^k;>kg'i}jf'<''.:i'>jv,jjj,.;;v^,. ,..■ ■^''3 ■'•".7 :>■'■.■ '■•;; .+.<-" vim-. A^.-:^:-- HISTORY OF ROME A HISTORY OF ROME TO THE DEATH OF C/ESAR W. W. HpW, M.A. FELLOW AND TUTOR OI'mEKTON COLLEGE, OXFORD H. D. LEIGH, M.A. FELLOW ANU TUTOH OK CORPUS CHRISTI COLLEciK, OXFORD contohniate. drbs koma. and wolf with twuo NE W IMPRESSION LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 1901 All rights reserved PREFACE In writing this short history of Rome the authors' have endeavoured to meet the requirements of the upper forms in schools and of the pass examinations at the Universities. With this object in view they have dwelt at some length on the more important and eventful wars, and on the history of the Roman army. Literature, which never at Rome reached the heart of the people, they have designedly omitted. A mere outline, which is all that space would allow, would have been worse than useless, since it might have led to the neglect of the separate histories of the subject. On the other hand they have attempted to describe clearly, if briefly, the de- velopment of a constitution, interesting to Englishmen both from its likeness and its unlikeness to that of their own country. In so doing they have derived assistance from the researches of many scholars, both at home and abroad ; but their deepest debt is due to the master of all modern his- torians of Rome, Professor Mommsen. On constitutional and antiquarian questions they have bowed to his paramount authority, and even from his somewhat sweeping judgments of parties and person:? they have never dissented without hesitation. Like other Oxford students they owe much to the lectures and articles of Professor Pelham ; they have also drawn upon Mr. Warde Prowler's works, and Mr. Strachan Davidson's Cicero and Polybius. From the latter, through the kindness of the Clarendon Press, they have been allowed viii PREFA CE to take a plan of Cannae ; for other maps and plans they are indebted to Kraner's " Ccesar," to Mr. R. Bosworth Smith, and to Mr. R. F. Horton, who has been good enough to permit them to revise the useful series appended to his History of the Romans. It is needless to say that they are intended not to supersede but only to supplement the classical atlas. For the insertion of numerous illustrations the authors have to thank Messrs. Longmans; for their selection they are indebted to Mr. Cecil Smith of the British Museum. They are in all cases derived from authentic archaeological sources, and have been taken, so far as possible, from well-known and accessible collections, above all from the British Museum. In the list which follows references have been given to standard works. The authors are not without hope that even scholars and teachers not primarily interested in history may welcome the appearance of trustworthy copies from many among the coins and inscriptions which illustrate the art, language, and writing of the Romans in the days of the Republic. The authors have as a rule adopted modern improvements in the spelling of Latin, but in accordance with English custom they have retained the familiar forms of well-known names, such as Pompey and Catiline, and in the Index they have sacrificed scientific accuracy to convenience of reference. Oxford, April 1896. CONTENTS CHAP. PAGE I. THE LAND OF ITALY ...,....! IL PEOPLES OK ITALY II III. THE LEGENDS Ol' THE KLN'OS 20 IV. THE REGAL PERIOD 34 V. THE INSTITUTIONS OK THE NEW REPUBLIC ... 47 VI. THE FIRST STRUGGLES OK IHIC PLEBEIANS ... $2 VIL EARLY WARS AND ALLIANCES OK THE REI'UBLIC . . 58 VIII. THE DECEMVIRATE 65 IX. PROGRESS OF THE PLEBEIANS 72 X. W^ARS FROM THE DECEMVIRATE TO THE FALL OF VEII . 77 XI. THE GAULS 84 XII. THE LICINIAN LAWS AND THE E(jUALISATION OF THE ORDERS 91 XIIL THE SUBJUGATION OF LATIUM AM) CAMPANIA . . 97 XIV. THE SECOND SAMNITE WAR I05 XV. THE CONQUEST OF THE ITALIANS II4 XVL THE WAR WITH TARENTUM AND PYKRHUS . . . I20 XVII. THE POSITION AND RESOURCES OF ROME AND CARTHAIJE IJI XVIII. THE FIRST PUNIC WAR I49 XIX. THE EXTENSION OK ITALY TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES 162 XX. HAMILCAR AND HANNIBAL 169 XXL THE SECOND PUNIC WAR UP TO THE BATTLE OF CANNA; 1 74 XXII. THE SECOND PUNIC WAR FROM CANN^ TO ZAMA . . I99 XXIII. FIFTY YEARS OF CONQUEST — THE WARS IN THE WEST . 234 XXIV. FIFTY YEARS OF CONQUEST — AFRICA .... 245 XXV. FIFTY YEARS OF CONQUEST^THE EASTERN STATES AND THE SECOND MACEDONIAN WAR 253 XXVI. FIFTY YEARS OF CONQUEST — THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS 265 XXVII. FIFTY YEARS OF CONQUEST — ^THE FALL OF MACEDON AND GREECE 273 ix COyTEiYTS CHAr. XXVIIl. XXXI. XXXII. XXXIII. XXXIV. XXXV. XXXVI. XXXVII. XXXVIII. XXXIX. XL. XLI. XLII. XLIII. XLIV. XLV. XLVI. XLVIl. XLVIII. XLIX. I,. LI. LII. INTERNAL HISTORY (266-I46 H.l . ;— RKLUJIOUS ANIJ CON- .STITUTIONAI INTERNAL HISTORY (266-I46 B.C.) — I'OLITICS AND AI>- MINISTRATION INTERNAL HISTORY (266-146 B.C.) — SOCIAL AND ECO- NOMIC PROBLEMS CAUSES OF THE FALL OF THE REPUBLIC FOREIGN AND PROVINCIAL AFFAIRS (I46-I29 B.C.) INTERNAL AFFAIRS AND TIBERIUS GRACCHUS (133 B.C.) i;AIUS GRACCHUS THE RESTORED OLIGARCHY AND THE WAR WITH JUGURTHA THE WARS IN THE NORTH SATURNINUS, MARIUS, AND THEIR TIMES THE LAWS OF DRUSUS .... THE SOCIAL WAR SULPICIUS, MARIUS, AND SULLA (8S B.C.) THE FIRST MITHRADATIC WAR THE CINNAN REVOLUTION AND THE CIVIL WAR THE PROSCRIPTIONS AND THE NEW DICTATORSHIP THE CONSTITUTION OF SULLA. THE RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION THE WARS WITH THE PIRATES AND MITHKADAJ POMPEY IN THE EAST .... CICERO AND CATILINE THE FORMATION OF THE FIRSl TRIUMVIRATE THE CONQUEST OF GAUI THE RULE OF THE TRIUMNIRATE AND ITS DISSOLUI THE CIVIL WAR THE RULE OF C/ESAR .... APPENDIX I. — ASSEMBLIES AT ROME .... APPENDIX II. — LIST OF THE MOST IMPORTANT" ROMAN OF REPUBLICAN TIMES INDEX rioN 287 316 322 326 343 357 371 384 394 399 412 419 434 445 449 460 471 484 496 503 S16 526 539 553 555 557 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS Kiruacan Temple and Altar, re.sturcil (Semper, Der Slil, plate xiii.) Frontispiece Contorniate — Urbs Roma, ami Wulf with Twins (Sabalier, plate 14A) Title-page View of the Cami)agua, with Atjueduct ..... Model of a Primitive Etruscan House (Baumei.sler, tig. 146) Wall and Gateway of Perugia, showing Etruscan Work . Contorniate. .Eneas leaving Troy — Head of Trajan (Sabatier, plate 14-10) Wolf with Romulus and Remus. Bronze in the Palace of the Con servatori at Rome ........ Denarius of First Century B.C. — Titus Talius and the Rape of the Sabines (Babelon, ii. 496, 7) ..... . Wall of Servius Tullius (Baumeisttr, fig. 1591) Roman Coin after 268 B.C. — Head of Rome ; Castor and l'ullu> (Head, Coins of the Ancients, plate 44. 2) ... Ficus Ruminalis, with Picus and Parra ; Urbs Ruma ; and Wolf suckling Twins (Rom. Mitth., i. plate i, 1886) . Wall on the Aventine (Parker, Historical Photographs of Rome) Cloaca Maxima ......... (iround-Plan and Elevation of the Teni[)le of Vesta, restoretl (Jordan, Tempel der Vesta, plate 4) . Sella Curulis and Fasces (Menard, La Vie Privee des Aucien>, i. 482, Etruscan Helmet (Dennis, Etruria, vol. ii. p. 103) . Suovetaurilia. Sacrifice after the Numbering of the People (P Bouillon, Musee des Antiques, tom. ii. 98) Etruscan Helmet dedicated by Hiero I. after his Victory in 474 1;. 1; (British Museum, Etruscan Saloon, c. 93) ... Etruscan Terra-Cotta Sarcophagus from Clusium (British Museum) Faliscan Vase in the British Museum, 4 feet 3 inches in height . The Libral As {M.% Grave). From a Cast in the British Museum 10 14 -J 27 36 39 41 43 49 63 75 78 83 89 93 xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS lAt.E Romano-Campanian Coin, 338-317 B.C. (Head, op. cil., jilate 33. 5) 105 ChimEEra. Etruscan Bronze in iho ArchEcological Museum al Florence. . . . . . . . . . -113 Tomb of L. Cornelius Scipio BarbaUis, now in the Vatican (Baunieister, fig. 1621) 117 Faliscan Vase in the British Museum 121 Tetradrachm of Pyrrhus struck in Italy — Head of Zeus of Dodona, and the Goddess Dione (Head, op. cit., plate 46. 27) . .127 King in Cliariot. Terra-Cotta of Punic Workmanship (Heuzey, Les Figurines Antiques de Terre Cuite du Musee de Louvre, plate V.) 132 Plan of Roman Camp (Seyfifert-Sandys, 117) 140 The Smaller Cisterns at Carthage (Bosworth Smith, Carthage) . 144 Siculo-Punic Tetradrachm — Head of Persephone, with Dolphins, copied from Syracuse (Head, op. cit., plate 35. 38) , . . 145 Siculo-Punic Tetradrachm — Head of Persephone, with Dolphins, copied from Syracuse (Head, op. cit., plate 35. 37) . . . 147 Siculo-Punic Tetradrachm — Head of Herakles (Melkarth), copied from Alexander's Coins (Head, op. cit., plate 35. 36) . .149 The Cokimna Roslrata, restored (Fougere, fig. 60S) . , .153 Epitaph of Lucius Scipio (Ritschl, plate 38) . . . . -154 Denarius struck circa 133 B.C., to commemorate Victory of Panormus (Babelon, i. 263) 1 58 Milestone of P. Claudius Pulcher and of C. Furius, ,'luliles (C. I. L. , X. 6838, and Rcim. Mitth., iv. 84, 1S89) 159 Remains of the Town of Eryx (Duruy, i. 490) ..... 161 Coin struck al Carthage — Head of Persephone (Head, op. cit., plate 35-35) • • -163 Denarius of circa 45 B.C. — Marcellus and Sjiolia Opima (Bal)elon, i- 352) 16S Roman in Toga (Statue in the British Museum) .... 173 Tombstone of Roman Horse-Soldier from Hexham (by kind per- mission of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle-on-Tyne, from Bruce's Roman Wall, handbook, p. 78) .... 184 The Aufidus near Cannae ........ 195 Carthaginian Helmet found at Cannte (British Museum) . . . 198 Coin of Hiero H. of Syracuse (Head, op. cit., plate 46. 31) . . 205 Bust of Scipio Africanus, in the Capitoline Museum at Rome (Bei^ nouilli, Rom. Ikon., vol. i. plate i) . . . . . .216 Panoramic View of the Peninsula of Carthage . .... 227 Carthaginian Dodecadrachm- — Head of Persephone (Head, op. cit., 47-42) 234 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii PACK Decree of L. ^-Emilius PauUus, I'rx'tor of l*"urther Sixiin, regulating the Position of a S]ianish Client-Community, 1S9 R.c. (C. I. L., ii. 5041) 241 Remains of Ancient Harbours at Carthage (Bosworth Smith) . . 246 Trilingual Inscription on an Altar dedicated to the God Eshmun, by 252 Cleon, an Officer of the Salt-Revenue, circ. 150 B.C. (Cast in the British Museum) ........ 252 Tetradrachm of Philip V. — Athena Alkis hurling I"'ulnien (Head, op. cit., 41. 8) 259 Gold Octadrachm of Antiochus HI. — .\pollo seatetl on Onijihalfjs (Head, op. cit., 38. 19) 266 Cippus of a Roman Marine of late date (Schreiber-.Vnderson, xliii. 20) 269 Tetradrachm of Perseus (Head, op. cit., 54. 10) .... 275 Temple and Acropolis, Corinth ....... 284 Dedicatory Inscription of L. Mummius (Ritschl, 5 1 a) . . . 286 A Roman sacrificing (Baumeister, fig. 1304) ..... 289 Letter of the Consuls to Local Magistrates, containing the .Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus (Ritschl, plate iS) . . . 292 E\tispicia (.Schreiber- Anderson, plate 17. 3) . . . . . 293 Epitaph of P. Cornelius .Scipio, Flamen Dialis, (?) .Son of Africanus, who died young (Ritschl, plate 391O ..... 301 Roman in Toga (Baumeister, fig. 191 7) ...... 307 Roman Soldiers with Scutum, of a late period (.Schreiber- Anderson, 42. 8) 314 Lamp with Circus Scene (British Museum, Terra-Cotta Room, Case C.) 319 Gladiators. From a Pompeian Wall-Painting (Les Ruines de Pompeii, F. Mazois, vol. iv. plate 48) ....... 321 Milestone set up by P. Popillius Lcenas, in Lucania, as Consul, 132 B.C. (C. I. L., i. 551, Ritschl, plate 51B) .... 339 Termini set up by the Land Commission in the Land of the Ilirpini, 130-129 B.C. (Ritschl, plate 55C.n.) 344 Ruins of Aqueduct, Carthage ........ 348 A Camillus, or Attendant at .Sacrifice (Baumeister, fig. 1305) . . 355 View of Cirta (Delamare, Expedition .Scientifique d'Algerie) . . y:)"^ Plan and .Section of the Mamertine Prison. (Middleton, Ancient Rome) ........... 370 Roman Soldier (Lindenschmidt, Tracht und Bewafifnung, plate i. 6) 376 Combat of Gladiators : the vanquished Combatant appealing to the Audience. From a Pompeian Painting (Baumeister, fig. 2347) . 3S0 Denarius struck loi B.C. —Triumph of Marius the Goddess, Rome (Babelon, i. 515) 383 xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS HAGK Part nfa Statue of a Vestal (Museoalle Teniic, Knme) . . . 386 Denarius of the Confederates — Taking tlie ( )ath : and I lead of Tialia (Head, op. cit., plate 6S. 14) ...... . 400 Denarius of Mutilus — Samnite Bull goring Wolf; Head of P.ac- chante (Head, op. cit., plate 6S. 15) . . . . . 404 Sling-Bullets from Asculum (Duruy, ii. 570) ..... 409 Temple of P'ortuna (?) at Rome (so-called P'ortuna Virilis) . 415 Tetradrachm of Mithradates \T.[(Head, op. cit., plate 60. 2) . , 421 Tetradrachni struck by Sulla in Athens — Athena and thcO^l (Pritish Museum) .......... 430 Etruscan Arch at Volaterra; ........ 444 Head of Pompey on a Coin struck circ. 38-36 B.C. (Bahclon, s. v. Nasidius, ii. 251, 2) . . . . . . . . . 463 Gladiators — Combats of Secutor and Retiarius (IJaunieister, fig. 2352) 467 Helmet of a Gladiator (Baunieister, fig. 2346) ..... 469 Coin of Tigranes struck in Syria before 69 B.C. — (i) Head of Tigranes ; (2) Anlioch sealed on a Rock (Head, op. cit., 61. 13) 473 Gold Stater of Mithradates VI. (Head, op. cit., 60. i) . . . 474 Tombs of the Kings of Pontus (Perrot, Exploration Arch, de la Galatie) . . . . . . . . . . .481 Golden Gate of Temple at Jerusalem (Duruy, ii. S31) . . . 483 Bust of Cicero (Bernouilli, Rom. Ikon., i. jjlate 11), in the \'atican . 489 Sacrarium in a House at Pompeii (Overbeck, Pompeii, \. 299) . 498 Bust of Julius Coesar (Naples Museum) ...... 501 Stater of Philip I. of Macedon — (i ) Head of Apollo ; (2) Charioteer (Head, op. cit., plate 22. 17) . . . . . . . 505 Gallic Imitation of Stater of Philip (Head, op. cit., plate 57. i) 505 Figure-head of Roman Ship (Torr, Ancient Ships, plate 8) . . 509 Roman Arch at S. Remy (France) . . . . . . -515 Head of Cleopatra (British Museum) ...... 537 Denarius struck 44 B.C. — (i) Head of Caesar ; (2) Venus with Victory (Babelon, ii. 20. 21) 539 Bust of C. Octavius, afterwards Augustus (in the Vatican) . . 543 Bust of Brutus (in the Capitoline Museum at Rome) . . 549 Parody of a Scene in School (Rom. Mitlh., V. plate I. 1S90) . . 551 The Illustrations anil Plans engraved by Messrs. ]]'alker and Boutall. MAPS AND PLANS I. MAPS LITHOGRAPHED Italia before the Roman Conquest Urbs Roma, Republic (llorton, I list, of the Romans) .... Italia, showing the Colonies (Ilortnn, ^i^t of the Romans) .... Sicily (Bosworth .Smiili, Carthage) The Carthaginian Em]iire (Bosworth Smith Carthasie) . . . . . Carthage and her Neighliourhooil (llosworth 1 Smith, Carthage) . . . . ■ \ Rome and her Neighbours (Horton) Gallia (after Kiepert, in Kraner's CcEsar) The Roman Empire .... Before page I Be/ween pages 38 aful 39 I Between pages 134 and 135 To face page 150 ' Between pages 1 74 and 1 7 5 To face page 249 Between pages 402 and 403 ,, 506 and 507 552 a;;./ 553 II. PLANS AND MAPS IN TEXT Battle of Ecnomus (Bosworth Smith) Battle of Lake Trasimene . Battle of Cannn? (from Strachan Davidson, I'olybius) Campania ....... The Harbours at Carthage (Bosworth Smith The East when Rome began to interfere Greece ...... The East, temp. Mithradates and Tigranes Alesia (Kraner) .... Ilerda (Kraner) Macedonia and Greece (Kraner) Battles near Dyrrhachium (Kraner) . PAGE • 155 . 189 • 197 . 208 • 250 ■ 256 • 274 • 423 • 513 ■ 530 • 532 • 533 ADDENDA AND CORRIGENDA Page 37, line 8 from the bottom, " Roma Quadiata." The meaning of this term is disputed. Lanciani, Ki/i>is of Aucicnt Rome, p. 60, denies its application to the Palatine city. Page 44, line 3 from bottom. The original meaning and derivation of the word '"'' tribus" is far from certain. Pages 159, i6o,/^r "Calatinus" the Fasti ?ra^" Caiatinus," and similarly Mommsen prefers "Caiatia" to "Calatia" on page 114, line 3, HISTORY OF ROME CHAPTER I THE LAND OF ITALY Rome and Italy. — The history of Rome is the history of Italy. It has been much more ; it has never been much less. Her early efforts aimed at predominance in Italy ; she wielded the strength of Italy in her wars of defence and aggression, and if in her selfish and centralising policy she merged the land in the city, and sacri- ficed its population and prosperity to her own interests, she made Italy mistress of the world, and stood to the end as the head and representative of the Italian land. In her beginnings, and indeed constitutionally throughout, she was but a city-state of the sole type recognised by Pericles or Aristotle, as distinct and individual as ancient Athens or mediaeval Florence : she became in later days an imperial power, stamping' the civilised world with the unity of the Roman name. But the Rome of Augustus is, equally with the Rome of the Fabii, Italian in sentiment, interests, and policy. Her youth was singularly free from non- Italian influences ; and, however much her maturer age received and diffused an alien cultivation, she remained rooted and grounded in Italy, as Italy was in that West to which its face is turned. The struggle of Octavian and Antony, of East and West, is typical of her history from first to last. Hence to understand the place of Rome in history, we must understand the place of Rome in Italy, and the place of Italy in the Mediterranean basin. To comprehend the special character of her own laws and institutions, and of the ideas and civilisation which she implanted, we must comprehend the relation of Rome to Italian peoples, and of the Italian country to its immediate neighbours. Historically, only those features of a country are important which affect the power of a nation for offence or defence, which A 2 HISTORY OF ROME determine its splicre of action and the nature of its resources, or wliicli influence its national character and type of life. The work of Rome in liistory was twofold, — first and foremost to create Italian unity, and then, with the power so gained, to solve the problem her rivals could not solve, the maintenance of peace and order in the Mediterranean, the civilisation of the ruder races round its coasts, and the defence of that civilisation against the barbarians of the East and North. The place of Rome in Italy partly explains the union of Italy under Roman supremacy ; the place of Italy in the Mediterranean is a still larger factor in the extension of that supremacy over the civilised world. Marked Features. — Italy, the central peninsula of the three masses of land projecting into the southern sea, with the islands that essentially belong to her, enjoys a position favourable to independent development, and, in the hands of a strong people with adequate sea-power, admirably adapted for the control of tlie Mediterranean. Apart from the untrustworthy barriers of the Alps and Po, her great depth and narrow front were a powerful aid to her defences on the north ; by her central position she severed the East from the West, and holding the inner lines, could meet with security the combinations of Hannibal or Pompey. She lay back to back with Greece, her more accessible coast turned to the lands and waters of the West. The tip of her toe touches Sicily, the meeting-place of Hellene, Phoenician, Sicel, and Latin, and, through Sicily, touches upon the hump of Africa which projects Carthage upon the Sicilian shores. To her front lay Spain, the Eldorado of antiquity, blocked as yet by Phoenician cruisers. To the north the Celtic and Germanic tribes swarmed round and through the mountain-passes. In addition to these points in her position which materially influenced the destinies of Italy and Rome, the most striking features of the land are the projecting boot-like shape, the peculiar mountain-system which is its cause, the double length of coast which is its effect, and which exposes both flanks to naval attack as much as it opens them to friendly intercourse, and finally the marked contrast between the northern plain of the Po and the central and southern hill-country. Contrast with Greece and Spain. — Not only in position, but in form and character, Italy stands intermediate between the striking contrasts of Greece and Spain. Greece has no single definite mountain-barrier ; Spain is abruptly severed from Europe by the frowning lines of the Pyrenees ; the Alps partially protect, but do not isolate, Italy. Italy, diversified by sweeping bays and fertile MOUNTAINS OF TTAL V 3 coast-lands, by nortlicrn plain and sontliern slopes, remains one land, the land of the Apennines ; Spain surrounds her vast and sinj^le plateau with a rej^ular and little-broken coast ; Greece is split by windiu",'- chains and deep indented gulfs into geographical and political atoms. Greece, facing eastwards, expanded eastwards, and early assimilated Oriental culture ; Spain, till Columbus the western limit of the world, remained for centuries a barbarous country fringed by factories ; Italy, expanding to the west, passed on to Spain what she had received from Greece, and returned with increased power to absorb the sources of her own culture. Size. — The land of Italy lies roughly between parallels 37° and 46" of north latitude. Its greatest length, from N.W. to S.E., is a little over 700 miles ; its average breadth hardly exceeds 100, though from the western Alps to the head of the Adriatic it extends to 340 miles. The total area may be put at go,ooo square miles. In size, therefore, though not in shape, Italy bears some resemblance to Great Britain. Mountains. — The frontier of the peninsula to the north is formed by the wavering line of the Alps, which, stretching for 700 miles, with abundant passes, forms a rampart more striking than formid- able, and one that has never sufficed to shelter the sunny south from the inroads of the cevetous north. Rising precipitously enough from the Lombard plain, the Alps slope less steeply to the north. A short march brings the enemy who has climbed the less difficult ascent down at one swoop upon the plain. But the Alps are not Italian as a matter of geography or history. For centuries they remained beyond the sphere of Italian life. Not till Augustus were their robber-tribes thoroughly tamed and their passes paved with roads ; scarcely then did they cease to the true Roman mind to be a dubious defence, a commercial barrier, and a limit of Italian land and life. The Apennines, on the contrary, are the backbone of the country. Breaking off from the Maritime Alps above Savona, they stretch away E. and S.E. from coast to coast, severing the great triangle of Cisalpine Gaul from the true soil of Roman Italy. Above Genoa the range reaches but a moderate height (3000-4000 feet) ; rising rapidly to cover Etruria, it thrusts up higher peaks (5000- 7000 feet) both here and in northern Umbria, where it turns de- finitely S.E. After a slight break in Lower Umbria comes the massive quadrilateral of the Abruzzi, a group of lofty summits (9000 feet), cleft by torrents into deep ravines, and breaking down to pleasant upland vales. Such, too, but of lesser height, is the 4 HISTORY OF ROME mountain s^irdlc of Samnium. Ilenccfortli tlic main mass clianges direction to the south, runs down to form tlic projecting loe, and jumping the narrow rift at Rhegium, spreads itself out into the three corners of Sicily. Apart from their natural beauties, the Apennines have exercised a decisive influence on the history of the land and the character of its people. This single and continu- ous backbone has given to Italy the regular conformation, which contrasts so markedly with the complexity of outline stamped upon Greece by its chaos of mountains. The difference, too, between its eastern and western slopes determines the different character of the Adriatic and Tyrrhenian coasts. From the steep eastern side run down short spurs and swift torrents, which seam the narrow seaward strip with deep ravines. Scant room is left for cultivation ; and until the mountains leave the coast and we reach the good harbours of Brindisi and Otranto (Brundisium and Hydruntum), in the Apulian plain, there is no natural harbour of refuge from the Adriatic storms, except the open roadstead of Ancona, and the useless lagoons beneath Mount Garganus. The western side presents a marked contrast ; fertile plains are watered by ample streams, good and spacious ports formed at the river-mouths, or flanked and fronted by jutting headlands and sheltering islands, foster navigation and commerce on the tideless waters of the Tyrrhene sea. Italy, in fact, if we except Apulia in the extreme south-east and the lower valley of the Po in the extreme north, which maintained some connection with Greece and Illyria, turns her face westward, and found in the civilisation of the west her most important work. This decisive fact in her history is due to the Apennine range. Again, the mountains of Greece divide; the Apennines may be even said to unite. A dividing line between peoples they have never been. Even in the most rugged region of the Abruzzi, the easy intersecting passes, the table-lands, and upland valleys fit them for the labour and habitation of men. When the grass of the lower country is parched, the flocks and herds are driven up from the plain of Apulia to the mountain-pastures of Samnium. This happy combination is a special characteristic of Italy. In early times, indeed, the freebooters of the highlands, the Rob Roys of those days, harried and blackmailed the rich dwellers on the sunny coasts. The struggle of highland and lowland, and the final victory of civilisation under the leadership of Rome, achieving their natural union, is another marked feature which Italian history owes to the Apennines. RIVERS OF ITALY 5 V^olcanic forces have been largely at work in the formation of Italy. Apart from the acti\e craters of /Etna, Stromboli, and Vesuvius, the Campanian plain owes to its volcanic origin its peculiar beauty and richness ; while in the Roman land itself, stretching from Clusium to the Alban hills, and from the Apennines to the sea, lovely lakes fill the extinct craters, and from their pre- historic lava-streams and dust-showers come the tufa and the famous concrete of which Rome was built. Rivers. — The river-system of a country usually exercises an influence on its history only second to its general position and its relation to the sea. In Roman history it has played a lesser part. For centuries the largest river of Italy flowed unregarded through an alien territory. Gradually the Roman outposts were pushed up to Arretium and Ariminum, and thence to Placentia and Aquileia ; but in Caesar's time the Cisalpine plain was still a province, and Roman Italy ended at the Rubicon. The contrast of the two regions is marked and obvious. Tlie rivers of the peninsula proper are naturally small in size, and, however famous in story, geographically far less important. Upper Italy forms the basin of a single large stream, the Padus (Po), or, as Virgil calls it, Erida- nus, king of rivers, a great central artery whose network of veins stretches on either hand to the Alps and the Apennines. Spring- ing from its sources in Monte Viso (Mons Vesulus), it rushes to its junction with the Ticino, swollen by the torrents of the two Doras (Duria), the Sesia, and the Tanaro. But in its long and winding lower course its sluggish stream needs the impulse of swifter tributaries, the Ticino, the Adda, and the Mincio, which act as outlets for the large northern lakes, and draw through them the waters of the Alps. Of the smaller feeders from the southern ridges the most famous is the Trebia ; the largest are the Taro and Secchia. About its mouths the Po forms a vast system of marshes and lagoons. In this work it is aided by the Adige (Athesis), which descends from the Tyrol, affording an important issue to the north, and enters the Lombard plain at Verona, and by the Reno, from the Apennines, which reaches the lowlands near Bologna (Bononia). The ever-growing deposit and the constant floods have made this district an Italian Netherlands, a labyrinth of streams and canals, of lagoons and sandbanks, of reedy swamps and grassy meadows, noisy with frogs, and plagued by low fevers and mosquitos. Venice, by diverting the Brenta, keeps her waters intact, but Ravenna, the naval harbour of Augustus, is now six miles from the sea, and the same fate, yet earlier, befell both Atria and Spina. 6 HISTORY OF ROME M;iny of tlic southern tributaries of ihe I'oare in summer notliin^ more than wide, dry water-courses, but the main stream, thouj^h its unhealthy swamps prevented towns from ckistering on its banks, as on the Rhine or Rhone, was yet the highway of internal commerce, and with its numerous branches and canals irrigated and fertilised the entire plain, whose extraordinary productiveness is recorded by Polybius. At the same time there is constant danger of flood from the melting snows in May and from the autumnal rains. To meet this danger, the lower courses of the larger rivers are lined with double rows of massive dykes. But the disease grows by the remedy. The mud, unable to escape, chokes the channel and raises the river-bed above the level of the land. There comes a time when the ever-rising bank fails to bear the pressure of the confined waters, which burst the barriers in a raging torrent.^ Of the rivers of the peninsula proper, the Arno and the Tiber are the largest, and furnish the key to the formation of central Italy. Separated at their sources by less than thirty miles, their lower courses widely diverge. The Arno (i6o miles) at first flows southward, but turns abruptly to the north-west at Arezzo (Arre- tium), and thence past Florence westward to the sea. Its marshes formed a line of defence which almost baffled Hannibal ; otherwise its place in Roman history is but slight. The Tiber, running nearly due south, receives as its main tributaries, on the right bank the Chiana (Clanis), and on the left the Nera (Nar) and Teverone (Anio). Of these the Chiana, whose upper waters have recently been diverted into the Arno, rising above Chiusi (Clusium), comes in below Orvieto ; the Nar has carried the waters of the Sabine highlands since Manius Curius cut the rocks that hem the Veline lake and formed the falls of Terni (Interamna) ; while the Anio, issuing from the yEquian hills, makes Tivoli (Tibur) beautiful with its waterfalls, and enters the main stream above the city, below which the Tiber turns westward to Ostia and the sea. The tawny mud {flavtis Tiberis) has now partially silted up the river-bed, but in ancient days, though it was more usual to unload at Ostia, ships of burthen could make their way to Rome. The wine, corn, and timber of the inland districts were floated down in barges from the upper waters to the quays of the capital. It was this river- commerce which first made Rome the trading centre of middle Italy ; but her position, if favourable to trade, exposed her then, as now, to the ravages of floods, which wasted the swarming slums in the valleys (not then filled in with rubbish or levelled 1 Cf. Verg. Georg., i. 481, iv. 372; Lucan, Phars., vi. 272. RIVERS OF ITALY 7 by the enj^incci), and called for constanL 1 emulation and careful embankment. The next considerable stream, the Liris (Clarigliano), rises near LacLis Fucinus, and flowing S.E. by S., edges gradually westward between the Volscian and the central range, then turning sharply beyond Interamna, falls into the Mediterranean at Mintuniic. Be- neath Fregelkc it is joined by its chief feeder, the Trerus (Sacco), along' whose valley ran the great Latin road from Latium to the Hernican country, and thence by the bridg^e of Fregelhe to Casinum and Capua. From its junction with the Trerus the Liris ceases to be fordable, and serves as a defensive line to the south for the coast-land of Latium. The Volturnus from the north and the Calor from the south drain the mountain-valleys of Samnium ; their united stream, turning to the west, leaves Capua on the left, and passing the ielc-dc-pont of Casilinum, where the Appian and Latin roads converge, forms the natural highway from the hill -country to the sea, and an equally natural bone of contention in the long and keen struggle of Romans and Samnites for the mastery of Italy. The Silarus (Sele), the last considerable western stream, rises in the Lucanian Apennines, and enters the sea near Piestum. Henceforward the closeness of the watershed to the sea admits but of short, swift torrents. From the less abrupt slopes that skirt the instep of the boot there flow into the Gulf of Tarentum four streams of moderate size, Siris and Aciris, Bradanus and Casuentus. One stream of mark alone threads the poorly watered levels of Apulia, Horace's loud-roaring Aufidus (Ofanto), which, rushing rapidly down from the mountain angle of Samnium and Lucania, winds gently through the plain past Canusium and the fated field of Cannae. North of Mount Garganus, again, which juts like a misplaced spur above the heel, the one large stream among in- numerable rivulets and swift-falling torrents is the Aternus (Pes- cara). Its valley served as a natural link between the hills and the small emporium at the river's mouth, Aternum, and gave an obvious route for the Via Claudia Valeria, the direct road from Rome to the Adriatic. Corfinium, at the sharp angle of the stream where it turns on itself to the north and east, the most central point in the widest part of the valley, became, in the last struggle of the Marsic highlanders with Rome, the headquarters and formal capital of the insurgent tribes. The roll of Italian livers may well close with the historic name of Metaurus in the Gallic m.arch of Umbria. Lakes. — The lakes of Italy deserve a passing mention for their 8 FUSrORY OF ROME geological interest and inarvellous beauty. Here once more ap- pears the contrast of north and south. The great lakes of northern Italy, natural reservoirs, which store and regulate the waters of the Alpine feeders of the Po, Maggiore (Verbanus) on the Ticino, Como (Larius) on the Adda, and Garda (Benacus) on the smooth-sliding Mincius, rich with the praise of poets from Catullus to our own Tennyson, are chasms carved, it may be, in some age of ice, and filled at a later time, like fjords in Norway, by the sea which once rolled its waves to wash the feet of the Alps. The lakes of the peninsula are inferior in size and depth. Some, like the pools of Greece, are shallow meres with no out- let, due to accumulation of water in upland valleys. Such was Lacus Fucinus in the Marsic hills, which, like Lake Copais in Bceotia, has recently (1875) been drained, by an extension of the " emissarium " of Claudius ; such still are the famous mere of " reedy Trasimene," threatened with a like fate, and the smaller lake of Clusium, both in Etruria. Others again are found thickly scattered in the volcanic districts of central Italy. The Alban lakes and the Ciminian pool fill deep cup-shaped craters of extinct volcanoes ; the basins of the "great Volsinian mere" and the Lacus Sabatinus may have been formed Ijy subsidence and erosion. The two latter are linked by small rivers to the sea ; in other cases the water, as in Greece, pierces a subterranean passage, or is carried off in artificial channels often of remote antiquity. Climate and Products. — Taken as a whole, Italy is a healthy country. The summer's heat is tempered by the mountain breezes, the winter's cold by the nearness of the sea. Yet differences of latitude and the natural configuration of the land cause a consider- able variety in climate. In the basin of the Po the conditions are continental rather than Mediterranean. In winter bitter winds blow from the Alps, snow lies even on the plain, and the olive barely survives the keenness of the frost ; the rains of summer save the land from all danger of drought. The southern sea- board, with its sub-tropical climate, presents a direct antithesis. Campania, the coasts of the Tarentine gulf, and the Italian islands are seldom shrouded in snow ; their winter is pleasant as a genial spring. Both regions were early occupied by strangers, the north by the roving Gaul, the coasts and islands by the adventurous Greek. The land of the native Italians, which falls between the two extremes, is itself far from uniform in character, the chief contrast being- between the seaward fringe and the central hills. The Tuscan and Apulian plains under adequate irrigation are CLIMATE AND J 'RO DUCTS 9 still of great fertility, for all the ruin wrought by slavery, by war, and by the heavy hand of Sulla. The lower slopes of the hills, especially on the western side, bear the most characteristic products of Italy, the vine and the olive, as well as corn. The higher hills, now bleak and bare, were once partly clothed with beeches and chestnuts, or gave a summer pasture to flocks and herds. In winter snow covers the Samnite and Sabine highlands. A rich variety of products corresponds to this marked diversity of climate. It is true that the lemons and oranges of the south, the rice and maize of the north, with the mulberry-tree and the silk-worm, have been introduced in modern times. The plain of Lombardy, the market-garden of more than Italy, was, in the days of Poly- bius, studded with oak-coppices, where herds of swine fattened on acorns. But wheat, the olive, and the vine were from an early age common, if not indigenous, in the land. In the production of olive-oil Italy early took, and still holds, the foremost place in Europe ; her wines from the Massic hill and the Falernian fields stood high with the connoisseurs of the early empire, if they yield to-day before the rival vintages of France and Spain. These staple products were partially protected by the policy of the Senate from foreign competition. Corn-growing soon became unprofitable, and failed to hold its ovm against imported wheat, sheep-farming-, and market-gardening, whose economic effects were exaggerated by bad legislation and capitalism resting on slave - labour. Of manufactures Italy had little to boast, though the wool industry must have attained a great development. Essentially an agricul- tural land, with the decline of field industries, and the growth of foreign speculation, militarism, and luxury, the balance of com- merce must have gone increasingly against her, and the drain in payment for the food-stufi's, the art-products, the wines and luxuries of the East, only came back in the dangerous shape of tribute, of extorted interest and official plunder. But with all its advantages of climate, Italy suffers from one deadly scourge, the fever- laden air {malaria). The western plains, the southern coast, the margins of the islands, above all the Maremma and the Campagna of Rome, studded once with prosperous cities, thronged with hurrying feet, crowned with towers and beautified with temples, lie waste and desolate. Even in the first century of our era the Tuscan coast was becoming dangerous, and more than one Punic army had long since melted away by the marshes of Syracuse. Far wider tracts have been smitten with the curse in the Middle Ages and in modern times. HISTORY 01' ROME A' ACES OF A'OR'I'II ITALY il Land in Etruria and Lalium now si^en up to the froj,>- and the buffalo was in antiquity well drained and well tilled. The people were kept warm l)y the woollen clothing and blazing hearths dear to the Romans, and dwelt in cities whose great walls, as the Sardinians still find, helped to keep out the deadly mist. Even now the malaria retires before the ad\ancing plough, and crops of corn wave once more by the abandoned temples of Pa;stum. CHAPTER II PEOPLES OF ITALY The variety of races within the peninsula was no less marked than the variety of its products and of its climate. The causes are not far to seek. Waves of wandering barbarians, pushed by pressure from the north and east, or tempted by the famed fertility and beauty of the land, stormed one after another through the undefended passes, while its long coasts lay open to every bark of adventurous mariners from Hellas or the Punic settle- ments. Moreover, though Italy enjoys a unity denied to Greece, yet the frequent intersection of the peninsula by mountains favoured the division of the soil among a number of tribes, whose differences were naturally accentuated by the divergences of local conditions. Races of North Italy. — The Apennines of the north-west and the shores of the gulf of Genoa were the home of the Ligurians. Into these mountain-fastnesses stronger races had driven them from their once wide territory, which had stretched northwards over the valley of the Po, westward to the Rhone, and southward to the Arno. The men, a small dark race, wi.'d as their own land, hunters, cragsmen, and robbers, fought stoutly for their huts and caves with Gauls, Etruscans, and Romans alike. To the legions, which they long harassed with guerrilla warfare, they contributed later an admirable light infantry. The Gauls or Celts, who gave their name to the Cisalpine district, the latest wave of immigrants, descended the Alps, and pushing before them their Etruscan predecessors, seized the upper valley of the Po as far as the Mincio. Wandering bands pene- trated deep into the peninsula, but the genuine settlements of the Celts were closed by the Apennines and the /Esis. To the Roman, 12 HISTORY OF ROME as to the Creek, the Ciaul is the type of the northern barbarian, a name indiscriminately apphed to the Celt and the Teuton. The steadfast courage of disciplined troops prevailed at length over the impulsive valour and impetuous charges of the chivalrous but unstable northerners. But the terror of a Gallic tumult brought Italy as one man to the aid of Rome, and the memory of the terrible day on the Allia survived in Roman minds to give additional lustre to the victories of Caesar. By the end of the Hannibalic war the corn-lands of Cisalpine Gaul were won, and became the most prosperous in Italy. In the time of Polybius the Celts were largely merged or extinct, and Roman life and culture pressed steadily up to the Alps. The province of Venetia still recalls the name of its most ancient inhabitants, the Veneti, an Illyrian stock, who held the land at the head of the Adriatic as far inland as the Mincio against the intruding Gauls. In the fifth century B.C. they were partially civilised by the Greek colony of Atria founded on their coast, and in later days acted with Rome against their more barbarous neighbours. The Etruscans. — Beyond the Apennines, from the Macra to the Tiber, dwelt the mysterious people of the Rasenna known to the Romans as Etruscans, to the Greeks as Tyrrhenians, the standing riddle of Italian history. Neither language nor customs enable us to connect them assuredly with any known nation. They ^ entered Italy almost certainly by land over the Alps, and before the coming of the Gauls ruled on both sides the Po. Atria, Melpum, and Mantua were once Etruscan cities, and Felsina (Bononia) proudly styled herself head of Etruria. For a time, too, they held Campania and an Etruscan dynasty lorded it in Rome itself, but their per- manent home lay in the district called Etruria, where the twelve great cities long outlived the sister-leagues of Campania and Gaul. To the north they had a double line of defence in the Apennines and the marshes of the Arno ; to the south they were severed from the Italian races by the Tiber, and sheltered from the rising power of Rome behmd the barrier of the Ciminian forest, a line unbroken till the famous march of Fabius. The Rasenna were to the Romans a foreign nation speaking an unknown tongue. In contrast with the slender Italians; their monu- ments represent them as a sturdy, thick-set, large-headed race ; their 1 The Rngti, in Switzerland, spoke Etruscan, and have left behind them inscrip- tions in that language near Lugano and in the Valtellina. The Lydian origin of the Etruscans is an hypothesis due to confusion of names (Herod., i. 94). ETUUSCAArs 13 religion was apparently a gloomy mysticism, which readily degene- rated into superstition. Their cities, which in earlier times were governed by monarchs,and afterwards by close and long-lived aristo- cracies, were formed into three loosely-knit leagues of twelve cities, one in the Po valley, one in Campania, and one in Etruria itself. Each league recognised a federal metropolis at least for religious purposes, but there was little concerted action even in time of war. At first the Etruscans showed vigour on water as on land. Their galleys infested the sea, which took from them its name, "Tyrrhenian," and joined the Carthaginians in their effort to keep the Greeks from gaining a foothold in Sardinia and Corsica. Not MODEL OK A PRIMITIVE ETRUSCAN HOUSE. till Hiero I. of Syracuse defeated the allied powers off Cumae (474 V,.c.) were the Etruscan Corsairs driven from the seas. To fasten their grip upon the land, they crowned the steepest and most isolated hills with fortress-cities, whose mighty walls, arched g^ates, and huge drains still testify to the skill and power of their builders ; witness the city-gate of Perusia, the frowning hold of Volaterrre, or Cortona's " diadem of towers." But in his- torical times the vigour of the race is on the wane. The Greeks destroy their navy ; the Gauls overrun their country. Campania IS lost to the Samnites (450 R.c). Etruria, south of the Ciminian hills, submits to Rome. Hard-pressed and inwardly decayed, the Rasenna yielded, after a few faint struggles, to their most resolute 14 ///SrOA'V OF ROME enemy. The causes of this feeble resistance lay partly in the disunion of the cities, partly in the deep discontent of the op- pressed masses, but more llian all in the enervating efifecls of luxury. Gross materialism, that found its expression in feasting and drunkenness, in tasteless display and the cruel sports of the amphitheatre, is the leading characteristic of the later Etruscans. Their influence was deeply felt in the early art and architecture, in the religious ideas, the soothsaying and divination, as well as in the gladiatorial shows and the later agricultural villeinage of Rome. %/^^;m^^ WALL AMI (JATI'.W.W (U I'KKUGIA. Italian Stocks. — The genuine Italian race may be divided into four branches, the Umbrians of the north, the Oscans in the south, and in Central Italy, the men of the plain (Latium), and the hill-tribes, who, claiming descent from the .Sabines, may be styled Sabellian. The Umbrians, reputed the most ancient race in Italy, ^\•ho had once held the countr)' on either side the mountains from the Adriatic to the Tyrrhene Sea, were early expelled from Etruria SABELLTANS 15 by the invading Rasenna, and lost their eastern coast to the Senones, tlie latest immigrants from Gaul. In historical times they were confined within the district which still bears their name between the Tiber and the Apennines. In the struggle with the Etruscans the petty divisions of their numerous communities were fatal to a common defence, and, to purchase revenge on their ancient enemy, they sacrificed their independence later to Rome. The great Haminian road, secured by tlie fortresses of Narnia and Spoletium, riveted their allegiance to their new mistress. Central Italy.— The small people of the Sabines, who dwelt in the hills and dales east of Tiber, from the Nar to the Anio, a folk of primitive virtues and proverbial simplicity, were held to be the parent stock whence sprang the hill-tribes of Central and Southern Italy. Tradition tells how, during a war with the Um- brians, the pious folk vowed to the gods a sacred spring {ver sacnnii), and sent in due time their sons and daughters born in the next year to seek new homes wheresoever the gods should please. From two such bands which journeyed to the south was formed the nation of the Samnites (Sabinites) ; whereof one com- memorated the ox of Mars, their guide, in the name of their city, Bovianum ; the other called itself " the tribe of the wolf" that led them on their way (Hirpini, from hirpics). The clans of the centre were even more closely related to the Sabines. The Picentines of the coast took their name from another emblem of Mars, the wood-pecker {pictis) ; while the Marsi, grouped round the Fucine lake, arrogated to themselves, as bravest of the brave, the name of the war-god himself. Near akin to these latter tribes were the other peoples of the Abruzzi, such as the Marrucini, the Vestini, and Pasligni, between whom and the Oscan races of Samnium and Apulia lay the Frentani, a people of mixed blood. In the long wai-s of Rome and Samnium, all these Sabellian tribes, closely connected as they were in origin and history, adhered generally to the Latin power ; and although in the Social War, the last struggle for independence, the Marsi took the lead, the contest was fought out to the bitter end by Samnites and Lucanians alone. In their customs and institutions, again, there is great similarity. The mountains which split them into fractions were at once a bar to intercourse and a strong protection. Content with their scattered hamlets, nestling in secluded valleys, they never de- veloped an urban civilisation, and, like the Arcadians in Greece, formed not organised states but loose confederacies of cantons. 1 6 HISTORY OF ROME The iEqui, Hernici. and Volsci.— South-east of the Sabines lived tlic kindred tril)e of tiic /lujui, fierce enemies of rising Rome, but curbed later by the fortresses of Alba Fucens and Carsioli. On the rocky hills of the Trerus valley were perched the strongholds of the Hernici, Anagnia, Ferentinum, and Frusino. The hostility of this tribe to the yEqui and Volsci, between whom its land is sandwiched, explains its persistent and most useful loyalty to Rome. The Volsci, whose more level territory included the coast from Antiurn to the Pomptine marshes and the lower valley of the Liris, were a nation of obscure origin, ecjually opposed to Roman and Samnite. In early times the chief enemies of Rome and Latium, pushing their conquests to the southern slopes of the Alban hills, they fell at length before the combined attacks of Samnites and Romans, and left their land as a prize for " the fell, incensed opposites" to wrangle over. Latins. — The Roman Campagna, now a type of picturesque desolation, was once thickly peopled by Rome's nearest kinsmen and closest friends — the Latins. Their league of thirty cities filled the plain from the Tiber and the Anio to the Volscian hills, from the sea-shore to the western spurs of the Apennines. On these spurs stood two of their strongest and most famous cities, Tibur and Praeneste (Palestrina), but the centre and capital of the con- federacy was the ancient town of Alba Longa, raised on an isolated ridge of volcanic hills, which stands out boldly above the surround- ing plain. On the Alban mount was held the Latin festival, when all Latin towns joined in annual sacrifices to Jupiter Latiaris. With the religious festival was connected a meeting of deputies from the several communities, which formed a federal court of justice and arbitration. In both assemblies Alba presided, but it is unlikely that this titular leadership implied a real political supremacy. Each city retained its independence, but the possession of a common centre and the habit of common action c[uickened in the Latin race the sense of national unity. Oscans. — As the Apennines grow more regular and uniform the tribal divisions become larger and less marked. There are but three branches of the great Oscan race which spread itself over the highlands of South Italy. Of these, by far the most important are the Samnites, the Lucanians and Bruttians being impure and inferior representatives of the same stock. The Samnite niountains were the refuge of the Oscans when Greeks and lapygians occupied their coasts, and the stronghold from which they swooped down later to reclaim their ancient TKIliES OF SOUTH ITALY 17 heritage. 