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This fleet captured
a
a
if
if,
a
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a number of corsair-vessels and destroyed some rock-strong holds ; and not only so, but the Romans even settled them selves 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 thence- forth appears among the Roman magistracies. 1 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 especially in Cilicia, unhappily showed with how inadequate means the pirates were combated from the newly-acquired position.
But nowhere did the impotence and perversity of the
38a
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
Revolts of
"• Roman provincial administration come to light so con
spicuously 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
184. wars —which had emerged just about 620 as one, and that
1 It is assumed in many quarters that the establishment of the province of Cilicia only took place after the Cilician expedition of Publius Servilius 92. in 676 tl seq. , but erroneously ; for as early as 662 we find Sulla (Appian,
78.
80. 79. Mithr. 57 ; B. C. i. 77; Victor, 75), and in 674, 67s, Gnaeus Dolabella
102.
(Cic. Verr. i. i, 16, 44) as governors of Cilicia—which leaves no alter- native but to place the establishment of the province in 653. 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, more over, 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 — Cappa- docian 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, p. 378), the latter probably even from the time of the peace with Antiochus.
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
383
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 men tioned 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.
But the chief seat of these fearful commotions was once
more Sicily with its plantations and its hordes of slaves ^aian 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
(p. 310) ; 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, 104 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.
Thetecond
384
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
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 prsf**^ to accept the gift of freedom in
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
385
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.
While the revolt thus spread after an alarming manner Athenion. 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 admini stration 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
vol. in
90
386
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
ventured into tue 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
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.
Difficult as it was for the government during the serious war with the Cimbri to place a second army in the field, 103. 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
102. wao true or not, his successor Gaius Servilius (652) obtained no better results ; and both generals were afterwards crimi nally impeached and condemned for their conduct in office —which, however, was not at all a certain proof of their
102. guilt. Athenion, who after the death of Tryphon (652) was invested with the sole command, stood victorious at 101. the head of a considerable army, when in 653 Manius
sending
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
387
Aquillius, who had during the previous year distinguished Aquffltat. 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 pro hibited from bearing arms and peace was again restored to
or, in other words, its recent tormentors were relieved by those of former use and wont in fact, the victor himself occupied prominent place among the numerous and energetic robber-magistrates of this period. Any one who still required proof of the internal quality of the govern ment 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.
But wherever the eye might turn throughout the wide The sphere of Roman administration, the same causes and the SS^ 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, contem
porary 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
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.
The kingdom of Numidia stretched from the river Numldfc. Molochath to the great Syrtis (ii. 381/), bordering on the
one side with the Maureianian kingdom of Tingis (the
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;
jugurtha.
388
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book i>
modem 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-Phoeni cian 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 ques tion, next to Egypt, the most considerable of all the Roman
149. 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 251). Now after the death of his two brothers Massinissa's eldest son, Micipsa,1 reigned alone, feeble peaceful old man, who was fond of occupy ing 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 an illegiti- mate nephew of the king, the prince Jugurtha. Jugurtha was no unworthy grandson of Massinissa. He was hand some man and skilled and courageous rider and hunter
The following table exhibits the genealogy of the Numidian princes :— Massinissa, 516-605 (338-149).
AdherbaL '64s
Micipsa (Diod. B. 607).
Massin, 643
Gauda before 666
(88). Hkmpaal IL
J«b»L JabalL
Jugurtha, {650 (104).
Oiyuiaa,
Micipsa, 636(118).
Hiempsal U- 637
(117).
Gulussa, before 636 (hB).
Mastanabal, before 636(11! )
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chap, IV THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
389
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 120. 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
Soon afterwards, in 636, king Micipsa died. The testa- The [118. ment came into force : but the two sons of Micipsa—the JTmidiiui* vehement Hiempsal still more than his weak elder brother succession. —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 testa
ment 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
390
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book i»
seized the whole territory of the kingdom, subjecting the chiefs who adhered to his cousin to the most cruel perse cution. 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 suc cession 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 friend ship 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 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 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,
:
a
it,
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
391
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
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
(Constantine)
western half (what was afterwards Mauretania Caesariensis and Sitifensis).
This was bad; but matters soon became worse. In order sieged 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, Ju
gurtha, 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
populous
112.
Roman inter ven tion.
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 con cluded, 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 popula tion of the town, Africans as well as Italians, to be put to the
sword (642).
