In Sardinia, the
excesses of the mutineers had caused an insurrection among the natives,
who drove them out of the country.
excesses of the mutineers had caused an insurrection among the natives,
who drove them out of the country.
Napoleon - History of Julius Caesar - a
Egypt, which Herodotus calls a present from the Nile, did not equal
in surface a quarter of the empire of the Seleucidæ, but it formed a
power much more compact. Its civilisation reached back more than three
thousand years. The sciences and arts already flourished there, when
Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy were still in a state of barbarism. The
fertility of the valley of the Nile had permitted a numerous population
to develop itself there to such a point, that under Amasis II. ,
contemporary with Servius Tullius, twenty thousand cities were reckoned
in it. [428] The skilful administration of the first of the Lagides
increased considerably the resources of the country. Under Ptolemy II. ,
the annual revenues amounted to 14,800 talents (86,150,800 francs
[£3,446,032]), and a million and a half of artabi[429] of wheat. [430]
Besides the Egyptian revenues, the taxes levied in the foreign
possessions reached the amount of about 10,000 talents a year.
Cœle-Syria, Phœnicia, and Judea, with the province of Samaria,
yielded annually to Ptolemy Euergetes 8,000 talents (46 millions and a
half [£1,860,000]). [431] A single feast cost Philadelphia 2,240 talents
(more than 13 millions [more than half a million sterling]). [432] The
sums accumulated in the treasury amounted to the sum, perhaps
exaggerated, of 740,000 talents (about 4 milliards 300 millions of
francs [172 millions sterling]). [433] In 527, Ptolemy Euergetes was
able, without diminishing his resources too much, to send to the
Rhodians 3,300 talents of silver, a thousand talents of copper, and ten
millions of measures of wheat. [434] The precious metals abounded in the
empire of the Pharaohs, as is attested by the traces of mining
operations now exhausted, and by the multitude of objects in gold
contained in their tombs. Masters for some time of the Libanus, the
kings of Egypt obtained from it timber for ship-building. These riches
had accumulated especially at Alexandria, which became, after Carthage,
towards the commencement of the seventh century of Rome, the first
commercial city in the world. [435] It was fifteen miles in
circumference, had three spacious and commodious ports, which allowed
the largest ships to anchor along the quay. [436] There arrived the
merchandises of India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and of the coast of Africa;
some brought on the backs of camels, from Myos Hormos (to the north of
Cosseïr), and then transported down the Nile; others came by canals from
the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, or brought from the port of Berenice, on
the Red Sea. [437] The occupation of this sea by the Egyptians had put a
stop to the piracies of the Arabs,[438] and led to the establishment of
numerous factories. India furnished spices, muslins, and dyes; Ethiopia,
gold, ivory, and ebony; Arabia, perfumes. [439] All these products were
exchanged against those which came from the Pontus Euxinus and the
Western Sea. The native manufacture of printed and embroidered tissues,
and that of glass, assumed under the Ptolemies a new development. The
objects exhumed from the tombs of this period, the paintings with which
they are decorated, the allusions contained in the hieroglyphic texts
and Greek papyrus, prove that the most varied descriptions of industry
were exercised in the kingdom of the Pharaohs, and had attained a high
degree of perfection. The excellence of the products and the delicacy of
the work prove the intelligence of the workmen. Under Ptolemy II. , the
army was composed of 200,000 footmen, 40,000 cavalry, 300 elephants, and
200 chariots; the arsenals were capable of furnishing arms for 300,000
men. [440] The Egyptian fleet, properly so called, consisted of a
hundred and twelve vessels of the first class (from five to thirty
ranges of oars), and two hundred and twenty-four of the second class,
together with light craft; the king had, besides these, more than four
thousand ships in the ports placed in subjection to him. [441] It was
especially after Alexander that the Egyptian navy became greatly
extended.
[Sidenote: Cyrenaica. ]
XVII. Separating Egypt from the possessions of Carthage, Cyrenaica (_the
regency of Tripoli_), formerly colonised by the Greeks and independent,
had fallen into the hands of the first of the Ptolemies. It possessed
commercial and rich towns, and fertile plains; its cultivation extended
even into the mountains;[442] wine, oil, dates, saffron and different
plants, such as the silphium (_laserpitium_),[443] were the object of
considerable traffic. [444] The horses of Cyrenaica, which had all the
lightness of the Arabian horses, were objects of research even in
Greece,[445] and the natives of Cyrene could make no more handsome
present to Alexander than to send him three hundred of their
coursers. [446] Nevertheless, political revolutions had already struck at
the ancient prosperity of the country,[447] which previously formed, by
its navigation, its commerce, and its arts, probably the finest of the
colonies founded by the Greeks.
[Sidenote: Cyprus. ]
XVIII. The numerous islands of the Mediterranean enjoyed equal
prosperity. Cyprus, colonised by the Phœnicians, and subsequently by
the Greeks, passing afterwards under the dominion of the Egyptians, had
a population which preserved, from its native country, the love of
commerce and distant voyages. Almost all its towns were situated on the
sea-coast, and furnished with excellent ports. Ptolemy Soter maintained
in it an army of 30,000 Egyptians. [448] No country was richer in timber.
Its fertility passed for being superior to that of Egypt. [449] To its
agricultural produce were added precious stones, mines of copper worked
from an early period,[450] and so rich, that this metal took its name
from the island itself (_Cuprum_). In Cyprus were seen numerous
sanctuaries, and especially the temple of Venus at Paphos, which
contained a hundred altars. [451]
[Sidenote: Crete. ]
XIX. Crete, peopled by different races, had attained even in the heroic
age a great celebrity; Homer sang its hundred cities; but during several
centuries it had been on the decline. Without commerce, without a
regular navy, without agriculture, it possessed little else than its
fruits and woods, and the sterility which characterises it now had
already commenced. Nevertheless, there is every reason to believe that
at the time of the Roman conquest, the island was still well
peopled. [452] Devoted to piracy,[453] and reduced to sell their
services, the Cretans, celebrated as archers, fought as mercenaries in
the armies of Syria, Macedonia, and Egypt. [454]
[Sidenote: Rhodes. ]
XX. If Crete was in decline, Rhodes, on the contrary, was extending its
commerce, which took gradually the place of that of the maritime towns
of Ionia and Caria. Already inhabited, in the time of Homer, by a
numerous population, and containing three important towns, Lindos,
Ialysus, and Camirus,[455] the isle was, in the fifth century of Rome,
the first maritime power after Carthage. The town of Rhodes, built
during the war of the Peloponnesus (346), had, like the Punic city, two
ports, one for merchant vessels, the other for ships of war. The right
of anchorage produced a revenue of a million of drachmas a year. [456]
The Rhodians had founded colonies on different points of the
Mediterranean shore,[457] and entertained friendly relations with a
great number of towns from which they received more than once succours
and presents. [458] They possessed upon the neighbouring Asiatic
continent tributary towns, such as Caunus and Stratonicea, which paid
them 120 talents (700,000 francs [£28,000]). The navigation of the
Bosphorus, of which they strove to maintain the passage free, soon
belonged to them almost exclusively. [459] All the maritime commerce from
the Nile to the Palus Mæotis thus fell into their hands. Laden with
slaves, cattle, honey, wax, and salt meats,[460] their ships went to
fetch on the coast of the Cimmerian Bosphorus (_Sea of Azof_) the wheat
then very celebrated,[461] and to carry wines and oils to the northern
coast of Asia Minor. By means of its fleets, though its land army was
composed wholly of foreigners,[462] Rhodes several times made war with
success. She contended with Athens, especially from 397 to 399; she
resisted victoriously, in 450, Demetrius Poliorcetes, and owed her
safety to the respect of this prince for a magnificent painting of
Ialysus, the work of Protogenes. [463] During the campaigns of the Romans
in Macedonia and Asia, she furnished them with considerable fleets. [464]
Her naval force was maintained until the civil war which followed the
death of Cæsar, but was then annihilated.
The celebrity of Rhodes was no less great in arts and letters than in
commerce. After the reign of Alexander, it became the seat of a famous
school of sculpture and painting, from which issued Protogenes and the
authors of the _Laocoon_ and the _Farnese Bull_. The town contained
three thousand statues,[465] and a hundred and six colossi, among others
the famous Statue of the Sun, one of the seven wonders of the world, a
hundred and five feet high, the cost of which had been three thousand
talents (17,400,000 francs [£696,000]). [466] The school of rhetoric at
Rhodes was frequented by students who repaired thither from all parts
of Greece, and Cæsar, as well as Cicero, went there to perfect
themselves in the art of oratory.
The other islands of the Ægean Sea had nearly all lost their political
importance, and their commercial life was absorbed by the new states of
Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Rhodes. It was not so with the Archipelago of
the Ionian Sea, the prosperity of which continued until the moment when
it fell into the power of the Romans. Corcyra, which received into its
port the Roman forces, owed to its fertility and favourable position an
extensive commerce. The rival of Corinth since the fourth century, she
became corrupted like Byzantium and Zacynthus (_Zante_), which
Agatharchides, towards 640, represents as grown effeminate by excess of
luxury. [467]
[Sidenote: Sardinia. ]
XXI. The flourishing condition of Sardinia arose especially from the
colonies which Carthage had planted in it. The population of this island
rendered itself formidable to the Romans by its spirit of
independence. [468] From 541[469] to 580, 130,000 men were slain, taken,
or sold. [470] The number of these last was so considerable, that the
expression _Sardinians to sell_ (_Sardi venales_) became
proverbial. [471] Sardinia, which now counts not more than 544,000
inhabitants, then possessed at least a million. Its quantity of corn,
and numerous herds of cattle, made of this island the second granary of
Carthage. [472] The avidity of the Romans soon exhausted it. Yet, in 552,
the harvests were still so abundant, that there were merchants who were
obliged to abandon the wheat to the sailors for the price of the
freight. [473] The working of the mines and the trade in wool of a
superior quality[474] occupied thousands of hands.
[Sidenote: Corsica. ]
XXII. Corsica was much less populous. Diodorus Siculus gives it hardly
more than 30,000 inhabitants,[475] and Strabo represents them as
savages, and living in the mountains. [476] According to Pliny, however,
it had thirty towns. [477] Resin, wax, honey,[478] exported from
factories founded by the Etruscans and Phocæans on the coasts, were
almost the only products of the island.
[Sidenote: Sicily. ]
XXIII. Sicily, called by the ancients the favourite abode of Ceres, owed
its name to the Sicani or Siculi, a race which had once peopled a part
of Italy; Phœnician colonies, and afterwards Greek colonies, had
established themselves in it. In 371, the Greeks occupied the eastern
part, about two-thirds of the island; the Carthaginians, the western
part. Sicily, on account of its prodigious fertility, was, as may be
supposed, coveted by both peoples; it was soon the same in regard to the
Romans, and, after the conquest, it became the granary of Italy. [479]
The orations of Cicero against Verres show the prodigious quantities of
wheat which it sent, and to what a great sum the tenths or taxes
amounted, which procured immense profits to the farmers of the
revenues. [480]
The towns which, under Roman rule, declined, were possessed of
considerable importance at the time of which we are speaking. The first
among them, Syracuse, the capital of Hiero’s kingdom, contained 600,000
souls; it was composed of six quarters, comprised in a circumference of
180 stadia (36 kilometres); it furnished, when it was conquered, a booty
equal to that of Carthage. [481] Other cities rivalled Syracuse in extent
and power. Agrigentum, in the time of the first Punic war, contained
50,000 soldiers;[482] it was one of the principal garrisons in
Sicily. [483] Panormus (_Palermo_), Drepana (_Trapani_), and Lilybæum
(_Marsala_), possessed arsenals, docks for ship-building, and vast
ports. The roadstead of Messina was capable of holding 600 vessels. [484]
Sicily is still the richest country in ancient monuments; our
admiration is excited by the ruins of twenty-one temples and of eleven
theatres, among others that of Taormina, which contained 40,000
spectators. [485]
* * * * *
This concise description of the countries bordering on the
Mediterranean, two or three hundred years before our era, shows
sufficiently the state of prosperity of the different peoples who
inhabited them. The remembrance of such greatness inspires a very
natural wish, namely, that henceforth the jealousy of the great powers
may no longer prevent the East from shaking off the dust of twenty
centuries, and from being born again to life and civilisation!
CHAPTER V.
PUNIC WARS AND WARS OF MACEDONIA AND ASIA.
(From 488 to 621. )
[Sidenote: Comparison between Rome and Carthage. ]
I. Rome, having extended her dominion to the southern extremity of
Italy, found herself in face of a power which, by the force of
circumstances, was to become her rival.
Carthage, situated on the part of the African coast nearest to Sicily,
was only separated from it by the channel of Malta, which divides the
great basin of the Mediterranean in two. She had, during more than two
centuries, concluded, from time to time, treaties with Rome, and, with a
want of foresight of the future, congratulated the Senate every time it
had gained great advantages over the Etruscans or the Samnites.
