Collision between the Romans and the Samnites

After the fall of Veii and the conquest of the Pomptine territory,
Rome evidently felt herself powerful enough to tighten the reins of
her hegemony and to reduce the whole of the Latin cities to a position
so dependent that they became in fact completely subject.  At this
period (406) the Carthaginians, in a commercial treaty concluded with
Rome, bound themselves to inflict no injury on the Latins who were
subject to Rome, viz.  the maritime towns of Ardea, Antium, Circeii,
and Tarracina; if, however, any one of the Latin towns should fall
away from the Roman alliance, the Phoenicians were to be allowed to
attack it, but in the event of conquering it they were bound not to
raze it, but to hand it over to the Romans.  This plainly shows by
what chains the Roman community bound to itself the towns protected
by it and how much a town, which dared to withdraw from the native
protectorate, sacrificed or risked by such a course.

It is true that even now the Latin confederacy at least--if not also
the Hernican--retained its formal title to a third of the gains of
war, and doubtless some other remnants of the former equality of
rights; but what was palpably lost was important enough to explain the
exasperation which at this period prevailed among the Latins against
Rome.  Not only did numerous Latin volunteers fight under foreign
standards against the community at their head, wherever they found
armies in the field against Rome; but in 405 even the Latin federal
assembly resolved to refuse to the Romans its contingent.  To all
appearance a renewed rising of the whole Latin confederacy might be
anticipated at no distant date; and at that very moment a collision
was imminent with another Italian nation, which was able to encounter
on equal terms the united strength of the Latin stock.  After the
overthrow of the northern Volscians no considerable people in
the first instance opposed the Romans in the south; their legions
unchecked approached the Liris.  As early as 397 they had contended;
successfully with the Privernates; and in 409 occupied Sora on the
upper Liris.  Thus the Roman armies had reached the Samnite frontier;
and the friendly alliance, which the two bravest and most powerful
of the Italian nations concluded with each other in 400, was the
sure token of an approaching struggle for the supremacy of Italy--a
struggle which threatened to become interwoven with the crisis within
the Latin nation.

Conquests of the Samnites in the South of Italy

The Samnite nation, which, at the time of the expulsion of the
Tarquins from Rome, had doubtless already been for a considerable
period in possession of the hill-country which rises between the
Apulian and Campanian plains and commands them both, had hitherto
found its further advance impeded on the one side by the Daunians
--the power and prosperity of Arpi fall within this period--on the
other by the Greeks and Etruscans.  But the fall of the Etruscan power
towards the end of the third, and the decline of the Greek colonies in
the course of the fourth century, made room for them towards the west
and south; and now one Samnite host after another marched down to,
and even moved across, the south Italian seas.  They first made their
appearance in the plain adjoining the bay, with which the name of
the Campanians has been associated from the beginning of the fourth
century; the Etruscans there were suppressed, and the Greeks were
confined within narrower bounds; Capua was wrested from the former
(330), Cumae from the latter (334).  About the same time, perhaps even
earlier, the Lucanians appeared in Magna Graecia: at the beginning
of the fourth century they were involved in conflict with the people
of Terina and Thurii; and a considerable time before 364 they had
established themselves in the Greek Laus.  About this period their
levy amounted to 30,000 infantry and 4000 cavalry.  Towards the end of
the fourth century mention first occurs of the separate confederacy of
the Bruttii,(19) who had detached themselves from the Lucanians--not,
like the other Sabellian stocks, as a colony, but through a quarrel
--and had become mixed up with many foreign elements.  The Greeks of
Lower Italy tried to resist the pressure of the barbarians; the league
of the Achaean cities was reconstructed in 361; and it was determined
that, if any of the allied towns should be assailed by the Lucanians,
all should furnish contingents, and that the leaders of contingents
which failed to appear should suffer the punishment of death.  But
even the union of Magna Graecia no longer availed; for the ruler of
Syracuse, Dionysius the Elder, made common cause with the Italians
against his countrymen.  While Dionysius wrested from the fleets of
Magna Graecia the mastery of the Italian seas, one Greek city after
another was occupied or annihilated by the Italians.  In an incredibly
short time the circle of flourishing cities was destroyed or laid
desolate.  Only a few Greek settlements, such as Neapolis, succeeded
with difficulty, and more by means of treaties than by force of
arms, in preserving at least their existence and their nationality.
Tarentum alone remained thoroughly independent and powerful,
maintaining its ground in consequence of its more remote position
and its preparation for war--the result of its constant conflicts
with the Messapians.  Even that city, however, had constantly to
fight for its existence with the Lucanians, and was compelled to
seek for alliances and mercenaries in the mother-country of Greece.

About the period when Veii and the Pomptine plain came into the hands
of Rome, the Samnite hordes were already in possession of all Lower
Italy, with the exception of a few unconnected Greek colonies, and
of the Apulo-Messapian coast.  The Greek Periplus, composed about 418,
sets down the Samnites proper with their "five tongues" as reaching
from the one sea to the other; and specifies the Campanians as
adjoining them on the Tyrrhene sea to the north, and the Lucanians
to the south, amongst whom in this instance, as often, the Bruttii
are included, and who already had the whole coast apportioned among
them from Paestum on the Tyrrhene, to Thurii on the Ionic sea.  In
fact to one who compares the achievements of the two great nations
of Italy, the Latins and the Samnites, before they came into contact,
the career of conquest on the part of the latter appears far wider
and more splendid than that of the former.  But the character of their
conquests was essentially different.  From the fixed urban centre
which Latium possessed in Rome the dominion of the Latin stock spread
slowly on all sides, and lay within limits comparatively narrow; but
it planted its foot firmly at every step, partly by founding fortified
towns of the Roman type with the rights of dependent allies, partly
by Romanizing the territory which it conquered.  It was otherwise
with Samnium.  There was in its case no single leading community and
therefore no policy of conquest.  While the conquest of the Veientine
and Pomptine territories was for Rome a real enlargement of power,
Samnium was weakened rather than strengthened by the rise of the
Campanian cities and of the Lucanian and Bruttian confederacies; for
every swarm, which had sought and found new settlements, thenceforward
pursued a path of its own.

Relations between the Samnites and the Greeks

The Samnite tribes filled a disproportionately large space, while
yet they showed no disposition to make it thoroughly their own.
The larger Greek cities, Tarentum, Thurii, Croton, Metapontum,
Heraclea, Rhegium, and Neapolis, although weakened and often
dependent, continued to exist; and the Hellenes were tolerated
even in the open country and in the smaller towns, so that Cumae
for instance, Posidonia, Laus, and Hipponium, still remained--as
the Periplus already mentioned and coins show--Greek cities even
under Samnite rule.  Mixed populations thus arose; the bi-lingual
Bruttii, in particular, included Hellenic as well as Samnite elements
and even perhaps remains of the ancient autochthones; in Lucania
and Campania also similar mixtures must to a lesser extent have
taken place.

Campanian Hellenism

The Samnite nation, moreover, could not resist the dangerous charm
of Hellenic culture; least of all in Campania, where Neapolis early
entered into friendly intercourse with the immigrants, and where
the sky itself humanized the barbarians.  Nola, Nuceria, and Teanum,
although having a purely Samnite population, adopted Greek manners
and a Greek civic constitution; in fact the indigenous cantonal form
of constitution could not possibly subsist under these altered
circumstances.  The Samnite cities of Campania began to coin money,
in part with Greek inscriptions; Capua became by its commerce and
agriculture the second city in Italy in point of size--the first in
point of wealth and luxury.  The deep demoralization, in which,
according to the accounts of the ancients, that city surpassed all
others in Italy, is especially reflected in the mercenary recruiting
and in the gladiatorial sports, both of which pre-eminently flourished
in Capua.  Nowhere did recruiting officers find so numerous a
concourse as in this metropolis of demoralized civilization; while
Capua knew not how to save itself from the attacks of the aggressive
Samnites, the warlike Campanian youth flocked forth in crowds under
self-elected -condottteri-, especially to Sicily.  How deeply these
soldiers of fortune influenced by their enterprises the destinies of
Italy, we shall have afterwards to show; they form as characteristic
a feature of Campanian life as the gladiatorial sports which likewise,
if they did not originate, were at any rate carried to perfection in
Capua.  There sets of gladiators made their appearance even during
banquets; and their number was proportioned to the rank of the guests
invited.  This degeneracy of the most important Samnite city--a
degeneracy which beyond doubt was closely connected with the Etruscan
habits that lingered there--must have been fatal for the nation at
large; although the Campanian nobility knew how to combine chivalrous
valour and high mental culture with the deepest moral corruption, it
could never become to its nation what the Roman nobility was to the
Latin.  Hellenic influence had a similar, though less powerful, effect
on the Lucanians and Bruttians as on the Campanians.  The objects
discovered in the tombs throughout all these regions show how Greek
art was cherished there in barbaric luxuriance; the rich ornaments
of gold and amber and the magnificent painted pottery, which are now
disinterred from the abodes of the dead, enable us to conjecture how
extensive had been their departure from the ancient manners of their
fathers.  Other indications are preserved in their writing.  The old
national writing which they had brought with them from the north was
abandoned by the Lucanians and Bruttians, and exchanged for Greek;
while in Campania the national alphabet, and perhaps also the
language, developed itself under the influence of the Greek model
into greater clearness and delicacy.  We meet even with isolated
traces of the influence of Greek philosophy.

The Samnite Confederacy

The Samnite land, properly so called, alone remained unaffected by
these innovations, which, beautiful and natural as they may to some
extent have been, powerfully contributed to relax still more the bond
of national unity which even from the first was loose.  Through the
influence of Hellenic habits a deep schism took place in the Samnite
stock.  The civilized "Philhellenes" of Campania were accustomed to
tremble like the Hellenes themselves before the ruder tribes of
the mountains, who were continually penetrating into Campania and
disturbing the degenerate earlier settlers.  Rome was a compact state,
having the strength of all Latium at its disposal; its subjects might
murmur, but they obeyed.  The Samnite stock was dispersed and divided;
and, while the confederacy in Samnium proper had preserved unimpaired
the manners and valour of their ancestors, they were on that very
account completely at variance with the other Samnite tribes
and towns.

Submission of Capua to Rome--
Rome and Samnium Come to Terms--
Revolt of the Latins and Campanians against Rome--
Victory of the Romans--
Dissolution of the Latin League--
Colonization of the Land of the Volsci

In fact, it was this variance between the Samnites of the plain and
the Samnites of the mountains that led the Romans over the Liris.
The Sidicini in Teanum, and the Campanians in Capua, sought aid
from the Romans (411) against their own countrymen, who in swarms ever
renewed ravaged their territory and threatened to establish themselves
there.  When the desired alliance was refused, the Campanian envoys
made offer of the submission of their country to the supremacy of
Rome: and the Romans were unable to resist the bait.  Roman envoys
were sent to the Samnites to inform them of the new acquisition,
and to summon them to respect the territory of the friendly power.
The further course of events can no longer be ascertained in
detail;(20) we discover only that--whether after a campaign,
or without the intervention of a war--Rome and Samnium came to
an agreement, by which Capua was left at the disposal of the Romans,
Teanum in the hands of the Samnites, and the upper Liris in those
of the Volscians.

The consent of the Samnites to treat is explained by the energetic
exertions made about this very period by the Tarentines to get quit
of their Sabellian neighbours.  But the Romans also had good reason
for coming to terms as quickly as possible with the Samnites; for the
impending transition of the region bordering on the south of Latium
into the possession of the Romans converted the ferment that had long
existed among the Latins into open insurrection.  All the original
Latin towns, even the Tusculans who had been received into the
burgess-union of Rome, took up arms against Rome, with the single
exception of the Laurentes, whereas of the colonies founded beyond
the bounds of Latium only the old Volscian towns Velitrae, Antium,
and Tarracina adhered to the revolt.  We can readily understand how
the Capuans, notwithstanding their very recent and voluntarily offered
submission to the Romans, should readily embrace the first opportunity
of again ridding themselves of the Roman rule and, in spite of the
opposition of the optimate party that adhered to the treaty with Rome,
should make common cause with the Latin confederacy, whereas the still
independent Volscian towns, such as Fundi and Formiae, and the Hernici
abstained like the Campanian aristocracy from taking part in this
revolt.  The position of the Romans was critical; the legions which
had crossed the Liris and occupied Campania were cut off by the revolt
of the Latins and Volsci from their home, and a victory alone could
save them.  The decisive battle was fought near Trifanum (between
Minturnae, Suessa, and Sinuessa) in 414; the consul Titus Manlius
Imperiosus Torquatus achieved a complete victory over the united
Latins and Campanians.  In the two following years the individual
towns, so far as they still offered resistance, were reduced by
capitulation or assault, and the whole country was brought into
subjection.  The effect of the victory was the dissolution of the
Latin league.  It was transformed from an independent political
federation into a mere association for the purpose of a religious
festival; the ancient stipulated rights of the confederacy as to
a maximum for the levy of troops and a share of the gains of war
perished as such along with it, and assumed, where they were
recognized in future, the character of acts of grace.  Instead of
the one treaty between Rome on the one hand and the Latin confederacy
on the other, there came at best perpetual alliances between Rome and
the several confederate towns.  To this footing of treaty there were
admitted of the old-Latin places, besides Laurentum, also Tibur and
Praeneste, which however were compelled to cede portions of their
territory to Rome.  Like terms were obtained by the communities of
Latin rights founded outside of Latium, so far as they had not taken
part in the war.  The principle of isolating the communities from each
other, which had already been established in regard to the places
founded after 370,(21) was thus extended to the whole Latin nation.
In other respects the several places retained their former privileges
and their autonomy.  The other old-Latin communities as well as the
colonies that had revolted lost--all of them--independence and
entered in one form or another into the Roman burgess-union.  The two
important coast towns Antium (416) and Tarracina (425) were, after
the model of Ostia, occupied with Roman full-burgesses and restricted
to a communal independence confined within narrow limits, while the
previous burgesses were deprived in great part of their landed
property in favour of the Roman colonists and, so far as they retained
it, likewise adopted into the full burgess-union.  Lanuvium, Aricia,
Momentum, Pedum became Roman burgess-communities after the model of
Tusculum.(22)  The walls of Velitrae were demolished, its senate was
ejected -en masse- and deported to the interior of Roman Etruria,
and the town was probably constituted a dependent community with
Caerite rights.(23)  Of the land acquired a portion--the estates,
for instance, of the senators of Velitrae--was distributed to Roman
burgesses: with these special assignations was connected the erection
of two new tribes in 422.  The deep sense which prevailed in Rome
of the enormous importance of the result achieved is attested by
the honorary column, which was erected in the Roman Forum to the
victorious dictator of 416, Gaius Maenius, and by the decoration
of the orators' platform in the same place with the beaks taken
from the galleys of Antium that were found unserviceable.

Complete Submission of the Volscian and Campanian Provinces

In like manner the dominion of Rome was established and confirmed in
the south Volscian and Campanian territories.  Fundi, Formiae,
Capua, Cumae, and a number of smaller towns became dependent Roman
communities with self-administration.  To secure the pre-eminently
important city of Capua, the breach between the nobility and commons
was artfully widened, the communal constitution was revised in the
Roman interest, and the administration of the town was controlled by
Roman officials annually sent to Campania.  The same treatment was
measured out some years after to the Volscian Privernum, whose
citizens, supported by Vitruvius Vaccus a bold partisan belonging to
Fundi, had the honour of fighting the last battle for the freedom of
this region; the struggle ended with the storming of the town (425)
and the execution of Vaccus in a Roman prison.  In order to rear a
population devoted to Rome in these regions, they distributed, out
of the lands won in war particularly in the Privernate and Falernian
territories, so numerous allotments to Roman burgesses, that a few
years later (436) they were able to institute there also two new
tribes.  The establishment of two fortresses as colonies with Latin
rights finally secured the newly won land.  These were Cales (420)
in the middle of the Campanian plain, whence the movements of Teanum
and Capua could be observed, and Fregellae (426), which commanded
the passage of the Liris.  Both colonies were unusually strong, and
rapidly became flourishing, notwithstanding the obstacles which the
Sidicines interposed to the founding of Cales and the Samnites to that
of Fregellae.  A Roman garrison was also despatched to Sora, a step
of which the Samnites, to whom this district had been left by the
treaty, complained with reason, but in vain.  Rome pursued her purpose
with undeviating steadfastness, and displayed her energetic and
far-reaching policy--more even than on the battlefield--in the securing
of the territory which she gained by enveloping it, politically and
militarily, in a net whose meshes could not be broken.

Inaction of the Samnites

As a matter of course, the Samnites could not behold the threatening
progress of the Romans with satisfaction, and they probably put
obstacles in its way; nevertheless they neglected to intercept the new
career of conquest, while there was still perhaps time to do so, with
that energy which the circumstances required.  They appear indeed in
accordance with their treaty with Rome to have occupied and strongly
garrisoned Teanum; for while in earlier times that city sought help
against Samnium from Capua and Rome, in the later struggles it appears
as the bulwark of the Samnite power on the west.  They spread,
conquering and destroying, on the upper Liris, but they neglected
to establish themselves permanently in that quarter.  They destroyed
the Volscian town Fregellae--by which they simply facilitated the
institution of the Roman colony there which we have just mentioned
--and they so terrified two other Volscian towns, Fabrateria (Ceccano)
and Luca (site unknown), that these, following the example of Capua,
surrendered themselves to the Romans (424).  The Samnite confederacy
allowed the Roman conquest of Campania to be completed before they in
earnest opposed it; and the reason for their doing so is to be sought
partly in the contemporary hostilities between the Samnite nation and
the Italian Hellenes, but principally in the remiss and distracted
policy which the confederacy pursued.




Notes for Book II Chapter V


1.  I. VII. Relation of Rome to Latium

2.  The original equality of the two armies is evident from Liv. i. 52;
viii. 8, 14, and Dionys. viii, 15; but most clearly from Polyb. vi. 26.

3.  Dionysius (viii. 15) expressly states, that in the later federal
treaties between Rome and Latium the Latin communities were interdicted
from calling out their contingents of their own motion and sending them
into the field alone.

4.  These Latin staff-officers were the twelve -praefecti sociorum-,
who subsequently, when the old phalanx had been resolved into the
later legions and -alae-, had the charge of the two -alae- of the
federal contingents, six to each -ala-, just as the twelve war-tribunes
of the Roman army had charge of the two legions, six to each legion.
Polybius (vi. 26, 5) states that the consul nominated the former,
as he originally nominated the latter.  Now, as according to the
ancient maxim of law, that every person under obligation of service
might become an officer (p. 106), it was legally allowable for the
general to appoint a Latin as leader of a Roman, as well as conversely
a Roman as leader of a Latin, legion, this led to the practical result
that the -tribuni militum- were wholly, and the -praefecti sociorum-
at least ordinarily, Romans.

5.  These were the -decuriones turmarum- and -praefecti cohortium-
(Polyb. vi. 21, 5; Liv. xxv. 14; Sallust. Jug. 69, et al.)  Of
course, as the Roman consuls were in law and ordinarily also in fact
commanders-in-chief, the presidents of the community in the dependent
towns also were perhaps throughout, or at least very frequently,
placed at the head of the community-contingents (Liv. xxiii. 19;
Orelli, Inscr. 7022).  Indeed, the usual name given to the Latin
magistrates (-praetores-) indicates that they were officers.

6.  Such a --metoikos-- was not like an actual burgess assigned to a
specific voting district once for all, but before each particular vote
the district in which the --metoeci-- were upon that occasion to vote
was fixed by lot.  In reality this probably amounted to the concession
to the Latins of one vote in the Roman -comitia tributa-.  As a place
in some tribe was a preliminary condition of the ordinary centuriate
suffrage, if the --metoeci-- shared in the voting in the assembly of
the centuries-which we do not know-a similar allotment must have been
fixed for the latter.  In the curies they must have taken part like
the plebeians.

7.  II. I. Abolition of the Life-Presidency of the Community

8.  Ordinarily, as is well known, the Latin communities were
presided over by two praetors.  Besides these there occur in several
communities single magistrates, who in that case bear the title of
dictator; as in Alba (Orelli-Henzen, Inscr. 2293), Tusculum (p. 445,
note 2), Lanuvium (Cicero, pro Mil. 10, 27; 17, 45; Asconius, in Mil.
p. 32, Orell.; Orelli, n. 2786, 5157, 6086); Compitum (Orelli, 3324);
Nomentum (Orelli, 208, 6138, 7032; comp. Henzen, Bullett. 1858, p.
169); and Aricia (Orelli, n. 1455).  To these falls to be added the
similar dictator in the -civitas sine suffragio- of Caere (Orelli, n.
3787, 5772; also Garrucci Diss. arch., i. p. 31, although erroneously
placed after Sutrium); and further the officials of the like name at
Fidenae (Orelli, 112).  All these magistracies or priesthoods that
originated in magistracies (the dictator of Caere is to be explained
in accordance with Liv. ix. 43: -Anagninis--magistratibus praeter quam
sacrorum curatione interdictum-), were annual (Orelli, 208).
The statement of Macer likewise and of the annalists who borrowed
from him, that Alba was at the time of its fall no longer under kings,
but under annual directors (Dionys. v. 74; Plutarch, Romul. 27; Liv.
i. 23), is presumably a mere inference from the institution, with
which he was acquainted, of the sacerdotal Alban dictatorship which
was beyond doubt annual like that of Nomentum; a view in which,
moreover, the democratic partisanship of its author may have come
into play.  It may be a question whether the inference is valid, and
whether, even if Alba at the time of its dissolution was under rulers
holding office for life, the abolition of monarchy in Rome might not
subsequently lead to the conversion of the Alban dictatorship into
an annual office.

All these Latin magistracies substantially coincide in reality, as
well as specially in name, with the arrangement established in Rome
by the revolution in a way which is not adequately explained by the
mere similarity of the political circumstances underlying them.

9.  II. IV. Etruscans Driven Back from Latium

10.  The country of the Aequi embraces not merely the valley of
the Anio above Tibur and the territory of the later Latin colonies
Carsioli (on the upper part of the Turano) and Alba (on the Fucine
lake), but also the district of the later municipium of the Aequiculi,
who are nothing but that remnant of the Aequi to which, after the
subjugation by the Romans, and after the assignation of the largest
portion of the territory to Roman or Latin colonists, municipal
independence was left.

11.  To all appearance Velitrae, although situated in the plain, was
originally Volscian, and so a Latin colony; Cora, on the other hand,
on the Volscian mountains, was originally Latin.

12.  Not long afterwards must have taken place the founding of the
-Nemus Dianae- in the forest of Aricia, which, according to Cato's
account (p. 12, Jordan), a Tusculan dictator accomplished for
the urban communities of old Latium, Tusculum, Aricia, Lanuvium,
Laurentum, Cora, and Tibur, and of the two Latin colonies (which
therefore stand last) Suessa Pometia and Ardea (-populus Ardeatis
Rutulus-).  The absence of Praeneste and of the smaller communities
of the old Latium shows, as was implied in the nature of the case,
that not all the communities of the Latin league at that time took
part in the consecration.  That it falls before 372 is proved by the
emergence of Pometia (II. V. Closing Of The Latin Confederation), and
the list quite accords with what can otherwise be ascertained as to
the state of the league shortly after the accession of Ardea.

More credit may be given to the traditional statements regarding the
years of the foundations than to most of the oldest traditions, seeing
that the numbering of the year -ab urbe condita-, common to the
Italian cities, has to all appearance preserved, by direct tradition,
the year in which the colonies were founded.

13.  The two do not appear as Latin colonies in the so-called Cassian
list about 372, but they so appear in the Carthaginian treaty of 406;
the towns had thus become Latin colonies in the interval.

14.  In the list given by Dionysius (v. 61) of the thirty Latin
federal cities--the only list which we possess--there are named the
Ardeates, Aricini, Bovillani, Bubentani (site unknown), Corni (rather
Corani), Carventani (site unknown), Circeienses, Coriolani, Corbintes,
Cabani (perhaps the Cabenses on the Alban Mount, Bull, dell' Inst.
1861, p. 205), Fortinei (unknown), Gabini, Laurentes, Lanuvini,
Lavinates, Labicani, Nomentani, Norbani, Praenestini, Pedani,
Querquetulani (site unknown), Satricani, Scaptini, Setini, Tiburtini,
Tusculani, Tellenii (site unknown), Tolerini (site unknown), and
Veliterni.  The occasional notices of communities entitled to
participate, such as of Ardea (Liv. xxxii. x), Laurentum (Liv. xxxvii.
3), Lanuvium (Liv. xli. 16), Bovillae, Gabii, Labici (Cicero, pro
Plane. 9, 23) agree with this list.  Dionysius gives it on occasion
of the declaration of war by Latium against Rome in 256, and it was
natural therefore to regard--as Niebuhr did--this list as derived
from the well-known renewal of the league in 261, But, as in this list
drawn up according to the Latin alphabet the letter -g appears in a
position which it certainly had not at the time of the Twelve Tables
and scarcely came to occupy before the fifth century (see my
Unteritalische Dial. p. 33), it must be taken from a much more recent
source; and it is by far the simplest hypothesis to recognize it as
a list of those places which were afterwards regarded as the ordinary
members of the Latin confederacy, and which Dionysius in accordance
with his systematizing custom specifies as its original component
elements.  As was to be expected, the list presents not a single
non-Latin community; it simply enumerates places originally Latin
or occupied by Latin colonies--no one will lay stress on Corbio and
Corioli as exceptions.  Now if we compare with this list that of the
Latin colonies, there had been founded down to 372 Suessa Pometia,
Velitrae, Norba, Signia, Ardea, Circeii (361), Satricum (369), Sutrium
(371), Nepete (371), Setia (372).  Of the last three founded at nearly
the same time the two Etruscan ones may very well date somewhat later
than Setia, since in fact the foundation of every town claimed
a certain amount of time, and our list cannot be free from minor
inaccuracies.  If we assume this, then the list contains all the
colonies sent out up to the year 372, including the two soon
afterwards deleted from the list, Satricum destroyed in 377 and
Velitrae divested of Latin rights in 416; there are wanting only
Suessa Pometia, beyond doubt as having been destroyed before 372, and
Signia, probably because in the text of Dionysius, who mentions only
twenty-nine names, --SIGNINON-- has dropped out after --SEITINON--.
In entire harmony with this view there are absent from this list all
the Latin colonies founded after 372 as well as all places, which like
Ostia, Antemnae, Alba, were incorporated with the Roman community
before the year 370, whereas those incorporated subsequently, such
as Tusculum, Lanuvium, Velitrae, are retained in it.

As regards the list given by Pliny of thirty-two townships extinct in
his time which had formerly participated in the Alban festival, after
deduction of seven that also occur in Dionysius (for the Cusuetani
of Pliny appear to be the Carventani of Dionysius), there remain
twenty-five townships, most of them quite unknown, doubtless made up
partly of those seventeen non-voting communities--most of which perhaps
were just the oldest subsequently disqualified members of the Alban
festal league--partly of a number of other decayed or ejected members
of the league, to which latter class above all the ancient presiding
township of Alba, also named by Pliny, belonged.

15.  Livy certainly states (iv. 47) that Labici became a colony in
336.  But--apart from the fact that Diodorus (xiii. 6) says nothing
of it--Labici cannot have been a burgess-colony, for the town did
not lie on the coast and besides it appears subsequently as still in
possession of autonomy; nor can it have been a Latin one, for there is
not, nor can there be from the nature of these foundations, a single
other example of a Latin colony established in the original Latium.
Here as elsewhere it is most probable--especially as two -jugera- are
named as the portion of land allotted--that a public assignation to
the burgesses has been confounded with a colonial assignation ( I.
XIII. System of Joint Cultivation ).

16.  II. IV. South Etruria Roman

17.  II. V. League with the Hernici

18.  This restriction of the ancient full reciprocity of Latin rights
first occurs in the renewal of the treaty in 416 (Liv. viii. 14); but
as the system of isolation, of which it was an essential part, first
began in reference to the Latin colonies settled after 370, and was
only generalized in 416, it is proper to mention this alteration here.

19.  The name itself is very ancient; in fact it is the most
ancient indigenous name for the inhabitants of the present Calabria
(Antiochus, Fr. 5.  Mull.).  The well-known derivation is doubtless
an invention.

20.  Perhaps no section of the Roman annals has been more disfigured
than the narrative of the first Samnite-Latin war, as it stands or
stood in Livy, Dionysius, and Appian.  It runs somewhat to the
following effect.  After both consuls had marched into Campania in
411, first the consul Marcus Valerius Corvus gained a severe and
bloody victory over the Samnites at Mount Gaurus; then his colleague
Aulus Cornelius Cossus gained another, after he had been rescued from
annihilation in a narrow pass by the self-devotion of a division led
by the military tribune Publius Decius.  The third and decisive battle
was fought by both consuls at the entrance of the Caudine Pass near
Suessula; the Samnites were completely vanquished--forty thousand of
their shields were picked up on the field of battle--and they were
compelled to make a peace, in which the Romans retained Capua, which
had given itself over to their possession, while they left Teanum to
the Samnites (413).  Congratulations came from all sides, even from
Carthage.  The Latins, who had refused their contingent and seemed to
be arming against Rome, turned their arms not against Rome but against
the Paeligni, while the Romans were occupied first with a military
conspiracy of the garrison left behind in Campania (412), then with
the capture of Privernum (413) and the war against the Antiates.  But
now a sudden and singular change occurred in the position of parties.
The Latins, who had demanded in vain Roman citizenship and a share in
the consulate, rose against Rome in conjunction with the Sidicines,
who had vainly offered to submit to the Romans and knew not how to
save themselves from the Samnites, and with the Campanians, who were
already tired of the Roman rule.  Only the Laurentes in Latium and the
-equites- of Campania adhered to the Romans, who on their part found
support among the Paeligni and Samnites.  The Latin army fell upon
Samnium; the Romano-Samnite army, after it had marched to the Fucine
lake and from thence, avoiding Latium, into Campania, fought the
decisive battle against the combined Latins and Campanians at
Vesuvius; the consul Titus Manlius Imperiosus, after he had himself
restored the wavering discipline of the army by the execution of his
own son who had slain a foe in opposition to orders from headquarters,
and after his colleague Publius Decius Mus had appeased the gods by
sacrificing his life, at length gained the victory by calling up the
last reserves.  But the war was only terminated by a second battle,
in which the consul Manlius engaged the Latins and Campanians near
Trifanum; Latium and Capua submitted, and were mulcted in a portion
of their territory.

The judicious and candid reader will not fail to observe that this
report swarms with all sorts of impossibilities.  Such are the
statement of the Antiates waging war after the surrender of 377 (Liv.
vi. 33); the independent campaign of the Latins against the Paeligni,
in distinct contradiction to the stipulations of the treaties between
Rome and Latium; the unprecedented march of the Roman army through the
Marsian and Samnite territory to Capua, while all Latium was in arms
against Rome; to say nothing of the equally confused and sentimental
account of the military insurrection of 412, and the story of
its forced leader, the lame Titus Quinctius, the Roman Gotz von
Berlichingen.  Still more suspicious perhaps, are the repetitions.
Such is the story of the military tribune Publius Decius modelled on
the courageous deed of Marcus Calpurnius Flamma, or whatever he was
called, in the first Punic war; such is the recurrence of the conquest
of Privernum by Gaius Plautius in the year 425, which second conquest
alone is registered in the triumphal Fasti; such is the self-immolation
of Publius Decius, repeated, as is well known, in the case of his son
in 459.  Throughout this section the whole representation betrays
a different period and a different hand from the other more credible
accounts of the annals.  The narrative is full of detailed pictures
of battles; of inwoven anecdotes, such as that of the praetor
of Setia, who breaks his neck on the steps of the senate-house because
he had been audacious enough to solicit the consulship, and the
various anecdotes concocted out of the surname of Titus Manlius; and
of prolix and in part suspicious archaeological digressions.  In this
class we include the history of the legion--of which the notice, most
probably apocryphal, in Liv. i. 52, regarding the maniples of Romans
and Latins intermingled formed by the second Tarquin, is evidently a
second fragment, the erroneous view given of the treaty between Capua
and Rome (see my Rom. Munzwesen, p. 334, n. 122); the formularies of
self-devotion, the Campanian -denarius-, the Laurentine alliance,
and the -bina jugera- in the assignation (p. 450, note).  Under such
circumstances it appears a fact of great weight that Diodorus, who
follows other and often older accounts, knows absolutely nothing of
any of these events except the last battle at Trifanum; a battle
in fact that ill accords with the rest of the narrative, which, in
accordance with the rules of poetical justice, ought to have concluded
with the death of Decius.

21.  II. V. Isolation of the Later Latin Cities as Respected Private
Rights

22.  II. V. Crises within the Romano-Latin League

23.  II. IV. South Etruria Roman




CHAPTER VI

Struggle of the Italians against Rome


Wars between the Sabellians and Tarentines--
Archidamus--
Alexander the Molossian--

While the Romans were fighting on the Liris and Volturnus, other
conflicts agitated the south-east of the peninsula.  The wealthy
merchant-republic of Tarentum, daily exposed to more serious peril
from the Lucanian and Messapian bands and justly distrusting its own
sword, gained by good words and better coin the help of -condottieri-
from the mother-country.  The Spartan king, Archidamus, who with
a strong band had come to the assistance of his fellow-Dorians,
succumbed to the Lucanians on the same day on which Philip conquered
at Chaeronea (416); a retribution, in the belief of the pious Greeks,
for the share which nineteen years previously he and his people had
taken in pillaging the sanctuary of Delphi.  His place was taken by
an abler commander, Alexander the Molossian, brother of Olympias the
mother of Alexander the Great.  In addition to the troops which he had
brought along with him he united under his banner the contingents of
the Greek cities, especially those of the Tarentines and Metapontines;
the Poediculi (around Rubi, now Ruvo), who like the Greeks found
themselves in danger from the Sabellian nation; and lastly, even the
Lucanian exiles themselves, whose considerable numbers point to the
existence of violent internal troubles in that confederacy.  Thus he
soon found himself superior to the enemy.  Consentia (Cosenza), which
seems to have been the federal headquarters of the Sabellians settled
in Magna Graecia, fell into his hands.  In vain the Samnites came to
the help of the Lucanians; Alexander defeated their combined forces
near Paestum.  He subdued the Daunians around Sipontum, and the
Messapians in the south-eastern peninsula; he already commanded from
sea to sea, and was on the point of arranging with the Romans a joint
attack on the Samnites in their native abodes.  But successes so
unexpected went beyond the desires of the Tarentine merchants, and
filled them with alarm.  War broke out between them and their captain,
who had come amongst them a hired mercenary and now appeared desirous
to found a Hellenic empire in the west like his nephew in the east.
Alexander had at first the advantage; he wrested Heraclea from the
Tarentines, restored Thurii, and seems to have called upon the other
Italian Greeks to unite under his protection against the Tarentines,
while he at the same time tried to bring about a peace between them
and the Sabellian tribes.  But his grand projects found only feeble
support among the degenerate and desponding Greeks, and the forced
change of sides alienated from him his former Lucanian adherents: he
fell at Pandosia by the hand of a Lucanian emigrant (422).(1)  On his
death matters substantially reverted to their old position.  The Greek
cities found themselves once more isolated and once more left to
protect themselves as best they might by treaty or payment of tribute,
or even by extraneous aid; Croton for instance repulsed the Bruttii
about 430 with the help of the Syracusans.  The Samnite tribes acquire
renewed ascendency, and were able, without troubling themselves
about the Greeks, once more to direct their eyes towards Campania
and Latium.

But there during the brief interval a prodigious change had occurred.
The Latin confederacy was broken and scattered, the last resistance
of the Volsci was overcome, the province of Campania, the richest
and finest in the peninsula, was in the undisputed and well-secured
possession of the Romans, and the second city of Italy was a
dependency of Rome.  While the Greeks and Samnites were contending
with each other, Rome had almost without a contest raised herself to
a position of power which no single people in the peninsula possessed
the means of shaking, and which threatened to render all of them
subject to her yoke.  A joint exertion on the part of the peoples who
were not severally a match for Rome might perhaps still burst the
chains, ere they became fastened completely.  But the clearness of
perception, the courage, the self-sacrifice required for such a
coalition of numerous peoples and cities that had hitherto been for
the most part foes or at any rate strangers to each other, were not
to be found at all, or were found only when it was already too late.

Coalition of the Italians against Rome

After the fall of the Etruscan power and the weakening of the Greek
republics, the Samnite confederacy was beyond doubt, next to Rome, the
most considerable power in Italy, and at the same time that which was
most closely and immediately endangered by Roman encroachments.  To
its lot therefore fell the foremost place and the heaviest burden in
the struggle for freedom and nationality which the Italians had to
wage against Rome.  It might reckon upon the assistance of the small
Sabellian tribes, the Vestini, Frentani, Marrucini, and other smaller
cantons, who dwelt in rustic seclusion amidst their mountains, but
were not deaf to the appeal of a kindred stock calling them to take
up arms in defence of their common possessions.  The assistance
of the Campanian Greeks and those of Magna Graecia (especially the
Tarentines), and of the powerful Lucanians and Bruttians would have
been of greater importance; but the negligence and supineness of the
demagogues ruling in Tarentum and the entanglement of that city in
the affairs of Sicily, the internal distractions of the Lucanian
confederacy, and above all the deep hostility that had subsisted
for centuries between the Greeks of Lower Italy and their Lucanian
oppressors, scarcely permitted the hope that Tarentum and Lucania
would make common cause with the Samnites.  From the Sabines and the
Marsi, who were the nearest neighbours of the Romans and had long
lived in peaceful relations with Rome, little more could be expected
than lukewarm sympathy or neutrality.  The Apulians, the ancient and
bitter antagonists of the Sabellians, were the natural allies of the
Romans.  On the other hand it might be expected that the more remote
Etruscans would join the league if a first success were gained; and
even a revolt in Latium and the land of the Volsci and Hernici was
not impossible.  But the Samnites--the Aetolians of Italy, in whom
national vigour still lived unimpaired--had mainly to rely on their
own energies for such perseverance in the unequal struggle as would
give the other peoples time for a generous sense of shame, for calm
deliberation, and for the mustering of their forces; a single success
might then kindle the flames of war and insurrection all around Rome.
History cannot but do the noble people the justice of acknowledging
that they understood and performed their duty.

Outbreak of War between Samnium and Rome--
Pacification of Campania

Differences had already for several years existed between Rome and
Samnium in consequence of the continual aggressions in which the
Romans indulged on the Liris, and of which the founding of Fregellae
in 426 was the latest and most important.  But it was the Greeks of
Campania that gave occasion to the outbreak of the contest.  After
Cumae and Capua had become Roman, nothing so naturally suggested
itself to the Romans as the subjugation of the Greek city Neapolis,
which ruled also over the Greek islands in the bay--the only town
not yet reduced to subjection within the field of the Roman power.
The Tarentines and Samnites, informed of the scheme of the Romans to
obtain possession of the town, resolved to anticipate them; and while
the Tarentines were too remiss perhaps rather than too distant for the
execution of this plan, the Samnites actually threw into it a strong
garrison.  The Romans immediately declared war nominally against the
Neapolitans, really against the Samnites (427), and began the siege
of Neapolis.  After it had lasted a while, the Campanian Greeks
became weary of the disturbance of their commerce and of the foreign
garrison; and the Romans, whose whole efforts were directed to keep
states of the second and third rank by means of separate treaties
aloof from the coalition which was about to be formed, hastened, as
soon as the Greeks consented to negotiate, to offer them the most
favourable terms--full equality of rights and exemption from land
service, equal alliance and perpetual peace.  Upon these conditions,
after the Neapolitans had rid themselves of the garrison by stratagem,
a treaty was concluded (428).

The Sabellian towns to the south of the Volturnus, Nola, Nuceria,
Herculaneum, and Pompeii, took part with Samnium in the beginning of
the war; but their greatly exposed situation and the machinations of
the Romans--who endeavoured to bring over to their side the optimate
party in these towns by all the levers of artifice and self-interest,
and found a powerful support to their endeavours in the precedent of
Capua--induced these towns to declare themselves either in favour of
Rome or neutral not long after the fall of Neapolis.

Alliance between the Romans and Lucanians

A still more important success befell the Romans in Lucania.  There
also the people with true instinct was in favour of joining the
Samnites; but, as an alliance with the Samnites involved peace with
Tarentum and a large portion of the governing lords of Lucania were
not disposed to suspend their profitable pillaging expeditions, the
Romans succeeded in concluding an alliance with Lucania--an alliance
which was invaluable, because it provided employment for the
Tarentines and thus left the whole power of Rome available
against Samnium.

War in Samnium--
The Caudine Pass and the Caudine Peace

Thus Samnium stood on all sides unsupported; excepting that some of
the eastern mountain districts sent their contingents.  In the year
428 the war began within the Samnite land itself: some towns on the
Campanian frontier, Rufrae (between Venafrum and Teanum) and Allifae,
were occupied by the Romans.  In the following years the Roman armies
penetrated Samnium, fighting and pillaging, as far as the territory of
the Vestini, and even as far as Apulia, where they were received with
open arms; everywhere they had very decidedly the advantage.
The courage of the Samnites was broken; they sent back the Roman
prisoners, and along with them the dead body of the leader of the war
party, Brutulus Papius, who had anticipated the Roman executioners,
when the Samnite national assembly determined to ask the enemy for
peace and to procure for themselves more tolerable terms by the
surrender of their bravest general.  But when the humble, almost
suppliant, request was not listened to by the Roman people (432),
the Samnites, under their new general Gavius Pontius, prepared for the
utmost and most desperate resistance.  The Roman army, which under the
two consuls of the following year (433) Spurius Postumius and Titus
Veturius was encamped near Calatia (between Caserta and Maddaloni),
received accounts, confirmed by the affirmation of numerous captives,
that the Samnites had closely invested Luceria, and that that
important town, on which depended the possession of Apulia, was
in great danger.  They broke up in haste.  If they wished to arrive in
good time, no other route could be taken than through the midst of the
enemy's territory--where afterwards, in continuation of the Appian
Way, the Roman road was constructed from Capua by way of Beneventum
to Apulia.  This route led, between the present villages of Arpaja
and Montesarchio (Caudium), through a watery meadow, which was wholly
enclosed by high and steep wooded hills and was only accessible
through deep defiles at the entrance and outlet.  Here the Samnites
had posted themselves in ambush.  The Romans, who had entered the
valley unopposed, found its outlet obstructed by abattis and strongly
occupied; on marching back they saw that the entrance was similarly
closed, while at the same time the crests of the surrounding mountains
were crowned by Samnite cohorts.  They perceived, when it was too
late, that they had suffered themselves to be misled by a stratagem,
and that the Samnites awaited them, not at Luceria, but in the fatal
pass of Caudium.  They fought, but without hope of success and without
earnest aim; the Roman army was totally unable to manoeuvre and was
completely vanquished without a struggle.  The Roman generals offered
to capitulate.  It is only a foolish rhetoric that represents the
Samnite general as shut up to the simple alternatives of disbanding or
of slaughtering the Roman army; he could not have done better than
accept the offered capitulation and make prisoners of the hostile
army--the whole force which for the moment the Roman community could
bring into action--with both its commanders-in-chief.  In that case
the way to Campania and Latium would have stood open; and in the then
existing state of feeling, when the Volsci and Hernici and the larger
portion of the Latins would have received him with open arms, the
political existence of Rome would have been in serious danger.  But
instead of taking this course and concluding a military convention,
Gavius Pontius thought that he could at once terminate the whole
quarrel by an equitable peace; whether it was that he shared that
foolish longing of the confederates for peace, to which Brutulus
Papius had fallen a victim in the previous year, or whether it was
that he was unable to prevent the party which was tired of the war
from spoiling his unexampled victory.  The terms laid down were
moderate enough; Rome was to raze the fortresses which she had
constructed in defiance of the treaty--Cales and Fregellae--and to
renew her equal alliance with Samnium.  After the Roman generals had
agreed to these terms and had given six hundred hostages chosen from
the cavalry for their faithful execution--besides pledging their own
word and that of all their staff-officers on oath to the same effect
--the Roman army was dismissed uninjured, but disgraced; for the
Samnite army, drunk with victory, could not resist the desire to
subject their hated enemies to the disgraceful formality of laying
down their arms and passing under the yoke.

But the Roman senate, regardless of the oath of their officers and
of the fate of the hostages, cancelled the agreement, and contented
themselves with surrendering to the enemy those who had concluded it
as personally responsible for its fulfilment.  Impartial history can
attach little importance to the question whether in so doing the
casuistry of Roman advocates and priests kept the letter of the law,
or whether the decree of the Roman senate violated it; under a human
and political point of view no blame in this matter rests upon the
Romans.  It was a question of comparative indifference whether,
according to the formal state law of the Romans, the general in
command was or was not entitled to conclude peace without reserving
its ratification by the burgesses.  According to the spirit and
practice of the constitution it was quite an established principle
that in Rome every state-agreement, not purely military, pertained
to the province of the civil authorities, and a general who concluded
peace without the instructions of the senate and the burgesses
exceeded his powers.  It was a greater error on the part of the
Samnite general to give the Roman generals the choice between saving
their army and exceeding their powers, than it was on the part of
the latter that they had not the magnanimity absolutely to repel such
a suggestion; and it was right and necessary that the Roman senate
should reject such an agreement.  A great nation does not surrender
what it possesses except under the pressure of extreme necessity: all
treaties making concessions are acknowledgments of such a necessity,
not moral obligations.  If every people justly reckons it a point
of honour to tear to pieces by force of arms treaties that are
disgraceful, how could honour enjoin a patient adherence to a
convention like the Caudine to which an unfortunate general was
morally compelled, while the sting of the recent disgrace was
keenly felt and the vigour of the nation subsisted unimpaired?

Victory of the Romans

Thus the convention of Caudium did not produce the rest which the
enthusiasts for peace in Samnium had foolishly expected from it, but
only led to war after war with exasperation aggravated on either side
by the opportunity forfeited, by the breach of a solemn engagement,
by military honour disgraced, and by comrades that had been abandoned.
The Roman officers given up were not received by the Samnites, partly
because they were too magnanimous to wreak their vengeance on those
unfortunates, partly because they would thereby have admitted the
Roman plea that the agreement bound only those who swore to it, not
the Roman state.  Magnanimously they spared even the hostages whose
lives had been forfeited by the rules of war, and preferred to resort
at once to arms.

Luceria was occupied by them and Fregellae surprised and taken by
assault (434) before the Romans had reorganized their broken army;
the passing of the Satricans(2) over to the Samnites shows what they
might have accomplished, had they not allowed their advantage to slip
through their hands.  But Rome was only momentarily paralyzed, not
weakened; full of shame and indignation the Romans raised all the
men and means they could, and placed the highly experienced Lucius
Papirius Cursor, equally distinguished as a soldier and as a general,
at the head of the newly formed army.  The army divided; the one-half
marched by Sabina and the Adriatic coast to appear before Luceria,
the other proceeded to the same destination through Samnium itself,
successfully engaging and driving before it the Samnite army.  They
formed a junction again under the walls of Luceria, the siege of which
was prosecuted with the greater zeal, because the Roman equites lay
in captivity there; the Apulians, particularly the Arpani, lent the
Romans important assistance in the siege, especially by procuring
supplies.  After the Samnites had given battle for the relief of
the town and been defeated, Luceria surrendered to the Romans (435).
Papirius enjoyed the double satisfaction of liberating his comrades
who had been given up for lost, and of requiting the yoke of Caudium
on the Samnite garrison of Luceria.  In the next years (435-437)
the war was carried on(3) not so much in Samnium itself as in the
adjoining districts.  In the first place the Romans chastised the
allies of the Samnites in the Apulian and Frentanian territories,
and concluded new conventions with the Teanenses of Apulia and the
Canusini.  At the same time Satricum was again reduced to subjection
and severely punished for its revolt.  Then the war turned to
Campania, where the Romans conquered the frontier town towards
Samnium, Saticula (perhaps S. Agata de' Goti) (438).  But now
the fortune of war seemed disposed once more to turn against them.
The Samnites gained over the Nucerians (438), and soon afterwards
the Nolans, to their side; on the upper Liris the Sorani of themselves
expelled the Roman garrison (439); the Ausonians were preparing to
rise, and threatened the important Cales; even in Capua the party
opposed to Rome was vigorously stirring.  A Samnite army advanced into
Campania and encamped before the city, in the hope that its vicinity
might place the national party in the ascendant (440).  But Sora was
immediately attacked by the Romans and recaptured after the defeat
of a Samnite relieving force (440).  The movements among the Ausonians
were suppressed with cruel rigour ere the insurrection fairly broke
out, and at the same time a special dictator was nominated to
institute and decide political processes against the leaders of
the Samnite party in Capua, so that the most illustrious of them
died a voluntary death to escape from the Roman executioner (440).
The Samnite army before Capua was defeated and compelled to retreat
from Campania; the Romans, following close at the heels of the enemy,
crossed the Matese and encamped in the winter of 440 before Bovianum,
the: capital of Samnium.  Nola was abandoned by its allies; and the
Romans had the sagacity to detach the town for ever from the Samnite
party by a very favourable convention, similar to that concluded with
Neapolis (441).  Fregellae, which after the catastrophe of Caudium had
fallen into the hands of the party adverse to Rome and had been their
chief stronghold in the district on the Liris, finally fell in the
eighth year after its occupation by the Samnites (441); two hundred of
the citizens, the chief members of the national party, were conveyed
to Rome, and there openly beheaded in the Forum as an example and a
warning to the patriots who were everywhere bestirring themselves.

New Fortresses in Apulia and Campania

Apulia and Campania were thus in the hands of the Romans.  In order
finally to secure and permanently to command the conquered territory,
several new fortresses were founded in it during the years 440-442:
Luceria in Apulia, to which on account of its isolated and exposed
situation half a legion was sent as a permanent garrison; Pontiae (the
Ponza islands) for the securing of the Campanian waters; Saticula on
the Campano-Samnite frontier, as a bulwark against Samnium; and lastly
Interamna (near Monte Cassino) and Suessa Aurunca (Sessa) on the
road from Rome to Capua.  Garrisons moreover were sent to Caiatia
(Cajazzo), Sora, and other stations of military importance.  The great
military road from Rome to Capua, which with the necessary embankment
for it across the Pomptine marshes the censor Appius Claudius caused
to be constructed in 442, completed the securing of Campania.  The
designs of the Romans were more and more fully developed; their object
was the subjugation of Italy, which was enveloped more closely from
year to year in a network of Roman fortresses and roads.  The Samnites
were already on both sides surrounded by the Roman meshes; already the
line from Rome to Luceria severed north and south Italy from each
other, as the fortresses of Norba and Signia had formerly severed the
Volsci and Aequi; and Rome now rested on the Arpani, as it formerly
rested on the Hernici.  The Italians could not but see that the
freedom of all of them was gone if Samnium succumbed, and that it was
high time at length to hasten with all their might to the help of the
brave mountain people which had now for fifteen years singly sustained
the unequal struggle with the Romans.

Intervention of the Tarentines

The most natural allies of the Samnites would have been the
Tarentines; but it was part of that fatality that hung over Samnium
and over Italy in general, that at this moment so fraught with the
destinies of the future the decision lay in the hands of these
Athenians of Italy.  Since the constitution of Tarentum, which was
originally after the old Doric fashion strictly aristocratic, had
become changed to a complete democracy, a life of singular activity
had sprung up in that city, which was inhabited chiefly by mariners,
fishermen, and artisans.  The sentiments and conduct of the
population, more wealthy than noble, discarded all earnestness
amidst the giddy bustle and witty brilliance of their daily life, and
oscillated between the grandest boldness of enterprise and elevation
of spirit on the one hand, and a shameful frivolity and childish whim
on the other.  It may not be out of place, in connection with a crisis
wherein the existence or destruction of nations of noble gifts and
ancient renown was at stake, to mention that Plato, who came to
Tarentum some sixty years before this time, according to his own
statement saw the whole city drunk at the Dionysia, and that the
burlesque farce, or "merry tragedy" as it was called, was created
in Tarentum about the very time of the great Samnite war.  This
licentious life and buffoon poetry of the Tarentine fashionables and
literati had a fitting counterpart in the inconstant, arrogant, and
short-sighted policy of the Tarentine demagogues, who regularly
meddled in matters with which they had nothing to do, and kept aloof
where their immediate interests called for action.  After the Caudine
catastrophe, when the Romans and Samnites stood opposed in Apulia,
they had sent envoys thither to enjoin both parties to lay down their
arms (434).  This diplomatic intervention in the decisive struggle of
the Italians could not rationally have any other meaning than that of
an announcement that Tarentum had at length resolved to abandon
the neutrality which it had hitherto maintained.  It had in fact
sufficient reason to do so.  It was no doubt a difficult and dangerous
thing for Tarentum to be entangled in such a war; for the democratic
development of the state had directed its energies entirely to the
fleet, and while that fleet, resting upon the strong commercial
marine of Tarentum, held the first rank among the maritime powers
of Magna Graecia, the land force, on which they were in the present
case dependent, consisted mainly of hired soldiers and was sadly
disorganized.  Under these circumstances it was no light undertaking
for the Tarentine republic to take part in the conflict between Rome
and Samnium, even apart from the--at least troublesome--feud in which
Roman policy had contrived to involve them with the Lucanians.  But
these obstacles might be surmounted by an energetic will; and both the
contending parties construed the summons of the Tarentine envoys that
they should desist from the strife as meant in earnest.  The Samnites,
as the weaker, showed themselves ready to comply with it; the Romans
replied by hoisting the signal for battle.  Reason and honour dictated
to the Tarentines the propriety of now following up the haughty
injunction of their envoys by a declaration of war against Rome; but
in Tarentum neither reason nor honour characterized the government,
and they had simply been trifling in a very childish fashion with
very serious matters.  No declaration of war against Rome took place;
in its stead they preferred to support the oligarchical party in the
Sicilian towns against Agathocles of Syracuse who had at a former
period been in the Tarentine service and had been dismissed in
disgrace, and following the example of Sparta, they sent a fleet
to the island--a fleet which would have rendered better service
in the Campanian seas (440).

Accession of the Etruscans to the Coalition--
Victory at the Vadimonian Lake

The peoples of northern and central Italy, who seem to have been
roused especially by the establishment of the fortress of Luceria,
acted with more energy.  The Etruscans first drew the sword (443), the
armistice of 403 having already expired some years before.  The Roman
frontier-fortress of Sutrium had to sustain a two years' siege, and in
the vehement conflicts which took place under its walls the Romans as
a rule were worsted, till the consul of the year 444 Quintus Fabius
Rullianus, a leader who had gained experience in the Samnite wars, not
only restored the ascendency of the Roman arms in Roman Etruria, but
boldly penetrated into the land of the Etruscans proper, which had
hitherto from diversity of language and scanty means of communication
remained almost unknown to the Romans.  His march through the Ciminian
Forest which no Roman army had yet traversed, and his pillaging of a
rich region that had long been spared the horrors of war, raised
all Etruria in arms.  The Roman government, which had seriously
disapproved the rash expedition and had when too late forbidden the
daring leader from crossing the frontier, collected in the greatest
haste new legions, in order to meet the expected onslaught of the
whole Etruscan power.  But a seasonable and decisive victory of
Rullianus, the battle at the Vadimonian lake which long lived in
the memory of the people, converted an imprudent enterprise into a
celebrated feat of heroism and broke the resistance of the Etruscans.
Unlike the Samnites who had now for eighteen years maintained the
unequal struggle, three of the most powerful Etruscan towns--Perusia,
Cortona, and Arretium--consented after the first defeat to a separate
peace for three hundred months (444), and after the Romans had once
more beaten the other Etruscans near Perusia in the following year,
the Tarquinienses also agreed to a peace of four hundred months (446);
whereupon the other cities desisted from the contest, and a temporary
cessation of arms took place throughout Etruria.

Last Campaigns in Samnium

While these events were passing, the war had not been suspended in
Samnium.  The campaign of 443 was confined like the preceding to the
besieging and storming of several strongholds of the Samnites; but
in the next year the war took a more vigorous turn.  The dangerous
position of Rullianus in Etruria, and the reports which spread as
to the annihilation of the Roman army in the north, encouraged the
Samnites to new exertions; the Roman consul Gaius Marcius Rutilus was
vanquished by them and severely wounded in person.  But the sudden
change in the aspect of matters in Etruria destroyed their newly
kindled hopes.  Lucius Papirius Cursor again appeared at the head of
the Roman troops sent against the Samnites, and again remained the
victor in a great and decisive battle (445), in which the confederates
had put forth their last energies.  The flower of their army--the
wearers of the striped tunics and golden shields, and the wearers of
the white tunics and silver shields--were there extirpated, and their
splendid equipments thenceforth on festal occasions decorated the rows
of shops along the Roman Forum.  Their distress was ever increasing;
the struggle was becoming ever more hopeless.  In the following year
(446) the Etruscans laid down their arms; and in the same year the
last town of Campania which still adhered to the Samnites, Nuceria,
simultaneously assailed on the part of the Romans by water and by
land, surrendered under favourable conditions.  The Samnites found new
allies in the Umbrians of northern, and in the Marsi and Paeligni of
central, Italy, and numerous volunteers even from the Hernici joined
their ranks; but movements which might have decidedly turned the scale
against Rome, had the Etruscans still remained under arms, now simply
augmented the results of the Roman victory without seriously adding to
its difficulties.  The Umbrians, who gave signs of marching on Rome,
were intercepted by Rullianus with the army of Samnium on the upper
Tiber--a step which the enfeebled Samnites were unable to prevent;
and this sufficed to disperse the Umbrian levies.  The war once more
returned to central Italy.  The Paeligni were conquered, as were also
the Marsi; and, though the other Sabellian tribes remained nominally
foes of Rome, in this quarter Samnium gradually came to stand
practically alone.  But unexpected assistance came to them from
the district of the Tiber.  The confederacy of the Hernici, called
by the Romans to account for their countrymen found among the Samnite
captives, now declared war against Rome (in 448)--more doubtless from
despair than from calculation.  Some of the more considerable Hernican
communities from the first kept aloof from hostilities; but Anagnia,
by far the most eminent of the Hernican cities, carried out this
declaration of war.  In a military point of view the position of the
Romans was undoubtedly rendered for the moment highly critical by this
unexpected rising in the rear of the army occupied with the siege of
the strongholds of Samnium.  Once more the fortune of war favoured the
Samnites; Sora and Caiatia fell into their hands.  But the Anagnines
succumbed with unexpected rapidity before troops despatched from Rome,
and these troops also gave seasonable relief to the army stationed
in Samnium: all in fact was lost.  The Samnites sued for peace, but
in vain; they could not yet come to terms.  The final decision was
reserved for the campaign of 449.  Two Roman consular armies
penetrated--the one, under Tiberius Minucius and after his fall under
Marcus Fulvius, from Campania through the mountain passes, the other,
under Lucius Postumius, from the Adriatic upwards by the Biferno--into
Samnium, there to unite in front of Bovianum the capital; a decisive
victory was achieved, the Samnite general Statius Gellius was taken
prisoner, and Bovianum was carried by storm.

Peace with Samnium

The fall of the chief stronghold of the land terminated the twenty-two
years' war.  The Samnites withdrew their garrisons from Sora and
Arpinum, and sent envoys to Rome to sue for peace; the Sabellian
tribes, the Marsi, Marrucini, Paeligni, Frentani, Vestini, and
Picentes followed their example.  The terms granted by Rome were
tolerable; cessions of territory were required from some of them,
from the Paeligni for instance, but they do not seem to have been of
much importance.  The equal alliance was renewed between the Sabellian
tribes and the Romans (450).

And with Tarentum

Presumably about the same time, and in consequence doubtless of the
Samnite peace, peace was also made between Rome and Tarentum.  The two
cities had not indeed directly opposed each other in the field.  The
Tarentines had been inactive spectators of the long contest between
Rome and Samnium from its beginning to its close, and had only kept up
hostilities in league with the Sallentines against the Lucanians who
were allies of Rome.  In the last years of the Samnite war no doubt
they had shown some signs of more energetic action.  The position of
embarrassment to which the ceaseless attacks of the Lucanians reduced
them on the one hand, and on the other hand the feeling ever obtruding
itself on them more urgently that the complete subjugation of Samnium
would endanger their own independence, induced them, notwithstanding
their unpleasant experiences with Alexander, once more to entrust
themselves to a -condottiere-.  There came at their call the Spartan
prince Cleonymus, accompanied by five thousand mercenaries; with whom
he united a band equally numerous raised in Italy, as well as the
contingents of the Messapians and of the smaller Greek towns, and
above all the Tarentine civic army of twenty-two thousand men.  At
the head of this considerable force he compelled the Lucanians to make
peace with Tarentum and to install a government of Samnite tendencies;
in return for which Metapontum was abandoned to them.  The Samnites
were still in arms when this occurred; there was nothing to prevent
the Spartan from coming to their aid and casting the weight of his
numerous army and his military skill into the scale in favour of
freedom for the cities and peoples of Italy.  But Tarentum did not
act as Rome would in similar circumstances have acted; and prince
Cleonymus himself was far from being an Alexander or a Pyrrhus.  He
was in no hurry to undertake a war in which he might expect more blows
than booty, but preferred to make common cause with the Lucanians
against Metapontum, and made himself comfortable in that city, while
he talked of an expedition against Agathocles of Syracuse and of
liberating the Sicilian Greeks.  Thereupon the Samnites made peace;
and when after its conclusion Rome began to concern herself more
seriously about the south-east of the peninsula--in token of which
in the year 447 a Roman force levied contributions, or rather
reconnoitred by order of the government, in the territory of the
Sallentines--the Spartan -condottiere- embarked with his mercenaries
and surprised the island of Corcyra, which was admirably situated as
a basis for piratical expeditions against Greece and Italy.  Thus
abandoned by their general, and at the same time deprived of their
allies in central Italy, the Tarentines and their Italian allies,
the Lucanians and Sallentines, had now no course left but to solicit
an accommodation with Rome, which appears to have been granted on
tolerable terms.  Soon afterwards (451) even an incursion of
Cleonymus, who had landed in the Sallentine territory and laid
siege to Uria, was repulsed by the inhabitants with Roman aid.

Consolidation of the Roman Rule in Central Italy

The victory of Rome was complete; and she turned it to full account.
It was not from magnanimity in the conquerors--for the Romans knew
nothing of the sort--but from shrewd and far-seeing calculation that
terms so moderate were granted to the Samnites, the Tarentines, and
the more distant peoples generally.  The first and main object was not
so much to compel southern Italy as quickly as possible to recognize
formally the Roman supremacy, as to supplement and complete the
subjugation of central Italy, for which the way had been prepared by
the military roads and fortresses already established in Campania and
Apulia during the last war, and by that means to separate the northern
and southern Italians into two masses cut off in a military point of
view from direct contact with each other.  To this object accordingly
the next undertakings of the Romans were with consistent energy
directed.  Above all they used, or made, the opportunity for getting
rid of the confederacies of the Aequi and the Hernici which had once
been rivals of the Roman single power in the region of the Tiber and
were not yet quite set aside.  In the same year, in which the peace
with Samnium took place (450), the consul Publius Sempronius Sophus
waged war on the Aequi; forty townships surrendered in fifty days; the
whole territory with the exception of the narrow and rugged mountain
valley, which still in the present day bears the old name of the
people (Cicolano), passed into the possession of the Romans, and here
on the northern border of the Fucine lake was founded the fortress
Alba with a garrison of 6000 men, thenceforth forming a bulwark
against the valiant Marsi and a curb for central Italy; as was also
two years afterwards on the upper Turano, nearer to Rome, Carsioli
--both as allied communities with Latin rights.

The fact that in the case of the Hernici at least Anagnia had taken
part in the last stage of the Samnite war, furnished the desired
reason for dissolving the old relation of alliance.  The fate of the
Anagnines was, as might be expected, far harder than that which had
under similar circumstances been meted out to the Latin communities
in the previous generation.  They not merely had, like these, to
acquiesce in the Roman citizenship without suffrage, but they also
like the Caerites lost self-administration; out of a portion of their
territory on the upper Trerus (Sacco), moreover, a new tribe was
instituted, and another was formed at the same time on the lower Anio
(455).  The only regret was that the three Hernican communities next
in importance to Anagnia, Aletrium, Verulae, and Ferentinum, had not
also revolted; for, as they courteously declined the suggestion that
they should voluntarily enter into the bond of Roman citizenship and
there existed no pretext for compelling them to do so, the Romans were
obliged not only to respect their autonomy, but also to allow to them
even the right of assembly and of intermarriage, and in this way
still to leave a shadow of the old Hernican confederacy.  No such
considerations fettered their action in that portion of the Volscian
country which had hitherto been held by the Samnites.  There Arpinum
and Frusino became subject, the latter town was deprived of a third
of its domain, and on the upper Liris in addition to Fregellae the
Volscian town of Sora, which had previously been garrisoned, was now
permanently converted into a Roman fortress and occupied by a legion
of 4000 men.  In this way the old Volscian territory was completely
subdued, and became rapidly Romanized.  The region which separated
Samnium from Etruria was penetrated by two military roads, both of
which were secured by new fortresses.  The northern road, which
afterwards became the Flaminian, covered the line of the Tiber; it
led through Ocriculum, which was in alliance with Rome, to Narnia, the
name which the Romans gave to the old Umbrian fortress Nequinum when
they settled a military colony there (455).  The southern, afterwards
the Valerian, ran along the Fucine lake by way of the just mentioned
fortresses of Carsioli and Alba.  The small tribes within whose bounds
these colonies were instituted, the Umbrians who obstinately defended
Nequinum, the Aequians who once more assailed Alba, and the Marsians
who attacked Carsioli, could not arrest the course of Rome: the two
strong curb-fortresses were inserted almost without hindrance between
Samnium and Etruria.  We have already mentioned the great roads and
fortresses instituted for permanently securing Apulia and above all
Campania: by their means Samnium was further surrounded on the east
and west with the net of Roman strongholds.  It is a significant
token of the comparative weakness of Etruria that it was not deemed
necessary to secure the passes through the Ciminian Forest in a
similar mode--by a highway and corresponding fortresses.  The former
frontier fortress of Sutrium continued to be in this quarter the
terminus of the Roman military line, and the Romans contented
themselves with having the road leading thence to Arretium kept
in a serviceable state for military purposes by the communities
through whose territories it passed.(4)

Renewed Outbreak of the Samnite-Etruscan War--
Junction of the Troops of the Coalition in Etruria

The high-spirited Samnite nation perceived that such a peace was more
ruinous than the most destructive war; and, what was more, it acted
accordingly.  The Celts in northern Italy were just beginning to
bestir themselves again after a long suspension of warfare; moreover
several Etruscan communities there were still in arms against the
Romans, and brief armistices alternated in that quarter with vehement
but indecisive conflicts.  All central Italy was still in ferment and
partly in open insurrection; the fortresses were still only in course
of construction; the way between Etruria and Samnium was not yet
completely closed.  Perhaps it was not yet too late to save freedom;
but, if so, there must be no delay; the difficulty of attack
increased, the power of the assailants diminished with every year
by which the peace was prolonged.  Five years had scarce elapsed since
the contest ended, and all the wounds must still have been bleeding
which the twenty-two years' war had inflicted on the peasantry of
Samnium, when in the year 456 the Samnite confederacy renewed the
struggle.  The last war had been decided in favour of Rome mainly
through the alliance of Lucania with the Romans and the consequent
standing aloof of Tarentum.  The Samnites, profiting by that lesson,
now threw themselves in the first instance with all their might on the
Lucanians, and succeeded in bringing their party in that quarter to
the helm of affairs, and in concluding an alliance between Samnium and
Lucania.  Of course the Romans immediately declared war; the Samnites
had expected no other issue.  It is a significant indication of the
state of feeling, that the Samnite government informed the Roman
envoys that it was not able to guarantee their inviolability, if
they should set foot on Samnite ground.

The war thus began anew (456), and while a second army was fighting
in Etruria, the main Roman army traversed Samnium and compelled the
Lucanians to make peace and send hostages to Rome.  The following
year both consuls were able to proceed to Samnium; Rullianus conquered
at Tifernum, his faithful comrade in arms, Publius Decius Mus, at
Maleventum, and for five months two Roman armies encamped in the land
of the enemy.  They were enabled to do so, because the Tuscan states
had on their own behalf entered into negotiations for peace with Rome.
The Samnites, who from the beginning could not but see that their only
chance of victory lay in the combination of all Italy against Rome,
exerted themselves to the utmost to prevent the threatened separate
peace between Etruria and Rome; and when at last their general,
Gellius Egnatius, offered to bring aid to the Etruscans in their own
country, the Etruscan federal council in reality agreed to hold out
and once more to appeal to the decision of arms.  Samnium made the
most energetic efforts to place three armies simultaneously in the
field, the first destined for the defence of its own territory, the
second for an invasion of Campania, the third and most numerous
for Etruria; and in the year 458 the last, led by Egnatius himself,
actually reached Etruria in safety through the Marsian and Umbrian
territories, with whose inhabitants there was an understanding.
Meanwhile the Romans were capturing some strong places in Samnium and
breaking the influence of the Samnite party in Lucania; they were not
in a position to prevent the departure of the army led by Egnatius.
When information reached Rome that the Samnites had succeeded in
frustrating all the enormous efforts made to sever the southern
from the northern Italians, that the arrival of the Samnite bands in
Etruria had become the signal for an almost universal rising against
Rome, and that the Etruscan communities were labouring with the utmost
zeal to get their own forces ready for war and to take into their pay
Gallic bands, every nerve was strained also in Rome; the freedmen and
the married were formed into cohorts--it was felt on all hands that
the decisive crisis was near.  The year 458 however passed away,
apparently, in armings and marchings.  For the following year (459)
the Romans placed their two best generals, Publius Decius Mus and the
aged Quintus Fabius Rullianus, at the head of their army in Etruria,
which was reinforced with all the troops that could be spared from
Campania, and amounted to at least 60,000 men, of whom more than a
third were full burgesses of Rome.  Besides this, two reserves were
formed, the first at Falerii, the second under the walls of the
capital.  The rendezvous of the Italians was Umbria, towards which the
roads from the Gallic, Etruscan, and Sabellian territories converged;
towards Umbria the consuls also moved off their main force, partly
along the left, partly along the right bank of the Tiber, while at
the same time the first reserve made a movement towards Etruria, in
order if possible to recall the Etruscan troops from the main scene
of action for the defence of their homes.  The first engagement did
not prove fortunate for the Romans; their advanced guard was defeated
by the combined Gauls and Samnites in the district of Chiusi.  But
that diversion accomplished its object.  Less magnanimous than the
Samnites, who had marched through the ruins of their towns that they
might not be absent from the chosen field of battle, a great part of
the Etruscan contingents withdrew from the federal army on the news
of the advance of the Roman reserve into Etruria, and its ranks
were greatly thinned when the decisive battle came to be fought on
the eastern declivity of the Apennines near Sentinum.

Battle of Sentinum--
Peace with Etruria

Nevertheless it was a hotly contested day.  On the right wing of
the Romans, where Rullianus with his two legions fought against the
Samnite army, the conflict remained long undecided.  On the left,
which Publius Decius commanded, the Roman cavalry was thrown into
confusion by the Gallic war chariots, and the legions also already
began to give way.  Then the consul called to him Marcus Livius the
priest, and bade him devote to the infernal gods both the head of
the Roman general and the army of the enemy; and plunging into the
thickest throng of the Gauls he sought death and found it.  This
heroic deed of despair on the part of one so eminent as a man and so
beloved as a general was not in vain.  The fugitive soldiers rallied;
the bravest threw themselves after their leader into the hostile
ranks, to avenge him or to die with him; and just at the right moment
the consular Lucius Scipio, despatched by Rullianus, appeared with the
Roman reserve on the imperilled left wing.  The excellent Campanian
cavalry, which fell on the flank and rear of the Gauls, turned the
scale; the Gauls fled, and at length the Samnites also gave way,
their general Egnatius falling at the gate of the camp.  Nine thousand
Romans strewed the field of battle; but dearly as the victory was
purchased, it was worthy of such a sacrifice.  The army of the
coalition was dissolved, and with it the coalition itself; Umbria
remained in the power of the Romans, the Gauls dispersed, the remnant
of the Samnites still in compact order retreated homeward through the
Abruzzi.  Campania, which the Samnites had overrun during the Etruscan
war, was after its close re-occupied with little difficulty by the
Romans.  Etruria sued for peace in the following year (460); Volsinii,
Perusia, Arretium, and in general all the towns that had joined the
league against Rome, promised a cessation of hostilities for four
hundred months.

Last Struggles of Samnium

But the Samnites were of a different mind; they prepared for their
hopeless resistance with the courage of free men, which cannot
compel success but may put it to shame.  When the two consular armies
advanced into Samnium, in the year 460, they encountered everywhere
the most desperate resistance; in fact Marcus Atilius was discomfited
near Luceria, and the Samnites were able to penetrate into Campania
and to lay waste the territory of the Roman colony Interamna on the
Liris.  In the ensuing year Lucius Papirius Cursor, the son of the
hero of the first Samnite war, and Spurius Carvilius, gave battle on
a great scale near Aquilonia to the Samnite army, the flower of which
--the 16,000 in white tunics--had sworn a sacred oath to prefer death
to flight.  Inexorable destiny, however, heeds neither the oaths nor
the supplications of despair; the Roman conquered and stormed the
strongholds where the Samnites had sought refuge for themselves and
their property.  Even after this great defeat the confederates still
for years resisted the ever-increasing superiority of the enemy with
unparalleled perseverance in their fastnesses and mountains, and still
achieved various isolated advantages.  The experienced arm of the old
Rullianus was once more called into the field against them (462), and
Gavius Pontius, a son perhaps of the victor of Caudium, even gained
for his nation a last victory, which the Romans meanly enough avenged
by causing him when subsequently taken to be executed in prison (463).
But there was no further symptom of movement in Italy; for the war,
which Falerii began in 461, scarcely deserves such a name.  The
Samnites doubtless turned with longing eyes towards Tarentum, which
alone was still in a position to grant them aid; but it held aloof.
The same causes as before occasioned its inaction--internal
misgovernment, and the passing over of the Lucanians once more to the
Roman party in the year 456; to which fell to be added a not unfounded
dread of Agathocles of Syracuse, who just at that time had reached the
height of his power and began to turn his views towards Italy.
About 455 the latter established himself in Corcyra whence Cleonymus
had been expelled by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and now threatened the
Tarentines from the Adriatic as well as from the Ionian sea.
The cession of the island to king Pyrrhus of Epirus in 459 certainly
removed to a great extent the apprehensions which they had cherished;
but the affairs of Corcyra continued to occupy the Tarentines--in the
year 464, for instance, they helped to protect Pyrrhus in possession
of the island against Demetrius--and in like manner Agathocles did not
cease to give the Tarentines uneasiness by his Italian policy.  When
he died (465) and with him the power of the Syracusans in Italy went
to wreck, it was too late; Samnium, weary of the thirty-seven years'
struggle, had concluded peace in the previous year (464) with the
Roman consul Manius Curius Dentatus, and had in form renewed its
league with Rome.  On this occasion, as in the peace of 450, no
disgraceful or destructive conditions were imposed on the brave people
by the Romans; no cessions even of territory seem to have taken place.
The political sagacity of Rome preferred to follow the path which it
had hitherto pursued, and to attach in the first place the Campanian
and Adriatic coast more and more securely to Rome before proceeding to
the direct conquest of the interior.  Campania, indeed, had been long
in subjection; but the far-seeing policy of Rome found it needful, in
order to secure the Campanian coast, to establish two coast-fortresses
there, Minturnae and Sinuessa (459), the new burgesses of which were
admitted according to the settled rule in the case of maritime
colonies to the full citizenship of Rome.  With still greater energy
the extension of the Roman rule was prosecuted in central Italy.  As
the subjugation of the Aequi and Hernici was the immediate sequel of
the first Samnite war, so that of the Sabines followed on the end of
the second.  The same general, who ultimately subdued the Samnites,
Manius Curius broke down in the same year (464) the brief and feeble
resistance of the Sabines and forced them to unconditional surrender.
A great portion of the subjugated territory was immediately taken into
possession of the victors and distributed to Roman burgesses, and
Roman subject-rights (-civitas sine suffragio-) were imposed on the
communities that were left--Cures, Reate, Amiternum, Nursia.  Allied
towns with equal rights were not established here; on the contrary the
country came under the immediate rule of Rome, which thus extended as
far as the Apennines and the Umbrian mountains.  Nor was it even now
restricted to the territory on Rome's side of the mountains; the last
war had shown but too clearly that the Roman rule over central Italy
was only secured, if it reached from sea to sea.  The establishment
of the Romans beyond the Apennines begins with the laying out of the
strong fortress of Atria (Atri) in the year 465, on the northern slope
of the Abruzzi towards the Picenian plain, not immediately on the
coast and hence with Latin rights, but still near to the sea, and the
keystone of the mighty wedge separating northern and southern Italy.
Of a similar nature and of still greater importance was the founding
of Venusia (463), whither the unprecedented number of 20,000 colonists
was conducted.  That city, founded at the boundary of Samnium, Apulia,
and Lucania, on the great road between Tarentum and Samnium, in an
uncommonly strong position, was destined as a curb to keep in check
the surrounding tribes, and above all to interrupt the communications
between the two most powerful enemies of Rome in southern Italy.
Beyond doubt at the same time the southern highway, which Appius
Claudius had carried as far as Capua, was prolonged thence to Venusia.
Thus, at the close of the Samnite wars, the Roman domain closely
compact--that is, consisting almost exclusively of communities with
Roman or Latin rights--extended on the north to the Ciminian Forest,
on the east to the Abruzzi and to the Adriatic, on the south as far as
Capua, while the two advanced posts, Luceria and Venusia, established
towards the east and south on the lines of communication of their
opponents, isolated them on every side.  Rome was no longer merely the
first, but was already the ruling power in the peninsula, when towards
the end of the fifth century of the city those nations, which had been
raised to supremacy in their respective lands by the favour of the
gods and by their own capacity, began to come into contact in council
and on the battle-field; and, as at Olympia the preliminary victors
girt themselves for a second and more serious struggle, so on the
larger arena of the nations, Carthage, Macedonia, and Rome now
prepared for the final and decisive contest.




Notes for Book II Chapter VI


1.  It may not be superfluous to mention that our knowledge Archidamus
and Alexander is derived from Greek annals, and that the synchronism
between these and the Roman is in reference to the present epoch only
approximately established.  We must beware, therefore, of pursuing too
far into detail the unmistakable general connection between the events
in the west and those in the east of Italy.

2.  These were not the inhabitants of Satricum near Antium (II. V.
League with The Hernici), but those of another Volscian town
constituted at that time as a Roman burgess-community without right
of voting, near Arpinum.

3.  That a formal armistice for two years subsisted between the Romans
and Samnites in 436-437 is more than improbable.

4.  The operations in the campaign of 537, and still more plainly the
formation of the highway from Arretium to Bononia in 567, show that
the road from Rome to Arretium had already been rendered serviceable
before that time.  But it cannot at that period have been a Roman
military road, because, judging from its later appellation of the
"Cassian way," it cannot have been constructed as a -via consularis-
earlier than 583; for no Cassian appears in the lists of Roman consuls
and censors between Spurius Cassius, consul in 252, 261, and 268--who
of course is out of the question--and Gaius Cassius Longinus, consul
in 583.




CHAPTER VII

Struggle between Pyrrhus and Rome, and Union of Italy


Relations between the East and West

After Rome had acquired the undisputed mastery of the world, the
Greeks were wont to annoy their Roman masters by the assertion that
Rome was indebted for her greatness to the fever of which Alexander of
Macedonia died at Babylon on the 11th of June, 431.  As it was not too
agreeable for them to reflect on the actual past, they were fond of
allowing their thoughts to dwell on what might have happened, had the
great king turned his arms--as was said to have been his intention at
the time of his death--towards the west and contested the Carthaginian
supremacy by sea with his fleet, and the Roman supremacy by land with
his phalanxes.  It is not impossible that Alexander may have cherished
such thoughts; nor is it necessary to resort for an explanation of
their origin to the mere difficulty which an autocrat, who is fond
of war and is well provided with soldiers and ships, experiences in
setting limits to his warlike career.  It was an enterprise worthy of
a Greek great king to protect the Siceliots against Carthage and the
Tarentines against Rome, and to put an end to piracy on either sea;
and the Italian embassies from the Bruttians, Lucanians, and
Etruscans,(1) that along with numerous others made their appearance at
Babylon, afforded him sufficient opportunities of becoming acquainted
with the circumstances of the peninsula and of entering into relations
with it.  Carthage with its many connections in the east could not but
attract the attention of the mighty monarch, and it was probably one
of his designs to convert the nominal sovereignty of the Persian king
over the Tyrian colony into a real one: it was not for nothing that
a Phoenician spy was found in the retinue of Alexander.  Whether,
however, these ideas were dreams or actual projects, the king died
without having interfered in the affairs of the west, and his ideas
were buried with him.  For but a few brief years a Greek ruler had
held in his hand the whole intellectual vigour of the Hellenic race
combined with the whole material resources of the east.  On his death
the work to which his life had been devoted--the establishment of
Hellenism in the east--was by no means undone; but his empire had
barely been united when it was again dismembered, and, amidst the
constant quarrels of the different states that were formed out of
its ruins, the object of world-wide interest which they were destined
to promote--the diffusion of Greek culture in the east--though not
abandoned, was prosecuted on a feeble and stunted scale.  Under such
circumstances, neither the Greek nor the Asiatico-Egyptian states
could think of acquiring a footing in the west or of turning their
efforts against the Romans or the Carthaginians.  The eastern and
western state-systems subsisted side by side for a time without
crossing, politically, each other's path; and Rome in particular
remained substantially aloof from the complications in the days
of Alexander's successors.  The only relations established were of
a mercantile kind; as in the instance of the free state of Rhodes,
the leading representative of the policy of commercial neutrality in
Greece and in consequence the universal medium of intercourse in an
age of perpetual wars, which about 448 concluded a treaty with Rome
--a commercial convention of course, such as was natural between a
mercantile people and the masters of the Caerite and Campanian
coasts.  Even in the supply of mercenaries from Hellas, the universal
recruiting field of those times, to Italy, and to Tarentum in
particular, political relations--such as subsisted, for instance,
between Tarentum and Sparta its mother-city--exercised but a very
subordinate influence.  In general the raising of mercenaries was
simply a matter of traffic, and Sparta, although it regularly supplied
the Tarentines with captains for their Italian wars, was by that
course as little involved in hostilities with the Italians, as in the
North American war of independence the German states were involved in
hostilities with the Union, to whose opponents they sold the services
of their subjects.

The Historical Position of Pyrrhus

Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, was himself simply a military adventurer.
He was none the less a soldier of fortune that he traced back his
pedigree to Aeacus and Achilles, and that, had he been more peacefully
disposed, he might have lived and died as "king" of a small mountain
tribe under the supremacy of Macedonia or perhaps in isolated
independence.  He has been compared to Alexander of Macedonia; and
certainly the idea of founding a Hellenic empire of the west--which
would have had as its core Epirus, Magna Graecia, and Sicily, would
have commanded both the Italian seas, and would have reduced Rome and
Carthage to the rank of barbarian peoples bordering on the Hellenistic
state-system, like the Celts and the Indians--was analogous in
greatness and boldness to the idea which led the Macedonian king over
the Hellespont.  But it was not the mere difference of issue that
formed the distinction between the expedition to the east and that
to the west.  Alexander with his Macedonian army, in which the
staff especially was excellent, could fully make head against the
great-king; but the king of Epirus, which stood by the side of
Macedonia somewhat as Hesse by the side of Prussia, could only raise
an army worthy of the name by means of mercenaries and of alliances
based on accidental political combinations.  Alexander made his
appearance in the Persian empire as a conqueror; Pyrrhus appeared in
Italy as the general of a coalition of secondary states.  Alexander
left his hereditary dominions completely secured by the unconditional
subjection of Greece, and by the strong army that remained behind
under Antipater; Pyrrhus had no security for the integrity of his
native dominions but the word of a doubtful neighbour.  In the case
of both conquerors, if their plans should be crowned with success,
their native country would necessarily cease to be the centre of
their new empire; but it was far more practicable to transfer the
seat of the Macedonian military monarchy to Babylon than to found a
soldier-dynasty in Tarentum or Syracuse.  The democracy of the Greek
republics--perpetual agony though it was--could not be at all coerced
into the stiff forms of a military state; Philip had good reason for
not incorporating the Greek republics with his empire.  In the east no
national resistance was to be expected; ruling and subject races had
long lived there side by side, and a change of despot was a matter of
indifference or even of satisfaction to the mass of the population.
In the west the Romans, the Samnites, the Carthaginians, might be
vanquished; but no conqueror could have transformed the Italians
into Egyptian fellahs, or rendered the Roman farmers tributaries of
Hellenic barons.  Whatever we take into view--whether their own power,
their allies, or the resources of their antagonists--in all points the
plan of the Macedonian appears as a feasible, that of the Epirot an
impracticable, enterprise; the former as the completion of a great
historical task, the latter as a remarkable blunder; the former as
the foundation of a new system of states and of a new phase of
civilization, the latter as a mere episode in history.  The work of
Alexander outlived him, although its creator met an untimely death;
Pyrrhus saw with his own eyes the wreck of all his plans, ere death
called him away.  Both were by nature daring and great, but Pyrrhus
was only the foremost general, Alexander was eminently the most gifted
statesman, of his time; and, if it is insight into what is and what is
not possible that distinguishes the hero from the adventurer, Pyrrhus
must be numbered among the latter class, and may as little be placed
on a parallel with his greater kinsman as the Constable of Bourbon may
be put in comparison with Louis the Eleventh.

And yet a wondrous charm attaches to the name of the Epirot--a
peculiar sympathy, evoked certainly in some degree by his chivalrous
and amiable character, but still more by the circumstance that he
was the first Greek that met the Romans in battle.  With him began
those direct relations between Rome and Hellas, on which the whole
subsequent development of ancient, and an essential part of modern,
civilization are based.  The struggle between phalanxes and cohorts,
between a mercenary army and a militia, between military monarchy and
senatorial government, between individual talent and national vigour
--this struggle between Rome and Hellenism was first fought out in
the battles between Pyrrhus and the Roman generals; and though the
defeated party often afterwards appealed anew to the arbitration of
arms, every succeeding day of battle simply confirmed the decision.
But while the Greeks were beaten in the battlefield as well as in
the senate-hall, their superiority was none the less decided on every
other field of rivalry than that of politics; and these very struggles
already betokened that the victory of Rome over the Hellenes would be
different from her victories over Gauls and Phoenicians, and that the
charm of Aphrodite only begins to work when the lance is broken and
the helmet and shield are laid aside.

Character and Earlier History of Pyrrhus

King Pyrrhus was the son of Aeacides, ruler of the Molossians (about
Janina), who, spared as a kinsman and faithful vassal by Alexander,
had been after his death drawn into the whirlpool of Macedonian
family-politics, and lost in it first his kingdom and then his life
(441).  His son, then six years of age, was saved by Glaucias the
ruler of the Illyrian Taulantii, and in the course of the conflicts
for the possession of Macedonia he was, when still a boy, restored by
Demetrius Poliorcetes to his hereditary principality (447)--but only
to lose it again after a few years through the influence of the
opposite party (about 452), and to begin his military career as an
exiled prince in the train of the Macedonian generals.  Soon his
personality asserted itself.  He shared in the last campaigns of
Antigonus; and the old marshal of Alexander took delight in the born
soldier, who in the judgment of the grey-headed general only wanted
years to be already the first warrior of the age.  The unfortunate
battle at Ipsus brought him as a hostage to Alexandria, to the court
of the founder of the Lagid dynasty, where by his daring and downright
character, and his soldierly spirit thoroughly despising everything
that was not military, he attracted the attention of the politic king
Ptolemy no less than he attracted the notice of the royal ladies by
his manly beauty, which was not impaired by his wild look and stately
tread.  Just at this time the enterprising Demetrius was once more
establishing himself in a new kingdom, which on this occasion was
Macedonia; of course with the intention of using it as a lever to
revive the monarchy of Alexander.  To keep down his ambitious designs,
it was important to give him employment at home; and Ptolemy, who knew
how to make admirable use of such fiery spirits as the Epirot youth in
the prosecution of his subtle policy, not only met the wishes of his
consort queen Berenice, but also promoted his own ends, by giving his
stepdaughter the princess Antigone in marriage to the young prince,
and lending his aid and powerful influence to support the return of
his beloved "son" to his native land (458).  Restored to his paternal
kingdom, he soon carried all before him.  The brave Epirots, the
Albanians of antiquity, clung with hereditary loyalty and fresh
enthusiasm to the high-spirited youth--the "eagle," as they called
him.  In the confusion that arose regarding the succession to the
Macedonian throne after the death of Cassander (457), the Epirot
extended his dominions: step by step he gained the regions on the
Ambracian gulf with the important town of Ambracia, the island of
Corcyra,(2) and even a part of the Macedonian territory, and with
forces far inferior he made head against king Demetrius to the
admiration of the Macedonians themselves.  Indeed, when Demetrius was
by his own folly hurled from the Macedonian throne, it was voluntarily
proffered by them to his chivalrous opponent, a kinsman of the
Alexandrid house (467).  No one was in reality worthier than Pyrrhus
to wear the royal diadem of Philip and of Alexander.  In an age of
deep depravity, in which princely rank and baseness began to be
synonymous, the personally unspotted and morally pure character of
Pyrrhus shone conspicuous.  For the free farmers of the hereditary
Macedonian soil, who, although diminished and impoverished, were
far from sharing in that decay of morals and of valour which the
government of the Diadochi produced in Greece and Asia, Pyrrhus
appeared exactly formed to be the fitting king, --Pyrrhus, who,
like Alexander, in his household and in the circle of his friends
preserved a heart open to all human sympathies, and constantly
avoided the bearing of an Oriental sultan which was so odious to the
Macedonians; and who, like Alexander, was acknowledged to be the first
tactician of his time.  But the singularly overstrained national
feeling of the Macedonians, which preferred the most paltry Macedonian
sovereign to the ablest foreigner, and the irrational insubordination
of the Macedonian troops towards every non-Macedonian leader, to which
Eumenes the Cardian, the greatest general of the school of Alexander,
had fallen a victim, put a speedy termination to the rule of the
prince of Epirus.  Pyrrhus, who could not exercise sovereignty over
Macedonia with the consent of the Macedonians, and who was too
powerless and perhaps too high spirited to force himself on the nation
against its will, after reigning seven months left the country to its
native misgovernment, and went home to his faithful Epirots (467).
But the man who had worn the crown of Alexander, the brother-in-law
of Demetrius, the son-in-law of Ptolemy Lagides and of Agathocles
of Syracuse, the highly-trained tactician who wrote memoirs and
scientific dissertations on the military art, could not possibly end
his days in inspecting at a set time yearly the accounts of the royal
cattle steward, in receiving from his brave Epirots their customary
gifts of oxen and sheep, in thereupon, at the altar of Zeus, procuring
the renewal of their oath of allegiance and repeating his own
engagement to respect the laws, and--for the better confirmation of
the whole--in carousing with them all night long.  If there was no
place for him on the throne of Macedonia, there was no abiding in the
land of his nativity at all; he was fitted for the first place, and
he could not be content with the second.  His views therefore turned
abroad.  The kings, who were quarrelling for the possession of
Macedonia, although agreeing in nothing else, were ready and glad to
concur in aiding the voluntary departure of their dangerous rival; and
that his faithful war-comrades would follow him where-ever he led, he
knew full well.  Just at that time the circumstances of Italy were
such, that the project which had been meditated forty years before by
Pyrrhus's kinsman, his father's cousin, Alexander of Epirus, and quite
recently by his father-in-law Agathocles, once more seemed feasible;
and so Pyrrhus resolved to abandon his Macedonian schemes and to found
for himself and for the Hellenic nation a new empire in the west.

Rising of the Italians against Rome--
The Lucanians--
The Etruscans and Celts--
The Samnites--
The Senones Annihilated

The interval of repose, which the peace with Samnium in 464 had
procured for Italy, was of brief duration; the impulse which led to
the formation of a new league against Roman ascendency came on this
occasion from the Lucanians.  This people, by taking part with Rome
during the Samnite wars, paralyzed the action of the Tarentines and
essentially contributed to the decisive issue; and in consideration of
their services, the Romans gave up to them the Greek cities in their
territory.  Accordingly after the conclusion of peace they had, in
concert with the Bruttians, set themselves to subdue these cities in
succession.  The Thurines, repeatedly assailed by Stenius Statilius
the general of the Lucanians and reduced to extremities, applied for
assistance against the Lucanians to the Roman senate--just as formerly
the Campanians had asked the aid of Rome against the Samnites--and
beyond doubt with a like sacrifice of their liberty and independence.
In consequence of the founding of the fortress Venusia, Rome could
dispense with the alliance of the Lucanians; so the Romans granted
the prayer of the Thurines, and enjoined their friends and allies to
desist from their designs on a city which had surrendered itself to
Rome.  The Lucanians and Bruttians, thus cheated by their more
powerful allies of their share in the common spoil, entered into
negotiations with the opposition-party among the Samnites and
Tarentines to bring about a new Italian coalition; and when the Romans
sent an embassy to warn them, they detained the envoys in captivity
and began the war against Rome with a new attack on Thurii (about
469), while at the same time they invited not only the Samnites and
Tarentines, but the northern Italians also--the Etruscans, Umbrians,
and Gauls--to join them in the struggle for freedom.  The Etruscan
league actually revolted, and hired numerous bands of Gauls; the Roman
army, which the praetor Lucius Caecilius was leading to the help of
the Arretines who had remained faithful, was annihilated under the
walls of Arretium by the Senonian mercenaries of the Etruscans: the
general himself fell with 13,000 of his men (470).  The Senones were
reckoned allies of Rome; the Romans accordingly sent envoys to them to
complain of their furnishing warriors to serve against Rome, and to
require the surrender of their captives without ransom.  But by the
command of their chieftain Britomaris, who had to take vengeance on
the Romans for the death of his father, the Senones slew the Roman
envoys and openly took the Etruscan side.  All the north of Italy,
Etruscans, Umbrians, Gauls, were thus in arms against Rome; great
results might be achieved, if its southern provinces also should
seize the moment and declare, so far as they had not already done so,
against Rome.  In fact the Samnites, ever ready to make a stand on
behalf of liberty, appear to have declared war against the Romans; but
weakened and hemmed in on all sides as they were, they could be of
little service to the league; and Tarentum manifested its wonted
delay.  While her antagonists were negotiating alliances, settling
treaties as to subsidies, and collecting mercenaries, Rome was acting.
The Senones were first made to feel how dangerous it was to gain a
victory over the Romans.  The consul Publius Cornelius Dolabella
advanced with a strong army into their territory; all that were not
put to the sword were driven forth from the land, and this tribe was
erased from the list of the Italian nations (471).  In the case of a
people subsisting chiefly on its flocks and herds such an expulsion
en masse was quite practicable; and the Senones thus expelled from
Italy probably helped to make up the Gallic hosts which soon after
inundated the countries of the Danube, Macedonia, Greece, and Asia
Minor.

The Boii

The next neighbours and kinsmen of the Senones, the Boii, terrified
and exasperated by a catastrophe which had been accomplished with so
fearful a rapidity, united instantaneously with the Etruscans, who
still continued the war, and whose Senonian mercenaries now fought
against the Romans no longer as hirelings, but as desperate avengers
of their native land.  A powerful Etrusco-Gallic army marched against
Rome to retaliate the annihilation of the Senonian tribe on the
enemy's capital, and to extirpate Rome from the face of the earth more
completely than had been formerly done by the chieftain of these same
Senones.  But the combined army was decidedly defeated by the Romans
at its passage of the Tiber in the neighbourhood of the Vadimonian
lake (471).  After they had once more in the following year risked a
general engagement near Populonia with no better success, the Boii
deserted their confederates and concluded a peace on their own account
with the Romans (472).  Thus the Gauls, the most formidable member of
the league, were conquered in detail before the league was fully
formed, and by that means the hands of Rome were left free to act
against Lower Italy, where during the years 469-471 the contest had
not been carried on with any vigour.  Hitherto the weak Roman army had
with difficulty maintained itself in Thurii against the Lucanians and
Bruttians; but now (472) the consul Gaius Fabricius Luscinus appeared
with a strong army in front of the town, relieved it, defeated the
Lucanians in a great engagement, and took their general Statilius
prisoner.  The smaller non-Doric Greek towns, recognizing the Romans
as their deliverers, everywhere voluntarily joined them.  Roman
garrisons were left behind in the most important places, in Locri,
Croton, Thurii, and especially in Rhegium, on which latter town the
Carthaginians seem also to have had designs.  Everywhere Rome had most
decidedly the advantage.  The annihilation of the Senones had given to
the Romans a considerable tract of the Adriatic coast.  With a view,
doubtless, to the smouldering feud with Tarentum and the already
threatened invasion of the Epirots, they hastened to make themselves
sure of this coast as well as of the Adriatic sea.  A burgess colony
was sent out (about 471) to the seaport of Sena (Sinigaglia), the
former capital of the Senonian territory; and at the same time a Roman
fleet sailed from the Tyrrhene sea into the eastern waters, manifestly
for the purpose of being stationed in the Adriatic and of protecting
the Roman possessions there.

Breach between Rome and Tarentum

The Tarentines since the treaty of 450 had lived at peace with Rome.
They had been spectators of the long struggle of the Samnites, and of
the rapid extirpation of the Senones; they had acquiesced without
remonstrance in the establishment of Venusia, Atria, and Sena, and in
the occupation of Thurii and of Rhegium.  But when the Roman fleet, on
its voyage from the Tyrrhene to the Adriatic sea, now arrived in the
Tarentine waters and cast anchor in the harbour of the friendly city,
the long, cherished resentment at length overflowed.  Old treaties,
which prohibited the war-vessels of Rome from sailing to the east of
the Lacinian promontory, were appealed to by popular orators in the
assembly of the citizens.  A furious mob fell upon the Roman ships of
war, which, assailed suddenly in a piratical fashion, succumbed after
a sharp struggle; five ships were taken and their crews executed
or sold into slavery; the Roman admiral himself had fallen in the
engagement.  Only the supreme folly and supreme unscrupulousness of
mob-rule can account for those disgraceful proceedings.  The treaties
referred to belonged to a period long past and forgotten; it is clear
that they no longer had any meaning, at least subsequently to the
founding of Atria and Sena, and that the Romans entered the bay on
the faith of the existing alliance; indeed, it was very much their
interest--as the further course of things showed--to afford the
Tarentines no sort of pretext for declaring war.  In declaring war
against Rome--if such was their wish--the statesmen of Tarentum were
only doing what they should have done long before; and if they
preferred to rest their declaration of war upon the formal pretext
of a breach of treaty rather than upon the real ground, no further
objection could be taken to that course, seeing that diplomacy has
always reckoned it beneath its dignity to speak the plain truth in
plain language.  But to make an armed attack upon the fleet without
warning, instead of summoning the admiral to retrace his course, was
a foolish no less than a barbarous act--one of those horrible
barbarities of civilization, when moral principle suddenly forsakes
the helm and the merest coarseness emerges in its room, as if to warn
us against the childish belief that civilization is able to extirpate
brutality from human nature.

And, as if what they had done had not been enough, the Tarentines
after this heroic feat attacked Thurii, the Roman garrison of which
capitulated in consequence of the surprise (in the winter of 472-473);
and inflicted: severe chastisement on the Thurines--the same, whom
Tarentine policy had abandoned to the Lucanians and thereby forcibly
constrained into surrender to Rome--for their desertion from the
Hellenic party to the barbarians.

Attempts at Peace

The barbarians, however, acted with a moderation which, considering
their power and the provocation they had received, excites
astonishment.  It was the interest of Rome to maintain as long as
possible the Tarentine neutrality, and the leading men in the senate
accordingly rejected the proposal, which a minority had with natural
resentment submitted, to declare war at once against the Tarentines.
In fact, the continuance of peace on the part of Rome was proffered on
the most moderate terms consistent with her honour--the release of the
captives, the restoration of Thurii, the surrender of the originators
of the attack on the fleet.  A Roman embassy proceeded with these
proposals to Tarentum (473), while at the same time, to add weight to
their words, a Roman army under the consul Lucius Aemilius advanced
into Samnium.  The Tarentines could, without forfeiting aught of
their independence, accept these terms; and considering the little
inclination for war in so wealthy a commercial city, the Romans had
reason to presume that an accommodation was still possible.  But the
attempt to preserve peace failed, whether through the opposition
of those Tarentines who recognized the necessity of meeting the
aggressions of Rome, the sooner the better, by a resort to arms,
or merely through the unruliness of the city rabble, which with
characteristic Greek naughtiness subjected the person of the envoy
to an unworthy insult.  The consul now advanced into the Tarentine
territory; but instead of immediately commencing hostilities, he
offered once more the same terms of peace; and, when this proved in
vain, he began to lay waste the fields and country houses, and he
defeated the civic militia.  The principal persons captured, however,
were released without ransom; and the hope was not abandoned that the
pressure of war would give to the aristocratic party ascendency in the
city and so bring about peace.  The reason of this reserve was, that
the Romans were unwilling to drive the city into the arms of the
Epirot king.  His designs on Italy were no longer a secret.  A
Tarentine embassy had already gone to Pyrrhus and returned without
having accomplished its object.  The king had demanded more than it
had powers to grant.  It was necessary that they should come to a
decision.  That the civic militia knew only how to run away from the
Romans, had been made sufficiently clear.  There remained only the
choice between a peace with Rome, which the Romans still were ready
to agree to on equitable terms, and a treaty with Pyrrhus on any
condition that the king might think proper; or, in other words, the
choice between submission to the supremacy of Rome, and subjection
to the --tyrannis-- of a Greek soldier.

Pyrrhus Summoned to Italy

The parties in the city were almost equally balanced.  At length the
ascendency remained with the national party--a result, that was due
partly to the justifiable predilection which led them, if they must
yield to a master at all, to prefer a Greek to a barbarian, but partly
also to the dread of the demagogues that Rome, notwithstanding the
moderation now forced upon it by circumstances, would not neglect on a
fitting opportunity to exact vengeance for the outrages perpetrated
by the Tarentine rabble.  The city, accordingly, came to terms with
Pyrrhus.  He obtained the supreme command of the troops of the
Tarentines and of the other Italians in arms against Rome, along with
the right of keeping a garrison in Tarentum.  The expenses of the war
were, of course, to be borne by the city.  Pyrrhus, on the other hand,
promised to remain no longer in Italy than was necessary; probably
with the tacit reservation that his own judgment should fix the time
during which he would be needed there.  Nevertheless, the prey had
almost slipped out of his hands.  While the Tarentine envoys--the
chiefs, no doubt, of the war party--were absent in Epirus, the state
of feeling in the city, now hard pressed by the Romans, underwent
a change.  The chief command was already entrusted to Agis, a man
favourable to Rome, when the return of the envoys with the concluded
treaty, accompanied by Cineas the confidential minister of Pyrrhus,
again brought the war party to the helm.

Landing of Pyrrhus

A firmer hand now grasped the reins, and put an end to the pitiful
vacillation.  In the autumn of 473 Milo, the general of Pyrrhus,
landed with 3000 Epirots and occupied the citadel of the town.
He was followed in the beginning of the year 474 by the king himself,
who landed after a stormy passage in which many lives were lost.
He transported to Tarentum a respectable but miscellaneous army,
consisting partly of the household troops, Molossians, Thesprotians,
Chaonians, and Ambraciots; partly of the Macedonian infantry and the
Thessalian cavalry, which Ptolemy king of Macedonia had conformably to
stipulation handed over to him; partly of Aetolian, Acarnanian, and
Athamanian mercenaries.  Altogether it numbered 20,000 phalangitae,
2000 archers, 500 slingers, 3000 cavalry, and 20 elephants, and thus
was not much smaller than the army with which fifty years before
Alexander had crossed the Hellespont

Pyrrhus and the Coalition

The affairs of the coalition were in no very favourable state when the
king arrived.  The Roman consul indeed, as soon as he saw the soldiers
of Milo taking the field against him instead of the Tarentine militia,
had abandoned the attack on Tarentum and retreated to Apulia; but,
with the exception of the territory of Tarentum, the Romans virtually
ruled all Italy.  The coalition had no army in the field anywhere in
Lower Italy; and in Upper Italy the Etruscans, who alone were still
in arms, had in the last campaign (473) met with nothing but defeat.
The allies had, before the king embarked, committed to him the chief
command of all their troops, and declared that they were able to place
in the field an army of 350,000 infantry and 20,000 cavalry.  The
reality formed a sad contrast to these great promises.  The army,
whose chief command had been committed to Pyrrhus, had still to be
created; and for the time being the main resources available for
forming it were those of Tarentum alone.  The king gave orders for
the enlisting of an army of Italian mercenaries with Tarentine money,
and called out the able-bodied citizens to serve in the war.  But the
Tarentines had not so understood the agreement.  They had thought to
purchase victory, like any other commodity, with money; it was a sort
of breach of contract, that the king should compel them to fight for
it themselves.  The more glad the citizens had been at first after
Milo's arrival to be quit of the burdensome service of mounting guard,
the more unwillingly they now rallied to the standards of the king:
it was necessary to threaten the negligent with the penalty of death.
This result now justified the peace party in the eyes of all, and
communications were entered into, or at any rate appeared to have been
entered into, even with Rome.  Pyrrhus, prepared for such opposition,
immediately treated Tarentum as a conquered city; soldiers were
quartered in the houses, the assemblies of the people and the numerous
clubs (--sussitia--) were suspended, the theatre was shut, the
promenades were closed, and the gates were occupied with Epirot
guards.  A number of the leading men were sent over the sea as
hostages; others escaped the like fate by flight to Rome.  These
strict measures were necessary, for it was absolutely impossible in
any sense to rely upon the Tarentines.  It was only now that the king,
in possession of that important city as a basis, could begin
operations in the field.

Preparations in Rome--
Commencement of the Conflict in Lower Italy

The Romans too were well aware of the conflict which awaited them.  In
order first of all to secure the fidelity of their allies or, in other
words, of their subjects, the towns that could not be depended on were
garrisoned, and the leaders of the party of independence, where it
seemed needful, were arrested or executed: such was the case with a
number of the members of the senate of Praeneste.  For the war itself
great exertions were made; a war contribution was levied; the full
contingent was called forth from all their subjects and allies; even
the proletarians who were properly exempt from obligation of service
were called to arms.  A Roman army remained as a reserve in the
capital.  A second advanced under the consul Tiberius Coruncanius
into Etruria, and dispersed the forces of Volci and Volsinii.  The
main force was of course destined for Lower Italy; its departure was
hastened as much as possible, in order to reach Pyrrhus while still
in the territory of Tarentum, and to prevent him and his forces from
forming a junction with the Samnites and other south Italian levies
that were in arms against Rome.  The Roman garrisons, that were placed
in the Greek towns of Lower Italy, were intended temporarily to check
the king's progress.  But the mutiny of the troops stationed in
Rhegium--one of the legions levied from the Campanian subjects of
Rome under a Campanian captain Decius--deprived the Romans of that
important town.  It was not, however, transferred to the hands of
Pyrrhus.  While on the one hand the national hatred of the Campanians
against the Romans undoubtedly contributed to produce this military
insurrection, it was impossible on the other hand that Pyrrhus, who
had crossed the sea to shield and protect the Hellenes, could receive
as his allies troops who had put to death their Rhegine hosts in their
own houses.  Thus they remained isolated, in close league with their
kinsmen and comrades in crime, the Mamertines, that is, the Campanian
mercenaries of Agathocles, who had by similar means gained possession
of Messana on the opposite side of the straits; and they pillaged and
laid waste for their own behoof the adjacent Greek towns, such as
Croton, where they put to death the Roman garrison, and Caulonia,
which they destroyed.  On the other hand the Romans succeeded, by
means of a weak corps which advanced along the Lucanian frontier and
of the garrison of Venusia, in preventing the Lucanians and Samnites
from uniting with Pyrrhus; while the main force--four legions as it
would appear, and so, with a corresponding number of allied troops, at
least 50,000 strong--marched against Pyrrhus, under the consul Publius
Laevinus.

Battle near Heraclea

With a view to cover the Tarentine colony of Heraclea, the king had
taken up a position with his own and the Tarentine troops between that
city and Pandosia (3) (474).  The Romans, covered by their cavalry,
forced the passage of the Siris, and opened the battle with a
vehement and successful cavalry charge; the king, who led his
cavalry in person, was thrown from his horse, and the Greek horsemen,
panic-struck by the disappearance of their leader, abandoned the field
to the squadrons of the enemy.  Pyrrhus, however, put himself at the
head of his infantry, and began a fresh and more decisive engagement.
Seven times the legions and the phalanx met in shock of battle, and
still the conflict was undecided.  Then Megacles, one of the best
officers of the king, fell, and, because on this hotly-contested day
he had worn the king's armour, the army for the second time believed
that the king had fallen; the ranks wavered; Laevinus already felt
sure of the victory and threw the whole of his cavalry on the flank of
the Greeks.  But Pyrrhus, marching with uncovered head through the
ranks of the infantry, revived the sinking courage of his troops.
The elephants which had hitherto been kept in reserve were brought up
to meet the cavalry; the horses took fright at them; the soldiers, not
knowing how to encounter the huge beasts, turned and fled; the masses
of disordered horsemen and the pursuing elephants at length broke the
compact ranks of the Roman infantry, and the elephants in concert with
the excellent Thessalian cavalry wrought great slaughter among the
fugitives.  Had not a brave Roman soldier, Gaius Minucius, the first
hastate of the fourth legion, wounded one of the elephants and thereby
thrown the pursuing troops into confusion, the Roman army would have
been extirpated; as it was, the remainder of the Roman troops
succeeded in retreating across the Siris.  Their loss was great; 7000
Romans were found by the victors dead or wounded on the field of
battle, 2000 were brought in prisoners; the Romans themselves stated
their loss, including probably the wounded carried off the field, at
15,000 men.  But Pyrrhus's army had suffered not much less: nearly
4000 of his best soldiers strewed the field of battle, and several of
his ablest captains had fallen.  Considering that his loss fell
chiefly on the veteran soldiers who were far more difficult to be
replaced than the Roman militia, and that he owed his victory only to
the surprise produced by the attack of the elephants which could not
be often repeated, the king, skilful judge of tactics as he was, may
well at an after period have described this victory as resembling a
defeat; although he was not so foolish as to communicate that piece of
self-criticism to the public--as the Roman poets afterwards invented
the story--in the inscription of the votive offering presented by him
at Tarentum.  Politically it mattered little in the first instance at
what sacrifices the victory was bought; the gain of the first battle
against the Romans was of inestimable value for Pyrrhus.  His talents
as a general had been brilliantly displayed on this new field of
battle, and if anything could breathe unity and energy into the
languishing league of the Italians, the victory of Heraclea could not
fail to do so.  But even the immediate results of the victory were
considerable and lasting.  Lucania was lost to the Romans: Laevinus
collected the troops stationed there and marched to Apulia, The
Bruttians, Lucanians, and Samnites joined Pyrrhus unmolested.  With
the exception of Rhegium, which pined under the oppression of the
Campanian mutineers, the whole of the Greek cities joined the king,
and Locri even voluntarily delivered up to him the Roman garrison; in
his case they were persuaded, and with reason, that they would not be
abandoned to the Italians.  The Sabellians and Greeks thus passed over
to Pyrrhus; but the victory produced no further effect.  The Latins
showed no inclination to get quit of the Roman rule, burdensome as it
might be, by the help of a foreign dynast.  Venusia, although now
wholly surrounded by enemies, adhered with unshaken steadfastness to
Rome.  Pyrrhus proposed to the prisoners taken on the Siris, whose
brave demeanour the chivalrous king requited by the most honourable
treatment, that they should enter his army in accordance with
the Greek fashion; but he learned that he was fighting not with
mercenaries, but with a nation.  Not one, either Roman or Latin,
took service with him.

Attempts at Peace

Pyrrhus offered peace to the Romans.  He was too sagacious a soldier
not to recognize the precariousness of his footing, and too skilled a
statesman not to profit opportunely by the moment which placed him in
the most favourable position for the conclusion of peace.  He now
hoped that under the first impression made by the great battle on the
Romans he should be able to secure the freedom of the Greek towns in
Italy, and to call into existence between them and Rome a series of
states of the second and third order as dependent allies of the new
Greek power; for such was the tenor of his demands: the release of all
Greek towns--and therefore of the Campanian and Lucanian towns in
particular--from allegiance to Rome, and restitution of the territory
taken from the Samnites, Daunians, Lucanians, and Bruttians, or in
other words especially the surrender of Luceria and Venusia.  If a
further struggle with Rome could hardly be avoided, it was not
desirable at any rate to begin it till the western Hellenes should
be united under one ruler, till Sicily should be acquired and perhaps
Africa be conquered.

Provided with such instructions, the Thessalian Cineas, the
confidential minister of Pyrrhus, went to Rome.  That dexterous
negotiator, whom his contemporaries compared to Demosthenes so far as
a rhetorician might be compared to a statesman and the minister of a
sovereign to a popular leader, had orders to display by every means
the respect which the victor of Heraclea really felt for his
vanquished opponents, to make known the wish of the king to come to
Rome in person, to influence men's minds in the king's favour by
panegyrics which sound so well in the mouth of an enemy, by earnest
flatteries, and, as opportunity offered, also by well-timed gifts--in
short to try upon the Romans all the arts of cabinet policy, as they
had been tested at the courts of Alexandria and Antioch.  The senate
hesitated; to many it seemed a prudent course to draw back a step and
to wait till their dangerous antagonist should have further entangled
himself or should be no more.  But the grey-haired and blind consular
Appius Claudius (censor 442, consul 447, 458), who had long withdrawn
from state affairs but had himself conducted at this decisive moment
to the senate, breathed the unbroken energy of his own vehement nature
with words of fire into the souls of the younger generation.  They
gave to the message of the king the proud reply, which was first heard
on this occasion and became thenceforth a maxim of the state, that
Rome never negotiated so long as there were foreign troops on Italian
ground; and to make good their words they dismissed the ambassador at
once from the city.  The object of the mission had failed, and
the dexterous diplomatist, instead of producing an effect by his
oratorical art, had on the contrary been himself impressed by such
manly earnestness after so severe a defeat--he declared at home that
every burgess in that city had seemed to him a king; in truth, the
courtier had gained a sight of a free people.

Pyrrhus Marches against Rome

Pyrrhus, who during these negotiations had advanced into Campania,
immediately on the news of their being broken off marched against
Rome, to co-operate with the Etruscans, to shake the allies of Rome,
and to threaten the city itself.  But the Romans as little allowed
themselves to be terrified as cajoled.  At the summons of the herald
"to enrol in the room of the fallen," the young men immediately after
the battle of Heraclea had pressed forward in crowds to enlist; with
the two newly-formed legions and the corps withdrawn from Lucania,
Laevinus, stronger than before, followed the march of the king.  He
protected Capua against him, and frustrated his endeavours to enter
into communications with Neapolis.  So firm was the attitude of the
Romans that, excepting the Greeks of Lower Italy, no allied state of
any note dared to break off from the Roman alliance.  Then Pyrrhus
turned against Rome itself.  Through a rich country, whose flourishing
condition he beheld with astonishment, he marched against Fregellae
which he surprised, forced the passage of the Liris, and reached
Anagnia, which is not more than forty miles from Rome.  No army
crossed his path; but everywhere the towns of Latium closed their
gates against him, and with measured step Laevinus followed him
from Campania, while the consul Tiberius Coruncanius, who had just
concluded a seasonable peace with the Etruscans, brought up a
second Roman army from the north, and in Rome itself the reserve was
preparing for battle under the dictator Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus.
In these circumstances Pyrrhus could accomplish nothing; no course was
left to him but to retire.  For a time he still remained inactive in
Campania in presence of the united armies of the two consuls; but no
opportunity occurred of striking an effective blow.  When winter came
on, the king evacuated the enemy's territory, and distributed his
troops among the friendly towns, taking up his own winter quarters in
Tarentum.  Thereupon the Romans also desisted from their operations.
The army occupied standing quarters near Firmum in Picenum, where by
command of the senate the legions defeated on the Siris spent the
winter by way of punishment under tents.

Second Year of the War

Thus ended the campaign of 474.  The separate peace which at the
decisive moment Etruria had concluded with Rome, and the king's
unexpected retreat which entirely disappointed the high-strung hopes
of the Italian confederates, counterbalanced in great measure the
impression of the victory of Heraclea.  The Italians complained of the
burdens of the war, particularly of the bad discipline of the
mercenaries quartered among them, and the king, weary of the petty
quarrelling and of the impolitic as well as unmilitary conduct of his
allies, began to have a presentiment that the problem which had fallen
to him might be, despite all tactical successes, politically
insoluble.  The arrival of a Roman embassy of three consulars,
including Gaius Fabricius the conqueror of Thurii, again revived in
him for a moment the hopes of peace; but it soon appeared that they
had only power to treat for the ransom or exchange of prisoners.
Pyrrhus rejected their demand, but at the festival of the Saturnalia
he released all the prisoners on their word of honour.  Their keeping
of that word, and the repulse by the Roman ambassador of an attempt at
bribery, were celebrated by posterity in a manner most unbecoming and
betokening rather the dishonourable character of the later, than the
honourable feeling of that earlier, epoch.

Battle of Ausculum

In the spring of 475 Pyrrhus resumed the offensive, and advanced into
Apulia, whither the Roman army marched to meet him.  In the hope of
shaking the Roman symmachy in these regions by a decisive victory, the
king offered battle a second time, and the Romans did not refuse it.
The two armies encountered each other near Ausculum (Ascoli di
Puglia).  Under the banners of Pyrrhus there fought, besides
his Epirot and Macedonian troops, the Italian mercenaries, the
burgess-force--the white shields as they were called--of Tarentum,
and the allied Lucanians, Bruttians, and Samnites--altogether 70,000
infantry, of whom 16,000 were Greeks and Epirots, more than 8000
cavalry, and nineteen elephants.  The Romans were supported on
that day by the Latins, Campanians, Volscians, Sabines, Umbrians,
Marrucinians, Paelignians, Frentanians, and Arpanians.  They too
numbered above 70,000 infantry, of whom 20,000 were Roman citizens,
and 8000 cavalry.  Both parties had made alterations in their military
system.  Pyrrhus, perceiving with the sharp eye of a soldier the
advantages of the Roman manipular organization, had on the wings
substituted for the long front of his phalanxes an arrangement by
companies with intervals between them in imitation of the cohorts,
and-- perhaps for political no less than for military reasons--had
placed the Tarentine and Samnite cohorts between the subdivisions of
his own men.  In the centre alone the Epirot phalanx stood in close
order.  For the purpose of keeping off the elephants the Romans
produced a species of war-chariot, from which projected iron poles
furnished with chafing-dishes, and on which were fastened moveable
masts adjusted with a view to being lowered, and ending in an iron
spike--in some degree the model of the boarding-bridges which were
to play so great a part in the first Punic war.

According to the Greek account of the battle, which seems less
one-sided than the Roman account also extant, the Greeks had the
disadvantage on the first day, as they did not succeed in deploying
their line along the steep and marshy banks of the river where they
were compelled to accept battle, or in bringing their cavalry and
elephants into action.  On the second day, however, Pyrrhus
anticipated the Romans in occupying the intersected ground, and thus
gained without loss the plain where he could without disturbance draw
up his phalanx.  Vainly did the Romans with desperate courage fall
sword in hand on the -sarissae-; the phalanx preserved an unshaken
front under every assault, but in its turn was unable to make any
impression on the Roman legions.  It was not till the numerous escort
of the elephants had, with arrows and stones hurled from slings,
dislodged the combatants stationed in the Roman war-chariots and had
cut the traces of the horses, and the elephants pressed upon the Roman
line, that it began to waver.  The giving way of the guard attached
to the Roman chariots formed the signal for universal flight, which,
however, did not involve the sacrifice of many lives, as the adjoining
camp received the fugitives.  The Roman account of the battle alone
mentions the circumstance, that during the principal engagement an
Arpanian corps detached from the Roman main force had attacked and
set on fire the weakly-guarded Epirot camp; but, even if this were
correct, the Romans are not at all justified in their assertion that
the battle remained undecided.  Both accounts, on the contrary, agree
in stating that the Roman army retreated across the river, and that
Pyrrhus remained in possession of the field of battle.  The number of
the fallen was, according to the Greek account, 6000 on the side of
the Romans, 3505 on that of the Greeks.(4)  Amongst the wounded was
the king himself, whose arm had been pierced with a javelin, while he
was fighting, as was his wont, in the thickest of the fray.  Pyrrhus
had achieved a victory, but his were unfruitful laurels; the victory
was creditable to the king as a general and as a soldier, but it
did not promote his political designs.  What Pyrrhus needed was a
brilliant success which should break up the Roman army and give an
opportunity and impulse to the wavering allies to change sides; but
the Roman army and the Roman confederacy still remained unbroken, and
the Greek army, which was nothing without its leader, was fettered for
a considerable time in consequence of his wound.  He was obliged to
renounce the campaign and to go into winter quarters; which the king
took up in Tarentum, the Romans on this occasion in Apulia.  It was
becoming daily more evident that in a military point of view the
resources of the king were inferior to those of the Romans, just as,
politically, the loose and refractory coalition could not stand a
comparison with the firmly-established Roman symmachy.  The sudden and
vehement style of the Greek warfare and the genius of the general
might perhaps achieve another such victory as those of Heraclea and
Ausculum, but every new victory was wearing out his resources for
further enterprise, and it was clear that the Romans already felt
themselves the stronger, and awaited with a courageous patience final
victory.  Such a war as this was not the delicate game of art that
was practised and understood by the Greek princes.  All strategical
combinations were shattered against the full and mighty energy of the
national levy.  Pyrrhus felt how matters stood: weary of his victories
and despising his allies, he only persevered because military honour
required him not to leave Italy till he should have secured his
clients from barbarian assault.  With his impatient temperament it
might be presumed that he would embrace the first pretext to get rid
of the burdensome duty; and an opportunity of withdrawing from Italy
was soon presented to him by the affairs of Sicily.

Relations of Sicily, Syracuse, and Carthage--
Pyrrhus Invited to Syracuse

After the death of Agathocles (465) the Greeks of Sicily were without
any leading power.  While in the several Hellenic cities incapable
demagogues and incapable tyrants were replacing each other, the
Carthaginians, the old rulers of the western point, were extending
their dominion unmolested.  After Agrigentum had surrendered to them,
they believed that the time had come for taking final steps towards
the end which they had kept in view for centuries, and for reducing
the whole island under their authority; they set themselves to attack
Syracuse.  That city, which formerly by its armies and fleets had
disputed the possession of the island with Carthage, had through
internal dissension and the weakness of its government fallen so low
that it was obliged to seek for safety in the protection of its walls
and in foreign aid; and none could afford that aid but king Pyrrhus.
Pyrrhus was the husband of Agathocles's daughter, and his son
Alexander, then sixteen years of age, was Agathocles's grandson.
Both were in every respect natural heirs of the ambitious schemes
of the ruler of Syracuse; and if her freedom was at an end, Syracuse
might find compensation in becoming the capital of a Hellenic empire
of the West.  So the Syracusans, like the Tarentines, and under
similar conditions, voluntarily offered their sovereignty to king
Pyrrhus (about 475); and by a singular conjuncture of affairs
everything seemed to concur towards the success of the magnificent
plans of the Epirot king, based as they primarily were on the
possession of Tarentum and Syracuse.

League between Rome and Carthage--
Third Year of the War

The immediate effect, indeed, of this union of the Italian and
Sicilian Greeks under one control was a closer concert also on the
part of their antagonists.  Carthage and Rome now converted their old
commercial treaties into an offensive and defensive league against
Pyrrhus (475), the tenor of which was that, if Pyrrhus invaded Roman
or Carthaginian territory, the party which was not attacked should
furnish that which was assailed with a contingent on its own territory
and should itself defray the expense of the auxiliary troops; that in
such an event Carthage should be bound to furnish transports and to
assist the Romans also with a war fleet, but the crews of that fleet
should not be obliged to fight for the Romans by land; that lastly,
both states should pledge themselves not to conclude a separate peace
with Pyrrhus.  The object of the Romans in entering into the treaty
was to render possible an attack on Tarentum and to cut off Pyrrhus
from his own country, neither of which ends could be attained without
the co-operation of the Punic fleet; the object of the Carthaginians
was to detain the king in Italy, so that they might be able without
molestation to carry into effect their designs on Syracuse.(5)  It was
accordingly the interest of both powers in the first instance to
secure the sea between Italy and Sicily.  A powerful Carthaginian
fleet of 120 sail under the admiral Mago proceeded from Ostia, whither
Mago seems to have gone to conclude the treaty, to the Sicilian
straits.  The Mamertines, who anticipated righteous punishment for
their outrage upon the Greek population of Messana in the event of
Pyrrhus becoming ruler of Sicily and Italy, attached themselves
closely to the Romans and Carthaginians, and secured for them the
Sicilian side of the straits.  The allies would willingly have brought
Rhegium also on the opposite coast under their power; but Rome could
not possibly pardon the Campanian garrison, and an attempt of the
combined Romans and Carthaginians to gain the city by force of arms
miscarried.  The Carthaginian fleet sailed thence for Syracuse and
blockaded the city by sea, while at the same time a strong Phoenician
army began the siege by land (476).  It was high time that Pyrrhus
should appear at Syracuse: but, in fact, matters in Italy were by no
means in such a condition that he and his troops could be dispensed
with there.  The two consuls of 476, Gaius Fabricius Luscinus, and
Quintus Aemilius Papus, both experienced generals, had begun the new
campaign with vigour, and although the Romans had hitherto sustained
nothing but defeat in this war, it was not they but the victors that
were weary of it and longed for peace.  Pyrrhus made another attempt
to obtain accommodation on tolerable terms.  The consul Fabricius had
handed over to the king a wretch, who had proposed to poison him on
condition of being well paid for it.  Not only did the king in token
of gratitude release all his Roman prisoners without ransom, but he
felt himself so moved by the generosity of his brave opponents that
he offered, by way of personal recompense, a singularly fair and
favourable peace.  Cineas appears to have gone once more to Rome, and
Carthage seems to have been seriously apprehensive that Rome might
come to terms.  But the senate remained firm, and repeated its former
answer.  Unless the king was willing to allow Syracuse to fall into
the hands of the Carthaginians and to have his grand scheme thereby
disconcerted, no other course remained than to abandon his Italian
allies and to confine himself for the time being to the occupation of
the most important seaports, particularly Tarentum and Locri.  In vain
the Lucanians and Samnites conjured him not to desert them; in vain
the Tarentines summoned him either to comply with his duty as their
general or to give them back their city.  The king met their
complaints and reproaches with the consolatory assurance that better
times were coming, or with abrupt dismissal.  Milo remained behind in
Tarentum; Alexander, the king's son, in Locri; and Pyrrhus, with his
main force, embarked in the spring of 476 at Tarentum for Syracuse.

Embarkation of Pyrrhus for Sicily--
The War in Italy Flags

By the departure of Pyrrhus the hands of the Romans were set free
in Italy; none ventured to oppose them in the open field, and their
antagonists everywhere confined themselves to their fastnesses or
their forests.  The struggle however was not terminated so rapidly as
might have been expected; partly in consequence of its nature as a
warfare of mountain skirmishes and sieges, partly also, doubtless,
from the exhaustion of the Romans, whose fearful losses are indicated
by a decrease of 17,000 in the burgess-roll from 473 to 479.  In 476
the consul Gaius Fabricius succeeded in inducing the considerable
Tarentine settlement of Heraclea to enter into a separate peace, which
was granted to it on the most favourable terms.  In the campaign of
477 a desultory warfare was carried on in Samnium, where an attack
thoughtlessly made on some entrenched heights cost the Romans many
lives, and thereafter in southern Italy, where the Lucanians and
Bruttians were defeated.  On the other hand Milo, issuing from
Tarentum, anticipated the Romans in their attempt to surprise Croton:
whereupon the Epirot garrison made even a successful sortie against
the besieging army.  At length, however, the consul succeeded by a
stratagem in inducing it to march forth, and in possessing himself
of the undefended town (477).  An incident of more moment was the
slaughter of the Epirot garrison by the Locrians, who had formerly
surrendered the Roman garrison to the king, and now atoned for one act
of treachery by another.  By that step the whole south coast came into
the hands of the Romans, with the exception of Rhegium and Tarentum.
These successes, however, advanced the main object but little.  Lower
Italy itself had long been defenceless; but Pyrrhus was not subdued so
long as Tarentum remained in his hands and thus rendered it possible
for him to renew the war at his pleasure, and the Romans could not
think of undertaking the siege of that city.  Even apart from the fact
that in siege-warfare, which had been revolutionized by Philip of
Macedonia and Demetrius Poliorcetes, the Romans were at a very decided
disadvantage when matched against an experienced and resolute Greek
commandant, a strong fleet was needed for such an enterprise, and,
although the Carthaginian treaty promised to the Romans support by
sea, the affairs of Carthage herself in Sicily were by no means in
such a condition as to enable her to grant that support.

Pyrrhus Master of Sicily

The landing of Pyrrhus on the island, which, in spite of the
Carthaginian fleet, had taken place without interruption, had changed
at once the aspect of matters there.  He had immediately relieved
Syracuse, had in a short time united under his sway all the free Greek
cities, and at the head of the Sicilian confederation had wrested
from the Carthaginians nearly their whole possessions.  It was with
difficulty that the Carthaginians could, by the help of their fleet
which at that time ruled the Mediterranean without a rival, maintain
themselves in Lilybaeum; it was with difficulty, and amidst constant
assaults, that the Mamertines held their ground in Messana.  Under
such circumstances, agreeably to the treaty of 475, it would have been
the duty of Rome to lend her aid to the Carthaginians in Sicily, far
rather than that of Carthage to help the Romans with her fleet to
conquer Tarentum; but on the side of neither ally was there much
inclination to secure or to extend the power of the other.  Carthage
had only offered help to the Romans when the real danger was past;
they in their turn had done nothing to prevent the departure of the
king from Italy and the fall of the Carthaginian power in Sicily.
Indeed, in open violation of the treaties Carthage had even proposed
to the king a separate peace, offering, in return for the undisturbed
possession of Lilybaeum, to give up all claim to her other Sicilian
possessions and even to place at the disposal of the king money and
ships of war, of course with a view to his crossing to Italy and
renewing the war against Rome.  It was evident, however, that with
the possession of Lilybaeum and the departure of the king the position
of the Carthaginians in the island would be nearly the same as it had
been before the landing of Pyrrhus; the Greek cities if left to
themselves were powerless, and the lost territory would be easily
regained.  So Pyrrhus rejected the doubly perfidious proposal, and
proceeded to build for himself a war fleet.  Mere ignorance and
shortsightedness in after times censured this step; but it was really
as necessary as it was, with the resources of the island, easy of
accomplishment.  Apart from the consideration that the master of
Ambracia, Tarentum, and Syracuse could not dispense with a naval
force, he needed a fleet to conquer Lilybaeum, to protect Tarentum,
and to attack Carthage at home as Agathocles, Regulus, and Scipio
did before or afterwards so successfully.  Pyrrhus never was so near
to the attainment of his aim as in the summer of 478, when he saw
Carthage humbled before him, commanded Sicily, and retained a
firm footing in Italy by the possession of Tarentum, and when the
newly-created fleet, which was to connect, to secure, and to augment
these successes, lay ready for sea in the harbour of Syracuse.

The Sicilian Government of Pyrrhus

The real weakness of the position of Pyrrhus lay in his faulty
internal policy.  He governed Sicily as he had seen Ptolemy rule in
Egypt: he showed no respect to the local constitutions; he placed
his confidants as magistrates over the cities whenever, and for as
long as, he pleased; he made his courtiers judges instead of the
native jurymen; he pronounced arbitrary sentences of confiscation,
banishment, or death, even against those who had been most active
in promoting his coming thither; he placed garrisons in the towns,
and ruled over Sicily not as the leader of a national league, but
as a king.  In so doing he probably reckoned himself according to
oriental-Hellenistic ideas a good and wise ruler, and perhaps he
really was so; but the Greeks bore this transplantation of the system
of the Diadochi to Syracuse with all the impatience of a nation that
in its long struggle for freedom had lost all habits of discipline;
the Carthaginian yoke very soon appeared to the foolish people more
tolerable than their new military government.  The most important
cities entered into communications with the Carthaginians, and even
with the Mamertines; a strong Carthaginian army ventured again to
appear on the island; and everywhere supported by the Greeks, it made
rapid progress.  In the battle which Pyrrhus fought with it fortune
was, as always, with the "Eagle"; but the circumstances served to show
what the state of feeling was in the island, and what might and must
ensue, if the king should depart.

Departure of Pyrrhus to Italy

To this first and most essential error Pyrrhus added a second; he
proceeded with his fleet, not to Lilybaeum, but to Tarentum.  It was
evident, looking to the very ferment in the minds of the Sicilians,
that he ought first of all to have dislodged the Carthaginians wholly
from the island, and thereby to have cut off the discontented from
their last support, before he turned his attention to Italy; in that
quarter there was nothing to be lost, for Tarentum was safe enough for
him, and the other allies were of little moment now that they had been
abandoned.  It is conceivable that his soldierly spirit impelled him
to wipe off the stain of his not very honourable departure in the year
476 by a brilliant return, and that his heart bled when he heard the
complaints of the Lucanians and Samnites.  But problems, such as
Pyrrhus had proposed to himself, can only be solved by men of iron
nature, who are able to control their feelings of compassion and even
their sense of honour; and Pyrrhus was not one of these.

Fall of the Sicilian Kingdom--
Recommencement of the Italian War

The fatal embarkation took place towards the end of 478.  On the
voyage the new Syracusan fleet had to sustain a sharp engagement with
that of Carthage, in which it lost a considerable number of vessels.
The departure of the king and the accounts of this first misfortune
sufficed for the fall of the Sicilian kingdom.  On the arrival of the
news all the cities refused to the absent king money and troops; and
the brilliant state collapsed even more rapidly than it had arisen,
partly because the king had himself undermined in the hearts of
his subjects the loyalty and affection on which every commonwealth
depends, partly because the people lacked the devotedness to
renounce freedom for perhaps but a short term in order to save
their nationality.  Thus the enterprise of Pyrrhus was wrecked, and
the plan of his life was ruined irretrievably; he was thenceforth an
adventurer, who felt that he had been great and was so no longer, and
who now waged war no longer as a means to an end, but in order to
drown thought amidst the reckless excitement of the game and to find,
if possible, in the tumult of battle a soldier's death.  Arrived on
the Italian coast, the king began by an attempt to get possession of
Rhegium; but the Campanians repulsed the attack with the aid of the
Mamertines, and in the heat of the conflict before the town the king
himself was wounded in the act of striking down an officer of the
enemy.  On the other hand he surprised Locri, whose inhabitants
suffered severely for their slaughter of the Epirot garrison, and he
plundered the rich treasury of the temple of Persephone there, to
replenish his empty exchequer.  Thus he arrived at Tarentum, it is
said with 20,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry.  But these were no longer
the experienced veterans of former days, and the Italians no longer
hailed them as deliverers; the confidence and hope with which they
had received the king five years before were gone; the allies were
destitute of money and of men.

Battle near Beneventum--
Pyrrhus Leaves Italy--
Death of Pyrrhus

The king took the field in the spring of 479 with the view of aiding
the hard-pressed Samnites, in whose territory the Romans had passed
the previous winter; and he forced the consul Manius Curius to give
battle near Beneventum on the -campus Arusinus-, before he could
form a junction with his colleague advancing from Lucania.  But the
division of the army, which was intended to take the Romans in flank,
lost its way during its night march in the woods, and failed to appear
at the decisive moment; and after a hot conflict the elephants again
decided the battle, but decided it this time in favour of the Romans,
for, thrown into confusion by the archers who were stationed to
protect the camp, they attacked their own people.  The victors
occupied the camp; there fell into their hands 1300 prisoners and four
elephants--the first that were seen in Rome--besides an immense spoil,
from the proceeds of which the aqueduct, which conveyed the water of
the Anio from Tibur to Rome, was subsequently built.  Without troops
to keep the field and without money, Pyrrhus applied to his allies who
had contributed to his equipment for Italy, the kings of Macedonia
and Asia; but even in his native land he was no longer feared, and
his request was refused.  Despairing of success against Rome and
exasperated by these refusals, Pyrrhus left a garrison in Tarentum,
and went home himself in the same year (479) to Greece, where some
prospect of gain might open up to the desperate player sooner than
amidst the steady and measured course of Italian affairs.  In fact,
he not only rapidly recovered the portion of his kingdom that had
been taken away, but once more grasped, and not without success, at
the Macedonian throne.  But his last plans also were thwarted by the
calm and cautious policy of Antigonus Gonatas, and still more by his
own vehemence and inability to tame his proud spirit; he still gained
battles, but he no longer gained any lasting success, and met his
death in a miserable street combat in Peloponnesian Argos (482).

Last Struggles in Italy--
Capture of Tarentum

In Italy the war came to an end with the battle of Beneventum; the
last convulsive struggles of the national party died slowly away.
So long indeed as the warrior prince, whose mighty arm had ventured
to seize the reins of destiny in Italy, was still among the living,
he held, even when absent, the stronghold of Tarentum against Rome.
Although after the departure of the king the peace party recovered
ascendency in the city, Milo, who commanded there on behalf of
Pyrrhus, rejected their suggestions and allowed the citizens
favourable to Rome, who had erected a separate fort for themselves
in the territory of Tarentum, to conclude peace with Rome as they
pleased, without on that account opening his gates.  But when after
the death of Pyrrhus a Carthaginian fleet entered the harbour, and
Milo saw that the citizens were on the point of delivering up the city
to the Carthaginians, he preferred to hand over the citadel to the
Roman consul Lucius Papirius (482), and by that means to secure a free
departure for himself and his troops.  For the Romans this was an
immense piece of good fortune.  After the experiences of Philip before
Perinthus and Byzantium, of Demetrius before Rhodes, and of Pyrrhus
before Lilybaeum, it may be doubted whether the strategy of that
period was at all able to compel the surrender of a town well
fortified, well defended, and freely accessible by sea; and how
different a turn matters might have taken, had Tarentum become to the
Phoenicians in Italy what Lilybaeum was to them in Sicily! What was
done, however, could not be undone.  The Carthaginian admiral, when he
saw the citadel in the hands of the Romans, declared that he had only
appeared before Tarentum conformably to the treaty to lend assistance
to his allies in the siege of the town, and set sail for Africa; and
the Roman embassy, which was sent to Carthage to demand explanations
and make complaints regarding the attempted occupation of Tarentum,
brought back nothing but a solemn confirmation on oath of that
allegation as to its ally's friendly design, with which accordingly
the Romans had for the time to rest content.  The Tarentines obtained
from Rome, presumably on the intercession of their emigrants, the
restoration of autonomy; but their arms and ships had to be given up
and their walls had to be pulled down.

Submission of Lower Italy

In the same year, in which Tarentum became Roman, the Samnites,
Lucanians, and Bruttians finally submitted.  The latter were obliged
to cede the half of the lucrative, and for ship-building important,
forest of Sila.

At length also the band that for ten years had sheltered themselves in
Rhegium were duly chastised for the breach of their military oath, as
well as for the murder of the citizens of Rhegium and of the garrison
of Croton.  In this instance Rome, while vindicating her own rights
vindicated the general cause of the Hellenes against the barbarians.
Hiero, the new ruler of Syracuse, accordingly supported the Romans
before Rhegium by sending supplies and a contingent, and in
combination with the Roman expedition against the garrison of Rhegium
he made an attack upon their fellow-countrymen and fellow-criminals,
the Mamertines of Messana.  The siege of the latter town was long
protracted.  On the other hand Rhegium, although the mutineers
resisted long and obstinately, was stormed by the Romans in 484; the
survivors of the garrison were scourged and beheaded in the public
market at Rome, while the old inhabitants were recalled and, as far as
possible, reinstated in their possessions.  Thus all Italy was, in
484, reduced to subjection.  The Samnites alone, the most obstinate
antagonists of Rome, still in spite of the official conclusion of
peace continued the struggle as "robbers," so that in 485 both
consuls had to be once more despatched against them.  But even the
most high-spirited national courage--the bravery of despair--comes
to an end; the sword and the gibbet at length carried quiet even
into the mountains of Samnium.

Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

For the securing of these immense acquisitions a new series of
colonies was instituted: Paestum and Cosa in Lucania (481); Beneventum
(486), and Aesernia (about 491) to hold Samnium in check; and, as
outposts against the Gauls, Ariminum (486), Firmum in Picenum (about
490), and the burgess colony of Castrum Novum.  Preparations were made
for the continuation of the great southern highway--which acquired in
the fortress of Beneventum a new station intermediate between Capua
and Venusia--as far as the seaports of Tarentum and Brundisium, and
for the colonization of the latter seaport, which Roman policy had
selected as the rival and successor of the Tarentine emporium.  The
construction of the new fortresses and roads gave rise to some further
wars with the small tribes, whose territory was thereby curtailed:
with the Picentes (485, 486), a number of whom were transplanted to
the district of Salernum; with the Sallentines about Brundisium (487,
488); and with the Umbrian Sassinates (487, 488), who seem to have
occupied the territory of Ariminum after the expulsion of the Senones.
By these establishments the dominion of Rome was extended over the
interior of Lower Italy, and over the whole Italian east coast from
the Ionian sea to the Celtic frontier.

Maritime Relations

Before we describe the political organization under which the Italy
which was thus united was governed on the part of Rome, it remains
that we should glance at the maritime relations that subsisted in the
fourth and fifth centuries.  At this period Syracuse and Carthage were
the main competitors for the dominion of the western waters.  On the
whole, notwithstanding the great temporary successes which Dionysius
(348-389), Agathocles (437-465), and Pyrrhus (476-478) obtained at
sea, Carthage had the preponderance and Syracuse sank more and more
into a naval power of the second rank.  The maritime importance of
Etruria was wholly gone;(6) the hitherto Etruscan island of Corsica,
if it did not quite pass into the possession, fell under the maritime
supremacy, of the Carthaginians.  Tarentum, which for a time had
played a considerable part, had its power broken by the Roman
occupation.  The brave Massiliots maintained their ground in their
own waters; but they exercised no material influence over the course
of events in those of Italy.  The other maritime cities hardly came
as yet into serious account.

Decline of the Roman Naval Power

Rome itself was not exempt from a similar fate; its own waters were
likewise commanded by foreign fleets.  It was indeed from the first
a maritime city, and in the period of its vigour never was so untrue
to its ancient traditions as wholly to neglect its war marine or so
foolish as to desire to be a mere continental power.  Latium furnished
the finest timber for ship-building, far surpassing the famed growths
of Lower Italy; and the very docks constantly maintained in Rome are
enough to show that the Romans never abandoned the idea of possessing
a fleet of their own.  During the perilous crises, however, which the
expulsion of the kings, the internal disturbances in the Romano-Latin
confederacy, and the unhappy wars with the Etruscans and Celts brought
upon Rome, the Romans could take but little interest in the state of
matters in the Mediterranean; and, in consequence of the policy of
Rome directing itself more and more decidedly to the subjugation of
the Italian continent, the growth of its naval power was arrested.
There is hardly any mention of Latin vessels of war up to the end of
the fourth century, except that the votive offering from the Veientine
spoil was sent to Delphi in a Roman vessel (360).  The Antiates indeed
continued to prosecute their commerce with armed vessels and thus,
as occasion offered, to practise the trade of piracy also, and the
"Tyrrhene corsair" Postumius, whom Timoleon captured about 415, may
certainly have been an Antiate; but the Antiates were scarcely to be
reckoned among the naval powers of that period, and, had they been so,
the fact must from the attitude of Antium towards Rome have been
anything but an advantage to the latter.  The extent to which the
Roman naval power had declined about the year 400 is shown by the
plundering of the Latin coasts by a Greek, presumably a Sicilian, war
fleet in 405, while at the same time Celtic hordes were traversing and
devastating the Latin land.(7)  In the following year (406), and
beyond doubt under the immediate impression produced by these serious
events, the Roman community and the Phoenicians of Carthage, acting
respectively for themselves and for their dependent allies, concluded
a treaty of commerce and navigation-- the oldest Roman document of
which the text has reached us, although only in a Greek
translation.(8)  In that treaty the Romans had to come under
obligation not to navigate the Libyan coast to the west of the Fair
Promontory (Cape Bon) excepting in cases of necessity.  On the other
hand they obtained the privilege of freely trading, like the natives,
in Sicily, so far as it was Carthaginian; and in Africa and Sardinia
they obtained at least the right to dispose of their merchandise at a
price fixed with the concurrence of the Carthaginian officials and
guaranteed by the Carthaginian community.  The privilege of free
trading seems to have been granted to the Carthaginians at least in
Rome, perhaps in all Latium; only they bound themselves neither to do
violence to the subject Latin communities,(9) nor, if they should set
foot as enemies on Latin soil, to take up their quarters for a night
on shore--in other words, not to extend their piratical inroads into
the interior--nor to construct any fortresses in the Latin land.

We may probably assign to the same period the already mentioned(10)
treaty between Rome and Tarentum, respecting the date of which we are
only told that it was concluded a considerable time before 472.  By it
the Romans bound themselves--for what concessions on the part of
Tarentum is not stated--not to navigate the waters to the east of
the Lacinian promontory; a stipulation by which they were thus wholly
excluded from the eastern basin of the Mediterranean.

Roman Fortification of the Coast

These were disasters no less than the defeat on the Allia, and the
Roman senate seems to have felt them as such and to have made use of
the favourable turn, which the Italian relations assumed soon after
the conclusion of the humiliating treaties with Carthage and Tarentum,
with all energy to improve its depressed maritime position.  The most
important of the coast towns were furnished with Roman colonies: Pyrgi
the seaport of Caere, the colonization of which probably falls within
this period; along the west coast, Antium in 415,(11) Tarracina in
425,(12) the island of Pontia in 441,(13) so that, as Ardea and
Circeii had previously received colonists, all the Latin seaports of
consequence in the territory of the Rutuli and Volsci had now become
Latin or burgess colonies; further, in the territory of the Aurunci,
Minturnae and Sinuessa in 459;(14) in that of the Lucanians, Paestum
and Cosa in 481;(15) and, on the coast of the Adriatic, Sena Gallica
and Castrum Novum about 471,(16) and Ariminum in 486;(17) to which
falls to be added the occupation of Brundisium, which took place
immediately after the close of the Pyrrhic war.  In the greater part
of these places--the burgess or maritime colonies(18)--the young men
were exempted from serving in the legions and destined solely for the
watching of the coasts.  The well judged preference given at the same
time to the Greeks of Lower Italy over their Sabellian neighbours,
particularly to the considerable communities of Neapolis, Rhegium,
Locri, Thurii, and Heraclea, and their similar exemption under the
like conditions from furnishing contingents to the land army,
completed the network drawn by Rome around the coasts of Italy.

But with a statesmanlike sagacity, from which the succeeding
generations might have drawn a lesson, the leading men of the Roman
commonwealth perceived that all these coast fortifications and coast
garrisons could not but prove inadequate, unless the war marine of
the state were again placed on a footing that should command respect.
Some sort of nucleus for this purpose was already furnished on the
subjugation of Antium (416) by the serviceable war-galleys which were
carried off to the Roman docks; but the enactment at the same time,
that the Antiates should abstain from all maritime traffic,(19) is a
very clear and distinct indication how weak the Romans then felt
themselves at sea, and how completely their maritime policy was still
summed up in the occupation of places on the coast.  Thereafter, when
the Greek cities of southern Italy, Neapolis leading the way in 428,
were admitted to the clientship of Rome, the war-vessels, which each
of these cities bound itself to furnish as a war contribution under
the alliance to the Romans, formed at least a renewed nucleus for a
Roman fleet.  In 443, moreover, two fleet-masters (-duoviri navales-)
were nominated in consequence of a resolution of the burgesses
specially passed to that effect, and this Roman naval force
co-operated in the Samnite war at the siege of Nuceria.(20)  Perhaps
even the remarkable mission of a Roman fleet of twenty-five sail to
found a colony in Corsica, which Theophrastus mentions in his "History
of Plants" written about 446, belongs to this period.  But how little
was immediately accomplished with all this preparation, is shown by
the renewed treaty with Carthage in 448.  While the stipulations of
the treaty of 406 relating to Italy and Sicily(21) remained unchanged,
the Romans were now prohibited not only from the navigation of the
eastern waters, but also from that of the Atlantic Ocean which was
previously permitted, as well as debarred from holding commercial
intercourse with the subjects of Carthage in Sardinia and Africa, and
also, in all probability, from effecting a settlement in Corsica;(22)
so that only Carthaginian Sicily and Carthage itself remained open
to their traffic.  We recognize here the jealousy of the dominant
maritime power, gradually increasing with the extension of the Roman
dominion along the coasts.  Carthage compelled the Romans to acquiesce
in her prohibitive system, to submit to be excluded from the seats of
production in the west and east (connected with which exclusion is the
story of a public reward bestowed on the Phoenician mariner who at the
sacrifice of his own ship decoyed a Roman vessel, steering after him
into the Atlantic Ocean, to perish on a sand-bank), and to restrict
their navigation under the treaty to the narrow space of the western
Mediterranean--and all this for the mere purpose of averting pillage
from their coasts and of securing their ancient and important trading
connection with Sicily.  The Romans were obliged to yield to these
terms; but they did not desist from their efforts to rescue their
marine from its condition of impotence.

Quaestors of the Fleet--
Variance between Rome and Carthage

A comprehensive measure with that view was the institution of four
quaestors of the fleet (-quaestores classici-) in 487: of whom the
first was stationed at Ostia the port of Rome; the second, stationed
at Cales then the capital of Roman Campania, had to superintend the
ports of Campania and Magna Graecia; the third, stationed at Ariminum,
superintended the ports on the other side of the Apennines; the
district assigned to the fourth is not known.  These new standing
officials were intended to exercise not the sole, but a conjoint,
guardianship of the coasts, and to form a war marine for their
protection.  The objects of the Roman senate--to recover their
independence by sea, to cut off the maritime communications of
Tarentum, to close the Adriatic against fleets coming from Epirus,
and to emancipate themselves from Carthaginian supremacy--were very
obvious.  Their already explained relations with Carthage during the
last Italian war discover traces of such views.  King Pyrrhus indeed
compelled the two great cities once more--it was for the last time
--to conclude an offensive alliance; but the lukewarmness and
faithlessness of that alliance, the attempts of the Carthaginians
to establish themselves in Rhegium and Tarentum, and the immediate
occupation of Brundisium by the Romans after the termination of the
war, show clearly how much their respective interests already came
into collision.

Rome and the Greek Naval Powers

Rome very naturally sought to find support against Carthage from the
Hellenic maritime states.  Her old and close relations of amity with
Massilia continued uninterrupted.  The votive offering sent by Rome
to Delphi, after the conquest of Veii, was preserved there in the
treasury of the Massiliots.  After the capture of Rome by the Celts
there was a collection in Massilia for the sufferers by the fire,
in which the city chest took the lead; in return the Roman senate
granted commercial advantages to the Massiliot merchants, and, at the
celebration of the games in the Forum assigned a position of honour
(-Graecostasis-) to the Massiliots by the side of the platform for the
senators.  To the same category belong the treaties of commerce and
amity concluded by the Romans about 448 with Rhodes and not long after
with Apollonia, a considerable mercantile town on the Epirot coast,
and especially the closer relation, so fraught with danger for
Carthage, which immediately after the end of the Pyrrhic war
sprang up between Rome and Syracuse.(23)

While the Roman power by sea was thus very far from keeping pace with
the immense development of their power by land, and the war marine
belonging to the Romans in particular was by no means such as from the
geographical and commercial position of the city it ought to have
been, yet it began gradually to emerge out of the complete nullity to
which it had been reduced about the year 400; and, considering the
great resources of Italy, the Phoenicians might well follow its
efforts with anxious eyes.

The crisis in reference to the supremacy of the Italian waters was
approaching; by land the contest was decided.  For the first time
Italy was united into one state under the sovereignty of the Roman
community.  What political prerogatives the Roman community on this
occasion withdrew from all the other Italian communities and took into
its own sole keeping, or in other words, what conception in state-law
is to be associated with this sovereignty of Rome, we are nowhere
expressly informed, and--a significant circumstance, indicating
prudent calculation--there does not even exist any generally current
expression for that conception.(24) The only privileges that
demonstrably belonged to it were the rights of making war, of
concluding treaties, and of coining money.  No Italian community could
declare war against any foreign state, or even negotiate with it, or
coin money for circulation.  On the other hand every declaration of
war made by the Roman people and every state-treaty resolved upon by
it were binding in law on all the other Italian communities, and the
silver money of Rome was legally current throughout all Italy.  It is
probable that the formulated prerogatives of the leading community
extended no further.  But to these there were necessarily attached
rights of sovereignty that practically went far beyond them.

The Full Roman Franchise

The relations, which the Italians sustained to the leading community,
exhibited in detail great inequalities.  In this point of view, in
addition to the full burgesses of Rome, there were three different
classes of subjects to be distinguished.  The full franchise itself,
in the first place, was extended as far as was possible, without
wholly abandoning the idea of an urban commonwealth as applied to the
Roman commune.  The old burgess-domain had hitherto been enlarged
chiefly by individual assignation in such a way that southern Etruria
as far as towards Caere and Falerii,(25) the districts taken from the
Hernici on the Sacco and on the Anio(26) the largest part of the
Sabine country(27) and large tracts of the territory formerly
Volscian, especially the Pomptine plain(28) were converted into land
for Roman farmers, and new burgess-districts were instituted mostly
for their inhabitants.  The same course had even already been taken
with the Falernian district on the Volturnus ceded by Capua.(29)  All
these burgesses domiciled outside of Rome were without a commonwealth
and an administration of their own; on the assigned territory there
arose at the most market-villages (-fora et conciliabula-).  In a
position not greatly different were placed the burgesses sent out
to the so-called maritime colonies mentioned above, who were likewise
left in possession of the full burgess-rights of Rome, and whose
self-administration was of little moment.  Towards the close of
this period the Roman community appears to have begun to grant full
burgess-rights to the adjoining communities of passive burgesses who
were of like or closely kindred nationality; this was probably done
first for Tusculum,(30) and so, presumably, also for the other
communities of passive burgesses in Latium proper, then at the end
of this period (486) was extended to the Sabine towns, which doubtless
were even then essentially Latinized and had given sufficient proof
of their fidelity in the last severe war.  These towns retained the
restricted self-administration, which under their earlier legal
position belonged to them, even after their admission into the Roman
burgess-union; it was they more than the maritime colonies that
furnished the model for the special commonwealths subsisting within
the body of Roman full burgesses and so, in the course of time, for
the Roman municipal organization.  Accordingly the range of the full
Roman burgesses must at the end of this epoch have extended northward
as far as the vicinity of Caere, eastward as far as the Apennines, and
southward as far as Tarracina; although in this case indeed we cannot
speak of boundary in a strict sense, partly because a number of
federal towns with Latin rights, such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia,
Norba, Circeii, were found within these bounds, partly because beyond
them the inhabitants of Minturnae, Sinuessa, of the Falernian
territory, of the town Sena Gallica and some other townships,
likewise possessed the full franchise, and families of Roman
farmers were presumably to be even now found scattered throughout
Italy, either isolated or united in villages.

Subject Communities

Among the subject communities the passive burgesses (-cives sine
suffragio-) apart from the privilege of electing and being elected,
stood on an equality of rights and duties with the full burgesses.
Their legal position was regulated by the decrees of the Roman comitia
and the rules issued for them by the Roman praetor, which, however,
were doubtless based essentially on the previous arrangements.
Justice was administered for them by the Roman praetor or his deputies
(-praefecti-) annually sent to the individual communities.  Those of
them in a better position, such as the city of Capua,(31) retained
self-administration and along with it the continued use of the native
language, and had officials of their own who took charge of the levy
and the census.  The communities of inferior rights such as Caere(32)
were deprived even of self-administration, and this was doubtless the
most oppressive among the different forms of subjection.  However, as
was above remarked, there is already apparent at the close of this
period an effort to incorporate these communities, at least so far
as they were -de facto- Latinized, among the full burgesses.

Latins

Among the subject communities the most privileged and most important
class was that of the Latin towns, which obtained accessions equally
numerous and important in the autonomous communities founded by Rome
within and even beyond Italy--the Latin colonies, as they were called
--and was always increasing in consequence of new settlements of the
same nature.  These new urban communities of Roman origin, but with
Latin rights, became more and more the real buttresses of the Roman
rule over Italy.  These Latins, however, were by no means those with
whom the battles of the lake Regillus and Trifanum had been fought.
They were not those old members of the Alban league, who reckoned
themselves originally equal to, if not better than, the community of
Rome, and who felt the dominion of Rome to be an oppressive yoke, as
the fearfully rigorous measures of security taken against Praeneste
at the beginning of the war with Pyrrhus, and the collisions that
evidently long continued to occur with the Praenestines in particular,
show.  This old Latium had essentially either perished or become
merged in Rome, and it now numbered but few communities politically
self-subsisting, and these, with the exception of Tibur and Praeneste,
throughout insignificant.  The Latium of the later times of
the republic, on the contrary, consisted almost exclusively of
communities, which from the beginning had honoured Rome as their
capital and parent city; which, settled amidst regions of alien
language and of alien habits, were attached to Rome by community of
language, of law, and of manners; which, as the petty tyrants of the
surrounding districts, were obliged doubtless to lean on Rome for
their very existence, like advanced posts leaning upon the main army;
and which, in fine, in consequence of the increasing material
advantages of Roman citizenship, were ever deriving very considerable
benefit from their equality of rights with the Romans, limited though
it was.  A portion of the Roman domain, for instance, was usually
assigned to them for their separate use, and participation in the
state leases and contracts was open to them as to the Roman burgess.
Certainly in their case also the consequences of the self-subsistence
granted to them did not wholly fail to appear.  Venusian inscriptions
of the time of the Roman republic, and Beneventane inscriptions
recently brought to light,(33) show that Venusia as well as Rome
had its plebs and its tribunes of the people, and that the chief
magistrates of Beneventum bore the title of consul at least about
the time of the Hannibalic war.  Both communities are among the most
recent of the Latin colonies with older rights: we perceive what
pretensions were stirring in them about the middle of the fifth
century.  These so-called Latins, issuing from the Roman burgess-body
and feeling themselves in every respect on a level with it, already
began to view with displeasure their subordinate federal rights and to
strive after full equalization.  Accordingly the senate had exerted
itself to curtail these Latin communities--however important they were
for Rome--as far as possible, in their rights and privileges, and to
convert their position from that of allies to that of subjects, so far
as this could be done without removing the wall of partition between
them and the non-Latin communities of Italy.  We have already
described the abolition of the league of the Latin communities
itself as well as of their former complete equality of rights,
and the loss of the most important political privileges belonging to
them.  On the complete subjugation of Italy a further step was taken,
and a beginning was made towards the restriction of the personal
rights--that had not hitherto been touched--of the individual Latin,
especially the important right of freedom of settlement.  In the case
of Ariminum founded in 486 and of all the autonomous communities
constituted afterwards, the advantage enjoyed by them, as compared
with other subjects, was restricted to their equalization with
burgesses of the Roman community so far as regarded private rights
--those of traffic and barter as well as those of inheritance.(34)
Presumably about the same time the full right of free migration
allowed to the Latin communities hitherto established--the title of
every one of their burgesses to gain by transmigration to Rome full
burgess-rights there--was, for the Latin colonies of later erection,
restricted to those persons who had attained to the highest office of
the community in their native home; these alone were allowed to
exchange their colonial burgess-rights for the Roman.  This clearly
shows the complete revolution in the position of Rome.  So long as
Rome was still but one among the many urban communities of Italy,
although that one might be the first, admission even to the
unrestricted Roman franchise was universally regarded as a gain for
the admitting community, and the acquisition of that franchise by
non-burgesses was facilitated in every way, and was in fact often
imposed on them as a punishment.  But after the Roman community became
sole sovereign and all the others were its servants, the state of
matters changed.  The Roman community began jealously to guard its
franchise, and accordingly put an end in the first instance to the old
full liberty of migration; although the statesmen of that period were
wise enough still to keep admission to the Roman franchise legally
open at least to the men of eminence and of capacity in the highest
class of subject communities.  The Latins were thus made to feel that
Rome, after having subjugated Italy mainly by their aid, had now no
longer need of them as before.

Non-Latin Allied Communities

Lastly, the relations of the non-Latin allied communities were
subject, as a matter of course, to very various rules, just as each
particular treaty of alliance had defined them.  Several of these
perpetual alliances, such as that with the Hernican communities,(35)
passed over to a footing of complete equalization with the Latin.
Others, in which this was not the case, such as those with
Neapolis(36), Nola(37), and Heraclea(38), granted rights
comparatively comprehensive; while others, such as the Tarentine
and Samnite treaties, may have approximated to despotism.

Dissolution of National Leagues--
Furnishing of Contingents

As a general rule, it may be taken for granted that not only the
Latin and Hernican national confederations--as to which the fact is
expressly stated--but all such confederations subsisting in Italy, and
the Samnite and Lucanian leagues in particular, were legally dissolved
or at any rate reduced to insignificance, and that in general no
Italian community was allowed the right of acquiring property or of
intermarriage, or even the right of joint consultation and resolution,
with any other.  Further, provision must have been made, under
different forms, for placing the military and financial resources of
all the Italian communities at the disposal of the leading community.
Although the burgess militia on the one hand, and the contingents of
the "Latin name" on the other, were still regarded as the main and
integral constituents of the Roman army, and in that way its national
character was on the whole preserved, the Roman -cives sine suffragio-
were called forth to join its ranks, and not only so, but beyond doubt
the non-Latin federate communities also were either bound to furnish
ships of war, as was the case with the Greek cities, or were placed on
the roll of contingent-furnishing Italians (-formula togatorum-),
as must have been ordained at once or gradually in the case of the
Apulians, Sabellians, and Etruscans.  In general this contingent,
like that of the Latin communities, appears to have had its numbers
definitely fixed, although, in case of necessity, the leading
community was not precluded from making a larger requisition.
This at the same time involved an indirect taxation, as every
community was bound itself to equip and to pay its own contingent.
Accordingly it was not without design that the supply of the most
costly requisites for war devolved chiefly on the Latin, or non-Latin
federate communities; that the war marine was for the most part kept
up by the Greek cities; and that in the cavalry service the allies,
at least subsequently, were called upon to furnish a proportion thrice
as numerous as the Roman burgesses, while in the infantry the old
principle, that the contingent of the allies should not be more
numerous than the burgess army, still remained in force for a long
time at least as the rule.

System of Government--
Division and Classification of the Subjects

The system, on which this fabric was constructed and kept together,
can no longer be ascertained in detail from the few notices that have
reached us.  Even the numerical proportions of the three classes of
subjects relatively to each other and to the full burgesses, can no
longer be determined even approximately;(39) and in like manner the
geographical distribution of the several categories over Italy is but
imperfectly known.  The leading ideas on which the structure was
based, on the other hand, are so obvious that it is scarcely necessary
specially to set them forth.  First of all, as we have already said,
the immediate circle of the ruling community was extended--partly
by the settlement of full burgesses, partly by the conferring of
passive burgess-rights--as far as was possible without completely
decentralizing the Roman community, which was an urban one and was
intended to remain so.  When the system of incorporation was extended
up to and perhaps even beyond its natural limits, the communities that
were subsequently added had to submit to a position of subjection; for
a pure hegemony as a permanent relation was intrinsically impossible.
Thus not through any arbitrary monopolizing of sovereignty, but
through the inevitable force of circumstances, by the side of the
class of ruling burgesses a second class of subjects took its place.
It was one of the primary expedients of Roman rule to subdivide the
governed by breaking up the Italian confederacies and instituting as
large a number as possible of comparatively small communities, and
to graduate the pressure of that rule according to the different
categories of subjects.  As Cato in the government of his household
took care that the slaves should not be on too good terms with one
another, and designedly fomented variances and factions among them,
so the Roman community acted on a great scale.  The expedient was not
generous, but it was effectual.

Aristocratic Remodelling of the Constitutions of the Italian
Communities

It was but a wider application of the same expedient, when in each
dependent community the constitution was remodelled after the Roman
pattern and a government of the wealthy and respectable families was
installed, which was naturally more or less keenly opposed to the
multitude and was induced by its material interests and by its wish
for local power to lean on Roman support.  The most remarkable
instance of this sort is furnished by the treatment of Capua, which
appears to have been from the first treated with suspicious precaution
as the only Italian city that could come into possible rivalry with
Rome.  The Campanian nobility received a privileged jurisdiction,
separate places of assembly, and in every respect a distinctive
position; indeed they even obtained not inconsiderable pensions
--sixteen hundred of them at 450 -stateres- (about 30 pounds)
annually--charged on the Campanian exchequer.  It was these Campanian
equites, whose refusal to take part in the great Latino-Campanian
insurrection of 414 mainly contributed to its failure, and whose brave
swords decided the day in favour of the Romans at Sentinum in 459;(40)
whereas the Campanian infantry at Rhegium was the first body of
troops that in the war with Pyrrhus revolted from Rome.(41) Another
remarkable instance of the Roman practice of turning to account for
their own interest the variances between the orders in the dependent
communities by favouring the aristocracy, is furnished by the
treatment which Volsinii met with in 489.  There, just as in Rome,
the old and new burgesses must have stood opposed to one another,
and the latter must have attained by legal means equality of political
rights.  In consequence of this the old burgesses of Volsinii resorted
to the Roman senate with a request for the restoration of their old
constitution--a step which the ruling party in the city naturally
viewed as high treason, and inflicted legal punishment accordingly on
the petitioners.  The Roman senate, however, took part with the old
burgesses, and, when the city showed no disposition to submit, not
only destroyed by military violence the communal constitution of
Volsinii which was In recognized operation, but also, by razing the
old capital of Etruria, exhibited to the Italians a fearfully palpable
proof of the mastery of Rome.

Moderation of the Government

But the Roman senate had the wisdom not to overlook the fact, that the
only means of giving permanence to despotism is moderation on the part
of the despots.  On that account there was left with, or conferred on,
the dependent communities an autonomy, which included a shadow of
independence, a special share in the military and political successes
of Rome, and above all a free communal constitution--so far as
the Italian confederacy extended, there existed no community of
Helots.  On that account also Rome from the very first, with a
clear-sightedness and magnanimity perhaps unparalleled in history,
waived the most dangerous of all the rights of government, the right
of taxing her subjects.  At the most tribute was perhaps imposed
on the dependent Celtic cantons: so far as the Italian confederacy
extended, there was no tributary community.  On that account, lastly,
while the duty of bearing arms was partially devolved on the subjects,
the ruling burgesses were by no means exempt from it; it is probable
that the latter were proportionally far more numerous than the body
of the allies; and in that body, again, probably the Latins as a whole
were liable to far greater demands upon them than the non-Latin
allied communities.  There was thus a certain reasonableness in the
appropriation by which Rome ranked first, and the Latins next to her,
in the distribution of the spoil acquired in war.

Intermediate Functionaries--
Valuation of the Empire

The central administration at Rome solved the difficult problem of
preserving its supervision and control over the mass of the Italian
communities liable to furnish contingents, partly by means of the four
Italian quaestorships, partly by the extension of the Roman censorship
over the whole of the dependent communities.  The quaestors of the
fleet,(42) along with their more immediate duty, had to raise
the revenues from the newly acquired domains and to control the
contingents of the new allies; they were the first Roman functionaries
to whom a residence and district out of Rome were assigned by law, and
they formed the necessary intermediate authority between the Roman
senate and the Italian communities.  Moreover, as is shown by the
later municipal constitution, the chief functionaries in every Italian
community,(43) whatever might be their title, had to undertake a
valuation every fourth or fifth year--an institution, the suggestion
of which must necessarily have emanated from Rome, and which can
only have been intended to furnish the senate with a view of the
resources in men and money of the whole of Italy, corresponding
to the census in Rome.

Italy and the Italians

Lastly, with this military administrative union of the whole peoples
dwelling to the south of the Apennines, as far as the Iapygian
promontory and the straits of Rhegium, was connected the rise of a
new name common to them all--that of "the men of the toga" (-togati-),
which was their oldest designation in Roman state law, or that of the
"Italians," which was the appellation originally in use among the
Greeks and thence became universally current.  The various nations
inhabiting those lands were probably first led to feel and own their
unity, partly through their common contrast to the Greeks, partly and
mainly through their common resistance to the Celts; for, although
an Italian community may now and then have made common cause with
the Celts against Rome and employed the opportunity to recover
independence, yet in the long run sound national feeling necessarily
prevailed.  As the "Gallic field" down to a late period stood
contrasted in law with the Italian, so the "men of the toga" were thus
named in contrast to the Celtic "men of the hose" (-braccati-); and it
is probable that the repelling of the Celtic invasions played an
important diplomatic part as a reason or pretext for centralizing
the military resources of Italy in the hands of the Romans.  Inasmuch
as the Romans on the one hand took the lead in the great national
struggle and on the other hand compelled the Etruscans, Latins,
Sabellians, Apulians, and Hellenes (within the bounds to be
immediately described) alike to fight under their standards, that
unity, which hitherto had been undefined and latent rather than
expressed, obtained firm consolidation and recognition in state law;
and the name -Italia-, which originally and even in the Greek authors
of the fifth century--in Aristotle for instance--pertained only to the
modern Calabria, was transferred to the whole land of these wearers of
the toga.

Earliest Boundaries of the Italian Confederacy

The earliest boundaries of this great armed confederacy led by Rome,
or of the new Italy, reached on the western coast as far as the
district of Leghorn south of the Arnus,(44) on the east as far as
the Aesis north of Ancona.  The townships colonized by Italians,
lying beyond these limits, such as Sena Gallica and Ariminum beyond
the Apennines, and Messana in Sicily, were reckoned geographically as
situated out of Italy--even when, like Ariminum, they were members of
the confederacy or even, like Sena, were Roman burgess communities.
Still less could the Celtic cantons beyond the Apennines be reckoned
among the -togati-, although perhaps some of them were already among
the clients of Rome.

First Steps towards the Latininzing of Italy--
New Position of Rome as a Great Power

The new Italy had thus become a political unity; it was also in
the course of becoming a national unity.  Already the ruling Latin
nationality had assimilated to itself the Sabines and Volscians and
had scattered isolated Latin communities over all Italy; these germs
were merely developed, when subsequently the Latin language became
the mother-tongue of every one entitled to wear the Latin toga.
That the Romans already clearly recognized this as their aim,
is shown by the familiar extension of the Latin name to the whole body
of contingent-furnishing Italian allies.(45)  Whatever can still be
recognized of this grand political structure testifies to the great
political sagacity of its nameless architects; and the singular
cohesion, which that confederation composed of so many and so
diversified ingredients subsequently exhibited under the severest
shocks, stamped their great work with the seal of success.  From the
time when the threads of this net drawn as skilfully as firmly around
Italy were concentrated in the hands of the Roman community, it was a
great power, and took its place in the system of the Mediterranean
states in the room of Tarentum, Lucania, and other intermediate
and minor states erased by the last wars from the list of political
powers.  Rome received, as it were, an official recognition of its new
position by means of the two solemn embassies, which in 481 were sent
from Alexandria to Rome and from Rome to Alexandria, and which, though
primarily they regulated only commercial relations, beyond doubt
prepared the way for a political alliance.  As Carthage was contending
with the Egyptian government regarding Cyrene and was soon to contend
with that of Rome regarding Sicily, so Macedonia was contending with
the former for the predominant influence in Greece, with the latter
proximately for the dominion of the Adriatic coasts.  The new
struggles, which were preparing on all sides, could not but influence
each other, and Rome, as mistress of Italy, could not fail to be drawn
into the wide arena which the victories and projects of Alexander the
Great had marked out as the field of conflict for his successors.




Notes for Book II Chapter VII


1.  The story that the Romans also sent envoys to Alexander at Babylon
on the testimony of Clitarchus (Plin. Hist. Nat. iii. 5, 57), from
whom the other authorities who mention this fact (Aristus and
Asclepiades, ap. Arrian, vii. 15, 5; Memnon, c. 25) doubtless derived
it.  Clitarchus certainly was contemporary with these events;
nevertheless, his Life of Alexander was decidedly a historical romance
rather than a history; and, looking to the silence of the trustworthy
biographers (Arrian, l. c.; Liv. ix. 18) and the utterly romantic
details of the account--which represents the Romans, for instance,
as delivering to Alexander a chaplet of gold, and the latter as
prophesying the future greatness of Rome--we cannot but set down this
story as one of the many embellishments which Clitarchus introduced
into the history.

2.  II. VI. Last Struggles of Samnium

3.  Near the modern Anglona; not to be confounded with the better
known town of the same name in the district of Cosenza.

4.  These numbers appear credible.  The Roman account assigns,
probably in dead and wounded, 15,000 to each side; a later one even
specifies 5000 as dead on the Roman, and 20,000 on the Greek side.
These accounts may be mentioned here for the purpose of exhibiting,
in one of the few instances where it is possible to check the
statement, the untrustworthiness--almost without exception--of the
reports of numbers, which are swelled by the unscrupulous invention
of the annalists with avalanche-like rapidity.

5.  The later Romans, and the moderns following them, give a version
of the league, as if the Romans had designedly avoided accepting the
Carthaginian help in Italy.  This would have been irrational, and the
facts pronounce against it.  The circumstance that Mago did not land
at Ostia is to be explained not by any such foresight, but simply by
the fact that Latium was not at all threatened by Pyrrhus and so did
not need Carthaginian aid; and the Carthaginians certainly fought for
Rome in front of Rhegium.

6.  II. IV. Victories of Salamis and Himera, and Their Effects

7.  II. IV. Fruitlessness of the Celtic Victory

8.  The grounds for assigning the document given in Polybius (iii. 22)
not to 245, but to 406, are set forth in my Rom. Chronologie, p. 320
f. [translated in the Appendix to this volume].

9.  II. V. Domination of the Romans; Exasperation of the Latins

10.  II. VII. Breach between Rome and Tarentum

11.  II. V. Colonization of the Volsci

12.  II. V. Colonization of the Volsci

13.  II.  VI. New Fortresses in Apulia and Campania

14.  II. VI. Last Struggles of Samnium

15.  II. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

16.  II. VII. The Boii

17.  II. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

18.  These were Pyrgi, Ostia, Antium, Tarracina, Minturnae, Sinuessa
Sena Gallica, and Castrum Novum.

19.  This statement is quite as distinct (Liv. viii. 14; -interdictum
mari Antiati populo est-) as it is intrinsically credible; for Antium
was inhabited not merely by colonists, but also by its former citizens
who had been nursed in enmity to Rome (II. V. Colonizations in The
Land Of The Volsci).  This view is, no doubt, inconsistent with the
Greek accounts, which assert that Alexander the Great (431) and
Demetrius Poliorcetes (471) lodged complaints at Rome regarding
Antiate pirates.  The former statement is of the same stamp, and
perhaps from the same source, with that regarding the Roman embassy to
Babylon (II. VII. Relations Between The East and West).  It seems more
likely that Demetrius Poliorcetes may have tried by edict to put down
piracy in the Tyrrhene sea which he had never set eyes upon, and it is
not at all inconceivable that the Antiates may have even as Roman
citizens, in defiance of the prohibition, continued for a time their
old trade in an underhand fashion: much dependence must not however,
be placed even on the second story.

20.  II. VI. Last Campaigns in Samnium

21.  II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power

22.  According to Servius (in Aen. iv. 628) it was stipulated in the
Romano-Carthaginian treaties, that no Roman should set foot on (or
rather occupy) Carthaginian, and no Carthaginian on Roman, soil, but
Corsica was to remain in a neutral position between them (-ut neque
Romani ad litora Carthaginiensium accederent neque Carthaginienses
ad litora Romanorum.....Corsica esset media inter Romanos et
Carthaginienses-).  This appears to refer to our present period,
and the colonization of Corsica seems to have been prevented by
this very treaty.

23.  II. VII. Submission of Lower Italy

24.  The clause, by which a dependent people binds itself "to uphold
in a friendly manner the sovereignty of that of Rome" (-maiestatem
populi Romani comiter conservare-), is certainly the technical
appellation of that mildest form of subjection, but it probably did
not come into use till a considerably later period (Cic. pro Balbo,
16, 35).  The appellation of clientship derived from private law,
aptly as in its very indefiniteness it denotes the relation (Dig.
xlix. 15, 7, i), was scarcely applied to it officially in earlier
times.

25.  II. IV. South Etruria Roman

26.  II. VI. Consolidation of the Roman Rule in Central Italy

27.  II. VI. Last Struggles of Samnium

28.  II. V. Complete Submission of the Volscian and Campanian
Provinces

29.  II. V. Complete Submission of the Volscian and Campanian
Provinces

30.  That Tusculum as it was the first to obtain passive
burgess-rights (II. V. Crises within the Romano-Latin League)
was also the first to exchange these for the rights of full burgesses,
is probable in itself and presumably it is in the latter and not in
the former respect that the town is named by Cicero (pro Mur. 8, 19)
-municipium antiquissimum-.

31.  II. V. Complete Submission of the Volscian and Campanian
Provinces

32.  II. IV. South Etruria Roman

33.  -V. Cervio A. f. cosol dedicavit- and -lunonei Quiritri sacra. C.
Falcilius L. f. consol dedicavit-.

34.  According to the testimony of Cicero (pro Caec. 35) Sulla gave to
the Volaterrans the former -ius- of Ariminum, that is--adds the
orator--the -ius- of the "twelve colonies" which had not the Roman
-civitas- but had full -commercium- with the Romans.  Few things have
been so much discussed as the question to what places this -ius- of
the twelve towns refers; and yet the answer is not far to seek.  There
were in Italy and Cisalpine Gaul--laying aside some places that soon
disappeared again--thirty-four Latin colonies established in all.
The twelve most recent of these--Ariminum, Beneventum, Firmum,
Aesernia, Brundisium, Spoletium, Cremona, Placentia, Copia, Valentia,
Bononia, and Aquileia--are those here referred to; and because
Ariminum was the oldest of these and the town for which this new
organization was primarily established, partly perhaps also because it
was the first Roman colony founded beyond Italy, the -ius- of these
colonies rightly took its name from Ariminum.  This at the same time
demonstrates the truth of the view--which already had on other grounds
very high probability--that all the colonies established in Italy (in
the wider sense of the term) after the founding of Aquileia belonged
to the class of burgess-colonies.

We cannot fully determine the extent to which the curtailment of the
rights of the more recent Latin towns was carried, as compared with
the earlier.  If intermarriage, as is not improbable but is in fact
anything but definitely established (i. 132; Diodor. p. 590, 62, fr.
Vat. p. 130, Dind.), formed a constituent element of the original
federal equality of rights, it was, at any rate, no longer conceded
to the Latin colonies of more recent origin.

35.  II. V. League with the Hernici

36.  II. VI. Pacification of Campania

37.  II. VI. Victory of the Romans

38.  II. VII. The War in Italy Flags

39.  It is to be regretted that we are unable to give satisfactory
information as to the proportional numbers.  We may estimate the
number of Roman burgesses capable of bearing arms in the later regal
period as about 20,000.  (I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform) Now
from the fall of Alba to the conquest of Veii the immediate territory
of Rome received no material extension; in perfect accordance with
which we find that from the first institution of the twenty-one tribes
about 259, (II. II. Coriolanus) which involved no, or at any rate no
considerable, extension of the Roman bounds, no new tribes were
instituted till 367.  However abundant allowance we make for increase
by the excess of births over deaths, by immigration, and by
manumissions, it is absolutely impossible to reconcile with the narrow
limits of a territory of hardly 650 square miles the traditional
numbers of the census, according to which the number of Roman
burgesses capable of bearing arms in the second half of the third
century varied between 104,000 and 150,000, and in 362, regarding
which a special statement is extant, amounted to 152,573.  These
numbers must rather stand on a parallel with the 84,700 burgesses of
the Servian census; and in general the whole earlier census-lists,
carried back to the four lustres of Servius Tullius and furnished with
copious numbers, must belong to the class of those apparently
documentary traditions which delight in, and betray themselves
by the very fact of, such numerical details.

It was only with the second half of the fourth century that the large
extensions of territory, which must have suddenly and considerably
augmented the burgess roll, began.  It is reported on trustworthy
authority and is intrinsically credible, that about 416 the Roman
burgesses numbered 165,000; which very well agrees with the statement
that ten years previously, when the whole militia was called out
against Latium and the Gauls, the first levy amounted to ten legions,
that is, to 50,000 men.  Subsequently to the great extensions of
territory in Etruria, Latium, and Campania, in the fifth century the
effective burgesses numbered, on an average, 250,000; immediately
before the first Punic war, 280,000 to 290,000.  These numbers are
certain enough, but they are not quite available historically for
another reason, namely, that in them probably the Roman full burgesses
and the "burgesses without vote" not serving, like the Campanians, in
legions of their own, --such, e. g., as the Caerites, --are included
together in the reckoning, while the latter must at any rate -de
facto- be counted among the subjects (Rom. Forsch. ii. 396).

40.  II. VI. Battle of Sentinum

41.  II. VII. Commencement of the Conflict in Lower Italy

42.  II. VII. Quaestors of the Fleet

43.  Not merely in every Latin one; for the censorship or so-called
-quinquennalitas- occurs, as is well known, also among communities
whose constitution was not formed according to the Latin scheme.

44.  This earliest boundary is probably indicated by the two small
townships -Ad fines-, of which one lay north of Arezzo on the road
to Florence, the second on the coast not far from Leghorn.  Somewhat
further to the south of the latter, the brook and valley of Vada are
still called -Fiume della fine-, -Valle della fine- (Targioni
Tozzetti, Viaggj, iv. 430).

45.  In strict official language, indeed, this was not the case.
The fullest designation of the Italians occurs in the agrarian law of
643, line 21; -[ceivis] Romanus sociumve nominisve Latini, quibus ex
formula togatorum [milites in terra Italia imperare solent]-; in like
manner at the 29th line of the same -peregrinus- is distinguished from
the -Latinus-, and in the decree of the senate as to the Bacchanalia
in 568 the expression is used: -ne quis ceivis Romanus neve nominis
Latini neve socium quisquam-.  But in common use very frequently the
second or third of these three subdivisions is omitted, and along
with the Romans sometimes only those Latini nominis are mentioned,
sometimes only the -socii- (Weissenborn on Liv. xxii. 50, 6), while
there is no difference in the meaning.  The designation -homines
nominis Latini ac socii Italici- (Sallust. Jug. 40), correct as it is
in itself, is foreign to the official -usus loquendi, which knows
-Italia-, but not -Italici-.




CHAPTER VIII

Law, Religion, Military System, Economic Condition, Nationality


Development of Law

In the development which law underwent during this period within the
Roman community, probably the most important material innovation was
that peculiar control which the community itself, and in a subordinate
degree its office-bearers, began to exercise over the manners and
habits of the individual burgesses.  The germ of it is to be sought in
the right of the magistrate to inflict property-fines (-multae-) for
offences against order.(1)  In the case of all fines of more than two
sheep and thirty oxen or, after the cattle-fines had been by the
decree of the people in 324 commuted into money, of more than 3020
libral -asses- (30 pounds), the decision soon after the expulsion of
the kings passed by way of appeal into the hands of the community;(2)
and thus procedure by fine acquired an importance which it was far
from originally possessing.  Under the vague category of offences
against order men might include any accusations they pleased, and by
the higher grades in the scale of fines they might accomplish whatever
they desired.  The dangerous character of such arbitrary procedure was
brought to light rather than obviated by the mitigating proviso, that
these property-fines, where they were not fixed by law at a definite
sum, should not amount to half the estate belonging to the person
fined.  To this class belonged the police-laws, which from the earliest
times were especially abundant in the Roman community.  Such were those
enactments of the Twelve Tables, which prohibited the anointing of a
dead body by persons hired for the purpose, the dressing it out with
more than one cushion or more than three purple-edged coverings, the
decorating it with gold or gaudy chaplets, the use of dressed wood for
the funeral pile, and the perfuming or sprinkling of the pyre with
frankincense or myrrh-wine; which limited the number of flute-players
in the funeral procession to ten at most; and which forbade wailing
women and funeral banquets--in a certain measure the earliest Roman
legislation against luxury.  Such also were the laws--originating
in the conflicts of the orders--directed against usury as well as
against an undue use of the common pasture and a disproportionate
appropriation of the occupiable domain-land.  But far more fraught
with danger than these and similar fining-laws, which at any rate
formulated once for all the trespass and often also the measure of
punishment, was the general prerogative of every magistrate who
exercised jurisdiction to inflict a fine for an offence against order,
and, if the fine reached the amount necessary to found an appeal and
the person fined did not submit to the penalty, to bring the case
before the community.  Already in the course of the fifth century
quasi-criminal proceedings had been in this way instituted against
immorality of life both in men and women, against the forestalling of
grain, witchcraft, and similar matters.  Closely akin to this was the
quasi-jurisdiction of the censors, which likewise sprang up at this
period.  They were invested with authority to adjust the Roman budget
and the burgess-roll, and they availed themselves of it, partly to
impose of their own accord taxes on luxury which differed only in form
from penalties on it, partly to abridge or withdraw the political
privileges of the burgess who was reported to have been guilty of any
infamous action.(3)  The extent to which this surveillance was already
carried is shown by the fact that penalties of this nature were
inflicted for the negligent cultivation of a man's own land, and that
such a man as Publius Cornelius Rufinus (consul in 464, 477) was
struck off the list of senators by the censors of 479, because he
possessed silver plate to the value of 3360 sesterces (34 pounds).
No doubt, according to the rule generally applicable to the edicts of
magistrates,(4) the sentences of the censors had legal force only
during their censorship, that is on an average for the next five
years, and might be renewed or not by the next censors at pleasure.
Nevertheless this censorial prerogative was of so immense importance,
that in virtue of it the censorship, originally a subordinate
magistracy, became in rank and consideration the first of all.(5)
The government of the senate rested essentially on this twofold
police control supreme and subordinate, vested in the community and
its officials, and furnished with powers as extensive as they were
arbitrary.  Like every such arbitrary government, it was productive
of much good and much evil, and we do not mean to combat the view of
those who hold that the evil preponderated.  But we must not forget
that--amidst the morality external certainly but stern and energetic,
and the powerful enkindling of public spirit, that were the genuine
characteristics of this period--these institutions remained exempt
as yet from any really base misuse; and if they were the chief
instruments in repressing individual freedom, they were also the means
by which the public spirit and the good old manners and order of the
Roman community were with might and main upheld.

Modifications in the Laws

Along with these changes a humanizing and modernizing tendency showed
itself slowly, but yet clearly enough, in the development of Roman
law.  Most of the enactmerits of the Twelve Tables, which coincide with
the laws of Solon and therefore may with reason be considered as in
substance innovations, bear this character; such as the securing the
right of free association and the autonomy of the societies that
originated under it; the enactment that forbade the ploughing up of
boundary-balks; and the mitigation of the punishment of theft, so that
a thief not caught in the act might henceforth release himself from
the plaintiff's suit by payment of double compensation.  The law of
debt was modified in a similar sense, but not till upwards of a
century afterwards, by the Poetelian law.(6)  The right freely to
dispose of property, which according to the earliest Roman law was
accorded to the owner in his lifetime but in the case of death had
hitherto been conditional on the consent of the community, was
liberated from this restriction, inasmuch as the law of the Twelve
Tables or its interpretation assigned to the private testament the
same force as pertained to that confirmed in the curies.  This was
an important step towards the breaking up of the clanships, and
towards the full carrying out of individual liberty in the disposal
of property.  The fearfully absolute paternal power was restricted by
the enactment, that a son thrice sold by his father should not relapse
into his power, but should thenceforth be free; to which--by a legal
inference that, strictly viewed, was no doubt absurd--was soon
attached the possibility that a father might voluntarily divest
himself of dominion over his son by emancipation.  In the law of
marriage civil marriage was permitted;(7) and although the full
marital power was associated as necessarily with a true civil as with
a true religious marriage, yet the permission of a connection instead
of marriage,(8) formed without that power, constituted a first step
towards relaxation of the full power of the husband.  The first step
towards a legal enforcement of married life was the tax on old
bachelors (-aes uxorium-) with the introduction of which Camillus
began his public career as censor in 351.

Administration of Justice--
Code of Common Law--
New Judicial Functionaries

Changes more comprehensive than those effected in the law itself were
introduced into--what was more important in a political point of view,
and more easily admitted of alteration--the system of judicial
administration.  First of all came the important limitation of the
supreme judicial power by the embodiment of the common law in a
written code, and the obligation of the magistrate thenceforth to
decide no longer according to varying usage, but according to the
written letter, in civil as well as in criminal procedure (303, 304).
The appointment of a supreme magistrate in Rome exclusively for the
administration of justice in 387,(9) and the establishment of
separate police functionaries which took place contemporaneously
in Rome, and was imitated under Roman influence in all the Latin
communities,(10) secured greater speed and precision of justice.
These police-magistrates or aediles had, of course, a certain
jurisdiction at the same time assigned to them.  On the one hand,
they were the ordinary civil judges for sales concluded in open
market, for the cattle and slave markets in particular; and on
the other hand, they ordinarily acted in processes of fines and
amercements as judges of first instance or--which was in Roman
law the same thing--as public prosecutors.  In consequence of this the
administration of the laws imposing fines, and the equally indefinite
and politically important right of fining in general, were vested
mainly in them.  Similar but subordinate functions, having especial
reference to the poorer classes, pertained to the three night--or
blood-masters (-tres viri nocturni- or -capitales-), first nominated
in 465; they were entrusted with the duties of nocturnal police as
regards fire and the public safety and with the superintendence of
executions, with which a certain summary jurisdiction was very soon,
perhaps even from the outset, associated.(11)  Lastly from the
increasing extent of the Roman community it became necessary, out of
regard to the convenience of litigants, to station in the more remote
townships special judges competent to deal at least with minor civil
causes.  This arrangement was the rule for the communities of burgesses
-sine suffragio-,(12) and was perhaps even extended to the more
remote communities of full burgesses,(13)--the first germs of a
Romano-municipal jurisdiction developing itself by the side of that
which was strictly Roman.

Changes in Procedure

In civil procedure (which, however, according to the ideas of that
period included most of the crimes committed against fellow-citizens)
the division of a process into the settlement of the question of law
before the magistrate (-ius-), and the decision of the question of
fact by a private person nominated by the magistrate (-iudicium-)
--a division doubtless customary even in earlier times--was on
the abolition of the monarchy prescribed by law;(14) and to that
separation the private law of Rome was mainly indebted for its logical
clearness and practical precision.(15)  In actions regarding property,
the decision as to what constituted possession, which hitherto had
been left to the arbitrary caprice of the magistrate, was subjected
gradually to legal rules; and, alongside of the law of property, a law
of possession was developed--another step, by which the magisterial
authority lost an important part of its powers.  In criminal processes,
the tribunal of the people, which hitherto had exercised the
prerogative of mercy, became a court of legally secured appeal.  If the
accused after hearing (-quaestio-) was condemned by the magistrate and
appealed to the burgesses, the magistrate proceeded in presence of
these to the further hearing (-anquisitio-) and, when he after three
times discussing the matter before the community had repeated his
decision, in the fourth diet the sentence was confirmed or rejected
by the burgesses.  Modification was not allowed.  A similar republican
spirit breathed in the principles, that the house protected the
burgess, and that an arrest could only take place out of doors; that
imprisonment during investigation was to be avoided; and that it
was allowable for every accused and not yet condemned burgess by
renouncing his citizenship to withdraw from the consequences of
condemnation, so far as they affected not his property but his
person-principles, which certainly were not embodied in formal laws
and accordingly did not legally bind the prosecuting magistrate, but
yet were by their moral weight of the greatest influence, particularly
in limiting capital punishment.  But, if the Roman criminal law
furnishes a remarkable testimony to the strong public spirit and to
the increasing humanity of this epoch, it on the other hand suffered
in its practical working from the struggles between the orders, which
in this respect were specially baneful.  The co-ordinate primary
jurisdiction of all the public magistrates in criminal cases, that
arose out of these conflicts,(16) led to the result, that there was
no longer any fixed authority for giving instructions, or any serious
preliminary investigation, in Roman criminal procedure.  And, as the
ultimate criminal jurisdiction was exercised in the forms and by
the organs of legislation, and never disowned its origin from the
prerogative of mercy; as, moreover, the treatment of police fines had
an injurious reaction on the criminal procedure which was externally
very similar; the decision in criminal causes was pronounced--and that
not so much by way of abuse, as in some degree by virtue of the
constitution--not according to fixed law, but according to the
arbitrary pleasure of the judges.  In this way the Roman criminal
procedure was completely void of principle, and was degraded into
the sport and instrument of political parties; which can the less be
excused, seeing that this procedure, while especially applied to
political crimes proper, was applicable also to others, such as murder
and arson.  The evil was aggravated by the clumsiness of that
procedure, which, in concert with the haughty republican contempt for
non-burgesses, gave rise to a growing custom of tolerating, side by
side with the more formal process, a summary criminal, or rather
police, procedure against slaves and common people.  Here too the
passionate strife regarding political processes overstepped natural
limits, and introduced institutions which materially contributed to
estrange the Romans step by step from the idea of a fixed moral order
in the administration of justice.

Religion--
New Gods

We are less able to trace the progress of the religious conceptions of
the Romans during this epoch.  In general they adhered with simplicity
to the simple piety of their ancestors, and kept equally aloof from
superstition and from unbelief.  How vividly the idea of spiritualizing
all earthly objects, on which the Roman religion was based, still
prevailed at the close of this epoch, is shown by the new "God of
silver" (-Argentinus-), who presumably came into existence only in
consequence of the introduction of the silver currency in 485, and who
naturally was the son of the older "God of copper" (-Aesculanus-).

The relations to foreign lands were the same as heretofore; but here,
and here especially, Hellenic influences were on the increase.  It was
only now that temples began to rise in Rome itself in honour of the
Hellenic gods.  The oldest was the temple of Castor and Pollux, which
had been vowed in the battle at lake Regillus(17) and was consecrated
on 15th July 269.  The legend associated with it, that two youths of
superhuman size and beauty had been seen fighting on the battle-field
in the ranks of the Romans and immediately after the battle watering
their foaming steeds in the Roman Forum at the fountain of luturna,
and announcing the great victory, bears a stamp thoroughly un-Roman,
and was beyond doubt at a very early period modelled on the appearance
of the Dioscuri--similar down to its very details--in the famous
battle fought about a century before between the Crotoniates and
Locrians at the river Sagras.  The Delphic Apollo too was not only
consulted--as was usual with all peoples that felt the influence of
Grecian culture--and presented moreover after special successes, such
as the capture of Veii, with a tenth of the spoil (360), but also had
a temple built for him in the city (323, renewed 401).  The same honour
was towards the close of this period accorded to Aphrodite (459), who
was in some enigmatical way identified with the old Roman garden
goddess, Venus;(18) and to Asklapios or Aesculapius, who was obtained
by special request from Epidaurus in the Peloponnesus and solemnly
conducted to Rome (463).  Isolated complaints were heard in serious
emergencies as to the intrusion of foreign superstition, presumably
the art of the Etruscan -haruspices- (as in 326); but in such cases
the police did not fail to take proper cognisance of the matter.

In Etruria on the other hand, while the nation stagnated and decayed
in political nullity and indolent opulence, the theological monopoly
of the nobility, stupid fatalism, wild and meaningless mysticism, the
system of soothsaying and of mendicant prophecy gradually developed
themselves, till they reached the height at which we afterwards find
them.

Sacerdotal System

In the sacerdotal system no comprehensive changes, so far as we know,
took place.  The more stringent enactments, that were made about 465
regarding the collection of the process-fines destined to defray the
cost of public worship, point to an increase in the ritual budget of
the state--a necessary result of the increase in the number of its
gods and its temples.  It has already been mentioned as one of the evil
effects of the dissensions between the orders that an illegitimate
influence began to be conceded to the colleges of men of lore, and
that they were employed for the annulling of political acts(19)--a
course by which on the one hand the faith of the people was shaken,
and on the other hand the priests were permitted to exercise a very
injurious influence on public affairs.

Military System--
Manipular Legion--
Entrenchment of Camp--
Cavalry--
Officers--
Military Discipline--
Training and Classes of Soldiers--
Military Value of the Manipular Legion

A complete revolution occurred during this epoch in the military
system.  The primitive Graeco-Italian military organization, which was
probably based, like the Homeric, on the selection of the most
distinguished and effective warriors--who ordinarily fought on
horseback--to form a special vanguard, had in the later regal period
been superseded by the -legio--the old Dorian phalanx of hoplites,
probably eight file deep.(20)  This phalanx thenceforth undertook the
chief burden of the battle, while the cavalry were stationed on the
flanks, and, mounted or dismounted according to circumstances, were
chiefly employed as a reserve.  From this arrangement there were
developed nearly at the same time the phalanx of -sarrissae-in
Macedonia and the manipular arrangement in Italy, the former formed by
closing and deepening, the latter by breaking up and multiplying, the
ranks, in the first instance by the division of the old -legio- of
8400 into two -legiones- of 4200 men each.  The old Doric phalanx had
been wholly adapted to close combat with the sword and especially with
the spear, and only an accessory and subordinate position in the order
of battle was assigned to missile weapons.  In the manipular legion the
thrusting-lance was confined to the third division, and instead of it
the first two were furnished with a new and peculiar Italian missile
weapon, the -pilum- a square or round piece of wood, four and a half
feet long, with a triangular or quadrangular iron point--which had
been originally perhaps invented for the defence of the ramparts of
the camp, but was soon transferred from the rear to the front ranks,
and was hurled by the advancing line into the ranks of the enemy at a
distance of from ten to twenty paces.  At the same time the sword
acquired far greater importance than the short knife of the phalangite
could ever have had; for the volley of javelins was intended in the
first instance merely to prepare the way for an attack sword in hand.
While, moreover, the phalanx had, as if it were a single mighty lance,
to be hurled at once upon the enemy, in the new Italian legion the
smaller units, which existed also in the phalanx system but were in
the order of battle firmly and indissolubly united, were tactically
separated from each other.  Not merely was the close square divided, as
we have said, into two equally strong halves, but each of these was
separated in the direction of its depth into the three divisions of
the -hastati-, - principes-, and -triarii-, each of a moderate depth
probably amounting in ordinary cases to only four files; and was
broken up along the front into ten bands (-manipuli-), in such a way
that between every two divisions and every two maniples there was left
a perceptible interval.  It was a mere continuation of the same process
of individualizing, by which the collective mode of fighting was
discouraged even in the diminished tactical unit and the single combat
became prominent, as is evident from the (already mentioned) decisive
part played by hand-to-hand encounters and combats with the sword.  The
system of entrenching the camp underwent also a peculiar development.
The place where the army encamped, even were it only for a single
night, was invariably provided with a regular circumvallation and as
it were converted into a fortress.  Little change took place on the
other hand in the cavalry, which in the manipular legion retained the
secondary part which it had occupied by the side of the phalanx.  The
system of officering the army also continued in the main unchanged;
only now over each of the two legions of the regular army there were
set just as many war-tribunes as had hitherto commanded the whole
army, and the number of staff-officers was thus doubled.  It was at
this period probably that the clear line of demarcation became
established between the subaltern officers, who as common soldiers had
to gain their place at the head of the maniples by the sword and
passed by regular promotion from the lower to the higher maniples, and
the military tribunes placed at the head of whole legions--six to
each--in whose case there was no regular promotion, and for whom men
of the better class were usually taken.  In this respect it must have
become a matter of importance that, while previously the subaltern
as well as the staff-officers had been uniformly nominated by the
general, after 392 some of the latter posts were filled up through
election by the burgesses.(21)  Lastly, the old, fearfully strict,
military discipline remained unaltered.  Still, as formerly, the
general was at liberty to behead any man serving in his camp, and to
scourge with rods the staff-officer as well as the common soldier;
nor were such punishments inflicted merely on account of common
crimes, but also when an officer had allowed himself to deviate from
the orders which he had received, or when a division had allowed
itself to be surprised or had fled from the field of battle.  On the
other hand, the new military organization necessitated a far more
serious and prolonged military training than the previous phalanx
system, in which the solidity of the mass kept even the inexperienced
in their ranks.  If nevertheless no special soldier-class sprang up,
but on the contrary the army still remained, as before, a burgess
army, this object was chiefly attained by abandoning the former mode
of ranking the soldiers according to property(22) and arranging them
according to length of service.  The Roman recruit now entered among
the light-armed "skirmishers" (-rorarii-), who fought outside of the
line and especially with stone slings, and he advanced from this step
by step to the first and then to the second division, till at length
the soldiers of long service and experience were associated together
in the corps of the -triarii-, which was numerically the weakest but
imparted its tone and spirit to the whole army.

The excellence of this military organization, which became the primary
cause of the superior political position of the Roman community,
chiefly depended on the three great military principles of maintaining
a reserve, of combining the close and distant modes of fighting, and
of combining the offensive and the defensive.  The system of a reserve
was already foreshadowed in the earlier employment of the cavalry,
but it was now completely developed by the partition of the army into
three divisions and the reservation of the flower of the veterans for
the last and decisive shock.  While the Hellenic phalanx had developed
the close, and the Oriental squadrons of horse armed with bows and
light missile spears the distant, modes of fighting respectively, the
Roman combination of the heavy javelin with the sword produced results
similar, as has justly been remarked, to those attained in modern
warfare by the introduction of bayonet-muskets; the volley of javelins
prepared the way for the sword encounter, exactly in the same way as a
volley of musketry now precedes a charge with the bayonet.  Lastly,
the elaborate system of encampment allowed the Romans to combine the
advantages of defensive and offensive war and to decline or give
battle according to circumstances, and in the latter case to fight
under the ramparts of their camp just as under the walls of a
fortress--the Roman, says a Roman proverb, conquers by sitting still.

Origin of the Manipular Legion

That this new military organization was in the main a Roman, or at any
rate Italian, remodelling and improvement of the old Hellenic tactics
of the phalanx, is plain.  If some germs of the system of reserve and
of the individualizing of the smaller subdivisions of the army are
found to occur among the later Greek strategists, especially Xenophon,
this only shows that they felt the defectiveness of the old system,
but were not well able to obviate it.  The manipular legion appears
fully developed in the war with Pyrrhus; when and under what
circumstances it arose, whether at once or gradually, can no
longer be ascertained.  The first tactical system which the Romans
encountered, fundamentally different from the earlier Italo-Hellenic
system, was the Celtic sword-phalanx.  It is not impossible that the
subdivision of the army and the intervals between the maniples in
front were arranged with a view to resist, as they did resist, its
first and only dangerous charge; and it accords with this hypothesis
that Marcus Furius Camillus, the most celebrated Roman general of the
Gallic epoch, is presented in various detached notices as the reformer
of the Roman military system.  The further traditions associated with
the Samnite and Pyrrhic wars are neither sufficiently accredited, nor
can they with certainty be duly arranged;(23) although it is in itself
probable that the prolonged Samnite mountain warfare exercised a
lasting influence on the individual development of the Roman soldier,
and that the struggle with one of the first masters of the art of war,
belonging to the school of the great Alexander, effected an
improvement in the technical features of the Roman military system.

National Economy--
The Farmers--
Farming of Estates

In the national economy agriculture was, and continued to be, the
social and political basis both of the Roman community and of the new
Italian state.  The common assembly and the army consisted of Roman
farmers; what as soldiers they had acquired by the sword, they secured
as colonists by the plough.  The insolvency of the middle class of
landholders gave rise to the formidable internal crises of the third
and fourth centuries, amidst which it seemed as if the young republic
could not but be destroyed.  The revival of the Latin farmer-class,
which was produced during the fifth century partly by the large
assignations of land and incorporations, partly by the fall in the
rate of interest and the increase of the Roman population, was at once
the effect and the cause of the mighty development of Roman power.
The acute soldier's eye of Pyrrhus justly discerned the cause of the
political and military ascendency of the Romans in the flourishing
condition of the Roman farms.  But the rise also of husbandry on a
large scale among the Romans appears to fall within this period.
In earlier times indeed there existed landed estates of--at least
comparatively--large size; but their management was not farming on a
large scale, it was simply a husbandry of numerous small parcels.(24)
On the other hand the enactment in the law of 387, not incompatible
indeed with the earlier mode of management but yet far more
appropriate to the later, viz.  that the landholder should be bound
to employ along with his slaves a proportional number of free
persons,(25) may well be regarded as the oldest trace of the later
centralized farming of estates;(26) and it deserves notice that even
here at its first emergence it essentially rests on slave-holding.  How
it arose, must remain an undecided point; possibly the Carthaginian
plantations in Sicily served as models to the oldest Roman
landholders, and perhaps even the appearance of wheat in husbandry
by the side of spelt,(27) which Varro places about the period of the
decemvirs, was connected with that altered style of management.  Still
less can we ascertain how far this method of husbandry had already
during this period spread; but the history of the wars with Hannibal
leaves no doubt that it cannot yet have become the rule, nor can it
have yet absorbed the Italian farmer class.  Where it did come into
vogue, however, it annihilated the older clientship based on the
-precarium-; just as the modern system of large farms has been formed
in great part by the suppression of petty holdings and the conversion
of hides into farm-fields.  It admits of no doubt that the restriction
of this agricultural clientship very materially contributed towards
the distress of the class of small cultivators.

Inland Intercourse in Italy

Respecting the internal intercourse of the Italians with each other
our written authorities are silent; coins alone furnish some
information.  We have already mentioned(28) that in Italy, with the
exception of the Greek cities and of the Etruscan Populonia, there was
no coinage during the first three centuries of Rome, and that cattle
in the first instance, and subsequently copper by weight, served as
the medium of exchange.  Within the present epoch occurred the
transition on the part of the Italians from the system of barter to
that of money; and in their money they were naturally led at first to
Greek models.  The circumstances of central Italy led however to the
adoption of copper instead of silver as the metal for their coinage,
and the unit of coinage was primarily based on the previous unit of
value, the copper pound; hence they cast their coins instead of
stamping them, for no die would have sufficed for pieces so large and
heavy.  Yet there seems from the first to have been a fixed ratio for
the relative value of copper and silver (250:1), and with reference to
that ratio the copper coinage seems to have been issued; so that, for
example, in Rome the large copper piece, the -as-, was equal in value
to a scruple (1/288 of a pound) of silver.  It is a circumstance
historically more remarkable, that coining in Italy most probably
originated in Rome, and in fact with the decemvirs, who found in the
Solonian legislation a pattern for the regulation of their coinage;
and that from Rome it spread over a number of Latin, Etruscan,
Umbrian, and east-Italian communities, --a clear proof of the superior
position which Rome from the beginning of the fourth century held in
Italy.  As all these communities subsisted side by side in formal
independence, legally the monetary standard was entirely local, and
the territory of every city had its own monetary system.  Nevertheless
the standards of copper coinage in central and northern Italy may be
comprehended in three groups, within which the coins in common
intercourse seem to have been treated as homogeneous.  These groups
are, first, the coins of the cities of Etruria lying north of the
Ciminian Forest and those of Umbria; secondly, the coins of Rome and
Latium; and lastly, those of the eastern seaboard.  We have already
observed that the Roman coins held a certain ratio to silver by
weight; on the other hand we find those of the east coast of Italy
placed in a definite proportional relation to the silver coins which
were current from an early period in southern Italy, and the standard
of which was adopted by the Italian immigrants, such as the Bruttians,
Lucanians, and Nolans, by the Latin colonies in that quarter, such as
Cales and Suessa, and even by the Romans themselves for their
possessions in Lower Italy.  Accordingly the inland traffic of Italy
must have been divided into corresponding provinces, which dealt with
one another like foreign nations.

In transmarine commerce the relations we have previously described(29)
between Sicily and Latium, Etruria and Attica, the Adriatic and
Tarentum, continued to subsist during the epoch before us or rather,
strictly speaking, belonged to it; for although facts of this class,
which as a rule are mentioned without a date, have been placed
together for the purpose of presenting a general view under the first
period, the statements made apply equally to the present.  The clearest
evidence in this respect is, of course, that of the coins.  As the
striking of Etruscan silver money after an Attic standard(30) and the
penetrating of Italian and especially of Latin copper into Sicily(31)
testify to the two former routes of traffic, so the equivalence, which
we have just mentioned, between the silver money of Magna Graecia and
the copper coinage of Picenum and Apulia, forms, with numerous other
indications, an evidence of the active traffic which the Greeks of
Lower Italy, the Tarentines in particular, held with the east Italian
seaboard.  The commerce again, which was at an earlier period perhaps
still more active, between the Latins and the Campanian Greeks seems
to have been disturbed by the Sabellian immigration, and to have been
of no great moment during the first hundred and fifty years of the
republic.  The refusal of the Samnites in Capua and Cumae to supply
the Romans with grain in the famine of 343 may be regarded as an
indication of the altered relations which subsisted between Latium and
Campania, till at the commencement of the fifth century the Roman arms
restored and gave increased impetus to the old intercourse.

Touching on details, we may be allowed to mention, as one of the few
dated facts in the history of Roman commerce, the notice drawn from
the annals of Ardea, that in 454 the first barber came from Sicily to
Ardea; and to dwell for a moment on the painted pottery which was sent
chiefly from Attica, but also from Corcyra and Sicily, to Lucania,
Campania, and Etruria, to serve there for the decoration of tombs--a
traffic, as to the circumstances of which we are accidentally better
informed than as to any other article of transmarine commerce.  The
commencement of this import trade probably falls about the period of
the expulsion of the Tarquins; for the vases of the oldest style,
which are of very rare occurrence in Italy, were probably painted in
the second half of the third century of the city, while those of the
chaste style, occurring in greater numbers, belong to the first half,
those of the most finished beauty to the second half, of the fourth
century; and the immense quantities of the other vases, often marked
by showiness and size but seldom by excellence in workmanship, must be
assigned as a whole to the following century.  It was from the Hellenes
undoubtedly that the Italians derived this custom of embellishing
tombs; but while the moderate means and fine discernment of the Greeks
confined the practice in their case within narrow limits, it was
stretched in Italy by barbaric opulence and barbaric extravagance
far beyond its original and proper bounds.  It is a significant
circumstance, however, that in Italy this extravagance meets us only
in the lands that had a Hellenic semi-culture.  Any one who can read
such records will perceive in the cemeteries of Etruria and Campania
--the mines whence our museums have been replenished--a significant
commentary on the accounts of the ancients as to the Etruscan and
Campanian semi-culture choked amidst wealth and arrogance.(32)
The homely Samnite character on the other hand remained at all times
a stranger to this foolish luxury; the absence of Greek pottery from
the tombs exhibits, quite as palpably as the absence of a Samnite
coinage, the slight development of commercial intercourse and of urban
life in this region.  It is still more worthy of remark that Latium
also, although not less near to the Greeks than Etruria and Campania,
and in closest intercourse with them, almost wholly refrained from
such sepulchral decorations.  It is more than probable--especially on
account of the altogether different character of the tombs in the
unique Praeneste--that in this result we have to recognize the
influence of the stern Roman morality or--if the expression be
preferred--of the rigid Roman police.  Closely connected with this
subject are the already-mentioned interdicts, which the law of the
Twelve Tables fulminated against purple bier-cloths and gold ornaments
placed beside the dead; and the banishment of all silver plate,
excepting the salt-cellar and sacrificial ladle, from the Roman
household, so far at least as sumptuary laws and the terror of
censorial censure could banish it: even in architecture we shall again
encounter the same spirit of hostility to luxury whether noble or
ignoble.  Although, however, in consequence of these influences Rome
probably preserved a certain outward simplicity longer than Capua and
Volsinii, her commerce and trade--on which, in fact, along with
agriculture her prosperity from the beginning rested--must not be
regarded as having been inconsiderable, or as having less sensibly
experienced the influence of her new commanding position.

Capital in Rome

No urban middle class in the proper sense of that term, no body of
independent tradesmen and merchants, was ever developed in Rome.  The
cause of this was--in addition to the disproportionate centralization
of capital which occurred at an early period--mainly the employment of
slave labour.  It was usual in antiquity, and was in fact a necessary
consequence of slavery, that the minor trades in towns were very
frequently carried on by slaves, whom their master established as
artisans or merchants; or by freedmen, in whose case the master not
only frequently furnished the capital, but also regularly stipulated
for a share, often the half, of the profits.  Retail trading and
dealing in Rome were undoubtedly constantly on the increase; and
there are proofs that the trades which minister to the luxury of
great cities began to be concentrated in Rome--the Ficoroni casket
for instance was designed in the fifth century of the city by a
Praenestine artist and was sold to Praeneste, but was nevertheless
manufactured in Rome.(33)  But as the net proceeds even of retail
business flowed for the most part into the coffers of the great
houses, no industrial and commercial middle-class arose to an extent
corresponding to that increase.  As little were the great merchants and
great manufacturers marked off as a distinct class from the great
landlords.  On the one hand, the latter were from ancient times(34)
simultaneously traders and capitalists, and combined in their hands
lending on security, trafficking on a great scale, the undertaking
of contracts, and the executing of works for the state.  On the other
hand, from the emphatic moral importance which in the Roman
commonwealth attached to the possession of land, and from its
constituting the sole basis of political privileges--a basis which was
infringed for the first time only towards the close of this epoch
(35)--it was undoubtedly at this period already usual for the
fortunate speculator to invest part of his capital in land.  It is
clear enough also from the political privileges given to freedmen
possessing freeholds,(36) that the Roman statesmen sought in this way
to diminish the dangerous class of the rich who had no land.

Development of Rome as A Great City

But while neither an opulent urban middle class nor a strictly close
body of capitalists grew up in Rome, it was constantly acquiring more
and more the character of a great city.  This is plainly indicated by
the increasing number of slaves crowded together in the capital (as
attested by the very serious slave conspiracy of 335), and still more
by the increasing multitude of freedmen, which was gradually becoming
inconvenient and dangerous, as we may safely infer from the
considerable tax imposed on manumissions in 397(37) and from the
limitation of the political rights of freedmen in 450.(38)  For not
only was it implied in the circumstances that the great majority of
the persons manumitted had to devote themselves to trade or commerce,
but manumission itself among the Romans was, as we have already said,
less an act of liberality than an industrial speculation, the master
often finding it more for his interest to share the profits of the
trade or commerce of the freedman than to assert his title to
the whole proceeds of the labour of his slave.  The increase of
manumissions must therefore have necessarily kept pace with the
increase of the commercial and industrial activity of the Romans.

Urban Police

A similar indication of the rising importance of urban life in Rome is
presented by the great development of the urban police.  To this period
probably belong in great measure the enactments under which the
four aediles divided the city into four police districts, and made
provision for the discharge of their equally important and difficult
functions--for the efficient repair of the network of drains small and
large by which Rome was pervaded, as well as of the public buildings
and places; for the proper cleansing and paving of the streets; for
obviating the nuisances of ruinous buildings, dangerous animals, or
foul smells; for the removing of waggons from the highway except
during the hours of evening and night, and generally for the keeping
open of the communication; for the uninterrupted supply of the market
of the capital with good and cheap grain; for the destruction of
unwholesome articles, and the suppression of false weights and
measures; and for the special oversight of baths, taverns, and
houses of bad fame.

Building--
Impulse Given to It

In respect to buildings the regal period, particularly the epoch of
the great conquests, probably accomplished more than the first two
centuries of the republic.  Structures like the temples on the Capitol
and on the Aventine and the great Circus were probably as obnoxious to
the frugal fathers of the city as to the burgesses who gave their
task-work; and it is remarkable that perhaps the most considerable
building of the republican period before the Samnite wars, the temple
of Ceres in the Circus, was a work of Spurius Cassius (261) who in
more than one respect, sought to lead the commonwealth back to the
traditions of the kings.  The governing aristocracy moreover repressed
private luxury with a rigour such as the rule of the kings, if
prolonged, would certainly not have displayed.  But at length even
the senate was no longer able to resist the superior force of
circumstances.  It was Appius Claudius who in his epoch-making
censorship (442) threw aside the antiquated rustic system of
parsimonious hoarding, and taught his fellow-citizens to make a worthy
use of the public resources.  He began that noble system of public
works of general utility, which justifies, if anything can justify,
the military successes of Rome even from the point of view of the
welfare of the nations, and which even now in its ruins furnishes some
idea of the greatness of Rome to thousands on thousands who have never
read a page of her history.  To him the Roman state was indebted for
its great military road, and the city of Rome for its first aqueduct.
Following in the steps of Claudius, the Roman senate wove around Italy
that network of roads and fortresses, the formation of which has
already been described,(39) and without which, as the history of all
military states from the Achaemenidae down to the creator of the road
over the Simplon shows, no military hegemony can subsist.  Following in
the steps of Claudius, Manius Curius built from the proceeds of the
Pyrrhic spoil a second aqueduct for the capital (482); and some years
previously (464) with the gains of the Sabine war he opened up for the
Velino, at the point above Terni where it falls into the Nera, that
broader channel in which the stream still flows, with a view to drain
the beautiful valley of Rieti and thereby to gain space for a large
burgess settlement along with a modest farm for himself.  Such works,
in the eyes of persons of intelligence, threw into the shade the
aimless magnificence of the Hellenic temples.

Embellishment of the City

The style of living also among the citizens now was altered.  About
the time of Pyrrhus silver plate began to make its appearance on Roman
tables, and the chroniclers date the disappearance of shingle roofs in
Rome from 470.(40)  The new capital of Italy gradually laid aside its
village-like aspect, and now began to embellish itself.  It was not yet
indeed customary to strip the temples in conquered towns of their
ornaments for the decoration of Rome; but the beaks of the galleys of
Antium were displayed at the orator's platform in the Forum(41) and
on public festival days the gold-mounted shields brought home from
the battle-fields of Samnium were exhibited along the stalls of the
market.(42)  The proceeds of fines were specially applied to the paving
of the highways in and near the city, or to the erection and
embellishment of public buildings.  The wooden booths of the butchers,
which stretched along the Forum on both sides, gave way, first on the
Palatine side, then on that also which faced the Carinae, to the stone
stalls of the money-changers; so that this place became the Exchange
of Rome.  Statues of the famous men of the past, of the kings, priests,
and heroes of the legendary period, and of the Grecian -hospes- who
was said to have interpreted to the decemvirs the laws of Solon;
honorary columns and monuments dedicated to the great burgomasters who
had conquered the Veientes, the Latins, the Samnites, to state envoys
who had perished while executing their instructions, to rich women
who had bequeathed their property to public objects, nay even to
celebrated Greek philosophers and heroes such as Pythagoras and
Alcibiades, were erected on the Capitol or in the Forum.  Thus, now
that the Roman community had become a great power, Rome itself
became a great city.

Silver Standard of Value

Lastly Rome, as head of the Romano-Italian confederacy, not only
entered into the Hellenistic state-system, but also conformed to the
Hellenic system of moneys and coins.  Up to this time the different
communities of northern and central Italy, with few exceptions, had
struck only a copper currency; the south Italian towns again
universally had a currency of silver; and there were as many legal
standards and systems of coinage as there were sovereign communities
in Italy.  In 485 all these local mints were restricted to the issuing
of small coin; a general standard of currency applicable to all Italy
was introduced, and the coining of the currency was centralized in
Rome; Capua alone continued to retain its own silver coinage struck in
the name of Rome, but after a different standard.  The new monetary
system was based on the legal ratio subsisting between the two metals,
as it had long been fixed.(43)  The common monetary unit was the piece
of ten -asses- (which were no longer of a pound, but reduced to the
third of a pound), the -denarius-, which weighed in copper 3 1/3 and
in silver 1/72, of a Roman pound, a trifle more than the Attic
--drachma--.  At first copper money still predominated in the coinage;
and it is probable that the earliest silver -denarius- was coined
chiefly for Lower Italy and for intercourse with other lands.  As the
victory of the Romans over Pyrrhus and Tarentum and the Roman embassy
to Alexandria could not but engage the thoughts of the contemporary
Greek statesman, so the sagacious Greek merchant might well ponder as
he looked on these new Roman drachmae.  Their flat, unartistic, and
monotonous stamping appeared poor and insignificant by the side of
the marvellously beautiful contemporary coins of Pyrrhus and the
Siceliots; nevertheless they were by no means, like the barbarian
coins of antiquity, slavishly imitated and unequal in weight and
alloy, but, on the contrary, worthy from the first by their
independent and conscientious execution to be placed on a level
with any Greek coin.

Extension of the Latin Nationality

Thus, when the eye turns from the development of constitutions and
from the national struggles for dominion and for freedom which
agitated Italy, and Rome in particular, from the banishment of the
Tarquinian house to the subjugation of the Samnites and the Italian
Greeks, and rests on those calmer spheres of human existence which
history nevertheless rules and pervades, it everywhere encounters the
reflex influence of the great events, by which the Roman burgesses
burst the bonds of patrician sway, and the rich variety of the
national cultures of Italy gradually perished to enrich a single
people.  While the historian may not attempt to follow out the great
course of events into the infinite multiplicity of individual detail,
he does not overstep his province when, laying hold of detached
fragments of scattered tradition, he indicates the most important
changes which during this epoch took place in the national life of
Italy.  That in such an inquiry the life of Rome becomes still more
prominent than in the earlier epoch, is not merely the result of the
accidental blanks of our tradition; it was an essential consequence
of the change in the political position of Rome, that the Latin
nationality should more and more cast the other nationalities of Italy
into the shade.  We have already pointed to the fact, that at this
epoch the neighbouring lands--southern Etruria, Sabina, the land of
the Volscians, --began to become Romanized, as is attested by the
almost total absence of monuments of the old native dialects, and by
the occurrence of very ancient Roman inscriptions in those regions;
the admission of the Sabines to full burgess-rights at the end of this
period(44) betokens that the Latinizing of Central Italy was already
at that time the conscious aim of Roman policy.  The numerous
individual assignations and colonial establishments scattered
throughout Italy were, not only in a military but also in a linguistic
and national point of view, the advanced posts of the Latin stock.  The
Latinizing of the Italians was scarcely at this time generally aimed
at; on the contrary, the Roman senate seems to have intentionally
upheld the distinction between the Latin and the other nationalities,
and they did not yet, for example, allow the introduction of Latin
into official use among the half-burgess communities of Campania.  The
force of circumstances, however, is stronger than even the strongest
government: the language and customs of the Latin people immediately
shared its predominance in Italy, and already began to undermine
the other Italian nationalities.

Progress of Hellenism in Italy--
Adoption of Greek Habits at the Table

These nationalities were at the same time assailed from another
quarter and by an ascendency resting on another basis--by Hellenism.
This was the period when Hellenism began to become conscious of its
intellectual superiority to the other nations, and to diffuse itself
on every side.  Italy did not remain unaffected by it.  The most
remarkable phenomenon of this sort is presented by Apulia, which after
the fifth century of Rome gradually laid aside its barbarian dialect
and silently became Hellenized.  This change was brought about, as in
Macedonia and Epirus, not by colonization, but by civilization, which
seems to have gone hand in hand with the land commerce of Tarentum; at
least that hypothesis is favoured by the facts, that the districts
of the Poediculi and Daunii who were on friendly terms with the
Tarentines carried out their Hellenization more completely than the
Sallentines who lived nearer to Tarentum but were constantly at feud
with it, and that the towns that were soonest Graecized, such as Arpi,
were not situated on the coast.  The stronger influence exerted by
Hellenism over Apulia than over any other Italian region is explained
partly by its position, partly by the slight development of any
national culture of its own, and partly also perhaps by its
nationality presenting a character less alien to the Greek stock than
that of the rest of Italy.(45)  We have already called attention(46) to
the fact that the southern Sabellian stocks, although at the outset in
concert with the tyrants of Syracuse they crushed and destroyed the
Hellenism of Magna Graecia, were at the same time affected by contact
and mingling with the Greeks, so that some of them, such as the
Bruttians and Nolans, adopted the Greek language by the side of their
native tongue, and others, such as the Lucanians and a part of the
Campanians, adopted at least Greek writing and Greek manners.  Etruria
likewise showed tendencies towards a kindred development in the
remarkable vases which have been discovered(47) belonging to this
period, rivalling those of Campania and Lucania; and though Latium and
Samnium remained more strangers to Hellenism, there were not wanting
there also traces of an incipient and ever-growing influence of Greek
culture.  In all branches of the development of Rome during this epoch,
in legislation and coinage, in religion, in the formation of national
legend, we encounter traces of the Greeks; and from the commencement
of the fifth century in particular, in other words, after the conquest
of Campania, the Greek influence on Roman life appears rapidly and
constantly on the increase.  In the fourth century occurred the
erection of the "-Graecostasis-"--remarkable in the very form of the
word--a platform in the Roman Forum for eminent Greek strangers and
primarily for the Massiliots.(48)  In the following century the annals
began to exhibit Romans of quality with Greek surnames, such as
Philipus or in Roman form Pilipus, Philo, Sophus, Hypsaeus.  Greek
customs gained ground: such as the non-Italian practice of placing
inscriptions in honour of the dead on the tomb--of which the epitaph
of Lucius Scipio (consul in 456) is the oldest example known to us;
the fashion, also foreign to the Italians, of erecting without any
decree of the state honorary monuments to ancestors in public places
--a system begun by the great innovator Appius Claudius, when he
caused bronze shields with images and eulogies of his ancestors to be
suspended in the new temple of Bellona (442); the distribution of
branches of palms to the competitors, introduced at the Roman national
festival in 461; above all, the Greek manners and habits at table.
The custom not of sitting as formerly on benches, but of reclining
on sofas, at table; the postponement of the chief meal from noon to
between two and three o'clock in the afternoon according to our mode
of reckoning; the institution of masters of the revels at banquets,
who were appointed from among the guests present, generally by
throwing the dice, and who then prescribed to the company what, how,
and when they should drink; the table-chants sung in succession by the
guests, which, however, in Rome were not -scolia-, but lays in praise
of ancestors--all these were not primitive customs in Rome, but were
borrowed from the Greeks at a very early period, for in Cato's time
these usages were already common and had in fact partly fallen into
disuse again.  We must therefore place their introduction in this
period at the latest.  A characteristic feature also was the erection
of statues to "the wisest and the bravest Greek" in the Roman Forum,
which took place by command of the Pythian Apollo during the Samnite
wars.  The selection fell--evidently under Sicilian or Campanian
influence--on Pythagoras and Alcibiades, the saviour and the Hannibal
of the western Hellenes.  The extent to which an acquaintance with
Greek was already diffused in the fifth century among Romans of
quality is shown by the embassies of the Romans to Tarentum--when
their mouthpiece spoke, if not in the purest Greek, at any rate
without an interpreter--and of Cineas to Rome.  It scarcely admits
of a doubt that from the fifth century the young Romans who devoted
themselves to state affairs universally acquired a knowledge of what
was then the general language of the world and of diplomacy.

Thus in the intellectual sphere Hellenism made advances quite as
incessant as the efforts of the Romans to subject the earth to their
sway; and the secondary nationalities, such as the Samnite, Celt, and
Etruscan, hard pressed on both sides, were ever losing their inward
vigour as well as narrowing their outward bounds.

Rome and the Romans of This Epoch

When the two great nations, both arrived at the height of their
development, began to mingle in hostile or in friendly contact, their
antagonism of character was at the same time prominently and fully
brought out--the total want of individuality in the Italian and
especially in the Roman character, as contrasted with the boundless
variety, lineal, local, and personal, of Hellenism.  There was no epoch
of mightier vigour in the history of Rome than the epoch from the
institution of the republic to the subjugation of Italy.  That epoch
laid the foundations of the commonwealth both within and without; it
created a united Italy; it gave birth to the traditional groundwork of
the national law and of the national history; it originated the
-pilum- and the maniple, the construction of roads and of aqueducts,
the farming of estates and the monetary system; it moulded the
she-wolf of the Capitol and designed the Ficoroni casket.  But the
individuals, who contributed the several stones to this gigantic
structure and cemented them together, have disappeared without leaving
a trace, and the nations of Italy did not merge into that of Rome more
completely than the single Roman burgess merged in the Roman
community.  As the grave closes alike over all whether important or
insignificant, so in the roll of the Roman burgomasters the empty
scion of nobility stands undistinguishable by the side of the great
statesman.  Of the few records that have reached us from this period
none is more venerable, and none at the same time more characteristic,
than the epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio, who was consul in 456,
and three years afterwards took part in the decisive battle of
Sentinum.(49)  On the beautiful sarcophagus, in noble Doric style,
which eighty years ago still enclosed the dust of the conqueror of the
Samnites, the following sentence is inscribed:--

-Cornelius Lucius--Scipio Barbatus,
Gnaivod patre prognatus, --fortis vir sapiensque,
Quoius forma virtu--tei parisuma fuit,
Consol censor aidilis--quei fuit apud vos,
Taurasia Cisauna--Samnio cepit,
Subigit omne Loucanum--opsidesque abdoucit.-

_-'_-'_-'_||-'_-'_-'_

Innumerable others who had been at the head of the Roman commonwealth,
as well as this Roman statesman and warrior, might be commemorated as
having been of noble birth and of manly beauty, valiant and wise; but
there was no more to record regarding them.  It is doubtless not the
mere fault of tradition that no one of these Cornelii, Fabii, Papirii,
or whatever they were called, confronts us in a distinct individual
figure.  The senator was supposed to be no worse and no better than
other senators, nor at all to differ from them.  It was not necessary
and not desirable that any burgess should surpass the rest, whether by
showy silver plate and Hellenic culture, or by uncommon wisdom and
excellence.  Excesses of the former kind were punished by the censor,
and for the latter the constitution gave no scope.  The Rome of this
period belonged to no individual; it was necessary for all the
burgesses to be alike, that each of them might be like a king.

Appius Claudius

No doubt, even now Hellenic individual development asserted its claims
by the side of that levelling system; and the genius and force which
it exhibited bear, no less than the tendency to which it opposed
itself, the full stamp of that great age.  We can name but a single man
in connection with it; but he was, as it were, the incarnation of the
idea of progress.  Appius Claudius (censor 442; consul 447, 458), the
great-great-grandson of the decemvir, was a man of the old nobility
and proud of the long line of his ancestors; but yet it was he who
set aside the restriction which confined the full franchise of the
state to the freeholders,(50) and who broke up the old system of
finance.(51)  From Appius Claudius date not only the Roman aqueducts
and highways, but also Roman jurisprudence, eloquence, poetry, and
grammar.  The publication of a table of the -legis actiones-, speeches
committed to writing and Pythagorean sentences, and even innovations
in orthography, are attributed to him.  We may not on this account call
him absolutely a democrat or include him in that opposition party
which found its champion in Manius Curius;(52) in him on the contrary
the spirit of the ancient and modern patrician kings predominated
--the spirit of the Tarquins and the Caesars, between whom he forms
a connecting link in that five hundred years' interregnum of
extraordinary deeds and ordinary men.  So long as Appius Claudius took
an active part in public life, in his official conduct as well as his
general carriage he disregarded laws and customs on all hands with the
hardihood and sauciness of an Athenian; till, after having long
retired from the political stage, the blind old man, returning as it
were from the tomb at the decisive Moment, overcame king Pyrrhus in
the senate, and first formally and solemnly proclaimed the complete
sovereignty of Rome over Italy.(53)  But the gifted man came too early
or too late; the gods made him blind on account of his untimely
wisdom.  It was not individual genius that ruled in Rome and through
Rome in Italy; it was the one immoveable idea of a policy--propagated
from generation to generation in the senate--with the leading maxims
of which the sons of the senators became already imbued, when in the
company of their fathers they went to the council and there at the
door of the hall listened to the wisdom of the men whose seats they
were destined at some future time to fill.  Immense successes were
thus obtained at an immense price; for Nike too is followed by her
Nemesis.  In the Roman commonwealth there was no special dependence
on any one man, either on soldier or on general, and under the
rigid discipline of its moral police all the idiosyncrasies of human
character were extinguished.  Rome reached a greatness such as no other
state of antiquity attained; but she dearly purchased her greatness at
the sacrifice of the graceful variety, of the easy abandon and of
the inward freedom of Hellenic life.




Notes for Book II Chapter VIII


1.  I. XI. Punishment of Offenses against Order

2.  II. I. Right of Appeal

3.  II. III. The Senate, Its Composition

4.  II. I. Law and Edict

5.  II. III. Censorship, the Magistrates, Partition and Weakening of
the Consular Powers

6.  II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

7.  I. VI. Class of --Metoeci-- Subsisting by the Side of the Community

8.  I. V. The Housefather and His Household, note

9.  II. III. Praetorship

10.  II. III. Praetorship, II. V. Revision of the Municipal
Constitutions, Police Judges

11.  The view formerly adopted, that these -tres viri- belonged to the
earliest period, is erroneous, for colleges of magistrates with odd
numbers are foreign to the oldest state-arrangements (Chronol. p. 15,
note 12).  Probably the well-accredited account, that they were first
nominated in 465  (Liv. Ep. 11), should simply be retained, and the
otherwise suspicious inference of the falsifier Licinius Macer (in
Liv. vii. 46), which makes mention of them before 450, should be
simply rejected.  At first undoubtedly the -tres viri- were nominated
by the superior magistrates, as was the case with most of the later
-magistratus minores-; the Papirian -plebiscitum-, which transferred
the nomination of them to the community (Festus, -v. sacramentum-,
p. 344, Niall.), was at any rate not issued till after the institution
of the office of -praetor peregrinus-, or at the earliest towards the
middle of the sixth century, for it names the praetor -qui inter jus
cives ius dicit-.

12.  II. VII. Subject Communities

13.  This inference is suggested by what Livy says (ix. 20) as to the
reorganization of the colony of Antium twenty years after it was
founded; and it is self-evident that, while the Romans might very
well impose on the inhabitant of Ostia the duty of settling all his
lawsuits in Rome, the same course could not be followed with townships
like Antium and Sena.

14.  II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers

15.  People are in the habit of praising the Romans as a nation
specially privileged in respect to jurisprudence, and of gazing with
wonder on their admirable law as a mystical gift of heaven; presumably
by way of specially excusing themselves for the worthlessness of
their own legal system.  A glance at the singularly fluctuating and
undeveloped criminal law of the Romans might show the untenableness
of ideas so confused even to those who may think the proposition too
simple, that a sound people has a sound law, and a morbid people an
unsound.  Apart from the more general political conditions on which
jurisprudence also, and indeed jurisprudence especially, depends, the
causes of the excellence of the Roman civil law lie mainly in two
features: first, that the plaintiff and defendant were specially
obliged to explain and embody in due and binding form the grounds of
the demand and of the objection to comply with it; and secondly, that
the Romans appointed a permanent machinery for the edictal development
of their law, and associated it immediately with practice.  By the
former the Romans precluded the pettifogging practices of advocates,
by the latter they obviated incapable law-making, so far as such
things can be prevented at all; and by means of both in conjunction
they satisfied, as far as is possible, the two conflicting
requirements, that law shall constantly be fixed, and that it
shall constantly be in accordance with the spirit of the age.

16.  II. II. Relation of the Tribune to the Consul

17.  V. V. The Hegemony of Rome over Latium Shaken and Re-established

18.  Venus probably first appears in the later sense as Aphrodite on
occasion of the dedication of the temple consecrated in this year
(Liv. x. 31; Becker, Topographie, p. 472).

19.  II. III. Intrigues of the Nobility

20.  I. VI. Organization of the Army

21.  II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses

22.  I. VI. the Five Classes

23.  According to Roman tradition the Romans originally carried
quadrangular shields, after which they borrowed from the Etruscans the
round hoplite shield (-clupeus-, --aspis--), and from the Samnites the
later square shield (-scutum-, --thureos--), and the javelin (-veru-)
(Diodor. Vat. Fr. p. 54; Sallust, Cat. 51, 38; Virgil, Aen. vii. 665;
Festus, Ep. v. Samnites, p. 327, Mull.; and the authorities cited in
Marquardt, Handb. iii. 2, 241).  But it may be regarded as certain that
the hoplite shield or, in other words, the tactics of the Doric
phalanx were imitated not from the Etruscans, but directly from the
Hellenes, As to the -scutum-, that large, cylindrical, convex leather
shield must certainly have taken the place of the flat copper
-clupeus-, when the phalanx was broken up into maniples; but the
undoubted derivation of the word from the Greek casts suspicion on the
derivation of the thing itself from the Samnites.  From the Greeks the
Romans derived also the sling (-funda- from --sphendone--).  (like
-fides- from --sphion--),(I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences).
The pilum was considered by the ancients as quite a Roman invention.

24.  I. XIII. Landed Proprietors

25.  II. III. Combination of the Plebian Aristocracy and the Farmers
against the Nobility

26.  Varro (De R. R. i. 2, 9) evidently conceives the author of the
Licinian agrarian law as fanning in person his extensive lands;
although, we may add, the story may easily have been invented to
explain the cognomen (-Stolo-).

27.  I. XIII. System of Joint Cultivation

28.  I. XIII. Inland Commerce of the Italians

29.  I. XIII. Commerce in Latium Passive, in Etruria Active

30.  I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

31.  I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce

32.  II. IV. Etruria at Peace and on the Decline, II. V. Campanian
Hellenism

33.  The conjecture that Novius Flautius, the artist who worked at
this casket for Dindia Macolnia, in Rome, may have been a Campanian,
is refuted by the old Praenestine tomb-stones recently discovered,
on which, among other Macolnii and Plautii, there occurs also a Lucius
Magulnius, son of Haulms (L. Magolnio Pla. f.).

34.  I. XIII. Etrusco-Attic, and Latino-Sicilian Commerce, II. II.
Rising Power of the Capitalists

35.  II. III. The Burgess Body

36.  II. III. The Burgess Body

37.  II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

38.  II. III. The Burgess Body

39.  II. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

40.  We have already mentioned the censorial stigma attached to Publius
Cornelius Rufinus (consul 464, 477) for his silver plate.(II. VIII.
Police) The strange statement of Fabius (in Strabo, v. p. 228) that
the Romans first became given to luxury (--aisthesthae tou plouton--)
after the conquest of the Sabines, is evidently only a historical
version of the same matter; for the conquest of the Sabines falls in
the first consulate of Rufinus.

41.  II. V. Colonizations in the Land of the Volsci

42.  II. VI. Last Campaigns in Samnium

43.  II. VIII. Inland Intercourse in Italy

44.  I. III. Localities of the Oldest Cantons

45.  I. II. Iapygians

46.  II. V. Campanian Hellenism

47.  II. VIII. Transmarine Commerce

48.  II. VII. The Full Roman Franchise

49.  II. VI. Battle of Sentinum

50.  II. III. The Burgess-Body

51.  II. VIII. Impulse Given to It

52.  II. III. New Opposition

53.  II. VII. Attempts at Peace




CHAPTER IX

Art and Science


The Roman National Festival--
The Roman Stage

The growth of art, and of poetic art especially, in antiquity was
intimately associated with the development of national festivals.
The thanksgiving-festival of the Roman community, which had been
already organized in the previous period essentially under Greek
influence and in the first instance as an extraordinary festival,
--the -ludi maximi- or -Romani-,(1) --acquired during the present
epoch a longer duration and greater variety in the amusements.
Originally limited to one day, the festival was prolonged by an
additional day after the happy termination of each of the three
great revolutions of 245, 260, and 387, and thus at the close of
this period it had already a duration of four days.(2)

A still more important circumstance was, that, probably on the
institution of the curule aedileship (387) which was from the first
entrusted with the preparation and oversight of the festival,(3) it
lost its extraordinary character and its reference to a special vow
made by the general, and took its place in the series of the ordinary
annually recurring festivals as the first of all.  Nevertheless the
government adhered to the practice of allowing the spectacle proper
--namely the chariot-race, which was the principal performance--to
take place not more than once at the close of the festival.  On the
other days the multitude were probably left mainly to furnish
amusement for themselves, although musicians, dancers, rope-walkers,
jugglers, jesters and such like would not fail to make their
appearance on the occasion, whether hired or not But about the year
390 an important change occurred, which must have stood in connection
with the fixing and prolongation of the festival, that took place
perhaps about the same time.  A scaffolding of boards was erected at
the expense of the state in the Circus for the first three days, and
suitable representations were provided on it for the entertainment of
the multitude.  That matters might not be carried too far however in
this way, a fixed sum of 200,000 -asses- (2055 pounds) once for all
appropriated from the exchequer for the expenses of the festival; and
the sum was not increased up to the period of the Punic wars.  The
aediles, who had to expend this sum, were obliged to defray any
additional amount out of their own pockets; and it is not probable
that they at this time contributed often or considerably from their
own resources.  That the new stage was generally under Greek influence,
is proved by its very name (-scaena-, --skene--).  It was no doubt at
first designed merely for musicians and buffoons of all sorts, amongst
whom the dancers to the flute, particularly those then so celebrated
from Etruria, were probably the most distinguished; but a public stage
had at any rate now arisen in Rome and it soon became open also to
the Roman poets.

Ballad Singers, -Satura- --
Censure of Art

There was no want of such poets in Latium.  Latin "strolling minstrels"
or "ballad-singers" (-grassatores-, -spatiatores-) went from town to
town and from house to house, and recited their chants (-saturae-(4)),
gesticulating and dancing to the accompaniment of the flute.
The measure was of course the only one that then existed, the
so-called Saturnian.(5)  No distinct plot lay at the basis of the
chants, and as little do they appear to have been in the form of
dialogue.  We must conceive of them as resembling those monotonous
--sometimes improvised, sometimes recited--ballads and -tarantelle-,
such as one may still hear in the Roman hostelries.  Songs of this sort
accordingly early came upon the public stage, and certainly formed the
first nucleus of the Roman theatre.  But not only were these beginnings
of the drama in Rome, as everywhere, modest and humble; they were, in
a remarkable manner, accounted from the very outset disreputable.
The Twelve Tables denounced evil and worthless song-singing, imposing
severe penalties not only upon incantations but even on lampoons
composed against a fellow-citizen or recited before his door, and
forbidding the employment of wailing-women at funerals.  But far more
severely, than by such legal restrictions, the incipient exercise of
art was affected by the moral anathema, which was denounced against
these frivolous and paid trades by the narrowminded earnestness of
the Roman character.  "The trade of a poet," says Cato, "in former
times was not respected; if any one occupied himself with it or was a
hanger-on at banquets, he was called an idler."  But now any one who
practised dancing, music, or ballad-singing for money was visited
with a double stigma, in consequence of the more and more confirmed
disapproval of gaining a livelihood by services rendered for
remuneration.  While accordingly the taking part in the masked
farces with stereotyped characters, that formed the usual native
amusement,(6) was looked upon as an innocent youthful frolic, the
appearing on a public stage for money and without a mask was
considered as directly infamous, and the singer and poet were in
this respect placed quite on a level with the rope-dancer and the
harlequin.  Persons of this stamp were regularly pronounced by the
censors(7) incapable of serving in the burgess-army and of voting
in the burgess-assembly.  Moreover, not only was the direction of the
stage regarded as pertaining to the province of the city police--a
fact significant enough even in itself--but the police was probably,
even at this period, invested with arbitrary powers of an
extraordinary character against professional stage-artists.  Not only
did the police magistrates sit in judgment on the performance after
its conclusion--on which occasion wine flowed as copiously for those
who had acquitted themselves well, as stripes fell to the lot of the
bungler--but all the urban magistrates were legally entitled to
inflict bodily chastisement and imprisonment on any actor at any
time and at any place.  The necessary effect of this was that dancing,
music, and poetry, at least so far as they appeared on the public
stage, fell into the hands of the lowest classes of the Roman
burgesses, and especially into those of foreigners; and while at
this period poetry still played altogether too insignificant a part
to engage the attention of foreign artists, the statement on the other
hand, that in Rome all the music, sacred and profane, was essentially
Etruscan, and consequently the ancient Latin art of the flute,
which was evidently at one time held in high esteem,(8) had been
supplanted by foreign music, may be regarded as already applicable
to this period.

There is no mention of any poetical literature.  Neither the masked
plays nor the recitations of the stage can have had in the proper
sense fixed texts; on the contrary, they were ordinarily improvised
by the performers themselves as circumstances required.  Of works
composed at this period posterity could point to nothing but a sort
of Roman "Works and Days"--counsels of a farmer to his son,(9) and
the already-mentioned Pythagorean poems of Appius Claudius(10) the
first commencement of Roman poetry after the Hellenic type.  Nothing
of the poems of this epoch has survived but one or two epitaphs
in Saturnian measure.(11)

Roman Historical Composition

Along with the rudiments of the Roman drama, the rudiments of Roman
historical composition belong to this period; both as regards the
contemporary recording of remarkable events, and as regards the
conventional settlement of the early history of the Roman community.

Registers of Magistrates

The writing of contemporary history was associated with the register
of the magistrates.  The register reaching farthest back, which was
accessible to the later Roman inquirers and is still indirectly
accessible to us, seems to have been derived from the archives of the
temple of the Capitoline Jupiter; for it records the names of the
annual presidents of the community onward from the consul Marcus
Horatius, who consecrated that temple on the 13th Sept. in his year of
office, and it also notices the vow which was made on occasion of a
severe pestilence under the consuls Publius Servilius and Lucius
Aebutius (according to the reckoning now current, 291), that
thenceforward a nail should be driven every hundredth year into the
wall of the Capitoline temple.  Subsequently it was the state officials
who were learned in measuring and in writing, or in other words, the
pontifices, that kept an official record of the names of the annual
chief magistrates, and thus combined an annual, with the earlier
monthly, calendar.  Both these calendars were afterwards comprehended
under the name of Fasti--which strictly belonged only to the list of
court-days.  This arrangement was probably adopted not long after the
abolition of the monarchy; for in fact an official record of the
annual magistrates was of urgent practical necessity for the purpose
of authenticating the order of succession of official documents.  But,
if there was an official register of the consuls so old, it probably
perished in the Gallic conflagration (364); and the list of the
pontifical college was subsequently completed from the Capitoline
register which was not affected by that catastrophe, so far as this
latter reached back.  That the list of presidents which we now have
--although in collateral matters, and especially in genealogical
statements, it has been supplemented at pleasure from the family
pedigrees of the nobility--is in substance based from the beginning
on contemporary and credible records, admits of no doubt.  But it
reproduces the calendar years only imperfectly and approximately: for
the consuls did not enter on office with the new year, or even on a
definite day fixed once for all; on the contrary from various causes
the day of entering on office was fluctuating, and the -interregna-
that frequently occurred between two consulates were entirely omitted
in the reckoning by official years.  Accordingly, if the calendar years
were to be reckoned by this list of consuls, it was necessary to note
the days of entering on and of demitting office in the case of each
pair, along with such -interregna- as occurred; and this too may have
been early done.  But besides this, the list of the annual magistrates
was adjusted to the list of calendar years in such a way that a pair
of magistrates were by accommodation assigned to each calendar year,
and, where the list did not suffice, intercalary years were inserted,
which are denoted in the later (Varronian) table by the figures 379,
383, 421, 430, 445, 453.  From 291 u. c. (463 B. C.) the Roman list
demonstrably coincides, not indeed in detail but yet on the whole,
with the Roman calendar, and is thus chronologically certain, so far
as the defectiveness of the calendar itself allows.  The 47 years
preceding that date cannot be checked, but must likewise be at least
in the main correct.(12)  Whatever lies beyond 245 remains,
chronologically, in oblivion.

Capitoline Era

No era was formed for ordinary use; but in ritual matters they
reckoned from the year of the consecration of the temple of the
Capitoline Jupiter, from which the list of magistrates also started.

Annals

The idea naturally suggested itself that, along with the names of
the magistrates, the most important events occurring under their
magistracy might be noted; and from such notices appended to the
catalogue of magistrates the Roman annals arose, just as the
chronicles of the middle ages arose out of the memoranda marginally
appended to the table of Easter.  But it was not until a late period
that the pontifices formed the scheme of a formal chronicle (-liber
annalis-), which should steadily year by year record the names of all
the magistrates and the remarkable events.  Before the eclipse of the
sun noticed under the 5th of June 351, by which is probably meant that
of the 20th June 354, no solar eclipse was found recorded from
observation in the later chronicle of the city: its statements as to
the numbers of the census only begin to sound credible after the
beginning of the fifth century,(13) the cases of fines brought before
the people, and the prodigies expiated on behalf of the community,
appear to have been regularly introduced into the annals only after
the second half of the fifth century began.  To all appearance the
institution of an organized book of annals, and--what was certainly
associated with it--the revision (which we have just explained) of the
earlier list of magistrates so as to make it a year-calendar by the
insertion, where chronologically necessary, of intercalary years, took
place in the first half of the fifth century.  But even after it became
a practically recognized duty of the -pontifex maximus- to record year
after year campaigns and colonizations, pestilences and famines,
eclipses and portents, the deaths of priests and other men of note,
the new decrees of the people, and the results of the census, and
to deposit these records in his official residence for permanent
preservation and for any one's inspection, these records were still
far removed from the character of real historical writings.  How scanty
the contemporary record still was at the close of this period and how
ample room is left for the caprice of subsequent annalists, is shown
with incisive clearness by a comparison of the accounts as to the
campaign of 456 in the annals and in the epitaph of the consul
Scipio.(14)  The later historians were evidently unable to construct a
readable and in some measure connected narrative out of these notices
from the book of annals; and we should have difficulty, even if the
book of annals still lay before us with its original contents, in
writing from it in duly connected sequence the history of the times.
Such chronicles, however, did not exist merely in Rome; every Latin
city possessed its annals as well as its pontifices, as is clear from
isolated notices relative to Ardea for instance, Ameria, and Interamna
on the Nar; and from the collective mass of these city-chronicles
some result might perhaps have been attained similar to what has
been accomplished for the earlier middle ages by the comparison of
different monastic chronicles.  Unfortunately the Romans in later times
preferred to supply the defect by Hellenic or Hellenizing falsehoods.

Family Pedigrees

Besides these official arrangements, meagrely planned and uncertainly
handled, for commemorating past times and past events, there can
scarcely have existed at this epoch any other records immediately
serviceable for Roman history.  Of private chronicles we find no trace.
The leading houses, however, were careful to draw up genealogical
tables, so important in a legal point of view, and to have the family
pedigree painted for a perpetual memorial on the walls of the
entrance-hall.  These lists, which at least named the magistracies held
by the family, not only furnished a basis for family tradition, but
doubtless at an early period had biographical notices attached to
them.  The memorial orations, which in Rome could not be omitted at the
funeral of any person of quality, and were ordinarily pronounced by
the nearest relative of the deceased, consisted essentially not merely
in an enumeration of the virtues and excellencies of the dead, but
also in a recital of the deeds and virtues of his ancestors; and so
they were doubtless, even in the earliest times, transmitted
traditionally from one generation to another.  Many a valuable
notice may by this means have been preserved; but many a daring
perversion and falsification also may have been in this way
introduced into tradition.

Roman Early History of Rome

But as the first steps towards writing real history belonged to
this period, to it belonged also the first attempts to record, and
conventionally distort, the primitive history of Rome.  The sources
whence it was formed were of course the same as they are everywhere.
Isolated names like those of the kings Numa, Ancus, Tullus, to whom
the clan-names were probably only assigned subsequently, and isolated
facts, such as the conquest of the Latins by king Tarquinius and the
expulsion of the Tarquinian royal house, may have continued to live in
true general tradition orally transmitted.  Further materials were
furnished by the traditions of the patrician clans, such as the
various tales that relate to the Fabii.  Other tales gave a symbolic
and historic shape to primitive national institutions, especially
setting forth with great vividness the origin of rules of law.  The
sacredness of the walls was thus illustrated in the tale of the death
of Remus, the abolition of blood-revenge in the tale of the end of
king Tatius(15), the necessity of the arrangement as to the -pons
sublicius- in the legend of Horatius Cocles,(15) the origin of the
-provocatio- in the beautiful tale of the Horatii and Curiatii, the
origin of manumission and of the burgess-rights of freedmen in the
tale of the Tarquinian conspiracy and the slave Vindicius.  To the same
class belongs the history of the foundation of the city itself, which
was designed to connect the origin of Rome with Latium and with Alba,
the general metropolis of the Latins.  Historical glosses were annexed
to the surnames of distinguished Romans; that of Publius Valerius the
"servant of the people" (-Poplicola-), for instance, gathered around
it a whole group of such anecdotes.  Above all, the sacred fig-tree and
other spots and notable objects in the city were associated with a
great multitude of sextons' tales of the same nature as those out of
which, upwards of a thousand years afterwards, there grew up on the
same ground the Mirabilia Urbis.  Some attempts to link together these
different tales--the adjustment of the series of the seven kings, the
setting down of the duration of the monarchy at 240 years in all,
which was undoubtedly based on a calculation of the length of
generations,(16) and even the commencement of an official record of
these assumed facts--probably took place already in this epoch.  The
outlines of the narrative, and in particular its quasi-chronology,
make their appearance in the later tradition so unalterably fixed,
that for that very reason the fixing of them must be placed not in,
but previous to, the literary epoch of Rome.  If a bronze casting of
the twins Romulus and Remus sucking the teats of the she-wolf was
already placed beside the sacred fig-tree in 458, the Romans who
subdued Latium and Samnium must have heard the history of the origin
of their ancestral city in a form not greatly differing from what
we read in Livy.  Even the Aborigines--i. e. "those from the very
beginning"--that simple rudimental form of historical speculation as
to the Latin race--are met with about 465 in the Sicilian author
Callias.  It is of the very nature of a chronicle that it should attach
prehistoric speculation to history and endeavour to go back, if not
to the origin of heaven and earth, at least to the origin of the
community; and there is express testimony that the table of the
pontifices specified the year of the foundation of Rome.  Accordingly
it may be assumed that, when the pontifical college in the first half
of the fifth century proceeded to substitute for the former scanty
records--ordinarily, doubtless, confined to the names of the
magistrates--the scheme of a formal yearly chronicle, it also added
what was wanting at the beginning, the history of the kings of Rome
and of their fall, and, by placing the institution of the republic on
the day of the consecration of the Capitoline temple, the 13th of
Sept. 245, furnished a semblance of connection between the dateless
and the annalistic narrative.  That in this earliest record of the
origin of Rome the hand of Hellenism was at work, can scarcely
be doubted.  The speculations as to the primitive and subsequent
population, as to the priority of pastoral life over agriculture, and
the transformation of the man Romulus into the god Quirinus,(17) have
quite a Greek aspect, and even the obscuring of the genuinely national
forms of the pious Numa and the wise Egeria by the admixture of alien
elements of Pythagorean primitive wisdom appears by no means to be
one of the most recent ingredients in the Roman prehistoric annals.

The pedigrees of the noble clans were completed in a manner analogous
to these -origines- of the community, and were, in the favourite style
of heraldry, universally traced back to illustrious ancestors.  The
Aemilii, for instance, Calpurnii, Pinarii, and Pomponii professed to
be descended from the four sons of Numa, Mamercus, Calpus, Pinus, and
Pompo; and the Aemilii, yet further, from Mamercus, the son of
Pythagoras, who was named the "winning speaker" (--aimulos--)

But, notwithstanding the Hellenic reminiscences that are everywhere
apparent, these prehistoric annals of the community and of the leading
houses may be designated at least relatively as national, partly
because they originated in Rome, partly because they tended primarily
to form links of connection not between Rome and Greece, but between
Rome and Latium.

Hellenic Early History of Rome

It was Hellenic story and fiction that undertook the task of
connecting Rome and Greece.  Hellenic legend exhibits throughout an
endeavour to keep pace with the gradual extension of geographical
knowledge, and to form a dramatized geography by the aid of its
numerous stories of voyagers and emigrants.  In this, however, it
seldom follows a simple course.  An account like that of the earliest
Greek historical work which mentions Rome, the "Sicilian History" of
Antiochus of Syracuse (which ended in 330)--that a man named Sikelos
had migrated from Rome to Italia, that is, to the Bruttian peninsula
--such an account, simply giving a historical form to the family
affinity between the Romans, Siculi, and Bruttians, and free from all
Hellenizing colouring, is a rare phenomenon.  Greek legend as a whole
is pervaded--and the more so, the later its rise--by a tendency to
represent the whole barbarian world as having either issued from the
Greeks or having been subdued by them; and it early in this sense spun
its threads also around the west.  For Italy the legends of Herakles
and of the Argonauts were of less importance--although Hecataeus
(after 257) is already acquainted with the Pillars of Herakles, and
carries the Argo from the Black Sea into the Atlantic Ocean, from the
latter into the Nile, and thus back to the Mediterranean--than were
the homeward voyages connected with the fall of Ilion.  With the first
dawn of information as to Italy Diomedes begins to wander in the
Adriatic, and Odysseus in the Tyrrhene Sea;(18) as indeed the
latter localization at least was naturally suggested by the Homeric
conception of the legend.  Down to the times of Alexander the countries
on the Tyrrhene Sea belonged in Hellenic fable to the domain of the
legend of Odysseus; Ephorus, who ended his history with the year 414,
and the so-called Scylax (about 418) still substantially follow it.
Of Trojan voyages the whole earlier poetry has no knowledge;
in Homer Aeneas after the fall of Ilion rules over the Trojans
that remained at home.

Stesichorus

It was the great remodeller of myths, Stesichorus (122-201) who first
in his "Destruction of Ilion" brought Aeneas to the land of the west,
that he might poetically enrich the world of fable in the country of
his birth and of his adoption, Sicily and Lower Italy, by the contrast
of the Trojan heroes with the Hellenic.  With him originated the
poetical outlines of this fable as thenceforward fixed, especially the
group of the hero and his wife, his little son and his aged father
bearing the household gods, departing from burning Troy, and the
important identification of the Trojans with the Sicilian and Italian
autochthones, which is especially apparent in the case of the Trojan
trumpeter Misenus who gave his name to the promontory of Misenum.(19)
The old poet was guided in this view by the feeling that the
barbarians of Italy were less widely removed from the Hellenes than
other barbarians were, and that the relation between the Hellenes and
Italians might, when measured poetically, be conceived as similar to
that between the Homeric Achaeans and the Trojans.  This new Trojan
fable soon came to be mixed up with the earlier legend of Odysseus,
while it spread at the same time more widely over Italy.  According to
Hellanicus (who wrote about 350) Odysseus and Aeneas came through the
country of the Thracians and Molottians (Epirus) to Italy, where the
Trojan women whom they had brought with them burnt the ships, and
Aeneas founded the city of Rome and named it after one of these Trojan
women.  To a similar effect, only with less absurdity, Aristotle
(370-432) related that an Achaean squadron cast upon the Latin coast
had been set on fire by Trojan female slaves, and that the Latins
had originated from the descendants of the Achaeans who were thus
compelled to remain there and of their Trojan wives.  With these tales
were next mingled elements from the indigenous legend, the knowledge
of which had been diffused as far as Sicily by the active intercourse
between Sicily and Italy, at least towards the end of this epoch.
In the version of the origin of Rome, which the Sicilian Callias
put on record about 465, the fables of Odysseus, Aeneas, and Romulus
were intermingled.(20)

Timaeus

But the person who really completed the conception subsequently
current of this Trojan migration was Timaeus of Tauromenium in Sicily,
who concluded his historical work with 492.  It is he who represents
Aeneas as first founding Lavinium with its shrine of the Trojan
Penates, and as thereafter founding Rome; he must also have interwoven
the Tyrian princess Elisa or Dido with the legend of Aeneas, for with
him Dido is the foundress of Carthage, and Rome and Carthage are said
by him to have been built in the same year.  These alterations were
manifestly suggested by certain accounts that had reached Sicily
respecting Latin manners and customs, in conjunction with the critical
struggle which at the very time and place where Timaeus wrote was
preparing between the Romans and the Carthaginians.  In the main,
however, the story cannot have been derived from Latium, but can only
have been the good-for-nothing invention of the old "gossip-monger"
himself.  Timaeus had heard of the primitive temple of the household
gods in Lavinium; but the statement, that these were regarded by the
Lavinates as the Penates brought by the followers of Aeneas from
Ilion, is as certainly an addition of his own, as the ingenious
parallel between the Roman October horse and the Trojan horse, and the
exact inventory taken of the sacred objects of Lavinium--there were,
our worthy author affirms, heralds' staves of iron and copper, and an
earthen vase of Trojan manufacture! It is true that these same Penates
might not at all be seen by any one for centuries afterwards; but
Timaeus was one of the historians who upon no matter are so fully
informed as upon things unknowable.  It is not without reason that
Polybius, who knew the man, advises that he should in no case be
trusted, and least of all where, as in this instance, he appeals to
documentary proofs.  In fact the Sicilian rhetorician, who professed to
point out the grave of Thucydides in Italy, and who found no higher
praise for Alexander than that he had finished the conquest of Asia
sooner than Isocrates finished his "Panegyric," was exactly the man to
knead the naive fictions of the earlier time into that confused medley
on which the play of accident has conferred so singular a celebrity.

How far the Hellenic play of fable regarding Italian matters, as it
in the first instance arose in Sicily, gained admission during this
period even in Italy itself, cannot be ascertained with precision.
Those links of connection with the Odyssean cycle, which we
subsequently meet with in the legends of the foundation of Tusculum,
Praeneste, Antium, Ardea, and Cortona, must probably have been already
concocted at this period; and even the belief in the descent of the
Romans from Trojan men or Trojan women must have been established at
the close of this epoch in Rome, for the first demonstrable contact
between Rome and the Greek east is the intercession of the senate on
behalf of the "kindre" Ilians in 472.  That the fable of Aeneas was
nevertheless of comparatively recent origin in Italy, is shown by
the extremely scanty measure of its localization as compared with
the legend of Odysseus; and at any rate the final redaction of these
tales, as well as their reconciliation with the legend of the origin
of Rome, belongs only to the following age.

While in this way historical composition, or what was so called among
the Hellenes, busied itself in its own fashion with the prehistoric
times of Italy, it left the contemporary history of Italy almost
untouched--a circumstance as significant of the sunken condition of
Hellenic history, as it is to be for our sakes regretted.  Theopompus
of Chios (who ended his work with 418) barely noticed in passing the
capture of Rome by the Celts; and Aristotle,(21) Clitarchus,(22)
Theophrastus,(23) Heraclides of Pontus (about 450), incidentally
mention particular events relating to Rome.  It is only with Hieronymus
of Cardia, who as the historian of Pyrrhus narrated also his Italian
wars, that Greek historiography becomes at the same time an authority
for the history of Rome.

Jurisprudence

Among the sciences, that of jurisprudence acquired an invaluable basis
through the committing to writing of the laws of the city in the years
303, 304.  This code, known under the name of the Twelve Tables, is
perhaps the oldest Roman document that deserves the name of a book.
The nucleus of the so-called -leges regiae- was probably not much more
recent.  These were certain precepts chiefly of a ritual nature, which
rested upon traditional usage, and were probably promulgated to the
general public under the form of royal enactments by the college of
pontifices, which was entitled not to legislate but to point out the
law.  Moreover it may be presumed that from the commencement of this
period the more important decrees of the senate at any rate--if not
those of the people--were regularly recorded in writing; for already
in the earliest conflicts between the orders disputes took place as
to their preservation.(24)

Opinions--
Table of Formulae for Actions

While the mass of written legal documents thus increased, the
foundations of jurisprudence in the proper sense were also firmly
laid.  It was necessary that both the magistrates who were annually
changed and the jurymen taken from the people should be enabled to
resort to men of skill, who were acquainted with the course of law and
knew how to suggest a decision accordant with precedents or, in the
absence of these, resting on reasonable grounds.  The pontifices who
were wont to be consulted by the people regarding court-days and on
all questions of difficulty and of legal observance relating to the
worship of the gods, delivered also, when asked, counsels and opinions
on other points of law, and thus developed in the bosom of their
college that tradition which formed the basis of Roman private law,
more especially the formulae of action proper for each particular
case.  A table of formulae which embraced all these actions, along with
a calendar which specified the court-days, was published to the people
about 450 by Appius Claudius or by his clerk, Gnaeus Flavius.  This
attempt, however, to give formal shape to a science, that as yet
hardly recognized itself, stood for a long time completely isolated.

That the knowledge of law and the setting it forth were even now a
means of recommendation to the people and of attaining offices of
state, may be readily conceived, although the story, that the first
plebeian pontifex Publius Sempronius Sophus (consul 450), and the
first plebeian pontifex maximus Tiberius Coruncanius (consul 474),
were indebted for these priestly honours to their knowledge of law,
is probably rather a conjecture of posterity than a statement
of tradition.

Language

That the real genesis of the Latin and doubtless also of the other
Italian languages was anterior to this period, and that even at its
commencement the Latin language was substantially an accomplished
fact, is evident from the fragments of the Twelve Tables, which,
however, have been largely modernized by their semi-oral tradition.
They contain doubtless a number of antiquated words and harsh
combinations, particularly in consequence of omitting the indefinite
subject; but their meaning by no means presents, like that of the
Arval chant, any real difficulty, and they exhibit far more agreement
with the language of Cato than with that of the ancient litanies.
If the Romans at the beginning of the seventh century had difficulty
in understanding documents of the fifth, the difficulty doubtless
proceeded merely from the fact that there existed at that time in Rome
no real, least of all any documentary, research.

Technical Style

On the other hand it must have been at this period, when the
indication and redaction of law began, that the Roman technical style
first established itself--a style which at least in its developed
shape is nowise inferior to the modern legal phraseology of England in
stereotyped formulae and turns of expression, endless enumeration of
particulars, and long-winded periods; and which commends itself to the
initiated by its clearness and precision, while the layman who does
not understand it listens, according to his character and humour, with
reverence, impatience, or chagrin.

Philology

Moreover at this epoch began the treatment of the native languages
after a rational method.  About its commencement the Sabellian as well
as the Latin idiom threatened, as we saw,(25) to become barbarous,
and the abrasion of endings and the corruption of the vowels and more
delicate consonants spread on all hands, just as was the case with the
Romanic languages in the fifth and sixth centuries of the Christian
era.  But a reaction set in: the sounds which had coalesced in Oscan,
-d and -r, and the sounds which had coalesced in Latin, -g and -k,
were again separated, and each was provided with its proper sign;
-o and -u, for which from the first the Oscan alphabet had lacked
separate signs, and which had been in Latin originally separate but
threatened to coalesce, again became distinct, and in Oscan even the
-i was resolved into two signs different in sound and in writing;
lastly, the writing again came to follow more closely the
pronunciation--the -s for instance among the Romans being in many
cases replaced by -r.  Chronological indications point to the fifth
century as the period of this reaction; the Latin -g for instance was
not yet in existence about 300 but was so probably about 500; the
first of the Papirian clan, who called himself Papirius instead of
Papisius, was the consul of 418; the introduction of that -r instead
of -s is attributed to Appius Claudius, censor in 442.  Beyond doubt
the re-introduction of a more delicate and precise pronunciation was
connected with the increasing influence of Greek civilization, which
is observable at this very period in all departments of Italian life;
and, as the silver coins of Capua and Nola are far more perfect than
the contemporary asses of Ardea and Rome, writing and language appear
also to have been more speedily and fully reduced to rule in the
Campanian land than in Latium.  How little, notwithstanding the labour
bestowed on it, the Roman language and mode of writing had become
settled at the close of this epoch, is shown by the inscriptions
preserved from the end of the fifth century, in which the greatest
arbitrariness prevails, particularly as to the insertion or omission
of -m, -d and -s in final sounds and of -n in the body of a word,
and as to the distinguishing of the vowels -o -u and -e -i.(26)  It is
probable that the contemporary Sabellians were in these points further
advanced, while the Umbrians were but slightly affected by the
regenerating influence of the Hellenes.

Instruction

In consequence of this progress of jurisprudence and grammar,
elementary school-instruction also, which in itself had doubtless
already emerged earlier, must have undergone a certain improvement.
As Homer was the oldest Greek, and the Twelve Tables was the oldest
Roman, book, each became in its own land the essential basis of
instruction; and the learning by heart the juristico-political
catechism was a chief part of Roman juvenile training.  Alongside of
the Latin "writing-masters" (-litteratores-) there were of course,
from the time when an acquaintance with Greek was indispensable for
every statesman and merchant, also Greek "language-masters"
(-grammatici-)(27)--partly tutor-slaves, partly private teachers,
who at their own dwelling or that of their pupil gave instructions
in the reading and speaking of Greek.  As a matter of course, the rod
played its part in instruction as well as in military discipline and
in police.(28)  The instruction of this epoch cannot however have
passed beyond the elementary stage: there was no material shade
of difference, in a social respect, between the educated and
the non-educated Roman.

Exact Sciences--
Regulation of the Calendar

That the Romans at no time distinguished themselves in the
mathematical and mechanical sciences is well known, and is attested,
in reference to the present epoch, by almost the only fact which can
be adduced under this head with certainty--the regulation of the
calendar attempted by the decemvirs.  They wished to substitute for the
previous calendar based on the old and very imperfect -trieteris-(29)
the contemporary Attic calendar of the -octaeteris-, which retained
the lunar month of 29 1/2 days but assumed the solar year at 365 1/4
days instead of 368 3/4, and therefore, without making any alteration
in the length of the common year of 354 days, intercalated, not as
formerly 59 days every 4 years, but 90 days every 8 years.  With the
same view the improvers of the Roman calendar intended--while
otherwise retaining the current calendar--in the two inter-calary
years of the four years' cycle to shorten not the intercalary months,
but the two Februaries by 7 days each, and consequently to fix that
month in the intercalary years at 22 and 21 days respectively instead
of 29 and 28.  But want of mathematical precision and theological
scruples, especially in reference to the annual festival of Terminus
which fell within those very days in February, disarranged the
intended reform, so that the Februaries of the intercalary years came
to be of 24 and 23 days, and thus the new Roman solar year in reality
ran to 366 1/4 days.  Some remedy for the practical evils resulting
from this was found in the practice by which, setting aside the
reckoning by the months or ten months of the calendar (30) as now no
longer applicable from the inequality in the length of the months,
wherever more accurate specifications were required, they accustomed
themselves to reckon by terms of ten months of a solar year of 365
days or by the so-called ten-month year of 304 days.  Over and above
this, there came early into use in Italy, especially for agricultural
purposes, the farmers' calendar based on the Egyptian solar year of
365 1/4 days by Eudoxus (who flourished 386).

Structural and Plastic Art

A higher idea of what the Italians were able to do in these
departments is furnished by their works of structural and plastic art,
which are closely associated with the mechanical sciences.  Here too we
do not find phenomena of real originality; but if the impress of
borrowing, which the plastic art of Italy bears throughout, diminishes
its artistic interest, there gathers around it a historical interest
all the more lively, because on the one hand it preserves the most
remarkable evidences of an international intercourse of which other
traces have disappeared, and on the other hand, amidst the well-nigh
total loss of the history of the non-Roman Italians, art is almost
the sole surviving index of the living activity which the different
peoples of the peninsula displayed.  No novelty is to be reported in
this period; but what we have already shown(31) may be illustrated
in this period with greater precision and on a broader basis, namely,
that the stimulus derived from Greece powerfully affected the
Etruscans and Italians on different sides, and called forth among
the former a richer and more luxurious, among the latter--where it
had any influence at all--a more intelligent and more genuine, art.

Architecture--
Etruscan

We have already shown how wholly the architecture of all the Italian
lands was, even in its earliest period, pervaded by Hellenic elements.
Its city walls, its aqueducts, its tombs with pyramidal roofs, and its
Tuscanic temple, are not at all, or not materially, different from the
oldest Hellenic structures.  No trace has been preserved of any advance
in architecture among the Etruscans during this period; we find among
them neither any really new reception, nor any original creation,
unless we ought to reckon as such the magnificent tombs, e.  g.  the
so-called tomb of Porsena at Chiusi described by Varro, which vividly
recalls the strange and meaningless grandeur of the Egyptian pyramids.

Latin--
The Arch

In Latium too, during the first century and a half of the republic,
it is probable that they moved solely in the previous track, and it
has already been stated that the exercise of art rather sank than rose
with the introduction of the republic.(32)  There can scarcely be named
any Latin building of architectural importance belonging to this
period, except the temple of Ceres built in the Circus at Rome in 261,
which was regarded in the period of the empire as a model of the
Tuscanic style.  But towards the close of this epoch a new spirit
appeared in Italian and particularly in Roman architecture;(33) the
building of the magnificent arches began.  It is true that we are not
entitled to pronounce the arch and the vault Italian inventions.
It is well ascertained that at the epoch of the genesis of Hellenic
architecture the Hellenes were not yet acquainted with the arch, and
therefore had to content themselves with a flat ceiling and a sloping
roof for their temples; but the arch may very well have been a later
invention of the Hellenes originating in more scientific mechanics;
as indeed the Greek tradition refers it to the natural philosopher
Democritus (294-397).  With this priority of Hellenic over Roman
arch-building the hypothesis, which has been often and perhaps justly
propounded, is quite compatible, that the vaulted roof of the Roman
great -cloaca-, and that which was afterwards thrown over the old
Capitoline well-house which originally had a pyramidal roof,(34) are
the oldest extant structures in which the principle of the arch is
applied; for it is more than probable that these arched buildings
belong not to the regal but to the republican period,(35) and that
in the regal period the Italians were acquainted only with flat or
overlapped roofs.(34)  But whatever may be thought as to the invention
of the arch itself, the application of a principle on a great scale is
everywhere, and particularly in architecture, at least as important as
its first exposition; and this application belongs indisputably to the
Romans.  With the fifth century began the building of gates, bridges,
and aqueducts based mainly on the arch, which is thenceforth
inseparably associated with the Roman name.  Akin to this was the
development of the form of the round temple with the dome-shaped roof,
which was foreign to the Greeks, but was held in much favour with the
Romans and was especially applied by them in the case of the cults
peculiar to them, particularly the non-Greek worship of Vesta.(37)

Something the same may be affirmed as true of various subordinate,
but not on that account unimportant, achievements in this field.
They do not lay claim to originality or artistic accomplishment;
but the firmly-jointed stone slabs of the Roman streets, their
indestructible highways, the broad hard ringing tiles, the everlasting
mortar of their buildings, proclaim the indestructible solidity and
the energetic vigour of the Roman character.

Plastic and Delineative Art

Like architectural art, and, if possible, still more completely, the
plastic and delineative arts were not so much matured by Grecian
stimulus as developed from Greek seeds on Italian soil.  We have
already observed(38) that these, although only younger sisters of
architecture, began to develop themselves at least in Etruria, even
during the Roman regal period; but their principal development in
Etruria, and still more in Latium, belongs to the present epoch, as is
very evident from the fact that in those districts which the Celts
and Samnites wrested from the Etruscans in the course of the fourth
century there is scarcely a trace of the practice of Etruscan art.
The plastic art of the Tuscans applied itself first and chiefly to
works in terra-cotta, in copper, and in gold-materials which were
furnished to the artists by the rich strata of clay, the copper mines,
and the commercial intercourse of Etruria.  The vigour with which
moulding in clay was prosecuted is attested by the immense number of
bas-reliefs and statuary works in terra-cotta, with which the walls,
gables, and roofs of the Etruscan temples were once decorated, as
their still extant ruins show, and by the trade which can be shown to
have existed in such articles from Etruria to Latium.  Casting in
copper occupied no inferior place.  Etruscan artists ventured to make
colossal statues of bronze fifty feet in height, and Volsinii, the
Etruscan Delphi, was said to have possessed about the year 489 two
thousand bronze statues.  Sculpture in stone, again, began in Etruria,
as probably everywhere, at a far later date, and was prevented from
development not only by internal causes, but also by the want of
suitable material; the marble quarries of Luna (Carrara) were not yet
opened.  Any one who has seen the rich and elegant gold decorations
of the south-Etruscan tombs, will have no difficulty in believing the
statement that Tyrrhene gold cups were valued even in Attica.
Gem-engraving also, although more recent, was in various forms
practised in Etruria.  Equally dependent on the Greeks, but otherwise
quite on a level with the workers in the plastic arts, were the
Etruscan designers and painters, who manifested extraordinary activity
both in outline-drawing on metal and in monochromatic fresco-painting.

Campanian and Sabellian

On comparing with this the domain of the Italians proper, it appears
at first, contrasted with the Etruscan riches, almost poor in art.
But on a closer view we cannot fail to perceive that both the
Sabellian and the Latin nations must have had far more capacity
and aptitude for art than the Etruscans.  It is true that in the proper
Sabellian territory, in Sabina, in the Abruzzi, in Samnium, there are
hardly found any works of art at all, and even coins are wanting.
But those Sabellian stocks, which reached the coasts of the Tyrrhene
or Ionic seas, not only appropriated Hellenic art externally, like
the Etruscans, but more or less completely acclimatized it.  Even in
Velitrae, where probably alone in the former land of the Volsci their
language and peculiar character were afterwards maintained, painted
terra-cottas have been found, displaying vigorous and characteristic
treatment.  In Lower Italy Lucania was to a less degree influenced
by Hellenic art; but in Campania and in the land of the Bruttii,
Sabellians and Hellenes became completely intermingled not only in
language and nationality, but also and especially in art, and the
Campanian and Bruttian coins in particular stand so entirely in point
of artistic treatment on a level with the contemporary coins of
Greece, that the inscription alone serves to distinguish the one
from the other.

Latin

It is a fact less known, but not less certain, that Latium also, while
inferior to Etruria in the copiousness and massiveness of its art,
was not inferior in artistic taste and practical skill.  Evidently the
establishment of the Romans in Campania which took place about the
beginning of the fifth century, the conversion of the town of Cales
into a Latin community, and that of the Falernian territory near Capua
into a Roman tribe,(39) opened up in the first instance Campanian art
to the Romans.  It is true that among these the art of gem-engraving so
diligently prosecuted in luxurious Etruria is entirely wanting, and we
find no indication that the Latin workshops were, like those of the
Etruscan goldsmiths and clay-workers, occupied in supplying a foreign
demand.  It is true that the Latin temples were not like the Etruscan
overloaded with bronze and clay decorations, that the Latin tombs were
not like the Etruscan filled with gold ornaments, and their walls
shone not, like those of the Tuscan tombs, with paintings of various
colours.  Nevertheless, on the whole the balance does not incline in
favour of the Etruscan nation.  The device of the effigy of Janus,
which, like the deity itself, may be attributed to the Latins,(40)
is not unskilful, and is of a more original character than that of
any Etruscan work of art.  The beautiful group of the she-wolf with the
twins attaches itself doubtless to similar Greek designs, but was--as
thus worked out--certainly produced, if not in Rome, at any rate by
Romans; and it deserves to be noted that it first appears on the
silver moneys coined by the Romans in and for Campania.  In the
above-mentioned Cales there appears to have been devised soon after
its foundation a peculiar kind of figured earthenware, which was
marked with the name of the masters and the place of manufacture,
and was sold over a wide district as far even as Etruria.  The little
altars of terra-cotta with figures that have recently been brought
to light on the Esquiline correspond in style of representation as in
that of ornament exactly to the similar votive gifts of the Campanian
temples.  This however does not exclude Greek masters from having also
worked for Rome.  The sculptor Damophilus, who with Gorgasus prepared
the painted terra-cotta figures for the very ancient temple of Ceres,
appears to have been no other than Demophilus of Himera, the teacher
of Zeuxis (about 300).  The most instructive illustrations are
furnished by those branches of art in which we are able to form a
comparative judgment, partly from ancient testimonies, partly from
our own observation.  Of Latin works in stone scarcely anything else
survives than the stone sarcophagus of the Roman consul Lucius Scipio,
wrought at the close of this period in the Doric style; but its noble
simplicity puts to shame all similar Etruscan works.  Many beautiful
bronzes of an antique chaste style of art, particularly helmets,
candelabra, and the like articles, have been taken from Etruscan
tombs; but which of these works is equal to the bronze she-wolf
erected from the proceeds of fines in 458 at the Ruminal fig-tree in
the Roman Forum, and still forming the finest ornament of the Capitol?
And that the Latin metal-founders as little shrank from great
enterprises as the Etruscans, is shown by the colossal bronze figure
of Jupiter on the Capitol erected by Spurius Carvilius (consul in 461)
from the melted equipments of the Samnites, the chisellings of which
sufficed to cast the statue of the victor that stood at the feet of
the Colossus; this statue of Jupiter was visible even from the Alban
Mount.  Amongst the cast copper coins by far the finest belong to
southern Latium; the Roman and Umbrian are tolerable, the Etruscan
almost destitute of any image and often really barbarous.
The fresco-paintings, which Gaius Fabius executed in the temple of
Health on the Capitol, dedicated in 452, obtained in design and
colouring the praise even of connoisseurs trained in Greek art in
the Augustan age; and the art-enthusiasts of the empire commended
the frescoes of Caere, but with still greater emphasis those of Rome,
Lanuvium, and Ardea, as masterpieces of painting.  Engraving on metal,
which in Latium decorated not the hand-mirror, as in Etruria, but the
toilet-casket with its elegant outlines, was practised to a far less
extent in Latium and almost exclusively in Praeneste.  There are
excellent works of art among the copper mirrors of Etruria as among
the caskets of Praeneste; but it was a work of the latter kind, and
in fact a work which most probably originated in the workshop of a
Praenestine master at this epoch,(41) regarding which it could with
truth be affirmed that scarcely another product of the graving of
antiquity bears the stamp of an art so finished in its beauty and
characteristic expression, and yet so perfectly pure and chaste,
as the Ficoroni -cista-.

Character of Etruscan Art

The general character of Etruscan works of art is, on the one hand, a
sort of barbaric extravagance in material as well as in style; on the
other hand, an utter absence of original development.  Where the Greek
master lightly sketches, the Etruscan disciple lavishes a scholar's
diligence; instead of the light material and moderate proportions of
the Greek works, there appears in the Etruscan an ostentatious stress
laid upon the size and costliness, or even the mere singularity, of
the work.  Etruscan art cannot imitate without exaggerating; the chaste
in its hands becomes harsh, the graceful effeminate, the terrible
hideous, and the voluptuous obscene; and these features become more
prominent, the more the original stimulus falls into the background
and Etruscan art finds itself left to its own resources.  Still more
surprising is the adherence to traditional forms and a traditional
style.  Whether it was that a more friendly contact with Etruria at the
outset allowed the Hellenes to scatter there the seeds of art, and
that a later epoch of hostility impeded the admission into Etruria
of the more recent developments of Greek art, or whether, as is more
probable, the intellectual torpor that rapidly came over the nation
was the main cause of the phenomenon, art in Etruria remained
substantially stationary at the primitive stage which it had occupied
on its first entrance.  This, as is well known, forms the reason why
Etruscan art, the stunted daughter, was so long regarded as the
mother, of Hellenic art.  Still more even than the rigid adherence to
the style traditionally transmitted in the older branches of art,
the sadly inferior handling of those branches that came into vogue
afterwards, particularly of sculpture in stone and of copper-casting
as applied to coins, shows how quickly the spirit of Etruscan art
evaporated.  Equally instructive are the painted vases, which are found
in so enormous numbers in the later Etruscan tombs.  Had these come
into current use among the Etruscans as early as the metal plates
decorated with contouring or the painted terra-cottas, beyond doubt
they would have learned to manufacture them at home in considerable
quantity, and of a quality at least relatively good; but at the period
at which this luxury arose, the power of independent reproduction
wholly failed--as the isolated vases provided with Etruscan
inscriptions show--and they contented themselves with buying
instead of making them.

North Etruscan and South Etruscan Art

But even within Etruria there appears a further remarkable distinction
in artistic development between the southern and northern districts.
It is South Etruria, particularly in the districts of Caere,
Tarquinii, and Volci, that has preserved the great treasures of art
which the nation boasted, especially in frescoes, temple decorations,
gold ornaments, and painted vases.  Northern Etruria is far inferior;
no painted tomb, for example, has been found to the north of Chiusi.
The most southern Etruscan cities, Veii, Caere, and Tarquinii, were
accounted in Roman tradition the primitive and chief seats of Etruscan
art; the most northerly town, Volaterrae, with the largest territory
of all the Etruscan communities, stood most of all aloof from art
While a Greek semi-culture prevailed in South Etruria, Northern
Etruria was much more marked by an absence of all culture.  The causes
of this remarkable contrast may be sought partly in differences of
nationality--South Etruria being largely peopled in all probability by
non-Etruscan elements(42)--partly in the varying intensity of Hellenic
influence, which must have made itself very decidedly felt at Caere in
particular.  The fact itself admits of no doubt.  The more injurious on
that account must have been the early subjugation of the southern half
of Etruria by the Romans, and the Romanizing--which there began very
early--of Etruscan art.  What Northern Etruria, confined to its own
efforts, was able to produce in the way of art, is shown by the copper
coins which essentially belong to it.

Character of Latin Art

Let us now turn from Etruria to glance at Latium.  The latter, it is
true, created no new art; it was reserved for a far later epoch of
culture to develop on the basis of the arch a new architecture
different from the Hellenic, and then to unfold in harmony with that
architecture a new style of sculpture and painting.  Latin art is
nowhere original and often insignificant; but the fresh sensibility
and the discriminating tact, which appropriate what is good in others,
constitute a high artistic merit.  Latin art seldom became barbarous,
and in its best products it comes quite up to the level of Greek
technical execution.  We do not mean to deny that the art of Latium,
at least in its earlier stages, had a certain dependence on the
undoubtedly earlier Etruscan;(43) Varro may be quite right in
supposing that, previous to the execution by Greek artists of the clay
figures in the temple of Ceres,(44) only "Tuscanic" figures adorned
the Roman temples; but that, at all events, it was mainly the direct
influence of the Greeks that led Latin art into its proper channel,
is self-evident, and is very obviously shown by these very statues as
well as by the Latin and Roman coins.  Even the application of graving
on metal in Etruria solely to the toilet mirror, and in Latium solely
to the toilet casket, indicates the diversity of the art-impulses that
affected the two lands.  It does not appear, however, to have been
exactly at Rome that Latin art put forth its freshest vigour; the
Roman -asses- and Roman -denarii- are far surpassed in fineness and
taste of workmanship by the Latin copper, and the rare Latin silver,
coins, and the masterpieces of painting and design belong chiefly to
Praeneste, Lanuvium, and Ardea.  This accords completely with the
realistic and sober spirit of the Roman republic which we have already
described--a spirit which can hardly have asserted itself with equal
intensity in other parts of Latium.  But in the course of the fifth
century, and especially in the second half of it, there was a mighty
activity in Roman art.  This was the epoch, in which the construction
of the Roman arches and Roman roads began; in which works of art like
the she-wolf of the Capitol originated; and in which a distinguished
man of an old Roman patrician clan took up his pencil to embellish a
newly constructed temple and thence received the honorary surname of
the "Painter." This was not accident.  Every great age lays grasp on
all the powers of man; and, rigid as were Roman manners, strict as was
Roman police, the impulse received by the Roman burgesses as masters
of the peninsula or, to speak more correctly, by Italy united for the
first time as one state, became as evident in the stimulus given to
Latin and especially to Roman art, as the moral and political decay of
the Etruscan nation was evident in the decline of art in Etruria.
As the mighty national vigour of Latium subdued the weaker nations,
it impressed its imperishable stamp also on bronze and on marble.




Notes for Book II Chapter IX


1.  I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

2.  The account given by Dionysius (vi. 95; comp. Niebuhr, ii. 40) and
by Plutarch (Camill. 42), deriving his statement from another passage
in Dionysius regarding the Latin festival, must be understood to apply
rather to the Roman games, as, apart from other grounds, is strikingly
evident from comparing the latter passage with Liv. vi. 42 (Ritschl,
Parerg. i. p. 313).  Dionysius has--and, according to his wont when in
error, persistently--misunderstood the expression -ludi maximi-.

There was, moreover, a tradition which referred the origin of the
national festival not, as in the common version, to the conquest of
the Latins by the first Tarquinius, but to the victory over the Latins
at the lake Regillus (Cicero, de Div. i. 26, 55; Dionys. vii. 71).
That the important statements preserved in the latter passage from
Fabius really relate to the ordinary thanksgiving-festival, and not to
any special votive solemnity, is evident from the express allusion to
the annual recurrence of the celebration, and from the exact agreement
of the sum of the expenses with the statement in the Pseudo-Asconius
(p. 142 Or.).

3.  II. III. Curule Aedileship

4.  I. II. Art

5.  I. XV. Metre

6.  I. XV. Masks

7.  II. VIII. Police f.

8.  I. XV. Melody

9.  A fragment has been preserved:

-Hiberno pulvere, verno luto, grandia farra
Camille metes-

We do not know by what right this was afterwards regarded as the
oldest Roman poem (Macrob. Sat. v. 20; Festus, Ep. v. Flaminius,
p. 93, M.; Serv. on Virg. Georg, i. 101; Plin. xvii. 2. 14).

10.  II. VIII. Appius Claudius

11.  II. VIII. Rome and the Romans of This Epoch

12.  The first places in the list alone excite suspicion, and may have
been subsequently added, with a view to round off the number of years
between the flight of the king and the burning of the city to 120.

13.  I. VI. Time and the Occasion of the Reform, II. VII. System of
Government

14.  II. VIII Rome and the Romans of This Epoch.  According to the
annals Scipio commands in Etruria and his colleague in Samnium, and
Lucania is during this year in league with Rome; according to the
epitaph Scipio conquers two towns in Samnium and all Lucania.

15.  I. XI. Jurisdiction, second note.

16.  They appear to have reckoned three generations to a hundred years
and to have rounded off the figures 233 1/3 to 240, just as the epoch
between the king's flight and the burning of the city was rounded off
to 120 years (II. IX. Registers of Magistrates, note).  The reason why
these precise numbers suggested themselves, is apparent from the
similar adjustment (above explained, I. XIV. The Duodecimal System)
of the measures of surface.

17.  I. XII. Spirits

18.  I. X. Relations of the Western Italians to the Greeks

19.  The "Trojan colonies" in Sicily, mentioned by Thucydides, the
pseudo-Scylax, and others, as well as the designation of Capua as a
Trojan foundation in Hecataeus, must also be traced to Stesichorus
and his identification of the natives of Italy and Sicily with
the Trojans.

20.  According to his account Rome, a woman who had fled from Ilion
to Rome, or rather her daughter of the same name, married Latinos,
king of the Aborigines, and bore to him three sons, Romos, Romylos,
and Telegonos.  The last, who undoubtedly emerges here as founder
of Tusculum and Praeneste, belongs, as is well known, to the legend
of Odysseus.

21.  II. IV. Fruitlessness of the Celtic Victory

22.  II. VII. Relations between the East and West

23.  II. VII. The Roman Fleet

24.  II. II. Political Value of the Tribunates, II. II.
The Valerio-Horatian Laws

25.  I. XIV. Corruption of Language and Writing

26.  In the two epitaphs, of Lucius Scipio consul in 456, and of the
consul of the same name in 495, -m and -d are ordinarily wanting in
the termination of cases, yet -Luciom- and -Gnaivod- respectively
occur once; there occur alongside of one another in the nominative
-Cornelio- and -filios-; -cosol-, -cesor-, alongside of -consol-,
-censor-; -aidiles-, -dedet-, -ploirume- (= -plurimi-) -hec- (nom.
sing.) alongside of -aidilis-, -cepit-, -quei-, -hic-.  Rhotacism is
already carried out completely; we find -duonoro-(= -bonorum-),
-ploirume-, not as in the chant of the Salii -foedesum-, -plusima-.
Our surviving inscriptions do not in general precede the age of
rhotacism; of the older -s only isolated traces occur, such as
afterwards -honos-, -labos- alongside of -honor-, -labor-; and the
similar feminine -praenomina-, -Maio- (= -maios- -maior-) and -Mino-
in recently found epitaphs at Praeneste.

27.  -Litterator- and -grammaticus- are related nearly as elementary
teacher and teacher of languages with us; the latter designation
belonged by earlier usage only to the teacher of Greek, not to a
teacher of the mother-tongue.  -Litteratus- is more recent, and
denotes not a schoolmaster but a man of culture.

28.  It is at any rate a true Roman picture, which Plautus (Bacch. 431)
produces as a specimen of the good old mode of training children:--

... -ubi revenisses domum,
Cincticulo praecinctus in sella apud magistrum adsideres;
Si, librum cum legeres, unam peccavisses syllabam,
Fieret corium tam maculosum, quam est nutricis pallium-.

29.  I. XIV. The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar

30.  I. XIV. The Oldest Italo-Greek Calendar

31.  I. XV. Plastic Art in Italy

32.  II. VIII. Building

33.  II. VIII. Building

34.  I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

35.  I. VII. Servian Wall

36.  I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

37.  The round temple certainly was not, as has been supposed, an
imitation of the oldest form of the house; on the contrary, house
architecture uniformly starts from the square form.  The later Roman
theology associated this round form with the idea of the terrestrial
sphere or of the universe surrounding like a sphere the central sun
(Fest. v. -rutundam-, p. 282; Plutarch, Num. 11; Ovid, Fast. vi. 267,
seq.).  In reality it may be traceable simply to the fact, that the
circular shape has constantly been recognized as the most convenient
and the safest form of a space destined for enclosure and custody.
That was the rationale of the round --thesauroi-- of the Greeks as
well as of the round structure of the Roman store-chamber or temple of
the Penates.  It was natural, also, that the fireplace--that is, the
altar of Vesta--and the fire-chamber--that is, the temple of Vesta
--should be constructed of a round form, just as was done with the
cistern and the well-enclosure (-puteal-).  The round style of building
in itself was Graeco-Italian as was the square form, and the former
was appropriated to the store-place, the latter to the dwelling-house;
but the architectural and religious development of the simple -tholos-
into the round temple with pillars and columns was Latin.

38.  I. XV. Plastic Art in Italy

39.  II. V. Complete Submission of the Campanian and Volscian Provinces

40.  I. XII. Nature of the Roman Gods

41.  Novius Plautius (II. VIII. Capital in Rome) cast perhaps only the
feet and the group on the lid; the casket itself may have proceeded
from an earlier artist, but hardly from any other than a Praenestine,
for the use of these caskets was substantially confined to Praeneste.

42.  I. IX. Settlements of the Etruscans in Italy

43.  I. XV. Earliest Hellenic Influences

44.  I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform



End of Book II



     *        *        *         *        *



THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK III

From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek
States




Preparer's Note

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

1) 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-.

2) 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--

3) Simple unideographic 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.

4) Ideographic references, referring to signs of representation rather
than to content, are represented as -"id:xxxx"-.  "id:" stands for
"ideograph", and indicates that the reader should form a picture based
on the following "xxxx"; which may be a single symbol, a word, or an
attempt at a picture composed of ASCII characters.  For example,
 --"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 one of
lowercase.  Also, a construct such as --"id:E" indicates a symbol
that with ASCII resembles most closely a Roman uppercase "E", but,
in fact, is actually drawn more crudely.

5) 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.  The preparer of this document, has appended to the end
of each volume a table of conversion between the two systems.




CONTENTS

BOOK III:  From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage
           and the Greek States

   CHAPTER

      I. Carthage

     II. The War between Rome and Carthage Concerning Sicily

    III. The Extension of Italy to Its Natural Boundaries

     IV. Hamilcar and Hannibal

      V. The War under Hannibal to the Battle of Cannae

     VI. The War under Hannibal from Cannae to Zama

    VII. The West from the Peace of Hannibal to the Close
         of the Third Period

   VIII. The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War

     IX. The War with Antiochus of Asia

      X. The Third Macedonian War

     XI. The Government and the Governed

    XII. The Management of Land and of Capital

   XIII. Faith and Manners

    XIV. Literature and Art




BOOK THIRD

From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek
States




Arduum res gestas scribere.

--Sallust.




CHAPTER I

Carthage

The Phoenicians

The Semitic stock occupied a place amidst, and yet aloof from, the
nations of the ancient classical world.  The true centre of the
former lay in the east, that of the latter in the region of the
Mediterranean; and, however wars and migrations may have altered the
line of demarcation and thrown the races across each other, a deep
sense of diversity has always severed, and still severs, the Indo-
Germanic peoples from the Syrian, Israelite, and Arabic nations.
This diversity was no less marked in the case of that Semitic people
which spread more than any other in the direction of the west--the
Phoenicians.  Their native seat was the narrow border of coast bounded
by Asia Minor, the highlands of Syria, and Egypt, and called Canaan,
that is, the "plain."  This was the only name which the nation itself
made use of; even in Christian times the African farmer called himself
a Canaanite.  But Canaan received from the Hellenes the name of
Phoenike, the "land of purple," or "land of the red men," and the
Italians also were accustomed to call the Canaanites Punians, as we
are accustomed still to speak of them as the Phoenician or Punic race.

Their Commerce

The land was well adapted for agriculture; but its excellent harbours
and the abundant supply of timber and of metals favoured above all
things the growth of commerce; and it was there perhaps, where the
opulent eastern continent abuts on the wide-spreading Mediterranean
so rich in harbours and islands, that commerce first dawned in all
its greatness upon man.  The Phoenicians directed all the resources of
courage, acuteness, and enthusiasm to the full development of commerce
and its attendant arts of navigation, manufacturing, and colonization,
and thus connected the east and the west.  At an incredibly early
period we find them in Cyprus and Egypt, in Greece and Sicily, in
Africa and Spain, and even on the Atlantic Ocean and the North Sea.
The field of their commerce reached from Sierra Leone and Cornwall
in the west, eastward to the coast of Malabar.  Through their hands
passed the gold and pearls of the East, the purple of Tyre, slaves,
ivory, lions' and panthers' skins from the interior of Africa,
frankincense from Arabia, the linen of Egypt, the pottery and fine
wines of Greece, the copper of Cyprus, the silver of Spain, tin from
England, and iron from Elba.  The Phoenician mariners brought to
every nation whatever it could need or was likely to purchase; and
they roamed everywhere, yet always returned to the narrow home to
which their affections clung.

Their Intellectual Endowments

The Phoenicians are entitled to be commemorated in history by the
side of the Hellenic and Latin nations; but their case affords a
fresh proof, and perhaps the strongest proof of all, that the
development of national energies in antiquity was of a one-sided
character. Those noble and enduring creations in the field of
intellect, which owe their origin to the Aramaean race, do not belong
primarily to the Phoenicians.  While faith and knowledge in a certain
sense were the especial property of the Aramaean nations and first
reached the Indo-Germans from the east, neither the Phoenician
religion nor Phoenician science and art ever, so far as we can
see, held an independent rank among those of the Aramaean family.
The religious conceptions of the Phoenicians were rude and uncouth,
and it seemed as if their worship was meant to foster rather than to
restrain lust and cruelty.  No trace is discernible, at least in times
of clear historical light, of any special influence exercised by their
religion over other nations.  As little do we find any Phoenician
architecture or plastic art at all comparable even to those of Italy,
to say nothing of the lands where art was native.  The most ancient
seat of scientific observation and of its application to practical
purposes was Babylon, or at any rate the region of the Euphrates.  It
was there probably that men first followed the course of the stars; it
was there that they first distinguished and expressed in writing the
sounds of language; it was there that they began to reflect on time
and space and on the powers at work in nature: the earliest traces
of astronomy and chronology, of the alphabet, and of weights and
measures, point to that region.  The Phoenicians doubtless availed
themselves of the artistic and highly developed manufactures of
Babylon for their industry, of the observation of the stars for
their navigation, of the writing of sounds and the adjustment of
measures for their commerce, and distributed many an important germ
of civilization along with their wares; but it cannot be demonstrated
that the alphabet or any other of those ingenious products of the
human mind belonged peculiarly to them, and such religious and
scientific ideas as they were the means of conveying to the Hellenes
were scattered by them more after the fashion of a bird dropping
grains than of the husbandman sowing his seed.  The power which
the Hellenes and even the Italians possessed, of civilizing and
assimilating to themselves the nations susceptible of culture with
whom they came into contact, was wholly wanting in the Phoenicians.
In the field of Roman conquest the Iberian and the Celtic languages
have disappeared before the Romanic tongue; the Berbers of Africa
speak at the present day the same language as they spoke in the times
of the Hannos and the Barcides.

Their Political Qualities

Above all, the Phoenicians, like the rest of the Aramaean nations as
compared with the Indo-Germans, lacked the instinct of political life
--the noble idea of self-governing freedom.  During the most
flourishing times of Sidon and Tyre the land of the Phoenicians was
a perpetual apple of contention between the powers that ruled on the
Euphrates and on the Nile, and was subject sometimes to the Assyrians,
sometimes to the Egyptians.  With half its power Hellenic cities
would have made themselves independent; but the prudent men of Sidon
calculated that the closing of the caravan-routes to the east or of
the ports of Egypt would cost them more than the heaviest tribute, and
so they punctually paid their taxes, as it might happen, to Nineveh or
to Memphis, and even, if they could not avoid it, helped with their
ships to fight the battles of the kings.  And, as at home the
Phoenicians patiently bore the oppression of their masters, so also
abroad they were by no means inclined to exchange the peaceful career
of commerce for a policy of conquest.  Their settlements were
factories.  It was of more moment in their view to deal in buying and
selling with the natives than to acquire extensive territories in
distant lands, and to carry out there the slow and difficult work of
colonization.  They avoided war even with their rivals; they allowed
themselves to be supplanted in Egypt, Greece, Italy, and the east of
Sicily almost without resistance; and in the great naval battles,
which were fought in early times for the supremacy of the western
Mediterranean, at Alalia (217) and at Cumae (280), it was the
Etruscans, and not the Phoenicians, that bore the brunt of the
struggle with the Greeks.  If rivalry could not be avoided, they
compromised the matter as best they could; no attempt was ever made
by the Phoenicians to conquer Caere or Massilia.  Still less, of
course, were the Phoenicians disposed to enter on aggressive war.
On the only occasion in earlier times when they took the field on the
offensive--in the great Sicilian expedition of the African Phoenicians
which ended in their defeat at Himera by Gelo of Syracuse (274)--it
was simply as dutiful subjects of the great-king and in order to avoid
taking part in the campaign against the Hellenes of the east, that
they entered the lists against the Hellenes of the west; just as their
Syrian kinsmen were in fact obliged in that same year to share the
defeat of the Persians at Salamis(1).

This was not the result of cowardice; navigation in unknown waters
and with armed vessels requires brave hearts, and that such were to be
found among the Phoenicians, they often showed.  Still less was it
the result of any lack of tenacity and idiosyncrasy of national
feeling; on the contrary the Aramaeans defended their nationality with
the weapons of intellect as well as with their blood against all the
allurements of Greek civilization and all the coercive measures of
eastern and western despots, and that with an obstinacy which no Indo-
Germanic people has ever equalled, and which to us who are Occidentals
seems to be sometimes more, sometimes less, than human.  It was the
result of that want of political instinct, which amidst all their
lively sense of the ties of race, and amidst all their faithful
attachment to the city of their fathers, formed the most essential
feature in the character of the Phoenicians.  Liberty had no charms
for them, and they lusted not after dominion; "quietly they lived,"
says the Book of Judges, "after the manner of the Sidonians, careless
and secure, and in possession of riches."

Carthage

Of all the Phoenician settlements none attained a more rapid and
secure prosperity than those which were established by the Tyrians and
Sidonians on the south coast of Spain and the north coast of Africa--
regions that lay beyond the reach of the arm of the great-king and the
dangerous rivalry of the mariners of Greece, and in which the natives
held the same relation to the strangers as the Indians in America held
to the Europeans.  Among the numerous and flourishing Phoenician
cities along these shores, the most prominent by far was the "new
town," Karthada or, as the Occidentals called it, Karchedon or
Carthago.  Although not the earliest settlement of the Phoenicians
in this region, and originally perhaps a dependency of the adjoining
Utica, the oldest of the Phoenician towns in Libya, it soon
outstripped its neighbours and even the motherland through the
incomparable advantages of its situation and the energetic activity
of its inhabitants.  It was situated not far from the (former) mouth
of the Bagradas (Mejerda), which flows through the richest corn
district of northern Africa, and was placed on a fertile rising
ground, still occupied with country houses and covered with groves
of olive and orange trees, falling off in a gentle slope towards the
plain, and terminating towards the sea in a sea-girt promontory.
Lying in the heart of the great North-African roadstead, the Gulf of
Tunis, at the very spot where that beautiful basin affords the best
anchorage for vessels of larger size, and where drinkable spring water
is got close by the shore, the place proved singularly favourable for
agriculture and commerce and for the exchange of their respective
commodities--so favourable, that not only was the Tyrian settlement
in that quarter the first of Phoenician mercantile cities, but even
in the Roman period Carthage was no sooner restored than it became the
third city in the empire, and even now, under circumstances far from
favourable and on a site far less judiciously chosen, there exists and
flourishes in that quarter a city of a hundred thousand inhabitants.
The prosperity, agricultural, mercantile, and industrial, of a city
so situated and so peopled, needs no explanation; but the question
requires an answer--in what way did this settlement come to attain
a development of political power, such as no other Phoenician
city possessed?

Carthage Heads the Western Phoenicians in Opposition to the Hellenes

That the Phoenician stock did not even in Carthage renounce its policy
of passiveness, there is no lack of evidence to prove.  Carthage paid,
even down to the times of its prosperity, a ground-rent for the space
occupied by the city to the native Berbers, the tribe of the Maxyes or
Maxitani; and although the sea and the desert sufficiently protected
the city from any assault of the eastern powers, Carthage appears to
have recognized--although but nominally--the supremacy of the great-
king, and to have paid tribute to him occasionally, in order to secure
its commercial communications with Tyre and the East.

But with all their disposition to be submissive and cringing,
circumstances occurred which compelled these Phoenicians to adopt a
more energetic policy.  The stream of Hellenic migration was pouring
ceaselessly towards the west: it had already dislodged the Phoenicians
from Greece proper and Italy, and it was preparing to supplant them
also in Sicily, in Spain, and even in Libya itself.  The Phoenicians
had to make a stand somewhere, if they were not willing to be totally
crushed.  In this case, where they had to deal with Greek traders and
not with the great-king, submission did not suffice to secure the
continuance of their commerce and industry on its former footing,
liable merely to tax and tribute.  Massilia and Cyrene were already
founded; the whole east of Sicily was already in the hands of the
Greeks; it was full time for the Phoenicians to think of serious
resistance.  The Carthaginians undertook the task; after long and
obstinate wars they set a limit to the advance of the Cyrenaeans,
and Hellenism was unable to establish itself to the west of the desert
of Tripolis.  With Carthaginian aid, moreover, the Phoenician settlers
on the western point of Sicily defended themselves against the Greeks,
and readily and gladly submitted to the protection of the powerful
cognate city.(2)  These important successes, which occurred in the
second century of Rome, and which saved for the Phoenicians the south-
western portion of the Mediterranean, served of themselves to give to
the city which had achieved them the hegemony of the nation, and to
alter at the same time its political position.  Carthage was no longer
a mere mercantile city: it aimed at the dominion of Libya and of a
part of the Mediterranean, because it could not avoid doing so.
It is probable that the custom of employing mercenaries contributed
materially to these successes.  That custom came into vogue in Greece
somewhere about the middle of the fourth century of Rome, but among
the Orientals and the Carians more especially it was far older, and it
was perhaps the Phoenicians themselves that began it.  By the system
of foreign recruiting war was converted into a vast pecuniary
speculation, which was quite in keeping with the character and
habits of the Phoenicians.

The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa

It was probably the reflex influence of these successes abroad,
that first led the Carthaginians to change the character of their
occupation in Africa from a tenure of hire and sufferance to one of
proprietorship and conquest.  It appears to have been only about the
year 300 of Rome that the Carthaginian merchants got rid of the rent
for the soil, which they had hitherto been obliged to pay to the
natives.  This change enabled them to prosecute a husbandry of their
own on a great scale.  From the outset the Phoenicians had been
desirous to employ their capital as landlords as well as traders,
and to practise agriculture on a large scale by means of slaves or
hired labourers; a large portion of the Jews in this way served the
merchant-princes of Tyre for daily wages.  Now the Carthaginians
could without restriction extract the produce of the rich Libyan soil
by a system akin to that of the modern planters; slaves in chains
cultivated the land--we find single citizens possessing as many as
twenty thousand of them.  Nor was this all.  The agricultural villages
of the surrounding region--agriculture appears to have been introduced
among the Libyans at a very early period, probably anterior to the
Phoenician settlement, and presumably from Egypt--were subdued by
force of arms, and the free Libyan farmers were transformed into
fellahs, who paid to their lords a fourth part of the produce of the
soil as tribute, and were subjected to a regular system of recruiting
for the formation of a home Carthaginian army.  Hostilities were
constantly occurring with the roving pastoral tribes (--nomades--)
on the borders; but a chain of fortified posts secured the territory
enclosed by them, and the Nomades were slowly driven back into the
deserts and mountains, or were compelled to recognize Carthaginian
supremacy, to pay tribute, and to furnish contingents.  About the
period of the first Punic war their great town Theveste (Tebessa, at
the sources of the Mejerda) was conquered by the Carthaginians.  These
formed the "towns and tribes (--ethne--) of subjects," which appear in
the Carthaginian state-treaties; the former being the non-free Libyan
villages, the latter the subject Nomades.

Libyphoenicians

To this fell to be added the sovereignty of Carthage over the other
Phoenicians in Africa, or the so-called Liby-phoenicians.  These
included, on the one hand, the smaller settlements sent forth from
Carthage along the whole northern and part of the north-western coast
of Africa--which cannot have been unimportant, for on the Atlantic
seaboard alone there were settled at one time 30,000 such colonists
--and, on the other hand, the old Phoenician settlements especially
numerous along the coast of the present province of Constantine
and Beylik of Tunis, such as Hippo afterwards called Regius (Bona),
Hadrumetum (Susa), Little Leptis (to the south of Susa)--the second
city of the Phoenicians in Africa--Thapsus (in the same quarter), and
Great Leptis (Lebda to the west of Tripoli).  In what way all these
cities came to be subject to Carthage--whether voluntarily, for their
protection perhaps from the attacks of the Cyrenaeans and Numidians,
or by constraint--can no longer be ascertained; but it is certain that
they are designated as subjects of the Carthaginians even in official
documents, that they had to pull down their walls, and that they had
to pay tribute and furnish contingents to Carthage.  They were
not liable however either to recruiting or to the land-tax, but
contributed a definite amount of men and money, Little Leptis for
instance paying the enormous sum annually of 365 talents (90,000
pounds); moreover they lived on a footing of equality in law with
the Carthaginians, and could marry with them on equal terms.(3)
Utica alone escaped a similar fate and had its walls and independence
preserved to it, less perhaps from its own power than from the pious
feeling of the Carthaginians towards their ancient protectors;
in fact, the Phoenicians cherished for such relations a remarkable
feeling of reverence presenting a thorough contrast to the
indifference of the Greeks.  Even in intercourse with foreigners it is
always "Carthage and Utica" that stipulate and promise in conjunction;
which, of course, did not preclude the far more important "new town"
from practically asserting its hegemony also over Utica.  Thus the
Tyrian factory was converted into the capital of a mighty North
-African empire, which extended from the desert of Tripoli to the
Atlantic Ocean, contenting itself in its western portion (Morocco and
Algiers) with the occupation, and that to some extent superficial, of
a belt along the coast, but in the richer eastern portion (the present
districts of Constantine and Tunis) stretching its sway over the
interior also and constantly pushing its frontier farther to the
south.  The Carthaginians were, as an ancient author significantly
expresses it, converted from Tyrians into Libyans.  Phoenician
civilization prevailed in Libya just as Greek civilization prevailed
in Asia Minor and Syria after the campaigns of Alexander, although
not with the same intensity.  Phoenician was spoken and written at
the courts of the Nomad sheiks, and the more civilized native tribes
adopted for their language the Phoenician alphabet;(4) to Phoenicise
them completely suited neither the genius of the nation nor
the policy of Carthage.

The epoch, at which this transformation of Carthage into the capital
of Libya took place, admits the less of being determined, because
the change doubtless took place gradually.  The author just mentioned
names Hanno as the reformer of the nation.  If the Hanno is meant who
lived at the time of the first war with Rome, he can only be regarded
as having completed the new system, the carrying out of which
presumably occupied the fourth and fifth centuries of Rome.

The flourishing of Carthage was accompanied by a parallel decline
in the great cities of the Phoenician mother-country, in Sidon and
especially in Tyre, the prosperity of which was destroyed partly by
internal commotions, partly by the pressure of external calamities,
particularly of its sieges by Salmanassar in the first, Nebuchodrossor
in the second, and Alexander in the fifth century of Rome.  The noble
families and the old firms of Tyre emigrated for the most part to
the secure and flourishing daughter-city, and carried thither their
intelligence, their capital, and their traditions.  At the time when
the Phoenicians came into contact with Rome, Carthage was as decidedly
the first of Canaanite cities as Rome was the first of the
Latin communities.

Naval Power of Carthage

But the empire of Libya was only half of the power of Carthage; its
maritime and colonial dominion had acquired, during the same period,
a not less powerful development.

Spain

In Spain the chief station of the Phoenicians was the primitive Tyrian
settlement at Gades (Cadiz).  Besides this they possessed to the west
and east of it a chain of factories, and in the interior the region of
the silver mines; so that they held nearly the modern Andalusia and
Granada, or at least the coasts of these provinces.  They made no
effort to acquire the interior from the warlike native nations; they
were content with the possession of the mines and of the stations for
traffic and for shell and other fisheries; and they had difficulty in
maintaining their ground even in these against the adjoining tribes.
It is probable that these possessions were not properly Carthaginian
but Tyrian, and Gades was not reckoned among the cities tributary to
Carthage; but practically, like all the western Phoenicians, it was
under Carthaginian hegemony, as is shown by the aid sent by Carthage
to the Gaditani against the natives, and by the institution of
Carthaginian trading settlements to the westward of Gades.  Ebusus and
the Baleares, again, were occupied by the Carthaginians themselves at
an early period, partly for the fisheries, partly as advanced posts
against the Massiliots, with whom furious conflicts were waged
from these stations.

Sardinia

In like manner the Carthaginians already at the end of the second
century of Rome established themselves in Sardinia, which was
utilized by them precisely in the same way as Libya.  While the
natives withdrew into the mountainous interior of the island to
escape from bondage as agricultural serfs, just as the Numidians in
Africa withdrew to the borders of the desert, Phoenician colonies
were conducted to Caralis (Cagliari) and other important points, and
the fertile districts along the coast were turned to account by the
introduction of Libyan cultivators.

Sicily

Lastly in Sicily the straits of Messana and the larger eastern half of
the island had fallen at an early period into the hands of the Greeks;
but the Phoenicians, with the help of the Carthaginians, retained the
smaller adjacent islands, the Aegates, Melita, Gaulos, Cossyra--the
settlement in Malta especially was rich and flourishing--and they kept
the west and north-west coast of Sicily, whence they maintained
communication with Africa by means of Motya and afterwards of
Lilybaeum and with Sardinia by means of Panormus and Soluntum.
The interior of the island remained in the possession of the natives,
the Elymi, Sicani, and Siceli.  After the further advance of the
Greeks was checked, a state of comparative peace had prevailed in
the island, which even the campaign undertaken by the Carthaginians
at the instigation of the Persians against their Greek neighbours on
the island (274) did not permanently interrupt, and which continued
on the whole to subsist till the Attic expedition to Sicily (339-341).
The two competing nations made up their minds to tolerate each other,
and confined themselves in the main each to its own field.

