No More Learning

The army of refugees under the fugitive Hasdrubal — which was in possession of the whole Carthaginian territory with the exception of the towns on the east coast occupied by the Romans, viz. Had- rumetum, Little Leptis, Thapsus and Achulla, and ^the city of Utica, and offered an invaluable support for the defence — was entreated not to refuse its aid to the commonwealth in this dire emergency. At the same
ihagtohn*. which was
displayed previously by the Tyrians against Alexander, and subsequently by the Jews against Ves pasian. Unparalleled as was the patience with which this nation could endure bondage and oppression, as un paralleled was now the furious rising of that mercantile and seafaring population, when the things at stake were not the state and freedom, but the beloved soil of their
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES «45
time, concealing in true Phoenician style the most un bounded resentment under the cloak of humility, they attempted to deceive the enemy. A message was sent to the consuls to request a thirty days' armistice for the despatch of an embassy to Rome. The Carthaginians were well aware that the generals neither would nor could grant this request, which had been refused once already ; but the consuls were confirmed by it in the natural supposition that after the first outbreak of despair the utterly defenceless city would submit, and accordingly postponed the attack. The precious interval was employed in preparing catapults and armour ; day and night all, with out distinction of age or sex, were occupied in constructing machines and forging arms ; the public buildings were torn down to procure timber and metal ; women cut off their hair to furnish the strings indispensable for the catapults ; in an incredibly short time the walls and the men were once more armed. That all this could be done without the consuls, who were but a few miles off, learning any
of not the least marvellous feature in this marvellous movement sustained by truly enthusiastic, and in fact superhuman, national hatred. When at length the consuls, weary of waiting, broke up from their camp at Utica, and thought that they should be able to scale the bare walls with ladders, they found to their surprise and horror the battlements crowned anew with catapults, and the large populous city which they had hoped to occupy like an open village, able and ready to defend itself to the last man.
Carthage was rendered very strong both by the nature of its situation and by the art of its inhabitants, who had
The line of the coast has been in the course of centuries so much changed that the former local relations are but imperfectly recognizable on the ancient site. The name of the city preserved by Cape Carta gena—also called from the saint's tomb found there Ras Sidi bu Said
thing
situation of c*rth*8B.
is
1
1
it, is
a
246 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
very often to depend on the protection of its walls. Into the broad gulf of Tunis, which is bounded on the west
Farina and on the east by Cape Bon, there projects in a direction from west to east a promontory, which is encompassed on three sides by the sea and is connected with the mainland only towards the west This
at its narrowest part only about two miles broad and on the whole flat, again expands towards the gulf, and terminates there in the two heights of Jebel- Khawi and Sidi bu Said, between which extends the plain of El Mersa. On its southern portion which ends in the height of Sidi bu Said lay the city of Carthage. The pretty steep declivity of that height towards the gulf and its numerous rocks and shallows gave natural strength to the side of the city next to the gulf, and a simple circumvallation was sufficient there. On the wall along the west or landward side, on the other hand, where nature afforded no protection, every appliance within the power of the art of fortification in those times was ex
It consisted, as its recently discovered remains exactly tallying with the description of Polybius have shown, of an outer wall 6\ feet thick and immense casemates attached to it behind, probably along its whole extent ; these were separated from the outer wall by a covered way 6 feet broad, and had a depth of 14 feet, exclusive of the front and back walls, each of which was fully 3 feet broad. 1
—the eastern headland of the peninsula, projecting into the gulf with its highest point rising to 393 feet above the level of the sea.
1 The dimensions given by Beule (Fouilles a Carthage, 1861) are as follows in metres and in Greek feet (1=0*309 metre) :
Outer wall a metres = 61 feet. Corridor 1-9 ,, = 6 „
,, a* ,,
by Cape
promontory,
pended.
Front wall of casemates .
. 1
3$
Casemate rooms
Back wall of casemates . .
42 ,,
=14
•■
. 1 . . . . —
Whole breadth of the walls . . 10 1 metres =33 feet
Of, as Diodorus (p. 522) states 22 cubits Greek cubit = feet),
„ m ,, 3$
it,
(1
ij
:hap. i THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 047
This enormous wall, composed throughout of large hewn blocks, rose in two stories, exclusive of the battlements and the huge towers four stories high, to a height of 45 feet,1 and furnished in the lower range of the casemates stables and provender-stores for 300 elephants, in the upper range stalls for horses, magazines, and barracks. 2 The citadel-hill, the Byrsa (Syriac, btrtha = citadel), a compara
while Llvy (ap. Oros. It. as) and Appian (Pun. 95), who seem to have had before them another less accurate passage of Polybius, state the breadth of the walls at 30 feet. The triple wall of Appian—as to which a false idea has hitherto been diffused by Floras 31) — denotes the outer wall, and the front and back walls of the casemates. That this coincidence not accidental, and that we have here in reality the remains of the famed walls of Carthage before us, will be evident to every one the objections of Davis (Carthage and her Remains, p. 370 et sea. ) only show how little even the utmost zeal can adduce in opposition to the main results of Reute. Only we must maintain that all the ancient authorities give the statements of which we are now speaking with reference not to the citadel-wall, but to the city-wall on the landward side, of which the wall along the south side of the citadel-hill was an integral part (Oros. iv.
In accordance with this view, the excavations at the citadel-hill on the east, north, and west, have shown no traces of fortifications, whereas on the south side they have brought to light the very remains of this great wall. There is no reason for regarding these as the remains of a separate fortification of the citadel distinct from the city wall may be presumed that further excavations at corresponding depth —the foundation of the city wall discovered at the Byrsa lies fly-six feet beneath the present surface — will bring to light like, or at any rate analogous, foundations along the whole landward side, although probable that at the point where the walled suburb of Magalia rested on the main wall the fortification was either weaker from the first or was early neglected. The length of the wall as a whole cannot be stated with precision but must have been very considerable, for three hundred elephants were stabled there, and the stores for their fodder and perhaps other spaces also as well as the gates are to be taken into account It easy to conceive how the inner city, within the walls of which the Byrsa was included, should, especially by way of contrast to the suburb of Magalia which had its separate circum- vallation, be sometimes itself called Byrsa (App. Pun. 117; Nepos, ap. Serv. Aen.
aa).
368).
Such the height given by Appian, e. Diodorus gives the height,
probably inclusive of the battlements, at 40 cubits or 60 feet. The remnant preserved still from 13 to 16 feet (4-5 metres) high.