'I'licir wandering Ijands of warlike adventurers seized for themselves large tracts of the Apulian and Camjjanian plains, but neither here nor there could they cope with the masterly and resolute policy of Rome. The league of the four cantons,' firm for defence, was ill organised for aggression. Their random conquests were achieved in pursuance of no definite policy and supported without concentrated purpose. They founded no town like Rome, to he their leader in war and peace. The long struggle of Rome and Samnium is the struggle of lowland and urban civilisation against a people of highlanders, husbandmen and freebooters, content with the old-fashioned village life and tribal ties. Samnium fought to the death ; and even after superior policy and the forces of civilisa- tion had prevailed, their undying love of liberty and restless valour broke out in bloody revolts from the days of Pyrrhus and Hannibal till Sulla destroyed the nation root and branch. The population of Campania was made up of many elements. The older Oscan inhabitants were conquered and civilised partly by Greeks and partly by Etruscans. Some centuries later (450 B.C.) new streams of Oscans poured down on the bright and pleasant coast-lands, and turned the tables on the foreign colonists. About the same time the Samnites, spreading southward, formed the new nation of Lucanians, whose weight pressed heavily on the Greek cities of the south, and hastened their decline. From the Lucanians, a century later, broke off the Bruttians, rucie robber-herdsmen who lived in the deep forests and inacces- sible granite mountains of the toe of Italy. Always subject to foreign lords, these savage tribesmen remained under the Romans little better than slaves. lapygians. — Sharply distinguished from the Oscan races are the lapygian clans — Daunians, Peucetians, Messapians, who par- celled out among themselves the heel and spur of Italy. Con- nected doubtless with the Illyrians of the opposite coast, they must have crossed thence to Apulia by sea. Their natural affinity to the Greeks is proved by their ready adoption of Greek writing and civilisation, and by the similarity of local and tribal names. But the persistence of the primitive authority of the chieftain in the clan dates their settlement in Italy ages before the era of the Greek colonies. After resisting for centuries the attempts of Tarentum to enslave them, they were forced by the aggression of the Samnites to welcome the intervention of Rome. Greeks. — The coast of Southern Italy from Cuma; to Tarentum 1 In ordei" from north to south, Caraceni, Pentri, Caudini, Hirpini. B 1 8 HISTORY OF ROME was so studded witli Circek settlements as to earn for the district the name of Magna Cnecia. The description of the colonies of Italy and Sicily belongs properly to Hellenic history. But a cer- tain number play an important part in the history of Rome. The Ionian colony of Cum;c, on the Campanian coast, the earliest and boldest of these great adventures, was the first centre of Greek culture and influence in Italy. Dorian Tarentum, the queen of the south, the first of Italian cities in manufactures and commerce, with its sheltered harbour, its purple-fisheries, and its wool, led the Itahot Greeks in their struggle with Rome. Messana and Rhegium commanded the passage of the straits, a point of vital importance in the Punic wars. In those wars Neapolis and the Greek sea- ports manned with their sailors the young fleet that won the sovereignty of the seas. Syracuse, long preserved from subjection by the wise policy of Hiero 1 1., who held the balance between Rome and Carthage, became the capital of a rich province. Wealthy and luxurious Sybaris, it is true, had perished and left its place desolate ; Acragas, the most western stronghold of Hellenism, ceased to be a Greek city ; and Croton, the home of philosophy, athleticism, and medicine, fell to the Bruttians ; but the persistence of the Greek language in Italy and Sicily forces us to recognise this foreign element in the population. Sicily. — Sicily is an Italian island, but it is no mere appendage of Italy. Largest and most fertile of Mediterranean islands, it lies in the centre of the sea, at once parting and uniting its eastern and western halves. It offered many attractions to the great colonists of antiquity, the Phoenicians and the Greeks. There are, indeed, no navigable rivers, and the central districts are obstructed by mountains, but a long series of harbours welcomes the sailor everywhere but on the dangerous southern coast, and the plains and valleys of the isle, known later as " the granary of Rome," grew rich crops of corn and pastured a famous breed of horses. Thus Sicily became the meeting-place of the nations, the battle-ground of East and West. The native races, Sicels and Sicans, Italian perhaps in origin, became by adoption Greek in speech and manners, and the story of Sicily was henceforth the story of the struggle of the Carthaginian and the Greek, till Rome, the successor of the Syracusan tyrants and of Pyrrhus the Epirot, as champion of Europe against Asia, and Hellene against Semite, drove the Punic ships from the seas, and their garrisons from the great fortresses of the western coast. Greek civilisation was saved, but independence was lost, and Sicily became the earliest province of POSITION OF RO.]rE 19 Rome, to whose destinies her own were united for nearly seven hundred years. Sicily owed its early civilisation to its central position on the main trade-route of the ancient world ; Corsica and Sardinia re- mainctl in a backward state not so much from natural poverty as from the exclusive policy of Carthage, and the fact that they lay out of the beaten path of commerce. The Punic settlers who tilled the plains and worked tlie mines of Sardinia, and the Etruscans who held the fringe of Corsica, failed themselves to introduce even the elements of civilisation, and, from selfish fear of Greek competition, combined to expel the Phocicans from Alalia. Under Roman rule, Sardinia, malarial as it was, rivalled Sicily in her output of corn, and Corsican forests supplied excellent timber to the dockyards. Position of Rome. — Such being the geographical conditions of Itah', and such and so many its tribes and states, what were the special advantages and qualifications of Rome for welding these divided elements into a coherent whole? In the first place, she was allowed to develop without interference on Italian lines. The policy of Carthage was content with the monopoly of com- merce and navigation, and aimed only at the reduction of her Greek rivals. The Greeks, absorbed in their intestine struggles and with minds turned to the East, had no eyes for the growth of Rome. The ambitious projects of Athens were shattered in the harbour of Syracuse. The Etruscan power was on the wane, and the casual incursions of marauding Gauls served only to unite Italy round its strongest state. In herself she was fitted for her mission not only by the excellence of her mihtary system, the steady courage of her soldiers, and the tenacious policy of her statesmen, but also by her geographical situation. The eternal city lies in the very centre of Italy, on the one navigable river of the peninsula. The seven hills, flanked by the great outwork of Janiculum, are the most defensible position on the lower Tiber. Near enough to the sea for purposes of commerce, — and Rome was ever a commercial city, — it was far enough from it to be safe from pirates. Rome, in fact, was the predestined capital of Latium and the mart of Central Italy. The leader of Latium became the champion of the plains against the highland clans. During the long contest for the supremacy of Italy, her masterly diplomacy was powerfully aided by her central position in the task of isolating her foes and beating them in detail. Her legions, moving on inner lines, struck with concentrated force against her scattered enemies. She bestrid the narrow peninsula and severed the north from the 20 HISTORY OF ROME south. Arkno\vIcdL;ed mistress of Italy, it l)ccainc her thity to provide for its defence and to wrest from its Semitic foes the control of its seas and islands. The inevitable conflict with the Punic sea-power, and the equally inevitable extension of the Italian frontier to the Alps, launched Rome on a career of victory which ended only with the subjug^ation of the world. CHAPTER III THE LEGENDS Ol" THE KINGS TRADITIONAL DATES Y-X. .\.U.C. Romulus 753-717 1-37 Numa Pompilius 715-673 39-81 Tullus Hostilius 673-642 81-112 Ancus Marcius 642-617 112-137 L. Tarquinius Priscus 616-579 138-175 Servius Tullius 578-535 176-319 L. Tarquinius Superbus 535-5'° 219-244 It is as hopeless to retell as it is impossible to omit the legendary stories of the birth and growth of Rome. Shadowy as are the personages, and unhistorical as are their achievements, the genius of poets and painters and the unquestioning faith of a people has thrown a halo of consecration around them. They may have no foundation in fact, they remain a part of history. The Founding of Rome — When Troy was taken by the Greeks, the hero /Eneas fled, bearing" with him his father, Anchises, and his household gods. Led by the star of his mother, Venus, at length he reached his fated home on the far-otf western shore. The king of the land, Latinus, welcomed the stranger, and would have given his daughter, Lavinia, to be his bride. But the king's people and the new folk quarrelled, and by-and-by Latinus was slain and his city taken. Then ^neas married Lavinia, and built a city and called its name Lavinium ; and the peoples became one, and were called Latins after the old king. But Turnus, king of the Rutulians, took to him Mezentius, king of Etruscan Ca^re, and fought with /Eneas at the river Numicius, and was slain. And /Eneas vanished away, but was worshipped of his people as a god. And Ascanius, his son, who was also called lulus, I'eigned in his stead. Ascanius slew Mezentius in battle, and built a city on a high hill, and called it Alba Longa. There he reigned, he and his children, for three hundred years. FOUNDATION OF ROMF 21 Rut when the a])pointccl limes were fulfilled the king Numitor was reigning in Alba, and his younger l^rother, Amulius, rose up against him. He took his kingdom and slew his sons, and his daughter, Rhea Silvia, he set to watch the sacred fire of Vesta that she might be a virgin and not marry. But the god Mars loved the maiden, and she bore him twins. And Amulius cast the babes into the Tiber to drown them ; but the river had overflowed, and the floods floated the basket in which the twins were to the foot of the Palatine hill by the sacred fig-tree ; and they were thrown nut on land, and a she-wolf from the cave of Lupercus suckled them. Then Faustulus, the king's herdsman, found the twins and Inought them up as his own sons, and called them Romulus and Remus. But when they were grown men, it clianced, out of a CONTOKMATF,. /TINEAS LEAVING TROV — HEAP r)l' TRAJAN. certain cjuarrcl of the herdsmen, that they were made known to their grandfather, and, when they had slain the tyrant, they set Numitor again on his throne. And from Alba they went forth to build a new city on the banks of the Tiber where they had been saved ; and a question arose between them who should be its founder, and they sought answer of the gods by the flight of birds, watching the heavens all night. At sunrise Remus beheld from the Aventine hill six vultures, but Romulus from the Palatine saw twelve. So he built the city there and called it by his own name, and when Remus leaped the unfinished wall and scorned the work, he smote him that he died, and said, " So be it with any who dare cross this wall." And the city was called Rome. Romulus. — To fill his new town with men, King Romulus made an asylum or place of refuge on the Capitol for the bloodguilty 22 HISTORY OF ROME and the exile. And tn win wives for tlic outcasts he devised a festival and games, to whicli llie men of the country-side and, above all, the Sabines brought their wives and daughters. But in the midst of the shows armed men, at a sign from the king, bore off the women to be their wives. This was the " Rape of tlie Sabines," which brought many wars upon Rome. But Romulus slew Acron, king of C;enina, with his own hand and dedicated his arms to Jupiter {spolia opiDia), and drove back the men of Crustumerium and Antemnit". Then came the Sabines with WOLF WITH ROMULUS AND REMU.S. (Bronze in the Palace of the Consej~vatori at Rome.) Titus Tatius, their king, and made their camp On the Quirinal hill. And they took the Capitol by treachery and gave treason its meed. For Tarpeia, daughter of the captain of the citadel, for the promise of the bright things they wore on their left arms, — their golden rings and armlets, — opened to them the gate ; but they cast their shields on her that she died. Then the Sabines fought with the Romans in the valley between the Capitol and the Pala- tine, and drove them back to the very gate of their city, till Romulus vowed a temple to Jupiter, " the Stayer of Flight." So the flight was stayed, but as the battle raged anew the Sabine wives ROMULUS 23 of the Romans rushed in between their husbands and their kinsmen, and made them at peace with one another. So they became one people, and the two kings Romukis and Tatius ruled over them. But after Tatius had been killed by the men of Laurentum, Romulus reigned alone and made laws for his people. He parted them into three tribes, the Ramnians, Titians, and Luceres, and in each tribe he made ten divisions called curia". From each curia he chose one hundred men to fight on foot and ten on horseback, so that the number of the legion was 3000 footmen, and of the horsemen, called celeres^ three hundred. And when the bur- gesses met together at the summons of the king, they voted by ctiricc, — that is, the voice of each curia went by the majority of votes in that curia, and that of the whole people by the majority of curia". Then from the heads of houses Romulus chose his Senate or council of elders, that they might advise him for the DENARIUS OF FIRST CF.NTUKY B.C. — TITUS TATIUS AND THE RAPE OF THE SABINES. common weal. But in private each burgess father of a family ruled his household with power of life and death ; and he was bound to protect his dependents {clientes) from wrong, while they must do him loyal and faithful service. Now when Romulus had ruled for nearly forty years, there was one day an assembly in the Field of Mars ; and a great storm befell, with thunder and lightning-, so that the people were scattered. And when the storm passed Romulus was not. But as one Julius Proculus came from Alba, he appeared to him on the way, and bade the Romans be of good cheer, for Rome should rule the earth ; and, so saying, departed heavenward. So he became a g^od, and they worshipped him as Quirinus, " the Lord of Spears." Numa Pompilius. —But the senators would choose no one to be king after him, but ruled in turn each man five days. And there was strife among the people for a year between Roman and Sabine. At last they so devised that the Romans should choose a king 24 HISTORY OF ROME from among the Salines. So they chose Niima Pompilius, for he was wise and Iioly ; and he took the kingdom when lie had inquired of the gods by the flight of birds and the ciiricc had consented to him. Now King Numa was a man of peace, and cared most for the worship of the gods and the ways of husbandry. And he learned wisdom of his wife, the nymph Egeria, who met him by night in her sacred grove. So lie set up the holy brotherhoods, the Pontifices, who ordered the rites of the gods, and the Augurs, to divine their will, and the Flamines to minister to the great gods, Jupiter, Mars, and Quirinus, and the Salii to worship them with song and dance and to keep the shield that fell from hea\en. And he made the Vestal Virgins to watch the fire on the holy hearth of the city. Moreover, he divided the lands that Romulus had won, and set up landmarks sacred to Terminus, laying- a curse on any who should move the same. Also he parted the crafts- men by their callings into nine guilds, and built a temple of Faith. So in his days there was peace in the land and the gates of Janus were closed. And he died at a, good old age, and was buried under the hill Janiculum, and the books of his ordinances by him ; and Tullus Hostilius was chosen in his place. TuUus Hostilius. — In the days of Tullus there was war between Alba and Rome. For when a quarrel arose upon the border, each sent heralds to the other and would have satisfaction for the wrong. But Tullus kept the men of Alba without answer till word came that their city had denied justice, and that the Roman Fetiales had declared war, so that the reproach might lie with Alba. Then Cluilius led the Albans against Rome, and the trench of his camp is called to this day "the ditch of Cluilius," and it lies within five miles of the city. And when he died Mettus Fufetius was made dictator in his room. But, ere the armies met, the chiefs agreed together and chose champions to decide the quarrel, for each side three brothers born at a birth — the Horatii for the Romans, and for the Albans the Curiatii. So they fought before the hosts, and two Romans were slain, and the Alban three were wounded. Then the last Horatius made show of flight that he might separate his enemies as they pursued, and so turned and slew each as he came up, for they were hindered by their wounds. But as the Romans returned in triumph, with Horatius at their head bearing his triple spoils, his sister, who was betrothed to one of the dead, came forth to meet him by the gate ; and when she saw the cloak her own hands had broidered for her lover on her brother's shoulders, she cried out and wept. And Horatius, angered, stabbed her to the EARLY KINGS 25 heart, with bitter words, because she wept for her country's foe. For this thing the two judges of Ijlood sentenced him to death, ikit he made appeal to the people with the king^s will ; and the people rememliered the deeds he had done for them, and gave car to his fathei-'s prayer. So he was set free from the guilt, after he liad passed beneath the yoke and made offering- to the spirit of the dead. And the yoke was called thereafter " the sistei-'s beam " {soron'iai! ligiUiim)^ but the spoils were hung on a pillar in tlie Forum — \\\(tpila Hoj-aiia — to be a memorial in later days. JUit when Tullus bade the Albans aid him, according to their bond, in battle with the men of Veil and Fidenas, Mettus came with his host, but stood aloof waiting on the end. So Tullus, after he had won the battle, called the Albans together unarmed, as the custom was, for a speech, and placed armed Romans round that they might neither fight nor flee. Then he took the traitor and bound him to two chariots and drave them different ways, so that he was torn asundei'. And he sent horsemen to destroy Alba, but the people he set to live on Mons C;elius in Rome. But when he had prevailed in war against the Etruscans and Sabines, his heart was puffed up and he forgot the service of the gods. And after that he had reigned thirty-two years, Jupiter smote him with hghtning and consumed him and his house. Ancus Marcius. — Now the next kingr was the grandson of Numa, and he brought back his ordinances and set them up in the Forum on wooden taljlets for all to see. Ancus loved peace, but, when the Latins plundered his lands, he took their cities by the sword, and set their people on the Aventine hill. So he made the city larger, and dug a great trench across the valleys to strengthen it without, and for evil-doers within he built a prison under the citadel hard by the Foruni. He also fortified the hill Janiculum and joined it to the city by a wooden bridge, and at the mouth of the Tiber he built the harbour of Ostia and made a colony there. So Ancus ruled honourably for three and-twenty years, and went down to the grave in peace. Lucius Tarquinius Priscus. — In the days of Ancus Martins came one Lucumo to Rome from Tarquinii in Etruria, whither his father, the noble Demaratus, had fled from Corinth. Lucumo left Tar- quinii by counsel of his wife, Tanaquil, for there he was denied ad- vancement, because his father was a stranger, though his mother was a noble Etruscan. Now at Rome she hoped he would win honour and worship by reason of a sign ; for, as they drew near in their chariot, an eagle bore off his cap on high, and wheeling 26 HISTORY OF ROME replaced it on his head. And the Romans called him, after the name of his city, Lucius Tarquinius, and he served King Ancus well in council and in war. So the king" made him guardian of his sons ; but Tarquin persuaded the people to choose him to reign over them, for the kingship went by choice. And he overcame the nations round about and took their cities, so that the Etruscans sent him the golden crown and the sceptre, the ivory chair, the purple robe, and the twelve axes in the bundles of rods {fasces), which were the emblems of royalty among them. """"" Then Tarquin began the great temple on the Capitol which he had vowed in war to Jupiter, and built huge drains to carry off the water from the valleys between the hills, and levelled the inarket-place or Forum, surrounding it with booths and a covered walk. Moreover, he made a circus or racecourse for horses and chariots, after the manner of the Etruscans. But when he pur- posed to make new tribes, and centuries of horsemen, the augur Attus Navius forbade it. Then the king mocked at him, and asked, " Can the thought of my mind be fulfilled?" and the augur answered by the birds that it might. So the king said, " Cut me, then, this whetstone with this knife ; " and he did so, and the omen of the birds was made true. And from that time forth the king obeyed his voice. Yet did he double the number of noble houses in each tribe, and so did he with the centuries of the knights and the Senate also. Now there was a certain slave of the king named Servius Tullius, and men said he was the child of the hearth-god, for one day, as he slept, a flame played round his head and did him no hurt. So Tanaquil made him free, and he served the king faithfully and was in favour with all men. But when the sons of Ancus heard that the king had wedded him to his daughter and would make him heir, they plotted to slay Tarquin and strike for the crown. And they smote the king by the hands of hirelings, as he sat to give judgment, but got no profit of their treason ; for Tanaquil shut the gates of the palace and gave out that the king was not dead, but had appointed Servius to rule till he should be healed of his wound. And even when men knew that the king was dead indeed, Servius kept his state and ruled the land without consent of Senate or people. Servius Tullius. — This Senius won the goodwill of the com- mons, for he divided among them the conquered lands, and upheld the cause of the poor, so that in later ages men still lo\ed the memory of" good King Servius." He subdued the Etruscans under SER VI US TUT. I. TUS 27 him, but made alliance with the Latins and built a temple to Diana on the Aventine, where Latins and Romans might make common sacrifice. And he brought the Quirinal and Viminal and the Esquiline hills within the city, and all the seven hills he com- passed about with a great ditch and rampart, which is known to this day as the wall and the mound of Servius. Moreover, he divided the city in four parts — the Suburan, Esquiline, Colline, and Palatine — and the land without into twenty- six, and the parts he called " Tribus." The tribes were made up of men who dwelt together in one place, and they had common WALL OF SERVIUS TULLIUS. sanctuaries and common feasts and head-men over them. And he arranged the assembly of the people so that men should vote according to their wealth in land and cattle, and to the order of the army in the field. For he divided the whole people into five classes, and in each class he parted the elder and the younger, the younger from seventeen to forty-five years for service in the field, the elder men for the defence of the town. And the ordering of the classes was this : — Each man's place in the assembly was as his place in the ranks of battle, and his place in the ranks was as his power to clothe himself with armour and bear the burdens of war ; so his place went by his estate, by his acres of land, and by 28 HISTORY OF ROME his sheep and oxen. Moreover, he divided the classes into hundreds or centuries for service, and to each century he gave one vote in the assembly ; yet he left not the classes ecpal, but gave the chief power to the richer men who served the state on horseback or on foot in full armour. For to the first class he assigned eighty centuries, forty of the older and forty of the younger men ; to the fifth class he gave thirty centuries, divided in like manner ; but to each of the other three he gave but twenty. Of the trumpeters, the armourers, and carpenters he made four centuries ; but the other craftsmen and men who had less than a certain sum he sufiTered not to serve in the army, but made of them a separate century, that of the Proletarians. Lastly, he made of the horse- men eighteen centuries, adding to the six old twelve new ones formed of the richest and noblest citizens ; and they received a horse from the state, so long as they served, and were called '' Knights of the Public Horse." ^ 1 TABLE OF CLASSES AND CENTURIES. EXERCITUS. Number. Census. Arms. Equites. 18 centuries 100,009 asses ( Cavalry equipment and \ equus publiciis. Pedites. C Helmet, shield (clipei/s), ■I greaves, breastplate, ( lance, and sword. ist Class 80 centuries 100,000 asses 2 centuries of smiths and carpenters. 1" Helmet, shield (.fr;////w), I greaves, lance, and ( sword. 2nd ,, 20 centuries 75,000 ,, ( Helmet, shield, lance. 3rcl ,. 20 ,, 50,000 ( and sword. 41I1 ,, 20 ,, 25,000 Lance and javelin. 5th „ 30 . „ 2 centuries of trum- peters. II.OOQ Darts and slings. I century of proletarii. N.B. — The term class, as applied to the four lower grades, is an anticipation of later usage [vide pp. 46 and 296). Similarly, the rates given are the later money-equivalents of original assessments by land and cattle. THE LAST KINGS 29 So the king gave votes to tlie poorest and lowest, hut no power- in the state. Nor were there many poor nor many ricli in those days, for the holdings of land were small, and trade was but simple as yet. The stout farmers had the chief voice, and though the younger were more in number than the elder, yet Servius gave equal weight to the centuries of the seniors, that age might liavc its say. Thus was made the great assembly of the centuries, that suffered change, but was not done away till the people lost their freedom. King Servius had no son, but two daughters, and them he had wedded to the two sons of King Tarquin. Now the sweeter maid he gave of set purpose to the haughty Lucius ; to Aruns, the good- natured, he gave the proud and cruel Tullia. But the thing fell out otherwise. For those evil ones, when they had rid them of their gentler mates, came together, as their souls desired, to work wickedness. Now Tarquinius feared the purpose of the king to do away with the kingship and set the people free, and made a conspiracy against him with the young nobles, who hated him for his goodness to the common folk. So when the appointed day came he seized the king's throne, and sat thereon. And when the king came and rebuked him, young Lucius claimed it for his father's son, and took the old man and cast him down the steps of the senate-house, and sent armed men who slew him as he fled. And Tullia, his wife, drove furiously to the Forum to greet her lord as king, and as she went back her father's body lay bleeding in the way. But she turned not aside from her driving, so her chariot and dress were splashed with her father's blood. Wherefore men called that street " the street of crime " {vicics scelcratus). Tarquinius Superbus. — So by bloodshed and violence came the proud Tarquin to the throne, and so by violence he kept it, till they made an end of him and his house. He reigned as a tyrant, neither regarded he justice and judgment, but he spoiled the rich and oppressed the poor. Moreover, he joined himself to Octavius Mamilius of Tusculum, and set up his power over Latium. And when Herdonius of Aricia spake against him in the federal meeting he compassed his death by false witness, and that easily, for all men feared him. But the men of Gabii stood out against him, till Sextus, his son, betrayed them into his hands by craft. For he fled to Gabii for refuge from his father's wrath. And the men of the city received him gladly, and by degrees they moved him to the chief place, for the young man prospered in all he undertook, the Romans ever fleeing before him, as the king bade them. Then 30 HISTORY OF ROME he sent a messenger to know his father's will. Now Tarquin walked with the messenger in a garden and said no word, but smote down the tallest popjjies with his stick. And Sextus under- stood the thing, and by false charges brought the chief men of Gabii to death, and then gave up the town into the hands of Tarquin. The king iinished the great works which his father liad begun. He built the great temple on the Capitol, and removed from the site many shrines of the gods of the Sabines ; but the shrines of Terminus and of Youth would not be moved, so he enclosed them within his temple. Moreover, as they dug for foundations, they lighted on a human head. Now these things were signs that Rome should be head of the earth, and that its youth should not fade nor its bounds go back. And he dedicated the temple to the great Etruscan three, to Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva. And on a certain time there came a strange woman to the king, who would have him buy at a price nine books of the pro- phecies of the Sibyl of Cuma; ; and when he refused, she burnt three and offered the rest at the same price. But he mocked at her for a mad woman. And she came yet again with but three left and asked the same price : so the king was astonished, and took counsel of the augurs and bought the books. These were the Sibylline books that w^ere kept in a stone chest beneath the Capitol, and two men were set to keep them and consult them in the hour of need. And on another time a snake came out of the altar in the king's house and ate the offering on the altar. So Tarquin sent his sons Titus and Aruns even to Delphi to inquire of the oracle of the Greeks, and with them their cousin Lucius Junius, whom men called Brutus, the dullard, because he feigned to be witless for fear of the tyrant. And his oftering was like to himself, for he gave a simple staff, but within it was filled with pure gold. Now when the young men had inquired for the king, they asked Apollo which of them should reign at Rome. So the voice said, "Whichever of you shall first kiss his mother." Then Titus and Aruns drew lots for this, but Brutus, as they left the temple, fell down as by chance, and kissed our common mother Earth. But the end of the Tarquins came on this wise. When the host was besieging Ardea of the Rutulians, and the king's sons were supping with their cousin, Tarquinius of Collatia, they dis- puted of their wives which was worthiest. So they rode to Rome to see. There found thej^ the wives of Aruns and Titus and FALL OF THE MONARCHY 31 Sextus making merry ; but wlien they came to CoUatia at dead of night, they found Lucretia, Collatinus' wife, working with her hand- maids at the loom. So they judged her worthiest, and rode back to camp. But Sextus was smitten with an unholy passion for Lucrece, and he came alone to Collatia, and was welcomed as a near kinsman. But he paid back good with evil, and wrought his wicked will by foul threats. Then good Lucretia sent for her father, Lucretius, and her husband, and they came with their trusty friends, Publius Valerius and Junius Brutus. And when she had told them her tale and bidden them avenge her of her shame, she drove a knife into her heart. Then Brutus drew out the knife from the wound, and swore to visit her blood on Tarquin and upon all his race, and that no man should henceforth be king in Rome. And they took her body to the market-place that men might see the deeds of the Tarquins. Moreover, Brutus, the captain of the horse {tribunus ccleruiii)^ assembled the people, and won them to depose the tyrant and banish his whole house. And he went down to the camp and drave out the king's sons, for Tarquin had gone to Rome to quell the tumult. But he found the gates shut in his face, and he fled with his sons to Ctcre in Etruria. And this was the end of kings in Rome. The First Consuls, — Then the people gathered in their centuries in the Field of Mars, and were minded to choose year by year two men to share the royal power, to be called consuls. So they chose Brutus, and with him at the first Collatinus. But the people feared Collatinus for his name's sake, because he was a Tarquin, and they prayed him to depart from Rome. And in his room they chose Publius Valerius. And the consuls filled up the places in the Senate which the king had left empty, and each ruled for a month at a time, and had the lictors then to bear the fasces before him. " " ' Then came men from the banished king to claim his goods, and they made a plot with many of the young nobles to bring the king back, and among these were the two sons of Brutus. But the consuls were warned, and had the young men seized. And Brutus sat on the judgment-seat, and bade scourge and behead them all, nor spared his two sons, nor turned his face from the sight, for he loved his country more than his own flesh and blood. And the goods of the Tarquins they gave for a prey to the commons, to break all thought of peace between the princes and the people of Rome. Then Tarquin stirred up the men of Veii and Tarquinii, in 32 HISTORY OF ROME Elruria, to make war on Komc. And ere the liatlle was joined, Aruns spurred liotly upon Hrutus, when he saw liini in royal array marshalling the horse ; and each ran upon the other with the spear tliat they died. 'I'hen the hosts fought stubbornly till even- ing. But in the night the Etruscans went home, hearkening to a divine voice. And the Romans bore Brutus back to the city and buried him ; and the matrons mourned for him a full year because he had avenged Lucrece. Valerius now ruled alone, and built a great house on the hill Velia, above the Forum, and men feared that he would make him- self king, and use the hill as a hold for his guards. Therefore he assembled the people and came with lowered fasces for a sign of submission, and pulled down his house and rebuilt it at the foot of the hill. Then he passed two laws to protect the people. The first declared that man accursed and worthy of death who should seek to become king; the second allowed a citizen condemned to death to appeal from the magistrate to the general assembly. So Valerius was hailed the People's Friend (Publicola). And in Brutus' place the people chose Spurius Lucretius, and when he died, Marcus Horatius. Now both Valerius and Horatius wished to dedicate the temple on the Capitol which Tarquin had built, but the lot fell on Horatius, to the great displeasure of the friends of Valerius. So he dedicated the temple, but even as he was praying with his hand on the door-post, one told him that his son was dead. But he said simply, "Then let them bury him," and made no lament of evil omen, because he honoured the gods above his son. Lars Porsenna. — And by-and-by caine Lars Porsenna, king of Clusium and head of Etruria, with a great host to bring back Tarquin, and took the fortress on the hill Janiculum, and drove the Romans back over the Tiber-bridge. Now the bridge was of wood, and as the rest fled, three brave men turned in the narrow way, and faced the Etruscan army, even Horatius Codes, Spurius Lartius, and Titus Herminius. These three made good their post till the bridge was cut down behind them. As the last supports gave way Lartius and Herminius ran back, but still Horatius stood alone on the farther bank. And when the bridge had fallen, he prayed to Father Tiber and gave his life and his arms into his keeping, and so swam back to the city he had saved, sore spent, but unhurt by flood or foe. And for this deed the Romans set up his statue in the Comitium, and gave him as much of .the common land as he could plough in a day. LEGENDS OE THE EARLY KEPUBLLC 33 But Rome was liard l^eset by siej^e and famine. So Caius Mucins, a )oung- noble, went forth to slay Porsenna and make an end. He found entrance to the camp ; and when he saw a man in a purple robe sitting on a throne and giving pay to the soldiers, he went up into the crowd, and stabbed him for the king ; yet was it but the king's scribe. So they dragged him before the kmg-. But when they threatened torture if he revealed not the whole matter, he thrust his hand into the fire that was on an altar, crying that pain was a small thing compared with glory. But Porsenna marvelled, and bade him go in peace. So Mucins was won by kindness to tell the king what no torture could wring from him, how three hundred noble Romans had sworn to take Porsenna's life, and would follow the first adventure, each in his turn. Thus won Mucius his name of Scaevola, the left-handed. liut Porsenna made peace with the Romans, taking from them all the land of Veii, and for hostages ten youths and ten maidens. And when Clcelia taught her fellows to escape, and they swam across the Tiber to the city, the Romans kept faith and sent the maidens back. Then Porsenna marvelled again both at the courage and the good faith of the Romans, and he set Clcelia free. And the land and the other hostages he gave back later, because the Romans entreated his beaten armies kindly, what time they fled before the Latins to the gates of Rome. Battle of Lake Regillus. — So Tarquin, foiled once more, went to Tusculum, unto his son-in-law, Octavius Mamilius, the chief of all the Latins. Then the Romans, fearing the power of the great League, named a single leader to rule the people as king for six months, lest with two chiefs their counsels should be divided. .So Titus Lartius was the first Dictator, and two years after, they chose Aulus Postumius, who made Titus ^butius his Master of the Horse. Then the Latins came with the house of Tarquin and the Roman exiles, and fought with the Romans by the Lake Regillus, in the land of Tusculum. In the centre the banished king charged the Dictator, but fell wounded, and was borne out of the throng. But on the left Mamilius ran .^butius through the arm, and pressing on for all his wounds, restored the fight. And the battle swayed this way and that : here fell M. Valerius ; there Herminius sniote Mamilius down, but fell himself ere he could spoil him of his armour. At last Postumius vowed a temple to the twin brethren, Castor and Pollux, if they would give him the victory. And, as he spake, two youths on horses white as snow rode in the Roman front, and pressed the Latins back, and drove them to their C 34 HISTORY OF NOME camp. And when men sought tlicm, they found no trace of them save a hoof-mark on the rock, that no earthly liorse had made. But as the old men sat in Rome waiting- for news, behold two horsemen young and beautiful on white horses bathed with the foam of battle, who washed their horses in the pool by Vesta's House, and told the people of Rome's victory. And when they had done this they rode away and were seen no more. So the Romans built a rich temple, as Aulus had vowed, to Castor and Pollux on the spot where they washed their horses ; and its pillars stand in Rome to this day. But King Tarqum went to Aristodemus, the Greek tyrant of Cumaj, alone, for all his sons had fallen in the wars. So evil met its reward, and Rome was delivered from the rule of kings. HEAD OF ROME. CASTOR AND POLEUX. CHAPTER IV THE REGAL PERIOD The Legends are Unhistorical. — The legends told by Roman chroniclers about the founding and the early history of the city cannot be regarded as sober narratives of real events. They rest on the insecure basis of oral tradition alone, for the written records perished at the sack of Rome by the Gauls in 390 B.C. Nor are the traditions in themselves so probable as to inspire belief They give us, indeed, admirable pictures of old Roman ideals and institu- tions, but the personages and events portrayed in them are shadowy and unreal. Romulus and Numa, for instance, simply personify the two great elements of ancient law, the secular and the religious, which find a later and weaker embodiment in the slightly different figures of Tullus Hostilius and Ancus Marcius. But formal criti- SOURCES OF THE LEGENDS 35 cism is not now needed to prove that we have here to do with myth, not history. Euhemerism. — What then is the origin of these myths, and to what causes may their growth be ascribed? The first and most obvious source is to be found in Euhemerism, ^ which turned into plain history the tales told of the gods. The method was intro- duced at Rome by Ennius, and was readily followed by the Augustan writers, who rationalised the legends by the omission of the supernatural and the conversion of Italian gods into primitive kings. It suited the more prosaic and literal mind of the Roman, and harmonised with his view of things spiritual. The vivid imagination of the Greeks peopled the hills and streams with Naiads and Oreads, and saw in the motion of the cloud the hand of Zeus, the bounty of Demeter in the produce of the earth. The art of their sculptors fashioned ideal forms in the likeness of men and women, whose sayings and doings made an ever-growing story full of human interest, enriched and fixed by the genius of their great poets. The Italians, on the other hand, worshipped with deeper but more distant reverence shadowy beings, rarely em- bodied in wood or stone, whose name, attributes, and cult alone were saved from oblivion. And so the very reverence of the Italian mind, together with its literalness, as scepticism advanced, made the historical explanation a natural and popular method. To take examples from the legend of Romulus : the twin-brothers are the two Lares or guardian-deities of the city ; in the story they are born of a Vestal, because their worship was closely con- nected with that of the Hearth-goddess ; their names are derived from that of the town, for Remus is but a variant of Romulus. So, again, Titus Tatius is the eponjaiious hero of the religious brotherhood, the Sodales Titii, and of the ancient tribe of the Titles. Quirinusis the old Italian god of war, identified by Diony- sius of Halicarnassus with Mars ; hence even the legend, which deifies Romulus as Quirinus, represents him as the son of Mars. ./Etiological Legends. — In the story of a founder we naturally look for the mythical element ; elsewhere other influences are more marked. Setting deliberate fiction aside, the most potent factor in the making of traditional history is the desire to explain obsolete usages and half-forgotten institutions, and to give some account of the origin of public buildings and ancient monuments. In the wedding-ceremony of the Romans are observed traces of * Euhemerus was a Greek (circ. 300 B.C.) wlio first systematically explained myths as history, treating the gods as heroes worshipped for their valour. 36 HISTORY OF ROME tho i)riiiiitive system of marriage by capture, relics without doubt from an earlier stage of society. 'I'lic feigned violence with which the bride was snatched from her mother's arms and her hair parted with a spear is found in the marriage-ritual of savage tribes throughout the world. The Romans explained this by a legend, "the Rape of the Sabines," and e.xpressed its anticjuity by telling the story of the founder himself. So, too, the legend of Remus symbolises the inviolability of the city-wall. FICUS RUMINAI.IS, WITH PICUS AND PARRA : SUCKLING TWINS. URBS ROMA ; AND WOLF Again, legends tend to gather about places of worship and memorials of a forgotten past. The story of the infancy of Romulus and Remus centres round the sacred fig-tree {Funs Riiiiiinalis) and the worship of Faunus Lupercus in the cave hard by. Faunus, the god who keeps the flock, is transformed into Faustulus, the shepherd who scares the wolf from the twins. The temple of Jupiter Stator may have suggested the legend of the rally of SOURCES OF THE LEGENDS 37 the Romans there, while the details at least of the tale of the Horatii may well have been invented to account for a group of monuments 1 which stood together near the Carinie. Greek Fiction. — The remaining source of tradition is deliberate fiction, probably due to Greek influence. The connection of yEiieas with Egesta (/En. v.) and Cunii^ can be traced back to the Sicilian poet Stesichorus, and to the tradition of the colonisation of the Italian from the /Eolic Cyme. The fable that Numa was a pupil of Pythagoras was invented by some ingenious Greek so ignorant of Roman chronology that he ante-dated the philosopher by two centuries. Especially deep is the debt of the Greek historical novelists to their father Herodotus. Not to speak of the marked resem- blances between the tales of the childhood of Cyrus and of Romulus, the stratagem of Sextus Tarquinius at Gabii, and the story of the poppy-heads are taken straight from Herodotus' narrative of the capture of Babylon (iii. 154), and of the strange behaviour of the tyrant Thrasybulus (v. 92). With equal certainty we may ascribe the embassy to Delphi to the lively fancy of some patriotic Greek. The Truth in the Legends. — Such being the main sources of error in the traditional history, it remains to discover and piece together the scattered fragments of truth preserved in the legends, like flies in amber. In this task we gain great help from two sources. The researches of archaeologists into the early buildings of ancient Rome reveal some glimpses of the city's material growth, while the study of the laws and customs of a later day, with the aid of the science of comparative law, sheds some rays of light on the original institutions of the Roman state. To deal first with the growth and history of regal Rome. The Original Settlements. — The germ of the eternal city lay in that square town (Roma Quadrata), whose well-built tufa walls may still be traced on the slopes of the Palatine. Here stood the relics of Romulus, the sacred fig-tree and the thatched hut ; round it ran the Pomerium traced by the founder's plough ; by one of its gates was the shrine of Jupiter Stator. An extension of this scjuare city of the Palatine is found in the Septimontium — the original seven hills — which included the Palatine mount with its two outlying ridges (the Cermalus overhanging the swampy Velabrum, and the 1 These were the altar of Janus Curiatius, near the sororium Tigillum {cf. p. 25), and that of Juno sororia at which the Horatii sacrificed, and the Pila Horatia in the Forum. 38 HISTORY OF ROME Velia running towards the Esqiiilinc), together with the three peaks of the hitter hill, Fagutal, Oppius, and Cispius, and the fortress built to protect the low valley of the Subura. But this settlement of the Septimontium was not the only city enclosed in the circuit of the later walls. On the Quirinal and Viminal, opposite, stood a town perhaps Sabine, perhaps merely Latin, in origin, distinct certainly from the Palatine city and probably hostile. Of the existence of this separate settlement there are man) proofs. Dis- tinctive names survived to later days. There were duplicate worships of Mars and double colleges of Salii and Lupcrci, while the legends of the double kingship and the twofold door of the double-headed Janus may point to the same conclusion. Hence the hypothesis that there were originally two rival towns, divided at first, united afterwards, the settlement of the Montani on the Palatine mounts, and of the Collini on the Quirinal hills. The Unification of the City. — In the next period of develop- ment, the age of the Tarquins, the names and remains of Roman buildings serve more fully to confirm the substance of the tradi- tional account. The legends themselves show that no great ex- tension of Roman territory took p'ace under the first four kings. Fidenaa remains Etruscan, the Anio is the boundary towards the Sabines, and in all probability the fossa Cluilia, but five miles from Rome, served to mark the frontier towards Latium. Only along the Tiber towards the sea does Rome extend her boundaries, securing command of the river by the fortification of JanicuJum and the foundation of Ostia. But with the advent of the Tarquins, Rome becomes an important state, mistress of Latium and Southern Etruria — a position she again loses on the expulsion of the kings. To the same monarchs are ascribed the buildings which first made Rome a great city. Round the scattered settlements, already noticed, .Servius Tullius built a wall, whose colossal size may be estimated from the remains still existing on the Aventine, and the rampart {cig'ii'cr) recently destroyed in part, to make room for a railway station. Within this wall was included the whole of Republican Rome, as well the older towns on the Palatine and Esquiline, the Quirinal and \'iminal, as three more hills now first brought within the bounds of the city, the Caelian, the Aventine, and the Capitol. On this last, the most famous of the seven hills, was built the citadel, with the well-house (Tullianum) and prison, the treasury, and the great temple of Jupiter, the chief monument of the Tarquins. To the Tarquins, too, are attributed the great drains {cIoiwct), which turned the marsh-lands of the Subura, THE PRIMITIVE CITY 59 the Forum, and Velabrum into firm ground. On the land thus reclaimed was the Comitium, or place of assembly, and the Forum, or market-place of the united Roman people. Near the north-west corner of this oblong stood the Curia, or senate- house, and on the south-east the buildings that typified the unity WALL ON THE AVENTINE. of the new city, the temple of Vesta, the city hearth, and the house of the king {rcgia). The Etruscan Kings of Rome.