Maritime Supremacy
Rivalry with Syracuse

All these settlements and possessions were important enough in
themselves; but they were of still greater moment, inasmuch as they
became the pillars of the Carthaginian maritime supremacy.  By their
possession of the south of Spain, of the Baleares, of Sardinia, of
western Sicily and Melita, and by their prevention of Hellenic
colonies on the east coast of Spain, in Corsica, and in the region of
the Syrtes, the masters of the north coast of Africa rendered their
sea a closed one, and monopolized the western straits.  In the
Tyrrhene and Gallic seas alone the Phoenicians were obliged to
admit the rivalry of other nations.  This state of things might
perhaps be endured, so long as the Etruscans and the Greeks served
to counterbalance each other in these waters; with the former, as the
less dangerous rivals, Carthage even entered into an alliance against
the Greeks.  But when, on the fall of the Etruscan power--a fall
which, as is usually the case in such forced alliances, Carthage had
hardly exerted all her power to avert--and after the miscarriage of
the great projects of Alcibiades, Syracuse stood forth as indisputably
the first Greek naval power, not only did the rulers of Syracuse
naturally begin to aspire to dominion over Sicily and lower Italy
and at the same time over the Tyrrhene and Adriatic seas, but the
Carthaginians also were compelled to adopt a more energetic policy.
The immediate result of the long and obstinate conflicts between
them and their equally powerful and infamous antagonist, Dionysius
of Syracuse (348-389), was the annihilation or weakening of the
intervening Sicilian states--a result which both parties had an
interest in accomplishing--and the division of the island between
the Syracusans and Carthaginians.  The most flourishing cities in
the island--Selinus, Himera, Agrigentum, Gela, and Messana--were
utterly destroyed by the Carthaginians in the course of these unhappy
conflicts: and Dionysius was not displeased to see Hellenism destroyed
or suppressed there, so that, leaning for support on foreign
mercenaries enlisted from Italy, Gaul and Spain, he might rule in
greater security over provinces which lay desolate or which were
occupied by military colonies.  The peace, which was concluded after
the victory of the Carthaginian general Mago at Kronion (371), and
which subjected to the Carthaginians the Greek cities of Thermae (the
ancient Himera), Segesta, Heraclea Minoa, Selinus, and a part of the
territory of Agrigentum as far as the Halycus, was regarded by the two
powers contending for the possession of the island as only a temporary
accommodation; on both sides the rivals were ever renewing their
attempts to dispossess each other.  Four several times--in 360 in the
time of Dionysius the elder; in 410 in that of Timoleon; in 445 in
that of Agathocles; in 476 in that of Pyrrhus--the Carthaginians were
masters of all Sicily excepting Syracuse, and were baffled by its
solid walls; almost as often the Syracusans, under able leaders, such
as were the elder Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus, seemed equally
on the eve of dislodging the Africans from the island.  But more and
more the balance inclined to the side of the Carthaginians, who were,
as a rule, the aggressors, and who, although they did not follow out
their object with Roman steadfastness, yet conducted their attack with
far greater method and energy than the Greek city, rent and worn out
by factions, conducted its defence.  The Phoenicians might with reason
expect that a pestilence or a foreign -condottiere- would not always
snatch the prey from their hands; and for the time being, at least at
sea, the struggle was already decided:(5) the attempt of Pyrrhus to
re-establish the Syracusan fleet was the last.  After the failure of
that attempt, the Carthaginian fleet commanded without a rival the
whole western Mediterranean; and their endeavours to occupy Syracuse,
Rhegium, and Tarentum, showed the extent of their power and the
objects at which they aimed.  Hand in hand with these attempts went
the endeavour to monopolize more and more the maritime commerce of
this region, at the expense alike of foreigners and of their own
subjects; and it was not the wont of the Carthaginians to recoil from
any violence that might help forward their purpose.  A contemporary
of the Punic wars, Eratosthenes, the father of geography (479-560),
affirms that every foreign mariner sailing towards Sardinia or towards
the Straits of Gades, who fell into the hands of the Carthaginians,
was thrown by them into the sea; and with this statement the fact
completely accords, that Carthage by the treaty of 406 (6) declared
the Spanish, Sardinian, and Libyan ports open to Roman trading
vessels, whereas by that of 448,(7) it totally closed them, with
the exception of the port of Carthage itself, against the same.

Constitution of Carthage
Council
Magistrates

Aristotle, who died about fifty years before the commencement of the
first Punic war, describes the constitution of Carthage as having
changed from a monarchy to an aristocracy, or to a democracy inclining
towards oligarchy, for he designates it by both names.  The conduct
of affairs was immediately vested in the hands of the Council of
Ancients, which, like the Spartan gerusia, consisted of the two kings
nominated annually by the citizens, and of twenty-eight gerusiasts,
who were also, as it appears, chosen annually by the citizens.  It was
this council which mainly transacted the business of the state-making,
for instance, the preliminary arrangements for war, appointing levies
and enlistments, nominating the general, and associating with him a
number of gerusiasts from whom the sub-commanders were regularly
taken; and to it despatches were addressed.  It is doubtful whether by
the side of this small council there existed a larger one; at any rate
it was not of much importance.  As little does any special influence
seem to have belonged to the kings; they acted chiefly as supreme
judges, and they were frequently so named (shofetes, -praetores-).
The power of the general was greater.  Isocrates, the senior
contemporary of Aristotle, says that the Carthaginians had an
oligarchical government at home, but a monarchical government in
the field; and thus the office of the Carthaginian general may be
correctly described by Roman writers as a dictatorship, although the
gerusiasts attached to him must have practically at least restricted
his power and, after he had laid down his office, a regular official
reckoning--unknown among the Romans--awaited him.  There existed no
fixed term of office for the general, and for this very reason he was
doubtless different from the annual king, from whom Aristotle also
expressly distinguishes him.  The combination however of several
offices in one person was not unusual among the Carthaginians, and it
is not therefore surprising that often the same person appears as at
once general and shofete.

Judges

But the gerusia and the magistrates were subordinate to the
corporation of the Hundred and Four (in round numbers the Hundred),
or the Judges, the main bulwark of the Carthaginian oligarchy.
It had no place in the original constitution of Carthage, but, like
the Spartan ephorate, it originated in an aristocratic opposition to
the monarchical elements of that constitution.  As public offices were
purchasable and the number of members forming the supreme board was
small, a single Carthaginian family, eminent above all others in
wealth and military renown, the clan of Mago,(8) threatened to unite
in its own hands the management of the state in peace and war and the
administration of justice.  This led, nearly about the time of the
decemvirs, to an alteration of the constitution and to the appointment
of this new board.  We know that the holding of the quaestorship gave
a title to admission into the body of judges, but that the candidate
had nevertheless to be elected by certain self-electing Boards of Five
(Pentarchies); and that the judges, although presumably by law chosen
from year to year, practically remained in office for a longer
period or indeed for life, for which reason they are usually called
"senators" by the Greeks and Romans.  Obscure as are the details, we
recognize clearly the nature of the body as an oligarchical board
constituted by aristocratic cooptation; an isolated but characteristic
indication of which is found in the fact that there were in Carthage
special baths for the judges over and above the common baths for the
citizens.  They were primarily intended to act as political jurymen,
who summoned the generals in particular, but beyond doubt the shofetes
and gerusiasts also when circumstances required, to a reckoning on
resigning office, and inflicted even capital punishment at pleasure,
often with the most reckless cruelty.  Of course in this as in every
instance, where administrative functionaries are subjected to the
control of another body, the real centre of power passed over from
the controlled to the controlling authority; and it is easy to
understand on the one hand how the latter came to interfere in all
matters of administration--the gerusia for instance submitted
important despatches first to the judges, and then to the people
--and on the other hand how fear of the control at home, which
regularly meted out its award according to success, hampered the
Carthaginian statesman and general in council and action.

Citizens

The body of citizens in Carthage, though not expressly restricted, as
in Sparta, to the attitude of passive bystanders in the business of
the state, appears to have had but a very slight amount of practical
influence on it In the elections to the gerusia a system of open
corruption was the rule; in the nomination of a general the people
were consulted, but only after the nomination had really been made by
proposal on the part of the gerusia; and other questions only went to
the people when the gerusia thought fit or could not otherwise agree.
Assemblies of the people with judicial functions were unknown in
Carthage.  The powerlessness of the citizens probably in the main
resulted from their political organization; the Carthaginian mess-
associations, which are mentioned in this connection and compared
with the Spartan Pheiditia, were probably guilds under oligarchical
management.  Mention is made even of a distinction between "burgesses
of the city" and "manual labourers," which leads us to infer that the
latter held a very inferior position, perhaps beyond the pale of law.

Character of the Government

On a comprehensive view of its several elements, the Carthaginian
constitution appears to have been a government of capitalists, such as
might naturally arise in a burgess-community which had no middle class
of moderate means but consisted on the one hand of an urban rabble
without property and living from hand to mouth, and on the other hand
of great merchants, planters, and genteel overseers.  The system of
repairing the fortunes of decayed grandees at the expense of the
subjects, by despatching them as tax-assessors and taskwork-overseers
to the dependent communities--that infallible token of a rotten urban
oligarchy--was not wanting in Carthage; Aristotle describes it as the
main cause of the tried durability of the Carthaginian constitution.
Up to his time no revolution worth mentioning had taken place in
Carthage either from above or from below.  The multitude remained
without leaders in consequence of the material advantages which the
governing oligarchy was able to offer to all ambitious or necessitous
men of rank, and was satisfied with the crumbs, which in the form of
electoral corruption or otherwise fell to it from the table of the
rich.  A democratic opposition indeed could not fail with such a
government to emerge; but at the time of the first Punic war it was
still quite powerless.  At a later period, partly under the influence
of the defeats which were sustained, its political influence appears
on the increase, and that far more rapidly than the influence of the
similar party at the same period in Rome; the popular assemblies began
to give the ultimate decision in political questions, and broke down
the omnipotence of the Carthaginian oligarchy.  After the termination
of the Hannibalic war it was even enacted, on the proposal of
Hannibal, that no member of the council of a Hundred could hold office
for two consecutive years; and thereby a complete democracy was
introduced, which certainly was under existing circumstances the only
means of saving Carthage, if there was still time to do so.  This
opposition was swayed by a strong patriotic and reforming enthusiasm;
but the fact cannot withal be overlooked, that it rested on a corrupt
and rotten basis.  The body of citizens in Carthage, which is compared
by well-informed Greeks to the people of Alexandria, was so disorderly
that to that extent it had well deserved to be powerless; and it might
well be asked, what good could arise from revolutions, where, as in
Carthage, the boys helped to make them.

Capital and Its Power in Carthage

From a financial point of view, Carthage held in every respect
the first place among the states of antiquity.  At the time of the
Peloponnesian war this Phoenician city was, according to the testimony
of the first of Greek historians, financially superior to all
the Greek states, and its revenues were compared to those of the
great-king; Polybius calls it the wealthiest city in the world.
The intelligent character of the Carthaginian husbandry--which, as was
the case subsequently in Rome, generals and statesmen did not disdain
scientifically to practise and to teach--is attested by the agronomic
treatise of the Carthaginian Mago, which was universally regarded by
the later Greek and Roman farmers as the fundamental code of rational
husbandry, and was not only translated into Greek, but was edited also
in Latin by command of the Roman senate and officially recommended
to the Italian landholders.  A characteristic feature was the close
connection between this Phoenician management of land and that of
capital: it was quoted as a leading maxim of Phoenician husbandry that
one should never acquire more land than he could thoroughly manage.
The rich resources of the country in horses, oxen, sheep, and goats,
in which Libya by reason of its Nomad economy perhaps excelled at that
time, as Polybius testifies, all other lands of the earth, were of
great advantage to the Carthaginians.  As these were the instructors
of the Romans in the art of profitably working the soil, they were so
likewise in the art of turning to good account their subjects; by
virtue of which Carthage reaped indirectly the rents of the "best
part of Europe," and of the rich--and in some portions, such as in
Byzacitis and on the lesser Syrtis, surpassingly productive--region
of northern Africa.  Commerce, which was always regarded in Carthage
as an honourable pursuit, and the shipping and manufactures which
commerce rendered flourishing, brought even in the natural course of
things golden harvests annually to the settlers there; and we have
already indicated how skilfully, by an extensive and evergrowing
system of monopoly, not only all the foreign but also all the inland
commerce of the western Mediterranean, and the whole carrying trade
between the west and east, were more and more concentrated in that
single harbour.

Science and art in Carthage, as afterwards in Rome, seem to have been
mainly dependent on Hellenic influences, but they do not appear to
have been neglected.  There was a respectable Phoenician literature;
and on the conquest of the city there were found rich treasures of
art--not created, it is true, in Carthage, but carried off from
Sicilian temples--and considerable libraries.  But even intellect
there was in the service of capital; the prominent features of its
literature were chiefly agronomic and geographical treatises, such
as the work of Mago already mentioned and the account by the admiral
Hanno of his voyage along the west coast of Africa, which was
originally deposited publicly in one of the Carthaginian temples, and
which is still extant in a translation.  Even the general diffusion of
certain attainments, and particularly of the knowledge of foreign
languages,(9) as to which the Carthage of this epoch probably stood
almost on a level with Rome under the empire, forms an evidence of the
thoroughly practical turn given to Hellenic culture in Carthage.  It
is absolutely impossible to form a conception of the mass of capital
accumulated in this London of antiquity, but some notion at least may
be gained of the sources of public revenue from the fact, that, in
spite of the costly system on which Carthage organized its wars and
in spite of the careless and faithless administration of the state
property, the contributions of its subjects and the customs-revenue
completely covered the expenditure, so that no direct taxes were
levied from the citizens; and further, that even after the second
Punic war, when the power of the state was already broken, the current
expenses and the payment to Rome of a yearly instalment of 48,000
pounds could be met, without levying any tax, merely by a somewhat
stricter management of the finances, and fourteen years after the
peace the state proffered immediate payment of the thirty-six
remaining instalments.  But it was not merely the sum total of its
revenues that evinced the superiority of the financial administration
at Carthage.  The economical principles of a later and more advanced
epoch are found by us in Carthage alone of all the more considerable
states of antiquity.  Mention is made of foreign state-loans, and in
the monetary system we find along with gold and silver mention of a
token-money having no intrinsic value--a species of currency not used
elsewhere in antiquity.  In fact, if government had resolved itself
into mere mercantile speculation, never would any state have solved
the problem more brilliantly than Carthage.

Comparison between Carthage and Rome
In Their Economy

Let us now compare the respective resources of Carthage and Rome.
Both were agricultural and mercantile cities, and nothing more; art
and science had substantially the same altogether subordinate and
altogether practical position in both, except that in this respect
Carthage had made greater progress than Rome.  But in Carthage the
moneyed interest preponderated over the landed, in Rome at this
time the landed still preponderated over the moneyed; and, while
the agriculturists of Carthage were universally large landlords
and slave-holders, in the Rome of this period the great mass of the
burgesses still tilled their fields in person.  The majority of the
population in Rome held property, and was therefore conservative; the
majority in Carthage held no property, and was therefore accessible
to the gold of the rich as well as to the cry of the democrats for
reform.  In Carthage there already prevailed all that opulence which
marks powerful commercial cities, while the manners and police of Rome
still maintained at least externally the severity and frugality of
the olden times.  When the ambassadors of Carthage returned from Rome,
they told their colleagues that the relations of intimacy among the
Roman senators surpassed all conception; that a single set of silver
plate sufficed for the whole senate, and had reappeared in every house
to which the envoys had been invited.  The sneer is a significant
token of the difference in the economic conditions on either side.

In Their Constitution

In both the constitution was aristocratic; the judges governed in
Carthage, as did the senate in Rome, and both on the same system of
police-control.  The strict state of dependence in which the governing
board at Carthage held the individual magistrate, and the injunction
to the citizens absolutely to refrain from learning the Greek language
and to converse with a Greek only through the medium of the public
interpreter, originated in the same spirit as the system of government
at Rome; but in comparison with the cruel harshness and the absolute
precision, bordering on silliness, of this Carthaginian state-
tutelage, the Roman system of fining and censure appears mild and
reasonable.  The Roman senate, which opened its doors to eminent
capacity and in the best sense represented the nation, was able
also to trust it, and had no need to fear the magistrates.
The Carthaginian senate, on the other hand, was based on a jealous
control of administration by the government, and represented
exclusively the leading families; its essence was mistrust of all
above and below it, and therefore it could neither be confident that
the people would follow whither it led, nor free from the dread of
usurpations on the part of the magistrates.  Hence the steady course
of Roman policy, which never receded a step in times of misfortune,
and never threw away the favours of fortune by negligence or
indifference; whereas the Carthaginians desisted from the struggle
when a last effort might perhaps have saved all, and, weary or
forgetful of their great national duties, allowed the half-completed
building to fall to pieces, only to begin it in a few years anew.
Hence the capable magistrate in Rome was ordinarily on a good
understanding with his government; in Carthage he was frequently
at decided feud with his masters at home, and was forced to resist
them by unconstitutional means and to make common cause with the
opposing party of reform.

In the Treatment of Their Subject

Both Carthage and Rome ruled over communities of lineage kindred with
their own, and over numerous others of alien race.  But Rome had
received into her citizenship one district after another, and had
rendered it even legally accessible to the Latin communities; Carthage
from the first maintained her exclusiveness, and did not permit the
dependent districts even to cherish a hope of being some day placed
upon an equal footing.  Rome granted to the communities of kindred
lineage a share in the fruits of victory, especially in the acquired
domains; and sought, by conferring material advantages on the rich and
noble, to gain over at least a party to her own interest in the other
subject states.  Carthage not only retained for herself the produce
of her victories, but even deprived the most privileged cities of
their freedom of trade.  Rome, as a rule, did not wholly take away
independence even from the subject communities, and imposed a fixed
tribute on none; Carthage despatched her overseers everywhere, and
loaded even the old-Phoenician cities with a heavy tribute, while her
subject tribes were practically treated as state-slaves.  In this way
there was not in the compass of the Carthagino-African state a single
community, with the exception of Utica, that would not have been
politically and materially benefited by the fall of Carthage; in the
Romano-Italic there was not one that had not much more to lose than
to gain in rebelling against a government, which was careful to avoid
injuring material interests, and which never at least by extreme
measures challenged political opposition to conflict.  If Carthaginian
statesmen believed that they had attached to the interests of Carthage
her Phoenician subjects by their greater dread of a Libyan revolt
and all the landholders by means of token-money, they transferred
mercantile calculation to a sphere to which it did not apply.
Experience proved that the Roman symmachy, notwithstanding its
seemingly looser bond of connection, kept together against Pyrrhus
like a wall of rock, whereas the Carthaginian fell to pieces like a
gossamer web as soon as a hostile army set foot on African soil.  It
was so on the landing of Agathocles and of Regulus, and likewise in
the mercenary war; the spirit that prevailed in Africa is illustrated
by the fact, that the Libyan women voluntarily contributed their
ornaments to the mercenaries for their war against Carthage.  In
Sicily alone the Carthaginians appear to have exercised a milder rule,
and to have attained on that account better results.  They granted to
their subjects in that quarter comparative freedom in foreign trade,
and allowed them to conduct their internal commerce, probably from the
outset and exclusively, with a metallic currency; far greater freedom
of movement generally was allowed to them than was permitted to the
Sardinians and Libyans.  Had Syracuse fallen into Carthaginian hands,
their policy would doubtless soon have changed.  But that result did
not take place; and so, owing to the well-calculated mildness of the
Carthaginian government and the unhappy distractions of the Sicilian
Greeks, there actually existed in Sicily a party really friendly to
the Phoenicians; for example, even after the island had passed to the
Romans, Philinus of Agrigentum wrote the history of the great war in
a thoroughly Phoenician spirit.  Nevertheless on the whole the
Sicilians must, both as subjects and as Hellenes, have been at
least as averse to their Phoenician masters as the Samnites
and Tarentines were to the Romans.

In Finance

In a financial point of view the state revenues of Carthage doubtless
far surpassed those of Rome; but this advantage was partly neutralized
by the facts, that the sources of the Carthaginian revenue--tribute
and customs--dried up far sooner (and just when they were most needed)
than those of Rome, and that the Carthaginian mode of conducting war
was far more costly than the Roman.

In Their Military System

The military resources of the Romans and Carthaginians were very
different, yet in many respects not unequally balanced.  The citizens
of Carthage still at the conquest of the city amounted to 700,000,
including women and children,(10) and were probably at least as
numerous at the close of the fifth century; in that century they were
able in case of need to set on foot a burgess-army of 40,000 hoplites.
At the very beginning of the fifth century, Rome had in similar
circumstances sent to the field a burgess-army equally strong;(11)
after the great extensions of the burgess-domain in the course of that
century the number of full burgesses capable of bearing arms must at
least have doubled.  But far more than in the number of men capable of
bearing arms, Rome excelled in the effective condition of the burgess-
soldier.  Anxious as the Carthaginian government was to induce its
citizens to take part in military service, it could neither furnish
the artisan and the manufacturer with the bodily vigour of the
husbandman, nor overcome the native aversion of the Phoenicians to
warfare.  In the fifth century there still fought in the Sicilian
armies a "sacred band" of 2500 Carthaginians as a guard for the
general; in the sixth not a single Carthaginian, officers excepted,
was to be met with in the Carthaginian armies, e. g. in that of Spain.
The Roman farmers, again, took their places not only in the muster-
roll, but also in the field of battle.  It was the same with the
cognate races of both communities; while the Latins rendered to
the Romans no less service than their own burgess-troops, the Liby-
phoenicians were as little adapted for war as the Carthaginians, and,
as may easily be supposed, still less desirous of it, and so they too
disappeared from the armies; the towns bound to furnish contingents
presumably redeemed their obligation by a payment of money.  In the
Spanish army just mentioned, composed of some 15,000 men, only a
single troop of cavalry of 450 men consisted, and that but partly, of
Liby-phoenicians.  The flower of the Carthaginian armies was formed by
the Libyan subjects, whose recruits were capable of being trained
under able officers into good infantry, and whose light cavalry was
unsurpassed in its kind.  To these were added the forces of the more
or less dependent tribes of Libya and Spain and the famous slingers of
the Baleares, who seem to have held an intermediate position between
allied contingents and mercenary troops; and finally, in case of need,
the hired soldiery enlisted abroad.  So far as numbers were concerned,
such an army might without difficulty be raised almost to any desired
strength; and in the ability of its officers, in acquaintance with
arms, and in courage it might be capable of coping with that of Rome.
Not only, however, did a dangerously long interval elapse, in the
event of mercenaries being required, ere they could be got ready,
while the Roman militia was able at any moment to take the field, but
--which was the main matter--there was nothing to keep together the
armies of Carthage but military honour and personal advantage, while
the Romans were united by all the ties that bound them to their common
fatherland.  The Carthaginian officer of the ordinary type estimated
his mercenaries, and even the Libyan farmers, very much as men
in modern warfare estimate cannon-balls; hence such disgraceful
proceedings as the betrayal of the Libyan troops by their general
Himilco in 358, which was followed by a dangerous insurrection of the
Libyans, and hence that proverbial cry of "Punic faith," which did the
Carthaginians no small injury.  Carthage experienced in full measure
all the evils which armies of fellahs and mercenaries could bring upon
a state, and more than once she found her paid serfs more dangerous
than her foes.

The Carthaginian government could not fail to perceive the defects
of this military system, and they certainly sought to remedy them by
every available means.  They insisted on maintaining full chests
and full magazines, that they might at any time be able to equip
mercenaries.  They bestowed great care on those elements which among
the ancients represented the modern artillery--the construction of
machines, in which we find the Carthaginians regularly superior to
the Siceliots, and the use of elephants, after these had superseded in
warfare the earlier war-chariots: in the casemates of Carthage there
were stalls for 300 elephants.  They could not venture to fortify the
dependent cities, and were obliged to submit to the occupation of the
towns and villages as well as of the open country by any hostile army
that landed in Africa--a thorough contrast to the state of Italy,
where most of the subject towns had retained their walls, and a
chain of Roman fortresses commanded the whole peninsula.  But on the
fortification of the capital they expended all the resources of money
and of art, and on several occasions nothing but the strength of its
walls saved the state; whereas Rome held a political and military
position so secure that it never underwent a formal siege.
Lastly, the main bulwark of the state was their war-marine, on which
they lavished the utmost care.  In the building as well as in the
management of vessels the Carthaginians excelled the Greeks; it was at
Carthage that ships were first built of more than three banks of oars,
and the Carthaginian war-vessels, at this period mostly quinqueremes,
were ordinarily better sailors than the Greek; the rowers, all of them
public slaves, who never stirred from the galleys, were excellently
trained, and the captains were expert and fearless.  In this respect
Carthage was decidedly superior to the Romans, who, with the few ships
of their Greek allies and still fewer of their own, were unable even
to show themselves in the open sea against the fleet which at that
time without a rival ruled the western Mediterranean.

If, in conclusion, we sum up the results of this comparison of
the resources of the two great powers, the judgment expressed by a
sagacious and impartial Greek is perhaps borne out, that Carthage and
Rome were, when the struggle between them began, on the whole equally
matched.  But we cannot omit to add that, while Carthage had put forth
all the efforts of which intellect and wealth were capable to provide
herself with artificial means of attack and defence, she was unable in
any satisfactory way to make up for the fundamental wants of a land
army of her own and of a symmachy resting on a self-supporting basis.
That Rome could only be seriously attacked in Italy, and Carthage only
in Libya, no one could fail to see; as little could any one fail to
perceive that Carthage could not in the long run escape from such
an attack.  Fleets were not yet in those times of the infancy of
navigation a permanent heirloom of nations, but could be fitted out
wherever there were trees, iron, and water.  It was clear, and had
been several times tested in Africa itself, that even powerful
maritime states were not able to prevent enemies weaker by sea from
landing.  When Agathocles had shown the way thither, a Roman general
could follow the same course; and while in Italy the entrance of an
invading army simply began the war, the same event in Libya put an
end to it by converting it into a siege, in which, unless special
accidents should intervene, even the most obstinate and heroic courage
must finally succumb.




Notes for Chapter I


1. II. IV. Victories of Salamis and Himera, and Their Effects

2. I. X. Phoenicians and Italians in Opposition to the Hellenes

3. The most precise description of this important class occurs in
the Carthaginian treaty (Polyb. vii. 9), where in contrast to the
Uticenses on the one hand, and to the Libyan subjects on the other,
they are called --ol Karchedonion uparchoi osoi tois autois nomois
chrontai--.  Elsewhere they are spoken of as cities allied
(--summachides poleis--, Diod. xx. 10) or tributary (Liv. xxxiv. 62;
Justin, xxii. 7, 3).  Their -conubium- with the Carthaginians is
mentioned by Diodorus, xx. 55; the -commercium- is implied in the
"like laws." That the old Phoenician colonies were included among
the Liby-phoenicians, is shown by the designation of Hippo as a
Liby-phoenician city (Liv. xxv. 40); on the other hand as to the
settlements founded from Carthage, for instance, it is said in the
Periplus of Hanno: "the Carthaginians resolved that Hanno should sail
beyond the Pillars of Hercules and found cities of Liby-phoenicians."
In substance the word "Liby-phoenicians" was used by the Carthaginians
not as a national designation, but as a category of state-law.  This
view is quite consistent with the fact that grammatically the name
denotes Phoenicians mingled with Libyans (Liv. xxi. 22, an addition to
the text of Polybius); in reality, at least in the institution of very
exposed colonies, Libyans were frequently associated with Phoenicians
(Diod. xiii. 79; Cic. pro Scauro, 42).  The analogy in name and legal
position between the Latins of Rome and the Liby-phoenicians
of Carthage is unmistakable.

4. The Libyan or Numidian alphabet, by which we mean that which was
and is employed by the Berbers in writing their non-Semitic language
--one of the innumerable alphabets derived from the primitive Aramaean
one--certainly appears to be more closely related in several of its
forms to the latter than is the Phoenician alphabet; but it by no
means follows from this, that the Libyans derived their writing not
from Phoenicians but from earlier immigrants, any more than the
partially older forms of the Italian alphabets prohibit us from
deriving these from the Greek.  We must rather assume that the Libyan
alphabet has been derived from the Phoenician at a period of the
latter earlier than the time at which the records of the Phoenician
language that have reached us were written.

5. II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power

6. II. VII. Decline of the Roman Naval Power

7. II. VII. The Roman Fleet

8. II. IV. Etrusco-Carthaginian Maritime Supremacy

9. The steward on a country estate, although a slave, ought, according
to the precept of the Carthaginian agronome Mago (ap. Varro, R. R. i.
17), to be able to read, and ought to possess some culture.  In the
prologue of the "Poenulus" of Plautus, it is said of the hero of
the title:-

-Et is omnes linguas scit; sed dissimulat sciens
Se scire; Poenus plane est; quid verbit opus't-?

10. Doubts have been expressed as to the correctness of this number,
and the highest possible number of inhabitants, taking into account
the available space, has been reckoned at 250,000.  Apart from the
uncertainty of such calculations, especially as to a commercial city
with houses of six stories, we must remember that the numbering is
doubtless to be understood in a political, not in an urban, sense,
just like the numbers in the Roman census, and that thus all
Carthaginians would be included in it, whether dwelling in the city
or its neighbourhood, or resident in its subject territory or in other
lands.  There would, of course, be a large number of such absentees in
the case of Carthage; indeed it is expressly stated that in Gades, for
the same reason, the burgess-roll always showed a far higher number
than that of the citizens who had their fixed residence there.

11. II. VII. System of Government, note




CHAPTER II

The War between Rome and Carthage Concerning Sicily

State of Sicily

For upwards of a century the feud between the Carthaginians and
the rulers of Syracuse had devastated the fair island of Sicily.
On both sides the contest was carried on with the weapons of political
proselytism, for, while Carthage kept up communications with the
aristocratic-republican opposition in Syracuse, the Syracusan dynasts
maintained relations with the national party in the Greek cities that
had become tributary to Carthage.  On both sides armies of mercenaries
were employed to fight their battles--by Timoleon and Agathocles, as
well as by the Phoenician generals.  And as like means were employed
on both sides, so the conflict had been waged on both with a disregard
of honour and a perfidy unexampled in the history of the west.  The
Syracusans were the weaker party.  In the peace of 440 Carthage had
still limited her claims to the third of the island to the west of
Heraclea Minoa and Himera, and had expressly recognized the hegemony
of the Syracusans over all the cities to the eastward.  The expulsion
of Pyrrhus from Sicily and Italy (479) left by far the larger half of
the island, and especially the important Agrigentum, in the hands of
Carthage; the Syracusans retained nothing but Tauromenium and the
south-east of the island.

Campanian Mercenaries

In the second great city on the east coast, Messana, a band of foreign
soldiers had established themselves and held the city, independent
alike of Syracusans and Carthaginians.  These new rulers of Messana
were Campanian mercenaries.  The dissolute habits that had become
prevalent among the Sabellians settled in and around Capua,(1) had
made Campania in the fourth and fifth centuries--what Aetolia, Crete,
and Laconia were afterwards--the universal recruiting field for
princes and cities in search of mercenaries.  The semi-culture that
had been called into existence there by the Campanian Greeks, the
barbaric luxury of life in Capua and the other Campanian cities,
the political impotence to which the hegemony of Rome condemned them,
while yet its rule was not so stern as wholly to withdraw from them
the right of self-disposal--all tended to drive the youth of Campania
in troops to the standards of the recruiting officers.  As a matter of
course, this wanton and unscrupulous selling of themselves here, as
everywhere, brought in its train estrangement from their native land,
habits of violence and military disorder, and indifference to the
breach of their allegiance.  These Campanians could see no reason why
a band of mercenaries should not seize on their own behalf any city
entrusted to their guardianship, provided only they were in a position
to hold it--the Samnites had established their dominion in Capua
itself, and the Lucanians in a succession of Greek cities, after
a fashion not much more honourable.

Mammertines

Nowhere was the state of political relations more inviting for such
enterprises than in Sicily.  Already the Campanian captains who came
to Sicily during the Peloponnesian war had insinuated themselves in
this way into Entella and Aetna.  Somewhere about the year 470 a
Campanian band, which had previously served under Agathocles and after
his death (465) took up the trade of freebooters on their own account,
established themselves in Messana, the second city of Greek Sicily,
and the chief seat of the anti-Syracusan party in that portion of
the island which was still in the power of the Greeks.  The citizens
were slain or expelled, their wives and children and houses were
distributed among the soldiers, and the new masters of the city, the
Mamertines or "men of Mars," as they called themselves, soon became
the third power in the island, the north-eastern portion of which they
reduced to subjection in the times of confusion that succeeded the
death of Agathocles.  The Carthaginians were no unwilling spectators
of these events, which established in the immediate vicinity of the
Syracusans a new and powerful adversary instead of a cognate and
ordinarily allied or dependent city.  With Carthaginian aid the
Mamertines maintained themselves against Pyrrhus, and the untimely
departure of the king restored to them all their power.

Hiero of Syracuse
War between the Syracusans and the Mammertines

It is not becoming in the historian either to excuse the perfidious
crime by which the Mamertines seized their power, or to forget that
the God of history does not necessarily punish the sins of the fathers
to the fourth generation.  He who feels it his vocation to judge the
sins of others may condemn the human agents; for Sicily it might be a
blessing that a warlike power, and one belonging to the island, thus
began to be formed in it--a power which was already able to bring
eight thousand men into the field, and which was gradually putting
itself in a position to take up at the proper time and on its own
resources that struggle against the foreigners, to the maintenance
of which the Hellenes, becoming more and more unaccustomed to arms
notwithstanding their perpetual wars, were no longer equal.

In the first instance, however, things took another turn.  A young
Syracusan officer, who by his descent from the family of Gelo and
his intimate relations of kindred with king Pyrrhus as well as by the
distinction with which he had fought in the campaigns of the latter,
had attracted the notice of his fellow-citizens as well as of the
Syracusan soldiery--Hiero, son of Hierocles--was called by military
election to command the army, which was at variance with the citizens
(479-480).  By his prudent administration, the nobility of his
character, and the moderation of his views, he rapidly gained the
hearts of the citizens of Syracuse--who had been accustomed to the
most scandalous lawlessness in their despots--and of the Sicilian
Greeks in general.  He rid himself--in a perfidious manner, it is
true--of the insubordinate army of mercenaries, revived the citizen-
militia, and endeavoured, at first with the title of general,
afterwards with that of king, to re-establish the deeply sunken
Hellenic power by means of his civic troops and of fresh and more
manageable recruits.  With the Carthaginians, who in concert with the
Greeks had driven king Pyrrhus from the island, there was at that time
peace.  The immediate foes of the Syracusans were the Mamertines.
They were the kinsmen of those hated mercenaries whom the Syracusans
had recently extirpated; they had murdered their own Greek hosts;
 they had curtailed the Syracusan territory; they had oppressed and
plundered a number of smaller Greek towns.  In league with the Romans
who just about this time were sending their legions against the
Campanians in Rhegium, the allies, kinsmen, and confederates in crime
of the Mamertines,(2) Hiero turned his arms against Messana.  By a
great victory, after which Hiero was proclaimed king of the Siceliots
(484), he succeeded in shutting up the Mamertines within their city,
and after the siege had lasted some years, they found themselves
reduced to extremity and unable to hold the city longer against Hiero
on their own resources.  It is evident that a surrender on stipulated
conditions was impossible, and that the axe of the executioner, which
had fallen upon the Campanians of Rhegium at Rome, as certainly
awaited those of Messana at Syracuse.  Their only means of safety lay
in delivering up the city either to the Carthaginians or to the
Romans, both of whom could not but be so strongly set upon acquiring
that important place as to overlook all other scruples.  Whether it
would be more advantageous to surrender it to the masters of Africa
or to the masters of Italy, was doubtful; after long hesitation the
majority of the Campanian burgesses at length resolved to offer
the possession of their sea-commanding fortress to the Romans.

The Mammertines Received into the Italian Confederacy

It was a moment of the deepest significance in the history of the
world, when the envoys of the Mamertines appeared in the Roman senate.
No one indeed could then anticipate all that was to depend on the
crossing of that narrow arm of the sea; but that the decision, however
it should go, would involve consequences far other and more important
than had attached to any decree hitherto passed by the senate, must
have been manifest to every one of the deliberating fathers of the
city.  Strictly upright men might indeed ask how it was possible to
deliberate at all, and how any one could even think of suggesting
that the Romans should not only break their alliance with Hiero, but
should, just after the Campanians of Rhegium had been punished by them
with righteous severity, admit the no less guilty Sicilian accomplices
to the alliance and friendship of the state, and thereby rescue them
from the punishment which they deserved.  Such an outrage on propriety
would not only afford their adversaries matter for declamation,
but must seriously offend all men of moral feeling.  But even the
statesman, with whom political morality was no mere phrase, might ask
in reply, how Roman burgesses, who had broken their military oath and
treacherously murdered the allies of Rome, could be placed on a level
with foreigners who had committed an outrage on foreigners, where
no one had constituted the Romans judges of the one or avengers of
the other?  Had the question been only whether the Syracusans or
Mamertines should rule in Messana, Rome might certainly have
acquiesced in the rule of either.  Rome was striving for the
possession of Italy, as Carthage for that of Sicily; the designs of
the two powers scarcely then went further.  But that very circumstance
formed a reason why each desired to have and retain on its frontier an
intermediate power--the Carthaginians for instance reckoning in this
way on Tarentum, the Romans on Syracuse and Messana--and why, if that
course was impossible, each preferred to see these adjacent places
given over to itself rather than to the other great power.
As Carthage had made an attempt in Italy, when Rhegium and Tarentum
were about to be occupied by the Romans, to acquire these cities for
itself, and had only been prevented from doing so by accident, so in
Sicily an opportunity now offered itself for Rome to bring the city of
Messana into its symmachy; should the Romans reject it, it was not to
be expected that the city would remain independent or would become
Syracusan; they would themselves throw it into the arms of the
Phoenicians.  Were they justified in allowing an opportunity to
escape, such as certainly would never recur, of making themselves
masters of the natural tete de pont between Italy and Sicily, and of
securing it by means of a brave garrison on which they could, for good
reasons, rely?  Were they justified in abandoning Messana, and thereby
surrendering the command of the last free passage between the eastern
and western seas, and sacrificing the commercial liberty of Italy?
It is true that other objections might be urged to the occupation of
Messana besides mere scruples of feeling and of honourable policy.
That it could not but lead to a war with Carthage, was the least of
these; serious as was such a war, Rome might not fear it.  But there
was the more important objection that by crossing the sea the Romans
would depart from the purely Italian and purely continental policy
which they had hitherto pursued; they would abandon the system by
which their ancestors had founded the greatness of Rome, to enter upon
another system the results of which no one could foretell.  It was one
of those moments when calculation ceases, and when faith in men's own
and in their country's destiny alone gives them courage to grasp the
hand which beckons to them out of the darkness of the future, and
to follow it no one knows whither.  Long and seriously the senate
deliberated on the proposal of the consuls to lead the legions to the
help of the Mamertines; it came to no decisive resolution.  But the
burgesses, to whom the matter was referred, were animated by a lively
sense of the greatness of the power which their own energy had
established.  The conquest of Italy encouraged the Romans, as that of
Greece encouraged the Macedonians and that of Silesia the Prussians,
to enter upon a new political career.  A formal pretext for supporting
the Mamertines was found in the protectorate which Rome claimed the
right to exercise over all Italians.  The transmarine Italians were
received into the Italian confederacy;(3) and on the proposal of
the consuls the citizens resolved to send them aid (489).

Variance between Rome and Carthage
Carthaginians in Messana
Messana Seized by the Romans
War between the Romans and the Carthaginians and the Syracusans

Much depended on the way in which the two Sicilian powers, immediately
affected by this intervention of the Romans in the affairs of the
island, and both hitherto nominally in alliance with Rome, would
regard her interference.  Hiero had sufficient reason to treat the
summons, by which the Romans required him to desist from hostilities
against their new confederates in Messana, precisely in the same way
as the Samnites and Lucanians in similar circumstances had received
the occupation of Capua and Thurii, and to  answer the Romans by a
declaration of war.  If, however, he remained unsupported, such a war
would be folly; and it might be expected from his prudent and moderate
policy that he would acquiesce in what was inevitable, if Carthage
should be disposed for peace.  This seemed not impossible.  A Roman
embassy was now (489) sent to Carthage, seven years after the attempt
of the Phoenician fleet to gain possession of Tarentum, to demand
explanations as to these incidents.(4)  Grievances not unfounded, but
half-forgotten, once more emerged--it seemed not superfluous amidst
other warlike preparations to replenish the diplomatic armoury
with reasons for war, and for the coming manifesto to reserve to
themselves, as was the custom of the Romans, the character of the
party aggrieved.  This much at least might with entire justice be
affirmed, that the respective enterprises on Tarentum and Messana
stood upon exactly the same footing in point of design and of pretext,
and that it was simply the accident of success that made the
difference.  Carthage avoided an open rupture.  The ambassadors
carried back to Rome the disavowal of the Carthaginian admiral who
had made the attempt on Tarentum, along with the requisite false
oaths: the counter-complaints, which of course were not wanting on
the part of Carthage, were studiously moderate, and abstained from
characterizing the meditated invasion of Sicily as a ground for war.
Such, however, it was; for Carthage regarded the affairs of Sicily
--just as Rome regarded those of Italy--as internal matters in which
an independent power could allow no interference, and was determined
to act accordingly.  But Phoenician policy followed a gentler course
than that of threatening open war.  When the preparations of Rome for
sending help to the Mamertines were at length so far advanced that the
fleet formed of the war-vessels of Naples, Tarentum, Velia, and Locri,
and the vanguard of the Roman land army under the military tribune
Gaius Claudius, had appeared at Rhegium (in the spring of 490),
unexpected news arrived from Messana that the Carthaginians, having
come to an understanding with the anti-Roman party there, had as a
neutral power arranged a peace between Hiero and the Mamertines; that
the siege had in consequence been raised; and that a Carthaginian
fleet lay in the harbour of Messana, and a Carthaginian garrison in
the citadel, both under the command of admiral Hanno.  The Mamertine
citizens, now controlled by Carthaginian influence, informed the Roman
commanders, with due thanks to the federal help so speedily accorded
to them, that they were glad that they no longer needed it.
The adroit and daring officer who commanded the Roman vanguard
nevertheless set sail with his troops.  But the Carthaginians warned
the Roman vessels to retire, and even made some of them prizes; these,
however, the Carthaginian admiral, remembering his strict orders to
give no pretext for the outbreak of hostilities, sent back to his good
friends on the other side of the straits.  It almost seemed as if the
Romans had compromised themselves as uselessly before Messana, as the
Carthaginians before Tarentum.  But Claudius did not allow himself
to be deterred, and on a second attempt he succeeded in landing.
Scarcely had he arrived when he called a meeting of the citizens; and,
at his wish, the Carthaginian admiral also appeared at the meeting,
still imagining that he should be able to avoid an open breach.  But
the Romans seized his person in the assembly itself; and Hanno and the
Phoenician garrison in the citadel, weak and destitute of a leader,
were pusillanimous enough, the former to give to his troops the
command to withdraw, the latter to comply with the orders of their
captive general and to evacuate the city along with him.  Thus the
tete de pont of the island fell into the hands of the Romans.  The
Carthaginian authorities, justly indignant at the folly and weakness
of their general, caused him to be executed, and declared war against
the Romans.  Above all it was their aim to recover the lost place.  A
strong Carthaginian fleet, led by Hanno, son of Hannibal, appeared off
Messana; while the fleet blockaded the straits, the Carthaginian army
landing from it began the siege on the north side.  Hiero, who had
only waited for the Carthaginian attack to begin the war with Rome,
again brought up his army, which he had hardly withdrawn, against
Messana, and undertook the attack on the south side of the city.

Peace with Hiero

But meanwhile the Roman consul Appius Claudius Caudex had appeared at
Rhegium with the main body of his army, and succeeded in crossing on
a dark night in spite of the Carthaginian fleet.  Audacity and fortune
were on the side of the Romans; the allies, not prepared for an attack
by the whole Roman army and consequently not united, were beaten in
detail by the Roman legions issuing from the city; and thus the siege
was raised.  The Roman army kept the field during the summer, and
even made an attempt on Syracuse; but, when that had failed and the
siege of Echetla (on the confines of the territories of Syracuse and
Carthage) had to be abandoned with loss, the Roman army returned to
Messana, and thence, leaving a strong garrison behind them, to Italy.
The results obtained in this first campaign of the Romans out of Italy
may not quite have corresponded to the expectations at home, for the
consul had no triumph; nevertheless, the energy which the Romans
displayed in Sicily could not fail to make a great impression on the
Sicilian Greeks.  In the following year both consuls and an army twice
as large entered the island unopposed.  One of them, Marcus Valerius
Maximus, afterwards called from this campaign the "hero of Messana"
(-Messalla-), achieved a brilliant victory over the allied
Carthaginians and Syracusans.  After this battle the Phoenician army
no longer ventured to keep the field against the Romans; Alaesa,
Centuripa, and the smaller Greek towns generally fell to the victors,
and Hiero himself abandoned the Carthaginian side and made peace and
alliance with the Romans (491).  He pursued a judicious policy in
joining the Romans as soon as it appeared that their interference in
Sicily was in earnest, and while there was still time to purchase
peace without cessions and sacrifices.  The intermediate states in
Sicily, Syracuse and Messana, which were unable to follow out a policy
of their own and had only the choice between Roman and Carthaginian
hegemony, could not but at any rate prefer the former; because the
Romans had very probably not as yet formed the design of conquering
the island for themselves, but sought merely to prevent its being
acquired by Carthage, and at all events Rome might be expected to
substitute a more tolerable treatment and a due protection of
commercial freedom for the tyrannizing and monopolizing system that
Carthage pursued.  Henceforth Hiero continued to be the most
important, the steadiest, and the most esteemed ally of the Romans
in the island.

Capture of Agrigentum

The Romans had thus gained their immediate object.  By their double
alliance with Messana and Syracuse, and the firm hold which they had
on the whole east coast, they secured the means of landing on the
island and of maintaining--which hitherto had been a very difficult
matter--their armies there; and the war, which had previously been
doubtful and hazardous, lost in a great measure its character of risk.
Accordingly, no greater exertions were made for it than for the wars
in Samnium and Etruria; the two legions which were sent over to the
island for the next year (492) sufficed, in concert with the Sicilian
Greeks, to drive the Carthaginians everywhere into their fortresses.
The commander-in-chief of the Carthaginians, Hannibal son of Gisgo,
threw himself with the flower of his troops into Agrigentum, to defend
to the last that most important of the Carthaginian inland cities.
Unable to storm a city so strong, the Romans blockaded it with
entrenched lines and a double camp; the besieged, who numbered 50,000
soon suffered from want of provisions.  To raise the siege the
Carthaginian admiral Hanno landed at Heraclea, and cut off in turn the
supplies from the Roman besieging force.  On both sides the distress
was great.  At length a battle was resolved on, to put an end to the
state of embarrassment and uncertainty.  In this battle the Numidian
cavalry showed itself just as superior to the Roman horse as the Roman
infantry was superior to the Phoenician foot; the infantry decided
the victory, but the losses even of the Romans were very considerable.
The result of the successful struggle was somewhat marred by the
circumstance that, after the battle, during the confusion and fatigue
of the conquerors, the beleaguered army succeeded in escaping from
the city and in reaching the fleet.  The victory was nevertheless of
importance; Agrigentum fell into the hands of the Romans, and thus the
whole island was in their power, with the exception of the maritime
fortresses, in which the Carthaginian general Hamilcar, Hanno's
successor in command, entrenched himself to the teeth, and was not to
be driven out either by force or by famine.  The war was thenceforth
continued only by sallies of the Carthaginians from the Sicilian
fortresses and their descents on the Italian coasts.

Beginning of the Maritime War
The Romans Build a Fleet

In fact, the Romans now for the first time felt the real difficulties
of the war.  If, as we are told, the Carthaginian diplomatists before
the outbreak of hostilities warned the Romans not to push the matter
to a breach, because against their will no Roman could even wash his
hands in the sea, the threat was well founded.  The Carthaginian fleet
ruled the sea without a rival, and not only kept the coast towns of
Sicily in due obedience and provided them with all necessaries,
but also threatened a descent upon Italy, for which reason it was
necessary in 492 to retain a consular army there.  No invasion on a
large scale occurred; but smaller Carthaginian detachments landed on
the Italian coasts and levied contributions on the allies of Rome,
and what was worst of all, completely paralyzed the commerce of Rome
and her allies.  The continuance of such a course for even a short
time would suffice entirely to ruin Caere, Ostia, Neapolis, Tarentum,
and Syracuse, while the Carthaginians easily consoled themselves for
the loss of the tribute of Sicily with the contributions which they
levied and the rich prizes of their privateering.  The Romans now
learned, what Dionysius, Agathocles, and Pyrrhus had learned before,
that it was as difficult to conquer the Carthaginians as it was easy
to beat them in the field.  They saw that everything depended on
procuring a fleet, and resolved to form one of twenty triremes and
a hundred quinqueremes.  The execution, however, of this energetic
resolution was not easy.  The representation originating in the
schools of the rhetoricians, which would have us believe that the
Romans then for the first time dipped their oars in water, is no doubt
a childish tale; the mercantile marine of Italy must at this time have
been very extensive, and there was no want even of Italian vessels of
war.  But these were war-barks and triremes, such as had been in use
in earlier times; quinqueremes, which under the more modern system of
naval warfare that had originated chiefly in Cartilage were almost
exclusively employed in the line, had not yet been built in Italy.
The measure adopted by the Romans was therefore much as if a maritime
state of the present day were to pass at once from the building of
frigates and cutters to the building of ships of the line; and, just
as in such a case now a foreign ship of the line would, if possible,
be adopted as a pattern, the Romans referred their master shipbuilders
to a stranded Carthaginian -penteres- as a model No doubt the Romans,
had they wished, might have sooner attained their object with the aid
of the Syracusans and Massiliots; but their statesmen had too much
sagacity to desire to defend Italy by means of a fleet not Italian.
The Italian allies, however, were largely drawn upon both for the
naval officers, who must have been for the most part taken from the
Italian mercantile marine, and for the sailors, whose name (-socii
navales-) shows that for a time they were exclusively furnished by
the allies; along with these, slaves provided by the state and
the wealthier families were afterwards employed, and ere long also
the poorer class of burgesses.  Under such circumstances, and when we
take into account, as is but fair, on the one hand the comparatively
low state of shipbuilding at that time, and on the other hand the
energy of the Romans, there is nothing incredible in the statement
that the Romans solved within a year the problem--which baffled
Napoleon--of converting a continental into a maritime power, and
actually launched their fleet of 120 sail in the spring of 494.
It is true, that it was by no means a match for the Carthaginian fleet
in numbers and efficiency at sea; and these were points of the greater
importance, as the naval tactics of the period consisted mainly in
manoeuvring.  In the maritime warfare of that period hoplites and
archers no doubt fought from the deck, and projectile machines were
also plied from it; but the ordinary and really decisive mode of
action consisted in running foul of the enemy's vessels, for which
purpose the prows were furnished with heavy iron beaks: the vessels
engaged were in the habit of sailing round each other till one or the
other succeeded in giving the thrust, which usually proved decisive.
Accordingly the crew of an ordinary Greek trireme, consisting of about
200 men, contained only about 10 soldiers, but on the other hand 170
rowers, from 50 to 60 on each deck; that of a quinquereme numbered
about 300 rowers, and soldiers in proportion.

The happy idea occurred to the Romans that they might make up for
what their vessels, with their unpractised officers and crews,
necessarily lacked in ability of manoeuvring, by again assigning a
more considerable part in naval warfare to the soldiers.  They
stationed at the prow of each vessel a flying bridge, which could be
lowered in front or on either side; it was furnished on both sides
with parapets, and had space for two men in front.  When the enemy's
vessel was sailing up to strike the Roman one, or was lying alongside
of it after the thrust had been evaded, the bridge on deck was
suddenly lowered and fastened to its opponent by means of a grappling-
iron: this not only prevented the running down, but enabled the Roman
marines to pass along the bridge to the enemy's deck and to carry it
by assault as in a conflict on land.  No distinct body of marines
was formed, but land troops were employed, when required, for this
maritime service.  In one instance as many as 120 legionaries fought
in each ship on occasion of a great naval battle; in that case however
the Roman fleet had at the same time a landing-army on board.

In this way the Romans created a fleet which was a match for the
Carthaginians.  Those err, who represent this building of a Roman
fleet as a fairy tale, and besides they miss their aim; the feat must
be understood in order to be admired.  The construction of a fleet by
the Romans was in very truth a noble national work--a work through
which, by their clear perception of what was needful and possible, by
ingenuity in invention, and by energy in resolution and in execution,
they rescued their country from a position which was worse than at
first it seemed.

Naval Victory at Mylae

The outset, nevertheless, was not favourable to the Romans.  The Roman
admiral, the consul Gnaeus Cornelius Scipio, who had sailed for
Messana with the first seventeen vessels ready for sea (494), fancied,
when on the voyage, that he should be able to capture Lipara by a
coup de main.  But a division of the Carthaginian fleet stationed at
Panormus blockaded the harbour of the island where the Roman vessels
rode at anchor, and captured the whole squadron along with the consul
without a struggle.  This, however, did not deter the main fleet from
likewise sailing, as soon as its preparations were completed, for
Messana.  On its voyage along the Italian coast it fell in with a
Carthaginian reconnoitring squadron of less strength, on which it
had the good fortune to inflict a loss more than counterbalancing
the first loss of the Romans; and thus successful and victorious it
entered the port of Messana, where the second consul Gaius Duilius
took the command in room of his captured colleague.  At the promontory
of Mylae, to the north-west of Messana, the Carthaginian fleet, that
advanced from Panormus under the command of Hannibal, encountered the
Roman, which here underwent its first trial on a great scale.  The
Carthaginians, seeing in the ill-sailing and unwieldy vessels of the
Romans an easy prey, fell upon them in irregular order; but the newly
invented boarding-bridges proved their thorough efficiency.  The Roman
vessels hooked and stormed those of the enemy as they came up one
by one; they could not be approached either in front or on the sides
without the dangerous bridge descending on the enemy's deck.  When the
battle was over, about fifty Carthaginian vessels, almost the half of
the fleet, were sunk or captured by the Romans; among the latter was
the ship of the admiral Hannibal, formerly belonging to king Pyrrhus.
The gain was great; still greater the moral effect of the victory.
Rome had suddenly become a naval power, and held in her hand the
 means of energetically terminating a war which threatened to be
endlessly prolonged and to involve the commerce of Italy in ruin.

The War on the Coasts of Sicily and Sardinia

Two plans were open to the Romans.  They might attack Carthage on the
Italian islands and deprive her of the coast fortresses of Sicily and
Sardinia one after another--a scheme which was perhaps practicable
through well-combined operations by land and sea; and, in the event of
its being accomplished, peace might either be concluded with Carthage
on the basis of the cession of these islands, or, should such terms
not be accepted or prove unsatisfactory, the second stage of the war
might be transferred to Africa.  Or they might neglect the islands and
throw themselves at once with all their strength on Africa, not, in
the adventurous style of Agathocles, burning their vessels behind them
and staking all on the victory of a desperate band, but covering with
a strong fleet the communications between the African invading army
and Italy; and in that case a peace on moderate terms might be
expected from the consternation of the enemy after the first
successes, or, if the Romans chose, they might by pushing matters
to an extremity compel the enemy to entire surrender.

They chose, in the first instance, the former plan of operations.
In the year after the battle of Mylae (495) the consul Lucius Scipio
captured the port of Aleria in Corsica--we still possess the tombstone
of the general, which makes mention of this deed--and made Corsica a
naval station against Sardinia.  An attempt to establish a footing in
Ulbia on the northern coast of that island failed, because the fleet
wanted troops for landing.  In the succeeding year (496) it was
repeated with better success, and the open villages along the coast
were plundered; but no permanent establishment of the Romans took
place.  Nor was greater progress made in Sicily.  Hamilcar conducted
the war with energy and adroitness, not only by force of arms on sea
and land, but also by political proselytism.  Of the numerous small
country towns some every year fell away from the Romans, and had to
be  laboriously wrested afresh from the Phoenician grasp; while in
the coast fortresses the Carthaginians maintained themselves without
challenge, particularly in their headquarters of Panormus and in their
new stronghold of Drepana, to which, on account of its easier defence
by sea, Hamilcar had transferred the inhabitants of Eryx.  A second
great naval engagement off the promontory of Tyndaris (497), in which
both parties claimed the victory, made no change in the position of
affairs.  In this way no progress was made, whether in consequence
of the division and rapid change of the chief command of the Roman
troops, which rendered the concentrated management of a series of
operations on a small scale exceedingly difficult, or from the general
strategical relations of the case, which certainly, as the science
of war then stood, were unfavourable to the attacking party in
general,(5) and particularly so to the Romans, who were still on
the mere threshold of scientific warfare.  Meanwhile, although the
pillaging of the Italian coasts had ceased, the commerce of Italy
suffered not much less than it had done before the fleet was built.

Attack on Africa
Naval Victory of Ecnomus

Weary of a course of operations without results, and impatient to put
an end to the war, the senate resolved to change its system, and to
assail Carthage in Africa.  In the spring of 498 a fleet of 330 ships
of the line set sail for the coast of Libya: at the mouth of the river
Himera on the south coast of Sicily it embarked the army for landing,
consisting of four legions, under the charge of the two consuls Marcus
Atilius Regulus and Lucius Manlius Volso, both experienced generals.
The Carthaginian admiral suffered the embarkation of the enemy's
troops to take place; but on continuing their voyage towards Africa
the Romans found the Punic fleet drawn up in order of battle off
Ecnomus to protect its native land from invasion.  Seldom have greater
numbers fought at sea than were engaged in the battle that now ensued.
The Roman fleet: of 330 sail contained at least 100,000 men in its
crews, besides the landing army of about 40,000; the Carthaginian of
350 vessels was manned by at least an equal number; so that well-nigh
three hundred thousand men were brought into action on this day to
decide the contest between the two mighty civic communities.
The Phoenicians were placed in a single widely-extended line, with
their left wing resting on the Sicilian coast.  The Romans arranged
themselves in a triangle, with the ships of the two consuls as
admirals at the apex, the first and second squadrons drawn out in
oblique line to the right and left, and a third squadron, having the
vessels built for the transport of the cavalry in tow, forming the
line which closed the triangle.  They thus bore down in close order on
the enemy.  A fourth squadron placed in reserve followed more slowly.
The wedge-shaped attack broke without difficulty the Carthaginian
line, for its centre, which was first assailed, intentionally gave
way, and the battle resolved itself into three separate engagements.
While the admirals with the two squadrons drawn up on the wings
pursued the Carthaginian centre and were closely engaged with it, the
left wing of the Carthaginians drawn up along the coast wheeled round
upon the third Roman squadron, which was prevented by the vessels
which it had in tow from following the two others, and by a vehement
onset in superior force drove it against the shore; at the same time
the Roman reserve was turned on the open sea, and assailed from
behind, by the right wing of the Carthaginians.  The first of these
three engagements was soon at an end; the ships of the Carthaginian
centre, manifestly much weaker than the two Roman squadrons with which
they were engaged, took to flight.  Meanwhile the two other divisions
of the Romans had a hard struggle with the superior enemy; but in
close fighting the dreaded boarding-bridges stood them in good stead,
and by this means they succeeded in holding out till the two admirals
with their vessels could come up.  By their arrival the Roman reserve
was relieved, and the Carthaginian vessels of the right wing retired
before the superior force.  And now, when this conflict had been
decided in favour of the Romans, all the Roman vessels that still
could keep the sea fell on the rear of the Carthaginian left wing,
which was obstinately following up its advantage, so that it was
surrounded and almost all the vessels composing it were taken.  The
losses otherwise were nearly equal.  Of the Roman fleet 24 sail were
sunk; of the Carthaginian 30 were sunk, and 64 were taken.

Landing of Regulus in Africa

Notwithstanding its considerable loss, the Carthaginian fleet did not
give up the protection of Africa, and with that view returned to the
gulf of Carthage, where it expected the descent to take place and
purposed to give battle a second time.  But the Romans landed, not on
the western side of the peninsula which helps to form the gulf, but on
the eastern side, where the bay of Clupea presented a spacious harbour
affording protection in almost all winds, and the town, situated close
by the sea on a shield-shaped eminence rising out of the plain,
supplied an excellent defence for the harbour.  They disembarked the
troops without hindrance from the enemy, and established themselves
on the hill; in a short time an entrenched naval camp was constructed,
and the land army was at liberty to commence operations.  The Roman
troops ranged over the country and levied contributions: they were
able to send as many as 20,000 slaves to Rome.  Through the rarest
good fortune the bold scheme had succeeded at the first stroke, and
with but slight sacrifices: the end seemed attained.  The feeling of
confidence that in this respect animated the Romans is evinced by the
resolution of the senate to recall to Italy the greater portion of the
fleet and half of the army; Marcus Regulus alone remained in Africa
with 40 ships, 15,000 infantry, and 500 cavalry.  Their confidence,
however, was seemingly not overstrained.  The Carthaginian army, which
was disheartened, did not venture forth into the plain, but waited to
sustain discomfiture in the wooded defiles, in which it could make no
use of its two best arms, the cavalry and the elephants.  The towns
surrendered -en masse-; the Numidians rose in insurrection, and
overran the country far and wide.  Regulus might hope to begin the
next campaign with the siege of the capital, and with that view he
pitched his camp for the winter in its immediate vicinity at Tunes.

Vain Negotiations for Peace

The spirit of the Carthaginians was broken: they sued for peace.
But the conditions which the consul proposed--not merely the cession
of Sicily and Sardinia, but the conclusion of an alliance on unequal
terms with Rome, which would have bound the Carthaginians to renounce
a war-marine of their own and to furnish vessels for the Roman wars
--conditions which would have placed Carthage on a level with Neapolis
and Tarentum, could not be accepted, so long as a Carthaginian army
kept the field and a Carthaginian fleet kept the sea, and the capital
stood unshaken.

Preparations of Carthage

The mighty enthusiasm, which is wont to blaze up nobly among Oriental
nations, even the most abased, on the approach of extreme peril--the
energy of dire necessity--impelled the Carthaginians to exertions,
such as were by no means expected from a nation of shopkeepers.
Hamilcar, who had carried on the guerilla war against the Romans in
Sicily with so much success, appeared in Libya with the flower of
the Sicilian troops, which furnished an admirable nucleus for the
newly-levied force.  The connections and gold of the Carthaginians,
moreover, brought to them excellent Numidian horsemen in troops,
and also numerous Greek mercenaries; amongst whom was the celebrated
captain Xanthippus of Sparta, whose talent for organization and
strategical skill were of great service to his new masters.(6)  While
the Carthaginians were thus making their preparations in the course of
the winter, the Roman general remained inactive at Tunes.  Whether it
was that he did not anticipate the storm which was gathering over his
head, or that a sense of military honour prohibited him from doing
what his position demanded--instead of renouncing a siege which he was
not in a condition even to attempt, and shutting himself up in the
stronghold of Clupea, he remained with a handful of men before the
walls of the hostile capital, neglecting even to secure his line of
retreat to the naval camp, and neglecting to provide himself with
--what above all he wanted, and what might have been so easily
obtained through negotiation with the revolted Numidian tribes
--a good light cavalry.  He thus wantonly brought himself and
his army into a plight similar to that which formerly befell
Agathocles in his desperate adventurous expedition.

Defeat of Regulus

When spring came (499), the state of affairs had so changed, that now
the Carthaginians were the first to take the field and to offer battle
to the Romans.  It was natural that they should do so, for everything
depended on their getting quit of the army of Regulus, before
reinforcements could arrive from Italy.  The same reason should have
led the Romans to desire delay; but, relying on their invincibleness
in the open field, they at once accepted battle notwithstanding their
inferiority of strength--for, although the numbers of the infantry on
both sides were nearly the same, their 4000 cavalry and 100 elephants
gave to the Carthaginians a decided superiority--and notwithstanding
the unfavourable nature of the ground, the Carthaginians having taken
up their position in a broad plain presumably not far from Tunes.
Xanthippus, who on this day commanded the Carthaginians, first threw
his cavalry on that of the enemy, which was stationed, as usual, on
the two flanks of the line of battle; the few squadrons of the Romans
were scattered like dust in a moment before the masses of the enemy's
horse, and the Roman infantry found itself outflanked by them and
surrounded.  The legions, unshaken by their apparent danger, advanced
to attack the enemy's line; and, although the row of elephants placed
as a protection in front of it checked the right wing and centre of
the Romans, the left wing at any rate, marching past the elephants,
engaged the mercenary infantry on the right of the enemy, and
overthrew them completely.  But this very success broke up the Roman
ranks.  The main body indeed, assailed by the elephants in front and
by the cavalry on the flanks and in the rear, formed square, and
defended itself with heroic courage, but the close masses were at
length broken and swept away.  The victorious left wing encountered
the still fresh Carthaginian centre, where the Libyan infantry
prepared a similar fate for it.  From the nature of the ground and the
superior numbers of the enemy's cavalry, all the combatants in these
masses were cut down or taken prisoners; only two thousand men,
chiefly, in all probability, the light troops and horsemen who were
dispersed at the commencement, gained--while the Roman legions stood
to be slaughtered--a start sufficient to enable them with difficulty
to reach Clupea.  Among the few prisoners was the consul himself, who
afterwards died in Carthage; his family, under the idea that he had
not been treated by the Carthaginians according to the usages of war,
wreaked a most revolting vengeance on two noble Carthaginian captives,
till even the slaves were moved to pity, and on their information the
tribunes put a stop to the shameful outrage.(7)

Evacuation of Africa

When the terrible news reached Rome, the first care of the Romans was
naturally directed to the saving of the force shut up in Clupea.  A
Roman fleet of 350 sail immediately started, and after a noble victory
at the Hermaean promontory, in which the Carthaginians lost 114 ships,
it reached Clupea just in time to deliver from their hard-pressed
position the remains of the defeated army which were there entrenched.
Had it been despatched before the catastrophe occurred, it might have
converted the defeat into a victory that would probably have put an
end to the Punic wars.  But so completely had the Romans now lost
their judgment, that after a successful conflict before Clupea they
embarked all their troops and sailed home, voluntarily evacuating
that important and easily defended position which secured to
them facilities for landing in Africa, and abandoning their
numerous African allies without protection to the vengeance of the
Carthaginians.  The Carthaginians did not neglect the opportunity of
filling their empty treasury, and of making their subjects clearly
understand the consequences of unfaithfulness.  An extraordinary
contribution of 1000 talents of silver (244,000 pounds) and 20,000
oxen was levied, and the sheiks in all the communities that had
revolted were crucified; it is said that there were three thousand of
them, and that this revolting atrocity on the part of the Carthaginian
authorities really laid the foundation of the revolution which broke
forth in Africa some years later.  Lastly, as if to fill up the
measure of misfortune to the Romans even as their measure of success
had been filled before, on the homeward voyage of the fleet three-
fourths of the Roman vessels perished with their crews in a violent
storm; only eighty reached their port (July 499).  The captains had
foretold the impending mischief, but the extemporised Roman admirals
had nevertheless given orders to sail.

Recommencement of the War in Sicily

After successes so immense the Carthaginians were able to resume their
offensive operations, which had long been in abeyance.  Hasdrubal son
of Hanno landed at Lilybaeum with a strong force, which was enabled,
particularly by its enormous number of elephants--amounting to 140
--to keep the field against the Romans: the last battle had shown
that it was possible to make up for the want of good infantry to some
extent by elephants and cavalry.  The Romans also resumed the war in
Sicily; the annihilation of their invading army had, as the voluntary
evacuation of Clupea shows, at once restored ascendency in the senate
to the party which was opposed to the war in Africa and was content
with the gradual subjugation of the islands.  But for this purpose
too there was need of a fleet; and, since that which had conquered at
Mylae, at Ecnomus, and at the Hermaean promontory was destroyed, they
built a new one.  Keels were at once laid down for 220 new vessels
of war--they had never hitherto undertaken the building of so many
simultaneously--and in the incredibly short space of three months
they were all ready for sea.  In the spring of 500 the Roman fleet,
numbering 300 vessels mostly new, appeared on the north coast of
Sicily; Panormus, the most important town in Carthaginian Sicily,
was acquired through a successful attack from the seaboard, and the
smaller places there, Soluntum, Cephaloedium, and Tyndaris, likewise
fell into the hands of the Romans, so that along the whole north coast
of the island Thermae alone was retained by the Carthaginians.
Panormus became thenceforth one of the chief stations of the Romans
in Sicily.  The war by land, nevertheless, made no progress; the two
armies stood face to face before Lilybaeum, but the Roman commanders,
who knew not how to encounter the mass of elephants, made no attempt
to compel a pitched battle.

In the ensuing year (501) the consuls, instead of pursuing sure
advantages in Sicily, preferred to make an expedition to Africa, for
the purpose not of landing but of plundering the coast towns.  They
accomplished their object without opposition; but, after having first
run aground in the troublesome, and to their pilots unknown, waters of
the Lesser Syrtis, whence they with difficulty got clear again, the
fleet encountered a storm between Sicily and Italy, which cost more
than 150 ships.  On this occasion also the pilots, notwithstanding
their representations and entreaties to be allowed to take the course
along the coast, were obliged by command of the consuls to steer
straight from Panormus across the open sea to Ostia.

Suspension of the Maritime War
Roman Victory at Panormus

Despondency now seized the fathers of the city; they resolved to
reduce their war-fleet to sixty sail, and to confine the war by sea
to the defence of the coasts, and to the convoy of transports.
Fortunately, just at this time, the languishing war in Sicily took a
more favourable turn.  In the year 502, Thermae, the last point which
the Carthaginians held on the north coast, and the important island of
Lipara, had fallen into the hands of the Romans, and in the following
year (summer of 503) the consul Lucius Caecilius Metellus achieved
a brilliant victory over the army of elephants under the walls of
Panormus.  These animals, which had been imprudently brought forward,
were wounded by the light troops of the Romans stationed in the moat
of the town; some of them fell into the moat, and others fell back
on their own troops, who crowded in wild disorder along with the
elephants towards the beach, that they might be picked up by the
Phoenician ships.  One hundred and twenty elephants were captured, and
the Carthaginian army, whose strength depended on these animals, was
obliged once more to shut itself up in its fortresses.  Eryx soon fell
into the hands of the Romans (505), and the Carthaginians retained
nothing in the island but Drepana and Lilybaeum.  Carthage a second
time offered peace; but the victory of Metellus and the exhaustion
of the enemy gave to the more energetic party the upper hand
in the senate.

Siege of Lilybaeum

Peace was declined, and it was resolved to prosecute in earnest the
siege of the two Sicilian cities and for this purpose to send to sea
once more a fleet of 200 sail.  The siege of Lilybaeum, the first
great and regular siege undertaken by Rome, and one of the most
obstinate known in history, was opened by the Romans with an important
success: they succeeded in introducing their fleet into the harbour
of the city, and in blockading it on the side facing the sea.
The besiegers, however, were not able to close the sea completely.
In spite of their sunken vessels and their palisades, and in spite of
the most careful vigilance, dexterous mariners, accurately acquainted
with the shallows and channels, maintained with swift-sailing vessels
a regular communication between the besieged in the city and the
Carthaginian fleet in the harbour of Drepana.  In fact after some
time a Carthaginian squadron of 50 sail succeeded in running into
the harbour, in throwing a large quantity of provisions and a
reinforcement of 10,000 men into the city, and in returning
unmolested.  The besieging land army was not much more fortunate.
They began with a regular attack; machines were erected, and in a
short time the batteries had demolished six of the towers flanking
the walls, so that the breach soon appeared to be practicable.  But
the able Carthaginian commander Himilco parried this assault by giving
orders for the erection of a second wall behind the breach.  An
attempt of the Romans to enter into an understanding with the garrison
was likewise frustrated in proper time.  And, after a first sally
 made for the purpose of burning the Roman set of machines had
been repulsed, the Carthaginians succeeded during a stormy night
in effecting their object.  Upon this the Romans abandoned their
preparations for an assault, and contented themselves with blockading
the walls by land and water.  The prospect of success in this way was
indeed very remote, so long as they were unable wholly to preclude the
entrance of the enemy's vessels; and the army of the besiegers was in
a condition not much better than that of the besieged in the city,
because their supplies were frequently cut off by the numerous and
bold light cavalry of the Carthaginians, and their ranks began to be
thinned by the diseases indigenous to that unwholesome region.  The
capture of Lilybaeum, however, was of sufficient importance to induce
a patient perseverance in the laborious task, which promised to be
crowned in time with the desired success.

Defeat of the Roman Fleet before Drepana
Annililation of the Roman Transport Fleet

But the new consul Publius Claudius considered the task of maintaining
the investment of Lilybaeum too trifling: he preferred to change once
more the plan of operations, and with his numerous newly-manned
vessels suddenly to surprise the Carthaginian fleet which was waiting
in the neighbouring harbour of Drepana.  With the whole blockading
squadron, which had taken on board volunteers from the legions, he
started about midnight, and sailing in good order with his right wing
by the shore, and his left in the open sea, he safely reached the
harbour of Drepana at sunrise.  Here the Phoenician admiral Atarbas
was in command.  Although surprised, he did not lose his presence of
mind or allow himself to be shut up in the harbour, but as the Roman
ships entered the harbour, which opens to the south in the form of
a sickle, on the one side, he withdrew his vessels from it by the
opposite side which was still free, and stationed them in line on the
outside.  No other course remained to the Roman admiral but to recall
as speedily as possible the foremost vessels from the harbour, and to
make his arrangements for battle in like manner in front of it; but in
consequence of this retrograde movement he lost the free choice of his
position, and was obliged to accept battle in a line, which on the one
hand was outflanked by that of the enemy to the extent of five ships
--for there was not time fully to deploy the vessels as they issued
from the harbour--and on the other hand was crowded so close on the
shore that his vessels could neither retreat, nor sail behind the
line so as to come to each other's aid.  Not only was the battle lost
before it began, but the Roman fleet was so completely ensnared that
it fell almost wholly into the hands of the enemy.  The consul indeed
escaped, for he was the first who fled; but 93 Roman vessels, more
than three-fourths of the blockading fleet, with the flower of the
Roman legions on board, fell into the hands of the Phoenicians.  It
was the first and only great naval victory which the Carthaginians
gained over the Romans.  Lilybaeum was practically relieved on the
side towards the sea, for though the remains of the Roman fleet
returned to their former position, they were now much too weak
seriously to blockade a harbour which had never been wholly closed,
and they could only protect themselves from the attack of the
Carthaginian ships with the assistance of the land army.  That single
imprudent act of an inexperienced and criminally thoughtless officer
had thrown away all that had been with so much difficulty attained
by the long and galling warfare around the fortress; and those war-
vessels of the Romans which his presumption had not forfeited were
shortly afterwards destroyed by the folly of his colleague.

The second consul, Lucius Junius Pullus, who had received the charge
of lading at Syracuse the supplies destined for the army at Lilybaeum,
and of convoying the transports along the south coast of the island
with a second Roman fleet of 120 war-vessels, instead of keeping his
ships together, committed the error of allowing the first convoy
to depart alone and of only following with the second.  When the
Carthaginian vice-admiral, Carthalo, who with a hundred select ships
blockaded the Roman fleet in the port of Lilybaeum, received the
intelligence, he proceeded to the south coast of the island, cut off
the two Roman squadrons from each other by interposing between them,
and compelled them to take shelter in two harbours of refuge on the
inhospitable shores of Gela and Camarina.  The attacks of the
Carthaginians were indeed bravely repulsed by the Romans with the help
of the shore batteries, which had for some time been erected there
as everywhere along the coast; but, as the Romans could not hope to
effect a junction and continue their voyage, Carthalo could leave
the elements to finish his work.  The next great storm, accordingly,
completely annihilated the two Roman fleets in their wretched
roadsteads, while the Phoenician admiral easily weathered it on
the open sea with his unencumbered and well-managed ships.
The Romans, however, succeeded in saving the greater part
of the crews and cargoes (505).

Perplexity of the Romans

The Roman senate was in perplexity.  The war had now reached its
sixteenth year; and they seemed to be farther from their object in
the sixteenth than in the first.  In this war four large fleets had
perished, three of them with Roman armies on board; a fourth select
land army had been destroyed by the enemy in Libya; to say nothing of
the numerous losses which had been occasioned by the minor naval
engagements, and by the battles, and still more by the outpost
warfare and the diseases, of Sicily.

What a multitude of human lives the war swept away may be seen from
the fact, that the burgess-roll merely from 502 to 507 decreased by
about 40,000, a sixth part of the entire number; and this does not
include the losses of the allies, who bore the whole brunt of the war
by sea, and, in addition, at least an equal proportion with the Romans
of the warfare by land.  Of the financial loss it is not possible to
form any conception; but both the direct damage sustained in ships and
-materiel-, and the indirect injury through the paralyzing of trade,
must have been enormous.  An evil still greater than this was the
exhaustion of all the methods by which they had sought to terminate
the war.  They had tried a landing in Africa with their forces fresh
and in the full career of victory, and had totally failed.  They had
undertaken to storm Sicily town by town; the lesser places had fallen,
but the two mighty naval strongholds of Lilybaeum and Drepana stood
more invincible than ever.  What were they to do?  In fact, there was
to some extent reason for despondency.  The fathers of the city became
faint-hearted; they allowed matters simply to take their course,
knowing well that a war protracted without object or end was more
pernicious for Italy than the straining of the last man and the last
penny, but without that courage and confidence in the nation and in
fortune, which could demand new sacrifices in addition to those that
had already been lavished in vain.  They dismissed the fleet; at the
most they encouraged privateering, and with that view placed the war-
vessels of the state at the disposal of captains who were ready to
undertake a piratical warfare on their own account.  The war by land
was continued nominally, because they could not do otherwise; but
they were content with observing the Sicilian fortresses and barely
maintaining what they possessed,--measures which, in the absence
of a fleet, required a very numerous army and extremely
costly preparations.

Now, if ever, the time had come when Carthage was in a position to
humble her mighty antagonist.  She, too, of course must have felt
some exhaustion of resources; but, in the circumstances, the
Phoenician finances could not possibly be so disorganized as to
prevent the Carthaginians from continuing the war--which cost them
little beyond money--offensively and with energy.  The Carthaginian
government, however, was not energetic, but on the contrary weak and
indolent, unless impelled to action by an easy and sure gain or by
extreme necessity.  Glad to be rid of the Roman fleet, they foolishly
allowed their own also to fall into decay, and began after the example
of the enemy to confine their operations by land and sea to the petty
warfare in and around Sicily.

Petty War in Sicily
Hamilcar Barcas

Thus there ensued six years of uneventful warfare (506-511), the most
inglorious in the history of this century for Rome, and inglorious
also for the Carthaginian people.  One man, however, among the latter
thought and acted differently from his nation.  Hamilcar, named Barak
or Barcas (i. e. lightning), a young officer of much promise, took
over the supreme command in Sicily in the year 507.  His army, like
every Carthaginian one, was defective in a trustworthy and experienced
infantry; and the government, although it was perhaps in a position to
create such an infantry and at any rate was bound to make the attempt,
contented itself with passively looking on at its defeats or at most
with nailing the defeated generals to the cross.  Hamilcar resolved to
take the matter into his own hands.  He knew well that his mercenaries
were as indifferent to Carthage as to Rome, and that he had to expect
from his government not Phoenician or Libyan conscripts, but at the
best a permission to save his country with his troops in his own way,
provided it cost nothing.  But he knew himself also, and he knew men.
His mercenaries cared nothing for Carthage; but a true general is able
to substitute his own person for his country in the affections of his
soldiers; and such an one was this young commander.  After he had
accustomed his men to face the legionaries in the warfare of outposts
before Drepana and Lilybaeum, he established himself with his force on
Mount Ercte (Monte Pellegrino near Palermo), which commands like a
fortress the neighbouring country; and making them settle there with
their wives and children, levied contributions from the plains, while
Phoenician privateers plundered the Italian coast as far as Cumae.  He
thus provided his people with copious supplies without asking money
from the Carthaginians, and, keeping up the communication with Drepana
by sea, he threatened to surprise the important town of Panormus in
his immediate vicinity.  Not only were the Romans unable to expel
him from his stronghold, but after the struggle had lasted awhile at
Ercte, Hamilcar formed for himself another similar position at Eryx.
This mountain, which bore half-way up the town of the same name and
on its summit the temple of Aphrodite, had been hitherto in the hands
of the Romans, who made it a basis for annoying Drepana.  Hamilcar
deprived them of the town and besieged the temple, while the Romans
in turn blockaded him from the plain.  The Celtic deserters from the
Carthaginian army who were stationed by the Romans at the forlorn post
of the temple--a reckless pack of marauders, who in the course of this
siege plundered the temple and perpetrated every sort of outrage
--defended the summit of the rock with desperate courage; but Hamilcar
did not allow himself to be again dislodged from the town, and kept
his communications constantly open by sea with the fleet and the
garrison of Drepana.  The war in Sicily seemed to be assuming a turn
more and more unfavourable for the Romans.  The Roman state was losing
in that warfare its money and its soldiers, and the Roman generals
their repute; it was  already clear that no Roman general was a
match for Hamilcar, and the time might be calculated when even the
Carthaginian mercenary would be able boldly to measure himself
against the legionary.  The privateers of Hamilcar appeared with ever-
increasing audacity on the Italian coast: already a praetor had been
obliged to take the field against a band of Carthaginian rovers which
had landed there.  A few years more, and Hamilcar might with his fleet
have accomplished from Sicily what his son subsequently undertook by
the land route from Spain.

A Fleet Built by the Romans
Victory of Catulus at the Island Aegusa

The Roman senate, however, persevered in its inaction;
the desponding party for once had the majority there.  At length a
number of sagacious and high-spirited men determined to save the state
even without the interposition of the government, and to put an end to
the ruinous Sicilian war.  Successful corsair expeditions, if they had
not raised the courage of the nation, had aroused energy and hope in
a portion of the people; they had already joined together to form
a squadron, burnt down Hippo on the African coast, and sustained a
successful naval conflict with the Carthaginians off Panormus.  By a
private subscription--such as had been resorted to in Athens also,
but not on so magnificent a scale--the wealthy and patriotic Romans
equipped a war fleet, the nucleus of which was supplied by the ships
built for privateering and the practised crews which they contained,
and which altogether was far more carefully fitted out than had
hitherto been the case in the shipbuilding of the state.  This fact
--that a number of citizens in the twenty-third year of a severe war
voluntarily presented to the state two hundred ships of the line,
manned by 60,000 sailors--stands perhaps unparalleled in the annals of
history.  The consul Gaius Lutatius Catulus, to whom fell the honour
of conducting this fleet to the Sicilian seas, met there with almost
no opposition: the two or three Carthaginian vessels, with which
Hamilcar had made his corsair expeditions, disappeared before the
superior force, and almost without resistance the Romans occupied
the harbours of Lilybaeum and Drepana, the siege of which was now
undertaken with energy by water and by land.  Carthage was completely
taken by surprise; even the two fortresses, weakly provisioned, were
in great danger.  A fleet was equipped at home; but with all the haste
which they displayed, the year came to an end without any appearance
of Carthaginian sails in the Sicilian waters; and when at length, in
the spring of 513, the hurriedly-prepared vessels appeared in the
offing of Drepana, they deserved the name of a fleet of transports
rather than that of a war fleet ready for action.  The Phoenicians had
hoped to land undisturbed, to disembark their stores, and to be able
to take on board the troops requisite for a naval battle; but the
Roman vessels intercepted them, and forced them, when about to sail
from the island of Hiera (now Maritima) for Drepana, to accept battle
near the little island of Aegusa (Favignana) (10 March, 513).  The
issue was not for a moment doubtful; the Roman fleet, well built and
manned, and admirably handled by the able praetor Publius Valerius
Falto (for a wound received before Drepana still confined the consul
Catulus to his bed), defeated at the first blow the heavily laden and
poorly and inadequately manned vessels of the enemy; fifty were sunk,
and with seventy prizes the victors sailed into the port of Lilybaeum.
The last great effort of the Roman patriots had borne fruit; it
brought victory, and with victory peace.

Conclusion of Peace

The Carthaginians first crucified the unfortunate admiral--a step
which did not alter the position of affairs--and then dispatched
 to the Sicilian general unlimited authority to conclude a peace.
Hamilcar, who saw his heroic labours of seven years undone by the
fault of others, magnanimously submitted to what was inevitable
without on that account sacrificing either his military honour, or
his nation, or his own designs.  Sicily indeed could not be retained,
seeing that the Romans had now command of the sea; and it was not
to be expected that the Carthaginian government, which had vainly
endeavoured to fill its empty treasury by a state-loan in Egypt,
would make even any further attempt to vanquish the Roman fleet He
therefore surrendered Sicily.  The independence and integrity of the
Carthaginian state and territory, on the other hand, were expressly
recognized in the usual form; Rome binding herself not to enter into
a separate alliance with the confederates of Carthage, and Carthage
engaging not to enter into separate alliance with the confederates
of Rome,--that is, with their respective subject and dependent
communities; neither was to commence war, or exercise rights of
sovereignty, or undertake recruiting within the other's dominions.(8)
The secondary stipulations included, of course, the gratuitous return
of the Roman prisoners of war and the payment of a war contribution;
but the demand of Catulus that Hamilcar should deliver up his arms and
the Roman deserters was resolutely refused by the Carthaginian, and
with success.  Catulus desisted from his second request, and allowed
the Phoenicians a free departure from Sicily for the moderate ransom
of 18 -denarii- (12 shillings) per man.

If the continuance of the war appeared to the Carthaginians
undesirable, they had reason to be satisfied with these terms.  It may
be that the natural wish to bring to Rome peace as well as triumph,
the recollection of Regulus and of the many vicissitudes of the war,
the consideration that such a patriotic effort as had at last decided
the victory could neither be enjoined nor repeated, perhaps even the
personal character of Hamilcar, concurred in influencing the Roman
general to yield so much as he did.  It is certain that there was
dissatisfaction with the proposals of peace at Rome, and the assembly
of the people, doubtless under the influence of the patriots who had
accomplished the equipment of the last fleet, at first refused to
ratify it.  We do not know with what view this was done, and therefore
we are unable to decide whether the opponents of the proposed peace in
reality rejected it merely for the purpose of exacting some further
concessions from the enemy, or whether, remembering that Regulus had
summoned Carthage to surrender her political independence, they were
resolved to continue the war till they had gained that end--so that it
was no longer a question of peace, but a question of conquest.  If the
refusal took place with the former view, it was presumably mistaken;
compared with the gain of Sicily every other concession was of little
moment, and looking to the determination and the inventive genius of
Hamilcar, it was very rash to stake the securing of the principal
gain on the attainment of secondary objects.  If on the other hand
the party opposed to the peace regarded the complete political
annihilation of Carthage as the only end of the struggle that would
satisfy the Roman community, it showed political tact and anticipation
of coming events; but whether the resources of Rome would have
sufficed to renew the expedition of Regulus and to follow it up as far
as might be required not merely to break the courage but to breach the
walls of the mighty Phoenician city, is another question, to which
no one now can venture to give either an affirmative or a negative
answer.  At last the settlement of the momentous question was
entrusted to a commission which was to decide it upon the spot in
Sicily.  It confirmed the proposal in substance; only, the sum to be
paid by Carthage for the costs of the war was raised to 3200 talents
(790,000 pounds), a third of which was to be paid down at once, and
the remainder in ten annual instalments.  The definitive treaty
included, in addition to the surrender of Sicily, the cession also of
the islands between Sicily and Italy, but this can only be regarded as
an alteration of detail made on revision; for it is self-evident that
Carthage, when surrendering Sicily, could hardly desire to retain the
island of Lipara which had long been occupied by the Roman fleet,
and the suspicion, that an ambiguous stipulation was intentionally
introduced into the treaty with reference to Sardinia and Corsica,
is unworthy and improbable.

Thus at length they came to terms.  The unconquered general of a
vanquished nation descended from the mountains which he had defended
so long, and delivered to the new masters of the island the fortresses
which the Phoenicians had held in their uninterrupted possession for
at least four hundred years, and from whose walls all assaults of the
Hellenes had recoiled unsuccessful.  The west had peace (513).

Remarks on the Roman Conduct of the War

Let us pause for a moment over the conflict, which extended the
dominion of Rome beyond the circling sea that encloses the peninsula.
It was one of the longest and most severe which the Romans ever waged;
many of the soldiers who fought in the decisive battle were unborn
when the contest began.  Nevertheless, despite the incomparably noble
incidents which it now and again presented, we can scarcely name any
war which the Romans managed so wretchedly and with such vacillation,
both in a military and in a political point of view.  It could hardly
be otherwise.  The contest occurred amidst a transition in their
political system--the transition from an Italian policy, which no
longer sufficed, to the policy befitting a great state, which had not
yet been found.  The Roman senate and the Roman military system were
excellently organized for a purely Italian policy.  The wars which
such a policy provoked were purely continental wars, and always rested
on the capital situated in the middle of the peninsula as the ultimate
basis of operations, and proximately on the chain of Roman fortresses.
The problems to be solved were mainly tactical, not strategical;
marches and operations occupied but a subordinate, battles held the
first, place; fortress warfare was in its infancy; the sea and naval
war hardly crossed men's thoughts even incidentally.  We can easily
understand--especially if we bear in mind that in the battles of that
period, where the naked weapon predominated, it was really the hand-
to-hand encounter that proved decisive--how a deliberative assembly
might direct such operations, and how any one who just was burgomaster
might command the troops.  All this was changed in a moment.  The
field of battle stretched away to an incalculable distance, to the
unknown regions of another continent, and beyond a broad expanse of
sea; every wave was a highway for the enemy; from any harbour he
might be expected to issue for his onward march.  The siege of
strong places, particularly maritime fortresses, in which the first
tacticians of Greece had failed, had now for the first time to be
attempted by the Romans.  A land army and the system of a civic
militia no longer sufficed.  It was essential to create a fleet, and,
what was more difficult, to employ it; it was essential to find out
the true points of attack and defence, to combine and to direct
masses, to calculate expeditions extending over long periods and great
distances, and to adjust their co-operation; if these things were not
attended to, even an enemy far weaker in the tactics of the field
might easily vanquish a stronger opponent.  Is there any wonder that
the reins of government in such an exigency slipped from the hands of
a deliberative assembly and of commanding burgomasters?

It was plain, that at the beginning of the war  the Romans did not
know what they were undertaking; it was only during the course of the
struggle that the inadequacies of their system, one after another,
forced themselves on their notice--the want of a naval power, the
lack of fixed military leadership, the insufficiency of their
generals, the total uselessness of their admirals.  In part these
evils were remedied by energy and good fortune; as was the case with
the want of a fleet.  That mighty creation, however, was but a grand
makeshift, and always remained so.  A Roman fleet was formed, but it
was rendered national only in name, and was always treated with the
affection of a stepmother; the naval service continued to be little
esteemed in comparison with the high honour of serving in the legions;
the naval officers were in great part Italian Greeks; the crews were
composed of subjects or even of slaves and outcasts.  The Italian
farmer was at all times distrustful of the sea; and of the three
things in his life which Cato regretted one was, that he had travelled
by sea when he might have gone by land.  This result arose partly out
of the nature of the case, for the vessels were oared galleys and the
service of the oar can scarcely be ennobled; but the Romans might at
least have formed separate legions of marines and taken steps towards
the rearing of a class of Roman naval officers.  Taking advantage
of the impulse of the nation, they should have made it their aim
gradually to establish a naval force important not only in numbers
but in sailing power and practice, and for such a purpose they had a
valuable nucleus in the privateering that was developed during the
long war; but nothing of the sort was done by the government.
Nevertheless the Roman fleet with its unwieldy grandeur was the
noblest creation of genius in this war, and, as at its beginning, so
at its close it was the fleet that turned the scale in favour of Rome.

Far more difficult to be overcome were those deficiencies, which could
not be remedied without an alteration of the constitution.  That the
senate, according to the strength of the contending parties within it,
should leap from one system of conducting the war to another, and
perpetrate errors so incredible as the evacuation of Clupea and the
repeated dismantling of the fleet; that the general of one year should
lay siege to Sicilian towns, and his successor, instead of compelling
them to surrender, should pillage the African coast or think proper to
risk a naval battle; and that at any rate the supreme command should
by law change hands every year--all these anomalies could not be done
away without stirring constitutional questions the solution of which
was more difficult than the building of a fleet, but as little could
their retention be reconciled with the requirements of such a war.
Above all, moreover, neither the senate nor the generals could at once
adapt themselves to the new mode of conducting war.  The campaign of
Regulus is an instance how singularly they adhered to the idea that
superiority in tactics decides everything.  There are few generals who
have had such successes thrown as it were into their lap by fortune:
in the year 498 he stood precisely where Scipio stood fifty years
later, with this difference, that he had no Hannibal and no
experienced army arrayed against him.  But the senate withdrew half
the army, as soon as they had satisfied themselves of the tactical
superiority of the Romans; in blind reliance on that superiority the
general remained where he was, to be beaten in strategy, and accepted
battle when it was offered to him, to be beaten also in tactics.
This was the more remarkable, as Regulus was an able and experienced
general of his kind.  The rustic method of warfare, by which Etruria
and Samnium had been won, was the very cause of the defeat in the
plain of Tunes.  The principle, quite right in its own province, that
every true burgher is fit for a general, was no longer applicable;
the new system of war demanded the employment of generals who had a
military training and a military eye, and every burgomaster had not
those qualities.  The arrangement was however still worse, by which
the chief command of the fleet was treated as an appanage to the chief
command of the land army, and any one who chanced to be president of
the city thought himself able to act the part not of general only, but
of admiral too.  The worst disasters which Rome suffered in this war
were due not to the storms and still less to the Carthaginians, but
to the presumptuous folly of its own citizen-admirals.

Rome was victorious at last.  But her acquiescence in a gain far less
than had at first been demanded and indeed offered, as well as the
energetic opposition which the peace encountered in Rome, very clearly
indicate the indecisive and superficial character of the victory and
of the peace; and if Rome was the victor, she was indebted for her
victory in part no doubt to the favour of the gods and to the energy
of her citizens, but still more to the errors of her enemies in the
conduct of the war--errors far surpassing even her own.




Notes for Chapter II


1. II. V. Campanian Hellenism

2. II. VII. Submission of Lower Italy

3. The Mamertines entered quite into the same position towards Rome
as the Italian communities, bound themselves to furnish ships (Cic.
Verr. v. 19, 50), and, as the coins show, did not possess the right
of coining silver.

4. II. VII. Submission of Lower Italy

5. II. VII. Last Struggles in Italy

6. The statement, that the military talent of Xanthippus was the
primary means of saving Carthage, is probably coloured; the officers
of Carthage can hardly have waited for foreigners to teach them that
the light African cavalry could be more appropriately employed on the
plain than among hills and forests.  From such stories, the echo of
the talk of Greek guardrooms, even Polybius is not free.  The
statement that Xanthippus was put to death by the Carthaginians after
the victory, is a fiction; he departed voluntarily, perhaps to enter
the Egyptian service.

7. Nothing further is known with certainty as to the end of Regulus;
even his mission to Rome--which is sometimes placed in 503, sometimes
in 513--is very ill attested.  The later Romans, who sought in the
fortunes and misfortunes of their forefathers mere materials for
school themes, made Regulus the prototype of heroic misfortune as
they made Fabricius the prototype of heroic poverty, and put into
circulation in his name a number of anecdotes invented by way of
due accompaniment--incongruous embellishments, contrasting ill with
serious and sober history.

8. The statement (Zon. viii. 17) that the Carthaginians had to promise
that they would not send any vessels of war into the territories of
the Roman symmachy--and therefore not to Syracuse, perhaps even not
to Massilia--sounds credible enough; but the text of the treaty says
nothing of it (Polyb. iii. 27).




CHAPTER III

The Extension of Italy to Its Natural Boundaries

Natural Boundaries of Italy

The Italian confederacy as it emerged from the crises of the fifth
century--or, in other words, the State of Italy--united the various
civic and cantonal communities from the Apennines to the Ionian Sea
under the hegemony of Rome.  But before the close of the fifth century
these limits were already overpassed in both directions, and Italian
communities belonging to the confederacy had sprung up beyond the
Apennines and beyond the sea.  In the north the republic, in revenge
for ancient and recent wrongs, had already in 471 annihilated the
Celtic Senones; in the south, through the great war from 490 to 513,
it had dislodged the Phoenicians from the island of Sicily.  In the
north there belonged to the combination headed by Rome the Latin town
of Ariminum (besides the burgess-settlement of Sena), in the south the
community of the Mamertines in Messana, and as both were nationally of
Italian origin, so both shared in the common rights and obligations of
the Italian confederacy.  It was probably the pressure of events at
the moment rather than any comprehensive political calculation, that
gave rise to these extensions of the confederacy; but it was natural
that now at least, after the great successes achieved against
Carthage, new and wider views of policy should dawn upon the Roman
government--views which even otherwise were obviously enough suggested
by the physical features of the peninsula.  Alike in a political and
in a military point of view Rome was justified in shifting its
northern boundary from the low and easily crossed Apennines to the
mighty mountain-wall that separates northern from southern Europe,
the Alps, and in combining with the sovereignty of Italy the
sovereignty of the seas and islands on the west and east of the
peninsula; and now, when by the expulsion of the Phoenicians from
Sicily the most difficult portion of the task had been already
achieved, various circumstances united to facilitate its completion
by the Roman government.

Sicily a Dependency of Italy

In the western sea which was of far more account for Italy than the
Adriatic, the most important position, the large and fertile island
of Sicily copiously furnished with harbours, had been by the peace
with Carthage transferred for the most part into the possession of the
Romans.  King Hiero of Syracuse indeed, who during the last twenty-two
years of the war had adhered with unshaken steadfastness to the Roman
alliance, might have had a fair claim to an extension of territory;
but, if Roman policy had begun the war with the resolution of
tolerating only secondary states in the island, the views of the
Romans at its close decidedly tended towards the seizure of Sicily
for themselves.  Hiero might be content that his territory--namely, in
addition to the immediate district of Syracuse, the domains of Elorus,
Neetum, Acrae, Leontini, Megara, and Tauromenium--and his independence
in relation to foreign powers, were (for want of any pretext to
curtail them) left to him in their former compass; he might well be
content that the war between the two great powers had not ended in
the complete overthrow of the one or of the other, and that there
consequently still remained at least a possibility of subsistence for
the intermediate power in Sicily.  In the remaining and by far the
larger portion of Sicily, at Panormus, Lilybaeum, Agrigentum, Messana,
the Romans effected a permanent settlement.

Sardinia Roman
The Libyan Insurrection
Corsica

They only regretted that the possession of that beautiful island was
not enough to convert the western waters into a Roman inland sea,
so long as Sardinia still remained Carthaginian.  Soon, however,
after the conclusion of the peace there appeared an unexpected
prospect of wresting from the Carthaginians this second island of the
Mediterranean.  In Africa, immediately after peace had been concluded
with Rome, the mercenaries and the subjects of the Phoenicians joined
in a common revolt.  The blame of the dangerous insurrection was
mainly chargeable on the Carthaginian government.  In the last years
of the war Hamilcar had not been able to pay his Sicilian mercenaries
as formerly from his own resources, and he had vainly requested that
money might be sent to him from home; he might, he was told, send his
forces to Africa to be paid off.  He obeyed; but as he knew the men,
he prudently embarked them in small subdivisions, that the authorities
might pay them off by troops or might at least separate them, and
thereupon he laid down his command.  But all his precautions were
thwarted not so much by the emptiness of the exchequer, as by the
collegiate method of transacting business and the folly of the
bureaucracy.  They waited till the whole army was once more united in
Libya, and then endeavoured to curtail the pay promised to the men.
Of course a mutiny broke out among the troops, and the hesitating and
cowardly demeanour of the authorities showed the mutineers what they
might dare.  Most of them were natives of the districts ruled by, or
dependent on, Carthage; they knew the feelings which had been provoked
throughout these districts by the slaughter decreed by the government
after the expedition of Regulus(1) and by the fearful pressure of
taxation, and they knew also the character of their government, which
never kept faith and never pardoned; they were well aware of what
awaited them, should they disperse to their homes with pay exacted by
mutiny.  The Carthaginians had for long been digging the mine, and
they now themselves supplied the men who could not but explode it.
Like wildfire the revolution spread from garrison to garrison, from
village to village; the Libyan women contributed their ornaments to
pay the wages of the mercenaries; a number of Carthaginian citizens,
amongst whom were some of the most distinguished officers of the
Sicilian army, became the victims of the infuriated multitude;
Carthage was already besieged on two sides, and the Carthaginian
army marching out of the city was totally routed in consequence of
the blundering of its unskilful leader.

When the Romans thus saw their hated and still dreaded foe involved in
a greater danger than any ever brought on that foe by the Roman wars,
they began more and more to regret the conclusion of the peace of 513
--which, if it was not in reality precipitate, now at least appeared
so to all--and to forget how exhausted at that time their own state
had been and how powerful had then been the standing of their
Carthaginian rival.  Shame indeed forbade their entering into
communication openly with the Carthaginian rebels; in fact, they gave
an exceptional permission to the Carthaginians to levy recruits for
this war in Italy, and prohibited Italian mariners from dealing with
the Libyans.  But it may be doubted whether the government of Rome
was very earnest in these acts of friendly alliance; for, in spite
of them, the dealings between the African insurgents and the Roman
mariners continued, and when Hamilcar, whom the extremity of the peril
had recalled to the command of the Carthaginian army, seized and
imprisoned a number of Italian captains concerned in these dealings,
the senate interceded for them with the Carthaginian government and
procured their release.  The insurgents themselves appeared to
recognize in the Romans their natural allies.  The garrisons in
Sardinia, which like the rest of the Carthaginian army had declared
in favour of the insurgents, offered the possession of the island to
the Romans, when they saw that they were unable to hold it against the
attacks of the un-conquered mountaineers of the interior (about 515);
and similar offers came even from the community of Utica, which had
likewise taken part in the revolt and was now hard pressed by the
arms of Hamilcar.  The latter suggestion was declined by the Romans,
chiefly doubtless because its acceptance would have carried them
beyond the natural boundaries of Italy and therefore farther than
the Roman government was then disposed to go; on the other hand they
entertained the offers of the Sardinian mutineers, and took over
from them the portion of Sardinia which had been in the hands of the
Carthaginians (516).  In this instance, even more than in the affair
of the Mamertines, the Romans were justly liable to the reproach that
the great and victorious burgesses had not disdained to fraternize
and share the spoil with a venal pack of mercenaries, and had not
sufficient self-denial to prefer the course enjoined by justice and
by honour to the gain of the moment.  The Carthaginians, whose troubles
reached their height just about the period of the occupation of
Sardinia, were silent for the time being as to the unwarrantable
violence; but, after this peril had been, contrary to the expectations
and probably contrary to the hopes of the Romans, averted by the
genius of Hamilcar, and Carthage had been reinstated to her full
sovereignty in Africa (517), Carthaginian envoys immediately appeared
at Rome to require the restitution of Sardinia.  But the Romans, not
inclined to restore their booty, replied with frivolous or at any rate
irrelevant complaints as to all sorts of injuries which they alleged
that the Carthaginians had inflicted on the Roman traders, and
hastened to declare war;(2) the principle, that in politics power
is the measure of right, appeared in its naked effrontery.  Just
resentment urged the Carthaginians to accept that offer of war; had
Catulus insisted upon the cession of Sardinia five years before, the
war would probably have pursued its course.  But now, when both
islands were lost, when Libya was in a ferment, and when the state was
weakened to the utmost by its twenty-four years' struggle with Rome
and the dreadful civil war that had raged for nearly five years more,
they were obliged to submit It was only after repeated entreaties,
and after the Phoenicians had bound themselves to pay to Rome a
compensation of 1200 talents (292,000 pounds) for the warlike
preparations which had been wantonly occasioned, that the Romans
reluctantly desisted from war.  Thus the Romans acquired Sardinia
almost without a struggle; to which they added Corsica, the ancient
possession of the Etruscans, where perhaps some detached Roman
garrisons still remained over from the last war.(3)  In Sardinia,
however, and still more in the rugged Corsica, the Romans restricted
themselves, just as the Phoenicians had done, to an occupation of
the coasts.  With the natives in the interior they were continually
engaged in war or, to speak more correctly, in hunting them like wild
beasts; they baited them with dogs, and carried what they captured to
the slave market; but they undertook no real conquest.  They had
occupied the islands not on their own account, but for the security
of Italy.  Now that the confederacy possessed the three large islands,
it might call the Tyrrhene Sea its own.

Method of Administration in the Transmarine Possessions
Provincial Praetors

The acquisition of the islands in the western sea of Italy introduced
into the state administration of Rome a distinction, which to all
appearance originated in mere considerations of convenience and almost
accidentally, but nevertheless came to be of the deepest importance
for all time following--the distinction between the continental and
transmarine forms of administration, or to use the appellations
afterwards current, the distinction between Italy and the provinces.
Hitherto the two chief magistrates of the community, the consuls, had
not had any legally defined sphere of action; on the contrary their
official field extended as far as the Roman government itself.  Of
course, however, in practice they made a division of functions
between them, and of course also they were bound in every particular
department of their duties by the enactments existing in regard to it;
the jurisdiction, for instance, over Roman citizens had in every case
to be left to the praetor, and in the Latin and other autonomous
communities the existing treaties had to be respected.  The four
quaestors who had been since 487 distributed throughout Italy did not,
formally at least, restrict the consular authority, for in Italy,
just as in Rome, they were regarded simply as auxiliary magistrates
dependent on the consuls.  This mode of administration appears to have
been at first extended also to the territories taken from Carthage,
and Sicily and Sardinia to have been governed for some years by
quaestors under the superintendence of the consuls; but the Romans
must very soon have become practically convinced that it was
indispensable to have superior magistrates specially appointed for
the transmarine regions.  As they had been obliged to abandon the
concentration of the Roman jurisdiction in the person of the praetor
as the community became enlarged, and to send to the more remote
districts deputy judges,(4) so now (527) the concentration of
administrative and military power in the person of the consuls had to
be abandoned.  For each of the new transmarine regions--viz. Sicily,
and Sardinia with Corsica annexed to it--there was appointed a special
auxiliary consul, who was in rank and title inferior to the consul and
equal to the praetor, but otherwise was--like the consul in earlier
times before the praetorship was instituted--in his own sphere of
action at once commander-in-chief, chief magistrate, and supreme
judge.  The direct administration of finance alone was withheld from
these new chief magistrates, as from the first it had been withheld
from the consuls;(5) one or more quaestors were assigned to them,
who were in every way indeed subordinate to them, and were their
assistants in the administration of justice and in command, but yet
had specially to manage the finances and to render account of their
administration to the senate after having laid down their office.

Organization of the Provinces
-Commercium-
Property
Autonomy

This difference in the supreme administrative power was the essential
distinction between the transmarine and continental possessions.  The
principles on which Rome had organized the dependent lands in Italy,
were in great part transferred also to the extra-Italian possessions.
As a matter of course, these communities without exception lost
independence in their external relations.  As to internal intercourse,
no provincial could thenceforth acquire valid property in the province
out of the bounds of his own community, or perhaps even conclude a
valid marriage.  On the other hand the Roman government allowed, at
least to the Sicilian towns which they had not to fear, a certain
federative organization, and probably even general Siceliot diets
with a harmless right of petition and complaint.(6)  In monetary
arrangements it was not indeed practicable at once to declare the
Roman currency to be the only valid tender in the islands; but it
seems from the first to have obtained legal circulation, and in like
manner, at least as a rule, the right of coining in precious metals
seems to have been withdrawn from the cities in Roman Sicily.(7)  On
the other hand not only was the landed property in all Sicily left
untouched--the principle, that the land out of Italy fell by right of
war to the Romans as private property, was still unknown to this
century--but all the Sicilian and Sardinian communities retained self-
administration and some sort of autonomy, which indeed was not assured
to them in a way legally binding, but was provisionally allowed.
If the democratic constitutions of the communities were everywhere
set aside, and in every city the power was transferred to the hands
of a council representing the civic aristocracy; and if moreover the
Sicilian communities, at least, were required to institute a general
valuation corresponding to the Roman census every fifth year; both
these measures were only the necessary sequel of subordination
to the Roman senate, which in reality could not govern with Greek
--ecclesiae--, or without a view of the financial and military
resources of each dependent community; in the various districts
of Italy also the same course was in both respects pursued.

Tenths and Customs
Communities Exempted

But, side by side with this essential equality of rights, there was
established a distinction, very important in its effects, between the
Italian communities on the one hand and the transmarine communities
on the other.  While the treaties concluded with the Italian towns
imposed on them a fixed contingent for the army or the fleet of
the Romans, such a contingent was not imposed on the transmarine
communities, with which no binding paction was entered into at all,
but they lost the right of arms,(8) with the single exception that
they might be employed on the summons of the Roman praetor for the
defence of their own homes.  The Roman government regularly sent
Italian troops, of the strength which it had fixed, to the islands;
in return for this, a tenth of the field-produce of Sicily, and a toll
of 5 per cent on the value of all articles of commerce exported from
or imported into the Sicilian harbours, were paid to Rome.  To the
islanders these taxes were nothing new.  The imposts levied by the
Persian great-king and the Carthaginian republic were substantially of
the same character with that tenth; and in Greece also such a taxation
had for long been, after Oriental precedent, associated with the
-tyrannis- and often also with a hegemony.  The Sicilians had in this
way long paid their tenth either to Syracuse or to Carthage, and had
been wont to levy customs-dues no longer on their own account.  "We
received,"  says Cicero, "the Sicilian communities into our clientship
and protection in such a way that they continued under the same law
under which they had lived before, and obeyed the Roman community
under relations similar to those in which they had obeyed their
own rulers."  It is fair that this should not be forgotten; but to
continue an injustice is to commit injustice.  Viewed in relation not
to the subjects, who merely changed masters, but to their new rulers,
the abandonment of the equally wise and magnanimous principle of Roman
statesmanship--viz., that Rome should accept from her subjects simply
military aid, and never pecuniary compensation in lieu of it--was of
a fatal importance, in comparison with which all alleviations in the
rates and the mode of levying them, as well as all exceptions in
detail, were as nothing.  Such exceptions were, no doubt, made in
various cases.  Messana was directly admitted to the confederacy of
the -togati-, and, like the Greek cities in Italy, furnished its
contingent to the Roman fleet.  A number of other cities, while not
admitted to the Italian military confederacy, yet received in addition
to other favours immunity from tribute and tenths, so that their
position in a financial point of view was even more favourable than
that of the Italian communities.  These were Segesta and Halicyae,
which were the first towns of Carthaginian Sicily that joined the
Roman alliance; Centuripa, an inland town in the east of the island,
which was destined to keep a watch over the Syracusan territory in its
neighbourhood;(9) Halaesa on the northern coast, which was the first
of the free Greek towns to join the Romans, and above all Panormus,
hitherto the capital of Carthaginian, and now destined to become
that of Roman, Sicily.  The Romans thus applied to Sicily the ancient
principle of their policy, that of subdividing the dependent
communities into carefully graduated classes with different
privileges; but, on the average, the Sardinian and Sicilian
communities were not in the position of allies but in the
manifest relation of tributary subjection.

Italy and the Provinces

It is true that this thorough distinction between the communities that
furnished contingents and those that paid tribute, or at least did not
furnish contingents, was not in law necessarily coincident with the
distinction between Italy and the provinces.  Transmarine communities
might belong to the Italian confederacy; the Mamertines for example
were substantially on a level with the Italian Sabellians, and there
existed no legal obstacle to the establishment even of new communities
with Latin rights in Sicily and Sardinia any more than in the country
beyond the Apennines.  Communities on the mainland might be deprived
of the right of bearing arms and become tributary; this arrangement
was already the case with certain Celtic districts on the Po, and was
introduced to a considerable extent in after times.  But, in reality,
the communities that furnished contingents just as decidedly
preponderated on the mainland as the tributary communities in the
islands; and while Italian settlements were not contemplated on the
part of the Romans either in Sicily with its Hellenic civilization or
in Sardinia, the Roman government had beyond doubt already determined
not only to subdue the barbarian land between the Apennines and the
Alps, but also, as their conquests advanced, to establish in it
new communities of Italic origin and Italic rights.  Thus their
transmarine possessions were not merely placed on the footing of land
held by subjects, but were destined to remain on that footing in all
time to come; whereas the official field recently marked off by law
for the consuls, or, which is the same thing, the continental
territory of the Romans, was to become a new and more extended Italy,
which should reach from the Alps to the Ionian sea.  In the first
instance, indeed, this essentially geographical conception of Italy
was not altogether coincident with the political conception of the
Italian confederacy; it was partly wider, partly narrower.  But even
now the Romans regarded the whole space up to the boundary of the Alps
as -Italia-, that is, as the present or future domain of the -togati-
and, just as was and still is the case in North America, the boundary
was provisionally marked off in a geographical sense, that the field
might be gradually occupied in a political sense also with the advance
of colonization.(10)

Events on the Adriatic Coasts

In the Adriatic sea, at the entrance of which the important and long-
contemplated colony of Brundisium had at length been founded before
the close of the war with Carthage (510), the supremacy of Rome was
from the very first decided.  In the western sea Rome had been obliged
to rid herself of rivals; in the eastern, the quarrels of the Hellenes
themselves prevented any of the states in the Grecian peninsula from
acquiring or retaining power.  The most considerable of them, that of
Macedonia, had through the influence of Egypt been dislodged from the
upper Adriatic by the Aetolians and from the Peloponnesus by the
Achaeans, and was scarcely even in a position to defend its northern
frontier against the barbarians.  How concerned the Romans were to
keep down Macedonia and its natural ally, the king of Syria, and how
closely they associated themselves with the Egyptian policy directed
to that object, is shown by the remarkable offer which after the end
of the war with Carthage they made to king Ptolemy III.  Euergetes,
to support him in the war which he waged with Seleucus II.  Callinicus
of Syria (who reigned 507-529) on account of the murder of Berenice,
and in which Macedonia had probably taken part with the latter.
Generally, the relations of Rome with the Hellenistic states became
closer; the senate already negotiated even with Syria, and interceded
with the Seleucus just mentioned on behalf of the Ilians with whom
the Romans claimed affinity.

For a direct interference of the Romans in the affairs of
the eastern powers there was no immediate need.  The Achaean league,
the prosperity of which was arrested by the narrow-minded coterie-
policy of Aratus, the Aetolian republic of military adventurers, and
the decayed Macedonian empire kept each other in check; and the Romans
of that time avoided rather than sought transmarine acquisitions.
When the Acarnanians, appealing to the ground that they alone of all
the Greeks had taken no part in the destruction of Ilion, besought
the descendants of Aeneas to help them against the Aetolians, the
senate did indeed attempt a diplomatic mediation; but when the
Aetolians returned an answer drawn up in their own saucy fashion,
the antiquarian interest of the Roman senators by no means provoked
them into undertaking a war by which they would have freed the
Macedonians from their hereditary foe (about 515).

Illyrian Piracy
Expedition against Scodra

Even the evil of piracy, which was naturally in such a state of
matters the only trade that flourished on the Adriatic coast, and
from which the commerce of Italy suffered greatly, was submitted to by
the Romans with an undue measure of patience, --a patience intimately
connected with their radical aversion to maritime war and their
wretched marine.  But at length it became too flagrant.  Favoured by
Macedonia, which no longer found occasion to continue its old function
of protecting Hellenic commerce from the corsairs of the Adriatic for
the benefit of its foes, the rulers of Scodra had induced the Illyrian
tribes--nearly corresponding to the Dalmatians, Montenegrins, and
northern Albanians of the present day--to unite for joint piratical
expeditions on a great scale.

With whole squadrons of their swift-sailing biremes, the veil-known
"Liburnian" cutters, the Illyrians waged war by sea and along the
coasts against all and sundry.  The Greek settlements in these
regions, the island-towns of Issa (Lissa) and Pharos (Lesina), the
important ports of Epidamnus (Durazzo) and Apollonia (to the north of
Avlona on the Aous) of course suffered especially, and were repeatedly
beleaguered by the barbarians.  Farther to the south, moreover, the
corsairs established themselves in Phoenice, the most flourishing town
of Epirus; partly voluntarily, partly by constraint, the Epirots and
Acarnanians entered into an unnatural symmachy with the foreign
freebooters; the coast was insecure even as far as Elis and Messene.
In vain the Aetolians and Achaeans collected what ships they had, with
a view to check the evil: in a battle on the open sea they were beaten
by the pirates and their Greek allies; the corsair fleet was able at
length to take possession even of the rich and important island of
Corcyra (Corfu).  The complaints of Italian mariners, the appeals for
aid of their old allies the Apolloniates, and the urgent entreaties
of the besieged Issaeans at length compelled the Roman senate to
send at least ambassadors to Scodra.  The brothers Gaius and Lucius
Coruncanius went thither to demand that king Agron should put an end
to the disorder.  The king answered that according to the national law
of the Illyrians piracy was a lawful trade, and that the government
had no right to put a stop to privateering; whereupon Lucius
Coruncanius replied, that in that case Rome would make it her business
to introduce a better law among the Illyrians.  For this certainly not
very diplomatic reply one of the envoys was--by the king's orders, as
the Romans asserted--murdered on the way home, and the surrender of
the murderers was refused.  The senate had now no choice left to it.
In the spring of 525 a fleet of 200 ships of the line, with a landing-
army on board, appeared off Apollonia; the corsair-vessels were
scattered before the former, while the latter demolished the piratic
strongholds; the queen Teuta, who after the death of her husband
Agron conducted the government during the minority of her son Pinnes,
besieged in her last retreat, was obliged to accept the conditions
dictated by Rome.  The rulers of Scodra were again confined both on
the north and south to the narrow limits of their original domain,
and had to quit their hold not only on all the Greek towns, but also
on the Ardiaei in Dalmatia, the Parthini around Epidamnus, and the
Atintanes in northern Epirus; no Illyrian vessel of war at all, and
not more than two unarmed vessels in company, were to be allowed in
future to sail to the south of Lissus (Alessio, between Scutari and
Durazzo).  The maritime supremacy of Rome in the Adriatic was
asserted, in the most praiseworthy and durable way, by the rapid
and energetic suppression of the evil of piracy.

Acquisition of Territory in Illyria
Impression in Greece and Macedonia

But the Romans went further, and established themselves on the east
coast.  The Illyrians of Scodra were rendered tributary to Rome;
Demetrius of Pharos, who had passed over from the service of Teuta to
that of the Romans, was installed, as a dependent dynast and ally of
Rome, over the islands and coasts of Dalmatia; the Greek cities
Corcyra, Epidamnus, Apollonia, and the communities of the Atintanes
and Parthini were attached to Rome under mild forms of symmachy.
These acquisitions on the east coast of the Adriatic were not
sufficiently extensive to require the appointment of a special
auxiliary consul; governors of subordinate rank appear to have
been sent to Corcyra and perhaps also to other places, and the
superintendence of these possessions seems to have been entrusted
to the chief magistrates who administered Italy.(11)  Thus the most
important maritime stations in the Adriatic became subject, like
Sicily and Sardinia, to the authority of Rome.  What other result was
to be expected?  Rome was in want of a good naval station in the upper
Adriatic--a want which was not supplied by her possessions on the
Italian shore; her new allies, especially the Greek commercial towns,
saw in the Romans their deliverers, and doubtless did what they could
permanently to secure so powerful a protection; in Greece itself
no one was in a position to oppose the movement; on the contrary,
the praise of the liberators was on every one's lips.  It may be a
question whether there was greater rejoicing or shame in Hellas, when,
in place of the ten ships of the line of the Achaean league, the most
warlike power in Greece, two hundred sail belonging to the barbarians
now entered her harbours and accomplished at a blow the task, which
properly belonged to the Greeks, but in which they had failed so
miserably.  But if the Greeks were ashamed that the salvation of their
oppressed countrymen had to come from abroad, they accepted the
deliverance at least with a good grace; they did not fail to receive
the Romans solemnly into the fellowship of the Hellenic nation by
admitting them to the Isthmian games and the Eleusinian mysteries.

Macedonia was silent; it was not in a condition to protest in arms,
and disdained to do so in words.  No resistance was encountered.
Nevertheless Rome, by seizing the keys to her neighbour's house, had
converted that neighbour into an adversary who, should he recover his
power, or should a favourable opportunity occur, might be expected to
know how to break the silence.  Had the energetic and prudent king
Antigonus Doson lived longer, he would have doubtless taken up the
gauntlet which the Romans had flung down, for, when some years
afterwards the dynast Demetrius of Pharos withdrew from the hegemony
of Rome, prosecuted piracy contrary to the treaty in concert with
the Istrians, and subdued the Atintanes whom the Romans had declared
independent, Antigonus formed an alliance with him, and the troops
of Demetrius fought along with the army of Antigonus at the battle
of Sellasia (532).  But Antigonus died (in the winter 533-4); and his
successor Philip, still a boy, allowed the Consul Lucius Aemilius
Paullus to attack the ally of Macedonia, to destroy his capital,
and to drive him from his kingdom into exile (535).

Northern Italy

The mainland of Italy proper, south of the Apennines, enjoyed profound
peace after the fall of Tarentum: the six days' war with Falerii (513)
was little more than an interlude.  But towards the north, between the
territory of the confederacy and the natural boundary of Italy--the
chain of the Alps--there still extended a wide region which was not
subject to the Romans.  What was regarded as the boundary of Italy on
the Adriatic coast was the river Aesis immediately above Ancona.
Beyond this boundary the adjacent properly Gallic territory as far as,
and including, Ravenna belonged in a similar way as did Italy proper
to the Roman alliance; the Senones, who had formerly settled there,
were extirpated in the war of 471-2,(12) and the several townships
were connected with Rome, either as burgess-colonies, like Sena
Gallica,(13) or as allied towns, whether with Latin rights, like
Ariminum,(14) or with Italian rights, like Ravenna.  On the wide
region beyond Ravenna as far as the Alps non-Italian peoples were
settled.  South of the Po the strong Celtic tribe of the Boii still
held its ground (from Parma to Bologna); alongside of them, the
Lingones on the east and the Anares on the west (in the region of
Parma)--two smaller Celtic cantons presumably clients of the Boii--
peopled the plain.  At the western end of the plain the Ligurians
began, who, mingled with isolated Celtic tribes, and settled on the
Apennines from above Arezzo and Pisa westward, occupied the region of
the sources of the Po.  The eastern portion of the plain north of the
Po, nearly from Verona to the coast, was possessed by the Veneti, a
race different from the Celts and probably of Illyrian extraction.
Between these and the western mountains were settled the Cenomani
(about Brescia and Cremona) who rarely acted with the Celtic nation
and were probably largely intermingled with Veneti, and the Insubres
(around Milan).  The latter was the most considerable of the Celtic
cantons in Italy, and was in constant communication not merely
with the minor communities partly of Celtic, partly of non-Celtic
extraction, that were scattered in the Alpine valleys, but also with
the Celtic cantons beyond the Alps.  The gates of the Alps, the mighty
stream navigable for 230 miles, and the largest and most fertile plain
of the then civilized Europe, still continued in the hands of the
hereditary foes of the Italian name, who, humbled indeed and weakened,
but still scarce even nominally dependent and still troublesome
neighbours, persevered in their barbarism, and, thinly scattered over
the spacious plains, continued to pasture their herds and to plunder.
It was to be anticipated that the Romans would hasten to possess
themselves of these regions; the more so as the Celts gradually began
to forget their defeats in the campaigns of 471 and 472 and to bestir
themselves again, and, what was still more dangerous, the Transalpine
Celts  began anew to show themselves on the south of the Alps.

Celtic Wars

In fact the Boii had already renewed the war in 516, and their
chiefs Atis and Galatas had--without, it is true, the authority of the
general diet--summoned the Transalpine Gauls to make common cause with
them.  The latter had numerously answered the call, and in 518 a
Celtic army, such as Italy had not seen for long, encamped before
Ariminum.  The Romans, for the moment much too weak to attempt a
battle, concluded an armistice, and to gain time allowed envoys from
the Celts to proceed to Rome, who ventured in the senate to demand
the cession of Ariminum--it seemed as if the times of Brennus had
returned.  But an unexpected incident put an end to the war before it
had well begun.  The Boii, dissatisfied with their unbidden allies and
afraid probably for their own territory, fell into variance with the
Transalpine Gauls.  An open battle took place between the two Celtic
hosts; and, after the chiefs of the Boii had been put to death by
their own men, the Transalpine Gauls returned home.  The Boii were
thus delivered into the hands of the Romans, and the latter were at
liberty to expel them like the Senones, and to advance at least to
the Po; but they preferred to grant the Boii peace in return for
the cession of some districts of their land (518).  This was probably
done, because they were just at that time expecting the renewed
outbreak of war with Carthage; but, after that war had been averted by
the cession of Sardinia, true policy required the Roman government to
take possession as speedily and entirely as possible of the country up
to the Alps.  The constant apprehensions on the part of the Celts as
to such a Roman invasion were therefore sufficiently justified; but
the Romans were in no haste.  So the Celts on their part began the
war, either because the Roman assignations of land on the east coast
(522), although not a measure immediately directed against them, made
them apprehensive of danger; or because they perceived that a war with
Rome for the possession of Lombardy was inevitable; or, as is perhaps
most probable, because their Celtic impatience was once more weary of
inaction and preferred to arm for a new warlike expedition.  With the
exception of the Cenomani, who acted with the Veneti and declared for
the Romans, all the Italian Celts concurred in the war, and they were
joined by the Celts of the upper valley of the Rhone, or rather by
a number of adventurers belonging to them, under the leaders
Concolitanus and Aneroestus.(15)  With 50,000 warriors on foot, and
20,000 on horseback or in chariots, the leaders of the Celts advanced
to the Apennines (529).  The Romans had not anticipated an attack on
this side, and had not expected that the Celts, disregarding the Roman
fortresses on the east coast and the protection of their own kinsmen,
would venture to advance directly against the capital.  Not very long
before a similar Celtic swarm had in an exactly similar way overrun
Greece.  The danger was serious, and appeared still more serious than
it really was.  The belief that Rome's destruction was this time
inevitable, and that the Roman soil was fated to become the property
of the Gauls, was so generally diffused among the multitude in Rome
itself that the government reckoned it not beneath its dignity to
allay the absurd superstitious belief of the mob by an act still more
absurd, and to bury alive a Gaulish man and a Gaulish woman in the
Roman Forum with a view to fulfil the oracle of destiny.  At the same
time they made more serious preparations.  Of the two consular armies,
each of which numbered about 25,000 infantry and 1100 cavalry, one
was stationed in Sardinia under Gaius Atilius Regulus, the other at
Ariminum under Lucius Aemilius Papus.  Both received orders to repair
as speedily as possible to Etruria, which was most immediately
threatened.  The Celts had already been under the necessity of leaving
a garrison at home to face the Cenomani and Veneti, who were allied
with Rome; now the levy of the Umbrians was directed to advance from
their native mountains down into the plain of the Boii, and to inflict
all the injury which they could think of on the enemy upon his own
soil.  The militia of the Etruscans and Sabines was to occupy the
Apennines and if possible to obstruct the passage, till the regular
troops could arrive.  A reserve was formed in Rome of 50,000 men.
Throughout all Italy, which on this occasion recognized its true
champion in Rome, the men capable of service were enrolled, and stores
and materials of war were collected.

Battle of Telamon

All this, however, required time.  For once the Romans had allowed
themselves to be surprised, and it was too late at least to save
Etruria.  The Celts found the Apennines hardly defended, and plundered
unopposed the rich plains of the Tuscan territory, which for long had
seen no enemy.  They were already at Clusium, three days' march from
Rome, when the army of Ariminum, under the consul Papus, appeared on
their flank, while the Etruscan militia, which after crossing the
Apennines had assembled in rear of the Gauls, followed the line of the
enemy's march.  Suddenly one evening, after the two armies had already
encamped and the bivouac fires were kindled, the Celtic infantry again
broke up and retreated on the road towards Faesulae (Fiesole): the
cavalry occupied the advanced posts during the night, and followed the
main force next morning.  When the Tuscan militia, who had pitched
their camp close upon the enemy, became aware of his departure, they
imagined that the host had begun to disperse, and marched hastily in
pursuit.  The Gauls had reckoned on this very result: their infantry,
which had rested and was drawn up in order, awaited on a well-chosen
battlefield the Roman militia, which came up from its forced march
fatigued and disordered.  Six thousand men fell after a furious
combat, and the rest of the militia, which had been compelled to seek
refuge on a hill, would have perished, had not the consular army
appeared just in time.  This induced the Gauls to return homeward.
Their dexterously-contrived plan for preventing the union of the two
Roman armies and annihilating the weaker in detail, had only been
partially successful; now it seemed to them advisable first of all to
place in security their considerable booty.  For the sake of an easier
line of march they proceeded from the district of Chiusi, where they
were, to the level coast, and were marching along the shore, when
they found an unexpected obstacle in the way.  It was the Sardinian
legions, which had landed at Pisae; and, when they arrived too late to
obstruct the passage of the Apennines, had immediately put themselves
in motion and were advancing along the coast in a direction opposite
to the march of the Gauls.  Near Telamon (at the mouth of the Ombrone)
they met with the enemy.  While the Roman infantry advanced with close
front along the great road, the cavalry, led by the consul Gaius
Atilius Regulus in person, made a side movement so as to take the
Gauls in flank, and to acquaint the other Roman army under Papus as
soon as possible with their arrival.  A hot cavalry engagement took
place, in which along with many brave Romans Regulus fell; but he had
not sacrificed his life in vain: his object was gained.  Papus became
aware of the conflict, and guessed how matters stood; he hastily
arrayed his legions, and on both sides the Celtic host was now pressed
by Roman legions.  Courageously it made its dispositions for the
double conflict, the Transalpine Gauls and Insubres against the
troops of Papus, the Alpine Taurisci and the Boii against the
Sardinian infantry; the cavalry combat pursued its course apart on
the flank.  The forces were in numbers not unequally matched, and the
desperate position of the Gauls impelled them to the most obstinate
resistance.  But the Transalpine Gauls, accustomed only to close
fighting, gave way before the missiles of the Roman skirmishers; in
the hand-to-hand combat the better temper of the Roman weapons placed
the Gauls at a disadvantage; and at last an attack in flank by the
victorious Roman cavalry decided the day.  The Celtic horsemen made
their escape; the infantry, wedged in between the sea and the three
Roman armies, had no means of flight.  10,000 Celts, with their king
Concolitanus, were taken prisoners; 40,000 others lay dead on the
field of battle; Aneroestus and his attendants had, after the Celtic
fashion, put themselves to death.

The Celts Attacked in Their Own Land

The victory was complete, and the Romans were firmly resolved to
prevent the recurrence of such surprises by the complete subjugation
of the Celts on the south of the Alps.  In the following year (530)
the Boii submitted without resistance along with the Lingones; and in
the year after that (531) the Anares; so that the plain as far as the
Po was in the hands of the Romans.  The conquest of the northern bank
of the river cost a more serious struggle.  Gaius Flaminius crossed
the river in the newly-acquired territory of the Anares (somewhere
near Piacenza) in 531; but during the crossing, and still more while
making good his footing on the other bank, he suffered so heavy losses
and found himself with the river in his rear in so dangerous a
position, that he made a capitulation with the enemy to secure a free
retreat, which the Insubres foolishly conceded.  Scarce, however, had
he escaped when he appeared in the territory of the Cenomani, and,
united with them, advanced for the second time from the north into the
canton of the Insubres.  The Gauls perceived what was now the object
of the Romans, when it was too late: they took from the temple of
their goddess the golden standards called the "immovable,"  and with
their whole levy, 50,000 strong, they offered battle to the Romans.
The situation of the latter was critical: they were stationed with
their back to a river (perhaps the Oglio), separated from home by the
enemy's territory, and left to depend for aid in battle as well as for
their line of retreat on the uncertain friendship of the Cenomani.
There was, however, no choice.  The Gauls fighting in the Roman ranks
were placed on the left bank of the stream; on the right, opposite to
the Insubres, the legions were drawn up, and the bridges were broken
down that they might not be assailed, at least in the rear, by their
dubious allies.

The Celts Conquered by Rome

In this way undoubtedly the river cut off their retreat, and their way
homeward lay through the hostile army.  But the superiority of the
Roman arms and of Roman discipline achieved the victory, and the army
cut its way through: once more the Roman tactics had redeemed the
blunders of the general.  The victory was due to the soldiers and
officers, not to the generals, who gained a triumph only through
popular favour in opposition to the just decree of the senate.  Gladly
would the Insubres have made peace; but Rome required unconditional
subjection, and things had not yet come to that pass.  They tried to
maintain their ground with the help of their northern kinsmen; and,
with 30,000 mercenaries whom they had raised amongst these and their
own levy, they received the two consular armies advancing once more in
the following year (532) from the territory of the Cenomani to invade
their land.  Various obstinate combats took place; in a diversion,
attempted by the Insubres against the Roman fortress of Clastidium
(Casteggio, below Pavia), on the right bank of the Po, the Gallic
king Virdumarus fell by the hand of the consul Marcus Marcellus.  But,
after a battle already half won by the Celts but ultimately decided
in favour of the Romans, the consul Gnaeus Scipio took by assault
Mediolanum, the capital of the Insubres, and the capture of that town
and of Comum terminated their resistance.  Thus the Celts of Italy
were completely vanquished, and as, just before, the Romans had shown
to the Hellenes in the war with the pirates the difference between a
Roman and a Greek sovereignty of the seas, so they had now brilliantly
demonstrated that Rome knew how to defend the gates of Italy against
freebooters on land otherwise than Macedonia had guarded the gates of
Greece, and that in spite of all internal quarrels Italy presented as
united a front to the national foe, as Greece exhibited distraction
and discord.

Romanization of the Entire of Italy

The boundary of the Alps was reached, in so far as the whole flat
country on the Po was either rendered subject to the Romans, or, like
the territories of the Cenomani and Veneti, was occupied by dependent
allies.  It needed time, however, to reap the consequences of this
victory and to Romanize the land.  In this the Romans did not adopt
a uniform mode of procedure.  In the mountainous northwest of Italy
and in the more remote districts between the Alps and the Po they
tolerated, on the whole, the former inhabitants; the numerous wars,
as they are called, which were waged with the Ligurians in particular
(first in 516) appear to have been slave-hunts rather than wars, and,
often as the cantons and valleys submitted to the Romans, Roman
sovereignty in that quarter was hardly more than a name.  The
expedition to Istria also (533) appears not to have aimed at much
more than the destruction of the last lurking-places of the Adriatic
pirates, and the establishment of a communication by land along the
coast between the Italian conquests of Rome and her acquisitions on
the other shore.  On the other hand the Celts in the districts south
of the Po were doomed irretrievably to destruction; for, owing to
the looseness of the ties connecting the Celtic nation, none of the
northern Celtic cantons took part with their Italian kinsmen except
for money, and the Romans looked on the latter not only as their
national foes, but as the usurpers of their natural heritage.  The
extensive assignations of land in 522 had already filled the whole
territory between Ancona and Ariminum with Roman colonists, who
settled here without communal organization in market-villages and
hamlets.  Further measures of the same character were taken, and
it was not difficult to dislodge and extirpate a half-barbarous
population like the Celtic, only partially following agriculture,
and destitute of walled towns.  The great northern highway, which had
been, probably some eighty years earlier, carried by way of Otricoli
to Narni, and had shortly before been prolonged to the newly-founded
fortress of Spoletium (514), was now (534) carried, under the name of
the "Flaminian" road, by way of the newly-established market-village
Forum Flaminii (near Foligno), through the pass of Furlo to the coast,
and thence along the latter from Fanum (Fano) to Ariminum; it was the
first artificial road which crossed the Apennines and connected the
two Italian seas.  Great zeal was manifested in covering the newly-
acquired fertile territory with Roman townships.  Already, to cover
the passage of the Po, the strong fortress of Placentia (Piacenza)
had been founded on the right bank; not far from it Cremona had been
laid out on the left bank, and the building of the walls of Mutina
(Modena), in the territory taken away from the Boii, had far advanced
--already preparations were being made for further assignations of
land  and for continuing the highway, when sudden event interrupted
the Romans in reaping the fruit of their successes.




Notes for Chapter III


1. III. II. Evacuation of Africa

2. That the cession of the islands lying between Sicily and Italy,
which the peace of 513 prescribed to the Carthaginians, did not
include the cession of Sardinia is a settled point (III. II. Remarks
On the Roman Conduct of the War); but the statement, that the Romans
made that a pretext for their occupation of the island three years
after the peace, is ill attested.  Had they done so, they would merely
have added a diplomatic folly to the political effrontery.

3. III. II. The War on the Coasts of Sicily and Sardinia

4. III. VIII. Changes in Procedure

5. II. I. Restrictions on the Delegation of Powers

6. That this was the case may be gathered partly from the appearance
of the "Siculi" against Marcellus (Liv. xxvi. 26, seq.), partly from
the "conjoint petitions of all the Sicilian communities" (Cicero,
Verr. ii. 42, 102; 45, 114; 50, 146; iii. 88, 204), partly from well-
known analogies (Marquardt, Handb. iii. i, 267).  Because there was no
-commercium- between the different towns, it by no means follows that
there was no -concilium-.

7. The right of coining gold and silver was not monopolized by Rome
in the provinces so strictly as in Italy, evidently because gold
and silver money not struck after the Roman standard was of less
importance.  But in their case too the mints were doubtless, as a
rule, restricted to the coinage of copper, or at most silver, small
money; even the most favourably treated communities of Roman Sicily,
such as the Mamertines, the Centuripans, the Halaesines, the
Segestans, and also in the main the Pacormitaus coined only copper.

8. This is implied in Hiero's expression (Liv. xxii. 37):
that he knew that the Romans made use of none but Roman or Latin
infantry and cavalry, and employed "foreigners" at most only among
the light-armed troops.

9. This is shown at once by a glance at the map, and also by the
remarkable exceptional provision which allowed the Centuripans
to buy to any part of Sicily.  They needed, as Roman spies, the
utmost freedom of movement We may add that Centuripa appears to
have been among the first cities that went over to Rome
(Diodorus, l. xxiii. p. 501).

10. This distinction between Italy as the Roman mainland or consular
sphere on the one hand, and the transmarine territory or praetorial
sphere on the other, already appears variously applied in the sixth
century.  The ritual rule, that certain priests should not leave Rome
(Val. Max. i. i, 2), was explained to mean, that they were not allowed
to cross the sea (Liv. Ep. 19, xxxvii. 51; Tac. Ann. iii. 58, 71; Cic.
Phil. xi. 8, 18; comp. Liv. xxviii. 38, 44, Ep. 59). To this head
still more definitely belongs the interpretation which was proposed in
544 to be put upon the old rule, that the consul might nominate the
dictator only on "Roman ground": viz. that "Roman ground" comprehended
all Italy (Liv. xxvii. 5).  The erection of the Celtic land between
the Alps and Apennines into a special province, different from that of
the consuls and subject to a separate Standing chief magistrate, was
the work of Sulla.  Of course no one will Urge as an objection to this
view, that already in the sixth century Gallia or Ariminum is very
often designated as the "official district"  (-provincia-), usually of
one of the consuls.  -Provincia-, as is well known, was in the older
language not--what alone it denoted subsequently--a definite space
assigned as a district to a standing chief magistrate, but the
department of duty fixed for the individual consul, in the first
instance by agreement with his colleague, under concurrence of the
senate; and in this sense frequently individual regions in northern
Italy, or even North Italy generally, were assigned to individual
consuls as -provincia-.

11. A standing Roman commandant of Corcyra is apparently mentioned in
Polyb. xxii. 15, 6 (erroneously translated by Liv. xxxviii. ii, comp.
xlii. 37), and a similar one in the case of Issa in Liv. xliii. 9.
We have, moreover, the analogy of the -praefectus pro legato insularum
Baliarum- (Orelli, 732), and of the governor of Pandataria (Inscr.
Reg. Neapol. 3528).  It appears, accordingly, to have been a rule in
the Roman administration to appoint non-senatorial -praefecti- for the
more remote islands.  But these "deputies" presuppose in the nature of
the case a superior magistrate who nominates and superintends them;
and this superior magistracy can only have been at this period that of
the consuls.  Subsequently, after the erection of Macedonia and Gallia
Cisalpina into provinces, the superior administration was committed to
one of these two governors; the very territory now in question, the
nucleus of the subsequent Roman province of Illyricum, belonged, as
is well known, in part to Caesar's district of administration.

12. III. VII. The Senones Annihilated

13. III. VII. Breach between Rome and Tarentum

14. III. VII. Construction of New Fortresses and Roads

15. These, whom Polybius designates as the "Celts in the Alps and on
the Rhone, who on account of their character as military adventurers
are called Gaesatae (free lances)," are in the Capitoline Fasti named
-Germani-.  It is possible that the contemporary annalists may have
here mentioned Celts alone, and that it was the historical speculation
of the age of Caesar and Augustus that first induced the redactors of
these Fasti to treat them as "Germans." If, on the other hand, the
mention of the Germans in the Fasti was based on contemporary records
--in which case this is the earliest mention of the name--we shall here
have to think not of the Germanic races who were afterwards so called,
but of a Celtic horde.




CHAPTER IV

Hamilcar and Hannibal

Situation of Carthage after the Peace

The treaty with Rome in 513 gave to the Carthaginians peace, but they
paid for it dearly.  That the tribute of the largest portion of Sicily
now flowed into the enemy's exchequer instead of the Carthaginian
treasury, was the least part of their loss.  They felt a far keener
regret when they not merely had to abandon the hope of monopolizing
all the sea-routes between the eastern and the western Mediterranean
--just as that hope seemed on the eve of fulfilment--but also saw
their whole system of commercial policy broken up, the south-western
basin of the Mediterranean, which they had hitherto exclusively
commanded, converted since the loss of Sicily into an open
thoroughfare for all nations, and the commerce of Italy rendered
completely independent of the Phoenician.  Nevertheless the quiet
men of Sidon might perhaps have prevailed on themselves to acquiesce
in this result.  They had met with similar blows already; they had
been obliged to share with the Massiliots, the Etruscans, and the
Sicilian Greeks what they had previously possessed alone; even now
the possessions which they retained, Africa, Spain, and the gates of
the Atlantic Ocean, were sufficient to confer power and prosperity.
But in truth, where was their security that these at least would
continue in their hands?  The demands made by Regulus, and his very
near approach to the obtaining of what he asked, could only be
forgotten by those who were willing to forget; and if Rome should now
renew from Lilybaeum the enterprise which she had undertaken with so
great success from Italy, Carthage would undoubtedly fall, unless the
perversity of the enemy or some special piece of good fortune should
intervene to save it No doubt they had peace for the present; but the
ratification of that peace had hung on a thread, and they knew what
public opinion in Rome thought of the terms on which it was concluded.
It might be that Rome was not yet meditating the conquest of Africa
and was as yet content with Italy; but if the existence of the
Carthaginian state depended on that contentment, the prospect was but
a sorry one; and where was the security that the Romans might not find
it even convenient for their Italian policy to extirpate rather than
reduce to subjection their African neighbour?

War Party and Peace Party in Carthage

In short, Carthage could only regard the peace of 513 in the light
of a truce, and could not but employ it in preparations for the
inevitable renewal of the war; not for the purpose of avenging the
defeat which she had suffered, nor even with the primary view of
recovering what she had lost, but in order to secure for herself an
existence that should not be dependent on the good-will of the enemy.
But when a war of annihilation is surely, though in point of time
indefinitely, impending over a weaker state, the wiser, more
resolute, and more devoted men--who would immediately prepare for the
unavoidable struggle, accept it at a favourable moment, and thus cover
their defensive policy by a strategy of offence--always find
themselves hampered by the indolent and cowardly mass of the money-
worshippers, of the aged and feeble, and of the thoughtless who are
minded merely to gain time, to live and die in peace, and to postpone
at any price the final struggle.  So there was in Carthage a party
for peace and a party for war, both, as was natural, associating
themselves with the political distinction which already existed
between the conservatives and the reformers.  The former found its
support in the governing boards, the council of the Ancients and that
of the Hundred, led by Hanno the Great, as he was called; the latter
found its support in the leaders of the multitude, particularly the
much-respected Hasdrubal, and in the officers of the Sicilian army,
whose great successes under the leadership of Hamilcar, although they
had been otherwise fruitless, had at least shown to the patriots a
method which seemed to promise deliverance from the great danger that
beset them.  Vehement feud had probably long subsisted between these
parties, when the Libyan war intervened to suspend the strife.  We
have already related how that war arose.  After the governing party
had instigated the mutiny by their incapable administration which
frustrated all the precautionary measures of the Sicilian officers,
had converted that mutiny into a revolution by the operation of their
inhuman system of government, and had at length brought the country to
the verge of ruin by their military incapacity--and particularly that
of their leader Hanno, who ruined the army--Hamilcar Barcas, the hero
of Ercte, was in the perilous emergency solicited by the government
itself to save it from the effects of its blunders and crimes.  He
accepted the command, and had the magnanimity not to resign it
even when they appointed Hanno as his colleague.  Indeed, when the
indignant army sent the latter home, Hamilcar had the self-control
a second time to concede to him, at the urgent request of the
government, a share in the command; and, in spite of his enemies and
in spite of such a colleague, he was able by his influence with the
insurgents, by his dexterous treatment of the Numidian sheiks, and
by his unrivalled genius for organization and generalship, in a
singularly short time to put down the revolt entirely and to recall
rebellious Africa to its allegiance (end of 517).

During this war the patriot party had kept silence; now it spoke out
the louder.  On the one hand this catastrophe had brought to light
the utterly corrupt and pernicious character of the ruling oligarchy,
their incapacity, their coterie-policy, their leanings towards the
Romans.  On the other hand the seizure of Sardinia, and the
threatening attitude which Rome on that occasion assumed, showed
plainly even to the humblest that a declaration of war by Rome was
constantly hanging like the sword of Damocles over Carthage, and that,
if Carthage in her present circumstances went to war with Rome,
the consequence must necessarily be the downfall of the Phoenician
dominion in Libya.  Probably there were in Carthage not a few who,
despairing of the future of their country, counselled emigration to
the islands of the Atlantic; who could blame them?  But minds of the
nobler order disdain to save themselves apart from their nation,
and great natures enjoy the privilege of deriving enthusiasm from
circumstances in which the multitude of good men despair.  They
accepted the new conditions just as Rome dictated them; no course
was left but to submit and, adding fresh bitterness to their former
hatred, carefully to cherish and husband resentment--that last
resource of an injured nation.  They then took steps towards a
political reform.(1)  They had become sufficiently convinced of the
incorrigibleness of the party in power: the fact that the governing
lords had even in the last war neither forgotten their spite nor
learned greater wisdom, was shown by the effrontery bordering on
simplicity with which they now instituted proceedings against Hamilcar
as the originator of the mercenary war, because he had without full
powers from the government made promises of money to his Sicilian
soldiers.  Had the club of officers and popular leaders desired to
overthrow this rotten and wretched government, it would hardly have
encountered much difficulty in Carthage itself; but it would have met
with more formidable obstacles in Rome, with which the chiefs of the
government in Carthage already maintained relations that bordered on
treason.  To all the other difficulties of the position there fell
to be added the circumstance, that the means of saving their country
had to be created without allowing either the Romans, or their own
government with its Roman leanings, to become rightly aware of
what was doing.

Hamilcar Commander-in-Chief

So they left the constitution untouched, and the chiefs of the
government in full enjoyment of their exclusive privileges and of the
public property.  It was merely proposed and carried, that of the two
commanders-in-chief, who at the end of the Libyan war were at the head
of the Carthaginian troops, Hanno and Hamilcar, the former should be
recalled, and the latter should be nominated commander-in-chief for
all Africa during an indefinite period.  It was arranged that he
should hold a position independent of the governing corporations
--his antagonists called it an unconstitutional monarchical power,
Cato calls it a dictatorship--and that he could only be recalled and
placed upon his trial by the popular assembly.(2)  Even the choice
of a successor was to be vested not in the authorities of the capital,
but in the army, that is, in the Carthaginians serving in the array as
gerusiasts or officers, who were named in treaties also along with
the general; of course the right of confirmation was reserved to the
popular assembly at home.  Whether this may or may not have been a
usurpation, it clearly indicates that the war party regarded and
treated the army as its special domain.

The commission which Hamilcar thus received sounded but little
liable to exception.  Wars with the Numidian tribes on the borders
never ceased; only a short time previously the "city of a hundred
gates,"  Theveste (Tebessa), in the interior had been occupied by the
Carthaginians.  The task of continuing this border warfare, which was
allotted to the new commander-in-chief of Africa, was not in itself of
such importance as to prevent the Carthaginian government, which was
allowed to do as it liked in its own immediate sphere, from tacitly
conniving at the decrees passed in reference to the matter by the
popular assembly; and the Romans did not perhaps recognize its
significance at all.

Hamilcar's War Projects
The Army
The Citizens

Thus there stood at the head of the army the one man, who had given
proof in the Sicilian and in the Libyan wars that fate had destined
him, if any one, to be the saviour of his country.  Never perhaps was
the noble struggle of man with fate waged more nobly than by him.
The army was expected to save the state; but what sort of army?
The Carthaginian civic militia had fought not badly under Hamilcar's
leadership in the Libyan war; but he knew well, that it is one thing
to lead out the merchants and artisans of a city, which is in the
extremity of peril, for once to battle, and another to form them
into soldiers.  The patriotic party in Carthage furnished him with
excellent officers, but it was of course almost exclusively the
cultivated class that was represented in it.  He had no citizen-
militia, at most a few squadrons of Libyphoenician cavalry.  The task
was to form an army out of Libyan forced recruits and mercenaries; a
task possible in the hands of a general like Hamilcar, but possible
even for him only on condition that he should be able to pay his men
punctually and amply.  But he had learned, by experience in Sicily,
that the state revenues of Carthage were expended in Carthage itself
on matters much more needful than the payment of the armies that
fought against the enemy.  The warfare which he waged, accordingly,
had to support itself, and he had to carry out on a great scale what
he had already attempted on a smaller scale at Monte Pellegrino.  But
further, Hamilcar was not only a military chief, he was also a party
leader.  In opposition to the implacable governing party, which
eagerly but patiently waited for an opportunity of overthrowing him,
he had to seek support among the citizens; and although their leaders
might be ever so pure and noble, the multitude was deeply corrupt and
accustomed by the unhappy system of corruption to give nothing without
being paid for it.  In particular emergencies, indeed, necessity or
enthusiasm might for the moment prevail, as everywhere happens even
with the most venal corporations; but, if Hamilcar wished to secure
the permanent support of the Carthaginian community for his plan,
which at the best could only be carried out after a series of years,
he had to supply his friends at home with regular consignments of
money as the means of keeping the mob in good humour.  Thus compelled
to beg or to buy from the lukewarm and venal multitude the permission
to save it; compelled to bargain with the arrogance of men whom
he hated and whom he had constantly conquered, at the price of
humiliation and of silence, for the respite indispensable for his
ends; compelled to conceal from those despised traitors to their
country, who called themselves the lords of his native city, his plans
and his contempt--the noble hero stood with few like-minded friends
between enemies without and enemies within, building upon the
irresolution of the one and of the other, at once deceiving both and
defying both, if only he might gain means, money, and men for the
contest with a land which, even were the army ready to strike the
blow, it seemed difficult to reach and scarce possible to vanquish.
He was still a young man, little beyond thirty, but he had apparently,
when he was preparing for his expedition, a foreboding that he would
not be permitted to attain the end of his labours, or to see otherwise
than afar off the promised land.  When he left Carthage he enjoined
his son Hannibal, nine years of age, to swear at the altar of the
supreme God eternal hatred to the Roman name, and reared him and his
younger sons Hasdrubal and Mago--the "lion's brood,"  as he called
them--in the camp as the inheritors of his projects, of his genius,
and of his hatred.

Hamilcar Proceed to Spain
Spanish Kingdom of the Barcides

The new commander-in-chief of Libya departed from Carthage immediately
after the termination of the mercenary war (perhaps in the spring of
518).  He apparently meditated an expedition against the free Libyans
in the west.  His army, which was especially strong in elephants,
marched along the coast; by its side sailed the fleet, led by his
faithful associate Hasdrubal.  Suddenly tidings came that he had
crossed the sea at the Pillars of Hercules and had landed in Spain,
where he was waging war with the natives--with people who had done him
no harm, and without orders from his government, as the Carthaginian
authorities complained.  They could not complain at any rate that he
neglected the affairs of Africa; when the Numidians once more
rebelled, his lieutenant Hasdrubal so effectually routed them that
for a long period there was tranquillity on the frontier, and several
tribes hitherto independent submitted to pay tribute.  What he
personally did in Spain, we are no longer able to trace in detail.
His achievements compelled Cato the elder, who, a generation after
Hamilcar's death, beheld in Spain the still fresh traces of his
working, to exclaim, notwithstanding all his hatred of the
Carthaginians, that no king was worthy to be named by the side of
Hamilcar Barcas.  The results still show to us, at least in a general
way, what was accomplished by Hamilcar as a soldier and a statesman in
the last nine years of his life (518-526)--till in the flower of his
age, fighting bravely in the field of battle, he met his death like
Scharn-horst just as his plans were beginning to reach maturity--and
what during the next eight years (527-534) the heir of his office
and of his plans, his son-in-law Hasdrubal, did to prosecute, in the
spirit of the master, the work which Hamilcar had begun.  Instead of
the small entrepot for trade, which, along with the protectorate over
Gades, was all that Carthage had hitherto possessed on the Spanish
coast, and which she had treated as a dependency of Libya, a
Carthaginian kingdom was founded in Spain by the generalship of
Hamilcar, and confirmed by the adroit statesmanship of Hasdrubal.
The fairest regions of Spain, the southern and eastern coasts,
became Phoenician provinces.  Towns were founded; above all, "Spanish
Carthage" (Cartagena) was established by Hasdrubal on the only good
harbour along the south coast, containing the splendid "royal castle"
of its founder.  Agriculture flourished, and, still more, mining in
consequence of the fortunate discovery of the silver-mines of
Cartagena, which a century afterwards had a yearly produce of more
than 360,000 pounds (36,000,000 sesterces).  Most of the communities
as far as the Ebro became dependent on Carthage and paid tribute to
it.  Hasdrubal skilfully by every means, even by intermarriages,
attached the chiefs to the interests of Carthage.  Thus Carthage
acquired in Spain a rich market for its commerce and manufactures;
and not only did the revenues of the province sustain the army, but
there remained a balance to be remitted to Carthage and reserved for
future use.  The province formed and at the same time trained the
army; regular levies took place in the territory subject to Carthage;
the prisoners of war were introduced into the Carthaginian corps.
Contingents and mercenaries, as many as were desired, were supplied
by the dependent communities.  During his long life of warfare the
soldier found in the camp a second home, and found a substitute for
patriotism in fidelity to his standard and enthusiastic attachment
to his great leaders.  Constant conflicts with the brave Iberians and
Celts created a serviceable infantry, to co-operate with the excellent
Numidian cavalry.

The Carthaginian Government and the Barcides

So far as Carthage was concerned, the Barcides were allowed to go on.
Since the citizens were not asked for regular contributions, but on
the contrary some benefit accrued to them and commerce recovered in
Spain what it had lost in Sicily and Sardinia, the Spanish war and the
Spanish army with its brilliant victories and important successes soon
became so popular that it was even possible in particular emergencies,
such as after Hamilcar's fall, to effect the despatch of considerable
reinforcements of African troops to Spain; and the governing party,
whether well or ill affected, had to maintain silence, or at any rate
to content themselves with complaining to each other or to their
friends in Rome regarding the demagogic officers and the mob.

The Roman Government and the Barcides

On the part of Rome too nothing took place calculated seriously to
alter the course of Spanish affairs.  The first and chief cause of
the inactivity of the Romans was undoubtedly their very want of
acquaintance with the circumstances of the remote peninsula--which was
certainly also Hamilcar's main reason for selecting Spain and not, as
might otherwise have been possible, Africa itself for the execution of
his plan.  The explanations with which the Carthaginian generals met
the Roman commissioners sent to Spain to procure information on the
spot, and their assurances that all this was done only to provide
the means of promptly paying the war-contributions to Rome, could not
possibly find belief in the senate.  But they probably discerned
only the immediate object of Hamilcar's plans, viz. to procure
compensation in Spain for the tribute and the traffic of the islands
which Carthage had lost; and they deemed an aggressive war on the part
of the Carthaginians, and in particular an invasion of Italy from
Spain--as is evident both from express statements to that effect and
from the whole state of the case--as absolutely impossible.  Many, of
course, among the peace party in Carthage saw further; but, whatever
they might think, they could hardly be much inclined to enlighten
their Roman friends as to the impending storm, which the Carthaginian
authorities had long been unable to prevent, for that step would
accelerate, instead of averting, the crisis; and even if they did so,
such denunciations proceeding from partisans would justly be received
with great caution at Rome.  By degrees, certainly, the inconceivably
rapid and mighty extension of the Carthaginian power in Spain could
not but excite the observation and awaken the apprehensions of the
Romans.  In fact, in the course of the later years before the outbreak
of war, they did attempt to set bounds to it.  About the year 528,
mindful of their new-born Hellenism, they concluded an alliance
with the two Greek or semi-Greek towns on the east coast of Spain,
Zacynthus or Saguntum (Murviedro, not far from Valencia), and Emporiae
(Ampurias); and when they acquainted the Carthaginian general
Hasdrubal that they had done so, they at the same time warned him
not to push his conquests over the Ebro, with which he promised
compliance.  This was not done by any means to prevent an invasion
of Italy by the land-route--no treaty could fetter the general who
undertook such an enterprise--but partly to set a limit to the
material power of the Spanish Carthaginians which began to be
dangerous, partly to secure the free communities between the Ebro
and the Pyrenees whom Rome thus took under her protection, a basis
of operations in case of its being necessary to land and make war in
Spain.  In reference to the impending war with Carthage, which the
senate did not fail to see was inevitable, they hardly apprehended any
greater inconvenience from the events that had occurred in Spain than
that they might be compelled to send some legions thither, and that
the enemy would be somewhat better provided with money and soldiers
than, without Spain, he would have been; they were at any rate firmly
resolved, as the plan of the campaign of 536 shows and as indeed could
not but be the case, to begin and terminate the next war in Africa,
--a course which would at the same time decide the fate of Spain.
Further grounds for delay were suggested during the first years by the
instalments from Carthage, which a declaration of war would have cut
off, and then by the death of Hamilcar, which probably induced friends
and foes to think that his projects must have died with him.  Lastly,
during the latter years when the senate certainly began, to apprehend
that it was not prudent long to delay the renewal of the war, there
was the very intelligible wish to dispose of the Gauls in the
valley of the Po in the first instance, for these, threatened with
extirpation, might be expected to avail themselves of any serious war
undertaken by Rome to allure the Transalpine tribes once more to
Italy, and to renew those Celtic migrations which were still fraught
with very great peril.  That it was not regard either for the
Carthaginian peace party or for existing treaties which withheld the
Romans from action, is self-evident; moreover, if they desired war,
the Spanish feuds furnished at any moment a ready pretext.  The
conduct of Rome in this view is by no means unintelligible; but as
little can it be denied that the Roman senate in dealing with this
matter displayed shortsightedness and slackness--faults which were
still more inexcusably manifested in their mode of dealing at the same
epoch with Gallic affairs.  The policy of the Romans was always more
remarkable for tenacity, cunning, and consistency, than for grandeur
of conception or power of rapid organization--qualities in which the
enemies of Rome from Pyrrhus down to Mithradates often surpassed her.

Hannibal

Thus the smiles of fortune inaugurated the brilliantly conceived
project of Hamilcar.  The means of war were acquired--a numerous army
accustomed to combat and to conquer, and a constantly replenished
exchequer; but, in order that the right moment might be discovered for
the struggle and that the right direction might be given to it, there
was wanted a leader.  The man, whose head and heart had in a desperate
emergency and amidst a despairing people paved the way for their
deliverance, was no more, when it became possible to carry out his
design.  Whether his successor Hasdrubal forbore to make the attack
because the proper moment seemed to him to have not yet come, or
whether, more a statesman than a general, he believed himself unequal
to the conduct of the enterprise, we are unable to determine.  When,
at the beginning of 534, he fell by the hand of an assassin, the
Carthaginian officers of the Spanish army summoned to fill his place
Hannibal, the eldest son of Hamilcar.  He was still a young man--born
in 505, and now, therefore, in his twenty-ninth year; but his had
already been a life of manifold experience.  His first recollections
pictured to him his father fighting in a distant land and conquering
on Ercte; he had keenly shared that unconquered father's feelings on
the peace of Catulus, on the bitter return home, and throughout the
horrors of the Libyan war.  While yet a boy, he had followed his
father to the camp; and he soon distinguished himself.  His light
and firmly-knit frame made him an excellent runner and fencer, and a
fearless rider at full speed; the privation of sleep did not affect
him, and he knew like a soldier how to enjoy or to dispense with food.
Although his youth had been spent in the camp, he possessed such
culture as belonged to the Phoenicians of rank in his day; in Greek,
apparently after he had become a general, he made such progress under
the guidance of his confidant Sosilus of Sparta as to be able to
compose state papers in that language.  As he grew up, he entered
the army of his father, to perform his first feats of arms under the
paternal eye and to see him fall in battle by his side.  Thereafter he
had commanded the cavalry under his sister's husband, Hasdrubal, and
distinguished himself by brilliant personal bravery as well as by his
talents as a leader.  The voice of his comrades now summoned him--the
tried, although youthful general--to the chief command, and he could
now execute the designs for which his father and his brother-in-law
had lived and died.  He took up the inheritance, and he was worthy of
it.  His contemporaries tried to cast stains of various sorts on his
character; the Romans charged him with cruelty, the Carthaginians with
covetousness; and it is true that he hated as only Oriental natures
know how to hate, and that a general who never fell short of money and
stores can hardly have been other than covetous.  But though anger and
envy and meanness have written his history, they have not been able to
mar the pure and noble image which it presents.  Laying aside wretched
inventions which furnish their own refutation, and some things which
his lieutenants, particularly Hannibal Monomachus and Mago the
Samnite, were guilty of doing in his name, nothing occurs in the
accounts regarding him which may not be justified under the
circumstances, and according to the international law, of the times;
and all agree in this, that he combined in rare perfection discretion
and enthusiasm, caution and energy.  He was peculiarly marked by that
inventive craftiness, which forms one of the leading traits of the
Phoenician character; he was fond of taking singular and unexpected
routes; ambushes and stratagems of all sorts were familiar to him;
and he studied the character of his antagonists with unprecedented
care.  By an unrivalled system of espionage--he had regular spies even
in Rome--he kept himself informed of the projects of the enemy; he
himself was frequently seen wearing disguises and false hair, in order
to procure information on some point or other.  Every page of the
history of this period attests his genius in strategy; and his gifts
as a statesman were, after the peace with Rome, no less conspicuously
displayed in his reform of the Carthaginian constitution, and in the
unparalleled influence which as a foreign exile he exercised in the
cabinets of the eastern powers.  The power which he wielded over men
is shown by his incomparable control over an army of various nations
and many tongues--an army which never in the worst times mutinied
against him.  He was a great man; wherever he went, he riveted the
eyes of all.

Rupture between Rome and Carthage

Hannibal resolved immediately after his nomination (in the spring
of 534) to commence the war.  The land of the Celts was still in a
ferment, and a war seemed imminent between Rome and Macedonia: he had
good reason now to throw off the mask without delay and to carry the
war whithersoever he pleased, before the Romans began it at their own
convenience with a descent on Africa.  His army was soon ready to take
the field, and his exchequer was filled by some razzias on a great
scale; but the Carthaginian government showed itself far from desirous
of despatching the declaration of war to Rome.  The place of
Hasdrubal, the patriotic national leader, was even more difficult
to fill in Carthage than that of Hasdrubal the general in Spain; the
peace party had now the ascendency at home, and persecuted the leaders
of the war party with political indictments.  The rulers who had
already cut down and mutilated the plans of Hamilcar were by no means
inclined to allow the unknown young man, who now commanded in Spain,
to vent his youthful patriotism at the expense of the state; and
Hannibal hesitated personally to declare war in open opposition to the
legitimate authorities.  He tried to provoke the Saguntines to break
the peace; but they contented themselves with making a complaint to
Rome.  Then, when a commission from Rome appeared, he tried to
drive it to a declaration of war by treating it rudely; but the
commissioners saw how matters stood: they kept silence in Spain,
with a view to lodge complaints at Carthage and to report at home that
Hannibal was ready to strike and that war was imminent.  Thus the time
passed away; accounts had already come of the death of Antigonus
Doson, who had suddenly died nearly at the same time with Hasdrubal;
in Cisalpine Gaul the establishment of fortresses was carried on by
the Romans with redoubled rapidity and energy; preparations were made
in Rome for putting a speedy end in the course of the next spring to
the insurrection in Illyria.  Every day was precious; Hannibal formed
his resolution.  He sent summary intimation to Carthage that the
Saguntines were making aggressions on the Torboletes, subjects of
Carthage, and he must therefore attack them; and without waiting for
a reply he began in the spring of 535 the siege of a town which was in
alliance with Rome, or, in other words, war against Rome.  We may form
some idea of the views and counsels that would prevail in Carthage
from the impression produced in certain circles by York's
capitulation.  All "respectable men," it was said, disapproved an
attack made "without orders"; there was talk of disavowal, of
surrendering the daring officer.  But whether it was that dread of the
army and of the multitude nearer home outweighed in the Carthaginian
council the fear of Rome; or that they perceived the impossibility
of retracing such a step once taken; or that the mere -vis inertiae-
prevented any definite action, they resolved at length to resolve on
nothing and, if not to wage war, to let it nevertheless be waged.
Saguntum defended itself, as only Spanish towns know how to conduct
defence: had the Romans showed but a tithe of the energy of their
clients, and not trifled away their time during the eight months'
siege of Saguntum in the paltry warfare with Illyrian brigands, they
might, masters as they were of the sea and of places suitable for
landing, have spared themselves the disgrace of failing to grant the
protection which they had promised, and might perhaps have given a
different turn to the war.  But they delayed, and the town was at
length taken by storm.  When Hannibal sent the spoil for distribution
to Carthage, patriotism and zeal for war were roused in the hearts of
many who had hitherto felt nothing of the kind, and the distribution
cut off all prospect of coming to terms with Rome.  Accordingly, when
after the destruction of Saguntum a Roman embassy appeared at Carthage
and demanded the surrender of the general and of the gerusiasts
present in the camp, and when the Roman spokesman, interrupting an
attempt at justification, broke off the discussion and, gathering
up his robe, declared that he held in it peace and war and that the
gerusia might choose between them, the gerusiasts mustered courage
to reply that they left it to the choice of the Roman; and when he
offered war, they accepted it (in the spring of 536).

Preparations for Attacking Italy

Hannibal, who had lost a whole year through the obstinate resistance
of the Saguntines, had as usual retired for the winter of 535-6 to
Cartagena, to make all his preparations on the one hand for the attack
of Italy, on the other for the defence of Spain and Africa; for, as
he, like his father and his brother-in-law, held the supreme command
in both countries, it devolved upon him to take measures also for the
protection of his native land.  The whole mass of his forces amounted
to about 120,000 infantry and 16,000 cavalry; he had also 58
elephants, 32 quinqueremes manned, and 18 not manned, besides the
elephants and vessels remaining at the capital.  Excepting a few
Ligurians among the light troops, there were no mercenaries in this
Carthaginian army; the troops, with the exception of some Phoenician
squadrons, consisted mainly of the Carthaginian subjects called out
for service--Libyans and Spaniards.  To insure the fidelity of the
latter the general, who knew the men with whom he had to deal, gave
them as a proof of his confidence a general leave of absence for the
whole winter; while, not sharing the narrow-minded exclusiveness of
Phoenician patriotism, he promised to the Libyans on his oath the
citizenship of Carthage, should they return to Africa victorious.
This mass of troops however was only destined in part for the
expedition to Italy.  Some 20,000 men were sent to Africa, the smaller
portion of them proceeding to the capital and the Phoenician territory
proper, the majority to the western point of Africa.  For the
protection of Spain 12,000 infantry, 2500 cavalry, and nearly the half
of the elephants were left behind, in addition to the fleet stationed
there; the chief command and the government of Spain were entrusted
to Hannibal's younger brother Hasdrubal.  The immediate territory of
Carthage was comparatively weakly garrisoned, because the capital
afforded in case of need sufficient resources; in like manner a
moderate number of infantry sufficed for the present in Spain, where
new levies could be procured with ease, whereas a comparatively large
proportion of the arms specially African--horses and elephants--was
retained there.  The chief care was bestowed in securing the
communications between Spain and Africa: with that view the fleet
remained in Spain, and western Africa was guarded by a very strong
body of troops.  The fidelity of the troops was secured not only by
hostages collected from the Spanish communities and detained in the
stronghold of Saguntum, but by the removal of the soldiers from the
districts where they were raised to other quarters: the east African
militia were moved chiefly to Spain, the Spanish to Western Africa,
the West African to Carthage.  Adequate provision was thus made for
defence.  As to offensive measures, a squadron of 20 quinqueremes with
1000 soldiers on board was to sail from Carthage for the west coast of
Italy and to pillage it, and a second of 25 sail was, if possible,
to re-establish itself at Lilybaeum; Hannibal believed that he might
count upon the government making this moderate amount of exertion.
With the main army he determined in person to invade Italy; as was
beyond doubt part of the original plan of Hamilcar.  A decisive attack
on Rome was only possible in Italy, as a similar attack on Carthage
was only possible in Libya; as certainly as Rome meant to begin her
next campaign with the latter, so certainly ought Carthage not to
confine herself at the outset either to any secondary object of
operations, such as Sicily, or to mere defence--defeat would in
any case involve equal destruction, but victory would not yield
equal fruit.

Method of Attack

But how could Italy be attacked?  He might succeed in reaching the
peninsula by sea or by land; but if the project was to be no mere
desperate adventure, but a military expedition with a strategic aim,
a nearer basis for its operations was requisite than Spain or Africa.
Hannibal could not rely for support on a fleet and a fortified
harbour, for Rome was now mistress of the sea.  As little did the
territory of the Italian confederacy present any tenable basis.  If
in very different times, and in spite of Hellenic sympathies, it had
withstood the shock of Pyrrhus, it was not to be expected that it
would now fall to pieces on the appearance of the Phoenician general;
an invading army would without doubt be crushed between the network of
Roman fortresses and the firmly-consolidated confederacy.  The land of
the Ligurians and Celts alone could be to Hannibal, what Poland was to
Napoleon in his very similar Russian campaigns.  These tribes still
smarting under their scarcely ended struggle for independence, alien
in race from the Italians, and feeling their very existence endangered
by the chain of Roman fortresses and highways whose first coils were
even now being fastened around them, could not but recognize their
deliverers in the Phoenician army (which numbered in its ranks
numerous Spanish Celts), and would serve as a first support for it to
fall back upon--a source whence it might draw supplies and recruits.
Already formal treaties were concluded with the Boii and the Insubres,
by which they bound themselves to send guides to meet the Carthaginian
army, to procure for it a good reception from the cognate tribes and
supplies along its route, and to rise against the Romans as soon as
it should set foot on Italian ground.  In fine, the relations of Rome
with the east led the Carthaginians to this same quarter.  Macedonia,
which by the victory of Sellasia had re-established its sovereignty
in the Peloponnesus, was in strained relations with Rome; Demetrius of
Pharos, who had exchanged the Roman alliance for that of Macedonia
and had been dispossessed by the Romans, lived as an exile at the
Macedonian court, and the latter had refused the demand which the
Romans made for his surrender.  If it was possible to combine the
armies from the Guadalquivir and the Karasu anywhere against the
common foe, it could only be done on the Po.  Thus everything directed
Hannibal to Northern Italy; and that the eyes of his father had
already been turned to that quarter, is shown by the reconnoitring
party of Carthaginians, whom the Romans to their great surprise
encountered in Liguria in 524.

The reason for Hannibal's preference of the land route to that by sea
is less obvious; for that neither the maritime supremacy of the Romans
nor their league with Massilia could have prevented a landing at
Genoa, is evident, and was shown by the sequel.  Our authorities fail
to furnish us with several of the elements, on which a satisfactory
answer to this question would depend, and which cannot be supplied by
conjecture.  Hannibal had to choose between two evils.  Instead of
exposing himself to the unknown and less calculable contingencies of
a sea voyage and of naval war, it must have seemed to him the better
course to accept the assurances, which beyond doubt were seriously
meant, of the Boii and Insubres, and the more so that, even if the
army should land at Genoa, it would still have mountains to cross;
he could hardly know exactly, how much smaller are the difficulties
presented by the Apennines at Genoa than by the main chain of the
Alps.  At any rate the route which he took was the primitive Celtic
route, by which many much larger hordes had crossed the Alps: the
ally and deliverer of the Celtic nation might without temerity
venture to traverse it.

Departure of Hannibal

So Hannibal collected the troops, destined for the grand army, in
Cartagena at the beginning of the favourable season; there were 90,000
infantry and 12,000 cavalry, of whom about two-thirds were Africans
and a third Spaniards.  The 37 elephants which they took with them
were probably destined rather to make an impression on the Gauls than
for serious warfare.  Hannibal's infantry no longer needed, like that
led by Xanthippus, to shelter itself behind a screen of elephants, and
the general had too much sagacity to employ otherwise than sparingly
and with caution that two-edged weapon, which had as often occasioned
the defeat of its own as of the enemy's army.  With this force the
general set out in the spring of 536 from Cartagena towards the Ebro.
He so far informed his soldiers as to the measures which he had taken,
particularly as to the connections he had entered into with the Celts
and the resources and object of the expedition, that even the common
soldier, whose military instincts lengthened war had developed, felt
the clear perception and the steady hand of his leader, and followed
him with implicit confidence to the unknown and distant land; and the
fervid address, in which he laid before them the position of their
country and the demands of the Romans, the slavery certainly reserved
for their dear native land, and the disgrace of the imputation that
they could surrender their beloved general and his staff, kindled a
soldierly and patriotic ardour in the hearts of all.

Position of Rome
Their Uncertain Plans for War

The Roman state was in a plight, such as may occur even in firmly-
established and sagacious aristocracies.  The Romans knew doubtless
what they wished to accomplish, and they took various steps; but
nothing was done rightly or at the right time.  They might long ago
have been masters of the gates of the Alps and have settled matters
with the Celts; the latter were still formidable, and the former were
open.  They might either have had friendship, with Carthage, had they
honourably kept the peace of 513, or, had they not been disposed for
peace, they might long ago have conquered Cartilage: the peace was
practically broken by the seizure of Sardinia, and they allowed the
power of Carthage to recover itself undisturbed for twenty years.
There was no great difficulty in maintaining peace with Macedonia; but
they had forfeited her friendship for a trifling gain.  There must
have been a lack of some leading statesman to take a connected and
commanding view of the position of affairs; on all hands either too
little was done, or too much.  Now the war began at a time and at a
place which they had allowed the enemy to determine; and, with all
their well-founded conviction of military superiority, they were
perplexed as to the object to be aimed at and the course to be
followed in their first operations.  They had at their disposal more
than half a million of serviceable soldiers; the Roman cavalry alone
was less good, and relatively less numerous, than the Carthaginian,
the former constituting about a tenth, the latter an eighth, of the
whole number of troops taking the field.  None of the states affected
by the war had any fleet corresponding to the Roman fleet of 220
quinqueremes, which had just returned from the Adriatic to the western
sea.  The natural and proper application of this crushing superiority
of force was self-evident.  It had been long settled that the war
ought to be opened with a landing in Africa.  The subsequent turn
taken by events had compelled the Romans to embrace in their scheme
of the war a simultaneous landing in Spain, chiefly to prevent the
Spanish army from appearing before the walls of Carthage.  In
accordance with this plan they ought above all, when the war had been
practically opened by Hannibal's attack on Saguntum in the beginning
of 535, to have thrown a Roman army into Spain before the town fell;
but they neglected the dictates of interest no less than of honour.
For eight months Saguntum held out in vain: when the town passed into
other hands, Rome had not even equipped her armament for landing in
Spain.  The country, however, between the Ebro and the Pyrenees was
still free, and its tribes were not only the natural allies of the
Romans, but had also, like the Saguntines, received from Roman
emissaries promises of speedy assistance.  Catalonia may be reached by
sea from Italy in not much longer time than from Cartagena by and: had
the Romans started, like the Phoenicians, in April, after the formal
declaration of war that had taken place in the interval, Hannibal
might have encountered the Roman legions on the line of the Ebro.

Hannibal on the Ebro

At length, certainly, the greater part of the army and of the fleet
was got ready for the expedition to Africa, and the second consul
Publius Cornelius Scipio was ordered to the Ebro; but he took time,
and when an insurrection broke out on the Po, he allowed the army that
was ready for embarkation to be employed there, and formed new legions
for the Spanish expedition.  So although Hannibal encountered on the
Ebro very vehement resistance, it proceeded only from the natives;
and, as under existing circumstances time was still more precious to
him than the blood of his men, he surmounted the opposition after some
months with the loss of a fourth part of his army, and reached the
line of the Pyrenees.  That the Spanish allies of Rome would be
sacrificed a second time by that delay might have been as certainly
foreseen, as the delay itself might have been easily avoided; but
probably even the expedition to Italy itself, which in the spring of
536 must not have been anticipated in Rome, would have been averted
by the timely appearance of the Romans in Spain.  Hannibal had by no
means the intention of sacrificing his Spanish "kingdom," and throwing
himself like a desperado on Italy.  The time which he had spent in
the siege of Saguntum and in the reduction of Catalonia, and the
considerable corps which he left behind for the occupation of the
newly-won territory between the Ebro and the Pyrenees, sufficiently
show that, had a Roman army disputed the possession of Spain with him,
he would not have been content to withdraw from it; and--which was the
main point--had the Romans been able to delay his departure from Spain
for but a few weeks, winter would have closed the passes of the Alps
before Hannibal reached them, and the African expedition would have
departed without hindrance for its destination.

Hannibal in Gaul
Scipio at Massilia
Passage of the Rhone

Arrived at the Pyrenees, Hannibal sent home a portion of his troops;
a measure which he had resolved on from the first with the view of
showing to the soldiers how confident their general was of success,
and of checking the feeling that his enterprise was one of those from
which there is no return home.  With an army of 50,000 infantry and
9000 cavalry, entirely veteran soldiers, he crossed the Pyrenees
without difficulty, and then took the coast route by Narbonne and
Nimes through the Celtic territory, which was opened to the army
partly by the connections previously formed, partly by Carthaginian
gold, partly by arms.  It was not till it arrived in the end of July
at the Rhone opposite Avignon, that a serious resistance appeared to
await it.  The consul Scipio, who on his voyage to Spain had landed at
Massilia (about the end of June), had there been informed that he had
come too late and that Hannibal had crossed not only the Ebro but the
Pyrenees.  On receiving these accounts, which appear to have first
opened the eyes of the Romans to the course and the object of
Hannibal, the consul had temporarily given up his expedition to Spain,
and had resolved in connection with the Celtic tribes of that region,
who were under the influence of the Massiliots and thereby under that
of Rome, to receive the Phoenicians on the Rhone, and to obstruct
their passage of the river and their march into Italy.  Fortunately
for Hannibal, opposite to the point at which he meant to cross, there
lay at the moment only the general levy of the Celts, while the consul
himself with his army of 22,000 infantry and 2000 horse was still in
Massilia, four days' march farther down the stream.  The messengers of
the Gallic levy hastened to inform him.  It was the object of Hannibal
to convey his army with its numerous cavalry and elephants across the
rapid stream under the eyes of the enemy, and before the arrival of
Scipio; and he possessed not a single boat.  Immediately by his
directions all the boats belonging to the numerous navigators of
the Rhone in the neighbourhood were bought up at any price, and the
deficiency of boats was supplied by rafts made from felled trees;
and in fact the whole numerous army could be conveyed over in one day.
While this was being done, a strong division under Hanno, son of
Bomilcar, proceeded by forced marches up the stream till they reached
a suitable point for crossing, which they found undefended, situated
two short days' march above Avignon.  Here they crossed the river on
hastily constructed rafts, with the view of then moving down on the
left bank and taking the Gauls, who were barring the passage of the
main army, in the rear.  On the morning of the fifth day after they
had reached the Rhone, and of the third after Hanno's departure, the
smoke-signals of the division that had been detached rose up on the
opposite bank and gave to Hannibal the anxiously awaited summons for
the crossing.  Just as the Gauls, seeing that the enemy's fleet of
boats began to move, were hastening to occupy the bank, their camp
behind them suddenly burst into flames.  Surprised and divided, they
were unable either to withstand the attack or to resist the passage,
and they dispersed in hasty flight.

Scipio meanwhile held councils of war in Massilia as to the proper
mode of occupying the ferries of the Rhone, and was not induced to
move even by the urgent messages that came from the leaders of the
Celts.  He distrusted their accounts, and he contented himself with
detaching a weak Roman cavalry division to reconnoitre on the left
bank of the Rhone.  This detachment found the whole enemy's army
already transported to that bank, and occupied in bringing over the
elephants which alone remained on the right bank of the stream; and,
after it had warmly engaged some Carthaginian squadrons in the
district of Avignon, merely for the purpose of enabling it to complete
its reconnaissance--the first encounter of the Romans and Phoenicians
in this war--it hastily returned to report at head-quarters.  Scipio
now started in the utmost haste with all his troops for Avignon; but,
when he arrived there, even the Carthaginian cavalry that had been
left behind to cover the passage of the elephants had already taken
its departure three days ago, and nothing remained for the consul but
to return with weary troops and little credit to Massilia, and to
revile the "cowardly flight" of the Punic leader.  Thus the Romans had
for the third time through pure negligence abandoned their allies and
an important line of defence; and not only so, but by passing after
this first blunder from mistaken slackness to mistaken haste, and by
still attempting without any prospect of success to do what might have
been done with so much certainty a few days before, they let the real
means of repairing their error pass out of their hands.  When once
Hannibal was in the Celtic territory on the Roman side of the Rhone,
he could no longer be prevented from reaching the Alps; but if Scipio
had at the first accounts proceeded with his whole army to Italy--the
Po might have been reached by way of Genoa in seven days--and had
united with his corps the weak divisions in the valley of the Po,
he might have at least prepared a formidable reception for the enemy.
But not only did he lose precious time in the march to Avignon, but,
capable as otherwise he was, he wanted either the political courage
or the military sagacity to change the destination of his corps as the
change of circumstances required.  He sent the main body under his
brother Gnaeus to Spain, and returned himself with a few men to Pisae.

Hannibal's Passage of the Alps

Hannibal, who after the passage of the Rhone had in a great assembly
of the army explained to his troops the object of his expedition, and
had brought forward the Celtic chief Magilus himself, who had arrived
from the valley of the Po, to address the army through an interpreter,
meanwhile continued his march to the passes of the Alps without
obstruction.  Which of these passes he should choose, could not be
at once determined either by the shortness of the route or by the
disposition of the  inhabitants, although he had no time to lose
either in circuitous routes or in combat.  He had necessarily to
select a route which should be practicable for his baggage, his
numerous cavalry, and his elephants, and in which an army could
procure sufficient means of subsistence either by friendship or by
force; for, although Hannibal had made preparations to convey
provisions after him on beasts of burden, these could only meet for
a few days the wants of an army which still, notwithstanding its great
losses, amounted to nearly 50,000 men.  Leaving out of view the coast
route, which Hannibal abstained from taking not because the Romans
barred it, but because it would have led him away from his
destination, there were only two routes of note leading across the
Alps from Gaul to Italy in ancient times:(3) the pass of the Cottian
Alps (Mont Genevre) leading into the territory of the Taurini (by Susa
or Fenestrelles to Turin), and that of the Graian Alps (the Little St.
Bernard) leading into the territory of the Salassi (to Aosta and
Ivrea).  The former route is the shorter; but, after leaving the
valley of the Rhone, it passes by the impracticable and unfruitful
river-valleys of the Drac, the Romanche, and the upper Durance,
through a difficult and poor mountain country, and requires at least
a seven or eight days' mountain march.  A military road was first
constructed there by Pompeius, to furnish a shorter communication
between the provinces of Cisalpine and Transalpine Gaul.

The route by the Little St. Bernard is somewhat longer; but after
crossing the first Alpine wall that forms the eastern boundary of
the Rhone valley, it keeps by the valley of the upper Isere, which
stretches from Grenoble by way of Chambery up to the very foot of the
Little St. Bernard or, in other words, of the chain of the higher
Alps, and is the broadest, most fertile and most populous of all the
Alpine valleys.  Moreover, the pass of the Little St. Bernard, while
not the lowest of all the natural passes of the Alps, is by far the
easiest; although no artificial road was constructed there, an
Austrian corps with artillery crossed the Alps by that route in 1815.
And lastly this route, which only leads over two mountain ridges, has
been from the earliest times the great military route from the Celtic
to the Italian territory.  The Carthaginian army had thus in fact no
choice.  It was a fortunate coincidence, but not a motive influencing
the decision of Hannibal, that the Celtic tribes allied with him in
Italy inhabited the country up to the Little St. Bernard, while
the route by Mont Genevre would have brought him at first into the
territory of the Taurini, who were from ancient times at feud with
the Insubres.

So the Carthaginian army marched in the first instance up the Rhone
towards the valley of the upper Isere, not, as might be presumed, by
the nearest route up the left bank of the lower Isere from Valence to
Grenoble, but through the "island" of the Allobroges, the rich, and
even then thickly peopled, low ground, which is enclosed on the north
and west by the Rhone, on the south by the Isere, and on the east
by the Alps.  The reason of this movement was, that the nearest route
would have led them through an impracticable and poor mountain-
country, while the "island" was level and extremely fertile, and was
separated by but a single mountain-wall from the valley of the upper
Isere.  The march along the Rhone into, and across, the "island"
to the foot of the Alpine wall was accomplished in sixteen days: it
presented little difficulty, and in the "island" itself Hannibal
dexterously availed himself of a feud that had broken out between two
chieftains of the Allobroges to attach to his interests one of the
most important of the chiefs, who not only escorted the Carthaginians
through the whole plain, but also supplied them with provisions, and
furnished the soldiers with arms, clothing, and shoes.  But the
expedition narrowly escaped destruction at the crossing of the first
Alpine chain, which rises precipitously like a wall, and over which
only a single available path leads (over the Mont du Chat, near the
hamlet Chevelu).  The population of the Allobroges had strongly
occupied the pass.  Hannibal learned the state of matters early enough
to avoid a surprise, and encamped at the foot, until after sunset the
Celts dispersed to the houses of the nearest town; he then seized the
pass in the night Thus the summit was gained; but on the extremely
steep path, which leads down from the summit to the lake of Bourget,
the mules and horses slipped and fell.  The assaults, which at
suitable points were made by the Celts upon the army in march, were
very annoying, not so much of themselves as by reason of the turmoil
which they occasioned; and when Hannibal with his light troops threw
himself from above on the Allobroges, these were chased doubtless
without difficulty and with heavy loss down the mountain, but the
confusion, in the train especially, was further increased by the noise
of the combat.  So, when after much loss he arrived in the plain,
Hannibal immediately attacked the nearest town, to chastise and
terrify the barbarians, and at the same time to repair as far as
possible his loss in sumpter animals and horses.  After a day's repose
in the pleasant valley of Chambery the army continued its march up the
Isere, without being detained either by want of supplies or by attacks
so long as the valley continued broad and fertile.  It was only when
on the fourth day they entered the territory of the Ceutrones (the
modern Tarantaise) where the valley gradually contracts, that they had
again greater occasion to be on their guard.  The Ceutrones received
the army at the boundary of their country (somewhere about Conflans)
with branches and garlands, furnished cattle for slaughter, guides,
and hostages; and the Carthaginians marched through their territory
as through a friendly land.  When, however, the troops had reached the
very foot of the Alps, at the point where the path leaves the Isere,
and winds by a narrow and difficult defile along the brook Reclus
up to the summit of the St. Bernard, all at once the militia of the
Ceutrones appeared partly in the rear of the army, partly on the
crests of the rocks enclosing the pass on the right and left, in
the hope of cutting off the train and baggage.  But Hannibal, whose
unerring tact had seen in all those advances made by the Ceutrones
nothing but the design of procuring at once immunity for their
territory and a rich spoil, had in expectation of such an attack
sent forward the baggage and cavalry, and covered the march with all
his infantry.  By this means he frustrated the design of the enemy,
although he could not prevent them from moving along the mountain
slopes parallel to the march of the infantry, and inflicting very
considerable loss by hurling or rolling down stones.  At the "white
stone"  (still called -la roche blanche-), a high isolated chalk cliff
standing at the foot of the St. Bernard and commanding the ascent to
it, Hannibal encamped with his infantry, to cover the march of the
horses and sumpter animals laboriously climbing upward throughout
the whole night; and amidst continual and very bloody conflicts he at
length on the following day reached the summit of the pass.  There,
on the sheltered table-land which spreads to the extent of two and a
half miles round a little lake, the source of the Doria, he allowed
the army to rest.  Despondency had begun to seize the minds of the
soldiers.  The paths that were becoming ever more difficult, the
provisions failing, the marching through defiles exposed to the
constant attacks of foes whom they could not reach, the sorely thinned
ranks, the hopeless situation of the stragglers and the wounded, the
object which appeared chimerical to all save the enthusiastic leader
and his immediate staff--all these things began to tell even on the
African and Spanish veterans.  But the confidence of the general
remained ever the same; numerous stragglers rejoined the ranks; the
friendly Gauls were near; the watershed was reached, and the view of
the descending path, so gladdening to the mountain-pilgrim, opened up:
after a brief repose they prepared with renewed courage for the last
and most difficult undertaking, --the downward march.  In it the army
was not materially annoyed by the enemy; but the advanced season--it
was already the beginning of September--occasioned troubles in the
descent, equal to those which had been occasioned in the ascent by the
attacks of the adjoining tribes.  On the steep and slippery mountain-
slope along the Doria, where the recently-fallen snow had concealed
and obliterated the paths, men and animals went astray and slipped,
and were precipitated into the chasms.  In fact, towards the end of
the first day's march they reached a portion of the path about 200
paces in length, on which avalanches are constantly descending from
the precipices of the Cramont that overhang it, and where in cold
summers snow lies throughout the year.  The infantry passed over;
but the horses and elephants were unable to cross the smooth masses
of ice, on which there lay but a thin covering of freshly-fallen snow,
and the general encamped above the difficult spot with the baggage,
the cavalry, and the elephants.  On the following day the horsemen,
by zealous exertion in entrenching, prepared a path for horses and
beasts of burden; but it was not until after a further labour of three
days with constant reliefs, that the half-famished elephants could at
length be conducted over.  In this way the whole army was after a
delay of four days once more united; and after a further three days'
march through the valley of the Doria, which was ever widening and
displaying greater fertility, and whose inhabitants the Salassi,
clients of the Insubres, hailed in the Carthaginians their allies
and deliverers, the army arrived about the middle of September in the
plain of Ivrea, where the exhausted troops were quartered in the
villages, that by good nourishment and a fortnight's repose they might
recruit from their unparalleled hardships.  Had the Romans placed a
corps, as they might have done, of 30,000 men thoroughly fresh and
ready for action somewhere near Turin, and immediately forced on a
battle, the prospects of Hannibal's great plan would have been very
dubious; fortunately for him, once more, they were not where they
should have been, and they did not disturb the troops of the enemy
in the repose which was so greatly needed.(4)

Results

The object was attained, but at a heavy cost.  Of the 50,000
veteran infantry and the 9000 cavalry, which the army had numbered
at the crossing of the Pyrenees, more than half had been sacrificed
in the conflicts, the marches, and the passages of the rivers.
Hannibal now, according to his own statement, numbered not more
than 20,000 infantry--of whom three-fifths were Libyans and two-fifths
Spaniards--and 6000 cavalry, part of them doubtless dismounted: the
comparatively small loss of the latter proclaimed the excellence of
the Numidian cavalry no less than the consideration of the general
in making a sparing use of troops so select.  A march of 526 miles or
about 33 moderate days' marching--the continuance and termination of
which were disturbed by no special misfortunes on a great scale that
could not be anticipated, but were, on the other hand, rendered
possible only by incalculable pieces of good fortune and still more
incalculable blunders of the enemy, and which yet not only cost such
sacrifices, but so fatigued and demoralized the army, that it needed
a prolonged rest in order to be again ready for action--is a military
operation of doubtful value, and it may be questioned whether Hannibal
himself regarded it as successful.  Only in so speaking we may not
pronounce an absolute censure on the general: we see well the defects
of the plan of operations pursued by him, but we cannot determine
whether he was in a position to foresee them--his route lay through
an unknown land of barbarians--or whether any other plan, such as that
of taking the coast road or of embarking at Cartagena or at Carthage,
would have exposed him to fewer dangers.  The cautious and masterly
execution of the plan in its details at any rate deserves our
admiration, and to whatever causes the result may have been due
--whether it was due mainly to the favour of fortune, or mainly to
the skill of the general--the grand idea of Hamilcar, that of taking
up the conflict with Rome in Italy, was now realized.  It was his
genius that projected this expedition; and as the task of Stein and
Scharnhorst was more difficult and nobler than that of York and
Blucher, so the unerring tact of historical tradition has always dwelt
on the last link in the great chain of preparatory steps, the passage
of the Alps, with a greater admiration than on the battles of the
Trasimene lake and of the plain of Cannae.




Notes for Chapter IV


1. Our accounts as to these events are not only imperfect but one-
sided, for of course it was the version of the Carthaginian peace
party which was adopted by the Roman annalists.  Even, however, in
our fragmentary and confused accounts (the most important are those of
Fabius, in Polyb. iii. 8; Appian. Hisp. 4; and Diodorus, xxv. p. 567)
the relations of the parties appear dearly enough.  Of the vulgar
gossip by which its opponents sought to blacken the "revolutionary
combination" (--etaireia ton ponerotaton anthropon--) specimens may
be had in Nepos (Ham. 3), to which it will be difficult perhaps
to find a parallel.

2. The Barca family conclude the most important state treaties, and
the ratification of the governing board is a formality (Pol. iii. 21).
Rome enters her protest before them and before the senate (Pol. iii.
15).  The position of the Barca family towards Carthage in many points
resembles that of the Princes of Orange towards the States-General.

3. It was not till the middle ages that the route by Mont Cenis became
a military road.  The eastern passes, such as that over the Poenine
Alps or the Great St. Bernard--which, moreover, was only converted
into a military road by Caesar and Augustus--are, of course, in this
case out of the question.

4. The much-discussed questions of topography, connected with this
celebrated expedition, may be regarded as cleared up and substantially
solved by the masterly investigations of Messrs. Wickham and Cramer.
Respecting the chronological questions, which likewise present
difficulties, a few remarks may be exceptionally allowed to have
a place here.

When Hannibal reached the summit of the St. Bernard, "the peaks were
already beginning to be thickly covered with snow" (Pol. iii. 54),
snow lay on the route (Pol. iii. 55), perhaps for the most part snow
not freshly fallen, but proceeding from the fall of avalanches.  At
the St. Bernard winter begins about Michaelmas, and the falling of
snow in September; when the Englishmen already mentioned crossed
the mountain at the end of August, they found almost no snow on
their road, but the slopes on both sides were covered with it.
Hannibal thus appears to have arrived at the pass in the beginning
of September; which is quite compatible with the statement that
he arrived there "when the winter was already approaching"
--for --sunaptein ten tes pleiados dusin-- (Pol. iii. 54) does
not mean anything more than this, least of all, the day of the
heliacal setting of the Pleiades (about 26th October); comp.
Ideler, Chronol. i. 241.

If Hannibal reached Italy nine days later, and therefore about the
middle of September, there is room for the events that occurred from
that time up to the battle of the Trebia towards the end of December
(--peri cheimerinas tropas--, Pol. iii. 72), and in particular for
the transporting of the army destined for Africa from Lilybaeum to
Placentia.  This hypothesis further suits the statement that the
day of departure was announced at an assembly of the army --upo ten
earinen oran-- (Pol. iii. 34), and therefore towards the end of March,
and that the march lasted five (or, according to App. vii. 4, six)
months.  If Hannibal was thus at the St. Bernard in the beginning of
September, he must have reached the Rhone at the beginning of August
--for he spent thirty days in making his way from the Rhone thither
--and in that case it is evident that Scipio, who embarked at
the beginning of summer (Pol. iii. 41) and so at latest by the
commencement of June, must have spent much time on the voyage or
remained for a considerable period in singular inaction at Massilia.




CHAPTER V

The War under Hannibal to the Battle of Cannae

Hannibal and the Italian Celts

The appearance of the Carthaginian army on the Roman side of the Alps
changed all at once the situation of affairs, and disconcerted the
Roman plan of war.  Of the two principal armies of the Romans, one had
landed in Spain and was already engaged with the enemy there: it was
no longer possible to recall it.  The second, which was destined
for Africa under the command of the consul Tiberius Sempronius, was
fortunately still in Sicily: in this instance Roman delay for once
proved useful.  Of the two Carthaginian squadrons destined for Italy
and Sicily, the first was dispersed by a storm, and some of its
vessels were captured by the Syracusans near Messana; the second had
endeavoured in vain to surprise Lilybaeum, and had thereafter been
defeated in a naval engagement off that port.  But the continuance of
the enemy's squadrons in the Italian waters was so inconvenient, that
the consul determined, before crossing to Africa, to occupy the small
islands around Sicily, and to drive away the Carthaginian fleet
operating against Italy.  The summer passed away in the conquest of
Melita, in the chase after the enemy's squadron, which he expected
to find at the Lipari islands while it had made a descent near Vibo
(Monteleone) and pillaged the Bruttian coast, and, lastly, in gaining
information as to a suitable spot for landing on the coast of Africa;
so that the army and fleet were still at Lilybaeum, when orders
arrived from the senate that they should return with all possible
speed for the defence of their homes.

In this way, while the two great Roman armies, each in itself equal
in numbers to that of Hannibal, remained at a great distance from the
valley of the Po, the Romans were quite unprepared for an attack in
that quarter.  No doubt a Roman army was there, in consequence of
an insurrection that had broken out among the Celts even before the
arrival of the Carthaginian army.  The founding of the two Roman
strongholds of Placentia and Cremona, each of which received 6000
colonists, and more especially the preparations for the founding of
Mutina in the territory of the Boii, had already in the spring of 536
driven the Boii to revolt before the time concerted with Hannibal;
and the Insubres had immediately joined them.  The colonists already
settled in the territory of Mutina, suddenly attacked, took refuge in
the town.  The praetor Lucius Manlius, who held the chief command at
Ariminum, hastened with his single legion to relieve the blockaded
colonists; but he was surprised in the woods, and no course was left
to him after sustaining great loss but to establish himself upon a
hill and to submit to a siege there on the part of the Boii, till
a second legion sent from Rome under the praetor Lucius Atilius
succeeded in relieving army and town, and in suppressing for the
moment the Gaulish insurrection.  This premature rising of the Boii
on the one hand, by delaying the departure of Scipio for Spain,
essentially promoted the plans of Hannibal; on the other hand, but
for its occurrence he would have found the valley of the Po entirely
unoccupied, except the fortresses.  But the Roman corps, whose two
severely thinned legions did not number 20,000 soldiers, had enough
to do to keep the Celts in check, and did not think of occupying the
passes of the Alps.  The Romans only learned that the passes were
threatened, when in August the consul Publius Scipio returned without
his army from Massilia to Italy, and perhaps even then they gave
little heed to the matter, because, forsooth, the foolhardy attempt
would be frustrated by the Alps alone.  Thus at the decisive hour and
on the decisive spot there was not even a Roman outpost.  Hannibal had
full time to rest his army, to capture after a three days' siege the
capital of the Taurini which closed its gates against him, and to
induce or terrify into alliance with him all the Ligurian and Celtic
communities in the upper basin of the Po, before Scipio, who had
taken the command in the Po valley, encountered him.

Scipio in the Valley of the Po
Conflict on the Ticino
The Armies at Placentia

Scipio, who, with an army considerably smaller and very weak in
cavalry, had the difficult task of preventing the advance of the
superior force of the enemy and of repressing the movements of
insurrection which everywhere were spreading among the Celts, had
crossed the Po presumably at Placentia, and marched up the river to
meet the enemy, while Hannibal after the capture of Turin marched
downwards to relieve the Insubres and Boii.  In the plain between
the Ticino and the Sesia, not far from Vercelli, the Roman cavalry,
which had advanced with the light infantry to make a reconnaissance
in force, encountered the Punic cavalry sent out for the like purpose,
both led by the generals in person.  Scipio accepted battle when
offered, notwithstanding the superiority of the enemy; but his light
infantry, which was placed in front of the cavalry, dispersed before
the charge of the heavy cavalry of the enemy, and while the latter
engaged the masses of the Roman horsemen in front, the light Numidian
cavalry, after having pushed aside the broken ranks of the enemy's
infantry, took the Roman horsemen in flank and rear.  This decided
the combat.  The loss of the Romans was very considerable.  The consul
himself, who made up as a soldier for his deficiencies as a general,
received a dangerous wound, and owed his safety entirely to the
devotion of his son of seventeen, who, courageously dashing into the
ranks of the enemy, compelled his squadron to follow him and rescued
his father.  Scipio, enlightened by this combat as to the strength of
the enemy, saw the error which he had committed in posting himself,
with a weaker army, in the plain with his back to the river, and
resolved to return to the right bank of the Po under the eyes of his
antagonist.  As the operations became contracted into a narrower space
and his illusions regarding Roman invincibility departed, he recovered
the use of his considerable military talents, which the adventurous
boldness of his youthful opponent's plans had for a moment paralyzed.
While Hannibal was preparing for a pitched battle, Scipio by a rapidly
projected and steadily executed march succeeded in reaching the right
bank of the river which in an evil hour he had abandoned, and broke
down the bridge over the Po behind his army; the Roman detachment of
600 men charged to cover the process of destruction were, however,
intercepted and made prisoners.  But as the upper course of the river
was in the hands of Hannibal, he could not be prevented from marching
up the stream, crossing on a bridge of boats, and in a few days
confronting the Roman army on the right bank.  The latter had taken
a position in the plain in front of Placentia; but the mutiny of a
Celtic division in the Roman camp, and the Gallic insurrection
breaking out afresh all around, compelled the consul to evacuate the
plain and to post himself on the hills behind the Trebia.  This was
accomplished without notable loss, because the Numidian horsemen sent
in pursuit lost their time in plundering, and setting fire to, the
abandoned camp.  In this strong position, with his left wing resting
on the Apennines, his right on the Po and the fortress of Placentia,
and covered in front by the Trebia--no inconsiderable stream at that
season--Scipio was unable to save the rich stores of Clastidium
(Casteggio) from which in this position he was cut off by the army of
the enemy; nor was he able to avert the insurrectionary movement on
the part of almost all the Gallic cantons, excepting the Cenomani who
were friendly to Rome; but he completely checked the progress of
Hannibal, and compelled him to pitch his camp opposite to that of
the Romans.  Moreover, the position taken up by Scipio, and the
circumstance of the Cenomani threatening the borders of the Insubres,
hindered the main body of the Gallic insurgents from directly joining
the enemy, and gave to the second Roman army, which meanwhile had
arrived at Ariminum from Lilybaeum, the opportunity of reaching
Placentia through the midst of the insurgent country without material
hindrance, and of uniting itself with the army of the Po.

Battle on the Trebia

Scipio had thus solved his difficult task completely and brilliantly.
The Roman army, now close on 40,000 strong, and though not a match for
its antagonist in cavalry, at least equal in infantry, had simply to
remain in its existing position, in order to compel the enemy either
to attempt in the winter season the passage of the river and an attack
upon the camp, or to suspend his advance and to test the fickle temper
of the Gauls by the burden of winter quarters.  Clear, however, as
this was, it was no less clear that it was now December, and that
under the course proposed the victory might perhaps be gained by Rome,
but would not be gained by the consul Tiberius Sempronius, who held
the sole command in consequence of Scipio's wound, and whose year of
office expired in a few months.  Hannibal knew the man, and neglected
no means of alluring him to fight.  The Celtic villages that had
remained faithful to the Romans were cruelly laid waste, and, when
this brought on a conflict between the cavalry, Hannibal allowed his
opponents to boast of the victory.  Soon thereafter on a raw rainy
day a general engagement came on, unlocked for by the Romans.  From
the earliest hour of the morning the Roman light troops had been
skirmishing with the light cavalry of the enemy; the latter slowly
retreated, and the Romans eagerly pursued it through the deeply
swollen Trebia to follow up the advantage which they had gained.
Suddenly the cavalry halted; the Roman vanguard found itself face to
face with the army of Hannibal drawn up for battle on a field chosen
by himself; it was lost, unless the main body should cross the stream
with all speed to its support.  Hungry, weary, and wet, the Romans
came on and hastened to form in order of battle, the cavalry, as
usual, on the wings, the infantry in the centre.  The light troops,
who formed the vanguard on both sides, began the combat: but the
Romans had already almost exhausted their missiles against the
cavalry, and immediately gave way.  In like manner the cavalry gave
way on the wings, hard pressed by the elephants in front, and
outflanked right and left by the far more numerous Carthaginian horse.
But the Roman infantry proved itself worthy of its name: at the
beginning of the battle it fought with very decided superiority
against the infantry of the enemy, and even when the repulse of the
Roman horse allowed the enemy's cavalry and light-armed troops to turn
their attacks against the Roman infantry, the latter, although ceasing
to advance, obstinately maintained its ground.  At this stage a select
Carthaginian band of 1000 infantry, and as many horsemen, under the
leadership of Mago, Hannibal's youngest brother, suddenly emerged from
an ambush in the rear of the Roman army, and fell upon the densely
entangled masses.  The wings of the army and the rear ranks of the
Roman centre were broken up and scattered by this attack, while the
first division, 10,000 men strong, in compact array broke through the
Carthaginian line, and made a passage for itself obliquely through the
midst of the enemy, inflicting great loss on the opposing infantry and
more especially on the Gallic insurgents.  This brave body, pursued
but feebly, thus reached Placentia.  The remaining mass was for the
most part slaughtered by the elephants and light troops of the enemy
in attempting to cross the river: only part of the cavalry and some
divisions of infantry were able, by wading through the river, to gain
the camp whither the Carthaginians did not follow them, and thus they
too reached Placentia.(1)  Few battles confer more honour on the Roman
soldier than this on the Trebia, and few at the same time furnish
graver impeachment of the general in command; although the candid
judge will not forget that a commandership in chief expiring on a
definite day was an unmilitary institution, and that figs cannot be
reaped from thistles.  The victory came to be costly even to the
victors.  Although the loss in the battle fell chiefly on the Celtic
insurgents, yet a multitude of the veteran soldiers of Hannibal died
afterwards from diseases engendered by that raw and wet winter day,
and all the elephants perished except one.

Hannibal Master of Northern Italy

The effect of this first victory of the invading army was, that the
national insurrection now spread and assumed shape without hindrance
throughout the Celtic territory.  The remains of the Roman army of
the Po threw themselves into the fortresses of Placentia and Cremona:
completely cut off from home, they were obliged to procure their
supplies by way of the river.  The consul Tiberius Sempronius only
escaped, as if by miracle, from being taken prisoner, when with a
weak escort of cavalry he went to Rome on account of the elections.
Hannibal, who would not hazard the health of his troops by further
marches at that inclement season, bivouacked for the winter where he
was; and, as a serious attempt on the larger fortresses would have
led to no result, contented himself with annoying the enemy by attacks
on the river port of Placentia and other minor Roman positions.  He
employed himself mainly in organizing the Gallic insurrection: more
than 60,000 foot soldiers and 4000 horsemen from the Celts are said
to have joined his army.

Military and Political Position of Hannibal

No extraordinary exertions were made in Rome for the campaign of 537.
The senate thought, and not unreasonably, that, despite the lost
battle, their position was by no means fraught with serious danger.
Besides the coast garrisons, which were despatched to Sardinia,
Sicily, and Tarentum, and the reinforcements which were sent to Spain,
the two new consuls Gaius Flaminius and Gnaeus Servilius obtained
only as many men as were necessary to restore the four legions to
their full complement; additions were made to the strength of the
cavalry alone.  The consuls had to protect the northern frontier, and
stationed themselves accordingly on the two highways which led  from
Rome to the north, the western of which at that lime terminated at
Arretium, and the eastern at Ariminum; Gaius Flaminius occupied the
former, Gnaeus Servilius the latter.  There they ordered the troops
from the fortresses on the Po to join them, probably by water, and
awaited the commencement of the favourable season, when they proposed
to occupy in the defensive the passes of the Apennines, and then,
taking up the offensive, to descend into the valley of the Po and
effect a junction somewhere near Placentia.  But Hannibal by no means
intended to defend the valley of the Po.  He knew Rome better perhaps
than the Romans knew it themselves, and was very well aware how
decidedly he was the weaker and continued to be so notwithstanding the
brilliant battle on the Trebia; he knew too that his ultimate object,
the humiliation of Rome, was not to be wrung from the unbending Roman
pride either by terror or by surprise, but could only be gained by
the actual subjugation of the haughty city.  It was clearly apparent
that the Italian federation was in political solidity and in military
resources infinitely superior to an adversary, who received only
precarious and irregular support from home, and who in Italy was
dependent for primary aid solely on the vacillating and capricious
nation of the Celts; and that the Phoenician foot soldier was,
notwithstanding all the pains taken by Hannibal, far inferior in
point of tactics to the legionary, had been completely proved by
the defensive movements of Scipio and the brilliant retreat of the
defeated infantry on the Trebia.  From this conviction flowed the two
fundamental principles which determined Hannibal's whole method of
operations in Italy--viz., that the war should be carried on, in
somewhat adventurous fashion, with constant changes in the plan and
in the theatre of operations; and that its favourable issue could
only be looked for as the result of political and not of military
successes--of the gradual loosening and final breaking up of the
Italian federation.  That mode of carrying on the war was necessary,
because the single element which Hannibal had to throw into the scale
against so many disadvantages--his military genius--only told with
its full weight, when he constantly foiled his opponents by unexpected
combinations; he was undone, if the war became stationary.  That aim
was the aim dictated to him by right policy, because, mighty conqueror
though he was in battle, he saw very clearly that on each occasion he
vanquished the generals and not the city, and that after each new
battle the Romans remained just as superior to the Carthaginians as
he was personally superior to the Roman commanders.  That Hannibal
even at the height of his fortune never deceived himself on this
point, is worthier of admiration than his most admired battles.

Hannibal Crosses the Apennines

It was these motives, and not the entreaties of the Gauls that he
should spare their country--which would not have influenced him--that
induced Hannibal now to forsake, as it were, his newly acquired basis
of operations against Italy, and to transfer the scene of war to Italy
itself.  Before doing so he gave orders that all the prisoners should
be brought before him.  He ordered the Romans to be separated and
loaded with chains as slaves--the statement that Hannibal put to death
all the Romans capable of bearing arms, who here and elsewhere fell
into his hands, is beyond doubt at least strongly exaggerated.  On the
other hand, all the Italian allies were released without ransom, and
charged to report at home that Hannibal waged war not against Italy,
but against Rome; that he promised to every Italian community the
restoration of its ancient independence and its ancient boundaries;
and that the deliverer was about to follow those whom he had set free,
bringing release and revenge.  In fact, when the winter ended, he
started from the valley of the Po to search for a route through
the difficult defiles of the Apennines.  Gaius Flaminius, with the
Etruscan army, was still for the moment at Arezzo, intending to move
from that point towards Lucca in order to protect the vale of the Arno
and the passes of the Apennines, so soon as the season should allow.
But Hannibal anticipated him.  The passage of the Apennines was
accomplished without much difficulty, at a point as far west as
possible or, in other words, as distant as possible from the enemy;
but the marshy low grounds between the Serchio and the Arno were so
flooded by the melting of the snow and the spring rains, that the army
had to march four days in water, without finding any other dry spot
for resting by night than was supplied by piling the baggage or by
the sumpter animals that had fallen.  The troops underwent unutterable
sufferings, particularly the Gallic infantry, which marched behind the
Carthaginians along tracks already rendered impassable: they murmured
loudly and would undoubtedly have dispersed to a man, had not the
Carthaginian cavalry under Mago, which brought up the rear, rendered
flight impossible.  The horses, assailed by a distemper in their
hoofs, fell in heaps; various diseases decimated the soldiers;
Hannibal himself lost an eye in consequence of ophthalmia.

Flaminius

But the object was attained.  Hannibal encamped at Fiesole, while
Gaius Flaminius was still waiting at Arezzo until the roads should
become passable that he might blockade them.  After the Roman
defensive position had thus been turned, the best course for the
consul, who might perhaps have been strong enough to defend the
mountain passes but certainly was unable now to face Hannibal in the
open field, would have been to wait till the second army, which had
now become completely superfluous at Ariminum, should arrive.  He
himself, however, judged otherwise.  He was a political party leader,
raised to distinction by his efforts to limit the power of the senate;
indignant at the government in consequence of the aristocratic
intrigues concocted against him during his consulship; carried away,
through a doubtless justifiable opposition to their beaten track of
partisanship, into a scornful defiance of tradition and custom;
intoxicated at once by blind love of the common people and equally
bitter hatred of the party of the nobles; and, in addition to all
this, possessed with the fixed idea that he was a military genius.
His campaign against the Insubres of 531, which to unprejudiced
judges only showed that good!   soldiers often repair the errors
of bad generals,(2) was regarded by him and by his adherents as an
irrefragable proof that the Romans had only to put Gaius Flaminius at
the head of the army in order to make a speedy end of Hannibal.  Talk
of this sort had procured for him his second consulship, and hopes of
this sort had now brought to his camp so great a multitude of unarmed
followers eager for spoil, that their number, according to the
assurance of sober historians, exceeded that of the legionaries.
Hannibal based his plan in part on this circumstance.  So far from
attacking him, he marched past him, and caused the country all around
to be pillaged by the Celts who thoroughly understood plundering,
and by his numerous cavalry.  The complaints and indignation of the
multitude which had to submit to be plundered under the eyes of the
hero who had promised to enrich them, and the protestation of the
enemy that they did not believe him possessed of either the power
or the resolution to undertake anything before the arrival of his
colleague, could not but induce such a man to display his genius
for strategy, and to give a sharp lesson to his inconsiderate
and haughty foe.

Battle on the Trasimene Lake

No plan was ever more successful.  In haste, the consul followed the
line of march of the enemy, who passed by Arezzo and moved slowly
through the rich valley of the Chiana towards Perugia.  He overtook
him in the district of Cortona, where Hannibal, accurately informed
of his antagonist's march, had had full time to select his field of
battle--a narrow defile between two steep mountain walls, closed at
its outlet by a high hill, and at its entrance by the Trasimene lake.
With the flower of his infantry he barred the outlet; the light troops
and the cavalry placed themselves in concealment on either side.  The
Roman columns advanced without hesitation into the unoccupied pass;
the thick morning mist concealed from them the position of the enemy.
As the head of the Roman line approached the hill, Hannibal gave the
signal for battle; the cavalry, advancing behind the heights, closed
the entrance of the pass, and at the same time the mist rolling away
revealed the Phoenician arms everywhere along the crests on the right
and left.  There was no battle; it was a mere rout.  Those that
remained outside of the defile were driven by the cavalry into the
lake.  The main body was annihilated in the pass itself almost without
resistance, and most of them, including the consul himself, were cut
down in the order of march.  The head of the Roman column, formed of
6000 infantry, cut their way through the infantry of the enemy, and
proved once more the irresistible might of the legions; but, cut off
from the rest of the army and without knowledge of its fate, they
marched on at random, were surrounded on the following day, on a
hill which they had occupied, by a corps of Carthaginian cavalry,
and--as the capitulation, which promised them a free retreat, was
rejected by Hannibal--were all treated as prisoners of war.  15,000
Romans had fallen, and as many were captured; in other words, the
army was annihilated.  The slight Carthaginian loss--1500 men--again
fell mainly upon the Gauls.(3)  And, as if this were not enough,
immediately after the battle on the Trasimene lake, the cavalry of
the army of Ariminum under Gaius Centenius, 4000 strong, which Gnaeus
Servilius had sent forward for the temporary support of his colleague
while he himself advanced by slow marches, was likewise surrounded by
the Phoenician army, and partly slain, partly made prisoners.  All
Etruria was lost, and Hannibal might without hindrance march on Rome.
The Romans prepared themselves for the worst; they broke down the
bridges over the Tiber, and nominated Quintus Fabius Maximus dictator
to repair the walls and conduct the defence, for which an army of
reserve was formed.  At the same time two new legions were summoned
under arms in the room of those annihilated, and the fleet, which
might become of importance in the event of a siege, was put in order.

Hannibal on the East Coast
Reorganization of the Carthaginian Army

But Hannibal was more farsighted than king Pyrrhus.  He did not march
on Rome; nor even against Gnaeus Servilius, an able general, who had
with the help of the fortresses on the northern road preserved his
army hitherto uninjured, and would perhaps have kept his antagonist
at bay.  Once more a movement occurred which was quite unexpected.
Hannibal marched past the fortress of Spoletium, which he attempted in
vain to surprise, through Umbria, fearfully devastated the territory
of Picenum which was covered all over with Roman farmhouses, and
halted on the shores of the Adriatic.  The men and horses of his
army had not yet recovered from the painful effects of their spring
campaign; here he rested for a considerable time to allow his army to
recruit its strength in a pleasant district and at a fine season of
the year, and to reorganize his Libyan infantry after the Roman mode,
the means for which were furnished to him by the mass of Roman arms
among the spoil.  From this point, moreover, he resumed his long-
interrupted communication with his native land, sending his messages
of victory by water to Carthage.  At length, when his army was
sufficiently restored and had been adequately exercised in the use
of the new arms, he broke up and marched slowly along the coast into
southern Italy.

War in Lower Italy
Fabius

He had calculated correctly, when he chose this time for remodelling
his infantry.  The surprise of his antagonists, who were in constant
expectation of an attack on the capital, allowed him at least four
weeks of undisturbed leisure for the execution of the unprecedentedly
bold experiment of changing completely his military system in the
heart of a hostile country and with an army still comparatively small,
and of attempting to oppose African legions to the invincible legions
of Italy.  But his hope that the confederacy would now begin to break
up was not fulfilled.  In this respect the Etruscans, who had carried
on their last wars of independence mainly with Gallic mercenaries,
were of less moment; the flower of the confederacy, particularly
in a military point of view, consisted--next to the Latins--of the
Sabellian communities, and with good reason Hannibal had now come into
their neighbourhood.  But one town after another closed its gates; not
a single Italian community entered into alliance with the Phoenicians.
This was a great, in fact an all-important, gain for the Romans.
Nevertheless it was felt in the capital that it would be imprudent to
put the fidelity of their allies to such a test, without a Roman army
to keep the field.  The dictator Quintus Fabius combined the two
supplementary legions formed in Rome with the army of Ariminum,
and when Hannibal marched past the Roman fortress of Luceria towards
Arpi, the Roman standards appeared on his right flank at Aeca.
Their leader, however, pursued a course different from that of his
predecessors.  Quintus Fabius was a man advanced in years, of a
deliberation and firmness, which to not a few seemed procrastination
and obstinacy.  Zealous in his reverence for the good old times, for
the political omnipotence of the senate, and for the command of the
burgomasters, he looked to a methodical prosecution of the war as
--next to sacrifices and prayers--the means of saving the state.
A political antagonist of Gaius Flaminius, and summoned to the head of
affairs in virtue of the reaction against his foolish war-demagogism,
Fabius departed for the camp just as firmly resolved to avoid a
pitched battle at any price, as his predecessor had been determined at
any price to fight one; he was without doubt convinced that the first
elements of strategy would forbid Hannibal to advance so long as the
Roman army confronted him intact, and that accordingly it would not be
difficult to weaken by petty conflicts and gradually to starve out the
enemy's army, dependent as it was on foraging for its supplies.

March to Capua and Back to Apulia
War in Apulia

Hannibal, well served by his spies in Rome and in the Roman army,
immediately learned how matters stood, and, as usual, adjusted the
plan of his campaign in accordance with the individual character of
the opposing leader.  Passing the Roman army, he marched over the
Apennines into the heart of Italy towards Beneventum, took the open
town of Telesia on the boundary between Samnium and Campania, and
thence turned against Capua, which as the most important of all the
Italian cities dependent on Rome, and the only one standing in some
measure on a footing of equality with it, had for that very reason
felt more severely than any other community the oppression of the
Roman government.  He had formed connections there, which led him to
hope that the Campanians might revolt from the Roman alliance; but in
this hope he was disappointed.  So, retracing his steps, he took the
road to Apulia.  During all this march of the Carthaginian army the
dictator had followed along the heights, and had condemned his
soldiers to the melancholy task of looking on with arms in their
hands, while the Numidian cavalry plundered the faithful allies far
and wide, and the villages over all the plain rose in flames.  At
length he opened up to the exasperated Roman army the eagerly-coveted
opportunity of attacking the enemy.  When Hannibal had begun his
retreat, Fabius intercepted his route near Casilinum (the modern
Capua), by strongly garrisoning that town on the left bank of the
Volturnus and occupying the heights that crowned the right bank with
his main army, while a division of 4000 men encamped on the road
itself that led along by the river.  But Hannibal ordered his light-
armed troops to climb the heights which rose immediately alongside
of the road, and to drive before them a number of oxen with lighted
faggots on their horns, so that it seemed as if the Carthaginian army
were thus marching off during the night by torchlight.  The Roman
division, which barred the road, imagining that they were evaded and
that further covering of the road was superfluous, marched by a side
movement to the same heights.  Along the road thus left free Hannibal
then retreated with the bulk of his army, without encountering the
enemy; next morning he without difficulty, but with severe loss to
the Romans, disengaged and recalled his light troops.  Hannibal then
continued his march unopposed in a north-easterly direction; and
by a widely-circuitous route, after traversing and laying under
contribution the lands of the Hirpinians, Campanians, Samnites,
Paelignians, and Frentanians without resistance, he arrived with rich
booty and a full chest once more in the region of Luceria, just as
the harvest there was about to begin.  Nowhere in his extensive march
had he met with active opposition, but nowhere had he found allies.
Clearly perceiving that no course remained for him but to take up
winter quarters in the open field, he began the difficult operation
of collecting the winter supplies requisite for the army, by means of
its own agency, from the fields of the enemy.  For this purpose he
had selected the broad and mostly flat district of northern Apulia,
which furnished grain and grass in abundance, and which could be
completely commanded by his excellent cavalry.  An entrenched camp
was constructed at Gerunium, twenty-five miles to the north of
Luceria.  Two-thirds of the army were daily despatched from it to
bring in the stores, while Hannibal with the remainder took up a
position to protect the camp and the detachments sent out.

Fabius and Minucius

The master of the horse, Marcus Minucius, who held temporary command
in the Roman camp during the absence of the dictator, deemed this a
suitable opportunity for approaching the enemy more closely, and
formed a camp in the territory of the Larinates; where on the one hand
by his mere presence he checked the sending out of detachments and
thereby hindered the provisioning of the enemy's army, and on the
other hand, in a series of successful conflicts in which his troops
encountered isolated Phoenician divisions and even Hannibal himself,
drove the enemy from their advanced positions and compelled them to
concentrate themselves at Gerunium.  On the news of these successes,
which of course lost nothing in the telling, the storm broke, forth
in the capital against Quintus Fabius.  It was not altogether
unwarranted.  Prudent as it was on the part of Rome to abide by the
defensive and to expect success mainly from the cutting off of the
enemy's means of subsistence, there was yet something strange in a
system of defence and of starving out, under which the enemy had laid
waste all central Italy without opposition beneath the eyes of a Roman
army of equal numbers, and had provisioned themselves sufficiently for
the winter by an organized method of foraging on the greatest scale.
Publius Scipio, when he commanded on the Po, had not adopted this view
of a defensive attitude, and the attempt of his successor to imitate
him at Casilinum had failed in such a way as to afford a copious fund
of ridicule to the scoffers of the city.  It was wonderful that the
Italian communities had not wavered, when Hannibal so palpably showed
them the superiority of the Phoenicians and the nullity of Roman aid;
but how long could they be expected to bear the burden of a double
war, and to allow themselves to be plundered under the very eyes of
the Roman troops and of their own contingents?  Finally, it could not
be alleged that the condition of the Roman army compelled the general
to adopt this mode of warfare.  It was composed, as regarded its core,
of the capable legions of Ariminum, and, by their side, of militia
called out, most of whom were likewise accustomed to service; and, far
from being discouraged by the last defeats, it was indignant at the
but little honourable task which its general, "Hannibal's lackey,"
assigned to it, and it demanded with a loud voice to be led against
the enemy.  In the assemblies of the people the most violent
invectives were directed against the obstinate old man.  His political
opponents, with the former praetor Gaius Terentius Varro at their
head, laid hold of the quarrel--for the understanding of which we must
not forget that the dictator was practically nominated by the senate,
and the office was regarded as the palladium of the conservative
party--and, in concert with the discontented soldiers and the
possessors of the plundered estates, they carried an unconstitutional
and absurd resolution of the people conferring the dictatorship, which
was destined to obviate the evils of a divided command in times of
danger, on Marcus Minucius,(4) who had hitherto been the lieutenant
of Quintus Fabius, in the same way as on Fabius himself.  Thus the
Roman army, after its hazardous division into two separate corps had
just been appropriately obviated, was once more divided; and not only
so, but the two sections were placed under leaders who notoriously
followed quite opposite plans of war.  Quintus Fabius of course
adhered more than ever to his methodical inaction; Marcus Minucius,
compelled to justify in the field of battle his title of dictator,
made a hasty attack with inadequate forces, and would have been
annihilated had not his colleague averted greater misfortune by the
seasonable interposition of a fresh corps.  This last turn of matters
justified in some measure the system of passive resistance.  But in
reality Hannibal had completely attained in this campaign all that
arms could attain: not a single material operation had been frustrated
either by his impetuous or by his deliberate opponent; and his
foraging, though not unattended with difficulty, had yet been in the
main so successful that the army passed the winter without complaint
in the camp at Gerunium.  It was not the Cunctator that saved Rome,
but the compact structure of its confederacy and, not less perhaps,
the national hatred with which the Phoenician hero was regarded on
the part of Occidentals.

New War-like Preparations in Rome
Paullus and Varro

Despite all its misfortunes, Roman pride stood no less unshaken than
the Roman symmachy.  The donations which were offered by king Hiero of
Syracuse and the Greek cities in Italy for the next campaign--the war
affected the latter less severely than the other Italian allies of
Rome, for they sent no contingents to the land army--were declined
with thanks; the chieftains of Illyria were informed that they could
not be allowed to neglect payment of their tribute; and even the
king of Macedonia was once more summoned to surrender Demetrius of
Pharos.  The majority of the senate, notwithstanding the semblance
of legitimation which recent events had given to the Fabian system
of delay, had firmly resolved to depart from a mode of war that was
slowly but certainly ruining the state; if the popular dictator had
failed in his more energetic method of warfare, they laid the blame
of the failure, and not without reason, on the fact that they had
adopted a half-measure and had given him too few troops.  This error
they determined to avoid and to equip an army, such as Rome had never
sent out before--eight legions, each raised a fifth above the normal
strength, and a corresponding number of allies--enough to crush an
opponent who was not half so strong.  Besides this, a legion under
the praetor Lucius Postumius was destined for the valley of the Po,
in order, if possible, to draw off the Celts serving in the army of
Hannibal to their homes.  These resolutions were judicious; everything
depended on their coming to an equally judicious decision respecting
the supreme command.  The stiff carriage of Quintus Fabius, and
the attacks of the demagogues which it provoked, had rendered the
dictatorship and the senate generally more unpopular than ever:
amongst the people, not without the connivance of their leaders,
the foolish report circulated that the senate was intentionally
prolonging the war.  As, therefore, the nomination of a dictator was
not to be thought of, the senate attempted to procure the election of
suitable consuls; but this only had the effect of thoroughly rousing
suspicion and obstinacy.  With difficulty the senate carried one of
its candidates, Lucius Aemilius Paullus, who had with judgment
conducted the Illyrian war in 535;(5) an immense majority of the
citizens assigned to him as colleague the candidate of the popular
party, Gaius Terentius Varro, an incapable man, who was known only by
his bitter opposition to the senate and more especially as the main
author of the proposal to elect Marcus Minucius co-dictator, and who
was recommended to the multitude solely by his humble birth and his
coarse effrontery.

Battle at Cannae

While these preparations for the next campaign were being made in
Rome, the war had already recommenced in Apulia.  As soon as the
season allowed him to leave his winter quarters, Hannibal, determining
as usual the course of the war and assuming the offensive, set out
from Gerunium in a southerly direction, and marching past Luceria
crossed the Aufidus and took the citadel of Cannae (between Canosa
and Barletta) which commanded the plain of Canusium, and had hitherto
served the Romans as their chief magazine.  The Roman army which,
since Fabius had conformably to the constitution resigned his
dictatorship in the middle of autumn, was now commanded by Gnaeus
Servilius and Marcus Regulus, first as consuls then as proconsuls,
had been unable to avert a loss which they could not but feel.  On
military as well as on political grounds, it became more than ever
necessary to arrest the progress of Hannibal by a pitched battle.
With definite orders to this effect from the senate, accordingly, the
two new commanders-in-chief, Paullus and Varro, arrived in Apulia in
the beginning of the summer of 538.  With the four new legions and a
corresponding contingent of Italians which they brought up, the Roman
army rose to 80,000 infantry, half burgesses, half allies, and 6000
cavalry, of whom one-third were burgesses and two-thirds allies;
whereas Hannibal's army numbered 10,000 cavalry, but only about 40,000
infantry.  Hannibal wished nothing so much as a battle, not merely for
the general reasons which we have explained above, but specially
because the wide Apulian plain allowed him to develop the whole
superiority of his cavalry, and because the providing supplies for
his numerous army would soon, in spite of that excellent cavalry, be
rendered very difficult by the proximity of an enemy twice as strong
and resting on a chain of fortresses.  The leaders of the Roman forces
also had, as we have said, made up their minds on the general question
of giving battle, and approached the enemy with that view; but the
more sagacious of them saw the position of Hannibal, and were disposed
accordingly to wait in the first instance and simply to station
themselves in the vicinity of the enemy, so as to compel him to retire
and accept battle on a ground less favourable to him.  Hannibal
encamped at Cannae on the right bank of the Aufidus.  Paullus pitched
his camp on both banks of the stream, so that the main force came to
be stationed on the left bank, but a strong corps took up a position
on the right immediately opposite to the enemy, in order to impede his
supplies and perhaps also to threaten Cannae.  Hannibal, to whom it
was all-important to strike a speedy blow, crossed the stream with the
bulk of his troops, and offered battle on the left bank, which Paullus
did not accept.  But such military pedantry was disapproved by the
democratic consul--so much had been said about men taking the field
not to stand guard, but to use their swords--and he gave orders
accordingly to attack the enemy, wherever and whenever they found him.
According to the old custom foolishly retained, the decisive voice in
the council of war alternated between the commanders-in-chief day by
day; it was necessary therefore on the following day to submit, and
to let the hero of the pavement have his way.  On the left bank,
where the wide plain offered full scope to the superior cavalry of
the enemy, certainly even he would not fight; but he determined to
unite the whole Roman forces on the right bank, and there, taking up
a position between the Carthaginian camp and Cannae and seriously
threatening the latter, to offer battle.  A division of 10,000 men
was left behind in the principal Roman camp, charged to capture the
Carthaginian encampment during the conflict and thus to intercept the
retreat of the enemy's army across the river.  The bulk of the Roman
army, at early dawn on the and August according to the unconnected,
perhaps in tune according to the correct, calendar, crossed the river
which at this season was shallow and did not materially hamper the
movements of the troops, and took up a position in line near the
smaller Roman camp to the westward of Cannae.  The Carthaginian army
followed and likewise crossed the stream, on which rested the right
Roman as well as the left Carthaginian wing.  The Roman cavalry was
stationed on the wings: the weaker portion consisting of burgesses,
led by Paullus, on the right next the river; the stronger consisting
of the allies, led by Varro, on the left towards the plain.  In the
centre was stationed the infantry in unusually deep files, under the
command of the consul of the previous year Gnaeus Servilius.  Opposite
to this centre Hannibal arranged his infantry in the form of a
crescent, so that the Celtic and Iberian troops in their national
armour formed the advanced centre, and the Libyans, armed after the
Roman fashion, formed the drawn-back wings on either side.  On the
side next the river the whole heavy cavalry under Hasdrubal was
stationed, on the side towards the plain the light Numidian horse.
After a short skirmish between the light troops the whole line was
soon engaged.  Where the light cavalry of the Carthaginians fought
against the heavy cavalry of Varro, the conflict was prolonged,
amidst constant charges of the Numidians, without decisive result.
In the centre, on the other hand, the legions completely overthrew
the Spanish and Gallic troops that first encountered them; eagerly the
victors pressed on and followed up their advantage.  But meanwhile, on
the right wing, fortune had turned against the Romans.  Hannibal had
merely sought to occupy the left cavalry wing of the enemy, that he
might bring Hasdrubal with the whole regular cavalry to bear against
the weaker right and to overthrow it first.  After a brave resistance,
the Roman horse gave way, and those that were not cut down were chased
up the river and scattered in the plain; Paullus, wounded, rode to the
centre to turn or, if not, to share the fate of the legions.  These,
in order the better to follow up the victory over the advanced
infantry of the enemy, had changed their front disposition into a
column of attack, which, in the shape of a wedge, penetrated the
enemy's centre.  In this position they were warmly assailed on both
sides by the Libyan infantry wheeling inward upon them right and left,
and a portion of them were compelled to halt in order to defend
themselves against the flank attack; by this means their advance was
checked, and the mass of infantry, which was already too closely
crowded, now had no longer room to develop itself at all.  Meanwhile
Hasdrubal, after having completed the defeat of the wing of Paullus,
had collected and arranged his cavalry anew and led them behind the
enemy's centre against the wing of Varro.  His Italian cavalry,
already sufficiently occupied with the Numidians, was rapidly
scattered before the double attack, and Hasdrubal, leaving the
pursuit of the fugitives to the Numidians, arranged his squadrons
for the third time, to lead them against the rear of the Roman
infantry.  This last charge proved decisive.  Flight was not possible,
and quarter was not given.  Never, perhaps, was an army of such size
annihilated on the field of battle so completely, and with so little
loss to its antagonist, as was the Roman army at Cannae.  Hannibal
had lost not quite 6000 men, and two-thirds of that loss fell upon
the Celts, who sustained the first shock of the legions.  On the other
hand, of the 76,000 Romans who had taken their places in the line of
battle 70,000 covered the field, amongst whom were the consul Lucius
Paullus, the proconsul Gnaeus Servilius, two-thirds of the staff-
officers, and eighty men of senatorial rank.  The consul Gaius Varro
was saved solely by his quick resolution and his good steed, reached
Venusia, and was not ashamed to survive.  The garrison also of the
Roman camp, 10,000 strong, were for the most part made prisoners of
war; only a few thousand men, partly of these troops, partly of the
line, escaped to Canusium.  Nay, as if in this year an end was to
be made with Rome altogether, before its close the legion sent to
Gaul fell into an ambush, and was, with its general Lucius Postumius
who was nominated as consul for the next year, totally destroyed
by the Gauls.

Consequences of the Battle of Cannae
Prevention of Reinforcements from Spain

This unexampled success appeared at length to mature the great
political combination, for the sake of which Hannibal had come to
Italy.  He had, no doubt, based his plan primarily upon his army; but
with accurate knowledge of the power opposed to him he designed that
army to be merely the vanguard, in support of which the powers of the
west and east were gradually to unite their forces, so as to prepare
destruction for the proud city.  That support however, which seemed
the most secure, namely the sending of reinforcements from Spain, had
been frustrated by the boldness and firmness of the Roman general sent
thither, Gnaeus Scipio.  After Hannibal's passage of the Rhone Scipio
had sailed for Emporiae, and had made himself master first of the
coast between the Pyrenees and the Ebro, and then, after conquering
Hanno, of the interior also (536).  In the following year (537) he had
completely defeated the Carthaginian fleet at the mouth of the Ebro,
and after his brother Publius, the brave defender of the valley of
the Po, had joined him with a reinforcement of 8000 men, he had even
crossed the Ebro, and advanced as far as Saguntum.  Hasdrubal had
indeed in the succeeding year (538), after obtaining reinforcements
from Africa, made an attempt in accordance with his brother's orders
to conduct an army over the Pyrenees; but the Scipios opposed his
passage of the Ebro, and totally defeated him, nearly at the same
time that Hannibal conquered at Cannae.  The powerful tribe of the
Celtiberians and numerous other Spanish tribes had joined the Scipios;
they commanded the sea, the passes of the Pyrenees, and, by means of
the trusty Massiliots, the Gallic coast also.  Now therefore support
to Hannibal was less than ever to be looked for from Spain.

Reinforcements from Spain

On the part of Carthage as much had hitherto been done in support
of her general in Italy as could be expected.  Phoenician squadrons
threatened the coasts of Italy and of the Roman islands and guarded
Africa from a Roman landing, and there the matter ended.  More
substantial assistance was prevented not so much by the uncertainty
as to where Hannibal was to be found and the want of a port of
disembarkation in Italy, as by the fact that for many years the
Spanish army had been accustomed to be self-sustaining, and above
all by the murmurs of the peace party.  Hannibal severely felt the
consequences of this unpardonable inaction; in spite of all his saving
of his money and of the soldiers whom he had brought with him, his
chests were gradually emptied, the pay fell into arrear, and the ranks
of his veterans began to thin.  But now the news of the victory of
Cannae reduced even the factious opposition at home to silence.  The
Carthaginian senate resolved to place at the disposal of the general
considerable assistance in money and men, partly from Africa, partly
from Spain, including 4000 Numidian horse and 40 elephants, and to
prosecute the war with energy in Spain as well as in Italy.

Alliance between Carthage and Macedonia

The long-discussed offensive alliance between Carthage and Macedonia
had been delayed, first by the sudden death of Antigonus, and then by
the indecision of his successor Philip and the unseasonable war waged
by him and his Hellenic allies against the Aetolians (534-537).  It
was only now, after the battle of Cannae, that Demetrius of Pharos
found Philip disposed to listen to his proposal to cede to Macedonia
his Illyrian possessions--which it was necessary, no doubt, to wrest
in the first place from the Romans--and it was only now that the court
of Pella came to terms with Carthage.  Macedonia undertook to land an
invading army on the east coast of Italy, in return for which she
received an assurance that the Roman possessions in Epirus should
be restored to her.

Alliance between Carthage and Syracuse

In Sicily king Hiero had during the years of peace maintained a policy
of neutrality, so far as he could do so with safety, and he had shown
a disposition to accommodate the Carthaginians during the perilous
crises after the peace with Rome, particularly by sending supplies of
corn.  There is no doubt that he saw with the utmost regret a renewed
breach between Carthage and Rome; but he had no power to avert it, and
when it occurred he adhered with well-calculated fidelity to Rome.
But soon afterwards (in the autumn of 538) death removed the old man
after a reign of fifty-four years.  The grandson and successor of the
prudent veteran, the young and incapable Hieronymus, entered at once
into negotiations with the Carthaginian diplomatists; and, as they
made no difficulty in consenting to secure to him by treaty, first,
Sicily as far as the old Carthagino-Sicilian frontier, and then, when
he rose in the arrogance of his demands, the possession even of the
whole island, he entered into alliance with Carthage, and ordered
the Syracusan fleet to unite with the Carthaginian which had come
to threaten Syracuse.  The position of the Roman fleet at Lilybaeum,
which already had to deal with a second Carthaginian squadron
stationed near the Aegates, became all at once very critical, while at
the same time the force that was in readiness at Rome for embarkation
to Sicily had, in consequence of the defeat at Cannae, to be diverted
to other and more urgent objects.

Capua and Most of the Communities of Lower Italy Pass over to Hannibal

Above all came the decisive fact, that now at length the fabric of the
Roman confederacy began to be unhinged, after it had survived unshaken
the shocks of two severe years of war.  There passed over to the side
of Hannibal Arpi in Apulia, and Uzentum in Messapia, two old towns
which had been greatly injured by the Roman colonies of Luceria and
Brundisium; all the towns of the Bruttii--who took the lead--with the
exception of the Petelini and the Consentini who had to be besieged
before yielding; the greater portion of the Lucanians; the Picentes
transplanted into the region of Salernum; the Hirpini; the Samnites
with the exception of the Pentri; lastly and chiefly, Capua the
second city of Italy, which was able to bring into the field 30,000
infantry and 4000 horse, and whose secession determined that of
the neighbouring towns Atella and Caiatia.  The aristocratic party,
indeed, attached by many ties to the interest of Rome everywhere,
and more especially in Capua, very earnestly opposed this change of
sides, and the obstinate internal conflicts which arose regarding it
diminished not a little the advantage which Hannibal derived from
these accessions.  He found himself obliged, for instance, to have one
of the leaders of the aristocratic party in Capua, Decius Magius, who
even after the entrance of the Phoenicians obstinately contended for
the Roman alliance, seized and conveyed to Carthage; thus furnishing
a demonstration, very inconvenient for himself, of the small value of
the liberty and sovereignty which had just been solemnly assured to
the Campanians by the Carthaginian general.  On the other hand, the
south Italian Greeks adhered to the Roman alliance--a result to which
the Roman garrisons no doubt contributed, but which was still more due
to the very decided dislike of the Hellenes towards the Phoenicians
themselves and towards their new Lucanian and Bruttian allies, and
their attachment on the other hand to Rome, which had zealously
embraced every opportunity of manifesting its Hellenism, and had
exhibited towards the Greeks in Italy an unwonted gentleness.  Thus
the Campanian Greeks, particularly Neapolis, courageously withstood
the attack of Hannibal in person: in Magna Graecia Rhegium, Thurii,
Metapontum, and Tarentum did the same notwithstanding their very
perilous position.  Croton and Locri on the other hand were partly
carried by storm, partly forced to capitulate, by the united
Phoenicians and Bruttians; and the citizens of Croton were conducted
to Locri, while Bruttian colonists occupied that important naval
station.  The Latin colonies in southern Italy, such as Brundisium,
Venusia, Paesturn, Cosa, and Cales, of course maintained unshaken
fidelity to Rome.  They were the strongholds by which the conquerors
held in check a foreign land, settled on the soil of the surrounding
population, and at feud with their neighbours; they, too, would be the
first to be affected, if Hannibal should keep his word and restore to
every Italian community its ancient boundaries.  This was likewise
the case with all central Italy, the earliest seat of the Roman rule,
where Latin manners and language already everywhere preponderated, and
the people felt themselves to be the comrades rather than the subjects
of their rulers.  The opponents of Hannibal in the Carthaginian senate
did not fail to appeal to the fact that not one Roman citizen or one
Latin community had cast itself into the arms of Carthage.  This
groundwork of the Roman power could only be broken up, like the
Cyclopean walls, stone by stone.

Attitude of the Romans

Such were the consequences of the day of Cannae, in which the flower
of the soldiers and officers of the confederacy, a seventh of the
whole number of Italians capable of bearing arms, perished.  It was
a cruel but righteous punishment for the grave political errors with
which not merely some foolish or miserable individuals, but the Roman
people themselves, were justly chargeable.  A constitution adapted for
a small country town was no longer suitable for a great power; it was
simply impossible that the question as to the leadership of the armies
of the city in such a war should be left year after year to be decided
by the Pandora's box of the balloting-urn.  As a fundamental revision
of the constitution, if practicable at all, could not at least be
undertaken now, the practical superintendence of the war, and in
particular the bestowal and prolongation of the command, should have
been at once left to the only authority which was in a position to
undertake it--the senate--and there should have been reserved for the
comitia the mere formality of confirmation.  The brilliant successes
of the Scipios in the difficult arena of Spanish warfare showed what
might in this way be achieved.  But political demagogism, which was
already gnawing at the aristocratic foundations of the constitution,
had seized on the management of the Italian war.  The absurd
accusation, that the nobles were conspiring with the enemy without,
had made an impression on the "people."  The saviours to whom
political superstition looked for deliverance, Gaius Flaminius and
Gaius Varro, both "new men" and friends of the people of the purest
dye, had accordingly been empowered by the multitude itself to execute
the plans of operations which, amidst the approbation of that
multitude, they had unfolded in the Forum; and the results were the
battles on the Trasimene lake and at Cannae.  Duty required that the
senate, which now of course understood its task better than when it
recalled half the army of Regulus from Africa, should take into its
hands the management of affairs, and should oppose such mischievous
proceedings; but when the first of those two defeats had for the
moment placed the rudder in its hands, it too had hardly acted in a
manner unbiassed by the interests of party.  Little as Quintus Fabius
may be compared with these Roman Cleons, he had yet conducted the war
not as a mere military leader, but had adhered to his rigid attitude
of defence specially as the political opponent of Gaius Flaminius; and
in the treatment of the quarrel with his subordinate, had done what he
could to exasperate at a time when unity was needed.  The consequence
was, first, that the most important instrument which the wisdom of
their ancestors had placed in the hands of the senate just for such
cases--the dictatorship--broke down in his hands; and, secondly--at
least indirectly--the battle of Cannae.  But the headlong fall of the
Roman power was owing not to the fault of Quintus Fabius or Gaius
Varro, but to the distrust between the government and the governed--to
the variance between the senate and the burgesses.  If the deliverance
and revival of the state were still possible, the work had to begin at
home with the re-establishment of unity and of confidence.  To have
perceived this and, what is of more importance, to have done it,
and done it with an abstinence from all recriminations however just,
constitutes the glorious and imperishable honour of the Roman senate.
When Varro--alone of all the generals who had command in the battle
--returned to Rome, and the Roman senators met him at the gate and
thanked him that he had not despaired of the salvation of his country,
this was no empty phraseology veiling the disaster under sounding
words, nor was it bitter mockery over a poor wretch; it was the
conclusion of peace between the government and the governed.  In
presence of the gravity of the time and the gravity of such an appeal,
the chattering of demagogues was silent; henceforth the only thought
of the Romans was how they might be able jointly to avert the common
peril.  Quintus Fabius, whose tenacious courage at this decisive
moment was of more service to the state than all his feats of war,
and the other senators of note took the lead in every movement, and
restored to the citizens confidence in themselves and in the future.
The senate preserved its firm and unbending attitude, while messengers
from all sides hastened to Rome to report the loss of battles, the
secession of allies, the capture of posts and magazines, and to ask
reinforcements for the valley of the Po and for Sicily at a time
when Italy was abandoned and Rome was almost without a garrison.
Assemblages of the multitude at the gates were forbidden; onlookers
and women were sent to their houses; the time of mourning for the
fallen was restricted to thirty days that the service of the gods of
joy, from which those clad in mourning attire were excluded, might
not be too long interrupted--for so great was the number of the
fallen, that there was scarcely a family which had not to lament its
dead.  Meanwhile the remnant saved from the field of battle had been
assembled by two able military tribunes, Appius Claudius and Publius
Scipio the younger, at Canusium.  The latter managed, by his lofty
spirit and by the brandished swords of his faithful comrades, to
change the views of those genteel young lords who, in indolent despair
of the salvation of their country, were thinking of escape beyond the
sea.  The consul Gaius Varro joined them with a handful of men; about
two legions were gradually collected there; the senate gave orders
that they should be reorganized and reduced to serve in disgrace and
without pay.  The incapable general was on a suitable pretext recalled
to Rome; the praetor Marcus Claudius Marcellus, experienced in the
Gallic wars, who had been destined to depart for Sicily with the fleet
from Ostia, assumed the chief command.  The utmost exertions were made
to organize an army capable of taking the field.  The Latins were
summoned to render aid in the common peril.  Rome itself set the
example, and called to arms all the men above boyhood, armed the
debtor-serfs and criminals, and even incorporated in the army eight
thousand slaves purchased by the state.  As there was a want of arms,
they took the old spoils from the temples, and everywhere set the
workshops and artisans in action.  The senate was completed, not as
timid patriots urged, from the Latins, but from the Roman burgesses
who had the best title.  Hannibal offered a release of captives at the
expense of the Roman treasury; it was declined, and the Carthaginian
envoy who had arrived with the deputation of captives was not admitted
into the city: nothing should look as if the senate thought of peace.
Not only were the allies to be prevented from believing that Rome was
disposed to enter into negotiations, but even the meanest citizen was
to be made to understand that for him as for all there was no peace,
and that safety lay only in victory.




Notes for Chapter V


1. Polybius's account of the battle on the Trebia is quite clear.  If
Placentia lay on the right bank of the Trebia where it falls into the
Po, and if the battle was fought on the left bank, while the Roman
encampment was pitched upon the right--both of which points have been
disputed, but are nevertheless indisputable--the Roman soldiers must
certainly have passed the Trebia in order to gain Placentia as well
as to gain the camp.  But those who crossed to the camp must have made
their way through the disorganized portions of their own army and
through the corps of the enemy that had gone round to their rear,
and must then have crossed the river almost in hand-to-hand combat
with the enemy.  On the other hand the passage near Placentia was
accomplished after the pursuit had slackened; the corps was several
miles distant from the field of battle, and had arrived within reach
of a Roman fortress; it may even have been the case, although it
cannot be proved, that a bridge led over the Trebia at that point,
and that the -tete de pont- on the other bank was occupied by the
garrison of Placentia.  It is evident that the first passage was
just as difficult as the second was easy, and therefore with good
reason Polybius, military judge as he was, merely says of the corps
of 10,000, that in close columns it cut its way to Placentia (iii. 74,
6), without mentioning the passage of the river which in this case
was unattended with difficulty.

The erroneousness of the view of Livy, which transfers the Phoenician
camp to the right, the Roman to the left bank of the Trebia, has
lately been repeatedly pointed out.  We may only further mention,
that the site of Clastidium, near the modern Casteggio, has now been
established by inscriptions (Orelli-Henzen, 5117).

2. III. III. The Celts Attacked in Their Own Land

3. The date of the battle, 23rd June according to the uncorrected
calendar, must, according to the rectified calendar, fall somewhere
in April, since Quintus Fabius resigned his dictatorship, after six
months, in the middle of autumn (Lav. xxii. 31, 7; 32, i), and must
therefore have entered upon it about the beginning of May.  The
confusion of the calendar (p. 117) in Rome was even at this period
very great.

4. The inscription of the gift devoted by the new dictator on account
of his victory at Gerunium to Hercules Victor-- -Hercolei sacrom M.
Minuci(us) C. f. dictator vovit- --was found in the year 1862 at Rome,
near S. Lorenzo.

5. III. III. Northern Italy




CHAPTER VI

The War under Hannibal from Cannae to Zama

The Crisis

The aim of Hannibal in his expedition to Italy had been to break up
the Italian confederacy: after three campaigns that aim had been
attained, so far as it was at all attainable.  It was clear that the
Greek and Latin or Latinized communities of Italy, since they had not
been shaken in their allegiance by the day of Cannae, would not yield
to terror, but only to force; and the desperate courage with which
even in Southern Italy isolated little country towns, such as the
Bruttian Petelia, maintained their forlorn defence against the
Phoenicians, showed very plainly what awaited them among the Marsians
and Latins.  If Hannibal had expected to accomplish more in this way
and to be able to lead even the Latins against Rome, these hopes had
proved vain.  But it appears as if even in other respects the Italian
coalition had by no means produced the results which Hannibal hoped
for.  Capua had at once stipulated that Hannibal should not have the
right to call Campanian citizens compulsorily to arms; the citizens
had not forgotten how Pyrrhus had acted in Tarentum, and they
foolishly imagined that they should be able to withdraw at once from
the Roman and from the Phoenician rule.  Samnium and Luceria were no
longer what they had been, when king Pyrrhus had thought of marching
into Rome at the head of the Sabellian youth.

Not only did the chain of Roman fortresses everywhere cut the nerves
and sinews of the land, but the Roman rule, continued for many years,
had rendered the inhabitants unused to arms--they furnished only a
moderate contingent to the Roman armies--had appeased their ancient
hatred, and had gained over a number of individuals everywhere to the
interest of the ruling community.  They joined the conqueror of the
Romans, indeed, after the cause of Rome seemed fairly lost, but they
felt that the question was no longer one of liberty; it was simply
the exchange of an Italian for a Phoenician master, and it was not
enthusiasm, but despair that threw the Sabellian communities into
the arms of the victor.  Under such circumstances the war in Italy
flagged.  Hannibal, who commanded the southern part of the peninsula
as far up as the Volturnus and Garganus, and who could not simply
abandon these lands again as he had abandoned that of the Celts, had
now likewise a frontier to protect, which could not be left uncovered
with impunity; and for the purpose of defending the districts that he
had gained against the fortresses which everywhere defied him and the
armies advancing from the north, and at the same time of resuming the
difficult offensive against central Italy, his forces--an army of
about 40,000 men, without reckoning the Italian contingents--were far
from sufficient.

Marcellus

Above all, he found that other antagonists were opposed to him.
Taught by fearful experience, the Romans adopted a more judicious
system of conducting the war, placed none but experienced officers
at the head of their armies, and left them, at least where it was
necessary, for a longer period in command.  These generals neither
looked down on the enemy's movements from the mountains, nor did they
throw themselves on their adversary wherever they found him; but,
keeping the true mean between inaction and precipitation, they took up
their positions in entrenched camps under the walls of fortresses, and
accepted battle where victory would lead to results and defeat would
not be destruction.  The soul of this new mode of warfare was Marcus
Claudius Marcellus.  With true instinct, after the disastrous day of
Cannae, the senate and people had turned their eyes to this brave and
experienced officer, and entrusted him at once with the actual supreme
command.  He had received his training in the troublesome warfare
against Hamilcar in Sicily, and had given brilliant evidence of his
talents as a leader as well as of his personal valour in the last
campaigns against the Celts.  Although far above fifty, he still
glowed with all the ardour of the most youthful soldier, and only a
few years before this he had, as general, cut down the mounted general
of the enemy(1)--the first and only Roman consul who achieved that
feat of arms.  His life was consecrated to the two divinities, to
whom he erected the splendid double temple at the Capene Gate--to
Honour and to Valour; and, while the merit of rescuing Rome from this
extremity of danger belonged to no single individual, but pertained to
the Roman citizens collectively and pre-eminently to the senate, yet
no single man contributed more towards the success of the common
enterprise than Marcus Marcellus.

Hannibal Proceeds to Campania

From the field of battle Hannibal had turned his steps to Campania, He
knew Rome better than the simpletons, who in ancient and modern times
have fancied that he might have terminated the struggle by a march on
the enemy's capital.  Modern warfare, it is true, decides a war on the
field of battle; but in ancient times, when the system of attacking
fortresses was far less developed than the system of defence, the most
complete success in the field was on numberless occasions neutralized
by the resistance of the walls of the capitals.  The council and
citizens of Carthage were not at all to be compared to the senate
and people of Rome; the peril of Carthage after the first campaign of
Regulus was infinitely more urgent than that of Rome after the battle
of Cannae; yet Carthage had made a stand and been completely
victorious.  With what colour could it be expected that Rome would now
deliver her keys to the victor, or even accept an equitable peace?
Instead therefore of sacrificing practicable and important successes
for the sake of such empty demonstrations, or losing time in the
besieging of the two thousand Roman fugitives enclosed within the
walls of Canusium, Hannibal had immediately proceeded to Capua before
the Romans could throw in a garrison, and by his advance had induced
this second city of Italy after long hesitation to join him.  He might
hope that, in possession of Capua, he would be able to seize one of
the Campanian ports, where he might disembark the reinforcements which
his great victories had wrung from the opposition at home.

Renewal of the War in Campania
The War in Apulia

When the Romans learned whither Hannibal had gone, they also left
Apulia, where only a weak division was retained, and collected
their remaining forces on the right bank of the Volturnus.  With
the two legions saved from Cannae Marcus Marcellus marched to Teanum
Sidicinum, where he was joined by such troops as were at the moment
disposable from Rome and Ostia, and advanced--while the dictator
Marcus Junius slowly followed with the main army which had been
hastily formed--as far as the Volturnus at Casilinum, with a view if
possible to save Capua.  That city he found already in the power of
the enemy; but on the other hand the attempts of the enemy on Neapolis
had been thwarted by the courageous resistance of the citizens, and
the Romans were still in good time to throw a garrison into that
important port.  With equal fidelity the two other large coast towns,
Cumae and Nuceria, adhered to Rome.  In Nola the struggle between
the popular and senatorial parties as to whether they should attach
themselves to the Carthaginians or to the Romans, was still undecided.
Informed that the former were gaining the superiority, Marcellus
crossed the river at Caiatia, and marching along the heights of
Suessula so as to evade the enemy's army, he reached Nola in
sufficient time to hold it against the foes without and within.
In a sally he even repulsed Hannibal in person with considerable loss;
a success which, as the first defeat sustained by Hannibal, was of far
more importance from its moral effect than from its material results.
In Campania indeed, Nuceria, Acerrae, and, after an obstinate siege
prolonged into the following year (539), Casilinum also, the key
of the Volturnus, were conquered by Hannibal, and the severest
punishments were inflicted on the senates of these towns which had
adhered to Rome.  But terror is a bad weapon of proselytism; the
Romans succeeded, with comparatively trifling loss, in surmounting the
perilous moment of their first weakness.  The war in Campania came to
a standstill; then winter came on, and Hannibal took up his quarters
in Capua, the luxury of which was by no means fraught with benefit to
his troops who for three years had not been under a roof.  In the next
year (539) the war acquired another aspect.  The tried general Marcus
Marcellus, Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus who had distinguished himself
in the campaign of the previous year as master of the horse to the
dictator, and the veteran Quintus Fabius Maximus, took--Marcellus as
proconsul, the two others as consuls--the command of the three Roman
armies which were destined to surround Capua and Hannibal; Marcellus
resting on Nola and Suessula, Maximus taking a position on the right
bank of the Volturnus near Cales, and Gracchus on the coast near
Liternum, covering Neapolis and Cumae.  The Campanians, who marched
to Hamae three miles from Cumae with a view to surprise the Cumaeans,
were thoroughly defeated by Gracchus; Hannibal, who had appeared
before Cumae to wipe out the stain, was himself worsted in a combat,
and when the pitched battle offered by him was declined, retreated
in ill humour to Capua.  While the Romans in Campania thus not only
maintained what they possessed, but also recovered Compulteria and
other smaller places, loud complaints were heard from the eastern
allies of Hannibal.  A Roman army under the praetor Marcus Valerius
had taken position at Luceria, partly that it might, in connection
with the Roman fleet, watch the east coast and the movements of the
Macedonians; partly that it might, in connection with the army of
Nola, levy contributions on the revolted Samnites, Lucanians, and
Hirpini.  To give relief to these, Hannibal turned first against his
most active opponent, Marcus Marcellus; but the latter achieved under
the walls of Nola no inconsiderable victory over the Phoenician army,
and it was obliged to depart, without having cleared off the stain,
from Campania for Arpi, in order at length to check the progress of
the enemy's army in Apulia.  Tiberius Gracchus followed it with his
corps, while the two other Roman armies in Campania made arrangements
to proceed next spring to the attack of Capua.

Hannibal Reduced to the Defensive
His Prospects as to Reinforcements

The clear vision of Hannibal had not been dazzled by his victories.
It became every day more evident that he was not thus gaining his
object Those rapid marches, that adventurous shifting of the war to
and fro, to which Hannibal was mainly indebted for his successes,
were at an end; the enemy had become wiser; further enterprises were
rendered almost impossible by the inevitable necessity of defending
what had been gained.  The offensive was not to be thought of; the
defensive was difficult, and threatened every year to become more so.
He could not conceal from himself that the second half of his great
task, the subjugation of the Latins and the conquest of Rome, could
not be accomplished with his own forces and those of his Italian
allies alone.  Its accomplishment depended on the council at Carthage,
on the head-quarters at Cartagena, on the courts of Pella and of
Syracuse.  If all the energies of Africa, Spain, Sicily, and Macedonia
should now be exerted in common against the common enemy; if Lower
Italy should become the great rendezvous for the armies and fleets of
the west, south, and east; he might hope successfully to finish what
the vanguard under his leadership had so brilliantly begun.  The most
natural and easy course would have been to send to him adequate
support from home; and the Carthaginian state, which had remained
almost untouched by the war and had been brought from deep decline so
near to complete victory by a small band of resolute patriots acting
of their own accord and at their own risk, could beyond doubt have
done this.  That it would have been possible for a Phoenician fleet
of any desired strength to effect a landing at Locri or Croton,
especially as long as the port of Syracuse remained open to the
Carthaginians and the fleet at Brundisium was kept in check by
Macedonia, is shown by the unopposed disembarkation at Locri of 4000
Africans, whom Bomilcar about this time brought over from Carthage to
Hannibal, and still more by Hannibal's undisturbed embarkation, when
all had been already lost.  But after the first impression of the
victory of Cannae had died away, the peace party in Carthage, which
was at all times ready to purchase the downfall of its political
opponents at the expense of its country, and which found faithful
allies in the shortsightedness and indolence of the citizens, refused
the entreaties of the general for more decided support with the half-
simple, half-malicious reply, that he in fact needed no help inasmuch
as he was really victor; and thus contributed not much less than
the Roman senate to save Rome.  Hannibal, reared in the camp and a
stranger to the machinery of civic factions, found no popular leader
on whose support he could rely, such as his father had found in
Hasdrubal; and he was obliged to seek abroad the means of saving
his native country--means which itself possessed in rich abundance
at home.

For this purpose he might, at least with more prospect of success,
reckon on the leaders of the Spanish patriot army, on the connections
which he had formed in Syracuse, and on the intervention of Philip.
Everything depended on bringing new forces into the Italian field of
war against Rome from Spain, Syracuse, or Macedonia; and for the
attainment or for the prevention of this object wars were carried
on in Spain, Sicily, and Greece.  All of these were but means to an
end, and historians have often erred in accounting them of greater
importance.  So far as the Romans were concerned, they were
essentially defensive wars, the proper objects of which were to hold
the passes of the Pyrenees, to detain the Macedonian army in Greece,
to defend Messana and to bar the communication between Italy and
Sicily.  Of course this defensive warfare was, wherever it was
possible, waged by offensive methods; and, should circumstances be
favourable, it might develop into the dislodging of the Phoenicians
from Spain and Sicily, and into the dissolution of Hannibal's
alliances with Syracuse and with Philip.  The Italian war in itself
fell for the time being into the shade, and resolved itself into
conflicts about fortresses and razzias, which had no decisive effect
on the main issue.  Nevertheless, so long as the Phoenicians retained
the offensive at all, Italy always remained the central aim of
operations; and all efforts were directed towards, as all interest
centred in, the doing away, or perpetuating, of Hannibal's isolation
in southern Italy.

The Sending of Reinforcements Temporarily Frustrated

Had it been possible, immediately after the battle of Cannae, to bring
into play all the resources on which Hannibal thought that he might
reckon, he might have been tolerably certain of success.  But the
position of Hasdrubal at that time in Spain after the battle on the
Ebro was so critical, that the supplies of money and men, which the
victory of Cannae had roused the Carthaginian citizens to furnish,
were for the most part expended on Spain, without producing much
improvement in the position of affairs there.  The Scipios transferred
the theatre of war in the following campaign (539) from the Ebro to
the Guadalquivir; and in Andalusia, in the very centre of the proper
Carthaginian territory, they achieved at Illiturgi and Intibili two
brilliant victories.  In Sardinia communications entered into with
the natives led the Carthaginians to hope that they should be able
to master the island, which would have been of importance as an
intermediate station between Spain and Italy.  But Titus Manlius
Torquatus, who was sent with a Roman army to Sardinia, completely
destroyed the Carthaginian landing force, and reassured to the Romans
the undisputed possession of the island (539).  The legions from
Cannae sent to Sicily held their ground in the north and east of
the island with courage and success against the Carthaginians and
Hieronymus; the latter met his death towards the end of 539 by the
hand of an assassin.  Even in the case of Macedonia the ratification
of the alliance was delayed, principally because the Macedonian envoys
sent to Hannibal were captured on their homeward journey by the Roman
vessels of war.  Thus the dreaded invasion of the east coast was
temporarily suspended; and the Romans gained time to secure the very
important station of Brundisium first by their fleet and then by the
land army which before the arrival of Gracchus was employed for the
protection of Apulia, and even to make preparations for an invasion of
Macedonia in the event of war being declared.  While in Italy the war
thus came to a stand, out of Italy nothing was done on the part of
Carthage to accelerate the movement of new armies or fleets towards
the seat of war.  The Romans, again, had everywhere with the greatest
energy put themselves in a state of defence, and in that defensive
attitude had fought for the most part with good results wherever the
genius of Hannibal was absent.  Thereupon the short-lived patriotism,
which the victory of Cannae had awakened in Carthage, evaporated; the
not inconsiderable forces which had been organized there were, either
through factious opposition or merely through unskilful attempts
to conciliate the different opinions expressed in the council, so
frittered away that they were nowhere of any real service, and but a
very small portion arrived at the spot where they would have been most
useful.  At the close of 539 the reflecting Roman statesman might
assure himself that the urgency of the danger was past, and that the
resistance so heroically begun had but to persevere in its exertions
at all points in order to achieve its object.

War in Sicily
Siege of Syracuse

First of all the war in Sicily came to an end.  It had formed no part
of Hannibal's original plan to excite a war on the island; but partly
through accident, chiefly through the boyish vanity of the imprudent
Hieronymus, a land war had broken out there, which--doubtless because
Hannibal had not planned it--the Carthaginian council look up with
especial zeal.  After Hieronymus was killed at the close of 539, it
seemed more than doubtful whether the citizens would persevere in
the policy which he had pursued.  If any city had reason to adhere
to Rome, that city was Syracuse; for the victory of the Carthaginians
over the Romans could not but give to the former, at any rate, the
sovereignty of all Sicily, and no one could seriously believe that
the promises made by Carthage to the Syracusans would be really kept.
Partly induced by this consideration, partly terrified by the
threatening preparations of the Romans--who made every effort to
bring once more under their complete control that important island,
the bridge between Italy and Africa, and now for the campaign of 540
sent their best general, Marcus Marcellus, to Sicily--the Syracusan
citizens showed a disposition to obtain oblivion of the past by a
timely return to the Roman alliance.  But, amidst the dreadful
confusion in the city--which after the death of Hieronymus was
agitated alternately by endeavours to re-establish the ancient freedom
of the people and by the -coups de main- of the numerous pretenders to
the vacant throne, while the captains of the foreign mercenary troops
were the real masters of the place--Hannibal's dexterous emissaries,
Hippocrates and Epicydes, found opportunity to frustrate the projects
of peace.  They stirred up the multitude in the name of liberty;
descriptions, exaggerated beyond measure, of the fearful punishment
that the Romans were said to have inflicted on the Leontines, who had
just been re-conquered, awakened doubts even among the better portion
of the citizens whether it was not too late to restore their old
relations with Rome; while the numerous Roman deserters among the
mercenaries, mostly runaway rowers from the fleet, were easily
persuaded that a peace on the part of the citizens with Rome would
be their death-warrant.  So the chief magistrates were put to death,
the armistice was broken, and Hippocrates and Epicydes undertook
the government of the city.  No course was left to the consul except
to undertake a siege; but the skilful conduct of the defence,
in which the Syracusan engineer Archimedes, celebrated as a learned
mathematician, especially distinguished himself, compelled the Romans
after besieging the city for eight months to convert the siege into
a blockade by sea and land.

Carthaginian Expedition to Sicily
The Carthaginian Troops Destroyed
Conquest of Syracuse

In the meanwhile Carthage, which hitherto had only supported the
Syracusans with her fleets, on receiving news of their renewed rising
in arms against the Romans had despatched a strong land army under
Himilco to Sicily, which landed without interruption at Heraclea Minoa
and immediately occupied the important town of Agrigentum.  To effect
a junction with Himilco, the bold and able Hippocrates marched forth
from Syracuse with an army: the position of Marcellus between the
garrison of Syracuse and the two hostile armies began to be critical.
With the help of some reinforcements, however, which arrived from
Italy, he maintained his position in the island and continued the
blockade of Syracuse.  On the other hand, the greater portion of the
small inland towns were driven to the armies of the Carthaginians not
so much by the armies of the enemy, as by the fearful severity of the
Roman proceedings in the island, more especially the slaughter of the
citizens of Enna, suspected of a design to revolt, by the Roman
garrison which was stationed there.  In 542 the besiegers of Syracuse
during a festival in the city succeeded in scaling a portion of the
extensive outer walls that had been deserted by the guard, and in
penetrating into the suburbs which stretched from the "island" and
the city proper on the shore (Achradina) towards the interior.  The
fortress of Euryalus, which, situated at the extreme western end of
the suburbs, protected these and the principal road leading from the
interior to Syracuse, was thus cut off and fell not long afterwards.
When the siege of the city thus began to assume a turn favourable
to the Romans, the two armies under Himilco and Hippocrates advanced
to its relief, and attempted a simultaneous attack on the Roman
positions, combined with an attempt at landing on the part of the
Carthaginian fleet and a sally of the Syracusan garrison; but the
attack was repulsed on all sides, and the two relieving armies were
obliged to content themselves with encamping before the city, in the
low marshy grounds along the Anapus, which in the height of summer and
autumn engender pestilences fatal to those that tarry in them.  These
pestilences had often saved the city, oftener even than the valour of
its citizens; in the times of the first Dionysius, two Phoenician
armies in the act of besieging the city had been in this way destroyed
under its very walls.  Now fate turned the special defence of the city
into the means of its destruction; while the army of Marcellus
quartered in the suburbs suffered but little, fevers desolated the
Phoenician and Syracusan bivouacs.  Hippocrates died; Himilco and
most of the Africans died also; the survivors of the two armies,
mostly native Siceli, dispersed into the neighbouring cities.  The
Carthaginians made a further attempt to save the city from the sea
side; but the admiral Bomilcar withdrew, when the Roman fleet offered
him battle.  Epicydes himself, who commanded in the city, now
abandoned it as lost, and made his escape to Agrigentum.  Syracuse
would gladly have surrendered to the Romans; negotiations had already
begun.  But for the second time they were thwarted by the deserters:
in another mutiny of the soldiers the chief magistrates and a number
of respectable citizens were slain, and the government and the defence
of the city were entrusted by the foreign troops to their captains.
Marcellus now entered into a negotiation with one of these, which gave
into his hands one of the two portions of the city that were still
free, the "island"; upon which the citizens voluntarily opened to
him the gates of Achradina also (in the autumn of 542).  If mercy
was to be shown in any case, it might, even according to the far
from laudable principles of Roman public law as to the treatment
of perfidious communities, have been extended to this city, which
manifestly had not been at liberty to act for itself, and which had
repeatedly made the most earnest attempts to get rid of the tyranny
of the foreign soldiers.  Nevertheless, not only did Marcellus stain
his military honour by permitting a general pillage of the wealthy
mercantile city, in the course of which Archimedes and many other
citizens were put to death, but the Roman senate lent a deaf ear to
the complaints which the Syracusans afterwards presented regarding the
celebrated general, and neither returned to individuals their pillaged
property nor restored to the city its freedom.  Syracuse and the towns
that had been previously dependent on it were classed among the
communities tributary to Rome--Tauromenium and Neetum alone obtained
the same privileges as Messana, while the territory of Leontini became
Roman domain and its former proprietors Roman lessees--and no
Syracusan citizen was henceforth allowed to reside in the "island,"
the portion of the city that commanded the harbour.

Guerilla War in Sicily
Agrigentum Occupied by the Romans
Sicily Tranquillized

Sicily thus appeared lost to the Carthaginians; but the genius of
Hannibal exercised even from a distance its influence there.  He
despatched to the Carthaginian army, which remained at.  Agrigentum
in perplexity and inaction under Hanno and Epicydes, a Libyan cavalry
officer Muttines, who took the command of the Numidian cavalry, and
with his flying squadrons, fanning into an open flame the bitter
hatred which the despotic rule of the Romans had excited over all the
island, commenced a guerilla warfare on the most extensive scale and
with the happiest results; so that he even, when the Carthaginian and
Roman armies met on the river Himera, sustained some conflicts with
Marcellus himself successfully.  The relations, however, which
prevailed between Hannibal and the Carthaginian council, were here
repeated on a small scale.  The general appointed by the council
pursued with jealous envy the officer sent by Hannibal, and insisted
upon giving battle to the proconsul without Muttines and the
Numidians.  The wish of Hanno was carried out, and he was completely
beaten.  Muttines was not induced to deviate from his course; he
maintained himself in the interior of the country, occupied several
small towns, and was enabled by the not inconsiderable reinforcements
which joined him from Carthage gradually to extend his operations.
His successes were so brilliant, that at length the commander-in-
chief, who could not otherwise prevent the cavalry officer from
eclipsing him, deprived him summarily of the command of the light
cavalry, and entrusted it to his own son.  The Numidian, who had
now for two years preserved the island for his Phoenician masters,
had the measure of his patience exhausted by this treatment.  He and
his horsemen who refused to follow the younger Hanno entered into
negotiations with the Roman general Marcus Valerius Laevinus and
delivered to him Agrigentum.  Hanno escaped in a boat, and went to
Carthage to report to his superiors the disgraceful high treason of
Hannibal's officer; the Phoenician garrison in the town was put to
death by the Romans, and the citizens were sold into slavery (544).
To secure the island from such surprises as the landing of 540, the
city received a new body of inhabitants selected from Sicilians well
disposed towards Rome; the old glorious Akragas was no more.  After
the whole of Sicily was thus subdued, the Romans exerted themselves to
restore some sort of tranquillity and order to the distracted island.
The pack of banditti that haunted the interior were driven together
en masse and conveyed to Italy, that from their head-quarters at
Rhegium they might burn and destroy in the territories of Hannibal's
allies.  The government did its utmost to promote the restoration
of agriculture which had been totally neglected in the island.
The Carthaginian council more than once talked of sending a fleet
to Sicily and renewing the war there; but the project went no further.

Philip of Macedonia and His Delay

Macedonia might have exercised an influence over the course of
events more decisive than that of Syracuse.  From the Eastern powers
neither furtherance nor hindrance was for the moment to be expected.
Antiochus the Great, the natural ally of Philip, had, after the
decisive victory of the Egyptians at Raphia in 537, to deem himself
fortunate in obtaining peace from the indolent Philopator on the basis
of the -status quo ante-.  The rivalry of the Lagidae and the constant
apprehension of a renewed outbreak of the war on the one hand, and
insurrections of pretenders in the interior and enterprises of all
sorts in Asia Minor, Bactria, and the eastern satrapies on the other,
prevented him from joining that great anti-Roman alliance which
Hannibal had in view.  The Egyptian court was decidedly on the side
of Rome, with which it renewed alliance in 544; but it was not to be
expected of Ptolemy Philopator, that he would support otherwise than
by corn-ships.  Accordingly there was nothing to prevent Greece and
Macedonia from throwing a decisive weight into the great Italian
struggle except their own discord; they might save the Hellenic name,
if they had the self-control to stand by each other for but a few
years against the common foe.  Such sentiments doubtless were current
in Greece.  The prophetic saying of Agelaus of Naupactus, that he was
afraid that the prize-fights in which the Hellenes now indulged at
home might soon be over; his earnest warning to direct their eyes to
the west, and not to allow a stronger power to impose on all the
parties now contending a peace of equal servitude--such sayings had
essentially contributed to bring about the peace between Philip and
the Aetolians (537), and it was a significant proof of the tendency
of that peace that the Aetolian league immediately nominated Agelaus
as its -strategus-.

National patriotism was bestirring itself in Greece as in Carthage:
for a moment it seemed possible to kindle a Hellenic national war
against Rome.  But the general in such a crusade could only be Philip
of Macedonia; and he lacked the enthusiasm and the faith in the
nation, without which such a war could not be waged.  He knew not
how to solve the arduous problem of transforming himself from the
oppressor into the champion of Greece.  His very delay in the
conclusion of the alliance with Hannibal damped the first and best
zeal of the Greek patriots; and when he did enter into the conflict
with Rome, his mode of conducting war was still less fitted to awaken
sympathy and confidence.  His first attempt, which was made in the
very year of the battle of Cannae (538), to obtain possession of the
city of Apollonia, failed in a way almost ridiculous, for Philip
turned back in all haste on receiving the totally groundless report
that a Roman fleet was steering for the Adriatic.  This took place
before there was a formal breach with Rome; when the breach at length
ensued, friend and foe expected a Macedonian landing in Lower Italy.
Since  539 a Roman fleet and army had been stationed at Brundisium to
meet it; Philip, who was without vessels of war, was constructing a
flotilla of light Illyrian barks to convey his army across.  But when
the endeavour had to be made in earnest, his courage failed to
encounter the dreaded quinqueremes at sea; he broke the promise which
he had given to his ally Hannibal to attempt a landing, and with the
view of still doing something he resolved to make an attack on his own
share of the spoil, the Roman possessions in Epirus (540).  Nothing
would have come of this even at the best; but the Romans, who well
knew that offensive was preferable to defensive protection, were by no
means content to remain--as Philip may have hoped--spectators of the
attack from the opposite shore.  The Roman fleet conveyed a division
of the army from Brundisium to Epirus; Oricum was recaptured from the
king, a garrison was thrown into Apollonia, and the Macedonian camp
was stormed.  Thereupon Philip passed from partial action to total
inaction, and notwithstanding all the complaints of Hannibal, who
vainly tried to breathe into such a halting and shortsighted policy
his own fire and clearness of decision, he allowed some years to
elapse in armed inactivity.

Rome Heads a Greek Coalition against Macedonia

Nor was Philip the first to renew the hostilities.  The fall of
Tarentum (542), by which Hannibal acquired an excellent port on the
coast which was the most convenient for the landing of a Macedonian
army, induced the Romans to parry the blow from a distance and to give
the Macedonians so much employment at home that they could not think
of an attempt on Italy.  The national enthusiasm in Greece had of
course evaporated long ago.  With the help of the old antagonism to
Macedonia, and of the fresh acts of imprudence and injustice of which
Philip had been guilty, the Roman admiral Laevinus found no difficulty
in organizing against Macedonia a coalition of the intermediate and
minor powers under the protectorate of Rome.  It was headed by the
Aetolians, at whose diet Laevinus had personally appeared and had
gained its support by a promise of the Acarnanian territory which
the Aetolians had long coveted.  They concluded with Rome a modest
agreement to rob the other Greeks of men and land on the joint
account, so that the land should belong to the Aetolians, the men
and moveables to the Romans.  They were joined by the states of anti-
Macedonian, or rather primarily of anti-Achaean, tendencies in Greece
proper; in Attica by Athens, in the Peloponnesus by Elis and Messene
and especially by Sparta, the antiquated constitution of which had
been just about this time overthrown by a daring soldier Machanidas,
in order that he might himself exercise despotic power under the
name of king Pelops, a minor, and might establish a government of
adventurers sustained by bands of mercenaries.  The coalition was
joined moreover by those constant antagonists of Macedonia, the
chieftains of the half-barbarous Thracian and Illyrian tribes, and
lastly by Attalus king of Pergamus, who followed out his own interest
with sagacity and energy amidst the ruin of the two great Greek states
which surrounded him, and had the acuteness even now to attach himself
as a client to Rome when his assistance was still of some value.

Resultless Warfare
Peace between Philip and the Greeks
Peace between Philip and Rome

It is neither agreeable nor necessary to follow the vicissitudes of
this aimless struggle.  Philip, although he was superior to each one
of his opponents and repelled their attacks on all sides with energy
and personal valour, yet consumed his time and strength in that
profitless defensive.  Now he had to turn against the Aetolians,
who in concert with the Roman fleet annihilated the unfortunate
Acarnanians and threatened Locris and Thessaly; now an invasion of
barbarians summoned him to the northern provinces; now the Achaeans
solicited his help against the predatory expeditions of Aetolians and
Spartans; now king Attalus of Pergamus and the Roman admiral Publius
Sulpicius with their combined fleets threatened the east coast or
landed troops in Euboea.  The want of a war fleet paralyzed Philip in
all his movements; he even went so far as to beg vessels of war from
his ally Prusias of Bithynia, and even from Hannibal.  It was only
towards the close of the war that he resolved--as he should have done
at first--to order the construction of 100 ships of war; of these
however no use was made, if the order was executed at all.  All who
understood the position of Greece and sympathized with it lamented
the unhappy war, in which the last energies of Greece preyed upon
themselves and the prosperity of the land was destroyed; repeatedly
the commercial states, Rhodes, Chios, Mitylene, Byzantium, Athens, and
even Egypt itself had attempted a mediation.  In fact both parties had
an interest in coming to terms.  The Aetolians, to whom their Roman
allies attached the chief importance, had, like the Macedonians,
much to suffer from the war; especially after the petty king of the
Athamanes had been gained by Philip, and the interior of Aetolia had
thus been laid open to Macedonian incursions.  Many Aetolians too had
their eyes gradually opened to the dishonourable and pernicious part
which the Roman alliance condemned them to play; a cry of horror
pervaded the whole Greek nation when the Aetolians in concert with
the Romans sold whole bodies of Hellenic citizens, such as those of
Anticyra, Oreus, Dyme, and Aegina, into slavery.  But the Aetolians
were no longer free; they ran a great risk if of their own accord they
concluded peace with Philip, and they found the Romans by no means
disposed, especially after the favourable turn which matters were
taking in Spain and in Italy, to desist from a war, which on their
part was carried on with merely a few ships, and the burden and
injury of which fell mainly on the Aetolians.  At length however
the Aetolians resolved to listen to the mediating cities: and,
notwithstanding the counter-efforts of the Romans, a peace was
arranged in the winter of 548-9 between the Greek powers.  Aetolia had
converted an over-powerful ally into a dangerous enemy; but the Roman
senate, which just at that time was summoning all the resources of the
exhausted state for the decisive expedition to Africa, did not deem it
a fitting moment to resent the breach of the alliance.  The war with
Philip could not, after the withdrawal of the Aetolians, have been
carried on by the Romans without considerable exertions of their own;
and it appeared to them more convenient to terminate it also by a
peace, whereby the state of things before the war was substantially
restored and Rome in particular retained all her possessions on the
coast of Epirus except the worthless territory of the Atintanes.
Under the circumstances Philip had to deem himself fortunate in
obtaining such terms; but the fact proclaimed--what could not indeed
be longer concealed--that all the unspeakable misery which ten years
of a warfare waged with revolting inhumanity had brought upon Greece
had been endured in vain, and that the grand and just combination,
which Hannibal had projected and all Greece had for a moment joined,
was shattered irretrievably.

Spanish War

In Spain, where the spirit of Hamilcar and Hannibal was powerful, the
struggle was more earnest.  Its progress was marked by the singular
vicissitudes incidental to the peculiar nature of the country and the
habits of the people.  The farmers and shepherds, who inhabited the
beautiful valley of the Ebro and the luxuriantly fertile Andalusia as
well as the rough intervening highland region traversed by numerous
wooded mountain ranges, could easily be assembled in arms as a general
levy; but it was difficult to lead them against the enemy or even to
keep them together at all.  The towns could just as little be combined
for steady and united action, obstinately as in each case they bade
defiance to the oppressor behind their walls.  They all appear to have
made little distinction between the Romans and the Carthaginians;
whether the troublesome guests who had established themselves in the
valley of the Ebro, or those who had established themselves on the
Guadalquivir, possessed a larger or smaller portion of the peninsula,
was probably to the natives very much a matter of indifference; and
for that reason the tenacity of partisanship so characteristic of
Spain was but little prominent in this war, with isolated exceptions
such as Saguntum on the Roman and Astapa on the Carthaginian side.
But, as neither the Romans nor the Africans had brought with them
sufficient forces of their own, the war necessarily became on both
sides a struggle to gain partisans, which was decided rarely by solid
attachment, more usually by fear, money, or accident, and which, when
it seemed about to end, resolved itself into an endless series of
fortress-sieges and guerilla conflicts, whence it soon revived with
fresh fury.  Armies appeared and disappeared like sandhills on the
seashore; on the spot where a hill stood yesterday, not a trace of
it remains today.  In general the superiority was on the side of
the Romans, partly because they at first appeared in Spain as the
deliverers of the land from Phoenician despotism, partly because of
the fortunate selection of their leaders and of the stronger nucleus
of trustworthy troops which these brought along with them.  It is
hardly possible, however, with the very imperfect and--in point of
chronology especially--very confused accounts which have been handed
down to us, to give a satisfactory view of a war so conducted.

Successes of the Scipios
Syphax against Carthage

The two lieutenant-governors of the Romans in the peninsula, Gnaeus
and Publius Scipio--both of them, but especially Gnaeus, good
generals and excellent administrators--accomplished their task with
the most brilliant success.  Not only was the barrier of the Pyrenees
steadfastly maintained, and the attempt to re-establish the
interrupted communication by land between the commander-in-chief of
the enemy and his head-quarters sternly repulsed; not only had a
Spanish New Rome been created, after the model of the Spanish New
Carthage, by means of the comprehensive fortifications and harbour
works of Tarraco, but the Roman armies had already in 539 fought with
success in Andalusia.(2)  Their expedition thither was repeated in
the following year (540) with still greater success.  The Romans
carried their arms almost to the Pillars of Hercules, extended their
protectorate in South Spain, and lastly by regaining and restoring
Saguntum secured for themselves an important station on the line from
the Ebro to Cartagena, repaying at the same time as far as possible
an old debt which the nation owed.  While the Scipios thus almost
dislodged the Carthaginians from Spain, they knew how to raise up a
dangerous enemy to them in western Africa itself in the person of the
powerful west African prince Syphax, ruling in the modern provinces of
Oran and Algiers, who entered into connections with the Romans (about
541).  Had it been possible to supply him with a Roman army, great
results might have been expected; but at that time not a man could be
spared from Italy, and the Spanish army was too weak to be divided.
Nevertheless the troops belonging to Syphax himself, trained and led
by Roman officers, excited so serious a ferment among the Libyan
subjects of Carthage that the lieutenant-commander of Spain and
Africa, Hasdrubal Barcas, went in person to Africa with the flower
of his Spanish troops.  His arrival in all likelihood gave another
turn to the matter; the king Gala--in what is now the province of
Constantine--who had long been the rival of Syphax, declared for
Carthage, and his brave son Massinissa defeated Syphax, and compelled
him to make peace.  Little more is related of this Libyan war than the
story of the cruel vengeance which Carthage, according to her wont,
inflicted on the rebels after the victory of Massinissa.

The Scipios Defeated and Killed
Spain South of the Ebro Lost to the Romans
Nero Sent to Spain

This turn of affairs in Africa had an important effect on the war in
Spain.  Hasdrubal was able once more to turn to that country (543),
whither he was soon followed by considerable reinforcements and by
Massinissa himself.  The Scipios, who during the absence of the
enemy's general (541, 542) had continued to plunder and to gain
partisans in the Carthaginian territory, found themselves unexpectedly
assailed by forces so superior that they were under the necessity of
either retreating behind the Ebro or calling out the Spaniards.  They
chose the latter course, and took into their pay 20,000 Celtiberians;
and then, in order the better to encounter the three armies of the
enemy under Hasdrubal Barcas, Hasdrubal the son of Gisgo, and Mago,
they divided their army and did not even keep their Roman troops
together.  They thus prepared the way for their own destruction.
While Gnaeus with his corps, containing a third of the Roman and all
the Spanish troops, lay encamped opposite to Hasdrubal Barcas, the
latter had no difficulty in inducing the Spaniards in the Roman army
by means of a sum of money to withdraw--which perhaps to their free-
lance ideas of morals did not even seem a breach of fidelity, seeing
that they did not pass over to the enemies of their paymaster.
Nothing was left to the Roman general but hastily to begin his
retreat, in which the enemy closely followed him.  Meanwhile the
second Roman corps under Publius found itself vigorously assailed
by the two other Phoenician armies under Hasdrubal son of Gisgo
and Mago, and the daring squadrons of Massinissa's horse gave to
the Carthaginians a decided advantage.  The Roman camp was almost
surrounded; when the Spanish auxiliaries already on the way should
arrive, the Romans would be completely hemmed in.  The bold resolve
of the proconsul to encounter with his best troops the advancing
Spaniards, before their appearance should fill up the gap in the
blockade, ended unfortunately.  The Romans indeed had at first the
advantage; but the Numidian horse, who were rapidly despatched in
pursuit, soon overtook them and prevented them both from following up
the victory which they had already half gained, and from marching
back, until the Phoenician infantry came up and at length the fall of
the general converted the lost battle into a defeat.  After Publius
had thus fallen, Gnaeus, who slowly retreating had with difficulty
defended himself against the one Carthaginian army, found himself
suddenly assailed at once by three, and all retreat cut off by the
Numidian cavalry.  Hemmed in upon a bare hill, which did not even
afford the possibility of pitching a camp, the whole corps were cut
down or taken prisoners.  As to the fate of the general himself no
certain information was ever obtained.  A small division alone was
conducted by Gaius Marcius, an excellent officer of the school of
Gnaeus, in safety to the other bank of the Ebro; and thither the
legate Titus Fonteius also succeeded in bringing safely the portion
of the corps of Publius that had been left in the camp; most even of
the Roman garrisons scattered in the south of Spain were enabled to
flee thither.  In all Spain south of the Ebro the Phoenicians ruled
undisturbed; and the moment seemed not far distant, when the river
would be crossed, the Pyrenees would be open, and the communication
with Italy would be restored.  But the emergency in the Roman camp
called the right man to the command.  The choice of the soldiers,
passing over older and not incapable officers, summoned that Gaius
Marcius to become leader of the army; and his dexterous management
and quite as much perhaps, the envy and discord among the three
Carthaginian generals, wrested from these the further fruits of their
important victory.  Such of the Carthaginians as had crossed the river
were driven back, and the line of the Ebro was held in the meanwhile,
till Rome gained time to send a new army and a new general.
Fortunately the turn of the war in Italy, where Capua had just fallen,
allowed this to be done.  A strong legion--12,000 men--arriving under
the propraetor Gaius Claudius Nero, restored the balance of arms.
An expedition to Andalusia in the following year (544) was most
successful; Hasdrubal Barcas was beset and surrounded, and escaped a
capitulation only by ignoble stratagem and open perfidy.  But Nero was
not the right general for the Spanish war.  He was an able officer,
but a harsh, irritable, unpopular man, who had little skill in the
art of renewing old connections or of forming new ones, or in taking
advantage of the injustice and arrogance with which the Carthaginians
after the death of the Scipios had treated friend and foe in Further
Spain, and had exasperated all against them.

Publius Scipio

The senate, which formed a correct judgment as to the importance
and the peculiar character of the Spanish war, and had learned from
the Uticenses brought in as prisoners by the Roman fleet the great
exertions which were making in Carthage to send Hasdrubal and
Massinissa with a numerous army over the Pyrenees, resolved to
despatch to Spain new reinforcements and an extraordinary general of
higher rank, the nomination of whom they deemed it expedient to leave
to the people.  For long--so runs the story--nobody announced himself
as ready to take in hand the complicated and perilous business; but
at last a young officer of twenty-seven, Publius Scipio (son of the
general of the same name that had fallen in Spain), who had held the
offices of military tribune and aedile, came forward to solicit it.
It is incredible that the Roman senate should have left to accident
an election of such importance in this meeting of the Comitia which
it had itself suggested, and equally incredible that ambition and
patriotism should have so died out in Rome that no tried officer
presented himself for the important post.  If on the other hand the
eyes of the senate turned to the young, talented, and experienced
officer, who had brilliantly distinguished himself in the hotly-
contested days on the Ticinus and at Cannae, but who still had not the
rank requisite for his coming forward as the successor of men who had
been praetors and consuls, it was very natural to adopt this course,
which compelled the people out of good nature to admit the only
candidate notwithstanding his defective qualification, and which could
not but bring both him and the Spanish expedition, which was doubtless
very unpopular, into favour with the multitude.  If the effect of this
ostensibly unpremeditated candidature was thus calculated, it was
perfectly successful.  The son, who went to avenge the death of a
father whose life he had saved nine years before on the Ticinus;
the young man of manly beauty and long locks, who with modest blushes
offered himself in the absence of a better for the post of danger;
the mere military tribune, whom the votes of the centuries now raised
at once to the roll of the highest magistracies--all this made a
wonderful and indelible impression on the citizens and farmers of
Rome.  And in truth Publius Scipio was one, who was himself
enthusiastic, and who inspired enthusiasm.  He was not one of the few
who by their energy and iron will constrain the world to adopt and to
move in new paths for centuries, or who at any rate grasp the reins of
destiny for years till its wheels roll over them.  Publius Scipio
gained battles and conquered countries under the instructions of the
senate; with the aid of his military laurels he took also a prominent
position in Rome as a statesman; but a wide interval separates such a
man from an Alexander or a Caesar.  As an officer he rendered at least
no greater service to his country than Marcus Marcellus; and as a
politician, although not perhaps himself fully conscious of the
unpatriotic and personal character of his policy, he injured his
country at least as much, as he benefited it by his military skill.
Yet a special charm lingers around the form of that graceful hero;
it is surrounded, as with a dazzling halo, by the atmosphere of serene
and confident inspiration, in which Scipio with mingled credulity and
adroitness always moved.  With quite enough of enthusiasm to warm
men's hearts, and enough of calculation to follow in every case the
dictates of intelligence, while not leaving out of account the vulgar;
not naive enough to share the belief of the multitude in his divine
inspirations, nor straightforward enough to set it aside, and yet in
secret thoroughly persuaded that he was a man specially favoured of
the gods--in a word, a genuine prophetic nature; raised above the
people, and not less aloof from them; a man of steadfast word and
kingly spirit, who thought that he would humble himself by adopting
the ordinary title of a king, but could never understand how the
constitution of the republic should in his case be binding;
so confident in his own greatness that he knew nothing of envy
or of hatred, courteously acknowledged other men's merits, and
compassionately forgave other men's faults; an excellent officer and
a refined diplomatist without the repellent special impress of either
calling, uniting Hellenic culture with the fullest national feeling of
a Roman, an accomplished speaker and of graceful manners--Publius
Scipio won the hearts of soldiers and of women, of his countrymen
and of the Spaniards, of his rivals in the senate and of his greater
Carthaginian antagonist.  His name was soon on every one's lips, and
his was the star which seemed destined to bring victory and peace
to his country.

Scipio Goes to Spain
Capture of New Carthage

Publius Scipio went to Spain in 544-5, accompanied by the propraetor
Marcus Silanus, who was to succeed Nero and to serve as assistant and
counsellor to the young commander-in-chief, and by his intimate friend
Gaius Laelius as admiral, and furnished with a legion exceeding the
usual strength and a well-filled chest.  His appearance on the scene
was at once signalized by one of the boldest and most fortunate -coups
de main- that are known in history.  Of the three Carthaginian
generals Hasdrubal Barcas was stationed at the sources, Hasdrubal
son of Gisgo at the mouth, of the Tagus, and Mago at the Pillars of
Hercules; the nearest of them was ten days' march from the Phoenician
capital New Carthage.  Suddenly in the spring of 545, before the
enemy's armies began to move, Scipio set out with his whole army of
nearly 30,000 men and the fleet for this town, which he could reach
from the mouth of the Ebro by the coast route in a few days, and
surprised the Phoenician garrison, not above 1000 men strong, by a
combined attack by sea and land.  The town, situated on a tongue of
land projecting into the harbour, found itself threatened at once on
three sides by the Roman fleet, and on the fourth by the legions; and
all help was far distant.  Nevertheless the commandant Mago defended
himself with resolution and armed the citizens, as the soldiers did
not suffice to man the walls.  A sortie was attempted; but the Romans
repelled it with ease and, without taking time to open a regular
siege, began the assault on the landward side.  Eagerly the assailants
pushed their advance along the narrow land approach to the town;
new columns constantly relieved those that were fatigued; the weak
garrison was utterly exhausted; but the Romans had gained no
advantage.  Scipio had not expected any; the assault was merely
designed to draw away the garrison from the side next to the harbour,
where, having been informed that part of the latter was left dry at
ebb-tide, he meditated a second attack.  While the assault was raging
on the landward side, Scipio sent a division with ladders over the
shallow bank "where Neptune himself showed them the way," and they had
actually the good fortune to find the walls at that point undefended.
Thus the city was won on the first day; whereupon Mago in the citadel
capitulated.  With the Carthaginian capital there fell into the hands
of the Romans 18 dismantled vessels of war and 63 transports, the
whole war-stores, considerable supplies of corn, the war-chest of 600
talents (more than; 40,000 pounds), ten thousand captives, among whom
were eighteen Carthaginian gerusiasts or judges, and the hostages of
all the Spanish allies of Carthage.  Scipio promised the hostages
permission to return home so soon as their respective communities
should have entered into alliance with Rome, and employed the
resources which the city afforded to reinforce and improve the
condition of his army.  He ordered the artisans of New Carthage,
2000 in number, to work for the Roman army, promising to them liberty
at the close of the war, and he selected the able-bodied men among
the remaining multitude to serve as rowers in the fleet.  But the
burgesses of the city were spared, and allowed to retain their liberty
and former position.  Scipio knew the Phoenicians, and was aware that
they would obey; and it was important that a city possessing the only
excellent harbour on the east coast and rich silver mines should be
secured by something more than a garrison.

Success thus crowned the bold enterprise--bold, because it was not
unknown to Scipio that Hasdrubal Barcas had received orders from his
government to advance towards Gaul and was engaged in fulfilling them,
and because the weak division left behind on the Ebro was not in a
position seriously to oppose that movement, should the return of
Scipio be delayed.  But he was again at Tarraco, before Hasdrubal made
his appearance on the Ebro.  The hazard of the game which the young
general played, when he abandoned his primary task in order to execute
a dashing stroke, was concealed by the fabulous success which Neptune
and Scipio had gained in concert.  The marvellous capture of the
Phoenician capital so abundantly justified all the expectations
which had been formed at home regarding the wondrous youth, that
none could venture to utter any adverse opinion.  Scipio's command was
indefinitely prolonged; he himself resolved no longer to confine his
efforts to the meagre task of guarding the passes of the Pyrenees.
Already, in consequence of the fall of New Carthage, not only had
the Spaniards on the north of the Ebro completely submitted, but
even beyond the Ebro the most powerful princes had exchanged
the Carthaginian for the Roman protectorate.

Scipio Goes to Andalusia
Hasdrubal Crosses the Pyrenees

Scipio employed the winter of 545-6 in breaking up his fleet and
increasing his  land  army with  the men thus acquired, so that he
might at once guard the north and assume the offensive in the south
more energetically than before; and he marched in 546 to Andalusia.
There he: encountered Hasdrubal Barcas, who, in the execution of his
long-cherished plan, was moving northward to the help of his brother.
A battle took place at Baecula, in which the Romans claimed the
victory and professed to have made 10,000 captives; but Hasdrubal
substantially attained his end, although at the sacrifice of a portion
of his army.  With his chest, his elephants, and the best portion of
his troops, he fought his way to the north coast of Spain; marching
along the shore, he reached the western passes of the Pyrenees which
appear to have been unoccupied, and before the bad season began he
was in Gaul, where he took up quarters for the winter.  It was evident
that the resolve of Scipio to combine offensive operations with the
defensive which he had been instructed to maintain was inconsiderate
and unwise.  The immediate task assigned to the Spanish army, which
not only Scipio's father and uncle, but even Gaius Marcius and Gaius
Nero had accomplished with much inferior means, was not enough for the
arrogance of the victorious general at the head of a numerous army;
and he was mainly to blame for the extremely critical position of Rome
in the summer of 547, when the plan of Hannibal for a combined attack
on the Romans was at length realized.  But the gods covered the errors
of their favourite with laurels.  In Italy the peril fortunately
passed over; the Romans were glad to accept the bulletin of the
ambiguous victory of Baecula, and, when fresh tidings of victory
arrived from Spain, they thought no more of the circumstance that
they had had to combat the ablest general and the flower of the
Hispano-Phoenician army in Italy.

Spain Conquered
Mago Goes to Italy
Gades Becomes Roman

After the removal of Hasdrubal Barcas the two generals who were
left in Spain determined for the time being to retire, Hasdrubal
son of Gisgo to Lusitania, Mago even to the Baleares; and, until new
reinforcements should arrive from Africa, they left the light cavalry
of Massinissa alone to wage a desultory warfare in Spain, as Muttines
had done so successfully in Sicily.  The whole east coast thus fell
into the power of the Romans.  In the following year (547) Hanno
actually made his appearance from Africa with a third army, whereupon
Mago and Hasdrubal returned to Andalusia.  But Marcus Silanus defeated
the united armies of Mago and Hanno, and captured the latter in
person.  Hasdrubal upon this abandoned the idea of keeping the open
field, and distributed his troops among the Andalusian cities, of
which Scipio was during this year able to storm only one, Oringis.
The Phoenicians seemed vanquished; but yet they were able in the
following year (548) once more to send into the field a powerful army,
32 elephants, 4000 horse, and 70,000 foot, far the greater part of
whom, it is true, were hastily-collected: Spanish militia.  Again
a battle took place at Baecula.  The Roman army numbered little
more than half that of the enemy, and was also to a considerable
extent composed of Spaniards.  Scipio, like Wellington in similar
circumstances, disposed his Spaniards so that they should not partake
in the fight--the only possible mode of preventing their dispersion
--while on the other hand he threw his Roman troops in the first
instance on the Spaniards.  The day was nevertheless obstinately
contested; but at length the Romans were the victors, and, as a matter
of course, the defeat of such an army was equivalent to its complete
dissolution--Hasdrubal and Mago singly made their escape to Gades.
The Romans were now without a rival in the peninsula; the few towns
that did not submit with good will were subdued one by one, and some
of them were punished with cruel severity.  Scipio was even able to
visit Syphax on the African coast, and to enter into communications
with him and also with Massinissa with reference to an expedition
to Africa--a foolhardy venture, which was not warranted by any
corresponding advantage, however much the report of it might please
the curiosity of the citizens of the capital at home.  Gades alone,
where Mago held command, was still Phoenician.  For a moment it seemed
as if, after the Romans had entered upon the Carthaginian heritage and
had sufficiently undeceived the expectation cherished here and there
among the Spaniards that after the close of the Phoenician rule they
would get rid of their Roman guests also and regain their ancient
freedom, a general insurrection against the Romans would break forth
in Spain, in which the former allies of Rome would take the lead.
The sickness of the Roman general and the mutiny of one of his corps,
occasioned by their pay being in arrear for many years, favoured
the rising.  But Scipio recovered sooner than was expected, and
dexterously suppressed the tumult among the soldiers; upon which
the communities that had taken the lead in the national rising were
subdued at once before the insurrection gained ground.  Seeing that
nothing came of this movement and Gades could not be permanently held,
the Carthaginian government ordered Mago to gather together whatever
could be got in ships, troops, and money, and with these, if possible,
to give another turn to the war in Italy.  Scipio could not prevent
this--his dismantling of the fleet now avenged itself--and he was a
second time obliged to leave in the hands of his gods the defence,
with which he had been entrusted, of his country against new
invasions.  The last of Hamilcar's sons left the peninsula without
opposition.  After his departure Gades, the oldest and last possession
of the Phoenicians on Spanish soil, submitted on favourable conditions
to the new masters.  Spain was, after a thirteen years' struggle,
converted from a Carthaginian into a Roman province, in which the
conflict with the Romans was still continued for centuries by means of
insurrections always suppressed and yet never subdued, but in which at
the moment no enemy stood opposed to Rome.  Scipio embraced the first
moment of apparent peace to resign his command (in the end of 548),
and to report at Rome in person the victories which he had achieved
and the provinces which he had won.

Italian War
Position of the Armies

While the war was thus terminated in Sicily by Marcellus, in Greece by
Publius Sulpicius, and in Spain by Scipio, the mighty struggle went on
without interruption in the Italian peninsula.  There after the battle
of Cannae had been fought and its effects in loss or gain could by
degrees be discerned, at the commencement of 540, the fifth year of
the war, the dispositions of the opposing Romans and Phoenicians were
the following.  North Italy had been reoccupied by the Romans after
the departure of Hannibal, and was protected by three legions, two of
which were stationed in the Celtic territory, the third as a reserve
in Picenum.  Lower Italy, as far as Mount Garganus and the Volturnus,
was, with the exception of the fortresses and most of the ports, in
the hands of Hannibal.  He lay with his main army at Arpi, while
Tiberius Gracchus with four legions confronted him in Apulia, resting
upon the fortresses of Luceria and Beneventum.  In the land of the
Bruttians, where the inhabitants had thrown themselves entirely into
the arms of Hannibal, and where even the ports--excepting Rhegium,
which the Romans protected from Messana--had been occupied by the
Phoenicians, there was a second Carthaginian army under Hanno, which
in the meanwhile saw no enemy to face it.  The Roman main army of four
legions under the two consuls, Quintus Fabius and Marcus Marcellus,
was on the point of attempting to recover Capua.  To these there fell
to be added on the Roman side the reserve of two legions in the
capital, the garrisons placed in all the seaports--Tarentum and
Brundisium having been reinforced by a legion on account of the
Macedonian landing apprehended there--and lastly the strong fleet
which had undisputed command of the sea.  If we add to these the Roman
armies in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, the whole number of the Roman
forces, even apart from the garrison service in the fortresses of
Lower Italy which was provided for by the colonists occupying them,
may be estimated at not less than 200,000 men, of whom one-third were
newly enrolled for this year, and about one-half were Roman citizens.
It may be assumed that all the men capable of service from the 17th
to the 46th year were under arms, and that the fields, where the war
permitted them to be tilled at all, were cultivated by the slaves
and the old men, women, and children.  As may well be conceived,
under such circumstances the finances were in the most grievous
embarrassment; the land-tax, the main source of revenue, came in but
very irregularly.  Yet notwithstanding these difficulties as to men
and money the Romans were able--slowly indeed and by exerting all
their energies, but still surely--to recover what they had so rapidly
lost; to increase their armies yearly, while those of the Phoenicians
were diminishing; to gain ground year by year on the Italian allies
of Hannibal, the Campanians, Apulians, Samnites, and Bruttians, who
neither sufficed, like the Roman fortresses in Lower Italy, for their
own protection nor could be adequately protected by the weak army of
Hannibal; and finally, by means of the method of warfare instituted by
Marcus Marcellus, to develop the talent of their officers and to bring
into full play the superiority of the Roman infantry.  Hannibal might
doubtless still hope for victories, but no longer such victories as
those on the Trasimene lake and on the Aufidus; the times of the
citizen-generals were gone by.  No course was left to him but to wait
till either Philip should execute his long-promised descent or his own
brothers should join him from Spain, and meanwhile to keep himself,
his army, and his clients as far as possible free from harm and in
good humour.  We hardly recognize in the obstinate defensive system
which he now began the same general who had carried on the offensive
with almost unequalled impetuosity and boldness; it is marvellous in
a psychological as well as in a military point of view, that the same
man should have accomplished the two tasks set to him--tasks so
diametrically opposite in their character--with equal completeness.

Conflicts in the South of Italy

At first the war turned chiefly towards Campania.  Hannibal appeared
in good time to protect its capital, which he prevented from being
invested; but he was unable either to wrest any of the Campanian towns
held by the Romans from their strong Roman garrisons, or to prevent
--in addition to a number of less important country towns--Casilinum,
which secured his passage over the Volturnus, from being taken by
 the two consular armies after an obstinate defence.  An attempt of
Hannibal to gain Tarentum, with the view especially of acquiring a
safe landing-place for the Macedonian army, proved unsuccessful.
Meanwhile the Bruttian army of the Carthaginians under Hanno had
various encounters in Lucania with the Roman army of Apulia; here
Tiberius Gracchus sustained the struggle with good results, and after
a successful combat not far from Beneventum, in which the slave
legions pressed into service had distinguished themselves, he
bestowed liberty and burgess-rights on his slave-soldiers in
the name of the people.

Arpi Acquired by the Romans

In the following year (541) the Romans recovered the rich and
important Arpi, whose citizens, after the Roman soldiers had stolen
into the town, made common cause with them against the Carthaginian
garrison.  In general the bonds of the symmachy formed by Hannibal
were relaxing; a number of the leading Capuans and several of the
Bruttian towns passed over to Rome; even a Spanish division of the
Phoenician army, when informed by Spanish emissaries of the course
of events in their native land, passed from the Carthaginian into
the Roman service.

Tarentum Taken by Hannibal

The year 542 was more unfavourable for the Romans in consequence of
fresh political and military errors, of which Hannibal did not fail
to take advantage.  The connections which Hannibal maintained in the
towns of Magna Graecia had led to no serious result; save that the
hostages from Tarentum and Thurii, who were kept at Rome, were induced
by his emissaries to make a foolhardy attempt at escape, in which they
were speedily recaptured by the Roman posts.  But the injudicious
spirit of revenge displayed by the Romans was of more service to
Hannibal than his intrigues; the execution of all the hostages who
had sought to escape deprived them of a valuable pledge, and the
exasperated Greeks thenceforth meditated how they might open
their gates to Hannibal.  Tarentum was actually occupied by the
Carthaginians in consequence of an understanding with the citizens and
of the negligence of the Roman commandant; with difficulty the Roman
garrison maintained itself in the citadel.  The example of Tarentum
was followed by Heraclea, Thurii, and Metapontum, from which town the
garrison had to be withdrawn in order to save the Tarentine Acropolis.
These successes so greatly increased the risk of a Macedonian landing,
that Rome felt herself compelled to direct renewed attention and
renewed exertions to the Greek war, which had been almost totally
neglected; and fortunately the capture of Syracuse and the favourable
state of the Spanish war enabled her to do so.

Conflicts around Capua

At the chief seat of war, in Campania, the struggle went on with very
varying success.  The legions posted in the neighbourhood of Capua had
not yet strictly invested the city, but had so greatly hindered the
cultivation of the soil and the ingathering of the harvest, that the
populous city was in urgent need of supplies from without.  Hannibal
accordingly collected a considerable supply of grain, and directed
the Campanians to receive it at Beneventum; but their tardiness gave
the consuls Quintus Flaccus and Appius Claudius time to come up, to
inflict a severe defeat on Hanno who protected the grain, and to seize
his camp and all his stores.  The two consuls then invested the town,
while Tiberius Gracchus stationed himself on the Appian Way to prevent
Hannibal from approaching to relieve it But that brave officer fell
in consequence of the shameful stratagem of a perfidious Lucanian;
and his death was equivalent to a complete defeat, for his army,
consisting mostly of those slaves whom he had manumitted, dispersed
after the fall of their beloved leader.  So Hannibal found the road to
Capua open, and by his unexpected appearance compelled the two consuls
to raise the blockade which they had barely begun.  Their cavalry had
already, before Hannibal's arrival, been thoroughly defeated by the
Phoenician cavalry, which lay as a garrison in Capua under Hanno and
Bostar, and by the equally excellent Campanian horse.  The total
destruction of the regular troops and free bands in Lucania led by
Marcus Centenius, a man imprudently promoted from a subaltern to be
a general, and the not much less complete defeat of the negligent and
arrogant praetor Gnaeus Fulvius Flaccus in Apulia, closed the long
series of the misfortunes of this year.  But the stubborn perseverance
of the Romans again neutralized the rapid success of Hannibal, at
least at the most decisive point.  As soon as Hannibal turned his back
on Capua to proceed to Apulia, the Roman armies once more gathered
around that city, one at Puteoli and Volturnum under Appius Claudius,
another at Casilinum under Quintus Fulvius, and a third on the Nolan
road under the praetor Gaius Claudius Nero.  The three camps, well
entrenched and connected with one another by fortified lines,
precluded all access to the place, and the large, inadequately
provisioned city could not but find itself compelled by the mere
investment to surrender at no distant time, should no relief arrive.
As the winter of 542-3 drew to an end, the provisions were almost
exhausted, and urgent messengers, who were barely able to steal
through the well-guarded Roman lines, requested speedy help from
Hannibal, who was at Tarentum, occupied  with the siege of the
citadel.  With 33 elephants and his best troops he departed by
forced marches from Tarentum for Campania, captured the Roman post at
Caiatia, and took up his camp on Mount Tifata close by Capua, in the
confident expectation that the Roman generals would, now raise the
siege as they had done the year before.  But the Romans, who had had
time to entrench their camps and their lines like a fortress, did not
stir, and looked on unmoved from their ramparts, while on one side
the Campanian horsemen, on the other the Numidian squadrons, dashed
against their lines.  A serious assault could not be thought of by
Hannibal; he could foresee that his advance would soon draw the other
Roman armies after him to Campania, if even before their arrival the
scarcity of supplies in a region so systematically foraged did not
drive him away.  Nothing could be done in that quarter.

Hannibal Marches toward Rome

Hannibal tried a further expedient, the last which occurred to his
inventive genius, to save the important city.  After giving the
Campanians information of his intention and exhorting them to hold
out, he started with the relieving army from Capua and took the road
for Rome.  With the same dexterous boldness which he had shown in his
first Italian campaigns, he threw himself with a weak army between the
armies and fortresses of the enemy, and led his troops through Samnium
and along the Valerian Way past Tibur to the bridge over the Anio,
which he passed and encamped on the opposite bank, five miles from
the city.  The children's children of the Romans still shuddered, when
they were told of "Hannibal at the gate"; real danger there was none.
The country houses and fields in the neighbourhood of the city were
laid waste by the enemy; the two legions in the city, who went forth
against them, prevented the investment of the walls.  Besides,
Hannibal had never expected to surprise Rome by a -coup de main-,
such as Scipio soon afterwards executed against New Carthage, and
still less had he meditated a siege in earnest; his only hope was that
in the first alarm part of the besieging army of Capua would march to
Rome and thus give him an opportunity of breaking up the blockade.
Accordingly after a brief stay he departed.  The Romans saw in his
withdrawal a miraculous intervention of the gods, who by portents and
visions had compelled the wicked man to depart, when in truth the
Roman legions were unable to compel him; at the spot where Hannibal
had approached nearest to the city, at the second milestone on the
Appian Way in front of the Capene gate, with grateful credulity the
Romans erected an altar to the god "who turned back and protected"
(-Rediculus Tutanus-), Hannibal in reality retreated, because this was
part of his plan, and directed his march towards Capua.  But the Roman
generals had not committed the mistake on which their opponent had
reckoned; the legions remained unmoved in the lines round Capua, and
only a weak corps had been detached on the news of Hannibal's march
towards Rome.  When Hannibal learned this, he suddenly turned against
the consul Publius Galba, who had imprudently followed him from Rome,
and with whom he had hitherto avoided an engagement, vanquished him,
and took his camp by storm.

Capua Capitulates

But this was a poor compensation for the now inevitable fall of Capua.
Long had its citizens, particularly the better passes, anticipated
with sorrowful forebodings what was coming; the senate-house and the
administration of the city were left almost exclusively to the leaders
of the popular party hostile to Rome.  Now despair seized high and
low, Campanians and Phoenicians alike.  Twenty-eight senators chose a
voluntary death; the remainder gave over the city to the discretion of
an implacably exasperated foe.  Of course a bloody retribution had to
follow; the only discussion was as to whether the process should be
long or short: whether the wiser and more appropriate course was to
probe to the bottom the further ramifications of the treason even
beyond Capua, or to terminate the matter by rapid executions.  Appius
Claudius and the Roman senate wished to take the former course; the
latter view, perhaps the less inhuman, prevailed.  Fifty-three of the
officers and magistrates of Capua were scourged and beheaded in the
marketplaces of Cales and Teanum by the orders and before the eyes
of the proconsul Quintus Flaccus, the rest of the senators were
imprisoned, numbers of the citizens were sold into slavery, and the
estates of the more wealthy were confiscated.  Similar penalties were
inflicted upon Atella and Caiatia.  These punishments were severe;
but, when regard is had to the importance of the revolt of Capua
from Rome, and to what was the ordinary if not warrantable usage of
war in those times, they were not unnatural.  And had not the citizens
themselves pronounced their own sentence, when immediately after their
defection they put to death all the Roman citizens present in Capua at
the time of the revolt?  But it was unjustifiable in Rome to embrace
this opportunity of gratifying the secret rivalry that had long
subsisted between the two largest cities of Italy, and of wholly
annihilating, in a political point of view, her hated and envied
competitor by abolishing the constitution of the Campanian city.

Superiority of the Romans
Tarentum Capitulates

Immense was the impression produced by the fall of Capua, and all the
more that it had not been brought about by surprise, but by a two
years' siege carried on in spite of all the exertions of Hannibal.
It was quite as much a token that the Romans had recovered their
ascendency in Italy, as its defection some years before to Hannibal
had been a token that that ascendency was lost.  In vain Hannibal had
tried to counteract the impression of this news on his allies by the
capture of Rhegium or of the citadel of Tarentum.  His forced march
to surprise Rhegium had yielded no result.  The citadel of Tarentum
suffered greatly from famine, after the Tarentino-Carthaginian
squadron closed the harbour; but, as the Romans with their much more
powerful fleet were able to cut off the supplies from that squadron
itself, and the territory, which Hannibal commanded, scarce sufficed
to maintain his army, the besiegers on the side next the sea suffered
not much less than did the besieged in the citadel, and at length they
left the harbour.  No enterprise was now successful; Fortune herself
seemed to have deserted the Carthaginians.  These consequences of the
fall of Capua--the deep shock given to the respect and confidence
which Hannibal had hitherto enjoyed among the Italian allies, and the
endeavours made by every community that was not too deeply compromised
to gain readmission on tolerable terms into the Roman symmachy
--affected Hannibal much more keenly than the immediate loss.  He had
to choose one of two courses; either to throw garrisons into the
wavering towns, in which case he would weaken still more his army
already too weak and would expose his trusty troops to destruction in
small divisions or to treachery--500 of his select Numidian horsemen
were put to death in this way in 544 on the defection of the town of
Salapia; or to pull down and burn the towns which could not be
depended on, so as to keep them out of the enemy's hands--a course,
which could not raise the spirits of his Italian clients.  On the
fall of Capua the Romans felt themselves once more confident as to
the final issue of the war in Italy; they despatched considerable
reinforcements to Spain, where the existence of the Roman army was
placed in jeopardy by the fall of the two Scipios; and for the first
time since the beginning of the war they ventured on a diminution in
the total number of their troops, which had hitherto been annually
augmented notwithstanding the annually-increasing difficulty of
levying them, and had risen at last to 23 legions.  Accordingly in
the next year (544) the Italian war was prosecuted more remissly than
hitherto by the Romans, although Marcus Marcellus had after the close
of the Sicilian war resumed the command of the main army; he applied
himself to the besieging of fortresses in the interior, and had
indecisive conflicts with the Carthaginians.  The struggle for the
Acropolis of Tarentum also continued without decisive result.  In
Apulia Hannibal succeeded in defeating the proconsul Gnaeus Fulvius
Centumalus at Herdoneae.  In the following year (545) the Romans took
steps to regain possession of the second large city, which had passed
over to Hannibal, the city of Tarentum.  While Marcus Marcellus
continued the struggle against Hannibal in person with his wonted
obstinacy and energy, and in a two days' battle, beaten on the first
day, achieved on the second a costly and bloody victory; while the
consul Quintus Fulvius induced the already wavering Lucanians and
Hirpinians to change sides and to deliver up their Phoenician
garrisons; while well-conducted razzias from Rhegium compelled
Hannibal to hasten to the aid of the hard-pressed Bruttians;
the veteran Quintus Fabius, who had once more--for the fifth
time--accepted the consulship and along with it the commission to
reconquer Tarentum, established himself firmly in the neighbouring
Messapian territory, and the treachery of a Bruttian division of
the garrison surrendered to him the city.  Fearful excesses were
committed by the exasperated victors.  They put to death all of
the garrison or of the citizens whom they could find, and pillaged
the houses.  30,000 Tarentines are said to have been sold as slaves,
and 3000 talents (730,000 pounds) are stated to have been sent to the
state treasury.  It was the last feat in arms of the general of eighty
years; Hannibal arrived to the relief of the city when all was over,
and withdrew to Metapontum.

