As one of our first writers says, it must be “that truth is a divine
thing, since the errors of good men are as fatal to humanity as vice,
which is the error of the wicked.
thing, since the errors of good men are as fatal to humanity as vice,
which is the error of the wicked.
Napoleon - History of Julius Caesar - a
Obliged to check these
dangerous aggressions, the Senate, from 540 to 548, maintained large
forces on the coasts of Epirus and Macedonia; and, united with the
Ætolian league, and with Attalus, king of Pergamus, had forced Philip to
conclude peace. But in 553, after the victory of Zama, when this prince
again attacked the free cities of Greece and Asia allied to Rome, war
was declared against him. The Senate could not forget that at this last
battle a Macedonian contingent was found among the Carthaginian troops,
and that still there remained in Greece a large number of Roman citizens
sold for slaves after the battle of Cannæ. [562] Thus from each war was
born a new war, and every success was destined to force the Republic
into the pursuit of others. Now the Adriatic was to be passed, first, to
curb the power of the Macedonians, and then to call to liberty those
famous towns, the cradles of civilisation. The destinies of Greece could
not be a matter of indifference to the Romans, who had borrowed her
laws, her science, her literature, and her arts.
Sulpicius, appointed to combat Philip, landed on the coast of Epirus,
and penetrated into Macedonia, where he gained a succession of
victories, while one of his lieutenants, sent to Greece with the fleet,
caused the siege of Athens to be raised. During two years the war
languished, but the Roman fleet, combined with that of Attalus and the
Rhodians, remained master of the sea (555). T. Quinctius Flamininus,
raised to the consulship while still young, justified, by his
intelligence and energy, the confidence of his fellow-citizens. He
detached the Achaians and Bœtians from their alliance with the King
of Macedonia, and, with the aid of the Ætolians, gained the battle of
Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly (557), where the legion routed the celebrated
phalanx of Philip II. and Alexander the Great. Philip III. , compelled to
make peace, was fain to accept hard conditions; the first of which was
the obligation to withdraw his garrisons from the towns of Greece and
Asia, and the prohibition to make war without the permission of the
Senate.
The recital of Livy, which speaks of the decree proclaiming liberty to
Greece, deserves to be quoted. We see there what value the Senate then
attached to moral influence, and to that true popularity which the glory
of having freed a people gives:--
“The epoch of the celebration of the Isthmian games generally attracted
a great concourse of spectators, either because of the natural taste of
the Greeks for all sorts of games, or because of the situation of
Corinth, which, seated on two seas, offered easy access to the curious.
But on this occasion an immense multitude flocked thither from all
parts, in expectation of the future fate of Greece in general, and of
each people in particular: this was the only subject of thought and
conversation. The Romans take their place, and the herald, according to
custom, advances into the middle of the arena, whence the games are
announced according to a solemn form. The trumpet sounds, silence is
proclaimed, and the herald pronounces these words: ‘The Roman Senate,
and S. T. Quinctius, imperator, conquerors of Philip and the Macedonians,
re-establish in the enjoyment of liberty, their laws, and privileges,
the Corinthians, the Phocians, the Locrians, the island of Eubœa, the
Magnetes, the Thessalians, the Perrhœbi, and the Achæans of
Phthiotis. ’ These were the names of all the nations which had been under
the dominion of Philip. At this proclamation, the assembly was overcome
with excess of joy. Hardly anybody could believe what he heard. The
Greeks looked at each other as if they were still in the illusions of a
pleasant dream, to be dissipated on awakening, and, distrusting the
evidence of their ears, they asked their neighbours if they were not
deceived. The herald is recalled, each man burning, not only to hear,
but to see the messenger of such good news; he reads the decree a second
time. Then, no longer able to doubt their happiness, they uttered cries
of joy, and bestowed on their liberator such loud and repeated applause
as make it easy to see that, of all good, liberty is that which has most
charm for the multitude. Then the games were celebrated, but hastily,
and without attracting the looks or the attention of the spectators. One
interest alone absorbed their souls, and took from them the feeling of
every other pleasure.
“The games ended, the people rush towards the Roman general; everybody
is anxious to greet him, to take his hand, to cast before him crowns of
flowers and of ribbons, and the crowd was so great that he was almost
suffocated. He was but thirty-three years of age, and the vigour of
life, joined with the intoxication of a glory so dazzling, gave him
strength to bear up against such a trial. The joy of the peoples was not
confined to the enthusiasm of the moment: the impression was kept up
long afterwards in their thoughts and speech. ‘There was then,’ they
said, ‘one nation upon earth, which, at its own cost, at the price of
fatigues and perils, made war for the liberty of peoples even though
removed from their frontiers and continent: this nation crossed the
seas, in order that there should not be in the whole world one single
unjust government, and that right, equity, and law should be everywhere
dominant. The voice of a herald had been sufficient to restore freedom
to all the cities of Greece and Asia. The idea alone of such a design
supposed a rare greatness of soul; but to execute it needed as much
courage as fortune. ’”[563]
There was, however, a shadow on the picture. All Peloponnesus was not
freed, and Flamininus, after having taken several of his possessions
from Nabis, king of Sparta, had concluded peace with him, without
continuing the siege of Lacedæmon, of which he dreaded the length. He
feared also the arrival of a more dangerous enemy, Antiochus III. , who
had already reached Thrace, and threatened to go over into Greece with a
considerable army. For this the allied Greeks, occupied only with their
own interests, reproached the Roman consul with having concluded peace
too hastily with Philip, whom, in their opinion, he could have
annihilated. [564] But Flamininus replied that he was not commissioned to
dethrone Philip, and that the existence of the kingdom of Macedonia was
necessary as a barrier against the barbarians of Thrace, Illyria, and
Gaul. [565] Meanwhile, accompanied even to their ships by the
acclamations of the people, the Roman troops evacuated the cities
restored to liberty (560), and Flamininus returned to a triumph at Rome,
bringing with him that glorious protectorate of Greece, so long an
object of envy to the successors of Alexander.
[Sidenote: War against Antiochus (563). ]
VIII. The policy of the Senate had been to make Macedonia a rampart
against the Thracians, and Greece herself a rampart against Macedonia.
But, though the Romans had freed the Achæan league, they did not intend
to create a formidable power or confederation. Then, as formerly, the
Athenians, the Spartans, the Bœotians, the Ætolians, and, finally,
the Achæans, each endeavoured to constitute an Hellenic league for their
own advantage; and each aspiring to dominate over the others, turned
alternately to those from whom it hoped the most efficient support at
the time. In the Hellenic peninsula, properly so called, the Ætolians,
to whose territory the Senate had promised to join Phocis and Locris,
coveted the cities of Thessaly, which the Romans obstinately refused
them.
Thus, although reinstated in the possession of their independence,
neither the Ætolians, the Achæans, nor yet the Spartans, were satisfied:
they all dreamt of aggrandisement. The Ætolians, more impatient, made,
in 562, three simultaneous attempts against Thessaly, the island of
Eubœa, and Peloponnesus. Having only succeeded in seizing Demetrias,
they called Antiochus III. to Greece, that they might place him at the
head of the hegemony, which they sought in vain to obtain from the
Romans.
The better part of the immense heritage left by Alexander the Great had
fallen to this prince. Already, some years before, Flamininus had given
him notice that it belonged to the honour of the Republic not to
abandon Greece, of which the Roman people had loudly proclaimed itself
the liberator; and that after having delivered it from the yoke of
Philip, the Senate now wished to free from the dominion of Antiochus all
the Asian cities of Hellenic origin. [566] Hannibal, who had taken refuge
with the King of Syria, encouraged him to resist, by engaging him to
carry the struggle into Italy, as he himself had done. War was then
declared by the Romans. To maintain the independence of Greece against
an Asiatic prince was at once to fulfil treaties and undertake the
defence of civilisation against barbarism. Thus, in proclaiming the most
generous ideas, the Republic justified its ambition.
The services rendered by Rome were already forgotten. [567] Antiochus
thus found numerous allies in Greece, secret or declared. He organised a
formidable confederacy, into which entered the Ætolians, the Athamanes,
the Elians, and the Bœotians, and, having landed at Chalcis,
conquered Eubœa and Thessaly. The Romans opposed to him the King of
Macedonia and the Achæans. Beaten at Thermopylæ, in 563, by the consul
Acilius Glabrio, aided by Philip, the King of Syria withdrew to Asia,
and the Ætolians, left to themselves, demanded peace, which was granted
them in 563.
It was not enough to have compelled Antiochus to abandon Greece. L.
Scipio, having his brother, the vanquisher of Carthage, for his
lieutenant, went in 564 to seek him out in his own territory. Philip
favoured the passage of the Roman army, which crossed Macedonia, Thrace,
and the Hellespont without difficulty. The victories gained at Myonnesus
by sea, and at Magnesia by land, terminated the campaign, and compelled
Antiochus to yield up all his provinces on this side Mount Taurus, and
pay 15,000 talents--a third more than the tax imposed on Carthage after
the second Punic war. The Senate, far from reducing Asia then to a
province, exacted only just and moderate conditions. [568] All the Greek
towns of that country were declared free, and the Romans only occupied
certain important points, and enriched their allies at the expense of
Syria. The King of Pergamus and the Rhodian fleet had seconded the Roman
army. Eumenes II. , the successor of Attalus I. , saw his kingdom
increased; Rhodes obtained Lycia and Caria; Ariarathes, king of
Cappadocia, who had given aid to Antiochus, paid two hundred
talents. [569]
[Sidenote: The War in the Cisalpine (558-579). ]
IX. The prompt submission of the East was a fortunate occurrence for the
Republic, for near at home, enemies, always eager and watchful, might at
any moment, supported or excited by their brethren on the other side of
the Alps, attack her in the very centre of her empire.
Indeed, since the time of Hannibal, war had been perpetuated in the
Cisalpine, the bellicose tribes of which, though often beaten, engaged
continually in new insurrections. The settlement of the affairs of
Macedonia left the Senate free to act with more vigour, and in 558 the
defeat of the Ligures, of the Boii, of the Insubres, and of the
Cenomani, damped the ardour of these barbarous peoples. The Ligures and
the Boii, however, continued the strife; but the bloody battle of 561,
fought near Modena, and, later, the ravages committed by L. Flamininus,
brother of the conqueror of Cynoscephalæ, and Scipio Nasica, during the
following years, obliged the Boii to treat. Compelled to yield the half
of their territory, they retired towards the Danube in 564, and three
years afterwards Cisalpine Gaul was formed into a Roman province.
As to the Ligures, they maintained a war of desperation to the end of
the century. Their resistance was such that Rome was obliged to meet it
with measures of excessive rigour; and in 574, more than 47,000 Ligures
were transported into a part of Samnium which had been left almost
without inhabitants since the war with Hannibal. In 581, lands beyond
the Po were distributed to other Ligures. [570] Every year the frontiers
receded more towards the north, and military roads,[571] the foundation
of important colonies, secured the march of the armies--a system which
had been interrupted during the second Punic war, but was afterwards
adopted, and especially applied to the south of Italy and the
Cisalpine. [572]
In achieving the submission of this last province, Rome had put an end
to other less important wars. In 577 she reduced the Istrians; in 579,
the Sardinians and the Corsicans; finally, from 569 to 573, she extended
her conquests into Spain, where she met the same enemies as Carthage had
encountered.