The rooms of a horse-shoe shape brought to light in excavation have a depth of 14, and a breadth of 11, Greek feet the width of the entrances not specified. Whether these dimensions and the proportions of the corridor suffice for our recognizing them as elephants' stalls, remains to
be settled by a more accurate investigation. The partition-walls, which separate the apartments, have a thickness of metre = feet
J3
it
1 1
;
is
*1
is i. is
is
is
a
A
; is
fi
;
it
; it
:
(i.
248 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
tively considerable rock having a height of 188 feet and at its base a circumference of fully 2000 double paces,1 was joined to this wall at its southern end, just as the rock-wall of the Capitol was joined to the city-wall of Rome. Its summit bore the huge temple of the God of Healing, resting on a basement of sixty steps. The south side of the city was washed partly by the shallow lake of Tunes towards the south-west, which was separated almost wholly from the gulf by a narrow and low tongue of land running southwards from the Carthaginian peninsula,2 partly by the open gulf towards the south-east. At this last spot was situated the double harbour of the city, a work of human hands ; the outer or commercial harbour, a longish rect angle with the narrow end turned to the sea, from whose entrance, only 70 feet wide, broad quays stretched along the water on both sides, and the inner circular war-
harbour, the Cothon,8 with the island containing the admiral's house in the middle, which was approached
the outer harbour. Between the two passed the city wall, which turning eastward from the Byrsa excluded the tongue of land and the outer harbour, but included the war-harbour, so that the entrance to the latter must be conceived as capable of being closed like a gate. Not far from the war-harbour lay the market place, which was connected by three narrow streets with, the citadel open on the side towards the town. To the
1 Oros. iv. a3. Fully 3000 paces, or—as Polybius must have said— 16 stadia, are = about 3000 mitres. The citadel-hill, on which the church of St. Louis now stands, measures at the top about 1400, half-way up about 3600, metres in circumference (Beulg, p. 33) ; for the circumference at the base that estimate will very well suffice.
through
* It now bears the fort Goletta.
' That this Phoenician word signifies a basin excavated in a circular shape, is shown both by Diodorus (iii. 44), and by its being employed by the Greeks to denote a "cup. " It thus suits only the inner harbour of Carthage, and in that sense it is used by Strabo (xvii. a, 14, where it is strictly applied to the admiral's island) and Fest. Ef. v. cothones, p. 37. Appian (Pun. 137) is not quite accurate in describing the rectangular harbour in front of the Cothon as part of it.
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 249
north of, and beyond, the city proper, the pretty con siderable space of the modern El Mersa, even at that time occupied in great part by villas and well- watered gardens, and then called Magalia, had a circumvallation of its own joining on to the city wall. On the opposite point of the peninsula, the Jebel-Khawi near the modem village of Ghamart, lay the necropolis. These three— the old city, the suburb, and the necropolis —together filled the whole breadth of the promontory on its side next the gulf, and were only accessible by the two highways leading to Utica and Tunes along that narrow tongue of land, which, although not closed by a wall, yet afforded a most advantageous position for the armies taking their stand under the protection of the capital with the view of protecting it in return.
The difficult task of reducing so well fortified a city was rendered still more difficult by the fact, that the resources of the capital itself and of its territory which still included 800 townships and was mostly under the power of the emi grant party on the one hand, and the numerous tribes of the free or half-free Libyans hostile to Massinissa on the other, enabled the Carthaginians simultaneously with their defence of the city to keep a numerous army in the field — an army which, from the desperate temper of the emigrants and the serviceableness of the light Numidian cavalry, the besiegers could not afford to disregard.
The consuls accordingly had by no means an easy task The siege to perform, when they now found themselves compelled to commence a regular siege. Manius Manilius, who com
manded the land army, pitched his camp opposite the wall
of the citadel, while Lucius Censorinus stationed himself with the fleet on the lake and there began operations on
the tongue of land. The Carthaginian army, under Has- drubal, encamped on the other side of the lake near the fortress of Nepheris, whence it obstructed the labours of
aso THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book it
the Roman soldiers despatched to cut timber for con structing machines, and the able cavalry-leader in parti cular, Himilco Phameas, slew many of the Romans. Censorinus fitted up two large battering-rams on the tongue, and made a breach with them at this weakest place of the wall ; but, as evening had set in, the assault had to be postponed. During the night the besieged succeeded in filling up a great part of the breach, and in so damaging the Roman machines by a sortie that they could not work next day. Nevertheless the Romans ventured on the assault ; but they found the breach and the portions of the wall and houses in the neighbourhood so strongly occupied, and advanced with such imprudence, that they were repulsed with severe loss and would have suffered still greater damage, had not the military tribune
Aemilianus, foreseeing the issue of the foolhardy attack, kept together his men in front of the walls and with them intercepted the fugitives. Manilius accomplished still less against the impregnable wall of the citadel. The siege thus lingered on. The diseases engendered in the camp by the heat of summer, the departure of Censorinus the abler general, the ill-humour and inaction of Massinissa who was naturally far from pleased to see the Romans taking for themselves the booty which he had long coveted, and the death of the king at the age of ninety which ensued
149. soon after (end of 605), utterly arrested the offensive opera tions of the Romans. They had enough to do in pro tecting their ships against the Carthaginian incendiaries and their camp against nocturnal surprises, and in securing food for their men and horses by the construction of a harbour-fort and by forays in the neighbourhood. Two expeditions directed against Hasdrubal remained without success ; and in fact the first, badly led over difficult ground, had almost terminated in a formal defeat But, while the course of the war was inglorious for the general
Scipio
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 251
and the army, the military tribune Scipio achieved in it brilliant distinction. It was he who, on occasion of a nocturnal attack by the enemy on the Roman camp, starting with some squadrons of horse and taking the enemy in rear, compelled him to retreat. On the first expedition to Nepheris, when the passage of the river had taken place in opposition to his advice and had almost occasioned the destruction of the army, by a bold attack in flank he relieved the pressure on the retreating troops, and by his devoted and heroic courage rescued a division which had been given up as lost While the other officers, and the consul in
particular, by their perfidy deterred the towns and party-leaders that were inclined to negotiate, Scipio succeeded in in
ducing one of the ablest of the latter, Himilco Phameas, to pass over to the Romans with 2200 cavalry. Lastly, after he had in fulfilment of the charge of the dying Massinissa divided his kingdom among his three sons, Micipsa, Gulussa, and Mastanabal, he brought to the Roman army in Gulussa a cavalry-leader worthy of his father, and thereby remedied the want, which had hitherto been seriously felt, of light cavalry. His refined and yet simple demeanour, which recalled rather his own father than him whose name he bore, overcame even envy, and in the camp as in the capital the name of Scipio was on the lips of all. Even Cato, who was not liberal with his
a few months before his death —he died at the
end of 605 without having seen the wish of his life, the 149. destruction of Carthage, accomplished —applied to the young officer and to his incapable comrades the Homeric
line • —
He only is a living man, the rest are gliding shades. 1
While these events were passing, the close of the year 1 0&>I rfwrvrtu, ~ol Si aiuai Uattwa.