The superiority of Carthage at the beginning of the Punic wars was
evident; yet the constitution of the two cities might have led any one
to foresee which in the end must be the master. A powerful aristocracy
reigned in both; but at Rome the nobles, identified continually with the
people, set an example of patriotism and of all civic virtues, while at
Carthage the leading families, enriched by commerce, made effeminate by
an unbridled luxury, formed a selfish and greedy caste, distinct from
the rest of the citizens. At Rome, the sole motive of action was glory,
the principal occupation war, and the first duty military service. At
Carthage, everything was sacrificed to interest and commerce; and the
defence of the fatherland was, as an insupportable burden, abandoned to
mercenaries. Hence, after a defeat, at Carthage the army was recruited
with difficulty; at Rome it immediately recruited itself, because the
populace was subject to the recruitment. If the poverty of the treasury
caused the pay of the troops to be delayed, the Carthaginian soldiers
mutinied, and placed the State in danger; the Romans supported
privations and suffering without a murmur, out of mere love for their
country.
The Carthaginian religion made of the Divinity a jealous and malignant
power, which required to be appeased by horrible sacrifices or honoured
by shameful practices: hence manners depraved and cruel; at Rome, good
sense or the interest of the government moderated the brutality of
paganism, and maintained in religion the sentiments of morality. [486]
And, again, what a difference in their policies! Rome had subdued, by
force of arms, it is true, the people who surrounded her, but she had,
so to say, obtained pardon for her victories in offering to the
vanquished a greater country and a share in the rights of the
metropolis. Moreover, as the inhabitants of the peninsula were in
general of one and the same race, she had found it easy to assimilate
them to herself. Carthage, on the contrary, had remained a foreigner in
the midst of the natives of Africa, from whom she was separated by
origin, language, and manners. She had made her rule hateful to her
subjects and to her tributaries by the mercantile spirit of her agents,
and their habits of rapacity; hence frequent insurrections, repressed
with unexampled cruelty. Her distrust of her subjects had engaged her to
leave all the towns on her territory open, in order that none of them
might become a centre of support to a revolt. Thus two hundred towns
surrendered without resistance to Agathocles immediately he appeared in
Africa. Rome, on the contrary, surrounded her colonies with ramparts,
and the walls of Placentia, Spoletum, Casilinum, and Nola, contributed
to arrest the invasion of Hannibal.
The town of Romulus was at that time in all the vigour of youth, while
Carthage had reached that degree of corruption at which States are
incapable of supporting either the abuses which enervate them, or the
remedy by which they might be regenerated.
To Rome then belonged the future. On one hand, a people of soldiers,
restrained by discipline, religion, and purity of manners, animated with
the love of their country, surrounded by devoted allies; on the other, a
people of merchants with dissolute manners, unruly mercenaries, and
discontented subjects.
[Sidenote: First Punic War (490-513). ]
II. These two powers, of equal ambition, but so opposite in spirit,
could not long remain in presence without disputing the command of the
rich basin of the Mediterranean. Sicily especially was destined to
excite their covetousness. The possession of that island was then shared
between Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, the Carthaginians, and the
Mamertines. These last, descended from the old adventurers, mercenaries
of Agathocles, who came from Italy in 490 and settled at Messina,
proceeded to make war upon the Syracusans. They first sought the
assistance of the Carthaginians, and surrendered to them the acropolis
of Messina as the price of their protection; but soon, disgusted with
their too exacting allies, they sent to demand succour of Rome under the
name of a common nationality, for most of them called themselves
Italiots, and consequently allies of the Republic; some even were or
pretended to be Romans. [487]
The Senate hesitated; but public opinion carried the day, and, in spite
of the little interest inspired by the Mamertines, war was decided. A
body of troops, sent without delay to Messina, expelled the
Carthaginians. Soon after, a consular army crossed the Strait, defeated
first the Syracusans and then the Carthaginians, and effected a military
settlement in the island. Thus commenced the first Punic War.
Different circumstances favoured the Romans. The Carthaginians had made
themselves objects of hatred to the Sicilian Greeks. The towns still
independent, comparing the discipline of the legions with the excesses
of all kinds which had marked the progress of the mercenaries of
Agathocles, Pyrrhus, and the Carthaginian generals, received the consuls
as liberators. Hiero, master of Syracuse, the principal town in Sicily,
had no sooner experienced the power of the Roman armies than he foresaw
the result of the struggle, and declared for the strongest. His
alliance, maintained faithfully during fifty years, was of great utility
to the Republic. [488] With his support, the Romans, at the end of the
third year of the war, had obtained possession of Agrigentum and the
greater part of the towns of the interior; but the fleets of the
Carthaginians remained masters of the sea and of the fortresses on the
coast.
The Romans were deficient in ships of war. [489] They could, no doubt,
procure transport vessels, or, by their allies (_socii navales_), a few
triremes,[490] but they had none of those ships with five ranks of oars,
better calculated, by their weight and velocity, to sink the ships of
the enemy. An incomparable energy supplied in a short time the
insufficiency of the fleet: a hundred and twenty galleys were
constructed after the model of a Carthaginian quinquireme which had been
cast on the coast of Italy; and soldiers were exercised on land in the
handling of the oar. [491] At the end of two months, the crews were
embarked, and the Carthaginians were defeated at Mylæ (494), and three
years after at Tyndaris (497). These two sea-fights deprived Carthage of
the prestige of her maritime superiority.
Still the struggle continued on land without decisive results, when the
two rivals embraced the same resolution of making a final effort for the
mastery of the sea. Carthage fitted out three hundred and fifty decked
vessels; Rome, three hundred and thirty of equal force. In 498 the two
fleets met between Heraclea Minora and the Cape of Ecnomus, and, in a
memorable combat, in which 300,000 men[492] contended, the victory
remained with the Romans. The road to Africa was open, and M. Atilius
Regulus, inspired, no doubt, by the example of Agathocles, formed the
design of carrying the war thither. His first successes were so great,
that Carthage, in her terror, and to avoid the siege with which she was
threatened, was ready to renounce her possessions in Sicily. Regulus,
relying too much on the feebleness of the resistance he had hitherto
encountered, thought he could impose upon Carthage the hardest
conditions; but despair restored to the Africans all their energy, and
Xanthippus, a Greek adventurer, but good general, placed himself at the
head of the troops, defeated the consul, and almost totally destroyed
his army.
The Romans never desponded in their reverses; they carried the war
again into Sicily, and recovered Panormus, the head-quarters of the
Carthaginian army. For several years the fleets of the two countries
ravaged, one the coast of Africa, the other the Italian shores; in the
interior of Sicily the Romans had the advantage; on the coast, the
Carthaginians. Twice the fleets of the Republic were destroyed by
tempests or by the enemy, and these disasters led the Senate on two
occasions to suspend all naval warfare. The struggle remained
concentrated during six years in a corner of Sicily: the Romans occupied
Panormus; the Carthaginians, Lilybæum and Drepana. It might have been
prolonged indefinitely, if the Senate, in spite of the poverty of the
treasury, had not succeeded, by means of voluntary gifts, in equipping
another fleet of two hundred quinquiremes. Lutatius, who commanded it,
dispersed the enemy’s ships near the Ægates, and, master of the sea,
threatened to starve the Carthaginians. They sued for peace at the very
moment when a great warrior, Hamilcar, had just restored a prestige to
their arms. The fact is, that the enormity of her expenses and
sacrifices for the last twenty-four years had discouraged Carthage,
while at Rome, patriotism, insensible to material losses, maintained the
national energy without change. The Carthaginians, obliged to give up
all their establishments in Sicily, paid an indemnity of 2,200
talents. [493] From that time the whole island, with the exception of the
kingdom of Hiero, became tributary, and, for the first time, Rome had a
subject province.
If, in spite of this definitive success, there were momentary checks,
we must attribute them in great part to the continual changes in the
plans of campaign, which varied annually with the generals. Several
consuls, nevertheless, were wanting neither in skill nor perseverance,
and the Senate, always grateful, gave them worthy recompense for their
services. Some obtained the honours of the triumph; among others,
Duilius, who gained the first naval battle, and Lutatius, whose victory
decided peace. At Carthage, on the contrary, the best generals fell
victims to envy and ingratitude. Xanthippus, who vanquished Regulus, was
summarily removed through the jealousy of the nobles, whom he had
saved;[494] and Hamilcar, calumniated by a rival faction, did not
receive from his government the support necessary for the execution of
his great designs.
During this contest of twenty-three years, the war often experienced the
want of a skilful and stable direction; but the legions lost nothing of
their ancient valour, and they were even seen one day proceeding to
blows with the auxiliaries, who had disputed with them the possession of
the most dangerous post. We may cite also the intrepidity of the tribune
Calpurnius Flamma, who saved the legions shut up by Hamilcar in a
defile. He covered the retreat with three hundred men, and, found alive
under a heap of dead bodies, received from the consul a crown of
leaves--a modest reward, but sufficient then to inspire heroism. All
noble sentiments were raised to such a point as even to do justice to an
enemy. The consul, L. Cornelius, gave magnificent funeral rites to
Hanno, a Carthaginian general, who had died valiantly in fighting
against him. [495]
During the first Punic war, the Carthaginians had often threatened the
coasts of Italy, but never attempted a serious landing. They could find
no allies among the peoples recently subdued; neither the Samnites, nor
the Lucanians who had declared for Pyrrhus, nor the Greek towns in the
south of the Peninsula, showed any inclination to revolt. The Cisalpine
Gauls, lately so restless, and whom we shall soon see taking arms again,
remained motionless. The disturbances which broke out at the close of
the Punic war among the Salentini and Falisci were without importance,
and appear to have had no connection with the great struggle between
Rome and Carthage. [496]
This resistance to all attempts at insurrection proves that the
government of the Republic was equitable, and that it had given
satisfaction to the vanquished. No complaint was heard, even after great
disasters; and yet the calamities of war bore cruelly upon the
cultivators--incessantly obliged to quit their fields to fill up the
voids made in the legions. At home, the Senate had in its favour a great
prestige, and abroad it enjoyed a reputation of good faith which ensured
sincere alliances.
The first Punic war exercised a remarkable influence on manners. Until
then the Romans had not entertained continuous relations with the
Greeks. The conquest of Sicily rendered these relations numerous and
active, and whatever Hellenic civilisation contained, whether useful or
pernicious, made itself felt.
The religious ideas of the two peoples were different, although Roman
paganism had great affinity with the paganism of Greece. This had its
philosophers, its sophists, and its freethinkers. At Rome, nothing of
the sort; there, creeds were profound, simple, and sincere; and,
moreover, from a very remote period, the government had made religion
subordinate to politics, and had laboured to give it a direction
advantageous to the State.
The Greeks of Sicily introduced into Rome two sects of philosophy, the
germs of which became developed at a later period, and which had perhaps
more relation with the instincts of the initiated than with those of the
initiators. _Stoicism_ fortified the practice of the civic virtues, but
without modifying their ancient roughness; _Epicurism_, much more
extensively spread, soon flung the nation into the search after material
enjoyments. Both sects, by inspiring contempt for death, gave a terrible
power to the people who adopted them.
The war had exhausted the finances of Carthage. The mercenaries, whom
she could not pay, revolted in Africa and Sardinia at the same time.
They were only vanquished by the genius of Hamilcar.
In Sardinia, the
excesses of the mutineers had caused an insurrection among the natives,
who drove them out of the country. The Romans did not let this
opportunity for intervention escape them; and, as before in the case of
the Mamertines, the Senate, according to all appearance, assumed as a
pretext that there were Italiots among the mercenaries in Sardinia. The
island was taken, and the conquerors imposed a new contribution on
Carthage for having captured some merchant vessels navigating in those
latitudes--a scandalous abuse of power, which Polybius loudly
condemns. [497] Reduced to impotency by the loss of their navy and the
revolt of their army, the Carthaginians submitted to the conditions of
the strongest. They had quitted Sicily without leaving any regrets; but
it was not the same with Sardinia; there their government and dominion
were popular, probably from the community of religion and the
Phœnician origin of some of the towns. [498] For a long time
afterwards, periodical rebellions testified to the affection of the
Sardinians for their old masters. Towards the same epoch, the Romans
took possession of Corsica, and, from 516 to 518, repulsed the Ligures
and the Gaulish tribes, with whom they had been at peace for forty-five
years.
[Sidenote: War of Illyria (525). ]
III. While the Republic protected its northern frontiers against the
Gauls and Ligures, and combated the influence of Carthage in Sardinia
and Corsica, she undertook, against a small barbarous people, another
expedition, less difficult, it is true, but which was destined to have
immense consequences. The war of Illyria, in fact, was on the point of
opening to the Romans the roads to Greece and Asia, subjected to the
successors of Alexander, and where Greek civilisation was dominant. Now
become a great maritime power, Rome had henceforward among her
attributes the police of the seas. The inhabitants of the eastern coasts
of the Adriatic, addicted to piracy, were destructive to commerce.