[Sidenote: War against Persia (583). ]
X. For twenty-six years had peace been maintained with Philip, the
Ætolians vanquished, the peoples of Asia subdued, and the greater part
of Greece restored to liberty. Profiting by its co-operation with the
Romans against Antiochus, the Achæan league had largely increased, and
Philopœmen had brought into it Sparta, Messene, and the island of
Zacynthus; but these countries, impatient of the Achæan rule, soon
sought to free themselves from it. Thus was realised the prediction of
Philip, who told the Thessalian envoys, after the battle of
Cynoscephalæ, that the Romans would soon repent of having given liberty
to peoples incapable of enjoying it, and whose dissensions and
jealousies would always keep up a dangerous agitation. [573] In fact,
Sparta and Messene rebelled, and sued for help from Rome. Philopœmen,
after having cruelly punished the first of these cities, perished in his
struggle with the second. Thessaly and Ætolia were torn by anarchy and
civil war.
Whilst the Republic was occupied in restoring tranquillity to these
countries, a new adversary came to imprudently attract its wrath. One
would say that Fortune, while raising up so many enemies against Rome,
took pleasure in delivering them, one after the other, into her hands.
The old legend of Horatius killing the three Curiatii in succession was
a lesson which the Senate had never forgotten.
Perseus, heir to his father’s crown and enmities, had taken advantage of
the peace to increase his army and his resources, to make allies, and to
rouse up the kings and peoples of the East against Rome. Besides the
warlike population of his own country, he had at his beck barbarous
peoples like the Illyrians, the Thracians, and the Bastarnæ, dwelling
not far from the Danube. Notwithstanding the treaty, which forbad
Macedonia to make war without the consent of the Senate, Perseus had
silently aggrandised himself on the side of Thrace; he had placed
garrisons in the maritime cities of Oenoe and Maronia, excited the
Dardanians[574] to war, brought under subjection the Dolopes, and
advanced as far as Delphi. [575] He endeavored to draw the Achæans into
an alliance, and skilfully obtained the good-will of the Greeks. Eumenes
II. , king of Pergamus, who, like his father Attalus I. , feared the
encroachments of Macedonia, denounced at Rome this infraction of the old
treaties. The fear with which a powerful prince inspired him, and the
gratitude which he owed to the Republic for the aggrandisement of his
kingdom after the Asian war, obliged him to cultivate the friendship of
the Roman people. In 582 he came to Rome, and, honourably received by
the Senate, forgot nothing which might excite it against Perseus, whom
he accused of ambitious designs hostile to the Republic. This
denunciation raised violent enmities against Eumenes. On his way back to
his kingdom, he was attacked by assassins, and dangerously wounded.
Suspicion fell on the Macedonian monarch, not without show of reason,
and was taken by the Republic as sufficient ground for declaring war on
a prince whose power began to offend it.
Bold in planning, Perseus displayed cowardice when it was necessary to
act. After having from the first haughtily rejected the Roman claims, he
waited in Thessaly for their army, which, ill-commanded and
ill-organised, was beaten by his lieutenants and repulsed into mountain
gorges, where it might have been easily destroyed. He then offered peace
to P. Licinius Crassus; but, notwithstanding his check, the consul
replied, with all the firmness of the Roman character, that peace was
only possible if Perseus would abandon his person and his kingdom to the
discretion of the Senate. [576] Struck by so much assurance, the king
recalled his troops, and suffered the enemy to effect his retreat
undisturbed. The incapacity of the Roman generals, however, their
violences, and the want of discipline among the soldiers, had alienated
the Greeks, who naturally preferred a prince of their own race to a
foreign captain; moreover, they did not see the Macedonians get the
better of the Romans without a certain satisfaction. In their eyes, it
was the Hellenic civilisation overthrowing the presumption of the
Western barbarians.
The campaigns of 584 and 585 were not more fortunate for the Roman arms.
A consul had the rash idea of invading Macedonia by the passes of
Callipeuce, where his army would have been annihilated if the king had
had the courage to defend himself. At the approach of the legions he
took to flight, and the Romans escaped from their perilous position
without loss. [577] At length, the people, feeling the necessity of
having an eminent man at the head of the army, nominated Paulus Æmilius
consul, who had given many proofs of his military talents in the
Cisalpine. Already the greater part of the Gallo-græci were in treaty
with Perseus. The Illyrians and the people of the Danube offered to
second him. The Rhodians, and the King of Pergamus himself, persuaded
that Fortune was going to declare herself for the King of Macedonia,
made him offers of alliance; he chaffered with them with the most
inexplicable levity. In the mean time, the Roman army, ably conducted,
advanced by forced marches. One single combat terminated the war; and
the battle of Pydna, in 586, once more proved the superiority of the
Roman legion over the phalanx. This, however, did not yield
ingloriously; and, though abandoned by their king, who fled, the
Macedonian hoplites died at their post.
When they heard of this defeat, Eumenes and the Rhodians hastened to
wipe out the remembrance of their ever having doubted the fortune of
Rome[578] by the swiftness of their repentance. At the same time, L.
Anicius conquered Illyria and seized the person of Gentius. Macedonia
was divided into four states called _free_, that is to say, presided
over by magistrates chosen by themselves, but under the protectorate of
the Republic. By the law imposed on these new provinces, all marriages,
and all exchange of immovable property, were interdicted between the
citizens of different states,[579] and the imports reduced one-half. As
we see, the Republic applied the system practised in 416 to dissolve the
Latin confederacy, and later, in 449, that of the Hernici. Illyria was
also divided into three parts. The towns which had first yielded were
exempt from all tribute, and the taxes of the others reduced to
half. [580]
It is not uninteresting to recall to mind how Livy appreciates the
institutions which Macedonia and Illyria received at this epoch. “It was
decreed,” he says, “that liberty should be given to the Macedonians and
Illyrians, to prove to the whole universe that, in carrying their arms
so far, the object of the Romans was to deliver the enslaved peoples,
not to enslave the free peoples; to guarantee to these last their
independence, to the nations subject to kings a milder and more just
government; and to convince them that, in the wars which might break out
between the Republic and their sovereigns, the result would be the
liberty of the peoples: Rome reserving to herself only the honour of
victory. ”[581]
Greece, and above all Epirus, sacked by Paulus Æmilius, underwent the
penalty of defection. As to the Achæan league, the fidelity of which had
appeared doubtful, nearly a thousand of the principal citizens, guilty
or suspected of having favoured the Macedonians, were sent as hostages
to Rome. [582]
[Sidenote: Modification of Roman policy. ]
XI. In carrying her victorious arms through almost all the borders of
the Mediterranean, the Republic had hitherto obeyed either legitimate
needs or generous inspirations. Care for her future greatness, for her
existence even, made it absolute on her to dispute the empire of the sea
with Carthage. Hence the wars, of which Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Italy,
and Africa, by turns, became the theatre. It was also her duty to combat
the warlike peoples of the Cisalpine, that she might ensure the safety
of her frontiers. As to the expeditions of Macedonia and Asia, Rome had
been drawn into them by the conduct of foreign kings, their violation of
treaties, their guilty plottings, and their attacks on her allies.
To conquer thus became to her an obligation, under pain of seeing fall
to ruin the edifice which she had built up at the price of so many
sacrifices; and, what is remarkable, she showed herself after victory
magnificent towards her allies, clement to the vanquished, and moderate
in her pretensions. Leaving to the kings all the glory of the throne,
and to the nations their laws and liberties, she had reduced to Roman
provinces only a part of Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Cisalpine Gaul. In
Sicily she preserved the most intimate alliance with Hiero, tyrant of
Syracuse, for fifty years. The constant support of this prince must have
shown the Senate how much such alliances were preferable to direct
dominion. In Spain she augmented the territory of all the chiefs who
consented to become her allies. After the battle of Cynoscephalæ, as
after that of Magnesia, she maintained on their thrones Philip and
Antiochus, and imposed on this last only the same conditions as those
offered before the victory. If, after the battle of Pydna, she overthrew
Perseus, it was because he had openly violated his engagements; but she
gave equitable laws to Macedonia. Justice then ruled her conduct, even
towards her oldest rival; for when Masinissa asked the help of the
Senate in his quarrels with Carthage, he received for answer that, even
in his favour, justice could not be sacrificed. [583]
In Egypt her protection preserved the crown on the head of Ptolemy
Philometor and of his sister Cleopatra. [584] Finally, when all the kings
came after the victory of Pydna to offer their congratulations to the
Roman people, and to implore their protection, the Senate regulated
their demands with extreme justice. Eumenes, himself an object of
suspicion, sent his brother Attalus to Rome; and he, willing to profit
by the favourable impression he had made, thought to ask for him a part
of the kingdom of Pergamus. He was recommended to give up the design.
The Senate restored his son to Cotys, king of Thrace, without ransom,
saying that the Roman people did not make a traffic of their
benefits. [585] Finally, in the disputes between Prusias, king of
Bithynia, and the Gallo-græcians, it declared that justice alone could
dictate its decision. [586]
How, then, did so much nobleness of views, so much magnanimity in
success, so much prudence in conduct seem to be belied, dating from that
period of twenty-two years which divides the war against Persia from the
third Punic war? Because too much success dazzles nations as well as
kings. When the Romans began to think that nothing could resist them in
the future because nothing had resisted them in the past, they believed
that all was permitted them. They no longer made war to protect their
allies, defend their frontiers, or destroy coalitions, but to crush the
weak, and use nations for their own profit. We must also acknowledge
that the inconstancy of the peoples, faithful in appearance, but always
plotting some defection, and the hatred of the kings, concealing their
resentment under a show of abasement, concurred to render the Republic
more suspicious and more exacting, and caused it to count from
henceforth rather on its subjects than on its allies. Vainly did the
Senate seek to follow the grand traditions of the past; it was no longer
strong enough to curb individual ambitions; and the same institutions
which formerly brought forth the virtues, now only protected the vices
of aggrandised Rome. The generals dared no longer to obey; thus, the
consul Cn. Manlius attacks the Gallo-græcians in Asia without the orders
of the Senate;[587] A. Manlius takes on himself to make an expedition
into Istria;[588] the consul C. Cassius abandons the Cisalpine, his
province, and attempts of his own accord to penetrate into Macedonia by
Illyria;[589] the prætor Furius, on his own authority, disarms one of
the peoples of Cisalpine Gaul, the Cenomani, at peace with Rome;[590]
Popilius Lænas attacks the Statiellates without cause, and sells ten
thousand of them; others also oppress the peoples of Spain. [591] All
these things doubtless incur the blame of the Senate; the consuls and
prætors are disavowed, even accused, but their disobedience none the
less remain unpunished, and the accusations without result. In 599, it
is true, L. Lentulus, consul in the preceding year, underwent
condemnation for exaction, but that did not prevent him from being
raised again to the chief honours. [592]
As long as the object was only to form men destined for a modest part on
a narrow theatre, nothing was better than the annual election of the
consuls and prætors, by which, in a certain space of time, a great
number of the principal citizens of both the patrician and plebeian
nobility participated in the highest offices. Powers thus exercised
under the eyes of their fellow-citizens, rather for honour than
interest, obliged them to be worthy of their trust; but when, leading
their legions into the most remote countries, the generals, far from all
control, and invested with absolute power, enriched themselves by the
spoils of the vanquished, dignities were sought merely to furnish them
with wealth during their short continuance. The frequent re-election of
the magistrates, in multiplying the contests of candidates, multiplied
the ambitious, who scrupled at nothing to attain their object. Thus
Montesquieu justly observes, that “good laws which have made a small
republic great, become a burden to it when it has increased, because
their natural effect was to create a grand people, and not to govern
it. ”[593]
The remedy for this overflowing of unruly passions would have been, on
the one hand, to moderate the desire for conquest; on the other, to
diminish the number of aspirants to power, by giving them a longer term
of duration. But then, the people alone, guided by its instincts, felt
the need of remedying this defect in the institution, by retaining in
authority those who had their confidence. Thus, they wished to appoint
Scipio Africanus perpetual dictator;[594] while pretended reformers,
such as Portius Cato, enslaved to old customs, and in a spirit of
exaggerated rigorism, made laws to interdict the same man from aspiring
twice to the consulship, and to advance the age at which it was lawful
to try for this high office.
