No More Learning

The anecdotes inserted from Herodotus1 were probably still foreign to these earliest annalists, and direct borrowing of Greek materials in this section cannot be proved. The more remarkable, therefore, the tendency, which everywhere, even in the case of Cato the enemy of the Greeks, very distinctly apparent, not only to connect Rome with Hellas, but to represent the Italian and Greek nations as having been originally identical. To this tendency we owe the primitive-Italians or Aborigines who were immi grants from Greece, and the primitive-Greeks or Pelas- gians whose wanderings brought them to Italy.
The current story led with some measure of connection, The earlier though the connecting thread was but weak and loose. ■■*■*• through the regal period down to the institution of the
For instance the history of the siege of Gabii compiled from the anecdotes in Herodotus as to Zopyrus and the tyrant Thrasybulus, and one version of the story of the exposure of Romulus framed on the model of
the history of the youth of Cyrus as Herodotus relates it
is
is
is
1
is
a
; in
it
(p.
content. tfotarj.
from the expulsion of king Tarquinius down to the Pyrrhic war, by presenting in its own way the main result of that history— the union of Italy under the hegemony of Rome,
Contemporary history, again, was treated in a connected an(* detailed manner. Naevius described the first, and Fabius the second, war with Carthage from their own
188 LITERATURE AND ART book hi
republic but at that point legend dried uj. ; and it was not merely difficult but altogether impossible to lorm a narrative, in any degree connected and readable, out of the lists of magistrates and the scanty notices appended to them. The poets felt this most. Naevius appears for that reason to have passed at once from the regal period to the war regard ing Sicily : Ennius, who in the third of his eighteen books was still describing the regal period and in the sixth had already reached the war with Pyrrhus, must have treated the first two centuries of the republic merely in the most general outline. How the annalists who wrote in Greek managed the matter, we do not know. Cato adopted a peculiar course. He felt no pleasure, as he himself says, "in relating what was set forth on the tablet in the house of the Pontifex Maximus, how often wheat had been dear, and when the sun or moon had been eclipsed ; " and so he devoted the second and third books of his historical work to accounts of the origin of the other Italian communities and of their admission to the Roman confederacy. He thus got rid of the fetters of chronicle, which reports events year by year under the heading of the magistrates for the time being ; the statement in particular, that Cato's historical work narrated events " sectionally," must refer to this feature of his method. This attention bestowed on the other Italian communities, which surprises us in a Roman work, had a bearing on the political position of the author, who leaned throughout on the support of the municipal
Italy in his opposition to the doings of the capital; while it furnished a sort of substitute for the missing history of Rome
chap, xiv LITERATURE AND ART
189
knowledge; Ennius devoted at least thirteen out of the eighteen books of his Annals to the epoch from Pyrrhus down to the Istrian war 372); Cato narrated the fourth and fifth books of his historical work the wars from the first Punic war down to that with Perseus, and in the two last books, which probably were planned on different and ampler scale, he related the events of the last twenty years of his life. For the Pyrrhic war Ennius may have employed Timaeus or other Greek authorities but on the whole the accounts given were based, partly on personal observation or communications of eye-witnesses, partly on each other.
Contemporaneously with historical literature, and some Speeches
sense as an appendage to arose the literature of speeches
and letters. This like manner was commenced
for the Romans possessed nothing of an earlier age except some funeral orations, most of which probably were only brought to light at later period from family archives, such as that which the veteran Quintus Fabius, the opponent of Hannibal, delivered when an old man over his son who had died his prime. Cato on the other hand committed to writing in his old age such of the numerous orations which he had delivered during his long and active public career as were historically important, as sort of political memoirs, and published them partly in his historical work, partly, would seem, as independent supplements to There also existed collection of his letters.
With non-Roman history the Romans concerned them- selves so far, that certain knowledge of was deemed indispensable for the cultivated Roman even old Fabius said to have been familiar not merely with the Roman, but also with foreign, wars, and distinctly testified that Cato
read Thucydides and the Greek historians in
diligently
general.
anecdotes and maxims which Cato compiled for himself as
But, we leave out of view the collection of
"
Cato;
History of °ther nauons.
if
it is
it,
(ii.
;
is
it
it
it
;
a
a
in
aa
in
a
by
in
in
Uncritical treatment of history.
ioo LITERATURE AND ART BOOK III
the fruits of this reading, no trace is discernible of any literary activity in this field.
These first essays in historical literature were all of them, as a matter of course, pervaded by an easy, uncritical spirit ; neither authors nor readers readily took offence at inward or outward inconsistencies. King Tarquinius the Second, although he was already grown up at the time of his father's death and did not begin to reign till thirty-nine years afterwards, is nevertheless still a young man when he ascends the throne. Pythagoras, who came to Italy about a genera tion before the expulsion of the kings, is nevertheless set down by the Roman historians as a friend of the wise Numa.
492. The state-envoys sent to Syracuse in the year 262 transact business with Dionysius the elder, who ascended the throne
408. eighty-six years afterwards (348). This naive uncritical spirit is especially apparent in the treatment of Roman chronology. Since according to the Roman reckoning — the outlines of which were probably fixed in the previous epoch — the foundation of Rome took place 240 years before the consecration of the Capitoline temple 106) and 360 years before the burning of the city by the Gauls (ii. 101), and the latter event, which mentioned also in Greek historical works, fell according to these in the year of the Athenian archon Pyrgion 388 B. C. 01. 98, the building of Rome accordingly fell on 01. 1. This was, according to the chronology of Eratosthenes which was already recognized as canonical, the year 436 after the fall of Troy; nevertheless the common story retained as the founder of Rome the grandson of the Trojan Aeneas. Cato, who like good financier checked the calculation, no doubt drew attention in this instance to the incongruity but he does not appear to have proposed any mode of getting over the difficulty —the list of the Alban kings, which was after wards inserted with this view, certainly did not proceed from him.
;
a
is 8,
1,
(ii.
CHA7. x:» LITERATURE AND ART
191
The same uncritical spirit, which prevailed in the early history, prevailed also to a certain extent in the representa tion of historical times. The accounts certainly without exception bore that strong party colouring, for which the Fabian narrative of the commencement of the second war with Carthage is censured by Polybius with the calm severity characteristic of him. Mistrust, however, is more appro priate in such circumstances than reproach. It is somewhat ridiculous to expect from the Roman contemporaries of Hannibal a just judgment on their opponents; but no conscious misrepresentation of the facts, except such as a simple-minded patriotism of itself involves, has been proved against the fathers of Roman history.
The beginnings of scientific culture, and even of author- ship relating to also fall within this epoch. The instruc tion hitherto given had been substantially confined to read ing and writing and knowledge of the law of the land. 1 But closer contact with the Greeks gradually suggested to the Romans the idea of more general culture and stimulated the endeavour, not directly to transplant this Greek culture to Rome, at any rate to modify the Roman culture to some extent after its model.
Partiality,
First of all, the knowledge of the mother-tongue began
to shape itself into Latin grammar; Greek philology transferred its methods to the kindred idiom of Italy.