Several times they had carried their depredations as far as Messenia,
and defeated Greek squadrons sent to repress their ravages. [499] These
pirates belonged to the Illyrian nation. The Greeks considered them as
barbarians, which meant foreigners to the Hellenic race; it is probable,
nevertheless, that they had a certain affinity with it. Inconvenient
allies of the kings of Macedonia, they often took arms either for or
against them; intrepid and fierce hordes, they were ready to sell their
services and blood to any one who would pay them, resembling, in this
respect, the Albanians of the present day, believed by some to be their
descendants driven into the mountains by the invasions of the
Slaves. [500]
The king of the Illyrians was a child, and his mother, Teuta, exercised
the regency. This fact alone reveals manners absolutely foreign to
Hellenic and Roman civilisation. A chieftain of Pharos (_Lesina_), named
Demetrius, in the pay of Teuta, occupied as a fief the island of Corcyra
Nigra (now _Curzola_), and exercised the functions of prime minister.
The Romans had no difficulty in gaining him; moreover, the Illyrians
furnished a legitimate cause of war by assassinating an ambassador of
the Republic. [501] The Senate immediately dispatched an army and a fleet
to reduce them (525). Demetrius surrendered his island, which served as
a basis against Apollonia, Dyrrhachium, Nutria, and a great part of the
coast. After a resistance of some months, the Illyrians submitted,
entered into an engagement to renounce piracy, surrendered several
ports, and agreed to choose Demetrius, the ally of the Romans, for the
guardian of their king. [502]
By this expedition, the Republic gained great popularity throughout
Greece; the Athenians and the Achaian league especially were lavish of
thanks, and began from that time to consider the Romans as their
protectors against their dangerous neighbours, the kings of Macedonia.
As to the Illyrians, the lesson they had received was not sufficient to
correct them of their piratical habits. Ten years later another
expedition was sent to chastise the Istrians at the head of the
Adriatic,[503] and soon afterwards the disobedience of Demetrius to the
orders of the Senate brought war again upon Illyria. He was compelled to
take refuge with Philip of Macedon, while the young king became the ally
or subject of the Republic. [504] In the mean time a new war attracted
the attention of the Romans.
[Sidenote: Invasion of the Cisalpines (528). ]
IV. The idea of the Senate was evidently to push its domination towards
the north of Italy, and thus to preserve it from the invasion of the
Gauls. In 522, at the proposal of the tribune Flaminius, the Senones had
been expelled from Picenum, and their lands, declared public domain,
were distributed among the plebeians. This measure, a presage to the
neighbouring Gaulish tribes of the lot reserved for them, excited among
them great uneasiness, and they began to prepare for a formidable
invasion. In 528, they called from the other side of the Alps a mass of
barbarians of the warlike race of the Gesatæ. [505] The terror at Rome
was great. The same interests animated the peoples of Italy, and the
fear of a danger equally threatening for all began to inspire them with
the same spirit. [506] They rushed to arms; an army of 150,000 infantry
and 6,000 cavalry was sent into the field, and the census of men capable
of bearing arms amounted to nearly 800,000. The enumeration of the
contingents of each country[507] furnishes valuable information on the
general population of Italy, which appears, at this period, to have
been, without reckoning the slaves, about the same as at the present
day, yet with this difference, that the men capable of bearing arms were
then in a much greater proportion. [508] These documents also give rise
to the remark that the Samnites, only forty years recovered from the
disasters of their sanguinary struggles, could still furnish 77,000 men.
The Gauls penetrated to the centre of Tuscany, and at Fesulæ defeated a
Roman army; but, intimidated by the unexpected arrival of the consul L.
Æmilius coming from Rimini, they retired, when, meeting the other
consul, Caius Atilius, who, returning from Sardinia, had landed at Pisa,
they were enclosed between two armies, and were annihilated. In the
following year, the Gaulish tribes, successively driven back to the
other side of the Po, were defeated again on the banks of the Adda; the
coalition of the Cisalpine peoples was dissolved, without leading to the
complete submission of the country. The colonies of Cremona and
Placentia contributed, nevertheless, to hold it in check.
While the north of Italy seemed sufficient to absorb the attention of
the Romans, great events were passing in Spain.
[Sidenote: Second Punic War (536-552). ]
V. Carthage, humiliated, had lost the empire of the sea, with Sicily and
Sardinia. Rome, on the contrary, had strengthened herself by her
conquests in the Mediterranean, in Illyria, and in the Cisalpine.
Suddenly the scene changes: the dangers which threatened the African
town disappear, Carthage rises from her abasement, and Rome, which had
lately been able to count 800,000 men in condition to carry arms, will
soon tremble for her own existence. A change so unforeseen is brought
about by the mere appearance in the ranks of the Carthaginian army of a
man of genius, Hannibal.
His father, Hamilcar, chief of the powerful faction of the Barcas, had
saved Carthage by suppressing the insurrection of the mercenaries.
Charged afterwards with the war in Spain, he had vanquished the most
warlike peoples of that country, and formed in silence a formidable
array. Having discovered early the merit of a young man named Hasdrubal,
he took him into his favour with the intention of making him his
successor. In taking him for his son-in-law, he entrusted to him the
education of Hannibal, on whom rested his dearest hopes. Hamilcar having
been slain in 526, Hasdrubal had taken his place at the head of the
army.
The progress of the Carthaginians in Spain, and the state of their
forces in that country, had alarmed the Senate, which, in 526, obliged
the government of Carthage to subscribe to a new treaty, prohibiting the
Punic army from passing the Ebro, and attacking the allies of the
Republic. [509] This last article referred to the Saguntines, who had
already had some disputes with the Carthaginians. The Romans affected
not to consider them as aborigines, and founded their plea on a legend
which represented this people as a colony from Ardea, contemporary with
the Trojan war. [510] By a similar conduct Rome created allies in Spain
to watch her old adversaries, and this time, as in the case of the
Mamertines, she showed an interested sympathy in favour of a weak nation
exposed to frequent collisions with the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal had
received the order to carry into execution the new treaty; but he was
assassinated by a Gaul, in 534, and the army, without waiting for orders
from Carthage, chose by acclamation for its chief Hannibal, then
twenty-nine years of age. In spite of the rival factions, this choice
was ratified, and perhaps any hesitation on the part of the council in
Carthage would only have led to the revolt of the troops. The party of
the Barcas carried the question against the government, and confirmed
the power of the young general. Adored by the soldiers, who saw in him
their own pupil, Hannibal exercised over them an absolute authority, and
believed that with their old band he could venture upon anything.
The Saguntines were at war with the Turbuletæ,[511] allies or subjects
of Carthage. In contempt of the treaty of 256, Hannibal laid siege to
Saguntum, and took it after a siege of several months. He pretended
that, in attacking his own allies, the Saguntines had been the
aggressors. The people of Saguntum hastened to implore the succour of
Rome. The Senate confined itself to despatching commissioners, some to
Hannibal, who gave them no attention, and others to Carthage, where they
arrived only when Saguntum had ceased to exist. An immense booty, sent
by the conqueror, had silenced the faction opposed to the Barcas, and
the people, as well as the soldiers, elevated by success, breathed
nothing but war. The Roman ambassadors, sent to require indemnities, and
even to demand the head of Hannibal, were ill received, and returned
declaring hostilities unavoidable.
Rome prepared for war with her usual firmness and energy. One of the
consuls was ordered to pass into Sicily, and thence into Africa; the
other to lead an army by sea to Spain, and expel the Carthaginians from
that country. But, without waiting the issue of negotiations, Hannibal
was in full march to transfer the war into Italy. Sometimes treating
with the Celtiberian or Gaulish hordes to obtain a passage through their
territory, sometimes intimidating them by his arms, he had reached the
banks of the Rhone, when the consul charged with the conquest of Spain,
P. Cornelius Scipio, landing at the eastern mouth of that river, learnt
that Hannibal had already entered the Alps. He then leaves his army to
his brother Cneius, returns promptly to Pisa, places himself at the head
of the troops destined to fight the Boii, crosses the Po with them,
hoping by this rapid movement to surprise the Carthaginian general at
the moment when, fatigued and weakened, he entered the plains of Italy.
The two armies met on the banks of the Tessino (536). Scipio, defeated
and wounded, fell back on the colony of Placentia. Rejoined in the
neighbourhood of that town by his colleague Tib. Sempronius Longus, he
again, on the Trebia, offered battle to the Carthaginians. A brilliant
victory placed Hannibal in possession of a great part of Liguria and
Cisalpine Gaul, the warlike hordes of which received him with enthusiasm
and reinforced his army, reduced, after the passage of the mountains, to
less than 30,000 men. Flattered by the reception of the Gauls, the
Carthaginian general tried also to gain the Italiots, and, announcing
himself as the liberator of oppressed peoples, he took care, after the
victory, to set at liberty all the prisoners taken from the allies. He
hoped that these liberated captives would become for him useful
emissaries. In the spring of 537 he entered Etruria, crossed the marshes
of the Val di Chiana, and, drawing the Roman army to the neighbourhood
of the Lake Trasimenus, into an unfavourable locality, destroyed it
almost totally.
The terror was great at Rome; yet the conqueror, after devastating
Etruria, and attacking Spoletum in vain, crossed the Apennines, threw
himself into Umbria and Picenum, and thence directed his march through
Samnium towards the coast of Apulia. In fact, having reached the centre
of Italy, deprived of all communication with the mother country, without
the engines necessary for a siege, with no assured line of retreat,
having behind him the army of Sempronius, what must Hannibal do? --Place
the Apennines between himself and Rome, draw nearer to the populations
more disposed in his favour, and then, by the conquest of the southern
provinces, establish a solid basis of operation, in direct communication
with Carthage. In spite of the victory of Trasimenus, his position was
critical, for, except the Cisalpine Gauls, all the Italiot peoples
remained faithful to Rome, and so far no one had come to increase his
army. [512] Thus Hannibal remained several months between Casilinum and
Arpi, where Fabius, by his skilful movements, would have succeeded in
starving the Carthaginian army, if the term of his command had not
expired. Moreover, the popular party, irritated at a system of
temporising which it accused of cowardice, raised to the consulship, as
the colleague of Æmilius Paulus, Varro, a man of no capacity. Obliged to
remain in Apulia, to procure subsistence for his troops, Hannibal, being
attacked imprudently, entirely defeated, near Cannæ, two consular armies
composed of eight legions and of an equal number of allies, amounting to
87,000 men (538). [513] One of the consuls perished, the other escaped,
followed only by a few horsemen. 40,000 Romans had been killed or taken,
and Hannibal sent to Carthage a bushel of gold rings taken from the
fingers of knights who lay on the field of battle. [514] From that moment
part of Samnium, Apulia, Lucania, and Bruttium declared for the
Carthaginians, while the Greek towns of the south of the peninsula
remained favourable to the Romans. [515] About the same time, as an
increase of ill fortune, L. Postumus, sent against the Gauls, was
defeated, and his army cut to pieces.
The Romans always showed themselves admirable in adversity; and thus the
Senate, by a skilful policy, went to meet the consul Varro, and thank
him for not having despaired of the Republic; it would, however, no
longer employ the troops which had retreated from the battle, but sent
them into Sicily with a prohibition to return into Italy until the enemy
had been driven out of it. They refused to ransom the prisoners in
Hannibal’s hands. The fatherland, they said, had no need of men who
allowed themselves to be taken arms in hand. [516] This reply made people
report at Rome that the man who possessed power was treated very
differently from the humble citizen. [517]
The idea of asking for peace presented itself to nobody. Each rivalled
the other in sacrifices and devotion. New legions were raised, and there
were enrolled 8,000 slaves, who were restored to freedom after the first
combat. [518] The treasury being empty, all the private fortunes were
brought to its aid. The proprietors of slaves taken for the army, the
farmers of the revenue charged with the furnishing of provisions,
consented to be repaid only at the end of the war. Everybody, according
to his means, maintained at his own expense freedmen to serve on the
galleys. After the example of the Senate, widows and minors carried
their gold and silver to the public treasury. It was forbidden for
anybody to keep at home either jewels, plate, silver or copper money,
above a certain value, and, by the law Oppia, even the toilette of the
ladies was limited. [519] Lastly, the duration of family mourning for
relatives slain before the enemy was restricted to thirty days. [520]
After the victory of Cannæ it would have been more easy for Hannibal to
march straight upon Rome than after Trasimenus; yet, since so great a
captain did not think this possible to attempt, it is not uninteresting
to inquire into his motives. In the first place, his principal force was
in Numidian cavalry, which would have been useless in a siege;[521]
then, he had generally the inferiority in attacking fortresses. Thus,
after Trebia, he could not reduce Placentia;[522] after Trasimenus, he
failed before Spoletum; three times he marched upon Naples, without
venturing to attack it; later still, he was obliged to abandon the
sieges of Nola, Cumæ, and Casilinum. [523] What, then, could be more
natural than his hesitation to attack Rome, defended by a numerous
population, accustomed to the use of arms?