All these measures were contrary to the object at which they aimed. In
maintaining annual elections, the way was left free to vulgar
covetousness; in excluding youth from high functions, they repressed the
impulses of those choice natures which early reveal themselves, and the
exceptional elevation of which had so often saved Rome from the greatest
disasters. Have we not seen, for example, in 406, Marcus Valerius
Corvus, raised to the consulate at twenty-three years of age, gain the
battle of Mount Gaurus against the Samnites; Scipio Africanus, nominated
proconsul at twenty-four, conquer Spain and humiliate Carthage; the
consul Quinctius Flamininus, at thirty, carry off from Philip the
victory of Cynoscephalæ? Finally, Scipio Æmilianus, who is to destroy
Carthage, will be elected consul, even before the age fixed by the law
of Cato.
No doubt, Cato the Censor, honest and incorruptible, had the laudable
design of arresting the decline of morals. But, instead of attacking the
cause, he only attacked the effect; instead of strengthening authority,
he tended to weaken it; instead of leaving the nations a certain
independence, he urged the Senate to bring them all under its absolute
dominion; instead of adopting what came from Greece with an enlightened
discernment, he indiscriminately condemned all that was of foreign
origin. [595] There was in Cato’s austerity more ostentation than real
virtue. Thus, during his censorship, he expelled Manlius from the Senate
for having kissed his wife before his daughter in open daylight; he took
pleasure in regulating the toilette and extravagance of the Roman
ladies; and, by an exaggerated disinterestedness, he sold his horse
when he quitted Spain, to save the Republic the cost of transport. [596]
But the Senate contained men less absolute, and wiser appreciators of
the needs of the age; they desired to repress abuses, to carry out a
policy of moderation, to curb the spirit of conquest, and to accept from
Greece all that she had of good. Scipio Nasica and Scipio Æmilianus
figured among the most important. [597] One did not reject whatever might
soften manners and increase human knowledge; the other cultivated the
new muses, and was even said to have assisted Terence.
The irresistible inclination of the people towards all that elevates the
soul and ennobles existence was not to be arrested. Greece had brought
to Italy her literature, her arts, her science, her eloquence; and when,
in 597, there came to Rome three celebrated philosophers--Carneades the
Academician, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic--as
ambassadors from Athens, they produced an immense sensation. The young
men flocked in crowds to see and hear them; the Senate itself approved
this homage paid to men whose talent must polish, by the culture of
letters, minds still rude and unformed. [598] Cato alone, inexorable,
pretended that these arts would soon corrupt the Roman youth, and
destroy its taste for arms; and he caused these philosophers to be
dismissed.
Sent to Africa as arbiter to appease the struggle between Masinissa and
Carthage, he only embittered it. Jealous at seeing this ancient rival
still great and prosperous, he did not cease pronouncing against her
that famous decree of death: _Delenda est Carthago_. Scipio Nasica, on
the contrary, opposed the destruction of Carthage, which he considered
too weak to do injury, yet strong enough to keep up a salutary fear,
which might prevent the people from casting themselves into all those
excesses which are the inevitable consequences of the unbounded increase
of empires. [599] Unhappily, the opinion of Cato triumphed.
As one of our first writers says, it must be “that truth is a divine
thing, since the errors of good men are as fatal to humanity as vice,
which is the error of the wicked. ”
Cato, by persecuting with his accusations the principal citizens, and,
among others, Scipio Africanus, taught the Romans to doubt virtue. [600]
By exaggeration in his attacks, and by delivering his judgments with
passion, he caused his justice to be suspected. [601] By condemning the
vices from which he himself was not exempt, he deprived his
remonstrances of all moral force. [602] When he scourged the people as
accuser and judge, without seeking to raise them by education and laws,
he resembled, says a learned German, that Persian king who whipped the
sea with rods to make the tempest cease. [603] His influence, though
powerless to arrest the movement of one civilisation taking the place of
another, failed not to produce a fatal effect on the policy of that
period. [604] The Senate, renouncing the moderation and justice which
hitherto had stamped all its deeds, adopted in their stead a crafty and
arrogant line of action, and a system of extermination.
Towards the beginning of the seventh century, everything disappears
before the Roman power. The independence of peoples, kingdoms, and
republics ceases to exist. Carthage is destroyed, Greece gives up her
arms, Macedonia loses her liberty, that of Spain perishes at Numantia,
and shortly afterwards Pergamus undergoes the same fate.
[Sidenote: Third Punic War (605-608). ]
XII. Notwithstanding her abasement, Carthage still existed, the eternal
object of hatred and distrust. She was accused of connivance with the
Macedonians, ever impatient of their yoke; and to her was imputed the
resistance of the Celtiberian hordes. In 603, Masinissa and the
Carthaginians engaged in a new struggle. As, according to their
treaties, these last could not make war without authorisation, the
Senate deliberated on the course it was to take. Cato desired war
immediately. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, obtained the appointment of
a new embassy, which succeeded in persuading Masinissa to evacuate the
territory in dispute; on its part, the Senate of Carthage consented to
submit to the wisdom of the ambassadors, when the populace at Carthage,
excited by those men who in troublous times speculate on the passions of
the mob, breaks out in insurrection, insults the Roman envoys, and
expels the chief citizens. [605] A fatal insurrection; for in moments of
external crisis all popular movements ruin a nation,[606] as all
political change is fatal in the presence of a foreigner invading the
soil of the fatherland. However, the Roman Senate judged it best to
temporise, because of the war in Spain, where Scipio Æmilianus then
served in the capacity of tribune. Ordered to Africa (603), to obtain
from Masinissa elephants for the war against the Celtiberians, he
witnessed a sanguinary defeat of the Carthaginian army. This event
decided the question of Roman intervention; the Senate, in fact, had no
intention of leaving the entire sovereignty of Africa to the Numidian
king, whose possessions already extended from the ocean to Cyrene. [607]
In vain did Carthage send ambassadors to Rome to explain her conduct.
They obtained no satisfaction. Utica yielded to the Romans (604), and
the two consuls, L. Marcius Censorinus, and M. Manlius Nepos, arrived
there at the head of 80,000 men in 605. Carthage sues for peace; they
impose the condition that she shall give up her arms; she delivers them
up, with 2,000 engines of war. But soon exactions increase; the
inhabitants are commanded to quit their city and retire ten miles
inland. Exasperated by so much severity, the Carthaginians recover their
energy; they forge new weapons, raise the populace, fling into the
campaign Hasdrubal, who has soon collected 70,000 men in his camp at
Nepheris, and gives the consuls reason to fear the success of their
enterprise. [608]
The Roman army met with a resistance it was far from expecting.
Endangered by Manlius, it was saved by the tribune, Scipio Æmilianus, on
whom all eyes were turned. On his return to Rome, he was in 607 elected
consul at the age of thirty-six years, and charged with the direction of
the war, which henceforth took a new aspect. Carthage is soon inclosed
by works of prodigious labour; on land, trenches surround the place and
protect the besiegers; by sea, a colossal bar interrupts all
communication, and gives up the city to famine; but the Carthaginians
build a second fleet in their inner port, and excavate a new
communication with the sea. During the winter Scipio goes and forces the
camp at Nepheris, and on the return of spring makes himself master of
the first enclosure; finally, after a siege which lasted for three
years, with heroic efforts on both sides, the town and its citadel Byrsa
are carried, and entirely razed to the ground. Hasdrubal surrendered,
with fifty thousand inhabitants, the remains of an immense population;
but on a fragment of the wall which had escaped the fire, the wife of
the last Carthaginian chief, dressed in her most gorgeous robes, was
seen to curse her husband, who had not had the courage to die; then,
after having slain her two children, she flung herself into the flames.
A mournful image of a nation which achieves her own ruin, but which does
not fall ingloriously.
When the vessel laden with magnificent spoils, and adorned with laurels,
entered the Tiber, bearer of the grand news, all the citizens rushed out
into the streets embracing and congratulating each other on so joyful a
victory. Now only did Rome feel herself free from all fear, and the
mistress of the world. Nevertheless, the destruction of Carthage was a
crime which Caius Gracchus, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus sought to repair.
[Sidenote: Greece, Macedonia, Numantia, and Pergamus reduced to
Provinces. ]
XIII. The same year saw the destruction of the Greek autonomy. Since the
war with Persia, the preponderance of Roman influence had maintained
order in Achaia; but on the return of the hostages, in 603, coincident
with the troubles of Macedonia, party enmities were re-awakened.
Dissensions soon broke out between the Achæan league and the cities of
the Peloponnesus, which it coveted, and the resistance of which it did
not hesitate to punish by destruction and pillage.
Sparta soon rebelled, and Peloponnesus was all in flames. The Romans
made vain efforts to allay this general disturbance. The envoys of the
Senate carried a decree to Corinth, which detached from the league
Sparta, Argos, Orchomenus, and Arcadia. On hearing this, the Achæans
massacred the Lacedæmonians then at Corinth, and loaded the Roman
commissioners with insults. [609] Before using severity, the Roman
Senate resolved to make one appeal to conciliation; but the words of the
new envoys were not listened to.
The Achæan league, united with Eubœa and Bœotia, then dared to
declare war against Rome, which they knew to be occupied in Spain and
Africa. The league was soon vanquished at Scarphia, in Locris, by
Metellus, and at Leucopetra, near Corinth, by Mummius. The towns of the
Achæan league were treated rigorously; Corinth was sacked; and Greece,
under the name of Achaia, remained in subjection to the Romans
(608). [610]
However, Mummius, as Polybius himself avows,[611] showed as much
moderation as disinterestedness after the victory. He preserved in their
places the statues of Philopœmen, kept none of the trophies taken in
Greece for himself, and remained so poor that the Senate conferred a
dowry upon his daughter from the public treasury.
About the same time the severity of the Senate had not spared Macedonia.
During the last Punic war, a Greek adventurer, Andriscus, pretending to
be the son of Perseus, had stirred up the country to rebellion, with an
army of Thracians. Driven out of Thessaly by Scipio Nasica, he returned
there, slew the prætor Juventius Thalna, and formed an alliance with the
Carthaginians. Beaten by Metellus, he was sent to Rome loaded with
chains. Some years later, a second impostor having also endeavoured to
seize the succession of Perseus, the Senate reduced Macedonia to a
Roman province (612). It was the same with Illyria after the submission
of the Ardæi (618). Never had so many triumphs been seen. Scipio
Æmilianus had triumphed over Africa, Metellus over Macedonia, Mummius
over Achaia, and Fulvius Flaccus over Illyria.
Delivered henceforth from its troubles in the east and south, the Senate
turned its attention towards Spain. This country had never entirely
yielded: its strength hardly restored, it took up arms again. After the
pacification which Scipio Africanus and Sempronius Gracchus successively
induced, new insurrections broke forth; the Lusitanians, yielding to the
instigations of Carthage, had revolted in 601, and had gained some
advantages over Mummius and his successor Galba (603). But this last, by
an act of infamous treachery, massacred thirty thousand prisoners.