Hannibal Driven Back
Death of Marcellus

After Hannibal had thus lost his most important acquisitions and
found himself hemmed in by degrees to the south-western point of the
peninsula, Marcus Marcellus, who had been chosen consul for the next
year (546), hoped that, in connection with his capable colleague
Titus Quintius Crispinus, he should be able to terminate the war by a
decisive attack.  The old soldier was not disturbed by the burden of
his sixty years; sleeping and waking he was haunted by the one thought
of defeating Hannibal and of liberating Italy.  But fate reserved that
wreath of victory for a younger brow.  While engaged in an unimportant
reconnaissance in the district of Venusia, both consuls were suddenly
attacked by a division of African cavalry.  Marcellus maintained the
unequal struggle--as he had fought forty years before against Hamilcar
and fourteen years before at Clastidium--till he sank dying from
his horse; Crispinus escaped, but died of his wounds received
in the conflict (546).

Pressure of the War

It was now the eleventh year of the war.  The danger which some years
before had threatened the very existence of the state seemed to have
vanished; but all the more the Romans felt the heavy burden--a burden
pressing more severely year after year--of the endless war.  The
finances of the state suffered beyond measure.  After the battle of
Cannae (538) a special bank-commission (-tres viri mensarii-) had
been appointed, composed of men held in the highest esteem, to form
a permanent and circumspect board of superintendence for the public
finances in these difficult times.  It may have done what it could;
but the state of things was such as to baffle all financial sagacity.
At the very beginning of the war the Romans had debased the silver and
copper coin, raised the legal value of the silver piece more than a
third, and issued a gold coin far above the value of the metal.  This
very soon proved insufficient; they were obliged to take supplies from
the contractors on credit, and connived at their conduct because they
needed them, till the scandalous malversation at last induced the
aediles to make an example of some of the worst by impeaching them
before the people.  Appeals were often made, and not in vain, to the
patriotism of the wealthy, who were in fact the very persons that
suffered comparatively the most.  The soldiers of the better classes
and the subaltern officers and equites in a body, either voluntarily
or constrained by the -esprit de corps-, declined to receive pay.
The owners of the slaves armed by the state and manumitted after the
engagement at Beneventum(3) replied to the bank-commission, which
offered them payment, that they would allow it to stand over to the
end of the war (540).  When there was no longer money in the exchequer
for the celebration of the national festivals and the repairs of the
public buildings, the companies which had hitherto contracted for
these matters declared themselves ready to continue their services for
a time without remuneration (540).  A fleet was even fitted out and
manned, just as in the first Punic war, by means of a voluntary loan
among the rich (544).  They spent the moneys belonging to minors; and
at length, in the year of the conquest of Tarentum, they laid hands
on the last long-spared reserve fund (164,000 pounds).  The state
nevertheless was unable to meet its most necessary payments; the pay
of the soldiers fell dangerously into arrear, particularly in the more
remote districts.  But the embarrassment of the state was not the
worst part of the material distress.  Everywhere the fields lay
fallow: even where the war did not make havoc, there was a want of
hands for the hoe and the sickle.  The price of the -medimnus-
(a bushel and a half) had risen to 15 -denarii- (10s.), at least three
times the average price in the capital; and many would have died of
absolute want, if supplies had not arrived from Egypt, and if, above
all, the revival of agriculture in Sicily(4) had not prevented the
distress from coming to the worst.  The effect which such a state of
things must have had in ruining the small farmers, in eating away
the savings which had been so laboriously acquired, and in
converting flourishing villages into nests of beggars and brigands,
is illustrated by similar wars of which fuller details have
been preserved.

The Allies

Still more ominous than this material distress was the increasing
aversion of the allies to the Roman war, which consumed their
substance and their blood.  In regard to the non-Latin communities,
indeed, this was of less consequence.  The war itself showed that they
could do nothing, so long as the Latin nation stood by Rome; their
greater or less measure of dislike was not of much moment.  Now,
however, Latium also began to waver.  Most of the Latin communes in
Etruria, Latium, the territory of the Marsians, and northern Campania
--and so in those very districts of Italy which directly had suffered
least from the war--announced to the Roman senate in 545 that
thenceforth they would send neither contingents nor contributions,
and would leave it to the Romans themselves to defray the costs of a
war waged in their interest.  The consternation in Rome was great;
but for the moment there were no means of compelling the refractory.
Fortunately all the Latin communities did not act in this way.  The
colonies in the land of the Gauls, in Picenum, and in southern Italy,
headed by the powerful and patriotic Fregellae, declared on the
contrary that they adhered the more closely and faithfully to Rome; in
fact, it was very clearly evident to all of these that in the present
war their existence was, if possible, still more at stake than that of
the capital, and that this war was really waged not for Rome merely,
but for the Latin hegemony in Italy, and in truth for the independence
of the Italian nation.  That partial defection itself was certainly
not high treason, but merely the result of shortsightedness and
exhaustion; beyond doubt these same towns would have rejected with
horror an alliance with the Phoenicians.  But still there was a
variance between Romans and Latins, which did not fail injuriously
to react on the subject population of these districts.  A dangerous
ferment immediately showed itself in Arretium; a conspiracy organized
in the interest of Hannibal among the Etruscans was discovered, and
appeared so perilous that Roman troops were ordered to march thither.
The military and police suppressed this movement without difficulty;
but it was a significant token of what might happen in those
districts, if once the Latin strongholds ceased to inspire terror.

Hasdrubal's Approach

Amidst these difficulties and strained relations, news suddenly
arrived that Hasdrubal had crossed the Pyrenees in the autumn of 546,
and that the Romans must be prepared to carry on the war next year
with both the sons of Hamilcar in Italy.  Not in vain had Hannibal
persevered at his post throughout the long anxious years; the aid,
which the factious opposition at home and the shortsighted Philip had
refused to him, was at length in the course of being brought to him
by his brother, who, like himself, largely inherited the spirit of
Hamilcar.  Already 8000 Ligurians, enlisted by Phoenician gold, were
ready to unite with Hasdrubal; if he gained the first battle, he might
hope that like his brother he should be able to bring the Gauls and
perhaps the Etruscans into arms against Rome.  Italy, moreover, was
 no longer what it had been eleven years before; the state and the
individual citizens were exhausted, the Latin league was shaken, their
best general had just fallen in the field of battle, and Hannibal was
not subdued.  In reality Scipio might bless the star of his genius, if
it averted the consequences of his unpardonable blunder from himself
and from his country.

New Armaments
Hasdrubal and Hannibal on the March

As in the times of the utmost danger, Rome once more called out
twenty-three legions.  Volunteers were summoned to arm, and those
legally exempt from military service were included in the levy.
Nevertheless, they were taken by surprise.  Far earlier than either
friends or foes expected, Hasdrubal was on the Italian side of the
Alps (547); the Gauls, now accustomed to such transits, were readily
bribed to open their passes, and furnished what the army required.
If the Romans had any intention of occupying the outlets of the Alpine
passes, they were again too late; already they heard that Hasdrubal
was on the Po, that he was calling the Gauls to arms as successfully
as his brother had formerly done, that Placentia was invested.  With
all haste the consul Marcus Livius proceeded to the northern army; and
it was high time that he should appear.  Etruria and Umbria were in
sullen ferment; volunteers from them reinforced the Phoenician army.
His colleague Gaius Nero summoned the praetor Gaius Hostilius Tubulus
from Venusia to join him, and hastened with an army of 40,000 men to
intercept the march of Hannibal to the north.  The latter collected
all his forces in the Bruttian territory, and, advancing along the
great road leading from Rhegium to Apulia, encountered the consul at
Grumentum.  An obstinate engagement took place in which Nero claimed
the victory; but Hannibal was able at all events, although with some
loss, to evade the enemy by one of his usual adroit flank-marches, and
to reach Apulia without hindrance.  There he halted, and encamped at
first at Venusia, then at Canusium: Nero, who had followed closely in
his steps, encamped opposite to him at both places.  That Hannibal
voluntarily halted and was not prevented from advancing by the Roman
army, appears to admit of no doubt; the reason for his taking up his
position exactly at this point and not farther to the north, must have
depended on arrangements concerted between himself and Hasdrubal, or
on conjectures as to the route of the latter's march, with which we
are not acquainted.  While the two armies thus lay inactive, face to
face, the despatch from Hasdrubal which was anxiously expected in
Hannibal's camp was intercepted by the outposts of Nero.  It stated
that Hasdrubal intended to take the Flaminian road, in other words,
to keep in the first instance along the coast and then at Fanum to
turn across the Apennines towards Narnia, at which place he hoped to
meet Hannibal.  Nero immediately ordered the reserve in the capital
to proceed to Narnia as the point selected for the junction of the two
Phoenician armies, while the division stationed at Capua went to the
capital, and a new reserve was formed there.  Convinced that Hannibal
was not acquainted with the purpose of his brother and would continue
to await him in Apulia, Nero resolved on the bold experiment of
hastening northward by forced marches with a small but select corps
of 7000 men and, if possible, in connection with his colleague,
compelling Hasdrubal to fight.  He was able to do so, for the Roman
army which he left behind still continued strong enough either to
hold its ground against Hannibal if he should attack it, or to
accompany him and to arrive simultaneously with him at the
decisive scene of action, should he depart.

Battle of Sena
Death of Hasdrubal

Nero found his colleague Marcus Livius at Sena Gallica awaiting the
enemy.  Both consuls at once marched against Hasdrubal, whom they
found occupied in crossing the Metaurus.  Hasdrubal wished to avoid
a battle and to escape from the Romans by a flank movement, but his
guides left him in the lurch; he lost his way on the ground strange to
him, and was at length attacked on the march by the Roman cavalry
and detained until the Roman infantry arrived and a battle became
inevitable.  Hasdrubal stationed the Spaniards on the right wing, with
his ten elephants in front of it, and the Gauls on the left, which he
kept back.  Long the fortune of battle wavered on the right wing, and
the consul Livius who commanded there was hard pressed, till Nero,
repeating his strategical operation as a tactical manoeuvre, allowed
the motionless enemy opposite to him to remain as they stood, and
marching round his own army fell upon the flank of the Spaniards.
This decided the day.  The severely bought and very bloody victory was
complete; the army, which had no retreat, was destroyed, and the camp
was taken by assault.  Hasdrubal, when he: saw the admirably-conducted
battle lost, sought and found like his father an honourable soldier's
death.  As an officer and a man, he was worthy to be the brother
of Hannibal.

Hannibal Retires to the Bruttian Territory

On the day after the battle Nero started, and after scarcely fourteen
days' absence once more confronted Hannibal in Apulia, whom no message
had reached, and who had not stirred.  The consul brought the message
with him; it was the head of Hannibal's brother, which the Roman
ordered to be thrown into the enemy's outposts, repaying in this
way his great antagonist, who scorned to war with the dead, for
the honourable burial which he had given to Paullus, Gracchus, and
Marcellus.  Hannibal saw that his hopes had been in vain, and that
all was over.  He abandoned Apulia and Lucania, even Metapontum,
and retired with his troops to the land of the Bruttians, whose ports
formed his only means of withdrawal from Italy.  By the energy of the
Roman generals, and still more by a conjuncture of unexampled good
fortune, a peril was averted from Rome, the greatness of which
justified Hannibal's tenacious perseverance in Italy, and which fully
bears comparison with the magnitude of the peril of Cannae.  The joy
in Rome was boundless; business was resumed as in time of peace; every
one felt that the danger of the war was surmounted.

Stagnation of the War in Italy

Nevertheless the Romans were in no hurry to terminate the war.  The
state and the citizens were exhausted by the excessive moral and
material strain on their energies; men gladly abandoned themselves
to carelessness and repose.

The army and fleet were reduced; the Roman and Latin farmers were
brought back to their desolate homesteads the exchequer was filled by
the sale of a portion of the Campanian domains.  The administration
of the state was regulated anew and the disorders which had prevailed
were done away; the repayment of the voluntary war-loan was begun,
and the Latin communities that remained in arrears were compelled
to fulfil their neglected obligations with heavy interest.

The war in Italy made no progress.  It forms a brilliant proof of the
strategic talent of Hannibal as well as of the incapacity of the Roman
generals now opposed to him, that after this he was still able for
four years to keep the field in the Bruttian country, and that all the
superiority of his opponents could not compel him either to shut
himself up in fortresses or to embark.  It is true that he was obliged
to retire farther and farther, not so much in consequence of the
indecisive engagements which took place with the Romans, as because
his Bruttian allies were always becoming more troublesome, and at last
he could only reckon on the towns which his army garrisoned.  Thus he
voluntarily abandoned Thurii; Locri was, on the suggestion of Publius
Scipio, recaptured by an expedition from Rhegium (549).  As if at last
his projects were to receive a brilliant justification at the hands of
the very Carthaginian authorities who had thwarted him in them, these
now, in their apprehension as to the anticipated landing of the
Romans, revived of their own accord those plans (548, 549), and sent
reinforcements and subsidies to Hannibal in Italy, and to Mago in
Spain, with orders to rekindle the war in Italy so as to achieve some
further respite for the trembling possessors of the Libyan country
houses and the shops of Carthage.  An embassy was likewise sent to
Macedonia, to induce Philip to renew the alliance and to land in Italy
(549).  But it was too late.  Philip had made peace with Rome some
months before; the impending political annihilation of Carthage was
far from agreeable to him, but he took no step openly at least against
Rome.  A small Macedonian corps went to Africa, the expenses of which,
according to the assertion of the Romans, were defrayed by Philip from
his own pocket; this may have been the case, but the Romans had at any
rate no proof of it, as the subsequent course of events showed.
No Macedonian landing in Italy was thought of.

Mago in Italy

Mago, the youngest son of Hamilcar, set himself to his task more
earnestly.  With the remains of the Spanish army, which he had
conducted in the first instance to Minorca, he landed in 549 at Genoa,
destroyed the city, and summoned the Ligurians and Gauls to arms.
Gold and the novelty of the enterprise led them now, as always, to
come to him in troops; he had formed connections even throughout
Etruria, where political prosecutions never ceased.  But the troops
which he had brought with him were too few for a serious enterprise
against Italy proper; and Hannibal likewise was much too weak, and his
influence in Lower Italy had fallen much too low, to permit him to
advance with any prospect of success.  The rulers of Carthage had not
been willing to save their native country, when its salvation was
possible; now, when they were willing, it was possible no longer.

The African Expedition of Scipio

Nobody probably in the Roman senate doubted either that the war on
the part of Carthage against Rome was at an end, or that the war on
the part of Rome against Carthage must now be begun; but unavoidable
as was the expedition to Africa, they were afraid to enter on its
preparation.  They required for it, above all, an able and beloved
leader; and they had none.  Their best generals had either fallen in
the field of battle, or they were, like Quintus Fabius and Quintus
Fulvius, too old for such an entirely new and probably tedious war.
The victors of Sena, Gaius Nero and Marcus Livius, would perhaps have
been equal to the task, but they were both in the highest degree
unpopular aristocrats; it was doubtful whether they would succeed in
procuring the command--matters had already reached such a pass that
ability, as such, determined the popular choice only in times of grave
anxiety--and it was more than doubtful whether these were the men to
stimulate the exhausted people to fresh exertions.  At length Publius
Scipio returned from Spain, and the favourite of the multitude, who
had so brilliantly fulfilled, or at any rate seemed to have fulfilled,
the task with which it had entrusted him, was immediately chosen
consul for the next year.  He entered on office (549) with the firm
determination of now realizing that African expedition which he had
projected in Spain.  In the senate, however, not only was the party
favourable to a methodical conduct of the war unwilling to entertain
the project of an African expedition so long as Hannibal remained in
Italy, but the majority was by no means favourably disposed towards
the young general himself.  His Greek refinement and his modern
culture and tone of thought were but little agreeable to the austere
and somewhat boorish fathers of the city; and serious doubts existed
both as to his conduct of the Spanish war and as to his military
discipline.  How much ground there was for the objection that he
showed too great indulgence towards his officers of division, was very
soon demonstrated by the disgraceful proceedings of Gaius Pleminius at
Locri, the blame of which certainly was indirectly chargeable to the
scandalous negligence which marked Scipio's supervision.  In the
proceedings in the senate regarding the organization of the African
expedition and the appointment of a general for it, the new consul,
wherever usage or the constitution came into conflict with his private
views, showed no great reluctance to set such obstacles aside, and
very clearly indicated that in case of need he was disposed to rely
for support against the governing board on his fame and his popularity
with the people.  These things could not but annoy the senate and
awaken, moreover, serious apprehension as to whether, in the impending
decisive war and the eventual negotiations for peace with Carthage,
such a general would hold himself bound by the instructions which he
received--an apprehension which his arbitrary management of the
Spanish expedition was by no means fitted to allay.  Both sides,
however, displayed wisdom enough not to push matters too far.  The
senate itself could not fail to see that the African expedition was
necessary, and that it was not wise indefinitely to postpone it; it
could not fail to see that Scipio was an extremely able officer and so
far well adapted to be the leader in such a war, and that he, if any
one, could prevail on the people to protract his command as long as
was necessary and to put forth their last energies.  The majority came
to the resolution not to refuse to Scipio the desired commission,
after he had previously observed, at least in form, the respect due to
the supreme governing board and had submitted himself beforehand to
the decree of the senate.  Scipio was to proceed this year to Sicily
to superintend the building of the fleet, the preparation of siege
materials, and the formation of the expeditionary army, and then in
the following year to land in Africa.  For this purpose the army of
Sicily--still composed of those two legions that were formed from the
remnant of the army of Cannae--was placed at his disposal, because a
weak garrison and the fleet were quite sufficient for the protection
of the island; and he was permitted moreover to raise volunteers in
Italy.  It was evident that the senate did not appoint the expedition,
but merely allowed it: Scipio did not obtain half the resources which
had formerly been placed at the command of Regulus, and he got that
very corps which for years had been subjected by the senate to
intentional degradation.  The African army was, in the  view of the
majority of the senate, a forlorn hope of disrated companies and
volunteers, the loss of whom in any event the state had no great
occasion to regret.

Any one else than Scipio would perhaps have declared that the African
expedition must either be undertaken with other means, or not at all;
but Scipio's confidence accepted the terms, whatever they were, solely
with the view of attaining the eagerly-coveted command.  He carefully
avoided, as far as possible, the imposition of direct burdens on the
people, that he might not injure the popularity of the expedition.
Its expenses, particularly those of building the fleet which were
considerable, were partly procured by what was termed a voluntary
contribution of the Etruscan cities--that is, by a war tribute imposed
as a punishment on the Arretines and other communities disposed to
favour the Phoenicians--partly laid upon the cities of Sicily.  In
forty days the fleet was ready for sea.  The crews were reinforced by
volunteers, of whom seven thousand from all parts of Italy responded
to the call of the beloved officer.  So Scipio set sail for Africa in
the spring of 550 with two strong legions of veterans (about 30,000
men), 40 vessels of war, and 400 transports, and landed successfully,
without meeting the slightest resistance, at the Fair Promontory in
the neighbourhood of Utica.

Preparations in Africa

The Carthaginians, who had long expected that the plundering
expeditions, which the Roman squadrons had frequently made during
the last few years to the African coast, would be followed by a more
serious invasion, had not only, in order to ward it off, endeavoured
to bring about a revival of the Italo-Macedonian war, but had also
made armed preparation at home to receive the Romans.  Of the two
rival Berber kings, Massinissa of Cirta (Constantine), the ruler of
the Massylians, and Syphax of Siga (at the mouth of the Tafna westward
from Oran), the ruler of the Massaesylians, they had succeeded in
attaching the latter, who was far the more powerful and hitherto had
been friendly to the Romans, by treaty and marriage alliance closely
to Carthage, while they cast off the other, the old rival of Syphax
and ally of the Carthaginians.  Massinissa had after desperate
resistance succumbed to the united power of the Carthaginians and
of Syphax, and had been obliged to leave his territories a prey to
the latter; he himself wandered with a few horsemen in the desert.
Besides the contingent to be expected from Syphax, a Carthaginian army
of 20,000 foot, 6000 cavalry, and 140 elephants--Hanno had been sent
out to hunt elephants for the very purpose--was ready to fight for
the protection of the capital, under the command of Hasdrubal son of
Gisgo, a general who had gained experience in Spain; in the port
there lay a strong fleet.  A Macedonian corps under Sopater, and a
consignment of Celtiberian mercenaries, were immediately expected.

Scipio Driven Back to the Coast
Surprise of the Carthaginian Camp

On the report of Scipio's landing, Massinissa immediately arrived in
the camp of the general, whom not long before he had confronted as an
enemy in Spain; but the landless prince brought in the first instance
nothing beyond his personal ability to the aid of the Romans, and the
Libyans, although heartily weary of levies and tribute, had acquired
too bitter experience in similar cases to declare at once for the
invaders.  So Scipio began the campaign.  So long as he was only
opposed by the weaker Carthaginian army, he had the advantage, and was
enabled after some successful cavalry skirmishes to proceed to the
siege of Utica; but when Syphax arrived, according to report with
50,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry, the siege had to be raised, and a
fortified naval camp had to be constructed for the winter on a
promontory, which easily admitted of entrenchment, between Utica and
Carthage.  Here the Roman general passed the winter of 550-1.  From
the disagreeable situation in which the spring found him he extricated
himself by a fortunate -coup de main-.  The Africans, lulled into
security by proposals of peace suggested by Scipio with more artifice
than honour, allowed themselves to be surprised on one and the same
night in their two camps; the reed huts of the Numidians burst into
flames, and, when the Carthaginians hastened to their help, their own
camp shared the same fate; the fugitives were slain without resistance
by the Roman divisions.  This nocturnal surprise was more destructive
than many a battle; nevertheless the Carthaginians did not suffer
their courage to sink, and they rejected even the advice of the timid,
or rather of the judicious, to recall Mago and Hannibal.  Just at this
time the expected Celtiberian and Macedonian auxiliaries arrived; it
was resolved once more to try a pitched battle on the "Great Plains,"
five days' march from Utica.  Scipio hastened to accept it; with
little difficulty his veterans and volunteers dispersed the hastily-
collected host of Carthaginians and Numidians, and the Celtiberians,
who could not reckon on any mercy from Scipio, were cut down after
obstinate resistance.  After this double defeat the Africans could no
longer keep the field.  An attack on the Roman naval camp attempted by
the Carthaginian fleet, while not unsuccessful, was far from decisive,
and was greatly outweighed by the capture of Syphax, which Scipio's
singular good fortune threw in his way, and by which Massinissa became
to the Romans what Syphax had been at first to the Carthaginians.

Negotiations for Peace
Machinations of the Carthaginian Patriots

After such defeats the Carthaginian peace party, which had been
reduced to silence for sixteen years, was able once more to raise its
head and openly to rebel against the government of the Barcides and
the patriots.  Hasdrubal son of Gisgo was in his absence condemned
by the government to death, and an attempt was made to obtain an
armistice and peace from Scipio.  He demanded the cession of their
Spanish possessions and of the islands of the Mediterranean, the
transference of the kingdom of Syphax to Massinissa, the surrender of
all their vessels of war except 20, and a war contribution of 4000
talents (nearly 1,000,000 pounds)--terms which seemed so singularly
favourable to Carthage, that the question obtrudes itself whether they
were offered by Scipio more in his own interest or in that of Rome.
The Carthaginian plenipotentiaries accepted them under reservation of
their being ratified by the respective authorities, and accordingly a
Carthaginian embassy was despatched to Rome.  But the patriot party in
Carthage were not disposed to give up the struggle so cheaply; faith
in the nobleness of their cause, confidence in their great leader,
even the example that had been set to them by Rome herself, stimulated
them to persevere, apart from the fact that peace of necessity
involved the return of the opposite party to the helm of affairs
and their own consequent destruction.  The patriotic party had the
ascendency among the citizens; it was resolved to allow the opposition
to negotiate for peace, and meanwhile to prepare for a last and
decisive effort.  Orders were sent to Mago and Hannibal to return with
all speed to Africa.  Mago, who for three years (549-551) had been
labouring to bring about a coalition in Northern Italy against Rome,
had just at this time in the territory of the Insubres (about Milan)
been defeated by the far superior double army of the Romans.  The
Roman cavalry had been brought to give way, and the infantry had been
thrown into confusion; victory seemed on the point of declaring for
the Carthaginians, when a bold attack by a Roman troop on the enemy's
elephants, and above all a serious wound received by their beloved and
able commander, turned the fortune of the battle.  The Phoenician army
was obliged to retreat to the Ligurian coast, where it received and
obeyed the order to embark; but Mago died of his wound on the voyage.

Hannibal Recalled to Africa

Hannibal would probably have anticipated the order, had not the
last negotiations with Philip presented to him a renewed prospect of
rendering better service to his country in Italy than in Libya; when
he received it at Croton, where he latterly had his head-quarters, he
lost no time in complying with it.  He caused his horses to be put
to death as well as the Italian soldiers who refused to follow him
over the sea, and embarked in the transports that had been long in
readiness in the roadstead of Croton.  The Roman citizens breathed
freely, when the mighty Libyan lion, whose departure no one even now
ventured to compel, thus voluntarily turned his back on Italian
ground.  On this occasion the decoration of a grass wreath was
bestowed by the senate and burgesses on the only survivor of the Roman
generals who had traversed that troubled time with honour, the veteran
of nearly ninety years, Quintus Fabius.  To receive this wreath--which
by the custom of the Romans the army that a general had saved
presented to its deliverer--at the hands of the whole community was
the highest distinction which had ever been bestowed upon a Roman
citizen, and the last honorary decoration accorded to the old general,
who died in the course of that same year (551).  Hannibal, doubtless
not under the protection of the armistice, but solely through his
rapidity of movement and good fortune, arrived at Leptis without
hindrance, and the last of the "lion's brood" of Hamilcar trode once
more, after an absence of thirty-six years, his native soil.  He had
left it, when still almost a boy, to enter on that noble and yet so
thoroughly fruitless career of heroism, in which he had set out
towards the west to return homewards from the east, having described
a wide circle of victory around the Carthaginian sea.  Now, when what
he had wished to prevent, and what he would have prevented had he been
allowed, was done, he was summoned to help and if possible, to save;
and he obeyed without complaint or reproach.

Recommencement of Hostilities

On his arrival the patriot party came forward openly; the disgraceful
sentence against Hasdrubal was cancelled; new connections were formed
with the Numidian sheiks through the dexterity of Hannibal; and not
only did the assembly of the people refuse to ratify the peace
practically concluded, but the armistice was broken by the plundering
of a Roman transport fleet driven ashore on the African coast, and by
the seizure even of a Roman vessel of war carrying Roman envoys.  In
just indignation Scipio started from his camp at Tunes (552) and
traversed the rich valley of the Bagradas (Mejerdah), no longer
allowing the townships to capitulate, but causing the inhabitants of
the villages and towns to be seized en masse and sold.  He had already
penetrated far into the interior, and was at Naraggara (to the west of
Sicca, now El Kef, on the frontier between Tunis and Algiers), when
Hannibal, who had marched out from Hadrumetum, fell in with him.  The
Carthaginian general attempted to obtain better conditions from the
Roman in a personal conference; but Scipio, who had already gone to
the extreme verge of concession, could not possibly after the breach
of the armistice agree to yield further, and it is not credible that
Hannibal had any other object in this step than to show to the
multitude that the patriots were not absolutely opposed to peace.
The conference led to no result.

Battle of Zama

The two armies accordingly came to a decisive battle at Zama
(presumably not far from Sicca).(5)  Hannibal arranged his infantry
in three lines; in the first rank the Carthaginian hired troops, in
the second the African militia and the Phoenician civic force along
with the Macedonian corps, in the third the veterans who had followed
him from Italy.  In front of the line were placed the 80 elephants;
the cavalry were stationed on the wings.  Scipio likewise disposed his
legions in three ranks, as was the wont of the Romans, and so arranged
them that the elephants could pass through and alongside of the line
without breaking it.  Not only was this disposition completely
successful, but the elephants making their way to the side disordered
also the Carthaginian cavalry on the wings, so that Scipio's cavalry
--which moreover was by the arrival of Massinissa's troops rendered
far superior to the enemy--had little trouble in dispersing them,
and were soon engaged in full pursuit.  The struggle of the infantry
was more severe.  The conflict lasted long between the first ranks on
either side; at length in the extremely bloody hand-to-hand encounter
both parties fell into confusion, and were obliged to seek a support
in the second ranks.  The Romans found that support; but the
Carthaginian militia showed itself so unsteady and wavering, that
the mercenaries believed themselves betrayed and a hand-to-hand combat
arose between them and the Carthaginian civic force.  But Hannibal now
hastily withdrew what remained of the first two lines to the flanks,
and pushed forward his choice Italian troops along the whole line.
Scipio, on the other hand, gathered together in the centre as many of
the first line as still were able to fight, and made the second and
third ranks close up on the right and left of the first.  Once more
on the same spot began a still more fearful conflict; Hannibal's old
soldiers never wavered in spite of the superior numbers of the enemy,
till the cavalry of the Romans and of Massinissa, returning from the
pursuit of the beaten cavalry of the enemy, surrounded them on all
sides.  This not only terminated the struggle, but annihilated the
Phoenician army; the same soldiers, who fourteen years before had
given way at Cannae, had retaliated on their conquerors at Zama.
With a handful of men Hannibal arrived, a fugitive, at Hadrumetum.

Peace

After this day folly alone could counsel a continuance of the war on
the part of Carthage.  On the other hand it was in the power of the
Roman general immediately to begin the siege of the capital, which was
neither protected nor provisioned, and, unless unforeseen accidents
should intervene, now to subject Carthage to the fate which Hannibal
had wished to bring upon Rome.  Scipio did not do so; he granted peace
(553), but no longer upon the former terms.  Besides the concessions
which had already in the last negotiations been demanded in favour of
Rome and of Massinissa, an annual contribution of 200 talents (48,000
pounds) was imposed for fifty years on the Carthaginians; and they had
to bind themselves that they would not wage war against Rome or its
allies or indeed beyond the bounds of Africa at all, and that in
Africa they would not wage war beyond their own territory without
having sought the permission of Rome--the practical effect of which
was that Carthage became tributary and lost her political
independence.  It even appears that the Carthaginians were bound
in certain cases to furnish ships of war to the Roman fleet.

Scipio has been accused of granting too favourable conditions to the
enemy, lest he might be obliged to hand over the glory of terminating
the most severe war which Rome had waged, along with his command, to
a successor.  The charge might have had some foundation, had the first
proposals been carried out; it seems to have no warrant in reference
to the second.  His position in Rome was not such as to make the
favourite of the people, after the victory of Zama, seriously
apprehensive of recall--already before the victory an attempt to
supersede him had been referred by the senate to the burgesses, and by
them decidedly rejected.  Nor do the conditions themselves warrant
such a charge.  The Carthaginian city never, after its hands were thus
tied and a powerful neighbour was placed by its side, made even an
attempt to withdraw from Roman supremacy, still less to enter into
rivalry with Rome; besides, every one who cared to know knew that the
war just terminated had been undertaken much more by Hannibal than by
Carthage, and that it was absolutely impossible to revive the gigantic
plan of the patriot party.  It might seem little in the eyes of the
vengeful Italians, that only the five hundred surrendered ships of war
perished in the flames, and not the hated city itself; spite and
pedantry might contend for the view that an opponent is only really
vanquished when he is annihilated, and might censure the man who had
disdained to punish more thoroughly the crime of having made Romans
tremble.  Scipio thought otherwise; and we have no reason and
therefore no right to assume that the Roman was in this instance
influenced by vulgar motives rather than by the noble and magnanimous
impulses which formed part of his character.  It was not the
consideration of his own possible recall or of the mutability of
fortune, nor was it any apprehension of the outbreak of a Macedonian
war at certainly no distant date, that prevented the self-reliant and
confident hero, with whom everything had hitherto succeeded beyond
belief, from accomplishing the destruction of the unhappy city, which
fifty years afterwards his adopted grandson was commissioned to
execute, and which might indeed have been equally well accomplished
now.  It is much more probable that the two great generals, on whom
the decision of the political question now devolved, offered and
accepted peace on such terms in order to set just and reasonable
limits on the one hand to the furious vengeance of the victors, on
the other to the obstinacy and imprudence of the vanquished.  The
noble-mindedness and statesmanlike gifts of the great antagonists are
no less apparent in the magnanimous submission of Hannibal to what was
inevitable, than in the wise abstinence of Scipio from an extravagant
and insulting use of victory.  Is it to be supposed that one so
generous, unprejudiced, and intelligent should not have asked himself
of what benefit it could be to his country, now that the political
power of the Carthaginian city was annihilated, utterly to destroy
that ancient seat of commerce and of agriculture, and wickedly to
overthrow one of the main pillars of the then existing civilization?
The time had not yet come when the first men of Rome lent themselves
to destroy the civilization of their neighbours, and frivolously
fancied that they could wash away from themselves the eternal
infamy of the nation by shedding an idle tear.

Results of the War

Thus ended the second Punic or, as the Romans more correctly called
it, the Hannibalic war, after it had devastated the lands and islands
from the Hellespont to the Pillars of Hercules for seventeen years.
Before this war the policy of the Romans had no higher aim than to
acquire command of the mainland of the Italian peninsula within its
natural boundaries, and of the Italian islands and seas; it is clearly
proved by their treatment of Africa on the conclusion of peace that
they also terminated the war with the impression, not that they
had laid the foundation of sovereignty over the states of the
Mediterranean or of the so-called universal empire, but that they had
rendered a dangerous rival innocuous and had given to Italy agreeable
neighbours.  It is true doubtless that other results of the war, the
conquest of Spain in particular, little accorded with such an idea;
but their very successes led them beyond their proper design, and it
may in fact be affirmed that the Romans came into possession of Spain
accidentally.  The Romans achieved the sovereignty of Italy, because
they strove for it; the hegemony--and the sovereignty which grew out
of it--over the territories of the Mediterranean was to a certain
extent thrown into the hands of the Romans by the force of
circumstances without intention on their part to acquire it.

Out of Italy

The immediate results of the war out of Italy were, the conversion
of Spain into two Roman provinces--which, however, were in perpetual
insurrection; the union of the hitherto dependent kingdom of Syracuse
with the Roman province of Sicily; the establishment of a Roman
instead of a Carthaginian protectorate over the most important
Numidian chiefs; and lastly the conversion of Carthage from a powerful
commercial state into a defenceless mercantile town.  In other words,
it established the uncontested hegemony of Rome over the western
region of the Mediterranean.  Moreover, in its further development,
it led to that necessary contact and interaction between the state
systems of the east and the west, which the first Punic war had
only foreshadowed; and thereby gave rise to the proximate decisive
interference of Rome in the conflicts of the Alexandrine monarchies.

In Italy

As to its results in Italy, first of all the Celts were now certainly,
if they had not been already beforehand, destined to destruction; and
the execution of the doom was only a question of time.  Within the
Roman confederacy the effect of the war was to bring into more
distinct prominence the ruling Latin nation, whose internal union
had been tried and attested by the peril which, notwithstanding
isolated instances of wavering, it had surmounted on the whole in
faithful fellowship; and to depress still further the non-Latin or
non-Latinized Italians, particularly the Etruscans and the Sabellians
of Lower Italy.  The heaviest punishment or rather vengeance was
inflicted partly on the most powerful, partly on those who were at
once the earliest and latest, allies of Hannibal--the community of
Capua, and the land of the Bruttians.  The Capuan constitution was
abolished, and Capua was reduced from the second city into the first
village of Italy; it was even proposed to raze the city and level
it with the ground.  The whole soil, with the exception of a few
possessions of foreigners or of Campanians well disposed towards Rome,
was declared by the senate to be public domain, and was thereafter
parcelled out to small occupiers on temporary lease.  The Picentes on
the Silarus were similarly treated; their capital was razed, and the
inhabitants were dispersed among the surrounding villages.  The doom
of the Bruttians was still more severe; they were converted en masse
into a sort of bondsmen to the Romans, and were for ever excluded from
the right of bearing arms.  The other allies of Hannibal also dearly
expiated their offence.  The Greek cities suffered severely, with the
exception of the few which had steadfastly adhered to Rome, such as
the Campanian Greeks and the Rhegines.  Punishment not much lighter
awaited the Arpanians and a number of other Apulian, Lucanian, and
Samnite communities, most of which lost portions of their territory.
On a part of the lands thus acquired new colonies were settled.  Thus
in the year 560 a succession of burgess-colonies was sent to the best
ports of Lower Italy, among which Sipontum (near Manfredonia) and
Croton may be named, as also Salernum placed in the former territory
of the southern Picentes and destined to hold them in check, and above
all Puteoli, which soon became the seat of the genteel -villeggiatura-
and of the traffic in Asiatic and Egyptian luxuries.  Thurii became
a Latin fortress under the new name of Copia (560), and the rich
Bruttian town of Vibo under the name of Valentia (562).  The veterans
of the victorious army of Africa were settled singly on various
patches of land in Samnium and Apulia; the remainder was retained as
public land, and the pasture stations of the grandees of Rome replaced
the gardens and arable fields of the farmers.  As a matter of course,
moreover, in all the communities of the peninsula the persons of note
who were not well affected to Rome were got rid of, so far as this
could be accomplished by political processes and confiscations of
property.  Everywhere in Italy the non-Latin allies felt that their
name was meaningless, and that they were thenceforth subjects of Rome;
the vanquishing of Hannibal was felt as a second subjugation of Italy,
and all the exasperation and all the arrogance of the victor vented
themselves especially on the Italian allies who were not Latin.  Even
the colourless Roman comedy of this period, well subjected as it was
to police control, bears traces of this.  When the subjugated towns
of Capua and Atella were abandoned without restraint to the unbridled
wit of the Roman farce, so that the latter town became its very
stronghold, and when other writers of comedy jested over the fact
that the Campanian serfs had already learned to survive amidst the
deadly atmosphere in which even the hardiest race of slaves, the
Syrians, pined away; such unfeeling mockeries re-echoed the scorn of
the victors, but not less the cry of distress from the down-trodden
nations.  The position in which matters stood is shown by the anxious
carefulness, which during the ensuing Macedonian war the senate
evinced in the watching of Italy, and by the reinforcements which were
despatched from Rome to the most important colonies, to Venusia in
554, Narnia in 555, Cosa in 557, and Cales shortly before 570.

What blanks were produced by war and famine in the ranks of the
Italian population, is shown by the example of the burgesses of
Rome, whose numbers during the war had fallen almost a fourth.
The statement, accordingly, which puts the whole number of Italians
who fell in the war under Hannibal at 300,000, seems not at all
exaggerated.  Of course this loss fell chiefly on the flower of the
burgesses, who in fact furnished the -elite- as well as the mass of
the combatants.  How fearfully the senate in particular was thinned,
is shown by the filling up of its complement after the battle of
Cannae, when it had been reduced to 123 persons, and was with
difficulty restored to its normal state by an extraordinary nomination
of 177 senators.  That, moreover, the seventeen years' war, which had
been carried on simultaneously in all districts of Italy and towards
all the four points of the compass abroad, must have shaken to the
very heart the national economy, is, as a general position, clear; but
our tradition does not suffice to illustrate it in detail.  The state
no doubt gained by the confiscations, and the Campanian territory in
particular thenceforth remained an inexhaustible source of revenue to
the state; but by this extension of the domain system the national
prosperity of course lost just about as much as at other times it had
gained by the breaking up of the state lands.  Numbers of flourishing
townships--four hundred, it was reckoned--were destroyed and ruined;
the capital laboriously accumulated was consumed; the population were
demoralized by camp life; the good old traditional habits of the
burgesses and farmers were undermined from the capital down to the
smallest village.  Slaves and desperadoes associated themselves in
robber-bands, of the dangers of which an idea may be formed from the
fact that in a single year (569) 7000 men had to be condemned for
highway robbery in Apulia alone; the extension of the pastures,
with their half-savage slave-herdsmen, favoured this mischievous
barbarizing of the land.  Italian agriculture saw its very existence
endangered by the proof, first afforded in this war, that the Roman
people could be supported by grain from Sicily and from Egypt instead
of that which they reaped themselves.

Nevertheless the Roman, whom the gods had allowed to survive the close
of that gigantic struggle, might look with pride to the past and with
confidence to the future.  Many errors had been committed, but much
suffering had also been endured; the people, whose whole youth capable
of arms had for ten years hardly laid aside shield or sword, might
excuse many faults.  The living of different nations side by side in
peace and amity upon the whole--although maintaining an attitude of
mutual antagonism--which appears to be the aim of modern phases of
national life, was a thing foreign to antiquity.  In ancient times it
was necessary to be either anvil or hammer; and in the final struggle
between the victors victory remained with the Romans.  Whether they
would have the judgment to use it rightly--to attach the Latin nation
by still closer bonds to Rome, gradually to Latinize Italy, to rule
their dependents in the provinces as subjects and not to abuse them as
slaves, to reform the constitution, to reinvigorate and to enlarge the
tottering middle class--many a one might ask.  If they should know how
to use it, Italy might hope to see happy times, in which prosperity
based on personal exertion under favourable circumstances, and the
most decisive political supremacy over the then civilized world, would
impart a just self-reliance to every member of the great whole,
furnish a worthy aim for every ambition, and open a career for every
talent.  It would, no doubt, be otherwise, should they fail to use
aright their victory.  But for the moment doubtful voices and gloomy
apprehensions were silent, when from all quarters the warriors and
victors returned to their homes; thanksgivings and amusements, and
rewards to the soldiers and burgesses were the order of the day;
the released prisoners of war were sent home from Gaul, Africa,
and Greece; and at length the youthful conqueror moved in splendid
procession through the decorated streets of the capital, to deposit
his laurels in the house of the god by whose direct inspiration, as
the pious whispered one to another, he had been guided in counsel
and in action.




Notes for Chapter VI


1. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome

2. III. VI. The Sending of Reinforcements Temporarily Frustrated

3. III. VI. Conflicts in the South of Italy

4. III. VI. Sicily Tranquillized

5. Of the two places bearing this name, the more westerly, situated
about 60 miles west of Hadrumetum, was probably the scene of the
battle (comp. Hermes, xx. 144, 318).  The time was the spring or
summer of the year 552; the fixing of the day as the 19th October,
on account of the alleged solar eclipse, is of no account.




CHAPTER VII

The West from the Peace of Hannibal to the Close of the Third Period

Subjugation of the Valley of the Po

The war waged by Hannibal had interrupted Rome in the extension of her
dominion to the Alps or to the boundary of Italy, as was even now the
Roman phrase, and in the organization and colonizing of the Celtic
territories.  It was self-evident that the task would now be resumed
at the point where it had been broken off, and the Celts were well
aware of this.  In the very year of the conclusion of peace with
Carthage (553) hostilities had recommenced in the territory of the
Boii, who were the most immediately exposed to danger; and a first
success obtained by them over the hastily-assembled Roman levy,
coupled with the persuasions of a Carthaginian officer, Hamilcar, who
had been left behind from the expedition of Mago in northern Italy,
produced in the following year (554) a general insurrection spreading
beyond the two tribes immediately threatened, the Boii and Insubres.
The Ligurians were driven to arms by the nearer approach of the
danger, and even the youth of the Cenomani on this occasion listened
less to the voice of their cautious chiefs than to the urgent appeal
of their kinsmen who were in peril.  Of "the two barriers against the
raids of the Gauls," Placentia and Cremona, the former was sacked--not
more than 2000 of the inhabitants of Placentia saved their lives--and
the second was invested.  In haste the legions advanced to save what
they could.  A great battle took place before Cremona.  The dexterous
management and the professional skill of the Phoenician leader failed
to make up for the deficiencies of his troops; the Gauls were unable
to withstand the onset of the legions, and among the numerous dead who
covered the field of battle was the Carthaginian officer.  The Celts,
nevertheless, continued the struggle; the same Roman army which had
conquered at Cremona was next year (555), chiefly through the fault of
its careless leader, almost destroyed by the Insubres; and it was not
till 556 that Placentia could be partially re-established.  But the
league of the cantons associated for the desperate struggle suffered
from intestine discord; the Boii and Insubres quarrelled, and the
Cenomani not only withdrew from the national league, but purchased
their pardon from the Romans by a disgraceful betrayal of their
countrymen; during a battle in which the Insubres engaged the Romans
on the Mincius, the Cenomani attacked in rear, and helped to destroy,
their allies and comrades in arms (557).  Thus humbled and left in the
lurch, the Insubres, after the fall of Comum, likewise consented to
conclude a separate peace (558).  The conditions, which the Romans
prescribed to the Cenomani and Insubres, were certainly harder than
they had been in the habit of granting to the members of the Italian
confederacy; in particular, they were careful to confirm by law the
barrier of separation between Italians and Celts, and to enact that
never should a member of these two Celtic tribes be capable of
acquiring the citizenship of Rome.  But these Transpadane Celtic
districts were allowed to retain their existence and their national
constitution--so that they formed not town-domains, but tribal
cantons--and no tribute, as it would seem, was imposed on them.
They were intended to serve as a bulwark for the Roman settlements
south of the Po, and to ward off from Italy the incursions of the
migratory northern tribes and the aggressions of the predatory
inhabitants of the Alps, who were wont to make regular razzias in
these districts.  The process of Latinizing, moreover, made rapid
progress in these regions; the Celtic nationality was evidently far
from able to oppose such resistance as the more civilized nations of
Sabellians and Etruscans.  The celebrated Latin comic poet Statius
Caecilius, who died in 586, was a manumitted Insubrian; and Polybius,
who visited these districts towards the close of the sixth century,
affirms, not perhaps without some exaggeration, that in that quarter
only a few villages among the Alps remained Celtic.  The Veneti, on
the other hand, appear to have retained their nationality longer.

Measures Adopted to Check the Immigrations of the Transalpine Gauls

The chief efforts of the Romans in these regions were naturally
directed to check the immigration of the Transalpine Celts, and to
make the natural wall, which separates the peninsula from the interior
of the continent, also its political boundary.  That the terror of
the Roman name had already penetrated to the adjacent Celtic cantons
beyond the Alps, is shown not only by the totally passive attitude
which they maintained during the annihilation or subjugation of their
Cisalpine countrymen, but still more by the official disapproval and
disavowal which the Transalpine cantons--we shall have to think
primarily of the Helvetii (between the lake of Geneva and the Main)
and the Carni or Taurisci (in Carinthia and Styria)--expressed to
the envoys from Rome, who complained of the attempts made by isolated
Celtic bands to settle peacefully on the Roman side of the Alps.  Not
less significant was the humble spirit in which these same bands of
emigrants first came to the Roman senate entreating an assignment
of land, and then without remonstrance obeyed the rigorous order to
return over the Alps (568-575), and allowed the town, which they
had already founded not far from the later Aquileia, to be again
destroyed.  With wise severity the senate permitted no sort of
exception to the principle that the gates of the Alps should be
henceforth closed for the Celtic nation, and visited with heavy
penalties those Roman subjects in Italy, who had instigated any such
schemes of immigration.  An attempt of this kind which was made on a
route hitherto little known to the Romans, in the innermost recess of
the Adriatic, and still more, as if would seem, the project of Philip
of Macedonia for invading Italy from the east as Hannibal had done
from the west, gave occasion to the founding of a fortress in the
extreme north-eastern corner of Italy--Aquileia, the most northerly of
the Italian colonies (571-573)--which was intended not only to close
that route for ever against foreigners, but also to secure the command
of the gulf which was specially convenient for navigation, and to
check the piracy which was still not wholly extirpated in those
waters.  The establishment of Aquileia led to a war with the Istrians
(576, 577), which was speedily terminated by the storming of some
strongholds and the fall of the king, Aepulo, and which was remarkable
for nothing except for the panic, which the news of the surprise of
the Roman camp by a handful of barbarians called forth in the fleet
and throughout Italy.

Colonizing of the Region on the South of the Po

A different course was adopted with the region on the south of the Po,
which the Roman senate had determined to incorporate with Italy.  The
Boii, who were immediately affected by this step, defended themselves
with the resolution of despair.  They even crossed the Po and made an
attempt to rouse the Insubres once more to arms (560); they blockaded
a consul in his camp, and he was on the point of succumbing; Placentia
maintained itself with difficulty against the constant assaults of
the exasperated natives.  At length the last battle was fought at
Mutina; it was long and bloody, but the Romans conquered (561);
and thenceforth the struggle was no longer a war, but a slave-hunt.
The Roman camp soon was the only asylum in the Boian territory;
thither the better part of the still surviving population began to
take refuge; and the victors were able, without much exaggeration, to
report to Rome that nothing remained of the nation of the Boii but old
men and children.  The nation was thus obliged to resign itself to the
fate appointed for it.  The Romans demanded the cession of half the
territory (563); the demand could not be refused, and even within the
diminished district which was left to the Boii, they soon disappeared,
and amalgamated with their conquerors.(1)

After the Romans had thus cleared the ground for themselves,
the fortresses of Placentia and Cremona, whose colonists had been
in great part swept away or dispersed by the troubles of the last few
years, were reorganized, and new settlers were sent thither.  The new
foundations were, in or near the former territory of the Senones,
Potentia (near Recanati not far from Ancona: in 570) and Pisaurum
(Pesaro: in 570), and, in the newly acquired district of the Boii, the
fortresses of Bononia (565), Mutina (571), and Parma (571); the colony
of Mutina had been already instituted before the war under Hannibal,
but that war had interrupted the completion of the settlement.
The construction of fortresses was associated, as was always the case,
with the formation of military roads.  The Flaminian way was prolonged
from its northern termination at Ariminum, under the name of the
Aemilian way, to Placentia (567).  Moreover, the road from Rome to
Arretium or the Cassian way, which perhaps had already been long a
municipal road, was taken in charge and constructed anew by the Roman
community probably in 583; while in 567 the track from Arretium over
the Apennines to Bononia as far as the new Aemilian road had been put
in order, and furnished a shorter communication between Rome and the
fortresses on the Po.  By these comprehensive measures the Apennines
were practically superseded as the boundary between the Celtic and
Italian territories, and were replaced by the Po.  South of the Po
there henceforth prevailed mainly the urban constitution of the
Italians, beyond it mainly the cantonal constitution of the Celts;
and, if the district between the Apennines and the Po was still
reckoned Celtic land, it was but an empty name.

Liguria

In the north-western mountain-land of Italy, whose valleys and hills
were occupied chiefly by the much-subdivided Ligurian stock, the
Romans pursued a similar course.  Those dwelling immediately to the
north of the Arno were extirpated.  This fate befell chiefly the
Apuani, who dwelt on the Apennines between the Arno and the Magra, and
incessantly plundered on the one side the territory of Pisae, on the
other that of Bononia and Mutina.  Those who did not fall victims in
that quarter to the sword of the Romans were transported into Lower
Italy to the region of Beneventum (574); and by energetic measures the
Ligurian nation, from which the Romans were obliged in 578 to recover
the colony of Mutina which it had conquered, was completely crushed in
the mountains which separate the valley of the Po from that of the
Arno.  The fortress of Luna (not far from Spezzia), established in 577
in the former territory of the Apuani, protected the frontier against
the Ligurians just as Aquileia did against the Transalpines, and gave
the Romans at the same time an excellent port which henceforth became
the usual station for the passage to Massilia and to Spain.  The
construction of the coast or Aurelian road from Rome to Luna, and
of the cross road carried from Luca by way of Florence to Arretium
between the Aurelian and Cassian ways, probably belongs to the
same period.

With the more western Ligurian tribes, who held the Genoese Apennines
and the Maritime Alps, there were incessant conflicts.  They were
troublesome neighbours, accustomed to pillage by land and by sea: the
Pisans and Massiliots suffered no little injury from their incursions
and their piracies.  But no permanent results were gained amidst these
constant hostilities, or perhaps even aimed at; except apparently
that, with a view to have a communication by land with Transalpine
Gaul and Spain in addition to the regular route by sea, the Romans
endeavoured to clear the great coast road from Luna by way of Massilia
to Emporiae, at least as far as the Alps--beyond the Alps it devolved
on the Massiliots to keep the coast navigation open for Roman vessels
and the road along the shore open for travellers by land.  The
interior with its impassable valleys and its rocky fastnesses,
and with its poor but dexterous and crafty inhabitants, served
the Romans mainly as a school of war for the training and hardening
of soldiers and officers.

Corsica
Sardinia

Wars as they are called, of a similar character with those against the
Ligurians, were waged with the Corsicans and to a still greater extent
with the inhabitants of the interior of Sardinia, who retaliated for
the predatory expeditions directed against them by sudden attacks on
the districts along the coast.  The expedition of Tiberius Gracchus
against the Sardinians in 577 was specially held in remembrance,
not so much because it gave "peace" to the province, as because
he asserted that he had slain or captured as many as 80,000 of
the islanders, and dragged slaves thence in such multitudes to
Rome that "cheap as a Sardinian" became a proverb.

Carthage

In Africa the policy of Rome was substantially summed up in the one
idea, as short-sighted as it was narrow-minded, that she ought to
prevent the revival of the power of Carthage, and ought accordingly
to keep the unhappy city constantly oppressed and apprehensive of
a declaration of war suspended over it by Rome like the sword of
Damocles.  The stipulation in the treaty of peace, that the
Carthaginians should retain their territory undiminished, but
that their neighbour Massinissa should have all those possessions
guaranteed to him which he or his predecessor had possessed within
the Carthaginian bounds, looks almost as if it had been inserted not
to obviate, but to provoke disputes.  The same remark applies to the
obligation imposed by the Roman treaty of peace on the Carthaginians
not to make war upon the allies of Rome; so that, according to the
letter of the treaty, they were not even entitled to expel their
Numidian neighbours from their own undisputed territory.  With such
stipulations and amidst the uncertainty of African frontier questions
in general, the situation of Carthage in presence of a neighbour
equally powerful and unscrupulous and of a liege lord who was at once
umpire and party in the cause, could not but be a painful one; but
the reality was worse than the worst expectations.  As early as 561
Carthage found herself suddenly assailed under frivolous pretexts,
and saw the richest portion of her territory, the province of Emporiae
on the Lesser Syrtis, partly plundered by the Numidians, partly
even seized and retained by them.  Encroachments of this kind were
multiplied; the level country passed into the hands of the Numidians,
and the Carthaginians with difficulty maintained themselves in the
larger places.  Within the last two years alone, the Carthaginians
declared in 582, seventy villages had been again wrested from them in
opposition to the treaty.  Embassy after embassy was despatched to
Rome; the Carthaginians adjured the Roman senate either to allow them
to defend themselves by arms, or to appoint a court of arbitration
with power to enforce their award, or to regulate the frontier anew
that they might at least learn once for all how much they were to
lose; otherwise it were better to make them Roman subjects at once
than thus gradually to deliver them over to the Libyans.  But the
Roman government, which already in 554 had held forth a direct
prospect of extension of territory to their client, of course at the
expense of Carthage, seemed to have little objection that he should
himself take the booty destined for him; they moderated perhaps at
times the too great impetuosity of the Libyans, who now retaliated
fully on their old tormentors for their former sufferings; but it
was in reality for the very sake of inflicting this torture that the
Romans had assigned Massinissa as a neighbour to Carthage.  All the
requests and complaints had no result, except either that Roman
commissions made their appearance in Africa and after a thorough
investigation came to no decision, or that in the negotiations at
Rome the envoys of Massinissa pretended a want of instructions and
the matter was adjourned.  Phoenician patience alone was able to
submit meekly to such a position, and even to exhibit towards
the despotic victors every attention and courtesy, solicited or
unsolicited with unwearied perseverance.  The Carthaginians
especially courted Roman favour by sending supplies of grain.

Hannibal
Reform of the Carthaginian Constitution
Hannibal's Flight

This pliability on the part of the vanquished, however was not mere
patience and resignation.  There was still in Carthage a patriotic
party, and at its head stood the man who, wherever fate placed him,
was still dreaded by the Romans.  It had not abandoned the idea of
resuming the struggle by taking advantage of those complications that
might be easily foreseen between Rome and the eastern powers; and, as
the failure of the magnificent scheme of Hamilcar and his sons had
been due mainly to the Carthaginian oligarchy, the chief object was
internally to reinvigorate the country for this new struggle.  The
salutary influence of adversity, and the clear, noble, and commanding
mind of Hannibal, effected political and financial reforms.  The
oligarchy, which had filled up the measure of its guilty follies by
raising a criminal process against the great general, charging him
with having intentionally abstained from the capture of Rome and with
embezzlement of the Italian spoil--that rotten oligarchy was, on the
proposition of Hannibal, overthrown, and a democratic government was
introduced such as was suited to the circumstances of the citizens
(before 559).  The finances were so rapidly reorganized by the
collection of arrears and of embezzled moneys and by the introduction
of better control, that the contribution due to Rome could be paid
without burdening the citizens in any way with extraordinary taxes.
The Roman government, just then on the point of beginning its critical
war with the great-king of Asia, observed the progress of these
events, as may easily be conceived, with apprehension; it was no
imaginary danger that the Carthaginian fleet might land in Italy and
a second war under Hannibal might spring up there, while the Roman
legions fighting in Asia Minor.  We can scarcely, therefore, censure
the Romans for sending an embassy to Carthage (in 559) which was
presumably charged to demand the surrender of Hannibal.  The spiteful
Carthaginian oligarchs, who sent letter after letter to Rome to
denounce to the national foe the hero who had overthrown them as
having entered into secret communications with the powers unfriendly
to Rome, were contemptible, but their information was probably
correct; and, true as it was that that embassy involved a humiliating
confession of the dread with which the simple shofete of Carthage
inspired so powerful a people, and natural and honourable as it was
that the proud conqueror of Zama should take exception in the senate
to so humiliating a step, still that confession was nothing but the
simple truth, and Hannibal was of a genius so extraordinary, that none
but sentimental politicians in Rome could tolerate him longer at the
head of the Carthaginian state.  The marked recognition thus accorded
to him by the Roman government scarcely took himself by surprise.
As it was Hannibal and not Carthage that had carried on the last war,
so it was he who had to bear the fate of the vanquished.  The
Carthaginians could do nothing but submit and be thankful that
Hannibal, sparing them the greater disgrace by his speedy and prudent
flight to the east, left to his ancestral city merely the lesser
disgrace of having banished its greatest citizen for ever from his
native land, confiscated his property, and razed his house.  The
profound saying that those are the favourites of the gods, on whom
they lavish infinite joys and infinite sorrows, thus verified itself
in full measure in the case of Hannibal.

Continued Irritation in Rome towards Carthage

A graver responsibility than that arising out of their proceedings
against Hannibal attaches to the Roman government for their
persistence in suspecting and tormenting the city after his removal.
Parties indeed fermented there as before; but, after the withdrawal
of the extraordinary man who had wellnigh changed the destinies of the
world, the patriot party was not of much more importance in Carthage
than in Aetolia or Achaia.  The most rational of the various ideas
which then agitated the unhappy city was beyond doubt that of
attaching themselves to Massinissa and of converting him from
the oppressor into the protector of the Phoenicians.  But neither
the national section of the patriots nor the section with Libyan
tendencies attained the helm; on the contrary the government remained
in the hands of the oligarchs friendly to Rome, who, so far as they
did not altogether renounce thought of the future, clung to the single
idea of saving the material welfare and the communal freedom of
Carthage under Roman protection.  With this state of matters the
Romans might well have been content.  But neither the multitude, nor
even the ruling lords of the average stamp, could rid themselves of
the profound alarm produced by the Hannibalic war; and the Roman
merchants with envious eyes beheld the city even now, when its
political power was gone, possessed of extensive commercial
dependencies and of a firmly established wealth which nothing could
shake.  Already in 567 the Carthaginian government offered to pay up
at once the whole instalments stipulated in the peace of 553--an offer
which the Romans, who attached far more importance to the having
Carthage tributary than to the sums of money themselves, naturally
declined, and only deduced from it the conviction that, in spite of
all the trouble they had taken, the city was not ruined and was not
capable of ruin.  Fresh reports were ever circulating through Rome as
to the intrigues of the faithless Phoenicians.  At one time it was
alleged that Aristo of Tyre had been seen in Carthage as an emissary
of Hannibal, to prepare the citizens for the landing of an Asiatic
war-fleet (561); at another, that the council had, in a secret
nocturnal sitting in the temple of the God of Healing, given audience
to the envoys of Perseus (581); at another there was talk of the
powerful fleet which was being equipped in Carthage for the Macedonian
war (583).  It is probable that these and similar reports were founded
on nothing more than, at most, individual indiscretions; but still
they were the signal for new diplomatic ill usage on the part of Rome,
and for new aggressions on the part of Massinissa, and the idea gained
ground the more, the less sense and reason there was in it, that the
Carthaginian question would not be settled without a third Punic war.

Numidians

While the power of the Phoenicians was thus sinking in the land of
their choice, just as it had long ago succumbed in their original
home, a new state grew up by their side.  The northern coast of Africa
has been inhabited from time immemorial, and is inhabited still, by
the people, who themselves assume the name of Shilah or Tamazigt, whom
the Greeks and Romans call Nomades or Numidians, i. e. the "pastoral"
people, and the Arabs call Berbers, although they also at times
designate them as "shepherds" (Shawie), and to whom we are wont to
give the name of Berbers or Kabyles.  This people is, so far as its
language has been hitherto investigated, related to no other known
nation.  In the Carthaginian period these tribes, with the exception
of those dwelling immediately around Carthage or immediately on the
coast, had on the whole maintained their independence, and had also
substantially retained their pastoral and equestrian life, such as the
inhabitants of the Atlas lead at the present day; although they were
not strangers to the Phoenician alphabet and Phoenician civilization
generally,(2) and instances occurred in which the Berber sheiks had
their sons educated in Carthage and intermarried with the families of
the Phoenician nobility.  It was not the policy of the Romans to have
direct possessions of their own in Africa; they preferred to rear a
state there, which should not be of sufficient importance to be able
to dispense with Roman protection, and yet should be sufficiently
strong to keep down the power of Carthage now that it was restricted
to Africa, and to render all freedom of movement impossible for the
tortured city.  They found what they sought among the native princes.
About the time of the Hannibalic war the natives of North Africa were
subject to three principal kings, each of whom, according to the
custom there, had a multitude of princes bound to follow his banner;
Bocchar king of the Mauri, who ruled from the Atlantic Ocean to the
river Molochath (now Mluia, on the boundary between Morocco and the
French territory); Syphax king of the Massaesyli, who ruled from the
last-named point to the "Perforated Promontory," as it was called
(Seba Rus, between Jijeli and Bona), in what are now the provinces of
Oran and Algiers; and Massinissa king of the Massyli, who ruled from
the Tretum Promontorium to the boundary of Carthage, in what is now
the province of Constantine.  The most powerful of these, Syphax king
of Siga, had been vanquished in the last war between Rome and Carthage
and carried away captive to Rome, where he died in captivity.  His
wide dominions were mainly given to Massinissa; although Vermina the
son of Syphax by humble petition recovered a small portion of his
father's territory from the Romans (554), he was unable to deprive
the earlier ally of the Romans of his position as the privileged
oppressor of Carthage.

Massinissa

Massinissa became the founder of the Numidian kingdom; and seldom has
choice or accident hit upon a man so thoroughly fitted for his post.
In body sound and supple up to extreme old age; temperate and sober
like an Arab; capable of enduring any fatigue, of standing on the same
spot from morning to evening, and of sitting four-and-twenty hours on
horseback; tried alike as a soldier and a general amidst the romantic
vicissitudes of his youth as well as on the battle-fields of Spain,
and not less master of the more difficult art of maintaining
discipline in his numerous household and order in his dominions;
with equal unscrupulousness ready to throw himself at the feet of his
powerful protector, or to tread under foot his weaker neighbour; and,
in addition to all this, as accurately acquainted with the
circumstances of Carthage, where he was educated and had been on
familiar terms in the noblest houses, as he was filled with an African
bitterness of hatred towards his own and his people's oppressors,
--this remarkable man became the soul of the revival of his nation,
which had seemed on the point of perishing, and of whose virtues and
faults he appeared as it were a living embodiment.  Fortune favoured
him, as in everything, so especially in the fact, that it allowed
him time for his work.  He died in the ninetieth year of his age
(516-605), and in the sixtieth year of his reign, retaining to the
last the full possession of his bodily and mental powers, leaving
behind him a son one year old and the reputation of having been
the strongest man and the best and most fortunate king of his age.

Extension and Civilization of Numidia

We have already narrated how purposely and clearly the Romans in
their management of African affairs evinced their taking part with
Massinissa, and how zealously and constantly the latter availed
himself of the tacit permission to enlarge his territory at the
expense of Carthage.  The whole interior to the border of the desert
fell to the native sovereign as it were of its own accord, and even
the upper valley of the Bagradas (Mejerdah) with the rich town of Vaga
became subject to the king; on the coast also to the east of Carthage
he occupied the old Sidonian city of Great Leptis and other districts,
so that his kingdom stretched from the Mauretanian to the Cyrenaean
frontier, enclosed the Carthaginian territory on every side by land,
and everywhere pressed, in the closest vicinity, on the Phoenicians.
It admits of no doubt, that he looked on Carthage as his future
capital; the Libyan party there was significant.  But it was not
only by the diminution of her territory that Carthage suffered injury.
The roving shepherds were converted by their great king into another
people.  After the example of the king, who brought the fields
under cultivation far and wide and bequeathed to each of his sons
considerable landed estates, his subjects also began to settle and
to practise agriculture.  As he converted his shepherds into settled
citizens, he converted also his hordes of plunderers into soldiers who
were deemed by Rome worthy to fight side by side with her legions;
and he bequeathed to his successors a richly-filled treasury, a well-
disciplined army, and even a fleet.  His residence Cirta (Constantine)
became the stirring capital of a powerful state, and a chief seat of
Phoenician civilization, which was zealously fostered at the court of
the Berber king--fostered perhaps studiously with a view to the future
Carthagino-Numidian kingdom.  The hitherto degraded Libyan nationality
thus rose in its own estimation, and the native manners and language
made their way even into the old Phoenician towns, such as Great
Leptis.  The Berber began, under the aegis of Rome, to feel himself
the equal or even the superior of the Phoenician; Carthaginian envoys
at Rome had to submit to be told that they were aliens in Africa,
and that the land belonged to the Libyans.  The Phoenico-national
civilization of North Africa, which still retained life and vigour
even in the levelling times of the Empire, was far more the work
of Massinissa than of the Carthaginians.

The State of Culture in Spain

In Spain the Greek and Phoenician towns along the coast, such as
Emporiae, Saguntum, New Carthage, Malaca, and Gades, submitted to the
Roman rule the more readily, that, left to their own resources, they
would hardly have been able to protect themselves from the natives;
as for similar reasons Massilia, although far more important and more
capable of self-defence than those towns, did not omit to secure a
powerful support in case of need by closely attaching itself to the
Romans, to whom it was in return very serviceable as an intermediate
station between Italy and Spain.  The natives, on the other hand, gave
to the Romans endless trouble.  It is true that there were not wanting
the rudiments of a national Iberian civilization, although of its
special character it is scarcely possible for us to acquire any clear
idea.  We find among the Iberians a widely diffused national writing,
which divides itself into two chief kinds, that of the valley of the
Ebro, and the Andalusian, and each of these was presumably subdivided
into various branches: this writing seems to have originated at a very
early period, and to be traceable rather to the old Greek than to the
Phoenician alphabet.  There is even a tradition that the Turdetani
(round Seville) possessed lays from very ancient times, a metrical
book of laws of 6000 verses, and even historical records; at any rate
this tribe is described as the most civilized of all the Spanish
tribes, and at the same time the least warlike; indeed, it regularly
carried on its wars by means of foreign mercenaries.  To the same
region probably we must refer the descriptions given by Polybius of
the flourishing condition of agriculture and the rearing of cattle
in Spain--so that, in the absence of opportunity of export, grain and
flesh were to be had at nominal prices--and of the splendid royal
palaces with golden and silver jars full of "barley wine." At least a
portion of the Spaniards, moreover, zealously embraced the elements of
culture which the Romans brought along with them, so that the process
of Latinizing made more rapid progress in Spain than anywhere else in
the transmarine provinces.  For example, warm baths after the Italian
fashion came into use even at this period among the natives.  Roman
money, too, was to all appearance not only current in Spain far
earlier than elsewhere out of Italy, but was imitated in Spanish
coins; a circumstance in some measure explained by the rich silver-
mines of the country.  The so-called "silver of Osca" (now Huesca
in Arragon), i. e. Spanish -denarii- with Iberian inscriptions, is
mentioned in 559; and the commencement of their coinage cannot be
placed much later, because the impression is imitated from that of
the oldest Roman -denarii-.

But, while in the southern and eastern provinces the culture of the
natives may have so far prepared the way for Roman civilization and
Roman rule that these encountered no serious difficulties, the west
and north on the other hand, and the whole of the interior, were
occupied by numerous tribes more or less barbarous, who knew little of
any kind of civilization--in Intercatia, for instance, the use of gold
and silver was still unknown about 600--and who were on no better
terms with each other than with the Romans.  A characteristic trait
in these free Spaniards was the chivalrous spirit of the men and, at
least to an equal extent, of the women.  When a mother sent forth her
son to battle, she roused his spirit by the recital of the feats of
his ancestors; and the fairest maiden unasked offered her hand in
marriage to the bravest man.  Single combat was common, both with
a view to determine the prize of valour, and for the settlement of
lawsuits; even disputes among the relatives of princes as to the
succession were settled in this way.  It not unfrequently happened
that a well-known warrior confronted the ranks of the enemy and
challenged an antagonist by name; the defeated champion then
surrendered his mantle and sword to his opponent, and even entered
into relations of friendship and hospitality with him.  Twenty years
after the close of the second Punic war, the little Celtiberian
community of Complega (in the neighbourhood of the sources of the
Tagus) sent a message to the Roman general, that unless he sent to
them for every man that had fallen a horse, a mantle, and a sword,
it would fare ill with him.  Proud of their military honour, so that
they frequently could not bear to survive the disgrace of being
disarmed, the Spaniards were nevertheless disposed to follow any
one who should enlist their services, and to stake their lives in
any foreign quarrel.  The summons was characteristic, which a Roman
general well acquainted with the customs of the country sent to a
Celtiberian band righting in the pay of the Turdetani against the
Romans--either to return home, or to enter the Roman service with
double pay, or to fix time and place for battle.  If no recruiting
officer made his appearance, they met of their own accord in free
bands, with the view of pillaging the more peaceful districts and
even of capturing and occupying towns, quite after the manner of the
Campanians.  The wildness and insecurity of the inland districts are
attested by the fact that banishment into the interior westward of
Cartagena was regarded by the Romans as a severe punishment, and that
in periods of any excitement the Roman commandants of Further Spain
took with them escorts of as many as 6000 men.  They are still more
clearly shown by the singular relations subsisting between the Greeks
and their Spanish neighbours in the Graeco-Spanish double city of
Emporiae, at the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees.  The Greek
settlers, who dwelt on the point of the peninsula separated on the
landward side from the Spanish part of the town by a wall, took care
that this wall should be guarded every night by a third of their civic
force, and that a higher official should constantly superintend the
watch at the only gate; no Spaniard was allowed to set foot in the
Greek city, and the Greeks conveyed their merchandise to the natives
only in numerous and well-escorted companies.

Wars between the Romans and Spaniards

These natives, full of restlessness and fond of war--full of the
spirit of the Cid and of Don Quixote--were now to be tamed and, if
possible, civilized by the Romans.  In a military point of view
the task was not difficult.  It is true that the Spaniards showed
themselves, not only when behind the walls of their cities or under
the leadership of Hannibal, but even when left to themselves and in
the open field of battle, no contemptible opponents; with their short
two-edged sword which the Romans subsequently adopted from them, and
their formidable assaulting columns, they not unfrequently made even
the Roman legions waver.  Had they been able to submit to military
discipline and to political combination, they might perhaps have
shaken off the foreign yoke imposed on them.  But their valour was
rather that of the guerilla than of the soldier, and they were utterly
void of political judgment.  Thus in Spain there was no serious war,
but as little was there any real peace; the Spaniards, as Caesar
afterwards very justly pointed out to them, never showed themselves
quiet in peace or strenuous in war.  Easy as it was for a Roman
general to scatter a host of insurgents, it was difficult for the
Roman statesman to devise any suitable means of really pacifying and
civilizing Spain.  In fact, he could only deal with it by palliative
measures; because the only really adequate expedient, a comprehensive
Latin colonization, was not accordant with the general aim of Roman
policy at this period.

The Romans Maintain a Standing Army in Spain
Cato
Gracchus

The territory which the Romans acquired in Spain in the course of the
second Punic war was from the beginning divided into two masses--the
province formerly Carthaginian, which embraced in the first instance
the present districts of Andalusia, Granada, Murcia, and Valencia, and
the province of the Ebro, or the modern Arragon and Catalonia, the
fixed quarters of the Roman army during the last war.  Out of these
territories were formed the two Roman provinces of Further and Hither
Spain.  The Romans sought gradually to reduce to subjection the
interior corresponding nearly to the two Castiles, which they
comprehended under the general name of Celtiberia, while they were
content with checking the incursions of the inhabitants of the western
provinces, more especially those of the Lusitanians in the modern
Portugal and the Spanish Estremadura, into the Roman territory;
with the tribes on the north coast, the Callaecians, Asturians,
and Cantabrians, they did not as yet come into contact at all.
The territories thus won, however, could not be maintained and secured
without a standing garrison, for the governor of Hither Spain had no
small trouble every year with the chastisement of the Celtiberians,
and the governor of the more remote province found similar employment
in repelling the Lusitanians.  It was needful accordingly to maintain
in Spain a Roman army of four strong legions, or about 40,000 men,
year after year; besides which the general levy had often to be called
out in the districts occupied by Rome, to reinforce the legions.  This
was of great importance for two reasons: it was in Spain first, at
least first on any larger scale, that the military occupation of the
land became continuous; and it was there consequently that the service
acquired a permanent character.  The old Roman custom of sending
troops only where the exigencies of war at the moment required them,
and of not keeping the men called to serve, except in very serious
and important wars, under arms for more than a year, was found
incompatible with the retention of the turbulent and remote Spanish
provinces beyond the sea; it was absolutely impossible to withdraw
the troops from these, and very dangerous even to relieve them
extensively.  The Roman burgesses began to perceive that dominion over
a foreign people is an annoyance not only to the slave, but to the
master, and murmured loudly regarding the odious war-service of Spain.
While the new generals with good reason refused to allow the relief of
the existing corps as a whole, the men mutinied and threatened that,
if they were not allowed their discharge, they would take it of
their own accord.

The wars themselves, which the Romans waged in Spain, were but of
a subordinate importance.  They began with the very departure of
Scipio,(3) and continued as long as the war under Hannibal lasted.
After the peace with Carthage (in 553) there was a cessation of
arms in the peninsula; but only for a short time.  In 557 a general
insurrection broke out in both provinces; the commander of the
Further province was hard pressed; the commander of Hither Spain was
completely defeated, and was himself slain.  It was necessary to take
up the war in earnest, and although in the meantime the able praetor
Quintus Minucius had mastered the first danger, the senate resolved in
559 to send the consul Marcus Cato in person to Spain.  On landing at
Emporiae he actually found the whole of Hither Spain overrun by the
insurgents; with difficulty that seaport and one or two strongholds
in the interior were still held for Rome.  A pitched battle took place
between the insurgents and the consular army, in which, after an
obstinate conflict man against man, the Roman military skill at length
decided the day with its last reserve.  The whole of Hither Spain
thereupon sent in its submission: so little, however, was this
submission meant in earnest, that on a rumour of the consul having
returned to Rome the insurrection immediately recommenced.  But the
rumour was false; and after Cato had rapidly reduced the communities
which had revolted for the second time and sold them -en masse- into
slavery, he decreed a general disarming of the Spaniards in the Hither
province, and issued orders to all the towns of the natives from the
Pyrenees to the Guadalquivir to pull down their walls on one and the
same day.  No one knew how far the command extended, and there was no
time to come to any understanding; most of the communities complied;
and of the few that were refractory not many ventured, when the Roman
army soon appeared before their walls, to await its assault.

These energetic measures were certainly not without permanent effect.
Nevertheless the Romans had almost every year to reduce to subjection
some mountain valley or mountain stronghold in the "peaceful
province," and the constant incursions of the Lusitanians into the
Further province led occasionally to severe defeats of the Romans.
In 563, for instance, a Roman army was obliged after heavy loss to
abandon its camp, and to return by forced inarches into the more
tranquil districts.  It was not till after a victory gained by the
praetor Lucius Aemilius Paullus in 565,(4) and a second still more
considerable gained by the brave praetor Gaius Calpurnius beyond the
Tagus over the Lusitanians in 569, that quiet for some time prevailed.
In Hither Spain the hitherto almost nominal rule of the Romans over
the Celtiberian tribes was placed on a firmer basis by Quintus Fulvius
Flaccus, who after a great victory over them in 573 compelled at least
the adjacent cantons to submission; and especially by his successor
Tiberius Gracchus (575, 576), who achieved results of a permanent
character not only by his arms, by which he reduced three hundred
Spanish townships, but still more by his adroitness in adapting
himself to the views and habits of the simple and haughty nation.
He induced Celtiberians of note to take service in the Roman army,
and so created a class of dependents; he assigned land to the roving
tribes, and collected them in towns--the Spanish town Graccurris
preserved the Roman's name--and so imposed a serious check on their
freebooter habits; he regulated the relations of the several tribes
to the Romans by just and wise treaties, and so stopped, as far as
possible, the springs of future rebellion.  His name was held in
grateful remembrance by the Spaniards, and comparative peace
henceforth reigned in the land, although the Celtiberians still
from time to time winced under the yoke.

Administration of Spain

The system of administration in the two Spanish provinces was similar
to that of the Sicilo-Sardinian province, but not identical.  The
superintendence was in both instances vested in two auxiliary consuls,
who were first nominated in 557, in which year also the regulation of
the boundaries and the definitive organization of the new provinces
took place.  The judicious enactment of the Baebian law (573), that
the Spanish praetors should always be nominated for two years, was not
seriously carried out in consequence of the increasing competition for
the highest magistracies, and still more in consequence of the jealous
supervision exercised over the powers of the magistrates by the
senate; and in Spain also, except where deviations occurred in
extraordinary circumstances, the Romans adhered to the system of
annually changing the governors--a system especially injudicious in
the case of provinces so remote and with which it was so difficult to
gain an acquaintance.  The dependent communities were throughout
tributary; but, instead of the Sicilian and Sardinian tenths and
customs, in Spain fixed payments in money or other contributions were
imposed by the Romans, just as formerly by the Carthaginians, on the
several towns and tribes: the collection of these by military means
was prohibited by a decree of the senate in 583, in consequence of the
complaints of the Spanish communities.  Grain was not furnished in
their case except for compensation, and even then the governor might
not levy more than a twentieth; besides, conformably to the just-
mentioned ordinance of the supreme authority, he was bound to adjust
the compensation in an equitable manner.  On the other hand, the
obligation of the Spanish subjects to furnish contingents to the Roman
armies had an importance very different from that which belonged to
it at least in peaceful Sicily, and it was strictly regulated in the
several treaties.  The right, too, of coining silver money of the
Roman standard appears to have been very frequently conceded to the
Spanish towns, and the monopoly of coining seems to have been by no
means asserted here by the Roman government with the same strictness
as in Sicily.  Rome had too much need of her subjects everywhere in
Spain, not to proceed with all possible tenderness in the introduction
and handling of the provincial constitution there.  Among the
communities specially favoured by Rome were the great cities along
the coast of Greek, Phoenician, or Roman foundation, such as Saguntum,
Gades, and Tarraco, which, as the natural pillars of the Roman rule
in the peninsula, were admitted to alliance with Rome.  On the whole,
Spain was in a military as well as financial point of view a burden
rather than a gain to the Roman commonwealth; and the question
naturally occurs, Why did the Roman government, whose policy at that
time evidently did not contemplate the acquisition of countries beyond
the sea, not rid itself of these troublesome possessions?  The not
inconsiderable commercial connections of Spain, her important iron-
mines, and her still more important silver-mines famous from ancient
times even in the far east(5)--which Rome, like Carthage, took into
her own hands, and the management of which was specially regulated by
Marcus Cato (559)--must beyond doubt have co-operated to induce its
retention; but the chief reason of the Romans for retaining the
peninsula in their own immediate possession was, that there were no
states in that quarter of similar character to the Massiliot republic
in the land of the Celts and the Numidian kingdom in Libya, and that
thus they could not abandon Spain without putting it into the power
of any adventurer to revive the Spanish empire of the Barcides.




Notes for Chapter VII


1. According to the account of Strabo these Italian Boii were driven
by the Romans over the Alps, and from them proceeded that Boian
settlement in what is now Hungary about Stein am Anger and Oedenburg,
which was attacked and annihilated in the time of Augustus by the
Getae who crossed the Danube, but which bequeathed to this district
the name of the Boian desert.  This account is far from agreeing with
the well-attested representation of the Roman annals, according to
which the Romans were content with the cession of half the territory;
and, in order to explain the disappearance of the Italian Boii,
we have really no need to assume a violent expulsion--the other
Celtic peoples, although visited to a far less extent by war and
colonization, disappeared not much less rapidly and totally from the
ranks of the Italian nations.  On the other hand, other accounts
suggest the derivation of those Boii on the Neusiedler See from the
main stock of the nation, which formerly had its seat in Bavaria and
Bohemia before Germanic tribes pushed it towards the south.  But it is
altogether very doubtful whether the Boii, whom we find near Bordeaux,
on the Po, and in Bohemia, were really scattered branches of one
stock, or whether this is not an instance of mere similarity of name.
The hypothesis of Strabo may have rested on nothing else than an
inference from the similarity of name--an inference such as the
ancients drew, often without due reason, in the case of the Cimbri,
Veneti, and others.

2. III. I. Libyphoenicians

3. III. VI. Gades Becomes Roman

4. Of this praetor there has recently come to light the following
decree on a copper tablet found in the neighbourhood of Gibraltar
and now preserved in the Paris Museum: "L. Aimilius, son of Lucius,
Imperator, has ordained that the slaves of the Hastenses [of Hasta
regia, not far from Jerez de la Frontera], who dwell in the tower of
Lascuta [known by means of coins and Plin. iii. i, 15, but uncertain
as to site] should be free.  The ground and the township, of which
they are at the time in possession, they shall continue to possess and
hold, so long as it shall please the people and senate of the Romans.
Done in camp on 12 Jan. [564 or 565]." (-L. Aimilius L. f. inpeirator
decreivit utei qui Hastensium servei in turri Lascutana habitarent,
leiberei essent, Agrum oppidumqu[e], guod ea tempestate posedissent,
item possidere habereque ioussit, dum poplus senatusque Romanus
vettet.  Act. in castreis a. d. XII. k. Febr.-) This is the oldest
Roman document which we possess in the original, drawn up three years
earlier than the well-known edict of the consuls of the year 568 in
the affair of the Bacchanalia.

5. 1 Maccab. viii. 3.  "And Judas heard what the Romans had done
to the land of Hispania to become masters of the silver and gold
mines there."




CHAPTER VIII

The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War

The Hellenic East

The work, which Alexander king of Macedonia had begun a century
before the Romans acquired their first footing in the territory which
he had called his own, had in the course of time--while adhering
substantially to the great fundamental idea of Hellenizing the east
--changed and expanded into the construction of a system of Hellene-
Asiatic states.  The unconquerable propensity of the Greeks for
migration and colonizing, which had formerly carried their traders
to Massilia and Cyrene, to the Nile and to the Black Sea, now firmly
held what the king had won; and under the protection of the -sarissae-,
Greek civilization peacefully domiciled itself everywhere throughout
the ancient empire of the Achaemenidae.  The officers, who divided the
heritage of the great general, gradually settled their differences,
and a system of equilibrium was established, of which the very
Oscillations manifest some sort of regularity.

The Great States
Macedonia

Of the three states of the first rank belonging to this system
--Macedonia, Asia, and Egypt--Macedonia under Philip the Fifth, who
had occupied the throne since 534, was externally at least very much
what it had been under Philip the Second the father of Alexander
--a compact military state with its finances in good order.  On its
northern frontier matters had resumed their former footing, after the
waves of the Gallic inundation had rolled away; the guard of the
frontier kept the Illyrian barbarians in check without difficulty,
at least in ordinary times.  In the south, not only was Greece in
general dependent on Macedonia, but a large portion of it--including
all Thessaly in its widest sense from Olympus to the Spercheius and
the peninsula of Magnesia, the large and important island of Euboea,
the provinces of Locris, Phocis, and Doris, and lastly, a number of
isolated positions in Attica and in the Peloponnesus, such as the
promontory of Sunium, Corinth, Orchomenus, Heraea, the Triphylian
territory--was directly subject to Macedonia and received Macedonian
garrisons; more especially the three important fortresses of Demetrias
in Magnesia, Chalcis in Euboea, and Corinth, "the three fetters of
the Hellenes."  But the strength of the state lay above all in its
hereditary soil, the province of Macedonia.  The population, indeed,
of that extensive territory was remarkably scanty; Macedonia, putting
forth all her energies, was scarcely able to bring into the field as
many men as were contained in an ordinary consular army of two
legions; and it was unmistakeably evident that the land had not yet
recovered from the depopulation occasioned by the campaigns of
Alexander and by the Gallic invasion.  But while in Greece proper
the moral and political energy of the people had decayed, the day of
national vigour seemed to have gone by, life appeared scarce worth
living for, and even of the better spirits one spent time over the
wine-cup, another with the rapier, a third beside the student's lamp;
while in the east and Alexandria the Greeks were able perhaps to
disseminate elements of culture among the dense native population and
to diffuse among that population their language and their loquacity,
their science and pseudo-science, but were barely sufficient in point
of number to supply the nations with officers, statesmen, and
schoolmasters, and were far too few to form even in the cities middle-
class of the pure Greek type; there still existed, or the other hand,
in northern Greece a goodly portion of the old national vigour, which
had produced the warriors of Marathon.  Hence arose the confidence
with which the Macedonians, Aetolians, and Acarnanians, wherever they
made their appearance in the east, claimed to be, and were taken as,
a better race; and hence the superior part which they played at the
courts of Alexandria and Antioch.  There is a characteristic story,
that an Alexandrian who had lived for a considerable time in Macedonia
and had adopted the manners and the dress of that country, on
returning to his native city, now looked upon himself as a man and
upon the Alexandrians as little better than slaves.  This sturdy
vigour and unimpaired national spirit were turned to peculiarly good
account by the Macedonians, as the most powerful and best organized
of the states of northern Greece.  There, no doubt, absolutism had
emerged in opposition to the old constitution, which to some extent
recognized different estates; but sovereign and subject by no means
stood towards each other in Macedonia as they stood in Asia and Egypt,
and the people still felt itself independent and free.  In steadfast
resistance to the public enemy under whatever name, in unshaken
fidelity towards their native country and their hereditary government,
and in persevering courage amidst the severest trials, no nation in
ancient history bears so close a resemblance to the Roman people as
the Macedonians; and the almost miraculous regeneration of the state
after the Gallic invasion redounds to the imperishable honour of its
leaders and of the people whom they led.

Asia

The second of the great states, Asia, was nothing but Persia
superficially remodelled and Hellenized--the empire of "the king
of kings," as its master was wont to call himself in a style
characteristic at once of his arrogance and of his weakness--with the
same pretensions to rule from the Hellespont to the Punjab, and with
the same disjointed organization; an aggregate of dependent states in
various degrees of dependence, of insubordinate satrapies, and of
half-free Greek cities.  In Asia Minor more especially, which was
nominally included in the empire of the Seleucidae, the whole north
coast and the greater part of the eastern interior were practically
in the hands of native dynasties or of the Celtic hordes that had
penetrated thither from Europe; a considerable portion of the west was
in the possession of the kings of Pergamus, and the islands and coast
towns were some of them Egyptian, some of them free; so that little
more was left to the great-king than the interior of Cilicia, Phrygia,
and Lydia, and a great number of titular claims, not easily made good,
against free cities and princes--exactly similar in character to the
sovereignty of the German emperor, in his day, beyond his hereditary
dominions.  The strength of the empire was expended in vain endeavours
to expel the Egyptians from the provinces along the coast; in frontier
strife with the eastern peoples, the Parthians and Bactrians; in feuds
with the Celts, who to the misfortune of Asia Minor had settled within
its bounds; in constant efforts to check the attempts of the eastern
satraps and of the Greek cities of Asia Minor to achieve their
independence; and in family quarrels and insurrections of pretenders.
None indeed of the states founded by the successors of Alexander were
free from such attempts, or from the other horrors which absolute
monarchy in degenerate times brings in its train; but in the kingdom
of Asia these evils were more injurious than elsewhere, because, from
the lax composition of the empire, they usually led to the severance
of particular portions from it for longer or shorter periods.

Egypt

In marked contrast to Asia, Egypt formed a consolidated and united
state, in which the intelligent statecraft of the first Lagidae,
skilfully availing itself of ancient national and religious precedent,
had established a completely absolute cabinet government, and in which
even the worst misrule failed to provoke any attempt either at
emancipation or disruption.  Very different from the Macedonians,
whose national attachment to royalty was based upon their personal
dignity and was its political expression, the rural population
in Egypt was wholly passive; the capital on the other hand was
everything, and that capital was a dependency of the court.  The
remissness and indolence of its rulers, accordingly, paralyzed the
state in Egypt still more than in Macedonia and in Asia; while on
the other hand when wielded by men, like the first Ptolemy and Ptolemy
Euergetes, such a state machine proved itself extremely useful.  It
was one of the peculiar advantages of Egypt as compared with its two
great rivals, that its policy did not grasp at shadows, but pursued
clear and attainable objects.  Macedonia, the home of Alexander, and
Asia, the land where he had established his throne, never ceased to
regard themselves as direct continuations of the Alexandrine monarchy
and more or less loudly asserted their claim to represent it at least,
if not to restore it.  The Lagidae never tried to found a universal
empire, and never dreamt of conquering India; but, by way of
compensation, they drew the whole traffic between India and the
Mediterranean from the Phoenician ports to Alexandria, and made Egypt
the first commercial and maritime state of this epoch, and the
mistress of the eastern Mediterranean and of its coasts and islands.
It is a significant fact, that Ptolemy III.  Euergetes voluntarily
restored all his conquests to Seleucus Callinicus except the seaport
of Antioch.  Partly by this means, partly by its favourable
geographical situation, Egypt attained, with reference to the two
continental powers, an excellent military position either for defence
or for attack.  While an opponent even in the full career of success
was hardly in a position seriously to threaten Egypt, which was almost
inaccessible on any side to land armies, the Egyptians were able by
sea to establish themselves not only in Cyrene, but also in Cyprus
and the Cyclades, on the Phoenico-Syrian coast, on the whole south
and west coast of Asia Minor and even in Europe on the Thracian
Chersonese.  By their unexampled skill in turning to account the
fertile valley of the Nile for the direct benefit of the treasury,
and by a financial system--equally sagacious and unscrupulous
--earnestly and adroitly calculated to foster material interests,
the court of Alexandria was constantly superior to its opponents even
as a moneyed power.  Lastly, the intelligent munificence, with which
the Lagidae welcomed the tendency of the age towards earnest inquiry
in all departments of enterprise and of knowledge, and knew how to
confine such inquiries within the bounds, and entwine them with the
interests, of absolute monarchy, was productive of direct advantage to
the state, whose ship-building and machine-making showed traces of the
beneficial influence of Alexandrian mathematics; and not only so, but
also rendered this new intellectual power--the most important and the
greatest, which the Hellenic nation after its political dismemberment
put forth--subservient, so far as it would consent to be serviceable
at all, to the Alexandrian court.  Had the empire of Alexander
continued to stand, Greek science and art would have found a state
worthy and capable of containing them.  Now, when the nation had
fallen to pieces, a learned cosmopolitanism grew up in it luxuriantly,
and was very soon attracted by the magnet of Alexandria, where
scientific appliances and collections were inexhaustible, where kings
composed tragedies and ministers wrote commentaries on them, and where
pensions and academies flourished.

The mutual relations of the three great states are evident from
what has been said.  The maritime power, which ruled the coasts and
monopolized the sea, could not but after the first great success
--the political separation of the European from the Asiatic continent
--direct its further efforts towards the weakening of the two great
states on the mainland, and consequently towards the protection of the
several minor states; whereas Macedonia and Asia, while regarding each
other as rivals, recognized above all their common adversary in Egypt,
and combined, or at any rate ought to have combined, against it.

The Kingdoms of Asia Minor

Among the states of the second rank, merely an indirect  importance,
so far as concerned the contact of the east with the west, attached
in the first instance to that series of states which, stretching from
the southern end of the Caspian Sea to the Hellespont, occupied the
interior and the north coast of Asia Minor: Atropatene (in the modern
Aderbijan, south-west of the Caspian), next to it Armenia, Cappadocia
in the interior of Asia Minor, Pontus on the south-east, and Bithynia
on the south-west, shore of the Black Sea.  All of these were
fragments of the great Persian Empire, and were ruled by Oriental,
mostly old Persian, dynasties--the remote mountain-land of Atropatene
in particular was the true asylum of the ancient Persian system, over
which even the expedition of Alexander had swept without leaving a
trace--and all were in the same relation of temporary and superficial
dependence on the Greek dynasty, which had taken or wished to take
the place of the great-kings in Asia.

The Celts of Asia Minor

Of greater importance for the general relations was the Celtic
state in the interior of Asia Minor.  There, intermediate between
Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, and Phrygia, three Celtic tribes
--the Tolistoagii, the Tectosages, and Trocmi--had settled, without
abandoning either their native language and manners or their
constitution and their trade as freebooters.  The twelve tetrarchs,
one of whom was appointed to preside over each of the four cantons in
each of the three tribes, formed, with their council of 300 men, the
supreme authority of the nation, and assembled  at the "holy place"
 (-Drunemetum-), especially for the pronouncing of capital sentences.
Singular as this cantonal constitution of the Celts appeared to the
Asiatics, equally strange seemed to them the adventurous and marauding
habits of the northern intruders, who on the one hand furnished their
unwarlike neighbours with mercenaries for every war, and on the other
plundered on their own account or levied contributions from the
surrounding districts.  These rude but vigorous barbarians were the
general terror of the effeminate surrounding nations, and even of the
great-kings of Asia themselves, who, after several Asiatic armies had
been destroyed by the Celts and king Antiochus I.  Soter had even
lost his life in conflict with them (493), agreed at last to pay
them tribute.

Pergamus

In consequence of bold and successful opposition to these Gallic
hordes, Attalus, a wealthy citizen of Pergamus, received the royal
title from his native city and bequeathed it to his posterity.  This
new court was in miniature what that of Alexandria was on a great
scale.  Here too the promotion of material interests and the fostering
of art and literature formed the order of the day, and the government
pursued a cautious and sober cabinet policy, the main objects of
which were the weakening the power of its two dangerous continental
neighbours, and the establishing an independent Greek state in the
west of Asia Minor.  A well-filled treasury contributed greatly to the
importance of these rulers of Pergamus.  They advanced considerable
sums to the kings of Syria, the repayment of which afterwards formed
part of the Roman conditions of peace.  They succeeded even in
acquiring territory in this way; Aegina, for instance, which the
allied Romans and Aetolians had wrested in the last war from Philip's
allies, the Achaeans, was sold by the Aetolians, to whom it fell in
terms of the treaty, to Attalus for 30 talents (7300 pounds).  But,
notwithstanding the splendour of the court and the royal title,
the commonwealth of Pergamus always retained something of the urban
character; and in its policy it usually went along with the free
cities.  Attalus himself, the Lorenzo de' Medici of antiquity,
remained throughout life a wealthy burgher; and the family life
of the Attalid house, from which harmony and cordiality were not
banished by the royal title, formed a striking contrast to the
dissolute and scandalous behaviour of more aristocratic dynasties.

Greece
Epirots, Acarnanians, Boeotians

In European Greece--exclusive of the Roman possessions on the west
coast, in the most important of which, particularly Corcyra, Roman
magistrates appear to have resided,(1) and the territory directly
subject to Macedonia--the powers more or less in a position to pursue
a policy of their own were the Epirots, Acarnanians, and Aetolians
in northern Greece, the Boeotians and Athenians in central Greece,
and the Achaeans, Lacedaemonians, Messenians, and Eleans in the
Peloponnesus.  Among these, the republics of the Epirots, Acarnanians,
and Boeotians were in various ways closely knit to Macedonia--the
Acarnanians more especially, because it was only Macedonian protection
that enabled them to escape the destruction with which they were
threatened by the Aetolians; none of them were of any consequence.
Their internal condition was very various.  The state of things may
to some extent be illustrated by the fact, that among the Boeotians
--where, it is true, matters reached their worst--it had become
customary to make over every property, which did not descend to heirs
in the direct line, to the -syssitia-; and, in the case of candidates
for the public magistracies, for a quarter of a century the primary
condition of election was that they should bind themselves not to
allow any creditor, least of all a foreign one, to sue his debtor.

The Athenians

The Athenians were in the habit of receiving support against Macedonia
from Alexandria, and were in close league with the Aetolians.  But
they too were totally powerless, and hardly anything save the halo
of Attic poetry and art distinguished these unworthy successors of
a glorious past from a number of petty towns of the same stamp.

The Aetolians

The power of the Aetolian confederacy manifested a greater vigour.
The energy of the northern Greek character was still unbroken there,
although it had degenerated into a reckless impatience of discipline
and control.  It was a public law in Aetolia, that an Aetolian might
serve as a mercenary against any state, even against a state in
alliance with his own country; and, when the other Greeks urgently
besought them to redress this scandal, the Aetolian diet declared that
Aetolia might sooner be removed from its place than this principle
from their national code.  The Aetolians might have been of great
service to the Greek nation, had they not inflicted still greater
injury on it by this system of organized robbery, by their thorough
hostility to the Achaean confederacy, and by their unhappy antagonism
to the great state of Macedonia.

The Achaeans

In the Peloponnesus, the Achaean league had united the best elements
of Greece proper in a confederacy based on civilization, national
spirit, and peaceful preparation for self-defence.  But the vigour
and more especially the military efficiency of the league had,
notwithstanding its outward enlargement, been arrested by the selfish
diplomacy of Aratus.  The unfortunate variances with Sparta, and the
still more lamentable invocation of Macedonian interference in the
Peloponnesus, had so completely subjected the Achaean league to
Macedonian supremacy, that the chief fortresses of the country
thenceforward received Macedonian garrisons, and the oath of
fidelity to Philip was annually taken there.

Sparta, Elis, Messene

The policy of the weaker states in the Peloponnesus, Messene, and
Sparta, was determined by their ancient enmity to the Achaean league
--an enmity specially fostered by disputes regarding their frontiers
--and their tendencies were Aetolian and anti-Macedonian, because
the Achaeans took part with Philip.  The only one of these states
possessing any importance was the Spartan military monarchy, which
after the death of Machanidas had passed into the hands of one Nabis.
With ever-increasing hardihood Nabis leaned on the support of
vagabonds and itinerant mercenaries, to whom he assigned not only the
houses and lands, but also the wives and children, of the citizens;
and he assiduously maintained connections, and even entered into an
association for the joint prosecution of piracy, with the great refuge
of mercenaries and pirates, the island of Crete, where he possessed
some townships.  His predatory expeditions by land, and the piratical
vessels which he maintained at the promontory of Malea, were dreaded
far and wide; he was personally hated for his baseness and cruelty;
but his rule was extending, and about the time of the battle of Zama
he had even succeeded in gaining possession of Messene.

League of the Greek Cities
Rhodes

Lastly, the most independent position among the intermediate states
was held by the free Greek mercantile cities on the European shore of
the Propontis as well as along the whole coast of Asia Minor, and on
the islands of the Aegean Sea; they formed, at the same time, the
brightest elements in the confused and multifarious picture which was
presented by the Hellenic state-system.  Three of them, in particular,
had after Alexander's death again enjoyed their full freedom, and by
the activity of their maritime commerce had attained to respectable
political power and even to considerable territorial possessions;
namely, Byzantium the mistress of the Bosporus, rendered wealthy and
powerful by the transit dues which she levied and by the important
corn trade carried on with the Black Sea; Cyzicus on the Asiatic side
of the Propontis, the daughter and heiress of Miletus, maintaining
the closest relations with the court of Pergamus; and lastly and
above all, Rhodes.  The Rhodians, who immediately after the death
of Alexander had expelled the Macedonian garrison had, by their
favourable position for commerce and navigation, secured the carrying
trade of all the eastern Mediterranean; and their well-handled fleet,
as well as the tried courage of the citizens in the famous siege of
450, enabled them in that age of promiscuous and ceaseless hostilities
to become the prudent and energetic representatives and, when occasion
required, champions of a neutral commercial policy.  They compelled
the Byzantines, for instance, by force of arms to concede to the
vessels of Rhodes exemption from dues in the Bosporus; and they did
not permit the dynast of Pergamus to close the Black Sea.  On the
other hand they kept themselves, as far as possible, aloof from land
warfare, although they had acquired no inconsiderable possessions on
the opposite coast of Caria; where war could not be avoided, they
carried it on by means of mercenaries.  With their neighbours on
all sides they were in friendly relations--with Syracuse, Macedonia,
Syria, but more especially with Egypt--and they enjoyed high
consideration at these courts, so that their mediation was not
unfrequently invoked in the wars of the great states.  But they
interested themselves quite specially on behalf of the Greek maritime
cities, which were so numerously spread along the coasts of the
kingdoms of Pontus, Bithynia, and Pergamus, as well as on the coasts
and islands of Asia Minor that had been wrested by Egypt from the
Seleucidae; such as Sinope, Heraclea Pontica, Cius, Lampsacus, Abydos,
Mitylene, Chios, Smyrna, Samos, Halicarnassus and various others.  All
these were in substance free and had nothing to do with the lords of
the soil except to ask for the confirmation of their privileges and,
at most, to pay a moderate tribute: such encroachments, as from time
to time were threatened by the dynasts, were skilfully warded off
sometimes by cringing, sometimes by strong measures.  In this case the
Rhodians were their chief auxiliaries; they emphatically supported
Sinope, for instance, against Mithradates of Pontus.  How firmly
amidst the quarrels, and by means of the very differences, of the
monarchs the liberties of these cities of Asia Minor were established,
is shown by the fact, that the dispute between Antiochus and the
Romans some years after this time related not to the freedom of these
cities in itself, but to the question whether they were to ask
confirmation of their charters from the king or not.  This league of
the cities was, in this peculiar attitude towards the lords of the
soil as well as in other respects, a formal Hanseatic association,
headed by Rhodes, which negotiated and stipulated in treaties for
itself and its allies.  This league upheld the freedom of the cities
against monarchical interests; and while wars raged around their
walls, public spirit and civic prosperity were sheltered in
comparative peace within, and art and science flourished without
the risk of being crushed by a dissolute soldiery or corrupted
by the atmosphere of a court.

Philip, King of Macedonia

Such was the state of things in the east, at the time when the wall of
political separation between the east and the west was broken down and
the eastern powers, Philip of Macedonia leading the way, were induced
to interfere in the relations of the west.  We have already set forth
to some extent the origin of this interference and the course of the
first Macedonian war (540-549); and we have pointed out what Philip
might have accomplished during the second Punic war, and how little
of all that Hannibal was entitled to expect and to count on was really
fulfilled.  A fresh illustration had been afforded of the truth, that
of all haphazards none is more hazardous than an absolute hereditary
monarchy.  Philip was not the man whom Macedonia at that time
required; yet his gifts were far from insignificant He was a genuine
king, in the best and worst sense of the term.  A strong desire to
rule in person and unaided was the fundamental trait of his character;
he was proud of his purple, but he was no less proud of other gifts,
and he had reason to be so.  He not only showed the valour of a
soldier and the eye of a general, but he displayed a high spirit in
the conduct of public affairs, whenever his Macedonian sense of honour
was offended.  Full of intelligence and wit, he won the hearts of all
whom he wished to gain, especially of the men who were ablest and most
refined, such as Flamininus and Scipio; he was a pleasant boon
companion and, not by virtue of his rank alone, a dangerous wooer.
But he was at the same time one of the most arrogant and flagitious
characters, which that shameless age produced.  He was in the habit of
saying that he feared none save the gods; but it seemed almost as if
his gods were those to whom his admiral Dicaearchus regularly offered
sacrifice--Godlessness (-Asebeia-) and Lawlessness (-Paranomia-).  The
lives of his advisers and of the promoters of his schemes possessed no
sacredness in his eyes, nor did he disdain to pacify his indignation
against the Athenians and Attalus by the destruction of venerable
monuments and illustrious works of art; it is quoted as one of his
maxims of state, that "whoever causes the father to be put to death
must also kill the sons."  It may be that to him cruelty was not,
strictly, a delight; but he was indifferent to the lives and
sufferings of others, and relenting, which alone renders men
tolerable, found no place in his hard and stubborn heart.  So abruptly
and harshly did he proclaim the principle that no promise and no moral
law are binding on an absolute king, that he thereby interposed the
most serious obstacles to the success of his plans.  No one can deny
that he possessed sagacity and resolution, but these were, in a
singular manner, combined with procrastination and supineness; which
is perhaps partly to be explained by the fact, that he was called in
his eighteenth year to the position of an absolute sovereign, and that
his ungovernable fury against every one who disturbed his autocratic
course by counter-argument or counter-advice scared away from him all
independent counsellors.  What various causes cooperated to produce
the weak and disgraceful management which he showed in the first
Macedonian war, we cannot tell; it may have been due perhaps to that
indolent arrogance which only puts forth its full energies against
danger when it becomes imminent, or perhaps to his indifference
towards a plan which was not of his own devising and his jealousy of
the greatness of Hannibal which put him to shame.  It is certain that
his subsequent conduct betrayed no further trace of the Philip,
through whose negligence the plan of Hannibal suffered shipwreck.

Macedonia and Asia Attack Egypt

When Philip concluded his treaty with the Aetolians and Romans in
548-9, he seriously intended to make a lasting peace with Rome, and
to devote himself exclusively in future to the affairs of the east.
It admits of no doubt that he saw with regret the rapid subjugation of
Carthage; and it may be, that Hannibal hoped for a second declaration
of war from Macedonia, and that Philip secretly reinforced the last
Carthaginian army with mercenaries.(2)  But the tedious affairs in
which he had meanwhile involved himself in the east, as well as the
nature of the alleged support, and especially the total silence of the
Romans as to such a breach of the peace while they were searching for
grounds of war, place it beyond doubt, that Philip was by no means
disposed in 551 to make up for what he ought to have done ten years
before.  He had turned his eyes to an entirely different quarter.

Ptolemy Philopator of Egypt had died in 549.  Philip and Antiochus,
the kings of Macedonia and Asia, had combined against his successor
Ptolemy Epiphanes, a child of five years old, in order completely
to gratify the ancient grudge which the monarchies of the mainland
entertained towards the maritime state.  The Egyptian state was to be
broken up; Egypt and Cyprus were to fall to Antiochus Cyrene, Ionia,
and the Cyclades to Philip.  Thoroughly after the manner of Philip,
who ridiculed such considerations, the kings began the war not merely
without cause but even without pretext, "just as the large fishes
devour the small." The allies, moreover, had made their calculations
correctly, especially Philip.  Egypt had enough to do in defending
herself against the nearer enemy in Syria, and was obliged to leave
her possessions in Asia Minor and the Cyclades undefended when Philip
threw himself upon these as his share of the spoil.  In the year in
which Carthage concluded peace with Rome (553), Philip ordered a fleet
equipped by the towns subject to him to take on board troops, and to
sail along the coast of Thrace.  There Lysimachia was taken from the
Aetolian garrison, and Perinthus, which stood in the relation of
clientship to Byzantium, was likewise occupied.  Thus the peace was
broken as respected the Byzantines; and as respected the Aetolians,
who had just made peace with Philip, the good understanding was
at least disturbed.  The crossing to Asia was attended with no
difficulties, for Prusias king of Bithynia was in alliance with
Macedonia.  By way of recompense, Philip helped him to subdue the
Greek mercantile cities in his territory.  Chalcedon submitted.
Cius, which resisted, was taken by storm and levelled with the ground,
and its inhabitants were reduced to slavery--a meaningless barbarity,
which annoyed Prusias himself who wished to get possession of the town
uninjured, and which excited profound indignation throughout the
Hellenic world.  The Aetolians, whose -strategus- had commanded
in Cius, and the Rhodians, whose attempts at mediation had been
contemptuously and craftily frustrated by the king, were
especially offended.

The Rhodian Hansa and Pergamus Oppose Philip

But even had this not been so, the interests of all Greek commercial
cities were at stake.  They could not possibly allow the mild and
almost purely nominal Egyptian rule to be supplanted by the Macedonian
despotism, with which urban self-government and freedom of commercial
intercourse were not at all compatible; and the fearful treatment
of the Cians showed that the matter at stake was not the right of
confirming the charters of the towns, but the life or death of one and
all.  Lampsacus had already fallen, and Thasos had been treated like
Cius; no time was to be lost.  Theophiliscus, the vigilant -strategus-
of Rhodes, exhorted his citizens to meet the common danger by common
resistance, and not to suffer the towns and islands to become one by
one a prey to the enemy.  Rhodes resolved on its course, and declared
war against Philip.  Byzantium joined it; as did also the aged Attalus
king of Pergamus, personally and politically the enemy of Philip.
While the fleet of the allies was mustering on the Aeolian coast,
Philip directed a portion of his fleet to take Chios and Samos.  With
the other portion he appeared in person before Pergamus, which however
he invested in vain; he had to content himself with traversing the
level country and leaving the traces of Macedonian valour on the
temples which he destroyed far and wide.  Suddenly he departed and
re-embarked, to unite with his squadron which was at Samos.  But the
Rhodo-Pergamene fleet followed him, and forced him to accept battle in
the straits of Chios.  The number of the Macedonian decked vessels
 was smaller, but the multitude of their open boats made up for this
inequality, and the soldiers of Philip fought with great courage.
But he was at length defeated.  Almost half of his decked vessels,
24 sail, were sunk or taken; 6000 Macedonian sailors and 3000 soldiers
perished, amongst whom was the admiral Democrates; 2000 were taken
prisoners.  The victory cost the allies no more than 800 men and six
vessels.  But, of the leaders of the allies, Attalus had been cut off
from his fleet and compelled to let his own vessel run aground at
Erythrae; and Theophiliscus of Rhodes, whose public spirit had decided
the question of war and whose valour had decided the battle, died on
the day after it of his wounds.  Thus while the fleet of Attalus went
home and the Rhodian fleet remained temporarily at Chios, Philip, who
falsely ascribed the victory to himself, was able to continue his
voyage and to turn towards Samos, in order to occupy the Carian towns.
On the Carian coast the Rhodians, not on this occasion supported by
Attalus, gave battle for the second time to the Macedonian fleet under
Heraclides, near the little island of Lade in front of the port of
Miletus.  The victory, claimed again by both sides, appears to have
been this time gained by the Macedonians; for while the Rhodians
retreated to Myndus and thence to Cos, the Macedonians occupied
Miletus, and a squadron under Dicaearchus the Aetolian occupied the
Cyclades.  Philip meanwhile prosecuted the conquest of the Rhodian
possessions on the Carian mainland, and of the Greek cities: had he
been disposed to attack Ptolemy in person, and had he not preferred to
confine himself to the acquisition of his own share in the spoil, he
would now have been able to think even of an expedition to Egypt.  In
Caria no army confronted the Macedonians, and Philip traversed without
hindrance the country from Magnesia to Mylasa; but every town in that
country was a fortress, and the siege-warfare was protracted without
yielding or promising any considerable results.  Zeuxis the satrap of
Lydia supported the ally of his master with the same lukewarmness as
Philip had manifested in promoting the interests of the Syrian king,
and the Greek cities gave their support only under the pressure
of fear or force.  The provisioning of the army became daily more
difficult; Philip was obliged today to plunder those who but yesterday
had voluntarily supplied his wants, and then he had reluctantly to
submit to beg afresh.  Thus the good season of the year gradually drew
to an end, and in the interval the Rhodians had reinforced their fleet
and had also been rejoined by that of Attalus, so that they were
decidedly superior at sea.  It seemed almost as if they might cut off
the retreat of the king and compel him to take up winter quarters in
Caria, while the state of affairs at home, particularly the threatened
intervention of the Aetolians and Romans, urgently demanded his
return.  Philip saw the danger; he left garrisons amounting together
to 3000 men, partly in Myrina to keep Pergamus in check, partly in
the petty towns round Mylasa--Iassus, Bargylia, Euromus and Pedasa
--to secure for him the excellent harbour and a landing place in
Caria; and, owing to the negligence with which the allies guarded the
sea, he succeeded in safely reaching the Thracian coast with his fleet
and arriving at home before the winter of 553-4.

Diplomatic Intervention of Rome

In fact a storm was gathering against Philip in the west, which
did not permit him to continue the plundering of defenceless Egypt.
The Romans, who had at length in this year concluded peace on their
own terms with Carthage, began to give serious attention to these
complications in the east.  It has often been affirmed, that after
the conquest of the west they forthwith proceeded to the subjugation
of the east; a serious consideration will lead to a juster judgment.
It is only dull prejudice which fails to see that Rome at this period
by no means grasped at the sovereignty of the Mediterranean states,
but, on the contrary, desired nothing further than to have neighbours
that should not be dangerous in Africa and in Greece; and Macedonia
was not really dangerous to Rome.  Its power certainly was far from
small, and it is evident that the Roman senate only consented with
reluctance to the peace of 548-9, which left it in all its integrity;
but how little any serious apprehensions of Macedonia were or could be
entertained in Rome, is best shown by the small number of troops--who
yet were never compelled to fight against a superior force--with which
Rome carried on the next war.  The senate doubtless would have gladly
seen Macedonia humbled; but that humiliation would be too dearly
purchased at the cost of a land war carried on in Macedonia with Roman
troops; and accordingly, after the withdrawal of the Aetolians, the
senate voluntarily concluded peace at once on the basis of the -status
quo-.  It is therefore far from made out, that the Roman government
concluded this peace with the definite design of beginning the war at
a more convenient season; and it is very certain that, at the moment,
from the thorough exhaustion of the state and the extreme
unwillingness of the citizens to enter into a second transmarine
struggle, the Macedonian war was in a high degree unwelcome to the
Romans.  But now it was inevitable.  They might have acquiesced in
the Macedonian state as a neighbour, such as it stood in 549; but it
was impossible that they could permit it to acquire the best part of
Asiatic Greece and the important Cyrene, to crush the neutral
commercial states, and thereby to double its power.  Further, the fall
of Egypt and the humiliation, perhaps the subjugation, of Rhodes would
have inflicted deep wounds on the trade of Sicily and Italy; and could
Rome remain a quiet spectator, while Italian commerce with the east
was made dependent on the two great continental powers?  Rome had,
moreover, an obligation of honour to fulfil towards Attalus her
faithful ally since the first Macedonian war, and had to prevent
Philip, who had already besieged him in his capital, from expelling
him from his dominions.  Lastly, the claim of Rome to extend her
protecting arm over all the Hellenes was by no means an empty phrase:
the citizens of Neapolis, Rhegium, Massilia, and Emporiae could
testify that that protection was meant in earnest, and there is no
question at all that at this time the Romans stood in a closer
relation to the Greeks than any other nation--one little more remote
than that of the Hellenized Macedonians.  It is strange that any
should dispute the right of the Romans to feel their human, as well as
their Hellenic, sympathies revolted at the outrageous treatment of the
Cians and Thasians.

Preparations and Pretexts for Second Macedonian War

Thus in reality all political, commercial, and moral motives concurred
in inducing Rome to undertake the second war against Philip--one of
the most righteous, which the city ever waged.  It greatly redounds
to the honour of the senate, that it immediately resolved on its
course and did not allow itself to be deterred from making the
necessary preparations either by the exhaustion of the state or by
the unpopularity of such a declaration of war.  The propraetor Marcus
Valerius Laevinus made his appearance as early as 553 with the
Sicilian fleet of 38 sail in the eastern waters.  The government,
however, were at a loss to discover an ostensible pretext for the war;
a pretext which they needed in order to satisfy the people, even
although they had not been far too sagacious to undervalue, as was the
manner of Philip, the importance of assigning a legitimate ground for
hostilities.  The support, which Philip was alleged to have granted to
the Carthaginians after the peace with Rome, manifestly could not be
proved.  The Roman subjects, indeed, in the province of Illyria had
for a considerable time complained of the Macedonian encroachments.
In 551 a Roman envoy at the head of the Illyrian levy had driven
Philip's troops from the Illyrian territory; and the senate had
accordingly declared to the king's envoys in 552, that if he sought
war, he would find it sooner than was agreeable to him.  But these
encroachments were simply the ordinary outrages which Philip practised
towards his neighbours; a negotiation regarding them at the present
moment would have led to his humbling himself and offering
satisfaction, but not to war.  With all the belligerent powers in the
east the Roman community was nominally in friendly relations, and
might have granted them aid in repelling Philip's attack.  But Rhodes
and Pergamus, which naturally did not fail to request Roman aid, were
formally the aggressors; and although Alexandrian ambassadors besought
the Roman senate to undertake the guardianship of the boy king,
Egypt appears to have been by no means eager to invoke the direct
intervention of the Romans, which would put an end to her difficulties
for the moment, but would at the same time open up the eastern sea to
the great western power.  Aid to Egypt, moreover, must have been in
the first instance rendered in Syria, and would have entangled Rome
simultaneously in a war with Asia and with Macedonia; which the
Romans were naturally the more desirous to avoid, as they were firmly
resolved not to intermeddle at least in Asiatic affairs.  No course
was left but to despatch in the meantime an embassy to the east for
the purpose, first, of obtaining--what was not in the circumstances
difficult--the sanction of Egypt to the interference of the Romans in
the affairs of Greece; secondly, of pacifying king Antiochus by
abandoning Syria to him; and, lastly, of accelerating as much as
possible a breach with Philip and promoting a coalition of the minor
Graeco-Asiatic states against him (end of 553).  At Alexandria they
had no difficulty in accomplishing their object; the court had no
choice, and was obliged gratefully to receive Marcus Aemilius Lepidus,
whom the senate had despatched as "guardian of the king" to uphold
his interests, so far as that could be done without an actual
intervention.  Antiochus did not break off his alliance with Philip,
nor did he give to the Romans the definite explanations which they
desired; in other respects, however--whether from remissness, or
influenced by the declarations of the Romans that they did not wish to
interfere in Syria--he pursued his schemes in that direction and left
things in Greece and Asia Minor to take their course.

Progress of the War

Meanwhile, the spring of 554 had arrived, and the war had recommenced.
Philip first threw himself once more upon Thrace, where he occupied
all the places on the coast, in particular Maronea, Aenus, Elaeus,
and Sestus; he wished to have his European possessions secured against
the risk of a Roman landing.  He then attacked Abydus on the Asiatic
coast, the acquisition of which could not but be an object of
importance to him, for the possession of Sestus and Abydus would bring
him into closer connection with his ally Antiochus, and he would no
longer need to be apprehensive lest the fleet of the allies might
intercept him in crossing to or from Asia Minor.  That fleet commanded
the Aegean Sea after the withdrawal of the weaker Macedonian squadron:
Philip confined his operations by sea to maintaining garrisons on
three of the Cyclades, Andros, Cythnos, and Paros, and fitting out
privateers.  The Rhodians proceeded to Chios, and thence to Tenedos,
where Attalus, who had passed the winter at Aegina and had spent his
time in listening to the declamations of the Athenians, joined them
with his squadron.  The allies might probably have arrived in time
to help the Abydenes, who heroically defended themselves; but they
stirred not, and so at length the city surrendered, after almost all
who were capable of bearing arms had fallen in the struggle before the
walls.  After the capitulation a large portion of the inhabitants fell
by their own hand--the mercy of the victor consisted in allowing the
Abydenes a term of three  days to die voluntarily.  Here, in the camp
before Abydus.  the Roman embassy, which after the termination of its
business in Syria and Egypt had visited and dealt with the minor Greek
states, met with the king, and submitted the proposals which it had
been charged to make by the senate, viz. that the king should wage no
aggressive war against any Greek state, should restore the possessions
which he had wrested from Ptolemy, and should consent to an
arbitration regarding the injury inflicted on the Pergamenes and
Rhodians.  The object of the senate, which sought to provoke the king
to a formal declaration of war, was not gained; the Roman ambassador,
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, obtained from the king nothing but the polite
reply that he would excuse what the envoy had said because he was
young, handsome, and a Roman.

Meanwhile, however, the occasion for declaring war, which Rome
desired, had been furnished from another quarter.  The Athenians
in their silly and cruel vanity had put to death two unfortunate
Acarnanians, because these had accidentally strayed into their
mysteries.  When the Acarnanians, who were naturally indignant, asked
Philip to procure them satisfaction, he could not refuse the just
request of his most faithful allies, and he allowed them to levy men
in Macedonia and, with these and their own troops, to invade Attica
without a formal declaration of war.  This, it is true, was no war
in the proper sense of the term; and, besides, the leader of the
Macedonian band, Nicanor, immediately gave orders to his troops to
retreat, when the Roman envoys, who were at Athens at the time, used
threatening language (in the end of 553).  But it was too late.  An
Athenian embassy was sent to Rome to report the attack made by Philip
on an ancient ally of the Romans; and, from the way in which the
senate received it, Philip saw clearly what awaited him; so that he
at once, in the very spring of 554, directed Philocles, his general
in Greece, to lay waste the Attic territory and to reduce the city
to extremities.

Declaration of War by Rome

The senate now had what they wanted; and in the summer of 554 they
were able to propose to the comitia a declaration of war "on account
of an attack on a state in alliance with Rome." It was rejected on the
first occasion almost unanimously: foolish or evil-disposed tribunes
of the people complained of the senate, which would allow the citizens
no rest; but the war was necessary and, in strictness, was already
begun, so that the senate could not possibly recede.  The burgesses
were induced to yield by representations and concessions.  It is
remarkable that these concessions were made mainly at the expense of
the allies.  The garrisons of Gaul, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia,
amounting in all to 20,000 men, were exclusively taken from the allied
contingents that were in active service--quite contrary to the former
principles of the Romans.  All the burgess troops, on the other hand,
that had continued under arms from the Hannibalic war, were
discharged; volunteers alone, it was alleged, were to be enrolled for
the Macedonian war, but they were, as was afterwards found, for the
most part forced volunteers--a fact which in the autumn of 555
called forth a dangerous military revolt in the camp of Apollonia.
Six legions were formed of the men newly called out; of these two
remained in Rome and two in Etruria, and only two embarked at
Brundisium for Macedonia, led by the consul Publius Sulpicius Galba.

Thus it was once more clearly demonstrated, that the sovereign burgess
assemblies, with their shortsighted resolutions dependent often on
mere accident, were no longer at all fitted to deal with the
complicated and difficult relations into which Rome was drawn by her
victories; and that their mischievous intervention in the working of
the state machine led to dangerous modifications of the measures which
in a military point of were necessary, and to the still more dangerous
course of treating the Latin allies as inferiors.

The Roman League

The position of Philip was very disadvantageous.  The eastern states,
which ought to have acted in unison against all interference of Rome
and probably under other circumstances would have so acted, had been
mainly by Philip's fault so incensed at each other, that they were
not inclined to hinder, or were inclined even to promote, the Roman
invasion.  Asia, the natural and most important ally of Philip, had
been neglected by him, and was moreover prevented at first from active
interference by being entangled in the quarrel with Egypt and the
Syrian war.  Egypt had an urgent interest in keeping the Roman fleet
out of the eastern waters; even now an Egyptian embassy intimated at
Rome very plainly, that the court of Alexandria was ready to relieve
the Romans from the trouble of intervention in Attica.  But the treaty
for the partition of Egypt concluded between Asia and Macedonia threw
that important state thoroughly into the arms of Rome, and compelled
the cabinet of Alexandria to declare that it would only intermeddle in
the affairs of European Greece with consent of the Romans.  The Greek
commercial cities, with Rhodes, Pergamus, and Byzantium at their head,
were in a position similar, but of still greater perplexity.  They
would under other circumstances have beyond doubt done what they
could to close the eastern seas against the Romans; but the cruel and
destructive policy of conquest pursued by Philip had driven them to
an unequal struggle, in which for their self-preservation they were
obliged to use every effort to implicate the great Italian power.
In Greece proper also the Roman envoys, who were commissioned to
organize a second league against Philip there, found the way already
substantially paved for them by the enemy.  Of the anti-Macedonian
party--the Spartans, Eleans, Athenians, and Aetolians--Philip might
perhaps have gained the latter, for the peace of 548 had made a deep,
and far from healed, breach in their friendly Alliance with Rome; but
apart from the old differences which subsisted between Aetolia and
Macedonia regarding the Thessalian towns withdrawn by Macedonia from
the Aetolian confederacy--Echinus, Larissa Cremaste, Pharsalus, and
Thebes in Phthiotis--the expulsion of the Aetolian garrisons from
Lysimachia and Cius had produced fresh exasperation against Philip
in the minds of the Aetolians.  If they delayed to join the league
against him, the chief reason doubtless was the ill-feeling that
continued to prevail between them and the Romans.

It was a circumstance still more ominous, that even among the Greek
states firmly attached to the interests of Macedonia--the Epirots,
Acarnanians, Boeotians, and Achaeans--the Acarnanians and Boeotians
alone stood steadfastly by Philip.  With the Epirots the Roman envoys
negotiated not without success; Amynander, king of the Athamanes, in
particular closely attached himself to Rome.  Even among the Achaeans,
Philip had offended many by the murder of Aratus; while on the other
hand he had thereby paved the way for a more free development of the
confederacy.  Under the leadership of Philopoemen (502-571, for the
first time -strategus- in 546) it had reorganized its military system,
recovered confidence in itself by successful conflicts with Sparta,
and no longer blindly followed, as in the time of Aratus, the policy
of Macedonia.  The Achaean league, which had to expect neither profit
nor immediate injury from the thirst of Philip for aggrandizement,
alone in all Hellas looked at this war from an impartial and national-
Hellenic point of view.  It perceived--what there was no difficulty in
perceiving--that the Hellenic nation was thereby surrendering itself
to the Romans even before these wished or desired its surrender, and
attempted accordingly to mediate between Philip and the Rhodians;
but it was too late.  The national patriotism, which had formerly
terminated the federal war and had mainly contributed to bring about
the first war between Macedonia and Rome, was extinguished the Achaean
mediation remained fruitless, and in vain Philip visited the cities
and islands to rekindle the zeal of the nation--its apathy was the
Nemesis for Cius and Abydus.  The Achaeans, as they could effect
no change and were not disposed to render help to either party,
remained neutral.

Landing of the Romans in Macedonia

In the autumn of 554 the consul, Publius Sulpicius Galba, landed
with his two legions and 1000 Numidian cavalry accompanied even by
elephants derived from the spoils of Carthage, at Apollonia; on
receiving accounts of which the king returned in haste from the
Hellespont to Thessaly.  But, owing partly to the far-advanced season,
partly to the sickness of the Roman general, nothing was undertaken
by land that year except a reconnaissance in force, in the course of
which the townships in the vicinity, and in particular the Macedonian
colony Antipatria, were occupied by the Romans.  For the next year a
joint attack on Macedonia was concerted with the northern barbarians,
especially with Pleuratus, the then ruler of Scodra, and Bato, prince
of the Dardani, who of course were eager to profit by the favourable
opportunity.

More importance attached to the enterprises of the Roman fleet, which
numbered 100 decked and 80 light vessels.  While the rest of the ships
took their station for the winter at Corcyra, a division under Gaius
Claudius Cento proceeded to the Piraeeus to render assistance to the
hard-pressed Athenians.  But, as Cento found the Attic territory
already sufficiently protected against the raids of the Corinthian
garrison and the Macedonian corsairs, he sailed on and appeared
suddenly before Chalcis in Euboea, the chief stronghold of Philip in
Greece, where his magazines, stores of arms, and prisoners were kept,
and where the commandant Sopater was far from expecting a Roman
attack.  The undefended walls were scaled, and the garrison was put
to death; the prisoners were liberated and the stores were burnt;
unfortunately, there was a want of troops to hold the important
position.  On receiving news of this invasion, Philip immediately in
vehement indignation started from Demetrias in Thessaly for Chalcis,
and when he found no trace of the enemy there save the scene of ruin,
he went on to Athens to retaliate.  But his attempt to surprise the
city was a failure, and even the assault was in vain, greatly as
the king exposed his life; the approach of Gaius Claudius from the
Piraeeus, and of Attalus from Aegina, compelled him to depart.
Philip still tarried for some time in Greece; but in a political and
in a military point of view his successes were equally insignificant.
In vain he tried to induce the Achaeans to take up arms in his behalf;
and equally fruitless were his attacks on Eleusis and the Piraeeus,
as well as a second attempt on Athens itself.  Nothing remained for
him but to gratify his natural exasperation in an unworthy manner
by laying waste the country and destroying the trees of Academus,
and then to return to the north.

Attempt of the Romans to Invade Macedonia

Thus the winter passed away.  With the spring of 555 the proconsul
Publius Sulpicius broke up from his winter camp, determined to conduct
his legions from Apollonia by the shortest route into Macedonia
proper.  This principal attack from the west was to be supported by
three subordinate attacks; on the north by an invasion of the Dardani
and Illyrians; on the east by an attack on the part of the combined
fleet of the Romans and allies, which assembled at Aegina; while
lastly the Athamanes, and the Aetolians also, if the attempt to induce
them to share in the struggle should prove successful, were to advance
from the south.  After Galba had crossed the mountains pierced by the
Apsus (now the Beratind), and had marched through the fertile plain of
Dassaretia, he reached the mountain range which separates Illyria from
Macedonia, and crossing it, entered the proper Macedonian territory.
Philip had marched to meet him; but in the extensive and thinly-
peopled regions of Macedonia the antagonists for a time sought each
other in vain; at length they met in the province of Lyncestis, a
fertile but marshy plain not far from the north-western frontier,
and encamped not 1000 paces apart.  Philip's army, after he had been
joined by the corps detached to occupy the northern passes, numbered
about 20,000 infantry and 2000 cavalry; the Roman army was nearly
as strong.  The Macedonians however had the great advantage, that,
fighting in their native land and well acquainted with its highways
and byways, they had little trouble in procuring supplies of
provisions, while they had encamped so close to the Romans that
the latter could not venture to disperse for any extensive foraging.
The consul repeatedly offered battle, but the king persisted in
declining it; and the combats between the light troops, although
the Romans gained some advantages in them, produced no material
alteration.  Galba was obliged to break up his camp and to pitch
another eight miles off at Octolophus, where he conceived that he
could more easily procure supplies.  But here too the divisions sent
out were destroyed by the light troops and cavalry of the Macedonians;
the legions were obliged to come to their help, whereupon the
Macedonian vanguard, which had advanced too far, were driven back to
their camp with heavy loss; the king himself lost his horse in the
action, and only saved his life through the magnanimous self-devotion
of one of his troopers.  From this perilous position the Romans were
liberated through the better success of the subordinate attacks which
Galba had directed the allies to make, or rather through the weakness
of the Macedonian forces.  Although Philip had instituted levies
as large as possible in his own dominions, and had enlisted Roman
deserters and other mercenaries, he had not been able to bring into
the field (over and above the garrisons in Asia Minor and Thrace)
more than the army, with which in person he confronted the consul;
and besides, in order to form even this, he had been obliged to leave
the northern passes in the Pelagonian territory undefended.  For the
protection of the east coast he relied partly on the orders which
he had given for the laying waste of the islands of Sciathus and
Peparethus, which might have furnished a station to the enemy's fleet,
partly on the garrisoning of Thasos and the coast and on the fleet
organized at Demetrias under Heraclides.  For the south frontier
be had been obliged to reckon solely upon the more than doubtful
neutrality of the Aetolians.  These now suddenly joined the league
against Macedonia, and immediately in conjunction with the Athamanes
penetrated into Thessaly, while simultaneously the Dardani and
Illyrians overran the northern provinces, and the Roman fleet
under Lucius Apustius, departing from Corcyra, appeared in the
eastern waters, where the ships of Attalus, the Rhodians, and
the Istrians joined it.

Philip, on learning this, voluntarily abandoned his position and
retreated in an easterly direction: whether he did so in order to
repel the probably unexpected invasion of the Aetolians, or to draw
the Roman army after him with a view to its destruction, or to take
either of these courses according to circumstances, cannot well be
determined.  He managed his retreat so dexterously that Galba, who
adopted the rash resolution of following him, lost his track, and
Philip was enabled to reach by a flank movement, and to occupy, the
narrow pass which separates the provinces of Lyncestis and Eordaea,
with the view of awaiting the Romans and giving them a warm reception
there.  A battle took place on the spot which he had selected; but the
long Macedonian spears proved unserviceable on the wooded and uneven
ground.  The Macedonians were partly turned, partly broken, and lost
many men.

Return of the Romans

But, although Philip's army was after this unfortunate action no
longer able to prevent the advance of the Romans, the latter were
themselves afraid to encounter further unknown dangers in an
impassable and hostile country; and returned to Apollonia, after they
had laid waste the fertile provinces of Upper Macedonia--Eordaea,
Elymaea, and Orestis.  Celetrum, the most considerable town of Orestis
(now Kastoria, on a peninsula in the lake of the same name), had
surrendered to them: it was the only Macedonian town that opened its
gates to the Romans.  In the Illyrian land Pelium, the city of the
Dassaretae, on the upper confluents of the Apsus, was taken by
storm and strongly garrisoned to serve as a future basis for a
similar expedition.

Philip did not disturb the Roman main army in its retreat, but turned
by forced marches against the Aetolians and Athamanians who, in the
belief that the legions were occupying the attention of the king, were
fearlessly and recklessly plundering the rich vale of the Peneius,
defeated them completely, and compelled such as did not fall to make
their escape singly through the well-known mountain paths.  The
effective strength of the confederacy was not a little diminished by
this defeat, and not less by the numerous enlistments made in Aetolia
on Egyptian account.  The Dardani were chased back over the mountains
by Athena-goras, the leader of Philip's light troops, without
difficulty and with severe loss.  The Roman fleet also did not
accomplish much; it expelled the Macedonian garrison from Andros,
punished Euboea and Sciathus, and then made attempts on the Chalcidian
peninsula, which were, however, vigorously repulsed by the Macedonian
garrison at Mende.  The rest of the summer was spent in the capture
of Oreus in Euboea, which was long delayed by the resolute defence of
the Macedonian garrison.  The weak Macedonian fleet under Heraclides
remained inactive at Heraclea, and did not venture to dispute the
possession of the sea with the enemy.  The latter went early to
winter quarters, the Romans proceeding to the Piraeeus and Corcyra,
the Rhodians and Pergamenes going home.

Philip might on the whole congratulate himself upon the results of
this campaign.  The Roman troops, after an extremely troublesome
campaign, stood in autumn precisely on the spot whence they had
started in spring; and, but for the well-timed interposition of the
Aetolians and the unexpected success of the battle at the pass of
Eordaea, perhaps not a man of their entire force would have again seen
the Roman territory.  The fourfold offensive had everywhere failed in
its object, and not only did Philip in autumn see his whole dominions
cleared of the enemy, but he was able to make an attempt--which,
however, miscarried--to wrest from the Aetolians the strong town of
Thaumaci, situated on the Aetolo-Thessalian frontier and commanding
the plain of the Peneius.  If Antiochus, for whose coming Philip
vainly supplicated the gods, should unite with him in the next
campaign, he might anticipate great successes.  For a moment it
seemed as if Antiochus was disposed to do so; his army appeared in
Asia Minor, and occupied some townships of king Attalus, who requested
military protection from the Romans.  The latter, however, were not
anxious to urge the great-king at this time to a breach: they sent
envoys, who in fact obtained an evacuation of the dominions of
Attalus.  From that quarter Philip had nothing to hope for.

Philip Encamps on the Aous
Flaminius
Philip Driven Back to Tempe
Greece in the Power of the Romans

But the fortunate issue of the last campaign had so raised the courage
or the arrogance of Philip, that, after having assured himself afresh
of the neutrality of the Achaeans and the fidelity of the Macedonians
by the sacri fice of some strong places and of the  detested admiral
Heraclides, he next spring (556) assumed the offensive and advanced
into the territory of the Atintanes, with a view to form a well-
entrenched camp in the narrow pass, where the Aous (Viosa) winds
its way between the mountains Aeropus and Asnaus.  Opposite to him
encamped the Roman army reinforced by new arrivals of troops, and
commanded first by the consul of the previous year, Publius Villius,
and then from the summer of 556 by that year's consul, Titus Quinctius
Flamininus.  Flamininus, a talented man just thirty years of age,
belonged to the younger generation who began to lay aside the
patriotism as well as the habits of their forefathers and, though not
unmindful of their fatherland, were still more mindful of themselves
and of Hellenism.  A skilful officer and a better diplomatist, he was
in many respects admirably adapted for the management of the troubled
affairs of Greece.  Yet it would perhaps have been better both for
Rome and for Greece, if the choice had fallen on one less full of
Hellenic sympathies, and if the general despatched thither had been
a man, who would neither have been bribed by delicate flattery nor
stung by pungent sarcasm; who would not amidst literary and
artistic reminiscences have overlooked the pitiful condition of the
constitutions of the Hellenic states; and who, while treating Hellas
according to its deserts, would have spared the Romans the trouble of
striving after unattainable ideals.

The new commander-in-chief immediately had a conference with the king,
while the two armies lay face to face inactive.  Philip made proposals
of peace; he offered to restore all his own conquests, and to submit
to an equitable arbitration regarding the damage inflicted on the
Greek cities; but the negotiations broke down, when he was asked to
give up ancient possessions of Macedonia and particularly Thessaly.
For forty days the two armies lay in the narrow pass of the Aous;
Philip would not retire, and Flamininus could not make up his mind
whether he should order an assault, or leave the king alone and
reattempt the expedition of the previous year.  At length the Roman
general was helped out of his perplexity by the treachery of some
men of rank among the Epirots--who were otherwise well disposed to
Macedonia--and especially of Charops.  They conducted a Roman corps of
4000 infantry and 300 cavalry by mountain paths to the heights above
the Macedonian camp; and, when the consul attacked the enemy's army
in front, the advance of that Roman division, unexpectedly descending
from the mountains commanding the position, decided the battle.
Philip lost his camp and entrenchments and nearly 2000 men, and
hastily retreated to the pass of Tempe, the gate of Macedonia proper.
He gave up everything which he had held except the fortresses; the
Thessalian towns, which he could not defend, he himself destroyed;
Pherae alone closed its gates against him and thereby escaped
destruction.  The Epirots, induced partly by these successes of the
Roman arms, partly by the judicious moderation of Flamininus, were the
first to secede from the Macedonian alliance.  On the first accounts
of the Roman victory the Athamanes and Aetolians immediately invaded
Thessaly, and the Romans soon followed; the open country was easily
overrun, but the strong towns, which were friendly to Macedonia and
received support from Philip, fell only after a brave resistance or
withstood even the superior foe--especially Atrax on the left bank
of the Peneius, where the phalanx stood in the breach as a substitute
for the wall.  Except these Thessalian fortresses and the territory
of the faithful Acarnanians, all northern Greece was thus in the hands
of the coalition.

The Achaeans Enter into Alliance with Rome

The south, on the other hand, was still in the main retained under
the power of Macedonia by the fortresses of Chalcis and Corinth, which
maintained communication with each other through the territory of the
Boeotians who were friendly to the Macedonians, and by the Achaean
neutrality; and as it was too late to advance into Macedonia this
year, Flamininus resolved to direct his land army and fleet in the
first place against Corinth and the Achaeans.  The fleet, which had
again been joined by the Rhodian and Pergamene ships, had hitherto
been employed in the capture and pillage of two of the smaller towns
in Euboea, Eretria and Carystus; both however, as well as Oreus,
were thereafter abandoned, and reoccupied by Philocles the Macedonian
commandant of Chalcis.  The united fleet proceeded thence to
Cenchreae, the eastern port of Corinth, to threaten that strong
fortress.  On the other side Flamininus advanced into Phocis and
occupied the country, in which Elatea alone sustained a somewhat
protracted siege: this district, and Anticyra in particular on the
Corinthian gulf, were chosen as winter quarters.  The Achaeans, who
thus saw on the one hand the Roman legions approaching and on the
other the Roman fleet already on their own coast, abandoned their
morally honourable, but politically untenable, neutrality.  After
the deputies from the towns most closely attached to Macedonia
--Dyme, Megalopolis, and Argos--had left the diet, it resolved to
 join the coalition against Philip.  Cycliades and other leaders of
the Macedonian party went into exile; the troops of the Achaeans
immediately united with the Roman fleet and hastened to invest Corinth
by land, which city--the stronghold of Philip against the Achaeans
--had been guaranteed to them on the part of Rome in return for
their joining the coalition.  Not only, however, did the Macedonian
garrison, which was 1300 strong and consisted chiefly of Italian
deserters, defend with determination the almost impregnable city,
but Philocles also arrived from Chalcis with a division of 1500 men,
which not only relieved Corinth but also invaded the territory of
the Achaeans and, in concert with the citizens who were favourable
to Macedonia, wrested from them Argos.  But the recompense of such
devotedness was, that the king delivered over the faithful Argives
to the reign of terror of Nabis of Sparta.  Philip hoped, after the
accession of the Achaeans to the Roman coalition, to gain over Nabis
who had hitherto been the ally of the Romans; for his chief reason
for joining the Roman alliance had been that he was opposed to the
Achaeans and since 550 was even at open war with them.  But the
affairs of Philip were in too desperate a condition for any one
to feel satisfaction in joining his side now.  Nabis indeed accepted
Argos from Philip, but he betrayed the traitor and remained in
alliance with Flamininus, who, in his perplexity at being now
allied with two powers that were at war with each other, had in
the meantime arranged an armistice of four months between the
Spartans and Achaeans.

Vain Attempts to Arrange a Peace

Thus winter came on; and Philip once more availed himself of it to
obtain if possible an equitable peace.  At a conference held at Nicaea
on the Maliac gulf the king appeared in person, and endeavoured to
come to an understanding with Flamininus.  With haughty politeness he
repelled the forward insolence of the petty chiefs, and by marked
deference to the Romans, as the only antagonists on an equality with
him, he sought to obtain from them tolerable terms.  Flamininus was
sufficiently refined to feel himself flattered by the urbanity of
the vanquished prince towards himself and his arrogance towards the
allies, whom the Roman as well as the king had learned to despise;
but his powers were not ample enough to meet the king's wishes.  He
granted him a two months' armistice in return for the evacuation of
Phocis and Locris, and referred him, as to the main matter, to his
government.  The Roman senate had long been at one in the opinion that
Macedonia must give up all her possessions abroad; accordingly, when
the ambassadors of Philip appeared in Rome, they were simply asked
whether they had full powers to renounce all Greece and in particular
Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias, and when they said that they had not,
the negotiations were immediately broken off, and it was resolved
that the war should be prosecuted with vigour.  With the help of the
tribunes of the people, the senate succeeded in preventing a change
in the chief command--which had often proved so injurious--and in
prolonging the command of Flamininus; he obtained considerable
reinforcements, and the two former commanders-in-chief, Publius Galba
and Publius Villius, were instructed to place themselves at his
disposal.  Philip resolved once more to risk a pitched battle.
To secure Greece, where all the states except the Acarnanians and
Boeotians were now in arms against him, the garrison of Corinth was
augmented to 6000 men, while he himself, straining the last energies
of exhausted Macedonia and enrolling children and old men in the ranks
of the phalanx, brought into the field an army of about 26,000 men,
of whom 16,000 were Macedonian -phalangitae-.

Philip Proceed to Thessaly
Battle of Cynoscephalae

Thus the fourth campaign, that of 557, began.  Flamininus despatched
a part of the fleet against the Acarnanians, who were besieged in
Leucas; in Greece proper he became by stratagem master of Thebes,
the capital of Boeotia, in consequence of which the Boeotians were
compelled to join at least nominally the alliance against Macedonia.
Content with having thus interrupted the communication between Corinth
and Chalcis, he proceeded to the north, where alone a decisive blow
could be struck.  The great difficulties of provisioning the army in
a hostile and for the most part desolate country, which had often
hampered its operations, were now to be obviated by the fleet
accompanying the army along the coast and carrying after it supplies
sent from Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia.  The decisive blow came,
however, earlier than Flamininus had hoped.  Philip, impatient and
confident as he was, could not endure to await the enemy on the
Macedonian frontier: after assembling his army at Dium, he advanced
through the pass of Tempe into Thessaly, and encountered the army of
the enemy advancing to meet him in the district of Scotussa.

The Macedonian and Roman armies--the latter of which had been
reinforced by contingents of the Apolloniates and the Athamanes,
by the Cretans sent by Nabis, and especially by a strong band of
Aetolians--contained nearly equal numbers of combatants, each about
26,000 men; the Romans, however, had the superiority in cavalry.
In front of Scotussa, on the plateau of the Karadagh, during a gloomy
day of rain, the Roman vanguard unexpectedly encountered that of the
enemy, which occupied a high and steep hill named Cynoscephalae, that
lay between the two camps.  Driven back into the plain, the Romans
were reinforced from the camp by the light troops and the excellent
corps of Aetolian cavalry, and now in turn forced the Macedonian
vanguard back upon and over the height.  But here the Macedonians
again found support in their whole cavalry and the larger portion
of their light infantry; the Romans, who had ventured forward
imprudently, were pursued with great loss almost to their camp, and
would have wholly taken to flight, had not the Aetolian horsemen
prolonged the combat in the plain until Flamininus brought up his
rapidly-arranged legions.  The king yielded to the impetuous cry of
his victorious troops demanding the continuance of the conflict, and
hastily drew up his heavy-armed soldiers for the battle, which neither
general nor soldiers had expected on that day.  It was important to
occupy the hill, which for the moment was quite denuded of troops.
The right wing of the phalanx, led by the king in person, arrived
early enough to form without trouble in battle order on the height;
the left had not yet come up, when the light troops of the
Macedonians, put to flight by the legions, rushed up the hill.  Philip
quickly pushed the crowd of fugitives past the phalanx into the middle
division, and, without waiting till Nicanor had arrived on the left
wing with the other half of the phalanx which followed more slowly,
he ordered the right phalanx to couch their  spears and to charge
down the hill on the legions, and the rearranged light infantry
simultaneously to turn them and fall upon them in flank.  The attack
of the phalanx, irresistible on so favourable ground, shattered the
Roman infantry, and the left wing of the Romans was completely beaten.
Nicanor on the other wing, when he saw the king give the attack,
ordered the other half of the phalanx to advance in all haste; by this
movement it was thrown into confusion, and while the first ranks were
already rapidly following the victorious right wing down the hill, and
were still more thrown into disorder by the inequality of the ground,
the last files were just gaining the height.  The right wing of the
Romans under these circumstances soon overcame the enemy's left; the
elephants alone, stationed upon this wing, annihilated the broken
Macedonian ranks.  While a fearful slaughter was taking place at this
point, a resolute Roman officer collected twenty companies, and with
these threw himself on the victorious Macedonian wing, which had
advanced so far in pursuit of the Roman left that the Roman right
came to be in its rear.  Against an attack from behind the phalanx
was defenceless, and this movement ended the battle.  From the
complete breaking up of the two phalanxes we may well believe that
the Macedonian loss amounted to 13,000, partly prisoners, partly
fallen--but chiefly the latter, because the Roman soldiers were not
acquainted with the Macedonian sign of surrender, the raising of the
 -sarissae-.  The loss of the victors was slight.  Philip escaped to
Larissa, and, after burning all his papers that nobody might be
compromised, evacuated Thessaly and returned home.

Simultaneously with this great defeat, the Macedonians suffered other
discomfitures at all the points which they still occupied; in Caria
the Rhodian mercenaries defeated the Macedonian corps stationed there
and compelled it to shut itself up in Stratonicea; the Corinthian
garrison was defeated by Nicostratus and his Achaeans with severe
loss, and Leucas in Acarnania was taken by assault after a heroic
resistance.  Philip was completely vanquished; his last allies, the
Acarnanians, yielded on the news of the battle of Cynoscephalae.

Preliminaries of Peace

It was completely in the power of the Romans to dictate peace; they
used their power without abusing it.  The empire of Alexander might be
annihilated; at a conference of the allies this desire was expressly
put forward by the Aetolians.  But what else would this mean, than to
demolish the rampart protecting Hellenic culture from the Thracians
and Celts?  Already during the war just ended the flourishing
Lysimachia on the Thracian Chersonese had been totally destroyed by
the Thracians--a serious warning for the future.  Flamininus, who had
clearly perceived the bitter animosities subsisting among the Greek
states, could never consent that the great Roman power should be the
executioner for the grudges of the Aetolian confederacy, even if his
Hellenic sympathies had not been as much won by the polished and
chivalrous king as his Roman national feeling was offended by the
boastings of the Aetolians, the "victors of Cynoscephalae," as they
called themselves.  He replied to the Aetolians that it was not the
custom of Rome to annihilate the vanquished, and that, besides, they
were their own masters and were at liberty to put an end to Macedonia,
if they could.  The king was treated with all possible deference, and,
on his declaring himself ready now to entertain the demands formerly
made, an armistice for a considerable term was agreed to by Flamininus
in return for the payment of a sum of money and the furnishing of
hostages, among whom was the king's son Demetrius,--an armistice which
Philip greatly needed in order to expel the Dardani out of Macedonia.

Peace with Macedonia

The final regulation of the complicated affairs of Greece was
entrusted by the senate to a commission of ten persons, the head and
soul of which was Flamininus.  Philip obtained from it terms similar
to those laid down for Carthage.  He lost all his foreign possessions
in Asia Minor, Thrace, Greece, and in the islands of the Aegean Sea;
while he retained Macedonia proper undiminished, with the exception of
some unimportant tracts on the frontier and the province of Orestis,
which was declared free--a stipulation which Philip felt very keenly,
but which the Romans could not avoid prescribing, for with his
character it was impossible to leave him free to dispose of subjects
who had once revolted from their allegiance.  Macedonia was further
bound not to conclude any foreign alliances without the previous
knowledge of Rome, and not to send garrisons abroad; she was bound,
moreover, not to make war out of Macedonia against civilized states
or against any allies of Rome at all; and she was not to maintain
any army exceeding 5000 men, any elephants, or more than five decked
ships--the rest were to be given up to the Romans.  Lastly, Philip
entered into symmachy with the Romans, which obliged him to send a
contingent when requested; indeed, Macedonian troops immediately
afterwards fought side by side with the legions.  Moreover, he paid
a contribution of 1000 talents (244,000 pounds).

Greece Free

After Macedonia had thus been reduced to complete political nullity
and was left in possession of only as much power as was needful to
guard the frontier of Hellas against the barbarians, steps were taken
to dispose of the possessions ceded by the king.  The Romans, who just
at that time were learning by experience in Spain that transmarine
provinces were a very dubious gain, and who had by no means begun the
war with a view to the acquisition of territory, took none of the
spoil for themselves, and thus compelled their allies also to
moderation.  They resolved to declare all the states of Greece,
which had previously been under Phillip free: and Flamininus was
commissioned to read the decree to that effect to the Greeks assembled
at the Isthmian games (558).  Thoughtful men doubtless might ask
whether freedom was a blessing capable of being thus bestowed, and
what was the value of freedom to a nation apart from union and unity;
but the rejoicing was great and sincere, as the intention of the
senate was sincere in conferring the freedom.(2)

Scodra
The Achaean League Enlarged
The Aetolians

The only exceptions to this general rule were, the Illyrian provinces
eastward of Epidamnus, which fell to Pleuratus the ruler of Scodra,
and rendered that state of robbers and pirates, which a century before
had been humbled by the Romans,(3) once more one of the most powerful
of the petty principalities in those regions; some townships in
western Thessaly, which Amynander had occupied and was allowed to
retain; and the three islands of Paros, Scyros, and Imbros, which were
presented to Athens in return for her many hardships and her still
more numerous addresses of thanks and courtesies of all sorts.  The
Rhodians, of course, retained their Carian possessions, and the
Pergamenes retained Aegina.  The remaining allies were only indirectly
rewarded by the accession of the newly-liberated cities to the several
confederacies.  The Achaeans were the best treated, although they were
the latest in joining the coalition against Philip; apparently for the
honourable reason, that this federation was the best organized and
most respectable of all the Greek states.  All the possessions of
Philip in the Peloponnesus and on the Isthmus, and consequently
Corinth in particular, were incorporated with their league.  With the
Aetolians on the other hand the Romans used little ceremony; they were
allowed to receive the towns of Phocis and Locris into their symmachy,
but their attempts to extend it also to Acarnania and Thessaly were in
part decidedly rejected, in part postponed, and the Thessalian cities
were organized into four small independent confederacies.  The Rhodian
city-league reaped the benefit of the liberation of Thasos, Lemnos,
and the towns of Thrace and Asia Minor.

War against Nabis of Sparta

The regulation of the affairs of the Greek states, as respected both
their mutual relations and their internal condition, was attended with
difficulty.  The most urgent matter was the war which had been carried
on between the Spartans and Achaeans since 550, in which the duty of
mediating necessarily fell to the Romans.  But after various attempts
to induce Nabis to yield, and particularly to give up the city of
Argos belonging to the Achaean league, which Philip had surrendered to
him, no course at last was left to Flamininus but to have war declared
against the obstinate petty robber-chieftain, who reckoned on the
well-known grudge of the Aetolians against the Romans and on the
advance of Antiochus into Europe, and pertinaciously refused to
restore Argos.  War was declared, accordingly, by all the Hellenes at
a great diet in Corinth, and Flamininus advanced into the Peloponnesus
accompanied by the fleet and the Romano-allied army, which included a
contingent sent by Philip and a division of Lacedaemonian emigrants
under Agesipolis, the legitimate king of Sparta (559).  In order to
crush his antagonist immediately by an overwhelming superiority of
force, no less than 50,000 men were brought into the field, and,
the other towns being disregarded, the capital itself was at once
invested; but the desired result was not attained.  Nabis had sent
into the field a considerable army amounting to 15,000 men, of whom
5000 were mercenaries, and he had confirmed his rule afresh by a
complete reign of terror--by the execution -en masse- of the officers
and inhabitants of the country whom he suspected.  Even when he
himself after the first successes of the Roman army and fleet resolved
to yield and to accept the comparatively favourable terms of peace
proposed by Flamininus, "the people," that is to say the gang of
robbers whom Nabis had domiciled in Sparta, not without reason
apprehensive of a reckoning after the victory, and deceived by an
accompaniment of lies as to the nature of the terms of peace and as to
the advance of the Aetolians and Asiatics, rejected the peace offered
by the Roman general, so that the struggle began anew.  A battle took
place in front of the walls and an assault was made upon them; they
were already scaled by the Romans, when the setting on fire of the
captured streets compelled the assailants to retire.

Settlement of Spartan Affairs

At last the obstinate resistance came to an end.  Sparta retained its
independence and was neither compelled to receive back the emigrants
nor to join the Achaean league; even the existing monarchical
constitution, and Nabis himself, were left intact.  On the other hand
Nabis had to cede his foreign possessions, Argos, Messene, the Cretan
cities, and the whole coast besides; to bind himself neither to
conclude foreign alliances, nor to wage war, nor to keep any other
vessels than two open boats; and lastly to disgorge all his plunder,
to give to the Romans hostages, and to pay to them a war-contribution.
The towns on the Laconian coast were given to the Spartan emigrants,
and this new community, who named themselves the "free Laconians" in
contrast to the monarchically governed Spartans, were directed to
enter the Achaean league.  The emigrants did not receive back their
property, as the district assigned to them was regarded as a
compensation for it; it was stipulated, on the other hand, that
their wives and children should not be detained in Sparta against
their will.  The Achaeans, although by this arrangement they gained
the accession of the free Laconians as well as Argos, were yet far
from content; they had expected that the dreaded and hated Nabis would
be superseded, that the emigrants would be brought back, and that
the Achaean symmachy would be extended to the whole Peloponnesus.
Unprejudiced persons, however, will not fail to see that Flamininus
managed these difficult affairs as fairly and justly as it was
possible to manage them where two political parties, both chargeable
with unfairness and injustice stood opposed to each other.  With the
old and deep hostility subsisting between the Spartans and Achaeans,
the incorporation of Sparta into the Achaean league would have been
equivalent to subjecting Sparta to the Achaeans, a course no less
contrary to equity than to prudence.  The restitution of the
emigrants, and the complete restoration of a government that had been
set aside for twenty years, would only have substituted one reign of
terror for another; the expedient adopted by Flamininus was the right
one, just because it failed to satisfy either of the extreme parties.
At length thorough provision appeared to be made that the Spartan
system of robbery by sea and land should cease, and that the
government there, such as it was, should prove troublesome only
to its own subjects.  It is possible that Flamininus, who knew
Nabis and could not but be aware how desirable it was that he should
personally be superseded, omitted to take such a step from the mere
desire to have done with the matter and not to mar the clear
impression of his successes by complications that might be prolonged
beyond all calculation; it is possible, moreover, that he sought
to preserve Sparta as a counterpoise to the power of the Achaean
confederacy in the Peloponnesus.  But the former objection relates to
a point of secondary importance; and as to the latter view, it is far
from probable that the Romans condescended to fear the Achaeans.

Final Regulation of Greece

Peace was thus established, externally at least, among the petty Greek
states.  But the internal condition of the several communities also
furnished employment to the Roman arbiter.  The Boeotians openly
displayed their Macedonian tendencies, even after the expulsion of the
Macedonians from Greece; after Flamininus had at their request allowed
their countrymen who were in the service of Philip to return home,
Brachyllas, the most decided partisan of Macedonia, was elected to the
presidency of the Boeotian confederacy, and Flamininus was otherwise
irritated in every way.  He bore it with unparalleled patience; but
the Boeotians friendly to Rome, who knew what awaited them after the
departure of the Romans, determined to put Brachyllas to death, and
Flamininus, whose permission they deemed it necessary to ask, at least
did not forbid them.  Brachyllas was accordingly killed; upon which
the Boeotians were not only content with prosecuting the murderers,
but lay in wait for the Roman soldiers passing singly or in small
parties through their territories, and killed about 500 of them.
This was too much to be endured; Flamininus imposed on them a fine
of a talent for every soldier; and when they did not pay it, he
collected the nearest troops and besieged Coronea (558).  Now they
betook themselves to entreaty; Flamininus in reality desisted on the
intercession of the Achaeans and Athenians, exacting but a very
moderate fine from those who were guilty; and although the Macedonian
party remained continuously at the helm in the petty province, the
Romans met their puerile opposition simply with the forbearance of
superior power.  In the rest of Greece Flamininus contented himself
with exerting his influence, so far as he could do so without
violence, over the internal affairs especially of the newly-freed
communities; with placing the council and the courts in the hands of
the more wealthy and bringing the anti-Macedonian party to the helm;
and with attaching as much as possible the civic commonwealths to the
Roman interest, by adding everything, which in each community should
have fallen by martial law to the Romans, to the common property of
the city concerned.  The work was finished in the spring of 560;
Flamininus once more assembled the deputies of all the Greek
communities at Corinth, exhorted them to a rational and moderate use
of the freedom conferred on them, and requested as the only return for
the kindness of the Romans, that they would within thirty days send to
him the Italian captives who had been sold into Greece during the
Hannibalic war.  Then he evacuated the last fortresses in which Roman
garrisons were still stationed, Demetrias, Chalcis along with the
smaller forts dependent upon it in Euboea, and Acrocorinthus--thus
practically giving the lie to the assertion of the Aetolians that
Rome had inherited from Philip the "fetters" of Greece--and departed
homeward with all the Roman troops and the liberated captives.

Results

It is only contemptible disingenuousness or weakly sentimentality,
which can fail to perceive that the Romans were entirely in earnest
with the liberation of Greece; and the reason why the plan so nobly
projected resulted in so sorry a structure, is to be sought only in
the complete moral and political disorganization of the Hellenic
nation.  It was no small matter, that a mighty nation should have
suddenly with its powerful arm brought the land, which it had been
accustomed to regard as its primitive home and as the shrine of
its intellectual and higher interests, into the possession of
full freedom, and should have conferred on every community in it
deliverance from foreign taxation and foreign garrisons and the
unlimited right of self-government; it is mere paltriness that sees
in this nothing save political calculation.  Political calculation
made the liberation of Greece a possibility for the Romans; it was
converted into a reality by the Hellenic sympathies that were at that
time indescribably powerful in Rome, and above all in Flamininus
himself.  If the Romans are liable to any reproach, it is that all
of them, and in particular Flamininus who overcame the well-founded
scruples of the senate, were hindered by the magic charm of the
Hellenic name from perceiving in all its extent the wretched character
of the Greek states of that period, and so allowed yet further freedom
for the doings of communities which, owing to the impotent antipathies
that prevailed alike in their internal and their mutual relations,
knew neither how to act nor how to keep quiet.  As things stood, it
was really necessary at once to put an end to such a freedom, equally
pitiful and pernicious, by means of a superior power permanently
present on the spot; the feeble policy of sentiment, with all its
apparent humanity, was far more cruel than the sternest occupation
would have been.  In Boeotia for instance Rome had, if not to
instigate, at least to permit, a political murder, because the Romans
had resolved to withdraw their troops from Greece and, consequently,
could not prevent the Greeks friendly to Rome from seeking their
remedy in the usual manner of the country.  But Rome herself also
suffered from the effects of this indecision.  The war with Antiochus
would not have arisen but for the political blunder of liberating
Greece, and it would not have been dangerous but tor the military
blunder of withdrawing the garrisons from the principal fortresses on
the European frontier.  History has a Nemesis for every sin--for an
impotent craving after freedom, as well as for an injudicious
generosity.




Notes for Chapter VIII


1. III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria

2. III. VI. Stagnation of the War in Italy

3. There are still extant gold staters, with the head of Flamininus
and the inscription "-T.  Quincti(us)-," struck in Greece under the
government of the liberator of the Hellenes.  The use of the Latin
language is a significant compliment.

4. III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria




CHAPTER IX

The War with Antiochus of Asia

Antiochus the Great

In the kingdom of Asia the diadem of the Seleucidae had been worn since
531 by king Antiochus the Third, the great-great-grandson of the founder
of the dynasty.  He had, like Philip, begun to reign at nineteen years
of age, and had displayed sufficient energy and enterprise, especially
in his first campaigns in the east, to warrant his being without too
ludicrous impropriety addressed in courtly style as "the Great."   He
had succeeded--more, however, through the negligence of his opponents
and of the Egyptian Philopator in particular, than through any ability
of his own--in restoring in some degree the integrity of the monarchy,
and in reuniting with his crown first the eastern satrapies of Media
and Parthyene, and then the separate state which Achaeus had founded
on this side of the Taurus in Asia Minor.  A first attempt to wrest
from the Egyptians the coast of Syria, the loss of which he sorely
felt, had, in the year of the battle of the Trasimene lake, met with a
bloody repulse from Philopator at Raphia; and Antiochus had taken good
care not to resume the contest with Egypt, so long as a man--even
though he were but an indolent one--occupied the Egyptian throne.
But, after Philopator's death (549), the right moment for crushing
Egypt appeared to have arrived; with that view Antiochus entered into
concert with Philip, and had thrown himself upon Coele-Syria, while
Philip attacked the cities of Asia Minor.  When the Romans interposed
in that quarter, it seemed for a moment as if Antiochus would make
common cause with Philip against them--the course suggested by the
position of affairs, as well as by the treaty of alliance.  But, not
far-seeing enough to repel at once with all his energy any
interference whatever by the Romans in the affairs of the east,
Antiochus thought that his best course was to take advantage of the
subjugation of Philip by the Romans (which might easily be foreseen),
in order to secure the kingdom of Egypt, which he had previously been
willing to share with Philip, for himself alone.  Notwithstanding the
close relations of Rome with the court of Alexandria and her royal
ward, the senate by no means intended to be in reality, what it was in
name, his "protector;"  firmly resolved to give itself no concern
about Asiatic affairs except in case of extreme necessity, and to
limit the sphere of the Roman power by the Pillars of Hercules and the
Hellespont, it allowed the great-king to take his course.  He himself
was not probably in earnest with the conquest of Egypt proper--which
was more easily talked of than achieved--but he contemplated the
subjugation of the foreign possessions of Egypt one after another, and
at once attacked those in Cilicia as well as in Syria and Palestine.
The great victory, which he gained in 556 over the Egyptian general
Scopas at Mount Panium near the sources of the Jordan, not only gave
him complete possession of that region as far as the frontier of Egypt
proper, but so alarmed the Egyptian guardians of the young king that,
to prevent Antiochus from invading Egypt, they submitted to a peace
and sealed it by the betrothal of their ward to Cleopatra the daughter
of Antiochus.  When he had thus achieved his first object, he
proceeded in the following year, that of the battle of Cynoscephalae,
with a strong fleet of 100 decked and 100 open vessels to Asia Minor,
to take possession of the districts that formerly belonged to Egypt on
the south and west coasts of Asia Minor--probably the Egyptian
government had ceded these districts, which were -de facto- in the
hands of Philip, to Antiochus under the peace, and had renounced all
their foreign possessions in his favour--and to recover the Greeks of
Asia Minor generally for his empire.  At the same time a strong Syrian
land-army assembled in Sardes.

Difficulties with Rome

This enterprise had an indirect bearing on the Romans who from the
first had laid it down as a condition for Philip that he should
withdraw his garrisons from Asia Minor and should leave to the
Rhodians and Pergamenes their territory and to the free cities their
former constitution unimpaired, and who had now to look on while
Antiochus took possession of them in Philip's place.  Attalus and the
Rhodians found themselves now directly threatened by Antiochus with
precisely the same danger as had driven them a few years before into
the war with Philip; and they naturally sought to involve the Romans
in this war as well as in that which had just terminated.  Already in
555-6 Attalus had requested from the Romans military aid against
Antiochus, who had occupied his territory while the troops of Attalus
were employed in the Roman war.  The more energetic Rhodians even
declared to king Antiochus, when in the spring of 557 his fleet
appeared off the coast of Asia Minor, that they would regard its
passing beyond the Chelidonian islands (off the Lycian coast) as a
declaration of war; and, when Antiochus did not regard the threat,
they, emboldened by the accounts that had just arrived of the battle
at Cynoscephalae, had immediately begun the war and had actually
protected from the king the most important of the Carian cities,
Caunus, Halicarnassus, and Myndus, and the island of Samos.  Most of
the half-free cities had submitted to Antiochus, but some of them,
more especially the important cities of Smyrna, Alexandria Troas, and
Lampsacus, had, on learning the discomfiture of Philip, likewise taken
courage  to resist  the  Syrian; and   their urgent entreaties were
combined with those of the Rhodians.

It admits of no doubt, that Antiochus, so far as he was at all capable
of forming a resolution and adhering to it, had already made up his
mind not only to attach to his empire the Egyptian possessions in
Asia, but also to make conquests on his own behalf in Europe and, if
not to seek on that account a war with Rome, at any rate to risk it
The Romans had thus every reason to comply with that request of their
allies, and to interfere directly in Asia; but they showed little
inclination to do so.  They not only delayed as long as the Macedonian
war lasted, and gave to Attalus nothing but the protection of
diplomatic intercession, which, we may add, proved in the first
instance effective; but even after the victory, while they doubtless
spoke as though the cities which had been in the hands of Ptolemy and
Philip ought not to be taken possession of by Antiochus, and while the
freedom of the Asiatic cities, Myrina, Abydus, Lampsacus,(1) and Cius,
figured in Roman documents, they took not the smallest step to give
effect to it, and allowed king Antiochus to employ the favourable
opportunity presented by the withdrawal of the Macedonian garrisons to
introduce his own.  In fact, they even went so far as to submit to his
landing in Europe in the spring of 558 and invading the Thracian
Chersonese, where he occupied Sestus and Madytus and spent a
considerable time in the chastisement of the Thracian barbarians and
the restoration of the destroyed Lysimachia, which he had selected as
his chief place of arms and as the capital of the newly-instituted
satrapy of Thrace.  Flamininus indeed, who was entrusted with the
conduct of these affairs, sent to the king at Lysimachia envoys, who
talked of the integrity of the Egyptian territory and of the freedom
of all the Hellenes; but nothing came out of it.  The king talked in
turn of his undoubted legal title to the ancient kingdom of Lysimachus
conquered by his ancestor Seleucus, explained that he was employed not
in making territorial acquisitions but only in preserving the
integrity of his hereditary dominions, and declined the intervention
of the Romans in his disputes with the cities subject to him in Asia
Minor.  With justice he could add that peace had already been
concluded with Egypt, and that the Romans were thus far deprived of
any formal pretext for interfering.(2)  The sudden return of the king
to Asia occasioned by a false report of the death of the young king of
Egypt, and the projects which it suggested of a landing in Cyprus or
even at Alexandria, led to the breaking off of the conferences without
coming to any conclusion, still less producing any result.  In the
following year, 559, Antiochus returned to Lysimachia with his fleet
and army reinforced, and employed himself in organizing the new
satrapy which he destined for his son Seleucus.  Hannibal, who had
been obliged to flee from Carthage, came to him at Ephesus; and the
singularly honourable reception accorded to the exile was virtually a
declaration of war against Rome.  Nevertheless Flamininus in the
spring of 560 withdrew all the Roman garrisons from Greece.  This was
under the existing circumstances at least a mischievous error, if not
a criminal acting in opposition to his own better knowledge; for we
cannot dismiss the idea that Flamininus, in order to carry home with
him the undiminished glory of having wholly terminated the war and
liberated Hellas, contented himself with superficially covering up for
the moment the smouldering embers of revolt and war.  The Roman
statesman might perhaps be right, when he pronounced any attempt to
bring Greece directly under the dominion of the Romans, and any
intervention of the Romans in Asiatic affairs, to be a political
blunder; but the opposition fermenting in Greece, the feeble arrogance
of the Asiatic king, the residence, at the Syrian head-quarters, of
the bitter enemy of the Romans who had already raised the west in arms
against Rome--all these were clear signs of the approach of a fresh
rising in arms on the part of the Hellenic east, which could not but
have for its aim at least to transfer Greece from the clientship of
Rome to that of the states opposed to Rome, and, if this object should
be attained, would immediately extend the circle of its operations.
It is plain that Rome could not allow this to take place.  When
Flamininus, ignoring all these sure indications of war, withdrew the
garrisons from Greece, and yet at the same time made demands on the
king of Asia which he had no intention of employing his army to
support, he overdid his part in words as much as he fell short in
action, and forgot his duty as a general and as a citizen in the
indulgence of his personal vanity--a vanity, which wished to confer,
and imagined that it had conferred, peace on Rome and freedom
on the Greeks of both continents.

Preparations of Antiochus for War with Rome

Antiochus employed the unexpected respite in strengthening his
position at home and his relations with his neighbours before
beginning the war, on which for his part he was resolved, and became
all the more so, the more the enemy appeared to procrastinate.  He now
(561) gave his daughter Cleopatra, previously betrothed, in marriage
to the young king of Egypt.  That he at the same time promised to
restore the provinces wrested from his son-in-law, was afterwards
affirmed on the part of Egypt, but probably without warrant; at any
rate the land remained actually attached to the Syrian kingdom.(3)
He offered to restore to Eumenes, who had in 557 succeeded his father
Attalus on the throne of Pergamus, the towns taken from him, and to
give him also one of his daughters in marriage, if he would abandon
the Roman alliance.  In like manner he bestowed a daughter on
Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, and gained the Galatians by presents,
while he reduced by arms the Pisidians who were constantly in revolt,
and other small tribes.  Extensive privileges were granted to the
Byzantines; respecting the cities in Asia Minor, the king declared
that he would permit the independence of the old free cities such as
Rhodes and Cyzicus, and would be content in the case of the others
with a mere formal recognition of his sovereignty; he even gave them
to understand that he was ready to submit to the arbitration of the
Rhodians.  In European Greece he could safely count on the Aetolians,
and he hoped to induce Philip again to take up arms.  In fact, a plan
of Hannibal obtained the royal approval, according to which he was to
receive from Antiochus a fleet of 100 sail and a land army of 10,000
infantry and 1000 cavalry, and was to employ them in kindling first
a third Punic war in Carthage, and then a second Hannibalic war in
Italy; Tyrian emissaries proceeded to Carthage to pave the way for a
rising in arms there(4)  Finally, good results were anticipated from
the Spanish insurrection, which, at the time when Hannibal left
Carthage, was at its height.(5)

Aetolian Intrigues against Rome

While the storm was thus gathering from far and wide against Rome, it
was on this, as on all occasions, the Hellenes implicated in the
enterprise, who were of the least moment, and yet took action of the
greatest importance and with the utmost impatience.  The exasperated
and arrogant Aetolians began by degrees to persuade themselves that
Philip had been vanquished by them and not by the Romans, and could
not even wait till Antiochus should advance into Greece.  Their policy
is characteristically expressed in the reply, which their -strategus-
gave soon afterwards to Flamininus, when he requested a copy of the
declaration of war against Rome: that he would deliver it to him in
person, when the Aetolian army should encamp on the Tiber.  The
Aetolians acted as the agents of the Syrian king in Greece and
deceived both parties, by representing to the king that all the
Hellenes were waiting with open arms to receive him as their true
deliverer, and by telling those in Greece who were disposed to listen
to them that the landing of the king was nearer than it was in
reality.  Thus they actually succeeded in inducing the simple
obstinacy of Nabis to break loose and to rekindle in Greece the flame
of war two years after Flamininus's departure, in the spring of 562;
but in doing so they missed their aim.  Nabis attacked Gythium, one of
the towns of the free Laconians that by the last treaty had been
annexed to the Achaean league, and took it; but the experienced
-strategus- of the Achaeans, Philopoemen, defeated him at the
Barbosthenian mountains, and the tyrant brought back barely a fourth
part of his army to his capital, in which Philopoemen shut him up.  As
such a commencement was no sufficient inducement for Antiochus to come
to Europe, the Aetolians resolved to possess themselves of Sparta,
Chalcis, and Demetrias, and by gaining these important towns to
prevail upon the king to embark.  In the first place they thought to
become masters of Sparta, by arranging that the Aetolian Alexamenus
should march with 1000 men into the town under pretext of bringing a
contingent in terms of the alliance, and should embrace the
opportunity of making away with Nabis and of occupying the town.  This
was done, and Nabis was killed at a review of the troops; but, when
the Aetolians dispersed to plunder the town, the Lacedaemonians found
time to rally and slew them to the last man.  The city was then
induced by Philopoemen to join the Achaean league.  After this
laudable project of the Aetolians had thus not only deservedly failed,
but had had precisely the opposite effect of uniting almost the whole
Peloponnesus in the hands of the other party, it fared little better
with them at Chalcis, for the Roman party there called in the citizens
of Eretria and Carystus in Euboea, who were favourable to Rome, to
render seasonable aid against the Aetolians and the Chalcidian exiles.
On the other hand the occupation of Demetrias was successful, for the
Magnetes to whom the city had been assigned were, not without reason,
apprehensive that it had been promised by the Romans to Philip as a
prize in return for his aid against Antiochus; several squadrons of
Aetolian horse moreover managed to steal into the town under the
pretext of forming an escort for Eurylochus, the recalled head of the
opposition to Rome.  Thus the Magnetes passed over, partly of their
own accord, partly by compulsion, to the side of the Aetolians, and
the latter did not fail to make use of the fact at the court of the
Seleucid.

Rupture between Antiochus and the Romans

Antiochus took his resolution.  A rupture with Rome, in spite of
endeavours to postpone it by the diplomatic palliative of embassies,
could no longer be avoided.  As early as the spring of 561 Flamininus,
who continued to have the decisive voice in the senate as to eastern
affairs, had expressed the Roman ultimatum to the envoys of the king,
Menippus and Hegesianax; viz. that he should either evacuate Europe
and dispose of Asia at his pleasure, or retain Thrace and submit to
the Roman protectorate over Smyrna, Lampsacus, and Alexandria Troas.
These demands had been again discussed at Ephesus, the chief place of
arms and fixed quarters of the king in Asia Minor, in the spring of
562, between Antiochus and the envoys of the senate, Publius Sulpicius
and Publius Villius; and they had separated with the conviction on
both sides thata peaceful settlement was no longer possible.
Thenceforth war was resolved on in Rome.  In that very summer of 562
a Roman fleet of 30 sail, with 3000 soldiers on board, under Aulus
Atilius Serranus, appeared off Gythium, where their arrival
accelerated the conclusion of the treaty between the Achaeans
and Spartans; the eastern coasts of Sicily and Italy were strongly
garrisoned, so as to be secure against any attempts at a landing; a
land army was expected in Greece in the autumn.  Since the spring of
562 Flamininus, by direction of the senate, had journeyed through
Greece to thwart the intrigues of the opposite party, and to
counteract as far as possible the evil effects of the ill-timed
evacuation of the country.  The Aetolians had already gone so far as
formally to declare war in their diet against Rome.  But Flamininus
succeeded In saving Chalcis for the Romans by throwing into it a
garrison of 500 Achaeans and 500 Pergamenes.  He made an attempt also
to recover Demetrias; and the Magnetes wavered.  Though some towns in
Asia Minor, which Antiochus had proposed to subdue before beginning
the great war, still held out, he could now no longer delay his
landing, unless he was willing to let the Romans recover all the
advantages which they had surrendered two years before by withdrawing
their garrisons from Greece.  He collected the vessels and troops
which were at hand--he had but 40 decked vessels and 10,000 infantry,
along with 500 horse and 6 elephants--and started from the Thracian
Chersonese for Greece, where he landed in the autumn of 562 at
Pteleum on the Pagasaean gulf, and immediately occupied the adjoining
Demetrias.  Nearly about the same time a Roman army of some 25,000 men
under the praetor Marcus Baebius landed at Apollonia.  The war was
thus begun on both sides.

Attitude of the Minor Powers
Carthage and Hannibal

Everything depended on the extent to which that comprehensively-
planned coalition against Rome, of which Antiochus came forward as the
head, might be realized.  As to the plan, first of all, of stirring
up enemies to the Romans in Carthage and Italy, it was the fate of
Hannibal at the court of Ephesus, as through his whole career, to have
projected his noble and high-spirited plans for the behoof of people
pedantic and mean.  Nothing was done towards their execution, except
that some Carthaginian patriots were compromised; no choice was left
to the Carthaginians but to show unconditional submission to Rome.
The camarilla would have nothing to do with Hannibal--such a man was
too inconveniently great for court cabals; and, after having tried all
sorts of absurd expedients, such as accusing the general, with whose
name the Romans frightened their children, of concert with the Roman
envoys, they succeeded in persuading Antiochus the Great, who like all
insignificant monarchs plumed himself greatly on his independence and
was influenced by nothing so easily as by the fear of being ruled,
into the wise belief that he ought not to allow himself to be thrown
into the shade by so celebrated a man.  Accordingly it was in solemn
council resolved that the Phoenician should be employed in future
only for subordinate enterprises and for giving advice--with the
reservation, of course, that the advice should never be followed.
Hannibal revenged himself on the rabble, by accepting every commission
and brilliantly executing all.

States of Asia Minor

In Asia Cappadocia adhered to the great-king; Prusias of Bithynia on
the other hand took, as always, the side of the stronger.  King
Eumenes remained faithful to the old policy of his house, which was
now at length to yield to him its true fruit.  He had not only
persistently refused |the offers of Antiochus, but had constantly
urged the Romans to a war, from which he expected the aggrandizement
of his kingdom.  The Rhodians and Byzantines likewise joined their
old allies.  Egypt too took the side of Rome and offered support in
supplies and men; which, however, the Romans did not accept.

Macedonia

In Europe the result mainly depended on the position which Philip of
Macedonia would take up.  It would have been perhaps the right policy
for him, notwithstanding all the injuries or shortcomings of the past,
to unite with Antiochus.  But Philip was ordinarily influenced not by
such considerations, but by his likings and dislikings; and his hatred
was naturally directed much more against the faithless ally, who had
left him to contend alone with the common enemy, had sought merely to
seize his own share in the spoil, and had become a burdensome
neighbour to him in Thrace, than against the conqueror, who had
treated him respectfully and honourably.  Antiochus had, moreover,
given deep offence to the hot temper of Philip by the setting up of
absurd pretenders to the Macedonian crown, and by the ostentatious
burial of the Macedonian bones bleaching at Cynoscephalae.  Philip
therefore placed his whole force with cordial zeal at the disposal
of the Romans.

The Lesser Greek States

The second power of Greece, the Achaean league, adhered no less
decidedly than the first to the alliance with Rome.  Of the smaller
powers, the Thessalians and the Athenians held by Rome; among the
latter an Achaean garrison introduced by Flamininus into the citadel
brought the patriotic party, which was pretty strong, to reason.  The
Epirots exerted themselves to keep on good terms, if possible, with
both parties.  Thus, in addition to the Aetolians and the Magnetes who
were joined by a portion of the neighbouring Perrhaebians, Antiochus
was supported only by Amynander, the weak king of the Athamanes, who
allowed himself to be dazzled by foolish designs on the Macedonian
crown; by the Boeotians, among whom the party opposed to Rome was
still at the helm; and in the Peloponnesus by the Eleans and
Messenians, who were in the habit of taking part with the Aetolians
against the Achaeans.  This was indeed a hopeful beginning; and the
title of commander-in-chief with absolute power, which the Aetolians
decreed to the great-king, seemed insult added to injury.  There had
been, just as usual, deception on both sides.  Instead of the
countless hordes of Asia, the king brought up a force scarcely half as
strong as an ordinary consular army; and instead of the open arms with
which all the Hellenes were to welcome their deliverer from the Roman
yoke, one or two bands of klephts and some dissolute civic communities
offered to the king brotherhood in arms.

Antiochus in Greece

For the moment, indeed, Antiochus had anticipated the Romans in Greece
proper.  Chalcis was garrisoned by the Greek allies of the Romans, and
refused the first summons but the fortress surrendered when Antiochus
advanced with all his force; and a Roman division, which arrived too
late to occupy it, was annihilated by Antiochus at Deliurn.  Euboea
was thus lost to the Romans.  Antiochus still made even in winter
an attempt, in concert with the Aetolians and Athamanes, to gain
Thessaly; Thermopylae was occupied, Pherae and other towns were taken,
but Appius Claudius came up with 2000 men from Apollonia, relieved
Larisa, and took up his position there.  Antiochus, tired of the
winter campaign, preferred to return to his pleasant quarters at
Chalcis, where the time was spent merrily, and the king even, in spite
of his fifty years and his warlike schemes, wedded a fair Chalcidian.
So the winter of 562-3 passed, without Antiochus doing much more than
sending letters hither and thither through Greece: he waged the war
--a Roman officer remarked--by means of pen and ink.

Landing of the Romans

In the beginning of spring 563 the Roman staff arrived at Apollonia.
The commander-in-chief was Manius Acilius Glabrio, a man of humble
origin, but an able general feared both by his soldiers and by the
enemy; the admiral was Gaius Livius; and among the military tribunes
were Marcus Porcius Cato, the conqueror of Spain, and Lucius Valerius
Flaccus, who after the old Roman wont did not disdain, although they
had been consuls, to re-enter the army as simple war-tribunes.  They
brought with them reinforcements in ships and men, including Numidian
cavalry and Libyan elephants sent by Massinissa, and the permission
of the senate to accept auxiliary troops to the number of 5000 from
the extra-Italian allies, so that the whole number of the Roman forces
was raised to about 40,000 men.  The king, who in the beginning of
spring had gone to the Aetolians and had thence made an aimless
expedition to Acarnania, on the news of Glabrio's landing returned to
his head-quarters to begin the campaign in earnest.  But incom
prehensibly, through his own negligence and that of his lieutenants in
Asia, reinforcements had wholly failed to reach him, so that he had
nothing but the weak army--now further decimated by sickness and
desertion in its dissolute winter-quarters--with which he had landed
at Pteleum in the autumn of the previous year.  The Aetolians too, who
had professed to send such enormous numbers into the field, now, when
their support was of moment, brought to their commander-in-chief no
more than 4000 men.  The Roman troops had already begun operations in
Thessaly, where the vanguard in concert with the Macedonian army drove
the garrisons of Antiochus out of the Thessalian towns and occupied
the territory of the Athamanes.  The consul with the main army
followed; the whole force of the Romans assembled at Larisa.

Battle at Thermopylae
Greece Occupied by the Romans
Resistance of the Aetolians

Instead of returning with all speed to Asia and evacuating the field
before an enemy in every respect superior, Antiochus resolved to
entrench himself at Thermopylae, which he had occupied, and there to
await the arrival of the great army from Asia.  He himself took up a
position in the chief pass, and commanded the Aetolians to occupy the
mountain-path, by which Xerxes had formerly succeeded in turning the
Spartans.  But only half of the Aetolian contingent was pleased to
comply with this order of the commander-in-chief; the other 2000 men
threw themselves into the neighbouring town of Heraclea, where they
took no other part in the battle than that of attempting during its
progress to surprise and plunder the Roman camp.  Even the Aetolians
posted on the heights discharged their duty of watching with
remissness and reluctance; their post on the Callidromus allowed
itself to be surprised by Cato, and the Asiatic phalanx, which the
consul had meanwhile assailed in front, dispersed, when the Romans
hastening down the mountain fell upon its flank.  As Antiochus had
made no provision for any case and had not thought of retreat, the
army was destroyed partly on the field of battle, partly during its
flight; with difficulty a small band reached Demetrias, and the king
himself escaped to Chalcis with 500 men.  He embarked in haste for
Ephesus; Europe was lost to him all but his possessions in Thrace, and
even the fortresses could be no longer defended Chalcis surrendered to
the Romans, and Demetrias to Philip, who received permission--as a
compensation for the conquest of the town of Lamia in Achaia
Phthiotis, which he was on the point of accomplishing and had then
abandoned by orders of the consul--to make himself master of all the
communities that had gone over to Antiochus in Thessaly proper, and
even of the territories bordering on Aetolia, the districts of Dolopia
and Aperantia.  All the Greeks that had pronounced in favour of
Antiochus hastened to make their peace; the Epirots humbly besought
pardon for their ambiguous conduct, the Boeotians surrendered at
discretion, the Eleans and Messenians, the latter after some struggle,
submitted to the Achaeans.  The prediction of Hannibal to the king was
fulfilled, that no dependence at all could be placed upon the Greeks,
who would submit to any conqueror.  Even the Aetolians, when their
corps shut up in Heraclea had been compelled after obstinate
resistance to capitulate, attempted to make their peace with the
sorely provoked Romans; but the stringent demands of the Roman consul,
and a consignment of money seasonably arriving from Antiochus,
emboldened them once more to break off the negotiations and to sustain
for two whole months a siege in Naupactus.  The town was already
reduced to extremities, and its capture or capitulation could not have
been long delayed, when Flamininus, constantly striving to save every
Hellenic community from the worst consequences of its own folly and
from the severity of his ruder colleagues, interposed and arranged in
the first instance an armistice on tolerable terms.  This terminated,
at least for the moment, armed resistance in Greece.

Maritime War, and Preparations for Crossing to Asia
Polyxenidas and Pausistratus
Engagement off Aspendus
Battle of Myonnesus

A more serious war was impending in Asia--a war which appeared of a
very hazardous character on account not so much of the enemy as of the
great distance and the insecurity of the communications with home,
while yet, owing to the short-sighted obstinacy of Antiochus, the
struggle could not well be terminated otherwise than by an attack on
the enemy in his own country.  The first object was to secure the sea.
The Roman fleet, which during the campaign in Greece was charged with
the task of interrupting the communication between Greece and Asia
Minor, and which had been successful about the time of the battle at
Thermopylae in seizing a strong Asiatic transport fleet near Andros,
was thenceforth employed in making preparations for the crossing of
the Romans to Asia next year and first of all in driving the enemy's
fleet out of the Aegean Sea.  It lay in the harbour of Cyssus on the
southern shore of the tongue of land that projects from Ionia towards
Chios; thither in search of it the Roman fleet proceeded, consisting
of 75 Roman, 24 Pergamene, and 6 Carthaginian, decked vessels under
the command of Gaius Livius.  The Syrian admiral, Polyxenidas, a
Rhodian emigrant, had only 70 decked vessels to oppose to it; but, as
the Roman fleet still expected the ships of Rhodes, and as Polyxenidas
relied on the superior seaworthiness of his vessels, those of Tyre and
Sidon in particular, he immediately accepted battle.  At the outset
the Asiatics succeeded in sinking one of the Carthaginian vessels;
but, when they came to grapple, Roman valour prevailed, and it was
owing solely to the swiftness of their rowing and sailing that the
enemy lost no more than 23 ships.  During the pursuit the Roman fleet
was joined by 25 ships from Rhodes, and the superiority of the Romans
in those waters was now doubly assured.  The enemy's fleet thenceforth
kept the shelter of the harbour of Ephesus, and, as it could not be
induced to risk a second battle, the fleet of the Romans and allies
broke up for the winter; the Roman ships of war proceeded to the
harbour of Cane in the neighbourhood of Pergamus.  Both parties were
busy during the winter in preparing for the next campaign.  The Romans
sought to gain over the Greeks of Asia Minor; Smyrna, which had
perseveringly resisted all the attempts of the king to get possession
of the city, received the Romans with open arms, and the Roman party
gained the ascendency in Samos, Chios, Erythrae, Clazomenae, Phocaea,
Cyme, and elsewhere.  Antiochus was resolved, if possible, to prevent
the Romans from crossing to Asia, and with that view he made zealous
naval preparations--employing Polyxenidas to fit out and augment the
fleet stationed at Ephesus, and Hannibal to equip a new fleet in
Lycia, Syria, and Phoenicia; while he further collected in Asia Minor
a powerful land army from all regions of his extensive empire.  Early
next year (564) the Roman fleet resumed its operations.  Gaius Livius
left the Rhodian fleet--which had appeared in good time this year,
numbering 36 sail--to observe that of the enemy in the offing of
Ephesus, and went with the greater portion of the Roman and Pergamene
vessels to the Hellespont in accordance with his instructions, to
pave the way for the passage of the land army by the capture of the
fortresses there.  Sestus was already occupied and Abydus reduced to
extremities, when the news of the defeat of the Rhodian fleet recalled
him.  The Rhodian admiral Pausistratus, lulled into security by the
representations of his countryman that he wished to desert from
Antiochus, had allowed himself to be surprised in the harbour of
Samos; he himself fell, and all his vessels were destroyed except five
Rhodian and two Coan ships; Samos, Phocaea, and Cyme on hearing the
news went over to Seleucus, who held the chief command by land in
those provinces for his father.

But when the Roman fleet arrived partly from Cane, partly from the
Hellespont, and was after some time joined by twenty new ships of the
Rhodians at Samos, Polyxenidas was once more compelled to shut himself
up in the harbour of Ephesus.  As he declined the offered naval
battle, and as, owing to the small numbers of the Roman force, an
attack by land was not to be thought of, nothing remained for the
Roman fleet but to take up its position in like manner at Samos.  A
division meanwhile proceeded to Patara on the Lycian coast, partly to
relieve the Rhodians from the very troublesome attacks that were
directed against them from that quarter, partly and chiefly to prevent
the hostile fleet, which Hannibal was expected to bring up, from
entering the Aegean Sea.  When the squadron sent against Patara
achieved nothing, the new admiral Lucius Aemilius Regillus, who had
arrived with 20 war-vessels from Rome and had relieved Gaius Livius at
Samos, was so indignant that he proceeded thither with the whole
fleet; his officers with difficulty succeeded, while they were on
their voyage, in making him understand that the primary object was not
the conquest of Patara but the command of the Aegean Sea, and in
inducing him to return to Samos.  On the mainland of Asia Minor
Seleucus had in the meanwhile begun the siege of Pergamus, while
Antiochus with his chief army ravaged the Pergamene territory and the
possessions of the Mytilenaeans on the mainland; they hoped to crush
the hated Attalids, before Roman aid appeared.  The Roman fleet went
to Elaea and the port of Adramytium to help their ally; but, as the
admiral wanted troops, he accomplished nothing.  Pergamus seemed lost;
but the laxity and negligence with which the siege was conducted
allowed Eumenes to throw into the city Achaean auxiliaries under
Diophanes, whose bold and successful sallies compelled the Gallic
mercenaries, whom Antiochus had entrusted with the siege, to raise it.

In the southern waters too the projects of Antiochus were frustrated.
The fleet equipped and led by Hannibal, after having been long
detained by the constant westerly winds, attempted at length to reach
the Aegean; but at the mouth of the Eurymedon, off Aspendus in
Pamphylia, it encountered a Rhodian squadron under Eudamus; and in the
battle, which ensued between the two fleets, the excellence of the
Rhodian ships and naval officers carried the victory over Hannibal's
tactics and his numerical superiority.  It was the first naval battle,
and the last battle against Rome, fought by the great Carthaginian.
The victorious Rhodian fleet then took its station at Patara, and
there prevented the intended junction of the two Asiatic fleets.  In
the Aegean Sea the Romano-Rhodian fleet at Samos, after being weakened
by detaching the Pergamene ships to the Hellespont to support the land
army which had arrived there, was in its turn attacked by that of
Polyxenidas, who now numbered nine sail more than his opponents.  On
December 23 of the uncorrected calendar, according to the corrected
calendar about the end of August, in 564, a battle took place at the
promontory of Myonnesus between Teos and Colophon; the Romans broke
through the line of the enemy, and totally surrounded the left wing,
so that they took or sank 42 ships.  An inscription in Saturnian verse
over the temple of the Lares Permarini, which was built in the Campus
Martius in memory of this victory, for many centuries thereafter
proclaimed to the Romans how the fleet of the Asiatics had been
defeated before the eyes of king Antiochus and of all his land army,
and how the Romans thus "settled the mighty strife and subdued the
kings."    Thenceforth the enemy's ships no longer ventured to show
themselves on the open sea, and made no further attempt to obstruct
the crossing of the Roman land army.

Expedition to Asia

The conqueror of Zama had been selected at Rome to conduct the war on
the Asiatic continent; he practically exercised the supreme command
for the nominal commander-in-chief, his brother Lucius Scipio, whose
intellect was insignificant, and who had no military capacity.  The
reserve hitherto stationed in Lower Italy was destined for Greece, the
army of Glabrio for Asia: when it became known who was to command it,
5000 veterans from the Hannibalic war voluntarily enrolled, to fight
once more under their beloved leader.  In the Roman July, but
according to the true time in March, the Scipios arrived at the army
to commence the Asiatic campaign; but they were disagreeably surprised
to find themselves instead involved, in the first instance, in an
endless struggle with the desperate Aetolians.  The senate, finding
that Flamininus pushed his boundless consideration for the Hellenes
too far, had left the Aetolians to choose between paying an utterly
exorbitant war contribution and unconditional surrender, and thus had
driven them anew to arms; none could tell when this warfare among
mountains and strongholds would come to an end.  Scipio got rid
of the inconvenient obstacle by concerting a six-months' armistice,
and then entered on his march to Asia.  As the one fleet of the enemy
was only blockaded in the Aegean Sea, and the other, which was coming
up from the south, might daily arrive there in spite of the squadron
charged to intercept it, it seemed advisable to take the land route
through Macedonia and Thrace and to cross the Hellespont.  In that
direction no real obstacles were to be anticipated; for Philip of
Macedonia might be entirely depended on, Prusias king of Bithynia was
in alliance with the Romans, and the Roman fleet could easily
establish itself in the straits.  The long and weary march along the
coast of Macedonia and Thrace was accomplished without material loss;
Philip made provision on the one hand for supplying their wants, on
the other for their friendly reception by the Thracian barbarians.
They had lost so much time however, partly with the Aetolians, partly
on the march, that the army only reached the Thracian Chersonese about
the time of the battle of Myonnesus.  But the marvellous good fortune
of Scipio now in Asia, as formerly in Spain and Africa, cleared his
path of all difficulties.

Passage of the Hellespont by the Romans

On the news of the battle at Myonnesus Antiochus so completely lost
his judgment, that in Europe he caused the strongly-garrisoned and
well-provisioned fortress of Lysimachia to be evacuated by the
garrison and by the inhabitants who were faithfully devoted to the
restorer of their city, and withal even forgot to withdraw in like
manner the garrisons or to destroy the rich magazines at Aenus and
Maronea; and on the Asiatic coast he opposed not the slightest
resistance to the landing of the Romans, but on the contrary, while
it was taking place, spent his time at Sardes in upbraiding destiny.
It is scarcely doubtful that, had he but provided for the defence of
Lysimachia down to the no longer distant close of the summer, and
moved forward his great army to the Hellespont, Scipio would have
been compelled to take up winter quarters on the European shore,
in a position far from being, in a military or political point
of view, secure.

While the Romans, after disembarking on the Asiatic shore, paused for
some days to refresh themselves and to await their leader who was
detained behind by religious duties, ambassadors from the great-king
arrived in their camp to negotiate for peace.  Antiochus offered half
the expenses of the war, and the cession of his European possessions
as well as of all the Greek cities in Asia Minor that had gone over to
Rome; but Scipio demanded the whole costs of the war and the surrender
of all Asia Minor.  The former terms, he declared, might have been
accepted, had the army still been before Lysimachia, or even on the
European side of the Hellespont; but they did not suffice now, when
the steed felt the bit and knew its rider.  The attempts of the great-
king to purchase peace from his antagonist after the Oriental manner
by sums of money--he offered the half of his year's revenues!--failed
as they deserved; the proud burgess, in return for the gratuitous
restoration of his son who had fallen a captive, rewarded the great-
king with the friendly advice to make peace on any terms.  This was
not in reality necessary: had the king possessed the resolution to
prolong the war and to draw the enemy after him by retreating into the
interior, a favourable issue was still by no means impossible.  But
Antiochus, irritated by the presumably intentional arrogance of his
antagonist, and too indolent for any persevering and consistent
warfare, hastened with the utmost eagerness to expose his unwieldy,
but unequal, and undisciplined mass of an army to the shock of the
Roman legions.

Battle of Magnesia

In the valley of the Hermus, near Magnesia at the foot of Mount
Sipylus not far from Smyrna, the Roman troops fell in with the enemy
late in the autumn of 564.  The force of Antiochus numbered close on
80,000 men, of whom 12,000 were cavalry; the Romans--who had along
with them about 5000 Achaeans, Pergamenes, and Macedonian volunteers
--had not nearly half that number, but they were so sure of victory,
that they did not even wait for the recovery of their general who had
remained behind sick at Elaea; Gnaeus Domitius took the command in his
stead.  Antiochus, in order to be able even to place his immense mass
of troops, formed two divisions.  In the first were placed the mass of
the light troops, the peltasts, bowmen, slingers, the mounted archers
of Mysians, Dahae, and Elymaeans, the Arabs on their dromedaries, and
the scythe-chariots.  In the second division the heavy cavalry (the
Cataphractae, a sort of cuirassiers) were stationed on the flanks;
next to these, in the intermediate division, the Gallic and
Cappadocian infantry; and in the very centre the phalanx armed after
the Macedonian fashion, 16,000 strong, the flower of the army, which,
however, had not room in the narrow space and had to be drawn up in
double files 32 deep.  In the space between the two divisions were
placed 54 elephants, distributed between the bands of the phalanx and
of the heavy cavalry.  The Romans stationed but a few squadrons on the
left wing, where the river gave protection; the mass of the cavalry
and all the light armed were placed on the right, which was led by
Eumenes; the legions stood in the centre.  Eumenes began the battle by
despatching his archers and slingers against the scythe-chariots with
orders to shoot at the teams; in a short time not only were these
thrown into disorder, but the camel-riders stationed next to them were
also carried away, and even in the second division the left wing of
heavy cavalry placed behind fell into confusion.  Eumenes now threw
himself with all the Roman cavalry, numbering 3000 horse, on the
mercenary infantry, which was placed in the second division between
the phalanx and the left wing of heavy cavalry, and, when these gave
way, the cuirassiers who had already fallen into disorder also fled.
The phalanx, which had just allowed the light troops to pass through
and was preparing to advance against the Roman legions, was hampered
by the attack of the cavalry in flank, and compelled to stand still
and to form front on both sides--a movement which the depth of its
disposition favoured.  Had the heavy Asiatic cavalry been at hand, the
battle might have been restored; but the left wing was shattered, and
the right, led by Antiochus in person, had driven before it the little
division of Roman cavalry opposed to it, and had reached the Roman
camp, which was with great difficulty defended from its attack.  In
this way the cavalry were at the decisive moment absent from the scene
of action.  The Romans were careful not to assail the phalanx with
their legions, but sent against it the archers and slingers, not one
of whose missiles failed to take effect on the densely-crowded mass.
The phalanx nevertheless retired slowly and in good order, till the
elephants stationed in the interstices became frightened and broke the
ranks.  Then the whole army dispersed in tumultuous flight; an attempt
to hold the camp failed, and only increased the number of the dead and
the prisoners.  The estimate of the loss of Antiochus at 50,000 men
is, considering the infinite confusion, not incredible; the legions of
the Romans had never been engaged, and the victory, which gave them a
third continent, cost them 24 horsemen and 300 foot soldiers.  Asia
Minor submitted; including even Ephesus, whence the admiral had
hastily to withdraw his fleet, and Sardes the residence of the court.

Conclusion of Peace
Expedition against the Celts of Asia Minor
Regulation of the Affairs of Asia Minor

The king sued for peace and consented to the terms proposed by the
Romans, which, as usual, were just the same as those offered before
the battle and consequently included the cession of Asia Minor.  Till
they were ratified, the army remained in Asia Minor at the expense of
the king; which came to cost him not less than 3000 talents (730,000
pounds).  Antiochus himself in his careless fashion soon consoled
himself for the loss of half his kingdom; it was in keeping with his
character, that he declared himself grateful to the Romans for saving
him the trouble of governing too large an empire.  But with the day of
Magnesia Asia was erased from the list of great states; and never
perhaps did a great power fall so rapidly, so thoroughly, and so
ignominiously as the kingdom of the Seleucidae under this Antiochus
the Great.  He himself was soon afterwards (567) slain by the
indignant inhabitants of Elymais at the head of the Persian gulf, on
occasion of pillaging the temple of Bel, with the treasures of which
he had sought to replenish his empty coffers.

The Roman government, after having achieved the victory, had to
arrange the affairs of Asia Minor and of Greece.  If the Roman rule
was here to be erected on a firm foundation, it was by no means enough
that Antiochus should have renounced the supremacy in the west of Asia
Minor.  The circumstances of the political situation there have been
set forth above.(6)  The Greek free cities on the Ionian and Aeolian
coast, as well as the kingdom of Pergamus of a substantially similar
nature, were certainly the natural pillars of the new Roman supreme
power, which here too came forward essentially as protector of the
Hellenes kindred in race.  But the dynasts in the interior of Asia
Minor and on the north coast of the Black Sea had hardly yielded for
long any serious obedience to the kings of Asia, and the treaty with
Antiochus alone gave to the Romans no power over the interior.  It was
indispensable to draw a certain line within which the Roman influence
was henceforth to exercise control.  Here the element of chief
importance was the relation of the Asiatic Hellenes to the Celts who
had been for a century settled there.  These had formally apportioned
among them the regions of Asia Minor, and each one of the three
cantons raised its fixed tribute from the territory laid under
contribution.  Doubtless the burgesses of Pergamus, under the vigorous
guidance of their presidents who had thereby become hereditary
princes, had rid themselves of the unworthy yoke; and the fair
afterbloom of Hellenic art, which had recently emerged afresh from the
soil, had grown out of these last Hellenic wars sustained by a
national public spirit.  But it was a vigorous counterblow, not a
decisive success; again and again the Pergamenes had to defend with
arms their urban peace against the raids of the wild hordes from the
eastern mountains, and the great majority of the other Greek cities
probably remained in their old state of dependence.(7)

If the protectorate of Rome over the Hellenes was to be in Asia more
than a name, an end had to be put to this tributary obligation of
their new clients; and, as the Roman policy at this time declined,
much more even in Asia than on the Graeco-Macedonian peninsula, the
possession of the country on its own behalf and the permanent
occupation therewith connected, there was no course in fact left but
to carry the arms of Rome up to the limit which was to be staked off
for the domain of Rome's power, and effectively to inaugurate the new
supremacy among the inhabitants of Asia Minor generally, and above all
in the Celtic cantons.

This was done by the new Roman commander-in-chief, Gnaeus Manlius
Volso, who relieved Lucius Scipio in Asia Minor.  He was subjected
to severe reproach on this score; the men in the senate who were
averse to the new turn of policy failed to see either the aim, or
the pretext, for such a war.  There is no warrant for the former
objection, as directed against this movement in particular; it
was on the contrary, after the Roman state had once interfered
in Hellenic affairs as it had done, a necessary consequence of this
policy.  Whether it was the right course for Rome to undertake the
protectorate over the Hellenes collectively, may certainly be called
in question; but regarded from the point of view which Flamininus
and the majority led by him had now taken up, the overthrow of the
Galatians was in fact a duty of prudence as well as of honour.  Better
founded was the objection that there was not at the time a proper
ground of war against them; for they had not been, strictly speaking,
in alliance with Antiochus, but had only according to their wont
allowed him to levy hired troops in their country.  But on the other
side there fell the decisive consideration, that the sending of a
Roman military force to Asia could only be demanded of the Roman
burgesses under circumstances altogether extraordinary, and, if once
such an expedition was necessary, everything told in favour of
carrying it out at once and with the victorious army that was now
stationed in Asia.  So, doubtless under the influence of Flamininus
and of those who shared his views in the senate, the campaign into
the interior of Asia Minor was undertaken in the spring of 565.  The
consul started from Ephesus, levied contributions from the towns and
princes on the upper Maeander and in Pamphylia without measure, and
then turned northwards against the Celts.  Their western canton, the
Tolistoagii, had retired with their belongings to Mount Olympus, and
the middle canton, the Tectosages, to Mount Magaba, in the hope that
they would be able there to defend themselves till the winter should
compel the strangers to withdraw.  But the missiles of the Roman
slingers and archers--which so often turned the scale against the
Celts unacquainted with such weapons, almost as in more recent times
firearms have turned the scale against savage tribes--forced the
heights, and the Celts succumbed in a battle, such as had often its
parallels before and after on the Po and on the Seine, but here
appears as singular as the whole phenomenon of this northern race
emerging amidst the Greek and Phrygian nations.  The number of the
slain was at both places enormous, and still greater that of the
captives.  The survivors escaped over the Halys to the third Celtic
canton of the Trocmi, which the consul did not attack.  That river was
the limit at which the leaders of Roman policy at that time had
resolved to halt.  Phrygia, Bithynia, and Paphlagonia were to
become dependent on Rome; the regions lying farther to the east
were left to themselves.

The affairs of Asia Minor were regulated partly by the peace with
Antiochus (565), partly by the ordinances of a Roman commission
presided over by the consul Volso.  Antiochus had to furnish hostages,
one of whom was his younger son of the same name, and to pay a war-
contribution--proportional in amount to the treasures of Asia--of
15,000 Euboic talents (3,600,000 pounds), a fifth of which was to be
paid at once, and the remainder in twelve yearly instalments.  He was
called, moreover, to cede all the lands which he possessed in Europe
and, in Asia Minor, all his possessions and claims of right to the
north of the range of the Taurus and to the west of the mouth of the
Cestrus between Aspendus and Perga in Pamphylia, so that he retained
nothing in Asia Minor but eastern Pamphylia and Cilicia.  His
protectorate over its kingdoms and principalities of course ceased.
Asia, or, as the kingdom of the Seleucids was thenceforth usually and
more appropriately named, Syria, lost the right of waging aggressive
wars against the western states, and in the event of a defensive war,
of acquiring territory from them on the conclusion of peace; lost,
moreover, the right of navigating the sea to the west of the mouth of
the Calycadnus in Cilicia with vessels of war, except for the
conveyance of envoys, hostages, or tribute; was further prevented from
keeping more than ten decked vessels in all, except in the case of a
defensive war, from taming war-elephants, and lastly from the levying
of mercenaries in the western states, or receiving political refugees
and deserters from them at court.  The war vessels which he possessed
beyond the prescribed number, the elephants, and the political
refugees who had sought shelter with him, he delivered up.  By way of
compensation the great-king received the title of a friend of the
Roman commonwealth.  The state of Syria was thus by land and sea
completely and for ever dislodged from the west; it is a significant
indication of the feeble and loose organization of the kingdom of the
Seleucidae, that it alone, of all the great states conquered by Rome
never after the first conquest desired a second appeal to the decision
of arms.

Armenia

The two Armenias, hitherto at least nominally Asiatic satrapies,
became transformed, if not exactly in pursuance with the Roman treaty
of peace, yet under its influence into independent kingdoms; and their
holders, Artaxias and Zariadris, became founders of new dynasties.

Cappadocia

Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, whose land lay beyond the boundary
laid down by the Romans for their protectorate, escaped with a money-
fine of 600 talents (146,000 pounds); which was afterwards, on the
intercession of his son-in-law Eumenes, abated to half that sum.

Bithynia

Prusias, king of Bithynia, retained his territory as it stood, and so
did the Celts; but they were obliged to promise that they would no
longer send armed bands beyond their bounds, and the disgraceful
payments of tribute by the cities of Asia Minor came to an end.  The
Asiatic Greeks did not fail to repay the benefit--which was certainly
felt as a general and permanent one--with golden chaplets and
transcendental panegyrics.

The Free Greek Cities

In the western portion of Asia Minor the regulation of the territorial
arrangements was not without difficulty, especially as the dynastic
policy of Eumenes there came into collision with that of the Greek
Hansa.  At last an understanding was arrived at to the following
effect.  All the Greek cities, which were free and had joined the
Romans on the day of the battle of Magnesia, had their liberties
confirmed, and all of them, excepting those previously tributary to
Eumenes, were relieved from the payment of tribute to the different
dynasts for the future.  In this way the towns of Dardanus and Ilium,
whose ancient affinity with the Romans was traced to the times of
Aeneas, became free, along with Cyme, Smyrna, Clazomenae, Erythrae,
Chios, Colophon, Miletus, and other names of old renown.  Phocaea
also, which in spite of its capitulation had been plundered by
the soldiers of the Roman fleet--although it did not fall under
the category designated in the treaty--received back by way of
compensation its territory and its freedom.  Most of the cities of
the Graeco-Asiatic Hansa acquired additions of territory and other
advantages.  Rhodes of course received most consideration; it obtained
Lycia exclusive of Telmissus, and the greater part of Caria south of
the Maeander; besides, Antiochus guaranteed the property and the
claims of the Rhodians within his kingdom, as well as the exemption
from customs-dues which they had hitherto enjoyed.

Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

All the rest, forming by far the largest share of the spoil, fell to
the Attalids, whose ancient fidelity to Rome, as well as the hardships
endured by Eumenes in the war and his personal merit in connection
with the issue of the decisive battle, were rewarded by Rome as no
king ever rewarded his ally.  Eumenes received, in Europe, the
Chersonese with Lysimachia; in Asia--in addition to Mysia which he
already possessed--the provinces of Phrygia on the Hellespont, Lydia
with Ephesus and Sardes, the northern district of Caria as far as the
Maeander with Tralles and Magnesia, Great Phrygia and Lycaonia along
with a portion of Cilicia, the district of Milyas between Phrygia and
Lycia, and, as a port on the southern sea, the Lycian town Telmissus.
There was a dispute afterwards between Eumenes and Antiochus regarding
Pamphylia, as to how far it lay on this side of or beyond the
prescribed boundary, and accordingly belonged to the former or to the
latter.  He further acquired the protectorate over, and the right of
receiving tribute from, those Greek cities which did not receive
absolute freedom; but it was stipulated in this case that the cities
should retain their charters, and that the tribute should not be
heightened.  Moreover, Antiochus had to bind himself to pay to Eumenes
the 350 talents (85,000 pounds) which he owed to his father Attalus,
and likewise to pay a compensation of 127 talents (31,000 pounds) for
arrears in the supplies of corn.  Lastly, Eumenes obtained the royal
forests and the elephants delivered up by Antiochus, but not the ships
of war, which were burnt: the Romans tolerated no naval power by the
side of their own.  By these means the kingdom of the Attalids became
in the east of Europe and Asia what Numidia was in Africa, a powerful
state with an absolute constitution dependent on Rome, destined and
able to keep in check both Macedonia and Syria without needing, except
in extraordinary cases, Roman support.  With this creation dictated by
policy the Romans had as far as possible combined the liberation of
the Asiatic Greeks, which was dictated by republican and national
sympathy and by vanity.  About the affairs of the more remote east
beyond the Taurus and Halys they were firmly resolved to give
themselves no concern.  This is clearly shown by the terms of the
peace with Antiochus, and still more decidedly by the peremptory
refusal of the senate to guarantee to the town of Soli in Cilicia the
freedom which the Rhodians requested for it.  With equal fidelity they
adhered to the fixed principle of acquiring no direct transmarine
possessions.  After the Roman fleet had made an expedition to Crete
and had accomplished the release of the Romans sold thither into
slavery, the fleet and land army left Asia towards the end of the
summer of 566; on which occasion the land army, which again marched
through Thrace, in consequence of the negligence of the general
suffered greatly on the route from the attacks of the barbarians.
The Romans brought nothing home from the east but honour and gold,
both of which were already at this period usually conjoined in the
practical shape assumed by the address of thanks--the golden chaplet.

Settlement of Greece
Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians

European Greece also had been agitated by this Asiatic war, and needed
reorganization.  The Aetolians, who had not yet learned to reconcile
themselves to their insignificance, had, after the armistice concluded
with Scipio in the spring of 564, rendered intercourse between Greece
and Italy difficult and unsafe by means of their Cephallenian
corsairs; and not only so, but even perhaps while the armistice yet
lasted, they, deceived by false reports as to the state of things in
Asia, had the folly to place Amynander once more on his Athamanian
throne, and to carry on a desultory warfare with Philip in the
districts occupied by him on the borders of Aetolia and Thessaly, in
the course of which Philip suffered several discomfitures.  After
this, as a matter of course, Rome replied to their request for peace
by the landing of the consul Marcus Fulvius Nobilior.  He arrived
among the legions in the spring of 565, and after fifteen days' siege
gained possession of Ambracia by a capitulation honourable for the
garrison; while simultaneously the Macedonians, Illyrians, Epirots,
Acarnanians, and Achaeans fell upon the Aetolians.  There was no such
thing as resistance in the strict sense; after repeated entreaties of
the Aetolians for peace the Romans at length desisted from the war,
and granted conditions which must be termed reasonable when viewed
with reference to such pitiful and malicious opponents.  The Aetolians
lost all cities and territories which were in the hands of their
adversaries, more especially Ambracia which afterwards became free and
independent in consequence of an intrigue concocted in Rome against
Marcus Fulvius, and Oenia which was given to the Acarnanians: they
likewise ceded Cephallenia.  They lost the right of making peace and
war, and were in that respect dependent on the foreign relations of
Rome.  Lastly, they paid a large sum of money.  Cephallenia opposed
this treaty on its own account, and only submitted when Marcus Fulvius
landed on the island.  In fact, the inhabitants of Same, who feared
that they would be dispossessed from their well-situated town by a
Roman colony, revolted after their first submission and sustained a
four months' siege; the town, however, was finally taken and the whole
inhabitants were sold into slavery.

Macedonia

In this case also Rome adhered to the principle of confining herself
to Italy and the Italian islands.  She took no portion of the spoil
for herself, except the two islands of Cephallenia and Zacynthus,
which formed a desirable supplement to the possession of Corcyra and
other naval stations in the Adriatic.  The rest of the territorial
gain went to the allies of Rome.  But the two most important of these,
Philip and the Achaeans, were by no means content with the share of
the spoil granted to them.  Philip felt himself aggrieved, and not
without reason.  He might safely say that the chief difficulties
in the last war--difficulties which arose not from the character
of the enemy, but from the distance and the uncertainty of the
communications--had been overcome mainly by his loyal aid.  The senate
recognized this by remitting his arrears of tribute and sending back
his hostages; but he did not receive those additions to his territory
which he expected.  He got the territory of the Magnetes, with
Demetrias which he had taken from the Aetolians; besides, there
practically remained in his hands the districts of Dolopia and
Athamania and a part of Thessaly, from which also the Aetolians had
been expelled by him.  In Thrace the interior remained under
Macedonian protection, but nothing was fixed as to the coast towns
and the islands of Thasos and Lemnos which were -de facto- in Philip's
hands, while the Chersonese was even expressly given to Eumenes; and
it was not difficult to see that Eumenes received possessions in
Europe, simply that he might in case of need keep not only Asia but
Macedonia in check.  The exasperation of the proud and in many
respects chivalrous king was natural; it was not chicane, however,
but an unavoidable political necessity that induced the Romans to take
this course.  Macedonia suffered for having once been a power of the
first rank, and for having waged war on equal terms with Rome; there
was much better reason in her case than in that of Carthage for
guarding against the revival of her old powerful position.

The Achaeans

It was otherwise with the Achaeans.  They had, in the course of the
war with Antiochus, gratified their long-cherished wish to bring the
whole Peloponnesus into their confederacy; for first Sparta, and then,
after the expulsion of the Asiatics from Greece, Elis and Messene had
more or less reluctantly joined it.  The Romans had allowed this to
take place, and had even tolerated the intentional disregard of Rome
which marked their proceedings.  When Messene declared that she wished
to submit to the Romans but not to enter the confederacy, and the
latter thereupon employed force, Flamininus had not failed to remind
the Achaeans that such separate arrangements as to the disposal of a
part of the spoil were in themselves unjust, and were, in the relation
in which the Achaeans stood to the Romans, more than unseemly; and yet
in his very impolitic complaisance towards the Hellenes he had
substantially done what the Achaeans willed.  But the matter did not
end there.  The Achaeans, tormented by their dwarfish thirst for
aggrandizement, would not relax their hold on the town of Pleuron in
Aetolia which they had occupied during the war, but on the contrary
made it an involuntary member of their confederacy; they bought
Zacynthus from Amynander the lieutenant of the last possessor, and
would gladly have acquired Aegina also.  It was with reluctance that
they gave up the former island to Rome, and they heard with great
displeasure the good advice of Flamininus that they should content
themselves with their Peloponnesus.

The Achaean Patriots

The Achaeans believed it their duty to display the independence of
their state all the more, the less they really had; they talked of the
rights of war, and of the faithful aid of the Achaeans in the wars of
the Romans; they asked the Roman envoys at the Achaean diet why Rome
should concern herself about Messene when Achaia put no questions as
to Capua; and the spirited patriot, who had thus spoken, was applauded
and was sure of votes at the elections.  All this would have been very
right and very dignified, had it not been much more ridiculous.  There
was a profound justice and a still more profound melancholy in the
fact, that Rome, however earnestly she endeavoured to establish the
freedom and to earn the thanks of the Hellenes, yet gave them nothing
but anarchy and reaped nothing but ingratitude.  Undoubtedly very
generous sentiments lay at the bottom of the Hellenic antipathies to
the protecting power, and the personal bravery of some of the men who
took the lead in the movement was unquestionable; but this Achaean
patriotism remained not the less a folly and a genuine historical
caricature.  With all that ambition and all that national
susceptibility the whole nation was, from the highest to the lowest,
pervaded by the most thorough sense of impotence.  Every one was
constantly listening to learn the sentiments of Rome, the liberal
man no less than the servile; they thanked heaven, when the dreaded
decree was not issued; they were sulky, when the senate gave them to
understand that they would do well to yield voluntarily in order that
they might not need to be compelled; they did what they were obliged
to do, if possible, in a way offensive to the Romans, "to save forms";
they reported, explained, postponed, evaded, and, when all this would
no longer avail, yielded with a patriotic sigh.  Their proceedings
might have claimed indulgence at any rate, if not approval, had their
leaders been resolved to fight, and had they preferred the destruction
of the nation to its bondage; but neither Philopoemen nor Lycortas
thought of any such political suicide--they wished, if possible,
to be free, but they wished above all to live.  Besides all this, the
dreaded intervention of Rome in the internal affairs of Greece was not
the arbitrary act of the Romans, but was always invoked by the Greeks
themselves, who, like boys, brought down on their own heads the rod
which they feared.  The reproach repeated -ad nauseam- by the erudite
rabble in Hellenic and post-Hellenic times--that the Romans had been
at pains to stir up internal discord in Greece--is one of the most
foolish absurdities which philologues dealing in politics have ever
invented.  It was not the Romans that carried strife to Greece--which
in truth would have been "carrying owls to Athens"--but the Greeks
that carried their dissensions to Rome.

Quarrels between Achaeans and Spartans

The Achaeans in particular, who, in their eagerness to round their
territory, wholly failed to see how much it would have been for their
own good that Flamininus had not incorporated the towns of Aetolian
sympathies with their league, acquired in Lacedaemon and Messene a
very hydra of intestine strife.  Members of these communities were
incessantly at Rome, entreating and beseeching to be released from the
odious connection; and amongst them, characteristically enough, were
even those who were indebted to the Achaeans for their return to their
native land.  The Achaean league was incessantly occupied in the work
of reformation and restoration at Sparta and Messene; the wildest
refugees from these quarters determined the measures of the diet.
Four years after the nominal admission of Sparta to the confederacy
matters came even to open war and to an insanely thorough restoration,
in which all the slaves on whom Nabis had conferred citizenship were
once more sold into slavery, and a colonnade was built from the
proceeds in the Achaean city of Megalopolis; the old state of property
in Sparta was re-established, the of Lycurgus were superseded by
Achaean laws, and the walls were pulled down (566).  At last the Roman
senate was summoned by all parties to arbitrate on all these doings
--an annoying task, which was the righteous punishment of the
sentimental policy that the senate had pursued.  Far from mixing
itself up too much in these affairs, the senate not only bore the
sarcasms of Achaean candour with exemplary composure, but even
manifested a culpable indifference while the worst outrages were
committed.  There was cordial rejoicing in Achaia when, after that
restoration, the news arrived from Rome that the senate had found
fault with it, but had not annulled it.  Nothing was done for the
Lacedaemonians by Rome, except that the senate, shocked at the
judicial murder of from sixty to eighty Spartans committed by the
Achaeans, deprived the diet of criminal jurisdiction over the
Spartans--truly a heinous interference with the internal affairs of
an independent state!  The Roman statesmen gave themselves as little
concern as possible about this tempest in a nut-shell, as is best
shown by the many complaints regarding the superficial, contradictory,
and obscure decisions of the senate; in fact, how could its decisions
be expected to be clear, when there were four parties from Sparta
simultaneously speaking against each other at its bar?  Add to this
the personal impression, which most of these Peloponnesian statesmen
produced in Rome; even Flamininus shook his head, when one of them
showed him on the one day how to perform some dance, and on the next
entertained him with affairs of state.  Matters went so far, that the
senate at last lost patience and informed the Peloponnesians that it
would no longer listen to them, and that they might do what they chose
(572).  This was natural enough, but it was not right; situated as
the Romans were, they were under a moral and political obligation
earnestly and steadfastly to rectify this melancholy state of things.
Callicrates the Achaean, who went to the senate in 575 to enlighten
it as to the state of matters in the Peloponnesus and to demand a
consistent and calm intervention, may have had somewhat less worth as
a man than his countryman Philopoemen who was the main founder of that
patriotic policy; but he was in the right.

Death of Hannibal

Thus the protectorate of the Roman community now embraced all the
states from the eastern to the western end of the Mediterranean.
There nowhere existed a state that the Romans would have deemed it
worth while to fear.  But there still lived a man to whom Rome
accorded this rare honour--the homeless Carthaginian, who had
raised in arms against Rome first all the west and then all the east,
and whose schemes perhaps had been only frustrated by infamous
aristocratic policy in the former case, and by stupid court policy in
the latter.  Antiochus had been obliged to bind himself in the treaty
of peace to deliver up Hannibal; but the latter had escaped, first to
Crete, then to Bithynia,(8) and now lived at the court of Prusias king
of Bithynia, employed in aiding the latter in his wars with Eumenes,
and victorious as ever by sea and by land.  It is affirmed that he was
desirous of stirring up Prusias also to make war on Rome; a folly,
which, as it is told, sounds very far from credible.  It is more
certain that, while the Roman senate deemed it beneath its dignity to
have the old man hunted out in his last asylum--for the tradition
which inculpates the senate appears to deserve no credit--Flamininus,
whose restless vanity sought after new opportunities for great
achievements, undertook on his own part to deliver Rome from Hannibal
as he had delivered the Greeks from their chains, and, if not to
wield--which was not diplomatic--at any rate to whet and to point,
the dagger against the greatest man of his time.  Prusias, the most
pitiful among the pitiful princes of Asia, was delighted to grant the
little favour which the Roman envoy in ambiguous terms requested; and,
when Hannibal saw his house beset by assassins, he took poison.  He
had long been prepared to do so, adds a Roman, for he knew the Romans
and the word of kings.  The year of his death is uncertain; probably
he died in the latter half of the year 571, at the age of sixty-seven.
When he was born, Rome was contending with doubtful success for the
possession of Sicily; he had lived long enough to see the West wholly
subdued, and to fight his own last battle with the Romans against the
vessels of his native city which had itself become Roman; and he was
constrained at last to remain a mere spectator, while Rome overpowered
the East as the tempest overpowers the ship that has no one at the
helm, and to feel that he alone was the pilot that could have
weathered the storm.  There was left to him no further hope to be
disappointed, when he died; but he had honestly, through fifty years
of struggle, kept the oath which he had sworn when a boy.

Death of Scipio

About the same time, probably in the same year, died also the man whom
the Romans were wont to call his conqueror, Publius Scipio.  On him
fortune had lavished all the successes which she denied to his
antagonist--successes which did belong to him, and successes which did
not.  He had added to the empire Spain, Africa, and Asia; and Rome,
which he had found merely the first community of Italy, was at his
death mistress of the civilized world.  He himself had so many titles
of victory, that some of them were made over to his brother and his
cousin.(9)  And yet he too spent his last years in bitter vexation,
and died when little more than fifty years of age in voluntary
banishment, leaving orders to his relatives not to bury his remains
in the city for which he had lived and in which his ancestors reposed.
It is not exactly known what drove him from the city.  The charges of
corruption and embezzlement, which were directed against him and still
more against his brother Lucius, were beyond doubt empty calumnies,
which do not sufficiently explain such bitterness of feeling; although
it is characteristic of the man, that instead of simply vindicating
himself by means of his account-books, he tore them in pieces in
presence of the people and of his accusers, and summoned the Romans
to accompany him to the temple of Jupiter and to celebrate the
anniversary of his victory at Zama.  The people left the accuser on
the spot, and followed Scipio to the Capitol; but this was the last
glorious day of the illustrious man.  His proud spirit, his belief
that he was different from, and better than, other men, his very
decided family-policy, which in the person of his brother Lucius
especially brought forward a clumsy man of straw as a hero, gave
offence to many, and not without reason.  While genuine pride protects
the heart, arrogance lays it open to every blow and every sarcasm, and
corrodes even an originally noble-minded spirit.  It is throughout,
moreover, the distinguishing characteristic of such natures as that of
Scipio--strange mixtures of genuine gold and glittering tinsel--that
they need the good fortune and the brilliance of youth in order
to exercise their charm, and, when this charm begins to fade, it is
the charmer himself that is most painfully conscious of the change.




Notes for Chapter IX


1. According to a recently discovered decree of the town of Lampsacus
(-Mitth, des arch. Inst, in Athen-, vi. 95) the Lampsacenes after the
defeat of Philip sent envoys to the Roman senate with the request that
the town might be embraced in the treaty concluded between Rome and
(Philip) the king (--opos sumperilephthomen [en tais sunthekais] tais
genomenais Pomaiois pros ton [basilea]--), which the senate, at least
according to the view of the petitioners, granted to them and referred
them, as regarded other matters, to Flamininus and the ten envoys.
From the latter they then obtain in Corinth a guarantee of their
constitution and "letters to the kings." Flamininus also gives to them
similar letters; of their contents we learn nothing more particular,
than that in the decree the embassy is described as successful.  But
if the senate and Flamininus had formally and positively guaranteed
the autonomy and democracy of the Lampsacenes, the decree would hardly
dwell so much at length on the courteous answers, which the Roman
commanders, who had been appealed to on the way for their intercession
with the senate, gave to the envoys.

Other remarkable points in this document are the "brotherhood" of the
Lampsacenes and the Romans, certainly going back to the Trojan legend,
and the mediation, invoked by the former with success, of the allies
and friends of Rome, the Massiliots, who were connected with the
Lampsacenes through their common mother-city Phocaea.

2. The definite testimony of Hieronymus, who places the betrothal of
the Syrian princess Cleopatra with Ptolemy Epiphanes in 556, taken in
connection with the hints in Liv. xxxiii. 40 and Appian. Syr. 3, and
with the actual accomplishment of the marriage in 561, puts it beyond
a doubt that the interference of the Romans in the affairs of Egypt
was in this case formally uncalled for.

3. For this we have the testimony of Polybius (xxviii. i), which the
sequel of the history of Judaea completely confirms; Eusebius (p. 117,
-Mai-) is mistaken in making Philometor ruler of Syria.  We certainly
find that about 567 farmers of the Syrian taxes made their payments at
Alexandria (Joseph, xii. 4, 7); but this doubtless took place without
detriment to the rights of sovereignty, simply because the dowry of
Cleopatra constituted a charge on those revenues; and from this very
circumstance presumably arose the subsequent dispute.

4. II. VII. Submission of Lower Italy

5. III. VII. The Romans Maintain a Standing Army in Spain

6. III. VIII. The Celts of Asia Minor ff.

7. From the decree of Lampsacus mentioned at III. IX. Difficulties
with Rome, it appears pretty certain that the Lampsacenes requested
from the Massiliots not merely intercession at Rome, but also
intercession with the Tolistoagii (so the Celts, elsewhere named
Tolistobogi, are designated in this document and in the Pergamene
inscription, C. J. Gr. 3536,--the oldest monuments which mention
them).  Accordingly the Lampsacenes were probably still about the
time of the wax with Philip tributary to this canton (comp. Liv.
xxxviii. 16).

8. The story that he went to Armenia and at the request of king
Artaxias built the town of Artaxata on the Araxes (Strabo, xi. p. 528;
Plutarch, Luc. 31), is certainly a fiction; but it is a striking
circumstance that Hannibal should have become mixed up, almost like
Alexander, with Oriental fables.

9. Africanus, Asiagenus, Hispallus.




CHAPTER X

The Third Macedonian War

Dissatisfactions of Philip with Rome

Philip of Macedonia was greatly annoyed by the treatment which he
met with from the Romans after the peace with Antiochus; and the
subsequent course of events was not fitted to appease his wrath.
His neighbours in Greece and Thrace, mostly communities that had once
trembled at the Macedonian name not less than now they trembled at
the Roman, made it their business, as was natural, to retaliate on the
fallen great power for all the injuries which since the times of
Philip the Second they had received at the hands of Macedonia.  The
empty arrogance and venal anti-Macedonian patriotism of the Hellenes
of this period found vent at the diets of the different confederacies
and in ceaseless complaints addressed to the Roman senate.  Philip had
been allowed by the Romans to retain what he had taken from the
Aetolians; but in Thessaly the confederacy of the Magnetes alone
had formally joined the Aetolians, while those towns which Philip
had wrested from the Aetolians in other two of the Thessalian
confederacies--the Thessalian in its narrower sense, and the
Perrhaebian--were demanded back by their leagues on the ground that
Philip had only liberated these towns, not conquered them.  The
Athamahes too believed that they might crave their freedom; and
Eumenes demanded the maritime cities which Antiochus had possessed
in Thrace proper, especially Aenus and Maronea, although in the peace
with Antiochus the Thracian Chersonese alone had been expressly
promised to him.  All these complaints and numerous minor ones from
all the neighbours of Philip as to his supporting king Prusias against
Eumenes, as to competition in trade, as to the violation of contracts
and the seizing of cattle, were poured forth at Rome.  The king of
Macedonia had to submit to be accused by the sovereign rabble before
the Roman senate, and to accept justice or injustice as the senate
chose; he was compelled to witness judgment constantly going against
him; he had with deep chagrin to withdraw his garrisons from the
Thracian coast and from the Thessalian and Perrhaebian towns, and
courteously to receive the Roman commissioners, who came to see
whether everything required had been carried out in accordance with
instructions.  The Romans were not so indignant against Philip as they
had been against Carthage; in fact, they were in many respects even
favourably disposed to the Macedonian ruler; there was not in his case
so reckless a violation of forms as in that of Libya; but the
situation of Macedonia was at bottom substantially the same as that of
Carthage.  Philip, however, was by no means the man to submit to this
infliction with Phoenician patience.  Passionate as he was, he had
after his defeat been more indignant with the faithless ally than with
the honourable antagonist; and, long accustomed to pursue a policy not
Macedonian but personal, he had seen in the war with Antiochus simply
an excellent opportunity of instantaneously revenging himself on the
ally who had disgracefully deserted and betrayed him.  This object he
had attained; but the Romans, who saw very clearly that the Macedonian
was influenced not by friendship for Rome, but by enmity to Antiochus,
and who moreover were by no means in the habit of regulating their
policy by such feelings of liking and disliking, had carefully
abstained from bestowing any material advantages on Philip, and had
preferred to confer their favours on the Attalids.  From their first
elevation the Attalids had been at vehement feud with Macedonia, and
were politically and personally the objects of Philip's bitterest
hatred; of all the eastern powers they had contributed most to maim
Macedonia and Syria, and to extend the protectorate of Rome in the
east; and in the last war, when Philip had voluntarily and loyally
embraced the side of Rome, they had been obliged to take the same side
for the sake of their very existence.  The Romans had made use of
these Attalids for the purpose of reconstructing in all essential
points the kingdom of Lysimachus--the destruction of which had been
the most important achievement of the Macedonian rulers after
Alexander--and of placing alongside of Macedonia a state, which was
its equal in point of power and was at the same time a client of Rome.
In the special circumstances a wise sovereign, devoted to the
interests of his people, would perhaps have resolved not to resume the
unequal struggle with Rome; but Philip, in whose character the sense
of honour was the most powerful of all noble, and the thirst for
revenge the most potent of all ignoble, motives, was deaf to the voice
of timidity or of resignation, and nourished in the depths of his
heart a determination once more to try the hazard of the game.  When
he received the report of fresh invectives, such as were wont to be
launched against Macedonia at the Thessalian diets, he replied with
the line of Theocritus, that his last sun had not yet set.(1)

The Latter Years of Philip

Philip displayed in the preparation and the concealment of his designs
a calmness, earnestness, and persistency which, had he shown them in
better times, would perhaps have given a different turn to the
destinies of the world.  In particular the submissiveness towards
Rome, by which he purchased the time indispensable for his objects,
formed a severe trial for the fierce and haughty man; nevertheless he
courageously endured it, although his subjects and the innocent
occasions of the quarrel, such as the unfortunate Maronea, paid
severely for the suppression of his resentment.  It seemed as if war
could not but break out as early as 571; but by Philip's instructions,
his younger son, Demetrius, effected a reconciliation between his
father and Rome, where he had lived some years as a hostage and was a
great favourite.  The senate, and particularly Flamininus who managed
Greek affairs, sought to form in Macedonia a Roman party that would be
able to paralyze the exertions of Philip, which of course were not
unknown to the Romans; and had selected as its head, and perhaps as
the future king of Macedonia, the younger prince who was passionately
attached to Rome.  With this purpose in view they gave it clearly to
be understood that the senate forgave the father for the sake of the
son; the natural effect of which was, that dissensions arose in the
royal household itself, and that the king's elder son, Perseus, who,
although the offspring of an unequal marriage, was destined by his
father for the succession, sought to ruin his brother as his future
rival.  It does not appear that Demetrius was a party to the Roman
intrigues; it was only when he was falsely suspected that he was
forced to become guilty, and even then he intended, apparently,
nothing more than flight to Rome.  But Perseus took care that his
father should be duly informed of this design; an intercepted letter
from Flamininus to Demetrius did the rest, and induced the father to
give orders that his son should be put to death.  Philip learned, when
it was too late, the intrigues which Perseus had concocted; and death
overtook him, as he was meditating the punishment of the fratricide
and his exclusion from the throne.  He died in 575 at Demetrias, in
his fifty-ninth year.  He left behind him a shattered kingdom and a
distracted household, and with a broken heart confessed to himself
that all his toils and all his crimes had been in vain.

King Perseus

His son Perseus then entered on the government, without encountering
opposition either in Macedonia or in the Roman senate.  He was a man
of stately aspect, expert in all bodily exercises, reared in the camp
and accustomed to command, imperious like his father and unscrupulous
in the choice of his means.  Wine and women, which too often led
Philip to forget the duties of government, had no charm for Perseus;
he was as steady and persevering as his father had been fickle and
impulsive.  Philip, a king while still a boy, and attended by good
fortune during the first twenty years of his reign, had been spoiled
and ruined by destiny; Perseus ascended the throne in his thirty-first
year, and, as he had while yet a boy borne a part in the unhappy war
with Rome and had grown up under the pressure of humiliation and under
the idea that a revival of the state was at hand, so he inherited
along with the kingdom of his father his troubles, resentments, and
hopes.  In fact he entered with the utmost determination on the
continuance of his father's work, and prepared more zealously than
ever for war against Rome; he was stimulated, moreover, by the
reflection, that he was by no means indebted to the goodwill of the
Romans for his wearing the diadem of Macedonia.  The proud Macedonian
nation looked with pride upon the prince whom they had been accustomed
to see marching and fighting at the head of their youth; his
countrymen, and many Hellenes of every variety of lineage, conceived
that in him they had found the right general for the impending war of
liberation.  But he was not what he seemed.  He wanted Philip's
geniality and Philip's elasticity--those truly royal qualities, which
success obscured and tarnished, but which under the purifying power of
adversity recovered their lustre.  Philip was self-indulgent, and
allowed things to take their course; but, when there was occasion, he
found within himself the vigour necessary for rapid and earnest
action.  Perseus devised comprehensive and subtle plans, and
prosecuted them with unwearied perseverance; but, when the moment
arrived for action and his plans and preparations confronted him in
living reality, he was frightened at his own work.  As is the wont of
narrow minds, the means became to him the end; he heaped up treasures
on treasures for war with the Romans, and, when the Romans were in the
land, he was unable to part with his golden pieces.  It is a
significant indication of character that after defeat the father first
hastened to destroy the papers in his cabinet that might compromise
him, whereas the son took his treasure-chests and embarked.  In
ordinary times he might have made an average king, as good as or
better than many another; but he was not adapted for the conduct of
an enterprise, which was from the first a hopeless one unless some
extraordinary man should become the soul of the movement.

Resources of Macedonia

The power of Macedonia was far from inconsiderable.  The devotion of
the land to the house of the Antigonids was unimpaired; in this one
respect the national feeling was not paralyzed by the dissensions
of political parties.  A monarchical constitution has the great
advantage, that every change of sovereign supersedes old resentments
and quarrels and introduces a new era of other men and fresh hopes.
The king had judiciously availed himself of this, and had begun his
reign with a general amnesty, with the recall of fugitive bankrupts,
and with the remission of arrears of taxes.  The hateful severity of
the father thus not only yielded benefit, but conciliated affection,
to the son.  Twenty-six years of peace had partly of themselves filled
up the blanks in the Macedonian population, partly given opportunity
to the government to take serious steps towards rectifying this which
was really the weak point of the land.  Philip urged the Macedonians
to marry and raise up children; he occupied the coast towns, whose
inhabitants he carried into the interior, with Thracian colonists of
trusty valour and fidelity.  He formed a barrier on the north to check
once for all the desolating incursions of the Dardani, by converting
the space intervening between the Macedonian frontier and the
barbarian territory into a desert, and by founding new towns in the
northern provinces.  In short he took step by step the same course in
Macedonia, as Augustus afterwards took when he laid afresh the
foundations of the Roman empire.  The army was numerous--30,000 men
without reckoning contingents and hired troops--and the younger men
were well exercised in the constant border warfare with the Thracian
barbarians.  It is strange that Philip did not try, like Hannibal, to
organize his army after the Roman fashion; but we can understand it
when we recollect the value which the Macedonians set upon their
phalanx, often conquered, but still withal believed to be invincible.
Through the new sources of revenue which Philip had created in mines,
customs, and tenths, and through the flourishing state of agriculture
and commerce, he had succeeded in replenishing his treasury,
granaries, and arsenals.  When the war began, there was in the
Macedonian treasury money enough to pay the existing army and 10,000
hired troops for ten years, and there were in the public magazines
stores of grain for as long a period (18,000,000 medimni or 27,000,000
bushels), and arms for an army of three times the strength of the
existing one.  In fact, Macedonia had become a very different state
from what it was when surprised by the outbreak of the second war with
Rome.  The power of the kingdom was in all respects at least doubled:
with a power in every point of view far inferior Hannibal had been
able to shake Rome to its foundations.

Attempted Coalition against Rome

Its external relations were not in so favourable a position.  The
nature of the case required that Macedonia should now take up the
plans of Hannibal and Antiochus, and should try to place herself at
the head of a coalition of all oppressed states against the supremacy
of Rome; and certainly threads of intrigue ramified in all directions
from the court of Pydna.  But their success was slight.  It was indeed
asserted that the allegiance of the Italians was wavering; but neither
friend nor foe could fail to see that an immediate resumption of the
Samnite wars was not at all probable.  The nocturnal conferences
likewise between Macedonian deputies and the Carthaginian senate,
which Massinissa denounced at Rome, could occasion no alarm to serious
and sagacious men, even if they were not, as is very possible, an
utter fiction.  The Macedonian court sought to attach the kings of
Syria and Bithynia to its interests by intermarriages; but nothing
further came of it, except that the immortal simplicity of the
diplomacy which seeks to gain political ends by matrimonial means once
more exposed itself to derision.  Eumenes, whom it would have been
ridiculous to attempt to gain, the agents of Perseus would have gladly
put out of the way: he was to have been murdered at Delphi on his way
homeward from Rome, where he had been active against Macedonia; but
the pretty project miscarried.

Bastarnae
Genthius

Of greater moment were the efforts made to stir up the northern
barbarians and the Hellenes to rebellion against Rome.  Philip had
conceived the project of crushing the old enemies of Macedonia,
the Dardani in what is now Servia, by means of another still more
barbarous horde of Germanic descent brought from the left bank of the
Danube, the Bastarnae, and of then marching in person with these and
with the whole avalanche of peoples thus set in motion by the land-
route to Italy and invading Lombardy, the Alpine passes leading to
which he had already sent spies to reconnoitre--a grand project,
worthy of Hannibal, and doubtless immediately suggested by Hannibal's
passage of the Alps.  It is more than probable that this gave occasion
to the founding of the Roman fortress of Aquileia,(2) which was formed
towards the end of the reign of Philip (573), and did not harmonize
with the system followed elsewhere by the Romans in the establishment
of fortresses in Italy.  The plan, however, was thwarted by the
desperate resistance of the Dardani and of the adjoining tribes
concerned; the Bastarnae were obliged to retreat, and the whole horde
were drowned in returning home by the giving way of the ice on the
Danube.  The king now sought at least to extend his clientship among
the chieftains of the Illyrian land, the modern Dalmatia and northern
Albania.  One of these who faithfully adhered to Rome, Arthetaurus,
perished, not without the cognizance of Perseus, by the hand of an
assassin.  The most considerable of the whole, Genthius the son and
heir of Pleuratus, was, like his father, nominally in alliance with
Rome; but the ambassadors of Issa, a Greek town on one of the
Dalmatian islands, informed the senate, that Perseus had a secret
understanding with the young, weak, and drunken prince, and that
the envoys of Genthius served as spies for Perseus in Rome.

Cotys

In the regions on the east of Macedonia towards the lower Danube the
most powerful of the Thracian chieftains, the brave and sagacious
Cotys, prince of the Odrysians and ruler of all eastern Thrace from
the Macedonian frontier on the Hebrus (Maritza) down to the fringe of
coast covered with Greek towns, was in the closest alliance with
Perseus.  Of the other minor chiefs who in that quarter took part
with Rome, one, Abrupolis prince of the Sagaei, was, in consequence
of a predatory expedition directed against Amphipolis on the Strymon,
defeated by Perseus and driven out of the country.  From these regions
Philip had drawn numerous colonists, and mercenaries were to be had
there at any time and in any number.

Greek National Party

Among the unhappy nation of the Hellenes Philip and Perseus had, long
before declaring war against Rome carried on a lively double system of
proselytizing, attempting to gain over to the side of Macedonia on the
one hand the national, and on the other--if we may be permitted the
expression--the communistic, party.  As a matter of course, the whole
national party among the Asiatic as well as the European Greeks was
now at heart Macedonian; not on account of isolated unrighteous acts
on the part of the Roman deliverers, but because the restoration of
Hellenic nationality by a foreign power involved a contradiction in
terms, and now, when it was in truth too late, every one perceived
that the most detestable form of Macedonian rule was less fraught with
evil for Greece than a free constitution springing from the noblest
intentions of honourable foreigners.  That the most able and upright
men throughout Greece should be opposed to Rome was to be expected;
the venal aristocracy alone was favourable to the Romans, and here
and there an isolated man of worth, who, unlike the great majority,
was under no delusion as to the circumstances and the future of the
nation.  This was most painfully felt by Eumenes of Pergamus, the main
upholder of that extraneous freedom among the Greeks.  In vain he
treated the cities subject to him with every sort of consideration;
in vain he sued for the favour of the communities and diets by fair-
sounding words and still better-sounding gold; he had to learn that
his presents were declined, and that all the statues that had formerly
been erected to him were broken in pieces and the honorary tablets
were melted down, in accordance with a decree of the diet,
simultaneously throughout the Peloponnesus (584).  The name of Perseus
was on all lips; even the states that formerly were most decidedly
anti-Macedonian, such as the Achaeans, deliberated as to the
cancelling of the laws directed against Macedonia; Byzantium,
although situated within the kingdom of Pergamus, sought and obtained
protection and a garrison against the Thracians not from Eumenes, but
from Perseus, and in like manner Lampsacus on the Hellespont joined
the Macedonian: the powerful and prudent Rhodians escorted the Syrian
bride of king Perseus from Antioch with their whole magnificent war-
fleet--for the Syrian war-vessels were not allowed to appear in the
Aegean--and returned home highly honoured and furnished with rich
presents, more especially with wood for shipbuilding; commissioners
from the Asiatic cities, and consequently subjects of Eumenes, held
secret conferences with Macedonian deputies in Samothrace.  That
sending of the Rhodian war-fleet had at least the aspect of a
demonstration; and such, certainly, was the object of king Perseus,
when he exhibited himself and all his army before the eyes of the
Hellenes under pretext of performing a religious ceremony at Delphi.
That the king should appeal to the support of this national
partisanship in the impending war, was only natural.  But it was wrong
in him to take advantage of the fearful economic disorganization of
Greece for the purpose of attaching to Macedonia all those who desired
a revolution in matters of property and of debt.  It is difficult to
form any adequate idea of the unparalleled extent to which the
commonwealths as well as individuals in European Greece--excepting the
Peloponnesus, which was in a somewhat better position in this respect
--were involved in debt.  Instances occurred of one city attacking and
pillaging another merely to get money--the Athenians, for example,
thus attacked Oropus--and among the Aetolians, Perrhaebians, and
Thessalians formal battles took place between those that had property
and those that had none.  Under such circumstances the worst outrages
were perpetrated as a matter of course; among the Aetolians, for
instance, a general amnesty was proclaimed and a new public peace was
made up solely for the purpose of entrapping and putting to death a
number of emigrants.  The Romans attempted to mediate; but their
envoys returned without success, and announced that both parties were
equally bad and that their animosities were not to be restrained.  In
this case there was, in fact, no longer other help than the officer
and the executioner; sentimental Hellenism began to be as repulsive as
from the first it had been ridiculous.  Yet king Perseus sought to
gain the support of this party, if it deserve to be called such--of
people who had nothing, and least of all an honourable name, to lose
--and not only issued edicts in favour of Macedonian bankrupts, but
also caused placards to be put up at Larisa, Delphi, and Delos, which
summoned all Greeks that were exiled on account of political or other
offences or on account of their debts to come to Macedonia and to
look for full restitution of their former honours and estates.  As may
easily be supposed, they came; the social revolution smouldering
throughout northern Greece now broke out into open flame, and the
national-social party there sent to Perseus for help.  If Hellenic
nationality was to be saved only by such means, the question might
well be asked, with all respect for Sophocles and Phidias, whether
the object was worth the cost.

Rupture with Perseus

The senate saw that it had delayed too long already, and that it was
time to put an end to such proceedings.  The expulsion of the Thracian
chieftain Abrupolis who was in alliance with the Romans, and the
alliances of Macedonia with the Byzantines, Aetolians, and part of the
Boeotian cities, were equally violations of the peace of 557, and
sufficed for the official war-manifesto: the real ground of war was
that Macedonia was seeking to convert her formal sovereignty into a
real one, and to supplant Rome in the protectorate of the Hellenes.
As early as 581 the Roman envoys at the Achaean diet stated pretty
plainly, that an alliance with Perseus was equivalent to casting off
the alliance of Rome.  In 582 king Eumenes came in person to Rome with
a long list of grievances and laid open to the senate the whole
situation of affairs; upon which the senate unexpectedly in a secret
sitting resolved on an immediate declaration of war, and furnished the
landing-places in Epirus with garrisons.  For the sake of form an
embassy was sent to Macedonia, but its message was of such a nature
that Perseus, perceiving that he could not recede, replied that he
was ready to conclude with Rome a new alliance on really equal terms,
but that he looked upon the treaty of 557 as cancelled; and he bade
the envoys leave the kingdom within three days.  Thus war was
practically declared.

This was in the autumn of 582.  Perseus, had he wished, might have
occupied all Greece and brought the Macedonian party everywhere to the
helm, and he might perhaps have crushed the Roman division of 5000 men
stationed under Gnaeus Sicinius at Apollonia and have disputed the
landing of the Romans.  But the king, who already began to tremble at
the serious aspect of affairs, entered into discussions with his
guest-friend the consular Quintus Marcius Philippus, as to the
frivolousness of the Roman declaration of war, and allowed himself to
be thereby induced to postpone the attack and once more to make an
effort for peace with Rome: to which the senate, as might have been
expected, only replied by the dismissal of all Macedonians from Italy
and the embarkation of the legions.  Senators of the older school no
doubt censured the "new wisdom" of their colleague, and his un-Roman
artifice; but the object was gained and the winter passed away without
any movement on the part of Perseus.  The Romati diplomatists made all
the more zealous use of the interval to deprive Perseus of any support
in Greece.  They were sure of the Achaeans.  Even the patriotic party
among them--who had neither agreed with those social movements, nor
had soared higher than the longing after a prudent neutrality--had no
idea of throwing themselves into the arms of Perseus; and, besides,
the opposition party there had now been brought by Roman influence to
the helm, and attached itself absolutely to Rome.  The Aetolian league
had doubtless asked aid from Perseus in its internal troubles; but
the new strategus, Lyciscus, chosen under the eyes of the Roman
ambassadors, was more of a Roman partisan than the Romans themselves.
Among the Thessalians also the Roman party retained the ascendency.
Even the Boeotians, old partisans as they were of Macedonia, and sunk
in the utmost financial disorder, had not in their collective capacity
declared openly for Perseus; nevertheless at least three of their
cities, Thisbae, Haliartus and Coronea, had of their own accord
entered into engagements with him.  When on the complaint of the Roman
envoy the government of the Boeotian confederacy communicated to him
the position of things, he declared that it would best appear which
cities adhered to Rome, and which did not, if they would severally
pronounce their decision in his presence; and thereupon the Boeotian
confederacy fell at once to pieces.  It is not true that the great
structure of Epaminondas was destroyed by the Romans; it actually
collapsed before they touched it, and thus indeed became the prelude
to the dissolution of the other still more firmly consolidated leagues
of Greek cities.(3)  With the forces of the Boeotian towns friendly
to Rome the Roman envoy Publius Lentulus laid siege to Haliartus,
even before the Roman fleet appeared in the Aegean.

Preparations for War

Chalcis was occupied with Achaean, and the province of Orestis with
Epirot, forces: the fortresses of the Dassaretae and Illyrians on the
west frontier of Macedonia were occupied by the troops of Gnaeus
Sicinius; and as soon as the navigation was resumed, Larisa received a
garrison of 2000 men.  Perseus during all this remained inactive and
had not a foot's breadth of land beyond his own territory, when in the
spring, or according to the official calendar in June, of 583, the
Roman legions landed on the west coast.  It is doubtful whether
Perseus would have found allies of any mark, even had he shown as much
energy as he displayed remissness; but, as circumstances stood, he
remained of course completely isolated, and those prolonged attempts
at proselytism led, for the time at least, to no result.  Carthage,
Genthius of Illyria, Rhodes and the free cities of Asia Minor, and
even Byzantium hitherto so very friendly with Perseus, offered to the
Romans vessels of war; which these, however, declined.  Eumenes put
his land army and his ships on a war footing.  Ariarathes king of
Cappadocia sent hostages, unsolicited, to Rome.  The brother-in-law of
Perseus, Prusias II.  king of Bithynia, remained neutral.  No one
stirred in all Greece.  Antiochus IV.  king of Syria, designated
in court style "the god, the brilliant bringer of victory," to
distinguish him from his father the "Great," bestirred himself, but
only to wrest the Syrian coast during this war from the entirely
impotent Egypt.

Beginning of the War

But, though Perseus stood almost alone, he was no contemptible
antagonist.  His army numbered 43,000 men; of these 21,000 were
phalangites, and 4000 Macedonian and Thracian cavalry; the rest were
chiefly mercenaries.  The whole force of the Romans in Greece amounted
to between 30,000 and 40,000 Italian troops, besides more than 10,000
men belonging to Numidian, Ligurian, Greek, Cretan, and especially
Pergamene contingents.  To these was added the fleet, which numbered
only 40 decked vessels, as there was no fleet of the enemy to oppose
it--Perseus, who had been prohibited from building ships of war by the
treaty with Rome, was only now erecting docks at Thessalonica--but it
had on board 10,000 troops, as it was destined chiefly to co-operate
in sieges.  The fleet was commanded by Gaius Lucretius, the land army
by the consul Publius Licinius Crassus.

The Romans Invade Thessaly

The consul left a strong division in Illyria to harass Macedonia
from the west, while with the main force he started, as usual, from
Apollonia for Thessaly.  Perseus did not think of disturbing their
arduous march, but contented himself with advancing into Perrhaebia
and occupying the nearest fortresses.  He awaited the enemy at Ossa,
and not far from Larisa the first conflict took place between the
cavalry and light troops on both sides.  The Romans were decidedly
beaten.  Cotys with the Thracian horse had defeated and broken the
Italian, and Perseus with his Macedonian horse the Greek, cavalry; the
Romans had 2000 foot and 200 horsemen killed, and 600 horsemen made
prisoners, and had to deem themselves fortunate in being allowed to
cross the Peneius without hindrance.  Perseus employed the victory to
ask peace on the same terms which Philip had obtained: he was ready
even to pay the same sum.  The Romans refused his request: they never
concluded peace after a defeat, and in this case the conclusion
of peace would certainly have involved as a consequence the loss
of Greece.

Their Lax and Unsuccessful Management of the War

The wretched Roman commander, however, knew not how or where to
attack; the army marched to and fro in Thessaly, without accomplishing
anything of importance.  Perseus might have assumed the offensive; he
saw that the Romans were badly led and dilatory; the news had passed
like wildfire through Greece, that the Greek army had been brilliantly
victorious in the first engagement; a second victory might lead to a
general rising of the patriot party, and, by commencing a guerilla
warfare, might produce incalculable results.  But Perseus, while a
good soldier, was not a general like his father; he had made his
preparations for a defensive war, and, when things took a different
turn, he felt himself as it were paralyzed.  He made an unimportant
success, which the Romans obtained in a second cavalry combai near
Phalanna, a pretext for reverting, as is the habit of narrow and
obstinate minds, to his first plan and evacuating Thessaly.
This was of course equivalent to renouncing all idea of a Hellenic
insurrection: what might have been attained by a different course was
shown by the fact that, notwithstanding what had occurred, the Epirots
changed sides.  Thenceforth nothing serious was accomplished on either
side.  Perseus subdued king Genthius, chastised the Dardani, and, by
means of Cotys, expelled from Thrace the Thracians friendly to Rome
and the Pergamene troops.  On the other hand the western Roman army
took some Illyrian towns, and the consul busied himself in clearing
Thessaly of the Macedonian garrisons and making sure of the turbulent
Aetolians and Acarnanians by occupying Ambracia.  But the heroic
courage of the Romans was most severely felt by the unfortunate
Boeotian towns which took part with Perseus; the inhabitants as well
of Thisbae, which surrendered without resistance as soon as the Roman
admiral Gaius Lucretius appeared before the city, as of Haliartus,
which closed its gates against him and had to be taken by storm, were
sold by him into slavery; Corcnea was treated in the same manner by
the consul Crassus in spite even of its capitulation.  Never had a
Roman army exhibited such wretched discipline as the force under these
commanders.  They had so disorganized the army that, even in the next
campaign of 584, the new consul Aulus Hostilius could not think of
undertaking anything serious, especially as the new admiral Lucius
Hortensius showed himself to be as incapable and unprincipled as his
predecessor.  The fleet visited the towns on the Thracian coast
without result.  The western army under Appius Claudius, whose
headquarters were at Lychnidus in the territory of the Dassaretae,
sustained one defeat after another: after an expedition to Macedonia
had been utterly unsuccessful, the king in turn towards the beginning
of winter assumed the aggressive with the troops which were no longer
needed on the south frontier in consequence of the deep snow blocking
up all the passes, took from Appius numerous townships and a multitude
of prisoners, and entered into connections with king Genthius; he was
able in fact to attempt an invasion of Aetolia, while Appius allowed
himself to be once more defeated in Epirus by the garrison of a
fortress which he had vainly besieged.  The Roman main army made two
attempts to penetrate into Macedonia: first, ovei the Cambunian
mountains, and then through the Thessalian passes; but they were
negligently planned, and both were repulsed by Perseus.

Abuses in the Army

The consul employed himself chiefly in the reorganization of the army
--a work which was above all things needful, but which required a
sterner man and an officer of greater mark.  Discharges and furloughs
might be bought, and therefore the divisions were never up to their
full numbers; the men were put into quarters in summer, and, as the
officers plundered on a large, the common soldiers plundered on a
small, scale.  Friendly peoples were subjected to the most shameful
suspicions: for instance, the blame of the disgraceful defeat at
Larisa was imputed to the pretended treachery of the Aetolian cavalry,
and, what was hitherto unprecedented, its officers were sent to be
criminally tried at Rome; and the Molossians in Epirus were forced
by false suspicions into actual revolt.  The allied states had war-
contributions imposed upon them as if they had been conquered, and if
they appealed to the Roman senate, their citizens were executed or
sold into slavery: this was done, for instance, at Abdera, and similar
outrages were committed at Chalcis.  The senate interfered very
earnestly:(4) it enjoined the liberation of the unfortunate Coroneans
and Abderites, and forbade the Roman magistrates to ask contributions
from the allies without its leave.  Gaius Lucretius was unanimously
condemned by the burgesses.  But such steps could not alter the fact,
that the military result of these first two campaigns had been null,
while the political result had been a foul stain on the Romans, whose
extraordinary successes in the east were based in no small degree on
their reputation for moral purity and solidity as compared with the
scandals of Hellenic administration.  Had Philip commanded instead of
Perseus, the war would presumably have begun with the destruction of
the Roman army and the defection of most of the Hellenes; but Rome
was fortunate enough to be constantly outstripped in blunders by her
antagonists.  Perseus was content with entrenching himself in
Macedonia--which towards the south and west is a true mountain-
fortress--as in a beleaguered town.

Marcius Enters Macedonia through the Pass of Tempe
The Armies on the Elpius

The third commander-in-chief also, whom Rome sent to Macedonia in 585,
Quintus Marcius Philippus, that already-mentioned upright guest-friend
of the king, was not at all equal to his far from easy task.  He was
ambitious and enterprising, but a bad officer.  His hazardous venture
of crossing Olympus by the pass of Lapathus westward of Tempe, leaving
behind one division to face the garrison of the pass, and making his
way with his main force through impracticable denies to Heracleum, is
not excused by the fact of its success.  Not only might a handful of
resolute men have blocked the route, in which case retreat was out of
the question; but even after the passage, when he stood with the
Macedonian main force in front and the strongly-fortified mountain-
fortresses of Tempe and Lapathus behind him, wedged into a narrow
plain on the shore and without supplies or the possibility of foraging
for them, his position was no less desperate than when, in his first
consulate, he had allowed himself to be similarly surrounded in the
Ligurian defiles which thenceforth bore his name.  But as an accident
saved him then, so the incapacity of Perseus saved him now.  As if he
could not comprehend the idea of defending himself against the Romans
otherwise than by blocking the passes, he strangely gave himself over
as lost as soon as he saw the Romans on the Macedonian side of them,
fled in all haste to Pydna, and ordered his ships to be burnt and
his treasures to be sunk.  But even this voluntary retreat of the
Macedonian army did not rescue the consul from his painful position.
He advanced indeed without hindrance, but was obliged after four days'
march to turn back for want of provisions; and, when the king came to
his senses and returned in all haste to resume the position which he
had abandoned, the Roman army would have been in great danger, had not
the impregnable Tempe surrendered at the right moment and handed over
its rich stores to the enemy.  The communication with the south was
by this means secured to the Roman army; but Perseus had strongly
barricaded himself in his former well-chosen position on the bank of
the little river Elpius, and there checked the farther advance of the
Romans.  So the Roman army remained, during the rest of the summer and
the winter, hemmed in in the farthest corner of Thessaly; and, while
the crossing of the passes was certainly a success and the first
substantial one in the war, it was due not to the ability of the
Roman, but to the blundering of the Macedonian, general.  The Roman
fleet in vain attempted the capture of Demetrias, and performed no
exploit whatever.  The light ships of Perseus boldly cruised between
the Cyclades, protected the corn-vessels destined for Macedonia, and
attacked the transports of the enemy.  With the western army matters
were still worse: Appius Claudius could do nothing with his weakened
division, and the contingent which he asked from Achaia was prevented
from coming to him by the jealousy of the consul.  Moreover, Genthius
had allowed himself to be bribed by Perseus with the promise of a
great sum of money to break with Rome, and to imprison the Roman
envoys; whereupon the frugal king deemed it superfluous to pay the
money which he had promised, since Genthius was now forsooth
compelled, independently of it, to substitute an attitude of decided
hostility to Rome for the ambiguous position which he had hitherto
maintained.  Accordingly the Romans had a further petty war by the
side of the great one, which had already lasted three years.  In fact
had Perseus been able to part with his money, he might easily have
aroused enemies still more dangerous to the Romans.  A Celtic host
under Clondicus--10,000 horsemen and as many infantry--offered to take
service with him in Macedonia itself; but they could not agree as to
the pay.  In Hellas too there was such a ferment that a guerilla
warfare might easily have been kindled with a little dexterity and a
full exchequer; but, as Perseus had no desire to give and the Greeks
did nothing gratuitously, the land remained quiet.

Paullus

At length the Romans resolved to send the right man to Greece.  This
was Lucius Aemilius Paullus, son of the consul of the same name that
fell at Cannae; a man of the old nobility but of humble means, and
therefore not so successful in the comitia as on the battle-field,
where he had remarkably distinguished himself in Spain and still more
so in Liguria.  The people elected him for the second time consul in
the year 586 on account of his merits--a course which was at that
time rare and exceptional.  He was in all respects the right man: an
excellent general of the old school, strict as respected both himself
and his troops, and, notwithstanding his sixty years, still hale and
vigorous; an incorruptible magistrate--"one of the few Romans of that
age, to whom one could not offer money," as a contemporary says of
him--and a man of Hellenic culture, who, even when commander-in-chief,
embraced the opportunity of travelling through Greece to inspect its
works of art.

Perseus Is Driven Back to Pydna
Battle of Pydna
Perseus Taken Prisoner

As soon as the new general arrived in the camp at Heracleum, he gave
orders for the ill-guarded pass at Pythium to be surprised by Publius
Nasica, while skirmishes between the outposts in the channel of the
river Elpius occupied the attention of the Macedonians; the enemy was
thus turned, and was obliged to retreat to Pydna.  There on the Roman
4th of September, 586, or on the 22nd of June of the Julian calendar
--an eclipse of the moon, which a scientific Roman officer announced
beforehand to the army that it might not be regarded as a bad omen,
affords in this case the means of determining the date--the outposts
accidentally fell into conflict as they were watering their horses
after midday; and both sides determined at once to give the battle,
which it was originally intended to postpone till the following day.
Passing through the ranks in person, without helmet or shield, the
grey-headed Roman general arranged his men.  Scarce were they in
position, when the formidable phalanx assailed them; the general
himself, who had witnessed many a hard fight, afterwards acknowledged
that he had trembled.  The Roman vanguard dispersed; a Paelignian
cohort was overthrown and almost annihilated; the legions themselves
hurriedly retreated till they reached a hill close upon the Roman
camp.  Here the fortune of the day changed.  The uneven ground and the
hurried pursuit had disordered the ranks of the phalanx; the Romans in
single cohorts entered at every gap, and attacked it on the flanks and
in rear; the Macedonian cavalry which alone could have rendered aid
looked calmly on, and soon fled in a body, the king among the
foremost; and thus the fate of Macedonia was decided in less than an
hour.  The 3000 select phalangites allowed themselves to be cut down
to the last man; it was as if the phalanx, which fought its last great
battle at Pydna, had itself wished to perish there.  The overthrow was
fearful; 20,000 Macedonians lay on the field of battle, 11,000 were
prisoners.  The war was at an end, on the fifteenth day after Paullus
had assumed the command; all Macedonia submitted in two days.  The
king fled with his gold--he still had more than 6000 talents
(1,460,000 pounds) in his chest--to Samothrace, accompanied by a few
faithful attendants.  But he himself put to death one of these,
Evander of Crete, who was to be called to account as instigator of the
attempted assassination of Eumenes; and then the king's pages and his
last comrades also deserted him.  For a moment he hoped that the right
of asylum would protect him; but he himself perceived that he was
clinging to a straw.  An attempt to take flight to Cotys failed.  So
he wrote to the consul; but the letter was not received, because he
had designated himself in it as king.  He recognized his fate, and
surrendered to the Romans at discretion with his children and his
treasures, pusillanimous and weeping so as to disgust even his
conquerors.  With a grave satisfaction, and with thoughts turning
rather on the mutability of fortune than on his own present success,
the consul received the most illustrious captive whom Roman general
had ever brought home.  Perseus died a few years after, as a state
prisoner, at Alba on the Fucine lake;(5) his son in after years
earned a living in the same Italian country town as a clerk.

Thus perished the empire of Alexander the Great, which had subdued and
Hellenized the east, 144 years after its founder's death.

Defeat and Capture of Genthius

That the tragedy, moreover, might not be without its accompaniment of
farce, at the same time the war against "king" Genthius of Illyria was
also begun and ended by the praetor Lucius Anicius within thirty days.
The piratical fleet was taken, the capital Scodra was captured, and
the two kings, the heir of Alexander the Great and the heir of
Pleuratus, entered Rome side by side as prisoners.

Macedonia Broken Up

The senate had resolved that the peril, which the unseasonable
gentleness of Flamininus had brought on Rome, should not recur.
Macedonia was abolished.  In the conference at Amphipolis on the
Strymon the Roman commission ordained that the compact, thoroughly
monarchical, single state should be broken up into four republican-
federative leagues moulded on the system of the Greek confederacies,
viz. that of Amphipolis in the eastern regions, that of Thessalonica
with the Chalcidian peninsula, that of Pella on the frontiers of
Thessaly, and that of Pelagonia in the interior.  Intermarriages
between persons belonging to different confederacies were to be
invalid, and no one might be a freeholder in more than one of them.
All royal officials, as well as their grown-up sons, were obliged to
leave the country and resort to Italy on pain of death; the Romans
still dreaded, and with reason, the throbbings of the ancient loyalty.
The law of the land and the former constitution otherwise remained in
force; the magistrates were of course nominated by election in each
community, and the power in the communities as well as in the
confederacies was placed in the hands of the upper class.  The royal
domains and royalties were not granted to the confederacies, and these
were specially prohibited from working the gold and silvei mines,
a chief source of the national wealth; but in 596 they were again
permitted to work at least the silver-mines.(6)  The import of salt,
and the export of timber for shipbuilding, were prohibited.  The land-
tax hitherto paid to the king ceased, and the confederacies and
communities were left to tax themselves; but these had to pay to Rome
half of the former land-tax, according to a rate fixed once for all,
amounting in all to 100 talents annually (24,000 pounds).(7)  The
whole land was for ever disarmed, and the fortress of Demetrias was
razed; on the northern frontier alone a chain of posts was to be
retained to guard against the incursions of the barbarians.  Of the
arms given up, the copper shields were sent to Rome, and the rest
were burnt.

The Romans gained their object.  The Macedonian land still on two
occasions took up arms at the call of princes of the old reigning
house; but otherwise from that time to the present day it has remained
without a history.

Illyria Broken Up

Illyria was treated in a similar way.  The kingdom of Genthius was
split up into three small free states.  There too the freeholders paid
the half of the former land-tax to their new masters, with the
exception of the towns, which had adhered to Rome and in return
obtained exemption from land-tax--an exception, which there was no
opportunity to make in the case of Macedonia.  The Illyrian piratic
fleet was confiscated, and presented to the more reputable Greek
communities along that coast.  The constant annoyances, which the
Illyrians inflicted on the neighbours by their corsairs, were in this
way put an end to, at least for a lengthened period.

Cotys

Cotys in Thrace, who was difficult to be reached and might
conveniently be used against Eumenes, obtained pardon and received
back his captive son.

Thus the affairs of the north were settled, and Macedonia also was at
last released from the yoke of monarchy--in fact Greece was more free
than ever; a king no longer existed anywhere.

Humiliation of the Greeks in General
Course Pursued with Pergamus

But the Romans did not confine themselves to cutting the nerves and
sinews of Macedonia.  The senate resolved at once to render all the
Hellenic states, friend and foe, for ever incapable of harm, and to
reduce all of them alike to the same humble clientship.  The course
pursued may itself admit of justification; but the mode in which it
was carried out in the case of the more powerful of the Greek client-
states was unworthy of a great power, and showed that the epoch of
the Fabii and the Scipios was at an end.

The state most affected by this change in the position of parties was
the kingdom of the Attalids, which had been created and fostered by
Rome to keep Macedonia in check, and which now, after the destruction
of Macedonia, was forsooth no longer needed.  It was not easy to find
a tolerable pretext for depriving the prudent and considerate Eumenes
of his privileged position, and allowing him to fall into disfavour.
All at once, about the time when the Romans were encamped at
Heracleum, strange reports were circulated regarding him--that he was
in secret intercourse with Perseus; that his fleet had been suddenly,
as it were, wafted away; that 500 talents had been offered for his
non-participation in the campaign and 1500 for his mediation to
procure peace, and that the agreement had only broken down through the
avarice of Perseus.  As to the Pergamene fleet, the king, after having
paid his respects to the consul, went home with it at the same time
that the Roman fleet went into winter quarters.  The story about
corruption was as certainly a fable as any newspaper canard of the
present day; for that the rich, cunning, and consistent Attalid, who
had primarily occasioned the breach between Rome and Macedonia by
his journey in 582 and had been on that account wellnigh assassinated
by the banditti of Perseus, should--at the moment when the real
difficulties of a war, of whose final issue, moreover, he could never
have had any serious doubt, were overcome--have sold to the instigator
of the murder his share in the spoil for a few talents, and should
have perilled the work of long years for so pitiful a consideration,
may be set down not merely as a fabrication, but as a very silly one.
That no proof was found either in the papers of Perseus or elsewhere,
is sufficiently certain; for even the Romans did not venture to
express those suspicions aloud, But they gained their object.  Their
wishes appeared in the behaviour of the Roman grandees towards
Attalus, the brother of Eumenes, who had commanded the Pergamene
auxiliary troops in Greece.  Their brave and faithful comrade was
received in Rome with open arms and invited to ask not for his
brother, but for himself--the senate would be glad to give him a
kingdom of his own.  Attalus asked nothing but Aenus and Maronea.  The
senate thought that this was only a preliminary request, and granted
it with great politeness.  But when he took his departure without
having made any further demands, and the senate came to perceive that
the reigning family in Pergamus did not live on such terms with each
other as were customary in princely houses, Aenus and Maronea were
declared free cities.  The Pergamenes obtained not a foot's breadth
of territory out of the spoil of Macedonia; if after the victory over
Antiochus the Romans had still saved forms as respected Philip, they
were now disposed to hurt and to humiliate.  About this time the
senate appears to have declared Pamphylia, for the possession of which
Eumenes and Antiochus had hitherto contended, independent.  What was
of more importance, the Galatians--who had been substantially in the
power of Eumenes, ever since he had expelled the king of Pontus by
force of arms from Caiatia and had on making peace extorted from him
the promise that he would maintain no further communication with the
Galatian princes--now, reckoning beyond doubt on the variance that had
taken place between Eumenes and the Romans, if not directly instigated
by the latter, rose against Eumenes, overran his kingdom, and brought
him into great danger.  Eumenes besought the mediation of the Romans;
the Roman envoy declared his readiness to mediate, but thought it
better that Attalus, who commanded the Pergamene army, should not
accompany him lest the barbarians might be put into ill humour.
Singularly enough, he accomplished nothing; in fact, he told on
his return that his mediation had only exasperated the barbarians.
No long time elapsed before the independence of the Galatians was
expressly recognized and guaranteed by the senate.  Eumenes determined
to proceed to Rome in person, and to plead his cause in the senate.
But the latter, as if troubled by an evil conscience, suddenly decreed
that in future kings should not be allowed to come to Rome; and
despatched a quaestor to meet him at Brundisium, to lay before him
this decree of the senate, to ask him what he wanted, and to hint to
him that they would be glad to see his speedy departure.  The king was
long silent; at length he said that he desired nothing farther, and
re-embarked.  He saw how matters stood: the epoch of half-powerful and
half-free alliance was at an end; that of impotent subjection began.

Humiliation of Rhodes

Similar treatment befell the Rhodians.  They had a singularly
privileged position: their relation to Rome assumed the form not of
symmachy properly so called, but of friendly equality; it did not
prevent them from entering into alliances of any kind, and did not
compel them to supply the Romans with a contingent on demand.  This
very circumstance was presumably the real reason why their good
understanding with Rome had already for some time been impaired.
The first dissensions with Rome had arisen in consequence of the
rising of the Lycians, who were handed over to Rhodes after the defeat
of Antiochus, against their oppressors who had (576) cruelly reduced
them to slavery as revolted subjects; the Lycians, however, asserted
that they were not subjects but allies of the Rhodians, and prevailed
with this plea in the Roman senate, which was invited to settle the
doubtful meaning of the instrument of peace.  But in this result a
justifiable sympathy with the victims of grievous oppression had
perhaps the chief share; at least nothing further was done on the part
of the Romans, who left this as well as other Hellenic quarrels to
take their course.  When the war with Perseus broke out, the Rhodians,
like all other sensible Greeks, viewed it with regret, and blamed
Eumenes in particular as the instigator of it, so that his festal
embassy was not even permitted to be present at the festival of Helios
in Rhodes.  But this did not prevent them from adhering to Rome and
keeping the Macedonian party, which existed in Rhodes as well as
everywhere else, aloof from the helm of affairs.  The permission given
to them in 585 to export grain from Sicily shows the continuance of
the good understanding with Rome.  All of a sudden, shortly before the
battle of Pydna, Rhodian envoys appeared at the Roman head-quarters
and in the Roman senate, announcing that the Rhodians would no longer
tolerate this war which was injurious to their Macedonian traffic and
their revenue from port-dues, that they were disposed themselves to
declare war against the party which should refuse to make peace, and
that with this view they had already concluded an alliance with Crete
and with the Asiatic cities.  Many caprices are possible in a republic
governed by primary assemblies; but this insane intervention of a
commercial city--which can only have been resolved on after the
fall of the pass of Tempe was known at Rhodes--requires special
explanation.  The key to it is furnished by the well-attested account
that the consul Quintus Marcius, that master of the "new-fashioned
diplomacy," had in the camp at Heracleum (and therefore after the
occupation of the pass of Tempe) loaded the Rhodian envoy Agepolis
with civilities and made an underhand request to him to mediate a
peace.  Republican wrongheadedness and vanity did the rest; the
Rhodians fancied that the Romans had given themselves up as lost;
they were eager to play the part of mediator among four great powers
at once; communications were entered into with Perseus; Rhodian envoys
with Macedonian sympathies said more than they should have said; and
they were caught.  The senate, which doubtless was itself for the most
part unaware of those intrigues, heard the strange announcement, as
may be conceived, with indignation, and was glad of the favourable
opportunity to humble the haughty mercantile city.  A warlike praetor
went even so far as to propose to the people a declaration of war
against Rhodes.  In vain the Rhodian ambassadors repeatedly on their
knees adjured the senate to think of the friendship of a hundred and
forty years rather than of the one offence; in vain they sent the
heads of the Macedonian party to the scaffold or to Rome; in vain they
sent a massive wreath of gold in token of their gratitude for the non-
declaration of war.  The upright Cato indeed showed that strictly the
Rhodians had committed no offence and asked whether the Romans were
desirous to undertake the punishment of wishes and thoughts, and
whether they could blame the nations for being apprehensive that Rome
might allow herself all license if she had no longer any one to fear?
His words and warnings were in vain.  The senate deprived the Rhodians
of their possessions on the mainland, which yielded a yearly produce
of 120 talents (29,000 pounds).  Still heavier were the blows aimed at
the Rhodian commerce.  The very prohibition of the import of salt to,
and of the export of shipbuilding timber from, Macedonia appears to
have been directed against Rhodes.  Rhodian commerce was still more
directly affected by the erection of the free port at Delos; the
Rhodian customs-dues, which hitherto had produced 1,000,000 drachmae
(41,000 pounds) annually, sank in a very brief period to 150,000
drachmae (6180 pounds).  Generally, the Rhodians were paralyzed in
their freedom of action and in their liberal and bold commercial
policy, and the state began to languish.  Even the alliance asked
for was at first refused, and was only renewed in 590 after urgent
entreaties.  The equally guilty but powerless Cretans escaped with
a sharp rebuke.

Intervention in the Syro-Egyptian War

With Syria and Egypt the Romans could go to work more summarily.
War had broken out between them; and Coelesyria and Palaestina formed
once more the subject of dispute.  According to the assertion of the
Egyptians, those provinces had been ceded to Egypt on the marriage of
the Syrian Cleopatra: this however the court of Babylon, which was in
actual possession, disputed.  Apparently the charging of her dowry on
the taxes of the Coelesyrian cities gave occasion to the quarrel, and
the Syrian side was in the right; the breaking out of the war was
occasioned by the death of Cleopatra in 581, with which at latest the
payments of revenue terminated.  The war appears to have been begun by
Egypt; but king Antiochus Epiphanes gladly embraced the opportunity
of once more--and for the last time--endeavouring to achieve the
traditional aim of the policy of the Seleucidae, the acquisition of
Egypt, while the Romans were employed in Macedonia.  Fortune seemed
favourable to him.  The king of Egypt at that time, Ptolemy VI,
Philometor, the son of Cleopatra, had hardly passed the age of boyhood
and had bad advisers; after a great victory on the Syro-Egyptian
frontier Antiochus was able to advance into the territories of his
nephew in the same year in which the legions landed in Greece (583),
and soon had the person of the king in his power.  Matters began to
look as if Antiochus wished to possess himself of all Egypt in
Philometor's name; Alexandria accordingly closed its gates against
him, deposed Philometor, and nominated as king in his stead his
younger brother, named Euergetes II, or the Fat.  Disturbances in his
own kingdom recalled the Syrian king from Egypt; when he returned, he
found that the brothers had come to an understanding during his
absence; and he then continued the war against both.  Just as he lay
before Alexandria, not long after the battle of Pydna (586), the Roman
envoy Gaius Popillius, a harsh rude man, arrived, and intimated to him
the command of the senate that he should restore all that he had
conquered and should evacuate Egypt within a set term.  Antiochus
asked time for consideration; but the consular drew with his staff a
circle round the king, and bade him declare his intentions before he
stepped beyond the circle.  Antiochus replied that he would comply;
and marched off to his capital that he might there, in his character
of "the god, the brilliant bringer of victory," celebrate in Roman
fashion his conquest of Egypt and parody the triumph of Paullus.

Measures of Security in Greece

Egypt voluntarily submitted to the Roman protectorate; and thereupon
the kings of Babylon also desisted from the last attempt to maintain
their independence against Rome.  As with Macedonia in the war waged
by Perseus, the Seleucidae in the war regarding Coelesyria made a
similar and similarly final effort to recover their former power; but
it is a significant indication of the difference between the two
kingdoms, that in the former case the legions, in the latter the
abrupt language of a diplomatist, decided the controversy.  In Greece
itself, as the two Boeotian cities had already paid more than a
sufficient penalty, the Molottians alone remained to be punished as
allies of Perseus.  Acting on secret orders from the senate, Paullus
in one day gave up seventy townships in Epirus to plunder, and sold
the inhabitants, 150,000 in number, into slavery.  The Aetolians lost
Amphipolis, and the Acarnanians Leucas, on account of their equivocal
behaviour; whereas the Athenians, who continued to play the part of
the begging poet in their own Aristophanes, not only obtained a gift
of Delos and Lemnos, but were not ashamed even to petition for the
deserted site of Haliartus, which was assigned to them accordingly.
Thus something was done for the Muses; but more had to be done for
justice.  There was a Macedonian party in every city, and therefore
trials for high treason began in all parts of Greece.  Whoever had
served in the army of Perseus was immediately executed, whoever was
compromised by the papers of the king or the statements of political
opponents who flocked to lodge informations, was despatched to Rome;
the Achaean Callicrates and the Aetolian Lyciscus distinguished
themselves in the trade of informers.  In this way the more
conspicuous patriots among the Thessalians, Aetolians, Acarnanians,
Lesbians and so forth, were removed from their native land; and,
in particular, more than a thousand Achaeans were thus disposed of
--a step taken with the view not so much of prosecuting those who were
carried off, as of silencing the childish opposition of the Hellenes.

To the Achaeans, who, as usual, were not content till they got the
answer which they anticipated, the senate, wearied by constant
requests for the commencement of the investigation, at length roundly
declared that till further orders the persons concerned were to remain
in Italy.  There they were placed in country towns in the interior,
and tolerably well treated; but attempts to escape were punished with
death.  The position of the former officials removed from Macedonia
was, in all probability, similar.  This expedient, violent as it was,
was still, as things stood, the most lenient, and the enraged Greeks
of the Roman party were far from content with the paucity of the
executions.  Lyciscus had accordingly deemed it proper, by way of
preliminary, to have 500 of the leading men of the Aetolian patriotic
party slain at the meeting of the diet; the Roman commission, which
needed the man, suffered the deed to pass unpunished, and merely
censured the employment of Roman soldiers in the execution of this
Hellenic usage.  We may presume, however, that the Romans instituted
the system of deportation to Italy partly in order to prevent such
horrors.  As in Greece proper no power existed even of such importance
as Rhodes or Pergamus, there was no need in its case for any further
humiliation; the steps taken were taken only in the exercise of
justice--in the Roman sense, no doubt, of that term--and for
the prevention of the most scandalous and palpable outbreaks of
party discord.

Rome and Her Dependencies

All the Hellenistic states had thus been completely subjected to the
protectorate of Rome, and the whole empire of Alexander the Great had
fallen to the Roman commonwealth just as if the city had inherited it
from his heirs.  From all sides kings and ambassadors flocked to Rome
to congratulate her; and they showed that fawning is never more abject
than when kings are in the antechamber.  King Massinissa, who only
desisted from presenting himself in person on being expressly
prohibited from doing so, ordered his son to declare that he
regarded himself as merely the beneficiary, and the Romans as the true
proprietors, of his kingdom, and that he would always be content with
what they were willing to leave to him.  There was at least truth
in this.  But Prusias king of Bithynia, who had to atone for his
neutrality, bore off the palm in this contest of flattery; he fell on
his face when he was conducted into the senate, and did homage to "the
delivering gods." As he was so thoroughly contemptible, Polybius tells
us, they gave him a polite reply, and presented him with the fleet
of Perseus.

The moment was at least well chosen for such acts of homage.  Polybius
dates from the battle of Pydna the full establishment of the universal
empire of Rome.  It was in fact the last battle in which a civilized
state confronted Rome in the field on a footing of equality with her
as a great power; all subsequent struggles were rebellions or wars
with peoples beyond the pale of the Romano-Greek civilization
--with barbarians, as they were called.  The whole civilized world
thenceforth recognized in the Roman senate the supreme tribunal, whose
commissions decided in the last resort between kings and nations; and
to acquire its language and manners foreign princes and youths of
quality resided in Rome.  A clear and earnest attempt to get rid of
this dominion was in reality made only once--by the great Mithradates
of Pontus.  The battle of Pydna, moreover, marks the last occasion on
which the senate still adhered to the state-maxim that they should, if
possible, hold no possessions and maintain no garrisons beyond the
Italian seas, but should keep the numerous states dependent on them in
order by a mere political supremacy.  The aim of their policy was that
these states should neither decline into utter weakness and anarchy,
as had nevertheless happened in Greece nor emerge out of their half-
free position into complete independence, as Macedonia had attempted
to do not without success.  No state was to be allowed utterly to
perish, but no one was to be permitted to stand on its own resources.
Accordingly the vanquished foe held at least an equal, often a better,
position with the Roman diplomatists than the faithful ally; and,
while a defeated opponent was reinstated, those who attempted to
reinstate themselves were abased--as the Aetolians, Macedonia after
the Asiatic war, Rhodes, and Pergamus learned by experience.  But not
only did this part of protector soon prove as irksome to the masters
as to the servants; the Roman protectorate, with its ungrateful
Sisyphian toil that continually needed to be begun afresh, showed
itself to be intrinsically untenable.  Indications of a change of
system, and of an increasing disinclination on the part of Rome to
tolerate by its side intermediate states even in such independence as
was possible for them, were very clearly given in the destruction of
the Macedonian monarchy after the battle of Pydna, The more and more
frequent and more and more unavoidable intervention in the internal
affairs of the petty Greek states through their misgovernment and
their political and social anarchy; the disarming of Macedonia, where
the northern frontier at any rate urgently required a defence
different from that of mere posts; and, lastly, the introduction of
the payment of land-tax to Rome from Macedonia and Illyria, were so
many symptoms of the approaching conversion of the client states
into subjects of Rome.

The Italian and Extra-Italian Policy of Rome

If, in conclusion, we glance back at the career of Rome from the union
of Italy to the dismemberment of Macedonia, the universal empire of
Rome, far from appearing as a gigantic plan contrived and carried out
by an insatiable thirst for territorial aggrandizement, appears to
have been a result which forced itself on the Roman government
without, and even in opposition to, its wish.  It is true that the
former view naturally suggests itself--Sallust is right when he makes
Mithradates say that the wars of Rome with tribes, cities, and kings
originated in one and the same prime cause, the insatiable longing
after dominion and riches; but it is an error to give forth this
judgment--influenced by passion and the event--as a historical fact.
It is evident to every one whose observation is not superficial, that
the Roman government during this whole period wished and desired
nothing but the sovereignty of Italy; that they were simply desirous
not to have too powerful neighbours alongside of them; and that--not
out of humanity towards the vanquished, but from the very sound view
that they ought not to suffer the kernel of their empire to be stifled
by the shell--they earnestly opposed the introduction first of Africa,
then of Greece, and lastly of Asia into the sphere of the Roman
protectorate, till circumstances in each case compelled, or at least
suggested with irresistible force, the extension of that sphere.  The
Romans always asserted that they did not pursue a policy of conquest,
and that they were always the party assailed; and this was something
more, at any rate, than a mere phrase.  They were in fact driven to
all their great wars with the exception of that concerning Sicily--to
those with Hannibal and Antiochus, no less than to those with Philip
and Perseus--either by a direct aggression or by an unparalleled
disturbance of the existing political relations; and hence they were
ordinarily taken by surprise on their outbreak.  That they did not
after victory exhibit the moderation which they ought to have done in
the interest more especially of Italy itself; that the retention of
Spain, for instance, the undertaking of the guardianship of Africa,
and above all the half-fanciful scheme of bringing liberty everywhere
to the Greeks, were in the light of Italian policy grave errors, is
sufficiently clear.  But the causes of these errors were, on the
one hand a blind dread of Carthage, on the other a still blinder
enthusiasm for Hellenic liberty; so little did the Romans exhibit
during this period the lust of conquest, that they, on the contrary,
displayed a very judicious dread of it.  The policy of Rome throughout
was not projected by a single mightly intellect and bequeathed
traditionally from generation to generation; it was the policy of a
very able but somewhat narrow-minded deliberative assembly, which had
far too little power of grand combination, and far too much of a right
instinct for the preservation of its own commonwealth, to devise
projects in the spirit of a Caesar or a Napoleon.  The universal
empire of Rome had its ultimate ground in the political development of
antiquity in general.  The ancient world knew nothing of a balance of
power among nations; and therefore every nation which had attained
internal unity strove either directly to subdue its neighbors, as did
the Hellenic states, or at any rate to render them innocuous, as Rome
did,--an effort, it is true, which also issued ultimately in
subjugation.  Egypt was perhaps the only great power in antiquity
which seriously pursued a system of equilibrium; on the opposite
system Seleucus and Antigonous, Hannibal and Scipio, came into
collision.  And, if it seems to us sad that all the other richly-
endowed and highly-developed nations of antiquity had to perish in
order to enrich a single one out of the whole, and that all in the
long run appear to have only arisen to contribute to the greatness
of Italy and to the decay involved in that greatness, yet historical
justice must acknowledge that this result was not produced by the
military superiority of the legion over the phalanx, but was the
necessary development of the international relations of antiquity
generally-so that the issue was not decided by provoking chance,
but was the fulfillment of an unchangeable, and therefore
endurable, destiny.




Notes for Chapter X


1. --Ide gar prasde panth alion ammi dedukein-- (i. 102).

2. II. VII. Last Struggles in Italy

3. The legal dissolution of the Boeotian confederacy, however, took
place not at this time, but only after the destruction of Corinth
(Pausan. vii. 14, 4; xvi. 6).

4. The recently discovered decree of the senate of 9th Oct. 584, which
regulates the legal relations of Thisbae (Ephemeris epigraphica, 1872,
p. 278, fig.; Mitth. d. arch. Inst., in Athen, iv. 235, fig.), gives
a clear insight into these relations.

5. The story, that the Romans, in order at once to keep the promise
which had guaranteed his life and to take vengeance on him, put him
to death by depriving him of sleep, is certainly a fable.

6. The statement of Cassiodorus, that the Macedonian  mines  were
reopened in 596, receives its more exact interpretation by means of
the coins.  No gold coins of the four Macedonias are extant; either
therefore the gold-mines remained closed, or the gold extracted was
converted into bars.  On the other hand there certainly exist silver
coins of Macedonia -prima- (Amphipolis) in  which district the silver-
mines were situated.  For the brief period, during which they must
have been struck (596-608), the number of them is remarkably great,
and proves either that the mines were very energetically worked, or
that the old royal money was recoined in large quantity.

7. The statement that the Macedonian commonwealth was "relieved of
seignorial imposts and taxes" by the Romans (Polyb. xxxvii. 4) does
not necessarily require us to assume a subsequent remission of these
taxes: it is sufficient, for the explanation of Polybius' words, to
assume that the hitherto seignorial tax now became a public one.  The
continuance of the constitution granted to the province of Macedonia
by Paullus down to at least the Augustan age (Liv. xlv. 32; Justin,
xxxiii. 2), would, it is true, be compatible also with the remission
of the taxes.


CHAPTER XI

The Government and the Governed

Formation of New Parties

The fall of the patriciate by no means divested the Roman commonwealth
of its aristocratic character.  We have already(1) indicated that the
plebeian party carried within it that character from the first as well
as, and in some sense still more decidedly than, the patriciate; for,
while in the old body of burgesses an absolute equality of rights
prevailed, the new constitution set out from a distinction between
the senatorial houses who were privileged in point of burgess
rights and of burgess usufructs, and the mass of the other citizens.
Immediately, therefore, on the abolition of the patriciate and the
formal establishment of civic equality, a new aristocracy and a
corresponding opposition were formed; and we have already shown how
the former engrafted itself as it were on the fallen patriciate, and
how, accordingly, the first movements of the new party of progress
were mixed up with the last movements of the old opposition between
the orders.(2)  The formation of these new parties began in the fifth
century, but they assumed their definite shape only in the century
which followed.  The development of this internal change is, as it
were, drowned amidst the noise of the great wars and victories, and
not merely so, but the process of formation is in this case more
withdrawn from view than any other in Roman history.  Like a crust
of ice gathering imperceptibly over the surface of a stream and
imperceptibly confining it more and more, this new Roman aristocracy
silently arose; and not less imperceptibly, like the current
concealing itself beneath and slowly extending, there arose in
opposition to it the new party of progress.  It is very difficult
to sum up in a general historical view the several, individually
insignificant, traces of these two antagonistic movements, which do
not for the present yield their historical product in any distinct
actual catastrophe.  But the freedom hitherto enjoyed in the
commonwealth was undermined, and the foundation for future revolutions
was laid, during this epoch; and the delineation of these as well as
of the development of Rome in general would remain imperfect, if we
should fail to give some idea of the strength of that encrusting ice,
of the growth of the current beneath, and of the fearful moaning and
cracking that foretold the mighty breaking up which was at hand.

Germs of the Nobility in the Patriciate

The Roman nobility attached itself, in form, to earlier institutions
belonging to the times of the patriciate.  Persons who once had filled
the highest ordinary magistracies of the state not only, as a matter
of course, practically enjoyed all along a higher honour, but also had
at an early period certain honorary privileges associated with their
position.  The most ancient of these was doubtless the permission
given to the descendants of such magistrates to place the wax images
of these illustrious ancestors after their death in the family hall,
along the wall where the pedigree was painted, and to have these
images carried, on occasion of the death of members of the family,
in the funeral procession.(3)  To appreciate the importance of this
distinction, we must recollect that the honouring of images was
regarded in the Italo-Hellenic view as unrepublican, and on that
account the Roman state-police did not at all tolerate the exhibition
of effigies of the living, and strictly superintended that of effigies
of the dead.  With this privilege were associated various external
insignia, reserved by law or custom for such magistrates and their
descendants:--the golden finger-ring of the men, the silver-mounted
trappings of the youths, the purple border on the toga and the golden
amulet-case of the boys (4)--trifling matters, but still important in
a community where civic equality even in external appearance was so
strictly adhered to,(5) and where, even during the second Punic war,
a burgess was arrested and kept for years in prison because he had
appeared in public, in a manner not sanctioned by law, with a garland
of roses upon his head.(6)

Patricio-Plebian Nobility

These distinctions may perhaps have already existed partially in the
time of the patrician government, and, so long as families of higher
and humbler rank were distinguished within the patriciate, may have
served as external insignia for the former; but they certainly only
acquired political importance in consequence of the change of
constitution in 387, by which the plebeian families that attained
the consulate were placed on a footing of equal privilege with the
patrician families, all of whom were now probably entitled to carry
images of their ancestors.  Moreover, it was now settled that the
offices of state to which these hereditary privileges were attached
should include neither the lower nor the extraordinary magistracies
nor the tribunate of the plebs, but merely the consulship, the
praetorship which stood on the same level with it,(7) and the curule
aedileship, which bore a part in the administration of public justice
and consequently in the exercise of the sovereign powers of the
state.(8)  Although this plebeian nobility, in the strict sense of the
term, could only be formed after the curule offices were opened to
plebeians, yet it exhibited in a short time, if not at the very first,
a certain compactness of organization--doubtless because such a
nobility had long been prefigured in the old senatorial plebeian
families.  The result of the Licinian laws in reality therefore
amounted nearly to what we should now call the creation of a batch of
peers.  Now that the plebeian families ennobled by their curule
ancestors were united into one body with the patrician families and
acquired a distinctive position and distinguished power in the
commonwealth, the Romans had again arrived at the point whence they
had started; there was once more not merely a governing aristocracy
and a hereditary nobility--both of which in fact had never
disappeared--but there was a governing hereditary nobility, and the
feud between the gentes in possession of the government and the
commons rising in revolt against the gentes could not but begin
afresh.  And matters very soon reached that stage.  The nobility was
not content with its honorary privileges which were matters of
comparative indifference, but strove after separate and sole political
power, and sought to convert the most important institutions of the
state--the senate and the equestrian order--from organs of the
commonwealth into organs of the plebeio-patrician aristocracy.

The Nobility in Possession of the Senate

The dependence -de jure- of the Roman senate of the republic, more
especially of the larger patricio-plebeian senate, on the magistracy
had rapidly become lax, and had in fact been converted into
independence.  The subordination of the public magistracies to
the state-council, introduced by the revolution of 244;(9) the
transference of the right of summoning men to the senate from the
consul to the censor;(10) lastly, and above all, the legal recognition
of the right of those who had been curule magistrates to a seat and
vote in the senate,(11) had converted the senate from a council
summoned by the magistrates and in many respects dependent on them
into a governing corporation virtually independent, and in a certain
sense filling up its own ranks; for the two modes by which its members
obtained admission--election to a curule office and summoning by the
censor--were both virtually in the power of the governing board
itself.  The burgesses, no doubt, at this epoch were still too
independent to allow the entire exclusion of non-nobles from the
senate, and the nobility were perhaps still too judicious even to wish
for this; but, owing to the strictly aristocratic gradations in the
senate itself--in which those who had been curule magistrates were
sharply distinguished, according to their respective classes of
-consulares-, -praetorii-, and -aedilicii-, from the senators who
had not entered the senate through a curule office and were therefore
excluded from debate--the non-nobles, although they probably sat in
considerable numbers in the senate, were reduced to an insignificant
and comparatively uninfluential position in it, and the senate became
substantially a mainstay of the nobility.

The Nobility in Possession of the Equestrian Centuries

The institution of the equites was developed into a second, less
important but yet far from unimportant, organ of the nobility.  As the
new hereditary nobility had not the power to usurp sole possession of
the comitia, it necessarily became in the highest degree desirable
that it should obtain at least a separate position within the body
representing the community.  In the assembly of the tribes there
was no method of managing this; but the equestrian centuries under
the Servian organization seemed as it were created for the very
purpose.  The 1800 horses which the community furnished(12) were
constitutionally disposed of likewise by the censors.  It was, no
doubt, the duty of these to select the equites on military grounds and
at their musters to insist that all horsemen incapacitated by age or
otherwise, or at all unserviceable, should surrender their public
horse; but the very nature of the institution implied that the
equestrian horses should be given especially to men of means, and it
was not at all easy to hinder the censors from looking to genteel
birth more than to capacity, and from allowing men of standing who
were once admitted, senators particularly, to retain their horse
beyond the proper time.  Perhaps it was even fixed by law that the
senator might retain it as long as he wished.  Accordingly it became
at least practically the rule for the senators to vote in the eighteen
equestrian centuries, and the other places in these were assigned
chiefly to the young men of the nobility.  The military system, of
course, suffered from this not so much through the unfitness for
effective service of no small part of the legionary cavalry, as
through the destruction of military equality to which the change gave
rise, inasmuch as the young men of rank more and more withdrew from
service in the infantry.  The closed aristocratic corps of the equites
proper came to set the tone for the whole legionary cavalry, taken
from the citizens who were of highest position by descent and wealth.
This enables us in some degree to understand why the equites during
the Sicilian war refused to obey the order of the consul Gaius
Aurelius Cotta that they should work at the trenches with the
legionaries (502), and why Cato, when commander-in-chief of the army
in Spain, found himself under the necessity of addressing a severe
reprimand to his cavalry.  But this conversion of the burgess-cavalry
into a mounted guard of nobles redounded not more decidedly to the
injury of the commonwealth than to the advantage of the nobility,
which acquired in the eighteen equestrian centuries a suffrage not
merely separate but giving the tone to the rest.

Separation of the Orders in the Theatre

Of a kindred character was the formal separation of the places
assigned to the senatorial order from those occupied by the rest of
the multitude as spectators at the national festivals.  It was the
great Scipio, who effected this change in his second consulship in
560.  The national festival was as much an assembly of the people as
were the centuries convoked for voting; and the circumstance that the
former had no resolutions to pass made the official announcement of a
distinction between the ruling order and the body of subjects--which
the separation implied--all the more significant.  The innovation
accordingly met with much censure even from the ruling class, because
it was simply invidious and not useful, and because it gave a very
manifest contradiction to the efforts of the more prudent portion of
the aristocracy to conceal their exclusive government under the forms
of civil equality.

The Censorship a Prop of the Nobility

These circumstances explain, why the censorship became the pivot of
the later republican constitution; why an office, originally standing
by no means in the first rank, came to be gradually invested with
external insignia which did not at all belong to it in itself and with
an altogether unique aristocratic-republican glory, and was viewed as
the crown and completion of a well-conducted public career; and why
the government looked upon every attempt of the opposition to
introduce their men into this office, or even to hold the censor
responsible to the people for his administration during or after his
term of office, as an attack on their palladium, and presented a
united front of resistance to every such attempt.  It is sufficient
in this respect to mention the storm which the candidature of Cato for
the censorship provoked, and the measures, so extraordinarily reckless
and in violation of all form, by which the senate prevented the
judicial prosecution of the two unpopular censors of the year 550.
But with their magnifying the glory of the censorship the government
combined a characteristic distrust of this, their most important and
for that very reason most dangerous, instrument.  It was thoroughly
necessary to leave to the censors absolute control over the personal
composition of the senate and the equites; for the right of exclusion
could not well be separated from the right of summoning, and it was
indispensable to retain such a right, not so much for the purpose of
removing from the senate capable men of the opposition--a course which
the smooth-going government of that age cautiously avoided--as for the
purpose of preserving around the aristocracy that moral halo, without
which it must have speedily become a prey to the opposition.  The
right of ejection was retained; but what they chiefly needed was the
glitter of the naked blade--the edge of it, which they feared, they
took care to blunt.  Besides the check involved in the nature of the
office--under which the lists of the members of the aristocratic
corporations were liable to revision only at intervals of five years
--and besides the limitations resulting from the right of veto vested
in the colleague and the right of cancelling vested in the successor,
there was added a farther check which exercised a very sensible
influence; a usage equivalent to law made it the duty of the censor
not to erase from the list any senator or knight without specifying in
writing the grounds for his decision, or, in other words, adopting, as
a rule, a quasi-judicial procedure.

Remodelling of the Constitution According to the Views of the Nobility
Inadequate Number of Magistrates

In this political position--mainly based on the senate, the equites,
and the censorship--the nobility not only usurped in substance the
government, but also remodelled the constitution according to their
own views.  It was part of their policy, with a view to keep up the
appreciation of the public magistracies, to add to the number of these
as little as possible, and to keep it far below what was required by
the extension of territory and the increase of business.  Only the
most urgent exigencies were barely met by the division of the judicial
functions hitherto discharged by a single praetor between two judges
--one of whom tried the lawsuits between Roman burgesses, and the
other those that arose between non-burgesses or between burgess and
non-burgess--in 511, and by the nomination of four auxiliary consuls
for the four transmarine provinces of Sicily (527), Sardinia including
Corsica (527), and Hither and Further Spain (557).  The far too
summary mode of initialing processes in Rome, as well as the
increasing influence of the official staff, are doubtless traceable
in great measure to the practically inadequate numbers of the
Roman magistracy.

Election of Officers in the Comitia

Among the innovations originated by the government--which were none
the less innovations, that almost uniformly they changed not the
letter, but merely the practice of the existing constitution--the most
prominent were the measures by which the filling up of officers' posts
as well as of civil magistracies was made to depend not, as the letter
of the constitution allowed and its spirit required, simply on merit
and ability, but more and more on birth and seniority.  As regards the
nomination of staff-officers this was done not in form, but all the
more in substance.  It had already, in the course of the previous
period, been in great part transferred from the general to the
burgesses;(13) in this period came the further step, that the whole
staff-officers of the regular yearly levy--the twenty-four military
tribunes of the four ordinary legions--were nominated in the -comitia
tributa-.  Thus a line of demarcation more and more insurmountable was
drawn between the subalterns, who gained their promotion from the
general by punctual and brave service, and the staff, which obtained
its privileged position by canvassing the burgesses.(14)  With a view
to check simply the worst abuses in this respect and to prevent young
men quite untried from holding these important posts, it became
necessary to require, as a preliminary to the bestowal of staff
appointments, evidence of a certain number of years of service.
Nevertheless, when once the military tribunate, the true pillar of the
Roman military system, was laid down as the first stepping-stone in
the political career of the young aristocrats, the obligation of
service inevitably came to be frequently eluded, and the election of
officers became liable to all the evils of democratic canvassing and
of aristocratic exclusiveness.  It was a cutting commentary on the new
institution, that in serious wars (as in 583) it was found necessary
to suspend this democratic mode of electing officers, and to leave
once more to the general the nomination of his staff.

Restrictions on the Election of Consuls and Censors

In the case of civil offices, the first and chief object was to
limit re-election to the supreme magistracies.  This was certainly
necessary, if the presidency of annual kings was not to be an empty
name; and even in the preceding period reelection to the consulship
was not permitted till after the lapse often years, while in the case
if the censorship it was altogether forbidden.(15)  No farther law was
passed in the period before us; but an increased stringency in its
application is obvious from the fact that, while the law as to the ten
years' interval was suspended in 537 during the continuance of the war
in Italy, there was no farther dispensation from it afterwards, and
indeed towards the close of this period re-election seldom occurred at
all.  Moreover, towards the end of this epoch (574) a decree of the
people was issued, binding the candidates for public magistracies to
undertake them in a fixed order of succession, and to observe certain
intervals between the offices, and certain limits of age.  Custom,
indeed, had long prescribed both of these; but it was a sensibly
felt restriction of the freedom of election, when the customary
qualification was raised into a legal requirement, and the right of
disregarding such requirements in extraordinary cases was withdrawn
from the elective body.  In general, admission to the senate was
thrown open to persons belonging to the ruling families without
distinction as to ability, while not only were the poorer and humbler
ranks of the population utterly precluded from access to the offices
of government, but all Roman burgesses not belonging to the hereditary
aristocracy were practically excluded, not indeed exactly from the
senate, but from the two highest magistracies, the consulship and the
censorship.  After Manius Curius and Gaius Fabricius,(16) no instance
can be pointed out of a consul who did not belong to the social
aristocracy, and probably no instance of the kind occurred at all.
But the number of the -gentes-, which appear for the first time in the
lists of consuls and censors in the half-century from the beginning of
the war with Hannibal to the close of that with Perseus, is extremely
limited; and by far the most of these, such as the Flaminii, Terentii,
Porcii, Acilii, and Laelii, may be referred to elections by the
opposition, or are traceable to special aristocratic connections.
The election of Gaius Laelius in 564, for instance, was evidently
due to the Scipios.  The exclusion of the poorer classes from the
government was, no doubt, required by the altered circumstances of the
case.  Now that Rome had ceased to be a purely Italian state and had
adopted Hellenic culture, it was no longer possible to take a small
farmer from the plough and to set him at the head of the community.
But it was neither necessary nor beneficial that the elections should
almost without exception be confined to the narrow circle of the
curule houses, and that a "new man" could only make his way into that
circle by a sort of usurpation.(17)  No doubt a certain hereditary
character was inherent not merely in the nature of the senate as
an institution, in so far as it rested from the outset on a
representation of the clans,(18) but in the nature of aristocracy
generally, in so far as statesmanly wisdom and statesmanly experience
are bequeathed from the able father to the able son, and the inspiring
spirit of an illustrious ancestry fans every noble spark within the
human breast into speedier and more brilliant flame.  In this sense
the Roman aristocracy had been at all times hereditary; in fact, it
had displayed its hereditary character with great naivete in the old
custom of the senator taking his sons with him to the senate, and of
the public magistrate decorating his sons, as it were by anticipation,
with the insignia of the highest official honour--the purple border of
the consular, and the golden amulet-case of the triumphator.  But,
while in the earlier period the hereditariness of the outward dignity
had been to a certain extent conditioned by the inheritance of
intrinsic worth, and the senatorial aristocracy had guided the state
not primarily by virtue of hereditary right, but by virtue of the
highest of all rights of representation--the right of the excellent,
as contrasted with the ordinary, man--it sank in this epoch (and with
specially great rapidity after the end of the Hannibalic war) from its
original high position, as the aggregate of those in the community who
were most experienced in counsel and action, down to an order of lords
filling up its ranks by hereditary succession, and exercising
collegiate misrule.

Family Government

Indeed, matters had already at this time reached such a height, that
out of the grave evil of oligarchy there emerged the still worse evil
of usurpation of power by particular families.  We have already
spoken(19) of the offensive family-policy of the conqueror of Zama,
and of his unhappily successful efforts to cover with his own laurels
the incapacity and pitifulness of his brother; and the nepotism of the
Flaminini was, if possible, still more shameless and scandalous than
that of the Scipios.  Absolute freedom of election in fact turned to
the advantage of such coteries far more than of the electing body.
The election of Marcus Valerius Corvus to the consulship at twenty-
three had doubtless been for the benefit of the state; but now, when
Scipio obtained the aedileship at twenty-three and the consulate at
thirty, and Flamininus, while not yet thirty years of age, rose from
the quaestorship to the consulship, such proceedings involved serious
danger to the republic.  Things had already reached such a pass, that
the only effective barrier against family rule and its consequences
had to be found in a government strictly oligarchical; and this was
the reason why even the party otherwise opposed to the oligarchy
agreed to restrict the freedom of election.

Government of the Nobility
Internal Administration

The government bore the stamp of this gradual change in the spirit of
the governing class.  It is true that the administration of external
affairs was still dominated at this epoch by that consistency and
energy, by which the rule of the Roman community over Italy had been
established.  During the severe disciplinary times of the war as to
Sicily the Roman aristocracy had gradually raised itself to the height
of its new position; and if it unconstitutionally usurped for the
senate functions of government which by right foil to be shared
between the magistrates and the comitia alone, it vindicated the step
by its certainly far from brilliant, but sure and steady, pilotage
of the vessel of the state during the Hannibalic storm and the
complications thence arising, and showed to the world that the Roman
senate was alone able, and in many respects alone deserved, to rule
the wide circle of the Italo-Hellenic states.  But admitting the noble
attitude of the ruling Roman senate in opposition to the outward foe
--an attitude crowned with the noblest results--we may not overlook
the fact, that in the less conspicuous, and yet far more important
and far more difficult, administration of the internal affairs of the
state, both the treatment of the existing arrangements and the new
institutions betray an almost opposite spirit, or, to speak more
correctly, indicate that the opposite tendency has already acquired
the predominance in this field.

Decline in the Administration

In relation, first of all, to the individual burgess the government
was no longer what it had been.  The term "magistrate" meant a man who
was more than other men; and, if he was the servant of the community,
he was for that very reason the master of every burgess.  But the
tightness of the rein was now visibly relaxed.  Where coteries and
canvassing flourish as they did in the Rome of that age, men are chary
of forfeiting the reciprocal services of their fellows or the favour
of the multitude by stern words and impartial discharge of official
duty.  If now and then magistrates appeared who displayed the gravity
and the sternness of the olden time, they were ordinarily, like Cotta
(502) and Cato, new men who had not sprung from the bosom of the
ruling class.  It was already something singular, when Paullus, who
had been named commander-in-chief against Perseus, instead of
tendering his thanks in the usual manner to the burgesses, declared
to them that he presumed they had chosen him as general because
they accounted him the most capable of command, and requested them
accordingly not to help him to command, but to be silent and obey.

As to Military Discipline and Administration of Justice

The supremacy and hegemony of Rome in the territories of the
Mediterranean rested not least on the strictness of her military
discipline and her administration of justice.  Undoubtedly she was
still, on the whole, at that time infinitely superior in these
respects to the Hellenic, Phoenician, and Oriental states, which were
without exception thoroughly disorganized; nevertheless grave abuses
were already occurring in Rome.  We have previously(20) pointed out
how the wretched character of the commanders-in-chief--and that not
merely in the case of demagogues chosen perhaps by the opposition,
like Gaius Flaminius and Gaius Varro, but of men who were good
aristocrats--had already in the third Macedonian war imperilled the
weal of the state.  And the mode in which justice was occasionally
administered is shown by the scene in the camp of the consul Lucius
Quinctius Flamininus at Placentia (562).  To compensate a favourite
youth for the gladiatorial games of the capital, which through his
attendance on the consul he had missed the opportunity of seeing, that
great lord had ordered a Boian of rank who had taken refuge in the
Roman camp to be summoned, and had killed him at a banquet with his
own hand.  Still worse than the occurrence itself, to which various
parallels might be adduced, was the fact that the perpetrator was not
brought to trial; and not only so, but when the censor Cato on account
of it erased his name from the roll of the senate, his fellow-senators
invited the expelled to resume his senatorial stall in the theatre
--he was, no doubt, the brother of the liberator of the Greeks,
and one of the most powerful coterie-leaders in the senate.

As to the Management of Finances

The financial system of the Roman community also retrograded rather
than advanced during this epoch.  The amount of their revenues,
indeed, was visibly on the increase.  The indirect taxes--there were
no direct taxes in Rome--increased in consequence of the enlargement
of the Roman territory, which rendered it necessary, for example, to
institute new customs-offices along the Campanian and Bruttian coasts
at Puteoli, Castra (Squillace), and elsewhere, in 555 and 575.  The
same reason led to the new salt-tariff of 550 fixing the scale of
prices at which salt was to be sold in the different districts of
Italy, as it was no longer possible to furnish salt at one and the
same price to the Roman burgesses now scattered throughout the land;
but, as the Roman government probably supplied the burgesses with salt
at cost price, if not below it, this financial measure yielded no gain
to the state.  Still more considerable was the increase in the produce
of the domains.  The duty indeed, which of right was payable to the
treasury from the Italian domain-lands granted for occupation, was in
the great majority of cases neither demanded nor paid.  On the other
hand the -scriptura- was retained; and not only so, but the domains
recently acquired in the second Punic war, particularly the greater
portion of the territory of Capua(21) and that of Leontini,(22)
instead of being given up to occupation, were parcelled out and let to
petty temporary lessees, and the attempts at occupation made in these
cases were opposed with more than usual energy by the government; by
which means the state acquired a considerable and secure source of
income.  The mines of the state also, particularly the important
Spanish mines, were turned to profit on lease.  Lastly, the revenue
was augmented by the tribute of the transmarine subjects.  From
extraordinary sources very considerable sums accrued during this epoch
to the state treasury, particularly the produce of the spoil in the
war with Antiochus, 200 millions of sesterces (2,000,000 pounds), and
that of the war with Perseus, 210 millions of sesterces (2,100,000
pounds)--the latter, the largest sum in cash which ever came at one
time into the Roman treasury.