praise,
Sdpto lianai
15» THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
had come and with it a change of commanders ; the consul 148. Lucius Piso (606) was somewhat late in appearing and took the command of the land army, while Lucius Mancinus
took charge of the fleet. But, if their predecessors had done little, these did nothing at all. Instead of prosecuting the siege of Carthage or subduing the army of Hasdrubal,
Piso employed himself in attacking the small maritime towns of the Phoenicians, and that mostly without success. Clupea, for example, repulsed him, and he was obliged to retire in disgrace from Hippo Diarrhytus, after having lost the whole summer in front of it and having had his besieg ing apparatus twice burnt Neapolis was no doubt taken ; but the pillage of the town in opposition to his pledged word of honour was not specially favourable to the progress of the Roman arms. The courage of the Carthaginians rose. Bithyas, a Numidian sheik, passed over to them with 800 horse; Carthaginian envoys were enabled to attempt negotiations with the kings of Numidia and Maure- tania and even with Philip the Macedonian pretender. It was perhaps internal intrigues —Hasdrubal the emigrant brought the general of the same name, who commanded in the city, into suspicion on account of his relationship with
Massinissa, and caused him to be put to death in the senate- house — rather than the activity of the Romans, that prevented things from assuming a turn still more favourable for Carthage.
With the view of producing a change in the state of African affairs, which excited uneasiness, the Romans re sorted to the extraordinary measure of entrusting the conduct of the war to the only man who had as yet brought home honour from the Libyan plains, and who was recom mended for this war by his very name. Instead of calling Scipio to the aedileship for which he was a candidate, they gave to him the consulship before the usual time, setting aside the laws to the contrary effect, and committed to him
chap. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 153
by special decree the conduct of the African war. He arrived (607) in Utica at a moment when much was at stake. 147. The Roman admiral Mancinus, charged by Piso with the nominal continuance of the siege of the capital, had occupied
a steep cliff, far remote from the inhabited district and scarcely defended, on the almost inaccessible seaward side
of the suburb of Magalia, and had united nearly his whole
not very numerous force there, in the hope of being able to penetrate thence into the outer town. In fact the assailants
had been for a moment within its gates and the camp- followers had flocked forward in a body in the hope of spoil, when they were again driven back to the cliff and, being without supplies and almost cut off, were in the great
est danger. Scipio found matters in that position. He
had hardly arrived when he despatched the troops which
he had brought with him and the militia of Utica by sea to
the threatened point, and succeeded in saving its garrison
and holding the cliff itself. After this danger was averted,
the general proceeded to the camp of Piso to take over the
army and bring it back to Carthage. Hasdrubal and Bithyas availed themselves of his absence to move their camp immediately up to the city, and to renew the attack on the garrison of the cliff before Magalia; but even now Scipio appeared with the vanguard of the main army in sufficient time to afford assistance to the post Then the siege began afresh and more earnestly. First of all Scipio cleared the camp of the mass of camp-followers and sutlers and once more tightened the relaxed reins of discipline. Military operations were soon resumed with increased vigour. In an attack by night on the suburb the Romans succeeded in passing from a tower—placed in front of the walls and equal to them in height—on to the battlements, and opened a little gate through which the whole army entered. The Carthaginians abandoned the suburb and their camp before the gates, and gave the chief command
»54 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book it
of the garrison of the city, amounting to 30,000 men, to Hasdrubal. The new commander displayed his energy in the first instance by giving orders that all the Roman pri soners should be brought to the battlements and, after undergoing cruel tortures, should be thrown over before the eyes of the besieging army ; and, when voices were raised in disapproval of the act, a reign of terror was introduced with reference to the citizens also.
Scipio, meanwhile, after having confined the besieged to the city itself, sought totally to cut off their intercourse with the outer world. He took
up his head-quarters on the ridge by which the Carthaginian peninsula was connected with the mainland, and, notwith standing the various attempts of the Carthaginians to disturb his operations, constructed a great camp across the whole breadth of the isthmus, which completely blockaded the city from the landward side. Nevertheless ships with pro visions still ran into the harbour, partly bold merchantmen allured by the great gain, partly vessels of Bithyas, who availed himself of every favourable wind to convey supplies to the city from Nepheris at the end of the lake of Tunes ; whatever might now be the sufferings of the citizens, the garrison was still sufficiently provided for. Scipio therefore constructed a stone mole, 96 feet broad, running from the tongue of land between the lake and gulf into the latter, so as thus to close the mouth of the harbour. The city seemed lost, when the success of this undertaking, which was at first ridiculed by the Carthaginians as impracticable, became evident. But one surprise was balanced by another. While the Roman labourers were constructing the mole, work was going forward night and day for two months in the Carthaginian harbour, without even the deserters
being able to tell what were the designs of the besieged. All of a sudden, just as the Romans had completed the bar across
the entrance to the harbour, fifty Carthaginian triremes and a number of boats and skiffs sailed forth from that same
chap. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 255
harbour into the gulf—while the enemy were closing the old mouth of the harbour towards the south, the Cartha ginians had by means of a canal formed in an easterly direction procured for themselves a new outlet, which owing to the depth of the sea at that spot could not possibly be closed. Had the Carthaginians, instead of resting content with a mere demonstration, thrown themselves at once and resolutely on the half-dismantled and wholly unprepared Roman fleet, it must have been lost ; when they returned on the third day to give the naval battle, they found the Romans in readiness. The conflict came off without deci sive result ; but on their return the Carthaginian vessels so ran foul of each other in and before the entrance of the harbour, that the damage thus occasioned was equivalent to a defeat Scipio now directed his attacks against the outer quay, which lay outside of the city walls and was only protected for the exigency by an earthen rampart of recent construction. The machines were stationed on the tongue of land, and a breach was easily made ; but with unexam pled intrepidity the Carthaginians, wading through the shallows, assailed the besieging implements, chased away the covering force which ran off in such a manner that Scipio was obliged to make his own troopers cut them down, and destroyed the machines. In this way they gained time to close the breach. Scipio, however, again established the machines and set on fire the wooden towers of the enemy ; by which means he obtained possession of the quay and of the outer harbour along with A rampart equal ling the city wall in height was here constructed, and the town was now at length completely blockaded land and sea, for the inner harbour could only be reached through the outer. To ensure the completeness of the blockade, Scipio ordered Gaius Laelius to attack the camp at Nepheris, where Diogenes now held the command was captured
fortunate stratagem, and the whole countless multitude
by a
; it
by
it.