— It is hard to resist the impres- sion that all these great undertakings are the handiwork of the master-builders of Italy, the Etruscans. The massive walls, the 40 HISTORY 01' ROME arched drains, and tlic Capitolinc lcnij)lc*, with its tlircc shrines of Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva set side by side, and its long, low front, resting on but six pillars, are all eminently characteristic of Etruscan architects ; and when we find that great nation spreading in early times from the Alps to the Bay of Naples, we cannot but suppose that Rome and Latium came beneath its sway. Nor are there wanting traditions of their rule in this district. In the yEneid, Turnus (Turrhenus or Tuscan) of Ardea is closely allied with Mezentius, the Etruscan tyrant of Cicre. Cato declares the Volsci were once subject to Etruscan rule, and his statement is borne out by the name of one of their cities, Tarracina ( = city of Tarchon), and the Etruscan remains found at Velitrae. Roman legends assert the Etruscan origin of the Tarquins, whose name (Tarchon or Tarchnas) means lord or prince ; Tuscan tradition, preserved to us by the Emperor Claudius and a tomb at Volci, makes Servius Tullius an Etruscan prince, Mastarna, the friend of Caeles Vibenna. The legend of Porsenna is but another attempt to conceal the fact of an Etruscan conquest of Rome. Hence we infer that the monarchy of the Tarcjuins represents the rule of Etruscan princes over a concjuered Latin race, and their expulsion a rising of the natives of the land against their foreign rulers. The Institutions of Rome :— The Familia. — Yet, though there may have been a Sabine settlement on one of the Roman hills, and though Etruscan princes once were lords of the city, primitive Rome is essentially a Latin town, Latin in its character, its customs, and its institutions. The foreign elements were absorbed or thrown off; they modified, may even have profoundly affected, but never controlled its true development. The unit of the Roman state was the family, built up of father and mother, sons and daughters, slaves and clients. In law the household was governed absolutely by the paterfamilias ; to its master each member was subject, wife and child as much as slave and dependent. He is absolute owner of all property possessed or acquired by its members ; he disposes of their persons and their goods at pleasure. By custom, however, thougdi not by law, the house-father acts as representativ^e rather than despot ; he is con- trolled by the tiios inaiorum, by public opinion, and by the council of the near relations. He, too, is priest of the household, and maintains the worship of the ancestors and the household gods. By his side within the gates stood the mistress, high in reverence and dignity, who kept the house and ruled the maidens working at the distaff. When the father died the sons or nearest males EARLY INS'rJTUTIONS 41 inlicntcd his goods and his authority ; the daughters remained as children or as wives in the hand of their male protectors. The Gens and the CHents. From the family develops the house or clan {gens). All descendants in the male line of a single ancestor, whether by blood or adoption, regarded themselves as members of one house. Bound to the house by ties of dependence were the clients, enfranchised slaves, or refugees who placed themselves under the protection of some Roman chief, and handed down the CLOACA MAXIMA. relation to their children. In strict law their persons and property were wholly at the disposal of the head of the house ; by custom they enjoyed almost complete freedom. The patronus, indeed, was morally bound to protect the person and advance the interests of his client in return for the services rendered by the client to his protectors. The Plebs. — From these dependents in the first instance arose a new class in the community, the "plebs" or common people. Men who for years had enjoyed this practical freedom gradually 42 HISTORY OF ROME emancipated themselves from the legal bonds of clientship, and gained a right to the protection of the state against their ancient masters. The number and importance of this protected popula- tion grew apace, as Rome became a power in Central Italy. Com- merce drew within her strong walls merchants from less favoured towns, who lived as settlers under the king's guardianship. And to these elements of the new body must be added the inhabitants of conquered cities brought to Rome, as tradition tells us, and settled there as clients of the community, that is, of the king. The King. — The Roman state sprang from the union of clans and families. Its institutions grew naturally from those of the smaller associations, and upon their model. At the head of the united community was the father and ruler of the state, the re.\ or king. The Roman kingship is compounded of three elements. From one point of view, the king is the hereditary and patriarchal chief of the people, as the father is of the household ; from another, the chief priest of the nation, as the father is of the family ; but most distinctively, differing herein from the father of the family, he is the elected representative and magistrate of a free state. The compromise on which the monarchy rested is best seen in the traditional method of election. On the death of the king the supreme power reverted to the assembled " fathers " {paircs)^ the representatives of the old houses {gcntcs). This council of elders appoints an inter-rex, who holds office for five days, and then nominates another elder to take his place ; eventually, by some inter-rex so nominated, the new king is, with the advice of the elders, chosen. Next the inter-rex proposes to the assembled people the election of the king thus designated. Finally, the vote of the people is ratified by the approval of the gods, as given in the solemn ceremony of inauguration, and by the assent of the fathers, the guardians of the religion of Rome. Thus the king is nominated by his predecessor, chosen by the Senate, elected by the people, who bestow on him the sovereign power {iinperiuiii)^ and confirmed in his office by the assent of Heaven. He is, during his life, the sole magistrate of the state, the guardian of the city hearth and high priest of its religion, the leader of his people in war, and the supreme judge in peace. His orders and his judgments are not fettered by written statutes ; all officials, whether religious or secular, derive their authority from him and are but his assistants or deputies ; he alone can convene the Senate or people, and has the right to propose new laws to the people, and to address them publicly in their assemblies. Yet the THE KING 43 GROUND-PLAN AND ELEVATION OF THE TEMPLE OF VESTA [reitored). 44 HISTORY OF ROME authority of the king is limited, not al)sohite, for lie is the minister, not the maker, of the law. His ])lenary ]KJwcr is given him by the assembled burgesses, whose allegiance is due to the law-abiding ruler, not the lawless lord, of the state. When the kings trans- gressed the ancient customs {^inos maioruDi) of the land, they forfeited their claim on the allegiance of the people. The Senate — By the side of the monarch stands the Senate, the council of the "fathers" or heads of the great houses of Rome. Orig-inally, no doubt, the elders had been chieftains of the separate clans from whose union the Roman people was formed. Thus in one aspect the Senate is a representative council of chiefs, whose ancient independence is proved by their lifelong tenure of office, and whose claim to be the ultimate source of authority, civil and religious, is shown by the appointment of the inter-rex, and by its right to confirm or annul all resolutions of the people {pairum auctoritas\ including the election of the king. But when the allied clans became one people, under one chief magistrate, the Senate lost its ancient supremacy. Nor is there any relic left in historical times of its representative character. The king, as head of the united state, nominates whom he will to fill up its ranks, and may at his pleasure refuse to consult his council, or reject the advice it has tendered. The Comitia Curiata, — The earliest assembly of the Roman people was that in which the free men voted by curies {comitia curiata). The whole Roman people, plebeian as well as patrician, were members of the thirty curies, and were summoned to the assemblies in the Comitium. Originally, however, the plebeians were purely passive members Oi the assembly, and only acquired the right to vote at a later period. Each curia comprised several gentes, knit together by participation in common rites and festivals, by the possession of a common chapel, hall, and hearth, and the tradition of a common ancestry. The curies were, in the earliest days which history records, the only important division of the Roman people. Their number, it is true, reminds us of the shadowy triple division of the people into Ramnes, Titles, and Luceres, and the traditional number of the Senate, three hun- dred. A comparison of the figures with the ordinary number in colonies — ten curies and a hundred decurions or senators — taken in conjunction with the derivation of the old Roman name for a division of the people {tribus = a. third), confirms the suggestion that the city was formed by the aggregation of three distinct settlements. KEFOKMS OF SERVIUS 45 But these three obsolete tribes and tlie ancient houses were no longer effective political divisions ; for such purposes the curia is the only unit recognised by the primitive constitution. In the assembly the vote of each curia was decided by the majority of individual voters ; that of the whole people by tlie majority of curies. The assembly, however, only met when summoned by the king or inter-rex, and in the earliest times had but few oppor- tunities of exercising its powers. Its right to elect magistrates is limited to the acceptance or rejection of a new king ; the necessity for its concurrence in all important innovations is exemplified only perhaps in the case of the rupture of an existing treaty with a foreign power, in the grant of the franchise to a non-citizen, or the transference of a citizen from one family to another by the ceremony of adoption. But the assembly was also called to- gether to witness the most solemn acts of a private or religious character, the making of wills, the inauguration of flamens. and the proclamation of festivals. Of the three powers in the Roman state, the king, the Senate, and the people, the first alone is constantly active ; yet for all great changes the concurrence of the people and the sanction of the Senate are requisite, so that the monarchy is limited on all sides by the rights of the burgesses. But to these rights is attached the corresponding duty of the defence of the state in war, for on the burgesses fell the burden of personal service in the legion and of building the city walls. The Reforms of Servius Tullius. — The first great constitutional reform, the foundation of the comitia centuriata, is ascribed to one of the Etruscan kings of Rome, Servius Tullius. But it is probable that the changes made by these prmces were in the first instance financial and military. The royal army had been composed of 1000 footmen and 100 horse from each of the old three tribes. Tar- quinius Priscus meant, we are told, to create three new tribes and centuries of horsemen, but, daunted by the opposition of the augurs, left the old forms unchanged, while he accomplished his purpose by doubling the strength of each division. Servius Tullius undertook a more thorough reform, by reorganising the army on a new basis, that of property. Though the old six centuries of horsemen were left untouched, twelve fresh squadrons were formed of the richest citizens ; and in the ranks of the footmen were included the rest of the freeholders, patri- cians and plebeians alike, arranged according to the value of their landed estate. The unit adopted in the new organisation 46 HISTORY OF ROME was the existing century or company of a hundred men ; these companies were grouped in grades, and drawn up in phalanx. The richest citizens, in complete armour, formed the four front ranks of the phalanx {classis). Behind them stood the less perfectly armed spearmen of the second and third grades, while the fourth and fifth grades served as light-armed skirmishers, all four inferior grades counting technically as infra classctn. The whole force is divided into two equal parts, the field army, coinposed of the younger men {jiiniorcs), and the army of reserve of older men {seniores)^ each part containing eighty-five centuries and forming most probably two legions {cf. pp. 28 and 296). Traces of the Military Origin of the Comitia Centuriata.— That the original purpose of the Servian reform was military is sufficiently proved by the forms retained in the later assembly. The people in the comitia centuriata is called the army {exerdtus), and organised for war, not peace. Its divisions are the century or company of horse or foot, the " classis" representing an original distinction by armament, the corps of juniors and seniors. The president, who is of necessity invested with full military power (hnperium), summons the burghers to meet him outside the walls, in the field of Mars, by the sounding of the war-trumpet and the hoisting of the standard. In the earliest times the citizens as- sembled in arms, and were arrayed under their standards in order of battle, and even in later days the companies of smiths and trumpeters maintained their separate existence in the assembly. The original purpose of the Servian reform was the imposition of military service and the war-tax {tribiituni) on all freeholders {assidj/i), but the duty of defending the state could not long be separated from the right of deciding its policy. The natural consequence was, that the Servian army was converted into the comitia centuriata, which, at least from the establishment of the Republic, ranked as the chief assembly of the Roman people. The Local Tribes. — Another institution ascribed to KingServius underwent a similar transformation. To facilitate the levying of troops, Servius divided the city and its territory into four local districts, the Palatine, Esquiline, Suburan, and Colline tribes. Each tribe at first included not only a district of the city, but also a portion of the country outside the walls. In later days the four original tribes were confined to the city, while the* country was portioned out in new tribes. Throughout history the tribe is a local district, marked off for administrative purposes ; but just as the Servian classification was originally military, and only later THE CONSULATE 47 political, so the tribe, at first intended to serve as the basi's for the levying of troops, became in its turn the most important political division in the Roman people. It would therefore appear that the memory of good King Servius has been preserved rather by the consequences which followed in the course of years from his reforms than by their original pur- pose. Yet we cannot doubt that those reforms were conceived by a master-mind. They have not the air of being a compromise reached by hard contlict between two hostile parties, but bear the stamp of a great legislator. Rome would seem to owe to Servius the debt which Athens acknowledges to Solon and England to Alfred. CHAPTER V THE INSTITUTIONS OF THE NEW REPUBLIC The Consulate. — The traditional account of the expulsion of the kings is no doubt an historical romance, but it is a romance founded on fact. The bitter and abiding hatred of the very name of king at Rome proves the truth of the tradition that the monarchy became a tyranny and was abolished by a revolution. But it is characteristic of the Roman people to retain as far as possible existing institutions. Hence, even in abolishing the mon- archy, they retained the title of king for a priestly functionary {rex sacrorum) debarred from holding any other office. A more important legacy left by the monarchy to the new Republic is the conception of sovereign power {iinperiuiii). This power, it is true, is no longer held for life by a single individual, but entrusted to two colleagues, the consuls, for the term of a single year. Yet the consuls, though only annual magistrates, are true successors of the king, and joint-inheritors of his authority. For if in practice there must have been from the first a division of functions, the law recognised no such distinction. A consul had in all cases the right to forbid what his colleague had enjoined, and by his intercession to annul the force of the command. By this peculiar institution of co-ordinate magistrates the Romans contrived to maintain the sovereign power intact, and yet to provide against its abuse by individual self-will. With the same purpose, the tenure of office was limited to a 48 HISTORY OF ROME single year ; and thougli in law the official acts of a consul were valid, even if he refused to resign his magistracy at the end of the appointed term, in practice the consuls seldom dared to disregard in this way the spirit of the new constitution. Hence, whereas the king had been practically irresponsible because his authority ceased only with his life, the consul, on his retirement from office, was responsible for the use he had made of his power. The two great differences which distinguished the position of a consul from that of a king were the existence of a colleague and the annual tenure of office ; but others of the old royal prerogatives were also lost in the change of the constitution. By the Valerian law the consul was compelled to allow an appeal to the people against a sentence which affected the life or status {caput') of a citizen. This measure, though it prescribed no penalty but infamy for its transgression, and needed repeated re-enactment, was for centuries the Habeas Corpus Act of Rome and the keystone of her citizens' liberties. Another royal prerogative much limited at this time was the right to delegate powers. The two lieutenants of the king for peace and war, the guardian of the c\\.y {prccfectiis urbi) and the master of the horse {viaglsier equittiDi) play no part under the Republic. The prasfectship becomes a mere form, and the mastership of the horse is called to life only when a serious emergency demands the temporary restoration o^ monarchy in the shape of the dictatorship. The consuls may delegate their military functions, but they cannot name at pleasure deputies to represent them as judges or magistrates. Their assistants in these departments attain the rank of standing officials with definite functions. The quaestores parricidii, if they existed at all under the kings, were mere deputies ; they are now regularly entrusted with criminal jurisdiction and the care of the state chest. Till the year 447 B.C. these officials were appointed by the consuls, but the annual tenure and the clearly marked duties of their office made them in a measure independent of the superior magistrate. Again, though the consul, like the king, had the right of naming- his successor, yet his prerogative was limited by the people's claim to designate the man on whom the nomination should fall. He was, it is true, no mere returning officer at a Roman election. He might, and did, reject particular candidates, either refusing to record votes tendered for them or recalling to the poll centuries who had given them their suffrages. But, though at a crisis the consul might reassert the old right of a supreme magistrate to name his THE IMPERIUM 49 successor, as a rule he bowed to tlie expressed will of the people.^ Lastly, the appointment of the priests was withdrawn from the consuls. The priestly colleges obtained the right of filling up their ranks by co-optation, while the Vestals were nominated by the chief college, that of the pontifices. In this way a separation is made between ci\il and religious authority. Imperium Domi and Imperium Militiae.— Another distinction of greater significance in history first appears at this time, that be- tween civil and military authority. In war the consul retains SELLA CURULIS AND FASCES. absolute power of life and death, in token of which the lictors bear the axes before him, but in peace his authority is subject to the right of appeal to the sovereign people, in deference to whom, within the city, the axe is laid aside by the lictors. Thus there is a clear distinction between the absolute power of the general over his army in the field {iviperiuni niiliticc) and the constitutional authority of the magistrate over the people at home {imperium domi). Dictatorship. — This limitation and division of the powers of the magistrates secured in /ordinary times the liberties of the people, D 50 HISTORY OF ROME but in time of war the divided command was a source of serious danger. To meet such emergencies the Romans retained the monarchical principle in the dictatorsliip. After consuUing the Senate, either consul had the right of nominating whom he would as dictator, or master of the people. The dictator possessed the old royal powers untrammelled and unlimited ; he disposed at will of the treasure of the state and the lives of the citizens. From his sentence there was no appeal, and all magistrates were subor- dinate to him. In fine, he was a temporary monarch, and as such named his second in command, the master of the horse ; and was accompanied by four-and-twenty lict^srsjjcaring^axes in the fasces. lUit in no case might the dictator retain office for mor'e tlian six months, nor name a successor to take his place. Broadly speaking, then, though kingship was abolished, royal power was retained, and that power might be revived at a crisis in all its ancient fulness and entrusted to a single man ; yet the essence of the new consti- tution was the limitation of the old regal authority by the collegiate character and annual tenure of the magistracy, and by the explicit recognition of the sovereignty of the people. The Senate. — The abolition of the monarchy left the legal position of the Senate unaltered. The consuls called the Senate together, presided over its debates, and enforced its resolutions just as the king had done in the past. The Senate cannot legally give commands to the magistrate, but may only offer advice. Yet in practice the permanence of the Senate gave it a decisive influence over a shifting and divided magistracy, and enabled it to dictate the policy of Rome. It is probable that plebeians were at this period first admitted into the ranks of the Senate, but this infusion of new blood did not alter the character of the council, which remained the chief bulwark of the old patrician aristocracy. One most important privilege, the right to ratify or reject all proceedings of the centuries, the election of magistrates, as well as the passing of laws, was reserved for its patrician members. By withholding their sanction {patricm auctoritas) the heads of the old burgess houses could make the decisions of the assembly void, and so keep the commons in subjection to the will of the patricians. Assembly. — By the expulsion of the kings the people had acquired the important rights of annually electing its rulers and of acting as a court of appeal in capital cases. The sovereign people to whom these rights belonged was the army of freeholders (comitia centuriata) created by Servius Tullius, not the old curiate assembly, which was now gradually confined to mere formalities, such as the PATRICIAN GOVERNMENT 51 confirmation of llic niaj^istrales, already chobcn by the assembly of the centuries, in their authority {lex curiata dc impcrio). All the chief prerogatives of the sovereign people, the right of legislation and the power of peace and war, as well as the election of magis- trates and the decision of criminal appeals, passed to the new comitia centuriata. In this assembly the plebeians doubtless formed the large mass of the voters, but since it was a majority of centuries, not of individual votes, that determined the decision of the people, their numerical superiority was of little service to them. For the centuries of the knights and of the first class, which mainly consisted of old burgesses, outnumbered those of the lower classes ; and, further, the six patrician centuries of knights possessed the valuable privilege of voting first {prccrogathui). Thus, while the comitia centuriata formally secured the liberties of the commons, it left the substance of power in the hands of the upper classes {cf. Table, p. 28). Patrician Government. — Nobles and commons had united to throw off the galling yoke of despotic monarchs, but, now that this overshadowing authority was gone, there begins a long'^ and fierce struggle between the orders for the fruits of victory. The lion's share fell in the first instance to the patricians. The plebeians had indeed gained the clear recognition of their rights as citizens of Rome ; they had won the right to vote in the assembly of freeholders, and the right to appeal from the sentence of the patrician magistrate to the verdict of that assembly. Never- theless, while the plebeians won the shadow of liberty, the old burgesses, now become a patrician nobility, retained the substance of power. In the comitia centuriata their vote and influence could as a rule secure them a safe majority ; but even had it been other- wise, that body had too little independence of action seriously to contest their supremacy. Resolutions in the comitia were intro- duced by patrician magistrates after consultation with an aristocratic Senate, and subsequently required the sanction of the patrician members of the Senate {patrutn aiictoritas). In elections the voters could only choose patrician candidates nominated by patrician magi- strates, and subject to the approval of the curies, in which patrician influence preponderated, and to that of the patrician senators. The useful machinery of the omens and the working of the calendar was controlled by patrician priests. Thus the legal supremacy of the people in their assembly was at every turn hedged in and crippled by the powers of a patrician magistracy and Senate. The first eflect of the Revolution was the transference of power 52 HISTORY OF NOME IVoiii an indix idual king to a close corporation, represented by its special organ, the Senate, and working through the magis- trates. The ensuing period of constitutional history is naturally filled with the long struggles by which the plebeian masses wrung from the patricians those cherished privileges which secured them the monopoly of office and authority. The ruling"^ corporation was far more influenced by aristocratic prejudice than the monarch, who, standing on a height above all his subjects, was more likely to be a just judge between different classes and different orders. The king might, and probably did, lean on the support of the masses against the power of the aristocracy, but the annual republican magistrate had neither time nor inclination to shake himself free from the fetters of patrician prejudice. Even if there arose a man bold enough to defy his order, his actions could be thwarted by the opposition of his colleague or the gloomy pre- dictions of patrician priests, and, in the last resort, his power suspended by the appointment of a dictator. Thus at first sight it would appear as if the commons of Rome had escaped the tyranny of a single monarch only to place on their necks the harder yoke of a narrow aristocracy. Yet the privileges gained, the clear re- cognition of their claims as individuals to citizenship, and of the full sovereignty of the whole people assembled in their centuries^ though at the time rendered nugatory by the powers entrusted to the patricians, were an earnest of their future victory in the struggle between the orders, and of the complete ecjuality between patrician and plebeian which crowned that victory. CHAPTER VI THE FIR.ST STRUGGLES OF THE PLEBEIANS TRADITIONAL DATES B.C. A. U.C. Secession of the Plebs 494 260 Spurius Cassius' Agrarian Law 486 268 Publilian Law 472 zSz Grievances of the Plebeians. — The plebeians were not slow to discover the real meaning of the late changes. To them the new oligarchy was as oppressive, at the least, as the old monarchy. It was, indeed, the natural and obvious policy of the patriciate to thwart the rising ambition and depress the social status of their discarded GKTEVANCES OF THE PLEBEIANS 53 allies. Class feeling- and political uUercst alike urged them to exclude the rich plebeian from the charmed circle of the official order, and, by robbing the poor farmer of his hard-won liberties, to re-establish the client system in full force for their own benefit. Political and social inequalities, however, formed a small part of the burden which afflicted the lower classes, whose sufferings from direct oppression were further aggravated by the losses sustained by Rome in the wars which followed the fall of the monarchy. Material distress, in the first instance, precipitated the inevitable conflict, and, like true Romans, the plebeians attacked first, not the rule of the aristocracy in the abstract, but the practical oppressions of the patrician magistrates and Senate. The most glaring examples of cruelty and misgovernment were the savage law of debtor and creditor, the arbitrary action of the executive magistrates, and the exclusive use and shameful maladministra- tion of the public lands. As regards the last, the magistrates and Senate had leagued themselves together to exclude the plebeians from all use of the common pastures and all share in the arable domains, the enjoyment of which was confined to the privileged class. At the same time they failed to exact the legal dues for the usufruct of the land, and thus robbed the treasury of present revenue and gave the occupant a claim to the equitable forbear- ance of the state in future. With a decreasing territory allotments to the poor were out of the question. Thus the public domain was monopolised by the old burgesses to the detriment alike of the poor and the public. Against this monopoly the plebeians were to figdit many a weary battle, but their first efforts were aimed against the arbitrary sentences imposed by patrician magistrates, and the stern cruelty of the old Roman law of debt. The horrible injustice perpetrated in the name of law moved the masses, not so much to diminish the power of the magistrates, as to provide them- selves with a refuge from its abuse. The First Secession. — If we may trust Livy and Dionysius, it was the law of debt which first caused an open revolt of the poor against the government. The small farmer was called away from home by continual wars, and often returned only to find his home- stead a heap of ashes. In his distress he fell into the hands of some patrician money-lender, and finally found his way into a private prison, there to be loaded with chains and torn with stripes. Driven to despair at length, the plebeians refused to serve in a war against the Volscians, and only enrolled them- selves in the legions after the consul Ser\alius had freed the 54 HISTORY OF ROME clel)tor.s from prison and ))romisc(l thcni liis ])r()tcction for the future. But when the troops returned victorious from tlie field, the other consul, Appius Claudius, enforced the law of debt with merciless severity. So, on the renewal of the war, the plebeians again refused to serve, till Manius Valerius, of the "house that loved the people well," was made dictator. Victory again crowned the Roman arms ; but when the dictator proposed reform in the .Senate, he was met by a selfish and oljstinate opposition. At length the patience of the army waiting before the gates gave way ; they deserted their general, and marched in full array to the "Sacred Mount" between the Anio and the Tiber. Here the leaders of the secession threatened to found a new plebeian city, a rival to the old Rome of the burgesses and their clients. But at this point the Senate yielded, and authorised Valerius to treat with the plebeians. The seceding party, too, had the sense to see the community of interest which bound them to the other half of Rome, and recognised in the old fable of the belly and the members, told them by Menenius Agrippa, the moral that union is strength. They stipulated, however, that the miseiy of the lower classes should be relieved by the foundation of colonics for poor farmers on the public land. Tribunes of the Plebs.— But the kernel of the covenant between the orders lay in the provision for the appointment of two tribunes of the plebs, to be chosen annually by the plebeians from their own body, who received power to protect the commons from the high-handed injustice of patrician magistrates, and whose personal security {sacro Siincfuui) was guaranteed for ever by the solemn oath of the people. The tribunate thus created was henceforward the representative of the plebeian body, its constant safeguard and sanctuary, and the instrument of its political victories. The first duty of the tribune was to succour the oppressed, his chief function to cancel any command of a consul which infringed the liberties of a citizen. But his "intercession" was in no case valid against the "imperium" of a dictator, or even of the ordinary magistrate a mile beyond the walls. His power was confined to the city, and his protest, limited to the acts of executive magistrates, must be made in person. Hence he must always sleep in his own house at Rome, with his door open night and day, that none might seek his aid in vain. This right of interference with special acts was at first used simply for the protection of an aggrieved individual, but was gradually stretched till the tribune could forbid almost any administrative act. THE TRIBUNATE 55 The Judicial Powers of the Tribune, — The judicial powers of the tribunes were large and undefined. They claimed the right to arrest even the consul, to imprison him, and eventually to con- demn him to death. In minor cases, where the penalty was but a fine, they were assisted by the plebeian .xdiles, and probably by a board of ten judges {decemviri liiibtts iiidicandis). It may be questioned whether the power, claimed by the tribunes, of condemning and executing offenders against the rights of the commons was ever strictly legal, or fully recognised by the Senate, but their jurisdiction in minor cases was authorised and regulated by later laws. Concilia Plebis Tributa. — The most momentous consequence of the tribunes' judicial position was the formation of a new assembly to serve as a court of appeal from their sentences. This is the assembly of plebeians in which they voted by tribes, or local districts. These tribes included, in all, four urban and seventeen country wards ; and in this mode of voting the influence of birth and wealth was entirely ignored. The right of the tribunes to hold assemblies of the plebeians was guaranteed by the Icilian law, which forbade any magistrate to disperse such assemblies, or to interrupt a tribune's speech to them. This law, or rather " resolution of the commons " {plcbisciimn)^ was itself but an instance of the growing custom of taking the votes of the commons on legislative proposals. Such resolutions were binding on the plebeians who passed them, but not as yet on the whole Roman people. The final step in this organisation of the plebeians as a sepa- rate corporation was an alteration in the mode of election of the tribunes. At first, it would seem, they were elected by the plebeians, voting by curies, but after the plebiscitum of Publilius Volero (472 B.C.) the plebeians adopted for elections, as well as for other purposes, the division by tribes. The gradual increase in the number of tribunes, from two to ten, no doubt secured more efficiently the primary aim of the institution, the protection of the oppressed. Value of the Tribunate.— On a general review of the effects of this formation of a new plebeian state within the pale of the Roman people, with officers at its head, whose permanent duty it was to oppose the magistrates of the whole community, the anomalies and inconveniences of such a system are more obvious and prominent than its merits. The tribune, resting on the personal inviolability accorded him hy the solemn law and covenant {lex 56 HISTORY OF ROME sacrata) of the people, was strong for resistance but weak for reform. He could obstruct the action and restrain the injustice of the patrician magistrate by the exercise of his right of inter- cession, but he could not, without a new revolution, get the unjust laws, which the consul enforced, repealed ; nor could he cure the worst diseases of the state, the occupation of the domain land and the other economic evils which impoverished the plebeians. Yet, though the tribunate, in early days, rather legalised than remedied the duality of the Roman state and the dissensions of its two parts, nevertheless before the Punic wars it had served to secure the equality of the orders, and thus to promote and maintain the unity of the people. When this object was attained it became an anach- ronism. The tribune of later Rome is an officer of a markedly different character from the old protector of the unprivileged plebs. The Public Land. — The other chief grievance of the ple- beians, the occupation of the public land by the patricians, needs further explanation. The common land {J>2iblici(s agcr) of Rome, mainly derived from conquest, had formed the royal domain of the monarchs. The minute size of the traditional Roman farm (2 jugera = ij acres) makes it certain that the citizen from the first had licence to pasture sheep and cattle, to cut wood, and perhaps even to grow corn on the common-land. When the government passed from the king to the nobles, the latter seem to have claimed and secured, as a right and privilege of their order, the exclusive management of this public property. There were two methods of dealing with the soil which were peculiarly advan- tageous to the rich and powerful. Firstly, the state might allow its citizens to take over and cultivate the arable land without con- ferring absolute ownership. Thus, by means of their clients, the patricians occupied {occiipare) and enclosed large tracts, for which, whether legally or not, they paid the state no rent. This system of tenure, called possession, which made \h^ domains a monopoly of the ruling class, was a deep and lasting injury to the smaller farmers. Secondly, the effect of this was aggravated by the exclusion of the yeomanry from the public pastures. As stock- raising grew in importance the right to use the common pastures, formerly granted to all on payment of a tax {scriptufa), was con- fined more and more to the upper classes, from whom the magis- trates neglected to exact the fees due to the state. This double privilege of patrician landholders was a twofold injustice to the yeoman -farmer. AGRARIAN LAWS 57 Agrarian Laws. — As might be expected, the tribunes were con- stantly protesting against this misuse of the pubHc land, and pro- posing " agrarian laws " designed to distribute some portion of the soil among the Roman poor. Before dealing with particulars, it is necessary to restate the truism, that agrarian laws at Rome never confiscated private land, but dealt simply and solely with the state's domains won in war by the sword of her soldiers. Their object was to rescue public land from the stock-farmers and squatters iposscssores) who absorbed it, and distribute it in small allotments to the poor. Sometimes a group of three hundred or more citizens were planted — in later years far larger numbers — together on the land in a single settlement or " colony," which, like an Athenian cleruchy, sen-ed indeed as an outlet for surplus popula- tion and a means of relieving the necessities of the poor, but mainly as a centre of Roman influence in peace and a well-garrisoned for- tress in war.i Sometimes particular portions of land were assigned to indi\iduals {assignatio inritini). But, in either case, to make the landless man a peasant proprietor was to bestow on him not only a livelihood, but also political rights, which were, in early times, confined to freeholders, who alone could be enrolled in a tribe. Thus both the political and social interests of the plebeians were bound up with the distribution of the public land by agrarian laws. Tradition has associated the name of Spurius Cassius, the author of the league with the Latins and Hernicans, with the first agrarian law. But of its provisions we can learn nothing from the confused and contradictory statements of Livy and Dionysius= Patrician obstruction appears, legally or illegally, to have thwarted the operation of the law ; patrician vengeance fell upon the man who had dared to come forward as the friend of the poor. Spurius Cassius was accused of aiming at absolute power, and sentenced to death by the assembly, or, according to another account, by his own father, in virtue of the tremendous powers entrusted by Roman law to the head of a family. Here, as in two later cases, the patricians turned the hatred felt by all true Romans towards the very name of king to good account, in discrediting the cham- pions of the lower orders. Yet the agitation begun by the proposals of Cassius was not ended by his death. Again and again the tribunes demanded the 1 The colonies founded by Rome were either (i) burgess-colonies, or (2), after 384 B.C., also Latin colonies, i.e., communities whose members, of what- ever origin, received Latin rights, v. infra pp. 134, 135. Previous Latin colonies were joint foundations of Rome and the Latin League. 58 HISTORY OF ROME execution of his measure, or at least some distribution of lands to the poor. Nor were they intimidated by the assassination of one of the most energ^etic among them, Cn. Genucius. At length their efforts were crowned with partial success ; for in 467 R.C., by the foundation of a Latin colony at Antium, a number of the poorer Romans were provided with lands, and in 456 I5.C. the Aventine was portioned out in building-lots for the lower classes. In the last case, if not in both, it would appeal that the tribunes compelled the consuls to bring the petition of the plebeians before the Senate. Then the consuls, with the assent of the Senate, carried the measure through the assemljly of the whole people in their centuries. This interesting innovation closes for a while the agrarian question, and leads us back to the constitutional and legal reforms demanded at this time by the plebeians. Note. — Mommsen holds llial llie agrarian law of Sp. Cassius is a late invention. He grants that his consulships and alliance with the Latins rest on good evidence, and believes that the record of his condemnation on the charge of treason was to be found in the earliest chronicles. But he points out how unlikely it is that such documents contained an account of a law which was never carried, and dwells upon the confusions and contradictions in the account of its contents, and of the trial ofits autlior. He concludes that the agrarian law of Cassius and his championship of the Latins are fictions of the age of Sulla, founded upon the real proposals of the Gracchi and Livius Drusus. {Rom. Forsch., ii. 153^.) CHAPTER VII EARLY WARS ANTi ALLIANCES OF THE RKPUHMC TRADITIONAL DATES l',.C. A, LI.C. Alliance with Latins and Capture of Corioli . , 493 261 Disaster at the Cremera 477 277 Cincinnatus Dictator 458 296 The new Republic hard pressed on all sides. — With the fall of the monarchy came a great loss of power and territory for the Roman state. While the later kings had gained a miniature empire over the neighbouring tribes, in the early days of the Republic Rome has to fight for her very existence. The beautiful legends, which tell us of the patriotic self-devotion of Horatius LEGENDS OE EAKLV REPUBLTC 59 Codes cind of Sca^vola, must not blind us to the fact that Rome had failed to maintain her hold on Southern Etruria, nor the glamour of the heroic combats of Lake Regillus conceal the loss of her suzerainty in Latium. In fine, for sixty years after the foundation of the Republic the Roman armies fought for the most part in defence of their homes, almost within sight of the city. Often was the flag on Janiculum struck, and the burgher summoned from the assembly in the field of Mars, to repel the raids of the Veientine on the north, or the more serious assaults of the ^tquian and Volscian on the south. The Sabines pressed across the Anio, the yEquians settled like a thunder-cloud on Mount Algidus, while the Volscians overran the coast-land as far as Antium, and even gained a footing at Velitrfc and Corioli. on the southern slopes of the Alban hills. Legendary Victories. — Throughout the period the Roman annals tell us of many splendid triumphs, but as we hear nothing of the fruits of victory, we may safely ascribe their glories to the imagination of patriotic orators and chroniclers. Each of the great houses had its own fabled exploits, extolled in the orations delivered at the funerals of its chief members, and afterwards in- corporated in the family chronicles. From this source Fabius Pictor (circ. 200 B.C.) and the later annalists drew those stirring narratives of adventure, and graphic portraits of individuals, pre- served for us by Livy and IMutarch. But we can put no trust in these legends, which owe their life and colour to the imagina- tion of the chroniclers. The official records in early times con- tained little more than lists of names ; the annals of the priests noticed only subjects of religious interest. Even these scanty documents perished in the sack of Rome by the Gauls (390 B.C.), and were but imperfectly restored, from memory or by conjecture. Yet these meagre outlines are the only historical evidence we possess. In the legends we must not hope to find truth, yet they remain a part of history, for belief in them has influenced later generations more than many facts. As typical instances we may take the stories of Coriolanus, of Cincinnatus, and of the Fabii. Legend of Coriolanus. — Gnaeus Marcius- was a noble of the race of King Ancus, brought up by his mother, Veturin,i in the strict old Roman ways. And when the Romans were besieging Corioli, the men of the city broke forth, and drove them back even to their camp. But Marcius rallied the runaways and turned the 1 The names in Shakespeare's play are derived from a slightly different version given bv Plutarch. 