But this increase of revenue was for the most part counterbalanced by
the increasing expenditure.  The provinces, Sicily perhaps excepted,
probably cost nearly as much as they yielded; the expenditure on
highways and other structures rose in proportion to the extension of
territory; the repayment also of the advances (-tributa-) received
from the freeholder burgesses during times of severe war formed a
burden for many a year afterwards on the Roman treasury.  To these
fell to be added very considerable losses occasioned to the revenue
by the mismanagement, negligence, or connivance of the supreme
magistrates.  Of the conduct of the officials in the provinces, of
their luxurious living at the expense of the public purse, of their
embezzlement more especially of the spoil, of the incipient system of
bribery and extortion, we shall speak in the sequel.  How the state
fared generally as regarded the farming of its revenues and the
contracts for supplies and buildings, may be estimated from the
circumstance, that the senate resolved in 587 to desist from the
working of the Macedonian mines that had fallen to Rome, because the
lessees of the minerals would either plunder the subjects or cheat
the exchequer--truly a naive confession of impotence, in which the
controlling board pronounced its own censure.  Not only was the duty
from the occupied domain-land allowed tacitly to fall into abeyance,
as has been already mentioned, but private buildings in the capital
and elsewhere were suffered to encroach on ground which was public
property, and the water from the public aqueducts was diverted to
private purposes: great dissatisfaction was created on one occasion
when a censor took serious steps against such trespassers, and
compelled them either to desist from the separate use of the public
property, or to pay the legal rate for the ground and water.  The
conscience of the Romans, otherwise in economic matters so scrupulous,
showed, so far as the community was concerned, a remarkable laxity.
"He who steals from a burgess," said Cato, "ends his days in chains
and fetters; but he who steals from the community ends them in gold
and purple."  If, notwithstanding the fact that the public property
of the Roman community was fearlessly and with impunity plundered by
officials and speculators, Polybius still lays stress on the rarity
of embezzlement in Rome, while Greece could hardly produce a single
official who had not touched the public money, and on the honesty with
which a Roman commissioner or magistrate would upon his simple word of
honour administer enormous sums, while in the case of the paltriest
sum in Greece ten letters were sealed and twenty witnesses were
required and yet everybody cheated, this merely implies that social
and economic demoralization had advanced much further in Greece than
in Rome, and in particular, that direct and palpable peculation was
not as yet so flourishing in the one case as in the other.  The
general financial result is most clearly exhibited to us by the state
of the public buildings, and by the amount of cash in the treasury.
We find in times of peace a fifth, in times of war a tenth, of the
revenues expended on public buildings; which, in the circumstances,
does not seem to have been a very copious outlay.  With these sums, as
well as with fines which were not directly payable into the treasury,
much was doubtless done for the repair of the highways in and near the
capital, for the formation of the chief Italian roads,(23) and for the
construction of public buildings.  Perhaps the most important of the
building operations in the capital, known to belong to this period,
was the great repair and extension of the network of sewers throughout
the city, contracted for probably in 570, for which 24,000,000
sesterces (240,000 pounds) were set apart at once, and to which it may
be presumed that the portions of the -cloacae- still extant, at least
in the main, belong.  To all appearance however, even apart from the
severe pressure of war, this period was inferior to the last section
of the preceding epoch in respect of public buildings; between 482 and
607 no new aqueduct was constructed at Rome.  The treasure of the
state, no doubt, increased; the last reserve in 545, when: they found
themselves under the necessity of laying hands on it, amounted only to
164,000 pounds (4000 pounds of gold);(24) whereas a short time after
the close of this period (597) close on 860,000 pounds in precious
metals were stored in the treasury.  But, when we take into account
the enormous extraordinary revenues which in the generation after the
close of the Hannibalic war came into the Roman treasury, the latter
sum surprises us rather by its smallness than by its magnitude.  So
far as with the extremely meagre statements before us it is allowable
to speak of results, the finances of the Roman state exhibit doubtless
an excess of income over expenditure, but are far from presenting a
brilliant result as a whole.

Italian Subjects
Passive Burgesses

The change in the spirit of the government was most distinctly
apparent in the treatment of the Italian and extra-Italian subjects of
the Roman community.  Formerly there had been distinguished in Italy
the ordinary, and the Latin, allied communities, the Roman burgesses
-sine suffragio- and the Roman burgesses with the full franchise.  Of
these four classes the third was in the course of this period almost
completely set aside, inasmuch as the course which had been earlier
taken with the communities of passive burgesses in Latium and Sabina,
was now applied also to those of the former Volscian territory, and
these gradually--the last perhaps being in the year 566 Arpinum,
Fundi, and Formiae--obtained full burgess-rights.  In Campania Capua
along with a number of minor communities in the neighbourhood was
broken up in consequence of its revolt from Rome in the Hannibalic
war.  Although some few communities, such as Velitrae in the Volscian
territory, Teanum and Cumae in Campania, may have remained on their
earlier legal footing, yet, looking at the matter in the main, this
franchise of a passive character may be held as now superseded.

Dediticii

On the other hand there emerged a new class in a position of
peculiar inferiority, without communal freedom and the right to
carry arms, and, in part, treated almost like public slaves
(-peregrini dediticii-); to which, in particular, the members of
the former Campanian, southern Picentine, and Bruttian communities,
that had been in alliance with Hannibal,(25) belonged.  To these were
added the Celtic tribes tolerated on the south side of the Alps, whose
position in relation to the Italian confederacy is indeed only known
imperfectly, but is sufficiently characterized as inferior by the
clause embodied in their treaties of alliance with Rome, that no
member of these communities should ever be allowed to acquire
Roman citizenship.(26)

Allies

The position of the non-Latin allies had, as we have mentioned
before,(27) undergone a change greatly to their disadvantage in
consequence of the Hannibalic war.  Only a few communities in this
category, such as Neapolis, Nola, Rhegium, and Heraclea, had during
all the vicissitudes of that war remained steadfastly on the Roman
side, and therefore retained their former rights as allies unaltered;
by far the greater portion were obliged in consequence of having
changed sides to acquiesce in a revision of the existing treaties to
their disadvantage.  The reduced position of the non-Latin allies is
attested by the emigration from their communities into the Latin:
when in 577 the Samnites and Paelignians applied to the senate for a
reduction of their contingents, their request was based on the ground
that during late years 4000 Samnite and Paelignian families had
migrated to the Latin colony of Fregellae.

Latins

That the Latins--which term now denoted the few towns in old Latium
that were not included in the Roman burgess-union, such as Tibur and
Praeneste, the allied cities placed in law on the same footing with
them, such as several of the Hernican towns, and the Latin colonies
dispersed throughout Italy--were still at this time in a better
position, is implied in their very name; but they too had, in
proportion, hardly less deteriorated.  The burdens imposed on them
were unjustly increased, and the pressure of military service was more
and more devolved from the burgesses upon them and the other Italian
allies.  For instance, in 536, nearly twice as many of the allies were
called out as of the burgesses: after the end of the Hannibalic war
all the burgesses received their discharge, but not all the allies;
the latter were chiefly employed for garrison duty and for the odious
service in Spain; in the triumphal largess of 577 the allies received
not as formerly an equal share with the burgesses, but only the half,
so that amidst the unrestrained rejoicing of that soldiers' carnival
the divisions thus treated as inferior followed the chariot of victory
in sullen silence: in the assignations of land in northern Italy the
burgesses received ten jugera of arable land each, the non-burgesses
three -jugera- each.  The unlimited liberty of migration had already
at an earlier period been taken from the Latin communities, and
migration to Rome was only allowed to them in the event of their
leaving behind children of their own and a portion of their estate in
the community which had been their home.(28)  But these burdensome
requirements were in various ways evaded or transgressed; and the
crowding of the burgesses of Latin townships to Rome, and the
complaints of their magistrates as to the increasing depopulation
of the cities and the impossibility under such circumstances of
furnishing the fixed contingent, led the Roman government to institute
police-ejections from the capital on a large scale (567, 577).  The
measure might be unavoidable, but it was none the less severely felt.
Moreover, the towns laid out by Rome in the interior of Italy began
towards the close of this period to receive instead of Latin rights
the full franchise, which previously had only been given to the
maritime colonies; and the enlargement of the Latin body by the
accession of new communities, which hitherto had gone on so regularly,
thus came to an end.  Aquileia, the establishment of which began in
571, was the latest of the Italian colonies of Rome that received
Latin rights; the full franchise was given to the colonies, sent forth
nearly at the same time, of Potentia, Pisaurum, Mutina, Parma, and
Luna (570-577).  The reason for this evidently lay in the decline of
the Latin as compared with the Roman franchise.  The colonists
conducted to the new settlements were always, and now more than ever,
chosen in preponderating number from the Roman burgesses; and even
among the poorer portion of these there was a lack of people willing,
for the sake even of acquiring considerable material advantages, to
exchange their rights as burgesses for those of the Latin franchise.

Roman Franchise More Difficult of Acquisition

Lastly, in the case of non-burgesses--communities as well as
individuals--admission to the Roman franchise was almost completely
foreclosed.  The earlier course incorporating the subject communities
in that of Rome had been dropped about 400, that the Roman burgess
body might not be too much decentralized by its undue extension; and
therefore communities of half-burgesses were instituted.(29)  Now
the centralization of the community was abandoned, partly through
the admission of the half-burgess communities to the full franchise,
partly through the accession of numerous more remote burgess-colonies
to its ranks; but the older system of incorporation was not resumed
with reference to the allied communities.  It cannot be shown that
after the complete subjugation of Italy even a single Italian
community exchanged its position as an ally for the Roman franchise;
probably none after that date in reality acquired it Even the
transition of individual Italians to the Roman franchise was confined
almost solely to the case of magistrates of the Latin communities(30)
and, by special favour, of individual non-burgesses admitted to share
it at the founding of burgess-colonies.(31)

It cannot be denied that these changes -de facto- and -de jure- in
the relations of the Italian subjects exhibit at least an intimate
connection and consistency.  The situation of the subject classes was
throughout deteriorated in proportion to the gradations previously
subsisting, and, while the government had formerly endeavoured to
soften the distinctions and to provide means of transition from one to
another, now the intermediate links were everywhere set aside and the
connecting bridges were broken down.  As within the Roman burgess-body
the ruling class separated itself from the people, uniformly withdrew
from public burdens, and uniformly took for itself the honours and
advantages, so the burgesses in their turn asserted their distinction
from the Italian confederacy, and excluded it more and more from the
joint enjoyment of rule, while transferring to it a double or triple
share in the common burdens.  As the nobility, in relation to the
plebeians, returned to the close exclusiveness of the declining
patriciate, so did the burgesses in relation to the non-burgesses;
the plebeiate, which had become great through the liberality of
its institutions, now wrapped itself up in the rigid maxims of
patricianism.  The abolition of the passive burgesses cannot in itself
be censured, and, so far as concerned the motive which led to it,
belongs presumably to another connection to be discussed afterwards;
but through its abolition an intermediate link was lost.  Far more
fraught with peril, however, was the disappearance of the distinction
between the Latin and the other Italian communities.  The privileged
position of the Latin nation within Italy was the foundation of the
Roman power; that foundation gave way, when the Latin towns began to
feel that they were no longer privileged partakers in the dominion of
the powerful cognate community, but substantially subjects of Rome
like the rest, and when all the Italians began to find their position
equally intolerable.  It is true, that there were still distinctions:
the Bruttians and their companions in misery were already treated
exactly like slaves and conducted themselves accordingly, deserting,
for instance, from the fleet in which they served as galley-slaves,
whenever they could, and gladly taking service against Rome; and the
Celtic, and above all the transmarine, subjects formed by the side of
the Italians a class still more oppressed and intentionally abandoned
by the government to contempt and maltreatment at the hands of the
Italians.  But such distinctions, while implying a gradation of
classes among the subjects, could not withal afford even a remote
compensation for the earlier contrast between the cognate, and the
alien, Italian subjects.  A profound dissatisfaction prevailed through
the whole Italian confederacy, and fear alone prevented it from
finding loud expression.  The proposal made in the senate after the
battle at Cannae, to give the Roman franchise and a seat in the senate
to two men from each Latin community, was made at an unseasonable
time, and was rightly rejected; but it shows the apprehension with
which men in the ruling community even then viewed the relations
between Latium and Rome.  Had a second Hannibal now carried the war to
Italy, it may be doubted whether he would have again been thwarted by
the steadfast resistance of the Latin name to a foreign domination.

The Provinces

But by far the most important institution which this epoch introduced
into the Roman commonwealth, and that at the same time which involved
the most decided and fatal deviation from the course hitherto pursued,
was the new provincial magistracies.  The earlier state-law of Rome
knew nothing of tributary subjects: the conquered communities were
either sold into slavery, or merged in the Roman commonwealth, or
lastly, admitted to an alliance which secured to them at least
communal independence and freedom from taxation.  But the Carthaginian
possessions in Sicily, Sardinia, and Spain, as well as the kingdom of
Hiero, had paid tribute and rent to their former masters: if Rome was
desirous of retaining these possessions at all, it was in the judgment
of the short-sighted the most judicious, and undoubtedly the most
convenient, course to administer the new territories entirely in
accordance with the rules heretofore observed.  Accordingly the Romans
simply retained the Carthagino-Hieronic provincial constitution, and
organized in accordance with it those provinces also, such as Hither
Spain, which they wrested from the barbarians.  It was the shirt of
Nessus which they inherited from the enemy.  Beyond doubt at first
the Roman government intended, in imposing taxes on their subjects,
not strictly to enrich themselves, but only to cover the cost of
administration and defence; but they already deviated from this
course, when they made Macedonia and Illyria tributary without
undertaking the government or the guardianship of the frontier there.
The fact, however, that they still maintained moderation in the
imposition of burdens was of little consequence, as compared with the
conversion of their sovereignty into a right yielding profit at all;
the fall was the same, whether a single apple was taken or the tree
was plundered.

Position of the Governors

Punishment followed in the steps of wrong.  The new provincial
system necessitated the appointment of governors, whose position was
absolutely incompatible not only with the welfare of the provinces,
but with the Roman constitution.  As the Roman community in the
provinces took the place of the former ruler of the land, so their
governor appeared there in the king's stead; the Sicilian praetor, for
example, resided in the palace of Hiero at Syracuse.  It is true, that
by right the governor nevertheless ought to administer his office with
republican honesty and frugality.  Cato, when governor of Sardinia,
appeared in the towns subject to him on foot and attended by a single
servant, who carried his coat and sacrificial ladle; and, when he
returned home from his Spanish governorship, he sold his war-horse
beforehand, because he did not hold himself entitled to charge the
state with the expenses of its transport.  There is no question that
the Roman governors--although certainly but few of them pushed their
conscientiousness, like Cato, to the verge of being niggardly and
ridiculous--made in many cases a powerful impression on the subjects,
more especially on the frivolous and unstable Greeks, by their old-
fashioned piety, by the reverential stillness prevailing at their
repasts, by their comparatively upright administration of office and
of justice, especially by their proper severity towards the worst
bloodsuckers of the provincials--the Roman revenue-farmers and
bankers--and in general by the gravity and dignity of their
deportment.  The provincials found their government comparatively
tolerable.  They had not been pampered by their Carthaginian stewards
and Syracusan masters, and they were soon to find occasion for
recalling with gratitude the present rods as compared with the coming
scorpions: it is easy to understand how, in later times, the sixth
century of the city appeared as the golden era of provincial rule.
But it was not practicable for any length of time to be at once
republican and king.  Playing the part of governors demoralized the
Roman ruling class \vith fearful rapidity.  Haughtiness and arrogance
towards the provincials were so natural in the circumstances, as
scarcely to form matter of reproach against the individual magistrate.
But already it was a rare thing--and the rarer, because the government
adhered rigidly to the old principle of not paying public officials
--that a governor returned with quite clean hands from his province;
it was already remarked upon as something singular that Paullus, the
conqueror of Pydna, did not take money.  The bad custom of delivering
to the governor "honorary wine" and other "voluntary" gifts seems as
old as the provincial constitution itself, and may perhaps have been
a legacy from the Carthaginians; even Cato in his administration of
Sardinia in 556 had to content himself with regulating and moderating
such contributions.  The right of the magistrates, and of those
travelling on the business of the state generally, to free quarters
and free conveyance was already employed as a pretext for exactions.
The more important right of the magistrate to make requisitions of
grain in his province--partly for the maintenance of himself and his
retinue (-in cellam-) partly for the provisioning of the army in case
of war, or on other special occasions at a fair valuation--was already
so scandalously abused, that on the complaint of the Spaniards the
senate in 583 found it necessary to withdraw from the governors the
right of fixing the price of the supplies for either purpose.(32)
Requisitions had begun to be made on the subjects even for the popular
festivals in Rome; the unmeasured vexatious demands made on the
Italian as well as extra-Italian communities by the aedile Tiberius
Sempronius Gracchus, for the festival which he had to provide, induced
the senate officially to interfere against them (572).  The liberties
which Roman magistrates at the close of this period allowed themselves
to take not only with the unhappy subjects, but even with the
dependent free-states and kingdoms, are illustrated by the raids of
Gaius Volso in Asia Minor,(33) and above all by the scandalous
proceedings in Greece during the war with Perseus.(34)

Control over the Governors
Supervision of the Senate over the Provinces and Their Governors

The government had no right to be surprised at such things, for it
provided no serious check on the excesses of this capricious military
administration.  Judicial control, it is true, was not entirely
wanting.  Although, according to the universal but more than
questionable rule of allowing no complaint to be brought against a
commander-in-chief during his term of office,(35) the Roman governor
could ordinarily be called to account only after the mischief had
been done, yet he was amenable both to a criminal and to a civil
prosecution.  In order to the institution of the former, a tribune of
the people by virtue of the judicial power pertaining to him had to
take the case in hand and bring it to the bar of the people; the civil
action was remitted by the senator who administered the corresponding
praetorship to a jury appointed, according to the constitution of the
tribunal in those times, from the ranks of the senate.  In both cases,
therefore, the control lay in the hands of the ruling class, and,
although the latter was still sufficiently upright and honourable not
absolutely to set aside well-founded complaints, and the senate even
in various instances, at the call of those aggrieved, condescended
itself to order the institution of a civil process, yet the complaints
of poor men and foreigners against powerful members of the ruling
aristocracy--submitted to judges and jurymen far remote from the scene
and, if not involved in the like guilt, at least belonging to the same
order as the accused--could from the first only reckon on success in
the event of the wrong being clear and crying; and to complain in vain
was almost certain destruction.  The aggrieved no doubt found a sort
of support in the hereditary relations of clientship, which the
subject cities and provinces entered into with their conquerors and
other Romans brought into close contact with them.  The Spanish
governors felt that no one could with impunity maltreat clients of
Cato; and the circumstance that the representatives of the three
nations conquered by Paullus--the Spaniards, Ligurians, and
Macedonians--would not forgo the privilege of carrying his bier to the
funeral pile, was the noblest dirge in honour of that noble man.  But
not only did this special protection give the Greeks opportunity to
display in Rome all their talent for abasing themselves in presence of
their masters, and to demoralize even those masters by their ready
servility--the decrees of the Syracusans in honour of Marcellus, after
he had destroyed and plundered their city and they had complained of
his conduct in these respects to the senate in vain, form one of the
most scandalous pages in the far from honourable annals of Syracuse
--but, in connection with the already dangerous family-politics, this
patronage on the part of great houses had also its politically
perilous side.  In this way the result perhaps was that the Roman
magistrates in some degree feared the gods and the senate, and for
the most part were moderate in their plundering; but they plundered
withal, and did so with impunity, if they but observed such
moderation.  The mischievous rule became established, that in the case
of minor exactions and moderate violence the Roman magistrate acted in
some measure within his sphere and was in law exempt from punishment,
so that those who were aggrieved had to keep silence; and from this
rule succeeding ages did not fail to draw the fatal consequences.
Nevertheless, even though the tribunals had been as strict as they
were lax, the liability to a judicial reckoning could only check
the worst evils.  The true security for a good administration lay
in a strict and uniform supervision by the supreme administrative
authority: and this the senate utterly failed to provide.  It was
in this respect that the laxity and helplessness of the collegiate
government became earliest apparent.  By right the governors ought to
have been subjected to an oversight far more strict and more special
than had sufficed for the administration of Italian municipal affairs;
and now, when the empire embraced great transmarine territories, the
arrangements, through which the government preserved to itself the
supervision of the whole, ought to have undergone a corresponding
expansion.  In both respects the reverse was the case.  The governors
ruled virtually as sovereign; and the most important of the
institutions serving for the latter purpose, the census of the empire,
was extended to Sicily alone, not to any of the provinces subsequently
acquired.  This emancipation of the supreme administrative officials
from the central authority was more than hazardous.  The Roman
governor, placed at the head of the armies of the state, and in
possession of considerable financial resources: subject to but a
lax judicial control, and practically independent of the supreme
administration; and impelled by a sort of necessity to separate the
interest of himself and of the people whom he governed from that of
the Roman community and to treat them as conflicting, far more
resembled a Persian satrap than one of the commissioners of the Roman
senate at the time of the Samnite wars.  The man, moreover, who had
just conducted a legalized military tyranny abroad, could with
difficulty find his way back to the common civic level, which
distinguished between those who commanded and those who obeyed, but
not between masters and slaves.  Even the government felt that their
two fundamental principles--equality within the aristocracy, and the
subordination of the power of the magistrates to the senatorial
college--began in this instance to give way in their hands.  The
aversion of the government to the acquisition of new provinces and to
the whole provincial system; the institution of the provincial
quaestorships, which were intended to take at least the financial
power out of the hands of the governors; and the abolition of the
arrangement--in itself so judicious--for a longer tenure of such
offices,(36) very clearly evince the anxiety felt by the more far-
seeing of the Roman statesmen as to the fruits of the seed thus sown.
But diagnosis is not cure.  The internal government of the nobility
continued to follow the direction once given to it; and the decay of
the administration and of the financial system--paving the way for
future revolutions and usurpations--steadily pursued its course,
if not unnoticed, yet unchecked.

The Opposition

If the new nobility was less sharply defined than the old aristocracy
of the clans, and if the encroachment on the other burgesses as
respected the joint enjoyment of political rights was in the one
case -de jure-, in the other only -de facto-, the second form of
inferiority was for that very reason worse to bear and worse to throw
off than the first.  Attempts to throw it off were, as a matter of
course, not wanting.  The opposition rested on the support of the
public assembly, as the nobility did on the senate: in order to
understand the opposition, we must first describe the Roman burgess-
body during this period as regards its spirit and its position in the
commonwealth.

Character of the Roman Burgess-Body

Whatever could be demanded of an assembly of burgesses like the Roman,
which was not the moving spring, but the firm foundation, of the whole
machinery--a sure perception of the common good, a sagacious deference
towards the right leader, a steadfast spirit in prosperous and evil
days, and, above all, the capacity of sacrificing the individual for
the general welfare and the comfort of the present for the advantage
of the future--all these qualities the Roman community exhibited in so
high a degree that, when we look to its conduct as a whole, all
censure is lost in reverent admiration.  Even now good sense and
discretion still thoroughly predominated.  The whole conduct of
the burgesses with reference to the government as well as to the
opposition shows quite clearly that the same mighty patriotism before
which even the genius of Hannibal had to quit the field prevailed also
in the Roman comitia.  No doubt they often erred; but their errors
originated not in the mischievous impulses of a rabble, but in the
narrow views of burgesses and farmers.  The machinery, however, by
means of which the burgesses intervened in the course of public
affairs became certainly more and more unwieldy, and the circumstances
in which they were placed through their own great deeds far outgrew
their power to deal with them.  We have already stated, that in the
course of this epoch most of the former communities of passive
burgesses, as well as a considerable number of newly established
colonies, received the full Roman franchise.(37)  At the close of this
period the Roman burgess-body, in a tolerably compact mass, filled
Latium in its widest sense, Sabina, and a part of Campania, so that it
reached on the west coast northward to Caere and southward to Cumae;
within this district there were only a few cities not included in it,
such as Tibur, Praeneste, Signia, Norba, and Ferentinum.  To this
fell to be added the maritime colonies on the coasts of Italy which
uniformly possessed the full Roman franchise, the Picenian and Trans-
Apennine colonies of the most recent times, to which the franchise
must have been conceded,(38) and a very considerable number of Roman
burgesses, who, without forming separate communities in a strict
sense, were scattered throughout Italy in market-villages and hamlets
(-fora et conciliabula-).  To some extent the unwieldiness of a civic
community so constituted was remedied, for the purposes of justice(39)
and of administration, by the deputy judges previously mentioned;(40)
and already perhaps the maritime(41) and the new Picenian and Trans-
Apennine colonies exhibited at least the first lineaments of the
system under which afterwards smaller urban communities were organized
within the great city-commonwealth of Rome.  But in all political
questions the primary assembly in the Roman Forum remained alone
entitled to act; and it is obvious at a glance, that this assembly
was no longer, in its composition or in its collective action, what
it had been when all the persons entitled to vote could exercise their
privilege as citizens by leaving their farms in the morning and
returning home the same evening.  Moreover the government--whether
from want of judgment, from negligence, or from any evil design, we
cannot tell--no longer as formerly enrolled the communities admitted
to the franchise after 513 in newly instituted election-districts, but
included them along with others in the old; so that gradually each
tribe came to be composed of different townships scattered over the
whole Roman territory.  Election-districts such as these, containing
on an average 8000--the urban naturally having more, the rural fewer
--persons entitled to vote, without local connection or inward unity,
no longer admitted of any definite leading or of any satisfactory
previous deliberation; disadvantages which must have been the more
felt, since the voting itself was not preceded by any free debate.
Moreover, while the burgesses had quite sufficient capacity to discern
their communal interests, it was foolish and utterly ridiculous to
leave the decision of the highest and most difficult questions which
the power that ruled the world had to solve to a well-disposed but
fortuitous concourse of Italian farmers, and to allow the nomination
of generals and the conclusion of treaties of state to be finally
judged of by people who understood neither the grounds nor the
consequences of their decrees.  In all matters transcending mere
communal affairs the Roman primary assemblies accordingly played a
childish and even silly part.  As a rule, the people stood and gave
assent to all proposals; and, when in exceptional instances they of
their own impulse refused assent, as on occasion of the declaration
of war against Macedonia in 554,(42) the policy of the market-place
certainly made a pitiful opposition--and with a pitiful issue--to the
policy of the state.

Rise of a City Rabble

At length the rabble of clients assumed a position, formally of
equality and often even, practically, of superiority, alongside of
the class of independent burgesses.  The institutions out of which it
sprang were of great antiquity.  From time immemorial the Roman of
quality exercised a sort of government over his freedmen and
dependents, and was consulted by them in all their more important
affairs; a client, for instance, was careful not to give his children
in marriage without having obtained the consent of his patron, and
very often the latter directly arranged the match.  But as the
aristocracy became converted into a special ruling class concentrating
in its hands not only power but also wealth, the clients became
parasites and beggars; and the new adherents of the rich undermined
outwardly and inwardly the burgess class.  The aristocracy not only
tolerated this sort of clientship, but worked it financially and
politically for their own advantage.  Thus, for instance, the old
penny collections, which hitherto had taken place chiefly for
religious purposes and at the burial of men of merit, were now
employed by lords of high standing--for the first time by Lucius
Scipio, in 568, on occasion of a popular festival which he had in
contemplation--for the purpose of levying on extraordinary occasions a
contribution from the public.  Presents were specially placed under
legal restriction (in 550), because the senators began under that name
to take regular tribute from their clients.  But the retinue of
clients was above all serviceable to the ruling class as a means of
commanding the comitia; and the issue of the elections shows clearly
how powerfully the dependent rabble already at this epoch competed
with the independent middle class.

The very rapid increase of the rabble in the capital particularly,
which is thus presupposed, is also demonstrable otherwise.  The
increasing number and importance of the freedmen are shown by the very
serious discussions that arose in the previous century,(43) and were
continued during the present, as to their right to vote in the public
assemblies, and by the remarkable resolution, adopted by the senate
during the Hannibalic war, to admit honourable freedwomen to a
participation in the public collections, and to grant to the
legitimate children of manumitted fathers the insignia hitherto
belonging only to the children of the free-born.(44)  The majority of
the Hellenes and Orientals who settled in Rome were probably little
better than the freedmen, for national servility clung as indelibly
to the former as legal servility to the latter.

Systematic Corruption of the Multitude
Distributions of Grain

But not only did these natural causes co-operate to produce a
metropolitan rabble: neither the nobility nor the demagogues,
moreover, can be acquitted from the reproach of having systematically
nursed its growth, and of having undermined, so far as in them lay,
the old public spirit by flattery of the people and things still
worse.  The electors as a body were still too respectable to admit of
direct electoral corruption showing itself on a great scale; but the
favour of those entitled to vote was indirectly courted by methods far
from commendable.  The old obligation of the magistrates, particularly
of the aediles, to see that corn could be procured at a moderate price
and to superintend the games, began to degenerate into the state of
things which at length gave rise to the horrible cry of the city
populace under the Empire, "Bread for nothing and games for ever!"
Large supplies of grain, cither placed by the provincial governors at
the disposal of the Roman market officials, or delivered at Rome free
of cost by the provinces themselves for the purpose of procuring
favour with particular Roman magistrates, enabled the aediles, from
the middle of the sixth century, to furnish grain to the population of
the capital at very low prices.  "It was no wonder," Cato considered,
"that the burgesses no longer listened to good advice--the belly
forsooth had no ears."

Festivals

Popular amusements increased to an alarming extent.  For five hundred
years the community had been content with one festival in the year,
and with one circus.  The first Roman demagogue by profession, Gaius
Flaminius, added a second festival and a second circus (534);(45) and
by these institutions--the tendency of which is sufficiently indicated
by the very name of the new festival, "the plebeian games"--he
probably purchased the permission to give battle at the Trasimene
lake.  When the path was once opened, the evil made rapid progress.
The festival in honour of Ceres, the goddess who protected the
plebeian order,(46) must have been but little, if at all, later than
the plebeian games.  On the suggestion of the Sibylline and Marcian
prophecies, moreover, a fourth festival was added in 542 in honour of
Apollo, and a fifth in 550 in honour of the "Great Mother" recently
transplanted from Phrygia to Rome.  These were the severe years of
the Hannibalic war--on the first celebration of the games of Apollo
the burgesses were summoned from the circus itself to arms; the
superstitious fear peculiar to Italy was feverishly excited, and
persons were not wanting who took advantage of the opportunity to
circulate Sibylline and prophetic oracles and to recommend themselves
to the multitude through their contents and advocacy: we can scarcely
blame the government, which was obliged to call for so enormous
sacrifices from the burgesses, for yielding in such matters.  But what
was once conceded had to be continued; indeed, even in more peaceful
times (581) there was added another festival, although of minor
importance--the games in honour of Flora.  The cost of these new
festal amusements was defrayed by the magistrates entrusted with the
providing of the respective festivals from their own means: thus the
curule aediles had, over and above the old national festival, those
of the Mother of the Gods and of Flora; the plebeian aediles had the
plebeian festival and that of Ceres, and the urban praetor the
Apollinarian games.  Those who sanctioned the new festivals perhaps
excused themselves in their own eyes by the reflection that they were
not at any rate a burden on the public purse; but it would have been
in reality far less injurious to burden the public budget with a
number of useless expenses, than to allow the providing of an
amusement for the people to become practically a qualification for
holding the highest office in the state.  The future candidates for
the consulship soon entered into a mutual rivalry in their expenditure
on these games, which incredibly increased their cost; and, as may
well be conceived, it did no harm if the consul expectant gave,
over and above this as it were legal contribution, a voluntary
"performance" (-munus-), a gladiatorial show at his own expense for
the public benefit.  The splendour of the games became gradually the
standard by which the electors measured the fitness of the candidates
for the consulship.  The nobility had, in truth, to pay dear for their
honours--a gladiatorial show on a respectable scale cost 720,000
sesterces (7200 pounds)--but they paid willingly, since by this
means they absolutely precluded men who were not wealthy from a
political career.

Squandering of the Spoil

Corruption, however, was not restricted to the Forum; it was
transferred even to the camp.  The old burgess militia had reckoned
themselves fortunate when they brought home a compensation for the
toil of war, and, in the event of success, a trifling gift as a
memorial of victory.  The new generals, with Scipio Africanus at their
head, lavishly scattered amongst their troops the money of Rome as
well as the proceeds of the spoil: it was on this point, that Cato
quarrelled with Scipio during the last campaigns against Hannibal in
Africa.  The veterans from the second Macedonian war and that waged in
Asia Minor already returned home throughout as wealthy men: even the
better class began to commend a general, who did not appropriate the
gifts of the provincials and the gains of war entirely to himself and
his immediate followers, and from whose camp not a few men returned
with gold, and many with silver, in their pockets: men began to forget
that the moveable spoil was the property of the state.  When Lucius
Paullus again dealt with it in the old mode, his own soldiers,
especially the volunteers who had been allured in numbers by the
prospect of rich plunder, fell little short of refusing to the
victor of Pydna by popular decree the honour of a triumph--an honour
which they already threw away on every one who had subjugated three
Ligurian villages.

Decline of Warlike Spirit

How much the military discipline and the martial spirit of the
burgesses suffered from this conversion of war into a traffic in
plunder, may be traced in the campaigns against Perseus; and the
spread of cowardice was manifested in a way almost scandalous during
the insignificant Istrian war (in 576).  On occasion of a trifling
skirmish magnified by rumour to gigantic dimensions, the land army
and the naval force of the Romans, and even the Italians, ran off
homeward, and Cato found it necessary to address a special reproof to
his countrymen for their cowardice.  In this too the youth of quality
took precedence.  Already during the Hannibalic war (545) the censors
found occasion to visit with severe penalties the remissness of those
who were liable to military service under the equestrian census.
Towards the close of this period (574?) a decree of the people
prescribed evidence of ten years' service as a qualification for
holding any public magistracy, with a view to compel the sons of
the nobility to enter the army.

Title-Hunting

But perhaps nothing so clearly evinces the decay of genuine pride and
genuine honour in high and low alike as the hunting after insignia and
titles, which appeared under different forms of expression, but with
substantial identity of character, among all ranks and classes.  So
urgent was the demand for the honour of a triumph that there was
difficulty in upholding the old rule, which accorded a triumph only
to the ordinary supreme magistrate who augmented the power of the
commonwealth in open battle, and thereby, it is true, not unfrequently
excluded from that honour the very authors of the most important
successes.  There was a necessity for acquiescence, while those
generals, who had in vain solicited, or had no prospect of attaining,
a triumph from the senate or the burgesses, marched in triumph on
their own account at least to the Alban Mount (first in 523).  No
combat with a Ligurian or Corsican horde was too insignificant to be
made a pretext for demanding a triumph.  In order to put an end to the
trade of peaceful triumphators, such as were the consuls of 574, the
granting of a triumph was made to depend on the producing proof of a
pitched battle which had cost the lives of at least 5000 of the enemy;
but this proof was frequently evaded by false bulletins--already in
houses of quality many an enemy's armour might be seen to glitter,
which had by no means come thither from the field of battle.  While
formerly the commander-in-chief of the one year had reckoned it an
honour to serve next year on the staff of his successor, the fact that
the consular Cato took service as a military tribune under Tiberius
Sempronius Longus (560) and Manius Glabrio (563;(47)), was now
regarded as a demonstration against the new-fashioned arrogance.
Formerly the thanks of the community once for all had sufficed for
service rendered to the state: now every meritorious act seemed to
demand a permanent distinction.  Already Gaius Duilius, the victor of
Mylae (494), had gained an exceptional permission that, when he walked
in the evening through the streets of the capital, he should be
preceded by a torch-bearer and a piper.  Statues and monuments, very
often erected at the expense of the person whom they purported to
honour, became so common, that it was ironically pronounced a
distinction to have none.  But such merely personal honours did not
long suffice.  A custom came into vogue, by which the victor and his
descendants derived a permanent surname from the victories they had
won--a custom mainly established by the victor of Zama who got himself
designated as the hero of Africa, his brother as the hero of Asia, and
his cousin as the hero of Spain.(48)  The example set by the higher
was followed by the humbler classes.  When the ruling order did not
disdain to settle the funeral arrangements for different ranks and to
decree to the man who had been censor a purple winding-sheet, it could
not complain of the freedmen for desiring that their sons at any rate
might be decorated with the much-envied purple border.  The robe, the
ring, and the amulet-case distinguished not only the burgess and the
burgess's wife from the foreigner and the slave, but also the person
who was free-born from one who had been a slave, the son of free-born,
from the son of manumitted, parents, the son of the knight and the
senator from the common burgess, the descendant of a curule house from
the common senator(49)--and this in a community where all that was
good and great was the work of civil equality!

The dissension in the community was reflected in the ranks of the
opposition.  Resting on the support of the farmers, the patriots
raised a loud cry for reform; resting on the support of the mob in
the capital, demagogism began its work.  Although the two tendencies
do not admit of being wholly separated but in various respects go hand
in hand, it will be necessary to consider them apart.

The Party of Reform
Cato

The party of reform emerges, as it were, personified in Marcus Porcius
Cato (520-605).  Cato, the last statesman of note belonging to that
earlier system which restricted its ideas to Italy and was averse to
universal empire, was for that reason accounted in after times the
model of a genuine Roman of the antique stamp; he may with greater
justice be regarded as the representative of the opposition of the
Roman middle class to the new Hellenico-cosmopolite nobility.  Brought
up at the plough, he was induced to enter on a political career by the
owner of a neighbouring estate, one of the few nobles who kept aloof
from the tendencies of the age, Lucius Valerius Flaccus.  That upright
patrician deemed the rough Sabine farmer the proper man to stem the
current of the times; and he was not deceived in his estimate.
Beneath the aegis of Flaccus, and after the good old fashion serving
his fellow-citizens and the commonwealth in counsel and action, Cato
fought his way up to the consulate and a triumph, and even to the
censorship.  Having in his seventeenth year entered the burgess-army,
he had passed through the whole Hannibalic war from the battle on the
Trasimene lake to that of Zama; had served under Marcellus and Fabius,
under Nero and Scipio; and at Tarentum and Sena, in Africa, Sardinia,
Spain, and Macedonia, had shown himself capable as a soldier, a staff-
officer, and a general.  He was the same in the Forum, as in the
battle-field.  His prompt and fearless utterance, his rough but
pungent rustic wit, his knowledge of Roman law and Roman affairs, his
incredible activity and his iron frame, first brought him into notice
in the neighbouring towns; and, when at length he made his appearance
on the greater arena of the Forum and the senate-house in the capital,
constituted him the most influential advocate and political orator of
his time.  He took up the key-note first struck by Manius Curius, his
ideal among Roman statesmen;(50) throughout his long life he made it
his task honestly, to the best of his judgment, to assail on all hands
the prevailing declension; and even in his eighty-fifth year he
battled in the Forum with the new spirit of the times.  He was
anything but comely--he had green eyes, his enemies alleged, and red
hair--and he was not a great man, still less a far-seeing statesman.
Thoroughly narrow in his political and moral views, and having the
ideal of the good old times always before his eyes and on his lips, he
cherished an obstinate contempt for everything new.  Deeming himself
by virtue of his own austere life entitled to manifest an unrelenting
severity and harshness towards everything and everybody; upright and
honourable, but without a glimpse of any duty lying beyond the sphere
of police order and of mercantile integrity; an enemy to all villany
and vulgarity as well as to all refinement and geniality, and above
all things the foe of his foes; he never made an attempt to stop evils
at their source, but waged war throughout life against symptoms, and
especially against persons.  The ruling lords, no doubt, looked down
with a lofty disdain on the ignoble growler, and believed, not without
reason, that they were far superior; but fashionable corruption in and
out of the senate secretly trembled in the presence of the old censor
of morals with his proud republican bearing, of the scar-covered
veteran from the Hannibalic war, and of the highly influential senator
and the idol of the Roman farmers.  He publicly laid before his noble
colleagues, one after another, his list of their sins; certainly
without being remarkably particular as to the proofs, and certainly
also with a peculiar relish in the case of those who had personally
crossed or provoked him.  With equal fearlessness he reproved and
publicly scolded the burgesses for every new injustice and every fresh
disorder.  His vehement attacks provoked numerous enemies, and he
lived in declared and irreconcilable hostility with the most powerful
aristocratic coteries of the time, particularly the Scipios and
Flaminini; he was publicly accused forty-four times.  But the farmers
--and it is a significant indication how powerful still in the Roman
middle class was the spirit which had enabled them to survive the day
of Cannae--never allowed the unsparing champion of reform to lack the
support of their votes.  Indeed when in 570 Cato and his like-minded
patrician colleague, Lucius Flaccus, solicited the censorship, and
announced beforehand that it was their intention when in that office
to undertake a vigorous purification of the burgess-body through all
its ranks, the two men so greatly dreaded were elected by the
burgesses notwithstanding all the exertions of the nobility; and the
latter were obliged to submit, while the great purgation actually took
place and erased among others the brother of Africanus from the roll
of the equites, and the brother of the deliverer of the Greeks from
the roll of the senate.

Police Reform

This warfare directed against individuals, and the various attempts to
repress the spirit of the age by means of justice and of police,
however deserving of respect might be the sentiments in which they
originated, could only at most stem the current of corruption for a
short time; and, while it is remarkable that Cato was enabled in spite
of that current, or rather by means of it, to play his political part,
it is equally significant that he was as little successful in getting
rid of the leaders of the opposite party as they were in getting rid
of him.  The processes of count and reckoning instituted by him and by
those who shared his views before the burgesses uniformly remained,
at least in the cases that were of political importance, quite as
ineffectual as the counter-accusations directed against him.  Nor was
much more effect produced by the police-laws, which were issued at
this period in unusual numbers, especially for the restriction of
luxury and for the introduction of a frugal and orderly housekeeping,
and some of which have still to be touched on in our view of the
national economics.

Assignations of Land

Far more practical and more useful were the attempts made to
counteract the spread of decay by indirect means; among which, beyond
doubt, the assignations of new farms out of the domain land occupy the
first place.  These assignations were made in great numbers and of
considerable extent in the period between the first and second war
with Carthage, and again from the close of the latter till towards the
end of this epoch.  The most important of them were the distribution
of the Picenian possessions by Gaius Flaminius in 522;(51) the
foundation of eight new maritime colonies in 560;(52) and above all
the comprehensive colonization of the district between the Apennines
and the Po by the establishment of the Latin colonies of Placentia,
Cremona,(53) Bononia,(54) and Aquileia,(55) and of the burgess-
colonies, Potentia, Pisaurum, Mutina, Parma, and Luna(56) in the years
536 and 565-577.  By far the greater part of these highly beneficial
foundations may be ascribed to the reforming party.  Cato and those
who shared his opinions demanded such measures, pointing, on the
one hand, to the devastation of Italy by the Hannibalic war and the
alarming diminution of the farms and of the free Italian population
generally, and, on the other, to the widely extended possessions of
the nobles--occupied along with, and similarly to, property of their
own--in Cisalpine Gaul, in Samnium, and in the Apulian and Bruttian
districts; and although the rulers of Rome did not probably comply
with these demands to the extent to which they might and should have
complied with them, yet they did not remain deaf to the warning voice
of so judicious a man.

Reforms in the Military Service

Of a kindred character was the proposal, which Cato made in the
senate, to remedy the decline of the burgess-cavalry by the
institution of four hundred new equestrian stalls.(57)  The exchequer
cannot have wanted means for the purpose; but the proposal appears to
have been thwarted by the exclusive spirit of the nobility and their
endeavour to remove from the burgess-cavalry those who were troopers
merely and not knights.  On the other hand, the serious emergencies of
the war, which even induced the Roman government to make an attempt
--fortunately unsuccessful--to recruit their armies after the Oriental
fashion from the slave-market,(58) compelled them to modify the
qualifications hitherto required for service in the burgess-army, viz.
a minimum census of 11,000 -asses- (43 pounds), and free birth.  Apart
from the fact that they took up for service in the fleet the persons
of free birth rated between 4000 -asses- (17 pounds) and 1500 -asses-
(6 pounds) and all the freedmen, the minimum census for the legionary
was reduced to 4000 -asses- (17 pounds); and, in case of need, both
those who were bound to serve in the fleet and the free-born rated
between 1500 -asses- (6 pounds) and 375 -asses- (1 pound 10 shillings)
were enrolled in the burgess-infantry.  These innovations, which
belong presumably to the end of the preceding or beginning of the
present epoch, doubtless did not originate in party efforts any more
than did the Servian military reform; but they gave a material impulse
to the democratic party, in so far as those who bore civic burdens
necessarily claimed and eventually obtained equalization of civic
rights.  The poor and the freedmen began to be of some importance in
the commonwealth from the time when they served it; and chiefly from
this cause arose one of the most important constitutional changes of
this epoch --the remodelling of the -comitia centuriata-, which most
probably took place in the same year in which the war concerning
Sicily terminated

Reform of the Centuries

According to the order of voting hitherto followed in the centuriate
comitia, although the freeholders were no longer--as down to the
reform of Appius Claudius(59) they had been--the sole voters, the
wealthy had the preponderance.  The equites, or in other words the
patricio-plebeian nobility, voted first, then those of the highest
rating, or in other words those who had exhibited to the censor an
estate of at least 100,000 -asses- (420 pounds);(60) and these two
divisions, when they kept together, had derided every vote.  The
suffrage of those assessed under the four following classes had been
of doubtful weight; that of those whose valuation remained below the
standard of the lowest class, 11,000 -asses- (43 pounds), had been
essentially illusory.  According to the new arrangement the right of
priority in voting was withdrawn from the equites, although they
retained their separate divisions, and it was transferred to a voting
division chosen from the first class by lot.  The importance of that
aristocratic right of prior voting cannot be estimated too highly,
especially at an epoch in which practically the influence of the
nobility on the burgesses at large was constantly on the increase.
Even the patrician order proper were still at this epoch powerful
enough to fill the second consulship and the second censorship, which
stood open in law alike to patricians and plebeians, solely with men
of their own body, the former up to the close of this period (till
582), the latter even for a generation longer (till 623); and in fact,
at the most perilous moment which the Roman republic ever experienced
--in the crisis after the battle of Cannae--they cancelled the quite
legally conducted election of the officer who was in all respects the
ablest--the plebeian Marcellus--to the consulship vacated by the death
of the patrician Paullus, solely on account of his plebeianism.  At
the same time it is a significant token of the nature even of this
reform that the right of precedence in voting was withdrawn only from
the nobility, not from those of the highest rating; the right of prior
voting withdrawn from the equestrian centuries passed not to a
division chosen incidentally by lot from the whole burgesses, but
exclusively to the first class.  This as well as the five grades
generally remained as they were; only the lower limit was probably
shifted in such a way that the minimum census was, for the right of
voting in the centuries as for service in the legion, reduced from
11,000 to 4000 -asses-.  Besides, the formal retention of the earlier
rates, while there was a general increase in the amount of men's
means, involved of itself in some measure an extension of the suffrage
in a democratic sense.  The total number of the divisions remained
likewise unchanged; but, while hitherto, as we have said, the 18
equestrian centuries and the 80 of the first class had, standing by
themselves, the majority in the 193 voting centuries, in the reformed
arrangement the votes of the first class were reduced to 70, with the
result that under all circumstances at least the second grade came to
vote.  Still more important, and indeed the real central element of
the reform, was the connection into which the new voting divisions
were brought with the tribal arrangement.  Formerly the centuries
originated from the tribes on the footing, that whoever belonged to a
tribe had to be enrolled by the censor in one of the centuries.  From
the time that the non-freehold burgesses had been enrolled in the
tribes, they too came thus into the centuries, and, while they were
restricted in the -comitia tributa- to the four urban divisions,
they had in the -comitia centuriata- formally the same right with
the freehold burgesses, although probably the censorial arbitrary
prerogative intervened in the composition of the centuries, and
granted to the burgesses enrolled in the rural tribes the
preponderance also in the centuriate assembly.  This preponderance was
established by the reformed arrangement on the legal footing, that of
the 70 centuries of the first class, two were assigned to each tribe
and, accordingly, the non-freehold burgesses obtained only eight of
them; in a similar way the preponderance must have been conceded also
in the four other grades to the freehold burgesses.  In a like spirit
the previous equalization of the freedmen with the free-born in the
right of voting was set aside at this time, and even the freehold
freedmen were assigned to the four urban tribes.  This was done in the
year 534 by one of the most notable men of the party of reform, the
censor Gaius Flaminius, and was then repeated and more stringently
enforced fifty years later (585) by the censor Tiberius Sempronius
Gracchus, the father of the two authors of the Roman revolution.  This
reform of the centuries, which perhaps in its totality proceeded
likewise from Flaminius, was the first important constitutional change
which the new opposition wrung from the nobility, the first victory of
the democracy proper.  The pith of it consists partly in the
restriction of the censorial arbitrary rule, partly in the restriction
of the influence of the nobility on the one hand, and of the non-
freeholders and the freedmen on the other, and so in the remodelling
of the centuriate comitia according to the principle which already
held good for the comitia of the tribes; a course which commended
itself by the circumstance that elections, projects of law, criminal
impeachments, and generally all affairs requiring the co-operation of
the burgesses, were brought throughout to the comitia of the tribes
and the more unwieldy centuries were but seldom called together,
except where it was constitutionally necessary or at least usual, in
order to elect the censors, consuls, and praetors, and in order to
resolve upon an aggressive war.

Thus this reform did not introduce a new principle into the
constitution, but only brought into general application the principle
that had long regulated the working of the practically more frequent
and more important form of the burgess-assemblies.  Its democratic,
but by no means demagogic, tendency is clearly apparent in the
position which it took up towards the proper supports of every really
revolutionary party, the proletariate and the freedmen.  For that
reason the practical significance of this alteration in the order of
voting regulating the primary assemblies must not be estimated too
highly.  The new law of election did not prevent, and perhaps did
not even materially impede, the contemporary formation of a new
politically privileged order.  It is certainly not owing to the mere
imperfection of tradition, defective as it undoubtedly is, that we are
nowhere able to point to a practical influence exercised by this much-
discussed reform on the course of political affairs.  An intimate
connection, we may add, subsisted between this reform, and the
already-mentioned abolition of the Roman burgess-communities -sine
suffragio-, which were gradually merged in the community of full
burgesses.  The levelling spirit of the party of progress suggested
the abolition of distinctions within the middle class, while the
chasm between burgesses and non-burgesses was at the same time
widened and deepened.

Results of the Efforts at Reform

Reviewing what the reform party of this age aimed at and obtained, we
find that it undoubtedly exerted itself with patriotism and energy to
check, and to a certain extent succeeded in checking, the spread of
decay--more especially the falling off of the farmer class and the
relaxation of the old strict and frugal habits--as well as the
preponderating political influence of the new nobility.  But we fail
to discover any higher political aim.  The discontent of the multitude
and the moral indignation of the better classes found doubtless in
this opposition their appropriate and powerful expression; but we do
not find either a clear insight into the sources of the evil, or any
definite and comprehensive plan of remedying it.  A certain want of
thought pervades all these efforts otherwise so deserving of honour,
and the purely defensive attitude of the defenders forebodes little
good for the sequel.  Whether the disease could be remedied at all by
human skill, remains fairly open to question; the Roman reformers of
this period seem to have been good citizens rather than good
statesmen, and to have conducted the great struggle between the
old civism and the new cosmopolitanism on their part after a somewhat
inadequate and narrow-minded fashion.

Demagogism

But, as this period witnessed the rise of a rabble by the side of the
burgesses, so it witnessed also the emergence of a demagogism that
flattered the populace alongside of the respectable and useful party
of opposition.  Cato was already acquainted with men who made a trade
of demagogism; who had a morbid propensity for speechifying, as others
had for drinking or for sleeping; who hired listeners, if they could
find no willing audience otherwise; and whom people heard as they
heard the market-crier, without listening to their words or, in the
event of needing help, entrusting themselves to their hands.  In his
caustic fashion the old man describes these fops formed after the
model of the Greek talkers of the agora, dealing in jests and
witticisms, singing and dancing, ready for anything; such an one was,
in his opinion, good for nothing but to exhibit himself as harlequin
in a procession and to bandy talk with the public--he would sell his
talk or his silence for a bit of bread.  In reality these demagogues
were the worst enemies of reform.  While the reformers insisted above
all things and in every direction on moral amendment, demagogism
preferred to insist on the limitation of the powers of the government
and the extension of those of the burgesses.

Abolition of the Dictatorship

Under the former head the most important innovation was the practical
abolition of the dictatorship.  The crisis occasioned by Quintus
Fabius and his popular opponents in 537(61) gave the death-blow to
this all-along unpopular institution.  Although the government once
afterwards, in 538, under the immediate impression produced by the
battle of Cannae, nominated a dictator invested with active command,
it could not again venture to do so in more peaceful times.  On
several occasions subsequently (the last in 552), sometimes after
a previous indication by the burgesses of the person to be nominated,
a dictator was appointed for urban business; but the office, without
being formally abolished, fell practically into desuetude.  Through
its abeyance the Roman constitutional system, so artificially
constructed, lost a corrective which was very desirable with reference
to its peculiar feature of collegiate magistrates;(62) and the
government, which was vested with the sole power of creating a
dictatorship or in other words of suspending the consuls, and
ordinarily designated also the person who was to be nominated as
dictator, lost one of its most important instruments.  Its place
was but very imperfectly supplied by the power--which the senate
thenceforth claimed--of conferring in extraordinary emergencies,
particularly on the sudden outbreak of revolt or war, a quasi-
dictatorial power on the supreme magistrates for the time being, by
instructing them "to take measures for the safety of the commonwealth
at their discretion," and thus creating a state of things similar to
the modern martial law.

Election of Priests by the Community

Along with this change the formal powers of the people in the
nomination of magistrates as well as in questions of government,
administration, and finance, received a hazardous extension.  The
priesthoods--particularly those politically most important, the
colleges of men of lore--according to ancient custom filled up the
vacancies in their own ranks, and nominated also their own presidents,
where these corporations had presidents at all; and in fact, for such
institutions destined to transmit the knowledge of divine things from
generation to generation, the only form of election in keeping with
their spirit was cooptation.  It was therefore--although not of great
political importance--significant of the incipient disorganization of
the republican arrangements, that at this time (before 542), while
election into the colleges themselves was left on its former footing,
the designation of the presidents--the -curiones- and -pontifices-
--from the ranks of those corporations was transferred from the
colleges to the community.  In this case, however, with a pious regard
for forms that is genuinely Roman, in order to avoid any error, only a
minority of the tribes, and therefore not the "people," completed the
act of election.

Interference of the Community in War and Administration

Of greater importance was the growing interference of the burgesses in
questions as to persons and things belonging to the sphere of military
administration and external policy.  To this head belong the
transference of the nomination of the ordinary staff-officers from the
general to the burgesses, which has been already mentioned;(63) the
elections of the leaders of the opposition as commanders-in-chief
against Hannibal;(64) the unconstitutional and irrational decree of
the people in 537, which divided the supreme command between the
unpopular generalissimo and his popular lieutenant who opposed him in
the camp as well as at home;(65) the tribunician complaint laid before
the burgesses, charging an officer like Marcellus with injudicious and
dishonest management of the war (545), which even compelled him to
come from the camp to the capital and there demonstrate his military
capacity before the public; the still more scandalous attempts to
refuse by decree of the burgesses to the victor of Pydna his
triumph;(66) the investiture--suggested, it is true, by the senate--of
a private man with extraordinary consular authority (544;(67)); the
dangerous threat of Scipio that, if the senate should refuse him the
chief command in Africa, he would seek the sanction of the burgesses
(549;(68)); the attempt of a man half crazy with ambition to extort
from the burgesses, against the will of the government, a declaration
of war in every respect unwarranted against the Rhodians (587;(69));
and the new constitutional axiom, that every state-treaty acquired
validity only through the ratification of the people.

Interference of the Community with the Finances

This joint action of the burgesses in governing and in commanding was
fraught in a high degree with peril.  But still more dangerous was
their interference with the finances of the state; not only because
any attack on the oldest and most important right of the government
--the exclusive administration of the public property--struck at the
root of the power of the senate, but because the placing of the most
important business of this nature--the distribution of the public
domains--in the hands of the primary assemblies of the burgesses
necessarily dug the grave of the republic.  To allow the primary
assembly to decree the transference of public property without limit
to its own pocket is not only wrong, but is the beginning of the end;
it demoralizes the best-disposed citizens, and gives to the proposer
a power incompatible with a free commonwealth.  Salutary as was the
distribution of the public land, and doubly blameable as was the
senate accordingly for omitting to cut off this most dangerous of all
weapons of agitation by voluntarily distributing the occupied lands,
yet Gaius Flaminius, when he came to the burgesses in 522 with the
proposal to distribute the domains of Picenum, undoubtedly injured the
commonwealth more by the means than he benefited it by the end.
Spurius Cassius had doubtless two hundred and fifty years earlier
proposed the same thing;(70) but the two measures, closely as they
coincided in the letter, were yet wholly different, inasmuch as
Cassius submitted a matter affecting the community to that community
while it was in vigour and self-governing, whereas Flaminius submitted
a question of state to the primary assembly of a great empire.

Nullity of the Comitia

Not the party of the government only, but the party of reform also,
very properly regarded the military, executive, and financial
government as the legitimate domain of the senate, and carefully
abstained from making full use of, to say nothing of augmenting, the
formal power vested in primary assemblies that were inwardly doomed to
inevitable dissolution.  Never even in the most limited monarchy was a
part so completely null assigned to the monarch as was allotted to the
sovereign Roman people: this was no doubt in more than one respect to
be regretted, but it was, owing to the existing state of the comitial
machine, even in the view of the friends of reform a matter of
necessity.  For this reason Cato and those who shared his views never
submitted to the burgesses a question, which trenched on government
strictly so called; and never, directly or indirectly, by decree of
the burgesses extorted from the senate the political or financial
measures which they wished, such as the declaration of war against
Carthage and the assignations of land.  The government of the senate
might be bad; the primary assemblies could not govern at all.  Not
that an evil-disposed majority predominated in them; on the contrary
the counsel of a man of standing, the loud call of honour, and the
louder call of necessity were still, as a rule, listened to in the
comitia, and averted the most injurious and disgraceful results.
The burgesses, before whom Marcellus pleaded his cause, ignominiously
dismissed his accuser, and elected the accused as consul for the
following year: they suffered themselves also to be persuaded of the
necessity of the war against Philip, terminated the war against
Perseus by the election of Paullus, and accorded to the latter his
well-deserved triumph.  But in order to such elections and such
decrees there was needed some special stimulus; in general the mass
having no will of its own followed the first impulse, and folly or
accident dictated the decision.

Disorganisation of Government

In the state, as in every organism, an organ which no longer
discharges its functions is injurious.  The nullity of the sovereign
assembly of the people involved no small danger.  Any minority in the
senate might constitutionally appeal to the comitia against the
majority.  To every individual, who possessed the easy art of
addressing untutored ears or of merely throwing away money, a path was
opened up for his acquiring a position or procuring a decree in his
favour, to which the magistrates and the government were formally
bound to do homage.  Hence sprang those citizen-generals, accustomed
to sketch plans of battle on the tables of taverns and to look down on
the regular service with compassion by virtue of their inborn genius
for strategy: hence those staff-officers, who owed their command to
the canvassing intrigues of the capital and, whenever matters looked
serious, had at once to get leave of absence -en masse-; and hence
the battles on the Trasimene lake and at Cannae, and the disgraceful
management of the war with Perseus.  At every step the government
was thwarted and led astray by those incalculable decrees of the
burgesses, and as was to be expected, most of all in the very
cases where it was most in the right.

But the weakening of the government and the weakening of the community
itself were among the lesser dangers that sprang from this demagogism.
Still more directly the factious violence of individual ambition
pushed itself forward under the aegis of the constitutional rights of
the burgesses.  That which formally issued forth as the will of the
supreme authority in the state was in reality very often the mere
personal pleasure of the mover; and what was to be the fate of a
commonwealth in which war and peace, the nomination and deposition of
the general and his officers, the public chest and the public
property, were dependent on the caprices of the multitude and its
accidental leaders?  The thunder-storm had not yet burst; but the
clouds were gathering in denser masses, and occasional peals of
thunder were already rolling through the sultry air.  It was a
circumstance, moreover, fraught with double danger, that the
tendencies which were apparently most opposite met together at their
extremes both as regarded ends and as regarded means.  Family policy
and demagogism carried on a similar and equally dangerous rivalry in
patronizing and worshipping the rabble.  Gaius Flaminius was regarded
by the statesmen of the following generation as the initiator of that
course from which proceeded the reforms of the Gracchi and--we may
add--the democratico-monarchical revolution that ensued.  But Publius
Scipio also, although setting the fashion to the nobility in
arrogance, title-hunting, and client-making, sought support for his
personal and almost dynastic policy of opposition to the senate in the
multitude, which he not only charmed by the dazzling effect of his
personal qualities, but also bribed by his largesses of grain; in the
legions, whose favour he courted by all means whether right or wrong;
and above all in the body of clients, high and low, that personally
adhered to him.  Only the dreamy mysticism, on which the charm as well
as the weakness of that remarkable man so largely depended, never
suffered him to awake at all, or allowed him to awake but imperfectly,
out of the belief that he was nothing, and that he desired to be
nothing, but the first burgess of Rome.

To assert the possibility of a reform would be as rash as to deny it:
this much is certain, that a thorough amendment of the state in all
its departments was urgently required, and that in no quarter was any
serious attempt made to accomplish it.  Various alterations in
details, no doubt, were made on the part of the senate as well as on
the part of the popular opposition.  The majorities in each were still
well disposed, and still frequently, notwithstanding the chasm that
separated the parties, joined hands in a common endeavour to effect
the removal of the worst evils.  But, while they did not stop the evil
at its source, it was to little purpose that the better-disposed
listened with anxiety to the dull murmur of the swelling flood and
worked at dikes and dams.  Contenting themselves with palliatives,
and failing to apply even these--especially such as were the most
important, the improvement of justice, for instance, and the
distribution of the domains--in proper season and due measure, they
helped to prepare evil days for their posterity.  By neglecting to
break up the field at the proper time, they allowed weeds even to
ripen which they had not sowed.  To the later generations who survived
the storms of revolution the period after the Hannibalic war appeared
the golden age of Rome, and Cato seemed the model of the Roman
statesman.  It was in reality the lull before the storm and the epoch
of political mediocrities, an age like that of the government of
Walpole in England; and no Chatham was found in Rome to infuse fresh
energy into the stagnant life of the nation.  Wherever we cast our
eyes, chinks and rents are yawning in the old building; we see workmen
busy sometimes in filling them up, sometimes in enlarging them; but we
nowhere perceive any trace of preparations for thoroughly rebuilding
or renewing it, and the question is no longer whether, but simply
when, the structure will fall.  During no epoch did the Roman
constitution remain formally so stable as in the period from the
Sicilian to the third Macedonian war and for a generation beyond it;
but the stability of the constitution was here, as everywhere, not a
sign of the health of the state, but a token of incipient sickness and
the harbinger of revolution.




Notes for Chapter XI


1. II. III. New Aristocracy

2. II. III. New Opposition

3. II. III. Military Tribunes with Consular Powers

4. All these insignia probably belonged on their first emergence only
to the nobility proper, i. e. to the agnate descendants of curule
magistrates; although, after the manner of such decorations, all of
them in course of time were extended to a wider circle.  This can be
distinctly proved in the case of the gold finger-ring, which in the
fifth century was worn only by the nobility (Plin. H. N., xxxiii. i.
18), in the sixth by every senator and senator's son (Liv. xxvi. 36),
in the seventh by every one of equestrian rank, under the empire by
every one who was of free birth.  So also with the silver trappings,
which still, in the second Punic war, formed a badge of the nobility
alone (Liv. xxvi. 37); and with the purple border of the boys' toga,
which at first was granted only to the sons of curule magistrates,
then to the sons of equites, afterwards to those of all free-born
persons, lastly--yet as early as the time of the second Punic war
--even to the sons of freedmen (Macrob. Sat. i. 6).  The golden
amulet-case (-bulla-) was a badge of the children of senators in the
time of the second Punic war (Macrob. l. c.; Liv. xxvi. 36), in that
of Cicero as the badge of the children of the equestrian order (Cic.
Verr. i. 58, 152), whereas children of inferior rank wore the leathern
amulet (-lorum-).  The purple stripe (-clavus-) on the tunic was a
badge of the senators (I. V. Prerogatives of the Senate) and of the
equites, so that at least in later times the former wore it broad, the
latter narrow; with the nobility the -clavus- had nothing to do.

5. II. III. Civic Equality

6. Plin. H. N. xxi. 3, 6.  The right to appear crowned in public was
acquired by distinction in war (Polyb. vi. 39, 9; Liv. x. 47);
consequently, the wearing a crown without warrant was an offence
similar to the assumption, in the present day, of the badge of a
military order of merit without due title.

7. II. III. Praetorship

8. Thus there remained excluded the military tribunate with consular
powers (II. III. Throwing Open of Marriage and of Magistracies) the
proconsulship, the quaestorship, the tribunate of the people, and
several others.  As to the censorship, it does not appear,
notwithstanding the curule chair of the censors (Liv. xl. 45; comp,
xxvii. 8), to have been reckoned a curule office; for the later
period, however, when only a man of consular standing could be made
censor, the question has no practical importance.  The plebeian
aedileship certainly was not reckoned originally one of the curule
magistracies (Liv. xxiii. 23); it may, however, have been subsequently
included amongst them.

9. II. I. Government of the Patriciate

10. II. III. Censorship

11. II. III. The Senate

12. The current hypothesis, according to which the six centuries of
the nobility alone amounted to 1200, and the whole equestrian force
accordingly to 3600 horse, is not tenable.  The method of determining
the number of the equites by the number of duplications specified by
the annalists is mistaken: in fact, each of these statements has
originated and is to be explained by itself.  But there is no evidence
either for the first number, which is only found in the passage of
Cicero, De Rep. ii. 20, acknowledged as miswritten even by the
champions of this view, or for the second, which does not appear at
all in ancient authors.  In favour, on the other hand, of the
hypothesis set forth in the text, we have, first of all, the number as
indicated not by authorities, but by the institutions themselves; for
it is certain that the century numbered 100 men, and there were
originally three (I. V. Burdens of the Burgesses), then six (I. Vi.
Amalgamation of the Palatine and Quirinal Cities), and lastly after
the Servian reform eighteen (I. VI. The Five Classes), equestrian
centuries.  The deviations of the authorities from this view are only
apparent.  The old self-consistent tradition, which Becker has
developed (ii. i, 243), reckons not the eighteen patricio-plebeian,
but the six patrician, centuries at 1800 men; and this has been
manifestly followed by Livy, i. 36 (according to the reading which
alone has manuscript authority, and which ought not to be corrected
from Livy's particular estimates), and by Cicero l. c. (according to
the only reading grammatically admissible, MDCCC.; see Becker, ii. i,
244).  But Cicero at the same time indicates very plainly, that in
that statement he intended to describe the then existing amount of the
Roman equites in general.  The number of the whole body has therefore
been transferred to the most prominent portion of it by a prolepsis,
such as is common in the case of the old annalists not too much given
to reflection: just in the same way 300 equites instead of 100 are
assigned to the parent-community, including, by anticipation, the
contingents of the Tities and the Luceres (Becker, ii. i, 238).
Lastly, the proposition of Cato (p. 66, Jordan), to raise the number
of the horses of the equites to 2200, is as distinct a confirmation of
the view proposed above, as it is a distinct refutation of the
opposite view.  The closed number of the equites probably continued to
subsist down to Sulla's time, when with the -de facto- abeyance of the
censorship the basis of it fell away, and to all appearance in place
of the censorial bestowal of the equestrian horse came its acquisition
by hereditary right; thenceforth the senator's son was by birth an
-eques-.  Alongside, however, of this closed equestrian body, the
-equites equo publico-, stood from an early period of the republic the
burgesses bound to render mounted service on their own horses, who are
nothing but the highest class of the census; they do not vote in the
equestrian centuries, but are regarded otherwise as equites, and lay
claim likewise to the honorary privileges of the equestrian order.

In the arrangement of Augustus the senatorial houses retained the
hereditary equestrian right; but by its side the censorial bestowal of
the equestrian horse is renewed as a prerogative of the emperor and
without restriction to a definite time, and thereby the designation of
equites for the first class of the census as such falls into abeyance.

13. II. III. Increasing Powers of the Burgesses

14. II. VIII. Officers

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

16. II. III. New Opposition

17. The stability of the Roman nobility may be clearly traced, more
especially in the case of the patrician -gentes-, by means of the
consular and aedilician Fasti.  As is well known, the consulate was
held by one patrician and one plebeian in each year from 388 to 581
(with the exception of the years 399, 400, 401, 403, 405, 409, 411, in
which both consuls were patricians).  Moreover, the colleges of curule
aediles were composed exclusively of patricians in the odd years of
the Varronian reckoning, at least down to the close of the sixth
century, and they are known for the sixteen years 541, 545, 547, 549,
551, 553, 555, 557, 561, 565, 567, 575, 585, 589, 591, 593.  These
patrician consuls and aediles are, as respects their -gentes-,
distributed as follows:--

              Consuls   Consuls   Curule aediles of those
              388-500   501-581   16 patrician colleges

Cornelii           15        15        15
Valerii            10         8         4
Claudii             4         8         2
Aemilii             9         6         2
Fabii               6         6         1
Manlii              4         6         1
Postumii            2         6         2
Servilii            3         4         2
Quinctii            2         3         1
Furii               2         3         -
Sulpicii            6         4         2
Veturii             -         2         -
Papirii             3         1         -
Nautii              2         -         -
Julii               1         -         1
Foslii              1         -         -
                  ---       ---       ---
                   70        70        32

Thus the fifteen or sixteen houses of the high nobility, that  were
powerful in the state at the time of the Licinian laws, maintained
their ground without material change in their relative numbers--which
no doubt were partly kept up by adoption--for the next two centuries,
and indeed down to the end of the republic.  To the circle of the
plebeian nobility new -gentes- doubtless were from time to time added;
but the old plebian houses, such as the Licinii, Fulvii, Atilii,
Domitii, Marcii, Junii, predominate very decidedly in the Fasti
throughout three centuries.

18. I. V. The Senate

19. III. IX. Death of Scipio

20. III. X. Their Lax and Unsuccessful Management of the War f.

21. III. VI. In Italy

22. III. VI. Conquest of Sicily

23. The expenses of these were, however, probably thrown in great part
on the adjoining inhabitants.  The old system of making requisitions
of task-work was not abolished: it must not unfrequently have happened
that the slaves of the landholders were called away to be employed in
the construction of roads.  (Cato, de R. R. 2 )

24. III. VI. Pressure of the War

25. III. VI. In Italy

26. III. VII. Celtic Wars

27. III. VI In Italy

28. III. VII. Latins

29. II. VII. Non-Latin Allied Communities

30. III. VII. Latins

31. Thus, as is well known, Ennius of Rudiae received burgess-rights
from one of the triumvirs, Q. Fulvius Nobilior, on occasion of the
founding of the burgess-colonies of Potentia and Pisaurum (Cic. Brut.
20, 79); whereupon, according to the well-known custom, he adopted the
-praenomen- of the latter.  The non-burgesses who were sent to share
in the foundation of a burgess-colony, did not, at least in tin's
epoch, thereby acquire -de jure- Roman citizenship, although they
frequently usurped it (Liv. xxxiv. 42); but the magistrates charged
with the founding of a colony were empowered, by a clause in the
decree of the people relative to each case, to confer burgess-rights
on a limited number of persons (Cic. pro Balb. 21, 48).

32. III. VII. Administration of Spain

33. III. IX. Expedition against the Celts in Asia Minor

34. III. X. Their Lax and Unsuccessful Management of the War f.

35. II. I. Term of Office

36. III. VII. Administration of Spain

37. III. XI. Italian Subjects, Roman Franchise More Difficult of
Acquisition

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

39. In Cato's treatise on husbandry, which, as is well known,
primarily relates to an estate in the district of Venafrum, the
judicial discussion of such processes as might arise is referred to
Rome only as respects one definite case; namely, that in which the
landlord leases the winter pasture to the owner of a flock of sheep,
and thus has to deal with a lessee who, as a rule, is not domiciled in
the district (c. 149).  It may be inferred from this, that in ordinary
cases, where the contract was with a person domiciled in the district,
such processes as might spring out of it were even in Cato's time
decided not at Rome, but before the local judges.

40. II. VII. The Full Roman Franchise

41. II. VII. Subject Communities

42. III. VIII. Declaration of War by Rome

43. II. III. The Burgess-Body

44. III. XI. Patricio-Plebian Nobility

45. The laying out of the circus is attested.  Respecting the origin
of the plebeian games there is no ancient tradition (for what is said
by the Pseudo-Asconius, p. 143, Orell. is not such); but seeing that
they were celebrated in the Flaminian circus (Val. Max. i, 7, 4), and
first certainly occur in 538, four years after it was built (Liv.
xxiii. 30), what we have stated above is sufficiently proved.

46. II. II. Political Value of the Tribunate

47. III. IX. Landing of the Romans

48. III. IX. Death of Scipio.  The first certain instance of such a
surname is that of Manius Valerius Maximus, consul in 491, who, as
conqueror of Messana, assumed the name Messalla (ii. 170): that the
consul of 419 was, in a similar manner, called Calenus, is an error.
The presence of Maximus as a surname in the Valerian (i. 348) and
Fabian (i. 397) clans is not quite analogous.

49. III. XI. Patricio-Plebian Nobility

50. II. III. New Opposition

51. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome

52. III. VI. In Italy

53. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome

54. III. VII. Liguria

55. III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the
Transalpine Gauls

56. III. VII. Liguria

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

58. III. V. Attitude of the Romans, III. VI. Conflicts in the South of
Italy

59. II. III. The Burgess-Body

60. As to the original rates of the Roman census it is difficult to
lay down anything definite.  Afterwards, as is well known, 100,000
-asses- was regarded as the minimum census of the first class; to
which the census of the other four classes stood in the (at least
approximate) ratio of 3/4, 1/2, 1/4, 1/9.  But these rates are
understood already by Polybius, as by all later authors, to refer to
the light -as- (1/10th of the -denarius-), and apparently this view
must be adhered to, although in reference to the Voconian law the same
sums are reckoned as heavy -asses- (1/4 of the -denarius-: Geschichte
des Rom. Munzwesens, p. 302).  But Appius Claudius, who first in 442
expressed the census-rates in money instead of the possession of land
(II. III. The Burgess-Body), cannot in this have made use of the light
-as-, which only emerged in 485 (II. VIII. Silver Standard of Value).
Either therefore he expressed the same amounts in heavy -asses-, and
these were at the reduction of the coinage converted into light; or he
proposed the later figures, and these remained the same
notwithstanding the reduction or the coinage, which in this case would
have involved a lowering of the class-rates by more than the half.
Grave doubts may be raised in opposition to either hypothesis; but the
former appears the more credible, for so exorbitant an advance in
democratic development is not probable either for the end of the fifth
century or as an incidental consequence of a mere administrative
measure, and besides it would scarce have disappeared wholly from
tradition.  100,000 light -asses-, or 40,000 sesterces, may, moreover,
be reasonably regarded as the equivalent of the original Roman full
hide of perhaps 20 -jugera- (I. VI. Time and Occasion of the Reform);
so that, according to this view, the rates of the census as a whole
have changed merely in expression, and not in value.

61. III. V. Fabius and Minucius

62. II. I. The Dictator

63. III. XI. Election of Officers in the Comitia

64. III. V. Flaminius, New Warlike Preparations in Rome

65. III. V. Fabius and Minucius

66. III. XI. Squandering of the Spoil

67. III. VI. Publius Scipio

68. III. VI. The African Expedition of Scipio

69. III. X. Humiliation of Rhodes

70. II. II. Agrarian Law of Spurius Cassius




CHAPTER XII

The Management of Land and of Capital

Roman Economics

It is in the sixth century of the city that we first find materials
for a history of the times exhibiting in some measure the mutual
connection of events; and it is in that century also that the economic
condition of Rome emerges into view more distinctly and clearly.
It is at this epoch that the wholesale system, as regards both the
cultivation of land and the management of capital, becomes first
established under the form, and on the scale, which afterwards
prevailed; although we cannot exactly discriminate how much of that
system is traceable to earlier precedent, how much to an imitation of
the methods of husbandry and of speculation among peoples that were
earlier civilized, especially the Phoenicians, and how much to the
increasing mass of capital and the growth of intelligence in the
nation.  A summary outline of these economic relations will conduce
to a more accurate understanding of the internal history of Rome.

Roman husbandry(1) applied itself either to the farming of estates, to
the occupation of pasture lands, or to the tillage of petty holdings.
A very distinct view of the first of these is presented to us in the
description given by Cato.

Farming of Estates
Their Size

The Roman land-estates were, considered as larger holdings, uniformly
of limited extent.  That described by Cato had an area of 240 jugera;
a very common measure was the so-called -centuria- of 200 -jugera-.
Where the laborious culture of the vine was pursued, the unit of
husbandry was made still less; Cato assumes in that case an area of
100 -jugera-.  Any one who wished to invest more capital in farming
did not enlarge his estate, but acquired several estates; accordingly
the amount of 500 -jugera-,(2) fixed as the maximum which it was
allowable to occupy, has been conceived to represent the contents of
two or three estates.

Management of the Estate

Object of Husbandry

The heritable lease was not recognised in the management of Italian
private any more than of Roman public land; it occurred only in the
case of the dependent communities.  Leases for shorter periods,
granted either for a fixed sum of money or on condition that the
lessee should bear all the costs of tillage and should receive in
return a share, ordinarily perhaps one half, of the produce,(3) were
not unknown, but they were exceptional and a makeshift; so that no
distinct class of tenant-farmers grew up in Italy.(4)  Ordinarily
therefore the proprietor himself superintended the cultivation of his
estates; he did not, however, manage them strictly in person, but only
appeared from time to time on the property in order to settle the plan
of operations, to look after its execution, and to audit the accounts
of his servants.  He was thus enabled on the one hand to work a number
of estates at the same time, and on the other hand to devote himself,
as circumstances might require, to public affairs.

The grain cultivated consisted especially of spelt and wheat, with
some barley and millet; turnips, radishes, garlic, poppies, were also
grown, and--particularly as fodder for the cattle--lupines, beans,
pease, vetches, and other leguminous plants.  The seed was sown
ordinarily in autumn, only in exceptional cases in spring.  Much
activity was displayed in irrigation and draining; and drainage by
means of covered ditches was early in use.  Meadows also for supplying
hay were not wanting, and even in the time of Cato they were
frequently irrigated artificially.  Of equal, if not of greater,
economic importance than grain and vegetables were the olive and the
vine, of which the former was planted between the crops, the latter in
vineyards appropriated to itself.(5)  Figs, apples, pears, and other
fruit trees were cultivated; and likewise elms, poplars, and other
leafy trees and shrubs, partly for the felling of the wood, partly for
the sake of the leaves which were useful as litter and as fodder for
cattle.  The rearing of cattle, on the other hand, held a far less
important place in the economy of the Italians than it holds in modern
times, for vegetables formed the general fare, and animal food made
its appearance at table only exceptionally; where it did appear, it
consisted almost solely of the flesh of swine or lambs.  Although the
ancients did not fail to perceive the economic connection between
agriculture and the rearing of cattle, and in particular the
importance of producing manure, the modern combination of the growth
of corn with the rearing of cattle was a thing foreign to antiquity.
The larger cattle were kept only so far as was requisite for the
tillage of the fields, and they were fed not on special pasture-land,
but, wholly during summer and mostly during winter also, in the stall
Sheep, again, were driven out on the stubble pasture; Cato allows 100
head to 240 -jugera-.  Frequently, however, the proprietor preferred
to let his winter pasture to a large sheep-owner, or to hand over his
flock of sheep to a lessee who was to share the produce, stipulating
for the delivery of a certain number of lambs and of a certain
quantity of cheese and milk.  Swine--Cato assigns to a large estate
ten sties--poultry, and pigeons were kept in the farmyard, and fed as
there was need; and, where opportunity offered, a small hare-preserve
and a fish-pond were constructed--the modest commencement of that
nursing and rearing of game and fish which was afterwards prosecuted
to so enormous an extent.

Means of Husbandry
Cattle

The labours of the field were performed by means of oxen which were
employed for ploughing, and of asses, which were used specially for
the carriage of manure and for driving the mill; perhaps a horse also
was kept, apparently for the use of the master.  These animals were
not reared on the estate, but were purchased; oxen and horses at least
were generally castrated.  Cato assigns to an estate of 100 -jugera-
one, to one of 240 -jugera- three, yoke of oxen; a later writer on
agriculture, Saserna, assigns two yoke to the 200 -jugera-.  Three
asses were, according to Cato's estimate, required for the smaller,
and four for the larger, estate.

Slaves

The human labour on the farm was regularly performed by slaves.  At
the head of the body of slaves on the estate (-familia rustica-) stood
the steward (-vilicus-, from -villa-), who received and expended,
bought and sold, went to obtain the instructions of the landlord, and
in his absence issued orders and administered punishment.  Under him
were placed the stewardess (-vilica-) who took charge of the house,
kitchen and larder, poultry-yard and dovecot: a number of ploughmen
(-bubulci-) and common serfs, an ass-driver, a swineherd, and, where a
flock of sheep was kept, a shepherd.  The number, of course, varied
according to the method of husbandry pursued.  An arable estate of 200
-jugera- without orchards was estimated to require two ploughmen and
six serfs: a similar estate with two orchards two plough-men and nine
serfs; an estate of 240 -jugera- with olive plantations and sheep,
three ploughmen, five serfs, and three herdsmen.  A vineyard naturally
required a larger expenditure of labour: an estate of 100 -jugera-
with vine-plantations was supplied with one ploughman, eleven serfs,
and two herdsmen.  The steward of course occupied a freer position
than the other slaves: the treatise of Mago advised that he should be
allowed to marry, to rear children, and to have funds of his own, and
Cato advises that he should be married to the stewardess; he alone had
some prospect, in the event of good behaviour, of obtaining liberty
from his master.  In other respects all formed a common household.
The slaves were, like the larger cattle, not bred on the estate, but
purchased at an age capable of labour in the slave-market; and, when
through age or infirmity they had become incapable of working, they
were again sent with other refuse to the market.(6)  The farm-
buildings (-villa rustica-) supplied at once stabling for the cattle,
storehouses for the produce, and a dwelling for the steward and the
slaves; while a separate country house (-villa urbana-) for the master
was frequently erected on the estate.  Every slave, even the steward
himself, had all the necessaries of life delivered to him on the
master's behalf at certain times and according to fixed rates; and
upon these he had to subsist.  He received in this way clothes and
shoes, which were purchased in the market, and which the recipients
had merely to keep in repair; a quantity of wheat monthly, which each
had to grind for himself; as also salt, olives or salted fish to form
a relish to their food, wine, and oil.  The quantity was adjusted
according to the work; on which account the steward, who had easier
work than the common slaves, got scantier measure than these.  The
stewardess attended to all the baking and cooking; and all partook of
the same fare.  It was not the ordinary practice to place chains on
the slaves; but when any one had incurred punishment or was thought
likely to attempt an escape, he was set to work in chains and was shut
up during the night in the slaves' prison.(7)

Other Labourers

Ordinarily these slaves belonging to the estate were sufficient; in
case of need neighbours, as a matter of course, helped each other with
their slaves for day's wages.  Otherwise labourers from without were
not usually employed, except in peculiarly unhealthy districts, where
it was found advantageous to limit the amount of slaves and to employ
hired persons in their room, and for the ingathering of the harvest,
for which the regular supply of labour on the farm did not suffice.
At the corn and hay harvests they took in hired reapers, who often
instead of wages received from the sixth to the ninth sheaf of the
produce reaped, or, if they also thrashed, the fifth of the grain:
Umbrian labourers, for instance, went annually in great numbers to the
vale of Rieti, to help to gather in the harvest there.  The grape and
olive harvest was ordinarily let to a contractor, who by means of his
men--hired free labourers, or slaves of his own or of others--
conducted the gleaning and pressing under the inspection of some
persons appointed by the landlord for the purpose, and delivered the
produce to the master;(8) very frequently the landlord sold the
harvest on the tree or branch, and left the purchaser to look
after the ingathering.

Spirit of the System

The whole system was pervaded by the utter regardless-ness
characteristic of the power of capital.  Slaves and cattle stood on
the same level; a good watchdog, it is said in a Roman writer on
agriculture, must not be on too friendly terms with his "fellow-
slaves." The slave and the ox were fed properly so long as they could
work, because it would not have been good economy to let them starve;
and they were sold like a worn-out ploughshare when they became unable
to work, because in like manner it would not have been good economy to
retain them longer.  In earlier times religious considerations had
here also exercised an alleviating influence, and had released the
slave and the plough-ox from labour on the days enjoined for festivals
and for rest.(9)  Nothing is more characteristic of the spirit of Cato
and those who shared his sentiments than the way in which they
inculcated the observance of the holiday in the letter, and evaded it
in reality, by advising that, while the plough should certainly be
allowed to rest on these days, the slaves should even then be
incessantly occupied with other labours not expressly prohibited.
On principle no freedom of movement whatever was allowed to them--a
slave, so runs one of Cato's maxims, must either work or sleep--and no
attempt was ever made to attach the slaves to the estate or to their
master by any bond of human sympathy.  The letter of the law in all
its naked hideousness regulated the relation, and the Romans indulged
no illusions as to the consequences.  "So many slaves, so many foes,"
said a Roman proverb.  It was an economic maxim, that dissensions
among the slaves ought rather to be fostered than suppressed.  In the
same spirit Plato and Aristotle, and no less strongly the oracle of
the landlords, the Carthaginian Mago, caution masters against bringing
together slaves of the same nationality, lest they should originate
combinations and perhaps conspiracies of their fellow-countrymen.  The
landlord, as we have already said, governed his slaves exactly in the
same way as the Roman community governed its subjects in the "country
estates of the Roman people," the provinces; and the world learned by
experience, that the ruling state had modelled its new system of
government on that of the slave-holder.  If, moreover, we have risen
to that little-to-be-envied elevation of thought which values no
feature of an economy save the capital invested in it, we cannot deny
to the management of the Roman estates the praise of consistency,
energy, punctuality, frugality, and solidity.  The pithy practical
husbandman is reflected in Cato's description of the steward, as he
ought to be.  He is the first on the farm to rise and the last to go
to bed; he is strict in dealing with himself as well as with those
under him, and knows more especially how to keep the stewardess in
order, but is also careful of his labourers and his cattle, and in
particular of the ox that draws the plough; he puts his hand
frequently to work and to every kind of it, but never works himself
weary like a slave; he is always at home, never borrows nor lends,
gives no entertainments, troubles himself about no other worship than
that of the gods of the hearth and the field, and like a true slave
leaves all dealings with the gods as well as with men to his master;
lastly and above all, he modestly meets that master and faithfully and
simply, without exercising too little or too much of thought, conforms
to the instructions which that master has given.  He is a bad
husbandman, it is elsewhere said, who buys what he can raise on his
own land; a bad father of a household, who takes in hand by day what
can be done by candle-light, unless the weather be bad; a still worse,
who does on a working-day what might be done on a holiday; but worst
of all is he, who in good weather allows work to go on within doors
instead of in the open air.  The characteristic enthusiasm too of high
farming is not wanting; and the golden rules are laid down, that the
soil was given to the husbandman not to be scoured and swept but to be
sown and reaped, and that the farmer therefore ought first to plant
vines and olives and only thereafter, and that not too early in life,
to build himself a villa.  A certain boorishness marks the system,
and, instead of the rational investigation of causes and effects, the
well-known rules of rustic experience are uniformly brought forward;
yet there is an evident endeavour to appropriate the experience of
others and the products of foreign lands: in Cato's list of the
sorts of fruit trees, for instance, Greek, African, and Spanish
species appear.

Husbandry of the Petty Farmers

The husbandry of the petty farmer differed from that of the estate-
holder only or chiefly in its being on a smaller scale.  The owner
himself and his children in this case worked along with the slaves or
in their room.  The quantity of cattle was reduced, and, where an
estate no longer covered the expenses of the plough and of the yoke
that drew it, the hoe formed the substitute.  The culture of the olive
and the vine was less prominent, or was entirely wanting.

In the vicinity of Rome or of any other large seat of consumption
there existed also carefully-irrigated gardens for flowers and
vegetables, somewhat similar to those which one now sees around
Naples; and these yielded a very abundant return.

Pastoral Husbandry

Pastoral husbandry was prosecuted on a great scale far more than
agriculture.  An estate in pasture land (-saltus-) had of necessity in
every case an area considerably greater than an arable estate--the
least allowance was 800 -jugera- --and it might with advantage to the
business be almost indefinitely extended.  Italy is so situated in
respect of climate that the summer pasture in the mountains and the
winter pasture in the plains supplement each other: already at that
period, just as at the present day, and for the most part probably
along the same paths, the flocks and herds were driven in spring from
Apulia to Samnium, and in autumn back again from Samnium to Apulia.
The winter pasturage, however, as has been already observed, did not
take place entirely on ground kept for the purpose, but was partly the
grazing of the stubbles.  Horses, oxen, asses, and mules were reared,
chiefly to supply the animals required by the landowners, carriers,
soldiers, and so forth; herds of swine and of goats also were not
neglected.  But the almost universal habit of wearing woollen stuffs
gave a far greater independence and far higher development to the
breeding of sheep.  The management was in the hands of slaves, and was
on the whole similar to the management of the arable estate, the
cattle-master (-magister pecoris-) coming in room of the steward.
Throughout the summer the shepherd-slaves lived for the most part not
under a roof, but, often miles remote from human habitations, under
sheds and sheepfolds; it was necessary therefore that the strongest
men should be selected for this employment, that they should be
provided with horses and arms, and that they should be allowed
far greater freedom of movement than was granted to the slaves
on arable estates.

Results
Competition of Transmarine Corn

In order to form some estimate of the economic results of this system
of husbandry, we must consider the state of prices, and particularly
the prices of grain at this period.  On an average these were
alarmingly low; and that in great measure through the fault of the
Roman government, which in this important question was led into the
most fearful blunders not so much by its short-sightedness, as by an
unpardonable disposition to favour the proletariate of the capital at
the expense of the farmers of Italy.  The main question here was that
of the competition between transmarine and Italian corn.  The grain
which was delivered by the provincials to the Roman government,
sometimes gratuitously, sometimes for a moderate compensation, was in
part applied by the government to the maintenance of the Roman
official staff and of the Roman armies on the spot, partly given up to
the lessees of the -decumae- on condition of their either paying a sum
of money for it or of their undertaking to deliver certain quantities
of grain at Rome or wherever else it should be required.  From the
time of the second Macedonian war the Roman armies were uniformly
supported by transmarine corn, and, though this tended to the benefit
of the Roman exchequer, it cut off the Italian farmer from an
important field of consumption for his produce.  This however was
the least part of the mischief.  The government had long, as was
reasonable, kept a watchful eye on the price of grain, and, when there
was a threatening of dearth, had interfered by well-timed purchases
abroad; and now, when the corn-deliveries of its subjects brought into
its hands every year large quantities of grain--larger probably than
were needed in times of peace--and when, moreover, opportunities were
presented to it of acquiring foreign grain in almost unlimited
quantity at moderate prices, there was a natural temptation to glut
the markets of the capital with such grain, and to dispose of it at
rates which either in themselves or as compared with the Italian rates
were ruinously low.  Already in the years 551-554, and in the first
instance apparently at the suggestion of Scipio, 6 -modii- (1 1/2
bush.) of Spanish and African wheat were sold on public account to the
citizens of Rome at 24 and even at 12 -asses- (1 shilling 8 pence or
ten pence).  Some years afterwards (558), more than 240,000 bushels of
Sicilian grain were distributed at the latter illusory price in the
capital.  In vain Cato inveighed against this shortsighted policy:
the rise of demagogism had a part in it, and these extraordinary, but
presumably very frequent, distributions of grain under the market
price by the government or individual magistrates became the germs of
the subsequent corn-laws.  But, even where the transmarine corn did
not reach the consumers in this extraordinary mode, it injuriously
affected Italian agriculture.  Not only were the masses of grain which
the state sold off to the lessees of the tenths beyond doubt acquired
under ordinary circumstances by these so cheaply that, when re-sold,
they could be disposed of under the price of production; but it is
probable that in the provinces, particularly in Sicily--in consequence
partly of the favourable nature of the soil, partly of the extent
to which wholesale farming and slave-holding were pursued on the
Carthaginian system(10)--the price of production was in general
considerably lower than in Italy, while the transport of Sicilian and
Sardinian corn to Latium was at least as cheap as, if not cheaper
than, its transport thither from Etruria, Campania, or even northern
Italy.  In the natural course of things therefore transmarine corn
could not but flow to the peninsula, and lower the price of the grain
produced there.  Under the unnatural disturbance of relations
occasioned by the lamentable system of slave-labour, it would perhaps
have been justifiable to impose a duty on transmarine corn for the
protection of the Italian farmer; but the very opposite course seems
to have been pursued, and with a view to favour the import of
transmarine corn to Italy, a prohibitive system seems to have been
applied in the provinces--for though the Rhodians were allowed to
export a quantity of corn from Sicily by way of special favour, the
export of grain from the provinces must probably, as a rule, have been
free only as regarded Italy, and the transmarine corn must thus have
been monopolized for the benefit of the mother-country.

Prices of Italian Corn

The effects of this system are clearly evident.  A year of
extraordinary fertility like 504--when the people of the capital paid
for 6 Roman -modii- (1 1/2 bush.) of spelt not more than 3/5 of a
-denarius- (about 5 pence), and at the same price there were sold 180
Roman pounds (a pound = 11 oz.) of dried figs, 60 pounds of oil, 72
pounds of meat, and 6 -congii- (= 4 1/2 gallons) of wine--is scarcely
by reason of its very singularity to be taken into account; but other
facts speak more distinctly.  Even in Cato's time Sicily was called
the granary of Rome.  In productive years Sicilian and Sardinian corn
was disposed of in the Italian ports for the freight.  In the richest
corn districts of the peninsula--the modern Romagna and Lombardy
--during the time of Polybius victuals and lodgings in an inn cost on
an average half an -as- (1/3 pence) per day; a bushel and a half of
wheat was there worth half a -denarius- (4 pence).  The latter average
price, about the twelfth part of the normal price elsewhere,(11) shows
with indisputable clearness that the producers of grain in Italy were
wholly destitute of a market for their produce, and in consequence
corn and corn-land there were almost valueless.

Revolution in Roman Agriculture

In a great industrial state, whose agriculture cannot feed its
population, such a result might perhaps be regarded as useful or at
any rate as not absolutely injurious; but a country like Italy, where
manufactures were inconsiderable and agriculture was altogether the
mainstay of the state, was in this way systematically ruined, and the
welfare of the nation as a whole was sacrificed in the most shameful
fashion to the interests of the essentially unproductive population
of the capital, to which in fact bread could never become too cheap.
Nothing perhaps evinces so clearly as this, how wretched was the
constitution and how incapable was the administration of this
so-called golden age of the republic.  Any representative system,
however meagre, would have led at least to serious complaints and to
a perception of the seat of the evil; but in those primary assemblies
of the burgesses anything was listened to sooner than the warning
voice of a foreboding patriot.  Any government that deserved the name
would of itself have interfered; but the mass of the Roman senate
probably with well-meaning credulity regarded the low prices of grain
as a real blessing for the people, and the Scipios and Flamininuses
had, forsooth, more important things to do--to emancipate the Greeks,
and to exercise the functions of republican kings.  So the ship drove
on unhindered towards the breakers.

Decay of the Farmers

When the small holdings ceased to yield any substantial clear return,
the farmers were irretrievably ruined, and the more so that they
gradually, although more slowly than the other classes, lost the moral
tone and frugal habits of the earlier ages of the republic It was
merely a question of time, how rapidly the hides of the Italian
farmers would, by purchase or by resignation, become merged in
the larger estates.

Culture of Oil and Wine, and Rearing of Cattle

The landlord was better able to maintain himself than the farmer.
The former produced at a cheaper rate than the latter, when, instead
of letting his land according to the older system to petty temporary
lessees, he caused it according to the newer system to be cultivated
by his slaves.  Accordingly, where this course had not been adopted
even at an earlier period,(12) the competition of Sicilian slave-corn
compelled the Italian landlord to follow it, and to have the work
performed by slaves without wife or child instead of families of free
labourers.  The landlord, moreover, could hold his ground better
against competitors by means of improvements or changes in
cultivation, and he could content himself with a smaller return from
the soil than the farmer, who wanted capital and intelligence and who
merely had what was requisite for his subsistence.  Hence the Roman
landholder comparatively neglected the culture of grain--which in many
rases seems to have been restricted to the raising of the quantity
required for the staff of labourers(13)--and gave increased attention
to the production of oil and wine as well as to the breeding of
cattle.  These, under the favourable climate of Italy, had no need to
fear foreign competition; Italian wine, Italian oil, Italian wool not
only commanded the home markets, but were soon sent abroad; the valley
of the Po, which could find no consumption for its corn, provided the
half of Italy with swine and bacon.  With this the statements that
have reached us as to the economic results of the Roman husbandry very
well agree.  There is some ground for assuming that capital invested
in land was reckoned to yield a good return at 6 per cent; this
appears to accord with the average interest of capital at this period,
which was about twice as much.  The rearing of cattle yielded on the
whole better results than arable husbandry: in the latter the vineyard
gave the best return, next came the vegetable garden and the olive
orchard, while meadows and corn-fields yielded least.(14)

It is of course presumed that each species of husbandry was prosecuted
under the conditions that suited it, and on the soil which was adapted
to its nature.  These circumstances were already in themselves
sufficient to supersede the husbandry of the petty farmer gradually by
the system of farming on a great scale; and it was difficult by means
of legislation to counteract them.  But an injurious effect was
produced by the Claudian law to be mentioned afterwards (shortly
before 536), which excluded the senatorial houses from mercantile
speculation, and thereby artificially compelled them to invest their
enormous capitals mainly in land or, in other words, to replace the
old homesteads of the farmers by estates under the management of land-
stewards and by pastures for cattle.  Moreover special circumstances
tended to favour cattle-husbandry as contrasted with agriculture,
although the former was far more injurious to the state.  First of
all, this form of extracting profit from the soil--the only one which
in reality demanded and rewarded operations on a great scale--was
alone in keeping with the mass of capital and with the spirit of the
capitalists of this age.  An estate under cultivation, although not
demanding the presence of the master constantly, required his frequent
appearance on the spot, while the circumstances did not well admit of
his extending the estate or of his multiplying his possessions except
within narrow limits; whereas an estate under pasture admitted of
unlimited extension, and claimed little of the owner's attention.  For
this reason men already began to convert good arable land into pasture
even at an economic loss--a practice which was prohibited by
legislation (we know not when, perhaps about this period) but hardly
with success.  The growth of pastoral husbandry was favoured also by
the occupation of domain-land.  As the portions so occupied were
ordinarily large, the system gave rise almost exclusively to great
estates; and not only so, but the occupiers of these possessions,
which might be resumed by the state at pleasure and were in law
always insecure, were afraid to invest any considerable amount in
their cultivation--by planting vines for instance, or olives.
The consequence was, that these lands were mainly turned to
account as pasture.

Management of Money

We are prevented from giving a similar comprehensive view of the
moneyed economy of Rome, partly by the want of special treatises
descending from Roman antiquity on the subject, partly by its very
nature which was far more complex and varied than that of the Roman
husbandry.  So far as can be ascertained, its principles were, still
less perhaps than those of husbandry, the peculiar property of the
Romans; on the contrary, they were the common heritage of all ancient
civilization, under which, as under that of modern times, the
operations on a great scale naturally were everywhere much alike.
In money matters especially the mercantile system appears to have been
established in the first instance by the Greeks, and to have been
simply adopted by the Romans.  Yet the precision with which it was
carried out and the magnitude of the scale on which its operations
were conducted were so peculiarly Roman, that the spirit of the Roman
economy and its grandeur whether for good or evil are pre-eminently
conspicuous in its monetary transactions.

Moneylending

The starting-point of the Roman moneyed economy was of course
money-lending; and no branch of commercial industry was more
zealously prosecuted by the Romans than the trade of the professional
money-lender (-fenerator-) and of the money-dealer or banker (-argent
arius-).  The transference of the charge of the larger monetary
transactions from the individual capitalists to the mediating banker,
who receives and makes payments for his customers, invests and borrows
money, and conducts their money dealings at home and abroad--which is
the mark of a developed monetary economy--was already completely
carried out in the time of Cato.  The bankers, however, were not only
the cashiers of the rich in Rome, but everywhere insinuated themselves
into minor branches of business and settled in ever-increasing numbers
in the provinces and dependent states.  Already throughout the whole
range of the empire the business of making advances to those who
wanted money began to be, so to speak, monopolized by the Romans.

Speculation of Contractors

Closely connected with this was the immeasurable field of enterprise.
The system of transacting business through mediate agency pervaded the
whole dealings of Rome.  The state took the lead by letting all its
more complicated revenues and all contracts for furnishing supplies
and executing buildings to capitalists, or associations of
capitalists, for a fixed sum to be given or received.  But private
persons also uniformly contracted for whatever admitted of being done
by contract--for buildings, for the ingathering of the harvest,(15)
and even for the partition of an inheritance among the heirs or the
winding up of a bankrupt estate; in which case the contractor--usually
a banker--received the whole assets, and engaged on the other hand to
settle the liabilities in full or up to a certain percentage and to
pay the balance as the circumstances required.

Commerce
Manufacturing Industry

The prominence of transmarine commerce at an early period in the Roman
national economy has already been adverted to in its proper place.
The further stimulus, which it received during the present period, is
attested by the increased importance of the Italian customs-duties in
the Roman financial system.(16)  In addition to the causes of this
increase in the importance of transmarine commerce which need no
further explanation, it was artificially promoted by the privileged
position which the ruling Italian nation assumed in the provinces, and
by the exemption from customs-dues which was probably even now in many
of the client-states conceded by treaty to the Romans and Latins.

On the other hand, industry remained comparatively undeveloped.
Trades were no doubt indispensable, and there appear indications that
to a certain extent they were concentrated in Rome; Cato, for
instance, advises the Campanian landowner to purchase the slaves'
clothing and shoes, the ploughs, vats, and locks, which he may
require, in Rome.  From the great consumption of woollen stuffs the
manufacture of cloth must undoubtedly have been extensive and
lucrative.(17)  But no endeavours were apparently made to transplant
to Italy any such professional industry as existed in Egypt and Syria,
or even merely to carry it on abroad with Italian capital.  Flax
indeed was cultivated in Italy and purple dye was prepared there,
but the latter branch of industry at least belonged essentially
to the Greek Tarentum, and probably the import of Egyptian linen
and Milesian or Tyrian purple even now preponderated everywhere over
the native manufacture.

Under this category, however, falls to some extent the leasing or
purchase by Roman capitalists of landed estates beyond Italy, with
a view to carry on the cultivation of grain and the rearing of cattle
on a great scale.  This species of speculation, which afterwards
developed to proportions so enormous, probably began particularly in
Sicily, within the period now before us; seeing that the commercial
restrictions imposed on the Siceliots,(18) if not introduced for
the very purpose, must have at least tended to give to the Roman
speculators, who were exempt from such restrictions, a sort of
monopoly of the profits derivable from land.

Management of Business by Slaves

Business in all these different branches was uniformly carried on by
means of slaves.  The money-lenders and bankers instituted, throughout
the range of their business, additional counting-houses and branch
banks under the direction of their slaves and freedmen.  The company,
which had leased the customs-duties from the state, appointed chiefly
its slaves and freedmen to levy them at each custom-house.  Every one
who took contracts for buildings bought architect-slaves; every one
who undertook to provide spectacles or gladiatorial games on account
of those giving them purchased or trained a company of slaves skilled
in acting, or a band of serfs expert in the trade of fighting.  The
merchant imported his wares in vessels of his own under the charge
of slaves or freedmen, and disposed of them by the same means in
wholesale or retail.  We need hardly add that the working of mines and
manufactories was conducted entirely by slaves.  The situation of
these slaves was, no doubt, far from enviable, and was throughout less
favourable than that of slaves in Greece; but, if we leave out of
account the classes last mentioned, the industrial slaves found their
position on the whole more tolerable than the rural serfs.  They had
more frequently a family and a practically independent household, with
no remote prospect of obtaining freedom and property of their own.
Hence such positions formed the true training school of those upstarts
from the servile class, who by menial virtues and often by menial
vices rose to the rank of Roman citizens and not seldom attained
great prosperity, and who morally, economically, and politically
contributed at least as much as the slaves themselves to the ruin
of the Roman commonwealth.

Extent of Roman Mercantile Transactions
Coins and Moneys

The Roman mercantile transactions of this period fully kept pace with
the contemporary development of political power, and were no less
grand of their kind.  Any one who wishes to have a clear idea of the
activity of the traffic with other lands, needs only to look into the
literature, more especially the comedies, of this period, in which the
Phoenician merchant is brought on the stage speaking Phoenician, and
the dialogue swarms with Greek and half Greek words and phrases.
But the extent and zealous prosecution of Roman business-dealings may
be traced most distinctly by means of coins and monetary relations.
The Roman denarius quite kept pace with the Roman legions.  We have
already mentioned(19) that the Sicilian mints--last of all that of
Syracuse in 542--were closed or at any rate restricted to small money
in consequence of the Roman conquest, and that in Sicily and Sardinia
the -denarius- obtained legal circulation at least side by side with
the older silver currency and probably very soon became the exclusive
legal tender.  With equal if not greater rapidity the Roman silver
coinage penetrated into Spain, where the great silver-mines existed
and there was virtually no earlier national coinage; at a very
early period the Spanish towns even began to coin after the Roman
standard.(20)  On the whole, as Carthage coined only to a very limited
extent,(21) there existed not a single important mint in addition to
that of Rome in the region of the western Mediterranean, with the
exception of that of Massilia and perhaps also those of the Illyrian
Greeks in Apollonia and Dyrrhachium.  Accordingly, when the Romans
began to establish themselves in the region of the Po, these mints
were about 525 subjected to the Roman standard in such a way, that,
while they retained the right of coining silver, they uniformly
--and the Massiliots in particular--were led to adjust their
--drachma-- to the weight of the Roman three-quarter -denarius-, which
the Roman government on its part began to coin, primarily for the use
of Upper Italy, under the name of the "coin of victory" (-victoriatus-
).  This new system, dependent on the Roman, not merely prevailed
throughout the Massiliot, Upper Italian, and Illyrian territories; but
these coins even penetrated into the barbarian lands on the north,
those of Massilia, for instance, into the Alpine districts along the
whole basin of the Rhone, and those of Illyria as far as the modern
Transylvania.  The eastern half of the Mediterranean was not yet
reached by the Roman money, as it had not yet fallen under the direct
sovereignty of Rome; but its place was filled by gold, the true and
natural medium for international and transmarine commerce.  It is
true that the Roman government, in conformity with its strictly
conservative character, adhered--with the exception of a temporary
coinage of gold occasioned by the financial embarrassment during the
Hannibalic war(22)--steadfastly to the rule of coining silver only in
addition to the national-Italian copper; but commerce had already
assumed such dimensions, that it was able even in the absence of money
to conduct its transactions with gold by weight.  Of the sum in cash,
which lay in the Roman treasury in 597, scarcely a sixth was coined or
uncoined silver, five-sixths consisted of gold in bars,(23) and beyond
doubt the precious metals were found in all the chests of the larger
Roman capitalists in substantially similar proportions.  Already
therefore gold held the first place in great transactions; and,
as may be further inferred from this fact, in general commerce the
preponderance belonged to that carried on with foreign lands, and
particularly with the east, which since the times of Philip and
Alexander the Great had adopted a gold currency.

Roman Wealth

The whole gain from these immense transactions of the Roman
capitalists flowed in the long run to Rome; for, much as they went
abroad, they were not easily induced to settle permanently there, but
sooner or later returned to Rome, either realizing their gains and
investing them in Italy, or continuing to carry on business from Rome
as a centre by means of the capital and connections which they had
acquired.  The moneyed superiority of Rome as compared with the rest
of the civilized world was, accordingly, quite as decided as its
political and military ascendency.  Rome in this respect stood towards
other countries somewhat as the England of the present day stands
towards the Continent--a Greek, for instance, observes of the younger
Scipio Africanus, that he was not rich "for a Roman." We may form some
idea of what was considered as riches in the Rome of those days from
the fact, that Lucius Paullus with an estate of 60 talents (14,000
pounds) was not reckoned a wealthy senator, and that a dowry--such as
each of the daughters of the elder Scipio Africanus received--of 50
talents (12,000 pounds) was regarded as a suitable portion for a
maiden of quality, while the estate of the wealthiest Greek of this
century was not more than 300 talents (72,000 pounds).

Mercantile Spirit

It was no wonder, accordingly, that the mercantile spirit took
possession of the nation, or rather--for that was no new thing in
Rome--that the spirit of the capitalist now penetrated and pervaded
all other aspects and stations of life, and agriculture as well as the
government of the state began to become enterprises of capitalists.
The preservation and increase of wealth quite formed a part of public
and private morality.  "A widow's estate may diminish;" Cato wrote in
the practical instructions which he composed for his son, "a man must
increase his means, and he is deserving of praise and full of a divine
spirit, whose account-books at his death show that he has gained more
than he has inherited."  Wherever, therefore, there was giving and
counter-giving, every transaction although concluded without any sort
of formality was held as valid, and in case of necessity the right of
action was accorded to the party aggrieved if not by the law, at any
rate by mercantile custom and judicial usage;(24) but the promise of a
gift without due form was null alike in legal theory and in practice.
In Rome, Polybius tells us, nobody gives to any one unless he must do
so, and no one pays a penny before it falls due, even among near
relatives.  The very legislation yielded to this mercantile morality,
which regarded all giving away without recompense as squandering; the
giving of presents and bequests and the undertaking of sureties were
subjected to restriction at this period by decree of the burgesses,
and heritages, if they did not fall to the nearest relatives, were at
least taxed.  In the closest connection with such views mercantile
punctuality, honour, and respectability pervaded the whole of Roman
life.  Every ordinary man was morally bound to keep an account-book of
his income and expenditure--in every well-arranged house, accordingly,
there was a separate account-chamber (-tablinum-)--and every one took
care that he should not leave the world without having made his will:
it was one of the three matters in his life which Cato declares that
he regretted, that he had been a single day without a testament.
Those household books were universally by Roman usage admitted as
valid evidence in a court of justice, nearly in the same way as we
admit the evidence of a merchant's ledger.  The word of a man of
unstained repute was admissible not merely against himself, but also
in his own favour; nothing was more common than to settle differences
between persons of integrity by means of an oath demanded by the one
party and taken by the other--a mode of settlement which was reckoned
valid even in law; and a traditional rule enjoined the jury, in the
absence of evidence, to give their verdict in the first instance for
the man of unstained character when opposed to one who was less
reputable, and only in the event of both parties being of equal repute
to give it in favour of the defendant.(25)  The conventional
respectability of the Romans was especially apparent in the more and
more strict enforcement of the rule, that no respectable man should
allow himself to be paid for the performance of personal services.
Accordingly, magistrates, officers, jurymen, guardians, and generally
all respectable men entrusted with public functions, received no other
recompense for the services which they rendered than, at most,
compensation for their outlays; and not only so, but the services
which acquaintances (-amici-) rendered to each other--such as giving
security, representation in lawsuits, custody (-depositum-), lending
the use of objects not intended to be let on hire (-commodatum-), the
managing and attending to business in general (-procuratio-)--were
treated according to the same principle, so that it was unseemly to
receive any compensation for them and an action was not allowable even
where a compensation had been promised.  How entirely the man was
merged in the merchant, appears most distinctly perhaps in the
substitution of a money-payment and an action at law for the duel
--even for the political duel--in the Roman life of this period.
The usual form of settling questions of personal honour was this: a
wager was laid between the offender and the party offended as to the
truth or falsehood of the offensive assertion, and under the shape of
an action for the stake the question of fact was submitted in due form
of law to a jury; the acceptance of such a wager when offered by the
offended or offending party was, just like the acceptance of a
challenge to a duel at the present day, left open in law, but was
often in point of honour not to be avoided.

Associations

One of the most important consequences of this mercantile spirit,
which displayed itself with an intensity hardly conceivable by those
not engaged in business, was the extraordinary impulse given to the
formation of associations.  In Rome this was especially fostered by
the system already often mentioned whereby the government had its
business transacted through middlemen: for from the extent of the
transactions it was natural, and it was doubtless often required by
the state for the sake of greater security, that capitalists should
undertake such leases and contracts not as individuals, but in
partnership.  All great dealings were organized on the model of these
state-contracts.  Indications are even found of the occurrence among
the Romans of that feature so characteristic of the system of
association--a coalition of rival companies in order jointly to
establish monopolist prices.(26)  In transmarine transactions more
especially and such as were otherwise attended with considerable risk,
the system of partnership was so extensively adopted, that it
practically took the place of insurances, which were unknown to
antiquity.  Nothing was more common than the nautical loan, as it was
called--the modern "bottomry"--by which the risk and gain of
transmarine traffic were proportionally distributed among the owners
of the vessel and cargo and all the capitalists advancing money for
the voyage.  It was, however, a general rule of Roman economy that one
should rather take small shares in many speculations than speculate
independently; Cato advised the capitalist not to fit out a single
ship with his money, but in concert with forty-nine other capitalists
to send out fifty ships and to take an interest in each to the extent
of a fiftieth part.  The greater complication thus introduced into
business was overcome by the Roman merchant through his punctual
laboriousness and his system of management by slaves and freedmen
--which, regarded from the point of view of the pure capitalist, was
far preferable to our counting-house system.  Thus these mercantile
companies, with their hundred ramifications, largely influenced the
economy of every Roman of note.  There was, according to the testimony
of Polybius, hardly a man of means in Rome who had not been concerned
as an avowed or silent partner in leasing the public revenues; and
much more must each have invested on an average a considerable portion
of his capital in mercantile associations generally.

All this laid the foundation for that endurance of Roman wealth,
which was perhaps still more remarkable than its magnitude.  The
phenomenon, unique perhaps of its kind, to which we have already
called attention(27)--that the standing of the great clans remained
almost the same throughout several centuries--finds its explanation
in the somewhat narrow but solid principles on which they managed
their mercantile property.

Moneyed Aristocracy

In consequence of the one-sided prominence assigned to capital in
the Roman economy, the evils inseparable from a pure capitalist system
could not fail to appear.

Civil equality, which had already received a fatal wound through the
rise of the ruling order of lords, suffered an equally severe blow in
consequence of the line of social demarcation becoming more and more
distinctly drawn between the rich and the poor.  Nothing more
effectually promoted this separation in a downward direction than the
already-mentioned rule--apparently a matter of indifference, but in
reality involving the utmost arrogance and insolence on the part of
the capitalists--that it was disgraceful to take money for work; a
wall of partition was thus raised not merely between the common day-
labourer or artisan and the respectable landlord or manufacturer, but
also between the soldier or subaltern and the military tribune, and
between the clerk or messenger and the magistrate.  In an upward
direction a similar barrier was raised by the Claudian law suggested
by Gaius Flaminius (shortly before 536), which prohibited senators
and senators' sons from possessing sea-going vessels except for the
transport of the produce of their estates, and probably also from
participating in public contracts--forbidding them generally from
carrying on whatever the Romans included under the head of
"speculation" (-quaestus-).(28)  It is true that this enactment was
not called for by the senators; it was on the contrary a work of the
democratic opposition, which perhaps desired in the first instance
merely to prevent the evil of members of the governing class
personally entering into dealings with the government.  It may be,
moreover, that the capitalists in this instance, as so often
afterwards, made common cause with the democratic party, and seized
the opportunity of diminishing competition by the exclusion of the
senators.  The former object was, of course, only very imperfectly
attained, for the system of partnership opened up to the senators
ample facilities for continuing to speculate in secret; but this
decree of the people drew a legal line of demarcation between those
men of quality who did not speculate at all or at any rate not openly
and those who did, and it placed alongside of the aristocracy which
was primarily political an aristocracy which was purely moneyed--the
equestrian order, as it was afterwards called, whose rivalries with
the senatorial order fill the history of the following century.

Sterility of the Capitalist Question

A further consequence of the one-sided power of capital was the
disproportionate prominence of those branches of business which were
the most sterile and the least productive for the national economy as
a whole.  Industry, which ought to have held the highest place, in
fact occupied the lowest.  Commerce flourished; but it was universally
passive, importing, but not exporting.  Not even on the northern
frontier do the Romans seem to have been able to give merchandise in
exchange for the slaves, who were brought in numbers from the Celtic
and probably even from the Germanic territories to Ariminum and the
other markets of northern Italy; at least as early as 523 the export
of silver money to the Celtic territory was prohibited by the Roman
government.  In the intercourse with Greece, Syria, Egypt, Cyrene, and
Carthage, the balance of trade was necessarily unfavourable to Italy.
Rome began to become the capital of the Mediterranean states, and
Italy to become the suburbs of Rome; the Romans had no wish to be
anything more, and in their opulent indifference contented themselves
with a passive commerce, such as every city which is nothing more than
a capital necessarily carries on--they possessed, forsooth, money
enough to pay for everything which they needed or did not need.  On
the other hand the most unproductive of all sorts of business, the
traffic in money and the farming of the revenue, formed the true
mainstay and stronghold of the Roman economy.  And, lastly, whatever
elements that economy had contained for the production of a wealthy
middle class, and of a lower one making enough for its subsistence,
were extinguished by the unhappy system of employing  slaves, or,
at the best, contributed to the multiplication of the troublesome
order of freedmen.

The Capitalists and Public Opinion

But above all the deep rooted immorality, which is inherent in an
economy of pure capital, ate into the heart of society and of the
commonwealth, and substituted an absolute selfishness for humanity
and patriotism.  The better portion of the nation were very keenly
sensible of the seeds of corruption which lurked in that system of
speculation; and the instinctive hatred of the great multitude, as
well as the displeasure of the well-disposed statesman, was especially
directed against the trade of the professional money-lender, which for
long had been subjected to penal laws and still continued under the
letter of the law amenable to punishment.  In a comedy of this period
the money-lender is told that the class to which he belongs is on a
parallel with the -lenones- --

-Eodem hercle vos pono et paro; parissumi estis ibus.
Hi saltem in occultis locis prostant: vos in foro ipso.
Vos fenore, hi male suadendo et lustris lacerant homines.
Rogitationes plurimas propter vos populus scivit,
Quas vos rogatas rumpitis: aliquam reperitis rimam.
Quasi aquam ferventem frigidam esse, ita vos putatis leges.-

Cato the leader of the reform party expresses himself still more
emphatically than the comedian.  "Lending money at interest," he says
in the preface to his treatise on agriculture, "has various
advantages; but it is not honourable.  Our forefathers accordingly
ordained, and inscribed it among their laws, that the thief should be
bound to pay twofold, but the man who takes interest fourfold,
compensation; whence we may infer how much worse a citizen they deemed
the usurer than the thief." There is no great difference, he elsewhere
considers, between a money-lender and a murderer; and it must be
allowed that his acts did not fall short of his words--when governor
of Sardinia, by his rigorous administration of the law he drove the
Roman bankers to their wits' end.  The great majority of the ruling
senatorial order regarded the system of the speculators with dislike,
and not only conducted themselves in the provinces on the whole with
more integrity and honour than these moneyed men, but often acted as
a restraint on them.  The frequent changes of the Roman chief
magistrates, however, and the inevitable inequality in their mode
of handling the laws, necessarily abated the effort to check such
proceedings.

Reaction of the Capitalist System on Agriculture

The Romans perceived moreover--as it was not difficult to perceive
--that it was of far more consequence to give a different direction
to the whole national economy than to exercise a police control over
speculation; it was such views mainly that men like Cato enforced
by precept and example on the Roman agriculturist. "When our
forefathers," continues Cato in the preface just quoted, "pronounced
the eulogy of a worthy man, they praised him as a worthy farmer and a
worthy landlord; one who was thus commended was thought to have
received the highest praise.  The merchant I deem energetic and
diligent in the pursuit of gain; but his calling is too much exposed
to perils and mischances.  On the other hand farmers furnish the
bravest men and the ablest soldiers; no calling is so honourable,
safe, and free from odium as theirs, and those who occupy themselves
with it are least liable to evil thoughts." He was wont to say of
himself, that his property was derived solely from two sources
--agriculture and frugality; and, though this was neither very logical
in thought nor strictly conformable to the truth,(29) yet Cato was not
unjustly regarded by his contemporaries and by posterity as the model
of a Roman landlord.  Unhappily it is a truth as remarkable as it is
painful, that this husbandry, commended so much and certainly with so
entire good faith as a remedy, was itself pervaded by the poison of
the capitalist system.  In the case of pastoral husbandry this was
obvious; for that reason it was most in favour with the public and
least in favour with the party desirous of moral reform.  But how
stood the case with agriculture itself?  The warfare, which from the
third onward to the fifth century capital had waged against labour,
by withdrawing under the form of interest on debt the revenues of the
soil from the working farmers and bringing them into the hands of the
idly consuming fundholder, had been settled chiefly by the extension
of the Roman economy and the throwing of the capital which existed in
Latium into the field of mercantile activity opened up throughout the
range of the Mediterranean.  Now even the extended field of business
was no longer able to contain the increased mass of capital; and an
insane legislation laboured simultaneously to compel the investment
of senatorial capital by artificial means in Italian estates, and
systematically to reduce the value of the arable land of Italy by
interference with the prices of grain.  Thus there began a second
campaign of capital against free labour or--what was substantially the
same thing in antiquity--against the small farmer system; and, if the
first had been bad, it yet seemed mild and humane as compared with the
second.  The capitalists no longer lent to the farmer at interest
--a course, which in itself was not now practicable because the petty
landholder no longer aimed at any considerable surplus, and was
moreover not sufficiently simple and radical--but they bought up the
farms and converted them, at the best, into estates managed by
stewards and worked by slaves.  This likewise was called agriculture;
it was essentially the application of the capitalist system to the
production of the fruits of the soil.  The description of the
husbandmen, which Cato gives, is excellent and quite just; but how
does it correspond to the system itself, which he portrays and
recommends?  If a Roman senator, as must not unfrequently have been
the case, possessed four such estates as that described by Cato, the
same space, which in the olden time when small holdings prevailed had
supported from 100 to 150 farmers' families, was now occupied by one
family of free persons and about 50, for the most part unmarried,
slaves.  If this was the remedy by which the decaying national economy
was to be restored to vigour, it bore, unhappily, an aspect of extreme
resemblance to the disease.

Development of Italy

The general result of this system is only too clearly obvious in the
changed proportions of the population.  It is true that the condition
of the various districts of Italy was very unequal, and some were even
prosperous.  The farms, instituted in great numbers in the region
between the Apennines and the Po at the time of its colonization, did
not so speedily disappear.  Polybius, who visited that quarter not
long after the close of the present period, commends its numerous,
handsome, and vigorous population: with a just legislation as to corn
it would doubtless have been possible to make the basin of the Po, and
not Sicily the granary of the capital.  In like manner Picenum and the
so-called -ager Gallicus- acquired a numerous body of farmers through
the distributions of domain-land consequent on the Flaminian law of
522--a body, however, which was sadly reduced in the Hannibalic war.
In Etruria, and perhaps also in Umbria, the internal condition of the
subject communities was unfavourable to the flourishing of a class
of free farmers, Matters were better in Latium--which could not be
entirely deprived of the advantages of the market of the capital, and
which had on the whole been spared by the Hannibalic war--as well as
in the secluded mountain-valleys of the Marsians and Sabellians.  On
the other hand the Hannibalic war had fearfully devastated southern
Italy and had ruined, in addition to a number of smaller townships,
its two largest cities, Capua and Tarentum, both once able to send
into the field armies of 30,000 men.  Samnium had recovered from the
severe wars of the fifth century: according to the census of 529 it
was in a position to furnish half as many men capable of arms as all
the Latin towns, and it was probably at that time, next to the -ager
Romanus-, the most flourishing region of the peninsula.  But the
Hannibalic war had desolated the land afresh, and the assignations
of land in that quarter to the soldiers of Scipio's army, although
considerable, probably did not cover the loss.  Campania and Apulia,
both hitherto well-peopled regions, were still worse treated in the
same war by friend and foe.  In Apulia, no doubt, assignations of land
took place afterwards, but the colonies instituted there were not
successful.  The beautiful plain of Campania remained more populous;
but the territory of Capua and of the other communities broken up in
the Hannibalic war became state-property, and the occupants of it were
uniformly not proprietors, but petty temporary lessees.  Lastly, in
the wide Lucanian and Bruttian territories the population, which was
already very thin before the Hannibalic war, was visited by the whole
severity of the war itself and of the penal executions that followed
in its train; nor was much done on the part of Rome to revive the
agriculture there--with the exception perhaps of Valentia (Vibo,
now Monteleone), none of the colonies established there attained
real prosperity.

Falling Off in the Population

With every allowance for the inequality in the political and economic
circumstances of the different districts and for the comparatively
flourishing condition of several of them, the retrogression is yet on
the whole unmistakeable, and it is confirmed by the most indisputable
testimonies as to the general condition of Italy.  Cato and Polybius
agree in stating that Italy was at the end of the sixth century far
weaker in population than at the end of the fifth, and was no longer
able to furnish armies so large as in the first Punic war.  The
increasing difficulty of the levy, the necessity of lowering the
qualification for service in the legions, and the complaints of the
allies as to the magnitude of the contingents to be furnished by them,
confirm these statements; and, in the case of the Roman burgesses, the
numbers tell the same tale.  In 502, shortly after the expedition of
Regulus to Africa, they amounted to 298,000 men capable of bearing
arms; thirty years later, shortly before the commencement of the
Hannibalic war (534), they had fallen off to 270,000, or about a
tenth, and again twenty years after that, shortly before the end of
the same war (550), to 214,000, or about a fourth; and a generation
afterwards--during which no extraordinary losses occurred, but the
institution of the great burgess-colonies in the plain of northern
Italy in particular occasioned a perceptible and exceptional increase
--the numbers of the burgesses had hardly again reached the point at
which they stood at the commencement of this period.  If we had
similar statements regarding the Italian population generally,
they would beyond all doubt exhibit a deficit relatively still more
considerable.  The decline of the national vigour less admits of
proof; but it is stated by the writers on agriculture that flesh and
milk disappeared more and more from the diet of the common people.
At the same time the slave population increased, as the free
population declined.  In Apulia, Lucania, and the Bruttian land,
pastoral husbandry must even in the time of Cato have preponderated
over agriculture; the half-savage slave-herdsmen were here in reality
masters in the house.  Apulia was rendered so insecure by them that a
strong force had to be stationed there; in 569 a slave-conspiracy
planned on the largest scale, and mixed up with the proceedings of the
Bacchanalia, was discovered there, and nearly 7000 men were condemned
as criminals.  In Etruria also Roman troops had to take the field
against a band of slaves (558), and even in Latium there were
instances in which towns like Setia and Praeneste were in danger of
being surprised by a band of runaway serfs (556).  The nation was
visibly diminishing, and the community of free burgesses was resolving
itself into a body composed of masters and slaves; and, although it
was in the first instance the two long wars with Carthage which
decimated and ruined both the burgesses and the allies, the Roman
capitalists beyond doubt contributed quite as much as Hamilcar and
Hannibal to the decline in the vigour and the numbers of the Italian
people.  No one can say whether the government could have rendered
help; but it was an alarming and discreditable fact, that the circles
of the Roman aristocracy, well-meaning and energetic as in great part
they were, never once showed any insight into the real gravity of the
situation or any foreboding of the full magnitude of the danger.  When
a Roman lady belonging to the high nobility, the sister of one of the
numerous citizen-admirals who in the first Punic war had ruined the
fleets of the state, one day got among a crowd in the Roman Forum, she
said aloud in the hearing of those around, that it was high time to
place her brother once more at the head of the fleet and to relieve
the pressure in the market-place by bleeding the citizens afresh
(508).  Those who thus thought and spoke were, no doubt, a small
minority; nevertheless this outrageous speech was simply a forcible
expression of the criminal indifference with which the whole noble
and rich world looked down on the common citizens and farmers.

They did not exactly desire their destruction, but they allowed it to
run its course; and so desolation advanced with gigantic steps over
the flourishing land of Italy, where countless free men had just been
enjoying a moderate and merited prosperity.




Notes for Chapter XII


1. In order to gain a correct picture of ancient Italy, it is
necessary for us to bear in mind the great changes which have been
produced there by modern cultivation.  Of the -cerealia-, rye was not
cultivated in antiquity; and the Romans of the empire were astonished
to rind that oats, with which they were well acquainted as a weed, was
used by the Germans for making porridge.  Rice was first cultivated in
Italy at the end of the fifteenth, and maize at the beginning of the
seventeenth, century.  Potatoes and tomatoes were brought from
America; artichokes seem to be nothing but a cultivated variety of the
cardoon which was known to the Romans, yet the peculiar character
superinduced by cultivation appears of more recent origin.  The
almond, again, or "Greek nut," the peach, or "Persian nut," and also
the "soft nut" (-nux mollusca-), although originally foreign to Italy,
are met with there at least 150 years before Christ.  The date-palm,
introduced into Italy from Greece as into Greece from the East, and
forming a living attestation of the primitive commercial-religious
intercourse between the west and the east, was already cultivated in
Italy 300 years before Christ (Liv. x. 47; Pallad. v. 5, 2; xi. 12, i)
not for its fruit (Plin. H. N. xiii. 4, 26), but, just as in the
present day, as a handsome plant, and for the sake of the leaves which
were used at public festivals.  The cherry, or fruit of Cerasus on the
Black Sea, was later in being introduced, and only began to be planted
in Italy in the time of Cicero, although the wild cherry is indigenous
there; still later, perhaps, came the apricot, or "Armenian plum." The
citron-tree was not cultivated in Italy till the later ages of the
empire; the orange was only introduced by the Moors in the twelfth or
thirteenth, and the aloe (Agave Americana) from America only in the
sixteenth, century.  Cotton was first cultivated in Europe by the
Arabs.  The buffalo also and the silkworm belong only to modern, not
to ancient Italy.

It is obvious that the products which Italy had not originally are for
the most part those very products which seem to us truly  "Italian;"
and if modern Germany, as compared with the Germany visited by Caesar,
may be called a southern land, Italy has since in no less degree
acquired a "more southern" aspect.

2. II. III. Licinio-Sextian Laws

3. According to Cato, de R. R, 137 (comp. 16), in the case of a lease
with division of the produce the gross produce of the estate, after
deduction of the fodder necessary for the oxen that drew the plough,
was divided between lessor and lessee (-colonus partiarius-) in the
proportions agreed upon between them.  That the shares were ordinarily
equal may be conjectured from the analogy of the French -bail a
cheptel- and the similar Italian system of half-and-half leases,
as well as from the absence of all trace of any other scheme of
partition.  It is erroneous to refer to the case of the -politor-,
who got the fifth of the grain or, if the division took place before
thrashing, from the sixth to the ninth sheaf (Cato, 136, comp. 5);
he was not a lessee sharing the produce, but a labourer assumed in
the harvest season, who received his daily wages according to that
contract of partnership (III. XII. Spirit of the System).

4. The lease lirst assumed real importance when the Roman capitalists
began to acquire transmarine possessions on a great scale; then indeed
they knew how to value it, when a temporary lease was continued
through several generations (Colum. i. 7, 3).

5. That the space between the vines was occupied not by grain, but
only at the most by such fodder plants as easily grew in the shade, is
evident from Cato (33, comp. 137), and accordingly Columella (iii. 3)
calculates on no other accessory gain in the case of a vineyard except
the produce of the young shoots sold.  On the other hand, the orchard
(-arbustum-) was sown like any corn field (Colum. ii. 9, 6).  It was
only where the vine was trained on living trees that corn was
cultivated in the intervals between them.

6. Mago, or his translator (in Varro, R. R., i. 17, 3), advises that
slaves should not be bred, but should be purchased not under 22 years
of age; and Cato must have had a similar course in view, as the
personal staff of his model farm clearly shows, although he does not
exactly say so.  Cato (2) expressly counsels the sale of old and
diseased slaves.  The slave-breeding described by Columella (I. I.
Italian History), under which female slaves who had three sons were
exempted from labour, and the mothers of four sons were even
manumitted, was doubtless an independent speculation rather than a
part of the regular management of the estate--similar to the trade
pursued by Cato himself of purchasing slaves to be trained and sold
again (Plutarch, Cat. Mai. 21).  The characteristic taxation mentioned
in this same passage probably has reference to the body of servants
properly so called (-familia urbana-).

7. In this restricted sense the chaining of slaves, and even of the
sons of the family (Dionys. ii. 26), was very old; and accordingly
chained field-labourers are mentioned by Cato as exceptions, to whom,
as they could not themselves grind, bread had to be supplied instead
of grain (56).  Even in the times of the empire the chaining of slaves
uniformly presents itself as a punishment inflicted definitively by
the master, provisionally by the steward (Colum. i. 8; Gai. i. 13;
Ulp. i. ii).  If, notwithstanding, the tillage of the fields by means
of chained slaves appeared in subsequent times as a distinct system,
and the labourers' prison (-ergastulum-)--an underground cellar with
window-aperatures numerous but narrow and not to be reached from the
ground by the hand (Colum. i. 6)--became a necessary part of the farm-
buildings, this state of matters was occasioned by the fact that the
position of the rural serfs was harder than that of other slaves and
therefore those slaves were chiefly taken for it, who had, or seemed
to have, committed some offence.  That cruel masters, moreover,
applied the chains without any occasion to do so, we do not mean to
deny, and it is clearly indicated by the circumstance that the law-
books do not decree the penalties applicable to slave transgressors
against those in chains, but prescribe the punishment of the half-
chained.  It was precisely the same with branding; it was meant to be,
strictly, a punishment; but the whole flock was probably marked
(Diodor. xxxv. 5; Bernays, --Phokytides--, p. xxxi.).

8. Cato does not expressly say this as to the vintage, but Varro does
so (I. II. Relation of the Latins to the Umbro-Samnites), and it is
implied in the nature of the case.  It would have been economically an
error to fix the number of the slaves on a property by the standard of
the labours of harvest; and least of all, had such been the case,
would the grapes have been sold on the tree, which yet was frequently
done (Cato, 147).

9. Columella (ii. 12, 9) reckons to the year on an average 45 rainy
days and holidays; with which accords the statement of Tertullian (De
Idolol. 14), that the number of the heathen festival days did not come
up to the fifty days of the Christian festal season from Easter to
Whitsunday.  To these fell to be added the time of rest in the middle
of winter after the completion of the autumnal bowing, which Columella
estimates at thirty days.  Within this time, doubtless, the moveable
"festival of seed-sowing" (-feriae sementivae-; comp. i. 210 and Ovid.
Fast, i. 661) uniformly occurred.  This month of rest must not be
confounded with the holidays for holding courts in the season of the
harvest (Plin. Ep. viii. 21, 2, et al.) and vintage.

10. III. I. The Carthaginian Dominion in Africa

11. The medium price of grain in the capital may be assumed at least
for the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome at one -denarius- for the
Roman -modius-, or 2 shillings 8 pence per bushel of wheat, for which
there is now paid (according to the average of the prices in the
provinces of Brandenburg and Pomerania from 1816 to 1841) about 3
shillings 5 pence.  Whether this not very considerable difference
between the Roman and the modern prices depends on a rise in the value
of corn or on a fall in the value of silver, can hardly be decided.

It is very doubtful, perhaps, whether in the Rome of this and of later
times the prices of corn really fluctuated more than is the case in
modern times.  If we compare prices like those quoted above, of 4
pence and 5 pence for the bushel and a half, with those of the worst
times of war-dearth and famine--such as in the second Punic war when
the same quantity rose to 9 shillings 7 pence (1 -medimnus- = 15 --
drachmae--; Polyb. ix. 44), in the civil war to 19 shillings 2 pence
(1 -modius- = 5 -denarii-; Cic. Verr. iii. 92, 214), in the great
dearth under Augustus, even to 21 shillings 3 pence (5 -modii- =27 1/2
-denarii-; Euseb. Chron. p. Chr. 7, Scal.)--the difference is indeed
immense; but such extreme cases are but little instructive, and might
in either direction be found recurring under the like conditions at
the present day.

12. II. VIII. Farming of Estates

13. Accordingly Cato calls the two estates, which he describes,
summarily "olive-plantation" (-olivetum-) and "vineyard" (-vinea-),
although not wine and oil merely, but grain also and other products
were cultivated there.  If indeed the 800 -culei-, for which the
possessor of the vineyard is directed to provide himself with casks
(11), formed the maximum of a year's vintage, the whole of the 100
-jugera- must have been planted with vines, because a produce of 8
-culei- per -jugerum- was almost unprecedented (Colum. iii. 3); but
Varro (i. 22) understood, and evidently with reason, the statement to
apply to the case of the possessor of a vineyard who found it
necessary to make the new vintage before he had sold the old.

14. That the Roman landlord made on an average 6 per cent from his
capital, may be inferred from Columella, iii. 3, 9.  We have a more
precise estimate of the expense and produce only in the case of the
vine yard, for which Columella gives the following calculation of
the cost per -jugerum-:

Price of the ground                         1000 sesterces.
Price of the slaves who work it             1143
(proportion to-jugerum-)
Vines and stakes                            2000
Loss of interest during the first two years  497
                                            ----
Total                                       4640 sesterces= 47 pounds.

He calculates the produce as at any rate 60 -amphorae-, worth at least
900 sesterces (9 pounds), which would thus represent a return of 17
per cent.  But this is somewhat illusory, as, apart from bad harvests,
the cost of gathering in the produce (III. XII. Spirit of the System),
and the expenses of the maintenance of the vines, stakes, and slaves,
are omitted from the estimate.

The gross produce of meadow, pasture, and forest is estimated by the
same agricultural writer as, at most, 100 sesterces per -jugerum-, and
that of corn land as less rather than more: in fact, the average
return of 25 -modii- of wheat per -jugerum- gives, according to the
average price in the capital of 1 -denarius- per -modius-, not more
than 100 sesterces for the gross proceeds, and at the seat of
production the price must have been still lower.  Varro (iii. 2)
reckons as a good ordinary gross return for a larger estate 150
sesterces per -jugerum-.  Estimates of the corresponding expense have
not reached us: as a matter of course, the management in this instance
cost much less than in that of a vineyard.

All these statements, moreover, date from a century or more after
Gate's death.  From him we have only the general statement that the
breeding of cattle yielded a better return than agriculture (ap.
Cicero, De Off. ii. 25, 89; Colum. vi. praef. 4, comp. ii. 16, 2;
Plin. H. N. xviii. 5, 30; Plutarch, Cato, 21); which of course is not
meant to imply that it was everywhere advisable to convert arable land
into pasture, but is to be understood relatively as signifying that
the capital invested in the rearing of flocks and herds on mountain
pastures and other suitable pasture-land yielded, as compared with
capital invested in cultivating Suitable corn land, a higher interest.
Perhaps the circumstance has been also taken into account in the
calculation, that the want of energy and intelligence in the landlord
operates far less injuriously in the case of pasture-land than in the
highly-developed culture of the vine and olive.  On an arable estate,
according to Cato, the returns of the soil stood as follows in a
descending series:--1, vineyard; 2, vegetable garden; 3, osier copse,
which yielded a large return in consequence of the culture of the
vine; 4, olive plantation; 5, meadow yielding hay; 6, corn fields;
7, copse; 8, wood for felling; 9, oak forest for forage to the cattle;
all of which nine elements enter into the scheme of husbandry for
Cato's model estates.

The higher net return of the culture of the vine as compared with that
of corn is attested also by the fact, that under the award pronounced
in the arbitration between the city of Genua and the villages
tributary to it in 637 the city received a sixth of wine, and a
twentieth of grain, as quitrent.

15. III. XII. Spirit of the System

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

17. The industrial importance of the Roman cloth-making is evident
from the remarkable part which is played by the fullers in Roman
comedy.  The profitable nature of the fullers' pits is attested by
Cato (ap. Plutarch, Cat 21).

18. III. III. Organization of the Provinces

19. III. III. Property

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

21. III. I. Comparison between Carthage and Rome

22. III. VI. Pressure of the War

23. There were in the treasury 17,410 Roman pounds of gold, 22,070
pounds of uncoined, and 18,230 pounds of coined, silver.  The legal
ratio of gold to silver was: 1 pound of gold = 4000 sesterces, or 1:
11.91.

24. On this was based the actionable character of contracts of
buying, hiring, and partnership, and, in general, the whole system
of non-formal actionable contracts.

25. The chief passage as to this point is the fragment of Cato in
Gellius, xiv. 2.  In the case of the -obligatio litteris- also,
i. e. a claim based solely on the entry of a debt in the account-book
of the creditor, this legal regard paid to the personal credibility of
the party, even where his testimony in his own cause is concerned,
affords the key of explanation; and hence it happened that in later
times, when this mercantile repute had vanished from Roman life, the
-obligatio litteris-, while not exactly abolished, fell of itself into
desuetude.

26. In the remarkable model contract given by Cato (141) for the
letting of the olive harvest, there is the following paragraph:--

"None [of the persons desirous to contract on the occasion of letting]
shall withdraw, for the sake of causing the gathering and pressing of
the olives to be let at a dearer rate; except when [the joint bidder]
immediately names [the other bidder] as his partner.  If this rule
shall appear to have been infringed, all the partners [of the company
with which the contract has been concluded] shall, if desired by the
landlord or the overseer appointed by him, take an oath [that they
have not conspired in this way to prevent competition].  If they do
not take the oath, the stipulated price is not to be paid." It is
tacitly assumed that the contract is taken by a company, not by an
individual capitalist.

27. III. XIII. Religious Economy

28. Livy (xxi. 63; comp. Cic. Verr. v. 18, 45) mentions only the
enactment as to the sea-going vessels; but Asconius (in Or. in toga
cand. p. 94, Orell.) and Dio. (lv. 10, 5) state that the senator was
also forbidden by law to undertake state-contracts (-redemptiones-);
and, as according to Livy "all speculation was considered unseemly for
a senator," the Claudian law probably reached further than he states.

29. Cato, like every other Roman, invested a part of his means in the
breeding of cattle, and in commercial and other undertakings.  But it
was not his habit directly to violate the laws; he neither speculated
in state-leases--which as a senator he was not allowed to do--nor
practised usury.  It is an injustice to charge him with a practice in
the latter respect at variance with his theory; the -fenus nauticum-,
in which he certainly engaged, was not a branch of usury prohibited by
the law; it really formed an essential part of the business of
chartering and freighting vessels.




CHAPTER XIII

Faith and Manners

Roman Austerity and Roman Pride

Life in the case of the Roman was spent under conditions of austere
restraint, and, the nobler he was, the less he was a free man.
 All-powerful custom restricted him to a narrow range of thought
and action; and to have led a serious and strict or, to use the
characteristic Latin expressions, a sad and severe life, was his
glory.  No one had more and no one had less to do than to keep his
household in good order and manfully bear his part of counsel and
action in public affairs.  But, while the individual had neither the
wish nor the power to be aught else than a member of the community,
the glory and the might of that community were felt by every
individual burgess as a personal possession to be transmitted along
with his name and his homestead to his posterity; and thus, as one
generation after another was laid in the tomb and each in succession
added its fresh contribution to the stock of ancient honours, the
collective sense of dignity in the noble families of Rome swelled into
that mighty civic pride, the like of which the earth has never seen
again, and the traces of which, as strange as they are grand, seem to
us, wherever we meet them, to belong as it were to another world.  It
was one of the characteristic peculiarities of this powerful sense of
citizenship, that it was, while not suppressed, yet compelled by the
rigid simplicity and equality that prevailed among the citizens to
remain locked up within the breast during life, and was only allowed
to find expression after death; but then it was displayed in the
funeral rites of the man of distinction so conspicuously and
intensely, that this ceremonial is better fitted than any other
phenomenon of Roman life to give to us who live in later times a
glimpse of that wonderful spirit of the Romans.

A Roman Funeral

It was a singular procession, at which the burgesses were invited to
be present by the summons of the public crier: "Yonder warrior is
dead; whoever can, let him come to escort Lucius Aemilius; he is borne
forth from his house."  It was opened by bands of wailing women,
musicians, and dancers; one of the latter was dressed out and
furnished with a mask after the likeness of the deceased, and by
gesture doubtless and action recalled once more to the multitude the
appearance of the well-known man.  Then followed the grandest and most
peculiar part of the solemnity--the procession of ancestors--before
which all the rest of the pageant so faded in comparison, that men of
rank of the true Roman type enjoined their heirs to restrict the
funeral ceremony to that procession alone.  We have already mentioned
that the face-masks of those ancestors who had filled the curule
aedileship or any higher ordinary magistracy, wrought in wax and
painted--modelled as far as possible after life, but not wanting even
for the earlier ages up to and beyond the time of the kings--were wont
to be placed in wooden niches along the walls of the family hall, and
were regarded as the chief ornament of the house.  When a death
occurred in the family, suitable persons, chiefly actors, were dressed
up with these face-masks and the corresponding official costume to
take part in the funeral ceremony, so that the ancestors--each in the
principal dress worn by him in his lifetime, the triumphator in his
gold-embroidered, the censor in his purple, and the consul in his
purple-bordered, robe, with their lictors and the other insignia of
office--all in chariots gave the final escort to the dead.  On the
bier overspread with massive purple and gold-embroidered coverlets and
fine linen cloths lay the deceased himself, likewise in the full
costume of the highest office which he had filled, and surrounded by
the armour of the enemies whom he had slain and by the chaplets which
in jest or earnest he had won.  Behind the bier came the mourners, all
dressed in black and without ornament, the sons of the deceased with
their heads veiled, the daughters without veil, the relatives and
clansmen, the friends, the clients and freedmen.  Thus the procession
passed on to the Forum.  There the corpse was placed in an erect
position; the ancestors descended from their chariots and seated
themselves in the curule chairs; and the son or nearest gentile
kinsman of the deceased ascended the rostra, in order to announce to
the assembled multitude in simple recital the names and deeds of each
of the men sitting in a circle around him and, last of all, those of
him who had recently died.

This may be called a barbarous custom, and a nation of artistic
feelings would certainly not have tolerated the continuance of this
odd resurrection of the dead down to an epoch of fully-developed
civilization; but even Greeks who were very dispassionate and but
little disposed to reverence, such as Polybius, were greatly impressed
by the naive pomp of this funeral ceremony.  It was a conception
essentially in keeping with the grave solemnity, the uniform movement,
and the proud dignity of Roman life, that departed generations should
continue to walk, as it were, corporeally among the living, and that,
when a burgess weary of labours and of honours was gathered to his
fathers, these fathers themselves should appear in the Forum to
receive him among their number.

The New Hellenism

But the Romans had now reached a crisis of transition.  Now that the
power of Rome was no longer confined to Italy but had spread far and
wide to the east and to the west, the days of the old home life of
Italy were over, and a Hellenizing civilization came in its room.  It
is true that Italy had been subject to the influence of Greece, ever
since it had a history at all.  We have formerly shown how the
youthful Greece and the youthful Italy--both of them with a certain
measure of simplicity and originality--gave and received intellectual
impulses; and how at a later period Rome endeavoured after a more
external manner to appropriate to practical use the language and
inventions of the Greeks.  But the Hellenism of the Romans of the
present period was, in its causes as well as its consequences,
something essentially new.  The Romans began to feel the need of a
richer intellectual life, and to be startled as it were at their own
utter want of mental culture; and, if even nations of artistic gifts,
such as the English and Germans, have not disdained in the pauses of
their own productiveness to avail themselves of the miserable French
culture for filling up the gap, it need excite no surprise that the
Italian nation now flung itself with fervid zeal on the glorious
treasures as well as on the dissolute filth of the intellectual
development of Hellas.  But it was an impulse still more profound and
deep-rooted, which carried the Romans irresistibly into the Hellenic
vortex.  Hellenic civilization still doubtless called itself by that
name, but it was Hellenic no longer; it was, in fact, humanistic and
cosmopolitan.  It had solved the problem of moulding a mass of
different nations into one whole completely in the field of intellect,
and to a certain extent also in that of politics; and, now when the
same task on a wider scale devolved on Rome, she took over Hellenism
along with the rest of the inheritance of Alexander the Great.
Hellenism therefore was no longer a mere stimulus or accessory
influence; it penetrated the Italian nation to the very core.  Of
course, the vigorous home life of Italy strove against the foreign
element.  It was only after a most vehement struggle that the Italian
farmer abandoned the field to the cosmopolite of the capital; and, as
in Germany the French coat called forth the national Germanic frock,
so the reaction against Hellenism aroused in Rome a tendency which
opposed the influence of Greece on principle, in a fashion altogether
foreign to the earlier centuries, and in doing so fell pretty
frequently into downright follies and absurdities.

Hellenism in Politics

No department of human action or thought remained unaffected by this
struggle between the old fashion and the new.  Even political
relations were largely influenced by it The whimsical project of
emancipating the Hellenes, the well deserved failure of which has
already been described, the kindred, likewise Hellenic, idea of a
common interest of republics in opposition to kings, and the desire of
propagating Hellenic polity at the expense of eastern despotism--the
two principles that helped to regulate, for instance, the treatment of
Macedonia--were fixed ideas of the new school, just as dread of the
Carthaginians was the fixed idea of the old; and, if Cato pushed the
latter to a ridiculous excess, Philhellenism now and then indulged in
extravagances at least quite as foolish.  For example, the conqueror
of king Antiochus not only had a statue of him self in Greek costume
erected on the Capitol, but also, instead of calling himself in good
Latin -Asiaticus-, assumed the unmeaning and anomalous, but yet
magnificent and almost Greek, surname of --Asiagenus--.(1)  A more
important consequence of this attitude of the ruling nation towards
Hellenism was, that the process of Latinizing gained ground everywhere
in Italy except where it encountered the Hellenes.  The cities of the
Greeks in Italy, so far as the war had not destroyed them, remained
Greek.  Apulia, about which, it is true, the Romans gave themselves
little concern, appears at this very epoch to have been thoroughly
pervaded by Hellenism, and the local civilization there seems to have
attained the level of the decaying Hellenic culture by its side.
Tradition is silent on the matter; but the numerous coins of cities,
uniformly furnished with Greek inscriptions, and the manufacture of
painted clay-vases after the Greek style, which was carried on in that
part of Italy alone with more ambition and gaudiness than taste, show
that Apulia had completely adopted Greek habits and Greek art.

But the real struggle between Hellenism and its national antagonists
during the present period was carried on in the field of faith, of
manners, and of art and literature; and we must not omit to attempt
some delineation of this great strife of principles, however difficult
it may be to present a summary view of the myriad forms and aspects
which the conflict assumed.

The National Religion and Unbelief

The extent to which the old simple faith still retained a living hold
on the Italians is shown very clearly by the admiration or
astonishment which this problem of Italian piety excited among the
contemporary Greeks.  On occasion of the quarrel with the Aetolians it
was reported of the Roman commander-in-chief that during battle he was
solely occupied in praying and sacrificing like a priest; whereas
Polybius with his somewhat stale moralizing calls the attention of his
countrymen to the political usefulness of this piety, and admonishes
them that a state cannot consist of wise men alone, and that such
ceremonies are very convenient for the sake of the multitude.

Religious Economy

But if Italy still possessed--what had long been a mere antiquarian
curiosity in Hellas--a national religion, it was already visibly
beginning to be ossified into theology.  The torpor creeping over
faith is nowhere perhaps so distinctly apparent as in the alterations
in the economy of divine service and of the priesthood.  The public
service of the gods became not only more tedious, but above all more
and more costly.  In 558 there was added to the three old colleges of
the augurs, pontifices, and keepers of oracles, a fourth consisting of
three "banquet-masters" (-tres viri epulones-), solely for the
important purpose of superintending the banquets of the gods.  The
priests, as well as the gods, were in fairness entitled to feast; new
institutions, however, were not needed with that view, as every
college applied itself with zeal and devotion to its convivial
affairs.  The clerical banquets were accompanied by the claim of
clerical immunities.  The priests even in times of grave embarrassment
claimed the right of exemption from public burdens, and only after
very troublesome controversy submitted to make payment of the taxes in
arrear (558).  To the individual, as well as to the community, piety
became a more and more costly article.  The custom of instituting
endowments, and generally of undertaking permanent pecuniary
obligations, for religious objects prevailed among the Romans in a
manner similar to that of its prevalence in Roman Catholic countries
at the present day.  These endowments--particularly after they came to
be regarded by the supreme spiritual and at the same time the supreme
juristic authority in the state, the pontifices, as a real burden
devolving -de jure- on every heir or other person acquiring the
estate--began to form an extremely oppressive charge on property;
"inheritance without sacrificial obligation" was a proverbial saying
among the Romans somewhat similar to our "rose without a thorn." The
dedication of a tenth of their substance became so common, that twice
every month a public entertainment was given from the proceeds in the
Forum Boarium at Rome.  With the Oriental worship of the Mother of the
Gods there was imported to Rome among other pious nuisances the
practice, annually recurring on certain fixed days, of demanding
penny-collections from house to house (-stipem cogere-).  Lastly, the
subordinate class of priests and soothsayers, as was reasonable,
rendered no service without being paid for it; and beyond doubt the
Roman dramatist sketched from life, when in the curtain-conversation
between husband and wife he represents the account for pious services
as ranking with the accounts for the cook, the nurse, and other
customary presents:--

-Da mihi, vir,--quod dem Quinquatribus
Praecantrici, conjectrici, hariolae atquc haruspicae;
Tum piatricem clementer non potest quin munerem.
Flagitium est, si nil mittetur, quo supercilio spicit.-

The Romans did not create a "God of gold," as they had formerly
created a "God of silver";(2) nevertheless he reigned in reality alike
over the highest and lowest spheres of religious life.  The old pride
of the Latin national religion--the moderation of its economic
demands--was irrevocably gone.

Theology

At the same time its ancient simplicity also departed.  Theology, the
spurious offspring of reason and faith, was already occupied in
introducing its own tedious prolixity and solemn inanity into the old
homely national faith, and thereby expelling the true spirit of that
faith.  The catalogue of the duties and privileges of the priest of
Jupiter, for instance, might well have a place in the Talmud.  They
pushed the natural rule--that no religious service can be acceptable
to the gods unless it is free from flaw--to such an extent in
practice, that a single sacrifice had to be repeated thirty times in
succession on account of mistakes again and again committed, and that
the games, which also formed a part of divine service, were regarded
as undone if the presiding magistrate had committed any slip in word
or deed or if the music even had paused at a wrong time, and so had to
be begun afresh, frequently for several, even as many as seven, times
in succession.

Irreligious Spirit

This exaggeration of conscientiousness was already a symptom of its
incipient torpor; and the reaction against it--indifference and
unbelief--failed not soon to appear.  Even in the first Punic war
(505) an instance occurred in which the consul himself made an open
jest of consulting the auspices before battle--a consul, it is true,
belonging to the peculiar clan of the Claudii, which alike in good and
evil was ahead of its age.  Towards the end of this epoch complaints
were loudly made that the lore of the augurs was neglected, and that,
to use the language of Cato, a number of ancient auguries and auspices
were falling into oblivion through the indolence of the college.  An
augur like Lucius Paullus, who saw in the priesthood a science and not
a mere title, was already a rare exception, and could not but be so,
when the government more and more openly and unhesitatingly employed
the auspices for the accomplishment of its political designs, or, in
other words, treated the national religion in accordance with the view
of Polybius as a superstition useful for imposing on the public at
large.  Where the way was thus paved, the Hellenistic irreligious
spirit found free course.  In connection with the incipient taste for
art the sacred images of the gods began as early as the time of Cato
to be employed, like other furniture, in adorning the chambers of the
rich.  More dangerous wounds were inflicted on religion by the rising
literature.  It could not indeed venture on open attacks, and such
direct additions as were made by its means to religious conceptions
--e.g. the Pater Caelus formed by Ennius from the Roman Saturnus in
imitation of the Greek Uranos--were, while Hellenistic, of no great
importance.  But the diffusion of the doctrines of Epichar and
Euhemerus in Rome was fraught with momentous consequences.  The
poetical philosophy, which the later Pythagoreans had extracted from
the writings of the old Sicilian comedian Epicharmus of Megara (about
280), or rather had, at least for the most part, circulated under
cover of his name, saw in the Greek gods natural substances, in Zeus
the atmosphere, in the soul a particle of sun-dust, and so forth.  In
so far as this philosophy of nature, like the Stoic doctrine in later
times, had in its most general outlines a certain affinity with the
Roman religion, it was calculated to undermine the national religion
by resolving it into allegory.  A quasi-historical analysis of
religion was given in the "Sacred Memoirs" of Euhemerus of Messene
(about 450), which, under the form of reports on the travels of the
author among the marvels of foreign lands, subjected to thorough and
documentary sifting the accounts current as to the so-called gods, and
resulted in the conclusion that there neither were nor are gods at
all.  To indicate the character of the book, it may suffice to mention
the one fact, that the story of Kronos devouring his children is
explained as arising out of the existence of cannibalism in the
earliest times and its abolition by king Zeus.  Notwithstanding, or
even by virtue of, its insipidity and of its very obvious purpose, the
production had an undeserved success in Greece, and helped, in concert
with the current philosophies there, to bury the dead religion.  It is
a remarkable indication of the expressed and conscious antagonism
between religion and the new philosophy that Ennius already translated
into Latin those notoriously destructive writings of Epicharmus and
Euhemerus.  The translators may have justified themselves at the bar
of Roman police by pleading that the attacks were directed only
against the Greek, and not against the Latin, gods; but the evasion
was tolerably transparent.  Cato was, from his own point of view,
quite right in assailing these tendencies indiscriminately, wherever
they met him, with his own peculiar bitterness, and in calling even
Socrates a corrupter of morals and offender against religion.

Home and Foreign Superstition

Thus the old national religion was visibly on the decline; and, as
the great trees of the primeval forest were uprooted the soil became
covered with a rank growth of thorns and of weeds that had never been
seen before.  Native superstitions and foreign impostures of the most
various hues mingled, competed, and conflicted with each other.  No
Italian stock remained exempt from this transmuting of old faith into
new superstition.  As the lore of entrails and of lightning was
cultivated among the Etruscans, so the liberal art of observing birds
and conjuring serpent?  flourished luxuriantly among the Sabellians
and more particularly the Marsians.  Even among the Latin nation, and
in fact in Rome itself, we meet with similar phenomena, although they
are, comparatively speaking, less conspicuous.  Such for instance were
the lots of Praeneste, and the remarkable discovery at Rome in 573 of
the tomb and posthumous writings of the king Numa, which are alleged
to have prescribed religious rites altogether strange and unheard of.
But the credulous were to their regret not permitted to learn more
than this, coupled with the fact that the books looked very new; for
the senate laid hands on the treasure and ordered the rolls to be
summarily thrown into the fire.  The home manufacture was thus quite
sufficient to meet such demands of folly as might fairly be expected;
but the Romans were far from being content with it.  The Hellenism of
that epoch, already denationalized and pervaded by Oriental mysticism,
introduced not only unbelief but also superstition in its most
offensive and dangerous forms to Italy; and these vagaries moreover
had quite a special charm, precisely because they were foreign.

Worship of Cybele

Chaldaean astrologers and casters of nativities were already in the
sixth century spread throughout Italy; but a still more important
event--one making in fact an epoch in the world's history--was the
reception of the Phrygian Mother of the Gods among the publicly
recognized divinities of the Roman state, to which the government had
been obliged to give its consent during the last weary years of the
Hannibalic war (550).  A special embassy was sent for the purpose to
Pessinus, a city in the territory of the Celts of Asia Minor; and the
rough field-stone, which the priests of the place liberally presented
to the foreigners as the real Mother Cybele, was received by the
community with unparalleled pomp.  Indeed, by way of perpetually
commemorating the joyful event, clubs in which the members entertained
each other in rotation were instituted among the higher classes, and
seem to have materially stimulated the rising tendency to the
formation of cliques.  With the permission thus granted for the
-cultus- of Cybele the worship of the Orientals gained a footing
officially in Rome; and, though the government strictly insisted that
the emasculate priests of the new gods should remain Celts (-Galli-)
as they were called, and that no Roman burgess should devote himself
to this pious eunuchism, yet the barbaric pomp of the "Great Mother"
--her priests clad in Oriental costume with the chief eunuch at their
head, marching in procession through the streets to the foreign music
of fifes and kettledrums, and begging from house to house--and the
whole doings, half sensuous, half monastic, must have exercised a most
material influence over the sentiments and views of the people.

Worship of Bacchus

The effect was only too rapidly and fearfully apparent.  A few years
later (568) rites of the most abominable character came to the
knowledge of the Roman authorities; a secret nocturnal festival in
honour of the god Bacchus had been first introduced into Etruria
through a Greek priest, and, spreading like a cancer, had rapidly
reached Rome and propagated itself over all Italy, everywhere
corrupting families and giving rise to the most heinous crimes,
unparalleled unchastity, falsifying of testaments, and murdering by
poison.  More than 7000 men were sentenced to punishment, most of them
to death, on this account, and rigorous enactments were issued as to
the future; yet they did not succeed in repressing the ongoings, and
six years later (574) the magistrate to whom the matter fell
complained that 3000 men more had been condemned and still there
appeared no end of the evil.

Repressive Measures

Of course all rational men were agreed in the condemnation of these
spurious forms of religion--as absurd as they were injurious to the
commonwealth: the pious adherents of the olden faith and the partisans
of Hellenic enlightenment concurred in their ridicule of, and
indignation at, this superstition.  Cato made it an instruction to his
steward, "that he was not to present any offering, or to allow any
offering to be presented on his behalf, without the knowledge and
orders of his master, except at the domestic hearth and on the
wayside-altar at the Compitalia, and that he should consult no
-haruspex-, -hariolus-, or -Chaldaeus-."  The well-known question, as
to how a priest could contrive to suppress laughter when he met his
colleague, originated with Cato, and was primarily applied to the
Etruscan -haruspex-.  Much in the same spirit Ennius censures in true
Euripidean style the mendicant soothsayers and their adherents:

-Sed superstitiosi vates impudentesque arioli,
Aut inertes aut insani aut quibus egestas imperat,
Qui sibi semitam non sapiunt, alteri monstrant viam,
Quibus divitias pollicentur, ab eis drachumam ipsi petunt.-

But in such times reason from the first plays a losing game against
unreason.  The government, no doubt, interfered; the pious impostors
were punished and expelled by the police; every foreign worship not
specially sanctioned was forbidden; even the consulting of the
comparatively innocent lot-oracle of Praeneste was officially
prohibited in 512; and, as we have already said, those who took part
in the Bacchanalia were rigorously prosecuted.  But, when once men's
heads are thoroughly turned, no command of the higher authorities
avails to set them right again.  How much the government was obliged
to concede, or at any rate did concede, is obvious from what has been
stated.  The Roman custom, under which the state consulted Etruscan
sages in certain emergencies and the government accordingly took steps
to secure the traditional transmission of Etruscan lore in the noble
families of Etruria, as well as the permission of the secret worship
of Demeter, which was not immoral and was restricted to women, may
probably be ranked with the earlier innocent and comparatively
indifferent adoption of foreign rites.  But the admission of the
worship of the Mother of the Gods was a bad sign of the weakness which
the government felt in presence of the new superstition, perhaps even
of the extent to which it was itself pervaded by it; and it showed in
like manner either an unpardonable negligence or something still
worse, that the authorities only took steps against such proceedings
as the Bacchanalia at so late a stage, and even then on an accidental
information.

Austerity of Manners
Catos's Family Life

The picture, which has been handed down to us of the life of Cato the
Elder, enables us in substance to perceive how, according to the ideas
of the respectable burgesses of that period, the private life of the
Roman should be spent.  Active as Cato was as a statesman, pleader,
author, and mercantile speculator, family life always formed with him
the central object of existence; it was better, he thought, to be a
good husband than a great senator.  His domestic discipline was
strict.  The servants were not allowed to leave the house without
orders, nor to talk of what occurred to the household to strangers.
The more severe punishments were not inflicted capriciously, but
sentence was pronounced and executed according to a quasi-judicial
procedure: the strictness with which offences were punished may be
inferred from the fact, that one of his slaves who had concluded a
purchase without orders from his master hanged himself on the matter
coming to Cato's ears.  For slight offences, such as mistakes
committed in waiting at table, the consular was wont after dinner to
administer to the culprit the proper number of lashes with a thong
wielded by his own hand.  He kept his wife and children in order no
less strictly, but by other means; for he declared it sinful to lay
hands on a wife or grown-up children in the same way as on slaves.
In the choice of a wife he disapproved marrying for money, and
recommended men to look to good descent; but he himself married in
old age the daughter of one of his poor clients.  Moreover he adopted
views in regard to continence on the part of the husband similar to
those which everywhere prevail in slave countries; a wife was
throughout regarded by him as simply a necessary evil.  His writings
abound in invectives against the chattering, finery-loving,
ungovernable fair sex; it was the opinion of the old lord that "all
women are plaguy and proud," and that, "were men quit of women, our
life might probably be less godless."  On the other hand the rearing
of children born in wedlock was a matter which touched his heart and
his honour, and the wife in his eyes existed strictly and solely for
the children's sake.  She nursed them ordinarily herself, or, if she
allowed her children to be suckled by female slaves, she also allowed
their children in return to draw nourishment from her own breast; one
of the few traits, which indicate an endeavour to mitigate the
institution of slavery by ties of human sympathy--the common impulses
of maternity and the bond of foster-brotherhood.  The old general was
present in person, whenever it was possible, at the washing and
swaddling of his children.  He watched with reverential care over
their childlike innocence; he assures us that he was as careful lest
he should utter an unbecoming word in presence of his children as if
he had been in presence of the Vestal Virgins, and that he never
before the eyes of his daughters embraced their mother, except when
she had become alarmed during a thunder-storm.  The education of the
son was perhaps the noblest portion of his varied and variously
honourable activity.  True to his maxim, that a ruddy-checked boy was
worth more than a pale one, the old soldier in person initiated his
son into all bodily exercises, and taught him to wrestle, to ride, to
swim, to box, and to endure heat and cold.  But he felt very justly,
that the time had gone by when it sufficed for a Roman to be a good
farmer and soldier; and be felt also that it could not but have an
injurious influence on the mind of his boy, if he should subsequently
learn that the teacher, who had rebuked and punished him and had won
his reverence, was a mere slave.  Therefore he in person taught the
boy what a Roman was wont to learn, to read and write and know the law
of the land; and even in his later years he worked his way so far into
the general culture of the Hellenes, that he was able to deliver to
his son in his native tongue whatever in that culture he deemed to be
of use to a Roman.  All his writings were primarily intended for his
son, and he wrote his historical work for that son's use with large
distinct letters in his own hand.  He lived in a homely and frugal
style.  His strict parsimony tolerated no expenditure on luxuries.  He
allowed no slave to cost him more than 1500 -denarii- (65 pounds) and
no dress more than 100 -denarii- (4 pounds: 6 shillings); no carpet was
to be seen in his house, and for a long time there was no whitewash on
the walls of the rooms.  Ordinarily he partook of the same fare with
his servants, and did not buffer his outlay in cash for the meal to
exceed 30 -asses- (2 shillings); in time of war even wine was
uniformly banished from his table, and he drank water or, according to
circumstances, water mixed with vinegar.  On the other hand, he was no
enemy to hospitality; he was fond of associating both with his club in
town and with the neighbouring landlords in the country; he sat long
at table, and, as his varied experience and his shrewd and ready wit
made him a pleasant companion, he disdained neither the dice nor the
wine-flask: among other receipts in his book on husbandry he even
gives a tried recipe for the case of a too hearty meal and too deep
potations.  His life up to extreme old age was one of ceaseless
activity.  Every moment was apportioned and occupied; and every
evening he was in the habit of turning over in his mind what he had
heard, said, or done during the day.  Thus he found time for his own
affairs as well as for those of his friends and of the state, and time
also for conversation and pleasure; everything was done quickly and
without many words, and his genuine spirit of activity hated nothing
so much as bustle or a great ado about trifles.  So lived the man who
was regarded by his contemporaries and by posterity as the true model
of a Roman burgess, and who appeared as it were the living embodiment
of the--certainly somewhat coarse-grained--energy and probity of Rome
in contrast with Greek indolence and Greek immorality; as a later
Roman poet says:

-Sperne mores transmarinos, mille habent offucias.
Cive Romano per orbem nemo vivit rectius.
Quippe malim unum Catonem, quam trecentos Socratas.- (3)

Such judgments will not be absolutely adopted by history; but every
one who carefully considers the revolution which the degenerate
Hellenism of this age accomplished in the modes of life and thought
among the Romans, will be inclined to heighten rather than to lessen
that condemnation of the foreign manners.

New Manners

The ties of family life became relaxed with fearful rapidity.  The
evil of grisettes and boy-favourites spread like a pestilence, and, as
matters stood, it was not possible to take any material steps in the
way of legislation against it.  The high tax, which Cato as censor
(570) laid on this most abominable species of slaves kept for luxury,
would not be of much moment, and besides fell practically into disuse
a year or two afterwards along with the property-tax generally.
Celibacy--as to which grave complaints were made as early as 520--and
divorces naturally increased in proportion.  Horrible crimes were
perpetrated in the bosom of families of the highest rank; for
instance, the consul Gaius Calpurnius Piso was poisoned by his wife
and his stepson, in order to occasion a supplementary election to the
consulship and so to procure the supreme magistracy for the latter
--a plot which was successful (574).  Moreover the emancipation of
women began.  According to old custom the married woman was subject
in law to the marital power which was parallel with the paternal, and
the unmarried woman to the guardianship of her nearest male -agnati-,
which fell little short of the paternal power; the wife had no
property of her own, the fatherless virgin and the widow had at any
rate no right of management.  But now women began to aspire to
independence in respect to property, and, getting quit of the
guardianship of their -agnati- by evasive lawyers' expedients
--particularly through mock marriages--they took the management
of their property into their own hands, or, in the event of being
married, sought by means not much better to withdraw themselves
from the marital power, which under the strict letter of the law was
necessary.  The mass of capital which was collected in the hands of
women appeared to the statesmen of the time so dangerous, that they
resorted to the extravagant expedient of prohibiting by law the
testamentary nomination of women as heirs (585), and even sought by a
highly arbitrary practice to deprive women for the most part of the
collateral inheritances which fell to them without testament.  In like
manner the exercise of family jurisdiction over women, which was
connected with that marital and tutorial power, became practically
more and more antiquated.  Even in public matters women already
began to have a will of their own and occasionally, as Cato thought,
"to rule the rulers of the world;" their influence was to be traced
in the burgess-assembly, and already statues were erected in the
provinces to Roman ladies.

Luxury

Luxury prevailed more and more in dress, ornaments, and furniture, in
buildings and at table.  Especially after the expedition to Asia Minor
in 564 Asiatico-Hellenic luxury, such as prevailed at Ephesus and
Alexandria, transferred its empty refinement and its dealing in
trifles, destructive alike of money, time, and pleasure, to Rome.
Here too women took the lead: in spite of the zealous invective of
Cato they managed to procure the abolition, after the peace with
Cartilage (559), of the decree of the people passed soon after the
battle of Cannae (539), which forbade them to use gold ornaments,
variegated dresses, or chariots; no course was left to their zealous
antagonist but to impose a high tax on those articles (570).  A
multitude of new and for the most part frivolous articles--silver
plate elegantly figured, table-couches with bronze mounting, Attalic
dresses as they were called, and carpets of rich gold brocade--now
found their way to Rome.  Above all, this new luxury appeared in the
appliances of the table.  Hitherto without exception the Romans had
only partaken of hot dishes once a day; now hot dishes were not
unfrequently produced at the second meal (-prandium-), and for the
principal meal the two courses formerly in use no longer sufficed.
Hitherto the women of the household had themselves attended to
the baking of bread and cooking; and it was only on occasion of
entertainments that a professional cook was specially hired, who in
that case superintended alike the cooking and the baking.  Now, on
the other hand, a scientific cookery began to prevail.  In the
better houses a special cook was kept The division of labour became
necessary, and the trade of baking bread and cakes branched off from
that of cooking--the first bakers' shops in Rome appeared about 583.
Poems on the art of good eating, with long lists of the most palatable
fishes and other marine products, found their readers: and the theory
was reduced to practice.  Foreign delicacies--anchovies from Pontus,
wine from Greece--began to be esteemed in Rome, and Cato's receipt for
giving to the ordinary wine of the country the flavour of Coan by
means of brine would hardly inflict any considerable injury on the
Roman vintners.  The old decorous singing and reciting of the guests
and their boys were supplanted by Asiatic -sambucistriae-.  Hitherto
the Romans had perhaps drunk pretty deeply at supper, but drinking-
banquets in the strict sense were unknown; now formal revels came into
vogue, on which occasions the wine was little or not at all diluted
and was drunk out of large cups, and the drink-pledging, in which each
was bound to follow his neighbour in regular succession, formed the
leading feature--"drinking after the Greek style" (-Graeco more
bibere-) or "playing the Greek" (-pergraecari-, -congraecare-) as the
Romans called it.  In consequence of this debauchery dice-playing,
which had doubtless long been in use among the Romans, reached such
proportions that it was necessary for legislation to interfere.  The
aversion to labour and the habit of idle lounging were visibly on the
increase.(4)  Cato proposed to have the market paved with pointed
stones, in order to put a stop to the habit of idling; the Romans
laughed at the jest and went on to enjoy the pleasure of loitering
and gazing all around them.

Increase of Amusements

We have already noticed the alarming extension of the popular
amusements during this epoch.  At the beginning of it, apart from some
unimportant foot and chariot races which should rather be ranked with
religious ceremonies, only a single general festival was held in the
month of September, lasting four days and having a definitely fixed
maximum of cost.(5)  At the close of the epoch, this popular festival
had a duration of at least six days; and besides this there were
celebrated at the beginning of April the festival of the Mother of the
Gods or the so-called Megalensia, towards the end of April that of
Ceres and that of Flora, in June that of Apollo, in November the
Plebeian games--all of them probably occupying already more days than
one.  To these fell to be added the numerous cases where the games
were celebrated afresh--in which pious scruples presumably often
served as a mere pretext--and the incessant extraordinary festivals.
Among these the already-mentioned banquets furnished from the
dedicated tenths(6) the feasts of the gods, the triumphal and funeral
festivities, were conspicuous; and above all the festal games which
were celebrated--for the first time in 505--at the close of one of
those longer periods which were marked off by the Etrusco-Roman
religion, the -saecula-, as they were called.  At the same time
domestic festivals were multiplied.  During the second Punic war there
were introduced, among people of quality, the already-mentioned
banquetings on the anniversary of the entrance of the Mother of the
Gods (after 550), and, among the lower orders, the similar Saturnalia
(after 537), both under the influence of the powers henceforth closely
allied--the foreign priest and the foreign cook.  A very near approach
was made to that ideal condition in which every idler should know
where he might kill time every day; and this in a commonwealth where
formerly action had been with all and sundry the very object of
existence, and idle enjoyment had been proscribed by custom as well
as by law!  The bad and demoralizing elements in these festal
observances, moreover, daily acquired greater ascendency.  It is true
that still as formerly the chariot races formed the brilliant finale
of the national festivals; and a poet of this period describes very
vividly the straining expectancy with which the eyes of the multitude
were fastened on the consul, when he was on the point of giving the
signal for the chariots to start.  But the former amusements no longer
sufficed; there was a craving for new and more varied spectacles.
Greek athletes now made their appearance (for the first time in 568)
alongside of the native wrestlers and boxers.  Of the dramatic
exhibitions we shall speak hereafter: the transplanting of Greek
comedy and tragedy to Rome was a gain perhaps of doubtful value, but
it formed at any rate the best of the acquisitions made at this time.
The Romans had probably long indulged in the sport of coursing hares
and hunting foxes in presence of the public; now these innocent hunts
were converted into formal baitings of wild animals, and the wild
beasts of Africa--lions and panthers--were (first so far as can be
proved in 568) transported at great cost to Rome, in order that by
killing or being killed they might serve to glut the eyes of the
gazers of the capital.  The still more revolting gladiatorial games,
which prevailed in Campania and Etruria, now gained admission to Rome;
human blood was first shed for sport in the Roman forum in 490.  Of
course these demoralizing amusements encountered severe censure: the
consul of 486, Publius Sempronius Sophus, sent a divorce to his wife,
because she had attended funeral games; the government carried a
decree of the people prohibiting the bringing over of wild beasts to
Rome, and strictly insisted that no gladiators should appear at the
public festivals.  But here too it wanted either the requisite power
or the requisite energy: it succeeded, apparently, in checking the
practice of baiting animals, but the appearance of sets of gladiators
at private festivals, particularly at funeral celebrations, was not
suppressed.  Still less could the public be prevented from preferring
the comedian to the tragedian, the rope-dancer to the comedian, the
gladiator to the rope-dancer; or the stage be prevented from revelling
by choice amidst the pollution of Hellenic life.  Whatever elements of
culture were contained in the scenic and artistic entertainments were
from the first thrown aside; it was by no means the object of the
givers of the Roman festivals to elevate--though it should be but
temporarily--the whole body of spectators through the power of poetry
to the level of feeling of the best, as the Greek stage did in the
period of its prime, or to prepare an artistic pleasure for a select
circle, as our theatres endeavour to do.  The character of the
managers and spectators in Rome is illustrated by a scene at the
triumphal games in 587, where the first Greek flute-players, on their
melodies failing to please, were instructed by the director to box
with one another instead of playing, upon which the delight would
know no bounds.

Nor was the evil confined to the corruption of Roman manners by
Hellenic contagion; conversely the scholars began to demoralize their
instructors.  Gladiatorial games, which were unknown in Greece, were
first introduced by king Antiochus Epiphanes (579-590), a professed
imitator of the Romans, at the Syrian court, and, although they
excited at first greater horror than pleasure in the Greek public,
which was more humane and had more sense of art than the Romans, yet
they held their ground likewise there, and gradually came more and
more into vogue.

As a matter of course, this revolution in life and manners brought an
economic revolution in its train.  Residence in the capital became
more and more coveted as well as more costly.  Rents rose to an
unexampled height.  Extravagant prices were paid for the new
articles of luxury; a barrel of anchovies from the Black Sea cost
1600 sesterces (16 pounds)--more than the price of a rural slave; a
beautiful boy cost 24,000 sesterces (240 pounds)--more than many a
farmer's homestead.  Money therefore, and nothing but money, became
the watchword with high and low.  In Greece it had long been the case
that nobody did anything for nothing, as the Greeks themselves with
discreditable candour allowed: after the second Macedonian war the
Romans began in this respect also to imitate the Greeks.
Respectability had to provide itself with legal buttresses; pleaders,
for instance, had to be prohibited by decree of the people from taking
money for their services; the jurisconsults alone formed a noble
exception, and needed no decree of the people to compel their
adherence to the honourable custom of giving good advice gratuitously.
Men did not, if possible, steal outright; but all shifts seemed
allowable in order to attain rapidly to riches--plundering and
begging, cheating on the part of contractors and swindling on the part
of speculators, usurious trading in money and in grain, even the
turning of purely moral relations such as friendship and marriage to
economic account.  Marriage especially became on both sides an object
of mercantile speculation; marriages for money were common, and it
appeared necessary to refuse legal validity to the' presents which the
spouses made to each other.  That, under such a state of things, plans
for setting fire on all sides to the capital came to the knowledge of
the authorities, need excite no surprise.  When man no longer finds
enjoyment in work, and works merely in order to attain as quickly as
possible to enjoyment, it is a mere accident that he does not become a
criminal.  Destiny had lavished all the glories of power and riches
with liberal hand on the Romans; but, in truth, the Pandora's box was
a gift of doubtful value.




Notes for Chapter XIII


1. That --Asiagenus-- was the original title of the hero of Magnesia
and of his descendants, is established by coins and inscriptions; the
fact that the Capitoline Fasti call him -Asiaticus- is one of several
traces indicating that these have undergone a non-contemporary
revision.  The former surname can only he a corruption of --Asiagenus--
--the form which later authors substituted for it--which signifies
not the conqueror of Asia, but an Asiatic by birth.

2. II. VIII. Religion

3. [In the first edition of this translation I gave these lines in
English on the basis of Dr. Mommsen's German version, and added in a
note that I had not been able to find the original.  Several scholars
whom I consulted were not more successful; and Dr. Mommsen was at the
time absent from Berlin.  Shortly after the first edition appeared, I
received a note from Sir George Cornewall Lewis informing me that I
should find them taken from Florus (or Floridus) in Wernsdorf, Poetae
Lat. Min. vol. iii. p. 487.  They were accordingly given in the
revised edition of 1868 from the Latin text Baehrens (Poet. Lat. Min.
vol. iv. p. 347) follows Lucian Muller in reading -offucia-. --TR.]

4. A sort of -parabasis- in the -Curculio- of Plautus describes what
went on in the market-place of the capital, with little humour
perhaps, but with life-like distinctness.

-Conmonstrabo, quo in quemque hominem facile inveniatis loco,
Ne nimio opere sumat operam, si quis conventum velit
Vel vitiosum vel sine vitio, vel probum vel inprobum.
Qui perjurum convenire volt hominem, ito in comitium;
Qui mendacem et gloriosum, apud Cloacinae sacrum.
[Ditis damnosos maritos sub basilica quaerito.
Ibidem erunt scorta exoleta quique stipulari solent.]
Symbolarum conlatores apud forum piscarium.
In foro infumo boni homines atque dites ambulant;
In medio propter canalem ibi ostentatores meri.
Confidentes garrulique et malevoli supra lacum,
Qui alteri de nihilo audacter dicunt contumeliam
Et qui ipsi sat habent quod in se possit vere dicier.
Sub veteribus ibi sunt, qui dant quique accipiunt faenore.
Pone aedem Castoris ibi sunt, subito quibus credas male.
In Tusco vico ibi sunt homines, qui ipsi sese venditant.
In Velabro vel pistorem vel lanium vel haruspicem
Vel qui ipsi vorsant, vel qui aliis, ut vorsentur, praebeant.
Ditis damnosos maritos apud Leucadiam Oppiam.-

The verses in brackets are a subsequent addition, inserted after the
building of the first Roman bazaar (570).  The business of the baker
(-pistor-, literally miller) embraced at this time the sale of
delicacies and the providing accommodation for revellers (Festus, Ep.
v. alicariae, p. 7, Mull.; Plautus, Capt. 160; Poen. i. a, 54; Trin.
407).  The same was the case with the butchers.  Leucadia Oppia may
have kept a house of bad fame.

5. II. IX. The Roman National Festival

6. III. XIII. Religious Economy




CHAPTER XIV

Literature and Art

The influences which stimulated the growth of Roman literature were
of a character altogether peculiar and hardly paralleled in any other
nation.  To estimate them correctly, it is necessary in the first
place that we should glance at the instruction of the people and
its recreations during this period.

Knowledge of Languages

Language lies at the root of all mental culture; and this was
especially the case in Rome.  In a community where so much importance
was attached to speeches and documents, and where the burgess, at an
age which is still according to modern ideas regarded as boyhood, was
already entrusted with the uncontrolled management of his property and
might perhaps find it necessary to make formal speeches to the
assembled community, not only was great value set all along on the
fluent and polished use of the mother-tongue, but efforts were early
made to acquire a command of it in the years of boyhood.  The Greek
language also was already generally diffused in Italy in the time of
Hannibal.  In the higher circles a knowledge of that language, which
was the general medium of intercourse for ancient civilization, had
long been a far from uncommon accomplishment; and now, when the change
of Rome's position in the world had so enormously increased the
intercourse with foreigners and the foreign traffic, such a knowledge
was, if not necessary, yet presumably of very material importance to
the merchant as well as the statesman.  By means of the Italian slaves
and freedmen, a very large portion of whom were Greek or half-Greek
by birth the Greek language and Greek knowledge to a certain extent
reached even the lower ranks of the population, especially in the
capital.  The comedies of this period may convince us that even the
humbler classes of the capital were familiar with a sort of Latin,
which could no more be properly understood without a knowledge of
Greek than the English of Sterne or the German of Wieland without
a knowledge of French.(1)  Men of senatorial families, however, not
only addressed a Greek audience in Greek, but even published their
speeches--Tiberius Gracchus (consul in 577 and 591) so published a
speech which he had given at Rhodes--and in the time of Hannibal wrote
their chronicles in Greek, as we shall have occasion to mention more
particularly in the sequel.  Individuals went still farther.  The
Greeks honoured Flamininus by complimentary demonstrations in the
Roman language,(2) and he returned the compliment; the "great general
of the Aeneiades" dedicated his votive gifts to the Greek gods after
the Greek fashion in Greek distichs.(3)  Cato reproached another
senator with the fact, that he had the effrontery to deliver Greek
recitations with the due modulation at Greek revels.

Under the influence of such circumstances Roman instruction developed
itself.  It is a mistaken opinion, that antiquity was materially
inferior to our own times in the general diffusion of elementary
attainments.  Even among the lower classes and slaves there was much
reading, writing, and counting: in the case of a slave steward, for
instance, Cato, following the example of Mago, takes for granted the
ability to read and write.  Elementary instruction, as well as
instruction in Greek, must have been long before this period imparted
to a very considerable extent in Rome.  But the epoch now before us
initiated an education, the aim of which was to communicate not merely
an outward expertness, but a real mental culture.  Hitherto in Rome
a knowledge of Greek had conferred on its possessor as little
superiority in civil or social life, as a knowledge of French perhaps
confers at the present day in a hamlet of German Switzerland; and the
earliest writers of Greek chronicles may have held a position among
the other senators similar to that of the farmer in the fens of
Holstein who has been a student and in the evening, when he comes home
from the plough, takes down his Virgil from the shelf.  A man who
assumed airs of greater importance by reason of his Greek, was
reckoned a bad patriot and a fool; and certainly even in Cato's time
one who spoke Greek ill or not at all might still be a man of rank
and become senator and consul.  But a change was already taking place.
The internal decomposition of Italian nationality had already,
particularly in the aristocracy, advanced so far as to render the
substitution of a general humane culture for that nationality
inevitable: and the craving after a more advanced civilization was
already powerfully stirring the minds of men.  Instruction in the
Greek language as it were spontaneously met this craving.  The
classical literature of Greece, the Iliad and still more the Odyssey,
had all along formed the basis of that instruction; the overflowing
treasures of Hellenic art and science were already by this means
spread before the eyes of the Italians.  Without any outward
revolution, strictly speaking, in the character of the instruction
the natural result was, that the empirical study of the language
became converted into a higher study of the literature; that the
general culture connected with such literary studies was communicated
in increased measure to the scholars; and that these availed
themselves of the knowledge thus acquired to dive into that Greek
literature which most powerfully influenced the spirit of the age
--the tragedies of Euripides and the comedies of Menander.

In a similar way greater importance came to be attached to instruction
in Latin.  The higher society of Rome began to feel the need, if not
of exchanging their mother-tongue for Greek, at least of refining it
and adapting it to the changed state of culture; and for this purpose
too they found themselves in every respect dependent on the Greeks.
The economic arrangements of the Romans placed the work of elementary
instruction in the mother-tongue--like every other work held in little
estimation and performed for hire--chiefly in the hands of slaves,
freedmen, or foreigners, or in other words chiefly in the hands of
Greeks or half-Greeks;(4) which was attended with the less difficulty,
because the Latin alphabet was almost identical with the Greek and the
two languages possessed a close and striking affinity.  But this was
the least part of the matter; the importance of the study of Greek in
a formal point of view exercised a far deeper influence over the study
of Latin.  Any one who knows how singularly difficult it is to find
suitable matter and suitable forms for the higher intellectual culture
of youth, and how much more difficult it is to set aside the matter
and forms once found, will understand how it was that the Romans knew
no mode of supplying the desideratum of a more advanced Latin
instruction except that of simply transferring the solution of this
problem, which instruction in the Greek language and literature
furnished, to instruction in Latin.  In the present day a process
entirely analogous goes on under our own eyes in the transference of
the methods of instruction from the dead to the living languages.

But unfortunately the chief requisite for such a transference was
wanting.  The Romans could, no doubt, learn to read and write Latin
by means of the Twelve Tables; but a Latin culture presupposed a
literature, and no such literature existed in Rome.

The Stage under Greek Influence

To this defect was added a second.  We have already described the
multiplication of the amusements of the Roman people.  The stage had
long played an important part in these recreations; the chariot-races
formed strictly the principal amusement in all of them, but these
races uniformly took place only on one, viz. the concluding, day,
while the earlier days were substantially devoted to stage-
entertainments.  But for long these stage-representations consisted
chiefly of dances and jugglers' feats; the improvised chants, which
were produced on these occasions, had neither dialogue nor plot.(5)
It was only now that the Romans looked around them for a real drama.
The Roman popular festivals were throughout under the influence of
the Greeks, whose talent for amusing and for killing time naturally
rendered them purveyors of pleasure for the Romans.  Now no national
amusement was a greater favourite in Greece, and none was more varied,
than the theatre; it could not but speedily attract the attention of
those who provided the Roman festivals and their staff of assistants.
The earlier Roman stage-chant contained within it a dramatic germ
capable perhaps of development; but to develop the drama from that
germ required on the part of the poet and the public a genial power
of giving and receiving, such as was not to be found among the Romans
at all, and least of all at this period; and, had it been possible to
find it, the impatience of those entrusted with the amusement of the
multitude would hardly have allowed to the noble fruit peace and
leisure to ripen.  In this case too there was an outward want, which
the nation was unable to satisfy; the Romans desired a theatre, but
the pieces were wanting.

Rise of a Roman Literature

On these elements Roman literature was based; and its defective
character was from the first and necessarily the result of such
an origin.  All real art has its root in individual freedom and a
cheerful enjoyment of life, and the germs of such an art were not
wanting in Italy; but, when Roman training substituted for freedom
and joyousness the sense of belonging to the community and the
consciousness of duty, art was stifled and, instead of growing, could
not but pine away.  The culminating point of Roman development was the
period which had no literature.  It was not till Roman nationality
began to give way and Hellenico-cosmopolite tendencies began to
prevail, that literature made its appearance at Rome in their train.
Accordingly from the beginning, and by stringent internal necessity,
it took its stand on Greek ground and in broad antagonism to the
distinctively Roman national spirit.  Roman poetry above all had its
immediate origin not from the inward impulse of the poets, but from
the outward demands of the school, which needed Latin manuals, and of
the stage, which needed Latin dramas.  Now both institutions--the
school and the stage--were thoroughly anti-Roman and revolutionary.
The gaping and staring idleness of the theatre was an abomination to
the sober earnestness and the spirit of activity which animated the
Roman of the olden type; and--inasmuch as it was the deepest and
noblest conception lying at the root of the Roman commonwealth, that
within the circle of Roman burgesses there should be neither master
nor slave, neither millionnaire nor beggar, but that above all a like
faith and a like culture should characterize all Romans--the school
and the necessarily exclusive school-culture were far more dangerous
still, and were in fact utterly destructive of the sense of equality.
The school and the theatre became the most effective levers in the
hands of the new spirit of the age, and all the more so that they used
the Latin tongue.  Men might perhaps speak and write Greek and yet not
cease to be Romans; but in this case they accustomed themselves to
speak in the Roman language, while the whole inward being and life
were Greek.  It is not one of the most pleasing, but it is one of the
most remarkable and in a historical point of view most instructive,
facts in this brilliant era of Roman conservatism, that during its
course Hellenism struck root in the whole field of intellect not
immediately political, and that the -maitre de plaisir- of the
great public and the schoolmaster in close alliance created
a Roman literature.

Livius Andronicus

In the very earliest Roman author the later development appears, as it
were, in embryo.  The Greek Andronikos (from before 482, till after
547), afterwards as a Roman burgess called Lucius(6) Livius
Andronicus, came to Rome at an early age in 482 among the other
captives taken at Tarentum(7) and passed into the possession of the
conqueror of Sena(8) Marcus Livius Salinator (consul 535, 547).  He
was employed as a slave, partly in acting and copying texts, partly in
giving instruction in the Latin and Greek languages, which he taught
both to the children of his master and to other boys of wealthy
parents in and out of the house.  He distinguished himself so much in
this way that his master gave him freedom, and even the authorities,
who not unfrequently availed themselves of his services--commissioning
him, for instance, to prepare a thanksgiving-chant after the fortunate
turn taken by the Hannibalic war in 547--out of regard for him
conceded to the guild of poets and actors a place for their common
worship in the temple of Minerva on the Aventine.  His authorship
arose out of his double occupation.  As schoolmaster he translated the
Odyssey into Latin, in order that the Latin text might form the basis
of his Latin, as the Greek text was the basis of his Greek,
instruction; and this earliest of Roman school-books maintained its
place in education for centuries.  As an actor, he not only like every
other wrote for himself the texts themselves, but he also published
them as books, that is, he read them in public and diffused them by
copies.  What was still more important, he substituted the Greek drama
for the old essentially lyrical stage poetry.  It was in 514, a year
after the close of the first Punic war, that the first play was
exhibited on the Roman stage.  This creation of an epos, a tragedy,
and a comedy in the Roman language, and that by a man who was more
Roman than Greek, was historically an event; but we cannot speak of
his labours as having any artistic value.  They make no sort of claim
to originality; viewed as translations, they are characterized by a
barbarism which is only the more perceptible, that this poetry does
not naively display its own native simplicity, but strives, after a
pedantic and stammering fashion, to imitate the high artistic culture
of the neighbouring people.  The wide deviations from the original
have arisen not from the freedom, but from the rudeness of the
imitation; the treatment is sometimes insipid, sometimes turgid, the
language harsh and quaint.(9)  We have no difficulty in believing the
statement of the old critics of art, that, apart from the compulsory
reading at school, none of the poems of Livius were taken up a second
time.  Yet these labours were in various respects norms for succeeding
times.  They began the Roman translated literature, and naturalized
the Greek metres in Latium.  The reason why these were adopted only
in the dramas, while the Odyssey of Livius was written in the national
Saturnian measure, evidently was that the iambuses and trochees of
tragedy and comedy far more easily admitted of imitation in Latin
than the epic dactyls.

But this preliminary stage of literary development was soon passed.
The epics and dramas of Livius were regarded by posterity, and
undoubtedly with perfect justice, as resembling the rigid statues
of Daedalus destitute of emotion or expression--curiosities rather
than works of art.

But in the following generation, now that the foundations were
once laid, there arose a lyric, epic, and dramatic art; and it is
of great importance, even in a historical point of view, to trace
this poetical development.

Drama
Theatre

Both as respects extent of production and influence over the public,
the drama stood at the head of the poetry thus developed in Rome.  In
antiquity there was no permanent theatre with fixed admission-money;
in Greece as in Rome the drama made its appearance only as an element
in the annually-recurring or extraordinary amusements of the citizens.
Among the measures by which the government counteracted or imagined
that they counteracted that extension of the popular festivals which
they justly regarded with anxiety, they refused to permit the erection
of a stone building for a theatre.(10)  Instead of this there was
erected for each festival a scaffolding of boards with a stage for
the actors (-proscaenium-, -pulpitum-) and a decorated background
(-scaena-); and in a semicircle in front of it was staked off the
space for the spectators (-cavea-), which was merely sloped without
steps or seats, so that, if the spectators had not chairs brought
along with them, they squatted, reclined, or stood.(11)  The women
were probably separated at an early period, and were restricted to
the uppermost and worst places; otherwise there was no distinction of
places in law till 560, after which, as already mentioned,(12) the
lowest and best positions were reserved for the senators.

Audience

The audience was anything but genteel.  The better classes, it is
true, did not keep aloof from the general recreations of the people;
the fathers of the city seem even to have been bound for decorum's
sake to appear on these occasions.  But the very nature of a burgess
festival implied that, while slaves and probably foreigners also were
excluded, admittance free of charge was given to every burgess with
his wife and children;(13) and accordingly the body of spectators
cannot have differed much from what one sees in the present day at
public fireworks and -gratis- exhibitions.  Naturally, therefore, the
proceedings were not too orderly; children cried, women talked and
shrieked, now and then a wench prepared to push her way to the stage;
the ushers had on these festivals anything but a holiday, and found
frequent occasion to confiscate a mantle or to ply the rod.

The introduction of the Greek drama increased the demands on the
dramatic staff, and there seems to have been no redundance in the
supply of capable actors: on one occasion for want of actors a piece
of Naevius had to be performed by amateurs.  But this produced no
change in the position of the artist; the poet or, as he was at this
time called, the "writer," the actor, and the composer not only
belonged still, as formerly, to the class of workers for hire in
itself little esteemed,(14) but were still, as formerly, placed in
the most marked way under the ban of public opinion, and subjected
to police maltreatment.(15)  Of course all reputable persons kept
aloof from such an occupation.  The manager of the company (-dominus
gregis-, -factionis-, also -choragus-), who was ordinarily also the
chief actor, was generally a freedman, and its members were ordinarily
his slaves; the composers, whose names have reached us, were all of
them non-free.  The remuneration was not merely small--a -honorarium-
of 8000 sesterces (80 pounds) given to a dramatist is described
shortly after the close of this period as unusually high--but was,
moreover, only paid by the magistrates providing the festival, if the
piece was not a failure.  With the payment the matter ended; poetical
competitions and honorary prizes, such as took place in Attica, were
not yet heard of in Rome--the Romans at this time appear to have
simply applauded or hissed as we now do, and to have brought forward
only a single piece for exhibition each day.(16)  Under such
circumstances, where art worked for daily wages and the artist instead
of receiving due honour was subjected to disgrace, the new national
theatre of the Romans could not present any development either
original or even at all artistic; and, while the noble rivalry of
the noblest Athenians had called into life the Attic drama, the Roman
drama taken as a whole could be nothing but a spoiled copy of its
predecessor, in which the only wonder is that it has been able to
display so much grace and wit in the details.

That only one piece was produced each day we infer from the fact,
that the spectators come from home at the beginning of the piece
(Poen. 10), and return home after its close (Epid. Pseud. Rud. Stich.
Truc. ap. fin.).  They went, as these passages show, to the theatre
after the second breakfast, and were at home again for the midday
meal; the performance thus lasted, according to our reckoning, from
about noon till half-past two o'clock, and a piece of Plautus, with
music in the intervals between the acts, might probably occupy nearly
that length of time (comp. Horat. Ep. ii. i, 189).  The passage, in
which Tacitus (Ann. xiv. 20) makes the spectators spend "whole days"
in the theatre, refers to the state of matters at a later period.

Comedy

In the dramatic world comedy greatly preponderated over tragedy; the
spectators knit their brows, when instead of the expected comedy a
tragedy began.  Thus it happened that, while this period exhibits
poets who devoted themselves specially to comedy, such as Plautus
and Caecilius, it presents none who cultivated tragedy alone; and
among the dramas of this epoch known to us by name there occur three
comedies for one tragedy.  Of course the Roman comic poets, or rather
translators, laid hands in the first instance on the pieces which had
possession of the Hellenic stage at the time; and thus they found
themselves exclusively(17) confined to the range of the newer Attic
comedy, and chiefly to its best-known poets, Philemon of Soli in
Cilicia (394?-492) and Menander of Athens (412-462).  This comedy came
to be of so great importance as regards the development not only of
Roman literature, but even of the nation at large, that even history
has reason to pause and consider it.

Character of the Newer Attic Comedy

The pieces are of tiresome monotony.  Almost without exception the
plot turns on helping a young man, at the expense either of his father
or of some -leno-, to obtain possession of a sweetheart of undoubted
charms and of very doubtful morals.  The path to success in love
regularly lies through some sort of pecuniary fraud; and the crafty
servant, who provides the needful sum and performs the requisite
swindling while the lover is mourning over his amatory and pecuniary
distresses, is the real mainspring of the piece.  There is no want of
the due accompaniment of reflections on the joys and sorrows of love,
of tearful parting scenes, of lovers who in the anguish of their
hearts threaten to do themselves a mischief; love or rather amorous
intrigue was, as the old critics of art say, the very life-breath of
the Menandrian poetry.  Marriage forms, at least with Menander, the
inevitable finale; on which occasion, for the greater edification
and satisfaction of the spectators, the virtue of the heroine usually
comes forth almost if not wholly untarnished, and the heroine herself
proves to be the lost daughter of some rich man and so in every
respect an eligible match.  Along with these love-pieces we find
others of a pathetic kind.  Among the comedies of Plautus, for
instance, the -Rudens- turns on a shipwreck and the right of asylum;
while the -Trinummus- and the -Captivi- contain no amatory intrigue,
but depict the generous devotedness of the friend to his friend and
of the slave to his master.  Persons and situations recur down to the
very details like patterns on a carpet; we never get rid of the asides
of unseen listeners, of knocking at the house-doors, and of slaves
scouring the streets on some errand or other.  The standing masks,
of which there was a certain fixed number--viz., eight masks for old
men, and seven for servants--from which alone in ordinary cases at
least the poet had to make his choice, further favoured a stock-model
treatment.  Such a comedy almost of necessity rejected the lyrical
element in the older comedy--the chorus--and confined itself from the
first to conversation, or at most recitation; it was devoid not of the
political element only, but of all true passion and of all poetical
elevation.  The pieces judiciously made no pretence to any grand or
really poetical effect: their charm resided primarily in furnishing
occupation for the intellect, not only through their subject-matter
--in which respect the newer comedy was distinguished from the old as
much by the greater intrinsic emptiness as by the greater outward
complication of the plot--but more especially through their execution
in detail, in which the point and polish of the conversation more
particularly formed the triumph of the poet and the delight of the
audience.  Complications and confusions of one person with another,
which very readily allowed scope for extravagant, often licentious,
practical jokes--as in the -Casina-, which winds up in genuine
Falstaffian style with the retiring of the two bridegrooms and of the
soldier dressed up as bride--jests, drolleries, and riddles, which in
fact for want of real conversation furnished the staple materials of
entertainment at the Attic table of the period, fill up a large
portion of these comedies.  The authors of them wrote not like Eupolis
and Aristophanes for a great nation, but rather for a cultivated
society which spent its time, like other clever circles whose
cleverness finds little fit scope for action, in guessing riddles and
playing at charades.  They give us, therefore, no picture of their
times; of the great historical and intellectual movements of the age
no trace appears in these comedies, and we need to recall, in order
to realize, the fact that Philemon and Menander were really
contemporaries of Alexander and Aristotle.  But they give us a
picture, equally elegant and faithful, of that refined Attic society
beyond the circles of which comedy never travels.  Even in the dim
Latin copy, through which we chiefly know it, the grace of the
original is not wholly obliterated; and more especially in the pieces
which are imitated from Menander, the most talented of these poets,
the life which the poet saw and shared is delicately reflected not so
much in its aberrations and distortions as in its amiable every day
course.  The friendly domestic relations between father and daughter,
husband and wife, master and servant, with their love-affairs and
other little critical incidents, are portrayed with so broad a
truthfulness, that even now they do not miss their effect: the
servants' feast, for instance, with which the -Stichus- concludes is,
in the limited range of its relations and the harmony of the two
lovers and the one sweetheart, of unsurpassed gracefulness in its
kind.  The elegant grisettes, who make their appearance perfumed and
adorned, with their hair fashionably dressed and in variegated, gold-
embroidered, sweeping robes, or even perform their toilette on the
stage, are very effective.  In their train come the procuresses,
sometimes of the most vulgar sort, such as one who appears in the
-Curculio-, sometimes duennas like Goethe's old Barbara, such as
Scapha in the -Mostettaria-; and there is no lack of brothers and
comrades ready with their help.  There is great abundance and variety
of parts representing the old: there appear in turn the austere
and avaricious, the fond and tender-hearted, and the indulgent
accommodating, papas, the amorous old man, the easy old bachelor, the
jealous aged matron with her old maid-servant who takes part with her
mistress against her master; whereas the young men's parts are less
prominent, and neither the first lover, nor the virtuous model son who
here and there occurs, lays claim to much significance.  The servant-
world--the crafty valet, the stern house-steward, the old vigilant
tutor, the rural slave redolent of garlic, the impertinent page--forms
a transition to the very numerous professional parts.  A standing
figure among these is the jester (-parasitus-) who, in return for
permission to feast at the table of the rich, has to entertain the
guests with drolleries and charades, or, according to circumstances,
to let the potsherds be flung at his head.  This was at that time a
formal trade in Athens; and it is certainly no mere poetical fiction
which represents such a parasite as expressly preparing himself for
his work by means of his books of witticisms and anecdotes.  Favourite
parts, moreover, are those of the cook, who understands not only how
to boast of unheard-of sauces, but also how to pilfer like a
professional thief; the shameless -leno-, complacently confessing to
the practice of every vice, of whom Ballio in the -Pseudolus- is a
model specimen; the military braggadocio, in whom we trace a very
distinct reflection of the free-lance habits that prevailed under
Alexander's successors; the professional sharper or sycophant, the
stingy money-changer, the solemnly silly physician, the priest,
mariner, fisherman, and the like.  To these fall to be added, lastly,
the parts delineative of character in the strict sense, such as the
superstitious man of Menander and the miser in the -Aulularia- of
Plautus.  The national-Hellenic poetry has preserved, even in this its
last creation, its indestructible plastic vigour; but the delineation
of character is here copied from without rather than reproduced from
inward experience, and the more so, the more the task approaches to
the really poetical.  It is a significant circumstance that, in the
parts illustrative of character to which we have just referred,
the psychological truth is in great part represented by abstract
development of the conception; the miser here collects the parings of
his nails and laments the tears which he sheds as a waste of water.
But the blame of this want of depth in the portraying of character,
and generally of the whole poetical and moral hollowness of this newer
comedy, lay less with the comic writers than with the nation as a
whole.  Everything distinctively Greek was expiring: fatherland,
national faith, domestic life, all nobleness of action and sentiment
were gone; poetry, history, and philosophy were inwardly exhausted;
and nothing remained to the Athenian save the school, the fish-market,
and the brothel.  It is no matter of wonder and hardly a matter of
blame, that poetry, which is destined to shed a glory over human
existence, could make nothing more out of such a life than the
Menandrian comedy presents to us.  It is at the same time very
remarkable that the poetry of this period, wherever it was able to
turn away in some degree from the corrupt Attic life without falling
into scholastic imitation, immediately gathers strength and freshness
from the ideal.  In the only remnant of the mock-heroic comedy of this
period--the -Amphitruo- of Plautus--there breathes throughout a purer
and more poetical atmosphere than in all the other remains of the
contemporary stage.  The good-natured gods treated with gentle irony,
the noble forms from the heroic world, and the ludicrously cowardly
slaves present the most wonderful mutual contrasts; and, after the
comical course of the plot, the birth of the son of the gods amidst
thunder and lightning forms an almost grand concluding effect But this
task of turning the myths into irony was innocent and poetical, as
compared with that of the ordinary comedy depicting the Attic life of
the period.  No special accusation may be brought from a historico-
moral point of view against the poets, nor ought it to be made matter
of individual reproach to any particular poet that he occupies the
level of his epoch: comedy was not the cause, but the effect of the
corruption that prevailed in the national life.  But it is necessary,
more especially with a view to judge correctly the influence of these
comedies on the life of the Roman people, to point out the abyss which
yawned beneath all that polish and elegance.  The coarsenesses and
obscenities, which Menander indeed in some measure avoided, but of
which there is no lack in the other poets, are the least part of the
evil.  Features far worse are, the dreadful desolation of life in
which the only oases are lovemaking and intoxication; the fearfully
prosaic atmosphere, in which anything resembling enthusiasm is to be
found only among the sharpers whose heads have been turned by their
own swindling, and who prosecute the trade of cheating with some sort
of zeal; and above all that immoral morality, with which the pieces of
Menander in particular are garnished.  Vice is chastised, virtue is
rewarded, and any peccadilloes are covered by conversion at or after
marriage.  There are pieces, such as the -Trinummus- of Plautus and
several of Terence, in which all the characters down to the slaves
possess some admixture of virtue; all swarm with honest men who allow
deception on their behalf, with maidenly virtue wherever possible,
with lovers equally favoured and making love in company; moral
commonplaces and well-turned ethical maxims abound.  A finale of
reconciliation such as that of the -Bacchides-, where the swindling
sons and the swindled fathers by way of a good winding up all go to
carouse together in the brothel, presents a corruption of morals
thoroughly worthy of Kotzebue.

Roman Comedy
Its Hellenism a Necessary Result of the Law

Such were the foundations, and such the elements which shaped the
growth, of Roman comedy.  Originality was in its case excluded not
merely by want of aesthetic freedom, but in the first instance,
probably, by its subjection to police control.  Among the considerable
number of Latin comedies of this sort which are known to us, there is
not one that did not announce itself as an imitation of a definite
Greek model; the title was only complete when the names of the Greek
piece and of its author were also given, and if, as occasionally
happened, the "novelty" of a piece was disputed, the question was
merely whether it had been previously translated.  Comedy laid the
scene of its plot abroad not only frequently, but regularly and under
the pressure of necessity; and that species of art derived its special
name (-fabula palliata-) from the fact, that the scene was laid away
from Rome, usually in Athens, and thai the -dramatis personae- were
Greeks or at any rate not Romans.  The foreign costume is strictly
carried out even in detail, especially in those things in which the
uncultivated Roman was distinctly sensible of the contrast, Thus the
names of Rome and the Romans are avoided, and, where they are referred
to, they are called in good Greek "foreigners" (-barbari-); in like
manner among the appellations of moneys and coins, that occur ever
so frequently, there does not once appear a Roman coin.  We form a
strange idea of men of so great and so versatile talents as Naevius
and Plautus, if we refer such things to their free choice: this
strange and clumsy "exterritorial" character of Roman comedy
was undoubtedly due to causes very different from aesthetic
considerations.  The transference of such social relations, as are
uniformly delineated in the new Attic comedy, to the Rome of the
Hannibalic period would have been a direct outrage on its civic order
and morality.  But, as the dramatic spectacles at this period were
regularly given by the aediles and praetors who were entirely
dependent on the senate, and even extraordinary festivals, funeral
games for instance, could not take place without permission of the
government; and as the Roman police, moreover, was not in the habit
of standing on ceremony in any case, and least of all in dealing with
the comedians; the reason is self-evident why this comedy, even after
it was admitted as one of the Roman national amusements, might still
bring no Roman upon the stage, and remained as it were banished to
foreign lands.

Political Neutrality

The compilers were still more decidedly prohibited from naming any
living person in terms either of praise or censure, as well as from
any captious allusion to the circumstances of the times.  In the whole
repertory of the Plautine and post-Plautine comedy, there is not,
so far as we know, matter for a single action of damages.  In like
manner--if we leave out of view some wholly harmless jests--we meet
hardly any trace of invectives levelled at communities (invectives
which, owing to the lively municipal spirit of the Italians, would
have been specially dangerous), except the significant scoff at the
unfortunate Capuans and Atellans (18) and, what is remarkable, various
sarcasms on the arrogance and the bad Latin of the Praenestines.(19)
In general no references to the events or circumstances of the
present occur in the pieces of Plautus.  The only exceptions are,
congratulations on the course of the war(20) or on the peaceful times;
general sallies directed against usurious dealings in grain or money,
against extravagance, against bribery by candidates, against the
too frequent triumphs, against those who made a trade of collecting
forfeited fines, against farmers of the revenue distraining for
payment, against the dear prices of the oil-dealers; and once--in the
-Curculio- --a more lengthened diatribe as to the doings in the Roman
market, reminding us of the -parabases- of the older Attic comedy, and
but little likely to cause offence(21)  But even in the midst of such
patriotic endeavours, which from a police point of view were entirely
in order, the poet interrupts himself;

-Sed sumne ego stultus, qui rem curo publicam
Ubi sunt magistratus, quos curare oporteat?-

and taken as a whole, we can hardly imagine a comedy politically more
tame than was that of Rome in the sixth century.(22)  The oldest
Roman comic writer of note, Gnaeus Naevius, alone forms a remarkable
exception.  Although he did not write exactly original Roman comedies,
the few fragments of his, which we possess, are full of references to
circumstances and persons in Rome.  Among other liberties he not only
ridiculed one Theodotus a painter by name, but even directed against
the victor of Zama the following verses, of which Aristophanes need
not have been ashamed:

-Etiam qui res magnas manu saepe gessit gloriose,
Cujus facta viva nunc vigent, qui apud gentes solus praestat,
Eum suus pater cum pallio uno ab amica abduxit.-

As he himself says,

-Libera lingua loquemur ludis Liberalibus,-

he may have often written at variance with police rules, and put
dangerous questions, such as:

-Cedo qui vestram rem publicam tantam amisistis tam cito?-

which he answered by an enumeration of political sins, such as:

-Proveniebant oratores novi, stulti adulescentuli.-

But the Roman police was not disposed like the Attic to hold stage-
invectives and political diatribes as privileged, or even to tolerate
them at all.  Naevius was put in prison for these and similar sallies,
and was obliged to remain there, till he had publicly made amends and
recantation in other comedies.  These quarrels, apparently, drove
him from his native land; but his successors took warning from his
example--one of them indicates very plainly, that he has no desire
whatever to incur an involuntary gagging like his colleague Naevius.
Thus the result was accomplished--not much less unique of its kind
than the conquest of Hannibal--that, during an epoch of the most
feverish national excitement, there arose a national stage utterly
destitute of political tinge.

Character of the Editing of Roman Comedy
Persons and Situations

But the restrictions thus stringently and laboriously imposed by
custom and police on Roman poetry stifled its very breath, Not without
reason might Naevius declare the position of the poet under the
sceptre of the Lagidae and Seleucidae enviable as compared with his
position in free Rome.(23)  The degree of success in individual
instances was of course determined by the quality of the original
which was followed, and by the talent of the individual editor; but
amidst all their individual variety the whole stock of translations
must have agreed in certain leading features, inasmuch as all the
comedies were adapted to similar conditions of exhibition and a
similar audience.  The treatment of the whole as well as of the
details was uniformly in the highest degree free; and it was necessary
that it should be so.  While the original pieces were performed in
presence of that society which they copied, and in this very fact
lay their principal charm, the Roman audience of this period was so
different from the Attic, that it was not even in a position rightly
to understand that foreign world.  The Roman comprehended neither
the grace and kindliness, nor the sentimentalism and the whitened
emptiness of the domestic life of the Hellenes.  The slave-world was
utterly different; the Roman slave was a piece of household furniture,
the Attic slave was a servant.  Where marriages of slaves occur or a
master carries on a kindly conversation with his slave, the Roman
translators ask their audience not to take offence at such things
which are usual in Athens;(24) and, when at a later period comedies
began to be written in Roman costume, the part of the crafty servant
had to be rejected, because the Roman public did not tolerate slaves
of this sort overlooking and controlling their masters.  The
professional figures and those illustrative of character, which were
sketched more broadly and farcically, bore the process of transference
better than the polished figures of every-day life; but even of those
delineations the Roman editor had to lay aside several--and these
probably the very finest and most original, such as the Thais, the
match-maker, the moon-conjuress, and the mendicant priest of Menander
--and to keep chiefly to those foreign trades, with which the Greek
luxury of the table, already very generally diffused in Rome, had made
his audience familiar.  If the professional cook and the jester in the
comedy of Plautus are delineated with so striking vividness and so
much relish, the explanation lies in the fact, that Greek cooks had
even at that time daily offered their services in the Roman market,
and that Cato found it necessary even to instruct his steward not to
keep a jester.  In like manner the translator could make no use of a
very large portion of the elegant Attic conversation in his originals.
The Roman citizen or farmer stood in much the same relation to
the refined revelry and debauchery of Athens, as the German of a
provincial town to the mysteries of the Palais Royal.  A science of
cookery, in the strict sense, never entered into his thoughts; the
dinner-parties no doubt continued to be very numerous in the Roman
imitation, but everywhere the plain Roman roast pork predominated
over the variety of baked meats and the refined sauces and dishes of
fish.  Of the riddles and drinking songs, of the Greek rhetoric and
philosophy, which played so great a part in the originals, we meet
only a stray trace now and then in the Roman adaptation.

Construction of the Plot

The havoc, which the Roman editors were compelled in deference to
their audience to make in the originals, drove them inevitably into
methods of cancelling and amalgamating incompatible with any artistic
construction.  It was usual not only to throw out whole character-
parts of the original, but also to insert others taken from other
comedies of the same or of another poet; a treatment indeed which,
owing to the outwardly methodical construction of the originals and
the recurrence of standing figures and incidents, was not quite so bad
as it might seem.  Moreover the poets, at least in the earlier period,
allowed themselves the most singular liberties in the construction of
the plot.  The plot of the -Stichus- (performed in 554) otherwise so
excellent turns upon the circumstance, that two sisters, whom their
father urges to abandon their absent husbands, play the part of
Penelopes, till the husbands return home with rich mercantile gains
and with a beautiful damsel as a present for their father-in-law.
In the -Casina-, which was received with quite special favour by the
public, the bride, from whom the piece is named and around whom the
plot revolves, does not make her appearance at all, and the denouement
is quite naively described by the epilogue as "to be enacted later
within." Very often the plot as it thickens is suddenly broken off,
the connecting thread is allowed to drop, and other similar signs of
an unfinished art appear.  The reason of this is to be sought probably
far less in the unskilfulness of the Roman editors, than in the
indifference of the Roman public to aesthetic laws.  Taste, however,
gradually formed itself.  In the later pieces Plautus has evidently
bestowed more care on their construction, and the -Captivi- for
instance, the -Pseudolus-, and the -Bacchides- are executed in a
masterly manner after their kind.  His successor Caecilius, none of
whose pieces are extant, is said to have especially distinguished
himself by the more artistic treatment of the subject.

Roman Barbarism

In the treatment of details the endeavour of the poet to bring matters
as far as possible home to his Roman hearers, and the rule of police
which required that the pieces should retain a foreign character,
produced the most singular contrasts.  The Roman gods, the ritual,
military, and juristic terms of the Romans, present a strange
appearance amid the Greek world; Roman -aediles- and -tresviri- are
grotesquely mingled with -agoranomi- and -demarchi-; pieces whose
scene is laid in Aetolia or Epidamnus send the spectator without
scruple to the Velabrum and the Capitol.  Such a patchwork of Roman
local tints distributed over the Greek ground is barbarism enough; but
interpolations of this nature, which are often in their naive way very
ludicrous, are far more tolerable than that thorough alteration of the
pieces into a ruder shape, which the editors deemed necessary to suit
the far from Attic culture of their audience.  It is true that several
even of the new Attic poets probably needed no accession to their
coarseness; pieces like the -Asinaria- of Plautus cannot owe their
unsurpassed dulness and vulgarity solely to the translator.
Nevertheless coarse incidents so prevail in the Roman comedy, that the
translators must either have interpolated them or at least have made a
very one-sided selection.  In the endless abundance of cudgelling and
in the lash ever suspended over the back of the slaves we recognize
very clearly the household-government inculcated by Cato, just as
we recognize the Catonian opposition to women in the never-ending
disparagement of wives.  Among the jokes of their own invention, with
which the Roman editors deemed it proper to season the elegant Attic
dialogue, several are almost incredibly unmeaning and barbarous.(25)

Metrical Treatment

So far as concerns metrical treatment on the other hand, the flexible
and sounding verse on the whole does all honour to the composers.  The
fact that the iambic trimeters, which predominated in the originals
and were alone suitable to their moderate conversational tone, were
very frequently replaced in the Latin edition by iambic or trochaic
tetrameters, is to be attributed not so much to any want of skill
on the part of the editors who knew well how to handle the trimeter,
as to the uncultivated taste of the Roman public which was pleased
with the sonorous magnificence of the long verse even where it was
not appropriate.

Scenic Arrangements

Lastly, the arrangements for the production of the pieces on the stage
bore the like stamp of indifference to aesthetic requirements on the
part of the managers and the public.  The stage of the Greeks--which
on account of the extent of the theatre and from the performances
taking place by day made no pretension to acting properly so called,
employed men to represent female characters, and absolutely required
an artificial strengthening of the voice of the actor--was entirely
dependent, in a scenic as well as acoustic point of view, on the use
of facial and resonant masks.  These were well known also in Rome; in
amateur performances the players appeared without exception masked.
But the actors who were to perform the Greek comedies in Rome were
not supplied with the masks--beyond doubt much more artificial--that
were necessary for them; a circumstance which, apart from all else in
connection with the defective acoustic arrangements of the stage,(26)
not only compelled the actor to exert his voice unduly, but drove
Livius to the highly inartistic but inevitable expedient of having
the portions which were to be sung performed by a singer not belonging
to the staff of actors, and accompanied by the mere dumb show of the
actor within whose part they fell.  As little were the givers of the
Roman festivals disposed to put themselves to material expense for
decorations and machinery.  The Attic stage regularly presented a
street with houses in the background, and had no shifting decorations;
but, besides various other apparatus, it possessed more especially
a contrivance for pushing forward on the chief stage a smaller one
representing the interior of a house.  The Roman theatre, however, was
not provided with this; and we can hardly therefore throw the blame
on the poet, if everything, even childbirth, was represented on
the street.

Aesthetic Result

Such was the nature of the Roman comedy of the sixth century.  The
mode in which the Greek dramas were transferred to Rome furnishes a
picture, historically invaluable, of the diversity in the culture
of the two nations; but in an aesthetic and a moral point of view the
original did not stand high, and the imitation stood still lower.  The
world of beggarly rabble, to whatever extent the Roman editors might
take possession of it under the benefit of the inventory, presented
in Rome a forlorn and strange aspect, shorn as it were of its delicate
characteristics: comedy no longer rested on the basis of reality, but
persons and incidents seemed capriciously or carelessly mingled as in
a game of cards; in the original a picture from life, it became in the
reproduction a caricature.  Under a management which could announce
a Greek agon with flute-playing, choirs of dancers, tragedians, and
athletes, and eventually convert it into a boxing-match;(27) and in
presence of a public which, as later poets complain, ran away en masse
from the play, if there were pugilists, or rope-dancers, or even
gladiators to be seen; poets such as the Roman composers were--workers
for hire and of inferior social position--were obliged even perhaps
against their own better judgment and their own better taste to
accommodate themselves more or less to the prevailing frivolity and
rudeness.  It was quite possible, nevertheless, that there might arise
among them individuals of lively and vigorous talent, who were able at
least to repress the foreign and factitious element in poetry, and,
when they had found their fitting sphere, to produce pleasing and
even important creations.

Naevius

At the head of these stood Gnaeus Naevius, the first Roman who
deserves to be called a poet, and, so far as the accounts preserved
regarding him and the few fragments of his works allow us to form
an opinion, to all appearance as regards talent one of the most
remarkable and most important names in the whole range of Roman
literature.  He was a younger contemporary of Andronicus--his poetical
activity began considerably before, and probably did not end till
after, the Hannibalic war--and felt in a general sense his influence;
he was, as is usually the case in artificial literatures, a worker in
all the forms of art produced by his predecessor, in epos, tragedy,
and comedy, and closely adhered to him in the matter of metres.
Nevertheless, an immense chasm separates the poets and their poems.
Naevius was neither freedman, schoolmaster, nor actor, but a citizen
of unstained character although not of rank, belonging probably to one
of the Latin communities of Campania, and a soldier in the first Punic
war.(28)  In thorough contrast to the language of Livius, that of
Naevius is easy and clear, free from all stiffness and affectation,
and seems even in tragedy to avoid pathos as it were on purpose; his
verses, in spite of the not unfrequent -hiatus- and various other
licences afterwards disallowed, have a smooth and graceful flow.(29)
While the quasi-poetry of Livius proceeded, somewhat like that of
Gottsched in Germany, from purely external impulses and moved wholly
in the leading-strings of the Greeks, his successor emancipated Roman
poetry, and with the true divining-rod of the poet struck those
springs out of which alone in Italy a native poetry could well up
--national history and comedy.  Epic poetry no longer merely
furnished the schoolmaster with a lesson-book, but addressed itself
independently to the hearing and reading public.  Composing for the
stage had been hitherto, like the preparation of the stage costume, a
subsidiary employment of the actor or a mechanical service performed
for him; with Naevius the relation was inverted, and the actor now
became the servant of the composer.  His poetical activity is marked
throughout by a national stamp.  This stamp is most distinctly
impressed on his grave national drama and on his national epos, of
which we shall have to speak hereafter; but it also appears in his
comedies, which of all his poetic performances seem to have been the
best adapted to his talents and the most successful.  It was probably,
as we have already said,(30) external considerations alone that
induced the poet to adhere in comedy so much as he did to the Greek
originals; and this did not prevent him from far outstripping his
successors and probably even the insipid originals in the freshness of
his mirth and in the fulness of his living interest in the present;
indeed in a certain sense he reverted to the paths of the Aristophanic
comedy.  He felt full well, and in his epitaph expressed, what he had
been to his nation:

-Immortales mortales si foret fas fiere,
Flerent divae Camenae Naevium poetam;
Itaque, postquam est Orci traditus thesauro,
Obliti sunt Romae loquier lingua Latina.-

Such proud language on the part of the man and the poet well befitted
one who had witnessed and had personally taken part in the struggles
with Hamilcar and with Hannibal, and who had discovered for the
thoughts and feelings of that age--so deeply agitated and so
elevated by mighty joy--a poetical expression which, if not exactly
the highest, was sound, adroit, and national.  We have already
mentioned(31) the troubles into which his licence brought him with
the authorities, and how, driven presumably by these troubles from
Rome, he ended his life at Utica.  In his instance likewise the
individual life was sacrificed for the common weal, and the
beautiful for the useful.

Plautus

His younger contemporary, Titus Maccius Plautus (500?-570), appears to
have been far inferior to him both in outward position and in the
conception of his poetic calling.  A native of the little town of
Sassina, which was originally Umbrian but was perhaps by this time
Latinized, he earned his livelihood in Rome at first as an actor, and
then--after he had lost in mercantile speculations what he had gained
by his acting--as a theatrical composer reproducing Greek comedies,
without occupying himself with any other department of literature and
probably without laying claim to authorship properly so called.  There
seems to have been at that time a considerable number of persons who
made a trade of thus editing comedies in Rome; but their names,
especially as they did not perhaps in general publish their works,(32)
were virtually forgotten, and the pieces belonging to this stock of
plays, which were preserved, passed in after times under the name
of the most popular of them, Plautus.  The -litteratores- of the
following century reckoned up as many as 130 such "Plautine pieces";
but of these a large portion at any rate were merely revised by
Plautus or had no connection with him at all; the best of them are
still extant.  To form a proper judgment, however, regarding the
poetical character of the editor is very difficult, if not impossible,
since the originals have not been preserved.  That the editors
reproduced good and bad pieces without selection; that they were
subject and subordinate both to the police and to the public; that
they were as indifferent to aesthetical requirements as their
audience, and to please the latter, lowered the originals to a
farcical and vulgar tone--are objections which apply rather to the
whole manufacture of translations than to the individual remodeller.
On the other hand we may regard as characteristic of Plautus, the
masterly handling of the language and of the varied rhythms, a rare
skill in adjusting and working the situation for dramatic effect,
the almost always clever and often excellent dialogue, and, above all,
a broad and fresh humour, which produces an irresistible comic effect
with its happy jokes, its rich vocabulary of nicknames, its whimsical
coinage of words, its pungent, often mimic, descriptions and
situations--excellences, in which we seem to recognize the former
actor.  Undoubtedly the editor even in these respects retained what
was successful in the originals rather than furnished contributions
of his own.  Those portions of the pieces which can with certainty
be traced to the translator are, to say the least, mediocre; but they
enable us to understand why Plautus became and remained the true
popular poet of Rome and the true centre of the Roman stage, and
why even after the passing away of the Roman world the theatre has
repeatedly reverted to his plays.

Caecilius

Still less are we able to form a special opinion as to the third
and last--for though Ennius wrote comedies, he did so altogether
unsuccessfully--comedian of note in this epoch, Statins Caecilius.  He
resembled Plautus in his position in life and his profession.  Born in
Cisalpine Gaul in the district of Mediolanum, he was brought among the
Insubrian prisoners of war(33) to Rome, and earned a livelihood, first
as a slave, afterwards as a freedman, by remodelling Greek comedies
for the theatre down to his probably early death (586).  His language
was not pure, as was to be expected from his origin; on the other
hand, he directed his efforts, as we have already said,(34) to a more
artistic construction of the plot.  His pieces experienced but a dull
reception from his contemporaries, and the public of later times laid
aside Caecilius for Plautus and Terence; and, if nevertheless the
critics of the true literary age of Rome--the Varronian and Augustan
epoch--assigned to Caecilius the first place among the Roman editors
of Greek comedies, this verdict appears due to the mediocrity of the
connoisseur gladly preferring a kindred spirit of mediocrity in the
poet to any special features of excellence.  These art-critics
probably took Caecilius under their wing, simply because he was more
regular than Plautus and more vigorous than Terence; notwithstanding
which he may very well have been far inferior to both.

Moral Result

If therefore the literary historian, while fully acknowledging the
very respectable talents of the Roman comedians, cannot recognize
in their mere stock of translations a product either artistically
important or artistically pure, the judgment of history respecting its
moral aspects must necessarily be far more severe.  The Greek comedy
which formed its basis was morally so far a matter of indifference, as
it was simply on the same level of corruption with its audience; but
the Roman drama was, at this epoch when men were wavering between the
old austerity and the new corruption, the academy at once of Hellenism
and of vice.  This Attico-Roman comedy, with its prostitution of body
and soul usurping the name of love--equally immoral in shamelessness
and in sentimentality--with its offensive and unnatural generosity,
with its uniform glorification of a life of debauchery, with its
mixture of rustic coarseness and foreign refinement, was one
continuous lesson of Romano-Hellenic demoralization, and was felt
as such.  A proof of this is preserved in the epilogue of the
-Captivi- of Plautus:--

-Spectators, ad pudicos mores facta haec fabulast.
Neque in hoc subigitationes sunt neque ulla amatio
Nec pueri suppositio nec argenti circumductio,
Neque ubi amans adulescens scortum liberet clam suum patrem.
Huius modi paucas poetae reperiunt comoedias,
Ubi boni meliores fiant.  Nunc vos, si vobis placet,
Et si placuimus neque odio fuimus, signum hoc mittite;
Qui pudicitiae esse voltis praemium, plausum date!-

We see here the opinion entertained regarding the Greek comedy by
the party of moral reform; and it may be added, that even in those
rarities, moral comedies, the morality was of a character only adapted
to ridicule innocence more surely.  Who can doubt that these dramas
gave a practical impulse to corruption?  When Alexander the Great
derived no pleasure from a comedy of this sort which its author read
before him, the poet excused himself by saying that the fault lay not
with him, but with the king; that, in order to relish such a piece, a
man must be in the habit of holding revels and of giving and receiving
blows in an intrigue.  The man knew his trade: if, therefore, the
Roman burgesses gradually acquired a taste for these Greek comedies,
we see at what a price it was bought.  It is a reproach to the Roman
government not that it did so little in behalf of this poetry, but
that it tolerated it at all Vice no doubt is powerful even without a
pulpit; but that is no excuse for erecting a pulpit to proclaim it.
To debar the Hellenic comedy from immediate contact with the persons
and institutions of Rome, was a subterfuge rather than a serious means
of defence.  In fact, comedy would probably have been much less
injurious morally, had they allowed it to have a more free course,
so that the calling of the poet might have been ennobled and a Roman
poetry in some measure independent might have been developed; for
poetry is also a moral power, and, if it inflicts deep wounds, it can
do much to heal them.  As it was, in this field also the government
did too little and too much; the political neutrality and moral
hypocrisy of its stage-police contributed their part to the fearfully
rapid breaking up of the Roman nation.

National Comedy
Titinius

But, while the government did not allow the Roman comedian to depict
the state of things in his native city or to bring his fellow-citizens
on the stage, a national Latin comedy was not absolutely precluded
from springing up; for the Roman burgesses at this period were not yet
identified with the Latin nation, and the poet was at liberty to lay
the plot of his pieces in the Italian towns of Latin rights just as
in Athens or Massilia.  In this way, in fact, the Latin original
comedy arose (-fabula togata- (35)): the earliest known composer
of such pieces, Titinius, flourished probably about the close of
this period.(36)

This comedy was also based on the new Attic intrigue-piece; it was
not translation, however, but imitation; the scene of the piece lay
in Italy, and the actors appeared in the national dress,(37) the
-toga-.  Here the Latin life and doings were brought out with peculiar
freshness.  The pieces delineate the civil life of the middle-sized
towns of Latium; the very titles, such as -Psaltria- or -Ferentinatis-
, -Tibicina-, -Iurisperita-, -Fullones-, indicate this; and many
particular incidents, such as that of the townsman who has his shoes
made after the model of the sandals of the Alban kings, tend to
confirm it.  The female characters preponderate in a remarkable manner
over the male.(38) With genuine national pride the poet recalls
the great times of the Pyrrhic war, and looks down on his new
Latin neighbours,--

-Qui Obsce et Volsce fabulantur; nam Latine nesciunt.-

This comedy belongs to the stage of the capital quite as much as did
the Greek; but it was probably animated by something of that rustic
antagonism to the ways and the evils of a great town, which appeared
contemporaneously in Cato and afterwards in Varro.  As in the German
comedy, which proceeded from the French in much the same way as the
Roman comedy from the Attic, the French Lisette was very soon
superseded by the -Frauenzimmerchen- Franziska, so the Latin national
comedy sprang up, if not with equal poetical power, at any rate with
the same tendency and perhaps with similar success, by the side of
the Hellenizing comedy of the capital.

Tragedies
Euripides

Greek tragedy as well as Greek comedy came in the course of this epoch
to Rome.  It was a more valuable, and in a certain respect also an
easier, acquisition than comedy.  The Greek and particularly the
Homeric epos, which was the basis of tragedy, was not unfamiliar
to the Romans, and was already interwoven with their own national
legends; and the susceptible foreigner found himself far more at home
in the ideal world of the heroic myths than in the fish-market of
Athens.  Nevertheless tragedy also promoted, only with less abruptness
and less vulgarity, the anti-national and Hellenizing spirit; and in
this point of view it was a circumstance of the most decisive
importance, that the Greek tragic stage of this period was chiefly
under the sway of Euripides (274-348).  This is not the place for a
thorough delineation of that remarkable man and of his still more
remarkable influence on his contemporaries and posterity; but the
intellectual movements of the later Greek and the Graeco-Roman epoch
were to so great an extent affected by him, that it is indispensable
to sketch at least the leading outlines of his character.  Euripides
was one of those poets who raise poetry doubtless to a higher level,
but in this advance manifest far more the true sense of what ought to
be than the power of poetically creating it.  The profound saying which
morally as well as poetically sums up all tragic art--that action is
passion--holds true no doubt also of ancient tragedy; it exhibits
man in action, but it makes no real attempt to individualize him.
The unsurpassed grandeur with which the struggle between man and
destiny fulfils its course in Aeschylus depends substantially on
the circumstance, that each of the contending powers is only conceived
broadly and generally; the essential humanity in Prometheus and
Agamemnon is but slightly tinged by poetic individualizing.  Sophocles
seizes human nature under its general conditions, the king, the old
man, the sister; but not one of his figures displays the microcosm of
man in all his aspects--the features of individual character.  A high
stage was here reached, but not the highest; the delineation of man
in his entireness and the entwining of these individual--in themselves
finished--figures into a higher poetical whole form a greater
achievement, and therefore, as compared with Shakespeare, Aeschylus
and Sophocles represent imperfect stages of development.  But, when
Euripides undertook to present man as he is, the advance was logical
and in a certain sense historical rather than poetical.  He was
able to destroy the ancient tragedy, but not to create the modern.
Everywhere he halted half-way.  Masks, through which the expression
of the life of the soul is, as it were, translated from the particular
into the general, were as necessary for the typical tragedy of
antiquity as they are incompatible with the tragedy of character;
but Euripides retained them.  With remarkably delicate tact the older
tragedy had never presented the dramatic element, to which it was
unable to allow free scope, unmixed, but had constantly fettered it
in some measure by epic subjects from the superhuman world of gods and
heroes and by the lyrical choruses.  One feels that Euripides was
impatient under these fetters: with his subjects he came down at least
to semi-historic times, and his choral chants were of so subordinate
importance, that they were frequently omitted in subsequent
performance and hardly to the injury of the pieces; but yet he has
neither placed his figures wholly on the ground of reality, nor
entirely thrown aside the chorus.  Throughout and on all sides he is
the full exponent of an age in which, on the one hand, the grandest
historical and philosophical movement was going forward, but in which,
on the other hand, the primitive fountain of all poetry--a pure and
homely national life--had become turbid.  While the reverential piety
of the older tragedians sheds over their pieces as it were a reflected
radiance of heaven; while the limitation of the narrow horizon of the
older Hellenes exercises its satisfying power even over the hearer;
the world of Euripides appears in the pale glimmer of speculation as
much denuded of gods as it is spiritualised, and gloomy passions shoot
like lightnings athwart the gray clouds.  The old deeply-rooted faith
in destiny has disappeared; fate governs as an outwardly despotic
power, and the slaves gnash their teeth as they wear its fetters.
That unbelief, which is despairing faith, speaks in this poet with
superhuman power.  Of necessity therefore the poet never attains a
plastic conception overpowering himself, and never reaches a truly
poetic effect on the whole; for which reason he was in some measure
careless as to the construction of his tragedies, and indeed not
unfrequently altogether spoiled them in this respect by providing no
central interest either of plot or person--the slovenly fashion of
weaving the plot in the prologue, and of unravelling it by a -Deus ex
machina- or a similar platitude, was in reality brought into vogue by
Euripides.  All the effect in his case lies in the details; and with
great art certainly every effort has in this respect been made to
conceal the irreparable want of poetic wholeness.  Euripides is
a master in what are called effects; these, as a rule, have a
sensuously-sentimental colouring, and often moreover stimulate
the sensuous impression by a special high seasoning, such as the
interweaving of subjects relating to love with murder or incest.
The delineations of Polyxena willing to die and of Phaedra pining
away under the grief of secret love, above all the splendid picture
of the mystic ecstasies of the Bacchae, are of the greatest beauty
in their kind; but they are neither artistically nor morally pure,
and the reproach of Aristophanes, that the poet was unable to paint a
Penelope, was thoroughly well founded.  Of a kindred character is the
introduction of common compassion into the tragedy of Euripides.
While his stunted heroes or heroines, such as Menelaus in the -Helena-,
Andromache, Electra as a poor peasant's wife, the sick and ruined
merchant Telephus, are repulsive or ridiculous and ordinarily both,
the pieces, on the other hand, which keep more to the atmosphere of
common reality and exchange the character of tragedy for that of the
touching family-piece or that almost of sentimental comedy, such as
the -Iphigenia in Aulis-, the -Ion-, the -Alcestis-, produce perhaps
the most pleasing effect of all his numerous works.  With equal
frequency, but with less success, the poet attempts to bring into play
an intellectual interest.  Hence springs the complicated plot, which
is calculated not like the older tragedy to move the feelings, but
rather to keep curiosity on the rack; hence the dialectically pointed
dialogue, to us non-Athenians often absolutely intolerable; hence the
apophthegms, which are scattered throughout the pieces of Euripides
like flowers in a pleasure-garden; hence above all the psychology of
Euripides, which rests by no means on direct reproduction of human
experience, but on rational reflection.  His Medea is certainly in so
far painted from life, that she is before departure properly provided
with money for her voyage; but of the struggle in the soul between
maternal love and jealousy the unbiassed reader will not find much in
Euripides.  But, above all, poetic effect is replaced in the tragedies
of Euripides by moral or political purpose.  Without strictly or
directly entering on the questions of the day, and having in view
throughout social rather than political questions, Euripides in the
legitimate issues of his principles coincided with the contemporary
political and philosophical radicalism, and was the first and chief
apostle of that new cosmopolitan humanity which broke up the old Attic
national life.  This was the ground at once of that opposition which
the ungodly and un-Attic poet encountered among his contemporaries,
and of that marvellous enthusiasm, with which the younger generation
and foreigners devoted themselves to the poet of emotion and of love,
of apophthegm and of tendency, of philosophy and of humanity.  Greek
tragedy in the hands of Euripides stepped beyond its proper sphere and
consequently broke down; but the success of the cosmopolitan poet was
only promoted by this, since at the same time the nation also stepped
beyond its sphere and broke down likewise.  The criticism of
Aristophanes probably hit the truth exactly both in a moral and in a
poetical point of view; but poetry influences the course of history
not in proportion to its absolute value, but in proportion as it is
able to forecast the spirit of the age, and in this respect Euripides
was unsurpassed.  And thus it happened, that Alexander read him
diligently; that Aristotle developed the idea of the tragic poet with
special reference to him; that the latest poetic and plastic art in
Attica as it were originated from him (for the new Attic comedy did
nothing but transfer Euripides into a comic form, and the school of
painters which we meet with in the designs of the later vases derived
its subjects no longer from the old epics, but from the Euripidean
tragedy); and lastly that, the more the old Hellas gave place to the
new Hellenism, the more the fame and influence of the poet increased,
and Greek life abroad, in Egypt as well as in Rome, was directly or
indirectly moulded in the main by Euripides.

Roman Tragedy

The Hellenism of Euripides flowed to Rome through very various
channels, and probably produced a speedier and deeper effect there
by indirect means than in the form of direct translation.  The tragic
drama in Rome was not exactly later in its rise than the comic;(39)
but the far greater expense of putting a tragedy on the stage--which
was undoubtedly felt as a consideration of moment, at least during the
Hannibalic war--as well as the nature of the audience(40) retarded the
development of tragedy.  In the comedies of Plautus the allusions to
tragedies are not very frequent, and most references of this kind may
have been taken from the originals.  The first and only influential
tragedian of this epoch was the younger contemporary of Naevius
and Plautus, Quintus Ennius (515-585), whose pieces were already
travestied by contemporary comic writers, and were exhibited and
declaimed by posterity down to the days of the empire.

The tragic drama of the Romans is far less known to us than the comic:
on the whole the same features, which have been noticed in the case of
comedy, are presented by tragedy also.  The dramatic stock, in like
manner, was mainly formed by translations of Greek pieces.  The
preference was given to subjects derived from the siege of Troy and
the legends immediately connected with it, evidently because this
cycle of myths alone was familiar to the Roman public through
instruction at school; by their side incidents of striking horror
predominate, such as matricide or infanticide in the -Eumenides-,
the -Alcmaeon-, the -Cresphontes-, the -Melanippe-, the -Medea-, and
the immolation of virgins in the -Polyxena-, the -Erechthides-, the
-Andromeda-, the -Iphigenia- --we cannot avoid recalling the fact,
that the public for which these tragedies were prepared was in the
habit of witnessing gladiatorial games.  The female characters and
ghosts appear to have made the deepest impression.  In addition to the
rejection of masks, the most remarkable deviation of the Roman edition
from the original related to the chorus.  The Roman theatre, fitted up
doubtless in the first instance for comic plays without chorus, had
not the special dancing-stage (-orchestra-) with the altar in the
middle, on which the Greek chorus performed its part, or, to speak
more correctly, the space thus appropriated among the Greeks served
with the Romans as a sort of pit; accordingly the choral dance at
least, with its artistic alternations and intermixture of music and
declamation, must have been omitted in Rome, and, even if the chorus
was retained, it had but little importance.  Of course there were
various alterations of detail, changes in the metres, curtailments,
and disfigurements; in the Latin edition of the -Iphigenia- of
Euripides, for instance, the chorus of women was--either after the
model of another tragedy, or by the editor's own device--converted
into a chorus of soldiers.  The Latin tragedies of the sixth century
cannot be pronounced good translations in our sense of the word;(41)
yet it is probable that a tragedy of Ennius gave a far less imperfect
image of the original of Euripides than a comedy of Plautus gave of
the original of Menander.

Moral Effect of Tragedy

The historical position and influence of Greek tragedy in Rome
were entirely analogous to those of Greek comedy; and while, as
the difference in the two kinds of composition necessarily implied,
the Hellenistic tendency appeared in tragedy under a purer and more
spiritual form, the tragic drama of this period and its principal
representative Ennius displayed far more decidedly an anti-national
and consciously propagandist aim.  Ennius, hardly the most important
but certainly the most influential poet of the sixth century, was not
a Latin by birth, but on the contrary by virtue of his origin half a
Greek.  Of Messapian descent and Hellenic training, he settled in his
thirty-fifth year at Rome, and lived there--at first as a resident
alien, but after 570 as a burgess(42)--in straitened circumstances,
supported partly by giving instruction in Latin and Greek, partly by
the proceeds of his pieces, partly by the donations of those Roman
grandees, who, like Publius Scipio, Titus Flamininus, and Marcus
Fulvius Nobilior, were inclined to promote the modern Hellenism and
to reward the poet who sang their own and their ancestors' praises and
even accompanied some of them to the field in the character, as it
were, of a poet laureate nominated beforehand to celebrate the great
deeds which they were to perform.  He has himself elegantly described
the client-like qualities requisite for such a calling.(43)  From the
outset and by virtue of the whole tenor of his life a cosmopolite, he
had the skill to appropriate the distinctive features of the nations
among which he lived--Greek, Latin, and even Oscan--without devoting
himself absolutely to any cne of them; and while the Hellenism of the
earlier Roman poets was the result rather than the conscious aim of
their poetic activity, and accordingly they at least attempted more or
less to take their stand on national ground, Ennius on the contrary is
very distinctly conscious of his revolutionary tendency, and evidently
labours with zeal to bring into vogue neologico-Hellenic ideas among
the Italians.  His most serviceable instrument was tragedy.  The
remains of his tragedies show that he was well acquainted with the
whole range of the Greek tragic drama and with Aeschylus and Sophocles
in particular; it is the less therefore the result of accident, that
he has modelled the great majority of his pieces, and all those that
attained celebrity, on Euripides.  In the selection and treatment he
was doubtless influenced partly by external considerations.  But these
alone cannot account for his bringing forward so decidedly the
Euripidean element in Euripides; for his neglecting the choruses still
more than did his original; for his laying still stronger emphasis on
sensuous effect than the Greek; nor for his taking up pieces like the
-Thyestes- and the -Telephus- so well known from the immortal ridicule
of Aristophanes, with their princes' woes and woful princes, and even
such a piece as Menalippa the Female Philosopher, in which the whole
plot turns on the absurdity of the national religion, and the tendency
to make war on it from the physicist point of view is at once
apparent.  The sharpest arrows are everywhere--and that partly in
passages which can be proved to have been inserted(44)--directed
against faith in the miraculous, and we almost wonder that the
censorship of the Roman stage allowed such tirades to pass as
the following:--

-Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,
Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus;
Nam si curent, bene bonis sit, male malis, quod nunc abest.-

We have already remarked(45) that Ennius scientifically inculcated the
same irreligion in a didactic poem of his own; and it is evident that
he was in earnest with this freethinking.  With this trait other
features are quite accordant--his political opposition tinged with
radicalism, that here and there appears;(46) his singing the praises
of the Greek pleasures of the table;(47) above all his setting aside
the last national element in Latin poetry, the Saturnian measure, and
substituting for it the Greek hexameter.  That the "multiform" poet
executed all these tasks with equal neatness, that he elaborated
hexameters out of a language of by no means dactylic structure, and
that without checking the natural flow of his style he moved with
confidence and freedom amidst unwonted measures and forms--are so many
evidences of his extraordinary plastic talent, which was in fact more
Greek than Roman;(48) where he offends us, the offence is owing much
more frequently to Greek alliteration(49) than to Roman ruggedness.
He was not a great poet, but a man of graceful and sprightly talent,
throughout possessing the vivid sensibilities of a poetic nature, but
needing the tragic buskin to feel himself a poet and wholly destitute
of the comic vein.  We can understand the pride with which the
Hellenizing poet looked down on those rude strains --

-quos olim Faunei vatesque canebant,-

and the enthusiasm with which he celebrates his own artistic poetry:

-Enni foeta, salve,
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus.-

The clever man had an instinctive assurance that he had spread his
sails to a prosperous breeze; Greek tragedy became, and thenceforth
remained, a possession of the Latin nation.

National Dramas

Through less frequented paths, and with a less favourable wind, a
bolder mariner pursued a higher aim.  Naevius not only like Ennius
--although with far less success--adapted Greek tragedies for the
Roman stage, but also attempted to create, independently of the
Greeks, a grave national drama (-fabula praetextata-).  No outward
obstacles here stood in the way; he brought forward subjects both
from Roman legend and from the contemporary history of the country on
the stage of his native land.  Such were his Nursing of Romulus and
Remus or the Wolf, in which Amulius king of Alba appeared, and his
-Clastidium-, which celebrated the victory of Marcellus over the
Celts in 532.(49)  After his example, Ennius in his -Ambracia-
described from personal observation the siege of that city by his
patron Nobilior in 565.(50)  But the number of these national dramas
remained small, and that species of composition soon disappeared from
the stage; the scanty legend and the colourless history of Rome were
unable permanently to compete with the rich cycle of Hellenic legends.
Respecting the poetic value of the pieces we have no longer the means
of judging; but, if we may take account of the general poetical
intention, there were in Roman literature few such strokes of genius
as the creation of a Roman national drama.  Only the Greek tragedians
of that earliest period which still felt itself nearer to the gods
--only poets like Phrynichus and Aeschylus--had the courage to bring
the great deeds which they had witnessed, and in which they had borne
a part, on the stage by the side of those of legendary times; and
here, if anywhere, we are enabled vividly to realize what the Punic
wars were and how powerful was their effect, when we find a poet,
who like Aeschylus had himself fought in the battles which he sang,
introducing the kings and consuls of Rome upon that stage on which
men had hitherto been accustomed to see none but gods and heroes.

Recitative Poetry

Recitative poetry also took its rise during this epoch at Rome.
Livius naturalized the custom which among the ancients held the
place of our modern publication--the public reading of new works by
the author--in Rome, at least to the extent of reciting them in his
school.  As poetry was not in this instance practised with a view to
a livelihood, or at any rate not directly so, this branch of it was
not regarded by public opinion with such disfavour as writing for the
stage: towards the end of this epoch one or two Romans of quality had
publicly come forward in this manner as poets.(51)  Recitative poetry
however was chiefly cultivated by those poets who occupied themselves
with writing for the stage, and the former held a subordinate place as
compared with the latter; in fact, a public to which read poetry might
address itself can have existed only to a very limited extent at this
period in Rome.

Satura

Above all, lyrical, didactic, and epigrammatic poetry found but feeble
representation.  The religious festival chants--as to which the annals
of this period certainly have already thought it worth while to
mention the author--as well as the monumental inscriptions on temples
and tombs, for which the Saturnian remained the regular measure,
hardly belong to literature proper.  So far as the minor poetry makes
its appearance at all, it presents itself ordinarily, and that as
early as the time of Naevius, under the name of -satura-.  This term
was originally applied to the old stage-poem without action, which
from the time of Livius was driven off the stage by the Greek drama;
but in its application to recitative poetry it corresponds in some
measure to our "miscellaneous poems," and like the latter denotes not
any positive species or style of art, but simply poems not of an epic
or dramatic kind, treating of any matters (mostly subjective), and
written in any form, at the pleasure of the author.  In addition to
Cato's "poem on Morals" to be noticed afterwards, which was presumably
written in Saturnian verses after the precedent of the older first
attempts at a national didactic poetry,(52) there came under this
category especially the minor poems of Ennius, which that writer,
who was very fertile in this department, published partly in his
collection of -saturae-, partly separately.  Among these were brief
narrative poems relating to the legendary or contemporary history of
his country; editions of the religious romance of Euhemerus,(53) of
the poems dealing with natural philosophy circulating in the name
of Epicharmus,(54) and of the gastronomies of Archestratus of Gela,
a poet who treated of the higher cookery; as also a dialogue between
Life and Death, fables of Aesop, a collection of moral maxims,
parodies and epigrammatic trifles--small matters, but indicative
of the versatile powers as well as the neological didactic tendencies
of the poet, who evidently allowed himself the freest range in this
field, which the censorship did not reach.

Metrical Annals
Naevius

The attempts at a metrical treatment of the national annals lay
claim to greater poetical and historical importance.  Here too it was
Naevius who gave poetic form to so much of the legendary as well as
of the contemporary history as admitted of connected narrative; and
who, more especially, recorded in the half-prosaic Saturnian national
metre the story of the first Punic war simply and distinctly, with
a straightforward adherence to fact, without disdaining anything at
all as unpoetical, and without at all, especially in the description
of historical times, going in pursuit of poetical flights or
embellishments--maintaining throughout his narrative the present
tense.(55)  What we have already said of the national drama of the
same poet, applies substantially to the work of which we are now
speaking.  The epic, like the tragic, poetry of the Greeks lived and
moved essentially in the heroic period; it was an altogether new and,
at least in design, an enviably grand idea--to light up the present
with the lustre of poetry.  Although in point of execution the
chronicle of Naevius may not have been much better than the rhyming
chronicles of the middle ages, which are in various respects of
kindred character, yet the poet was certainly justified in regarding
this work of his with an altogether peculiar complacency.  It was no
small achievement, in an age when there was absolutely no historical
literature except official records, to have composed for his
countrymen a connected account of the deeds of their own and the
earlier time, and in addition to have placed before their eyes
the noblest incidents of that history in a dramatic form.

Ennius

Ennius proposed to himself the very same task as Naevius; but the
similarity of the subject only brings out into stronger relief the
political and poetical contrast between the national and the anti-
national poet.  Naevius sought out for the new subject a new form;
Ennius fitted or forced it into the forms of the Hellenic epos.  The
hexameter took the place of the Saturnian verse; the ornate style of
the Homeridae, striving after plastic vividness of delineation,
took the place of the homely historic narrative.  Wherever the
circumstances admit, Homer is directly translated; e. g. the burial of
those that fell at Heraclea is described after the model of the burial
of Patroclus, and under the helmet of Marcus Livius Stolo, the
military tribune who fights with the Istrians, lurks none other than
the Homeric Ajax; the reader is not even spared the Homeric invocation
of the Muse.  The epic machinery is fully set agoing; after the battle
of Cannae, for instance, Juno in a full council of the gods pardons
the Romans, and Jupiter after obtaining the consent of his wife
promises them a final victory over the Carthaginians.  Nor do the
"Annals" fail to betray the neological and Hellenistic tendencies of
the author.  The very employment of the gods for mere decoration bears
this stamp.  The remarkable vision, with which the poem opens, tells
in good Pythagorean style how the soul now inhabiting Quintus Ennius
had previously been domiciled in Homer and still earlier in a peacock,
and then in good physicist style explains the nature of things and
the relation of the body to the mind.  Even the choice of the subject
serves the same purpose--at any rate the Hellenic literati of all ages
have found an especially suitable handle for their Graeco-cosmopolite
tendencies in this very manipulation of Roman history.  Ennius lays
stress on the circumstance that the Romans were reckoned Greeks:

-Contendunt Graecos, Graios memorare solent sos.-

The poetical value of the greatly celebrated Annals may easily be
estimated after the remarks which we have already made regarding the
excellences and defects of the poet in general.  It was natural that
as a poet of lively sympathies, he should feel himself elevated by the
enthusiastic impulse which the great age of the Punic wars gave to the
national sensibilities of Italy, and that he should not only often
happily imitate Homeric simplicity, but should also and still more
frequently make his lines strikingly echo the solemnity and decorum of
the Roman character.  But the construction of his epic was defective;
indeed it must have been very lax and indifferent, when it was
possible for the poet to insert a special book by way of supplement
to please an otherwise forgotten hero and patron.  On the whole the
Annals were beyond question the work in which Ennius fell farthest
short of his aim.  The plan of making an Iliad pronounces its own
condemnation.  It was Ennius, who in this poem for the first time
introduced into literature that changeling compound of epos and of
history, which from that time up to the present day haunts it like a
ghost, unable either to live or to die.  But the poem certainly had
its success.  Ennius claimed to be the Roman Homer with still greater
ingenuousness than Klopstock claimed to be the German, and was
received as such by his contemporaries and still more so by posterity.
The veneration for the father of Roman poetry was transmitted from
generation to generation; even the polished Quintilian says, "Let us
revere Ennius as we revere an ancient sacred grove, whose mighty oaks
of a thousand years are more venerable than beautiful;" and, if any
one is disposed to wonder at this, he may recall analogous phenomena
in the successes of the Aeneid, the Henriad, and the Messiad.  A
mighty poetical development of the nation would indeed have set
aside that almost comic official parallel between the Homeric
Iliad and the Ennian

Annals as easily as we have set aside the comparison of Karschin
with Sappho and of Willamov with Pindar; but no such development took
place in Rome.  Owing to the interest of the subject especially for
aristocratic circles, and the great plastic talent of the poet, the
Annals remained the oldest Roman original poem which appeared to the
culture of later generations readable or worth reading; and thus,
singularly enough, posterity came to honour this thoroughly anti-
national epos of a half-Greek -litterateur- as the true model
poem of Rome.

Prose Literature

A prose literature arose in Rome not much later than Roman poetry,
but in a very different way.  It experienced neither the artificial
furtherance, by which the school and the stage prematurely forced the
growth of Roman poetry, nor the artificial restraint, to which Roman
comedy in particular was subjected by the stern and narrow-minded
censorship of the stage.  Nor was this form of literary activity
placed from the outset under the ban of good society by the stigma
which attached to the "ballad-singer." Accordingly the prose
literature, while far less extensive and less active than the
contemporary poetical authorship, had a far more natural growth.
While poetry was almost wholly in the hands of men of humble rank and
not a single Roman of quality appears among the celebrated poets of
this age, there is, on the contrary, among the prose writers of this
period hardly a name that is not senatorial; and it is from the
circles of the highest aristocracy, from men who had been consuls and
censors--the Fabii, the Gracchi, the Scipios--that this literature
throughout proceeds.  The conservative and national tendency, in the
nature of the case, accorded better with this prose authorship than
with poetry; but here too--and particularly in the most important
branch of this literature, historical composition--the Hellenistic
bent had a powerful, in fact too powerful, influence both on matter
and form.

Writing of History

Down to the period of the Hannibalic war there was no historical
composition in Rome; for the entries in the book of Annals were of the
nature of records and not of literature, and never made any attempt to
develop the connection of events.  It is a significant illustration of
the peculiarity of Roman character, that notwithstanding the extension
of the power of the Roman community far beyond the bounds of Italy,
and notwithstanding the constant contact of the noble society of Rome
with the Greeks who were so fruitful in literary activity, it was not
till the middle of the sixth century that there was felt the need and
desire of imparting a knowledge of the deeds and fortunes of the Roman
people, by means of authorship, to the contemporary world and to
posterity.  When at length this desire was felt, there were neither
literary forms ready at hand for the use of Roman history, nor was
there a public prepared to read it, and great talent and considerable
time were required to create both.  In the first instance,
accordingly, these difficulties were in some measure evaded by writing
the national history either in the mother-tongue but in that case in
verse, or in prose but in that case in Greek.  We have already spoken
of the metrical chronicles of Naevius (written about 550?) and of
Ennius (written about 581); both belong to the earliest historical
literature of the Romans, and the work of Naevius may be regarded as
the oldest of all Roman historical works.  At nearly the same period
were composed the Greek "Histories" of Quintus Fabius Pictor(56)
(after 553), a man of noble family who took an active part in state
affairs during the Hannibalic war, and of Publius Scipio, the son of
Scipio Africanus (about 590).  In the former case they availed
themselves of the poetical art which was already to a certain extent
developed, and addressed themselves to a public with a taste for
poetry, which was not altogether wanting; in the latter case they
found the Greek forms ready to their hand, and addressed themselves
--as the interest of their subject stretching far beyond the bounds
of Latium naturally suggested--primarily to the cultivated foreigner.
The former plan was adopted by the plebeian authors, the latter by
those of quality; just as in the time of Frederick the Great an
aristocratic literature in the French language subsisted side by side
with the native German authorship of pastors and professors, and,
while men like Gleim and Ramler wrote war-songs in German, kings and
generals wrote military histories in French.  Neither the metrical
chronicles nor the Greek annals by Roman authors constituted Latin
historical composition in the proper sense; this only began with Cato,
whose "Origines," not published before the close of this epoch, formed
at once the oldest historical work written in Latin and the first
important prose work in Roman literature.(57)

All these works, while not coming up to the Greek conception of
history,(58) were, as contrasted with the mere detached notices of
the book of Annals, systematic histories with a connected narrative
and a more or less regular structure.  They all, so far as we can see,
embraced the national history from the building of Rome down to the
time of the writer, although in point of title the work of Naevius
related only to the first war with Carthage, and that of Cato only
to the very early history.  They were thus naturally divided into
the three sections of the legendary period, of earlier, and of
contemporary, history.

History of the Origin of Rome

In the legendary period the history of the origin of the city of Rome
was set forth with great minuteness; and in its case the peculiar
difficulty had to be surmounted, that there were, as we have already
shown,(59) two wholly irreconcileable versions of it in circulation:
the national version, which, in its leading outlines at least, was
probably already embodied in the book of Annals, and the Greek
version of Timaeus, which cannot have remained unknown to these Roman
chroniclers.  The object of the former was to connect Rome with
Alba, that of the latter to connect Rome with Troy; in the former
accordingly the city was built by Romulus son of the Alban king,
in the latter by the Trojan prince Aeneas.  To the present epoch,
probably either to Naevius or to Pictor, belongs the amalgamation of
the two stories.  The Alban prince Romulus remains the founder of
Rome, but becomes at the same time the grandson of Aeneas; Aeneas does
not found Rome, but is represented as bringing the Roman Penates to
Italy and building Lavinium as their shrine, while his son Ascanius
founds Alba Longa, the mother-city of Rome and the ancient metropolis
of Latium.  All this was a sorry and unskilful patchwork.  The view
that the original Penates of Rome were preserved not, as had hitherto
been believed, in their temple in the Roman Forum, but in the shrine
at Lavinium, could not but be offensive to the Romans; and the Greek
fiction was a still worse expedient, inasmuch as under it the gods
only bestowed on the grandson what they had adjudged to the grandsire.
But the redaction served its object: without exactly denying the
national origin of Rome, it yet deferred to the Hellenizing tendency,
and legalized in some degree that desire to claim kindred with Aeneas
and his descendants which was already at this epoch greatly in
vogue;(60) and thus it became the stereotyped, and was soon accepted
as the official, account of the origin of the mighty community.

Apart from the fable of the origin of the city, the Greek
historiographers had otherwise given themselves little or no concern
as to the Roman commonwealth; so that the presentation of the further
course of the national history must have been chiefly derived from
native sources.  But the scanty information that has reached us does
not enable us to discern distinctly what sort of traditions, in
addition to the book of Annals, were at the command of the earliest
chroniclers, and what they may possibly have added of their own.
The anecdotes inserted from Herodotus(61) were probably still foreign
to these earliest annalists, and a direct borrowing of Greek materials
in this section cannot be proved.  The more remarkable, therefore, is
the tendency, which is everywhere, even in the case of Cato the enemy
of the Greeks, very distinctly apparent, not only to connect Rome with
Hellas, but to represent the Italian and Greek nations as having been
originally identical.  To this tendency we owe the primitive-Italians
or Aborigines who were immigrants from Greece, and the primitive-
Greeks or Pelasgians whose wanderings brought them to Italy.

The Earlier History

The current story led with some measure of connection, though the
connecting thread was but weak and loose through the regal period down
to the institution of the republic; but at that point legend dried up;
and it was not merely difficult but altogether impossible to form a
narrative, in any degree connected and readable, out of the lists of
magistrates and the scanty notices appended to them.  The poets felt
this most.  Naevius appears for that reason to have passed at once
from the regal period to the war regarding Sicily: Ennius, who in the
third of his eighteen books was still describing the regal period and
in the sixth had already reached the war with Pyrrhus, must have
treated the first two centuries of the republic merely in the most
general outline.  How the annalists who wrote in Greek managed the
matter, we do not know.  Cato adopted a peculiar course.  He felt no
pleasure, as he himself says, "in relating what was set forth on the
tablet in the house of the Pontifex Maximus, how often wheat had been
dear, and when the sun or moon had been eclipsed;" and so he devoted
the second and third books of his historical work to accounts of the
origin of the other Italian communities and of their admission to the
Roman confederacy.  He thus got rid of the fetters of chronicle, which
reports events year by year under the heading of the magistrates for
the time being; the statement in particular, that Cato's historical
work narrated events "sectionally," must refer to this feature of his
method.  This attention bestowed on the other Italian communities,
which surprises us in a Roman work, had a bearing on the political
position of the author, who leaned throughout on the support of the
municipal Italy in his opposition to the doings of the capital; while
it furnished a sort of substitute for the missing history of Rome
from the expulsion of king Tarquinius down to the Pyrrhic war, by
presenting in its own way the main result of that history--the union
of Italy under the hegemony of Rome.

Contemporary History

Contemporary history, again, was treated in a connected and detailed
manner.  Naevius described the first, and Fabius the second, war with
Carthage from their own knowledge; Ennius devoted at least thirteen
out of the eighteen books of his Annals to the epoch from Pyrrhus down
to the Istrian war;(62) Cato narrated in the fourth and fifth books
of his historical work the wars from the first Punic war down to that
with Perseus, and in the two last books, which probably were planned
on a different and ampler scale, he related the events of the last
twenty years of his life.  For the Pyrrhic war Ennius may have
employed Timaeus or other Greek authorities; but on the whole
the accounts given were based, partly on personal observation
or communications of eye-witnesses, partly on each other.

Speeches and Letters

Contemporaneously with historical literature, and in some sense as an
appendage to it, arose the literature of speeches and letters.  This
in like manner was commenced by Cato; for the Romans possessed nothing
of an earlier age except some funeral orations, most of which probably
were only brought to light at a later period from family archives,
such as that which the veteran Quintus Fabius, the opponent of
Hannibal, delivered when an old man over his son who had died in his
prime.  Cato on the other hand committed to writing in his old age
such of the numerous orations which he had delivered during his long
and active public career as were historically important, as a sort of
political memoirs, and published them partly in his historical work,
partly, it would seem, as independent supplements to it.  There also
existed a collection of his letters.

History of Other Nations

With non-Roman history the Romans concerned themselves so far, that
a certain knowledge of it was deemed indispensable for the cultivated
Roman; even old Fabius is said to have been familiar not merely with
the Roman, but also with foreign, wars, and it is distinctly testified
that Cato diligently read Thucydides and the Greek historians in
general.  But, if we leave out of view the collection of anecdotes and
maxims which Cato compiled for himself as the fruits of this reading,
no trace is discernible of any literary activity in this field.

Uncritical Treatment of History

These first essays in historical literature were all of them, as
a matter of course, pervaded by an easy, uncritical spirit; neither
authors nor readers readily took offence at inward or outward
inconsistencies.  King Tarquinius the Second, although he was already
grown up at the time of his father's death and did not begin to reign
till thirty-nine years afterwards, is nevertheless still a young man
when he ascends the throne.  Pythagoras, who came to Italy about a
generation before the expulsion of the kings, is nevertheless set
down by the Roman historians as a friend of the wise Numa.  The state-
envoys sent to Syracuse in the year 262 transact business with
Dionysius the elder, who ascended the throne eighty-six years
afterwards (348).  This naive uncritical spirit is especially apparent
in the treatment of Roman chronology.  Since according to the Roman
reckoning--the outlines of which were probably fixed in the previous
epoch--the foundation of Rome took place 240 years before the
consecration of the Capitoline temple(63) and 360 years before the
burning of the city by the Gauls,(64) and the latter event, which
is mentioned also in Greek historical works, fell according to these
in the year of the Athenian archon Pyrgion 388 B. C. Ol. 98, i, the
building of Rome accordingly fell on Ol. 8, i.  This was, according
to the chronology of Eratosthenes which was already recognized as
canonical, the year 436 after the fall of Troy; nevertheless the
common story retained as the founder of Rome the grandson of the
Trojan Aeneas.  Cato, who like a good financier checked the
calculation, no doubt drew attention in this instance to the
incongruity; but he does not appear to have proposed any mode of
getting over the difficulty--the list of the Alban kings, which
was afterwards inserted with this view, certainly did not proceed
from him.

The same uncritical spirit, which prevailed in the early history,
prevailed also to a certain extent in the representation of historical
times.  The accounts certainly without exception bore that strong
party colouring, for which the Fabian narrative of the commencement
of the second war with Carthage is censured by Polybius with the
calm severity characteristic of him.  Mistrust, however, is more
appropriate in such circumstances than reproach.  It is somewhat
ridiculous to expect from the Roman contemporaries of Hannibal a
just judgment on their opponents; but no conscious misrepresentation
of the facts, except such as a simple-minded patriotism of itself
involves, has been proved against the fathers of Roman history.

Science

The beginnings of scientific culture, and even of authorship relating
to it, also fall within this epoch.  The instruction hitherto given
had been substantially confined to reading and writing and a knowledge
of the law of the land.(65)  But a closer contact with the Greeks
gradually suggested to the Romans the idea of a more general culture;
and stimulated the endeavour, if not directly to transplant this
Greek culture to Rome, at any rate to modify the Roman culture to
some extent after its model.

Grammar

First of all, the knowledge of the mother-tongue began to shape itself
into Latin grammar; Greek philology transferred its methods to the
kindred idiom of Italy.  The active study of grammar began nearly at
the same time with Roman authorship.  About 520 Spurius Carvilius, a
teacher of writing, appears to have regulated the Latin alphabet, and
to have given to the letter -g, which was not previously included in
it,(66) the place of the -z which could be dispensed with--the place
which it still holds in the modern Occidental alphabets.  The Roman
school-masters must have been constantly working at the settlement
of orthography; the Latin Muses too never disowned their scholastic
Hippocrene, and at all times applied themselves to orthography side
by side with poetry.  Ennius especially--resembling Klopstock in this
respect also--not only practised an etymological play on assonance
quite after the Alexandrian style,(67) but also introduced, in place
of the simple signs for the double consonants that had hitherto been
usual, the more accurate Greek double writing.  Of Naevius and
Plautus, it is true, nothing of the kind is known; the popular
poets in Rome must have treated orthography and etymology with
the indifference which is usual with poets.

Rhetoric and Philosophy

The Romans of this epoch still remained strangers to rhetoric and
philosophy.  The speech in their case lay too decidedly at the very
heart of public life to be accessible to the handling of the foreign
schoolmaster; the genuine orator Cato poured forth all the vials of
his indignant ridicule over the silly Isocratean fashion of ever
learning, and yet never being able, to speak.  The Greek philosophy,
although it acquired a certain influence over the Romans through the
medium of didactic and especially of tragic poetry, was nevertheless
viewed with an apprehension compounded of boorish ignorance and of
instinctive misgiving.  Cato bluntly called Socrates a talker and a
revolutionist, who was justly put to death as an offender against the
faith and the laws of his country; and the opinion, which even Romans
addicted to philosophy entertained regarding it, may well be expressed
in the words of Ennius:

-Philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis, nam omnino haut placet.
Degustandum ex ea, non in eam ingurgitandum censeo.-

Nevertheless the poem on Morals and the instructions in Oratory, which
were found among the writings of Cato, may be regarded as the Roman
quintessence or, if the expression be preferred, the Roman -caput
mortuum- of Greek philosophy and rhetoric.  The immediate sources
whence Cato drew were, in the case of the poem on Morals, presumably
the Pythagorean writings on morals (along with, as a matter of course,
due commendation of the simple ancestral habits), and, in the case of
the book on Oratory, the speeches in Thucydides and more especially
the orations of Demosthenes, all of which Cato zealously studied.
Of the spirit of these manuals we may form some idea from the golden
oratorical rule, oftener quoted than followed by posterity, "to think
of the matter and leave the words to follow from it."(68)

Medicine

Similar manuals of a general elementary character were composed by
Cato on the Art of Healing, the Science of War, Agriculture, and
Jurisprudence--all of which studies were likewise more or less under
Greek influence.  Physics and mathematics were not much studied in
Rome; but the applied sciences connected with them received a certain
measure of attention.  This was most of all true of medicine.  In 535
the first Greek physician, the Peloponnesian Archagathus, settled in
Rome and there acquired such repute by his surgical operations, that a
residence was assigned to him on the part of the state and he received
the freedom of the city; and thereafter his colleagues flocked in
crowds to Italy.  Cato no doubt not only reviled the foreign medical
practitioners with a zeal worthy of a better cause, but attempted,
by means of his medical manual compiled from his own experience and
probably in part also from the medical literature of the Greeks, to
revive the good old fashion under which the father of the family was
at the same time the family physician.  The physicians and the public
gave themselves, as was reasonable, but little concern about his
obstinate invectives: at any rate the profession, one of the most
lucrative which existed in Rome, continued a monopoly in the hands
of the foreigners, and for centuries there were none but Greek
physicians in Rome.

Mathematics

Hitherto the measurement of time had been treated in Rome with
barbarous indifference, but matters were now at least in some degree
improved.  With the erection of the first sundial in the Roman Forum
in 491 the Greek hour (--ora--, -hora-) began to come into use at
Rome: it happened, however, that the Romans erected a sundial which
had been prepared for Catana situated four degrees farther to the
south, and were guided by this for a whole century.  Towards the end
of this epoch we find several persons of quality taking an interest
in mathematical studies.  Manius Acilius Glabrio (consul in 563)
attempted to check the confusion of the calendar by a law, which
allowed the pontifical college to insert or omit intercalary months at
discretion: if the measure failed in its object and in fact aggravated
the evil, the failure was probably owing more to the unscrupulousness
than to the want of intelligence of the Roman theologians.  Marcus
Fulvius Nobilior (consul in 565), a man of Greek culture, endeavoured
at least to make the Roman calendar more generally known.  Gaius
Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588), who not only predicted the eclipse
of the moon in 586 but also calculated the distance of the moon
from the earth, and who appears to have come forward even as an
astronomical writer, was regarded on this account by his
contemporaries as a prodigy of diligence and acuteness.

Agriculture and the Art of War

Agriculture and the art of war were, of course, primarily regulated
by the standard of traditional and personal experience, as is very
distinctly apparent in that one of the two treatises of Cato on
Agriculture which has reached our time.  But the results of Graeco-
Latin, and even of Phoenician, culture were brought to bear on these
subordinate fields just as on the higher provinces of intellectual
activity, and for that reason the foreign literature relating to
them cannot but have attracted some measure of attention.

Jurisprudence

Jurisprudence, on the other hand, was only in a subordinate degree
affected by foreign elements.  The activity of the jurists of this
period was still mainly devoted to the answering of parties consulting
them and to the instruction of younger listeners; but this oral
instruction contributed to form a traditional groundwork of rules,
and literary activity was not wholly wanting.  A work of greater
importance for jurisprudence than the short sketch of Cato was the
treatise published by Sextus Aelius Paetus, surnamed the "subtle"
(-catus-), who was the first practical jurist of his time, and, in
consequence of his exertions for the public benefit in this respect,
rose to the consulship (556) and to the censorship (560).  His
treatise --the "-Tripartita-" as it was called--was a work on the
Twelve Tables, which appended to each sentence of the text an
explanation--chiefly, doubtless, of the antiquated and unintelligible
expressions--and the corresponding formula of action.  While this
process of glossing undeniably indicated the influence of Greek
grammatical studies, the portion treating of the formulae of action,
on the contrary, was based on the older collection of Appius(69)
and on the whole system of procedure developed by national usage
and precedent.

Cato's Encyclopaedia

The state of science generally at this epoch is very distinctly
exhibited in the collection of those manuals composed by Cato for his
son which, as a sort of encyclopaedia, were designed to set forth in
short maxims what a "fit man" (-vir bonus-) ought to be as orator,
physician, husbandman, warrior, and jurist.  A distinction was not yet
drawn between the propaedeutic and the professional study of science;
but so much of science generally as seemed necessary or useful was
required of every true Roman.  The work did not include Latin grammar,
which consequently cannot as yet have attained that formal development
which is implied in a properly scientific instruction in language; and
it excluded music and the whole cycle of the mathematical and physical
sciences.  Throughout it was the directly practical element in science
which alone was to be handled, and that with as much brevity and
simplicity as possible.  The Greek literature was doubtless made use
of, but only to furnish some serviceable maxims of experience culled
from the mass of chaff and rubbish: it was one of Cato's commonplaces,
that "Greek books must be looked into, but not thoroughly studied."
Thus arose those household manuals of necessary information, which,
while rejecting Greek subtlety and obscurity, banished also Greek
acuteness and depth, but through that very peculiarity moulded the
attitude of the Romans towards the Greek sciences for all ages.

Character and Historical Position of Roman Literature

Thus poetry and literature made their entrance into Rome along with
the sovereignty of the world, or, to use the language of a poet of
the age of Cicero:

-Poenico bello secundo Musa pennato gradu
Intulit se bellicosam Romuli in gentem feram.-

In the districts using the Sabellian and Etruscan dialects also there
must have been at the same period no want of intellectual movement
Tragedies in the Etruscan language are mentioned, and vases with
Oscan inscriptions show that the makers of them were acquainted with
Greek comedy.  The question accordingly presents itself, whether,
contemporarily with Naevius and Cato, a Hellenizing literature like
the Roman may not have been in course of formation on the Arnus and
Volturnus.  But all information on the point is lost, and history
can in such circumstances only indicate the blank.

Hellenizing Literature

The Roman literature is the only one as to which we can still form an
opinion; and, however problematical its absolute worth may appear to
the aesthetic judge, for those who wish to apprehend the history of
Rome it remains of unique value as the mirror of the inner mental
life of Italy in that sixth century--full of the din of arms and
pregnant for the future--during which its distinctively Italian phase
closed, and the land began to enter into the broader career of ancient
civilization.  In it too there prevailed that antagonism, which
everywhere during this epoch pervaded the life of the nation and
characterized the age of transition.  No one of unprejudiced mind,
and who is not misled by the venerable rust of two thousand years,
can be deceived as to the defectiveness of the Hellenistico-Roman
literature.  Roman literature by the side of that of Greece resembles
a German orangery by the side of a grove of Sicilian orange-trees;
both may give us pleasure, but it is impossible even to conceive them
as parallel.  This holds true of the literature in the mother-tongue
of the Latins still more decidedly, if possible, than of the Roman
literature in a foreign tongue; to a very great extent the former was
not the work of Romans at all, but of foreigners, of half-Greeks,
Celts, and ere long even Africans, whose knowledge of Latin was only
acquired by study.  Among those who in this age came before the public
as poets, none, as we have already said, can be shown to have been
persons of rank; and not only so, but none can be shown to have
been natives of Latium proper.  The very name given to the poet was
foreign; even Ennius emphatically calls himself a -poeta-(70).  But
not only was this poetry foreign; it was also liable to all those
defects which are found to occur where schoolmasters become authors
and the great multitude forms the public.  We have shown how comedy
was artistically debased by a regard to the multitude, and in fact
sank into vulgar coarseness; we have further shown that two of the
most influential Roman authors were schoolmasters in the first
instance and only became poets in the sequel, and that, while the
Greek philology which only sprang up after the decline of the national
literature experimented merely on the dead body, in Latium grammar and
literature had their foundations laid simultaneously and went hand
in hand, almost as in the case of modern missions to the heathen.  In
fact, if we view with an unprejudiced eye this Hellenistic literature
of the sixth century--that poetry followed out professionally and
destitute of all productiveness of its own, that uniform imitation
of the very shallowest forms of foreign art, that repertoire of
translations, that changeling of epos--we are tempted to reckon
it simply one of the diseased symptoms of the epoch before us.

But such a judgment, if not unjust, would yet be just only in a very
partial sense.  We must first of all consider that this artificial
literature sprang up in a nation which not only did not possess any
national poetic art, but could never attain any such art.  In
antiquity, which knew nothing of the modern poetry of individual life,
creative poetical activity fell mainly within the mysterious period
when a nation was experiencing the fears and pleasures of growth:
without prejudice to the greatness of the Greek epic and tragic poets
we may assert that their poetry mainly consisted in reproducing the
primitive stories of human gods and divine men.  This basis of ancient
poetry was totally wanting in Latium: where the world of gods remained
shapeless and legend remained barren, the golden apples of poetry
could not voluntarily ripen.  To this falls to be added a second
and more important consideration.

The inward mental development and the outward political evolution of
Italy had equally reached a point at which it was no longer possible
to retain the Roman nationality based on the exclusion of all higher
and individual mental culture, and to repel the encroachments of
Hellenism.  The propagation of Hellenism in Italy had certainly a
revolutionary and a denationalizing tendency, but it was indispensable
for the necessary intellectual equalization of the nations; and this
primarily forms the historical and even the poetical justification of
the Romano-Hellenistic literature.  Not a single new and genuine work
of art issued from its workshop, but it extended the intellectual
horizon of Hellas over Italy.  Viewed even in its mere outward aspect,
Greek poetry presumes in the hearer a certain amount of positive
acquired knowledge.  That self-contained completeness, which is one
of the most essential peculiarities of the dramas of Shakespeare for
instance, was foreign to ancient poetry; a person unacquainted with
the cycle of Greek legend would fail to discover the background and
often even the ordinary meaning of every rhapsody and every tragedy.
If the Roman public of this period was in some degree familiar, as the
comedies of Plautus show, with the Homeric poems and the legends of
Herakles, and was acquainted with at least the more generally current
of the other myths,(71) this knowledge must have found its way to the
public primarily through the stage alongside of the school, and thus
have formed at least a first step towards the understanding of the
Hellenic poetry.  But still deeper was the effect--on which the most
ingenious literary critics of antiquity justly laid emphasis--produced
by the naturalization of the Greek poetic language and the Greek
metres in Latium.  If "conquered Greece vanquished her rude conqueror
by art," the victory was primarily accomplished by elaborating from
the unpliant Latin idiom a cultivated and elevated poetical language,
so that instead of the monotonous and hackneyed Saturnian the senarius
flowed and the hexameter rushed, and the mighty tetrameters, the
jubilant anapaests, and the artfully intermingled lyrical rhythms
fell on the Latin ear in the mother-tongue.  Poetical language is the
key to the ideal world of poetry, poetic measure the key to poetical
feeling; for the man, to whom the eloquent epithet is dumb and the
living image is dead, and in whom the times of dactyls and iambuses
awaken no inward echo, Homer and Sophocles have composed in vain.
Let it not be said that poetical and rhythmical feeling comes
spontaneously.  The ideal feelings are no doubt implanted by nature
in the human breast, but they need favourable sunshine in order to
germinate; and especially in the Latin nation, which was but little
susceptible of poetic impulses, they needed external nurture.  Nor let
it be said, that, by virtue of the widely diffused acquaintance with
the Greek language, its literature would have sufficed for the
susceptible Roman public.  The mysterious charm which language
exercises over man, and which poetical language and rhythm only
enhance, attaches not to any tongue learned accidentally, but only
to the mother-tongue.  From this point of view, we shall form a juster
judgment of the Hellenistic literature, and particularly of the
poetry, of the Romans of this period.  If it tended to transplant
the radicalism of Euripides to Rome, to resolve the gods either into
deceased men or into mental conceptions, to place a denationalized
Latium by the side of a denationalized Hellas, and to reduce all
purely and distinctly developed national peculiarities to the
problematic notion of general civilization, every one is at liberty to
find this tendency pleasing or disagreeable, but none can doubt its
historical necessity.  From this point of view the very defectiveness
of the Roman poetry, which cannot be denied, may be explained and
so may in some degree be justified.  It is no doubt pervaded by a
disproportion between the trivial and often bungled contents and the
comparatively finished form; but the real significance of this poetry
lay precisely in its formal features, especially those of language and
metre.  It was not seemly that poetry in Rome was principally in the
hands of schoolmasters and foreigners and was chiefly translation or
imitation; but, if the primary object of poetry was simply to form
a bridge from Latium to Hellas, Livius and Ennius had certainly a
vocation to the poetical pontificate in Rome, and a translated
literature was the simplest means to the end.  It was still less
seemly that Roman poetry preferred to lay its hands on the most worn-
out and trivial originals; but in this view it was appropriate.  No
one will desire to place the poetry of Euripides on a level with that
of Homer; but, historically viewed, Euripides and Menander were quite
as much the oracles of cosmopolitan Hellenism as the Iliad and
Odyssey were the oracles of national Hellenism, and in so far
the representatives of the new school had good reason for
introducing their audience especially to this cycle of literature.
The instinctive consciousness also of their limited poetical powers
may partly have induced the Roman composers to keep mainly by
Euripides and Menander and to leave Sophocles and even Aristophanes
untouched; for, while poetry is essentially national and difficult to
transplant, intellect and wit, on which the poetry of Euripides as
well as of Menander is based, are in their very nature cosmopolitan.
Moreover the fact always deserves to be honourably acknowledged, that
the Roman poets of the sixth century did not attach themselves to the
Hellenic literature of the day or what is called Alexandrinism, but
sought their models solely in the older classical literature, although
not exactly in its richest or purest fields.  On the whole, however
innumerable may be the false accommodations and sins against the rules
of art which we can point out in them, these were just the offences
which were by stringent necessity attendant on the far from scrupulous
efforts of the missionaries of Hellenism; and they are, in a
historical and even aesthetic point of view, outweighed in some
measure by the zeal of faith equally inseparable from propagandism.
We may form a different opinion from Ennius as to the value of his new
gospel; but, if in the case of faith it does not matter so much what,
as how, men believe, we cannot refuse recognition and admiration to
the Roman poets of the sixth century.  A fresh and strong sense of the
power of the Hellenic world-literature, a sacred longing to transplant
the marvellous tree to the foreign land, pervaded the whole poetry of
the sixth century, and coincided in a peculiar manner with the
thoroughly elevated spirit of that great age.  The later refined
Hellenism looked down on the poetical performances of this period
with some degree of contempt; it should rather perhaps have looked
up to the poets, who with all their imperfection yet stood in a more
intimate relation to Greek poetry, and approached nearer to genuine
poetical art, than their more cultivated successors.  In the bold
emulation, in the sounding rhythms, even in the mighty professional
pride of the poets of this age there is, more than in any other epoch
of Roman literature, an imposing grandeur; and even those who are
under no illusion as to the weak points of this poetry may apply to
it the proud language, already quoted, in which Ennius celebrates
its praise:

-Enni poeta, salve, qui mortalibus
Versus propinas flammeos medullitus.-

National Opposition

As the Hellenico-Roman literature of this period was essentially
marked by a dominant tendency, so was also its antithesis, the
contemporary national authorship.  While the former aimed at neither
more nor less than the annihilation of Latin nationality by the
creation of a poetry Latin in language but Hellenic in form and
spirit, the best and purest part of the Latin nation was driven to
reject and place under the ban of outlawry the literature of Hellenism
along with Hellenism itself.  The Romans in the time of Cato stood
opposed to Greek literature, very much as in the time of the Caesars
they stood opposed to Christianity; freedmen and foreigners formed the
main body of the poetical, as they afterwards formed the main body of
the Christian, community; the nobility of the nation and above all
the government saw in poetry as in Christianity an absolutely hostile
power; Plautus and Ennius were ranked with the rabble by the Roman
aristocracy for reasons nearly the same as those for which the
apostles and bishops were put to death by the Roman government.
In this field too it was Cato, of course, who took the lead as the
vigorous champion of his native country against the foreigners.  The
Greek literati and physicians were in his view the most dangerous scum
of the radically corrupt Greek people,(72) and the Roman "ballad-
singers" are treated by him with ineffable contempt.(73)  He and
those who shared his sentiments have been often and harshly censured
on this account, and certainly the expressions of his displeasure
are not unfrequently characterized by the bluntness and narrowness
peculiar to him; on a closer consideration, however, we must not only
confess him to have been in individual instances substantially right,
but we must also acknowledge that the national opposition in this
field, more than anywhere else, went beyond the manifestly inadequate
line of mere negative defence.  When his younger contemporary, Aulus
Postumius Albinus, who was an object of ridicule to the Hellenes
themselves by his offensive Hellenizing, and who, for example, even
manufactured Greek verses--when this Albinus in the preface to his
historical treatise pleaded in excuse for his defective Greek that he
was by birth a Roman--was not the question quite in place, whether he
had been doomed by authority of law to meddle with matters which he
did not understand?  Were the trades of the professional translator of
comedies and of the poet celebrating heroes for bread and protection
more honourable, perhaps, two thousand years ago than they are now?
Had Cato not reason to make it a reproach against Nobilior, that he
took Ennius--who, we may add, glorified in his verses the Roman
potentates without respect of persons, and overloaded Cato himself
with praise--along with him to Ambracia as the celebrator of his
future achievements?  Had he not reason to revile the Greeks, with
whom he had become acquainted in Rome and Athens, as an incorrigibly
wretched pack?  This opposition to the culture of the age and the
Hellenism of the day was well warranted; but Cato was by no means
chargeable with an opposition to culture and to Hellenism in general.
On the contrary it is the highest merit of the national party, that
they comprehended very clearly the necessity of creating a Latin
literature and of bringing the stimulating influences of Hellenism
to bear on it; only their intention was, that Latin literature should
not be a mere copy taken from the Greek and intruded on the national
feelings of Rome, but should, while fertilized by Greek influences,
be developed in accordance with Italian nationality.  With a genial
instinct, which attests not so much the sagacity of individuals as
the elevation of the epoch, they perceived that in the case of Rome,
owing to the total want of earlier poetical productiveness, history
furnished the only subject-matter for the development of an
intellectual life of their own.  Rome was, what Greece was not, a
state; and the mighty consciousness of this truth lay at the root both
of the bold attempt which Naevius made to attain by means of history a
Roman epos and a Roman drama, and of the creation of Latin prose by
Cato.  It is true that the endeavour to replace the gods and heroes of
legend by the kings and consuls of Rome resembles the attempt of the
giants to storm heaven by means of mountains piled one above another:
without a world of gods there is no ancient epos and no ancient drama,
and poetry knows no substitutes.  With greater moderation and good
sense Cato left poetry proper, as a thing irremediably lost, to the
party opposed to him; although his attempt to create a didactic poetry
in national measure after the model of the earlier Roman productions
--the Appian poem on Morals and the poem on Agriculture--remains
significant and deserving of respect, in point if not of success, at
least of intention.  Prose afforded him a more favourable field, and
accordingly he applied the whole varied power and energy peculiar to
him to the creation of a prose literature in his native tongue.  This
effort was all the more Roman and all the more deserving of respect,
that the public which he primarily addressed was the family circle,
and that in such an effort he stood almost alone in his time.  Thus
arose his "Origines," his remarkable state-speeches, his treatises
on special branches of science.  They are certainly pervaded by a
national spirit, and turn on national subjects; but they are far
from anti-Hellenic: in fact they originated essentially under Greek
influence, although in a different sense from that in which the
writings of the opposite party so originated.  The idea and even the
title of his chief work were borrowed from the Greek "foundation-
histories" (--ktoeis--).  The same is true of his oratorical
authorship; he ridiculed Isocrates, but he tried to learn from
Thucydides and Demosthenes.  His encyclopaedia is essentially the
result of his study of Greek literature.  Of all the undertakings
of that active and patriotic man none was more fruitful of results
and none more useful to his country than this literary activity,
little esteemed in comparison as it probably was by himself.
He found numerous and worthy successors in oratorical and scientific
authorship; and though his original historical treatise, which of its
kind may be compared with the Greek logography, was not followed by
any Herodotus or Thucydides, yet by and through him the principle
was established that literary occupation in connection with the
useful sciences as well as with history was not merely becoming
but honourable in a Roman.

Architecture

Let us glance, in conclusion, at the state of the arts of
architecture, sculpture, and painting.  So far as concerns the former,
the traces of incipient luxury were less observable in public than in
private buildings.  It was not till towards the close of this period,
and especially from the time of the censorship of Cato (570), that
the Romans began in the case of the former to have respect to the
convenience as well as to the bare wants of the public; to line with
stone the basins (-lacus-) supplied from the aqueducts, (570); to
erect colonnades (575, 580); and above all to transfer to Rome the
Attic halls for courts and business--the -basilicae- as they were
called.  The first of these buildings, somewhat corresponding to our
modern bazaars--the Porcian or silversmiths' hall--was erected by Cato
in 570 alongside of the senate-house; others were soon associated with
it, till gradually along the sides of the Forum the private shops were
replaced by these splendid columnar halls.  Everyday life, however,
was more deeply influenced by the revolution in domestic architecture
which must, at latest, be placed in this period.  The hall of the
house (-atrium-), court (-cavum aedium-), garden and garden colonnade
(-peristylium-), the record-chamber (-tablinum-), chapel, kitchen,
and bedrooms were by degrees severally provided for; and, as to the
internal fittings, the column began to be applied both in the court
and in the hall for the support of the open roof and also for the
garden colonnades: throughout these arrangements it is probable
that Greek models were copied or at any rate made use of.  Yet the
materials used in building remained simple; "our ancestors," says
Varro, "dwelt in houses of brick, and laid merely a moderate
foundation of stone to keep away damp."

Plastic Art and Painting

Of Roman plastic art we scarcely encounter any other trace than,
perhaps, the embossing in wax of the images of ancestors.  Painters
and painting are mentioned somewhat more frequently.  Manius Valerius
caused the victory which he obtained over the Carthaginians and Hiero
in 491 off Messana(74) to be depicted on the side wall of the senate-
house--the first historical frescoes in Rome, which were followed by
many of similar character, and which were in the domain of the arts of
design what the national epos and the national drama became not much
later in the domain of poetry.  We find named as painters, one
Theodotus who, as Naevius scoffingly said,

-Sedens in cella circumtectus tegetibus
Lares ludentis peni pinxit bubulo;-

Marcus Pacuvius of Brundisium, who painted in the temple of Hercules
in the Forum Boarium--the same who, when more advanced in life, made
himself a name as an editor of Greek tragedies; and Marcus Plautius
Lyco, a native of Asia Minor, whose beautiful paintings in the temple
of Juno at Ardea procured for him the freedom of that city.(75)  But
these very facts clearly indicate, not only that the exercise of art
in Rome was altogether of subordinate importance and more of a manual
occupation than an art, but also that it fell, probably still more
exclusively than poetry, into the hands of Greeks and half Greeks.

On the other hand there appeared in genteel circles the first
traces of the tastes subsequently displayed by the dilettante and
the collector.  They admired the magnificence of the Corinthian and
Athenian temples, and regarded with contempt the old-fashioned terra-
cotta figures on the roofs of those of Rome: even a man like Lucius
Paullus, who shared the feelings of Cato rather than of Scipio, viewed
and judged the Zeus of Phidias with the eye of a connoisseur.  The
custom of carrying off the treasures of art from the conquered Greek
cities was first introduced on a large scale by Marcus Marcellus
after the capture of Syracuse (542).  The practice met with severe
reprobation from men of the old school of training, and the stern
veteran Quintus Fabius Maximus, for instance, on the capture of
Tarentum (545) gave orders that the statues in the temples should not
be touched, but that the Tarentines should be allowed to retain their
indignant gods.  Yet the plundering of temples in this way became of
more and more frequent occurrence.  Titus Flamininus in particular
(560) and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior (567), two leading champions of
Roman Hellenism, as well as Lucius Paullus (587), were the means of
filling the public buildings of Rome with the masterpieces of the
Greek chisel.  Here too the Romans had a dawning consciousness of the
truth that an interest in art as well as an interest in poetry formed
an essential part of Hellenic culture or, in other words, of modern
civilization; but, while the appropriation of Greek poetry was
impossible without some sort of poetical activity, in the case of art
the mere beholding and procuring of its productions seemed to suffice,
and therefore, while a native literature was formed in an artificial
way in Rome, no attempt even was made to develop a native art.




Notes for Chapter XIV


1. A distinct set of Greek expressions, such as -stratioticus-,
-machaera-, -nauclerus-, -trapezita-, -danista-, -drapeta-, -
oenopolium-, -bolus-, -malacus-, -morus-, -graphicus-, -logus-,
- apologus-, -techna-, -schema-, forms quite a special feature in
the language of Plautus.  Translations are seldom attached, and that
only in the case of words not embraced in the circle of ideas to which
those which we have cited belong; for instance, in the -Truculentus-
--in a verse, however, that is perhaps a later addition (i. 1, 60)
--we find the explanation: --phronesis-- -est sapientia-.  Fragments
of Greek also are common, as in the -Casina-, (iii. 6, 9):

--Pragmata moi parecheis-- -- -Dabo- --mega kakon--, -ut opinor-.

Greek puns likewise occur, as in the -Bacchides- (240):

-opus est chryso Chrysalo-.

Ennius in the same way takes for granted that the etymological meaning
of Alexandros and Andromache is known to the spectators (Varro, de L.
L. vii. 82).  Most characteristic of all are the half-Greek
formations, such as -ferritribax-, -plagipatida-, -pugilice-,
or in the -Miles Gloriosus- (213):

-Fuge!  euscheme hercle astitit sic dulice et comoedice!-

2. III. VIII. Greece Free

3. One of these epigrams composed in the name of Flamininus runs thus:

--Zenos io kraipnaisi gegathotes ipposunaisi
Kouroi, io Spartas Tundaridai basileis,
Aineadas Titos ummin upertatos opase doron
Ellenon teuxas paisin eleutherian.--

4. Such, e. g, was Chilo, the slave of Cato the Elder, who earned
money en bis master's behalf as a teacher of children (Plutarch,
Cato Mai. 20).

5. II. IX. Ballad-Singers

6. The later rule, by which the freedman necessarily bore the
-praenomen- of his patron, was not yet applied in republican Rome.

7. II. VII. Capture of Tarentum

8. III. VI. Battle of Sena

9. One of the tragedies of Livius presented the line--

-Quem ego nefrendem alui Iacteam immulgens opem.-

The verses of Homer (Odyssey, xii. 16):

--oud ara Kirken
ex Aideo elthontes elethomen, alla mal oka
elth entunamene ama d amphipoloi pheron aute
siton kai krea polla kai aithopa oinon eruthron.--

are thus interpreted:

-Topper citi ad aedis--venimus Circae
Simul duona coram(?)--portant ad navis,
Milia dlia in isdem--inserinuntur.-

The most remarkable feature is not so much the barbarism as the
thoughtlessness of the translator, who, instead of sending Circe to
Ulysses, sends Ulysses to Circe.  Another still more ridiculous
mistake is the translation of --aidoioisin edoka-- (Odyss. xv. 373)
by -lusi- (Festus, Ep. v. affatim, p. ii, Muller).  Such traits are
not in a historical point of view matters of difference; we recognize
in them the stage of intellectual culture which irked these earliest
Roman verse-making schoolmasters, and we at the same time perceive
that, although Andronicus was born in Tarentum, Greek cannot have
been properly his mother-tongue.

10. Such a building was, no doubt, constructed for the Apollinarian
games in the Flaminian circus in 575 (Liv. xl. 51; Becker, Top. p.
605); but it was probably soon afterwards pulled down again (Tertull.
de Spect. 10).

11. In 599 there were still no seats in the theatre (Ritschl, Parerg.
i. p. xviii. xx. 214; comp. Ribbeck, Trag. p. 285); but, as not only
the authors  of the Plautine prologues, but Plautus  himself on
various occasions, make allusions to a sitting  audience  (Mil. Glor.
82, 83; Aulul. iv. 9, 6; Triicul. ap. fin.; Epid. ap. fin.), most
of the spectators must have brought stools with them or have seated
themselves on the ground.

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

13. Women and children appear to have been at all times admitted to
the Roman theatre (Val. Max. vi. 3, 12; Plutarch., Quaest. Rom. 14;
Cicero, de Har. Resp. 12, 24; Vitruv. v. 3, i; Suetonius, Aug.
44,&c.); but slaves were -de jure- excluded (Cicero, de Har. Resp. 12,
26; Ritschl. Parerg. i. p. xix. 223), and the same must doubtless have
been the case with foreigners, excepting of course the guests of the
community, who took their places among or by the side of the senators
(Varro, v. 155; Justin, xliii. 5. 10; Sueton. Aug. 44).

14. III. XII. Moneyed Aristocracy

15. II. IX. Censure of Art

16. It is not necessary to infer from the prologues of Plautus (Cas.
17; Amph. 65) that there was a distribution of prizes (Ritschl,
Parerg. i. 229); even the passage Trin. 706, may very well belong to
the Greek original, not to the translator; and the total silence of
the -didascaliae- and prologues, as well as of all tradition, on
the point of prize tribunals and prizes is decisive.

17. The scanty use made of what is called the middle Attic comedy does
not require notice in a historical point of view, since it was nothing
but the Menandrian comedy in a less developed form.  There is no trace
of any employment of the older comedy.  The Roman tragi-comedy--after
the type of the -Amphitruo- of Plautus--was no doubt styled by the
Roman literary historians -fabula Rhinthonica-; but the newer Attic
comedians also composed such parodies, and it is difficult to see why
the Ionians should have resorted for their translations to Rhinthon
and the older writers rather than to those who were nearer to their
own times.

18. III. VI In Italy

19. Bacch. 24; Trin. 609; True. iii. 2, 23.  Naevius also, who in
fact was generally less scrupulous, ridicules the  Praenestines and
Lanuvini (Com.  21, Ribb.).  There are indications more than once of a
certain variance between the Praenestines and Romans (Liv. xxiii. 20,
xlii. i); and the executions in the time of Pyrrhus (ii. 18) as well
as the catastrophe in that of Sulla, were certainly connected with
this variance. --Innocent jokes, such as Capt. 160, 881, of course
passed uncensured. --The compliment paid to Massilia in Cas. v. 4., i,
deserves notice.

20.  Thus the prologue of the -Cistellaria- concludes with the
following words, which may have a place here as the only contemporary
mention of the Hannibalic war in the literature that has come down
to us:--

-Haec res sic gesta est.  Bene valete, et vincite
Virtute vera, quod fecistis antidhac;
Servate vostros socios, veteres et novos;
Augete auxilia vostris iustis legibus;
Perdite perduelles: parite laudem et lauream
Ut vobis victi Poeni poenas sufferant.-

The fourth line (-augete auxilia vostris iustis Iegibus-) has
reference to the supplementary payments imposed on the negligent
Latin colonies in 550 (Liv.  xxix. 15; see ii. 350).

21. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements

22. For this reason we can hardly be too cautious in assuming
allusions on the part of Plautus to the events of the times.  Recent
investigation has set aside many instances of mistaken acuteness of
this sort; but might not even the reference to the Bacchanalia,
which is found in Cas. v. 4, 11 (Ritschl, Parerg. 1. 192), have been
expected to incur censure?  We might even reverse the case and infer
from the notices of the festival of Bacchus in the -Casina-, and some
other pieces (Amph. 703; Aul. iii. i, 3; Bacch. 53, 371; Mil. Glor.
1016; and especially Men. 836), that these were written at a time
when it was not yet dangerous to speak of the Bacchanalia.

23. The remarkable passage in the -Tarentilla- can have no
other meaning:--

-Quae ego in theatro hic meis probavi plausibus,
Ea non audere quemquam regem rumpere:
Quanto libertatem hanc hic superat servitus!-

24. The ideas of the modern Hellas on the point of slavery are
illustrated by the passage in Euripides (Ion, 854; comp. Helena,
728):--

--En gar ti tois douloisin alochunen pherei,
Tounoma ta d' alla panta ton eleutheron
Oudeis kakion doulos, ostis esthlos e.--

25. For instance, in the otherwise very graceful examination which in
the -Stichus- of Plautus the father and his daughters institute into
the qualities of a good wife, the irrelevant question--whether it is
better to marry a virgin or a widow--is inserted, merely in order that
it may be answered by a no less irrelevant and, in the mouth of the
interlocutrix, altogether absurd commonplace against women.  But that
is a trifle compared with the following specimen.  In Menander's
-Plocium- a husband bewails his troubles to his friend:--

--Echo d' epikleron Lamian ouk eireka soi
Tout'; eit' ap' ouchi; kurian tes oikias
Kai ton agron kai panton ant' ekeines
Echoumen, Apollon, os chalepon chalepotaton
Apasi d' argalea 'stin, ouk emoi mono,
Tio polu mallon thugatri.--pragm' amachon legeis'
Eu oida--

In the Latin edition of Caecilius, this conversation, so elegant in
its simplicity, is converted into the following uncouth dialogue:--

-Sed tua morosane uxor quaeso est?--Ua!  rogas?--
Qui tandem?--Taedet rientionis, quae mihi
Ubi domum adveni ac sedi, extemplo savium
Dat jejuna anima.--Nil peccat de savio:
Ut devomas volt, quod foris polaveris.-

26. Even when  the Romans built  stone  theatres, these  had not the
sounding-apparatus by which the Greek architects supported the efforts
of the actors (Vitruv. v. 5, 8).

27. III. XIII. Increase of Amusements

28. The personal notices of Naevius are sadly confused.  Seeing that
he fought in the first Punic war, he cannot have been born later than
495.  Dramas, probably the first, were exhibited by him in 519 (Gell.
xii. 21. 45).  That he had died as early as  550, as is usually
stated, was doubted by Varro (ap. Cic. Brut. 15, 60), and certainly
with reason; if it were true, he must have made his escape during the
Hannibalic war to the soil of the enemy.  The sarcastic verses on
Scipio (p. 150) cannot have been written before the battle of
Zama.  We may place his life between 490 and 560, so that he was a
contemporary of the two Scipios who fell in 543 (Cic. de Rep. iv. 10),
ten years younger than Andronicus, and perhaps ten years older than
Plautus.  His Campanian origin is indicated by Gellius, and his Latin
nationality, if proof of it were needed, by himself in his epitaph.
The hypothesis that he was not a Roman citizen, but possibly a burgess
of Cales or of some other Latin town in Campania, renders the fact
that the Roman police treated him so unscrupulously the more easy
of explanation.  At any rate he was not an actor, for he served in
the army.

29. Compare, e. g., with the verse of Livius the fragment from
Naevius' tragedy of -Lycurgus- :--

-Vos, qui regalis cordons custodias
Agitatis, ite actutum in frundiferos locos,
Ingenio arbusta ubi nata sunt, non obsita-;

Or the famous words, which in the -Hector Profisciscens- Hector
addresses to Priam:

-Laetus sum laudari me abs te, pater, a laudato viro;-

and the charming verse from the -Tarentilla-; --

-Alii adnutat, alii adnictat; alium amat, alium tenet.-

30. III. XIV. Political Neutrality

31. III. XIV. Political Neutrality

32. This hypothesis appears necessary, because otherwise the ancients
could not have hesitated in the way they did as to the genuineness or
spuriousness of the pieces of Plautus: in the case of no author,
properly so called, of Roman antiquity, do we find anything like a
similar uncertainty as to his literary property.  In this respect,
as in so many other external points, there exists the most remarkable
analogy between Plautus and Shakespeare.

33. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome, III. VII. Measures Adopted
to Check the Immigration of the Trans-Alpine Gauls

34. III. XIV. Roman Barbarism

35 -Togatus- denotes, in juristic and generally in technical language,
the Italian in contradistinction not merely to the foreigner, but also
to the Roman burgess.  Thus especially -formula togatorum- (Corp.
Inscr. Lat., I. n. 200, v. 21, 50) is the list of those Italians bound
to render military serviee, who do not serve in the legions.  The
designation also of Cisalpine Gaul as -Gallia togata-, which first
occurs in Hirtius and not long after disappears again from the
ordinary -usus loquendi-, describes this region presumably according
to its legal position, in so far as in the epoch from 665 to 705 the
great majority of its communities possessed Latin rights.  Virgil
appears likewise in the -gens togata-, which he mentions along with
the Romans (Aen. i. 282), to have thought of the Latin nation.

According to this view we shall have to recognize in the -fabula
togata-the comedy which laid its plot in Latium, as the -fabula
palliata- had its plot in Greece; the transference of the scene of
action to a foreign land is common to both, and the comic writer is
wholly forbidden to bring on the stage the city or the burgesses of
Rome.  That in reality the -togata- could only have its plot laid in
the towns of Latin rights, is shown by the fact that all the towns
in which, to our knowledge, pieces of Titinius and Afranius had their
scene--Setia, Ferentinum, Velitrae, Brundisium,--demonstrably had
Latin or, at any rate, allied rights down to the Social war.  By the
extension of the franchise to all Italy the writers of comedy lost
this Latin localisation for their pieces, for Cisalpine Gaul, which
-de jure- took the place of the Latin communities, lay too far off
for the dramatists of the capital, and so the -fabula togata- seems in
fact to have disappeared.  But the -de jure- suppressed communities of
Italy, such as Capua and Atella, stepped into this gap (ii. 366, iii.
148), and so far the -fabula Atellana- was in some measure the
continuation of the -togata-.

36. Respecting Titinius there is an utter want of literary
information; except that, to judge from a fragment of Varro, he seems
to have been older than Terence (558-595, Ritschl, Parerg. i. 194) for
more indeed, cannot he inferred from that passage, and though, of the
two groups there compared the second (Trabea, Atilius, Caecilius) is
on the whole older than the first (Titinius, Terentius, Atta), it does
not exactly follow that the oldest of the junior group is to be deemed
younger than the youngest of the elder.

37. II. VII. First Steps toward the Latinizing of Italy

38. Of the fifteen comedies of Titinius, with which we are acquainted,
six are named after male characters (-baratus-?  -coecus-, -fullones-,
-Hortensius-, -Quintus-, -varus-), and  nine after female (-Gemina-,
-iurisperita-, -prilia-?  -privigna-, -psaltria- or -Ferentinatis-,
-Setina-, -tibicina-, -Veliterna-, -Ulubrana?), two of which, the
-iurisperita- and the -tibicina-, are evidently parodies of men's
occupations.  The feminine world preponderates also in the fragments.

39. III. XIV. Livius Andronicus

40. III. XIV. Audience

41. We subjoin, for comparison, the opening lines of the -Medea- in
the original of Euripides and in the version of Ennius:--

--Eith' ophel' 'Apgous me diaptasthai skaphos
Kolchon es aian kuaneas sumplegadas
Med' en napaisi Pelion pesein pote
Tmetheisa peuke, med' epetmosai cheras
Andron arioton, oi to pagchruson deros
Pelia metelthon ou gar an despoin
Medeia purgous ges epleus Iolkias
'Eroti thumon ekplageis' 'Iasonos.--

-Utinam ne in nemore Pelio securibus
Caesa accidisset abiegna ad terram trabes,
Neve inde navis inchoandae exordium
Coepisset, quae nunc nominatur nomine
Argo, quia Argivi in ea dilecti viri
Vecti petebant pellem inauratam arietis
Colchis, imperio regis Peliae, per dolum.
Nam  nunquam era errans mea domo efferret pedem
Medea, animo aegra, amort saevo saucia.-

The variations of the translation from the original are instructive
--not only its tautologies and periphrases, but also the omission
or explanation of the less familiar mythological names, e. g. the
Symplegades, the Iolcian land, the Argo.  But the instances in which
Ennius has really misunderstood the original are rare.

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

43. Beyond doubt the ancients were right in recognizing a sketch of
the poet's own character in the passage in the seventh book of the
Annals, where the consul calls to his side the confidant,

-quocum bene saepe libenter
Mensam sermonesque suos rerumque suarum
Congeriem partit, magnam cum lassus diei
Partem fuisset de summis rebus regundis
Consilio indu foro lato sanctoque senatu:
Cui res audacter magnas parvasque iocumque
Eloqueretur, cuncta simul malaque et bona dictu
Evomeret, si qui vellet, tutoque locaret.
Quocum multa volup ac gaudia clamque palamque,
Ingenium cui nulla malum sententia suadet
Ut faceret facinus lenis aut malus, doctus fidelis
Suavis homo facundus suo contentus beatus
Scitus secunda loquens in tempore commodus verbum
Paucum, multa tenens antiqua sepulta, vetustas
Quem fecit mores veteresque novosque tenentem,
Multorum veterum leges divumque hominumque,
Prudenter qui dicta loquive tacereve possit.-

In the line before the last we should probably read -multarum leges
divumque hominumque.-

44. Euripides (Iph. in Aul. 956) defines the soothsayer as a man,

--Os olig' alethe, polla de pseuon legei
Tuchon, otan de me, tuche oioichetai--

This is turned by the Latin translator into the following diatribe
against the casters of horoscopes:--

-Astrologorum signa in caelo quaesit, observat,
Iovis
Cum capra aut nepa aut exoritur lumen aliquod beluae.
Quod est ante pedes, nemo spectat: caeli scrutantur plagas.-

45. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit

46. In the -Telephus- we find him saying--

-Palam mutire plebeio piaculum est.-

47. III. XIII. Luxury

48. The following verses, excellent in matter and form, belong to the
adaptation of the -Phoenix- of Euripides:--

-Sed virum virtute vera vivere animatum addecet,
Fortiterque innoxium vocare adversum adversarios.
Ea libertas est, qui pectus purum et firmum gestitat:
Aliae res obnoxiosae nocte in obscura latent.-

In the -Scipio-, which was probably incorporated in the collection of
miscellaneous poems, the graphic lines occurred:--

-- -- -mundus caeli vastus constitit silentio,
Et Neptunus saevus undis asperis pausam dedit.
Sol equis iter repressit ungulis volantibus;
Constitere amnes perennes, arbores vento vacant.-

This last passage affords us a glimpse of the way in which the poet
worked up his original poems.  It is simply an expansion of the words
which occur in the tragedy -Hectoris Lustra- (the original of which
was probably by Sophocles) as spoken by a spectator of the combat
between Hephaestus and the Scamander:--

-Constitit credo Scamander, arbores vento vacant,-

and the incident is derived from the Iliad (xxi. 381).

49. Thus in the Phoenix we find the line:--

-- -- -stultust, qui cupita cupiens cupienter cupit,-

and this is not the most absurd specimen of such recurring assonances.
He also indulged in acrostic verses (Cic. de Div. ii. 54, iii).

50. III. III. The Celts Conquered by Rome

51. III. IX. Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians

52. Besides Cato, we find the names of two "consulars and poets"
belonging to this period (Sueton. Vita Terent. 4)--Quintus Labeo,
consul in 571, and Marcus Popillius, consul in 581.  But it remains
uncertain whether they published their poems.  Even in the case of
Cato this may be doubted.

53. II. IX. Roman Historical Composition

54. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit

55. III. XII. Irreligious Spirit

56. The following fragments will give some idea of its tone.  Of Dido
he says:

-Blande et docte percontat--Aeneas quo pacto
Troiam urbem liquerit.-

Again of Amulius:

-Manusque susum ad caelum--sustulit suas rex
Amulius; gratulatur--divis-.

Part of a speech where the indirect construction is remarkable:

-Sin illos deserant for--tissumos virorum
Magnum stuprum populo--fieri per gentis-.

With reference to the landing at Malta in 498:

-Transit Melitam Romanus--insuiam integram
Urit populatur vastat--rem hostium concinnat.-

Lastly, as to the peace which terminated the war concerning Sicily:

-Id quoque paciscunt moenia--sint Lutatium quae
Reconcilient; captivos--plurimos idem
Sicilienses paciscit--obsides ut reddant.-

57. That this oldest prose work on the history of Rome was composed in
Greek, is established beyond a doubt by Dionys. i. 6, and Cicero, de
Div. i. 21, 43.  The Latin Annals quoted under the same name by
Quintilian and later grammarians remain involved in mystery, and the
difficulty is increased by the circumstance, that there is also quoted
under the same name a very detailed exposition of the pontifical law
in the Latin language.  But the latter treatise will not be attributed
by any one, who has traced the development of Roman literature in its
connection, to an author of the age of the Hannibalic war; and even
Latin annals from that age appear problematical, although it must
remain a moot question whether there has been a confusion of the
earlier with a later annalist, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus
(consul in 612), or whether there existed an old Latin edition of the
Greek Annals of Fabius as well as of those of Acilius and Albinus, or
whether there were two annalists of the name of Fabius Pictor.

The historical work likewise written in Greek, ascribed to Lucius
Cincius Alimentus a contemporary of Fabius, seems spurious and a
compilation of the Augustan age.

58. Cato's whole literary activity belonged to the period of his old
age (Cicero, Cat. ii, 38; Nepos, Cato, 3); the composition even of the
earlier books of the "Origines" falls not before, and yet probably not
long subsequent to, 586 (Plin. H. N. iii. 14, 114).

59. It is evidently by way of contrast with Fabius that Polybius
(xl. 6, 4) calls attention to the fact, that Albinus, madly fond of
everything Greek, had given himself the trouble of writing history
systematically [--pragmatiken iotorian--].

60. II. IX. Roman Early History of Rome

61. III. XIV. Knowledge of Languages

62.  For instance the history of the siege of Gabii is compiled from
the anecdotes in Herodotus as to Zopyrus and the tyrant Thrasybulus,
and one version of the story of the exposure of Romulus is framed
on the model of the history of the youth of Cyrus as Herodotus
relates it.

63. III. VII. Measures Adopted to Check the Immigration of the
Transalpine Gauls

64. II. IX. Roman Early History of Rome

65. II. IX. Registers of Magistrates

66. Plautus (Mostell. 126) says of parents, that they teach their
children -litteras-, -iura-, -leges-; and Plutarch (Cato Mai. 20)
testifies to the same effect.

67. II. IX. Philology

68. Thus in his Epicharmian poems Jupiter is so called, -quod iuvat-;
and Ceres, -quod gerit fruges.-

69. -Rem tene, verba sequentur.-

70. II. IX. Language

71. See the lines already quoted at III. II. The War on the Coasts of
Sicily and Sardinia.

The formation of the name -poeta- from the vulgar Greek --poetes--
instead of --poietes-- --as --epoesen-- was in use among the Attic
potters--is characteristic.  We may add that -poeta- technically
denotes only the author of epic or recitative poems, not the composer
for the stage, who at this time was styled -scriba- (III. XIV. Audience;
Festus, s. v., p. 333 M.).

72.  Even subordinate figures from the legends of Troy and of Herakles
niake their appearance, e. g. Talthybius (Stich. 305), Autolycus
(Bacch. 275), Parthaon (Men. 745).  Moreover the most general outlines
must have been known in the case of the Theban and the Argonautic
legends, and of the stories of Bellerophon (Bacch. 810), Pentheus
(Merc. 467), Procne and Philomela (Rud. 604).  Sappho and Phaon (Mil.
1247).

73. "As to these Greeks," he says to his son Marcus, "I shall tell at
the proper place, what I came to learn regarding them at Athens; and
shall show that it is useful to look into their writings, but not to
study them thoroughly.  They are an utterly corrupt and ungovernable
race--believe me, this is true as an oracle; if that people bring
hither its culture, it will ruin everything, and most especially if
it send hither its physicians.  They have conspired to despatch all
barbarians by their physicking, but they get themselves paid for it,
that people may trust them and that they may the more easily bring us
to ruin.  They call us also barbarians, and indeed revile us by the
still more vulgar name of Opicans.  I interdict thee, therefore, from
all dealings with the practitioners of the healing art."

