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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.

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 men492 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.

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.

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 country507 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.

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.

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 curiæ561 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. Nevertheless, this appearance of immobility in the midst of progressing society was one advantage of Roman manners. Religious observers of tradition and ancient customs, the Romans did not appear to destroy what they displaced; they applied ancient forms to new principles, and thus introduced innovations without disturbance, and without weakening the prestige of institutions consecrated by time.

The Macedonian War (554).

VII. During the second Punic war, Philip III., king of Macedonia, had attacked the Roman settlements in Illyria, invaded several provinces of Greece, and made an alliance with Hannibal. Obliged to check these dangerous aggressions, the Senate, from 540 to 548, maintained large forces on the coasts of Epirus and Macedonia; and, united with the Ætolian league, and with Attalus, king of Pergamus, had forced Philip to conclude peace. But in 553, after the victory of Zama, when this prince again attacked the free cities of Greece and Asia allied to Rome, war was declared against him. The Senate could not forget that at this last battle a Macedonian contingent was found among the Carthaginian troops, and that still there remained in Greece a large number of Roman citizens sold for slaves after the battle of Cannæ.562 Thus from each war was born a new war, and every success was destined to force the Republic into the pursuit of others. Now the Adriatic was to be passed, first, to curb the power of the Macedonians, and then to call to liberty those famous towns, the cradles of civilisation. The destinies of Greece could not be a matter of indifference to the Romans, who had borrowed her laws, her science, her literature, and her arts.

Sulpicius, appointed to combat Philip, landed on the coast of Epirus, and penetrated into Macedonia, where he gained a succession of victories, while one of his lieutenants, sent to Greece with the fleet, caused the siege of Athens to be raised. During two years the war languished, but the Roman fleet, combined with that of Attalus and the Rhodians, remained master of the sea (555). T. Quinctius Flamininus, raised to the consulship while still young, justified, by his intelligence and energy, the confidence of his fellow-citizens. He detached the Achaians and Bœtians from their alliance with the King of Macedonia, and, with the aid of the Ætolians, gained the battle of Cynoscephalæ in Thessaly (557), where the legion routed the celebrated phalanx of Philip II. and Alexander the Great. Philip III., compelled to make peace, was fain to accept hard conditions; the first of which was the obligation to withdraw his garrisons from the towns of Greece and Asia, and the prohibition to make war without the permission of the Senate.

The recital of Livy, which speaks of the decree proclaiming liberty to Greece, deserves to be quoted. We see there what value the Senate then attached to moral influence, and to that true popularity which the glory of having freed a people gives:—

“The epoch of the celebration of the Isthmian games generally attracted a great concourse of spectators, either because of the natural taste of the Greeks for all sorts of games, or because of the situation of Corinth, which, seated on two seas, offered easy access to the curious. But on this occasion an immense multitude flocked thither from all parts, in expectation of the future fate of Greece in general, and of each people in particular: this was the only subject of thought and conversation. The Romans take their place, and the herald, according to custom, advances into the middle of the arena, whence the games are announced according to a solemn form. The trumpet sounds, silence is proclaimed, and the herald pronounces these words: ‘The Roman Senate, and S.T. Quinctius, imperator, conquerors of Philip and the Macedonians, re-establish in the enjoyment of liberty, their laws, and privileges, the Corinthians, the Phocians, the Locrians, the island of Eubœa, the Magnetes, the Thessalians, the Perrhœbi, and the Achæans of Phthiotis.’ These were the names of all the nations which had been under the dominion of Philip. At this proclamation, the assembly was overcome with excess of joy. Hardly anybody could believe what he heard. The Greeks looked at each other as if they were still in the illusions of a pleasant dream, to be dissipated on awakening, and, distrusting the evidence of their ears, they asked their neighbours if they were not deceived. The herald is recalled, each man burning, not only to hear, but to see the messenger of such good news; he reads the decree a second time. Then, no longer able to doubt their happiness, they uttered cries of joy, and bestowed on their liberator such loud and repeated applause as make it easy to see that, of all good, liberty is that which has most charm for the multitude. Then the games were celebrated, but hastily, and without attracting the looks or the attention of the spectators. One interest alone absorbed their souls, and took from them the feeling of every other pleasure.

“The games ended, the people rush towards the Roman general; everybody is anxious to greet him, to take his hand, to cast before him crowns of flowers and of ribbons, and the crowd was so great that he was almost suffocated. He was but thirty-three years of age, and the vigour of life, joined with the intoxication of a glory so dazzling, gave him strength to bear up against such a trial. The joy of the peoples was not confined to the enthusiasm of the moment: the impression was kept up long afterwards in their thoughts and speech. ‘There was then,’ they said, ‘one nation upon earth, which, at its own cost, at the price of fatigues and perils, made war for the liberty of peoples even though removed from their frontiers and continent: this nation crossed the seas, in order that there should not be in the whole world one single unjust government, and that right, equity, and law should be everywhere dominant. The voice of a herald had been sufficient to restore freedom to all the cities of Greece and Asia. The idea alone of such a design supposed a rare greatness of soul; but to execute it needed as much courage as fortune.’ ”563