Capture of *'
a56 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
assembled there were put to death or taken prisoners. Winter had now arrived and Scipio suspended his opera tions, leaving famine and pestilence to complete what he had begun.
How fearfully these mighty agencies had laboured in the work of destruction during the interval while Hasdrubal continued to vaunt and to gormandize, appeared so soon as
146. the Roman army proceeded in the spring of 608 to attack the inner towa Hasdrubal gave orders to set fire to the outer harbour and made himself ready to repel the ex pected assault on the Cothon ; but Laelius succeeded in scaling the wall, hardly longer defended by the famished garrison, at a point farther up and thus penetrated into the inner harbour. The city was captured, but the struggle was still by no means at an end. The assailants occupied the market-place contiguous to the small harbour, and slowly pushed their way along the three narrow streets leading from this to the citadel — slowly, for the huge
houses of six stories in height had to be taken one by one ; on the roofs or on beams laid over the street the soldiers penetrated from one of these fortress-like buildings to that which was adjoining or opposite, and cut down whatever they encountered there. Thus six days elapsed, terrible for the inhabitants of the city and full of difficulty and danger also for the assailants ; at length they arrived in front of the steep citadel-rock, whither Hasdrubal and the force still surviving had retreated. To procure a wider approach, Scipio gave orders to set fire to the captured streets and to level the ruins ; on which occasion a number
of persons unable to fight, who were concealed in the houses, miserably perished. Then at last the remnant of the population, crowded together in the citadel, besought for mercy. Bare life was conceded to them, and they appeared before the victor, 30,000 men and 25,000 women, not the tenth part of the former population. The Roman
chap, 1 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES »57
deserters alone, 900 in number, and the general Hasdrubal with his wife and his two children had thrown themselves into the temple of the God of Healing ; for them — for soldiers who had deserted their posts, and for the murderer of the Roman prisoners — there were no terms. But when, yielding to famine, the most resolute of them set fire to the temple, Hasdrubal could not endure to face death; alone he ran forth to the victor and falling upon his knees pleaded for his life. It was granted ; but, when his wife who with her children was among the rest on the roof of the temple saw him at the feet of Scipio, her proud heart swelled at this disgrace brought on her dear perishing home, and, with bitter words bidding her husband be careful to save his life, she plunged first her sons and then herself into the flames. The struggle was at an end. The joy in the camp and at Rome was boundless ; the noblest of the people alone were in secret ashamed of the most recent grand achievement of the nation. The prisoners were mostly sold as slaves ; several were allowed to languish in prison ; the most notable, Hasdrubal and Bithyas, were sent to the interior of Italy as Roman state-prisoners and tolerably treated. The moveable property, with the excep tion of gold, silver, and votive gifts, was abandoned to the pillage of the soldiers. As to the temple treasures, the booty that had been in better times carried off by the Carthaginians from the Sicilian towns was restored to them ; the bull of Phalaris, for example, was returned to the Agrigentines ; the rest fell to the Roman state.
But by far the larger portion of the city still remained Destruc-
standing. We may believe that Scipio desired its preserva- tion ; at least he addressed a special inquiry to the senate on the subject Scipio Nasica once more attempted to gain a hearing for the demands of reason and honour ; but in vain. The senate ordered the general to level the city of Carthage and the suburb of Magalia with the ground,
VOL III 82
c^L_
Province of Africa.
358 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
and to do the same with all the townships which had held by Carthage to the last ; and thereafter to pass the plough over the site of Carthage so as to put an end in legal form to the existence of the city, and to cur. se the soil and site for ever, that neither house nor cornfield might ever re appear on the spot. The command was punctually obeyed. The ruins burned for seventeen days : recently, when the remains of the Carthaginian city wall were excavated, they were found to be covered with a layer of ashes from four to five feet deep, filled with half-charred pieces of wood, fragments of iron, and projectiles. Where the industrious Phoenicians had bustled and trafficked for five hundred years, Roman slaves henceforth pastured the herds of their distant masters. Scipio, however, whom nature had destined for a nobler part than that of an executioner, gazed with horror on his own work ; and, instead of the joy of victory, the victor himself was haunted by a presentiment of the retribution that would inevitably follow such a
misdeed.
There remained the work of arranging the future
organization of the country. The earlier plan of investing the allies of Rome with the transmarine possessions that she acquired was no longer viewed with favour. Micipsa and Ins brothers retained in substance their former territory, including the districts recently wrested from the Cartha ginians on the Bagradas and in Emporia ; their long- cherished hope of obtaining Carthage as a capital was for ever frustrated ; the senate presented them instead with the Carthaginian libraries. The Carthaginian territory as possessed by the city in its last days — viz. the narrow border of the African coast lying immediately opposite to Sicily, from the river Tusca (near Thabraca) to Thaenae (opposite to the island of Karkenah) — became a Roman
In the interior, where the constant encroach ments of Massinissa had more and more narrowed the
province.
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES a59
Carthaginian dominions and Bulla, Zama, and Aquae already belonged to the kings, the Numidians retained what they possessed. But the careful regulation of the boundary between the Roman province and the Numidian kingdom, which enclosed it on three sides, showed that Rome would by no means tolerate in reference to herself what she had permitted in reference to Carthage ; while the name of the new province, Africa, on the other hand appeared to indicate that Rome did not at all regard the boundary now marked off as a definitive one. The supreme administra tion of the new province was entrusted to a Roman governor, who had his seat at Utica. Its frontier did not need any regular defence, as the allied Numidian kingdom everywhere separated it from the inhabitants of the desert. In the matter of taxes Rome dealt on the whole with moderation. Those communities which from the beginning of the war had taken part with Rome —viz. only the maritime towns of Utica, Hadrumetum, Little Leptis, Thapsus, Achulla, and Usalis, and the inland town of Theudalis — retained their territory and became free cities ; which was also the case with the newly-founded community of deserters. The territory of the city of Carthage —with the exception of a tract presented to Utica—and that of the other destroyed townships became Roman domain-land, which was let on lease. The remaining townships likewise forfeited in law their property in the soil and their municipal liberties; but their land and their constitution were for the time being, and until further orders from the Roman government, left to them as a possession liable to be recalled, and the communities paid annually to Rome for the use of their soil which had become Roman a once- for-all fixed tribute (slipendium), which they in their turn collected by means of a property-tax levied from the in dividuals liable. The real gainers, however, by this destruction of the first commercial city of the west were
Philip,
26o THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
( the Roman merchants, who, as soon as Carthage lay in ) ashes, flocked in troops to Utica, and from this as their , head-quarters began to turn to profitable account not only
the Roman province, but also the Numidian and Gaetulian regions which had hitherto been closed to them.