Cato in his zeal was not aware that the name of Opicans, which had in
Latin an obnoxious meaning, was in Greek quite unobjectionable, and
that the Greeks had in the most innocent way come to designate the
Italians by that term (I. X. Time of the Greek Immigration).

74. II. IX. Censure of Art

75. III. II. War between the Romans and Carthaginians and Syracusans

76. Plautius belongs to this or to the beginning of the following
period, for the inscription on his pictures (Plin. H. N. xxxv. 10,
115), being hexametrical, cannot well be older than Ennius, and the
bestowal of the citizenship of Ardea must have taken place before the
Social War, through which Ardea lost its independence.



End of Book III



     *        *        *         *        *



THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK IV

The Revolution




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.




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



     *        *        *         *        *



THE HISTORY OF ROME: BOOK V

The Establishment of the Military Monarchy




Preparer's Notes

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
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E. g. --"id:GAMMA gamma"-- indicates an uppercase Greek gamma-form
Followed by the form in lowercase.  Such exotic parsing  is necessary
to explain alphabetic development because a single symbol
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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
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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
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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
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In this edition subheadings are the only remaining indexing "handles"
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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
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7) The attentive reader will notice occasional typographic or syntactic
anomalies and errors.  In almost all cases this conscious and due to
an editorial decision for the first Gutenberg edition to transmit
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8) 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 V:  The Establishment of the Military Monarchy

   CHAPTER

      I. Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius

     II. Rule of the Sullan Restoration

    III. The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius

     IV. Pompeius and the East

      V. The Struggle of Parties during the Absence of Pompeius

     VI. Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pretenders

    VII. The Subjugation of the West

   VIII. The Joint Rule of Pompeius and Caesar

     IX. Death of Crassus--Rupture between the Joint Rulers

      X. Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus

     XI. The Old Republic and the New Monarchy

    XII. Religion, Culture, Literature, and Art




BOOK FIFTH

The Establishment of the Military Monarchy




Wie er sich sieht so um und um,
Kehrt es ihm fast den Kopf herum,
Wie er wollt' Worte zu allem finden?
Wie er mocht' so viel Schwall verbinden?
Wie er mocht' immer muthig bleiben
So fort und weiter fort zu schreiben?

Goethe.




CHAPTER I

Marcus Lepidus and Quintus Sertorius

The Opposition
Jurists
Aristocrats Friendly to Reform
Democrats

When Sulla died in the year 676, the oligarchy which he had
restored ruled with absolute sway over the Roman state; but,
as it had been established by force, it still needed force
to maintain its ground against its numerous secret and open foes.
It was opposed not by any single party with objects clearly
expressed and under leaders distinctly acknowledged, but by a mass
of multifarious elements, ranging themselves doubtless
under the general name of the popular party, but in reality opposing
the Sullan organization of the commonwealth on very various grounds
and with very different designs.  There were the men of positive
law who neither mingled in nor understood politics, but who detested
the arbitrary procedure of Sulla in dealing with the lives
and property of the burgesses.  Even during Sulla's lifetime,
when all other opposition was silent, the strict jurists resisted
the regent; the Cornelian laws, for example, which deprived various
Italian communities of the Roman franchise, were treated
in judicial decisions as null and void; and in like manner the courts
held that, where a burgess had been made a prisoner of war and sold
into slavery during the revolution, his franchise was not forfeited.
There was, further, the remnant of the old liberal minority
in the senate, which in former times had laboured to effect
a compromise with the reform party and the Italians, and was now
in a similar spirit inclined to modify the rigidly oligarchic
constitution of Sulla by concessions to the Populares.
There were, moreover, the Populares strictly so called,
the honestly credulous narrow-minded radicals, who staked property
and life for the current watchwords of the party-programme,
only to discover with painful surprise after the victory
that they had been fighting not for a reality, but for a phrase.
Their special aim was to re-establish the tribunician power, which Sulla
had not abolished but had divested of its most essential prerogatives,
and which exercised over the multitude a charm all the more mysterious,
because the institution had no obvious practical use and was
in fact an empty phantom--the mere name of tribune of the people,
more than a thousand years later, revolutionized Rome.

Transpadanes
Freedmen
Capitalists
Proletarians of the Capital
The Dispossessed
The Proscribed and Their Adherents

There were, above all, the numerous and important classes
whom the Sullan restoration had left unsatisfied, or whose political
or private interests it had directly injured.  Among those
who for such reasons belonged to the opposition ranked the dense
and prosperous population of the region between the Po and the Alps,
which naturally regarded the bestowal of Latin rights in 665(1)
as merely an instalment of the full Roman franchise, and so afforded
a ready soil for agitation.  To this category belonged also
the freedmen, influential in numbers and wealth, and specially
dangerous through their aggregation in the capital, who could
not brook their having been reduced by the restoration to their
earlier, practically useless, suffrage.  In the same position
stood, moreover, the great capitalists, who maintained a cautious
silence, but still as before preserved their tenacity of resentment
and their equal tenacity of power.  The populace of the capital,
which recognized true freedom in free bread-corn, was likewise
discontented.  Still deeper exasperation prevailed among
the burgess-bodies affected by the Sullan confiscations--whether
they like those of Pompeii, lived on their property curtailed
by the Sullan colonists, within the same ring-wall with the latter,
and at perpetual variance with them; or, like the Arretines
and Volaterrans, retained actual possession of their territory,
but had the Damocles' sword of confiscation suspended over them
by the Roman people; or, as was the case in Etruria especially,
were reduced to be beggars in their former abodes, or robbers
in the woods.  Finally, the agitation extended to the whole family
connections and freedmen of those democratic chiefs who had lost
their lives in consequence of the restoration, or who were wandering
along the Mauretanian coasts, or sojourning at the court
and in the army of Mithradates, in all the misery of emigrant exile;
for, according to the strict family-associations that governed
the political feeling of this age, it was accounted a point of honour(2)
that those who were left behind should endeavour to procure for exiled
relatives the privilege of returning to their native land, and,
in the case of the dead, at least a removal of the stigma attaching
to their memory and to their children, and a restitution to the latter
of their paternal estate.  More especially the immediate children
of the proscribed, whom the regent had reduced in point of law
to political Pariahs,(3) had thereby virtually received from the law
itself a summons to rise in rebellion against the existing
order of things.

Men of Ruined Fortunes
Men of Ambition

To all these sections of the opposition there was added the whole
body of men of ruined fortunes.  All the rabble high and low,
whose means and substance had been spent in refined or in vulgar
debauchery; the aristocratic lords, who had no farther mark
of quality than their debts; the Sullan troopers whom the regent's
fiat could transform into landholders but not into husbandmen,
and who, after squandering the first inheritance of the proscribed,
were longing to succeed to a second--all these waited only
the unfolding of the banner which invited them to fight against
the existing order of things, whatever else might be inscribed on it.
From a like necessity all the aspiring men of talent, in search
of popularity, attached themselves to the opposition; not only
those to whom the strictly closed circle of the Optimates denied
admission or at least opportunities for rapid promotion,
and who therefore attempted to force their way into the phalanx
and to break through the laws of oligarchic exclusiveness and seniority
by means of popular favour, but also the more dangerous men,
whose ambition aimed at something higher than helping to determine
the destinies of the world within the sphere of collegiate intrigues.
On the advocates' platform in particular--the only field of legal
opposition left open by Sulla--even in the regent's lifetime
such aspirants waged lively war against the restoration with the weapons
of formal jurisprudence and combative oratory: for instance,
the adroit speaker Marcus Tullius Cicero (born 3rd January 648),
son of a landholder of Arpinum, speedily made himself a name
by the mingled caution and boldness of his opposition to the dictator.
Such efforts were not of much importance, if the opponent desired
nothing farther than by their means to procure for himself a curule
chair, and then to sit in it in contentment for the rest of his life.
No doubt, if this chair should not satisfy a popular man
and Gaius Gracchus should find a successor, a struggle for life
or death was inevitable; but for the present at least no name could
be mentioned, the bearer of which had proposed to himself
any such lofty aim.

Power of the Opposition

Such was the sort of opposition with which the oligarchic government
instituted by Sulla had to contend, when it had, earlier than
Sulla himself probably expected, been thrown by his death
on its own resources.  The task was in itself far from easy, and it
was rendered more difficult by the other social and political evils
of this age--especially by the extraordinary double difficulty
of keeping the military chiefs in the provinces in subjection
to the supreme civil magistracy, and of dealing with the masses
of the Italian and extra-Italian populace accumulating in the capital,
and of the slaves living there to a great extent in de facto freedom,
without having troops at disposal.  The senate was placed
as it were, in a fortress exposed and threatened on all sides,
and serious conflicts could not fail to ensue.  But the means
of resistance organized by Sulla were considerable and lasting;
and although the majority of the nation was manifestly disinclined
to the government which Sulla had installed, and even animated
by hostile feelings towards it, that government might very well
maintain itself for a long time in its stronghold against
the distracted and confused mass of an opposition which was not agreed
either as to end or means, and, having no head, was broken up
into a hundred fragments.  Only it was necessary that it should
be determined to maintain its position, and should bring
at least a spark of that energy, which had built the fortress,
to its defence; for in the case of a garrison which will not
defend itself, the greatest master of fortification constructs
his walls and moats in vain.

Want of Leaders
Coterie-Systems

The more everything ultimately depended on the personality
of the leading men on both sides, it was the more unfortunate
that both, strictly speaking, lacked leaders.  The politics of
thisperiod were thoroughly under the sway of the coterie-system
in its worst form.  This, indeed, was nothing new; close unions
of families and clubs were inseparable from an aristocratic
organizationof the state, and had for centuries prevailed in Rome.
But it was not till this epoch that they became all-powerful,
for it was only now (first in 690) that their influence was attested
rather than checked by legal measures of repression.

All persons of quality, those of popular leanings no less than
the oligarchy proper, met in Hetaeriae; the mass of the burgesses
likewise, so far as they took any regular part in political events
at all, formed according to their voting-districts close unions
with an almost military organization, which found their natural
captains and agents in the presidents of the districts, "tribe-
distributors" (-divisores tribuum-).  With these political clubs
everything was bought and sold; the vote of the elector especially,
but also the votes of the senator and the judge, the fists too
which produced the street riot, and the ringleaders who directed
it--the associations of the upper and of the lower ranks
were distinguished merely in the matter of tariff.  The Hetaeria
decided the elections, the Hetaeria decreed the impeachments,
the Hetaeria conducted the defence; it secured the distinguished
advocate, and in case of need it contracted for an acquittal
with one of the speculators who pursued on a great scale lucrative
dealings in judges' votes.  The Hetaeria commanded by its compact bands
the streets of the capital, and with the capital but too often the state.
All these things were done in accordance with a certain rule,
and, so to speak, publicly; the system of Hetaeriae was better organized
and managed than any branch of state administration; although there was,
as is usual among civilized swindlers, a tacit understanding
that there should be no direct mention of the nefarious proceedings,
nobody made a secret of them, and advocates of repute were not ashamed
to give open and intelligible hints of their relation to the Hetaeriae
of their clients.  If an individual was to be found here or there
who kept aloof from such doings and yet did not forgo public life,
he was assuredly, like Marcus Cato, a political Don Quixote.
Parties and party-strife were superseded by the clubs and their rivalry;
government was superseded by intrigue.  A more than equivocal
character, Publius Cethegus, formerly one of the most zealous
Marians, afterwards as a deserter received into favour by Sulla,(4)
acted a most influential part in the political doings
of this period--unrivalled as a cunning tale-bearer and mediator
between the sections of the senate, and as having a statesman's
acquaintance with the secrets of all cabals: at times the appointment
to the most important posts of command was decided by a word
from his mistress Praecia.  Such a plight was only possible
where none of the men taking part in politics rose above mediocrity:
any man of more than ordinary talent would have swept away
this system of factions like cobwebs; but there was in reality
the saddest lack of men of political or military capacity.

Phillipus
Metellus, Catulus, the Luculli

Of the older generation the civil wars had left not a single man
of repute except the old shrewd and eloquent Lucius Philippus (consul
in 663), who, formerly of popular leanings,(5) thereafter leader
of the capitalist party against the senate,(6) and closely associated
with the Marians,(7) and lastly passing over to the victorious
oligarchy in sufficient time to earn thanks and commendation,(8)
had managed to escape between the parties.  Among the men
of the following generation the most notable chiefs of the pure
aristocracy were Quintus Metellus Pius (consul in 674), Sulla's
comrade in dangers and victories; Quintus Lutatius Catulus, consul
in the year of Sulla's death, 676, the son of the victor of Vercellae;
and two younger officers, the brothers Lucius and Marcus Lucullus,
of whom the former had fought with distinction under Sulla
in Asia, the latter in Italy; not to mention Optimates like Quintus
Hortensius (640-704), who had importance only as a pleader,
or men like Decimus Junius Brutus (consul in 677), Mamercus
Aemilius Lepidus Livianus (consul in 677), and other such nullities,
whose best quality was a euphonious aristocratic name.
But even those four men rose little above the average calibre
of the Optimates of this age.  Catulus was like his father a man of
refined culture and an honest aristocrat, but of moderate talents
and, in particular, no soldier.  Metellus was not merely estimable
in his personal character, but an able and experienced officer;
and it was not so much on account of his close relations as a kinsman
and colleague with the regent as because of his recognized ability
that he was sent in 675, after resigning the consulship, to Spain,
where the Lusitanians and the Roman emigrants under Quintus
Sertorius were bestirring themselves afresh.  The two Luculli
were also capable officers--particularly the elder, who combined
very respectable military talents with thorough literary culture
and leanings to authorship, and appeared honourable also as a man.
But, as statesmen, even these better aristocrats were not much less
remiss and shortsighted than the average senators of the time.
In presence of an outward foe the more eminent among them, doubtless,
proved themselves useful and brave; but no one of them evinced
the desire or the skill to solve the problems of politics proper,
and to guide the vessel of the state through the stormy sea of intrigues
and factions as a true pilot.  Their political wisdom was limited
to a sincere belief in the oligarchy as the sole means of salvation,
and to a cordial hatred and courageous execration of demagogism
as well as of every individual authority which sought to emancipate
itself.  Their petty ambition was contented with little.
The stories told of Metellus in Spain--that he not only allowed
himself to be delighted with the far from harmonious lyre
of the Spanish occasional poets, but even wherever he went had himself
received like a god with libations of wine and odours of incense,
and at table had his head crowned by descending Victories amidst
theatrical thunder with the golden laurel of the conqueror--
are no better attested than most historical anecdotes; but even
such gossip reflects the degenerate ambition of the generations
of Epigoni.  Even the better men were content when they had gained
not power and influence, but the consulship and a triumph
and a place of honour in the senate; and at the very time
when with right ambition they would have just begun to be truly useful
to their country and their party, they retired from the political stage
to be lost in princely luxury.  Men like Metellus and Lucius Lucullus
were, even as generals, not more attentive to the enlargement
of the Roman dominion by fresh conquests of kings and peoples than
to the enlargement of the endless game, poultry, and dessert lists
of Roman gastronomy by new delicacies from Africa and Asia Minor,
and they wasted the best part of their lives in more or less ingenious
idleness.  The traditional aptitude and the individual self-denial,
on which all oligarchic government is based, were lost
in the decayed and artificially restored Roman aristocracy of this age;
in its judgment universally the spirit of clique was accounted
as patriotism, vanity as ambition, and narrow-mindedness as consistency.
Had the Sullan constitution passed into the guardianship of men
such as have sat in the Roman College of Cardinals or the Venetian
Council of Ten, we cannot tell whether the opposition would have been able
to shake it so soon; with such defenders every attack involved,
at all events, a serious peril.

Pompeius

Of the men, who were neither unconditional adherents nor open
opponents of the Sullan constitution, no one attracted more the eyes
of the multitude than the young Gnaeus Pompeius, who was at the time
of Sulla's death twenty-eight years of age (born 29th September 648).
The fact was a misfortune for the admired as well as
for the admirers; but it was natural.  Sound in body and mind,
a capable athlete, who even when a superior officer vied with his
soldiers in leaping, running, and lifting, a vigorous and skilled
rider and fencer, a bold leader of volunteer bands, the youth had
become Imperator and triumphator at an age which excluded him
from every magistracy and from the senate, and had acquired
the first place next to Sulla in public opinion; nay, had obtained
from the indulgent regent himself--half in recognition, half in irony--
the surname of the Great.  Unhappily, his mental endowments by no means
corresponded with these unprecedented successes.  He was neither
a bad nor an incapable man, but a man thoroughly ordinary, created
by nature to be a good sergeant, called by circumstances to be
a general and a statesman.  An intelligent, brave and experienced,
thoroughly excellent soldier, he was still, even in his military
capacity, without trace of any higher gifts.  It was characteristic
of him as a general, as well as in other respects, to set to work
with a caution bordering on timidity, and, if possible, to give
the decisive blow only when he had established an immense superiority
over his opponent.  His culture was the average culture of the time;
although entirely a soldier, he did not neglect, when he went
to Rhodes, dutifully to admire, and to make presents to,
the rhetoricians there.  His integrity was that of a rich man
who manages with discretion his considerable property inherited
and acquired.  He did not disdain to make money in the usual senatorial
way, but he was too cold and too rich to incur special risks,
or draw down on himself conspicuous disgrace, on that account.
The vice so much in vogue among his contemporaries, rather than
any virtue of his own, procured for him the reputation--comparatively,
no doubt, well warranted--of integrity and disinterestedness.
His "honest countenance" became almost proverbial, and even after
his death he was esteemed as a worthy and moral man; he was in fact
a good neighbour, who did not join in the revolting schemes
by which the grandees of that age extended the bounds of their domains
through forced sales or measures still worse at the expense
of their humbler neighbours, and in domestic life he displayed
attachment to his wife and children: it redounds moreover to his
credit that he was the first to depart from the barbarous custom
of putting to death the captive kings and generals of the enemy,
after they had been exhibited in triumph.  But this did not prevent
him from separating from his beloved wife at the command of his lord
and master Sulla, because she belonged to an outlawed family,
nor from ordering with great composure that men who had stood
by him and helped him in times of difficulty should be executed
before his eyes at the nod of the same master:(9) he was not cruel,
thoughhe was reproached with being so, but--what perhaps was worse--
he was cold and, in good as in evil, unimpassioned.  In the tumult
of battle he faced the enemy fearlessly; in civil life he was a shy
man, whose cheek flushed on the slightest occasion; he spoke
in public not without embarrassment, and generally was angular, stiff,
and awkward in intercourse.  With all his haughty obstinacy he was--
as indeed persons ordinarily are, who make a display of their
independence--a pliant tool in the hands of men who knew how
to manage him, especially of his freedmen and clients, by whom he had
no fear of being controlled.  For nothing was he less qualified
than for a statesman.  Uncertain as to his aims, unskilful in the choice
of his means, alike in little and great matters shortsighted
and helpless, he was wont to conceal his irresolution and indecision
under a solemn silence, and, when he thought to play a subtle
game, simply to deceive himself with the belief that he was
deceiving others.  By his military position and his territorial
connections he acquired almost without any action of his own
a considerable party personally devoted to him, with which
the greatest things might have been accomplished; but Pompeius
was in every respect incapable of leading and keeping together a party,
and, if it still kept together, it did so--in like manner without
his action--through the sheer force of circumstances.  In this,
as in other things, he reminds us of Marius; but Marius, with his
nature of boorish roughness and sensuous passion, was still less
intolerable than this most tiresome and most starched of all
artificial great men.  His political position was utterly perverse.
He was a Sullan officer and under obligation to stand up for
the restored constitution, and yet again in opposition to Sulla
personally as well as to the whole senatorial government.  The gens
of the Pompeii, which had only been named for some sixty years
in the consular lists, had by no means acquired full standing
in the eyes of the aristocracy; even the father of this Pompeius
had occupied a very invidious equivocal position towards
the senate,(10) and he himself had once been in the ranks
of the Cinnans(11)--recollections which were suppressed perhaps,
but not forgotten.  The prominent position which Pompeius
acquired for himself under Sulla set him at inward variance
with the aristocracy, quite as much as it brought him into outward
connection with it.  Weak-headed as he was, Pompeius was seized
with giddiness on the height of glory which he had climbed
with such dangerous rapidity and ease.  Just as if he would himself
ridicule his dry prosaic nature by the parallel with the most
poetical of all heroic figures, he began to compare himself
with Alexander the Great, and to account himself a man of unique
standing, whom it did not beseem to be merely one of the five
hundred senators of Rome.  In reality, no one was more fitted
to take his place as a member of an aristocratic government than
Pompeius.  His dignified outward appearance, his solemn formality,
his personal bravery, his decorous private life, his want
of all initiative might have gained for him, had he been born
two hundred years earlier, an honourable place by the side
of Quintus Maximus and Publius Decius: this mediocrity, so characteristic
of the genuine Optimate and the genuine Roman, contributed not a little
to the elective affinity which subsisted at all times between Pompeius
and the mass of the burgesses and the senate.  Even in his own age
he would have had a clearly defined and respectable position
had he contented himself with being the general of the senate,
for which he was from the outset destined.  With this he was
not content, and so he fell into the fatal plight of wishing
to be something else than he could be.  He was constantly aspiring
to a special position in the state, and, when it offered itself,
he could not make up his mind to occupy it; he was deeply indignant
when persons and laws did not bend unconditionally before him,
and yet he everywhere bore himself with no mere affectation
of modesty as one of many peers, and trembled at the mere thought
of undertaking anything unconstitutional.  Thus constantly
at fundamental variance with, and yet at the same time the obedient
servant of, the oligarchy, constantly tormented by an ambition
which was frightened at its own aims, his much-agitated life
passed joylessly away in a perpetual inward contradiction.

Crassus

Marcus Crassus cannot, any more than Pompeius, be reckoned among
the unconditional adherents of the oligarchy.  He is a personage
highly characteristic of this epoch.  Like Pompeius, whose senior
he was by a few years, he belonged to the circle of the high Roman
aristocracy, had obtained the usual education befitting his rank,
and had like Pompeius fought with distinction under Sulla
in the Italian war.  Far inferior to many of his peers in mental gifts,
literary culture, and military talent, he outstripped them
by his boundless activity, and by the perseverance with which he strove
to possess everything and to become all-important.  Above all,
he threw himself into speculation.  Purchases of estates during
the revolution formed the foundation of his wealth; but he disdained
no branch of gain; he carried on the business of building
in the capital on a great scale and with prudence; he entered
into partnership with his freedmen in the most varied undertakings;
he acted as banker both in and out of Rome, in person or by his agents;
he advanced money to his colleagues in the senate, and undertook--
as it might happen--to execute works or to bribe the tribunals
on their account.  He was far from nice in the matter
of making profit.  On occasion of the Sullan proscriptions a forgery
in the lists had been proved against him, for which reason Sulla
made no more use of him thenceforward in the affairs of state:
he did not refuse to accept an inheritance, because the testamentary
document which contained his name was notoriously forged; he made
no objection, when his bailiffs by force or by fraud dislodged
the petty holders from lands which adjoined his own.  He avoided open
collisions, however, with criminal justice, and lived himself
like a genuine moneyed man in homely and simple style.  In this way
Crassus rose in the course of a few years from a man of ordinary
senatorial fortune to be the master of wealth which not long before
his death, after defraying enormous extraordinary expenses, still
amounted to 170,000,000 sesterces (1,700,000 pounds).  He had
become the richest of Romans and thereby, at the same time, a great
political power.  If, according to his expression, no one might
call himself rich who could not maintain an army from his revenues,
one who could do this was hardly any longer a mere citizen.
In reality the views of Crassus aimed at a higher object than
the possession of the best-filled money-chest in Rome.  He grudged
no pains to extend his connections.  He knew how to salute by name
every burgess of the capital.  He refused to no suppliant
his assistance in court.  Nature, indeed, had not done much
for him as an orator: his speaking was dry, his delivery monotonous,
he had difficulty of hearing; but his tenacity of purpose,
which no wearisomeness deterred and no enjoyment distracted, overcame
such obstacles.  He never appeared unprepared, he never extemporized,
and so he became a pleader at all times in request and at all times
ready; to whom it was no derogation that a cause was rarely too bad
for him, and that he knew how to influence the judges not merely
by his oratory, but also by his connections and, on occasion,
by his gold.  Half the senate was in debt to him; his habit of advancing
to "friends" money without interest revocable at pleasure rendered
a number of influential men dependent on him, and the more so that,
like a genuine man of business, he made no distinction among
the parties, maintained connections on all hands, and readily lent
to every one who was able to pay or otherwise useful.  The most daring
party-leaders, who made their attacks recklessly in all directions,
were careful not to quarrel with Crassus; he was compared
to the bull of the herd, whom it was advisable for none to provoke.
That such a man, so disposed and so situated, could not strive
after humble aims is clear; and, in a very different way from Pompeius,
Crassus knew exactly like a banker the objects and the means
of political speculation.  From the origin of Rome capital
was a political power there; the age was of such a sort, that everything
seemed accessible to gold as to iron.  If in the time of revolution
a capitalist aristocracy might have thought of overthrowing
the oligarchy of the gentes, a man like Crassus might raise
his eyes higher than to the -fasces- and embroidered mantle
of the triumphators.  For the moment he was a Sullan and adherent
of the senate; but he was too much of a financier to devote himself
to a definite political party, or to pursue aught else than his personal
advantage.  Why should Crassus, the wealthiest and most intriguing
man in Rome, and no penurious miser but a speculator on the greatest
scale, not speculate also on the crown?  Alone, perhaps,
he could not attain this object; but he had already carried out
various great transactions in partnership; it was not impossible
that for this also a suitable partner might present himself.
It is a trait characteristic of the time, that a mediocre orator
and officer, a politician who took his activity for energy
and his covetousness for ambition, one who at bottom had nothing
but a colossal fortune and the mercantile talent of forming
connections--that such a man, relying on the omnipotence of coteries
and intrigues, could deem himself on a level with the first generals
and statesmen of his day, and could contend with them
for the highest prize which allures political ambition.

Leaders of the Democrats

In the opposition proper, both among the liberal conservatives
and among the Populares, the storms of revolution had made fearful
havoc.  Among the former, the only surviving man of note was Gaius
Cotta (630-c. 681), the friend and ally of Drusus, and as such
banished in 663,(12) and then by Sulla's victory brought back
to his native land;(13) he was a shrewd man and a capable advocate,
but not called, either by the weight of his party or by that of his
personal standing, to act more than a respectable secondary part.
In the democratic party, among the rising youth, Gaius Julius
Caesar, who was twenty-four years of age (born 12 July 652?(14)),
drew towards him the eyes of friend and foe.  His relationship
with Marius and Cinna (his father's sister had been the wife of Marius,
he himself had married Cinna's daughter); the courageous refusal
of the youth who had scarce outgrown the age of boyhood to send
a divorce to his young wife Cornelia at the bidding of the dictator,
as Pompeius had in the like case done; his bold persistence
in the priesthood conferred upon him by Marius, but revoked by Sulla;
his wanderings during the proscription with which he was threatened,
and which was with difficulty averted by the intercession
of his relatives; his bravery in the conflicts before Mytilene
and in Cilicia, a bravery which no one had expected from the tenderly
reared and almost effeminately foppish boy; even the warnings
of Sulla regarding the "boy in the petticoat" in whom more than a Marius
lay concealed--all these were precisely so many recommendations
in the eyes of the democratic party.  But Caesar could only be the object
of hopes for the future; and the men who from their age and their
public position would have been called now to seize the reins
of the party and the state, were all dead or in exile.

Lepidus

Thus the leadership of the democracy, in the absence of a man
with a true vocation for it, was to be had by any one who might please
to give himself forth as the champion of oppressed popular freedom;
and in this way it came to Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, a Sullan,
who from motives more than ambiguous deserted to the camp
of the democracy.  Once a zealous Optimate, and a large purchaser
at the auctions of the proscribed estates, he had, as governor of Sicily,
so scandalously plundered the province that he was threatened
with impeachment, and, to evade it, threw himself into opposition.
It was a gain of doubtful value.  No doubt the opposition
thus acquired a well-known name, a man of quality, a vehement orator
in the Forum; but Lepidus was an insignificant and indiscreet
personage, who did not deserve to stand at the head either
in council or in the field.  Nevertheless the opposition welcomed him,
and the new leader of the democrats succeeded not only in deterring
his accusers from prosecuting the attack on him which they had
begun, but also in carrying his election to the consulship
for 676; in which, we may add, he was helped not only by the treasures
exacted in Sicily, but also by the foolish endeavour of Pompeius
to show Sulla and the pure Sullans on this occasion what he could do.
Now that the opposition had, on the death of Sulla, found a head
once more in Lepidus, and now that this their leader had become
the supreme magistrate of the state, the speedy outbreak of a new
revolution in the capital might with certainty be foreseen.

The Emigrants in Spain
Sertorius

But even before the democrats moved in the capital, the democratic
emigrants had again bestirred themselves in Spain.  The soul
of this movement was Quintus Sertorius.  This excellent man,
a native of Nursia in the Sabine land, was from the first
of a tender and even soft organization--as his almost enthusiastic love
for his mother, Raia, shows--and at the same time of the most chivalrous
bravery, as was proved by the honourable scars which he brought
home from the Cimbrian, Spanish, and Italian wars.  Although wholly
untrained as an orator, he excited the admiration of learned
advocates by the natural flow and the striking self-possession
of his address.  His remarkable military and statesmanly talent
had found opportunity of shining by contrast, more particularly
in the revolutionary war which the democrats so wretchedly and stupidly
mismanaged; he was confessedly the only democratic officer
who knew how to prepare and to conduct war, and the only democratic
statesman who opposed the insensate and furious doings of his party
with statesmanlike energy.  His Spanish soldiers called him the new
Hannibal, and not merely because he had, like that hero, lost
an eye in war.  He in reality reminds us of the great Phoenician
by his equally cunning and courageous strategy, by his rare talent
of organizing war by means of war, by his adroitness in attracting
foreign nations to his interest and making them serviceable to his ends,
by his prudence in success and misfortune, by the quickness
of his ingenuity in turning to good account his victories
and averting the consequences of his defeats.  It may be doubted
whether any Roman statesman of the earlier period, or of the present,
can be compared in point of versatile talent to Sertorius.
After Sulla's generals had compelled him to quit Spain,(15)
he had led a restless life of adventure along the Spanish and African
coasts, sometimes in league, sometimes at war, with the Cilician
pirates who haunted these seas, and with the chieftains
of the roving tribes of Libya.  The victorious Roman restoration had
pursued him even thither: when he was besieging Tingis (Tangiers),
a corps under Pacciaecus from Roman Africa had come to the help
of the prince of the town; but Pacciaecus was totally defeated,
and Tingis was taken by Sertorius.  On the report of such achievements
by the Roman refugee spreading abroad, the Lusitanians, who,
notwithstanding their pretended submission to the Roman supremacy,
practically maintained their independence, and annually fought
with the governors of Further Spain, sent envoys to Sertorius
in Africa, to invite him to join them, and to commit to him
the command of their militia.

Renewed Outbreak of the Spanish Insurrection
Metellus Sent to Spain

Sertorius, who twenty years before had served under Titus Didius
in Spain and knew the resources of the land, resolved to comply
with the invitation, and, leaving behind a small detachment
on the Mauretanian coast, embarked for Spain (about 674).
The straits separating Spain and Africa were occupied by a Roman
squadron commanded by Cotta; to steal through it was impossible;
so Sertorius fought his way through and succeeded in reaching
the Lusitanians.  There were not more than twenty Lusitanian
communities that placed themselves under his orders; and even
of "Romans" he mustered only 2600 men, a considerable part
of whom were deserters from the army of Pacciaecus or Africans
armed after the Roman style.  Sertorius saw that everything depended on
his associating with the loose guerilla-bands a strong nucleus
of troops possessing Roman organization and discipline: for this end
he reinforced the band which he had brought with him by levying
4000 infantry and 700 cavalry, and with this one legion
and the swarms of Spanish volunteers advanced against the Romans.
The command in Further Spain was held by Lucius Fufidius,
who through his absolute devotion to Sulla--well tried amidst
the proscriptions--had risen from a subaltern to be propraetor;
he was totally defeated on the Baetis; 2000 Romans covered the field
of battle.  Messengers in all haste summoned the governor
of the adjoining province of the Ebro, Marcus Domitius Calvinus,
to check the farther advance of the Sertorians; and there soon appeared
(675) also the experienced general Quintus Metellus, sent by Sulla
to relieve the incapable Fufidius in southern Spain.  But they did
not succeed in mastering the revolt.  In the Ebro province
not only was the army of Calvinus destroyed and he himself slain
by the lieutenant of Sertorius, the quaestor Lucius Hirtuleius,
but Lucius Manlius, the governor of Transalpine Gaul, who had crossed
the Pyrenees with three legions to the help of his colleague,
was totally defeated by the same brave leader.  With difficulty
Manlius escaped with a few men to Ilerda (Lerida) and thence
to his province, losing on the march his whole baggage through
a sudden attack of the Aquitanian tribes.  In Further Spain Metellus
penetrated into the Lusitanian territory; but Sertorius succeeded
during the siege of Longobriga (not far from the mouth
of the Tagus) in alluring a division under Aquinus into an ambush,
and thereby compelling Metellus himself to raise the siege
and to evacuate the Lusitanian territory.  Sertorius followed him,
defeated on the Anas (Guadiana) the corps of Thorius, and inflicted
vast damage by guerilla warfare on the army of the commander-in-
chief himself.  Metellus, a methodical and somewhat clumsy
tactician, was in despair as to this opponent, who obstinately
declined a decisive battle, but cut off his supplies
and communications and constantly hovered round him on all sides.

Organizations of Sertorius

These extraordinary successes obtained by Sertorius
in the two Spanish provinces were the more significant,
that they were not achieved merely by arms and were not of a mere
military nature.  The emigrants as such were not formidable;
nor were isolated successes of the Lusitanians under this or that
foreign leader of much moment.  But with the most decided political
and patriotic tact Sertorius acted, whenever he could do so,
not as condottiere of the Lusitanians in revolt against Rome,
but as Roman general and governor of Spain, in which capacity
he had in fact been sent thither by the former rulers.
He began(16) to form the heads of the emigration into a senate,
which was to increase to 300 members and to conduct affairs
and to nominate magistrates in Roman form.  He regarded his army
as a Roman one, and filled the officers' posts, without exception,
with Romans.  When facing the Spaniards, he was the governor,
who by virtue of his office levied troops and other support
from them; but he was a governor who, instead of exercising
the usual despotic sway, endeavoured to attach the provincials
to Rome and to himself personally.  His chivalrous character
rendered it easy for him to enter into Spanish habits,
and excited in the Spanish nobility the most ardent enthusiasm
for the wonderful foreigner who had a spirit so kindred
with their own.  According to the warlike custom of personal following
which subsisted in Spain as among the Celts and the Germans,
thousands of the noblest Spaniards swore to stand faithfully
by their Roman general unto death; and in them Sertorius found
more trustworthy comrades than in his countrymen and party-associates.
He did not disdain to turn to account the superstition of the ruder
Spanish tribes, and to have his plans of war brought to him as commands
of Diana by the white fawn of the goddess.  Throughout he exercised
a just and gentle rule.  His troops, at least so far as his eye
and his arm reached, had to maintain the strictest discipline.
Gentle as he generally was in punishing, he showed himself inexorable
when any outrage was perpetrated by his soldiers on friendly soil.
Nor was he inattentive to the permanent alleviation of the condition
of the provincials; he reduced the tribute, and directed the soldiers
to construct winter barracks for themselves, so that the oppressive
burden of quartering the troops was done away and thus a source
of unspeakable mischief and annoyance was stopped.  For the children
of Spaniards of quality an academy was erected at Osca (Huesca),
in which they received the higher instruction usual in Rome,
learning to speak Latin and Greek, and to wear the toga--a remarkable
measure, which was by no means designed merely to take from the allies
in as gentle a form as possible the hostages that in Spain
were inevitable, but was above all an emanation from, and an advance
onthe great project of Gaius Gracchus and the democratic
party for gradually Romanizing the provinces.  It was the first
attempt to accomplish their Romanization not by extirpating
the old inhabitants and filling their places with Italian emigrants,
but by Romanizing the provincials themselves.  The Optimates
in Rome sneered at the wretched emigrant, the runaway from the Italian
army, the last of the robber-band of Carbo; the sorry taunt
recoiled upon its authors.  The masses that had been brought into
the field against Sertorius were reckoned, including the Spanish
general levy, at 120,000 infantry, 2000 archers and slingers,
and 6000 cavalry.  Against this enormous superiority of force Sertorius
had not only held his ground in a series of successful conflicts
and victories, but had also reduced the greater part of Spain
under his power.  In the Further province Metellus found himself
confined to the districts immediately occupied by his troops;
hereall the tribes, who could, had taken the side of Sertorius.
In the Hither province, after the victories of Hirtuleius,
there no longer existed a Roman army.  Emissaries of Sertorius
roamed through the whole territory of Gaul; there, too,
the tribes began to stir, and bands gathering together began
to make the Alpine passes insecure.  Lastly the sea too belonged
quite as much to the insurgents as to the legitimate government,
since the allies of the former--the pirates--were almost as powerful
in the Spanish waters as the Roman ships of war.  At the promontory
of Diana (now Denia, between Valencia and Alicante) Sertorius established
for the corsairs a fixed station, where they partly lay in wait
for such Roman ships as were conveying supplies to the Roman
maritime towns and the army, partly carried away or delivered goods
for the insurgents, and partly formed their medium of intercourse
with Italy and Asia Minor.  The constant readiness of these men moving
to and fro to carry everywhere sparks from the scene of conflagration
tended in a high degree to excite apprehension, especially at a time
when so much combustible matter was everywhere accumulated
in the Roman empire.

Death of Sulla and Its Consequences

Amidst this state of matters the sudden death of Sulla took place
(676).  So long as the man lived, at whose voice a trained
and trustworthy army of veterans was ready any moment to rise,
the oligarchy might tolerate the almost (as it seemed)
definite abandonment of the Spanish provinces to the emigrants,
and the election of the leader of the opposition at home to be supreme
magistrate, at all events as transient misfortunes; and in their
shortsighted way, yet not wholly without reason, might cherish
confidence either that the opposition would not venture to proceed
to open conflict, or that, if it did venture, he who had twice
saved the oligarchy would set it up a third time.  Now the state
of things was changed.  The democratic Hotspurs in the capital,
long impatient of the endless delay and inflamed by the brilliant news
from Spain, urged that a blow should be struck; and Lepidus,
with whom the decision for the moment lay, entered into the proposal
with all the zeal of a renegade and with his own characteristic
frivolity.  For a moment it seemed as if the torch which kindled
the funeral pile of the regent would also kindle civil war;
but the influence of Pompeius and the temper of the Sullan veterans
induced the opposition to let the obsequies of the regent
pass over in peace.

Insurrection of Lepidus

Yet all the more openly were arrangements thenceforth made
to introduce a fresh revolution.  Daily the Forum resounded
with accusations against the "mock Romulus" and his executioners.
Even before the great potentate had closed his eyes, the overthrow
of the Sullan constitution, the re-establishment of the distributions
of grain, the reinstating of the tribunes of the people in their
former position, the recall of those who were banished contrary
to law, the restoration of the confiscated lands, were openly indicated
by Lepidus and his adherents as the objects at which they aimed.
Now communications were entered into with the proscribed;
Marcus Perpenna, governor of Sicily in the days of Cinna,(17)
arrived in the capital.  The sons of those whom Sulla had declared
guilty of treason--on whom the laws of the restoration bore
with intolerable severity--and generally the more noted men of Marian
views were invited to give their accession.  Not a few, such as
the young Lucius Cinna, joined the movement; others, however,
followed the example of Gaius Caesar, who had returned home from Asia
on receiving the accounts of the death of Sulla and of the plans
of Lepidus, but after becoming more accurately acquainted
with the character of the leader and of the movement prudently withdrew.
Carousing and recruiting went on in behalf of Lepidus
in the taverns and brothels of the capital.  At length a conspiracy
against the new order of things was concocted among the Etruscan
malcontents.(18)

All this took place under the eyes of the government The consul
Catulus as well as the more judicious Optimates urged an immediate
decisive interference and suppression of the revolt in the bud;
the indolent majority, however, could not make up their minds to begin
the struggle, but tried to deceive themselves as long as possible
by a system of compromises and concessions.  Lepidus also on his
part at first entered into it.  The suggestion, which proposed
a restoration of the prerogatives taken away from the tribunes
of the people, he as well as his colleague Catulus repelled.
On the other hand, the Gracchan distribution of grain
was to a limited extent re-established.  According to it not all
(as according to the Sempronian law) but only a definite number--
presumably 40,000--of the poorer burgesses appear to have received
the earlier largesses, as Gracchus had fixed them, of five -modii-
monthly at the price of 6 1/3 -asses- (3 pence)--a regulation
which occasioned to the treasury an annual net loss of at least
40,000 pounds.(19)  The opposition, naturally as little satisfied
as it was decidedly emboldened by this partial concession, displayed
all the more rudeness and violence in the capital; and in Etruria,
the true centre of all insurrections of the Italian proletariate,
civil war already broke out, the dispossessed Faesulans resumed
possession of their lost estates by force of arms, and several
of the veterans settled there by Sulla perished in the tumult.
The senate on learning what had occurred resolved to send the two consuls
thither, in order to raise troops and suppress the insurrection.(20)
It was impossible to adopt a more irrational course.  The senate,
in presence of the insurrection, evinced its pusillanimity
and its fears by the re-establishment of the corn-law; in order
to be relieved from a street-riot, it furnished the notorious
head of the insurrection with an army; and, when the two consuls
were bound by the most solemn oath which could be contrived not to turn
the arms entrusted to them against each other, it must have required
the superhuman obduracy of oligarchic consciences to think of erecting
such a bulwark against the impending insurrection.  Of course Lepidus
armed in Etruria not for the senate, but for the insurrection--
sarcastically declaring that the oath which he had taken bound him
only for the current year.  The senate put the oracular machinery
in motion to induce him to return, and committed to him the conduct
of the impending consular elections; but Lepidus evaded compliance,
and, while messengers passed to and fro and the official year drew
to an end amidst proposals of accommodation, his force swelled to an army.
When at length, in the beginning of the following year (677),
the definite order of the senate was issued to Lepidus to return
without delay, the proconsul haughtily refused obedience,
and demanded in his turn the renewal of the former tribunician power,
the reinstatement of those who had been forcibly ejected
from their civic rights and their property, and, besides this,
his own re-election as consul for the current year or, in other words,
the -tyrannis- in legal form.

Outbreak of the War
Lepidus Defeated
Death of Lepidus

Thus war was declared.  The senatorial party could reckon, in addition to
the Sullan veterans whose civil existence was threatened by Lepidus,
upon the army assembled by the proconsul Catulus; and so, in compliance
with the urgent warnings of the more sagacious, particularly of Philippus,
Catulus was entrusted by the senate with the defence of the capital
and the repelling of the main force of the democratic party stationed
in Etruria.  At the same time Gnaeus Pompeius was despatched with another
corps to wrest from his former protege the valley of the Po, which was held
by Lepidus' lieutenant, Marcus Brutus.  While Pompeius speedily
accomplished his commission and shut up the enemy's general closely
in Mutina, Lepidus appeared before the capital in order to conquer
it for the revolution as Marius had formerly done by storm.
The right bank of the Tiber fell wholly into his power, and he was able
even to cross the river.  The decisive battle was fought
on the Campus Martius, close under the walls of the city.
But Catulus conquered; and Lepidus was compelled to retreat to Etruria,
while another division, under his son Scipio, threw itself
into the fortress of Alba.  Thereupon the rising was substantially
atan end.  Mutina surrendered to Pompeius; and Brutus was,
notwithstanding the safe-conduct promised to him, subsequently
put to death by order of that general.  Alba too was, after a long siege,
reduced by famine, and the leader there was likewise executed.
Lepidus, pressed on two sides by Catulus and Pompeius, fought another
engagement on the coast of Etruria in order merely to procure
the means of retreat, and then embarked at the port of Cosa for Sardinia
from which point he hoped to cut off the supplies of the capital,
and to obtain communication with the Spanish insurgents.
But the governor of the island opposed to him a vigorous resistance;
and he himself died, not long after his landing, of consumption (677),
whereupon the war in Sardinia came to an end.  A part of his soldiers
dispersed; with the flower of the insurrectionary army
and with a well-filled chest the late praetor, Marcus Perpenna,
proceeded to Liguria, and thence to Spain to join the Sertorians.

Pompeius Extorts the Command in Spain

The oligarchy was thus victorious over Lepidus; but it found itself
compelled by the dangerous turn of the Sertorian war to concessions,
which violated the letter as well as the spirit of the Sullan
constitution.  It was absolutely necessary to send a strong
army and an able general to Spain; and Pompeius indicated,
very plainly, that he desired, or rather demanded, this commission.
The pretension was bold.  It was already bad enough that they
had allowed this secret opponent again to attain an extraordinary
command in the pressure of the Lepidian revolution; but it was far
more hazardous, in disregard of all the rules instituted by Sulla
for the magisterial hierarchy, to invest a man who had hitherto
filled no civil office with one of the most important ordinary
provincial governorships, under circumstances in which the observance
of the legal term of a year was not to be thought of.
The oligarchy had thus, even apart from the respect due to their
general Metellus, good reason to oppose with all earnestness
this new attempt of the ambitious youth to perpetuate his exceptional
position.  But this was not easy.  In the first place, they had
not a single man fitted for the difficult post of general in Spain.
Neither of the consuls of the year showed any desire to measure
himself against Sertorius; and what Lucius Philippus said in a full
meeting of the senate had to be admitted as too true--that, among
all the senators of note, not one was able and willing to command
in a serious war.  Yet they might, perhaps, have got over this,
and after the manner of oligarchs, when they had no capable candidate,
have filled the place with some sort of makeshift, if Pompeius had
merely desired the command and had not demanded it at the head
of an army.  He had already lent a deaf ear to the injunctions
of Catulus that he should dismiss the army; it was at least doubtful
whether those of the senate would find a better reception,
and the consequences of a breach no one could calculate--
the scale of aristocracy might very easily mount up, if the sword
of a well-known general were thrown into the opposite scale.
So the majority resolved on concession.  Not from the people,
which constitutionally ought to have been consulted in a case
where a private man was to be invested with the supreme magisterial
power, but from the senate, Pompeius received proconsular authority
and the chief command in Hither Spain; and, forty days after he had
received it, crossed the Alps in the summer of 677.

Pompeius in Gaul

First of all the new general found employment in Gaul,
where no formal insurrection had broken out, but serious disturbances
of the peace had occurred at several places; in consequence
of which Pompeius deprived the cantons of the Volcae-Arecomici
and the Helvii of their independence, and placed them under Massilia.
He also laid out a new road over the Cottian Alps (Mont Genevre,(21)),
and so established a shorter communication between the valley
of the Po and Gaul.  Amidst this work the best season of the year
passed away; it was not till late in autumn that Pompeius crossed
the Pyrenees.

Appearance of Pompeius in Spain

Sertorius had meanwhile not been idle.  He had despatched
Hirtuleius into the Further province to keep Metellus in check,
and had himself endeavoured to follow up his complete victory
in the Hither province, and to prepare for the reception of Pompeius.
The isolated Celtiberian towns there, which still adhered to Rome,
were attacked and reduced one after another; at last, in the very
middle of winter, the strong Contrebia (south-east of Saragossa)
had fallen.  In vain the hard-pressed towns had sent message
after message to Pompeius; he would not be induced by any entreaties
to depart from his wonted rut of slowly advancing.  With the exception
of the maritime towns, which were defended by the Roman fleet,
and the districts of the Indigetes and Laletani in the north-east
corner of Spain, where Pompeius established himself after he had
at length crossed the Pyrenees, and made his raw troops bivouac
throughout the winter to inure them to hardships, the whole
of Hither Spain had at the end of 677 become by treaty or force
dependent on Sertorius, and the district on the upper and middle
Ebro thenceforth continued the main stay of his power.  Even
the apprehension, which the fresh Roman force and the celebrated name
of the general excited in the army of the insurgents, had a salutary
effect on it.  Marcus Perpenna, who hitherto as the equal
of Sertorius in rank had claimed an independent command over the force
which he had brought with him from Liguria, was, on the news
of the arrival of Pompeius in Spain, compelled by his soldiers
to place himself under the orders of his abler colleague.

For the campaign of 678 Sertorius again employed the corps
of Hirtuleius against Metellus, while Perpenna with a strong army
took up his position along the lower course of the Ebro to prevent
Pompeius from crossing the river, if he should march, as was
to be expected, in a southerly direction with the view of effecting
a junction with Metellus, and along the coast for the sake
of procuring supplies for his troops.  The corps of Gaius Herennius
was destined to the immediate support of Perpenna; farther inland
on the upper Ebro, Sertorius in person prosecuted meanwhile
the subjugation of several districts friendly to Rome, and held himself
at the same time ready to hasten according to circumstances
to the aid of Perpenna or Hirtuleius.  It was still his intention
to avoid any pitched battle, and to annoy the enemy by petty
conflicts and cutting off supplies.

Pompeius Defeated

Pompeius, however, forced the passage of the Ebro against Perpenna
and took up a position on the river Pallantias, near Saguntum,
whence, as we have already said, the Sertorians maintained their
communications with Italy and the east.  It was time that Sertorius
should appear in person, and throw the superiority of his numbers
and of his genius into the scale against the greater excellence
of the soldiers of his opponent.  For a considerable time the struggle
was concentrated around the town of Lauro (on the Xucar, south
of Valencia), which had declared for Pompeius and was on that account
besieged by Sertorius.  Pompeius exerted himself to the utmost
to relieve it; but, after several of his divisions had already been
assailed separately and cut to pieces, the great warrior found
himself--just when he thought that he had surrounded the Sertorians,
and when he had already invited the besieged to be spectators
of the capture of the besieging army--all of a sudden completely
outmanoeuvred; and in order that he might not be himself
surrounded, he had to look on from his camp at the capture
and reduction to ashes of the allied town and at the carrying off
of its inhabitants to Lusitania--an event which induced a number
of towns that had been wavering in middle and eastern Spain
to adhere anew to Sertorius.

Victories of Metellus

Meanwhile Metellus fought with better fortune.  In a sharp
engagement at Italica (not far from Seville), which Hirtuleius had
imprudently risked, and in which both generals fought hand to hand
and Hirtuleius was wounded, Metellus defeated him and compelled him
to evacuate the Roman territory proper, and to throw himself
into Lusitania.  This victory permitted Metellus to unite with Pompeius.
The two generals took up their winter-quarters in 678-79
at the Pyrenees, and in the next campaign in 679 they resolved
to make a joint attack on the enemy in his position near Valentia.
But while Metellus was advancing, Pompeius offered battle beforehand
to the main army of the enemy, with a view to wipe out the stain
of Lauro and to gain the expected laurels, if possible, alone.
With joy Sertorius embraced the opportunity of fighting with Pompeius
before Metellus arrived.

Battle on the Sucro

The armies met on the river Sucro (Xucar): after a sharp conflict
Pompeius was beaten on the right wing, and was himself carried
from the field severely wounded.  Afranius no doubt conquered
with the left and took the camp of the Sertorians, but during its pillage
he was suddenly assailed by Sertorius and compelled also to give way.
Had Sertorius been able to renew the battle on the following
day, the army of Pompeius would perhaps have been annihilated.
But meanwhile Metellus had come up, had overthrown the corps
of Perpenna ranged against him, and taken his camp: it was not
possible to resume the battle against the two armies united.  The
successes of Metellus, the junction of the hostile forces, the
sudden stagnation after the victory, diffused terror among the
Sertorians; and, as not unfrequently happened with Spanish armies,
in consequence of this turn of things the greater portion
of the Sertorian soldiers dispersed.  But the despondency passed away
as quickly as it had come; the white fawn, which represented
in the eyes of the multitude the military plans of the general,
was soon more popular than ever; in a short time Sertorius appeared
with a new army confronting the Romans in the level country
to the south of Saguntum (Murviedro), which firmly adhered to Rome,
while the Sertorian privateers impeded the Roman supplies by sea,
and scarcity was already making itself felt in the Roman camp.
Another battle took place in the plains of the river Turia
(Guadalaviar), and the struggle was long undecided.  Pompeius
with the cavalry was defeated by Sertorius, and his brother-in-law
and quaestor, the brave Lucius Memmius, was slain; on the other hand
Metellus vanquished Perpenna, and victoriously repelled the attack
of the enemy's main army directed against him, receiving himself
a wound in the conflict.  Once more the Sertorian army dispersed.
Valentia, which Gaius Herennius held for Sertorius, was taken
and razed to the ground.  The Romans, probably for a moment,
cherished a hope that they were done with their tough antagonist.
The Sertorian army had disappeared; the Roman troops, penetrating
far into the interior, besieged the general himself in the fortress
Clunia on the upper Douro.  But while they vainly invested
this rocky stronghold, the contingents of the insurgent communities
assembled elsewhere; Sertorius stole out of the fortress and even
before the expiry of the year stood once more as general
at the head of an army.

Again the Roman generals had to take up their winter quarters
with the cheerless prospect of an inevitable renewal of their Sisyphean
war-toils.  It was not even possible to choose quarters in the region
of Valentia, so important on account of the communication with Italy
and the east, but fearfully devastated by friend and foe;
Pompeius led his troops first into the territory of the Vascones(22)
(Biscay) and then spent the winter in the territory of the Vaccaei
(about Valladolid), and Metellus even in Gaul.

Indefinite and Perilous Character of the Sertorian War

For five years the Sertorian war thus continued, and still
there seemed no prospect of its termination.  The state suffered
from it beyond description.  The flower of the Italian youth perished
amid the exhausting fatigues of these campaigns.  The public treasury
was not only deprived of the Spanish revenues, but had annually
to send to Spain for the pay and maintenance of the Spanish armies
very considerable sums, which the government hardly knew how
to raise.  Spain was devastated and impoverished, and the Roman
civilization, which unfolded so fair a promise there, received
a severe shock; as was naturally to be expected in the case
ofan insurrectionary war waged with so much bitterness,
and but too often occasioning the destruction of whole communities.
Even the towns which adhered to the dominant party in Rome had countless
hardships to endure; those situated on the coast had to be provided
with necessaries by the Roman fleet, and the situation of the faithful
communities in the interior was almost desperate.  Gaul suffered
hardly less, partly from the requisitions for contingents
of infantry and cavalry, for grain and money, partly
from the oppressive burden of the winter-quarters, which rose
to an intolerable degree in consequence of the bad harvest of 680;
almost all the local treasuries were compelled to betake themselves
to the Roman bankers, and to burden themselves with a crushing load
of debt.  Generals and soldiers carried on the war with reluctance.
The generals had encountered an opponent far superior in talent,
a tough and protracted resistance, a warfare of very serious perils
and of successes difficult to be attained and far from brilliant;
it was asserted that Pompeius was scheming to get himself recalled
from Spain and entrusted with a more desirable command somewhere
else.  The soldiers, too, found little satisfaction in a campaign
in which not only was there nothing to be got save hard blows
and worthless booty, but their very pay was doled out to them
with extreme irregularity.  Pompeius reported to the senate, at the end
of 679, that the pay was two years in arrear, and that the army
was threatening to break up.  The Roman government might certainly
have obviated a considerable portion of these evils, if they could have
prevailed on themselves to carry on the Spanish war with less
remissness, to say nothing of better will.  In the main, however,
it was neither their fault nor the fault of their generals
that a genius so superior as that of Sertorius was able to carry on
this petty warfare year after year, despite of all numerical
and military superiority, on ground so thoroughly favourable
to insurrectionary and piratical warfare.  So little could its end
be foreseen, that the Sertorian insurrection seemed rather
as if it would become intermingled with other contemporary revolts
and thereby add to its dangerous character.  Just at that time
the Romans were contending on every sea with piratical fleets,
in Italy with the revolted slaves, in Macedonia with the tribes
on the lower Danube; and in the east Mithradates, partly induced
by the successes of the Spanish insurrection, resolved once more
to try the fortune of arms.  That Sertorius had formed connections
with the Italian and Macedonian enemies of Rome, cannot be distinctly
affirmed, although he certainly was in constant intercourse
with the Marians in Italy.  With the pirates, on the other hand,
he had previously formed an avowed league, and with the Pontic king--
with whom he had long maintained relations through the medium
of the Roman emigrants staying at his court--he now concluded
a formal treaty of alliance, in which Sertorius ceded to the king
the client-states of Asia Minor, but not the Roman province of Asia,
and promised, moreover, to send him an officer qualified to lead
his troops, and a number of soldiers, while the king, in turn,
bound himself to transmit to Sertorius forty ships and 3000 talents
(720,000 pounds).  The wise politicians in the capital were already
recalling the time when Italy found itself threatened by Philip
from the east and by Hannibal from the west; they conceived
that the new Hannibal, just like his predecessor, after having
by himself subdued Spain, could easily arrive with the forces
of Spain in Italy sooner than Pompeius, in order that,
like the Phoenician formerly, he might summon the Etruscans
and Samnites to arms against Rome.

Collapse of the Power of Sertorius

But this comparison was more ingenious than accurate.  Sertorius
was far from being strong enough to renew the gigantic enterprise
of Hannibal.  He was lost if he left Spain, where all his successes
were bound up with the peculiarities of the country and the people;
and even there he was more and more compelled to renounce
the offensive.  His admirable skill as a leader could not change
the nature of his troops.  The Spanish militia retained its character,
untrustworthy as the wave or the wind; now collected in masses
to the number of 150,000, now melting away again to a mere handful.
The Roman emigrants, likewise, continued insubordinate, arrogant,
and stubborn.  Those kinds of armed force which require that a corps
should keep together for a considerable time, such as cavalry
especially, were of course very inadequately represented
in his army.  The war gradually swept off his ablest officers
and the flower of his veterans; and even the most trustworthy
communities, weary of being harassed by the Romans and maltreated
by the Sertorian officers, began to show signs of impatience
and wavering allegiance.  It is remarkable that Sertorius,
in this respect also like Hannibal, never deceived himself
as to the hopelessness of his position; he allowed no opportunity
for bringing about a compromise to pass, and would have been ready
at any moment to lay down his staff of command on the assurance
of being allowed to live peacefully in his native land.
But political orthodoxy knows nothing of compromise and conciliation.
Sertorius might not recede or step aside; he was compelled inevitably
to move on along the path which he had once entered, however narrow
and giddy it might become.

The representations which Pompeius addressed to Rome, and which
derived emphasis from the behaviour of Mithradates in the east,
were successful.  He had the necessary supplies of money sent
to him by the senate and was reinforced by two fresh legions.
Thus the two generals went to work again in the spring of 680
and once more crossed the Ebro.  Eastern Spain was wrested
from the Sertorians in consequence of the battles on the Xucar
and Guadalaviar; the struggle thenceforth became concentrated
on the upper and middle Ebro around the chief strongholds
of the Sertorians--Calagurris, Osca, Ilerda.  As Metellus had done
best in the earlier campaigns, so too on this occasion he gained
the most important successes.  His old opponent Hirtuleius, who again
confronted him, was completely defeated and fell himself along with
his brother--an irreparable loss for the Sertorians.  Sertorius,
whom the unfortunate news reached just as he was on the point
of assailing the enemy opposed to him, cut down the messenger,
that the tidings might not discourage his troops; but the news
could not be long concealed.  One town after another surrendered,
Metellus occupied the Celtiberian towns of Segobriga (between Toledo
and Cuenca) and Bilbilis (near Calatayud).  Pompeius besieged
Pallantia (Palencia above Valladolid), but Sertorius relieved it,
and compelled Pompeius to fall back upon Metellus; in front
of Calagurris (Calahorra, on the upper Ebro), into which Sertorius
had thrown himself, they both suffered severe losses.  Nevertheless,
when they went into winter-quarters--Pompeius to Gaul, Metellus
to his own province--they were able to look back on considerable
results; a great portion of the insurgents had submitted or had
been subdued by arms.

In a similar way the campaign of the following year (681) ran
its course; in this case it was especially Pompeius who slowly
but steadily restricted the field of the insurrection.

Internal Dissension among the Sertorians

The discomfiture sustained by the arms of the insurgents failed
not to react on the tone of feeling in their camp.  The military
successes of Sertorius became like those of Hannibal, of necessity
less and less considerable; people began to call in question
his military talent: he was no longer, it was alleged,
what he had been; he spent the day in feasting or over his cups,
and squandered money as well as time.  The number of the deserters,
and of communities falling away, increased.  Soon projects formed
by the Roman emigrants against the life of the general were reported
to him; they sounded credible enough, especially as various officers
of the insurgent army, and Perpenna in particular, had submitted
with reluctance to the supremacy of Sertorius, and the Roman
governors had for long promised amnesty and a high reward to any
one who should kill him.  Sertorius, on hearing such allegations,
withdrew the charge of guarding his person from the Roman soldiers
and entrusted it to select Spaniards.  Against the suspected
themselves he proceeded with fearful but necessary severity,
and condemned various of the accused to death without resorting,
as in other cases, to the advice of his council; he was now
more dangerous--it was thereupon affirmed in the circles
of the malcontents--to his friends than to his foes.

Assassination of Sertorius

A second conspiracy was soon discovered, which had its seat
in his own staff; whoever was denounced had to take flight or die;
but all were not betrayed, and the remaining conspirators,
including especially Perpenna, found in the circumstances only
a new incentive to make haste.  They were in the headquarters
at Osca.  There, on the instigation of Perpenna, a brilliant victory
was reported to the general as having been achieved by his troops;
and at the festal banquet arranged by Perpenna to celebrate
this victory Sertorius accordingly appeared, attended, as was his wont,
by his Spanish retinue.  Contrary to former custom in the Sertorian
headquarters, the feast soon became a revel; wild words passed
at table, and it seemed as if some of the guests sought opportunity
to begin an altercation.  Sertorius threw himself back on his couch,
and seemed desirous not to hear the disturbance.  Then a wine-cup
was dashed on the floor; Perpenna had given the concerted sign.
Marcus Antonius, Sertorius' neighbour at table, dealt the first
blow against him, and when Sertorius turned round and attempted
to rise, the assassin flung himself upon him and held him down
till the other guests at table, all of them implicated
in the conspiracy, threw themselves on the struggling pair,
and stabbed he defenceless general while his arms were pinioned (682).
With him died his faithful attendants.  So ended one of the greatest
men, if not the very greatest man, that Rome had hitherto produced--
a man who under more fortunate circumstances would perhaps
have become the regenerator of his country--by the treason
of the wretched band of emigrants whom he was condemned to lead against
his native land.  History loves not the Coriolani; nor has she made
any exception even in the case of this the most magnanimous,
most gifted, most deserving to be regretted of them all.

Perpenna Succeeds Sertorius

The murderers thought to succeed to the heritage of the murdered.
After the death of Sertorius, Perpenna, as the highest among
the Roman officers of the Spanish army, laid claim to the chief
command.  The army submitted, but with mistrust and reluctance.
However men had murmured against Sertorius in his lifetime, death
reinstated the hero in his rights, and vehement was the indignation
of the soldiers when, on the publication of his testament, the name
of Perpenna was read forth among the heirs.  A part of the soldiers,
especially the Lusitanians, dispersed; the remainder had a presentiment
that with the death of Sertorius their spirit and their
fortune had departed.

Pompeius Puts an End to the Insurrection

Accordingly, at the first encounter with Pompeius, the wretchedly
led and despondent ranks of the insurgents were utterly broken,
and Perpenna, among other officers, was taken prisoner.  The wretch
sought to purchase his life by delivering up the correspondence
of Sertorius, which would have compromised numerous men of standing
in Italy; but Pompeius ordered the papers to be burnt unread,
and handed him, as well as the other chiefs of the insurgents,
overto the executioner.  The emigrants who had escaped dispersed;
and most of them went into the Mauretanian deserts or joined the pirates.
Soon afterwards the Plotian law, which was zealously supported
by the young Caesar in particular, opened up to a portion of them
the opportunity of returning home; but all those who had taken part
in the murder of Sertorius, with but a single exception, died
a violent death.  Osca, and most of the towns which had still adhered
to Sertorius in Hither Spain, now voluntarily opened their gates
to Pompeius; Uxama (Osma), Clunia, and Calagurris alone had to be
reduced by force.  The two provinces were regulated anew;
in the Further province, Metellus raised the annual tribute
of the most guilty communities; in the Hither, Pompeius dispensed
reward and punishment: Calagurris, for example, lost its independence
and was placed under Osca.  A band of Sertorian soldiers, which had
collected in the Pyrenees, was induced by Pompeius to surrender,
and was settled by him to the north of the Pyrenees near Lugudunum
(St.  Bertrand, in the department Haute-Garonne), as the community
of the "congregated" (-convenae-).  The Roman emblems of victory
were erected at the summit of the pass of the Pyrenees;
at the close of 683, Metellus and Pompeius marched with their armies
through the streets of the capital, to present the thanks
of the nation to Father Jovis at the Capitol for the conquest
of the Spaniards.  The good fortune of Sulla seemed still to be
with his creation after he had been laid in the grave, and to protect it
better than the incapable and negligent watchmen appointed to guard
it.  The opposition in Italy had broken down from the incapacity
and precipitation of its leader, and that of the emigrants
from dissension within their own ranks.  These defeats,
although far more the result of their own perverseness and discordance
than of the exertions of their opponents, were yet so many victories
for the oligarchy.  The curule chairs were rendered once more secure.




CHAPTER II

Rule of the Sullan Restoration

External Relations

When the suppression of the Cinnan revolution, which threatened
the very existence of the senate, rendered it possible for the restored
senatorial government to devote once more the requisite attention
to the internal and external security of the empire, there emerged
affairs enough, the settlement of which could not be postponed
without injuring the most important interests and allowing
present inconveniences to grow into future dangers.  Apart from
the very serious complications in Spain, it was absolutely necessary
effectually to check the barbarians in Thrace and the regions
of the Danube, whom Sulla on his march through Macedonia had only
been able superficially to chastise,(1) and to regulate, by military
intervention, the disorderly state of things along the northern
frontier of the Greek peninsula; thoroughly to suppress
the bands of pirates infesting the seas everywhere, but especially
the eastern waters; and lastly to introduce better order
into the unsettled relations of Asia Minor.  The peace which Sulla
had concluded in 670 with Mithradates, king of Pontus,(2)
and of which the treaty with Murena in 673(3) was essentially
a repetition, bore throughout the stamp of a provisional arrangement
to meet the exigencies of the moment; and the relations of the Romans
with Tigranes, king of Armenia, with whom they had de facto waged war,
remained wholly untouched in this peace.  Tigranes had with right
regarded this as a tacit permission to bring the Roman possessions
in Asia under his power.  If these were not to be abandoned, it
was necessary to come to terms amicably or by force with the new
great-king of Asia.

In the preceding chapter we have described the movements
in Italy and Spain connected with the proceedings of the democracy,
and their subjugation by the senatorial government.  In the present
chapter we shall review the external government, as the authorities
installed by Sulla conducted or failed to conduct it.

Dalmato-Macedonian Expeditions

We still recognize the vigorous hand of Sulla in the energetic measures
which, in the last period of his regency, the senate adopted almost
simultaneously against the Sertorians, the Dalmatians and Thracians,
and the Cilician pirates.

The expedition to the Graeco-Illyrian peninsula was designed partly
to reduce to subjection or at least to tame the barbarous tribes
who ranged over the whole interior from the Black Sea to the Adriatic,
and of whom the Bessi (in the great Balkan) especially were,
as it was then said, notorious as robbers even among a race
of robbers; partly to destroy the corsairs in their haunts,
especially along the Dalmatian coast.  As usual, the attack took
place simultaneously from Dalmatia and from Macedonia, in which
province an army of five legions was assembled for the purpose.
In Dalmatia the former praetor Gaius Cosconius held the command,
marched through the country in all directions, and took by storm
the fortress of Salona after a two years' siege.  In Macedonia
the proconsul Appius Claudius (676-678) first attempted along
the Macedono-Thracian frontier to make himself master of the mountain
districts on the left bank of the Karasu.  On both sides the war
was conducted with savage ferocity; the Thracians destroyed
the townships which they took and massacred their captives,
and the Romans returned like for like.  But no results of importance
were attained; the toilsome marches and the constant conflicts
with the numerous and brave inhabitants of the mountains decimated
the army to no purpose; the general himself sickened and died.
His successor, Gaius Scribonius Curio (679-681), was induced
by various obstacles, and particularly by a not inconsiderable
military revolt, to desist from the difficult expedition
against the Thracians, and to turn himself instead to the northern
frontier of Macedonia, where he subdued the weaker Dardani (in Servia)
and reached as far as the Danube.  The brave and able Marcus Lucullus
(682, 683) was the first who again advanced eastward, defeated the Bessi
in their mountains, took their capital Uscudama (Adrianople),
and compelled them to submit to the Roman supremacy.  Sadalas king
of the Odrysians, and the Greek towns on the east coast to the north
and south of the Balkan chain--Istropolis, Tomi, Callatis,
Odessus (near Varna), Mesembria, and others--became dependent
on the Romans.  Thrace, of which the Romans had hitherto held little
more than the Attalic possessions on the Chersonese, now became
a portion--though far from obedient--of the province of Macedonia.

Piracy

But the predatory raids of the Thracians and Dardani, confined
as they were to a small part of the empire, were far less injurious
to the state and to individuals than the evil of piracy,
which was continually spreading farther and acquiring
more solid organization.  The commerce of the whole Mediterranean
was in its power.  Italy could neither export its products nor import
grain from the provinces; in the former the people were starving,
in the latter the cultivation of the corn-fields ceased for want
of a vent for the produce.  No consignment of money, no traveller
was longer safe: the public treasury suffered most serious losses;
a great many Romans of standing were captured by the corsairs,
and compelled to pay heavy sums for their ransom, if it was not even
the pleasure of the pirates to execute on individuals the sentence
of death, which in that case was seasoned with a savage humour.
The merchants, and even the divisions of Roman troops destined
for the east, began to postpone their voyages chiefly to the unfavourable
season of the year, and to be less afraid of the winter storms
than of the piratical vessels, which indeed even at this season
did not wholly disappear from the sea.  But severely as the closing
of the sea was felt, it was more tolerable than the raids
made on the islands and coasts of Greece and Asia Minor.
Just as afterwards in the time of the Normans, piratical squadrons
ran up to the maritime towns, and either compelled them to buy
themselves off with large sums, or besieged and took them by storm.
When Samothrace, Clazomenae, Samos, Iassus were pillaged
by the pirates (670) under the eyes of Sulla after peace was concluded
with Mithradates, we may conceive how matters went where neither
a Roman army nor a Roman fleet was at hand.  All the old rich temples
along the coasts of Greece and Asia Minor were plundered
one after another; from Samothrace alone a treasure of 1000 talents
(240,000 pounds) is said to have been carried off.  Apollo, according
to a Roman poet of this period, was so impoverished by the pirates that,
when the swallow paid him a visit, he could no longer produce
to it out of all his treasures even a drachm of gold.  More than four
hundred townships were enumerated as having been taken or laid
under contribution by the pirates, including cities like Cnidus,
Samos, Colophon; from not a few places on islands or the coast,
which were previously flourishing, the whole population migrated,
that they might not be carried off by the pirates.  Even inland
districts were no longer safe from their attacks; there were instances
of their assailing townships distant one or two days' march
from the coast.  The fearful debt, under which subsequently
all the communities of the Greek east succumbed, proceeded
in great part from these fatal times.

Organization of Piracy

Piracy had totally changed its character.  The pirates
were no longer bold freebooters, who levied their tribute
from the large Italo-Oriental traffic in slaves and luxuries,
as it passed through the Cretan waters between Cyrene
and the Peloponnesus--in the language of the pirates the "golden sea";
no longer even armed slave-catchers, who prosecuted "war, trade,
and piracy" equally side by side; they formed now a piratical state,
with a peculiar esprit de corps, with a solid and very respectable
organization, with a home of their own and the germs of a symmachy,
and doubtless also with definite political designs.  The pirates
called themselves Cilicians; in fact their vessels were the rendezvous
of desperadoes and adventurers from all countries--discharged
mercenaries from the recruiting-grounds of Crete, burgesses
from the destroyed townships of Italy, Spain, and Asia, soldiers
and officers from the armies of Fimbria and Sertorius, in a word
the ruined men of all nations, the hunted refugees of all vanquished
parties, every one that was wretched and daring--and where was there not
misery and outrage in this unhappy age? It was no longer
a gang of robbers who had flocked together, but a compact soldier-
state, in which the freemasonry of exile and crime took the place
of nationality, and within which crime redeemed itself, as it so often
does in its own eyes, by displaying the most generous public spirit.
In an abandoned age, when cowardice and insubordination
had relaxed all the bonds of social order, the legitimate commonwealths
might have taken a pattern from this state--the mongrel offspring
of distress and violence--within which alone the inviolable
determination to stand side by side, the sense of comradeship,
respect for the pledged word and the self-chosen chiefs, valour
and adroitness seemed to have taken refuge.  If the banner of this state
was inscribed with vengeance against the civil society which,
rightly or wrongly, had ejected its members, it might be a question
whether this device was much worse than those of the Italian oligarchy
and the Oriental sultanship which seemed in the fair way of dividing
the world between them.  The corsairs at least felt themselves
on a level with any legitimate state; their robber-pride,
their robber-pomp, and their robber-humour are attested by many
a genuine pirate's tale of mad merriment and chivalrous bandittism:
they professed, and made it their boast, to live at righteous war
with all the world: what they gained in that warfare was designated
not as plunder, but as military spoil; and, while the captured corsair
was sure of the cross in every Roman seaport, they too claimed
the right of executing any of their captives.

Its Military-Political Power

Their military-political organization, especially since
the Mithradatic war, was compact.  Their ships, for the most part
-myopiarones-, that is, small open swift-sailing barks,
with a smaller proportion of biremes and triremes, now regularly sailed
associated in squadrons and under admirals, whose barges were wont
to glitter in gold and purple.  To a comrade in peril,
though he might be totally unknown, no pirate captain refused
the requested aid; an agreement concluded with any one of them
was absolutely recognized by the whole society, and any injury inflicted
on one was avenged by all.  Their true home was the sea from the pillars
of Hercules to the Syrian and Egyptian waters; the refuges
which they needed for themselves and their floating houses
on the mainland were readily furnished to them by the Mauretanian
and Dalmatian coasts, by the island of Crete, and, above all,
by the southern coast of Asia Minor, which abounded in headlands
and lurking-places, commanded the chief thoroughfare of the maritime
commerce of that age, and was virtually without a master.
The league of Lycian cities there, and the Pamphylian communities,
were of little importance; the Roman station, which had existed
in Cilicia since 652, was far from adequate to command the extensive
coast; the Syrian dominion over Cilicia had always been
but nominal, and had recently been superseded by the Armenian,
the holder of which, as a true great-king, gave himself no concern
at all about the sea and readily abandoned it to the pillage
of the Cilicians.  It was nothing wonderful, therefore,
that the corsairs flourished there as they had never done anywhere else.
Not only did they possess everywhere along the coast signal-places
and stations, but further inland--in the most remote recesses
of the impassable and mountainous interior of Lycia, Pamphylia,
and Cilicia--they had built their rock-castles, in which they concealed
their wives, children, and treasures during their own absence
at sea, and, doubtless, in times of danger found an asylum themselves.
Great numbers of such corsair-castles existed especially
in the Rough Cilicia, the forests of which at the same time furnished
the pirates with the most excellent timber for shipbuilding; and there,
accordingly, their principal dockyards and arsenals were situated.
It was not to be wondered at that this organized military state
gained a firm body of clients among the Greek maritime cities,
which were more or less left to themselves and managed their own
affairs: these cities entered into traffic with the pirates
as with a friendly power on the basis of definite treaties,
and did not comply with the summons of the Roman governors to furnish
vessels against them.  The not inconsiderable town of Side
in Pamphylia, for instance, allowed the pirates to build ships
on its quays, and to sell the free men whom they had captured
in its market.

Such a society of pirates was a political power; and as a political
power it gave itself out and was accepted from the time
when the Syrian king Tryphon first employed it as such and rested
his throne on its support.(4)  We find the pirates as allies of king
Mithradates of Pontus as well as of the Roman democratic emigrants;
we find them giving battle to the fleets of Sulla in the eastern
and in the western waters; we find individual pirate princes ruling
over a series of considerable coast towns.  We cannot tell how far
the internal political development of this floating state had
already advanced; but its arrangements undeniably contained
the germ of a sea-kingdom, which was already beginning to establish
itself, and out of which, under favourable circumstances,
a permanent state might have been developed.

Nullity of the Roman Marine Police

This state of matters clearly shows, as we have partly indicated
already,(5) how the Romans kept--or rather did not keep--order
on "their sea."  The protectorate of Rome over the provinces
consisted essentially in military guardianship; the provincials
paid tax or tribute to the Romans for their defence by sea and land,
which was concentrated in Roman hands.  But never, perhaps,
did a guardian more shamelessly defraud his ward than the Roman
oligarchy defrauded the subject communities.  Instead of Rome equipping
a general fleet for the empire and centralizing her marine police,
the senate permitted the unity of her maritime superintendence--
without which in this matter nothing could at all be done--to fall
into abeyance, and left it to each governor and each client state
to defend themselves against the pirates as each chose and was able.
Instead of Rome providing for the fleet, as she had bound herself
to do, exclusively with her own blood and treasure and with those
of the client states which had remained formally sovereign,
the senate allowed the Italian war-marine to fall into decay,
and learned to make shift with the vessels which the several
mercantile towns were required to furnish, or still more frequently
with the coast-guards everywhere organized--all the cost
and burden falling, in either case, on the subjects.  The provincials
might deem themselves fortunate, if their Roman governor applied
the requisitions which he raised for the defence of the coast
in reality solely to that object, and did not intercept them
for himself; or if they were not, as very frequently happened, called
on to pay ransom for some Roman of rank captured by the buccaneers.
Measures undertaken perhaps with judgment, such as the occupation
of Cilicia in 652, were sure to be spoilt in the execution.
Any Roman of this period, who was not wholly carried away
by the current intoxicating idea of the national greatness, must have
wished that the ships' beaks might be torn down from the orator's
platform in the Forum, that at least he might not be constantly
reminded by them of the naval victories achieved in better times.

Expedition to the South Coast of Asia Minor
Publius Servilius Isauricus
Zenicetes Vanquished
The Isaurians Subdued

Nevertheless Sulla, who in the war against Mithradates had
the opportunity of acquiring an adequate conviction of the dangers
which the neglect of the fleet involved, took various steps
seriously to check the evil.  It is true that the instructions
which he had left to the governors whom he appointed in Asia,
to equip in the maritime towns a fleet against the pirates, had borne
little fruit, for Murena preferred to begin war with Mithradates,
and Gnaeus Dolabella, the governor of Cilicia, proved wholly
incapable.  Accordingly the senate resolved in 675 to send one
of the consuls to Cilicia; the lot fell on the capable Publius
Servilius.  He defeated the piratical fleet in a bloody engagement,
and then applied himself to destroy those towns on the south coast
of Asia Minor which served them as anchorages and trading stations.
The fortresses of the powerful maritime prince Zenicetes--Olympus,
Corycus, Phaselis in eastern Lycia, Attalia in Pamphylia--
were reduced, and the prince himself met his death in the flames
of his stronghold Olympus.  A movement was next made against
the Isaurians, who in the north-west corner of the Rough Cilicia,
on the northern slope of Mount Taurus, inhabited a labyrinth
of steep mountain ridges, jagged rocks, and deeply-cut valleys,
covered with magnificent oak forests--a region which is even
at the present day filled with reminiscences of the old robber times.
To reduce these Isaurian fastnesses, the last and most secure retreats
ofthe freebooters, Servilius led the first Roman army over the Taurus,
and broke up the strongholds of the enemy, Oroanda, and above all
Isaura itself--the ideal of a robber-town, situated on the summit
of a scarcely accessible mountain-ridge, and completely overlooking
and commanding the wide plain of Iconium.  The war, not ended
till 679, from which Publius Servilius acquired for himself
and his descendants the surname of Isauricus, was not without fruit;
a great number of pirates and piratical vessels fell in consequence
of it into the power of the Romans; Lycia, Pamphylia, West Cilicia
were severely devastated, the territories of the destroyed towns
were confiscated, and the province of Cilicia was enlarged by their
addition to it.  But, in the nature of the case, piracy was far
from being suppressed by these measures; on the contrary, it simply
betook itself for the time to other regions, and particularly
to Crete, the oldest harbour for the corsairs of the Mediterranean.(6)
Nothing but repressive measures carried out on a large scale
and with unity of purpose--nothing, in fact, but the establishment
of a standing maritime police--could in such a case
afford thorough relief.

Asiatic Relations
Tigranes and the New Great-Kingdom of Armenia

The affairs of the mainland of Asia Minor were connected by various
relations with this maritime war.  The variance which existed
between Rome and the kings of Pontus and Armenia did not abate,
but increased more and more.  On the one hand Tigranes,
kingof Armenia, pursued his aggressive conquests in the most reckless
manner.  The Parthians, whose state was at this period torn
by internal dissensions and enfeebled, were by constant hostilities
driven farther and farther back into the interior of Asia.
Of the countries between Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Iran, the kingdoms
of Corduene (northern Kurdistan), and Media Atropatene (Azerbijan),
were converted from Parthian into Armenian fiefs, and the kingdom
of Nineveh (Mosul), or Adiabene, was likewise compelled, at least
temporarily, to become a dependency of Armenia.  In Mesopotamia,
too, particularly in and around Nisibis, the Armenian rule
was established; but the southern half, which was in great part desert,
seems not to have passed into the firm possession of the new great-
king, and Seleucia, on the Tigris, in particular, appears not to have
become subject to him.  The kingdom of Edessa or Osrhoene
he handed over to a tribe of wandering Arabs, which he transplanted
from southern Mesopotamia and settled in this region, with the view
of commanding by its means the passage of the Euphrates
and the great route of traffic.(7)

Cappadocia Armenian

But Tigranes by no means confined his conquests to the eastern
bank of the Euphrates.  Cappadocia especially was the object
of his attacks, and, defenceless as it was, suffered destructive
blows from its too potent neighbour.  Tigranes wrested the eastern
province Melitene from Cappadocia, and united it with the opposite
Armenian province Sophene, by which means he obtained command
of the passage of the Euphrates with the great thoroughfare
of traffic between Asia Minor and Armenia.  After the death of Sulla
the Armenians even advanced into Cappadocia proper, and carried off
to Armenia the inhabitants of the capital Mazaca (afterwards Caesarea)
and eleven other towns of Greek organization.

Syria under Tigranes

Nor could the kingdom of the Seleucids, already in full course
of dissolution, oppose greater resistance to the new great-king.
Here the south from the Egyptian frontier to Straton's Tower
(Caesarea) was under the rule of the Jewish prince Alexander Jannaeus,
who extended and strengthened his dominion step by step
in conflict with his Syrian, Egyptian, and Arabic neighbours
and with the imperial cities.  The larger towns of Syria--Gaza,
Straton's Tower, Ptolemais, Beroea--attempted to maintain themselves
on their own footing, sometimes as free communities, sometimes
under so-called tyrants; the capital, Antioch, in particular,
was virtually independent.  Damascus and the valleys of Lebanon
had submitted to the Nabataean prince, Aretas of Petra.  Lastly,
in Cilicia the pirates or the Romans bore sway.  And for this crown
breaking into a thousand fragments the Seleucid princes continued
perseveringly to quarrel with each other, as though it were their object
to make royalty a jest and an offence to all; nay more,
while this family, doomed like the house of Laius to perpetual discord,
had its own subjects all in revolt, it even raised claims to the throne
of Egypt vacant by the decease of king Alexander II without heirs.
Accordingly king Tigranes set to work there without ceremony.
Eastern Cilicia was easily subdued by him, and the citizens of Soli
and other towns were carried off, just like the Cappadocians,
to Armenia.  In like manner the province of Upper Syria,
withthe exception of the bravely-defended town of Seleucia at the mouth
of the Orontes, and the greater part of Phoenicia were reduced
by force; Ptolemais was occupied by the Armenians about 680,
and the Jewish state was already seriously threatened by them.  Antioch,
the old capital of the Seleucids, became one of the residences
of the great-king.  Already from 671, the year following the peace
between Sulla and Mithradates, Tigranes is designated
in the Syrian annals as the sovereign of the country, and Cilicia
and Syria appear as an Armenian satrapy under Magadates,
the lieutenant of the great-king.  The age of the kings of Nineveh,
ofthe Salmanezers and Sennacheribs, seemed to be renewed; again oriental
despotism pressed heavily on the trading population of the Syrian
coast, as it did formerly on Tyre and Sidon; again great states
of the interior threw themselves on the provinces along
the Mediterranean; again Asiatic hosts, said to number
half a million combatants, appeared on the Cilician and Syrian coasts.
As Salmanezer and Nebuchadnezzar had formerly carried the Jews
to Babylon, so now from all the frontier provinces of the new
kingdom--from Corduene, Adiabene, Assyria, Cilicia, Cappadocia--
the inhabitants, especially the Greek or half-Greek citizens
of the towns, were compelled to settle with their whole goods
and chattels (under penalty of the confiscation of everything
that they left behind) in the new capital, one of those gigantic cities
proclaiming rather the nothingness of the people than the greatness
of the rulers, which sprang up in the countries of the Euphrates
on every change in the supreme sovereignty at the fiat of the new
grand sultan.  The new "city of Tigranes," Tigrano-certa, founded
on the borders of Armenia and Mesopotamia, and destined
as the capital of the territories newly acquired for Armenia, became
a city like Nineveh and Babylon, with walls fifty yards high,
and the appendages of palace, garden, and park that were appropriate
to sultanism.  In other respects, too, the new great-king proved
faithful to his part.  As amidst the perpetual childhood
of the east the childlike conceptions of kings with real crowns
on their heads have never disappeared, Tigranes, when he showed
himselfin public, appeared in the state and the costume of a successor
of Darius and Xerxes, with the purple caftan, the half-white
half-purple tunic, the long plaited trousers, the high turban,
and the royal diadem--attended moreover and served in slavish fashion,
wherever he went or stood, by four "kings."

Mithradates

King Mithradates acted with greater moderation.  He refrained
from aggressions in Asia Minor, and contented himself with--
what no treaty forbade--placing his dominion along the Black Sea
ona firmer basis, and gradually bringing into more definite dependence
the regions which separated the Bosporan kingdom, now ruled
under his supremacy by his son Machares, from that of Pontus.
But he too applied every effort to render his fleet and army efficient,
and especially to arm and organize the latter after the Roman model;
in which the Roman emigrants, who sojourned in great numbers
at his court, rendered essential service.

Demeanor of the Romans in the East
Egypt not Annexed

The Romans had no desire to become further involved in Oriental
affairs than they were already.  This appears with striking
clearness in the fact, that the opportunity, which at this time
presented itself, of peacefully bringing the kingdom of Egypt
under the immediate dominion of Rome was spurned by the senate.
The legitimate descendants of Ptolemaeus son of Lagus had come
to an end, when the king installed by Sulla after the death of Ptolemaeus
Soter II Lathyrus--Alexander II, a son of Alexander I--was killed,
a few days after he had ascended the throne, on occasion of a tumult
in the capital (673).  This Alexander had in his testament(8) appointed
the Roman community his heir.  The genuineness of this document
was no doubt disputed; but the senate acknowledged it by assuming
in virtue of it the sums deposited in Tyre on account of the deceased king.
Nevertheless it allowed two notoriously illegitimate sons of king Lathyrus,
Ptolemaeus XI, who was styled the new Dionysos or the Flute-blower
(Auletes), and Ptolemaeus the Cyprian, to take practical possession
of Egypt and Cyprus respectively.  They were not indeed expressly
recognized by the senate, but no distinct summons to surrender
their kingdoms was addressed to them.  The reason why the senate allowed
this state of uncertainty to continue, and did not commit itself
to a definite renunciation of Egypt and Cyprus, was undoubtedly
the considerable rent which these kings, ruling as it were on sufferance,
regularly paid for the continuance of the uncertainty to the heads
of the Roman coteries.  But the motive for waiving that attractive
acquisition altogether was different.  Egypt, by its peculiar
position and its financial organization, placed in the hands
of any governor commanding it a pecuniary and naval power and generally
an independent authority, which were absolutely incompatible
with the suspicious and feeble government of the oligarchy:
in this point of view it was judicious to forgo the direct possession
of the country of the Nile.

Non-Intervention in Asia Minor and Syria

Less justifiable was the failure of the senate to interfere directly
in the affairs of Asia Minor and Syria.  The Roman government did not
indeed recognize the Armenian conqueror as king of Cappadocia
and Syria; but it did nothing to drive him back, although the war,
which under pressure of necessity it began in 676 against the pirates
in Cilicia, naturally suggested its interference more especially
in Syria.  In fact, by tolerating the loss of Cappadocia and Syria
without declaring war, the government abandoned not merely
those committed to its protection, but the most important
foundations of its own powerful position.  It adopted
a hazardous course, when it sacrificed the outworks of its dominion
in the Greek settlements and kingdoms on the Euphrates
and Tigris; but, when it allowed the Asiatics to establish
themselves on the Mediterranean which was the political
basis of its empire, this was not a proof of love of peace,
but a confession that the oligarchy had been rendered by the Sullan
restoration more oligarchical doubtless, but neither wiser
nor more energetic, and it was for Rome's place as a power
in the world the beginning of the end.

On the other side, too, there was no desire for war.  Tigranes
had no reason to wish it, when Rome even without war abandoned
to him all its allies.  Mithradates, who was no mere sultan and had
enjoyed opportunity enough, amidst good and bad fortune, of gaining
experience regarding friends and foes, knew very well that in a second
Roman war he would very probably stand quite as much alone
as in the first, and that he could follow no more prudent course
than to keep quiet and to strengthen his kingdom in the interior.
That he was in earnest with his peaceful declarations, he had
sufficiently proved in the conference with Murena.(9)  He continued
to avoid everything which would compel the Roman government
to abandon its passive attitude.

Apprehensions of Rome

But as the first Mithradatic war had arisen without any of the partie
properly desiring it, so now there grew out of the opposition
of interests mutual suspicion, and out of this suspicion
mutual preparations for defence; and these, by their very gravity,
ultimately led to an open breach.  That distrust of her own readiness
to fight and preparation for fighting, which had for long governed
the policy of Rome--a distrust, which the want of standing armies
and the far from exemplary character of the collegiate rule
render sufficiently intelligible--made it, as it were, an axiom
of her policy to pursue every war not merely to the vanquishing,
but to the annihilation of her opponent; in this point of view
the Romans were from the outset as little content with the peace
of Sulla, as they had formerly been with the terms which Scipio
Africanus had granted to the Carthaginians.  The apprehension often
expressed that a second attack by the Pontic king was imminent,
was in some measure justified by the singular resemblance between
the present circumstances and those which existed twelve years before.
Once more a dangerous civil war coincided with serious armaments
of Mithradates; once more the Thracians overran Macedonia,
and piratical fleets covered the Mediterranean; emissaries were coming
and going--as formerly between Mithradates and the Italians--
so now between the Roman emigrants in Spain and those at the court
of Sinope.  As early as the beginning of 677 it was declared
in the senate that the king was only waiting for the opportunity
of falling upon Roman Asia during the Italian civil war;
the Roman armies in Asia and Cilicia were reinforced
to meet possible emergencies.

Apprehensions of Mithradates
Bithynia Roman
Cyrene a Roman Province
Outbreak of the Mithradatic War

Mithradates on his part followed with growing apprehension
the development of the Roman policy.  He could not but feel
that a war between the Romans and Tigranes, however much
the feeble senate might dread it, was in the long run almost inevitable,
and that he would not be able to avoid taking part in it.  His attempt
to obtain from the Roman senate the documentary record of the terms
of peace, which was still wanting, had fallen amidst the disturbances
attending the revolution of Lepidus and remained without result;
Mithradates found in this an indication of the impending renewal
of the conflict.  The expedition against the pirates, which indirectly
concerned also the kings of the east whose allies they were,
seemed the preliminary to such a war.  Still more suspicious
were the claims which Rome held in suspense over Egypt and Cyprus:
it is significant that the king of Pontus betrothed his two daughters
Mithradatis and Nyssa to the two Ptolemies, to whom the senate
continued to refuse recognition.  The emigrants urged him
to strike: the position of Sertorius in Spain, as to which Mithradates
despatched envoys under convenient pretexts to the headquarters
of Pompeius to obtain information, and which was about this very time
really imposing, opened up to the king the prospect of fighting
not, as in the first Roman war, against both the Roman parties,
but in concert with the one against the other.  A more favourable
moment could hardly be hoped for, and after all it was always
better to declare war than to let it be declared against him.
In 679 Nicomedes III Philopator king of Bithynia, died, and as
the last of his race--for a son borne by Nysa was, or was said
to be, illegitimate--left his kingdom by testament to the Romans,
who delayed not to take possession of this region bordering
on the Roman province and long ago filled with Roman officials
and merchants.  At the same time Cyrene, which had been already
bequeathed to the Romans in 658,(10) was at length constituted
a province, and a Roman governor was sent thither (679).  These
measures, in connection with the attacks carried out about
the same time against the pirates on the south coast of Asia Minor,
must have excited apprehensions in the king; the annexation of Bithynia
in particular made the Romans immediate neighbours of the Pontic
kingdom; and this, it may be presumed, turned the scale.  The king
took the decisive step and declared war against the Romans
in the winter of 679-680.

Preparations of Mithradates

Gladly would Mithradates have avoided undertaking so arduous a work
singlehanded.  His nearest and natural ally was the great-king
Tigranes; but that shortsighted man declined the proposal of his
father-in-law.  So there remained only the insurgents and the pirates.
Mithradates was careful to place himself in communication
with both, by despatching strong squadrons to Spain and to Crete.
A formal treaty was concluded with Sertorius,(11) by which Rome
ceded to the king Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Galatia, and Cappadocia--
all of them, it is true, acquisitions which needed to be ratified
on the field of battle.  More important was the support
which the Spanish general gave to the king, by sending Roman officers
to lead his armies and fleets.  The most active of the emigrants
inthe east, Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, were appointed by Sertorius
as his representatives at the court of Sinope.  From the pirates
also came help; they flocked largely to the kingdom of Pontus,
and by their means especially the king seems to have succeeded
in forming a naval force imposing by the number as well as
by the quality of the ships.  His main support still lay in his
own forces, with which the king hoped, before the Romans should arrive
in Asia, to make himself master of their possessions there;
especially as the financial distress produced in the province
of Asia by the Sullan war-tribute, the aversion of Bithynia towards
the new Roman government, and the elements of combustion left
behind by the desolating war recently brought to a close in Cilicia
and Pamphylia, opened up favourable prospects to a Pontic invasion.
There was no lack of stores; 2,000,000 -medimni- of grain lay
in the royal granaries.  The fleet and the men were numerous and well
exercised, particularly the Bastarnian mercenaries, a select corps
which was a match even for Italian legionaries.  On this occasion
also it was the king who took the offensive.  A corps under Diophantus
advanced into Cappadocia, to occupy the fortresses there
and to close the way to the kingdom of Pontus against the Romans;
the leader sent by Sertorius, the propraetor Marcus Marius,
went in company with the Pontic officer Eumachus to Phrygia, with a view
to rouse the Roman province and the Taurus mountains to revolt;
the main army, above 100,000 men with 16,000 cavalry and 100
scythe-chariots, led by Taxiles and Hermocrates under the personal
superintendence of the king, and the war-fleet of 400 sail
commanded by Aristonicus, moved along the north coast of Asia Minor
to occupy Paphlagonia and Bithynia.

Roman Preparations

On the Roman side there was selected for the conduct of the war
in the first rank the consul of 680, Lucius Lucullus, who as governor
of Asia and Cilicia was placed at the head of the four legions
stationed in Asia Minor and of a fifth brought by him from Italy,
and was directed to penetrate with this army, amounting to 30,000
infantry and 1600 cavalry, through Phrygia into the kingdom
of Pontus.  His colleague Marcus Cotta proceeded with the fleet
and another Roman corps to the Propontis, to cover Asia and Bithynia.
Lastly, a general arming of the coasts and particularly
of the Thracian coast more immediately threatened by the Pontic fleet,
was enjoined; and the task of clearing all the seas and coasts
from the pirates and their Pontic allies was, by extraordinary decree,
entrusted to a single magistrate, the choice falling on the praetor
Marcus Antonius, the son of the man who thirty years before had
first chastised the Cilician corsairs.(12)  Moreover, the senate
placed at the disposal of Lucullus a sum of 72,000,000 sesterces
(700,000 pounds), in order to build a fleet; which, however,
Lucullus declined.  From all this we see that the Roman government
recognized the root of the evil in the neglect of their marine,
and showed earnestness in the matter at least so far as
their decrees reached.

Beginning of the War

Thus the war began in 680 at all points.  It was a misfortune
for Mithradates, that at the very moment of his declaring war
the Sertorian struggle reached its crisis, by which one of his
principal hopes was from the outset destroyed, and the Roman
government was enabled to apply its whole power to the maritime
and Asiatic contest.  In Asia Minor on the other hand Mithradates
reaped the advantages of the offensive, and of the great distance
of the Romans from the immediate seat of war.  A considerable
number of cities in Asia Minor opened their gates to the Sertorian
propraetor who was placed at the head of the Roman province,
and they massacred, as in 666, the Roman families settled among them:
the Pisidians, Isaurians, and Cilicians took up arms against Rome.
The Romans for the moment had no troops at the points threatened.
Individual energetic men attempted no doubt at their own hand
to check this mutiny of the provincials; thus on receiving accounts
of these events the young Gaius Caesar left Rhodes where he was staying
on account of his studies, and with a hastily-collected
band opposed himself to the insurgents; but not much could be
effected by such volunteer corps.  Had not Deiotarus, the brave
tetrarch of the Tolistobogii--a Celtic tribe settled around
Pessinus--embraced the side of the Romans and fought with success
against the Pontic generals, Lucullus would have had to begin with
recapturing the interior of the Roman province from the enemy.
But even as it was, he lost in pacifying the province and driving
back the enemy precious time, for which the slight successes
achieved by his cavalry were far from affording compensation.
Still more unfavourable than in Phrygia was the aspect of things
for the Romans on the north coast of Asia Minor.  Here the great
Pontic army and the fleet had completely mastered Bithynia,
and compelled the Roman consul Cotta to take shelter with his
far from numerous force and his ships within the walls
and port of Chalcedon, where Mithradates kept them blockaded.

The Romans Defeated at Chalcedon

This blockade, however, was so far a favourable event
for the Romans, as, if Cotta detained the Pontic army before Chalcedon
and Lucullus proceeded also thither, the whole Roman forces might unite
at Chalcedon and compel the decision of arms there rather than
in the distant and impassable region of Pontus.  Lucullus did take
the route for Chalcedon; but Cotta, with the view of executing a great
feat at his own hand before the arrival of his colleague, ordered
his admiral Publius Rutilius Nudus to make a sally, which not only
ended in a bloody defeat of the Romans, but also enabled the Pontic
force to attack the harbour, to break the chain which closed it,
and to burn all the Roman vessels of war which were there, nearly
seventy in number.  On the news of these misfortunes reaching
Lucullus at the river Sangarius, he accelerated his march
to the great discontent of his soldiers, in whose opinion Cotta
was of no moment, and who would far rather have plundered an undefended
country than have taught their comrades to conquer.  His arrival
made up in part for the misfortunes sustained: the king raised
the siege of Chalcedon, but did not retreat to Pontus; he went
southward into the old Roman province, where he spread his army
along the Propontis and the Hellespont, occupied Lampsacus,
and began to besiege the large and wealthy town of Cyzicus.
He thus entangled himself more and more deeply in the blind alley
which he had chosen to enter, instead of--which alone promised success
for him--bringing the wide distances into play against the Romans.

Mithradates Besieges Cyzicus

In few places had the old Hellenic adroitness and aptitude
preserved themselves so pure as in Cyzicus; its citizens, although
they had suffered great loss of ships and men in the unfortunate
double battle of Chalcedon, made the most resolute resistance.
Cyzicus lay on an island directly opposite the mainland
and connected with it by a bridge.  The besiegers possessed themselves
not only of the line of heights on the mainland terminating at the bridge
and of the suburb situated there, but also of the celebrated
Dindymene heights on the island itself; and alike on the mainland
and on the island the Greek engineers put forth all their art
to pave the way for an assault.  But the breach which they at length
made was closed again during the night by the besieged,
and the exertions of the royal army remained as fruitless as did
the barbarous threat of the king to put to death the captured Cyzicenes
before the walls, if the citizens still refused to surrender.
The Cyzicenes continued the defence with courage and success;
they fell little short of capturing the king himself
in the course of the siege.

Destruction of the Pontic Army

Meanwhile Lucullus had possessed himself of a very strong position
in rear of the Pontic army, which, although not permitting him
directly to relieve the hard-pressed city, gave him the means
of cutting off all supplies by land from the enemy.  Thus the enormous
army of Mithradates, estimated with the camp-followers at 300,000
persons, was not in a position either to fight or to march, firmly
wedged in between the impregnable city and the immoveable Roman
army, and dependent for all its supplies solely on the sea,
which fortunately for the Pontic troops was exclusively commanded
by their fleet.  But the bad season set in; a storm destroyed a great
part of the siege-works; the scarcity of provisions and above all
of fodder for the horses began to become intolerable.  The beasts
of burden and the baggage were sent off under convoy of the greater
portion of the Pontic cavalry, with orders to steal away or break
through at any cost; but at the river Rhyndacus, to the east
of Cyzicus, Lucullus overtook them and cut to pieces the whole body.
Another division of cavalry under Metrophanes and Lucius Fannius
was obliged, after wandering long in the west of Asia Minor,
to return to the camp before Cyzicus.  Famine and disease made
fearful ravages in the Pontic ranks.  When spring came on (681),
the besieged redoubled their exertions and took the trenches
constructed on Dindymon: nothing remained for the king but to raise
the siege and with the aid of his fleet to save what he could.
He went in person with the fleet to the Hellespont, but suffered
considerable loss partly at its departure, partly through storms
on the voyage.  The land army under Hermaeus and Marius likewise
set out thither, with the view of embarking at Lampsacus
under the protection of its walls.  They left behind their baggage
as well as the sick and wounded, who were all put to death
by the exasperated Cyzicenes.  Lucullus inflicted on them
very considerable loss by the way at the passage of the rivers
Aesepus and Granicus; but they attained their object.  The Pontic ships
carried off the remains of the great army and the citizens of Lampsacus
themselves beyond the reach of the Romans.

Maritime War
Mithradates Driven Back to Pontus

The consistent and discreet conduct of the war by Lucullus
had not only repaired the errors of his colleague, but had also
destroyed without a pitched battle the flower of the enemy's army--
it was said 200,000 soldiers.  Had he still possessed the fleet
which was burnt in the harbour of Chalcedon, he would have annihilated
the whole army of his opponent.  As it was, the work of destruction
continued incomplete; and while he was obliged to remain passive,
the Pontic fleet notwithstanding the disaster of Cyzicus took
its station in the Propontis, Perinthus and Byzantium were blockaded
by it on the European coast and Priapus pillaged on the Asiatic,
and the headquarters of the king were established in the Bithynian port
of Nicomedia.  In fact a select squadron of fifty sail,
which carried 10,000 select troops including Marcus Marius
and the flower of the Roman emigrants, sailed forth even into the Aegean;
the report went that it was destined to effect a landing in Italy
and there rekindle the civil war.  But the ships, which Lucullus
after the disaster off Chalcedon had demanded from the Asiatic
communities, began to appear, and a squadron ran forth in pursuit
of the enemy's fleet which had gone into the Aegean.  Lucullus himself,
 experienced as an admiral,(13) took the command.  Thirteen quinqueremes
of the enemy on their voyage to Lemnos, under Isidorus, were assailed
and sunk off the Achaean harbour in the waters between the Trojan coast
and the island of Tenedos.  At the small island of Neae, between Lemnos
and Scyros, at which little-frequented point the Pontic flotilla
of thirty-two sail lay drawn up on the shore, Lucullus found it,
immediately attacked the ships and the crews scattered over the island,
and possessed himself of the whole squadron.  Here Marcus Marius
and the ablest of the Roman emigrants met their death, either in conflict
or subsequently by the axe of the executioner.  The whole Aegean fleet
of the enemy was annihilated by Lucullus.  The war in Bithynia
was meanwhile continued by Cotta and by the legates of Lucullus,
Voconius, Gaius Valerius Triarius, and Barba, with the land army
reinforced by fresh arrivals from Italy, and a squadron collected
in Asia.  Barba captured in the interior Prusias on Olympus and Nicaea
while Triarius along the coast captured Apamea (formerly Myrlea)
and Prusias on the sea (formerly Cius).  They then united for a joint
attack on Mithradates himself in Nicomedia; but the king without
even attempting battle escaped to his ships and sailed homeward,
and in this he was successful only because the Roman admiral Voconius,
who was entrusted with the blockade of the port of Nicomedia,
arrived too late.  On the voyage the important Heraclea was indeed
betrayed to the king and occupied by him; but a storm in these waters
sank more than sixty of, his ships and dispersed the rest; the king
arrived almost alone at Sinope.  The offensive on the part of Mithradates
ended in a complete defeat--not at all honourable, least of all
for the supreme leader--of the Pontic forces by land and sea.

Invasion of Pontus by Lucullus

Lucullus now in turn proceeded to the aggressive.  Triarius
received the command of the fleet, with orders first of all
to blockade the Hellespont and lie in wait for the Pontic ships
returning from Crete and Spain; Cotta was charged with the siege
of Heraclea; the difficult task of providing supplies
was entrusted to the faithful and active princes of the Galatians
and to Ariobarzanes king of Cappadocia; Lucullus himself advanced
in the autumn of 681 into the favoured land of Pontus, which had long
been untrodden by an enemy.  Mithradates, now resolved to maintain
the strictest defensive, retired without giving battle from Sinope
to Amisus, and from Amisus to Cabira (afterwards Neocaesarea,
now Niksar) on the Lycus, a tributary of the Iris; he contented
himself with drawing the enemy after him farther and farther
into the interior, and obstructing their supplies and communications.
Lucullus rapidly followed; Sinope was passed by; the Halys, the old
boundary of the Roman dominion, was crossed and the considerable
towns of Amisus, Eupatoria (on the Iris), and Themiscyra (on
the Thermodon) were invested, till at length winter put an end
to the onward march, though not to the investments of the towns.
The soldiers of Lucullus murmured at the constant advance
which did not allow them to reap the fruits of their exertions,
and at the tedious and--amidst the severity of that season--
burdensome blockades.  But it was not the habit of Lucullus
to listen to such complaints: in the spring of 682 he immediately
advanced against Cabira, leaving behind two legions before Amisus
under Lucius Murena.  The king had made fresh attempts during the winter
to induce the great-king of Armenia to take part in the struggle;
they remained like the former ones fruitless, or led only
to empty promises.  Still less did the Parthians show any desire
to interfere in the forlorn cause.  Nevertheless a considerable army,
chiefly raised by enlistments in Scythia, had again assembled
under Diophantus and Taxiles at Cabira.  The Roman army,
which still numbered only three legions and was decidedly inferior
to the Pontic in cavalry, found itself compelled to avoid as far as
possible the plains, and arrived, not without toil and loss,
by difficult bypaths in the vicinity of Cabira, At this town
the two armies lay for a considerable period confronting each other.
The chief struggle was for supplies, which were on both sides scarce:
for this purpose Mithradates formed the flower of his cavalry
and a division of select infantry under Diophantus and Taxiles
into a flying corps, which was intended to scour the country between
the Lycus and the Halys and to seize the Roman convoys of provisions
coming from Cappadocia.  But the lieutenant of Lucullus, Marcus
Fabius Hadrianus, who escorted such a train, not only completely
defeated the band which lay in wait for him in the defile where it
expected to surprise him, but after being reinforced from the camp
defeated also the army of Diophantus and Taxiles itself, so that it
totally broke up.  It was an irreparable loss for the king,
when his cavalry, on which alone he relied, was thus overthrown.

Victory of Cabira

As soon as he received through the first fugitives that arrived
at Cabira from the field of battle--significantly enough, the beaten
generals themselves--the fatal news, earlier even than Lucullus
got tidings of the victory, he resolved on an immediate
farther retreat.  But the resolution taken by the king spread
with the rapidity of lightning among those immediately around him; and,
when the soldiers saw the confidants of the king packing in all haste,
they too were seized with a panic.  No one was willing to be
the hindmost in decamping; all, high and low, ran pell-mell
like startled deer; no authority, not even that of the king,
was longer heeded; and the king himself was carried away amidst
the wild tumult.  Lucullus, perceiving the confusion, made his attack,
and the Pontic troops allowed themselves to be massacred almost
without offering resistance.  Had the legions been able to maintain
discipline and to restrain their eagerness for spoil, hardly a man
would have escaped them, and the king himself would doubtless have
been taken.  With difficulty Mithradates escaped along with a few
attendants through the mountains to Comana (not far from Tocat
and the source of the Iris); from which, however, a Roman corps
under Marcus Pompeius soon scared him off and pursued him, till,
attended by not more than 2000 cavalry, he crossed the frontier
of his kingdom at Talaura in Lesser Armenia.  In the empire
of the great-king he found a refuge, but nothing more (end of 682).
Tigranes, it is true, ordered royal honours to be shown to his fugitive
father-in-law; but he did not even invite him to his court,
and detained him in the remote border-province to which he had come
in a sort of decorous captivity.

Pontus Becomes Roman
Sieges of the Pontic Cities

The Roman troops overran all Pontus and Lesser Armenia, and as
far as Trapezus the flat country submitted without resistance
to the conqueror.  The commanders of the royal treasure-houses also
surrendered after more or less delay, and delivered up their stores
of money.  The king ordered that the women of the royal harem--his
sisters, his numerous wives and concubines--as it was not possible
to secure their flight, should all be put to death by one of his
eunuchs at Pharnacea (Kerasunt).  The towns alone offered
obstinate resistance.  It is true that the few in the interior--
Cabira, Amasia, Eupatoria--were soon in the power of the Romans;
but the larger maritime towns, Amisus and Sinope in Pontus,
Amastris in Paphlagonia, Tius and the Pontic Heraclea in Bithynia,
defended themselves with desperation, partly animated by attachment
to the king and to their free Hellenic constitution which he had
protected, partly overawed by the bands of corsairs whom the king
had called to his aid.  Sinope and Heraclea even sent forth vessels
against the Romans; and the squadron of Sinope seized a Roman
flotilla which was bringing corn from the Tauric peninsula
for the army of Lucullus.  Heraclea did not succumb till after
a two years' siege, when the Roman fleet had cut off the city
from intercourse with the Greek towns on the Tauric peninsula and treason
had broken out in the ranks of the garrison.  When Amisus was reduced
to extremities, the garrison set fire to the town, and under cover
of the flames took to their ships.  In Sinope, where the daring
pirate-captain Seleucus and the royal eunuch Bacchides conducted
the defence, the garrison plundered the houses before it withdrew,
and set on fire the ships which it could not take along with it;
it is said that, although the greater portion of the defenders
were enabled to embark, 8000 corsairs were there put to death
by Lucullus.  These sieges of towns lasted for two whole years
and more after the battle of Cabira (682-684); Lucullus prosecuted
them in great part by means of his lieutenants, while he himself
regulated the affairs of the province of Asia, which demanded
and obtained a thorough reform.

Remarkable, in an historical point of view, as was that obstinate
resistance of the Pontic mercantile towns to the victorious Romans,
it was of little immediate use; the cause of Mithradates was none
the less lost.  The great-king had evidently, for the present
at least, no intention at all of restoring him to his kingdom.
The Roman emigrants in Asia had lost their best men by the destruction
of the Aegean fleet; of the survivors not a few, such as the active
leaders Lucius Magius and Lucius Fannius, had made their peace
with Lucullus; and with the death of Sertorius, who perished in the year
of the battle of Cabira, the last hope of the emigrants vanished.
Mithradates' own power was totally shattered, and one after another
his remaining supports gave way; his squadrons returning from Crete
and Spain, to the number of seventy sail, were attacked and destroyed
by Triarius at the island of Tenedos; even the governor
of the Bosporan kingdom, the king's own son Machares, deserted him,
and as independent prince of the Tauric Chersonese concluded
on his own behalf peace and friendship with the Romans (684).
The king himself, after a not too glorious resistance, was confined
in a remote Armenian mountain-stronghold, a fugitive from his kingdom
and almost a prisoner of his son-in-law.  Although the bands
of corsairs might still hold out in Crete, and such as had escaped
from Amisus and Sinope might make their way along the hardly-
accessible east coast of the Black Sea to the Sanigae and Lazi,
the skilful conduct of the war by Lucullus and his judicious
moderation, which did not disdain to remedy the just grievances
of the provincials and to employ the repentant emigrants as officers
in his army, had at a moderate sacrifice delivered Asia Minor
from the enemy and annihilated the Pontic kingdom, so that it might
be converted from a Roman client-state into a Roman province.
A commission of the senate was expected, to settle in concert
with the commander-in-chief the new provincial organization.

Beginning of the Armenian War

But the relations with Armenia were not yet settled.
Thata declaration of war by the Romans against Tigranes
was in itself justified and even demanded, we have already shown.
Lucullus, who looked at the state of affairs from a nearer point of view
and with a higher spirit than the senatorial college in Rome, perceived
clearly the necessity of confining Armenia to the other side
of the Tigris and of re-establishing the lost dominion of Rome over
the Mediterranean.  He showed himself in the conduct of Asiatic
affairs no unworthy successor of his instructor and friend Sulla.
A Philhellene above most Romans of his time, he was not insensible
to the obligation which Rome had come under when taking up
the heritage of Alexander--the obligation to be the shield and sword
of the Greeks in the east.  Personal motives--the wish to earn laurels
also beyond the Euphrates, irritation at the fact that the great-
king in a letter to him had omitted the title of Imperator--may
doubtless have partly influenced Lucullus; but it is unjust
to assume paltry and selfish motives for actions, which motives
of duty quite suffice to explain.  The Roman governing college
at any rate--timid, indolent, ill informed, and above all beset
by perpetual financial embarrassments--could never be expected,
without direct compulsion, to take the initiative in an expedition
so vast and costly.  About the year 682 the legitimate representatives
of the Seleucid dynasty, Antiochus called the Asiatic and his brother,
moved by the favourable turn of the Pontic war, had gone to Rome
to procure a Roman intervention in Syria, and at the same
time a recognition of their hereditary claims on Egypt.
If the latter demand might not be granted, there could not, at any rate,
be found a more favourable moment or occasion for beginning the war
which had long been necessary against Tigranes.  But the senate,
while it recognized the princes doubtless as the legitimate
kings of Syria, could not make up its mind to decree the armed
intervention.  If the favourable opportunity was to be employed,
and Armenia was to be dealt with in earnest, Lucullus had to begin
the war, without any proper orders from the senate, at his own hand
and his own risk; he found himself, just like Sulla, placed under
the necessity of executing what he did in the most manifest
interest of the existing government, not with its sanction,
but in spite of it.  His resolution was facilitated by the relations
of Rome towards Armenia, for long wavering in uncertainty between
peace and war, which screened in some measure the arbitrariness
of his proceedings, and failed not to suggest formal grounds for war.
The state of matters in Cappadocia and Syria afforded pretexts
enough; and already in the pursuit of the king of Pontus Roman
troops had violated the territory of the great-king.  As, however,
the commission of Lucullus related to the conduct of the war
against Mithradates and he wished to connect what he did
with that commission, he preferred to send one of his officers,
Appius Claudius, to the great-king at Antioch to demand the surrender
of Mithradates, which in fact could not but lead to war.

Difficulties to Be Encountered

The resolution was a grave one, especially considering
the condition of the Roman army.  It was indispensable during
the campaign in Armenia to keep the extensive territory of Pontus
strongly occupied, for otherwise the army stationed in Armenia
might lose its communications with home; and besides it might be
easily foreseen that Mithradates would attempt an inroad into his
former kingdom.  The army, at the head of which Lucullus had ended
the Mithradatic war, amounting to about 30,000 men, was obviously
inadequate for this double task.  Under ordinary circumstances
the general would have asked and obtained from his government
the despatch of a second army; but as Lucullus wished,
and was in some measure compelled, to take up the war over the head
of the government, he found himself necessitated to renounce
that plan and--although he himself incorporated the captured Thracian
mercenaries of the Pontic king with his troops--to carry the war
over the Euphrates with not more than two legions, or at most
15,000 men.  This was in itself hazardous; but the smallness
of the number might be in some degree compensated by the tried valour
of the army consisting throughout of veterans.  A far worse feature
was the temper of the soldiers, to which Lucullus, in his high
aristocratic fashion, had given far too little heed.  Lucullus
was an able general, and--according to the aristocratic standard--
an upright and kindly-disposed man, but very far from being
a favourite with his soldiers.  He was unpopular, as a decided
adherent of the oligarchy; unpopular, because he had vigorously
checked the monstrous usury of the Roman capitalists in Asia Minor;
unpopular, on account of the toils and fatigues which he inflicted
on his troops; unpopular, because he demanded strict discipline
in his soldiers and prevented as far as possible the pillage
of the Greek towns by his men, but withal caused many a waggon
and many a camel to be laden with the treasures of the east for himself;
unpopular too on account of his manner, which was polished,
haughty, Hellenizing, not at all familiar, and inclining, wherever
it was possible, to ease and pleasure.  There was no trace in him
of the charm which weaves a personal bond between the general
and the soldier.  Moreover, a large portion of his ablest soldiers
had every reason to complain of the unmeasured prolongation of their
term of service.  His two best legions were the same which Flaccus
and Fimbria had led in 668 to the east;(14) notwithstanding
that shortly after the battle of Cabira they had been promised their
discharge well earned by thirteen campaigns, Lucullus now led them
beyond the Euphrates to face a new incalculable war--it seemed
as though the victors of Cabira were to be treated worse than
the vanquished of Cannae.(15)  It was in fact more than rash that,
with troops so weak and so much out of humour, a general should at his
own hand and, strictly speaking, at variance with the constitution,
undertake an expedition to a distant and unknown land, full of rapid
streams and snow-clad mountains--a land which from the very vastness
of its extent rendered any lightly-undertaken attack fraught
with danger.  The conduct of Lucullus was therefore much
and not unreasonably censured in Rome; only, amidst the censure
the fact should not have been concealed, that the perversity
of the government was the prime occasion of this venturesome
project of the general, and, if it did not justify it, rendered
it at least excusable.

Lucullus Crosses the Euphrates

The mission of Appius Claudius was designed not only to furnish
a diplomatic pretext for the war, but also to induce the princes
and cities of Syria especially to take arms against the great-king:
in the spring of 685 the formal attack began.  During the winter
the king of Cappadocia had silently provided vessels for transport;
with these the Euphrates was crossed at Melitene, and the further
march was directed by way of the Taurus-passes to the Tigris.
This too Lucullus crossed in the region of Amida (Diarbekr),
and advanced towards the road which connected the second capital
Tigranocerta,(16) recently founded on the south frontier of Armenia,
with the old metropolis Artaxata.  At the former was stationed
the great-king, who had shortly before returned from Syria,
after having temporarily deferred the prosecution of his plans
of conquest on the Mediterranean on account of the embroilment
with the Romans.  He was just projecting an inroad into Roman Asia
from Cilicia and Lycaonia, and was considering whether the Romans
would at once evacuate Asia or would previously give him battle,
possibly at Ephesus, when the news was brought to him of the advance
of Lucullus, which threatened to cut off his communications
with Artaxata.  He ordered the messenger to be hanged,
but the disagreeable reality remained unaltered; so he left
the new capital and resorted to the interior of Armenia, in order
there to raise a force--which had not yet been done--against the Romans.
Meanwhile Mithrobarzanes with the troops actually at his disposal
and in concert with the neighbouring Bedouin tribes, who were called out
in all haste, was to give employment to the Romans.  But the corps
of Mithrobarzanes was dispersed by the Roman vanguard, and the Arabs
by a detachment under Sextilius; Lucullus gained the road leading
from Tigranocerta to Artaxata, and, while on the right bank
of the Tigrisa Roman detachment pursued the great-king
retreating northwards, Lucullus himself crossed to the left
and marched forward to Tigranocerta.

Siege and Battle of Tigranocerta

The exhaustless showers of arrows which the garrison poured upon
the Roman army, and the setting fire to the besieging machines
by means of naphtha, initiated the Romans into the new dangers
of Iranian warfare; and the brave commandant Mancaeus maintained
the city, till at length the great royal army of relief had assembled
from all parts of the vast empire and the adjoining countries
that were open to Armenian recruiting officers, and had advanced
through the north-eastern passes to the relief of the capital.
The leader Taxiles, experienced in the wars of Mithradates,
advised Tigranes to avoid a battle, and to surround and starve out
the small Roman army by means of his cavalry.  But when the king saw
the Roman general, who had determined to give battle without raising
the siege, move out with not much more than 10,000 men against a force
twenty times superior, and boldly cross the river which separated
the two armies; when he surveyed on the one side this little band,
"too many for an embassy, too few for an army," and on the other
side his own immense host, in which the peoples from the Black Sea
and the Caspian met with those of the Mediterranean and of
the Persian Gulf, in which the dreaded iron-clad lancers alone
were more numerous than the whole army of Lucullus, and in which
even infantry armed after the Roman fashion were not wanting;
he resolved promptly to accept the battle desired by the enemy.
But while the Armenians were still forming their array, the quick
eye of Lucullus perceived that they had neglected to occupy a height
which commanded the whole position of their cavalry.  He hastened
to occupy it with two cohorts, while at the same time his weak
cavalry by a flank attack diverted the attention of the enemy
from this movement; and as soon as he had reached the height, he led
his little band against the rear of the enemy's cavalry.  They were
totally broken and threw themselves on the not yet fully formed
infantry, which fled without even striking a blow.  The bulletin
of the victor--that 100,000 Armenians and five Romans had fallen
and that the king, throwing away his turban and diadem, had galloped
off unrecognized with a few horsemen--is composed in the style
of his master Sulla.  Nevertheless the victory achieved on the 6th
October 685 before Tigranocerta remains one of the most brilliant
stars in the glorious history of Roman warfare; and it was not less
momentous than brilliant.

All the Armenian Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans

All the provinces wrested from the Parthians or Syrians
to the south of the Tigris were by this means strategically lost
to the Armenians, and passed, for the most part, without delay
into the possession of the victor.  The newly-built second capital
itselfset the example.  The Greeks, who had been forced in large numbers
to settle there, rose against the garrison and opened to the Roman
army the gates of the city, which was abandoned to the pillage
of the soldiers.  It had been created for the new great-kingdom,
and, like this, was effaced by the victor.  From Cilicia and Syria
all the troops had already been withdrawn by the Armenian satrap
Magadates to reinforce the relieving army before Tigranocerta.
Lucullus advanced into Commagene, the most northern province
of Syria, and stormed Samosata, the capital; he did not reach Syria
proper, but envoys arrived from the dynasts and communities as far
as the Red Sea--from Hellenes, Syrians, Jews, Arabs--to do homage
to the Romans as their sovereigns.  Even the prince of Corduene,
the province situated to the east of Tigranocerta, submitted;
while, on the other hand, Guras the brother of the great-king
maintained himself in Nisibis, and thereby in Mesopotamia.
Lucullus came forward throughout as the protector of the Hellenic
princes and municipalities: in Commagene he placed Antiochus,
a prince of the Seleucid house, on the throne; he recognized
Antiochus Asiaticus, who after the withdrawal of the Armenians had
returned to Antioch, as king of Syria; he sent the forced settlers
of Tigranocerta once more away to their homes.  The immense stores
and treasures of the great-king--the grain amounted to 30,000,000
-medimni-, the money in Tigranocerta alone to 8000 talents (nearly
2,000,000 pounds)--enabled Lucullus to defray the expenses of the war
without making any demand on the state-treasury, and to bestow
on each of his soldiers, besides the amplest maintenance, a present
of 800 -denarii- (33 pounds).

Tigranes and Mithradates

The great-king was deeply humbled.  He was of a feeble character,
arrogant in prosperity, faint-hearted in adversity.  Probably
an agreement would have been come to between him and Lucullus--
an agreement which there was every reason that the great-king should
purchase by considerable sacrifices, and the Roman general should
grant under tolerable conditions--had not the old Mithradates been
in existence.  The latter had taken no part in the conflicts around
Tigranocerta.  Liberated after twenty months' captivity about
the middle of 684 in consequence of the variance that had occurred
between the great-king and the Romans, he had been despatched
with 10,000 Armenian cavalry to his former kingdom, to threaten
the communications of the enemy.  Recalled even before he could
accomplish anything there, when the great-king summoned his whole
force to relieve the capital which he had built, Mithradates was met
on his arrival before Tigranocerta by the multitudes just fleeing
from the field of battle.  To every one, from the great-king
down to the common soldier, all seemed lost.  But if Tigranes
should now make peace, not only would Mithradates lose the last
chance of being reinstated in his kingdom, but his surrender would
be beyond doubt the first condition of peace; and certainly
Tigranes would not have acted otherwise towards him than Bocchus
had formerly acted towards Jugurtha.  The king accordingly staked
his whole personal weight to prevent things from taking this turn,
and to induce the Armenian court to continue the war, in which
he had nothing to lose and everything to gain; and, fugitive
and dethroned as was Mithradates, his influence at this court
was not slight.  He was still a stately and powerful man, who,
although already upwards of sixty years old, vaulted on horseback
in full armour, and in hand-to-hand conflict stood his ground
like the best.  Years and vicissitudes seemed to have steeled his spirit:
while in earlier times he sent forth generals to lead his armies
and took no direct part in war himself, we find him henceforth
as an old man commanding in person and fighting in person on the field
of battle.  To one who, during his fifty years of rule, had witnessed
so many unexampled changes of fortune, the cause of the great-king
appeared by no means lost through the defeat of Tigranocerta;
whereas the position of Lucullus was very difficult, and, if peace
should not now take place and the war should be judiciously continued,
even in a high degree precarious.

Renewal of the War

The veteran of varied experience, who stood towards the great-king
almost as a father, and was now able to exercise a personal
influence over him, overpowered by his energy that weak man,
and induced him not only to resolve on the continuance of the war,
but also to entrust Mithradates with its political and military
management.  The war was now to be changed from a cabinet contest
into a national Asiatic struggle; the kings and peoples of Asia
were to unite for this purpose against the domineering and haughty
Occidentals.  The greatest exertions were made to reconcile
the Parthians and Armenians with each other, and to induce them
to make common cause against Rome.  At the suggestion of Mithradates,
Tigranes offered to give back to the Arsacid Phraates the God (who
had reigned since 684) the provinces conquered by the Armenians--
Mesopotamia, Adiabene, the "great valleys"--and to enter into friendship
and alliance with him.  But, after all that had previously taken place,
this offer could scarcely reckon on a favourable reception;
Phraates preferred to secure the boundary of the Euphrates
by a treaty not with the Armenians, but with the Romans,
and to look on, while the hated neighbour and the inconvenient
foreigner fought out their strife.  Greater success attended
the application of Mithradates to the peoples of the east
than to the kings.  It was not difficult to represent the war
as a national one of the east against the west, for such it was;
it might very well be made a religious war also, and the report
might be spread that the object aimed at by the army of Lucullus
was the temple of the Persian Nanaea or Anaitis in Elymais or the modern
Luristan, the most celebrated and the richest shrine in the whole
region of the Euphrates.(17) From far and near the Asiatics flocked
in crowds to the banner of the kings, who summoned them to protect
the east and its gods from the impious foreigners.  But facts had
shown not only that the mere assemblage of enormous hosts
was of little avail, but that the troops really capable of marching
and fighting were by their very incorporation in such a mass rendered
useless and involved in the general ruin.  Mithradates sought
above all to develop the arm which was at once weakest among
the Occidentals and strongest among the Asiatics, the cavalry;
in the army newly formed by him half of the force was mounted.
For the ranks of the infantry he carefully selected, out of the mass
of recruits called forth or volunteering, those fit for service,
and caused them to be drilled by his Pontic officers.  The considerable
army, however, which soon assembled under the banner of the great-
king was destined not to measure its strength with the Roman
veterans on the first chance field of battle, but to confine itself
to defence and petty warfare.  Mithradates had conducted
the last war in his empire on the system of constantly retreating
and avoiding battle; similar tactics were adopted on this occasion,
and Armenia proper was destined as the theatre of war--the hereditary
land of Tigranes, still wholly untouched by the enemy, and excellently
adapted for this sort of warfare both by its physical character
and by the patriotism of its inhabitants.

Dissatisfaction with Lucullus in the Capital and in the Army

The year 686 found Lucullus in a position of difficulty,
which daily assumed a more dangerous aspect.  In spite of his brilliant
victories, people in Rome were not at all satisfied with him.
The senate felt the arbitrary nature of his conduct: the capitalist
party, sorely offended by him, set all means of intrigue
and corruption at work to effect his recall.  Daily the Forum
echoed with just and unjust complaints regarding the foolhardy,
the covetous, the un-Roman, the traitorous general.  The senate
so far yielded to the complaints regarding the union of such unlimited
power--two ordinary governorships and an important extraordinary
command--in the hands of such a man, as to assign the province
of Asia to one of the praetors, and the province of Cilicia
along with three newly-raised legions to the consul Quintus
Marcius Rex, and to restrict the general to the command
against Mithradates and Tigranes.

These accusations springing up against the general in Rome
found a dangerous echo in the soldiers' quarters on the Iris
andon the Tigris; and the more so that several officers including
the general's own brother-in-law, Publius Clodius, worked upon
the soldiers with this view.  The report beyond doubt designedly
circulated by these, that Lucullus now thought of combining
with the Pontic-Armenian war an expedition against the Parthians,
fed the exasperation of the troops.

Lucullus Advances into Armenia

But while the troublesome temper of the government and of the soldier
thus threatened the victorious general with recall and mutiny,
he himself continued like a desperate gambler to increase
his stake and his risk.  He did not indeed march against the Parthians
but when Tigranes showed himself neither ready to make peace
nor disposed, as Lucullus wished, to risk a second pitched
battle, Lucullus resolved to advance from Tigranocerta, through
the difficult mountain-country along the eastern shore of the lake
of Van, into the valley of the eastern Euphrates (or the Arsanias,
now Myrad-Chai), and thence into that of the Araxes, where,
on the northern slope of Ararat, lay Artaxata the capital of Armenia
proper, with the hereditary castle and the harem of the king.
He hoped, by threatening the king's hereditary residence,
to compel him to fight either on the way or at any rate before
Artaxata.  It was inevitably necessary to leave behind a division
at Tigranocerta; and, as the marching army could not possibly be
further reduced, no course was left but to weaken the position
in Pontus and to summon troops thence to Tigranocerta.  The main
difficulty, however, was the shortness of the Armenian summer,
so inconvenient for military enterprises.  On the tableland
of Armenia, which lies 5000 feet and more above the level of the sea,
the corn at Erzeroum only germinates in the beginning of June,
and the winter sets in with the harvest in September; Artaxata
had to be reached and the campaign had to be ended in four
months at the utmost.

At midsummer, 686, Lucullus set out from Tigranocerta,
and, marching doubtless through the pass of Bitlis and farther
to the westward along the lake of Van--arrived on the plateau of Musch
and at the Euphrates.  The march went on--amidst constant
and very troublesome skirmishing with the enemy's cavalry,
and especially with the mounted archers--slowly, but without material
hindrance; and the passage of the Euphrates, which was seriously
defended by the Armenian cavalry, was secured by a successful engagement;
the Armenian infantry showed itself, but the attempt to involve it
in the conflict did not succeed.  Thus the army reached the tableland,
properly so called, of Armenia, and continued its march
into the unknown country.  They had suffered no actual misfortune;
but the mere inevitable delaying of the march by the difficulties
of the ground and the horsemen of the enemy was itself a very serious
disadvantage.  Long before they had reached Artaxata, winter set
in; and when the Italian soldiers saw snow and ice around them,
the bow of military discipline that had been far too tightly
stretched gave way.

Lucullus Retreats to Mesopotamia
Capture of Nisibus

A formal mutiny compelled the general to order a retreat,
which he effected with his usual skill.  When he had safely reached
Mesopotamia where the season still permitted farther operations,
Lucullus crossed the Tigris, and threw himself with the mass of his
army on Nisibis, the last city that here remained to the Armenians.
The great-king, rendered wiser by the experience acquired before
Tigranocerta, left the city to itself: notwithstanding its brave
defence it was stormed in a dark, rainy night by the besiegers,
and the army of Lucullus found there booty not less rich and winter-
quarters not less comfortable than the year before in Tigranocerta.

Conflicts in Pontus and at Tigranocerta

But, meanwhile, the whole weight of the enemy's offensive fell
on the weak Roman divisions left behind in Pontus and in Armenia.
Tigranes compelled the Roman commander of the latter corps, Lucius
Fannius--the same who had formerly been the medium of communication
between Sertorius and Mithradates (18)--to throw himself
into a fortress, and kept him beleaguered there.  Mithradates
advanced into Pontus with 4000 Armenian horsemen and 4000 of his own,
and as liberator and avenger summoned the nation to rise against
the common foe.  All joined him; the scattered Roman soldiers
were everywhere seized and put to death: when Hadrianus, the Roman
commandant in Pontus,(19) led his troops against him, the former
mercenaries of the king and the numerous natives of Pontus
following the army as slaves made common cause with the enemy.
For two successive days the unequal conflict lasted; it was only
the circumstance that the king after receiving two wounds had
to be carried off from the field of battle, which gave the Roman
commander the opportunity of breaking off the virtually lost
battle, and throwing himself with the small remnant of his troops
into Cabira.  Another of Lucullus' lieutenants who accidentally
came into this region, the resolute Triarius, again gathered round
him a body of troops and fought a successful engagement
with the king; but he was much too weak to expel him afresh
from Pontic soil, and had to acquiesce while the king took up
winter-quarters in Comana.

Farther Retreat to Pontus

So the spring of 687 came on.  The reunion of the army in Nisibis,
the idleness of winter-quarters, the frequent absence of the general,
had meanwhile increased the insubordination of the troops;
not only did they vehemently demand to be led back, but it was already
tolerably evident that, if the general refused to lead them home,
they would break up of themselves.  The supplies were scanty;
Fannius and Triarius, in their distress, sent the most urgent
entreaties to the general to furnish aid.  With a heavy heart
Lucullus resolved to yield to necessity, to give up Nisibis
and Tigranocerta, and, renouncing all the brilliant hopes of his
Armenian expedition, to return to the right bank of the Euphrates.
Fannius was relieved; but in Pontus the help was too late.
Triarius, not strong enough to fight with Mithradates, had taken
up a strong position at Gaziura (Turksal on the Iris, to the west
of Tokat), while the baggage was left behind at Dadasa.
But when Mithradates laid siege to the latter place, the Roman soldiers,
apprehensive for their property, compelled their leader to leave
his secure position, and to give battle to the king between Gaziura
and Ziela (Zilleh) on the Scotian heights.

Defeat of the Romans in Pontus at Ziela

What Triarius had foreseen, occurred.  In spite of the stoutest
resistance the wing which the king commanded in person broke
the Roman line and huddled the infantry together into a clayey ravine,
where it could make neither a forward nor a lateral movement
and was cut to pieces without pity.  The king indeed was dangerously
wounded by a Roman centurion, who sacrificed his life for it;
but the defeat was not the less complete.  The Roman camp was taken;
the flower of the infantry, and almost all the staff and subaltern
officers, strewed the ground; the dead were left lying unburied
on the field of battle, and, when Lucullus arrived on the right bank
of the Euphrates, he learned the defeat not from his own soldiers,
but through the reports of the natives.

Mutiny of the Soldiers

Along with this defeat came the outbreak of the military conspiracy.
At this very time news arrived from Rome that the people had resolved
to grant a discharge to the soldiers whose legal term of service had
expired, to wit, to the Fimbrians, and to entrust the chief command
in Pontus and Bithynia to one of the consuls of the current year:
the successor of Lucullus, the consul Manius Acilius Glabrio,
had already landed in Asia Minor.  The disbanding of the bravest
and most turbulent legions and the recall of the commander-in-chief,
in connection with the impression produced by the defeat of Ziela,
dissolved all the bonds of authority in the army just when the general
had most urgent need of their aid.  Near Talaura in Lesser Armenia
he confronted the Pontic troops, at whose head Tigranes' son-in-law,
Mithradates of Media, had already engaged the Romans successfully
in a cavalry conflict; the main force of the great-king was advancing
to the same point from Armenia.  Lucullus sent to Quintus Marcius
the new governor of Cilicia, who had just arrived on the way
to his province with three legions in Lycaonia, to obtain help from him;
Marcius declared that his soldiers refused to march to Armenia.
He sent to Glabrio with the request that he would take up the supreme
command committed to him by the people; Glabrio showed still less
inclination to undertake this task, which had now become so difficult
and hazardous.  Lucullus, compelled to retain the command,
with the view of not being obliged to fight at Talaura against
the Armenian and the Pontic armies conjoined, ordered a movement
against the advancing Armenians.

Farther Retreat to Asia Minor

The soldiers obeyed the order to march; but, when they reached
the point where the routes to Armenia and Cappadocia diverged,
the bulk of the army took the latter, and proceeded to the province
of Asia.  There the Fimbrians demanded their immediate discharge;
and although they desisted from this at the urgent entreaty
of the commander-in-chief and the other corps, they yet persevered
in their purpose of disbanding if the winter should come on without
an enemy confronting them; which accordingly was the case.
Mithradates not only occupied once more almost his whole kingdom,
but his cavalry ranged over all Cappadocia and as far as Bithynia;
king Ariobarzanes sought help equally in vain from Quintus Marcius,
from Lucullus, and from Glabrio.  It was a strange, almost
incredible issue for a war conducted in a manner so glorious.
If we look merely to military achievements, hardly any other Roman
general accomplished so much with so trifling means as Lucullus;
the talent and the fortune of Sulla seemed to have devolved on this
his disciple.  That under the circumstances the Roman army should
have returned from Armenia to Asia Minor uninjured, is a military
miracle which, so far as we can judge, far excels the retreat
of Xenophon; and, although mainly doubtless to be explained
by the solidity of the Roman, and the inefficiency of the Oriental,
system of war, it at all events secures to the leader of this expedition
an honourable name in the foremost rank of men of military
capacity.  If the name of Lucullus is not usually included among these,
it is to all appearance simply owing to the fact that no narrative
of his campaigns which is in a military point of view even tolerable
has come down to us, and to the circumstance that in everything
and particularly in war, nothing is taken into account
but the final result; and this, in reality, was equivalent
to a complete defeat.  Through the last unfortunate turn of things,
and principally through the mutiny of the soldiers, all the results
of an eight years' war had been lost; in the winter of 687-688
the Romans again stood exactly at the same spot
as in the winter of 679-680.

War with the Pirates

The maritime war against the pirates, which began at the same time
with the continental war and was all along most closely connected
with it, yielded no better results.  It has been already mentioned
(20) that the senate in 680 adopted the judicious resolution
to entrust the task of clearing the seas from the corsairs
to a single admiral in supreme command, the praetor Marcus Antonius.
But at the very outset they had made an utter mistake in the choice
of the leader; or rather those, who had carried this measure
so appropriate in itself, had not taken into account that in the senate
all personal questions were decided by the influence of Cethegus(21)
and similar coterie-considerations.  They had moreover
neglected to furnish the admiral of their choice with money
and ships in a manner befitting his comprehensive task,
so that with his enormous requisitions he was almost as burdensome
to the provincials whom he befriended as were the corsairs.

Defeat of Antonius off Cydonia

The results were corresponding.  In the Campanian waters the fleet
of Antonius captured a number of piratical vessels.  But an engagement
took place with the Cretans, who had entered into friendship
and alliance with the pirates and abruptly rejected his demand
that they should desist from such fellowship; and the chains,
with which the foresight of Antonius had provided his vessels
for the purpose of placing the captive buccaneers in irons,
served to fasten the quaestor and the other Roman prisoners
to the masts of the captured Roman ships, when the Cretan generals
Lasthenes and Panares steered back in triumph to Cydonia
from the naval combat in which they had engaged the Romans
off their island.  Antonius, after having squandered immense sums
and accomplished not the slightest result by his inconsiderate mode
of warfare, died in 683 at Crete.  The ill success of his expedition,
the costliness of building a fleet, and the repugnance of the oligarchy
to confer any powers of a more comprehensive kind on the magistrates,
led them, after the practical termination of this enterprise
by Antonius' death, to make no farther nomination of an admiral-in-chief,
and to revert to the old system of leaving each governor to look
after the suppression of piracy in his own province: the fleet equipped
by Lucullus for instance(22) was actively employed for this purpose
in the Aegean sea.

Cretan War

So far however as the Cretans were concerned, a disgrace
like that endured off Cydonia seemed even to the degenerate Romans
of this age as if it could be answered only by a declaration of war.
Yet the Cretan envoys, who in the year 684 appeared in Rome
with the request that the prisoners might be taken back and the old
alliance reestablished, had almost obtained a favourable decree
of the senate; what the whole corporation termed a disgrace,
the individual senator was ready to sell for a substantial price.
It was not till a formal resolution of the senate rendered the loans
of the Cretan envoys among the Roman bankers non-actionable--
that is, not until the senate had incapacitated itself for undergoing
bribery--that a decree passed to the effect that the Cretan
communities, if they wished to avoid war, should hand over not only
the Roman deserters but the authors of the outrage perpetrated off
Cydonia--the leaders Lasthenes and Panares--to the Romans
for befitting punishment, should deliver up all ships and boats of four
or more oars, should furnish 400 hostages, and should pay a fine
of 4000 talents (975,000 pounds).  When the envoys declared that they
were not empowered to enter into such terms, one of the consuls
of the next year was appointed to depart on the expiry of his official
term for Crete, in order either to receive there what was demanded
or to begin the war.

Metellus Subdues Crete

Accordingly in 685 the proconsul Quintus Metellus appeared
in the Cretan waters.  The communities of the island, with the larger
towns Gortyna, Cnossus, Cydonia at their head, were resolved rather
to defend themselves in arms than to submit to those excessive
demands.  The Cretans were a nefarious and degenerate people,(23)
with whose public and private existence piracy was as intimately
associated as robbery with the commonwealth of the Aetolians;
but they resembled the Aetolians in valour as in many other respects,
and accordingly these two were the only Greek communities
that waged a courageous and honourable struggle for independence.
At Cydonia, where Metellus landed his three legions, a Cretan army
of 24,000 men under Lasthenes and Panares was ready to receive him;
a battle took place in the open field, in which the victory
after a hard struggle remained with the Romans.  Nevertheless
the towns bade defiance from behind their walls to the Roman general;
Metellus had to make up his mind to besiege them in succession.
First Cydonia, in which the remains of the beaten army had taken
refuge, was after a long siege surrendered by Panares in return
for the promise of a free departure for himself.  Lasthenes, who had
escaped from the town, had to be besieged a second time in Cnossus;
and, when this fortress also was on the point of falling,
he destroyed its treasures and escaped once more to places which still
continued their defence, such as Lyctus, Eleuthera, and others.
Two years (686, 687) elapsed, before Metellus became master
of the whole island and the last spot of free Greek soil thereby
passed under the control of the dominant Romans; the Cretan communities,
as they were the first of all Greek commonwealths to develop
the free urban constitution and the dominion of the sea, were also
to be the last of all those Greek maritime states that formerly filled
the Mediterranean to succumb to the Roman continental power.

The Pirates in the Mediterranean

All the legal conditions were fulfilled for celebrating another
of the usual pompous triumphs; the gens of the Metelli could add
to its Macedonian, Numidian, Dalmatian, Balearic titles with equal
right the new title of Creticus, and Rome possessed another name
of pride.  Nevertheless the power of the Romans in the Mediterranean
was never lower, that of the corsairs never higher, than in those
years.  Well might the Cilicians and Cretans of the seas, who are
said to have numbered at this time 1000 ships, mock the Isauricus
and the Creticus, and their empty victories.  With what effect
the pirates interfered in the Mithradatic war, and how the obstinate
resistance of the Pontic maritime towns derived its best resources
from the corsair-state, has been already related.  But that state
transacted business on a hardly less grand scale on its own behoof.
Almost under the eyes of the fleet of Lucullus, the pirate Athenodorus
surprised in 685 the island of Delos, destroyed its far-famed
shrines and temples, and carried off the whole population
into slavery.  The island Lipara near Sicily paid to the pirates
a fixed tribute annually, to remain exempt from like attacks.
Another pirate chief Heracleon destroyed in 682 the squadron
equipped in Sicily against him, and ventured with no more than four
open boats to sail into the harbour of Syracuse.  Two years later
his colleague Pyrganion even landed at the same port, established
himself there and sent forth flying parties into the island,
till the Roman governor at last compelled him to re-embark.
People grew at length quite accustomed to the fact that all
the provinces equipped squadrons and raised coastguards,
or were at any rate taxed for both; and yet the pirates appeared
to plunder the provinces with as much regularity as the Roman governors.
But even the sacred soil of Italy was now no longer respected
by the shameless transgressors: from Croton they carried off with them
the temple-treasures of the Lacinian Hera; they landed in Brundisium,
Misenum, Caieta, in the Etruscan ports, even in Ostia itself; they
seized the most eminent Roman officers as captives, among others
the admiral of the Cilician army and two praetors with their whole
retinue, with the dreaded -fasces- themselves and all the insignia
of their dignity; they carried away from a villa at Misenum
the very sister of the Roman admiral-in-chief Antonius, who was sent
forth to annihilate the pirates; they destroyed in the port
of Ostia the Roman war fleet equipped against them and commanded
by a consul.  The Latin husbandman, the traveller on the Appian highway,
the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae
were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single
moment; all traffic and all intercourse were suspended;
the most dreadful scarcity prevailed in Italy, and especially
in the capital, which subsisted on transmarine corn.  The contemporary
world and history indulge freely in complaints of insupportable
distress; in this case the epithet may have been appropriate.

Servile Disturbances

We have already described how the senate restored by Sulla carried
out its guardianship of the frontier in Macedonia, its discipline
over the client kings of Asia Minor, and lastly its marine police;
the results were nowhere satisfactory.  Nor did better success
attend the government in another and perhaps even more urgent
matter, the supervision of the provincial, and above all
of the Italian, proletariate.  The gangrene of a slave-proletariate
Gnawed at the vitals of all the states of antiquity, and the more so,
the more vigorously they had risen and prospered; for the power
and riches of the state regularly led, under the existing
circumstances, to a disproportionate increase of the body
of slaves.  Rome naturally suffered more severely from this cause
than any other state of antiquity.  Even the government of the sixth
century had been under the necessity of sending troops against
the gangs of runaway herdsmen and rural slaves.  The plantation-system,
spreading more and more among the Italian speculators
had infinitely increased the dangerous evil: in the time of
the Gracchan and Marian crises and in close connection with them
servile revolts had taken place at numerous points of the Roman
empire, and in Sicily had even grown into two bloody wars (619-622
and 652-654;(24)).  But the ten years of the rule of the restoration
after Sulla's death formed the golden age both for the buccaneers
at sea and for bands of a similar character on land, above all
in the Italian peninsula, which had hitherto been comparatively
well regulated.  The land could hardly be said any longer to enjoy
peace.  In the capital and the less populous districts of Italy
robberies were of everyday occurrence, murders were frequent.
A special decree of the people was issued--perhaps at this epoch--
against kidnapping of foreign slaves and of free men; a special
summary action was about this time introduced against violent
deprivation of landed property.  These crimes could not
but appear specially dangerous, because, while they were usually
perpetrated by the proletariate, the upper class were to a great
extent also concerned in them as moral originators and partakers
in the gain.  The abduction of men and of estates was very frequently
suggested by the overseers of the large estates and carried out
by the gangs of slaves, frequently armed, that were collected there:
and many a man even of high respectability did not disdain what
one of his officious slave-overseers thus acquired for him
as Mephistopheles acquired for Faust the lime trees of Philemon.
The state of things is shown by the aggravated punishment for outrages
on property committed by armed bands, which was introduced
by one of the better Optimates, Marcus Lucullus, as presiding over
the administration of justice in the capital about the year 676,(25)
with the express object of inducing the proprietors of large bands
of slaves to exercise a more strict superintendence over them
and thereby avoid the penalty of seeing them judicially condemned.
Where pillage and murder were thus carried on by order
of the world of quality, it was natural for these masses of slaves
and proletarians to prosecute the same business on their own account;
a spark was sufficient to set fire to so inflammable materials,
and to convert the proletariate into an insurrectionary army.
An occasion was soon found.

Outbreak of the Gladiatorial War in Italy
Spartacus

The gladiatorial games, which now held the first rank
among the popular amusements in Italy, had led to the institution
of numerous establishments, more especially in and around Capua,
designed partly for the custody, partly for the training
of those slaves who were destined to kill or be killed for the amusement
of the sovereign multitude.  These were naturally in great part
brave men captured in war, who had not forgotten that they had once
faced the Romans in the field.  A number of these desperadoes broke out
of one of the Capuan gladiatorial schools (681), and sought refuge
on Mount Vesuvius.  At their head were two Celts, who were designated
by their slave-names Crixus and Oenomaus, and the Thracian Spartacus.
The latter, perhaps a scion of the noble family of the Spartocids
which attained even to royal honours in its Thracian home
and in Panticapaeum, had served among the Thracian auxiliaries
in the Roman army, had deserted and gone as a brigand to the mountains,
and had been there recaptured and destined for the gladiatorial games.

The Insurrection Takes Shape

The inroads of this little band, numbering at first only seventy-four
persons, but rapidly swelling by concourse from the surrounding
country, soon became so troublesome to the inhabitants
of the rich region of Campania, that these, after having vainly
attempted themselves to repel them, sought help against them
from Rome.  A division of 3000 men hurriedly collected appeared
under the leadership of Clodius Glaber, and occupied the approaches
to Vesuvius with the view of starving out the slaves.
But the brigands in spite of their small number and their
defective armament had the boldness to scramble down steep declivities
and to fall upon the Roman posts; and when the wretched militia saw
the little band of desperadoes unexpectedly assail them, they took
to their heels and fled on all sides.  This first success procured
for the robbers arms and increased accessions to their ranks.
Although even now a great portion of them carried nothing
but pointed clubs, the new and stronger division of the militia--
two legions under the praetor Publius Varinius--which advanced
from Rome into Campania, found them encamped almost like a regular army
in the plain.  Varinius had a difficult position.  His militia,
compelled to bivouac opposite the enemy, were severely weakened
by the damp autumn weather and the diseases which it engendered;
and, worse than the epidemics, cowardice and insubordination thinned
the ranks.  At the very outset one of his divisions broke up entirely,
so that the fugitives did not fall back on the main corps, but went
straight home.  Thereupon, when the order was given to advance
against the enemy's entrenchments and attack them, the greater
portion of the troops refused to comply with it.  Nevertheless
Varinius set out with those who kept their ground against
the robber-band; but it was no longer to be found where he sought it.
It had broken up in the deepest silence and had turned to the south
towards Picentia (Vicenza near Amain), where Varinius overtook it
indeed, but could not prevent it from retiring over the Silarus
into the interior of Lucania, the chosen land of shepherds and robbers.
Varinius followed thither, and there at length the despised enemy
arrayed themselves for battle.  All the circumstances
under which the combat took place were to the disadvantage
of the Romans: the soldiers, vehemently as they had demanded
battle a little before, fought ill; Varinius was completely
vanquished; his horse and the insignia of his official
dignity fell with the Roman camp itself into the enemy's hand.
The south-Italian slaves, especially the brave half-savage herdsmen,
flocked in crowds to the banner of the deliverers who had
so unexpectedly appeared; according to the most moderate estimates
the number of armed insurgents rose to 40,000 men.  Campania,
just evacuated, was speedily reoccupied, and the Roman corps which was
left behind there under Gaius Thoranius, the quaestor of Varinius,
was broken and destroyed.  In the whole south and south-west
of Italy the open country was in the hands of the victorious bandit-
chiefs; even considerable towns, such as Consentia in the Bruttian
country, Thurii and Metapontum in Lucania, Nola and Nuceria
in Campania, were stormed by them, and suffered all the atrocities
which victorious barbarians could inflict on defenceless civilized
men, and unshackled slaves on their former masters.  That a conflict
like this should be altogether abnormal and more a massacre
than a war, was unhappily a matter of course: the masters
duly crucified every captured slave; the slaves naturally killed
their prisoners also, or with still more sarcastic retaliation
even compelled their Roman captives to slaughter each other
in gladiatorial sport; as was subsequently done with three hundred
of them at the obsequies of a robber-captain who had fallen in combat.

Great Victories of Spartacus

In Rome people were with reason apprehensive as to the destructive
conflagration which was daily spreading.  It was resolved next year
(682) to send both consuls against the formidable leaders
of the gang.  The praetor Quintus Arrius, a lieutenant of the consul
Lucius Gellius, actually succeeded in seizing and destroying
at Mount Garganus in Apulia the Celtic band, which under Crixus
had separated from the mass of the robber-army and was levying
contributions at its own hand.  But Spartacus achieved
all the more brilliant victories in the Apennines and in northern Italy,
where first the consul Gnaeus Lentulus who had thought to surround
and capture the robbers, then his colleague Gellius and the so recently
victorious praetor Arrius, and lastly at Mutina the governor
of Cisalpine Gaul Gaius Cassius (consul 681) and the praetor Gnaeus
Manlius, one after another succumbed to his blows.  The scarcely-
armed gangs of slaves were the terror of the legions; the series
of defeats recalled the first years of the Hannibalic war.

Internal Dissension among the Insurgents

What might have come of it, had the national kings
from the mountains of Auvergne or of the Balkan, and not runaway
gladiatorial slaves, been at the head of the victorious bands,
it is impossible to say; as it was, the movement remained
notwithstanding its brilliant victories a rising of robbers,
and succumbed less to the superior force of its opponents than
to internal discord and the want of definite plan.  The unity
in confronting the common foe, which was so remarkably conspicuous
in the earlier servile wars of Sicily, was wanting in this Italian
war--a difference probably due to the fact that, while the Sicilian
slaves found a quasi-national point of union in the common
Syrohellenism, the Italian slaves were separated into the two
bodies of Helleno-Barbarians and Celto-Germans.  The rupture
between the Celtic Crixus and the Thracian Spartacus--Oenomaus had
fallen in one of the earliest conflicts--and other similar quarrels
crippled them in turning to account the successes achieved,
and procured for the Romans several important victories.  But the want
of a definite plan and aim produced far more injurious effects
on the enterprise than the insubordination of the Celto-Germans.
Spartacus doubtless--to judge by the little which we learn
regarding that remarkable man--stood in this respect above his party.
Along with his strategic ability he displayed no ordinary
talent for organization, as indeed from the very outset
the uprightness, with which he presided over his band and distributed
the spoil, had directed the eyes of the multitude to him quite
as much at least as his valour.  To remedy the severely felt want
of cavalry and of arms, he tried with the help of the herds of horses
seized in Lower Italy to train and discipline a cavalry, and, so soon as
he got the port of Thurii into his hands, to procure from that quarter
iron and copper, doubtless through the medium of the pirates.
But in the main matters he was unable to induce the wild hordes
whom he led to pursue any fixed ulterior aims.  Gladly would
he have checked the frantic orgies of cruelty, in which the robbers
indulged on the capture of towns, and which formed the chief reason
why no Italian city voluntarily made common cause with the insurgents;
but the obedience which the bandit-chief found in the conflic
ceased with the victory, and his representations and entreaties
were in vain.  After the victories obtained in the Apennine
in 682 the slave army was free to move in any direction.
Spartacus himself is said to have intended to cross the Alps,
with a view to open to himself and his followers the means of return
to their Celtic or Thracian home: if the statement is well founded,
it shows how little the conqueror overrated his successes
and his power.  When his men refused so speedily to turn their backs
on the riches of Italy, Spartacus took the route for Rome, and is said
to have meditated blockading the capital.  The troops, however,
showed themselves also averse to this desperate but yet methodical
enterprise; they compelled their leader, when he was desirous
to be a general, to remain a mere captain of banditti and aimlessly
to wander about Italy in search of plunder.  Rome might think herself
fortunate that the matter took this turn; but even as it was,
the perplexity was great.  There was a want of trained soldiers
as of experienced generals; Quintus Metellus and Gnaeus Pompeius
were employed in Spain, Marcus Lucullus in Thrace, Lucius Lucullus
in Asia Minor; and none but raw militia and, at best, mediocre
officers were available.  The extraordinary supreme command
in Italy was given to the praetor Marcus Crassus, who was not
a general of much reputation, but had fought with honour under Sulla
and had at least character; and an army of eight legions, imposing
if not by its quality, at any rate by its numbers, was placed
at his disposal.  The new commander-in-chief began by treating
the first division, which again threw away its arms and fled before
the banditti, with all the severity of martial law, and causing every
tenth man in it to be executed; whereupon the legions in reality
grew somewhat more manly.  Spartacus, vanquished in the next
engagement, retreated and sought to reach Rhegium through Lucania.

Conflicts in the Bruttian Country

Just at that time the pirates commanded not merely the Sicilian
waters, but even the port of Syracuse;(26) with the help of their
boats Spartacus proposed to throw a corps into Sicily, where the slaves
only waited an impulse to break out a third time.  The march to Rhegium
was accomplished; but the corsairs, perhaps terrified by the coastguards
established in Sicily by the praetor Gaius Verres, perhaps also bribed
by the Romans, took from Spartacus the stipulated hire without performing
the service for which it was given.  Crassus meanwhile had followed
the robber-army nearly as far as the mouth, of the Crathis,
and, like Scipio before Numantia, ordered his soldiers,
seeing that they did not fight as they ought, to construct
an entrenched wall of the length of thirty-five miles,
which shut off the Bruttian peninsula from the rest of Italy,(27)
intercepted the insurgent army on the return from Rhegium,
and cut off its supplies.  But in a dark winter night Spartacus
broke through the lines of the enemy, and in the spring of 683(28)
was once more in Lucania.  The laborious work had thus been in vain.
Crassus began to despair of accomplishing his task and demanded
that the senate should for his support recall to Italy the armies
stationed in Macedonia under Marcus Lucullus and in Hither Spain
under Gnaeus Pompeius.

Disruption of the Rebels and Their Subjugation

This extreme step however was not needed; the disunion and the arrogance
of the robber-bands sufficed again to frustrate their successes.
Once more the Celts and Germans broke off from the league of which
the Thracian was the head and soul, in order that, under leaders
of their own nation Gannicus and Castus, they might separately
fall victims to the sword of the Romans.  Once, at the Lucanian
lake the opportune appearance of Spartacus saved them,
and thereupon they pitched their camp near to his; nevertheless
Crassus succeeded in giving employment to Spartacus by means
of the cavalry, and meanwhile surrounded the Celtic bands and compelled
them to a separate engagement, in which the whole body--numbering
it is said 12,300 combatants--fell fighting bravely all on the spot
and with their wounds in front.  Spartacus then attempted to throw
himself with his division into the mountains round Petelia (near
Strongoli in Calabria), and signally defeated the Roman vanguard,
which followed his retreat But this victory proved more injurious
to the victor than to the vanquished.  Intoxicated by success,
the robbers refused to retreat farther, and compelled their general
to lead them through Lucania towards Apulia to face the last decisive
struggle.  Before the battle Spartacus stabbed his horse:
as in prosperity and adversity he had faithfully kept by his men,
he now by that act showed them that the issue for him and for all
was victory or death.  In the battle also he fought with the courage
of a lion; two centurions fell by his hand; wounded and on his knees
he still wielded his spear against the advancing foes.
Thus the great robber-captain and with him the best of his comrades
died the death of free men and of honourable soldiers (683).
After the dearly-bought victory the troops who had achieved it,
and those of Pompeius that had meanwhile after conquering the Sertorians
arrived from Spain, instituted throughout Apulia and Lucania a manhunt,
such as there had never been before, to crush out the last sparks
of the mighty conflagration.  Although in the southern districts,
where for instance the little town of Tempsa was seized in 683
by a gang of robbers, and in Etruria, which was severely affected
by Sulla's evictions, there was by no means as yet a real public
tranquillity, peace was officially considered as re-established
in Italy.  At least the disgracefully lost eagles were recovered--
after the victory over the Celts alone five of them were brought
in; and along the road from Capua to Rome the six thousand crosses
bearing captured slaves testified to the re-establishment of order,
and to the renewed victory of acknowledged law over its living
property that had rebelled.

The Government of the Restoration as a Whole

Let us look back on the events which fill up the ten years
of the Sullan restoration.  No one of the movements, external
or internal, which occurred during this period--neither the insurrection
of Lepidus, nor the enterprises of the Spanish emigrants, nor the wars
in Thrace and Macedonia and in Asia Minor, nor the risings
of the pirates and the slaves--constituted of itself a mighty danger
necessarily affecting the vital sinews of the nation; and yet
the state had in all these struggles well-nigh fought for its
very existence.  The reason was that the tasks were everywhere
left unperformed, so long as they might still have been performed
with ease; the neglect of the simplest precautionary measures produced
the most dreadful mischiefs and misfortunes, and transformed
dependent classes and impotent kings into antagonists on a footing
of equality.  The democracy and the servile insurrection
were doubtless subdued; but such as the victories were, the victor
was neither inwardly elevated nor outwardly strengthened by them.
It was no credit to Rome, that the two most celebrated generals
of the government party had during a struggle of eight years marked
by more defeats than victories failed to master the insurgent chief
Sertorius and his Spanish guerillas, and that it was only
the dagger of his friends that decided the Sertorian war in favour
of the legitimate government.  As to the slaves, it was far less
an honour to have conquered them than a disgrace to have confronted
them in equal strife for years.  Little more than a century had
elapsed since the Hannibalic war; it must have brought a blush
to the cheek of the honourable Roman, when he reflected
on the fearfully rapid decline of the nation since that great age.
Then the Italian slaves stood like a wall against the veterans
of Hannibal; now the Italian militia were scattered like chaff before
the bludgeons of their runaway serfs.  Then every plain captain
acted in case of need as general, and fought often without success,
but always with honour; now it was difficult to find among
all the officers of rank a leader of even ordinary efficiency.
Then the government preferred to take the last farmer from the plough
rather than forgo the acquisition of Spain and Greece; now they were
on the eve of again abandoning both regions long since acquired,
merely that they might be able to defend themselves against
the insurgent slaves at home.  Spartacus too as well as Hannibal
had traversed Italy with an army from the Po to the Sicilian straits,
beaten both consuls, and threatened Rome with blockade;
the enterprise which had needed the greatest general of antiquity
to conduct it against the Rome of former days could be undertaken
against the Rome of the present by a daring captain of banditti.
Was there any wonder that no fresh life sprang out of such victories
over insurgents and robber-chiefs?

The external wars, however, had produced a result still less
gratifying.  It is true that the Thraco-Macedonian war had yielded
a result not directly unfavourable, although far from corresponding
to the considerable expenditure of men and money.  In the wars
in Asia Minor and with the pirates on the other hand, the government
had exhibited utter failure.  The former ended with the loss
of the whole conquests made in eight bloody campaigns, the latter
with the total driving of the Romans from "their own sea." Once Rome,
fully conscious of the irresistibleness of her power by land,
had transferred her superiority also to the other element;
now the mighty state was powerless at sea and, as it seemed,
on the point of also losing its dominion at least over the Asiatic
continent.  The material benefits which a state exists to confer--
security of frontier, undisturbed peaceful intercourse, legal protection,
and regulated administration--began all of them to vanish for the whole
of the nations united in the Roman state; the gods of blessing
seemed all to have mounted up to Olympus and to have left
the miserable earth at the mercy of the officially called or volunteer
plunderers and tormentors.  Nor was this decay of the state felt
as a public misfortune merely perhaps by such as had political rights
and public spirit; the insurrection of the proletariate,
and the brigandage and piracy which remind us of the times
of the Neapolitan Ferdinands, carried the sense of this decay
into the remotest valley and the humblest hut of Italy, and made
every one who pursued trade and commerce, or who bought
even a bushel of wheat, feel it as a personal calamity.

If inquiry was made as to the authors of this dreadful and unexampled
misery, it was not difficult to lay the blame of it with good
reason on many.  The slaveholders whose heart was in their
money-bags, the insubordinate soldiers, the generals cowardly,
incapable, or foolhardy, the demagogues of the market-place mostly
pursuing a mistaken aim, bore their share of the blame; or,
to speak more truly, who was there that did not share in it?
It was instinctively felt that this misery, this disgrace, this disorder
were too colossal to be the work of any one man.  As the greatness
of the Roman commonwealth was the work not of prominent individuals,
but rather of a soundly-organized burgess-body, so the decay
of this mighty structure was the result not of the destructive genius
of individuals, but of a general disorganization.  The great majority
of the burgesses were good for nothing, and every rotten stone
in the building helped to bring about the ruin of the whole; the whole
nation suffered for what was the whole nation's fault.  It was unjust
to hold the government, as the ultimate tangible organ of the state,
responsible for all its curable and incurable diseases; but it certainly
was true that the government contributed after a very grave fashion
to the general culpability.  In the Asiatic war, for example,
where no individual of the ruling lords conspicuously failed,
and Lucullus, in a military point of view at least, behaved with ability
and even glory, it was all the more clear that the blame of failure lay
in the system and in the government as such--primarily, so far
as that war was concerned, in the remissness with which Cappadocia
and Syria were at first abandoned, and in the awkward position
of the able general with reference to a governing college incapable
of any energetic resolution.  In maritime police likewise
the true idea which the senate had taken up as to a general hunting
out of the pirates was first spoilt by it in the execution
and then totally dropped, in order to revert to the old foolish system
of sending legions against the coursers of the sea.  The expeditions
of Servilius and Marcius to Cilicia, and of Metellus to Crete,
were undertaken on this system; and in accordance with it Triarius
had the island of Delos surrounded by a wall for protection against
the pirates.  Such attempts to secure the dominion of the seas remind
us of that Persian great-king, who ordered the sea to be scourged
with rods to make it subject to him.  Doubtless therefore
the nation had good reason for laying the blame of its failure
primarily on the government of the restoration.  A similar misrule
had indeed always come along with the re-establishment
of the oligarchy, after the fall of the Gracchi as after that
of Marius and Saturninus; yet never before had it shown such violence
and at the same time such laxity, never had it previously emerged
so corrupt and pernicious.  But, when a government cannot govern,
it ceases to be legitimate, and whoever has the power has also
the right to overthrow it.  It is, no doubt, unhappily true
that an incapable and flagitious government may for a long period trample
under foot the welfare and honour of the land, before the men are
found who are able and willing to wield against that government
the formidable weapons of its own forging, and to evoke out of
the moral revolt of the good and the distress of the many the revolution
which is in such a case legitimate.  But if the game attempted
with the fortunes of nations may be a merry one and may be played
perhaps for a long time without molestation, it is a treacherous
game, which in its own time entraps the players; and no one then
blames the axe, if it is laid to the root of the tree that bears
such fruits.  For the Roman oligarchy this time had now come.
The Pontic-Armenian war and the affair of the pirates became
the proximate causes of the overthrow of the Sullan constitution
and of the establishment of a revolutionary military dictatorship.




CHAPTER III

The Fall of the Oligarchy and the Rule of Pompeius

Continued Subsistence of the Sullan Constitution

The Sullan constitution still stood unshaken.  The assault,
which Lepidus and Sertorius had ventured to make on it,
had been repulsed with little loss.  The government had neglected,
it is true, to finish the half-completed building in the energetic
spirit of its author.  It is characteristic of the government,
that it neither distributed the lands which Sulla had destined
for allotment but had not yet parcelled out, nor directly abandoned
the claim to them, but tolerated the former owners in provisional
possession without regulating their title, and indeed even allowed
various still undistributed tracts of Sullan domain-land to be
arbitrarily taken possession of by individuals according
to the old system of occupation, which was de jure and de facto
set aside by the Gracchan reforms.(1)  Whatever in the Sullan enactments
was indifferent or inconvenient for the Optimates, was without scruple
ignored or cancelled; for instance, the sentences under which whole
communities were deprived of the right of citizenship, the prohibition
against conjoining the new farms, and several of the privileges
conferred by Sulla on particular communities--of course, without
giving back to the communities the sums paid for these exemptions.
But though these violations of the ordinances of Sulla by the government
itself contributed to shake the foundations of his structure,
the Sempronian laws were substantially abolished and remained so.

Attacks of the Democracy
Corn-Laws
Attempts to Restore the Tribunician Power

There was no lack, indeed, of men who had in view the re-establishment
of the Gracchan constitution, or of projects to attain piecemeal
in the way of constitutional reform what Lepidus and Sertorius
had attempted by the path of revolution.  The government
had already under the pressure of the agitation of Lepidus
immediately after the death of Sulla consented to a limited revival
of the largesses of grain (676); and it did, moreover,
what it could to satisfy the proletariate of the capital in regard
to this vital question.  When, notwithstanding those distributions,
the high price of grain occasioned chiefly by piracy produced
so oppressive a dearth in Rome as to lead to a violent tumult
in the streets in 679, extraordinary purchases of Sicilian grain
on account of the government relieved for the time the most severe
distress; and a corn-law brought in by the consuls of 681 regulated
for the future the purchases of Sicilian grain and furnished
the government, although at the expense of the provincials,
with better means of obviating similar evils.  But the less material
points of difference also--the restoration of the tribunician power
in its old compass, and the setting aside of the senatorial tribunals--
ceased not to form subjects of popular agitation; and in their
case the government offered more decided resistance.  The dispute
regarding the tribunician magistracy was opened as early as 678,
immediately after the defeat of Lepidus, by the tribune of the people
Lucius Sicinius, perhaps a descendant of the man of the same
name who had first filled this office more than four hundred years
before; but it failed before the resistance offered to it
by the active consul Gaius Curio.  In 680 Lucius Quinctius resumed
the agitation, but was induced by the authority of the consul Lucius
Lucullus to desist from his purpose.  The matter was taken up
in the following year with greater zeal by Gaius Licinius Macer, who--
in a way characteristic of the period--carried his literary studies
into public life, and, just as he had read in the Annals,
counselled the burgesses to refuse the conscription.

Attacks on the Senatorial Tribunals

Complaints also, only too well founded, prevailed respecting
the bad administration of justice by the senatorial jurymen.
The condemnation of a man of any influence could hardly be obtained.
Not only did colleague feel reasonable compassion for colleague,
those who had been or were likely to be accused for the poor sinner
under accusation at the moment; the sale also of the votes
of jurymen was hardly any longer exceptional.  Several senators
had been judicially convicted of this crime: men pointed
with the finger at others equally guilty; the most respected Optimates,
such as Quintus Catulus, granted in an open sitting of the senate
that the complaints were quite well founded; individual specially
striking cases compelled the senate on several occasions, e. g. in 680,
to deliberate on measures to check the venality of juries,
but only of course till the first outcry had subsided and the matter
could be allowed to slip out of sight.  The consequences
of this wretched administration of justice appeared especially
in a system of plundering and torturing the provincials, compared
with which even previous outrages seemed tolerable and moderate.
Stealing and robbing had been in some measure legitimized by custom;
the commission on extortions might be regarded as an institution
for taxing the senators returning from the provinces for the benefit
of their colleagues that remained at home.  But when an esteemed
Siceliot, because he had not been ready to help the governor
in a crime, was by the latter condemned to death in his absence
and unheard; when even Roman burgesses, if they were not equites
or senators, were in the provinces no longer safe from the rods
and axes of the Roman magistrate, and the oldest acquisition
of the Roman democracy--security of life and person--began to be
trodden under foot by the ruling oligarchy; then even the public
in the Forum at Rome had an ear for the complaints regarding
its magistrates in the provinces, and regarding the unjust judges
who morally shared the responsibility of such misdeeds.  The opposition
of course did not omit to assail its opponents in--what was almost
the only ground left to it--the tribunals.  The young Gaius Caesar,
who also, so far as his age allowed, took zealous part
in the agitation for the re-establishment of the tribunician power,
brought to trial in 677 one of the most respected partisans
of Sulla the consular Gnaeus Dolabella, and in the following year
another Sullan officer Gaius Antonius; and Marcus Cicero in 684
called to account Gaius Verres, one of the most wretched
of the creatures of Sulla, and one of the worst scourges
of the provincials.  Again and again were the pictures
of that dark period of the proscriptions, the fearful sufferings
of the provincials, the disgraceful state of Roman criminal justice,
unfolded before the assembled multitude with all the pomp
of Italian rhetoric, and with all the bitterness of Italian sarcasm,
and the mighty dead as well as his living instruments were unrelentingly
exposed to their wrath and scorn.  The re-establishment of the full
tribunician power, with the continuance of which the freedom,
might, and prosperity of the republic seemed bound up as by a charm
of primeval sacredness, the reintroduction of the "stern" equestrian
tribunals, the renewal of the censorship, which Sulla had set
aside, for the purifying of the supreme governing board
from its corrupt and pernicious elements, were daily demanded
with a loud voice by the orators of the popular party.

Want of Results from the Democratic Agitation

But with all this no progress was made.  There was scandal
and outcry enough, but no real result was attained by this exposure
of the government according to and beyond its deserts.  The material
power still lay, so long as there was no military interference,
in the hands of the burgesses of the capital; and the "people"
that thronged the streets of Rome and made magistrates and laws
in the Forum, was in fact nowise better than the governing senate.
The government no doubt had to come to terms with the multitude,
where its own immediate interest was at stake; this was the reason
for the renewal of the Sempronian corn-law.  But it was not
to be imagined that this populace would have displayed earnestness
on behalf of an idea or even of a judicious reform.  What Demosthenes
said of his Athenians was justly applied to the Romans
of this period--the people were very zealous for action, so long
as they stood round the platform and listened to proposals of reforms;
but when they went home, no one thought further of what he had
heard in the market-place.  However those democratic agitators might
stir the fire, it was to no purpose, for the inflammable material
was wanting.  The government knew this, and allowed no sort
of concession to be wrung from it on important questions
of principle; at the utmost it consented (about 682) to grant
amnesty to a portion of those who had become exiles with Lepidus.
Any concessions that did take place, came not so much from the pressure
of the democracy as from the attempts at mediation of the moderate
aristocracy.  But of the two laws which the single still surviving
leader of this section Gaius Cotta carried in his consulate of 679,
that which concerned the tribunals was again set aside
in the very next year; and the second, which abolished the Sullan
enactment that those who had held the tribunate should be disqualified
for undertaking other magistracies, but allowed the other limitations
to continue, merely--like every half-measure--excited the displeasure
of both parties.

The party of conservatives friendly to reform which lost
its most notable head by the early death of Cotta occurring soon
after (about 681) dwindled away more and more--crushed between
the extremes, which were becoming daily more marked.  But of these
the party of the government, wretched and remiss as it was,
necessarily retained the advantage in presence of the equally
wretched and equally remiss opposition.

Quarrel between the Government and Their General Pompeius

But this state of matters so favourable to the government
was altered, when the differences became more distinctly developed
which subsisted between it and those of its partisans, whose hopes
aspired to higher objects than the seat of honour in the senate
and the aristocratic villa.  In the first rank of these stood Gnaeus
Pompeius.  He was doubtless a Sullan; but we have already shown(2)
how little he was at home among his own party, how his lineage,
his past history, his hopes separated him withal from the nobility
as whose protector and champion he was officially regarded.
The breach already apparent had been widened irreparably during
the Spanish campaigns of the general (677-683).  With reluctance
and semi-compulsion the government had associated him as colleague
with their true representative Quintus Metellus; and in turn he accused
the senate, probably not without ground, of having by its careless
or malicious neglect of the Spanish armies brought about their
defeats and placed the fortunes of the expedition in jeopardy.
Now he returned as victor over his open and his secret foes,
at the head of an army inured to war and wholly devoted to him,
desiring assignments of land for his soldiers, a triumph
and the consulship for himself.  The latter demands came into
collision with the law.  Pompeius, although several times invested
in an extraordinary way with supreme official authority, had not yet
administered any ordinary magistracy, not even the quaestorship,
and was still not a member of the senate; and none but one
who had passed through the round of lesser ordinary magistracies
could become consul, none but one who had been invested
with the ordinary supreme power could triumph.  The senate
was legally entitled, if he became a candidate for the consulship,
to bid him begin with the quaestorship; if he requested a triumph,
to remind him of the great Scipio, who under like circumstances
had renounced his triumph over conquered Spain.  Nor was Pompeius
less dependent constitutionally on the good will of the senate
as respected the lands promised to his soldiers.  But, although
the senate--as with its feebleness even in animosity
was very conceivable--should yield those points and concede
to the victorious general, in return for his executioner's service
against the democratic chiefs, the triumph, the consulate,
and the assignations of land, an honourable annihilation
in senatorial indolence among the long series of peaceful
senatorial Imperators was the most favourable lot which the oligarchy
was able to hold in readiness for the general of thirty-six.
That which his heart really longed for--the command
in the Mithradatic war--he could never expect to obtain
from the voluntary bestowal of the senate: in their own well-understood
interest the oligarchy could not permit him to add to his Africa
and European trophies those of a third continent; the laurels
which were to be plucked copiously and easily in the east were reserved
at all events for the pure aristocracy.  But if the celebrated general
did not find his account in the ruling oligarchy, there remained--
for neither was the time ripe, nor was the temperament of Pompeius
at all fitted, for a purely personal outspoken dynastic policy--
no alternative save to make common cause with the democratic party.
No interest of his own bound him to the Sullan constitution;
he could pursue his personal objects quite as well, if not better,
with one more democratic.  On the other hand he found all that he needed
in the democratic party.  Its active and adroit leaders were ready
and able to relieve the resourceless and somewhat wooden hero
of the trouble of political leadership, and yet much too insignificant
to be able or even wishful to dispute with the celebrated general
the first place and especially the supreme military control.  Even
Gaius Caesar, by far the most important of them, was simply a young
man whose daring exploits and fashionable debts far more than his
fiery democratic eloquence had gained him a name, and who could not
but feel himself greatly honoured when the world-renowned Imperator
allowed him to be his political adjutant.  That popularity,
to which men like Pompeius, with pretensions greater than their
abilities, usually attach more value than they are willing
to confess to themselves, could not but fall in the highest measure
to the lot of the young general whose accession gave victory
to the almost forlorn cause of the democracy.  The reward of victory
claimed by him for himself and his soldiers would then follow
of itself.  In general it seemed, if the oligarchy were overthrown,
that amidst the total want of other considerable chiefs
of the opposition it would depend solely on Pompeius himself
to determine his future position.  And of this much there could
hardly be a doubt, that the accession of the general of the army,
which had just returned victorious from Spain and still stood compact
and unbroken in Italy, to the party of opposition must have
as its consequence the fall of the existing order of things.
Government and opposition were equally powerless; so soon as
the latter no longer fought merely with the weapons of declamation,
but had the sword of a victorious general ready to back its demands,
the government would be in any case overcome, perhaps even
without a struggle.

Coalition of the Military Chiefs and the Democracy

Pompeius and the democrats thus found themselves urged
into coalition.  Personal dislikings were probably not wanting
on either side: it was not possible that the victorious general
could love the street orators, nor could these hail with pleasure
as their chief the executioner of Carbo and Brutus; but political
necessity outweighed at least for the moment all moral scruples.

The democrats and Pompeius, however, were not the sole parties
to the league.  Marcus Crassus was in a similar situation
with Pompeius.  Although a Sullan like the latter, his politics
were quite as in the case of Pompeius preeminently of a personal kind,
and by no means those of the ruling oligarchy; and he too was now
in Italy at the head of a large and victorious army, with which
he had just suppressed the rising of the slaves.  He had to choose
whether he would ally himself with the oligarchy against the coalition,
or enter that coalition: he chose the latter, which was doubtless
the safer course.  With his colossal wealth and his influence
on the clubs of the capital he was in any case a valuable
ally; but under the prevailing circumstances it was an incalculable
gain, when the only army, with which the senate could have met
the troops of Pompeius, joined the attacking force.  The democrats
moreover, who were probably somewhat uneasy at their alliance
with that too powerful general, were not displeased to see
a counterpoise and perhaps a future rival associated with him
in the person of Marcus Crassus.

Thus in the summer of 683 the first coalition took place between
the democracy on the one hand, and the two Sullan generals Gnaeus
Pompeius and Marcus Crassus on the other.  The generals adopted
the party-programme of the democracy; and they were promised
immediately in return the consulship for the coming year, while
Pompeius was to have also a triumph and the desired allotments
of land for his soldiers, and Crassus as the conqueror of Spartacus
at least the honour of a solemn entrance into the capital.

To the two Italian armies, the great capitalists,
and the democracy, which thus came forward in league for the overthrow
of the Sullan constitution, the senate had nothing to oppose save
perhaps the second Spanish army under Quintus Metellus Pius.
But Sulla had truly predicted that what he did would not be done
a second time; Metellus, by no means inclined to involve himself
in a civil war, had discharged his soldiers immediately after crossing
the Alps.  So nothing was left for the oligarchy but to submit
to what was inevitable.  The senate granted the dispensations
requisite for the consulship and triumph; Pompeius and Crassus
were, without opposition, elected consuls for 684, while their
armies, on pretext of awaiting their triumph, encamped before
the city.  Pompeius thereupon, even before entering on office,
gave his public and formal adherence to the democratic programme
in an assembly of the people held by the tribune Marcus Lollius
Palicanus.  The change of the constitution was thus
in principle decided.

Re-establishing of the Tribunician Power

They now went to work in all earnest to set aside the Sullan
institutions.  First of all the tribunician magistracy regained
its earlier authority.  Pompeius himself as consul introduced the law
which gave back to the tribunes of the people their time-honoured
prerogatives, and in particular the initiative of legislation--
a singular gift indeed from the hand of a man who had done more than
any one living to wrest from the community its ancient privileges.

New Arrangement as to Jurymen

With respect to the position of jurymen, the regulation of Sulla,
that the roll of the senators was to serve as the list of jurymen,
was no doubt abolished; but this by no means led to a simple
restoration of the Gracchan equestrian courts.  In future--so it
was enacted by the new Aurelian law--the colleges of jurymen
were to consist one-third of senators and two-thirds of men
of equestrian census, and of the latter the half must have rilled
the office of district-presidents, or so-called -tribuni aerarii-.
This last innovation was a farther concession made to the democrats,
inasmuch as according to it at least a third part of the criminal
jurymen were indirectly derived from the elections of the tribes.
The reason, again, why the senate was not totally excluded
from the courts is probably to be sought partly in the relations
of Crassus to the senate, partly in the accession of the senatorial
middle party to the coalition; with which is doubtless connected
the circumstance that this law was brought in by the praetor Lucius
Cotta, the brother of their lately deceased leader.

Renewal of the Asiatic Revenue-Farming

Not less important was the abolition of the arrangements
as to taxation established for Asia by Sulla,(3) which presumably
likewise fell to this year.  The governor of Asia at that time,
Lucius Lucullus, was directed to reestablish the system of farming
the revenue introduced by Gaius Gracchus; and thus this important
source of money and power was restored to the great capitalists.

Renewal of the Censorship

Lastly, the censorship was revived.  The elections for it,
which the new consuls fixed shortly after entering on their office,
fell, in evident mockery of the senate, on the two consuls of 682,
Gnaeus Lentulus Clodianus and Lucius Gellius, who had been removed
by the senate from their commands on account of their wretched
management of the war against Spartacus.(4)  It may readily be conceived
that these men put in motion all the means which their important
and grave office placed at their command, for the purpose of doing
homage to the new-holders of power and of annoying the senate.
At least an eighth part of the senate, sixty-four senators, a number
hitherto unparalleled, were deleted from the roll, including Gaius
Antonius, formerly impeached without success by Gaius Caesar,(5)
and Publius Lentulus Sura, the consul of 683, and presumably also
not a few of the most obnoxious creatures of Sulla.

The New Constitution

Thus in 684 they had reverted in the main to the arrangements
that subsisted before the Sullan restoration.

Again the multitude of the capital was fed from the state-chest,
in other words by the provinces;(6) again the tribunician authority
gave to every demagogue a legal license to overturn the arrangements
of the state; again the moneyed nobility, as farmers of the revenue
and possessed of the judicial control over the governors, raised their
heads alongside of the government as powerfully as ever; again the senate
trembled before the verdict of jurymen of the equestrian order and before
the censorial censure.  The system of Sulla, which had based the monopoly
of power by the nobility on the political annihilation of the mercantile
aristocracy and of demagogism, was thus completely overthrown.
Leaving out of view some subordinate enactments, the abolition
of which was not overtaken till afterwards, such as the restoration
of the right of self-completion to the priestly colleges,(7) nothing
of the general ordinances of Sulla survived except, on the one hand,
the concessions which he himself found it necessary to make
to the opposition, such as the recognition of the Roman franchise
of all the Italians, and, on the other hand, enactments without
any marked partisan tendency, and with which therefore even judicious
democrats found no fault--such as, among others, the restriction
of the freedmen, the regulation of the functional spheres
of the magistrates, and the material alterations in criminal law.

The coalition was more agreed regarding these questions
of principle than with respect to the personal questions which such
a political revolution raised.  As might be expected, the democrats
were not content with the general recognition of their programme;
but they too now demanded a restoration in their sense--revival
of the commemoration of their dead, punishment of the murderers,
recall of the proscribed from exile, removal of the political
disqualification that lay on their children, restoration
of the estates confiscated by Sulla, indemnification at the expense
of the heirs and assistants of the dictator.  These were certainly
the logical consequences which ensued from a pure victory
of the democracy; but the victory of the coalition of 683 was very far
from being such.  The democracy gave to it their name and their
programme, but it was the officers who had joined the movement,
and above all Pompeius, that gave to it power and completion; and these
could never yield their consent to a reaction which would not only
have shaken the existing state of things to its foundations,
but would have ultimately turned against themselves--men still had
a lively recollection who the men were whose blood Pompeius had shed,
and how Crassus had laid the foundation of his enormous fortune.
It was natural therefore, but at the same time significant
of the weakness of the democracy, that the coalition of 683 took
not the slightest step towards procuring for the democrats revenge
or even rehabilitation.  The supplementary collection of all
the purchase money still outstanding for confiscated estates
bought by auction, or even remitted to the purchasers by Sulla--
for which the censor Lentulus provided in a special law--
can hardly be regarded as an exception; for though not a few Sullans
were thereby severely affected in their personal interests,
yet the measure itself was essentially a confirmation
of the confiscations undertaken by Sulla.

Impending Miliatry Dictatorship of Pompeius

The work of Sulla was thus destroyed; but what the future order
of things was to be, was a question raised rather than decided by
that destruction.  The coalition, kept together solely by the common
object of setting aside the work of restoration, dissolved
of itself, if not formally, at any rate in reality, when that object
was attained; while the question, to what quarter the preponderance
of power was in the first instance to fall, seemed approaching
an equally speedy and violent solution.  The armies of Pompeius
and Crassus still lay before the gates of the city.  The former had
indeed promised to disband his soldiers after his triumph (last day
of Dec. 683); but he had at first omitted to do so, in order to let
the revolution in the state be completed without hindrance
under the pressure which the Spanish army in front of the capital
exercised over the city and the senate--a course, which in like manner
applied to the army of Crassus.  This reason now existed
no longer; but still the dissolution of the armies was postponed.
In the turn taken by matters it looked as if one of the two generals
allied with the democracy would seize the military dictatorship
and place oligarchs and democrats in the same chains.  And this one
could only be Pompeius.  From the first Crassus had played
a subordinate part in the coalition; he had been obliged to propose
himself, and owed even his election to the consulship mainly
to the proud intercession of Pompeius.  Far the stronger, Pompeius
was evidently master of the situation; if he availed himself of it,
it seemed as if he could not but become what the instinct
of the multitude even now designated him--the absolute ruler
of the mightiest state in the civilized world.  Already the whole mass
of the servile crowded around the future monarch.  Already his weaker
opponents were seeking their last resource in a new coalition;
Crassus, full of old and recent jealousy towards the younger rival
who so thoroughly outstripped him, made approaches to the senate
and attempted by unprecedented largesses to attach to himself
the multitude of the capital--as if the oligarchy which Crassus himself
had helped to break down, and the ever ungrateful multitude,
would have been able to afford any protection whatever against
the veterans of the Spanish army.  For a moment it seemed as if
the armies of Pompeius and Crassus would come to blows before
the gates of the capital.

Retirement of Pompeius

But the democrats averted this catastrophe by their sagacity
and their pliancy.  For their party too, as well as for the senate
and Crassus, it was all-important that Pompeius should not seize
the dictatorship; but with a truer discernment of their own weakness
and of the character of their powerful opponent their leaders tried
the method of conciliation.  Pompeius lacked no condition
for grasping at the crown except the first of all--proper kingly
courage.  We have already described the man--with his effort to be
at once loyal republican and master of Rome, with his vacillation
and indecision, with his pliancy that concealed itself
under the boasting of independent resolution.  This was the first
great trial to which destiny subjected him; and he failed to stand it.
The pretext under which Pompeius refused to dismiss the army was,
that he distrusted Crassus and therefore could not take the initiative
in disbanding the soldiers.  The democrats induced Crassus to make
gracious advances in the matter, and to offer the hand of peace
to his colleague before the eyes of all; in public and in private they
besought the latter that to the double merit of having vanquished
the enemy and reconciled the parties he would add the third and yet
greater service of preserving internal peace to his country,
and banishing the fearful spectre of civil war with which
they were threatened.  Whatever could tell on a vain, unskilful,
vacillating man--all the flattering arts of diplomacy, all the theatrical
apparatus of patriotic enthusiasm--was put in motion to obtain
the desired result; and--which was the main point--things had
by the well-timed compliance of Crassus assumed such a shape,
that Pompeius had no alternative but either to come forward openly
as tyrant of Rome or to retire.  So he at length yielded and consented
to disband the troops.  The command in the Mithradatic war,
which he doubtless hoped to obtain when he had allowed himself to be
chosen consul for 684, he could not now desire, since Lucullus
seemed to have practically ended that war with the campaign of 683.
He deemed it beneath his dignity to accept the consular province
assigned to him by the senate in accordance with the Sempronian
law, and Crassus in this followed his example.  Accordingly
when Pompeius after discharging his soldiers resigned his consulship
on the last day of 684, he retired for the time wholly from public
affairs, and declared that he wished thenceforth to live a life
of quiet leisure as a simple citizen.  He had taken up such a position
that he was obliged to grasp at the crown; and, seeing that he was
not willing to do so, no part was left to him but the empty one
of a candidate for a throne resigning his pretensions to it.

Senate, Equites, and Populares

The retirement of the man, to whom as things stood the first place
belonged, from the political stage reproduced in the first instance
nearly the same position of parties, which we found in the Gracchan
and Marian epochs.  Sulla had merely strengthened the senatorial
government, not created it; so, after the bulwarks erected by Sulla
had fallen, the government nevertheless remained primarily
with the senate, although, no doubt, the constitution with which
it governed--in the main the restored Gracchan constitution--
was pervaded by a spirit hostile to the oligarchy.  The democracy
had effected the re-establishment of the Gracchan constitution;
but without a new Gracchus it was a body without a head,
and that neither Pompeius nor Crassus could be permanently such a head,
was in itself clear and had been made still clearer by the recent
events.  So the democratic opposition, for want of a leader
who could have directly taken the helm, had to content itself
for the time being with hampering and annoying the government
at every step.  Between the oligarchy, however, and the democracy
there rose into new consideration the capitalist party,
which in the recent crisis had made common cause with the latter,
but which the oligarchs now zealously endeavoured to draw over
to their side, so as to acquire in it a counterpoise to the democracy.
Thus courted on both sides the moneyed lords did not neglect to turn
their advantageous position to profit, and to have the only one
of their former privileges which they had not yet regained--the fourteen
benches reserved for the equestrian order in the theatre--now (687)
restored to them by decree of the people.  On the whole, without
abruptly breaking with the democracy, they again drew closer
to the government.  The very relations of the senate to Crassus
and his clients point in this direction; but a better understanding
between the senate and the moneyed aristocracy seems to have been
chiefly brought about by the fact, that in 686 the senate withdrew
from Lucius Lucullus the ablest of the senatorial officers,
at the instance of the capitalists whom he had sorely annoyed,
the dministration of the province of Asia so important
for their purposes.(8)

The Events in the East, and Their Reaction on Rome

But while the factions of the capital were indulging in their
wonted mutual quarrels, which they were never able to bring
to any proper decision, events in the east followed their fatal course,
as we have already described; and it was these events that brought
the dilatory course of the politics of the capital to a crisis.
The war both by land and by sea had there taken a most unfavourable
turn.  In the beginning of 687 the Pontic army of the Romans
was destroyed, and their Armenian army was utterly breaking up
on its retreat; all their conquests were lost, the sea was exclusively
in the power of the pirates, and the price of grain in Italy
was thereby so raised that they were afraid of an actual famine.
No doubt, as we saw, the faults of the generals, especially
the utter incapacity of the admiral Marcus Antonius and the temerity
of the otherwise able Lucius Lucullus, were in part the occasion
of these calamities; no doubt also the democracy had by its
revolutionary agitations materially contributed to the breaking up
of the Armenian army.  But of course the government was now held
cumulatively responsible for all the mischief which itself
and others had occasioned, and the indignant hungry multitude
desired only an opportunity to settle accounts with the senate.

Reappearance of Pompeius

It was a decisive crisis.  The oligarchy, though degraded
and disarmed, was not yet overthrown, for the management of public
affairs was still in the hands of the senate; but it would fall,
if its opponents should appropriate to themselves that management,
and more especially the superintendence of military affairs;
and now this was possible.  If proposals for another and better
management of the war by land and sea were now submitted to the comitia,
the senate was obviously--looking to the temper of the burgesses--
not in a position to prevent their passing; and an interference
of the burgesses in these supreme questions of administration
was practically the deposition of the senate and the transference
of the conduct of the state to the leaders of opposition.  Once more
the concatenation of events brought the decision into the hands
of Pompeius.  For more than two years the famous general had lived
as a private citizen in the capital.  His voice was seldom heard
in the senate-house or in the Forum; in the former he was unwelcome
and without decisive influence, in the latter he was afraid
of the stormy proceedings of the parties.  But when he did show himself,
it was with the full retinue of his clients high and low,
and the very solemnity of his reserve imposed on the multitude.
If he, who was still surrounded with the full lustre of his extraordinary
successes, should now offer to go to the east, he would beyond
doubt be readily invested by the burgesses with all the plenitude
of military and political power which he might himself ask.
For the oligarchy, which saw in the political-military dictatorship
their certain ruin, and in Pompeius himself since the coalition
of 683 their most hated foe, this was an overwhelming blow;
but the democratic party also could have little comfort in the prospect.
However desirable the putting an end to the government of the senate
could not but be in itself, it was, if it took place in this way,
far less a victory for their party than a personal victory
for their over-powerful ally.  In the latter there might easily arise
a far more dangerous opponent to the democratic party than the senate
had been.  The danger fortunately avoided a few years before
by the disbanding of the Spanish army and the retirement of Pompeius
would recur in increased measure, if Pompeius should now be placed
at the head of the armies of the east.

Overthrow of the Senatorial Rule, and New Power of Pompeius

On this occasion, however, Pompeius acted or at least allowed
others to act in his behalf.  In 687 two projects of law
were introduced, one of which, besides decreeing the discharge--
long since demanded by the democracy--of the soldiers of the Asiatic
army who had served their term, decreed the recall of its
commander-in-chief Lucius Lucullus and the supplying of his place
by one of the consuls of the current year, Gaius Piso or Manius
Glabrio; while the second revived and extended the plan proposed
seven years before by the senate itself for clearing the seas
from the pirates.  A single general to be named by the senate
from the consulars was to be appointed, to hold by sea exclusive command
over the whole Mediterranean from the Pillars of Hercules to the coasts
of Pontus and Syria, and to exercise by land, concurrently
with the respective Roman governors, supreme command over the whole
coasts for fifty miles inland.  The office was secured to him
for three years.  He was surrounded by a staff, such as Rome
had never seen, of five-and-twenty lieutenants of senatorial rank,
all invested with praetorian insignia and praetorian powers,
and of two under-treasurers with quaestorian prerogatives, all of them
selected by the exclusive will of the general commanding-in-chief.
He was allowed to raise as many as 120,000 infantry, 5000 cavalry,
500 ships of war, and for this purpose to dispose absolutely
of the means of the provinces and client-states; moreover, the existing
vessels of war and a considerable number of troops were at once
handed over to him.  The treasures of the state in the capital
and in the provinces as well as those of the dependent communities
were to be placed absolutely at his command, and in spite of the severe
financial distress a sum of; 1,400,000 pounds (144,000,000 sesterces)
was at once to be paid to him from the state-chest.

Effect of the Projects of Law

It is clear that by these projects of law, especially
by that which related to the expedition against the pirates,
the government of the senate was set aside.  Doubtless the ordinary
supreme magistrates nominated by the burgesses were of themselves
the proper generals of the commonwealth, and the extraordinary
magistrates needed, at least according to strict law, confirmation
by the burgesses in order to act as generals; but in the appointment
to particular commands no influence constitutionally belonged
to the community, and it was only on the proposition of the senate,
or at any rate on that of a magistrate entitled in himself
to hold the office of general, that the comitia had hitherto
now and again interfered in this matter and conferred
such special functions.  In this field, ever since there had existed
a Roman free state, the practically decisive voice pertained
to the senate, and this its prerogative had in the course of time
obtained full recognition.  No doubt the democracy had already
assailed it; but even in the most doubtful of the cases which had
hitherto occurred--the transference of the African command
to Gaius Marius in 647(9)--it was only a magistrate constitutionally
entitled to hold the office of general that was entrusted
by the resolution of the burgesses with a definite expedition.

But now the burgesses were to invest any private man at their
pleasure not merely with the extraordinary authority of the supreme
magistracy, but also with a sphere of office definitely settled
by them.  That the senate had to choose this man from the ranks
of the consulars, was a mitigation only in form; for the selection
was left to it simply because there was really no choice,
and in presence of the vehemently excited multitude the senate
could entrust the chief command of the seas and coasts to no other
save Pompeius alone.  But more dangerous still than this negation
in principle of the senatorial control was its practical abolition
by the institution of an office of almost unlimited military
and financial powers.  While the office of general was formerly
restricted to a term of one year, to a definite province,
and to military and financial resources strictly measured out,
the new extraordinary office had from the outset a duration
of three years secured to it--which of course did not exclude
a farther prolongation; had the greater portion of all the provinces,
and even Italy itself which was formerly free from military
jurisdiction, subordinated to it; had the soldiers, ships,
treasures of the state placed almost without restriction
at its disposal.  Even the primitive fundamental principle
in the state-law of the Roman republic, which we have just mentioned--
that the highest military and civil authority could not be conferred
without the co-operation of the burgesses--was infringed in favour
of the new commander-in-chief.  Inasmuch as the law conferred beforehand
on the twenty-five adjutants whom he was to nominate praetorian
rank and praetorian prerogatives,(10) the highest office
of republican Rome became subordinate to a newly created office,
for which it was left to the future to find the fitting name,
but which in reality even now involved in it the monarchy.
It was a total revolution in the existing order of things,
for which the foundation was laid in this project of law.

Pompeius and the Gabinian Laws

These measures of a man who had just given so striking proofs
of his vacillation and weakness surprise us by their decisive energy.
Nevertheless the fact that Pompeius acted on this occasion
more resolutely than during his consulate is very capable of explanation.
The point at issue was not that he should come forward at once
as monarch, but only that he should prepare the way for the monarchy
by a military exceptional measure, which, revolutionary
as it was in its nature, could still be accomplished under the forms
of the existing constitution, and which in the first instance
carried Pompeius so far on the way towards the old object
of his wishes, the command against Mithradates and Tigranes.
Important reasons of expediency also might be urged for the emancipation
of the military power from the senate.  Pompeius could not
have forgotten that a plan designed on exactly similar
principles for the suppression of piracy had a few years before
failed through the mismanagement of the senate, and that the issue
of the Spanish war had been placed in extreme jeopardy by the neglect
of the armies on the part of the senate and its injudicious conduct
of the finances; he could not fail to see what were the feelings
with which the great majority of the aristocracy regarded
him as a renegade Sullan, and what fate was in store for him,
if he allowed himself to be sent as general of the government
with the usual powers to the east.  It was natural therefore
that he should indicate a position independent of the senate
as the first condition of his undertaking the command,
and that the burgesses should readily agree to it.  It is moreover
in a high degree probable that Pompeius was on this occasion urged
to more rapid action by those around him, who were, it may be presumed,
not a little indignant at his retirement two years before.  The projects
of law regarding the recall of Lucullus and the expedition against
the pirates were introduced by the tribune of the people Aulus
Gabinius, a man ruined in finances and morals, but a dexterous
negotiator, a bold orator, and a brave soldier.  Little as the assurance
of Pompeius, that he had no wish at all for the chief command
in the war with the pirates and only longed for domestic
repose, were meant in earnest, there was probably this much
of truth in them, that the bold and active client, who was
in confidential intercourse with Pompeius and his more immediate
circle and who completely saw through the situation and the men,
took the decision to a considerable extent out of the hands
of his shortsighted and resourceless patron.

The Parties in Relation to the Gabinian Laws

The democracy, discontented as its leaders might be in secret,
could not well come publicly forward against the project of law.
It would, to all appearance, have been in no case able to hinder
the carrying of the law; but it would by opposition have openly
broken with Pompeius and thereby compelled him either to make
approaches to the oligarchy or regardlessly to pursue his personal
policy in the face of both parties.  No course was left
to the democrats but still even now to adhere to their alliance
with Pompeius, hollow as it was, and to embrace the present opportunity
of at least definitely overthrowing the senate and passing over
from opposition into government, leaving the ulterior issue
to the future and to the well-known weakness of Pompeius' character.
Accordingly their leaders--the praetor Lucius Quinctius, the same
who seven years before had exerted himself for the restoration
of the tribunician power,(11) and the former quaestor Gaius Caesar--
supported the Gabinian proposals.

The privileged classes were furious--not merely the nobility,
but also the mercantile aristocracy, which felt its exclusive
rights endangered by so thorough a state-revolution and once
more recognized its true patron in the senate.  When the tribune
Gabinius after the introduction of his proposals appeared
in the senate-house, the fathers of the city were almost on the point
of strangling him with their own hands, without considering in their
zeal how extremely disadvantageous for them this method of arguing
must have ultimately proved.  The tribune escaped to the Forum
and summoned the multitude to storm the senate-house, when just
at the right time the sitting terminated.  The consul Piso,
the champion of the oligarchy, who accidentally fell into the hands
of the multitude, would have certainly become a victim to popular fury,
had not Gabinius come up and, in order that his certain success
might not be endangered by unseasonable acts of violence, liberated
the consul.  Meanwhile the exasperation of the multitude remained
undiminished and constantly found fresh nourishment in the high
prices of grain and the numerous rumours more or less absurd
which were in circulation--such as that Lucius Lucullus had invested
the money entrusted to him for carrying on the war at interest in Rome,
or had attempted with its aid to make the praetor Quinctius withdraw
from the cause of the people; that the senate intended to prepare
for the "second Romulus," as they called Pompeius, the fate
of the first,(12) and other reports of a like character.

The Vote

Thereupon the day of voting arrived.  The multitude stood densely
packed in the Forum; all the buildings, whence the rostra could
be seen, were covered up to the roofs with men.  All the colleagues
of Gabinius had promised their veto to the senate; but in presence
of the surging masses all were silent except the single Lucius
Trebellius, who had sworn to himself and the senate rather
to die than yield.  When the latter exercised his veto,
Gabinius immediately interrupted the voting on his projects of law
and proposed to the assembled people to deal with his
refractory colleague, as Octavius had formerly been dealt with
on the proposition of Tiberius Gracchus,(13) namely, to depose him
immediately from office.  The vote was taken and the reading
out of the voting tablets began; when the first seventeen tribes,
which came to be read out, had declared for the proposal
and the next affirmative vote would give to it the majority,
Trebellius, forgetting his oath, pusillanimously withdrew his veto.
In vain the tribune Otho then endeavoured to procure that at least
the collegiate principle might be preserved, and two generals
elected instead of one; in vain the aged Quintus Catulus,
the most respected man in the senate, exerted his last energies
to secure that the lieutenant-generals should not be nominated
by the commander-in-chief, but chosen by the people.  Otho could
not even procure a hearing amidst the noise of the multitude;
the well-calculated complaisance of Gabinius procured a hearing
for Catulus, and in respectful silence the multitude listened
to the old man's words; but they were none the less thrown away.
The proposals were not merely converted into law with all the clauses
unaltered, but the supplementary requests in detail made by Pompeius
were instantaneously and completely agreed to.

Successes of Pompeius in the East

With high-strung hopes men saw the two generals Pompeius and Glabrio
depart for their places of destination.  The price of grain
had fallen immediately after the passing of the Gabinian laws
to the ordinary rates--an evidence of the hopes attached to the grand
expedition and its glorious leader.  These hopes were, as we shall
have afterwards to relate, not merely fulfilled, but surpassed:
in three months the clearing of the seas was completed.
Since the Hannibalic war the Roman government had displayed
no such energy in external action; as compared with the lax
and incapable administration of the oligarchy, the democratic--
military opposition had most brilliantly made good its title
to grasp and wield the reins of the state.  The equally unpatriotic
and unskilful attempts of the consul Piso to put paltry obstacles
in the way of the arrangements of Pompeius for the suppression of piracy
in Narbonese Gaul only increased the exasperation of the burgesses
against the oligarchy and their enthusiasm for Pompeius; it was nothing
but the personal intervention of the latter, that prevented the assembly
of the people from summarily removing the consul from his office.

Meanwhile the confusion on the Asiatic continent had become still
worse.  Glabrio, who was to take up in the stead of Lucullus
the chief command against Mithradates and Tigranes, had remained
stationary in the west of Asia Minor and, while instigating
the soldiers by various proclamations against Lucullus, had not entered
on the supreme command, so that Lucullus was forced to retain it.
Against Mithradates, of course, nothing was done; the Pontic
cavalry plundered fearlessly and with impunity in Bithynia
and Cappadocia.  Pompeius had been led by the piratical war to proceed
with his army to Asia Minor; nothing seemed more natural than
to invest him with the supreme command in the Pontic-Armenian war,
to which he himself had long aspired.  But the democratic party did
not, as may be readily conceived, share the wishes of its general,
and carefully avoided taking the initiative in the matter.
It is very probable that it had induced Gabinius not to entrust
both the war with Mithradates and that with the pirates from the outset
to Pompeius, but to entrust the former to Glabrio; upon no account
could it now desire to increase and perpetuate the exceptional
position of the already too-powerful general.  Pompeius himself
retained according to his custom a passive attitude; and perhaps
he would in reality have returned home after fulfilling the commission
which he had received, but for the occurrence of an incident
unexpected by all parties.

The Manillian Law

One Gaius Manilius, an utterly worthless and insignificant man
had when tribune of the people by his unskilful projects of legislation
lost favour both with the aristocracy and with the democracy.
In the hope of sheltering himself under the wing of the powerful
general, if he should procure for the latter what every one knew
that he eagerly desired but had not the boldness to ask, Manilius
proposed to the burgesses to recall the governors Glabrio
from Bithynia and Pontus and Marcius Rex from Cilicia, and to entrust
their offices as well as the conduct of the war in the east,
apparently without any fixed limit as to time and at any rate
with the freest authority to conclude peace and alliance,
to the proconsul of the seas and coasts in addition to his previous
office (beg. of 688).  This occurrence very clearly showed how
disorganized was the machinery of the Roman constitution,
whenthe power of legislation was placed as respected the initiative
inthe hands of any demagogue however insignificant, and as respected
the final determination in the hands of the incapable multitude,
while it at the same time was extended to the most important questions
of administration.  The Manilian proposal was acceptable to none of
the political parties; yet it scarcely anywhere encountered serious
resistance.  The democratic leaders, for the same reasons which had
forced them to acquiesce in the Gabinian law, could not venture
earnestly to oppose the Manilian; they kept their displeasure
and their fears to themselves and spoke in public for the general
of the democracy.  The moderate Optimates declared themselves
for the Manilian proposal, because after the Gabinian law resistance
in any case was vain, and far-seeing men already perceived
that the true policy for the senate was to make approaches
as far as possible to Pompeius and to draw him over to their side
on occasion of the breach which might be foreseen between him
and the democrats.  Lastly the trimmers blessed the day
when they too seemed to have an opinion and could come forward
decidedly without losing favour with either of the parties--
it is significant that Marcus Cicero first appeared as an orator
on the political platform in defence of the Manilian proposal.
The strict Optimates alone, with Quintus Catulus at their head,
showed at least their colours and spoke against the proposition.
Of course it was converted into law by a majority bordering on unanimity.
Pompeius thus obtained, in addition to his earlier extensive powers,
the administration of the most important provinces of Asia Minor--
so that there scarcely remained a spot of land within the wide Roman
bounds that had not to obey him--and the conduct of a war as to which,
like the expedition of Alexander, men could tell where and when
it began, but not where and when it might end.  Never since Rome
stood had such power been united in the hands of a single man.

The Democratic-Military Revolution

The Gabinio-Manilian proposals terminated the struggle between
the senate and the popular party, which the Sempronian laws had begun
sixty-seven years before.  As the Sempronian laws first constituted
the revolutionary party into a political opposition, the Gabinio-
Manilian first converted it from an opposition into the government;
and as it had been a great moment when the first breach
in the existing constitution was made by disregarding the veto
of Octavius, it was a moment no less full of significance
when the last bulwark of the senatorial rule fell with the withdrawal
of Trebellius.  This was felt on both sides and even the indolent
souls of the senators were convulsively roused by this death-
struggle; but yet the war as to the constitution terminated
in a very different and far more pitiful fashion than it had begun.
A youth in every sense noble had commenced the revolution;
it was concluded by pert intriguers and demagogues of the lowest type.
On the other hand, while the Optimates had begun the struggle
with a measured resistance and with a defence which earnestly held out
even at the forlorn posts, they ended with taking the initiative
in club-law, with grandiloquent weakness, and with pitiful perjury.
What had once appeared a daring dream, was now attained; the senate
had ceased to govern.  But when the few old men who had seen
the first storms of revolution and heard the words of the Gracchi,
compared that time with the present they found that everything
had in the interval changed--countrymen and citizens, state-law
and military discipline, life and manners; and well might those
painfully smile, who compared the ideals of the Gracchan period
with their realization.  Such reflections however belonged
to the past.  For the present and perhaps also for the future the fall
of the aristocracy was an accomplished fact.  The oligarchs resembled
an army utterly broken up, whose scattered bands might serve
to reinforce another body of troops, but could no longer themselves
keep the field or risk a combat on their own account.  But as
the old struggle came to an end, a new one was simultaneously
beginning--the struggle between the two powers hitherto leagued
for the overthrow of the aristocratic constitution, the civil-
democratic opposition and the military power daily aspiring
to greater ascendency.  The exceptional position of Pompeius
even under the Gabinian, and much more under the Manilian,
law was incompatible with a republican organization.  He had been
as even then his opponents urged with good reason, appointed
by the Gabinian law not as admiral, but as regent of the empire;
not unjustly was he designated by a Greek familiar with eastern
affairs "king of kings." If he should hereafter, on returning
from the east once more victorious and with increased glory,
with well-filled chests, and with troops ready for battle and devoted
to his cause, stretch forth his hand to seize the crown--who would
then arrest his arm?  Was the consular Quintus Catulus, forsooth,
to summon forth the senators against the first general of his time
and his experienced legions? or was the designated aedile Gaius Caesar
to call forth the civic multitude, whose eyes he had just feasted
on his three hundred and twenty pairs of gladiators with their silver
equipments? Soon, exclaimed Catulus, it would be necessary once
more to flee to the rocks of the Capitol, in order to save liberty.
It was not the fault of the prophet, that the storm came not,
as he expected, from the east, but that on the contrary fate,
fulfilling his words more literally than he himself anticipated,
brought on the destroying tempest a few years later from Gaul.




CHAPTER IV

Pompeius and the East

Pompeius Suppresses Piracy

We have already seen how wretched was the state of the affairs
of Rome by land and sea in the east, when at the commencement of 687
Pompeius, with an almost unlimited plenitude of power, undertook
the conduct of the war against the pirates.  He began by dividing
the immense field committed to him into thirteen districts
and assigning each of these districts to one of his lieutenants,
for the purpose of equipping ships and men there, of searching
the coasts, and of capturing piratical vessels or chasing them
into the meshes of a colleague.  He himself went with the best part
of the ships of war that were available--among which on this occasion
also those of Rhodes were distinguished--early in the year to sea,
and swept in the first place the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian
waters, with a view especially to re-establish the supply of grain
from these provinces to Italy.  His lieutenants meanwhile addressed
themselves to the clearing of the Spanish and Gallic coasts.
It was on this occasion that the consul Gaius Piso attempted
from Rome to prevent the levies which Marcus Pomponius, the legate
of Pompeius, instituted by virtue of the Gabinian law in the province
of Narbo--an imprudent proceeding, to check which, and at the same
time to keep the just indignation of the multitude against
the consul within legal bounds, Pompeius temporarily reappeared
in Rome.(1)  When at the end of forty days the navigation had been
everywhere set free in the western basin of the Mediterranean,
Pompeius proceeded with sixty of his best vessels to the eastern
seas, and first of all to the original and main seat of piracy,
the Lycian and Cilician waters.  On the news of the approach
of the Roman fleet the piratical barks everywhere disappeared
from the open sea; and not only so, but even the strong Lycian fortresses
of Anticragus and Cragus surrendered without offering serious
resistance.  The well-calculated moderation of Pompeius helped
even more than fear to open the gates of these scarcely accessible
marine strongholds.  His predecessors had ordered every captured
freebooter to be nailed to the cross; without hesitation he gave
quarter to all, and treated in particular the common rowers found
in the captured piratical vessels with unusual indulgence.
The bold Cilician sea-kings alone ventured on an attempt to maintain
at least their own waters by arms against the Romans; after having
placed their children and wives and their rich treasures for
security in the mountain-fortresses of the Taurus, they awaited
the Roman fleet at the western frontier of Cilicia, in the offing
of Coracesium.  But here the ships of Pompeius, well manned and well
provided with all implements of war, achieved a complete victory.
Without farther hindrance he landed and began to storm and break up
the mountain-castles of the corsairs, while he continued to offer
to themselves freedom and life as the price of submission.  Soon
the great multitude desisted from the continuance of a hopeless war
in their strongholds and mountains, and consented to surrender.
Forty-nine days after Pompeius had appeared in the eastern seas,
Cilicia was subdued and the war at an end.

The rapid suppression of piracy was a great relief, but not a grand
achievement; with the resources of the Roman state, which had been
called forth in lavish measure, the corsairs could as little cope
as the combined gangs of thieves in a great city can cope
with a well-organized police.  It was a naive proceeding to celebrate
such a razzia as a victory.  But when compared with the prolonged
continuance and the vast and daily increasing extent of the evil,
it was natural that the surprisingly rapid subjugation
of the dreaded pirates should make a most powerful impression
on the public; and the more so, that this was the first trial of rule
centralized in a single hand, and the parties were eagerly waiting
to see whether that hand would understand the art of ruling better
than the collegiate body had done.  Nearly 400 ships and boats,
including 90 war vessels properly so called, were either taken
by Pompeius or surrendered to him; in all about 1300 piratical vessels
are said to have been destroyed; besides which the richly-filled
arsenals and magazines of the buccaneers were burnt.
Of the pirates about 10,000 perished; upwards of 20,000 fell alive
into the hands of the victor; while Publius Clodius the admiral
of the Roman army stationed in Cilicia, and a multitude of other
individuals carried off by the pirates, some of them long believed
at home to be dead, obtained once more their freedom through
Pompeius.  In the summer of 687, three months after the beginning
of the campaign, commerce resumed its wonted course and instead
of the former famine abundance prevailed in Italy.

Dissensions between Pompeius and Metellus as to Crete

A disagreeable interlude in the island of Crete, however,
disturbed in some measure this pleasing success of the Roman arms.
There Quintus Metellus was stationed in the second year of his command,
and was employed in finishing the subjugation-already substantially
effected--of the island,(2) when Pompeius appeared in the eastern
waters.  A collision was natural, for according to the Gabinian law
the command of Pompeius extended concurrently with that of Metellus
over the whole island, which stretched to a great length but was
nowhere more than ninety miles broad;(3) but Pompeius was considerate
enough not to assign it to any of his lieutenants.  The still resisting
Cretan communities, however, who had seen their subdued countrymen
taken to task by Metellus with the most cruel severity and had learned
on the other hand the gentle terms which Pompeius was in the habit
of imposing on the townships which surrendered to him in the south
of Asia Minor, preferred to give in their joint surrender to Pompeius.
He accepted it in Pamphylia, where he was just at the moment,
from their envoys, and sent along with them his legate Lucius Octavius
to announce to Metellus the conclusion of the conventions
and to take over the towns.  This proceeding was, no doubt,
not like that of a colleague; but formal right was wholly on the side
of Pompeius, and Metellus was most evidently in the wrong when,
utterly ignoring the convention of the cities with Pompeius,
he continued to treat them as hostile.  In vain Octavius protested;
in vain, as he had himself come without troops, he summoned
from Achaia Lucius Sisenna, the lieutenant of Pompeius stationed there;
Metellus, not troubling himself about either Octavius or Sisenna,
besieged Eleutherna and took Lappa by storm, where Octavius in person
was taken prisoner and ignominiously dismissed, while the Cretans
who were taken with him were consigned to the executioner.
Accordingly formal conflicts took place between the troops of Sisenna,
at whose head Octavius placed himself after that leader's
death, and those of Metellus; even when the former had been
commanded to return to Achaia, Octavius continued the war
in concert with the Cretan Aristion, and Hierapytna,
where both made a stand, was only subdued by Metellus
after the most obstinate resistance.

In reality the zealous Optimate Metellus had thus begun formal
civil war at his own hand against the generalissimo of the democracy.
It shows the indescribable disorganization in the Roman state,
that these incidents led to nothing farther than a bitter
correspondence between the two generals, who a couple of years
afterwards were sitting once more peacefully and even "amicably"
side by side in the senate.

Pompeius Takes the Supreme Command against Mithradates

Pompeius during these events remained in Cilicia; preparing
for the next year, as it seemed, a campaign against the Cretans
or rather against Metellus, in reality waiting for the signal
which should call him to interfere in the utterly confused affairs
of the mainland of Asia Minor.  The portion of the Lucullan army
that was still left after the losses which it had suffered
and the departure of the Fimbrian legions remained inactive
on the upper Halys in the country of the Trocmi bordering
on the Pontic territory.  Lucullus still held provisionally
the chief command, as his nominated successor Glabrio continued
to linger in the west of Asia Minor.  The three legions
commanded by Quintus Marcius Rex lay equally inactive
in Cilicia.  The Pontic territory was again wholly in the power
of king Mithradates, who made the individuals and communities
that had joined the Romans, such as the town of Eupatoria,
pay for their revolt with cruel severity.  The kings of the east
did not proceed to any serious offensive movement against the Romans,
either because it formed no part of their plan, or--as was asserted--
because the landing of Pompeius in Cilicia induced Mithradates
and Tigranes to desist from advancing farther.  The Manilian law
realized the secretly-cherished hopes of Pompeius more rapidly
than he probably himself anticipated; Glabrio and Rex
were recalled and the governorships of Pontus-Bithynia and Cilicia
with the troops stationed there, as well as the management
of the Pontic-Armenian war along with authority to make war, peace,
and alliance with the dynasts of the east at his own discretion,
were transferred to Pompeius.  Amidst the prospect of honours
and spoils so ample Pompeius was glad to forgo the chastising
of an ill-humoured Optimate who enviously guarded his scanty laurels;
he abandoned the expedition against Crete and the farther pursuit
of the corsairs, and destined his fleet also to support the attack
which he projected on the kings of Pontus and Armenia.  Yet amidst
this land-war he by no means wholly lost sight of piracy,
which was perpetually raising its head afresh.  Before he left Asia
(691) he caused the necessary ships to be fitted out there against
the corsairs; on his proposal in the following year a similar measure
was resolved on for Italy, and the sum needed for the purpose
was granted by the senate.  They continued to protect the coasts
with guards of cavalry and small squadrons, and though
as the expeditions to be mentioned afterwards against Cyprus in 696
and Egypt in 699 show, piracy was not thoroughly mastered, it yet
after the expedition of Pompeius amidst all the vicissitudes
and political crises of Rome could never again so raise its head
and so totally dislodge the Romans from the sea, as it had done
under the government of the mouldering oligarchy.

War Preparations of Pompeius
Alliance with the Parthians
Variance between Mithradates and Tigranes

The few months which still remained before the commencement
of the campaign in Asia Minor, were employed by the new commander-
in-chief with strenuous activity in diplomatic and military
preparations.  Envoys were sent to Mithradates, rather to reconnoitre
than to attempt a serious mediation.  There was a hope at the Pontic
court that Phraates king of the Parthians would be induced by the recent
considerable successes which the allies had achieved over Rome
to enter into the Pontic-Armenian alliance.  To counteract this, Roman
envoys proceeded to the court of Ctesiphon; and the internal troubles,
which distracted the Armenian ruling house, came to their aid.
A son of the great-king Tigranes, bearing the same name
had rebelled against his father, either because he was unwilling
to wait for the death of the old man, or because his father's
suspicion, which had already cost several of his brothers their
lives, led him to discern his only chance of safety in open
insurrection.  Vanquished by his father, he had taken refuge
with a number of Armenians of rank at the court of the Arsacid,
and intrigued against his father there.  It was partly due
to his exertions, that Phraates preferred to take the reward
which was offered to him by both sides for his accession--the secured
possession of Mesopotamia--from the hand of the Romans, renewed
with Pompeius the agreement concluded with Lucullus respecting
the boundary of the Euphrates,(4) and even consented to operate
in concert with the Romans against Armenia.  But the younger Tigranes
occasioned still greater mischief than that which arose out of his
promoting the alliance between the Romans and the Parthians,
for his insurrection produced a variance between the kings
Tigranes and Mithradates themselves.  The great-king cherished
in secret the suspicion that Mithradates might have had a hand
in the insurrection of his grandson--Cleopatra the mother
of the younger Tigranes was the daughter of Mithradates--
and, though no open rupture took place, the good understanding
between the two monarchs was disturbed at the very moment
when it was most urgently needed.

At the same time Pompeius prosecuted his warlike preparations
with energy.  The Asiatic allied and client communities were warned
to furnish the stipulated contingents.  Public notices summoned
the discharged veterans of the legions of Fimbria to return
to the standards as volunteers, and by great promises and the name
of Pompeius a considerable portion of them were induced in reality
to obey the call.  The whole force united under the orders
of Pompeius may have amounted, exclusive of the auxiliaries,
to between 40,000 and 50,000 men.(5)

Pompeius and Lucullus

In the spring of 688 Pompeius proceeded to Galatia, to take
the chief command of the troops of Lucullus and to advance
with them into the Pontic territory, whither the Cilician legions
were directed to follow.  At Danala, a place belonging to the Trocmi,
the two generals met; but the reconciliation, which mutual friends
had hoped to effect, was not accomplished.  The preliminary
courtesies soon passed into bitter discussions, and these
into violent altercation: they parted in worse mood than they had met.
As Lucullus continued to make honorary gifts and to distribute
lands just as if he were still in office, Pompeius declared
all the acts performed by his predecessor subsequent to
his own arrival null and void.  Formally he was in the right;
customary tactin the treatment of a meritorious and more than
sufficientlymortified opponent was not to be looked for from him.

Invasion of Pontus
Retreat of Mithradates

So soon as the season allowed, the Roman troops crossed
the frontier of Pontus.  There they were opposed by king Mithradates
with 30,000 infantry and 3000 cavalry.  Left in the lurch by his
allies and attacked by Rome with reinforced power and energy,
he made an attempt to procure peace; but he would hear nothing
of the unconditional submission which Pompeius demanded--what worse
could the most unsuccessful campaign bring to him? That he might
not expose his army, mostly archers and horsemen, to the formidable
shock of the Roman infantry of the line, he slowly retired before
the enemy, and compelled the Romans to follow him in his various
cross-marches; making a stand at the same time, wherever there was
opportunity, with his superior cavalry against that of the enemy,
and occasioning no small hardship to the Romans by impeding
their supplies.  At length Pompeius in his impatience desisted
from following the Pontic army, and, letting the king alone,
proceeded to subdue the land; he marched to the upper Euphrates,
crossed it, and entered the eastern provinces of the Pontic empire.
But Mithradates followed along the left bank of the Euphrates,
and when he had arrived in the Anaitic or Acilisenian province,
he intercepted the route of the Romans at the castle of Dasteira,
which was strong and well provided with water, and from which
with his light troops he commanded the plain.  Pompeius,
still wanting the Cilician legions and not strong enough to maintain
himself in this position without them, had to retire over the Euphrates
and to seek protection from the cavalry and archers of the king
in the wooded ground of Pontic Armenia extensively intersected
by rocky ravines and deep valleys.  It was not till the troops
from Cilicia arrived and rendered it possible to resume the offensive
with a superiority of force, that Pompeius again advanced, invested
the camp of the king with a chain of posts of almost eighteen miles
in length, and kept him formally blockaded there, while the Roman
detachments scoured the country far and wide.  The distress in the Pontic
camp was great; the draught animals even had to be killed; at length
after remaining for forty-five days the king caused his sick
and wounded, whom he could not save and was unwilling to leave
in the hands of the enemy, to be put to death by his own troops,
and departed during the night with the utmost secrecy towards
the east.  Cautiously Pompeius followed through the unknown land:
the march was now approaching the boundary which separated
the dominions of Mithradates and Tigranes.  When the Roman general
perceived that Mithradates intended not to bring the contest
to a decision within his own territory, but to draw the enemy away
after him into the far distant regions of the east, he determined
not to permit this.

Battle at Nicopolis

The two armies lay close to each other.  During the rest at noon
the Roman army set out without the enemy observing the movement,
made a circuit, and occupied the heights, which lay in front
and commanded a defile to be passed by the enemy, on the southern bank
of the river Lycus (Jeschil-Irmak) not far from the modern Enderes,
at the point where Nicopolis was afterwards built.  The following
morning the Pontic troops broke up in their usual manner,
and, supposing that the enemy was as hitherto behind them, after,
accomplishing the day's march they pitched their camp
in the very valley whose encircling heights the Romans had occupied.
Suddenly in the silence of the night there sounded all around them
the dreaded battle-cry of the legions, and missiles from all sides
poured on the Asiatic host, in which soldiers and camp-followers,
chariots, horses, and camels jostled each other; and amidst
the dense throng, notwithstanding the darkness, not a missile
failed to take effect.  When the Romans had expended their darts,
they charged down from the heights on the masses which had now become
visible by the light of the newly-risen moon, and which were
abandoned to them almost defenceless; those that did not fall
by the steel of the enemy were trodden down in the fearful pressure
under the hoofs and wheels.  It was the last battle-field
on which the gray-haired king fought with the Romans.  With three
attendants--two of his horsemen, and a concubine who was accustomed
to follow him in male attire and to fight bravely by his side--
he made his escape thence to the fortress of Sinoria, whither
a portion of his trusty followers found their way to him.  He divided
among them his treasures preserved there, 6000 talents of gold
(1,400,000 pounds); furnished them and himself with poison;
and hastened with the band that was left to him up the Euphrates
to unite with his ally, the great-king of Armenia.

Tigranes Breaks with Mithradates
Mithradates Crosses the Phasis

This hope likewise was vain; the alliance, on the faith of which
Mithradates took the route for Armenia, already by that time
existed no longer.  During the conflicts between Mithradates
and Pompeius just narrated, the king of the Parthians, yielding
to the urgency of the Romans and above all of the exiled Armenian prince,
had invaded the kingdom of Tigranes by force of arms, and had
compelled him to withdraw into the inaccessible mountains.
The invading army began even the siege of the capital Artaxata;
but, on its becoming protracted, king Phraates took his departure
with the greater portion of his troops; whereupon Tigranes overpowered
the Parthian corps left behind and the Armenian emigrants led
by his son, and re-established his dominion throughout the kingdom
Naturally, however, the king was under such circumstances little
inclined to fight with the freshly-victorious Romans, and least
of all to sacrifice himself for Mithradates; whom he trusted less
than ever, since information had reached him that his rebellious son
intended to betake himself to his grandfather.  So he entered into
negotiations with the Romans for a separate peace; but he did not wait
for the conclusion of the treaty to break off the alliance
which linked him to Mithradates.  The latter, when he had arrived
at the frontier of Armenia, was doomed to learn that the great-king
Tigranes had set a price of 100 talents (24,000 pounds)
on his head, had arrested his envoys, and had delivered them
to the Romans.  King Mithradates saw his kingdom in the hands
of the enemy, and his allies on the point of coming to an agreement
with them; it was not possible to continue the war; he might deem
himself fortunate, if he succeeded in effecting his escape along
the eastern and northern shores of the Black Sea, in perhaps
dislodging his son Machares--who had revolted and entered into
connection with the Romans(6)--once more from the Bosporan kingdom,
and in finding on the Maeotis a fresh soil for fresh projects.
So he turned northward.  When the king in his flight had crossed
the Phasis, the ancient boundary of Asia Minor, Pompeius for the time
discontinued his pursuit; but instead of returning to the region
of the sources of the Euphrates, he turned aside into the region
of the Araxes to settle matters with Tigranes.

Pompeius at Artaxata
Peace with Tigranes

Almost without meeting resistance he arrived in the region
of Artaxata (not far from Erivan) and pitched his camp thirteen miles
from the city.  There he was met by the son of the great-king,
who hoped after the fall of his father to receive the Armenian diadem
from the hand of the Romans, and therefore had endeavoured in every
way to prevent the conclusion of the treaty between his father
and the Romans.  The great-king was only the more resolved to purchase
peace at any price.  On horseback and without his purple robe,
but adorned with the royal diadem and the royal turban, he appeared
at the gate of the Roman camp and desired to be conducted
to the presence of the Roman general.  After having given up
at the bidding of the lictors, as the regulations of the Roman camp
required, his horse and his sword, he threw himself in barbarian
fashion at the feet of the proconsul and in token of unconditional
surrender placed the diadem and tiara in his hands.  Pompeius,
highly delighted at a victory which cost nothing, raised up
the humbled king of kings, invested him again with the insignia
of his dignity, and dictated the peace.  Besides a payment of;
1,400,000 pounds (6000 talents) to the war-chest and a present
to the soldiers, out of which each of them received 50 -denarii-
(2 pounds 2 shillings), the king ceded all the conquests which
he had made, not merely his Phoenician, Syrian, Cilician, and Cappadocian
possessions, but also Sophene and Corduene on the right bank
of the Euphrates; he was again restricted to Armenia proper,
and his position of great-king was, of course, at an end.
In a single campaign Pompeius had totally subdued the two mighty kings
of Pontus and Armenia.  At the beginning of 688 there was not a Roman
soldier beyond the frontier of the old Roman possessions; at its
close king Mithradates was wandering as an exile and without
an army in the ravines of the Caucasus, and king Tigranes sat
on the Armenian throne no longer as king of kings, but as a vassal
of Rome.  The whole domain of Asia Minor to the west of the Euphrates
unconditionally obeyed the Romans; the victorious army took up
its winter-quarters to the east of that stream on Armenian soil,
in the country from the upper Euphrates to the river Kur,
from which the Italians then for the first time watered their horses.

The Tribes of the Caucasus
Iberians
Albanians

But the new field, on which the Romans here set foot, raised up
for them new conflicts.  The brave peoples of the middle and eastern
Caucasus saw with indignation the remote Occidentals encamping
on their territory.  There--in the fertile and well-watered tableland
of the modern Georgia--dwelt the Iberians, a brave, well-organized,
agricultural nation, whose clan-cantons under their patriarchs
cultivated the soil according to the system of common possession,
without any separate ownership of the individual cultivators.  Army
and people were one; the people were headed partly by the ruler-
clans--out of which the eldest always presided over the whole
Iberian nation as king, and the next eldest as judge and leader
of the army--partly by special families of priests, on whom chiefly
devolved the duty of preserving a knowledge of the treaties
concluded with other peoples and of watching over their observance.
The mass of the non-freemen were regarded as serfs of the king.
Their eastern neighbours, the Albanians or Alans, who were settled
on the lower Kur as far as the Caspian Sea, were in a far lower
stage of culture.  Chiefly a pastoral people they tended, on foot
or on horseback, their numerous herds in the luxuriant meadows
of the modern Shirvan; their few tilled fields were still cultivated
with the old wooden plough without iron share.  Coined money
was unknown, and they did not count beyond a hundred.  Each of their
tribes, twenty-six in all, had its own chief and spoke its distinct
dialect.  Far superior in number to the Iberians, the Albanians
could not at all cope with them in bravery.  The mode of fighting
was on the whole the same with both nations; they fought chiefly
with arrows and light javelins, which they frequently after the Indian
fashion discharged from their lurking-places in the woods
behind the trunks of trees, or hurled down from the tops of trees
on the foe; the Albanians had also numerous horsemen partly mailed
after the Medo-Armenian manner with heavy cuirasses and greaves.
Both nations lived on their lands and pastures in a complete
independence preserved from time immemorial.  Nature itself
as it were, seems to have raised the Caucasus between Europe and Asia
as a rampart against the tide of national movements; there the arms
of Cyrus and of Alexander had formerly found their limit;
now the brave garrison of this partition-wall set themselves
to defend it also against the Romans.

Albanians Conquered by Pompeius
Iberians Conquered

Alarmed by the information that the Roman commander-in-chief
intended next spring to cross the mountains and to pursue
the Pontic king beyond the Caucasus--for Mithradates, they heard,
was passing the winter in Dioscurias (Iskuria between Suchum Kale
and Anaklia) on the Black Sea--the Albanians under their prince
Oroizes first crossed the Kur in the middle of the winter of 688-689
and threw themselves on the army, which was divided for the sake
of its supplies into three larger corps under Quintus Metellus Celer,
Lucius Flaccus, and Pompeius in person.  But Celer, on whom
the chief attack fell, made a brave stand, and Pompeius, after having
delivered himself from the division sent to attack him, pursued
the barbarians beaten at all points as far as the Kur.  Artoces
the king of the Iberians kept quiet and promised peace and friendship;
but Pompeius, informed that he was secretly arming so as to fall
upon the Romans on their march in the passes of the Caucasus,
advanced in the spring of 689, before resuming the pursuit
of Mithradates, to the two fortresses just two miles distant
from each other, Harmozica (Horum Ziche or Armazi) and Seusamora
(Tsumar) which a little above the modern Tiflis command the two valleys
of the river Kur and its tributary the Aragua, and with these
the only passes leading from Armenia to Iberia.  Artoces, surprised
by the enemy before he was aware of it, hastily burnt the bridge over
the Kur and retreated negotiating into the interior.  Pompeius occupied
the fortresses and followed the Iberians to the other bank
of the Kur; by which he hoped to induce them to immediate submission.
But Artoces retired farther and farther into the interior,
and, when at length he halted on the river Pelorus, he did so
not to surrender but to fight.  The Iberian archers however withstood
not for a moment the onset of the Roman legions, and, when Artoces
saw the Pelorus also crossed by the Romans, he submitted
at length to the conditions which the victor proposed, and sent
his children as hostages.

Pompeius Proceeds to Colchis

Pompeius now, agreeably to the plan which he had formerly projected,
marched through the Sarapana pass from the region of the Kur
to that of the Phasis and thence down that river to the Black Sea,
where on the Colchian coast the fleet under Servilius already
awaited him.  But it was for an uncertain idea, and an aim almost
unsubstantial, that the army and fleet were thus brought
to the richly fabled shores of Colchis.  The laborious march just
completed through unknown and mostly hostile nations was nothing
when compared with what still awaited them, and if they should
really succeed in conducting the force from the mouth of the Phasis
to the Crimea, through warlike and poor barbarian tribes,
on inhospitable and unknown waters, along a coast where
at certain places the mountains sink perpendicularly into the sea
and it would have been absolutely necessary to embark in the ships--
if such a march should be successfully accomplished, which was perhaps
more difficult than the campaigns of Alexander and Hannibal--
what was gained by it even at the best, corresponding at all to its toils
and dangers? The war doubtless was not ended, so long as the old
king was still among the living; but who could guarantee that they
would really succeed in catching the royal game for the sake of which
this unparalleled chase was to be instituted?  Was it not better
even at the risk of Mithradates once more throwing the torch
of war into Asia Minor, to desist from a pursuit which promised
so little gain and so many dangers? Doubtless numerous voices
in the army, and still more numerous voices in the capital,
urged the general to continue the pursuit incessantly and at any price;
but they were the voices partly of foolhardy Hotspurs,
partly of those perfidious friends, who would gladly at any price
have kept the too-powerful Imperator aloof from the capital
and entangled him amidst interminable undertakings in the east.
Pompeius was too experienced and too discreet an officer to stake
his fame and his army in obstinate adherence to so injudicious
an expedition; an insurrection of the Albanians in rear of the army
furnished the pretext for abandoning the further pursuit
of the king and arranging its return.  The fleet received instructions
to cruise in the Black Sea, to protect the northern coast of Asia
Minor against any hostile invasion, and strictly to blockade
the Cimmerian Bosporus under the threat of death to any trader
who should break the blockade.  Pompeius conducted the land troops
not without great hardships through the Colchian and Armenian territory
to the lower course of the Kur and onward, crossing the stream,
into the Albanian plain.

Fresh Conflicts with the Albanians

For several days the Roman army had to march in the glowing heat
through this almost waterless flat country, without encountering
the enemy; it was only on the left bank of the Abas (probably
the river elsewhere named Alazonius, now Alasan) that the force
of the Albanians under the leadership of Coses, brother of the king
Oroizes, was drawn up against the Romans; they are said to have
amounted, including the contingent which had arrived
from the inhabitants of the Transcaucasian steppes, to 60,000 infantry
and 12,000 cavalry.  Yet they would hardly have risked the battle,
unless they had supposed that they had merely to fight with
the Roman cavalry; but the cavalry had only been placed in front,
and, on its retiring, the masses of Roman infantry showed themselves
from their concealment behind.  After a short conflict the army
of the barbarians was driven into the woods, which Pompeius
gave orders to invest and set on fire.  The Albanians thereupon
consented to make peace; and, following the example of the more
powerful peoples, all the tribes settled between the Kur and the Caspian
concluded a treaty with the Roman general.  The Albanians,
Iberians, and generally the peoples settled to the south along,
and at the foot of, the Caucasus, thus entered at least for the moment
into a relation of dependence on Rome.  When, on the other hand,
the peoples between the Phasis and the Maeotis--Colchians, Soani,
Heniochi, Zygi, Achaeans, even the remote Bastarnae--were inscribed
in the long list of the nations subdued by Pompeius, the notion
of subjugation was evidently employed in a manner very far from exact.
The Caucasus once more verified its significance in the history
of the world; the Roman conquest, like the Persian and the Hellenic,
found its limit there.

Mithradates Goes to Panticapaeum

Accordingly king Mithradates was left to himself and to destiny.
As formerly his ancestor, the founder of the Pontic state
had first entered his future kingdom as a fugitive from the executioners
of Antigonus and attended only by six horsemen, so had the grandson
now been compelled once more to cross the bounds of his kingdom
and to turn his back on his own and his fathers' conquests.
But for no one had the dice of fate turned up the highest gains
and the greatest losses more frequently and more capriciously
than for the old sultan of Sinope; and the fortunes of men
change rapidly and incalculably in the east.  Well might
Mithradates now in the evening of his life accept each new
vicissitude with the thought that it too was only in its turn
paving the way for a fresh revolution, and that the only thing
constant was the perpetual change of fortune.  Inasmuch as
the Roman rule was intolerable for the Orientals at the very core
of their nature, and Mithradates himself was in good and in evil
a true prince of the east, amidst the laxity of the rule exercised
by the Roman senate over the provinces, and amidst the dissensions
of the political parties in Rome fermenting and ripening into civil
war, Mithradates might, if he was fortunate enough to bide
his time, doubtless re-establish his dominion yet a third time.
For this very reason--because he hoped and planned while still
there was life in him--he remained dangerous to the Romans so long as
he lived, as an aged refugee no less than when he had marched forth
with his hundred thousands to wrest Hellas and Macedonia
from the Romans.  The restless old man made his way in the year 689
from Dioscurias amidst unspeakable hardships partly by land partly
by sea to the kingdom of Panticapaeum, where by his reputation
and his numerous retainers he drove his renegade son Machares
from the throne and compelled him to put himself to death.
From this point he attempted once more to negotiate with the Romans;
he besought that his paternal kingdom might be restored to him,
and declared himself ready to recognize the supremacy of Rome
and to pay tribute as a vassal.  But Pompeius refused to grant
the king a position in which he would have begun the old game afresh,
and insisted on his personal submission.

His Last Preparations against Rome

Mithradates, however, had no thought of delivering himself into the hands
of the enemy, but was projecting new and still more extravagant plans.
Straining all the resources with which the treasures that he had saved
and the remnant of his states supplied him, he equipped a new army
of 36,000 men consisting partly of slaves which he armed and exercised
after the Roman fashion, and a war-fleet; according to rumour he designed
to march westward through Thrace, Macedonia, and Pannonia, to carry along
with him the Scythians in the Sarmatian steppes and the Celts on the Danube
as allies, and with this avalanche of peoples to throw himself
on Italy.  This has been deemed a grand idea, and the plan of war
of the Pontic king has been compared with the military march
of Hannibal; but the same project, which in a gifted man is a stroke
of genius, becomes folly in one who is wrong-headed.  This intended
invasion of Italy by the Orientals was simply ridiculous,
and nothing but a product of the impotent imagination of despair.
Through the prudent coolness of their leader the Romans
were prevented from Quixotically pursuing their Quixotic antagonist
and warding off in the distant Crimea an attack, which, if it
were not nipped of itself in the bud, would still have been
soon enough met at the foot of the Alps.

Revolt against Mithradates

In fact, while Pompeius, without troubling himself further
as to the threats of the impotent giant, was employed in organizing
the territory which he had gained, the destinies of the aged king
drew on to their fulfilment without Roman aid in the remote north.
His extravagant preparations had produced the most violent excitement
among the Bosporans, whose houses were torn down, and whose oxen
were taken from the plough and put to death, in order to procure
beams and sinews for constructing engines of war.  The soldiers
too were disinclined to enter on the hopeless Italian expedition.
Mithradates had constantly been surrounded by suspicion
and treason; he had not the gift of calling forth affection
and fidelity among those around him.  As in earlier years he had
compelled his distinguished general Archelaus to seek protection
in the Roman camp; as during the campaigns of Lucullus his most
trusted officers Diodes, Phoenix, and even the most notable of the Roman
emigrants had passed over to the enemy; so now, when his star
grew pale and the old, infirm, embittered sultan was accessible
to no one else save his eunuchs, desertion followed still more rapidly
on desertion.  Castor, the commandant of the fortress Phanagoria
(on the Asiatic coast opposite Kertch), first raised the standard
of revolt; he proclaimed the freedom of the town and delivered
the sons of Mithradates that were in the fortress into the hands
of the Romans.  While the insurrection spread among the Bosporan towns,
and Chersonesus (not far from Sebastopol), Theudosia (Kaffa),
and others joined the Phanagorites, the king allowed his suspicion
and his cruelty to have free course.  On the information of despicable
eunuchs his most confidential adherents were nailed to the cross;
the king's own sons were the least sure of their lives.  The son
who was his father's favourite and was probably destined by him
as his successor, Pharnaces, took his resolution and headed
the insurgents.  The servants whom Mithradates sent to arrest him,
and the troops despatched against him, passed over to his side;
the corps of Italian deserters, perhaps the most efficient among
the divisions of Mithradates' army, and for that very reason the least
inclined to share in the romantic--and for the deserters peculiarly
hazardous--expedition against Italy, declared itself en masse
for the prince; the other divisions of the army and the fleet followed
the example thus set.

Death of Mithadates

After the country and the army had abandoned the king, the capital
Panticapaeum at length opened its gates to the insurgents
and delivered over to them the old king enclosed in his palace.
From the high wall of his castle the latter besought his son at least
to grant him life and not imbrue his hands in his father's blood;
but the request came ill from the lips of a man whose own hands
were stained with the blood of his mother and with the recently-shed
blood of his innocent son Xiphares; and in heartless severity
and inhumanity Pharnaces even outstripped his father.  Seeing therefore
he had now to die, the sultan resolved at least to die as he had
lived; his wives, his concubines and his daughters, including
the youthful brides of the kings of Egypt and Cyprus, had all to suffer
the bitterness of death and drain the poisoned cup, before he too
took it, and then, when the draught did not take effect quickly
enough, presented his neck for the fatal stroke to a Celtic
mercenary Betuitus.  So died in 691 Mithradates Eupator,
in the sixty-eighth year of his life and the fifty-seventh of his reign,
twenty-six years after he had for the first time taken the field
against the Romans.  The dead body, which king Pharnaces sent
as a voucher of his merits and of his loyalty to Pompeius, was by order
of the latter laid in the royal sepulchre of Sinope.

The death of Mithradates was looked on by the Romans as equivalent
to a victory: the messengers who reported to the general
the catastrophe appeared crowned with laurel, as if they had a victory
to announce, in the Roman camp before Jericho.  In him a great
enemy was borne to the tomb, a greater than had ever yet withstood
the Romans in the indolent east.  Instinctively the multitude felt
this: as formerly Scipio had triumphed even more over Hannibal than
over Carthage, so the conquest of the numerous tribes of the east
and of the great-king himself was almost forgotten in the death
of Mithradates; and at the solemn entry of Pompeius nothing attracted
more the eyes of the multitude than the pictures, in which they saw
king Mithradates as a fugitive leading his horse by the rein
and thereafter sinking down in death between the dead bodies of his
daughters.  Whatever judgment may be formed as to the idiosyncrasy
of the king, he is a figure of great significance--in the full
sense of the expression--for the history of the world. He was not
a personage of genius, probably not even of rich endowments;
but he possessed the very respectable gift of hating,
and out of this hatred he sustained an unequal conflict
against superior foes throughout half a century, without success
doubtless, but with honour.  He became still more significant
through the position in which history had placed him
thanthrough his individual character.  As the forerunner
of the national reaction of the Orientals against the Occidentals,
he opened the new conflict of the east against the west;
and the feeling remained with the vanquished as with the victors,
that his death was not so much the end as the beginning.

Pompeius Proceeds to Syria

Meanwhile Pompeius, after his warfare in 689 with the peoples
of the Caucasus, had returned to the kingdom of Pontus,
and there reduced the last castles still offering resistance;
these were razed in order to check the evils of brigandage,
and the castle wells were rendered unserviceable by rolling blocks
of rock into them.  Thence he set out in the summer of 690 for Syria,
to regulate its affairs.

State of Syria

It is difficult to present a clear view of the state of disorganization
which then prevailed in the Syrian provinces.  It is true
that in consequence of the attacks of Lucullus the Armenian governor
Magadates had evacuated these provinces in 685,(7) and that the Ptolemies,
gladly as they would have renewed the attempts of their predecessors
to attach the Syrian coast to their kingdom, were yet afraid to provoke
the Roman government by the occupation of Syria; the more so,
as that government had not yet regulated their more than doubtful
legal title even in the case of Egypt, and had been several times
solicited by the Syrian princes to recognize them as the legitimate heirs
of the extinct house of the Lagids.  But, though the greater powers
all at the moment refrained from interference in the affairs
of Syria, the land suffered far more than it would have suffered amidst
a great war, through the endless and aimless feuds of the princes,
knights, and cities.

Arabian Princes

The actual masters in the Seleucid kingdom were at this time
the Bedouins, the Jews, and the Nabataeans.  The inhospitable
sandy steppe destitute of springs and trees, which, stretching
from the Arabianpeninsula up to and beyond the Euphrates, reaches
towards the west as far as the Syrian mountain-chain and its narrow belt
of coast, toward the east as far as the rich lowlands of the Tigris
and lower Euphrates--this Asiatic Sahara--was the primitive home
of the sons of Ishmael; from the commencement of tradition we find
the "Bedawi," the "son of the desert," pitching his tents there
and pasturing his camels, or mounting his swift horse in pursuit
now of the foe of his tribe, now of the travelling merchant.  Favoured
formerly by king Tigranes, who made use of them for his plans half
commercial half political,(8) and subsequently by the total absence
of any master in the Syrian land, these children of the desert
spread themselves over northern Syria.  Wellnigh the leading part
in a political point of view was enacted by those tribes,
which had appropriated the first rudiments of a settled existence
from the vicinity of the civilized Syrians.  The most noted
of these emirs were Abgarus, chief of the Arab tribe of the Mardani,
whom Tigranes had settled about Edessa and Carrhae in upper Mesopotamia;(9)
then to the west of the Euphrates Sampsiceramus, emir of the Arabs
of Hemesa (Homs) between Damascus and Antioch, and master
of the strong fortress Arethusa; Azizus the head of another horde
roaming in the same region; Alchaudonius, the prince of the Rhambaeans,
who had already put himself into communication with Lucullus;
and several others.

Robber-Chiefs

Alongside of these Bedouin princes there had everywhere appeared
bold cavaliers, who equalled or excelled the children of the desert
in the noble trade of waylaying.  Such was Ptolemaeus son
of Mennaeus, perhaps the most powerful among these Syrian robber-
chiefs and one of the richest men of this period, who ruled over
the territory of the Ityraeans--the modern Druses--in the valleys
of the Libanus as well as on the coast and over the plain
of Massyas to the northward with the cities of Heliopolis (Baalbec)
and Chalcis, and maintained 8000 horsemen at his own expense;
such were Dionysius and Cinyras, the masters of the maritime cities
Tripolis (Tarablus) and Byblus (between Tarablus and Beyrout);
such was the Jew Silas in Lysias, a fortress not far from Apamea
on the Orontes.

Jews

In the south of Syria, on the other hand, the race of the Jews
seemed as though it would about this time consolidate itself
into a political power.  Through the devout and bold defence
of the primitive Jewish national worship, which was imperilled
by the levelling Hellenism of the Syrian kings, the family
of the Hasmonaeans or the Makkabi had not only attained to their
hereditary principality and gradually to kingly honours;(10)
but these princely high-priests had also spread their conquests
to the north, east, and south.  When the brave Jannaeus Alexander
died (675), the Jewish kingdom stretched towards the south over
the whole Philistian territory as far as the frontier of Egypt, towards
the south-east as far as that of the Nabataean kingdom of Petra,
from which Jannaeus had wrested considerable tracts on the right
bank of the Jordan and the Dead Sea, towards the north over Samaria
and Decapolis up to the lake of Gennesareth; here he was already
making arrangements to occupy Ptolemais (Acco) and victoriously
to repel the aggressions of the Ityraeans.  The coast obeyed the Jews
from Mount Carmel as far as Rhinocorura, including the important
Gaza--Ascalon alone was still free; so that the territory
of the Jews, once almost cut off from the sea, could now be enumerated
among the asylums of piracy.  Now that the Armenian invasion, just
as it approached the borders of Judaea, was averted from that land
by the intervention of Lucullus,(11) the gifted rulers
of the Hasmonaean house would probably have carried their arms still
farther, had not the development of the power of that remarkable
conquering priestly state been nipped in the bud by internal divisions.

Pharisees
Sadducees

The spirit of religious independence, and the spirit of national
independence--the energetic union of which had called the Maccabee
state into life--speedily became once more dissociated and even
antagonistic.  The Jewish orthodoxy or Pharisaism, as it was called,
was content with the free exercise of religion, as it had
been asserted in defiance of the Syrian rulers; its practical aim
was a community of Jews, composed of the orthodox in the lands
of all rulers, essentially irrespective of the secular government--
a community which found its visible points of union in the tribute
for the temple at Jerusalem, which was obligatory on every
conscientious Jew, and in the schools of religion and spiritual
courts.  Overagainst this orthodoxy, which turned away
from political life and became more and more stiffened into theological
formalism and painful ceremonial service, were arrayed
the defenders of the national independence, invigorated amidst
successful struggles against foreign rule, and advancing towards
the ideal of a restoration of the Jewish state, the representatives
of the old great families--the so-called Sadducees--partly
on dogmatic grounds, in so far as they acknowledged only the sacred
books themselves and conceded authority merely, not canonicity,
to the "bequests of the scribes," that is, to canonical tradition;(12)
partly and especially on political grounds, in so far as, instead
of a fatalistic waiting for the strong arm of the Lord of Zebaoth,
they taught that the salvation of the nation was to be expected
from the weapons of this world, and from the inward and outward
strengthening of the kingdom of David as re-established
in the glorious times of the Maccabees.  Those partisans of orthodoxy
found their support in the priesthood and the multitude; they
contested with the Hasmonaeans the legitimacy of their high-
priesthood, and fought against the noxious heretics with all
the reckless implacability, with which the pious are often found
to contend for the possession of earthly goods.  The state-party
on the other hand relied for support on intelligence brought into
contact with the influences of Hellenism, on the army, in which
numerous Pisidian and Cilician mercenaries served, and on the abler
kings, who here strove with the ecclesiastical power much as
a thousand years later the Hohenstaufen strove with the Papacy.
Jannaeus had kept down the priesthood with a strong hand;
under his two sons there arose (685 et seq.) a civil and fraternal war,
since the Pharisees opposed the vigorous Aristobulus and attempted
to obtain their objects under the nominal rule of his brother,
the good-natured and indolent Hyrcanus.  This dissension not merely
put a stop to the Jewish conquests, but gave also foreign nations
opportunity to interfere and thereby obtain a commanding position
in southern Syria.

Nabataeans

This was the case first of all with the Nabataeans.  This remarkable
nation has often been confounded with its eastern neighbours,
the wandering Arabs, but it is more closely related to the Aramaean
branch than to the proper children of Ishmael.  This Aramaean or,
according to the designation of the Occidentals, Syrian stock
must have in very early times sent forth from its most ancient
settlements about Babylon a colony, probably for the sake of trade,
to the northern end of the Arabian gulf; these were the Nabataeans
on the Sinaitic peninsula, between the gulf of Suez and Aila,
and in the region of Petra (Wadi Mousa).  In their ports
the wares of the Mediterranean were exchanged for those of India;
the great southern caravan-route, which ran from Gaza to the mouth
of the Euphrates and the Persian gulf, passed through the capital
of the Nabataeans--Petra--whose still magnificent rock-palaces
and rock-tombs furnish clearer evidence of the Nabataean civilization
than does an almost extinct tradition.  The leaders of the Pharisees,
to whom after the manner of priests the victory of their faction
seemed not too dearly bought at the price of the independence
and integrity of their country, solicited Aretas the king
of the Nabataeans for aid against Aristobulus, in return for which
they promised to give back to him all the conquests wrested
from him by Jannaeus.  Thereupon Aretas had advanced with, it was
said, 50,000 men into Judaea and, reinforced by the adherents
of the Pharisees, he kept king Aristobulus besieged in his capital.

Syrian Cities

Amidst the system of violence and feud which thus prevailed
from one end of Syria to another, the larger cities were of course
the principal sufferers, such as Antioch, Seleucia, Damascus,
whose citizens found themselves paralysed in their husbandry
as well as in their maritime and caravan trade.  The citizens of Byblus
and Berytus (Beyrout) were unable to protect their fields
and their ships from the Ityraeans, who issuing from their mountain
and maritime strongholds rendered land and sea equally insecure.
Those of Damascus sought to ward off the attacks of the Ityraeans
and Ptolemaeus by handing themselves over to the more remote kings
of the Nabataeans or of the Jews.  In Antioch Sampsiceramus and Azizus
mingled in the internal feuds of the citizens, and the Hellenic
great city had wellnigh become even now the seat of an Arab emir.
The state of things reminds us of the kingless times of the German
middle ages, when Nuremberg and Augsburg found their protection
not in the king's law and the king's courts, but in their own walls
alone; impatiently the merchant-citizens of Syria awaited the strong
arm, which should restore to them peace and security of intercourse.

The Last Seleucids

There was no want, however, of a legitimate king in Syria;
there were even two or three of them.  A prince Antiochus
from the house of the Seleucids had been appointed by Lucullus
as ruler of the most northerly province in Syria, Commagene.(13)
Antiochus Asiaticus, whose claims on the Syrian throne had met
with recognition both from the senate and from Lucullus,(14)
had been received in Antioch after the retreat of the Armenians
and there acknowledged as king.  A third Seleucid prince Philippus
had immediately confronted him there as a rival; and the great
population of Antioch, excitable and delighting in opposition
almost like that of Alexandria, as well as one or two
of the neighbouring Arab emirs had interfered in the family strife
which now seemed inseparable from the rule of the Seleucids.
Was there any wonder that legitimacy became ridiculous and loathsome
to its subjects, and that the so-called rightful kings
were of even somewhat less importance in the land than the petty
princes and robber-chiefs?

Annexation of Syria

To create order amidst this chaos did not require either brilliance
of conception or a mighty display of force, but it required a clear
insight into the interests of Rome and of her subjects, and vigour
and consistency in establishing and maintaining the institutions
recognized as necessary.  The policy of the senate in support
of legitimacy had sufficiently degraded itself; the general,
whom the opposition had brought into power, was not to be guided
by dynastic considerations, but had only to see that the Syrian kingdom
should not be withdrawn from the clientship of Rome in future either
by the quarrels of pretenders or by the Covetousness of neighbours.
But to secure this end there was only one course; that the Roman
community should send a satrap to grasp with a vigorous hand
the reins of government, which had long since practically slipped
from the hands of the kings of the ruling house more even through
their own fault than through outward misfortunes.  This course Pompeius
took.  Antiochus the Asiatic, on requesting to be acknowledged
as the hereditary ruler of Syria, received the answer that Pompeius
would not give back the sovereignty to a king who knew neither how
to maintain nor how to govern his kingdom, even at the request
of his subjects, much less against their distinctly expressed wishes.
With this letter of the Roman proconsul the house of Seleucus
was ejected from the throne which it had occupied for two hundred
and fifty years.  Antiochus soon after lost his life through
the artifice of the emir Sampsiceramus, as whose client he played
the ruler in Antioch; thenceforth there is no further mention of these
mock-kings and their pretensions.

Military Pacification of Syria

But, to establish the new Roman government and introduce
any tolerable order into the confusion of affairs, it was further
necessary to advance into Syria with a military force and to terrify
or subdue all the disturbers of the peace, who had sprung
up during the many years of anarchy, by means of the Roman legions.
Already during the campaigns in the kingdom of Pontus and on the Caucasus
Pompeius had turned his attention to the affairs of Syria
and directed detached commissioners and corps to interfere,
where there was need.  Aulus Gabinius--the same who as tribune
of the people had sent Pompeius to the east--had in 689 marched
along the Tigris and then across Mesopotamia to Syria, to adjust
the complicated affairs of Judaea.  In like manner the severely pressed
Damascus had already been occupied by Lollius and Metellus.  Soon
afterwards another adjutant of Pompeius, Marcus Scaurus, arrived
in Judaea, to allay the feuds ever breaking out afresh there.
Lucius Afranius also, who during the expedition of Pompeius
to the Caucasus held the command of the Roman troops in Armenia,
had proceeded from Corduene (the northern Kurdistan) to upper
Mesopotamia, and, after he had successfully accomplished
the perilous march through the desert with the sympathizing help
of the Hellenes settled in Carrhae, brought the Arabs in Osrhoene
to submission.  Towards the end of 690 Pompeius in person arrived
in Syria,(15) and remained there till the summer of the following
year, resolutely interfering and regulating matters for the present
and the future.  He sought to restore the kingdom to its state
in the better times of the Seleucid rule; all usurped powers were set
aside, the robber-chiefs were summoned to give up their castles,
the Arab sheiks were again restricted to their desert domains,
the affairs of the several communities were definitely regulated.

The Robber-Chiefs Chastised

The legions stood ready to procure obedience to these stern orders,
and their interference proved especially necessary against
the audacious robber-chiefs.  Silas the ruler of Lysias, Dionysius
the ruler of Tripolis, Cinyras the ruler of Byblus were taken prisoners
in their fortresses and executed, the mountain and maritime strongholds
of the Ityraeans were broken up, Ptolemaeus son of Mennaeus in Chalcis
was forced to purchase his freedom and his lordship with a ransom
of 1000 talents (240,000 pounds).  Elsewhere the commands
of the new master met for the most part with unresisting obedience.

Negotiations and Conflicts with the Jews

The Jews alone hesitated.  The mediators formerly sent by Pompeius,
Gabinius and Scaurus, had--both, as it was said, bribed
with considerable sums--in the dispute between the brothers
Hyrcanus and Aristobulus decided in favour of the latter, and had also
induced king Aretas to raise the siege of Jerusalem and to proceed
homeward, in doing which he sustained a defeat at the hands
of Aristobulus.  But, when Pompeius arrived in Syria, he cancelled
the orders of his subordinates and directed the Jews to resume their
old constitution under high-priests, as the senate had recognized
it about 593,(16) and to renounce along with the hereditary
principality itself all the conquests made by the Hasmonaean
princes.  It was the Pharisees, who had sent an embassy of two
hundred of their most respected men to the Roman general and procured
from him the overthrow of the kingdom; not to the advantage
of their own nation, but doubtless to that of the Romans,
who from the nature of the case could not but here revert
to the old rights of the Seleucids, and could not tolerate a conquering
power like that of Jannaeus within the limits of their empire.
Aristobulus was uncertain whether it was better patiently
to acquiesce in his inevitable doom or to meet his fate with arms
in hand; at one time he seemed on the point of submitting to Pompeius,
at another he seemed as though he would summon the national party
among the Jews to a struggle with the Romans.  When at length,
with the legions already at the gates, he yielded to the enemy,
the more resolute or more fanatical portion of his army refused
to comply with the orders of a king who was not free.  The capital
submitted; the steep temple-rock was defended by that fanatical band
for three months with an obstinacy ready to brave death, till at last
the besiegers effected an entrance while the besieged were resting
on the Sabbath, possessed themselves of the sanctuary, and handed over
the authors of that desperate resistance, so far as they had
not fallen under the sword of the Romans, to the axes of the lictors.
Thus ended the last resistance of the territories newly annexed
to the Roman state.

The New Relations of the Romans in the East

The work begun by Lucullus had been completed by Pompeius;
the hitherto formally independent states of Bithynia, Pontus,
and Syria were united with the Roman state; the exchange--which
had been recognized for more than a hundred years as necessary--
of the feeble system of a protectorate for that of direct sovereignty
over the more important dependent territories,(17) had at length
been realized, as soon as the senate had been overthrown and the Gracchan
party had come to the helm.  Rome had obtained in the east
new frontiers, new neighbours, new friendly and hostile relations.
There were now added to the indirect territories of Rome
the kingdom of Armenia and the principalities of the Caucasus,
and also the kingdom on the Cimmerian Bosporus, the small remnant
of the extensive conquests of Mithradates Eupator, now a client-state
of Rome under the government of his son and murderer Pharnaces;
the town of Phanagoria alone, whose commandant Castor had given
the signal for the revolt, was on that account recognized by the Romans
as free and independent.

Conflicts with the Nabataeans

No like successes could be boasted of against the Nabataeans.
King Aretas had indeed, yielding to the desire of the Romans,
evacuated Judaea; but Damascus was still in his hands,
and the Nabataean land had not yet been trodden by any Roman soldier.
To subdue that region or at least to show to their new neighbours
in Arabia that the Roman eagles were now dominant on the Orontes
and on the Jordan, and that the time had gone by when any one was free
to levy contributions in the Syrian lands as a domain without a master,
Pompeius began in 691 an expedition against Petra; but detained
by the revolt of the Jews, which broke out during this expedition,
he was not reluctant to leave to his successor Marcus Scaurus
the carrying out of the difficult enterprise against the Nabataean city
situated far off amidst the desert.(18)  In reality Scaurus also
soon found himself compelled to return without having accomplished
his object.  He had to content himself with making war
on the Nabataeans in the deserts on the left bank of the Jordan,
where he could lean for support on the Jews, but yet bore off only
very trifling successes.  Ultimately the adroit Jewish minister
Antipater from Idumaea persuaded Aretas to purchase a guarantee
for all his possessions, Damascus included, from the Roman governor
for a sum of money; and this is the peace celebrated on the coins
of Scaurus, where king Aretas appears--leading his camel--
as a suppliant offering the olive branch to the Roman.

Difficulty with the Parthians

Far more fraught with momentous effects than these new relations
of the Romans to the Armenians, Iberians, Bosporans, and Nabataeans
was the proximity into which through the occupation of Syria they
were brought with the Parthian state.  Complaisant as had been
the demeanour of Roman diplomacy towards Phraates while the Pontic
and Armenian states still subsisted, willingly as both Lucullus
and Pompeius had then conceded to him the possession of the regions
beyond the Euphrates,(19) the new neighbour now sternly took up
his position by the side of the Arsacids; and Phraates, if the royal
art of forgetting his own faults allowed him, might well recall now
the warning words of Mithradates that the Parthian by his alliance
with the Occidentals against the kingdoms of kindred race paved
the way first for their destruction and then for his own.
Romans and Parthians in league had brought Armenia to ruin;
when it was overthrown, Rome true to her old policy now reversed
the parts and favoured the humbled foe at the expense
of the powerful ally.  The singular preference, which the father
Tigranes experienced from Pompeius as contrasted with his son
the ally and son-in-law of the Parthian king, was already
part of this policy; it was a direct offence, when soon afterwards
by the orders of Pompeius the younger Tigranes and his family
were arrested and were not released even on Phraates interceding
with the friendly general for his daughter and his son-in-law.
But Pompeius paused not here.  The province of Corduene,
to which both Phraates and Tigranes laid claim, was at the command
of Pompeius occupied by Roman troops for the latter, and the Parthians
who were found in possession were driven beyond the frontier
and pursued even as far as Arbela in Adiabene, without the government
of Ctesiphon having even been previously heard (689).
Far the most suspicious circumstance however was, that the Romans
seemed not at all inclined to respect the boundary of the Euphrates
fixed by treaty.  On several occasions Roman divisions
destined from Armenia for Syria marched across Mesopotamia;
the Arab emir Abgarus of Osrhoene was received under singularly
favourable conditions into Roman protection; nay, Oruros, situated
in Upper Mesopotamia somewhere between Nisibis and the Tigris 220
miles eastward from the Commagenian passage of the Euphrates,
was designated as the eastern limit of the Roman dominion--
presumably their indirect dominion, inasmuch as the larger
and more fertile northern half of Mesopotamia had been assigned
by the Romans in like manner with Corduene to the Armenian empire.
The boundary between Romans and Parthians thus became the great
Syro-Mesopotamian desert instead of the Euphrates; and this too
seemed only provisional.  To the Parthian envoys, who came to insist
on the maintenance of the agreements--which certainly, as it would
seem, were only concluded orally--respecting the Euphrates
boundary, Pompeius gave the ambiguous reply that the territory
of Rome extended as far as her rights.  The remarkable intercourse
between the Roman commander-in-chief and the Parthian satraps
of the region of Media and even of the distant province Elymais
(between Susiana, Media, and Persia, in the modern Luristan) seemed
a commentary on this speech.(20)  The viceroys of this latter
mountainous, warlike, and remote land had always exerted themselves
to acquire a position independent of the great-king; it was
the more offensive and menacing to the Parthian government,
when Pompeius accepted the proffered homage of this dynast.
Not less significant was the fact that the title of "king of kings,"
which had been hitherto conceded to the Parthian king by the Romans
in official intercourse, was now all at once exchanged by them
for the simple title of king.  This was even more a threat than
a violation of etiquette.  Since Rome had entered on the heritage
of the Seleucids, it seemed almost as if the Romans had a mind to revert
at a convenient moment to those old times, when all Iran and Turan
were ruled from Antioch, and there was as yet no Parthian empire
but merely a Parthian satrapy.  The court of Ctesiphon would thus
have had reason enough for going to war with Rome; it seemed
the prelude to its doing so, when in 690 it declared war on Armenia
on account of the question of the frontier.  But Phraates had not
the courage to come to an open rupture with the Romans at a time
when the dreaded general with his strong army was on the borders
of the Parthian empire.  When Pompeius sent commissioners to settle
amicably the dispute between Parthia and Armenia, Phraates yielded
to the Roman mediation forced upon him and acquiesced in their
award, which assigned to the Armenians Corduene and northern
Mesopotamia.  Soon afterwards his daughter with her son and her
husband adorned the triumph of the Roman general.  Even the Parthians
trembled before the superior power of Rome; and, if they had not,
like the inhabitants of Pontus and Armenia, succumbed to the Roman
arms, the reason seemed only to be that they had not ventured
to stand the conflict.

Organization of the Provinces

There still devolved on the general the duty of regulating
the internal relations of the newly-acquired provinces and of removing
as far as possible the traces of a thirteen years' desolating war.
The work of organization begun in Asia Minor by Lucullus
and the commission associated with him, and in Crete by Metellus,
received its final conclusion from Pompeius.  The former province
of Asia, which embraced Mysia, Lydia, Phrygia, and Caria, was converted
from a frontier province into a central one.  The newly-erected
provinces were, that of Bithynia and Pontus, which was formed
out of the whole former kingdom of Nicomedes and the western half
of the former Pontic state as far as and beyond the Halys;
that of Cilicia, which indeed was older, but was now for the first
time enlarged and organized in a manner befitting its name,
and comprehended also Pamphylia and Isauria; that of Syria,
and that of Crete.  Much was no doubt wanting to render that mass
of countries capable of being regarded as the territorial possession
of Rome in the modern sense of the term.  The form and order
of the government remained substantially as they were; only the Roman
community came in place of the former monarchs.  Those Asiatic provinces
consisted as formerly of a motley mixture of domanial possessions,
urban territories de facto or de jure autonomous, lordships pertaining
to princes and priests, and kingdoms, all of which were as regards
internal administration more or less left to themselves,
and in other respects were dependent, sometimes in milder sometimes
in stricter forms, on the Roman government and its proconsuls
very much as formerly on the great-king and his satraps.

Feudatory Kings
Cappadocia
Commagene
Galatia

The first place, in rank at least, among the dependent dynasts
was held by the king of Cappadocia, whose territory Lucullus had
already enlarged by investing him with the province of Melitene
(about Malatia) as far as the Euphrates, and to whom Pompeius
farther granted on the western frontier some districts taken off
Cilicia from Castabala as far as Derbe near Iconium, and on the eastern
frontier the province of Sophene situated on the left bank
of the Euphrates opposite Melitene and at first destined
for the Armenian prince Tigranes; so that the most important passage
of the Euphrates thus came wholly into the power of the Cappadocian
prince.  The small province of Commagene between Syria
and Cappadocia with its capital Samosata (Samsat) remained a dependent
kingdom in the hands of the already-named Seleucid Antiochus;(21)
to him too were assigned the important fortress of Seleucia (near
Biradjik) commanding the more southern passage of the Euphrates,
and the adjoining tracts on the left bank of that river; and thus
care was taken that the two chief passages of the Euphrates
with a corresponding territory on the eastern bank were left in the hands
of two dynasts wholly dependent on Rome.  Alongside of the kings
of Cappadocia and Commagene, and in real power far superior to them,
the new king Deiotarus ruled in Asia Minor.  One of the tetrarchs
of the Celtic stock of the Tolistobogii settled round Pessinus,
and summoned by Lucullus and Pompeius to render military service
with the other small Roman clients, Deiotarus had in these campaigns
so brilliantly proved his trustworthiness and his energy as contrasted
with all the indolent Orientals that the Roman generals conferred
upon him, in addition to his Galatian heritage and his possessions
in the rich country between Amisus and the mouth of the Halys,
the eastern half of the former Pontic empire with the maritime towns
of Pharnacia and Trapezus and the Pontic Armenia as far as
the frontier of Colchis and the Greater Armenia, to form the kingdom
of Lesser Armenia.  Soon afterwards he increased his already
considerable territory by the country of the Celtic Trocmi,
whose tetrarch he dispossessed.  Thus the petty feudatory became
one of the most powerful dynasts of Asia Minor, to whom might
be entrusted the guardianship of an important part of the frontier
of the empire.

Princes and Chiefs

Vassals of lesser importance were, the other numerous Galatian
tetrarchs, one of whom, Bogodiatarus prince of the Trocmi,
was on account of his tried valour in the Mithradatic war presented
by Pompeius with the formerly Pontic frontier-town of Mithradatium;
Attalus prince of Paphlagonia, who traced back his lineage
to the old ruling house of the Pylaemenids; Aristarchus and other petty
lords in the Colchian territory; Tarcondimotus who ruled in eastern
Cilicia in the mountain-valleys of the Amanus; Ptolemaeus son
of Mennaeus who continued to rule in Chalcis on the Libanus; Aretas
king of the Nabataeans as lord of Damascus; lastly, the Arabic
emirs in the countries on either side of the Euphrates, Abgarus
in Osrhoene, whom the Romans endeavoured in every way to draw over
to their interest with the view of using him as an advanced post
against the Parthians, Sampsiceramus in Hemesa, Alchaudonius
the Rhambaean, and another emir in Bostra.

Priestly Princes

To these fell to be added the spiritual lords who in the east
frequently ruled over land and people like secular dynasts,
and whose authority firmly established in that native home
of fanaticism the Romans prudently refrained from disturbing,
as they refrained from even robbing the temples of their treasures:
the high-priest of the Goddess Mother in Pessinus; the two high-priests
of the goddess Ma in the Cappadocian Comana (on the upper Sarus)
and in the Pontic city of the same name (Gumenek near Tocat),
both lords who were in their countries inferior only to the king
in power, and each of whom even at a much later period possessed
extensive estates with special jurisdiction and about six thousand
temple-slaves--Archelaus, son of the general of that name
who passed over from Mithradates to the Romans, was invested
by Pompeius with the Pontic high-priesthood--the high-priest
of the Venasian Zeus in the Cappadocian district of Morimene,
whose revenues amounted annually to 3600 pounds (15 talents);
the "archpriest and lord" of that territory in Cilicia Trachea,
where Teucer the son of Ajax had founded a temple to Zeus, over which
his descendants presided by virtue of hereditary right; the "arch-priest
and lord of the people" of the Jews, to whom Pompeius, after having
razed the walls of the capital and the royal treasuries and strongholds
in the land, gave back the presidency of the nation with a serious
admonition to keep the peace and no longer to aim at conquests.

Urban Communities

Alongside of these secular and spiritual potentates stood the urban
communities.  These were partly associated into larger unions
which rejoiced in a comparative independence, such as in particular
the league of the twenty-three Lycian cities, which was well organized
and constantly, for instance, kept aloof from participation
in the disorders of piracy; whereas the numerous detached communities,
even if they had self-government secured by charter,
were in practice wholly dependent on the Roman governors.

Elevation of Urban Life in Asia

The Romans failed not to see that with the task of representing
Hellenism and protecting and extending the domain of Alexander
in the east there devolved on them the primary duty of elevating
the urban system; for, while cities are everywhere the pillars
of civilization, the antagonism between Orientals and Occidentals
was especially and most sharply embodied in the contrast between
the Oriental, military-despotic, feudal hierarchy and the Helleno-
Italic urban commonwealth prosecuting trade and commerce.  Lucullus
and Pompeius, however little they in other respects aimed at
the reduction of things to one level in the east, and however much
the latter was disposed in questions of detail to censure and alter
the arrangements of his predecessor, were yet completely agreed
in the principle of promoting as far as they could an urban life in Asia
Minor and Syria.  Cyzicus, on whose vigorous resistance the first
violence of the last war had spent itself, received from Lucullus
a considerable extension of its domain.  The Pontic Heraclea,
energetically as it had resisted the Romans, yet recovered
its territory and its harbours; and the barbarous fury of Cotta against
the unhappy city met with the sharpest censure in the senate.
Lucullus had deeply and sincerely regretted that fate had refused
him the happiness of rescuing Sinope and Amisus from devastation
by the Pontic soldiery and his own: he did at least what he could
to restore them, extended considerably their territories, peopled them
afresh--partly with the old inhabitants, who at his invitation
returned in troops to their beloved homes, partly with new settlers
of Hellenic descent--and provided for the reconstruction
of the buildings destroyed.  Pompeius acted in the same spirit
and on a greater scale.  Already after the subjugation of the pirates
he had, instead of following the example of his predecessors
and crucifying his prisoners, whose number exceeded 20,000, settled
them partly in the desolated cities of the Plain Cilicia,
such as Mallus, Adana, Epiphaneia, and especially in Soli,
which thenceforth bore the name of Pompeius' city (Pompeiupolis),
partly at Dyme in Achaia, and even at Tarentum.  This colonizing
by means of pirates met with manifold censure,(22) as it seemed
in some measure to set a premium on crime; in reality it was,
politically and morally, well justified, for, as things then stood,
piracy was something different from robbery and the prisoners
might fairly be treated according to martial law.

New Towns Established

But Pompeius made it his business above all to promote urban life
in the new Roman provinces.  We have already observed how poorly
provided with towns the Pontic empire was:(23) most districts
of Cappadocia even a century after this had no towns, but merely
mountain fortresses as a refuge for the agricultural population
in war; the whole east of Asia Minor, apart from the sparse Greek
colonies on the coasts, must have been at this time in a similar
plight.  The number of towns newly established by Pompeius in these
provinces is, including the Cilician settlements, stated at thirty-
nine, several of which attained great prosperity.  The most notable
of these townships in the former kingdom of Pontus were Nicopolis,
the "city of victory," founded on the spot where Mithradates
sustained the last decisive defeat(24)--the fairest memorial
of a general rich in similar trophies; Megalopolis, named from Pompeius'
surname, on the frontier of Cappadocia and Lesser Armenia,
the subsequent Sebasteia (now Siwas); Ziela, where the Romans fought
the unfortunate battle,(25) a township which had arisen round
the temple of Anaitis there and hitherto had belonged to its high-
priest, and to which Pompeius now gave the form and privileges
of a city; Diopolis, formerly Cabira, afterwards Neocaesarea (Niksar),
likewise one of the battle-fields of the late war; Magnopolis
or Pompeiupolis, the restored Eupatoria at the confluence of the Lycus
and the Iris, originally built by Mithradates, but again destroyed
by him on account of the defection of the city to the Romans;(26)
Neapolis, formerly Phazemon, between Amasia and the Halys.  Most
of the towns thus established were formed not by bringing
colonists from a distance, but by the suppression of villages
and the collection of their inhabitants within the new ring-wall;
only in Nicopolis Pompeius settled the invalids and veterans of his army,
who preferred to establish a home for themselves there at once
rather than afterwards in Italy.  But at other places also
there arose on the suggestion of the regent new centres of Hellenic
civilization.  In Paphlagonia a third Pompeiupolis marked the spot
where the army of Mithradates in 666 achieved the great victory
over the Bithynians.(27)  In Cappadocia, which perhaps had suffered
more than any other province by the war, the royal residence Mazaca
(afterwards Caesarea, now Kaisarieh) and seven other townships
were re-established by Pompeius and received urban institutions.
In Cilicia and Coelesyria there were enumerated twenty towns laid
out by Pompeius.  In the districts ceded by the Jews, Gadara
in the Decapolis rose from its ruins at the command of Pompeius,
and the city of Seleucis was founded.  By far the greatest portion
of the domain-land at his disposal on the Asiatic continent must have
been applied by Pompeius for his new settlements; whereas in Crete,
about which Pompeius troubled himself little or not at all,
the Roman domanial possessions seem to have continued tolerably extensive.

Pompeius was no less intent on regulating and elevating the existing
communities than on founding new townships.  The abuses and usurpations
which prevailed were done away with as far as lay in his power;
detailed ordinances drawn up carefully for the different provinces
regulated the particulars of the municipal system.  A number
of the most considerable cities had fresh privileges conferred on them.
Autonomy was bestowed on Antioch on the Orontes, the most important
city of Roman Asia and but little inferior to the Egyptian Alexandria
and to the Bagdad of antiquity, the city of Seleucia in the Parthian
empire; as also on the neighbour of Antioch, the Pierian Seleucia,
which was thus rewarded for its courageous resistance to Tigranes;
on Gaza and generally on all the towns liberated from the Jewish rule;
on Mytilene in the west of Asia Minor; and on Phanagoria
on the Black Sea.

Aggregate Results

Thus was completed the structure of the Roman state in Asia,
which with its feudatory kings and vassals, its priests made
into princes, and its series of free and half-free cities puts
us vividly in mind of the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation.
It was no miraculous work, either as respects the difficulties
overcome or as respects the consummation attained; nor was it made
so by all the high-sounding words, which the Roman world of quality
lavished in favour of Lucullus and the artless multitude in praise
of Pompeius.  Pompeius in particular consented to be praised,
and praised himself, in such a fashion that people might
almost have reckoned him still more weak-minded than he really was.
If the Mytilenaeans erected a statue to him as their deliverer
and founder, as the man who had as well by land as by sea terminated
the wars with which the world was filled, such a homage might
not seem too extravagant for the vanquisher of the pirates
and of the empires of the east.  But the Romans this time surpassed
the Greeks.  The triumphal inscriptions of Pompeius himself enumerated
12 millions of people as subjugated and 1538 cities and strongholds
as conquered--it seemed as if quantity was to make up for quality--
and made the circle of his victories extend from the Maeotic Sea
to the Caspian and from the latter to the Red Sea, when his eyes had
never seen any one of the three; nay farther, if he did not exactly
say so, he at any late induced the public to suppose that the annexation
of Syria, which in truth was no heroic deed, had added
the whole east as far as Bactria and India to the Roman empire--
so dim was the mist of distance, amidst which according to his
statements the boundary-line of his eastern conquests was lost.
The democratic servility, which has at all times rivalled
that of courts, readily entered into these insipid extravagances.
It was not satisfied by the pompous triumphal procession, which moved
through the streets of Rome on the 28th and 29th Sept. 693--
the forty-sixth birthday of Pompeius the Great--adorned, to say nothing
of jewels of all sorts, by the crown insignia of Mithradates
and by the children of the three mightiest kings of Asia, Mithradates,
Tigranes, and Phraates; it rewarded its general, who had conquered
twenty-two kings, with regal honours and bestowed on him the golden
chaplet and the insignia of the magistracy for life.  The coins struck
in his honour exhibit the globe itself placed amidst the triple
laurels brought home from the three continents, and surmounted
by the golden chaplet conferred by the burgesses on the man
who had triumphed over Africa, Spain, and Asia.  It need excite
no surprise, if in presence of such childish acts of homage voices
were heard of an opposite import.  Among the Roman world of quality
it was currently affirmed that the true merit of having subdued
the east belonged to Lucullus, and that Pompeius had only gone thither
to supplant Lucullus and to wreathe around his own brow the laurels
which another hand had plucked.  Both statements were totally
erroneous: it was not Pompeius but Glabrio that was sent to Asia
to relieve Lucullus, and, bravely as Lucullus had fought, it was
a fact that, when Pompeius took the supreme command, the Romans
had forfeited all their earlier successes and had not a foot's breadth
of Pontic soil in their possession.  More pointed and effective
was the ridicule of the inhabitants of the capital, who failed not
to nickname the mighty conqueror of the globe after the great powers
which he had conquered, and saluted him now as "conqueror of Salem,"
now as "emir" (-Arabarches-), now as the Roman Sampsiceramus.

Lucullus and Pompeius as Administrators

The unprejudiced judge will not agree either with those exaggerations
or with these disparagements.  Lucullus and Pompeius, in subduing
and regulating Asia, showed themselves to be, not heroes
and state-creators, but sagacious and energetic army-leaders
and governors.  As general Lucullus displayed no common talents
and a self-confidence bordering on rashness, while Pompeius displayed
military judgment and a rare self-restraint; for hardly
has any general with such forces and a position so wholly free
ever acted so cautiously as Pompeius in the east.  The most brilliant
undertakings, as it were, offered themselves to him on all sides;
he was free to start for the Cimmerian Bosporus and for the Red
Sea; he had opportunity of declaring war against the Parthians;
the revolted provinces of Egypt invited him to dethrone king
Ptolemaeus who was not recognized by the Romans, and to carry
out the testament of Alexander; but Pompeius marched neither
to Panticapaeum nor to Petra, neither to Ctesiphon nor to Alexandria;
throughout he gathered only those fruits which of themselves fell
to his hand.  In like manner he fought all his battles by sea
and land with a crushing superiority of force.  Had this moderation
proceeded from the strict observance of the instructions given
to him, as Pompeius was wont to profess, or even from a perception
that the conquests of Rome must somewhere find a limit and that
fresh accessions of territory were not advantageous to the state,
it would deserve a higher praise than history confers on the most
talented officer; but constituted as Pompeius was, his self-
restraint was beyond doubt solely the result of his peculiar want
of decision and of initiative--defects, indeed, which were in his
case far more useful to the state than the opposite excellences
of his predecessor.  Certainly very grave errors were perpetrated
both by Lucullus and by Pompeius.  Lucullus reaped their fruits himself,
when his imprudent conduct wrested from him all the results
of his victories; Pompeius left it to his successors to bear
the consequences of his false policy towards the Parthians.  He might
either have made war on the Parthians, if he had had the courage
to do so, or have maintained peace with them and recognized,
as he had promised, the Euphrates as boundary; he was too timid
for the former course, too vain for the latter, and so he resorted
to the silly perfidy of rendering the good neighbourhood,
which the court of Ctesiphon desired and on its part practised,
impossible through the most unbounded aggressions, and yet allowing
the enemy to choose of themselves the time for rupture and retaliation.
As administrator of Asia Lucullus acquired a more than princely
wealth; and Pompeius also received as reward for its organization
large sums in cash and still more considerable promissory notes
from the king of Cappadocia, from the rich city of Antioch,
and from other lords and communities.  But such exactions had become
almost a customary tax; and both generals showed themselves at any rate
to be not altogether venal in questions of greater importance,
and, if possible, got themselves paid by the party whose interests
coincided with those of Rome.  Looking to the state of the times,
this does not prevent us from characterizing the administration
of both as comparatively commendable and conducted primarily
in the interest of Rome, secondarily in that of the provincials.

The conversion of the clients into subjects, the better regulation
of the eastern frontier, the establishment of a single and strong
government, were full of blessing for the rulers as well as
for the ruled.  The financial gain acquired by Rome was immense;
the new property tax, which with the exception of some specially
exempted communities all those princes, priests, and cities had to pay
to Rome, raised the Roman state-revenues almost by a half above their
former amount.  Asia indeed suffered severely.  Pompeius brought
in money and jewels an amount of 2,000,000 pounds (200,000,000
sesterces) into the state-chest and distributed 3,900,000 pounds
(16,000 talents) among his officers and soldiers; if we add to this
the considerable sums brought home by Lucullus, the non-official
exactions of the Roman army, and the amount of the damage done
by the war, the financial exhaustion of the land may be readily
conceived.  The Roman taxation of Asia was perhaps in itself
not worse than that of its earlier rulers, but it formed a heavier
burden on the land, in so far as the taxes thenceforth went
out of the country and only the lesser portion of the proceeds
was again expended in Asia; and at any rate it was, in the old
as well as the newly-acquired provinces, based on a systematic plundering
of the provinces for the benefit of Rome.  But the responsibility
for this rests far less on the generals personally than on the parties
at home, whom these had to consider; Lucullus had even exerted himself
energetically to set limits to the usurious dealings of the Roman
capitalists in Asia, and this essentially contributed to bring
about his fall.  How much both men earnestly sought to revive
the prosperity of the reduced provinces, is shown by their action
in cases where no considerations of party policy tied their hands,
and especially in their care for the cities of Asia Minor.  Although
for centuries afterwards many an Asiatic village lying in ruins
recalled the times of the great war, Sinope might well begin a new
era with the date of its re-establishment by Lucullus, and almost
all the more considerable inland towns of the Pontic kingdom might
gratefully honour Pompeius as their founder.  The organization
of Roman Asia by Lucullus and Pompeius may with all its undeniable
defects be described as on the whole judicious and praiseworthy;
serious as were the evils that might still adhere to it,
it could not but be welcome to the sorely tormented Asiatics
for the very reason that it came attended by the inward
and outward peace, the absence of which had been so long
and so painfully felt.

The East after the Departure of Pompeius

Peace continued substantially in the east, till the idea--merely
indicated by Pompeius with his characteristic timidity--of joining
the regions eastward of the Euphrates to the Roman empire was taken
up again energetically but unsuccessfully by the new triumvirate
of Roman regents, and soon thereafter the civil war drew the eastern
provinces as well as all the rest into its fatal vortex.
In the interval the governors of Cilicia had to fight constantly
with the mountain-tribes of the Amanus and those of Syria with the hordes
of the desert, and in the latter war against the Bedouins especially
many Roman troops were destroyed; but these movements had no farther
significance.  More remarkable was the obstinate resistance,
which the tough Jewish nation opposed to the conquerors.  Alexander,
son of the deposed king Aristobulus, and Aristobulus himself
who after some time succeeded in escaping from captivity,
excited during the governorship of Aulus Gabinius (697-700)
three different revolts against the new rulers, to each of which
the government of the high-priest Hyrcanus installed by Rome impotently
succumbed.  It was not political conviction, but the invincible repugnance
of the Oriental towards the unnatural yoke, which compelled them
to kick against the pricks; as indeed the last and most dangerous
of these revolts, for which the withdrawal of the Syrian army
of occupation in consequence of the Egyptian crisis furnished
the immediate impulse, began with the murder of the Romans
settled in Palestine.  It was not without difficulty
that the able governor succeeded in rescuing the few Romans,
who had escaped this fate and found a temporary refuge
on Mount Gerizim, from the insurgents who kept them blockaded there,
and in overpowering the revolt after several severely contested
battles and tedious sieges.  In consequence of this the monarchy
of the high-priests was abolished and the Jewish land was broken up
as Macedonia had formerly been, into five independent districts
administered by governing colleges with an Optimate organization;
Samaria and other townships razed by the Jews were re-established,
to form a counterpoise to Jerusalem; and lastly a heavier tribute
was imposed on the Jews than on the other Syrian subjects of Rome.

The Kingdom of Egypt

It still remains that we should glance at the kingdom of Egypt
along with the last dependency that remained to it of the extensive
acquisitions of the Lagids, the fair island of Cyprus.
Egypt was now the only state of the Hellenic east that was still
at least nominally independent; just as formerly, when the Persians
established themselves along the eastern half of the Mediterranean,
Egypt was their last conquest, so now the mighty conquerors
from the west long delayed the annexation of that opulent
and peculiar country.  The reason lay, as was already indicated,
neitherin any fear of the resistance of Egypt nor in the want
of a fitting occasion.  Egypt was just about as powerless as Syria,
and had already in 673 fallen in all due form of law to the Roman
community.(28)  The control exercised over the court of Alexandria
by the royal guard--which appointed and deposed ministers
and occasionally kings, took for itself what it pleased, and,
if it was refused a rise of pay, besieged the king in his palace--
was by no means liked in the country or rather in the capital (for
the country with its population of agricultural slaves was hardly taken
into account); and at least a party there wished for the annexation
of Egypt by Rome, and even took steps to procure it But the less
the kings of Egypt could think of contending in arms against Rome,
the more energetically Egyptian gold set itself to resist the Roman
plans of union; and in consequence of the peculiar despotico-
communistic centralization of the Egyptian finances the revenues
of the court of Alexandria were still nearly equal to the public
income of Rome even after its augmentation by Pompeius.
The suspicious jealousy of the oligarchy, which was chary of allowing
any individual either to conquer or to administer Egypt, operated
in the same direction.  So the de facto rulers of Egypt and Cyprus
were enabled by bribing the leading men in the senate not merely
to respite their tottering crowns, but even to fortify them afresh
and to purchase from the senate the confirmation of their royal title.
But with this they had not yet obtained their object.
Formal state-law required a decree of the Roman burgesses;
until this was issued, the Ptolemies were dependent on the caprice
of every democratic holder of power, and they had thus to commence
the warfare of bribery also against the other Roman party,
which as the more powerful stipulated for far higher prices.

Cyprus Annexed

The result in the two cases was different.  The annexation
of Cyprus was decreed in 696 by the people, that is, by the leaders
of the democracy, the support given to piracy by the Cypriots
being alleged as the official reason why that course should
now be adopted.  Marcus Cato, entrusted by his opponents
with the execution of this measure, came to the island without an army;
but he had no need of one.  The king took poison; the inhabitants
submitted without offering resistance to their inevitable fate,
and were placed under the governor of Cilicia.  The ample treasure
of nearly 7000 talents (1,700,000 pounds), which the equally
covetous and miserly king could not prevail on himself to apply
for the bribes requisite to save his crown, fell along with the latter
to the Romans, and filled after a desirable fashion the empty vaults
of their treasury.

Ptolemaeus in Egypt Recognized but Expelled by His Subjects

On the other hand the brother who reigned in Egypt succeeded
in purchasing his recognition by decree of the people from the new
masters of Rome in 695; the purchase-money is said to have amounted
to 6000 talents (1,460,000 pounds).  The citizens indeed, long
exasperated against their good flute-player and bad ruler,
and now reduced to extremities by the definitive loss of Cyprus
and the pressure of the taxes which were raised to an intolerable
degree in consequence of the transactions with the Romans (696),
chased him on that account out of the country.  When the king thereupon
applied, as if on account of his eviction from the estate which he
had purchased, to those who sold it, these were reasonable enough
to see that it was their duty as honest men of business to get back
his kingdom for Ptolemaeus; only the parties could not agree
as to the person to whom the important charge of occupying Egypt
by force along with the perquisites thence to be expected should
be assigned.  It was only when the triumvirate was confirmed anew
at the conference of Luca, that this affair was also arranged,
after Ptolemaeus had agreed to a further payment of 10,000 talents
(2,400,000 pounds); the governor of Syria, Aulus Gabinius,
now obtained orders from those in power to take the necessary steps
immediately for bringing back the king.  The citizens of Alexandria
had meanwhile placed the crown on the head of Berenice the eldest
daughter of the ejected king, and given to her a husband
in the person of one of the spiritual princes of Roman Asia,
Archelaus the high-priest of Comana,(29) who possessed ambition enough
to hazard his secure and respectable position in the hope of mounting
the throne of the Lagids.  His attempts to gain the Roman regents
to his interests remained without success; but he did not recoil
before the idea of being obliged to maintain his new kingdom
with arms in hand even against the Romans.

And Brought Back by Gabinius
A Roman Garrison Remains in Alexandria

Gabinius, without ostensible powers to undertake war against Egypt
but directed to do so by the regents, made a pretext out of
the alleged furtherance of piracy by the Egyptians and the building
of a fleet by Archelaus, and started without delay for the Egyptian
frontier (699).  The march through the sandy desert between Gaza
and Pelusium, in which so many invasions previously directed
against Egypt had broken down, was on this occasion successfully
accomplished--a result especially due to the quick and skilful
leader of the cavalry Marcus Antonius.  The frontier fortress
of Pelusium also was surrendered without resistance by the Jewish
garrison stationed there.  In front of this city the Romans met
the Egyptians, defeated them--on which occasion Antonius again
distinguished himself--and arrived, as the first Roman army,
at the Nile.  Here the fleet and army of the Egyptians were drawn up
for the last decisive struggle; but the Romans once more conquered,
and Archelaus himself with many of his followers perished
in the combat.  Immediately after this battle the capital surrendered,
and therewith all resistance was at an end.  The unhappy land
was handed over to its legitimate oppressor; the hanging and beheading,
with which, but for the intervention of the chivalrous Antonius,
Ptolemaeus would have already in Pelusium begun to celebrate
the restoration of the legitimate government, now took its course
unhindered, and first of all the innocent daughter was sent
by her father to the scaffold.  The payment of the reward agreed
upon with the regents broke down through the absolute impossibility
of exacting from the exhausted land the enormous sums required,
although they took from the poor people the last penny; but care
was taken that the country should at least be kept quiet
by the garrison of Roman infantry and Celtic and German cavalry
left in the capital, which took the place of the native praetorians
and otherwise emulated them not unsuccessfully.  The previous hegemony
of Rome over Egypt was thus converted into a direct military
occupation, and the nominal continuance of the native monarchy
was not so much a privilege granted to the land as a double
burden imposed on it.




CHAPTER V

The Struggle of Parties During the Absence of Pompeius.

The Defeated Aristocracy

With the passing of the Gabinian law the parties in the capital
changed positions.  From the time that the elected general
of the democracy held in his hand the sword, his party,
or what was reckoned such, had the preponderance in the capital.
The nobility doubtless still stood in compact array, and still
as before there issued from the comitial machinery none but consuls,
who according to the expression of the democrats were already
designated to the consulate in their cradles; to command the elections
andbreak down the influence of the old families over them was beyond
the power even of the holders of power.  But unfortunately the consulate,
at the very moment when they had got the length of virtually excluding
the "new men" from it, began itself to grow pale before the newly-
risen star of the exceptional military power.  The aristocracy felt
this, though they did not exactly confess it; they gave themselves
up as lost.  Except Quintus Catulus, who with honourable firmness
persevered at his far from pleasant post as champion of a vanquished
party down to his death (694), no Optimate could be named
from the highest ranks of the nobility, who would have sustained
the interests of the aristocracy with courage and steadfastness.
Their very men of most talent and fame, such as Quintus Metellus
Pius and Lucius Lucullus, practically abdicated and retired,
so far as they could at all do so with propriety, to their villas,
in order to forget as much as possible the Forum and the senate-house
amidst their gardens and libraries, their aviaries and fish-ponds.
Still more, of course, was this the case with the younger generation
of the aristocracy, which was either wholly absorbed in luxury
and literature or turning towards the rising sun.

Cato

There was among the younger men a single exception; it was
Marcus Porcius Cato (born in 659), a man of the best intentions
and of rare devotedness, and yet one of the most Quixotic
and one of the most cheerless phenomena in this age so abounding
in political caricatures.  Honourable and steadfast, earnest in purpose
and in action, full of attachment to his country and to its hereditary
constitution, but dull in intellect and sensuously as well as
morally destitute of passion, he might certainly have made
a tolerable state-accountant.  But unfortunately he fell early
under the power of formalism, and swayed partly by the phrases
of the Stoa, which in their abstract baldness and spiritless
isolation were current among the genteel world of that day, partly
by the example of his great-grandfather whom he deemed it his especial
task to reproduce, he began to walk about in the sinful capital
as a model burgess and mirror of virtue, to scold at the times
like the old Cato, to travel on foot instead of riding, to take
no interest, to decline badges of distinction as a soldier,
and to introduce the restoration of the good old days by going after
the precedent of king Romulus without a shirt.  A strange caricature
of his ancestor--the gray-haired farmer whom hatred and anger made
an orator, who wielded in masterly style the plough as well as
the sword, who with his narrow, but original and sound common sense
ordinarily hit the nail on the head--was this young unimpassioned
pedant from whose lips dropped scholastic wisdom and who was
everywhere seen sitting book in hand, this philosopher
who understood neither the art of war nor any other art whatever,
this cloud-walker in the realm of abstract morals.  Yet he attained
to moral and thereby even to political importance.  In an utterly
wretched and cowardly age his courage and his negative virtues told
powerfully on the multitude; he even formed a school, and there were
individuals--it is true they were but few--who in their turn
copied and caricatured afresh the living pattern of a philosopher.
On the same cause depended also his political influence.
As he was the only conservative of note who possessed if not talent
and insight, at any rate integrity and courage, and was always ready
to throw himself into the breach whether it was necessary to do so
or not, he soon became the recognized champion of the Optimate party,
although neither his age nor his rank nor his intellect entitled
him to be so.  Where the perseverance of a single resolute man
could decide, he no doubt sometimes achieved a success,
and in questions of detail, more particularly of a financial character,
he often judiciously interfered, as indeed he was absent
from no meeting of the senate; his quaestorship in fact formed
an epoch, and as long as he lived he checked the details of the public
budget, regarding which he maintained of course a constant warfare
with the farmers of the taxes.  For the rest, he lacked simply
every ingredient of a statesman.  He was incapable of even
comprehending a political aim and of surveying political relations;
his whole tactics consisted in setting his face against every one
who deviated or seemed to him to deviate from the traditionary
moral and political catechism of the aristocracy, and thus
of course he worked as often into the hands of his opponents
as into those of his own party.  The Don Quixote of the aristocracy,
he proved by his character and his actions that at this time,
while there was certainly still an aristocracy in existence,
the aristocratic policy was nothing more than a chimera.

Democratic Attacks

To continue the conflict with this aristocracy brought little
honour.  Of course the attacks of the democracy on the vanquished
foe did not on that account cease.  The pack of the Populares threw
themselves on the broken ranks of the nobility like the sutlers
on a conquered camp, and the surface at least of politics
was by this agitation ruffled into high waves of foam.  The multitude
entered into the matter the more readily, as Gaius Caesar especially
kept them in good humour by the extravagant magnificence of his games
(689)--in which all the equipments, even the cages of the wild
beasts, appeared of massive silver--and generally by a liberality
which was all the more princely that it was based solely
on the contraction of debt.  The attacks on the nobility
were of the most varied kind.  The abuses of aristocratic rule afforded
copious materials; magistrates and advocates who were liberal or assumed
a liberal hue, like Gaius Cornelius, Aulus Gabinius, Marcus Cicero,
continued systematically to unveil the most offensive and scandalous
aspects of the Optimate doings and to propose laws against them.
The senate was directed to give access to foreign envoys on set days,
with the view of preventing the usual postponement of audiences.
Loans raised by foreign ambassadors in Rome were declared non-actionable,
as this was the only means of seriously checking the corruptions
which formed the order of the day in the senate (687).  The right
of the senate to give dispensation in particular cases from the laws
was restricted (687); as was also the abuse whereby every Roman of rank,
who had private business to attend to in the provinces, got himself
invested by the senate with the character of a Roman envoy thither
(691).  They heightened the penalties against the purchase
of votes and electioneering intrigues (687, 691); which latter
were especially increased in a scandalous fashion by the attempts
of the individuals ejected from the senate(1) to get back
to it through re-election.

What had hitherto been simply understood as matter of course
was now expressly laid down as a law, that the praetors were bound
to administer justice in conformity with the rules set forth by them,
after the Roman fashion, at their entering on office (687).

Transpadanes
Freedmen

But, above all, efforts were made to complete the democratic
restoration and to realize the leading ideas of the Gracchan period
in a form suitable to the times.  The election of the priests
by the comitia, which Gnaeus Domitius had introduced(2) and Sulla
had again done away,(3) was established by a law of the tribune
of the people Titus Labienus in 691.  The democrats were fond
of pointing out how much was still wanting towards the restoration
of the Sempronian corn-laws in their full extent, and at the same
time passed over in silence the fact that under the altered
circumstances--with the straitened condition of the public finances
and the great increase in the number of fully-privileged Roman
citizens--that restoration was absolutely impracticable.
In the country between the Po and the Alps they zealously fostered
the agitation for political equality with the Italians.
As early as 686 Gaius Caesar travelled from place to place there
for this purpose; in 689 Marcus Crassus as censor made arrangements
to enrol the inhabitants directly in the burgess-roll--which was only
frustrated by the resistance of his colleague; in the following
censorships this attempt seems regularly to have been repeated.
As formerly Gracchus and Flaccus had been the patrons of the Latins,
so the present leaders of the democracy gave themselves forth
as protectors of the Transpadanes, and Gaius Piso (consul in 687)
had bitterly to regret that he had ventured to outrage
one of these clients of Caesar and Crassus.  On the other hand
the same leaders appeared by no means disposed to advocate
the political equalization of the freedmen; the tribune of the people
Gaius Manilius, who in a thinly attended assembly had procured
the renewal (31 Dec. 687) of the Sulpician law as to the suffrage
of freedmen,(4) was immediately disavowed by the leading men
of the democracy, and with their consent the law was cancelled
by the senate on the very day after its passing.  In the same spirit
all the strangers, who possessed neither Roman nor Latin burgess-
rights, were ejected from the capital by decree of the people
in 689.  It is obvious that the intrinsic inconsistency
of the Gracchan policy--in abetting at once the effort of the excluded
to obtain admission into the circle of the privileged, and the effort
of the privileged to maintain their distinctive rights--had passed
over to their successors; while Caesar and his friends on the one hand
held forth to the Transpadanes the prospect of the franchise,
they on the other hand gave their assent to the continuance
of the disabilities of the freedmen, and to the barbarous setting aside
of the rivalry which the industry and trading skill of the Hellenes
and Orientals maintained with the Italians in Italy itself.

Process against Rabirius

The mode in which the democracy dealt with the ancient criminal
jurisdiction of the comitia was characteristic.  It had not been
properly abolished by Sulla, but practically the jury-commissions
on high treason and murder had superseded it,(5) and no rational
man could think of seriously re-establishing the old procedure
which long before Sulla had been thoroughly unpractical.
But as the idea of the sovereignty of the people appeared to require
a recognition at least in principle of the penal jurisdiction
of the burgesses, the tribune of the people Titus Labienus in 691
brought the old man, who thirty-eight years before had slain or was
alleged to have slain the tribune of the people Lucius Saturninus,(6)
before the same high court of criminal jurisdiction, by virtue of which,
if the annals reported truly, king Tullus had procured the acquittal
of the Horatius who had killed his sister.  The accused was one
Gaius Rabirius, who, if he had not killed Saturninus,
had at least paraded with his cut-off head at the tables
of men of rank, and who moreover was notorious among the Apulian
landholders for his kidnapping and his bloody deeds.  The object,
if not of the accuser himself, at any rate of the more sagacious men
who backed him, was not at all to make this pitiful wretch
die the death of the cross; they were not unwilling to acquiesce,
when first the form of the impeachment was materially modified
by the senate, and then the assembly of the people called to pronounce
sentence on the guilty was dissolved under some sort of pretext
by the opposite party--so that the whole procedure was set aside.
At all events by this process the two palladia of Roman freedom,
the right of the citizens to appeal and the inviolability of the tribunes
of the people, were once more established as practical rights,
and the legal basis on which the democracy rested was adjusted afresh.

Personal Attacks

The democratic reaction manifested still greater vehemence
in all personal questions, wherever it could and dared.
Prudence indeed enjoined it not to urge the restoration of the estates
confiscated by Sulla to their former owners, that it might not quarrel
with its own allies and at the same time fall into a conflict
with material interests, for which a policy with a set purpose
is rarelya match; the recall of the emigrants was too closely connected
with this question of property not to appear quite as unadvisable.
On the other hand great exertions were made to restore to the children
of the proscribed the political rights withdrawn from them (691),
and the heads of the senatorial party were incessantly subjected
to personal attacks.  Thus Gaius Memmius set on foot a process aimed
at Marcus Lucullus in 688.  Thus they allowed his more famous
brother to wait for three years before the gates of the capital
for his well-deserved triumph (688-691).  Quintus Rex and the conqueror
of Crete Quintus Metellus were similarly insulted.

It produced a still greater sensation, when the young leader
of the democracy Gaius Caesar in 691 not merely presumed to compete
with the two most distinguished men of the nobility, Quintus Catulus
and Publius Servilius the victor of Isaura, in the candidature
for the supreme pontificate, but even carried the day
among the burgesses.  The heirs of Sulla, especially his son Faustus,
found themselves constantly threatened with an action for the refunding
of the public moneys which, it was alleged, had been embezzled
by the regent.  They talked even of resuming the democratic
impeachments suspended in 664 on the basis of the Varian law.(7)
The individuals who had taken part in the Sullan executions were,
as may readily be conceived, judicially prosecuted with the utmost
zeal.  When the quaestor Marcus Cato, in his pedantic integrity,
himself made a beginning by demanding back from them the rewards
which they had received for murder as property illegally alienated
from the state (689), it can excite no surprise that in the following
year (690) Gaius Caesar, as president of the commission
regarding murder, summarily treated the clause in the Sullan
ordinance, which declared that a proscribed person might be
killed with impunity, as null and void, and caused the most
noted of Sulla's executioners, Lucius Catilina, Lucius Bellienus,
Lucius Luscius to be brought before his jurymen and, partially,
to be condemned.

Rehabilitation of Saturninus and Marius

Lastly, they did not hesitate now to name once more in public
the long-proscribed names of the heroes and martyrs of the democracy,
and to celebrate their memory.  We have already mentioned how
Saturninus was rehabilitated by the process directed against
his murderer.  But a different sound withal had the name of Gaius
Marius, at the mention of which all hearts once had throbbed;
and it happened that the man, to whom Italy owed her deliverance
from the northern barbarians, was at the same time the uncle
of the present leader of the democracy.  Loudly had the multitude
rejoiced, when in 686 Gaius Caesar ventured in spite of
the prohibitions publicly to show the honoured features of the hero
in the Forum at the interment of the widow of Marius.  But when,
three years afterwards (689), the emblems of victory, which Marius
had caused to be erected in the Capitol and Sulla had ordered to be
thrown down, one morning unexpectedly glittered afresh in gold
and marble at the old spot, the veterans from the African and Cimbrian
wars crowded, with tears in their eyes, around the statue of their
beloved general; and in presence of the rejoicing masses the senate
did not venture to seize the trophies which the same bold hand had
renewed in defiance of the laws.

Worthlessness of the Democratic Successes

But all these doings and disputes, however much noise they made,
were, politically considered, of but very subordinate importance.
The oligarchy was vanquished; the democracy had attained the helm.
That underlings of various grades should hasten to inflict
an additional kick on the prostrate foe; that the democrats also
should have their basis in law and their worship of principles;
that their doctrinaires should not rest till the whole privileges
of the community were in all particulars restored, and should
in that respect occasionally make themselves ridiculous,
as legitimists are wont to do--all this was just as much
to be expected as it was matter of indifference.  Taken as a whole,
the agitation was aimless; and we discern in it the perplexity
of its authors to find an object for their activity, for it
turned almost wholly on things already essentially settled
or on subordinate matters.

Impending Collision between the Democrats and Pompeius

It could not be otherwise.  In the struggle with the aristocracy
the democrats had remained victors; but they had not conquered
alone, and the fiery trial still awaited them--the reckoning
not with their former foe, but with their too powerful ally,
to whom in the struggle with the aristocracy they were substantially
indebted for victory, and to whose hands they had now entrusted
an unexampled military and political power, because they dared
not refuse it to him.  The general of the east and of the seas
was still employed in appointing and deposing kings.  How long time
he would take for that work, or when he would declare the business
of the war to be ended, no one could tell but himself;
since like everything else the time of his return to Italy,
or in other words the day of decision, was left in his own hands.
The parties in Rome meanwhile sat and waited.  The Optimates indeed
looked forward to the arrival of the dreaded general with comparative
calmness; by the rupture between Pompeius and the democracy, which they
saw to be approaching, they could not lose, but could only gain.
The democrats on the contrary waited with painful anxiety,
and sought, during the interval still allowed to them
by the absence of Pompeius, to lay a countermine against
the impending explosion.

Schemes for Appointing a Democratic Military Dictatorship

In this policy they again coincided with Crassus,
to whom no course was left for encountering his envied and hated rival
but that of allying himself afresh, and more closely than before,
with the democracy.  Already in the first coalition a special
approximation had taken place between Caesar and Crassus
as the two weaker parties; a common interest and a common danger
tightened yet more the bond which joined the richest
and the most insolvent of Romans in closest alliance.
While in public the democrats described the absent general
as the head and pride of their party and seemed to direct
all their arrows against the aristocracy, preparations
were secretly made against Pompeius; and these attempts
of the democracy to escape from the impending military dictatorship
have historically a far higher significance than the noisy agitation,
for the most part employed only as a mask, against the nobility.
It is true that they were carried on amidst a darkness, upon which
our tradition allows only some stray gleams of light to fall;
for not the present alone, but the succeeding age also
had its reasons for throwing a veil over the matter.  But in general
both the course and the object of these efforts are completely clear.
The military power could only be effectually checkmated by another
military power.  The design of the democrats was to possess
themselves of the reins of government after the example of Marius
and Cinna, then to entrust one of their leaders either with the conquest
of Egypt or with the governorship of Spain or some similar
ordinary or extraordinary office, and thus to find in him
and his military force a counterpoise to Pompeius and his army.
For this they required a revolution, which was directed immediately
against the nominal government, but in reality against Pompeius
as the designated monarch;(8) and, to effect this revolution,
there was from the passing of the Gabinio-Manilian laws down to
the return of Pompeius (688-692) perpetual conspiracy in Rome.
The capital was in anxious suspense; the depressed temper
of the capitalists, the suspensions of payment, the frequent bankruptcies
were heralds of the fermenting revolution, which seemed as though it must
at the same time produce a totally new position of parties.
The project of the democracy, which pointed beyond the senate
at Pompeius, suggested an approximation between that general
and the senate.  But the democracy in attempting to oppose
to the dictatorship of Pompeius that of a man more agreeable to it,
recognized, strictly speaking, on its part also the military government,
and in reality drove out Satan by Beelzebub; the question of principles
became in its hands a question of persons.

League of the Democrats and the Anarchists

The first step towards the revolution projected by the leaders
of the democracy was thus to be the overthrow of the existing
government by means of an insurrection primarily instigated
in Rome by democratic conspirators.  The moral condition of the lowest
as of the highest ranks of society in the capital presented
the materials for this purpose in lamentable abundance.  We need not
here repeat what was the character of the free and the servile
proletariate of the capital.  The significant saying was already
heard, that only the poor man was qualified to represent the poor;
the idea was thus suggested, that the mass of the poor might
constitute itself an independent power as well as the oligarchy
of the rich, and instead of allowing itself to be tyrannized over,
might perhaps in its own turn play the tyrant.  But even in the circles
of the young men of rank similar ideas found an echo.
The fashionable life of the capital shattered not merely the fortunes
of men, but also their vigour of body and mind.  That elegant world
of fragrant ringlets, of fashionable mustachios and ruffles--merry
as were its doings in the dance and with the harp, and early
and late at the wine-cup--yet concealed in its bosom an alarming abyss
of moral and economic ruin, of well or ill concealed despair,
and frantic or knavish resolves.  These circles sighed without
disguise for a return of the time of Cinna with its proscriptions
and confiscations and its annihilation of account-books for debt;
there were people enough, including not a few of no mean descent
and unusual abilities, who only waited the signal to fall
like a gang of robbers on civil society and to recruit by pillage
the fortune which they had squandered.  Where a band gathers,
leaders are not wanting; and in this case the men were soon found
who were fitted to be captains of banditti.

Catalina

The late praetor Lucius Catilina, and the quaestor Gnaeus Piso,
were distinguished among their fellows not merely by their genteel
birth and their superior rank.  They had broken down the bridge
completely behind them, and impressed their accomplices by their
dissoluteness quite as much as by their talents.  Catilina especially
was one of the most wicked men in that wicked age.  His villanies
belong to the records of crime, not to history; but his very outward
appearance--the pale countenance, the wild glance, the gait by turns
sluggish and hurried--betrayed his dismal past.  He possessed in a high
degree the qualities which are required in the leader of such a band--
the faculty of enjoying all pleasures and of bearing all privations,
courage, military talent, knowledge of men, the energy of a felon,
and that horrible mastery of vice, which knows how to bring the weak
to fall and how to train the fallen to crime.

To form out of such elements a conspiracy for the overthrow
of the existing order of things could not be difficult to men
who possessed money and political influence.  Catilina, Piso,
and their fellows entered readily into any plan which gave the prospect
of proscriptions and cancelling of debtor-books; the former had
moreover special hostility to the aristocracy, because it had opposed
the candidature of that infamous and dangerous man for the consulship.
As he had formerly in the character of an executioner
of Sulla hunted the proscribed at the head of a band of Celts
and had killed among others his own aged father-in-law
with his own hand, he now readily consented to promise similar services
to the opposite party.  A secret league was formed.  The number
of individuals received into it is said to have exceeded 400; it
included associates in all the districts and urban communities
of Italy; besides which, as a matter of course, numerous recruits
would flock unbidden from the ranks of the dissolute youth
to an insurrection, which inscribed on its banner the seasonable
programme of wiping out debts.

