No More Learning

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. c. comp. Cic. Verr. ai, 55), and that he thenceforth exercised the superintend ence over the constitutions of the cities (C. Gr. 1543), as well as in certain cases the criminal jurisdiction (C. Gr. 1543 Pint, Cim. a), Just
certain 148.
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272 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES BOOK IV
confederacies again allowed to have a shadowy existence, but the oppressive restriction on the alienation of landed property was removed.
The communities of Thebes, Chalcis, and Corinth ex perienced 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,
as the senate had hitherto done ; and that, lastly, the Macedonian pro vincial 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. Can. , 35 ; Colum. xL 3, 26), sometimes as assigned to it (e. g. Joseph. Ant. Jvd. xiv. 4, 4). The Roman domanial possessions in Greece were, no doubt, restricted to the territory of Corinth and possibly some portions of Euboea (6'. /. 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
89. further : Cisalpine Gaul consisted after 665 of mere burgess or Latin com munities 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 funda mental idea of the Roman provincia 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 com munities, it must be granted that the position of Greece was not altered in 146. 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 indi vidual communities of Achaia now appeared by the side of Rome as tribu tary 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.
CHAP. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES »73
if the Romans were not disposed permanently to garrison was certainly inevitable — but was levelled with the
ground, and all rebuilding on the desolate site was pro hibited 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 blessing for the country and the government of the Roman commander-in-chief of Macedonia, however much
fell short of what was to be wished, was yet far better than the previous confusion and misrule of Greek confeder acies and Roman commissions. The Peloponnesus ceased to be the great harbour of mercenaries 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 the Hellenes of that day not altogether without reason to the loss of Greek independence. The singular in dulgence, which Rome even now showed towards the Greeks, becomes fully apparent only when compared with the contem porary 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 "harsh and bar barous to deprive Athens and Sparta of the shadow of
VOL III
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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 tingle 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 regula tion 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
168. of greater importance ; a Roman free port as early as 586, it had attracted a great part of the business of Rhodes (ii. 5 1 5), 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. 1
In the third and more distant continent the Roman dominion exhibited a development more imperfect than in
1 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.
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES «75
the African and Macedono-Hellenic countries, which were
separated from Italy only by narrow seas.
In Asia Minor, after the Seleucids were driven back, Kingdom
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 with draw 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 (f 590), 164. had ascended the 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
how the senate sought to humble and weaken this ally after the third Macedonian war 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
As was not clear whether, according to the treaty of peace in 565, the heights of the Taurus in 189. Pamphylia and Pisidia belonged to the kingdom of Syria or
to that of Pergamus (ii 474), the brave Selgians, nominally recognizing, as would seem, the Syrian supremacy, made
prolonged and energetic resistance to the kings Eumenes II. and Attalus II. «a the hardly accessible mountains of
patrons.
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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
107. 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
512) 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 Roman influence,1 he yet, in spite of all the open attacks and secret machinations which his neighbours and the Romans directed against him, at his
Several letters recently brought to light (Mlinchener SUeungsberichte, i860, p. 180 et seq. ) from the kings Eumenes II. and Attains 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
164-168. 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 teq. as attempts on his part to interfere further in Gallic affairs, and to support his partisans in that quarter Polyb. xxxi. xxxii. 3,5). On the other hand 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 state council held for the purpose, at which Athenaeus (certainly the ! *iown brother of the king), Sosander, Menogenes, Chlorus, and other relatives (ivayKcuoi) 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 a success were obtained, they would expose themselves to its being lost
161.
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death (about 595) left his kingdom in standing un- 159. diminished. His brother Attalus II. Philadelphia (t 616) 138. 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 (S72? -6o5), a ruler who combined 182-149. in his own person all the vices of barbarism and of civiliza
tion, 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. 156-154. Philometor ascended the throne (616-621), the peaceful 138-133. 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.
With him the house of the Attalids became extinct. In Province of such an event, according to the constitutional law which ****"
held good at least for the client-states of Rome, the last
War JJrijjJ^
«78 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book it
ruler might dispose of the succession
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;1 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," 2 in other words, of the slaves whom he
by testament
1 In the same testament the king gave to his city Pergamus " freedom," that is the b-qnoKparia. urban self-government. According to the tenor of • remarkable document that has recently been found there (Staatsrtcht, in*, 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 reconcilia tion 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.
1 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
CHAp. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 279
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 181 landed in Asia. Its commander, the consul and pontifex maxim us 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. 180b 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 12*. was followed as in the case of the Carthaginian
for the moment —which derived its name from the God of the Sun so highly honoured in Syria.
territory.
Western sa*
2&> THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
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 (ii. 474) 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.