6o HISTORY OF ROME pursuers to flight ; and, as they fled through the gates of the town, Marcius entered with them, and by his single might van- quished the enemy and took the city. So men called him Corio- lanus because he had " fluttered the Volscians in Corioli." And afterward there was a famine in Rome, and the commons were sore distressed. But when the king of Syracuse sent corn to the Senate, Coriolanus counselled it not to sell the commons bread, unless they would give up their tribunes. For which cause the people was much angered, and the tribunes summoned him to appear before the assembly of the commons. Then Corio- lanus stayed not for a trial, in which he looked for neither justice nor mercy, but fled to the Volscians ; and Attius Tullius, their chief, received him kindly ; but he could not persuade the Volscians to make war with Rome, for they were afraid. Now at that time Jupiter had bidden the Romans to celebrate the great games anew, and many of the Volscians went up to see the sight. But Attius Tullius, going by stealth to the consuls, bade them remember the mischief wrought in Rome by a tumult of the Sabines, and counselled them to prevent the Volscians doing the like. And when the consuls told this to the Senate, they made proclamation that before sunset every Volscian should be gone from Rome. So they went homewards full of wrath at the dis- honour done to them. And as they passed by the spring- of Ferentina, in the Alban hills, Attius met them and stirred them up to make war with the Romans, who had thus put them to shame. So the Volscians gathered a great host, and over it they set Attius and Cn. Marcius, the banished Roman. Then the two generals took all the towns of the Latins, and encamped at length by the Cluilian dyke. And the Romans went not out to meet the foe, for within the city the strife between burghers and commons waxed fierce. But the poorer sort cried to the Senate to send an em- bassy to the Volscians. And five of the chief senators were sent to sue for peace ; but Marcius would give them no peace which Romans could accept. Next the Senate sent the priests and augurs clothed in their sacred robes ; yet would not Marcius hearken to them, but drove them back to the city. But when all men's hearts failed them for fear, Rome was delivered by the help of the gods. For Jupiter put it into the mind of the noble Lady Valeria to bid Veturia, the mother of Coriolanus, and Volumnia, his wife, to come with her and the other women of Rome to pray for mercy. So the whole train of matrons came to the camp of Coriolanus. And when he saw his mother, and his wife leading CORrOLANUS AND CINCINNATUS 6i his two boys by the liand, lie would have kissed them. But his mother stopped him and asked whether he was her son or an enemy, and she his mother or a prisoner. And when he could not answer she cried out, " Had I never borne a son, Rome should never have been besieged ! Had I remained childless, I might have died free ! But I am too old to bear for long thy shame or my misery. Look rather at thy wife and children, whom thou doomest to an untimely death or a lifelong slavery." And Marcius quailed at his mother's words, and melted at his wife's and chil- dren's kisses. So he cried out in an agony, " Mother, thine is the victory ; thou hast saved Rome, but destroyed thy son." So Coriolanus led away the X'olscian army, and troubled Rome no more, but li\-ed many years among the Volscians, and in his lonely old age felt the full bitterness of exile. And the Romans built a temple to Woman's Fortune, to do honour to the noble matrons by whose prayer the city was saved, and made Valeria its first priestess. Legend of Cincinnatus. — There was peace between Rome and the .f^quians, but Gracchus Cloelius, their chief, pitched his camp on Mount Algidus, and plundered the lands of Tusculum. And when the Romans sent ambassadors to complain of the wrong, Gracchus mocked them, and bade them tell their message to the oak above his tent. So the Romans took the sacred oak to witness that Gracchus had treacherously broken the peace, and made them ready for war. But Lucius Minucius, the consul, led his army into a narrow valley near Mount Algidus, and there was he compassed about on all sides by the ^quians. Nevertheless five horsemen broke through the enemy, and carried the sad news to Rome. And the Senate agreed that there was but one man who could deliver the army, Lucius Quinctius Cincinnatus, so he was named dictator. This L. Quinctius, called for his crisp curling locks {ci?icinni) Cincinnatus, tilled his own little farm beyond the Tiber. The deputies of the Senate came thither early in the morning, and found him digging in his field. And when he had sent to fetch his toga, and was now in fit guise to hear the message of the Senate, they hailed him dictator, and told him in what peril the consul and his army lay. So he went with four-and-twenty lictors before him to his house in Rome, and chose L. Tarquitius, a brave man but poor, to be master of the horse. On that day the dictator made all business to cease in the I'orum, and summoned all who could bear arms to meet in the P'ield of Mars before sunset, 62 HISTORY OF ROME ordering c;ich man to Ijrinj^ witli liim victuals for live days and twelve wooden stakes. So at nightfaJl, when everything was in readiness, the dictator marched with all speed to Mount Algidiis. And after that he had discovered where the enemy lay, he made his soldiers surround them on every side. Wiien this was done they raised a great shout, and began digging a trench and driving in their stakes right round the yl-lquian camp. Then the consul's army, that was in the valley, heard the Roman war-cry, and attacked the foe from behind so fiercely that he could not liinder the work of the dictator's men. And in the morning the ^Ecjuians saw that there was no escape, for they were hemmed in by a ditch and palisade, and prayed for mercy. Then Cincinnatus answered that they must deliver over to him Gracchus and their other chiefs bound, and yield up all their goods, even their arms and cloaks. And he set up two spears, and bound a third across them at the top, and made the /Equians pass beneath the yoke, and sent them away full of shame. Thus did Cincinnatus deliver the consul and his army. One evening he marched out to Mount Algidus ; the next he returned victorious. And the Senate decreed that the dictator should enter the city in triumph riding in his chariot, while his prisoners were led bound before him, and his soldiers with their spoil followed behind him. But afterward he went home c}uietly to his wife and farm. Legend of the Fabii. — The Etruscans had not, since the days of King Porsenna, pressed the Romans so hard as the yEquians and the Volscians. But the men of Veii, though they dared not meet the Romans in battle, harried the land up to the Tiber, while the consuls were fighting with the ^quians and Volscians, and there was none to hinder them. Wherefore the men of the great P^abian house took counsel together, and bade Ka:?so Fabius tell the Senate that the family of the Fabii would take upon itself the war with the men of Veii. And when they had gained the consent of the Senate, all the Fabii, to the number of three hundred and six warriors, gathered together at the house of Kasso on the Quirinal Hill, and marched out of the city by the right-hand passage of the g-ate Carmentalis. And they made them a stronghold in the country of the Vcientines, by the river Cremera, and for a whole year spoiled the men of Veii of their cattle and goods. But there was a certain day on which the house of the Fabii were accustomed to meet together for a sacrifice at the home of their fathers on the Quirinal. And as they went joyfully towards Rome, thinking that none would attack men bound on a sacred errand, the Veientines LEGEND OF 'J'HE FABII 63 laid an ambush before them, and pursued with a great host bcliind them. So the Fabii were compassed about, and set upon on all sides, and fell beneath a shower of darts and arrows, for none of the Etruscans dared come within the reach of their spears and swords. So the whole house of the Fabii was cut off, for there was not one full-grown man left, but only a boy, who, on account of his youth, had been left behind in Rome. Him the gods pre- served, that in after-ages his children might do good service to ETRUSCAN HELMKT. the commonwealth, mindful of the glories of their forefathers. And there was peace Ijctwcen Rome and Veii for forty years. The Leagues with the Latins and Hernici. — It was not, how- ever, the real or fabled exploits of the noble houses that saved Rome from the assaults of the Sabellian tribes, but the masterly policy of a far-sighted statesman. If we may believe an inscription, cited both by Cicero and Livy, within ten years of the battle of Lake Regillus, Sp. Cassius, the consul (493 B.C.), formed that great and lasting league with the cities of Latium which proved Rome's best defence in the days of adversity, and the sure founda- tion of her future prosperity. For, whatever be the exact terms 64 HISTORY OF ROME or origin of the league, this much may be regarded as certain. It was at first an equal alliance between the two powers of the lowlands, to defend their borders against the incursions of tlic hill- tribes, and to stay the rising tide of y^Equian and Volscian aggres- sion. At the same time Rome had the inestimable advantage of comparative immunity from invasion. The Latin cities stood like a bulwark between her territories and the Sabellian hill-tribes, securing her safety at the cost of their own. If the fortune of war was adverse, Latin towns fell into the hands of the ^quians and Volscians ; if favourable, Rome claimed her share of the fruits of victory. Thus the brunt of the battle fell always on the Latins, while Rome grew strong behind the barrier formed by her allies. In this way the old equal league paved the way for the dominion of Rome over Latium. Scarcely less important was the adhesion of the Hernici to the league. These mountaineers held the rocky fastnesses of the valley of the Trerus, bordered on one side by the .(Equians, on the other by the Volscians. Roman historians, misled by national pride, tell us that the treaty with the Hernici (486 B.C.), concluded, like the league with Latium, by Sp. Cassius, was pre- ceded by their conquest. But no doubt the Romans and Latins were glad to admit them into their alliance on equal terms, for their position midway between the yEquians and Volscians rendered their aid most valuable in any attack on those tribes. This triple league served for fifty years to protect Rome against assaults from the south, while the Etruscans were too hard pressed by the Celts on their northern frontiers to regain their dominion on the left bank of the Tiber. So the new Republic, though unable to maintain the position won by the later kings, succeeded in pre- serving the Campagna from the domination of Sabellians and Etruscans. Note. — It may be well to take the tale of Coriolanus as an example, and, by analysing its composition, to prove the untrustworthiness of similar legends which space forbids us to treat in full. Mommsen has shown that, in all probability, it is a late insertion in the Roman annals. Evidently the name of the hero was not to be found in the official lists of magistrates ; on no occasion is he at the head of the home government, or of the regular army in the field. In its original form the story was entirely free from fixed dates. The consuls play no part either in the distribution of the corn, or at the trial of Coriolanus, or in opposing the Volscian march on Rome. The assertion that Cominius (consul 493 B.C.) commanded the army that took Corioli is, as Livy naively confesses, a mere inference from the absence of his name on the brazen pillar which recorded the treaty CRITICISM OF LEGENDS 6$ made willi ihe Latins by liis colleague, Sp. Cassius. AVilh more flagrant disregard of ciironology, the old tradition made Dionysius of Syracuse (circ. 400 li.c.) the benefactor who relieved the famine at Rome (circ. 490) ; nor was the error corrected till a Greek antiquary substituted the name of Gelo for that of the later tyrant. Consistency was as little respected as chronology. Elsewhere in the chronicles Corioli is a Latin, and not a Volscian town, just as the spring of Ferentina is the Latin, not the Volscian, place of assembly. A trial before the tribes is impossible at so early a date, for, before the Publilian law, the plebeians voted by curies. Indeed, quite apart from errors of detail, the whole tone and character of the legend is utterly opposed to the dry, official character of the earliest chronicles of Rome. The picture of the hero, forced by the ingratitude of his countrymen to seek refuge with his bitterest enemy, who yet in the hour of his triumph foregoes his revenge at the bidding of his mother, is one which even Greek imagination never equalled. The moral of the tale, that Rome was saved in the hour of need by the patriotism of her women, is alien from the spirit of primitive times, when the mission of woman was confined to the family. In fine, the legend is a romance in- tended to glorify the great plebeian houses, the Marcii, the Veturii, and the Volumnii, by connecting them with the old patriciate, and, in the account of the trial, attempts to justify the claim of the plebeian assembly to rule the state. Its origin may be found in the century after the Licinian laws, when the new nobility had established its position. The legend of Cincinnalus bears on its face the stamp of a popular tale, and is proved, by its frequent repetition at different dates, to have had no place in the earliest chronicles. In the story of the Fabii, Mommsen sees a condemnation of that system of private warfare (coiiiitrafio) which in early times supplemented the summer campaigns of the citizen army {militia Icgitiiiia), but which, after its disuse, was misumlerstood by the Roman annalists. {Roiii, Forsch., ii. 1 13-152, &c.) CHAPTER VIII THE D E C E M V I R A T E TRADITIONAL DATES Proposals of C. Terentilius Ars.-i Appointment of Decemviri . Valerio-Horatian Laws ... Proposal to codify the Laws of Rome.— The tribunate no doulit did something to protect the interests and redress the injuries of the plebeians, but, so long as the Liws of Rome remained unwritten, it was impossible to secure their just and equitable administration. E B.C. A.U.C. 46Z 292 451 303 449 30s 66 II T STORY OF ROME Kom.'in law rested on a Ixisis of custom and command, and consisted largely of semi-religious usages and ceremonies, clogged with anticjue forms, and closely connected with gentile worships. The knowledge of the law was to the orthodox patrician, as to the Brahman of India, a mysterious science, to be jealously guarded from the vulgar gaze, and handed down by tradition only from generation to generation, as a sacred heritage of the ruling class, who alone had part or lot in the old religion of Rome. This exclusive property in law was at once a bulwark of patrician power and a stumbling-block in the path of the plebeians, and as such was marked out for tribunician assault. In 462 B.C. a tribune, C. Terentilius Arsa, proposed that a commission, consisting of five plebeians, should be appointed to codify and publish the laws of Rome. It does not appear that the proposal in its original shape sought either to reform the civil law, or to alter in any way the constitution of the state. Its effect would have been simply to deprive the patricians of their monopoly of the knowledge of law, and so to protect the plebeians against the misuse of legal technicalities, by which the magistrates perverted the course of justice. Resistance of the Senate overcome. — But though the proposed measure was at once just and moderate, it excited the most vehement opposition. For ten years the Senate obstructed its passage into law, and for ten years the commons elected tribunes pledged to support it. During the struggle the Senate tried in vain to appease the discontent, and divert the attention of the people by various concessions, by assenting to an increase in the number of tribunes (457 B.C.), to the distribution of the Aventine in allotments to plebeians (456 B.C.), and, finally, to the limitation of the maximum fines a consul might impose to two sheep or thirty bullocks. The concessions failed to satisfy the people, who were bent on carrying the proposal of Terentilius. At last the Senate was forced to yield, and accepted the measure, though in a modified form. As a preliminary, three commissioners were despatched to Greece, to report on the laws of Solon, and other Greek codes ; and on their return, two years later, it was agreed that ten men should be appointed to draw up a code of law {^dcceinvii't consiilayi imperio legiluis scribendis\ and to act for the year as sole and supreitie magistrates. At the same time, the tribunate and the right of appeal were suspended, in order that the decemvirs might enjoy the advantage of unfettered arid unlimited authority. The Rule of the Decemvirs. — Clearly the purpose of these THE DEC EM VI RATE 6j measures was to substitute for the uncertain working of the tribune's veto the fixed barrier of written law as a permanent safeguard of plebeian liberties. They were probably the result of a compromise, by which the commons on their part sacrificed the tribunate, and the nobles surrendered the monopoly of legal principles. The nobles got rid of a hated office, while the people hoped to secure, in a system of laws whose publicity raised them above all suspicion of patrician manipulation, an effective check on the power of the consuls. It would also appear that the decem- virate was legally open to plebeians as well as to patricians, and was intended to serve as an impartial board of arbitration between the orders. But all hope that the new magistracy might reconcile old dissensions, and weld the two orders at once into an united state, was frustrated by the action of the patricians, who contrived to monopolise all ten places at the first election. Satisfied with this victory, the dominant party made a sensible and moderate use of its power, so that the ten tables of laws issued by the board were at once approved by the people, and engraved on brazen tablets hung on the rostra in the Forum. But the task of publication could not be completed within a single year, so it was agreed to choose decemvirs for the next year to complete the code. At this election Appius Claudius, of the proud and noble house of the Claudii, leagued himself with the plebeian chiefs, the Icilii and Duilii, and courted the favour of the lower orders with all the arts of a demagogue. In vain the rest of the board conferred on this dangerous colleague the honour of presiding at the Comitia. Appius, perfectly alive to their meaning and thoroughly careless of precedent, not merely accepted votes for himself, but procured his own re-election to office in conjunction with men of inferior weight and position, to the exclusion of the leading patricians. Three at least, it may be five, of the new decemvirs were plebeian. Once their election was secured, the decemvirs, neglecting the work for which they were appointed, abandoned themselves to the enjoyment of absolute power, careless alike of the lives and property of their fellow-citizens. On the pretext that their duties were not accomplished — for the last two tables had not even then been submitted to the approval of the people — they refused to abdicate at the end of their year of office, in violation of the spirit if not of the letter of the constitution. Their government became an open tyranny, whose oppression recalled the days of the Tar- quins, and was in like manner commemorated in popular legends. Whatever be the historical value of these tales, the wrongs of 68 HISTORY OF ROME Virginia, like those of Lucietia, were deeply engraved on the hearts of the people. The real history of the fall of the decem- virate is hidden in mists due to popular animosity or the partiality of chroniclers. It is impossible to do more than repeat the oft- told tale of Appius Claudius, and suggest a prol)able interpretation of the inconsistencies and contradictions in the narratixes of Livy and Dionysius. Legend of Virginia. — When their year of office was over, the decemvirs refused to lay down their powers. The most part of them led forth the army against the .(Equians and the Sabines, but they were driven back, for their soldiers hated them and would not fight. So they laid a plot against one of the chief of the malcontents, L. Sicinius, sometime tribune of the plebs, and had him murdered by his own troops. And for a while the deed was kept secret from all meti, until, in the general uprising of all true Romans against the tyranny of the ten, it was brought to light. For meanwhile Appius Claudius stayed in Rome to watch over the city. And when he saw a young maiden, \'irginia, daughter of a centurion, Virginius, pass his judgment-seat in the Forum day by day as she went to school, he lusted after her in his heart, and suborned his client, M. Claudius, to swear that the maiden's real mother was a slave of his own, who had given the child to the childless wife of Virginius. And Appius would have handed her over forthwith to slavery, but L. Icilius, her betrothed, and P. Numitorius, her uncle, cried out that by law all were to be considered free till they were proved to be slaves. At length Appius promised to stay judgment for a day, so that Virginius might come from the camp and plead his cause. So Virginia's friends sent one messenger to her father, praying him to come with speed, and Appius another to his colleagues, bidding them not to let him go ; but his message did not come till Virginius had set out for Rome. So in the morning Virginius came to the Forum with his daughter and his friends, and prayed the people to stand by him. Then Appius would not hear him, but as soon as Claudius had spoken, adjudged the maiden to her master's custody until she should be proved free. And he overawed the people with a band of armed men. So Virginius asked leave to speak with the maiden and her nurse aside, that he might learn the truth of Claudius' story. And when leave was given him, he snatched up a knife from a butcher's stall, and plunged it in his daughter's heart, that so he might save her freedom and her honour. Then he called down on Appius the curse of blood, and so went forth from the P orum LEGEND OF VIRGINIA 69 to the camp, for none dared obey the tyrant's order to seize him. And Icihus and Numitorius made great mourning for Virginia, so that the people rose and drove Appius and his satelHtes to flee for their lives, and broke their power in Rome. Then the armies, too, moved by the story of Virginia's wrongs, marched from their camps to the Aventine, and elected tribunes to lead them instead of the decemvirs. But the Senate did not force the decemvirs to resign their office, until the armies and the commons had gone once more to the sacred mount, and again threatened to build them a city there. The legend goes on to tell how two popular patricians, L. Valerius Potitus and M. Horatius Barbatus, who were empowered to negotiate with the seceding plebeians, by yielding to their demands for the restoration of the tribunate, and for the right of appeal from the decision of all magistrates, and by granting an amnesty to the promoters of the secession, won them back to their allegiance. The fate of the Decemvirs remains uncertain. Tradition declares that Appius Claudius and Sp. Oppius, his chief plebeian supporter, died in prison, either by their own hands or by the sentence of the tribunes ; their colleagues were punished by the confiscation of their goods and banishment from Rome. Criticism of the Tradition. — The whole account of the decem- virate is vitiated by the partisan prejudice which discolours the narratives of our historians. The view of the Claudii found in Livy, which represents them as the proudest and stiffest of the patrician houses, has been disproved by INIommsen. Even in Livy, Appius Claudius, the decemvir, poses as the friend of the people, and by this means wins his commanding influence over his colleagues, and his re-election in conjunction with three plebeians. Obviously the democratic leanings of Appius were too clear to be entirely suppressed even by a partial chronicler. The true position of Appius is that of the noble leader of the commons, the patrician turned demagogue. The later transforma- tion of the demagogue into a tyrant may possibly be the invention of patrician hatred ; but there is nothing inconsistent in the two characters, and as the story of Virginia has the ring of genuine tradition, it is safer to assume the truth of the picture. The haughty decemvir prostituting justice for the satisfaction of his desires, and the lying retainer ready to do any service for his patron, reproduce so faithfully the features of the Greek tyrannies, that we may most reasonably believe that in Appius Claudius we have yet another instance of a noble obtaining power by the 70 HISTORY OF ROME pretence of poiJular sympathies, and iisiny it for personal ends, to the dcj^radation of noljles and commons alike. The La'ws of the Twelve Tables. — But if the decemvirs perished with ignominy, their work lived, and was regarded by after-ages as the source and foundation of all law. In reality it was little more than the formulation of old Roman custom ; for, though we need not reject the story of the embassy to Greece, and the co- operation of Hermodorus, the Ephesian, doubtless Greek influence is to be seen rather in the form than the matter of the decemviral legislation. The constitutional innovations contained in the laws of the twelve tables are of less interest than the statutes which regulate the relations between private individuals, and thus illus- trate the social condition of the people. The immense importance attached to the forms of litigation, and the inclusion of ceremonial rules, such as those which regulate the place and method of burial, reveal the primitive character of Roman civilisation. Everywhere we can trace the spirit of compromise, which softens, while it retains, the harsh principles of the older law. Thus the authority of the {:i.\\\&x {pairia potcstas) is maintained, but a thrice-repeated sale of a son severs the bond of connection between him and the head of the family. Again, by the side of the old patrician methods of making wills and contracting marriages, the law now recognises new forms, suitable to plebeians as well as patricians. For the religious ceremony of marriage {confarreatio) it allowed the substitution of a pretended purchase {co-einptio), and, in place of the solemn announcement of the will before the assembled burgesses {calaia comitid)^ the decemvirs authorised a fictitious sale (j)er as et libnuii). Thus, while the law preserved intact the rights of relations by male descent {agnati) to succeed to property where there was no will, it also facilitated the making of wills, just as it ordained that a civil ceremony {coe/iiptio), and even uninterrupted cohabitation {usits), should confer the same rights on a husband as the old religious marriage. The rights of pro- perty are sternly maintained in the decemviral code. The in- solvent debtor is liable to the extremest penalties both in property and in person, the only modification of the older law being the restriction of interest to lo per cent. {iinciariu>n fanus)^ and the punishment of usury. As is common in early codes, theft is more severely dealt with than violence ; while, curiously enough, libel, false witness, and judicial corruption are among the offences visited with death. Most notable is the fact that, whereas in the eye of the law patrician and plebeian are equal, a difference is recognised THE TWELVE TABLES ?i between the landed and the landless man. The prohibition of the inter-marriage of patricians and plebeians, long enforced by custom, now first acquired tlie sanction of law ; but against this unpopular statute must be set the permission given to voluntary associations {collegia) to make what rules they chose for their own gover- nance, provided they did not transgress the law of the land. This statute, taken, it is said, from Solon's legislation, protected plebeian associations from the arbitrary interference of the magistrates. The enactments on public matters define and confirm the existing law. The right of appeal, given already by the Lex Valeria, is reasserted and guaranteed. With this is closely connected the prohibition of all laws directed against a private individual {privi- lcgia\ and the reservation of all capital cases for the decision of the assembly of the centuries. Taken together these laws pro- tected all citizens, on the one hand from the arbitrary sentences of patrician magistrates, and on the other from the irregular pro- ceedings of tribunes backed by plebeian assemblies, and secured them a trial before the whole body of their fellow-citizens. Lastly, capricious selection of precedents by the magistrate was prevented by the express enactment, that the latest decision of the people should in all cases be preferred to the earlier. The Valeric- Horatian Laws. — The constitutional reforms which the decemvirate failed to initiate were achieved by the second secession of the plebeians, and embodied in the Valerio- Horatian laws. Even these laws rather vindicate and re-establish the ancient liberties of the plebeians than introduce new principles. The first was in substance only a reassertion of the old right of appeal, but it further forbade expressly the creation of any magistrate whose decisions were not subject to such appeal,^ and prescribed the penalty of death for the transgression of this pro- vision. The second guaranteed the inviolability of the tribunes and their subordinates, the a^diles and ten judges, declaring that he who lifted his hand against them was accursed. The old oath of the plebeians was replaced by a positive law, which prescribed the penalty of death and confiscation against offenders. The third contains the important and novel principle that the resolu- tions of the people, assembled in their tribes, have the binding force of law. The subject is beset with difficulties, but the most probable explanation is, that at this time patricians were admitted to the assembly of tribes, which thus developed into an assembly 1 This was held to apply even to the dictatorship. ^4 HISTORY OF ROME of the whole peojile {coiintia tributa)^ over which patrician magis- trates presided, while the tribunes still held the concilia plebis. In this new assembly were henceforth elected the quiestors, who had charge of the treasury {cf. p. 48). To this assembly, in all pro- bability, the right of legislation was given. At the same time, the position of the tribunes was raised. Henceforth they are entitled to attend the debates of the Senate, though not yet admitted within the doors of the house. Gradually they made good their claim to obstruct the action of the Senate's decrees by their "intercession." Thus the attempt of the patricians to get rid of the tribunate ended in the exaltation of that office, and the en- largement of its functions from the protection of individuals to a general power of interference in all affairs of state. The tribunate was too deeply rooted in the affections of the people to be lightly abolished, nor was the attempt repeated in the whole course of Roman history. CHAPTER IX PROGRESS OF THE PLEBEIANS TRADITIONAL DATES I),C, A.U.C. Marriages between Patricians and Plebeians legalised, and Military Tribunate established . Appointment of Censors . ■ Sp. Maelius killed by Ahala ... Number of Quaestors raised to Four, and Quaestorship opened to Plebeians ...... First Plebeian Consular Tribune .... Position of the Plebeians. — The force of the popular movement was not exhausted even by the attainment of the chief demands of the lower classes, the publication of written laws, and the restora- tion and enlargement of the powers of the tribunes. On the con- trary, success inspired the leaders of the plebeians with new hopes, and nerved them to make fresh efforts. Yet there is a change in the character of the demands of the plebeians, and in the nature of the opposition they offer to the governing order. Hitherto the commons had fought to secure freedom — the personal liberties of the individual, and the power to organise themselves as a cor- poration unhindered by patrician interference ; now they aimed ■ 445 309 443 3" 439 315 421 333 400 354 PROGRESS OF THE PLEBEIANS 73 at eciualily, the riglit to take their place in the governnienjt of the state by the side of the old nobles. Obviously the earlier reforms were in the interest of the poor, whom they protected against oppression, while the removal of political disabilities interested the wealthier and more influential plebeians. But for the moment both classes were united in opposition to the patrician govern- ment. Together they had secured the passing of the twelve tables and the Valerio-Horatian laws, and together they assailed the two chief bulwarks of patrician exclusiveness. Inter-marriage between the Orders. — In 445 B.C. the tribune C. Canuleius proposed to legalise marriages between patricians and plebeians. Whereas all children sprung from such unions had up to this time ranked as plebeians, because there could be no legitimate marriage between parents of different orders, after this the offspring of a patrician father and plebeian mother took the rank of the father. By this change the very corner-stone of the edifice of patrician exclusiveness was undermined. The sanctity of the religion of Rome had been the pretence for ex- cluding the plebeians from the government of the state. The patricians had asserted that they alone could take the auspices, and fulfil the duties of the state towards the gods, whose worship must not be profaned by the intrusion of men outside the conse- crated circle of the old families. But when men in whose veins was plebeian blood were admitted to the patrician order, the attempt to maintain a caste-system founded on purity of race was doomed. Thus the social revolution worked by the motion {plebi- scitum) of C. Canuleius necessarily entailed political equalisation. Military Tribunate. — The first step in that direction was taken in the very year in which C. Canuleius passed his resolution. The plebeian demand to share the consulship could no longer be met by contemptuous refusal ; it was evaded by a partial concession. Every year the Senate was to decide whether consuls should be elected, or military tribunes, as a rule six in number, with consular power. To this new office plebeians were eligible, though the con- sulship was still denied to them. We may wonder that patrician statesmen cared to maintain an irritating distinction, while they surrendered the substantial object in dispute. But an aristocracy is apt to be even more tenacious of the badges and honours which are the marks of power than of the power they signify. The con- sular tribune was never allowed the honour of a triumph, nor was his image placed in the family hall, like those of the curule magis- trates. No doubt the sacred name of religion was invoked by the 74 HISTORY OF ROME patricians in defence of their exclusive right to the possession of the supreme magistracy, but the sincerity of the appeal may well be doubted. Throughout the patricians act rather in the spirit of petty hucksters driving a keen bargain for their wares, than of statesmen defending a great principle. There is no grace in their concessions, no strength in their refusals ; their ideal of political wisdom is the craft which neutralises the popular measures it dare not resist. In the forty years before the siege of Veii, the Senate more often than not secured the election of consuls, and even the consular tribunate was in practice, up to the year 400 B.C., confined to patri- cians, so that the formal ecjuality conceded to the plebeians was a fraudulent pretence. If ever the patricians felt the control of the assembly of the centuries slipping from their grasp, the right of the presiding officer to refuse votes for a candidate, and of the patrician part of the Senate to withhold its sanction, were un- scrupulously employed as party weapons in this ignoble struggle. In the last resort the colleges of priests could declare an election null and void for some real or pretended religious informality. Many opportunities for electioneering intrigues were afforded by dissensions among the plebeians themselves. The rank and file of yeomen-farmers still cared only for social and economic reforms, but the leaders aimed rather at the removal of political inequalities. A disunited party, unversed in political warfare, was naturally un- able to cope with the organised obstruction of the patricians. Censorship. — But the men who swayed the counsels of the patricians recognised from the first that obstruction could not for ever thwart the wishes of the people. So they set themselves to diminish the value of the prize for which the plebeians were striving, by severing from the consulship some of its most cherished privi- leges. Within a year or two (443 B.C.) of the time of the establish- ment of the consular tribunate, they devised a new office, the censor- ship, conferred, indeed, by the votes of the centuries, but confined to patricians. No doubt the financial importance and moral dignity of this office are of later growth, but even its original powers made it a worthy object of ambition. The right to fill up vacancies in the ranks of the Senate and the knights most probably was given to the censors a century later, but the solemn numbering and assessment {census) of the citizens at intervals of four or five years {lustruni)^ from the first invested the new mag'istracy with peculiar dignity. So fearful were the Romans that this high function might be perverted to personal ends, that from an early period (435 B.C.) the tenure of the censorship was limited to eighteen months, and THE CENSORSHIP 7S (1^ < fe/J o S; •■^ 76 HISTORY OF ROME it was later (390 B.C.) provided that if one censor died in office, the other should at once resign his powers. Even in this exceptional case the Romans clung firmly to their two cardinal principles, the short tenure and collegiate character of the magistracy. A second attempt to diminish the powers of the consuls was turned to the confusion of its authors. In 421 B.C. the patricians proposed to relieve the consuls of the direct management of the military chest, and confer it on two new ciu;ustors of patrician rank. In this way the practical control of all finance was to be kept in the hands of patrician censors and queestors {cf. p. 72). But the commons insisted that plebeians should be eligible for the quiEstor- ship, and, twelve years after (409 B.C.), the assembly of the tribes actually filled three out of the four quccstorships with plebeians. Encouraged by this success, the plebeians, ten years later (400 and 399 B.C.), at last carried their candidates in the assembly of the centuries, and elected a plebeian majority on the board of consular tribunes. Spurius Maelius. — The patricians did not fail to employ the last resource of an incompetent government, intimidation. In the year 439 B.C. a terrible famine spread misery among the Roman poor, which all the edicts of L. Minucius, who was commissioned to meet the scarcity, could not relieve. Whereupon a rich plebeian knight, Sp. Marlins, bought corn in Etruria, and distributed it to the starving commons at nominal prices. The consulship, we are told, was the reward he asked in return for his magnificent gene- rosity. Minucius, envious of the man whose success had made his own failure conspicuous, persuaded the Senate that he was conspiring to overthrow the Republic and make himself a king. The Senate proclaimed him a traitor, and a young patrician, C. Servilius Ahala, undertook to carry out its sentence. Under some pretence, he drew Mailius aside in the Forum and stabbed him with a dagger, which he had hidden under his arm for the purpose. He then justified his deed to the indignant commons, by declaring to them the treason of Maslius to the Republic. The house of the traitor, and with it the evidence of his guilt, or of his innocence, was destroyed, and the corn he had collected distributed by his enemy, Minucius. Yet it cannot be doubted that the real offence of Maelius was his popularity with the commons, which would have secured his election to the consular tribunate, not a treason- able conspiracy to win himself a kingdom. His assassination was not the act of a patriot, but of a partisan blinded by prejudice. Another instance of the bitterness of faction may fitly conclude SPUR! us MAU.IUS 77 this discreditable chapter in Roman history. After the conquest of Labici from the yEquians a settlement was made there, two acres of land being given to each settler ; but when Bol?e, in the same district, was taken, the patricians stoutly resisted the tribunes' proposal to distribute its land in allotments. At their head was the stern and unbending consular tribune, M. Postumius Regillensis. He withheld the booty won at Bolte from his troops, and threatened to punish any political manifestations with merci- less severity. At this his soldiers rose in open revolt, and stoned to death the general to whom they were bound by the solemn oath of military obedience {sacravientuiii)^ an unparalleled crime as yef in Roman annals. Note. — We have given the earlier version of the fate of Melius, pre- served fi)r us by Dionysius. The introduction of Cincinnatus as dictator, and the elevation of Ahala into a master of the horse are later fictions, intended to soften our horror of the murder. But the story is evidently intended to glorify tyrannicide, and in its earlier form did so without com- promise or evasion. Again, tlie etymological point of the tale (the deriva- tion of the name Ahala, from ala, the arm-pit, in which the dagger was concealed) is lost if Servilius is not a secret assassin, but a lawful magis- trate. Yet the absence of the names of ordinary magistrates from the original tradition warns us that it is a family history inserted in the annals at a later date. Indeed in early times even a romance would not dare to make a mere plebeian aspire to the tlirone. The importance of the legend lies, not in its truth to fact, but in its effect in after-ages. Again and again it is cited to prove that the murder of a traitor is not only the right but the duly of every loyal citizen. (Mommsen, R. F., ii. 199^) CHAPTER X WARS FROM THE DECEMVIRATK TO THE FALL OF VEII TRADITIONAL DATES B.C. A.r.c. 428 326 406 348 396 3S8 Capture of Fidenas ..... War with Veii Conquest of Veii by M. Fiiriiis Camiilus Wars with the JEqai and Volsci. — During the sixty years between the fall of the monarchy and the decemvirate Rome had been closely beset on all sides ; in the sixty years after the degemvirate the tide of war turns slowly, but surely, in her favour. 78 nrsTORv OF iwme The great reforms carried between 450 and 445 B.C. inspire her citizens with new life and ardour, and at the same time tlie energies of her enemies are distracted and divided. The /Equians feel the pressure of the Sabellian clans, now established round the Fucine lake ; the Volscians are attacked in rear by a new power, the Samnites. Consequently the yEquians, who had wasted the country even up to the gates of Rome in 446 B.C., are driven from Labici in 418 B.C., and ]5ol;is in 414 B.C., the first of which at least is secured and garrisoned. Both towns helped to protect the line of communications between Rome and the Hernican country in the ETRUSCAN HELMET UEDICATEJ3 BY UIERO I. AFTER HIS VICTORY IN 474 B.C. valley of the Trerus ; nor could the y4Lquians, after their loss, maintain their hold on their ancient outpost, Mount Algidus. About the same time, the Volscians were obliged to resign their conquests in Latium, such as Satricum and \"e]itr3e ; while, if we may believe Livy, the Roman armies pushed on as far south as Circeii and Anxur (Tarracina). Misfortunes of the Etruscans. — On her northern frontier also Rome profited by the misfortunes of her adversaries. The power of the Etruscans had long since passed its zenith ; it now began to decline more rapidly. As early as 474 B.C. Hiero I. of .Syracuse DECLINE OE THE ETRUSCANS 79 had annihilated their navy, and made his own city mistress of the Tyrrhene Sea. This supremacy the Syracusans maintained, even after the fall of the great tyrants, by expeditions to Corsica and the coast of Tuscany (453 B.C.). These reverses may help to account for the inaction of the Etruscans for forty years ; a fresh series of disasters opened the way for Roman conciuest. The cities of the Rasenna in Campania, whose communications with the mother country, whether by land or sea, were now cut off, surrendered one after another to the assaults of roving bands of Samnites. The fall of Capua, their chief town (424 B.C.), marks the destruction of Etruscan rule in that district. To complete the tale of their dis- asters, Dionysius of Syracuse planted colonies in their dominions round the head of the Adriatic, and ruined the trade of Etruria by the storming of Pyrgi, the rich seaport of Caere (387-5 B.C.). But the heaviest blows which fell on the doomed people were dealt by the Gauls, who were pouring over the Alps into the plain of the Po. The most northern of the three leagues of the Rasenna was utterly swept away by the new immigrants ; its great cities became, like Melpum, dim traditions, or, like Felsina (Bononia), were renamed by the Gallic victors, after whom the whole district is henceforth called. Conquest of Fidenae. — Greeks, Samnites, and Gauls each in turn did their part in smoothing the path of Rome. But it was the day of small things. Her petty successes in border warfare gave little promise of future greatness. The small town of Fidena^ ventured to revolt for the last time, and transferred its allegiance to Lars Tolumnius, king of V^eii. It sealed its fidelity to its new master by murdering the Roman settlers and the envoys sent to demand satisfaction. But Lars Tolumnius was routed in battle, and fell himself in single combat with A. Cornelius Cossus, the leader of the Roman cavalry, who dedicated the arms of the Veientine king to Jupiter {xpolia opinid). Fidenae submitted, and, content with this success, the Romans concluded an armistice with \"eii for 200 months. Note. — The spoils dedicated by Cossus to Jupiter Feretrius enal)le us to correct the narrative of the annalists by archaeological evidence. Augustus, when he restored the temple, found that Cossus was called consul in an inscription on the arms. Now Cossus was consul in 428 K.c. But the chroniclers used by Livy knew of no war in that year, assigning the revolt of Fidenae and the death of Lars Tolumnius to 437 B.C., when Cossus was not a magistrate at all, and a second similar revolt to 426 B.C., when he was consular tribune. Clearly the two wars are mere variations So HISTORY OF ROME of one story. Neither is rightly dated, for the evidence of the inscription in fa%'our of the year 428 li.c. is confirmed l)y the common opinion that only a general could \\\\\ the spolia opima. Varro's assertion that a common soldier could do so, if he slew the leader of the enemy, is an attempt to reconcile the acce]ited tradition about Cossus wilh the chrt)no- logy of the annalists. War with Veil. — At length Rome undertook the work of con- quering Southern Etruria. She was matched with no unworthy foe, for V^eii equalled her in size and excelled her in the grandeur and solidity of her buildings. But whereas Rome could rely on the firm support of her true allies, the Latins and Hernicans, Veil could count only on her neighbours, Capena, Falerii, and Tarcjuinii. The northern Etruscans were fully occupied at home in vain efforts to repel the raids of the Gauls, and their oligarchic govern- ments viewed with dislike the monarchy of Veii. The end of such a conflict could hardly be doubtful, but the siege of the Roman Troy was protracted for ten long years. For tlie first time the Roman army was obliged to keep the field in winter as well as summer. And now that the citizen was pre- vented from returning to his farm after a short summer campaign, the introduction of military pay became a necessity. But despite these ineasures, the fortune of war was for nine years unfavourable to Rome. The fortified camps before Veii were stormed by the men of Capena and Falerii, and only recovered by a great effort. In the tenth year of the siege the plebeian consular tribunes, Genucius and Titinius, wei'e routed in the field by the same enemies. Panic reigned in the lines before Veii, and even at Rome itself, where the Senate resolved to meet the danger by appointing a dictator. The crisis called forth the needed hero, M. Furius Camillus, with whose advent the dry annals of the chroniclers are transformed into a romantic legend of daring achievements crowned with supernatural success. Legend of Camillus. — In the summer of the eighth year of the siege of Veii the waters of the Alban lake rose mysteriously, until at length they reached the top of the hills around the lake, and poured down into the plain below and thence into the sea. And the Romans, since they might not trust Etruscan soothsayers while they were at war with their nation, sent messengers to Delphi to ask counsel of Apollo. But the meaning of the portent was re- vealed to them before their messengers returned. For an old Veientine cried out to some Roman soldiers, that Veii should not LEGEND OE CAMILLUS 8i fall, until the waters of the Alban lake should flow into the sea no more. And one of the soldiers persuaded the old man to go apart with him to a lonely spot, pretending that he wished to consult him about a matter of his own. And, while they talked together, the Roman seized the old man round the body and bore him off to the camp. So the soothsayer of \'eii was sent by the generals to the Senate, and prophesied to them that if the waters of the Alban lake should run into the sea woe should fall on Rome, but if they were drawn off the woe should be turned on \'eii. But the Senate would not hearken to his words until they were confirmed by the answer of the oracle at Delphi. Then the Romans bored a tunnel through the side of the hills to make a passage for the water, and dug many channels in the plain below to receive it ; and the tunnel is there to this day. And when the whole flood was spent in watering the fields, so that none flowed into the sea any more, the Romans felt assured that they should take \"eii, as the god foretold. Nor could they be turned from their purpose by the prayers of an embassy from Veii, nor by their prophecy that the destruction of Veii should be soon followed by the fall of Rome. Capture of Veii.— So Camillus compassed the city round on every side, aided by the Latins and Hernicans. And he cut a tunnel underground from his camp even to the temple of Juno in the citadel of Veii. Then the whole people came forth from Rome to share in the spoil. And while the men of Veii were guarding their walls against the main army of the Romans, Camillus led a few men by the secret passage into the very heart of the city. And even as the high priest of V^eii prophesied to the king that he, ♦ho should ofifer on the altar of Juno the victim standing by, should be victorious in the war, Camillus burst forth, and snatching the sacrifice from their hands, offered it himself Then the Romans opened the gates of the city to their comrades, and together they sacked the town. And as Camillus looked down on the havoc from the citadel, his heart swelled with pride at the greatness of his victory. But soon he bethought him of the fickleness of fortune, and prayed that, if some ill must befall him, to balance this great glory, it might be but small. And, as he prayed with veiled head and turned himself to the right, he tripped and fell to the ground. Then was he comforted in his heart, because he supposed the jealousy of the gods had been ap- peased by. this small mishap. And he ordered a chosen band of youths, washed in pure water and clothed in white, to go into the temple of Juno, and ask the goddess whether she would be pleased F 82 HISTORY OF ROME to come with them to Rome. And the image answered and said, " I will go." Thus Juno forsook \'eii, and dwelt ever after in the temple built for her on the Aventine in Rome. Never had Rome seen so splendid a triumph as when Camillus rode up the sacred street to the Capitol in a chariot drawn by white horses. And men feared that his pride might be brought low by the hand of Heaven. Nevertheless Rome still prevailed over her enemies, and forced the men of Capena to beg for peace, and them of Falerii to shut themselves up in their city. But a certain schoolmaster, who had the charge of the sons of the chief men of the town, led the boys to the Roman camp. Scorning his treachery, Camillus ordered the boys to flog their master back into the town ; for Romans, he said, fight not with children. And the Faliscans were touched by his noble deed, and submitted themselves to the power of Rome. Lastly, the great city of Volsinii, which took up arms after the fall of Veii, consented soon after to an inglorious peace. Thus Rome became mistress of Etruria as far north as the Ciminian Hills, whose gates were guarded by her allies, Sutrium and Nepete. Fall of Camillas. — The story goes on to tell of domestic dis- cords at Rome. Even during the death-struggle with Veii, the plebeians, headed by their tribunes, had complained bitterly of the burden of the land-tax {tribi/tiaii)^ which furnished the soldiers with pay, and of the patrician monopoly of the consular tribunate. After its fall they proposed that the empty town of Veii should be repeopled by the migration thither of half the citizens of Rome. This division of the one commonwealth into two cities, which must have distracted and diminished its energy, was strenuously resisted by the patricians. First they persuaded stwo tribunes to forbid its consideration ; later, they pleaded in person against so fatal a measure to such purpose that it was rejected by the tribes, though only by a bare majority. Content' with this victory, the Senate agreed to the division of the Veientine land among the commons, in allotments of the unusual size of seven jugera. But the popularity of the great patrician leader had passed away. In the hour of victory he had vowed a tenth of the spoil of Veii to Apollo, but the soldiers had not set apart any portion of their plunder for the god. Camillus now called on them to pay the promised tithe, and thus lost the favour of the people and prepared the way for his own fall. When he was accused by the tribune Appuleius of embezzlement, because he had taken for himself some doors of bronze, which were a part of the booty won at Veii, even his own tribesmen and clients said they could not acquit him. ROME AND VEII S3 84 HISTORY OF ROME though they would pay his fine. Then Camillus withdrew in wratli to Ardea, praying that, if he were unjustly condemned, Heaven might cause his ungrateful country to rue his loss. The ministers of vengeance were at hand : the Gauls, who had taken Melpiuii on the day of the fall of Veii, were next year to burn Rome. Note. — The legend of Camillus is obviously mythical in its details. We can trace both Greek and pure Roman elements in the story. The ten years' siege, with the stratagem by which the town was captured, seem reminiscences of Troy, while the mission and offering to Apollo of Delphi may well be Greek inventions. Purely Italian, on the other hand, are the stories of the Etruscan soothsayer, of the offering in the temple of Juno, and of the removal of her image from Veii to Rome. The outlet of the Alban lake, a tunnel 2O0O yards in length, 7 feet in height and 5 in breadth, cut through the solid rock, may still be seen, but it would seem to belong to the days when Etruscan kings ruled in Rome and Latium. It is hardly possible that the Romans should have undertaken so great a work, in the middle of a war, though they might have repaired and reopened the tunnel if it had become blocked. CHAPTER XI THE GAULS B.C. A.U.C. Rome taken and burnt by the Gauls 390 364 War with the Etruscans 3S6-i 398-403 Last Incursion of the Gauls into Latium .... 