The most striking proof of the genius of Hannibal is the fact of his
having remained sixteen years in Italy, left almost to his own forces,
reduced to the necessity of recruiting his army solely among his new
allies, and of subsisting at their expense, ill seconded by the Senate
of his own country, having always to face at least two consular armies,
and, lastly, shut up in the peninsula by the Roman fleets, which guarded
its coasts to intercept reinforcements from Carthage. His constant
thought, therefore, was to make himself master of some important points
of the coast in order to open a communication with Africa. After Cannæ,
he occupies Capua, seeks to gain the sea by Naples,[524] Cumæ, Puteoli;
unable to effect these objects, he seizes upon Arpi and Salapia, on the
eastern coast, where he hopes to meet the ambassadors of the King of
Macedonia. He next makes Bruttium his base of operation, and his
attempts are directed against the maritime places, now against
Brundusium and Tarentum, now against Locri and Rhegium.
All the defeats sustained by the generals of the Republic had been
caused, first, by the superiority of the Numidian cavalry, and the
inferiority of the hastily levied Latin soldiers,[525] opposed to old
veteran troops; and, next, by excessive rashness in face of an able
captain, who drew his adversaries to the position which he had chosen.
Nevertheless, Hannibal, considerably weakened by his victories,
exclaimed, after Cannæ, as Pyrrhus had done after Heraclea, that such
another success would be his ruin. [526] Q. Fabius Maximus, recalled to
power (539), continued a system of methodical war; while Marcellus, his
colleague, bolder,[527] assumed the offensive, and arrested the progress
of the enemy, by obliging him to shut himself up in a trapezium, formed
on the north by Capua and Arpi, on the south by Rhegium and Tarentum. In
543 the war was entirely concentrated round two places; the citadel of
Tarentum, blockaded by the Carthaginians, and Capua, besieged by the two
consuls. These had surrounded themselves with lines of countervallation
against the place, and of circumvallation against the attacks from
without. Hannibal, having failed in his attempt to force these latter,
marched upon Rome, in the hope of causing the siege of Capua to be
raised, and by separating the two consular armies, defeating them one
after the other in the plain country. Having arrived under the walls of
the capital, and foreseeing too many difficulties in the way of making
himself master of so large a town, he abandoned his plan of attack, and
fell back to the environs of Rhegium. His abode there was prolonged
during several years, with alternations of reverse and success, in the
south of Italy, the populations of which were favourable to him;
avoiding engagements, keeping near the sea, and not going beyond the
southern extremity of the territory of Samnium.
In 547, a great army, which had left Spain under the command of one of
his brothers, Hasdrubal, had crossed the Alps, and was advancing to
unite with him, marching along the coast of the Adriatic. Two consular
armies were charged with the war against the Carthaginians: one, under
the command of the consul M. Livius Salinator, in Umbria; the other,
having at its head the consul C. Claudius Nero, held Hannibal in check
in Lucania, and had even obtained an advantage over him at Grumentum.
Hannibal had advanced as far as Canusium, when the consul Claudius Nero,
informed of the numerical superiority of the army of succour, leaves his
camp under the guard of Q. Cassius, his lieutenant, conceals his
departure, effects his junction with his colleague, and defeats, near
the Metaurus, Hasdrubal, who perished in the battle with all his
army. [528] From that moment Hannibal foresees the fate of Carthage; he
abandons Apulia, and even Lucania, and retires into the only country
which had remained faithful, Bruttium. He remains shut up there five
years more, in continual expectation of reinforcements,[529] and only
quits Italy when his country, threatened by the Roman legions, already
on the African soil, calls him home to her defence.
In this war the marine of the two nations performed an important part.
The Romans strained every nerve to remain masters of the sea; their
fleets, stationed at Ostia, Brundusium, and Lilybæum, kept incessantly
the most active watch upon the coasts of Italy; they even made cruises
to the neighbourhood of Carthage and as far as Greece. [530] The
difficulty of the direct communications induced the Carthaginians to
send their troops by way of Spain and the Alps, where their armies
recruited on the road, rather than dispatch them to the southern coast
of Italy. Hannibal received but feeble reinforcements;[531] Livy
mentions two only: the first of 4,000 Numidians and 40 elephants; and
the second, brought by Bomilcar to the coast of the Ionian Gulf, near
Locri. [532] All the other convoys appear to have been intercepted, and
one of the most considerable, laden with stores and troops, was
destroyed on the coast of Sicily. [533]
We cannot but admire the constancy of the Romans in face of enemies who
threatened them on all sides. During the same period they repressed the
Cisalpine Gauls and the Etruscans, combated the King of Macedonia, the
ally of Hannibal, sustained a fierce war in Spain, and resisted in
Sicily the attacks of the Syracusans, who, after the death of Hiero, had
declared against the Republic. It took three years to reduce Syracuse,
defended by Archimedes. Rome kept on foot, as long as the Second Punic
war lasted, from sixteen to twenty-four legions,[534] recruited only in
the town and in Latium. [535] These twenty-three legions represented an
effective force of about 100,000 men, a number which will not appear
exaggerated if we compare it with the census of 534, which gave 270,213
men, and only comprised persons in a condition to bear arms.
In the thirteenth year of the war the chances seemed in favour of the
Republic. P. Cornelius Scipio, the son of the consul defeated at Trebia,
had just expelled the Carthaginians from Spain. The people, recognising
his genius, had conferred upon him, six years before, the powers of
proconsul, though he was only twenty-four years of age. On his return to
Rome, Scipio, elected consul (549), passed into Sicily, and from thence
to Africa, where, after a campaign of two years, he defeated Hannibal in
the plains of Zama, and compelled the rival of Rome to sue for peace
(552). The Senate accorded to the conqueror the greatest honour which a
Republic can confer upon one of her citizens--she left it to him to
dictate terms to the vanquished. Carthage was compelled to give up her
ships and her elephants, to pay 10,000 talents (58,000,000 francs
[£2,320,000]), and, finally, to enter into the humiliating engagement
not to make war in future without the authorisation of Rome.
[Sidenote: Results of the Second Punic War. ]
VI. The second Punic war ended in the submission of Carthage and Spain,
but it was at the price of painful sacrifices. During this struggle of
sixteen years, a great number of the most distinguished citizens had
perished; at Cannæ alone two thousand seven hundred knights, two
questors, twenty-one tribunes of the soldiers, and many old consuls,
prætors, and ediles were slain; and so many senators had fallen, that it
was necessary to name a hundred and seventy-seven new ones, taken from
among those who had occupied the magistracies. [536] But such hard trials
had tempered anew the national character. [537] The Republic felt her
strength and her resources unfold themselves; she rejoiced in her
victories with a just pride, without yet experiencing the intoxication
of a too great fortune, and new bonds were formed between the different
peoples of Italy. War against a foreign invasion, in fact, has always
the immense advantage of putting an end to internal dissensions, and
unites the citizens against the common enemy. The greater part of the
allies gave unequivocable proofs of their devotion. The Republic owed
its safety, after the defeat of Cannæ, to the assistance of eighteen
colonies, which furnished men and money. [538] The fear of Hannibal had
fortunately given strength to concord, both in Rome and in Italy: no
more quarrels between the two orders,[539] no more divisions between the
governing and the governed. Sometimes the Senate refers to the people
the most serious questions; sometimes the people, full of trust in the
Senate, submits beforehand to its decision. [540]
It was especially during the struggle against Hannibal that the
inconvenience of the duality and of the annual change of the consular
powers became evident;[541] but this never-ceasing cause of weakness
was, as we have seen before, compensated by the spirit of patriotism.
Here is a striking example: while Fabius was pro-dictator, Minucius,
chief of the cavalry, was, contrary to the usual custom, invested with
the same powers. Hurried on by his temper, he compromised the army,
which was saved by Fabius. He acknowledged his error, submitted
willingly to the orders of his colleague, and thus restored, by his own
voluntary act, the unity of the command. [542] As to the continual change
of the military chiefs, the force of circumstances rendered it necessary
to break through this custom. The two Scipios remained seven years at
the head of the army of Spain; Scipio Africanus succeeded them for
almost as long a period. The Senate and the people had decided that,
during the war of Italy, the powers of the proconsuls and prætors might
be prorogued, and that the same consuls might be re-elected as often as
might be thought fit. [543] And subsequently, in the campaign against
Philip, the tribunes pointed out in the following terms the disadvantage
of such frequent changes: “During the four years that the war of
Macedonia lasted, Sulpicius had passed the greater part of his
consulship in seeking Philip and his army; Villius had overtaken the
enemy, but had been recalled before giving battle; Quinctius, retained
the greater part of the year at Rome by religious cares, would have
pushed the war with sufficient vigour to have entirely terminated it, if
he could have arrived at his destination before the season was so far
advanced. He had hardly entered his winter quarters, when he made
preparations for recommencing the campaign with the spring, with a view
of finishing it successfully, provided no successor came to snatch
victory from him. ”[544] These arguments prevailed, and the consul was
prorogued in his command.
Thus continual wars tended to introduce the stability of military powers
and the permanence of armies. The same legions had passed ten years in
Spain; others had been nearly as long in Sicily; and though, at the
expiration of their service, the old soldiers were dismissed, the
legions remained always under arms. Hence arose the necessity of giving
lands to the soldiers who had finished their time of service; and, in
552, there were assigned to Scipio’s veterans, for each year of service
in Africa and Spain, two acres of the lands confiscated from the
Samnites and Apulians. [545]
It was the first time that Rome took foreign troops into her pay,
sometimes Celtiberians, at others Cretans sent by Hiero of
Syracuse,[546] in fact, mercenaries, and a body of discontented Gauls
who had abandoned the Carthaginian army. [547]
Many of the inhabitants of the allied towns were drawn to Rome,[548]
where, in spite of the sacrifices imposed by the wars, commerce and
luxury increased. The spoils which Marcellus brought from Sicily, and
especially from Syracuse, had given development to the taste for the
arts, and this consul boasted of having been the first who caused his
countrymen to appreciate and admire the masterpieces of Greece. [549] The
games of the circus, in the middle of the sixth century, began to be
more in favour. Junius and Decius Brutus had, in 490, exhibited for the
first time the combats of gladiators, the number of which was soon
increased to twenty-two pairs. [550] Towards this period, also (559),
theatrical representations were first given by the ediles. [551] The
spirit of speculation had taken possession of the high classes, as
appears by the law forbidding the senators (law Claudia, 536) to
maintain at sea ships of a tonnage of more than three hundred amphoræ;
as the public wealth increased, the knights, composed of the class who
paid most taxes, increased also, and tended to separate into two
categories, some serving in the cavalry, and possessing the horse
furnished by the State (_equus publicus_),[552] the others devoting
themselves to commerce and financial operations. The knights had long
been employed in civil commissions,[553] and were often called to the
high magistracies; and therefore Perseus justly called them “the nursery
of the Senate, and the young nobility out of which issued consuls and
generals (_imperatores_). ”[554] During the Punic wars they had rendered
great services by making large advances for the provisioning of the
armies;[555] and if some, as undertakers of transports, had enriched
themselves at the expense of the State, the Senate hesitated in
punishing their embezzlements, for fear of alienating this class,
already powerful. [556] The territorial wealth was partly in the hands of
the great proprietors; this appears from several facts, and, among
others, from the hospitality given by a lady of Apulia to 10,000 Roman
soldiers, who had escaped from the battle of Cannæ, whom she entertained
at her own private cost on her own lands. [557]
Respect for the higher classes had been somewhat shaken, as we learn
from the adoption of a measure of apparently little importance. Since
the fall of the kingly power, there had been established in the public
games no distinction between the spectators. Deference for authority
rendered all classification superfluous, and “never would a plebeian,”
says Valerius Maximus,[558] “have ventured to place himself before a
senator. ” But, towards 560, a law was passed for assigning to the
members of the Senate reserved places. It is necessary, for the good
order of society, to increase the severity of the laws as the feeling of
the social hierarchy becomes weakened.
Circumstances had brought other changes; the tribuneship, without being
abolished, had become an auxiliary of the aristocracy. The tribunes no
longer exclusively represented the plebeian order; they were admitted
into the Senate; they formed part of the government, and employed their
authority in the interest of justice and the fatherland. [559] The three
kinds of comitia still remained,[560] but some modifications had been
introduced into them. The assembly of the curiæ[561] consisted now only
of useless formalities. Their attributes, more limited every day, were
reduced to the conferring of the _imperium_, and the deciding of certain
questions about auspices and religion. The comitia by centuries, which
in their origin were the assembly of the people in arms, voting in the
Campus Martius, and nominating their military chiefs, retained the same
privileges; only, the century had become a subdivision of the tribe. All
the citizens inscribed in each of the thirty-five tribes were separated
into five classes, according to their fortune; each class was divided
into two centuries, the one of the young men (_juniores_) the other of
the older men (_seniores_).
As to the comitia by tribes, in which each voted without distinction of
rank or fortune, their legislative power continued to increase as that
of the comitia by centuries diminished.