There was, however, a shadow on the picture. All Peloponnesus was not freed, and Flamininus, after having taken several of his possessions from Nabis, king of Sparta, had concluded peace with him, without continuing the siege of Lacedæmon, of which he dreaded the length. He feared also the arrival of a more dangerous enemy, Antiochus III., who had already reached Thrace, and threatened to go over into Greece with a considerable army. For this the allied Greeks, occupied only with their own interests, reproached the Roman consul with having concluded peace too hastily with Philip, whom, in their opinion, he could have annihilated.564 But Flamininus replied that he was not commissioned to dethrone Philip, and that the existence of the kingdom of Macedonia was necessary as a barrier against the barbarians of Thrace, Illyria, and Gaul.565 Meanwhile, accompanied even to their ships by the acclamations of the people, the Roman troops evacuated the cities restored to liberty (560), and Flamininus returned to a triumph at Rome, bringing with him that glorious protectorate of Greece, so long an object of envy to the successors of Alexander.

War against Antiochus (563).

VIII. The policy of the Senate had been to make Macedonia a rampart against the Thracians, and Greece herself a rampart against Macedonia. But, though the Romans had freed the Achæan league, they did not intend to create a formidable power or confederation. Then, as formerly, the Athenians, the Spartans, the Bœotians, the Ætolians, and, finally, the Achæans, each endeavoured to constitute an Hellenic league for their own advantage; and each aspiring to dominate over the others, turned alternately to those from whom it hoped the most efficient support at the time. In the Hellenic peninsula, properly so called, the Ætolians, to whose territory the Senate had promised to join Phocis and Locris, coveted the cities of Thessaly, which the Romans obstinately refused them.

Thus, although reinstated in the possession of their independence, neither the Ætolians, the Achæans, nor yet the Spartans, were satisfied: they all dreamt of aggrandisement. The Ætolians, more impatient, made, in 562, three simultaneous attempts against Thessaly, the island of Eubœa, and Peloponnesus. Having only succeeded in seizing Demetrias, they called Antiochus III. to Greece, that they might place him at the head of the hegemony, which they sought in vain to obtain from the Romans.

The better part of the immense heritage left by Alexander the Great had fallen to this prince. Already, some years before, Flamininus had given him notice that it belonged to the honour of the Republic not to abandon Greece, of which the Roman people had loudly proclaimed itself the liberator; and that after having delivered it from the yoke of Philip, the Senate now wished to free from the dominion of Antiochus all the Asian cities of Hellenic origin.566 Hannibal, who had taken refuge with the King of Syria, encouraged him to resist, by engaging him to carry the struggle into Italy, as he himself had done. War was then declared by the Romans. To maintain the independence of Greece against an Asiatic prince was at once to fulfil treaties and undertake the defence of civilisation against barbarism. Thus, in proclaiming the most generous ideas, the Republic justified its ambition.

The services rendered by Rome were already forgotten.567 Antiochus thus found numerous allies in Greece, secret or declared. He organised a formidable confederacy, into which entered the Ætolians, the Athamanes, the Elians, and the Bœotians, and, having landed at Chalcis, conquered Eubœa and Thessaly. The Romans opposed to him the King of Macedonia and the Achæans. Beaten at Thermopylæ, in 563, by the consul Acilius Glabrio, aided by Philip, the King of Syria withdrew to Asia, and the Ætolians, left to themselves, demanded peace, which was granted them in 563.

It was not enough to have compelled Antiochus to abandon Greece. L. Scipio, having his brother, the vanquisher of Carthage, for his lieutenant, went in 564 to seek him out in his own territory. Philip favoured the passage of the Roman army, which crossed Macedonia, Thrace, and the Hellespont without difficulty. The victories gained at Myonnesus by sea, and at Magnesia by land, terminated the campaign, and compelled Antiochus to yield up all his provinces on this side Mount Taurus, and pay 15,000 talents—a third more than the tax imposed on Carthage after the second Punic war. The Senate, far from reducing Asia then to a province, exacted only just and moderate conditions.568 All the Greek towns of that country were declared free, and the Romans only occupied certain important points, and enriched their allies at the expense of Syria. The King of Pergamus and the Rhodian fleet had seconded the Roman army. Eumenes II., the successor of Attalus I., saw his kingdom increased; Rhodes obtained Lycia and Caria; Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, who had given aid to Antiochus, paid two hundred talents.569

The War in the Cisalpine (558–579).

IX. The prompt submission of the East was a fortunate occurrence for the Republic, for near at home, enemies, always eager and watchful, might at any moment, supported or excited by their brethren on the other side of the Alps, attack her in the very centre of her empire.

Indeed, since the time of Hannibal, war had been perpetuated in the Cisalpine, the bellicose tribes of which, though often beaten, engaged continually in new insurrections. The settlement of the affairs of Macedonia left the Senate free to act with more vigour, and in 558 the defeat of the Ligures, of the Boii, of the Insubres, and of the Cenomani, damped the ardour of these barbarous peoples. The Ligures and the Boii, however, continued the strife; but the bloody battle of 561, fought near Modena, and, later, the ravages committed by L. Flamininus, brother of the conqueror of Cynoscephalæ, and Scipio Nasica, during the following years, obliged the Boii to treat. Compelled to yield the half of their territory, they retired towards the Danube in 564, and three years afterwards Cisalpine Gaul was formed into a Roman province.