The active study of grammar began nearly at the same
time with Roman authorship. About 520 Spurius Carvi- 284. lius, teacher of writing, appears to have regulated the Latin alphabet, and to have given to the letter g, which
was not previously included in 14), the place of the
which could be dispensed with—the place which still holds
the modern Occidental alphabets. The Roman school-
Plautus [Mostell. 126) says of parents, that they teach their children iitterat, iura, Ufa; and Plutarch (Cato Mai, 20) testifies to the same effect.
Selene*,
Grammar,
in 1
it
it
if
a
(ii. 1
s
a
a
;
it, a
Rhetoric
' °"
•ophy.
masters must have been constantly working at the settlement of orthography ; the Latin Muses too never disowned their scholastic Hippocrene, and at all times applied themselves to orthography side by side with poetry. Ennius especially —resembling Klopstock in this respect also—not only practised an etymological play on assonance quite after the Alexandrian style,1 but also introduced, in place of the simple signs for the double consonants that had hitherto been usual, the more accurate Greek double writing. Of Naevius and Plautus, it is true, nothing of the kind is known; the popular poets in Rome must have treated orthography and etymology with the indifference which is usual with poets.
The Romans of this epoch still remained strangers to rnetoric ana" philosophy. The speech in their case lay too decidedly at the very heart of public life to be accessible to the handling of the foreign schoolmaster; the genuine orator Cato poured forth all the vials of his indignant ridicule over the silly Isocratean fashion of ever learning, and yet never being able, to speak. The Greek philosophy, although it acquired a certain influence over the Romans through the medium of didactic and especially of tragic poetry, was nevertheless viewed with an apprehension compounded of boorish ignorance and of instinctive mis
giving. Cato bluntly called Socrates a talker and a revolu tionist, who was justly put to death as an offender against the faith and the laws of his country; and the opinion, which even Romans addicted to philosophy entertained regarding may well be expressed in the words of Ennius
Philosophari est mihi necesse, at paucis, nam omnino haut placet. Degustandum ex e&, mm in eam ingurgitandum censeo.
Nevertheless the poem on Morals and the instructions in
Thus in his Epicharmian poems Jupiter so called, quod iuvat; and Ceres, quod gerit fruges.
192
LITERATURE AND ART book in
1
is
:
it,
chap, xiv LITERATURE AND ART
193
Oratory, which were found among the writings of Cato, may be regarded as the Roman quintessence or, if the expression be preferred, the Roman caput mortuum of Greek philosophy and rhetoric. The immediate sources whence Cato drew were, in the case of the poem on Morals, presumably the Pythagorean writings on morals (along with, as a matter of course, due commendation of the simple ancestral habits), and, in the case of the book on Oratory, the speeches in Thucydides and more especially the orations of Demosthenes, all of which Cato zealously studied. Of the spirit of these manuals we may form some idea from the golden"oratorical rule, oftener quoted than followed by posterity, to think of the matter and leave the words to
follow from it"1
Similar manuals of a general elementary character were
composed by Cato on the Art of Healing, the Science of War, Agriculture, and Jurisprudence—all of which studies were likewise more or less under Greek influence. Physics and mathematics were not much studied in Rome ; but the applied sciences connected with them received a certain measure of attention. This was most of all true of medicine.
Medicine,
In 535 the first Greek physician, the Peloponnesian Arch- 219. agathus, settled in Rome and there acquired such repute by
his surgical operations, that a residence was assigned to
him on the part of the state and he received the freedom
of the city ; and thereafter his colleagues flocked in crowds to Italy. Cato no doubt not only reviled the foreign medical practitioners with a zeal worthy of a better cause, but attempted, by means of his medical manual compiled from his own experience and probably in part also from the medical literature of the Greeks, to revive the good old fashion under which the father of the family was at the same time the family physician. The physicians and the public gave themselves, as was reasonable, but little concern
VOL. 111
78
1 Rem tene, verba sequentur.
Matbe-
about his obstinate invectives : at any rate the profession, one of the most lucrative which existed in Rome, continued a monopoly in the hands of the foreigners, and for centuries there were none but Greek physicians in Rome.
Hitherto the measurement of time had been treated in Rome with barbarous indifference, but matters were now at least in some degree improved. With the erection of
AgTicul-
the art of ""•
and the art of war were, of course, primarily regulated by the standard of traditional and personal ex- perience, as is very distinctly apparent in that one of the two treatises of Cato on Agriculture which has reached our
time. But the results of Graeco- Latin, and even of Phoenician, culture were brought to bear on these subor
194
LITERATURE AND ART book hi
I6S. the first sundial in the Roman Forum in 491 the Greek hour (<apa, kora) began to come into use at Rome : it happened, however, that the Romans erected a sundial which had been prepared for Catana situated four degrees farther to the south, and were guided by this for a whole century. Towards the end of this epoch we find several persons of quality taking an interest in mathematical studies.
191. Manius Acilius Glabrio (consul in 563) attempted to check the confusion of the calendar by a law, which allowed the pontifical college to insert or omit intercalary months at discretion : if the measure failed in its object and in fact aggravated the evil, the failure was probably owing more to the unscrupulousness than to the want of intelligence of the Roman theologians. Marcus Fulvius Nobilior
189. (consul in 565), a man of Greek culture, endeavoured at least to make the Roman calendar more generally known. 166. Gaius Sulpicius Gallus (consul in 588), who not only 168. predicted the eclipse of the moon in 586 but also calculated
the distance of the moon from the earth, and who appears to have come forward even as an astronomical writer, was
on this account by his contemporaries as a prodigy of diligence and acuteness.
regarded
Agriculture
chap, xiv LITERATURE AND ART
19S
dinate fields just as on the higher provinces of intellectual activity, and for that reason the foreign literature relating to them cannot but have attracted some measure of atten tion.
Jurisprudence, on the other hand, was only in a subordi- J«ri»- nate degree affected by foreign elements. The activity of ^^ the jurists of this period was still mainly devoted to the answering of parties consulting them and to the instruction
of younger listeners ; but this oral instruction contributed
to form a traditional groundwork of rules, and literary activity was not wholly wanting. A work of greater import
ance for jurisprudence than the short sketch of Cato was
the treatise published by Sextus Aelius Paetus, surnamed Aelim the " subtle " (catus), who was the first practical jurist of
his time, and, in consequence of his exertions for the public benefit in this respect, rose to the consulship (556) and to 198. the censorship (560). His treatise — the " Tripartita" 194. as it was called — was a work on the Twelve Tables, which appended to each sentence of the text an explanation — chiefly, doubtless, of the antiquated and unintelligible expressions — and the corresponding formula of action. While this process of glossing undeniably indicated the influence of Greek grammatical studies, the portion treating
of the formulae of action, on the contrary, was based on
the older collection of Appius (ii. 113) and on the whole system of procedure developed by national usage and precedent
The state of science generally at this epoch is very dis- Cato's tinctly exhibited in the collection of those manuals composed ~2tt^ by Cato for his son which, as a sort of encyclopaedia, were designed to set forth in short maxims what a " fit man "
(vir bonus) ought to be as orator, physician, husbandman, warrior, and jurist A distinction was not yet drawn between the propaedeutic and the professional study of science ; but so much of science generally as seemed
Character
historical position of Roman literature.
sciences for all ages.