Failure of the First Plans of Conspiracy

In December 688--so we are told--the leaders of the league thought
that they had found the fitting occasion for striking a blow.
The two consuls chosen for 689, Publius Cornelius Sulla and Publius
Autronius Paetus, had recently been judicially convicted
of electoral bribery, and therefore had according to legal rule
forfeited their expectancy of the highest office.  Both thereupon
joined the league.  The conspirators resolved to procure
the consulship for them by force, and thereby to put themselves
in possession of the supreme power in the state.  On the day
when the new consuls should enter on their office--the 1st Jan. 689--
the senate-house was to be assailed by armed men, the new consuls
and the victims otherwise designated were to be put to death, and Sulla
and Paetus were to be proclaimed as consuls after the cancelling
of the judicial sentence which excluded them.  Crassus was then
to be invested with the dictatorship and Caesar with the mastership
of the horse, doubtless with a view to raise an imposing military
force, while Pompeius was employed afar off at the Caucasus.
Captains and common soldiers were hired and instructed; Catilina
waited on the appointed day in the neighbourhood of the senate-
house for the concerted signal, which was to be given him by Caesar
on a hint from Crassus.  But he waited in vain; Crassus was absent
from the decisive sitting of the senate, and for this time
the projected insurrection failed.  A similar still more comprehensive
plan of murder was then concerted for the 5th Feb.; but this too
was frustrated, because Catilina gave the signal too early,
before the bandits who were bespoken had all arrived.  Thereupon
the secret was divulged.  The government did not venture openly
to proceed against the conspiracy, but it assigned a guard
to the consuls who were primarily threatened, and it opposed to the band
of the conspirators a band paid by the government.  To remove Piso,
the proposal was made that he should be sent as quaestor
with praetorian powers to Hither Spain; to which Crassus consented,
in the hope of securing through him the resources of that important
province for the insurrection.  Proposals going farther
were prevented by the tribunes.

So runs the account that has come down to us, which evidently gives
the version current in the government circles, and the credibility
of which in detail must, in the absence of any means of checking
it, be left an open question.  As to the main matter--the participation
of Caesar and Crassus--the testimony of their political opponents
certainly cannot be regarded as sufficient evidence of it.  But their
notorious action at this epoch corresponds with striking exactness
to the secret action which this report ascribes to them.  The attempt
of Crassus, who in this year was censor, officially to enrol
the Transpadanes in the burgess-list(9) was of itself directly
a revolutionary enterprise.  It is still more remarkable,
that Crassus on the same occasion made preparations to enrol
Egypt and Cyprus in the list of Roman domains,(10) and that Caesar
about the same time (689 or 690) got a proposal submitted
by some tribunes to the burgesses to send him to Egypt,
in order to reinstate king Ptolemaeus whom the Alexandrians
had expelled.  These machinations suspiciously coincide
with the charges raised by their antagonists.  Certainty cannot be
attained on the point; but there is a great probability that Crassus
and Caesar had projected a plan to possess themselves of the military
dictatorship during the absence of Pompeius; that Egypt was selected
as the basis of this democratic military power; and that, in fine,
the insurrectionary attempt of 689 had been contrived to realize
these projects, and Catilina and Piso had thus been tools in the hands
of Crassus and Caesar.

Resumption of the Conspiracy

For a moment the conspiracy came to a standstill.  The elections
for 690 took place without Crassus and Caesar renewing their
attempt to get possession of the consulate; which may have been
partly owing to the fact that a relative of the leader
of the democracy, Lucius Caesar, a weak man who was not unfrequently
employed by his kinsman as a tool, was on this occasion a candidate
for the consulship.  But the reports from Asia urged them to make
haste.  The affairs of Asia Minor and Armenia were already
completely arranged.  However clearly democratic strategists showed
that the Mithradatic war could only be regarded as terminated
by the capture of the king, and that it was therefore necessary
to undertake the pursuit round the Black Sea, and above all things
to keep aloof from Syria(11)--Pompeius, not concerning himself
about such talk, had set out in the spring of 690 from Armenia
and marched towards Syria.  If Egypt was really selected
as the headquarters of the democracy, there was no time to be lost;
otherwise Pompeius might easily arrive in Egypt sooner than Caesar.
The conspiracy of 688, far from being broken up by the lax
and timid measures of repression, was again astir when the consular
elections for 691 approached.  The persons were, it may be
presumed, substantially the same, and the plan was but little
altered.  The leaders of the movement again kept in the background.
On this occasion they had set up as candidates for the consulship
Catilina himself and Gaius Antonius, the younger son of the orator
and a brother of the general who had an ill repute from Crete.
They were sure of Catilina; Antonius, originally a Sullan
like Catilina and like the latter brought to trial on that account
some years before by the democratic party and ejected
from the senate(12)--otherwise an indolent, insignificant man,
in no respect called to be a leader, and utterly bankrupt--
willingly lent himself as a tool to the democrats for the prize
of the consulship and the advantages attached to it.  Through these
consuls the heads of the conspiracy intended to seize the government,
to arrest the children of Pompeius, who remained behind in the capital,
as hostages, and to take up arms in Italy and the provinces
against Pompeius.  On the first news of the blow struck in the capital,
the governor Gnaeus Piso was to raise the banner of insurrection
in Hither Spain.  Communication could not be held with him by way
of the sea, since Pompeius commanded the seas.  For this purpose
they reckoned on the Transpadanes the old clients of the democracy--
among whom there was great agitation, and who would of course have
at once received the franchise--and, further, on different Celtic
tribes.(13)  The threads of this combination reached as far as
Mauretania.  One of the conspirators, the Roman speculator Publius
Sittius from Nuceria, compelled by financial embarrassments
to keep aloof from Italy, had armed a troop of desperadoes there
and in Spain, and with these wandered about as a leader of free-lances
in western Africa, where he had old commercial connections.

Consular Elections
Cicero Elected instead of Catalina

The party put forth all its energies for the struggle
of the election.  Crassus and Caesar staked their money--whether their
own or borrowed--and their connections to procure the consulship
for Catilina and Antonius; the comrades of Catilina strained every
nerve to bring to the helm the man who promised them the magistracies
and priesthoods, the palaces and country-estates of their opponents,
and above all deliverance from their debts, and who, they knew,
would keep his word.  The aristocracy was in great perplexity,
chiefly because it was not able even to start counter-candidates.
That such a candidate risked his head, was obvious; and the times
were past when the post of danger allured the burgess--now even
ambition was hushed in presence of fear.  Accordingly the nobility
contented themselves with making a feeble attempt to check
electioneering intrigues by issuing a new law respecting
the purchase of votes--which, however, was thwarted by the veto
of a tribune of the people--and with turning over their votes
to a candidate who, although not acceptable to them, was at least
inoffensive.  This was Marcus Cicero, notoriously a political
trimmer,(14) accustomed to flirt at times with the democrats,
at times with Pompeius, at times from a somewhat greater distance
with the aristocracy, and to lend his services as an advocate to every
influential man under impeachment without distinction of person
or party (he numbered even Catilina among his clients); belonging
properly to no party or--which was much the same--to the party
of material interests, which was dominant in the courts
and was pleased with the eloquent pleader and the courtly and witty
companion.  He had connections enough in the capital and the country
towns to have a chance alongside of the candidates proposed
by the democracy; and as the nobility, although with reluctance,
and the Pompeians voted for him, he was elected by a great
majority.  The two candidates of the democracy obtained almost
the same number of votes; but a few more fell to Antonius, whose family
was of more consideration than that of his fellow-candidate.
This accident frustrated the election of Catilina and saved Rome
from a second Cinna.  A little before this Piso had--it was said
at the instigation of his political and personal enemy Pompeius--
been put to death in Spain by his native escort.(15)  With the consul
Antonius alone nothing could be done; Cicero broke the loose bond
which attached him to the conspiracy, even before they entered
on their offices, inasmuch as he renounced his legal privilege
of having the consular provinces determined by lot, and handed over
to his deeply-embarrassed colleague the lucrative governorship
of Macedonia.  The essential preliminary conditions of this project
also had therefore miscarried.

New Projects of the Conspirators

Meanwhile the development of Oriental affairs grew daily
more perilous for the democracy.  The settlement of Syria rapidly
advanced; already invitations had been addressed to Pompeius
from Egypt to march thither and occupy the country for Rome;
they could not but be afraid that they would next hear of Pompeius
in person having taken possession of the valley of the Nile.
It was by this very apprehension probably that the attempt of Caesar
to get himself sent by the people to Egypt for the purpose of aiding
the king against his rebellious subjects(16) was called forth;
it failed, apparently, through the disinclination of great and small
to undertake anything whatever against the interest of Pompeius.
His return home, and the probable catastrophe which it involved,
were always drawing the nearer; often as the string of the bow
had been broken, it was necessary that there should be a fresh
attempt to bend it.  The city was in sullen ferment; frequent
conferences of the heads of the movement indicated that some
step was again contemplated.

The Servilian Agrarian Law

What they wished became manifest when the new tribunes
of the people entered on their office (10 Dec. 690), and one of them,
Publius Servilius Rullus, immediately proposed an agrarian law,
which was designed to procure for the leaders of the democrats
a position similar to that which Pompeius occupied in consequence
of 2the Gabinio-Manilian proposals.  The nominal object
was the founding of colonies in Italy.  The ground for these, however,
was not to be gained by dispossession; on the contrary all existing
private rights were guaranteed, and even the illegal occupations
of the most recent times(17) were converted into full property.
The leased Campanian domain alone was to be parcelled out
and colonized; in other cases the government was to acquire
the land destined for assignation by ordinary purchase.  To procure
the sums necessary for this purpose, the remaining Italian,
and more especially all the extra-Italian, domain-land was successively
to be brought to sale; which was understood to include the former
royal hunting domains in Macedonia, the Thracian Chersonese,
Bithynia, Pontus, Cyrene, and also the territories of the cities
acquired in full property by right of war in Spain, Africa, Sicily,
Hellas, and Cilicia.  Everything was likewise to be sold
which the state had acquired in moveable and immoveable property
since the year 666, and of which it had not previously disposed;
this was aimed chiefly at Egypt and Cyprus.  For the same purpose
all subject communities, with the exception of the towns with Latin
rights and the other free cities, were burdened with very high
rates of taxes and tithes.  Lastly there was likewise destined
for those purchases the produce of the new provincial revenues,
to be reckoned from 692, and the proceeds of the whole booty
not yet legally applied; which regulations had reference
to the new sources of taxation opened up by Pompeius in the east
and to the public moneys that might be found in the hands of Pompeius
and the heirs of Sulla.  For the execution of this measure decemvirs
with a special jurisdiction and special -imperium- were to be nominated,
who were to remain five years in office and to surround themselves
with 200 subalterns from the equestrian order; but in the election
of the decemvirs only those candidates who should personally
announce themselves were to be taken into account, and,
as in the elections of priests,(18) only seventeen tribes to be fixed
by lot out of the thirty-five were to make the election.  It needed
no great acuteness to discern that in this decemviral college it
was intended to create a power after the model of that of Pompeius,
only with somewhat less of a military and more of a democratic hue.
The jurisdiction was especially needed for the sake of deciding
the Egyptian question, the military power for the sake of arming
against Pompeius; the clause, which forbade the choice of an absent
person, excluded Pompeius; and the diminution of the tribes entitled
to vote as well as the manipulation of the balloting were designed
to facilitate the management of the election in accordance
with the views of the democracy.

But this attempt totally missed its aim.  The multitude, finding
it more agreeable to have their corn measured out to them
under the shade of Roman porticoes from the public magazines
than to cultivate it for themselves in the sweat of their brow,
received even the proposal in itself with complete indifference.
They soon came also to feel that Pompeius would never acquiesce
in such a resolution offensive to him in every respect, and that matters
could not stand well with a party which in its painful alarm
condescended to offers so extravagant.  Under such circumstances
it was not difficult for the government to frustrate the proposal;
the new consul Cicero perceived the opportunity of exhibiting
here too his talent for giving a finishing stroke to the beaten party;
even before the tribunes who stood ready exercised their veto,
the author himself withdrew his proposal (1 Jan. 691).
The democracy had gained nothing but the unpleasant lesson,
that the great multitude out of love or fear still continued
to adhere to Pompeius, and that every proposal was certain
to fail which the public perceived to be directed against him.

Preparations of the Anarchists in Etruria

Wearied by all this vain agitation and scheming without result,
Catilina determined to push the matter to a decision and make
an end of it once for all.  He took his measures in the course
of the summer to open the civil war.  Faesulae (Fiesole),
a very strong town situated in Etruria--which swarmed with
the impoverished and conspirators--and fifteen years before the centre
of the rising of Lepidus, was again selected as the headquarters
of the insurrection.  Thither were despatched the consignments
of money, for which especially the ladies of quality in the capital
implicated in the conspiracy furnished the means; there arms
and soldiers were collected; and there an old Sullan captain, Gaius
Manlius, as brave and as free from scruples of conscience
as was ever any soldier of fortune, took temporarily the chief command.
Similar though less extensive warlike preparations were made
at other points of Italy.  The Transpadanes were so excited
that they seemed only waiting for the signal to strike.  In the Bruttian
country, on the east coast of Italy, in Capua--wherever great
bodies of slaves were accumulated--a second slave insurrection
like that of Spartacus seemed on the eve of arising.  Even in the capital
there was something brewing; those who saw the haughty bearing
with which the summoned debtors appeared before the urban praetor,
could not but remember the scenes which had preceded the murder
of Asellio.(19)  The capitalists were in unutterable anxiety;
it seemed needful to enforce the prohibition of the export
of gold and silver, and to set a watch over the principal ports.
The plan of the conspirators was--on occasion of the consular
election for 692, for which Catilina had again announced himself--
summarily to put to death the consul conducting the election
as well as the inconvenient rival candidates, and to carry
the election of Catilina at any price; in case of necessity, even
to bring armed bands from Faesulae and the other rallying points
against the capital, and with their help to crush resistance.

Election of Catalina as Consul again Frustrated

Cicero, who was always quickly and completely informed by his
agents male and female of the transactions of the conspirators,
on the day fixed for the election (20 Oct.) denounced the conspiracy
in the full senate and in presence of its principal leaders.
Catilina did not condescend to deny it; he answered haughtily that,
if the election for consul should fall on him, the great headless
party would certainly no longer want a leader against the small
party led by wretched heads.  But as palpable evidences of the plot
were not before them, nothing farther was to be got from the timid
senate, except that it gave its previous sanction in the usual way
to the exceptional measures which the magistrates might deem
suitable (21 Oct.).  Thus the election battle approached--
on this occasion more a battle than an election; for Cicero too
had formed for himself an armed bodyguard out of the younger men,
more especially of the mercantile order; and it was his armed force
that covered and dominated the Campus Martius on the 28th October,
the day to which the election had been postponed by the senate.
The conspirators were not successful either in killing the consul
conducting the election, or in deciding the elections according
to their mind.

Outbreak of the Insurrection in Etruria
Repressive Measures of the Government

But meanwhile the civil war had begun.  On the 27th Oct.  Gaius
Manlius had planted at Faesulae the eagle round which the army
of the insurrection was to flock--it was one of the Marian eagles
from the Cimbrian war--and he had summoned the robbers
from the mountains as well as the country people to join him.
His proclamations, following the old traditions of the popular
party, demanded liberation from the oppressive load of debt
and a modification of the procedure in insolvency, which, if the amount
of the debt actually exceeded the estate, certainly still involved
in law the forfeiture of the debtor's freedom.  It seemed as though
the rabble of the capital, in coming forward as if it were
the legitimate successor of the old plebeian farmers and fighting
its battles under the glorious eagles of the Cimbrian war, wished
to cast a stain not only on the present but on the past of Rome.
This rising, however, remained isolated; at the other places
of rendezvous the conspiracy did not go beyond the collection of arms
and the institution of secret conferences, as resolute leaders
were everywhere wanting.  This was fortunate for the government;
for, although the impending civil war had been for a considerable time
openly announced, its own irresolution and the clumsiness
of the rusty machinery of administration had not allowed it to make
any military preparations whatever.  It was only now that the general
levy was called out, and superior officers were ordered to the several
regions of Italy that each might suppress the insurrection
in his own district; while at the same time the gladiatorial slaves
were ejected from the capital, and patrols were ordered on account
of the apprehension of incendiarism.

The Conspirators in Rome

Catilina was in a painful position.  According to his design
there should have been a simultaneous rising in the capital
and in Etruria on occasion of the consular elections; the failure
of the former and the outbreak of the latter movement endangered
his person as well as the whole success of his undertaking.
Now that his partisans at Faesulae had once risen in arms against
the government, he could no longer remain in the capital; and yet
not only did everything depend on his inducing the conspirators
of the capital now at least to strike quickly, but this had to be
done even before he left Rome--for he knew his helpmates too well
to rely on them for that matter.  The more considerable
of the conspirators--Publius Lentulus Sura consul in 683, afterwards
expelled from the senate and now, in order to get back into
the senate, praetor for the second time, and the two former praetors
Publius Autronius and Lucius Cassius--were incapable men; Lentulus
an ordinary aristocrat of big words and great pretensions, but slow
in conception and irresolute in action; Autronius distinguished
for nothing but his powerful screaming voice; while as to Lucius
Cassius no one comprehended how a man so corpulent and so simple
had fallen among the conspirators.  But Catilina could not venture
to place his abler partisans, such as the young senator Gaius
Cethegus and the equites Lucius Statilius and Publius Gabinius
Capito, at the head of the movement; for even among the conspirators
the traditional hierarchy of rank held its ground, and the very
anarchists thought that they should be unable to carry the day
unless a consular or at least a praetorian were at their head.
Therefore, however urgently the army of the insurrection might
long for its general, and however perilous it was for the latter
to remain longer at the seat of government after the outbreak
of the revolt, Catilina nevertheless resolved still to remain
for a time in Rome.  Accustomed to impose on his cowardly opponents
by his audacious insolence, he showed himself publicly in the Forum
and in the senate-house and replied to the threats which were
there addressed to him, that they should beware of pushing him
to extremities; that, if they should set the house on fire, he would
be compelled to extinguish the conflagration in ruins.  In reality
neither private persons nor officials ventured to lay hands
on the dangerous man; it was almost a matter of indifference
when a young nobleman brought him to trial on account of violence,
for long before the process could come to an end, the question could not
but be decided elsewhere.  But the projects of Catilina failed;
chiefly because the agents of the government had made their way
into the circle of the conspirators and kept it accurately informed
of every detail of the plot.  When, for instance, the conspirators
appeared before the strong Praeneste (1 Nov.), which they had hoped
to surprise by a -coup de main-, they found the inhabitants warned
and armed; and in a similar way everything miscarried.  Catilina
with all his temerity now found it advisable to fix his departure
for one of the ensuing days; but previously on his urgent exhortation,
at a last conference of the conspirators in the night between
the 6th and 7th Nov. it was resolved to assassinate the consul Cicero,
who was the principal director of the countermine, before the departure
of their leader, and, in order to obviate any treachery,
to carry the resolve at once into execution.  Early on the morning
of the 7th Nov., accordingly, the selected murderers knocked
at the house of the consul; but they found the guard reinforced
and themselves repulsed--on this occasion too the spies
of the government had outdone the conspirators.

Catalina Proceed to Etruria

On the following day (8 Nov.) Cicero convoked the senate.
Even now Catilina ventured to appear and to attempt a defence against
the indignant attacks of the consul, who unveiled before his face
the events of the last few days; but men no longer listened to him,
and in the neighbourhood of the place where he sat the benches became
empty.  He left the sitting, and proceeded, as he would doubtless
have done even apart from this incident, in accordance
with the agreement, to Etruria.  Here he proclaimed himself consul,
and assumed an attitude of waiting, in order to put his troops
in motion against the capital on the first announcement
of the outbreak of the insurrection there.  The government declared
the two leaders Catilina and Manlius, as well as those of their
comrades who should not have laid down their arms by a certain day,
to be outlaws, and called out new levies; but at the head
of the army destined against Catilina was placed the consul Gaius
Antonius, who was notoriously implicated in the conspiracy,
and with whose character it was wholly a matter of accident whether
he would lead his troops against Catilina or over to his side.
They seemed to have directly laid their plans towards converting
this Antonius into a second Lepidus.  As little were steps taken
against the leaders of the conspiracy who had remained behind
in the capital, although every one pointed the finger at them
and the insurrection in the capital was far from being abandoned
by the conspirators--on the contrary the plan of it had been settled
by Catilina himself before his departure from Rome.  A tribune
was to give the signal by calling an assembly of the people;
in the following night Cethegus was to despatch the consul Cicero;
Gabinius and Statilius were to set the city simultaneously
on fire at twelve places; and a communication was to be established
as speedily as possible with the army of Catilina, which should
have meanwhile advanced.  Had the urgent representations of Cethegus
borne fruit and had Lentulus, who after Catilina's departure
was placed at the head of the conspirators, resolved on rapidly
striking a blow, the conspiracy might even now have been successful.
But the conspirators were just as incapable and as cowardly as their
opponents; weeks elapsed and the matter came to no decisive issue.

Conviction and Arrest of the Conspirators in the Capital

At length the countermine brought about a decision.  Lentulus
in his tedious fashion, which sought to cover negligence in regard
to what was immediate and necessary by the projection of large
and distant plans, had entered into relations with the deputies
of a Celtic canton, the Allobroges, now present in Rome; had attempted
to implicate these--the representatives of a thoroughly disorganized
commonwealth and themselves deeply involved in debt--in the conspiracy;
and had given them on their departure messages and letters to his
confidants.  The Allobroges left Rome, but were arrested in the night
between 2nd and 3rd Dec. close to the gates by the Roman authorities,
and their papers were taken from them.  It was obvious
that the Allobrogian deputies had lent themselves as spies
to the Roman government, and had carried on the negotiations only
with a view to convey into the hands of the latter the desired proofs
implicating the ringleaders of the conspiracy.  On the following
morning orders were issued with the utmost secrecy by Cicero
for the arrest of the most dangerous leaders of the plot,
and executed in regard to Lentulus, Cethegus, Gabinius,
and Statilius, while some others escaped from seizure by flight.
The guilt of those arrested as well as of the fugitives
was completely evident.  Immediately after the arrest the letters seized,
the seals and handwriting of which the prisoners could not avoid
acknowledging, were laid before the senate, and the captives
and witnesses were heard; further confirmatory facts, deposits of arms
in the houses of the conspirators, threatening expressions
which they had employed, were presently forthcoming; the actual
subsistence of the conspiracy was fully and validly established,
and the most important documents were immediately on the suggestion
of Cicero published as news-sheets.

The indignation against the anarchist conspiracy was general.
Gladly would the oligarchic party have made use of the revelations
to settle accounts with the democracy generally and Caesar
in particular, but it was far too thoroughly broken to be able
to accomplish this, and to prepare for him the fate which it had
formerly prepared for the two Gracchi and Saturninus;
in this respect the matter went no farther than good will.
The multitude of the capital was especially shocked by the incendiary
schemes of the conspirators.  The merchants and the whole party
of material interests naturally perceived in this war of the debtors
against the creditors a struggle for their very existence; in tumultuous
excitement their youth crowded, with swords in their hands, round
the senate-house and brandished them against the open and secret
partisans of Catilina.  In fact, the conspiracy was for the moment
paralyzed; though its ultimate authors perhaps were still at liberty,
the whole staff entrusted with its execution were either captured
or had fled; the band assembled at Faesulae could not possibly
accomplish much, unless supported by an insurrection in the capital.

Discussions in the Senate as to the Execution of Those Arrested

In a tolerably well-ordered commonwealth the matter would now
have been politically at an end, and the military and the tribunals
would have undertaken the rest.  But in Rome matters had come
to such a pitch, that the government was not even in a position
to keep a couple of noblemen of note in safe custody.  The slaves
and freedmen of Lentulus and of the others arrested were stirring;
plans, it was alleged, were contrived to liberate them by force
from the private houses in which they were detained; there was no lack--
thanks to the anarchist doings of recent years--of ringleaders
in Rome who contracted at a certain rate for riots and deeds
of violence; Catilina, in fine, was informed of what had occurred,
and was near enough to attempt a coup de main with his bands.
How much of these rumours was true, we cannot tell; but there was ground
for apprehension, because, agreeably to the constitution, neither troops
nor even a respectable police force were at the command of the government
in the capital, and it was in reality left at the mercy of every gang
of banditti.  The idea was suggested of precluding all possible
attempts at liberation by the immediate execution of the prisoners.
Constitutionally, this was not possible.  According to the ancient
and sacred right of appeal, a sentence of death could only be
pronounced against the Roman burgess by the whole body of burgesses,
and not by any other authority; and, as the courts formed by the body
of burgesses had themselves become antiquated, a capital sentence
was no longer pronounced at all.  Cicero would gladly have rejected
the hazardous suggestion; indifferent as in itself the legal
question might be to the advocate, he knew well how very useful
it is to an advocate to be called liberal, and he showed
little desire to separate himself for ever from the democratic party
by shedding this blood.  But those around him, and particularly
his genteel wife, urged him to crown his services to his country
by this bold step; the consul like all cowards anxiously endeavouring
to avoid the appearance of cowardice, and yet trembling
before the formidable responsibility, in his distress
convoked the senate, and left it to that body to decide
as to the life or death of the four prisoners.  This indeed
had no meaning; for as the senate was constitutionally even less
entitled to act than the consul, all the responsibility still
devolved rightfully on the latter: but when was cowardice ever
consistent? Caesar made every exertion to save the prisoners,
and his speech, full of covert threats as to the future inevitable
vengeance of the democracy, made the deepest impression.  Although
all the consulars and the great majority of the senate had already
declared for the execution, most of them, with Cicero at their
head, seemed now once more inclined to keep within the limits
of the law.  But when Cato in pettifogging fashion brought
the champions of the milder view into suspicion of being accomplices
of the plot, and pointed to the preparations for liberating
the prisoners by a street-riot, he succeeded in throwing the waverers
into a fresh alarm, and in securing a majority for the immediate
execution of the transgressors.

Execution of the Catalinarians

The execution of the decree naturally devolved on the consul,
who had called it forth.  Late on the evening of the 5th of December
the prisoners were brought from their previous quarters, and conducted
across the market-place still densely crowded by men to the prison
in which criminals condemned to death were wont to be kept.
It was a subterranean vault, twelve feet deep, at the foot
of the Capitol, which formerly had served as a well-house.
The consul himself conducted Lentulus, and praetors the others,
all attended by strong guards; but the attempt at rescue,
which had been expected, did not take place.  No one knew whether
the prisoners were being conveyed to a secure place of custody
or to the scene of execution.  At the door of the prison they
were handed over to the -tresviri- who conducted the executions,
and were strangled in the subterranean vault by torchlight.  The consul
had waited before the door till the executions were accomplished,
and then with his loud well-known voice proclaimed over the Forum
to the multitude waiting in silence, "They are dead."  Till far
on in the night the crowds moved through the streets and exultingly
saluted the consul, to whom they believed that they owed
the security of their houses and their property.  The senate ordered
public festivals of gratitude, and the first men of the nobility,
Marcus Cato and Quintus Catulus, saluted the author of the sentence
of death with the name--now heard for the first time--of a "father
of his fatherland."

But it was a dreadful deed, and all the more dreadful that it
appeared to a whole people great and praiseworthy.  Never perhaps
has a commonwealth more lamentably declared itself bankrupt,
than did Rome through this resolution--adopted in cold blood
by the majority of the government and approved by public opinion--
to put to death in all haste a few political prisoners, who were
no doubt culpable according to the laws, but had not forfeited life;
because, forsooth, the security of the prisons was not to be
trusted, and there was no sufficient police.  It was the humorous
trait seldom wanting to a historical tragedy, that this act
of the most brutal tyranny had to be carried out by the most unstable
and timid of all Roman statesmen, and that the "first democratic
consul" was selected to destroy the palladium of the ancient
freedom of the Roman commonwealth, the right of -provocatio-.

Suppression of the Etruscan Insurrection

After the conspiracy had been thus stifled in the capital
even before it came to an outbreak, there remained the task of putting
an end to the insurrection in Etruria.  The army amounting to about
2000 men, which Catilina found on his arrival, had increased nearly
fivefold by the numerous recruits who flocked in, and already
formed two tolerably full legions, in which however only about
a fourth part of the men were sufficiently armed.  Catilina had
thrown himself with his force into the mountains and avoided
a battle with the troops of Antonius, with the view of completing
the organization of his bands and awaiting the outbreak
of the insurrection in Rome.  But the news of its failure broke up
the army of the insurgents; the mass of the less compromised thereupon
returned home.  The remnant of resolute, or rather desperate,
men that were left made an attempt to cut their way through
the Apennine passes into Gaul; but when the little band arrived
at the foot of the mountains near Pistoria (Pistoja), it found itself
here caught between two armies.  In front of it was the corps
of Quintus Metellus, which had come up from Ravenna and Ariminum
to occupy the northern slope of the Apennines; behind it was the army
of Antonius, who had at length yielded to the urgency of his officers
and agreed to a winter campaign.  Catilina was wedged in
on both sides, and his supplies came to an end; nothing was left
but to throw himself on the nearest foe, which was Antonius.
In a narrow valley enclosed by rocky mountains the conflict took place
between the insurgents and the troops of Antonius, which the latter,
in order not to be under the necessity of at least personally
performing execution on his former allies, had under a pretext
entrusted for this day to a brave officer who had grown gray
under arms, Marcus Petreius.  The superior strength of the government
army was of little account, owing to the nature of the field
of battle.  Both Catilina and Petreius placed their most trusty men
in the foremost ranks; quarter was neither given nor received.
The conflict lasted long, and many brave men fell on both sides;
Catilina, who before the beginning of the battle had sent back
his horse and those of all his officers, showed on this day
that nature had destined him for no ordinary things, and that he knew
at once how to command as a general and how to fight as a soldier.
At length Petreius with his guard broke the centre of the enemy,
and, after having overthrown this, attacked the two wings from within.
This decided the victory.  The corpses of the Catilinarians--there
were counted 3000 of them--covered, as it were in rank and file,
the ground where they had fought; the officers and the general
himself had, when all was lost, thrown themselves headlong
on the enemy and thus sought and found death (beginning of 692).
Antonius was on account of this victory stamped by the senate
with the title of Imperator, and new thanksgiving-festivals showed
that the government and the governed were beginning to become
accustomed to civil war.

Attitude of Crassus and Caesar toward the Anarchists

The anarchist plot had thus been suppressed in the capital as in Italy
with bloody violence; people were still reminded of it merely
by the criminal processes which in the Etruscan country towns
and in the capital thinned the ranks of those affiliated to the beaten
party, and by the large accessions to the robber-bands of Italy--
one of which, for instance, formed out of the remains of the armies
of Spartacus and Catilina, was destroyed by a military force in 694
in the territory of Thurii.  But it is important to keep in view
that the blow fell by no means merely on the anarchists proper,
who had conspired to set the capital on fire and had fought
at Pistoria, but on the whole democratic party.  That this party,
and in particular Crassus and Caesar, had a hand in the game
on the present occasion as well as in the plot of 688,
may be regarded--not in a juristic, but in a historical, point of view--
as an ascertained fact.  The circumstance, indeed, that Catulus
and the other heads of the senatorial party accused the leader
of the democrats of complicity in the anarchist plot,
and that the latter as senator spoke and voted against the brutal
judicial murder contemplated by the oligarchy, could only be urged
by partisan sophistry as any valid proof of his participation
in the plans of Catilina.  But a series of other facts is of more weight.
According to express and irrefragable testimonies it was especially
Crassus and Caesar that supported the candidature of Catilina
for the consulship.  When Caesar in 690 brought the executioners
of Sulla before the commission for murder(20) he allowed the rest
to be condemned, but the most guilty and infamous of all, Catilina,
to be acquitted.  In the revelations of the 3rd of December,
it is true, Cicero did not include among the names of the conspirators
of whom he had information those of the two influential men;
but it is notorious that the informers denounced not merely those
against whom subsequently investigation was directed, but "many innocent"
persons besides, whom the consul Cicero thought proper to erase
from the list; and in later years, when he had no reason to disguise
the truth, he expressly named Caesar among the accomplices.  An indirect
but very intelligible inculpation is implied also in the circumstance,
that of the four persons arrested on the 3rd of December the two least
dangerous, Statilius and Gabinius, were handed over to be guarded
by the senators Caesar and Crassus; it was manifestly intended that these
should either, if they allowed them to escape, be compromised in the view
of public opinion as accessories, or, if they really detained them,
be compromised in the view of their fellow-conspirators as renegades.

The following scene which occurred in the senate shows
significantlyhow matters stood.  Immediately after the arrest
of Lentulus and his comrades, a messenger despatched by the conspirators
in the capital to Catilina was seized by the agents of the government,
and, after having been assured of impunity, was induced
to make a comprehensive confession in a full meeting of the senate.
But when he came to the critical portions of his confession
and in particular named Crassus as having commissioned him,
he was interrupted by the senators, and on the suggestion
of Cicero it was resolved to cancel the whole statement without
farther inquiry, but to imprison its author notwithstanding
the amnesty assured to him, until such time as he should have
not merely retracted the statement, but should have also confessed
who had instigated him to give such false testimony! Here it is
abundantly clear, not merely that that man had a very accurate
knowledge of the state of matters who, when summoned to make
an attack upon Crassus, replied that he had no desire to provoke
the bull of the herd, but also that the majority of the senate
with Cicero at their head were agreed in not permitting the revelations
to go beyond a certain limit.  The public was not so nice; the young men,
who had taken up arms to ward off the incendiaries, were exasperated
against no one so much as against Caesar, on the 5th of December,
when he left the senate, they pointed their swords at his breast
and even now he narrowly escaped with his life on the same spot
where the fatal blow fell on him seventeen years afterwards;
he did not again for a considerable time enter the senate-house.
Any one who impartially considers the course of the conspiracy
will not be able to resist the suspicion that during all this time
Catilina was backed by more powerful men, who--relying on the want
of a legally complete chain of evidence and on the lukewarmness
and cowardice of the majority of the senate, which was but half-
initiated and greedily caught at any pretext for inaction--knew how
to hinder any serious interference with the conspiracy on the part
of the authorities, to procure free departure for the chief
of the insurgents, and even so to manage the declaration of war
and the sending of troops against the insurrection that it was almost
equivalent to the sending of an auxiliary army.  While the course
of the events themselves thus testifies that the threads
of the Catilinarian plot reached far higher than Lentulus and Catilina,
it deserves also to be noticed, that at a much later period,
when Caesar had got to the head of the state, he was in the closest
alliance with the only Catilinarian still surviving, Publius Sittius
the leader of the Mauretanian free bands, and that he modified
the law of debt quite in the sense that the proclamations
of Manlius demanded.

All these pieces of evidence speak clearly enough; but, even were
it not so, the desperate position of the democracy in presence
of the military power--which since the Gabinio-Manilian laws assumed
by its side an attitude more threatening than ever--renders it
almost a certainty that, as usually happens in such cases,
it sought a last resource in secret plots and in alliance
with anarchy.  The circumstances were very similar to those
of the Cinnan times.  While in the east Pompeius occupied a position
nearly such as Sulla then did, Crassus and Caesar sought to raise
over against him a power in Italy like that which Marius and Cinna
had possessed, with the view of employing it if possible better
than they had done.  The way to this result lay once more through
terrorism and anarchy, and to pave that way Catilina was certainly
the fitting man.  Naturally the more reputable leaders
of the democracy kept themselves as far as possible in the background,
and left to their unclean associates the execution of the unclean
work, the political results of which they hoped afterwards
to appropriate.  Still more naturally, when the enterprise had failed,
the partners of higher position applied every effort to conceal
their participation in it.  And at a later period, when the former
conspirator had himself become the target of political plots,
the veil was for that very reason drawn only the more closely
over those darker years in the life of the great man, and even
special apologies for him were written with that very object.(21)

Total Destruction of the Democratic Party

For five years Pompeius stood at the head of his armies and fleets
in the east; for five years the democracy at home conspired
to overthrow him.  The result was discouraging.  With unspeakable
exertions they had not merely attained nothing, but had suffered
morally as well as materially enormous loss.  Even the coalition
of 683 could not but be for democrats of pure water a scandal,
although the democracy at that time only coalesced with two
distinguished men of the opposite party and bound these
to its programme.

But now the democratic party had made common cause with a band
of murderers and bankrupts, who were almost all likewise deserters
from the camp of the aristocracy; and had at least for the time
being accepted their programme, that is to say, the terrorism
of Cinna.  The party of material interests, one of the chief elements
of the coalition of 683, was thereby estranged from the democracy,
and driven into the arms of the Optimates in the first instance,
or of any power at all which would and could give protection against
anarchy.  Even the multitude of the capital, who, although having
no objection to a street-riot, found it inconvenient to have
their houses set on fire over their heads, became in some measure
alarmed.  It is remarkable that in this very year (691) the full
re-establishment of the Sempronian corn-largesses took place,
and was effected by the senate on the proposal of Cato.  The league
of the democratic leaders with anarchy had obviously created a breach
between the former and the burgesses of the city; and the oligarchy
sought, not without at least momentary success, to enlarge
this chasm and to draw over the masses to their side.  Lastly,
Gnaeus Pompeius had been partly warned, partly exasperated,
by all these cabals; after all that had occurred, and after the democracy
had itself virtually torn asunder the ties which connected it
with Pompeius, it could no longer with propriety make the request--
which in 684 had had a certain amount of reason on its side--
that he should not himself destroy with the sword the democratic power
which he had raised, and which had raised him.

Thus the democracy was disgraced and weakened; but above all it had
become ridiculous through the merciless exposure of its perplexity
and weakness.  Where the humiliation of the overthrown government
and similar matters of little moment were concerned, it was great
and potent; but every one of its attempts to attain a real
political success had proved a downright failure.  Its relation
to Pompeius was as false as pitiful.  While it was loading him
with panegyrics and demonstrations of homage, it was concocting
against him one intrigue after another; and one after another,
like soap-bubbles, they burst of themselves.  The general of the east
and of the seas, far from standing on his defence against them,
appeared not even to observe all the busy agitation, and to obtain
his victories over the democracy as Herakles gained his over
the Pygmies, without being himself aware of it.  The attempt to kindle
civil war had miserably failed; if the anarchist section
had at least displayed some energy, the pure democracy, while knowing
doubtless how to hire conspirators, had not known how to lead
them or to save them or to die with them.  Even the old languid
oligarchy, strengthened by the masses passing over to it
from the ranks of the democracy and above all by the--in this affair
unmistakeable--identity of its interests and those of Pompeius,
had been enabled to suppress this attempt at revolution and thereby
to achieve yet a last victory over the democracy.  Meanwhile king
Mithradates was dead, Asia Minor and Syria were regulated,
and the return of Pompeius to Italy might be every moment expected.
The decision was not far off; but was there in fact still room
to speak of a decision between the general who returned more famous
and mightier than ever, and the democracy humbled beyond parallel
and utterly powerless? Crassus prepared to embark his family
and his gold and to seek an asylum somewhere in the east;
and even so elastic and so energetic a nature as that of Caesar seemed
on the point of giving up the game as lost.  In this year (691)
occurred his candidature for the place of -pontifex maximus-;(22)
when he left his dwelling on the morning of the election,
he declared that, if he should fail in this also, he would
never again cross the threshold of his house.




CHAPTER VI

Retirement of Pompeius and Coalition of the Pretenders

Pompeius in the East

When Pompeius, after having transacted the affairs committed
to his charge, again turned his eyes homeward, he found for the second
time the diadem at his feet.  For long the development of the Roman
commonwealth had been tending towards such a catastrophe;
it was evident to every unbiassed observer, and had been remarked
a thousand times, that, if the rule of the aristocracy
should be brought to an end, monarchy was inevitable.  The senate
had now been overthrown at once by the civic liberal opposition
and by the power of the soldiery; the only question remaining
was to settle the persons, names, and forms for the new order of things;
and these were already clearly enough indicated in the partly democratic,
partly military elements of the revolution.  The events of the last
five years had set, as it were, the final seal on this impending
transformation of the commonwealth.  In the newly-erected
Asiatic provinces, which gave regal honours to their organizer
as the successor of Alexander the Great, and already received
his favoured freedmen like princes, Pompeius had laid the foundations
of his dominion, and found at once the treasures, the army, and the halo
of glory which the future prince of the Roman state required.
The anarchist conspiracy, moreover, in the capital, and the civil
war connected with it, had made it palpably clear to every one
who studied political or even merely material interests,
that a government without authority and without military power,
such as that of the senate, exposed the state to the equally ludicrous
and formidable tyranny of political sharpers, and that a change
of constitution, which should connect the military power more closely
with the government, was an indispensable necessity if social order
was to be maintained.  So the ruler had arisen in the east,
the throne had been erected in Italy; to all appearance the year 692
was the last of the republic, the first of monarchy.

The Opponents of the Future Monarchy

This goal, it is true, was not to be reached without a struggle.
The constitution, which had endured for five hundred years,
and under which the insignificant town on the Tiber had risen
to unprecedented greatness and glory, had sunk its roots into the soil
to a depth beyond human ken, and no one could at all calculate
to what extent the attempt to overthrow it would penetrate
and convulse civil society.  Several rivals had been outrun by Pompeius
in the race towards the great goal, but had not been wholly set
aside.  It was not at all beyond reach of calculation that all
these elements might combine to overthrow the new holder of power,
and that Pompeius might find Quintus Catulus and Marcus Cato united
in opposition to him with Marcus Crassus, Gaius Caesar, and Titus
Labienus.  But the inevitable and undoubtedly serious struggle
could not well be undertaken under circumstances more favourable.
It was in a high degree probable that, under the fresh impression
of the Catilinarian revolt, a rule which promised order
and security, although at the price of freedom, would receive
the submission of the whole middle party--embracing especially
the merchants who concerned themselves only about their material
interests, but including also a great part of the aristocracy,
which, disorganized in itself and politically hopeless, had to rest
content with securing for itself riches, rank, and influence
by a timely compromise with the prince; perhaps even a portion
of the democracy, so sorely smitten by the recent blows, might submit
to hope for the realization of a portion of its demands
from a military chief raised to power by itself.  But, whatever might be
the position of party-relations, of what importance, in the first
instance at least, were the parties in Italy at all in presence
of Pompeius and his victorious army?  Twenty years previously Sulla,
after having concluded a temporary peace with Mithradates,
had with his five legions been able to carry a restoration
runningcounter to the natural development of things in the face
of the whole liberal party, which had been arming en masse for years,
from the moderate aristocrats and the liberal mercantile class down
to the anarchists.  The task of Pompeius was far less difficult.
He returned, after having fully and conscientiously performed
his different functions by sea and land.  He might expect to encounter
no other serious opposition save that of the various extreme
parties, each of which by itself could do nothing, and which even
when leagued together were no more than a coalition of factions
still vehemently hostile to each other and inwardly at thorough
variance.  Completely unarmed, they were without a military force
and without a head, without organization in Italy, without support
in the provinces, above all, without a general; there was in their
ranks hardly a soldier of note--to say nothing of an officer--who
could have ventured to call forth the burgesses to a conflict
with Pompeius.  The circumstance might further be taken into account,
that the volcano of revolution, which had been now incessantly
blazing for seventy years and feeding on its own flame, was visibly
burning out and verging of itself to extinction.  It was very doubtful
whether the attempt to arm the Italians for party interests
would now succeed, as it had succeeded with Cinna and Carbo.
If Pompeius exerted himself, how could he fail to effect
a revolution of the state, which was chalked out by a certain
necessity of nature in the organic development
of the Roman commonwealth?

Mission of Nepos to Rome

Pompeius had seized the right moment, when he undertook his mission
to the east; he seemed desirous to go forward.  In the autumn
of 691, Quintus Metellus Nepos arrived from the camp of Pompeius
in the capital, and came forward as a candidate for the tribuneship,
with the express design of employing that position to procure
for Pompeius the consulship for the year 693 and more immediately,
by special decree of the people, the conduct of the war against
Catilina.  The excitement in Rome was great.  It was not
to be doubted that Nepos was acting under the direct or indirect
commission of Pompeius; the desire of Pompeius to appear in Italy
as general at the head of his Asiatic legions, and to administer
simultaneously the supreme military and the supreme civil power
there, was conceived to be a farther step on the way to the throne,
and the mission of Nepos a semi-official proclamation of the monarchy.

Pompeius in Relation to the Parties

Everything turned on the attitude which the two great political parties
should assume towards these overtures; their future position
and the future of the nation depended on this. But the reception
which Nepos met with was itself in its turn determined
by the then existing relation of the parties to Pompeius, which was
of a very peculiar kind.  Pompeius had gone to the east as general
of the democracy.  He had reason enough to be discontented
with Caesar and his adherents, but no open rupture had taken place.
It is probable that Pompeius, who was at a great distance and occupied
with other things, and who besides was wholly destitute of the gift
of calculating his political bearings, by no means saw through,
at least at that time, the extent and mutual connection
of the democratic intrigues contrived against him; perhaps even
in his haughty and shortsighted manner he had a certain pride
in ignoring these underground proceedings.  Then there came the fact,
which with a character of the type of Pompeius had much weight,
that the democracy never lost sight of outward respect for the great man,
and even now (691) unsolicited (as he preferred it so) had granted
to him by a special decree of the people unprecedented honours
and decorations.(1)  But, even if all this had not been the case,
it lay in Pompeius' own well-understood interest to continue
his adherence, at least outwardly, to the popular party; democracy
and monarchy stand so closely related that Pompeius, in aspiring
to the crown, could scarcely do otherwise than call himself, as hitherto,
the champion of popular rights.  While personal and political
reasons, therefore, co-operated to keep Pompeius and the leaders
of the democracy, despite of all that had taken place, in their
previous connection, nothing was done on the opposite side to fill
up the chasm which separated him since his desertion to the camp
of the democracy from his Sullan partisans.  His personal quarrel
with Metellus and Lucullus transferred itself to their extensive
and influential coteries.  A paltry opposition of the senate--
but, to a character of so paltry a mould, all the more exasperating
by reason of its very paltriness--had attended him through his whole
career as a general.  He felt it keenly, that the senate had not taken
the smallest step to honour the extraordinary man according to
his desert, that is, by extraordinary means.  Lastly, it is not
to be forgotten, that the aristocracy was just then intoxicated
by its recent victory and the democracy deeply humbled,
and that the aristocracy was led by the pedantically stiff
and half-witless Cato, and the democracy by the supple master
of intrigue, Caesar.

Rupture between Pompeius and the Aristocracy

Such was the state of parties amidst which the emissary sent
by Pompeius appeared.  The aristocracy not only regarded the proposals
which he announced in favour of Pompeius as a declaration of war
against the existing constitution, but treated them openly as such,
and took not the slightest pains to conceal their alarm and their
indignation.  With the express design of combating these proposals,
Marcus Cato had himself elected as tribune of the people
along with Nepos, and abruptly repelled the repeated attempts of Pompeius
to approach him personally.  Nepos naturally after this found himself
under no inducement to spare the aristocracy, but attached himself
the more readily to the democrats, when these, pliant as ever,
submitted to what was inevitable and chose freely to concede
the office of general in Italy as well as the consulate
rather than let the concession be wrung from them by force of arms.
The cordial understanding soon showed itself.  Nepos publicly accepted
(Dec. 691) the democratic view of the executions recently decreed
by the majority of the senate, as unconstitutional judicial murders;
and that his lord and master looked on them in no other light,
was shown by his significant silence respecting the voluminous
vindication of them which Cicero had sent to him.  On the other
hand, the first act with which Caesar began his praetorship
was to call Quintus Catulus to account for the moneys alleged
to have been embezzled by him at the rebuilding of the Capitoline temple,
and to transfer the completion of the temple to Pompeius.  This was
a masterstroke.  Catulus had already been building at the temple
for fifteen years, and seemed very much disposed to die as he had lived
superintendent of the Capitoline buildings; an attack on this abuse
of a public commission--an abuse covered only by the reputation
of the noble commissioner--was in reality entirely justified
and in a high degree popular.  But when the prospect was simultaneously
opened up to Pompeius of being allowed to delete the name of Catulus
and engrave his own on this proudest spot of the first city
of the globe, there was offered to him the very thing which most
of all delighted him and did no harm to the democracy--abundant
but empty honour; while at the same time the aristocracy, which could
not possibly allow its best man to fall, was brought into the most
disagreeable collision with Pompeius.

Meanwhile Nepos had brought his proposals concerning Pompeius
before the burgesses.  On the day of voting Cato and his friend
and colleague, Quintus Minucius, interposed their veto.  When Nepos
did not regard this and continued the reading out, a formal conflict
took place; Cato and Minucius threw themselves on their colleague
and forced him to stop; an armed band liberated him, and drove
the aristocratic section from the Forum; but Cato and Minucius
returned, now supported likewise by armed bands, and ultimately
maintained the field of battle for the government.  Encouraged
by this victory of their bands over those of their antagonist,
the senate suspended the tribune Nepos as well as the praetor Caesar,
who had vigorously supported him in the bringing in of the law,
from their offices; their deposition, which was proposed in the senate,
was prevented by Cato, more, doubtless, because it was
unconstitutional than because it was injudicious.  Caesar did
not regard the decree, and continued his official functions till
the senate used violence against him.  As soon as this was known,
the multitude appeared before his house and placed itself at his
disposal; it was to depend solely on him whether the struggle
in the streets should begin, or whether at least the proposals made
by Metellus should now be resumed and the military command in Italy
desired by Pompeius should be procured for him; but this was not
in Caesar's interest, and so he induced the crowds to disperse,
whereupon the senate recalled the penalty decreed against him.
Nepos himself had, immediately after his suspension, left
the city and embarked for Asia, in order to report to Pompeius
the result of his mission.

Retirement of Pompeius

Pompeius had every reason to be content with the turn which things
had taken.  The way to the throne now lay necessarily through civil
war; and he owed it to Cato's incorrigible perversity that he could
begin this war with good reason.  After the illegal condemnation
of the adherents of Catilina, after the unparalleled acts of violence
against the tribune of the people Metellus, Pompeius might wage war
at once as defender of the two palladia of Roman public freedom--
the right of appeal and the inviolability of the tribunate
of the people--against the aristocracy, and as champion of the party
of order against the Catilinarian band.  It seemed almost impossible
that Pompeius should neglect this opportunity and with his eyes
open put himself a second time into the painful position, in which
the dismissal of his army in 684 had placed him, and from which
only the Gabinian law had released him.  But near as seemed
the opportunity of placing the white chaplet around his brow,
and much as his own soul longed after it, when the question of action
presented itself, his heart and his hand once more failed him.
This man, altogether ordinary in every respect excepting only
his pretensions, would doubtless gladly have placed himself beyond
the law, if only he could have done so without forsaking legal ground.
His very lingering in Asia betrayed a misgiving of this sort.
He might, had he wished, have very well arrived in January 692
with his fleet and army at the port of Brundisium, and have received
Nepos there.  His tarrying the whole winter of 691-692 in Asia had
proximately the injurious consequence, that the aristocracy,
which of course accelerated the campaign against Catilina as it best
could, had meanwhile got rid of his bands, and had thus set aside
the most feasible pretext for keeping together the Asiatic legions
in Italy.  For a man of the type of Pompeius, who for want of faith
in himself and in his star timidly clung in public life to formal
right, and with whom the pretext was nearly of as much importance
as the motive, this circumstance was of serious weight.  He probably
said to himself, moreover, that, even if he dismissed his army,
he did not let it wholly out of his hand, and could in case
of need still raise a force ready for battle sooner at any rate
than any other party-chief; that the democracy was waiting
in submissive attitude for his signal, and that he could deal
with the refractory senate even without soldiers; and such further
considerations as suggested themselves, in which there was exactly
enough of truth to make them appear plausible to one who wished
to deceive himself.  Once more the very peculiar temperament
of Pompeius naturally turned the scale.  He was one of those men
who are capable it may be of a crime, but not of insubordination;
in a good as in a bad sense, he was thoroughly a soldier.  Men of mark
respect the law as a moral necessity, ordinary men as a traditional
everyday rule; for this very reason military discipline, in which
more than anywhere else law takes the form of habit, fetters every
man not entirely self-reliant as with a magic spell.  It has often
been observed that the soldier, even where he has determined
to refuse obedience to those set over him, involuntarily
when that obedience is demanded resumes his place in the ranks.
It was this feeling that made Lafayette and Dumouriez hesitate
at the last moment before the breach of faith and break down;
and to this too Pompeius succumbed.

In the autumn of 692 Pompeius embarked for Italy.  While in the capital
all was being prepared for receiving the new monarch, news came
that Pompeius, when barely landed at Brundisium, had broken up
his legions and with a small escort had entered on his journey
to the capital.  If it is a piece of good fortune to gain a crown
without trouble, fortune never did more for mortal than it did
for Pompeius; but on those who lack courage the gods lavish every
favour and every gift in vain.

Pompeius without Influence

The parties breathed freely.  For the second time Pompeius had
abdicated; his already-vanquished competitors might once more begin
the race--in which doubtless the strangest thing was, that Pompeius
was again a rival runner.  In January 693 he came to Rome.
His position was an awkward one and vacillated with so much uncertainty
between the parties, that people gave him the nickname of Gnaeus
Cicero.  He had in fact lost favour with all.  The anarchists saw
in him an adversary, the democrats an inconvenient friend, Marcus
Crassus a rival, the wealthy class an untrustworthy protector,
the aristocracy a declared foe.(2)  He was still indeed the most
powerful man in the state; his military adherents scattered through
all Italy, his influence in the provinces, particularly those
of the east, his military fame, his enormous riches gave him a weight
such as no other possessed; but instead of the enthusiastic
reception on which he had counted, the reception which he met
with was more than cool, and still cooler was the treatment given
to the demands which he presented.  He requested for himself,
as he had already caused to be announced by Nepos, a second consulship;
demanding also, of course, a confirmation of the arrangements made
by him in the east and a fulfilment of the promise which he had
given to his soldiers to furnish them with lands.  Against these
demands a systematic opposition arose in the senate, the chief
elements of which were furnished by the personal exasperation
of Lucullus and Metellus Creticus, the old resentment of Crassus,
and the conscientious folly of Cato.  The desired second consulship
was at once and bluntly refused.  The very first request
which the returning general addressed to the senate, that the election
of the consuls for 693 might be put off till after his entry
into the capital, had been rejected; much less was there any likelihood
of obtaining from the senate the necessary dispensation from the law
of Sulla as to re-election.(3)  As to the arrangements which
he had made in the eastern provinces, Pompeius naturally asked
their confirmation as a whole; Lucullus carried a proposal
thatevery ordinance should be separately discussed and voted upon,
which opened the door for endless annoyances and a multitude of defeats
in detail.  The promise of a grant of land to the soldiers
of the Asiatic army was ratified indeed in general by the senate,
but was at the same time extended to the Cretan legions of Metellus;
and--what was worse--it was not executed, because the public chest
was empty and the senate was not disposed to meddle with the domains
for this purpose.  Pompeius, in despair of mastering the persistent
and spiteful opposition of the senate, turned to the burgesses.
But he understood still less how to conduct his movements
on this field.  The democratic leaders, although they did not
openly oppose him, had no cause at all to make his interests their own,
and so kept aloof.  Pompeius' own instruments--such as the consuls
elected by his influence and partly by his money, Marcus Pupius Piso
for 693 and Lucius Afranius for 694--showed themselves unskilful
and useless.  When at length the assignation of land for the veterans
of Pompeius was submitted to the burgesses by the tribune
of the people Lucius Flavius in the form of a general agrarian law,
the proposal, not supported by the democrats, openly combated
by the aristocrats, was left in a minority (beg. of 694).  The exalted
general now sued almost humbly for the favour of the masses,
for it was on his instigation that the Italian tolls were abolished
by a law introduced by the praetor Metellus Nepos (694).  But he played
the demagogue without skill and without success; his reputation
suffered from it, and he did not obtain what he desired.  He had
completely run himself into a noose.  One of his opponents summed
up his political position at that time by saying that he had
endeavoured "to conserve by silence his embroidered triumphal
mantle."  In fact nothing was left for him but to fret.

Rise of Caesar

Then a new combination offered itself.  The leader
of the democratic party had actively employed in his own interest
the political calm which had immediately followed on the retirement
of the previous holder of power.  When Pompeius returned from Asia,
Caesar had been little more than what Catilina was--the chief
of a political party which had dwindled almost into a club
of conspirators, and a bankrupt.  But since that event he had,
after administering the praetorship (692), been invested
with the governorship of Further Spain, and thereby had found means
partly to rid himself of his debts, partly to lay the foundation
for his military repute.  His old friend and ally Crassus had been
induced by the hope of finding the support against Pompeius,
which he had lost in Piso,(4) once more in Caesar, to relieve him
even before his departure to the province from the most oppressive
portion of his load of debt.  He himself had energetically employed
his brief sojourn there.  Returning from Spain in the year 694
with filled chests and as Imperator with well-founded claims
to a triumph, he came forward for the following year as a candidate
for the consulship; for the sake of which, as the senate refused
him permission to announce himself as a candidate for the consular
election in absence, he without hesitation abandoned the honour
of the triumph.  For years the democracy had striven to raise
one of its partisans to the possession of the supreme magistracy,
that by way of this bridge it might attain a military power of its own.
It had long been clear to discerning men of all shades that the strife
of parties could not be settled by civil conflict, but only
by military power; but the course of the coalition between
the democracy and the powerful military chiefs, through which the rule
of the senate had been terminated, showed with inexorable clearness
that every such alliance ultimately issued in a subordination
of the civil under the military elements, and that the popular party,
if it would really rule, must not ally itself with generals
properly foreign and even hostile to it, but must make generals
of its own leaders themselves.  The attempts made with this view
to carry the election of Catilina as consul, and to gain a military
support in Spain or Egypt, had failed; now a possibility presented
itself of procuring for their most important man the consulship
and the consular province in the usual constitutional way,
and of rendering themselves independent of their dubious and dangerous
ally Pompeius by the establishment, if we may so speak, of a home
power in their own democratic household.

Second Coalition of Pompeius, Crassus, and Caesar

But the more the democracy could not but desire to open up
for itself this path, which offered not so much the most favourable
as the only prospect of real successes, the more certainly it
might reckon on the resolute resistance of its political opponents.
Everything depended on whom it found opposed to it in this matter.
The aristocracy isolated was not formidable; but it had just been
rendered evident in the Catilinarian affair that it could certainly
still exert some influence, where it was more or less openly
supported by the men of material interests and by the adherents
of Pompeius.  It had several times frustrated Catilina's candidature
for the consulship, and that it would attempt the like against
Caesar was sufficiently certain.  But, even though Caesar should
perhaps be chosen in spite of it, his election alone did not suffice.
He needed at least some years of undisturbed working out of Italy,
in order to gain a firm military position; and the nobility
assuredly would leave no means untried to thwart his plans
during this time of preparation.  The idea naturally occurred,
whether the aristocracy might not be again successfully isolated
as in 683-684, and an alliance firmly based on mutual advantage might
not be established between the democrats with their ally Crassus
on the one side and Pompeius and the great capitalists on the other.
For Pompeius such a coalition was certainly a political suicide.
His weight hitherto in the state rested on the fact, that he was
the only party-leader who at the same time disposed of legions--
which, though now dissolved, were still in a certain sense
at his disposal.  The plan of the democracy was directed
to the very object of depriving him of this preponderance,
and of placing by his side in their own chief a military rival.
Never could he consent to this, and least of all personally help
to a post of supreme command a man like Caesar, who already
as a mere political agitator had given him trouble enough
and had just furnished the most brilliant proofs also of military
capacity in Spain.  But on the other hand, in consequence
of the cavilling opposition of the senate and the indifference
of the multitude to Pompeius and Pompeius' wishes, his position,
particularly with reference to his old soldiers, had become so painful
and so humiliating, that people might well expect from his character
to gain him for such a coalition at the price of releasing him
from that disagreeable situation.  And as to the so-called
equestrian party, it was to be found on whatever side the power lay;
and as a matter of course it would not let itself be long waited for,
if it saw Pompeius and the democracy combining anew in earnest.
It happened moreover, that on account of Cato's severity--
otherwise very laudable--towards the lessees of the taxes,
the great capitalists were just at this time once more
at vehement variance with the senate.

Change in the Position of Caesar

So the second coalition was concluded in the summer of 694.
Caesar was assured of the consulship for the following year
and a governorship in due course; to Pompeius was promised
the ratification of his arrangements made in the east,
and an assignation of lands for the soldiers of the Asiatic army;
to the equites Caesar likewise promised to procure for them
by means of the burgesses what the senate had refused; Crassus
in fine--the inevitable--was allowed at least to join the league,
although without obtaining definite promises for an accession
which he could not refuse.  It was exactly the same elements,
and indeed the same persons, who concluded the league with one another
in the autumn of 683 and in the summer of 694; but how entirely different
was the position of the parties then and now!  Then the democracy
was nothing but a political party, while its allies were victorious
generals at the head of their armies; now the leader of the democracy
was himself an Imperator crowned with victory and full
of magnificent military schemes, while his allies were retired
generals without any army.  Then the democracy conquered
in questions of principle, and in return for that victory conceded
the highest offices of state to its two confederates; now it had
become more practical and grasped the supreme civil and military
power for itself, while concessions were made to its allies only
in subordinate points and, significantly enough, not even the old
demand of Pompeius for a second consulship was attended to.  Then
the democracy sacrificed itself to its allies; now these had
to entrust themselves to it.  All the circumstances were completely
changed, most of all, however, the character of the democracy
itself.  No doubt it had, ever since it existed at all,
contained at its very core a monarchic element; but the ideal
of a constitution, which floated in more or less clear outline before
its best intellects, was always that of a civil commonwealth,
a Periclean organization of the state, in which the power
of the prince rested on the fact that he represented the burgesses
in the noblest and most accomplished manner, and the most accomplished
and noblest part of the burgesses recognized him as the man in whom
they thoroughly confided.  Caesar too set out with such views;
but they were simply ideals, which might have some influence
on realities, but could not be directly realized.  Neither the simple
civil power, as Gaius Gracchus possessed it, nor the arming
of the democratic party, such as Cinna though in a very inadequate
fashion had attempted, was able to maintain a permanent superiority
in the Roman commonwealth; the military machine fighting not for a party
but for a general, the rude force of the condottieri--after having
first appeared on the stage in the service of the restoration--soon
showed itself absolutely superior to all political parties.  Caesar
could not but acquire a conviction of this amidst the practical
workings of party, and accordingly he matured the momentous
resolution of making this military machine itself serviceable
to his ideals, and of erecting such a commonwealth, as he had
in his view, by the power of condottieri.  With this design
he concluded in 683 the league with the generals of the opposite party,
which, notwithstanding that they had accepted the democratic programme,
yet brought the democracy and Caesar himself to the brink
of destruction.  With the same design he himself came forward eleven
years afterwards as a condottiere.  It was done in both cases
with a certain naivete--with good faith in the possibility
of his being able to found a free commonwealth, if not by the swords
of others, at any rate by his own.  We perceive without difficulty
that this faith was fallacious, and that no one takes an evil spirit
into his service without becoming himself enslaved to it;
but the greatest men are not those who err the least.
If we still after so many centuries bow in reverence before what
Caesar willed and did, it is not because he desired and gained
a crown (to do which is, abstractly, as little of a great thing
as the crown itself) but because his mighty ideal--of a free commonwealth
under one ruler--never forsook him, and preserved him even when monarch
from sinking into vulgar royalty.

Caesar Consul

The election of Caesar as consul for 695 was carried without
difficulty by the united parties.  The aristocracy had to rest
content with giving to him--by means of a bribery, for which
the whole order of lords contributed the funds, and which excited
surprise even in that period of deepest corruption--a colleague
in the person of Marcus Bibulus, whose narrow-minded obstinacy
was regarded in their circles as conservative energy,
and whose good intentions at least were not at fault if the genteel
lords did not get a fit return for their patriotic expenditure.

Caesar's Agrarian Law

As consul Caesar first submitted to discussion the requests of his
confederates, among which the assignation of land to the veterans
of the Asiatic army was by far the most important.  The agrarian
law projected for this purpose by Caesar adhered in general
to the principles set forth in the project of law, which was introduced
in the previous year at the suggestion of Pompeius but not carried.(5)
There was destined for distribution only the Italian domain-land,
that is to say, substantially, the territory of Capua, and, if this
should not suffice, other Italian estates were to be purchased
out of the revenue of the new eastern provinces at the taxable value
recorded in the censorial rolls; all existing rights of property
and heritable possession thus remained unaffected.  The individual
allotments were small.  The receivers of land were to be poor
burgesses, fathers of at least three children; the dangerous
principle, that the rendering of military service gave a claim
to landed estate, was not laid down, but, as was reasonable and had
been done at all times, the old soldiers as well as the temporary
lessees to be ejected were simply recommended to the special
consideration of the land-distributors.  The execution of the measure
was entrusted to a commission of twenty men, into which Caesar
distinctly declared that he did not wish to be himself elected.

Opposition of the Aristocracy

The opposition had a difficult task in resisting this proposal.
It could not rationally be denied, that the state-finances ought
after the erection of the provinces of Pontus and Syria to be
in a position to dispense with the moneys from the Campanian leases;
that it was unwarrantable to withhold one of the finest districts
of Italy, and one peculiarly fitted for small holdings,
from private enterprise; and, lastly, that it was as unjust as it
was ridiculous, after the extension of the franchise to all Italy,
still to withhold municipal rights from the township of Capua.
The whole proposal bore the stamp of moderation, honesty, and solidity,
with which a democratic party-character was very dexterously
combined; for in substance it amounted to the re-establishment
of the Capuan colony founded in the time of Marius and again
done away by Sulla.(6)  In form too Caesar observed all possible
consideration.  He laid the project of the agrarian law, as well
as the proposal to ratify collectively the ordinances issued
by Pompeius in the east, and the petition of the farmers of the taxes
for remission of a third of the sums payable by them, in the first
instance before the senate for approval, and declared himself
ready to entertain and discuss proposals for alterations.
The corporation had now opportunity of convincing itself how foolishly
it had acted in driving Pompeius and the equites into the arms
of the adversary by refusing these requests.  Perhaps it was
the secret sense of this, that drove the high-born lords to the most
vehement opposition, which contrasted ill with the calm demeanour
of Caesar.  The agrarian law was rejected by them nakedly and even
without discussion.  The decree as to the arrangements of Pompeius
in Asia found quite as little favour in their eyes.  Cato attempted,
in accordance with the disreputable custom of Roman parliamentary
debate, to kill the proposal regarding the farmers of the taxes
by speaking, that is, to prolong his speech up to the legal hour
for closing the sitting; when Caesar threatened to have the stubborn
man arrested, this proposal too was at length rejected.

Proposals before the Burgesses

Of course all the proposals were now brought before the burgesses.
Without deviating far from the truth, Caesar could tell
the multitude that the senate had scornfully rejected most rational
and most necessary proposals submitted to it in the most respectful
form, simply because they came from the democratic consul.
When he added that the aristocrats had contrived a plot to procure
the rejection of the proposals, and summoned the burgesses,
and more especially Pompeius himself and his old soldiers, to stand
by him against fraud and force, this too was by no means a mere invention.
The aristocracy, with the obstinate weak creature Bibulus
and the unbending dogmatical fool Cato at their head, in reality
intended to push the matter to open violence.  Pompeius, instigated
by Caesar to proclaim his position with reference to the pending
question, declared bluntly, as was not his wont on other occasions,
that if any one should venture to draw the sword, he too would
grasp his, and in that case would not leave the shield at home;
Crassus expressed himself to the same effect The old soldiers
of Pompeius were directed to appear on the day of the vote--
which in fact primarily concerned them--in great numbers,
and with arms under their dress, at the place of voting.

The nobility however left no means untried to frustrate the proposals
of Caesar.  On each day when Caesar appeared before the people,
his colleague Bibulus instituted the well-known political observations
of the weather which interrupted all public business;(7) Caesar
did not trouble himself about the skies, but continued to prosecute
his terrestrial occupation.  The tribunician veto was interposed;
Caesar contented himself with disregarding it. Bibulus and Cato
sprang to the rostra, harangued the multitude, and instigated
the usual riot; Caesar ordered that they should be led away
by lictors from the Forum, and took care that otherwise no harm
should befall them--it was for his interest that the political
comedy should remain such as it was.

The Agrarian Law Carried
Passive Resistance of the Aristocracy

Notwithstanding all the chicanery and all the blustering
of the nobility, the agrarian law, the confirmation of the Asiatic
arrangements, and the remission to the lessees of taxes
were adopted by the burgesses; and the commission of twenty was elected
with Pompeius and Crassus at its head, and installed in office.
With all their exertions the aristocracy had gained nothing,
save that their blind and spiteful antagonism had drawn the bonds
of the coalition still tighter, and their energy, which they were soon
to need for matters more important, had exhausted itself
on these affairs that were at bottom indifferent.  They congratulated
each other on the heroic courage which they had displayed;
the declaration of Bibulus that he would rather die than yield,
the peroration which Cato still continued to deliver when in the hands
of the lictors, were great patriotic feats; otherwise they resigned
themselves to their fate.  The consul Bibulus shut himself up
for the remainder of the year in his house, while he at the same time
intimated by public placard that he had the pious intention
of watching the signs of the sky on all the days appropriate
for public assemblies during that year.  His colleagues once more
admired the great man who, as Ennius had said of the old Fabius,
"saved the state by wise delay," and they followed his example;
most of them, Cato included, no longer appeared in the senate,
but within their four walls helped their consul to fret over
the fact that the history of the world went on in spite of political
astronomy.  To the public this passive attitude of the consul
as well as of the aristocracy in general appeared, as it fairly might,
a political abdication; and the coalition were naturally very well
content that they were left to take their farther steps almost
undisturbed.

Caesar Governor of the Two Gauls

The most important of these steps was the regulating of the future
position of Caesar.  Constitutionally it devolved on the senate
to fix the functions of the second consular year of office before
the election of the consuls took place; accordingly it had, in prospect
of the election of Caesar, selected with that view for 696 two
provinces in which the governor should find no other employment
than the construction of roads and other such works of utility.
Of course the matter could not so remain; it was determined among
the confederates, that Caesar should obtain by decree of the people
an extraordinary command formed on the model of the Gabinio-Manilian
laws.  Caesar however had publicly declared that he would introduce
no proposal in his own favour; the tribune of the people Publius
Vatinius therefore undertook to submit the proposal to the burgesses,
who naturally gave their unconditional assent.  By this means
Caesar obtained the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul and the supreme
command of the three legions which were stationed there
and were already experienced in border warfare under Lucius Afranius,
along with the same rank of propraetor for his adjutants
which those of Pompeius had enjoyed; this office was secured to him
for five years--a longer period than had ever before been assigned
to any general whose appointment was limited to a definite time
at all.  The Transpadanes, who for years had in hope of the franchise
been the clients of the democratic party in Rome and of Caesar
in particular,(8) formed the main portion of his province.
His jurisdiction extended south as far as the Arnus and the Rubico,
and included Luca and Ravenna.  Subsequently there was added to Caesar's
official district the province of Narbo with the one legion
stationed there--a resolution adopted by the senate on the proposal
of Pompeius, that it might at least not see this command
also pass to Caesar by extraordinary decree of the burgesses.
What was wished was thus attained.  As no troops could constitutionally
be stationed in Italy proper,(9) the commander of the legions
of northern Italy and Gaul dominated at the same time Italy and Rome
for the next five years; and he who was master for five years
was master for life.  The consulship of Caesar had attained its object.
As a matter of course, the new holders of power did not neglect
withal to keep the multitude in good humour by games and amusements
of all sorts, and they embraced every opportunity of filling their
exchequer; in the case of the king of Egypt, for instance,
the decree of the people, which recognized him as legitimate ruler,(10)
was sold to him by the coalition at a high price, and in like manner
other dynasts and communities acquired charters and privileges
on this occasion.

Measures Adopted by the Allies for Their Security

The permanence of the arrangements made seemed also sufficiently
secured.  The consulship was, at least for the next year, entrusted
to safe hands.  The public believed at first, that it was destined
for Pompeius and Crassus themselves; the holders of power however
preferred to procure the election of two subordinate but trustworth
men of their party--Aulus Gabinius, the best among Pompeius' adjutants,
and Lucius Piso, who was less important but was Caesar's father-in-law--
as consuls for 696.  Pompeius personally undertook to watch over Italy,
where at the head of the commission of twenty he prosecuted the execution
of the agrarian law and furnished nearly 20,000 burgesses,
in great part old soldiers from his army, with land in the territory
of Capua.  Caesar's north-Italian legions served to back him
against the opposition in the capital.  There existed no prospect,
immediately at least, of a rupture among the holders of power themselves.
The laws issued by Caesar as consul, in the maintenance of which
Pompeius was at least as much interested as Caesar, formed
a guarantee for the continuance of the breach between Pompeius
and the aristocracy--whose heads, and Cato in particular,
continued to treat these laws as null--and thereby a guarantee
for the subsistence of the coalition.  Moreover, the personal bonds
of connection between its chiefs were drawn closer.  Caesar had
honestly and faithfully kept his word to his confederates
without curtailing or cheating them of what he had promised,
and in particular had fought to secure the agrarian law proposed
in the interest of Pompeius, just as if the case had been his own,
with dexterity and energy; Pompeius was not insensible to upright
dealing and good faith, and was kindly disposed towards the man
who had helped him to get quit at a blow of the sorry part
of a suppliant which he had been playing for three years.  Frequent
and familiar intercourse with a man of the irresistible amiableness
of Caesar did what was farther requisite to convert the alliance
of interests into an alliance of friendship.  The result
and the pledge of this friendship--at the same time, doubtless,
a public announcement which could hardly be misunderstood
of the newly established conjoint rule--was the marriage of Pompeius
with Caesar's only daughter, three-and-twenty years of age.
Julia, who had inherited the charm of her father, lived
in the happiest domestic relations with her husband, who was
nearly twice as old; and the burgesses longing for rest
and order after so many troubles and crises, saw in this nuptial
alliance the guarantee of a peaceful and prosperous future.

Situation of the Aristocracy

The more firmly and closely the alliance was thus cemented
between Pompeius and Caesar, the more hopeless grew the cause
of the aristocracy.  They felt the sword suspended over their head
and knew Caesar sufficiently to have no doubt that he would,
if necessary, use it without hesitation.  "On all sides," wrote
one of them, "we are checkmated; we have already through fear of death
or of banishment despaired of 'freedom'; every one sighs,
no one ventures to speak." More the confederates could not desire.
But though the majority of the aristocracy was in this desirable
frame of mind, there was, of course, no lack of Hotspurs among
this party.  Hardly had Caesar laid down the consulship, when some
of the most violent aristocrats, Lucius Domitius and Gaius Memmius,
proposed in a full senate the annulling of the Julian laws.
This indeed was simply a piece of folly, which redounded only
to the benefit of the coalition; for, when Caesar now himself
insisted that the senate should investigate the validity of the laws
assailed, the latter could not but formally recognize their
legality.  But, as may readily be conceived, the holders of power
found in this a new call to make an example of some of the most
notable and noisiest of their opponents, and thereby to assure
themselves that the remainder would adhere to that fitting policy
of sighing and silence.  At first there had been a hope
that the clause of the agrarian law, which as usual required
all the senators to take an oath to the new law on pain of forfeiting
their political rights, would induce its most vehement opponents
to banish themselves, after the example of Metellus Numidicus,(11)
by refusing the oath.  But these did not show themselves
so complaisant; even the rigid Cato submitted to the oath,
and his Sanchos followed him.  A second, far from honourable,
attempt to threaten the heads of the aristocracy with criminal
impeachments on account of an alleged plot for the murder of Pompeius,
and so to drive them into exile, was frustrated by the incapacity
of the instruments; the informer, one Vettius, exaggerated
and contradicted himself so grossly, and the tribune Vatinius,
who directed the foul scheme, showed his complicity with that Vettius
so clearly, that it was found advisable to strangle the latter
in prison and to let the whole matter drop.  On this occasion however
they had obtained sufficient evidence of the total disorganization
of the aristocracy and the boundless alarm of the genteel lords:
even a man like Lucius Lucullus had thrown himself in person
at Caesar's feet and publicly declared that he found himself compelled
by reason of his great age to withdraw from public life.

Cato and Cicero Removed

Ultimately therefore they were content with a few isolated victims.
It was of primary importance to remove Cato, who made no secret
of his conviction as to the nullity of all the Julian laws,
and who was a man to act as he thought.  Such a man Marcus Cicero
was certainly not, and they did not give themselves the trouble
to fear him.  But the democratic party, which played the leading part
in the coalition, could not possibly after its victory leave
unpunished the judicial murder of the 5th December 691, which it
had so loudly and so justly censured.  Had they wished to bring
to account the real authors of the fatal decree, they ought
to have seized not on the pusillanimous consul, but on the section
of the strict aristocracy which had urged the timorous man
to that execution.  But in formal law it was certainly not the advisers
of the consul, but the consul himself, that was responsible for it,
and it was above all the gentler course to call the consul alone
to account and to leave the senatorial college wholly out of the case;
for which reason in the grounds of the proposal directed against
Cicero the decree of the senate, in virtue of which he ordered
the execution, was directly described as supposititious.  Even against
Cicero the holders of power would gladly have avoided steps
that attracted attention; but he could not prevail on himself either
to give to those in power the guarantees which they required,
or to banish himself from Rome under one of the feasible pretexts
on several occasions offered to him, or even to keep silence.
With the utmost desire to avoid any offence and the most sincere alarm,
he yet had not self-control enough to be prudent; the word had
to come out, when a petulant witticism stung him, or when his self-
conceit almost rendered crazy by the praise of so many noble lords
gave vent to the well-cadenced periods of the plebeian advocate.

Clodius

The execution of the measures resolved on against Cato and Cicero
was committed to the loose and dissolute, but clever and pre-
eminently audacious Publius Clodius, who had lived for years
in the bitterest enmity with Cicero, and, with the view of satisfying
that enmity and playing a part as demagogue, had got himself converted
under the consulship of Caesar by a hasty adoption from a patrician
into a plebeian, and then chosen as tribune of the people
for the year 696.  To support Clodius, the proconsul Caesar remained
in the immediate vicinity of the capital till the blow was struck
against the two victims.  Agreeably to the instructions
which he had received, Clodius proposed to the burgesses to entrust
Cato with the regulation of the complicated municipal affairs
of the Byzantines and with the annexation of the kingdom of Cyprus,
which as well as Egypt had fallen to the Romans by the testament
of Alexander II, but had not like Egypt bought off the Roman
annexation, and the king of which, moreover, had formerly given
personal offence to Clodius.  As to Cicero, Clodius brought in
a project of law which characterized the execution of a burgess
without trial and sentence as a crime to be punished with banishment.
Cato was thus removed by an honourable mission, while Cicero
was visited at least with the gentlest possible punishment and,
besides, was not designated by name in the proposal.  But they did not
refuse themselves the pleasure, on the one hand, of punishing
a man notoriously timid and belonging to the class of political
weathercocks for the conservative energy which he displayed,
and, on the other hand, of investing the bitter opponent
of all interferences of the burgesses in administration
and of all extraordinary commands with such a command conferred
by decree of the burgesses themselves; and with similar humour
the proposal respecting Cato was based on the ground of the abnormal
virtue of the man, which made him appear pre-eminently qualified
to execute so delicate a commission, as was the confiscation
of the considerable crown treasure of Cyprus, without embezzlement.
Both proposals bear generally the same character of respectful
deference and cool irony, which marks throughout the bearing of Caesar
in reference to the senate.  They met with no resistance.
It was naturally of no avail, that the majority of the senate,
with the view of protesting in some way against the mockery
and censure of their decree in the matter of Catilina, publicly
put on mourning, and that Cicero himself, now when it was too late,
fell on his knees and besought mercy from Pompeius; he had to banish
himself even before the passing of the law which debarred him
from his native land (April 696).  Cato likewise did not venture
to provoke sharper measures by declining the commission
which he had received, but accepted itand embarked for the east.(12)
What was most immediately necessary was done; Caesar too
might leave Italy to devote himself to more serious tasks.




CHAPTER VII

The Subjugation of the West

The Romanizing of the West

When the course of history turns from the miserable monotony
of the political selfishness, which fought its battles
in the senate-house and in the streets of the capital, to matters
of greater importance than the question whether the first monarch
of Rome should be called Gnaeus, Gaius, or Marcus, we may well
be allowed--on the threshold of an event, the effects of which still
at the present day influence the destinies of the world--to look round us
for a moment, and to indicate the point of view under which the conquest
of what is now France by the Romans, and their first contact
with the inhabitants of Germany and of Great Britain, are to be
apprehended in their bearing on the general history of the world.

By virtue of the law, that a people which has grown into a state
absorbs its neighbours who are in political nonage, and a civilized
people absorbs its neighbours who are in intellectual nonage--
by virtue of this law, which is as universally valid and as much
a law of nature as the law of gravity--the Italian nation (the only
one in antiquity which was able to combine a superior political
development and a superior civilization, though it presented
the latter only in an imperfect and external manner) was entitled
to reduce to subjection the Greek states of the east which were ripe
for destruction, and to dispossess the peoples of lower grades
of culture in the west--Libyans, Iberians, Celts, Germans--by means
of its settlers; just as England with equal right has in Asia reduced
to subjection a civilization of rival standing but politically
impotent, and in America and Australia has marked and ennobled,
and still continues to mark and ennoble, extensive barbarian
countries with the impress of its nationality.  The Roman aristocracy
had accomplished the preliminary condition required for this task--
the union of Italy; the task itself it never solved, but always
regarded the extra-Italian conquests either as simply a necessary
evil, or as a fiscal possession virtually beyond the pale
of the state.  It is the imperishable glory of the Roman democracy
or monarchy--for the two coincide--to have correctly apprehended
and vigorously realized this its highest destination.  What
the irresistible force of circumstances had paved the way for,
through the senate establishing against its will the foundations
of the future Roman dominion in the west as in the east; what thereafter
the Roman emigration to the provinces--which came as a public
calamity, no doubt, but also in the western regions at any rate
as a pioneer of a higher culture--pursued as matter of instinct;
the creator of the Roman democracy, Gaius Gracchus, grasped
and began to carry out with statesmanlike clearness and decision.
The two fundamental ideas of the new policy--to reunite
the territories under the power of Rome, so far as they were Hellenic,
and to colonize them, so far as they were not Hellenic--had already
in the Gracchan age been practically recognized by the annexation
of the kingdom of Attalus and by the Transalpine conquests of Flaccus:
but the prevailing reaction once more arrested their application.
The Roman state remained a chaotic mass of countries without thorough
occupation and without proper limits.  Spain and the Graeco-Asiatic
possessions were separated from the mother country by wide
territories, of which barely the borders along the coast
were subject to the Romans; on the north coast of Africa the domains
of Carthage and Cyrene alone were occupied like oases; large tracts
even of the subject territory, especially in Spain, were but nominally
subject to the Romans.  Absolutely nothing was done on the part
of the government towards concentrating and rounding off
their dominion, and the decay of the fleet seemed at length
to dissolve the last bond of connection between the distant
possessions.  The democracy no doubt attempted, so soon as it
again raised its head, to shape its external policy in the spirit
of Gracchus--Marius in particular cherished such ideas--but as it
did not for any length of time attain the helm, its projects
were left unfulfilled.  It was not till the democracy practically took
in hand the government on the overthrow of the Sullan constitution
in 684, that a revolution in this respect occurred.  First of all
their sovereignty on the Mediterranean was restored--the most
vital question for a state like that of Rome.  Towards the east,
moreover, the boundary of the Euphrates was secured by the annexation
of the provinces of Pontus and Syria.  But there still remained beyond
the Alps the task of at once rounding off the Roman territory towards
the north and west, and of gaining a fresh virgin soil there
for Hellenic civilization and for the yet unbroken vigour
of the Italic race.

Historical Significance of the Conquests of Caesar

This task Gaius Caesar undertook.  It is more than an error,
it is an outrage upon the sacred spirit dominant in history,
to regard Gaul solely as the parade ground on which Caesar
exercised himself and his legions for the impending civil war.
Though the subjugation of the west was for Caesar so far a means
to an end that he laid the foundations of his later height of power
in the Transalpine wars, it is the especial privilege of a statesman
of genius that his means themselves are ends in their turn.  Caesar
needed no doubt for his party aims a military power, but he did not
conquer Gaul as a partisan.  There was a direct political necessity
for Rome to meet the perpetually threatened invasion of the Germans
thus early beyond the Alps, and to construct a rampart there
which should secure the peace of the Roman world.  But even this
important object was not the highest and ultimate reason for which Gaul
was conquered by Caesar.  When the old home had become too
narrow for the Roman burgesses and they were in danger of decay,
the senate's policy of Italian conquest saved them from ruin.
Now the Italian home had become in its turn too narrow; once more
the state languished under the same social evils repeating themselves
in similar fashion only on a greater scale.  It was a brilliant
idea, a grand hope, which led Caesar over the Alps--the idea
and the confident expectation that he should gain there for his
fellow-burgesses a new boundless home, and regenerate the state
a second time by placing it on a broader basis.

Caesar in Spain

The campaign which Caesar undertook in 693 in Further Spain, may
be in some sense included among the enterprises which aimed at
the subjugation of the west.  Long as Spain had obeyed the Romans,
its western shore had remained substantially independent of them
even after the expedition of Decimus Brutus against the Callaeci(1),
and they had not even set foot on the northern coast; while
the predatory raids, to which the subject provinces found
themselves continually exposed from those quarters, did no small
injury to the civilization and Romanizing of Spain.  Against these
the expedition of Caesar along the west coast was directed.
He crossed the chain of the Herminian mountains (Sierra de Estrella)
bounding the Tagus on the north; after having conquered their
inhabitants and transplanted them in part to the plain, he reduced
the country on both sides of the Douro and arrived at the northwest
point of the peninsula, where with the aid of a flotilla brought
up from Gades he occupied Brigantium (Corunna).  By this means
the peoples adjoining the Atlantic Ocean, Lusitanians and Callaecians,
were forced to acknowledge the Roman supremacy, while the conqueror
was at the same time careful to render the position of the subjects
generally more tolerable by reducing the tribute to be paid to Rome
and regulating the financial affairs of the communities.

But, although in this military and administrative debut of the great
general and statesman the same talents and the same leading ideas are
discernible which he afterwards evinced on a greater stage, his agency
in the Iberian peninsula was much too transient to have any deep effect;
the more especially as, owing to its physical and national peculiarities,
nothing but action steadily continued for a considerable time could
exert any durable influence there.

Gaul

A more important part in the Romanic development of the west
was reserved by destiny for the country which stretches between
the Pyrenees and the Rhine, the Mediterranean and the Atlantic Ocean,
and which since the Augustan age has been especially designated
by the name of the land of the Celts--Gallia--although strictly
speaking the land of the Celts was partly narrower, partly much
more extensive, and the country so called never formed a national
unity, and did not form a political unity before Augustus.
For this very reason it is not easy to present a clear picture
of the very heterogeneous state of things which Caesar encountered
on his arrival there in 696.

The Roman Province
Wars and Revolts There

In the region on the Mediterranean, which, embracing approximately
Languedoc on the west of the Rhone, on the east Dauphine and Provence,
had been for sixty years a Roman province, the Roman arms had seldom
been at rest since the Cimbrian invasion which had swept over it.
In 664 Gaius Caelius had fought with the Salyes about Aquae Sextiae,
and in 674 Gaius Flaccus,(2) on his march to Spain, with other
Celtic nations.  When in the Sertorian war the governor Lucius Manlius,
compelled to hasten to the aid of his colleagues beyond the Pyrenees,
returned defeated from Ilerda (Lerida) and on his way home
was vanquished a second time by the western neighbours
of the Roman province, the Aquitani (about 676;(3)), this seems
to have provoked a general rising of the provincials between
the Pyrenees and the Rhone, perhaps even of those between the Rhone
and Alps.  Pompeius had to make his way with the sword through
the insurgent Gaul to Spain,(4) and by way of penalty for their
rebellion gave the territories of the Volcae-Arecomici
and the Helvii (dep. Gard and Ardeche) over to the Massiliots;
the governor Manius Fonteius (678-680) carried out these arrangements
and restored tranquillity in the province by subduing the Vocontii
(dep.  Drome), protecting Massilia from the insurgents,
and liberating the Roman capital Narbo which they invested.
Despair, however, and the financial embarrassment which the participation
in the sufferings of the Spanish war(5) and generally the official
and non-official exactions of the Romans brought upon the Gallic
provinces, did not allow them to be tranquil; and in particular
the canton of the Allobroges, the most remote from Narbo,
was in a perpetual ferment, which was attested by the "pacification"
that Gaius Piso undertook there in 688 as well as by the behaviour
of the Allobrogian embassy in Rome on occasion of the anarchist plot
in 691,(6) and which soon afterwards (693) broke into open revolt
Catugnatus the leader of the Allobroges in this war of despair,
who had at first fought not unsuccessfully, was conquered at Solonium
after a glorious resistance by the governor Gaius Pomptinus.

Bounds
Relations to Rome

Notwithstanding all these conflicts the bounds of the Roman
territory were not materially advanced; Lugudunum Convenarum,
where Pompeius had settled the remnant of the Sertorian army,(7)
Tolosa, Vienna and Genava were still the most remote Roman townships
towards the west and north.  But at the same time the importance
of these Gallic possessions for the mother country was continually
on the increase.  The glorious climate, akin to that of Italy,
the favourable nature of the soil, the large and rich region lying
behind so advantageous for commerce with its mercantile routes
reaching as far as Britain, the easy intercourse by land and sea
with the mother country, rapidly gave to southern Gaul an economic
importance for Italy, which much older possessions, such as those
in Spain, had not acquired in the course of centuries; and as
the Romans who had suffered political shipwreck at this period sought
an asylum especially in Massilia, and there found once more Italian
culture and Italian luxury, voluntary emigrants from Italy also
were attracted more and more to the Rhone and the Garonne.
"The province of Gaul," it was said in a sketch drawn ten years
before Caesar's arrival, "is full of merchants; it swarms with Roman
burgesses.  No native of Gaul transacts a piece of business without
the intervention of a Roman; every penny, that passes from one hand
to another in Gaul, goes through the account books of the Roman
burgesses." From the same description it appears that in addition
to the colonists of Narbo there were Romans cultivating land
and rearing cattle, resident in great numbers in Gaul; as to which,
however, it must not be overlooked that most of the provincial land
possessed by Romans, just like the greater part of the English
possessions in the earliest times in America, was in the hands
of the high nobility living in Italy, and those farmers and graziers
consisted for the most part of their stewards--slaves or freedmen.

Incipient Romanizing

It is easy to understand how under such circumstances civilization
and Romanizing rapidly spread among the natives.  These Celts
were not fond of agriculture; but their new masters compelled them
to exchange the sword for the plough, and it is very credible
that the embittered resistance of the Allobroges was provoked in part
by some such injunctions.  In earlier times Hellenism had also
to a certain degree dominated those regions; the elements
of a higher culture, the stimulus to the cultivation of the vine
and the olive,(8) to the use of writing(9) and to the coining of money,
came to them from Massilia.  The Hellenic culture was in this case
far from being set aside by the Romans; Massilia gained through
them more influence than it lost; and even in the Roman period
Greek physicians and rhetoricians were publicly employed
in the Gallic cantons.  But, as may readily be conceived, Hellenism
in southern Gaul acquired through the agency of the Romans the same
character as in Italy; the distinctively Hellenic civilization
gave place to the Latino-Greek mixed culture, which soon made
proselytes here in great numbers.  The "Gauls in the breeches,"
as the inhabitants of southern Gaul were called by way of contrast
to the "Gauls in the toga" of northern Italy, were not indeed
like the latter already completely Romanized, but they were even now
very perceptibly distinguished from the "longhaired Gauls"
of the northern regions still unsubdued.  The semiculture becoming
naturalized among them furnished, doubtless, materials enough
for ridicule of their barbarous Latin, and people did not fail
to suggest to any one suspected of Celtic descent his "relationship
with the breeches"; but this bad Latin was yet sufficient
to enable even the remote Allobroges to transact business
with the Roman authorities, and even to give testimony in the Roman
courts without an interpreter.

While the Celtic and Ligurian population of these regions
was thus in the course of losing its nationality, and was languishing
and pining withal under a political and economic oppression,
the intolerable nature of which is sufficiently attested by their
hopeless insurrections, the decline of the native population here
went hand in hand with the naturalizing of the same higher culture
which we find at this period in Italy.  Aquae Sextiae and still
more Narbo were considerable townships, which might probably be
named by the side of Beneventum and Capua; and Massilia, the best
organized, most free, most capable of self-defence, and most
powerful of all the Greek cities dependent on Rome, under its
rigorous aristocratic government to which the Roman conservatives
probably pointed as the model of a good urban constitution,
in possession of an important territory which had been considerably
enlarged by the Romans and of an extensive trade, stood by the side
of those Latin towns as Rhegium and Neapolis stood in Italy
by the side of Beneventum and Capua.

Free Gaul

Matters wore a different aspect, when one crossed the Roman frontier.
The great Celtic nation, which in the southern districts already
began to be crushed by the Italian immigration, still moved
to the north of the Cevennes in its time-hallowed freedom.
It is not the first time that we meet it: the Italians had already
fought with the offsets and advanced posts of this vast stock
on the Tiber and on the Po, in the mountains of Castile and Carinthia,
and even in the heart of Asia Minor; but it was here that the main stock
was first assailed at its very core by their attacks.  The Celtic race
had on its settlement in central Europe diffused itself chiefly
over the rich river-valleys and the pleasant hill-country
of the present France, including the western districts of Germany
and Switzerland, and from thence had occupied at least the southern
part of England, perhaps even at this time all Great Britain
and Ireland;(10) it formed here more than anywhere else a broad,
geographically compact, mass of peoples.  In spite of
the differences in language and manners which naturally
were to be found within this wide territory, a close mutual intercourse,
an innate sense of fellowship, seems to have knit together
the tribes from the Rhone and Garonne to the Rhine and the Thames;
whereas, although these doubtless were in a certain measure locally
connected with the Celts in Spain and in the modern Austria,
the mighty mountain barriers of the Pyrenees and the Alps
on the one hand, and the encroachments of the Romans and the Germans
which also operated here on the other, interrupted the intercourse
and the intrinsic connection of the cognate peoples far otherwise
than the narrow arm of the sea interrupted the relations
of the continental and the British Celts.  Unhappily we are not
permitted to trace stage by stage the history of the internal development
of this remarkable people in these its chief seats; we must be content
with presenting at least some outline of its historical culture
and political condition, as it here meets us in the time of Caesar.

Population
Agriculture and the Rearing of Cattle

Gaul was, according to the reports of the ancients, comparatively
well peopled.  Certain statements lead us to infer that in the Belgic
districts there were some 200 persons to the square mile--
a proportion such as nearly holds at present for Wales
and for Livonia--in the Helvetic canton about 245;(11) it is probable
that in the districts which were more cultivated than the Belgic
and less mountainous than the Helvetian, as among the Bituriges,
Arverni, Haedui, the number rose still higher.  Agriculture
was no doubt practised in Gaul--for even the contemporaries of Caesar
were surprised in the region of the Rhine by the custom of manuring
with marl,(12) and the primitive Celtic custom of preparing beer
(-cervesia-) from barley is likewise an evidence of the early
and wide diffusion of the culture of grain--but it was not held
in estimation.  Even in the more civilized south it was reckoned not
becoming for the free Celts to handle the plough.  In far higher
estimation among the Celts stood pastoral husbandry, for which
the Roman landholders of this epoch very gladly availed themselves
both of the Celtic breed of cattle, and of the brave Celtic slaves
skilled in riding and familiar with the rearing of animals.(13)
Particularly in the northern Celtic districts pastoral husbandry
was thoroughly predominant.  Brittany was in Caesar's time
a country poor in corn.  In the north-east dense forests, attaching
themselves to the heart of the Ardennes, stretched almost without
interruption from the German Ocean to the Rhine; and on the plains
of Flanders and Lorraine, now so fertile, the Menapian and Treverian
herdsman then fed his half-wild swine in the impenetrable oak-forest.
Just as in the valley of the Po the Romans made the production
of wool and the culture of corn supersede the Celtic feeding
of pigs on acorns, so the rearing of sheep and the agriculture
in the plains of the Scheldt and the Maas are traceable
to their influence.  In Britain even the threshing of corn
was not yet usual; and in its more northern districts agriculture
was not practised, and the rearing of cattle was the only known mode
of turning the soil to account.  The culture of the olive and vine,
which yielded rich produce to the Massiliots, was not yet prosecuted
beyond the Cevennes in the time of Caesar.

Urban Life

The Gauls were from the first disposed to settle in groups;
there were open villages everywhere, and the Helvetic canton
alone numbered in 696 four hundred of these, besides a multitude
of single homesteads.  But there were not wanting also walled towns,
whose walls of alternate layers surprised the Romans both by their
suitableness and by the elegant interweaving of timber and stones
in their construction; while, it is true, even in the towns
of the Allobroges the buildings were erected solely of wood.
Of such towns the Helvetii had twelve and the Suessiones an equal number;
whereas at all events in the more northern districts, such as among
the Nervii, while there were doubtless also towns, the population
during war sought protection in the morasses and forests rather
than behind their walls, and beyond the Thames the primitive
defence of the wooden barricade altogether took the place
of towns and was in war the only place of refuge for men and herds.

Intercourse

In close association with the comparatively considerable
development of urban life stands the activity of intercourse
by land and by water.  Everywhere there were roads and bridges.
The river-navigation, which streams like the Rhone, Garonne, Loire,
and Seine, of themselves invited, was considerable and lucrative.
But far more remarkable was the maritime navigation of the Celts.
Not only were the Celts, to all appearance, the nation that first
regularly navigated the Atlantic ocean, but we find that the art
of building and of managing vessels had attained among them
a remarkable development.  The navigation of the peoples
of the Mediterranean had, as may readily be conceived from the nature
of the waters traversed by them, for a comparatively long period
adhered to the oar; the war-vessels of the Phoenicians, Hellenes,
and Romans were at all times oared galleys, in which the sail
was applied only as an occasional aid to the oar; the trading vessels
alone were in the epoch of developed ancient civilization "sailers"
properly so called.(14)   On the other hand the Gauls doubtless
employed in the Channel in Caesar's time, as for long afterwards,
a species of portable leathern skiffs, which seem to have been
in the main common oared boats, but on the west coast of Gaul
the Santones, the Pictones, and above all the Veneti sailed in large
though clumsily built ships, which were not impelled by oars
but were provided with leathern sails and iron anchor-chains;
and they employed these not only for their traffic with Britain,
but also in naval combat.  Here therefore we not only meet
for the first time with navigation in the open ocean, but we find
that here the sailing vessel first fully took the place
of the oared boat--an improvement, it is true, which the declining
activity of the old world did not know how to turn to account,
and the immeasurable results of which our own epoch of renewed culture
is employed in gradually reaping.

Commerce
Manufactures

With this regular maritime intercourse between the British
and Gallic coasts, the very close political connection between
the inhabitants on both sides of the Channel is as easily explained
as the flourishing of transmarine commerce and of fisheries.
It was the Celts of Brittany in particular, that brought the tin
of the mines of Cornwall from England and carried it by the river
and land routes of Gaul to Narbo and Massilia.  The statement,
that in Caesar's time certain tribes at the mouth of the Rhine subsisted
on fish and birds' eggs, may probably refer to the circumstance
that marine fishing and the collection of the eggs of sea-birds
were prosecuted there on an extensive scale.  When we put together
and endeavour to fill up the isolated and scanty statements which have
reached us regarding the Celtic commerce and intercourse, we come
to see why the tolls of the river and maritime ports play a great
part in the budgets of certain cantons, such as those of the Haedui
and the Veneti, and why the chief god of the nation was regarded
by them as the protector of the roads and of commerce, and at
the same time as the inventor of manufactures.  Accordingly the Celtic
industry cannot have been wholly undeveloped; indeed the singular
dexterity of the Celts, and their peculiar skill in imitating
any model and executing any instructions, are noticed by Caesar.
In most branches, however, their handicraft does not appear
to have risen above the ordinary level; the manufacture of linen
and woollen stuffs, that subsequently flourished in central
and northern Gaul, was demonstrably called into existence only
by the Romans.  The elaboration of metals forms an exception,
and so far as we know the only one.  The copper implements
not unfrequently of excellent workmanship and even now malleable,
which are brought to light in the tombs of Gaul, and the carefully
adjusted Arvernian gold coins, are still at the present day
striking witnesses of the skill of the Celtic workers in copper
and gold; and with this the reports of the ancients well accord,
that the Romans learned the art of tinning from the Bituriges
and that of silvering from the Alesini--inventions, the first of which
was naturally suggested by the traffic' in tin, and both of which
were probably made in the period of Celtic freedom.

Mining

Hand in hand with dexterity in the elaboration of the metals went
the art of procuring them, which had attained, more especially in
the iron mines on the Loire, such a degree of professional skill
that the miners played an important part in the sieges.  The opinion
prevalent among the Romans of this period, that Gaul was one
of the richest gold countries in the world, is no doubt refuted
by the well-known nature of the soil and by the character
of the articles found in the Celtic tombs, in which gold appears
but sparingly and with far less frequency than in the similar
repositories of the true native regions of gold; this conception
no doubt had its origin merely from the descriptions which Greek
travellers and Roman soldiers, doubtless not without strong
exaggeration, gave to their countrymen of the magnificence
of the Arvernian kings,(15) and of the treasures of the Tolosan
temples.(16)  But their stories were not pure fictions.  It may
well be believed that in and near the rivers which flow
from the Alps and the Pyrenees gold-washing and searches for gold,
which are unprofitable at the present value of labour, were worked
with profit and on a considerable scale in ruder times and with a system
of slavery; besides, the commercial relations of Gaul may,
as is not unfrequently the case with half-civilized peoples,
have favoured the accumulation of a dead stock of the precious metals.

Art and Science

The low state of the arts of design is remarkable,
and is the more striking by the side of this mechanical skill
in handling the metals.  The fondness for parti-coloured and brilliant
ornaments shows the want of a proper taste, which is sadly confirmed
by the Gallic coins with their representations sometimes exceedingly
simple, sometimes odd, but always childish in design, and almost
without exception rude beyond parallel in their execution.
It is perhaps unexampled that a coinage practised for centuries
with a certain technical skill should have essentially limited itself
to always imitating two or three Greek dies, and always
with increasing deformity.  On the other hand the art of poetry
was highly valued by the Celts, and intimately blended
with the religious and even with the political institutions
of the nation; we find religious poetry, as well as that of the court
and of the mendicant, flourishing.(17)  Natural science and philosophy
also found, although subject to the forms and fetters of the theology
of the country, a certain amount of attention among the Celts;
and Hellenic humanism met with a ready reception wherever
and in whatever shape it approached them.  The knowledge of writing
was general at least among the priests.  For the most part in free Gaul
the Greek writing was made use of in Caesar's time, as was done
among others by the Helvetii; but in its most southern districts
even then, in consequence of intercourse with the Romanized Celts,
the Latin attained predominance--we meet with it, for instance,
on the Arvernian coins of this period.

Political Organization
Cantonal Constitution

The political development of the Celtic nation also presents
very remarkable phenomena.  The constitution of the state was based
in this case, as everywhere, on the clan-canton, with its prince,
its council of the elders, and its community of freemen capable
of bearing arms; but the peculiarity in this case was that it never
got beyond this cantonal constitution.  Among the Greeks and Romans
the canton was very early superseded by the ring-wall as the basis
of political unity; where two cantons found themselves together
within the same walls, they amalgamated into one commonwealth;
where a body of burgesses assigned to a portion of their fellow-
burgesses a new ring-wall, there regularly arose in this way a new
state connected with the mother community only by ties of piety
and, at most, of clientship.  Among the Celts on the other hand
the "burgess-body" continued at all times to be the clan; prince
and council presided over the canton and not over any town,
and the general diet of the canton formed the authority of last resort
in the state.  The town had, as in the east, merely mercantile
and strategic, not political importance; for which reason the Gallic
townships, even when walled and very considerable such as Vienna
and Genava, were in the view of the Greeks and Romans nothing
but villages.  In the time of Caesar the original clan-constitution
still subsisted substantially unaltered among the insular Celts
and in the northern cantons of the mainland; the general assembly held
the supreme authority; the prince was in essential questions bound
by its decrees; the common council was numerous--it numbered
in certain clans six hundred members--but does not appear
to have had more importance than the senate under the Roman kings.
In the more stirring southern portion of the land, again,
one or two generations before Caesar--the children of the last kings
were still living in his time--there had occurred, at least
among the larger clans, the Arverni, Haedui, Sequani, Helvetii,
a revolution which set aside the royal dominion and gave the power
into the hands of the nobility.

Development of Knighthood
Breaking Up of the Old Cantonal Constitution

It is simply the reverse side of the total want of urban
commonwealths among the Celts just noticed, that the opposite pole
of political development, knighthood, so thoroughly preponderates
in the Celtic clan-constitution.  The Celtic aristocracy was to all
appearance a high nobility, for the most part perhaps the members
of the royal or formerly royal families; as indeed it is remarkable
that the heads of the opposite parties in the same clan
very frequently belong to the same house.  These great families
combined in their hands financial, warlike, and political ascendency.
They monopolized the leases of the profitable rights of the state.
They compelled the free commons, who were oppressed by the burden
of taxation, to borrow from them, and to surrender their freedom
first de facto as debtors, then de jure as bondmen.  They developed
the system of retainers, that is, the privilege of the nobility
to surround themselves with a number of hired mounted servants--
the -ambacti- as they were called (18)--and thereby to form a state
within the state; and, resting on the support of these troops
of their own, they defied the legal authorities and the common levy
and practically broke up the commonwealth.  If in a clan,
which numbered about 80,000 men capable of arms, a single noble
could appear at the diet with 10,000 retainers, not reckoning
the bondmen and the debtors, it is clear that such an one
was more an independent dynast than a burgess of his clan.  Moreover,
the leading families of the different clans were closely connected
and through intermarriages and special treaties formed virtually
a compact league, in presence of which the single clan was powerless.
Therefore the communities were no longer able to maintain
the public peace, and the law of the strong arm reigned throughout.
The dependent found protection only from his master, whom duty
and interest compelled to redress the injury inflicted on his client;
the state had no longer the power to protect those who were free,
and consequently these gave themselves over in numbers to some
powerful man as clients.

Abolition of the Monarchy

The common assembly lost its political importance; and even
the power of the prince, which should have checked the encroachments
of the nobility, succumbed to it among the Celts as well as in Latium.
In place of the king came the "judgment-worker" or -Vergobretus-,(19)
who was like the Roman consul nominated only for a year.
So far as the canton still held together at all, it was led
by the common council, in which naturally the heads of the aristocracy
usurped the government.  Of course under such circumstances
there was agitation in the several clans much in the same way
as there had been agitation in Latium for centuries after the expulsion
of the kings: while the nobility of the different communities combined
to form a separate alliance hostile to the power of the community,
the multitude ceased not to desire the restoration of the monarchy;
and not unfrequently a prominent nobleman attempted, as Spurius
Cassius had done in Rome, with the support of the mass of those
belonging to the canton to break down the power of his peers,
and to reinstate the crown in its rights for his own special benefit.

Efforts towards National Unity

While the individual cantons were thus irremediably declining,
the sense of unity was at the same time powerfully stirring
in the nation and seeking in various ways to take shape and hold.
That combination of the whole Celtic nobility in contradistinction
to the individual canton-unions, while disturbing the existing order
of things, awakened and fostered the conception of the collective
unity of the nation.  The attacks directed against the nation
from without, and the continued diminution of its territory in war
with its neighbours, operated in the same direction.  Like the Hellenes
in their wars with the Persians, and the Italians in their wars
with the Celts, the Transalpine Gauls seem to have become conscious
of the existence and the power of their national unity in the wars
against Rome.  Amidst the dissensions of rival clans and all their
feudal quarrelling there might still be heard the voices of those
who were ready to purchase the independence of the nation
at the cost of the independence of the several cantons, and even
at that of the seignorial rights of the knights.  The thorough
popularity of the opposition to a foreign yoke was shown by the wars
of Caesar, with reference to whom the Celtic patriot party occupied
a position entirely similar to that of the German patriots
towards Napoleon; its extent and organization are attested,
among other things, by the telegraphic rapidity with which news
was communicated from one point to another.

Religious Union of the Nation
Druids

The universality and the strength of the Celtic national feeling
would be inexplicable but for the circumstance that, amidst
the greatest political disruption, the Celtic nation had for long
been centralized in respect of religion and even of theology.
The Celtic priesthood or, to use the native name, the corporation
of the Druids, certainly embraced the British islands and all Gaul,
and perhaps also other Celtic countries, in a common religious-
national bond.  It possessed a special head elected by the priests
themselves; special schools, in which its very comprehensive
tradition was transmitted; special privileges, particularly
exemption from taxation and military service, which every clan
respected; annual councils, which were held near Chartres
at the "centre of the Celtic earth"; and above all, a believing people,
who in painful piety and blind obedience to their priests seem
to have been nowise inferior to the Irish of modern times.  It may
readily be conceived that such a priesthood attempted to usurp,
as it partially did usurp, the secular government; where the annual
monarchy subsisted, it conducted the elections in the event
of an interregnum; it successfully laid claim to the right of excluding
individuals and whole communities from religious, and consequently
also from civil, society; it was careful to draw to itself the most
important civil causes, especially processes as to boundaries
and inheritance; on the ground, apparently, of its right to exclude
from the community, and perhaps also of the national custom
that criminals should be by preference taken for the usual
human sacrifices, it developed an extensive priestly criminal
jurisdiction, which was co-ordinate with that of the kings
and vergobrets; it even claimed the right of deciding on war and peace.
The Gauls were not far removed from an ecclesiastical state
with its pope and councils, its immunities, interdicts,
and spiritual courts; only this ecclesiastical state did not,
like that of recent times, stand aloof from the nations,
but was on the contrary pre-eminently national.

Want of Political Centralization
The Canton-Leagues

But while the sense of mutual relationship was thus vividly
awakened among the Celtic tribes, the nation was still precluded
from attaining a basis of political centralization such as Italy
found in the Roman burgesses, and the Hellenes and Germans
in the Macedonian and Frank kings.  The Celtic priesthood and likewise
the nobility--although both in a certain sense represented and combined
the nation--were yet, on the one hand, incapable of uniting it
in consequence of their particular class-interests, and, on the other
hand, sufficiently powerful to allow no king and no canton to accomplish
the work of union.  Attempts at this work were not wanting;
they followed, as the cantonal constitution suggested,
the system of hegemony.  A powerful canton induced a weaker
to become subordinate, on such a footing that the leading canton
acted for the other as well as for itself in its external relations
and stipulated for it in state-treaties, while the dependent canton
bound itself to render military service and sometimes also to pay
a tribute.  In this way a series of separate leagues arose;
but there was no leading canton for all Gaul--no tie, however
loose, combining the nation as a whole.

The Belgic League
The Maritime Cantons
The Leagues of Central Gaul

It has been already mentioned(20) that the Romans
at the commencement of their Transalpine conquests found in the north
a Britanno-Belgic league under the leadership of the Suessiones,
and in central and southern Gaul the confederation of the Arverni,
with which latter the Haedui, although having a weaker body
of clients, carried on a rivalry.  In Caesar's time we find the Belgae
in north-eastern Gaul between the Seine and the Rhine still forming
such an association, which, however, apparently no longer extends
to Britain; by their side there appears, in the modern Normandy
and Brittany, the league of the Aremorican or the maritime cantons:
in central or proper Gaul two parties as formerly contended
for the hegemony, the one headed by the Haedui, the other by the Sequani
after the Arvernians weakened by the wars with Rome had retired.
These different confederacies subsisted independently side by side;
the leading states of central Gaul appear never to have extended
their clientship to the north-east nor, seriously, perhaps even
to the north-west of Gaul.

Character of Those Leagues

The impulse of the nation towards freedom found doubtless a certain
gratification in these cantonal unions; but they were in every
respect unsatisfactory.  The union was of the loosest kind, constantly
fluctuating between alliance and hegemony; the representation
of the whole body in peace by the federal diets, in war
by the general,(21) was in the highest degree feeble. The Belgian
confederacy alone seems to have been bound together somewhat
more firmly; the national enthusiasm, from which the successful
repulse of the Cimbri proceeded,(22) may have proved beneficial
to it.  The rivalries for the hegemony made a breach in every
league, which time did not close but widened, because the victory
of one competitor still left his opponent in possession
of political existence, and it always remained open to him,
even though he had submitted to clientship, subsequently to renew
the struggle.  The rivalry among the more powerful cantons not only
set these at variance, but spread into every dependent clan,
into every village, often indeed into every house, for each individual
chose his side according to his personal relations.  As Hellas
exhausted its strength not so much in the struggle of Athens against
Sparta as in the internal strife of the Athenian and Lacedaemonian
factions in every dependent community, and even in Athens itself,
so the rivalry of the Arverni and Haedui with its repetitions
on a smaller and smaller scale destroyed the Celtic people.

The Celtic Military System
Cavalry

The military capability of the nation felt the reflex influence
of these political and social relations.  The cavalry was throughout
the predominant arm; alongside of which among the Belgae, and still
more in the British islands, the old national war-chariots appear
in remarkable perfection.  These equally numerous and efficient
bands of combatants on horseback and in chariots were formed
from the nobility and its vassals; for the nobles had a genuine knightly
delight in dogs and horses, and were at much expense to procure
noble horses of foreign breed.  It is characteristic of the spirit
and the mode of fighting of these nobles that, when the levy
was called out, whoever could keep his seat on horseback,
even the gray-haired old man, took the field, and that, when on the point
of beginning a combat with an enemy of whom they made little account,
they swore man by man that they would keep aloof from house
and homestead, unless their band should charge at least twice through
the enemy's line.  Among the hired warriors the free-lance spirit
prevailed with all its demoralized and stolid indifference towards
their own life and that of others.  This is apparent from the stories--
however anecdotic their colouring--of the Celtic custom of tilting
by way of sport and now and then fighting for life or death
at a banquet, and of the usage (which prevailed among the Celts,
and outdid even the Roman gladiatorial games) of selling themselves
to be killed for a set sum of money or a number of casks of wine,
and voluntarily accepting the fatal blow stretched on their shield
before the eyes of the whole multitude.

Infantry

By the side of these mounted warriors the infantry fell
into the background.  In the main it essentially resembled the bands
of Celts, with whom the Romans had fought in Italy and Spain.
The large shield was, as then, the principal weapon of defence;
among the offensive arms, on the other hand, the long thrusting
lance now played the chief part in room of the sword.  Where several
cantons waged war in league, they naturally encamped and fought clan
against clan; there is no trace of their giving to the levy of each
canton military organization and forming smaller and more regular
tactical subdivisions.  A long train of waggons still dragged
the baggage of the Celtic army; instead of an entrenched camp, such as
the Romans pitched every night, the poor substitute of a barricade
of waggons still sufficed.  In the case of certain cantons,
such as the Nervii, the efficiency of their infantry is noticed
as exceptional; it is remarkable that these had no cavalry,
and perhaps were not even a Celtic but an immigrant German tribe.
But in general the Celtic infantry of this period appears
as an unwarlike and unwieldy levy en masse; most of all
in the more southern provinces, where along with barbarism valour
had also disappeared.  The Celt, says Caesar, ventures not to face
the German in battle.  The Roman general passed a censure
still more severe than this judgment on the Celtic infantry,
seeing that, after having become acquainted with them
in his first campaign, he never again employed them
in connection with Roman infantry.

Stage of Development of the Celtic Civilization

If we survey the whole condition of the Celts as Caesar found it
in the Transalpine regions, there is an unmistakeable advance
in civilization, as compared with the stage of culture at which
the Celts came before us a century and a half previously in the valley
of the Po.  Then the militia, excellent of its kind, thoroughly
preponderated in their armies;(23) now the cavalry occupies
the first place.  Then the Celts dwelt in open villages; now well-
constructed walls surrounded their townships.  The objects too
found in the tombs of Lombardy are, especially as respects articles
of copper and glass, far inferior to those of northern Gaul.
Perhaps the most trustworthy measure of the increase of culture
is the sense of a common relationship in the nation; so little
of it comes to light in the Celtic battles fought on the soil of what
is now Lombardy, while it strikingly appears in the struggles
against Caesar.  To all appearance the Celtic nation, when Caesar
encountered it, had already reached the maximum of the culture
allotted to it, and was even now on the decline.  The civilization
of the Transalpine Celts in Caesar's time presents, even for us
who are but very imperfectly informed regarding it, several aspects
that are estimable, and yet more that are interesting; in some
respects it is more akin to the modern than to the Hellenic-Roman
culture, with its sailing vessels, its knighthood, its ecclesiastical
constitution, above all with its attempts, however imperfect,
to build the state not on the city, but on the tribe and in a higher
degree on the nation.  But just because we here meet the Celtic nation
at the culminating point of its development, its lesser degree
of moral endowment or, which is the same thing, its lesser
capacity of culture, comes more distinctly into view.
It was unable to produce from its own resources either a national
art or a national state; it attained at the utmost a national theology
and a peculiar type of nobility.  The original simple valour
was no more; the military courage based on higher morality and judicious
organization, which comes in the train of increased civilization,
had only made its appearance in a very stunted form among
the knights.  Barbarism in the strict sense was doubtless outlived;
the times had gone by, when in Gaul the fat haunch was assigned
to the bravest of the guests, but each of his fellow-guests who thought
himself offended thereby was at liberty to challenge the receiver
on that score to combat, and when the most faithful retainers
of a deceased chief were burnt along with him.  But human sacrifices
still continued, and the maxim of law, that torture was inadmissible
in the case of the free man but allowable in that of the free
woman as well as of slaves, throws a far from pleasing light
on the position which the female sex held among the Celts
even in their period of culture.  The Celts had lost the advantages
which specially belong to the primitive epoch of nations, but had not
acquired those which civilization brings with it when it intimately
and thoroughly pervades a people.

External Relations
Celts and Iberians

Such was the internal condition of the Celtic nation.  It remains
that we set forth their external relations with their neighbours,
and describe the part which they sustained at this moment in the mighty
rival race and rival struggle of the nations, in which it is
everywhere still more difficult to maintain than to acquire.
Along the Pyrenees the relations of the peoples had for long been
peaceably settled, and the times had long gone by when the Celts
there pressed hard on, and to some extent supplanted, the Iberian,
that is, the Basque, original population.  The valleys of the Pyrenees
as well as the mountains of Bearn and Gascony, and also the coast-
steppes to the south of the Garonne, were at the time of Caesar
in the undisputed possession of the Aquitani, a great number
of small tribes of Iberian descent, coming little into contact
with each other and still less with the outer world; in this quarter
only the mouth of the Garonne with the important port of Burdigala
(Bordeaux) was in the hands of a Celtic tribe, the Bituriges-Vivisci.

Celts and Romans
Advance of Roman Trade and Commerce into Free Gaul

Of far greater importance was the contact of the Celtic nation
with the Roman people, and with the Germans.  We need not here repeat--
what has been related already--how the Romans in their slow advance
had gradually pressed back the Celts, had at last occupied the belt
of coast between the Alps and the Pyrenees, and had thereby totally
cut them off from Italy, Spain and the Mediterranean Sea--a catastrophe,
for which the way had already been prepared centuries before
by the laying out of the Hellenic stronghold at the mouth
of the Rhone.  But we must here recall the fact that it was not merely
the superiority of the Roman arms which pressed hard on the Celts,
but quite as much that of Roman culture, which likewise reaped
the ultimate benefit of the respectable beginnings of Hellenic
civilization in Gaul.  Here too, as so often happens, trade
and commerce paved the way for conquest.  The Celt after northern
fashion was fond of fiery drinks; the fact that like the Scythian
he drank the generous wine unmingled and to intoxication,
excited the surprise and the disgust of the temperate southern;
but the trader has no objection to deal with such customers.
Soon the trade with Gaul became a mine of gold for the Italian merchant;
it was nothing unusual there for a jar of wine to be exchanged
for a slave.  Other articles of luxury, such as Italian horses,
found advantageous sale in Gaul.  There were instances even already
of Roman burgesses acquiring landed property beyond the Roman
frontier, and turning it to profit after the Italian fashion;
there is mention, for example, of Roman estates in the canton
of the Segusiavi (near Lyons) as early as about 673.  Beyond doubt it
was a consequence of this that, as already mentioned(24) in free Gaul
itself, e. g. among the Arverni, the Roman language was not unknown
even before the conquest; although this knowledge was presumably
still restricted to few, and even the men of rank in the allied
canton of the Haedui had to be conversed with through interpreters.
Just as the traffickers in fire-water and the squatters led the way
in the occupation of North America, so these Roman wine-traders
and landlords paved the way for, and beckoned onward, the future
conqueror of Gaul.  How vividly this was felt even on the opposite
side, is shown by the prohibition which one of the most energetic
tribes of Gaul, the canton of the Nervii, like some German peoples,
issued against trafficking with the Romans.

Celts and Germans

Still more violent even than the pressure of the Romans
from the Mediterranean was that of the Germans downward from the Baltic
and the North Sea--a fresh stock from the great cradle of peoples
in the east, which made room for itself by the side of its elder
brethren with youthful vigour, although also with youthful
rudeness.  Though the tribes of this stock dwelling nearest
to the Rhine--the Usipetes, Tencteri, Sugambri, Ubii--had begun to be
in some degree civilized, and had at least ceased voluntarily
to change their abodes, all accounts yet agree that farther inland
agriculture was of little importance, and the several tribes
had hardly yet attained fixed abodes.  It is significant
in this respect that their western neighbours at this time hardly knew
how to name any one of the peoples of the interior of Germany
by its cantonal name; these were only known to them under the general
appellations of the Suebi, that is, the roving people or nomads,
and the Marcomani, that is, the land-guard(25)--names which were
hardly cantonal names in Caesar's time, although they appeared
as such to the Romans and subsequently became in various cases
names of cantons.

The Right Bank of the Rhine Lost to the Celts

The most violent onset of this great nation fell upon the Celts.
The struggles, in which the Germans probably engaged with the Celts
for the possession of the regions to the east of the Rhine, are
wholly withdrawn from our view.  We are only able to perceive,
that about the end of the seventh century of Rome all the land
as far as the Rhine was already lost to the Celts; that the Boii,
who were probably once settled in Bavaria and Bohemia,(26) were homeless
wanderers; and that even the Black Forest formerly possessed
by the Helvetii,(27) if not yet taken possession of by the German tribes
dwelling in the vicinity, was at least waste debateable border-
land, and was presumably even then, what it was afterwards called,
the Helvetian desert The barbarous strategy of the Germans--which
secured them from hostile attacks by laying waste the neighbourhood
for miles--seems to have been applied here on the greatest scale.

German Tribes on the Left Bank of the Rhine

But the Germans had not remained stationary at the Rhine.
The march of the Cimbrian and Teutonic host, composed, as respects
its flower, of German tribes, which had swept with such force fifty
years before over Pannonia, Gaul, Italy, and Spain, seemed to have
been nothing but a grand reconnaissance.  Already different German
tribes had formed permanent settlements to the west of the Rhine,
especially of its lower course; having intruded as conquerors,
these settlers continued to demand hostages and to levy annual
tribute from the Gallic inhabitants in their neighbourhood,
as if from subjects.  Among these German tribes were the Aduatuci,
who from a fragment of the Cimbrian horde(28) had grown
into a considerable canton, and a number of other tribes afterwards
comprehended under the name of the Tungri on the Maas in the region
of Liege; even the Treveri (about Treves) and the Nervii
(in Hainault), two of the largest and most powerful peoples
of this region, are directly designated by respectable authorities
as Germans.  The complete credibility of these accounts must certainly
remain doubtful, since, as Tacitus remarks in reference to the two
peoples last mentioned, it was subsequently, at least in these regions,
reckoned an honour to be descended of German blood and not to belong
to the little-esteemed Celtic nation; yet the population
in the region of the Scheldt, Maas, and Moselle seems certainly
to have become, in one way or another, largely mingled with German
elements, or at any rate to have come under German influences.
The German settlements themselves were perhaps small;
they were not unimportant, for amidst the chaotic obscurity,
through which we see the stream of peoples on the right bank
of the Rhine ebbing and flowing about this period, we can well perceive
that larger German hordes were preparing to cross the Rhine in the track
of these advanced posts.  Threatened on two sides by foreign domination
and torn by internal dissension, it was scarcely to be expected
that the unhappy Celtic nation would now rally and save itself
by its own vigour.  Dismemberment, and decay in virtue of dismemberment,
had hitherto been its history; how should a nation, which could
name no day like those of Marathon and Salamis, of Aricia and the Raudine
plain--a nation which, even in its time of vigour, had made
no attempt to destroy Massilia by a united effort--now when evening
had come, defend itself against so formidable foes?

The Roman Policy with Reference to the German Invasion

The less the Celts, left to themselves, were a match for the Germans,
the more reason had the Romans carefully to watch over the complications
in which the two nations might be involved.  Although the movements
thence arising had not up to the present time directly affected
them, they and their most important interests were yet concerned
in the issue of those movements.  As may readily be conceived,
the internal demeanour of the Celtic nation had become speedily
and permanently influenced by its outward relations.  As in Greece
the Lacedaemonian party combined with Persia against the Athenians,
so the Romans from their first appearance beyond the Alps had found
a support against the Arverni, who were then the ruling power among
the southern Celts, in their rivals for the hegemony, the Haedui:
and with the aid of these new "brothers of the Roman nation" they had
not merely reduced to subjection the Allobroges and a great portion
of the indirect territory of the Arverni, but had also, in the Gaul
that remained free, occasioned by their influence the transference
of the hegemony from the Arverni to these Haedui.  But while the Greeks
were threatened with danger to their nationality only from one side,
the Celts found themselves hard pressed simultaneously by two
national foes; and it was natural that they should seek from the one
protection against the other, and that, if the one Celtic party
attached itself to the Romans, their opponents should
on the contrary form alliance with the Germans.  This course
was most natural for the Belgae, who were brought by neighbourhood
and manifold intermixture into closer relation to the Germans who had
crossed the Rhine, and moreover, with their less-developed culture,
probably felt themselves at least as much akin to the Suebian
of alien race as to their cultivated Allobrogian or Helvetic
countryman.  But the southern Celts also, among whom now
as already mentioned, the considerable canton of the Sequani
(about Besangon) stood at the head of the party hostile to the Romans,
had every reason at this very time to call in the Germans against
the Romans who immediately threatened them; the remiss government
of the senate and the signs of the revolution preparing in Rome,
which had not remained unknown to the Celts, made this very moment
seem suitable for ridding themselves of the Roman influence
and primarily for humbling the Roman clients, the Haedui.  A rupture
had taken place between the two cantons respecting the tolls
on the Saone, which separated the territory of the Haedui
from that of the Sequani, and about the year 683 the German prince
Ariovistus with some 15,000 armed men had crossed the Rhine
as condottiere of the Sequani.

Ariovistus on the Middle Rhine

The war was prolonged for some years with varying success;
on the whole the results were unfavourable to the Haedui.  Their leader
Eporedorix at length called out their whole clients, and marched
forth with an enormous superiority of force against the Germans.
These obstinately refused battle, and kept themselves under cover
of morasses and forests.  It was not till the clans, weary
of waiting, began to break up and disperse, that the Germans appeared
in the open field, and then Ariovistus compelled a battle
at Admagetobriga, in which the flower of the cavalry of the Haedui
were left on the field.  The Haedui, forced by this defeat
to conclude peace on the terms which the victor proposed, were obliged
to renounce the hegemony, and to consent with their whole adherents
to become clients of the Sequani; they had to bind themselves
to pay tribute to the Sequani or rather to Ariovistus, and to furnish
the children of their principal nobles as hostages; and lastly
they had to swear that they would never demand back these hostages
nor invoke the intervention of the Romans.

Inaction of the Romans

This peace was concluded apparently about 693.(29)  Honour
and advantage enjoined the Romans to come forward in opposition to it;
the noble Haeduan Divitiacus, the head of the Roman party in his clan,
and for that reason now banished by his countrymen, went in person
to Rome to solicit their intervention.  A still more serious
warning was the insurrection of the Allobroges in 693(30)--
the neighbours of the Sequani--which was beyond doubt connected
with these events.  In reality orders were issued to the Gallic
governors to assist the Haedui; they talked of sending consuls
and consular armies over the Alps; but the senate, to whose decision
these affairs primarily fell, at length here also crowned great
words with little deeds.  The insurrection of the Allobroges
was suppressed by arms, but nothing was done for the Haedui;
on the contrary, Ariovistus was even enrolled in 695 in the list
of kings friendly with the Romans.(31)

Foundation of a German Empire in Gaul

The German warrior-prince naturally took this as a renunciation
by the Romans of the Celtic land which they had not occupied;
he accordingly took up his abode there, and began to establish
a German principality on Gallic soil.  It was his intention that
the numerous bands which he had brought with him, and the still
more numerous bands that afterwards followed at his call from home--
it was reckoned that up to 696 some 120,000 Germans had crossed
the Rhine--this whole mighty immigration of the German nation,
which poured through the once opened sluices like a stream over
the beautiful west, should become settled there and form a basis
on which he might build his dominion over Gaul.  The extent
of the German settlements which he called into existence
on the left bank of the Rhine cannot be determined; beyond doubt
it was great, and his projects were far greater still.  The Celts
were treated by him as a wholly subjugated nation, and no distinction
was made between the several cantons.  Even the Sequani, as whose hired
commander-in-chief he had crossed the Rhine, were obliged, as if they
were vanquished enemies, to cede to him for his people a third
of their territory--presumably upper Alsace afterwards inhabited
by the Triboci--where Ariovistus permanently settled with his followers;
nay, as if this were not enough, a second third was afterwards
demanded of them for the Harudes who arrived subsequently.
Ariovistus seemed as if he wished to take up in Gaul the part
of Philip of Macedonia, and to play the master over the Celts
who were friendly to the Germans no less than over those
who adhered to the Romans.

The Germans on the Lower Rhine
The Germans on the Upper Rhine
Spread of the Helvetian Invasion to the Interior of Gaul

The appearance of the energetic German prince in so dangerous
proximity, which could not but in itself excite the most serious
apprehension in the Romans, appeared still more threatening,
inasmuch as it stood by no means alone.  The Usipetes and Tencteri
settled on the right bank of the Rhine, weary of the incessant
devastation of their territory by the overbearing Suebian tribes,
had, the year before Caesar arrived in Gaul (695), set out
from their previous abodes to seek others at the mouth of the Rhine.
They had already taken away from the Menapii there the portion
of their territory situated on the right bank, and it might be
foreseen that they would make the attempt to establish themselves
also on the left.  Suebian bands, moreover, assembled between
Cologne and Mayence, and threatened to appear as uninvited guests
in the opposite Celtic canton of the Treveri.  Lastly,
the territory of the most easterly clan of the Celts, the warlike
and numerous Helvetii, was visited with growing frequency
by the Germans, so that the Helvetii, who perhaps even apart from this
were suffering from over-population through the reflux of their
settlers from the territory which they had lost to the north
of the Rhine, and besides were liable to be completely isolated
from their kinsmen by the settlement of Ariovistus in the territory
of the Sequani, conceived the desperate resolution of voluntarily
evacuating the territory hitherto in their possession to the Germans,
and acquiring larger and more fertile abodes to the west
of the Jura, along with, if possible, the hegemony in the interior
of Gaul--a plan which some of their districts had already formed
and attempted to execute during the Cimbrian invasion.(32)
the Rauraci whose territory (Basle and southern Alsace) was similarly
threatened, the remains, moreover, of the Boii who had already
at an earlier period been compelled by the Germans to forsake their
homes and were now unsettled wanderers, and other smaller tribes,
made common cause with the Helvetii.  As early as 693 their flying
parties came over the Jura and even as far as the Roman province;
their departure itself could not be much longer delayed; inevitably
German settlers would then advance into the important region
between the lakes of Constance and Geneva forsaken by its defenders.
From the sources of the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean the German tribes
were in motion; the whole line of the Rhine was threatened by them;
it was a moment like that when the Alamanni and the Franks
threw themselves on the falling empire of the Caesars;
and even now there seemed on the eve of being carried into effect
against the Celts that very movement which was successful
five hundred years afterwards against the Romans.

Caesar Proceeds to Gaul
Caesar's Army

Under these circumstances the new governor Gaius Caesar arrived
in the spring of 696 in Narbonese Gaul, which had been added by decree
of the senate to his original province embracing Cisalpine Gaul
along with Istria and Dalmatia.  His office, which was committed
to him first for five years (to the end of 700), then in 699
for five more (to the end of 705), gave him the right to nominate
ten lieutenants of propraetorian rank, and (at least according to
his own interpretation) to fill up his legions, or even to form
new ones at his discretion out of the burgess-population--who were
especially numerous in Cisalpine Gaul--of the territory under his
sway.  The army, which he received in the two provinces, consisted,
as regards infantry of the line, of four legions trained and inured
to war, the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth, or at the utmost
24,000 men, to which fell to be added, as usual, the contingents
of the subjects.  The cavalry and light-armed troops, moreover,
were represented by horsemen from Spain, and by Numidian, Cretan,
and Balearic archers and slingers.  The staff of Caesar--the elite
of the democracy of the capital--contained, along with not a few
useless young men of rank, some able officers, such as Publius
Crassus the younger son of the old political ally of Caesar,
and Titus Labienus, who followed the chief of the democracy
as a faithful adjutant from the Forum to the battle-field.
Caesar had not received definite instructions; to one
who was discerning and courageous these were implied
in the circumstances with which he had to deal.  Here too
the negligence of the senate had to be retrieved, and first of all
the stream of migration of the German peoples had to be checked.

Repulse of the Helvetii

Just at this time the Helvetic invasion, which was closely
interwoven with the German and had been in preparation for years,
began.  That they might not make a grant of their abandoned huts
to the Germans and might render their own return impossible,
the Helvetii had burnt their towns and villages; and their long
trains of waggons, laden with women, children, and the best part
of their moveables, arrived from all sides at the Leman lake near
Genava (Geneva), where they and their comrades had fixed their
rendezvous for the 28th of March(33) of this year.  According
to their own reckoning the whole body consisted of 368,000 persons,
of whom about a fourth part were able to bear arms.  As the mountain
chain of the Jura, stretching from the Rhine to the Rhone, almost
completely closed in the Helvetic country towards the west,
and its narrow defiles were as ill adapted for the passage
of such a caravan as they were well adapted for defence, the leaders
had resolved to go round in a southerly direction, and to open up
for themselves a way to the west at the point, where the Rhone
has broken through the mountain-chain between the south-western
and highest part of the Jura and the Savoy mountains, near
the modern Fort de l'Ecluse.  But on the right bank here the rocks
and precipices come so close to the river that there remained only
a narrow path which could easily be blocked up, and the Sequani,
to whom this bank belonged, could with ease intercept the route
of the Helvetii.  They preferred therefore to pass over, above the point
where the Rhone breaks through, to the left Allobrogian bank,
with the view of regaining the right bank further down the stream
where the Rhone enters the plain, and then marching on towards
the level west of Gaul; there the fertile canton of the Santones
(Saintonge, the valley of the Charente) on the Atlantic Ocean
was selected by the wanderers for their new abode.  This march led,
where it touched the left bank of the Rhone, through Roman territory;
and Caesar, otherwise not disposed to acquiesce in the establishment
of the Helvetii in western Gaul, was firmly resolved not to permit
their passage.  But of his four legions three were stationed far
off at Aquileia; although he called out in haste the militia
of the Transalpine province, it seemed scarcely possible with so small
a force to hinder the innumerable Celtic host from crossing
the Rhone, between its exit from the Leman lake at Geneva
and the point of its breaking through the mountains, over a distance
of more than fourteen miles.  Caesar, however, by negotiations
with the Helvetii, who would gladly have effected by peaceable means
the crossing of the river and the march through the Allobrogian
territory, gained a respite of fifteen days, which was employed
in breaking down the bridge over the Rhone at Genava, and barring
the southern bank of the Rhone against the enemy by an entrenchment
nearly nineteen miles long: it was the first application
of the system--afterwards carried out on so immense a scale
by the Romans--of guarding the frontier of the empire in a military point
of view by a chain of forts placed in connection with each other
by ramparts and ditches.  The attempts of the Helvetii to gain
the other bank at different places in boats or by means of fords
were successfully frustrated by the Romans in these lines,
and the Helvetii were compelled to desist from the passage of the Rhone.

The Helvetii Move towards Gaul

On the other hand, the party in Gaul hostile to the Romans,
which hoped to obtain a powerful reinforcement in the Helvetii,
more especially the Haeduan Dumnorix brother of Divitiacus,
and at the head of the national party in his canton as the latter
wasat the head of the Romans, procured for them a passage
through the passes of the Jura and the territory of the Sequani.
The Romans had no legal title to forbid this; but other and higher
interestswereat stake for them in the Helvetic expedition than
the question of the formal integrity of the Roman territory-- interests
which could only be guarded, if Caesar, instead of confining himself,
as all the governors of the senate and even Marius(34) had done,
to the modest task of watching the frontier, should cross what had hitherto
been the frontier at the head of a considerable army.  Caesar was general
not of the senate, but of the state; he showed no hesitation.
He had immediately proceeded from Genava in person to Italy,
and with characteristic speed brought up the three legions
cantoned there as well as two newly-formed legions of recruits.

The Helvetian War

These troops he united with the corps stationed at Genava,
and crossed the Rhone with his whole force.  His unexpected appearance
in the territory of the Haedui naturally at once restored the Roman
party there to power, which was not unimportant as regarded
supplies.  He found the Helvetii employed in crossing the Saone,
and moving from the territory of the Sequani into that
of the Haedui; those of them that were still on the left bank
of the Saone, especially the corps of the Tigorini, were caught
and destroyed by the Romans rapidly advancing.  The bulk
of the expedition, however, had already crossed to the right bank
of the river; Caesar followed them and in twenty-four hours effected
the passage, which the unwieldy host of the Helvetii had not been able
to accomplish in twenty days.  The Helvetii, prevented by this passage
of the river on the part of the Roman army from continuing
their march westward, turned in a northerly direction, doubtless
under the supposition that Caesar would not venture to follow them
far into the interior of Gaul, and with the intention, if he should
desist from following them, of turning again toward their proper
destination.  For fifteen days the Roman army marched behind
that of the enemy at a distance of about four miles, clinging
to its rear, and hoping for an advantageous opportunity of assailing
the Helvetic host under conditions favourable to victory,
and destroying it.  But this moment came not: unwieldy as was the march
of the Helvetic caravan, the leaders knew how to guard against
a surprise, and appeared to be copiously provided with supplies
as well as most accurately informed by their spies of every event
in the Roman camp.  On the other hand the Romans began to suffer
from want of necessaries, especially when the Helvetii removed
from the Saone and the means of river-transport ceased.  The non-arrival
of the supplies promised by the Haedui, from which this embarrassment
primarily arose, excited the more suspicion, as both armies
were still moving about in their territory.  Moreover the considerable
Roman cavalry, numbering almost 4000 horse, proved utterly
untrustworthy--which doubtless admitted of explanation,
for they consisted almost wholly of Celtic horsemen, especially
of the mounted retainers of the Haedui, under the command of Dumnorix
the well-known enemy of the Romans, and Caesar himself had taken
them over still more as hostages than as soldiers.  There was good
reason to believe that a defeat which they suffered at the hands
of the far weaker Helvetic cavalry was occasioned by themselves,
and that the enemy was informed by them of all occurrences
in the Roman camp.  The position of Caesar grew critical; it was
becoming disagreeably evident, how much the Celtic patriot party
could effect even with the Haedui in spite of their official
alliance with Rome, and of the distinctive interests of this canton
inclining it towards the Romans; what was to be the issue, if they
ventured deeper and deeper into a country full of excitement,
and if they removed daily farther from their means of communication?
The armies were just marching past Bibracte (Autun), the capital
of the Haedui, at a moderate distance; Caesar resolved to seize
this important place by force before he continued his march
into the interior; and it is very possible, that he intended to desist
altogether from farther pursuit and to establish himself
in Bibracte.  But when he ceased from the pursuit and turned
against Bibracte, the Helvetii thought that the Romans were making
preparations for flight, and now attacked in their turn.

Battle at Bibracte

Caesar desired nothing better.  The two armies posted themselves
on two parallel chains of hills; the Celts began the engagement,
broke up the Roman cavalry which had advanced into the plain,
and rushed on against the Roman legions posted on the slope of the hill,
but were there obliged to give way before Caesar's veterans.
When the Romans thereupon, following up their advantage, descended
in their turn to the plain, the Celts again advanced against them,
and a reserved Celtic corps took them at the same time in flank.
The reserve of the Roman attacking column was pushed forward
against the latter; it forced it away from the main body towards
the baggage and the barricade of waggons, where it was destroyed.
The bulk of the Helvetic host was at length brought to give way,
and compelled to beat a retreat in an easterly direction--the opposite
of that towards which their expedition led them.  This day had
frustrated the scheme of the Helvetii to establish for themselves
new settlements on the Atlantic Ocean, and handed them over
to the pleasure of the victor; but it had been a hot day also
for the conquerors.  Caesar, who had reason for not altogether trusting
his staff of officers, had at the very outset sent away
all the officers' horses, so as to make the necessity of holding
their ground thoroughly clear to his troops; in fact the battle,
had the Romans lost it, would have probably brought about
the annihilation of the Roman army.  The Roman troops
were too much exhausted to pursue the conquered with vigour;
but in consequence of the proclamation of Caesar that he would
treat all who should support the Helvetii as like the Helvetii
themselves enemies of the Romans, all support was refused
to the beaten army whithersoever it went-- in the first instance,
in the canton of the Lingones (about Langres)--and, deprived
of all supplies and of their baggage and burdened by the mass
of camp-followers incapable of fighting, they were under the necessity
of submitting to the Roman general.

The Helvetii Sent back to Their Original Abode

The lot of the vanquished was a comparatively mild one.
The Haedui were directed to concede settlements in their territory
to the homeless Boii; and this settlement of the conquered foe
in the midst of the most powerful Celtic cantons rendered almost
the services of a Roman colony.  The survivors of the Helvetii
and Rauraci, something more than a third of the men that had marched
forth, were naturally sent back to their former territory.
It was incorporated with the Roman province, but the inhabitants
were admitted to alliance with Rome under favourable conditions,
in order to defend, under Roman supremacy, the frontier along
the upper Rhine against the Germans.  Only the south-western point
of the Helvetic canton was directly taken into the possession
of the Romans, and there subsequently, on the charming shore
of the Leman lake, the old Celtic town Noviodunum (now Nyon)
was converted into a Roman frontier-fortress,
the "Julian equestrian colony."(35)

Caesar and Ariovistus
Negotiations

Thus the threatening invasion of the Germans on the upper Rhine
was obviated, and, at the same time, the party hostile to the Romans
among the Celts was humbled.  On the middle Rhine also,
where the Germans had already crossed years ago, and where the power
of Ariovistus which vied with that of Rome in Gaul was daily
spreading, there was need of similar action, and the occasion
for a rupture was easily found.  In comparison with the yoke threatened
or already imposed on them by Ariovistus, the Roman supremacy probably
now appeared to the greater part of the Celts in this quarter
the lesser evil; the minority, who retained their hatred
of the Romans, had at least to keep silence.  A diet of the Celtic
tribes of central Gaul, held under Roman influence, requested
the Roman general in name of the Celtic nation for aid against
the Germans.  Caesar consented.  At his suggestion the Haedui stopped
the payment of the tribute stipulated to be paid to Ariovistus,
and demanded back the hostages furnished; and when Ariovistus
on account of this breach of treaty attacked the clients of Rome,
Caesar took occasion thereby to enter into direct negotiation
with him and specially to demand, in addition to the return
of the hostages and a promise to keep peace with the Haedui,
that Ariovistus should bind himself to allure no more Germans
over the Rhine.  The German general replied to the Roman, in the full
consciousness of equality of rights, that northern Gaul had become
subject to him by right of war as fairly as southern Gaul
to the Romans; and that, as he did not hinder the Romans from taking
tribute from the Allobroges, so they should not prevent him
from taxing his subjects.  In later secret overtures it appeared
that the prince was well aware of the circumstances of the Romans;
he mentioned the invitations which had been addressed to him from Rome
to put Caesar out of the way, and offered, if Caesar would leave
to him northern Gaul, to assist him in turn to obtain the sovereignty
of Italy--as the party-quarrels of the Celtic nation had opened up
an entrance for him into Gaul, he seemed to expect from the party-
quarrels of the Italian nation the consolidation of his rule there.
For centuries no such language of power completely on a footing
of equality and bluntly and carelessly expressing its independence had
been held in presence of the Romans, as was now heard from the king
of the German host; he summarily refused to come, when the Roman
general suggested that he should appear personally before him
according to the usual practice with client-princes.

Ariovistus Attacked
And Beaten

It was the more necessary not to delay; Caesar immediately set out
against Ariovistus.  A panic seized his troops, especially his officers
when they were to measure their strength with the flower
of the German troops that for fourteen years had not come
under shelter of a roof: it seemed as if the deep decay of Roman moral
and military discipline would assert itself and provoke desertion
and mutiny even in Caesar's camp.  But the general, while declaring
that in case of need he would march with the tenth legion alone
against the enemy, knew not merely how to influence these
by such an appeal to honour, but also how to bind the other regiments
to their eagles by warlike emulation, and to inspire the troops
with something of his own energy.  Without leaving them time
for reflection, he led them onward in rapid marches, and fortunately
anticipated Ariovistus in the occupation of Vesontio (Besancon),
the capital of the Sequani.  A personal conference between the two
generals, which took place at the request of Ariovistus, seemed
as if solely meant to cover an attempt against the person of Caesar;
arms alone could decide between the two oppressors of Gaul.  The war
came temporarily to a stand.  In lower Alsace somewhere in the region
of Muhlhausen, five miles from the Rhine,(36) the two armies
lay at a little distance from each other, till Ariovistus
with his very superior force succeeded in marching past the Roman camp,
placing himself in its rear, and cutting off the Romans
from their base and their supplies.  Caesar attempted to free himself
from his painful situation by a battle; but Ariovistus did not accept it.
Nothing remained for the Roman general but, in spite of
his inferior strength, to imitate the movement of the Germans,
and to recover his communications by making two legions march past
the enemy and take up a position beyond the camp of the Germans,
while four legions remained behind in the former camp.  Ariovistus,
when he saw the Romans divided, attempted an assault on their lesser
camp; but the Romans repulsed it.  Under the impression made
by this success, the whole Roman army was brought forward
to the attack; and the Germans also placed themselves in battle array,
in a long line, each tribe for itself, the cars of the army
with the baggage and women being placed behind them to render flight
more difficult.  The right wing of the Romans, led by Caesar himself,
threw itself rapidly on the enemy, and drove them before it;
the right wing of the Germans was in like manner successful.
The balance still stood equal; but the tactics of the reserve,
which had decided so many other conflicts with barbarians, decided
the conflict with the Germans also in favour of the Romans;
their third line, which Publius Crassus seasonably sent to render help,
restored the battle on the left wing and thereby decided
the victory.  The pursuit was continued to the Rhine; only a few,
including the king, succeeded in escaping to the other bank (696).

German Settlements on the Left Bank of the Rhine

Thus brilliantly the Roman rule announced its advent to the mighty
stream, which the Italian soldiers here saw for the first time;
by a single fortunate battle the line of the Rhine was won.
The fate of the German settlements on the left bank of the Rhine
lay in the hands of Caesar; the victor could destroy them,
but he did not do so.  The neighbouring Celtic cantons--the Sequani,
Leuci, Mediomatrici--were neither capable of self-defence
nor trustworthy; the transplanted Germans promised to become
not merely brave guardians of the frontier but also better subjects
of Rome, for their nationality severed them from the Celts,
and their own interest in the preservation of their newly-won
settlements severed them from their countrymen across the Rhine,
so that in their isolated position they could not avoid adhering
to the central power.  Caesar here, as everywhere, preferred
conquered foes to doubtful friends; he left the Germans settled
by Ariovistus along the left bank of the Rhine--the Triboci
about Strassburg, the Nemetes about Spires, the Vangiones
about Worms--in possession of their new abodes, and entrusted them
with the guarding of the Rhine-frontier against their countrymen.(37)
The Suebi, who threatened the territory of the Treveri on the middle
Rhine, on receiving news of the defeat of Ariovistus, again retreated
into the interior of Germany; on which occasion they sustained
considerable loss by the way at the hands of the adjoining tribes.

The Rhine Boundary

The consequences of this one campaign were immense; they were felt
for many centuries after.  The Rhine had become the boundary
of the Roman empire against the Germans.  In Gaul, which was no longer
able to govern itself, the Romans had hitherto ruled on the south
coast, while lately the Germans had attempted to establish themselves
farther up.  The recent events had decided that Gaul was to succumb
not merely in part but wholly to the Roman supremacy,
and that the natural boundary presented by the mighty river was also
to become the political boundary.  The senate in its better times
had not rested, till the dominion of Rome had reached the natural
bounds of Italy--the Alps and the Mediterranean--and its adjacent
islands.  The enlarged empire also needed a similar military
rounding off; but the present government left the matter
to accident, and sought at most to see, not that the frontiers
were capable of defence, but that they should not need to be defended
directly by itself.  People felt that now another spirit
and another arm began to guide the destinies of Rome.

Subjugation of Gaul
Belgic Expedition

The foundations of the future edifice were laid; but in order
to finish the building and completely to secure the recognition
of the Roman rule by the Gauls, and that of the Rhine-frontier by
the Germans, very much still remained to be done.  All central Gaul
indeed from the Roman frontier as far up as Chartres and Treves
submitted without objection to the new ruler; and on the upper
and middle Rhine also no attack was for the present to be apprehended
from the Germans.  But the northern provinces--as well
the Aremorican cantons in Brittany and Normandy as the more powerful
confederation of the Belgae--were not affected by the blows
directed against central Gaul, and found no occasion to submit
to the conqueror of Ariovistus.  Moreover, as was already remarked,
very close relations subsisted between the Belgae and the Germans
over the Rhine, and at the mouth of the Rhine also Germanic tribes
made themselves ready to cross the stream.  In consequence of this
Caesar set out with his army, now increased to eight legions,
in the spring of 697 against the Belgic cantons.  Mindful of the brave
and successful resistance which fifty years before they had
with united strength presented to the Cimbri on the borders of their
land,(38) and stimulated by the patriots who had fled to them
in numbers from central Gaul, the confederacy of the Belgae sent
their whole first levy--300,000 armed men under the leadership of Galba
the king of the Suessiones--to their southern frontier to receive
Caesar there.  A single canton alone, that of the powerful Remi
(about Rheims) discerned in this invasion of the foreigners
an opportunity to shake off the rule which their neighbours
the Suessiones exercised over them, and prepared to take up
in the north the part which the Haedui had played in central Gaul.
The Roman and the Belgic armies arrived in their territory almost
at the same time.

Conflicts on the Aisne
Submission of the Western Cantons

Caesar did not venture to give battle to the brave enemy six times
as strong; to the north of the Aisne, not far from the modern
Pontavert between Rheims and Laon, he pitched his camp on a plateau
rendered almost unassailable on all sides partly by the river
and by morasses, partly by fosses and redoubts, and contented himself
with thwarting by defensive measures the attempts of the Belgae
to cross the Aisne and thereby to cut him off from his communications.
When he counted on the likelihood that the coalition would speedily
collapse under its own weight, he had reckoned rightly.  King Galba
was an honest man, held in universal respect; but he was not equal
to the management of an army of 300,000 men on hostile soil.
No progress was made, and provisions began to fail; discontent
and dissension began to insinuate themselves into the camp
of the confederates.  The Bellovaci in particular, equal to
the Suessiones in power, and already dissatisfied that the supreme
command of the confederate army had not fallen to them, could no longer
be detained after news had arrived that the Haedui as allies
of the Romans were making preparations to enter the Bellovacic territory.
They determined to break up and go home; though for honour's sake
all the cantons at the same time bound themselves to hasten
with their united strength to the help of the one first attacked,
the miserable dispersion of the confederacy was but miserably palliated
by such impracticable stipulations.  It was a catastrophe
which vividly reminds us of that which occurred almost
on the same spot in 1792; and, just as with the campaign in Champagne,
the defeat was all the more severe that it took place without a battle.
The bad leadership of the retreating army allowed the Roman general
to pursue it as if it were beaten, and to destroy a portion
of the contingents that had remained to the last.  But the consequences
of the victory were not confined to this.  As Caesar advanced
into the western cantons of the Belgae, one after another
gave themselves up as lost almost without resistance; the powerful
Suessiones (about Soissons), as well as their rivals, the Bellovaci
(about Beauvais) and the Ambiani (about Amiens).  The towns opened
their gates when they saw the strange besieging machines,
the towers rolling up to their walls; those who would not submit
to the foreign masters sought a refuge beyond the sea in Britain.

The Conflict with the Nervii

But in the eastern cantons the national feeling was more
energetically roused.  The Viromandui (about Arras), the Atrebates
(about St. Quentin), the German Aduatuci (about Namur), but above
all the Nervii (in Hainault) with their not inconsiderable body
of clients, little inferior in number to the Suessiones and Bellovaci,
far superior to them in valour and vigorous patriotic spirit,
concluded a second and closer league, and assembled their forces
on the upper Sambre.  Celtic spies informed them most accurately
of the movements of the Roman army; their own local knowledge,
and the high tree-barricades which were formed everywhere in these
districts to obstruct the bands of mounted robbers who often
visited them, allowed the allies to conceal their own operations
for the most part from the view of the Romans.  When these arrived
on the Sambre not far from Bavay, and the legions were occupied
in pitching their camp on the crest of the left bank, while
the cavalry and light infantry were exploring the opposite heights,
the latter were all at once assailed by the whole mass of the enemy's
forces and driven down the hill into the river.  In a moment
the enemy had crossed this also, and stormed the heights of the left
bank with a determination that braved death.  Scarcely was there
time left for the entrenching legionaries to exchange the mattock
for the sword; the soldiers, many without helmets, had to fight
just as they stood, without line of battle, without plan, without
proper command; for, owing to the suddenness of the attack
and the intersection of the ground by tall hedges, the several
divisions had wholly lost their communications.  Instead of a battle
there arose a number of unconnected conflicts.  Labienus with the left
wing overthrew the Atrebates and pursued them even across
the river.  The Roman central division forced the Viromandui down
the declivity.  But the right wing, where the general himself
was present, was outflanked by the far more numerous Nervii
the more easily, as the central division carried away by its
own success had evacuated the ground alongside of it, and even
the half-ready camp was occupied by the Nervii; the two legions,
each separately rolled together into a dense mass and assailed
in front and on both flanks, deprived of most of their officers
and their best soldiers, appeared on the point of being broken and cut
to pieces.  The Roman camp-followers and the allied troops were already
fleeing in all directions; of the Celtic cavalry whole divisions,
like the contingent of the Treveri, galloped off at full speed,
that from the battle-field itself they might announce at home
the welcome news of the defeat which had been sustained.  Everything
was at stake.  The general himself seized his shield and fought
among the foremost; his example, his call even now inspiring enthusiasm,
induced the wavering ranks to rally.  They had already in some
measure extricated themselves and had at least restored the connection
between the two legions of this wing, when help came up--
partly down from the crest of the bank, where in the interval
the Roman rearguard with the baggage had arrived, partly
from the other bank of the river, where Labienus had meanwhile penetrated
to the enemy's camp and taken possession of it, and now, perceiving
at length the danger that menaced the right wing, despatched
the victorious tenth legion to the aid of his general.  The Nervii,
separated from their confederates and simultaneously assailed
on all sides, now showed, when fortune turned, the same heroic courage
as when they believed themselves victors; still over the pile
of corpses of their fallen comrades they fought to the last man.
According to their own statement, of their six hundred senators
only three survived this day.

Subjugation of the Belgae

After this annihilating defeat the Nervii, Atrebates, and Viromandui
could not but recognize the Roman supremacy.  The Aduatuci, who arrived
too late to take part in the fight on the Sambre, attempted still to hold
their ground in the strongest of their towns (on the mount Falhize
near the Maas not far from Huy), but they too soon submitted. A nocturnal
attack on the Roman camp in front of the town, which they ventured
after the surrender, miscarried; and the perfidy was avenged
by the Romans with fearful severity.  The clients of the Aduatuci,
consisting of the Eburones between the Maas and Rhine and other
small adjoining tribes, were declared independent by the Romans,
while the Aduatuci taken prisoners were sold under the hammer en masse
for the benefit of the Roman treasury.  It seemed as if the fate
which had befallen the Cimbri still pursued even this last
Cimbrian fragment.  Caesar contented himself with imposing
on the other subdued tribes a general disarmament and furnishing
of hostages.  The Remi became naturally the leading canton
in Belgic, like the Haedui in central Gaul; even in the latter
several clans at enmity with the Haedui preferred to rank
among the clients of the Remi.  Only the remote maritime
cantons of the Morini (Artois) and the Menapii (Flanders and Brabant),
and the country between the Scheldt and the Rhine inhabited in great
part by Germans, remained still for the present exempt from Roman
invasion and in possession of their hereditary freedom.

Expeditions against the Maritime Cantons
Venetian War

The turn of the Aremorican cantons came.  In the autumn of 697
Publius Crassus was sent thither with a Roman corps; he induced
the Veneti--who as masters of the ports of the modern Morbihan
and of a respectable fleet occupied the first place among all
the Celtic cantons in navigation and commerce--and generally
the coast-districts between the Loire and Seine, to submit
to the Romans and give them hostages.  But they soon repented.
When in the following winter (697-698) Roman officers
came to these legions to levy requisitions of grain there,
they were detained by the Veneti as counter-hostages.  The example
thus set was quickly followed not only by the Aremorican cantons,
but also by the maritime cantons of the Belgae that still remained
free; where, as in some cantons of Normandy, the common council
refused to join the insurrection, the multitude put them to death
and attached itself with redoubled zeal to the national cause.
The whole coast from the mouth of the Loire to that of the Rhine
rose against Rome; the most resolute patriots from all the Celtic
cantons hastened thither to co-operate in the great work of liberation;
they already calculated on the rising of the whole Belgic confederacy,
on aid from Britain, on the arrival of Germans from beyond the Rhine.

Caesar sent Labienus with all the cavalry to the Rhine, with a view
to hold in check the agitation in the Belgic province, and in case
of need to prevent the Germans from crossing the river; another
of his lieutenants, Quintus Titurius Sabinus, went with three legions
to Normandy, where the main body of the insurgents assembled.
But the powerful and intelligent Veneti were the true centre
of the insurrection; the chief attack by land and sea was directed
against them.  Caesar's lieutenant, Decimus Brutus, brought up
the fleet formed partly of the ships of the subject Celtic cantons,
partly of a number of Roman galleys hastily built on the Loire
and manned with rowers from the Narbonese province; Caesar himself
advanced with the flower of his infantry into the territory of the Veneti.
But these were prepared beforehand, and had with equal skill
and resolution availed themselves of the favourable circumstances
which the nature of the ground in Brittany and the possession
of a considerable naval power presented.  The country was much
intersected and poorly furnished with grain, the towns
were situated for the most part on cliffs and tongues of land,
and were accessible from the mainland only by shallows which it was
difficult to cross; the provision of supplies and the conducting
of sieges were equally difficult for the army attacking by land,
while the Celts by means of their vessels could furnish the towns
easily with everything needful, and in the event of the worst could
accomplish their evacuation.  The legions expended their time
and strength in the sieges of the Venetian townships, only to see
the substantial fruits of victory ultimately carried off in the vessels
of the enemy.

Naval Battle between the Romans and the Veneti
Submission of the Maritime Cantons

Accordingly when the Roman fleet, long detained by storms
at the mouth of the Loire, arrived at length on the coast of Brittany,
it was left to decide the struggle by a naval battle.  The Celts,
conscious of their superiority on this element, brought forth their
fleet against that of the Romans commanded by Brutus.  Not only
did it number 220 sail, far more than the Romans had been able
to bring up, but their high-decked strong sailing-vessels with flat
bottoms were also far better adapted for the high-running waves
of the Atlantic Ocean than the low, lightly-built oared galleys
of the Romans with their sharp keels.  Neither the missiles
nor the boarding-bridges of the Romans could reach the high deck
of the enemy's vessels, and the iron beaks recoiled powerless
from the strong oaken planks.  But the Roman mariners cut the ropes,
by which the yards were fastened to the masts, by means of sickles
fastened to long poles; the yards and sails fell down, and, as they
did not know how to repair the damage speedily, the ship was thus
rendered a wreck just as it is at the present day by the falling
of the masts, and the Roman boats easily succeeded by a joint attack
in mastering the maimed vessel of the enemy.  When the Gauls
perceived this manoeuvre, they attempted to move from the coast
on which they had taken up the combat with the Romans, and to gain
the high seas, whither the Roman galleys could not follow them;
but unhappily for them there suddenly set in a dead calm,
and the immense fleet, towards the equipment of which the maritime
cantons had applied all their energies, was almost wholly destroyed
by the Romans.  Thus was this naval battle--so far as historical
knowledge reaches, the earliest fought on the Atlantic Ocean--
just like the engagement at Mylae two hundred years before,(39)
notwithstanding the most unfavourable circumstances, decided in favour
of the Romans by a lucky invention suggested by necessity.
The consequence of the victory achieved by Brutus was the surrender
of the Veneti and of all Brittany.  More with a view to impress
the Celtic nation, after so manifold evidences of clemency towards
the vanquished, by an example of fearful severity now against those
whose resistance had been obstinate, than with the view of punishing
the breach of treaty and the arrest of the Roman officers, Caesar
caused the whole common council to be executed and the people
of the Venetian canton to the last man to be sold into slavery.
By this dreadful fate, as well as by their intelligence
and their patriotism, the Veneti have more than any other Celtic clan
acquired a title to the sympathy of posterity.

Sabinus meanwhile opposed to the levy of the coast-states assembled
on the Channel the same tactics by which Caesar had in the previous
year conquered the Belgic general levy on the Aisne; he stood
on the defensive till impatience and want invaded the ranks of the enemy,
and then managed by deceiving them as to the temper and strength
of his troops, and above all by means of their own impatience,
to allure them to an imprudent assault upon the Roman camp, in which
they were defeated; whereupon the militia dispersed and the country
as far as the Seine submitted.

Expeditins against the Morini and Menapii

The Morini and Menapii alone persevered in withholding their
recognition of the Roman supremacy.  To compel them to this, Caesar
appeared on their borders; but, rendered wiser by the experiences
of their countrymen, they avoided accepting battle on the borders
of their land, and retired into the forests which then stretched
almost without interruption from the Ardennes towards the German
Ocean.  The Romans attempted to make a road through the forest
with the axe, ranging the felled trees on each side as a barricade
against the enemy's attacks; but even Caesar, daring as he was,
found it advisable after some days of most laborious marching,
especially as it was verging towards winter, to order a retreat,
although but a small portion of the Morini had submitted and the powerful
Menapii had not been reached at all.  In the following year (699)
while Caesar himself was employed in Britain the greater part
of the army was sent afresh against these tribes; but this expedition
also remained in the main unsuccessful.  Nevertheless the result
of the last campaigns was the almost complete reduction of Gaul
under the dominion of the Romans.  While central Gaul had submitted
to it without resistance, during the campaign of 697 the Belgic,
and during that of the following year the maritime, cantons
had been compelled by force of arms to acknowledge the Roman rule.
The lofty hopes, with which the Celtic patriots had begun
the last campaign, had nowhere been fulfilled.  Neither Germans
nor Britons had come to their aid; and in Belgica the presence
of Labienus had sufficed to prevent the renewal of the conflicts
of the previous year.

Establishment of Communications with Italy by the Valais

While Caesar was thus forming the Roman domain in the west by force
of arms into a compact whole, he did not neglect to open up
for the newly-conquered country--which was destined in fact to fill up
the wide gap in that domain between Italy and Spain-communications both
with the Italian home and with the Spanish provinces.  The communication
between Gaul and Italy had certainly been materially facilitated
by the military road laid out by Pompeius in 677 over Mont Genevre;(40)
but since the whole of Gaul had been subdued by the Romans, there was
need of a route crossing the ridge of the Alps from the valley of the Po,
not in a westerly but in a northerly direction, and furnishing a shorter
communication between Italy and central Gaul.  The way which leads over
the Great St. Bernard into the Valais and along the lake of Geneva
had long served the merchant for this purpose; to get this road
into his power, Caesar as early as the autumn of 697 caused Octodurum
(Martigny) to be occupied by Servius Galba, and the inhabitants
of the Valais to be reduced to subjection--a result which was,
of course, merely postponed, not prevented, by the brave resistance
of these mountain-peoples.

And with Spain

To gain communication with Spain, moreover, Publius Crassus
was sent in the following year (698) to Aquitania with instructions
to compel the Iberian tribes dwelling there to acknowledge the Roman
rule.  The task was not without difficulty; the Iberians held
together more compactly than the Celts and knew better than these
how to learn from their enemies.  The tribes beyond the Pyrenees,
especially the valiant Cantabri, sent a contingent to their
threatened countrymen; with this there came experienced officers
trained under the leadership of Sertorius in the Roman fashion,
who introduced as far as possible the principles of the Roman art
of war, and especially of encampment, among the Aquitanian levy
already respectable from its numbers and its valour.
But the excellent officer who led the Romans knew how to surmount
all difficulties, and after some hardly-contested but successful
battles he induced the peoples from the Garonne to the vicinity
of the Pyrenees to submit to the new masters.

Fresh Violations of the Rhine-Boundary by the Germans
The Usipetes and Tencteri

One of the objects which Caesar had proposed to himself--
the subjugation of Gaul--had been in substance, with exceptions
scarcely worth mentioning, attained so far as it could be attained
at all by the sword.  But the other half of the work undertaken
by Caesar was still far from being satisfactorily accomplished,
and the Germans had by no means as yet been everywhere compelled
to recognize the Rhine as their limit.  Even now, in the winter
of 698-699, a fresh crossing of the boundary had taken place
on the lower course of the river, whither the Romans had not yet
penetrated.  The German tribes of the Usipetes and Tencteri
whose attempts to cross the Rhine in the territory of the Menapii
have been already mentioned,(41) had at length, eluding the vigilance
of their opponents by a feigned retreat, crossed in the vessels
belonging to the Menapii--an enormous host, which is said,
including women and children, to have amounted to 430,000 persons.
They still lay, apparently, in the region of Nimeguen and Cleves;
but it was said that, following the invitations of the Celtic
patriot party, they intended to advance into the interior of Gaul;
and the rumour was confirmed by the fact that bands of their
horsemen already roamed as far as the borders of the Treveri.
But when Caesar with his legions arrived opposite to them, the sorely-
harassed emigrants seemed not desirous of fresh conflicts,
but very ready to accept land from the Romans and to till it in peace
under their supremacy.  While negotiations as to this were going on,
a suspicion arose in the mind of the Roman general that the Germans
only sought to gain time till the bands of horsemen sent out
by them had returned.  Whether this suspicion was well founded or not,
we cannot tell; but confirmed in it by an attack, which in spite
of the de facto suspension of arms a troop of the enemy made
on his vanguard, and exasperated by the severe loss thereby sustained,
Caesar believed himself entitled to disregard every consideration
of international law.  When on the second morning the princes
and elders of the Germans appeared in the Roman camp to apologize
for the attack made without their knowledge, they were arrested,
and the multitude anticipating no assault and deprived of their leaders
were suddenly fallen upon by the Roman army.  It was rather a manhunt
than a battle; those that did not fall under the swords of the Romans
were drowned in the Rhine; almost none but the divisions detached
at the time of the attack escaped the massacre and succeeded
in recrossing the Rhine, where the Sugambri gave them an asylu
in their territory, apparently on the Lippe.  The behaviour of Caesar
towards these German immigrants met with severe and just censure
in the senate; but, however little it can be excused, the German
encroachments were emphatically checked by the terror
which it occasioned.

Caesar on the Right Bank of the Rhine

Caesar however found it advisable to take yet a further step
and to lead the legions over the Rhine.  He was not without connections
beyond the river.  the Germans at the stage of culture
which they had then reached, lacked as yet any national coherence;
in political distraction they--though from other causes--fell nothing
short of the Celts.  The Ubii (on the Sieg and Lahn), the most
civilized among the German tribes, had recently been made subject
and tributary by a powerful Suebian canton of the interior, and had
as early as 697 through their envoys entreated Caesar to free them
like the Gauls from the Suebian rule.  It was not Caesar's design
seriously to respond to this suggestion, which would have involved
him in endless enterprises; but it seemed advisable, with the view
of preventing the appearance of the Germanic arms on the south
of the Rhine, at least to show the Roman arms beyond it. The protection
which the fugitive Usipetes and Tencteri had found among the Sugambri
afforded a suitable occasion.  In the region, apparently between
Coblentz and Andernach, Caesar erected a bridge of piles over the Rhine
and led his legions across from the Treverian to the Ubian territory.
Some smaller cantons gave in their submission; but the Sugambri,
against whom the expedition was primarily directed, withdrew,
on the approach of the Roman army, with those under their protection
into the interior.  In like manner the powerful Suebian canton
which oppressed the Ubii--presumably the same which subsequently
appears under the name of the Chatti--caused the districts immediately
adjoining the Ubian territory to be evacuated and the non-combatant
portion of the people to be placed in safety, while all the men
capable of arms were directed to assemble at the centre of the canton.
The Roman general had neither occasion nor desire to accept
this challenge; his object--partly to reconnoitre, partly to produce
an impressive effect if possible upon the Germans, or at least
on the Celts and his countrymen at home, by an expedition
over the Rhine--was substantially attained; after remaining
eighteen days on the right bank of the Rhine he again arrived
in Gaul and broke down the Rhine bridge behind him (699).

Expeditions to Britain

There remained the insular Celts.  From the close connection
between them and the Celts of the continent, especially
the maritime cantons, it may readily be conceived that they had
at least sympathized with the national resistance, and that if they
did not grant armed assistance to the patriots, they gave at any rate
an honourable asylum in their sea-protected isle to every one
who was no longer safe in his native land.  This certainly involved
a danger, if not for the present, at any rate for the future; it
seemed judicious--if not to undertake the conquest of the island
itself--at any rate to conduct there also defensive operations
by offensive means, and to show the islanders by a landing
on the coast that the arm of the Romans reached even across the Channel.
The first Roman officer who entered Brittany, Publius Crassus
had already (697) crossed thence to the "tin-islands" at the south-west
point of England (Stilly islands); in the summer of 699 Caesar
himself with only two legions crossed the Channel at its narrowest
part.(42)  He found the coast covered with masses of the enemy's
troops and sailed onward with his vessels; but the British war-
chariots moved on quite as fast by land as the Roman galleys
by sea, and it was only with the utmost difficulty that the Roman
soldiers succeeded in gaining the shore in the face of the enemy,
partly by wading, partly in boats, under the protection
of the ships of war, which swept the beach with missiles thrown
from machines and by the hand.  In the first alarm the nearest villages
submitted; but the islanders soon perceived how weak the enemy was,
and how he did not venture to move far from the shore.  The natives
disappeared into the interior and returned only to threaten
the camp; and the fleet, which had been left in the open roads,
suffered very considerable damage from the first tempest
that burst upon it.  The Romans had to reckon themselves fortunate
in repelling the attacks of the barbarians till they had bestowed
the necessary repairs on the ships, and in regaining with these
the Gallic coast before the bad season of the year came on.

Caesar himself was so dissatisfied with the results of this expedition
undertaken inconsiderately and with inadequate means, that he immediately
(in the winter of 699-700) ordered a transport fleet of 800 sail
to be fitted out, and in the spring of 700 sailed a second time
for the Kentish coast, on this occasion with five legions
and 2000 cavalry.  The forces of the Britons, assembled
this time also on the shore, retired before the mighty armada
without risking a battle; Caesar immediately set out on his march
into the interior, and after some successful conflicts crossed
the river Stour; but he was obliged to halt very much against his will,
because the fleet in the open roads had been again half destroyed
by the storms of the Channel.  Before they got the ships drawn
up upon the beach and the extensive arrangements made
for their repair, precious time was lost, which the Celts wisely
turned to account.

Cassivellaunus

The brave and cautious prince Cassivellaunus, who ruled in what
is now Middlesex and the surrounding district--formerly the terror
of the Celts to the south of the Thames, but now the protector
and champion of the whole nation--had headed the defence of the land.
He soon saw that nothing at all could be done with the Celtic
infantry against the Roman, and that the mass of the general levy--
which it was difficult to feed and difficult to control--was only
a hindrance to the defence; he therefore dismissed it and retained
only the war-chariots, of which he collected 4000, and in which
the warriors, accustomed to leap down from their chariots and fight
on foot, could be employed in a twofold manner like the burgess-
cavalry of the earliest Rome.  When Caesar was once more able
to continue his march, he met with no interruption to it;
but the British war-chariots moved always in front and alongside
of the Roman army, induced the evacuation of the country
(which from the absence of towns proved no great difficulty),
prevented the sending out of detachments, and threatened
the communications.  The Thames was crossed--apparently
between Kingston and Brentford above London--by the Romans;
they moved forward, but made no real progress; the general achieved
no victory, the soldiers made no booty, and the only actual result,
the submission of the Trinobante in the modern Essex, was less
the effect of a dread of the Romans than of the deep hostility
between this canton and Cassivellaunus.  The danger increased
with every onward step, and the attack, which the princes of Kent
by the orders of Cassivellaunus made on the Roman naval camp,
although it was repulsed, was an urgent warning to turn back.
The taking by storm of a great British tree-barricade,
in which a multitude of cattle fell into the hands of the Romans,
furnished a passable conclusion to the aimless advance and a tolerable
pretext for returning.  Cassivellaunus was sagacious enough
not to drive the dangerous enemy to extremities, and promised,
as Caesar desired him, to abstain from disturbing the Trinobantes,
to pay tribute and to furnish hostages; nothing was said
of delivering up arms or leaving behind a Roman garrison,
and even those promises were, it may be presumed, so far as
they concerned the future, neither given nor received in earnest.
After receiving the hostages Caesar returned to the naval camp
and thence to Gaul.  If he, as it would certainly seem,
had hoped on this occasion to conquer Britain, the scheme
was totally thwarted partly by the wise defensive system
of Cassivellaunus, partly and chiefly by the unserviceableness
of the Italian oared fleet in the waters of the North Sea;
for it is certain that the stipulated tribute was never paid.
But the immediate object--of rousing the islanders out of their haughty
security and inducing them in their own interest no longer to allow
their island to be a rendezvous for continental emigrants--
seems certainly to have been attained; at least no complaints
are afterwards heard as to the bestowal of such protection.

The Conspiracy of the Patriots

The work of repelling the Germanic invasion and of subduing
the continental Celts was completed.  But it is often easier
to subdue a free nation than to keep a subdued one in subjection.
The rivalry for the hegemony, by which more even than by the attacks
of Rome the Celtic nation had been ruined, was in some measure set
aside by the conquest, inasmuch as the conqueror took the hegemony
to himself.  Separate interests were silent; under the common
oppression at any rate they felt themselves again as one people;
and the infinite value of that which they had with indifference
gambled away when they possessed it--freedom and nationality--
was now, when it was too late, fully appreciated by their infinite
longing.  But was it, then, too late? With indignant shame they
confessed to themselves that a nation, which numbered at least
a million of men capable of arms, a nation of ancient and well-
founded warlike renown, had allowed the yoke to be imposed upon it
by, at the most, 50,000 Romans.  The submission of the confederacy
of central Gaul without having struck even a blow; the submission
of the Belgic confederacy without having done more than merely
shown a wish to strike; the heroic fall on the other hand
of the Nervii and the Veneti, the sagacious and successful resistance
of the Morini, and of the Britons under Cassivellaunus--
all that in each case had been done or neglected, had failed
or had succeeded--spurred the minds of the patriots to new attempts,
if possible, more united and more successful.  Especially
among the Celtic nobility there prevailed an excitement, which seemed
every moment as if it must break out into a general insurrection.
Even before the second expedition to Britain in the spring of 700 Caesar
had found it necessary to go in person to the Treveri, who,
since they had compromised themselves in the Nervian conflict in 697,
had no longer appeared at the general diets and had formed more than
suspicious connections with the Germans beyond the Rhine.  At that
time Caesar had contented himself with carrying the men of most
note among the patriot party, particularly Indutiomarus, along
with him to Britain in the ranks of the Treverian cavalry-contingent;
he did his utmost to overlook the conspiracy, that he might not
by strict measures ripen it into insurrection.  But when the Haeduan
Dumnorix, who likewise was present in the army destined for Britain,
nominally as a cavalry officer, but really as a hostage,
peremptorily refused to embark and rode home instead, Caesar could
not do otherwise than have him pursued as a deserter; he was accordingly
overtaken by the division sent after him and, when he stood
on his defence, was cut down (700).  That the most esteemed knight
of the most powerful and still the least dependent of the Celtic cantons
should have been put to death by the Romans, was a thunder-clap
for the whole Celtic nobility; every one who was conscious
of similar sentiments--and they formed the great majority--
saw in that catastrophe the picture of what was in store for himself.

Insurrection

If patriotism and despair had induced the heads of the Celtic
nobility to conspire, fear and self-defence now drove the conspirators
to strike.  In the winter of 700-701, with the exception of a legion
stationed in Brittany and a second in the very unsettled canton
of the Carnutes (near Chartres), the whole Roman army numbering six
legions was encamped in the Belgic territory.  The scantiness
of the supplies of grain had induced Caesar to station his troops
farther apart than he was otherwise wont to do--in six different
camps constructed in the cantons of the Bellovaci, Ambiani, Morini,
Nervii, Remi, and Eburones.  The fixed camp placed farthest towards
the east in the territory of the Eburones, probably not far
from the later Aduatuca (the modern Tongern), the strongest of all,
consisting of a legion under one of the most respected of Caesar's
leaders of division, Quintus Titurius Sabinus, besides different
detachments led by the brave Lucius Aurunculeius Cotta(43) and amounting
together to the strength of half a legion, found itself all of a sudden
surrounded by the general levy of the Eburones under the kings Ambiorix
and Catuvolcus.  The attack came so unexpectedly, that the very men
absent from the camp could not be recalled and were cut off
by the enemy; otherwise the immediate danger was not great,
as there was no lack of provisions, and the assault, which the Eburones
attempted, recoiled powerless from the Roman intrenchments.
But king Ambiorix informed the Roman commander that all the Roman camps
in Gaul were similarly assailed on the same day, and that the Romans
would undoubtedly be lost if the several corps did not quickly set out
and effect a junction; that Sabinus had the more reason to make haste,
as the Germans too from beyond the Rhine were already advancing
against him; that he himself out of friendship for the Romans
would promise them a free retreat as far as the nearest
Roman camp, only two days' march distant.  Some things
in these statements seemed no fiction; that the little canton
of the Eburones specially favoured by the Romans(44) should have
undertaken the attack of its own accord was in reality incredible,
and, owing to the difficulty of effecting a communication with the other
far-distant camps, the danger of being attacked by the whole
mass of the insurgents and destroyed in detail was by no means
to be esteemed slight; nevertheless it could not admit of the smallest
doubt that both honour and prudence required them to reject
the capitulation offered by the enemy and to maintain the post
entrusted to them.  Yet, although in the council of war numerous
voices and especially the weighty voice of Lucius Aurunculeius
Cotta supported this view, the commandant determined to accept
the proposal of Ambiorix.  The Roman troops accordingly marched
off next morning; but when they had arrived at a narrow valley about
two miles from the camp they found themselves surrounded
by the Eburones and every outlet blocked.  They attempted to open
a way for themselves by force of arms; but the Eburones would not enter
into any close combat, and contented themselves with discharging
their missiles from their unassailable positions into the dense
mass of the Romans.  Bewildered, as if seeking deliverance
from treachery at the hands of the traitor, Sabinus requested
a conference with Ambiorix; it was granted, and he and the officers
accompanying him were first disarmed and then slain.  After the fall
of the commander the Eburones threw themselves from all sides
at once on the exhausted and despairing Romans, and broke their
ranks; most of them, including Cotta who had already been wounded,
met their death in this attack; a small portion, who had succeeded
in regaining the abandoned camp, flung themselves on their own
swords during the following night.  The whole corps was annihilated.

Cicero Attacked

This success, such as the insurgents themselves had hardly ventured
to hope for, increased the ferment among the Celtic patriots
so greatly that the Romans were no longer sure of a single district
with the exception of the Haedui and Remi, and the insurrection
broke out at the most diverse points.  First of all the Eburones
followed up their victory.  Reinforced by the levy of the Aduatuci,
who gladly embraced the opportunity of requiting the injury done
to them by Caesar, and of the powerful and still unsubdued Menapii,
they appeared in the territory of the Nervii, who immediately
joined them, and the whole host thus swelled to 60,000 moved
forward to confront the Roman camp formed in the Nervian canton.
Quintus Cicero, who commanded there, had with his weak corps
a difficult position, especially as the besiegers, learning from the foe,
constructed ramparts and trenches, -testudines- and moveable towers
after the Roman fashion, and showered fire-balls and burning
spears over the straw-covered huts of the camp.  The only hope
of the besieged rested on Caesar, who lay not so very far off
with three legions in his winter encampment in the region of Amiens.
But--a significant proof of the feeling that prevailed in Gaul-
for a considerable time not the slightest hint reached the general
either of the disaster of Sabinus or of the perilous
situation of Cicero.

Caesar Proceeds to His Relief
The Insurrection Checked

At length a Celtic horseman from Cicero's camp succeeded
in stealing through the enemy to Caesar.  On receiving the startling
news Caesar immediately set out, although only with two weak
legions, together numbering about 7000, and 400 horsemen;
nevertheless the announcement that Caesar was advancing sufficed
to induce the insurgents to raise the siege.  It was time;
not one tenth of the men in Cicero's camp remained unwounded.
Caesar, against whom the insurgent army had turned, deceived the enemy,
in the way which he had already on several occasions successfully
applied, as to his strength; under the most unfavourable
circumstances they ventured an assault upon the Roman camp
and in doing so suffered a defeat.  It is singular, but characteristic
of the Celtic nation, that in consequence of this one lost battle,
or perhaps rather in consequence of Caesar's appearance in person
on the scene of conflict, the insurrection, which had commenced
so victoriously and extended so widely, suddenly and pitiably broke
off the war.  The Nervii, Menapii, Aduatuci, Eburones, returned
to their homes.  The forces of the maritime cantons, who had made
preparations for assailing the legion in Brittany, did the same.
The Treveri, through whose leader Indutiomarus the Eburones,
the clients of the powerful neighbouring canton, had been chiefly
induced to that so successful attack, had taken arms on the news
of the disaster of Aduatuca and advanced into the territory
of the Remi with the view of attacking the legion cantoned there
under the command of Labienus; they too desisted for the present
from continuing the struggle.  Caesar not unwillingly postponed
farther measures against the revolted districts till the spring,
in order not to expose his troops which had suffered much to the whole
severity of the Gallic winter, and with the view of only reappearing
in the field when the fifteen cohorts destroyed should have
been replaced in an imposing manner by the levy of thirty new
cohorts which he had ordered.  The insurrection meanwhile pursued
its course, although there was for the moment a suspension of arms.
Its chief seats in central Gaul were, partly the districts
of the Carnutes and the neighbouring Senones (about Sens), the latter
of whom drove the king appointed by Caesar out of their country;
partly the region of the Treveri, who invited the whole Celtic
emigrants and the Germans beyond the Rhine to take part
in the impending national war, and called out their whole force,
with a view to advance in the spring a second time into the territory
of the Remi, to capture the corps of Labienus, and to seek
a communication with the insurgents on the Seine and Loire.
The deputies of these three cantons remained absent from the diet
convoked by Caesar in central Gaul, and thereby declared war just
as openly as a part of the Belgic cantons had done by the attacks
on the camps of Sabinus and Cicero.

And Suppressed

The winter was drawing to a close when Caesar set out
with his army, which meanwhile had been considerably reinforced,
against the insurgents.  The attempts of the Treveri to concentrate
the revolt had not succeeded; the agitated districts were kept in check
by the marching in of Roman troops, and those in open rebellion
were attacked in detail.  First the Nervii were routed by Caesar
in person.  The Senones and Carnutes met the same fate.  The Menapii,
the only canton which had never submitted to the Romans,
were compelled by a grand attack simultaneously directed against them
from three sides to renounce their long-preserved freedom.
Labienus meanwhile was preparing the same fate for the Treveri.
Their first attack had been paralyzed, partly by the refusal
of the adjoining German tribes to furnish them with mercenaries,
partly by the fact that Indutiomarus, the soul of the whole movement
had fallen in a skirmish with the cavalry of Labienus.  But they did
not on this account abandon their projects.  With their whole levy
they appeared in front of Labienus and waited for the German bands
that were to follow, for their recruiting agents found a better
reception than they had met with from the dwellers on the Rhine,
among the warlike tribes of the interior of Germany, especially,
as it would appear, among the Chatti.  But when Labienus seemed
as if he wished to avoid these and to march off in all haste, the Treveri
attacked the Romans even before the Germans arrived and in a most
unfavourable spot, and were completely defeated.  Nothing remained
for the Germans who came up too late but to return, nothing for
the Treverian canton but to submit; its government reverted to the head
of the Roman party Cingetorix, the son-in-law of Indutiomarus.
After these expeditions of Caesar against the Menapii and of Labienus
against the Treveri the whole Roman army was again united
in the territory of the latter.  With the view of rendering
the Germans disinclined to come back, Caesar once more crossed
the Rhine, in order if possible to strike an emphatic blow against
the troublesome neighbours; but, as the Chatti, faithful to their
tried tactics, assembled not on their western boundary,
but far in the interior, apparently at the Harz mountains,
for the defence of the land, he immediately turned back and contented
himself with leaving behind a garrison at the passage of the Rhine.

Retaliatory Expedition against the Eburones

Accounts had thus been settled with all the tribes that took part
in the rising; the Eburones alone were passed over but not forgotten.
Since Caesar had met with the disaster of Aduatuca, he had worn
mourning and had sworn that he would only lay it aside
when he should have avenged his soldiers, who had not fallen
in honourable war, but had been treacherously murdered.
Helpless and passive the Eburones sat in their huts and looked on
as the neighbouring cantons one after another submitted to the Romans,
till the Roman cavalry from the Treverian territory advanced
through the Ardennes into their land.  So little were they prepared
for the attack, that the cavalry had almost seized the king
Ambiorix in his house; with great difficulty, while his attendants
sacrificed themselves on his behalf, he escaped into the neighbouring
thicket.  Ten Roman legions soon followed the cavalry.
At the same time a summons was issued to the surrounding tribes
to hunt the outlawed Eburones and pillage their land in concert
with the Roman soldiers; not a few complied with the call, including
even an audacious band of Sugambrian horsemen from the other side
of the Rhine, who for that matter treated the Romans no better than
the Eburones, and had almost by a daring coup de main surprised
the Roman camp at Aduatuca.  The fate of the Eburones was dreadful.
However they might hide themselves in forests and morasses,
there were more hunters than game.  Many put themselves to death
like the gray-haired prince Catuvolcus; only a few saved life
and liberty, but among these few was the man whom the Romans sought
above all to seize, the prince Ambiorix; with but four horsemen
he escaped over the Rhine.  This execution against the canton
which had transgressed above all the rest was followed in the other
districts by processes of high treason against individuals.  The season
for clemency was past.  At the bidding of the Roman proconsul
the eminent Carnutic knight Acco was beheaded by Roman lictors
(701) and the rule of the -fasces- was thus formally inaugurated.
Opposition was silent; tranquillity everywhere prevailed.  Caesar
went as he was wont towards the end of the year (701) over the Alps,
that through the winter he might observe more closely
the daily-increasing complications in the capital.

Second Insurrection

The sagacious calculator had on this occasion miscalculated.
The fire was smothered, but not extinguished.  The stroke,
under which the head of Acco fell, was felt by the whole Celtic nobility.
At this very moment the position of affairs presented better prospects
than ever.  The insurrection of the last winter had evidently failed
only through Caesar himself appearing on the scene of action;
now he was at a distance, detained on the Po by the imminence
of civil war, and the Gallic army, which was collected on the upper Seine,
was far separated from its dreaded leader.  If a general insurrection
now broke out in central Gaul, the Roman army might be surrounded,
and the almost undefended old Roman province be overrun before Caesar
reappeared beyond the Alps, even if the Italian complications
did not altogether prevent him from further concerning himself about Gaul.

The Carnutes
The Arverni

Conspirators from all the cantons of central Gaul assembled;
the Carnutes, as most directly affected by the execution of Acco,
offered to take the lead.  On a set day in the winter of 701-702
the Carnutic knights Gutruatus and Conconnetodumnus gave at Cenabum
(Orleans) the signal for the rising, and put to death in a body
the Romans who happened to be there.  The most vehement agitation
seized the length and breadth of the great Celtic land; the patriots
everywhere bestirred themselves.  But nothing stirred the nation
so deeply as the insurrection of the Arverni.  The government
of this community, which had formerly under its kings been the first
in southern Gaul, and had still after the fall of its principality
occasioned by the unfortunate wars against Rome(45) continued to be
one of the wealthiest, most civilized, and most powerful in all Gaul,
had hitherto inviolably adhered to Rome.  Even now the patriot party
in the governing common council was in the minority; an attempt
to induce it to join the insurrection was in vain.  The attacks
of the patriots were therefore directed against the common council
and the existing constitution itself; and the more so, that the change
of constitution which among the Arverni had substituted the common
council for the prince(46) had taken place after the victories
of the Romans and probably under their influence.

Vercingetorix

The leader of the Arvernian patriots Vercingetorix, one of those
nobles whom we meet with among the Celts, of almost regal repute
in and beyond his canton, and a stately, brave, sagacious man
to boot, left the capital and summoned the country people,
who were as hostile to the ruling oligarchy as to the Romans, at once
to re-establish the Arvernian monarchy and to go to war with Rome.
The multitude quickly joined him; the restoration of the throne
of Luerius and Betuitus was at the same time the declaration
of a national war against Rome.  The centre of unity,
from the want of which all previous attempts of the nation
to shake off the foreign yoke had failed, was now found
in the new self-nominated king of the Arverni.  Vercingetorix
became for the Celts of the continent what Cassivellaunus
was for the insular Celts; the feeling strongly pervaded the masses
that he, if any one, was the man to save the nation.

Spread of the Insurrection
Appearance of Caesar

The west from the mouth of the Garonne to that of the Seine
was rapidly infected by the insurrection, and Vercingetorix
was recognized by all the cantons there as commander-in-chief;
where the common council made any difficulty, the multitude compelled
it to join the movement; only a few cantons, such as that
of the Bituriges, required compulsion to join it, and these perhaps
only for appearance' sake.  The insurrection found a less favourable
soil in the regions to the east of the upper Loire.  Everything
here depended on the Haedui; and these wavered.  The patriotic
party was very strong in this canton; but the old antagonism
to the leading of the Arverni counterbalanced their influence--
to the most serious detriment of the insurrection, as the accession
of the eastern cantons, particularly of the Sequani and Helvetii,
was conditional on the accession of the Haedui, and generally
in this part of Gaul the decision rested with them.  While the insurgents
were thus labouring partly to induce the cantons that still
hesitated, especially the Haedui, to join them, partly to get
possession of Narbo--one of their leaders, the daring Lucterius,
had already appeared on the Tarn within the limits of the old
province--the Roman commander-in-chief suddenly presented himself
in the depth of winter, unexpected alike by friend and foe,
on this side of the Alps.  He quickly made the necessary preparations
to cover the old province, and not only so, but sent also a corps
over the snow-covered Cevennes into the Arvernian territory;
but he could not remain here, where the accession of the Haedui
to the Gallic alliance might any moment cut him off from his army
encamped about Sens and Langres.  With all secrecy he went to Vienna,
and thence, attended by only a few horsemen, through the territory
of the Haedui to his troops.  The hopes, which had induced
the conspirators to declare themselves, vanished; peace continued
in Italy, and Caesar stood once more at the head of his army.

The Gallic Plan of War

But what were they to do? It was folly under such circumstances
to let the matter come to the decision of arms; for these had already
decidedly irrevocably.  They might as well attempt to shake
the Alps by throwing stones at them as to shake the legions by means
of the Celtic bands, whether these might be congregated in huge
masses or sacrificed in detail canton after canton.  Vercingetorix
despaired of defeating the Romans.  He adopted a system of warfare
similar to that by which Cassivellaunus had saved the insular
Celts.  The Roman infantry was not to be vanquished; but Caesar's
cavalry consisted almost exclusively of the contingent
of the Celtic nobility, and was practically dissolved by the general
revolt.  It was possible for the insurrection, which was in fact
essentially composed of the Celtic nobility, to develop such
a superiority in this arm, that it could lay waste the land far
and wide, burn down towns and villages, destroy the magazines,
and endanger the supplies and the communications of the enemy,
without his being able seriously to hinder it.  Vercingetorix
accordingly directed all his efforts to the increase of his cavalry,
and of the infantry-archers who were according to the mode of fighting
of that time regularly associated with it.  He did not send the immense
and self-obstructing masses of the militia of the line to their homes,
but he did not allow them to face the enemy, and attempted
to impart to them gradually some capacity of intrenching, marching,
and manoeuvring, and some perception that the soldier is not destined
merely for hand-to-hand combat.  Learning from the enemy, he adopted
in particular the Roman system of encampment, on which depended
the whole secret of the tactical superiority of the Romans;
for in consequence of it every Roman corps combined all the advantages
of the garrison of a fortress with all the advantages of an offensive
army.(47)  It is true that a system completely adapted to Britain
which had few towns and to its rude, resolute, and on the whole
united inhabitants was not absolutely transferable to the rich
regions on the Loire and their indolent inhabitants on the eve
of utter political dissolution.  Vercingetorix at least accomplished
this much, that they did not attempt as hitherto to hold every
town with the result of holding none; they agreed to destroy
the townships not capable of defence before attack reached them,
but to defend with all their might the strong fortresses. At the same
time the Arvernian king did what he could to bind to the cause of their
country the cowardly and backward by stern severity, the hesitating
by entreaties and representations, the covetous by gold, the decided
opponents by force, and to compel or allure the rabble high or low
to some manifestation of patriotism.

Beginning of the Struggle

Even before the winter was at an end, he threw himself on the Boii
settled by Caesar in the territory of the Haedui, with the view
of annihilating these, almost the sole trustworthy allies of Rome,
before Caesar came up.  The news of this attack induced Caesar,
leaving behind the baggage and two legions in the winter quarters
of Agedincum (Sens), to march immediately and earlier than he would
doubtless otherwise have done, against the insurgents.  He remedied
the sorely-felt want of cavalry and light infantry in some measure
by gradually bringing up German mercenaries, who instead of using
their own small and weak ponies were furnished with Italian
and Spanish horses partly bought, partly procured by requisition
of the officers.  Caesar, after having by the way caused Cenabum,
the capital of the Carnutes, which had given the signal for the revolt,
to be pillaged and laid in ashes, moved over the Loire
into the country of the Bituriges.  He thereby induced Vercingetorix
to abandon the siege of the town of the Boii, and to resort likewise
to the Bituriges.  Here the new mode of warfare was first to be
tried.  By order of Vercingetorix more than twenty townships
of the Bituriges perished in the flames on one day; the general
decreed a similar self-devastation as to the neighbour cantons,
so far as they could be reached by the Roman foraging parties.

Caesar before Arvaricum

According to his intention, Avaricum (Bourges), the rich
and strong capital of the Bituriges, was to meet the same fate;
but the majority of the war-council yielded to the suppliant entreaties
of the Biturigian authorities, and resolved rather to defend that city
with all their energy.  Thus the war was concentrated in the first
instance around Avaricum, Vercingetorix placed his infantry amidst
the morasses adjoining the town in a position so unapproachable,
that even without being covered by the cavalry they needed not
to fear the attack of the legions.  The Celtic cavalry covered
all the roads and obstructed the communication.  The town was strongly
garrisoned, and the connection between it and the army before
the walls was kept open.  Caesar's position was very awkward.
The attempt to induce the Celtic infantry to fight was unsuccessful;
it stirred not from its unassailable lines.  Bravely as his soldiers
in front of the town trenched and fought, the besieged vied
with them in ingenuity and courage, and they had almost succeeded
in setting fire to the siege apparatus of their opponents.
The task withal of supplying an army of nearly 60,000 men
with provisions in a country devastated far and wide and scoured
by far superior bodies of cavalry became daily more difficult.
The slender stores of the Boii were soon used up; the supply promised
by the Haedui failed to appear; the corn was already consumed,
and the soldier was placed exclusively on flesh-rations.
But the moment was approaching when the town, with whatever contempt
of death the garrison fought, could be held no longer.  Still it was
not impossible to withdraw the troops secretly by night and destroy
the town, before the enemy occupied it.  Vercingetorix made
arrangements for this purpose, but the cry of distress raised
at the moment of evacuation by the women and children left behind
attracted the attention of the Romans; the departure miscarried.

Avaricum Conquered
Caesar Divides His Army

On the following gloomy and rainy day the Romans scaled the walls,
and, exasperated by the obstinate defence, spared neither age
nor sex in the conquered town.  The ample stores, which the Celts had
accumulated in it, were welcome to the starved soldiers of Caesar.
With the capture of Avaricum (spring of 702), a first success
had been achieved over the insurrection, and according to former
experience Caesar might well expect that it would now dissolve,
and that it would only be requisite to deal with the cantons
individually.  After he had therefore shown himself with his
whole army in the canton of the Haedui and had by this imposing
demonstration compelled the patriot party in a ferment there
to keep quiet at least for the moment, he divided his army and sent
Labienus back to Agedincum, that in combination with the troops
left there he might at the head of four legions suppress
in the first instance the movement in the territory of the Carnutes
and Senones, who on this occasion once more took the lead;
while he himself with the six remaining legions turned to the south
and prepared to carry the war into the Arvernian mountains, the proper
territory of Vercingetorix.

Labienus before Lutetia

Labienus moved from Agedincum up the left bank of the Seine with
a view to possess himself of Lutetia (Paris), the town of the Parisii
situated on an island in the Seine, and from this well-secured
position in the heart of the insurgent country to reduce it again
to subjection.  But behind Melodunum (Melun), he found his route
barred by the whole army of the insurgents, which had here taken
up a position between unassailable morasses under the leadership
of the aged Camulogenus.  Labienus retreated a certain distance,
crossed the Seine at Melodunum, and moved up its right bank
unhindered towards Lutetia; Camulogenus caused this town to be
burnt and the bridges leading to the left bank to be broken down,
and took up a position over against Labienus, in which the latter
could neither bring him to battle nor effect a passage
under the eyes of the hostile army.

Caesar before Gergovia
Fruitless Blockade

The Roman main army in its turn advanced along the Allier down
into the canton of the Arverni.  Vercingetorix attempted to prevent
it from crossing to the left bank of the Allier, but Caesar
overreached him and after some days stood before the Arvernian
capital Gergovia.(48)  Vercingetorix, however, doubtless even while
he was confronting Caesar on the Allier, had caused sufficient
stores to be collected in Gergovia and a fixed camp provided
with strong stone ramparts to be constructed for his troops in front
of the walls of the town, which was situated on the summit of a pretty
steep hill; and, as he had a sufficient start, he arrived before
Caesar at Gergovia and awaited the attack in the fortified camp
under the wall of the fortress.  Caesar with his comparatively
weak army could neither regularly besiege the place nor even
sufficiently blockade it; he pitched his camp below the rising
ground occupied by Vercingetorix, and was compelled to preserve
an attitude as inactive as his opponent.  It was almost a victory
for the insurgents, that Caesar's career of advance from triumph
to triumph had been suddenly checked on the Seine as on the Allier.
In fact the consequences of this check for Caesar were almost
equivalent to those of a defeat.

The Haedui Waver

The Haedui, who had hitherto continued vacillating, now made
preparations in earnest to join the patriotic party; the body
of men, whom Caesar had ordered to Gergovia, had on the march been
induced by its officers to declare for the insurgents; at the same
time they had begun in the canton itself to plunder and kill
the Romans settled there.  Caesar, who had gone with two-thirds
of the blockading army to meet that corps of the Haedui which was being
brought up to Gergovia, had by his sudden appearance recalled it
to nominal obedience; but it was more than ever a hollow and fragile
relation, the continuance of which had been almost too dearly
purchased by the great peril of the two legions left behind
in front of Gergovia.  For Vercingetorix, rapidly and resolutely
availing himself of Caesar's departure, had during his absence
made an attack on them, which had wellnigh ended in their
being overpowered, and the Roman camp being taken by storm.
Caesar's unrivalled celerity alone averted a second catastrophe
like that of Aduatuca.  Though the Haedui made once more fair
promises, it might be foreseen that, if the blockade should still
be prolonged without result, they would openly range themselves
on the side of the insurgents and would thereby compel Caesar to raise
it; for their accession would interrupt the communication between
him and Labienus, and expose the latter especially in his isolation
to the greatest peril.  Caesar was resolved not to let matters come
to this pass, but, however painful and even dangerous it was
to retire from Gergovia without having accomplished his object,
nevertheless, if it must be done, rather to set out immediately
and by marching into the canton of the Haedui to prevent
at any cost their formal desertion.

Caesar Defeated before Gergovia

Before entering however on this retreat, which was far
from agreeable to his quick and confident temperament, he made
yet a last attempt to free himself from his painful perplexity
by a brilliant success.  While the bulk of the garrison of Gergovia
was occupied in intrenching the side on which the assault
was expected, the Roman general watched his opportunity to surprise
another access less conveniently situated but at the moment
left bare.  In reality the Roman storming columns scaled the camp-wall,
and occupied the nearest quarters of the camp; but the whole garrison
was already alarmed, and owing to the small distances Caesar found
it not advisable to risk the second assault on the city-wall.
He gave the signal for retreat; but the foremost legions, carried
away by the impetuosity of victory, heard not or did not wish to hear,
and pushed forward without halting, up to the city-wall, some even
into the city.  But masses more and more dense threw themselves
in front of the intruders; the foremost fell, the columns stopped;
in vain centurions and legionaries fought with the most devoted
and heroic courage; the assailants were chased with very considerable
loss out of the town and down the hill, where the troops stationed
by Caesar in the plain received them and prevented greater
mischief.  The expected capture of Gergovia had been converted
into a defeat, and the considerable loss in killed and wounded--
there were counted 700 soldiers that had fallen, including 46
centurions--was the least part of the misfortune suffered.

Renewed Insurrection
Rising of the Haedui
Rising of the Belgae

The imposing position of Caesar in Gaul depended essentially
on the halo of victory that surrounded him; and this began to grow pale.
The conflicts around Avaricum, Caesar's vain attempts to compel
the enemy to fight, the resolute defence of the city and its almost
accidental capture by storm bore a stamp different from that
of the earlier Celtic wars, and had strengthened rather than impaired
the confidence of the Celts in themselves and their leader.
Moreover, the new system of warfare--the making head against the enemy
in intrenched camps under the protection of fortresses--had completely
approved itself at Lutetia as well as at Gergovia.  Lastly,
this defeat, the first which Caesar in person had suffered
from the Celts crowned their success, and it accordingly gave
as it were the signal for a second outbreak of the insurrection.
The Haedui now broke formally with Caesar and entered into union
with Vercingetorix.  Their contingent, which was still with Caesar's
army, not only deserted from it, but also took occasion to carry
off the depots of the army of Caesar at Noviodunum on the Loire,
whereby the chests and magazines, a number of remount-horses,
and all the hostages furnished to Caesar, fell into the hands
of the insurgents.  It was of at least equal importance,
that on this news the Belgae, who had hitherto kept aloof
from the whole movement, began to bestir themselves.  The powerful
canton of the Bellovaci rose with the view of attacking
in the rear the corps of Labienus, while it confronted
at Lutetia the levy of the surrounding cantons of central Gaul.
Everywhere else too men were taking to arms; the strength
of patriotic enthusiasm carried along with it even the most
decided and most favoured partisans of Rome, such as Commius
king of the Atrebates, who on account of his faithful services had
received from the Romans important privileges for his community
and the hegemony over the Morini.  The threads of the insurrection
ramified even into the old Roman province: they cherished the hope,
perhaps not without ground, of inducing the Allobroges themselves
to take arms against the Romans.  With the single exception
of the Remi and of the districts--dependent immediately on the Remi--
of the Suessiones, Leuci, and Lingones, whose peculiar isolation
was not affected even amidst this general enthusiasm, the whole Celtic
nation from the Pyrenees to the Rhine was now in reality,
for the first and for the last time, in arms for its freedom
and nationality; whereas, singularly enough, the whole German
communities, who in the former struggles had held the foremost
rank, kept aloof.  In fact, the Treveri, and as it would seem
the Menapii also, were prevented by their feuds with the Germans
from taking an active part in the national war.

Caesar's Plan of War
Caesar Unites with Labienus

It was a grave and decisive moment, when after the retreat
from Gergovia and the loss of Noviodunum a council of war was held
in Caesar's headquarters regarding the measures now to be adopted.
Various voices expressed themselves in favour of a retreat over
the Cevennes into the old Roman province, which now lay open
on all sides to the insurrection and certainly was in urgent need
of the legions that had been sent from Rome primarily for its
protection.  But Caesar rejected this timid strategy suggested
not by the position of affairs, but by government-instructions
and fear of responsibility.  He contented himself with calling
the general levy of the Romans settled in the province to arms,
and having the frontiers guarded by that levy to the best of its
ability.  On the other hand he himself set out in the opposite
direction and advanced by forced marches to Agedincum, to which
he ordered Labienus to retreat in all haste.  The Celts naturally
endeavoured to prevent the junction of the two Roman armies.
Labienus might by crossing the Marne and marching down the right bank
of the Seine have reached Agedincum, where he had left his reserve
and his baggage; but he preferred not to allow the Celts
again to behold the retreat of Roman troops.  He therefore
instead of crossing the Marne crossed the Seine under the eyes
of the deluded enemy, and on its left bank fought a battle
with the hostile forces, in which he conquered, and among many others
the Celtic general himself, the old Camulogenus, was left on the field.
Nor were the insurgents more successful in detaining Caesar
on the Loire; Caesar gave them no time to assemble larger masses there,
and without difficulty dispersed the militia of the Haedui,
which alone he found at that point

Position of the Insurgents at Alesia

Thus the junction of the two divisions of the army was happily
accomplished.  The insurgents meanwhile had consulted as to the farthe
conduct of the war at Bibracte (Autun) the capital of the Haeduil
the soul of these consultations was again Vercingetorix,
to whom the nation was enthusiastically attached after the victory
of Gergovia.  Particular interests were not, it is true,
even now silent; the Haedui still in this death-struggle of the nation
asserted their claims to the hegemony, and made a proposal
in the national assembly to substitute a leader of their own
for Vercingetorix.  But the national representatives had not merely
declined this and confirmed Vercingetorix in the supreme command,
but had also adopted his plan of war without alteration.  It was
substantially the same as that on which he had operated at Avaricum
and at Gergovia.  As the base of the new position there was
selected the strong city of the Mandubii, Alesia (Alise Sainte
Reine near Semur in the department Cote d'Or)(49) and another
entrenched camp was constructed under its walls.  Immense stores
were here accumulated, and the army was ordered thither
from Gergovia, having its cavalry raised by resolution of the national
assembly to 15,000 horse.  Caesar with the whole strength
of his army after it was reunited at Agedincum took the direction
of Besancon, with the view of now approaching the alarmed province
and protecting it from an invasion, for in fact bands of insurgents
had already shown themselves in the territory of the Helvii
on the south slope of the Cevennes.  Alesia lay almost on his way;
the cavalry of the Celts, the only arm with which Vercingetorix
chose to operate, attacked him on the route, but to the surprise
of all was worsted by the new German squadrons of Caesar
and the Roman infantry drawn up in support of them.

Caesar in Front of Alesia
Siege of Alesia

Vercingetorix hastened the more to shut himself up in Alesia;
and if Caesar was not disposed altogether to renounce the offensive,
no course was left to him but for the third time in this campaign
to proceed by way of attack with a far weaker force against an army
encamped under a well-garrisoned and well-provisioned fortress
and supplied with immense masses of cavalry.  But, while the Celts
had hitherto been opposed by only a part of the Roman legions,
the whole forces of Caesar were united in the lines round Alesia,
and Vercingetorix did not succeed, as he had succeeded at Avaricum
and Gergovia, in placing his infantry under the protection of the walls
of the fortress and keeping his external communications open
for his own benefit by his cavalry, while he interrupted those
of the enemy.  The Celtic cavalry, already discouraged by that defeat
inflicted on them by their lightly esteemed opponents, was beaten
by Caesar's German horse in every encounter.  The line
of circumvallation of the besiegers extending about nine miles
invested the whole town, including the camp attached to it.
Vercingetorix had been prepared for a struggle under the walls,
but not for being besieged in Alesia; in that point of view
the accumulated stores, considerable as they were, were yet
far from sufficient for his army--which was said to amount to 80,000
infantry and 15,000 cavalry--and for the numerous inhabitants
of the town.  Vercingetorix could not but perceive that his plan
of warfare had on this occasion turned to his own destruction,
and that he was lost unless the whole nation hastened up to the rescue
of its blockaded general.  The existing provisions were still,
when the Roman circumvallation was closed, sufficient for a month
and perhaps something more; at the last moment, when there was still
free passage at least for horsemen, Vercingetorix dismissed
his whole cavalry, and sent at the same time to the heads
of the nation instructions to call out all their forces and lead them
to the relief of Alesia.  He himself, resolved to bear in person
the responsibility for the plan of war which he had projected
and which had miscarried, remained in the fortress, to share in good
or evil the fate of his followers.  But Caesar made up his mind
at once to besiege and to be besieged.  He prepared his line
of circumvallation for defence also on its outer side, and furnished
himself with provisions for a longer period.  The days passed;
they had no longer a boll of grain in the fortress, and they
were obliged to drive out the unhappy inhabitants of the town
to perish miserably between the entrenchments of the Celts
and of the Romans, pitilessly rejected by both.

Attempt at Relief
Conflicts before Alesia

At the last hour there appeared behind Caesar's lines
the interminable array of the Celto-Belgic relieving array, said
to amount to 250,000 infantry and 8000 cavalry, from the Channel
to the Cevennes the insurgent cantons had strained every nerve
to rescue the flower of their patriots and the general of their
choice--the Bellovaci alone had answered that they were doubtless
disposed to fight against the Romans, but not beyond their own bounds.
The first assault, which the besieged of Alesia and the relieving
troops without made on the Roman double line, was repulsed;
but, when after a day's rest it was repeated, the Celts
succeeded--at a spot where the line of circumvallation ran over
the slope of a hill and could be assailed from the height above--
in filling up the trenches and hurling the defenders down
from the rampart.  Then Labienus, sent thither by Caesar, collected
the nearest cohorts and threw himself with four legions on the foe.
Under the eyes of the general, who himself appeared at the most
dangerous moment, the assailants were driven back in a desperate
hand-to-hand conflict, and the squadrons of cavalry that came
with Caesar taking the fugitives in rear completed the defeat.

Alesia Capitulates

It was more than a great victory; the fate of Alesia, and indeed
of the Celtic nation, was thereby irrevocably decided.  The Celtic
army, utterly disheartened, dispersed at once from the battle-field
and went home.  Vercingetorix might perhaps have even now taken
to flight, or at least have saved himself by the last means open
to a free man; he did not do so, but declared in a council of war that,
since he had not succeeded in breaking off the alien yoke,
he was ready to give himself up as a victim and to avert as far as
possible destruction from the nation by bringing it on his own
head.  This was done.  The Celtic officers delivered their general--
the solemn choice of the whole nation--over to the energy of their
country for such punishment as might be thought fit.  Mounted
on his steed and in full armour the king of the Arverni appeared
before the Roman proconsul and rode round his tribunal;
then he surrendered his horse and arms, and sat down in silence
on the steps at Caesar's feet (702).

Vercingetorix Executed

Five years afterwards he was led in triumph through the streets
of the Italian capital, and, while his conqueror was offering solemn
thanks to the gods on the summit of the Capitol, Vercingetorix
was beheaded at its foot as guilty of high treason against the Roman
nation.  As after a day of gloom the sun may perhaps break through
the clouds at its setting, so destiny may bestow on nations
in their decline yet a last great man.  Thus Hannibal stands
at the close of the Phoenician history, and Vercingetorix
at the close of the Celtic.  They were not able to save the nations
to which they belonged from a foreign yoke, but they spared them
the last remaining disgrace--an inglorious fall.  Vercingetorix,
just like the Carthaginian, was obliged to contend not merely
against the public foe, but also and above all against that anti-national
opposition of wounded egotists and startled cowards, which regularly
accompanies a degenerate civilization; for him too a place
in history is secured, not by his battles and sieges,
but by the fact that he was able to furnish in his own person
a centre and rallying-point to a nation distracted and ruined
by the rivalry of individual interests.  And yet there can hardly
be a more marked contrast than between the sober townsman
of the Phoenician mercantile city, whose plans were directed towards
one great object with unchanging energy throughout fifty years,
and the bold prince of the Celtic land, whose mighty deeds and high-
minded self-sacrifice fall within the compass of one brief summer.
The whole ancient world presents no more genuine knight, whether
as regards his essential character or his outward appearance.
But man ought not to be a mere knight, and least of all the statesman.
It was the knight, not the hero, who disdained to escape from Alesia,
when for the nation more depended on him than on a hundred thousand
ordinary brave men.  It was the knight, not the hero, who gave
himself up as a sacrifice, when the only thing gained
by that sacrifice was that the nation publicly dishonoured itself
and with equal cowardice and absurdity employed its last breath
in proclaiming that its great historical death-struggle was a crime
against its oppressor.  How very different was the conduct
of Hannibal in similar positions! It is impossible to part
from the noble king of the Arverni without a feeling of historical
and human sympathy; but it is a significant trait of the Celtic nation,
that its greatest man was after all merely a knight.

The Last Conflicts
With the Bituriges and Carnutes

The fall of Alesia and the capitulation of the army enclosed
in it were fearful blows for the Celtic insurrection; but blows
quite as heavy had befallen the nation and yet the conflict
had been renewed.  The loss of Vercingetorix, however, was irreparable.
With him unity had come to the nation; with him it seemed also
to have departed.  We do not find that the insurgents made any attempt
to continue their joint defence and to appoint another generalissimo;
the league of patriots fell to pieces of itself, and every clan
was left to fight or come to terms with the Romans as it pleased.
Naturally the desire after rest everywhere prevailed.
Caesar too had an interest in bringing the war quickly to an end.
Of the ten years of his governorship seven had elapsed, and the last
was called in question by his political opponents in the capital;
he could only reckon with some degree of certainty on two more summers,
and, while his interest as well as his honour required
that he should hand over the newly-acquired regions to his successor
in a condition of tolerable peace and tranquillity, there was
in truth but scanty time to bring about such a state of things.
To exercise mercy was in this case still more a necessity
for the victor than for the vanquished; and he might thank his stars
that the internal dissensions and the easy temperament of the Celts
met him in this respect half way.  Where--as in the two most eminent
cantons of central Gaul, those of the Haedui and Arverni--there
existed a strong party well disposed to Rome, the cantons obtained
immediately after the fall of Alesia a complete restoration
of their former relations with Rome, and even their captives, 20,000
in number, were released without ransom, while those of the other
clans passed into the hard bondage of the victorious legionaries.
The greater portion of the Gallic districts submitted like the Haedui
and Arverni to their fate, and allowed their inevitable
punishment to be inflicted without farther resistance.
But not a few clung in foolish frivolity or sullen despair
to the lost cause, till the Roman troops of execution appeared
within their borders.  Such expeditions were in the winter of 702-703
undertaken against the Bituriges and the Carnutes.

With the Bellovaci

More serious resistance was offered by the Bellovaci,
who in the previous year had kept aloof from the relief of Alesia;
they seem to have wished to show that their absence on that decisive day
at least did not proceed from want of courage or of love for freedom.
The Atrebates, Ambiani, Caletes, and other Belgic cantons took part
in this struggle; the brave king of the Atrebates Commius,
whose accession to the insurrection the Romans had least of all forgiven,
and against whom recently Labienus had even directed an atrocious
attempt at assassination, brought to the Bellovaci 500 German
horse, whose value the campaign of the previous year had shown.
The resolute and talented Bellovacian Correus, to whom the chief
conduct of the war had fallen, waged warfare as Vercingetorix
had waged it, and with no small success.  Although Caesar had gradually
brought up the greater part of his army, he could neither bring
the infantry of the Bellovaci to a battle, nor even prevent it
from taking up other positions which afforded better protection
against his augmented forces; while the Roman horse, especially
the Celtic contingents, suffered most severe losses in various combats
at the hands of the enemy's cavalry, especially of the German cavalry
of Commius.  But after Correus had met his death in a skirmish
with the Roman foragers, the resistance here too was broken;
the victor proposed tolerable conditions, to which the Bellovaci
along with their confederates submitted.  The Treveri were reduced
to obedience by Labienus, and incidentally the territory
of the outlawed Eburones was once more traversed and laid waste.
Thus the last resistance of the Belgic confederacy was broken.

On the Loire

The maritime cantons still made an attempt to defend themselves
against the Roman domination in concert with their neighbours
on the Loire.  Insurgent bands from the Andian, Carnutic, and other
surrounding cantons assembled on the lower Loire and besieged
in Lemonum (Poitiers) the prince of the Pictones who was friendly
to the Romans.  But here too a considerable Roman force soon appeared
against them; the insurgents abandoned the siege, and retreated
with the view of placing the Loire between themselves and the enemy,
but were overtaken on the march and defeated; whereupon
the Carnutes and the other revolted cantons, including even
the maritime ones, sent in their submission.

And in Uxellodunum

The resistance was at an end; save that an isolated leader of free
bands still here and there upheld the national banner.  The bold
Drappes and the brave comrade in arms of Vercingetorix Lucterius,
after the breaking up of the army united on the Loire, gathered
together the most resolute men, and with these threw themselves
into the strong mountain-town of Uxellodunum on the Lot,(50)
which amidst severe and fatal conflicts they succeeded in sufficiently
provisioning.  In spite of the loss of their leaders, of whom
Drappes had been taken prisoner, and Lucterius had been cut off
from the town, the garrison resisted to the uttermost; it was not
till Caesar appeared in person, and under his orders the spring
from which the besieged derived their water was diverted by means
of subterranean drains, that the fortress, the last stronghold
of the Celtic nation, fell.  To distinguish the last champions
of the cause of freedom, Caesar ordered that the whole garrison should
have their hands cut off and should then be dismissed, each one
to his home.  Caesar, who felt it all-important to put an end at least
to open resistance throughout Gaul, allowed king Commius, who still
held out in the region of Arras and maintained desultory warfare
with the Roman troops there down to the winter of 703-704, to make
his peace, and even acquiesced when the irritated and justly
distrustful man haughtily refused to appear in person in the Roman
camp.  It is very probable that Caesar in a similar way allowed
himself to be satisfied with a merely nominal submission, perhaps
even with a de facto armistice, in the less accessible districts
of the north-west and north-east of Gaul.(51)

Gaul Subdued

Thus was Gaul--or, in other words, the land west of the Rhine
and north of the Pyrenees--rendered subject after only eight years
of conflict (696-703) to the Romans.  Hardly a year after the full
pacification of the land, at the beginning of 705, the Roman troops
had to be withdrawn over the Alps in consequence of the civil war,
which had now at length broken out in Italy, and there remained
nothing but at the most some weak divisions of recruits in Gaul.
Nevertheless the Celts did not again rise against the foreign yoke;
and, while in all the old provinces of the empire there was
fighting against Caesar, the newly-acquired country alone remained
continuously obedient to its conqueror.  Even the Germans
did not during those decisive years repeat their attempts to conquer
new settlements on the left bank of the Rhine.  As little did
there occur in Gaul any national insurrection or German invasion
during the crises that followed, although these offered the most
favourable opportunities.  If disturbances broke out anywhere,
such as the rising of the Bellovaci against the Romans in 708,
these movements were so isolated and so unconnected with
the complications in Italy, that they were suppressed without material
difficulty by the Roman governors.  Certainly this state of peace
was most probably, just as was the peace of Spain for centuries,
purchased by provisionally allowing the regions that were most
remote and most strongly pervaded by national feeling--Brittany,
the districts on the Scheldt, the region of the Pyrenees--
to withdraw themselves de facto in a more or less definite manner
from the Roman allegiance.  Nevertheless the building of Caesar--
however scanty the time which he found for it amidst other
and at the moment still more urgent labours, however unfinished
and but provisionally rounded off he may have left it--in substance
stood the test of this fiery trial, as respected both the repelling
of the Germans and the subjugation of the Celts.

Organization
Roman Taxation

As to administration in chief, the territories newly acquired
by the governor of Narbonese Gaul remained for the time being united
with the province of Narbo; it was not till Caesar gave up
this office (710) that two new governorships--Gaul proper
and Belgica--were formed out of the territory which he conquered.
That the individual cantons lost their political independence,
was implied in the very nature of conquest.  They became throughout
tributary to the Roman community.  Their system of tribute however was,
of course, not that by means of which the nobles and financial
aristocracy turned Asia to profitable account; but, as was
the case in Spain, a tribute fixed once for all was imposed on each
individual community, and the levying of it was left to itself.
In this way forty million sesterces (400,000 pounds) flowed annually
from Gaul into the chests of the Roman government; which, no doubt,
undertook in return the cost of defending the frontier of the
Rhine.  Moreover, the masses of gold accumulated in the temples
of the gods and the treasuries of the grandees found their way,
as a matter of course, to Rome; when Caesar offered his Gallic gold
throughout the Roman empire and brought such masses of it at once
into the money market that gold as compared with silver fell about
25 per cent, we may guess what sums Gaul lost through the war.

Indulgences towards Existing Arrangements

The former cantonal constitutions with their hereditary kings,
or their presiding feudal-oligarchies, continued in the main
to subsist after the conquest, and even the system of clientship,
which made certain cantons dependent on others more powerful,
was not abolished, although no doubt with the loss of political
independence its edge was taken off.  The sole object of Caesar
was, while making use of the existing dynastic, feudalist,
and hegemonic divisions, to arrange matters in the interest of Rome,
and to bring everywhere into power the men favourably disposed
to the foreign rule.  Caesar spared no pains to form a Roman party
in Gaul; extensive rewards in money and specially in confiscated
estates were bestowed on his adherents, and places in the common
council and the first offices of state in their cantons
were procured for them by Caesar's influence.  Those cantons
in which a sufficiently strong and trustworthy Roman party existed,
such as those of the Remi, the Lingones, the Haedui, were favoured
by the bestowal of a freer communal constitution--the right
of alliance, as it was called--and by preferences in the regulation
of the matter of hegemony.  The national worship and its priests
seem to have been spared by Caesar from the outset as far as possible;
no trace is found in his case of measures such as were adopted
in later times by the Roman rulers against the Druidical system,
and with this is probably connected the fact that his Gallic wars,
so far as we see, do not at all bear the character of religious
warfare after the fashion which formed so prominent a feature
of the Britannic wars subsequently.

Introduction of the Romanizing of the Country

While Caesar thus showed to the conquered nation every allowable
consideration and spared their national, political, and religious
institutions as far as was at all compatible with their subjection
to Rome, he did so, not as renouncing the fundamental idea of his
conquest, the Romanization of Gaul, but with a view to realize it
in the most indulgent way.  He did not content himself with letting
the same circumstances, which had already in great part Romanized
the south province, produce their effect likewise in the north;
but, like a genuine statesman, he sought to stimulate the natural
course of development and, moreover, to shorten as far as possible
the always painful period of transition.  To say nothing
of the admission of a number of Celts of rank into Roman citizenship
and even of several perhaps into the Roman senate, it was probably
Caesar who introduced, although with certain restrictions,
the Latin instead of the native tongue as the official language
within the several cantons in Gaul, and who introduced the Roman
instead of the national monetary system on the footing of reserving
the coinage of gold and of denarii to the Roman authorities, while
the smaller money was to be coined by the several cantons, but only
for circulation within the cantonal bounds, and this too in accordance
with the Roman standard.  We may smile at the Latin jargon,
which the dwellers by the Loire and the Seine henceforth employed
in accordance with orders;(52) but these barbarisms were pregnant
with a greater future than the correct Latin of the capital.
Perhaps too, if the cantonal constitution in Gaul afterwards appears
more closely approximated to the Italian urban constitution,
and the chief places of the canton as well as the common councils
attain a more marked prominence in it than was probably the case
in the original Celtic organization, the change may be referred
to Caesar.  No one probably felt more than the political heir
of Gaius Gracchus and of Marius, how desirable in a military
as well as in a political point of view it would have been to establish
a series of Transalpine colonies as bases of support for the new rule
and starting-points of the new civilization.  If nevertheless
he confined himself to the settlement of his Celtic or German horsemen
in Noviodunum(53) and to that of the Boii in the canton
of the Haedui (54)--which latter settlement already rendered quite
the services of a Roman colony in the war with Vercingetorix(55)--
the reason was merely that his farther plans did not permit him
to put the plough instead of the sword into the hands of his legions.
What he did in later years for the old Roman province
in this respect, will be explained in its own place; it is probable
that the want of time alone prevented him from extending
the same system to the regions which he had recently subdued.

The Catastrophe of the Celtic Nation
Traits Common to the Celts and Irish

All was over with the Celtic nation.  Its political dissolution
had been completed by Caesar; its national dissolution was begun
and in course of regular progress.  This was no accidental destruction,
such as destiny sometimes prepares even for peoples capable
of development, but a self-incurred and in some measure historically
necessary catastrophe.  The very course of the last war proves this,
whether we view it as a whole or in detail.  When the establishment
of the foreign rule was in contemplation, only single districts--
mostly, moreover, German or half-German--offered energetic
resistance.  When the foreign rule was actually established,
the attempts to shake it off were either undertaken altogether
without judgment, or they were to an undue extent the work
of certain prominent nobles, and were therefore immediately
and entirely brought to an end with the death or capture of an
Indutiomarus, Camulogenus, Vercingetorix, or Correus.  The sieges
and guerilla warfare, in which elsewhere the whole moral depth
of national struggles displays itself, were throughout this Celtic
struggle of a peculiarly pitiable character.  Every page of Celtic
history confirms the severe saying of one of the few Romans who had
the judgment not to despise the so-called barbarians--that the Celts
boldly challenge danger while future, but lose their courage
before its presence.  In the mighty vortex of the world's history,
which inexorably crushes all peoples that are not as hard
and as flexible as steel, such a nation could not permanently maintain
itself; with reason the Celts of the continent suffered the same
fate at the hands of the Romans, as their kinsmen in Ireland suffer
down to our own day at the hands of the Saxons--the fate
of becoming merged as a leaven of future development in a politically
superior nationality.  On the eve of parting from this remarkable
nation we may be allowed to call attention to the fact,
that in the accounts of the ancients as to the Celts on the Loire
and Seine we find almost every one of the characteristic traits
which we are accustomed to recognize as marking the Irish.
Every feature reappears: the laziness in the culture of the fields;
the delight in tippling and brawling; the ostentation--we may recall
that sword of Caesar hung up in the sacred grove of the Arverni
after the victory of Gergovia, which its alleged former owner viewed
with a smile at the consecrated spot and ordered the sacred property
to be carefully spared; the language full of comparisons and hyperboles,
of allusions and quaint turns; the droll humour--an excellent
example of which was the rule, that if any one interrupted a person
speaking in public, a substantial and very visible hole should be
cut, as a measure of police, in the coat of the disturber
of the peace; the hearty delight in singing and reciting the deeds
of past ages, and the most decided gifts of rhetoric and poetry;
the curiosity--no trader was allowed to pass, before he had told
in the open street what he knew, or did not know, in the shape of news--
and the extravagant credulity which acted on such accounts,
for which reason in the better regulated cantons travellers
were prohibited on pain of severe punishment from communicating
unauthenticated reports to others than the public magistrates;
the childlike piety, which sees in the priest a father and asks
for his counsel in all things; the unsurpassed fervour of national
feeling, and the closeness with which those who are fellow-countrymen
cling together almost like one family in opposition to strangers;
the inclination to rise in revolt under the first chance-leader
that presents himself and to form bands, but at the same time
the utter incapacity to preserve a self-reliant courage equally remote
from presumption and from pusillanimity, to perceive the right time
for waiting and for striking a blow, to attain or even barely
to tolerate any organization, any sort of fixed military or political
discipline.  It is, and remains, at all times and all places
the same indolent and poetical, irresolute and fervid, inquisitive,
credulous, amiable, clever, but--in a political point of view--
thoroughly useless nation; and therefore its fate has been always
and everywhere the same.

The Beginnings of Romanic Development

But the fact that this great people was ruined by the Transalpine wars
of Caesar, was not the most important result of that grand enterprise;
far more momentous than the negative was the positive result.
It hardly admits of a doubt that, if the rule of the senate
had prolonged its semblance of life for some generations
longer, the migration of peoples, as it is called, would have
occurred four hundred years sooner than it did, and would have
occurred at a time when the Italian civilization had not become
naturalized either in Gaul, or on the Danube, or in Africa and
Spain.  Inasmuch as the great general and statesman of Rome
with sure glance perceived in the German tribes the rival antagonists
of the Romano-Greek world; inasmuch as with firm hand he established
the new system of aggressive defence down even to its details,
and taught men to protect the frontiers of the empire by rivers
or artificial ramparts, to colonize the nearest barbarian tribes along
the frontier with the view of warding off the more remote,
and to recruit the Roman army by enlistment from the enemy's country;
he gained for the Hellenico-Italian culture the interval necessary
to civilize the west just as it had already civilized the east.
Ordinary men see the fruits of their action; the seed sown by men
of genius germinates slowly.  Centuries elapsed before men understood
that Alexander had not merely erected an ephemeral kingdom
in the east, but had carried Hellenism to Asia; centuries again
elapsed before men understood that Caesar had not merely conquered
a new province for the Romans, but had laid the foundation
for the Romanizing of the regions of the west.  It was only a late
posterity that perceived the meaning of those expeditions
to England and Germany, so inconsiderate in a military point of view,
and so barren of immediate result.  An immense circle of peoples,
whose existence and condition hitherto were known barely through
the reports--mingling some truth with much fiction--of the mariner
and the trader, was disclosed by this means to the Greek and Roman
world.  "Daily," it is said in a Roman writing of May 698,
"the letters and messages from Gaul are announcing names of peoples,
cantons, and regions hitherto unknown to us."  This enlargement
of the historical horizon by the expeditions of Caesar beyond
the Alps was as significant an event in the world's history
as the exploring of America by European bands.  To the narrow circle
of the Mediterranean states were added the peoples of central
and northern Europe, the dwellers on the Baltic and North seas;
to the old world was added a new one, which thenceforth was influenced
by the old and influenced it in turn.  What the Gothic Theodoric
afterwards succeeded in, came very near to being already carried
out by Ariovistus.  Had it so happened, our civilization would have
hardly stood in any more intimate relation to the Romano-Greek than
to the Indian and Assyrian culture.  That there is a bridge connecting
the past glory of Hellas and Rome with the prouder fabric of modern
history; that Western Europe is Romanic, and Germanic Europe
classic; that the names of Themistocles and Scipio have to us
a very different sound from those of Asoka and Salmanassar;
that Homer and Sophocles are not merely like the Vedas and Kalidasa
attractive to the literary botanist, but bloom for us in our own
garden--all this is the work of Caesar; and, while the creation
of his great predecessor in the east has been almost wholly reduced
to ruin by the tempests of the Middle Ages, the structure of Caesar
has outlasted those thousands of years which have changed religion
and polity for the human race and even shifted for it the centre
of civilization itself, and it stands erect for what we may
designate as eternity.

The Countries on the Danube

To complete the sketch of the relations of Rome to the peoples
of the north at this period, it remains that we cast a glance
at the countries which stretch to the north of the Italian and Greek
peninsulas, from the sources of the Rhine to the Black Sea.
It is true that the torch of history does not illumine the mighty stir
and turmoil of peoples which probably prevailed at that time there,
and the solitary gleams of light that fall on this region are,
like a faint glimmer amidst deep darkness, more fitted to bewilder
than to enlighten.  But it is the duty of the historian to indicate
also the gaps in the record of the history of nations; he may not
deem it beneath him to mention, by the side of Caesar's magnificent
system of defence, the paltry arrangements by which the generals
of the senate professed to protect on this side
the frontier of the empire.

Alpine Peoples

North-eastern Italy was still as before(56) left exposed
to the attacks of the Alpine tribes.  The strong Roman army
encamped at Aquileia in 695, and the triumph of the governor
of Cisalpine Gaul Lucius Afranius, lead us to infer, that about
this time an expedition to the Alps took place, and it may have been
in consequence of this that we find the Romans soon afterwards
in closer connection with a king of the Noricans.  But that even
subsequently Italy was not at all secure on this side, is shown
by the sudden assault of the Alpine barbarians on the flourishing town
of Tergeste in 702, when the Transalpine insurrection had compelled
Caesar to divest upper Italy wholly of troops.

Illyria

The turbulent peoples also, who had possession of the district
along the Illyrian coast, gave their Roman masters constant
employment.  The Dalmatians, even at an earlier period the most
considerable people of this region, enlarged their power so much
by admitting their neighbours into their union, that the number
of their townships rose from twenty to eighty.  When they refused
to give up once more the town of Promona (not far from the river
Kerka), which they had wrested from the Liburnians, Caesar
after the battle of Pharsalia gave orders to march against them;
but the Romans were in the first instance worsted, and in consequence
of this Dalmatia became for some time a rendezvous of the party
hostile to Caesar, and the inhabitants in concert with the Pompeians
and with the pirates offered an energetic resistance
to the generals of Caesar both by land and by water.

Macedonia

Lastly Macedonia along with Epirus and Hellas lay in greater
desolation and decay than almost any other part of the Roman
empire.  Dyrrhachium, Thessalonica, and Byzantium had still some
trade and commerce; Athens attracted travellers and students
by its name and its philosophical school; but on the whole there lay
over the formerly populous little towns of Hellas, and her seaports
once swarming with men, the calm of the grave.  But if the Greeks
stirred not, the inhabitants of the hardly accessible Macedonian
mountains on the other hand continued after the old fashion their
predatory raids and feuds; for instance about 697-698 Agraeans
and Dolopians overran the Aetolian towns, and in 700 the Pirustae
dwelling in the valleys of the Drin overran southern Illyria.
The neighbouring peoples did likewise.  The Dardani on the northern
frontier as well as the Thracians in the east had no doubt been
humbled by the Romans in the eight years' conflicts from 676
to 683; the most powerful of the Thracian princes, Cotys, the ruler
of the old Odrysian kingdom, was thenceforth numbered among the client
kings of Rome.  Nevertheless the pacified land had still as before
to suffer invasions from the north and east.  The governor Gaius
Antonius was severely handled both by the Dardani and by the tribes
settled in the modern Dobrudscha, who, with the help of the dreaded
Bastarnae brought up from the left bank of the Danube, inflicted
on him an important defeat (692-693) at Istropolis (Istere, not far
from Kustendji).  Gaius Octavius fought with better fortune
against the Bessi and Thracians (694).  Marcus Piso again (697-698)
as general-in-chief wretchedly mismanaged matters; which was
no wonder, seeing that for money he gave friends and foes whatever
they wished.  The Thracian Dentheletae (on the Strymon) under his
governorship plundered Macedonia far and wide, and even stationed
their posts on the great Roman military road leading from Dyrrhachium
to Thessalonica; the people in Thessalonica made up their minds
to stand a siege from them, while the strong Roman army in the province
seemed to be present only as an onlooker when the inhabitants
of the mountains and neighbouring peoples levied contributions
from the peaceful subjects of Rome.

The New Dacian Kingdom

Such attacks could not indeed endanger the power of Rome, and a fresh
disgrace had long ago ceased to occasion concern.  But just about
this period a people began to acquire political consolidation
beyond the Danube in the wide Dacian steppes--a people which seemed
destined to play a different part in history from that of the Bessi
and the Dentheletae.  Among the Getae or Dacians in primeval times
there had been associated with the king of the people a holy man
called Zalmoxis, who, after having explored the ways and wonders
of the gods in distant travel in foreign lands, and having thoroughly
studied in particular the wisdom of the Egyptian priests
and of the Greek Pythagoreans, had returned to his native country
to endhis life as a pious hermit in a cavern of the "holy mountain."
He remained accessible only to the king and his servants, and gave
forth to the king and through him to the people his oracles
with reference to every important undertaking.  He was regarded
by his countrymen at first as priest of the supreme god and ultimately
as himself a god, just as it is said of Moses and Aaron that the Lord
had made Aaron the prophet and Moses the god of the prophet.
This had become a permanent institution; there was regularly associated
with the king of the Getae such a god, from whose mouth everything
which the king ordered proceeded or appeared to proceed.
This peculiar constitution, in which the theocratic idea had become
subservient to the apparently absolute power of the king, probably
gave to the kings of the Getae some such position with respect
to their subjects as the caliphs had with respect to the Arabs;
and one result of it was the marvellous religious-political reform
of the nation, which was carried out about this time by the king
of the Getae, Burebistas, and the god Dekaeneos.  The people,
which had morally and politically fallen into utter decay through
unexampled drunkenness, was as it were metamorphosed by the new
gospel of temperance and valour; with his bands under the influence,
so to speak, of puritanic discipline and enthusiasm king Burebistas
founded within a few years a mighty kingdom, which extended along
both banks of the Danube and reached southward far into Thrace,
Illyria, and Noricum.  No direct contact with the Romans had yet
taken place, and no one could tell what might come out of
this singular state, which reminds us of the early times of Islam;
but this much it needed no prophetic gift to foretell, that proconsuls
like Antonius and Piso were not called to contend with gods.




CHAPTER VIII

The Joint Rule of Pompeius and Caesar

Pompeius and Caesar in Juxtaposition

Among the democratic chiefs, who from the time of the consulate
of Caesar were recognized officially, so to speak, as the joint
rulers of the commonwealth, as the governing "triumvirs," Pompeius
according to public opinion occupied decidedly the first place.
It was he who was called by the Optimates the "private dictator";
it was before him that Cicero prostrated himself in vain;
against him were directed the sharpest sarcasms in the wall-placards
of Bibulus, and the most envenomed arrows of the talk in the saloons
of the opposition.  This was only to be expected.  According to
the facts before the public Pompeius was indisputably the first general
of his time; Caesar was a dexterous party-leader and party-orator,
of undeniable talents, but as notoriously of unwarlike and indeed
of effeminate temperament.  Such opinions had been long current;
it could not be expected of the rabble of quality that it should
trouble itself about the real state of things and abandon
once established platitudes because of obscure feats of heroism
on the Tagus.  Caesar evidently played in the league the mere part
of the adjutant who executed for his chief the work which Flavius,
Afranius, and other less capable instruments had attempted
and not performed.  Even his governorship seemed not to alter
this state of things.  Afranius had but recently occupied
a very similar position, without thereby acquiring any special
importance; several provinces at once had been of late years
repeatedly placed under one governor, and often far more
than four legions had been united in one hand; as matters
were again quiet beyond the Alps and prince Ariovistus
was recognized by the Romans as a friend and neighbour,
there was no prospect of conducting a war of any moment there.
It was natural to compare the position which Pompeius had obtained
by the Gabinio-Manilian law with that which Caesar had obtained
by the Vatinian; but the comparison did not turn out to Caesar's
advantage.  Pompeius ruled over nearly the whole Roman empire;
Caesar over two provinces.  Pompeius had the soldiers
and the treasures of the state almost absolutely at his disposal;
Caesar had only the sums assigned to him and an army of 24,000 men.
It was left to Pompeius himself to fix the point of time
for his retirement; Caesar's command was secured to him
for a long period no doubt, but yet only for a limited term.
Pompeius, in fine, had been entrusted with the most important
undertakings by sea and land; Caesar was sent to the north,
to watch over the capital from upper Italy and to take care
that Pompeius should rule it undisturbed.

Pompeius and the Capital
Anarchy

But when Pompeius was appointed by the coalition to be ruler
of the capital, he undertook a task far exceeding his powers.
Pompeius understood nothing further of ruling than may be summed up
in the word of command.  The waves of agitation in the capital
were swelled at once by past and by future revolutions; the problem
of ruling this city--which in every respect might be compared
to the Paris of the nineteenth century--without an armed force
was infinitely difficult, and for that stiff and stately
pattern-soldier altogether insoluble.  Very soon matters reached
such a pitch that friends and foes, both equally inconvenient to him,
could, so far as he was concerned, do what they pleased;
after Caesar's departure from Rome the coalition ruled doubtless
still the destinies of the world, but not the streets of the capital.
The senate too, to whom there still belonged a sort of nominal
government, allowed things in the capital to follow their
natural course; partly because the section of this body controlled
by the coalition lacked the instructions of the regents, partly because
the angry opposition kept aloof out of indifference or pessimism,
but chiefly because the whole aristocratic corporation began
to feel at any rate, if not to comprehend, its utter impotence.
For the moment therefore there was nowhere at Rome any power
of resistance in any sort of government, nowhere a real authority.
Men were living in an interregnum between the ruin of the aristocratic,
and the rise of the military, rule; and, if the Roman commonwealth
has presented all the different political functions and organizations
more purely and normally than any other in ancient or modern times,
it has also exhibited political disorganization-anarchy--
with an unenviable clearness.  It is a strange coincidence
that in the same years, in which Caesar was creating beyond the Alps
a workto last for ever, there was enacted in Rome one of the most
extravagant political farces that was ever produced upon the stage
of the world's history.  The new regent of the commonwealth
did not rule, but shut himself up in his house and sulked in silence.
The former half-deposed government likewise did not rule, but sighed,
sometimes in private amidst the confidential circles of the villas,
sometimes in chorus in the senate-house.  The portion of the burgesses
which had still at heart freedom and order was disgusted
with the reign of confusion, but utterly without leaders
and counsel it maintained a passive attitude-not merely avoiding
all political activity, but keeping aloof, as far as possible,
from the political Sodom itself.

The Anarchists

On the other hand the rabble of every sort never had better days,
never found a merrier arena.  The number of little great men
was legion.  Demagogism became quite a trade, which accordingly
did not lack its professional insignia--the threadbare mantle,
the shaggy beard, the long streaming hair, the deep bass voice;
and not seldom it was a trade with golden soil.  For the standing
declamations the tried gargles of the theatrical staff
were an article in much request;(1) Greeks and Jews, freedmen
and slaves, were the most regular attenders and the loudest criers
in the public assemblies; frequently, even when it came to a vote,
only a minority of those voting consisted of burgesses constitutionally
entitled to do so.  "Next time," it is said in a letter of this period,
"we may expect our lackeys to outvote the emancipation-tax."
The real powers of the day were the compact and armed bands,
the battalions of anarchy raised by adventurers of rank
out of gladiatorial slaves and blackguards.  Their possessors
had from the outset been mostly numbered among the popular party;
but since the departure of Caesar, who alone understood how to impress
the democracy, and alone knew how to manage it, all discipline
had departed from them and every partisan practised politics
at his own hand.  Even now, no doubt, these men fought with most pleasure
under the banner of freedom; but, strictly speaking, they were neither
of democratic nor of anti-democratic views; they inscribed on the--
in itself indispensable--banner, as it happened, now the name
of the people, anon that of the senate or that of a party-chief;
Clodius for instance fought or professed to fight in succession
for the ruling democracy, for the senate, and for Crassus.  The leaders
of these bands kept to their colours only so far as they inexorably
persecuted their personal enemies--as in the case of Clodius
against Cicero and Milo against Clodius--while their partisan
position served them merely as a handle in these personal feuds.
We might as well seek to set a charivari to music as to write the history
of this political witches' revel; nor is it of any moment
to enumerate all the deeds of murder, besiegings of houses,
acts of incendiarism and other scenes of violence within a great capital,
and to reckon up how often the gamut was traversed from hissing
and shouting to spitting on and trampling down opponents,
and thence to throwing stones and drawing swords.

Clodius

The principal performer in this theatre of political rascality
was that Publius Clodius, of whose services, as already mentioned,(2)
the regents availed themselves against Cato and Cicero.
Left to himself, this influential, talented, energetic and--
in his trade--really exemplary partisan pursued during his tribunate,
of the people (696) an ultra-democratic policy, gave the citizens
corn gratis, restricted the right of the censors to stigmatize
immoral burgesses, prohibited the magistrates from obstructing
the course of the comitial machinery by religious formalities,
set asidethe limitswhich had shortly before (690), for the purpose
of checking the system of bands, been imposed on the right
of association of the lower classes, and reestablished the "street-clubs"
(-collegia compitalicia-) at that time abolished, which were nothing
else than a formal organization--subdivided according to the streets,
and with an almost military arrangement--of the whole free
or slave proletariate of the capital.  If in addition the further law,
which Clodius had likewise already projected and purposed to introduce
when praetor in 702, should give to freedmen and to slaves living
in de facto possession of freedom the same political rights
with the freeborn, the author of all these brave improvements
of the constitution might declare his work complete, and as
a second Numa of freedom and equality might invite the sweet rabble
of the capital to see him celebrate high mass in honour of the arrival
of the democratic millennium in the temple of Liberty which he had
erected on the site of one of his burnings at the Palatine.
Of course these exertions in behalf of freedom did not exclude
a traffic in decrees of the burgesses; like Caesar himself, Caesar's ape
kept governorships and other posts great and small on sale
for the benefit of his fellow-citizens, and sold the sovereign rights
of the state for the benefit of subject kings and cities.

Quarrel of Pompeius with Clodius

At all these things Pompeius looked on without stirring.
If he did not perceive how seriously he thus compromised himself,
his opponent perceived it.  Clodius had the hardihood to engage
in a dispute with the regent of Rome on a question of little moment,
as to the sending back of a captive Armenian prince; and the variance
soon became a formal feud, in which the utter helplessness
of Pompeius was displayed.  The head of the state knew not how to meet
the partisan otherwise than with his own weapons, only wielded
with far less dexterity.  If he had been tricked by Clodius respecting
the Armenian prince, he offended him in turn by releasing Cicero,
who was preeminently obnoxious to Clodius, from the exile
into which Clodius had sent him; and he attained his object
so thoroughly, that he converted his opponent into an implacable foe.
If Clodius made the streets insecure with his bands, the victorious
general likewise set slaves and pugilists to work; in the frays
which ensued the general naturally was worsted by the demagogue
and defeated in the street, and Gaius Cato was kept almost constantly
under siege in his garden by Clodius and his comrades.  It is not
the least remarkable feature in this remarkable spectacle,
that the regent and the rogue amidst their quarrel vied in courting
the favour of the fallen government; Pompeius, partly to please
the senate, permitted Cicero's recall, Clodius on the other hand
declared the Julian laws null and void, and called on Marcus Bibulus
publicly to testify to their having been unconstitutionally passed.

Naturally no positive result could issue from this imbroglio
of dark passions; its most distinctive character was just
its utterly ludicrous want of object.  Even a man of Caesar's genius
had to learn by experience that democratic agitation was completely
worn out, and that even the way to the throne no longer lay
through demagogism.  It was nothing more than a historical makeshift,
if now, in the interregnum between republic and monarchy,
some whimsical fellow dressed himself out with the prophet's mantle
and staff which Caesar had himself laid aside, and the great ideals
of Gaius Gracchus came once more upon the stage distorted into a parody;
the so-called party from which this democratic agitation
proceeded was so little such in reality, that afterwards it had
not even a part falling to it in the decisive struggle.  It cannot
even be asserted that by means of this anarchical state of things
the desire after a strong government based on military power
had been vividly kindled in the minds of those who were indifferent
to politics.  Even apart from the fact that such neutral burgesses
were chiefly to be sought outside of Rome, and thus were not
directly affected by the rioting in the capital, those minds
which could be at all influenced by such motives had been already
by their former experiences, and especially by the Catilinarian
conspiracy, thoroughly converted to the principle of authority;
but those that were really alarmed were affected far more emphatically
by a dread of the gigantic crisis inseparable from an overthrow
of the constitution, than by dread of the mere continuance of the--
at bottom withal very superficial--anarchy in the capital.
The only result of it which historically deserves notice
was the painful position in which Pompeius was placed by the attacks
of the Clodians, and which had a material share in determining
his farther steps.

Pompeius in Relation to the Gallic Victories of Caesar

Little as Pompeius liked and understood taking the initiative,
he was yet on this occasion compelled by the change of his position
towards both Clodius and Caesar to depart from his previous inaction.
The irksome and disgraceful situation to which Clodius
had reduced him, could not but at length arouse even his sluggish
nature to hatred and anger.  But far more important was the change
which took place in his relation to Caesar.  While, of the two
confederate regents, Pompeius had utterly failed in the functions
which he had undertaken, Caesar had the skill to turn his official
position to an account which left all calculations and all fears
far behind.  Without much inquiry as to permission, Caesar
had doubled his army by levies in his southern province inhabited
in great measure by Roman burgesses; had with this army crossed
the Alps instead of keeping watch over Rome from Northern Italy;
had crushed in the bud a new Cimbrian invasion, and within two years
(696, 697) had carried the Roman arms to the Rhine and the Channel.
In presence of such facts even the aristocratic tactics of ignoring
and disparaging were baffled.  He who had often been scoffed
at as effeminate was now the idol of the army, the celebrated victory-
crowned hero, whose fresh laurels outshone the faded laurels
of Pompeius, and to whom even the senate as early as 697 accorded
the demonstrations of honour usual after successful campaigns
in richer measure than had ever fallen to the share of Pompeius.
Pompeius stood towards his former adjutant precisely
as after the Gabinio-Manilian laws the latter had stood towards him.
Caesar was now the hero of the day and the master of the most powerful
Roman army; Pompeius was an ex-general who had once been famous.
It is true that no collision had yet occurred between father-in-law
and son-in-law, and the relation was externally undisturbed;
but every political alliance is inwardly broken up, when the relative
proportions of the power of the parties are materially altered.
While the quarrel with Clodius was merely annoying, the change
in the position of Caesar involved a very serious danger for Pompeius;
just as Caesar and his confederates had formerly sought a military
support against him, he found himself now compelled to seek a military
support against Caesar, and, laying aside his haughty privacy,
to come forward as a candidate for some extraordinary magistracy,
which would enable him to hold his place by the side of the governor
of the two Gauls with equal and, if possible, with superior power.
His tactics, like his position, were exactly those of Caesar
during the Mithradatic war.  To balance the military power
of a superior but still remote adversary by the obtaining
of a similar command, Pompeius required in the first instance
the official machinery of government.  A year and a half ago
this had been absolutely at his disposal.  The regents then ruled
the state both by the comitia, which absolutely obeyed them
as the masters of the street, and by the senate, which was
energetically overawed by Caesar; as representative of the coalition
in Rome and as its acknowledged head, Pompeius would have doubtless
obtained from the senate and from the burgesses any decree
which he wished, even if it were against Caesar's interest.
But by the awkward quarrel with Clodius, Pompeius had lost the command
of the streets, and could not expect to carry a proposal in his favour
in the popular assembly.  Things were not quite so unfavourable for him
in the senate; but even there it was doubtful whether Pompeius
after that long and fatal inaction still held the reins of the majority
firmly enough in hand to procure such a decree as he needed.

The Republican Opposition among the Public

The position of the senate also, or rather of the nobility
generally, had meanwhile undergone a change.  From the very fact
of its complete abasement it drew fresh energy.  In the coalition
of 694 various things had come to light, which were by no means
as yet ripe for it.  The banishment of Cato and Cicero--
which public opinion, however much the regents kept themselves
in the background and even professed to lament it, referred
with unerring tact to its real authors--and the marriage-relationship
formed between Caesar and Pompeius suggested to men's minds
with disagreeable clearness monarchical decrees of banishment
and family alliances.  The larger public too, which stood
more aloof from political events, observed the foundations
of the future monarchy coming more and more distinctly into view.
From the moment when the public perceived that Caesar's object
was not a modification of the republican constitution,
but that the question at stake was the existence or non-existence
of the republic, many of the best men, who had hitherto reckoned
themselves of the popular party and honoured in Caesar its head,
must infallibly have passed over to the opposite side.  It was
no longer in the saloons and the country houses of the governing
nobilityalone that men talked of the "three dynasts," of the "three-
headed monster."  The dense crowds of people listened to the consular
orations of Caesar without a sound of acclamation or approval;
not a hand stirred to applaud when the democratic consul entered
the theatre.  But they hissed when one of the tools of the regents
showed himself in public, and even staid men applauded when an actor
utteredan anti-monarchic sentence or an allusion against Pompeius.
Nay, when Cicero was to be banished, a great number of burgesses--
it is said twenty thousand--mostly of the middle classes, put on mourning
after the example of the senate.  "Nothing is now more popular,"
it is said in a letter of this period, "than hatred
of the popular party."

Attempts of the Regents to Check It

The regents dropped hints, that through such opposition the equites
might easily lose their new special places in the theatre,
and the commons their bread-corn; people were therefore somewhat
more guarded perhaps in the expression of their displeasure,
but the feeling remained the same.  The lever of material interests
was applied with better success.  Caesar's gold flowed in streams.
Men of seeming riches whose finances were in disorder, influential
ladies who were in pecuniary embarrassment, insolvent young nobles,
merchants and bankers in difficulties, either went in person
to Gaul with the view of drawing from the fountain-head, or applied
to Caesar's agents in the capital; and rarely was any man
outwardly respectable--Caesar avoided dealings with vagabonds
who were utterly lost--rejected in either quarter.  To this fell
to be added the enormous buildings which Caesar caused to be executed
on his account in the capital--and by which a countless number of men
of all ranks from the consular down to the common porter found
opportunity of profiting--as well as the immense sums expended
for public amusements.  Pompeius did the same on a more limited scale;
to him the capital was indebted for the first theatre of stone,
and he celebrated its dedication with a magnificence never seen before.
Of course such distributions reconciled a number of men
who were inclined towards opposition, more especially in the capital,
to the new order of things up to a certain extent; but the marrow
of the opposition was not to be reached by this system of corruption.
Every day more and more clearly showed how deeply the existing
constitution had struck root among the people, and how little,
in particular, the circles more aloof from direct party-agitation,
especially the country towns, were inclined towards monarchy
or even simply ready to let it take its course.

Increasing Importance of the Senate

If Rome had had a representative constitution, the discontent
of the burgesses would have found its natural expression
in the elections, and have increased by so expressing itself;
under the existing circumstances nothing was left for those
true to the constitution but to place themselves under the senate,
which, degraded as it was, still appeared the representative
and champion of the legitimate republic.  Thus it happened
that the senate, now when it had been overthrown, suddenly found
at its disposal an army far more considerable and far more
earnestly faithful, than when in its power and splendour
it overthrew the Gracchi and under the protection of Sulla's
sword restored the state.  The aristocracy felt this; it began
to bestir itself afresh.  Just at this time Marcus Cicero,
after having bound himself to join the obsequious party
in the senate and not only to offer no opposition, but to work
with all his might for the regents, had obtained from them
permission to return.  Although Pompeius in this matter only made
an incidental concession to the oligarchy, and intended first
of all to play a trick on Clodius, and secondly to acquire
in the fluent consular a tool rendered pliant by sufficient blows,
the opportunity afforded by the return of Cicero was embraced
for republican demonstrations, just as his banishment had been
a demonstration against the senate.  With all possible solemnity,
protected moreover against the Clodians by the band of Titus Annius
Milo, the two consuls, following out a resolution of the senate,
submitted a proposal to the burgesses to permit the return
of the consular Cicero, and the senate called on all burgesses
true to the constitution not to be absent from the vote.
An unusual number of worthy men, especially from the country towns,
actually assembled in Rome on the day of voting (4 Aug. 697).
The journey of the consular from Brundisium to the capital
gave occasion to a series of similar, but not less brilliant
manifestations of public feeling.  The new alliance between the senate
and the burgesses faithful to the constitution was on this occasion
as it were publicly proclaimed, and a sort of review of the latter
was held, the singularly favourable result of which contributed
not a little to revive the sunken courage of the aristocracy.

Helplessness of Pompeius

The helplessness of Pompeius in presence of these daring
demonstrations, as well as the undignified and almost ridiculous
position into which he had fallen with reference to Clodius, deprived
him and the coalition of their credit; and the section of the senate
which adhered to the regents, demoralized by the singular inaptitude
of Pompeius and helplessly left to itself, could not prevent
the republican-aristocratic party from regaining completely
the ascendency in the corporation.  The game of this party
really at that time (697) was still by no means desperate
for a courageous and dexterous player.  It had now--what it had
not possessed for a century past--a firm support in the people;
if it trusted the people and itself, it might attain its object
in the shortest and most honourable way.  Why not attack the regents
openly and avowedly? Why should not a resolute and eminent man
at the head of the senate cancel the extraordinary powers
as unconstitutional, and summon all the republicans of Italy to arms
against the tyrants and their following? It was possible perhaps
in this way once more to restore the rule of the senate.  Certainly
the republicans would thus play a bold game; but perhaps in this case,
as often, the most courageous resolution might have been
at the same time the most prudent.  Only, it is true, the indolent
aristocracy of this period was scarcely capable of so simple
and bold a resolution.  There was however another way perhaps
more sure, at any rate better adapted to the character and nature
of these constitutionalists; they might labour to set the two regents
at variance and through this variance to attain ultimately
to the helm themselves.  The relations between the two men ruling
the state had become altered and relaxed, now that Caesar had acquired
a standing of preponderant power by the side of Pompeius
and had compelled the latter to canvass for a new position of command;
it was probable that, if he obtained it, there would arise in one way
or other a rupture and struggle between them. If Pompeius remained
unsupported in this, his defeat was scarcely doubtful,
and the constitutional party would in that event find themselves
after the close of the conflict under the rule of one master
instead of two.  But if the nobility employed against Caesar
the same means by which the latter had won his previous victories,
and entered into alliance with the weaker competitor, victory
would probably, with a general like Pompeius, and with an army
such as that of the constitutionalists, fall to the coalition;
and to settle matters with Pompeius after the victory could not--
judging from the proofs of political incapacity which he had
already given-appear a specially difficult task.

Attempts of Pompeius to Obtain a Command through the Senate
Administration of the Supplies of Corn

Things had taken such a turn as naturally to suggest an understanding
between Pompeius and the republican party.  Whether such
an approximation was to take place, and what shape the mutual
relations of the two regents and of the aristocracy, which had become
utterly enigmatical, were next to assume, fell necessarily
to be decided, when in the autumn of 697 Pompeius came to the senate
with the proposal to entrust him with extraordinary official power.
He based his proposal once more on that by which he had
eleven years before laid the foundations of his power,
the price of bread in the capital, which had just then--as previously
to the Gabinian law--reached an oppressive height.  Whether
it had been forced up by special machinations, such as Clodius imputed
sometimes to Pompeius, sometimes to Cicero, and these in their turn
charged on Clodius, cannot be determined; the continuance of piracy,
the emptiness of the public chest, and the negligent and disorderly
supervision of the supplies of corn by the government were already
quite sufficient of themselves, even without political forestalling,
to produce scarcities of bread in a great city dependent
almost solely on transmarine supplies.  The plan of Pompeius
was to get the senate to commit to him the superintendence
of the matters relating to corn throughout the whole Roman empire,
and, with a view to this ultimate object, to entrust him
on the one hand with the unlimited disposal of the Roman state-
treasure, and on the other hand with an army and fleet, as well as
a command which not only stretched over the whole Roman empire,
but was superior in each province to that of the governor--in short
he designed to institute an improved edition of the Gabinian law,
to which the conduct of the Egyptian war just then pending(3)
would therefore quite as naturally have been annexed as the conduct
of the Mithradatic war to the razzia against the pirates.
However much the opposition to the new dynasts had gained ground
in recent years, the majority of the senate was still, when this matter
came to be discussed in Sept. 697, under the constraint of the terror
excited by Caesar.  It obsequiously accepted the project in principle,
and that on the proposition of Marcus Cicero, who was expected to give,
and gave, in this case the first proof of the pliableness
learned by him in exile.  But in the settlement of the details
very material portions were abated from the original plan,
which the tribune of the people Gaius Messius submitted.
Pompeius obtained neither free control over the treasury,
nor legions and ships of his own, nor even an authority superior
to that of the governors; but they contented themselves
with granting to him, for the purpose of his organizing
due supplies for the capital, considerable sums, fifteen adjutants,
and in allaffairs elating to the supply of grain full proconsular
power throughout the Roman dominions for the next five years,
and with having this decree confirmed by the burgesses.
There were many different reasons which led to this alteration,
almost equivalent to a rejection, of the original plan: a regard
to Caesar, with reference to whom the most timid could not but have
the greatest scruples in investing his colleague not merely with equal
but with superior authority in Gaul itself; the concealed opposition
of Pompeius' hereditary enemy and reluctant ally Crassus,
to whom Pompeius himself attributed or professed to attribute primarily
the failure of his plan; the antipathy of the republican opposition
in the senate to any decree which really or nominally enlarged
the authority of the regents; lastly and mainly, the incapacity
of Pompeius himself, who even after having been compelled to act
could not prevail on himself to acknowledge his own action, but chose
always to bring forward his real design as it were in incognito
by means of his friends, while he himself in his well-known modesty
declared his willingness to be content with even less.  No wonder
that they took him at his word, and gave him the less.

Egyptian Expedition

Pompeius was nevertheless glad to have found at any rate
a serious employment, and above all a fitting pretext for leaving
the capital.  He succeeded, moreover, in providing it with ampler
and cheaper supplies, although not without the provinces severely
feeling the reflex effect.  But he had missed his real object;
the proconsular title, which he had a right to bear in all the provinces,
remained an empty name, so long as he had not troops of his own
at his disposal.  Accordingly he soon afterwards got a second
proposition made to the senate, that it should confer on him
the charge of conducting back the expelled king of Egypt, if necessary
by force of arms, to his home.  But the more that his urgent need
of the senate became evident, the senators received his wishes
with a less pliant and less respectful spirit.  It was immediately
discovered in the Sibylline oracles that it was impious to send
a Roman army to Egypt; whereupon the pious senate almost
unanimously resolved to abstain from armed intervention.  Pompeius
was already so humbled, that he would have accepted the mission
even without an army; but in his incorrigible dissimulation he left
this also to be declared merely by his friends, and spoke and voted
for the despatch of another senator.  Of course the senate rejected
a proposal which wantonly risked a life so precious to his country;
and the ultimate issue of the endless discussions was the resolution
not to interfere in Egypt at all (Jan. 698).

Attempt at an Aristocratic Restoration
Attack on Caesar's Laws

These repeated repulses which Pompeius met with in the senate and,
what was worse, had to acquiesce in without retaliation,
were naturally regarded--come from what side they would--by the public
at large as so many victories of the republicans and defeats
of the regents generally; the tide of republican opposition
was accordingly always on the increase.  Already the elections for 698
had gone but partially according to the minds of the dynasts; Caesar's
candidates for the praetorship, Publius Vatinius and Gaius Alfius,
had failed, while two decided adherents of the fallen government,
Gnaeus Lentulus Marcellinus and Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus,
had been elected, the former as consul, the latter as praetor.
But for 699 there even appeared as candidate for the consulship
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, whose election it was difficult to prevent
owing to his influence in the capital and his colossal wealth, and who,
it was sufficiently well known, would not be content with a concealed
opposition.  The comitia thus rebelled; and the senate chimed in.
It solemnly deliberated over an opinion, which Etruscan soothsayers
of acknowledged wisdom had furnished respecting certain signs
and wonders at its special request.  The celestial revelation announced
that through the dissension of the upper classes the whole power
over the army and treasure threatened to pass to one ruler,
and the state to incur loss of freedom--it seemed that the gods
pointed primarily at the proposal of Gaius Messius.  The republicans
soon descended from heaven to earth.  The law as to the domain of Capua
and the other laws issued by Caesar as consul had been constantly
described by them as null and void, and an opinion had been expressed
in the senate as early as Dec. 697 that it was necessary to cancel
them on account of their informalities.  On the 6th April 698
the consular Cicero proposed in a full senate to put the consideration
of the Campanian land distribution in the order of the day
for the 15th May.  It was the formal declaration of war;
and it was the more significant, that it came from the mouth
of one of those men who only show their colours when they think
that they can do so with safety.  Evidently the aristocracy held
that the moment had come for beginning the struggle not with Pompeius
against Caesar, but against the -tyrannis- generally.  What would
further follow might easily be seen.  Domitius made no secret
that he intended as consul to propose to the burgesses
the immediate recall of Caesar from Gaul.  An aristocratic restoration
was at work; and with the attack on the colony of Capua the nobility
threw down the gauntlet to the regents.

Conference of the Regents at Luca

Caesar, although receiving from day to day detailed accounts
of the events in the capital and, whenever military considerations
allowed, watching their progress from as near a point of his
southern province as possible, had not hitherto, visibly at least
interfered in them.  But now war had been declared against him
as well as his colleague, in fact against him especially;
he was compelled to act, and he acted quickly.  He happened
to be in the very neighbourhood; the aristocracy had not even
found it advisable to delay the rupture, till he should have again
crossed the Alps.  In the beginning of April 698 Crassus
left the capital, to concert the necessary measures with his
more powerful colleague; he found Caesar in Ravenna.  Thence
both proceeded to Luca, and there they were joined by Pompeius,
who had departed from Rome soon after Crassus (11 April),
ostensibly for the purpose of procuring supplies of grain
from Sardinia and Africa.  The most noted adherents of the regents,
such as Metellus Nepos the proconsul of Hither Spain, Appius Claudius
the propraetor of Sardinia, and many others, followed them;
a hundred and twenty lictors, and upwards of two hundred senators
were counted at this conference, where already the new monarchical
senate was represented in contradistinction to the republican.
In every respect the decisive voice lay with Caesar.  He used it
to re-establish and consolidate the existing joint rule
on a new basis of more equal distribution of power of most importance
in a military point of view, next to that of the two Gauls,
were assigned to his two colleagues--that of the two Spains
to Pompeius, that of Syria to Crassus; and these offices
were to be secured to them by decree of the people for five years
(700-704), and to be suitably provided for in a military
and financial point of view.  On the other hand Caesar stipulated
for the prolongation of his command, which expired with the year 700,
to the close of 705, as well as for the prerogative of increasing
his legions to ten and of charging the pay for the troops
arbitrarily levied by him on the state-chest.  Pompeius and Crassus
were moreover promised a second consulship for the next year (699)
before they departed for their governorships, while Caesar kept it
open to himself to administer the supreme magistracy a second time
after the termination of his governorship in 706, when the ten years'
interval legally requisite between two consulships should have
in his case elapsed.  The military support, which Pompeius
and Crassus required for regulating the affairs of the capital
all the more that the legions of Caesar originally destined
for this purpose could not now be withdrawn from Transalpine Gaul,
was to be found in new legions, which they were to raise for the Spanish
and Syrian armies and were not to despatch from Italy to their several
destinations until it should seem to themselves convenient
to do so.  The main questions were thus settled; subordinate matters,
such as the settlement of the tactics to be followed against
the opposition in the capital, the regulation of the candidatures
for the ensuing years, and the like, did not long detain them.
The great master of mediation composed the personal differences
which stood in the way of an agreement with his wonted ease,
and compelled the most refractory elements to act in concert.
An understanding befitting colleagues was reestablished,
externally at least, between Pompeius and Crassus.  Even Publius Clodius
was induced to keep himself and his pack quiet, and to give
no farther annoyance to Pompeius--not the least marvellous feat
of the mighty magician.

Designs of Caesar in This Arrangement

That this whole settlement of the pending questions proceeded,
not from a compromise among independent and rival regents meeting
on equal terms, but solely from the good will of Caesar, is evident
from the circumstances.  Pompeius appeared at Luca in the painful
position of a powerless refugee, who comes to ask aid from his opponent.
Whether Caesar chose to dismiss him and to declare the coalition
dissolved, or to receive him and to let the league continue
just as it stood--Pompeius was in either view politically
annihilated.  If he did not in this case break with Caesar, he became
the powerless client of his confederate.  If on the other hand
he did break with Caesar and, which was not very probable,
effected even now a coalition with the aristocracy, this alliance
between opponents, concluded under pressure of necessity
and at the last moment, was so little formidable that it was hardly
for the sake of averting it that Caesar agreed to those concessions.
A serious rivalry on the part of Crassus with Caesar was utterly
impossible.  It is difficult to say what motives induced Caesar
to surrender without necessity his superior position,
and now voluntarily to concede--what he had refused to his rival
even on the conclusion of the league of 694, and what the latter
had since, with the evident design of being armed against Caesar,
vainly striven in different ways to attain without, nay against,
Caesar's will--the second consulate and military power.  Certainly
it was not Pompeius alone that was placed at the head of an army,
but also his old enemy and Caesar's ally throughout many years, Crassus;
and undoubtedly Crassus obtained his respectable military position
merely as a counterpoise to the new power of Pompeius.  Nevertheless
Caesar was a great loser, when his rival exchanged his former
powerlessness for an important command.  It is possible
that Caesar did not yet feel himself sufficiently master of his soldiers
to lead them with confidence to a warfare against the formal
authorities of the land, and was therefore anxious not to be forced
to civil war now by being recalled from Gaul; but whether civil war
should come or not, depended at the moment far more on the aristocracy
of the capital than on Pompeius, and this would have been
at most a reason for Caesar not breaking openly with Pompeius,
so that the opposition might not be emboldened by this breach,
but not a reason for conceding to him what he did concede.
Purely personal motives may have contributed to the result;
it may be that Caesar recollected how he had once stood in a position
of similar powerlessness in presence of Pompeius, and had been saved
from destruction only by his--pusillanimous, it is true, rather than
magnanimous--retirement; it is probable that Caesar hesitated
to breakthe heart of his beloved daughter who was sincerely attached
to her husband--in his soul there was room for much besides the statesman.
But the decisive reason was doubtless the consideration of Gaul.
Caesar--differing from his biographers--regarded the subjugation
of Gaul not as an incidental enterprise useful to him
for the gaining of the crown, but as one on which depended
the external security and the internal reorganization, in a word
the future, of his country.  That he might be enabled to complete
this conquest undisturbed and might not be obliged to take in hand
just at once the extrication of Italian affairs, he unhesitatingly
gave up his superiority over his rivals and granted to Pompeius
sufficient power to settle matters with the senate and its adherents.
This was a grave political blunder, if Caesar had no other object
than to become as quickly as possible king of Rome; but the ambition
of that rare man was not confined to the vulgar aim of a crown.
He had the boldness to prosecute side by side, and to complete,
two labours equally vast--the arranging of the internal affairs
of Italy, and the acquisition and securing of a new and fresh soil
for Italian civilization.  These tasks of course interfered
with each other; his Gallic conquests hindered much more than helped
him on his way to the throne.  It was fraught to him with bitter fruit
that, instead of settling the Italian revolution in 698,
he  postponed it to 706.  But as a statesman as well as a general
Caesar was a peculiarly daring player, who, confiding in himself
and despising his opponents, gave them always great
and sometimes extravagant odds.

The Aristocracy Submits

It was now therefore the turn of the aristocracy to make good
their high gage, and to wage war as boldly as they had boldly
declared it.  But there is no more pitiable spectacle
than when cowardly men have the misfortune to take a bold resolution.
They had simply exercised no foresight at all.  It seemed to have
occurred to nobody that Caesar would possibly stand on his defence,
or that Pompeius and Crassus would combine with him afresh
and more closely than ever.  This seems incredible; but it becomes
intelligible, when we glance at the persons who then led
the constitutional opposition in the senate.  Cato was still absent;(4)
the most influential man in the senate at this time was Marcus Bibulus,
the hero of passive resistance, the most obstinate and most stupid
of all consulars.  They had taken up arms only to lay them down,
so soon as the adversary merely put his hand to the sheath;
the bare news of the conferences in Luca sufficed to suppress
all thought of a serious opposition and to bring the mass
of the timid--that is, the immense majority of the senate--
back to their duty as subjects, which in an unhappy hour
they had abandoned.  There was no further talk of the appointed
discussion to try the validity of the Julian laws; the legions raised
by Caesar on his own behalf were charged by decree of the senate
on the public chest; the attempts on occasion of regulating
the next consular provinces to take away both Gauls or one of them
by decree from Caesar were rejected by the majority (end of May 698).
Thus the corporation did public penance.  In secret the individual lords,
one after another, thoroughly frightened at their own temerity,
came to make their peace and vow unconditional obedience--
none more quickly than Marcus Cicero, who repented too late
of his perfidy, and in respect of the most recent period of his life
clothed himself with titles of honour which were altogether
more appropriate than flattering.(5) Of course the regents agreed
to be pacified; they refused nobody pardon, for there was nobody
who was worth the trouble of making him an exception.  That we may
see how suddenly the tone in aristocratic circles changed
after the resolutions of Luca became known, it is worth while
to compare the pamphlets given forth by Cicero shortly before
with the palinode which he caused to be issued to evince publicly
his repentance and his good intentions.(6)

Settlement of the New Monarchical Rule

The regents could thus arrange Italian affairs at their pleasure
and more thoroughly than before.  Italy and the capital
obtained practically a garrison although not assembled in arms,
and one of the regents as commandant.  Of the troops levied for Syria
and Spain by Crassus and Pompeius, those destined for the east no doubt
took their departure; but Pompeius caused the two Spanish provinces
to be administered by his lieutenants with the garrison hitherto
stationed there, while he dismissed the officers and soldiers
of the legions which were newly raised--nominally for despatch
to Spain--on furlough, and remained himself with them in Italy.

Doubtless the tacit resistance of public opinion increased,
the more clearly and generally men perceived that the regents
were working to put an end to the old constitution and with as much
gentleness as possible to accommodate the existing condition
of the government and administration to the forms of the monarchy;
but they submitted, because they were obliged to submit.
First of all all the more important affairs, and particularly
all that related to military matters and external relations,
were disposed of without consulting the senate upon them,
sometimes by decree of the people, sometimes by the mere good
pleasure of the rulers.  The arrangements agreed on at Luca respecting
the military command of Gaul were submitted directly to the burgesses
by Crassus and Pompeius, those relating to Spain and Syria by the tribune
of the people Gaius Trebonius, and in other instances the more important
governorships were frequently filled up by decree of the people.
That the regents did not need the consent of the authorities
to increase their troops at pleasure, Caesar had already sufficiently
shown: as little did they hesitate mutually to borrow troops;
Caesar for instance received such collegiate support from Pompeius
for the Gallic, and Crassus from Caesar for the Parthian, war.
The Transpadanes, who possessed according to the existing constitution
only Latin rights, were treated by Caesar during his administration
practically as full burgesses of Rome.(7)  While formerly
the organization of newly-acquired territories had been managed
by a senatorial commission, Caesar organized his extensive Gallic
conquests altogether according to his own judgment, and founded,
for instance, without having received any farther full powers
burgess-colonies, particularly Novum-Comum (Como) with five thousand
colonists.  Piso conducted the Thracian, Gabinius the Egyptian,
Crassus the Parthian war, without consulting the senate,
and without even reporting, as was usual, to that body;
in like manner triumphs and other marks of honour were accorded
and carried out, without the senate being asked about them.
Obviously this did not arise from a mere neglect of forms, which would
be the less intelligible, seeing that in the great majority of cases
no opposition from the senate was to be expected.  On the contrary,
it was a well-calculated design to dislodge the senate from the domain
of military arrangements and of higher politics, and to restrict
its share of administration to financial questions and internal
affairs; and even opponents plainly discerned this and protested,
so far as they could, against this conduct of the regents by means
of senatorial decrees and criminal actions.  While the regents
thus in the main set aside the senate, they still made some use
of the less dangerous popular assemblies--care was taken that in these
the lords of the street should put no farther difficulty in the way
of the lords of the state; in many cases however they dispensed
even with this empty shadow, and employed without disguise
autocratic forms.

The Senate under the Monarchy
Cicero and the Majority

The humbled senate had to submit to its position
whether it would or not.  The leader of the compliant majority
continued to be Marcus Cicero.  He was useful on account
of his lawyer's talent of finding reasons, or at any rate words,
for everything; and there was a genuine Caesarian irony
in employing the man, by means of whom mainly the aristocracy
had conducted their demonstrations against the regents,
as the mouthpiece of servility.  Accordingly they pardoned him
for his brief desire to kick against the pricks, not however
without having previously assured themselves of his submissiveness
in every way.  His brother had been obliged to take the position
of an officer in the Gallic army to answer in some measure
as a hostage for him; Pompeius had compelled Cicero himself
to accept a lieutenant-generalship under him, which furnished
a handle for politely banishing him at any moment.  Clodius
had doubtless been instructed to leave him meanwhile at peace,
but Caesar as little threw off Clodius on account of Cicero
as he threw off Cicero on account of Clodius; and the great saviour
of his country and the no less great hero of liberty entered
into an antechamber-rivalry in the headquarters of Samarobriva,
for the befitting illustration of which there lacked, unfortunately,
a Roman Aristophanes.  But not only was the same rod kept in suspense
over Cicero's head, which had once already descended on him
so severely; golden fetters were also laid upon him.  Amidst
the serious embarrassment of his finances the loans of Caesar
free of interest, and the joint overseership of those buildings
which occasioned the circulation of enormous sums in the capital,
were in a high degree welcome to him; and many an immortal oration
for the senate was nipped in the bud by the thought of Caesar's agent,
who might present a bill to him after the close of the sitting.
Consequently he vowed "in future to ask no more after right and honour,
but to strive for the favour of the regents," and "to be as flexible
as an ear-lap." They used him accordingly as--what he was good for--
an advocate; in which capacity it was on various occasions
his lot to be obliged to defend his very bitterest foes
at a higher bidding, and that especially in the senate,
where he almost regularly served as the organ of the dynasts
and submitted the proposals "to which others probably consented,
but not he himself"; indeed, as recognized leader of the majority
of the compliant, he obtained even a certain political importance.
They dealt with the other members of the governing corporation
accessible to fear, flattery, or gold in the same way as they had dealt
with Cicero, and succeeded in keeping it on the whole in subjection.

Cato and the Minority

Certainly there remained a section of their opponents, who at least
kept to their colours and were neither to be terrified nor to be won.
The regents had become convinced that exceptional measures,
such as those against Cato and Cicero, did their cause
more harm than good, and that it was a lesser evil to tolerate
an inconvenient republican opposition than to convert their opponents
into martyrs for the republic Therefore they allowed Cato to return
(end of 698) and thenceforward in the senate and in the Forum,
often at the peril of his life, to offer a continued opposition
to the regents, which was doubtless worthy of honour, but unhappily
was at the same time ridiculous.  They allowed him on occasion
of the proposals of Trebonius to push matters once more
to a hand-to-hand conflict in the Forum, and to submit to the senate
a proposal that the proconsul Caesar should be given over
to the Usipetes and Tencteri on account of his perfidious conduct
toward those barbarians.(8)  They were patient when Marcus Favonius,
Cato's Sancho, after the senate had adopted the resolution
to charge the legions of Caesar on the state-chest, sprang to the door
of the senate-house and proclaimed to the streets the danger
of the country; when the same person in his scurrilous fashion
called the white bandage, which Pompeius wore round his weak leg,
a displaced diadem; when the consular Lentulus Marcellinus,
on being applauded, called out to the assembly to make diligent use
of this privilege of expressing their opinion now while they were
still allowed to do so; when the tribune of the people
Gaius Ateius Capito consigned Crassus on his departure for Syria,
with all the formalities of the theology of the day, publicly
to the evil spirits.  These were, on the whole, vain demonstrations
of an irritated minority; yet the little party from which they issued
was so far of importance, that it on the one hand fostered and gave
the watchword to the republican opposition fermenting in secret,
and on the other hand now and then dragged the majority of the senate,
which ithal cherished at bottom quite the same sentiments with reference
to the regents, into an isolated decree directed against them.
For even the majority felt the need of giving vent, at least
sometimes and in subordinate matters to their suppressed indignation,
and especially--after the manner of those who are servile
with reluctance--of exhibiting their resentment towards the great foes
in rage against the small.  Wherever it was possible, a gentle blow
was administered to the instruments of the regents; thus Gabinius
was refused the thanksgiving-festival that he asked (698);
thus Piso was recalled from his province; thus mourning was put on
by the senate, when the tribune of the people Gaius Cato hindered
the elections for 699 as long as the consul Marcellinus belonging
to the constitutional party was in office.  Even Cicero, however humbly
he always bowed before the regents, issued an equally envenomed
and insipid pamphlet against Caesar's father-in-law.  But both these
feeble signs of opposition by the majority of the senate
and the ineffectual resistance of the minority show only
the more clearly, that the government had now passed from the senate
to the regents as it formerly passed from the burgesses to the senate;
and that the senate was already not much more than a monarchical
council of state employed also to absorb the anti-monarchical
elements.  "No man," the adherents of the fallen government complained,
"is of the slightest account except the three; the regents
are all-powerful, and they take care that no one shall remain
in doubt about it; the whole senate is virtually transformed
and obeys the dictators; our generation will not live to see
a change of things."  They were living in fact no longer
under the republic, but under monarchy.

Continued Oppositon at the Elections

But if the guidance of the state was at the absolute disposal
of the regents, there remained still a political domain separated
in some measure from the government proper, which it was more easy
to defend and more difficult to conquer; the field of the ordinary
elections of magistrates, and that of the jury-courts.  That the latter
do not fall directly under politics, but everywhere, and above all
in Rome, come partly under the control of the spirit dominating
state-affairs, is of itself clear.  The elections of magistrates
certainly belonged by right to the government proper of the state;
but, as at this period the state was administered substantially
by extraordinary magistrates or by men wholly without title,
and even the supreme ordinary magistrates, if they belonged
to the anti-monarchical party, were not able in any tangible way
to influence the state-machinery, the ordinary magistrates sank
more and more into mere puppets--as, in fact, even those of them
who were most disposed to opposition described themselves frankly
and with entire justice as powerless ciphers--and their elections
therefore sank into mere demonstrations.  Thus, after the opposition
had already been wholly dislodged from the proper field of battle,
hostilities might nevertheless be continued in the field of elections
and of processes.  The regents spared no pains to remain victors
also in this field.  As to the elections, they had already
at Luca settled between themselves the lists of candidates
for the next years, and they left no means untried to carry
the candidates agreed upon there.  They expended their gold primarily
for the purpose of influencing the elections.  A great number
of soldiers were dismissed annually on furlough from the armies
of Caesar and Pompeius to take part in the voting at Rome.
Caesar was wont himself to guide, and watch over, the election movements
from as near a point as possible of Upper Italy.  Yet the object
was but very imperfectly attained.  For 699 no doubt Pompeius
and Crassus were elected consuls, agreeably to the convention of Luca,
and Lucius Domitius, the only candidate of the opposition who persevered
was set aside; but this had been effected only by open violence,
on which occasion Cato was wounded and other extremely scandalous
incidents occurred.  In the next consular elections for 700,
in spite of all the exertions of the regents, Domitius was
actually elected, and Cato likewise now prevailed in the candidature
for the praetorship, in which to the scandal of the whole burgesses
Caesar's client Vatinius had during the previous year beaten him
off the field.  At the elections for 701 the opposition succeeded
in so indisputably convicting the candidates of the regents,
along with others, of the most shameful electioneering intrigues
that the regents, on whom the scandal recoiled, could not do otherwise
than abandon them.  These repeated and severe defeats of the dynasts
on the battle-field of the elections may be traceable in part
to the unmanageableness of the rusty machinery, to the incalculable
accidents of the polling, to the opposition at heart of the middle
classes, to the various private considerations that interfere
in such cases and often strangely clash with those of party;
but the main cause lies elsewhere.  The elections were at this time
essentially in the power of the different clubs into which the aristocracy
had grouped themselves; the system of bribery was organized by them
on the most extensive scale and with the utmost method.
The same aristocracy therefore, which was represented in the senate,
ruled also the elections; but while in the senate it yielded
with a grudge, it worked and voted here--in secret and secure
from all reckoning--absolutely against the regents.  That the influence
of the nobility in this field was by no means broken by the strict
penal law against the electioneering intrigues of the clubs,
which Crassus when consul in 699 caused to be confirmed by the burgesses,
is self-evident, and is shown by the elections of the succeeding years.

And in the Courts

The jury-courts occasioned equally great difficulty to the regents.
As they were then composed, while the senatorial nobility was here
also influential, the decisive voice lay chiefly with the middle class.
The fixing of a high-rated census for jurymen by a law proposed
by Pompeius in 699 is a remarkable proof that the opposition
to the regents had its chief seat in the middle class properly
so called, and that the great capitalists showed themselves here,
as everywhere, more compliant than the latter. Nevertheless
the republican party was not yet deprived of all hold in the courts,
and it was never weary of directing political impeachments,
not indeed against the regents themselves, but against
their prominent instruments.  This warfare of prosecutions
was waged the more keenly, that according to usage the duty of accusation
belonged to the senatorial youth, and, as may readily be conceived,
there was more of republican passion, fresh talent, and bold delight
in attack to be found among these youths than among the older members
of their order.  Certainly the courts were not free; if the regents
were in earnest, the courts ventured as little as the senate
to refuse obedience.  None of their antagonists were prosecuted
by the opposition with such hatred--so furious that it almost
passed into a proverb--as Vatinius, by far the most audacious
and unscrupulous of the closer adherents of Caesar; but his master
gave the command, and he was acquitted in all the processes
raised against him.  But impeachments by men who knew how to wield
the sword of dialectics and the lash of sarcasm as did
Gaius Licinius Calvus and Gaius Asinius Pollio, did not miss
their mark even when they failed; nor were isolated successes wanting.
They were mostly, no doubt, obtained over subordinate individuals,
but even one of the most high-placed and most hated adherents
of the dynasts, the consular Gabinius, was overthrown in this way.
Certainly in his case the implacable hatred of the aristocracy,
which as little forgave him for the law regarding the conducting
of the war with the pirates as for his disparaging treatment
of the senate during his Syrian governorship, was combined
with the rage of the great capitalists, against whom he had when governor
of Syria ventured to defend the interests of the provincials,
and even with the resentment of Crassus, with whom he had stood
on ceremony in handing over to him the province.  His only protection
against all these foes was Pompeius, and the latter had every reason
to defend his ablest, boldest, and most faithful adjutant at any price;
but here, as everywhere, he knew not how to use his power
and to defend his clients, as Caesar defended his; in the end
of 700 the jurymen found Gabinius guilty of extortions
and sent him into banishment.

On the whole, therefore, in the sphere of the popular elections
and of the jury-courts it was the regents that fared worst.
The factors which ruled in these were less tangible, and therefore
more difficult to be terrified or corrupted than the direct organs
of government and administration.  The holders of power encountered
here, especially in the popular elections, the tough energy
of a close oligarchy--grouped in coteries--which is by no means
finally disposed of when its rule is overthrown, and which is
the more difficult to vanquish the more covert its action.
They encountered here too, especially in the jury-courts,
the repugnance of the middle classes towards the new monarchical rule,
which with all the perplexities springing out of it they were
as little able to remove.  They suffered in both quarters a series
of defeats.  The election-victories of the opposition had,
it is true, merely the value of demonstrations, since the regents
possessed and employed the means of practically annulling any magistrate
whom they disliked; but the criminal trials in which the opposition
carried condemnations deprived them, in a way keenly felt,
of useful auxiliaries.  As things stood, the regents could neither
set aside nor adequately control the popular elections
and the jury-courts, and the opposition, however much it felt itself
straitened even here, maintained to a certain extent the field of battle.

Literature of the Opposition

It proved, however, yet a more difficult task to encounter
the opposition in a field, to which it turned with the greater zeal
the more it was dislodged from direct political action.  This was
literature.  Even the judicial opposition was at the same time
a literary one, and indeed pre-eminently so, for the orations
were regularly published and served as political pamphlets.
The arrows of poetry hit their mark still more rapidly and sharply.
The lively youth of the high aristocracy, and still more energetically
perhaps the cultivated middle class in the Italian country towns,
waged the war of pamphlets and epigrams with zeal and success.
There fought side by side on this field the genteel senator's son
Gaius Licinius Calvus (672-706) who was as much feared
in the character of an orator and pamphleteer as of a versatile poet,
and the municipals of Cremona and Verona Marcus Furius Bibaculus
(652-691) and Quintus Valerius Catullus (667-c. 700) whose elegant
and pungent epigrams flew swiftly like arrows through Italy
and were sure to hit their mark.  An oppositional tone prevails
throughout the literature of these years.  It is full of indignant
sarcasm against the "great Caesar," "the unique general,"
against the affectionate father-in-law and son-in-law,
who ruin the whole globe in order to give their dissolute favourites
opportunity to parade the spoils of the long-haired Celts
through the streets of Rome, to furnish royal banquets with the booty
of the farthest isles of the west, and as rivals showering gold
to supplant honest youths at home in the favour of their mistresses.
There is in the poems of Catullus(9) and the other fragments
of the literature of this period something of that fervour of personal
and political hatred, of that republican agony overflowing
in riotous humour or in stern despair, which are more prominently
and powerfully apparent in Aristophanes and Demosthenes.

The most sagacious of the three rulers at least saw well
that it was as impossible to despise this opposition as to suppress
it by word of command.  So far as he could, Caesar tried
rather personally to gain over the more notable authors.
Cicero himself had to thank his literary reputation in good part
for the respectful treatment which he especially experienced
from Caesar; but the governor of Gaul did not disdain to conclude
a special peace even with Catullus himself through the intervention
of his father who had become personally known to him in Verona;
and the young poet, who had just heaped upon the powerful general
the bitterest and most personal sarcasms, was treated by him
with the most flattering distinction.  In fact Caesar was gifted enough
to follow his literary opponents on their own domain and to publish--
as an indirect way of repelling manifold attacks--a detailed report
on the Gallic wars, which set forth before the public, with happily
assumed naivete, the necessity and constitutional propriety
of his military operations.  But it is freedom alone that is absolutely
and exclusively poetical and creative; it and it alone is able
even in its most wretched caricature, even with its latest breath,
to inspire fresh enthusiasm.  All the sound elements of literature
were and remained anti-monarchical; and, if Caesar himself
could venture on this domain without proving a failure, the reason
was merely that even now he still cherished at heart the magnificent
dream of a free commonwealth, although he was unable to transfer it
either to his adversaries or to his adherents.  Practical politics
was not more absolutely controlled by the regents than literature
by the republicans.(10)

New Exceptional Measures Resolved on

It became necessary to take serious steps against this opposition,
which was powerless indeed, but was always becoming more troublesome
and audacious.  The condemnation of Gabinius, apparently,
turned the scale (end of 700).  The regents agreed to introduce
a dictatorship, though only a temporary one, and by means of this
to carry new coercive measures especially respecting the elections
and the jury-courts.  Pompeius, as the regent on whom primarily devolved
the government of Rome and Italy, was charged with the execution
of this resolve; which accordingly bore the impress of the awkwardness
in resolution and action that characterized him, and of his singular
incapacity of speaking out frankly, even where he would and could
command.  Already at the close of 700 the demand for a dictatorship
was brought forward in the senate in the form of hints,
and that not by Pompeius himself.  There served as its ostensible ground
the continuance of the system of clubs and bands in the capital,
which by acts of bribery and violence certainly exercised
the most pernicious pressure on the elections as well as
on the jury-courts and kept it in a perpetual state of disturbance;
we must allow that this rendered it easy for the regents to justify
their exceptional measures.  But, as may well be conceived,
even the servile majority shrank from granting what the future dictator
himself seemed to shrink from openly asking.  When the unparalleled
agitation regarding the elections for the consulship of 701
led to the most scandalous scenes, so  that the elections
were postponed a full year beyond the fixed time and only took place
after a seven months' interregnum in July 701, Pompeius found
in this state of things the desired occasion for indicating
now distinctly to the senate that the dictatorship was the only means
of cutting, if not of loosing the knot; but the decisive
word of command was not even yet spoken.  Perhaps it would have
still remained for long unuttered, had not the most audacious
partisan of the republican opposition Titus Annius Milo
stepped into the field at the consular elections for 702
as a candidate in opposition to the candidates of the regents,
Quintus Metellus Scipio and Publius Plautius Hypsaeus, both men
closely connected with Pompeius personally and thoroughly devoted to him.

Milo
Killing of Clodius

Milo, endowed with physical courage, with a certain talent for intrigue
and for contracting debt, and above all with an ample amount
of native assurance which had been carefully cultivated,
had made himself a name among the political adventurers
of the time, and was the greatest bully in his trade next to Clodius,
and naturally therefore through rivalry at the most deadly feud
with the latter.  As this Achilles of the streets had been acquired
by the regents and with their permission was again playing the ultra-
democrat, the Hector of the streets became as a matter of course
an aristocrat!  And the republican opposition, which now would have
concluded an alliance with Catilina in person, had he presented
himself to them, readily acknowledged Milo as their legitimate
champion in all riots.  In fact the few successes, which they
carried off in this field of battle, were the work of Milo
and of his well-trained band of gladiators.  So Cato and his friends
in return supported the candidature of Milo for the consulship;
even Cicero could not avoid recommending one who had been his enemy's
enemy and his own protector during many years; and as Milo himself
spared neither money nor violence to carry his election,
it seemed secured.  For the regents it would have been not only
a new and keenly-felt defeat, but also a real danger; for it was
to be foreseen that the bold partisan would not allow himself
as consul to be reduced to insignificance so easily as Domitius
and other men of the respectable opposition.  It happened that Achilles
and Hector accidentally encountered each other not far from the capital
on the Appian Way, and a fray arose between their respective bands,
in which Clodius himself received a sword-cut on the shoulder
and was compelled to take refuge in a neighbouring house.
This had occurred without orders from Milo; but, as the matter
had gone so far and as the storm had now to be encountered at any rate,
the whole crime seemed to Milo more desirable and even less dangerous
than the half; he ordered his men to drag Clodius forth
from his lurking place and to put him to death (13 Jan. 702).

Anarchy in Rome

The street leaders of the regents' party--the tribunes of the people
Titus Munatius Plancus, Quintus Pompeius Rufus, and Gaius
Sallustius Crispus--saw in this occurrence a fitting opportunity
to thwart in the interest of their masters the candidature of Milo
and carry the dictatorship of Pompeius.  The dregs of the populace,
especially the freedmen and slaves, had lost in Clodius
their patron and future deliverer;(11) the requisite excitement
was thus easily aroused.  After the bloody corpse had been exposed
for show at the orators' platform in the Forum and the speeches
appropriate to the occasion had been made, the riot broke forth.
The seat of the perfidious aristocracy was destined as a funeral pile
for the great liberator; the mob carried the body to the senate-house,
and set the building on fire.  Thereafter the multitude proceeded
to the front of Milo's house and kept it under siege, till his band
drove off the assailants by discharges of arrows.  They passed
on to the house of Pompeius and of his consular candidates,
of whom the former was saluted as dictator and the latter as consuls,
and thence to the house of the interrex Marcus Lepidus, on whom
devolved the conduct of the consular elections.  When the latter,
as in duty bound, refused to make arrangements for the elections
immediately, as the clamorous multitude demanded, he was kept
during five days under siege in his dwelling house.

Dictatorship of Pompeius

But the instigators of these scandalous scenes had overacted
their part.  Certainly their lord and master was resolved to employ
this favourable episode in order not merely to set aside Milo,
but also to seize the dictatorship; he wished, however, to receive it
not from a mob of bludgeon-men, but from the senate.  Pompeius brought
up troops to put down the anarchy which prevailed in the capital,
and which had in reality become intolerable to everybody;
at the same time he now enjoined what he had hitherto requested,
and the senate complied.  It was merely an empty subterfuge,
that on the proposal of Cato and Bibulus the proconsul Pompeius,
retaining his former offices, was nominated as "consul without
colleague" instead of dictator on the 25th of the intercalary
month(12) (702)--a subterfuge, which admitted an appellation labouring
under a double incongruity(13) for the mere purpose of avoiding
one which expressed the simple fact, and which vividly reminds us
of the sagacious resolution of the waning patriciate to concede
to the plebeians not the consulship, but only the consular power.(14)

Changes of in the Arrangement of Magistracies and the Jury-System

Thus in legal possession of full power, Pompeius set to work
and proceeded with energy against the republican party which was
powerful in the clubs and the jury-courts.  The existing enactments
as to elections were repeated and enforced by a special law;
and by another against electioneering intrigues, which obtained
retrospective force for all offences of this sort committed
since 684, the penalties hitherto imposed were augmented.
Still more important was the enactment, that the governorships,
which were by far the more important and especially by far
the more lucrative half of official life, should be conferred
on the consuls and praetors not immediately on their retirement
from the consulate or praetorship, but only after the expiry
of other five years; an arrangement which of course could only
come into effect after four years, and therefore made the filling up
of the governorships for the next few years substantially dependent
on decrees of senate which were to be issued for the regulation
of this interval, and thus practically on the person or section
ruling the senate at the moment.  The jury-commissions were left
in existence, but limits were put to the right of counter-plea,
and--what was perhaps still more important--the liberty of speech
in the courts was done away; for both the number of the advocates
and the time of speaking apportioned to each were restricted
by fixing a maximum, and the bad habit which had prevailed of adducing,
in addition to the witnesses as to facts, witnesses to character
or -laudatores-, as they were called, in favour of the accused
was prohibited.  The obsequious senate further decreed on the suggestion
of Pompeius that the country had been placed in peril by the quarrel
on the Appian Way; accordingly a special commission was appointed
by an exceptional law for all crimes connected with it,
the members of which were directly nominated by Pompeius.
An attempt was also made to give once more a serious importance
to the office of the censors, and by that agency to purge
the deeply disordered burgess-body of the worst rabble.

All these measures were adopted under the pressure of the sword.
In consequence of the declaration of the senate that the country
was in danger, Pompeius called the men capable of service
throughout Italy to arms and made them swear allegiance
for all contingencies; an adequate and trustworthy corps
was temporarily stationed at the Capitol; at every stirring
of opposition Pompeius threatened armed intervention, and during
the proceedings at the trial respecting the murder of Clodius
stationed contrary to all precedent, a guard over the place
of trial itself.

Humiliation of the Republicans

The scheme for the revival of the censorship failed, because
among the servile majority of the senate no one possessed
sufficient moral courage and authority even to become a candidate
for such an office.  On the other hand Milo was condemned
by the jurymen (8 April 702) and Cato's candidature for the consulship
of 703was frustrated.  The opposition of speeches and pamphlets
received through the new judicial ordinance a blow from which
it never recovered; the dreaded forensic eloquence was thereby
driven from the field of politics, and thenceforth felt
the restraints of monarchy.  Opposition of course had not disappeared
either from the minds of the great majority of the nation
or even wholly from public life--to effect that end the popular elections,
the jury-courts, and literature must have been not merely restricted,
but annihilated.  Indeed, in these very transactions themselves,
Pompeius by his unskilfulness and perversity helped the republicans
to gain even under his dictatorship several triumphs which
he severely felt.  The special measures, which the rulers took
to strengthen their power, were of course officially characterized
as enactments made in the interest of public tranquillity and order,
and every burgess, who did not desire anarchy, was described
as substantially concurring in them.  But Pompeius pushed
this transparent fiction so far, that instead of putting
safe instruments into the special commission for the investigation
of the last tumult, he chose the most respectable men of all parties,
including even Cato, and applied his influence over the court essentially
to maintain order, and to render it impossible for his adherents
as well as for his opponents to indulge in the scenes of disturbance
customary in the courts of this period.  This neutrality of the regent
was discernible in the judgments of the special court.  The jurymen
did not venture to acquit Milo himself; but most of the subordinate
persons accused belonging to the party of the republican opposition
were acquitted, while condemnation inexorably befell those
who in the last riot had taken part for Clodius, or in other words
for the regents, including not a few of Caesar's and of Pompeius' own
most intimate friends--even Hypsaeus his candidate for the consulship,
and the tribunes of the people Plancus and Rufus, who had directed
the -emeute- in his interest.  That Pompeius did not prevent
their condemnation for the sake of appearing impartial, was one specimen
of his folly; and a second was, that he withal in matters
quite indifferent violated his own laws to favour his friends--
appearing for example as a witness to character in the trial of Plancus,
and in fact protecting from condemnation several accused persons
specially connected with him, such as Metellus Scipio.  As usual,
he wished here also to accomplish opposite things; in attempting
to satisfy the duties at once of the impartial regent
and of the party-chief, he fulfilled neither the one nor the other,
and was regarded by public opinion with justice as a despotic regent,
and by his adherents with equal justice as a leader who either
could not or would not protect his followers.

But, although the republicans were still stirring and were even refreshed
by an isolated success here and there, chiefly through the blunders
of Pompeius, the object which the regents had proposed
to themselves in that dictatorship was on the whole attained,
the reins were drawn tighter, the republican party was humbled,
and the new monarchy was strengthened.  The public began
to reconcile themselves to the latter.  When Pompeius not long after
recovered from a serious illness, his restoration was celebrated
throughout Italy with the accompanying demonstrations of joy
which are usual on such occasions in monarchies.  The regents
showed themselves satisfied; as early as the 1st of August 702
Pompeius resigned his dictatorship, and shared the consulship
with his client Metellus Scipio.




CHAPTER IX

Death of Crassus--Rupture between the Joint Rulers

Crassus Goes to Syria

Marcus Crassus had for years been reckoned among the heads
of the "three-headed monster," without any proper title
to be so included.  He served as a makeweight to trim the balance
between the real regents Pompeius and Caesar, or, to speak
more accurately, his weight fell into the scale of Caesar
against Pompeius.  This part is not a too reputable one;
but Crassus was never hindered by any keen sense of honour
from pursuing his own advantage.  He was a merchant and was open
to be dealt with.  What was offered to him was not much;
but, when more was not to be got, he accepted it, and sought
to forget the ambition that fretted him, and his chagrin
at occupying a position so near to power and yet so powerless,
amidst his always accumulating piles of gold.  But the conference
at Luca changed the state of matters also for him; with the view
of still retaining the preponderance as compared with Pompeius
after concessions so extensive, Caesar gave to his old confederate
Crassus an opportunity of attaining in Syria through the Parthian war
the same position to which Caesar had attained by the Celtic war
in Gaul.  It was difficult to say whether these new prospects
proved more attractive to the ardent thirst for gold which had now become
at the age of sixty a second nature and grew only the more intense
with every newly-won million, or to the ambition which had been
long repressed with difficulty in the old man's breast
and now glowed in it with restless fire.  He arrived in Syria as early
as the beginning of 700; he had not even waited for the expiry
of his consulship to depart.  Full of impatient ardour he seemed desirous
to redeem every minute with the view of making up for what he had lost,
of gathering in the treasures of the east in addition to those
of the west, of achieving the power and glory of a general
as rapidly as Caesar, and with as little trouble as Pompeius.

Expedition against Parthia Resolved on

He found the Parthian war already commenced.  The faithless conduct
of Pompeius towards the Parthians has been already mentioned;(1)
he had not respected the stipulated frontier of the Euphrates
and had wrested several provinces from the Parthian empire
for the benefit of Armenia, which was now a client state of Rome.
King Phraates had submitted to this treatment; but after he had been
murdered by his two sons Mithradates and Orodes, the new king
Mithradates immediately declared war on the king of Armenia, Artavasdes,
son of the recently deceased Tigranes (about 698).(2)  This was
at the same time a declaration of war against Rome; therefore
as soon as the revolt of the Jews was suppressed, Gabinius,
the able and spirited governor of Syria, led the legions
over the Euphrates.  Meanwhile, however, a revolution had occurred
in the Parthian empire; the grandees of the kingdom, with the young,
bold, and talented grand vizier at their head, had overthrown
king Mithradates and placed his brother Orodes on the throne.
Mithradates therefore made common cause with the Romans
and resorted to the camp of Gabinius.  Everything promised
the best results to the enterprise of the Roman governor,
when he unexpectedly received orders to conduct the king of Egypt
back by force of arms to Alexandria.(3)  He was obliged to obey;
but, in the expectation of soon coming back, he induced the dethroned
Parthian prince who solicited aid from him to commence the war
in the meanwhile at his own hand.  Mithradates did so; and Seleucia
and Babylon declared for him; but the vizier captured Seleucia
by assault, having been in person the first to mount the battlements,
and in Babylon Mithradates himself was forced by famine to surrender,
whereupon he was by his brother's orders put to death.
His death was a palpable loss to the Romans; but it by no means
put an end to the ferment in the Parthian empire, and the Armenian war
continued.  Gabinius, after ending the Egyptian campaign,
was just on the eve of turning to account the still favourable
opportunity and resuming the interrupted Parthian war, when Crassus
arrived in Syria and along with the command took up also the plans
of his predecessor.  Full of high-flown hopes he estimated
the difficulties of the march as slight, and the power of resistance
in the armies of the enemy as yet slighter; he not only spoke
confidently of the subjugation of the Parthians, but was already
in imagination the conqueror of the kingdoms of Bactria and India.

Plan of the Campaign

The new Alexander, however, was in no haste.  Before he carried
into effect these great plans, he found leisure for very tedious
and very lucrative collateral transactions.  The temples of Derceto
at Hierapolis Bambyce and of Jehovah at Jerusalem and other rich shrines
of the Syrian province, were by order of Crassus despoiled
of their treasures; and contingents or, still better, sums of money
instead were levied from all the subjects.  The military operations
of the first summer were limited to an extensive reconnaissance
in Mesopotamia; the Euphrates was crossed, the Parthian satrap
was defeated at Ichnae (on the Belik to the north of Rakkah),
and the neighbouring towns, including the considerable one of Nicephorium
(Rakkah), were occupied, after which the Romans having left garrisons
behind in them returned to Syria.  They had hitherto been in doubt
whether it was more advisable to march to Parthia by the circuitous route
of Armenia or by the direct route through the Mesopotamian desert.
The first route, leading through mountainous regions under the control
of trustworthy allies, commended itself by its greater safety;
king Artavasdes came in person to the Roman headquarters
to advocate this plan of the campaign.  But that reconnaissance
decided in favour of the march through Mesopotamia.  The numerous
and flourishing Greek and half-Greek towns in the regions
along the Euphrates and Tigris, above all the great city
of Seleucia, were altogether averse to the Parthian rule;
all the Greek townships with which the Romans came into contact had now,
like the citizens of Carrhae at an earlier time,(4) practically shown
how ready they were to shake off the intolerable foreign yoke
and to receive the Romans as deliverers, almost as countrymen.
The Arab prince Abgarus, who commanded the desert of Edessa and Carrhae
and thereby the usual route from the Euphrates to the Tigris,
had arrived in the camp of the Romans to assure them in person
of his devotedness.  The Parthians had appeared to be wholly unprepared.

The Euphrates Crossed

Accordingly (701) the Euphrates was crossed (near Biradjik).
To reach the Tigris from this point they had the choice
of two routes; either the army might move downward along the Euphrates
to the latitude of Seleucia where the Euphrates and Tigris
are only a few miles distant from each other; or they might
immediately after crossing take the shortest line to the Tigris
right across the great Mesopotamian desert.  The former route
led directly to the Parthian capital Ctesiphon, which lay opposite
Seleucia on the other bank of the Tigris; several weighty voices
were raised in favour of this route in the Roman council of war;
in particular the quaestor Gaius Cassius pointed to the difficulties
of the march in the desert, and to the suspicious reports arriving
from the Roman garrisons on the left bank of the Euphrates
as to the Parthian warlike preparations.  But in opposition to this
the Arab prince Abgarus announced that the Parthians were employed
in evacuating their western provinces.  They had already packed up
their treasures and put themselves in motion to flee to the Hyrcanians
and Scythians; only through a forced march by the shortest route
was it at all possible still to reach them; but by such a march
the Romans would probably succeed in overtaking and cutting up at least
the rear-guard of the great army under Sillaces and the vizier,
and obtaining enormous spoil.  These reports of the friendly Bedouins
decided the direction of the march; the Roman army, consisting
of seven legions, 4000 cavalry, and 4000 slingers and archers,
turned off from the Euphrates and away into the inhospitable plains
of northern Mesopotamia.

The March in the Desert

Far and wide not an enemy showed himself; only hunger and thirst,
and the endless sandy desert, seemed to keep watch at the gates
of the east.  At length, after many days of toilsome marching, not far
from the first river which the Roman army had to cross,
the Balissus (Belik), the first horsemen of the enemy were descried.
Abgarus with his Arabs was sent out to reconnoitre; the Parthian
squadrons retired up to and over the river and vanished
in the distance, pursued by Abgarus and his followers.  With impatience
the Romans waited for his return and for more exact information.
The general hoped here at length to come upon the constantly
retreating foe; his young and brave son Publius, who had fought
with the greatest distinction in Gaul under Caesar,(5) and had been sent
by the latter at the head of a Celtic squadron of horse to take part
in the Parthian war, was inflamed with a vehement desire
for the fight.  When no tidings came, they resolved to advance
at a venture; the signal for starting was given, the Balissus
was crossed, the army after a brief insufficient rest at noon
was led on without delay at a rapid pace.  Then suddenly the kettledrums
of the Parthians sounded all around; on every side their silken
gold-embroidered banners were seen waving, and their iron helmets
and coats of mail glittering in the blaze of the hot noonday sun;
and by the side of the vizier stood prince Abgarus with his Bedouins.

Roman and Parthian Systems of Warfare

The Romans saw too late the net into which they had allowed themselves
to be ensnared.  With sure glance the vizier had thoroughly seen
both the danger and the means of meeting it.  Nothing could
be accomplished against the Roman infantry of the line
with Oriental infantry; so he had rid himself of it, and by
sending a mass, which was useless in the main field of battle,
under the personal leadership of king Orodes to Armenia,
he had prevented king Artavasdes from allowing the promised
10,000 heavy cavalry to join the army of Crassus, who now painfully
felt the want of them.  On the other hand the vizier met the Roman
tactics, unsurpassed of their kind, with a system entirely different.
His army consisted exclusively of cavalry; the line was formed of the
heavy horsemen armed with long thrusting-lances, and protected, man
and horse, by a coat of mail of metallic plates or a leathern doublet
and by similar greaves; the mass of the troops consisted of mounted
archers.  As compared with these, the Romans were thoroughly inferior
in the corresponding arms both as to number and excellence.  Their
infantry of the line, excellent as they were in close combat, whether
at a short distance with the heavy javelin or in hand-to-hand combat
with the sword, could not compel an army consisting merely of cavalry
to come to an engagement with them; and they found, even when they
did come to a hand-to-hand conflict, an equal if not superior
adversary in the iron-clad hosts of lancers.  As compared with an
army like this Parthian one, the Roman army was at a disadvantage
strategically, because the cavalry commanded the communications;
and at a disadvantage tactically, because every weapon of close
combat must succumb to that which is wielded from a distance,
unless the struggle becomes an individual one, man against man.
The concentrated position, on which the whole Roman method of war
was based, increased the danger in presence of such an attack;
the closer the ranks of the Roman column, the more irresistible
certainly was its onset, but the less also could the missiles
fail to hit their mark.  Under ordinary circumstances,
where towns have to be defended and difficulties of the ground
have to be considered, such tactics operating merely with cavalry
against infantry could never be completely carried out;
but in the Mesopotamian desert, where the army, almost like a ship
on the high seas, neither encountered an obstacle nor met
with a basis for strategic dispositions during many days' march,
this mode of warfare was irresistible for the very reason
that circumstances allowed it to be developed there in all its purity
and therefore in all its power.  There everything combined to put
the foreign infantry at a disadvantage against the native cavalry.
Where the heavy-laden Roman foot-soldier dragged himself toilsomely
through the sand or the steppe, and perished from hunger or still more
from thirst amid the pathless route marked only by water-springs
that were far apart and difficult to find, the Parthian horseman,
accustomed from childhood to sit on his fleet steed or camel,
nay almost to spend his life in the saddle, easily traversed
the desert whose hardships he had long learned how to lighten
or in case of need to endure.  There no rain fell to mitigate
the intolerable heat, and to slacken the bowstrings and leathern thongs
of the enemy's archers and slingers; there amidst the deep sand
at many places ordinary ditches and ramparts could hardly be formed
for the camp.  Imagination can scarcely conceive a situation
in which all the military advantages were more on the one side,
and all the disadvantages more thoroughly on the other.

To the question, under what circumstances this new style
of tactics, the first national system that on its own proper ground
showed itself superior to the Roman, arose among the Parthians,
we unfortunately can only reply by conjectures.  The lancers
and mounted archers were of great antiquity in the east, and already
formed the flower of the armies of Cyrus and Darius; but hitherto
these arms had been employed only as secondary, and essentially
to cover the thoroughly useless Oriental infantry.  The Parthian armies
also by no means differed in this respect from the other Oriental ones;
armies are mentioned, five-sixths of which consisted of infantry.
In the campaign of Crassus, on the other hand, the cavalry
for the first time came forward independently, and this arm
obtained quite a new application and quite a different value.
The irresistible superiority of the Roman infantry in close combat
seems to have led the adversaries of Rome in very different parts
of the world independently of each other--at the same time
and with similar success--to meet it with cavalry and distant weapons.
What as completely successful with Cassivellaunus in Britain(6)
and partially successful with Vercingetorix in Gaul(7)--
what was to a certain degree attempted even by Mithradates Eupator(8)--
the vizier of Orodes carried out only on a larger scale
and more completely.  And in doing so he had special advantages:
for he found in the heavy cavalry the means of forming a line; the bow
which was national in the east and was handled with masterly skill
in the Persian provinces gave him an effective weapon for distant combat;
and lastly the peculiarities of the country and the people
enabled him freely to realize his brilliant idea.  Here, where
the Roman weapons of close combat and the Roman system of concentration
yielded for the first time before the weapons of more distant warfare
and the system of deploying, was initiated that military revolution
which only reached its completion with the introduction of firearms.

Battle near Carrhae

Under such circumstances the first battle between the Romans
and Parthians was fought amidst the sandy desert thirty miles
to the south of Carrhae (Harran) where there was a Roman garrison,
and at a somewhat less distance to the north of Ichnae.  The Roman
archers were sent forward, but retired immediately before the enormous
numerical superiority and the far greater elasticity and range
of the Parthian bows.  The legions, which, in spite of the advice
of the more sagacious officers that they should be deployed
as much as possible against the enemy, had been drawn up
in a dense square of twelve cohorts on each side, were soon outflanked
and overwhelmed with the formidable arrows, which under such circumstances
hit their man even without special aim, and against which the soldiers
had no means of retaliation.  The hope that the enemy might expend
his missiles vanished with a glance at the endless range of camels
laden with arrows.  The Parthians were still extending their line.
That the outflanking might not end in surrounding, Publius Crassus
advanced to the attack with a select corps of cavalry, archers,
and infantry of the line.  The enemy in fact abandoned the attempt
to close the circle, and retreated, hotly pursued by the impetuous
leader of the Romans.  But, when the corps of Publius had totally lost
sight of the main army, the heavy cavalry made a stand against it,
and the Parthian host hastening up from all sides closed in
like a net round it.  Publius, who saw his troops falling thickly
and vainly around him under the arrows of the mounted archers,
threw himself in desperation with his Celtic cavalry unprotected
by any coats of mail on the iron-clad lancers of the enemy;
but the death-despising valour of his Celts, who seized the lances
with their hands or sprang from their horses to stab the enemy,
performed its marvels in vain.  The remains of the corps,
including their leader wounded in the sword-arm, were driven
to a slight eminence, where they only served for an easier mark
to the enemy's archers.  Mesopotamian Greeks, who were accurately
acquainted with the country, adjured Crassus to ride off with them
and make an attempt to escape; but he refused to separate his fate
from that of the brave men whom his too-daring courage
had led to death, and he caused himself to be stabbed by the hand
of his shield-bearer.  Following his example, most of the still
surviving officers put themselves to death.  Of the whole division,
about 6000 strong, not more than 500 were taken prisoners;
no one was able to escape.  Meanwhile the attack on the main army
had slackened, and the Romans were but too glad to rest.
When at length the absence of any tidings from the corps
sent out startled them out of the deceitful calm, and they drew near
to the scene of the battle for the purpose of learning its fate,
the head of the son was displayed on a pole before his father's eyes;
and the terrible onslaught began once more against the main army
with the same fury and the same hopeless uniformity.  They could
neither break the ranks of the lancers nor reach the archers;
night alone put an end to the slaughter.  Had the Parthians bivouacked
on the battle-field, hardly a man of the Roman army would have escaped.
But not trained to fight otherwise than on horseback, and therefore
afraid of a surprise, they were wont never to encamp close to the enemy;
jeeringly they shouted to the Romans that they would give the general
a night to bewail his son, and galloped off to return next morning
and despatch the game that lay bleeding on the ground.

Retreat to Carrhae

Of course the Romans did not wait for the morning.  The lieutenant-
generals Cassius and Octavius--Crassus himself had completely
lost his judgment--ordered the men still capable of marching
to set out immediately and with the utmost silence (while the whole--
said to amount to 4000--of the wounded and stragglers were left),
with the view of seeking protection within the walls of Carrhae.
The fact that the Parthians, when they returned on the following day,
applied themselves first of all to seek out and massacre
the scattered Romans left behind, and the further fact that the garrison
and inhabitants of Carrhae, early informed of the disaster by fugitives,
had marched forth in all haste to meet the beaten army, saved the remnants
of it from what seemed inevitable destruction.