Thus the Roman institutions, while appearing to remain the same, were
incessantly changing. The political assemblies, the laws of the Twelve
Tables, the classes established by Servius Tullius, the yearly election
to offices, the military services, the tribuneship, the edileship, all
seemed to remain as in the past, and in reality all had changed through
the force of circumstances.
in surface a quarter of the empire of the Seleucidæ, but it formed a
power much more compact. Its civilisation reached back more than three
thousand years. The sciences and arts already flourished there, when
Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy were still in a state of barbarism. The
fertility of the valley of the Nile had permitted a numerous population
to develop itself there to such a point, that under Amasis II. ,
contemporary with Servius Tullius, twenty thousand cities were reckoned
in it. [428] The skilful administration of the first of the Lagides
increased considerably the resources of the country. Under Ptolemy II. ,
the annual revenues amounted to 14,800 talents (86,150,800 francs
[£3,446,032]), and a million and a half of artabi[429] of wheat. [430]
Besides the Egyptian revenues, the taxes levied in the foreign
possessions reached the amount of about 10,000 talents a year.
Cœle-Syria, Phœnicia, and Judea, with the province of Samaria,
yielded annually to Ptolemy Euergetes 8,000 talents (46 millions and a
half [£1,860,000]). [431] A single feast cost Philadelphia 2,240 talents
(more than 13 millions [more than half a million sterling]). [432] The
sums accumulated in the treasury amounted to the sum, perhaps
exaggerated, of 740,000 talents (about 4 milliards 300 millions of
francs [172 millions sterling]). [433] In 527, Ptolemy Euergetes was
able, without diminishing his resources too much, to send to the
Rhodians 3,300 talents of silver, a thousand talents of copper, and ten
millions of measures of wheat. [434] The precious metals abounded in the
empire of the Pharaohs, as is attested by the traces of mining
operations now exhausted, and by the multitude of objects in gold
contained in their tombs. Masters for some time of the Libanus, the
kings of Egypt obtained from it timber for ship-building. These riches
had accumulated especially at Alexandria, which became, after Carthage,
towards the commencement of the seventh century of Rome, the first
commercial city in the world. [435] It was fifteen miles in
circumference, had three spacious and commodious ports, which allowed
the largest ships to anchor along the quay. [436] There arrived the
merchandises of India, Arabia, Ethiopia, and of the coast of Africa;
some brought on the backs of camels, from Myos Hormos (to the north of
Cosseïr), and then transported down the Nile; others came by canals from
the bottom of the Gulf of Suez, or brought from the port of Berenice, on
the Red Sea. [437] The occupation of this sea by the Egyptians had put a
stop to the piracies of the Arabs,[438] and led to the establishment of
numerous factories. India furnished spices, muslins, and dyes; Ethiopia,
gold, ivory, and ebony; Arabia, perfumes. [439] All these products were
exchanged against those which came from the Pontus Euxinus and the
Western Sea. The native manufacture of printed and embroidered tissues,
and that of glass, assumed under the Ptolemies a new development. The
objects exhumed from the tombs of this period, the paintings with which
they are decorated, the allusions contained in the hieroglyphic texts
and Greek papyrus, prove that the most varied descriptions of industry
were exercised in the kingdom of the Pharaohs, and had attained a high
degree of perfection. The excellence of the products and the delicacy of
the work prove the intelligence of the workmen. Under Ptolemy II. , the
army was composed of 200,000 footmen, 40,000 cavalry, 300 elephants, and
200 chariots; the arsenals were capable of furnishing arms for 300,000
men. [440] The Egyptian fleet, properly so called, consisted of a
hundred and twelve vessels of the first class (from five to thirty
ranges of oars), and two hundred and twenty-four of the second class,
together with light craft; the king had, besides these, more than four
thousand ships in the ports placed in subjection to him. [441] It was
especially after Alexander that the Egyptian navy became greatly
extended.
[Sidenote: Cyrenaica. ]
XVII. Separating Egypt from the possessions of Carthage, Cyrenaica (_the
regency of Tripoli_), formerly colonised by the Greeks and independent,
had fallen into the hands of the first of the Ptolemies. It possessed
commercial and rich towns, and fertile plains; its cultivation extended
even into the mountains;[442] wine, oil, dates, saffron and different
plants, such as the silphium (_laserpitium_),[443] were the object of
considerable traffic. [444] The horses of Cyrenaica, which had all the
lightness of the Arabian horses, were objects of research even in
Greece,[445] and the natives of Cyrene could make no more handsome
present to Alexander than to send him three hundred of their
coursers. [446] Nevertheless, political revolutions had already struck at
the ancient prosperity of the country,[447] which previously formed, by
its navigation, its commerce, and its arts, probably the finest of the
colonies founded by the Greeks.
[Sidenote: Cyprus. ]
XVIII. The numerous islands of the Mediterranean enjoyed equal
prosperity. Cyprus, colonised by the Phœnicians, and subsequently by
the Greeks, passing afterwards under the dominion of the Egyptians, had
a population which preserved, from its native country, the love of
commerce and distant voyages. Almost all its towns were situated on the
sea-coast, and furnished with excellent ports. Ptolemy Soter maintained
in it an army of 30,000 Egyptians. [448] No country was richer in timber.
Its fertility passed for being superior to that of Egypt. [449] To its
agricultural produce were added precious stones, mines of copper worked
from an early period,[450] and so rich, that this metal took its name
from the island itself (_Cuprum_). In Cyprus were seen numerous
sanctuaries, and especially the temple of Venus at Paphos, which
contained a hundred altars. [451]
[Sidenote: Crete. ]
XIX. Crete, peopled by different races, had attained even in the heroic
age a great celebrity; Homer sang its hundred cities; but during several
centuries it had been on the decline. Without commerce, without a
regular navy, without agriculture, it possessed little else than its
fruits and woods, and the sterility which characterises it now had
already commenced. Nevertheless, there is every reason to believe that
at the time of the Roman conquest, the island was still well
peopled. [452] Devoted to piracy,[453] and reduced to sell their
services, the Cretans, celebrated as archers, fought as mercenaries in
the armies of Syria, Macedonia, and Egypt. [454]
[Sidenote: Rhodes. ]
XX. If Crete was in decline, Rhodes, on the contrary, was extending its
commerce, which took gradually the place of that of the maritime towns
of Ionia and Caria. Already inhabited, in the time of Homer, by a
numerous population, and containing three important towns, Lindos,
Ialysus, and Camirus,[455] the isle was, in the fifth century of Rome,
the first maritime power after Carthage. The town of Rhodes, built
during the war of the Peloponnesus (346), had, like the Punic city, two
ports, one for merchant vessels, the other for ships of war. The right
of anchorage produced a revenue of a million of drachmas a year. [456]
The Rhodians had founded colonies on different points of the
Mediterranean shore,[457] and entertained friendly relations with a
great number of towns from which they received more than once succours
and presents. [458] They possessed upon the neighbouring Asiatic
continent tributary towns, such as Caunus and Stratonicea, which paid
them 120 talents (700,000 francs [£28,000]). The navigation of the
Bosphorus, of which they strove to maintain the passage free, soon
belonged to them almost exclusively. [459] All the maritime commerce from
the Nile to the Palus Mæotis thus fell into their hands. Laden with
slaves, cattle, honey, wax, and salt meats,[460] their ships went to
fetch on the coast of the Cimmerian Bosphorus (_Sea of Azof_) the wheat
then very celebrated,[461] and to carry wines and oils to the northern
coast of Asia Minor. By means of its fleets, though its land army was
composed wholly of foreigners,[462] Rhodes several times made war with
success. She contended with Athens, especially from 397 to 399; she
resisted victoriously, in 450, Demetrius Poliorcetes, and owed her
safety to the respect of this prince for a magnificent painting of
Ialysus, the work of Protogenes. [463] During the campaigns of the Romans
in Macedonia and Asia, she furnished them with considerable fleets. [464]
Her naval force was maintained until the civil war which followed the
death of Cæsar, but was then annihilated.
The celebrity of Rhodes was no less great in arts and letters than in
commerce. After the reign of Alexander, it became the seat of a famous
school of sculpture and painting, from which issued Protogenes and the
authors of the _Laocoon_ and the _Farnese Bull_. The town contained
three thousand statues,[465] and a hundred and six colossi, among others
the famous Statue of the Sun, one of the seven wonders of the world, a
hundred and five feet high, the cost of which had been three thousand
talents (17,400,000 francs [£696,000]). [466] The school of rhetoric at
Rhodes was frequented by students who repaired thither from all parts
of Greece, and Cæsar, as well as Cicero, went there to perfect
themselves in the art of oratory.
The other islands of the Ægean Sea had nearly all lost their political
importance, and their commercial life was absorbed by the new states of
Asia Minor, Macedonia, and Rhodes. It was not so with the Archipelago of
the Ionian Sea, the prosperity of which continued until the moment when
it fell into the power of the Romans. Corcyra, which received into its
port the Roman forces, owed to its fertility and favourable position an
extensive commerce. The rival of Corinth since the fourth century, she
became corrupted like Byzantium and Zacynthus (_Zante_), which
Agatharchides, towards 640, represents as grown effeminate by excess of
luxury. [467]
[Sidenote: Sardinia. ]
XXI. The flourishing condition of Sardinia arose especially from the
colonies which Carthage had planted in it. The population of this island
rendered itself formidable to the Romans by its spirit of
independence. [468] From 541[469] to 580, 130,000 men were slain, taken,
or sold. [470] The number of these last was so considerable, that the
expression _Sardinians to sell_ (_Sardi venales_) became
proverbial. [471] Sardinia, which now counts not more than 544,000
inhabitants, then possessed at least a million. Its quantity of corn,
and numerous herds of cattle, made of this island the second granary of
Carthage. [472] The avidity of the Romans soon exhausted it. Yet, in 552,
the harvests were still so abundant, that there were merchants who were
obliged to abandon the wheat to the sailors for the price of the
freight. [473] The working of the mines and the trade in wool of a
superior quality[474] occupied thousands of hands.
[Sidenote: Corsica. ]
XXII. Corsica was much less populous. Diodorus Siculus gives it hardly
more than 30,000 inhabitants,[475] and Strabo represents them as
savages, and living in the mountains. [476] According to Pliny, however,
it had thirty towns. [477] Resin, wax, honey,[478] exported from
factories founded by the Etruscans and Phocæans on the coasts, were
almost the only products of the island.
[Sidenote: Sicily. ]
XXIII. Sicily, called by the ancients the favourite abode of Ceres, owed
its name to the Sicani or Siculi, a race which had once peopled a part
of Italy; Phœnician colonies, and afterwards Greek colonies, had
established themselves in it. In 371, the Greeks occupied the eastern
part, about two-thirds of the island; the Carthaginians, the western
part. Sicily, on account of its prodigious fertility, was, as may be
supposed, coveted by both peoples; it was soon the same in regard to the
Romans, and, after the conquest, it became the granary of Italy. [479]
The orations of Cicero against Verres show the prodigious quantities of
wheat which it sent, and to what a great sum the tenths or taxes
amounted, which procured immense profits to the farmers of the
revenues. [480]
The towns which, under Roman rule, declined, were possessed of
considerable importance at the time of which we are speaking. The first
among them, Syracuse, the capital of Hiero’s kingdom, contained 600,000
souls; it was composed of six quarters, comprised in a circumference of
180 stadia (36 kilometres); it furnished, when it was conquered, a booty
equal to that of Carthage. [481] Other cities rivalled Syracuse in extent
and power. Agrigentum, in the time of the first Punic war, contained
50,000 soldiers;[482] it was one of the principal garrisons in
Sicily. [483] Panormus (_Palermo_), Drepana (_Trapani_), and Lilybæum
(_Marsala_), possessed arsenals, docks for ship-building, and vast
ports. The roadstead of Messina was capable of holding 600 vessels. [484]
Sicily is still the richest country in ancient monuments; our
admiration is excited by the ruins of twenty-one temples and of eleven
theatres, among others that of Taormina, which contained 40,000
spectators. [485]
* * * * *
This concise description of the countries bordering on the
Mediterranean, two or three hundred years before our era, shows
sufficiently the state of prosperity of the different peoples who
inhabited them. The remembrance of such greatness inspires a very
natural wish, namely, that henceforth the jealousy of the great powers
may no longer prevent the East from shaking off the dust of twenty
centuries, and from being born again to life and civilisation!
CHAPTER V.
PUNIC WARS AND WARS OF MACEDONIA AND ASIA.
(From 488 to 621. )
[Sidenote: Comparison between Rome and Carthage. ]
I. Rome, having extended her dominion to the southern extremity of
Italy, found herself in face of a power which, by the force of
circumstances, was to become her rival.
Carthage, situated on the part of the African coast nearest to Sicily,
was only separated from it by the channel of Malta, which divides the
great basin of the Mediterranean in two. She had, during more than two
centuries, concluded, from time to time, treaties with Rome, and, with a
want of foresight of the future, congratulated the Senate every time it
had gained great advantages over the Etruscans or the Samnites.