Thus poetry and literature made their entrance into
Rome along with the sovereignty of the world, or, to use the language of a poet of the age of Cicero :
Poenico bello seeundo Musa pennato gradu Intulit se belli cosam Romuli in gentem feram.
In the districts using the Sabellian and Etruscan dialects also there must have been at the same period no want of intellectual movement Tragedies in the Etruscan language are mentioned, and vases with Oscan inscriptions show that the makers of them were acquainted with Greek comedy. The question accordingly presents itself, whether,
196
LITERATURE AND ART
necessary or useful was required of every true Roman. The work did not include Latin grammar, which con sequently cannot as yet have attained that formal develop ment which is implied in a properly scientific instruction in language; and it excluded music and the whole cycle of the mathematical and physical sciences. Throughout it was the directly practical element in science which alone was to be handled, and that with as much brevity and simplicity as possible. The Greek literature was doubtless made use of, but only to furnish some serviceable maxims of experience culled from the mass of chaff and rubbish : it was one of Cato's commonplaces, that " Greek books must be looked
into, but not thoroughly studied. " Thus arose those household manuals of necessary information, which, while rejecting Greek subtlety and obscurity, banished also Greek acuteness and depth, but through that very
peculiarity moulded the attitude of the Romans towards the Greek
with Naevius and Cato, a Hellenizing literature like the Roman may not have been in course of
formation on the Arnus and Volturnus. But all information on the point is lost, and history can in such circumstances only indicate the blank.
The Roman literature is the only one as to which we
contemporarily
chap, xiv LITERATURE AND ART
197
can still form an opinion ; and, however problematical its Hdleniring
absolute worth may appear to the aesthetic judge, for those who wish to apprehend the history of Rome it remains of unique value as the mirror of the inner mental life of Italy in that sixth century — full of the din of arms and pregnant for the future — during which its distinctively Italian phase closed, and the land began to enter into the broader career of ancient civilization. In it too there prevailed that antagonism, which everywhere during this epoch pervaded the life of the nation and characterized the age of transition. No one of unprejudiced mind, and who is not misled by the venerable rust of two thousand years, can be deceived as to the defectiveness of the Hellenistico-Roman literature. Roman literature by the side of that of Greece resembles a German orangery by the side of a grove of Sicilian orange- trees ; both may give us pleasure, but it is impossible even to conceive them as parallel. This holds true of the literature in the mother-tongue of the Latins still more decidedly, if possible, than of the Roman literature in a foreign tongue ; to a very great extent the former was not the work of Romans at all, but of foreigners, of half-Greeks, Celts, and ere long even Africans, whose knowledge of Latin was only acquired by study. Among those who in this age came before the public as poets, none, as we have already said, can be shown to have been persons of rank ; and not only so, but none can be shown to have been natives of Latium proper. The very name given to the poet was foreign ; even Ennius emphatically calls himself a
poeta} But not only was this poetry foreign ; it was also liable to all those defects which are found to occur where
1 See the lines already quoted at p. 177.
The formation of the name poeta from the vulgar Greek xm/Hp instead of irmirrfc —as iirb-r\utv was in use among the Attic potters—is character istic. We may add that poeta technically denotes only the author of epic or recitative poems, not the composer for the stage, who at this time was styled icrita (p. 139 ; Festus, s. v. , p. 333 M. ).
,erature-
. 98
LITERATURE AND ART book ill
schoolmasters become authors and the great multitude forms the public. We have shown how comedy was artistically debased by a regard to the multitude, and in fact sank into vulgar coarseness ; we have further shown that two of the most influential Roman authors were schoolmasters in the first instance and only became poets in the sequel, and that, while the Greek philology which only sprang up after the decline of the national literature experimented merely on the dead body, in Latium grammar and literature had their foundations laid simultaneously and went hand in hand, almost as in the case of modern missions to the heathen. In fact, if we view with an unprejudiced eye this Hellenistic literature of the sixth century —that poetry followed out professionally and destitute of all productiveness of its own, that uniform imitation of the very shallowest forms of foreign art, that rtpertoire of translations, that changeling of epos — we are tempted to reckon it simply one of the diseased symptoms of the epoch before us.
But such a judgment, if not unjust, would yet be just only in a very partial sense. We must first of all consider that this artificial literature sprang up in a nation which not only did not possess any national poetic art, but could never attain any such art. In antiquity, which knew nothing of the modern poetry of individual life, creative poetical activity fell mainly within the mysterious period when a nation was experiencing the fears and pleasures of growth : without prejudice to the greatness of the Greek epic and tragic poets we may assert that their poetry mainly consisted in reproducing the primitive stories of human gods and divine men. This basis of ancient poetry was totally wanting in Latium : where the world of gods remained shapeless and legend remained barren, the golden apples of poetry could not voluntarily ripen. To this falls to be added a second and more important consideration.
chap, xiv LITERATURE AND ART
199
The inward mental development and the outward political evolution of Italy had equally reached a point at which it was no longer possible to retain the Roman nationality based on the exclusion of all higher and individual mental culture, and to repel the encroachments of Hellenism. The propagation of Hellenism in Italy had certainly a revolutionary and a denationalizing tendency, but it was indispensable for the necessary intellectual equalization of the nations ; and this primarily forms the historical and even the poetical justification of the Romano-Hellenistic literature. Not a single new and genuine work of art issued from its workshop, but it extended the intellectual horizon of Hellas over Italy. Viewed even in its mere outward aspect, Greek poetry presumes in the hearer a certain amount of positive acquired knowledge. That self-contained com pleteness, which is one of the most essential peculiarities of the dramas of Shakespeare for instance, was foreign to ancient poetry ; a person unacquainted with the cycle of Greek legend would fail to discover the background and
often even the ordinary meaning of every rhapsody and every tragedy. If the Roman public of this period was in some degree familiar, as the comedies of Plautus show, with the Homeric poems and the legends of Herakles, and was acquainted with at least the more generally current of the other myths,1 this knowledge must have found its way to the public primarily through the stage alongside of the school, and thus have formed at least a first step towards the understanding of the Hellenic poetry. But still deeper was the effect —on which the most ingenious literary critics of antiquity justly laid emphasis — produced by the natural
1 Even subordinate figures from the legends of Troy and of Herakles make their appearance, e. g. Talthybius (Stich. 305), Autolycus (Bacch. 275), Parthaon (Men. 745). Moreover the most general outlines must have been known in the case of the Theban and the Argonautic legends, and of the stories of Bellerophon (Bacch. 810), Pentheus (Merc. 467), Procneand Philomela (Rud. 604), Sappho and Phaon (Mil. 1247).