Prosecuted for this act at Rome by Cato, he was acquitted. Subsequently,
another consul showed no less perfidy: Licinius Lucullus, having entered
the town of Cauca, which had surrendered, slew twenty thousand of its
inhabitants, and sold the rest. [612]
So much cruelty excited the indignation of the peoples of Northern
Spain, and, as always happens, the national feeling brought forth a
hero. Viriathus, who had escaped the massacre of the Lusitanians, and
from a shepherd had become a general, began a war of partisans, and, for
five years, having vanquished the Roman generals, ended by rousing the
Celtiberians. Whilst these occupied Metellus the Macedonian, Fabius,
left alone against Viriathus, was hemmed into a defile by him, and
constrained to accept peace. The murder of Viriathus left the issue of
the war no longer doubtful. This death was too advantageous to the
Romans not to be imputed to Cæpio, successor to his brother Fabius. But
when the murderers came to demand the wages of their crime, they were
told that the Romans had never approved of the massacre of a general by
his soldiers. [613] The Lusitanians, however, submitted, and the legions
penetrated to the ocean.
The war, ended in the west, became concentrated round Numantia,[614]
where, in the course of five years, several consuls were defeated. When,
in 616, Mancinus, surrounded by the enemy on all sides, was reduced to
save his army by a shameful capitulation, like that of the Furculæ
Caudinæ, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and gave up the consul
loaded with chains. The same fate was reserved for Tiberius Gracchus,
his questor, who had guaranteed the treaty; but, through the favour of
the people, he remained at Rome. The Numantines still resisted for a
long time with rare energy. The conqueror of Carthage himself had to go
to direct the siege, which required immense works; and yet the town was
taken only by famine (621). Spain was overcome, but her spirit of
independence survived for a great number of years.
Although the fall of the kingdom of Pergamus was posterior to the events
we have just related, we will speak of it here because it is the
continuation of the system of reducing all peoples to subjection.
Attalus III. , a monster of cruelty and folly, had, when dying,
bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people, who sent troops to take
possession of it; but a natural son of Eumenes, Aristonicus, raised the
inhabitants, and defeated the consul Licinius Crassus, soon avenged by
one of his successors. Aristonicus was taken, and the kingdom, pacified,
passed by the name of Asia under Roman domination (625).
[Sidenote: Summary. ]
XIV. The more the Republic extended its empire, the more the number of
the high functions increased, and the more important they became. The
consuls, the proconsuls, and the prætors, governed not only foreign
countries, but Italy itself. In fact, Appian tells us that the
proconsuls exercised their authority in certain countries of the
peninsula. [615]
The Roman provinces were nine in number:--1. Cisalpine Gaul. 2. Farther
Spain. 3. Nearer Spain. 4. Sardinia and Corsica. 5. Sicily. 6. Northern
Africa. 7. Illyria. 8. Macedonia and Achaia. 9. Asia. The people
appointed yearly two consuls and seven prætors to go and govern these
distant countries; but generally these high offices were attainable only
by those who had been questors or ediles. Now, the edileship required a
large fortune; for the ediles were obliged to spend great sums in fêtes
and public works to please the people. The rich alone could aspire to
this first dignity; consequently, it was only the members of the
aristocracy who had a chance of arriving at the elevated position,
where, for one or two years, they were absolute masters of the destinies
of vast kingdoms. Thus, the nobility sought to keep these high offices
closed against new men. From 535 to 621--eighty-six years--nine families
alone obtained eighty-three consulships. Still later, twelve members of
the family Metellus gained various dignities in less than twelve years
(630-642. )[616] Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when,
addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is
regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and
infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the
multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus), on the contrary, did not wish to put
all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling
together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or
two orders. ”[617]
It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a
Roman. In reality, notwithstanding the changes introduced into the
comitia, the bearing of which is difficult to explain, the nobility
preserved its preponderance, and the habit of addressing the people only
after having taken the sense of the Senate, was still persisted in. [618]
The Roman government, always aristocratic, became more oppressive in
proportion as the State increased in extent, and it lost in influence
what the people of Italy gained in intelligence and in legitimate
aspirations towards a better future.
Besides, ever since the beginning of the Republic, it had harboured in
its breast two opposite parties, the one seeking to extend, the other to
restrict, the rights of the people. When the first came into power, all
the liberal laws of the past were restored to force; when the second
came in, these laws were evaded. Thus we see now the law Valeria, which
consecrates appeal to the people, thrice revived; now the law
interdicting the re-election of the consuls before an interval of ten
years, promulgated by Genucius in 412,[619] and immediately abandoned,
renewed in 603, and subsequently restored by Sylla; now the law which
threw the freedmen into the urban tribes, in order to annul their vote,
revived at three different epochs;[620] now the measures against
solicitation, against exactions, against usury, continually put into
force; and finally, the right of election to the sacerdotal office by
turn, refused or granted to the people. [621] By the Portian laws of 557
and 559, it was forbidden to strike with rods, or put to death, a Roman
citizen, before the people had pronounced upon his doom. And yet Scipio
Æmilianus, to evade this law, caused his auxiliaries to be beaten with
sticks and his soldiers with vine-stalks. [622] At the beginning of the
seventh century, the principle of secret voting was admitted in all
elections; in 615, in the elections of the magistrates; in 617, for the
decision of the people in judicial condemnations; in 623, in the votes
on proposals for laws. Finally, by the institution of permanent
tribunals (_quæstiones perpetuæ_), established from 605, it was sought
to remedy the spoliation of the provinces; but these institutions,
successively adopted or abandoned, could not heal the ills of society.
The manly virtues of an intelligent aristocracy had until then
maintained the Republic in a state of concord and greatness; its vices
were soon to shake it to its foundations.
We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and
thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no
nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she
has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the
Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has
conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of
Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east,
the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians,
the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a
tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the
Danube. [623] Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of
barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles,
Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of
civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia
receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of
the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her
tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a
Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms.
But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within
exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA.
(621-676. )
[Sidenote: State of the Republic. ]
I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had
lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism
created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to
sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good
sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from
the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at
every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but
sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.
“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of
a small number of good citizens,”[624] and we may add that its decline
began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who
had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi,
acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to
decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of
the best cause.
As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a
dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and
wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece
subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held
by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited
power. [625]
Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When,
freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give
themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides
troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful
men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a
veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at
other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no
longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all
were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition
to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of
things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the
ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the
depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such
a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a
generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could
neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it. ”[626]
The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the
introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense
riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in
causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had
taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one
hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues,
in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,[627] had
felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on
the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into
Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt
for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence
which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true,
superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice
is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit,
and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were
loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had
taken possession of all classes.
Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and
sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two
periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain
peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty
and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly
of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his
cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s
conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in
leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a
purchaser! ”[628]
Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions:
for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural
population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified;
the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of
proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the
place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by
the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that
fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly,
the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire,
without participating in the rights of Roman citizens. [629] There were,
as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies
and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state
of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the
metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected
to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were
exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation,
followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It
was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity
and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as
equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited
territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged
class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand
citizens,[630] divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only
belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it
is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of
several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were
deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still
remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and
Norba. [631]
The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed
of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had
finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by
purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and
this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy. [632] At a later time,
when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received,
either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense
quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of
wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into
pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer
hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only
did the vast domains, _latifundia_, appertain to a small number, but the
knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many
had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general
(_publicani_), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the
whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the
provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance
was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made
the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.
Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the
patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly
in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,[633] there
were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the
soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a
degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of
619. [634] In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to
furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been
carried away for slaves by Roman collectors. [635] In the great market of
Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy. [636]
The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause
of weakness to the State;[637] and there was the same inconvenience in
regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but
without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally
attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they
were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of
forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or
of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes
admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable
mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore
always the stigma of their origin. [638] Confined to the urban tribes,
they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population
of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a
veritable disdain: “Silence! ” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does
not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he
proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not
frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken. ”[639] When the
people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the
rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all
seductions, and to the most powerful of these--the money of the
candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were
also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when,
crowding the public place, as at the English _hustings_, they sought, by
their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.
On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal
families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to
preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves
worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made
them capable of filling all offices,[640] so that it might be said that
there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a
democracy without people.
There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and
abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against
solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to
cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of
Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures--to give
more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of
Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed
property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and
thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.
All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius
Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at
his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms,
but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles. [641]
[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus (621). ]
II.
dangerous aggressions, the Senate, from 540 to 548, maintained large
forces on the coasts of Epirus and Macedonia; and, united with the
Ætolian league, and with Attalus, king of Pergamus, had forced Philip to
conclude peace. But in 553, after the victory of Zama, when this prince
again attacked the free cities of Greece and Asia allied to Rome, war
was declared against him. The Senate could not forget that at this last
battle a Macedonian contingent was found among the Carthaginian troops,
and that still there remained in Greece a large number of Roman citizens
sold for slaves after the battle of Cannæ. [562] Thus from each war was
born a new war, and every success was destined to force the Republic
into the pursuit of others. Now the Adriatic was to be passed, first, to
curb the power of the Macedonians, and then to call to liberty those
famous towns, the cradles of civilisation. The destinies of Greece could
not be a matter of indifference to the Romans, who had borrowed her
laws, her science, her literature, and her arts.
Sulpicius, appointed to combat Philip, landed on the coast of Epirus,
and penetrated into Macedonia, where he gained a succession of
victories, while one of his lieutenants, sent to Greece with the fleet,
caused the siege of Athens to be raised. During two years the war
languished, but the Roman fleet, combined with that of Attalus and the
Rhodians, remained master of the sea (555). T. Quinctius Flamininus,
raised to the consulship while still young, justified, by his
intelligence and energy, the confidence of his fellow-citizens. He
detached the Achaians and Bœtians from their alliance with the King
of Macedonia, and, with the aid of the Ætolians, gained the battle of
Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly (557), where the legion routed the celebrated
phalanx of Philip II. and Alexander the Great. Philip III. , compelled to
make peace, was fain to accept hard conditions; the first of which was
the obligation to withdraw his garrisons from the towns of Greece and
Asia, and the prohibition to make war without the permission of the
Senate.
The recital of Livy, which speaks of the decree proclaiming liberty to
Greece, deserves to be quoted. We see there what value the Senate then
attached to moral influence, and to that true popularity which the glory
of having freed a people gives:--
“The epoch of the celebration of the Isthmian games generally attracted
a great concourse of spectators, either because of the natural taste of
the Greeks for all sorts of games, or because of the situation of
Corinth, which, seated on two seas, offered easy access to the curious.
But on this occasion an immense multitude flocked thither from all
parts, in expectation of the future fate of Greece in general, and of
each people in particular: this was the only subject of thought and
conversation. The Romans take their place, and the herald, according to
custom, advances into the middle of the arena, whence the games are
announced according to a solemn form. The trumpet sounds, silence is
proclaimed, and the herald pronounces these words: ‘The Roman Senate,
and S. T. Quinctius, imperator, conquerors of Philip and the Macedonians,
re-establish in the enjoyment of liberty, their laws, and privileges,
the Corinthians, the Phocians, the Locrians, the island of Eubœa, the
Magnetes, the Thessalians, the Perrhœbi, and the Achæans of
Phthiotis. ’ These were the names of all the nations which had been under
the dominion of Philip. At this proclamation, the assembly was overcome
with excess of joy. Hardly anybody could believe what he heard. The
Greeks looked at each other as if they were still in the illusions of a
pleasant dream, to be dissipated on awakening, and, distrusting the
evidence of their ears, they asked their neighbours if they were not
deceived. The herald is recalled, each man burning, not only to hear,
but to see the messenger of such good news; he reads the decree a second
time. Then, no longer able to doubt their happiness, they uttered cries
of joy, and bestowed on their liberator such loud and repeated applause
as make it easy to see that, of all good, liberty is that which has most
charm for the multitude. Then the games were celebrated, but hastily,
and without attracting the looks or the attention of the spectators. One
interest alone absorbed their souls, and took from them the feeling of
every other pleasure.