As to the Ligures, they maintained a war of desperation to the end of the century. Their resistance was such that Rome was obliged to meet it with measures of excessive rigour; and in 574, more than 47,000 Ligures were transported into a part of Samnium which had been left almost without inhabitants since the war with Hannibal. In 581, lands beyond the Po were distributed to other Ligures.570 Every year the frontiers receded more towards the north, and military roads,571 the foundation of important colonies, secured the march of the armies—a system which had been interrupted during the second Punic war, but was afterwards adopted, and especially applied to the south of Italy and the Cisalpine.572

In achieving the submission of this last province, Rome had put an end to other less important wars. In 577 she reduced the Istrians; in 579, the Sardinians and the Corsicans; finally, from 569 to 573, she extended her conquests into Spain, where she met the same enemies as Carthage had encountered.

War against Persia (583).

X. For twenty-six years had peace been maintained with Philip, the Ætolians vanquished, the peoples of Asia subdued, and the greater part of Greece restored to liberty. Profiting by its co-operation with the Romans against Antiochus, the Achæan league had largely increased, and Philopœmen had brought into it Sparta, Messene, and the island of Zacynthus; but these countries, impatient of the Achæan rule, soon sought to free themselves from it. Thus was realised the prediction of Philip, who told the Thessalian envoys, after the battle of Cynoscephalæ, that the Romans would soon repent of having given liberty to peoples incapable of enjoying it, and whose dissensions and jealousies would always keep up a dangerous agitation.573 In fact, Sparta and Messene rebelled, and sued for help from Rome. Philopœmen, after having cruelly punished the first of these cities, perished in his struggle with the second. Thessaly and Ætolia were torn by anarchy and civil war.

Whilst the Republic was occupied in restoring tranquillity to these countries, a new adversary came to imprudently attract its wrath. One would say that Fortune, while raising up so many enemies against Rome, took pleasure in delivering them, one after the other, into her hands. The old legend of Horatius killing the three Curiatii in succession was a lesson which the Senate had never forgotten.

Perseus, heir to his father’s crown and enmities, had taken advantage of the peace to increase his army and his resources, to make allies, and to rouse up the kings and peoples of the East against Rome. Besides the warlike population of his own country, he had at his beck barbarous peoples like the Illyrians, the Thracians, and the Bastarnæ, dwelling not far from the Danube. Notwithstanding the treaty, which forbad Macedonia to make war without the consent of the Senate, Perseus had silently aggrandised himself on the side of Thrace; he had placed garrisons in the maritime cities of Oenoe and Maronia, excited the Dardanians574 to war, brought under subjection the Dolopes, and advanced as far as Delphi.575 He endeavored to draw the Achæans into an alliance, and skilfully obtained the good-will of the Greeks. Eumenes II., king of Pergamus, who, like his father Attalus I., feared the encroachments of Macedonia, denounced at Rome this infraction of the old treaties. The fear with which a powerful prince inspired him, and the gratitude which he owed to the Republic for the aggrandisement of his kingdom after the Asian war, obliged him to cultivate the friendship of the Roman people. In 582 he came to Rome, and, honourably received by the Senate, forgot nothing which might excite it against Perseus, whom he accused of ambitious designs hostile to the Republic. This denunciation raised violent enmities against Eumenes. On his way back to his kingdom, he was attacked by assassins, and dangerously wounded. Suspicion fell on the Macedonian monarch, not without show of reason, and was taken by the Republic as sufficient ground for declaring war on a prince whose power began to offend it.

Bold in planning, Perseus displayed cowardice when it was necessary to act. After having from the first haughtily rejected the Roman claims, he waited in Thessaly for their army, which, ill-commanded and ill-organised, was beaten by his lieutenants and repulsed into mountain gorges, where it might have been easily destroyed. He then offered peace to P. Licinius Crassus; but, notwithstanding his check, the consul replied, with all the firmness of the Roman character, that peace was only possible if Perseus would abandon his person and his kingdom to the discretion of the Senate.576 Struck by so much assurance, the king recalled his troops, and suffered the enemy to effect his retreat undisturbed. The incapacity of the Roman generals, however, their violences, and the want of discipline among the soldiers, had alienated the Greeks, who naturally preferred a prince of their own race to a foreign captain; moreover, they did not see the Macedonians get the better of the Romans without a certain satisfaction. In their eyes, it was the Hellenic civilisation overthrowing the presumption of the Western barbarians.