aoo LITERATURE AND ART book hi
ization of the Greek poetic language and the Greek metres in Latium. If " conquered Greece vanquished her rude conqueror by art," the victory was primarily accomplished by elaborating from the unpliant Latin idiom a cultivated and elevated poetical language, so that instead of the monotonous and hackneyed Saturnian the senarius flowed and the hexameter rushed, and the mighty tetrameters, the jubilant anapaests, and the artfully intermingled lyrical rhythms fell on the Latin ear in the mother- tongue. Poetical language is the key to the ideal world of poetry, poetic measure the key to poetical feeling ; for the man, to whom the eloquent epithet is dumb and the living image is dead, and in whom the times of dactyls and iambuses awaken no inward echo, Homer and Sophocles have composed in vain. Let it not be said that poetical and rhythmical feeling comes spontaneously. The ideal feelings are no doubt implanted by nature in the human breast, but they need favourable sunshine in order to germinate ; and especially in the Latin nation, which was but little suscep tible of poetic impulses, they needed external nurture. Nor let it be said, that, by virtue of the widely diffused acquaint ance with the Greek language, its literature would have sufficed for the susceptible Roman public. The mysterious charm which language exercises over man, and which
poetical language and rhythm only enhance, attaches not to any tongue learned accidentally, but only to the mother- tongue. From this point of view, we shall form a juster judgment of the Hellenistic literature, and particularly of the poetry, of the Romans of this period. If it tended to transplant the radicalism of Euripides to Rome, to resolve the gods either into deceased men or into mental con ceptions, to place a denationalized Latium by the side of a denationalized Hellas, and to reduce all purely and distinctly developed national peculiarities to the problematic notion of general civilization, every one is at liberty to find this
chap, xiv LITERATURE AND ART sol
tendency pleasing or disagreeable, but none can doubt its historical necessity. From this point of view the very defectiveness of the Roman poetry, which cannot be denied, may be explained and so may in some degree be justified. It is no doubt pervaded by a disproportion between the trivial and often bungled contents and the comparatively finished form ; but the real significance of this poetry lay precisely in its formal features, especially those of language and metre. It was not seemly that poetry in Rome was principally in the hands of schoolmasters and foreigners and was chiefly translation or imitation ; but, if the primary object of poetry was simply to form a bridge from Latium to Hellas, Livius and Ennius had certainly a vocation to the poetical pontificate in Rome, and a translated literature was the simplest means to the end. It was still less seemly that Roman poetry preferred to lay its hands on the most worn-out and trivial originals ; but in this view it was appropriate. No one will desire to place the poetry of Euripides on a level with that of Homer ; but, historically viewed, Euripides and Menander were quite as much the
oracles of cosmopolitan Hellenism as the Iliad and Odyssey were the oracles of national Hellenism, and in so far the representatives of the new school had good reason for introducing their audience especially to this cycle of litera ture. The instinctive consciousness also of their limited poetical powers may partly have induced the Roman composers to keep mainly by Euripides and Menander and to leave Sophocles and even Aristophanes untouched ; for, while poetry is essentially national and difficult to trans plant, intellect and wit, on which the poetry of Euripides as well as of Menander is based, are in their very nature cosmopolitan. Moreover the fact always deserves to be honourably acknowledged, that the Roman poets of the sixth century did not attach themselves to the Hellenic literature of the day or what is called Alexandrinism, but
National opposition,
«» LITERATURE AND ART book ill
sought their models solely in the older classical literature, although not exactly in its richest or purest fields. On the whole, however innumerablemaybethe false accommodations and sins against the rules of art which we can point out in them, these were just the offences which were by stringent necessity attendant on the far from scrupulous efforts of the missionaries of Hellenism ; and they are, in a historical and even aesthetic point of view, outweighed in some measure by the zeal of faith equally inseparable from propagandism. We may form a different opinion from Ennius as to the value of his new gospel ; but, if in the case of faith it does not matter so much what, as how, men believe, we cannot refuse recognition and admiration to the Roman poets of the sixth century. A fresh and strong sense of the power of the Hellenic world-literature, a sacred longing to trans plant the marvellous tree to the foreign land, pervaded the whole poetry of the sixth century, and coincided in a
manner with the thoroughly elevated spirit of that great age. The later refined Hellenism looked down on the poetical performances of this period with some degree of contempt ; it should rather perhaps have looked up to the poets, who with all their imperfection yet stood in a more intimate relation to Greek poetry, and approached nearer to genuine poetical art, than their more cultivated successors. In the bold emulation, in the sounding rhythms, even in the mighty professional pride of the poets of this age there more than in any other epoch of Roman literature, an imposing grandeur; and even those who are under no illusion as to the weak points of this poetry may apply to the proud language, already quoted, in which Ennius celebrates its praise
Enni porta, salve, qui mortalibus Versus propinas Jlammeos medullitus.
As the Hellenico-Roman literature of this period was jssgntjjjly marke(i by dominant tendency, so was also its
peculiar
a
:
it
is,
chap. JOT LITERATURE AND ART
303
antithesis, the contemporary national authorship. While the former aimed at neither more nor less than the anni hilation of Latin nationality by the creation of a poetry Latin in language but Hellenic in form and spirit, the best and purest part of the Latin nation was driven to reject and place under the ban of outlawry the literature of Hellenism along with Hellenism itself. The Romans in the time of Cato stood opposed to Greek literature, very much as in the time of the Caesars they stood opposed to Christianity; freedmen and foreigners formed the main body of the poetical, as they afterwards formed the main body of the Christian, community ; the nobility of the nation and above all the government saw in poetry as in Christianity an absolutely hostile power ; Plautus and Ennius were ranked with the rabble by the Roman aristocracy for reasons nearly the same as those for which the apostles and bishops were put to death by the Roman government In this field too it was Cato, of course, who took the lead as the vigorous champion of his native country against the
The Greek literati and physicians were in his view the most dangerous scum of the radically corrupt Greek people,1 and the Roman "ballad -singers" are treated by him with ineffable contempt 98). He and those who shared his sentiments have been often and
" As to these Greeks, " he says to his son Marcus, shall tell at the proper place, what came to learn regarding them at Athens and shall
foreigners.
show that
thoroughly.
me, this
will ruin everything, and most especially send hither its physicians. They have conspired to despatch all barbarians by their physicking, but they get themselves paid for it, that people may trust them and that they may the more easily bring us to ruin. They call us also barbarians, and indeed revile us by the still more vulgar name of Opicans. interdict thee, therefore, from all dealings with the practitioners of the healing art. "
Cato in his zeal was not aware that the name of Opicans, which had in Latin an obnoxious meaning, was in Greek quite unobjectionable, and that the Greeks had in the most innocent way come to designate the Italians by that term
useful to look into their writings, but not to study them They are an utterly corrupt and ungovernable race — believe
true as an oracle that people bring hither its culture,
168).
(i.