Macedonia also disappeared about the same time as Carthage from the ranks of the nations. The four small confederacies, into which the wisdom of the Roman senate had parcelled out the ancient kingdom, could not live at peace either internally or one with another. How matters stood in the country appears from a single accidentally mentioned occurrence at Phacus, where the whole govern ing council of one of these confederacies were murdered on the instigation of one Damasippus. Neither the com-
184. missions sent by the senate (590), nor the foreign arbiters, 151. such as Scipio Aemilianus (603) called in after the Greek
fashion by the Macedonians, were able to establish tolerable order. Suddenly there appeared in Thrace a young man, who called himself Philip the son of king Perseus, whom he strikingly resembled, and of the Syrian Laodice. He had passed his youth in the Mysian town of Adramytium ; there he asserted that he had preserved the sure proofs of his illustrious descent. With these he had, after a vain attempt to obtain recognition in his native country, resorted to Demetrius Soter, king of Syria, his mother's brother. There were in fact some who believed the Adramytene or professed to believe him, and urged the king either to reinstate the prince in his hereditary kingdom or to cede to him the crown of Syria ; whereupon Demetrius, to put an end to the foolish proceedings,
/ arrested the pretender and sent him to the Romans. But the senate attached so little importance to the man, that it confined him in an Italian town without taking steps to have him even seriously guarded.
Thus he had escaped to Miletus, where the civic authorities once more seized
any
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES a6i
him and asked the Roman commissioners what they should do with the prisoner. The latter advised them to let him go ; and they did so. He now tried his fortune further in Thrace; and, singularly enough, he obtained recognition and support there not only from Teres the chief of the Thracian barbarians, the husband of his father's sister, and Barsabas, but also from the prudent Byzantines. With Thracian support the so-called Philip invaded Macedonia, and, although he was defeated at first, he soon gained one victory over the Macedonian militia in the district of Odomantice beyond the Strymon, followed by a second on the west side of the river, which gave him possession of all Macedonia. Apocryphal as his story sounded, and
as it was established that the real Philip, the son of Perseus, had died when eighteen years of age at Alba, and that this man, so far from being a Macedonian
was Andriscus a fuller of Adramytium, yet the Macedonians were too much accustomed to the rule of a king not to be readily satisfied on the point of legitimacy
and to return with pleasure into the old track. Messengers arrived from the Thessalians, announcing that the pretender
had advanced into their territory; the Roman commis sioner Nasica, who, in the expectation that a word of earnest remonstrance would put an end to the foolish enterprise, had been sent by the senate to Macedonia without soldiers, was obliged to call out the Achaean and Pergamene troops and to protect Thessaly against the superior force by means of the Achaeans, as far as was practicable, till (605 ? ) the praetor Juventius appeared with 149. a legion. The latter attacked the Macedonians with his small force; but he himself fell, his army was almost wholly destroyed, and the greater part of Thessaly fell into
the power of the pseudo-Philip, who conducted his govern ment there and in Macedonia with cruelty and arrogance.
At length a stronger Roman army under Quintus Caecilius
decidedly
prince,
262 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book it victory of Metellus appeared on the scene of conflict, and, supported
MetenB*'
by the Pergamene fleet, advanced into Macedonia. In the first cavalry combat the Macedonians retained the superiority; but soon dissensions and desertions occurred in the Macedonian army, and the blunder of the pretender in dividing his army and detaching half of it to Thessaly procured for the Romans an easy and decisive victory
148. (606). Philip fled to the chieftain Byzes in Thrace, whither Metellus followed him and after a second victory obtained his surrender.
Province donia.
The four Macedonian confederacies had not voluntarily submitted to the pretender, but had simply yielded to force. According to the policy hitherto pursued there was therefore no reason for depriving the Macedonians of the shadow of independence which the battle of Pydna had still left to them; nevertheless the kingdom of Alex ander was now, by order of the senate, converted Metellus into a Roman province. This case
by clearly showed that the Roman government had changed its
system, and had resolved to substitute for the relation of clientship that of simple subjects ; and accordingly the suppression of the four Macedonian confederacies was felt throughout the whole range of the client-states as a blow directed against all. The possessions in Epirus which were formerly after the first Roman victories de tached from Macedonia —the Ionian islands and the ports of Apollonia and Epidamnus 218, 477), that had hitherto been under the jurisdiction of the Italian magistrates — were now reunited with Macedonia, so that the latter, probably as early as this period, reached on the north-west to point beyond Scodra, where Illyria began. The pro tectorate which Rome claimed over Greece proper like wise devolved, of itself, on the new governor of Macedonia. Thus Macedonia recovered its unity and nearly the same limits which had in its most flourishing times. had
it
It
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chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 363
no longer, however, the unity of a kingdom, but that of a province, retaining its communal and even, as it would seem, its district organization, but placed under an Italian governor and quaestor, whose names make their appear ance on the native coins along with the name of the country. As tribute, there was retained the old moderate land-tax, as Paullus had arranged it (ii. 509) —a sum of 100 talents (^24,000) which was allocated in fixed pro portions on the several communities. Yet the land could not forget its old glorious dynasty. A few years after the subjugation of the pseudo- Philip another pretended son of Perseus, Alexander, raised the banner of insurrection on the Nestus (Karasu), and had in a short time collected 1600 men; but the quaestor Lucius Tremellius mastered the insurrection without difficulty and pursued the fugitive
as far as Dardania (612). This was the last 143. movement of the proud national spirit of Macedonia, which two hundred years before had accomplished so great things in Hellas and Asia. Henceforward there is scarcely anything else to be told of the Macedonians, save that they continued to reckon their inglorious years from the date at which the country received its definitive provincial organization (608). 148,
Thenceforth the defence of the northern and eastern frontiers of Macedonia or, in other words, of the frontier of Hellenic civilization against the barbarians devolved on the Romans. It was conducted by them with inadequate forces and not, on the whole, with befitting energy; but with a primary view to this military object the great Egnatian highway was constructed, which as early as the time of Polybius ran from Apollonia and
the two chief ports on the west coast, across the interior to Thessalonica, and was afterwards prolonged to the Hebrus
pretender
The new province became the natural basis, 1 This road was known already by the author of the pseudo-Aristotelian
(Maritza). 1
Dyrrhachium,
Breeeo.