The campaigns of 584 and 585 were not more fortunate for the Roman arms. A consul had the rash idea of invading Macedonia by the passes of Callipeuce, where his army would have been annihilated if the king had had the courage to defend himself. At the approach of the legions he took to flight, and the Romans escaped from their perilous position without loss.577 At length, the people, feeling the necessity of having an eminent man at the head of the army, nominated Paulus Æmilius consul, who had given many proofs of his military talents in the Cisalpine. Already the greater part of the Gallo-græci were in treaty with Perseus. The Illyrians and the people of the Danube offered to second him. The Rhodians, and the King of Pergamus himself, persuaded that Fortune was going to declare herself for the King of Macedonia, made him offers of alliance; he chaffered with them with the most inexplicable levity. In the mean time, the Roman army, ably conducted, advanced by forced marches. One single combat terminated the war; and the battle of Pydna, in 586, once more proved the superiority of the Roman legion over the phalanx. This, however, did not yield ingloriously; and, though abandoned by their king, who fled, the Macedonian hoplites died at their post.

When they heard of this defeat, Eumenes and the Rhodians hastened to wipe out the remembrance of their ever having doubted the fortune of Rome578 by the swiftness of their repentance. At the same time, L. Anicius conquered Illyria and seized the person of Gentius. Macedonia was divided into four states called free, that is to say, presided over by magistrates chosen by themselves, but under the protectorate of the Republic. By the law imposed on these new provinces, all marriages, and all exchange of immovable property, were interdicted between the citizens of different states,579 and the imports reduced one-half. As we see, the Republic applied the system practised in 416 to dissolve the Latin confederacy, and later, in 449, that of the Hernici. Illyria was also divided into three parts. The towns which had first yielded were exempt from all tribute, and the taxes of the others reduced to half.580

It is not uninteresting to recall to mind how Livy appreciates the institutions which Macedonia and Illyria received at this epoch. “It was decreed,” he says, “that liberty should be given to the Macedonians and Illyrians, to prove to the whole universe that, in carrying their arms so far, the object of the Romans was to deliver the enslaved peoples, not to enslave the free peoples; to guarantee to these last their independence, to the nations subject to kings a milder and more just government; and to convince them that, in the wars which might break out between the Republic and their sovereigns, the result would be the liberty of the peoples: Rome reserving to herself only the honour of victory.”581

Greece, and above all Epirus, sacked by Paulus Æmilius, underwent the penalty of defection. As to the Achæan league, the fidelity of which had appeared doubtful, nearly a thousand of the principal citizens, guilty or suspected of having favoured the Macedonians, were sent as hostages to Rome.582

Modification of Roman policy.

XI. In carrying her victorious arms through almost all the borders of the Mediterranean, the Republic had hitherto obeyed either legitimate needs or generous inspirations. Care for her future greatness, for her existence even, made it absolute on her to dispute the empire of the sea with Carthage. Hence the wars, of which Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, Italy, and Africa, by turns, became the theatre. It was also her duty to combat the warlike peoples of the Cisalpine, that she might ensure the safety of her frontiers. As to the expeditions of Macedonia and Asia, Rome had been drawn into them by the conduct of foreign kings, their violation of treaties, their guilty plottings, and their attacks on her allies.

To conquer thus became to her an obligation, under pain of seeing fall to ruin the edifice which she had built up at the price of so many sacrifices; and, what is remarkable, she showed herself after victory magnificent towards her allies, clement to the vanquished, and moderate in her pretensions. Leaving to the kings all the glory of the throne, and to the nations their laws and liberties, she had reduced to Roman provinces only a part of Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Cisalpine Gaul. In Sicily she preserved the most intimate alliance with Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse, for fifty years. The constant support of this prince must have shown the Senate how much such alliances were preferable to direct dominion. In Spain she augmented the territory of all the chiefs who consented to become her allies. After the battle of Cynoscephalæ, as after that of Magnesia, she maintained on their thrones Philip and Antiochus, and imposed on this last only the same conditions as those offered before the victory. If, after the battle of Pydna, she overthrew Perseus, it was because he had openly violated his engagements; but she gave equitable laws to Macedonia. Justice then ruled her conduct, even towards her oldest rival; for when Masinissa asked the help of the Senate in his quarrels with Carthage, he received for answer that, even in his favour, justice could not be sacrificed.583

In Egypt her protection preserved the crown on the head of Ptolemy Philometor and of his sister Cleopatra.584 Finally, when all the kings came after the victory of Pydna to offer their congratulations to the Roman people, and to implore their protection, the Senate regulated their demands with extreme justice. Eumenes, himself an object of suspicion, sent his brother Attalus to Rome; and he, willing to profit by the favourable impression he had made, thought to ask for him a part of the kingdom of Pergamus. He was recommended to give up the design. The Senate restored his son to Cotys, king of Thrace, without ransom, saying that the Roman people did not make a traffic of their benefits.585 Finally, in the disputes between Prusias, king of Bithynia, and the Gallo-græcians, it declared that justice alone could dictate its decision.586