I
I' it
if it
is
is
; if
it
I
1
(ii. ;
304
LITERATURE AND ART book ill
harshly censured on this account, and certainly the ex pressions of his displeasure are not unfrequently character ized by the bluntness and narrowness peculiar to him ; on a closer consideration, however, we must not only confess him to have been in individual instances
substantially right, but we must also acknowledge that the national
opposition in this field, more than anywhere else, went beyond the manifestly inadequate line of mere negative defence. When his younger contemporary, Aulus Postu- mius Albinus, who was an object of ridicule to the Hellenes themselves by his offensive Hellenizing, and who, for example, even manufactured Greek verses—when this Albinus in the preface to his historical treatise pleaded in excuse for his defective Greek that he was by birth a Roman — was not the question quite in place, whether he had been doomed by authority of law to meddle with matters which he did not understand ? Were the trades of the professional translator of comedies and of the poet
celebrating heroes for bread and protection more honour able, perhaps, two thousand years ago than they are now ? Had Cato not reason to make it a reproach against Nobilior, that he took Ennius—who, we may add, glorified in his verses the Roman potentates without respect of persons, and overloaded Cato himself with praise—along with him to Ambracia as the celebrator of his future achievements ? Had he not reason to revile the Greeks, with whom he had become acquainted in Rome and
Athens, as an incorrigibly wretched pack? This opposition to the culture of the age and the Hellenism of the day was well warranted ; but Cato was by no means chargeable with an opposition to culture and to Hellenism in general. On the contrary it is the highest merit of the national party, that they comprehended very clearly the necessity of creating a Latin literature and of bringing the stimulating influences of Hellenism to bear on it ; only their intention
chap, xiv LITERATURE AND ART
aos
was, that Latin literature should not be a mere copy taken from the Greek and intruded on the national feelings of Rome, but should, while fertilized by Greek influences, be developed in accordance with Italian nationality. With a genial instinct, which attests not so much the sagacity of individuals as the elevation of the epoch, they perceived that in the case of Rome, owing to the total want of earlier poetical productiveness, history furnished the only subject- matter for the development of an intellectual life of their own. Rome was, what Greece was not, a state; and the mighty consciousness of this truth lay at the root both of the bold attempt which Naevius made to attain by means of history a Roman epos and a Roman drama, and of the creation of Latin prose by Cato. It is true that the endeavour to replace the gods and heroes of legend by the
kings and consuls of Rome resembles the attempt of the giants to storm heaven by means of mountains piled one above another : without a world of gods there is no ancient epos and no ancient drama, and poetry knows no sub stitutes. With greater moderation and good sense Cato left poetry proper, as a thing irremediably lost, to the party opposed to him ; although his attempt to create a didactic poetry in national measure after the model of the earlier
Roman productions —the Appian poem on Morals and the poem on Agriculture—remains significant and deserving of respect, in point if not of success, at least of intention. Prose afforded him a more favourable field, and accordingly he applied the whole varied power and energy peculiar to him to the creation of a prose literature in his native
This effort was all the more Roman and all the more deserving of respect, that the public which he prima rily addressed was the family circle, and that in such an effort he stood almost alone in his time. Thus arose his "Origines," his remarkable state-speeches, his treatises on special branches of science. They are certainly pervaded
tongue.
Architec- tm"
184. 179.
J06
LITERATURE AND ART BOOK ill
by a national spirit, and turn on national subjects; but they are far from anti-Hellenic: in fact they originated essen tially under Greek influence, although in a different sense from that in which the writings of the opposite party so originated.
The idea and even the title of his chief work were borrowed from the Greek "foundation-histories"
The same is true of his oratorical authorship; he ridiculed Isocrates, but he tried to learn from Thucy- dides and Demosthenes. His encyclopaedia is essentially the result of his study of Greek literature. Of all the undertakings of that active and patriotic man none was more fruitful of results and none more useful to his country than this literary activity, little esteemed in com parison as it probably was by himself. He found numerous and worthy successors in oratorical and scientific author ship; and though his original historical treatise, which of its kind may be compared with the Greek logography, was not followed by any Herodotus or Thucydides, yet by and through him the principle was established that literary occupation in connection with the useful sciences as well as with history was not merely becoming but honourable in a Roman.
Let us glance, in conclusion, at the state of the arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting. So far as concerns the former, the traces of incipient luxury were less observ able in public than in private buildings. It was not till towards the close of this period, and especially from the
(icrtb-eis).
184. time of the censorship of Cato (570), that the Romans began in the case of the former to have respect to the convenience as well as to the bare wants of the public ; to line with stone the basins (lacus) supplied from the aqueducts (570); to erect colonnades (575, 580); and above all to transfer to Rome the Attic halls for courts and business—the basilicae as they were called. The first of these buildings, somewhat corresponding to our modern
chap. XIY LITERATURE AND ART
*o/
bazaars —the Porcian or silversmiths' hall —was erected by Cato in 570 alongside of the senate-house; others were 184. soon associated with till gradually along the sides of the Forum the private shops were replaced these splendid columnar halls. Every-day life, however, was more deeply influenced by the revolution in domestic architecture which must, at latest, be placed in this period. The hall of the house (atrium), court (cavum aedium), garden and garden colonnade (peristylium), the record -chamber (tablinum), chapel, kitchen, and bedrooms were degrees severally provided for; and, as to the internal fittings, the column began to be applied both in the court and in the hall
for the support of the open roof and also for the garden colonnades throughout these arrangements probable
that Greek models were copied or at any rate made use of.
Yet the materials used in building remained simple " our ancestors," says Varro, "dwelt in houses of brick, and
laid merely moderate foundation of stone to keep away damp. "
Of Roman plastic art we scarcely encounter any other Plastic an trace than, perhaps, the embossing in wax of the images of ■"? . ancestors. Painters and painting are mentioned somewhat
more frequently. Manius Valerius caused the
victory which he obtained over the Carthaginians and Hiero 49 263.
>ff Messana (ii. 170) to be depicted on the side wall of the senate-house—the first historical frescoes in Rome, which were followed many of similar character, and which were in the domain of the arts of design what the national epos and the national drama became not much later in the domain of poetry. We find named as painters, one Theodotus who, as Naevius scoffingly said,
Sedeiu in cella cimmtatus ttgetibut Lares htdentis ptni pinxit bubulo
Marcus Pacuvius of Brundisium, who painted in the templt of Hercules in the Forum Boarium —the same who, when
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208 LITERATURE AND ART book ill
more advanced in life, made himself a name as an editor of Greek tragedies; and Marcus Plautius Lyco, a native of Asia Minor, whose beautiful paintings in the temple of Juno at Ardea procured for him the freedom of that city. 1 But these very facts clearly indicate, not only that the exercise of art in Rome was altogether of subordinate importance and more of a manual occupation than an art, but also that it fell, probably still more exclusively than poetry, into the hands of Greeks and half Greeks.
On the other hand there appeared in genteel circles the first traces of the tastes subsequently displayed by the dilettante and the collector. They admired the magnifi cence of the Corinthian and Athenian temples, and re garded with contempt the old-fashioned terra-cotta figures on the roofs of those of Rome : even a man like Lucius Paullus, who shared the feelings of Cato rather than of Scipio, viewed and judged the Zeus of Phidias with the eye of a connoisseur. Tne custom of carrying off the treasures of art from the conquered Greek cities was first
introduced on a large scale by Marcus Marcellus after the SIS. capture of Syracuse (542). The practice met with severe
reprobation from men of the old school of training, and the
stern veteran Quintus Fabius Maximus, for instance, on the 209. capture of Tarentum (545) gave orders that the statues in
the temples should not be touched, but that the Tarentines should be allowed to retain their indignant gods. Yet the
of temples in this way became of more and more frequent occurrence. Titus Flamininus in particular 164. 187. (560) and Marcus Fulvius Nobilior (567X two leading champions of Roman Hellenism, as well as Lucius Paullus
167. (587), were the means of filling the public buildings of
1 Plautius belongs to this or to the beginning of the following period, for the inscription on his pictures (Plin. H. N. xxxv. io, 115), being hexametrical, cannot well be older than Ennius, and the bestowal of the citizenship of Ardea must have taken place before the Social War, through which Ardea lost its independence.
plundering
chap, xiv LITERATURE AND ART
309
Rome with the masterpieces of the Greek chisel. Here too the Romans had a dawning consciousness of the truth that an interest in art as well as an interest in poetry forma': an essential part of Hellenic culture or, in other words, of modern civilization ; but, while the appropriation of Greek poetry was impossible without some sort of poetical activity, in the case of art the mere beholding and procuring of its productions seemed to suffice, and therefore, while a native literature was formed in an artificial way in Rome, 00 attempt even was made to develop a native art
tot. in
FOURTH THE REVOLUTION
" Aber sie treiben's toll ; Ich furcht', es breche. "
Nicht jeden Wochenschluss Macht Gott die Zeche.