364 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book it
on the one hand for the movements against the turbulent Dalmatians, and on the other hand for the numerous ex peditions against the Illyrian, Celtic, and Thracian tribes settled to the north of the Grecian peninsula, which we shall afterwards have to exhibit in their historical con nection.
Greece proper had greater occasion than Macedonia to congratulate herself on the favour of the ruling power; and the Philhellenes of Rome might well be of opinion that the calamitous effects of the war with Perseus were disappearing, and that the state of things in general was improving there. The bitterest abettors of the now domi nant party, Lyciscus the Aetolian, Mnasippus the Boeotian, Chrematas the Acarnanian, the infamous Epirot Charops whom honourable Romans forbade even to enter their houses, descended one after another to the grave ; another generation grew up, in which the old recollections and the old antagonisms had faded. The Roman senate thought that the time for general forgiveness and oblivion had
160. come, and in 604 released the survivors of those Achaean
who had been confined for seventeen years in Italy, and whose liberation the Achaean diet had never ceased to demand. Nevertheless they were mistaken. How little the Romans with all their Philhellenism had been successful in heartily conciliating Hellenic patriotism, was nowhere more clearly apparent than in the attitude of the Greeks towards the Attalids. King Eumenes IL had been, as a friend of the Romans, extremely hated in Greece 494) but scarcely had coldness arisen between him and the Romans, when he became suddenly popular
treatise De Miraiilibus as commercial route between the Adriatic and Black seas, viz. as that along which the wine jars from Corcyra met half way those from Thasos and Lesbos. Even now runs substantially in the same direction from Durazzo, cutting through the mountains of Ba gora (Candavian chain) near the lake of Ochrida (Lychnitis), by way of Monastir to Salonica.
patriots
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CHAP. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 265
in Greece, and the Hellenic hopefuls expected the deliverer from a foreign yoke to come now from Pergamus as formerly from Macedonia. Social disorganization more especially was visibly on the increase among the petty states of Hellas now left to themselves. The country became desolate not through war and pestilence, but through the daily increasing disinclination of the higher classes to trouble themselves with wife and children; on the other hand the criminal or the thoughtless flocked as hitherto chiefly to Greece, there to await the recruiting officer. The communities sank into daily deeper debt, and into financial dishonour and a corresponding want of credit : some cities, more especially Athens and Thebes, resorted in their financial distress to direct robbery, and plundered the neighbouring communities. The internal dissensions in the leagues also — e. g. between the voluntary and the compulsory members of the Achaean confederacy — were by no means composed. If the Romans, as seems to have been the case, believed what they wished and con fided in the calm which for the moment prevailed, they were soon to learn that the younger generation in Hellas was in no respect better or wiser than the older. The
Greeks directly sought an opportunity of picking a quarrel with the Romans.
In order to screen a foul transaction, Diaeus, the president of the Achaean league for the time being, about 605 threw out in the diet the assertion that the special privileges con ceded by the Achaean league to the Lacedaemonians as members—viz. their exemption from the Achaean criminal jurisdiction, and the right to send separate embassies to Rome—were not at all guaranteed to them by the Romans. It was an audacious falsehood ; but the diet naturally believed what it wished, and, when the Achaeans showed themselves ready to make good their assertions with arms in hand, the weaker Spartans yielded for the time, or, to
Achaean ""' t149,
266 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book nr
speak more correctly, those whose surrender was demanded
by the Achaeans left the city to appear as complainants before the Roman senate. The senate answered as usual that it would send a commission to investigate the matter ; but instead of reporting this reply the envoys stated in Achaia as well as in Sparta, and in both cases falsely, that the senate had decided in their favour. The Achaeans, who felt more than ever their equality with Rome as allies and their political importance on account of the aid which the league had just rendered in Thessaly against the pseudo-
148. Philip, advanced in 606 under their strategus Damocritus into Laconia : in vain a Roman embassy on its way to Asia, at the suggestion of Metellus, admonished them to keep the peace and to await the commissioners of the senate. A battle took place, in which nearly 1000 Spartans fell, and Sparta might have been taken if Damocritus had not been
equally incapable as an officer and as a statesman. He was superseded, and his successor Diaeus, the instigator of all this mischief, zealously continued the war, while at the same time he gave to the dreaded commandant of Macedonia assurances of the full loyalty of the Achaean league. There upon the long-expected Roman commission made its appear ance, with Aurelius Orestes at its head ; hostilities were now suspended, and the Achaean diet assembled at Corinth to receive its communications. They were of an unexpected and far from agreeable character. The Romans had resolved to cancel the unnatural and forced 478) inclusion of Sparta among the Achaean states, and generally to act with vigour
168. against the Achaeans. Some years before (591) these had been obliged to release from their league the Aetolian town of Pleuron 478) now they were directed to renounce all the acquisitions which they had made since the second Macedonian war—viz. Corinth, Orchomenus, Argos, Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and Heraclea near to Oeta — and to reduce their league to the condition in which stood at the
it
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chap. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 167
end of the Hannibalic war. When the Achaean deputies learned this, they rushed immediately to the market-place without even hearing the Romans to an end, and communi
cated the Roman demands to the multitude ; whereupon the governing and the governed rabble with one voice resolved
to arrest at once the whole Lacedaemonians present in Corinth, because Sparta forsooth had brought on them this misfortune. The arrest accordingly took place in the most tumultuary fashion, so that the possession of Laconian names
or Laconian shoes appeared sufficient ground for imprison
ment : in fact they even entered the dwellings of the Roman envoys to seize the Lacedaemonians who had taken shelter there, and hard words were uttered against the Romans, although they did not lay hands on their persons. The envoys returned home in indignation, and made bitter and even exaggerated complaints in the senate ; but the latter,
with the same moderation which marked all its measures against the Greeks, confined itself at first to representations.
In the mildest form, and hardly mentioning satisfaction for
the insults which they had endured, Sextus Julius Caesar repeated the commands of the Romans at the diet in Aegium (spring of 607). But the leaders of affairs in Achaia with 147. the new strategus Critolaus at their head (strategus from
May 607 to May 608), as men versed in state affairs and 147-148. familiar with political arts, merely drew from that fact the inference that the position of Rome with reference to Car
thage and Viriathus could not but be very unfavourable,
and continued at once to cheat and to affront the Romans. Caesar was requested to arrange a conference of deputies of the contending parties at Tegea for the settlement of the
He did so ; but, after Caesar and the Lacedae monian envoys had waited there long in vain for the Achaeans, Critolaus at last appeared alone and informed them that the general assembly of the Achaeans was solely competent in this matter, and that it could only be settled
question.