349 405 Migrations of the Gauls. — A new nation now makes its appear- ance in Roman history, destined in the end to adopt the language and culture of the Italians, but at first sharply contrasted with them in customs and character. The Gauls or Celts had long since reached the lands in which they still dwell on the shores of the Atlantic ; but their wandering tribes had not as yet been formed into stable communities, nor had they settled down to till the land they had won. They still preferred a nomad pastoral life, and recognised only the military authority of the chieftain. Rest- less vanity and impetuous bravery fitted them for the life of roving soldiers of fortune ; want of discipline and order prevented them from reaping the fruits of the victories won by their chivalrous courage. They remind us of the knights-errant of the Middle Ages in their fondness for single combats and deep carousals, of Italian condottieri in their insatiable greed for gold. Thus they THE GAU/.S 85 fought, conquered, and destroyed in every land in Europe, but never created a national civilisation, or founded an enduring state. Tradition affirms, with much probability, that the swarm of bar- barians who poured over the Alps into Italy came from the western home of the Celts in Gaul. We are told that, in the days of King Ambiatus, those Gallic tribes, which, then as later, acknowledged the leadership of the Bituriges, sent forth two great conquering hordes, headed by Sigovesus and Bellovesus, nephews of the king. The former sought a home in the wilds of the Hercynian forest ; the latter, more favoured by Heaven, took froTii the Etiuscans their ancient heritage in the valley of the Po, and made Mediolanum (Milan) the capital of the canton of the Insubres. The Cenomani passed beyond the Adda, and settled round Brixia and Cremona. The Boii and Lingones followed the beaten Etruscans over the Po. Last of all came the Senones, who spread themselves along the coast of the Adriatic from Ariminum to Ancona. But the Senones soon marched forward in quest of plunder and adventures. Crossing the wall of the Apennines, they attacked the great town of Clusium ; whereupon the Etruscans, if we may believe a late tradition, sent to ask the aid of the concjuerors of Veii. Accordingly the Senate despatched envoys to warn the Gauls not to molest friends and allies of Rome. The Celts scorned the threats of the strangers, and joined battle with the men of Clusium. In this skirmish the Roman ambassadors took part, one of them slaying a Gallic chieftain in single combat. The bar- barians demanded the surrender of the men who had thus out- raged the law of nations, but the Roman people rejected this reasonable request. Then the Gallic leader broke up the siege of Clusium and marched direct on Rome. Battle of the Allia.^ — The Gauls had advanced within twelve miles of the gates of the city before a Roman army was ready to bar their path. By the rivulet of the Allia was fought a battle, in which panic fear succeeded to foolish arrogance in the Roman ranks. The fierce rush of the Celts was strange and terrible to the Italians. We hear nothing as yet of the knightly cavalry Ceesar found in Gaul, or of the war-chariots used by the Britons. But the barbarians were big men, armed with long, though ill- tempered, swords, and covered with huge shields, who by mere weight and strength broke through the Italian phalanx. Savage 1 Monimsen places the battle on the Etruscan bank of the Tiber, opposite tiie inflow of the Allia. This is perhaps the meaning of Diodorus, and explains the retreat to Veii, but it makes the flight of the Vestals to Caere absurd, and directly contradicts Livy's narrative. 86 HISTORY OF ROME cries unci shaggy locks, which no helmet guarded, added fancied lerrors to the furious onset of the clans, whose chieftain, Brennus, shattered the Roman right at the first shock, and so rolled up their whole line of battle in a hideous rout. The bulk of the fugitives plunged into the Tiber, hoping to escape the swords and javelins of the Gauls, and make good their retreat to Veil. A scanty remnant fled by the direct road to Rome, and brought thither tidings of a calamity never forgotten by the Roman people. Even after centuries of victory, the Roman legionary needs a Caesar or a Marius to inspire and discipline him to meet the fierce barbarian, who had routed his forefathers at the Allia. Sack of Rome. — At Rome all was confusion and dismay. Long trains of fugitives passed over the Tiber and the hill of Janiculum, leaving the doomed city to its fate. With them fled the flamen of Quirinus and the Vestal virgins, who buried some of their sacred things, and carried off with them the eternal fire to the friendly town of Caere. The flower of the patricians resolved to defend to the last the hill of the Capitol, the acropolis of Rome, the true home of its citizens and its gods. Thus when the Gauls at length appeared, on the third day after the battle, they found the walls unguarded and the gates open. Fearing- an ambush, they hesitated for a whole day to enter the city, and so gave the Romans time to garrison and provision the Capitol. But not all the citizens of Rome had fled or taken refuge in the citadel. The men who had, in years long past, swayed the counsels and led the armies of the state, and were now too old to fight in its defence, proudly refused to escape death by exile. They met together and devoted themselves to the gods below, for the deliverance of their country. Then they arrayed themselves in robes of state, and sat down, each on his ivory chair, in the gateway of his house. When the Gauls found them, sitting unmoved amidst the destruction of the city, they looked on them as more than mortal. At length one of them ventured to draw near and stroke the beard of M. Papirius, but the old man resented the profane touch of the bar- barian, and smote him on the head with his ivory staff. The Gaul, in fury, cut down Papirius with his sword, and thus aroused in his comrades the savage thirst for blood. The old Romans were sacrificed to the powers of death by the swords of the enemy. After sacking the city and giving its buildings to the flames, the Gauls made an open assault on the Capitol, but were repulsed with loss. They then contented themselves with a blockade, while roving bands plundered the country round. THE SACK OF ROME 87 Defence of the Capitol. — Meanwhile, the fugitives at \'eii took heart to resist some marauding Etruscans, and sent to Ardea to ask Camillus, who had already cut to pieces a party of plunderers, to lead them against the Gauls. But the exiled general must first receive authority from the remnant of the Roman people gathered on the Capitol. A young man named Pontius Cominius under- took the dangerous errand. He swam the Tiber, and climbed up the cliff by a precipitous, and therefore unguarded, path. Re- turning, as he came, unhurt, he bore the news to Veii that the Senate recalled Camillus, and appointed him dictator. But next morning the Gauls observed the tracks of his ascent, and resolved at once to follow the same path. Silently they climbed up the cliff in the darkness. The sentinels were asleep, and even the watch-dogs heard them not. But in the Capitoline temple the sacred geese of Juno, which Roman piety, even in the day of need, had spared, cackled with fear. Roused by the sound, M. Manlius seized sword and shield, and rushed to the top of the clifif, just in time to dash the foremost Gaul down the rock. The Gaul, as he fell, bore down those behind him ; the other Romans, coming up, slaughtered them easily. Thus the cackling of the geese and the courage of Manlius saved the Capitol. Nevertheless, despite the unhealthiness of a Roman autumn, the Gauls maintained the blockade of the Capitol, and reduced the garrison to the last extremity of hunger. At length they agreed to ransom themselves by the payment of a thousand pounds of gold, a sum collected with difficulty from the treasures of the Capitol. The gold was weighed in the Forum, but Brennus used unfair weights, and answered the complaints of Quintus Sulpicius by throwing his broadsword into the scale, with the insulting words, " Vae victis." Suddenly Camillus appeared with his troops and declared any agreement made without his sanction null and void. He then drove the Gauls out of the city, and defeated them so utterly that not a man survived to carry home the news of the disaster. Criticism of the Legend. — Such is the legend, by which patriots, like Livy, concealed the humiliation of Rome. But of its falsehood there can be no doubt. We can almost trace the steps by which the legend was fabricated. In Polybius we hear that the Gauls retired unmolested with their booty, having come to terms with the Romans because they heard that their own land was being harried by the Veneti. Suetonius alleges that the ransom of a thousand pounds was indeed paid, but brought back from Cisal- 88 HIS-J'ORY OF ROME pine Gaul by tlie piii'lor I\l. I/ulus Drusus a century later, as if barbarians were likely to hoard treasure. Finally, Diodorus de- clares that Camillus was made dictator after the Gauls had left Rome, but defeated them on their return from a raid into Apulia in the following year, and then recovered the ransom. From this to the patriotic fiction of Livy 's but a single step. But the manifest exaggerations and contradictions of the legend must not lead us to doubt its substance. It is certain at least that a wan- dering horde of Gauls suddenly invaded the territory of Rome, routed the army, and sacked and burnt the town. It is almost certain that the barbarians besieged the Capitol in vain, and by selling their victory, lost it. Doubtless straggling bands of plunderers were cut to pieces, as they retreated, by the Romans and Latins, which small successes orators and chroniclers magni- fied into the heroic exploits of Camillus. Re-establishment of Roman Power. — But the o\erthr()w of Rome by the Gauls had no permanent effect on her fortunes. The in- vaders departed as suddenly as they had come, and Rome took up again the interrupted work of establishing her supremacy on both sides the Tiber. Once more we hear of a proposition to desert the now ruined city, and seek a new home in Veii. It is defeated, less by the impassioned eloquence of Camillus than by the chance saying of a centurion : " Standard-bearer, plant the standard here ; here we had best remain," which was accepted as an omen first by the Senate and afterwards by the people. The city rose from its ruins, but the narrow and crooked streets of later Rome bear witness to the haste and irregularity of the work of rebuilding. Yet, though the Romans refused to migrate to Veii, they took care to secure their hold on the conquered territory. Sutrium and Nepete are said to have been recovered from the Etruscans once at least by the hero Camillus ; they are finally garrisoned by " Latin " colonists. Four new tribes are formed in the territories of Veii, Capena, and Falerii, and in this way Etruria south of the Ciminian forest was united to Rome by common interests and sympathies. The settlement of Latium, more fully described elsewhere, occupied the Romans during the next thirty years ; when that task was accomplished they turned again to Etruria (356 B.C.). The great city of Tarquinii, aided by volunteers from Caere and Falerii, tried to stem the tide of Roman success. Inspired by religious fury, the Etruscans defeated the legions in a great battle, and sacrificed three hundred and seven prisoners on the altars of their gods. A bloody revenge followed the victory of RKSJVRAT/O.V OF ROME 89 Rome ; three hundred and fifty-eight of the nobles of Tarquinii were scourged and beheaded (351 B.C.). In the end Tarquinii concluded ^ijfei ft » FALISCAN VASE IN THE BKITISII MUSEUM. a truce for forty years, while Ca;re and Falerii became dependents of Rome. Falerii was compelled to enter into perpetual alliance with the suzerain state ; Cicre surrendered her political indepen- 90 HISTORY OF ROME dence, and even local self-government. The inhabitants received the private, but not the public, rights of Romans {cii'itas sine suffragid) ; they shared the burdens but not the honours of citizen- ship. A Roman pncfect controlled the administration. Raids of the Gauls. — Marauding bands of Gauls continued to disturb the peace, though they did not again threaten the exist- ence of Rome. In the simple and credible account of Polybius two such raids arc recorded ; on the first occasion (360 B.C.) the Romans were taken by surprise, and did not venture to meet the enemy in the field ; on the second (349 B.C.) they showed a firm front, entirely discomfiting the Gauls, who retreated rapidly and in dis- order. From the highly coloured narrative of Livy, who tells of six invasions and six Roman triumphs, two stories of single combat may be given, interesting as among the last pure legends in Roman history. In 360 B.C. the Romans were encamped over against the Gauls on the Anio, not five miles from Rome. A gigantic Gaul, in splendid armour, challenged any man in the Roman ranks to single combat, and was encountered by young T. Manlius. The Roman champion closed at once ; avoiding the wild sweep of the Gallic broadsword, he thrust his own blade deep into his enemy's body, and so ended the combat. He then took the golden collar (^torques) from the Gallic chieftain's neck and put it on his own, thus earning for himself and his family the name of Torquatus. In 349 B.C. the Romans were commanded by the son of their old hero, Camillus. Again a young Roman is per- mitted by the general to accept the challenge of a Gallic warrior. But on this occasion the duel is decided by the direct intervention of Heaven. As the champions closed in conflict, a raven alighted on the Roman's helmet, and during the fight tore the face and eyes of the Gaul with beak and claw. Thus M. Valerius gained an easy victory over the bewildered barbarian, and ever after was known by the name of " Corvus." These legends fitly close the story of the Gallic invasion. Though they may be nothing more than attempts to account for the family names of great houses, yet the pictures they give us of the Gauls are true and interesting. The barbarians fail because they are inferior in arms and discipline to the Italians. Never again were Gauls to bring the Roman state to the brink of destruc- tion ; rather they had served to smooth the path for its triumphal progress, by breaking the strength of the Etruscan nation. Rome was free from all anxieties on her northern frontier when she had to face a new and stubborn foe in the mountains of the south. Lie I XI AX LAWS 91 CHAPTER XII THE LICINIAN LAWS AND THE EQUALISATION OF THE ORDERS ll.C. A.U.C. Execution of Manlius 384 370 The Bills of Licinius and Sextius 377-367 377-387 Popular Laws of Publilius Philo 339 415 Censorship of Appius Claudius 31Z 442 Lex Ogulnia 3°'' 454 Lex Hortensia 287 467 M. Manlius. — The exhausting struggle with Veii and the sack of Rome by the Gauls for a time distracted the attention of the plebeians fi-om constitutional reform. But the distress caused by these wars among the poorer farmers was widespread and severe. The introduction of pay for service in the legions was but a small compensation for the neglect and devastation of their lands. The impoverished yeomen found a champion in M. Manlius, the saviour of the Capitol. But the government raised again the old cry of treason, and procured his condemnation and execution. Note. — Mommsen discredits llie received story of Manlius, and be- lieves that the oldest chronicles contained only the record of his treason and his condemnation. The tale of the saving of the Capitol was invented to explain his name (Capitolinus), which, however, can be proved to have existed before that time in the Manlian gens, and was doubtless derived from the fact that their house stood on the Capitol. The attempt to cancel debts is a fiction of the days when Cinna made their abolition part of the democratic programme. [Cf. \). 58 for his treatment of the story of Sp. Cassius.) Proposals of Licinius and Sextius. — The failure of Manlius proved the powerlessness of the poor in face of an united aristoc- racy, but, by enlisting on their side those richer plebeians who resented their exclusion from political power, they might yet hope to obtain relief from the burden of debt and gain a share in the public lands. A coalition was formed under the able leadership of the tribunes, C. Licinius Stolo and L. Sextius. Their pro- posals dealt with the grievances of both sections of the plebeians. Debtors were relieved by the deduction of the interest they had already paid from the principal, and allowed three years for the payment of the residue. The monopoly of the conquered ter- 92 HISTORY OF ROME ritories by the rich was nut Ijv jjioviclin^ that no citizen should hold more than 500 jugera of the public land, nor keep more than 100 head of cattle and 500 sheep on the common pastnrc. A clause ordering that a certain proportion of the labourers employed on an estate should be freemen belongs, in all jiroba- bility, to a later age, when slave-labour was cheaper and more plentiful, but is usually ascribed, on Appian's authority, to Licinius. To these social reforms the plebeian leaders tacked a political proposal of the greatest importance, viz., that consuls, and not consular tribunes, be henceforth elected, and that one at least of the consuls be a plebeian. A subsequent Bill provided that the number of the priestly custodians of the Sibylline books be increased from two to ten, and that half the college be plebeian. Opposition of the Patricians. — The measures of Licinius met with the most pertinacious opposition from the patricians. For ten years they obstructed their ratification by procuring the inter- vention of friendly tribunes, and by the nomination of dictators to overawe the agitation. But the two sections of the plebeians held firmly together. The poor farmers cared little for the poli- tical privileges offered to them ; the rich plebeians were not in earnest about social reforms, for their author, Licinius, was him- self condemned for transgressing the agrarian provisions of his law ; but both perceived that union was an absolute necessity. At length their pertinacity triumphed over the obstruction of the patricians, and secured the passage of the measure and the election of the late tribune, L. Sextius Lateranus, as consul. The patricians managed to mar the grace of this great concession by clipping and paring away some of the powers of the consulate. The aci- ministration of justice was reserved for a patrician official, known as a pnttor, who was considered a colleague of the consuls, though inferior to them. At the same time the charge of the market, the organisation of festivals, and various police duties were assigned to two curule pcdiles of patrician birth. Admission of the Plebeians to Magistracies, — AH the heart was taken out of the patrician opposition by the surrender of the consulship. The wiser aristocrats saw that the cause of political privilege was lost, and loyally accepted the new order of things. Camillus, their great champion, appears for the last time on the stage of history, to found a temple of Concord, as a pledge and sign that the divisions of the orders were now at an end. The more stiff-necked aristocrats found themselves gradually deprived LTCmiAN LAWS 93 94 HIS TO A' Y OP ROME of their remaining privileges. The curule redileship was immedi- ately thrown open by an agreement that this ofifice should be held by plebeians and patricians in alternate years. The dictatorship was first held by a plebeian, C. Marcius Rutilus, in 356 B.C., and the censorship in 351 B.C. Though the patricians succeeded, in open defiance of the Licinian laws, in monopolising the consulate on several occasions, this abuse was finally put down in 342 B.C. by a resolution of the people which declared that both consulships might be held by plebeians. At the same time, (or perhaps in 330 B.C.), the tenure of two ordinary curule offices at once, or of the same office twice within ten years, was forbidden. These restric- tions, by increasing the number of individuals who had held magis- tracies, tended to strengthen the plebeian nobility. Finally, in 339 B.C., a plebeian dictator, Publilius Philo, carried a law which ordained that one censor must be plebeian, and in 337 B C. the same statesman was elected pra?tor, and thus broke down the last barrier which excluded the plebeians from offices of state. The Popular Assemblies. — Publilius Philo also secured freedom of action for the popular assemblies. Hitherto the resolutions of the people in the comitia of the centuries had required the subse- quent sanction of the patrician senators {patres). But Publilius Philo made their assent a mere formality, by a law which enacted that it should be given beforehand. By a later, Mtenian, law this rule was extended to elections held in that assembly. He also won ampler legislative powers for the comitia tributa, in which assembly all measures brought forward by a praetor are henceforth put to the vote. The emancipation of the comitia centuriata from the supervision of the patres, and the fuller recognition of the competence of the assembly of the tribes, are a fitting crown to the career of this great plebeian statesman. Appius Claudius. — The next step forward was accomplished by an imperious but enlightened aristocrat. Appius Claudius Caucus, censor in 312 B.C., showed, like his ancestor, the Decemvir, a haughty disdain for the narrow traditions of the Roman nobility. In conjunction with his colleague, C. Plautius, he conferred the full franchise on freedmen, and on all residents possessed of the private rights of citizenship {civitas sine suffragio). He thus enfranchised large numbers of tradesmen and artisans, and made the town population supreme in the assembly. At the same time he admitted men of the same class into the .Senate. Eight years later (304 B.C.) his influence procured the election of Cn. Flavins, the son of a freedman, and a clerk in the public service, to the curule tedile- APPIUS CLAUDIUS C.^CUS 95 ship. Together the proud noble and the clerk published a legal calendar and a list of the formulas of the law, which opened to all the sealed book of legal knowledge. But the reformer was before his time. By a judicious compromise the succeeding censor, Q. ?\ibius Rullianus, confined the newly enfranchised classes to the four city tribes, and left the twenty-seven country tribes to the landed proprietors and yeomen. Nor were the sons of freedmen again admitted to offices of state and seats in the Senate. The Appian Road and Aqueduct. — The censorship of Appius was memorable in another way. During his term of office he carried out two great public works which were models for all time. He built a great aqueduct to carry pure water from the Sabine mountains to the most crowded part of Rome — a work of peculiar necessity owing to the insanitary state of the town and the deficiency of water, — and he constructed the first of those magni- ficent straight level roads which still mark the lands where Rome has ruled. The Appian Road crossed the Campagna to the Alban hills, and then, passing through the Pomptine marshes to Tarracina, threaded its way by Lautute, where the Volscian hills come down to the shore. Thence it led on, across the Liris and Volturnus, to Capua, 1 20 miles from Rome. It was continued later to Tarentum and Brundisium. To give himself time to complete these great undertakings, Appius retained his office for the full term of five years, instead of laying it down, as custom prescribed, after eighteen months. But there is no ground for supposing that he meditated a revolution or aimed at tyranny. Such fables are the inventions of chroniclers, unable or unwilling to comprehend the genius of a statesman, whose schemes resemble those of Greek reformers in their daring disregard of custom and convention. Final Equality of the Orders. — In 300 B.C. the last strongholds of patrician exclusiveness, the sacred colleges of augurs and pontiffs, were thrown open to plebeians, and the equality of plebeians to patricians before the gods as well as before men proclaimed.^ The reservation of the offices of the flamens, the rex sacrificulus {cf. p. 47), and the inter-rex {^cf. p. 42) for patricians is a mere survival of no historical importance. The last step in the long process of emancipating the popular assemblies from patrician control was taken in 287 B.C. An agrarian proposal of Manius Curius had occasioned serious dissensions, and even a formal 1 The significance of tliis reform will be pointed out later. 96 IITSTORY OF ROME secession to Janiculuni. Jiut tlic l)r('acli was healed, and the Hbertics of the people assured, Ijy a 1 loitensian law, which declared the resolutions of the meeting of the plebeians {co7tcilium plcbis) of binding force witliout ratification by any other authority. The struggle l^etwccn the orders had ended in political equahty — Rome had cast off the yoke of the patrician aristocracy, and became in form a pure democracy. At the same time, the con- cjuest of Italy furnished land for distribution among the poor, and attracted wealth to the growing town. The harshness of the old law was modified by the measure of C. Poetelius (326 or 313 n.c), which abolished imprisonment for debt, except after a trial by jury, and allowed a debtor to preserve his liberty by ceding his property, if it was worth as much as the debt. The policy of the Licinian laws, which linked together political and social reform, was amply vindicated by the increasing vigour and the awakened patriotism of the united commonwealth. The reconciliation of jarring factions made the armies of Rome triumphant throughout Italy. The Rise of the New Nobility. — Nevertheless, this specious show of republican equality was destined to prove an illusion. Hardly had the old aristocracy of birth lost its privileges, when a new nobility rose in its place. The plebeian was no longer de- barred from office, but poverty was still a most serious hindrance in a political career. Though for a time poor men, like Fabricius and Manius Curius, force their way to the front as popular leaders, yet the wealthy classes gradually monopolise office, and establish their ascendency in the Senate. The sovereignty of the people, absolute in theory,^ in practice recedes into the background. In the mean- time the magistracy is weakened by the subdivision of the old powers among many holders. The consuls had lost the right to revise the rolls of citizens and senators, the management of finance, and the administration of justice. No other magistrate could take their place at the head of the government ; all alike tend to be- come officials dependent on the will of the Senate. Ascendency of the Senate, — That great council directed the destinies of Rome. By the Ovinian plebiscite, carried during this period, the censors were ordered to inscribe as members all who had held curule offices of state. No doubt men who had not 1 If, indeed, a constitution like tlie Roman can be said to possess a theory at all, and if the theory of sovereignty can be applied to an ancient state. Theories are apt to be the work of legists and scholars, who tend to over-systematise the whole, or to exaggerate transitional phases. rOWRR OF THE SEAGATE 97 held office were still admitted to fill up the ranks of the Senate, but its core was composed of statesmen elected magistrates by the free choice of the people, but retaining their seats in the Senate for life. This permanent council of state soon reduced the annual magistrates to subordination, and used them as its ministers. It regulated their provinces, and arbitrated in their cjuarrels. The tribunate, which, after the equalisation of the orders, seemed a useless anachronism, was transformed into a regular instrument of government. The tribunes were given the right of convok- ing the Senate and submitting decrees for its approval. Their powers were used to curb the self-will of consuls who refused com- pliance with the wishes of the Senate, or to manage the burgess assemblies in the interest of the government. But the tribunate was saved from extinction by its popular associations, and, dead as it was to all appearance, it was yet to play a conspicuous part in a new struggle of the masses against the classes who held the reins of power. For a century and a half, however, the tide ran strong in an aristocratic direction. The magistrates and people bowed to the wisdom of the great council which made Rome the mistress of the Mediterranean, and secured for her citizens prosperity at home and honour abroad. CHAPTER XIII THE SUBJUGATION OF LATIUM AND CAMPANIA Renewed Union between Rome and Latiuni Alliance with Samnites . . Treaty with Carthage ... First Samnite War Mutiny in Campania Great Latin War Dissolution of Latin League B.C. A.U.C. 358 396 354 400 348 406 343-341 411-413 342 412 340 414 338 416 The Latin League. — The ancient league between Rome and Latium, ascribed to Spurius Cassius (p. 63), had been based on the assumption of complete equality between the two contracting powers — Rome and Latium were to contribute equal contingents G 93 HISTORY OF ROME. to the legions, and receive equal shares of the booty and territory won in war. Full equality was likewise secured for individual burgesses. The burgess of any community might at pleasure claim in any other city of the league the privilege of contracting a legal marriage {^ius conubii), and the right to buy and sell, to hold and to bequeath land and other property {ius comniercii). Further, all members of the Latin league had full liberty to migrate and settle in Rome, as passive burgesses, possessed of all the private rights of citizens, though debarred from office, and from the suffrage, except in the comiiia tributa, where these settlers voted in a tribe fixed on each occasion by lot. The internal constitutions of the Latin cities resembled as a rule that of Rome in its most remarkable feature, the collegiate tenure of the magistracy. In such instances the supreme magis- trates were called by the name originally given at Rome to the consuls, prKtors, while another Roman title, that of dictator, is given to the single annual magistrate found in other Latin cities. We may therefore suppose that the substitution of aristocracy for monarchy at Rome was accompanied by a similar remodelling of the constitutions of the allied cities, and that political sympathies as well as common interests strengthened the bonds of union between the leading state and the Latin league. Disaffection in Latium. — But there is an inevitable tendency in such a confederacy for the chief city to convert her leadership into sovereignty. Without any formal alterations in the treaty of alliance, the Latins lost in practice their right to name the general and staff of the amiy in alternate years, and the power of making separate treaties. Again, from the nature of the case, the burdens and dangers of the yEquian and Volscian wars pressed most severely on the Latins, while the fruits of victory were reaped by Rome. Hence, when the flood of the Celtic invasion receded, the Latins hastened to cut themselves adrift from the wreck. The strong cities of Tibur and Prseneste had made themselves mistresses of the smaller neighbouring towns, and were anxious to assert their independence. The discontent first came to a head at Prseneste (382-380 B.C.) ; next it showed itself in secret assist- ance to the Volscians, who were struggling desperately to main- tain their separate existence. At last there was a widespread revolt against the suzerain power. Pra;neste again flew to arms ; Tibur leagued herself with a wandering tribe of Gauls ; even the faithful Hernicans were for four years the open enemies of Rome (362 B.C.). But the disunited malcontents were powerless before LATIN LEAGUE CLOSED 99 the masterly policy of the Senate. In a few years the Gauls were repulsed, the Hernicans reduced to submission, and the disaffected Latins compelled again to recognise the supremacy of Rome (358 r..c.), and so set her free to defend her northern frontiers against Tarquinii. At the same time the Voiscians were punished by the loss of the Pomptine territory, now formed into two new tribes and incorporated with Rome. The decline of the Volscian power was doubtless in part due to assaults on their flank and rear by the Samnites, a people who were already pressing over the upper Liris on to the Ausonian plain, and with whom Rome soon after concluded a formal alliance. Tibur and Prajneste were (354 B.C.) the last to acknowledge the re-establishment of the Roman suzerainty. Closing of the Latin League. — The towns of the Latin league were now more obviously dependent on Rome. After this revolt, if not before/ the list of confederate cities and the limits of Latium were irrevocably fixed. Up to this time, every colony founded by Rome and Latium had been represented at the festival and diet, though of the forty-seven members of the league only thirty had been entitled to a vote. Later Latin colonies were excluded from the Alban festival and the list of the confederacy, while old mem- bers, such as Tusculum and Satricum, were retained on the list, though absorbed in the Roman state. The policy of separating the allied cities from each other and linking them only with the sovereign state was begun, by preventing all separate alliances within the league, and by completely isolating the new colonies, to whom no rights of intermarriage or of purchasing or inheriting land were granted except with Rome. We can hardly wonder that the smouldering embers of Latin discontent were destined within twenty years to burst again into flame. But for the moment the predominance of Rome was unquestioned, and was even recognised by the great naval power of Carthage, which, in 348 B.C., bound itself to spare the maritime cities of Latium, so long as they remained true to Rome, and, further, to restore to the suzerain power any revolted city that might fall into its hands. The Samnites and Campanians. — Before Rome was brought into closer contact with the mistress of the western seas, she had to make good her claim to supremacy in Italy. Nor were her antagonists unworthy of her high destiny. In the pastures and 1 Mommsen prefers an earlier date, circa 384 B.C. lOO inSTORY OF ROME valleys which skirt the snow-capped peak of Mount Matese dwelt a hardy race of herdsmen, whose confederate tribes bore the com- mon name of Samnites. These bold warriors poured down from their mountains on to the coast-lands, which Greeks and Etruscans had enriched with cornfields and vineyards, and adorned with stately cities. One swarm of invaders had driven the Etruscans from Capua and the Greeks from Cumce (424-420 B.C.) ; another, turning southward, overran Magna Gra^cia and made the name of the Lucanians terrible to the Achaean settlers. But these invading hordes broke off their connection with the parent stock in Samnium. Thus the Samnite dominion, extensive as it was, lacked the solid foundation on which Rome built her power. The loose confedera- cies of independent cantons, maintained by the Samnite race in its old mountain-home, and reproduced in its new possessions in Lucania and Campania, were ill fitted to meet the steady advance of a single centralised power. In many towns the conquerors were absorbed by the people with whom they mingled, and learnt from them the culture and civic institutions which were the heritage of the Greek. In Capua they adopted from the conquered Etrus- cans the employment of mercenaries, and the shows of gladi- ators, Rome's direst disgrace in later days. These degenerate offshoots of the Samnite stock trembled before the rude tribes which later followed the path they themselves had opened from the highlands. The townsmen of Campania looked round for a champion of civilisation to protect them from their own brethren, who still preserved the savage customs of their forefathers. First Samnite War. — A vain attempt of the Capuans to pro- tect the Sidicini of Teanum against the mountaineers only drew Samnite vengeance on themselves. A garrison posted on Mount Tifata, right above the town, laid waste the territories and defeated the forces of Capua. In their distress the Campanians implored and obtained the protection of Rome (343 B.C.). The Samnites refused to acknowledge the claims of Rome to rule in Campania, and war ensued. Of the details of this first Samnite war history says nothing. Neither truth nor beauty are to be found in the panegyrics pronounced on Valerius Corvus and Decius Mus. It would seem that the Romans and their allies were strong enough to drive the Samnites from the plains, though unable to penetrate into their mountain-fastnesses. Eventually Capua was retained by the Romans, and Teanum surrendered to the Samnites. Both combatants needed a respite before girding up their loins for the decisive struggle. The Samnites were troubled by the renewed MUTINY IN CAMPANIA loi activity of Tarentum. Rome, which had but hitely suppressed a serious militaiy revolt aggravated by domestic discontent, had now to face a desperate conflict with the whole strength of Latium. The Mutiny in Campania. — After the campaign of 343 B.C. the Roman legions, quartered in Capua for its defence, conspired together to seize the town for themselves. To frustrate this treachery, the consul, C. Marcius Rutilus, discharged the principal malcontents. But they gathered together at the pass of Lautulaj, near Tarracina, and being joined by the mass of the soldiery, marched on Rome. At the same time the commons in Rome rose in revolt against the oppressions of their creditors. M. Valerius Coi-vus, who had been appointed dictator, found it necessary to grant an amnesty to the insurgents, and to pass a solemn law and covenant embodying their demands. In future no military tribune could be degraded, and no soldier discharged from the ranks, at the caprice of the consul. Service in the legion at this time entitled the citizen to a share in the fruits of war, pay, plunder, and an allotment of land, while his rank in the legion determined the amount of his share. Hence the power of degrad- ing or discharging a soldier enabled the consul to deprive obnoxious citizens of the due reward of their service to the state. The soldiery insisted on the abolition of this arbitrary power, but did not press their petition for the reduction of the pay of the horse- men. To allay the discontent in the city a measure was passed for the relief of debtors, though we can hardly believe that sober Romans ever sanctioned the proposal of the tribune Genucius for the total prohibition of interest. Preparations for War. — These concessions, and the separate alliance concluded by Rome with the Samnites, were devised to meet the threatened defection of Latium and Campania. The Latins were determined not to sink into the position of helpless dependents, but rather to maintain their equality by force of arms. Even when Rome had deserted them they continued the Samnite war with vigour, and thus won the support of the Campanians. They now boldly demanded complete union with Rome on an equal footing-. One consul and half the Senate were to be of Latin origin, and doubtless this equal division of power was to be carried out also in the popular assemblies. The Senate, led by Manllus Torquatus, indignantly rejected this proposal for an equal union, and appealed at once to the arbitrament of the sword. Rome had now to meet, not a foreign foe, but a people whose I02 HISTOR V OF ROME institutions were similar to her own, and whose troops had long been trained to fight shoulder to shoulder wi;h her legionaries, and had learnt under the same discipline to use the same arms. If we may believe tradition, the old solid phalanx had been already superseded by a more open order of battle. The legionaries were now drawn up in three divisions, of which the two first were armed wiih the pilum, a wooden javelin, pointed with iron, six and a half feet in length, while the third still bore the old thrusting-spear {liastd). At the same time the sword became the principal weapon of the soldiers, who followed up their volleys of javelins by an attack sword in hand. Thus the phalanx of spearmen was broken up into handfuls {maniptili) of swordsmen, who fought in open order, with marked intervals between the various divisions. Most pro- bably this new method of fighting was perfected in mountain warfare against the Samnites ; it is fully developed at least by the time of Pyrrhus. The weakness of the Latin league was not military but political. Though the old Latin cities, except Lauren- tum, declared for war, the colonies founded outside Latium remained, with but few exceptions, true to Rome. In Capua, and perhaps elsewhere in Campania, the aristocracy, though overpowered for the time by the popular party, refused to forsake her cause. The Hernicans proved their fidelity, and the Samnites their magna- nimity, by rendering loyal aid to their Roman allies. The Latin War. — The hostile regions of Latium and Campania separated Rome from her chief allies, the Samnites. With wise audacity, the consuls, Manlius Torquatus and Decius Mus, left Rome to be defended by the citizens, and marched round through the country of the Marsians and Pcelignians to form a junction with the Samnite forces. The united army moved forward to offer battle in the plain of Capua, with their retreat into the Samnite mountains secured in case of disaster. vStrict orders were issued by Manlius against all irregular skirmishing with the Latins, but his own son was provoked into a single combat with Geminus Mettius of Tusculum. The young man, forgetting the commands and remembering only the exploit of his father, slew the Latin champion. But when he returned triumphant to lay his spoils at his father's feet, the consul turned gloomily from him, and ordered his immediate execution before the assembled army. This stern sacrifice of private feeling to public duty, so characteristic of a Roman noble, ensured the obedience, though it alienated the affections, of the soldiery. The Battle of Mount Vesuvius.— The battle that decided the THE GREAT LATIN WAR 103 fate of Campania was fought near Mount Vesuvius.