The superiority of Carthage at the beginning of the Punic wars was
evident; yet the constitution of the two cities might have led any one
to foresee which in the end must be the master. A powerful aristocracy
reigned in both; but at Rome the nobles, identified continually with the
people, set an example of patriotism and of all civic virtues, while at
Carthage the leading families, enriched by commerce, made effeminate by
an unbridled luxury, formed a selfish and greedy caste, distinct from
the rest of the citizens. At Rome, the sole motive of action was glory,
the principal occupation war, and the first duty military service. At
Carthage, everything was sacrificed to interest and commerce; and the
defence of the fatherland was, as an insupportable burden, abandoned to
mercenaries. Hence, after a defeat, at Carthage the army was recruited
with difficulty; at Rome it immediately recruited itself, because the
populace was subject to the recruitment. If the poverty of the treasury
caused the pay of the troops to be delayed, the Carthaginian soldiers
mutinied, and placed the State in danger; the Romans supported
privations and suffering without a murmur, out of mere love for their
country.
The Carthaginian religion made of the Divinity a jealous and malignant
power, which required to be appeased by horrible sacrifices or honoured
by shameful practices: hence manners depraved and cruel; at Rome, good
sense or the interest of the government moderated the brutality of
paganism, and maintained in religion the sentiments of morality. [486]
And, again, what a difference in their policies! Rome had subdued, by
force of arms, it is true, the people who surrounded her, but she had,
so to say, obtained pardon for her victories in offering to the
vanquished a greater country and a share in the rights of the
metropolis. Moreover, as the inhabitants of the peninsula were in
general of one and the same race, she had found it easy to assimilate
them to herself. Carthage, on the contrary, had remained a foreigner in
the midst of the natives of Africa, from whom she was separated by
origin, language, and manners. She had made her rule hateful to her
subjects and to her tributaries by the mercantile spirit of her agents,
and their habits of rapacity; hence frequent insurrections, repressed
with unexampled cruelty. Her distrust of her subjects had engaged her to
leave all the towns on her territory open, in order that none of them
might become a centre of support to a revolt. Thus two hundred towns
surrendered without resistance to Agathocles immediately he appeared in
Africa. Rome, on the contrary, surrounded her colonies with ramparts,
and the walls of Placentia, Spoletum, Casilinum, and Nola, contributed
to arrest the invasion of Hannibal.
The town of Romulus was at that time in all the vigour of youth, while
Carthage had reached that degree of corruption at which States are
incapable of supporting either the abuses which enervate them, or the
remedy by which they might be regenerated.
To Rome then belonged the future. On one hand, a people of soldiers,
restrained by discipline, religion, and purity of manners, animated with
the love of their country, surrounded by devoted allies; on the other, a
people of merchants with dissolute manners, unruly mercenaries, and
discontented subjects.
[Sidenote: First Punic War (490-513). ]
II. These two powers, of equal ambition, but so opposite in spirit,
could not long remain in presence without disputing the command of the
rich basin of the Mediterranean. Sicily especially was destined to
excite their covetousness. The possession of that island was then shared
between Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, the Carthaginians, and the
Mamertines. These last, descended from the old adventurers, mercenaries
of Agathocles, who came from Italy in 490 and settled at Messina,
proceeded to make war upon the Syracusans. They first sought the
assistance of the Carthaginians, and surrendered to them the acropolis
of Messina as the price of their protection; but soon, disgusted with
their too exacting allies, they sent to demand succour of Rome under the
name of a common nationality, for most of them called themselves
Italiots, and consequently allies of the Republic; some even were or
pretended to be Romans. [487]
The Senate hesitated; but public opinion carried the day, and, in spite
of the little interest inspired by the Mamertines, war was decided. A
body of troops, sent without delay to Messina, expelled the
Carthaginians. Soon after, a consular army crossed the Strait, defeated
first the Syracusans and then the Carthaginians, and effected a military
settlement in the island. Thus commenced the first Punic War.
Different circumstances favoured the Romans. The Carthaginians had made
themselves objects of hatred to the Sicilian Greeks. The towns still
independent, comparing the discipline of the legions with the excesses
of all kinds which had marked the progress of the mercenaries of
Agathocles, Pyrrhus, and the Carthaginian generals, received the consuls
as liberators. Hiero, master of Syracuse, the principal town in Sicily,
had no sooner experienced the power of the Roman armies than he foresaw
the result of the struggle, and declared for the strongest. His
alliance, maintained faithfully during fifty years, was of great utility
to the Republic. [488] With his support, the Romans, at the end of the
third year of the war, had obtained possession of Agrigentum and the
greater part of the towns of the interior; but the fleets of the
Carthaginians remained masters of the sea and of the fortresses on the
coast.
The Romans were deficient in ships of war. [489] They could, no doubt,
procure transport vessels, or, by their allies (_socii navales_), a few
triremes,[490] but they had none of those ships with five ranks of oars,
better calculated, by their weight and velocity, to sink the ships of
the enemy. An incomparable energy supplied in a short time the
insufficiency of the fleet: a hundred and twenty galleys were
constructed after the model of a Carthaginian quinquireme which had been
cast on the coast of Italy; and soldiers were exercised on land in the
handling of the oar. [491] At the end of two months, the crews were
embarked, and the Carthaginians were defeated at Mylæ (494), and three
years after at Tyndaris (497). These two sea-fights deprived Carthage of
the prestige of her maritime superiority.
Still the struggle continued on land without decisive results, when the
two rivals embraced the same resolution of making a final effort for the
mastery of the sea. Carthage fitted out three hundred and fifty decked
vessels; Rome, three hundred and thirty of equal force. In 498 the two
fleets met between Heraclea Minora and the Cape of Ecnomus, and, in a
memorable combat, in which 300,000 men[492] contended, the victory
remained with the Romans. The road to Africa was open, and M. Atilius
Regulus, inspired, no doubt, by the example of Agathocles, formed the
design of carrying the war thither. His first successes were so great,
that Carthage, in her terror, and to avoid the siege with which she was
threatened, was ready to renounce her possessions in Sicily. Regulus,
relying too much on the feebleness of the resistance he had hitherto
encountered, thought he could impose upon Carthage the hardest
conditions; but despair restored to the Africans all their energy, and
Xanthippus, a Greek adventurer, but good general, placed himself at the
head of the troops, defeated the consul, and almost totally destroyed
his army.
The Romans never desponded in their reverses; they carried the war
again into Sicily, and recovered Panormus, the head-quarters of the
Carthaginian army. For several years the fleets of the two countries
ravaged, one the coast of Africa, the other the Italian shores; in the
interior of Sicily the Romans had the advantage; on the coast, the
Carthaginians. Twice the fleets of the Republic were destroyed by
tempests or by the enemy, and these disasters led the Senate on two
occasions to suspend all naval warfare. The struggle remained
concentrated during six years in a corner of Sicily: the Romans occupied
Panormus; the Carthaginians, Lilybæum and Drepana. It might have been
prolonged indefinitely, if the Senate, in spite of the poverty of the
treasury, had not succeeded, by means of voluntary gifts, in equipping
another fleet of two hundred quinquiremes. Lutatius, who commanded it,
dispersed the enemy’s ships near the Ægates, and, master of the sea,
threatened to starve the Carthaginians. They sued for peace at the very
moment when a great warrior, Hamilcar, had just restored a prestige to
their arms. The fact is, that the enormity of her expenses and
sacrifices for the last twenty-four years had discouraged Carthage,
while at Rome, patriotism, insensible to material losses, maintained the
national energy without change. The Carthaginians, obliged to give up
all their establishments in Sicily, paid an indemnity of 2,200
talents. [493] From that time the whole island, with the exception of the
kingdom of Hiero, became tributary, and, for the first time, Rome had a
subject province.
If, in spite of this definitive success, there were momentary checks,
we must attribute them in great part to the continual changes in the
plans of campaign, which varied annually with the generals. Several
consuls, nevertheless, were wanting neither in skill nor perseverance,
and the Senate, always grateful, gave them worthy recompense for their
services. Some obtained the honours of the triumph; among others,
Duilius, who gained the first naval battle, and Lutatius, whose victory
decided peace. At Carthage, on the contrary, the best generals fell
victims to envy and ingratitude. Xanthippus, who vanquished Regulus, was
summarily removed through the jealousy of the nobles, whom he had
saved;[494] and Hamilcar, calumniated by a rival faction, did not
receive from his government the support necessary for the execution of
his great designs.
During this contest of twenty-three years, the war often experienced the
want of a skilful and stable direction; but the legions lost nothing of
their ancient valour, and they were even seen one day proceeding to
blows with the auxiliaries, who had disputed with them the possession of
the most dangerous post. We may cite also the intrepidity of the tribune
Calpurnius Flamma, who saved the legions shut up by Hamilcar in a
defile. He covered the retreat with three hundred men, and, found alive
under a heap of dead bodies, received from the consul a crown of
leaves--a modest reward, but sufficient then to inspire heroism. All
noble sentiments were raised to such a point as even to do justice to an
enemy. The consul, L. Cornelius, gave magnificent funeral rites to
Hanno, a Carthaginian general, who had died valiantly in fighting
against him. [495]
During the first Punic war, the Carthaginians had often threatened the
coasts of Italy, but never attempted a serious landing. They could find
no allies among the peoples recently subdued; neither the Samnites, nor
the Lucanians who had declared for Pyrrhus, nor the Greek towns in the
south of the Peninsula, showed any inclination to revolt. The Cisalpine
Gauls, lately so restless, and whom we shall soon see taking arms again,
remained motionless. The disturbances which broke out at the close of
the Punic war among the Salentini and Falisci were without importance,
and appear to have had no connection with the great struggle between
Rome and Carthage. [496]
This resistance to all attempts at insurrection proves that the
government of the Republic was equitable, and that it had given
satisfaction to the vanquished. No complaint was heard, even after great
disasters; and yet the calamities of war bore cruelly upon the
cultivators--incessantly obliged to quit their fields to fill up the
voids made in the legions. At home, the Senate had in its favour a great
prestige, and abroad it enjoyed a reputation of good faith which ensured
sincere alliances.
The first Punic war exercised a remarkable influence on manners. Until
then the Romans had not entertained continuous relations with the
Greeks. The conquest of Sicily rendered these relations numerous and
active, and whatever Hellenic civilisation contained, whether useful or
pernicious, made itself felt.
The religious ideas of the two peoples were different, although Roman
paganism had great affinity with the paganism of Greece. This had its
philosophers, its sophists, and its freethinkers. At Rome, nothing of
the sort; there, creeds were profound, simple, and sincere; and,
moreover, from a very remote period, the government had made religion
subordinate to politics, and had laboured to give it a direction
advantageous to the State.
The Greeks of Sicily introduced into Rome two sects of philosophy, the
germs of which became developed at a later period, and which had perhaps
more relation with the instincts of the initiated than with those of the
initiators. _Stoicism_ fortified the practice of the civic virtues, but
without modifying their ancient roughness; _Epicurism_, much more
extensively spread, soon flung the nation into the search after material
enjoyments. Both sects, by inspiring contempt for death, gave a terrible
power to the people who adopted them.
The war had exhausted the finances of Carthage. The mercenaries, whom
she could not pay, revolted in Africa and Sardinia at the same time.
They were only vanquished by the genius of Hamilcar.
In Sardinia, the
excesses of the mutineers had caused an insurrection among the natives,
who drove them out of the country. The Romans did not let this
opportunity for intervention escape them; and, as before in the case of
the Mamertines, the Senate, according to all appearance, assumed as a
pretext that there were Italiots among the mercenaries in Sardinia. The
island was taken, and the conquerors imposed a new contribution on
Carthage for having captured some merchant vessels navigating in those
latitudes--a scandalous abuse of power, which Polybius loudly
condemns. [497] Reduced to impotency by the loss of their navy and the
revolt of their army, the Carthaginians submitted to the conditions of
the strongest. They had quitted Sicily without leaving any regrets; but
it was not the same with Sardinia; there their government and dominion
were popular, probably from the community of religion and the
Phœnician origin of some of the towns. [498] For a long time
afterwards, periodical rebellions testified to the affection of the
Sardinians for their old masters. Towards the same epoch, the Romans
took possession of Corsica, and, from 516 to 518, repulsed the Ligures
and the Gaulish tribes, with whom they had been at peace for forty-five
years.
[Sidenote: War of Illyria (525). ]
III. While the Republic protected its northern frontiers against the
Gauls and Ligures, and combated the influence of Carthage in Sardinia
and Corsica, she undertook, against a small barbarous people, another
expedition, less difficult, it is true, but which was destined to have
immense consequences. The war of Illyria, in fact, was on the point of
opening to the Romans the roads to Greece and Asia, subjected to the
successors of Alexander, and where Greek civilisation was dominant. Now
become a great maritime power, Rome had henceforward among her
attributes the police of the seas. The inhabitants of the eastern coasts
of the Adriatic, addicted to piracy, were destructive to commerce.