How, then, did so much nobleness of views, so much magnanimity in success, so much prudence in conduct seem to be belied, dating from that period of twenty-two years which divides the war against Persia from the third Punic war? Because too much success dazzles nations as well as kings. When the Romans began to think that nothing could resist them in the future because nothing had resisted them in the past, they believed that all was permitted them. They no longer made war to protect their allies, defend their frontiers, or destroy coalitions, but to crush the weak, and use nations for their own profit. We must also acknowledge that the inconstancy of the peoples, faithful in appearance, but always plotting some defection, and the hatred of the kings, concealing their resentment under a show of abasement, concurred to render the Republic more suspicious and more exacting, and caused it to count from henceforth rather on its subjects than on its allies. Vainly did the Senate seek to follow the grand traditions of the past; it was no longer strong enough to curb individual ambitions; and the same institutions which formerly brought forth the virtues, now only protected the vices of aggrandised Rome. The generals dared no longer to obey; thus, the consul Cn. Manlius attacks the Gallo-græcians in Asia without the orders of the Senate;587 A. Manlius takes on himself to make an expedition into Istria;588 the consul C. Cassius abandons the Cisalpine, his province, and attempts of his own accord to penetrate into Macedonia by Illyria;589 the prætor Furius, on his own authority, disarms one of the peoples of Cisalpine Gaul, the Cenomani, at peace with Rome;590 Popilius Lænas attacks the Statiellates without cause, and sells ten thousand of them; others also oppress the peoples of Spain.591 All these things doubtless incur the blame of the Senate; the consuls and prætors are disavowed, even accused, but their disobedience none the less remain unpunished, and the accusations without result. In 599, it is true, L. Lentulus, consul in the preceding year, underwent condemnation for exaction, but that did not prevent him from being raised again to the chief honours.592

As long as the object was only to form men destined for a modest part on a narrow theatre, nothing was better than the annual election of the consuls and prætors, by which, in a certain space of time, a great number of the principal citizens of both the patrician and plebeian nobility participated in the highest offices. Powers thus exercised under the eyes of their fellow-citizens, rather for honour than interest, obliged them to be worthy of their trust; but when, leading their legions into the most remote countries, the generals, far from all control, and invested with absolute power, enriched themselves by the spoils of the vanquished, dignities were sought merely to furnish them with wealth during their short continuance. The frequent re-election of the magistrates, in multiplying the contests of candidates, multiplied the ambitious, who scrupled at nothing to attain their object. Thus Montesquieu justly observes, that “good laws which have made a small republic great, become a burden to it when it has increased, because their natural effect was to create a grand people, and not to govern it.”593

The remedy for this overflowing of unruly passions would have been, on the one hand, to moderate the desire for conquest; on the other, to diminish the number of aspirants to power, by giving them a longer term of duration. But then, the people alone, guided by its instincts, felt the need of remedying this defect in the institution, by retaining in authority those who had their confidence. Thus, they wished to appoint Scipio Africanus perpetual dictator;594 while pretended reformers, such as Portius Cato, enslaved to old customs, and in a spirit of exaggerated rigorism, made laws to interdict the same man from aspiring twice to the consulship, and to advance the age at which it was lawful to try for this high office.

All these measures were contrary to the object at which they aimed. In maintaining annual elections, the way was left free to vulgar covetousness; in excluding youth from high functions, they repressed the impulses of those choice natures which early reveal themselves, and the exceptional elevation of which had so often saved Rome from the greatest disasters. Have we not seen, for example, in 406, Marcus Valerius Corvus, raised to the consulate at twenty-three years of age, gain the battle of Mount Gaurus against the Samnites; Scipio Africanus, nominated proconsul at twenty-four, conquer Spain and humiliate Carthage; the consul Quinctius Flamininus, at thirty, carry off from Philip the victory of Cynoscephalæ? Finally, Scipio Æmilianus, who is to destroy Carthage, will be elected consul, even before the age fixed by the law of Cato.

No doubt, Cato the Censor, honest and incorruptible, had the laudable design of arresting the decline of morals. But, instead of attacking the cause, he only attacked the effect; instead of strengthening authority, he tended to weaken it; instead of leaving the nations a certain independence, he urged the Senate to bring them all under its absolute dominion; instead of adopting what came from Greece with an enlightened discernment, he indiscriminately condemned all that was of foreign origin.595 There was in Cato’s austerity more ostentation than real virtue. Thus, during his censorship, he expelled Manlius from the Senate for having kissed his wife before his daughter in open daylight; he took pleasure in regulating the toilette and extravagance of the Roman ladies; and, by an exaggerated disinterestedness, he sold his horse when he quitted Spain, to save the Republic the cost of transport.596

But the Senate contained men less absolute, and wiser appreciators of the needs of the age; they desired to repress abuses, to carry out a policy of moderation, to curb the spirit of conquest, and to accept from Greece all that she had of good. Scipio Nasica and Scipio Æmilianus figured among the most important.597 One did not reject whatever might soften manners and increase human knowledge; the other cultivated the new muses, and was even said to have assisted Terence.

The irresistible inclination of the people towards all that elevates the soul and ennobles existence was not to be arrested. Greece had brought to Italy her literature, her arts, her science, her eloquence; and when, in 597, there came to Rome three celebrated philosophers—Carneades the Academician, Diogenes the Stoic, and Critolaus the Peripatetic—as ambassadors from Athens, they produced an immense sensation. The young men flocked in crowds to see and hear them; the Senate itself approved this homage paid to men whose talent must polish, by the culture of letters, minds still rude and unformed.598 Cato alone, inexorable, pretended that these arts would soon corrupt the Roman youth, and destroy its taste for arms; and he caused these philosophers to be dismissed.