* The consuls were warned by a dream that the victory of the army must be purchased by the death of the general, and agreed that he whose legions first gave ground in the battle should devote himself to the gods of death. So, when the left wing-, where Decius Mus com- manded, fell into disorder, he called for the chief pontiff, and with veiled head repeated after him the solemn formula of self-devotion. And when he had so done and mounted his horse, he plunged into the ranks of the enemy, to seek death for himself and victory for his country. The day was saved by the heroism of Decius ; it was won by the skill of Manlius. Instead of his reserve of veterans {friarii), he brought up the supernumeraries {accensi), whom he had armed for the purpose. Deceived by this manoeuvre, the Latins threw their last reserves into the battle, and so had none left to meet the decisive charge of the Roman veterans. The part played by the Samnites and Hernicans in this victory is ignored or misrepresented by the chroniclers of Rome. Fleeing in confusion from Campania, the Latins made a last rally in defence of their liberties at Trifanum, but another defeat drove their troops from the field. Their fortified towns capitulated one after another, and the whole country submitted to the yoke of Rome. Settlement of Latium and Campania. — The victory of Rome entailed the destruction of the Latin league as a political federa- tion, though it survived as a religious association. Those Latin cities which were not absorbed into the Roinan state were com- pletely isolated from each other, and connected simply by their common dependence on Rome. Each subject community was bound to the suzerain by a separate treaty. It retained the right of local self-government, but lost all control over foreign policy, in which henceforth it followed the lead of Rome. Complete submission was ensured by a policy of isolation. The old rights of conubium (inter-marriage) and commercium (commerce and settlement {cf. p. 98) were retained by the Latins only in Rome ; all similar intercourse between one Latin town and another was prohibited. Further, Rome took upon herself the duties of the old federal council. She determined the amount of the contingents which the subject cities were bound by treaty to provide and pay, and 1 Mommsen has found reason to suspect the truth of Livy's narrative, summarised above, and follows Diodorus in omitting all but the final battle of Trifanum. I04 HISTORY OF ROME supervised the assessmciU of tlicir property and the levy of their troops. Even the strongest Latin towns, Tibur and Praeneste, had to cede their domain lands to Rome, and to follow her leadership in war. Other districts of Latium were granted less favourable terms. Lanuvium, Aricia, Nomcntum, and Pedum were compelled to accept the Ca:rite franchise (pp. 89, 90). Velitrse was further punished by the destruction of its walls and the exile of the senatorial aris- tocracy, who had headed the opposition to Rome. The Volscian port of Antium^ was made a Roman burgess colony ; its inhabitants had to provide land for the new settlers, but were permitted to join the colony (338 B.C.). A few years later Anxur shared the same fate (329 B.C.). The memory of these measures was preserved by the erection of equestrian statues in the Forum to the consuls Ma^nius and Camillus, and the decoration of the orator's platform {rostra) with the beaks of the Antiate triremes. Two new tribes were formed from the settlers on the confiscated lands of the Latins, and from some recently enfranchised communities. The organi- sation of the Volscian and Campanian districts followed. Fundi, Formias, Cumas, and Capua where the fidelity of the aristocracy was richly rewarded, received the civifas sine suffragio, without forfeiting local autonomy. Privernum, which once more rebelled (329 B.C.), escaped with the loss of its walls ; but the leader of the revolt, Vitruvius Vaccus of Fundi, paid for his boldness with his life. The strongholds of Cales (334 B.C.), which dominated the entrance to the Campanian plain, and Fregellae (328 B.C.), which commanded the passage of the Liris, were occupied by Latin colonies. In vain the Samnites protested against the occupation of Fregellaeand Sora, as an infringement of their rights. Rome, at whose instance they had refrained from attacking Luca and Fabrateria, pursued her course without regard to their complaints. In fifteen years she had conquered Latium and Campania, and secured the newly won territories by a ring of fortresses, but this was the least part of her achievement. With far-sighted policy, the sovereign state, while she severed every link which united the subject cities, drew them each more closely to herself by the promotion of social and commercial intercourse. Already the same language and the same customs prevailed throughout Latium ; Rome introduced a single system of law. Local autonomy satisfied her subjects for the present ; the hope of full citizenship in the future fired their 1 Antium, which had recovered its freedom in 459 B.C. , had possibly become once more a Lr.tin colony, 385-377 B.C. {cf. also p. 58). TAKEXTUM AXD THE SAMNITES 105 ambition and ensured their fidelity. The union thus evoked out of discord, a union too strong to be shaiven even by a Hannibal, was a proof of Rome's title to the dominion of Italy and a prophecy of her imperial mission. KOMA.NU-LAMIWMAN COIN, 33S-317 B.C. CHAPTl^R XIV THE SECOND SAMNITE WAR Outbreak of Second Samnite War 327 The Capitulation at the Caudine Forks . Rome drives the Samnites back into the Mountains Etruscan War Revolt of the Hernicans End of the War R.C. A.r.c. 327 427 321 433 3H 440 311-308 443-446 306 448 304 45° Alexander the Molossian. — The Samnites were not indifferent spectators of the establishment of Roman dominion in Latium and Campania, but they were fully occupied in Lower Italy. The wealthy merchants of Tarentum, the leading state in Greek Italy, had long trembled before the Samnites and Lucanians. They now called to their aid mercenaiy leaders from the mother countr}'. The Spartan king Archidamus fell in battle against the Lucanians (338 B.C.), but his place was taken by an abler chieftain, Alexander the Molossian, uncle of the great Alexander. Under his banner were arrayed his countrymien of Epirus, the Greeks of Italy, and even exiled Lucanians. He captured Consentia, the chief town of the Lucanians, and after defeating the combined forces of the Samnites and Lucanians near Paistum, made himself master of Lower Italy from sea to sea. Rome, which now feared the rivalry of the Samnites, ungratefully forgot their services in the Latin war, and made an ally of their enemy. But this sudden greatness, which io6 HISTORY OF ROME fired the Epirot prince with the hope of founding; a Hellenic Empire in the west, a dream which not even his great successor, Pyrrhus, could realise, proved the precursor of his fall. The Taren- tines, who needed not a master but a mercenary, withdrew their support. The attempt to form a new league of their unwilling adherents, the degenerate Greek cities of Italy, and their old enemies, the Oscan tribes, ended in the assassination of the prince by a Lucanian exile. The death of Alexander left the Greek cities to defend themselves as best they could against the Lucanians, and set the Samnites free to use their whole force against Rome in the decisive struggle for the mastery of Italy. Outbreak of Second Samnite War. — The supremacy of Rome was now undisputed in the plains of Latium and Campania as far south as the Volturnus. Only the Greek citizens of the twin towns Palaeopolis and Neapolis (Naples) were still independent. Dis- putes arose between the men of Palaeopolis and the Roman settlers in Campania, which led the Greeks to appeal for aid to the Samnites, the only power in Italy strong enough to protect them against the encroachments of Rome. The Samnites deter- mined to make a stand in Campania, and despatched a strong garrison to Palaeopolis. The formal demand of the Roman ambassadors for its evacuation was met by a complaint of the colonisation of Fregellae. Both nations were firmly convinced of the justice of their cause and the strength of their armies, and appealed with confidence to the judgment of the god of battle. For, in truth, though the occupation of Palaeopolis formed the pre- text for the war, just as that of Messana was later the occasion of the first Punic war, the struggle thus begun was no border war for the possession of a single city or even a particular district, but a mighty duel between two rival races, which was to determine whether Italy should be Latin or Oscan, and her civilisation pro- gressive or stationary. Diplomatic and Military Successes of Rome. — The Romans were keenly alive to the gravity of the issue, and strengthened themselves by alliances with the neighbours and enemies of the Samnites. The inhabitants of the plains of Apulia suffered from the raids of the Samnites, iiiuch as in Scotland the Lowlanders did from the Highland clans, and were ready to welcome the legions, for whose operations against the rear and flanks of the enemy they furnished a most serviceable base. The people in Lucania were eager to join their kinsmen in Samnium, to whom they were bound both by sentiment and interest, but the governing nobles SECOND SAMNITE WAR 107 would not sanction an alliance which involved peace with their old enemies, the Greeks of Tarentum. Roman diplomacy succeeded, as so often, in playing off one race against another, and averted the danger of an Oscan coalition. The Sabellian tribes of Central Italy were from the first not unfriendly to Rome. Only the Vestini attempted an independent policy, and they were shortly reduced by the legions to submission. In this way Rome secured her communications with Apulia, a point of the utmost strategic importance. Meanwhile Publilius Philo, the most trusted of her statesmen, pushed on the siege of Palceopolis with energy, and received the unprecedented honour of a command prolonged beyond his year of office. The triumph of the first proconsul was gained rather by diplomacy than by arms. The Roman party in Palajopolis opened their gates to the legions, and forced the Samnite garrison to flee in disorder. The Greeks of the twin cities, old and new, were granted the most favourable terms, a perpetual alliance with full equality of rights. This liberality was rewarded by the fidelity of Neapolis, and may have induced the neighbouring cities of Herculaneum and Pompeii, Nola and Nuceria, to throw in their lot with Rome. The aristocratic party was in all these Oscan towns, as at Capua, the chief support of Roman supremacy. In the meantime the two consuls had advanced into Samnium, and are said to have taken several towns ; at any rate they covered the operations in Campania and Central Italy by keeping the Samnites employed nearer home. Two campaigns sufficed to confine the Samnite power within the narrow bounds of their native mountains, and to secure for Rome a firm base in the cities on either coast, and a safe line of com- munications between them through the cantons of Central Italy. L. Papirius Cursor and Q. Fabius Rullianus. — At this point the real history of the war is obscured by exaggerated tales of the exploits of the two principal heroes of the day, and a lively account of a dispute between them. L. Papirius Cursor, a disciplinarian of the old school, who was now dictator, was recalled from the camp to Rome, to take the auspices afresh. He left his master of the horse, Q. Fabius Rullianus, in command, but charged him most strictly to avoid a battle. Fabius disobeyed his orders and won a great victory. Papirius hastened back, vowing to punish his disobedience with death, but Fabius was saved for the moment by the soldiery, and fled to Rome to implore the protection of the Senate and people. The dictator, who pursued in hot haste, warned the tribunes not to diminish his authority by bringing his io8 HISTORY OF ROME sentence before the assembly, but was softened by the entreaties of the people and the submission of the offender to his mercy. He granted Fabius his life, but deprived him of his command. Timely concessions averted a more serious danger in the fol- lowing year. While the two. consuls were engaged far away in Apulia and Samnium, discontent was rife nearer home. Tusculum, Privernum, and Velitrai flew to arms, determined to assert their independence, or extract from Rome, as the price of their support, full citizenship. At dead of night the alarm was given that the enemy were at the gates of Rome. Though the surprise failed, the attempt revealed to the Romans the danger of a general revolt, and induced them to grant the demands of the insurgents. At the next census two new tribes were formed which included the rebellious cities, and, more extraordinary still, L. Fulvius Flaccus, who had been chief magistrate of Tusculum at the time of the revolt, was, in the following year, consul of Rome. After the settlement of these difficulties Rome devoted herself to the war with renewed energy, so that the Samnites in despair sued for peace. They determined to surrender all their prisoners and plunder, and even Brutulus Papius, their bravest general, had not the patriot leader preferred suicide to the tender mercies of Rome. But when they found that nothing but unconditional submission would satisfy Roman pride, the Samnites resolved on a desperate defence of their liberty, and chose for their leader the hero of the war, Gavius Pontius. The Caudine Forks. — The overweening confidence of Rome was to be severely punished. Black as were the days of the Allia and of Cannse, there was one day blacker still in her calendar, the day of the Caudine Forks, because it was not only marked by disaster but branded with shame. The two consuls of the year 321 B.C., T. Veturius and Sp. Postumius, men untried in war, were enticed into the defiles of the Apennines by the news that the whole Samnite force was engaged in Apulia, besieging the town of Luceria. But as the legions pressed forward with all haste from Campania to the relief of their Apulian allies, they found the outlet of the valley of Caudium blocked by the Samnites, and, on retreating to the defile by which they had entered the fatal pass, found that also occupied by the enemy. The surrounding hills were lined with troops who had been lying' in ambush ; the Roman army was fairly caught in a trap, where it was hopeless to fight and impossible to fly. Their desperate attempts to break out were easily repulsed, and no resource was left but to throw them- THE CAUDINE FORK'S 109 selves on the mercy of the conqueror. I'ontius was not deaf to their entreaties. Instead of pressing his advantage, he aimed at an honourable and lasting peace. Rome was to recognise in the Samnites an equal and independent power, to restore the terri- tories {c.g.^ Campania) taken from them, and demolish the fortresses of Cales and P'regelkt, which she had constructed in defiance of the old treaty. These terms were accepted by the consuls, who left six hundred knights in the hands of the Samnites as hostages. Further, the consuls, the quaestors, and all the surviving officers, together with two tribunes who were with the army, swore to procure their ratification by the Senate and people. By this con- vention the Roman soldiers saved their lives, but they had to surrender their arms, their baggage, and even their clothes, except a single garment, and pass beneath the yoke {cf. p. 62). This ceremony was no peculiar insult devised by Pontius, but a regu- lar Italian usage, like that of piling arms in a modern capitulation. After this humiliating confession that they owed their lives to the forbearance of the enemy, the legionaries were not retained as prisoners of war, but suffered to depart unharmed. Rejection of the Compact by Rome. — Pontius little knew the enemies with whom he had to deal. He trusted to the honour of the Roman people to redeem the plighted faith of their consuls and their tribunes ; he hoped that the moderation of his demands would ensure the acceptance of the proffered peace. But the Roman people knew no peace save the submission of their enemies, and cared nothing for the spirit, if only they observed the letter, of their engagements. In shame and dejection the beaten army stole homeward through Campania, and entered the city under cover of the night. A general mourning was proclaimed, and the consuls shut themselves up in their houses, leaving the conduct of the election of their successors, of which they were deemed unworthy, to an inter-rex. But when the Senate met, it resolved at once to cancel the convention. Sp. Postumius was the first to urge that honour would be satisfied by the surrender of its authors to the enemy ; the Roman people could not be bound by the a^cts of magistrates who had exceeded their powers, but those who had sworn to the treaty must be delivered over to the Samnites, as men whose lives were forfeited by their breach of faith. Accord- ingly, all the officers of the defeated army, and even the tribunes, who protested in vain against this mockery of justice, were solemnly handed over in chains to the enemy, and, to complete the farce, Postumius kicked the Roman herald {Jctialis), professing thus to no HISTORY OF ROME give Rome a just cause of war against the Samnite nation, to which he now belonged. Pontius utterly refused to allow Rome to release herself in this way from her plighted word. He justly demanded, either the ratification of the peace, or the surrender of the army into his power, as at the Caudine Forks. But, with noble generosity, he refused to wreak his vengeance on the men whose lives even Roman casuistry pronounced forfeit, the six hundred hostages and the surrendered officers. It is easy to sneer at the simplicity which led him to believe that a great nation might prefer honour to expediency, and surrender at the bidding of justice what might have been extorted at the sword's point. But even the most prejudiced historians cannot obscure the contrast between the double-dyed dishonour of the Romans, who evaded by ignoble trickery the consequences of their cowardly capitulation, and the stainless magnanimity of the Samnite hero. Success of the Samnites. — War was at once renewed. The Roman chroniclers strive to efface the dishonour of the Caudine Forks by fictitious accounts of the recovery of Luceria and the humiliation of Pontius. But in reality Rome had to strain every nerve to keep her hold on Latium and Campania. Satricum, in the Volscian country, revolted, and though within a year the town was betrayed to the Romans, the Samnite garrison expelled, and the authors of the revolt punished, the example was fraught with danger. Still more serious was the loss of Fregelte, because it commanded the upper road, by the valleys of the Trerus and Liris, from Rome to Campania. In Apulia fear and hatred of Samnium, not the arms of the legions, kept the country true to the Roman alliance. The fall of Luceria was balanced by the adhesion of the cities of Teanum and Canusium, and of the neighbouring tribe of the Frentani. In the following years exhaustion caused both the combatants to relax their efibrts. Rome employed the respite thus given her in binding two important cities more closely to herself. The colony of Antium was reorganised, probably in the interest of the old Volscian population, and Capua was made a prasfecture, at which justice was henceforth administered for Roman citizens, according to the forms of Roman law, by a prasfect sent each year from Rome, an ominous encroachment on local liberty. The Crisis of the War. — In 315 i;.c. war was renewed with fresh energy. While the consuls were absent, engaged probably in re- covering Luceria, Rome's hold on Campania was all but lost. Nuceria, Nola, Atella, and Calatia threw in their lot with the Samnites ; Sora, on the Upper Liris, expelled its Roman colonists, SECOND SAMNITE WAR III and a large force of Samnites poured down from the mountains into Campania. Q. Fabius Maximus, the Roman dictator, who had just taken Saticula, was compelled to fall back by the coast road to the pass of Lautute, near Anxur. Even this defensible post was stormed, and his raw levies were only saved from destruc- tion by the heroism of his master of the horse, Q. Aulius Cerretanus, who fell in covering their retreat. The Ausonians in the country round were ripe for rebellion, and Capua showed her resent- ment at the recent infringement of her liberties. Suddenly the tide turned; possibly at this crisis the consuls returned to the rescue from Apulia, or compelled the Samnites to draw off to defend their own homes ; at any rate Campania was won back as speedily as it had been lost. An incjuiry into the conspiracy at Capua was con- ducted by the dictator C. Maenius, whereupon the two Calavii, the heads of the Samnite party in Capua, committed suicide. Sora was recaptured and punished. The Ausonian cities were delivered into the hands of the Romans by aristocratic traitors within their walls, and repaid by a horrible massacre for their wavering fidelity. In Campania the Samnite army was defeated and pursued over the mountains to Bovianum. Nola entered the Roman alliance on favourable terms, and the other Campanian towns followed its example. Finally, the upper road to Campania was reopened by the capture of Fregellas. Rome secures Apulia and Campania. — Rome hastened to secure her conquests by the foundation of colonies (3 1 ■>^-2y 1 2 B.C.), which, as has been explained (p. 57), were fortresses garrisoned by Roman citizens or Latin allies, whose mission it was to protect the frontiers and maintain the dominion of the mother city. Saticula ^ was made the outpost on the Samnite frontier, the islands of Pontiae became Rome's naval station in the Campanian waters, while Suessa, Aurunca, and Interamna served to guard the great road to Capua, built (312 B.C.) by the censor Appius Claudius. At the same time the care of Roman interests in Apulia was entrusted to the 2500 colonists of Luceria. Thus the Samnites were hemmed in on both sides by a chain of fortresses, whose walls were an impregnable barrier for men unskilled in the conduct of sieg-es. They must soon have been reduced to submission, if they had not found support outside their own borders. Tarentum. — The natural allies of Samnium, the men of Taren- tum, remained supine in Italy, while they frittered away their strength in a naval war with Agathocles of Syracuse. After the ' These are all Latin colonies {cf. map). 112 HISTORY OF ROME disaster at Caudium they liad aspired to arbitrate between the contending powers, but Rome had rejected tlieir niediation, a rebuft" which the government of Tarentum had not tlie spirit to resent. Even when the Spartan prince Cleonymus, at the head of their forces, had compelled the Lucanians to make peace with Tarentum, in return for the surrender of Metapontum, they still busied themselves in petty quarrels with other Greeks, instead of throwing the whole weight of South Italy into the scale against Rome. After suffering the Samnites to fall unaided, Tarentum was fortunate in obtaining a renewal of her treaty with Rome on favourable terms. Etruscan War. — The Etruscans, whose forty years' peace with Rome had just expired, assailed the frontier fortress of Sutrium with energy. After defeating the Roman force sent to its relief, they besieged the town. The hero of this war is Q. Fabius Maximus Rullianus. How much of his glory is due to the fancy of his kinsman, Fabius Pictor, the first historian of Rome, or to the family legends, which found in Etruria the most fitting scene for the exploits of the great Fabian house, we cannot tell ; but his campaigns certainly made a deep impression on the imagination of the people, and first revealed to Rome the funda- mental weakness of the stately edifice of Etruscan power. Fabius found the Etruscan lines too strong to be carried, so he resolved to draw off their forces by an attack on their own homes. Beyond the Ciminian hills and woods no Ronlan army had ever penetrated, but into this unknown land Fabius boldly led his troops. He had sent forward his brother to explore the country, and now, disre- garding the orders of the Senate's messengers, he dashed into Central Etruria. A series of brilliant victories justified the ad- venturous general. At Sutrium, at Lake Vadimo, and at Perusia he routed the enemy, and brought the chief cities of Etruria, Perusia, Cortona, Arretium, and Tarquinii to consent to peace for forty years. (310-309 B.C.) Fabius. — The conqueror of Etruria made the yet more glo- rious conquest of himself. While he was pushing his successes in Etruria, his colleague, Marcius Rutilus, was hard pressed in Samnium. The reserves which had been raised to cover Rome must be sent to his rescue, and only one man could be entrusted with such a command, Fabius' old enemy, Papirius Cursor. The consul, in the hour of his country's need, stifled private animosity, and named Papirius Cursor dictator. The old general, whose blunt humour reconciled the soldiery to his stern discipline, led SECOND SAMNITE WAR "3 the legions for the last time to victory. The sacred band of the Samnitcs, who had sworn to conquer or to die, made the triumph of the dictator gay with the white or many-coloured tunics, stripped from their corpses, while their gold and silver shields, which were used to decorate the shops of the Forum on festal-days, preserved the memory of this decisive battle. In the following year Fabius reconquered Nuceria, the last stronghold of the Samnites in Campania. He then marched into Central Italy, and kept the CHIM^-RA. (Efnisarn Bronze in the ArcJicrological Museum at Florence. Marsians and Pa^lignians firm in their allegiance to Rome by defeating the Samnite troops and putting down their partisans. Lastly, he marched from Samnium to meet the threatened attack of the Umbrians, and dispersed their levies at the great battle of Mevania. The Umbrians retired from the struggle, and Ocriculum entered the Roman alliance (308 B.C.). End of the Samnite War. — The dyiiig flames of war were re- vived by the rebellion of the old allies of Rome, the Hernicans. The Samnites made a last attempt to break through the iron H 114 HISTORY OF ROME barrier of Roman fortresses, and to force their way to the gates of Rome by the valleys of the Liris and Trerus. They took Sera, Calatia, and Arpinum, but, before they could come to the help of their new allies, Anagnia, the Hernican capital, succumbed to the consul Marcius. The Hernicans, three of whose cities had never joined the insurrection, abandoned a struggle to which their strength, if not their resolution, was plainly unequal, and submitted to the loss of their independence. One more campaign ended the weary struggle with the Samnites. Though the mountaineers fought with unabated courage, and even poured do\\'n once more into Campania, their strength was now exhausted. The consuls, Ti. Minucius and L. Postumius Megellus, penetrated into the heart of the country, defeated and captured the Samnite general, Statius Gellius, and stormed Bovianum. The Samnites sued for peace, and were granted tolerable terms. They had to resign all their conquests, but within their native mountains, to which they were henceforth confined, they retained their ancient liberties. Whether they formally acknowledged the supremacy of Rome is uncertain ; at any rate the issue of the war had placed the superiority of Rome beyond dispute, and had proved that no single nation in Italy could hold its own against the city of the seven hills. The Italians were often yet to fight in defence of their liberties ; but no hope of success remained except in wide-reaching coalitions or in the aid of the foreigner, the Gaul, the Greek, or the Carthaginian. CHAPTER XV THE CONQUEST OF THE ITALIANS K,V. Outbreak of the Third Samnite War 298 456 Battle of Sentinum 235 459 The Samnites and Sabines submit to Rome .... zgo 464 The Organisation of Central Italy. — Rome had granted peace to Samnium that she might have leisure to strengthen her hold on Central Italy. Campania she had already secured by a chain of fortresses linked to the capital by the great Appian road ; she now set to work with characteristic energy to perfect the defences and organisation of her other dependencies. The rebellious Herni- can communities were compelled to accept the Casrite franchise ETRURIA AND CENTRAL ITALY 115 (7'. supra, p. 90) ; but the three faithful towns, Aletrium, Verulae, and Ferentinum, declined the offer of the full citizenship, and Rome felt bound to respect the rights and liberties guaranteed them by the old equal alliance. In the Volscian district Arpinum and Trcbula had the burdens of citizenship imposed on them without its political privileges {civi/as sine siiffragio) \ Frusino paid for its disaffection with a third of its territory, and Sora was garrisoned by four thousand colonists. The central hills and the line of com- munication with them along the Anio were, from a military point of view, of vital importance, and so were most carefully secured. A new tribe was formed in the valley of the Anio, and in spite of the resistance of the ^quians and Marsians, two strong fortresses, the Latin colonies, Alba Fucens and Carsioli, were planted in their country, and connected with Rome by a road named later after the Valerian house. (303-298 B.C.) One more vulnerable point in the armour of Rome, the valley of the Tiber, was guarded by the establishment of a colony, called Narnia(299 B.C.), at the old Umbrian town of Nequinum, and the construction of the first part of the great Flaminian road through Ocriculum to that fortress. About the same time the Picentines joined the central Italian cantons in allying themselves with Rome, and thus completed the strong barrier which separated the northern and southern enemies of the conquering city. Etruria. — On the north, Rome was content to maintain her old military frontier, the Ciminian Hills, unchanged, but made use of the weakness and divisions of the Etruscans to extend her politi- cal influence. At this period the Etruscans were in great straits between their terror of the Gauls, whose tribes were now once more in a state of ferment, and their fear of the steady advance of Rome. One party in that unhappy country wished to bribe the Gallic clans to use their swords for the defence of Italian freedom ; another invoked the protection of Rome against the barbarians. Internal dissension increased the uncertainty of Etrus- can policy. Rome, as her custom was, befriended the nobility, and gained a useful ally by restoring the exiled Cilnii to power at Arretium. Outbreak of War. — The Samnites saw that such a peace was more fatal to the liberties of Italy than the most disastrous war. If Rome were allowed time to consolidate her power in Central Italy, to dominate Etruria and overawe the Gauls, their last hope of independence was gone. Only a coalition of all these jarring elements could make head against the growing power of Rome. ii6 HISTORY OF ROME But the Samnites had leainl by bitter experience the danger of leaving an enemy in their rear. Accordingly, while the Romans were engaged in watching the advance of a plundering horde of Gauls, the Samnites suddenly threw themselves on Lucania, and placed their partisans in power throughout that region. Rome at once required the Samnites to withdraw from Lucania, and answered their refusal by declaring war (298 B.C.). The movements of the contending armies in the first years of the war are uncertain or unintelligible, partly perhaps from a want of combination in the plans of the confederates, partly from the contradictions in our records of the war. It seems certain that the Romans won no great victories, for though L. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, the first of a famous line, is glorified both by Livy and by the epitaph on his tomb, their conflicting stories deserve no credence. The victory at Volaterrae over the Etruscans described by Livy, and the conquest of Lucania mentioned on the tomb seem to be equally imaginary. The more modest portions of the epitaph ^ which record the capture of two unknown places in Samnium and the reception of hostages from Lucania, taken in connection with the triumph of Fulvius over the Samnites, seem to show that both consuls were engaged in restoring Roman ascend- ency in the south. In the following year the Romans expected to be assailed on all sides, and pressed the consulship on their tried and trusted general, Q. Fabius. The old hero insisted that the honour should be shared by his friend, P. Decius Mus. But the expected storm passed ofif for the moment ; the Gauls had not come, and the Etruscans would not move, so that the Samnites had to bear the whole brunt of the battle. Their armies were defeated and their country laid waste by both the consuls (297 B.C.). Gellius Egnatius. — Next year the storm broke. Gellius Egna- tius, the Samnite general, had the boldness to conceive and the ability to execute a daring march through Central Italy to Umbria. It was essential to bring the Gauls and Etruscans to strike a great blow for the deliverance of Italy. So the Samnite leader left the ordinary levies to oppose the legions in Samnium and to make a descent on Campania, while he led the flower of his troops to his chosen battle-ground. The consul Volumnius was obliged to hasten from Samnium to the aid of his colleague, Appius Claudius, in Etruria, and then return with speed to preserve Campania from devastation. Yet the year closed without a decisive encounter; ^ " Taurasia Cisauna Saninio cepit Subigit omne Loucanam opsidesque abdoucit." GELLIUS EGNATTUS 117 each side was bracing its energies for the final struggle in the succeeding" spring-. The Senate was dismayed when they heard that Gellius Egna- tius had frustrated their efforts to separate the south from the north, and was gathering to his standards the discontented Etruscans and the restless Gauls, The courts of law were closed, and all citizens, old and young, freedmen as well as free-born, were called to arms. The chief command was entrusted to old Q. Fabius, who again TOMB OF I.. CORNELIUS SCIPIO BARBATUS. Stipulated that Decius Mus should be his colleague. Besides the main army, two reserves were called out, one of which was posted at Falerii to guard the line of communications, and the other retained for the immediate protection of the city. L. Scipio was sent forward with the vanguard towards Clusium, but his forces were surprised and cut to pieces by the Gauls. A movement of the reserve from Falerii into Central Etruria was more successful, as it recalled the Etruscans from Umbria to the defence of their own homes. Etruria, as usual, proved a broken reed in the hour Il8 HISTORY OF ROME of danger, and the Gauls and Saninites fell back sullenly over the Apennines. Battle of Sentinum. — The consuls, eager to give battle while the Etruscans were away, at once pursued the retreating enemy. On the other side, Gellius Egnatius knew that the Gauls would soon be weary of war, and trembled at the thought that the coali- tion effected by his skill and daring might dissolve away at the very moment when victory was in his grasp. Both armies were eager for the fray when they met on a fair field near the city of Sentinum. On the right wing, Fabius, whose troops were not shaken by the first rush of the enemy, drove back the Samnites foot by foot ; but on the left the Roman horse was thrown into disorder by the charge of the Gallic war-chariots, and in its flight broke the line of the infantry. Decius Mus, remembering his father's example, devoted himself, together with the host of the enemy, to the powers of the grave, and found the death he sought in the serried ranks of the Gauls. His legions rallied, and, sup- ported by the resei'ves which Fabius sent to their aid, restored the battle. The fortune of the day was decided by the repeated charges of the fine Campanian cavalry, which first turned the Samnites to flight, and then fell on the uncovered flanks and rear of the still unbroken masses of Gallic swordsmen. Gellius Egnatius fell at the' gate of the camp in a last attempt to rally the beaten troops ; his followers, disdaining to surrender, fought their way back to their native mountains ; but the Gauls dispersed, and the great coalition, by which Egnatius had hoped to save Italy, was shattered at one blow on the field of Sentinum (295 B.C.). The Samnites alone hold out. — Umbria passed at once into the hands of the Romans ; the disaffected cities of Etruria, in particular Volsinii and Perusia, made their peace in the following year ; and Campania was rescued from the attacks of the Samnite freebooters. But within their highland fastnesses that uncon- querable people still defied the might of Rome. The sturdy Swiss, who scattered the chivalry of Burgundy and of Austria, and made their Alps the cradle and stronghold of liberty, were more fortunate but not more heroic than the shepherds and herdsmen of the Apennines. The consuls of the next year, L. Postumius Megellus and M. Atilius Regulus, were repulsed with loss, and obliged to remain on the defensive both in Apulia and Campania. All they could boast of was the preser\'ation of Luceria and the rescue of Interamna, on the Liris, from the enemy. In 293 B.C. the Romans, THE SAMNITES SUBDUED 119 who seem to have relaxed their efforts for a while after the great deliverance at Sentinum, returned to the fray with renewed vigour. L. Papirius Cursor, son of the hero of the second Samnite war, invaded Samnium itself, supported by his colleague, Sp. Carvilius. The Samnites on their part are said again to have raised a sacred band, marked by white tunics and nodding" plumes, and bound by the most horrible oaths to concjuer or to die. Their gloomy resolu- tion was no match for the cheerful courage inspired in the Romans by the homely bluntness of Papirius, who at the crisis of the battle promised Jupiter, not a splendid temple, but a cup of honeyed wine before a drop touched his own lips. The surrender of Cominium and other Samnite strongholds crowned the victory of Aquilonia, and splendid spoils graced the triumph of the conqueror. The last gleams of success whi ch shone on the arms of the Samnites brightened a name already glorious, that of Gavius Pontius. The old general (unless, indeed, it be his son) chastised the rashness of the consul Q. Fabius Gurges, as he pressed in hot haste into the mountains after the retreating Samnites. Another veteran, Fabius Maximus, took the field to save the honour and retrieve the errors of his son. At length the victor of the Caudine Forks was defeated and captured, and the bitter and shameful memories of that day were yet more shamefully avenged by the death of the Samnite hero. The triumphs of Roman conquerors were constantly stained by the unjust execution of vanquished opponents, but no more odious instance of a heartless custom can be given than the cruel fate of Pontius. The task of completing the subjugation of the Samnites fell to Manius Curius, who appears to have granted them an honourable peace (290 B.C.). Roman Colonies. — The Romans at once devoted themselves to the work of securing the ground they had gained in the late war. On the coast of Campania they had already (296 B.C.) established fortresses at Minturnse and Sinuessa, whose inhabitants received the full citizenship, as was the rule in maritime colonies. In 290 B.C. Manius Curius conquered the Sabines, and compelled them to accept Roman citizenship without the franchise ; in the following years Rome strengthened her hold on the eastern coast by the foundation of colonies at Hatria, 289 B.C. (Latin), and Castrum Novum, 283 B.C. (burgess). But the chief settlement of the time was Venusia, on the confines of Samnium, Apulia, and Lucania, to which place as many as twenty thousand Latin colonists were sent (291 B.C.). This important fortress, connected with Rome by an extension of the Appian road, was designed to block the i20 IIISrORY OF JWAfE communications of the Samnites with Tarentum. For, though Tarentum had suffered her fears of Agathocles and her troubles with the Lucanians to blind her eyes to the pressing needs of the Samnites, she was the one city left in Italy strong enough to rouse the suspicions of Rome ; and by calling on Greece to redress the balance in Italy, she was yet to give the vanquished one more chance of striking at the heart of Rome, under the banner of the greatest captain of the age. CHAPTER XVI THE WAR WITH TARENTUM AND PYRRHUS B.C. A.I'.C. War with the Lucanians breaks out 289 465 Battle of Lake Vadimo 283 471 Declaration of War against Tarentum, which summons Pyrrhus from Epirus • ■ 281 473 Battle of Heraclea— Embassy of Cineas. . . . 280 474 Battle of Ausculum— Alliance of Rome and Carthage . 279 475 Pyrrhus goes to Sicily • . 278 476 Pyrrhus defeated by M. Curius at Beneventum . . . 275 479 Milo surrenders Tarentum— Submission of South Italy . 272 482 Rhegium taken ... - 271 483 War with the Lucanians. — The submission of the Samnites did not secure for Italy the promised respite from trouble. In the late war the Lucanians had been most useful to Rome by oc- cupying the attention of Tarentum ; they now expected to reap their reward in the plunder of the rich cities of Magna Graecia. With this object Sthenius Statilius, the Lucanian general, laid siege to Thurii, which, in despair of all other help, threw itself on the mercy of Rome. That power, which, since the subjugation of Samnium and the foundation of Venusia, no longer needed the help of the Lucanians, lent a ready ear to the prayer of Thurii, and ordered Statilius to cease his assaults on the beleaguered city. The Lucanians replied by the vigorous prosecution of the siege, and by a summons to all South Italy to unite with them in resisting the new pretensions of Rome. Etruria and the Gauls. — A more pressing danger prevented Rome throwing all her energies into the defence of Thurii. The Gauls and Etruscans had, on the whole, kept the peace since the ETRURIA AND THE GAULS 121 great battle of Sentinum, for the revolt of Falerii (293 B.C.) hardly disturbed the general quiet, but they were now encouraged by the war in the south to tempt fortune again. The forces raised by the Etruscan malcontents, which were composed chiefly of Senonian mercenaries, laid siege to the faithful town of Arretium, and annihilated the Roman army sent to its relief. An embassy was despatched to the chiefs of the Senones, who were nominally FALISCAN VASE IN THE UKITISH MUSEUM. at peace with Rome, to complain that their people had served in the armies of Rome's enemies, and to demand the release of the prisoners. But the Gallic chieftain, Britomaris, slew the sacred envoys in revenge for the death of his father in the late battle. The outrage was signally avenged. The consul, P. Cornelius Dolabella, advanced into the land of the Senones, while the flower of their warriors was in Etruria, and destroyed the whole tribe. The men were slain without quarter, the women and children 122 HISTORY OF ROME enslaved ; the very name of the Senones disappears from the muster-rolls of Italy. The neighbouring clan of the Boii, in whom rage mastered terror, flew to arms to avenge their slaughtered countrymen. They poured over the Apennines, and were joined in their march on Rome by the Etruscans and their Gallic mercenaries. But their combined forces were utterly defeated by Dolabella, while they were attempting to cross the Tiber near Lake Vadimo (283 B.C.). In the following year, after a second defeat near Populonia, the Boii concluded a separate peace. The land of the Senones was given to the burgesses settled at Sena Gallica, which fortress was designed to serve as a check on the Gauls and a station for a Roman fleet on the Adriatic (283 V,.Z.)} The Breach with Tarentum. — After the submission of the Gauls the Roman army took the offensive in Lucania. Hitherto it had been content to defend Thurii ; now C. Fabricius raised the siege by the defeat and capture of the Lucanian general, Statilius. The neighbouring cities of Croton, Locri, and Rhegium, following the example of Thurii, willingly received Roman garrisons. Taren- tum was thus hemmed in on all sides by the outposts of Rome ; even her maritime ascendency was threatened, in the Adriatic by the colonies of H atria and Sena, and in the home waters by the Greek cities which had allied themselves with the barbarians. Though she had not drawn the sword against Rome, she was sus- pected of having instigated the war which she had not the courage herself to undertake. Suddenly the Roman admiral, Valerius, ap- peared in the bay of Tarentum at the head of a squadron of ten ships of war. Whether Valerius simply intended to put in at a friendly port on his way to the Adriatic, or hoped to enable the aristocratic partisans of Rome in Tarentum to seize the reins of government, is a moot point. In any case his act was contrary to Greek international law, and a direct violation of an existing treaty, which forbade the ships of Rome to sail beyond the Lacinian promontory at the western extremity of the Tarentine gulf The people of Tarentum, assembled in the theatre overlookmg their harbour, saw the Romans advance, and were easily persuaded by the demagogue Philocharis to avenge the insult. The Roman squadron was put to flight by their hastily manned galleys ; the admiral fell ; four ships were sunk * The account given in Polybius, li. 19, 20, and preferred by Mommsen, is different in many points, and lays more stress on the part played by the Gauls. THE BREACH ]VITH TARENTUM 123 and one taken. The prisoners were either put to death or sold into slavery. The die was now cast. The democrats of Tarentuni, who had witnessed unmoved the long death-agonies of the Samnite nation, had been hurried by passion into the conflict which they had so long avoided. They resolved to follow up their first blow with energy. They marched to Thurii, compelled the Roman garrison to withdraw, and punished the principal citizens by exile and con- fiscation for preferring the assistance of barbarians to that of their own neighbours and countrymen (282 B.C.). Outbreak of War. — The Romans, who were afraid of driving Tarentum into the arms of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, behaved with studied moderation. They despatched, not an army, but an em- bassy to Tarentum to demand satisfaction. The terms proposed were moderate — the release of the captives, the surrender of the demagogues who had instigated the assault on the Roman fleet, and the reversal of the late revolution at Thurii. The statesmen of Rome sought to place her partisans in power in both the Greek cities, and thus secure her ascendency without recourse to arms. But the democrats of Tarentum had gone too far to retreat. When the Roman ambassadors reached Tarentum, their foreign dress and broken Greek were ridiculed by the disorderly rabble gathered in the theatre to celebrate the Dionysia. Gravely and simply L. Postumius delivered his message, heedless of the insults showered upon him. But at last a drunken wretch bespattered the envoy's white toga with dirt, an outrage which was greeted by the riotous mob with shouts of laughter and thunders of applause. The Roman held up the sullied toga to the crowd, and solemnly warned them that the stains upon it would be washed out in their best blood. We may suspect that this tale has been in- vented or exaggerated to exalt the Roman by depreciating the Greek, but the contrast between the staid dignity of the ambas- sador and the insolent levity of the populace points a true moral, even if the anecdote itself is false. Notwithstanding this insult the Roman Senate was unwilling to proceed to extreme measures. They were conscious that the capture of Tarentum was beyond their powers, for its walls were strong enough to defy their rude siege-engines, and its superior fleet made an effective blockade impossible. The city could neither be forced nor starved into a surrender, and the attempt would only precipitate what Rome most feared, a summons to Pyrrhus. But it was still possible that Tarentum might be induced to prefer the peaceful acknow- 124 HISTORY OF ROME ledgment of Rome's supremacy to the hardships of war. Accord- ingly the consul L. yEmiHus Barbula was instructed still to offer the same terms, but to begin hostilities at once if satisfaction were again refused. He scattered the troops and laid waste the lands of Tarentum, but spared the lives and properties of the aristocrats. Rome still hoped by wielding the sword with one hand, while with the other she offered the olive-branch, to bring moderate men in Tarentum to listen to reason. Nor were her hopes unfounded. While the principal democrats were absent on a mission to Pyrrhus, the aristocrats secured the election of their leader, Agis, as commander-in-chief But, before he could take office and come to terms with Rome, the envoys returned from the Epirot court, accompanied by Cineas, the minister of Pyrrhus, who promised immediate support from his master. The demo- cratic party used their restored ascendency to depose Agis, and to promise the king pay and provisions for his troops, as well as the command of all the recruits they could raise in Italy. The admission of his most trusted general, Milo, with 3000 Epirots into the citadel finally committed Tarentum to the cause of the adventurous prince, who hoped to rival Alexander by spreading Hellenic rule and civilisation to the western boundary of the known world (281 B.C.). The Early Career of Pyrrhus. — Pyrrhus was the son of yEacides — a cousin of Alexander the Molossiaft, and his successor on the throne. ^Eacides lost his kingdom and his life through the intrigues of Cassander, the wily regent of Macedon, who thus avenged the support ^acides had given to the ill-starred family of Alexander the Great. Pyrrhus was protected, and, while yet a boy, restored to the throne by Glaucias, an Illyrian chieftain. When fresh disturbances drove him again into exile, he joined his brother-in-law, Demetrius Poliorcetes, and fought bravely by his side on the field of Ipsus. After that crushing defeat he was sent as a hostage for Demetrius to the court of Alexandria. There he won the good opinion of King Ptolemy by his soldierly spirit, and the favour of Berenice by his manly beauty and courteous bearing. With the help of the Egyptian king he re- established himself on the throne of his forefathers, and, in the troubles that followed the death of Cassander, won for the Epirots a much-needed outlet to the sea, by gaining command over the Gulf of Ambracia and the island of Corcyra. After some years of peace, Pyrrhus was encouraged by Ptolemy of Egypt, Seleucus of Syria, and Lysimachus of Thrace, who were again PVR RHUS THE E PI ROT 125 leagued together against the restless and ambitious Demetrius, to drive that prince from the throne of Macedon. But after a seven months' reign the discontent of the Macedonians and the forces of Lysimachus compelled him to retire once more to his own kingdom of Epirus. In the petty duties of a tribal chieftain Pyrrhus could find no scope for his lofty ambition and military genius, and through six long years looked in vain for employment abroad. At last the appeal of the distressed Hellenic cities of the West for aid came as a message of release for the caged eagle of Epirus. The Schemes of Pyrrhus. — The ideas which animated the Epirot were not less bold than those which led Alexander across the Hellespont to gain the empire of the East. As the Macedonian had ended by his victory the long struggle with Persia, so Pyrrhus aspired to deliver the Greeks of the West from the dominion of the rude Italian and the hated Canaanite. Often in the ages past had the Carthaginian been driven from Eastern Sicily by the captains-general of Western Hellas. In older days Sicily had found leaders in the great tyrants, Gelo Hiero and Dionysius ; more recently she had looked for deliverance to the mother country, and found a saviour in the hero, Timoleon. Pyrrhus believed himself destined to complete and unite the schemes of his kinsman, Alexander of Epirus, and of his father-in-law, Agathocles, to humble Rome and Carthage to the dust, and found on the ruins of their dominions an Hellenic empire of the West. But this empire was the dream of a great adventurer, not the reasoned project of a statesman. When Alexander set out for the East he left Macedon securely guarded and Greece subject. Pyrrhus relied for the safety of Epirus on the good faith of neighbouring princes. Alexander led a sufficient army of Macedonian veterans to scatter the ill-disciplined hordes of Persia ; Pyrrhus had to face the national levies of Italy at the head of a motley army of allies and mercenaries, and for the navy, without which he could not hope to break the power of Carthage, was dependent on the fickle democracies of Syracuse and Tarentum. But though the schemes of Pyrrhus were doomed to failure, their surpassing interest sheds a reflected glory on their author. As the last great effort to deliver the West from the barbarian, and the first meeting of the phalanx and the legion in battle, the expedition of Pyrrhus is a turning-point in history. His defeat left Sicily the helpless prize in a mighty struggle between the rival cities of the West, and showed how powerless was the military science and political craft 126 HISTORY OF ROME of the Greek to meet the unflinching resolution of Roman states- men and the patriotic devotion of the Roman militia. The Beginning- of the War. — Pyrrhus landed in Italy at the head of an army raised for the most part in Northern and Western Greece, and consisting of 20,000 heavy-armed footmen, 3000 horse, 2500 archers and slingers, and 20 elephants. He found the hopes and promises of a general rising in Italy utterly vain. Even the men of Tarentum would not join heartily in the war which they had provoked. They had expected to hire a mercenary' to fight their battles ; they found the king a stern and exacting master. He compelled the lazy burghers to mount gmard on the wall ; he put down their clubs and assemblies, and shut up their theatre and gymnasia ; in fine, he treated Tarentum as a conquered town. The citizens were left no choice in the matter ; their resources were employed to hire Italian mercenaries, and their citadel be- came the base of the operations of the Epirot army. Rome was not behindhand in preparing for the coming con- flict. She repressed discontent among her subjects with a firm hand, and summoned to her standards full contingents both of her allies and her own" citizens. A force advanced into Etruria to compel the revolted cities, Volci and Volsinii, to lay down their arms ; a second was held in reserve at Rome. Garrisons were placed in the Greek towns of Lower Italy, while the Lucanians and Samnites were held in check by the colonists of Venusia and a weak corps of observation. P. Valerius Laevinus, with the main army, hastened to meet the invader before he could effect a junction with the Samnites or foster insurrections in Magna GrEecia. He found the Epirot troops occupying a position which covered the Tarentine colony of Heraclea. Battle of Heraclea. — Pyrrhus allowed the Romans to force the passage of the Siris, and thus compelled them to fight with a river in their rear. Seven times the legions strove to pierce the serried ranks of the Epirots, and but for the prayers and entreaties of the king the phalanx would have given way. At length each general brought up his last reserves, but the Roman horse would not face the terrors of the elephants. Their disordered flight broke the ranks of the infantry, and the whole army, horse and foot together, fled in confusion over the Siris. The military skill of Pyrrhus had won the day at Heraclea. By enticing the Roman legions into the plain, where his phalanx could maintain unbroken order and repel with ease all assaults on its bristling rows of pikes, he had gained a tactical advantage, which the rVRKHUS IN ITALY 127 terror inspired by the strange and monstrous appearance of the elephants had enabled him to turn to the best account. But it was a victory which could not be often repeated. Many of the best Epirot officers and four thousand veterans were left dead upon the field. I'yrrhus may well have felt that such a victory resembled a defeat. TETRADRACHM OF PYRRHUS STRUCIv IN ri'ALY — HEAD OK ZEUS OF DODONA, AND THE GODDESS DIONE. But the successful encounter with a Roman army in the field encouraged South Italy to throw in its lot with the conqueror. When Laevinus retired into Apulia, the Samnites, the Lucanians, and the Bruttians joined Pyrrhus. All the Greek cities, except Rhegium, now welcomed their deliverer. Even Rhegium was lost to the Romans, for its Campanian garrison seized the tou-n, and entered into a close alliance with their kinsmen and neigh- bours, the Mamertines, who, with like treachery, had deserted Agathocles, and taken Messana for themselves. On the other hand, the Latins remained true to Rome. (280 B.C.) Embassy of Cineas. — Pyrrhus resolved to use his victory to make peace with Rome and devote his energies to the conquest of Punic Sicily. He sent his most trusted minister, Cineas the Thessalian, to try the arts of diplomacy, learnt in Hellenistic courts, on the Roman Senate. The concessions demanded were the release of the Greek towns in Italy from their allegiance to Rome, and the surrender of the strongholds of Roman power in South Italy, Venusia, and Luccria. The flattery, if not the gifts, of Cineas all but cajoled the Roman Senate into the acceptance of the proffered peace. But the indomitable resolution of Rome 128 HISTORY OF ROME found voice in the greatest man of her proudest