Goethe.
BOOK
CHAPTER I
THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES DOWN TO THE TIMES OF THE GRACCHI
With the abolition of the Macedonian monarchy the The supremacy of Rome not only became an established fact m J from the Pillars of Hercules to the mouths of the Nile and
the Orontes, but, as if it were the final decree of fate, it weighed on the nations with all the pressure of an inevitable necessity, and seemed to leave them merely the choice of perishing in hopeless resistance or in hopeless endurance.
If history were not entitled to insist that the earnest reader should accompany her through good and evil days, through landscapes of winter as well as of spring, the historian might be tempted to shun the cheerless task of tracing the manifold and yet monotonous turns of this struggle between superior power and utter weakness, both in the Spanish provinces already annexed to the Roman empire and in the African, Hellenic, and Asiatic territories which were still treated as clients of Rome. But, however unimportant and subordinate the individual conflicts may appear, they have collectively a deep historical significance; and, in particular, the state of things in Italy at this period only becomes intelligible in the light of the reaction which the provinces exercised over the mother-country.
Except in the territories which may be regarded as Spain.
ai4 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
natural appendages of Italy—in which, however, the natives were still far from being completely subdued, and, not greatly to the credit of Rome, Ligurians, Sardinians, and Corsicans were continually furnishing occasion for "village triumphs "—the formal sovereignty of Rome at the com mencement of this period was established only in the two Spanish provinces, which embraced the larger eastern and southern portions of the peninsula beyond the Pyrenees. We have already 384 ff. ) attempted to describe the state of matters in ihe peninsula. Iberians and Celts, Phoenicians, Hellenes, and Romans were there confusedly intermingled. The most diverse kinds and stages of civilization subsisted there simultaneously and at various points crossed each other, the ancient Iberian culture side by side with utter barbarism, the civilized relations of Phoenician and Greek mercantile cities side side with an incipient process of Latinizing, which was especially pro moted by the numerous Italians employed in the silver mines and the large standing garrison. In this respect
the Roman township of Italica (near Seville) and the Latin colony of Carteia (on the bay of Gibraltar) deserve mention —the latter being the first transmarine urban community of Latin tongue and Italian constitution. Italica was
106. founded by the elder Scipio, before he left Spain (548), for his veterans who were inclined to remain in the penin sula—probably, however, not as burgess-community, but
171. merely as market-place. 1 Carteia was founded in 583 and owed its existence to the multitude of camp-children — the offspring of Roman soldiers and Spanish slaves —who grew up as slaves de jure but as free Italians de facto, and
Italica most have been intended by Scipio to be what was called in Italy forum et conciliabvlum civium Romanorum Aquae Seztiae in Gaul had a similar origin afterwards. The formation of transmarine burgess- communities only began at a later date with Carthage and Narbo yet
remarkable that Scipio already made first step, in a certain sense, in that direction.
is
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(ii.
chap. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES atj
were now manumitted on behalf of the state and constituted,
along with the old inhabitants of Carteia, into a Latin
colony. For nearly thirty years after the organizing of the
province of the Ebro by Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus
(575, 576; 391) the Spanish provinces, on the whole, 179. 17& enjoyed the blessings of peace undisturbed, although
mention made of one or two expeditions against the Celtiberians and Lusitanians.
But more serious events occurred in 600. The Lusi- Lusi-[164.
tanianw*-.
and the Upper Douro) were thereby induced to make common cause with the Lusitanians and these, thus reinforced, were enabled to extend their excursions as far
as the Mediterranean, and to pillage even the territory of
the Bastulo-Phoenicians not far from the Roman capital New Carthage (Cartagena). The Romans at home took the matter seriously enough to resolve on sending consul to Spain, step which had not been taken since 559 and, 195. order to accelerate the despatch of aid, they even made the
new consuls enter on office two months and half before the legal time. For this reason the day for the consuls enter
ing on office was shifted from the 15th of March to the
1st of January and thus was established the beginning of the year, which we still make use of at the present day. But, before the consul Quintus Fulvius Nobilior with his army arrived, very serious encounter took place on the right bank of the Tagus between the praetor Lucius Mummius, governor of Further Spain, and the Lusitanians, now led after the fall of Punicus his successor Caesarus
tanians, under the leadership of chief called Punicus, invaded the Roman territory, defeated the two Roman governors who had united to oppose them, and slew great number of their troops. The Vettones (between the
Tagus
Fortune was at first favourable to the Romans; 1M. the Lusitanian army was broken and their camp was taken.
But the Romans, partly already fatigued their march
(601).
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ai6 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book rv
and partly broken up in the disorder of the pursuit, were at length completely beaten by their already vanquished antagonists, and lost their own camp in addition to that of the enemy, as well as 9000 dead.
The flame of war now blazed up far and wide. The Lusitanians on the left bank of the Tagus, led by Caucaenus, threw themselves on the Celtici subject to the Romans (in Alentejo), and took away their town Conistorgis.
The Lusitanians sent the standards taken from Mummius to the Celtiberians at once as an announcement of victory and as a warning ; and among these, too, there was no want of ferment. Two small Celtiberian tribes in the neighbourhood of the powerful Arevacae (about the sources of the Douro and Tagus), the Belli and the Titthi, had resolved to settle together in Segeda, one of their towns. While they were occupied in building the walls, the Romans ordered them to desist, because the Sempronian regulations prohibited the subject communities from found ing towns at their own discretion ; and they at the same time required the contribution of money and men which was due by treaty but for a considerable period had not been demanded. The Spaniards refused to obey either command, alleging that they were engaged merely in en larging, not in founding, a city, and that the contribution had not been merely suspended, but remitted by the Romans. Thereupon Nobilior appeared in Hither Spain with an army of nearly 30,000 men, including some Numidian horsemen and ten elephants. The walls of the new town of Segeda still stood unfinished : most of the inhabitants submitted. But the most resolute men fled with their wives and children to the powerful Arevacae, and summoned these to make common cause with them against the Romans. The Arevacae, emboldened by the victory of the Lusitanians over Mummius, consented, and chose Carus, one of the Segedan refugees, as their general.