The numerous other small states and cities of western Asia—the kingdom of Bithynia, the Paphlagonian and Gallic principalities, the Lycian and Pamphylian confeder acies, the free cities of Cyzicus and Rhodes —continued in their former circumscribed relations.
Beyond the Halys Cappadocia —after king Ariarathes V. 163-180. 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 extrava gancies 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,
Cappa-
chap. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 281
Lycaonia, along with the district bordering on it to the eastward reckoned in earlier times as part of Cilicia.
In the remote north-east of Asia Minor " Cappadocia on Pontus. 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 183-179. 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 156-120. 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 Paphlago-
nian 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 dis solution 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.
Syrlm ue stantially conducted the government and, although much ^Jrpt
While in the peninsula of Asia Minor Rome thus sub-
282 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book it
was done without or in opposition to her wishes, yet deter mined 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
189. 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 (ii. 475), 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
and the Syrian army at the bidding of the
47
Roman senate evacuated Egypt when half-won
516), these things implied 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 164. Antiochus Epiphanes (590) Demetrius afterwards named
Soter, the son of Seleucus IV. , living as hostage at Rome, and Antiochus Eupator, minor, the son of the last king Antiochus Epiphanes, contended for the crown; in the
111-146. latter Ptolemy Philometor (573-608), the elder of the two 170. brothers who had reigned jointly since 584, had been driven 164. from the country (590) by the younger Ptolemy Euergetes 117. II. or the Fat 637), and had appeared in person at
Rome to procure his restoration. Both affairs were arranged 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 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 agree
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CHAP. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 183
ably to the treaty of 565, and was in the fair way of com- 189. pleting 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 govern ment 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 162. 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 out ward peace at home, had its decrees derided by the impo tent 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
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.
To the west of these began the kingdom of Asia, which, al though 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
Decline of the king dom of Asia.
284 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES BOOK IV
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,
146. 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.
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 385
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 north-east 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 (ii. 473). 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
Although it was true that his kingdom 175-184. 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
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.
One consequence of this policy was, that the inhabitants The Jew*
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 167. 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
(579-590).
throughout
The aapto,
386 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
Egypt was at any rate for the interest of Rome, it made no difficulty in at once recognizing the freedom and autonomy 181. 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
142. Jews (612); and soon afterwards the head of the Macca- baean 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 (61s). 1
Of still more importance in the sequel than this insurrec- tion 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 Jeru salem, 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
1 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 th» insurgents in the time of Hadrian.
189.
CHAP. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 287
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 250. 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 176-1M. 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, sup
ported 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
288 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
whole pack of neighbouring kings — those
Armenia, Cappadocia, Pergamus —incessantly
the affairs of Syria and fostered disputes as to the succes sion, so that civil war and the division of the sovereignty dt
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
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 re newed and superior opposition to Hellenism. The position of the imperial kings in presence of all this was really
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
spectator.
of Egypt, interfered in
pitiable.
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 389
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.
This revolution in the relations of the peoples in the Reaction of interior of Asia is the turning-point in the history of anti- "V"**. quity. The tide of national movement, which had hitherto Wert, poured from the west to the east and had found in Alex
ander 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 Con stantinople. 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
vol. in
84
tfaAbm
ago THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
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.
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
Piracy.
\ /
salutary decision, and had in
supremacy in the east by a maritime police energetically handled for the general good 216), the complete nullity of this police at the very beginning of this period as distinctly betokens the fearfully rapid decline of the aristo- cratic government. Rome no longer possessed fleet of her own she was content to make requisitions for ships, when 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
particular
introduced their
it
;
I
"> (
\.
a
(ii.
chap. : THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 391
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 631 233). But in the Mauretanian and 123. 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
about these more remote regions. The dis organized 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.
A bad pre-eminence in this respect belonged to Crete, Cret* 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 inde pendence. 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 fate had left liberty to the Cretans only in order to show what was the result of Hellenic independence. was dreadful picture. The old Doric rigour of the Cretan institutions had become, just as in Tarentum, changed into licentious democracy, and the chivalrous spirit of the inhabitants into
wild love of quarrelling and plunder; respectable Greek himself testifies, that in Crete alone nothing was accounted disgraceful that was lucrative, and even the Apostle Paul
'uotes with approval the saying of Cretan poet, Kpfjrtt del ifitOmu, mcuti Bripla, yaffrtpet ipycU.
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
possible
a
a
;
a
a
a
It
if
;
(p.
*9* THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
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
— expended its last energies in the wars which found itself compelled to wage against the Cretans for the suppression of piracy
160. (about 600), and which the Romans sought to mediate, but without earnestness and apparently without success.