house, the blind old consular, Appius Claudius. Lord Chatham protested in vain with dying voice against the dishonour of yielding to the coalition of France and America ; Appius inspired his countrymen with his own burning- patriotism, and first enunciated the proud maxim that Rome never negotiated while foreign troops stood on Italian ground. Cineas, with all his courtier's arts, had failed in his mission, and returned to his master deeply impressed with the majesty of the Senate, which he called an assembly of kings. Pyrrhus, who had advanced into Campania to support by arms the demands of his envoy, was goaded by their rejection into a march on Rome. But the legions recalled from Etruria and the reserve in the capital were ready to repel any assault, and Lasvinus, reinforced by two newly levied legions, hung upon his rear. Pyrrhus could only plunder the rich country south of Rome, and retire with his booty, first to Campania, and then to winter quarters at Tarentum. The arrival of a Roman embassy encouraged him to renew his offer of peace. But the consular, Fabricius, could not, we are told, be bribed, cajoled, or terrified into compliance with the king's wishes. Pyrrhus was obliged again to try the fortunes of war. Battle of Ausculum. — The second campaign was fought in Apulia. Pyrrhus, whose keen eye had perceived the value of the open order of battle adopted by the Romans, interspersed Italian cohorts between the subdivisions of his phalanx. But on the first day of the hard-fought battle at Ausculum the device availed him little. On the broken ground by th steep banks of a river his cavalry and elephants could not act. On the second day, however, he managed to deploy his phalanx on the plain beyond, and a second time the legionaries with their short swords hewed in vain at the hedge of pikes, till the arrival of the elephants was once more the signal for a general flight. The Roman army made good its retreat across the river to its camp with the loss of six thousand men ; the conquerors admitted that three thousand five hundred of their number had fallen. Such a victory was not calculated to break up the Roman confederacy, and sadly weakened the Epirot army. (279 B.C.) Pyrrhus goes to Sicily— Alliance of Rome and Carthage. — Pyrrhus was weary of fruitless victories, and anxious to escape with honour from an impossible position. While the indomitable resistance of Rome was wearing out his energies, Syracuse was anxiously expecting deliverance at his hands from the Cartha- PYRRHUS IN SICILY 12^ ginians. The king readily accepted the invitation, but the im- mediate effect of his new policy was to unite his enemies. Rome and Carthage entered into a league against him, by which each bound itself to render assistance to the other if its territory was attacked, and to refuse all offers of a separate peace. The Romans thus gained the assistance of the Punic navy ; the Carthaginians hoped to complete the conquest of Sicily, while their allies de- tained the king in Italy. But Pyrrhus seized the first chance offered him of patching up an armistice with the Romans. The consul Fabricius handed over to the king a traitor who proposed to poison him for money, and so paved the way for an interchange of prisoners and a cessation of hostilities. (278 B.C.) Leaving Milo in Tarentum, and his own son Alexander at Locri, Pyrrhus set sail for Syracuse. During his absence the war in Italy languished. The Lucanians and Bruttians were punished for their insurrection, but the Samnites once again repulsed the Roman armies. The Greek cities were gradually subdued ; Heraclea obtained favourable terms ; Croton was cap- tured by a stratagem ; Locri massacred its Epirot garrison, and thus atoned for its earlier treachery to Rome. Only Tarentum was held for the king. Pyrrhus in Sicily. — In Sicily, Pyrrhus won a series of triumphs. City after city was taken, until the Carthaginians were shut up in LilybtEum and the Mamertines in Messana. The Carthaginians offered as the price of peace to resign all claim to the sovereignty of Sicily if they might keep Lilyb;ieum. But Pyrrhus rejected the insidious proposal, for he saw that if Carthage kept a foothold in Sicily she could at once regain her dominions when he had gone. He preferred to continue the struggle, and called on his Sicilian allies to build a fleet. But the fickle Sicilians murmured at the burden of military service, and resented the autocratic rule of the king. They negotiated with their enemies, the Mamer- tines and Carthaginians, and treated their deliverer as a tyrant. In the field Pyrrhus was as brilliant as ever ; he drove the Car- thaginian army, which ventured out from Lilybteum, back into its stronghold ; but he felt that the day of his greatness was past. Sicily had shown herself unworthy of the hero to whom she had called for aid. (277-6 B.C.) Defeat and Departure of Pyrrhus. — Turning his back on .Sicily, Pyrrhus returned to Tarentum a " soured and disappointed" man. On his way he had to fight the Carthaginian fleet off Syracuse and the Mamertine army near Rhegium. He succeeded 1 136 HISTORY OF ROME in surprising Locri, and replenislicd liis treasury with tlic plunder of the temple of Persephone. But his Sicilian dominions fell away from him as soon as he left the island, and his Italian allies had lost faith in his star. His brave Epirots had fallen on many a well-fought field, and their places had been taken by forced levies or by foreign mercenaries. Yet the Romans took the field for the decisive campaign in 275 B.C. with reluctance and apprehen- sion. While L. Cornelius Lentulus maixhed into Lucania, Manius Curius faced Pyrrhus in Samnium. The Romans occupied a strong position in the hills near Beneventum, which Pyrrhus de- termined to storm before Lentulus could come to his colleague's assistance. But everything went wrong with the attacking force. A whole division lost its way in the forest, and came up too late ; neither the phalanx nor the cavalry could act, and the elephants, terrified by the storm of burning arrows with which the Romans received them, rushed furiously back through the ranks of their own friends. Pyrrhus could not keep the field after his defeat. His entreaties to his allies, the kings of Macedon, Syria, and Egypt, for help were coldly rejected. With a heavy heart he took leave of Italy, and returned to his own land. There he grasped once more at the crown of Macedon, but his vehement and haughty courage, which still gained him victories, was no match for the cool and cautious policy of Antigonus Gonatas. At length, he fell ingloriously in a street fight at Argos, struck down by a tile thrown by a woman's hand. Surrender of Tarentum. — Milo had been left in Italy to hold Tarentum. So long as his master lived, he withstood boldly the disaffection of the citizens and the attacks of Rome. But when news came of his death, he cared only to secure an honourable retreat for the Epirot garrison. A Roman army was outside the walls, a Carthaginian fleet before the harbour. Each power strained every nerve to win the prize. Milo preferred to treat with the Roman general, L. Papirius, and by the surrender of the citadel purchased a free departure for himself and his troops. The Cartha- ginians, who had doubtless hoped to secure in Tarentum a second Lilybaeum, now disavowed all selfish intentions, and professed to have merely offered naval assistance to the Roman army in con- formity with the treaty. Tarentum, deprived of her army, her ships, and her walls, lost her independence and prosperity, but retained the right of local self-government. (272 B.C.) Submission of Italy to Rome. — In the same year the Samnites, Lucanians, and Bruttians submitted to the inevitable yoke of ROME MISTRESS OF ITALY 131 Rome. Bands of guerrillas slill haunted the mountains, but three years later sword and cord established peace even in those wild regions. The sternest punishment was meted out to the mutineers who had seized Rhegium. These freebooters filled up the cup of their iniquity by the sack of Croton and the massacre of its Roman garrison. A strong force was sent against them ; Hiero, the new master of Syracuse, sent help to the Romans, and kept their friends and compatriots, the Mamertines of Messana, occupied at home. After a severe struggle the town was stormed, and its defenders, who survived the assault, executed. The city was restored to its ancient inhabitants and retained its local autonomy. Rome now ruled supreme from the straits of Messina to the river Arno and the headland of Ancona. A new act in the drama begins when the mistress of Italy comes into conflict with the great naval power of Carthage. The struggle had been already foreseen by Pyrrhus, who, when he turned his back on Sicily, repined at leaving so fair a battlefield to the Romans and Car- thaginians. The issue of the great duel secured for Rome the empire of the civilised world. CHAPTER XVII THE POSITION AND RESOURCES OF ROME AND CARTHAGE Retrospect and Prospect- Organisation of Italy -Roman Army and Navy- Carthage, Constitution, Organisation and Resources. Rome a Great Power. — The battle of Beneventum and the subjugation of the revolted tribes closes the chapter of Italian struggle and opens the period of external conquest. A new power, with a peculiar organisation and a national army, was revealed to the civilised world, schooled by experience to deal with the new and grave problems presented by the state of foreign affairs. Rome, mistress of Italy from the yEsis to the sea, was recognised in 273 B.C. by Egypt as a great power, and in 272 B.C. the collision with Carthage at Tarentum foreshadowed the course of coming events. Retrospect and Prospect. — We have traced the growth of the united city as the struggle for existence became a struggle for predominance ; we have watched the gradual consolidation of her 1^,2 HISTORY OF ROME orders and her institutions. Ilcr people, stron<^ in its c|ualitie.s and in its defects, without j^enius, culture, or elasticity, endowed with a sense of order and discipline, strictly legal and endlessly tenacious, secure in conquered rights, and led by a vigorous and patriotic nobility as yet uncorrupted by the plunder of provinces, had proved itself more than a match for even the picked troops of the finest soldier of the day. It had been welded by constitu- tional conflict, and educated by political action ; it had benefited KING IN CHARIOT. {Tcrra-cotta of Fiuiic workmanship. equally by victory and defeat in civic training and military tactics. It had now to enter on a new path. Ancient policy did not recognise the balance of power. Its scientific frontier was found in a belt of weakness ; it tolerated no rival on its borders whose strength was a possible danger. It was this, and the necessities of the moment, with the natural appetite for expansion and plunder, which urged the Government, not so much to make a bold bid for empire, as to enter on a policy of piecemeal annexation GOVERNMENT OF THE SENATE 133 and half-reluctant aggression, for which the character neither of the people nor of its institutions was thoroughly adecjuate. We have now to trace the beginnings of the provincial system, the growth of the professional army ; the reaction of both on the city- state and its finance^ on morals and religion ; the decay of the constitutional factors, the break-down of the military organisation, the gradual growth of an Italian question, the rise of a proletariate, the extension of slavery, the intensification of the old social and economic difficulties. Here, too, begins with the career of Scipio Africanus the line of commanding personalities, whose life and action, accustoming men to the idea of a single ruler, set the precedents and paved the way for Cassar. In the period immediately before us the democratic movement has subsided. The comitia, hampered by religious and constitu- tional restrictions, weakened by war and the diffusion of the citizen Dody throughout Italy, fall under the control of the magistrates. The magistrates, coming out of and returning into the Senate, with short tenure of office, saddled with the intercession of colleague or tribune, fall in their turn under the control of the Senate. The Senate, the sole deliberative assembly, permanent in power and patronage, becomes the de facto government of Rome. It directs militar)' operations ; it arranges for the cumulation or prorogation of office ; it manages the departments of finance and foreign policy, in an age when finance and foreign policy are dominant. The day of patrician intrigue and reactionary conservatism is over. With the admission of the plebs to the higher honours, the passing of the Lex Ovinia, and the accession of plebeians to the censorship (351 B.C.), a career had been opened to ability, the emulation of the nobles, stirred ; there was an influx into the Senate of younger, abler men of moderate views and tried capacity. The House, filled almost automatically with ex-officers of state, strengthened with a constant supply of new blood, entered on a new course with larger ideas and a broader policy. But in this period, also, the decay of the yeomanry and the growth of capitalism coincides with the extension of the empire. A new political order — the Eqaites — forms alongside of the official nobility, while the growing contact with Greece and the East tends more and more to affect the simplicity of Roman manners. Italian Organisation. — Rome's territory was compact ; her subjects were di\ idcd by no deep cleavage of race, feeling, or culture. Step by step her steady, ceaseless advance was secured 134 HISTORY OF ROME by a network of roads and fortresses. The peoples she annexed were not at once, as in modern times, levelled with their con- querors by allegiance to a common lord. She maintained the distinction of subject and citizen. The Roman franchise was at once an object of desire and a privileged position, granted at discretion to individuals or to whole states. The organisation of Italy was peculiar, and differed essentially from modern methods. There was no division into administrative districts, no uniformity of local government, law, and taxation. Annexation, colonisation, federation, had placed Rome at the head of a species of con- federacy, whose elements formed a congeries of communities with diverse and graduated rights. The national leagues were dis- solved, or limited to religious ceremonies ; joint assemblies and reciprocal franchises ^ were abolished ; a policy of subdivision and isolation, with a carefully adjusted distribution of privilege, paralysed joint action and drew the separated units closely to Rome. The jealousy of states, and the jealousy of orders in the states, was carefully utilised ; the constitutions were often re- modelled in an aristocratic sense. This system combined to some extent the advantages of local government and centralisa- tion. The weightier questions of internal administration, the whole foreign and intercommunal relations of the several states, were controlled by the paramount power. Local matters were settled by local councils and magistrates in accordance with the law or treaty which regulated the affairs of each community. The prerogatives of sovereignty ex- tended indeed beyond the formal rights of coinage, peace, and war, but the relation of sovereign and subject was left purposely indefinite, and there was no technical name for the Roman hegemony. The burghers of Rome of the thirty-three tribes — finally thirty-five — included, besides the actual inhabitants of the city and its immediate territory, and of the subject or allied towns to which full rights had been granted out of gratitude or policy, those who had been settled on confiscated land throughout Italy, either individually, or collectively in citizen colonies.^ The latter were a privileged class, with undiminished rights as citizens, rapidly assimilating in each town the subject population along- side them. Beneath these, in various stages of autonoinous dependency, ^ The right of intermarriage and settlement, i-'idc p. 98. - The citizen-colonies were mainly maritime ; the Latin colonies com- manded the great roads, vide map. ITALIAN ORGANISATION 135 come (i) the different classes of imuncipia, possessing the private rights of citizens, the civitas sitie sufft'agw et sine hire Iionoruin, with the his privatum of Rome administered by Roman praefects, burdened with personal service in the legion and the payment of the tribiiiiim, retaining or not, according to circumstances, the full or partial administration of local business ;^ (2) the ciintaies [(.sderatcr, whose dependence, nominally in political matters only, was actually more deeply felt. They furnished each a contingent to the army, and enjoyed full local autonomy, the right of coin- age, of jurisdiction, and the itis exilii. Among these come the Latin colonies, or Colonies of Latin Right, the outposts and watch-towers of Rome, dependent on Rome for life and land, with smaller franchise and larger autonomy than the colony of burgesses, with fuller rights than the ordinary ally;" the rest are strictly socii^ enjoying various immunities, limited only in foreign policy, and bound to render aid in war with ships or men ; such are Neapolis, Heraclea, or Tarentum. No doubt the rights so granted were gradually curtailed in proportion as the bestowal of the fran- chise was restricted, and the policy of Rome changed from one of incorporation and extension to one of jealous exclusion. The one thing sure was the gradual equalisation of pressure ; the one thing definitely fixed was the contingent of men or ships— deter- mined in the end only by the necessities or the power of Rome. But, in the meantime, policy mitigated despotism ; the allies enjoyed a free communal constitution, exemption from taxation, save that implied in the equipment and payment of their con- scripts, with a large share in the military and political successes which they helped to achieve, and in the august name and destinies of Rome. The strength of the growing Italian feeling, the solidity of this unique organisation, and the value of the Latin fortresses were severely tested in the war of Hannibal ; and the failure to follow up the wise policy of their fathers in this respect brought the Romans of the next period into deadly peril. In contrast with the factious Grecian states, with the loosely organised empire of Carthage", with the decrepit kingdoms of the East and the restless tribes of the North, stands the compacted Italian republic, with its strong national spirit, its willing, obedient subjects. The Army. — In ancient times the form and character of a 1 The term " municipium " comes to mean, later on, a country town of Roman citizens. 2 By the year 268 B.C. they were twenty-two in number, vide map. These, with the rehcs of the Cassian League, make up the Nonien Latinum. 136 HISTORY OF ROME government was largely determined by the character of the national armaments. The army is a fundamental institution of Rome, with whose history is inseparably bound up the his- tory of her total development. She was essentially a fighting nation. The history of that army follows a general law of ancient military progress. To the system of caste, when a ruling aristocracy retains in its own hands the science of war, succeeds the citizen army or fleet, whose special character is dictated by the local characteristics or political necessities of each state. From the citizen-militia is developed the professional, often the mercenary, army, to be succeeded by the standing armies and palace guard of a military monarchy. Power passes to the trained battalions. The Roman army exhibits such a gradual change in its tactics, its organisation, its recruiting fields, and each change is reflected in the face of current politics. As each new class enters the service, it presses against the limits of the franchise. Extended operations, distant fields of war, the requirements of the provinces, the development of tactics and individual drill combine with moral and economic causes to transform the farmer conscript of Camillus into the professional veteran of Cassar. At this period the backbone of the legions was still formed by that sound yeomanry, whose conservative instincts and fighting qualities made them the bulwark alike of Rome's constitution and power. From the same class came the Italian cohorts. But with the increasing need of troops and the growing distaste of the wealthier classes for their military duties, the property qualification for the legion is gradually lowered, the proletariate press in, and the effect is seen in the remodelling {circ. 241 B.C.) of the comitia centuriata : there is a marked growth in the allied contingents ; the cavalry service passes from the burgesses to the allies, the soldier tends to separate from the citizen, while the appointment of the staff by the people drags the army into the sphere of party politics. Service was at once a duty and a privilege ; every citizen was liable to serve, and, strictly speaking, only a citizen could serve. He was liable from the seventeenth to the forty-sixth year, and for sixteen to twenty campaigns in the infantry, ten in the cavalry. A certain number of campaigns was the condition of civil pro- motion, and the military tribuneship the first step in the career of office (311 B.C.). The capiie ce/isi and freedmen, except in a crisis, were relegated to the fleet. Owing to this extension of service, the total force at the disposal of the Senate, with whom rested the THE ARMY 137 control of the army, may be estimated for this period at over 700,000 foot and 70,000 horse, exclusive of the seniors reserved for garrison duty, but inclusive of the contingents of the Latin name and allies. Of this total, the citizens, with the cives sine siiff7-agi'o} might amount to over 273,000, the allies to over 497,000. A first summons on a great emergency could place above 200,000 soldiers in the field. The proportion of allies to citizens serving with the colours was, strictly speaking, determined in accordance with the original arrangement or treaty, on a scale relative to the number of available men and the number of legions on foot. Theoretically they furnished an equal force of infantry and thrice the cavalry, but the number steadily rose till two allies were summoned for every citizen. At this period, of the nonnal levy of two consular armies or four legions annually raised and annually discharged — 41,600 men — the allies contributed 20,000 foot and 3600 horse to the 16,800 foot and 1200 horse of the regular army ; />., roughly, about 4 to 3- — a number not disproportioned to their population. As, however, their population decreased, while that of Rome increased, the burden of the growing contingent, equipped and paid as it was by the various communities, and only main- tained in the field by Rome, became heavier. In the Punic wars the pressure was often severely felt. Besides the allies we have to recognise the corps of auxilia — allies or mercenary — Cretan archers, Moorish javelineers, Spanish infantry, Gallic cavalry, who were needed to meet the light troops of Hannibal. With these additions, we may reckon a consular army at from 20,000 to 24,000 men, consisting of two legions, each containing 4200 (rising occasionally to 5200) legionaries and 300 Roman horse, with 5000 foot and 900 horse of the allies. The number of legions on foot rises in the second Punic war to as many as from eighteen to twenty-three — not, of course, acting in combination. Development of the Legion. — The Greek phalanx of the Servian army, as a tactical body, lacked mobility. Against a Gallic charge or for mountain warfare it was useless. Only as strong as any one of its sides, its dislocation was disastrous, and it had no reserve. At the same time, the heavy burden of unpaid 1 Numbering about 50,000 and furnishing tlie Legio Campana, so named because the largest number came from Campania. - In case of necessity, and especially where a district was liable to be the seat of war, the proportion naturally rises. 138 HISTORY OF ROME service and the tributum rendered short campaigns a necessity to the small farmer. Strategy was out of the question. A series of gradual and undated changes in tactics and organisation leads us to the manipular legion. With the introduction of pay in 406 B.C., the burden of payment was shifted from the tribe to the treasury ; the gradual accession of plebeians to high command improved the position of the common soldier. War ceased to be ruinous, and {cf. law of 342 B.c.^) became actually attractive. Recruits pressed in with the prospect of pay, booty, and allotments of land. The civic system of classes gave w-ay before the demand for men and for a more uniform armament required by the change of tactics. Position in the ranks was determined by age and expe- rience rather than by wealth. The new levies were formed upcn a reserve of professional, disciplined, experienced soldiers. By a development of principles often attributed to Camillus, and already at work in the fourth century, open order was sub- stituted for close formation. The new system was worked out in the Gallic and Samnite wars. The brigade was drawn up in three divisions. In front stood the younger men — Hastati — 1200 strong ; in the second line the Principes, men in the vigour of life, also I2CXD. A veteran corps of 600 Triarii acted as reserve ; 1200 light-armed troops, or Velites, organised 21 1 B.C., take the place of the old Rorarii and Accensi. The heavy-armed troops were broken up into maniples or companies, ten in each line — each an indepen- dent tactical unit — consisting of 120 men, subdivided for mobility into two centuries of 60 (in the Triarii, 60 and 30 respectively). The maniples were arranged with distances of three feet between each rank and file — occasionally six feet — and with intervals of equal size between the companies, each interval covered by its rear com- pany, like squares on a chess-board. The intervals served for the skirmishers, attached to the maniples — twenty to each century, — to advance or retire, left space to receive a broken or throw forward a reserve division, and permitted the passage of cavaliy when the companies covered to form a column of cohorts. For probably as early as this, certainly by the time of Marius, the brigade was broken, as to its depth, into ten battalions of three companies, larger tactical bodies, called cohorts. The so-called Quincunx order soon gave way to continuous lines. The names of the three ranks lost all connection with their armament. By this time the Triarii had temporarily dropped the 1 Vide supra, p. loi. THE ARMY 139 pilum, and received the hasta or pike ; the two first hnes were armed with the hurling pilum, the characteristic Roman arm, a formidable weapon of considerable range and penetration. The short, straight, stabbing Spanish sword was adopted in the second Punic war ; a short knife, bronze casque with plume, the oblong scutum, greave, and cuirass complete the ordinary equipment. Each legion was officered by six tribunes, of whom those appointed to the regular four legions were chosen by the people, the rest by the commander, noble youths who made their office the first step in civil life, and served their preliminary campaigns in the cavalry or on the general's suite. Promotion in the ranks ceased with the centurions, sixty in number, two to each maniple, the senior commanding the company, among whom a regular order tended to be established from the lowest centurion of the first division to the primus pilus, or senior centurion of the Triarii. Cavalry — The regular cavalry, 300 strong, was divided into ten turniie or squadrons of thirty men, each commanded by the senior decurion, with two decurions and three optiones under his orders. It was, strictly speaking, drawn from the richest citizens, and enjoyed triple pay and other privileges ; but the old eighteen centuries had become a parade corps, and the ca\'alry was chiefly supplied, first by volunteers, and then by allies and auxiliaries. It had been, and remained, a secondary matter, and proved itself, both in numbers and handling, a lasting weakness of the Roman service. At Capua (21 1 B.C.) it required to be strength- ened by the new corps of Velites, who either acted as a sort of mounted infantry, riding en croupe, or closed the intervals of the maniples, or skirmished in double line before the heavy-armed. Allies. — The contingents of the allies, armed, equipped, and organised in the Roman fashion, were formed into two alae, each commanded by three Roman prjefecti socium, with local officers beneath them. These were divided into cohorts 420 strong, each under a pra^fect — according to races — and subdivided into maniples and centuries. 1600 foot and 600 horse were normally selected to form a special corps of Extraordinarii. The cavalry was divided into squadrons 300 strong, with five turmie of sixty each. Tactics, &c. — The legions were levied on the Capitol, the allies raised by the several communities. The military oath was taken for the campaign to the commanding officer. On the march the army moved in a single column, unless in lace of an enemy, I40 IIISTOKY OF ROME with the legions in the centre, the allies in the van and rear, the corps d't^lite acting as advanced or rear guard according to circum- stances. Each night a regularly constructed camp was formed, serving as a base of operations, a support for the line of battle, a refuge in case of defeat. In the order of battle the legions PORTA |DECUMANA fr... fro — .»<.i:;o- *-5»< 100*-. ;oo:«->.:o<-ioo» 1 CO-'-100-xIOO>. 50- •"■»■-••-—■- i 1 X X J i § 8 \ i 1 : < O < E s - l2 - 2 z - z E s o o < O Z ^ S < S < O o o o I ^ o o t~ i < I o O V 1 A Q u N T A N A < > I u - UJ - « » : Id - « „ O H 3 1- 2 ^ D < Z 1- 3 1- 1 O < I l- C z H ^ < I a a V PRAEFECTI 1 A P R RA Rl N C PAL 1 S PRAEFECTI SOCIORUM LcGATI ( TRIBUNI TRIBUNI LEGATl SOCIORUM t UJ 5 -1 3UAESTORIUM = [ P TO E- , < 5 FORUM 5 -J C/ w Q -1 a Q ^ Q u r - T E S E X - T R A R- DINAR AUXILIA PEDITES EXTRA- ORDI- NARII AUXILIA II =C RTA 11 P"AE TO 1IA PLAN OF KOMAN CAMP. formed the centre, the allies the left and right wings ; the cavalry covered the flanks. The fight opened with an alternate advance and discharg'e of missiles, followed by a hand-to-hand engage- ment with the sword, the lines in cases of pressure retiring in turn through the intervals behind. But these simple tactics were. THE NAVY 141 especially in the ensuing wars, developed into more elaborate orders of attack. The new army was thus flexible and mobile, adapted to any ground, except for its weakness in cavalry, and not easily dis- located. Its units were independent, its soldiers well trained, with free play for their sword and shield. Its strict discipline, its remodelled organisation, its splendid physique and morale, made it the unequalled instrument of the broader offensive policy of the reformed Senate. With its camp and third division, its pilum and sword, it combined the principle of a reserve with the union of the offensive and defensive, and of the close and distant methods of fighting. But good as were the soldiers, and careful as were the field exercise and minor tactics, Roman generals, unaccustomed to the liandling of large forces, had no idea of larger tactics and com- prehensive strategy. They could ill adapt their stiff dispositions and rigid manoeuvring to new circumstances. They were in- capable of even understanding a well-conceived campaign and the subtle combinations of genius. The election of two annual commanders without reference to military capacity, unfamiliar with their troops, ill instructed in the art of war, often at variance with each other, was a certain source of disaster. The absence of a permanent army and regular staff added to the peril, though no doubt an increasing reserve both of veterans and officers was gradually built up, and men of experience served among the legates and on the suite of the consul. However great the civic danger of continuous command and standing armies, militarily speaking the price paid was dear. The Navy. —By the destruction of the Etruscan naval power, Syracuse had become the first maritime state, next to Carthage, of the West, and as such her subjugation was necessary to Car- thage. In this task the Phoenician people had partially succeeded, while Rome had destroyed the power of Tarentum. Massilia confined herself to her own waters, and on the seas Rome and Carthage were left face to face. Rome had been long accustomed to maritime commerce. We have evidence of early relations, not merely with Caere, but \vith Massilia, the Sicilian Greeks, Libya, and even Greece itself; and, in days when piracy was respectable and privateering recognised in treaties, we must presuppose armed ships and some species of sea-police. But her war-marine, in spite of fitful outbursts of energy, as in 338, 313, and 31 1 L.C, though never wholly neglected, 142 HISTORY OF ROME was arrested in its proj^ress by internal crises and continental war. Her weakness is expressed in the disastrous treaties of navij^ation with Carthage and Tarentum, by which her move- ments on the sea were seriously restricted.' The protection of the coast was entrusted to a chain of maritime colonies, and to the Greek communities of Lower Italy. In spite of the appointment of duoviri navales in 311, and of four cjuiestores classici in 267, and in spite of the appearance of a Roman squadron at Tarentum in 282, the terms of the Poeno-Roman treaty of alliance against Pyrrhus in 279 B.C., and the events of the first years of the Punic war reveal the starved condition of the fleet. Naval tactics and armament had made but slight progress in the ancient world since the days of the Athenian navy, and Rome especially had never realised the value of a fleet as an essential arm of her service. Her commercial marine was large ; she had abundant timber, and there was probably no lack of triremes and galleys. Of quinqueremes, or ships of the line, she had perhaps none. Her crews were drawn from the lowest classes or from the allies. Her admirals, rash and headstrong, applied to naval warfare the maxims and tactics of a soldiers' battle. She had failed to organise the resources of Etruria and the cities of Magna Grascia, on whom, with Massilia and Syracuse, Apollonia, and even Rhodes, she relied for the nucleus of a fleet. From these sources on an emergency she might indeed equip a respectable squadron, but Carthage remained mistress of the Western waters ; without her leave, she boasted, no Roman could wash his hands in the sea. The development and expansion of Rome were at her mercy. Commerce alone, therefore, would force Rome's attention to her natural outlets in the West. Italy was in a double danger from the commercial and naval supremacy and monopoly of Carthage. While her geographical position, with the protection of a fleet, rendered her the political and strategical centre of the Mediter- ranean, without that protection her long coast-line, so favourable 1 The treaty of 509 B.C., probably renewed in 348 B.C., and the still more prohibitive treaty of 306 B.C., practically exclude Rome from the Western waters, and from free trade in Libya and Sardinia, while opening Carthage and Sicily. The coasts of Latium are guaranteed from Punic pirates. The treaty with Tarentum confined Roman vessels within the Lacinian promontory. However disputed in date, they afford evidence of Roman commerce. ( ]'ide Strachan-Davidson, " Polybius," Introd., Exc. on Carth. Treaties.) Inzjg B.C. the Carthaginians undertake to provide ships for transport and naval warfare. Cf. p. 129. CARTHAGE 143 to traffic, exposed her to attack at every vital point. Mere forti- fication was idle. Her extended sea-frontier, as with the Italy of to-day, demanded a powerful marine to ensure her independence. This necessity was not yet grasped, and to that error in concep- tion was due the length of the impending struggle. Willingly or unwillingly, Rome must enter upon a Mediterranean policy. Like England in the days of Elizabeth or Cromwell, she must refuse to submit to an intolerable position. The serious problem of her policy is henceforth how to check the advance of Carthage to an absolute control of the Western Mediterranean. As Pyrrhus had foreseen, the battle of the elephant and whale was bound to come ; and the natural field of war was the debatable ground of Sicily. Rome could not permit the extinction of Hellenism in Sicily, or the permanent occupation of Italian islands. What- ever the actual occasion or immediate motives and pretexts of the war, in this fact, seen or unseen, lay its ultimate necessity and justification. Carthage. — (i) People. — The people of Kirjath-Hadeschath (Carthage, the "New Town") belonged to the Phoenician branch of the Semitic stock, to a nation of commercial pioneers, mechanics, artisans, and manufacturers. The Genoese of the old world, they covered the seas with a network of factories, and the lands with the lines of their caravan-routes, from the coast of Coromandel to the mines of Cornwall. Ingenious and self- reliant, with little original culture and slight assimilating power, lacking also many of the higher instincts of political life, they were the porters of civilisation, the carriers of the world, whose genius for utilising the discoveries of others, whose steady power of resistance and strong local attachments, aided a shrewd com- mercial policy of discreet submission and masterly inactivity to preserve their individuality as a nation, and even their status as a power. Retiring from the Eastern Mediterranean before the developing energy of Greece, their essentially pacific and mer- cantile bias drove them to seek outlets for their colonisation and commerce in the West. Their settlements were not garrisoned fortresses, but civic factories dotted among the western islands and along the Spanish and African coast. Of these, not the earliest, originally even a dependency perhaps of Utica, Carthage, by her favourable situation and the vigour of her inhabitants, became by degrees the most prominent, and concentrated the PhcEnicians of the West into a single powerful state. The city was founded, about 100 years before Rome, on a small hilly CARTHAGE 145 peninsula jutting out into the Bay of Tunis, not far from the ancient mouth of the Ikii^radas. It consisted later of a citadel — Byrsa — of the Cothon or harbour-c[uarter, and the Megara or suburbs, covering an area of twenty-three miles, with a popula- tion of nearly a million. The fortifications were stupendous, the harbour well situated, the territory fertile. To these advantages was due her rapid l)ut unchronicled commercial and political development. Circumstances made her the natural head of the Western Phoenicians against the Greeks of Sicily, Cyrene, and Massilia. These energetic colonisers had already monopolised Eastern Sicily and Southern Italy. The Phocaeans had penetrated to Spain. Massilia was founded in 600 B.C. ; Selinus, 628 ; Agri- gentum, 580. The Phoenician was now in danger of losing the control of the Western waters and the monopoly of the carrying trade. The necessary resistance was undertaken by Carthage. She entered into relations with Etruria and the natives of Sicily, and established an early intercourse with Latium. Motye, Panormus, and Solus " riveted her hold on Western Sicily; Sardinia and the other Italian islands were annexed. The Phoenician settlements in Libya were brought to submission, and the Libyan farmers were reduced to fellaheen. Her rule ex- tended from the desert to the Atlantic. Her revenue was swelled by the tribute of the subject Phoenician and African communities, by the mines of Spain and the commerce of the ocean. Her system of agriculture and plantation was the model of the ancient SICULO-PUNIC TETRADK.\CHM — HEAD OF PERSEPHONE, WITH DOLPHINS. world. She had changed from a commercial to a conquering power ; her fleet had made the Western Mediterranean a Punic lake. The decline of Tyre and Sidon left her the first Semitic state and the commercial capital of the world. 2. Organisation of her Dominions. — That state consisted of a K 146 HISTORY OF ROME Libyan and a Colonial Empire. To the first belonged, beside the actual citizens, the native Libyans, the Liby-Phoenicians, the con- federate cities, and the dependent Numidian, or Berber, tribes. The Libyans, with precarious rights under an arbitrary government, were a standing danger. The Liby-Phcenicians were partly liaF- castes, partly a legal class corresponding to the " Latin name " in the Roman system. The confederate cities, except Utica, enjoyed a strictly limited autonomy. The Numidians, with their magnificent cavalry and uncertain temper, were at once the strength and weakness of the military organisation. The Colonial Empire in- cluded the North African settlements, the factories and mines of Andalusia (Cades, 1000 B.C.), the Raliaric islands, the coast of Sardinia, Malta, and the West Sicilian fortresses. In Sicily the Greeks and Phoenicians lived side by side, in spite of the crushing defeat of the latter at Himera in 480 B.C., till the fall of the Etruscans left Carthage on the seas face to face with Syracuse. A series of devastating wars, with many changes of fortune, ensued, lasting two centuries and a half, destroyed the most flourishing of the intermediate states, and ended in the ruin of the naval power of Syracuse, which had been, with Tarentum and Rhegium, the objec- tive of Punic effort. The maritime supremacy and commercial monopoly so gained were maintained by jealous cruelty and pro- hibitive treaties. The organisation of the foreign empire, how- ever adapted to the purposes of commerce, was too loose for military necessities, especially for those of defensive warfare. Its maintenance depended on the effective control of the sea. Home Government. — The home government, originally a monarchy, had become a republic. Occidental in character, it pre- served its municipal institutions, and, in spite of the fickle popu- lace, enjoyed a high reputation for stability. The constitution has been described as "an oligarchy at home, a monarchy in the field." Its general spirit was highly oligarchical. A few noble and wealthy families monopolised office and controlled the machinery of government. A steady development without violent reaction, peace and prosperity at home, extension of empire abroad, bear witness to their sagacity and success. Of the elements of the constitution little is clearly known. Up to the fifth century the chief magis- trates seem to have been two sufifetes or judges, annually elected, whose prerogatives had dwindled to religious and judicial functions and the presidency of the Senate. The latter was a numerous body, with inner committees, which transacted the ordinary business of the state. In case of disagreement between it and the sufies, GOVERNMENT OF CARTHAGE 147 the question -was referred to the people The conduct of affairs in the field passed from the suffes to the general, who exercised abroad a dictatorship tempered by crucifixion. The indefinite term and undivided command contrast favourabl)' with the Roman system, though the general was often hampered by the presence in the army of a certain number of senators. The office be- came at one time almost hereditary in the families of Mag^o and Hamilcar, but never grew into an actual despotism. The offices of the state were either purchasable or, at least, so expensive that they were open only to the rich. Both the Senate and officers were largely controlled by the council of 104 ("centum indices"), the keystone of the oligarchical constitution, whose original func- tions expanded into a general supervision, like that of the Spartan Ephors. Whatever its origin, it absorbed the reality of power, calling officials to account, assigning punishments, and interfering in every- department. It was, in fact, an oligarchic board constituted by co- optation. The people, traders and seamen, with no middle class between them and the lords, corrupt and ungovernable, had few definite political rights and small political influence. In later times the power of the democracy was developed by the patriotic opposition, which supported the Barcine family. This constitution was the growth of circumstances and centuries, and in its best epoch was an oligarchy, clear-sighted, consistent, and moderate, but narrow, suspicious, and exclusive. 3. Resources. — It remains to estimate the resources of Carthage for the war. She was the centre of capital ; her revenues were SICULO-PCNIC TKTKAIJKACIIM — HKAD OF PEKbEPHUNE, WITH DOLPHINS. immense ; she had highly developed the means and methods of agriculture and finance. She was rich in tributes and customs, and the produce of her colonies and mines. Besides her citizen militia, she raised for foreign service in her transmarine possessions huge 148 HISTORY OF ROME armies of mercenaries and conscripts. In these motley hosts, round the Phoenician officers and the small nucleus of citizens who supported the commander and acted as a bodyguard and last reserve, gathered the Libyan light or heavy foot, Iberian heavy cavalry and infantry (the best in her pay), hardy active Ligurians, the splendid slingers of the Baliaric Islands, an occasional corps of Campanians or Greeks, and rash, ill-disciplined hordes of huge half-naked Gauls. Her Numidian cavalry, a service to which Carthage paid especial attention, was the finest light horse in the world. Her magazines were full of stores, her stables of elephants. In the skill and daring of her navig-ators, in the build and size of her ships, she was vastly superior to Rome. The rich plains of Africa were free from the scourge of war and safe under cover of her fleet. A defeat cost nothing but cash ; war was a specula- tion waged with limited liability. On the other hand, her tributes and customs were liable to fail her at a crisis ; she had no regula r a rmY J. her militia, however brave, lacked training and perm anence ; her people as a whole were unequal to the Roman people as a whole ; her subjects less faithful. Her mercenary troops, whose very variety was dangerous to any but a consummate commander, and a delusive security against revolt, for all her jealous surveillance and cruel discipline, were costly, dangerous, and untrustworthy. Her infantry was weak, her cavalry not wholly reliable ; she pos- sessed no fortresses and no friends. Taxation and conscription, ruthlessly carried out, filled her subjects with a deadly hatred. The expeditions of Agathocles and Regulus showed the inner weakness of her political and military system. With the same oligarchical constitution and the same tendency to limit her execu- tive, Rom e possessed a Senate more open and representative, less hampered ma crisis by internal difficulties. Her subjects were more homogeneous ; geographically and politically she was more compact. She was strong in the simplicity, reverence, earnest- ness of her people, and in her iron resolution, tenacity, and self- restraint. Her slow constitutional progress, the concentration of practical ability in the Senate, her citizen-army, her fortresses, and, above all, the solidarity of her people enabled her to meet successfully the navies, the capital, the genius and courage, of Carthage. We know little of the history, the constitution, the literature and character, of the Carthaginians. What we learn is derived entirely from the accounts of their enemies. But we know enough to see that the charges of cruelty and faithlessness have been FIRST PUNIC WAR 149 exaggerated, tliat the sneer at a "nation of shopkeepers'' is unjust. She produced the greatest statesmen and generals of this age. The combatants in the struggle were not ill matched — a struggle which began as a war of nations and ended as a duel between a nation and a man. SICULO-PUNIC TKTRAIJRArUM — HEAD OK HKKAKI.ES MELKARTH CHAPTER XVIII THE FIRST PUNIC WAR B.C. A.U.C. Rome and Me.ssana— Outbreak of First Punic War . 264 490 Hiero makes Peace and Alliance with Rome. 263 491 Fall of Agrigentum ..... 262 492 The new Fleet and the Battle of Mylas ... 260 494 Regulus in Africa 256-255 498-499 Victory of Panormus — Siege of Lilybaeum begun . . 