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 217
On the third day after his election the valiant leader had fallen, but the Roman army was defeated and nearly 6000 Roman burgesses were slain ; the 2 3rd day of August, the festival of the Volcanalia, was thenceforth held in sad remembrance by the Romans. The fall of their general, however, induced the Arevacae to retreat into their strongest town Numantia (Guarray, a Spanish league to the north of Soria on the Douro), whither Nobilior followed them. Under the walls of the town a second engagement took place, in which the Romans at first by means of their elephants drove the Spaniards back into the town ; but while doing so they were thrown into confusion in consequence of one of the animals being wounded, and sustained a second defeat at the hands of the enemy again issuing from the walls. This and other misfortunes — such as the destruc tion of a corps of Roman cavalry despatched to call forth the contingents —imparted to the affairs of the Romans in the Hither province so unfavourable an aspect that the fortress of Ocilis, where the Romans had their chest and their stores, passed over to the enemy, and the Arevacae were in a position to think, although without success, of dictating peace to the Romans. These disadvantages, however, were in some measure counterbalanced by the successes which Mummius achieved in the southern pro vince. Weakened though his army was by the disaster which it had suffered, he yet succeeded with it in defeating
the Lusitanians who had imprudently dispersed themselves on the right bank of the Tagus ; and passing over to the left bank, where the Lusitanians had overrun the whole Roman territory, and had even made a foray into Africa, he cleared the southern province of the enemy.
To the northern province in the following year (602) 152.
the senate sent considerable reinforcements and a new Marcenus- commander-in-chief in the place of the incapable Nobilior,
the consul Marcus Claudius Marcellus, who had already,
ai8 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book rr
168. when praetor in 586, distinguished himself in Spain, and had since that time given proof of his talents as a general in two consulships. His skilful leadership, and still more his clemency, speedily changed the position of affairs : Ocilis at once surrendered to him ; and even the Arevacae, confirmed by Marcellus in the hope that peace would be granted to them on payment of a moderate fine, concluded an armistice and sent envoys to Rome. Marcellus could thus proceed to the southern province, where the Vettones and Lusitanians had professed submission to the praetor Marcus Atilius so long as he remained within their bounds, but after his departure had immediately revolted afresh and chastised the allies of Rome. The arrival of the consul restored tranquillity, and, while he spent the winter in Corduba, hostilities were suspended throughout the peninsula. Meanwhile the question of peace with the Arevacae was discussed at Rome. It is a significant indication of the relations subsisting among the Spaniards themselves, that the emissaries of the Roman party subsisting among the Arevacae were the chief occasion of the rejection of the proposals of peace at Rome, by representing that, if the Romans were not willing to sacrifice the Spaniards friendly to their interests, they had no alternative save either to send a consul with a corresponding army every year to the peninsula or to make an emphatic example now. In consequence of this, the ambassadors of the Arevacae were dismissed without a decisive answer, and it was resolved that the war should be prosecuted with vigour. Marcellus accordingly found himself compelled in the following spring
151. (603) to resume the war against the Arevacae. But— either, as was asserted, from his unwillingness to leave to his successor, who was to be expected soon, the glory of terminating the war, or, as is perhaps more probable, from his believing like Gracchus that a humane treatment of the Spaniards was the first thing requisite for a lasting peace —
chap, l THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 219
the Roman general after holding a secret conference with the most influential men of the Arevacae concluded a treaty under the walls of Numantia, by which the Arevacae surrendered to the Romans at discretion, but were rein stated in their former rights according to treaty on their undertaking to pay money and furnish hostages.
When the new commander-in-chief, the consul Lucius Lucullus, arrived at head-quarters, he found the war which he had come to conduct already terminated by a formally concluded peace, and his hopes of bringing home honour and more especially money from Spain were apparently frustrated. But there was a means of surmounting this
Lucullus of his own accord attacked the western neighbours of the Arevacae, the Vaccaei, a Celtiberian. nation still independent which was living on the best understanding with the Romans. The question of the Spaniards as to what fault they had committed was answered by a sudden attack on the town of Cauca (Coca, eight Spanish leagues to the west of Segovia) ; and, while the terrified town believed that it had purchased a capitulation by heavy sacrifices of money, Roman troops marched in and enslaved or slaughtered the inhabitants without any pretext at all. After this heroic feat, which is said to have cost the lives of some 20,000 defenceless men, the army proceeded on its march. Far and wide the villages and townships were abandoned or, as in the case of the strong Intercatia and Pallantia (Palencia) the capital of the Vaccaei, closed their gates against the Roman Covetousness was caught in its own net ; there was no community that would venture to conclude a capitulation with the perfidious commander, and the general flight of the inhabitants not only rendered booty scarce, but made it almost impossible for him to remain for any length of
time in these inhospitable regions. In front of Intercatia, Scipio Aemilianus, an esteemed military tribune, the son of
difficulty.
<
army.
/ /
VWathus.
better settlements ; whereupon the barbarians, who to the number of 7000 came to him for the sake of the expected lands, were separated into three divisions, disarmed, and partly carried off into slavery, partly massacred. War has hardly ever been waged with so much perfidy, cruelty, and avarice as by these two generals ; who yet by means of their criminally acquired treasures escaped the one from condemnation, and the other even from impeachment. The veteran Cato in his eighty-fifth year, a few months before his death, attempted to bring Galba to account before the burgesses ; but the weeping children of the general, and the gold which he had brought home with him, proved to the Roman people his innocence.
It was not so much the inglorious successes which Lucullus and Galba had attained in Spain, as the outbreak
220 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
the victor of Pydna and the adopted grandson of the victor of Zama, succeeded, by pledging his word of honour when that of the general no longer availed, in inducing the in habitants to conclude an agreement by virtue of which the Roman army departed on receiving a supply of cattle and clothing. But the siege of Pallantia had to be raised for want of provisions, and the Roman army in its retreat was pursued by the Vaccaei as far as the Douro. Lucullus thereupon proceeded to the southern province, where in the same year the praetor, Servius Sulpicius Galba, had allowed himself to be defeated by the Lusitanians. They spent the winter not far from each other — Lucullus in the terri tory of the Turdetani, Galba at Conistorgis —and in the
180. following year (604) jointly attacked the Lusitanians. Lucullus gained some advantages over them near the straits / of Gades. Galba performed a greater achievement, for he concluded a treaty with three Lusitanian tribes on the right Bank of the Tagus and promised to transfer them to
149. of the fourth Macedonian and of the third Carthaginian war in 605, which induced the Romans again to leave
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES
an
Spanish affairs in the first instance to the ordinary governors. Accordingly the Lusitanians, exasperated rather than humbled by the perfidy of Galba, immediately overran
afresh the rich territory of the Turdetani. The Roman governor Gaius Vetilius (607-8 P1) marched against them, 147-6. and not only defeated them, but drove the whole host towards a hill where it seemed lost irretrievably. The
was virtually concluded, when Viriathus — a man of humble origin, who formerly, when a youth, had bravely defended his flock from wild beasts and robbers and was now in more serious conflicts a dreaded guerilla chief, and who was one of the few that had accidentally escaped from the perfidious onslaught of Galba — warned his countrymen against relying on the Roman word of honour, and promised them deliverance if they would follow him. His language and his example produced a deep effect : the army entrusted him with the supreme command. Viriathus gave orders to the mass of his men to proceed in detached parties, by different routes, to the appointed rendezvous ; he himself formed the best mounted and most trustworthy into a corps of 1000 horse, with which he covered the departure of his men. The Romans, who wanted light cavalry, did not venture to disperse for the pursuit under the eyes of the enemy's horsemen. After Viriathus and his band had for two whole days held in check the entire
1 The chronology of the war with Viriathus is far from being precisely settled. It is certain that the appearance of Viriathus dates from the con flict with Vetilius (Appian, Hist. 61 ; Liv. lii. ; Oros. v. 4), and that he perished in 615 (Diod. Vat. p. no, eta) ; the duration of his rule is reckoned at eight (Appian, llisp. 63), ten (Justin, xliv. 3), eleven (Diodorus, p. 597), 6fteen (Liv. liv. ; Eulrop. iv. 16 ; Oros. v. 4 ; Flor. i. 33), and twenty years (Vellei. ii. 90). The first estimate possesses some probability, because the appearance of Viriathus is connected both in Diodorus (p. 591 ; Vat. p. 107, 108) and in Orosius with the destruction of Corinth. Of the Roman governors, with whom Viriathus fought, several undoubtedly belong to the northern province for though Viriathus was at work chiefly in the southern, he was not exclusively so (Liv. lii. conse quently we must not calculate the number of the years of his generalship by the numbet *. * these names.