“The games ended, the people rush towards the Roman general; everybody
is anxious to greet him, to take his hand, to cast before him crowns of
flowers and of ribbons, and the crowd was so great that he was almost
suffocated. He was but thirty-three years of age, and the vigour of
life, joined with the intoxication of a glory so dazzling, gave him
strength to bear up against such a trial. The joy of the peoples was not
confined to the enthusiasm of the moment: the impression was kept up
long afterwards in their thoughts and speech. ‘There was then,’ they
said, ‘one nation upon earth, which, at its own cost, at the price of
fatigues and perils, made war for the liberty of peoples even though
removed from their frontiers and continent: this nation crossed the
seas, in order that there should not be in the whole world one single
unjust government, and that right, equity, and law should be everywhere
dominant. The voice of a herald had been sufficient to restore freedom
to all the cities of Greece and Asia. The idea alone of such a design
supposed a rare greatness of soul; but to execute it needed as much
courage as fortune. ’”[563]
There was, however, a shadow on the picture. All Peloponnesus was not
freed, and Flamininus, after having taken several of his possessions
from Nabis, king of Sparta, had concluded peace with him, without
continuing the siege of Lacedæmon, of which he dreaded the length. He
feared also the arrival of a more dangerous enemy, Antiochus III. , who
had already reached Thrace, and threatened to go over into Greece with a
considerable army. For this the allied Greeks, occupied only with their
own interests, reproached the Roman consul with having concluded peace
too hastily with Philip, whom, in their opinion, he could have
annihilated. [564] But Flamininus replied that he was not commissioned to
dethrone Philip, and that the existence of the kingdom of Macedonia was
necessary as a barrier against the barbarians of Thrace, Illyria, and
Gaul. [565] Meanwhile, accompanied even to their ships by the
acclamations of the people, the Roman troops evacuated the cities
restored to liberty (560), and Flamininus returned to a triumph at Rome,
bringing with him that glorious protectorate of Greece, so long an
object of envy to the successors of Alexander.
[Sidenote: War against Antiochus (563). ]
VIII. The policy of the Senate had been to make Macedonia a rampart
against the Thracians, and Greece herself a rampart against Macedonia.
But, though the Romans had freed the Achæan league, they did not intend
to create a formidable power or confederation. Then, as formerly, the
Athenians, the Spartans, the Bœotians, the Ætolians, and, finally,
the Achæans, each endeavoured to constitute an Hellenic league for their
own advantage; and each aspiring to dominate over the others, turned
alternately to those from whom it hoped the most efficient support at
the time. In the Hellenic peninsula, properly so called, the Ætolians,
to whose territory the Senate had promised to join Phocis and Locris,
coveted the cities of Thessaly, which the Romans obstinately refused
them.
Thus, although reinstated in the possession of their independence,
neither the Ætolians, the Achæans, nor yet the Spartans, were satisfied:
they all dreamt of aggrandisement. The Ætolians, more impatient, made,
in 562, three simultaneous attempts against Thessaly, the island of
Eubœa, and Peloponnesus. Having only succeeded in seizing Demetrias,
they called Antiochus III. to Greece, that they might place him at the
head of the hegemony, which they sought in vain to obtain from the
Romans.
The better part of the immense heritage left by Alexander the Great had
fallen to this prince. Already, some years before, Flamininus had given
him notice that it belonged to the honour of the Republic not to
abandon Greece, of which the Roman people had loudly proclaimed itself
the liberator; and that after having delivered it from the yoke of
Philip, the Senate now wished to free from the dominion of Antiochus all
the Asian cities of Hellenic origin. [566] Hannibal, who had taken refuge
with the King of Syria, encouraged him to resist, by engaging him to
carry the struggle into Italy, as he himself had done. War was then
declared by the Romans. To maintain the independence of Greece against
an Asiatic prince was at once to fulfil treaties and undertake the
defence of civilisation against barbarism. Thus, in proclaiming the most
generous ideas, the Republic justified its ambition.
The services rendered by Rome were already forgotten. [567] Antiochus
thus found numerous allies in Greece, secret or declared. He organised a
formidable confederacy, into which entered the Ætolians, the Athamanes,
the Elians, and the Bœotians, and, having landed at Chalcis,
conquered Eubœa and Thessaly. The Romans opposed to him the King of
Macedonia and the Achæans. Beaten at Thermopylæ, in 563, by the consul
Acilius Glabrio, aided by Philip, the King of Syria withdrew to Asia,
and the Ætolians, left to themselves, demanded peace, which was granted
them in 563.
It was not enough to have compelled Antiochus to abandon Greece. L.
Scipio, having his brother, the vanquisher of Carthage, for his
lieutenant, went in 564 to seek him out in his own territory. Philip
favoured the passage of the Roman army, which crossed Macedonia, Thrace,
and the Hellespont without difficulty. The victories gained at Myonnesus
by sea, and at Magnesia by land, terminated the campaign, and compelled
Antiochus to yield up all his provinces on this side Mount Taurus, and
pay 15,000 talents--a third more than the tax imposed on Carthage after
the second Punic war. The Senate, far from reducing Asia then to a
province, exacted only just and moderate conditions. [568] All the Greek
towns of that country were declared free, and the Romans only occupied
certain important points, and enriched their allies at the expense of
Syria. The King of Pergamus and the Rhodian fleet had seconded the Roman
army. Eumenes II. , the successor of Attalus I. , saw his kingdom
increased; Rhodes obtained Lycia and Caria; Ariarathes, king of
Cappadocia, who had given aid to Antiochus, paid two hundred
talents. [569]
[Sidenote: The War in the Cisalpine (558-579). ]
IX. The prompt submission of the East was a fortunate occurrence for the
Republic, for near at home, enemies, always eager and watchful, might at
any moment, supported or excited by their brethren on the other side of
the Alps, attack her in the very centre of her empire.
Indeed, since the time of Hannibal, war had been perpetuated in the
Cisalpine, the bellicose tribes of which, though often beaten, engaged
continually in new insurrections. The settlement of the affairs of
Macedonia left the Senate free to act with more vigour, and in 558 the
defeat of the Ligures, of the Boii, of the Insubres, and of the
Cenomani, damped the ardour of these barbarous peoples. The Ligures and
the Boii, however, continued the strife; but the bloody battle of 561,
fought near Modena, and, later, the ravages committed by L. Flamininus,
brother of the conqueror of Cynoscephalæ, and Scipio Nasica, during the
following years, obliged the Boii to treat. Compelled to yield the half
of their territory, they retired towards the Danube in 564, and three
years afterwards Cisalpine Gaul was formed into a Roman province.
As to the Ligures, they maintained a war of desperation to the end of
the century. Their resistance was such that Rome was obliged to meet it
with measures of excessive rigour; and in 574, more than 47,000 Ligures
were transported into a part of Samnium which had been left almost
without inhabitants since the war with Hannibal. In 581, lands beyond
the Po were distributed to other Ligures. [570] Every year the frontiers
receded more towards the north, and military roads,[571] the foundation
of important colonies, secured the march of the armies--a system which
had been interrupted during the second Punic war, but was afterwards
adopted, and especially applied to the south of Italy and the
Cisalpine. [572]
In achieving the submission of this last province, Rome had put an end
to other less important wars. In 577 she reduced the Istrians; in 579,
the Sardinians and the Corsicans; finally, from 569 to 573, she extended
her conquests into Spain, where she met the same enemies as Carthage had
encountered.
[Sidenote: War against Persia (583). ]
X. For twenty-six years had peace been maintained with Philip, the
Ætolians vanquished, the peoples of Asia subdued, and the greater part
of Greece restored to liberty. Profiting by its co-operation with the
Romans against Antiochus, the Achæan league had largely increased, and
Philopœmen had brought into it Sparta, Messene, and the island of
Zacynthus; but these countries, impatient of the Achæan rule, soon
sought to free themselves from it. Thus was realised the prediction of
Philip, who told the Thessalian envoys, after the battle of
Cynoscephalæ, that the Romans would soon repent of having given liberty
to peoples incapable of enjoying it, and whose dissensions and
jealousies would always keep up a dangerous agitation. [573] In fact,
Sparta and Messene rebelled, and sued for help from Rome. Philopœmen,
after having cruelly punished the first of these cities, perished in his
struggle with the second. Thessaly and Ætolia were torn by anarchy and
civil war.
Whilst the Republic was occupied in restoring tranquillity to these
countries, a new adversary came to imprudently attract its wrath. One
would say that Fortune, while raising up so many enemies against Rome,
took pleasure in delivering them, one after the other, into her hands.
The old legend of Horatius killing the three Curiatii in succession was
a lesson which the Senate had never forgotten.
Perseus, heir to his father’s crown and enmities, had taken advantage of
the peace to increase his army and his resources, to make allies, and to
rouse up the kings and peoples of the East against Rome. Besides the
warlike population of his own country, he had at his beck barbarous
peoples like the Illyrians, the Thracians, and the Bastarnæ, dwelling
not far from the Danube. Notwithstanding the treaty, which forbad
Macedonia to make war without the consent of the Senate, Perseus had
silently aggrandised himself on the side of Thrace; he had placed
garrisons in the maritime cities of Oenoe and Maronia, excited the
Dardanians[574] to war, brought under subjection the Dolopes, and
advanced as far as Delphi. [575] He endeavored to draw the Achæans into
an alliance, and skilfully obtained the good-will of the Greeks. Eumenes
II. , king of Pergamus, who, like his father Attalus I. , feared the
encroachments of Macedonia, denounced at Rome this infraction of the old
treaties. The fear with which a powerful prince inspired him, and the
gratitude which he owed to the Republic for the aggrandisement of his
kingdom after the Asian war, obliged him to cultivate the friendship of
the Roman people. In 582 he came to Rome, and, honourably received by
the Senate, forgot nothing which might excite it against Perseus, whom
he accused of ambitious designs hostile to the Republic. This
denunciation raised violent enmities against Eumenes. On his way back to
his kingdom, he was attacked by assassins, and dangerously wounded.
Suspicion fell on the Macedonian monarch, not without show of reason,
and was taken by the Republic as sufficient ground for declaring war on
a prince whose power began to offend it.
Bold in planning, Perseus displayed cowardice when it was necessary to
act. After having from the first haughtily rejected the Roman claims, he
waited in Thessaly for their army, which, ill-commanded and
ill-organised, was beaten by his lieutenants and repulsed into mountain
gorges, where it might have been easily destroyed. He then offered peace
to P. Licinius Crassus; but, notwithstanding his check, the consul
replied, with all the firmness of the Roman character, that peace was
only possible if Perseus would abandon his person and his kingdom to the
discretion of the Senate. [576] Struck by so much assurance, the king
recalled his troops, and suffered the enemy to effect his retreat
undisturbed. The incapacity of the Roman generals, however, their
violences, and the want of discipline among the soldiers, had alienated
the Greeks, who naturally preferred a prince of their own race to a
foreign captain; moreover, they did not see the Macedonians get the
better of the Romans without a certain satisfaction. In their eyes, it
was the Hellenic civilisation overthrowing the presumption of the
Western barbarians.