968 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book it
at the diet or, in other words, in six months. Caesar there upon returned to Rome ; and the next national assembly of the Achaeans on the proposal of Critolaus formally declared war against Sparta. Even now Metellus made an attempt amicably to settle the quarrel, and sent envoys to Corinth ; but the noisy ecclesia, consisting mostly of the populace of that wealthy commercial and manufacturing city, drowned the voice of the Roman envoys and compelled them to leave the platform. The declaration of Critolaus, that they wished the Romans to be their friends but not their masters, was received with inexpressible delight ; and, when the members of the diet wished to interpose, the mob protected the man after its own heart, and applauded the sarcasms as to the high treason of the rich and the need of a military dictator ship as well as the mysterious hints regarding an impending insurrection of countless peoples and kings against Rome.
The spirit animating the movement is shown by the two resolutions, that all clubs should be permanent and all actions for debt should be suspended till the restoration of peace.
The Achaeans thus had war; and they had even actual allies, namely the Thebans and Boeotians and also the 148. Chalcidians. At the beginning of 608 the Achaeans
advanced into Thessaly to reduce to obedience Heraclea near to Oeta, which, in accordance with the decree of the senate, had detached itself from the Achaean league. The consul Lucius Mummius, whom the senate had resolved to send to Greece, had not yet arrived ; accordingly Metellus undertook to protect Heraclea with the Macedonian legions. When the advance of the Romans was announced to the Achaeo-Theban army, there was no more talk of fighting ; they deliberated only how they might best succeed in reach ing once more the secure Peloponnesus ; in all haste the army made off, and did not even attempt to hold the
at Thermopylae. But Metellus quickened the
position
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES 369
pursuit, and overtook and defeated the Greek army near Scarpheia in Locris. The loss in prisoners and dead was considerable ; Critolaus was never heard of after the battle. The remains of the defeated army wandered about Greece in single troops, and everywhere sought admission in vain ; the division of Patrae was destroyed in Phocis, the Arcadian select corps at Chaeronea ; all northern Greece was evacuated, and only a small portion of the Achaean army and of the citizens of Thebes, who fled in a body, reached the Peloponnesus. Metellus sought by the utmost modera tion to induce the Greeks to abandon their senseless resistance, and gave orders, for example, that all the Thebans with a single exception, should be allowed their liberty; his well-meant endeavours were thwarted not by the energy
of the people, but by the desperation of the leaders apprehensive for their own safety. Diaeus, who after the fall of Critolaus had resumed the chief command, summoned all men capable of bearing arms to the isthmus, and ordered
12,000 slaves, natives of Greece, to be enrolled in the army ; the rich were applied to for advances, and the ranks of the friends of peace, so far as they did not purchase their lives by bribing the ruling agents in this reign of terror, were thinned by bloody prosecutions. The war accordingly was continued, and after the same style. The Achaean vanguard, which, 4000 strong, was stationed under Alcamenes at Megara, dispersed as soon as it saw the Roman standards. Metellus was just about to order an attack upon the main force on the isthmus, when the consul Lucius Mummius with a few attendants arrived at the Roman head-quarters and took the command. Meanwhile the Achaeans, emboldened by a successful attack on the too incautious Roman outposts, offered battle to the Roman army, which was about twice as strong, at Leucopetra on the isthmus. The Romans were not slow to accept At the very first
the Achaean horsemen broke off en masse before the Roman
it.
Province of *'
a-jo THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
cavalry of six times their strength ; the hoplites withstood the enemy till a flank attack by the Roman select corps brought confusion also into their ranks. This terminated the resistance. Diaeus fled to his home, put his wife to death, and took poison himself. All the cities submitted without opposition ; and even the impregnable Corinth, into which Mummius for three days hesitated to enter because he feared an ambush, was occupied by the Romans without a blow.
The renewed regulation of the affairs of Greece was entrusted to a commission of ten senators in concert with the consul Mummius, who left behind him on the whole a blessed memory in the conquered country. Doubtless it was, to say the least, a foolish thing in him to assume the name of " Achaicus " on account of his feats of war and victory, and to build in the fulness of his gratitude a temple to Hercules Victor; but, as he had not been reared in aristocratic luxury and aristocratic corruption but was a " new man " and comparatively without means, he showed himself an upright and indulgent adminis trator. The statement, that none of the Achaeans per ished but Diaeus and none of the Boeotians but Pytheas, is a rhetorical exaggeration : in Chalcis especially sad outrages occurred; but yet on the whole modera tion was observed in the infliction of penalties. Mum mius rejected the proposal to throw down the statues of Philopoemen, the founder of the Achaean patriotic party; the fines imposed on the communities were destined not for the Roman exchequer, but for the in jured Greek cities, and were mostly remitted afterwards ; and the property of those traitors who had parents or children was not sold on public account, but handed over to their relatives. The works of art alone were carried away from Corinth, Thespiae, and other cities and
erected partly in the capital, partly in the country
chap, I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES *Jl
towns of Italy : * several pieces were also presented to the Isthmian, Delphic, and Olympic temples. In the definitive organization of the country also moderation was in general displayed. It is true that, as was implied in the very intro duction of the provincial constitution 210), the special confederacies, and the Achaean in particular, were as such dissolved the communities were isolated and intercourse between them was hampered the rule that no one might acquire landed property simultaneously in two communities. Moreover, as Flamininus had already attempted (ii. 441), the democratic constitutions of the towns were altogether set aside, and the government in each community was placed in the hands of council composed of the wealthy. A fixed land-tax to be paid to Rome was imposed on each community and they were all subordinated to the governor of Macedonia in such a manner that the latter, as supreme military chief, exercised superintendence over administra tion and justice, and could, for example, personally assume the decision of the more important " criminal processes. Yet the Greek communities retained freedom," that formal sovereignty —reduced, doubtless, by the Roman hegemony to name—which involved the property of the soil and the right to distinct administration and jurisdic tion of their own. * Some years later not only were the old
At Sabine townships, at Parma, and even at Italica in Spain (p. 214), several pediments marked with the name of Mummius have been brought to light, which once supported gifts forming part of the spoil.
The question whether Greece did or did not become a Roman
province in 608, virtually runs into dispute about words.
that the Greek communities throughout remained '' free (C.