capitulation
j S
I
188;
) ;
;
(v. 4)
His
221 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
Roman army he suddenly disappeared during the night and hastened to the general rendezvous. The Roman general followed him, but fell into an adroitly -laid ambush, in which he lost the half of his army and was himself captured and slain ; with difficulty the rest of the troops escaped to the colony of Carteia on the Straits. In all haste 5000 men of the Spanish militia were despatched from the Ebro to reinforce the defeated Romans ; but Viriathus destroyed the corps while still on its march, and commanded so absolutely the whole interior of Carpetania that the Romans did not even venture to seek him there. Viriathus, now recognized as lord and king of all the Lusitanians, knew how to combine the full dignity of his princely position with the homely habits of a shepherd. No badge distinguished him from the common soldier : he rose from the richly adorned marriage-table of his father-in-law, the prince Astolpa in Roman Spain, without having touched the golden plate and the sumptuous fare, lifted his bride on horseback, and rode back with her to his mountains. He never took more of the spoil than the share which he allotted to each of his comrades. The soldier recognized the general simply by his tall figure, by his striking sallies of wit, and above all by the fact that he surpassed every one of his men in temperance as well as in toil, sleeping always in full armour and fighting in front of all in battle. It seemed as if in that thoroughly prosaic
age one of the Homeric heroes had reappeared : the name of Viriathus resounded far and wide through Spain ; and the brave nation conceived that in him it had at length found the man who was destined to break the fetters of alien domination.
Extraordinary successes in northern and in southern Spain marked the next years of his generalship. After destroying the vanguard of the praetor Gaius Plautius
146. (608-9), Viriathus had the skill to lure him over to the
chap. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES a»3
right bank of the Tagus, and there to defeat him so emphatically that the Roman general went into winter quarters in the middle of summer—on which account he
was afterwards charged before the people with
disgraced the Roman community, and was compelled to
live in exile. In like manner the army of the governor — apparently of the Hither province —Claudius Unimanus
was destroyed, that of Gaius Negidius was vanquished,
and the level country was pillaged far and wide. Trophies of victory, decorated with the insignia of the Roman governors
and the arms of the legions, were erected on the Spanish mountains; people at Rome heard with shame and con sternation of the victories of the barbarian king. The conduct of the Spanish war was now committed to a trust worthy officer, the consul Quintus Fabius Maximus Aemilianus, the second son of the victor of Pydna (609). 14fc But the Romans no longer ventured to send the experienced veterans, who had just returned from Macedonia and Asia,
forth anew to the detested Spanish war; the two legions, which Maximus brought with him, were new levies and scarcely more to be trusted than the old utterly demoralized Spanish army. After the first conflicts had again issued favourably for the Lusitanians, the prudent general kept together his troops for the remainder of the year in the camp at Urso (Osuna, south-east from Seville) without accepting the enemy's offer of battle, and only took the
field afresh in the following year (610), after his troops had 144. by petty warfare become qualified for fighting ; he was then enabled to maintain the superiority, and after successful
feats of arms went into winter quarters at Corduba. But when the cowardly and incapable praetor Quinctius took
the command in room of Maximus, the Romans again suffered defeat after defeat, and their general in the middle
of summer shut himself up in Corduba, while the bands of Viriathus overran the southern province (611). 14&
having
334 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
His successor, Quintus Fabius Maximus Servilianus, the adopted brother of Maximus Aemilianus, sent to the peninsula with two fresh legions and ten elephants, en deavoured to penetrate into the Lusitanian country, but after a series of indecisive conflicts and an assault on the Roman camp, which was with difficulty repulsed, found himself compelled to retreat to the Roman
territory. Viriathus followed him into the province, but as his troops
after the wont of Spanish insurrectionary armies suddenly 142. melted away, he was obliged to return to Lusitania (612). 141. Next year (6 1 3) Servilianus resumed the offensive, traversed
the districts on the Baetis and Anas, and then advancing into Lusitania occupied a number of townships. A large number of the insurgents fell into his hands ; the leaders— of whom there were about 500—were executed; those who had gone over from Roman territory to the enemy had their hands cut off; the remaining mass were sold into slavery. But on this occasion also the Spanish war proved true to its fickle and capricious character. After all these successes the Roman army was attacked by Viriathus while it was besieging Erisane, defeated, and driven to a rock where it was wholly in the power of the enemy. Viriathus, however, was content, like the Samnite general formerly at the Caudine passes, to conclude a peace with Servilianus, in which the community of the Lusitanians was recognized
as sovereign and Viriathus acknowledged as its king. The power of the Romans had not risen more than the national sense of honour had sunk ; in the capital men were glad to be rid of the irksome war, and the senate and people ratified the treaty. But Quintus Servilius Caepio, the full brother of Servilianus and his successor in office, was far from satisfied with this complaisance ; and the senate was weak enough at first to authorize the consul to undertake secret machinations against Viriathus, and then to view at least with indulgence the open breach of his pledged word,
chap, i THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES *2$
for which there was no palliation. So Caepio invaded
Lusitania, and traversed the land as far as the territories of
the Vettones and Callaeci ; Viriathus declined a conflict
with the superior force, and by dexterous movements evaded
his antagonist (614). But when in the ensuing year (615) 140. 189. Caepio renewed the attack, and in addition the army, which
had in the meantime become available in the northern province, made its appearance under Marcus Popillius in Lusitania, Viriathus sued for peace on any terms. He was required to give up to the Romans all who had passed over to him from the Roman territory, amongst whom was his own father-in-law; he did so, and the Romans ordered them to be executed or to have their hands cut off. But this was not sufficient ; the Romans were not in the habit of announcing to the vanquished all at once their destined fate.
One behest after another was issued to the Lusitanians, Hii< each successive demand more intolerable than its predeces
sors ; and at length they were required even to surrender
their arms.