Several times they had carried their depredations as far as Messenia,
and defeated Greek squadrons sent to repress their ravages. [499] These
pirates belonged to the Illyrian nation. The Greeks considered them as
barbarians, which meant foreigners to the Hellenic race; it is probable,
nevertheless, that they had a certain affinity with it. Inconvenient
allies of the kings of Macedonia, they often took arms either for or
against them; intrepid and fierce hordes, they were ready to sell their
services and blood to any one who would pay them, resembling, in this
respect, the Albanians of the present day, believed by some to be their
descendants driven into the mountains by the invasions of the
Slaves. [500]
The king of the Illyrians was a child, and his mother, Teuta, exercised
the regency. This fact alone reveals manners absolutely foreign to
Hellenic and Roman civilisation. A chieftain of Pharos (_Lesina_), named
Demetrius, in the pay of Teuta, occupied as a fief the island of Corcyra
Nigra (now _Curzola_), and exercised the functions of prime minister.
The Romans had no difficulty in gaining him; moreover, the Illyrians
furnished a legitimate cause of war by assassinating an ambassador of
the Republic. [501] The Senate immediately dispatched an army and a fleet
to reduce them (525). Demetrius surrendered his island, which served as
a basis against Apollonia, Dyrrhachium, Nutria, and a great part of the
coast. After a resistance of some months, the Illyrians submitted,
entered into an engagement to renounce piracy, surrendered several
ports, and agreed to choose Demetrius, the ally of the Romans, for the
guardian of their king. [502]
By this expedition, the Republic gained great popularity throughout
Greece; the Athenians and the Achaian league especially were lavish of
thanks, and began from that time to consider the Romans as their
protectors against their dangerous neighbours, the kings of Macedonia.
As to the Illyrians, the lesson they had received was not sufficient to
correct them of their piratical habits. Ten years later another
expedition was sent to chastise the Istrians at the head of the
Adriatic,[503] and soon afterwards the disobedience of Demetrius to the
orders of the Senate brought war again upon Illyria. He was compelled to
take refuge with Philip of Macedon, while the young king became the ally
or subject of the Republic. [504] In the mean time a new war attracted
the attention of the Romans.
[Sidenote: Invasion of the Cisalpines (528). ]
IV. The idea of the Senate was evidently to push its domination towards
the north of Italy, and thus to preserve it from the invasion of the
Gauls. In 522, at the proposal of the tribune Flaminius, the Senones had
been expelled from Picenum, and their lands, declared public domain,
were distributed among the plebeians. This measure, a presage to the
neighbouring Gaulish tribes of the lot reserved for them, excited among
them great uneasiness, and they began to prepare for a formidable
invasion. In 528, they called from the other side of the Alps a mass of
barbarians of the warlike race of the Gesatæ. [505] The terror at Rome
was great. The same interests animated the peoples of Italy, and the
fear of a danger equally threatening for all began to inspire them with
the same spirit. [506] They rushed to arms; an army of 150,000 infantry
and 6,000 cavalry was sent into the field, and the census of men capable
of bearing arms amounted to nearly 800,000. The enumeration of the
contingents of each country[507] furnishes valuable information on the
general population of Italy, which appears, at this period, to have
been, without reckoning the slaves, about the same as at the present
day, yet with this difference, that the men capable of bearing arms were
then in a much greater proportion. [508] These documents also give rise
to the remark that the Samnites, only forty years recovered from the
disasters of their sanguinary struggles, could still furnish 77,000 men.
The Gauls penetrated to the centre of Tuscany, and at Fesulæ defeated a
Roman army; but, intimidated by the unexpected arrival of the consul L.
Æmilius coming from Rimini, they retired, when, meeting the other
consul, Caius Atilius, who, returning from Sardinia, had landed at Pisa,
they were enclosed between two armies, and were annihilated. In the
following year, the Gaulish tribes, successively driven back to the
other side of the Po, were defeated again on the banks of the Adda; the
coalition of the Cisalpine peoples was dissolved, without leading to the
complete submission of the country. The colonies of Cremona and
Placentia contributed, nevertheless, to hold it in check.
While the north of Italy seemed sufficient to absorb the attention of
the Romans, great events were passing in Spain.
[Sidenote: Second Punic War (536-552). ]
V. Carthage, humiliated, had lost the empire of the sea, with Sicily and
Sardinia. Rome, on the contrary, had strengthened herself by her
conquests in the Mediterranean, in Illyria, and in the Cisalpine.
Suddenly the scene changes: the dangers which threatened the African
town disappear, Carthage rises from her abasement, and Rome, which had
lately been able to count 800,000 men in condition to carry arms, will
soon tremble for her own existence. A change so unforeseen is brought
about by the mere appearance in the ranks of the Carthaginian army of a
man of genius, Hannibal.
His father, Hamilcar, chief of the powerful faction of the Barcas, had
saved Carthage by suppressing the insurrection of the mercenaries.
Charged afterwards with the war in Spain, he had vanquished the most
warlike peoples of that country, and formed in silence a formidable
array. Having discovered early the merit of a young man named Hasdrubal,
he took him into his favour with the intention of making him his
successor. In taking him for his son-in-law, he entrusted to him the
education of Hannibal, on whom rested his dearest hopes. Hamilcar having
been slain in 526, Hasdrubal had taken his place at the head of the
army.
The progress of the Carthaginians in Spain, and the state of their
forces in that country, had alarmed the Senate, which, in 526, obliged
the government of Carthage to subscribe to a new treaty, prohibiting the
Punic army from passing the Ebro, and attacking the allies of the
Republic. [509] This last article referred to the Saguntines, who had
already had some disputes with the Carthaginians. The Romans affected
not to consider them as aborigines, and founded their plea on a legend
which represented this people as a colony from Ardea, contemporary with
the Trojan war. [510] By a similar conduct Rome created allies in Spain
to watch her old adversaries, and this time, as in the case of the
Mamertines, she showed an interested sympathy in favour of a weak nation
exposed to frequent collisions with the Carthaginians. Hasdrubal had
received the order to carry into execution the new treaty; but he was
assassinated by a Gaul, in 534, and the army, without waiting for orders
from Carthage, chose by acclamation for its chief Hannibal, then
twenty-nine years of age. In spite of the rival factions, this choice
was ratified, and perhaps any hesitation on the part of the council in
Carthage would only have led to the revolt of the troops. The party of
the Barcas carried the question against the government, and confirmed
the power of the young general. Adored by the soldiers, who saw in him
their own pupil, Hannibal exercised over them an absolute authority, and
believed that with their old band he could venture upon anything.
The Saguntines were at war with the Turbuletæ,[511] allies or subjects
of Carthage. In contempt of the treaty of 256, Hannibal laid siege to
Saguntum, and took it after a siege of several months. He pretended
that, in attacking his own allies, the Saguntines had been the
aggressors. The people of Saguntum hastened to implore the succour of
Rome. The Senate confined itself to despatching commissioners, some to
Hannibal, who gave them no attention, and others to Carthage, where they
arrived only when Saguntum had ceased to exist. An immense booty, sent
by the conqueror, had silenced the faction opposed to the Barcas, and
the people, as well as the soldiers, elevated by success, breathed
nothing but war. The Roman ambassadors, sent to require indemnities, and
even to demand the head of Hannibal, were ill received, and returned
declaring hostilities unavoidable.
Rome prepared for war with her usual firmness and energy. One of the
consuls was ordered to pass into Sicily, and thence into Africa; the
other to lead an army by sea to Spain, and expel the Carthaginians from
that country. But, without waiting the issue of negotiations, Hannibal
was in full march to transfer the war into Italy. Sometimes treating
with the Celtiberian or Gaulish hordes to obtain a passage through their
territory, sometimes intimidating them by his arms, he had reached the
banks of the Rhone, when the consul charged with the conquest of Spain,
P. Cornelius Scipio, landing at the eastern mouth of that river, learnt
that Hannibal had already entered the Alps. He then leaves his army to
his brother Cneius, returns promptly to Pisa, places himself at the head
of the troops destined to fight the Boii, crosses the Po with them,
hoping by this rapid movement to surprise the Carthaginian general at
the moment when, fatigued and weakened, he entered the plains of Italy.
The two armies met on the banks of the Tessino (536). Scipio, defeated
and wounded, fell back on the colony of Placentia. Rejoined in the
neighbourhood of that town by his colleague Tib. Sempronius Longus, he
again, on the Trebia, offered battle to the Carthaginians. A brilliant
victory placed Hannibal in possession of a great part of Liguria and
Cisalpine Gaul, the warlike hordes of which received him with enthusiasm
and reinforced his army, reduced, after the passage of the mountains, to
less than 30,000 men. Flattered by the reception of the Gauls, the
Carthaginian general tried also to gain the Italiots, and, announcing
himself as the liberator of oppressed peoples, he took care, after the
victory, to set at liberty all the prisoners taken from the allies. He
hoped that these liberated captives would become for him useful
emissaries. In the spring of 537 he entered Etruria, crossed the marshes
of the Val di Chiana, and, drawing the Roman army to the neighbourhood
of the Lake Trasimenus, into an unfavourable locality, destroyed it
almost totally.
The terror was great at Rome; yet the conqueror, after devastating
Etruria, and attacking Spoletum in vain, crossed the Apennines, threw
himself into Umbria and Picenum, and thence directed his march through
Samnium towards the coast of Apulia. In fact, having reached the centre
of Italy, deprived of all communication with the mother country, without
the engines necessary for a siege, with no assured line of retreat,
having behind him the army of Sempronius, what must Hannibal do? --Place
the Apennines between himself and Rome, draw nearer to the populations
more disposed in his favour, and then, by the conquest of the southern
provinces, establish a solid basis of operation, in direct communication
with Carthage. In spite of the victory of Trasimenus, his position was
critical, for, except the Cisalpine Gauls, all the Italiot peoples
remained faithful to Rome, and so far no one had come to increase his
army. [512] Thus Hannibal remained several months between Casilinum and
Arpi, where Fabius, by his skilful movements, would have succeeded in
starving the Carthaginian army, if the term of his command had not
expired. Moreover, the popular party, irritated at a system of
temporising which it accused of cowardice, raised to the consulship, as
the colleague of Æmilius Paulus, Varro, a man of no capacity. Obliged to
remain in Apulia, to procure subsistence for his troops, Hannibal, being
attacked imprudently, entirely defeated, near Cannæ, two consular armies
composed of eight legions and of an equal number of allies, amounting to
87,000 men (538). [513] One of the consuls perished, the other escaped,
followed only by a few horsemen. 40,000 Romans had been killed or taken,
and Hannibal sent to Carthage a bushel of gold rings taken from the
fingers of knights who lay on the field of battle. [514] From that moment
part of Samnium, Apulia, Lucania, and Bruttium declared for the
Carthaginians, while the Greek towns of the south of the peninsula
remained favourable to the Romans. [515] About the same time, as an
increase of ill fortune, L. Postumus, sent against the Gauls, was
defeated, and his army cut to pieces.
The Romans always showed themselves admirable in adversity; and thus the
Senate, by a skilful policy, went to meet the consul Varro, and thank
him for not having despaired of the Republic; it would, however, no
longer employ the troops which had retreated from the battle, but sent
them into Sicily with a prohibition to return into Italy until the enemy
had been driven out of it. They refused to ransom the prisoners in
Hannibal’s hands. The fatherland, they said, had no need of men who
allowed themselves to be taken arms in hand. [516] This reply made people
report at Rome that the man who possessed power was treated very
differently from the humble citizen. [517]
The idea of asking for peace presented itself to nobody. Each rivalled
the other in sacrifices and devotion. New legions were raised, and there
were enrolled 8,000 slaves, who were restored to freedom after the first
combat. [518] The treasury being empty, all the private fortunes were
brought to its aid. The proprietors of slaves taken for the army, the
farmers of the revenue charged with the furnishing of provisions,
consented to be repaid only at the end of the war. Everybody, according
to his means, maintained at his own expense freedmen to serve on the
galleys. After the example of the Senate, widows and minors carried
their gold and silver to the public treasury. It was forbidden for
anybody to keep at home either jewels, plate, silver or copper money,
above a certain value, and, by the law Oppia, even the toilette of the
ladies was limited. [519] Lastly, the duration of family mourning for
relatives slain before the enemy was restricted to thirty days. [520]
After the victory of Cannæ it would have been more easy for Hannibal to
march straight upon Rome than after Trasimenus; yet, since so great a
captain did not think this possible to attempt, it is not uninteresting
to inquire into his motives. In the first place, his principal force was
in Numidian cavalry, which would have been useless in a siege;[521]
then, he had generally the inferiority in attacking fortresses. Thus,
after Trebia, he could not reduce Placentia;[522] after Trasimenus, he
failed before Spoletum; three times he marched upon Naples, without
venturing to attack it; later still, he was obliged to abandon the
sieges of Nola, Cumæ, and Casilinum. [523] What, then, could be more
natural than his hesitation to attack Rome, defended by a numerous
population, accustomed to the use of arms?