A cry of indignation rose throughout Italy. The mino
rity 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 commodi ties for sale ; loudest of all was the outcry of the mercan tile 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 procrastina tion, with a view to preserve still longer the peace which
39a
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
CHaP, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
393
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 113. 111. 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 head quarters 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
Treaty
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
If***TM, Numidia,
394
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book it
111. (643) ; the greater part of the latter the king afterwards re purchased by bargaining with the individual Roman com mandants 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. Mean while the discussions respecting the validity of the peace so concluded went on in the senate, and the new consul
chap, it THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
39S
Spurius Postumius Albinus zealously supported the proposal to cancel in the expectation that that case the chief command in Africa would devolve on him. This induced Massiva, grandson of Massinissa living in Rome, to assert before the senate his claims to the vacant Numidian king dom upon which Bomilcar, one of the confidants of king Jugurtha, doubtless under his instructions made away with the rival of his master assassination, and, when he was prosecuted on account of escaped with Jugurtha's aid from Rome.
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 Declaration from the city (winter of 643-644). The war was accord- 111-110. ingly resumed, and the consul Spurius Albinus was invested
with the command (644). But the African army down to lim
its lowest ranks was in state of disorganization corre
sponding to such 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 few officers
and soldiers had as well as their generals entered into
secret understanding with the enemy. easy to see
that such an army could do nothing in the field and
Jugurtha on this occasion bribed the Roman general into
inaction, as was afterwards judicially asserted against the
latter, he did 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 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
Cancelling
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;
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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,
396
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
tion of the the terms of which —the marching off of the Roman army Romans.
Second under the yoke, the immediate evacuation of the whole
peace.
Dissatis This was too much to be borne. While the Africans faction in were exulting and the prospect—thus suddenly opened up the capital. —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 connec tion 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
Numidian territory, and the renewal of the treaty cancelled
by the senate —were dictated by Jugurtha and accepted by 109. the Romans (in the beginning of 645).
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
397
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 extra ordinary commission of treason. Still less was any attempt even made to interfere with the functions of the govern ment, 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.
The senate in the first place cancelled the second treaty OnmBag of peace —to surrender to the enemy the commander who JLzSi had concluded as was done some thirty years before, treaty, 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 military and
moral point of view were equal to the task. The choice Metdlus fell on Quintus Metellus. He was, like the whole powerful {*^e family to which he belonged, in principle rigid and un scrupulous aristocrat; as magistrate, he, no doubt,
reckoned 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,
/"
it
a
a
a
it,
106.
107.
105. 106.
108. 106.
398
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
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 ex emplary 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
109. 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
108. sternly and speedily reorganized, and in the spring of 646 *
* In the exciting and clever description of this war by Sallust the chronology has been unduly neglected. The war terminated in the 106. summer of 649 114); therefore Marius began his management of the
107. 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 109. 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 44), only began his operations in the following year, in like manner Marius, who was likewise detained for considerable time in Italy by his military prepara-
107. uons 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: s0 that tne tw0 campaigns of Metellus thus fall in 646, 647, and those of Marius in 648, 649.
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,
even spoken of by him as consul in 649.
The prolongation of the command of Metellus, which Sallust reports
108. 106.
(bdi. 10), can in accordance with the place at which stands only refer to 107. 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, led paulo . . dt- (rtwrat; ta ra fruttra fuit, must either have named the provinces
.
;
it
;
U
It is
(c.
a
(c.
(c.
if
chap, IT THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
399
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 ulti
mately nothing more than a guarantee for his life. Metellus, Renewal 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 de liverer 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.
Beyond the utterly barren mountain -range, over which Battle on lay the route of the Romans into the interior, a plain of Mutt,,! , 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
destined for the consuls by the senate, possibly sed paulo [ante ut tontulibus Italia et Gallia provincial essent senalus] decreverat or have run according to the way of filling up the passage in the ordinary manuscripts ; mi fault [antt wiatus Metello Numidiam] deernerat.
400
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book IV
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 neces
sity 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 iwn. 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 de struction of the army ; for, while Numidian infantry oc cupied 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
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
hard-pressed
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
401
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. gurtha sent home a great part of his troops after the battle, and restricted himself to a guerilla warfare, which he likewise managed with skill.
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, trans ferred it into the Roman province, and employed the opportunity of suspended hostilities to institute fresh ne gotiations, 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 a 00, 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, how
ever, the king's most confidential counsellor, Bomilcar—
Ju
VOL HI
91
NnmWht
tySe Roman*,
402
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
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,1 the most considerable of the cities
108-107. 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 com mandant 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
1 Now Beja on the Mejerdah.
chap. IT THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
403
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
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?
When Metellus again took the field in 647, Jugurtha War [107. 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
people.
in the distance. In the interior of the modern of Tunis, close on the edge of the great desert,
sight
beylik
there lay on an oasis provided with springs the strong place Thala ; * thither Jugurtha had retired with his chil dren, 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
1 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.
Maurela- nian com plications.
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
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 conceit 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.