The campaigns of 584 and 585 were not more fortunate for the Roman arms.
A consul had the rash idea of invading Macedonia by the passes of
Callipeuce, where his army would have been annihilated if the king had
had the courage to defend himself. At the approach of the legions he
took to flight, and the Romans escaped from their perilous position
without loss. [577] At length, the people, feeling the necessity of
having an eminent man at the head of the army, nominated Paulus Æmilius
consul, who had given many proofs of his military talents in the
Cisalpine. Already the greater part of the Gallo-græci were in treaty
with Perseus. The Illyrians and the people of the Danube offered to
second him. The Rhodians, and the King of Pergamus himself, persuaded
that Fortune was going to declare herself for the King of Macedonia,
made him offers of alliance; he chaffered with them with the most
inexplicable levity. In the mean time, the Roman army, ably conducted,
advanced by forced marches. One single combat terminated the war; and
the battle of Pydna, in 586, once more proved the superiority of the
Roman legion over the phalanx. This, however, did not yield
ingloriously; and, though abandoned by their king, who fled, the
Macedonian hoplites died at their post.
When they heard of this defeat, Eumenes and the Rhodians hastened to
wipe out the remembrance of their ever having doubted the fortune of
Rome[578] by the swiftness of their repentance. At the same time, L.
Anicius conquered Illyria and seized the person of Gentius. Macedonia
was divided into four states called _free_, that is to say, presided
over by magistrates chosen by themselves, but under the protectorate of
the Republic. By the law imposed on these new provinces, all marriages,
and all exchange of immovable property, were interdicted between the
citizens of different states,[579] and the imports reduced one-half. As
we see, the Republic applied the system practised in 416 to dissolve the
Latin confederacy, and later, in 449, that of the Hernici. Illyria was
also divided into three parts. The towns which had first yielded were
exempt from all tribute, and the taxes of the others reduced to
half. [580]
It is not uninteresting to recall to mind how Livy appreciates the
institutions which Macedonia and Illyria received at this epoch. “It was
decreed,” he says, “that liberty should be given to the Macedonians and
Illyrians, to prove to the whole universe that, in carrying their arms
so far, the object of the Romans was to deliver the enslaved peoples,
not to enslave the free peoples; to guarantee to these last their
independence, to the nations subject to kings a milder and more just
government; and to convince them that, in the wars which might break out
between the Republic and their sovereigns, the result would be the
liberty of the peoples: Rome reserving to herself only the honour of
victory. ”[581]
Greece, and above all Epirus, sacked by Paulus Æmilius, underwent the
penalty of defection. As to the Achæan league, the fidelity of which had
appeared doubtful, nearly a thousand of the principal citizens, guilty
or suspected of having favoured the Macedonians, were sent as hostages
to Rome. [582]
[Sidenote: Modification of Roman policy. ]
XI. In carrying her victorious arms through almost all the borders of
the Mediterranean, the Republic had hitherto obeyed either legitimate
needs or generous inspirations. Care for her future greatness, for her
existence even, made it absolute on her to dispute the empire of the sea
with Carthage. Hence the wars, of which Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Italy,
and Africa, by turns, became the theatre. It was also her duty to combat
the warlike peoples of the Cisalpine, that she might ensure the safety
of her frontiers. As to the expeditions of Macedonia and Asia, Rome had
been drawn into them by the conduct of foreign kings, their violation of
treaties, their guilty plottings, and their attacks on her allies.
To conquer thus became to her an obligation, under pain of seeing fall
to ruin the edifice which she had built up at the price of so many
sacrifices; and, what is remarkable, she showed herself after victory
magnificent towards her allies, clement to the vanquished, and moderate
in her pretensions. Leaving to the kings all the glory of the throne,
and to the nations their laws and liberties, she had reduced to Roman
provinces only a part of Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Cisalpine Gaul. In
Sicily she preserved the most intimate alliance with Hiero, tyrant of
Syracuse, for fifty years. The constant support of this prince must have
shown the Senate how much such alliances were preferable to direct
dominion. In Spain she augmented the territory of all the chiefs who
consented to become her allies. After the battle of Cynoscephalæ, as
after that of Magnesia, she maintained on their thrones Philip and
Antiochus, and imposed on this last only the same conditions as those
offered before the victory. If, after the battle of Pydna, she overthrew
Perseus, it was because he had openly violated his engagements; but she
gave equitable laws to Macedonia. Justice then ruled her conduct, even
towards her oldest rival; for when Masinissa asked the help of the
Senate in his quarrels with Carthage, he received for answer that, even
in his favour, justice could not be sacrificed. [583]
In Egypt her protection preserved the crown on the head of Ptolemy
Philometor and of his sister Cleopatra. [584] Finally, when all the kings
came after the victory of Pydna to offer their congratulations to the
Roman people, and to implore their protection, the Senate regulated
their demands with extreme justice. Eumenes, himself an object of
suspicion, sent his brother Attalus to Rome; and he, willing to profit
by the favourable impression he had made, thought to ask for him a part
of the kingdom of Pergamus. He was recommended to give up the design.
The Senate restored his son to Cotys, king of Thrace, without ransom,
saying that the Roman people did not make a traffic of their
benefits. [585] Finally, in the disputes between Prusias, king of
Bithynia, and the Gallo-græcians, it declared that justice alone could
dictate its decision. [586]
How, then, did so much nobleness of views, so much magnanimity in
success, so much prudence in conduct seem to be belied, dating from that
period of twenty-two years which divides the war against Persia from the
third Punic war? Because too much success dazzles nations as well as
kings. When the Romans began to think that nothing could resist them in
the future because nothing had resisted them in the past, they believed
that all was permitted them. They no longer made war to protect their
allies, defend their frontiers, or destroy coalitions, but to crush the
weak, and use nations for their own profit. We must also acknowledge
that the inconstancy of the peoples, faithful in appearance, but always
plotting some defection, and the hatred of the kings, concealing their
resentment under a show of abasement, concurred to render the Republic
more suspicious and more exacting, and caused it to count from
henceforth rather on its subjects than on its allies. Vainly did the
Senate seek to follow the grand traditions of the past; it was no longer
strong enough to curb individual ambitions; and the same institutions
which formerly brought forth the virtues, now only protected the vices
of aggrandised Rome. The generals dared no longer to obey; thus, the
consul Cn. Manlius attacks the Gallo-græcians in Asia without the orders
of the Senate;[587] A. Manlius takes on himself to make an expedition
into Istria;[588] the consul C. Cassius abandons the Cisalpine, his
province, and attempts of his own accord to penetrate into Macedonia by
Illyria;[589] the prætor Furius, on his own authority, disarms one of
the peoples of Cisalpine Gaul, the Cenomani, at peace with Rome;[590]
Popilius Lænas attacks the Statiellates without cause, and sells ten
thousand of them; others also oppress the peoples of Spain. [591] All
these things doubtless incur the blame of the Senate; the consuls and
prætors are disavowed, even accused, but their disobedience none the
less remain unpunished, and the accusations without result. In 599, it
is true, L. Lentulus, consul in the preceding year, underwent
condemnation for exaction, but that did not prevent him from being
raised again to the chief honours. [592]
As long as the object was only to form men destined for a modest part on
a narrow theatre, nothing was better than the annual election of the
consuls and prætors, by which, in a certain space of time, a great
number of the principal citizens of both the patrician and plebeian
nobility participated in the highest offices. Powers thus exercised
under the eyes of their fellow-citizens, rather for honour than
interest, obliged them to be worthy of their trust; but when, leading
their legions into the most remote countries, the generals, far from all
control, and invested with absolute power, enriched themselves by the
spoils of the vanquished, dignities were sought merely to furnish them
with wealth during their short continuance. The frequent re-election of
the magistrates, in multiplying the contests of candidates, multiplied
the ambitious, who scrupled at nothing to attain their object. Thus
Montesquieu justly observes, that “good laws which have made a small
republic great, become a burden to it when it has increased, because
their natural effect was to create a grand people, and not to govern
it. ”[593]
The remedy for this overflowing of unruly passions would have been, on
the one hand, to moderate the desire for conquest; on the other, to
diminish the number of aspirants to power, by giving them a longer term
of duration. But then, the people alone, guided by its instincts, felt
the need of remedying this defect in the institution, by retaining in
authority those who had their confidence. Thus, they wished to appoint
Scipio Africanus perpetual dictator;[594] while pretended reformers,
such as Portius Cato, enslaved to old customs, and in a spirit of
exaggerated rigorism, made laws to interdict the same man from aspiring
twice to the consulship, and to advance the age at which it was lawful
to try for this high office.
All these measures were contrary to the object at which they aimed. In
maintaining annual elections, the way was left free to vulgar
covetousness; in excluding youth from high functions, they repressed the
impulses of those choice natures which early reveal themselves, and the
exceptional elevation of which had so often saved Rome from the greatest
disasters. Have we not seen, for example, in 406, Marcus Valerius
Corvus, raised to the consulate at twenty-three years of age, gain the
battle of Mount Gaurus against the Samnites; Scipio Africanus, nominated
proconsul at twenty-four, conquer Spain and humiliate Carthage; the
consul Quinctius Flamininus, at thirty, carry off from Philip the
victory of Cynoscephalæ? Finally, Scipio Æmilianus, who is to destroy
Carthage, will be elected consul, even before the age fixed by the law
of Cato.
No doubt, Cato the Censor, honest and incorruptible, had the laudable
design of arresting the decline of morals. But, instead of attacking the
cause, he only attacked the effect; instead of strengthening authority,
he tended to weaken it; instead of leaving the nations a certain
independence, he urged the Senate to bring them all under its absolute
dominion; instead of adopting what came from Greece with an enlightened
discernment, he indiscriminately condemned all that was of foreign
origin. [595] There was in Cato’s austerity more ostentation than real
virtue. Thus, during his censorship, he expelled Manlius from the Senate
for having kissed his wife before his daughter in open daylight; he took
pleasure in regulating the toilette and extravagance of the Roman
ladies; and, by an exaggerated disinterestedness, he sold his horse
when he quitted Spain, to save the Republic the cost of transport. [596]
But the Senate contained men less absolute, and wiser appreciators of
the needs of the age; they desired to repress abuses, to carry out a
policy of moderation, to curb the spirit of conquest, and to accept from
Greece all that she had of good. Scipio Nasica and Scipio Æmilianus
figured among the most important. [597] One did not reject whatever might
soften manners and increase human knowledge; the other cultivated the
new muses, and was even said to have assisted Terence.
The irresistible inclination of the people towards all that elevates the
soul and ennobles existence was not to be arrested. Greece had brought
to Italy her literature, her arts, her science, her eloquence; and when,
in 597, there came to Rome three celebrated philosophers--Carneades the
Academician, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic--as
ambassadors from Athens, they produced an immense sensation. The young
men flocked in crowds to see and hear them; the Senate itself approved
this homage paid to men whose talent must polish, by the culture of
letters, minds still rude and unformed. [598] Cato alone, inexorable,
pretended that these arts would soon corrupt the Roman youth, and
destroy its taste for arms; and he caused these philosophers to be
dismissed.
Sent to Africa as arbiter to appease the struggle between Masinissa and
Carthage, he only embittered it. Jealous at seeing this ancient rival
still great and prosperous, he did not cease pronouncing against her
that famous decree of death: _Delenda est Carthago_. Scipio Nasica, on
the contrary, opposed the destruction of Carthage, which he considered
too weak to do injury, yet strong enough to keep up a salutary fear,
which might prevent the people from casting themselves into all those
excesses which are the inevitable consequences of the unbounded increase
of empires. [599] Unhappily, the opinion of Cato triumphed.