Sent to Africa as arbiter to appease the struggle between Masinissa and Carthage, he only embittered it. Jealous at seeing this ancient rival still great and prosperous, he did not cease pronouncing against her that famous decree of death: Delenda est Carthago. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, opposed the destruction of Carthage, which he considered too weak to do injury, yet strong enough to keep up a salutary fear, which might prevent the people from casting themselves into all those excesses which are the inevitable consequences of the unbounded increase of empires.599 Unhappily, the opinion of Cato triumphed.

As one of our first writers says, it must be “that truth is a divine thing, since the errors of good men are as fatal to humanity as vice, which is the error of the wicked.”

Cato, by persecuting with his accusations the principal citizens, and, among others, Scipio Africanus, taught the Romans to doubt virtue.600 By exaggeration in his attacks, and by delivering his judgments with passion, he caused his justice to be suspected.601 By condemning the vices from which he himself was not exempt, he deprived his remonstrances of all moral force.602 When he scourged the people as accuser and judge, without seeking to raise them by education and laws, he resembled, says a learned German, that Persian king who whipped the sea with rods to make the tempest cease.603 His influence, though powerless to arrest the movement of one civilisation taking the place of another, failed not to produce a fatal effect on the policy of that period.604 The Senate, renouncing the moderation and justice which hitherto had stamped all its deeds, adopted in their stead a crafty and arrogant line of action, and a system of extermination.

Towards the beginning of the seventh century, everything disappears before the Roman power. The independence of peoples, kingdoms, and republics ceases to exist. Carthage is destroyed, Greece gives up her arms, Macedonia loses her liberty, that of Spain perishes at Numantia, and shortly afterwards Pergamus undergoes the same fate.

Third Punic War (605–608).

XII. Notwithstanding her abasement, Carthage still existed, the eternal object of hatred and distrust. She was accused of connivance with the Macedonians, ever impatient of their yoke; and to her was imputed the resistance of the Celtiberian hordes. In 603, Masinissa and the Carthaginians engaged in a new struggle. As, according to their treaties, these last could not make war without authorisation, the Senate deliberated on the course it was to take. Cato desired war immediately. Scipio Nasica, on the contrary, obtained the appointment of a new embassy, which succeeded in persuading Masinissa to evacuate the territory in dispute; on its part, the Senate of Carthage consented to submit to the wisdom of the ambassadors, when the populace at Carthage, excited by those men who in troublous times speculate on the passions of the mob, breaks out in insurrection, insults the Roman envoys, and expels the chief citizens.605 A fatal insurrection; for in moments of external crisis all popular movements ruin a nation,606 as all political change is fatal in the presence of a foreigner invading the soil of the fatherland. However, the Roman Senate judged it best to temporise, because of the war in Spain, where Scipio Æmilianus then served in the capacity of tribune. Ordered to Africa (603), to obtain from Masinissa elephants for the war against the Celtiberians, he witnessed a sanguinary defeat of the Carthaginian army. This event decided the question of Roman intervention; the Senate, in fact, had no intention of leaving the entire sovereignty of Africa to the Numidian king, whose possessions already extended from the ocean to Cyrene.607

In vain did Carthage send ambassadors to Rome to explain her conduct. They obtained no satisfaction. Utica yielded to the Romans (604), and the two consuls, L. Marcius Censorinus, and M. Manlius Nepos, arrived there at the head of 80,000 men in 605. Carthage sues for peace; they impose the condition that she shall give up her arms; she delivers them up, with 2,000 engines of war. But soon exactions increase; the inhabitants are commanded to quit their city and retire ten miles inland. Exasperated by so much severity, the Carthaginians recover their energy; they forge new weapons, raise the populace, fling into the campaign Hasdrubal, who has soon collected 70,000 men in his camp at Nepheris, and gives the consuls reason to fear the success of their enterprise.608

The Roman army met with a resistance it was far from expecting. Endangered by Manlius, it was saved by the tribune, Scipio Æmilianus, on whom all eyes were turned. On his return to Rome, he was in 607 elected consul at the age of thirty-six years, and charged with the direction of the war, which henceforth took a new aspect. Carthage is soon inclosed by works of prodigious labour; on land, trenches surround the place and protect the besiegers; by sea, a colossal bar interrupts all communication, and gives up the city to famine; but the Carthaginians build a second fleet in their inner port, and excavate a new communication with the sea. During the winter Scipio goes and forces the camp at Nepheris, and on the return of spring makes himself master of the first enclosure; finally, after a siege which lasted for three years, with heroic efforts on both sides, the town and its citadel Byrsa are carried, and entirely razed to the ground. Hasdrubal surrendered, with fifty thousand inhabitants, the remains of an immense population; but on a fragment of the wall which had escaped the fire, the wife of the last Carthaginian chief, dressed in her most gorgeous robes, was seen to curse her husband, who had not had the courage to die; then, after having slain her two children, she flung herself into the flames. A mournful image of a nation which achieves her own ruin, but which does not fall ingloriously.