Departure from Carrhae
Surprise at Sinnaca

The squadrons of Parthian horsemen could not think of undertaking
a siege of Carrhae.  But the Romans soon voluntarily departed,
whether compelled by want of provisions, or in consequence
of the desponding precipitation of their commander-in-chief,
whom the soldiers had vainly attempted to remove from the command
and to replace by Cassius.  They moved in the direction of the Armenian
mountains; marching by night and resting by day Octavius with a band
of 5000 men reached the fortress of Sinnaca, which was only
a day's march distant from the heights that would give shelter,
and liberated even at the peril of his own life the commander-in-chief,
whom the guide had led astray and given up to the enemy.
Then the vizier rode in front of the Roman camp to offer,
in the name of his king, peace and friendship to the Romans,
and to propose a personal conference between the two generals.
The Roman army, demoralized as it was, adjured and indeed compelled
its leader to accept the offer.  The vizier received the consular
and his staff with the usual honours, and offered anew to conclude
a compact of friendship; only, with just bitterness recalling the fate
of the agreements concluded with Lucullus and Pompeius respecting
the Euphrates boundary,(9) he demanded that it should be immediately
reduced to writing.  A richly adorned horse was produced;
it was a present from the king to the Roman commander-in-chief;
the servants of the vizier crowded round Crassus, zealous to mount him
on the steed.  It seemed to the Roman officers as if there was a design
to seize the person of the commander-in-chief; Octavius, unarmed
as he was, pulled the sword of one of the Parthians from its sheath
and stabbed the groom.  In the tumult which thereupon arose,
the Roman officers were all put to death; the gray-haired commander-
in-chief also, like his grand-uncle,(10) was unwilling to serve
as a living trophy to the enemy, and sought and found death.
The multitude left behind in the camp without a leader were partly
taken prisoners, partly dispersed.  What the day of Carrhae had begun,
the day of Sinnaca completed (June 9, 701); the two took their place
side by side with the days of the Allia, of Cannae, and of Arausio.
The army of the Euphrates was no more.  Only the squadron
of Gaius Cassius, which had been broken off from the main army
on the retreat from Carrhae, and some other scattered bands
and isolated fugitives succeeded in escaping from the Parthians
and Bedouins and separately finding their way back to Syria.
Of above 40,000 Roman legionaries, who had crossed the Euphrates,
not a fourth part returned; the half had perished; nearly 10,000
Roman prisoners were settled by the victors in the extreme east
of their kingdom--in the oasis of Merv--as bondsmen compelled
after the Parthian fashion to render military service.
For the first time since the eagles had headed the legions,
they had become in the same year trophies of victory in the hands
of foreign nations, almost contemporaneously of a German tribe
in the west(11) and of the Parthians in the east.  As to the impression
which the defeat of the Romans produced in the east, unfortunately
no adequate information has reached us; but it must have been deep
and lasting.  King Orodes was just celebrating the marriage of his son
Pacorus with the sister of his new ally, Artavasdes the king of Armenia,
when the announcement of the victory of his vizier arrived,
and along with it, according to Oriental usage, the cut-off head
of Crassus.  The tables were already removed; one of the wandering
companies of actors from Asia Minor, numbers of which at that time
existed and carried Hellenic poetry and the Hellenic drama
far into the east, was just performing before the assembled court
the -Bacchae- of Euripides.  The actor playing the part of Agave,
who in her Dionysiac frenzy has torn in pieces her son and returns
from Cithaeron carrying his head on the thyrsus, exchanged this
for the bloody head of Crassus, and to the infinite delight of his
audience of half-Hellenized barbarians began afresh the well-known song:

   --pheromin ex oreos
   elika neotomon epi melathra
   makarian theiran--.

It was, since the times of the Achaemenids, the first serious victory
which the Orientals had achieved over the west; and there was
a deep significance in the fact that, by way of celebrating
this victory, the fairest product of the western world--
Greek tragedy--parodied itself through its degenerate representatives
in that hideous burlesque.  The civic spirit of Rome and the genius
of Hellas began simultaneously to accommodate themselves
to the chains of sultanism.

Consequences of the Defeat

The disaster, terrible in itself, seemed also as though
it was to be dreadful in its consequences, and to shake the foundations
of the Roman power in the east.  It was among the least of its results
that the Parthians now had absolute sway beyond the Euphrates;
that Armenia, after having fallen away from the Roman alliance
even before the disaster of Crassus, was reduced by it
into entire dependence on Parthia; that the faithful citizens
of Carrhae were bitterly punished for their adherence to the Occidentals
by the new master appointed over them by the Parthians,
one of the treacherous guides of the Romans, named Andromachus.
The Parthians now prepared in all earnest to cross the Euphrates
in their turn, and, in union with the Armenians and Arabs, to dislodge
the Romans from Syria.  The Jews and various other Occidentals
awaited emancipation from the Roman rule there, no less impatiently
than the Hellenes beyond the Euphrates awaited relief
from the Parthian; in Rome civil war was at the door; an attack
at this particular place and time was a grave peril.  But fortunately
for Rome the leaders on each side had changed.  Sultan Orodes
was too much indebted to the heroic prince, who had first placed
the crown on his head and then cleared the land from the enemy,
not to get rid of him as soon as possible by the executioner.
His place as commander-in-chief of the invading army destined for Syria
was filled by a prince, the king's son Pacorus, with whom on account
of his youth and inexperience the prince Osaces had to be associated
as military adviser.  On the other side the interim command
in Syria in room of Crassus was taken up by the prudent and resolute
quaestor Gaius Cassius.

Repulse of the Parthians

The Parthians were, just like Crassus formerly, in no haste to attack,
but during the years 701 and 702 sent only weak flying bands,
who were easily repulsed, across the Euphrates; so that Cassius
obtained time to reorganize the army in some measure, and with the help
of the faithful adherent of the Romans, Herodes Antipater,
to reduce to obedience the Jews, whom resentment at the spoliation
of the temple perpetrated by Crassus had already driven to arms.
The Roman government would thus have had full time to send
fresh troops for the defence of the threatened frontier;
but this was left undone amidst the convulsions of the incipient
revolution, and, when at length in 703 the great Parthian invading army
appeared on the Euphrates, Cassius had still nothing to oppose to it
but the two weak legions formed from the remains of the army of Crassus.
Of course with these he could neither prevent the crossing
nor defend the province.  Syria was overrun by the Parthians,
and all Western Asia trembled.  But the Parthians did not understand
the besieging of towns.  They not only retreated from Antioch,
into which Cassius had thrown himself with his troops, without having
accomplished their object, but they were on their retreat
along the Orontes allured into an ambush by Cassius' cavalry
and there severely handled by the Roman infantry; prince Osaces
was himself among the slain.  Friend and foe thus perceived
that the Parthian army under an ordinary general and on ordinary ground
was not capable of much more than any other Oriental army.
However, the attack was not abandoned.  Still during the winter
of 703-704 Pacorus lay encamped in Cyrrhestica on this side
of the Euphrates; and the new governor of Syria, Marcus Bibulus,
as wretched a general as he was an incapable statesman,
knew no better course of action than to shut himself up
in his fortresses.  It was generally expected that the war
would break out in 704 with renewed fury. But instead
of turning his arms against the Romans, Pacorus turned against
his own father, and accordingly even entered into an understanding
with the Roman governor.  Thus the stain was not wiped
from the shield of Roman honour, nor was the reputation of Rome
restored in the east; but the Parthian invasion of Western Asia
was over, and the Euphrates boundary was, for the time being
at least, retained.

Impression Produced in Rome by the Defeat of Carrhae

In Rome meanwhile the periodical volcano of revolution was whirling
upward its clouds of stupefying smoke.  The Romans began to have
no longer a soldier or a denarius to be employed against the public foe--
no longer a thought for the destinies of the nations.  It is
one of the most dreadful signs of the times, that the huge national
disaster of Carrhae and Sinnaca gave the politicians of that time
far less to think and speak of than that wretched tumult
on the Appian road, in which, a couple of months after Crassus,
Clodius the partisan-leader perished; but it is easily conceivable
and almost excusable.  The breach between the two regents, long felt
as inevitable and often announced as near, was now assuming
such a shape that it could not be arrested.  Like the boat
of the ancient Greek mariners' tale, the vessel of the Roman community
now found itself as it were between two rocks swimming towards each other;
expecting every moment the crash of collision, those whom it was bearing,
tortured by nameless anguish, into the eddying surge that rose
higher and higher were benumbed; and, while every slightest movement
there attracted a thousand, eyes, no one ventured to give a glance
to the right or the left.

The Good Understanding between the Regents Relaxed

After Caesar had, at the conference of Luca in April 698,
agreed to considerable concessions as regarded Pompeius,
and the regents had thus placed themselves substantially on a level,
their relation was not without the outward conditions of durability,
so far as a division of the monarchical power--in itself indivisible--
could be lasting at all.  It was a different question
whether the regents, at least for the present, were determined
to keep together and mutually to acknowledge without reserve their title
to rank as equals.  That this was the case with Caesar, in so far
as he had acquired the interval necessary for the conquest of Gaul
at the price of equalization with Pompeius, has been already set forth.
But Pompeius was hardly ever, even provisionally, in earnest
with the collegiate scheme.  His was one of those petty
and mean natures, towards which it is dangerous to practise magnanimity;
to his paltry spirit it appeared certainly a dictate of prudence
to supplant at the first opportunity his reluctantly acknowledged rival,
and his mean soul thirsted after a possibility of retaliating on Caesar
for the humiliation which he had suffered through Caesar's indulgence.
But while it is probable that Pompeius in accordance with his dull
and sluggish nature never properly consented to let Caesar
hold a position of equality by his side, yet the design
of breaking up the alliance doubtless came only by degrees
to be distinctly entertained by him.  At any rate the public,
which usually saw better through the views and intentions
of Pompeius than he did himself, could not be mistaken
in thinking that at least with the death of the beautiful Julia--
who died in the bloom of womanhood in the autumn of 700 and was
soon followed by her only child to the tomb--the personal relation
between her father and her husband was broken up.  Caesar attempted
to re-establish the ties of affinity which fate had severed;
he asked for himself the hand of the only daughter of Pompeius,
and offered Octavia, his sister's grand-daughter, who was now
his nearest relative, in marriage to his fellow-regent; but Pompeius
left his daughter to her existing husband Faustus Sulla the son
of the regent, and he himself married the daughter of Quintus Metellus
Scipio.  The personal breach had unmistakeably begun, and it was
Pompeius who drew back his hand.  It was expected that a political
breach would at once follow; but in this people were mistaken;
in public affairs a collegiate understanding continued for a time
to subsist.  The reason was, that Caesar did not wish publicly
to dissolve the relation before the subjugation of Gaul
was accomplished, and Pompeius did not wish to dissolve it
before the governing authorities and Italy should be wholly reduced
under his power by his investiture with the dictatorship.
It is singular, but yet readily admits of explanation, that the regents
under these circumstances supported each other; Pompeius
after the disaster of Aduatuca in the winter of 700 handed over
one of his Italian legions that were dismissed on furlough
by way of loan to Caesar; on the other hand Caesar granted his consent
and his moral support to Pompeius in the repressive measures
which the latter took against the stubborn republican opposition.

Dictatorship of Pompeius
Covert Attacks by Pompeius on Caesar

It was only after Pompeius had in this way procured for himself
at the beginning of 702 the undivided consulship and an influence
in the capital thoroughly outweighing that of Caesar,
and after all the men capable of arms in Italy had tendered
their military oath to himself personally and in his name,
that he formed the resolution to break as soon as possible
formally with Caesar; and the design became distinctly enough apparent.
That the judicial prosecution which took place after the tumult
on the Appian Way lighted with unsparing severity precisely
on the old democratic partisans of Caesar,(12) might perhaps pass
as a mere awkwardness.  That the new law against electioneering intrigues,
which had retrospective effect as far as 684, included also the dubious
proceedings at Caesar's candidature for the consulship,(13)
might likewise be nothing more, although not a few Caesarians thought
that they perceived in it a definite design.  But people
could no longer shut their eyes, however willing they might be
to do so, when Pompeius did not select for his colleague
in the consulship his former father-in-law Caesar, as was fitting
in the circumstances of the case and was in many quarters demanded,
but associated with himself a puppet wholly dependent on him
in his new father-in-law Scipio;(14) and still less, when Pompeius
at the same time got the governorship of the two Spains continued
to him for five years more, that is to 709, and a considerable
fixed sum appropriated from the state-chest for the payment of his troops,
not only without stipulating for a like prolongation of command
and a like grant of money to Caesar, but even while labouring
ulteriorly to effect the recall of Caesar before the term
formerly agreed on through the new regulations which were issued
at the same time regarding the holding of the governorships.
These encroachments were unmistakeably calculated to undermine
Caesar's position and eventually to overthrow him.  The moment
could not be more favourable.  Caesar had conceded so much to Pompeius
at Luca, only because Crassus and his Syrian army would necessarily,
in the event of any rupture with Pompeius, be thrown into Caesar's scale;
for upon Crassus--who since the times of Sulla had been
at the deepest enmity with Pompeius and almost as long politically
and personally allied with Caesar, and who from his peculiar character
at all events, if he could not himself be king of Rome, would have been
content with being the new king's banker--Caesar could always reckon,
and could have no apprehension at all of seeing Crassus confronting him
as an ally of his enemies.  The catastrophe of June 701,
by which army and general in Syria perished, was therefore
a terribly severe blow also for Caesar.  A few months later
the national insurrection blazed up more violently than ever in Gaul,
just when it had seemed completely subdued, and for the first time
Caesar here encountered an equal opponent in the Arvernian king
Vercingetorix.  Once more fate had been working for Pompeius;
Crassus was dead, all Gaul was in revolt, Pompeius was practically
dictator of Rome and master of the senate.  What might have happened,
if he had now, instead of remotely intriguing against Caesar,
summarily compelled the burgesses or the senate to recall Caesar
at once from Gaul!  But Pompeius never understood how to take advantage
of fortune.  He heralded the breach clearly enough; already in 702
his acts left no doubt about it, and in the spring of 703 he openly
expressed his purpose of breaking with Caesar; but he did not
break with him, and allowed the months to slip away unemployed.

The Old Party Names and the Pretenders

But however Pompeius might delay, the crisis was incessantly urged
on by the mere force of circumstances.

The impending war was not a struggle possibly between republic
and monarchy--for that had been virtually decided years before--
but a struggle between Pompeius and Caesar for the possession
of the crown of Rome.  But neither of the pretenders found his account
in uttering the plain truth; he would have thereby driven
all that very respectable portion of the burgesses, which desired
the continuance of the republic and believed in its possibility,
directly into the camp of his opponent.  The old battle-cries raised
by Gracchus and Drusus, Cinna and Sulla, used up and meaningless
as they were, remained still good enough for watchwords
in the struggle of the two generals contending for the sole rule;
and, though for the moment both Pompeius and Caesar ranked themselves
officially with the so-called popular party, it could not be
for a moment doubtful that Caesar would inscribe on his banner
the people and democratic progress, Pompeius the aristocracy
and the legitimate constitution.

The Democracy and Caesar

Caesar had no choice.  He was from the outset and very earnestly
a democrat; the monarchy as he understood it differed more outwardly
than in reality from the Gracchan government of the people;
and he was too magnanimous and too profound a statesman to conceal
his colours and to fight under any other escutcheon than his own.
The immediate advantage no doubt, which this battle-cry brought to him,
was trifling; it was confined mainly to the circumstance
that he was thereby relieved from the inconvenience of directly naming
the kingly office, and so alarming the mass of the lukewarm
and his own adherents by that detested word.  The democratic banner
hardly yielded farther positive gain, since the ideals of Gracchus
had been rendered infamous and ridiculous by Clodius;
for where was there now--laying aside perhaps the Transpadanes--
any class of any sort of importance, which would have been induced
by the battle-cries of the democracy to take part in the struggle?

The Aristocracy and Pompeius

This state of things would have decided the part of Pompeius
in the impending struggle, even if apart from this it had not been
self-evident that he could only enter into it as the general
of the legitimate republic.  Nature had destined him, if ever any one,
to be a member of an aristocracy; and nothing but very accidental
and very selfish motives had carried him over as a deserter
from the aristocratic to the democratic camp.  That he should now
revert to his Sullan traditions, was not merely befitting in the case,
but in every respect of essential advantage.  Effete as was
the democratic cry, the conservative cry could not but have
the more potent effect, if it proceeded from the right man.
Perhaps the majority, at any rate the flower of the burgesses,
belonged to the constitutional party; and as respected its numerical
and moral strength might well be called to interfere powerfully,
perhaps decisively, in the impending struggle of the pretenders.
It wanted nothing but a leader.  Marcus Cato, its present head,
did the duty, as he understood it, of its leader amidst daily peril
to his life and perhaps without hope of success; his fidelity to duty
deserves respect, but to be the last at a forlorn post is commendable
in the soldier, not in the general.  He had not the skill
either to organize or to bring into action at the proper time
the powerful reserve, which had sprung up as it were spontaneously
in Italy for the party of the overthrown government; and he had
for good reasons never made any pretension to the military leadership,
on which everything ultimately depended.  If instead of this man,
who knew not how to act either as party-chief or as general,
a man of the political and military mark of Pompeius should raise
the banner of the existing constitution, the municipals of Italy
would necessarily flock towards it in crowds, that under it
they might help to fight, if not indeed for the kingship of Pompeius,
at any rate against the kingship of Caesar.

To this was added another consideration at least as important.
It was characteristic of Pompeius, even when he had formed a resolve,
not to be able to find his way to its execution.  While he knew
perhaps how to conduct war but certainly not how to declare it,
the Catonian party, although assuredly unable to conduct it,
was very able and above all very ready to supply grounds for the war
against the monarchy on the point of being founded.  According to
the intention of Pompeius, while he kept himself aloof, and in his
peculiar way, now talked as though he would immediately depart
for his Spanish provinces, now made preparations as though he would
set out to take over the command on the Euphrates, the legitimate
governing board, namely the senate, were to break with Caesar,
to declare war against him, and to entrust the conduct of it to Pompeius,
who then, yielding to the general desire, was to come forward
as the protector of the constitution against demagogico-
monarchical plots, as an upright man and champion of the existing
order of things against the profligates and anarchists,
as the duly-installed general of the senate against the Imperator
of the street, and so once more to save his country.  Thus Pompeius
gained by the alliance with the conservatives both a second army
in addition to his personal adherents, and a suitable war-manifesto--
advantages which certainly were purchased at the high price
of coalescing with those who were in principle opposed to him.
Of the countless evils involved in this coalition, there was developed
in the meantime only one--but that already a very grave one--
that Pompeius surrendered the power of commencing hostilities
against Caesar when and how he pleased, and in this decisive point
made himself dependent on all the accidents and caprices
of an aristocratic corporation.

The Republicans

Thus the republican opposition, after having been for years
obliged to rest content with the part of a mere spectator
and having hardly ventured to whisper, was now brought back once more
to the political stage by the impending rupture between the regents.
It consisted primarily of the circle which rallied round Cato--
those republicans who were resolved to venture on the struggle
for the republic and against the monarchy under all circumstances,
and the sooner the better.  The pitiful issue of the attempt
made in 698(15) had taught them that they by themselves alone
were not in a position either to conduct war or even to call it forth;
it was known to every one that even in the senate, while the whole
corporation with a few isolated exceptions was averse to monarchy,
the majority would still only restore the oligarchic government
if it might be restored without danger--in which case, doubtless,
it had a good while to wait.  In presence of the regents on the one hand,
and on the other hand of this indolent majority, which desired peace
above all things and at any price, and was averse to any decided action
and most of all to a decided rupture with one or other of the regents,
the only possible course for the Catonian party to obtain a restoration
of the old rule lay in a coalition with the less dangerous
of the rulers.  If Pompeius acknowledged the oligarchic constitution
and offered to fight for it against Caesar, the republican opposition
might and must recognize him as its general, and in alliance
with him compel the timid majority to a declaration of war.
That Pompeius was not quite in earnest with his fidelity
to the constitution, could indeed escape nobody; but, undecided
as he was in everything, he had by no means arrived like Caesar
at a clear and firm conviction that it must be the first business
of the new monarch to sweep off thoroughly and conclusively
the oligarchic lumber.  At any rate the war would train
a really republican army and really republican generals;
and, after the victory over Caesar, they might proceed
with more favourable prospects to set aside not merely
oneof the monarchs, but the monarchy itself, which was in the course
of formation.  Desperate as was the cause of the oligarchy, the offer
of Pompeius to become its ally was the most favourable arrangement
possible for it.

Their League with Pompeius

The conclusion of the alliance between Pompeius and the Catonian party
was effected with comparative rapidity.  Already during the dictatorship
of Pompeius a remarkable approximation had taken place between them.
The whole behaviour of Pompeius in the Milonian crisis,
his abrupt repulse of the mob that offered him the dictatorship,
his distinct declaration that he would accept this office
only from the senate, his unrelenting severity against disturbers
of the peace of every sort and especially against the ultra-democrats,
the surprising complaisance with which he treated Cato
and those who shared his views, appeared as much calculated to gain
the men of order as they were offensive to the democrat Caesar.
On the other hand Cato and his followers, instead of combating
with their wonted sternness the proposal to confer the dictatorship
on Pompeius, had made it with immaterial alterations of form
their own; Pompeius had received the undivided consulship
primarily from the hands of Bibulus and Cato.  While the Catonian party
and Pompeius had thus at least a tacit understanding as early
as the beginning of 702, the alliance might be held as formally
concluded, when at the consular elections for 703 there was elected
not Cato himself indeed, but--along with an insignificant man
belonging to the majority of the senate--one of the most decided
adherents of Cato, Marcus Claudius Marcellus.  Marcellus was
no furious zealot and still less a genius, but a steadfast
and strict aristocrat, just the right man to declare war
if war was to be begun with Caesar.  As the case stood,
this election, so surprising after the repressive measures
adopted immediately before against the republican opposition,
can hardly have occurred otherwise than with the consent,
or at least under the tacit permission, of the regent of Rome
for the time being.  Slowly and clumsily, as was his wont,
but steadily Pompeius moved onward to the rupture.

Passive Resistance of Caesar

It was not the intention of Caesar on the other hand to fall out
at this moment with Pompeius.  He could not indeed desire seriously
and permanently to share the ruling power with any colleague,
least of all with one of so secondary a sort as was Pompeius;
and beyond doubt he had long resolved after terminating the conquest
of Gaul to take the sole power for himself, and in case of need to extort
it by force of arms.  But a man like Caesar, in whom the officer
was thoroughly subordinate to the statesman, could not fail
to perceive that the regulation of the political organism
by force of arms does in its consequences deeply and often permanently
disorganize it; and therefore he could not but seek to solve
the difficulty, if at all possible, by peaceful means or at least
without open civil war.  But even if civil war was not to be avoided,
he could not desire to be driven to it at a time, when in Gaul
the rising of Vercingetorix imperilled afresh all that had been obtained
and occupied him without interruption from the winter of 701-702
to the winter of 702-703, and when Pompeius and the constitutional party
opposed to him on principle were dominant in Italy. Accordingly
he sought to preserve the relation with Pompeius and thereby
the peace unbroken, and to attain, if at all possible,
by peaceful means to the consulship for 706 already assured
to him at Luca.  If he should then after a conclusive settlement
of Celtic affairs be placed in a regular manner at the head
of the state, he, who was still more decidedly superior
to Pompeius as a statesman than as a general, might well reckon
on outmanoeuvring the latter in the senate-house and in the Forum
without special difficulty.  Perhaps it was possible to find out
for his awkward, vacillating, and arrogant rival some sort
of honourable and influential position, in which the latter might be
content to sink into a nullity; the repeated attempts of Caesar
to keep himself related by marriage to Pompeius, may have been
designed to pave the way for such a solution and to bring about
a final settlement of the old quarrel through the succession
of offspring inheriting the blood of both competitors.  The republican
opposition would then remain without a leader and therefore
probably quiet, and peace would be preserved.  If this should not
be successful, and if there should be, as was certainly possible,
a necessity for ultimately resorting to the decision of arms,
Caesar would then as consul in Rome dispose of the compliant majority
of the senate; and he could impede or perhaps frustrate the coalition
of the Pompeians and the republicans, and conduct the war
far more suitably and more advantageously, than if he now as proconsul
of Gaul gave orders to march against the senate and its general.
Certainly the success of this plan depended on Pompeius being good-
natured enough to let Caesar still obtain the consulship for 706
assured to him at Luca; but, even if it failed, it would be always
of advantage for Caesar to have given practical and repeated
evidence of the most yielding disposition.  On the one hand time
would thus be gained for attaining his object meanwhile in Gaul;
on the other hand his opponents would be left with the odium
of initiating the rupture and consequently the civil war--
which was of the utmost moment for Caesar with reference to the majority
of the senate and the party of material interests, and more especially
with reference to his own soldiers.

On these views he acted.  He armed certainly; the number of his legion
was raised through new levies in the winter of 702-703 to eleven,
including that borrowed from Pompeius. But at the same time
he expressly and openly approved of Pompeius' conduct during
the dictatorship and the restoration of order in the capital
which he had effected, rejected the warnings of officious friends
as calumnies, reckoned every day by which he succeeded
in postponing the catastrophe a gain, overlooked whatever
could be overlooked and bore whatever could be borne--
immoveably adhering only to the one decisive demand that,
when his governorship of Gaul came to an end with 705,
the second consulship, admissible by republican state-law
and promised to him according to agreement by his colleague,
should be granted to him for the year 706.

Preparation for Attacks on Caesar

This very demand became the battle-field of the diplomatic war
which now began.  If Caesar were compelled either to resign
his office of governor before the last day of December 705,
or to postpone the assumption of the magistracy in the capital
beyond the 1st January 706, so that he should remain for a time
between the governorship and the consulate without office,
and consequently liable to criminal impeachment--which according
to Roman law was only allowable against one who was not in office--
the public had good reason to prophesy for him in this case
the fate of Milo, because Cato had for long been ready to impeach him
and Pompeius was a more than doubtful protector.

Attempt to Keep Caesar Out of the Consulship

Now, to attain that object, Caesar's opponents had a very simple means.
According to the existing ordinance as to elections, every candidate
for the consulship was obliged to announce himself personally
to the presiding magistrate, and to cause his name to be inscribed
on the official list of candidates before the election,
that is half a year before entering on office.  It had probably
been regarded in the conferences at Luca as a matter of course
that Caesar would be released from this obligation, which was
purely formal and was very often dispensed with; but the decree
to that effect had not yet been issued, and, as Pompeius was now
in possession of the decretive machinery, Caesar depended in this respect
on the good will of his rival.  Pompeius incomprehensibly abandoned
of his own accord this completely secure position; with his consen
and during his dictatorship (702) the personal appearance
of Caesar was dispensed with by a tribunician law.  When however
soon afterwards the new election-ordinance(16) was issued,
the obligation of candidates personally to enrol themselves
was repeated in general terms, and no sort of exception was added
in favour of those released from it by earlier resolutions
of the people; according to strict form the privilege granted in favour
of Caesar was cancelled by the later general law.  Caesar complained,
and the clause was subsequently appended but not confirmed
by special decree of the people, so that this enactment inserted
by mere interpolation in the already promulgated law could only be
looked on de jure as a nullity.  Where Pompeius, therefore,
might have simply kept by the law, he had preferred first
to make a spontaneous concession, then to recall it,
and lastly to cloak this recall in a manner most disloyal.

Attempt to Shorten Caesar's Governorship

While in this way the shortening of Caesar's governorship
was only aimed at indirectly, the regulations issued at the same time
as to the governorships sought the same object directly.
The ten years for which the governorship had been secured to Caesar,
in the last instance through the law proposed by Pompeius himself
in concert with Crassus, ran according to the usual mode of reckoning
from 1 March 695 to the last day of February 705.  As, however,
according to the earlier practice, the proconsul or propraetor
had the right of entering on his provincial magistracy immediately
after the termination of his consulship or praetorship, the successor
of Caesar was to be nominated, not from the urban magistrates of 704,
but from those of 705, and could not therefore enter before 1st Jan. 706.
So far Caesar had still during the last ten months of the year 705
a right to the command, not on the ground of the Pompeio-Licinian law,
but on the ground of the old rule that a command with a set term
still continued after the expiry of the term up to the arrival
of the successor.  But now, since the new regulation of 702
called to the governorships not the consuls and praetors
going out, but those who had gone out five years ago or more,
and thus prescribed an interval between the civil magistracy
and the command instead of the previous immediate sequence,
there was no longer any difficulty in straightway filling up
from another quarter every legally vacant governorship, and so,
in the case in question, bringing about for the Gallic provinces
the change of command on the 1st March 705, instead of the 1st Jan. 706.
The pitiful dissimulation and procrastinating artifice of Pompeius
are after a remarkable manner mixed up, in these arrangements,
with the wily formalism and the constitutional erudition
of the republican party.  Years before these weapons of state-law
could be employed, they had them duly prepared, and put themselves
in a condition on the one hand to compel Caesar to the resignation
of his command from the day when the term secured to him by Pompeius'
own law expired, that is from the 1st March 705, by sending successors
to him, and on the other hand to be able to treat as null and void
the votes tendered for him at the elections for 706.  Caesar,
not in a position to hinder these moves in the game, kept silence
and left things to their own course.

Debates as to Caesar's Recall

Gradually therefore the slow course of constitutional procedure
developed itself.  According to custom the senate had to deliberate
on the governorships of the year 705, so far as they went
to former consuls, at the beginning of 703, so far as they went
to former praetors, at the beginning of 704; that earlier deliberation
gave the first occasion to discuss the nomination of new governors
for the two Gauls in the senate, and thereby the first occasion
for open collision between the constitutional party pushed forward
by Pompeius and the senatorial supporters of Caesar.  The consul
Marcus Marcellus introduced a proposal to give the two provinces
hitherto administered by the proconsul Gaius Caesar
from the 1st March 705 to the two consulars who were to be provided
with governorships for that year.  The long-repressed indignation
burst forth in a torrent through the sluice once opened;
everything that the Catonians were meditating against Caesar
was brought forward in these discussions.  For them it was
a settled point, that the right granted by exceptional law
to the proconsul Caesar of announcing his candidature for the consulship
in absence had been again cancelled by a subsequent decree of the people,
and that the reservation inserted in the latter was invalid.
The senate should in their opinion cause this magistrate,
now that the subjugation of Gaul was ended, to discharge immediately
the soldiers who had served out their time.  The cases in which
Caesar had bestowed burgess-rights and established colonies
in Upper Italy were described by them as unconstitutional and null;
in further illustration of which Marcellus ordained that a respected
senator of the Caesarian colony of Comum, who, even if that place
had not burgess but only Latin rights, was entitled to lay claim
to Roman citizenship,(17) should receive the punishment
of scourging, which was admissible only in the case of non-burgesses.

The supporters of Caesar at this time--among whom Gaius Vibius Pansa,
who was the son of a man proscribed by Sulla but yet had entered
on a political career, formerly an officer in Caesar's army
and in this year tribune of the people, was the most notable--
affirmed in the senate that both the state of things in Gaul
and equity demanded not only that Caesar should not be recalled
before the time, but that he should be allowed to retain the command
along with the consulship; and they pointed beyond doubt to the facts,
that a few years previously Pompeius had just in the same way
combined the Spanish governorships with the consulate,
that even at the present time, besides the important office
of superintending the supply of food to the capital, he held
the supreme command in Italy in addition to the Spanish,
and that in fact the whole men capable of arms had been sworn in by him
and had not yet been released from their oath.

The process began to take shape, but its course was not on that account
more rapid.  The majority of the senate, seeing the breach approaching,
allowed no sitting capable of issuing a decree to take place for months;
and other months in their turn were lost over the solemn procrastination
of Pompeius.  At length the latter broke the silence and ranged himself,
in a reserved and vacillating fashion as usual but yet plainly enough,
on the side of the constitutional party against his former ally.
He summarily and abruptly rejected the demand of the Caesarians
that their master should be allowed to conjoin the consulship
and the proconsulship; this demand, he added with blunt coarseness,
seemed to him no better than if a son should offer to flog
his father.  He approved in principle the proposal of Marcellus,
in so far as he too declared that he would not allow Caesar
directly to attach the consulship to the pro-consulship.
He hinted, however, although without making any binding declaration
on the point, that they would perhaps grant to Caesar admission
to the elections for 706 without requiring his personal announcement,
as well as the continuance of his governorship at the utmost
to the 13th Nov. 705.  But in the meantime the incorrigible
procrastinator consented to the postponement of the nomination
of successors to the last day of Feb. 704, which was asked
by the representatives of Caesar, probably on the ground of a clause
of the Pompeio-Licinian law forbidding any discussion in the senate
as to the nomination of successors before the beginning of Caesar's
last year of office.

In this sense accordingly the decrees of the senate were issued
(29 Sept. 703).  The filling up of the Gallic governorships
was placed in the order of the day for the 1st March 704; but even now
it was attempted to break up the army of Caesar--just as had formerly
been done by decree of the people with the army of Lucullus(18)--
by inducing his veterans to apply to the senate for their discharge.
Caesar's supporters effected, indeed, as far as they constitutionally
could, the cancelling of these decrees by their tribunician veto;
but Pompeius very distinctly declared that the magistrates were bound
unconditionally to obey the senate, and that intercessions and similar
antiquated formalities would produce no change.  The oligarchical party,
whose organ Pompeius now made himself, betrayed not obscurely the design,
in the event of a victory, of revising the constitution in their sense
and removing everything which had even the semblance of popular freedom;
as indeed, doubtless for this reason, it omitted to avail itself
of the comitia at all in its attacks directed against Caesar.
The coalition between Pompeius and the constitutional party
was thus formally declared; sentence too was already evidently passed
on Caesar, and the term of its promulgation was simply postponed.
The elections for the following year proved thoroughly adverse to him.

Counter-Arrangements of Caesar

During these party manoeuvres of his antagonists preparatory to war,
Caesar had succeeded in getting rid of the Gallic insurrection
and restoring the state of peace in the whole subject territory.
As early as the summer of 703, under the convenient pretext
of defending the frontier(19) but evidently in token of the fact
that the legions in Gaul were now beginning to be no longer
needed there, he moved one of them to North Italy.  He could not avoid
perceiving now at any rate, if not earlier, that he would not
be spared the necessity of drawing the sword against his fellow-
citizens; nevertheless, as it was highly desirable to leave the legions
still for a time in the barely pacified Gaul, he sought even yet
to procrastinate, and, well acquainted with the extreme
love of peace in the majority of the senate, did not abandon
the hope of still restraining them from the declaration of war
in spite of the pressure exercised over them by Pompeius.
He did not even hesitate to make great sacrifices, if only he might
avoid for the present open variance with the supreme governing board.
When the senate (in the spring of 704) at the suggestion of Pompeius
requested both him and Caesar to furnish each a legion
for the impending Parthian war(20) and when agreeably to this resolution
Pompeius demanded back from Caesar the legion lent to him
some years before, so as to send it to Syria, Caesar complied with
the double demand, because neither the opportuneness of this decree
of the senate nor the justice of the demand of Pompeius
could in themselves be disputed, and the keeping within the bounds
of the law and of formal loyalty was of more consequence to Caesar
than a few thousand soldiers.  The two legions came without delay
and placed themselves at the disposal of the government, but instead
of sending them to the Euphrates, the latter kept them at Capua
in readiness for Pompeius; and the public had once more the opportunity
of comparing the manifest endeavours of Caesar to avoid a rupture
with the perfidious preparation for war by his opponents.

Curio

For the discussions with the senate Caesar had succeeded
in purchasing not only one of the two consuls of the year,
Lucius Aemilius Paullus, but above all the tribune of the people
Gaius Curio, probably the most eminent among the many profligate men
of parts in this epoch;(21) unsurpassed in refined elegance, in fluent
and clever oratory, in dexterity of intrigue, and in that energy
which in the case of vigorous but vicious characters bestirs itself
only the more powerfully amid the pauses of idleness; but also
unsurpassed in his dissolute life, in his talent for borrowing--
his debts were estimated at 60,000,000 sesterces (600,000 pounds)--
and in his moral and political want of principle.  He had previously
offered himself to be bought by Caesar and had been rejected;
the talent, which he thenceforward displayed in his attacks on Caesar,
induced the latter subsequently to buy him up--the price was high,
but the commodity was worth the money.

Debates as to the Recall of Caesar and Pompeius

Curio had in the first months of his tribunate of the people
played the independent republican, and had as such thundered
both against Caesar and against Pompeius.  He availed himself
with rare skill of the apparently impartial position which
this gave him, when in March 704 the proposal as to the filling up
of the Gallic governorships for the next year came up afresh
for discussion in the senate; he completely approved the decree,
but asked that it should be at the same time extended to Pompeius
and his extraordinary commands.  His arguments--that a constitutional
state of things could only be brought about by the removal
of all exceptional positions, that Pompeius as merely entrusted
by the senate with the proconsulship could still less than Caesar
refuse obedience to it, that the one-sided removal of one
of the two generals would only increase the danger to the constitution--
carried complete conviction to superficial politicians and to the public
at large; and the declaration of Curio, that he intended to prevent
any onesided proceedings against Caesar by the veto constitutionally
belonging to him, met with much approval in and out of the senate.
Caesar declared his consent at once to Curio's proposal
and offered to resign his governorship and command at any moment
on the summons of the senate, provided Pompeius would do the same;
he might safely do so, for Pompeius without his Italo-Spanish command
was no longer formidable.  Pompeius again for that very reason
could not avoid refusing; his reply--that Caesar must first resign,
and that he meant speedily to follow the example thus set--
was the less satisfactory, that he did not even specify
a definite term for his retirement.  Again the decision was delayed
for months; Pompeius and the Catonians, perceiving the dubious humour
of the majority of the senate, did not venture to bring Curio's
proposal to a vote.  Caesar employed the summer in establishing
the state of peace in the regions which he had conquered, in holding
a great review of his troops on the Scheldt, and in making
a triumphal march through the province of North Italy, which was
entirely devoted to him; autumn found him in Ravenna, the southern
frontier-town of his province.

Caesar and Pompeius Both Recalled

The vote which could no longer be delayed on Curio's proposal
at length took place, and exhibited the defeat of the party
of Pompeius and Cato in all its extent.  By 370 votes against 20
the senate resolved that the proconsuls of Spain and Gaul
should both be called upon to resign their offices; and with boundless
joy the good burgesses of Rome heard the glad news of the saving
achievement of Curio.  Pompeius was thus recalled by the senate
no less than Caesar, and while Caesar was ready to comply with
the command, Pompeius positively refused obedience.  The presiding
consul Gaius Marcellus, cousin of Marcus Marcellus and like the latter
belonging to the Catonian party, addressed a severe lecture
to the servile majority; and it was, no doubt, vexatious
to be thus beaten in their own camp and beaten by means of a phalanx
of poltroons.  But where was victory to come from under a leader,
who, instead of shortly and distinctly dictating his orders
to the senators, resorted in his old days a second time
to the instructions of a professor of rhetoric, that with eloquence
polished up afresh he might encounter the youthful vigour
and brilliant talents of Curio?

Declaration of War

The coalition, defeated in the senate, was in the most painful position.
The Catonian section had undertaken to push matters to a rupture
and to carry the senate along with them, and now saw their vessel
stranded after a most vexatious manner on the sandbanks of the indolent
majority.  Their leaders had to listen in their conferences
to the bitterest reproaches from Pompeius; he pointed out
emphatically and with entire justice the dangers of the seeming peace;
and, though it depended on himself alone to cut the knot
by rapid action, his allies knew very well that they could never expect
this from him, and that it was for them, as they had promised,
to bring matters to a crisis.  After the champions of the constitution
and of senatorial government had already declared the constitutional
rights of the burgesses and of the tribunes of the people
to be meaningless formalities,(22) they now found themselves
driven by necessity to treat the constitutional decision; of the senate
itself in a similar manner and, as the legitimate government
would not let itself be saved with its own consent, to save it
against its will.  This was neither new nor accidental; Sulla(23)
and Lucullus(24) had been obliged to carry every energetic
resolution conceived by them in the true interest of the government
with a high hand irrespective of it, just as Cato and his friends
now proposed to do; the machinery of the constitution was in fact
utterly effete, and the senate was now--as the comitia had been
for centuries--nothing but a worn-out wheel slipping constantly
out of its track.

It was rumoured (Oct. 704) that Caesar had moved four legions
from Transalpine into Cisalpine Gaul and stationed them at Placentia.
This transference of troops was of itself within the prerogative
of the governor; Curio moreover palpably showed in the senate
the utter groundlessness of the rumour; and they by a majority
rejected the proposal of the consul Gaius Marcellus to give
Pompeius on the strength of it orders to march against Caesar.
Yet the said consul, in concert with the two consuls elected for 705
who likewise belonged to the Catonian party, proceeded to Pompeius,
and these three men by virtue of their own plenitude of power
requested the general to put himself at the head of the two legions
stationed at Capua, and to call the Italian militia to arms
at his discretion.  A more informal authorization for the commencement
of a civil war can hardly be conceived; but people had no longer time
to attend to such secondary matters; Pompeius accepted it.
The military preparations, the levies began; in order personally
to forward them, Pompeius left the capital in December 704.

The Ultimatum of Caesar

Caesar had completely attained the object of devolving
the initiative of civil war on his opponents.  He had, while himself
keeping on legal ground, compelled Pompeius to declare war,
and to declare it not as representative of the legitimate authority,
but as general of an openly revolutionary minority of the senate
which overawed the majority.  This result was not to be reckoned
of slight importance, although the instinct of the masses could not
and did not deceive itself for a moment as to the fact that the war
concerned other things than questions of formal law.  Now, when war
was declared, it was Caesar's interest to strike a blow as soon
as possible.  The preparations of his opponents were just beginning
and even the capital was not occupied.  In ten or twelve days
an army three times as strong as the troops of Caesar
that were in Upper Italy could be collected at Rome; but still
it was not impossible to surprise the city undefended, or even perhaps
by a rapid winter campaign to seize all Italy, and to shut off
the best resources of his opponents before they could make them available.
The sagacious and energetic Curio, who after resigning his tribunate
(10 Dec. 704) had immediately gone to Caesar at Ravenna,
vividly represented the state of things to his master;
and it hardly needed such a representation to convince Caesar
that longer delay now could only be injurious.  But, as he with the view
of not giving his antagonists occasion to complain had hitherto
brought no troops to Ravenna itself, he could for the present do nothing
but despatch orders to his whole force to set out with all haste;
and he had to wait till at least the one legion stationed in Upper Italy
reached Ravenna.  Meanwhile he sent an ultimatum to Rome,
which, if useful for nothing else, by its extreme submissiveness
still farther compromised his opponents in public opinion,
and perhaps even, as he seemed himself to hesitate, induced them
to prosecute more remissly their preparations against him.
In this ultimatum Caesar dropped all the counter-demands
which he formerly made on Pompeius, and offered on his own part
both to resign the governorship of Transalpine Gaul, and to dismiss
eight of the ten legions belonging to him, at the term fixed
by the senate; he declared himself content, if the senate would leave him
either the governorship of Cisalpine Gaul and Illyria with one,
or that of Cisalpine Gaul alone with two, legions, not, forsooth,
up to his investiture with the consulship, but till after the close
of the consular elections for 706.  He thus consented to those proposals
of accommodation, with which at the beginning of the discussions
the senatorial party and even Pompeius himself had declared
that they would be satisfied, and showed himself ready to remain
in a private position from his election to the consulate down to
his entering on office.  Whether Caesar was in earnest with these
astonishing concessions and had confidence that he should be able
to carry through his game against Pompeius even after granting
so much, or whether he reckoned that those on the other side
had already gone too far to find in these proposals of compromise
more than a proof that Caesar regarded his cause itself as lost,
can no longer be with certainty determined.  The probability is,
that Caesar committed the fault of playing a too bold game, far worse
rather than the fault of promising something which he was not minded
to perform; and that, if strangely enough his proposals had been
accepted, he would have made good his word.

Last Debate in the Senate

Curio undertook once more to represent his master in the lion's den.
In three days he made the journey from Ravenna to Rome.
When the new consuls Lucius Lentulus and Gaius Marcellus the younger(25)
assembled the senate for the first time on 1 Jan. 705, he delivered
in a full meeting the letter addressed by the general to the senate.
The tribunes of the people, Marcus Antonius well known
in the chronicle of scandal of the city as the intimate friend
of Curio and his accomplice in all his follies, but at the same time
known from the Egyptian and Gallic campaigns as a brilliant cavalry
officer, and Quintus Cassius, Pompeius' former quaestor,--the two,
who were now in Curio's stead managing the cause of Caesar in Rome--
insisted on the immediate reading of the despatch.  The grave
and clear words in which Caesar set forth the imminence of civil war,
the general wish for peace, the arrogance of Pompeius, and his own
yielding disposition, with all the irresistible force of truth;
the proposals for a compromise, of a moderation which doubtless
surprised his own partisans; the distinct declaration that this was
the last time that he should offer his hand for peace--
made the deepest impression.  In spite of the dread inspired
by the numerous soldiers of Pompeius who flocked into the capital,
the sentiment of the majority was not doubtful; the consuls could not
venture to let it find expression.  Respecting the proposal renewed
by Caesar that both generals might be enjoined to resign their commands
simultaneously, respecting all the projects of accommodation
suggested by his letter, and respecting the proposal made
by Marcus Coelius Rufus and Marcus Calidius that Pompeius
should be urged immediately to depart for Spain, the consuls refused--
as they in the capacity of presiding officers were entitled to do--
to let a vote take place.  Even the proposal of one of their
most decided partisans who was simply not so blind to the military
position of affairs as his party, Marcus Marcellus--to defer
the determination till the Italian levy en masse could be under arms
and could protect the senate--was not allowed to be brought to a vote.
Pompeius caused it to be declared through his usual organ,
Quintus Scipio, that he was resolved to take up the cause of the senate
now or never, and that he would let it drop if they longer delayed.
The consul Lentulus said in plain terms that even the decree
of the senate was no longer of consequence, and that, if it
should persevere in its servility, he would act of himself
and with his powerful friends take the farther steps necessary.
Thus overawed, the majority decreed what was commanded--
that Caesar should at a definite and not distant day give up
Transalpine Gaul to Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus, and Cisalpine Gaul
to Marcus Servilius Nonianus, and should dismiss his army,
failing which he should be esteemed a traitor.  When the tribunes
of Caesar's party made use of their right of veto against this resolution,
not only were they, as they at least asserted, threatened
in the senate-house itself by the swords of Pompeian soldiers,
and forced, in order to save their lives, to flee in slaves'
clothing from the capital; but the now sufficiently overawed senate
treated their formally quite constitutional interference
as an attempt at revolution, declared the country in danger,
and in the usual forms called the whole burgesses to take up arms,
and all magistrates faithful to the constitution to place themselves
at the head of the armed (7 Jan. 705).

Caesar Marches into Italy

Now it was enough.  When Caesar was informed by the tribunes
who had fled to his camp entreating protection as to the reception
which his proposals had met with in the capital, he called together
the soldiers of the thirteenth legion, which had meanwhile arrived
from its cantonments near Tergeste (Trieste) at Ravenna,
and unfolded before them the state of things.  It was not merely
the man of genius versed in the knowledge and skilled in the control
of men's hearts, whose brilliant eloquence shone forth and glowed
in this agitating crisis of his own and the world's destiny;
nor merely the generous commander-in-chief and the victorious general,
addressing soldiers, who had been called by himself to arms
and for eight years had followed his banners with daily-increasing
enthusiasm.  There spoke, above all, the energetic and consistent
statesman, who had now for nine-and-twenty years defended
the cause of freedom in good and evil times; who had braved for it
the daggers of assassins and the executioners of the aristocracy,
the swords of the Germans and the waves of the unknown ocean,
without ever yielding or wavering; who had torn to pieces
the Sullan constitution, had overthrown the rule of the senate,
and had furnished the defenceless and unarmed democracy with protection
and with arms by means of the struggle beyond the Alps. And he spoke,
not to the Clodian public whose republican enthusiasm had been
long burnt down to ashes and dross, but to the young men from the towns
and villages of Northern Italy, who still felt freshly and purely
the mighty influence of the thought of civic freedom; who were still
capable of fighting and of dying for ideals; who had themselves
received for their country in a revolutionary way from Caesar
the burgess-rights which the government refused to them;
whom Caesar's fall would leave once more at the mercy of the -fasces-,
and who already possessed practical proofs(26) of the inexorable use
which the oligarchy proposed to make of these against the Transpadanes.
Such were the listeners before whom such an orator set forth the facts--
the thanks for the conquest of Gaul which the nobility were preparing
for the general and his army; the contemptuous setting aside
of the comitia; the overawing of the senate; the sacred duty
of protecting with armed hand the tribunate of the people wrested
five hundred years ago by their fathers arms in hand from the nobility,
and of keeping the ancient oath which these had taken for themselves
as for their children's children that they would man by man stand firm
even to death for the tribunes of the people.(27)  And then, when he--
the leader and general of the popular party--summoned the soldiers
of the people, now that conciliatory means had been exhausted
and concession had reached its utmost limits, to follow him in the last,
the inevitable, the decisive struggle against the equally hated
and despised, equally perfidious and incapable, and in fact ludicrously
incorrigible aristocracy--there was not an officer or a soldier
who could hold back.  The order was given for departure; at the head
of his vanguard Caesar crossed the narrow brook which separated
his province from Italy, and which the constitution forbade
the proconsul of Gaul to pass.  When after nine years' absence
he trod once more the soil of his native land, he trod at the same time
the path of revolution.  "The die was cast."




CHAPTER X

Brundisium, Ilerda, Pharsalus, and Thapsus

The Resources on Either Side

Arms were thus to decide which of the two men who had hitherto
jointly ruled Rome was now to be its first sole ruler.  Let us see
what were the comparative resources at the disposal of Caesar
and Pompeius for the waging of the impending war.

Caesar's Absolute Power within His Party

Caesar's power rested primarily on the wholly unlimited authority
which he enjoyed within his party.  If the ideas of democracy
and of monarchy met together in it, this was not the result
of a coalition which had been accidentally entered into and might be
accidentally dissolved; on the contrary it was involved
in the very essence of a democracy without a representative constitution,
that democracy and monarchy should find in Caesar at once their highest
and ultimate expression.  In political as in military matters
throughout the first and the final decision lay with Caesar.
However high the honour in which he held any serviceable instrument,
it remained an instrument still; Caesar stood, in his own party
without confederates, surrounded only by military-political
adjutants, who as a rule had risen from the army and as soldiers
were trained never to ask the reason and purpose of any thing,
but unconditionally to obey.  On this account especially,
at the decisive moment when the civil war began, of all the officers
and soldiers of Caesar one alone refused him obedience;
and the circumstance that that one was precisely the foremost
of them all, serves simply to confirm this view of the relation
of Caesar to his adherents.

Labienus

Titus Labienus had shared with Caesar all the troubles of the dark times
of Catilina(1) as well as all the lustre of the Gallic career of victory,
had regularly held independent command, and frequently led half the army;
as he was the oldest, ablest, and most faithful of Caesar's adjutants,
he was beyond question also highest in position and highest in honour.
As late as in 704 Caesar had entrusted to him the supreme command
in Cisalpine Gaul, in order partly to put this confidential post
into safe hands, partly to forward the views of Labienus in his canvass
for the consulship.  But from this very position Labienus entered
into communication with the opposite party, resorted at the beginning
of hostilities in 705 to the headquarters of Pompeius instead of those
of Caesar, and fought through the whole civil strife with unparalleled
bitterness against his old friend and master in war.  We are not
sufficiently informed either as to the character of Labienus
or as to the special circumstances of his changing sides;
but in the main his case certainly presents nothing but a further proof
of the fact, that a military chief can reckon far more surely
on his captains than on his marshals.  To all appearance Labienus
was one of those persons who combine with military efficiency
utter incapacity as statesmen, and who in consequence, if they
unhappily choose or are compelled to take part in politics, are exposed
to those strange paroxysms of giddiness, of which the history
of Napoleon's marshals supplies so many tragi-comic examples.
He may probably have held himself entitled to rank alongside of Caesar
as the second chief of the democracy; and the rejection of this claim
of his may have sent him over to the camp of his opponents.
His case rendered for the first time apparent the whole gravity
of the evil, that Caesar's treatment of his officers as adjutants
without independence admitted of the rise of no men fitted to undertake
a separate command in his camp, while at the same time he stood
urgently in need of such men amidst the diffusion--which might easily
be foreseen--of the impending struggle through all the provinces
of the wide empire.  But this disadvantage was far outweighed
by that unity in the supreme leadership, which was the primary condition
of all success, and a condition only to be preserved at such a cost.

Caesar's Army

This unity of leadership acquired its full power through the efficiency
of its instruments.  Here the army comes, first of all, into view.
It still numbered nine legions of infantry or at the most
50,000 men, all of whom however had faced the enemy and two-thirds
had served in all the campaigns against the Celts. The cavalry
consisted of German and Noric mercenaries, whose usefulness
and trustworthiness had been proved in the war against Vercingetorix.
The eight years' warfare, full of varied vicissitudes,
against the Celtic nation--which was brave, although in a military
point of view decidedly inferior to the Italian--had given Caesar
the opportunity of organizing his army as he alone knew
how to organize it.  The whole efficiency of the soldier
presupposes physical vigour; in Caesar's levies more regard was had
to the strength and activity of the recruits than to their means
or their morals.  But the serviceableness of an army, like that
of any other machine, depends above all on the ease and quickness
of its movements; the soldiers of Caesar attained a perfection
rarely reached and probably never surpassed in their readiness
for immediate departure at any time, and in the rapidity
of their marching.  Courage, of course, was valued above everything;
Caesar practised with unrivalled mastery the art of stimulating
martial emulation and the esprit de corps, so that the pre-eminence
accorded to particular soldiers and divisions appeared even to those
who were postponed as the necessary hierarchy of valour.
He weaned his men from fear by not unfrequently--where it could be done
without serious danger--keeping his soldiers in ignorance
of an approaching conflict, and allowing them to encounter
the enemy unexpectedly.  But obedience was on a parity with valour.
The soldier was required to do what he was bidden, without asking
the reason or the object; many an aimless fatigue was imposed on him
solely as a training in the difficult art of blind obedience.
The discipline was strict but not harassing; it was exercised
with unrelenting vigour when the soldier was in presence of the enemy;
at other times, especially after victory, the reins were relaxed,
and if an otherwise efficient soldier was then pleased to indulge
in perfumery or to deck himself with elegant arms and the like,
or even if he allowed himself to be guilty of outrages
or irregularities of a very questionable kind, provided only
his military duties were not immediately affected, the foolery
and the crime were allowed to pass, and the general lent a deaf ear
to the complaints of the provincials on such points.  Mutiny
on the other hand was never pardoned, either in the instigators,
or even in the guilty corps itself.

But the true soldier ought to be not merely capable, brave,
and obedient, he ought to be all this willingly and spontaneously;
and it is the privilege of gifted natures alone to induce the animated
machine which they govern to a joyful service by means of example
and of hope, and especially by the consciousness of being turned
to befitting use.  As the officer, who would demand valour
from his troops, must himself have looked danger in the face with them,
Caesar had even when general found opportunity of drawing his sword
and had then used it like the best; in activity, moreover,
and fatigue he was constantly far more exacting from himself
than from his soldiers.  Caesar took care that victory, which primarily
no doubt brings gain to the general, should be associated also
with personal hopes in the minds of the soldiers.  We have already
mentioned that he knew how to render his soldiers enthusiastic
for the cause of the democracy, so far as the times which had become
prosaic still admitted of enthusiasm, and that the political equalization
of the Transpadane country--the native land of most of his soldiers--
with Italy proper was set forth as one of the objects of the struggle.(2)
Of course material recompenses were at the same time not wanting--
as well special rewards for distinguished feats of arms as general
rewards for every efficient soldier; the officers had their portions,
the soldiers received presents, and the most lavish gifts were placed
in prospect for the triumph.

Above all things Caesar as a true commander understood
how to awaken in every single component element, large or small,
of the mighty machine the consciousness of its befitting application.
The ordinary man is destined for service, and he has no objection
to be an instrument, if he feels that a master guides him.  Everywhere
and at all times the eagle eye of the general rested on the whole army,
rewarding and punishing with impartial justice, and directing
the action of each towards the course conducive to the good of all:
so that there was no experimenting or trifling with the sweat and blood
of the humblest, but for that very reason, where it was necessary,
unconditional devotion even to death was required. Without allowing
each individual to see into the whole springs of action,
Caesar yet allowed each to catch such glimpses of the political
and military connection of things as to secure that he should
be recognized--and it may be idealized--by the soldiers
as a statesman and a general.  He treated his soldiers throughout,
not as his equals, but as men who are entitled to demand and were able
to endure the truth, and who had to put faith in the promises
and the assurances of their general, without thinking of deception
or listening to rumours; as comrades through long years in warfare
and victory, among whom there was hardly any one that was not known
to him by name and that in the course of so many campaigns
had not formed more or less of a personal relation to the general;
as good companions, with whom he talked and dealt confidentially
and with the cheerful elasticity peculiar to him; as clients,
to requite whose services, and to avenge whose wrongs and death,
constituted in his view a sacred duty.  Perhaps there never was an army
which was so perfectly what an army ought to be--a machine able
for its ends and willing for its ends, in the hand of a master,
who transfers to it his own elasticity.  Caesar's soldiers were,
and felt themselves, a match for a tenfold superior force;
in connection with which it should not be overlooked, that under
the Roman tactics--calculated altogether for hand-to-hand conflict
and especially for combat with the sword--the practised Roman soldier
was superior to the novice in a far higher degree than is now the case
under the circumstances of modern times.(3)  But still more
than by the superiority of valour the adversaries of Caesar
felt themselves humbled by the unchangeable and touching fidelity
with which his soldiers clung to their general.  It is perhaps
without a parallel in history, that when the general summoned
his soldiers to follow him into the civil war, with the single exception
already mentioned of Labienus, no Roman officer and no Roman soldier
deserted him.  The hopes of his opponents as to an extensive
desertion were thwarted as ignominiously as the former attempts
to break up his army like that of Lucullus.(4)  Labienus himself
appeared in the camp of Pompeius with a band doubtless of Celtic
and German horsemen but without a single legionary.  Indeed
the soldiers, as if they would show that the war was quite as much
their matter as that of their general, settled among themselves
that they would give credit for the pay, which Caesar had promised
to double for them at the outbreak of the civil war, to their commander
up to its termination, and would meanwhile support their poorer comrades
from the general means; besides, every subaltern officer
equipped and paid a trooper out of his own purse.

Field of Caesar's Power
Upper Italy

While Caesar thus had the one thing which was needful--
unlimited political and military authority and a trustworthy army
ready for the fight--his power extended, comparatively speaking,
over only a very limited space.  It was based essentially
on the province of Upper Italy.  This region was not merely
the most populous of all the districts of Italy, but also devoted
to the cause of the democracy as its own.  The feeling
which prevailed there is shown by the conduct of a division of recruits
from Opitergium (Oderzo in the delegation of Treviso), which not long
after the outbreak of the war in the Illyrian waters, surrounded
on a wretched raft by the war-vessels of the enemy, allowed themselves
to be shot at during the whole day down to sunset without surrendering,
and, such of them as had escaped the missiles, put themselves to death
with their own hands during the following night.  It is easy to conceive
what might be expected of such a population.  As they had already
granted to Caesar the means of more than doubling his original army,
so after the outbreak of the civil war recruits presented themselves
in great numbers for the ample levies that were immediately instituted.

Italy

In Italy proper, on the other hand, the influence of Caesar was not
even remotely to be compared to that of his opponents.  Although
he had the skill by dexterous manoeuvres to put the Catonian party
in the wrong, and had sufficiently commended the rectitude
of his cause to all who wished for a pretext with a good conscience
either to remain neutral, like the majority of the senate,
or to embrace his side, like his soldiers and the Transpadanes,
the mass of the burgesses naturally did not allow themselves to be misled
by these things and, when the commandant of Gaul put his legions
in motion against Rome, they beheld--despite all formal explanations
as to law--in Cato and Pompeius the defenders of the legitimate republic,
in Caesar the democratic usurper.  People in general moreover
expected from the nephew of Marius, the son-in-law of Cinna,
the ally of Catilina, a repetition of the Marian and Cinnan horrors,
a realization of the saturnalia of anarchy projected by Catilina;
and though Caesar certainly gained allies through this expectation--
so that the political refugees immediately put themselves in a body
at his disposal, the ruined men saw in him their deliverer,
and the lowest ranks of the rabble in the capital and country towns
were thrown into a ferment on the news of his advance,--these belonged
to the class of friends who are more dangerous than foes.

Provinces

In the provinces and the dependent states Caesar had
even less influence than in Italy.  Transalpine Gaul indeed as far as
the Rhine and the Channel obeyed him, and the colonists of Narbo
as well as the Roman burgesses elsewhere settled in Gaul
were devoted to him; but in the Narbonese province itself
the constitutional party had numerous adherents, and now even
the newly-conquered regions were far more a burden than a benefit
to Caesar in the impending civil war; in fact, for good reasons
he made no use of the Celtic infantry at all in that war,
and but sparing use of the cavalry.  In the other provinces
and the neighbouring half or wholly independent states
Caesar had indeed attempted to procure for himself support,
had lavished rich presents on the princes, caused great buildings
to be executed in various towns, and granted to them in case of need
financial and military assistance; but on the whole, of course,
not much had been gained by this means, and the relations
with the German and Celtic princes in the regions of the Rhine
and the Danube,--particularly the connection with the Noric king Voccio,
so important for the recruiting of cavalry,--were probably
the only relations of this sort which were of any moment for him.

The Coalition

While Caesar thus entered the struggle only as commandant of Gaul,
without other essential resources than efficient adjutants,
a faithful army, and a devoted province, Pompeius began it
as de facto supreme head of the Roman commonwealth, and in full
possession of all the resources that stood at the disposal
of the legitimate government of the great Roman empire.  But while
his position was in a political and military point of view
far more considerable, it was also on the other hand far less definite
and firm.  The unity of leadership, which resulted of itself
and by necessity from the position of Caesar, was inconsistent
with the nature of a coalition; and although Pompeius, too much
of a soldier to deceive himself as to its being indispensable,
attempted to force it on the coalition and got himself nominated
by the senate as sole and absolute generalissimo by land and sea,
yet the senate itself could not be set aside nor hindered
from a preponderating influence on the political, and an occasional
and therefore doubly injurious interference with the military,
superintendence.  The recollection of the twenty years' war
waged on both sides with envenomed weapons between Pompeius
and the constitutional party; the feeling which vividly prevailed
on both sides, and which they with difficulty concealed,
that the first consequence of the victory when achieved would be
a rupture between the victors; the contempt which they entertained
for each other and with only too good grounds in either case;
the inconvenient number of respectable and influential men in the ranks
of the aristocracy and the intellectual and moral inferiority
of almost all who took part in the matter--altogether produced
among the opponents of Caesar a reluctant and refractory co-operation,
which formed the saddest contrast to the harmonious and compact action
on the other side.

Field of Power of the Coalition
Juba of Numidia

While all the disadvantages incident to the coalition of powers
naturally hostile were thus felt in an unusual measure by Caesar's
antagonists, this coalition was certainly still a very considerable power.
It had exclusive command of the sea; all ports, all ships of war,
all the materials for equipping a fleet were at its disposal.
The two Spains--as it were the home of the power of Pompeius
just as the two Gauls were the home of that of Caesar--
were faithful adherents to their master and in the hands of able
and trustworthy administrators.  In the other provinces also,
of course with the exception of the two Gauls, the posts
of the governors and commanders had during recent years been filled up
with safe men under the influence of Pompeius and the minority
of the senate.  The client-states throughout and with great decision
took part against Caesar and in favour of Pompeius.  The most important
princes and cities had been brought into the closest personal relations
with Pompeius in virtue of the different sections of his manifold
activity.  In the war against the Marians, for instance, he had been
the companion in arms of the kings of Numidia and Mauretania and had
reestablished the kingdom of the former;(5) in the Mithradatic war,
in addition to a number of other minor principalities spiritual
and temporal, he had re-established the kingdoms of Bosporus, Armenia,
and Cappadocia, and created that of Deiotarus in Galatia;(6)
it was primarily at his instigation that the Egyptian war was undertaken,
and it was by his adjutant that the rule of the Lagids
had been confirmed afresh.(7)  Even the city of Massilia
in Caesar's own province, while indebted to the latter
doubtless for various favours, was indebted to Pompeius
at the time of the Sertorian war for a very considerable extension
of territory;(8) and, besides, the ruling oligarchy there stood
in natural alliance--strengthened by various mutual relations--
with the oligarchy in Rome.  But these personal and relative
considerations as well as the glory of the victor in three continents,
which in these more remote parts of the empire far outshone
that of the conqueror of Gaul, did perhaps less harm to Caesar
in those quarters than the views and designs--which had not remained
there unknown--of the heir of Gaius Gracchus as to the necessity
of uniting the dependent states and the usefulness of provincial
colonizations.  No one of the dependent dynasts found himself
more imminently threatened by this peril than Juba king
of Numidia.  Not only had he years before, in the lifetime
of his father Hiempsal, fallen into a vehement personal quarrel
with Caesar, but recently the same Curio, who now occupied almost
the first place among Caesar's adjutants, had proposed to the Roman
burgesses the annexation of the Numidian kingdom.  Lastly, if matters
should go so far as to lead the independent neighbouring states
to interfere in the Roman civil war, the only state really powerful,
that of the Parthians, was practically already allied
with the aristocratic party by the connection entered into
between Pacorus and Bibulus,(9) while Caesar was far too much a Roman
to league himself for party-interests with the conquerors
of his friend Crassus.

Italy against Caesar

As to Italy the great majority of the burgesses were, as has been
already mentioned, averse to Caesar--more especially, of course,
the whole aristocracy with their very considerable following,
but also in a not much less degree the great capitalists,
who could not hope in the event of a thorough reform of the commonwealth
to preserve their partisan jury-courts and their monopoly of extortion.
Of equally anti-democratic sentiments were the small capitalists,
the landholders and generally all classes that had anything to lose;
but in these ranks of life the cares of the next rent-term and of sowing
and reaping outweighed, as a rule, every other consideration.

The Pompeian Army

The army at the disposal of Pompeius consisted chiefly
of the Spanish troops, seven legions inured to war and in every respect
trustworthy; to which fell to be added the divisions of troops--
weak indeed, and very much scattered--which were to be found
in Syria, Asia, Macedonia, Africa, Sicily, and elsewhere.  In Italy
there were under arms at the outset only the two legions
recently given off by Caesar, whose effective strength did not amount
to more than 7000 men, and whose trustworthiness was more than doubtful,
because--levied in Cisalpine Gaul and old comrades in arms
of Caesar--they were in a high degree displeased at the unbecoming
intrigue by which they had been made to change camps,(10)
and recalled with longing their general who had magnanimously
paid to them beforehand at their departure the presents
which were promised to every soldier for the triumph.
But, apart from the circumstance that the Spanish troops might arrive
in Italy with the spring either by the land route through Gaul
or by sea, the men of the three legions still remaining
from the levies of 699,(11) as well as the Italian levy sworn
to allegiance in 702,(12) could be recalled from their furlough.
Including these, the number of troops standing at the disposal
of Pompeius on the whole, without reckoning the seven legions in Spain
and those scattered in other provinces, amounted in Italy alone
to ten legions(13) or about 60,000 men, so that it was no exaggeration
at all, when Pompeius asserted that he had only to stamp
with his foot to cover the ground with armed men.  It is true
that it required some interval--though but short--to render
these soldiers available; but the arrangements for this purpose
as well as for the carrying out of the new levies ordered by the senate
in consequence of the outbreak of the civil war were already
everywhere in progress.  Immediately after the decisive decree
of the senate (7 Jan. 705), in the very depth of winter
the most eminent men of the aristocracy set out to the different
districts, to hasten the calling up of recruits and the preparation
of arms.  The want of cavalry was much felt, as for this arm
they had been accustomed to rely wholly on the provinces and especially
on the Celtic contingents; to make at least a beginning,
three hundred gladiators belonging to Caesar were taken
from the fencing-schools of Capua and mounted--a step which however
met with so general disapproval, that Pompeius again broke up
this troop and levied in room of it 300 horsemen from the mounted
slave-herdmen of Apulia.

The state-treasury was at a low ebb as usual; they busied themselves
in supplementing the inadequate amount of cash out of the local
treasuries and even from the temple-treasures of the -municipia-.

Caesar Takes the Offensive

Under these circumstances the war opened at the beginning
of January 705.  Of troops capable of marching Caesar had not
more than a legion--5000 infantry and 300 cavalry--at Ravenna,
which was by the highway some 240 miles distant from Rome; Pompeius
had two weak legions--7000 infantry and a small squadron of cavalry--
under the orders of Appius Claudius at Luceria, from which,
likewise by the highway, the distance was just about as great
to the capital.  The other troops of Caesar, leaving out of account
the raw divisions of recruits still in course of formation,
were stationed, one half on the Saone and Loire, the other half
in Belgica, while Pompeius' Italian reserves were already arriving
from all sides at their rendezvous; long before even the first
of the Transalpine divisions of Caesar could arrive in Italy,
a far superior army could not but be ready to receive it there.
It seemed folly, with a band of the strength of that of Catilina
and for the moment without any effective reserve, to assume
the aggressive against a superior and hourly-increasing army
under an able general; but it was a folly in the spirit of Hannibal.
If the beginning of the struggle were postponed till spring,
the Spanish troops of Pompeius would assume the offensive
in Transalpine, and his Italian troops in Cisalpine, Gaul,
and Pompeius, a match for Caesar in tactics and superior to him
in experience, was a formidable antagonist in such a campaign
running its regular course.  Now perhaps, accustomed as he was
to operate slowly and surely with superior masses, he might
be disconcerted by a wholly improvised attack; and that which
could not greatly discompose Caesar's thirteenth legion
after the severe trial of the Gallic surprise and the January campaign
in the land of the Bellovaci,(14)--the suddenness of the war and the toil
of a winter campaign--could not but disorganize the Pompeian corps
consisting of old soldiers of Caesar or of ill-trained recruits,
and still only in the course of formation.

Caesar's Advance

Accordingly Caesar advanced into Italy.(15) Two highways led
at that time from the Romagna to the south; the Aemilio-Cassian
which led from Bononia over the Apennines to Arretium and Rome,
and the Popillio-Flaminian, which led from Ravenna along the coast
of the Adriatic to Fanum and was there divided, one branch running
westward through the Furlo pass to Rome, another southward
to Ancona and thence onward to Apulia.  On the former Marcus Antonius
advanced as far as Arretium, on the second Caesar himself
pushed forward.  Resistance was nowhere encountered; the recruiting
officers of quality had no military skill, their bands of recruits
were no soldiers, the inhabitants of the country towns were only anxious
not to be involved in a siege.  When Curio with 1500 men
approached Iguvium, where a couple of thousand Umbrian recruits
had assembled under the praetor Quintus Minucius Thermus,
general and soldiers took to flight at the bare tidings of his approach;
and similar results on a small scale everywhere ensued.

Rome Evacuated

Caesar had to choose whether he would march against Rome, from which
his cavalry at Arretium were already only about 130 miles distant,
or against the legions encamped at Luceria.  He chose the latter plan.
The consternation of the opposite party was boundless.
Pompeius received the news of Caesar's advance at Rome; he seemed
at first disposed to defend the capital, but, when the tidings
arrived of Caesar's entrance into the Picenian territory
and of his first successes there, he abandoned Rome and ordered
its evacuation.  A panic, augmented by the false report that Caesar's
cavalry had appeared before the gates, came over the world of quality.
The senators, who had been informed that every one who should
remain behind in the capital would be treated as an accomplice
of the rebel Caesar, flocked in crowds out at the gates.
The consuls themselves had so totally lost their senses, that they
did not even secure the treasure; when Pompeius called upon them
to fetch it, for which there was sufficient time, they returned
the reply that they would deem it safer, if he should first
occupy Picenum.  All was perplexity; consequently a great council of war
was held in Teanum Sidicinum (23 Jan.), at which Pompeius, Labienus,
and both consuls were present.  First of all proposals of accommodation
from Caesar were again submitted; even now he declared himself
ready at once to dismiss his army, to hand over his provinces
to the successors nominated, and to become a candidate
in the regular way for the consulship, provided that Pompeius
were to depart for Spain, and Italy were to be disarmed.
The answer was, that if Caesar would immediately return to his province,
they would bind themselves to procure the disarming of Italy
and the departure of Pompeius by a decree of the senate
to be passed in due form in the capital; perhaps this reply
was intended not as a bare artifice to deceive, but as an acceptance
of the proposal of compromise; it was, however, in reality the opposite.
The personal conference which Caesar desired with Pompeius
the latter declined, and could not but decline, that he might not
by the semblance of a new coalition with Caesar provoke still more
the distrust already felt by the constitutional party.  Concerning
the management of the war it was agreed in Teanum, that Pompeius
should take the command of the troops stationed at Luceria,
on which notwithstanding their untrustworthiness all hope depended;
that he should advance with these into his own and Labienus'
native country, Picenum; that he should personally call
the general levy there to arms, as he had done some thirty-five
years ago,(16) and should attempt at the head of the faithful
Picentine cohorts and the veterans formerly under Caesar
to set a limit to the advance of the enemy.

Conflicts in Picenum

Everything depended on whether Picenum would hold out
until Pompeius should come up to its defence.  Already Caesar
with his reunited army had penetrated into it along the coast road
by way of Ancona.  Here too the preparations were in full course;
in the very northernmost Picenian town Auximum a considerable band
of recruits was collected under Publius Attius Varus; but at the entreaty
of the municipality Varus evacuated the town even before Caesar
appeared, and a handful of Caesar's soldiers which overtook the troop
not far from Auximum totally dispersed it after a brief conflict--
the first in this war.  In like manner soon afterwards
Gaius Lucilius Hirrus with 3000 men evacuated Camerinum,
and Publius Lentulus Spinther with 5000 Asculum.  The men,
thoroughly devoted to Pompeius, willingly for the most part abandoned
their houses and farms, and followed their leaders over the frontier;
but the district itself was already lost, when the officer
sent by Pompeius for the temporary conduct of the defence,
Lucius Vibullius Rufus--no genteel senator, but a soldier
experienced in war--arrived there; he had to content himself
with taking the six or seven thousand recruits who were saved
away from the incapable recruiting officers, and conducting them
for the time to the nearest rendezvous.

Corfinium Besieged
And Captured

This was Corfinium, the place of meeting for the levies in the Albensian,
Marsian and Paelignian territories; the body of recruits here assembled,
of nearly 15,000 men, was the contingent of the most warlike
and trustworthy regions of Italy, and the flower of the army
in course of formation for the constitutional party.  When Vibullius
arrived here, Caesar was still several days' march behind;
there was nothing to prevent him from immediately starting agreeably
to Pompeius' instructions and conducting the saved Picenian recruits
along with those assembled at Corfinium to join the main army in Apulia.
But the commandant in Corfinium was the designated successor to Caesar
in the governorship of Transalpine Gaul, Lucius Domitius,
one of the most narrow-minded and stubborn of the Roman aristocracy;
and he not only refused to comply with the orders of Pompeius,
but also prevented Vibullius from departing at least with the men
from Picenum for Apulia.  So firmly was he persuaded that Pompeius
only delayed from obstinacy and must necessarily come up to his relief,
that he scarcely made any serious preparations for a siege
and did not even gather into Corfinium the bands of recruits
placed in the surrounding towns. Pompeius however did not appear,
and for good reasons; for, while he might perhaps apply
his two untrustworthy legions as a reserved support for the Picenian
general levy, he could not with them alone offer battle to Caesar.
Instead of him after a few days Caesar came (14 Feb.).  His troops
had been joined in Picenum by the twelfth, and before Corfinium
by the eighth, legion from beyond the Alps, and, besides these,
three new legions had been formed partly from the Pompeian men
that were taken prisoners or presented themselves voluntarily,
partly from the recruits that were at once levied everywhere;
so that Caesar before Corfinium was already at the head
of an army of 40,000 men, half of whom had seen service.  So long as
 Domitius hoped for the arrival of Pompeius, he caused the town
to be defended; when the letters of Pompeius had at length undeceived him,
he resolved, not forsooth to persevere at the forlorn post--
by which he would have rendered the greatest service to his party--
nor even to capitulate, but, while the common soldiers
were informed that relief was close at hand, to make his own escape
along with his officers of quality during the next night.
Yet he had not the judgment to carry into effect even this pretty scheme.
The confusion of his behaviour betrayed him.  A part of the men
began to mutiny; the Marsian recruits, who held such an infamy
on the part of their general to be impossible, wished to fight
against the mutineers; but they too were obliged reluctantly
to believe the truth of the accusation, whereupon the whole garrison
arrested their staff and handed it, themselves, and the town
over to Caesar (20 Feb.).  The corps in Alba, 3000 strong,
and 1500 recruits assembled in Tarracina thereupon laid down
their arms, as soon as Caesar's patrols of horsemen appeared;
a third division in Sulmo of 3500 men had been previously
compelled to surrender.

Pompeius Goes to Brundisium
Embarkation for Greece

Pompeius had given up Italy as lost, so soon as Caesar
had occupied Picenum; only he wished to delay his embarkation
as long as possible, with the view of saving so much of his force
as could still be saved.  Accordingly he had slowly put himself
in motion for the nearest seaport Brundisium.  Thither came
the two legions of Luceria and such recruits as Pompeius
had been able hastily to collect in the deserted Apulia,
as well as the troops raised by the consuls and other commissioners
in Campania and conducted in all haste to Brundisium;
thither too resorted a number of political fugitives,
including the most respected of the senators accompanied
by their families.  The embarkation began; but the vessels at hand
did not suffice to transport all at once the whole multitude,
which still amounted to 25,000 persons.  No course remained
but to divide the army.  The larger half went first (4 March);
with the smaller division of some 10,000 men Pompeius
awaited at Brundisium the return of the fleet; for, however desirable
the possession of Brundisium might be for an eventual attempt
to reoccupy Italy, they did not presume to hold the place
permanently against Caesar.  Meanwhile Caesar arrived
before Brundisium; the siege began.  Caesar attempted first of all
to close the mouth of the harbour by moles and floating bridges,
with a view to exclude the returning fleet; but Pompeius
caused the trading vessels lying in the harbour to be armed,
and managed to prevent the complete closing of the harbour
until the fleet appeared and the troops--whom Pompeius
with great dexterity, in spite of the vigilance of the besiegers
and the hostile feeling of the inhabitants, withdrew from the town
to the last man unharmed--were carried off beyond Caesar's reach
to Greece (17 March).  The further pursuit, like the siege itself,
failed for want of a fleet.

In a campaign of two months, without a single serious engagement,
Caesar had so broken up an army of ten legions, that less than
the half of it had with great difficulty escaped in a confused flight
across the sea, and the whole Italian peninsula, including the capital
with the state-chest and all the stores accumulated there,
had fallen into the power of the victor.  Not without reason
did the beaten party bewail the terrible rapidity, sagacity,
and energy of the "monster."

Military and Financial Results of the Seizure of Italy

But it may be questioned whether Caesar gained or lost more
by the conquest of Italy.  In a military respect, no doubt,
very considerable resources were now not merely withdrawn
from his opponents, but rendered available for himself;
even in the spring of 705 his army embraced, in consequence
of the levies en masse instituted everywhere, a considerable
number of legions of recruits in addition to the nine old ones
But on the other hand it now became necessary not merely
to leave behind a considerable garrison in Italy, but also
to take measures against the closing of the transmarine traffic
contemplated by his opponents who commanded the sea, and against
the famine with which the capital was consequently threatened;
whereby Caesar's already sufficiently complicated military task
was complicated further still.  Financially it was certainly
of importance, that Caesar had the good fortune to obtain
possession of the stock of money in the capital; but the principal
sources of income and particularly the revenues from the east
were withal in the hands of the enemy, and, in consequence
of the greatly increased demands for the army and the new obligation
to provide for the starving population of the capital,
the considerable sums which were found quickly melted away.
Caesar soon found himself compelled to appeal to private credit,
and, as it seemed that he could not possibly gain any long respite
by this means, extensive confiscations were generally anticipated
as the only remaining expedient.

Its Political Results
Fear of Anarchy

More serious difficulties still were created by the political relations
amidst which Caesar found himself placed on the conquest of Italy.
The apprehension of an anarchical revolution was universal
among the propertied classes.  Friends and foes saw in Caesar
a second Catilina; Pompeius believed or affected to believe
that Caesar had been driven to civil war merely by the impossibility
of paying his debts.  This was certainly absurd; but in fact Caesar's
antecedents were anything but reassuring, and still less reassuring
was the aspect of the retinue that now surrounded him.
Individuals of the most broken reputation, notorious personages
like Quintus Hortensius, Gaius Curio, Marcus Antonius,--
the latter the stepson of the Catilinarian Lentulus who was executed
by the orders of Cicero--were the most prominent actors in it;
the highest posts of trust were bestowed on men who had long ceased
even to reckon up their debts; people saw men who held office
under Caesar not merely keeping dancing-girls--which was done
by others also--but appearing publicly in company with them.
Was there any wonder, that even grave and politically impartial men
expected amnesty for all exiled criminals, cancelling
of creditors' claims, comprehensive mandates of confiscation,
proscription, and murder, nay, even a plundering of Rome
by the Gallic soldiery?

Dispelled by Caesar

But in this respect the "monster" deceived the expectations
of his foes as well as of his friends.  As soon even as Caesar occupied
the first Italian town, Ariminum, he prohibited all common soldiers
from appearing armed within the walls; the country towns
were protected from all injury throughout and without distinction,
whether they had given him a friendly or hostile reception.
When the mutinous garrison surrendered Corfinium late in the evening,
he in the face of every military consideration postponed
the occupation of the town till the following morning, solely
that he might not abandon the burgesses to the nocturnal invasion
of his exasperated soldiers.  Of the prisoners the common soldiers,
as presumably indifferent to politics, were incorporated
with his own army, while the officers were not merely spared,
but also freely released without distinction of person and without
the exaction of any promises whatever; and all which they claimed
as private property was frankly given up to them, without even
investigating with any strictness the warrant for their claims.
Lucius Domitius himself was thus treated, and even Labienus had the money
and baggage which he had left behind sent after him to the enemy's camp.
In the most painful financial embarrassment the immense estates
of his opponents whether present or absent were not assailed; indeed
Caesar preferred to borrow from friends, rather than that he should
stir up the possessors of property against him even by exacting
the formally admissible, but practically antiquated, land tax.(17)
The victor regarded only the half, and that not the more difficult half,
of his task as solved with the victory; he saw the security
for its duration, according to his own expression, only
in the unconditional pardon of the vanquished, and had accordingly
during the whole march from Ravenna to Brundisium incessantly
renewed his efforts to bring about a personal conference
with Pompeius and a tolerable accommodation.

Threats of the Emigrants
The Mass of Quiet People Gained for Caesar

But, if the aristocracy had previously refused to listen
to any reconciliation, the unexpected emigration of a kind
so disgraceful had raised their wrath to madness, and the wild vengeance
breathed by the beaten contrasted strangely with the placability
of the victor.  The communications regularly coming from the camp
of the emigrants to their friends left behind in Italy
were full of projects for confiscations and proscriptions,
of plans for purifying the senate and the state, compared with which
the restoration of Sulla was child's play, and which even
the moderate men of their own party heard with horror.
The frantic passion of impotence, the wise moderation of power,
produced their effect.  The whole mass, in whose eyes material interests
were superior to political, threw itself into the arms of Caesar.
The country towns idolized "the uprightness, the moderation,
the prudence" of the victor; and even opponents conceded
that these demonstrations of respect were meant in earnest.
The great capitalists, farmers of the taxes, and jurymen,
showed no special desire, after the severe shipwreck
which had befallen the constitutional party in Italy,
to entrust themselves farther to the same pilots; capital came
once more to the light, and "the rich lords resorted again to their
daily task of writing their rent-rolls."  Even the great majority
of the senate, at least numerically speaking--for certainly but few
of the nobler and more influential members of the senate
were included in it--had notwithstanding the orders of Pompeius
and of the consuls remained behind in Italy, and a portion of them
even in the capital itself; and they acquiesced in Caesar's rule.
The moderation of Caesar, well calculated even in its very semblance
of excess, attained its object: the trembling anxiety of the propertied
classes as to the impending anarchy was in some measure allayed.
This was doubtless an incalculable gain for the future;
the prevention of anarchy, and of the scarcely less dangerous alarm
of anarchy, was the indispensable preliminary condition
to the future reorganization of the commonwealth.

Indignation of the Anarchist Party against Caesar
The Republican Party in Italy

But at the moment this moderation was more dangerous for Caesar
than the renewal of the Cinnan and Catilinarian fury would have been;
it did not convert enemies into friends, and it converted
friends into enemies.  Caesar's Catilinarian adherents
were indignant that murder and pillage remained in abeyance;
these audacious and desperate personages, some of whom
were men of talent, might be expected to prove cross and untractable.
The republicans of all shades, on the other hand, were neither
converted nor propitiated by the leniency of the conqueror.
According to the creed of the Catonian party, duty towards
what they called their fatherland absolved them from every
other consideration; even one who owed freedom and life to Caesar
remained entitled and in duty bound to take up arms or at least
to engage in plots against him.  The less decided sections
of the constitutional party were no doubt found willing to accept peace
and protection from the new monarch; nevertheless they ceased not
to curse the monarchy and the monarch at heart.  The more clearly
the change of the constitution became manifest, the more distinctly
the great majority of the burgesses--both in the capital with its
keener susceptibility of political excitement, and among
the more energetic population of the country and country towns--
awoke to a consciousness of their republican sentiments; so far
the friends of the constitution in Rome reported with truth
to their brethren of kindred views in exile, that at home all classes
and all persons were friendly to Pompeius.  The discontented temper
of all these circles was further increased by the moral pressure,
which the more decided and more notable men who shared such views
exercised from their very position as emigrants over the multitude
of the humbler and more lukewarm.  The conscience of the honourable man
smote him in regard to his remaining in Italy; the half-aristocrat
fancied that he was ranked among the plebeians, if he did not go
into exile with the Domitii and the Metelli, and even if he took his seat
in the Caesarian senate of nobodies.  The victor's special clemency
gave to this silent opposition increased political importance;
seeing that Caesar abstained from terrorism, it seemed as if
his secret opponents could display their disinclination
to his rule without much danger.

Passive Resistance of the Senate to Caesar

Very soon he experienced remarkable treatment in this respect
at the hands of the senate.  Caesar had begun the struggle
to liberate the overawed senate from its oppressors.  This was done;
consequently he wished to obtain from the senate approval
of what had been done, and full powers for the continuance of the war.
for this purpose, when Caesar appeared before the capital (end of March)
the tribunes of the people belonging to his party convoked for him
the senate (1 April).  The meeting was tolerably numerous,
but the more notable of the very senators that remained in Italy
were absent, including even the former leader of the servile majority
Marcus Cicero and Caesar's own father-in-law Lucius Piso;
and, what was worse, those who did appear were not inclined
to enter into Caesar's proposals.  When Caesar spoke of full power
to continue the war, one of the only two consulars present,
Servius Sulpicius Rufus, a very timid man who desired nothing
but a quiet death in his bed, was of opinion that Caesar would deserve
well of his country if he should abandon the thought of carrying
the war to Greece and Spain.  When Caesar thereupon requested the senate
at least to be the medium of transmitting his peace proposals
to Pompeius, they were not indeed opposed to that course in itself,
but the threats of the emigrants against the neutrals had so terrified
the latter, that no one was found to undertake the message of peace.
Through the disinclination of the aristocracy to help the erection
of the monarch's throne, and through the same inertness
of the dignified corporation, by means of which Caesar
had shortly before frustrated the legal nomination of Pompeius
as generalissimo in the civil war, he too was now thwarted when making
a like request.  Other impediments, moreover, occurred.  Caesar desired,
with the view of regulating in some sort of way his position,
to be named as dictator; but his wish was not complied with,
because such a magistrate could only be constitutionally appointed
by one of the consuls, and the attempt of Caesar to buy
the consul Lentulus--of which owing to the disordered condition
of his finances there was a good prospect--nevertheless proved
a failure.  The tribune of the people Lucius Metellus, moreover,
lodged a protest against all the steps of the proconsul, and made signs
as though he would protect with his person the public chest,
when Caesar's men came to empty it.  Caesar could not avoid
in this case ordering that the inviolable person should be pushed aside
as gently as possible; otherwise, he kept by his purpose of abstaining
from all violent steps.  He declared to the senate, just as
the constitutional party had done shortly before, that he had
certainly desired to regulate things in a legal way and with the help
of the supreme authority; but, since this help was refused,
he could dispense with it.

Provisional Arrangement of the Affairs of the Capital
The Provinces

Without further concerning himself about the senate and the formalities
of state law, he handed over the temporary administration
of the capital to the praetor Marcus Aemilius Lepidus as city-prefect,
and made the requisite arrangements for the administration
of the provinces that obeyed him and the continuance of the war.
Even amidst the din of the gigantic struggle, and with all
the alluring sound of Caesar's lavish promises, it still made
a deep impression on the multitude of the capital, when they saw
in their free Rome the monarch for the first time wielding
a monarch's power and breaking open the doors of the treasury
by his soldiers.  But the times had gone by, when the impressions
and feelings of the multitude determined the course of events;
it was with the legions that the decision lay, and a few
painful feelings more or less were of no farther moment.

Pompeians in Spain

Caesar hastened to resume the war.  He owed his successes
hitherto to the offensive, and he intended still to maintain it.
The position of his antagonist was singular.  After the original plan
of carrying on the campaign simultaneously in the two Gauls
by offensive operations from the bases of Italy and Spain had been
frustrated by Caesar's aggressive, Pompeius had intended to go to Spain.
There he had a very strong position.  The army amounted
to seven legions; a large number of Pompeius' veterans served in it,
and several years of conflicts in the Lusitanian mountains
had hardened soldiers and officers.  Among its captains Marcus Varro
indeed was simply a celebrated scholar and a faithful partisan;
but Lucius Afranius had fought with distinction in the east
and in the Alps, and Marcus Petreius, the conqueror of Catilina,
was an officer as dauntless as he was able.  While in the Further
province Caesar had still various adherents from the time
of his governorship there,(18) the more important province
of the Ebrowas attached by all the ties of veneration and gratitude
to the celebrated general, who twenty years before had held the command
in it during the Sertorian war, and after the termination of that war
had organized it anew.  Pompeius could evidently after the Italian
disaster do nothing better than proceed to Spain with the saved remnant
of his army, and then at the head of his whole force advance
to meet Caesar.  But unfortunately he had, in the hope of being able
still to save the troops that were in Corfinium, tarried in Apuli
so long that he was compelled to choose the nearer Brundisium
as his place of embarkation instead of the Campanian ports.
Why, master as he was of the sea and Sicily, he did not
subsequently revert to his original plan, cannot be determined;
whether it was that perhaps the aristocracy after their short-sighted
and distrustful fashion showed no desire to entrust themselves
to the Spanish troops and the Spanish population, it is enough
to say that Pompeius remained in the east, and Caesar had the option
of directing his first attack either against the army which was
being organized in Greece under Pompeius' own command, or against
that which was ready for battle under his lieutenants in Spain.
He had decided in favour of the latter course, and, as soon as
the Italian campaign ended, had taken measures to collect
on the lower Rhone nine of his best legions, as also 6000 cavalry--
partly men individually picked out by Caesar in the Celtic cantons,
partly German mercenaries--and a number of Iberian and Ligurian archers.

Massilia against Caesar

But at this point his opponents also had been active.  Lucius Domitius,
who was nominated by the senate in Caesar's stead as governor
of Transalpine Gaul, had proceeded from Corfinium--as soon as
Caesar had released him--along with his attendants and with Pompeius'
confidant Lucius Vibullius Rufus to Massilia, and actually induced
that city to declare for Pompeius and even to refuse a passage
to Caesar's troops.  Of the Spanish troops the two least trustworthy
legions were left behind under the command of Varro in the Further
province; while the five best, reinforced by 40,000 Spanish infantry--
partly Celtiberian infantry of the line, partly Lusitanian
and other light troops--and by 5000 Spanish cavalry, under Afranius
and Petreius, had, in accordance with the orders of Pompeius
transmitted by Vibullius, set out to close the Pyrenees
against the enemy.


Caesar Occupies the Pyrenees
Position at Ilerda

Meanwhile Caesar himself arrived in Gaul and, as the commencement
of the siege of Massilia still detained him in person,
he immediately despatched the greater part of his troops assembled
on the Rhone--six legions and the cavalry--along the great road
leading by way of Narbo (Narbonne) to Rhode (Rosas) with the view
of anticipating the enemy at the Pyrenees.  The movement was successful;
when Afranius and Petreius arrived at the passes, they found them
already occupied by the Caesarians and the line of the Pyrenees lost.
They then took up a position at Ilerda (Lerida) between the Pyrenees
and the Ebro.  This town lies twenty miles to the north
of the Ebro on the right bank of one of its tributaries,
the Sicoris (Segre), which was crossed by only a single solid bridge
immediately at Ilerda.  To the south of Ilerda the mountains
which adjoin the left bank of the Ebro approach pretty close to the town;
to the northward there stretches on both sides of the Sicoris
a level country which is commanded by the hill on which the town
is built.  For an army, which had to submit to a siege, it was
an excellent position; but the defence of Spain, after the occupation
of the line of the Pyrenees had been neglected, could only be undertaken
in earnest behind the Ebro, and, as no secure communication
was established between Ilerda and the Ebro, and no bridge
existed over the latter stream, the retreat from the temporary
to the true defensive position was not sufficiently secured.
The Caesarians established themselves above Ilerda, in the delta
which the river Sicoris forms with the Cinga (Cinca),
which unites with it below Ilerda; but the attack only began
in earnest after Caesar had arrived in the camp (23 June).
Under the walls of the town the struggle was maintained with equal
exasperation and equal valour on both sides, and with frequent
alternations of success; but the Caesarians did not attain their object--
which was, to establish themselves between the Pompeian camp
and the town and thereby to possess themselves of the stone bridge--
and they consequently remained dependent for their communication
with Gaul solely on two bridges which they had hastily constructed
over the Sicoris, and that indeed, as the river at Ilerda itself
was too considerable to be bridged over, about eighteen
or twenty miles farther up.

Caesar Cut Off

When the floods came on with the melting of the snow,
these temporary bridges were swept away; and, as they had no vessels
for the passage of the highly swollen rivers and under such circumstance
the restoration of the bridges could not for the present be thought of,
the Caesarian army was confined to the narrow space between the Cinca
and the Sicoris, while the left bank of the Sicoris and with it the road,
by which the army communicated with Gaul and Italy, were exposed
almost undefended to the Pompeians, who passed the river partly
by the town-bridge, partly by swimming after the Lusitanian fashion
on skins.  It was the season shortly before harvest; the old produce
was almost used up, the new was not yet gathered, and the narrow stripe
of land between the two streams was soon exhausted.   In the camp
actual famine prevailed--the -modius- of wheat cost 50 -denarii-
(1 pound 16 shillings)--and dangerous diseases broke out; whereas
on the left bank there were accumulated provisions and varied supplies,
as well as troops of all sorts--reinforcements from Gaul of cavalry
and archers, officers and soldiers from furlough, foraging parties
returning--in all a mass of 6000 men, whom the Pompeians attacked
with superior force and drove with great loss to the mountains,
while the Caesarians on the right bank were obliged to remain
passive spectators of the unequal conflict.  The communications
of the army were in the hands of the Pompeians; in Italy the accounts
from Spain suddenly ceased, and the suspicious rumours,
which began to circulate there, were not so very remote from the truth.
Had the Pompeians followed up their advantage with some energy,
they could not have failed either to reduce under their power
or at least to drive back towards Gaul the mass scarcely capable
of resistance which was crowded together on the left bank
of the Sicoris, and to occupy this bank so completely that not a man
could cross the river without their knowledge.  But both points
were neglected; those bands were doubtless pushed aside with loss
but neither destroyed nor completely beaten back, and the prevention
of the crossing of the river was left substantially to the river itself,


Caesar Re-establishes the Communications

Thereupon Caesar formed his plan.  He ordered portable boats
of a light wooden frame and osier work lined with leather,
after the model of those used in the Channel among the Britons
and subsequently by the Saxons, to be prepared in the camp
and transported in waggons to the point where the bridges had stood.
On these frail barks the other bank was reached and, as it was found
unoccupied, the bridge was re-established without much difficulty;
the road in connection with it was thereupon quickly cleared,
and the eagerly-expected supplies were conveyed to the camp.
Caesar's happy idea thus rescued the army from the immense peril
in which it was placed.  Then the cavalry of Caesar which in efficiency
far surpassed that of the enemy began at once to scour the country
on the left bank of the Sicoris; the most considerable
Spanish communities between the Pyrenees and the Ebro--Osca, Tarraco,
Dertosa, and others--nay, even several to the south of the Ebro,
passed over to Caesar's side.

Retreat of the Pompeians from Ilerda

The supplies of the Pompeians were now rendered scarce
through the foraging parties of Caesar and the defection
of the neighbouring communities; they resolved at length to retire
behind the line of the Ebro, and set themselves in all haste to form
a bridge of boats over the Ebro below the mouth of the Sicoris.
Caesar sought to cut off the retreat of his opponents over the Ebro
and to detain them in Ilerda; but so long as the enemy remained
in possession of the bridge at Ilerda and he had control of neither ford
nor bridge there, he could not distribute his army over both banks
of the river and could not invest Ilerda.  His soldiers therefore
worked day and night to lower the depth of the river by means of canals
drawing off the water, so that the infantry could wade through it.
But the preparations of the Pompeians to pass the Ebro were sooner
finished than the arrangements of the Caesarians for investing Ilerda;
when the former after finishing the bridge of boats began their march
towards the Ebro along the left bank of the Sicoris, the canals
of the Caesarians seemed to the general not yet far enough advanced
to make the ford available for the infantry; he ordered
only his cavalry to pass the stream and, by clinging to the rear
of the enemy, at least to detain and harass them.

Caesar Follows

But when Caesar's legions saw in the gray morning the enemy's columns
which had been retiring since midnight, they discerned
with the sure instinct of experienced veterans the strategic importance
of this retreat, which would compel them to follow their antagonists
into distant and impracticable regions filled by hostile troops;
at their own request the general ventured to lead the infantry
also into the river, and although the water reached up
to the shoulders of the men, it was crossed without accident.
It was high time.  If the narrow plain, which separated the town
of Ilerda from the mountains enclosing the Ebro were once traversed
and the army of the Pompeians entered the mountains, their retreat
to the Ebro could no longer be prevented.  Already they had,
notwithstanding the constant attacks of the enemy's cavalry
which greatly delayed their march, approached within five miles
of the mountains, when they, having been on the march since midnight
and unspeakably exhausted, abandoned their original plan of traversing
the whole plain on the same day, and pitched their camp.
Here the infantry of Caesar overtook them and encamped opposite to them
in the evening and during the night, as the nocturnal march
which the Pompeians had at first contemplated was abandoned from fear
of the night-attacks of the cavalry.  On the following day also
both armies remained immoveable, occupied only
in reconnoitering the country.


The Route to the Ebro Closed

Early in the morning of the third day Caesar's infantry set out,
that by a movement through the pathless mountains alongside of the road
they might turn the position of the enemy and bar their route
to the Ebro.  The object of the strange march, which seemed at first
to turn back towards the camp before Ilerda, was not at once
perceived by the Pompeian officers.  When they discerned it,
they sacrificed camp and baggage and advanced by a forced march
along the highway, to gain the crest of the ridge before the Caesarians.
But it was already too late; when they came up, the compact masses
of the enemy were already posted on the highway itself.
a desperate attempt of the Pompeians to discover other routes
to the Ebro over the steep mountains was frustrated by Caesar's cavalry,
which surrounded and cut to pieces the Lusitanian troops sent forth
for that purpose.  Had a battle taken place between the Pompeian army--
which had the enemy's cavalry in its rear and their infantry in front,
and was utterly demoralized--and the Caesarians, the issue
was scarcely doubtful, and the opportunity for fighting
several times presented itself; but Caesar made no use of it,
and, not without difficulty, restrained the impatient eagerness
for the combat in his soldiers sure of victory.  The Pompeian army
was at any rate strategically lost; Caesar avoided weakening his army
and still further envenoming the bitter feud by useless bloodshed.
On the very day after he had succeeded in cutting off the Pompeians
from the Ebro, the soldiers of the two armies had begun to fraternize
and to negotiate respecting surrender; indeed the terms
asked by the Pompeians, especially as to the sparing of their officers,
had been already conceded by Caesar, when Petreius with his escort
consisting of slaves and Spaniards came upon the negotiators
and caused the Caesarians, on whom he could lay hands,
to be put to death.  Caesar nevertheless sent the Pompeians
who had come to his camp back unharmed, and persevered in seeking
a peaceful solution.  Ilerda, where the Pompeians had still
a garrison and considerable magazines, became now the point
which they sought to reach; but with the hostile army in front
and the Sicoris between them and the fortress, they marched
without coming nearer to their object.  Their cavalry became gradually
so afraid that the infantry had to take them into the centre and legions
had to be set as the rearguard; the procuring of water and forage
became more and more difficult; they had already to kill the beasts
of burden, because they could no longer feed them.  At length
the wandering army found itself formally inclosed, with the Sicoris
in its rear and the enemy's force in front, which drew rampart
and trench around it.  It attempted to cross the river, but Caesar's
German horsemen and light infantry anticipated it in the occupation
of the opposite bank.

Capitulation of the Pompeians

No bravery and no fidelity could longer avert the inevitable
capitulation (2 Aug. 705).  Caesar granted to officers and soldiers
their life and liberty, and the possession of the property
which they still retained as well as the restoration of what had been
already taken from them, the full value of which he undertook
personally to make good to his soldiers; and not only so,
but while he had compulsorily enrolled in his army the recruits
captured in Italy, he honoured these old legionaries of Pompeius
by the promise that no one should be compelled against his will
to enter Caesar's army.  He required only that each should give up
his arms and repair to his home.  Accordingly the soldiers
who were natives of Spain, about a third of the army, were disbanded
at once, while the Italian soldiers were discharged on the borders
of Transalpine and Cisalpine Gaul.

Further Spain Submits

Hither Spain on the breaking up of this army fell of itself
into the power of the victor.  In Further Spain, where Marcus Varro
held the chief command for Pompeius, it seemed to him, when he learned
the disaster of Ilerda, most advisable that he should throw himself
into the insular town of Gades and should carry thither for safety
the considerable sums which he had collected by confiscating
the treasures of the temples and the property of prominent Caesarians,
the not inconsiderable fleet which he had raised, and the two legions
entrusted to him.  But on the mere rumour of Caesar's arrival
the most notable towns of the province which had been for long
attached to Caesar declared for the latter and drove away
the Pompeian garrisons or induced them to a similar revolt;
such was the case with Corduba, Carmo, and Gades itself.
One of the legions also set out of its own accord for Hispalis,
and passed over along with this town to Caesar's side.  When at length
even Italica closed its gates against Varro, the latter
resolved to capitulate.

Siege of Massilia

About the same time Massilia also submitted.  With rare energy
the Massiliots had not merely sustained a siege, but had also kept
the sea against Caesar; it was their native element, and they might hope
to obtain vigorous support on it from Pompeius, who in fact
had the exclusive command of it.  But Caesar's lieutenant, the able
Decimus Brutus, the same who had achieved the first naval victory
in the Atlantic over the Veneti,(19) managed rapidly to equip a fleet;
and in spite of the brave resistance of the enemy's crews--
consisting partly of Albioecian mercenaries of the Massiliots,
partly of slave-herdsmen of Domitius--he vanquished by means of his brave
marines selected from the legions the stronger Massiliot fleet,
and sank or captured the greater part of their ships.  When therefore
a small Pompeian squadron under Lucius Nasidius arrived
from the east by way of Sicily and Sardinia in the port of Massilia,
the Massiliots once more renewed their naval armament and sailed forth
along with the ships of Nasidius against Brutus.  The engagement
which took place off Tauroeis (La Ciotat to the east of Marseilles)
might probably have had a different result, if the vessels of Nasidius
had fought with the same desperate courage which the Massiliots
displayed on that day; but the flight of the Nasidians
decided the victory in favour of Brutus, and the remains
of the Pompeian fleet fled to Spain.  The besieged were completely
driven from the sea.  On the landward side, where Gaius Trebonius
conducted the siege, the most resolute resistance was still continued;
but in spite of the frequent sallies of the Albioecian mercenaries
and the skilful expenditure of the immense stores of projectiles
accumulated in the city, the works of the besiegers were at length
advanced up to the walls and one of the towers fell.  The Massiliots
declared that they would give up the defence, but desired
to conclude the capitulation with Caesar himself, and entreated
the Roman commander to suspend the siege operations till
Caesar's arrival.  Trebonius had express orders from Caesar
to spare the town as far as possible; he granted the armistice desired.
But when the Massiliots made use of it for an artful sally,
in which they completely burnt the one-half of the almost unguarded
Roman works, the struggle of the siege began anew and with increased
exasperation.  The vigorous commander of the Romans repaired
with surprising rapidity the destroyed towers and the mound;
soon the Massiliots were once more completely invested.

Massilia Capitulates

When Caesar on his return from the conquest of Spain arrived
before their city, he found it reduced to extremities
partly by the enemy's attacks, partly by famine and pestilence,
and ready for the second time--on this occasion in right earnest--
to surrender on any terms.  Domitius alone, remembering the indulgence
of the victor which he had shamefully misused, embarked in a boat
and stole through the Roman fleet, to seek a third battle-field
for his implacable resentment.  Caesar's soldiers had sworn
to put to the sword the whole male population of the perfidious city,
and vehemently demanded from the general the signal for plunder.
But Caesar, mindful here also of his great task of establishing
Helleno-Italic civilization in the west, was not to be coerced
into furnishing a sequel to the destruction of Corinth.
Massilia--the most remote from the mother-country of all those cities,
once so numerous, free, and powerful, that belonged to the old Ionic
mariner-nation, and almost the last in which the Hellenic seafaring life
had preserved itself fresh and pure, as in fact it was the last
Greek city that fought at sea--Massilia had to surrender its magazines
of arms and naval stores to the victor, and lost a portion
of its territory and of its privileges; but it retained its freedom
and its nationality and continued, though with diminished proportions
in a material point of view, to be still as before intellectually
the centre of Hellenic culture in that distant Celtic country
which at this very time was attaining a new historical significance.


Expeditions of Caesar to the Corn-Provinces

While thus in the western provinces the war after various critical
vicissitudes was thoroughly decided at length in favour of Caesar,
Spain and Massilia were subdued, and the chief army of the enemy
was captured to the last man, the decision of arms had also taken place
on the second arena of warfare, on which Caesar had found it necessary
immediately after the conquest of Italy to assume the offensive


Sardinia Occupied
Sicily Occupied

We have already mentioned that the Pompeians intended
to reduce Italy to starvation.  They had the means of doing so
in their hands.  They had thorough command of the sea and laboured
with great zeal everywhere--in Gades, Utica, Messana, above all
in the east--to increase their fleet.  They held moreover
all the provinces, from which the capital drew its means of subsistence:
Sardinia and Corsica through Marcus Cotta, Sicily through Marcus Cato,
Africa through the self-nominated commander-in-chief Titus Attius Varus
and their ally Juba king of Numidia It was indispensably needful
for Caesar to thwart these plans of the enemy and to wrest from them
the corn-provinces.  Quintus Valerius was sent with a legion to Sardinia
and compelled the Pompeian governor to evacuate the island.
The more important enterprise of taking Sicily and Africa from the enemy
was entrusted to the young Gaius Curio with the assistance
of the able Gaius Caninius Rebilus, who possessed experience in war.
Sicily was occupied by him without a blow; Cato, without a proper army
and not a man of the sword, evacuated the island, after having
in his straightforward manner previously warned the Siceliots
not to compromise themselves uselessly by an ineffectual resistance.

Landing of Curio in Africa

Curio left behind half of his troops to protect this island
so important for the capital, and embarked with the other half--
two legions and 500 horsemen--for Africa.  Here he might expect
to encounter more serious resistance; besides the considerable
and in its own fashion efficient army of Juba, the governor Varus
had formed two legions from the Romans settled in Africa
and also fitted out a small squadron of ten sail.  With the aid
of his superior fleet, however, Curio effected without difficulty
a landing between Hadrumetum, where the one legion of the enemy
lay along with their ships of war, and Utica, in front of which town
lay the second legion under Varus himself.  Curio turned against
the latter, and pitched his camp not far from Utica, just where
a century and a half before the elder Scipio had taken up
his first winter-camp in Africa.(20)  Caesar, compelled to keep together
his best troops for the Spanish war, had been obliged to make up
the Sicilo-African army for the most part out of the legions taken over
from the enemy, more especially the war-prisoners of Corfinium;
the officers of the Pompeian army in Africa, some of whom had served
in the very legions that were conquered at Corfinium,
now left no means untried to bring back their old soldiers who were
now fighting against them to their first allegiance.  But Caesar
had not erred in the choice of his lieutenant. Curio knew as well
how to direct the movements of the army and of the fleet,
as how to acquire personal influence over the soldiers;
the supplies were abundant, the conflicts without exception successful.

Curio Conquers at Utica

When Varus, presuming that the troops of Curio wanted opportunity
to pass over to his side, resolved to give battle chiefly for the sake
of affording them this opportunity, the result did not justify
his expectations.  Animated by the fiery appeal of their youthful leader
the cavalry of Curio put to flight the horsemen  of the enemy
and in presence of the two armies cut down also the light infantry
which had accompanied the horsemen; and emboldened by this success
and by Curio's personal example, his legions advanced through
the difficult ravine separating the two lines to the attack,
for which the Pompeians however did not wait, but disgracefully
fled back to their camp and evacuated even this in the ensuing night.
The victory was so complete that Curio at once took steps
to besiege Utica.  When news arrived, however, that king Juba
was advancing with all his forces to its relief, Curio resolved,
just as Scipio had done on the arrival of Syphax, to raise the siege
and to return to Scipio's former camp till reinforcements
should arrive from Sicily.  Soon afterwards came a second report,
that king Juba had been induced by the attacks of neighbouring princes
to turn back with his main force and was sending to the aid
of the besieged merely a moderate corps under Saburra.
Curio, who from his lively temperament had only with great reluctance
made up his mind to rest, now set out again at once to fight with Saburra
before he could enter into communication with the garrison of Utica.

Curio Defeated by Juba on the Bagradas
Death of Curio

His cavalry, which had gone forward in the evening, actually succeeded
in surprising the corps of Saburra on the Bagradas during the night
and inflicting much damage upon it; and on the news of this victory
Curio hastened the march of the infantry, in order by their means
to complete the defeat Soon they perceived on the last slopes
of the heights that sank towards the Bagradas the corps of Saburra,
which was skirmishing with the Roman horsemen; the legions
coming up helped to drive it completely down into the plain.
But here the combat changed its aspect.  Saburra was not,
as they supposed, destitute of support; on the contrary he was
not much more than five miles distant from the Numidian main force.
Already the flower of the Numidian infantry and 2000 Gallic
and Spanish horsemen had arrived on the field of battle
to support Saburra, and the king in person with the bulk of the army
and sixteen elephants was approaching.  After the nocturnal march
and the hot conflict there were at the moment not more than 200
of the Roman cavalry together, and these as well as the infantry,
extremely exhausted by fatigue and fighting, were all surrounded,
in the wide plain into which they had allowed themselves to be allured,
by the continually increasing hosts of the enemy.  Vainly Curio
endeavoured to engage in close combat; the Libyan horsemen retreated,
as they were wont, so soon as a Roman division advanced,
only to pursue it when it turned.  In vain he attempted
to regain the heights; they were occupied and foreclosed
by the enemy's horse.  All was lost.  The infantry was cut down
to the last man.  Of the cavalry a few succeeded in cutting
their way through; Curio too might have probably saved himself,
but he could not bear to appear alone before his master
without the army entrusted to him, and died sword in hand.
Even the force which was collected in the camp before Utica,
and that which guarded the fleet--which might so easily
have escaped to Sicily--surrendered under the impression made
by the fearfully rapid catastrophe on the following day
to Varus (Aug. or Sept. 705).

So ended the expedition arranged by Caesar to Sicily and Africa.
It attained its object so far, since by the occupation of Sicily
in connection with that of Sardinia at least the most urgent wants
of the capital were relieved; the miscarriage of the conquest of Africa--
from which the victorious party drew no farther substantial gain--
and the loss of two untrustworthy legions might be got over.
But the early death of Curio was an irreparable loss for Caesar,
and indeed for Rome.  Not without reason had Caesar entrusted
the most important independent command to this young man, although
he had no military experience and was notorious for his dissolute life;
there was a spark of Caesar's own spirit in the fiery youth.
He resembled Caesar, inasmuch as he too had drained the cup of pleasure
to the dregs; inasmuch as he did not become a statesman
because he was an officer, but on the contrary it was his political
action that placed the sword in his hands; inasmuch as
his eloquence was not that of rounded periods, but the eloquence
of deeply-felt thought; inasmuch as his mode of warfare was based
on rapid action with slight means; inasmuch as his character
was marked by levity and often by frivolity, by pleasant frankness
and thorough life in the moment.  If, as his general says of him,
youthful fire and high courage carried him into incautious acts,
and if he too proudly accepted death that he might not submit
to be pardoned for a pardonable fault, traits of similar imprudence
and similar pride are not wanting in Caesar's history also.
We may regret that this exuberant nature was not permitted to work off
its follies and to preserve itself for the following generation
so miserably poor in talents, and so rapidly falling a prey
to the dreadful rule of mediocrities.

Pompeius' Plan of Campaign for 705

How far these events of the war in 705 interfered with Pompeius'
general plan for the campaign, and particularly what part, in that plan
was assigned after the loss of Italy to the important military corps
in the west, can only be determined by conjecture.  That Pompeius
had the intention of coming by way of Africa and Mauretania
to the aid of his army fighting in Spain, was simply a romantic,
and beyond doubt altogether groundless, rumour circulating
in the camp of Ilerda.  It is much more likely that he still kept
by his earlier plan of attacking Caesar from both sides in Transalpine
and Cisalpine Gaul(21) even after the loss of Italy, and meditated
a combined attack at once from Spain and Macedonia.  It may be presumed
that the Spanish army was meant to remain on the defensive
at the Pyrenees till the Macedonian army in the course of organization
was likewise ready to march; whereupon both would then have started
simultaneously and effected a junction according to circumstances
either on the Rhone or on the Po, while the fleet, it may be conjectured,
would have attempted at the same time to reconquer Italy proper.
On this supposition apparently Caesar had first prepared himself
to meet an attack on Italy. One of the ablest of his officers,
the tribune of the people Marcus Antonius, commanded there
with propraetorian powers.  The southeastern ports--Sipus,
Brundisium, Tarentum--where an attempt at landing was first
to be expected, had received a garrison of three legions.  Besides
this Quintus Hortensius, the degenerate son of the well-known orator,
collected a fleet in the Tyrrhene Sea, and Publius Dolabella
a second fleet in the Adriatic, which were to be employed
partly to support the defence, partly to transport the intended
expedition to Greece.  In the event of Pompeius attempting
to penetrate by land into Italy, Marcus Licinius Crassus,
the eldest son of the old colleague of Caesar, was to conduct
the defence of Cisalpine Gaul, Gaius the younger brother
of Marcus Antonius that of Illyricum.

Caesar's Fleet and Army in Illyricum Destroyed

But the expected attack was long in coming.  It was not
till the height of summer that the conflict began in Illyria.
There Caesar's lieutenant Gaius Antonius with his two legions
lay in the island of Curicta (Veglia in the gulf of Quarnero),
and Caesar's admiral Publius Dolabella with forty ships
lay in the narrow arm of the sea between this island and the mainland.
The admirals of Pompeius in the Adriatic, Marcus Octavius with the Greek,
Lucius Scribonius Libo with the Illyrian division of the fleet,
attacked the squadron of Dolabella, destroyed all his ships,
and cut off Antonius on his island.  To rescue him, a corps under Basilus
and Sallustius came from Italy and the squadron of Hortensius
from the Tyrrhene Sea; but neither the former nor the latter were able
to effect anything in presence of the far superior fleet of the enemy.
The legions of Antonius had to be abandoned to their fate.
Provisions came to an end, the troops became troublesome and mutinous;
with the exception of a few divisions, which succeeded in reaching
the mainland on rafts, the corps, still fifteen cohorts strong, laid down
their arms and were conveyed in the vessels of Libo to Macedonia
to be there incorporated with the Pompeian army, while Octavius was left
to complete the subjugation of the Illyrian coast now denuded of troops.
The Dalmatae, now far the most powerful tribe in these regions,(22)
the important insular town of Issa (Lissa), and other townships,
embraced the party of Pompeius; but the adherents of Caesar
maintained themselves in Salonae (Spalato) and Lissus (Alessio),
and in the former town not merely sustained with courage a siege,
but when they were reduced to extremities, made a sally with such effect
that Octavius raised the siege and sailed off to Dyrrhachium
to pass the winter there.

Result of the Campaign as a Whole

The success achieved in Illyricum by the Pompeian fleet,
although of itself not inconsiderable, had yet but little influence
on the issue of the campaign as a whole; and it appears miserably small,
when we consider that the performances of the land and naval' forces
under the supreme command of Pompeius during the whole eventful year 705
were confined to this single feat of arms, and that from the east,
where the general, the senate, the second great army, the principal fleet,
the immense military and still more extensive financial resources
of the antagonists of Caesar were united, no intervention at all
took place where it was needed in that all-decisive struggle in the west.
The scattered condition of the forces in the eastern half of the empire,
the method of the general never to operate except with superior masses,
his cumbrous and tedious movements, and the discord of the coalition
may perhaps explain in some measure, though not excuse, the inactivity
of the land-force; but that the fleet, which commanded the Mediterranean
without a rival, should have thus done nothing to influence
the course of affairs--nothing for Spain, next to nothing
for the faithful Massiliots, nothing to defend Sardinia, Sicily,
Africa, or, if not to reoccupy Italy, at least to obstruct its supplies--
this makes demands on our ideas of the confusion and perversity
prevailing in the Pompeian camp, which we can only with difficulty meet.

The aggregate result of this campaign was corresponding.
Caesar's double aggressive movement, against Spain and against Sicily
and Africa, was successful, in the former case completely,
in the latter at least partially; while Pompeius' plan
of starving Italy was thwarted in the main by the taking away
of Sicily, and his general plan of campaign was frustrated completely
by the destruction of the Spanish army; and in Italy only
a very small portion of Caesar's defensive arrangements
had come to be applied.  Notwithstanding the painfully-felt losses
in Africa and Illyria, Caesar came forth from this first year
of the war in the most decided and most decisive manner as victor.

Organizations in Macedonia
The Emigrants

If, however, nothing material was done from the east to obstruct Caesar
in the subjugation of the west, efforts at least were made towards
securing political and military consolidation there during the respite
so ignominiously obtained.  The great rendezvous of the opponents
of Caesar was Macedonia.  Thither Pompeius himself and the mass
of the emigrants from Brundisium resorted; thither came
the other refugees from the west: Marcus Cato from Sicily,
Lucius Domitius from Massilia but more especially a number
of the best officers and soldiers of the broken-up army of Spain,
with its generals Afranius and Varro at their head.  In Italy
emigration gradually became among the aristocrats a question
not of honour merely but almost of fashion, and it obtained
a fresh impulse through the unfavourable accounts which arrived
regarding Caesar's position before Ilerda; not a few of the more
lukewarm partisans and the political trimmers went over by degrees,
and even Marcus Cicero at last persuaded himself that he did not
adequately discharge his duty as a citizen by writing a dissertatio
on concord.  The senate of emigrants at Thessalonica, where the official
Rome pitched its interim abode, numbered nearly 200 members
including many venerable old men and almost all the consulars.
But emigrants indeed they were.  This Roman Coblentz displayed
a pitiful spectacle in the high pretensions and paltry performances
of the genteel world of Rome, their unseasonable reminiscences
and still more unseasonable recriminations, their political
perversities and financial embarrassments.  It was a matter
of comparatively slight moment that, while the old structure
was falling to pieces, they were with the most painstaking gravity
watching over every old ornamental scroll and every speck of rust
in the constitution; after all it was simply ridiculous,
when the genteel lords had scruples of conscience as to calling
their deliberative assembly beyond the sacred soil of the city
the senate, and cautiously gave it the title of the "three hundred";(23)
or when they instituted tedious investigations in state law
as to whether and how a curiate law could be legitimately enacted
elsewhere than within the ring-wall of Rome.

The Lukewarm

Far worse traits were the indifference of the lukewarm
and the narrow-minded stubbornness of the ultras.  The former
could not be brought to act or even to keep silence.  If they were asked
to exert themselves in some definite way for the common good,
with the inconsistency characteristic of weak people they regarded
any such suggestion as a malicious attempt to compromise them
still further, and either did not do what they were ordered at all
or did it with half heart.  At the same time of course,
with their affectation of knowing better when it was too late
and their over-wise impracticabilities, they proved a perpetual clog
to those who were acting; their daily work consisted in criticizing,
ridiculing, and bemoaning every occurrence great and small,
and in unnerving and discouraging the multitude by their own
sluggishness and hopelessness.

The Ultras

While these displayed the utter prostration of weakness, the ultras
on the other hand exhibited in full display its exaggerated action.
With them there was no attempt to conceal that the preliminary
to any negotiation for peace was the bringing over of Caesar's head;
every one of the attempts towards peace, which Caesar repeatedly made
even now, was tossed aside without being examined, or employed
only to cover insidious attempts on the lives of the commissioners
of their opponent.  That the declared partisans of Caesar
had jointly and severally forfeited life and property, was a matter
of course; but it fared little better with those more or less neutral.
Lucius Domitius, the hero of Corfinium, gravely proposed
in the council of war that those senators who had fought in the army
of Pompeius should come to a vote on all who had either remained neutral
or had emigrated but not entered the army, and should according
to their own pleasure individually acquit them or punish them
by fine or even by the forfeiture of life and property.
Another of these ultras formally lodged with Pompeius a charge
of corruption and treason against Lucius Afranius for his defective
defence of Spain.  Among these deep-dyed republicans their
political theory assumed almost the character of a confession
of religious faith; they accordingly hated their own more lukewarm
partisans and Pompeius with his personal adherents, if possible,
still more than their open opponents, and that with all the dull
obstinacy of hatred which is wont to characterize orthodox theologians;
and they were mainly to blame for the numberless and bitter
separate quarrels which distracted the emigrant army and emigrant senate.
But they did not confine themselves to words. Marcus Bibulus,
Titus Labienus, and others of this coterie carried out their theory
in practice, and caused such officers or soldiers of Caesar's army
as fell into their hands to be executed en masse; which,
as may well be conceived, did not tend to make Caesar's troops
fight with less energy.  If the counterrevolution in favour
of the friends of the constitution, for which all the elements
were in existence,(24) did not break out in Italy during
Caesar's absence, the reason, according to the assurance
of discerning opponents of Caesar, lay chiefly in the general dread
of the unbridled fury of the republican ultras after the restoration
should have taken place.  The better men in the Pompeian camp
were in despair over this frantic behaviour.  Pompeius, himself
a brave soldier, spared the prisoners as far as he might and could;
but he was too pusillanimous and in too awkward a position to prevent
or even to punish all atrocities of this sort, as it became him
as commander-in-chief to do.  Marcus Cato, the only man who at least
carried moral consistency into the struggle, attempted with more energy
to check such proceedings; he induced the emigrant senate
to prohibit by a special decree the pillage of subject towns
and the putting to death of a burgess otherwise than in battle.
The able Marcus Marcellus had similar views.  No one, indeed,
knew better than Cato and Marcellus that the extreme party
would carry out their saving deeds, if necessary, in defiance
of all decrees of the senate.  But if even now, when they had still
to regard considerations of prudence, the rage of the ultras
could not be tamed, people might prepare themselves after the victory
for a reign of terror from which Marius and Sulla themselves
would have turned away with horror; and we can understand why Cato,
according to his own confession, was more afraid of the victory
than of the defeat of his own party.

The Preparations for War

The management of the military preparations in the Macedonian camp
was in the hands of Pompeius the commander-in-chief.  His position,
always troublesome and galling, had become still worse through
the unfortunate events of 705.  In the eyes of his partisans he was
mainly to blame for this result.  This judgment was in various respects
not just.  A considerable part of the misfortunes endured
was to be laid to the account of the perversity and insubordination
of the lieutenant-generals, especially of the consul Lentulus
and Lucius Domitius; from the moment when Pompeius took the head
of the army, he had led it with skill and courage, and had saved
at least very considerable forces from the shipwreck; that he was
not a match for Caesar's altogether superior genius, which was now
recognized by all, could not be fairly made matter of reproach to him.
But the result alone decided men's judgment.  Trusting to the general
Pompeius, the constitutional party had broken with Caesar; the pernicious
consequences of this breach recoiled upon the general Pompeius;
and, though owing to the notorious military incapacity
of all the other chiefs no attempt was made to change the supreme
command yet confidence at any rate in the commander-in-chief
was paralyzed.  To these painful consequences of the defeats endured
were added the injurious influences of the emigration.
Among the refugees who arrived there were certainly a number
of efficient soldiers and capable officers, especially those
belonging to the former Spanish army; but the number of those
who came to serve and fight was just as small as that of the generals
of quality who called themselves proconsuls and imperators
with as good title as Pompeius, and of the genteel lords
who took part in active military service more or less reluctantly,
was alarmingly great.  Through these the mode of life in the capital
was introduced into the camp, not at all to the advantage of the army;
the tents of such grandees were graceful bowers, the ground
elegantly covered with fresh turf, the walls clothed with ivy;
silver plate stood on the table, and the wine-cup often circulated
there even in broad daylight.  Those fashionable warriors formed
a singular contrast with Caesar's daredevils, who ate coarse bread
from which the former recoiled, and who, when that failed, devoured
even roots and swore that they would rather chew the bark of trees
than desist from the enemy.  While, moreover, the action
of Pompeius was hampered by the necessity of having regard
to the authority of a collegiate board personally disinclined to him,
this embarrassment was singularly increased when the senate of emigrants
took up its abode almost in his very headquarters and all the venom
of the emigrants now found vent in these senatorial sittings.
Lastly there was nowhere any man of mark, who could have thrown
his own weight into the scale against all these preposterous doings.
Pompeius himself was intellectually far too secondary for that purpose,
and far too hesitating, awkward, and reserved.  Marcus Cato
would have had at least the requisite moral authority, and would not
have lacked the good will to support Pompeius with it; but Pompeius,
instead of calling him to his assistance, out of distrustful
jealousy kept him in the background, and preferred for instance
to commit the highly important chief command of the fleet
to the in every respect incapable Marcus Bibulus rather than to Cato.


The Legions of Pompeius

While Pompeius thus treated the political aspect of his position
with his characteristic perversity, and did his best to make
what was already bad in itself still worse, he devoted himself
on the other hand with commendable zeal to his duty of giving military
organization to the considerable but scattered forces of his party.
The flower of his force was composed of the troops brought with him
from Italy, out of which with the supplementary aid of the Illyrian
prisoners of war and the Romans domiciled in Greece five legions
in all were formed.  Three others came from the east--the two Syrian
legions formed from the remains of the army of Crassus, and one made up
out of the two weak legions hitherto stationed in Cilicia.
Nothing stood in the way of the withdrawal of these corps of occupation:
because on the one hand the Pompeians had an understanding
with the Parthians, and might even have had an alliance with them
if Pompeius had not indignantly refused to pay them the price
which they demanded for it--the cession of the Syrian province
added by himself to the empire; and on the other hand
Caesar's plan of despatching two legions to Syria, and inducing
the Jews once more to take up arms by means of the prince Aristobulus
kept a prisoner in Rome, was frustrated partly by other causes,
partly by the death of Aristobulus.  New legions were moreover raised--
one from the veteran soldiers settled in Crete and Macedonia,
two from the Romans of Asia Minor.  To all these fell to be added
2000 volunteers, who were derived from the remains of the Spanish
select corps and other similar sources; and, lastly, the contingents
of the subjects.  Pompeius like Caesar had disdained to make
requisitions of infantry from them; only the Epirot, Aetolian,
and Thracian militia were called out to guard the coast, and moreover
3000 archers from Greece and Asia Minor and 1200 slingers
were taken up as light troops.

His Cavalry

The cavalry on the other hand--with the exception of a noble guard,
more respectable than militarily important, formed from the young
aristocracy of Rome, and of the Apulian slave-herdsmen whom Pompeius
had mounted (25)--consisted exclusively of the contingents
of the subjects and clients of Rome.  The flower of it consisted
of the Celts, partly from the garrison of Alexandria,(26)
partly the contingents of king Deiotarus who in spite of his great age
had appeared in person at the head of his troops, and of the other
Galatian dynasts.  With them were associated the excellent Thracian
horsemen, who were partly brought up by their princes Sadala
and Rhascuporis, partly enlisted by Pompeius in the Macedonian province;
the Cappadocian cavalry; the mounted archers sent by Antiochus
king of Commagene; the contingents of the Armenians from the west side
of the Euphrates under Taxiles, and from the other side under Megabates,
and the Numidian bands sent by king Juba--the whole body amounted
to 7000 horsemen.

Fleet

Lastly the fleet of Pompeius was very considerable.  It was formed
partly of the Roman transports brought from Brundisium
or subsequently built, partly of the war vessels of the king of Egypt,
of the Colchian princes, of the Cilician dynast Tarcondimotus,
of the cities of Tyre, Rhodes, Athens, Corcyra, and generally
of all the Asiatic and Greek maritime states; and it numbered nearly
500 sail, of which the Roman vessels formed a fifth.  Immense magazines
of corn and military stores were accumulated in Dyrrhachium.
The war-chest was well filled, for the Pompeians found themselves
in possession of the principal sources of the public revenue
and turned to their own account the moneyed resources of the client-
princes, of the senators of distinction, of the farmers of the taxes,
and generally of the whole Roman and non-Roman population
within their reach.  Every appliance that the reputation
of the legitimate government and the much-renowned protectorship
of Pompeius over kings and peoples could move in Africa, Egypt,
Macedonia, Greece, Western Asia and Syria, had been put in motion
for the protection of the Roman republic; the report which circulated
in Italy that Pompeius was arming the Getae, Colchians,
and Armenians against Rome, and the designation of "king of kings"
given to Pompeius in the camp, could hardly be called exaggerations.
On the whole he had command over an army of 7000 cavalry
and eleven legions, of which it is true, but five at the most
could be described as accustomed to war, and over a fleet of 500 sail.
The temper of the soldiers, for whose provisioning and pay Pompeius
manifested adequate care, and to whom in the event of victory the most
abundant rewards were promised, was throughout good, in several--
and these precisely the most efficient--divisions even excellent
but a great part of the army consisted of newly-raised troops,
the formation and training of which, however zealously it was prosecuted,
necessarily required time.  The force altogether was imposing,
but at the same time of a somewhat motley character.

Junction of the Pompeians on the Coast of Epirus

According to the design of the commander-in-chief the army and fleet
were to be in substance completely united by the winter of 705-706
along the coast and in the waters of Epirus.  The admiral Bibulus
had already arrived with no ships at his new headquarters, Corcyra.
On the other hand the land-army, the headquarters of which had been
during the summer at Berrhoea on the Haliacmon, had not yet come up;
the mass of it was moving slowly along the great highway
from Thessalonica towards the west coast to the future headquarters
Dyrrhachium; the two legions, which Metellus Scipio was bringing up
from Syria, remained at Pergamus in Asia for winter quarters
and were expected in Europe only towards spring.  They were taking time
in fact for their movements. For the moment the ports of Epirus
were guarded, over and above the fleet, merely by their own
civic defences and the levies of the adjoining districts.

Caesar against Pompeius

It thus remained possible for Caesar, notwithstanding the intervention
of the Spanish war, to assume the offensive also in Macedonia;
and he at least was not slow to act.  He had long ago ordered
the collection of vessels of war and transports in Brundisium,
and after the capitulation of the Spanish army and the fall
of Massilia had directed the greater portion of the select troops
employed there to proceed to that destination. The unparalleled
exertions no doubt, which were thus required by Caesar
from his soldiers, thinned the ranks more than their conflicts had done
and the mutiny of one of the four oldest legions, the ninth
on its march through Placentia was a dangerous indication
of the temper prevailing in the army; but Caesar's presence of mind
and personal authority gained the mastery, and from this quarter
nothing impeded the embarkation.  But the want of ships, through which
the pursuit of Pompeius had failed in March 705, threatened also
to frustrate this expedition.  The war-vessels, which Caesar
had given orders to build in the Gallic, Sicilian, and Italian ports,
were not yet ready or at any rate not on the spot; his squadron
in the Adriatic had been in the previous year destroyed at Curicta;(27)
he found at Brundisium not more than twelve ships of war
and scarcely transports enough to convey over at once the third part
of his army--of twelve legions and 10,000 cavalry--destined for Greece.
The considerable fleet of the enemy exclusively commanded
the Adriatic and especially all the harbours of the mainland
and islands on its eastern coast.  Under such circumstances
the question presents itself, why Caesar did not instead
of the maritime route choose the land route through Illyria,
which relieved him from all the perils threatened by the fleet
and besides was shorter for his troops, who mostly came from Gaul,
than the route by Brundisium.  It is true that the regions
of Illyria were rugged and poor beyond description; but they
were traversed by other armies not long afterwards, and this obstacle
can hardly have appeared insurmountable to the conqueror of Gaul.
Perhaps he apprehended that during the troublesome march
through Illyria Pompeius might convey his whole force over the Adriatic,
whereby their parts might come at once to be changed--with Caesar
in Macedonia, and Pompeius in Italy; although such a rapid change
was scarcely to be expected from his slow-moving antagonist.
Perhaps Caesar had decided for the maritime route on the supposition
that his fleet would meanwhile be brought into a condition
to command respect, and, when after his return from Spain
he became aware of the true state of things in the Adriatic,
it might be too late to change the plan of campaign.  Perhaps--
and, in accordance with Caesar's quick temperament always urging him
to decision, we may even say in all probability--he found himself
irresistibly tempted by the circumstance that the Epirot coast
was still at the moment unoccupied but would certainly be covered
in a few days by the enemy, to thwart once more by a bold stroke
the whole plan of his antagonist.

Caesar Lands in Epirus
First Successes

However this may be, on the 4th Jan. 706(28) Caesar set sail
with six legions greatly thinned by toil and sickness and 600 horsemen
from Brundisium for the coast of Epirus.  It was a counterpart
to the foolhardy Britannic expedition; but at least the first throw
was fortunate.  The coast was reached in the middle of the Acroceraunian
(Chimara) cliffs, at the little-frequented  roadstead of Paleassa
(Paljassa).  The transports were seen both from the harbour of Oricum
(creek of Avlona) where a Pompeian squadron of eighteen sail was lying,
and from the headquarters of the hostile fleet at Corcyra;
but in the one quarter they deemed themselves too weak,
in the other they were not ready to sail, so that the first freight
was landed without hindrance.  While the vessels at once returned
to bring over the second, Caesar on that same evening scaled
the Acroceraunian mountains.  His first successes were as great
as the surprise of his enemies.  The Epirot militia nowhere
offered resistance; the important seaport towns of Oricum
and Apollonia along with a number of smaller townships were taken,
and Dyrrhachium, selected by the Pompeians as their chief arsenal
and filled with stores of all sorts, but only feebly garrisoned,
was in the utmost danger.

Caesar Cut Off from Italy

But the further course of the campaign did not correspond
to this brilliant beginning.  Bibulus subsequently made up in some measure
for the negligence, of which he had allowed himself to be guilty,
by redoubling his exertions.  He not only captured nearly thirty
of the transports returning home, and caused them with every living
thing on board to be burnt, but he also established along
the whole district of coast occupied by Caesar, from the island Sason
(Saseno) as far as the ports of Corcyra, a most careful watch,
however troublesome it was rendered by the inclement season
of the year and the necessity of bringing everything necessary
for the guard-ships, even wood and water, from Corcyra; in fact
his successor Libo--for he himself soon succumbed to the unwonted
fatigues--even blockaded for a time the port of Brundisium,
till the want of water again dislodged him from the little island
in front of it on which he had established himself.  It was
not possible for Caesar's officers to convey the second portion
of the army over to their general.  As little did he himself
succeed in the capture of Dyrrhachium.  Pompeius learned through
one of Caesar's peace envoys as to his preparations for the voyage
to the Epirot coast, and, thereupon accelerating his march,
threw himself just at the right time into that important arsenal.
The situation of Caesar was critical.  Although he extended his range
in Epirus as far as with his slight strength was at all possible,
the subsistence of his army remained difficult and precarious,
while the enemy, in possession of the magazines of Dyrrhachium
and masters of the sea, had abundance of everything.  With his army
presumably little above 20,000 strong he could not offer battle
to that of Pompeius at least twice as numerous, but had to deem himself
fortunate that Pompeius went methodically to work and, instead
of immediately forcing a battle, took up his winter quarters
between Dyrrhachium and Apollonia on the right bank of the Apsus,
facing Caesar on the left, in order that after the arrival
of the legions from Pergamus in the spring he might annihilate
the enemy with an irresistibly superior force.  Thus months passed.
If the arrival of the better season, which brought to the enemy
a strong additional force and the free use of his fleet, found Caesar
still in the same position, he was to all appearance lost,
with his weak band wedged in among the rocks of Epirus between
the immense fleet and the three times superior land army of the enemy;
and already the winter was drawing to a close.  His sole hope
still depended on the transport fleet; that it should steal
or fight its way through the blockade was hardly to be hoped for;
but after the first voluntary foolhardiness this second venture
was enjoined by necessity.  How desperate his situation appeared
to Caesar himself, is shown by his resolution--when the fleet
still came not--to sail alone in a fisherman's boat across the Adriatic
to Brundisium in order to fetch it; which, in reality, was only abandoned
because no mariner was found to undertake the daring voyage.

Antonius Proceed to Epirus

But his appearance in person was not needed to induce
the faithful officer who commanded in Italy, Marcus Antonius,
to make this last effort for the saving of his master. Once more
the transport fleet, with four legions and 800 horsemen on board
sailed from the harbour of Brundisium, and fortunately a strong
south wind carried it past Libo's galleys.  But the same wind,
which thus saved the fleet, rendered it impossible for it to land
as it was directed on the coast of Apollonia, and compelled it
to sail past the camps of Caesar and Pompeius and to steer
to the north of Dyrrhachium towards Lissus, which town
fortunately still adhered to Caesar.(29)  When it sailed
past the harbour of Dyrrhachium, the Rhodian galleys started
in pursuit, and hardly had the ships of Antonius entered
the port of Lissus when the enemy's squadron appeared before it.
But just at this moment the wind suddenly veered, and drove
the pursuing galleys back into the open sea and partly
on the rocky coast.  Through the most marvellous good fortune
the landing of the second freight had also been successful.

Junction of Caesar's Army

Antonius and Caesar were no doubt still some four days' march
from each other, separated by Dyrrhachium and the whole army
of the enemy; but Antonius happily effected the perilous march
round about Dyrrhachium through the passes of the Graba Balkan,
and was received by Caesar, who had gone to meet him, on the right bank
of the Apsus.  Pompeius, after having vainly attempted to prevent
the junction of the two armies of the enemy and to force the corps
of Antonius to fight by itself, took up a new position at Asparagium
on the river Genusus (Skumbi), which flows parallel to the Apsus
between the latter and the town of Dyrrhachium, and here remained
once more immoveable.  Caesar felt himself now strong enough
to give battle; but Pompeius declined it.  On the other hand Caesar
succeeded in deceiving his adversary and throwing himself unawares
with his better marching troops, just as at Ilerda, between
the enemy's camp and the fortress of Dyrrhachium on which it rested
as a basis.  The chain of the Graba Balkan, which stretching
in a direction from east to west ends on the Adriatic
in the narrow tongue of land at Dyrrhachium, sends off--fourteen miles
to the east of Dyrrhachium--in a south-westerly direction a lateral
branch which likewise turns in the form of a crescent towards the sea,
and the main chain and lateral branch of the mountains enclose
between themselves a small plain extending round a cliff on the seashore.

Pompeius now took up his camp, and, although Caesar's army kept
the land route to Dyrrhachium closed against him, he yet with the aid
of his fleet remained constantly in communication with the town
and was amply and easily provided from it with everything needful;
while among the Caesarians, notwithstanding strong detachments
to the country lying behind, and notwithstanding all the exertions
of the general to bring about an organized system of conveyance
and thereby a regular supply, there was more than scarcity, and flesh,
barley, nay even roots had very frequently to take the place
of the wheat to which they were accustomed.

Caesar Invests the Camp of Pompeius

As his phlegmatic opponent persevered in his inaction, Caesar
undertook to occupy the circle of heights which enclosed the plain
on the shore held by Pompeius, with the view of being able at least
to arrest the movements of the superior cavalry of the enemy
and to operate with more freedom against Dyrrhachium, and if possible
to compel his opponent either to battle or to embarkation.  Nearly
the half of Caesar's troops was detached to the interior;
it seemed almost Quixotic to propose with the rest virtually
to besiege an army perhaps twice as strong, concentrated in position,
and resting on the sea and the fleet.  Yet Caesar's veterans by infinite
exertions invested the Pompeian camp with a chain of posts
sixteen miles long, and afterwards added, just as before Alesia,
to this inner line a second outer one, to protect themselves
against attacks from Dyrrhachium and against attempts to turn
their position which could so easily be executed with the aid
of the fleet.  Pompeius attacked more than once portions
of these entrenchments with a view to break if possible the enemy's line,
but he did not attempt to prevent the investment by a battle;
he preferred to construct in his turn a number of entrenchments
around his camp, and to connect them with one another by lines.
Both sides exerted themselves to push forward their trenches
as far as possible, and the earthworks advanced but slowly amidst
constant conflicts.  At the same time skirmishing went on
on the opposite side of Caesar's camp with the garrison of Dyrrhachium;
Caesar hoped to get the fortress into his power by means
of an understanding with some of its inmates, but was prevented
by the enemy's fleet.  There was incessant fighting at very different
points--on one of the hottest days at six places simultaneously--
and, as a rule, the tried valour of the Caesarians had the advantage
in these skirmishes; once, for instance, a single cohort
maintained itself in its entrenchments against four legions
for several hours, till support came up.  No prominent success
was attained on either side; yet the effects of the investment came
by degrees to be oppressively felt by the Pompeians.  The stopping
of the rivulets flowing from the heights into the plain compelled them
to be content with scanty and bad well-water.  Still more severely felt
was the want of fodder for the beasts of burden and the horses,
which the fleet was unable adequately to remedy; numbers of them died,
and it was of but little avail that the horses were conveyed by the fleet
to Dyrrhachium, because there also they did not find sufficient fodder.

Caesar's Lines Broken
Caesar Once More Defeated

Pompeius could not much longer delay to free himself
from his disagreeable position by a blow struck against the enemy.
He was informed by Celtic deserters that the enemy had neglected
to secure the beach between his two chains of entrenchments
600 feet distant from each other by a cross-wall, and on this
he formed his plan.  While he caused the inner line of Caesar's
entrenchments to be attacked by the legions from the camp,
and the outer line by the light troops placed in vessels
and landed beyond the enemy's entrenchments, a third division
landed in the space left between the two lines and attacked
in the rear their already sufficiently occupied defenders.
The entrenchment next to the sea was taken, and the garrison fled
in wild confusion; with difficulty the commander of the next trench
Marcus Antonius succeeded in maintaining it and in setting
a limit for the moment to the advance of the Pompeians; but;
apart from the considerable loss, the outermost entrenchment
along the sea remained in the hands of the Pompeians and the lin
was broken through.  Caesar the more  eagerly seized the opportunity,
which soon after presented itself, of attacking a Pompeian legion,
which had incautiously become isolated, with the bulk
of his infantry.  But the attacked offered valiant resistance,
and, as the ground on which the fight took place had been several times
employed for the encampment of larger and lesser divisions
and was intersected in various directions by mounds and ditches,
Caesar's right wing along with the cavalry entirely missed its way;
instead of supporting the left in attacking the Pompeian legion,
it got into a narrow trench that led from one of the old camps
towards the river.  So Pompeius, who came up in all haste
with five legions to the aid of his troops, found the two wings
of the enemy separated from each other, and one of them
in an utterly forlorn position.  When the Caesarians saw him advance,
a panic seized them; the whole plunged into disorderly flight;
and, if the matter ended with the loss of 1000 of the best soldiers
and Caesar's army did not sustain a complete defeat, this was due
simply to the circumstance that Pompeius also could not freely
develop his force on the broken ground, and to the further fact that,
fearing a stratagem, he at first held back his troops.

Consequences of Caesar's Defeats

But, even as it was, these days were fraught with mischief.
Not only had Caesar endured the most serious losses and forfeited
at a blow his entrenchments, the result of four months of gigantic
labour; he was by the recent engagements thrown back again exactly
to the point from which he had set out.  From the sea he was
more completely driven than ever, since Pompeius' elder son Gnaeus
had by a bold attack partly burnt, partly carried off, Caesar's
few ships of war lying in the port of Oricum, and had soon afterwards
also set fire to the transport fleet that was left behind in Lissus;
all possibility of bringing up fresh reinforcements to Caesar
by sea from Brundisium was thus lost.  The numerous Pompeian cavalry,
now released from their confinement, poured themselves over
the adjacent country and threatened to render the provisioning
of Caesar's army, which had always been difficult, utterly impossible.
Caesar's daring enterprise of carrying on offensive operations
without ships against an enemy in command of the sea and resting
on his fleet had totally failed.  On what had hitherto been
the theatre of war he found himself in presence of an impregnable
defensive position, and unable to strike a serious blow either
against Dyrrhachium or against the hostile army; on the other hand
it depended now solely on Pompeius whether he should proceed
to attack under the most favourable circumstances an antagonist
already in grave danger as to his means of subsistence.  The war
had arrived at a crisis.  Hitherto Pompeius had, to all appearance,
played the game of war without special plan, and only adjusted
his defence according to the exigencies of each attack; and this was
not to be censured, for the protraction of the war gave him opportunity
of making his recruits capable of fighting, of bringing up his reserves,
and of bringing more fully into play the superiority of his fleet
in the Adriatic.  Caesar was beaten not merely in tactics
but also in strategy.  This defeat had not, it is true,
that effect which Pompeius not without reason expected; the eminent
soldierly energy of Caesar's veterans did not allow matters
to come to an immediate and total breaking up of the army
by hunger and mutiny.  But yet it seemed as if it depended solely
on his opponent by judiciously following up his victory
to reap its full fruits.

War Prospects of Pompeius
Scipio and Calvinus

It was for Pompeius to assume the aggressive; and he was resolved
to do so.  Three different ways of rendering his victory fruitful
presented themselves to him.  The first and simplest was not to desist
from assailing the vanquished army, and, if it departed,
to pursue it.  Secondly, Pompeius might leave Caesar himself
and his best troops in Greece, and might cross in person, as he had
long been making preparations for doing, with the main army to Italy,
where the feeling was decidedly antimonarchical and the forces
of Caesar, after the despatch of the best troops and their brave
and trustworthy commandant to the Greek army, would not be
of very much moment.  Lastly, the victor might turn inland,
effect a junction with the legions of Metellus Scipio, and attempt
to capture the troops of Caesar stationed in the interior.
The latter forsooth had, immediately after the arrival of the second
freight from Italy, on the one hand despatched strong detachments
to Aetolia and Thessaly to procure means of subsistence for his army,
and on the other had ordered a corps of two legions under Gnaeus
Domitius Calvinus to advance on the Egnatian highway towards Macedonia,
with the view of intercepting and if possible defeating in detail
the corps of Scipio advancing on the same road from Thessalonica.
Calvinus and Scipio had already approached within a few miles
of each other, when Scipio suddenly turned southward and, rapidly
crossing the Haliacmon (Inje Karasu) and leaving his baggage there
under Marcus Favonius, penetrated into Thessaly, in order to attack
with superior force Caesar's legion of recruits employed
in the reduction of the country under Lucius Cassius Longinus.
But Longinus retired over the mountains towards Ambracia to join
the detachment under Gnaeus Calvisius Sabinus sent by Caesar
to Aetolia, and Scipio could only cause him to be pursued
by his Thracian cavalry, for Calvinus threatened his reserve
left behind under Favonius on the Haliacmon with the same fate
which he had himself destined for Longinus.  So Calvinus and Scipio
met again on the Haliacmon, and encamped there for a considerable time
opposite to each other.

Caesar's Retreat from Dyrrachium to Thessaly

Pompeius might choose among these plans; no choice was left to Caesar.
After that unfortunate engagement he entered on his retreat to Apollonia.
Pompeius followed.  The march from Dyrrhachium to Apollonia
along a difficult road crossed by several rivers was no easy task
for a defeated army pursued by the enemy; but the dexterous leadership
of their general and the indestructible marching energy of the soldiers
compelled Pompeius after four days' pursuit to suspend it as useless.
He had now to decide between the Italian expedition and the march
into the interior.  However advisable and attractive the former
might seem, and though various voices were raised in its favour,
he preferred not to abandon the corps of Scipio, the more especially
as he hoped by this march to get the corps of Calvinus into his hands.
Calvinus lay at the moment on the Egnatian road at Heraclea Lyncestis,
between Pompeius and Scipio, and, after Caesar had retreated
to Apollonia, farther distant from the latter than from the great army
of Pompeius; without knowledge, moreover, of the events at Dyrrhachium
and of his hazardous position, since after the successes achieved
at Dyrrhachium the whole country inclined to Pompeius and the messengers
of Caesar were everywhere seized.   It was not till the enemy's
main force had approached within a few hours of him that Calvinus
learned from the accounts of the enemy's advanced posts themselves
the state of things.  A quick departure in a southerly direction
towards Thessaly withdrew him at the last moment from imminent
destruction; Pompeius had to content himself with having
liberated Scipio from his position of peril.  Caesar had meanwhile
arrived unmolested at Apollonia.  Immediately after the disaster
of Dyrrhachium he had resolved if possible to transfer the struggle
from the coast away into the interior, with the view of getting beyond
the reach of the enemy's fleet--the ultimate cause of the failure
of his previous exertions.  The march to Apollonia had only been intended
to place his wounded in safety and to pay his soldiers there,
where his depots were stationed; as soon as this was done,
he set out for Thessaly, leaving behind garrisons in Apollonia,
Oricum, and Lissus.  The corps of Calvinus had also put itself
in motion towards Thessaly; and Caesar could effect a junction
with the reinforcements coming up from Italy, this time by the land-route
through Illyria--two legions under Quintus Cornificius--still more easily
in Thessaly than in Epirus.  Ascending by difficult paths in the valley
of the Aous and crossing the mountain-chain which separates Epirus
from Thessaly, he arrived at the Peneius; Calvinus was likewise
directed thither, and the junction of the two armies was thus accomplished
by the shortest route and that which was least exposed to the enemy.
It took place at Aeginium not far from the source of the Peneius.
The first Thessalian town before which the now united army appeared,
Gomphi, closed its gates against it; it was quickly stormed and given up
to pillage, and the other towns of Thessaly terrified by this example
submitted, so soon as Caesar's legions merely appeared before the walls.
Amidst these marches and conflicts, and with the help of the supplies--
albeit not too ample--which the region on the Peneius afforded,
the traces and recollections of the calamitous days through which
they had passed gradually vanished.

The victories of Dyrrhachium had thus borne not much immediate fruit
for the victors.  Pompeius with his unwieldy army and his numerous
cavalry had not been able to follow his versatile enemy
into the mountains; Caesar like Calvinus had escaped from pursuit,
and the two stood united and in full security in Thessaly.
Perhaps it would have been the best course, if Pompeius had now
without delay embarked with his main force for Italy, where success
was scarcely doubtful.  But in the meantime only a division
of the fleet departed for Sicily and Italy.  In the camp of the coalition
the contest with Caesar was looked on as so completely decided
by the battles of Dyrrhachium that it only remained to reap the fruits
of victory, in other words, to seek out and capture the defeated army.
Their former over-cautious reserve was succeeded by an arrogance
still less justified by the circumstances; they gave no heed
to the facts, that they had, strictly speaking, failed in the pursuit,
that they had to hold themselves in readiness to  encounter
a completely refreshed and reorganized army in Thessaly,
and that there was no small risk in moving away from the sea,
renouncing the support of the fleet, and following their antagonist
to the battlefield chosen by himself.  They were simply resolved
at any price to fight with Caesar, and therefore to get at him
as soon as possible and by the most convenient way.  Cato took up
the command in Dyrrhachium, where a garrison was left behind
of eighteen cohorts, and in Corcyra, where 300 ships of war were left;
Pompeius and Scipio proceeded--the former, apparently, following
the Egnatian way as far as Pella and then striking into the great road
to the south, the latter from the Haliacmon through the passes
of Olympus--to the lower Peneius and met at Larisa.

The Armies at Pharsalus

Caesar lay to the south of Larisa in the plain--which extends
between the hill-country of Cynoscephalae and the chain of Othrys
and is intersected by a tributary of the Peneius, the Enipeus--
on the left bank of the latter stream near the town of Pharsalus;
Pompeius pitched his camp opposite to him on the right bank
of the Enipeus along the slope of the heights of Cynoscephalae.(30)
The entire army of Pompeius was assembled; Caesar on the other hand
still expected the corps of nearly two legions formerly detached
to Aetolia and Thessaly, now stationed under Quintus Fufius Calenus
in Greece, and the two legions of Cornificius which were sent
after him by the land-route from Italy and had already arrived
in Illyria.  The army of Pompeius, numbering eleven legions
or 47,000 men and 7000 horse, was more than double that of Caesar
in infantry, and seven times as numerous in cavalry; fatigue
and conflicts had so decimated Caesar's troops, that his eight legions
did not number more than 22,000 men under arms, consequently
not nearly the half of their normal amount.  The victorious army
of Pompeius provided with a countless cavalry and good magazines had
provisions in abundance, while the troops of Caesar had difficulty
in keeping themselves alive and only hoped for better supplies
from the corn-harvest not far distant.  The Pompeian soldiers,
who had learned in the last campaign to know war and trust their leader,
were in the best of humour.  All military reasons on the side
of Pompeius favoured the view, that the decisive battle should not be
long delayed, seeing that they now confronted Caesar in Thessaly;
and the emigrant impatience of the many genteel officers and others
accompanying the army doubtless had more weight than even such reasons
in the council of war.  Since the events of Dyrrhachium
these lords regarded the triumph of their party as an ascertained fact;
already there was eager strife as to the filling up of Caesar's
supreme pontificate, and instructions were sent to Rome
to hire houses at the Forum for the next elections.  When Pompeius
hesitated on his part to cross the rivulet which separated
the two armies, and which Caesar with his much weaker army
did not venture to pass, this excited great indignation; Pompeius,
it was alleged, only delayed the battle in order to rule somewhat longer
over so many consulars and praetorians and to perpetuate his part
of Agamemnon.  Pompeius yielded; and Caesar, who under the impression
that matters would not come to a battle, had just projected
a mode of turning the enemy's army and for that purpose was on the point
of setting out towards Scotussa, likewise arrayed his legions for battle,
when he saw the Pompeians preparing to offer it to him on his bank.

The Battle

Thus the battle of Pharsalus was fought on the 9th August 706,
almost on the same field where a hundred and fifty years before
the Romans had laid the foundation of their dominion in the east.(31)
Pompeius rested his right wing on the Enipeus; Caesar opposite
to him rested his left on the broken ground stretching in front
of the Enipeus; the two other wings were stationed out in the plain,
covered in each case by the cavalry and the light troops.
The intention of Pompeius was to keep his infantry on the defensive,
but with his cavalry to scatter the weak band of horsemen which,
mixed after the German fashion with light infantry, confronted him,
and then to take Caesar's right wing in rear.  His infantry
courageously sustained the first charge of that of the enemy,
and the engagement there came to a stand.  Labienus likewise dispersed
the enemy's cavalry after a brave but short resistance,
and deployed his force to the left with the view of turning
the infantry.  But Caesar, foreseeing the defeat of his cavalry,
had stationed behind it on the threatened flank of his right wing
some 2000 of his best legionaries.  As the enemy's horsemen,
driving those of Caesar before them, galloped along and around the line,
they suddenly came upon this select corps advancing intrepidly
against them and, rapidly thrown into confusion by the unexpected
and unusual infantry attack,(32) they galloped at full speed
from the field of battle.  The victorious legionaries cut to pieces
the enemy's archers now unprotected, then rushed at the left wing
of the enemy, and began now on their part to turn it.  At the same time
Caesar's third division hitherto reserved advanced along
the whole line to the attack.  The unexpected defeat of the best arm
of the Pompeian army, as it raised the courage of their opponents,
broke that of the army and above all that of the general.  When Pompeius,
who from the outset did not trust his infantry, saw the horsemen
gallop off, he rode back at once from the field of battle to the camp,
without even awaiting the issue of the general attack ordered by Caesar.
His legions began to waver and soon to retire over the brook
into the camp, which was not accomplished without severe loss.

Its Issue
Flight of Pompeius

The day was thus lost and many an able soldier had fallen,
but the army was still substantially intact, and the situation
of Pompeius was far less perilous than that of Caesar after the defeat
of Dyrrhachium.  But while Caesar in the vicissitudes of his destiny
had learned that fortune loves to withdraw herself at certain moments
even from her favourites in order to be once more won back
through their perseverance, Pompeius knew fortune hitherto
only as the constant goddess, and despaired of himself and of her
when she withdrew from him; and, while in Caesar's grander nature
despair only developed yet mightier energies, the inferior soul
of Pompeius under similar pressure sank into the infinite abyss
of despondency.  As once in the war with Sertorius he had been
on the point of abandoning the office entrusted to him in presence
of his superior opponent and of departing,(33) so now, when he saw
the legions retire over the stream, he threw from him the fatal
general's scarf, and rode off by the nearest route to the sea,
to find means of embarking there.  His army discouraged and leaderless--
for Scipio, although recognized by Pompeius as colleague in supreme
command, was yet general-in-chief only in name--hoped to find protection
behind the camp-walls; but Caesar allowed it no rest; the obstinate
resistance of the Roman and Thracian guard of the camp was speedily
overcome, and the mass was compelled to withdraw in disorder
to the heights of Crannon and Scotussa, at the foot of which
the camp was pitched.  It attempted by moving forward along these hills
to regain Larisa; but the troops of Caesar, heeding neither
booty nor fatigue and advancing by better paths in the plain,
intercepted the route of the fugitives; in fact, when  late
in the evening the Pompeians suspended their march, their pursuers
were able even to draw an entrenched line which precluded
the fugitives from access to the only rivulet to be found
in the neighbourhood.  So ended the day of Pharsalus.  The enemy's army
was not only defeated, but annihilated; 15,000 of the enemy
lay dead or wounded on the field of battle, while the Caesarians missed
only 200 men; the body which remained together, amounting still
to nearly 20,000 men, laid down their arms on the morning after
the battle only isolated troops, including, it is true, the officers
of most note, sought a refuge in the mountains; of the eleven eagles
of the enemy nine were handed over to Caesar.  Caesar,
who on the very day of the battle had reminded the soldiers
that they should not forget the fellow-citizen in the foe,
did not treat the captives as did Bibulus and Labienus;
nevertheless he too found it necessary now to exercise some severity.
The common soldiers were incorporated in the army, fines
or confiscations of property were inflicted on the men of better rank;
the senators and equites of note who were taken, with few exceptions,
suffered death.  The time for clemency was past; the longer
the civil war lasted, the more remorseless and implacable it became.

The Political Effects of the Battle of Pharsalus
The East Submits

Some time elapsed, before the consequences of the 9th of August 706
could be fully discerned.  What admitted of least doubt,
was the passing over to the side of Caesar of all those
who had attached themselves to the party vanquished at Pharsalus
merely as to the more powerful; the defeat was so thoroughly
decisive, that the victor was joined by all who were not willing
or were not obliged to fight for a lost cause.  All the kings,
peoples, and cities, which had hitherto been the clients of Pompeius,
now recalled their naval and military contingents and declined
to receive the refugees of the beaten party; such as Egypt, Cyrene,
the communities of Syria, Phoenicia, Cilicia and Asia Minor, Rhodes,
Athens, and generally the whole east.  In fact Pharnaces
king of the Bosporus pushed his officiousness so far, that on the news
of the Pharsalian battle he took possession not only of the town
of Phanagoria which several years before had been declared free
by Pompeius, and of the dominions of the Colchian princes confirmed
by him, but even of the kingdom of Little Armenia which Pompeius
had conferred on king Deiotarus.  Almost the sole exceptions
to this general submission were the little town of Megara
which allowed itself to be besieged and stormed by the Caesarians,
and Juba king of Numidia, who had for long expected, and after the victory
over Curio expected only with all the greater certainty, that his kingdom
would be annexed by Caesar, and was thus obliged for better or for worse
to abide by the defeated party.

The Aristocracy after the Battle of Pharsalus

In the same way as the client communities submitted to the victor
of Pharsalus, the tail of the constitutional party--all who had
joined it with half a heart or had even, like Marcus Cicero
and his congeners, merely danced around the aristocracy like the witches
around the Brocken--approached to make their peace with the new monarch,
a peace accordingly which his contemptuous indulgence readily
and courteously granted to the petitioners.  But the flower
of the defeated party made no compromise.  All was over
with the aristocracy; but the aristocrats could never become converted
to monarchy.  The highest revelations of humanity are perishable;
the religion once true may become a lie,(34) the polity once fraught
with blessing may become a curse; but even the gospel that is past
still finds confessors, and if such a faith cannot remove mountains
like faith in the living truth, it yet remains true to itself
down to its very end, and does not depart from the realm of the living
till it has dragged its last priests and its last partisans
along with it, and a new generation, freed from those shadows of the past
and the perishing, rules over a world that has renewed its youth.
So it was in Rome.  Into whatever abyss of degeneracy the aristocratic
rule had now sunk, it had once been a great political system;
the sacred fire, by which Italy had been conquered and Hannibal
had been vanquished, continued to glow--although somewhat dimmed
and dull--in the Roman nobility so long as that nobility existed,
and rendered a cordial understanding between the men of the old regime
and the new monarch impossible.  A large portion of the constitutional
party submitted at least outwardly, and recognized the monarchy
so far as to accept pardon from Caesar and to retire as much as possible
into private life; which, however, ordinarily was not done
without the mental reservation of thereby preserving themselves
for a future change of things.  This course was chiefly followed
by the partisans of lesser note; but the able Marcus Marcellus,
the same who had brought about the rupture with Caesar,(35)
was to be found among these judicious persons and voluntarily
banished himself to Lesbos.  In the majority, however, of the genuine
aristocracy passion was more powerful than cool reflection;
along with which, no doubt, self-deceptions as to success
being still possible and apprehensions of the inevitable
vengeance of the victor variously co-operated.

Cato

No one probably formed a judgment as to the situation of affairs
with so painful a clearness, and so free from fear or hope
on his own account, as Marcus Cato.  Completely convinced
that after the days of Ilerda and Pharsalus the monarchy was inevitable,
and morally firm enough to confess to himself this bitter truth
and to act in accordance with it, he hesitated for a moment whether
the constitutional party ought at all to continue a war, which would
necessarily require sacrifices for a lost cause on the part of many
who did not know why they offered them.  And when he resolved
to fight against the monarchy not for victory, but for a speedier
and more honourable fall, he yet sought as far as possible to draw
no one into this war, who chose to survive the fall of the republic
and to be reconciled to monarchy.  He conceived that, so long
as the republic had been merely threatened, it was a right and a duty
to compel the lukewarm and bad citizen to take part in the struggle;
but that now it was senseless and cruel to compel the individual
to share the ruin of the lost republic.  Not only did he himself
discharge every one who desired to return to Italy; but when the wildest
of the wild partisans, Gnaeus Pompeius the younger, insisted
on the execution of these people and of Cicero in particular:
it was Cato alone who by his moral authority prevented it.

Pompeius

Pompeius also had no desire for peace.  Had he been a man
who deserved to hold the position which he occupied, we might suppose
him to have perceived that he who aspires to a crown cannot return
to the beaten track of ordinary existence, and that there is
accordingly no place left on earth for one who has failed.
But Pompeius was hardly too noble-minded to ask a favour,
which the victor would have been perhaps magnanimous enough
not to refuse to him; on the contrary, he was probably too mean
to do so.  Whether it was that he could not make up his mind
to trust himself to Caesar, or that in his usual vague
and undecided way, after the first immediate impression of the disaster
of Pharsalus had vanished, be began again to cherish hope, Pompeius
was resolved to continue the struggle against Caesar and to seek
for himself yet another battle-field after that of Pharsalus.

Military Effects of the Battle
The Leaders Scattered

Thus, however much Caesar had striven by prudence and moderation
to appease the fury of his opponents and to lessen their number,
the struggle nevertheless went on without alteration.  But the leading
men had almost all taken part in the fight at Pharsalus;
and, although they all escaped with the exception of Lucius Domitius
Ahenobarbus, who was killed in the flight, they were yet scattered
in all directions, so that they were unable to concert a common plan
for the continuance of the campaign.  Most of them found their way,
partly through the desolate mountains of Macedonia and Illyria,
partly by the aid of the fleet, to Corcyra, where Marcus Cato
commanded the reserve left behind.  Here a sort of council
of war took place under the presidency of Cato, at which Metellus Scipio,
Titus Labienus, Lucius Afranius, Gnaeus Pompeius the younger
and others were present; but the absence of the commander-in-chief
and the painful uncertainty as to his fate, as well as the internal
dissensions of the party, prevented the adoption of any common
resolution, and ultimately each took the course which seemed to him
the most suitable for himself or for the common cause.  It was in fact
in a high degree difficult to say among the many straws
to which they might possibly cling which was the one
that would keep longest above water.

Macedonia and Greece
Italy
The East
Egypt
Spain
Africa

Macedonia and Greece were lost by the battle of Pharsalus.
It is true that Cato, who had immediately on the news of the defeat
evacuated Dyrrhachium, still held Corcyra, and Rutilius Lupus
the Peloponnesus, during a time for the constitutional party.
For a moment it seemed also as if the Pompeians would make a stand
at Patrae in the Peloponnesus; but the accounts of the advance
of Calenus sufficed to frighten them from that quarter.  As little
was there any attempt to maintain Corcyra.  On the Italian
and Sicilian coasts the Pompeian squadrons despatched thither
after the victories of Dyrrhachium(36) had achieved not unimportant
successes against the ports of Brundisium, Messana and Vibo,
and at Messana especially had burnt the whole fleet in course
of being fitted out for Caesar; but the ships that were thus active,
mostly from Asia Minor and Syria, were recalled by their communities
in consequence of the Pharsalian battle, so that the expedition
came to an end of itself.  In Asia Minor and Syria there were
at the moment no troops of either party, with the exception
of the Bosporan army of Pharnaces which had taken possession,
ostensibly on Caesar's account, of different regions belonging
to his opponents.  In Egypt there was still indeed a considerable
Roman army, formed of the troops left behind there by Gabinius(37)
and thereafter recruited from Italian vagrants and Syrian
or Cilician banditti; but it was self-evident and was soon
officially confirmed by the recall of the Egyptian vessels,
that the court of Alexandria by no means had the intention
of holding firmly by the defeated party or of even placing
its force of troops at their disposal.  Somewhat more favourable
prospects presented themselves to the vanquished in the west.
In Spain Pompeian sympathies were so strong among the population,
that the Caesarians had on that account to give up the attack
which they contemplated from this quarter against Africa,
and an insurrection seemed inevitable, so soon as a leader of note
should appear in the peninsula.  In Africa moreover the coalition,
or rather Juba king of Numidia, who was the true regent there,
had been arming unmolested since the autumn of 705.  While the whole
east was consequently lost to the coalition by the battle
of Pharsalus, it might on the other hand continue the war
after an honourable manner probably in Spain, and certainly in Africa;
for to claim the aid of the king of Numidia, who had for a long time
been subject to the Roman community, against revolutionary fellow-
burgesses was for Romans a painful humiliation doubtless, but by no means
an act of treason.  Those again who in this conflict of despair
had no further regard for right or honour, might declare themselves
beyond the pale of the law, and commence hostilities as robbers;
or might enter into alliance with independent neighbouring states,
and introduce the public foe into the intestine strife; or, lastly,
might profess monarchy with the lips and prosecute the restoration
of the legitimate republic with the dagger of the assassin.

Hostilities of Robbers and Pirates

That the vanquished should withdraw and renounce the new monarchy,
was at least the natural and so far the truest expression of their
desperate position.  The mountains and above all the sea had been
in those times ever since the memory of man the asylum not only
of all crime, but also of intolerable misery and of oppressed right;
it was natural for Pompeians and republicans to wage a defiant war
against the monarchy of Caesar, which had ejected them,
in the mountains and on the seas, and especially natural for them
to take up piracy on a greater scale, with more compact organization,
and with more definite aims.  Even after the recall of the squadrons
that had come from the east they still possessed a very considerable
fleet of their own, while Caesar was as yet virtually without
vessels of war; and their connection with the Dalmatae who had risen
in their own interest against Caesar,(38) and their control
over the most important seas and seaports, presented the most
advantageous prospects for a naval war, especially on a small scale.
As formerly Sulla's hunting out of the democrats had ended
in the Sertorian insurrection, which was a conflict first waged
by pirates and then by robbers and ultimately became a very serious war,
so possibly, if there was in the Catonian aristocracy or among
the adherents of Pompeius as much spirit and fire as in the Marian
democracy, and if there was found among them a true sea-king,
a commonwealth independent of the monarchy of Caesar and perhaps a match
for it might arise on the still unconquered sea.

Parthian Alliance

Far more serious disapproval in every respect is due to the idea
of dragging an independent neighbouring state into the Roman civil war
and of bringing about by its means a counter-revolution;
law and conscience condemn the deserter more severely than the robber,
and a victorious band of robbers finds its way back to a free
and well-ordered commonwealth more easily than the emigrants who are
conducted back by the public foe.  Besides it was scarcely probable
that the beaten party would be able to effect a restoration in this way.
The only state, from which they could attempt to seek support,
was that of the Parthians; and as to this it was at least doubtful
whether it would make their cause its own, and very improbable
that it would fight out that cause against Caesar.

The time for republican conspiracies had not yet come.

Caesar Pursues Pompeius to Egypt

While the remnant of the defeated party thus allowed themselves
to be helplessly driven about by fate, and even those
who had determined to continue the struggle knew not how or where
to do so, Caesar, quickly as ever resolving and quickly acting,
laid everything aside to pursue Pompeius--the only one of his opponents
whom he respected as an officer, and the one whose personal capture
would have probably paralyzed a half, and that perhaps
the more dangerous half, of his opponents.  With a few men
he crossed the Hellespont--his single bark encountered in it a fleet
of the enemy destined for the Black Sea, and took the whole crews,
struck as with stupefaction by the news of the battle of Pharsalus,
prisoners--and as soon as the most necessary preparations were made,
hastened in pursuit of Pompeius to the east.  The latter had gone
from the Pharsalian battlefield to Lesbos, whence he brought away
his wife and his second son Sextus, and had sailed onward round
Asia Minor to Cilicia and thence to Cyprus.  He might have joined
his partisans at Corcyra or Africa; but repugnance toward his
aristocratic allies and the thought of the reception which awaited him
there after the day of Pharsalus and above all after his disgraceful
flight, appear to have induced him to take his own course
and rather to resort to the protection of the Parthian king
than to that of Cato.  While he was employed in collecting money
and slaves from the Roman revenue-farmers and merchants in Cyprus,
and in arming a band of 2000 slaves, he received news that Antioch
had declared for Caesar and that the route to the Parthians
was no longer open.  So he altered his plan and sailed to Egypt,
where a number of his old soldiers served in the army and the situation
and rich resources of the country allowed him time and opportunity
to reorganize the war.

In Egypt, after the death of Ptolemaeus Auletes (May 703)
his children, Cleopatra about sixteen years of age and Ptolemaeus Dionysus
about ten, had ascended the throne according to their father's will
jointly, and as consorts; but soon the brother or rather his guardian
Pothinus had driven the sister from the kingdom and compelled her
to seek a refuge in Syria, whence she made preparations
to get back to her paternal kingdom.  Ptolemaeus and Pothinus
lay with the whole Egyptian army at Pelusium for the sake
of protecting the eastern frontier against her, just when Pompeius
cast anchor at the Casian promontory and sent a request to the king
to allow him to land.  The Egyptian court, long informed of the disaster
at Pharsalus, was on the point of refusing to receive Pompeius;
but the king's tutor Theodotus pointed out that, in that case
Pompeius would probably employ his connections in the Egyptian army
to instigate rebellion; and that it would be safer, and also preferable
with regard to Caesar, if they embraced the opportunity of making away
with Pompeius.  Political reasonings of this sort did not readily fail
of their effect among the statesmen of the Hellenic world.

Death of Pompeius

Achillas the general of the royal troops and some of the former soldiers
of Pompeius went off in a boat to his vessel; and invited him
to come to the king and, as the water was shallow, to enter their barge.
As he was stepping ashore, the military tribune Lucius Septimius
stabbed him from behind, under the eyes of his wife and son
who were compelled to be spectators of the murder from the deck
of their vessel, without being able to rescue or revenge
(28 Sept. 706).  On the same day, on which thirteen years before
he had entered the capital in triumph over Mithradates,(39)
the man, who for a generation had been called the Great and for years
had ruled Rome, died on the desert sands of the inhospitable
Casian shore by the hand of one of his old soldiers.  A good officer
but otherwise of mediocre gifts of intellect and of heart,
fate had with superhuman constancy for thirty years allowed him
to solve all brilliant and toilless tasks; had permitted him to pluck
all laurels planted and fostered by others; had brought him
face to face with all the conditions requisite for obtaining
the supreme power--only in order to exhibit in his person an example
of spurious greatness, to which history knows no parallel.
Of all pitiful parts there is none more pitiful than that of passing
for more than one really is; and it is the fate of monarchy
that this misfortune inevitably clings to it, for barely once
in a thousand years does there arise among the people a man
who is a king not merely in name, but in reality.  If this disproportion
between semblance and reality has never perhaps been so abruptly marked
as in Pompeius, the fact may well excite grave reflection that it was
precisely he who in a certain sense opened the series of Roman monarchs.

Arrival of Caesar

When Caesar following the track of Pompeius arrived in the roadstead
of Alexandria, all was already over.  With deep  agitation
he turned away when the murderer brought to his ship the head of the man,
who had been his son-in-law and for long years his colleague
in rule, and to get whom alive into his power he had come to Egypt.
The dagger of the rash assassin precluded an answer to the question,
how Caesar would have dealt with the captive Pompeius; but, while
the humane sympathy, which still found a place in the great soul
of Caesar side by side with ambition, enjoined that he should
spare his former friend, his interest also required that he should
annihilate Pompeius otherwise than by the executioner.
Pompeius had been for twenty years the acknowledged ruler
of Rome; a dominion so deeply rooted does not perish
with the ruler's death.  The death of Pompeius did not break up
the Pompeians, but gave to them instead of an aged, incapable,
and worn-out chief in his sons Gnaeus and Sextus two leaders,
both of whom were young and active and the second was a man
of decided capacity.  To the newly-founded hereditary monarchy
hereditary pretendership attached itself at once like a parasite,
and it was very doubtful whether by this change of persons Caesar
did not lose more than he gained.

Caesar Regulates Egypt

Meanwhile in Egypt Caesar had now nothing further to do,
and the Romans and the Egyptians expected that he would
immediately set sail and apply himself to the subjugation of Africa,
and to the huge task of organization which awaited him after the victory.
But Caesar faithful to his custom--wherever he found himself
in the wide empire--of finally regulating matters at once and in person,
and firmly convinced that no resistance was to be expected
either from the Roman garrison or from the court, being, moreover,
in urgent pecuniary embarrassment, landed in Alexandria
with the two amalgamated legions accompanying him to the number
of 3200 men and 800 Celtic and German cavalry, took up his quarters
in the royal palace, and proceeded to collect the necessary sums of money
and to regulate the Egyptian succession, without allowing himself
to be disturbed by the saucy remark of Pothinus that Caesar
should not for such petty matters neglect his own so important affairs.
In his dealing with the Egyptians he was just and even indulgent.
Although the aid which they had given to Pompeius justified
the imposing of a war contribution, the exhausted land was spared
from this; and, while the arrears of the sum stipulated for in 695(40)
and since then only about half paid were remitted, there was required
merely a final payment of 10,000,000 -denarii- (400,000 pounds).
The belligerent brother and sister were enjoined immediately
to suspend hostilities, and were invited to have their dispute
investigated and decided before the arbiter.  They submitted;
the royal boy was already in the palace and Cleopatra also presented
herself there.  Caesar adjudged the kingdom of Egypt, agreeably
to the testament of Auletes, to the intermarried brother and sister
Cleopatra and Ptolemaeus Dionysus, and further gave unasked
the kingdom of Cyprus--cancelling the earlier act of annexation(41)--
as the appanageof the second-born of Egypt to the younger children
of Auletes, Arsinoe and Ptolemaeus the younger.

Insurrection in Alexandria

But a storm was secretly preparing.  Alexandria was a cosmopolitan city
as well as Rome, hardly inferior to the Italian capital in the number
of its inhabitants, far superior to it in stirring commercial spirit,
in skill of handicraft, in taste for science and art: in the citizens
there was a lively sense of their own national importance,
and, if there was no political sentiment, there was at any rate
a turbulent spirit, which induced them to indulge in their
street riots as regularly and as heartily as the Parisians
of the present day: one may conceive their feelings, when they saw
the Roman general ruling in the palace of the Lagids and their kings
accepting the award of his tribunal.  Pothinus and the boy-king,
both as may be conceived very dissatisfied at once with the peremptory
requisition of old debts and with the intervention in the throne-
dispute which could only issue, as it did, in favour of Cleopatra,
sent--in order to pacify the Roman demands--the treasures
of the temples and the gold plate of the king with intentional
ostentation to be melted at the mint; with increasing
indignation the Egyptians--who were pious even to superstition,
and who rejoiced in the world-renowned magnificence of their court
as if it were a possession of their own--beheld the bare walls
of their temples and the wooden cups on the table of their king.
The Roman army of occupation also, which had been essentially
denationalized by its long abode in Egypt and the many intermarriages
between the soldiers and Egyptian women, and which moreover
numbered a multitude of the old soldiers of Pompeius and runaway
Italian criminals and slaves in its ranks, was indignant at Caesar,
by whose orders it had been obliged to suspend its action
on the Syrian frontier, and at his handful of haughty legionaries.
The tumult even at the landing, when the multitude saw the Roman axes
carried into the old palace, and the numerous cases in which
his soldiers were assassinated in the city, had taught Caesar
the immense danger in which he was placed with his small force
in presence of that exasperated multitude.  But it was difficult
to return on account of the north-west winds prevailing at this season
of the year, and the attempt at embarkation might easily become
a signal for the outbreak of the insurrection; besides, it was not
the nature of Caesar to take his departure without having accomplished
his work.  He accordingly ordered up at once reinforcements
from Asia, and meanwhile, till these arrived, made a show
of the utmost self-possession.  Never was there greater gaiety
in his camp than during this rest at Alexandria; and while
the beautiful and clever Cleopatra was not sparing of her charms
in general and least of all towards her judge, Caesar also appeared
among all his victories to value most those won over beautiful women.
It was a merry prelude to graver scenes.  Under the leadership
of Achillas and, as was afterwards proved, by the secret orders
of the king and his guardian, the Roman army of occupation
stationed in Egypt appeared unexpectedly in Alexandria; and as soon as
the citizens saw that it had come to attack Caesar, they made
common cause with the soldiers.

Caesar in Alexandria

With a presence of mind, which in some measure justifies
his earlier foolhardiness, Caesar hastily collected his scattered men;
seized the persons of the king and his ministers; entrenched himself
in the royal residence and the adjoining theatre; and gave orders,
as there was no time to place in safety the war-fleet stationed
in the principal harbour immediately in front of the theatre,
that it should be set on fire and that Pharos, the island
with the light-tower commanding the harbour, should be occupied
by means of boats.  Thus at least a restricted position for defence
was secured, and the way was kept open to procure supplies
and reinforcements.  At the same time orders were issued
to the commandant of Asia Minor as well as to the nearest
subject countries, the Syrians and Nabataeans, the Cretans
and the Rhodians, to send troops and ships in all haste to Egypt.
The insurrection at the head of which the princess Arsinoe
and her confidant the eunuch Ganymedes had placed themselves,
meanwhilehad free course in all Egypt and in the greater part
of the capital.  In the streets of the latter there was daily fighting,
but without success either on the part of Caesar in gaining freer scope
and breaking through to the fresh water lake of Marea which lay behind
the town, where he could have provided himself with water and forage,
or on the part of the Alexandrians in acquiring superiority
over the besieged and depriving them of all drinking water; for,
when the Nile canals in Caesar's part of the town had been spoiled
by the introduction of salt water, drinkable water was unexpectedly found
in wells dug on the beach.

As Caesar was not to be overcome from the landward side,
the exertions of the besiegers were directed to destroy his fleet
and cut him off from the sea by which supplies reached him.
The island with the lighthouse and the mole by which this was connected
with the mainland divided the harbour into a western and an eastern half,
which were in communication with each other through two arched openings
in the mole.  Caesar commanded the island and the east harbour,
while the mole and the west harbour were in possession
of the citizens; and, as the Alexandrian fleet was burnt,
his vessels sailed in and out without hindrance. The Alexandrians,
after having vainly attempted to introduce fire-ships from the western
into the eastern harbour, equipped with the remnant of their arsenal
a small squadron and with this blocked up the way of Caesar's vessels,
when these were towing in a fleet of transports with a legion
that had arrived from Asia Minor; but the excellent Rhodian mariners
of Caesar mastered the enemy.  Not  long afterwards, however,
the citizens captured the lighthouse- island,(42) and from that point
totally closed the narrow and rocky mouth of the east harbour
for larger ships; so that Caesar's fleet was compelled
to take its station in the open roads before the east harbour,
and his communication with the sea hung only on a weak thread.
Caesar's fleet, attacked in that roadstead repeatedly
by the superior naval force of the enemy, could neither shun
the unequal strife, since the loss of the lighthouse-island
closed the inner harbour against it, nor yet withdraw, for the loss
of the roadstead would have debarred Caesar wholly from the sea.
Though the brave legionaries, supported by the dexterity
of the Rhodian sailors, had always hitherto decided these conflicts
in favour of the Romans, the Alexandrians renewed and augmented
their naval armaments with unwearied perseverance; the besieged
had to fight as often as it pleased the besiegers, and if the former
should be on a single occasion vanquished, Caesar would be
totally hemmed in and probably lost.

It was absolutely necessary to make an attempt to recover
the lighthouse island.  The double attack, which was made by boats
from the side of the harbour and by the war-vessels from the seaboard,
in reality brought not only the island but also the lower part
of the mole into Caesar's power; it was only at the second arch-
opening of the mole that Caesar ordered the attack to be stopped,
and the mole to be there closed towards the city by a transverse wall.
But while a violent conflict arose here around the entrenchers,
the Roman troops left the lower part of the mole adjoining
the island bare of defenders; a division of Egyptians landed there
unexpectedly, attacked in the rear the Roman soldiers and sailors
crowded together on the mole at the transverse wall, and drove
the whole mass in wild confusion into the sea.  A part
were taken on board by the Roman ships; the most were drowned.
Some 400 soldiers and a still greater number of men belonging
to the fleet were sacrificed on this day; the general himself,
who had shared the fate of his men, had been obliged to seek refuge,
in his ship, and when this sank from having been overloaded with men,
he  had to save himself by swimming to another.  But, severe as was
the loss suffered, it was amply compensated by the recovery
of the lighthouse-island, which along with the mole as far as
the first arch-opening remained in the hands of Caesar.

Relieving Army from Asia Minor

At length the longed-for relief arrived.  Mithradates of Pergamus,
an able warrior of the school of Mithradates Eupator, whose natural son
he claimed to be, brought up by land from Syria a motley army--
the Ityraeans of the prince of the Libanus,(43) the Bedouins
of Jamblichus, son of Sampsiceramus,(44) the Jews under the minister
Antipater, and the contingents generally of the petty chiefs
and communities of Cilicia and Syria.  From Pelusium, which Mithradates
had the fortune to occupy on the day of his arrival, he took
the great road towards Memphis with the view of avoiding
the intersected ground of the Delta and crossing the Nile
before its division; during which movement his troops received
manifold support from the Jewish peasants who were settled
in peculiar numbers in this part of Egypt.  The Egyptians,
with the young king Ptolemaeus now at their head, whom Caesar
had released to his people in the vain hope of allaying the insurrection
by his means, despatched an army to the Nile, to detain Mithradates
on its farther bank.  This army fell in with the enemy
even beyond Memphis at the so-called Jews'-camp, between Onion
and Heliopolis; nevertheless Mithradates, trained in the Roman fashion
of manoeuvring and encamping, amidst successful conflicts gained
the opposite bank at Memphis.  Caesar, on the other hand, as soon as
he obtained news of the arrival of the relieving army, conveyed a part
of his troops in ships to the end of the lake of Marea to the west
of Alexandria, and marched round this lake and down the Nile
to meet Mithradates advancing up the river.

Battle at the Nile

The junction took place without the enemy attempting to hinder it.
Caesar then marched into the Delta, whither the king had retreated,
overthrew, notwithstanding the deeply cut canal in their front,
the Egyptian vanguard at the first onset, and immediately stormed
the Egyptian camp itself.  It lay at the foot of a rising ground
between the Nile--from which only a narrow path separated it--
and marshes difficult of access.  Caesar caused the camp to be assailed
simultaneously from the front and from the flank on the path
along the Nile; and during this assault ordered a third detachment
to ascend unseen the heights behind the camp.  The victory was complete
the camp was taken, and those of the Egyptians who did not fal
beneath the sword of the enemy were drowned in the attempt to escape
to the fleet on the Nile.  With one of the boats, which sank
overladen with men, the young king also disappeared in the waters
of his native stream.

Pacificatin of Alexandria

Immediately after the battle Caesar advanced at the head
of his cavalry from the land-side straight into the portion
of the capital occupied by the Egyptians.  In mourning attire,
with the images of their gods in their hands, the enemy received him
and sued for peace; and his troops, when they saw him return as victor
from the side opposite to that by which he had set forth, welcomed him
with boundless joy.  The fate of the town, which had ventured
to thwart the plans of the master of the world and had brought him
within a hair's-breadth of destruction, lay in Caesar's hands;
but he was too much of a ruler to be sensitive, and dealt with
the Alexandrians as with the Massiliots.  Caesar--pointing
to their city severely devastated and deprived of its granaries,
of its world-renowned library, and of other important public buildings
on occasion of the burning of the fleet--exhorted the inhabitants
in future earnestly to cultivate the arts of peace alone, and to heal
the wounds which they had inflicted on themselves; for the rest,
he  contented himself with granting to the Jews settled in Alexandria
the same rights which the Greek population of the city enjoyed,
and with placing in Alexandria, instead of the previous Roman army
of occupation which nominally at least obeyed the kings of Egypt,
a formal Roman garrison--two of the legions besieged there,
and a third which afterwards arrived from Syria--under a commander
nominated by himself.  For this position of trust a man
was purposely selected, whose birth made it impossible for him
to abuse it--Rufio, an able soldier, but the son of a freedman.
Cleopatra and her younger brother Ptolemaeus obtained the sovereignty
of Egypt under the supremacy of Rome; the princess Arsinoe
was carried off to Italy, that she might not serve once more as a pretext
for insurrections to the Egyptians, who were after the Oriental fashion
quite as much devoted to their dynasty as they were indifferent
towards the individual dynasts; Cyprus became again a part
of the Roman province of Cilicia.

Course of Things during Caesar's Absence in Alexandria

This Alexandrian insurrection, insignificant as it was in itself
and slight as was its intrinsic connection with the events
of importance in the world's history which took place at the same time
in the Roman state, had nevertheless so far a momentous influence
on them that it compelled the man, who was all in all and without whom
nothing could be despatched and nothing could be solved,
to leave his proper tasks in abeyance from October 706 up to March 707
in order to fight along with Jews and Bedouins against a city rabble.
The consequences of personal rule began to make themselves felt.
They had the monarchy; but the wildest confusion prevailed everywhere,
and the monarch was absent.  The Caesarians were for the moment,
just like the Pompeians, without superintendence; the ability
of the individual officers and, above all, accident
decided matters everywhere.

Insubordination of Pharnaces

In Asia Minor there was, at the time of Caesar's departure for Egypt,
no enemy.  But Caesar's lieutenant there, the able Gnaeus Domitius
Calvinus, had received orders to take away again from king Pharnaces
what he had without instructions wrested from the allies of Pompeius;
and, as Pharnaces, an obstinate and arrogant despot like his father,
perseveringly refused to evacuate Lesser Armenia, no course remained
but to march against him.  Calvinus had been obliged to despatch
to Egypt two out of the three legions left behind with him and formed
out of the Pharsalian prisoners of war; he filled up the gap
by one legion hastily gathered from the Romans domiciled in Pontus
and two legions of Deiotarus exercised after the Roman manner,
and advanced into Lesser Armenia. But the Bosporan army,
tried in numerous conflicts with the dwellers on the Black Sea,
showed itself more efficient than his own.

Calvinus Defeated at Nicopolis
Victory of Caesar at Ziela

In an engagement at Nicopolis the Pontic levy of Calvinus
was cut to pieces and the Galatian legions ran off; only the one old
legion of the Romans fought its way through with moderate loss.
Instead of conquering Lesser Armenia, Calvinus could not even prevent
Pharnaces from repossessing himself of his Pontic "hereditary states,"
and pouring forth the whole vials of his horrible sultanic caprices
on their inhabitants, especially the unhappy Amisenes
(winter of 706-707).  When Caesar in person arrived in Asia Minor
and intimated to him that the service which Pharnaces had rendered
to him personally by having granted no help to Pompeius could not be
taken into account against the injury inflicted on the empire,
and that before any negotiation he must evacuate the province of Pontus
and send back the property which he had pillaged, he declared himself
doubtless ready to submit; nevertheless, well knowing how good reason
Caesar had for hastening to the west, he made no serious preparations
for the evacuation.  He did not know that Caesar finished
whatever he took in hand.  Without negotiating further,
Caesar took with him the one legion which he brought from Alexandria
and the troops of Calvinus and Deiotarus, and advanced against
the camp of Pharnaces at Ziela.  When the Bosporans saw him approach,
they boldly crossed the deep mountain-ravine which covered their front,
and charged the Romans up the hill.  Caesar's soldiers
were still occupied in pitching their camp, and the ranks wavered
for a moment; but the veterans accustomed to war rapidly rallied
and set the example for a general attack and for a complete victory
(2 Aug. 707).  In five days the campaign was ended--an invaluable piece
of good fortune at this time, when every hour was precious.

Regulation of Asia Minor

Caesar entrusted the pursuit of the king, who had gone home by way
of Sinope to Pharnaces' illegitimate brother, the brave Mithradates
of Pergamus, who as a reward for the services rendered by him in Egypt
received the crown of the Bosporan kingdom in room of Pharnaces.
In other respects the affairs of Syria and Asia Minor were peacefully
settled; Caesar's own allies were richly rewarded, those of Pompeius
were in general dismissed with fines or reprimands.  Deiotarus alone,
the most powerful of the clients of Pompeius, was again confined
to his narrow hereditary domain, the canton of the Tolistobogii.
In his stead Ariobarzanes king of Cappadocia was invested with
Lesser Armenia, and the tetrarchy of the Trocmi usurped by Deiotarus
was conferred on the new king of the Bosporus, who was descended
by the maternal side from one of the Galatian princely houses
as by the paternal from that of Pontus.

War by Land and Sea in Illyria
Defeat of Gabinius
Naval Victory at Tauris

In Illyria also, while Caesar was in Egypt, incidents of a very grave
nature had occurred.  The Dalmatian coast had been for centuries
a sore blemish on the Roman rule, and its inhabitants had been
at open feud with Caesar since the conflicts around Dyrrhachium;
while the interior also since the time of the Thessalian war,
swarmed with dispersed Pompeians.  Quintus Cornificius
had however, with the legions that followed him from Italy,
kept both the natives and the refugees in check and had
at the same time sufficiently met the difficult task of provisioning
the troops in these rugged districts.  Even when the able
Marcus Octavius, the victor of Curicta,(45) appeared with a part
of the Pompeian fleet in these waters to wage war there against Caesar
by sea and land, Cornificius not only knew how to maintain himself,
resting for support on the ships and the harbour of the Iadestini
(Zara), but in his turn also sustained several successful engagements
at sea with the fleet of his antagonist.  But when the new governor
of Illyria, the Aulus Gabinius recalled by Caesar from exile,(46)
arrived by the landward route in Illyria in the winter of 706-707
with fifteen cohorts and 3000 horse, the system of warfare
changed.  Instead of confining himself like his predecessor
to war on a small scale, the bold active man undertook at once,
in spite of the inclement season, an expedition with his whole force
to the mountains.  But the unfavourable weather, the difficulty
of providing supplies, and the brave resistance of the Dalmatians,
swept away the army; Gabinius had to commence his retreat,
was attacked in the course of it and disgracefully defeated
by the Dalmatians, and with the feeble remains of his fine army
had difficulty in reaching Salonae, where he soon afterwards died.
Most of the Illyrian coast towns thereupon surrendered to the fleet
of Octavius; those that adhered to Caesar, such as Salonae
and Epidaurus (Ragusa vecchia), were so hard pressed by the fleet
at sea and by the barbarians on land, that the surrender
and capitulation of the remains of the army enclosed in Salonae
seemed not far distant.  Then the commandant of the depot at Brundisium,
the energetic Publius Vatinius, in the absence of ships of war caused
common boats to be provided with beaks and manned with the soldiers
dismissed from the hospitals, and with this extemporized
war-fleet gave battle to the far superior fleet of Octavius
at the island of Tauris (Torcola between Lesina and Curzola)--
a battle in which, as in so many cases, the bravery of the leader
and of the marines compensated for the deficiencies of the vessels,
and the Caesarians achieved a brilliant victory.  Marcus Octavius
left these waters and proceeded to Africa (spring of 707);
the Dalmatians no doubt continued their resistance for years
with great obstinacy, but it was nothing beyond a local mountain-warfare.
When Caesar returned from Egypt, his resolute adjutant had already got rid
of the danger that was imminent in Illyria.

Reorganization of the Coalition in Africa

All the more serious was the position of things in Africa,
where the constitutional party had from the outset of the civil war
ruled absolutely and had continually augmented their power.
Down to the battle of Pharsalus king Juba had, properly speaking,
borne rule there; he had vanquished Curio, and his flying horsemen
and his numberless archers were the main strength of the army;
the Pompeian governor Varus played by his side so subordinate
a part that he even had to deliver those soldiers of Curio,
who had surrendered to him, over to the king, and had to look on
while they were executed or carried away into the interior of Numidia.
After the battle of Pharsalus a change took place.  With the exception
of Pompeius himself, no man of note among the defeated party
thought of flight to the Parthians.  As little did they attempt to hold
the sea with their united resources; the warfare waged by Marcus Octavius
in the Illyrian waters was isolated, and was without permanent success.
The great majority of the republicans as of the Pompeians
betook themselves to Africa, where alone an honourable
and constitutional warfare might still be waged against the usurper.
There the fragments of the army scattered at Pharsalus, the troops
that had garrisoned Dyrrhachium, Corcyra, and the Peloponnesus,
the remains of the Illyrian fleet, gradually congregated;
there the second commander-in-chief Metellus Scipio,
the two sons of Pompeius, Gnaeus and Sextus, the political leader
of the republicans Marcus Cato, the able officers Labienus,
Afranius, Petreius, Octavius and others met.  If the resources
of the emigrants had diminished, their fanaticism had, if possible,
even increased.  Not only did they continue to murder their prisoners
and even the officers of Caesar under flag of truce, but king Juba,
in whom the exasperation of the partisan mingled with the fury
of the half-barbarous African, laid down the maxim that in every
community suspected of sympathizing with the enemy the burgesses
ought to be extirpated and the town burnt down, and even practically
carried out this theory against some townships, such as the unfortunate
Vaga near Hadrumetum.  In fact it was solely owing to the energetic
intervention of Cato that the capital of the province itself
the flourishing Utica--which, just like Carthage formerly,
had been long regarded with a jealous eye by the Numidian kings--
did not experience the same treatment from Juba, and that measures
of precaution merely were taken against its citizens,
who certainly were not unjustly accused of leaning towards Caesar.

As neither Caesar himself nor any of his lieutenants undertook
the smallest movement against Africa, the coalition had full time
to acquire political and military reorganization there.  First of all,
it was necessary to fill up anew the place of commander-in-chief
vacant by the death of Pompeius.  King Juba was not disinclined
still to maintain the position which he had held in Africa
up to the battle of Pharsalus; indeed he bore himself no longer
as a client of the Romans but as an equal ally or even as a protector,
and took it upon him, for example, to coin Roman silver money
with his name and device; nay, he even raised a claim to be the sole
wearer of purple in the camp, and suggested to the Roman commanders
that they should lay aside their purple mantle of office.
Further Metellus Scipio demanded the supreme command for himself,
because Pompeius had recognized him in the Thessalian campaign
as on a footing of equality, more from the consideration that he was
his son-in-law than on military grounds.  The like demand was raised
by Varus as the governor--self-nominated, it is true--of Africa,
seeing that the war was to be waged in his province.  Lastly the army
desired for its leader the propraetor Marcus Cato.  Obviously
it was right.  Cato was the only man who possessed the requisite
devotedness, energy, and authority for the difficult office;
if he was no military man, it was infinitely better to appoint
as commander-in-chief a non-military man who understood how to listen
to reason and make his subordinates act, than an officer of untried
capacity like Varus, or even one of tried incapacity like Metellus
Scipio.  But the decision fell at length on this same Scipio,
and it was Cato himself who mainly determined that decision.
He did so, not because he felt himself unequal to such a task,
or because his vanity found its account rather in declining
than in accepting; still less because he loved or respected Scipio,
with whom he on the contrary was personally at variance,
and who with his notorious inefficiency had attained a certain importance
merely in virtue of his position as father-in-law to Pompeius;
but simply and solely because his obstinate legal formalism chose
rather to let the republic go to ruin in due course of law
than to save it in an irregular way.  When after the battle of Pharsalus
he met with Marcus Cicero at Corcyra, he had offered to hand over
the command in Corcyra to the latter--who was still from the time
of his Cilician administration invested with the rank of general--
as the officer of higher standing according to the letter of the law,
and by this readiness had driven the unfortunate advocate,
who now cursed a thousand times his laurels from the Arnanus,
almost to despair; but he had at the same time astonished all men
of any tolerable discernment.  The same principles were applied now,
when something more was at stake; Cato weighed the question
to whom the place of commander-in-chief belonged, as if the matter
had reference to a field at Tusculum, and adjudged it to Scipio.
By this sentence his own candidature and that of Varus were set aside.
But he it was also, and he alone, who confronted with energy
the claims of king Juba, and made him feel that the Roman nobility
came to him not suppliant, as to the great-prince of the Parthians,
with a view to ask aid at the hands of a protector, but as entitled
to command and require aid from a subject.  In the present state
of the Roman forces in Africa, Juba could not avoid lowering
his claims to some extent; although he still carried the point
with the weak Scipio, that the pay of his troops should be charged
on the Roman treasury and the cession of the province of Africa
should be assured to him in the event of victory.

By the side of the new general-in-chief the senate of the "three hundred"
again emerged.  It established its seat in Utica, and replenished
its thinned ranks by the admission of the most esteemed
and the wealthiest men of the equestrian order.

The warlike preparations were pushed forward, chiefly through
the zeal of Cato, with the greatest energy, and every man capable
of arms, even the freedman and Libyan, was enrolled in the legions;
by which course so many hands were withdrawn from agriculture
that a great part of the fields remained uncultivated, but an imposing
result was certainly attained.  The heavy infantry numbered fourteen
legions, of which two were already raised by Varus, eight others
were formed partly from the refugees, partly from the conscripts
in the province, and four were legions of king Juba armed
in the Roman manner.  The heavy cavalry, consisting of the Celts
and Germans who arrived with Labienus and sundry others incorporated
in their ranks, was, apart from Juba's squadron of cavalry equipped
in the Roman style, 1600 strong.  The light troops consisted
of innumerable masses of Numidians riding without bridle or rein
and armed merely with javelins, of a number of mounted bowmen,
and a large host of archers on foot.  To these fell to be added Juba's
120 elephants, and the fleet of 55 sail commanded by Publius Varus
and Marcus Octavius.  The urgent want of money was in some measure
remedied by a self-taxation on the part of the senate, which was
the more productive as the richest African capitalists had been
induced to enter it.  Corn and other supplies were accumulated
in immense quantities in the fortresses capable of defence;
at the same time the stores were as far as possible removed
from the open townships.  The absence of Caesar, the troublesome temper
of his legions, the ferment in Spain and Italy gradually raised
men's spirits, and the recollection of the Pharsalian defeat
began to give way to fresh hopes of victory.

The time lost by Caesar in Egypt nowhere revenged itself
more severely than here.  Had he proceeded to Africa immediately
after the death of Pompeius, he would have found there a weak,
disorganized, and frightened army and utter anarchy among the leaders;
whereas there was now in Africa, owing more especially to Cato's energy,
an army equal in number to that defeated at Pharsalus, under leaders
of note, and under a regulated superintendence.

Movements in Spain

A peculiar evil star seemed altogether to preside over this African
expedition of Caesar.  He had, even before his embarkation for Egypt,
arranged in Spain and Italy various measures preliminary and preparatory
to the African war; but out of all there had sprung nothing but mischief.
From Spain, according to Caesar's arrangement, the governor
of the southern province Quintus Cassius Longinus was to cross
with four legions to Africa, to be joined there by Bogud
king of West Mauretania,(47) and to advance with him towards
Numidia and Africa.  But that army destined for Africa
included in it a number of native Spaniards and two whole legions
formerly Pompeian; Pompeian sympathies prevailed in the army
as in the province, and the unskilful and tyrannical behaviour
of the Caesarian governor was not fitted to allay them. A formal revolt
took place; troops and towns took part for or against the governor;
already those who had risen against the lieutenant of Caesar
were on the point of openly displaying the banner of Pompeius;
already had Pompeius' elder son Gnaeus embarked from Africa for Spain
to take advantage of this favourable turn, when the disavowal
of the governor by the most respectable Caesarians themselves
and the interference of the commander of the northern province
suppressed just in right time the insurrection.  Gnaeus Pompeius,
who had lost time on the way with a vain attempt to establish himself
in Mauretania, came too late; Gaius Trebonius, whom Caesar
after his return from the east sent to Spain to relieve Cassius
(autumn of 707), met everywhere with absolute obedience.  But of course
amidst these blunders nothing was done from Spain to disturb
the organization of the republicans in Africa; indeed in consequence
of the complications with Longinus, Bogud king of West Mauretania,
who was on Caesar's side and might at least have put some obstacles
in the way of king Juba, had been called away with his troops to Spain.

Military Revolt in Campania

Still more critical were the occurrences among the troops
whom Caesar had caused to be collected in southern Italy, in order
to his embarkation with them for Africa.  They were for the most part
the old legions, which had founded Caesar's throne in Gaul, Spain,
and Thessaly.  The spirit of these troops had not been improved
by victories, and had been utterly disorganized by long repose
in Lower Italy.  The almost superhuman demands which the general
made on them, and the effects of which were only too clearly apparent
in their fearfully thinned ranks, left behind even in these men of iron
a leaven of secret rancour which required only time and quiet
to set their minds in a ferment.  The only man who had influence
over them, had been absent and almost unheard-of for a year;
while the officers placed over them were far more afraid of the soldiers
than the soldiers of them, and overlooked in the conquerors
of the world every outrage against those that gave them quarters,
and every breach of discipline.  When the orders to embark for Sicily
arrived, and the soldier was to exchange the luxurious ease of Campania
for a third campaign certainly not inferior to those of Spain
and Thessaly in point of hardship, the reins, which had been
too long relaxed and were too suddenly tightened, snapt asunder.
The legions refused to obey till the promised presents
were paid to them, scornfully repulsed the officers sent by Caesar,
and even threw stones at them.  An attempt to extinguish the incipient
revolt by increasing the sums promised not only had no success,
but the soldiers set out in masses to extort the fulfilment
of the promises from the general in the capital.  Several officers,
who attempted to restrain the mutinous bands on the way, were slain.
It was a formidable danger.  Caesar ordered the few soldiers
who were in the city to occupy the gates, with the view of warding off
the justly apprehended pillage at least at the first onset,
and suddenly appeared among the furious bands demanding to know
what they wanted.  They exclaimed: "discharge."  In a moment
the request was granted.  Respecting the presents, Caesar added,
which he had promised to his soldiers at his triumph, as well as
respecting the lands which he had not promised to them
but had destined for them, they might apply to him on the day
when he and the other soldiers should triumph; in the triumph itself
they could not of course participate, as having been previously
discharged.  The masses were not prepared for things taking this turn;
convinced that Caesar could not do without them for the African campaign,
they had demanded their discharge only in order that, if it were refused,
they might annex their own conditions to their service.  Half unsettled
in their belief as to their own indispensableness; too awkward
to return to their object, and to bring the negotiation
which had missed its course back to the right channel; ashamed, as men,
by the fidelity with which the Imperator kept his word even to soldiers
who had forgotten their allegiance, and by his generosity
which even now granted far more than he had ever promised;
deeply affected, as soldiers, when the general presented to them
the prospect of their being necessarily mere civilian spectators
of the triumph of their comrades, and when he called them no longer
"comrades" but "burgesses,"--by this very form of address,
which from his mouth sounded so strangely, destroying as it were
with one blow the whole pride of their past soldierly career;
and, besides all this, under the spell of the man whose presence
had an irresistible power--the soldiers stood for a while mute
and lingering, till from all sides a cry arose that the general
would once more receive them into favour and again permit them
to be called Caesar's soldiers.  Caesar, after having allowed himself
to be sufficiently entreated, granted the permission; but the ringleaders
in this mutiny had a third cut off from their triumphal presents.
History knows no greater psychological masterpiece, and none
that was more completely successful.

Caesar Proceeds to Africa
Conflict at Ruspina

This mutiny operated injuriously on the African campaign,
at least in so far as it considerably delayed the commencement of it.
When Caesar arrived at the port of Lilybaeum destined for the embarkation
the ten legions intended for Africa werefar from being
fully assembled there, and it was the experienced troops
that were farthest behind.  Hardly however had six legions,
of which five were newly formed, arrived there and the necessary
war-vessels and transports come forward, when Caesar put to sea with them
(25 Dec. 707 of the uncorrected, about 8 Oct. of the Julian, calendar).
The enemy's fleet, which on account of the prevailing equinoctial gales
was drawn up on the beach at the island Aegimurus in front of the bay
of Carthage, did not oppose the passage; but, the same storms scattered
the fleet of Caesar in all directions, and, when he availed himself
of the opportunity of landing not far from Hadrumetum (Susa),
he could not disembark more than some 3000 men, mostly recruits,
and 150 horsemen.  His attempt to capture Hadrumetum strongly occupied
by the enemy miscarried; but Caesar possessed himself of the two seaports
not far distant from each other, Ruspina (Monastir near Susa)
and Little Leptis.  Here he entrenched himself; but his position
was so insecure, that he kept his cavalry in the ships and the ships
ready for sea and provided with a supply of water, in order to re-embark
at any moment if he should be attacked by a superior force.
This however was not necessary, for just at the right time the ships
that had been driven out of their course arrived (3 Jan. 708).
On the very following day Caesar, whose army in consequence
of the arrangements made by the Pompeians suffered from want of corn,
undertook with three legions an expedition into the interior
of the country, but was attacked on the march not far from Ruspina
by the corps which Labienus had brought up to dislodge Caesar
from the coast.  As Labienus had exclusively cavalry and archers,
and Caesar almost nothing but infantry of the line, the legions
were quickly surrounded and exposed to the missiles of the enemy,
without being able to retaliate or to attack with success.  No doubt
the deploying of the entire line relieved once more the flanks,
and spirited charges saved the honour of their arms; but a retreat
was unavoidable, and had Ruspina not been so near, the Moorish javelin
would perhaps have accomplished the same result here
as the Parthian bow at Carrhae.

Caesar's Position at Ruspina

Caesar, whom this day had fully convinced of the difficulty
of the impending war, would not again expose his soldiers untried
and discouraged by the new mode of fighting to any such attack,
but awaited the arrival of his veteran legions.  The interval
was employed in providing some sort of compensation against
the crushing superiority of the enemy in the weapons of distant warfare.
The incorporation of the suitable men from the fleet as light horsemen
or archers in the land-army could not be of much avail.  The diversions
which Caesar suggested were somewhat more effectual.  He succeeded
in bringing into arms against Juba the Gaetulian pastoral tribes
wandering on the southern slope of the great Atlas towards the Sahara;
for the blows of the Marian and Sullan period had reached even to them,
and their indignation against Pompeius, who had at that time made them
subordinate to the Numidian kings,(48) rendered them from the outset
favourably inclined to the heir of the mighty Marius of whose Jugurthine
campaign they had still a lively recollection.  The Mauretanian kings,
Bogud in Tingis and Bocchus in Iol, were Juba's natural rivals
and to a certain extent long since in alliance with Caesar.
Further, there still roamed in the border-region between the kingdoms
of Juba and Bocchus the last of the Catilinarians, that Publius Sittius
of Nuceria,(49) who eighteen years before had become converted
from a bankrupt Italian merchant into a Mauretanian leader
of free bands, and since that time had procured for himself
a name and a body of retainers amidst the Libyan quarrels.
Bocchus and Sittius united fell on the Numidian land, and occupied
the important town of Cirta; and their attack, as well as
that of the Gaetulians, compelled king Juba to send a portion
of his troops to his southern and western frontiers.

Caesar's situation, however, continued sufficiently unpleasant.
His army was crowded together within a space of six square miles;
though the fleet conveyed corn, the want of forage was as much felt
by Caesar's cavalry as by those of Pompeius before Dyrrhachium.
The light troops of the enemy remained notwithstanding all the exertions
of Caesar so immeasurably superior to his, that it seemed almost
impossible to carry offensive operations into the interior
even with veterans.  If Scipio retired and abandoned the coast towns,
he might perhaps achieve a victory like those which the vizier of Orodes
had won over Crassus and Juba over Curio, and he could at least
endlessly protract the war.  The simplest consideration suggested
this plan of campaign; even Cato, although far from a strategist,
counselled its adoption, and offered at the same time to cross
with a corps to Italy and to call the republicans there to arms--
which, amidst the utter confusion in that quarter, might very well
meet with success.  But Cato could only advise, not command; Scipio
the commander-in-chief decided that the war should be carried on
in the region of the coast.  This was a blunder, not merely inasmuch as
they thereby dropped a plan of war promising a sure result, but also
inasmuch as the region to which they transferred the war was in dangerous
agitation, and a good part of the army which they opposed to Caesar
was likewise in a troublesome temper.  The fearfully strict levy,
the carrying off of the supplies, the devastating of the smaller
townships, the feeling in general that they were being sacrificed
for a cause which from the outset was foreign to them
and was already lost, had exasperated the native population against
the Roman republicans fighting out their last struggle of despair
on African soil; and the terrorist proceedings of the latter against
all communities that were but suspected of indifference,(50)
had raised this exasperation to the most fearful hatred.
The African towns declared, wherever they could venture to do so,
for Caesar; among the Gaetulians and the Libyans, who served in numbers
among the light troops and even in the legions, desertion was spreading.
But Scipio with all the obstinacy characteristic of folly persevered
in his plan, marched with all his force from Utica to appear
before the towns of Ruspina and Little Leptis occupied by Caesar,
furnished Hadrumetum to the north and Thapsus to the south
(on the promontory Ras Dimas) with strong garrisons, and in concert
with Juba, who likewise appeared before Ruspina with all his troops
not required by the defence of the frontier, offered battle repeatedly
to the enemy.  But Caesar was resolved to wait for his veteran legions.
As these one after another arrived and appeared on the scene
of strife, Scipio and Juba lost the desire to risk a pitched battle,
and Caesar had no means of compelling them to fight owing
to their extraordinary superiority in light cavalry.  Nearly two months
passed away in marches and skirmishes in the neighbourhood
of Ruspina and Thapsus, which chiefly had relation to the finding out
of the concealed store-pits (silos) common in the country,
and to the extension of posts.  Caesar, compelled by the enemy's
horsemen to keep as much as possible to the heights or even to cover
his flanks by entrenched lines, yet accustomed his soldiers
gradually during this laborious and apparently endless warfare
to the foreign mode of fighting.  Friend and foe hardly recognized
the rapid general in the cautious master of fence who trained his men
carefully and not unfrequently in person; and they became almost puzzled
by the masterly skill which displayed itself as conspicuously
in delay as in promptitude of action.

Battle at Thapsus

At last Caesar, after being joined by his last reinforcements,
made a lateral movement towards Thapsus.  Scipio had, as we have said,
strongly garrisoned this town, and thereby committed the blunder
of presenting to his opponent an object of attack easy to be seized;
to this first error he soon added the second still less excusable
blunder of now for the rescue of Thapsus giving the battle,
which Caesar had wished and Scipio had hitherto rightly refused,
on ground which placed the decision in the hands of the infantry
of the line.  Immediately along the shore, opposite to Caesar's camp,
the legions of Scipio and Juba appeared, the fore ranks ready
for fighting, the hinder ranks occupied in forming an entrenched camp;
at the same time the garrison of Thapsus prepared for a sally.
Caesar's camp-guard sufficed to repulse the latter.  His legions,
accustomed to war, already forming a correct estimate of the enemy
from the want of precision in their mode of array and their
ill-closed ranks, compelled--while yet the entrenching was going forward
on that side, and before even the general gave the signal--
a trumpeter to sound for the attack, and advanced along the whole line
headed by Caesar himself, who, when he saw his men advance
without waiting for his orders, galloped forward to lead them
against the enemy.  The right wing, in advance of the other divisions,
frightened the line of elephants opposed to it--this was
the last great battle in which these animals were employed--
by throwing bullets and arrows, so that they wheeled round
on their own ranks.  The covering force was cut down, the left wing
of the enemy was broken, and the whole line was overthrown.
The defeat was the more destructive, as the new camp of the beaten army
was not yet ready, and the old one was at a considerable distance;
both were successively captured almost without resistance.  The mass
of the defeated army threw away their arms and sued for quarter;
but Caesar's soldiers were no longer the same who had readily refrained
from battle before Ilerda and honourably spared the defenceless
at Pharsalus.  The habit of civil war and the rancour left behind
by the mutiny asserted their power in a terrible manner
on the battlefield of Thapsus.  If the hydra with which they fought
always put forth new energies, if the army was hurried from Italy
to Spain, from Spain to Macedonia, from Macedonia to Africa, and if
the repose ever more eagerly longed for never came, the soldier sought,
and not wholly without cause, the reason of this state of things
in the unseasonable clemency of Caesar.  He had sworn to retrieve
the general's neglect, and remained deaf to the entreaties
of his disarmed fellow-citizens as well as to the commands of Caesar
and the superior officers.  The fifty thousand corpses that covered
the battle-field of Thapsus, among whom were several Caesarian officers
known as secret opponents of the new monarchy, and therefore
cut down on this occasion by their own men, showed how the soldier
procures for himself repose.  The victorious army on the other hand
numbered no more than fifty dead (6 April 708).

Cato in Utica
His Death

There was as little a continuance of the struggle in Africa
after the battle of Thapsus, as there had been a year and a half before
in the east after the defeat of Pharsalus.  Cato as commandant
of Utica convoked the senate, set forth how the means of defence stood,
and submitted it to the decision of those assembled whether
they would yield or defend themselves to the last man--
only adjuring them to resolve and to act not each one for himself,
but all in unison.  The more courageous view found several supporters;
it was proposed to manumit on behalf of the state the slaves
capable of arms, which however Cato rejected as an illegal encroachment
on private property, and suggested in its stead a patriotic appeal
to the slave-owners.  But soon this fit of resolution in an assembly
consisting in great part of African merchants passed off, and they agreed
to capitulate.  Thereupon when Faustus Sulla, son of the regent,
and Lucius Afranius arrived in Utica with a strong division
of cavalry from the field of battle, Cato still made an attempt
to hold the town through them; but he indignantly rejected their demand
to let them first of all put to death the untrustworthy citizens of Utica
en masse, and chose to let the last stronghold of the republicans fall
into the hands of the monarch without resistance rather than to profane
the last moments of the republic by such a massacre.  After he had--
partly by his authority, partly by liberal largesses--checked so far
as he could the fury of the soldiery against the unfortunate Uticans;
after he had with touching solicitude furnished to those who preferred
not to trust themselves to Caesar's mercy the means for flight,
and to those who wished to remain the opportunity of capitulating
under the most tolerable conditions, so far as his ability reached;
and after having thoroughly satisfied himself that he could render
to no one any farther aid, he held himself released from his command,
retired to his bedchamber, and plunged his sword into his breast.

The Leaders of the Republicans Put to Death

Of the other fugitive leaders only a few escaped.  The cavalry
that fled from Thapsus encountered the bands of Sittius,
and were cut down or captured by them; their leaders Afranius and Faustus
were delivered up to Caesar, and, when the latter did not order
their immediate execution, they were slain in a tumult by his veterans.
The commander-in-chief Metellus Scipio with the fleet of the defeated
party fell into the power of the cruisers of Sittius  and,
when they were about to lay hands on him, stabbed himself.  King Juba,
not unprepared for such an issue, had in that case resolved to die
in a way which seemed to him befitting a king, and had caused
an enormous funeral pile to be prepared in the market-place
of his city Zama, which was intended to consume along with his body
all his treasures and the dead bodies of the whole citizens of Zama.
But the inhabitants of the town showed no desire to let themselves
be employed by way of decoration for the funeral rites
of the African Sardanapalus; and they closed the gates against
the king when fleeing from the battle-field he appeared, accompanied
by Marcus Petreius, before their city.  The king--one of those natures
that become savage amidst a life of dazzling and insolent enjoyment,
and prepare for themselves even out of death an intoxicating feast--
resorted with his companion to one of his country houses,
caused a copious banquet to be served up, and at the close
of the feast challenged Petreius to fight him to death in single combat.
It was the conqueror of Catilina that received his death at the hand
of the king; the latter thereupon caused himself to be stabbed
by one of his slaves.  The few men of eminence that escaped,
such as Labienus and Sextus Pompeius, followed the elder brother
of the latter to Spain and sought, like Sertorius formerly,
a last refuge of robbers and pirates in the waters and the mountains
of that still half-independent land.

Regulation of Africa

Without resistance Caesar regulated the affairs of Africa.
As Curio had already proposed, the kingdom of Massinissa was broken up.
The most eastern portion or region of Sitifis was united with the kingdom
of Bocchus king of East Mauretania,(51) and the faithful king Bogud
of Tingis was rewarded with considerable gifts. Cirta (Constantine)
and the surrounding district, hitherto possessed under the supremacy
of Juba by the prince Massinissa and his son Arabion, were conferred
on the condottiere Publius Sittius that he might settle
his half-Roman bands there;(52) but at the same time this district,
as well as by far the largest and most fertile portion
of the late Numidian kingdom, were united as "New Africa"
with the older province of Africa, and the defence of the country
along the coast against the roving tribes of the desert,
which the republic had entrusted to a client-king, was imposed
by the new ruler on the empire itself.

The Victory of Monarchy

The struggle, which Pompeius and the republicans had undertaken
against the monarchy of Caesar, thus terminated, after having lasted
for four years, in the complete victory of the new monarch.
No doubt the monarchy was not established for the first time
on the battle-fields of Pharsalus and Thapsus; it might already
be dated from the moment when Pompeius and Caesar in league
had established their joint rule and overthrown the previous
aristocratic constitution.  Yet it was only those baptisms of blood
of the ninth August 706 and the sixth April 708 that set aside
the conjoint rule so opposed to the nature of absolute dominion,
and conferred fixed status and formal recognition on the new monarchy.
Risings of pretenders and republican conspiracies might ensue and provoke
new commotions, perhaps even new revolutions and restorations;
but the continuity of the free republic that had been uninterrupted
for five hundred years was broken through, and monarchy was established
throughout the range of the wide Roman empire by the legitimacy
of accomplished fact.

The End of the Republic

The constitutional struggle was at an end; and that it was so,
was proclaimed by Marcus Cato when he fell on his sword at Utica.
For many years he had been the foremost man in the struggle
of the legitimate republic against its oppressors; he had continued it,
long after he had ceased to cherish any hope of victory.
But now the struggle itself had become impossible; the republic
which Marcus Brutus had founded was dead and never to be revived;
what were the republicans now to do on the earth?  The treasure
was carried off, the sentinels were thereby relieved; who could
blame them if they departed?  There was more nobility, and above all
more judgment, in the death of Cato than there had been in his life.
Cato was anything but a great man; but with all that short-sightedness,
that perversity, that dry prolixity, and those spurious phrases
which have stamped him, for his own and for all time,
as the ideal of unreflecting republicanism and the favourite of all
who make it their hobby, he was yet the only man who honourably
and courageously championed in the last struggle the great system
doomed to destruction.  Just because the shrewdest lie feels itself
inwardly annihilated before the simple truth, and because
all the dignity and glory of human nature ultimately depend
not on shrewdness but on honesty, Cato has played a greater part
in history than many men far superior to him in intellect.
It only heightens the deep and tragic significance of his death
that he was himself a fool; in truth it is just because Don Quixote
is a fool that he is a tragic figure.  It is an affecting fact,
that on that world-stage, on which so many great and wise men
had moved and acted, the fool was destined to give the epilogue.
He too died not in vain.  It was a fearfully striking protest
of the republic against the monarchy, that the last republican went
as the first monarch came--a protest which tore asunder like gossamer
all that so-called constitutional character with which Caesar
invested his monarchy, and exposed in all its hypocritical falsehood
the shibboleth of the reconciliation of all parties, under the aegis
of which despotism grew up.  The unrelenting warfare which the ghost
of the legitimate republic waged for centuries, from Cassius
and Brutus down to Thrasea and Tacitus, nay, even far later,
against the Caesarian monarchy--a warfare of plots and of literature--
was the legacy which the dying Cato bequeathed to his enemies.
This republican opposition derived from Cato its whole attitude--
stately, transcendental in its rhetoric, pretentiously rigid,
hopeless, and faithful to death; and accordingly it began
even immediately after his death to revere as a saint the man
who in his lifetime was not unfrequently its laughing-stock
and its scandal.  But the greatest of these marks of respect
was the involuntary homage which Caesar rendered to him, when he made
an exception to the contemptuous clemency with which he was wont
to treat his opponents, Pompeians as well as republicans,
in the case of Cato alone, and pursued him even beyond the grave
with that energetic hatred which practical statesmen are wont to feel
towards antagonists opposing them from a region of ideas
which they regard as equally dangerous and impracticable.




CHAPTER XI

The Old Republic and the New Monarchy

Character of Caesar

The new monarch of Rome, the first ruler over the whole domain
of Romano-Hellenic civilization, Gaius Julius Caesar, was in his
fifty-sixth year (born 12 July 652?) when the battle at Thapsus,
the last link in a long chain of momentous victories, placed
the decision as to the future of the world in his hands.  Few men
have had their elasticity so thoroughly put to the proof as Caesar--
the sole creative genius produced by Rome, and the last produced
by the ancient world, which accordingly moved on in the path
that he marked out for it until its sun went down.  Sprung from one
of the oldest noble families of Latium--which traced back its lineage
to the heroes of the Iliad and the kings of Rome, and in fact
to the Venus-Aphrodite common to both nations--he spent the years
of his boyhood and early manhood as the genteel youth of that epoch
were wont to spend them.  He had tasted the sweetness as well as
the bitterness of the cup of fashionable life, had recited and declaimed,
had practised literature and made verses in his idle hours,
had prosecuted love-intrigues of every sort, and got himself
initiated into all the mysteries of shaving, curls, and ruffles
pertaining to the toilette-wisdom of the day, as well as
into the still more mysterious art of always borrowing and never paying.
But the flexible steel of that nature was proof against even
these dissipated and flighty courses; Caesar retained both
his bodily vigour and his elasticity of mind and of heart unimpaired.
In fencing and in riding he was a match for any of his soldiers,
and his swimming saved his life at Alexandria; the incredible rapidity
of his journeys, which usually for the sake of gaining time
were performed by night--a thorough contrast to the procession-like
slowness with which Pompeius moved from one place to another--
was the astonishment of his contemporaries and not the least
among the causes of his success.  The mind was like the body.
His remarkable power of intuition revealed itself in the precision
and practicability of all his arrangements, even where he gave orders
without having seen with his own eyes.  His memory was matchless,
and it was easy for him to carry on several occupations simultaneously
with equal self-possession.  Although a gentleman, a man of genius,
and a monarch, he had still a heart.  So long as he lived,
he cherished the purest veneration for his worthy mother Aurelia
(his father having died early); to his wives and above all
to his daughter Julia he devoted an honourable affection,
which was not without reflex influence even on political affairs.
With the ablest and most excellent men of his time, of high
and of humbler rank, he maintained noble relations of mutual fidelity,
with each after his kind.  As he himself never abandoned
any of his partisans after the pusillanimous and unfeeling manner
of Pompeius, but adhered to his friends--and that not merely
from calculation--through good and bad times without wavering,
several of these, such as Aulus Hirtius and Gaius Matius, gave,
even after his death, noble testimonies of their attachment to him.

If in a nature so harmoniously organized any one aspect of it
may be singled out as characteristic, it is this--that he stood aloof
from all ideology and everything fanciful.  As a matter of course,
Caesar was a man of passion, for without passion there is no genius;
but his passion was never stronger than he could control.
He had had his season of youth, and song, love, and wine had taken
lively possession of his spirit; but with him they did not penetrate
to the inmost core of his nature.  Literature occupied him long
and earnestly; but, while Alexander could not sleep for thinking
of the Homeric Achilles, Caesar in his sleepless hours mused
on the inflections of the Latin nouns and verbs.  He made verses,
as everybody then did, but they were weak; on the other hand
he was interested in subjects of astronomy and natural science.
While wine was and continued to be with Alexander the destroyer of care,
the temperate Roman, after the revels of his youth were over,
avoided it entirely.  Around him, as around all those
whom the full lustre of woman's love has dazzled in youth,
fainter gleams of it continued imperishably to linger;
even in later years he had love-adventures and successes with women,
and he retained a certain foppishness in his outward appearance,
or, to speak more correctly, the pleasing consciousness
of his own manly beauty.  He carefully covered the baldness,
which he keenly felt, with the laurel chaplet that he wore in public
in his later years, and he would doubtless have surrendered
some of his victories, if  he could thereby have brought back
his youthful locks.  But, however much even when monarch
he enjoyed the society of women, he only amused himself
with them, and allowed them no manner of influence over him;
even his much-censured relation to queen Cleopatra was only contrived
to mask a weak point in his political position.(1)  Caesar was thoroughly
a realist and a man of sense; and whatever he undertook
and achieved was pervaded and guided by the cool sobriety
which constitutes the most marked peculiarity of his genius.
To this he owed the power of living energetically in the present,
undisturbed either by recollection or by expectation; to this
he owed the capacity of acting at any moment with collected vigour,
and of applying his whole genius even to the smallest
and most incidental enterprise; to this he owed the many-sided power
with which he grasped and mastered whatever understanding can comprehend
and will can compel; to this he owed the self-possessed ease
with which he arranged his periods as well as projected his campaigns;
to this he owed the "marvellous serenity" which remained
steadily with him through good and evil days; to this he owed
the complete independence, which admitted of no control by favourite
or by mistress, or even by friend.  It resulted, moreover,
from this clearness of judgment that Caesar never formed to himself
illusions regarding the power of fate and the ability of man;
in his case the friendly veil was lifted up, which conceals from man
the inadequacy of his working.  Prudently as he laid his plans
and considered all possibilities, the feeling was never absent
from his breast that in all things fortune, that is to say accident,
must bestow success; and with this may be connected the circumstance
that he so often played a desperate game with destiny, and in particular
again and again hazarded his person with daring indifference.
As indeed occasionally men of predominant sagacity betake themselves
to a pure game of hazard, so there was in Caesar's rationalism a point
at which it came in some measure into contact with mysticism.

Caesar as a Statesman

Gifts such as these could not fail to produce a statesman.
From early youth, accordingly, Caesar was a statesman in the deepest
sense of the term, and his aim was the highest which man is allowed
to propose to himself--the political, military, intellectual,
and moral regeneration of his own deeply decayed nation,
and of the still more deeply decayed Hellenic nation intimately akin
to his own.  The hard school of thirty years' experience changed
his views as to the means by which this aim was to be reached; his aim
itself remained the same in the times of his hopeless humiliation
and of his unlimited plenitude of power, in the times when as demagogue
and conspirator he stole towards it by paths of darkness,
and in those when, as joint possessor of the supreme power
and then as monarch, he worked at his task in the full light of day
before the eyes of the world.  All the measures of a permanent kind
that proceeded from him at the most various times assume their
appropriate places in the great building-plan.  We cannot
therefore properly speak of isolated achievements of Caesar;
he did nothing isolated.  With justice men commend Caesar the orator
for his masculine eloquence, which, scorning all the arts
of the advocate, like a clear flame at once enlightened and warmed.
With justice men admire in Caesar the author the inimitable simplicity
of the composition, the unique purity and beauty of the language.
With justice the greatest masters of war of all times have praised
Caesar the general, who, in a singular degree disregarding routine
and tradition, knew always how to find out the mode of warfare
by which in the given case the enemy was conquered, and which
was thus in the given case the right one; who with the certainty
of divination found the proper means for every end; who after defeat
stood ready for battle like William of Orange, and ended the campaign
invariably with victory; who managed that element of warfare,
the treatment of which serves to distinguish military genius
from the mere ordinary ability of an officer--the rapid movement
of masses--with unsurpassed perfection, and found the guarantee
of victory not in the massiveness of his forces but in the celerity
of their movements, not in long preparation but in rapid
and daring action even with inadequate means.  But all these were
with Caesar mere secondary matters; he was no doubt a great orator,
author, and general, but he became each of these merely because
he was a consummate statesman.  The soldier more especially
played in him altogether an accessory part, and it is
one of the principal peculiarities by which he is distinguished
from Alexander, Hannibal, and Napoleon, that he began his political
activity not as an officer, but as a demagogue.  According
to his original plan he had purposed to reach his object, like Pericles
and Gaius Gracchus, without force of arms, and throughout eighteen years
he had as leader of the popular party moved exclusively amid
political plans and intrigues--until, reluctantly convinced
of the necessity for a military support, he, when already forty years
of age, put himself at the head of an army.  It was natural
that he should even afterwards remain still more statesman
than general--just like Cromwell, who also transformed himself
from a leader of opposition into a military chief and democratic king,
and who in general, little as the prince of Puritans seems to resemble
the dissolute Roman, is yet in his development as well as
in the objects which he aimed at and the results which he achieved
of all statesmen perhaps the most akin to Caesar.  Even in his mode
of warfare this improvised generalship may still be recognized;
the enterprises of Napoleon against Egypt and against England
do not more clearly exhibit the artillery-lieutenant who had risen
by service to command than the similar enterprises of Caesar exhibit
the demagogue metamorphosed into a general.  A regularly trained
officer would hardly have been prepared, through political
considerations of a not altogether stringent nature, to set aside
the best-founded military scruples in the way in which Caesar did
on several occasions, most strikingly in the case of his landing
in Epirus.  Several of his acts are therefore censurable
from a military point of view; but what the general loses,
the statesman gains.  The task of the statesman is universal
in its nature like Caesar's genius; if he undertook things
the most varied and most remote one from another, they had all
without exception a bearing on the one great object to which
with infinite fidelity and consistency he devoted himself;
and of the manifold aspects and directions of his great activity
he never preferred one to another.  Although a master of the art of war,
he yet from statesmanly considerations did his utmost to avert
civil strife and, when it nevertheless began, to earn laurels
stained as little as possible by blood.  Although the founder
of a military monarchy, he yet, with an energy unexampled in history,
allowed no hierarchy of marshals or government of praetorians
to come into existence.  If he had a preference for any one form
of services rendered to the state, it was for the sciences and arts
of peace rather than for those of war.

The most remarkable peculiarity of his action as a statesman
was its perfect harmony.  In reality all the conditions
for this most difficult of all human functions were united in Caesar.
A thorough realist, he never allowed the images of the past
or venerable tradition to disturb him; for him nothing was of value
in politics but the living present and the law of reason, just as
in his character of grammarian he set aside historical and antiquarian
research and recognized nothing but on the one hand the living
-usus loquendi- and on the other hand the rule of symmetry.
A born ruler, he governed the minds of men as the wind drives the clouds,
and compelled the most heterogeneous natures to place themselves
at his service--the plain citizen and the rough subaltern, the genteel
matrons of Rome and the fair princesses of Egypt and Mauretania,
the brilliant cavalry-officer and the calculating banker.
His talent for organization was marvellous; no statesman has ever
compelled alliances, no general has ever collected an army
out of unyielding and refractory elements with such decision,
and kept them together with such firmness, as Caesar displayed
in constraining and upholding his coalitions and his legions;
never did regent judge his instruments and assign each to the place
appropriate for him with so acute an eye.

He was monarch; but he never played the king.  Even when absolute
lord of Rome, he retained the deportment of the party-leader;
perfectly pliant and smooth, easy and charming in conversation,
complaisant towards every one, it seemed as if he wished to be
nothing but the first among his peers.  Caesar entirely avoided
the blunder into which so many men otherwise on an equality with him
have fallen, of carrying into politics the military tone of command;
however much occasion his disagreeable relations with the senate
gave for it, he never resorted to outrages such as was that
of the eighteenth Brumaire.  Caesar was monarch; but he was never
seized with the giddiness of the tyrant.  He is perhaps the only one
among the mighty ones of the earth, who in great matters and little
never acted according to inclination or caprice, but always
without exception according to his duty as ruler, and who,
when he looked back on his life, found doubtless erroneous calculations
to deplore, but no false step of passion to regret.  There is nothing
in the history of Caesar's life, which even on a small scale(2)
can be compared with those poetico-sensual ebullitions--such as
the murder of Kleitos or the burning of Persepolis--which the history
of his great predecessor in the east records.  He is, in fine,
perhaps the only one of those mighty ones, who has preserved
to the end of his career the statesman's tact of discriminating between
the possible and the impossible, and has not broken down in the task
which for greatly gifted natures is the most difficult of all--
the task of recognizing, when on the pinnacle of success,
its natural limits.  What was possible he performed, and never left
the possible good undone for the sake of the impossible better,
never disdained at least to mitigate by palliatives evils
that were incurable.  But where he recognized that fate had spoken,
he always obeyed.  Alexander on the Hypanis, Napoleon at Moscow,
turned back because they were compelled to do so, and were indignant
at destiny for bestowing even on its favourites merely limited successes;
Caesar turned back voluntarily on the Thames and on the Rhine;
and thought of carrying into effect even at the Danube and the Euphrates
not unbounded plans of world-conquest, but merely well-considered
frontier-regulations.

Such was this unique man, whom it seems so easy and yet is so infinitely
difficult to describe.  His whole nature is transparent clearness;
and tradition preserves more copious and more vivid information
about him than about any of his peers in the ancient world.
Of such a personage our conceptions may well vary in point
of shallowness or depth, but they cannot be, strictly speaking,
different; to every not utterly perverted inquirer the grand figure
has exhibited the same essential features, and yet no one
has succeeded in reproducing it to the life.  The secret lies
in its perfection.  In his character as a man as well as in his place
in history, Caesar occupies a position where the great contrasts
of existence meet and balance each other.  Of mighty creative power
and yet at the same time of the most penetrating judgment;
no longer a youth and not yet an old man; of the highest energy of will
and the highest capacity of execution; filled with republican ideals
and at the same time born to be a king; a Roman in the deepest essence
of his nature, and yet called to reconcile and combine in himself
as well as in the outer world the Roman and the Hellenic
types of culture--Caesar was the entire and perfect man.
Accordingly we miss in him more than in any other historical personage
what are called characteristic features, which are in reality
nothing else than deviations from the natural course of human development.
What in Caesar passes for such at the first superficial glance is,
when more closely observed, seen to be the peculiarity
not of the individual, but of the epoch of culture or of the nation;
his youthful adventures, for instance, were common to him
with all his more gifted contemporaries of like position,
his unpoetical but strongly logical temperament was the temperament
of Romans in general.  It formed part also of Caesar's full humanity
that he was in the highest degree influenced by the conditions
of time and place; for there is no abstract humanity--
the living man cannot but occupy a place in a given nationality
and in a definite line of culture.  Caesar was a perfect man
just because he more than any other placed himself amidst
the currents of his time, and because he more than any other possessed
the essential peculiarity of the Roman nation--practical aptitude
as a citizen--in perfection: for his Hellenism in fact was only
the Hellenism which had been long intimately blended with the Italian
nationality.  But in this very circumstance lies the difficulty,
we may perhaps say the impossibility, of depicting Caesar to the life.
As the artist can paint everything save only consummate beauty,
so the historian, when once in a thousand years he encounters
the perfect, can only be silent regarding it.  For normality admits
doubtless of being expressed, but it gives us only the negative notion
of the absence of defect; the secret of nature, whereby
in her most finished manifestations normality and individuality
are combined, is beyond expression.  Nothing is left for us
but to deem those fortunate who beheld this perfection, and to gain
some faint conception of it from the reflected lustre which rests
imperishably on the works that were the creation of this great nature.
These also, it is true, bear the stamp of the time.  The Roman hero
himself stood by the side of his youthful Greek predecessor
not merely as an equal, but as a superior; but the world had meanwhile
become old and its youthful lustre had faded.  The action of Caesar
was no longer, like that of Alexander, a joyous marching onward
towards a goal indefinitely remote; he built on, and out of, ruins,
and was content to establish himself as tolerably and as securely
as possible within the ample but yet definite bounds once assigned
to him.  With reason therefore the delicate poetic tact
of the nations has not troubled itself about the unpoetical Roman,
and on the other hand has invested the son of Philip with all
the golden lustre of poetry, with all the rainbow hues of legend.
But with equal reason the political life of the nations has during
thousands of years again and again reverted to the lines
which Caesar drew; and the fact, that the peoples to whom the world
belongs still at the present day designate the highest of their monarchs
by his name, conveys a warning deeply significant and, unhappily,
fraught with shame.

Setting Aside of the Old Parties

If the old, in every respect vicious, state of things was to be
successfully got rid of and the commonwealth was to be renovated,
it was necessary first of all that the country should be
practically tranquillized and that the ground should be cleared
from the rubbish with which since the recent catastrophe it was
everywhere strewed.  In this work Caesar set out from the principle
of the reconciliation of the hitherto subsisting parties or,
to put it more correctly--for, where the antagonistic principles
are irreconcilable, we cannot speak of real reconciliation--
from the principle that the arena, on which the nobility and the populace
had hitherto contended with each other, was to be abandoned
by both parties, and that both were to meet together on the ground
of the new monarchical constitution.  First of all therefore
all the older quarrels of the republican past were regarded as done away
for ever and irrevocably.  While Caesar gave orders that the statues
of Sulla which had been thrown down by the mob of the capital
on the news of the battle of Pharsalus should be re-erected, and thus
recognized the fact that it became history alone to sit in judgment
on that great man, he at the same time cancelled the last remaining
effects of Sulla's exceptional laws, recalled from exile those
who had been banished in the times of the Cinnan and Sertorian troubles,
and restored to the children of those outlawed by Sulla
their forfeited privilege of eligibility to office.  In like manner
all those were restored, who in the preliminary stage of the recent
catastrophe had lost their seat in the senate or their civil existence
through sentence of the censors or political process, especially
through the impeachments raised on the basis of the exceptional laws
of 702.  Those alone who had put to death the proscribed
for money remained, as was reasonable, still under attainder;
and Milo, the most daring condottiere of the senatorial party,
was excluded from the general pardon.

Discontent of the Democrats

Far more difficult than the settlement of these questions
which already belonged substantially to the past was the treatment
of the parties confronting each other at the moment--on the one hand
Caesar's own democratic adherents, on the other hand the overthrown
aristocracy.  That the former should be, if possible, still less
satisfied than the latter with Caesar's conduct after the victory
and with his summons to abandon the old standing-ground of party,
was to be expected.  Caesar himself desired doubtless on the whole
the same issue which Gaius Gracchus had contemplated; but the designs
of the Caesarians were no longer those of the  Gracchans.
The Roman popular party had been driven onward in gradual progression
from reform to revolution, from revolution to anarchy, from anarchy
to a war against property; they celebrated among themselve
the memory of the reign of terror and now adorned the tomb
of Catilina, as formerly that of the Gracchi, with flowers
and garlands; they had placed themselves under Caesar's banner,
because they expected him to do for them what Catilina
had not been able to accomplish.  But as it speedily became plain
that Caesar was very far from intending to be the testamentary
executor of Catilina, and that the utmost which debtors might expect
from him was some alleviations of payment and modifications
of procedure, indignation found loud vent in the inquiry.
For whom then had the popular party conquered, if not for the people?
And the rabble of this description, high and low, out of pure chagrin
at the miscarriage of their politico-economic Saturnalia began first
to coquet with the Pompeians, and then even during Caesar's absence
of nearly two years from Italy (Jan. 706-autumn 707) to instigate there
a second civil war within the first.

Caelius and Milo

The praetor Marcus Caelius Rufus, a good aristocrat and bad payer
of debts, of some talent and much culture, as a vehement
and fluent orator hitherto in the senate and in the Forum
one of the most zealous champions for Caesar, proposed to the people--
without being instructed from any higher quarter to do so--
a law which granted to debtors a respite of six years free of interest,
and then, when he was opposed in this step, proposed a second law
which even cancelled all claims arising out of loans and current
house rents; whereupon the Caesarian senate deposed him from his office.
It was just on the eve of the battle of Pharsalus, and the balance
in the great contest seemed to incline to the side of the Pompeians;
Rufus entered into communication with the old senatorian
band-leader Milo, and the two contrived a counter-revolution,
which inscribed on its banner partly the republican constitution,
partly the cancelling of creditors' claims and the manumission of slaves.
Milo left his place of exile Massilia, and called the Pompeians
and the slave-herdsmen to arms in the region of Thurii; Rufus made
arrangements to seize the town of Capua by armed slaves.
But the latter plan was detected before its execution and frustrated
by the Capuan militia; Quintus Pedius, who advanced with a legion
into the territory of Thurii, scattered the band making havoc there;
and the fall of the two leaders put an end to the scandal (706).

Dolabella

Nevertheless there was found in the following year (707) a second fool,
the tribune of the people, Publius Dolabella, who, equally insolvent
but far from being equally gifted with his predecessor,
introduced afresh his law as to creditors' claims and house rents,
and with his colleague Lucius Trebellius began on that point once more--
it was the last time--the demagogic war; there were serious frays
between the armed bands on both sides and various street-riots,
till the commandant of Italy Marcus Antonius ordered the military
to interfere, and soon afterwards Caesar's return from the east
completely put an end to the preposterous proceedings.
Caesar attributed to these brainless attempts to revive the projects
of Catilina so little importance, that he tolerated Dolabella in Italy
and indeed after some time even received him again into favour.
Against a rabble of this sort, which had nothing to do with
any political question at all, but solely with a war against property--
as against gangs of banditti--the mere existence of a strong government
is sufficient; and Caesar was too great and too considerate
to busy himself with the apprehensions which the Italian alarmists
felt regarding these communists of that day, and thereby unduly
to procure a false popularity for his monarchy.

Measures against Pompeians and Republicans

While Caesar thus might leave, and actually left, the late democratic
party to the process of decomposition which had already in its case
advanced almost to the utmost limit, he had on the other hand,
with reference to the former aristocratic party possessing
a far greater vitality, not to bring about its dissolution--
which time alone could accomplish--but to pave the way for
and initiate it by a proper combination of repression and conciliation.
Among minor measures, Caesar, even from a natural sense of propriety,
avoided exasperating the fallen party by empty sarcasm;
he did not triumph over his conquered fellow-burgesses;(3)
he mentioned Pompeius often and always with respect, and caused
his statue overthrown by the people to be re-erected at the senate-
house, when the latter was restored, in its earlier distinguished place.
To political prosecutions after the victory Caesar assigned
the narrowest possible limits.  No investigation was instituted
into the various communications which the constitutional party
had held even with nominal Caesarians; Caesar threw the piles of papers
found in the enemy's headquarters at Pharsalus and Thapsus
into the fire unread, and spared himself and the country from political
processes against individuals suspected of high treason.  Further,
all the common soldiers who had followed their Roman or provincial
officers into the contest against Caesar came off with impunity.
The sole exception made was in the case of those Roman burgesses,
who had taken service in the army of the Numidian king Juba;
their property was confiscated by way of penalty for their treason.
Even to the officers of the conquered party Caesar had granted
unlimited pardon up to the close of the Spanish campaign of 705;
but he became convinced that in this he had gone too far,
and that the removal at least of the leaders among them was inevitable.
The rule by which he was thenceforth guided was, that every one
who after the capitulation of Ilerda had served as an officer
in the enemy's army or had sat in the opposition-senate, if he survived
the close of the struggle, forfeited his property and his political
rights, and was banished from Italy for life; if he did not survive
the close of the struggle, his property at least fell to the state;
but any one of these, who had formerly accepted pardon from Caesar
and was once more found in the ranks of the enemy, thereby
forfeited his life.  These rules were however materially modified
in the execution.  The sentence of death was actually executed
only against a very few of the numerous backsliders.  In the confiscation
of the property of the fallen not only were the debts attaching
to the several portions of the estate as well as the claims
of the widows for their dowries paid off, as was reasonable.
But a portion of the paternal estate was left also to the children
of the deceased.  Lastly not a few of those, who in consequence
of those rules were liable to banishment and confiscation of property,
were at once pardoned entirely or got off with fines, like the African
capitalists who were impressed as members of the senate of Utica.
And even the others almost without exception got their freedom
and property restored to them, if they could only prevail
on themselves to petition Caesar to that effect; on several
who declined to do so, such as the consular Marcus Marcellus,
pardon was even conferred unasked, and ultimately in 710
a general amnesty was issued for all who were still unrecalled.

Amnesty

The republican opposition submitted to be pardoned;
but it was not reconciled.  Discontent with the new order of things
and exasperation against the unwonted ruler were general.
For open political resistance there was indeed no farther opportunity--
it was hardly worth taking into account, that some oppositional
tribunes on occasion of the question of title acquired for themselves
the republican crown of martyrdom by a demonstrative intervention
against those who had called Caesar king--but republicanism
found expression all the more decidedly as an opposition of sentiment,
and in secret agitation and plotting. Not a hand stirred
when the Imperator appeared in public.  There was abundance
of wall-placards and sarcastic verses full of bitter and telling
popular satire against the new monarchy.  When a comedian
ventured on a republican allusion, he was saluted with the loudest
applause.  The praise of Cato formed the fashionable theme
of oppositional pamphleteers, and their writings found a public
all the more grateful because even literature was no longer free.
Caesar indeed combated the republicans even now on their own field;
he himself and his abler confidants replied to the Cato-literature
with Anticatones, and the republican and Caesarian scribes
fought round the dead hero of Utica like the Trojans and Hellenes
round the dead body of Patroclus; but as a matter of course
in this conflict--where the public thoroughly republican in its feelings
was judge--the Caesarians had the worst of it.  No course remained
but to overawe the authors; on which account men well known
and dangerous in a literary point of view, such as Publius
Nigidius Figulus and Aulus Caecina, had more difficulty
in obtaining permission to return to Italy than other exiles,
while the oppositional writers tolerated in Italy were subjected
to a practical censorship, the restraints of which were all the more
annoying that the measure of punishment to be dreaded
was utterly arbitrary.(4)  The underground machinations
of the overthrown parties against the new monarchy will be more fitly
set forth in another connection.  Here it is sufficient to say
that risings of pretenders as well as of republicans were incessantly
brewing throughout the Roman empire; that the flames of civil war kindled
now by the Pompeians, now by the republicans, again burst forth brightly
at various places; and that in the capital there was perpetual
conspiracy against the life of the monarch.  But Caesar
could not be induced by these plots even to surround himself
permanently with a body-guard, and usually contented himself
with making known the detected conspiracies by public placards.

Bearing of Caesar towards the Parties

However much Caesar was wont to treat all things relating
to his personal safety with daring indifference, he could not possibly
conceal from himself the very serious danger with which this mass
of malcontents threatened not merely himself but also his creations.
If nevertheless, disregarding all the warning and urgency
of his friends, he without deluding himself as to the implacability
of the very opponents to whom he showed mercy, persevered
with marvellous composure and energy in the course of pardoning
by far the greater number of them, he did so neither
from the chivalrous magnanimity of a proud, nor from the sentimental
clemency of an effeminate, nature, but from the correct statesmanly
consideration that vanquished parties are disposed of
more rapidly and with less public injury by their absorption
within the state than by any attempt to extirpate them by proscription
or to eject them from the commonwealth by banishment.  Caesar could not
for his high objects dispense with the constitutional party itself,
which in fact embraced not the aristocracy merely but all the elements
of a free and national spirit among the Italian burgesses;
for his schemes, which contemplated the renovation of the antiquated
state, he needed the whole mass of talent, culture, hereditary,
and self-acquired distinction, which this party embraced;
and in this sense he may well have named the pardoning of his opponents
the finest reward of victory.  Accordingly the most prominent chiefs
of the defeated parties were indeed removed, but full pardon
was not withheld from the men of the second and third rank
and especially of the younger generation; they were not, however,
allowed to sulk in passive opposition, but were by more or less
gentle pressure induced to take an active part in the new administration,
and to accept honours and offices from it.  As with Henry the Fourth
and William of Orange, so with Caesar his greatest difficulties began
only after the victory.  Every revolutionary conqueror learns
by experience that, if after vanquishing his opponents he would
not remain like Cinna and Sulla a mere party-chief, but would
like Caesar, Henry the Fourth, and William of Orange substitute
the welfare of the commonwealth for the necessarily one-sided programme
of his own party, for the moment all parties, his own as well as
the vanquished, unite against the new chief; and the more so,
the more great and pure his idea of his new vocation.  The friends
of the constitution and the Pompeians, though doing homage
with the lips to Caesar, bore yet in heart a grudge either
at monarchy or at least at the dynasty; the degenerate democracy
was in open rebellion against Caesar from the moment of its perceiving
that Caesar's objects were by no means its own; even the personal
adherents of Caesar murmured, when they found that their chief was
establishing instead of a state of condottieri a monarchy equal
and just towards all, and that the portions of gain accruing to them
were to be diminished by the accession of the vanquished.
This settlement of the commonwealth was acceptable to no party,
and had to be imposed on his associates no less than on his opponents.
Caesar's own position was now in a certain sense more imperilled
than before the victory; but what he lost, the state gained.
By annihilating the parties and not simply sparing the partisans
but allowing every man of talent or even merely of good descent
to attain to office irrespective of his political past, he gained
for his great building all the working power extant in the state;
and not only so, but the voluntary or compulsory participation of men
of all parties in the same work led the nation also over imperceptibly
to the newly prepared ground.  The fact that this reconciliation
of the parties was for the moment only externaland that they were
for the present much less agreed in adherence to the new state of things
than in hatred against Caesar, did not mislead him; he knew well
that antagonisms lose their keenness when brought into such outward union,
and that only in this way can the statesman anticipate the work of time,
which alone is able finally to heal such a strife by laying
the old generation in the grave.  Still less did he inquire who hated him
or meditated his assassination.  Like every genuine statesman he served
not the people for reward--not even for the reward of their love--
but sacrificed the favour of his contemporaries for the blessing
of posterity, and above all for the permission to save
and renew his nation.

Caesar's Work

In attempting to give a detailed account of the mode in which
the transition was effected from the old to the new state of things,
we must first of all recollect that Caesar came not to begin,
but to complete.  The plan of a new polity suited to the times,
long ago projected by Gaius Gracchus, had been maintained
by his adherents and successors with more or less of spirit and success,
but without wavering.  Caesar, from the outset and as it were
by hereditary right the head of the popular party, had for thirty years
borne aloft its banner without ever changing or even so much
as concealing his colours; he remained democrat even when monarch.
as he accepted without limitation, apart of course from the preposterous
projects of Catilina and Clodius, the heritage of his party;
as he displayed the bitterest, even personal, hatred to the aristocracy
and the genuine aristocrats; and as he retained unchanged
the essential ideas of Roman democracy, viz. alleviation of the burdens
of debtors, transmarine colonization, gradual equalization
of the differences of rights among the classes belonging
to the state, emancipation of the executive power from the senate:
his monarchy was so little at variance with democracy,
that democracy on the contrary only attained its completion
and fulfilment by means of that monarchy.  For this monarchy
was not the Oriental despotism of divine right, but a monarchy such as
Gaius Gracchus wished to found, such as Pericles and Cromwell founded--
the representation of the nation by the man in whom it puts
supreme and unlimited confidence.  The ideas, which lay
at the foundation of Caesar's work, were so far not strictly new;
but to him belongs their realization, which after all is everywhere
the main matter; and to him pertains the grandeur of execution,
which would probably have surprised the brilliant projector himself
if he could have seen it, and which has impressed, and will
always impress, every one to whom it has been presented in the living
reality or in the mirror of history--to whatever historical epoch
or whatever shade of politics he may belong--according
to the measure of his ability to comprehend human and historical
greatness, with deep and ever-deepening emotion and admiration.

At this point however it is proper expressly once for all to claim
what the historian everywhere tacitly presumes, and to protest
against the custom--common to simplicity and perfidy--of using
historical praise and historical censure, dissociated
from the given circumstances, as phrases of general application,
and in the present case of construing the judgment as to Caesar
into a judgment as to what is called Caesarism.  It is true
that the history of past centuries ought to be the instructress
of the present; but not in the vulgar sense, as if one could simply
by turning over the leaves discover the conjunctures of the present
in the records of the past, and collect from these the symptoms
for a political diagnosis and the specifics for a prescription;
it is instructive only so far as the observation of older forms
of culture reveals the organic conditions of civilization generally--
the fundamental forces everywhere alike, and the manner of their
combination everywhere different--and leads and encourages men,
not to unreflecting imitation, but to independent reproduction.
In this sense the history of Caesar and of Roman Imperialism,
with all the unsurpassed greatness of the master-worker,
with all the historical necessity of the work, is in truth
a sharper censure of modern autocracy than could be written
by the hand of man.  According to the same law of nature in virtue
of which the smallest organism infinitely surpasses the most artistic
machine, every constitution however defective which gives play
to the free self-determination of a majority of citizens infinitely
surpasses the most brilliant and humane absolutism; for the former
is capable of development and therefore living, the latter is what it is
and therefore dead.  This law of nature has verified itself
in the Roman absolute military monarchy and verified itself
all the more completely, that, under the impulse of its creator's genius
and in the absence of all material complications from without,
that monarchy developed itself more purely and freely
than any similar state.  From Caesar's time, as the sequel will show
and Gibbon has shown long ago, the Roman system had only an external
coherence and received only a mechanical extension, while internally
it became even with him utterly withered and dead.  If in the early
stages of the autocracy and above all in Caesar's own soul(5)
the hopeful dream of a combination of free popular development
and absolute rule was still cherished, the government of the highly-
gifted emperors of the Julian house soon taught men in a terrible form
how far it was possible to hold fire and water in the same vessel.
Caesar's work was necessary and salutary, not because it was
or could be fraught with blessing in itself, but because--
with the national organization of antiquity, which was based on slavery
and was utterly a stranger to republican-constitutional representation,
and in presence of the legitimate urban constitution which in the course
of five hundred years had ripened into oligarchic absolutism--
absolute military monarchy was the copestone logically necessary
and the least of evils.  When once the slave-holding aristocracy
in Virginia and the Carolinas shall have carried matters as far as
their congeners in the Sullan Rome, Caesarism will there too
be legitimized at the bar of the spirit of history;(6)
where it appears under other conditions of development, it is at once
a caricature and a usurpation.  But history will not submit
to curtail the true Caesar of his due honour, because her verdict
may in the presence of bad Caesars lead simplicity astray
and may give to roguery occasion for lying and fraud.  She too
is a Bible, and if she cannot any more than the Bible hinder the fool
from misunderstanding and the devil from quoting her, she too will
be able to bear with, and to requite, them both.

Dictatorship

The position of the new supreme head of the state appears formally,
at least in the first instance, as a dictatorship.  Caesar took
it up at first after his return from Spain in 705, but laid it down
again after a few days, and waged the decisive campaign of 706
simply as consul--this was the office his tenure of which was
the primary occasion for the outbreak of the civil war.(7)
but in the autumn of this year after the battle of Pharsalus
he reverted to the dictatorship and had it repeatedly entrusted to him,
at first for an undefined period, but from the 1st January 709
as an annual office, and then in January or February 710(8)
for the duration of his life, so that he in the end expressly dropped
the earlier reservation as to his laying down the office and gave
formal expression to its tenure for life in the new title of -dictator
perpetuus-.  This dictatorship, both in its first ephemeral
and in its second enduring tenure, was not that of the old constitution,
but--what was coincident with this merely in the name--the supreme
exceptional office as arranged by Sulla;(9) an office,
the functions of which were fixed, not by the constitutional ordinances
regarding the supreme single magistracy, but by special decree
of the people, to such an effect that the holder received,
in the commission to project laws and to regulate the commonwealth,
an official prerogative de jure unlimited which superseded
the republican partition of powers.  Those were merely applications
of this general prerogative to the particular case, when the holder
of power was further entrusted by separate acts with the right
of deciding on war and peace without consulting the senate
and the people, with the independent disposal of armies and finances,
and with the nomination of the provincial governors.  Caesar could
accordingly de jure assign to himself even such prerogatives
as lay outside of the proper functions of the magistracy and even
outside of the province of state-powers at all;(10) and it appears
almost as a concession on his part, that he abstained from nominating
the magistrates instead of the Comitia and limited himself to claiming
a binding right of proposal for a proportion of the praetors
and of the lower magistrates; and that he moreover had himself
empowered by special decree of the people for the creation of patricians,
which was not at all allowable according to use and wont.

Other Magistracies and Attributions

For other magistracies in the proper sense there remained alongside
of this dictatorship no room; Caesar did not take up the censorship
as such,(11) but he doubtless exercised censorial rights--
particularly the important right of nominating senators--after
a comprehensive fashion.

He held the consulship frequently alongside of the dictatorship,
once even without colleague; but he by no means attached it permanently
to his person, and he gave no effect to the calls addressed to him
to undertake it for five or even for ten years in succession.

Caesar had no need to have the superintendence of worship
now committed to him, since he was already -pontifex maximus-.(12)
as a matter of course the membership of the college of augurs
was conferred on him, and generally an abundance of old and new
honorary rights, such as the title of a "father of the fatherland,"
the designation of the month of his birth by the name which it
still bears of Julius, and other manifestations of the incipient
courtly tone which ultimately ran into utter deification.
Two only of the arrangements deserve to be singled out:
namely that Caesar was placed on the same footing with the tribunes
of the people as regards their special personal inviolability,
and that the appellation of Imperator was permanently attached
to his person and borne by him as a title alongside of
his other official designations.

Men of judgment will not require any proof, either that Caesar
intended to engraft on the commonwealth his supreme power,
and this not merely for a few years or even as a personal office
for an indefinite period somewhat like Sulla's regency,
but as an essential and permanent organ; or that he selected
for the new institution an appropriate and simple designation;
for, if it is a political blunder to create names without substantial
meaning, it is scarcely a less error to set up the substance
of plenary power without a name.  Only it is not easy to determine
what definitive formal shape Caesar had in view; partly because
in this period of transition the ephemeral and the permanent buildings
are not clearly discriminated from each other, partly because
the devotion of his clients which already anticipated the nod
of their master loaded him with a multitude--offensive doubtless
to himself--of decrees of confidence and laws conferring honours.
Least of all could the new monarchy attach itself to the consulship,
just on account of the collegiate character that could not well
be separated from this office; Caesar also evidently laboured
to degrade this hitherto supreme magistracy into an empty title,
and subsequently, when he undertook it, he did not hold it
through the whole year, but before the year expired gave it away
to personages of secondary rank.  The dictatorship came practically
into prominence most frequently and most definitely, but probably
only because Caesar wished to use it in the significance which it had
of old in the constitutional machinery--as an extraordinary presidency
for surmounting extraordinary crises.  On the other hand it was
far from recommending itself as an expression for the new monarchy,
for the magistracy was inherently clothed with an exceptional
and unpopular character, and it could hardly be expected
of the representative of the democracy that he should choose
for its permanent organization that form, which the most gifted champion
of the opposing party had created for his own ends.

The new name of Imperator, on the other hand, appears in every respect
by far more appropriate for the formal expression of the monarchy;
just because it is in this application(13) new, and no definite
outward occasion for its introduction is apparent. The new wine
might not be put into old bottles; here is a new name for the new thing,
and that name most pregnantly sums up what the democratic party
had already expressed in the Gabinian law, only with less precision,
as the function of its chief--the concentration and perpetuation
of official power (-imperium-) in the hands of a popular chief
independent of the senate.  We find on Caesar's coins,
especially those of the last period, alongside of the dictatorship
the title of Imperator prevailing, and in Caesar's law
as to political crimes the monarch seems to have been designated
by this name.  Accordingly the following times, though not immediately,
connected the monarchy with the name of Imperator.  To lend
to this new office at once a democratic and religious sanction,
Caesar probably intended to associate with it once for all
on the one hand the tribunician power, on the other
the supreme pontificate.

That the new organization was not meant to be restricted merely
to the lifetime of its founder, is beyond doubt; but he did not succeed
in settling the especially difficult question of the succession,
and it must remain an undecided point whether he had it in view
to institute some sort of form for the election of a successor,
such as had subsisted in the case of the original  kingly office,
or whether he wished to introduce for the supreme office
not merely the tenure for life but also the hereditary character,
as his adopted son subsequently maintained.(14)  It is not improbable
that he had the intention of combining in some measure the two systems,
and of arranging the succession, similarly to the course
followed by Cromwell and by Napoleon, in such a way that the ruler
should be succeeded in rule by his son, but, if he had no son,
or the son should not seem fitted for the succession, the ruler should
of his free choice nominate his successor in the form of adoption.

In point of state law the new office of Imperator was based
on the position which the consuls or proconsuls occupied
outside of the -pomerium-, so that primarily the military command,
but, along with this, the supreme judicial and consequently
also the administrative power, were included in it.(15)
But the authority of the Imperator was qualitatively superior
to the consular-proconsular, in so far as the former was not limited
as respected time or space, but was held for life and operative also
in the capital;(16) as the Imperator could not, while the consul could,
be checked by colleagues of equal power; and as all the restrictions
placed in course of time on the original supreme official power--
especially the obligation to give place to the -provocatio-
and to respect the advice of the senate--did not apply
to the Imperator.

Re-establishment of the Regal Office

In a word, this new office of Imperator was nothing else
than the primitive regal office re-established; for it was
those very restrictions--as respected the temporal and local
limitation of power, the collegiate arrangement, and the cooperation
of the senate or the community that was necessary for certain cases--
which distinguished the consul from the king.(17)  There is hardly
a trait of the new monarchy which was not found in the old:
the union of the supreme military, judicial, and administrative authority
in the hands of the prince; a religious presidency over the commonwealth;
the right of issuing ordinances with binding power; the reduction
of the senate to a council of state; the revival of the patriciate
and of the praefecture of the city.  But still more striking
than these analogies is the internal similarity of the monarchy
of Servius Tullius and the monarchy of Caesar; if those
old kings of Rome with all their plenitude of power had yet
been rulers of a free community and themselves the protectors
of the commons against the nobility, Caesar too had not come
to destroy liberty but to fulfil it, and primarily to break
the intolerable yoke of the aristocracy.  Nor need it surprise us
that Caesar, anything but a political antiquary, went back
five hundred years to find the model for his new state; for,
seeing that the highest office of the Roman commonwealth had remained
at all times a kingship restricted by a number of special laws,
the idea of the regal office itself had by no means become obsolete.
At very various periods and from very different sides--
in the decemviral power, in the Sullan regency, and in Caesar's
own dictatorship--there had been during the republic a practical
recurrence to it; indeed by a certain logical necessity,
whenever an exceptional power seemed requisite there emerged,
in contradistinction to the usual limited -imperium-,
the unlimited -imperium- which was simply nothing else
than the regal power.

Lastly, outward considerations also recommended this recurrence
to the former kingly position.  Mankind have infinite difficulty
in reaching new creations, and therefore cherish the once developed forms
as sacred heirlooms.  Accordingly Caesar very judiciously
connected himself with Servius Tullius, in the same way
as subsequently Charlemagne connected himself with Caesar,
and Napoleon attempted at least to connect himself with Charlemagne.
He did so, not in a circuitous way and secretly, but, as well as
his successors, in the most open manner possible; it was indeed
the very object of this connection to find a clear, national,
and popular form of expression for the new state.  From ancient times
there stood on the Capitol the statues of those seven kings,
whom the conventional history of Rome was wont to bring on the stage;
Caesar ordered his own to be erected beside them as the eighth.
He appeared publicly in the costume of the old kings of Alba.
In his new law as to political crimes the principal variation
from that of Sulla was, that there was placed alongside
of the collective community, and on a level with it, the Imperator
as the living and personal expression of the people.  In the formula
used for political oaths there was added to the Jovis and the Penates
of the Roman people the Genius of the Imperator.  The outward badge
of monarchy was, according to the view univerally diffused in antiquity,
the image of the monarch on the coins; from the year 710
the head of Caesar appears on those of the Roman state.

There could accordingly be no complaint at least on the score
that Caesar left the public in the dark as to his view of his position;
as distinctly and as formally as possible he came forward
not merely as monarch, but as very king of Rome.  It is possible even,
although not exactly probable, and at any rate of subordinate
importance, that he had it in view to designate his official power
not with the new name of Imperator, but directly with the old one
of King.(18)  Even in his lifetime many of his enemies as of his friends
were of opinion that he intended to have himself expressly nominated
king of Rome; several indeed of his most vehement adherents
suggested to him in different ways and at different times
that he should assume the crown; most strikingly of all,
Marcus Antonius, when he as consul offered the diadem to Caesar
before all the people (15 Feb. 710).  But Caesar rejected
these proposals without exception at once.  If he at the same time
took steps against those who made use of these incidents to stir
republican opposition, it by no means follows from this that he was not
in earnest with his rejection.  The assumption that these invitations
took place at his bidding, with the view of preparing the multitude
for the unwonted spectacle of the Roman diadem, utterly misapprehends
the mighty power of the sentimental opposition with which
Caesar had to reckon, and which could not be rendered more compliant,
but on the contrary necessarily gained a broader basis,
through such a public recognition of its warrant on the part
of Caesar himself.  It may have been the uncalled-for zeal of vehement
adherents alone that occasioned these incidents; it may be also,
that Caesar merely permitted or even suggested the scene with Antonius,
in order to put an end in as marked a manner as possible
to the inconvenient gossip by a declinature which took place
before the eyes of the burgesses and was inserted by his command
even in the calendar of the state and could not, in fact,
be well revoked.  The probability is that Caesar, who appreciated alike
the value of a convenient formal designation and the antipathies
of the multitude which fasten more on the names than on the essence
of things, was resolved to avoid the name of king as tainted
with an ancient curse and as more familiar to the Romans of his time
when applied to the despots of the east than to their own Numa
and Servius, and to appropriate the substance of the regal office
under the title of Imperator.

The New Court
The New Patrician Nobility

But, whatever may have been the definitive title present to his thoughts
the sovereign ruler was there, and accordingly the court
established itself at once with all its due accompaniments of pomp,
insipidity, and emptiness.  Caesar appeared in public not in the robe
of the consuls which was bordered with purple stripes,
but in the robe wholly of purple which was reckoned in antiquity
as the proper regal attire, and received, seated on his golden chair
and without rising from it, the solemn procession of the senate.
The festivals in his honour commemorative of birthday, of victories,
and of vows, filled the calendar.  When Caesar came to the capital,
his principal servants marched forth in troops to great distances
so as to meet and escort him.  To be near to him began to be
of such importance, that the rents rose in the quarter of the city
where he dwelt.  Personal interviews with him were rendered
so difficult by the multitude of individuals soliciting audience,
that Caesar found himself compelled in many cases to communicate
even with his intimate friends in writing, and that persons
even of the highest rank had to wait for hours in the antechamber.
People felt, more clearly than was agreeable to Caesar himself,
that they no longer approached a fellow-citizen.  There arose
a monarchical aristocracy, which was in a remarkable manner at once
new and old, and which had sprung out of the idea of casting
into the shade the aristocracy of the oligarchy by that of royalty,
the nobility by the patriciate.  The patrician body still subsisted,
although without essential privileges as an order, in the character
of a close aristocratic guild;(19) but as it could receive
no new -gentes-(20) it had dwindled away more and more in the course
of centuries, and in the time of Caesar there were not more than
fifteen or sixteen patrician -gentes- still in existence.
Caesar, himself sprung from one of them, got the right
of creating new patrician -gentes- conferred on the Imperator
by decree of the people, and so established, in contrast
to the republican nobility, the new aristocracy of the patriciate,
which most happily combined all the requisites of a monarchical
aristocracy--the charm of antiquity, entire dependence
on the government, and total insignificance.  On all sides
the new sovereignty revealed itself.

Under a monarch thus practically unlimited there could hardly
be scope for a constitution at all--still less for a continuance
of the hitherto existing commonwealth based on the legal co-operation
of the burgesses, the senate, and the several magistrates. Caesar fully
and definitely reverted to the tradition of the regal period;
the burgess-assembly remained--what it had already been, in that period--
by the side of and with the king the supreme and ultimate expression
of the will of the sovereign people; the senate was brought back
to its original destination of giving advice to the ruler
when he requested it; and lastly the ruler concentrated in his person
anew the whole magisterial authority, so that there existed no other
independent state-official by his side any more than by the side
of the kings of the earliest times.

Legislation
Edicts

For legislation the democratic monarch adhered to the primitive maxim
of Roman state-law, that the community of the people in concert
with the king convoking them had alone the power of organically
regulating the commonwealth; and he had his constitutive enactments
regularly sanctioned by decree of the people. The free energy
and the authority half-moral, half-political, which the yea or nay
of those old warrior-assemblies had carried with it, could not indeed
be again instilled into the so-called comitia of this period;
the co-operation of the burgesses in legislation, which in the old
constitution had been extremely limited but real and living,
was in the new practically an unsubstantial shadow.   There was therefore
no need of special restrictive measures against the comitia;
many years' experience had shown that every government--
the oligarchy as well as the monarch--easily kept on good terms
with this formal sovereign.  These Caesarian comitia were an important
element in the Caesarian system and indirectly of practical significance,
only in so far as they served to retain in principle the sovereignty
of the people and to constitute an energetic protest against sultanism.

But at the same time--as is not only obvious of itself, but is also
distinctly attested--the other maxim also of the oldest state-law
was revived by Caesar himself, and not merely for the first time
by his successors; viz.  that what the supreme, or rather sole,
magistrate commands is unconditionally valid so long as he remains
in office, and that, while legislation no doubt belongs only to the king
and the burgesses in concert, the royal edict is equivalent to law
at least till the demission of its author.

The Senate as the State-Council of the Monarch

While the democratic king thus conceded to the community of the people
at least a formal share in the sovereignty, it was by no means
his intention to divide his authority with what had hitherto been
the governing body, the college of senators.  The senate of Caesar
was to be--in a quite different way from the later senate of Augustus--
nothing but a supreme council of state, which he made use
of for advising with him beforehand as to laws, and for the issuing
of the more important administrative ordinances through it,
or at least under its name--for cases in fact occurred where decrees
of senate were issued, of which none of the senators recited
as present at their preparation had any cognizance.  There were
no material difficulties of form in reducing the senate to it
original deliberative position, which it had overstepped more de facto
than de jure; but in this case it was necessary to protect himself
from practical resistance, for the Roman senate was as much
the headquarters of the opposition to Caesar as the Attic Areopagus
was of the opposition to Pericles.  Chiefly for this reason
the number of senators, which had hitherto amounted at most
to six hundred in its normal condition(21) and had been greatly reduced
by the recent crises, was raised by extraordinary supplement
to nine hundred; and at the same time, to keep it at least
up to this mark, the number of quaestors to be nominated annually,
that is of members annually admitted to the senate, was raised
from twenty to forty.(22)  The extraordinary filling up of the senate
was undertaken by the monarch alone.  In the case of the ordinary
additions he secured to himself a permanent influence through
the circumstance, that the electoral colleges were bound by law(23)
to give their votes to the first twenty candidates for the quaestorship
who were provided with letters of recommendation from the monarch;
besides, the crown was at liberty to confer the honorary rights
attaching to the quaestorship or to any office superior to it,
and consequently a seat in the senate in particular, by way of exception
even on individuals not qualified.   The selection of the extraordinary
members who were added naturally fell in the main on adherents
of the new order of things, and introduced, along with -equites-
of respectable standing, various dubious and plebeian personages
into the proud corporation--former senators who had been erased
from the roll by the censor or in consequence of a judicial sentence,
foreigners from Spain and Gaul who had to some extent to learn
their Latin in the senate, men lately subaltern officers
who had not previously received even the equestrian ring,
sons of freedmen or of such as followed dishonourable trades,
and other elements of a like kind.  The exclusive circles
of the nobility, to whom this change in the personal composition
of the senate naturally gave the bitterest offence, saw in it
an intentional depreciation of the very institution itself.
Caesar was not capable of such a self-destructive policy;
he was as determined not to let himself be governed by his council
as he was convinced of the necessity of the institute in itself.
They might more correctly have discerned in this proceeding the intention
of the monarch to take away from the senate its former character
of an exclusive representation of the oligarchic aristocracy,
and to make it once more--what it had been in the regal period--
a state-council representing all classes of persons belonging
to the state through their most intelligent elements, and not necessarily
excluding the man of humble birth or even the foreigner;  just as those
earliest kings introduced non-burgesses,(24) Caesar introduced
non-Italians into his senate.

Personal Government by Caesar

While the rule of the nobility was thus set aside and its existence
undermined, and while the senate in its new form was merely a tool
of the monarch, autocracy was at the same time most strictly
carried out in the administration and government of the state,
and the whole executive was concentrated in the hands of the monarch.
First of all, the Imperator naturally decided in person every question
of any moment.  Caesar was able to carry personal government
to an extent which we puny men can hardly conceive, and which
is not to be explained solely from the unparalleled rapidity
and decision of his working, but has moreover its ground
in a more general cause.  When we see Caesar, Sulla, Gaius Gracchus,
and Roman statesmen in general displaying throughout an activity
which transcends our notions of human powers of working, the reason lies,
not in any change that human nature has undergone since that time,
but in the change which has taken place since then in the organization
of the household.  The Roman house was a machine, in which even
the mental powers of the slaves and freedmen yielded their produce
to the master; a master, who knew how to govern these, worked as it were
with countless minds.  It was the beau ideal of bureaucratic
centralization; which our counting-house system strives indeed
zealously to imitate, but remains as far behind its prototype
as the modern power of capital is inferior to the ancient system
of slavery. Caesar knew how to profit by this advantage;
wherever any post demanded special confidence, we see him filling it up
on principle--so far as other considerations at all permit--
with his slaves freedmen, or clients of humble birth.  His works
as a whole show what an organizing genius like his could accomplish
with such an  instrument; but to the question, how in detail
these marvellous feats were achieved, we have no adequate answer.
Bureaucracy resembles a manufactory also in this respect,
that the work done does not appear as that of the individual
who has worked at it, but as that of the manufactory which stamps it.
This much only is quite clear, that Caesar, in his work had no helper
at all who exerted a personal influence over it or was even so much as
initiated into the whole plan; he was not only the sole master,
but he worked also without skilled associates,
merely with common labourers.

In Matters of Finance

With respect to details as a matter of course in strictly political
affairs Caesar avoided, so far as was at all possible,
any delegation of his functions.  Where it was inevitable,
as especially when during his frequent absence from Rome he had need
of a higher organ there, the person destined for this purpose was,
significantly enough, not the legal deputy of the monarch,
the prefect of the city, but a confidant without officially-recognized
jurisdiction, usually Caesar's banker, the cunning and pliant
Phoenician merchant Lucius Cornelius Balbus from Gades.
In administration Caesar was above all careful to resume the keys
of the state-chest--which the senate had appropriated to itself
after the fall of the regal power, and by means of which
it had possessed itself of the government--and to entrust them
only to those servants who with their persons were absolutely
and exclusively devoted to him.  In respect of ownership indeed
the private means of the monarch remained, of course, strictly
separate from the property of the state; but Caesar took in hand
the administration of the whole financial and monetary system
of the state, and conducted it entirely in the way in which
he and the Roman grandees generally were wont to manage
the administration of their own means and substance.  For the future
the levying of the provincial revenues and in the main also
the management of the coinage were entrusted to the slaves and freedmen
of the Imperator and men of the senatorial order were excluded from it--
a momentous step out of which grew in course of time the important class
of procurators and the "imperial household."

In the Governorships

Of the governorships on the other hand, which, after they had handed
their financial business over to the new imperial tax-receivers,
were still more than they had formerly been essentially military commands,
that of Egypt alone was transferred to the monarch's own retainers.
The country of the Nile, in a peculiar manner geographically isolated
and politically centralized, was better fitted than any other district
to break off permanently under an able leader from the central power,
as the attempts which had repeatedly been made by hard-pressed Italian
party-chiefs to establish themselves there during the recent crisis
sufficiently proved.  Probably it was just this consideration
thatinduced Caesar not to declare the land formally a province,
but to leave the harmless Lagids there; and certainly for this reason
the legions stationed in Egypt were not entrusted to a man
belonging to the senate or, in other words, to the former government,
but this command was, just like the posts of tax-receivers,
treated as a menial office.(25)  In general however the consideration
had weight with Caesar, that the soldiers of Rome should not,
like those of Oriental kings, be commanded by lackeys.  It remained
the rule to entrust the more important governorships to those
who had been consuls, the less important to those who had been praetors;
and once more, instead of the five years' interval prescribed
by the law of 702,(26) the commencement of the governorship probably
was in the ancient fashion annexed directly to the close of the official
functions in the city.  On the other hand the distribution
of the provinces among the qualified candidates, which had hitherto
been arranged sometimes by decree of the people or senate,
sometimes by concert among the magistrates or by lot, passed over
to the monarch.  And, as the consuls were frequently induced
to abdicate before the end of the year and to make room for after-
elected consuls (-consules suffecti-); as, moreover, the number
of praetors annually nominated was raised from eight to sixteen,
and the nomination of half of them was entrusted to the Imperator
in the same way as that of the half of the quaestors; and, lastly,
as there was reserved to the Imperator the right of nominating,
if not titular consuls, at any rate titular praetors and titular
quaestors: Caesar secured a sufficient number of candidates
acceptable to him for filling up the governorships.  Their recall
remained of course left to the discretion of the regent as well as
their nomination; as a rule it was assumed that the consular governor
should not remain more than two years, nor the praetorian
more than one year, in the province.

In the Administration of the Capital

Lastly, so far as concerns the administration of the city which was
his capital and residence, the Imperator evidently intended for a time
to entrust this also to magistrates similarly nominated by him.
He revived the old city-lieutenancy of the regal period;(27)
on different occasions he committed during his absence the administration
of the capital to one or more such lieutenants nominated by him
without consulting the people and for an indefinite period,
who united in themselves the functions of all the administrative
magistrates and possessed even the right of coining money
with their own name, although of course not with their own effigy
In 707 and in the first nine months of 709 there were, moreover,
neither praetors nor curule aediles nor quaestors; the consuls too
were nominated in the former year only towards its close,
and in the latter Caesar was even consul without a colleague.
This looks altogether like an attempt to revive completely
the old regal authority within the city of Rome, as far as the limits
enjoined by the democratic past of the new monarch; in other words,
of magistrates additional to the king himself, to allow only
the prefect of the city during the king's absence and the tribunes
and plebeian aediles appointed for protecting popular freedom
to continue in existence, and to abolish the consulship, the censorship,
the praetorship, the curule aedileship and the quaestorship.(28)
But Caesar subsequently departed from this; he neither accepted
the royal title himself, nor did he cancel those venerable names
interwoven with the glorious history of the republic.  The consuls,
praetors, aediles, tribunes, and quaestors retained substantially
their previous formal powers; nevertheless their position
was totally altered.  It was the political idea lying
at the foundation of the republic that the Roman empire was identified
with the city of Rome, and in consistency with it the municipal
magistrates of the capital were treated throughout as magistrates
of the empire.  In the monarchy of Caesar that view and this consequence
of it fell into abeyance; the magistrates of Rome formed thenceforth
only the first among the many municipalities of the empire,
and the consulship in particular became a purely titular post,
which preserved a certain practical importance only in virtue
of the reversion of a higher governorship annexed to it.  The fate,
which the Roman community had been wont to prepare for the vanquished,
now by means of Caesar befell itself; its sovereignty over
the Roman empire was converted into a limited communal freedom
within the Roman state.  That at the same time the number
of the praetors and quaestors was doubled, has been already mentioned;
the same course was followed with the plebeian aediles, to whom
two new "corn-aediles" (-aediles Ceriales-) were added to superintend
the supplies of the capital.  The appointment to those offices remained
with the community, and was subject to no restriction as respected
the consuls and perhaps also the tribunes of the people
and plebeian aediles; we have already adverted to the fact,
that the Imperator reserved a right of proposal binding on the electors
as regards the half of the praetors, curule aediles, and quaestors
to be annually nominated.  In general the ancient and hallowed
palladia of popular freedom were not touched; which, of course,
did not prevent the individual refractory tribune of the people
from being seriously interfered with and, in fact, deposed and erased
from the roll of senators.

As the Imperator was thus, for the more general and more important
questions, his own minister; as he controlled the finances
by his servants, and the army by his adjutants; and as the old republican
state-magistracies were again converted into municipal magistracies
of the city of Rome; the autocracy was sufficiently established.

The State-Hierarchy

In the spiritual hierarchy on the other hand Caesar, although he issued
a detailed law respecting this portion of the state-economy,
made no material alteration, except that he connected with the person
of the regent the supreme pontificate and perhaps also the membership
of the higher priestly colleges generally; and, partly
in connection with this, one new stall was created in each
of the three supreme colleges, and three new stalls in the fourth college
of the banquet-masters.  If the Roman state-hierarchy had hitherto
served as a support to the ruling oligarchy, it might render
precisely the same service to the new monarchy.  The conservative
religious policy of the senate was transferred to the new kings of Rome;
when the strictly conservative Varro published about this time
his "Antiquities of Divine Things," the great fundamental
repository of Roman state-theology, he was allowed to dedicate it
to the -Pontifex Maximus- Caesar.  The faint lustre which the worship
of Jovis was still able to impart shone round the newly-established
throne; and the old national faith became in its last stages
the instrument of a Caesarian papacy, which, however,
was from the outset but hollow and feeble.

Regal Jurisdiction

In judicial matters, first of all, the old regal jurisdiction
was re-established.  As the king had originally been judge in criminal
and civil causes, without being legally bound in the former
to respect an appeal to the prerogative of mercy in the people,
or in the latter to commit the decision of the question in dispute
to jurymen; so Caesar claimed the right of bringing capital causes
as well as private processes for sole and final decision to his own bar,
and disposing of them in the event of his presence personally,
in the event of his absence by the city-lieutenant.  In fact,
we find him, quite after the manner of the ancient kings, now sitting
in judgment publicly in the Forum of the capital on Roman burgesses
accused of high treason, now holding a judicial inquiry, in his house
regarding the client princes accused of the like crime;
so that the only privilege, which the Roman burgesses had as compared
with the other subjects of the king, seems to have consisted
in the publicity of the judicial procedure.  But this resuscitated
supreme jurisdiction of the kings, although Caesar discharged its duties
with impartiality and care, could only from the nature of the case
find practical application in exceptional cases.

Retention of the Previous Administration of Justice

For the usual procedure in criminal and civil causes the former
republican mode of administering justice was substantially retained.
Criminal causes were still disposed of as formerly before the different
jury-commissions competent to deal with the several crimes,
civil causes partly before the court of inheritance or,
as it was commonly called, of the -centumviri-, partly before
the single -iudices-; the superintendence of judicial proceedings
was as formerly conducted in the capital chiefly by the praetors,
in the provinces by the governors.  Political crimes too continued
even under the monarchy to be referred to a jury-commission;
the new ordinance, which Caesar issued respecting them, specified
the acts legally punishable with precision and in a liberal spirit
which excluded all prosecution of opinions, and it fixed
as the penalty not death, but banishment.  As respects the selection
of the jurymen, whom the senatorial party desired to see chosen
exclusively from the senate and the strict Gracchans exclusively
from the equestrian order, Caesar, faithful to the principle
of reconciling the parties, left the matter on the footing
of the compromise-law of Cotta,(29) but with the modification--
for which the way was probably prepared by the law of Pompeius
of 699(30)-that the -tribuni aerarii- who came from the lower ranks
of the people were set aside; so that there was established a rating
for jurymen of at least 400,000 sesterces (4000 pounds), and senators
and equites now divided the functions of jurymen which had so long
been an apple of discord between them.

Appeal to the Monarch

The relations of the regal and the republican jurisdiction were
on the whole co-ordinate, so that any cause might be initiated as well
before the king's bar as before the competent republican tribunal,
the latter of course in the event of collision giving way;
if on the other hand the one or the other tribunal had pronounced
sentence, the cause was thereby finally disposed of.  To overturn
a verdict pronounced by the jurymen duly called to act in a civil
or in a criminal cause even the new ruler was not entitled,
except where special incidents, such as corruption or violence,
already according to the law of the republic gave occasion
for cancelling the jurymen's sentence.  On the other hand
the principle that, as concerned any decree emanating merely
from magistrates, the person aggrieved by it was entitled to appeal
to the superior of the decreeing authority, probably obtained
even now the great extension, out of which the subsequent imperial
appellate jurisdiction arose; perhaps all the magistrates
administering law, at least the governors of all the provinces,
were regarded so far as subordinates of the ruler, that appeal
to him might be lodged from any of their decrees.

Decay of the Judicial System

Certainly these innovations, the most important of which--
the general extension given to appeal--cannot even be reckoned
absolutely an improvement, by no means healed thoroughly the evils
from which the Roman administration of justice was suffering.
Criminal procedure cannot be sound in any slave-state, inasmuch as
the task of proceeding against slaves lies, if not de jure,
at least de facto in the hands of the master.  The Roman master,
as may readily be conceived, punished throughout the crime of his serf,
not as a crime, but only so far as it rendered the slave useless
or disagreeable to him; slave criminals were merely drafted off
somewhat like oxen addicted to goring, and, as the latter
were sold to the butcher, so were the former sold to the fencing-booth.
But even the criminal procedure against free men, which had been
from the outset and always in great part continued to be
a political process, had amidst the disorder of the last generations
become transformed from a grave legal proceeding into a faction-
fight to be fought out by means of favour, money, and violence.
The blame rested jointly on all that took part in it, on the magistrates,
the jury, the parties, even the public who were spectators;
but the most incurable wounds were inflicted on  justice by the doings
of the advocates.  In proportion as the parasitic plant
of Roman forensic eloquence flourished, all positive ideas of right
became broken up; and the distinction, so difficult of apprehension
by the public, between opinion and evidence was in reality
expelled from the Roman criminal practice.  "A plain simple defendant,"
says a Roman advocate of much experience at this period, "may be accused
of any crime at pleasure which he has or has not committed, and will be
certainly condemned."  Numerous pleadings in criminal causes
have been preserved to us from this epoch; there is hardly one of them
which makes even a serious attempt to fix the crime in question
and to put into proper shape the proof or counterproof.(31)
That the contemporary civil procedure was likewise in various respects
unsound, we need hardly mention; it too suffered from the effects
of the party politics mixed up with all things, as for instance
in the process of Publius Quinctius (671-673), where the most
contradictory decisions were given according as Cinna or Sulla
had the ascendency in Rome; and the advocates, frequently non-jurists,
produced here also intentionally and unintentionally abundance
of confusion.  But it was implied in the nature of the case,
that party mixed itself up with such matters only by way of exception,
and that here the quibbles of advocates could not so rapidly or so deeply
break up the ideas of right; accordingly the civil pleadings
which we possess from this epoch, while not according
to our stricter ideas effective compositions for their purpose,
are yet of a far less libellous and far more juristic character
than the contemporary speeches in criminal causes.  If Caesar permitted
the curb imposed on the eloquence of advocates by Pompeius(32)
to remain, or even rendered it more severe, there was at least
nothing lost by this; and much was gained, when better selected
and better superintended magistrates and jurymen were nominated
and the palpable corruption and intimidation of the courts
came to an end.  But the sacred sense of right and the reverence
for the law, which it is difficult to destroy in the minds
of the multitude, it is still more difficult to reproduce.
Though the legislator did away with various abuses, he could not heal
the root of the evil; and it might be doubted whether time,
which cures everything curable, would in this case bring relief.

Decay of the Roman Military System

The Roman military system of this period was nearly in the same condition
as the Carthaginian at the time of Hannibal. The governing classes
furnished only the officers; the subjects, plebeians and provincials,
formed the army.  The general was, financially and militarily,
almost independent of the central government, and, whether
in fortune or misfortune, substantially left to himself
and to the resources of his province.  Civic and even national spirit
had vanished from the army, and the esprit de corps was alone
left as a bond of inward union.  The army had ceased to be
an instrument of the commonwealth; in a political point of view
it had no will of its own, but it was doubtless able to adopt
that of the master who wielded it; in a military point of view
it sank under the ordinary miserable leaders into a disorganized
useless rabble, but under a right general it attained a military
perfection which the burgess-army could never reach.  The class
of officers especially had deeply degenerated. The higher ranks,
senators and equites, grew more and more unused to arms.
While formerly there had been a zealous competition for the posts
of staff officers, now every man of equestrian rank, who chose to serve,
was sure of a military tribuneship, and several of these posts
had even to be filled with men of humbler rank; and any man
of quality at all who still served sought at least to finish
his term of service in Sicily or some other province where
he was sure not to face the enemy.  Officers of ordinary bravery
and efficiency were stared at as prodigies; as to Pompeius especially,
his contemporaries practised a military idolatry which in every
respect compromised them.  The staff, as a rule, gave the signal
for desertion and for mutiny; in spite of the culpable indulgence
of the commanders proposals for the cashiering of officers of rank
were daily occurrences.  We still possess the picture--
drawn not without irony by Caesar's own hand--of the state of matters
at his own headquarters when orders were given to march
against Ariovistus, of the cursing and weeping, and preparing
of testaments, and presenting even of requests for furlough.
In the soldiery not a trace of the better classes could any longer
be discovered.  Legally the general obligation to bear arms
still subsisted; but the levy, if resorted to alongside of enlisting,
took place in the most irregular manner; numerous persons
liable to serve were wholly passed over, while those once levied
were retained thirty years and longer beneath the eagles.
The Roman burgess-cavalry now merely vegetated as a sort of mounted
noble guard, whose perfumed cavaliers and exquisite high-bred horses
only played a part in the festivals of the capital; the so-called
burgess-infantry was a troop of mercenaries swept together
from the lowest ranks of the burgess-population; the subjects furnished
the cavalry and the light troops exclusively, and came to be
more and more extensively employed also in the infantry.  The posts
of centurions in the legions, on which in the mode of warfare
of that time the efficiency of the divisions essentially depended,
and to which according to the national military constitution the soldier
served his way upward with the pike, were now not merely regularly
conferred according to favour, but were not unfrequently sold
to the highest bidder.  In consequence of the bad financial management
of the government and the venality and fraud of the great majority
of the magistrates, the payment of the soldiers was extremely
defective and irregular.

The necessary consequence of this was, that in the ordinary
course of things the Roman armies pillaged the provincials,
mutinied against their officers, and ran off in presence of the enemy;
instances occurred where considerable armies, such as the Macedonian army
of Piso in 697,(33) were without any proper defeat utterly ruined,
simply by this misconduct.  Capable leaders on the other hand,
such as Pompeius, Caesar, Gabinius, formed doubtless out of the existing
materials able and effective, and to some extent exemplary,
armies; but these armies belonged far more to their general
than to the commonwealth.  The still more complete decay
of the Roman marine--which, moreover, had remained an object
of antipathy to the Romans and had never been fully nationalized--
scarcely requires to be mentioned.  Here too, on all sides,
everything that could be ruined at all had been reduced to ruin
under the oligarchic government.

Its Reorganization by Caesar

The reorganization of the Roman military system by Caesar
was substantially limited to the tightening and strengthening
of the reins of discipline, which had been relaxed under the negligent
and incapable supervision previously subsisting.  The Roman military
system seemed to him neither to need, nor to be capable of,
radical reform; he accepted the elements of the army, just as Hannibal
had accepted them.  The enactment of his municipal ordinance that,
in order to the holding of a municipal magistracy or sitting
in the municipal council before the thirtieth year, three years' service
on horseback--that is, as officer--or six years' service on foot
should be required, proves indeed that he wished to attract
the better classes to the army; but it proves with equal clearness
that amidst the ever-increasing prevalence of an unwarlike spirit
in the nation he himself held it no longer possible to associate
the holding of an honorary office with the fulfilment of the time
of service unconditionally as hitherto.  This very circumstance
serves to explain why Caesar made no attempt to re-establish
the Roman burgess-cavalry.  The levy was better arranged,
the time of service was regulated and abridged; otherwise matters
remained on the footing that the infantry of the line were raised
chiefly from the lower orders of the Roman burgesses, the cavalry
and the light infantry from the subjects.  That nothing was done
for the reorganization of the fleet, is surprising.

Foreign Mercenaries
Adjutants of the Legion

It was an innovation--hazardous beyond doubt even in the view
of its author--to which the untrustworthy character of the cavalry
furnished by the subjects compelled him,(34) that Caesar
for the first time deviated from the old Roman system of never fighting
with mercenaries, and incorporated in the cavalry hired foreigners,
especially Germans.  Another innovation was the appointment of adjutants
of the legion (-legati legionis-).  Hitherto the military tribunes,
nominated partly by the burgesses, partly by the governor concerned,
had led the legions in such a way that six of them were placed
over each legion, and the command alternated among these;
a single commandant of the legion was appointed by the general
only as a temporary and extraordinary measure.  In subsequent times
on the other hand those colonels or adjutants of legions appear
as a permanent and organic institution, and as nominated no longer
by the governor whom they obey, but by the supreme command in Rome;
both changes seem referable to Caesar's arrangements connected
with the Gabinian law.(35)  The reason for the introduction
of this important intervening step in the military hierarchy
must be sought partly in the necessity for a more energetic
centralization of the command, partly in the felt want of capable
superior officers, partly and chiefly in the design of providing
a counterpoise to the governor by associating with him one or more
colonels nominated by the Imperator.

The New Commandership-in-Chief

The most essential change in the military system consisted
in the institution of a permanent military head in the person
of the Imperator, who, superseding the previous unmilitary
and in every respect incapable governing corporation, united
in his hands the whole control of the army, and thus converted it
from a direction which for the most part was merely nominal
into a real and energetic supreme command.  We are not properly informed
as to the position which this supreme command occupied towards
the special commands hitherto omnipotent in their respective spheres.
Probably the analogy of the relation subsisting between the praetor
and the consul or the consul and the dictator served generally
as a basis, so that, while the governor in his own right retained
the supreme military authority in his province, the Imperator
was entitled at any moment to take it away from him and assume it
for himself or his delegates, and, while the authority of the governor
was confined to the province, that of the Imperator, like the regal
and the earlier consular authority, extended over the whole empire.
Moreover it is extremely probable that now the nomination
of the officers, both the military tribunes and the centurions,
so far as it had hitherto belonged to the governor,(36) as well as
the nomination of the new adjutants of the legion, passed directly
into the hands of the Imperator; and in like manner even now
the arrangement of the levies, the bestowal of leave of absence,
and the more important criminal cases, may have been submitted
to the judgment of the commander-in-chief.  With this limitation
of the powers of the governors and with the regulated control
of the Imperator, there was no great room to apprehend
in future either that the armies might be utterly disorganized
or that they might be converted into retainers personally devoted
to their respective officers.

Caesar's Military Plans
Defence of the Frontier

But, however decidedly and urgently the circumstances pointed
to military monarchy, and however distinctly Caesar took the supreme
command exclusively for himself, he was nevertheless not at all
inclined to establish his authority by means of, and on, the army.
No doubt he deemed a standing army necessary for his state,
but only because from its geographical position it required
a comprehensive regulation of the frontiers and permanent frontier
garrisons.  Partly at earlier periods, partly during the recent
civil war, he had worked at the tranquillizing of Spain,
and had established strong positions for the defence of the frontier
in Africa along the great desert, and in the north-west of the empire
along the line of the Rhine.  He occupied himself with similar plans
for the regions on the Euphrates and on the Danube.  Above all
he designed an expedition against the Parthians, to avenge the day
of Carrhae; he had destined three years for this war, and was resolved
to settle accounts with these dangerous enemies once for all
and not less cautiously than thoroughly.  In like manner
he had projected the scheme of attacking Burebistas king of the Getae,
who was greatly extending his power on both sides of the Danube,(37)
and of protecting Italy in the north-east by border-districts
similar to those which he had created for it in Gaul.  On the other hand
there is no evidence at all that Caesar contemplated like Alexander
a career of victory extending indefinitely far; it is said indeed
that he had intended to march from Parthia to the Caspian
and from this to the Black Sea and then along its northern shores
to the Danube, to annex to the empire all Scythia and Germany as far as
the Northern Ocean--which according to the notions of that time was not
so very distant from the Mediterranean--and to return home through Gaul;
but no authority at all deserving of credit vouches for the existence
of these fabulous projects.  In the case of a state which, like the Roman
state of Caesar, already included a mass of barbaric elements difficult
to be controlled, and had still for centuries to come more than enough
to do with their assimilation, such conquests, even granting their
military practicability, would have been nothing but blunders
far more brilliant and far worse than the Indian expedition
of Alexander.  Judging both from Caesar's conduct in Britain
and Germany and from the conduct of those who became the heirs
of his political ideas, it is in a high degree probable that Caesar
with Scipio Aemilianus called on the gods not to increase the empire,
but to preserve it, and that his schemes of conquest restricted
themselves to a settlement of the frontier--measured, it is true,
by his own great scale--which should secure the line of the Euphrates,
and, instead of the fluctuating and militarily useless boundary
of the empire on the north-east, should establish and render defensible
the line of the Danube.

Attempts of Caesar to Avert Military Despotism

But, if it remains a mere probability that Caesar ought not
to be designated a world-conqueror in the same sense as Alexander
and Napoleon, it is quite certain that his design was not to rest
his new monarchy primarily on the support of the army nor generally
to place the military authority above the civil, but to incorporate
it with, and as far as possible subordinate it to, the civil
commonwealth.  The invaluable pillars of a military state,
those old and far-famed Gallic legions, were honourably dissolved
just on account of the incompatibility of their esprit de corps
with a civil commonwealth, and their glorious names were only perpetuated
in newly-founded urban communities.  The soldiers presented
by Caesar with allotments of land on their discharge were not,
like those of Sulla, settled together--as it were militarily--
in colonies of their own, but, especially when they settled in Italy,
were isolated as much as possible and scattered throughout the peninsula;
it was only in the case of the portions of the Campanian land
that remained for disposal, that an aggregation of the old soldiers
of Caesar could not be avoided.  Caesar sought to solve
the difficult task of keeping the soldiers of a standing army
within the spheres of civil life, partly by retaining the former
arrangement which prescribed merely certain years of service,
and not a service strictly constant, that is, uninterrupted
by any discharge; partly by the already-mentioned shortening of the term
of service, which occasioned a speedier change in the personal
composition of the army; partly by the regular settlement
of the soldiers who had served out their time as agricultural colonists;
partly and principally by keeping the army aloof from Italy
and generally from the proper seats of the civil and political life
of the nation, and directing the soldier to the points,
where according to the opinion of the great king he was alone,
in his place--to the frontier stations, that he might ward off
the extraneous foe.

Absence of Corps of Guards

The true criterion also of the military state--the development of,
and the privileged position assigned to, the corps of guards--
is not to be met with in the case of Caesar.  Although as respects
the army on active service the institution of a special bodyguard
for the general had been already long in existence,(38) in Caesar's
system this fell completely into the background; his praetorian
cohort seems to have essentially consisted merely of orderly
officers or non-military attendants, and never to have been
in the proper sense a select corps, consequently never an object
of jealousy to the troops of the line.  While Caesar even as general
practically dropped the bodyguard, he still, less as king tolerated
a guard round his person.  Although constantly beset by lurking
assassins and well aware of it, he yet rejected the proposal
of the senate to institute a select guard; dismissed,
as soon as things grew in some measure quiet, the Spanish escort
which he had made use of at first in the capital; and contented himself
with the retinue of lictors sanctioned by traditional usage
for the Roman supreme magistrates.

Impracticableness of Ideal

However much of the idea of his party and of his youth--
to found a Periclean government in Rome not by virtue of the sword,
but by virtue of the confidence of the nation--Caesar had been obliged
to abandon in the struggle with realities, he retained even now
the fundamental idea--of not founding a military monarchy--
with an energy to which history scarcely supplies a parallel.
Certainly this too was an impracticable ideal--it was the sole illusion,
in regard to which the earnest longing of that vigorous mind
was more powerful than its clear judgment.  A government, such as Caesar
had in view, was not merely of necessity in its nature highly personal,
and so liable to perish with the death of its author just as
 the kindred creations of Pericles and Cromwell with the death
of their founders; but, amidst the deeply disorganized state
of the nation, it was not at all credible that the eighth king of Rome
would succeed even for his lifetime in ruling, as his seven predecessors
had ruled, his fellow-burgesses merely by virtue of law and justice,
and as little probable that he would succeed in incorporating
the standing army--after it had during the last civil war
learned its power and unlearned its reverence--once more
as a subservient element in civil society.  To any one who calmly
considered to what extent reverence for the law had disappeared
from the lowest as from the highest ranks of society, the former hope
must have seemed almost a dream; and, if with the Marian reform
of the military system the soldier generally had ceased
to be a citizen,(39) the Campanian mutiny and the battle-field
of Thapsus showed with painful clearness the nature of the support
which the army now lent to the law.  Even the great democrat
could only with difficulty and imperfectly hold in check the powers
which he had unchained; thousands of swords still at his signal
flew from the scabbard, but they were no longer equally ready
upon that signal to return to the sheath.  Fate is mightier than genius.
Caesar desired to become the restorer of the civil commonwealth,
and became the founder of the military monarchy which he abhorred;
he overthrew the regime of aristocrats and bankers in the state,
only to put a military regime in their place, and the commonwealth
continued as before to be tyrannized and worked for profit
by a privileged minority.  And yet it is a privilege of the highest
natures thus creatively to err.  The brilliant attempts of great men
to realize the ideal, though they do not reach their aim,
form the best treasure of the nations.  It was owing to the work
of Caesar that the Roman military state did not become a police-state
till after the lapse of several centuries, and that the Roman Imperators,
however little they otherwise resembled the great founder
of their sovereignty, yet employed the soldier in the main
not against the citizen but against the public foe, and esteemed
both nation and army too highly to set the latter as constable
over the former.

Financial Administration

The regulation of financial matters occasioned comparatively
little difficulty in consequence of the solid foundations
which the immense magnitude of the empire and the exclusion
of the system of credit supplied.  If the state had hitherto found itself
in constant financial embarrassment, the fault was far from chargeable
on the inadequacy of the state revenues; on the contrary these had
of late years immensely increased.  To the earlier aggregate income,
which is estimated at 200,000,000 sesterces (2,000,000 pounds),
there were added 85,000,000 sesterces (850,000 pounds)
by the erection of the provinces of Bithynia-Pontus and Syria;
which increase, along with the other newly opened up or augmented
sources of income, especially from the constantly increasing produce
of the taxes on luxuries, far outweighed the loss of the Campanian rents.
Besides, immense sums had been brought from extraordinary sources
into the exchequer through Lucullus, Metellus, Pompeius, Cato,
and others.  The cause of the financial embarrassments rather la
partly in the increase of the ordinary and extraordinary expenditure,
partly in the disorder of management.  Under the former head,
the distribution of corn to the multitude of the capital claimed
almost exorbitant sums; through the extension  given to it
by Cato in 691(40) the yearly expenditure for that purpose amounted
to 30,000,000 sesterces (300,000 pounds) and after the abolition
in 696 of the compensation hitherto paid, it swallowed up even
a fifth of the state revenues.  The military budget also had risen,
since the garrisons of Cilicia, Syria, and Gaul had been added
to those of Spain, Macedonia, and the other provinces.
Among the extraordinary items of expenditure must be named
in the first place the great cost of fitting out fleets, on which,
for example, five years after the great razzia of 687, 34,000,000
sesterces (340,000 pounds) were expended at once.  Add to this
the very considerable sums which were consumed in wars and warlike
preparations; such as 18,000,000 sesterces (180,000 pounds)
paid at once to Piso merely for the outfit of the Macedonian army,
24,000,000 sesterces (240,000 pounds) even annually to Pompeius
for the maintenance and pay of the Spanish army, and similar sums
to Caesar for the Gallic legions.  But considerable as were
these demands made on the Roman exchequer, it would still have
beenable probably to meet them, had not its administration once
so exemplary been affected by the universal laxity and dishonesty
of this age; the payments of the treasury were often suspended
merely because of the neglect to call up its outstanding claims.
The magistrates placed over it, two of the quaestors--young men
annually changed--contented themselves at the best with inaction;
among the official staff of clerks and others, formerly so justly held
in high esteem for its integrity, the worst abuses now prevailed,
more especially since such posts had come to be bought and sold.

Financial Reforms of Caesar
Leasing of the Direct Taxes Abolished

As soon however as the threads of Roman state-finance were concentrated
no longer as hitherto in the senate, but in the cabinet of Caesar,
new life, stricter order, and more  compact connection at once pervaded
all the wheels and springs of that great machine.  the two institutions,
which originated with Gaius Gracchus and ate like a gangrene
into the Roman financial system--the leasing of the direct taxes,
and the distributions of grain--were partly abolished,
partly remodelled.  Caesar wished not, like his predecessor,
to hold the nobility in check by the banker-aristocracy
and the populace of the capital, but to set them aside and to deliver
the commonwealth from all parasites whether of high or lower rank;
and therefore he went in these two important questions
not with Gaius Gracchus, but with the oligarch Sulla.  The leasing system
was allowed to continue for the indirect taxes, in the case of which
it was very old and--under the maxim of Roman financial administration,
which was retained inviolable also by Caesar, that the levying
of the taxes should at any cost be kept simple and readily manageable--
absolutely could not be dispensed with.  But the direct taxes
were thenceforth universally either treated, like the African
and Sardinian deliveries of corn and oil, as contributions
in kind to be directly supplied to the state, or converted,
like the revenues of Asia Minor, into fixed money payments,
in which case the collection of the several sums payable
was entrusted to the tax-districts themselves.

Reform of the Distribution of Corn

The corn-distributions in the capital had hitherto been looked on
as a profitable prerogative of the community which ruled and,
because it ruled, had to be fed by its subjects.  This infamous
principle was set aside by Caesar; but it could not be overlooked
that a multitude of wholly destitute burgesses had been protected
solely by these largesses of food from starvation.  In this aspect
Caesar retained them.  While according to the Sempronian ordinance
renewed by Cato every Roman burgess settled in Rome had legally
a claim to bread-corn without payment, this list of recipients,
which had at last risen to the number of 320,000, was reduced
by the exclusion of all individuals having means or otherwise
provided for to 150,000, and this number was fixed once for all
as the maximum number of recipients of free corn; at the same time
an annual revision of the list was ordered, so that the places vacated
by removal or death might be again filled up with the most needful
among the applicants.  By this conversion of the political privilege
into a provision for the poor, a principle remarkable in a moral
as well as in a historical point of view came for the first time
into living operation.  Civil society but slowly and gradually
works its way to a perception of the interdependence of interests;
in earlier antiquity the state doubtless protected its members
from the public enemy and the murderer, but it was not bound to protect
the totally helpless fellow-citizen from the worse enemy, want,
by affording the needful means of subsistence.  It was the Attic
civilization which first developed, in the Solonian and post-Solonian
legislation, the principle that it is the duty of the community
to provide for its invalids and indeed for its poor generally
and it was Caesar that first developed what in the restricted compass
of Attic life had remained a municipal matter into an organic
institution of state, and transformed an arrangement,
which was a burden and a disgrace  for the commonwealth,
into the first of those institutions--in modern times as countless
as they are beneficial--where the infinite depth of human compassion
contends with the infinite depth of human misery.

The Budget of Income

In addition to these fundamental reforms a thorough revision
of the income and expenditure took place.  The ordinary sources
of income were everywhere regulated and fixed.  Exemption from taxation
was conferred on not a few communities and even on whole districts,
whether indirectly by the bestowal of the Roman or Latin franchise,
or directly by special privilege; it was obtained e. g. by all
the Sicilian communities(41) in the former, by the town of Ilion
in the latter way.  Still greater was the number of those whose
proportion of tribute was lowered; the communities in Further Spain,
for instance, already after Caesar's governorship had on his suggestion
a reduction of tribute granted to them by the senate, and now
the most oppressed province of Asia had not only the levying of its
direct taxes facilitated, but also a third of them wholly remitted.
The newly-added taxes, such as those of the communities subdued
in Illyria and above all of the Gallic communities--which latter
together paid annually 40,000,000 sesterces (400,000 pounds)--
were fixed throughout on a low scale.  It is true on the other hand
that various towns such as Little Leptis in Africa, Sulci in Sardinia,
and several Spanish communities, had their tribute raised by way
of penalty for their conduct during the last war.  The very lucrative
Italian harbour-tolls abolished in the recent times of anarchy
were re-established all the more readily, that this tax fell
essentially on luxuries imported from the east.  To these new
or revived sources of ordinary income were added the sums
which accrued by extraordinary means, especially in consequence
of the civil war, to the victor--the booty collected in Gaul;
the stock of cash in the capital; the treasures taken from the Italian
and Spanish temples; the sums raised in the shape of forced loan,
compulsory present, or fine, from the dependent communities
and dynasts, and the pecuniary penalties imposed in a similar way
by judicial sentence, or simply by sending an order to pay,
on individual wealthy Romans; and above all things the proceeds
from the estate of defeated opponents.  How productive these sources
of income were, we may learn from the fact, that the fine
of the African capitalists who sat in the opposition-senate alone
amounted to 100,000,000 sesterces (1,000,000 pounds) and the price paid
by the purchasers of the property of Pompeius to 70,000,000 sesterces
(700,000 pounds).  This course was necessary, because the power
of the beaten nobility rested in great measure on their colossal wealth
and could only be effectually broken by imposing on them the defrayment
of the costs of the war.  But the odium of the confiscations
was in some measure mitigated by the fact that  Caesar directed
their proceeds solely to the benefit of the state,
and, instead of overlooking after the manner of Sulla any act of fraud
in his favourites, exacted the purchase-money with rigour
even from his most faithful adherents, e. g. from Marcus Antonius.

The Budget of Expenditure

In the expenditure a diminution was in the first place obtained
by the considerable restriction of the largesses of grain.
The distribution of corn to the poor of the capital which was retained,
as well as the kindred supply of oil newly introduced by Caesar
for the Roman baths, were at least in great part charged once for all
on the contributions in kind from Sardinia and especially from Africa,
and were thereby wholly or for the most part kept separate
from the exchequer.  On the other hand the regular expenditure
for the military system was increased partly by the augmentation
of the standing army, partly by the raising of the pay of the legionary
from 480 sesterces (5 pounds) to 900 (9 pounds) annually.
Both steps were in fact indispensable.  There was a total want
of any real defence for the frontiers, and an indispensable preliminary
to it was a considerable increase of the army.  The doubling
of the pay was doubtless employed by Caesar to attach his soldiers
firmly to him,(42) but was not introduced as a permanent innovation
on that account.  The former pay of 1 1/3 sesterces (3 1/4 pence)
per day had been fixed in very ancient times, when money had
an altogether different value from that which it had in the Rome
of Caesar's day; it could only have been retained down to a period
when the common day-labourer in the capital earned by the labour
of his hands daily on an average 3 sesterces (7 1/2 pence),
because in those times the soldier entered the army not for the sake
of the pay, but chiefly for the sake of the--in great measure illicit--
perquisites of military service.  The first condition in order
to a serious reform in the military system, and to the getting rid
of those irregular gains of the soldier which formed a burden
mostly on the provincials, was an increase suitable to the times
in the regular pay; and the fixing of it at 2 1/2 sesterces (6 1/2 pence)
may be regarded as an equitable step, while the great burden
thereby imposed on the treasury was a necessary, and in its consequences
a beneficial, course.

Of the amount of the extraordinary expenses which Caesar
had to undertake or voluntarily undertook, it is difficult
to form a conception.  The wars themselves consumed enormous sums;
and sums perhaps not less were required to fulfil the promises
which Caesar had been obliged to make during the civil war.
It was a bad example and one unhappily not lost sight of in the sequel,
that every common soldier received for his participation in the civil war
20,000 sesterces (200 pounds), every burgess of the multitude
in the capital for his non-participation in it 300 sesterces
(3 pounds) as an addition to his aliment; but Caesar, after having once
under the pressure of circumstances pledged his word, was too much
of a king to abate from it.  Besides, Caesar answered innumerable
demands of honourable liberality, and put into circulation
immense sums for building more especially, which had been
shamefully neglected during the financial distress of the last times
of the republic--the cost of his buildings executed partly during
the Gallic campaigns, partly afterwards, in the capital was reckoned
at 160,000,000 sesterces (1,600,000 pounds).  The general result
of the financial administration of Caesar is expressed in the fact that,
while by sagacious and energetic reforms and by a right combination
of economy and liberality he amply and fully met all equitable claims,
nevertheless already in March 710 there lay in the public treasury
700,000,000 and in his own 100,000,000 sesterces (together
8,000,000 pounds)--a sum which exceeded by tenfold the amount of cash
in the treasury in the most flourishing times of the republic.(43)

Social Condition of the Nation

But the task of breaking up the old parties and furnishing
the new commonwealth with an appropriate constitution,
an efficient army, and well-ordered finances, difficult as it was,
was not the most difficult part of Caesar's work.  If the Italian nation
was really to be regenerated, it required a reorganization
which should transform all parts of the great empire--Rome, Italy,
and the provinces.  Let us endeavour here also to delineate
the old state of things, as well as the beginnings of a new
and more tolerable time.

The Capital

The good stock of the Latin nation had long since wholly disappeared
from Rome.  It is implied in the very nature of the case,
that a capital loses its municipal and even its national stamp
more quickly than any subordinate community.  There the upper classes
speedily withdraw from urban public life, in order to find
their home rather in the state as a whole than in a single city;
there are inevitably concentrated the foreign settlers, the fluctuating
population of travellers for pleasure or business, the mass
of the indolent, lazy, criminal, financially and morally bankrupt,
and for that very reason cosmopolitan, rabble.  All this preeminently
applied to Rome.  The opulent Roman frequently regarded his town-house
merely as a lodging.  When the urban municipal offices were converted
into imperial magistracies; when the civic assembly became the assembly
of burgesses of the empire; and when smaller self-governing tribal
or other associations were not tolerated within the capital:
all proper communal life ceased for Rome.  From the whole compass
of the widespread empire people flocked to Rome, for speculation,
for debauchery, for intrigue, for training in crime,
or even for the purpose of hiding there from the eye of the law.

The Populace There

These evils arose in some measure necessarily from the very nature
of a capital; others more accidental and perhaps still more grave
were associated with them.  There has never perhaps existed a great city
so thoroughly destitute of the means of support as Rome; importation
on the one hand, and domestic manufacture by slaves on the other,
rendered any free industry from the outset impossible there.
The injurious consequences of the radical evil pervading the politics
of antiquity in general--the slave-system--were more conspicuous
in the capital than anywhere else.  Nowhere were such masses
of slaves accumulated as in the city palaces of the great families
or of wealthy upstarts.  Nowhere were the nations of the three
continents mingled as in the slave-population of the capital--
Syrians, Phrygians and other half-Hellenes with Libyans and Moors,
Getae, and Iberians with the daily-increasing influx of Celts
and Germans.  The demoralization inseparable from the absence
of freedom, and the terrible inconsistency between formal
and moral right, were far more glaringly apparent in the case
of the half or wholly cultivated--as it were genteel--city-slave than,
in that of the rural serf who tilled the field in chains
like the fettered ox.  Still worse than the masses of slaves were those
who had been de jure or simply de facto released from slavery--
a mixture of mendicant rabble and very rich parvenus, no longer slaves
and not yet fully burgesses, economically and even legally dependent
on their master and yet with the pretensions of free men;
and these freedmen made their way above all towards the capital,
where gain of various sorts was to be had and the retail traffic
as well as the minor handicrafts were almost wholly in their hands.
Their influence on the elections is expressly attested;
and that they took a leading part in the street riots, is very evident
from the ordinary signal by means of which these were virtually
proclaimed by the demagogues--the closing of the shops
and places of sale.