As one of our first writers says, it must be “that truth is a divine
thing, since the errors of good men are as fatal to humanity as vice,
which is the error of the wicked. ”
Cato, by persecuting with his accusations the principal citizens, and,
among others, Scipio Africanus, taught the Romans to doubt virtue. [600]
By exaggeration in his attacks, and by delivering his judgments with
passion, he caused his justice to be suspected. [601] By condemning the
vices from which he himself was not exempt, he deprived his
remonstrances of all moral force. [602] When he scourged the people as
accuser and judge, without seeking to raise them by education and laws,
he resembled, says a learned German, that Persian king who whipped the
sea with rods to make the tempest cease. [603] His influence, though
powerless to arrest the movement of one civilisation taking the place of
another, failed not to produce a fatal effect on the policy of that
period. [604] The Senate, renouncing the moderation and justice which
hitherto had stamped all its deeds, adopted in their stead a crafty and
arrogant line of action, and a system of extermination.
Towards the beginning of the seventh century, everything disappears
before the Roman power. The independence of peoples, kingdoms, and
republics ceases to exist. Carthage is destroyed, Greece gives up her
arms, Macedonia loses her liberty, that of Spain perishes at Numantia,
and shortly afterwards Pergamus undergoes the same fate.
[Sidenote: Third Punic War (605-608). ]
XII. Notwithstanding her abasement, Carthage still existed, the eternal
object of hatred and distrust. She was accused of connivance with the
Macedonians, ever impatient of their yoke; and to her was imputed the
resistance of the Celtiberian hordes. In 603, Masinissa and the
Carthaginians engaged in a new struggle. As, according to their
treaties, these last could not make war without authorisation, the
Senate deliberated on the course it was to take. Cato desired war
immediately. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, obtained the appointment of
a new embassy, which succeeded in persuading Masinissa to evacuate the
territory in dispute; on its part, the Senate of Carthage consented to
submit to the wisdom of the ambassadors, when the populace at Carthage,
excited by those men who in troublous times speculate on the passions of
the mob, breaks out in insurrection, insults the Roman envoys, and
expels the chief citizens. [605] A fatal insurrection; for in moments of
external crisis all popular movements ruin a nation,[606] as all
political change is fatal in the presence of a foreigner invading the
soil of the fatherland. However, the Roman Senate judged it best to
temporise, because of the war in Spain, where Scipio Æmilianus then
served in the capacity of tribune. Ordered to Africa (603), to obtain
from Masinissa elephants for the war against the Celtiberians, he
witnessed a sanguinary defeat of the Carthaginian army. This event
decided the question of Roman intervention; the Senate, in fact, had no
intention of leaving the entire sovereignty of Africa to the Numidian
king, whose possessions already extended from the ocean to Cyrene. [607]
In vain did Carthage send ambassadors to Rome to explain her conduct.
They obtained no satisfaction. Utica yielded to the Romans (604), and
the two consuls, L. Marcius Censorinus, and M. Manlius Nepos, arrived
there at the head of 80,000 men in 605. Carthage sues for peace; they
impose the condition that she shall give up her arms; she delivers them
up, with 2,000 engines of war. But soon exactions increase; the
inhabitants are commanded to quit their city and retire ten miles
inland. Exasperated by so much severity, the Carthaginians recover their
energy; they forge new weapons, raise the populace, fling into the
campaign Hasdrubal, who has soon collected 70,000 men in his camp at
Nepheris, and gives the consuls reason to fear the success of their
enterprise. [608]
The Roman army met with a resistance it was far from expecting.
Endangered by Manlius, it was saved by the tribune, Scipio Æmilianus, on
whom all eyes were turned. On his return to Rome, he was in 607 elected
consul at the age of thirty-six years, and charged with the direction of
the war, which henceforth took a new aspect. Carthage is soon inclosed
by works of prodigious labour; on land, trenches surround the place and
protect the besiegers; by sea, a colossal bar interrupts all
communication, and gives up the city to famine; but the Carthaginians
build a second fleet in their inner port, and excavate a new
communication with the sea. During the winter Scipio goes and forces the
camp at Nepheris, and on the return of spring makes himself master of
the first enclosure; finally, after a siege which lasted for three
years, with heroic efforts on both sides, the town and its citadel Byrsa
are carried, and entirely razed to the ground. Hasdrubal surrendered,
with fifty thousand inhabitants, the remains of an immense population;
but on a fragment of the wall which had escaped the fire, the wife of
the last Carthaginian chief, dressed in her most gorgeous robes, was
seen to curse her husband, who had not had the courage to die; then,
after having slain her two children, she flung herself into the flames.
A mournful image of a nation which achieves her own ruin, but which does
not fall ingloriously.
When the vessel laden with magnificent spoils, and adorned with laurels,
entered the Tiber, bearer of the grand news, all the citizens rushed out
into the streets embracing and congratulating each other on so joyful a
victory. Now only did Rome feel herself free from all fear, and the
mistress of the world. Nevertheless, the destruction of Carthage was a
crime which Caius Gracchus, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus sought to repair.
[Sidenote: Greece, Macedonia, Numantia, and Pergamus reduced to
Provinces. ]
XIII. The same year saw the destruction of the Greek autonomy. Since the
war with Persia, the preponderance of Roman influence had maintained
order in Achaia; but on the return of the hostages, in 603, coincident
with the troubles of Macedonia, party enmities were re-awakened.
Dissensions soon broke out between the Achæan league and the cities of
the Peloponnesus, which it coveted, and the resistance of which it did
not hesitate to punish by destruction and pillage.
Sparta soon rebelled, and Peloponnesus was all in flames. The Romans
made vain efforts to allay this general disturbance. The envoys of the
Senate carried a decree to Corinth, which detached from the league
Sparta, Argos, Orchomenus, and Arcadia. On hearing this, the Achæans
massacred the Lacedæmonians then at Corinth, and loaded the Roman
commissioners with insults. [609] Before using severity, the Roman
Senate resolved to make one appeal to conciliation; but the words of the
new envoys were not listened to.
The Achæan league, united with Eubœa and Bœotia, then dared to
declare war against Rome, which they knew to be occupied in Spain and
Africa. The league was soon vanquished at Scarphia, in Locris, by
Metellus, and at Leucopetra, near Corinth, by Mummius. The towns of the
Achæan league were treated rigorously; Corinth was sacked; and Greece,
under the name of Achaia, remained in subjection to the Romans
(608). [610]
However, Mummius, as Polybius himself avows,[611] showed as much
moderation as disinterestedness after the victory. He preserved in their
places the statues of Philopœmen, kept none of the trophies taken in
Greece for himself, and remained so poor that the Senate conferred a
dowry upon his daughter from the public treasury.
About the same time the severity of the Senate had not spared Macedonia.
During the last Punic war, a Greek adventurer, Andriscus, pretending to
be the son of Perseus, had stirred up the country to rebellion, with an
army of Thracians. Driven out of Thessaly by Scipio Nasica, he returned
there, slew the prætor Juventius Thalna, and formed an alliance with the
Carthaginians. Beaten by Metellus, he was sent to Rome loaded with
chains. Some years later, a second impostor having also endeavoured to
seize the succession of Perseus, the Senate reduced Macedonia to a
Roman province (612). It was the same with Illyria after the submission
of the Ardæi (618). Never had so many triumphs been seen. Scipio
Æmilianus had triumphed over Africa, Metellus over Macedonia, Mummius
over Achaia, and Fulvius Flaccus over Illyria.
Delivered henceforth from its troubles in the east and south, the Senate
turned its attention towards Spain. This country had never entirely
yielded: its strength hardly restored, it took up arms again. After the
pacification which Scipio Africanus and Sempronius Gracchus successively
induced, new insurrections broke forth; the Lusitanians, yielding to the
instigations of Carthage, had revolted in 601, and had gained some
advantages over Mummius and his successor Galba (603). But this last, by
an act of infamous treachery, massacred thirty thousand prisoners.
Prosecuted for this act at Rome by Cato, he was acquitted. Subsequently,
another consul showed no less perfidy: Licinius Lucullus, having entered
the town of Cauca, which had surrendered, slew twenty thousand of its
inhabitants, and sold the rest. [612]
So much cruelty excited the indignation of the peoples of Northern
Spain, and, as always happens, the national feeling brought forth a
hero. Viriathus, who had escaped the massacre of the Lusitanians, and
from a shepherd had become a general, began a war of partisans, and, for
five years, having vanquished the Roman generals, ended by rousing the
Celtiberians. Whilst these occupied Metellus the Macedonian, Fabius,
left alone against Viriathus, was hemmed into a defile by him, and
constrained to accept peace. The murder of Viriathus left the issue of
the war no longer doubtful. This death was too advantageous to the
Romans not to be imputed to Cæpio, successor to his brother Fabius. But
when the murderers came to demand the wages of their crime, they were
told that the Romans had never approved of the massacre of a general by
his soldiers. [613] The Lusitanians, however, submitted, and the legions
penetrated to the ocean.
The war, ended in the west, became concentrated round Numantia,[614]
where, in the course of five years, several consuls were defeated. When,
in 616, Mancinus, surrounded by the enemy on all sides, was reduced to
save his army by a shameful capitulation, like that of the Furculæ
Caudinæ, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and gave up the consul
loaded with chains. The same fate was reserved for Tiberius Gracchus,
his questor, who had guaranteed the treaty; but, through the favour of
the people, he remained at Rome. The Numantines still resisted for a
long time with rare energy. The conqueror of Carthage himself had to go
to direct the siege, which required immense works; and yet the town was
taken only by famine (621). Spain was overcome, but her spirit of
independence survived for a great number of years.
Although the fall of the kingdom of Pergamus was posterior to the events
we have just related, we will speak of it here because it is the
continuation of the system of reducing all peoples to subjection.
Attalus III. , a monster of cruelty and folly, had, when dying,
bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people, who sent troops to take
possession of it; but a natural son of Eumenes, Aristonicus, raised the
inhabitants, and defeated the consul Licinius Crassus, soon avenged by
one of his successors. Aristonicus was taken, and the kingdom, pacified,
passed by the name of Asia under Roman domination (625).
[Sidenote: Summary. ]
XIV. The more the Republic extended its empire, the more the number of
the high functions increased, and the more important they became. The
consuls, the proconsuls, and the prætors, governed not only foreign
countries, but Italy itself. In fact, Appian tells us that the
proconsuls exercised their authority in certain countries of the
peninsula. [615]
The Roman provinces were nine in number:--1. Cisalpine Gaul. 2. Farther
Spain. 3. Nearer Spain. 4. Sardinia and Corsica. 5. Sicily. 6. Northern
Africa. 7. Illyria. 8. Macedonia and Achaia. 9. Asia. The people
appointed yearly two consuls and seven prætors to go and govern these
distant countries; but generally these high offices were attainable only
by those who had been questors or ediles. Now, the edileship required a
large fortune; for the ediles were obliged to spend great sums in fêtes
and public works to please the people. The rich alone could aspire to
this first dignity; consequently, it was only the members of the
aristocracy who had a chance of arriving at the elevated position,
where, for one or two years, they were absolute masters of the destinies
of vast kingdoms. Thus, the nobility sought to keep these high offices
closed against new men. From 535 to 621--eighty-six years--nine families
alone obtained eighty-three consulships. Still later, twelve members of
the family Metellus gained various dignities in less than twelve years
(630-642. )[616] Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when,
addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is
regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and
infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the
multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus), on the contrary, did not wish to put
all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling
together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or
two orders. ”[617]
It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a
Roman. In reality, notwithstanding the changes introduced into the
comitia, the bearing of which is difficult to explain, the nobility
preserved its preponderance, and the habit of addressing the people only
after having taken the sense of the Senate, was still persisted in. [618]
The Roman government, always aristocratic, became more oppressive in
proportion as the State increased in extent, and it lost in influence
what the people of Italy gained in intelligence and in legitimate
aspirations towards a better future.