When the vessel laden with magnificent spoils, and adorned with laurels, entered the Tiber, bearer of the grand news, all the citizens rushed out into the streets embracing and congratulating each other on so joyful a victory. Now only did Rome feel herself free from all fear, and the mistress of the world. Nevertheless, the destruction of Carthage was a crime which Caius Gracchus, Julius Cæsar, and Augustus sought to repair.

Greece, Macedonia, Numantia, and Pergamus reduced to Provinces.

XIII. The same year saw the destruction of the Greek autonomy. Since the war with Persia, the preponderance of Roman influence had maintained order in Achaia; but on the return of the hostages, in 603, coincident with the troubles of Macedonia, party enmities were re-awakened. Dissensions soon broke out between the Achæan league and the cities of the Peloponnesus, which it coveted, and the resistance of which it did not hesitate to punish by destruction and pillage.

Sparta soon rebelled, and Peloponnesus was all in flames. The Romans made vain efforts to allay this general disturbance. The envoys of the Senate carried a decree to Corinth, which detached from the league Sparta, Argos, Orchomenus, and Arcadia. On hearing this, the Achæans massacred the Lacedæmonians then at Corinth, and loaded the Roman commissioners with insults.609 Before using severity, the Roman Senate resolved to make one appeal to conciliation; but the words of the new envoys were not listened to.

The Achæan league, united with Eubœa and Bœotia, then dared to declare war against Rome, which they knew to be occupied in Spain and Africa. The league was soon vanquished at Scarphia, in Locris, by Metellus, and at Leucopetra, near Corinth, by Mummius. The towns of the Achæan league were treated rigorously; Corinth was sacked; and Greece, under the name of Achaia, remained in subjection to the Romans (608).610

However, Mummius, as Polybius himself avows,611 showed as much moderation as disinterestedness after the victory. He preserved in their places the statues of Philopœmen, kept none of the trophies taken in Greece for himself, and remained so poor that the Senate conferred a dowry upon his daughter from the public treasury.

About the same time the severity of the Senate had not spared Macedonia. During the last Punic war, a Greek adventurer, Andriscus, pretending to be the son of Perseus, had stirred up the country to rebellion, with an army of Thracians. Driven out of Thessaly by Scipio Nasica, he returned there, slew the prætor Juventius Thalna, and formed an alliance with the Carthaginians. Beaten by Metellus, he was sent to Rome loaded with chains. Some years later, a second impostor having also endeavoured to seize the succession of Perseus, the Senate reduced Macedonia to a Roman province (612). It was the same with Illyria after the submission of the Ardæi (618). Never had so many triumphs been seen. Scipio Æmilianus had triumphed over Africa, Metellus over Macedonia, Mummius over Achaia, and Fulvius Flaccus over Illyria.

Delivered henceforth from its troubles in the east and south, the Senate turned its attention towards Spain. This country had never entirely yielded: its strength hardly restored, it took up arms again. After the pacification which Scipio Africanus and Sempronius Gracchus successively induced, new insurrections broke forth; the Lusitanians, yielding to the instigations of Carthage, had revolted in 601, and had gained some advantages over Mummius and his successor Galba (603). But this last, by an act of infamous treachery, massacred thirty thousand prisoners. Prosecuted for this act at Rome by Cato, he was acquitted. Subsequently, another consul showed no less perfidy: Licinius Lucullus, having entered the town of Cauca, which had surrendered, slew twenty thousand of its inhabitants, and sold the rest.612

So much cruelty excited the indignation of the peoples of Northern Spain, and, as always happens, the national feeling brought forth a hero. Viriathus, who had escaped the massacre of the Lusitanians, and from a shepherd had become a general, began a war of partisans, and, for five years, having vanquished the Roman generals, ended by rousing the Celtiberians. Whilst these occupied Metellus the Macedonian, Fabius, left alone against Viriathus, was hemmed into a defile by him, and constrained to accept peace. The murder of Viriathus left the issue of the war no longer doubtful. This death was too advantageous to the Romans not to be imputed to Cæpio, successor to his brother Fabius. But when the murderers came to demand the wages of their crime, they were told that the Romans had never approved of the massacre of a general by his soldiers.613 The Lusitanians, however, submitted, and the legions penetrated to the ocean.

The war, ended in the west, became concentrated round Numantia,614 where, in the course of five years, several consuls were defeated. When, in 616, Mancinus, surrounded by the enemy on all sides, was reduced to save his army by a shameful capitulation, like that of the Furculæ Caudinæ, the Senate refused to ratify the treaty, and gave up the consul loaded with chains. The same fate was reserved for Tiberius Gracchus, his questor, who had guaranteed the treaty; but, through the favour of the people, he remained at Rome. The Numantines still resisted for a long time with rare energy. The conqueror of Carthage himself had to go to direct the siege, which required immense works; and yet the town was taken only by famine (621). Spain was overcome, but her spirit of independence survived for a great number of years.