Relations of the Oligarchy to the Populace

Moreover, the government not only did nothing to counteract
this corruption of the population of the capital, but even encouraged it
for the benefit of their selfish policy.  The judicious rule of law,
which prohibited individuals condemned for a capital offence
from dwelling in the capita, was not carried into effect
by the negligent police.  The police-supervision--so urgently required--
of association on the part of the rabble was at first neglected,
and afterwards(44) even declared punishable as a restriction inconsistent
with the freedom of the people.  The popular festivals had been allowed
so to increase that the seven ordinary ones alone--the Roman,
the Plebeian, those of the Mother of the Gods, of Ceres, of Apollo,
of Flora(45) and of Victoria--lasted altogether sixty-two days;
and to these were added the gladiatorial games and numerous other
extraordinary amusements.  The duty of providing grain at low prices--
which was unavoidably necessary with such a proletariate living wholly
from hand to mouth--was treated with the most unscrupulous frivolity,
and the fluctuations in the price of bread-corn were of a fabulous
and incalculable description.(46)  Lastly, the distribution of grain
formed an official invitation to the whole burgess-proletariate
who were destitute of food and indisposed for work to take up
their abode in the capital.

Anarchy of the Capital

The seed sown was bad, and the harvest corresponded.  The system
of clubs and bands in the sphere of politics, the worship of Isis
and similar pious extravagances in that of religion, had their root
in this state of things.  People were constantly in prospect
of a dearth, and not unfrequently in utter famine.  Nowhere was a man
less secure of his life than in the capital; murder professionally
prosecuted by banditti was the single trade peculiar to it;
the alluring of the victim to Rome was the preliminary
to his assassination; no one ventured into the country
in the vicinity of the capital without an armed retinue.
Its outward condition corresponded to this inward disorganization,
and seemed a keen satire on the aristocratic government.
Nothing was done for the regulation of the stream of the Tiber;
excepting that they caused the only bridge, with which they still
made shift,(47) to be constructed of stone at least as far as
the Tiber-island.  As little was anything done toward the levelling
of the city of the Seven Hills, except where perhaps the accumulation
of rubbish had effected some improvement.  The streets ascended
and descended narrow and angular, and were wretchedly kept; the footpaths
were small and ill paved.  The ordinary houses were built of bricks
negligently and to a giddy height, mostly by speculative builders
on account of the small proprietors; by which means the former
became vastly rich, and the latter were reduced to beggary.
Like isolated islands amidst this sea of wretched buildings
were seen the splendid palaces of the rich, which curtailed the space
for the smaller houses just as their owners curtailed the burgess-
rights of smaller men in the state, and beside whose marble pillars
and Greek statues the decaying temples, with their images of the gods
still in great part carved of wood, made a melancholy figure.
A police-supervision of streets, of river-banks, of fires, or of building
was almost unheard of; if the government troubled itself at all
about the inundations, conflagrations, and falls of houses
which were of yearly occurrence, it was only to ask from the state-
theologians their report and advice regarding the true import
of such signs and wonders.  If we try to conceive to ourselves
a London with the slave-population of New Orleans, with the police
of Constantinople, with the non-industrial character of the modern Rome,
and agitated by politics after the fashion of the Paris in 1848,
we shall acquire an approximate idea of the republican glory,
the departure of which Cicero and his associates in their
sulky letters deplore.

Caesar's Treatment of Matters in the Capital

Caesar did not deplore, but he sought to help so far as help
was possible.  Rome remained, of course, what it was--
a cosmopolitan city.  Not only would the attempt to give to it
once more a specifically Italian character have been impracticable;
it would not have suited Caesar's plan.  Just as Alexander found
for his Graeco-Oriental empire an appropriate capital in the Hellenic,
Jewish, Egyptian, and above all cosmopolitan, Alexandria,
so the capital of the new Romano-Hellenic universal empire,
situated at the meeting-point of the east and the west, was to be
not an Italian community, but the denationalized capital
of many nations.  For this reason Caesar tolerated the worship
of the newly-settled Egyptian gods alongside of Father Jovis, and granted
even to the Jews the free exercise of their strangely foreign ritual
in the very capital of the empire.  However offensive was the motley
mixture of the parasitic--especially the Helleno-Oriental--
population in Rome, he nowhere opposed its extension; it is significant,
that at his popular festivals for the capital he caused dramas
to be performed not merely in Latin and Greek, but also in other
languages, presumably in Phoenician, Hebrew, Syrian, Spanish.

Diminution of the Proletariate

But, if Caesar accepted with the full consciousness of what he was doing
the fundamental character of the capital such as he found it,
he yet worked energetically at the improvement of the lamentable
and disgraceful state of things prevailing there.  Unhappily
the primary evils were the least capable of being eradicated.
Caesar could not abolish slavery with its train of national calamities;
it must remain an open question, whether he would in the course of time
have attempted at least to limit the slave-population in the capital,
as he undertook to do so in another field.  As little could Caesar
conjure into existence a free industry in the capital;
yet the great building-operations remedied in some measure
the want of means of support there, and opened up to the proletariate
a source of small but honourable gain.  On the other hand Caesar
laboured energetically to diminish the mass of the free proletariate.
The constant influx of persons brought by the corn-largesses
to Rome was, if not wholly stopped,(48) at least very materially
restricted by the conversion of these largesses into a provision
for the poor limited to a fixed number.  The ranks of the existing
proletariate were thinned on the one hand by the  tribunals
which were instructed to proceed with unrelenting rigour
against the rabble, on the other hand by a comprehensive transmarine
colonization; of the 80,000 colonists whom Caesar sent beyond the seas
in the few years of his government, a very great portion
must have been taken from the lower ranks of the population
of the capital; most of the Corinthian settlers indeed were freedmen.
When in deviation from the previous order of things, which precluded
the freedmen from any urban honorary office, Caesar opened to them
in his colonies the doors of the senate-house, this was doubtless done
in order to gain those of them who were in better positions to favour
the cause of emigration.  This emigration, however, must have been
more than a mere temporary arrangement; Caesar, convinced like every
other man of sense that the only true remedy for the misery
of the proletariate consisted in a well-regulated system of colonization,
and placed by the condition of the empire in a position to realize it
to an almost unlimited extent, must have had the design
of permanently continuing the process, and so opening up a constant means
of abating an evil which was constantly reproducing itself.
Measures were further taken to set bounds to the serious fluctuations
in the price of the most important means of subsistence in the markets
of the capital.  The newly-organized and liberally-administered
finances of the state furnished the means for this purpose,
and two newly-nominated magistrates, the corn-aediles(49) were charged
with the special supervision of the contractors and of the market
of the capital.

The Club System Restricted

The club system was checked, more effectually than was possible
through prohibitive laws, by the change of the constitution;
inasmuch as with the republic and the republican elections and tribunals
the corruption and violence of the electioneering and judicial
-collegia---and generally the political Saturnalia of the -canaille---
came to an end of themselves.  Moreover the combinations called
into existence by the Clodian law were broken up, and the whole system
of association was placed under the superintendence of the governing
authorities.  With the exception of the ancient guilds and associations,
of the religious unions of the Jews, and of other specially excepted
categories, for which a simple intimation to the senate seems
to have sufficed, the permission to constitute a permanent society
with fixed times of assembling and standing deposits was made dependent
on a concession to be granted by the senate, and, as a rule,
doubtless only after the consent of the monarch had been obtained.

Street Police

To this was added a stricter administration of criminal justice
and an energetic police.  The laws, especially as regards the crime
of violence, were rendered more stringent; and the irrational enactment
of the republican law, that the convicted criminal was entitled
to withdraw himself from a part of the penalty which he had incurred
by self-banishment, was with reason set aside.  The detailed regulations,
which Caesar issued regarding the police of the capital,
are in great part still preserved; and all who choose may convince
themselves that the Imperator did not disdain to insist
on the house-proprietors putting the streets into repair
and paving the footpath in its whole breadth with hewn stones,
and to issue appropriate enactments regarding the carrying of litters
and the driving of waggons, which from the nature of the streets
were only allowed to move freely through the capital in the evening
and by night.  The supervision of the local police remained as hitherto
chiefly with the four aediles, who were instructed now at least,
if  not earlier, each to superintend a distinctly marked-off
police district within the capital.

Buildings of the Capital

Lastly, building in the capital, and the provision
connected therewith of institutions for the public benefit,
received from Caesar--who combined in himself the love for building
of a Roman and of an organizer--a sudden stimulus, which not merely
put to shame the mismanagement of the recent anarchic times,
but also left all that the Roman aristocracy had done in their best days
as far behind as the genius of Caesar surpassed the honest endeavours
of the Marcii and Aemilii.  It was not merely by the extent
of the buildings in themselves and the magnitude of the sums
expended on them that Caesar excelled his predecessors;
but a genuine statesmanly perception of what was for the public good
distinguishes what Caesar did for the public institutions of Rome
from all similar services.  He did not build, like his successors,
temples and other splendid structures, but he relieved the marketplace
of Rome--in which the burgess-assemblies, the seats of the chief courts,
the exchange, and the daily business-traffic as well as
the daily idleness, still were crowded together--at least
from the assemblies and the courts by constructing for the former
a new -comitium-, the Saepta Julia in the Campus Martius,
and for the latter a separate place of judicature, the Forum Julium
between the Capitol and Palatine.  Of a kindred spirit is the arrangement
originating with him, by which there were supplied to the baths
of the capital annually three million pounds of oil, mostly from Africa,
and they were thereby enabled to furnish to the bathers gratuitously
the oil required for the anointing of the body--a measure
of cleanliness and sanitary policy which, according
to the ancient dietetics based substantially on bathing and anointing,
was highly judicious.

But these noble arrangements were only the first steps towards
a complete remodelling of Rome.  Projects were already formed
for a new senate-house, for a new magnificent bazaar, for a theatre
to rival that of Pompeius, for a public Latin and Greek library
after the model of that recently destroyed at Alexandria--
the first institution of the sort in Rome--lastly for a temple of Mars,
which was to surpass all that had hitherto existed in riches and glory.
Still more brilliant was the idea, first, of constructing a canal
through the Pomptine marshes and drawing off their waters
to Tarracina, and secondly, of altering the lower course of the Tiber
and of leading it from the present Ponte Molle, not through
between the Campus Vaticanus and the Campus Martius, but rather
round the Campus Vaticanus and the Janiculum to Ostia,
where the miserable roadstead was to give place to an adequate
artificial harbour.  By this gigantic plan on the one hand
the most dangerous enemy of the capital, the malaria of the neighbourhood
would be banished; on the other hand the extremely limited facilities
for building in the capital would be at once enlarged by substituting
the Campus Vaticanus thereby transferred to the left bank of the Tiber
for the Campus Martius, and allowing the latter spacious field
to be applied for public and private edifices; while the capital
would at the same time obtain a safe seaport, the want of which
was so painfully felt.  It seemed as if the Imperator would remove
mountains and rivers, and venture to contend with nature herself.

Much however as the city of Rome gained by the new order of things
in commodiousness and magnificence, its political supremacy was,
as we have already said, lost to it irrecoverably through
that very change.  The idea that the Roman state should coincide
with the city of Rome had indeed in the course of time become
more and more unnatural and preposterous; but the maxim had been
so intimately blended with the essence of the Roman republic,
that it could not perish before the republic itself.  It was only
in the new state of Caesar that it was, with the exception perhaps
of some legal fictions, completely set aside, and the community
of the capital was placed legally on a level with all other
municipalities; indeed Caesar--here as everywhere endeavouring not merely
to regulate the thing, but also to call it officially by the right name--
issued his Italian municipal ordinance, beyond doubt purposely,
at once for the capital and for the other urban communities.  We may add
that Rome, just because it was incapable of a living communal character
as a capital, was even essentially inferior to the other municipalities
of the imperial period.  The republican Rome was a den of robbers,
but it was at the same time the state; the Rome of the monarchy,
although it began to embellish itself with all the glories
of the three continents and to glitter in gold and marble,
was yet nothing in the state but a royal residence in connection
with a poor-house, or in other words a necessary evil.

Italy
Italian Agriculture

While in the capital the only object aimed at was to get rid
of palpable evils by police ordinances on the greatest scale,
it was a far more difficult task to remedy the deep disorganization
of Italian economics.  Its radical misfortunes were those which
we previously noticed in detail--the disappearance of the agricultural,
and the unnatural increase of the mercantile, population--
with which an endless train of other evils was associated.
The reader will not fail to remember what was the state
of Italian agriculture.  In spite of the most earnest attempts
to check the annihilation of the small holdings, farm-husbandry
was scarcely any longer the predominant species of economy
during this epoch in any region of Italy proper, with the exception
perhaps of the valleys of the Apennines and Abruzzi.  As to
the management of estates, no material difference is perceptible
between the Catonian system formerly set forth(50) and that
described to us by Varro, except that the latter shows the traces
for better and for worse of the progress of city-life on a great scale
in Rome.  "Formerly," says Varro, "the barn on the estate was larger
than the manor-house; now it is wont to be the reverse." In the domains
of Tusculum and Tibur, on the shores of Tarracina and Baiae--
where the old Latin and Italian farmers had sown and reaped--
there now rose in barren splendour the villas of the Roman nobles,
some of which covered the space of a moderate-sized town with their
appurtenances of garden-grounds and aqueducts, fresh and salt water ponds
for the preservation and breeding of river and marine fishes,
nurseries of snails and slugs, game-preserves for keeping hares,
rabbits, stags, roes, and wild boars, and aviaries in which even cranes
and peacocks were kept.  But the luxury of a great city enriches also
many an industrious hand, and supports more poor than philanthropy
with its expenditure of alms.  Those aviaries and fish-ponds
of the grandees were of course, as a rule, a very costly indulgence.
But this system was carried to such an extent and prosecuted
with so much keenness, that e. g. the stock of a pigeon-house
was valued at 100,000 sesterces (1000 pounds); a methodical system
of fattening had sprung up, and the manure got from the aviaries
became of importance in agriculture; a single bird-dealer
was able to furnish at once 5000 fieldfares--for they knew how
to rear these also--at three denarii (2 shillings) each, and a single
possessor of a fish-pond 2000 -muraenae-; and the fishes left behind
by Lucius Lucullus brought 40,000 sesterces (400 pounds).
As may readily be conceived, under such circumstances any one
who followed this occupation industriously and intelligently
might obtain very large profits with a comparatively small outlay
of capital.  A small bee-breeder of this period sold from his thyme-
garden not larger than an acre in the neighbourhood of Falerii
honey to an average annual amount of at least 10,000 sesterces
(100 pounds).  The rivalry of the growers of fruit was carried so far,
that in elegant villas the fruit-chamber lined with marble
was not unfrequently fitted up at the same time as a dining-room,
and sometimes fine fruit acquired by purchase was exhibited there
as of home growth.  At this period the cherry from Asia Minor
and other foreign fruit-trees were first planted in the gardens of Italy.
The vegetable gardens, the beds of roses and violets in Latium
and Campania, yielded rich produce, and the "market for dainties"
(-forum cupedinis-) by the side of the Via Sacra, where fruits,
honey, and chaplets were wont to be exposed for sale,
played an important part in the life of the capital.  Generally
the management of estates, worked as they were on the planter-system,
had reached in an economic point of view a height scarcely
to be surpassed.  The valley of Rieti, the region round the Fucine lake,
the districts on the Liris and Volturnus, and indeed Central Italy
in general, were as respects husbandry in the most flourishing condition;
even certain branches of industry, which were suitable accompaniments
of the management of an estate by means of slaves, were taken up
by intelligent landlords, and, where the circumstances were favourable,
inns, weaving factories, and especially brickworks were constructed
on the estate.  The Italian producers of wine and oil in particular
not only supplied the Italian markets, but carried on also
in both articles a considerable business of transmarine exportation.
A homely professional treatise of this period compares Italy
to a great fruit-garden; and the pictures which a contemporary poet
gives of his beautiful native land, where the well-watered meadow,
the luxuriant corn-field, the pleasant vine-covered hill are fringed
by the dark line of the olive-trees--where the "ornament" of the land,
smiling in varied charms, cherishes the loveliest gardens
in its bosom and is itself wreathed round by food-producing trees--
these descriptions, evidently faithful pictures of the landscape
daily presented to the eye of the poet, transplant us
into the most flourishing districts of Tuscany and Terra di Lavoro.
The pastoral husbandry, it is true, which for reasons formerly explained
was always spreading farther especially in the south and south-east
of Italy, was in every respect a retrograde movement; but it too
participated to a certain degree in the general progress of agriculture;
much was done for the improvement of the breeds, e. g. asses for breeding
brought 60,000 sesterces (600 pounds), 100,000 (1000 pounds),
and even 400,000 (4000 pounds).  The solid Italian husbandry
obtained at this period, when the general development of intelligence
and abundance of capital rendered it fruitful, far more brilliant results
than ever the old system of small cultivators could have given;
and was carried even already beyond the bounds of Italy,
for the Italian agriculturist turned to account large tracts
in the provinces by rearing cattle and even cultivating corn.

Money-Dealing

In order to show what dimensions money-dealing assumed by the side
of this estate-husbandry unnaturally prospering over the ruin
of the small farmers, how the Italian merchants vying with the Jews
poured themselves into all the provinces and client-states
of the empire, and how all capital ultimately flowed to Rome,
it will be sufficient, after what has been already said, to point
to the single fact that in the money-market of the capital the regular
rate of interest at this time was six per cent, and consequently
money there was cheaper by a half than it was on an average
elsewhere in antiquity.

Social Disproportion

In consequence of this economic system based both in its agrarian
and mercantile aspects on masses of capital and on speculation,
there arose a most fearful disproportion in the distribution
of wealth.  The often-used and often-abused phrase of a commonwealth
composed of millionaires and beggars applies perhaps nowhere
so completely as to the Rome of the last age of the republic;
and nowhere perhaps has the essential maxim of the slave-state--
that the rich man who lives by the exertions of his slaves
is necessarily respectable, and the poor man who lives by the labour
of his hands is necessarily vulgar--been recognized with so terrible
a precision as the undoubted principle underlying all public
and private intercourse.(51)  A real middle class in our sense
of the term there was not, as indeed no such class can exist
in any fully-developed slave-state; what appears as if it were
a good middle class and is so in a certain measure, is composed
of those rich men of business and landholders who are so uncultivated
or so highly cultivated as to content themselves within the sphere
of their activity and to keep aloof from public life.  Of the men
of business--a class, among whom the numerous freedmen and other
upstarts, as a rule, were seized with the giddy fancy of playing
the man of quality--there were not very many who showed so much judgment.
A model of this sort was the Titus Pomponius Atticus frequently mentioned
in the accounts of this period.  He acquired an immense fortune
partly from the great estate-farming which he prosecuted in Italy
and Epirus, partly from his money-transactions which ramified throughout
Italy, Greece, Macedonia, and Asia Minor; but at the same time
he continued to be throughout the simple man of business,
did not allow himself to be seduced into soliciting office
or even into monetary transactions with the state,
and, equally remote from the avaricious niggardliness and from the prodigal
and burdensome luxury of his time--his table, for instance,
was maintained at a daily cost of 100 sesterces (1 pound)--
contented himself with an easy existence appropriating to itself
the charms of a country and a city life, the pleasures of intercourse
with the best society of Rome and Greece, and all the enjoyments
of literature and art.

More numerous and more solid were the Italian landholders
of the old type.  Contemporary literature preserves in the description
of Sextus Roscius, who was murdered amidst the proscriptions of 673,
the picture of such a rural nobleman (-pater familias rusticanus-);
his wealth, estimated at 6,000,000 sesterces (60,000 pounds),
is mainly invested in his thirteen landed estates; he attends
to the management of it in person systematically and with enthusiasm;
he comes seldom or never to the capital, and, when he does appear there,
by his clownish manners he contrasts not less with the polished senator
than the innumerable hosts of his uncouth rural slaves
with the elegant train of domestic slaves in the capital.
Far more than the circles of the nobility with their cosmopolitan
culture and the mercantile class at home everywhere and nowhere,
these landlords and the "country towns" to which they essentially
gave tone (-municipia rusticana-) preserved as well the discipline
and manners as the pure and noble language of their fathers.
The order of landlords was regarded as the flower of the nation;
the speculator, who has made his fortune and wishes to appear among
the notables of the land, buys an estate and seeks, if not to become
himself the squire, at any rate to rear his son with that view.
We meet the traces of this class of landlords, wherever a national
movement appears in politics, and wherever literature puts forth
any fresh growth; from it the patriotic opposition to the new monarchy
drew its best strength; to it belonged Varro, Lucretius, Catullus;
and nowhere perhaps does the comparative freshness of this landlord-life
come more characteristically to light than in the graceful Arpinate
introduction to the second book of Cicero's treatise De Legibus--
a green oasis amidst the fearful desert of that equally empty
and voluminous writer.

The Poor

But the cultivated class of merchants and the vigorous order
of landlords were far overgrown by the two classes that gave
tone to society--the mass of beggars, and the world of quality proper.
We have no statistical figures to indicate precisely the relative
proportions of poverty and riches for this epoch; yet we may
here perhaps again recall the expression which a Roman statesman
employed some fifty years before(52)--that the number of families
of firmly-established riches among the Roman burgesses did not
amount to 2000.  The burgess-body had since then become different;
but clear indications attest that the disproportion between
poor and rich had remained at least as great.  The increasing
impoverishment of the multitude shows itself only too plainly
in their crowding to the corn-largesses and to enlistment in the army;
the corresponding increase of riches is attested expressly
by an author of this generation, when, speaking of the circumstances
of the Marian period, he describes an estate of 2,000,000 sesterces
(20,000 pounds) as "riches according to the circumstances
of that day"; and the statements which we find as to the property
of individuals lead to the same conclusion.  The very rich
Lucius Domitius Ahenobarbus promised to twenty thousand soldiers
four -iugera- of land each, out of his own property; the estate
of Pompeius amounted to 70,000,000 sesterces (700,000 pounds);
that of Aesopus the actor to 20,000,000 (200,000 pounds); Marcus Crassus,
the richest of the rich, possessed at the outset of his career,
7,000,000 (70,000 pounds), at its close, after lavishing enormous
sums on the people, 170,000,000 sesterces (1,700,000 pounds).
The effect of such poverty and such riches was on both sides
an economic and moral disorganization outwardly different, but at bottom
of the same character.  If the common man was saved from starvation
only by support from the resources of the state, it was the necessary
consequence of this mendicant misery--although it also reciprocally
appears as a cause of it--that he addicted himself to the beggar's
laziness and to the beggar's good cheer.  The Roman plebeian
was fonder of gazing in the theatre than of working; the taverns
and brothels were so frequented, that the demagogues found their
special account in gaining the  possessors of such establishments
over to their interests.  The gladiatorial games--which revealed,
at the same time that they fostered, the worst demoralization
of the ancient world--had become so flourishing that a lucrative business
was done in the sale of the programmes for them; and it was at this time
that the horrible innovation was adopted by which the decision
as to the life or death of the vanquished became dependent,
not on the law of duel or on the pleasure of the victor,
but onthe caprice of the onlooking public, and according to its signal
the victor either spared or transfixed his prostrate antagonist.
The trade of fighting had so risen or freedom had so fallen in value,
that the intrepidity and the emulation, which were lacking
on the battle fields of this age, were universal in the armies
of the arena and, where the law of the duel required, every gladiator
allowed himself to be stabbed mutely and without shrinking; that in fact
free men not unfrequently sold themselves to the contractors for board
and wages as gladiatorial slaves.  The plebeians of the fifth century
had also suffered want and famine, but they had not sold their freedom;
and still less would the jurisconsults of that period have lent
themselves to pronounce the equally immoral and illegal contract
of such a gladiatorial slave "to let himself be chained, scourged,
burnt or killed without opposition, if the laws of the institution
should so require" by means of unbecoming juristic subtleties
as a contract lawful and actionable.

Extravagance

In the world of quality such things did not occur, but at bottom
it was hardly different, and least of all better.  In doing nothing
the aristocrat boldly competed with the proletarian; if the latter
lounged on the pavement, the former lay in bed till far on
in the day.  Extravagance prevailed here as unbounded as it was
devoid of taste.  It was lavished on politics and on the theatre,
of course to the corruption of both; the consular office was purchased
at an incredible price--in the summer of 700 the first voting-division
alone was paid 10,000,000 sesterces (100,000 pounds)--
and all the pleasure of the man of culture in the drama was spoilt
by the insane luxury of decoration.  Rents in Rome appear to have been
on an average four times as high as in the country-towns;
a house there was once sold for 15,000,000 sesterces (150,000 pounds).
The house of Marcus Lepidus (consul in 676) which was at the time
of the death of Sulla the finest in Rome, did not rank a generation
afterwards even as the hundredth on the list of Roman palaces.
We have already mentioned the extravagance practised in the matter
of country-houses; we find that 4,000,000 sesterces (40,000 pounds)
were paid for such a house, which was valued chiefly for its fishpond;
and the thoroughly fashionable grandee now needed at least two villas--
one in the Sabine or Alban mountains near the capital, and a second
in the vicinity of the Campanian baths--and in addition if possible
a garden immediately outside of the gates of Rome.  Still more irrational
than these villa-palaces were the palatial sepulchres, several of which
still existing at the present day attest what a lofty pile of masonry
the rich Roman needed in order that he might die as became his rank.
Fanciers of horses and dogs too were not wanting; 24,000 sesterces
(240 pounds) was no uncommon price for a showy horse.  They indulged
in furniture of fine wood--a table of African cypress-wood
cost 1,000,000 sesterces (10,000 pounds); in dresses of purple stuffs
or transparent gauzes accompanied by an elegant adjustment of their folds
before the mirror--the orator Hortensius is said to have brought
an action of damages against a colleague because he ruffled his dress
in a crowd; in precious stones and pearls, which first at this period
took the place of the far more beautiful and more artistic
ornaments of gold--it was already utter barbarism, when at the triumph
of Pompeius over Mithradates the image of the victor appeared
wrought wholly of pearls, and when the sofas and the shelves
in the dining-hall were silver-mounted and even the kitchen-utensils
were made of silver.  In a similar spirit the collectors of this period
took out the artistic medallions from the old silver cups,
to set them anew in vessels of gold.  Nor was there any lack
of luxury also in travelling.  "When the governor travelled,"
Cicero tells us as to one of the Sicilian governors, "which of course
he did not in winter, but only at the beginning of spring--
not the spring of the calendar but the beginning of the season of roses--
he had himself conveyed, as was the custom with the kings of Bithynia,
in a litter with eight bearers, sitting on a cushion of Maltese gauze
stuffed with rose-leaves, with one garland on his head, and a second
twined round his neck, applying to his nose a little smelling bag
of fine linen, with minute meshes, filled with roses; and thus
he had himself carried even to his bed chamber."

Table Luxury

But no sort of luxury flourished so much as the coarsest of all--
the luxury of the table.  The whole villa arrangements and the whole
villa life had ultimate reference to dining; not only had they
different dining-rooms for winter and summer, but dinner was served
in the picture-gallery, in the fruit-chamber, in the aviary,
or on a platform erected in the deer-park, around which,
when the bespoken "Orpheus" appeared in theatrical costume
and blew his flourish, the duly-trained roes and wild boars congregated.
Such was the care bestowed on decoration; but amidst all this
the reality was by no means forgotten.  Not only was the cook
a graduate in gastronomy, but the master himself often acted
as the instructor of his cooks.  The roast had been long ago
thrown into the shade by marine fishes and oysters; now the Italian
river-fishes were utterly banished from good tables, and Italian
delicacies and Italian wines were looked on as almost vulgar.
Now even at the popular festivals there were distributed,
besides the Italian Falerian, three sorts of foreign wine--Sicilian,
Lesbian, Chian, while a generation before it had been sufficient
even at great banquets to send round Greek wine once; in the cellar
of the orator Hortensius there was found a stock of 10,000 jars
(at 33 quarts) of foreign wine.  It was no wonder that the Italian
wine-growers began to complain of the competition of the wines
from the Greek islands.  No naturalist could ransack land and sea
more zealously for new animals and plants, than the epicures of that day
ransacked them for new culinary dainties.(53)  The circumstance
of the guest taking an emetic after a banquet, to avoid the consequences
of the varied fare set before him, no longer created surprise.
Debauchery of every sort became so systematic and aggravated
that it found its professors, who earned a livelihood by serving
as instructors of the youth of quality in the theory
and practice of vice.

Debt

It will not be necessary to dwell longer on this confused picture,
so monotonous in its variety; and the less so, that the Romans
were far from original in this respect, and confined themselves
to exhibiting a copy of the Helleno-Asiatic luxury still more
exaggerated and stupid than their model.  Plutos naturally devours
his children as well as Kronos; the competition for all these
mostly worthless objects of fashionable longing so forced up prices,
that those who swam with the stream found the most colossal estate
melt away in a short time, and even those, who only for credit's sake
joined in what was most necessary, saw their inherited
and firmly- established wealth rapidly undermined.  The canvass
for the consulship, for instance, was the usual highway to ruin
for houses of distinction; and nearly the same description applies
to the games, the great buildings, and all those other pleasant,
doubtless, but expensive pursuits.  The princely wealth of that period
is only surpassed by its still more princely liabilities;
Caesar owed about 692, after deducting his assets, 25,000,000 sesterces
(250,000 pounds); Marcus Antonius, at the age of twenty-four
6,000,000 sesterces (60,000 pounds), fourteen years afterwards
40,000,000 (400,000 pounds); Curio owed 60,000,000 (600,000 pounds);
Milo 70,000,000 (700,000 pounds).  That those extravagant habits
of the Roman world of quality rested throughout on credit,
is shown by the fact that the monthly interest in Rome was once
suddenly raised from four to eight per cent, through the borrowing
of the different competitors for the consulship. Insolvency,
instead of leading in due time to a meeting of creditors
or at any rate to a liquidation which might at least place matters
once more on a clear footing, was ordinarily prolonged
by the debtor as much as possible; instead of selling his property
and especially his landed estates, he continued to borrow
and to present the semblance of riches, till the crash only became
the worse and the winding-up yielded a result like that of Milo,
in which the creditors obtained somewhat above four per cent
of the sums for which they ranked.  Amidst this startlingly rapid
transition from riches to bankruptcy and this systematic swindling,
nobody of course gained so much as the cool banker, who knew how to give
and refuse credit.  The relations of debtor and creditor thus returned
almost to the same point at which they had stood in the worst times
of the social crises of the fifth century; the nominal landowners
held virtually by sufferance of their creditors; the debtors were either
in servile subjection to their creditors, so that the humbler of them
appeared like freedmen in the creditor's train and those of higher rank
spoke and voted even in the senate at the nod of their creditor-lord;
or they were on the point of declaring war on property itself,
and either of intimidating their creditors by threats or getting rid
of them by conspiracy and civil war.  On these relations was based
the power of Crassus; out of them arose the insurrections--whose motto
was "a clear sheet"-of Cinna(54) and still more definitely of Catilina,
of Coelius, of Dolabella entirely resembling the battles between those
who had and those who had not, which a century before agitated
the Hellenic world.(55)  That amidst so rotten an economic condition
every financial or political crisis should occasion the most dreadful
confusion, was to be expected from the nature of the case; we need
hardly mention that the usual phenomena--the disappearance of capital,
the sudden depreciation of landed estates, innumerable bankruptcies,
and an almost universal insolvency--made their appearance now
during the civil war, just as they had done during the Social
and Mithradatic wars.(56)

Immortality

Under such circumstances, as a matter of course, morality
and family life were treated as antiquated things among all ranks
of society.  To be poor was not merely the sorest disgrace
and the worst crime, but the only disgrace and the only crime:
for money the statesman sold the state, and the burgess sold his freedom;
the post of the officer and the vote of the juryman were to be had
for money; for money the lady of quality surrendered her person
as well as the common courtesan; falsifying of documents and perjuries
had become so common that in a popular poet of this age an oath
is called "the plaster for debts." Men had forgotten what honesty was;
a person who refused a bribe was regarded not as an upright man,
but as a personal foe.  The criminal statistics of all times
and countries will hardly furnish a parallel to the dreadful picture
of crimes--so varied, so horrible, and so unnatural--which the trial
of Aulus Cluentius unrolls before us in the bosom of one of the most
respected families of an Italian country town.

Friendship

But while at the bottom of the national life the slime was thus
constantly accumulating more and more deleteriously and deeply,
so much the more smooth and glittering was the surface,
overlaid with the varnish of polished manners and universal friendship.
All the world interchanged visits; so that in the houses of quality
it was necessary to admit the persons presenting themselves every morning
for the levee in a certain order fixed by the master or occasionally
by the attendant in waiting, and to give audience only
to the more notable one by one, while the rest were more summarily admitted
partly in groups, partly en masse at the close--a distinction
which Gaius Gracchus, in this too paving the way for the new monarchy,
is said to have introduced.  The interchange of letters of courtesy
was carried to as great an extent as the visits of courtesy;
"friendly" letters flew over land and sea between persons who had
neither personal relations nor business with each other, whereas proper
and formal business-letters scarcely occur except where the letter
is addressed to a corporation.  In like manner invitations to dinner,
the customary new year's presents, the domestic festivals, were divested
of their proper character and converted almost into public ceremonials;
even death itself did not release the Roman from these attentions
to his countless "neighbours," but in order to die with due respectability
he had to provide each of them at any rate with a keepsake.  Just as
 in certain circles of our mercantile world, the genuine intimacy
of family ties and family friendships had so totally vanished
from the Rome of that day that the whole intercourse of business
and acquaintance could be garnished with forms and flourishes
which had lost all meaning, and thus by degrees the reality
came to be superseded by that spectral shadow of "friendship,"
which holds by no means the least place among the various evil spirits
brooding over the proscriptions and civil wars of this age.

Women

An equally characteristic feature in the brilliant decay of this period
was the emancipation of women.  In an economic point of view
the women had long since made themselves independent;(57)
in the present epoch we even meet with solicitors acting specially
for women, who officiously lend their aid to solitary rich ladies
in the management of their property and their lawsuits,
make an impression on them by their knowledge of business and law,
and thereby procure for themselves ampler perquisites and legacies
than other loungers on the exchange.  But it was not merely
from the economic guardianship of father or husband that women
felt themselves emancipated.  Love-intrigues of all sorts were constantly
in progress.  The ballet-dancers (-mimae-) were quite a match
for those of the present day in the variety of their pursuits
and the skill with which they followed them out; their primadonnas,
Cytheris and the like, pollute even the pages of history.
But their, as it were, licensed trade was very materially injured
by the free art of the ladies of aristocratic circles.  Liaisons
in the first houses had become so frequent, that only a scandal
altogether exceptional could make them the subject of special talk;
a judicial interference seemed now almost ridiculous.
An unparalleled scandal, such as Publius Clodius produced in 693
at the women's festival in the house of the Pontifex Maximus,
although a thousand times worse than the occurrences which fifty years
before had led to a series of capital sentences,(58) passed
almost without investigation and wholly without punishment.
The watering-place season--in April, when political business
was suspended and the world of quality congregated in Baiae and Puteoli--
derived its chief charm from the relations licit and illicit which,
along with music and song and elegant breakfasts on board or on shore,
enlivened the gondola voyages.  There the ladies held absolute sway;
but they were by no means content with this domain which rightfully
belonged to them; they also acted as politicians, appeared in party
conferences, and took part with their money and their intrigues
in the wild coterie-doings of the time.  Any one who beheld
these female statesmen performing on the stage of Scipio
and Cato and saw at their side the young fop--as with smooth chin,
delicate voice, and mincing gait, with headdress and neckerchiefs,
frilled robe, and women's sandals he copied the loose courtesan--
might well have a horror of the unnatural world, in which the sexes
seemed as though they wished to change parts.  What ideas as to divorce
prevailed in the circles of the aristocracy may be discerned
in the conduct of their best and most moral hero Marcus Cato,
who did not hesitate to separate from his wife at the request
of a friend desirous to marry her, and as little scrupled
on the death of this friend to marry the same wife a second time.
Celibacy and childlessness became more and more common, especially
among the upper classes.  While among these marriage had for long
been regarded as a burden which people took upon them at the best
in the public interest,(59) we now encounter even in Cato and those
who shared Cato's sentiments the maxim to which Polybius
a century before traced the decay of Hellas,(60) that it is the duty
of a citizen to keep great wealth together and therefore not to beget
too many children.  Where were the times, when the designation
"children-producer" (-proletarius-) had been a term of honour
for the Roman?

Depopulation of Italy

In consequence of such a social condition the Latin stock in Italy
underwent an alarming diminution, and its fair provinces were overspread
partly by parasitic immigrants, partly by sheer desolation.
A considerable portion of the population of Italy flocked
to foreign lands.  Already the aggregate amount of talent
and of working power, which the supply of Italian magistrates
and Italian garrisons for the whole domain of the Mediterranean
demanded, transcended the resources of the peninsula, especially
as the elements thus sent abroad were in great part lost for ever
to the nation.  For the more that the Roman community grew
into an empire embracing many nations, the more the governing aristocracy
lost the habit of looking on Italy as their exclusive home;
while of the men levied or enlisted for service a considerable portion
perished in the many wars, especially in the bloody civil war,
and another portion became wholly estranged from their native country
by the long period of service, which sometimes lasted for a generation.
In like manner with the public service, speculation kept
a portion of the landholders and almost the whole body
of merchants all their lives or at any rate for a long time
out of the country, and the demoralising itinerant life of trading
in particular estranged the latter altogether from civic existence
in the mother country and from the various conditions of family life.
As a compensation for these, Italy obtained on the one hand
the proletariate of slaves and freedmen, on the other hand
the craftsmen and traders flocking thither from Asia Minor, Syria,
and Egypt, who flourished chiefly in the capital and still more
in the seaport towns of Ostia, Puteoli, and Brundisium.(61)
In the largest and most important part of Italy however,
even such a substitution of impure elements for pure;
but the population was visibly on the decline.  Especially
was this true of the pastoral districts such as Apulia, the chosen land
of cattle-breeding, which is called by contemporaries the most deserted
part of Italy, and of the region around Rome, where the Campagna
was annually becoming more desolate under the constant reciprocal
action of the retrograde agriculture and the increasing malaria.
Labici, Gabii, Bovillae, once cheerful little country towns,
were so decayed, that it was difficult to find representatives of them
for the ceremony of the Latin festival.  Tusculum, although still
one of the most esteemed communities of Latium, consisted almost solely
of some genteel families who lived in the capital but retained
their native Tusculan franchise, and was far inferior in the number
of burgesses entitled to vote even to small communities
in the interior of Italy.  The stock of men capable of arms
in this district, on which Rome's ability to defend herself
had once mainly depended, had so totally vanished, that people read
with astonishment and perhaps with horror the accounts of the annals--
sounding fabulous in comparison with things as they stood--
respecting the Aequian and Volscian wars.  Matters were not so bad
everywhere, especially in the other portions of Central Italy
and in Campania; nevertheless, as Varro complains, "the once populous
cities of Italy," in general "stood desolate."

Italy under the Oligarchy

It is a dreadful picture--this picture of Italy under the rule
of the oligarchy.  There was nothing to bridge over or soften
the fatal contrast between the world of the beggars and the world
of the rich.  The more clearly and painfully this contrast
was felt on both sides--the giddier the height to which riches rose,
the deeper the abyss of poverty yawned--the more frequently,
amidst that changeful world of speculation and playing at hazard,
were individuals tossed from the bottom to the top and again
from the top to the bottom.  The wider the chasm by which the two worlds
were externally divided, the more completely they coincided
in the like annihilation of family life--which is yet the germ
and core of all nationality--in the like laziness and luxury,
the like unsubstantial economy, the like unmanly dependence,
the like corruption differing only in its tariff, the like criminal
demoralization, the like longing to begin the war with property.
Riches and misery in close league drove the Italians out of Italy,
and filled the peninsula partly with swarms of slaves, partly
with awful silence.  It is a terrible picture, but not one peculiar
to Italy; wherever the government of capitalists in a slave-state
has fully developed itself, it has desolated God's fair world
in the same way as rivers glisten in different colours, but a common
sewer everywhere looks like itself, so the Italy of the Ciceronian epoch
resembles substantially the Hellas of Polybius and still more decidedly
the Carthage of Hannibal's time, where in exactly similar fashion
the all-powerful rule of capital ruined the middle class, raised trade
and estate-farming to the highest prosperity, and ultimately led to a--
hypocritically whitewashed--moral and political corruption of the nation.
All the arrant sins that capital has been guilty of against nation
and civilization in the modern world, remain as far inferior
to the abominations of the ancient capitalist-states as the free man,
be he ever so poor, remains superior to the slave; and not until
the dragon-seed of North America ripens, will the world have again
similar fruits to reap.

Reforms of Caesar

These evils, under which the national economy of Italy
lay prostrate, were in their deepest essence irremediable,
and so much of them as still admitted of remedy depended essentially
for its amendment on the people and on time; for the wisest government
is as little able as the more skilful physician to give freshness
to the corrupt juices of the organism, or to do more in the case
of the deeper-rooted evils than to prevent those accidents
which obstruct the remedial power of nature in its working.
The peaceful energy of the new rule even of itself furnished
such a preventive, for by its means some of the worst excrescences
were done away, such as the artificial pampering of the proletariate,
the impunity of crimes, the purchase of offices, and various others.
But the government could do something more than simply abstain
from harm.  Caesar was not one of those over-wise people who refuse
to embank the sea, because forsooth no dike can defy some sudden influx
of the tide.  It is better, if a nation and its economy follow
spontaneously the path prescribed by nature; but, seeing that they
had got out of this path, Caesar applied all his energies to bring back
by special intervention the nation to its home and family life,
and to reform the national economy by law and decree.

Measures against Absentees from Italy
Measures for the Elevation of the Family

With a view to check the continued absence of the Italians from Italy
and to induce the world of quality and the merchants to establish
their homes in their native land, not only was the term of service
for the soldiers shortened, but men of senatorial rank were
altogether prohibited from taking up their abode out of Italy
except when on public business, while the other Italians
of marriageable age (from the twentieth to the fortieth year)
were enjoined not to be absent from Italy for more than three
consecutive years. In the same spirit Caesar had already,
in his first consulship on founding the colony of Capua kept specially
in view fathers who had several children;(62) and now as Imperator
he proposed extraordinary rewards for the fathers of numerous families,
while he at the same time as supreme judge of the nation
treated divorce and adultery with a rigour according
to Roman ideas unparalleled.

Laws Respecting Luxury

Nor did he even think it beneath his dignity to issue a detailed law
as to luxury--which, among other points, cut down extravagance
in building at least in one of its most irrational forms,
that of sepulchral monuments; restricted the use of purple robes
and pearls to certain times, ages, and classes, and totally prohibited
it in grown-up men; fixed a maximum for the expenditure of the table;
and directly forbade a number of luxurious dishes.  Such ordinances
doubtless were not new; but it was a new thing that the "master
of morals" seriously insisted on their observance, superintended
the provision-markets by means of paid overseers, and ordered
that the tables of men of rank should be examined by his officers
and the forbidden dishes on them should be confiscated.  It is true
that by such theoretical and practical instructions in moderation
as the new monarchical police gave to the fashionable world,
hardly more could be accomplished than the compelling luxury to retire
somewhat more into concealment; but, if hypocrisy is the homage
which vice pays to virtue, under the circumstances of the times
even a semblance of propriety established by police measures
was a step towards improvement not to be despised.

The Debt Crisis

The measures of Caesar for the better regulation of Italian monetary
and agricultural relations were of a graver character and promised
greater results.  The first question here related to temporary enactments
respecting the scarcity of money and the debt-crisis generally.
The law called forth by the outcry as to locked-up capital--that no one
should have on hand more than 60,000 sesterces (600 pounds) in gold
and silver cash--was probably only issued to allay the indignation
of the blind public against the usurers; the form of publication,
which proceeded on the fiction that this was merely the renewed
enforcing of an earlier law that had fallen into oblivion,
shows that Caesar was ashamed of this enactment, and it can hardly
have passed into actual application.  A far more serious question
was the treatment of the pending claims for debt, the complete remission
of which was vehemently demanded from Caesar by the party which called
itself by his name.  We have already mentioned, that he did not yield
to this demand;(63) but two important concessions were made
to the debtors, and that as early as 705.  First, the interest
in arrear was struck off,(64) and that which was paid was deducted
from the capital.  Secondly, the creditor was compelled to accept
the moveable and immoveable property of the debtor in lieu of payment
at the estimated value which his effects had before the civil war
and the general depreciation which it had occasioned.  The latter
enactment was not unreasonable; if the creditor was to be looked on
de facto as the owner of the property of his debtor to the amount
of the sum due to him, it was doubtless proper that he should bear
his share in the general depreciation of the property.  On the other hand
the cancelling of the payments of interest made or outstanding--
which practically amounted to this, that the creditors lost,
besides the interest itself, on an average 25 per cent of what
they were entitled to claim as capital at the time of the issuing
of the law--was in fact nothing else than a partial concession
of that cancelling of creditors' claims springing out of loans,
for which the democrats had clamoured so vehemently; and, however bad
may have been the conduct of the usurers, it is not possible thereby
to justify the retrospective abolition of all claims for interest
without distinction.  In order at least to understand this agitation
we must recollect how the democratic party stood towards
the question of interest.  The legal prohibition against
taking interest, which the old plebeian opposition had extorted
in 412,(65) had no doubt been practically disregarded by the nobility
which controlled the civil procedure by means of the praetorship,
but had still remained since that period formally valid;
and the democrats of the seventh century, who regarded themselves
throughout as the continuers of that old agitation as to privilege
and social position,(66) had maintained the illegality of payment
of interest at any time, and even already practically enforced
that principle, at least temporarily, in the confusion of the Marian
period.(67)  It is not credible that Caesar shared the crude views
of his party on the interest question; the fact, that, in his account
of the matter of liquidation he mentions the enactment
as to the surrender of the property of the debtor in lieu of payment
but is silent as to the cancelling of the interest, is perhaps
a tacit self-reproach.  But he was, like every party-leader,
dependent on his party and could not directly repudiate
the traditional maxims of the democracy in the question of interest;
the more especially when he had to decide this question,
not as the all-powerful conqueror of Pharsalus, but even before
his departure for Epirus.  But, while he permitted perhaps rather than
originated this violation of legal order and of property, it is certainly
his merit that that monstrous demand for the annulling of all claims
arising from loans was rejected; and it may perhaps be looked on
as a saving of his honour, that the debtors were far more indignant
at the--according to their view extremely unsatisfactory--concession
given to them than the injured creditors, and made under Caelius
and Dolabella those foolish and (as already mentioned) speedily frustrated
attempts to extort by riot and civil war what Caesar refused to them.

New Ordinance as to Bankruptcy

But Caesar did not confine himself to helping the debtor
for the moment; he did what as legislator he could, permanently
to keep down the fearful omnipotence of capital.  First of all
the great legal maxim was proclaimed, that freedom is not a possession
commensurable with property, but an eternal right of man,
of which the state is entitled judicially to deprive the criminal alone,
not the debtor.  It was Caesar, who, perhaps stimulated in this case
also by the more humane Egyptian and Greek legislation, especially
that of Solon,(68) introduced this principle--diametrically opposed
to the maxims of the earlier ordinances as to bankruptcy--
into the common law, where it has since retained its place undisputed.
According to Roman law the debtor unable to pay became the serf
of his creditor.(69)  The Poetelian law no doubt had allowed a debtor,
who had become unable to pay only through temporary embarrassments,
not through genuine insolvency, to save his personal freedom
by the cession of his property;(70) nevertheless for the really insolvent
that principle of law, though doubtless modified in secondary points,
had been in substance retained unaltered for five hundred years;
a direct recourse to the debtor's estate only occurred exceptionally,
when the debtor had died or had forfeited his burgess-rights
or could not be found.  It was Caesar who first gave an insolvent
the right--on which our modern bankruptcy regulations are based--
of formally ceding his estate to his creditors, whether it might suffice
to satisfy them or not, so as to save at all events his personal freedom
although with diminished honorary and political rights, and to begin
a new financial existence, in which he could only be sued
on account of claims proceeding from the earlier period and not protected
in the liquidation, if he could pay them without renewed financial ruin.

Usury Laws

While thus the great democrat had the imperishable honour of emancipating
personal freedom in principle from capital, he attempted moreover
to impose a police limit on the excessive power of capital by usury-laws.
He did not affect to disown the democratic antipathy to stipulations
for interest.  For Italian money-dealing there was fixed a maximum amount
of the loans at interest to be allowed in the case of the individual
capitalist, which appears to have been proportioned to the Italian
landed estate belonging to each, and perhaps amounted to half its value.
Transgressions of this enactment were, after the fashion of the procedure
prescribed in the republican usury-laws, treated as criminal offence
and sent before a special jury-commission.  If these regulations
were successfully carried into effect, every Italian man of business
would be compelled to become at the same time an Italian landholder,
and the class of capitalists subsisting merely on their interest
would disappear wholly from Italy.  Indirectly too the no less injurious
category of insolvent landowners who practically managed their estates
merely for their creditors was by this means materially curtailed,
inasmuch as the creditors, if they desired to continue their lending
business, were compelled to buy for themselves.  From this very fact
besides it is plain that Caesar wished by no means simply to renew
that naive prohibition of interest by the old popular party,
but on the contrary to allow the taking of interest within certain limits.
It is very probable however that he did not confine himself
to that injunction--which applied merely to Italy--of a maximum amount
of sums to be lent, but also, especially with respect to the provinces,
prescribed maximum rates for interest itself.  The enactments--
that it was illegal to take higher interest than 1 per cent per month,
or to take interest on arrears of interest, or in fine to make
a judicial claim for arrears of interest to a greater amount
than a sum equal to the capital--were, probably also after
the Graeco-Egyptian model,(71) first introduced in the Roman empire
by Lucius Lucullus for Asia Minor and retained there by his
better successors; soon afterwards they were transferred
to other provinces by edicts of the governors, and ultimately at least
part of them was provided with the force of law in all provinces
by a decree of the Roman senate of 704.  The fact that these Lucullan
enactments afterwards appear in all their compass as imperial law
and have thus become the basis of the Roman and indeed of modern
legislation as to interest, may also perhaps be traced back
to an ordinance of Caesar.

Elevation of Agriculture

Hand in hand with these efforts to guard against the ascendency
of capital went the endeavours to bring back agriculture to the path
which was most advantageous for the commonwealth.  For this purpose
the improvement of the administration of justice and of police
was very essential.  While hitherto nobody in Italy had been sure
of his life and of his moveable or immoveable property, while Roman
condottieri for instance, at the intervals when their gangs
were not helping to manage the politics of the capital,
applied themselves to robbery in the forests of Etruria or rounded off
the country estates of their paymasters by fresh acquisitions,
this sort of club-law was now at an end; and in particular
the agricultural population of all classes must have felt
the beneficial effects of the change.  The plans of Caesar
for great works also, which were not at all limited to the capital,
were intended to tell in this respect; the construction,
for instance, of a convenient high-road from Rome through
the passesof the Apennines to the Adriatic was designed to stimulate
the internal traffic of Italy, and the lowering the level
of the Fucine lake to benefit the Marsian farmers.  But Caesar
also sought by more direct measures to influence the state
of Italian husbandry.  The Italian graziers were required
to take at least a third of their herdsmen from freeborn adults,
whereby brigandage was checked and at the same time a source of gain
was opened to the free proletariate.

Distribution of Land

In the agrarian question Caesar, who already in his first consulship
had been in a position to regulate it,(72) more judicious
than Tiberius Gracchus, did not seek to restore the farmer-system
at any price, even at that of a revolution--concealed under
juristic clauses--directed against property; by him on the contrary,
as by every other genuine statesman, the security of that
which is property or is at any rate regarded by the public
as property was esteemed as the first and most inviolable
of all political maxims, and it was only within the limits assigned
by this maxim that he sought to accomplish the elevation of the Italian
small holdings, which also appeared to him as a vital question
for the nation.  Even as it was, there was much still left for him
in this respect to do.  Every private right, whether it was called
property or entitled heritable possession, whether traceable to Gracchus
or to Sulla, was unconditionally respected by him. On the other hand,
Caesar, after he had in his strictly economical fashion--
which tolerated no waste and no negligence even on a small scale--
instituted a general revision of the Italian titles to possession
by the revived commission of Twenty,(73) destined the whole
actual domain land of Italy (including a considerable portion
of the real estates that were in the hands of spiritual guilds
but legally belonged to the state) for distribution in the Gracchan
fashion, so far, of course, as it was fitted for agriculture;
the Apulian summer and the Samnite winter pastures belonging
to the state continued to be domain; and it was at least the design
of the Imperator, if these domains should not suffice, to procure
the additional land requisite by the purchase of Italian estates
from the public funds.  In the selection of the new farmers provision
was naturally made first of all for the veteran soldiers,
and as far as possible the burden, which the levy imposed
on the mother country, was converted into a benefit by the fact
that Caesar gave the proletarian, who was levied from it as a recruit,
back to it as a farmer; it is remarkable also that the desolate
Latin communities, such as Veii and Capena, seem to have been
preferentially provided with new colonists.  The regulation
of Caesar that the new owners should not be entitled to alienate
the lands received by them till after twenty years, was a happy medium
between the full bestowal of the right of alienation, which would have
brought the larger portion of the distributed land speedily
back into the hands of the great capitalists, and the permanent
restrictions on freedom of dealing in land which Tiberius Gracchus(74)
and Sulla (75) had enacted, both equally in vain.

Elevation of the Municipal System

Lastly while the government thus energetically applied itself
to remove the diseased, and to strengthen the sound, elements
of the Italian national life, the newly-regulated municipal system--
which had but recently developed itself out of the crisis
of the Social war in and alongside of the state-economy(76)--was intended
to communicate to the new absolute monarchy the communal life
which was compatible with it, and to impart to the sluggish circulation
of the noblest elements of public life once more a quickened action.
The leading principles in the two municipal ordinances issued in 705
for Cisalpine Gaul and in 709 for Italy,(77) the latter of which remained
the fundamental law for all succeeding times, are apparently, first,
the strict purifying of the urban corporations from all immoral elements,
while yet no trace of political police occurs; secondly, the utmost
restriction of centralization and the utmost freedom of movement
in the communities, to which there was even now reserved the election
of magistrates and an--although limited--civil and criminal jurisdiction.
The general police enactments, such as the restrictions on the right
of association,(78) came, it is true, into operation also here.

Such were the ordinances, by which Caesar attempted to reform
the Italian national economy.  It is easy both to show their
insufficiency, seeing that they allowed a multitude of evils
still to exist, and to prove that they operated in various respects
injuriously by imposing restrictions, some of which were
very severely felt, on freedom of dealing.  It is still easier
to show that the evils of the Italian national economy generally
were incurable.  But in spite of this the practical statesman
will admire the work as well as the master-workman.  It was already
no small achievement that, where a man like Sulla, despairing
of remedy, had contented himself with a mere formal reorganization,
the evil was seized in its proper seat and grappled with there;
and we may well conclude that Caesar with his reforms came as near
to the measure of what was possible as it was given to a statesman
and a Roman to come.  He could not and did not expect from them
the regeneration of Italy; but he sought on the contrary to attain
this in a very different way, for the right apprehension
of which it is necessary first of all to review the condition
of the provinces as Caesar found them.

Provinces

The provinces, which Caesar found in existence, were fourteen in number:
seven European--the Further and the Hither Spain, Transalpine Gaul,
Italian Gaul with Illyricum, Macedonia with Greece, Sicily,
Sardinia with Corsica; five Asiatic--Asia, Bithynia and Pontus,
Cilicia with Cyprus, Syria, Crete; and two African--Cyrene and Africa.
To these Caesar added three new ones by the erection of the two new
governorships of Lugdunese Gaul and Belgica(79) and by constituting
Illyricum a province by itself.(80)

Provincial Administration of the Oligarchy

In the administration of these provinces oligarchic misrule
had reached a point which, notwithstanding various noteworthy
performances in this line, no second government has ever attained
at least in the west, and which according to our ideas it seems
no longer possible to surpass.  Certainly the responsibility for this
rests not on the Romans alone.  Almost everywhere before their day
the Greek, Phoenician, or Asiatic rule had already driven out
of the nations the higher spirit and the sense of right and of liberty
belonging to better times.  It was doubtless bad, that every
accused provincial was bound, when asked, to appear personally
in Rome to answer for himself; that the Roman governor interfered
at pleasure in the administration of justice and the management
of the dependent communities, pronounced capital sentences, and cancelled
transactions of the municipal council; and that in case of war
he treated the militia as he chose and often infamously, as e. g.
when Cotta at the siege of the Pontic Heraclea assigned to the militia
all the posts of danger, to spare his Italians, and on the siege
not going according to his wish, ordered the heads of his engineers
to be laid at his feet.  It was doubtless bad, that no rule
of morality or of criminal law bound either the Roman administrators
or their retinue, and that violent outrages, rapes, and murders
with or without form of law were of daily occurrence in the provinces.
But these things were at least nothing new; almost everywhere
men had long been accustomed to be treated like slaves,
and it signified little in the long run whether a Carthaginian overseer,
a Syrian satrap, or a Roman proconsul acted as the local tyrant.
Their material well-being, almost the only thing for which
the provincials still cared, was far less disturbed by those occurrences,
which although numerous in proportion to the many tyrants yet affected
merely isolated individuals, than by the financial exactions pressing
heavily on all, which had never previously been prosecuted
with such energy.

The Romans now gave in this domain fearful proof of their old master
of money-matters.  We have already endeavoured to describe
the Roman system of provincial oppression in its modest
and rational foundations as well as in its growth and corruption
as a matter of course, the latter went on increasing.  The ordinary taxes
became far more oppressive from the inequality of their distribution
and from the preposterous system of levying them than from their
high amount.  As to the burden of quartering troops, Roman statesmen
themselves expressed the opinion that a town suffered nearly
to the same extent when a Roman army took up winter quarters
in it as when an enemy took it by storm.  While the taxation
in its original character had been an indemnification for the burden
of military defence undertaken by Rome, and the community
paying tribute had thus a right to remain exempt from ordinary service,
garrison-service was now--as is attested e. g. in the case
of Sardinia--for the most part imposed on the provincials,
and even in the ordinary armies, besides other duties, the whole
heavy burden of the cavalry-service was devolved on them.
The extraordinary contributions demanded--such as, the deliveries
of grain for little or no compensation to benefit the proletariate
of the capital; the frequent and costly naval armaments and coast-
defences in order to check piracy; the task of supplying works of art,
wild beasts, or other demands of the insane Roman luxury in the theatre
and the chase; the military requisitions in case of war--
were just as frequent as they were oppressive and incalculable.
A single instance may show how far things were carried.
During the three years' administration of Sicily by  Gaius Verres
the number of farmers in Leontini fell from 84 to 32, in Motuca
from 187 to 86, in Herbita from 252 to 120, in Agyrium from 250 to 80;
so that in four of the most fertile districts of Sicily 59 per cent
of the landholders preferred to let their fields lie fallow
than to cultivate them under such government.  And these landholders were,
as their small number itself shows and as is expressly stated, by no means
small farmers, but respectable planters and in great part Roman burgesses!

In the Client-States

In the client-states the forms of taxation were somewhat different,
but the burdens themselves were if possible still worse,
since in addition to the exactions of the Romans there came
those of the native courts.  In Cappadocia and Egypt the farmer
as well as the king was bankrupt; the former was unable to satisfy
the tax-collector, the latter was unable to satisfy his Roman creditor.
Add to these the exactions, properly so called, not merely
of the governor himself, but also of his "friends," each of whom fancied
that he had as it were a draft on the governor and a title accordingly
to come back from the province a made man.  The Roman oligarchy
in this respect completely resembled a gang of robbers,
and followed out the plundering of the provincials in a professional
and business-like manner; capable members of the gang set to work
not too nicely, for they had in fact to share the spoil
with the advocates and the jurymen, and the more they stole,
they did so the more securely.  The notion of honour in theft too
was already developed; the big robber looked down on the little,
and the latter on the mere thief, with contempt; any one, who had been
once for a wonder condemned, boasted of the high figure of the sums
which he was proved to have exacted.  Such was the behaviour
in the provinces of the successors of those men, who had been
accustomed to bring home nothing from their administration but the thanks
of the subjects and the approbation of their fellow-citizens.

The Roman Capitalists in the Provinces

But still worse, if possible, and still less subject to any control
was the havoc committed by the Italian men of business among
the unhappy provincials.  The most lucrative portions of the landed
property and the whole commercial and monetary business
in the provinces were concentrated in their hands.  The estates
in the transmarine regions, which belonged to Italian grandees,
were exposed to all the misery of management by stewards, and never
saw their owners; excepting possibly the hunting-parks, which occur
as early as this time in Transalpine Gaul with an area amounting
to nearly twenty square miles.  Usury flourished as it had never
flourished before.  The small landowners in Illyricum, Asia, and Egypt
managed their estates even in Varro's time in great part practically
as the debtor-slaves of their Roman or non-Roman creditors,
just as the plebeians in former days for their patrician lords.
Cases occurred of capital being lent even to urban communities
at four per cent per month.  It was no unusual thing for an energetic
and influential man of business to get either the title
of envoy(81) given to him by the senate or that of officer
by the governor, and, if possible, to have men put at his service
for the better prosecution of his affairs; a case is narrated
on credible authority, where one of these honourable martial bankers
on account of a claim against the town of Salamis in Cyprus
kept its municipal council blockaded in the town-house,
until five of the members had died of hunger.

Robberies and Damage by War

To these two modes of oppression, each of which by itself
was intolerable and which were always becoming better arranged to work
into each other's hands, were added the general calamities, for which
the Roman government was also in great part, at least indirectly,
responsible.  In the various wars a large amount of capital
was dragged away from the country and a larger amount destroyed
sometimes by the barbarians, sometimes by the Roman armies.
Owing to the worthlessness of the Roman land and maritime police,
brigands and pirates swarmed every where.  In Sardinia and the interior
of Asia Minor brigandage was endemic; in Africa and Further Spain
it became necessary to fortify all buildings constructed
outside of the city-enclosures with walls and towers.  The fearful evil
of piracy has been already described in another connection.(82)
The panaceas of the prohibitive system, with which the Roman governor
was wont to interpose when scarcity of money or dearth occurred,
as under such circumstances they could not fail to do--
the prohibition of the export of gold or grain from the province--
did not mend the matter.  The communal affairs were almost everywhere
embarrassed, in addition to the general distress, by local disorders
and frauds of the public officials.

The Conditions of the Provinces Generally

Where such grievances afflicted communities and individuals
not temporarily but for generations with an inevitable, steady,
and yearly-increasing oppression, the best regulated public
or private economy could not but succumb to them, and the most
unspeakable misery could not but extend over all the nations
from the Tagus to the Euphrates.  "All the communities," it is said
in a treatise published as early as 684, "are ruined"; the same truth
is specially attested as regards Spain and Narbonese Gaul,
the very provinces which, comparatively speaking, were still
in the most tolerable economic position.  In Asia Minor even towns
like Samos and Halicarnassus stood almost empty; legal slavery
seemed here a haven of rest compared with the torments to which
the free provincial succumbed, and even the patient Asiatic had become,
according to the descriptions of Roman statesmen themselves,
weary of life.  Any one who desires to fathom the depths to which man
can sink in the criminal infliction, and in the no less criminal
endurance, of all conceivable injustice, may gather together
from the criminal records of this period the wrongs which Roman grandees
could perpetrate and Greeks, Syrians, and Phoenicians could suffer.
Even the statesmen of Rome herself publicly and frankly conceded
that the Roman name was unutterably odious through all Greece
and Asia; and, when the burgesses of the Pontic Heraclea on one occasion
put to death the whole of the Roman tax-collectors, the only matter
for regret was that such things did not occur oftener.

Caesar and the Provinces

The Optimates scoffed at the new master who went in person
to inspect his "farms" one after the other; in reality the condition
of the several provinces demanded all the earnestness and all the wisdom
of one of those rare men, who redeem the name of king from being regarded
by the nations as merely a conspicuous example of human insufficiency.
The wounds inflicted had to be healed by time; Caesar took care
that they might be so healed, and that there should be
no fresh inflictions.

The Caesarian Magistrates

The system of administration was thoroughly remodelled.
The Sullan proconsuls and propraetors had been in their provinces
essentially sovereign and practically subject to no control;
those of Caesar were the well-disciplined servants of a stern master,
who from the very unity and life-tenure of his power sustained
a more natural and more tolerable relation to the subjects
than those numerous, annually changing, petty tyrants.  The governorships
were no doubt still distributed among the annually-retiring two consuls
and sixteen praetors, but, as the Imperator directly nominated
eight of the latter and the distribution of the provinces
among the competitors depended solely on him,(83) they were
in reality bestowed by the Imperator.  The functions also
of the governors were practically restricted.  The superintendence
of the administration of justice and the administrative control
of the communities remained in their hands; but their command
was paralyzed by the new supreme command in Rome and its adjutants
associated with the governor,(84) and the raising of the taxes
was probably even now committed in the provinces substantially
to imperial officials,(85) so that the governor was thenceforward
surrounded with an auxiliary staff which was absolutely dependent
on the Imperator in virtue either of the laws of the military
hierarchy or of the still stricter laws of domestic discipline.
While hitherto the proconsul and his quaestor had appeared as if
they were members of a gang of robbers despatched to levy contributions,
the magistrates of Caesar were present to protect the weak
against the strong; and, instead of the previous worse than useless
control of the equestrian or senatorian tribunals, they had to answer
for themselves at the bar of a just and unyielding monarch.
The law as to exactions, the enactments of which Caesar
had already in his first consulate made more stringent,
was applied by him against the chief commandants in the provinces
with an inexorable severity going even beyond its letter;
and the tax-officers, if indeed they ventured to indulge
in an injustice, atoned for it to their master, as slaves
and freedmen according to the cruel domestic law of that time
were wont to atone.

Regulation of Burdens

The extraordinary public burdens were reduced to the right proportion
and the actual necessity; the ordinary burdens were materially lessened.
We have already mentioned the comprehensive regulation of taxation;(86)
the extension of the exemptions from tribute, the general lowering
of the direct taxes, the limitation of the system of -decumae- to Africa
and Sardinia, the complete setting aside of middlemen in the collection
of the direct taxes, were most beneficial reforms for the provincials.
That Caesar after the example of one of his greatest democratic
predecessors, Sertorius,(87) wished to free the subjects from the burden
of quartering troops and to insist on the soldiers erecting
for themselves permanent encampments resembling towns, cannot indeed
be proved; but he was, at least after he had exchanged the part
of pretender for that of king, not the man to abandon the subject
to the soldier; and it was in keeping with his spirit, when the heirs
of his policy created such military camps, and then converted them
into towns which formed rallying-points for Italian civilization
amidst the barbarian frontier districts.

Influence on the Capitalist System

It was a task far more difficult than the checking of official
irregularities, to deliver the provincials from the oppressive
ascendency of Roman capital.  Its power could not be directly broken
without applying means which were still more dangerous than the evil;
the government could for the time being abolish only isolated abuses--
as when Caesar for instance prohibited the employment of the title
of state-envoy for financial purposes--and meet manifest acts of violence
and palpable usury by a sharp application of the general penal laws
and of the laws as to usury, which extended also to the provinces;(88)
but a more radical cure of the evil was only to be expected
from the reviving prosperity of the provincials under a better
administration.  Temporary enactments, to relieve the insolvency
of particular provinces, had been issued on several occasions
in recent times.  Caesar himself had in 694 when governor
of Further Spain assigned to the creditors two thirds
of the income of their debtors in order to pay themselves
from that source.  Lucius Lucullus likewise when governor of Asia Minor
had directly cancelled a portion of the arrears of interest
which had swelled beyond measure, and had for the remaining portion
assigned to the creditors a fourth part of the produce of the lands
of their debtors, as well as a suitable proportion of the profits
accruing to them from house-rents or slave-labour.  We are not expressly
informed that Caesar after the civil war instituted similar
general liquidations of debt in the provinces; yet from what
has just been remarked and from what was done in the case of Italy,(89)
it can hardly be doubted that Caesar likewise directed his efforts
towards this object, or at least that it formed part of his plan.

While thus the Imperator, as far as lay within human power,
relieved the provincials from the oppressions of the magistrates
and capitalists of Rome, it might at the same time be with certaint
expected from the government to which he imparted fresh vigour,
that it would scare off the wild border-peoples and disperse
the freebooters by land and sea, as the rising sun chases away
the mist.  However the old wounds might still smart, with Caesar
there appeared for the sorely-tortured subjects the dawn
of a more tolerable epoch, the first intelligent and humane government
that had appeared for centuries, and a policy of peace which rested
not on cowardice but on strength.  Well might the subjects above all
mourn along with the best Romans by the bier of the great liberator.

The Beginning of the Helleno-Italic State

But this abolition of existing abuses was not the main matter
in Caesar's provincial reform.  In the Roman republic, according
to the view of the aristocracy and democracy alike, the provinces
had been nothing but--what they were frequently called--country-estates
of the Roman people, and they were employed and worked out as such.
This view had now passed away.  The provinces as such were gradually
to disappear, in order to prepare for the renovated Helleno-Italic nation
a new and more spacious home, of whose several component parts no one
existed merely for the sake of another but all for each and each for all;
the new existence in the renovated home, the fresher, broader, grander
national life, was of itself to overbear the sorrows and wrongs
of the nation for which there was no help in the old Italy.  These ideas,
as is well known, were not new.  The emigration from Italy
to the provinces that had been regularly going on for centuries
had long since, though unconsciously on the part of the emigrants
themselves, paved the way for such an extension of Italy.  The first
who in a systematic way guided the Italians to settle beyond the bounds
of Italy was Gaius Gracchus, the creator of the Roman democratic monarchy,
the author of the Transalpine conquests, the founder of the colonies
of Carthage and Narbo.  Then the second statesman of genius
produced by the Roman democracy, Quintus Sertorius, began to introduce
the barbarous Occidentals to Latin civilization; he gave to the Spanish
youth of rank the Roman dress, and urged them to speak Latin
and to acquire the higher Italian culture at the training institute
founded by him in Osca.  When Caesar entered on the government,
a large Italian population--though, in great part, lacking stability
and concentration--already existed in all the provinces and client-
states.  To say nothing of the formally Italian towns in Spain
and southern Gaul, we need only recall the numerous troops of burgesses
raised by Sertorius and Pompeius in Spain, by Caesar in Gaul,
by Juba in Numidia, by the constitutional party in Africa, Macedonia,
Greece, Asia Minor, and Crete; the Latin lyre--ill-tuned doubtless--
on which the town-poets of Corduba as early as the Sertorian war
sang the praises of the Roman generals; and the translations
of Greek poetry valued on account of their very elegance of language,
which the earliest extra-Italian poet of note, the Transalpine
Publius Terentius Varro of the Aude, published
shortly after Caesar's death.

On the other hand the interpenetration of the Latin and Hellenic
character was, we might say, as old as Rome.  On occasion
of the union of Italy the conquering Latin nation had assimilated
to itself all the other conquered nationalities, excepting only
the Greek, which was received just as it stood without any attempt
at external amalgamation.  Wherever the Roman legionary went,
the Greek schoolmaster, no less a conqueror in his own way, followed;
at an early date we find famous teachers of the Greek language
settled on the Guadalquivir, and Greek was as well taught as Latin
in the institute of Osca.  The higher Roman culture itself
was in fact nothing else than the proclamation of the great gospel
of Hellenic manners and art in the Italian idiom; against the modest
pretension of the civilizing conquerors to proclaim it first of all
in their own language to the barbarians of the west the Hellene
at least could not loudly protest.  Already the Greek every where--
and, most decidedly, just where the national feeling was purest
and strongest, on the frontiers threatened by barbaric denationalization,
e. g. in Massilia, on the north coast of the Black Sea,
and on the Euphrates and Tigris--descried the  protector and avenger
of Hellenism in Rome; and in fact the foundation of towns by Pompeius
in the far east resumed after an interruption of centuries
the beneficent work of Alexander.

The idea of an Italo-Hellenic empire with two languages
and a single nationality was not new--otherwise it would have been
nothing but a blunder; but the development of it from floating projects
to a firmly-grasped conception, from scattered initial efforts
to the laying of a concentrated foundation, was the work of the third
and greatest of the democratic statesmen of Rome.

The Ruling Nations
The Jews

The first and most essential condition for the political
and national levelling of the empire was the preservation and extension
of the two nations destined to joint dominion, along with the absorption
as rapidly as possible of the barbarian races, or those termed barbarian
existing by their side.  In a certain sense we might no doubt name
along with Romans and Greeks a third nationality, which vied with them
in ubiquity in the world of that day, and was destined to play
no insignificant part in the new state of Caesar.  We speak of the Jews.
This remarkable people, yielding and yet tenacious, was in the ancient
as in the modern world everywhere and nowhere at home, and everywhere
and nowhere powerful.  The successors of David and Solomon were of hardly
more significance for the Jews of that age than Jerusalem for those
of the present day; the nation found doubtless for its religious
and intellectual unity a visible rallying-point in the petty kingdom
of Jerusalem, but the nation itself consisted not merely of the subjects
of the Hasmonaeans, but of the innumerable bodies of Jews
scattered through the whole Parthian and the whole Roman empire.
Within the cities of Alexandria especially and of Cyrene the Jews
formed special communities administratively and even locally distinct,
not unlike the "Jews' quarters" of our towns, but with a freer position
and superintended by a "master of the people" as superior judge
and administrator.  How numerous even in Rome the Jewish population
was already before Caesar's time, and how closely at the same time
the Jews even then kept together as fellow-countrymen, is shown
by the remark of an author of this period, that it was dangerous
for a governor to offend the Jews, in his province, because he might
then certainly reckon on being hissed after his return by the populace
of the capital.  Even at this time the predominant business of the Jews
was trade; the Jewish trader moved everywhere with the conquering Roman
merchant then, in the same way as he afterwards accompanied the Genoese
and the Venetian, and capital flowed in on all hands to the Jewish,
by the side of the Roman, merchants.  At this period too we encounter
the peculiar antipathy of the Occidentals towards this so thoroughly
Oriental race and their foreign opinions and customs.  This Judaism,
although not the most pleasing feature in the nowhere pleasing picture
of the mixture of nations which then prevailed, was nevertheless
a historical element developing itself in the natural course of things,
which the statesman could neither ignore nor combat, and which Caesar
on the contrary, just like his predecessor Alexander, with correct
discernment of the circumstances, fostered as far as possible.
While Alexander, by laying the foundation of Alexandrian Judaism,
did not much less for the nation than its own David by planning
the temple of Jerusalem, Caesar also advanced the interests of the Jews
in Alexandria and in Rome by special favours and privileges,
and protected in particular their peculiar worship against the Roman
as well as against the Greek local priests.  The two great men
of course did not contemplate placing the Jewish nationality
on an equal footing with the Hellenic or Italo-Hellenic.
But the Jew who has not like the Occidental received the Pandora's gift
of political organization, and stands substantially in a relation
of indifference to the state; who moreover is as reluctant
to give up the essence of his national idiosyncrasy, as he is ready
to clothe it with any nationality at pleasure and to adapt himself
up to a certain degree to foreign habits--the Jew was for this
very reason as it were made for a state, which was to be built
on the ruins of a hundred living polities and to be endowed
with a somewhat abstract and, from the outset, toned-down nationality.
Even in the ancient world Judaism was an effective leaven
of cosmopolitanism and of national decomposition, and to that extent
a specially privileged member in the Caesarian state, the polity
of which was strictly speaking nothing but a citizenship of the world,
and the nationality of which was at bottom nothing but humanity.

Hellenism

But the Latin and Hellenic nationalities continued to be
exclusively the positive elements of the new citizenship.
The distinctively Italian state of the republic was thus at an end;
but the rumour that Caesar was ruining Italy and Rome on purpose
to transfer the centre of the empire to the Greek east and to make
Ilion or Alexandria its capital, was nothing but a piece of talk--
very easy to be accounted for, but also very silly--of the angry
nobility.  On the contrary in Caesar's organizations the Latin
nationality always retained the preponderance; as is indicated
in the very fact that he issued all his enactments in Latin,
although those destined for the Greek-speaking countries were
at the same time issued in Greek.  In general he arranged the relations
of the two great nations in his monarchy just as his republican
predecessors had arranged them in the united Italy; the Hellenic
nationality was protected where it existed, the Italian was extended
as far as circumstances permitted, and the inheritance
of the races to be absorbed was destined for it.  This was necessary,
because an entire equalizing of the Greek and Latin elements
in the state would in all probability have in a very short time
occasioned that catastrophe which Byzantinism brought about
several centuries later; for the Greek element was superior
to the Roman not merely in all intellectual aspects, but also
in the measure of its predominance, and it had within Italy itself
in the hosts of Hellenes and half-Hellenes who migrated compulsorily
or voluntarily to Italy an endless number of apostles apparently
insignificant, but whose influence could not be estimated
too highly.  To mention only the most conspicuous phenomenon
in this respect, the rule of Greek lackeys over the Roman monarchs
is as old as the monarchy. The first in the equally long and repulsive
list of these personages is the confidential servant of Pompeius,
Theophanes of Mytilene, who by his power over his weak master
contributed probably more than any one else to the outbreak of the war
between Pompeius and Caesar.  Not wholly without reason he was
after his death treated with divine honours by his countrymen;
he commenced, forsooth, the -valet de chambre- government
of the imperial period, which in a certain measure was just
a dominion of the Hellenes over the Romans.  The government
had accordingly every reason not to encourage by its fostering action
the spread of Hellenism at least in the west.  If Sicily was not simply
relieved of the pressure of the -decumae- but had its communities
invested with Latin rights, which was presumably meant to be followed
in due time by full equalization with Italy, it can only have been
Caesar's design that this glorious island, which was at that time
desolate and had as to management passed for the greater part
into Italian hands, but which nature has destined to be not so much
a neighbouring land to Italy as rather the finest of its provinces,
should become altogether merged in Italy.  But otherwise
the Greek element, wherever it existed, was preserved and protected.
However political crises might suggest to the Imperator the demolition
of the strong pillars of Hellenism in the west and in Egypt, Massilia
and Alexandria were neither destroyed nor denationalized.

Latinizing

On the other hand the Roman element was promoted by the government
through colonization and Latinizing with all vigour and at the most
various points of the empire.  The principle, which originated
no doubt from a bad combination of formal law and brute force,
but was inevitably necessary in order to freedom in dealing
with the nations destined to destruction--that all the soil
in the provinces not ceded by special act of the government
to communities or private persons was the property of the state,
and the holder of it for the time being had merely an heritable
possession on sufferance and revocable at any time--was retained
also by Caesar and raised by him from a democratic party-theory
to a fundamental principle of monarchical law.

Cisalpine Gaul

Gaul, of course, fell to be primarily dealt with in the extension
of Roman nationality.  Cisalpine Gaul obtained throughout--
what a great part of the inhabitants had long enjoyed--
political equalization with the leading country by the admission
of the Transpadane communities into the Roman burgess-union,
which had for long been assumed by the democracy as accomplished,(90)
and was now (705) finally accomplished by Caesar.  Practically
this province had already completely Latinized itself during
the forty years which had elapsed since the bestowal of Latin rights.
The exclusives might ridicule the broad and gurgling accent
of the Celtic Latin, and miss "an undefined something of the grace
of the capital" in the Insubrian or Venetian, who as Caesar's legionary
had conquered for himself with his sword a place in the Roman Forum
and even in the Roman senate-house.  Nevertheless Cisalpine Gaul
with its dense chiefly agricultural population was even before
Caesar's time in reality an Italian country, and remained
for centuries the true asylum of Italian manners and Italian culture;
indeed the teachers of Latin literature found nowhere else
out of the capital so much encouragement and approbation.

The Province of Narbo

While Cisalpine Gaul was thus substantially merged in Italy,
the place which it had hitherto occupied was taken by the Transalpine
province, which had been converted by the conquests of Caesar
from a frontier into an inland province, and which by its vicinity
as well as by its climate was fitted beyond all other regions
to become in due course of time likewise an Italian land.
Thither principally, according to the old aim of the transmarine
settlements of the Roman democracy, was the stream of Italian
emigration directed.  There the ancient colony of Narbo was reinforced
by new settlers, and four new burgess-colonies were instituted
at Baeterrae (Beziers) not far from Narbo, at Arelate (Aries)
and Arausio (Orange) on the Rhone, and at the new seaport Forum Julii
(Frejus); while the names assigned to them at the same time preserved
the memory of the brave legions which had annexed northern Gaul
to the empire.(91) The townships not furnished with colonists appear,
at least for the most part, to have been led on toward Romanization
in the same way as Transpadane Gaul in former times(92) by the bestowal
of Latin urban rights; in particular Nemausus (Nimes), as the chief place
of the territory taken from the Massiliots in consequence of their revolt
against Caesar,(93)was converted from a Massiliot village into a Latin
urban community, and endowed with a considerable territory and even
with the right of coinage.(94)  While Cisalpine Gaul thus advanced
from the preparatory stage to full equality with Italy, the Narbonese
province advanced at the same time into that preparatory stage;
just as previously in Cisalpine Gaul, the most considerable
communities there had the full franchise, the rest Latin rights.

Northern Gaul

In the other non-Greek and non-Latin regions of the empire,
which were still more remote from the influence of Italy and the process
of assimilation, Caesar confined himself to the establishment
of several centres for Italian civilization such as Narbo had hitherto
been in Gaul, in order by their means to pave the way for a future
complete equalization.  Such initial steps can be pointed out
in all the provinces of the empire, with the exception of the poorest
and least important of all, Sardinia.  How Caesar proceeded
in Northern Gaul, we have already set forth;(95) the Latin language
there obtained throughout official recognition, though not yet
employed for all branches of public intercourse, and the colony
of Noviodunum (Nyon) arose on the Leman lake as the most northerly town
with an Italian constitution.

Spain

In Spain, which was presumably at that time the most densely peopled
country of the Roman empire, not merely were Caesarian colonists
settled in the important Helleno-Iberian seaport town of Emporiae
by the side of the old population; but, as recently-discovered
records have shown, a number of colonists probably taken
predominantly from the proletariate of the capital were provided for
in the town of Urso (Osuna), not far from Seville in the heart
of Andalusia, and perhaps also in several other townships
of this province.  The ancient and wealthy mercantile city of Gades,
whose municipal system Caesar even when praetor had remodelled
suitably to the times, now obtained from the Imperator the full rights
of the Italian -municipia-(705) and became--what Tusculum had been
in Italy(96)--the first extra-Italian community not founded by Rome
which was admitted into the Roman burgess-union.  Some years
afterwards (709) similar rights were conferred also on some other
Spanish communities, and Latin rights presumably on still more.

Carthage

In Africa the project, which Gaius Gracchus had not been allowed
to bring to an issue, was now carried out, and on the spot
where the city of the hereditary foes of Rome had stood, 3000 Italian
colonists and a great number of the tenants on lease and sufferance
resident in the Carthaginian territory were settled; and the new
"Venus-colony," the Roman Carthage, throve with amazing rapidity
under the incomparably favourable circumstances of the locality.
Utica, hitherto the capital and first commercial town in the province,
had already been in some measure compensated  beforehand,
apparently by the bestowal of Latin rights, for the revival
of its superior rival.  In the Numidian territory newly annexed
to the empire the important Cirta and the other communities assigned
to the Roman condottiere Publius Sittius for himself and his troops(97)
obtained the legal position of Roman military colonies.
The stately provincial towns indeed, which the insane fury of Juba
and of the desperate remnant of the constitutional party had converted
into ruins, did not revive so rapidly as they had been reduced to ashes,
and many a ruinous site recalled long afterwards this fatal period;
but the two new Julian colonies, Carthage and Cirta, became
and continued to be the centres of Africano-Roman civilization.

Corinth
The East

In the desolate land of Greece, Caesar, besides other plans
such as the institution of a Roman colony in Buthrotum (opposite Corfu),
busied himself above all with the restoration of Corinth.  Not only
was a considerable burgess-colony conducted thither, but a plan
was projected for cutting through the isthmus, so as to avoid
the dangerous circumnavigation of the Peloponnesus and to make
the whole traffic between Italy and Asia pass through the Corintho-
Saronic gulf.  Lastly even in the remote Hellenic east the monarch
called into existence Italian settlements; on the Black Sea,
for instance, at Heraclea and Sinope, which towns the Italian
colonists shared, as in the case of Emporiae, with the old inhabitants;
on the Syrian coast, in the important port of Berytus,
which like Sinope obtained an Italian constitution; and even in Egypt,
where a Roman station was established on the lighthouse-island
commanding the harbour of Alexandria.

Extension of the Italian Municipal Constitution to the Provinces

Through these ordinances the Italian municipal freedom was carried
into the provinces in a manner far more comprehensive than had been
previously the case.  The communities of full burgesses--that is,
all the towns of the Cisalpine province and the burgess-colonies
and burgess-municipia--scattered in Transalpine Gaul and elsewhere--
were on an equal footing with the Italian, in so far as they administered
their own affairs, and even exercised a certainly limited jurisdiction;
while on the other hand the more important processes came before
the Roman authorities competent to deal with them--as a rule the governor
of the province.(98)  The formally autonomous Latin and the other
emancipated communities-thus including all those of Sicily
and of Narbonese Gaul, so far as they were not burgess-communities,
and a considerable number also in the other provinces--had not merely
free administration, but  probably unlimited jurisdiction; so that
the governor was only entitled to interfere there by virtue of his--
certainly very arbitrary--administrative control.  No doubt even earlier
there had been communities of full burgesses within the provinces
of governors, such as Aquileia, and Narbo, and whole governors'
provinces, such as Cisalpine Gaul, had consisted of communities
with Italian constitution; but it was, if not in law, at least
in a political point of view a singularly important innovation,
that there was now a province which as well as Italy was peopled
solely by Roman burgesses,(99) and that others promised to become such.

Italy and the Provinces Reduced to One Level

With this disappeared the first great practical distinction
that separated Italy from the provinces; and the second--that ordinarily
no troops were stationed in Italy, while they were stationed
in the provinces--was likewise in the course of disappearing;
troops were now stationed only where there was a frontier to be defended,
and the commandants of the provinces in which this was not the case,
such as Narbo and Sicily, were officers only in name.  The formal
contrast between Italy and the provinces, which had at all times
depended on other distinctions,(100) continued certainly
even now to subsist, for Italy was the sphere of civil jurisdiction
and of consuls and praetors, while the provinces were districts
under the jurisdiction of martial law and subject to proconsuls
and propraetors; but the procedure according to civil and according
to martial law had for long been practically coincident,
and the different titles of the magistrates signified little
after the one Imperator was over all.

In all these various municipal foundations and ordinances--
which are traceable at least in plan, if not perhaps all in execution,
to Caesar--a definite system is apparent.  Italy was converted
from the mistress of the subject peoples into the mother
of the renovated Italo-Hellenic nation.  The Cisalpine province
completely equalized with the mother-country was a promise
and a guarantee that, in the monarchy of Caesar just as
 in the healthier times of the republic, every Latinized
district might expect to be placed on an equal footing
by the side of its elder sisters and of the mother herself.
On the threshold of full national and political equalization
with Italy stood the adjoining lands, the Greek Sicily
and the south of Gaul, which was rapidly becoming Latinized.
In a more remote stage of preparation stood the other provinces
of the empire, in which, just as hitherto in southern Gaul Narbo
had been a Roman colony, the great maritime cities--Emporiae, Gades,
Carthage, Corinth, Heraclea in Pontus, Sinope, Berytus, Alexandria--
now became Italian or Helleno-Italian communities, the centres
of an Italian civilization even in the Greek east, the fundamental
pillars of the future national and political levelling of the empire.
The rule of the urban community of Rome over the shores
of the Mediterranean was at an end; in its stead came the new
Mediterranean state, and its first act was to atone for the two
greatest outrages which that urban community had perpetrated
on civilization.  While the destruction of the two greatest marts
of commerce in the Roman dominions marked the turning-point at which
the protectorate of the Roman community degenerated into political
tyrannizing over, and financial exaction from, the subject lands,
the prompt and brilliant restoration of Carthage and Corinth marked
the foundation of the new great commonwealth which was to train up
all the regions on the Mediterranean to national and political
equality, to union in a genuine state.  Well might Caesar bestow
on the city of Corinth in addition to its far-famed ancient name
the new one of "Honour to Julius" (-Lavs Jvli-).

Organization of the New Empire

While thus the new united empire was furnished with a national character,
which doubtless necessarily lacked individuality and was rather
an inanimate product of art than a fresh growth of nature,
it further had need of unity in those institutions which express
the general life of nations--in constitution and administration,
in religion and jurisprudence, in money, measures, and weights;
as to which, of course, local diversities of the most varied character
were quite compatible with essential union.  In all these departments
we can only speak of the initial steps, for the thorough formation
of the monarchy of Caesar into an unity was the work of the future,
and all that he did was to lay the foundation for the building
of centuries.  But of the lines, which the great man drew in these
departments, several can still be recognized; and it is more pleasing
to follow him here, than in the task of building from the ruins
of the nationalities.

Census of the Empire

As to constitution and administration, we have already noticed
elsewhere the most important elements of the new unity--
the transition of the sovereignty from the municipal council of Rome
to the sole master of the Mediterranean monarchy; the conversion
of that municipal council into a supreme imperial council representing
Italy and the provinces; above all, the transference--now commenced--
of the Roman, and generally of the Italian, municipal organization
to the provincial communities.  This latter course--the bestowal
of Latin, and thereafter of Roman, rights on the communities
ripe for full admission to the united state--gradually of itself
brought about uniform communal arrangements.  In one respect alone
this process could not be waited for.  The new empire needed
immediately an institution which should place before the government
at a glance the principal bases of administration--the proportions
of population and property in the different communities--
in other words an improved census.  First the census of Italy
was reformed.  According to Caesar's ordinance(101)--which probably,
indeed, only carried out the arrangements which were, at least
as to principle, adopted in consequence of the Social war--
in future, when a census took place in the Roman community,
there were to be simultaneously registered by the highest authority
in each Italian community the name of every municipal burgess
and that of his father or manumitter, his district, his age,
and his property; and these lists were to be furnished to the Roman
censor early enough to enable him to complete in proper time
the general list of Roman burgesses and of Roman property.
That it was Caesar's intention to introduce similar institutions
also in the provinces is attested partly by the measurement
and survey of the whole empire ordered by him, partly by the nature
of the arrangement itself; for it in fact furnished the general
instrument appropriate for procuring, as well in the Italian
as in the non-Italian communities of the state, the information
requisite for the central administration.  Evidently here too
it was Caesar's intention to revert to the traditions
of the earlier republican times, and to reintroduce the census
of the empire, which the earlier republic had effected--
essentially in the same way as Caesar effected the Italian--
by analogous extension of the institution of the urban censorship
with its set terms and other essential rules to all the subject
communities of Italy and Sicily.(102)  This had been
one of the first institutions which the torpid aristocracy allowed
to drop, and in this way deprived the supreme administrative authority
of any view of the resources in men and taxation at its disposal
and consequently of all possibility of an effective control.(103)
The indications still extant, and the very connection of things,
show irrefragably that Caesar made preparations to renew
the general census that had been obsolete for centuries.

Religion of the Empire

We need scarcely say that in religion and in jurisprudence
no thorough levelling could be thought of; yet with all toleration
towards local faiths and municipal statutes the new state needed
a common worship corresponding to the Italo-Hellenic nationality
and a general code of law superior to the municipal statutes.
It needed them; for de facto both were already in existence.
In the field of religion men had for centuries been busied
in fusing together the Italian and Hellenic worships partly
by external adoption, partly by internal adjustment of their respective
conceptions of the gods; and owing to the pliant formless character
of the Italian gods, there had been no great difficulty in resolving
Jupiter into Zeus, Venus into Aphrodite, and so every essential idea
of the Latin faith into its Hellenic counterpart. The Italo-Hellenic
religion stood forth in its outlines ready-made; how much
in this very department men were conscious of having gone beyond
the specifically Roman point of view and advanced towards
an Italo-Hellenic quasi-nationality, is shown by the distinction made
in the already-mentioned theology of Varro between the "common" gods,
that is, those acknowledged by Romans and Greeks, and the special gods
of the Roman community.

Law of the Empire

So far as concerns the field of criminal and police law,
where the government more directly interferes and the necessities
of the case are substantially met by a judicious legislation,
there was no difficulty in attaining, in the way of legislative action,
that degree of material uniformity which certainly was in this department
needful for the unity of the empire.  In the civil law again,
where the initiative belongs to commercial intercourse and merely
the formal shape to the legislator, the code for the united empire,
which the legislator certainly could not have created, had been already
long since developed in a natural way by commercial intercourse itself.
The Roman urban law was still indeed legally based on the embodiment
of the Latin national law contained in the Twelve Tables.
Later laws had doubtless introduced various improvements
of detail suited to the times, among which the most important
was probably the abolition of the old inconvenient mode
of commencing a process through standing forms of declaration
by the parties(104) and the substitution of an instruction drawn up
in writing by the presiding magistrate for the single juryman
(formula): but in the main the popular legislation had only piled upon
that venerable foundation an endless chaos of special laws
long since in great part antiquated and forgotten, which can
only be compared to the English statute-law.  The attempts to impart
to them scientific shape and system had certainly rendered
the tortuous paths of the old civil law accessible, and thrown light
upon them;(105) but no Roman Blackstone could remedy the fundamental
defect, that an urban code composed four hundred years ago
with its equally diffuse and confused supplements was now to serve
as the law of a great state.

The New Urban Law or the Edict

Commercial intercourse provided for itself a more thorough remedy.
The lively intercourse between Romans and non-Romans had long ago
developed in Rome an international private law (-ius gentium-;(106)),
that is to say, a body of maxims especially relating to commercial
matters, according to which Roman judges pronounced judgment,
when a cause could not be decided either according to their own
or any other national code and they were compelled--setting aside
the peculiarities of Roman, Hellenic, Phoenician and other law--
to revert to the common views of right underlying all dealings.
The formation of the newer law attached itself to this basis.
In the first place as a standard for the legal dealings
of Roman burgesses with each other, it de facto substituted
for the old urban law, which had become practically useless,
a new code based in substance on a compromise between the national law
of the Twelve Tables and the international law or so-called
law of nations.  The former was essentially adhered to,
though of course with modifications suited to the times,
in the law of marriage, family, and inheritance; whereas
in all regulations which concerned dealings with property,
and consequently in reference to ownership and contracts,
the international law was the standard; in these matters indeed
various important arrangements were borrowed even from local
provincial law, such as the legislation as to usury,(107)
and the institution of -hypotheca-.  Through whom, when,
and how this comprehensive innovation came into existence,
whether at once or gradually, whether through one or several authors,
are questions to which we cannot furnish a satisfactory answer.
We know only that this reform, as was natural, proceeded
in the first instance from the urban court; that it first took
formal shape in the instructions annually issued by the -praetor
urbanus-, when entering on office, for the guidance of the parties
in reference to the most important maxims of law to be observed
in the judicial year then beginning (-edictum annuum- or -perpetuum
praetoris urbani de iuris dictione-); and that, although various
preparatory steps towards it may have been taken in earlier times,
it certainly only attained its completion in this epoch.  The new code
was theoretic and abstract, inasmuch as the Roman view of law
had therein divested itself of such of its national peculiarities
as it had become aware of; but it was at the same time practical
and positive, inasmuch as it by no means faded away into the dim
twilight of general equity or even into the pure nothingness
of the so-called law of nature, but was applied by definite
functionaries for definite concrete cases according to fixed rules,
and was not merely capable of, but had already essentially received,
a legal embodiment in the urban edict.  This code moreover corresponded
in matter to the wants of the time, in so far as it furnished
the more convenient forms required by the increase of intercourse
for legal procedure, for acquisition of property, and for conclusion
of contracts.  Lastly, it had already in the main become subsidiary law
throughout the compass of the Roman empire, inasmuch as--
while the manifold local statutes were retained for those legal relations
which were not directly commercial, as well as for local transactions
between members of the same legal district--dealings relating
to property between subjects of the empire belonging to different
legal districts were regulated throughout after the model
of the urban edict, though not applicable de jure to these cases,
both in Italy and in the provinces.  The law of the urban edict
had thus essentially the same position in that age which the Roman law
has occupied in our political development; this also is, so far as
such opposites can be combined, at once abstract and positive;
this also recommended itself by its (compared with the earlier
legal code) flexible forms of intercourse, and took its place by the side
of the local statutes as universal subsidiary law.  But the Roman
legal development had an essential advantage over ours in this,
that the denationalized legislation appeared not, as with us,
prematurely and by artificial birth, but at the right time
and agreeably to nature.

Caesar's Project of Codification

Such was the state of the law as Caesar found it.  If he projected
the plan for a new code, it is not difficult to say what were
his intentions.  This code could only comprehend the law of Roman
burgesses, and could be a general code for the empire merely so far as
a code of the ruling nation suitable to the times could not
but of itself become general subsidiary law throughout the compass
of the empire.  In criminal law, if the plan embraced this at all,
there was needed only a revision and adjustment of the Sullan
ordinances.  In civil law, for a state whose nationality
was properly humanity, the necessary and only possible formal shape
was to invest that urban edict, which had already spontaneously grown
out of lawful commerce, with the security and precision of statute-law.
The first step towards this had been taken by the Cornelian law
of 687, when it enjoined the judge to keep to the maxims set forth
at the beginning of his magistracy and not arbitrarily
to administer other law (108)--a regulation, which may well
be compared with the law of the Twelve Tables, and which became
almost as significant for the fixing of the later urban law
as that collection for the fixing of the earlier.  But although
after the Cornelian decree of the people the edict was no longer
subordinate to the judge, but the judge was by law subject to the edict;
and though the new code had practically dispossessed the old urban law
in judicial usage as in legal instruction--every urban judge
was still free at his entrance on office absolutely and arbitrarily
to alter the edict, and the law of the Twelve Tables with its additions
still always outweighed formally the urban edict, so that
in each individual case of collision the antiquated rule had to be
set aside by arbitrary interference of the magistrates,
and therefore, strictly speaking, by violation of formal law.
The subsidiary application of the urban edict in the court
of the -praetor peregrinus- at Rome and in the different provincial
judicatures was entirely subject to the arbitrary pleasure
of the individual presiding magistrates.  It was evidently necessary
to set aside definitely the old urban law, so far as it had not
been transferred to the newer, and in the case of the latter
to set suitable limits to its arbitrary alteration by each individual
urban judge, possibly also to regulate its subsidiary application
by the side of the local statutes.  This was Caesars design,
when he projected the plan for his code; for it could not have been
otherwise.  The plan was not executed; and thus that troublesome
state of transition in Roman jurisprudence was perpetuated
till this necessary reform was accomplished six centuries afterwards,
and then but imperfectly, by one of the successors of Caesar,
the Emperor Justinian.

Lastly, in money, measures, and weights the substantial equalization
of the Latin and Hellenic systems had long been in progress.
It was very ancient so far as concerned the definitions of weight
and the measures of capacity and of length indispensable for trade
and commerce,(109) and in the monetary system little more recent
than the introduction of the silver coinage.(110)  But these older
equations were not sufficient, because in the Hellenic world itself
the most varied metrical and monetary systems subsisted side by side;
it was necessary, and formed part doubtless of Caesar's plan,
now to introduce everywhere in the new united empire, so far as
this had not been done already, Roman money, Roman measures,
and Roman weights in such a manner that they alone should be reckoned
by in official intercourse, and that the non-Roman systems
should be restricted to local currency or placed in a--once for all
regulated--ratio to the Roman.(111)  The action of Caesar,
however, can only be pointed out in two of the most important
of these departments, the monetary system and the calendar.

Gold Coin as Imperial Currency

The Roman monetary system was based on the two precious metals
circulating side by side and in a fixed relation to each other,
gold being given and taken according to weight,(112) silver
in the form of coin; but practically in consequence of the extensive
transmarine intercourse the gold far preponderated over the silver.
Whether the acceptance of Roman silver money was not even
at an earlier period obligatory throughout the empire, is uncertain;
at any rate uncoined gold essentially supplied the place of imperial
money throughout the Roman territory, the more so as the Romans
had prohibited the coining of gold in all the provinces and client-
states, and the -denarius- had, in addition to Italy, de jure
or de facto naturalized itself in Cisalpine Gaul, in Sicily,
in Spain and various other places, especially in the west.(113)
 but the imperial coinage begins with Caesar.  Exactly like Alexander,
he  marked the foundation of the new monarchy embracing the civilized
world by the fact that the only metal forming an universal medium
obtained the first place in the coinage.  The greatness of the scale
on which the new Caesarian gold piece (20 shillings 7 pence
according to the present value of the metal) was immediately coined,
is shown by the fact that in a single treasure buried seven years
after Caesar's death 80,000 of these pieces were found together.
It is true that financial speculations may have exercised
a collateral influence in this respect.(114) as to the silver money,
the exclusive rule of the Roman -denarius- in all the west,
for which the foundation had previously been laid, was finally
established by Caesar, when he definitively closed the only
Occidental mint that still competed in silver currency with the Roman,
that of Massilia.  The coining of silver or copper small money
was still permitted to a number of Occidental communities;
three-quarter -denarii- were struck by some Latin communities
of southern Gaul, half -denarii- by several cantons in northern Gaul,
copper small coins in various instances even after Caesar's time
by communes of the west; but this small money was throughout coined
after the Roman standard, and its acceptance moreover was probably
obligatory only in local dealings.  Caesar does not seem any more
than the earlier government to have contemplated the regulation
with a view to unity of the monetary system of the east,
where great masses of coarse silver money--much of which too easily
admitted of being debased or worn away--and to some extent even,
as in Egypt, a copper coinage akin to our paper money
were in circulation, and the Syrian commercial cities would have felt
very severely the want of their previous national coinage corresponding
to the Mesopotamian currency.  We find here subsequently
the arrangement that the -denarius- has everywhere legal currency
and is the only medium of official reckoning,(115) while the local coins
have legal currency within their limited range but according
to a tariff unfavourable for them as compared with the -denarius-.(116)
This was probably not introduced all at once, and in part perhaps
may have preceded Caesar; but it was at any rate the essential
complement of the Caesarian arrangement as to the imperial coinage,
whose new gold piece found its immediate model in the almost equally
heavy coin of Alexander and was doubtless calculated especially
for circulation in the east.

Reform of the Calendar

Of a kindred nature was the reform of the calendar.
The republican calendar, which strangely enough was still
the old decemviral calendar--an imperfect adoption of the -octaeteris-
that preceded Meton (117)--had by a combination of wretched mathematics
and wretched administration come to anticipate the true time
by 67 whole days, so that e. g. the festival of Flora was celebrated
on the 11th July instead of the 28th April.  Caesar finally removed
this evil, and with the help of the Greek mathematician Sosigenes
introduced the Italian farmer's year regulated according to the Egyptian
calendar of Eudoxus, as well as a rational system of intercalation,
into religious and official use; while at the same time
the beginning of the year on the 1st March of the old calendar
was abolished, and the date of the 1st January--fixed at first
as the official term for changing the supreme magistrates and,
in consequence of this, long since prevailing in civil life--
was assumed also as the calendar-period for commencing the year.
Both changes came into effect on the 1st January 709, and along
with them the use of the Julian calendar so named after its author,
which long after the fall of the monarchy of Caesar remained
the regulative standard of the civilized world and in the main
is so still.  By way of explanation there was added in a detailed edict
a star-calendar derived from the Egyptian astronomical observations
and transferred--not indeed very skilfully--to Italy, which fixed
the rising and setting of the stars named according to days
of the calendar.(118)  In this domain also the Roman and Greek worlds
were thus placed on a par.

Caesar and His Works

Such were the foundations of the Mediterranean monarchy of Caesar.
For the second time in Rome the social question had reached
a crisis, at which the antagonisms not only appeared to be,
but actually were, in the form of their exhibition, insoluble and,
in the form of their expression, irreconcilable.  On the former
occasion Rome had been saved by the fact that Italy was merged
in Rome and Rome in Italy, and in the new enlarged and altered home
those old antagonisms were not reconciled, but fell into abeyance.
Now Rome was once more saved by the fact that the countries
of the Mediterranean were merged in it or became prepared for merging;
the war between the Italian poor and rich, which in the old Italy
could only end with the destruction of the nation, had no longer
a battle-field or a meaning in the Italy of three continents.
The Latin colonies closed the gap which threatened to swallow up
the Roman community in the fifth century; the deeper chasm
of the seventh century was filled by the Transalpine and transmarine
colonizations of Gaius Gracchus and Caesar.  For Rome alone history
not merely performed miracles, but also repeated its miracles,
and twice cured the internal crisis, which in the state itself
was incurable, by regenerating the state.  There was doubtless
much corruption in this regeneration; as the union of Italy
was accomplished over the ruins of the Samnite and Etruscan nations,
so  the Mediterranean monarchy built itself on the ruins of countless
states and tribes once living and vigorous; but it was a corruption
out of which sprang a fresh growth, part of which remains green
at the present day.  What was pulled down for the sake of the new
building, was merely the secondary nationalities which had long since
been marked out for destruction by the levelling hand of civilization.
Caesar, wherever he came forward as a destroyer, only carried out
the pronounced verdict of historical development; but he protected
the germs of culture, where and as he found them, in his own land
as well as among the sister nation of the Hellenes.  He saved
and renewed the Roman type; and not only did he spare the Greek type,
but with the same self-relying genius with which he accomplished
the renewed foundation of Rome he undertook also the regeneration
of the Hellenes, and resumed the interrupted work of the great Alexander,
whose image, we may well believe, never was absent from Caesar's soul.
He solved these two great tasks not merely side by side,
but the one by means of the other.  The two great essentials
of humanity--general and individual development, or state and culture--
once in embryo united in those old Graeco-Italians feeding their flocks
in primeval simplicity far from the coasts and islands
of the Mediterranean, had become dissevered when these were parted
into Italians and Hellenes, and had thenceforth remained apart
for many centuries.  Now the descendant of the Trojan prince
and the Latin king's daughter created out of a state without
distinctive culture and a cosmopolitan civilization a new whole,
in which state and culture again met together at the acme
of human existence in the rich fulness of blessed maturity
and worthily filled the sphere appropriate to such an union.

The outlines have thus been set forth, which Caesar drew for this work,
according to which he laboured himself, and according to which posterity--
for many centuries confined to the paths which this great man marked out--
endeavoured to prosecute the work, if not with the intellect
and energy, yet on the whole in accordance with the intentions,
of the illustrious master.  Little was finished; much even
was merely begun.  Whether the plan was complete, those who venture
to vie in thought with such a man may decide; we observe no material
defect in what lies before us--every single stone of the building
enough to make a man immortal, and yet all combining to form
one harmonious whole.  Caesar ruled as king of Rome for five years
and a half, not half as long as Alexander; in the intervals
of seven great campaigns, which allowed him to stay not more
than fifteen months altogether(119) in the capital of his empire,
he regulated the destinies of the world for the present
and the future, from the establishment of the boundary-line
between civilization and barbarism down to the removal of the pools
of rain in the streets of the capital, and yet retained time
and composure enough attentively to follow the prize-pieces in the theatre
and to confer the chaplet on the victor with improvised verses.
The rapidity and self-precision with which the plan was executed
prove that it had been long meditated thoroughly and all its parts
settled in detail; but, even thus, they remain not much less wonderful than
the plan itself.  The outlines were laid down and thereby the new state
was defined for all coming time; the boundless future alone could complete
the structure.  So far Caesar might say, that his aim was attained;
and this was probably the meaning of the words which were sometimes
heard to fall from him--that he had "lived enough."  But precisely because
the building was an endless one, the master as long as he lived restlessly
added stone to stone, with always the same dexterity and always the same
elasticity busy at his work, without ever overturning or postponing,
just as if there were for him merely a to-day and no to-morrow.
Thus he worked and created as never did any mortal before or after him;
and as a worker and creator he still, after wellnigh two thousand years,
lives in the memory of the nations--the first, and withal unique,
Imperator Caesar.




CHAPTER XII

Religion, Culture, Literature, and Art

State Religion

In the development of religion and philosophy no new element
appeared during this epoch.  The Romano-Hellenic state-religion
and the Stoic state-philosophy inseparably combined with it
were for every government--oligarchy, democracy or monarchy--not merely
a convenient instrument, but quite indispensable for the very reason
that it was just as impossible to construct the state wholly without
religious elements as to discover any new state-religion fitted
to take the place of the old.  So the besom of revolution swept doubtless
at times very roughly through the cobwebs of the augural bird-lore;(1)
nevertheless the rotten machine creaking at every joint
survived the earthquake which swallowed up the republic itself,
and preserved its insipidity and its arrogance without diminution
for transference to the new monarchy.  As a matter of course,
it fell more and more into disfavour with all those who preserved
their freedom of judgment.  Towards the state-religion indeed
public opinion maintained an attitude essentially indifferent;
it was on all sides recognized as an institution of political convenience,
and no one specially troubled himself about it with the exception
of political and antiquarian literati.  But towards its philosophical
sister there gradually sprang up among the unprejudiced public
that hostility, which the empty and yet perfidious hypocrisy of set phrases
never fails in the long run to awaken.  That a presentiment of its own
worthlessness began to dawn on the Stoa itself, is shown by its attempt
artificially to infuse into itself some fresh spirit in the way
of syncretism.  Antiochus of Ascalon (flourishing about 675), who professed
to have patched together the Stoic and Platonic-Aristotelian systems
into one organic unity, in reality so far succeeded that his misshapen
doctrine became the fashionable philosophy of the conservatives
of his time and was conscientiously studied by the genteel dilettanti
and literati of Rome.  Every one who displayed any intellectual vigour,
opposed the Stoa or ignored it.  It was principally antipathy
towards the boastful and tiresome Roman Pharisees, coupled doubtless
with the increasing disposition to take refuge from practical life
in indolent apathy or empty irony, that occasioned during this epoch
the extension of the system of Epicurus to a larger circle
and the naturalization of the Cynic philosophy of Diogenes in Rome.
However stale and poor in thought the former might be, a philosophy,
which did not seek the way to wisdom through an alteration
of traditional terms but contented itself with those in existence,
and throughout recognized only the perceptions of sense as true,
was always better than the terminological jingle and the hollow
conceptions of the Stoic wisdom; and the Cynic philosophy
was of all the philosophical systems of the times in so far
by much the best, as its system was confined to the having
no system at all and sneering at all systems and all systematizers.
In both fields war was waged against the Stoa with zeal and success;
for serious men, the Epicurean Lucretius preached with the full accents
of heartfelt conviction and of holy zeal against the Stoical faith
in the gods and providence and the Stoical doctrine of the immortality
of the soul; for the great public ready to laugh, the Cynic Varro
hit the mark still more sharply with the flying darts of his extensively-
read satires.  While thus the ablest men of the older generation
made war on the Stoa, the younger generation again, such as Catullus,
stood in no inward relation to it at all, and passed a far sharper
censure on it by completely ignoring it.

The Oriental Religions

But, if in the present instance a faith no longer believed in
was maintained out of political convenience, they amply made up
for this in other respects.  Unbelief and superstition, different hues
of the same historical phenomenon, went in the Roman world
of that day hand in hand, and there was no lack of individuals
who in themselves combined both--who denied the gods with Epicurus,
and yet prayed and sacrificed before every shrine.  Of course only
the gods that came from the east were still in vogue, and, as the men
continued to flock from the Greek lands to Italy, so the gods
of the east migrated in ever-increasing numbers to the west.
The importance of the Phrygian cultus at that time in Rome is shown
both by the polemical tone of the older men such as Varro and Lucretius,
and by the poetical glorification of it in the fashionable Catullus,
which concludes with the characteristic request that the goddess
may deign to turn the heads of others only, and not that
of the poet himself.

Worship of Mithra

A fresh addition was the Persian worship, which is said
to have first reached the Occidental through the medium of the pirates
who met on the Mediterranean from the east and from the west;
the oldest seat of this cultus in the west is stated to have been
Mount Olympus in Lycia.  That in the adoption of Oriental worships
in the west such higher speculative and moral elements as they contained
were generally allowed to drop, is strikingly evinced by the fact
that Ahuramazda, the supreme god of the pure doctrine of Zarathustra,
remained virtually unknown in the west, and adoration there
was especially directed to that god who had occupied the first place
in the old Persian national religion and had been transferred
by Zarathustra to the second--the sun-god Mithra.

Worship of Isis

But the brighter and gentler celestial forms of the Persian religion
did not so rapidly gain a footing in Rome as the wearisome mystical host
of the grotesque divinities of Egypt--Isis the mother of nature
with her whole train, the constantly dying and constantly reviving
Osiris, the gloomy Sarapis, the taciturn and grave Harpocrates,
the dog-headed Anubis.  In the year when Clodius emancipated
the clubs and conventicles (696), and doubtless in consequence
of this very emancipation of the populace, that host even prepared
to make its entry into the old stronghold of the Roman Jupiter
in the Capitol, and it was with difficulty that the invasion
was prevented and the inevitable temples were banished
at least to the suburbs of Rome.  No worship was equally popular
among the lower orders of the population in the capital: when the senate
ordered the temples of Isis constructed within the ring-wall
to be pulled down, no labourer ventured to lay the first hand on them,
and the consul Lucius Paullus was himself obliged to apply
the first stroke of the axe(704); a wager might be laid,
that the more loose any woman was, the more piously she worshipped Isis.
That the casting of lots, the interpretation of dreams, and similar
liberal arts supported their professors, was a matter of course.
The casting of horoscopes was already a scientific pursuit;
Lucius Tarutius of Firmum, a respectable and in his own way learned man,
a friend of Varro and Cicero, with all gravity cast the nativity
of kings Romulus and Numa and of the city of Rome itself,
and for the edification of the credulous on either side confirmed
by means of his Chaldaean and Egyptian wisdom the accounts
of the Roman annals.

The New Pythagoreanism
Nigidius Figulus

But by far the most remarkable phenomenon in this domain
was the first attempt to mingle crude faith with speculative thought,
the first appearance of those tendencies, which we are accustomed
to describe as Neo-Platonic, in the Roman world.  Their oldest apostle
there was Publius Nigidius Figulus, a Roman of rank belonging
to the strictest section of the aristocracy, who filled
the praetorship in 696 and died in 709 as a political exile
beyond the bounds of Italy.  With astonishing copiousness of learning
and still more astonishing strength of faith he created
out of the most dissimilar elements a philosophico-religious structure,
the singular outline of which he probably developed still more
in his oral discourses than in his theological and physical writings.
In philosophy, seeking deliverance from the skeletons of the current
systems and abstractions, he recurred to the neglected fountain
of the pre-Socratic philosophy, to whose ancient sages thought
had still presented itself with sensuous vividness.  The researches
of physical science--which, suitably treated, afford even now
so excellent a handle for mystic delusion and pious sleight of hand,
and in antiquity with its more defective insight into physical laws
lent themselves still more easily to such objects--played in this case,
as may readily be conceived, a considerable part.  His theology
was based essentially on that strange medley, in which Greeks
of a kindred spirit had intermingled Orphic and other very old
or very new indigenous wisdom with Persian, Chaldaean,
and Egyptian secret doctrines, and with which Figulus incorporated
the quasi-results of the Tuscan investigation into nothingness
and of the indigenous lore touching the flight of birds,
so as to produce further harmonious confusion.  The whole system obtained
its consecration--political, religious, and national--from the name
of Pythagoras, the ultra-conservative statesman whose supreme principle
was "to promote order and to check disorder," the miracle-worker
and necromancer, the primeval sage who was a native of Italy,
who was interwoven even with the legendary history of Rome,
and whose statue was to be seen in the Roman Forum.  As birth
and death are kindred with each other, so--it seemed--Pythagoras
was to stand not merely by the cradle of the republic as friend
of the wise Numa and colleague of the sagacious mother Egeria,
but also by its grave as the last protector of the sacred bird-lore.
But the new system was not merely marvellous, it also worked marvels;
Nigidius announced to the father of the subsequent emperor Augustus,
on the very day when the latter was born, the future greatness
of his son; nay the prophets conjured up spirits for the credulous,
and, what was of more moment, they pointed out to  them the places
where their lost money lay.  The new-and-old wisdom, such as it was,
made a profound impression on its contemporaries; men of the highest rank,
of the greatest learning, of the most solid ability, belonging
to very different parties--the consul of 705, Appius Claudius,
the learned Marcus Varro, the brave officer Publius Vatinius--
took part in the citation of spirits, and it even appears
that a police interference was necessary against the proceedings
of these societies.  These last attempts to save the Roman theology,
like the kindred efforts of Cato in the field of politics, produce at once
a comical and a melancholy impression; we may smile at the creed
and its propagators, but still it is a grave matter when even able men
begin to addict themselves to absurdity.

Training of Youth
Sciences of General Culture at This Period

The training of youth followed, as may naturally be supposed,
the course of bilingual humane culture chalked out in the previous epoch,
and the general culture also of the Roman world conformed
more and more to the forms established for that purpose by the Greeks.
Even the bodily exercises advanced from ball-playing, running,
and fencing to the more artistically-developed Greek gymnastic contests;
though there were not yet any public institutions for gymnastics,
in the principal country-houses the palaestra was already to be found
by the side of the bath-rooms.  The manner in which the cycle
of general culture had changed in the Roman world during the course
of a century, is shown by a comparison of the encyclopaedia of Cato(2)
with the similar treatise of Varro "concerning the school-sciences."
As constituent elements of non-professional culture, there appear in Cato
the art of oratory, the sciences of agriculture, of law, of war,
and of medicine; in Varro--according to probable conjecture--grammar,
logic or dialectics, rhetoric, geometry, arithmetic, astronomy,
music, medicine, and architecture.  Consequently in the course
of the seventh century the sciences of war, jurisprudence,
and agriculture had been converted from general into professional
studies.  On the other hand in Varro the Hellenic training of youth
appears already in all its completeness: by the side of the course
of grammar, rhetoric, and philosophy, which had been introduced
at an earlier period into Italy, we now find the course which had
longer remained distinctively Hellenic, of geometry, arithmetic,
astronomy, and music.(3)  That astronomy more especially,
which ministered, in the nomenclature of the stars, to the thoughtless
erudite dilettantism of the age and, in its relations to astrology,
to the prevailing religious delusions, was regularly and zealously
studied by the youth in Italy, can be proved also otherwise;
the astronomical didactic poems of Aratus, among all the works
of Alexandrian literature, found earliest admittance into the instruction
of Roman youth.  To this Hellenic course there was added the study
of medicine, which was retained from the older Roman instruction,
and lastly that of architecture--indispensable to the genteel Roman
of this period, who instead of cultivatingthe ground built
houses and villas.

Greek Instruction
Alexandrinism

In comparison with the previous epoch the Greek as well as
the Latin training improved in extent and in scholastic strictness
quite as much as it declined in purity and in refinement.
The increasing eagerness after Greek lore gave to instruction
of itself an erudite character.  To explain Homer or Euripides
was after all no art; teachers and scholars found their account better
in handling the Alexandrian poems, which, besides, were in their spirit
far more congenial to the Roman world of that day than the genuine Greek
national poetry, and which, if they were not quite so venerable
as the Iliad, possessed at any rate an age sufficiently respectable
to pass as classics with schoolmasters.  The love-poems of Euphorion,
the "Causes" of Callimachus and his "Ibis," the comically obscure
"Alexandra" of Lycophron contained in rich abundance rare vocables
(-glossae-) suitable for being extracted and interpreted,
sentences laboriously involved and difficult of analysis,
prolix digressions full of mystic combinations of antiquated myths,
and generally a store of cumbersome erudition of all sorts.
Instruction needed exercises more and more difficult; these productions,
in great part model efforts of schoolmasters, were excellently
adapted to be lessons for model scholars.  Thus the Alexandrian poems
took a permanent place in Italian scholastic instruction,
especially as trial-themes, and certainly promoted knowledge,
although at the expense of taste and of discretion. The same unhealthy
appetite for culture moreover impelled the Roman youths to derive
their Hellenism as much as possible from the fountain-head.  The courses
of the Greek masters in Rome  sufficed only for a first start;
every one who wished to be able to converse heard lectures
on Greek philosophy at Athens, and on Greek rhetoric at Rhodes,
and made a literary and artistic tour through Asia Minor,
where most of the old art-treasures of the Hellenes were still
to be found on the spot, and the cultivation of the fine arts
had been continued, although after a mechanical fashion;
whereas Alexandria, more distant and more celebrated as the seat
of the exact sciences, was far more rarely the point whither young men
desirous of culture directed their travels.

Latin Instruction

The advance in Latin instruction was similar to that of Greek.
This in part resulted from the mere reflex influence of the Greek,
from which it in fact essentially borrowed its methods
and its stimulants.  Moreover, the relations of politics, the impulse
to mount the orators' platform in the Forum which was imparted
by the democratic doings to an ever-widening circle, contributed
not a little to the diffusion and enhancement of oratorical exercises;
"wherever one casts his eyes," says Cicero, "every place is full
of rhetoricians." Besides, the writings of the sixth century,
the farther they receded into the past, began to be more decidedly
regarded as classical texts of the golden age of Latin literature,
and thereby gave a greater preponderance to the instruction
which was essentially concentrated upon them.  Lastly the immigration
and spreading of barbarian elements from many quarters
and the incipient Latinizing of extensive Celtic and Spanish districts,
naturally gave to Latin grammar and Latin instruction a higher importance
than they could have had, so long as Latium only spoke Latin;
the teacher of Latin literature had from the outset a different
position in Comum and Narbo than he had in Praeneste and Ardea.
Taken as a whole, culture was more on the wane than on the advance.
The ruin of the Italian country towns, the extensive intrusion of foreign
elements, the political, economic, and moral deterioration of the nation,
above all, the distracting civil wars inflicted more injury
on the language than all the schoolmasters of the world could repair.
The closer contact with the Hellenic culture of the present,
the more decided influence of the talkative Athenian wisdom
and of the rhetoric of Rhodes and Asia Minor, supplied
to the Roman youth just the very elements that were most pernicious
in Hellenism.  The propagandist mission which Latium undertook
among the Celts, Iberians, and Libyans--proud as the task was--
could not but have the like consequences for the Latin language
as the Hellenizing of the east had had for the Hellenic.
The fact that the Roman public of this period applauded
the well arranged and rhythmically balanced periods of the orator,
and any offence in language or metre cost the actor dear, doubtless
shows that the insight into the mother tongue which was the reflection
of scholastic training was becoming the common possession of an ever-
widening circle.  But at the same time contemporaries capable
of judging complain that the Hellenic culture in Italy about 690
was at a far lower level than it had been a generation before;
that opportunities of hearing pure and good Latin were but rare,
and these chiefly from the mouth of elderly cultivated ladies;
that the tradition of genuine culture, the good old Latin mother wit,
the Lucilian polish, the cultivated circle of readers
of the Scipionic age were gradually disappearing.  The circumstance
that the term -urbanitas-, and the idea of a polished national culture
which it expressed, arose during this period, proves, not that
it was prevalent, but that it was on the wane, and that people
were keenly alive to the absence of this -urbanitas- in the language
and the habits of the Latinized barbarians or barbarized Latins.
Where we still meet with the urbane tone of conversation, as in Varro's
Satires and Cicero's Letters, it is an echo of the old fashion
which was not yet so obsolete in Reate and Arpinum as in Rome.

Germs of State Training-Schools

Thus the previous culture of youth remained substantially unchanged,
except that--not so much from its own deterioration as
from the general decline of the nation--it was productive of less good
and more evil than in the preceding epoch.  Caesar initiated
a revolution also in this department.  While the Roman senate
had first combated and then at the most had simply tolerated culture,
the government of the new Italo-Hellenic empire, whose essence
in fact was -humanitas-, could not but adopt measures to stimulate it
after the Hellenic fashion.  If Caesar conferred the Roman franchise
on all teachers of the liberal sciences and all the physicians
of the capital, we may discover in this step a paving of the way
in some degree for those institutions in which subsequently
the higher bilingual culture of the youth of the empire
was provided for on the part of the state, and which form
the most significant expression of the new state of -humanitas-;
and if Caesar had further resolved on the establishment
of a public Greek and Latin library in the capital and had already
nominated the most learned Roman of the age, Marcus Varro,
as principal librarian, this implied unmistakeably the design
of connecting the cosmopolitan monarchy with cosmopolitan literature.

Language
The Vulgarism of Asia Minor

The development of the language during this period turned
on the distinction between the classical Latin of cultivated society
and the vulgar language of common life.  The former itself
was a product of the distinctively Italian culture; even in the Scipionic
circle "pure Latin" had become the cue, and the mother tongue was spoken,
no longer in entire naivete, but in conscious contradistinction
to the language of the great multitude.  This epoch opens
with a remarkable reaction against the classicism which had hitherto
exclusively prevailed in the higher language of conversation
and accordingly also in literature--a reaction which had
inwardly and outwardly a close connection with the reaction
of a similar nature in the language of Greece.  Just about this time
the rhetor and romance-writer Hegesias of Magnesia and the numerous
rhetors and literati of Asia Minor who attached themselves to him
began to rebel against the orthodox Atticism.  They demanded
full recognition for the language of life, without distinction,
whether the word or the phrase originated in Attica or in Caria
and Phrygia; they themselves spoke and wrote not for the taste
of learned cliques, but for that of the great public.  There could not
be much objection to the principle; only, it is true, the result
could not be better than was the public of Asia Minor of that day,
which had totally lost the taste for chasteness and purity
of production, and longed only after the showy and brilliant.
To say nothing of the spurious forms of art that sprang
out of this tendency--especially the romance and the history assuming
the form of romance--the very style of these Asiatics was,
as may readily be conceived, abrupt and without modulation and finish,
minced and effeminate, full of tinsel and bombast, thoroughly vulgar
and affected; "any one who knows Hegesias," says Cicero,
"knows what silliness is."

Roman Vulgarism
Hortensius
Reaction
The Rhodian School

Yet this new style found its way also into the Latin world.
When the Hellenic fashionable rhetoric, after having at the close
of the previous epoch obtruded into the Latin instruction of youth,(4)
took at the beginning of the present period the final step and mounted
the Roman orators' platform in the person of Quintus Hortensius
(640-704), the most celebrated pleader of the Sullan age,
it adhered closely even in the Latin idiom to the bad Greek taste
of the time; and the Roman public, no longer having the pure
and chaste culture of the Scipionic age, naturally applauded
with zeal the innovator who knew how to give to vulgarism
the semblance of an artistic performance.  This was of great importance.
As in Greece the battles of language were always waged at first
in the schools of the rhetoricians, so in Rome the forensic oration
to a certain extent even more than literature set the standard of style,
and accordingly there was combined, as it were of right,
with the leadership of the bar the prerogative of giving the tone
to the fashionable mode of speaking and writing.  The Asiatic vulgarism
of Hortensius thus dislodged classicism from the Roman platform
and partly also from literature.  But the fashion soon changed
once more in Greece and in Rome.  In the former it was the Rhodian school
of rhetoricians, which, without reverting to all the chaste severity
of the Attic style, attempted to strike out a middle course between it
and the modern fashion: if the Rhodian masters were not too particular
as to the internal correctness of their thinking and speaking,
they at least insisted on purity of language and style, on the careful
selection of words and phrases, and the giving thorough effect
to the modulation of sentences.

Ciceronianism

In Italy it was Marcus Tullius Cicero (648-711) who, after having
in his early youth gone along with the Hortensian manner,
was brought by hearing the Rhodian masters and by his own
more matured taste to better paths, and thenceforth addicted himself
to strict purity of language and the thorough periodic arrangement
and modulation of his discourse.  The models of language, which,
in this respect he followed, he found especially in those circles
of the higher Roman society which had suffered but little or not at all
from vulgarism; and, as was already said, there were still such,
although they were beginning to disappear.  The earlier Latin
and the good Greek literature, however considerable was the influence
of the latter more especially on the rhythm of his oratory,
were in this matter only of secondary moment: this purifying
of the language was by no means a reaction of the language of books
against that of conversation, but a reaction of the language
of the really cultivated against the jargon of spurious
and partial culture.  Caesar, in the department of language
also the greatest master of his time, expressed the fundamental idea
of Roman classicism, when he enjoined that in speech and writing
every foreign word should be avoided, as rocks are avoided
by the mariner; the poetical and the obsolete word of the older
literature was rejected as well as the rustic phrase or that borrowed
from the language of common life, and more especially the Greek words
and phrases which, as the letters of this period show,
had to a very great extent found their way into conversational language.
Nevertheless this scholastic and artificial classicism
of the Ciceronian period stood to the Scipionic as repentance
to innocence, or the French of the classicists under Napoleon
to the model French of Moliere and Boileau; while the former classicism
had sprung out of the full freshness of life, the latter as it were
caught just in right time the last breath of a race perishing
beyond recovery.  Such as it was, it rapidly diffused itself.
With the leadership of the bar the dictatorship of language and taste
passed from Hortensius to Cicero, and the varied and copious
authorship of the latter gave to this classicism--what it had
hitherto lacked--extensive prose texts.  Thus Cicero became
the creator of the modern classical Latin prose, and Roman classicism
attached itself throughout and altogether to Cicero as a stylist;
it was to the stylist Cicero, not to the author, still less
to the statesman, that the panegyrics--extravagant yet not made up
wholly of verbiage--applied, with which the most gifted representatives
of classicism, such as Caesar and Catullus, loaded him.

The New Roman Poetry

They soon went farther.  What Cicero did in prose, was carried out
in poetry towards the end of the epoch by the new Roman school
of poets, which modelled itself on the Greek fashionable poetry,
and in which the man of most considerable talent was Catullus.
Here too the higher language of conversation dislodged the archaic
reminiscences which hitherto to a large extent prevailed
in this domain, and as Latin prose submitted to the Attic rhythm,
so Latin poetry submitted gradually to the strict or rather painful
metrical laws of the Alexandrines; e. g. from the time of Catullus,
it is no longer allowable at once to begin a verse and to close
a sentence begun in the verse preceding with a monosyllabic word
or a dissyllabic one not specially weighty.

Grammatical Science

At length science stepped in, fixed the law of language,
and developed its rule, which was no longer determined on the basis
of experience, but made the claim to determine experience.
The endings of declension, which hitherto had in part been variable,
were now to be once for all fixed; e. g. of the genitive and dative
forms hitherto current side by side in the so-called fourth declension
(-senatuis- and -senatus-, -senatui-, and -senatu-) Caesar recognized
exclusively as valid the contracted forms (-us and -u).
In orthography various changes were made, to bring the written
more fully into correspondence with the spoken language;
thus the -u in the middle of words like -maxumus- was replaced
after Caesar's precedent by -i; and of the two letters
which had become superfluous, -k and -q, the removal of the first
was effected, and that of the second was at least proposed.
The language was, if not yet stereotyped, in the course of becoming so;
it was not yet indeed unthinkingly dominated by rule, but it had already
become conscious of it.  That this action in the department
of Latin grammar derived generally its spirit and method
from the Greek, and not only so, but that the Latin language was also
directly rectified in accordance with Greek precedent, is shown,
for example, by the treatment of the final -s, which till
towards the close of this epoch had at pleasure passed sometimes
as a consonant, sometimes not as one, but was treated by the new-
fashioned poets throughout, as in Greek, as a consonantal
termination.  This regulation of language is the proper domain
of Roman classicism; in the most various ways, and for that very reason
all the more significantly, the rule is inculcated and the offence
against it rebuked by the coryphaei of classicism, by Cicero,
by Caesar, even in the poems of Catullus; whereas the older generation
expresses itself with natural keenness of feeling respecting
the revolution which had affected the field of language
as remorselessly as the field of politics.(5)  But while the new
classicism--that is to say, the standard Latin governed by rule
and as far as possible placed on a parity with the standard Greek--
which arose out of a conscious reaction against the vulgarism
intruding into higher society and even into literature,
acquired literary fixity and systematic shape, the latter by no means
evacuated the field.  Not only do we find it naively employed
in the works of secondary personages who have drifted into the ranks
of authors merely by accident, as in the account of Caesar's second
Spanish war, but we shall meet it also with an impress more or less
distinct in literature proper, in the mime, in the semi-romance,
in the aesthetic writings of Varro; and it is a significant
circumstance, that it maintains itself precisely in the most national
departments of literature, and that truly conservative men,
like Varro, take it into protection.  Classicism was based
on the death of the Italian language as monarchy on the decline
of the Italian nation; it was completely consistent that the men,
in whom the republic was still living, should continue to give
to the living language its rights, and for the sake of its comparative
vitality and nationality should tolerate its aesthetic defects.
Thus then the linguistic opinions and tendencies of this epoch
are everywhere divergent; by the side of the old-fashioned poetry
of Lucretius appears the thoroughly modern poetry of Catullus,
by the side of Cicero's well-modulated period stands the sentence
of Varro intentionally disdaining all subdivision.  In this field
likewise is mirrored the distraction of the age.

Literary Effort
Greek Literati in Rome

In the literature of this period we are first of all struck
by the outward increase, as compared with the former epoch,
of literary effort in Rome.  It was long since the literary activity
of the Greeks flourished no more in the free atmosphere
of civic independence, but only in the scientific institutions
of the larger cities and especially of the courts.  Left to depend
on the favour and protection of the great, and dislodged
from the former seats of the Muses(6) by the extinction
of the dynasties of Pergamus (621), Cyrene (658), Bithynia (679),
and Syria (690) and by the waning splendour of the court
of the Lagids--moreover, since the death of Alexander the Great,
necessarily cosmopolitan and at least quite as much strangers
among the Egyptians and Syrians as among the Latins--
the Hellenic literati began more and more to turn their eyes
towards Rome.  Among the host of Greek attendants with which
the Roman of quality at this time surrounded himself, the philosopher,
the poet, and the memoir-writer played conspicuous parts
by the side of the cook, the boy-favourite, and the jester.
We meet already literati of note in such positions; the Epicurean
Philodemus, for instance, was installed as domestic philosopher
with Lucius Piso consul in 696, and occasionally edified the initiated
with his clever epigrams on the coarse-grained Epicureanism
of his patron.  From all sides the most notable representatives
of Greek art and science migrated in daily-increasing numbers to Rome
where literary gains were now more abundant than anywhere else.
Among those thus mentioned as settled in Rome we find the physician
Asclepiades whom king Mithradates vainly endeavoured to draw away from it
into his service; the universalist in learning, Alexander of Miletus,
termed Polyhistor; the poet Parthenius from Nicaea in Bithynia;
Posidonius of Apamea in Syria equally celebrated as a traveller,
teacher, and author, who at a great age migrated in 703 from Rhodes
to Rome; and various others.  A house like that of Lucius Lucullus
was a seat of Hellenic culture and a rendezvous for Hellenic literati
almost like the Alexandrian Museum; Roman resources and Hellenic
connoisseurship had gathered in these halls of wealth and science
an incomparable collection of statues and paintings of earlier
and contemporary masters, as well as a library as carefully selected
as it was magnificently fitted up, and every person of culture
and especially every Greek was welcome there--the master of the house
himself was often seen walking up and down the beautiful colonnade
in philological or philosophical conversation with one of his
learned guests.  No doubt these Greeks brought along with their
rich treasures of culture their preposterousness and servility
to Italy; one of these learned wanderers for instance, the author
of the "Art of Flattery," Aristodemus of Nysa (about 700)
recommended himself to his masters by demonstrating that Homer
was a native of Rome!

Extent of the Literary Pursuits of the Romans

In the same measure as the pursuits of the Greek literati prospered
in Rome, literary activity and literary interest increased among
the Romans themselves.  Even Greek composition, which the stricter
taste of the Scipionic age had totally set aside, now revived.
The Greek language was now universally current, and a Greek treatise
found a quite different public from a Latin one; therefore Romans
of rank, such as Lucius Lucullus, Marcus Cicero, Titus Atticus,
Quintus Scaevola (tribune of the people in 700), like the kings
of Armenia and Mauretania, published occasionally Greek prose
and even Greek verses.  Such Greek authorship however by native Romans
remained a secondary matter and almost an amusement; the literary
as well as the political parties of Italy all coincided in adhering
to their Italian nationality, only more or less pervaded
by Hellenism.  Nor could there be any complaint at least as to want
of activity in the field of Latin authorship.  There was a flood
of books and pamphlets of all sorts, and above all of poems, in Rome.
Poets swarmed there, as they did only in Tarsus or Alexandria;
poetical publications had become the standing juvenile sin
of livelier natures, and even then the writer was reckoned fortunate
whose youthful poems compassionate oblivion withdrew from criticism.
Any one who understood the art, wrote without difficulty
at a sitting his five hundred hexameters in which no schoolmaster
found anything to censure, but no reader discovered anything to praise.
The female world also took a lively part in these literary pursuits;
the ladies did not confine themselves to dancing and music,
but by their spirit and wit ruled conversation and talked excellently
on Greek and Latin literature; and, when poetry laid siege
to a maiden's heart, the beleaguered fortress not seldom surrendered
likewise in graceful verses.  Rhythms became more and more
the fashionable plaything of the big children of both sexes;
poetical epistles, joint poetical exercises and competitions
among good friends, were of common occurrence, and towards the end
of this epoch institutions were already opened in the capital,
at which unfledged Latin poets might learn verse-making for money.
In consequence of the large consumption of books the machinery
for the manufacture of copies was substantially perfected,
and publication was effected with comparative rapidity and cheapness;
bookselling became a respectable and lucrative trade, and the bookseller's
shop a usual meeting-place of men of culture.  Reading had become
a fashion, nay a mania; at table, where coarser pastimes had not
already intruded, reading was regularly introduced, and any one
who meditated a journey seldom forgot to pack up a travelling library.
The superior officer was seen in the camp-tent with the obscene
Greek romance, the statesman in the senate with the philosophical
treatise, in his hands.  Matters accordingly stood in the Roman state
as they have stood and will stand in every state where the citizens
read "from the threshold to the closet."  The Parthian vizier
was not far wrong, when he pointed out to the citizens of Seleucia
the romances found in the camp of Crassus and asked them whether
they still regarded the readers of such books as formidable opponents.

The Classicists and the Moderns

The literary tendency of this age was varied and could not be otherwise,
for the age itself was divided between the old and the new modes.
The same tendencies which came into conflict on the field of politics,
the national-Italian tendency of the conservatives, the Helleno-Italian
or, if the term be preferred, cosmopolitan tendency of the new monarchy,
fought their battles also on the field of literature.  The former
attached itself to the older Latin literature, which in the theatre,
in the school, and in erudite research assumed more and more
the character of classical.  With less taste and stronger party
tendencies than the Scipionic epoch showed, Ennius, Pacuvius,
and especially Plautus were now exalted to the skies.  The leaves
of the Sibyl rose in price, the fewer they became; the relatively
greater nationality and relatively greater productiveness of the poets
of the sixth century were never more vividly felt than in this epoch
of thoroughly developed Epigonism, which in literature as decidedly
as in politics looked up to the century of the Hannibalic warriors
as to the golden age that had now unhappily passed away beyond recall.
No doubt there was in this admiration of the old classics no small portion
of the same hollowness and hypocrisy which are characteristic
of the conservatism of this age in general; and here too
there was no want of trimmers.  Cicero for instance, although in prose
one of the chief representatives of the modern tendency,
revered nevertheless the older national poetry nearly with the same
antiquarian respect which he paid to the aristocratic constitution
and the augural discipline; "patriotism requires," we find him saying,
"that we should rather read a notoriously wretched translation
of Sophocles than the original."  While thus the modern literary tendency
cognate to the democratic monarchy numbered secret adherents enough even
among the orthodox admirers of Ennius, there were not wanting already
bolder judges, who treated the native literature as disrespectfully
as the senatorial politics.  Not only did they resume the strict
criticism of the Scipionic epoch and set store by Terence only in order
to condemn Ennius and still more the Ennianists, but the younger
and bolder men went much farther and ventured already--though only as yet
in heretical revolt against literary orthodoxy--to call Plautus
a rude jester and Lucilius a bad verse-smith.  This modern tendency
attached itself not to the native authorship, but rather
to the more recent Greek literature or the so-called Alexandrinism.

The Greek Alexandrinism

We cannot avoid saying at least so much respecting
this remarkable winter-garden of Hellenic language and art,
as is requisite for the understanding of the Roman literature
of this and the later epochs.  The Alexandrian literature was based
on the decline of the pure Hellenic idiom, which from the time
of Alexander the Great was superseded in daily life by an inferior
jargon deriving its origin from the contact of the Macedonian dialect
with various Greek and barbarian tribes; or, to speak more accurately,
the Alexandrian literature sprang out of the ruin of the Hellenic nation
generally, which had to perish, and did perish, in its national
individuality in order to establish the universal monarchy of Alexander
and the empire of Hellenism.  Had Alexander's universal empire continued
to subsist, the former national and popular literature would have been
succeeded by a cosmopolitan literature Hellenic merely in name,
essentially denationalized and called into life in a certain measure
by royal patronage, but at all events ruling the world;
but, as the state of Alexander was unhinged by his death,
the germs of the literature corresponding to it rapidly perished.
Nevertheless the Greek nation with all that it had possessed--
with its nationality, its language, its art--belonged to the past.
It was only in a comparatively narrow circle not of men of culture--
for such, strictly speaking, no longer existed--but of men of erudition
that the Greek literature was still cherished even when dead;
that the rich inheritance which it had left was inventoried
with melancholy pleasure or arid refinement of research; and that,
possibly, the living sense of sympathy or the dead erudition
was elevated into a semblance of productiveness.  This posthumous
productiveness constitutes the so-called Alexandrinism.
It is essentially similar to that literature of scholars, which,
keeping aloof from the living Romanic nationalities and their vulgar
idioms, grew up during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
among a cosmopolitan circle of erudite philologues--as an artificial
aftergrowth of the departed antiquity; the contrast between
the classical and the vulgar Greek of the period of the Diadochi
is doubtless less strongly marked, but is not, properly speaking,
different from that between the Latin of Manutius
and the Italian of Macchiavelli.

The Roman Alexandrinism

Italy had hitherto been in the main disinclined towards Alexandrinism.
Its season of comparative brilliance was the period shortly before
and after the first Punic war; yet Naevius, Ennius, Pacuvius
and generally the whole body of the national Roman authors
down to Varro and Lucretius in all branches of poetical production,
not excepting even the didactic poem, attached themselves,
not to their Greek contemporaries or very recent predecessors,
but without exception to Homer, Euripides, Menander and the other masters
of the living and national Greek literature.  Roman literature
was never fresh and national; but, as long as there was a Roman people,
its authors instinctively sought for living and national models,
and copied, if not always to the best purpose or the best authors,
at least such as were original.  The Greek literature originating
after Aexander found its first Roman imitators--for the slight
initial attempts from the Marian age(7) can scarcely be taken
into account--among the contemporaries of Cicero and Caesar;
and now the Roman Alexandrinism spread with singular rapidity.
In part this arose from external causes.  The increased contact
with the Greeks, especially the frequent journeys of the Romans
into the Hellenic provinces and the assemblage of Greek literati
in Rome, naturally procured a public even among the Italians
for the Greek literature of the day, for the epic and elegiac poetry,
epigrams, and Milesian tales current at that time in Greece.  Moreover,
as we have already stated(8) the Alexandrian poetry had its established
place in the instruction of the Italian youth; and thus reacted
on Latin literature all the more, since the latter continued to be
essentially dependent at all times on the Hellenic school-training.
We find in this respect even a direct connection of the new Roman
with the new Greek literature; the already-mentioned Parthenius,
one of the better known Alexandrian elegists, opened, apparently
about 700, a school for literature and poetry in Rome, and the excerpts
are still extant in which he supplied one of his  pupils of rank
with materials for Latin elegies of an erotic and mythological
nature according to the well-known Alexandrian receipt.
But it was by no means simply such accidental occasions which called
into existence the Roman Alexandrinism; it was on the contrary
a product--perhaps not pleasing, but thoroughly inevitable--
of the political and national development of Rome.  On the one hand,
as Hellas resolved itself into Hellenism, so now Latium
resolved itself into Romanism; the national development of Italy
outgrew itself, and was merged in Caesar's Mediterranean empire,
just as the Hellenic development in the eastern empire of Alexander.
On the other hand, as the new empire rested on the fact
that the mighty streams of Greek and Latin nationality, after having
flowed in parallel channels for many centuries, now at length coalesced,
the Italian literature had not merely as hitherto to seek
its groundwork generally in the Greek, but had also to put itself
on a level with the Greek literature of the present, or in other words
with Alexandrinism.  With the scholastic Latin, with the closed number
of classics, with the exclusive circle of classic-reading -urbani-,
the national Latin literature was dead and at an end; there arose
instead of it a thoroughly degenerate, artificially fostered,
imperial literature, which did not rest on any definite nationality,
but proclaimed in two languages the universal gospel of humanity,
and was dependent in point of spirit throughout and consciously
on the old Hellenic, in point of language partly on this,
partly on the old Roman popular, literature.  This was no improvement.
The Mediterranean monarchy of Caesar was doubtless a grand and--
what is more--a necessary creation; but it had been called
into life by an arbitrary superior will, and therefore
there was nothing to be found in it of the fresh popular life,
of the overflowing national vigour, which are characteristic of younger,
more limited, and more natural commonwealths, and which the Italian
state of the sixth century had still been able to exhibit.
The ruin of the Italian nationality, accomplished in the creation
of Caesar, nipped the promise of literature.  Every one who has
any sense of the close affinity between art and nationality
will always turn back from Cicero and Horace to Cato and Lucretius;
and nothing but the schoolmaster's view of history and of literature--
which has acquired, it is true, in this department the sanction
of prescription--could have called the epoch of art beginning
with the new monarchy pre-eminently the golden age.  But while
the Romano-Hellenic Alexandrinism of the age of Caesar and Augustus
must be deemed inferior to the older, however imperfect, national
literature, it is on the other hand as decidedly superior
to the Alexandrinism of the age of the Diadochi as Caesar's enduring
structure to the ephemeral creation of Alexander.  We shall have
afterwards to show that the Augustan literature, compared with
the kindred literature of the period of the Diadochi, was far less
a literature of philologues and far more an imperial literature
than the latter, and therefore had a far more permanent
and far more general influence in the upper circles of society
than the Greek Alexandrinism ever had.

Dramatic Literature
Tragedy and Comedy Disappear

Nowhere was the prospect more lamentable than in dramatic literature.
Tragedy and comedy had already before the present epoch
become inwardly extinct in the Roman national literature.
New pieces were no longer performed.  That the public still
in the Sullan age expected to see such, appears from the reproductions--
belonging to this epoch--of Plautine comedies with the titles
and names of the persons altered, with reference to which
the managers well added that it was better to see a good old piece
than a bad new one.  From this the step was not great to that entire
surrender of the stage to the dead poets, which we find
in the Ciceronian age, and to which Alexandrinism made no opposition.
Its productiveness in this department was worse than none.
Real dramatic composition the Alexandrian literature never knew;
nothing but the spurious drama, which was written primarily for reading
and not for exhibition, could be introduced by it into Italy, and soon
accordingly these dramatic iambics began to be quite as prevalent
in Rome as in Alexandria, and the writing of tragedy in particular
began to figure among the regular diseases of adolescence.
We may form a pretty accurate idea of the quality of these productions
from the fact that Quintus Cicero, in order homoeopathically
to beguile the weariness of winter quarters in Gaul,
composed four tragedies in sixteen days.

The Mime
Laberius

In the "picture of life" or mime alone the last still vigorous
product of the national literature, the Atellan farce,
became engrafted with the ethological offshoots of Greek comedy,
which Alexandrinism cultivated with greater poetical vigour
and better success than any other branch of poetry.  The mime originated
out of the dances in character to the flute, which had long been usual,
and which were performed sometimes on other occasions, e. g.
for the entertainment of the guests during dinner, but more especially
in the pit of the theatre during the intervals between the acts.
It was not difficult to form out of these dances--in which the aid
of speech had doubtless long since been occasionally employed--
by means of the introduction of a more organized plot and a regular
dialogue little comedies, which were yet essentially distinguished
from the earlier comedy and even from the farce by the facts,
that the dance and the lasciviousness inseparable from such dancing
continued in this case to play a chief part, and that the mime,
as belonging properly not to the boards but to the pit, threw aside
all ideal scenic effects, such as masks for the face and theatrical
buskins, and--what was specially important--admitted of the female
characters being represented by women.  This new mime, which first
seems to have come on the stage of the capital about 672,
soon swallowed up the national harlequinade, with which it indeed
in the most essential respects coincided, and was employed
as the usual interlude and especially as afterpiece along with
the other dramatic performances.(9)  The plot was of course
still more indifferent, loose, and absurd than in the harlequinade;
if it was only sufficiently chequered, the public did not ask
why it laughed, and did not remonstrate with the poet, who instead
of untying the knot cut it to pieces.  The subjects were chiefly
of an amorous nature, mostly of the licentious sort; for example,
poet and public without exception took part against the husband,
and poetical justice consisted in the derision of good morals.
The artistic charm depended wholly, as in the Atellana,
on the portraiture of the manners of common and low life;
in which rural pictures are laid aside for those of the life
and doings of the capital, and the sweet rabble of Rome--
just as in the similar Greek pieces the rabble of Alexandria--
is summoned to applaud its own likeness.  Many subjects
are taken from the life of tradesmen; there appear the--
here also inevitable--"Fuller," then the "Ropemaker," the "Dyer,"
the "Salt-man," the "Female Weavers," the "Rascal"; other pieces
give sketches of character, as the "Forgetful," the "Braggart,"
the "Man of 100,000 sesterces";(10) or pictures of other lands,
the "Etruscan Woman," the "Gauls," the "Cretan," "Alexandria";
or descriptions of popular festivals, as the "Compitalia,"
the "Saturnalia," "Anna Perenna," the "Hot Baths"; or parodies
of mythology, as the "Voyage to the Underworld," the "Arvernian Lake."
Apt nicknames and short commonplaces which were easily retained
and applied were welcome; but every piece of nonsense
was of itself privileged; in this preposterous world Bacchus
is applied to for water and the fountain-nymph for wine.
Isolated examples even of the political allusions formerly
so strictly prohibited in the Roman theatre are found in these mimes.(11)
As regards metrical form, these poets gave themselves, as they tell us,
"but moderate trouble with the versification"; the language abounded,
even in the pieces prepared for publication, with vulgar expressions
and low newly-coined words.  The mime was, it is plain,
in substance nothing but the former farce; with this exception,
that the character-masks and the standing scenery of Atella
as well as the rustic impress are dropped, and in their room
the life of the capital in its boundless liberty and licence
is brought on the stage.  Most pieces of this sort were doubtless
of a very fugitive nature and made no pretension to a place
in literature; but the mimes of Laberius, full of pungent
delineation of character and in point of language and metre
exhibiting the hand of a master, maintained their ground in it;
and even the historian must regret that we are no longer permitted
to compare the drama of the republican death-struggle in Rome
with its great Attic counterpart.

Dramatic Spectacles

With the worthlessness of dramatic literature the increase
of scenic spectacles and of scenic pomp went hand in hand.
Dramatic representations obtained their regular place in the public life
not only of the capital but also of the country towns; the former
also now at length acquired by means of Pompeius a permanent theatre
(699;(12)), and the Campanian custom of stretching canvas
over the theatre for the protection of the actors and spectators
during the performance, which in ancient times always took place
in the open air, now likewise found admission to Rome (676).
As at that time in Greece it was not the--more than pale-Pleiad
of the Alexandrian dramatists, but the classic drama, above all
the tragedies of Euripides, which amidst the amplest development
of scenic resources kept the stage, so in Rome at the time of Cicero
the tragedies of Ennius, Pacuvius, and Accius, and the comedies
of Plautus were those chiefly produced.  While the latter had been
in the previous period supplanted by the more tasteful but in point
of comic vigour far inferior Terence, Roscius and Varro,
or in other words the theatre and philology, co-operated to procure
for him a resurrection similar to that which Shakespeare experienced
at the hands of Garrick and Johnson; but even Plautus had to suffer
from the degenerate susceptibility and the impatient haste
of an audience spoilt by the short and slovenly farces, so that
the managers found themselves compelled to excuse the length
of the Plautine comedies and even perhaps to make omissions
and alterations.  The more limited the stock of plays, the more
the activity of the managing and executive staff as well as
the interest of the public was directed to the scenic representation
of the pieces.  There was hardly any more lucrative trade in Rome
than that of the actor and the dancing-girl of the first rank.
The princely estate of the tragic actor Aesopus has been
already mentioned;(13) his still more celebrated contemporary
Roscius(14) estimated his annual income at 600,000 sesterces
(6000 pounds)(15) and Dionysia the dancer estimated hers
at 200,000 sesterces (2000 pounds).  At the same time
immense sums were expended on decorations and costume;
now and then trains of six hundred mules in harness crossed
the stage, and the Trojan theatrical army was employed
to present to the public a tableau of the nations vanquished
by Pompeius in Asia.  The music which accompanied the delivery
of the inserted choruses likewise obtained a greater
and more independent importance; as the wind sways the waves,
says Varro, so the skilful flute-player sways the minds of the listeners
with every modulation of melody.  It accustomed itself to the use
of quicker time, and thereby compelled the player to more lively action.
Musical and dramatic connoisseurship was developed; the -habitue-
recognized every tune by the first note, and knew the texts
by heart; every fault in the music or recitation was severely
censured by the audience.  The state of the Roman stage in the time
of Cicero vividly reminds us of the modern French theatre.
As the Roman mime corresponds to the loose tableaux of the pieces
of the day, nothing being too good and nothing too bad for either
the one or the other, so we find in both the same traditionally
classic tragedy and comedy, which the man of culture is in duty bound
to admire or at least to applaud.  The multitude is satisfied,
when it meets its own reflection in the farce, and admires
the decorative pomp and receives the general impression of an ideal world
in the drama; the man of higher culture concerns himself at the theatre
not with the piece, but only with its artistic representation.
Moreover the Roman histrionic art oscillated in its different spheres,
just like the French, between the cottage and the drawing-room.
It was nothing unusual for the Roman dancing-girls to throw off
at the finale the upper robe and to give a dance in undress
for the benefit of the public; but on the other hand in the eyes
of the Roman Talma the supreme law of his art was, not the truth
of nature, but symmetry.

Metrical Annals

In recitative poetry metrical annals after the model of those
of Ennius seem not to have been wanting; but they were perhaps
sufficiently criticised by that graceful vow of his mistress
of which Catullus sings--that the worst of the bad heroic poems
should be presented as a sacrifice to holy Venus, if she would only
bring back her lover from his vile political poetry to her arms.

Lucretius

Indeed in the whole field of recitative poetry at this epoch
the older national-Roman tendency is represented only by a single work
of note, which, however, is altogether one of the most important
poetical products of Roman literature.  It is the didactic poem
of Titus Lucretius Carus (655-699) "Concerning the Nature of Things,"
whose author, belonging to the best circles of Roman society,
but taking no part in public life whether from weakness of health
or from disinclination, died in the prime of manhood shortly before
the outbreak of the civil war.  As a poet he attached himself
decidedly to Ennius and thereby to the classical Greek literature.
Indignantly he turns away from the "hollow Hellenism" of his time,
and professes himself with his whole soul and heart to be the scholar
of the "chaste Greeks," as indeed even the sacred earnestness
of Thucydides has found no unworthy echo in one of the best-known
sections of this Roman poem.  As Ennius draws his wisdom
from Epicharmus and Euhemerus, so Lucretius borrows the form
of his representation from Empedocles, "the most glorious
treasure of the richly gifted Sicilian isle"; and, as to the matter,
gathers "all the golden words together from the rolls of Epicurus,"
"who outshines other wise men as the sun obscures the stars."
Like Ennius, Lucretius disdains the mythological lore with which
poetry was overloaded by Alexandrinism, and requires nothing
from his reader but a knowledge of the legends generally current.(16)
In spite of the modern purism which rejected foreign words from poetry,
Lucretius prefers to use, as Ennius had done, a significant Greek word
in place of a feeble and obscure Latin one.  The old Roman alliteration,
the want of due correspondence between the pauses of the verse and those
of the sentence, and generally the older modes of expression
and composition, are still frequently found in Lucretius' rhythms,
and although he handles the verse more melodiously than Ennius,
his hexameters move not, as those of the modern poetical school,
with a lively grace like the rippling brook, but with a stately slowness
like the stream of liquid gold.  Philosophically and practically
also Lucretius leans throughout on Ennius, the only indigenous poet
whom his poem celebrates.  The confession of faith of the singer
of Rudiae(17)--

   -Ego deum genus esse semper dixi et dicam caelitum,
   Sed eos non curare opinor, quid agat humanum genus-:--

describes completely the religious standpoint of Lucretius,
and not unjustly for that reason he himself terms his poem
as it were the continuation of Ennius:--

   -Ennius ut noster cecinit, qui primus amoeno
   Detulit ex Helicone perenni fronde coronam,
   Per gentis Italas hominum quae clara clueret-.

Once more--and for the last time--the poem of Lucretius is resonant
with the whole poetic pride and the whole poetic earnestness
of the sixth century, in which, amidst the images of the formidable
Carthaginian and the glorious Scipiad, the imagination of the poet
is more at home than in his own degenerate age.(18)  To him too
his own song "gracefully welling up out of rich feeling" sounds,
as compared with the common poems, "like the brief song of the swan
compared with the cry of the crane";--with him too the heart swells,
listening to the melodies of its own invention, with the hope
of illustrious honours--just as Ennius forbids the men to whom
he "gave from the depth of the heart a foretaste of fiery song,"
to mourn at his, the immortal singer's, tomb.

It is a remarkable fatality, that this man of extraordinary talents,
far superior in originality of poetic endowments to most
if not to all his contemporaries, fell upon an age in which
he felt himself strange and forlorn, and in consequence of this
made the most singular mistake in the selection of a subject.  The system
of Epicurus, which converts the universe into a great vortex of atoms
and undertakes to explain the origin and end of the world as well as
all the problems of nature and of life in a purely mechanical way,
was doubtless somewhat less silly than the conversion of myths
into history which was attempted by Euhemerus and after him by Ennius;
but it was not an ingenious or a fresh system, and the task
of poetically unfolding this mechanical view of the world
was of such a nature that never probably did poet expend life
and art on a more ungrateful theme.  The philosophic reader censures
in the Lucretian didactic poem the omission of the finer points
of the system, the superficiality especially with which controversies
are presented, the defective division, the frequent repetitions,
with quite as good reason as the poetical reader frets
at the mathematics put into rhythm which makes a great part
of the poem absolutely unreadable. In spite of these incredible defects,
before which every man of mediocre talent must inevitably have succumbed,
this poet might justly boast of having carried off from the poetic
wilderness a new chaplet such as the Muses had not yet bestowed on any;
and it was by no means merely the occasional similitudes,
and the other inserted descriptions of mighty natural phenomena
and yet mightier passions, which acquired for the poet this chaplet.
The genius which marks the view of life as well as the poetry
of Lucretius depends on his unbelief, which came forward
and was entitled to come forward with the full victorious power
of truth, and therefore with the full vigour of poetry, in opposition
to the prevailing hypocrisy or superstition.

   -Humana ante oculos foede cum vita iaceret
   In terris oppressa gravi sub religione,
   Quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat
   Horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans,
   Primum Graius homo mortalis tendere contra
   Est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra.
   Ergo vivida vis animi pervicit, et extra
   Processit longe flammantia moenia mundi
   Atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque-.

The poet accordingly was zealous to overthrow the gods,
as Brutus had overthrown the kings, and "to release nature
from her stern lords."  But it was not against the long ago enfeebled
throne of Jovis that these flaming words were hurled; just like Ennius,
Lucretius fights practically above all things against the wild
foreign faiths and superstitions of, the multitude, the worship
of the Great Mother for instance and the childish lightning-lore
of the Etruscans.  Horror and antipathy towards that terrible world
in general, in which and for which the poet wrote, suggested his poem.
It was composed in that hopeless time when the rule of the oligarchy
had been overthrown and that of Caesar had not yet  been established,
in the sultry years during which the outbreak of the civil war
was awaited with long and painful suspense.  If we  seem to perceive
in its unequal and restless utterance that the poet daily
expected to see the wild tumult of revolution break forth
over himself and his work, we must not with reference to his view
of men and things forget amidst what men, and in prospect
of what things, that view had its origin.  In the Hellas of the epoch
before Alexander it was a current saying, and one profoundly felt
by all the best men, that the best thing of all was not to be born,
and the next best to die.  Of all views of the world possible
to a tender and poetically organized mind in the kindred Caesarian age
this was the noblest and the most ennobling, that it is a benefit
for man to be released from a belief in the immortality of the soul
and thereby from the evil dread of death and of the gods
which malignantly steals over men like terror creeping over children
in a dark room; that, as the sleep of the night is more refreshing
than the trouble of the day, so death, eternal repose
from all hope and fear, is better than life, as indeed the gods
of the poet themselves are nothing, and have nothing, but an eternal
blessed rest; that the pains of hell torment man, not after life,
but during its course, in the wild and unruly passions
of his throbbing heart; that the task of man is to attune his soul
to equanimity, to esteem the purple no higher than the warm dress
worn at home, rather to remain in the ranks of those that obey
than to press into the confused crowd of candidates for the office
of ruler, rather to lie on the grass beside the brook than to take part
under the golden ceiling of the rich in emptying his countless dishes.
This philosophico-practical tendency is the true ideal essence
of the Lucretian poem and is only overlaid, not choked,
by all the dreariness of its physical demonstrations.  Essentially
on this rests its comparative wisdom and truth.  The man who
with a reverence for his great predecessors and a vehement zeal,
to which this century elsewhere knew no parallel, preached such doctrine
and embellished it with the charm of art, may be termed at once
a good citizen and a great poet.  The didactic poem concerning
the Nature of Things, however much in it may challenge censure,
has remained one of the most brilliant stars in the poorly illuminated
expanse of Roman literature; and with reason the greatest of German
philologues chose the task of making the Lucretian poem
once more readable as his last and most masterly work.

The Hellenic Fashionable Poetry

Lucretius, although his poetical vigour as well as his art was admired
by his cultivated contemporaries, yet remained--of late growth
as he was--a master without scholars.  In the Hellenic fashionable
poetry on the other hand there was no lack at least of scholars,
who exerted themselves to emulate the Alexandrian masters.
With true tact the more gifted of the Alexandrian poets
avoided larger works and the pure forms of poetry--the drama,
the epos, the lyric; the most pleasing and successful performances
consisted with them, just as with the new Latin poets, in "short-
winded" tasks, and especially in such as belonged to the domains
bordering on the pure forms of art, more especially to the wide field
intervening between narrative and song.  Multifarious didactic
poems were written.  Small half-heroic, half-erotic epics
were great favourites, and especially an erudite sort of love-elegy
peculiar to this autumnal summer of Greek poetry and characteristic
of the philological source whence it sprang, in which the poet
more or less arbitrarily interwove the description of his own feelings,
predominantly sensuous, with epic shreds from the cycle of Greek legend.
Festal lays were diligently and artfully manufactured; in general,
owing to the want of spontaneous poetical invention, the occasional poem
preponderated and especially the epigram, of which the Alexandrians
produced excellent specimens.  The poverty of materials and the want
of freshness in language and rhythm, which inevitably cleave
to every literature not national, men sought as much as possible
to conceal under odd themes, far-fetched phrases, rare words,
and artificial versification, and generally under the whole apparatus
of philologico-antiquarian erudition and technical dexterity.
Such was the gospel which was preached to the Roman boys of this period,
and they came in crowds to hear and to practise it; already (about 700)
the love-poems of Euphorion and similar Alexandrian poetry formed
the ordinary reading and the ordinary pieces for declamation
of the cultivated youth.(19)  The literary revolution took place;
but it yielded in the first instance with rare exceptions only premature
or unripe fruits.  The number of the "new-fashioned poets" was legion,
but poetry was rare and Apollo was compelled, as always when so many
throng towards Parnassus, to make very short work.  The long poems never
were worth anything, the short ones seldom.  Even in this literary age
the poetry of the day had become a public nuisance; it sometimes
happened that one's friend would send home to him by way of mockery
as a festal present a pile of trashy verses fresh from the bookseller's
shop, whose value was at once betrayed by the elegant binding
and the smooth paper.  A real public, in the sense in which national
literature has a public, was wanting to the Roman Alexandrians
as well as to the Hellenic; it was thoroughly the poetry of a clique
or rather cliques, whose members clung closely together,
abused intruders, read and criticised among themselves the new poems,
sometimes also quite after the Alexandrian fashion celebrated
the successful productions in fresh verses, and variously sought
to secure for themselves by clique-praises a spurious and ephemeral
renown.  A notable teacher of Latin literature, himself poetically
active in this new direction, Valerius Cato appears to have exercised
a sort of scholastic patronage over the most distinguished men
of this circle and to have pronounced final decision on the relative
value of the poems.  As compared with their Greek models,
these Roman poets evince throughout a want of freedom,
sometimes a schoolboy dependence; most of their products
must have been simply the austere fruits of a school poetry
still occupied in learning and by no means yet dismissed as mature.
Inasmuch as in language and in measure they adhered to the Greek patterns
far more closely than ever the national Latin poetry had done,
a greater correctness and consistency in language and metre
were certainly attained; but it was at the expense of the flexibility
and fulness of the national idiom.  As respects the subject-matter,
under the influence partly of effeminate models, partly
of an immoral age, amatory themes acquired a surprising preponderance
little conducive to poetry; but the favourite metrical compendia
of the Greeks were also in various cases translated, such as
the astronomical treatise of Aratus by Cicero, and, either at the end
of this or more probably at the commencement of the following period,
the geographical manual of Eratosthenes by Publius Varro of the Aude
and the physico-medicinal manual of Nicander by Aemilius Macer.
It is neither to be wondered at nor regretted that of this countless
host of poets but few names have been preserved to us;
and even these are mostly mentioned merely as curiosities
or as once upon a time great; such as the orator Quintus Hortensius
with his "five hundred thousand lines" of tiresome obscenity,
and the somewhat more frequently mentioned Laevius, whose -Erotopaegnia-
attracted a certain interest only by their complicated measures
and affected phraseology.  Even the small epic Smyrna by Gaius
Helvius Cinna (d. 710?), much as it was praised by the clique,
bears both in its subject--the incestuous love of a daughter
for her father--and in the nine years' toil bestowed on it the worst
characteristics of the time.

Catullus

Those poets alone of this school constitute an original
and pleasing exception, who knew how to combine with its neatness
and its versatility of form the national elements of worth still existing
in the republican life, especially in that of the country-towns.
To say nothing here of Laberius and Varro, this description
applies especially to the three poets already mentioned above(20)
of the republican opposition, Marcus Furius Libaculus (652-691),
Gaius Licinius Calvus (672-706) and Quintus Valerius Catullus
(667-c. 700).  Of the two former, whose writings have perished,
we can indeed only conjecture this; respecting the poems of Catullus
we can still form a judgment.  He too depends in subject and form
on the Alexandrians.  We find in his collection translations of pieces
of Callimachus, and these not altogether the very good,
but the very difficult.  Among the original pieces, we meet
with elaborately-turned fashionable poems, such as the over-artificial
Galliambics in praise of the Phrygian Mother; and even the poem,
otherwise so beautiful, of the marriage of Thetis has been
artistically spoiled by the truly Alexandrian insertion
of the complaint of Ariadne in the principal poem.  But by the side
of these school-pieces we meet with the melodious lament
of the genuine elegy, the festal poem in the full pomp of individual
and almost dramatic execution, above all, the freshest miniature painting
of cultivated social life, the pleasant and very unreserved
amatory adventures of which half the charm consists in prattling
and poetizing about the mysteries of love, the delightful life
of youth with full cups and empty purses, the pleasures
of travel and of poetry, the Roman and still more frequently
the Veronese anecdote of the town, and the humorous jest
amidst the familiar circle of friends.  But not only does Apollo
touch the lyre of the poet, he wields also the bow; the winged dart
of sarcasm spares neither the tedious verse-maker nor the provincial
who corrupts the language, but it hits none more frequently
and more sharply than the potentates by whom the liberty of the people
is endangered.  The short-lined and merry metres, often enlivened
by a graceful refrain, are of finished art and yet free
from the repulsive smoothness of the manufactory.  These poems lead us
alternately to the valleys of the Nile and the Po; but the poet
is incomparably more at home in the latter.  His poems are based
on Alexandrian art doubtless, but at the same time on the self-
consciousness of a burgess and a burgess in fact of a rural town,
on the contrast of Verona with Rome, on the contrast of the homely
municipal with the high-born lords of the senate who usually
maltreat their humble friends--as that contrast was probably felt
more vividly than anywhere else in Catullus' home, the flourishing
and comparatively vigorous Cisalpine Gaul.  The most beautiful
of his poems reflect the sweet pictures of the Lago di Garda,
and hardly at this time could any man of the capital have written
a poem like the deeply pathetic one on his brother's death,
or the excellent genuinely homely festal hymn for the marriage of Manlius
and Aurunculeia.  Catullus, although dependent on the Alexandrian masters
and standing in the midst of the fashionable and clique poetry
of that age, was yet not merely a good scholar among many mediocre
and bad ones, but himself as much superior to his masters
as the burgess of a free Italian community was superior
to the cosmopolitan Hellenic man of letters.  Eminent creative vigour
indeed and high poetic intentions we may not look for in him;
he is a richly gifted and graceful but not a great poet, and his poems
are, as he himself calls them, nothing but "pleasantries
and trifles." Yet when we find not merely his contemporaries
electrified by these fugitive songs, but the art-critics
of the Augustan age also characterizing him along with Lucretius
as the most important poet of this epoch, his contemporaries
as well as their successors were completely right.  The Latin nation
has produced no second poet in whom the artistic substance
and the artistic form appear in so symmetrical perfection
as in Catullus; and in this sense the collection of the poems of Catullus
is certainly the most perfect which Latin poetry as a whole can show.

Poems in Prose
Romances

Lastly, poetry in a prose form begins in this epoch.  The law
of genuine naive as well as conscious art, which had hitherto remained
unchangeable--that the poetical subject-matter and the metrical setting
should go together--gave way before the intermixture and disturbance
of all kinds and forms of art, which is one of the most significant
features of this period.  As to romances indeed nothing farther
is to be noticed, than that the most famous historian of this epoch,
Sisenna, did not esteem himself too good to translate into Latin
the much-read Milesian tales of Aristides--licentious fashionable novels
of the most stupid sort.

Varro's Aesthetic Writings

A more original and more pleasing phenomenon in this debateable
border-land between poetry and prose was the aesthetic writings
of Varro, who was not merely the most important representative
of Latin philologico-historical research, but one of the most fertile
and most interesting authors in belles-lettres.  Descended
from a plebeian gens which had its home in the Sabine land
but had belonged for the last two hundred years to the Roman senate,
strictly reared in antique discipline and decorum,(21) and already
at the beginning of this epoch a man of maturity, Marcus Terentius Varro
of Reate (638-727) belonged in politics, as a matter of course,
to the institutional party, and bore an honourable and energetic
part in its doings and sufferings.  He supported it, partly
in literature--as when he combated the first coalition,
the "three-headed monster," in pamphlets; partly in more serious
warfare, where we found him in the army of Pompeius as commandant
of Further Spain.(22)  When the cause of the republic was lost,
Varro was destined by his conqueror to be librarian of the library
which was to be formed in the capital.  The troubles
of the following period drew the old man once more into their vortex,
and it was not till seventeen years after Caesar's death,
in the eighty-ninth year of his well-occupied life, that death
called him away.

Varros' Models

The aesthetic writings, which have made him a name,
were brief essays, some in simple prose and of graver contents,
others humorous sketches the prose groundwork of which was inlaid
with various poetical effusions.  The former were the "philosophico-
historical dissertations" (-logistorici-), the latter the Menippean
Satires.  In neither case did he follow Latin models,
and the -Satura- of Varro in particular was by no means based
on that of Lucilius.  In fact the Roman -Satura- in general
was not properly a fixed species of art, but only indicated negatively
the fact that the "multifarious poem" was not to be included
under any of the recognized forms of art; and accordingly the -Satura-
poetry assumed in the hands of every gifted poet a different and peculiar
character.  It was rather in the pre-Alexandrian Greek philosophy
that Varro found the models for his more severe as well as
for his lighter aesthetic works; for the graver dissertations,
in the dialogues of Heraclides of Heraclea on the Black Sea
(d. about 450), for the satires, in the writings of Menippus of Gadara
in Syria (flourishing about 475).  The choice was significant.
Heraclides, stimulated as an author by Plato's philosophic
dialogues, had amidst the brilliance of their form totally
lost sight of the scientific contents and made the poetico-fabulistic
dress the main matter; he was an agreeable and largely-read author,
but far from a philosopher.  Menippus was quite as little
a philosopher, but the most genuine literary representative
of that philosophy whose wisdom consisted in denying philosophy
and ridiculing philosophers the cynical wisdom of Diogenes;
a comic teacher of serious wisdom, he proved by examples
and merry sayings that except an upright life everything is vain
in earth and heaven, and nothing more vain than the disputes
of so-called sages.  These were the true models for Varro,
a man full of old Roman indignation at the pitiful times and full
of old Roman humour, by no means destitute withal of plastic talent
but as to everything which presented the appearance not of palpable fact
but of idea or even of system, utterly stupid, and perhaps
the most unphilosophical among the unphilosophical Romans.(23)
But Varro was no slavish pupil.  The impulse and in general
the form he derived from Heraclides and Menippus; but his was a nature
too individual and too decidedly Roman not to keep his imitative
creations essentially independent and national.

Varro's Philosophico-Historical Essays

For his grave dissertations, in which a moral maxim
or other subject of general interest is handled, he disdained,
in his framework to approximate to the Milesian tales, as Heraclides
had done, and so to serve up to the reader even childish little stories
like those of Abaris and of the maiden reawakened to life
after being seven days dead.  But seldom he borrowed the dress
from the nobler myths of the Greeks, as in the essay "Orestes
or concerning Madness"; history ordinarily afforded him a worthier
frame for his subjects, more especially the contemporary history
of his country, so that these essays became, as they were called
-laudationes- of esteemed Romans, above all of the Coryphaei
of the constitutional party.  Thus the dissertation "concerning Peace"
was at the same time a memorial of Metellus Pius, the last
in the brilliant series of successful generals of the senate;
that "concerning the Worship of the Gods" was at the same time
destined to preserve the memory of the highly-respected
Optimate and Pontifex Gaius Curio; the essay "on Fate" was connected
with Marius, that "on the Writing of History" with Sisenna
the first historian of this epoch, that "on the Beginnings
of the Roman Stage" with the princely giver of scenic spectacles
Scaurus, that "on Numbers" with the highly-cultured
Roman banker Atticus.  The two philosophico-historical essays
"Laelius or concerning Friendship," "Cato or concerning Old Age,"
which Cicero wrote probably after the model of those of Varro,
may give us some approximate idea of Varro's half-didactic,
half-narrative, treatment of these subjects.

Varros' Menippean Satires

The Menippean satire was handled by Varro with equal originality
of form and contents; the bold mixture of prose and verse is foreign
to the Greek original, and the whole intellectual contents
are pervaded by Roman idiosyncrasy--one might say, by a savour
of the Sabine soil.  These satires like the philosophico-historical
essays handle some moral or other theme adapted to the larger public,
as is shown by the several titles---Columnae Herculis-, --peri doxeis--;
--Euren ei Lopas to Poma, peri gegameikoton--, -Est Modus
Matulae-, --peri metheis--; -Papiapapae-, --peri egkomios--.
The plastic dress, which in this case might not be wanting,
is of course but seldom borrowed from the history of his native country,
as in the satire -Serranus-, --peri archairesion--.  The Cynic-
world of Diogenes on the other hand plays, as might be expected,
a great part; we meet with the --Kounistor--, the --Kounorreiton--,
the 'Ippokouon, the --'Oudrokouon--, the --Kounodidaskalikon--
and others of a like kind.  Mythology is also laid under contribution
for comic purposes; we find a -Prometheus Liber-, an -Ajax
Stramenticius-, a -Hercules Socraticus-, a -Sesqueulixes-
who had spent not merely ten but fifteen years in wanderings.
The outline of the dramatic or romantic framework is still discoverable
from the fragments in some pieces, such as the -Prometheus Liber-,
the -Sexagessis-, -Manius-; it appears that Varro frequently,
perhaps regularly, narrated the tale as his own experience;
e. g. in the -Manius- the dramatis personae go to Varro and discourse
to him "because he was known to them as a maker of books."
as to the poetical value of this dress we are no longer allowed
to form any certain judgment; there still occur in our fragments
several very charming sketches full of wit and liveliness--
thus in the -Prometheus Liber- the hero after the loosing
of his chains opens a manufactory of men, in which Goldshoe the rich
(-Chrysosandalos-) bespeaks for himself a maiden, of milk and finest wax,
such as the Milesian bees gather from various flowers, a maiden
without bones and sinews, without skin or hair, pure and polished, slim,
smooth, tender, charming.  The life-breath of this poetry is polemics--
not so much the political warfare of party, such as Lucilius
and Catullus practised, but the general moral antagonism of the stern
elderly man to the unbridled and perverse youth, of the scholar
living in the midst of his classics to the loose and slovenly,
or at any rate in point of tendency reprobate, modern poetry,(24)
of the good burgess of the ancient type to the new Rome in which
the Forum, to use Varro's language, was a pigsty and Numa, if he turned
his eyes towards his city, would see no longer a trace of his wise
regulations.  In the constitutional struggle Varro did what seemed to him
the duty of a citizen; but his heart was not in such party-doings--
"why," he complains on one occasion, "do ye call me
from my pure life into the filth of your senate-house?"  He belonged
to the good old time, when the talk savoured of onions and garlic,
but the heart was sound.  His polemic against the hereditary foes
of the genuine Roman spirit, the Greek philosophers, was only
a single aspect of this old-fashioned opposition to the spirit
of the new times; but it resulted both from the nature of the Cynical
philosophy and from the temperament of Varro, that the Menippean lash
was very specially plied round the cars of the philosophers
and put them accordingly into proportional alarm--it was not
without palpitation that the philosophic scribes of the time
transmitted to the "severe man" their newly-issued treatises.
Philosophizing is truly no art.  With the tenth part of the trouble
with which a master rears his slave to be a professional baker,
he  trains himself to be a philosopher; no doubt, when the baker
and the philosopher both come under the hammer, the artist of pastry
goes off a hundred times dearer than the sage.  Singular people,
these philosophers! One enjoins that corpses be buried in honey--
it is a fortunate circumstance that his desire is not complied with,
otherwise where would any honey-wine be left?  Another thinks
that men grow out of the earth like cresses.  A third has invented
a world-borer (--Kosmotorounei--) by which the earth will some
day be destroyed.

   -Postremo, nemo aegrotus quicquam somniat
   Tam infandum, quod non aliquis dicat philosophus-.

It is ludicrous to observe how a Long-beard--by which is meant
an etymologizing Stoic--cautiously weighs every word in goldsmith's
scales; but there is nothing that surpasses the genuine
philosophers' quarrel--a Stoic boxing-match far excels any encounter
of athletes.  In the satire -Marcopolis-, --peri archeis--,
when Marcus created for himself a Cloud-Cuckoo-Home after his own heart,
matters fared, just as in the Attic comedy, well with the peasant,
but ill with the philosopher; the -Celer- -- -di'-enos- -leimmatos-logos--,
son of Antipater the Stoic, beats in the skull of his opponent--
evidently the philosophic -Dilemma---with the mattock.

With this morally polemic tendency and this talent for embodying it
in caustic and picturesque expression, which, as the dress of dialogue
given to the books on Husbandry written in his eightieth year shows,
never forsook him down to extreme old age, Varro most happily
combined an incomparable knowledge of the national manners
and language, which is embodied in the philological writings
of his old age after the manner of a commonplace-book, but displays
itself in his Satires in all its direct fulness and freshness.
Varro was in the best and fullest sense of the term a local antiquarian,
who from the personal observation of many years knew his nation
in its former idiosyncrasy and seclusion as well as in its modern state
of transition and dispersion, and had supplemented and deepened
his direct knowledge of the national manners and national language
by the most comprehensive research in historical and literary archives.
His partial deficiency in rational judgment and learning--
in our sense of the words--was compensated for by his clear
intuition and the poetry which lived within him.  He sought
neither after antiquarian notices nor after rare antiquated
or poetical words;(25) but he was himself an old and old-fashioned man
and almost a rustic, the classics of his nation were his favourite
and long-familiar companions; how could it fail that many details
of the manners of his forefathers, which he loved above all
and especially knew, should be narrated in his writings, and that
his discourse should abound with proverbial Greek and Latin phrases,
with good old words preserved in the Sabine conversational language,
with reminiscences of Ennius, Lucilius, and above all of Plautus?
We should not judge as to the prose style of these aesthetic
writings of Varro's earlier period by the standard of his work
on Language written in his old age and probably published
in an unfinished state, in which certainly the clauses
of the sentence are arranged on the thread of the relative
like thrushes on a string; but we have already observed that Varro
rejected on principle the effort after a chaste style and Attic periods,
and his aesthetic essays, while destitute of the mean bombast
and the spurious tinsel of vulgarism, were yet written after an unclassic
and even slovenly fashion, in sentences rather directly joined
on to each other than regularly subdivided.  The poetical pieces
inserted on the other hand show not merely that their author
knew how to mould the most varied measures with as much mastery
as any of the fashionable poets, but that he had a right
to include himself among those to whom a god has granted the gift
of "banishing cares from the heart by song and sacred poesy."(26)
the sketches of Varro no more created a school than the didactic poem
of Lucretius; to the more general causes which prevented this
there falls to be added their thoroughly individual stamp,
which was inseparable from the greater age, from the rusticity,
and even from the peculiar erudition of their author.  But the grace
and humour of the Menippean satires above all, which seem to have been
in number and importance far superior to Varro's graver works,
captivated his contemporaries as well as those in after times
who had any relish for originality and national spirit; and even we,
who are no longer permitted to read them, may still from the fragments
preserved discern in some measure that the writer  "knew how to laugh
and how to jest in moderation." And as the last breath
of the good spirit of the old burgess-times ere it departed,
as the latest fresh growth which the national Latin poetry put forth,
the Satires of Varro deserved that the poet in his poetical testament
should commend these his Menippean children to every one
"who had at heart the prosperity of Rome and of Latium";
and they accordingly retain an honourable place in the literature
as in the history of the Italian people.(27)

Historical Composition
Sisenna

The critical writing of history, after the manner in which
the Attic authors wrote the national history in their classic period
and in which Polybius wrote the history of the world, was never
properly developed in Rome.  Even in the field most adapted for it--
the representation of contemporary and of recently past events--
there was nothing, on the whole, but more or less inadequate attempts;
in the epoch especially from Sulla to Caesar the not very important
contributions, which the previous epoch had to show in this field--
the labours of Antipater and Asellius--were barely even equalled.
The only work of note belonging to this field, which arose
in the present epoch, was the history of the Social and Civil Wars
by Lucius Cornelius Sisenna (praetor in 676).  Those who had read it
testify that it far excelled in liveliness and readableness
the old dry chronicles, but was written withal in a style
thoroughly impure and even degenerating into puerility; as indeed
the few remaining fragments exhibit a paltry painting of horrible
details,(28) and a number of words newly coined or derived
from the language of conversation.  When it is added that the author's
model and, so to speak, the only Greek historian familiar to him
was Clitarchus, the author of a biography of Alexander the Great
oscillating between history and fiction in the manner of the semi-
romance which bears the name of Curtius, we shall not hesitate
to recognize in Sisenna's celebrated historical work, not a product
of genuine historical criticism and art, but the first Roman essay
in that hybrid mixture of history and romance so much a favourite
with the Greeks, which desires to make the groundwork of facts
life-like and interesting by means of fictitious details and thereby
makes it insipid and untrue; and it will no longer excite surprise
that we meet with the same Sisenna also as translator of Greek
fashionable romances.(29)

Annals of the City

That the prospect should be still more lamentable in the field
of the general annals of the city and even of the world, was implied
in the nature of the case.  The increasing activity of antiquarian
research induced the expectation that the current narrative
would be rectified from documents and other trustworthy sources;
but this hope was not fulfilled.  The more and the deeper men
investigated, the more clearly it became apparent what a task it was
to write a critical history of Rome.  The difficulties even,
which opposed themselves to investigation and narration, were immense;
but the most dangerous obstacles were not those of a literary kind.
The conventional early history of Rome, as it had now been narrated
and believed for at least ten generations; was most intimately mixed up
with the civil life of the nation; and yet in any thorough
and honest inquiry not only had details to be modified here and there,
but the whole building had to be overturned as much as
the Franconian primitive history of king Pharamund or the British
of king Arthur.  An inquirer of conservative views, such as was Varro
for instance, could have no wish to put his hand to such a work;
and if a daring freethinker had undertaken it, an outcry
would have been raised by all good citizens against this worst
of all revolutionaries, who was preparing to deprive the constitutional
party even of their past Thus philological and antiquarian research
deterred from the writing of history rather than conduced towards it.
Varro and the more sagacious men in general evidently gave up
the task of annals as hopeless; at the most they arranged,
as did Titus Pomponius Atticus, the official and gentile lists
in unpretending tabular shape--a work by which the synchronistic
Graeco-Roman chronology was finally brought into the shape in which
it was conventionally fixed for posterity.  But the manufacture
of city-chronicles of course did not suspend its activity;
it continued to supply its contributions both in prose and verse
to the great library written by ennui for ennui, while the makers
of the books, in part already freedmen, did not trouble themselves
at all about research properly so called.  Such of these writings
as are mentioned to us--not one of them is preserved--seem to have been
not only of a wholly secondary character, but in great part
even pervaded by interested falsification.  It is true
that the chronicle of Quintus Claudius Quadrigarius (about 676?)
was written in an old-fashioned but good style, and studied at least
a commendable brevity in the representation of the fabulous period.
Gaius Licinius Macer (d. as late praetor in 688), father of the poet
Calvus,(30) and a zealous democrat, laid claim more than
any other chronicler to documentary research and criticism,
but his -libri lintei- and other matters peculiar to him are
in the highest degree suspicious, and an interpolation
of the whole annals in the interest of democratic tendencies--
an interpolation of a very extensive kind, and which has passed over
in part to the later annalists--is probably traceable to him.

Valerius Antias

Lastly, Valerius Antias excelled all his predecessors in prolixity
as well as in puerile story-telling.  The falsification of numbers
was here systematically carried out down even to contemporary history,
and the primitive history of Rome was elaborated once more
from one form of insipidity to another; for instance the narrative
of the way in which the wise Numa according to the instructions
of the nymph Egeria caught the gods Faunus and Picus; with wine,
and the beautiful conversation thereupon held by the same Numa
with the god Jupiter, cannot be too urgently recommended
to all worshippers of the so-called legendary history of Rome
in order that, if  possible, they may believe these things--of course,
in substance.  It would have been a marvel if the Greek novel-writers
of this period had allowed such materials, made as if for their use,
to escape them.  In fact there were not wanting Greek literati,
who worked up the Roman history into romances; such a composition,
for instance, was the Five Books "Concerning Rome" of the Alexander
Polyhistor already mentioned among the Greek literati living in Rome,(31)
a preposterous mixture of vapid historical tradition and trivial,
principally erotic, fiction.  He, it may be presumed,
took the first steps towards filling up the five hundred years,
which were wanting to bring the destruction of Troy and the origin
of Rome into the chronological connection required by the fables
on either side, with one of those lists of kings without achievements
which are unhappily familiar to the Egyptian and Greek chroniclers;
for, to all appearance, it was he that launched into the world
the kings Aventinus and Tiberinus and the Alban gens of the Silvii,
whom the following times accordingly did not neglect to furnish
in detail with name, period of reigning, and, for the sake of greater
definiteness, also a portrait.

Thus from various sides the historical romance of the Greeks
finds its way into Roman historiography; and it is more than probable
that not the least portion of what we are accustomed nowadays
to call tradition of the Roman primitive times proceeds from sources
of the stamp of Amadis of Gaul and the chivalrous romances
of Fouque--an edifying consideration, at least for those who have
a relish for the humour of history and who know how to appreciate
the comical aspect of the piety still cherished in certain circles
of the nineteenth century for king Numa.

Universal History
Nepos

A novelty in the Roman literature of this period is the appearance
of universal history or, to speak more correctly, of Roman
and Greek history conjoined, alongside of the native annals.
Cornelius Nepos from Ticinum (c. 650-c. 725) first supplied
an universal chronicle (published before 700) and a general collection
of biographies--arranged according to certain categories--of Romans
and Greeks distinguished in politics or literature or of men
at any rate who exercised influence on the Roman or Greek history.
These works are of a kindred nature with the universal histories
which the Greeks had for a considerable time been composing;
and these very Greek world-chronicles, such as that of Kastor son-in-law
of the Galatian king Deiotarus, concluded in 698, now began to include
in their range the Roman history which previously they had neglected.
These works certainly attempted, just like Polybius, to substitute
the history of the Mediterranean world for the more local one;
but that which in Polybius was the result of a grand and clear
conception and deep historical feeling was in these chronicles
rather the product of the practical exigencies of school
and self-instruction.  These general chronicles, text-books
for scholastic instruction or manuals for reference, and the whole
literature therewith connected which subsequently became very copious
in the Latin language also, can hardly be reckoned as belonging
to artistic historical composition; and Nepos himself in particular
was a pure compiler distinguished neither by spirit nor even merely
by symmetrical plan.

The historiography of this period is certainly remarkable
and in a high degree characteristic, but it is as far from pleasing
as the age itself.  The interpenetration of Greek and Latin literature
is in no field so clearly apparent as in that of history;
here the respective literatures become earliest equalized in matter
and form, and the conception of Helleno-Italic history as an unity,
in which Polybius was so far in advance of his age, was now learned
even by Greek and Roman boys at school.  But while the Mediterranean
state had found a historian before it had become conscious
of its own existence, now, when that consciousness had been attained,
there did not arise either among the Greeks or among the Romans
any man who was able to give to it adequate expression.
"There is no such thing," says Cicero, "as Roman historical
composition"; and, so far as we can judge, this is no more than
the simple truth.  The man of research turns away from writing history,
the writer of history turns away from research; historical literature
oscillates between the schoolbook and the romance.  All the species
of pure art--epos, drama, lyric poetry, history--are worthless
in this worthless world; but in no species is the intellectual decay
of the Ciceronian age reflected with so terrible a clearness
as in its historiography.

Literature Subsidiary to History
Caesar's Report

The minor historical literature of this period displays
on the other hand, amidst many insignificant and forgotten productions,
one treatise of the first rank--the Memoirs of Caesar, or rather
the Military Report of the democratic general to the people
from whom he had received his commission.  The finished section,
and that which alone was published by the author himself, describing
the Celtic campaigns down to 702, is evidently designed to justify
as well as possible before the public the formally unconstitutional
enterprise of Caesar in conquering a great country and constantly
increasing his army for that object without instructions
from the competent authority; it was written and given forth in 703,
when the storm broke out against Caesar in Rome and he was summoned
to dismiss his army and answer for his conduct.(32)  The author
of this vindication writes, as he himself says, entirely as an officer
and carefully avoids extending his military report to the hazardous
departments of political organization and administration.
His incidental and partisan treatise cast in the form of a military
report is itself a piece of history like the bulletins of Napoleon,
but it is not, and was not intended to be, a historical work
in the true sense of the word; the objective form which the narrative
assumes is that of the magistrate, not that of the historian.
But in this modest character the work is masterly and finished,
more than any other in all Roman literature.  The narrative
is always terse and never scanty, always simple and never careless,
always of transparent vividness and never strained or affected.
The language is completely pure from archaisms and from vulgarisms--
the type of the modern -urbanitas-.  In the Books concerning
the Civil War we seem to feel that the author had desired to avoid war
and could not avoid it, and perhaps also that in Caesar's soul,
as in every other, the period of hope was a purer and fresher one
than that of fulfilment; but over the treatise on the Gallic war
there is diffused a bright serenity, a simple charm, which are
no less unique in literature than Caesar is in history.

Correspondence

Of a kindred nature were the letters interchanged between the statesmen
and literati of this period, which were carefully collected
and published in the following epoch; such as the correspondence
of Caesar himself, of Cicero, Calvus and others.  They can still less
be numbered among strictly literary performances; but this literature
of correspondence was a rich store-house for historical
as for all other research, and the most faithful mirror of an epoch
in which so much of the worth of past times and so much spirit,
cleverness, and talent were evaporated and dissipated in trifling.

News-Sheet

A journalist literature in the modern sense was never formed in Rome;
literary warfare continued to be confined to the writing
of pamphlets and, along with this, to the custom generally diffused
at that time of annotating the notices destined for the public
in places of resort with the pencil or the pen.  On the other hand
subordinate persons were employed to note down the events
of the day and news of the city for the absent men of quality;
and Caesar as early as his first consulship took fitting measures
for the immediate publication of an extract from the transactions
of the senate.  From the private journals of those Roman penny-a-liners
and these official current reports there arose a sort of news-sheet
for the capital (-acta diurna-), in which the resume of the business
discussed before the people and in the senate, and  births, deaths,
and such like were recorded.  This became a not unimportant
source for history, but remained without proper political
as without literary significance.

Speeches
Decline of Political Oratory

To subsidiary historical literature belongs of right also
the composition of orations.  The speech, whether written down or not,
is in its nature ephemeral and does not belong to literature;
but it may, like the report and the letter, and indeed still
more readily than these, come to be included, through the significance
of the moment and the power of the mind from which it springs,
among the permanent treasures of the national literature.
Thus in Rome the records of orations of a political tenor delivered
before the burgesses or the jurymen had for long played a great part
in public life; and not only so, but the speeches of Gaius Gracchus
in particular were justly reckoned among the classical Roman writings.
But in this epoch a singular change occurred on all hands.
The composition of political speeches was on the decline like political
speaking itself.  The political speech in Rome, as generally
in the ancient polities, reached its culminating point in the discussions
before the burgesses; here the orator was not fettered, as in the senate,
by collegiate considerations and burdensome forms, nor,
as in the judicial addresses, by the interests--in themselves foreign
to politics--of the accusation and defence; here alone his heart
swelled proudly before the whole great and mighty Roman people
hanging on his lips.  But all this was now gone.  Not as though
there was any lack of orators or of the publishing of speeches
delivered before the burgesses; on the contrary political
authorship only now waxed copious, and it began to become
a standing complaint at table that the host incommoded his guests
by reading before them his latest orations.  Publius Clodius
had his speeches to the people issued as pamphlets,
just like Gaius Gracchus; but two men may do the same thing
without producing the same effect.  The more important leaders
even of the opposition, especially Caesar himself, did not often address
the burgesses, and no longer published the speeches which they delivered;
indeed they partly sought for their political fugitive writings
another form than the traditional one of -contiones-, in which respect
more especially the writings praising and censuring Cato(33)
are remarkable.  This is easily explained.  Gaius Gracchus
had addressed the burgesses; now men addressed the populace;
and as the audience, so was the speech.  No wonder that the reputable
political author shunned a dress which implied that he had directed
his words to the crowd assembled in the market-place of the capital.

Rise of A Literature of Pleadings
Cicero

While the composition of orations thus declined from its former
literary and political value in the same way as all branches
of literature which were the natural growth of the national life,
there began at the same time a singular, non-political, literature
of pleadings.  Hitherto the Romans had known nothing of the idea
that the address of an advocate as such was destined not only
for the judges and the parties, but also for the literary edification
of contemporaries and posterity; no advocate had written down
and published his pleadings, unless they were possibly at the same time
political orations and in so far were fitted to be circulated
as party writings, and this had not occurred very frequently.
Even Quintus Hortensius (640-704), the most celebrated Roman advocate
in the first years of this period, published but few speeches
and these apparently only such as were wholly or half political.
It was his successor in the leadership of the Roman bar,
Marcus Tullius Cicero (648-711) who was from the outset quite as much
author as forensic orator; he published his pleadings regularly,
even when they were not at all or but remotely connected
with politics.  This was a token, not of progress, but of an unnatural
and degenerate state of things.  Even in Athens the appearance
of non-political pleadings among the forms of literature was a sign
of debility; and it was doubly so in Rome, which did not,
like Athens, by a sort of necessity produce this malformation
from the exaggerated pursuit of rhetoric, but borrowed it
from abroad arbitrarily and in antagonism to the better traditions
of the nation.  Yet this new species of literature came rapidly
into vogue, partly because it had various points of contact
and coincidence with the earlier authorship of political orations,
partly because the unpoetic, dogmatical, rhetorizing temperament
of the Romans offered a favourable soil for the new seed, as indeed
at the present day the speeches of advocates and even a sort
of literature of law-proceedings are of some importance in Italy.

His Character

Thus oratorical authorship emancipated from politics
was naturalized in the Roman literary world by Cicero.
We have already had occasion several times to mention
this many-sided man.  As a statesman without insight, idea,
or purpose, he figured successively as democrat, as aristocrat,
and as a tool of the monarchs, and was never more than
a short-sighted egotist. Where he exhibited the semblance of action,
the questions to which his action applied had, as a rule,
just reached their solution; thus he came forward in the trial
of Verres against the senatorial courts when they were already
set aside; thus he was silent at the discussion on the Gabinian,
and acted as a champion of the Manilian, law; thus he thundered
against Catilina when his departure was already settled,
and so forth.  He was valiant in opposition to sham attacks,
and he knocked down many walls of pasteboard with a loud din;
no serious matter was ever, either in good or evil, decided by him,
and the execution of the Catilinarians in particular was far more
due to his acquiescence than to his instigation.  In a literary
point of view we have already noticed that he was the creator
of the modern Latin prose;(34) his importance rests on his mastery
of style, and it is only as a stylist that he shows confidence
in himself.  In the character of an author, on the other hand,
he stands quite as low as in that of a statesman.  He essayed
the most varied tasks, sang the great deeds of Marius
and his own petty achievements in endless hexameters,
beat Demosthenes off the field with his speeches, and Plato
with his philosophic dialogues; and time alone was wanting for him
to vanquish also Thucydides.  He was in fact so thoroughly a dabbler,
that it was pretty much a matter of indifference to what work
he applied his hand.  By nature a journalist in the worst
sense of that term--abounding, as he himself says, in words,
poor beyond all conception in ideas--there was no department
in which he could not with the help of a few books have rapidly got up
by translation or compilation a readable essay.  His correspondence
mirrors most faithfully his character.  People are in the habit
of calling it interesting and clever; and it is so, as long as
it reflects the urban or villa life of the world of quality;
but where the writer is thrown on his own resources, as in exile,
in Cilicia, and after the battle of Pharsalus, it is stale
and emptyas was ever the soul of a feuilletonist banished from his
familiar circles.  It is scarcely needful to add that such a statesman
and such a -litterateur- could not, as a man, exhibit aught else
than a thinly varnished superficiality and heart-lessness.
Must we still describe the orator?  The great author is also a great man;
and in the great orator more especially conviction or passion
flows forth with a clearer and more impetuous stream from the depths
of the breast than in the scantily-gifted many who merely count
and are nothing.  Cicero had no conviction and no passion;
he was nothing but an advocate, and not a good one.  He understood
how to set forth his narrative of the case with piquancy of anecdote,
to excite, if not the feeling, at any rate the sentimentality
of his hearers, and to enliven the dry business of legal pleading
by cleverness or witticisms mostly of a personal sort;
his better orations, though they are far from coming up to the free
gracefulness and the sure point of the most excellent compositions
of this sort, for instance the Memoirs of Beaumarchais, yet form
easy and agreeable reading.  But while the very advantages
just indicated will appear to the serious judge as advantages
of very dubious value, the absolute want of political discernment
in the orations on constitutional questions and of juristic deduction
in the forensic addresses, the egotism forgetful of its duty
and constantly losing sight of the cause while thinking
of the advocate, the dreadful barrenness of thought in the Ciceronian
orations must revolt every reader of feeling and judgment.

Ciceronianism

If there is anything wonderful in the case, it is in truth
not the orations, but the admiration which they excited.  As to Cicero
every unbiassed person will soon make up his mind: Ciceronianism
is a problem, which in fact cannot be properly solved, but can only
be resolved into that greater mystery of human nature--language
and the effect of language on the mind.  Inasmuch as the noble Latin
language, just before it perished as a national idiom, was once more
as it were comprehensively grasped by that dexterous stylist
and deposited in his copious writings, something of the power
which language exercises, and of the piety which it awakens,
was transferred to the unworthy vessel.  The Romans possessed
no great Latin prose-writer; for Caesar was, like Napoleon,
only incidentally an author.  Was it to be wondered at that,
in the absence of such an one, they should at least honour the genius
of the language in the great stylist?  And that, like Cicero himself,
Cicero's readers also should accustom themselves to ask not what,
but how he had written?  Custom and the schoolmaster then completed
what the power of language had begun.

Opposition to Ciceronianism
Calvus and His Associates

Cicero's contemporaries however were, as may readily be conceived,
far less involved in this strange idolatry than many of their successors.
The Ciceronian manner ruled no doubt throughout a generation
the Roman advocate-world, just as the far worse manner of Hortensius
had done; but the most considerable men, such as Caesar,
kept themselves always aloof from it, and among the younger
generation there arose in all men of fresh and living talent
the most decided opposition to that hybrid and feeble rhetoric.
They found Cicero's language deficient in precision and chasteness,
his jests deficient in liveliness, his arrangement deficient
in clearness and articulate division, and above all his whole eloquence
wanting in the fire which makes the orator.  Instead of the Rhodian
eclectics men began to recur to the genuine Attic orators
especially to Lysias and Demosthenes, and sought to naturalize
a more vigorous and masculine eloquence in Rome.  Representatives
of this tendency were, the solemn but stiff Marcus Junius Brutus
(669-712); the two political partisans Marcus Caelius Rufus
(672-706;(35)) and Gaius Scribonius Curio (d. 705(36);)--
both as orators full of spirit and life; Calvus well known
also as a poet (672-706), the literary coryphaeus of this younger
group of orators; and the earnest and conscientious Gaius Asinius Pollio
(678-757).  Undeniably there was more taste and more spirit
in this younger oratorical literature than in the Hortensian
and Ciceronian put together; but we are not able to judge how far,
amidst the storms of the revolution which rapidly swept away the whole
of this richly-gifted group with the single exception of Pollio,
those better germs attained development.  The time allotted to them
was but too brief.  The new monarchy began by making war on freedom
of speech, and soon wholly suppressed the political oration.
Thenceforth the subordinate species of the pure advocate-pleading
was doubtless still retained in literature; but the higher art
and literature of oratory, which thoroughly depend on political
excitement, perished with the latter of necessity and for ever.

The Artificial Dialogue Applied to the Professional Sciences
Cicero's Dialogues

Lastly there sprang up in the aesthetic literature of this period
the artistic treatment of subjects of professional science
in the form of the stylistic dialogue, which had been very extensively
in use among the Greeks and had been already employed also
in isolated cases among the Romans.(37)  Cicero especially made
various attempts at presenting rhetorical and philosophical subjects
in this form and making the professional manual a suitable book
for reading.  His chief writings are the -De Oratore- (written in 699),
to which the history of Roman eloquence (the dialogue -Brutus-,
written in 708) and other minor rhetorical essays were added
by way of supplement; and the treatise -De Republica- (written in 700),
with which the treatise -De Legibus- (written in 702?) after the model
of Plato is brought into connection.  They are no great works
of art, but undoubtedly they are the works in which the excellences
of the author are most, and his defects least, conspicuous.
The rhetorical writings are far from coming up to the didactic
chasteness of form and precision of thought of the Rhetoric
dedicated to Herennius, but they contain instead a store
of practical forensic experience and forensic anecdotes of all sorts
easily and tastefully set forth, and in fact solve the problem
of combining didactic instruction with amusement.  The treatise
-De Republica- carries out, in a singular mongrel compound of history
and philosophy, the leading idea that the existing constitution
of Rome is substantially the ideal state-organization sought for
by the philosophers; an idea indeed just as unphilosophical
as unhistorical, and besides not even peculiar to the author,
but which, as may readily be conceived, became and remained popular.
The scientific groundwork of these rhetorical and political
writings of Cicero belongs of course entirely to the Greeks,
and many of the details also, such as the grand concluding effect
in the treatise -De Republica- the Dream of Scipio, are directly
borrowed from them; yet they possess comparative originality,
inasmuch as the elaboration shows throughout Roman local colouring,
and the proud consciousness of political life, which the Roman
was certainly entitled to feel as compared with the Greeks,
makes the author even confront his Greek instructors with a certain
independence.  The form of Cicero's dialogue is doubtless neither
the genuine interrogative dialectics of the best Greek artificial
dialogue nor the genuine conversational tone of Diderot or Lessing;
but the great groups of advocates gathering around Crassus
and Antonius and of the older and younger statesmen of the Scipionic
circle furnish a lively and effective framework, fitting channels
for the introduction of historical references and anecdotes,
and convenient resting-points for the scientific discussion.
The style is quite as elaborate and polished as in the best-written
orations, and so far more pleasing than these, since the author
does not often in this field make a vain attempt at pathos.

While these rhetorical and political writings of Cicero
with a philosophic colouring are not devoid of merit, the compiler
on the other hand completely failed, when in the involuntary leisure
of the last years of his life (709-710) he applied himself
to philosophy proper, and with equal peevishness and precipitation
composed in a couple of months a philosophical library.  The receipt
was very simple.  In rude imitation of the popular writings
of Aristotle, in which the form of dialogue was employed
chiefly for the setting forth and criticising of the different
older systems, Cicero stitched together the Epicurean, Stoic,
and Syncretist writings handling the same problem, as they came
or were given to his hand, into a so-called dialogue.  And all
that he did on his own part was, to supply an introduction prefixed
to the new book from the ample collection of prefaces for future works
which he had beside him; to impart a certain popular character,
inasmuch as he interwove Roman examples and references, and sometimes
digressed to subjects irrelevant but more familiar to the writer
and the reader, such as the treatment of the deportment
of the orator in the -De Officiis-; and to exhibit that sort
of bungling, which a man of letters, who has not attained to philosophic
thinking or even to philosophic knowledge and who works rapidly
and boldly, shows in the reproduction of dialectic trains of thought.
In this way no doubt a multitude of thick tomes might very quickly
come into existence--"They are copies," wrote the author himself
to a friend who wondered at his fertility; "they give me little trouble,
for I supply only the words and these I have in abundance."
Against this nothing further could be said; but any one who seeks
classical productions in works so written can only be advised to study
in literary matters a becoming silence.

Professional Sciences.
Latin Philology
Varro

Of the sciences only a single one manifested vigorous life,
that of Latin philology.  The scheme of linguistic and antiquarian
research within the domain of the Latin race, planned by Silo,
was carried out especially by his disciple Varro on the grandest scale.
There appeared comprehensive elaborations of the whole stores
of the language, more especially the extensive grammatical commentaries
of Figulus and the great work of Varro -De Lingua Latina-;
monographs on grammar and the history of the language, such as
Varro's writings on the usage of the Latin language, on synonyms,
on the age of the letters, on the origin of the Latin tongue;
scholia on the older literature, especially on Plautus;
works of literary history, biographies of poets, investigations
into the earlier drama, into the scenic division of the comedies
of Plautus, and into their genuineness.  Latin archaeology,
which embraced the whole older history and the ritual law apart
from practical jurisprudence, was comprehended in Varro's "Antiquities
of Things Human and Divine," which was and for all times remained
the fundamental treatise on the subject (published between 687
and 709).  The first portion, "Of Things Human," described the primeval
age of Rome, the divisions of city and country, the sciences
of the years, months, and days, lastly, the public transactions
at home and in war; in the second half, "Of Things Divine," the state-
theology, the nature and significance of the colleges of experts,
of the holy places, of the religious festivals, of sacrificial
and votive gifts, and lastly of the gods themselves were summarily
unfolded.  Moreover, besides a number of monographs--
e. g. on the descent of the Roman people, on the Roman gentes
descended from Troy, on the tribes--there was added, as a larger
and more independent supplement, the treatise "Of the Life
of the Roman People"--a remarkable attempt at a history of Roman manners,
which sketched a picture of the state of domestic life, finance,
and culture in the regal, the early republican, the Hannibalic,
and the most recent period.  These labours of Varro were based
on an empiric knowledge of the Roman world and its adjacent Hellenic
domain more various and greater in its kind than any other Roman
either before or after him possessed--a knowledge to which living
observation and the study of literature alike contributed.
The eulogy of his contemporaries was well deserved, that Varro
had enabled his countrymen--strangers in their own world--to know
their position in their native land, and had taught the Romans
who and where they were.  But criticism and system will be sought for
in vain.  His Greek information seems to have come from somewhat
confused sources, and there are traces that even in the Roman field
the writer was not free from the influence of the historical
romance of his time.  The matter is doubtless inserted
in a convenient and symmetrical framework, but not classified
or treated methodically; and with all his efforts to bring tradition
and personal observation into harmony, the scientific labours of Varro
are not to be acquitted of a certain implicit faith in tradition
or of an unpractical scholasticism.(38)  The connection with Greek
philology consists in the imitation of its defects more than
of its excellences; for instance, the basing of etymologies
on mere similarity of sound both in Varro himself and in the other
philologues of this epoch runs into pure guesswork and often
into downright absurdity.(39)  In its empiric confidence
and copiousness as well as in its empiric inadequacy and want of method
the Varronian vividly reminds us of the English national philology,
and just like the latter, finds its centre in the study
of the older drama.  We have already observed that the monarchical
literature developed the rules of language in contradistinction
to this linguistic empiricism.(40)  It is in a high degree significant
that there stands at the head of the modern grammarians no less a man
than Caesar himself, who in his treatise on Analogy (given forth
between 696 and 704) first undertook to bring free language
under the power of law.

The Other Professional Sciences

Alongside of this extraordinary stir in the field of philology
The small amount of activity in the other sciences is surprising.
What appeared of importance in philosophy--such as Lucretius'
representation of the Epicurean system in the poetical child-dress
of the pre-Socratic philosophy, and the better writings of Cicero--
produced its effect and found its audience not through its
philosophic contents, but in spite of such contents solely
through its aesthetic form; the numerous translations of Epicurean
writings and the Pythagorean works, such as Varro's great treatise
on the Elements of Numbers and the still more copious one of Figulus
concerning the Gods, had beyond doubt neither scientific
nor formal value.

Even the professional sciences were but feebly cultivated. Varro's
Books on Husbandry written in the form of dialogue are no doubt
more methodical than those of his predecessors Cato and Saserna--
on which accordingly he drops many a side glance of censure--
but have on the whole proceeded more from the study than, like those
earlier works, from living experience.  Of the juristic labours of Varro
and of Servius Sulpicius Rufus (consul in 703) hardly aught more
can be said, than that they contributed to the dialectic
and philosophical embellishment of Roman jurisprudence.  And there is
nothing farther here to be mentioned, except perhaps the three
books of Gaius Matius on cooking, pickling, and making preserves--
so far as we know, the earliest Roman cookery-book, and, as the work
of a man of rank, certainly a phenomenon deserving of  notice.
That mathematics and physics were stimulated by the increased
Hellenistic and utilitarian tendencies of the monarchy, is apparent
from their growing importance in the instruction of youth (41)
and from various practical applications; under which, besides
the reform of the calendar,(42) may perhaps be included the appearance
of wall-maps at this period, the technical improvements
in shipbuilding and in musical instruments, designs and buildings
like the aviary specified by Varro, the bridge of piles over the Rhine
executed by the engineers of Caesar, and even two semicircular
stages of boards arranged for being pushed together, and employed
first separately as two theatres and then jointly as an amphitheatre.
The public exhibition of foreign natural curiosities at the popular
festivals was not unusual; and the descriptions of remarkable animals,
which Caesar has embodied in the reports of his campaigns,
show that, had an Aristotle appeared, he would have again
found his patron-prince.  But such literary performances
as are mentioned in this department are essentially associated
with Neopythagoreanism, such as the comparison of Greek and Barbarian,
i. e. Egyptian, celestial observations by Figulus, and his writings
concerning animals, winds, and generative organs.  After Greek
physical research generally had swerved from the Aristotelian effort
to find amidst individual facts the law, and had more and more
passed into an empiric and mostly uncritical observation of the external
and surprising in nature, natural science when coming forward
as a mystical philosophy of nature, instead of enlightening
and stimulating, could only still more stupefy and paralyze;
and in presence of such a method it was better to rest satisfied
with the platitude which Cicero delivers as Socratic wisdom,
that the investigation of nature either seeks after things
which nobody can know, or after such things as nobody needs to know.

Art
Architecture

If, in fine, we cast a glance at art, we discover here
the same unpleasing phenomena which pervade the whole mental life
of this period.  Building on the part of the state was virtually
brought to a total stand amidst the scarcity of money that marked
the last age of the republic.  We have already spoken of the luxury
in building of the Roman grandees; the architects learned in consequence
of this to be lavish of marble--the coloured sorts such as
the yellow Numidian (Giallo antico) and others came into vogue
at this time, and the marble-quarries of Luna (Carrara)
were now employed for the first time--and began to inlay the floors
of the rooms with mosaic work, to panel the walls with slabs of marble,
or to paint the compartments in imitation of marble--the first steps
towards the subsequent fresco-painting.  But art was not a gainer
by this lavish magnificence.

Arts of Design

In the arts of design connoisseurship and collecting were always
on the increase.  It was a mere affectation of Catonian simplicity,
when an advocate spoke before the jurymen of the works of art
"of a certain Praxiteles"; every one travelled and inspected,
and the trade of the art-ciceroni, or, as they were then called,
the -exegetae-, was none of the worst.  Ancient works of art
were formally hunted after--statues and pictures less, it is true,
than, in accordance with the rude character of Roman luxury,
artistically wrought furniture and ornaments of all sorts for the room
and the table.  As early as that age the old Greek tombs of Capua
and Corinth were ransacked for the sake of the bronze and earthenware
vessels which had been placed in the tomb along with the dead.
for a small statuette of bronze 40,000 sesterces (400 pounds)
were paid, and 200,000 (2000 pounds) for a pair of costly carpets;
a well-wrought bronze cooking machine came to cost more than
an estate.  In this barbaric hunting after art the rich amateur was,
as might be expected, frequently cheated by those who supplied him;
but the economic ruin of Asia Minor in particular so exceedingly rich
in artistic products brought many really ancient and rare ornaments
and works of art into the market, and from Athens, Syracuse,
Cyzicus, Pergamus, Chios, Samos, and other ancient seats of art,
everything that was for sale and very much that was not migrated
to the palaces and villas of the Roman grandees.  We have
already mentioned what treasures of art were to be found within
the house of Lucullus, who indeed was accused, perhaps not unjustly,
of having gratified his interest in the fine arts at the expense
of his duties as a general.  The amateurs of art crowded thither
as they crowd at present to the Villa Borghese, and complained
even then of such treasures being confined to the palaces
and country-houses of the men of quality, where they could be seen
only with difficulty and after special permission from the possessor.
The public buildings on the other hand were far from filled
in like proportion with famous works of Greek masters,
and in many cases there still stood in the temples of the capital
nothing but the old images of the gods carved in wood.
As to the exercise of art there is virtually nothing to report;
there is hardly mentioned by name from this period any Roman sculptor
or painter except a certain Arellius, whose pictures rapidly went off
not on account of their artistic value, but because the cunning reprobate
furnished, in his pictures of the goddesses faithful portraits
of his mistresses for the time being.

Dancing and Music

The importance of music and dancing increased in public
as in domestic life.  We have already set forth how theatrical music
and the dancing-piece attained to an independent standing
in the development of the stage at this period;(43) we may add
that now in Rome itself representations were very frequently given
by Greek musicians, dancers, and declaimers on the public stage--
such as were usual in Asia Minor and generally in the whole Hellenic
and Hellenizing world.(44)  To these fell to be added the musicians
and dancing-girls who exhibited their arts to order at table
and elsewhere, and the special choirs of stringed and wind instruments
and singers which were no longer rare in noble houses.  But that even
the world of quality itself played and sang with diligence, is shown
by the very adoption of music into the cycle of the generally
recognized subjects of instruction;(45) as to dancing, it was,
to say nothing of women, made matter of reproach even against
consulars that they exhibited themselves in dancing performances
amidst a small circle.

Incipient Influence of the Monarchy

Towards the end of this period, however, there appears
with the commencement of the monarchy the beginning of a better time
also in art.  We have already mentioned the mighty stimulus
which building in the capital received, and building throughout
the empire was destined to receive, through Caesar.  Even in the cutting
of the dies of the coins there appears about 700 a remarkable change;
the stamping, hitherto for the most part rude and negligent,
is thenceforward managed with more delicacy and care.

Conclusion

We have reached the end of the Roman republic.  We have seen
it rule for five hundred years in Italy and in the countries
on the Mediterranean; we have seen it brought to ruin in politics
and morals, religion and literature, not through outward violence
but through inward decay, and thereby making room for the new monarchy
of Caesar.  There was in the world, as Caesar found it, much
of the noble heritage of past centuries and an infinite abundance of pomp
and glory, but little spirit, still less taste, and least of all
true delight in life.  It was indeed an old world; and even
the richly-gifted patriotism of Caesar could not make it young again.
The dawn does not return till after the night has fully set in
and run its course.  But yet with him there came to the sorely harassed
peoples on the Mediterranean a tolerable evening after the sultry noon;
and when at length after a long historical night the new day dawned
once more for the peoples, and fresh nations in free self-movement
commenced their race towards new and higher goals, there were found
among them not a few, in which the seed sown by Caesar had sprung up,
and which owed, as they still owe, to him their national individuality.




Notes for Chapter I


1.  IV. VII. Bestowal of Latin Rights on the Italian Celts, 527

2.  It is a significant trait, that a distinguished teacher of
literature, the freedman Staberius Eros, allowed the children of
the proscribed to attend his course gratuitously.

3.  IV. X. Proscription-Lists

4.  IV. IX. Pompeius

5.  IV. IV. Administration under the Restoration

6.  IV. IV. Livius Drusus

7.  IV. IX. Government of Cinna

8.  IV. IX. Pompeius

9.  IV. IX. Sertorius Embarks

10.  IV. VII. Strabo, IV. IX. Dubious Attitude of Strabo

11.  IV. IX. Carbo Assailed on Three Sides of Etruria

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

13.  IV. X. Reorganization of the Senate

14.  It is usual to set down the year 654 as that of Caesar's
birth, because according to Suetonius (Caes. 88), Plutarch (Caes.
69), and Appian (B. C. ii. 149) he was at his death (15 March 710)
in his 56th year; with which also the statement that he was 18
years old at the time of the Sullan proscription (672; Veil. ii.
41) nearly accords.  But this view is utterly inconsistent with
the facts that Caesar filled the aedileship in 689, the praetorship in
692, and the consulship in 695, and that these offices could,
according to the -leges annales-, be held at the very earliest in
the 37th-38th, 40th-41st, and 43rd-44th years of a man's life
respectively.  We cannot conceive why Caesar should have filled all
the curule offices two years before the legal time, and still less
why there should be no mention anywhere of his having done so.
These facts rather suggest the conjecture that, as his birthday
fell undoubtedly on July 12, he was born not in 654, but in 652; so
that in 672 he was in his 20th-21st year, and he died not in his
56th year, but at the age of 57 years 8 months.  In favour of this
latter view we may moreover adduce the circumstance, which has been
strangely brought forward in opposition to it, that Caesar "-paene
puer-" was appointed by Marius and Cinna as Flamen of Jupiter
(Veil. ii. 43); for Marius died in January 668, when Caesar was,
according to the usual view, 13 years 6 months old, and therefore
not "almost," as Velleius says, but actually still a boy, and most
probably for this very reason not at all capable of holding such
a priesthood.  If, again, he was born in July 652, he was at
the death of Marius in his sixteenth year; and with this the expression
in Velleius agrees, as well as the general rule that civil
positions were not assumed before the expiry of the age of boyhood.
Further, with this latter view alone accords the fact that
the -denarii- struck by Caesar about the outbreak of the civil war are
marked with the number LII, probably the year of his life; for
when it began, Caesar's age was according to this view somewhat
over 52 years.  Nor is it so rash as it appears to us who are
accustomed to regular and official lists of births, to charge our
authorities with an error in this respect.  Those four statements
may very well be all traceable to a common source; nor can they at
all lay claim to any very high credibility, seeing that for
the earlier period before the commencement of the -acta diurna-
the statements as to the natal years of even the best known and most
prominent Romans, e. g. as to that of Pompeius, vary in the most
surprising manner. (Comp. Staatsrecht, I. 8 p. 570.)

In the Life of Caesar by Napoleon III (B. 2, ch. 1) it is objected
to this view, first, that the -lex annalis- would point for
Caesar's birth-year not to 652, but to 651; secondly and
especially, that other cases are known where it was not attended
to.  But the first assertion rests on a mistake; for, as
the example of Cicero shows, the -lex annalis- required only that at
the entering on office the 43rd year should be begun, not that it
should be completed.  None of the alleged exceptions to the rule,
moreover, are pertinent.  When Tacitus (Ann. xi. 22) says that
formerly in conferring magistracies no regard was had to age, and
that the consulate and dictatorship were entrusted to quite young
men, he has in view, of course, as all commentators acknowledge,
the earlier period before the issuing of the -leges annales---the
consulship of M. Valerius Corvus at twenty-three, and similar
cases.  The assertion that Lucullus received the supreme magistracy
before the legal age is erroneous; it is only stated (Cicero, Acad.
pr. i. 1) that on the ground of an exceptional clause not more
particularly known to us, in reward for some sort of act performed
by him, he had a dispensation from the legal two years' interval
between the aedileship and praetorship--in reality he was aedile in
675, probably praetor in 677, consul in 680.  That the case of
Pompeius was a totally different one is obvious; but even as to
Pompeius, it is on several occasions expressly stated (Cicero, de
Imp. Pomp, ax, 62; Appian, iii. 88) that the senate released him
from the laws as to age.  That this should have been done with
Pompeius, who had solicited the consulship as a commander-in-chief
crowned with victory and a triumphator, at the head of an army and
after his coalition with Crassus also of a powerful party, we can
readily conceive.  But it would be in the highest degree
surprising, if the same thing should have been done with Caesar on
his candidature for the minor magistracies, when he was of little
more importance than other political beginners; and it would be, if
possible, more surprising still, that, while there is mention of
that--in itself readily understood--exception, there should be no
notice of this more than strange deviation, however naturally such
notices would have suggested themselves, especially with reference
to Octavianus consul at 21 (comp., e. g., Appian, iii. 88).  When
from these irrelevant examples the inference is drawn, "that
the law was little observed in Rome, where distinguished men were
concerned," anything more erroneous than this sentence was never
uttered regarding Rome and the Romans.  The greatness of the Roman
commonwealth, and not less that of its great generals and
statesmen, depends above all things on the fact that the law held
good in their case also.

15.  IV. IX. Spain

16.  At least the outline of these organizations must be assigned
to the years 674, 675, 676, although the execution of them
doubtless belonged, in great part, only to the subsequent years.

17  IV. IX. The Provinces

18.  The following narrative rests substantially on the account of
Licinianus, which, fragmentary as it is at this very point, still
gives important information as to the insurrection of Lepidus.

19.  Under the year 676 Licinianus states (p. 23, Pertz; p. 42,
Bonn); [Lepidus?] -[le]gem frumentari[am] nullo resistente
l[argi]tus est, ut annon[ae] quinque modi popu[lo da]rentur-.
According to this account, therefore, the law of the consuls of 681
Marcus Terentius Lucullus and Gaius Cassius Varus, which Cicero
mentions (in Verr. iii. 70, 136; v. 21, 52), and to which also
Sallust refers (Hist. iii. 61, 19 Dietsch), did not first reestablish
the five -modii-, but only secured the largesses of grain by
regulating the purchases of Sicilian corn, and perhaps made
various alterations of detail.  That the Sempronian law
(IV. III. Alterations on the Constitution By Gaius Gracchus)
allowed every burgess domiciled in Rome to share in the largesses
of grain, is certain.  But the later distribution of grain was not
so extensive as this, for, seeing that the monthly corn of
the Roman burgesses amounted to little more than 33,000 -medimni- =
198,000 -modii- (Cic. Verr. iii. 30, 72), only some 40,000
burgesses at that time received grain, whereas the number of
burgesses domiciled in the capital was certainly far more
considerable.  This arrangement probably proceeded from
the Octavian law, which introduced instead of the extravagant
Sempronian amount "a moderate largess, tolerable for the state and
necessary for the common people" (Cic. de Off. ii. 21, 72, Brut.
62, 222); and to all appearance it is this very law that is
the -lex frumentaria- mentioned by Licinianus.  That Lepidus should have
entered into such a proposal of compromise, accords with his attitude
as regards the restoration of the tribunate.  It is likewise in
keeping with the circumstances that the democracy should find itself
not at all satisfied by the regulation, brought about in this way,
of the distribution of grain (Sallust, l. c.).  The amount of loss
is calculated on the basis of the grain being worth at least double
(IV. III. Alterations on the Constitution By Gaius Gracchus);
when piracy or other causes drove up the price of grain,
a far more considerable loss must have resulted.

20.  From the fragments of the account of Licinianus (p. 44, Bonn)
it is plain that the decree of the senate, -uti Lepidus et Catulus
decretis exercitibus maturrime proficiscerentur- (Sallust, Hist. i.
44 Dietsch), is to be understood not of a despatch of the consuls
before the expiry of their consulship to their proconsular
provinces, for which there would have been no reason, but of their
being sent to Etruria against the revolted Faesulans, just as in
the Catilinarian war the consul Gaius Antonius was despatched to
the same quarter.  The statement of Philippus in Sallust (Hist. i.
48, 4) that Lepidus -ob seditionem provinciam cum exercitu adeptus
est-, is entirely in harmony with this view; for the extraordinary
consular command in Etruria was just as much a -provincia- as
the ordinary proconsular command in Narbonese Gaul.

21.  III. IV. Hannibal's Passage of the Alps

22.  In the recently found fragments of Sallust, which appear to
belong to the campaign of 679, the following words relate to this
incident: -Romanus [exer]citus (of Pompeius) frumenti gra[tia
r]emotus in Vascones i... [it]emque Sertorius mon... e, cuius
multum in[terer]it, ne ei perinde Asiae [iter et Italiae
intercluderetur].




Notes for Chapter II


1.  IV. VIII. New Difficulties

2.  IV. VIII. Preliminaries of Delium, IV. VIII. Peace at Dardanus

3.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

4.  IV. I. Cilicia

5.  IV. I. Piracy

6.  IV. I. Crete

7.  The foundation of the kingdom of Edessa is placed by native
chronicles in 620 (IV. I. The Parthian Empire), but it was not till
some time after its rise that it passed into the hands of the Arabic
dynasty bearing the names of Abgarus and Mannus, which we afterwards
find there.  This dynasty is obviously connected with the settlement
of many Arabs by Tigranes the Great in the region of Edessa,
Callirrhoe, Carrhae (Plin. H. N. v. 20, 85; ax, 86; vi. 28, 142);
respecting which Plutarch also (Luc. 21) states that Tigranes,
changing the habits of the tent-Arabs, settled them nearer to his
kingdom in order by their means to possess himself of the trade.
We may presumably take this to mean that the Bedouins, who were
accustomed to open routes for traffic through their territory and
to levy on these routes fixed transit-dues (Strabo, xvi. 748), were
to serve the great-king as a sort of toll-supervisors, and to levy
tolls for him and themselves at the passage of the Euphrates.
These "Osrhoenian Arabs" (-Orei Arabes-), as Pliny calls them,
must also be the Arabs on Mount Amanus, whom Afranius subdued
(Plut. Pomp. 39).

8.  The disputed question, whether this alleged or real testament
proceeded from Alexander I (d. 666) or Alexander II (d. 673), is
usually decided in favour of the former alternative.  But
the reasons are inadequate; for Cicero (de L. Agr. i. 4, 12; 15, 38;
16, 41) does not say that Egypt fell to Rome in 666, but that it
did so in or after this year; and while the circumstance that
Alexander I died abroad, and Alexander II in Alexandria, has led
some to infer that the treasures mentioned in the testament in
question as lying in Tyre must have belonged to the former, they
have overlooked that Alexander II was killed nineteen days after
his arrival in Egypt (Letronne, Inscr, de I'Egypte, ii. 20), when
his treasure might still very well be in Tyre.  On the other hand
the circumstance that the second Alexander was the last genuine
Lagid is decisive, for in the similar acquisitions of Pergamus,
Cyrene, and Bithynia it was always by the last scion of
the legitimate ruling family that Rome was appointed heir.  The ancient
constitutional law, as it applied at least to the Roman client-
states, seems to have given to the reigning prince the right of
ultimate disposal of his kingdom not absolutely, but only in
the absence of -agnati- entitled to succeed.  Comp. Gutschmid's remark
in the German translation of S. Sharpe's History of Egypt, ii. 17.

Whether the testament was genuine or spurious, cannot be ascertained,
and is of no great moment; there are no special reasons for
assuming a forgery.

9.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

10.  IV. VIII. Cyrene Roman

11.  V. I. Collapse of the Power of Sertorius

12.  IV. IV. The Provinces

13.  IV. VIII. Lucullus and the Fleet on the Asiatic Coast

14.  IV. VIII. Flaccus Arrives in Asia

15.  III. V. Attitude of the Romans, III. VI. The African Expedition
of Scipio

16.  That Tigranocerta was situated in the region of Mardln some
two days' march to the west of Nisibis, has been proved by
the investigation instituted on the spot by Sachau ("-Ueber die Lage
von Tigranokerta-," Abh. der Berliner Akademie, 1880), although
the more exact fixing of the locality proposed by Sachau is not beyond
doubt.  On the other hand, his attempt to clear up the campaign of
Lucullus encounters the difficulty that, on the route assumed in
it, a crossing of the Tigris is in reality out of the question.

17.  Cicero (De Imp. Pomp. 9, 23) hardly means any other than one
of the rich temples of the province Elymais, whither the predatory
expeditions of the Syrian and Parthian kings were regularly
directed (Strabo, xvi. 744; Polyb, xxxi. 11. 1 Maccab. 6, etc.),
and probably this as the best known; on no account can
the allusion be to the temple of Comana or any shrine at all in
the kingdom of Pontus.

18.  V. II. Preparations of Mithradates, 328, 334

19.  V. II. Invasion of Pontus by Lucullus

20.  V. II. Roman Preparations

21.  V. I. Want of Leaders

22.  V. II. Maritime War

23.  IV. I. Crete

24.  IV. II. The First Sicilian Slave War, IV. IV. Revolts of the Slaves

25.  These enactments gave rise to the conception of robbery
as a separate crime, while the older law comprehended robbery
under theft.

26.  V. II. The Pirates in the Mediterranean

27.  As the line was thirty-five miles long (Sallust, Hist, iv, 19,
Dietsch; Plutarch, Crass. 10), it probably passed not from
Squillace to Pizzo, but more to the north, somewhere near
Castrovillari and Cassano, over the peninsula which is here in
a straight line about twenty-seven miles broad.

28.  That Crassus was invested with the supreme command in 682,
follows from the setting aside of the consuls (Plutarch, Crass.
10); that the winter of 682-683 was spent by the two armies at
the Bruttian wall, follows from the "snowy night" (Plut. l. c).




Notes for Chapter III


1.  IV. X. Assignations to the Soldiers

2.  V. I. Pompeius

3.  IV. X. Abolition of the Gracchan Institutions

4.  V. II. The Insurrection Takes Shape

5.  V. III. Attacks on the Senatorial Tribunals

6.  V. I. Insurrection of Lepidus

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

8.  V. II. Mutiny of the Soldiers

9.  IV. IV. Marius Commander-in-Chief

10.  The extraordinary magisterial power (-pro consule-, -pro
praetore-, -pro quaestore-) might according to Roman state-law
originate in three ways.  Either it arose out of the principle
which held good for the non-urban magistracy, that the office
continued up to the appointed legal term, but the official
authority up to the arrival of the successor, which was the oldest,
simplest, and most frequent case.  Or it arose in the way of
the appropriate organs--especially the comitia, and in later times also
perhaps the senate--nominating a chief magistrate not contemplated
in the constitution, who was otherwise on a parity with
the ordinary magistrate, but in token of the extraordinary nature of
his office designated himself merely "instead of a praetor" or "of
a consul." To this class belong also the magistrates nominated in
the ordinary way as quaestors, and then extraordinarily furnished
with praetorian or even consular official authority (-quaestores
pro praetore- or -pro consule-); in which quality, for example,
Publius Lentulus Marcellinus went in 679 to Cyrene (Sallust, Hist.
ii. 39 Dietsch), Gnaeus Piso in 689 to Hither Spain (Sallust, Cat.
19), and Cato in 696 to Cyprus (Vell. ii. 45).  Or, lastly,
the extraordinary magisterial authority was based on the right of
delegation vested in the supreme magistrate.  If he left the bounds
of his province or otherwise was hindered from administering his
office, he was entitled to nominate one of those about him as his
substitute, who was then called -legatus pro praetore-(Sallust,
lug. 36, 37, 38), or, if the choice fell on the quaestor, -quaestor
pro praetore- (Sallust, Iug. 103).  In like manner he was entitled,
if he had no quaestor, to cause the quaestorial duties to be
discharged by one of his train, who was then called -legatus pro
quaestore-, a name which is to be met with, perhaps for the first
time, on the Macedonian tetradrachms of Sura, lieutenant of
the governor of Macedonia, 665-667.  But it was contrary to the nature
of delegation and therefore according to the older state-law
inadmissible, that the supreme magistrate should, without having
met with any hindrance in the discharge of his functions,
immediately upon his entering on office invest one or more of
his subordinates with supreme official authority; and so far
the -legati pro praetore-of the proconsul Pompeius were an innovation,
and already similar in kind to those who played so great a part in
the times of the Empire.

11.  V. III. Attempts to Restore the Tribunician Power

12.  According to the legend king Romulus was torn in pieces
by the senators.

13.  IV. II. Further Plans of Gracchus




Notes for Chapter IV


1.  V. III. Senate, Equites, and Populares

2.  V. II. Metellus Subdues Crete

3.  [Literally "twenty German miles"; but the breadth of the island
does not seem in reality half so much.--Tr.]

4.  V. II. Renewal of the War

5.  Pompeius distributed among his soldiers and officers as
presents 384,000,000 sesterces (=16,000 talents, App. Mithr.
116); as the officers received 100,000,000 (Plin. H. N. xxxvii. 2,
16) and each of the common soldiers 6000 sesterces (Plin., App.),
the army still numbered at its triumph about 40,000 men.

6.  V. II. Sieges of the Pontic Cities

7.  V. II. All the Armenian Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans

8.  V. II. Syria under Tigranes

9.  V. II. Syria under Tigranes

10.  IV. I. The Jews

11.  V. II. Siege and Battle of Tigranocerta

12.  Thus the Sadducees rejected the doctrine of angels and spirits
and the resurrection of the dead.  Most of the traditional points
of difference between Pharisees and Sadducees relate to subordinate
questions of ritual, jurisprudence, and the calendar.  It is
a characteristic fact, that the victorious Pharisees have introduced
those days, on which they definitively obtained the superiority in
particular controversies or ejected heretical members from
the supreme consistory, into the list of the memorial and festival
days of the nation.

13.  V. II. All the Armenian Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans

14.  V. II. Beginning of the Armenian War, V. II. All the Armenian
Conquests Pass into the Hands of the Romans

15.  Pompeius spent the winter of 689-690 still in
the neighbourhood of the Caspian Sea (Dio, xxxvii. 7).  In 690 he first
reduced the last strongholds still offering resistance in
the kingdom of Pontus, and then moved slowly, regulating matters
everywhere, towards the south.  That the organization of Syria
began in 690 is confirmed by the fact that the Syrian provincial
era begins with this year, and by Cicero's statement respecting
Commagene (Ad Q. fr. ii. 12, 2; comp. Dio, xxxvii. 7).  During
the winter of 690-691 Pompeius seems to have had his headquarters in
Antioch (Joseph, xiv. 3, 1, 2, where the confusion has been
rectified by Niese in the Hermes, xi. p. 471).

16.  III. V. New Warlike Preparations in Rome

17.  III. IV. War Party and Peace Party in Carthage

18.  Orosius indeed (vi. 6) and Dio (xxxvii. 15), both of them
doubtless following Livy, make Pompeius get to Petra and occupy
the city or even reach the Red Sea; but that he, on the contrary, soon
after receiving the news of the death of Mithradates, which came to
him on his march towards Jerusalem, returned from Syria to Pontus,
is stated by Plutarch (Pomp. 41, 42) and is confirmed by Floras (i.
39) and Josephus (xiv. 3, 3, 4).  If king Aretas figures in
the bulletins among those conquered by Pompeius, this is
sufficiently accounted for by his withdrawal from Jerusalem
at the instigation of Pompeius.

19.  V. II. Renewal of the War, V. IV. Variance between Mithradates
and Tigranes

20.  This view rests on the narrative of Plutarch (Pomp. 36) which
is supported by Strabo's (xvi. 744) description of the position of
the satrap of Elymais.  It is an embellishment of the matter, when
in the lists of the countries and kings conquered by Pompeius Media
and its king Darius are enumerated (Diodorus, Fr, Vat. p. 140;
Appian, Mithr. 117); and from this there has been further concocted
the war of Pompeius with the Medes (Veil. ii. 40; Appian, Mithr.
106, 114) and then even his expedition to Ecbatana (Oros. vi. 5).
A confusion with the fabulous town of the same name on Carmel has
hardly taken place here; it is simply that intolerable
exaggeration--apparently originating in the grandiloquent and
designedly ambiguous bulletins of Pompeius--which has converted his
razzia against the Gaetulians (p. 94) into a march to the west
coast of Africa (Plut. Pomp. 38), his abortive expedition against
the Nabataeans into a conquest of the city of Petra, and his award
as to the boundaries of Armenia into a fixing of the boundary of
the Roman empire beyond Nisibis.

21.  The war which this Antiochus is alleged to have waged with
Pompeius (Appian, Mithr. 106, 117) is not very consistent with
the treaty which he concluded with Lucullus (Dio, xxxvi. 4), and his
undisturbed continuance in his sovereignty; presumably it has been
concocted simply from the circumstance, that Antiochus of Commagene
figured among the kings subdued by Pompeius.

22.  To this Cicero's reproach presumably points (De Off. iii. 12,
49): -piratas immunes habemus, socios vectigales-; in so far,
namely, as those pirate-colonies probably had the privilege of
immunity conferred on them by Pompeius, while, as is well known,
the provincial communities dependent on Rome were, as a rule,
liable to taxation.

23.  IV. VIII. Pontus

24.  V. IV. Battle at Nicopolis

25.  V. II. Defeat of the Romans in Pontus at Ziela

26.  V. IV. Pompeius Take the Supreme Command against Mithradates

27.  IV. VIII. Weak Counterpreparations of the Romans ff.

28.  V. II. Egypt not Annexed

29.  V. IV. Urban Communities




Notes for Chapter V


1.  V. III. Renewal of the Censorship

2.  IV. VI. Political Projects of Marius

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

4.  IV. VII. The Sulpician Laws

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

6.  IV. VI. And Overpowered

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

8.  Any one who surveys the whole state of the political relations
of this period will need no special proofs to help him to see that
the ultimate object of the democratic machinations in 688 et seq.
was not the overthrow of the senate, but that of Pompeius.  Yet
such proofs are not wanting.  Sallust states that the Gabinio-
Manilian laws inflicted a mortal blow on the democracy (Cat. 39);
that the conspiracy of 688-689 and the Servilian rogation were
specially directed against Pompeius, is likewise attested (Sallust
Cat. 19; Val. Max. vi. 2, 4; Cic. de Lege Agr. ii. 17, 46).
Besides the attitude of Crassus towards the conspiracy alone shows
sufficiently that it was directed against Pompeius.

9.  V. V. Transpadanes

10.  Plutarch, Crass. 13; Cicero, de Lege agr. ii. 17, 44.  To this
year (689) belongs Cicero's oration -de rege Alexandrino-, which
has been incorrectly assigned to the year 698.  In it Cicero
refutes, as the fragments clearly show, the assertion of Crassus,
that Egypt had been rendered Roman property by the testament of
king Alexander.  This question of law might and must have been
discussed in 689; but in 698 it had been deprived of its
significance through the Julian law of 695.  In 698 moreover
the discussion related not to the question to whom Egypt belonged, but
to the restoration of the king driven out by a revolt, and in this
transaction which is well known to us Crassus played no part.
Lastly, Cicero after the conference of Luca was not at all in
a position seriously to oppose one of the triumvirs.

11.  V. IV. Pompeius Proceeds to Colchis

12.  V. III. Attacks on the Senatorial Tribunals, V. III. Renewal
of the Censorship

13.  The -Ambrani- (Suet. Caes. 9) are probably not the Ambrones
named along with the Cimbri (Plutarch, Mar. 19), but a slip of
the pen for -Arverni-.

14.  This cannot well be expressed more naively than is done in
the memorial ascribed to his brother (de pet. cons. i, 5; 13, 51, 53;
in 690); the brother himself would hardly have expressed his mind
publicly with so much frankness.  In proof of this unprejudiced
persons will read not without interest the second oration against
Rullus, where the "first democratic consul," gulling the friendly
public in a very delectable fashion, unfolds to it the "true democracy."

15.  His epitaph still extant runs: -Cn. Calpurnius Cn. f. Piso
quaestor fro pr. ex s. c. proviniciam Hispaniam citeriorem optinuit-.

16.  V. V. Failure of the First Plans of Conspiracy

17.  V. III. Continued Subsistence of the Sullan Constitution

18.  IV. XII. Priestly Colleges

19.  IV. VII. Economic Crisis

20.  V. V. Rehabilitation of Saturninus and Marius

21.  Such an apology is the -Catilina- of Sallust, which was
published by the author, a notorious Caesarian, after the year 708,
either under the monarchy of Caesar or more probably under
the triumvirate of his heirs; evidently as a treatise with a political
drift, which endeavours to bring into credit the democratic party--
on which in fact the Roman monarchy was based--and to clear
Caesar's memory from the blackest stain that rested on it; and with
the collateral object of whitewashing as far as possible the uncle
of the triumvir Marcus Antonius (comp. e. g. c. 59 with Dio,
xxxvii. 39).  The Jugurtha of the same author is in an exactly
similar way designed partly to expose the pitifulness of
the oligarchic government, partly to glorify the Coryphaeus of
the democracy, Gaius Marius.  The circumstance that the adroit author
keeps the apologetic and inculpatory character of these writings of
his in the background, proves, not that they are not partisan
treatises, but that they are good ones.

22.  V. XII. Greek Literati in Rome




Notes for Chapter VI


1.  V. IV. Aggregate Results

2.  The impression of the first address, which Pompeius made to
the burgesses after his return, is thus described by Cicero (ad Att. i.
14): -prima contio Pompei non iucunda miseris (the rabble), inanis
improbis (the democrats), beatis (the wealthy) non grata, bonis
(the aristocrats) non gravis; itaque frigebat-.

3.  IV. X. Regulating of the Qualifications for Office

4.  V. V. New Projects of the Conspirators

5.  V. VI. Pompeius without Influence

6.  IV. IX. Government of Cinna, IV. X. Punishments Inflicted
on Particular Communities

7.  IV. XII. Oriental Religions in Italy

8.  V. V. Transpadanes

9.  IV. X. Cisalpine Gaul Erected into a Province

10.  V. IV. Cyprus Annexed

11.  IV. VI. Violent Proceedings in the Voting

12.  V. IV. Cyprus Annexed




Notes for Chapter VII


1.  IV. I. The Callaeci Conquered

2.  IV. IX. Spain

3.  V. I. Renewed Outbreak of the Spanish Insurrection

4.  V. I. Pompeius in Gaul

5.  V. I. Indefinite and Perilous Character of the Sertorian War

6.  V. V. Conviction and Arrest of the Conspirators in the Capital

7.  V. I. Pompeius Puts and End to the Insurrection

8.  IV. II. Scipio Aemilianus

9.  There was found, for instance, at Vaison in the Vocontian
canton an inscription written in the Celtic language with
the ordinary Greek alphabet.  It runs thus: --segouaros ouilloneos
tooutious namausatis eiorou beileisamisosin nemeiton--.  The last
word means "holy."

10.  An immigration of Belgic Celts to Britain continuing for
a considerable time seems indicated by the names of English tribes on
both banks of the Thames borrowed from Belgic cantons; such as
the Atrebates, the Belgae, and even the Britanni themselves, which word
appears to have been transferred from the Brittones settled on
the Somme below Amiens first to an English canton and then to the whole
island.  The English gold coinage was also derived from the Belgic
and originally identical with it.

11.  The first levy of the Belgic cantons exclusive of the Remi,
that is, of the country between the Seine and the Scheldt and
eastward as far as the vicinity of Rheims and Andernach, from 9000
to 10,000 square miles, is reckoned at about 300,000 men; in
accordance with which, if we regard the proportion of the first
levy to the whole men capable of bearing arms specified for
the Bellovaci as holding good generally, the number of the Belgae
capable of bearing arms would amount to 500,000 and the whole
population accordingly to at least 2,000,000.  The Helvetii with
the adjoining peoples numbered before their migration 336,000; if
we assume that they were at that time already dislodged from
the right bank of the Rhine, their territory may be estimated at nearly
1350 square miles.  Whether the serfs are included in this, we can
the less determine, as we do not know the form which slavery
assumed amongst the Celts; what Caesar relates (i. 4) as to
the slaves, clients, and debtors of Orgetorix tells rather in favour
of, than against, their being included.

That, moreover, every such attempt to make up by combinations for
the statistical basis, in which ancient history is especially
deficient, must be received with due caution, will be at once
apprehended by the intelligent reader, while he will not absolutely
reject it on that account.

12.  "In the interior of Transalpine Gaul on the Rhine," says
Scrofa in Varro, De R. R. i. 7, 8, "when I commanded there, I
traversed some districts, where neither the vine nor the olive nor
the fruit-tree appears, where they manure the fields with white
Pit-chalk, where they have neither rock--nor sea-salt, but make use
of the saline ashes of certain burnt wood instead of salt." This
description refers probably to the period before Caesar and to
the eastern districts of the old province, such as the country of
the Allobroges; subsequently Pliny (H. N. xvii. 6, 42 seq.) describes
at length the Gallo-Britannic manuring with marl.

13.  "The Gallic oxen especially are of good repute in Italy, for
field labour forsooth; whereas the Ligurian are good for nothing."
(Varro, De R. R. ii. 5, 9).  Here, no doubt, Cisalpine Gaul is
referred to, but the cattle-husbandry there doubtless goes back to
the Celtic epoch.  Plautus already mentions the "Gallic ponies"
(-Gallici canterii-, Aul. iii. 5. 21).  "It is not every race that
is suited for the business of herdsmen; neither the Bastulians nor
the Turdulians" (both in Andalusia) "are fit for it; the Celts are
the best, especially as respects beasts for riding and burden
(-iumenta-)" (Varro, De R. R. ii. 10, 4).

14.  We are led to this conclusion by the designation of
the trading or "round" as contrasted with the "long" or war vessel, and
the similar contrast of the "oared ships" (--epikopoi veies--) and
the "merchantmen" (--olkades--, Dionys. iii. 44); and moreover by
the smallness of the crew in the trading vessels, which in the very
largest amounted to not more than 200 men (Rhein. Mus. N. F. xi.
625), while in the ordinary galley of three decks there were
employed 170 rowers (III. II. The Romans Build A Fleet). Comp. Movers,
Phoen. ii. 3, 167 seq.

15.  IV. V. Transalpine Relations of Rome

16.  IV. V. Defeat of Longinus

17.  IV. V. Transalpine Relations of Rome

18.  This remarkable word must have been in use as early as
the sixth century of Rome among the Celts in the valley of the Po; for
Ennius is already acquainted with it, and it can only have reached
the Italians at so early a period from that quarter.  It is not
merely Celtic, however, but also German, the root of our "Amt," as
indeed the retainer-system itself is common to the Celts and
the Germans.  It would be of great historical importance to ascertain
whether the word--and so also the thing--came to the Celts from
the Germans, or to the Germans from the Celts.  If, as is usually
supposed, the word is originally German and primarily signified
the servant standing in battle "against the back" (-and-= against,
-bak- = back) of his master, this is not wholly irreconcileable with
the singularly early occurrence of this word among the Celts.
According to all analogy the right to keep -ambacti-, that is,
--doouloi misthotoi--, cannot have belonged to the Celtic nobility
from the outset, but must only have developed itself gradually in
antagonism to the older monarchy and to the equality of the free
commons.  If thus the system of -ambacti- among the Celts was not
an ancient and national, but a comparatively recent institution, it
is--looking to the relation which had subsisted for centuries
between the Celts and Germans, and which is to be explained farther
on--not merely possible but even probable that the Celts, in Italy
as in Gaul, employed Germans chiefly as those hired servants-at-
arms.  The "Swiss guard" would therefore in that case be some
thousands of years older than people suppose.  Should the term by
which the Romans, perhaps after the example of the Celts, designate
the Germans as a nation-the name -Germani---be really of Celtic
origin, this obviously accords very well with that hypothesis.--No
doubt these assumptions must necessarily give way, should the word
-ambactus- be explained in a satisfactory way from a Celtic root;
as in fact Zeuss (Gramm. p. 796), though doubtfully, traces it to
-ambi- = around and -aig- = -agere-, viz. one moving round or moved
round, and so attendants, servants.  The circumstance that the word
occurs also as a Celtic proper name (Zeuss, p. 77), and is perhaps
preserved in the Cambrian -amaeth- = peasant, labourer (Zeuss, p.
156), cannot decide the point either way,

19.  From the Celtic words -guerg- = worker and -breth- = judgment.

20.  IV. V. Transalpine Relations of Rome

21.  The position which such a federal general occupied with
reference to his troops, is shown by the accusation of high treason
raised against Vercingetorix (Caesar, B. G. vii. 20).

22.  IV. V. The Cimbri

23.  II. IV. The Celts Assail the Etruscans in Northern Italy

24.  V. VII. Art and Science

25.  Caesar's Suebi thus were probably the Chatti; but that
designation certainly belonged in Caesar's time, and even much
later, also to every other German stock which could be described as
a regularly wandering one.  Accordingly if, as is not to be
doubted, the "king of the Suebi" in Mela (iii. i) and Pliny (H. N.
ii. 67, 170) was Ariovistus, it by no means therefore follows that
Ariovistus was a Chattan.  The Marcomani cannot be demonstrated as
a distinct people before Marbod; it is very possible that the word
up to that point indicates nothing but what it etymologically
signifies--the land, or frontier, guard.  When Caesar (i, 51)
mentions Marcomani among the peoples fighting in the army of
Ariovistus, he may in this instance have misunderstood a merely
appellative designation, just as he has decidedly done in
the case of the Suebi.

26.  IV. V. The Tribes at the Sources of the Rhine and Along
the Danube

27.  IV. V. The Tribes at the Sources of the Rhine and Along
the Danube

28.  IV. V. Teutones in the Province of Gaul

29.  The arrival of Ariovistus in Gaul has been placed, according
to Caesar, i. 36, in 683, and the battle of Admagetobriga (for such
was the name of the place now usually, in accordance with a false
inscription, called Magetobriga), according to Caesar i. 35 and
Cicero Ad. Att. i. 19, in 693.

30.  V. VII. Wars and Revolts There

31.  That we may not deem this course of things incredible, or even
impute to it deeper motives than ignorance and laziness in
statesmen, we shall do well to realize the frivolous tone in which
a distinguished senator like Cicero expresses himself in his
correspondence respecting these important Transalpine affairs.

32.  IV. V. Inroad of the Helvetii into Southern Gaul

33.  According to the uncorrected calendar.  According to
the current rectification, which however here by no means rests on
sufficiently trustworthy data, this day corresponds to the 16th of
April of the Julian calendar.

34.  IV. V. The Cimbri, Teutones, and Helvetii Unite

35.  -Julia Equestris-, where the last surname is to be taken as in
other colonies of Caesar the surnames of sextanorum, decimanorum,
etc.  It was Celtic or German horsemen of Caesar, who, of course
with the bestowal of the Roman or, at any rate, Latin franchise,
received land-allotments there.

36.  Goler (Caesars gall. Krieg, p. 45, etc.) thinks that he has
found the field of battle at Cernay not far from Muhlhausen, which,
on the whole, agrees with Napoleon's (Precis, p. 35) placing of
the battle-field in the district of Belfort.  This hypothesis, although
not certain, suits the circumstances of the case; for the fact that
Caesar required seven days' march for the short space from Besancon
to that point, is explained by his own remark (i. 41) that he had
taken a circuit of fifty miles to avoid the mountain paths; and
the whole description of the pursuit continued as far as the Rhine, and
evidently not lasting for several days but ending on the very day
of the battle, decides--the authority of tradition being equally
balanced--in favour of the view that the battle was fought five,
not fifty, miles from the Rhine.  The proposal of Rustow
(-Einleitung zu Caesars Comm-. p. 117) to transfer the field of
battle to the upper Saar rests on a misunderstanding.  The corn
expected from the Sequani, Leuci, Lingones was not to come to
the Roman army in the course of their march against Ariovistus, but to
be delivered at Besancon before their departure, and taken by
the troops along with them; as is clearly apparent from the fact that
Caesar, while pointing his troops to those supplies, comforts them
at the same time with the hope of corn to be brought in on
the route.  From Besancon Caesar commanded the region of Langres and
Epinal, and, as may be well conceived, preferred to levy his
requisitions there rather than in the exhausted districts from
which he came.

37.  This seems the simplest hypothesis regarding the origin of
these Germanic settlements.  That Ariovistus settled those peoples
on the middle Rhine is probable, because they fight in his army
(Caes. i. 51) and do not appear earlier; that Caesar left them in
possession of their settlements is probable, because he in presence
of Ariovistus declared himself ready to tolerate the Germans
already settled in Gaul (Caes. i. 35, 43), and because we find them
afterwards in these abodes.  Caesar does not mention the directions
given after the battle concerning these Germanic settlements,
because he keeps silence on principle regarding all the organic
arrangements made by him in Gaul.

38.  IV. V. The Cimbri, Teutones, and Helvetii Unite

39.  III. II. The Romans Build a Fleet

40.  V. I. Pompeius in Gaul

41.  V. VII. The Germans on the Lower Rhine

42.  The nature of the case as well as Caesar's express statement
proves that the passages of Caesar to Britain were made from ports
of the coast between Calais and Boulogne to the coast of Kent.
A more exact determination of the localities has often been
attempted, but without success.  All that is recorded is, that on
the first voyage the infantry embarked at one port, the cavalry at
another distant from the former eight miles in an easterly
direction (iv. 22, 23, 28), and that the second voyage was made
from that one of those two ports which Caesar had found most
convenient, the (otherwise not further mentioned) Portus Itius,
distant from the British coast 30 (so according to the MSS. of
Caesar v. 2) or 40 miles (=320 stadia, according to Strabo iv. 5,
2, who doubtless drew his account from Caesar).  From Caesar's
words (iv. 21) that he had chosen "the shortest crossing," we may
doubtless reasonably infer that he crossed not the Channel but
the Straits of Calais, but by no means that he crossed the latter by
the mathematically shortest line.  It requires the implicit faith
of local topographers to proceed to the determination of
the locality with such data in hand--data of which the best in itself
becomes almost useless from the variation of the authorities as to
the number; but among the many possibilities most may perhaps be
said in favour of the view that the Itian port (which Strabo l. c.
is probably right in identifying with that from which the infantry
crossed in the first voyage) is to be sought near Ambleteuse to
the west of Cape Gris Nez, and the cavalry-harbour near Ecale (Wissant)
to the east of the same promontory, and that the landing took place
to the east of Dover near Walmer Castle.

43.  That Cotta, although not lieutenant-general of Sabinus, but
like him legate, was yet the younger and less esteemed general and
was probably directed in the event of a difference to yield, may be
inferred both from the earlier services of Sabinus and from
the fact that, where the two are named together (iv. 22, 38; v. 24, 26,
52; vi. 32; otherwise in vi. 37) Sabinus regularly takes
precedence, as also from the narrative of the catastrophe itself.
Besides we cannot possibly suppose that Caesar should have placed
over a camp two officers with equal authority, and have made no
arrangement at all for the case of a difference of opinion.
the five cohorts are not counted as part of a legion (comp. vi. 32, 33)
any more than the twelve cohorts at the Rhine bridge (vi. 29, comp.
32, 33), and appear to have consisted of detachments of other
portions of the army, which had been assigned to reinforce this
camp situated nearest to the Germans.

44.  V. VII. Subjugation of the Belgae

45.  IV. V. War with the Allobroges and Arverni

46.  V. VII. Cantonal Constitution

47.  This, it is true, was only possible, so long as offensive
weapons chiefly aimed at cutting and stabbing.  In the modern mode
of warfare, as Napoleon has excellently explained, this system has
become inapplicable, because with our offensive weapons operating
from a distance the deployed position is more advantageous than
the concentrated.  In Caesar's time the reverse was the case.

48.  This place has been sought on a rising ground which is still
named Gergoie, a league to the south of the Arvernian capital
Nemetum, the modern Clermont; and both the remains of rude
fortress-walls brought to light in excavations there, and
the tradition of the name which is traced in documents up to the tenth
century, leave no room for doubt as to the correctness of this
determination of the locality.  Moreover it accords, as with
the other statements of Caesar, so especially with the fact that he
pretty clearly indicates Gergovia as the chief place of the Arverni
(vii. 4).  We shall have accordingly to assume, that the Arvernians
after their defeat were compelled to transfer their settlement from
Gergovia to the neighbouring less strong Nemetum.

49.  The question so much discussed of late, whether Alesia is not
rather to be identified with Alaise (25 kilometres to the south of
Besancon, dep. Doubs), has been rightly answered in the negative by
all judicious inquirers.

50.  This is usually sought at Capdenac not far from Figeac; Goler
has recently declared himself in favour of Luzech to the west of
Cahors, a site which had been previously suggested.

51.  This indeed, as may readily be conceived, is not recorded by
Caesar himself, but an intelligible hint on this subject is given
by Sallust (Hist. i. 9 Kritz), although he too wrote as a partisan
of Caesar.  Further proofs are furnished by the coins.

52.  Thus we read on a -semis- which a Vergobretus of the Lexovii
(Lisieux, dep. Calvados) caused to be struck, the following
inscription: -Cisiambos Cattos vercobreto; simissos (sic) publicos
Lixovio-.  The often scarcely legible writing and the incredibly
wretched stamping of these coins are in excellent harmony with
their stammering Latin.

53.  V. VII. Caesar and Ariovistus

54.  V. VII. The Helvetii Sent Back to Their Original Abodes

55.  V. VII. Beginning of the Struggle

56.  IV. V. Taurisci




Notes for Chapter VIII


1.  This is the meaning of -cantorum convitio contiones celebrare-
(Cic. pro Sest. 55, 118).

2.  V. VI. Clodius

3.  IV. V. The Victory and the Parties

4.  Cato was not yet in Rome when Cicero spoke on 11th March 698 in
favour of Sestius (Pro Sest. 28, 60) and when the discussion took
place in the senate in consequence of the resolutions of Luca
respecting Caesar's legions (Plut. Caes. 21); it is not till
the discussions at the beginning of 699 that we find him once more
busy, and, as he travelled in winter (Plut.  Cato Min. 38), he thus
returned to Rome in the end of 698.  He cannot therefore, as has
been mistakenly inferred from Asconius (p. 35, 53), have defended
Milo in Feb. 698.

5.  -Me asinum germanum fuisse- (Ad Att. iv. 5, 3).

6.  This palinode is the still extant oration on the Provinces to
be assigned to the consuls of 699.  It was delivered in the end of
May 698.  The pieces contrasting with it are the orations for
Sestius and against Vatinius and that upon the opinion of
the Etruscan soothsayers, dating from the months of March and April,
in which the aristocratic regime is glorified to the best of his
ability and Caesar in particular is treated in a very cavalier
tone.  It was but reasonable that Cicero should, as he himself
confesses (Ad Att. iv. 5, 1), be ashamed to transmit even to
intimate friends that attestation of his resumed allegiance.

7.  This is not stated by our authorities.  But the view that
Caesar levied no soldiers at all from the Latin communities, that
is to say from by far the greater part of his province, is in
itself utterly incredible, and is directly refuted by the fact that
the opposition-party slightingly designates the force levied by
Caesar as "for the most part natives of the Transpadane colonies"
(Caes. B. C. iii. 87); for here the Latin colonies of Strabo
(Ascon. in Pison. p. 3; Sueton. Caes. 8) are evidently meant.
Yet there is no trace of Latin cohorts in Caesar's Gallic army;
on the contrary according to his express statements all the recruits
levied by him in Cisalpine Gaul were added to the legions or
distributed into legions.  It is possible that Caesar combined
with the levy the bestowal of the franchise; but more probably he
adhered in this matter to the standpoint of his party, which did
not so much seek to procure for the Transpadanes the Roman
franchise as rather regarded it as already legally belonging to
them (iv. 457).  Only thus could the report spread, that Caesar had
introduced of his own authority the Roman municipal constitution
among the Transpadane communities (Cic. Ad Att. v. 3, 2; Ad Fam.
viii. 1, 2).  This hypothesis too explains why Hirtius designates
the Transpadane towns as "colonies of Roman burgesses" (B. G. viii.
24), and why Caesar treated the colony of Comum founded by him as
a burgess-colony (Sueton. Caes. 28; Strabo, v. 1, p. 213; Plutarch,
Caes. 29), while the moderate party of the aristocracy conceded to
it only the same rights as to the other Transpadane communities,
viz. Latin rights, and the ultras even declared the civic rights
conferred on the settlers as altogether null, and consequently did
not concede to the Comenses the privileges attached to the holding
of a Latin municipal magistracy (Cic. Ad Att. v. 11, 2; Appian, B.
C. ii. 26). Comp. Hermes, xvi. 30.

8.  V. VII. Fresh Violations of the Rhine-Boundary by the Germans

9.  The collection handed down to us is full of references to
the events of 699 and 700 and was doubtless published in the latter
year; the most recent event, which it mentions, is the prosecution
of Vatinius (Aug. 700). The statement of Hieronymus that Catullus
died in 697-698 requires therefore to be altered only by a few
years. From the circumstance that Vatinius "swears falsely by his
consulship," it has been erroneously inferred that the collection
did not appear till after the consulate of Vatinius (707); it
only follows from it that Vatinius, when the collection appeared,
might already reckon on becoming consul in a definite year,
for which he had every reason as early as 700; for his name
certainly stood on the list of candidates agreed on at Luca
(Cicero, Ad. Att. iv. 8 b. 2).

10.  The well-known poem of Catullus (numbered as xxix.)
was written in 699 or 700 after Caesar's Britannic expedition
and before the death of Julia:

-Quis hoc potest videre, quis potest pati, Nisi impudicus et vorax
et aleo, Mamurram habere quod comata Gallia Habebat ante et ultima
Britannia-? etc.

Mamurra of Formiae, Caesar's favourite and for a time during
the Gallic wars an officer in his army, had, presumably a short time
before the composition of this poem, returned to the capital and
was in all likelihood then occupied with the building of his much-
talked-of marble palace furnished with lavish magnificence on
the Caelian hill. The Iberian booty mentioned in the poem must have
reference to Caesar's governorship of Further Spain, and Mamurra
must even then, as certainly afterwards in Gaul, have been found at
Caesar's headquarters; the Pontic booty presumably has reference to
the war of Pompeius against Mithradates, especially as according to
the hint of the poet it was not merely Caesar that enriched Mamurra.

More innocent than this virulent invective, which was bitterly felt
by Caesar (Suet. Caes. 73), is another nearly contemporary poem of
the same author (xi.) to which we may here refer, because with its
pathetic introduction to an anything but pathetic commission it
very cleverly quizzes the general staff of the new regents--the
Gabiniuses, Antoniuses, and such like, suddenly advanced from
the lowest haunts to headquarters. Let it be remembered that it was
written at a time when Caesar was fighting on the Rhine and on
the Thames, and when the expeditions of Crassus to Parthia and of
Gabinius to Egypt were in preparation. The poet, as if he too
expected one of the vacant posts from one of the regents, gives
to two of his clients their last instructions before departure:

-Furi et Aureli, comites Catulli-, etc.

11.  V. VIII. Clodius

12.  In this year the January with 29 and the February with 23 days
were followed by the intercalary month with 28, and then by March.

13.  -Consul- signifies "colleague" (i. 318), and a consul who is
at the same time proconsul is at once an actual consul and
a consul's substitute.

14.  II. III. Military Tribunes with Consular Powers




Notes for Chapter IX


1.  iv. 434

2.  Tigranes was still living in February 698 (Cic. pro Sest. 27,
59); on the other hand Artavasdes was already reigning before 700
(Justin, xlii. 2, 4; Plut. Crass. 49).

3.  V. IV. Ptolemaeus in Egypt Recognized, but Expelled by His Subjects

4.  V. IV. Military Pacification of Syria

5.  V. VII. Repulse of the Helvetii, V. VII. Expeditions against
the Maritime Cantons

6.  V. VII. Cassivellaunus

7.  V. VII. The Carnutes ff.

8.  V. II. Renewal of the War

9.  V. IV. Difficulty with the Parthians

10.  IV. I. War against Aristonicus

11.  V. VII. Insurrection

12.  V. VIII. Humiliation of the Republicans

13.  V. VIII. Changes in the Arrangement of Magistrates and the Jury-System

14.  V. VIII. Humiliation of the Republicans

15.  V. VIII. The Aristocracy Submits ff.

16.  V. VIII. Changes in the Arrangement of Magistrates and the Jury-System

17.  V. VIII. The Senate under the Monarchy

18.  V. II. Mutiny of the Soldiers, V. III. Reappearance of Pompeius

19.  V. VII. Alpine Peoples

20.  V. IX. Dictatorship of Pompeius

21.  -Homo ingeniosissime nequam- (Vellei. ii. 48).

22.  V. IX. Debates as to Caesar's Recall

23.  IV. X. The Restoration

24.  V. II. Beginning of the Armenian War

25.  To be distinguished from the consul having the same name of
704; the latter was a cousin, the consul of 705 a brother, of
the Marcus Marcellus who was consul in 703.

26.  V. IX. Debates ss to Caesar's Recall ff.

27.  II. II. Intercession




Notes for Chapter X


1.  V. V. Transpadanes

2.  V. V. Transpadanes

3.  A centurion of Caesar's tenth legion, taken prisoner, declared
to the commander-in-chief of the enemy that he was ready with ten
of his men to make head against the best cohort of the enemy (500
men; Dell. Afric. 45).  "In the ancient mode of fighting," to quote
the opinion of Napoleon I, "a battle consisted simply of duels;
what was only correct in the mouth of that centurion, would be mere
boasting in the mouth of the modern soldier." Vivid proofs of
the soldierly spirit that pervaded Caesar's army are furnished by
the Reports--appended to his Memoirs--respecting the African and
the second Spanish wars, of which the former appears to have had as its
author an officer of the second rank, while the latter is in every
respect a subaltern camp-journal.

4.  V. IX. Debates as to Caesar's Recall

5.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

6.  V. IV. The New Relations of the Romans in the East, V. IV. Galatia

7.  V. IV. Ptolemaeus in Egypt Recognized, but Expelled by His Subjects

8.  V. VII. Wars and Revolts There

9.  V. IX. Repulse of the Parthians

10.  V. IX. Counter-Arrangements of Caesar

11.  V. VIII. Settlement of the New Monarchial Rule

12.  V. VIII. Changes in the Arrangement of Magistracies
and the Jury-System

13.  This number was specified by Pompeius himself (Caesar, B.C. i.
6), and it agrees with the statement that he lost in Italy about 60
cohorts or 30,000 men, and took 25,000 over to Greece (Caesar, B.C.
iii. 10).

14.  V. VII. With the Bellovaci

15.  The decree of the senate was passed on the 7th January; on
the 18th it had been already for several days known in Rome that Caesar
had crossed the boundary (Cic. ad Att. vii. 10; ix. 10, 4);
the messenger needed at the very least three days from Rome to Ravenna.
According to this the setting out of Caesar falls about the 12th
January, which according to the current reduction corresponds to
the Julian 24 Nov. 704.

16.  IV. IX. Pompeius

17.  IV. XI. Italian Revenues

18.  V. VII. Caesar in Spain

19.  V. VII. Venetian War ff.

20.  III. VI. Scipio Driven Back to the Coast

21.  V. X. Caesar Takes the Offensive

22.  V. VII. Illyria

23.  As according to formal law the "legal deliberative assembly"
undoubtedly, just like the "legal court," could only take place in
the city itself or within the precincts, the assembly representing
the senate in the African army called itself the "three hundred"
(Bell. Afric. 88, 90; Appian, ii. 95), not because it consisted of
300 members, but because this was the ancient normal number of
senators (i. 98).  It is very likely that this assembly recruited
its ranks by equites of repute; but, when Plutarch makes the three
hundred to be Italian wholesale dealers (Cato Min. 59, 61), he
has misunderstood his authority (Bell. Afr. 90).  Of a similar
kind must have been the arrangement as to the quasi-senate
already in Thessalonica.

24.  V. X. Indignation of the Anarchist Party against Caesar

25.  V. X. The Pompeian Army

26.  V. IV. And Brought Back by Gabinius

27.  V. X. Caesar's Fleet and Army in Illyricum Destroyed

28.  According to the rectified calendar on the 5th Nov. 705.

29.  V. X. Result of the Campaign as a Whole

30.  The exact determination of the field of battle is difficult.
Appian (ii. 75) expressly places it between (New) Pharsalus (now
Fersala) and the Enipeus.  Of the two streams, which alone are of
any importance in the question, and are undoubtedly the Apidanus
and Enipeus of the ancients--the Sofadhitiko and the Fersaliti--the
former has its sources in the mountains of Thaumaci (Dhomoko) and
the Dolopian heights, the latter in mount Othrys, and the Fersaliti
alone flows past Pharsalus; now as the Enipeus according to Strabo
(ix. p. 432) springs from mount Othrys and flows past Pharsalus,
the Fersaliti has been most justly pronounced by Leake (Northern
Greece, iv. 320) to be the Enipeus, and the hypothesis followed by
Goler that the Fersaliti is the Apidanus is untenable.  With this
all the other statements of the ancients as to the two rivers
agree.  Only we must doubtless assume with Leake, that the river of
Vlokho formed by the union of the Fersaliti and the Sofadhitiko and
going to the Peneius was called by the ancients Apidanus as well as
the Sofadhitiko; which, however, is the more natural, as while
the Sofadhitiko probably has, the Fersaliti has not, constantly water
(Leake, iv. 321).  Old Pharsalus, from which the battle takes its
name, must therefore have been situated between Fersala and
the Fersaliti.  Accordingly the battle was fought on the left bank of
the Fersaliti, and in such a way that the Pompeians, standing with
their faces towards Pharsalus, leaned their right wing on the river
(Caesar, B. C. iii. 83; Frontinus, Strat. ii. 3, 22).  The camp of
the Pompeians, however, cannot have stood here, but only on
the slope of the heights of Cynoscephalae, on the right bank of
the Enipeus, partly because they barred the route of Caesar to
Scotussa, partly because their line of retreat evidently went over
the mountains that were to be found above the camp towards Larisa;
if they had, according to Leake's hypothesis (iv. 482), encamped to
the east of Pharsalus on the left bank of the Enipeus, they could
never have got to the northward through this stream, which at this
very point has a deeply cut bed (Leake, iv. 469), and Pompeius must
have fled to Lamia instead of Larisa.  Probably therefore
the Pompeians pitched their camp on the right bank of the Fersaliti,
and passed the river both in order to fight and in order, after
the battle, to regain their camp, whence they then moved up the slopes
of Crannon and Scotussa, which culminate above the latter place in
the heights of Cynoscephalae.  This was not impossible.
the Enipeus is a narrow slow-flowing rivulet, which Leake found two
feet deep in November, and which in the hot season often lies quite
dry (Leake, i. 448, and iv. 472; comp. Lucan, vi. 373), and
the battle was fought in the height of summer.  Further the armies
before the battle lay three miles and a half from each other
(Appian, B. C. ii. 65), so that the Pompeians could make all
preparations and also properly secure the communication with their
camp by bridges.  Had the battle terminated in a complete rout, no
doubt the retreat to and over the river could not have been
executed, and doubtless for this reason Pompeius only reluctantly
agreed to fight here.  The left wing of the Pompeians which was
the most remote from the base of retreat felt this; but the retreat at
least of their centre and their right wing was not accomplished in
such haste as to be impracticable under the given conditions.
Caesar and his copyists are silent as to the crossing of the river,
because this would place in too clear a light the eagerness
for battle of the Pompeians apparent otherwise from the whole
narrative, and they are also silent as to the conditions of
retreat favourable for these.

31.  III. VIII. Battle of Cynoscephalae

32.  With this is connected the well-known direction of Caesar to
his soldiers to strike at the faces of the enemy's horsemen.
the infantry--which here in an altogether irregular way acted on
the offensive against cavalry, who were not to be reached with
the sabres--were not to throw their -pila-, but to use them as hand-
spears against the cavalry and, in order to defend themselves
better against these, to thrust at their faces (Plutarch, Pomp. 69,
71; Caes. 45; Appian, ii. 76, 78; Flor. ii. 12; Oros. vi. 15;
erroneously Frontinus, iv. 7, 32).  The anecdotical turn given to
this instruction, that the Pompeian horsemen were to be brought to
run away by the fear of receiving scars in their faces, and that
they actually galloped off "holding their hands before their eyes"
(Plutarch), collapses of itself; for it has point only on
the supposition that the Pompeian cavalry had consisted principally of
the young nobility of Rome, the "graceful dancers"; and this was
not the case (p. 224).  At the most it may be, that the wit of
the camp gave to that simple and judicious military order this very
irrational but certainly comic turn.

33.  V. I. Indefinite and Perilous Character of the Sertorian War

34.  [I may here state once for all that in this and other
passages, where Dr. Mommsen appears incidentally to express views
of religion or philosophy with which I can scarcely be supposed to
agree, I have not thought it right--as is, I believe, sometimes
done in similar cases--to omit or modify any portion of what he has
written.  The reader must judge for himself as to the truth or
value of such assertions as those given in the text.--Tr.]

35.  V. IX. Passive Resistance of Caesar

36.  V. X. The Armies at Pharsalus

37.  V. IV. And Brought Back by Gabinius

38.  V. X. Caesar's Fleet and Army in Illyricum Destroyed

39.  V. IV. Aggregate Results

40.  V. IV. Ptolemaeus in Egypt Recognized, but Expelled
by His Subjects

41.  V. IV. Cyprus Annexed

42.  The loss of the lighthouse-island must have fallen out, where
there is now a chasm (B. A. 12), for the island was in fact at
first in Caesar's power (B. C. iii. 12; B. A. 8).  The mole, must
have been constantly in the power of the enemy, for Caesar held
intercourse with the island only by ships.

43.  V. IV. Robber-Chiefs

44.  V. IV. Robber-Chiefs

45.  V. X. Caesar's Fleet and Army in Illyricum Destroyed

46.  V. VIII. And in the Courts

47.  Much obscurity rests on the shape assumed by the states in
northwestern Africa during this period.  After the Jugurthine war
Bocchus king of Mauretania ruled probably from the western sea
to the port of Saldae, in what is now Morocco and Algiers
(IV. IV. Reorganization of Numidia); the princes of Tingis
(Tangiers)--probably from the outset different from the Mauretanian
sovereigns--who occur even earlier (Plut. Serf. 9), and to whom it may
be conjectured that Sallust's Leptasta (Hist. ii. 31 Kritz) and Cicero's
Mastanesosus (In Vat. 5, 12) belong, may have been independent
within certain limits or may have held from him as feudatories;
just as Syphax already ruled over many chieftains of tribes
(Appian, Pun. 10), and about this time in the neighbouring Numidia
Cirta was possessed, probably however under Juba's supremacy,
by the prince Massinissa (Appian, B. C. iv. 54).  About 672 we find
in Bocchus' stead a king called Bocut or Bogud (iv. 92; Orosius,
v. 21, 14), the son of Bocchus.  From 705 the kingdom appears divided
between king Bogud who possesses the western, and king Bocchus
who possesses the eastern half, and to this the later partition
of Mauretania into Bogud's kingdom or the state of Tingis and Bocchus'
kingdom or the state of Iol (Caesarea) refers (Plin. H. N. v. 2, 19;
comp. Bell. Afric. 23).

48.  IV. IX. Fresh Difficulties with Mithradates

49.  V. V. Resumption of the Conspiracy

50.  V. X. Reorganization of the Coalition In Africa

51.  IV. IV. Reorganization of Numidia

52.  The inscriptions of the region referred to preserve numerous
traces of this colonization.  The name of the Sittii is there
unusually frequent; the African township Milev bears as Roman
the name -colonia Sarnensis-(C. I. L. viii. p. 1094) evidently from
the Nucerian river-god Sarnus (Sueton. Rhet. 4).




Notes for Chapter XI


1.  V. X. Insurrection in Alexandria

2.  The affair with Laberius, told in the well-known prologue, has
been quoted as an instance of Caesar's tyrannical caprices, but
those who have done so have thoroughly misunderstood the irony of
the situation as well as of the poet; to say nothing of
the -naivete- of lamenting as a martyr the poet who readily
pockets his honorarium.

3.  The triumph after the battle of Munda subsequently to be
mentioned probably had reference only to the Lusitanians who served
in great numbers in the conquered army.

4.  Any one who desires to compare the old and new hardships of
authors will find opportunity of doing so in the letter of Caecina
(Cicero, Aa. Fam. vi. 7).

5.  V. VI. Second Coalition of Pompeius, Crassus, and Caesar

6.  When this was written--in the year 1857--no one could foresee
how soon the mightiest struggle and most glorious victory as yet
recorded in human annals would save the United States from this
fearful trial, and secure the future existence of an absolute
self-governing freedom not to be permanently kept in check by
any local Caesarism.

7.  V. IX. Preparation for Attacks on Caesar

8.  On the 26th January 710 Caesar is still called dictator IIII
(triumphal table); on the 18th February of this year he was already
-dictator perpetuus- (Cicero, Philip, ii. 34, 87). Comp.
Staatsrecht, ii. 3 716.

9.  IV. X. Executions

10.  The formulation of that dictatorship appears to have expressly
brought into prominence among other things the "improvement of
morals"; but Caesar did not hold on his own part an office of this
sort (Staatsrecht, ii. 3 705).

11.  Caesar bears the designation of -imperator- always without any
number indicative of iteration, and always in the first place after
his name (Staatsrecht, ii. 3 767, note 1).

12.  V. V. Rehabilitation of Saturninus and Marius

13.  During the republican period the name Imperator, which denotes
the victorious general, was laid aside with the end of the campaign;
as a permanent title it first appears in the case of Caesar.

14.  That in Caesar's lifetime the -imperium- as well as
the supreme pontificate was rendered by a formal legislative act
hereditary for his agnate descendants--of his own body or through
the medium of adoption--was asserted by Caesar the Younger as his
legal title to rule.  As our traditional accounts stand,
the existence of such a law or resolution of the senate must be
decidedly called in question; but doubtless it remains possible
that Caesar intended the issue of such a decree. (Comp,
Staatsrecht, ii. 3 787, 1106.)

15.  The widely-spread opinion, which sees in the imperial office
of Imperator nothing but the dignity of general of the empire
tenable for life, is not warranted either by the signification of
the word or by the view taken by the old authorities.  -Imperium-
is the power of command, -Imperator- is the possessor of that
power; in these words as in the corresponding Greek terms --kratos--,
--autokrator-- so little is there implied a specific military
reference, that it is on the contrary the very characteristic of
the Roman official power, where it appears purely and completely,
to embrace in it war and process--that is, the military and
the civil power of command--as one inseparable whole.  Dio says quite
correctly (liii. 17; comp, xliii. 44; lii. 41) that the name
Imperator was assumed by the emperors "to indicate their full power
instead of the title of king and dictator (--pros deilosin teis
autotelous sphon exousias, anti teis basileos tou te diktatoros
epikleiseos--); for these other older titles disappeared in name,
but in reality the title of Imperator gives the same prerogatives
(--to de dei ergon auton tei tou autokratoros proseigoria
bebaiountai--), for instance the right of levying soldiers,
imposing taxes, declaring war and concluding peace, exercising
the supreme authority over burgess and non-burgess in and out of
the city and punishing any one at any place capitally or otherwise, and
in general of assuming the prerogatives connected in the earliest
times with the supreme imperium." It could not well be said in
plainer terms, that Imperator is nothing at all but a synonym for
rex, just as imperare coincides with regere.

16.  When Augustus in constituting the principate resumed
the Caesarian imperium, this was done with the restriction that it
should be limited as to space and in a certain sense also as to
time; the proconsular power of the emperors, which was nothing but
just this imperium, was not to come into application as regards
Rome and Italy (Staatsrecht, ii. 8 854).  On this element rests
the essential distinction between the Caesarian imperium and
the Augustan principate, just as on the other hand the real equality of
the two institutions rests on the imperfection with which even in
principle and still more in practice that limit was realized.

17.  II. I. Collegiate Arrangements

18.  On this question there may be difference of opinion, whereas
the hypothesis that it was Caesar's intention to rule the Romans as
Imperator, the non-Romans as Rex, must be simply dismissed.  It is
based solely on the story that in the sitting of the senate in
which Caesar was assassinated a Sibylline utterance was brought
forward by one of the priests in charge of the oracles, Lucius
Cotta, to the effect that the Parthians could only be vanquished by
a "king," and in consequence of this the resolution was adopted to
commit to Caesar regal power over the Roman provinces.  This story
was certainly in circulation immediately after Caesar's death.  But
not only does it nowhere find any sort of even indirect
confirmation, but it is even expressly pronounced false by
the contemporary Cicero (De Div. ii. 54, 119) and reported by the later
historians, especially by Suetonius (79) and Dio (xliv. 15) merely
as a rumour which they are far from wishing to guarantee; and it is
under such circumstances no better accredited by the fact of
Plutarch (Caes. 60, 64; Brut. 10) and Appian (B. C. ii. 110)
repeating it after their wont, the former by way of anecdote,
the latter by way of causal explanation.  But the story is not merely
unattested; it is also intrinsically impossible.  Even leaving out
of account that Caesar had too much intellect and too much
political tact to decide important questions of state after
the oligarchic fashion by a stroke of the oracle-machinery, he could
never think of thus formally and legally splitting up the state
which he wished to reduce to a level.

19.  II. III. Union of the Plebeians

20.  II. I. The New Community

21.  IV. X. Abolition of the Censorial Supervision of the Senate

22.  According to the probable calculation formerly assumed (iv.
113), this would yield an average aggregate number of from 1000
to 1200 senators.

23.  This certainly had reference merely to the elections for
the years 711 and 712 (Staatsrecht, ii. a 730); but the arrangement was
doubtless meant to become permanent.

24.  I. V. The Senate as State-Council, II. I. Senate

25.  V. X. Pacification of Alexandria

26.  V. VIII. Changes in the Arrangement of Magistracies
and the Jury-System

27.  I. V. The King

28.  Hence accordingly the cautious turns of expression on
the mention of these magistracies in Caesar's laws; -cum censor aliusve
quis magistratus Romae populi censum aget (L. Jul. mun. l. 144);
praetor isve quei Romae iure deicundo praerit (L. Rubr. often);
quaestor urbanus queive aerario praerit- (L. Jul. mun. l. 37 et al.).

29.  V. III. New Arrangement as to Jurymen

30.  V. VIII. And in the Courts

31.  -Plura enim multo-, says Cicero in his treatise De Oratore
(ii. 42, 178), primarily with reference to criminal trials,
-homines iudicant odio aut amore aut cupiditate aut iracundia aut
dolore aut laetitia aut spe aut timore aut errore aut aliqua
permotione mentis, quam veritate aut praescripto aut iuris norma
aliqua aut iudicii formula aut legibus-.  On this accordingly are
founded the further instructions which he gives for advocates
entering, on their profession.

32.  V. VIII. And in the Courts

33.  V. VII. Macedonia ff.

34.  V. VII. The Gallic Plan of War

35.  V. III. Overthrow of the Senatorial Rule, and New Power of Pompeius

36.  With the nomination of a part of the military tribunes by
the burgesses (III. XI. Election of Officers in the Comitia) Caesar--
in this also a democrat--did not meddle.

37.  V. VII. The New Dacian Kingdom

38.  IV. VI. Political Significance of the Marian Military Reform

39.  IV. VI. Political Significance of the Marian Military Reform

40.  V. V. Total Defeat of the Democratic Party

41.  Varro attests the discontinuance of the Sicilian -decumae-
in a treatise published after Cicero's death (De R. R. 2 praef.)
where he names--as the corn--provinces whence Rome derives her
subsistence--only Africa and Sardinia, no longer Sicily.
The -Latinitas-, which Sicily obtained, must thus doubtless have
included this immunity (comp. Staatsrecht, iii. 684).

42.  V. X. Field of Caesar's Power

43.  III. XI. Italian Subjects

44.  V. VIII. Clodius

45.  III. XIII. Increase of Amusements

46.  In Sicily, the country of production, the -modius- was sold
within a few years at two and at twenty sesterces; from this we may
guess what must have been the fluctuations of price in Rome, which
subsisted on transmarine corn and was the seat of speculators.

47.  IV. XII. The Finances and Public Buildings

48.  It is a fact not without interest that a political writer of
later date but much judgment, the author of the letters addressed
in the name of Sallust to Caesar, advises the latter to transfer
the corn-distribution of the capital to the several -municipia-.
There is good sense in the admonition; as indeed similar ideas
obviously prevailed in the noble municipal provision for
orphans under Trajan.

49.  V. XI. The State-Hierarchy

50.  III. XII. The Management of the Land and Its Capital

51.  The following exposition in Cicero's treatise De officiis
(i. 42) is characteristic: -Iam de artificiis et quaestibus, qui
liberales habendi, qui sordidi sint, kaec fere accepimus.  Primum
improbantur ii quaestus, qui in odia hominum incurrunt, ut
portitorum, ut feneratorum.  Illiberales autem et sordidi quaestus
mercenariorum omnium, quorum operae, nonaries emuntur.  Est autem
in illis ipsa merces auctoramentum servitutis.  Sordidi etiam
putandi, qui mercantur a mercatoribus quod statim vendant, nihil
enim proficiant, nisi admodum mentiantur.  Nec vero est quidquam
turpius vanitate.  Opificesque omnes in sordida arte versantur; nec
enim quidquam ingenuum habere potest officina.  Minimeque artes eae
probandae, quae ministrae sunt voluptatum,

"Cetarii, lanii, coqui, fartores, piscatores,"

ut ait Terentius.  Adde huc, si placet, unguentarios, saltatores,
totumque ludum talarium.  Quibus autem artibus aut prudentia maior
inest, aut non mediocris utilitas quaeritur, ut medicina, ut
architectura, ut doctrina rerum honestarum, eae sunt iis, quorum
ordini conveniunt, honestae.  Mercatura autem, si tenuis est,
sordida putanda est; sin magna et copiosa, multa undique apportans,
multaque sine vanitate impertiens, non est admodum vituperanda;
atque etiam, si satiata quaestu, vel contenta potius; ut saepe ex
alto in portum, ex ipso portu in agros se possessionesque
contulerit, videtur optimo iure posse laudari.  Omnium autem rerum,
ex quibus aliquid acquiritur, nihil est agricultura melius, nihil
uberius, nihil dulcius, nihil homine libero dignius-.  According to
this the respectable man must, in strictness, be a landowner;
the trade of a merchant becomes him only so far as it is a means to
this ultimate end; science as a profession is suitable only for
the Greeks and for Romans not belonging to the ruling classes, who by
this means may purchase at all events a certain toleration of their
personal presence in genteel circles.  It is a thoroughly developed
aristocracy of planters, with a strong infusion of mercantile
speculation and a slight shading of general culture.

52.  IV. IV. Administration under the Restoration

53.  We have still (Macrobius, Hi, 13) the bill of fare of
the banquet which Mucius Lentulus Niger gave before 691 on entering on
his pontificate, and of which the pontifices--Caesar included--the
Vestal Virgins, and some other priests and ladies nearly related to
them partook.  Before the dinner proper came sea-hedgehogs; fresh
oysters as many as the guests wished; large mussels; sphondyli;
fieldfares with asparagus; fattened fowls; oyster and mussel
pasties; black and white sea-acorns; sphondyli again; glycimarides;
sea-nettles; becaficoes; roe-ribs; boar's-ribs; fowls dressed with
flour; becaficoes; purple shell-fish of two sorts.  The dinner
itself consisted of sow's udder; boar's-head; fish-pasties; boar-
pasties; ducks; boiled teals; hares; roasted fowls; starch-pastry;
Pontic pastry.

These are the college-banquets regarding which Varro (De R. R. iii.
2, 16) says that they forced up the prices of all delicacies.
Varro in one of his satires enumerates the following as the most
notable foreign delicacies: peacocks from Samos; grouse from
Phrygia; cranes from Melos; kids from Ambracia; tunny fishes from
Chalcedon; muraenas from the Straits of Gades; bleak-fishes
(? -aselli-) from Pessinus; oysters and scallops from Tarentum;
sturgeons (?) from Rhodes; -scarus--fishes (?) from Cilicia; nuts
from Thasos; dates from Egypt; acorns from Spain.

54.  IV. VII. Economic Crisis, IV. IX. Death of Cinna

55.  III. X. Greek National Party

56.  IV. XI. Capitalist Oligarchy

57.  III. XIII. Luxury

58.  IV. XII. Practical Use Made of Religion

59.  III. XIII. Cato's Family Life, iv. 186 f.

60.  IV. I. Achaean War

61.  IV. XII. Mixture of Peoples

62.  V. VI. Caesar's Agrarian Law

63.  V. XI. Dolabella

64.  This is not stated by our authorities, but it necessarily
follows from the permission to deduct the interest paid by cash or
assignation (-si quid usurae nomine numeratum aut perscriptum
fuisset-; Sueton. Caes. 42), as paid contrary to law, from the capital.

65.  II. III. Laws Imposing Taxes

66.  V. V. Preparations of the Anarchists in Etruria

67.  IV. VII. Economic Crisis

68.  The Egyptian royal laws (Diodorus, i. 79) and likewise
the legislation of Solon (Plutarch, Sol. 13, 15) forbade bonds in which
the loss of the personal liberty of the debtor was made the penalty
of non-payment; and at least the latter imposed on the debtor in
the event of bankruptcy no more than the cession of his whole assets.

69.  I. XI. Manumission

70.  II. III. Continued Distress

71.  At least the latter rule occurs in the old Egyptian royal laws
(Diodorus, i. 79).  On the other hand the Solonian legislation
knows no restrictions on interest, but on the contrary expressly
allows interest to be fixed of any amount at pleasure.

72.  V. VI. Caesar's Agrarian Law

73.  V. VI. Caesar's Agrarian Law

74.  IV. II. Tribunate of Gracchus, IV. II. The Domain Question Viewed
in Itself, IV. IV. The Domain Question under the Restoration

75.  IV. XII. Carneades at Rome, V. III. Continued Subsistence
of the Sullan Constitution

76.  IV. X. The Roman Municipal System

77.  Of both laws considerable fragments still exist.

78.  V. XI. Diminution of the Proletariate

79.  V. VII. Gaul Subdued

80.  As according to Caesar's ordinance annually sixteen
propraetors and two proconsuls divided the governorships among
them, and the latter remained two years in office (p. 344), we
might conclude that he intended to bring the number of provinces in
all up to twenty.  Certainty is, however, the less attainable as to
this, seeing that Caesar perhaps designedly instituted fewer
offices than candidatures.

81.  This is the so-called "free embassy" (-libera legatio-), namely
an embassy without any proper public commission entrusted to it.

82.  V. II. Piracy

83.  V. XI. In The Administration of the Capital

84.  V. XI. Foreign Mercenaries

85.  V. IX. In the Governorships

86.  V. XI. Financial Reforms of Caesar

87.  V. I. Organizations of Sertorius

88.  V. XI. Robberies and Damage by War

89.  V. XI. The Roman Capitalists in the Provinces

90.  V. I. Transpadanes, V. VIII. Settlement of the New Monarchial Rule

91.  Narbo was called the colony of the Decimani, Baeterrae of
the Septimani, Forum Julii of the Octavani, Arelate of the Sextani,
Arausio of the Secundani.  The ninth legion is wanting, because it
had disgraced its number by the mutiny of Placentia (p. 246).  That
the colonists of these colonies belonged to the legions from which
they took their names, is not stated and is not credible;
the veterans themselves were, at least the great majority of them,
settled in Italy (p. 358).  Cicero's complaint, that Caesar "had
confiscated whole provinces and districts at a blow" (De Off. ii.
7, 27; comp. Philipp. xiii. 15, 31, 32) relates beyond doubt, as
its close connection with the censure of the triumph over
the Massiliots proves, to the confiscations of land made on account of
these colonies in the Narbonese province and primarily to
the losses of territory imposed on Massilia.

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

93.  V. XI. Other Magistracies and Attributions

94.  We are not expressly informed from whom the Latin rights of
the non-colonized townships of this region and especially of
Nemausus proceeded.  But as Caesar himself (B. C. i. 35) virtually
states that Nemausus up to 705 was a Massiliot village; as
according to Livy's account (Dio, xli. 25; Flor. ii. 13; Oros. vi.
15) this very portion of territory was taken from the Massiliots by
Caesar; and lastly as even on pre-Augustan coins and then in Strabo
the town appears as a community of Latin rights, Caesar alone can
have been the author of this bestowal of Latinity.  As to Ruscino
(Roussillon near Perpignan) and other communities in Narbonese Gaul
which early attained a Latin urban constitution, we can only
conjecture that they received it contemporarily with Nemausus.

95.  V. VII. Indulgence toward Existing Arrangements

96.  II. V. Crises within the Romano-Latin League

97.  V. X. The Leaders of the Republicans Put to Death

98.  That no community of full burgesses had more than limited
jurisdiction, is certain.  But the fact, which is distinctly
apparent from the Caesarian municipal ordinance for Cisalpine Gaul,
is a surprising one--that the processes lying beyond municipal
competency from this province went not before its governor, but
before the Roman praetor; for in other cases the governor is in his
province quite as much representative of the praetor who
administers justice between burgesses as of the praetor who
administers justice between burgess and non-burgess, and is
thoroughly competent to determine all processes.  Beyond doubt this
is a remnant of the arrangement before Sulla, under which in
the whole continental territory as far as the Alps the urban
magistrates alone were competent, and thus all the processes there,
where they exceeded municipal competency, necessarily came before
the praetors in Rome.  In Narbo again, Gades, Carthage, Corinth,
the processes in such a case went certainly to the governor
concerned; as indeed even from practical considerations
the carrying of a suit to Rome could not well be thought of.

99.  It is difficult to see why the bestowal of the Roman franchise
on a province collectively, and the continuance of a provincial
administration for it, should be usually conceived as contrasts
excluding each other.  Besides, Cisalpine Gaul notoriously obtained
the -civitas- by the Roscian decree of the people of the 11th March
705, while it remained a province as long as Caesar lived and was
only united with Italy after his death (Dio, xlviii. 12);
the governors also can be pointed out down to 711.  The very fact that
the Caesarian municipal ordinance never designates the country as
Italy, but as Cisalpine Gaul, ought to have led to the right view.

100.  IV. II. The First Sicilian Slave War

101.  The continued subsistence of the municipal census-authorities
speaks for the view, that the local holding of the census had
already been established for Italy in consequence of the Social war
(Staatsrecht, ii. 8 368); but probably the carrying out of this
system was Caesar's work.

102.  II. VII. Intermediate Fuctionaries, III. III. Autonomy

103.  III. XI. Supervision of the Senate Over the Provinces
and Their Governors

104.  I. XI. Character of the Roman Law

105.  IV. XIII. Philology

106.  I. XI. Clients and Foreigners

107.  V. XI. Usury Laws

108.  V. V. Transpadanes

109.  I. XIV. Italian Measures ff.

110.  III. XII. Coins and Moneys

111.  Weights recently brought to light at Pompeii suggest
the hypothesis that at the commencement of the imperial period
alongside of the Roman pound the Attic mina (presumably in
the ratio of 3: 4) passed current as a second imperial weight
(Hermes, xvi. 311).

112.  The gold pieces, which Sulla (iv. 179) and contemporarily
Pompeius caused to be struck, both in small quantity, do not
invalidate this proposition; for they probably came to be taken
solely by weight just like the golden Phillippei which were in
circulation even down to Caesar's time.  They are certainly
remarkable, because they anticipate the Caesarian imperial gold
just as Sulla's regency anticipated the new monarchy.

113.  IV. XI. Token-Money

114.  It appears, namely, that in earlier times the claims of
the state-creditors payable in silver could not be paid against their
will in gold according to its legal ratio to silver; whereas it
admits of no doubt, that from Caesar's time the gold piece had to
be taken as a valid tender for 100 silver sesterces.  This was just
at that time the more important, as in consequence of the great
quantities of gold put into circulation by Caesar it stood for
a time in the currency of trade 25 per cent below the legal ratio.

115.  There is probably no inscription of the Imperial period,
which specifies sums of money otherwise than in Roman coin.

116.  Thus the Attic -drachma-, although sensibly heavier than
the -denarius-, was yet reckoned equal to it; the -tetradrachmon- of
Antioch, weighing on an average 15 grammes of silver, was made
equal to 3 Roman -denarii-, which only weigh about 12 grammes;
the -cistophorus- of Asia Minor was according to the value of silver
above 3, according to the legal tariff =2 1/2 -denarii-; the Rhodian
half -drachma- according to the value of silver=3/4, according to
the legal tariff = 5/8 of a -denarius-, and so on.

117.  III. III. Illyrian Piracy

118.  The identity of this edict drawn up perhaps by Marcus Flavius
(Macrob. Sat. i. 14, 2) and the alleged treatise of Caesar, De
Stellis, is shown by the joke of Cicero (Plutarch, Caes. 59) that
now the Lyre rises according to edict.

We may add that it was known even before Caesar that the solar year
of 365 days 6 hours, which was the basis of the Egyptian calendar,
and which he made the basis of his, was somewhat too long.
the most exact calculation of the tropical year which the ancient world
was acquainted with, that of Hipparchus, put it at 365 d. 5 h. 52'
12"; the true length is 365 d. 5 h. 48' 48".

119.  Caesar stayed in Rome in April and Dec. 705, on each occasion
for a few days; from Sept. to Dec. 707; some four months in the autumn
of the year of fifteen months 708, and from Oct. 709 to March 710.




Notes for Chapter XII


1.  V. VIII. Clodius

2.  III. XIV. Cato's Encyclopedia

3.  These form, as is well known, the so-called seven liberal arts,
which, with this distinction between the three branches of
discipline earlier naturalized in Italy and the four subsequently
received, maintained their position throughout the middle ages.

4.  IV. XII. Latin Instruction

5.  Thus Varro (De R. R. i. 2) says: -ab aeditimo, ut dicere
didicimus a patribus nostris; ut corrigimur ab recenlibus
urbanis, ab aedituo-.

6.  The dedication of the poetical description of the earth which
passes under the name of Scymnus is remarkable in reference to
those relations.  After the poet has declared his purpose of
preparing in the favourite Menandrian measure a sketch of geography
intelligible for scholars and easy to be learned by heart, he
dedicates--as Apollodorus dedicated his similar historical
compendium to Attalus Philadelphus king of Pergamus

   --athanaton aponemonta dexan Attalo
   teis pragmateias epigraphein eileiphoti-- --

his manual to Nicomedes III king (663?-679) of Bithynia:

--ego d' akouon, dioti ton non basileon
monos basilikein chreistoteita prosphereis
peiran epethumeis autos ep' emautou labein
kai paragenesthai kai ti basileus est' idein,
dio tei prothesei sumboulon exelexamein
... ton Apollena ton Didumei...
ou dei schedon malista kai pepeismenos
pros sein kata logon eika (koinein gar schedon
tois philomathousin anadedeichas) estian--.

7.  IV. XIII. Historical Composition

8.  V. XII. Greek Instruction

9.  Cicero testifies that the mime in his time had taken the place
of the Atellana (Ad Fam. ix. 16); with this accords the fact, that
the -mimi- and -mimae- first appear about the Sullan epoch (Ad Her.
i. 14, 24; ii. 13, 19; Atta Fr. 1 Ribbeck; Plin. H. N. vii. 43,
158; Plutarch, Sull. 2, 36).  The designation -mimus-, however, is
sometimes inaccurately applied to the comedian generally.  Thus
the -mimus- who appeared at the festival of Apollo in 542-543 (Festus
under -salva res est-; comp. Cicero, De Orat. ii. 59, 242) was
evidently nothing but an actor of the -palliata-, for there was at
this period no room in the development of the Roman theatre for
real mimes in the later sense.

With the mimus of the classical Greek period--prose dialogues,
in which -genre- pictures, particularly of a rural kind, were
presented--the Roman mimus had no especial relation.

10.  With the possession of this sum, which constituted
the qualification for the first voting-class and subjected
the inheritance to the Voconian law, the boundary line was crossed
which separated the men of slender means (-tenuiores-) from
respectable people.  Therefore the poor client of Catullus
(xxiii. 26) beseeches the gods to help him to this fortune.

11.  In the "Descensus ad Inferos" of Laberius all sorts of people
come forward, who have seen wonders and signs; to one there
appeared a husband with two wives, whereupon a neighbour is of
opinion that this is still worse than the vision, recently seen by
a soothsayer in a dream, of six aediles.  Caesar forsooth desired--
according to the talk of the time--to introduce polygamy in Rome
(Suetonius, Caes. 82) and he nominated in reality six aediles
instead of four.  One sees from this that aberius understood
how to exercise the fool's privilege and Caesar how to permit
the fool's freedom.

12.  V. VIII. Attempts of the Regents to Check It

13.  V. XI. The Poor

14.  IV. XIII. Dramatic Arrangements

15.  He obtained from the state for every day on which he acted
1000 -denarii- (40 pounds) and besides this the pay for his
company.  In later years he declined the honorarium for himself.

16.  Such an individual apparent exception as Panchaea the land of
incense (ii. 417) is to be explained from the circumstance that
this had passed from the romance of the Travels of Euhemerus
already perhaps into the poetry of Ennius, at any rate into
the poems of Lucius Manlius (iv. 242; Plin. H. N. x. a, 4) and thence
was well known to the public for which Lucretius wrote.

17.  III. XIV. Moral Effect of Tragedy

18.  This naively appears in the descriptions of war, in which
the seastorms that destroy armies, and the hosts of elephants that
trample down those who are on their own side--pictures, that is,
from the Punic wars--appear as if they belong to the immediate
present. Comp. ii. 41; v. 1226, 1303, 1339.

19.  "No doubt," says Cicero (Tusc. iii. 19, 45) in reference to
Ennius, "the glorious poet is despised by our reciters of
Euphorion." "I have safely arrived," he writes to Atticus (vii. 2
init.), "as a most favourable north wind blew for us across from
Epirus.  This spondaic line you may, if you choose, sell to one of
the new-fashioned poets as your own" (-ita belle nobis flavit ab
Epiro lenissumus Onchesmites. Hunc- --spondeiazonta-- -si cui voles
--ton neoteron-- pro tuo vendito-).

20.  V. VIII. Literature of the Opposition

21.  "For me when a boy," he somewhere says, "there sufficed
a single rough coat and a single under-garment, shoes without
stockings, a horse without a saddle; I had no daily warm bath, and
but seldom a river-bath." On account of his personal valour he
obtained in the Piratic war, where he commanded a division of
the fleet, the naval crown.

22.  V. X. The Pompeians in Spain

23.  There is hardly anything more childish than Varro's scheme of
all the philosophies, which in the first place summarily declares
all systems that do not propose the happiness of man as their
ultimate aim to be nonexistent, and then reckons the number of
philosophies conceivable under this supposition as two hundred and
eighty-eight.  The vigorous man was unfortunately too much a scholar
to confess that he neither could nor would be a philosopher,
and accordingly as such throughout life he performed a blind dance-
not altogether becoming--between the Stoa, Pythagoreanism, and Diogenism.

24.  On one occasion he writes, "-Quintiforis Clodii foria ac
poemata ejus gargaridians dices; O fortuna, O fors fortuna-!" And
elsewhere, "-Cum Quintipor Clodius tot comoedias sine ulla fecerit
Musa, ego unum libellum non 'edolem' ut ait Ennius?-" This not
otherwise known Clodius must have been in all probability
a wretched imitator of Terence, as those words sarcastically laid
at his door "O fortuna, O fors fortuna!" are found occurring
in a Terentian comedy.

The following description of himself by a poet in Varro's
 --Onos Louras--,

   -Pacuvi discipulus dicor, porro is fuit Enni,
   Ennius Musarum; Pompilius clueor-

might aptly parody the introduction of Lucretius (p. 474), to whom
Varro as a declared enemy of the Epicurean system cannot have been
well disposed, and whom he never quotes.

25.  He himself once aptly says, that he had no special fondness
for antiquated words, but frequently used them, and that he was
very fond of poetical words, but did not use them.

26.  The following description is taken from the -Marcipor-
("Slave of Marcus"):--

   -Repente noctis circiter meridie
   Cum pictus aer fervidis late ignibus
   Caeli chorean astricen ostenderet,
   Nubes aquali, frigido velo leves
   Caeli cavernas aureas subduxerant,
   Aquam vomentes inferam mortalibus.
   Ventique frigido se ab axe eruperant,
   Phrenetici septentrionum filii,
   Secum ferentes tegulas, ramos, syrus.
   At nos caduci, naufragi, ut ciconiae
   Quarum bipennis fulminis plumas vapor
   Perussit, alte maesti in terram cecidimus-.

In the --'Anthropopolis-- we find the lines:

   -Non fit thesauris, non auro pectu' solutum;
   Non demunt animis curas ac relligiones
   Persarum montes, non atria diviti' Crassi-.

But the poet was successful also in a lighter vein.  In the -Est
Modus Matulae- there stood the following elegant commendation of
wine:--

   -Vino nihil iucundius quisquam bibit.
   Hoc aegritudinem ad medendam invenerunt,
   Hoc hilaritatis dulce seminarium.
   Hoc continet coagulum convivia-.

And in the --Kosmotonounei-- the wanderer returning home thus
concludes his address to the sailors:

   -Delis habenas animae leni,
   Dum nos ventus flamine sudo
   Suavem ad patriam perducit-.

27.  The sketches of Varro have so uncommon historical
and even poetical significance, and are yet, in consequence of
the fragmentary shape in which information regarding them has reached
us, known to so few and so irksome to study, that we may be allowed
to give in this place a resume of some of them with the few
restorations indispensable for making them readable.

The satire Manius (Early Up!) describes the management of a rural
household. "Manius summons his people to rise with the sun, and in
person conducts them to the scene of their work.  The youths make
their own bed, which labour renders soft to them, and supply
themselves with water-jar and lamp.  Their drink is the clear fresh
spring, their fare bread, and onions as relish.  Everything
prospers in house and field.  The house is no work of art; but
an architect might learn symmetry from it.  Care is taken of
the field, that it shall not be left disorderly and waste, or go to
ruin through slovenliness and neglect; in return the grateful Ceres
wards off damage from the produce, that the high-piled sheaves may
gladden the heart of the husbandman.  Here hospitality still holds
good; every one who has but imbibed mother's milk is welcome.
the bread-pantry and wine-vat and the store of sausages on the rafters,
lock and key are at the service of the traveller, and piles of food
are set before him; contented sits the sated guest, looking neither
before nor behind, dozing by the hearth in the kitchen.
the warmest double-wool sheepskin is spread as a couch for him.

"Here people still as good burgesses obey the righteous law, which
neither out of envy injures the innocent, nor out of favour pardons
the guilty.  Here they speak no evil against their neighbours.
Here they trespass not with their feet on the sacred hearth, but
honour the gods with devotion and with sacrifices, throw for
the house-spirit his little bit of flesh into his appointed little
dish, and when the master of the household dies, accompany the bier
with the same prayer with which those of his father and of his
grandfather were borne forth."

In another satire there appears a "Teacher of the Old"
(--Gerontodidaskalos--), of whom the degenerate age seems to stand
more urgently in need than of the teacher of youth, and he explains
how "once everything in Rome was chaste and pious," and now all
things are so entirely changed.  "Do my eyes deceive me, or do I
see slaves in arms against their masters?--Formerly every one who
did not present himself for the levy, was sold on the part of
the state into slavery abroad; now the censor who allows cowardice and
everything to pass is called [by the aristocracy, III. XI. Separation
Of the Orders in the Theatre; IV. X. Shelving of the Censorship, V. III.
Renewal of the Censorship; V. VIII. Humiliations of the Republicans]
a great citizen, and earns praise because he does not seek
to make himself a name by annoying his fellow-citizens.--
Formerly the Roman husbandman had his beard shaven once every week;
now the rural slave cannot have it fine enough.--Formerly one saw
on the estates a corn-granary, which held ten harvests, spacious
cellars for the wine-vats and corresponding wine-presses; now
the master keeps flocks of peacocks, and causes his doors to be inlaid
with African cypress-wood.--Formerly the housewife turned
the spindle with the hand and kept at the same time the pot on
the hearth in her eye, that the pottage might not be singed; now," it
is said in another satire, "the daughter begs her father for
a pound of precious stones, and the wife her husband for a bushel of
pearls.--Formerly a newly-married husband was silent and bashful;
now the wife surrenders herself to the first coachman that comes.--
Formerly the blessing of children was woman's pride; now if her
husband desires for himseli children, she replies: Knowest thou not
what Ennius says?

   "'-Ter sub armis malim vitam cernere Quam semel modo parere--.--'

"Formerly the wife was quite content, when the husband once or twice
in the year gave her a trip to the country in the uncushioned
waggon;" now, he could add (comp. Cicero, Pro Mil. 21, 55), "the
wife sulks if her husband goes to his country estate without her,
and the travelling lady is attended to the villa by the fashionable
host of Greek menials and the choir." --In a treatise of a graver
kind, "Catus or the Training of Children," Varro not only instructs
the friend who had asked him for advice on that point, regarding
the gods who were according to old usage to be sacrificed to for
the children's welfare, but, referring to the more judicious mode
of rearing children among the Persians and to his own strictly
spent youth, he warns against over-feeding and over-sleeping,
against sweet bread and fine fare--the whelps, the old man thinks,
are now fed more judiciously than the children--and likewise
against the enchantresses' charms and blessings, which in cases of
sickness so often take the place of the physician's counsel.  He
advises to keep the girls at embroidery, that they may afterwards
understand how to judge properly of embroidered and textile work,
and not to allow them to put off the child's dress too early; he
warns against carrying boys to the gladiatorial games, in which
the heart is early hardened and cruelty learned.--In the "Man of Sixty
Years" Varro appears as a Roman Epimenides who had fallen asleep
when a boy of ten and waked up again after half a century.  He is
astonished to find instead of his smooth-shorn boy's head an old
bald pate with an ugly snout and savage bristles like a hedgehog;
but he is still more astonished at the change in Rome.  Lucrine
oysters, formerly a wedding dish, are now everyday fare; for which,
accordingly, the bankrupt glutton silently prepares the incendiary
torch.  While formerly the father disposed of his boy, now
the disposal is transferred to the latter: he disposes, forsooth, of
his father by poison.  The Comitium had become an exchange,
the criminal trial a mine of gold for the jurymen.  No law is any
longer obeyed save only this one, that nothing is given for
nothing.  All virtues have vanished; in their stead the awakened
man is saluted by impiety, perfidy, lewdness, as new denizens.
"Alas for thee, Marcus, with such a sleep and such an awakening!"--
The sketch resembles the Catilinarian epoch, shortly after which
(about 697) the old man must have written it, and there lay a truth
in the bitter turn at the close; where Marcus, properly reproved
for his unseasonable accusations and antiquarian reminiscences, is--
with a mock application of a primitive Roman custom--dragged as
a useless old man to the bridge and thrown into the Tiber.  There was
certainly no longer room for such men in Rome.

28.  "The innocent," so ran a speech, "thou draggest forth,
trembling in every limb, and on the high margin of the river's bank
in the dawn of the morning" [thou causest them to be slaughtered].
Several such phrases, that might be inserted without difficulty in
a commonplace novel, occur.

29.  V. XII. Poems in Prose

30.  V. XII. Catullus

31.  V. XII. Greek Literati in Rome

32.  That the treatise on the Gallic war was published all at once,
has been long conjectured; the distinct proof that it was so, is
furnished by the mention of the equalization of the Boii and
the Haedui already in the first book (c. 28) whereas the Boii still
occur in the seventh (c. 10) as tributary subjects of the Haedui,
and evidently only obtained equal rights with their former masters
on account of their conduct and that of the Haedui in the war
against Vercingetorix.  On the other hand any one who attentively
follows the history of the time will find in the expression as to
the Milonian crisis (vii. 6) a proof that the treatise was published
before the outbreak of the civil war; not because Pompeius is there
praised, but because Caesar there approves the exceptional laws of
702.(p. 146)  This he might and could not but do, so long as he
sought to bring about a peaceful accommodation with Pompeius,( p.
175) but not after the rupture, when he reversed the condemnations
that took place on the basis of those laws injurious for him.(p.
316)  Accordingly the publication of this treatise has been quite
rightly placed in 703.

The tendency of the work we discern most distinctly in
the constant, often--most decidedly, doubtless, in the case of the
Aquitanian expedition (III. XI. The Censorship A Prop of the Nobility)--
not successful, justification of every single act of war as
a defensive measure which the state of things had rendered inevitable.
That the adversaries of Caesar censured his attacks on the Celts
and Germans above all as unprovoked, is well known (Sueton. Caes. 24).

33.  V. XI. Amnesty

34.  V. XII. The New Roman Poetry

35.  V. XI. Caelius and Milo

36.  V. IX. Curio, V. X. Death of Curio

37.  IV. XIII. Sciences

38.  A remarkable example is the general exposition regarding
cattle in the treatise on Husbandry (ii. 1) with the nine times
nine subdivisions of the doctrine of cattle-rearing, with
the "incredible but true" fact that the mares at Olisipo (Lisbon)
become pregnant by the wind, and generally with its singular
mixture of philosophical, historical, and agricultural notices.

39.  Thus Varro derives -facere- from -facies-, because he who
makes anything gives to it an appearance, -volpes-, the fox, after
Stilo from -volare pedibus- as the flying-footed; Gaius Trebatius,
a philosophical jurist of this age, derives -sacellum- from -sacra
cella-, Figulus -frater- from -fere alter- and so forth.  This
practice, which appears not merely in isolated instances but as
a main element of the philological literature of this age, presents
a very great resemblance to the mode in which till recently
comparative philology was prosecuted, before insight into
the organism of language put a stop to the occupation of the empirics.

40.  V. XII. Grammatical Science

41.  V. XI. Sciences of General Culture at This Period

42.  V. XI. Reform of the Calendar

43.  V. XII. Dramatic Spectacles

44.  Such "Greek entertainments" were very frequent not merely in
the Greek cities of Italy, especially in Naples (Cic. pro Arch. 5,
10; Plut. Brut. 21), but even now also in Rome (iv. 192; Cic. Ad
Fam. vii. 1, 3; Ad Att. xvi. 5, 1; Sueton. Caes. 39; Plut. Brut.
21).  When the well-known epitaph of Licinia Eucharis fourteen
years of age, which probably belongs to the end of this period,
makes this "girl well instructed and taught in all arts by
the Muses themselves" shine as a dancer in the private exhibitions of
noble houses and appear first in public on the Greek stage (-modo
nobilium ludos decoravi choro, et Graeca in scaena prima populo
apparui-), this doubtless can only mean that she was the first girl
that appeared on the public Greek stage in Rome; as generally
indeed it was not till this epoch that women began to come forward
publicly in Rome (p. 469).

These "Greek entertainments" in Rome seem not to have been properly
scenic, but rather to have belonged to the category of composite
exhibitions--primarily musical and declamatory--such as were not of
rare occurrence in subsequent times also in Greece (Welcker,
Griech. Trag., p. 1277).  This view is supported by the prominence
of flute-playing in Polybius (xxx. 13) and of dancing in
the account of Suetonius regarding the armed dances from Asia Minor
performed at Caesar's games and in the epitaph of Eucharis;
the description also of the -citharoedus- (Ad Her. iv. 47, 60; comp.
Vitruv. v. 5, 7) must have been derived from such "Greek
entertainments." The combinations of these representations in Rome
with Greek athletic combats is significant (Polyb. l. c.; Liv.
xxxix. 22).  Dramatic recitations were by no means excluded from
these mixed entertainments, since among the players whom Lucius
Anicius caused to appear in 587 in Rome, tragedians are expressly
mentioned; there was however no exhibition of plays in the strict
sense, but either whole dramas, or perhaps still more frequently
pieces taken from them, were declaimed or sung to the flute by
single artists.  This must accordingly have been done also in Rome;
but to all appearance for the Roman public the main matter in these
Greek games was the music and dancing, and the text probably had
little more significance for them than the texts of the Italian
opera for the Londoners and Parisians of the present day.  Those
composite entertainments with their confused medley were far better
suited for the Ionian public, and especially for exhibitions in
private houses, than proper scenic performances in the Greek
language; the view that the latter also took place in Rome cannot
be refuted, but can as little be proved.

45.  V. XI. Sciences of General Culture at This Period



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)