15 Caesar, B. C. in. Appian, Mithr. 58 Zonar. ix. 31).
no less certain that Greece was then taken possession of " by the Romans (Tac. Ann. xiv. 31 Maccab. viii. 9, 10) that thenceforth each com munity paid a fixed tribute to Rome (Pausan. vii. 16, comp. Cic. Dt Prw. Com. 3, 5), the little island of Gyarus, for instance, paying 150 drachmae annually (Strabo, x. 485); that the "rods and axes" of the Roman governor thenceforth ruled in Greece Polyb. xxxviii. c. comp. Cic. Verr. ai, 55), and that he thenceforth exercised the superintend ence over the constitutions of the cities (C. Gr. 1543), as well as in certain cases the criminal jurisdiction (C. Gr. 1543 Pint, Cim. a), Just
certain 148.
Gr. 1543, But
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272 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES BOOK IV
confederacies again allowed to have a shadowy existence, but the oppressive restriction on the alienation of landed property was removed.
The communities of Thebes, Chalcis, and Corinth ex perienced a treatment more severe. There is no ground for censure in the fact that the two former were disarmed and converted by the demolition of their walls into open villages ; but the wholly uncalled-for destruction of the flourishing Corinth, the first commercial city in Greece, remains a dark stain on the annals of Rome. By express orders from the senate the Corinthian citizens were seized, and such as were not killed were sold into slavery ; the city itself was not only deprived of its walls and its citadel —a measure which,
as the senate had hitherto done ; and that, lastly, the Macedonian pro vincial era was also in use in Greece. Between these facts there is no inconsistency, or at any rate none further than is involved in the position of the free cities generally, which are spoken of sometimes as if excluded from the province (e. g. Sueton. Can. , 35 ; Colum. xL 3, 26), sometimes as assigned to it (e. g. Joseph. Ant. Jvd. xiv. 4, 4). The Roman domanial possessions in Greece were, no doubt, restricted to the territory of Corinth and possibly some portions of Euboea (6'. /. Gr. 5879), and there were no subjects in the strict sense there at all ; yet if we look to the relations practically subsisting between the Greek communities and the Macedonian governor, Greece may be reckoned as included in the province of Macedonia in the same manner as Massilia in the province of Narbo or Dyrrhachium in that of Macedonia. We find even cases that go much
89. further : Cisalpine Gaul consisted after 665 of mere burgess or Latin com munities and was yet made a province by Sulla, and in the time of Caesar we meet with regions which consisted exclusively of burgess-communities and yet by no means ceased to be provinces. In these cases the funda mental idea of the Roman provincia comes out very clearly ; it was primarily nothing but a "command," and all the administrative and
judicial functions of the commandant were originally collateral duties and corollaries of his military position.
On the other hand, if we look to the formal sovereignty of the free com munities, it must be granted that the position of Greece was not altered in 146. point of constitutional law by the events of 608. It was a difference de
facto rather than de jure, when instead of the Achaean league the indi vidual communities of Achaia now appeared by the side of Rome as tribu tary protected states, and when, after the erection of Macedonia as a separate Roman province, the latter relieved the authorities of the capital of the superintendence over the Greek client-states. Greece therefore may or may not be regarded as a part of the " command " of Macedonia, according as the practical or the formal point of view preponderates ; but the preponderance is justly conceded to the former.
CHAP. I THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES »73
if the Romans were not disposed permanently to garrison was certainly inevitable — but was levelled with the
ground, and all rebuilding on the desolate site was pro hibited in the usual forms of accursing part of its territory was given to Sicyon under the obligation that the latter should defray the costs of the Isthmian national festival in room of Corinth, but the greater portion was declared to be public land of Rome. Thus was extinguished " the eye of Hellas," the last precious ornament of the Grecian land, once so rich in cities. If, however, we review the whole catastrophe, the impartial historian must acknowledge — what the Greeks of this period themselves candidly confessed —that the Romans were not to blame for the war itself, but that on the contrary the foolish perfidy and the feeble temerity of the Greeks compelled the Roman intervention. The abolition of the mock sovereignty of the leagues and of all the vague and pernicious dreams connected with them was blessing for the country and the government of the Roman commander-in-chief of Macedonia, however much
fell short of what was to be wished, was yet far better than the previous confusion and misrule of Greek confeder acies and Roman commissions. The Peloponnesus ceased to be the great harbour of mercenaries affirmed, and may readily be believed, that with the direct government of Rome security and prosperity in some measure returned. The epigram of Themistocles, that ruin had averted ruin, was applied the Hellenes of that day not altogether without reason to the loss of Greek independence. The singular in dulgence, which Rome even now showed towards the Greeks, becomes fully apparent only when compared with the contem porary conduct of the same authorities towards the Spaniards and Phoenicians. To treat barbarians with cruelty seemed not unallowable, but the Romans of this period, like the emperor Trajan in later times, deemed "harsh and bar barous to deprive Athens and Sparta of the shadow of
VOL III
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a74 THE SUBJECT COUNTRIES book iv
freedom which they still retained. " All the more marked is the contrast between this general moderation and the revolting treatment of Corinth — a treatment disapproved by the orators who defended the destruction of Numantia and Carthage, and far from justified, even according to Roman international law, by the abusive language uttered against the Roman deputies in the streets of Corinth. And yet it by no means proceeded from the brutality of any tingle individual, least of all of Mummius, but was a measure deliberated and resolved on by the Roman senate. We shall not err, if we recognize it as the work of the mercantile party, which even thus early began to interfere in politics by the side of the aristocracy proper, and which in destroying Corinth got rid of a commercial rival. If the great merchants of Rome had anything to say in the regula tion of Greece, we can understand why Corinth was singled out for punishment, and why the Romans not only destroyed the city as it stood, but also prohibited any future settlement on a site so pre-eminently favourable for commerce. The Peloponnesian Argos thenceforth became the rendezvous for the Roman merchants, who were very numerous even in Greece. For the Roman wholesale traffic, however, Delos was
168. of greater importance ; a Roman free port as early as 586, it had attracted a great part of the business of Rhodes (ii. 5 1 5), and now in a similar way entered on the heritage of Corinth. This island remained for a considerable time the chief emporium for merchandise going from the east to the west. 1
In the third and more distant continent the Roman dominion exhibited a development more imperfect than in
1 A remarkable proof of this is found in the names employed to designate the fine bronze and copper wares of Greece, which in the time of Cicero were called indiscriminately ' ' Corinthian " or " Delian " copper. Their designation in Italy was naturally derived not from the places of manufacture but from those of export (Plin.