Thereupon Metellus left the province, which he had been compelled by decree of the people to give up to bis 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 com municated 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
Marios com mander- 'n-chief.
106.
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
405
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 beard
less 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 107. 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 355), the arrangement made the senate which left Metellus at his post was overthrown, and decree of the sovereign comitia the supreme command in the African war was committed to Marius.
Accordingly he took the place of Metellus in the course Conflicts of 647 and held the command in the campaign of the wi*°ut following year but his confident promise to do better than 107.
his predecessor and to deliver Jugurtha bound hand and
; ;
by
by
(p.
406 THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book IV
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,
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 now concluded with Jugurtha treaty, in which the latter ceded to him 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 immense masses of
fortunately
by
a
a
it,
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
407
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 all 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).
Strange as it may seem, we can yet understand why the
10M0B.
Negotia- Romans now, after king Bocchus had commenced the war, 3^^! "
began to make most zealous exertions to secure his friend ship, 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,
Surrender and execu tion of Jugurtha.
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 untrust worthy, 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.
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
4o8
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
chap, IV THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
409
two sons, preceded the triumphal chariot of the victor, when he entered Rome on the 1st of January 650 : by his 104. 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 when
he crossed the threshold in order either to be strangled or
to perish from cold and hunger there. But 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 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 violent rage when king Bocchus afterwards consecrated 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 the general himself and by the whole army. In themselves these military rivalries would have been of little moment,
they had not been mixed up with the conflict of political parties, the opposition had not supplanted the senatorial general by Marius, and 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.
Otherwise, this insurrection of the Numidian client- state passed away without producing any noticeable change either in political relations generally or even those of
Reorgani- Nrmddk.
in
;
it
it,
if
a
a
if
by if
a
:
Political results.
Of greater importance than this regulation of African
1 Sallust's political ^wire-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, e. 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. 38 B. Afr. 43, 77) and by the later provincial constitution. On the other hand the nature of the case implied, and Sallust 97, 10a, in) indicates, that the kingdom of Bocchus was considerably enlarged with which 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 Consuntine).
4io
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book iv
the African province. By a deviation from the policy elsewhere followed at this period Numidia was not con verted 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
108. body and mind, who had already in 646 at the suggestion of Marius asserted his claims before the senate. 1 At the same time the Gaetulian tribes in the interior of Africa were received as free allies into the number of the inde pendent nations that had treaties with Rome.
106. As Mauretania was twice enlarged by the Romans, first in 649 after the 46. surrender of Jugurtha, and then in 708 after the breaking up of the Numidian kingdom, probable that the region of Caesarea was added
on the first, and that of Sitifis on the second augmentation.
it is
(c.
;
ii.
; is
CHaP. IT THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
411
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 ram part 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 con
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 opposi
tion 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 117-109. stand forth more defenceless and forlorn than was the
Roman senate in 645 : had there been in Rome a real 109. opposition, that is to say, a party which wished and urged
a fundamental alteration of the constitution, it must
temporary military
412
THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION book it
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 unim portant 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 (p. 58), and pro cured 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,
chap, iv THE RULE OF THE RESTORATION
413
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 introduc
tion 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 fyrannis, 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 states
man 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; 104. 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.
13 1
Relations the north.
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 communi cation 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
The
414
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book it
CHAPTER V
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
JJJ^nd,e Alps and the Pyrenees. The Romans had for long corn-
Alps and
manded this part of the coast of the Mediterranean through
CHAP, v THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH
415
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 Conflicts expedition into the Alps above Nice and Antibes, directed ur,^^ against the Ligurian Oxybii and Decietae, was undertaken
by the Romans in 600 partly at the request of the Massiliots, 154. 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 cultiva
tion 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 and the speculation marks the war, which was waged by the Romans SalassL under the consul Appius Claudius in 61 1 against the Salassi 143. 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
1 If Cicero has not allowed himself to fall into an anachronism when he makes Africanus say this as early a* 625 (de Rep. iii. 9), the view indicated 129, in the text remains perhaps the mly possible one. This enactment did not
refer to Northern Italy and Liguria, as the cultivation of the vine by the Genuates in 637 (p. 81, note) proves ; and as little to the immediate 117. territory of Massilia (Just xlili 4 ; Posidon. Fr. 25. Mull. ; Strabo, iv.
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.
179).
416
THE PEOPLES OF THE NORTH book iv
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
100. (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.
125. in 629. He was the first to enter on the career of Trans alpine 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
rhe Western Ocean was that of the Arverni ;l so that the state ment 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 protect orate 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 clans men, 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, scatter ing 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
1 In Auvergne. Their capital, Nemetum or Nemossus, lay not far from Clermont.