Besides, ever since the beginning of the Republic, it had harboured in
its breast two opposite parties, the one seeking to extend, the other to
restrict, the rights of the people. When the first came into power, all
the liberal laws of the past were restored to force; when the second
came in, these laws were evaded. Thus we see now the law Valeria, which
consecrates appeal to the people, thrice revived; now the law
interdicting the re-election of the consuls before an interval of ten
years, promulgated by Genucius in 412,[619] and immediately abandoned,
renewed in 603, and subsequently restored by Sylla; now the law which
threw the freedmen into the urban tribes, in order to annul their vote,
revived at three different epochs;[620] now the measures against
solicitation, against exactions, against usury, continually put into
force; and finally, the right of election to the sacerdotal office by
turn, refused or granted to the people. [621] By the Portian laws of 557
and 559, it was forbidden to strike with rods, or put to death, a Roman
citizen, before the people had pronounced upon his doom. And yet Scipio
Æmilianus, to evade this law, caused his auxiliaries to be beaten with
sticks and his soldiers with vine-stalks. [622] At the beginning of the
seventh century, the principle of secret voting was admitted in all
elections; in 615, in the elections of the magistrates; in 617, for the
decision of the people in judicial condemnations; in 623, in the votes
on proposals for laws. Finally, by the institution of permanent
tribunals (_quæstiones perpetuæ_), established from 605, it was sought
to remedy the spoliation of the provinces; but these institutions,
successively adopted or abandoned, could not heal the ills of society.
The manly virtues of an intelligent aristocracy had until then
maintained the Republic in a state of concord and greatness; its vices
were soon to shake it to its foundations.
We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and
thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no
nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she
has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the
Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has
conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of
Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east,
the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians,
the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a
tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the
Danube. [623] Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of
barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles,
Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of
civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia
receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of
the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her
tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a
Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms.
But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within
exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.
CHAPTER VI.
THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SYLLA.
(621-676. )
[Sidenote: State of the Republic. ]
I. The age of disinterestedness and stoic virtues was passed; it had
lasted nearly four hundred years, and during that period, the antagonism
created by divergency of opinions and interests had never led to
sanguinary conflicts. The patriotism of the aristocracy and the good
sense of the people had prevented this fatal extremity; but, dating from
the first years of the seventh century, everything had changed, and at
every proposal of reform, or desire of power, nothing was seen but
sedition, civil wars, massacres, and proscriptions.
“The Republic,” says Sallust, “owed its greatness to the wise policy of
a small number of good citizens,”[624] and we may add that its decline
began the day on which their successors ceased to be worthy of those who
had gone before them. In fact, most of those who, after the Gracchi,
acted a great part, were so selfish and cruel that it is difficult to
decide, in the midst of their excesses, which was the representative of
the best cause.
As long as Carthage existed, like a man who is on his guard before a
dangerous rival, Rome showed an anxiety to maintain the purity and
wisdom of her ancient principles; but Carthage fallen, Greece
subjugated, the kings of Asia vanquished, the Republic, no longer held
by any salutary check, abandoned herself to the excesses of unlimited
power. [625]
Sallust draws the following picture of the state of society: “When,
freed from the fear of Carthage, the Romans had leisure to give
themselves up to their dissensions, then there sprang up on all sides
troubles, seditions, and at last civil wars. A small number of powerful
men, whose favour most of the citizens sought by base means, exercised a
veritable despotism under the imposing name, sometimes of the Senate, at
other times of the People. The title of good and bad citizen was no
longer the reward of what he did for or against his country, for all
were equally corrupt; but the more any one was rich, and in a condition
to do evil with impunity, provided he supported the present order of
things, the more he passed for a man of worth. From this moment, the
ancient manners no longer became corrupted gradually as before; but the
depravation spread with the rapidity of a torrent, and youth was to such
a degree infected by the poison of luxury and avarice, that there came a
generation of people of which it was just to say, that they could
neither have patrimony nor suffer others to have it. ”[626]
The aggrandisement of the empire, frequent contact with strangers, the
introduction of new principles in philosophy and religion, the immense
riches brought into Italy by war and commerce, had all concurred in
causing a profound deterioration of the national character. There had
taken place an exchange of populations, ideas, and customs. On the one
hand, the Romans, whether soldiers, traders, or farmers of the revenues,
in spreading themselves abroad in crowds all over the world,[627] had
felt their cupidity increase amid the pomp and luxury of the East; on
the other, the foreigners, and especially the Greeks, flowing into
Italy, had brought, along with their perfection in the arts, contempt
for the ancient institutions. The Romans had undergone an influence
which may be compared with that which was exercised over the French of
the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Italy, then, it is true,
superior in intelligence, but perverted in morals. The seduction of vice
is irresistible when it presents itself under the form of elegance, wit,
and knowledge. As in all epochs of transition, the moral ties were
loosened, and the taste for luxury and the unbridled love of money had
taken possession of all classes.
Two characteristic facts, distant from one another by one hundred and
sixty-nine years, bear witness to the difference of morals at the two
periods. Cineas, sent by Pyrrhus to Rome, with rich presents, to obtain
peace, finds nobody open to corruption (474). Struck with the majesty
and patriotism of the senators, he compares the Senate to an assembly
of kings. Jugurtha, on the contrary, coming to Rome (643) to plead his
cause, finds his resources quickly exhausted in buying everybody’s
conscience, and, full of contempt for that great city, exclaims in
leaving it: “Venal town, which would soon perish if it could find a
purchaser! ”[628]
Society, indeed, was placed, by noteworthy changes, in new conditions:
for the populace of the towns had increased, while the agricultural
population had diminished; agriculture had become profoundly modified;
the great landed properties had absorbed the little; the number of
proletaries and freedmen had increased, and the slaves had taken the
place of free labour. The military service was no longer considered by
the nobles as the first honour and the first duty. Religion, that
fundamental basis of the Republic, had lost its prestige. And, lastly,
the allies were weary of contributing to the greatness of the empire,
without participating in the rights of Roman citizens. [629] There were,
as we have seen, two peoples, quite distinct: the people of the allies
and subjects, and the people of Rome. The allies were always in a state
of inferiority; their contingents, more considerable than those of the
metropolis, received only half the pay of the latter, and were subjected
to bodily chastisement from which the soldiers of the legions were
exempted. Even in the triumphs, their cohorts, by way of humiliation,
followed, in the last rank and in silence, the chariot of the victor. It
was natural then that, penetrated with the feelings of their own dignity
and the services they had rendered, they should aspire to be treated as
equals. The Roman people, properly so named, occupying a limited
territory, from Cære to Cumæ, preserved all the pride of a privileged
class. It was composed of from about three to four hundred thousand
citizens,[630] divided into thirty five tribes, of which four only
belonged to the town, and the others to the country. In these last, it
is true, had been inscribed the inhabitants of the colonies and of
several towns of Italy, but the great majority of the Italiotes were
deprived of political rights, and at the very gates of Rome there still
remained disinherited cities, such as Tibur, Præneste, Signia, and
Norba. [631]
The richest citizens, in sharing among them the public domain, composed
of about two-thirds of the totality of the conquered territory, had
finished by getting nearly the whole into their own hands, either by
purchase from the small proprietors, or by forcibly expelling them; and
this occurred even beyond the frontiers of Italy. [632] At a later time,
when the Republic, mistress of the basin of the Mediterranean, received,
either under the name of contribution, or by exchange, an immense
quantity of corn from the most fertile countries, the cultivation of
wheat was neglected in Italy, and the fields were converted into
pastures and sumptuous parks. Meadows, indeed, which required fewer
hands, would naturally be preferred by the great proprietors. Not only
did the vast domains, _latifundia_, appertain to a small number, but the
knights had monopolised all the elements of riches of the country. Many
had retired from the ranks of the cavalry to become farmers-general
(_publicani_), bankers, and, almost alone, merchants. Formed, over the
whole face of the empire, into financial companies, they worked the
provinces, and formed a veritable money aristocracy, whose importance
was continually increasing, and which, in the political struggles, made
the balance incline to the side where it threw its influence.
Thus, not only was the wealth of the country in the hands of the
patrician and plebeian nobility, but the free men diminished incessantly
in numbers in the rural districts. If we believe Plutarch,[633] there
were no longer in Etruria, in 620, any but foreigners for tillers of the
soil and herdsmen, and everywhere slaves had multiplied to such a
degree, that, in Sicily alone, 200,000 took part in the revolt of
619. [634] In 650, the King of Bithynia declared himself unable to
furnish a military contingent, because all the young adults had been
carried away for slaves by Roman collectors. [635] In the great market of
Delos, 10,000 slaves were sold and embarked in one day for Italy. [636]
The excessive number of slaves was then a danger to society and a cause
of weakness to the State;[637] and there was the same inconvenience in
regard to the freedmen. Citizens since the time of Servius Tullius, but
without right of suffrage; free in fact, but remaining generally
attached to their old masters; physicians, artists, grammarians, they
were incapable, they and their children, of becoming senators, or of
forming part of the college of pontiffs, or of marrying a free woman, or
of serving in the legions, unless in case of extreme danger. Sometimes
admitted into the Roman communalty, sometimes rejected; veritable
mulattoes of ancient times, they participated in two natures, and bore
always the stigma of their origin. [638] Confined to the urban tribes,
they had, with the proletaries, augmented that part of the population
of Rome for which the conqueror of Carthage and Numantia often showed a
veritable disdain: “Silence! ” he shouted one day, “you whom Italy does
not acknowledge for her children;” and as the noise still continued, he
proceeded, “Those whom I caused to be brought here in chains will not
frighten me because to-day their bonds have been broken. ”[639] When the
people of the town assembled in the Forum without the presence of the
rural tribes, which were more independent, they were open to all
seductions, and to the most powerful of these--the money of the
candidates and the distributions of wheat at a reduced price. They were
also influenced by the mob of those deprived of political rights, when,
crowding the public place, as at the English _hustings_, they sought, by
their cries and gestures, to act on the minds of the citizens.
On another hand, proud of the deeds of their ancestors, the principal
families, in possession of the soil and of the power, desired to
preserve this double advantage without being obliged to show themselves
worthy of it; they seemed to disdain the severe education which had made
them capable of filling all offices,[640] so that it might be said that
there existed then at Rome an aristocracy without nobility, and a
democracy without people.
There were, then, injustices to redress, exigencies to satisfy, and
abuses to repress; for neither the sumptuary laws, nor those against
solicitation, nor the measures against the freedmen, were sufficient to
cure the diseases of society. It was necessary, as in the time of
Licinius Stolo (378), to have recourse to energetic measures--to give
more stability to power, confer the right of city on the peoples of
Italy, diminish the number of slaves, revise the titles to landed
property, distribute to the people the lands illegally acquired, and
thus give a new existence to the agricultural class.
All the men of eminence saw the evil and sought the remedy. Caius
Lælius, among others, the friend of Scipio Æmilianus, and probably at
his instigation, entertained the thought of proposing salutary reforms,
but was prevented by the fear of raising troubles. [641]
[Sidenote: Tiberius Gracchus (621). ]
II.