CIHda. ,^p Along with Crete, Cilicia soon began to become 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
146-189. risen from slave to be king of Syria (608-615), encouraged by all means in his chief seat, the rugged or western
Cilicia, with view to strengthen his throne 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, which the very govern ments shared at least inaction. The evil was so serious
143. 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 fleet in these waters, and for this the Roman government lacked energy and persever ance. 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
;
;
; a
by
in
it
by
5)
it
a a
a
in
(ii.
5 1
chap, i THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 293
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.
^| C
I '
We have followed the transformation of the outward General relations of Rome and the Romano-Hellenic world generally result- 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 con venience, caprice, collateral advantage, or accident led them
to do so; whereas the greater portion of the territory
under clientship either remained in the intolerable uncer
tainty 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 181. from what he had asked, the chief magistrate of the town
I
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
( '
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 perma nently dragged in the mire by a faithlessness and treachery without parallel, by the most wanton trifling with capitula tions 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
294 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
government renounced all superintendence and all oversight of pro
vincial 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, unimpor tant in themselves, are instructive in this respect. In that
/ country, where the government was less able than in other
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
ISA. king of Syria (t 590), is mentioned as the first who attempted with success to bribe the Roman senate; the bestowal >f presents from foreign kings on influential senators on became so common, that surprise was excited
/
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 195
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 un scrupulous 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 par tiality shown by the magistrates in the levy, rendered it necessary in 602 to abandon the old practice of leaving the 168. selection of the requisite number of soldiers from the men
161. 136.
496 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
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 constitu- tional 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 devoted- ness, 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, nor in 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.
CHAP. II THE REFORM MOVEMENT
atf
CHAPTER n
THE REFORM MOVEMENT AND TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
For a whole generation after the battle of Pydna the The Roman state enjoyed a profound calm, scarcely varied by Rom,B
a ripple here and there on the surface. Its dominion ment extended over the three continents ; the lustre of the before th«
v^
Roman power and the glory of the Roman name were con- stantly 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. "
period of the GraccTM"
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,
Spread of ecay'
998
THE REFORM MOVEMENT BOOK r»
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 incom parable tenacity of purpose and power of heroic self- sacrifice, just as in seasons of tranquillity it will be short sighted, 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 politic ally 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 in ternal 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 cor poration 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 magis tracy ; but every member of the coterie had an inborn title to the highest office of the state—a title not to be pre judiced either by the unfair rivalry of men of his own class
chap, ii AND TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
399
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 603,1 151. and in sufficing with a government of aristocratic nobodies. Even the inaction of the government in its outwardN 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
> I
Syria or Egypt would have proved extremely inconvenient.
It is true that now also there was no want of opposition, Attempts
and it was even to a certain extent effectual. The p^^,, administration of justice was improved. The administrative criminal 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 149. proposal of Lucius Calpurnius Piso, a standing senatorial
1 1° 537 the 'aw restricting re-election to the consulship was suspended 217, during the continuance of the war in Italy, that is, down to 551 (p. 14 ; 203. Ijv. xxvii. 6). But after the death of Marcellus in 546 re-elections to the 208. consulship, if we do not include the abdicating consuls of 59a, only occurred in the years 547, 534, 560, 579, 585, 586, 591, 596, 599, 60a j 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 402) and beyond doubt the singular election of Marcus Marcellus who was consul in 588 and 599 to 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 was supported by Cato (p. 55,
Jordan).
858-844.
188, 155. 152.
149.
; it
(i.
•
;
JOO
THE REFORM MOVEMENT BOOK IV
commission (quaestio ordinarid) 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 189. the elections of magistrates by the Gabinian law (615), then 187. for the public tribunals by the Cassian law (617), lastly for the voting on legislative proposals by the Papirian law
181. 129. (623). In a similar way soon afterwards (about 625) the
Exclusion senators were by decree of the people enjoined on ad
Vote by ballot.
of the senators from the equestrian centuries.
mission to the senate to surrender their public horse, and thereby to renounce their privileged place in the voting of the eighteen equestrian centuries 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 steps towards re generation 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
did or did not concern. Equally ostentatious and equally empty was the formal recognition accorded to
the independence and sovereignty of the burgesses
The public elections.
But this hostility between the formal sovereignty of the people and the practically subsisting constitution was in great part semblance. Party phrases were in free circula tion 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
the transference of their place of assembly from the old 145. Comitium below the senate-house to the Forum (about 609).
:
a
by
it
;
;
a
(p. 8).
chap, II AND TIBERIUS GRACCHUS
901
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 Caeci- lian 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 com- petitors for the rare chaplets ; but now the practical close
ness 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.