The most striking proof of the genius of Hannibal is the fact of his
having remained sixteen years in Italy, left almost to his own forces,
reduced to the necessity of recruiting his army solely among his new
allies, and of subsisting at their expense, ill seconded by the Senate
of his own country, having always to face at least two consular armies,
and, lastly, shut up in the peninsula by the Roman fleets, which guarded
its coasts to intercept reinforcements from Carthage. His constant
thought, therefore, was to make himself master of some important points
of the coast in order to open a communication with Africa. After Cannæ,
he occupies Capua, seeks to gain the sea by Naples,[524] Cumæ, Puteoli;
unable to effect these objects, he seizes upon Arpi and Salapia, on the
eastern coast, where he hopes to meet the ambassadors of the King of
Macedonia. He next makes Bruttium his base of operation, and his
attempts are directed against the maritime places, now against
Brundusium and Tarentum, now against Locri and Rhegium.
All the defeats sustained by the generals of the Republic had been
caused, first, by the superiority of the Numidian cavalry, and the
inferiority of the hastily levied Latin soldiers,[525] opposed to old
veteran troops; and, next, by excessive rashness in face of an able
captain, who drew his adversaries to the position which he had chosen.
Nevertheless, Hannibal, considerably weakened by his victories,
exclaimed, after Cannæ, as Pyrrhus had done after Heraclea, that such
another success would be his ruin. [526] Q. Fabius Maximus, recalled to
power (539), continued a system of methodical war; while Marcellus, his
colleague, bolder,[527] assumed the offensive, and arrested the progress
of the enemy, by obliging him to shut himself up in a trapezium, formed
on the north by Capua and Arpi, on the south by Rhegium and Tarentum. In
543 the war was entirely concentrated round two places; the citadel of
Tarentum, blockaded by the Carthaginians, and Capua, besieged by the two
consuls. These had surrounded themselves with lines of countervallation
against the place, and of circumvallation against the attacks from
without. Hannibal, having failed in his attempt to force these latter,
marched upon Rome, in the hope of causing the siege of Capua to be
raised, and by separating the two consular armies, defeating them one
after the other in the plain country. Having arrived under the walls of
the capital, and foreseeing too many difficulties in the way of making
himself master of so large a town, he abandoned his plan of attack, and
fell back to the environs of Rhegium. His abode there was prolonged
during several years, with alternations of reverse and success, in the
south of Italy, the populations of which were favourable to him;
avoiding engagements, keeping near the sea, and not going beyond the
southern extremity of the territory of Samnium.
In 547, a great army, which had left Spain under the command of one of
his brothers, Hasdrubal, had crossed the Alps, and was advancing to
unite with him, marching along the coast of the Adriatic. Two consular
armies were charged with the war against the Carthaginians: one, under
the command of the consul M. Livius Salinator, in Umbria; the other,
having at its head the consul C. Claudius Nero, held Hannibal in check
in Lucania, and had even obtained an advantage over him at Grumentum.
Hannibal had advanced as far as Canusium, when the consul Claudius Nero,
informed of the numerical superiority of the army of succour, leaves his
camp under the guard of Q. Cassius, his lieutenant, conceals his
departure, effects his junction with his colleague, and defeats, near
the Metaurus, Hasdrubal, who perished in the battle with all his
army. [528] From that moment Hannibal foresees the fate of Carthage; he
abandons Apulia, and even Lucania, and retires into the only country
which had remained faithful, Bruttium. He remains shut up there five
years more, in continual expectation of reinforcements,[529] and only
quits Italy when his country, threatened by the Roman legions, already
on the African soil, calls him home to her defence.
In this war the marine of the two nations performed an important part.
The Romans strained every nerve to remain masters of the sea; their
fleets, stationed at Ostia, Brundusium, and Lilybæum, kept incessantly
the most active watch upon the coasts of Italy; they even made cruises
to the neighbourhood of Carthage and as far as Greece. [530] The
difficulty of the direct communications induced the Carthaginians to
send their troops by way of Spain and the Alps, where their armies
recruited on the road, rather than dispatch them to the southern coast
of Italy. Hannibal received but feeble reinforcements;[531] Livy
mentions two only: the first of 4,000 Numidians and 40 elephants; and
the second, brought by Bomilcar to the coast of the Ionian Gulf, near
Locri. [532] All the other convoys appear to have been intercepted, and
one of the most considerable, laden with stores and troops, was
destroyed on the coast of Sicily. [533]
We cannot but admire the constancy of the Romans in face of enemies who
threatened them on all sides. During the same period they repressed the
Cisalpine Gauls and the Etruscans, combated the King of Macedonia, the
ally of Hannibal, sustained a fierce war in Spain, and resisted in
Sicily the attacks of the Syracusans, who, after the death of Hiero, had
declared against the Republic. It took three years to reduce Syracuse,
defended by Archimedes. Rome kept on foot, as long as the Second Punic
war lasted, from sixteen to twenty-four legions,[534] recruited only in
the town and in Latium. [535] These twenty-three legions represented an
effective force of about 100,000 men, a number which will not appear
exaggerated if we compare it with the census of 534, which gave 270,213
men, and only comprised persons in a condition to bear arms.
In the thirteenth year of the war the chances seemed in favour of the
Republic. P. Cornelius Scipio, the son of the consul defeated at Trebia,
had just expelled the Carthaginians from Spain. The people, recognising
his genius, had conferred upon him, six years before, the powers of
proconsul, though he was only twenty-four years of age. On his return to
Rome, Scipio, elected consul (549), passed into Sicily, and from thence
to Africa, where, after a campaign of two years, he defeated Hannibal in
the plains of Zama, and compelled the rival of Rome to sue for peace
(552). The Senate accorded to the conqueror the greatest honour which a
Republic can confer upon one of her citizens--she left it to him to
dictate terms to the vanquished. Carthage was compelled to give up her
ships and her elephants, to pay 10,000 talents (58,000,000 francs
[£2,320,000]), and, finally, to enter into the humiliating engagement
not to make war in future without the authorisation of Rome.
[Sidenote: Results of the Second Punic War. ]
VI. The second Punic war ended in the submission of Carthage and Spain,
but it was at the price of painful sacrifices. During this struggle of
sixteen years, a great number of the most distinguished citizens had
perished; at Cannæ alone two thousand seven hundred knights, two
questors, twenty-one tribunes of the soldiers, and many old consuls,
prætors, and ediles were slain; and so many senators had fallen, that it
was necessary to name a hundred and seventy-seven new ones, taken from
among those who had occupied the magistracies. [536] But such hard trials
had tempered anew the national character. [537] The Republic felt her
strength and her resources unfold themselves; she rejoiced in her
victories with a just pride, without yet experiencing the intoxication
of a too great fortune, and new bonds were formed between the different
peoples of Italy. War against a foreign invasion, in fact, has always
the immense advantage of putting an end to internal dissensions, and
unites the citizens against the common enemy. The greater part of the
allies gave unequivocable proofs of their devotion. The Republic owed
its safety, after the defeat of Cannæ, to the assistance of eighteen
colonies, which furnished men and money. [538] The fear of Hannibal had
fortunately given strength to concord, both in Rome and in Italy: no
more quarrels between the two orders,[539] no more divisions between the
governing and the governed. Sometimes the Senate refers to the people
the most serious questions; sometimes the people, full of trust in the
Senate, submits beforehand to its decision. [540]
It was especially during the struggle against Hannibal that the
inconvenience of the duality and of the annual change of the consular
powers became evident;[541] but this never-ceasing cause of weakness
was, as we have seen before, compensated by the spirit of patriotism.
Here is a striking example: while Fabius was pro-dictator, Minucius,
chief of the cavalry, was, contrary to the usual custom, invested with
the same powers. Hurried on by his temper, he compromised the army,
which was saved by Fabius. He acknowledged his error, submitted
willingly to the orders of his colleague, and thus restored, by his own
voluntary act, the unity of the command. [542] As to the continual change
of the military chiefs, the force of circumstances rendered it necessary
to break through this custom. The two Scipios remained seven years at
the head of the army of Spain; Scipio Africanus succeeded them for
almost as long a period. The Senate and the people had decided that,
during the war of Italy, the powers of the proconsuls and prætors might
be prorogued, and that the same consuls might be re-elected as often as
might be thought fit. [543] And subsequently, in the campaign against
Philip, the tribunes pointed out in the following terms the disadvantage
of such frequent changes: “During the four years that the war of
Macedonia lasted, Sulpicius had passed the greater part of his
consulship in seeking Philip and his army; Villius had overtaken the
enemy, but had been recalled before giving battle; Quinctius, retained
the greater part of the year at Rome by religious cares, would have
pushed the war with sufficient vigour to have entirely terminated it, if
he could have arrived at his destination before the season was so far
advanced. He had hardly entered his winter quarters, when he made
preparations for recommencing the campaign with the spring, with a view
of finishing it successfully, provided no successor came to snatch
victory from him. ”[544] These arguments prevailed, and the consul was
prorogued in his command.
Thus continual wars tended to introduce the stability of military powers
and the permanence of armies. The same legions had passed ten years in
Spain; others had been nearly as long in Sicily; and though, at the
expiration of their service, the old soldiers were dismissed, the
legions remained always under arms. Hence arose the necessity of giving
lands to the soldiers who had finished their time of service; and, in
552, there were assigned to Scipio’s veterans, for each year of service
in Africa and Spain, two acres of the lands confiscated from the
Samnites and Apulians. [545]
It was the first time that Rome took foreign troops into her pay,
sometimes Celtiberians, at others Cretans sent by Hiero of
Syracuse,[546] in fact, mercenaries, and a body of discontented Gauls
who had abandoned the Carthaginian army. [547]
Many of the inhabitants of the allied towns were drawn to Rome,[548]
where, in spite of the sacrifices imposed by the wars, commerce and
luxury increased. The spoils which Marcellus brought from Sicily, and
especially from Syracuse, had given development to the taste for the
arts, and this consul boasted of having been the first who caused his
countrymen to appreciate and admire the masterpieces of Greece. [549] The
games of the circus, in the middle of the sixth century, began to be
more in favour. Junius and Decius Brutus had, in 490, exhibited for the
first time the combats of gladiators, the number of which was soon
increased to twenty-two pairs. [550] Towards this period, also (559),
theatrical representations were first given by the ediles. [551] The
spirit of speculation had taken possession of the high classes, as
appears by the law forbidding the senators (law Claudia, 536) to
maintain at sea ships of a tonnage of more than three hundred amphoræ;
as the public wealth increased, the knights, composed of the class who
paid most taxes, increased also, and tended to separate into two
categories, some serving in the cavalry, and possessing the horse
furnished by the State (_equus publicus_),[552] the others devoting
themselves to commerce and financial operations. The knights had long
been employed in civil commissions,[553] and were often called to the
high magistracies; and therefore Perseus justly called them “the nursery
of the Senate, and the young nobility out of which issued consuls and
generals (_imperatores_). ”[554] During the Punic wars they had rendered
great services by making large advances for the provisioning of the
armies;[555] and if some, as undertakers of transports, had enriched
themselves at the expense of the State, the Senate hesitated in
punishing their embezzlements, for fear of alienating this class,
already powerful. [556] The territorial wealth was partly in the hands of
the great proprietors; this appears from several facts, and, among
others, from the hospitality given by a lady of Apulia to 10,000 Roman
soldiers, who had escaped from the battle of Cannæ, whom she entertained
at her own private cost on her own lands. [557]
Respect for the higher classes had been somewhat shaken, as we learn
from the adoption of a measure of apparently little importance. Since
the fall of the kingly power, there had been established in the public
games no distinction between the spectators. Deference for authority
rendered all classification superfluous, and “never would a plebeian,”
says Valerius Maximus,[558] “have ventured to place himself before a
senator. ” But, towards 560, a law was passed for assigning to the
members of the Senate reserved places. It is necessary, for the good
order of society, to increase the severity of the laws as the feeling of
the social hierarchy becomes weakened.
Circumstances had brought other changes; the tribuneship, without being
abolished, had become an auxiliary of the aristocracy. The tribunes no
longer exclusively represented the plebeian order; they were admitted
into the Senate; they formed part of the government, and employed their
authority in the interest of justice and the fatherland. [559] The three
kinds of comitia still remained,[560] but some modifications had been
introduced into them. The assembly of the curiæ[561] consisted now only
of useless formalities. Their attributes, more limited every day, were
reduced to the conferring of the _imperium_, and the deciding of certain
questions about auspices and religion. The comitia by centuries, which
in their origin were the assembly of the people in arms, voting in the
Campus Martius, and nominating their military chiefs, retained the same
privileges; only, the century had become a subdivision of the tribe. All
the citizens inscribed in each of the thirty-five tribes were separated
into five classes, according to their fortune; each class was divided
into two centuries, the one of the young men (_juniores_) the other of
the older men (_seniores_).
As to the comitia by tribes, in which each voted without distinction of
rank or fortune, their legislative power continued to increase as that
of the comitia by centuries diminished.
Thus the Roman institutions, while appearing to remain the same, were
incessantly changing. The political assemblies, the laws of the Twelve
Tables, the classes established by Servius Tullius, the yearly election
to offices, the military services, the tribuneship, the edileship, all
seemed to remain as in the past, and in reality all had changed through
the force of circumstances.