Although the fall of the kingdom of Pergamus was posterior to the events we have just related, we will speak of it here because it is the continuation of the system of reducing all peoples to subjection. Attalus III., a monster of cruelty and folly, had, when dying, bequeathed his kingdom to the Roman people, who sent troops to take possession of it; but a natural son of Eumenes, Aristonicus, raised the inhabitants, and defeated the consul Licinius Crassus, soon avenged by one of his successors. Aristonicus was taken, and the kingdom, pacified, passed by the name of Asia under Roman domination (625).

Summary.

XIV. The more the Republic extended its empire, the more the number of the high functions increased, and the more important they became. The consuls, the proconsuls, and the prætors, governed not only foreign countries, but Italy itself. In fact, Appian tells us that the proconsuls exercised their authority in certain countries of the peninsula.615

The Roman provinces were nine in number:—1. Cisalpine Gaul. 2. Farther Spain. 3. Nearer Spain. 4. Sardinia and Corsica. 5. Sicily. 6. Northern Africa. 7. Illyria. 8. Macedonia and Achaia. 9. Asia. The people appointed yearly two consuls and seven prætors to go and govern these distant countries; but generally these high offices were attainable only by those who had been questors or ediles. Now, the edileship required a large fortune; for the ediles were obliged to spend great sums in fêtes and public works to please the people. The rich alone could aspire to this first dignity; consequently, it was only the members of the aristocracy who had a chance of arriving at the elevated position, where, for one or two years, they were absolute masters of the destinies of vast kingdoms. Thus, the nobility sought to keep these high offices closed against new men. From 535 to 621—eighty-six years—nine families alone obtained eighty-three consulships. Still later, twelve members of the family Metellus gained various dignities in less than twelve years (630–642.)616 Nabis, tyrant of Sparta, was right then, when, addressing the consul Quinctius Flamininus, he said, “With you, it is regard for the pay which determines enlistments into the cavalry and infantry. Power is for a small number; dependence is the lot of the multitude. Our lawgiver (Lycurgus), on the contrary, did not wish to put all the power into the hands of certain citizens, whose assembling together you call the Senate, nor to give a legal pre-eminence to one or two orders.”617

It is curious to see a tyrant of Greece give lessons in democracy to a Roman. In reality, notwithstanding the changes introduced into the comitia, the bearing of which is difficult to explain, the nobility preserved its preponderance, and the habit of addressing the people only after having taken the sense of the Senate, was still persisted in.618 The Roman government, always aristocratic, became more oppressive in proportion as the State increased in extent, and it lost in influence what the people of Italy gained in intelligence and in legitimate aspirations towards a better future.

Besides, ever since the beginning of the Republic, it had harboured in its breast two opposite parties, the one seeking to extend, the other to restrict, the rights of the people. When the first came into power, all the liberal laws of the past were restored to force; when the second came in, these laws were evaded. Thus we see now the law Valeria, which consecrates appeal to the people, thrice revived; now the law interdicting the re-election of the consuls before an interval of ten years, promulgated by Genucius in 412,619 and immediately abandoned, renewed in 603, and subsequently restored by Sylla; now the law which threw the freedmen into the urban tribes, in order to annul their vote, revived at three different epochs;620 now the measures against solicitation, against exactions, against usury, continually put into force; and finally, the right of election to the sacerdotal office by turn, refused or granted to the people.621 By the Portian laws of 557 and 559, it was forbidden to strike with rods, or put to death, a Roman citizen, before the people had pronounced upon his doom. And yet Scipio Æmilianus, to evade this law, caused his auxiliaries to be beaten with sticks and his soldiers with vine-stalks.622 At the beginning of the seventh century, the principle of secret voting was admitted in all elections; in 615, in the elections of the magistrates; in 617, for the decision of the people in judicial condemnations; in 623, in the votes on proposals for laws. Finally, by the institution of permanent tribunals (quæstiones perpetuæ), established from 605, it was sought to remedy the spoliation of the provinces; but these institutions, successively adopted or abandoned, could not heal the ills of society. The manly virtues of an intelligent aristocracy had until then maintained the Republic in a state of concord and greatness; its vices were soon to shake it to its foundations.

We have just related the principal events of a period of one hundred and thirty-three years, during which Rome displayed an energy which no nation has ever equalled. On all sides, and almost at the same time, she has passed her natural limits. In the north, she has subdued the Cisalpine Gauls and crossed the Alps; in the west and south, she has conquered the great islands of the Mediterranean and the greater part of Spain. Carthage, her powerful rival, has ceased to exist. To the east, the coasts of the Adriatic are colonised; the Illyrians, the Istrians, the Dalmatians, are subjected; the kingdom of Macedonia has become a tributary province; and the legions have penetrated even to the Danube.623 Farther than this exist only unknown lands, the country of barbarians, too weak yet to cause alarm. Continental Greece, her isles, Asia Minor up to Mount Taurus, all this country, the cradle of civilisation, has entered into the Roman empire. The rest of Asia receives her laws and obeys her influence. Egypt, the most powerful of the kingdoms which made part of the heritage of Alexander, is under her tutelage. The Jews implore her alliance. The Mediterranean has become a Roman lake. The Republic vainly seeks an adversary worthy of her arms. But if from without no serious danger seems to threaten her, within exist great interests not satisfied, and peoples discontented.