250 504 Hamilcar Barca in Sicily 247-241 507-513 Victory of the .iEgates Insulae 241 513 Peace made 241 513 Causes of War. — The natural battlefield of Rome and Carthage was, geographically and politically, Sicily, which had already been the seat of the struggle of Semite and Hellene. The result of the long wars, which had resolved themselves into a contest be- tween Carthage and Syracuse, had been to leave the Halycus the boundary between the two peoples. On the expulsion of Pyrrhus the south-eastern corner alone remained in the hands of Syracuse. The relations of Rome with her rival up to the Pyrrhic war had been confined mainly to maritime and commercial affairs. The treaties already mentioned reveal, only with increasing clear- ness, the naval impotence of the Latin state. The alliance of 279 B.C. Igo HISTORY OF ROME was due to tlie pressure of a common fear, and led to small results. The collision at Tarentum in 272 H.c. was followed in 264 by the affair of Messana, the immediate occasion of the war. Messana. — A free company of Campanian mercenaries who had served under Agathocles, tyrant of Syracuse, had, after his death, captured Messana by treason, ejected the inhabitants, and divided their property. Under the name of Mamertines they held the key of Sicily, and, in concert with the mutinous Campanian legion which had seized Rhegium, controlled the passage of the straits. While Rome crushed lier rebel troops, and recalled the citizens of Rhegium, the Syracusans, relieved from the evils of sedition and the pressure of Carthage by the victories of Pyrrhus and the skill and policy of Hiero II., besieged the Mamertines in Messana. By his successes in the field, the able and sagacious Hiero, whose prudence, moderation, and firmness had already restored the affairs of his country, paved at once his own way to monarchy, and compelled the Mamertines to appeal for help to Rome and Carthage. Anxious to prevent the extension of Syracuse, the Punic admiral, Hannibal, temporarily occupied the citadel. Later on, joint action with Syracuse against the Mamertines seemed advisable, till the latter, hard pressed by the siege and divided sharply into factions, placed themselves at one moment under the protection of Rome, and shortly after accepted a Punic garrison under the command of Hanno. It was natural for Carthage to treat foreign intervention in Sicily as a casus belli. The cjuestion for Rome was more difficult. Honour, gratitude to Hiero, and her own procedure at Rhegium forbade her to support the rebels of Messana. It meant, besides, war with her own allies — a transmarine war. It would be the first step out of Italy, the end of a definite continental policy, the beginning of a policy of adventure, whose issue it might be difficult to see. At the same time it was necessary to check Carthage, to secure the straits, and to grasp the key of Sicily, if not to complete Italy by the conquest of her islands. The Senate hesitated to decide ; the assembly, "with a light heart," assumed the protectorate of the Mamertines. Interest carried the day against the claims of public morality. The Carthaginians met the demands of Rome with studied moderation. War was not formally declared, but a Roman army and transports arrived at Rhegium, while a Punic fleet lay in the harbour of Messana. Gains Claudius, the energetic emissary of the consul, took advantage of the difficult situation, amused § i 5 ^ inn -^■--fl JVAR IN SICILY i$l the deluded admiral, and by adroit treachery seized the city, which was besieged by Hiero and a second Hanno in concert. The consul Appius Claudius Caudex crossed the straits by night, evading the Punic fleet, defeated the allies in detail, and raised the siege. The first campaign, in spite of the subsequent disastrous retreat of Claudius from Syracuse, had been so far successful. Rome and Hiero. — In the following year, however, two con- sular armies entered Sicily. The sufferings of Appius' troops and his comparative failure had shown the danger of throwing an army upon an island unsupported by a fleet. In the meantime ships had been rapidly built or collected, and with their aid the consul M'. Valerius Maximus was able to achieve a consider- able victory near Messana over the united Carthaginians and Syracusans, earning thereby a triumph and the surname Mes- salla. Sixty-seven cities passed over to Rome, and the far-sighted Hiero, already distrustful of the energy and loyalty of Carthage, gladly threw over his uncongenial alliance, surrendered his pri- soners, paid a war indemnity, and secured the favour of Rome. He remained a faithful and trusted ally whose value was often felt, as the Romans in Sicily, in face of the Carthaginian superi- ority at sea, had largely to depend on Syracuse for supplies. Agrigentum. — Unreadiness, negligence, or internal troubles had cost Carthage her hold on Eastern Sicily. She now bestirred herself. A large force of mercenaries was thrown into the once populous Agrigentum, under the command of Hannibal, son of Gisgo. It was still, in spite of its losses in previous wars, the second Greek city of the island, and by its strong position, and nearness to Syracuse, offered a convenient base of operations. Its one weakness was its distance from the sea and the fleet, from which supplies would be drawn. Unable to storm, the consuls blockaded the town, and cut its communications by means of two fortified camps and a double line of entrenchments. In spite of the capture of the Roman magazines at Erbessus, Hanno, who had been at length despatched in October to the rescue, was compelled by the distress of the besieged to risk a general action. His infantry was decisively defeated and a sortie in force re- pelled. The elephants, employed by Carthage for the first time, did themselves no credit. Hannibal escaped by night through the hostile lines, leaving the town and its inhabitants to the tender mercies of Romans irritated by a seven months' siege. Masters of Agrigentum, Messana, and Syracuse, the Romans 152 HISTORY OF ROME pushed their fortune among the inland towns and drove the enemy stoutly back upon the western strongholds Their ideas extended now to the expulsion of Carthage from Sicily. But to bring matters to a decisive issue meant carrying the war into the enemy's country. They were learning their lesson — a lesson driven home by the activity of the Punic fleet, which relieved or subdued the maritime towns of Sicily, harassed the Italian coasts, and scourged Italian commerce. The New Fleet. — Carthage needed a trustworthy infantry, Rome an effective fleet. We must not exaggerate the naval weakness of Rome, nor can we accept the legend of the building of the fleet. Rome had docks and ships and allies, and though the vessels of the Greek states were mainly triremes and pente- conters, it is incredible that no city in Italy should have possessed a quinquereme. The Romans, it is true, were no sailors ; they disliked the service and neglected the fleet, while naval tactics and shipbuilding were certainly at a low ebb ; but we cannot believe that a fleet of one hundred ships of the line and twenty frigates, modelled on a stranded Punic quincjuereme,' equipped in sixty days, and manned by land-lubbers taught to row on shore, should have been able to meet and defeat the well-built ships and trained seamen of Carthage. To the nucleus of ships that she possessed already, or had rapidly collected from the allies, Rome added a large number of new vessels, hastily built and equipped at the various ports. The officers and crews were largely pro- vided by the allies, supplemented by proletarians and slaves. The practical experiences, however, of the last two years had pro- bably convinced the Romans that new methods were necessary. In all the movements of ancient naval tactics — breaking the line, ramming, crushing through and disabling the oarage — everything depended, as the sails and masts were cleared for action, on the strength of the ship, the skill of the steersman, and, above all, on the combined and controlled action of the huge body of rowers. In the number and manoeuvring power of her ships, the experi- ence of her officers, and the precision of her oarsmen Rome was vastly inferior. As fighting-men, however, even her sailors were superior, man for man, to the " rabble of an African crew." The Corvus. — The inv^ention of the corvus,^ or swinging 1 Wrecked in the straits of Messina four years before. 2 A mast 24 feet high was fixed on the prow ; round it swung a gangway 4 feet wide x 36 feet long, with parapets on each side. It swung in a hole cut T2 feet from the end of the gangway, and was so made that it could be drawn THE NEW ELEET 153 boardin.cr-bridgc, and a large increase in the marines enabled personal qualities to compensate for tactical deficiencies. It utilised the superiority of the Roman soldier by substituting close combat for clever manoeuvres. Ten marines were enough for an THE COLUMNA ROSTRATA {restored). Athenian trireme with a total crew of nearly 200 ; the Roman man-of-war, with its 310 oarsmen, carried a complement of 120. Duilius. — The fleet sailed for Sicily under the command of up close to the mast. It was suspended from a pulley on the mast-head by a rope attached to a hook at its farther end, and lo-.vered with a rush. A heavy grappling-spike was fixed at the same extremity. To clear the bul- warks and improve the blow, it was fastened to the mast 12 feet above the deck, and therefore the first 12 feet must have been connected by a hinge to make it accessible. It played freely round the mast and could be lowered on either side. The soldiers, covered by their shields and the parapets, boarded two abreast. It also served to break the force of the enemy's impact. 154 HISTORY OF ROME Gnrcus Cornelius Scipio, who succeeded in losing,' his advanced squadron of seventeen sail, and earning the nickname Asina, by falling into a Punic trap at Lipara. The remainder of the fleet, under the land-general C. Duilius, gained a complete and sur- prising victory over the fleet of Hannibal, 130 strong, at Mylae, a promontory to the north-west of Messana (260 B.C.). The success was due as much to the contemptuous carelessness of the Car- thaginians as to the novel tactics of Duilius. Hurrying to the attack in sanguine disorder, they were astonished, puzzled, and discomfited by the swiftly turning Raven. The moral effect was immense. Carthage had been beaten at sea with a loss of fifty ships ; the siege of Segesta was promptly raised. Signal honours CORA/EUOI.FSCIPIO DIIESCOSOKESOK H oncoiaJOPI-yTRVAAECO/SEAITiONTR DVONpROOfTVMOfVlSEViko UClOMSCin/lOAJE FIliaS-BARMTI ^-^-^iSO^•CE^JS OR AID/US HICFVITA C CEriTQORSICAMERIACLVE\WE I' .DETTEMtTESTATEByjAlg^^E^E TX) EPITAPH OF LUCIUS SCIPIO. awaited the plebeian admiral ; the Columna Rostrata commemo- rated the event. In the following years the skill and energy of the earlier Hamilcar, basing on Panormus, improved the position of Car- thage, which was further strengthened by the fortification of Dre- pana. The severe measures taken by Rome with the helpless Greek states at once impaired her hold on Sicily and damaged the prize of victory. Meanwhile L. Scipio, the grandfather of Africanus, had beaten Hanno and captured Aleria, in Corsica, the timber depot of Carthage, and ravaged the rich and populous Sardinia, whose mines of silver, lead, and iron, and wealth of corn made her a valued element of strength. MYLM AND ECNOMUS '55 In Sicily towns continued to be taken and retaken, the land wasted and depopulated. Nor was the situation changed by the indecisive sea-fight at Tyndaris (257 B.C.). With considerable losses Rome maintained, on the whole, her superiority. Attack on Africa. — Tired of the fluctuation of the Sicilian war, the Senate naw detennined by a bold stroke to assume a strong offensive and transfer the war to Africa. Trade was ruined, Italy harassed ; Rome was draining away her life-blood ; the im- patience of the allies at the naval conscription had almost broken into actual mutiny. Carthage, safe at home, easily renewed her Sji/<=^ L L F '5» B D E C rf Position during the Battle. Romans. ^_ AB. 8z Ships under Vanlius BC. 83 Ships towing Transports CO. 82 Ships under Regulus D. Transports E. Triarii ZY. Admiral's Vessels (Hexeres) Carthaginians, • — ■ F. Han no LL. Hamilcar K. Carthaginian Left. iralkerG-Jioutallsc. PLAN OF ECNOMUS. fleet, and raised fresh armies of aliens. The attack on Africa may, of course, have been intended only as a powerful diversion ; in any case, had Rome concentrated her energy upon it, the internal weakness of Carthage and the absence of fortresses would have en- sured complete success. It demanded a powerful fleet to convoy a strong army and secure its communications, and accordingly vast naval preparations were made, to which Carthage, spurred by memories of the raid of Agathocles, responded with equal vigour. Ecnomus. — Off Ecnomus, half-way between Gela and Agrigen- 156 HISTORY OF ROME turn, the Roman fleet of 330 sliips, carrying 40,000 picked troops and ioo,coo seamen, under tlie consulars M. Atilius Regulus and L. Manlius \'olso, was met by Hamilcar and Hanno witli 350 ships and i 50,000 men. The Punic fleet advanced in a long hne of four divisions to meet the Roman wedge, its left thrown for- ward at an obtuse angle, resting on the Sicilian coast ; its right outflanking the Romans, who moved forward in a hollow triangle, led by the consuls — a defensive formation, in which each prow, with its corvus, covered the unprotected stern of the ship in front. The base-division towed the transports ; the rear was covered by the fourth division. The wedge, intended to split the Punic line, was itself broken by the withdrawal of the hostile centre and its own hasty advance ; the Punic right fell on the rear-guard, their left on the third division, which had thrown ofi"the transports. Outmanoeuvred and outsailed, the Romans, by sheer force and the corvus, Avere able to defeat the enemy's centre and relieve their hard-pressed rear. They had lost twenty-four ships and taken or destroyed ninety-four. After delay for repairs, the fleet pro- ceeded to Africa, and disembarked the troops at Clupea, where an entrenched camp secured their base (256 B.C.). Regulus. — The first blunder of the campaign was the failure to march at once on Carthage ; the second was the recall, in ac- cordance with Roman routine and red-tape, of one of the consuls with his army. The recall of the bulk of the fleet was the worst blunder of all. But the whole business, whether due to the limited ideas of the Senate, or to constitutional eccentricities, or to the incapacity and self-esteem of Regulus, was a hopeless bungle. Regulus, however, with his "adequate force" of 40 ships, 15,000 infantry, and 500 cavalry — barely a consular army — was able to carry on the devastation of the rich and beautiful country, with its villas and gardens, its vineyards and olive-groves, to defeat the local leaders, capture the open cities, and establish himself for the winter at Tunes. Hamilcar, recalled from Sicily, joined Hasdrubal and Bostar with a strong detachment ; but the bulk of the troops were absent, the country was unprepared, the militia inadequate, and the ever-suspicious oligarchy, even in its hour of danger, distrusted its leaders and divided the command. The disunited chiefs, ignorant of their real strength, mismanaged the campaign. But what Regulus gained by the difficulties of Carthage and the folly of her leaders he lost by the rash and brutal insolence of his demands. The suffering and overcrowded city, hemmed in by the Romans and distressed by Numidian in- DEFEAT OF REGULUS 157 cursions, was inclined to treat, but rejected with scorn the ultimatum of the consul and prepared for a passionate defence. Recruits were raised. Xanthippus, a trained Spartan officer, supported by popular feeling in his outspoken contempt for Punic tactics, taught them the value and use of cavalry and elephants, drilled a competent infantry, and inspired confidence by his obvious ability in handling the troops. His organising talent and tactical skill decided the issue. The incapable proconsul had neglected his rear and wasted his resources ; his strength was inadequate to a siege ; he was terribly inferior in cavalry. Forced to accept battle on a plain, he was thoroughly beaten and ftimself taken prisoner. The remnant of his army — the rest had been stamped out under the feet of the elephants — was rescued by a Roman fleet, whose commanders lost all the credit gained in a battle off the Hermican Cape' by the obstinacy which sacrificed an immense number of their ships in a storm off the south coast of Sicily (255 B.C.). The fate of Regulus is uncertain. He lived some time at Carthage ; but the story of his mission to Rome, his refusal to see his family, his return to Carthage, and death there under cruel tortures, is a highly coloured legend that possibly covers a true tale of a bloody Roman vengeance. Africa had been evacuated, but with a new fleet - rapidly equipped Cn. Cornelius Scipio surprised the rich and populous Panormus, and acquired a new and important base. The north coast of Sicily was now practically Roman. Carthage, occupied at home, made little resistance. In 253 B.C. a further disaster due to bad seamanship cost the Romans 150 ships and reduced the fleet to convoy-duty and coast defence. In 252 the Romans took Himera, Therma;, and Lipara. Meanwhile Hasdrubal had reinforced Carthalo at Libybieum with 30,000 men and 140 elephants. The hostile armies treated each other with distant respect. The Romans had not forgotten their fear of elephants ; Hasdrubal distrusted his in''antry. Panormus. — Next year the brilliant victory of L. Ccccilius Metellus at Panormus (250 B.C.), restored confidence and demon- strated the danger of elephants as an arm of war. Drawn by every art under the walls of the town, assailed from battlements and trenches by a storm of missiles, the maddened brutes turned 1 K victory grossly exaggerated or turned to very little account. - Two hundred and twenty ships, said to have been built in three months. 158 HISTORY OF ROME and trampled down the following- infantry. The rout was com- pleted by a successful sortie. One hundred and four elephants graced the triumph of Metellus. ^*l/ ?5fis'')2' DENARIUS STRUCK CIRCA I33 B.C., TO COMMEMORATE VICTORY OF PANORMUS. Terms offered by Carthage were rejected. With this embassy is connected the mission of Regulus {vide supra), but the whole story is doubtful. It was customary to ransom prisoners, and Rome especially had no reason to refuse. A new fleet of 200 sail and a double consular army besieged Lilybceum (the modern Marsala). Siege of Lilybaeum, — This siege brings us to the crisis of the war. Here had Carthage concentrated her resources in a strongly fortified position, on a promontory, the extreme west point of Sicily, commanding communications with Africa. Its magnificent lines and difficult harbour, the genius of Himilco, and the tenacity of Semites preserved the virgin fortress through a siege of unparalleled length, in which every means of attack and defence was exhausted. The Roman force may have reached, with crews and allies, a total of 100,000 ; to meet which Himilco disposed of 10,000 infantry, 7000 cavalry, and a large population. Regular siege-works were pushed forward — trenches, approaches, and mines. Greek skill provided machines and engines of attack. They were met by inner walls and counter-mines and endless bloody sallies. Brilliant incidents diversified the record of hard work and hard fighting. Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, with fifty ships and 10,000 men, steered by clever pilots, audaciously burst through the blockading line, borne on a rising wind and swelling sea, relieved the garrison, and removed the useless cavalry to prey effectively on the Roman rear. A namesake of his, surnamed the Rhodian, several times ran the gauntlet of the whole fleet with a single swift ship to bring supplies. Finally Himilco burnt the Roman works and converted the siege into a dogged but in- LILYB^UM AND DKEPANA 159 effective blockade, rendered possible to the wretched and starving Romans only by the aid of Hiero. In 249 B.C. P. Claudius Pulcher, a haughty aristocrat, arrived witii fresh crews and orders. IK %: ^> I D I I ^ i I MILESTONE OF P. CLAUDIUS PULCHER AND OF C. FURIUS (.-EDILES).! Drepana. — Weary of the fruitless assault of this Sicilian Sebastopol, he attempted, with the best of the decaying ships and a picked force, to carry Drepana by a coup-de-main. Adherbal, taken by surprise in the early morning, availed himself of the curving conformation of the harbour and the cover of an islanci to stand out to sea along the northern, as the consul coasted in, ship by ship, along the southern, shore. Having thus outflanked the enemy, he was able to crush the clumsily turning Roman ships against a hostile coast. Claudius escaped with a shameful loss of ninety-three ships. The sceptical consul, who had flung the sacred chickens into the sea that " they might drink if they would not eat," and had contemptuously nominated a servant as dictator, was fined if not exiled. Aulus Atilius Calatinus was created dictator, the first appointed for command outside Italy. The disaster of Drepana was completed by the utter destruction, 1 This milestone from the Appian Way is the earliest extant. l6o HISTORY OF ROME on the south coast of Sicily, of the iinnicnsc Koinan transport-fleet under L. Junius I'ulkis. Carthaj^c, l)y her one naval victory, had regained the mastery of the sea, and her admirals followed up their success with judj^ment and encr.^y. But owing to ex- haustion, indolence, or economy, possibly to internal troubles caused by the cruel severity of her taxation, she failed to push her advantage by land against the besieging army. Calatinus maintained his position. She neither hindered nor helped her only general, the kingly statesman and soldier, Hamilcar Barca, who, by strict discipline and a policy of patience, by a war of outposts, incursions, and privateering, was creating a trustworthy and at- tached infantry out of his mutinous and fickle mercenaries. Rome was also exhausted. Her loss in men and material, the damage to trade and agriculture, had been enormous. Her burgess roll fell by a sixth between 252 B.C. and 247 ; the coinage had been debased ; taxation heavily increased. She had no fleet and no generals, and contented herself with founding new citizen colonies to protect the coast. The only relief in Sicily was the capture of Eryx by Pullus with the remnant of his shipwrecked crews. Hamilcar Barca. — The last years of the war were uneventful, and resolved themselves into a display of accomplished "military pugilism." From his impregnable post on Mount Ercte (Monte Pellegrino), an isolated rock rising sharply from the sea, severed from the other hills, with a little haven at its base, Hamilcar threatened Panormus and harassed the Romans in Sicily and at home, hampering their communications and cutting off iheir supplies. In 244. B.C. he transferred himself to Mount Eryx, close to Drepana, and in this difficult position, between the Roman garrison on the summit and the Roman camp at the base, he fought his drawn battle to the end, schooling his attached troops and teaching a succession of consuls the art of war. At length Rome roused herself to a supreme elTort. A compulsory loan repayable by the state, or a voluntary contribution in the Athenian manner, created a fleet at private cost of 200 ships of the line, of ligdit build and good construction, either newly modelled on a captured ship or taken from the swarm of privateers which had recently, com- bining patriotism and profit, taken the place of a Roman navy and ravaged the African coast. ./Egates Insulae.— With these, in the twenty-third year of the war, C. Lutatius Catulus occupied the harbours of Lilybieum and Drepana, trained and practised his sailors unceasingly, and in the spring of 241 B.C., brought the war to a close by the de- END OF FIRST PUNIC WAR i6i struction of the hastily equipped fleet of 250 sail, with transports, sent under Hanno to relieve the fortress. The Carthaginians, with their heavy overladen ships, forced to engage, like the Spanish Armada, before they could embark their real commander, Hamilcar, were outsailed and tactically beaten by the patriotic fleet, temporarily commanded by P. Valerius Falto, in spite of the high sea and favoural)le wind (March 10, 241 B.C.). This defeat at the /Egatian Islands broke the spirit of Carthage. Her reserve was exhausted. The fortresses must fall. KEMAINS OF THE TOWN OK ERYX. Peace — Hamilcar received full powers to treat. Refusing to lay down his arms and evacuate as a preliminary, he induced Lutatius, anxious to conclude the war himself, to accede to more favourable conditions. The provisional treaty was rejected by the people, but a commission of ten appointed by the Senate con- cluded a definitive peace upon the spot. They raised the amount of the indemnity and shortened the term for payment. Carthage was to pay 3200 Euboic talents (^790,000) in ten years, to surrender Sicily and the islands between Sicily and Italy, and to give up all prisoners without ransom. The integrity of the Carthaginian state L i62 HISTORY OF ROME was guaranteed, and Hamilcar departed with the honours of war. To compensate her immense losses, Rome had gained her first province and the control of her own seas. Carthage, hard hit in mercenaries, revenues, and trade, had lost her naval prestige and commercial monopoly. In spite of her seamanship she had been constantly defeated on her own element. Sicily, the object of the efforts and sacrifices of centuries, had been lost. From LilybcCum, her foe controlled the passage between the eastern and western basins of the Mediterranean and threatened the defences of the capital. Her resources were, however, as elastic as her spirit. She soon recovered from her prostration, and her losses in Sicily were soon redressed by the Barcid conquest of Spain. The conduct of the war on both sides had been weak and vacillating, without clear objective or definite policy, a fact due to novel conditions and divided counsels. It had brought out the essential defects of both systems. An organisation adapted to short campaigns, resting on the capital and the Italian fortresses, was unsuited to wide combinations and distant regions, to maritime war and protracted sieges. With equal distinctness was revealed the rottenness of an organisation which rested on a mercenary infantry. The struggle had ended in a suspension of hostilities. It was but the tedious prologue to the deadly duel. Carthage retained the Western Mediterranean ; Rome was launched on her career of conquest.^ CHAPTER XIX THE EXTENSION OF ITALY TO ITS NATURAL BOUNDARIES B.C. A.U.C, The Mercenary War at Carthage . 241-237 513-517 Gallic Wars 238-236 226-222 516-518 528-532 Illyrian Wars 230-229 219 524-525 535 Revolt of the Mercenaries at Carthage. — Before passing to the next stage in the story of Roman expansion abroad, and of the grave social and political changes which that expansion involved, we have to describe the extension of Roman Italy to its natural 1 Tiie internal history will be reserved till ihe close of the period. SARDINIA OCCUPIED 163 boundaries. One series of events in foreign history, however — the so-called "Truceless War," the struggle of Carthage with her revolted mercenaries and subjects — is of importance for us as throwing light upon the internal weakness of that state and her relation to her African subjects. Its importance for Rome lies in the delay it imposed upon the far-reaching plans of Hamilcar. The details of the war belong to Carthaginian history. Disaffec- tion had broken out among the unpaid and not yet disbanded veterans of Sicily, who had been allowed, on the evacuation of the island, to gather in force at Carthage, and had been alternately cheated and coaxed by a weak and impecunious government. It swelled to a mutiny under the leadership of Spendius, a Campanian deserter, Matho, a Libyan, and Autaritus, a Gaul. The mis- cellaneous rabble of mercenaries was joined by the Libyan sub- jects, who rose eti masse to avenge the conscriptions, extortions, and evictions under which they w-rithed. After a desperate and ferocious struggle, prolonged by the dissensions and incapacity of the Punic leaders, the mutiny was stamped out in blood by Hamilcar Barca. Sardinia. — To complete the troubles of Carthage, Rome, who, with a loyalty due possibly to exhaustion, had permitted the waiy Hiero to assist with supplies and men the tottering state, and, by prolonging the life of Carthage, to secure the existence of Syracuse ; who had rejected the overtures of the rebels in Utica and Sardinia ; who had shown an unwonted courtesy and sense of treaty obliga- tion when it was in her power to complete the ruin of her rival, Rome succumbed to temptation, and in response to an appeal from the Sardinian mutineers, occupied the rich and valuable island. The mercenaries were hard pressed by the natives, and the Romans, in accepting their invitation, with characteristic sophistry COIN STRUCK AT CARTHAGE — HEAD OF PERSEPHONE. treatM Sardinia as a masterless land. A remonstrance from Carthage was met with a blank menace of war (238 B.c ). She was i64 HISTORY OF ROME forced to resign Sardinia and Corsica, and to pay an indemnity of 1 200 talents (^292,000). Rome had gained a province — organised in 231 B.C. — and secured the control of her own waters. By this act of simple brigandage, and by her high-handed support of her blockade-running subjects, she kindled, to her cost, the undying hatred of Hamiicar and prepared the just and terrible vengeance of the Hannibalic war. Sicily. — In Sicily, Hiero had been left an independent prince ; the remainder of the ruined and depopulated island was organised under a temporary arrangement till the establishment of a regular provincial government in 227 B.C. The old policy of isolation broke up the existing groups of states and shattered existing ties and relations. Messana became a federated state ; some few were left free and untaxed ; a large number retained their autonomy on pay- ment of a tithe of their produce {deciima) ; a large number again saw their land converted to ager ptibiicus, leased by the Roman censor.^ The removal of the tus commerct'z between states threw large masses of land into the possession of the Romans and the few privileged Sicilians. Prices fell, agriculture declined, big estates, plantations, and the slave system spread in all directions. Italy. — In Italy proper, except the absurd revolt of Falerii, crushed after six days' war, and the formation of colonies,- there is no matter of military importance. The predatory incur- sions of the Ligurians gave trouble for some years, while the stubborn inhabitants of Sardinia and Corsica offered a steady resistance to the conquerors. In 238 B.C. Ti. Sempronius Gracchus defeated the Ligurians and was active in the islands, in 236-235 the Carthaginians fomented disturbances in all three regions, and T. Manlius Torquatus defeated the Sardinians. The dis- turbances continued without decisive action down to 230. Turning to the Adriatic, we find that the line of colonies guarding the coast had been completed by the foundation of Brundisium. The Illyrians. — The Adriatic had become a Roman sea, covered with Roman ships. Occupied hitherto with the Punic war, Roman policy in the East had confined itself to watching r^Iacedonia and Syria and maintaining relations with Egypt, which had treated Rome with respectful attention since the em- ^ This organisation was not completed till 210 B.C. C/. pp. 211, 212. - Viz., besides the burgess-colonies at .iEsium and Alsium (247 B.C.), and Fregenae (245 B.C.), the Latin colonies at Posstum, and Cosa (on Lucanian coast?) (273 B.C.), Beneventum and Ariminum (268 B.C.), Firmum (264 B.C.), .^sernia (263 B.C.), Brundisium (244 B.C.), and Spoletium (241 B.C.). THE ILLYRIAN WAR 165 bassy of Plolemy Philadelphus in 273 li.C. In Greece the constant jars of the Achiean and /EtoHan leagues, of Sparta and of Macedon, spared her the trouble of interference. On the sea, however, the decay of the Greek fleets, the naval weakness of Rome, and her innate aversion from salt water, left a free hand to the pirates who flourished under the favour of Macedonia. The difficult waters and dangerous coast, avoided by Greek colonisation, formed an excellent school of hardy sailors and a safe retreat for the light Liburnian cutters. Here piracy had been ever at home, fitfull)- restrained by the sea-police of Corcyra or Syracuse. By this time the Illyrian buccaneers mustered powerful squadrons, which harried the coasts and swept the seas as far as Messene. The forces of Xing' Agron and his widow Teuta made themselves felt in continental affairs. At length the complaints of the Greek commercial towns, Issa, Pharos, Epidamnus, and Apollonia, and the losses sustained by Roman trade, drew an embassy from the Senate to the rulers of Scodra (Scutari). Queen Teuta declared herself ready to observe a correct attitude towards Rome in her public capacity, but was unable, she said, to restrict the private undertakings of her subjects on the high seas. Coruncanius retorted, with proper but ill-timed spirit, that the Romans would make it their business to improve the relations of sovereign and subject in Illyria. A murderous outrage upon the embassy was followed by Mar. A powerful fleet and army under the command of Cn. Fulvius Centumalus and L. Postumius Albinus, in a single campaign, relieved the Greek cities, captured Corcyra, which had been occupied by the Illyrians, and reduced the Queen to submission (229 B.C.). Her conquests were restored, her land-made tributary, her armed ships forbidden to sail south of Lissus. The Greek states, Corcyra, Epidamnus, and Apollonia, entered the Roman alliance, and Demetrius of Pharos was rewarded for his well-timed help by territory in Dalmatia. The new possessions were placed under the general consular authority, with special subordinate officers in Corcyra and elsewhere. Rome had secured good harbours on the Adriatic, and a first foothold in Greece. She was recognised by the Greeks as a civilised state, welcomed as a liberator, and admitted to the mysteries of Eleusis and to the Isthmian games. The keys of the East were in her hand. Macedon did not stir. Ten years later, Demetrius of Pharos, more shrewd than wise, relying on his connection with Antigonus Doson, the victor of Sellasia, and on Rome's actual and expected difiiculties with 1 66 HISTORY OF ROME Gauls and Carthaginians, treated the conditions of peace with open contempt and extended his rule in Illyria. Prompt action was demanded to secure Rome's flank in the obviously impending war with Carthage. L. yEmilius Paullus and M. Livius Salinator captured Pharos, drove Demetrius into exile, and settled the affairs of Illyria. Demetrius took refuge with Philip of Macedon. The two consuls were accused, and Livius condemned, for mal- administration of the booty. Cisalpine Gaul. — We have now to trace the extension of Rome to her natural boundary on the north. Political and military con- siderations pointed to the Alps as the scientific frontier of Italy. The plain of the Po and the passes of the mountains were held by Celtic tribes, her ancient and hereditary enemies. At the foot of the Alps, the Salassi and Taurini occupied the head- waters of the Po ; the Insubres round Mediolanum, the Cenomani round Brixia and Cremona, and the Veneti, a non-Gallic clan, filled the space in order between the Po, the Alps, and the Gulf of Venice. To the south, the Ligures held the slopes of the Apennines from the Maritime Alps to Arretium and Pisae. The right bank of the Po was held by the smaller tribes of the Anares and Lingones, below whom the strong Boii extended from Parma to Bologna. The Senones had once dwelt between the Apennines and the sea as far as Ancona. Of these, the Insubres, the Ceno- mani, and the Veneti remained neutral ; the Senones were extinct. Forty-five years had elapsed since the last Gallic war and the battle of the Vadimonian Lake. During the Pyrrhic and Punic wars the Gauls had fortunately kept the peace, but the younger generation was now in a state of ferment, and entered into com- munication with the Transalpine Celts. The first outbreak was not serious. In 238 and 237 B.C. the Gauls suffered some defeats, and in 236 a powerful Boian army reinforced by Transalpine Gauls, appeared before Ariminum, Rome's northern outpost, but was compelled by internal dissension to break up and to accept the moderate terms imposed. Flaminius. — A second more serious outbreak was precipitated by the popular policy of C. Flaminius, tribune of the plebs. It was clearly necessary to strengthen the north-eastern frontier. It was possible to secure this end, and at the same time to relieve the peasantry, suffering imder the effects of the long wars and the scarcity of money, to deplete the overcrowded capital and reward the veterans by allotting to colonists the ager publicus in Picenum and the land forfeited by the Senonian Gauls. BATTLE OF TELA MOM 167 In 232 B.C. the popular leader carried his agrarian law in the teeth of the nobles and the financial class, who maintained their own interests in the system of pasturage and occupation and the accumulation of large slave-worked estates. The measure was excellent, the means dubious. The folly of the Senate compelled an appeal to the constitutional powers of the tribes, and Flami- nius, by his victory, set a precedent to his successors which they were not slow to follow.^ It was a loss to the Senate of moral weight, and the statesmen of later ages found in Flaminius the herald of the Roman revolu- tion. The law was vigorously carried out in spite of the intrigues of the nobles, and one of its results was the irritation of the already impatient Gallic tribes. In 225 B.C. a combined force of Italian Celts and Gallic adventurers from the Rhone (Gtesatae), amounting to 50,000 foot and 20,000 horse, moving by the west coast route, eluded the Roman posts and marched on Clusium, within three days of Rome. A detachment had been left to watch the Cenomani and Veneti, who were acting with Rome. The terror of a common danger, stimulated by the usual prodigies, caused an outburst of superstition, in which two Gauls and two Greeks were buried alive in the Forum Boarium, followed by a general levy of the Italian peoples. The dispositions for defence were as follows : — L. ^milius Papus held the passage at Ariminum with a consu- lar army ; the western roads were blocked by 55,000 Etruscans and Sabines at Faesulas and Arretium, pending the arrival of C. Atilius Regulus with the amiy of Sardinia ; the Umbrian militia, in the centre, were ready to fall on the enemy's flank ; a reserve of 50,000 was posted at Rome. The Etruscan troops had been already entrapped and defeated when ^milius appeared on the Gallic flank. Battle of Telamon. — Turning homeward by the coast to secure their booty, their steps dogged by the consul, the Gauls fell in at Telamon with the Sardinian army, which had landed at Pisae. Caught between two armies, they protected their wings with barricades and fought on a double front. A flank attack of the victorious Roman cavalry helped superior discipline and armament to decide this strange and desperate battle. The value of the pilum for distant fighting was amply demonstrated on the naked bodies of the close-ranked Gauls. Forty thousand of the enemy were killed, ten thousand captured. The defeat was 1 On the land question vide i>ifra, on Ti. Gracchus and the agrarian laws 1 68 HISTORY OF KOME followed up by the invasion of Cisalpine Gaul, whose conciuest was completed more by the valour of the Roman soldier than by the tactics of the politician P'laminius, who succeeded to the command. Conquest of Cisalpine Gaul. — With the help of the Ccnomani, he ravaged the land of the Insubres, and refused peace except on the hardest terms. The Boii and Lingones had already sub- mitted. In 222 i;.C. the Insubres called in once more the Gtcsata^, but their final efforts were crushed by M. Marcellus, who with his own hand won the spolia opima^ from Viridomarus, and by Cn. Scipio, who captured Mediolanum and Comum. The power of DENARIUS OF CIRCA 45 B.C.— MARCELLUS AND SPOLIA UI'l.MA. the Gauls was broken. Rome had secured her tlank and extended her boundary to the Alps, while her true strength had been seen in the common front presented to a common danger. It remained to Romanise the conquered land. The great northern road was extended from Narnia and Spoletium to Ariminum as the "via Flaminia." Colonies were laid out (B.C. 218) at Placentia and Cremona (Latin), and Mutina (burgess). Communication with Illyricum was assured by the expedition to I stria. The allied tribes remained in nominal independence ; the western clans were on the whole undisturbed. The Senate hoped to bring the impending Punic struggle to an issue in Spain. Upon their unfinished work and half-founded colonies, sweeping with rapid march from the storm of Saguntum to the passes of the Alps, Hannibal descended like a thunder-cloud in a clear sky, to wage war through the length and breadth of Italy, and to march his troops to the gates of Rome. 1 Vide supra pp. 79 and 80. CARTHAGE AFTER THE WAR 169 CHAPTER XX HAMILCAR AND HANNII'.AL R.C. A.VX. Hamilcar in Spain 236-228 518 526 Hasdrubal 228-221 526-533 Hannibal takes Saguntum 219 S3S State of Carthage. — While Rome thus secured her position Carthage had not been idle. The Celtic troubles and wavering policy of her foe had given a chance that she was not slow to seize. She had doubtless lost her commercial supremacy, her command of the seas, and the Sicilian tribute ; she retained Africa, the Spanish factories, and the gates of the ocean. But the sur- render of Sardinia and the bullying attitude of Rome proved the precariousness of a tenure which hung upon the moods of the masters of Lilybasum. Carthage existed by the grace of Rome. To all but the cowardly and incapable opportunists of the peace- party, whose sole idea was a policy of "scuttle" abroad, and taxation and crucifixion at home, the position was clearly intoler- able, and war, sooner or later, a necessity. The distinction between the reactionaries and reformers, the capitalists and the democracy, was thus merged in the distinction between the parties of war and peace. Hanno " the great" led the governing aristocracy. At the head of the opposition stood Hamilcar Barca. Checked by the disasters in Sicily, and hampered by the weakness of the govern- ment, the democratic leader, with all the energy and tenacity of his character, educated a party, and pushed his plans alternately by military success and political adroitness. Sicily was lost and Africa drained of men and money, but to the statesman and soldier Spain offered a wider and a safer field, in which, with larger ideas and resources, at a convenient distance from Rome, to build up again the military and material power of his country. Precious time had been lost in the Mercenary war ; his popularity had been sacrificed ; his attached veterans had perished in battle or on the cross. At the same time the folly and incompetence of Hanno had strengthened the hands of the " Barcine faction." Hamilcar had saved his country by his generalship, self-control, and diplo- macy, and his reward had been an impeachment ; but the disas- ters of a government are the opportunity of its opponents. He was appointed generalissimo by popular vote. The Romanising I70 HISTORY OF ROME nobility accepted the situation, which liad its advantages even for them, and his actions, however little the Punic Senate grasped or approved his larger projects, were not without its knowledge and sanction. To it Spain offered a new source of revenue, and removed a dangerous man ; to him, as a recruiting ground and base of operations, with its fruitful soil, rich mines, and gallant tribes, it afforded "a new world to redress the balance of the old," the one means for saving Carthage and revenging her wrongs. Hamilcar in Spain. — The constitution remained unaltered, but the democrats (" eraipia tCjv TrovqpoTaTUP avdpuirui' "), without being in office, were in power. They controlled the government and directed its policy. The commander-in-chief, at once dreaded, detested, and adored by his countrymen, with a personal and national hatred in his heart, crossed to Spain in the summer of 236 B.C. to organise the '•''revanche^'' — a virtual dictator, removable only by the people, who had appointed him. With him went his young son Hannibal, who by the altar of Carthage had sworn an oath of undying enmity to Rome. Hasdrubal, too, his son-in-law, com- manded the fleet. He had to form an army, create material, supply his friends, bribe his enemies, win Spain, and Avatch Carthage. The war must support the war, and the party as well. He must conceal, deceive, and defy on both sides at once, forging a sword he was destined never to use. Spain had long been connected with the Phoenicians, whose private factories anciently established on the west formed the starting-point of his enterprise. Tartessus (Tarshish) was the El Dorado of antiquity, and Gades (founded circ. loco B.C.) the centre of western commerce. But hitherto the settlements had been as purely commercial as the original factories of the English in India. The time had come for conquest. For nine years, by arms, diplomacy, and personal influence, he attracted, quelled, organised Spain — an uncrowned " king of men," possessing his soul in patience with one end before his eyes, creating an empire, preparing victory. A new army was raised and trained ; trade followed the flag ; the state-chest shared with his troops and his party in the proceeds. The Romans were secretly harassed, the Gallic tribes conciliated, the Numidian insurgents crushed ; and yet Rome, arrogant or ignorant, spoke no word. Hasdrubal. — In 228 B.C. Hamilcar died, but his work throve in the hands of the astute statesman and successful soldier, Hasdrubal, who gained the command by the right of merit, by the favour of the army, and by his personal popularity. Shrewd, versatile, and eloquent, more at home in diplomacy than on the field, he HAMILCAR AND HASDRUBAL 171 pushed, with the aid of Hannibal and of reinforcements from home, the Punic province to the Ebro. He founded Nova Carthago, opened up the mines, and developed commerce. The party of Hanno was silenced by success. From Spain, Carthage could draw- revenue, conscripts, and mercenaries ; in Spain she was acquiring an infantry that would meet the legions on equal terms. Rome, underrating the elasticity of Carthage, blind to the strategic value of this new dominion, contented herself (228 B.C.) with the "paper boundary" of the Ebro, a limit as valuable as a Central Asian frontier. Besides this convention, she secured herself a base of action by alliances with Saguntum and Emporite, in the fixed and fatal idea that the decisive struggle would be fought at her convenience and on the field of her choice. If the policy of Hasdrubal and the energy of his lieutenant did at last arouse suspicion and alarm, her hands were full at home. Nor did she realise till the eleventh hour the rapidity of mobilisation, the swift movement, the audacious genius, of her great opponent. In limit- ing Hasdrubal by the Ebro, and giving him a free hand beyond that boundary, the Romans may have stipulated for the neutrality of Saguntum, and possibly of the other Greek towns, but they dealt only with Hasdrubal personally, whose action could be easily disavowed by the Punic government. Hasdrubal on his part was content to buy a respite and consolidate his power ; he' even neglected the opportunity afforded by the Gallic war. In 221 B.C. an act of private vengeance closed his eight years' rule in the peninsula. Character of Hannibal. — The voice of the army, confirmed by the Carthaginian people, called to the command Hasdrubal's right arm, Hannibal, a young man in his twenty-sixth or twenty-ninth year, a trained athlete and soldier, a brilliant cavalry officer, a fair linguist, not destitute of culture. The " inheritor of the unfulfilled renown" of Hamilcar, the heir of his hate and of his genius, the embodiment of the national revenge, he concentrated the spirit of his house and country in one long deadly struggle with her detested rival and oppressor. Rome was now to reap the fruits of her policy of " plunder and blunder." She had irritated without destroying ; she had imposed limits without effective safeguards ; she had allowed her enemy twenty years to recuperate her strength ; and now the ideas of Hamilcar were ripe. A trustworthy infantry was there to support the finest cavalry in the world ; the finances were restored, and all was ready. The war-party controlled the state. For, in spite of Hanno and the Senate, whose treasonable 172 HISTORY OF ROME tendencies liavc l)ccn exaggerated, and wliatcver the lies of Roman historians and the excuses of Punic ambassadors, Carthage sup- ported lier leader and his actions. It was no mere policy of drift, venality, or partisanship that accepted the siege of Saguntum, and maintained for seventeen years the waste and wear of the Hannibalic war. It was clear that war was inevitable, and that Hannibal was the man to wage it. To this he had been con- secrated from his boyhood. The great son of a great father, a master of the art of war, a crafty strategist, patient and audacious, warily cautious and daringly indiscreet, able to read as well as to lead men, he united policy and soldiership, subtle tactics and broad combinations. He was accused of perfidy, irreligion, cruelty, and avarice. The charges are questionable, their source suspected. If the strength and tenacity of a great people, well supplied with ordinary ability, triumphed in the end over her own disasters and the character and genius of an extraordinary man, we cannot accept the calumnies with which the ungenerous victors — victors alike in the field of war and the pag-es of history — have blackened the fair fame of " dirus Hannibal." He was less barbarous than his nation or his times ; his avarice was only public, to support the charges of the war ; yet Carthage thought him covetous and Rome cruel. He had a tinge of superstition in his character ; at times he showed a certain grim humour. He was not incapable of love ; he married a Spanish maiden, and solaced the toils of war with the charms of a Salapian lady. Such was the man whose spirit, moving in all the complications of the times, the soul of all that happened in Spain, Italy, Africa, and Macedon, gave to this pro- 1; nged death-grapple the well-earned title of the Hannibalic war. It was to him a necessary and a national work ; it was no mere war of ambition or aggrandisement ; there was no thought of a personal despotism. Siege of Saguntum. — The immediate occasion of war was found in the ambignious position of Saguntum, which plays the part of Messana in the first struggle. Lying within the Punic sphere of influence, it was protected by a treaty with Rome. Hannibal, disregarding alike this treaty and the doubtful pro- visions of the peace of Catulus, turned from the subjugation of the tribes of the central plateau — Olcades, Vacc^ei, and Carpetani — and created a casus belli by an attack on Saguntum. He had spent two years in securing his base, training his troops, and inspiring confidence at home and in the camp, and now took ad- vantage of Rome's interference in the party contests of Saguntum HANNIBAL AND SAGUNTUM 173 to declare its neutrality violated and the convention a dead letter. Such was his answer to the Roman embassy which came at the appeal of the threatened city. Its protest was ineffectual. He could not afford to leave tlie citv in his rear — this Roman Calais, ROMAN IN TOGA. the key to Spain. Defended for eight months with the courage of despair, and sacrificed by the culpable negligence of Rome, it fell before the vigorous assaults of Maharbal and Hannibal. The siege became a blockade, and at the final storm the Spanish chiefs 174 HISTORY OF ROME perished in the Hiunes of the houses whicli their own hands had kindled. Hannibal by this success — whose difficulty was an omen of his future failure in Italian sieges — had defied Rome, secured Spain, and committed Carthage. The agents of Rome found a contemptuous reception among the Spanish tribes, while an em- bassy, headed by Q. Fabius, proceeded to Carthage and demanded pro form d the surrender of Hannibal. The ultimatum was met by an attempt to discuss the question of formal right. The time for this was past. The causes of the war lay, not in the breach of treaties nor in the attack on Saguntum ; they lay in the action and relation of two peoples. It was a duel to the death between east and west, a struggle for life embittered by cruel memories, which could be settled only by the sword. Fabius put the sharp alter- native to the Punic Senate. He gathered his toga in two folds — " War or peace," he cried ; " which will you have ? " " Which you will," was the answer. He shook out the fold of war, and war was accepted by Carthage with a light lieart. CHAPTER XXI THE SECOND PUNIC WAR UP TO THE BATTLE OF CANN.B r,.c. A.u.c. Second Punic War begins— Battles of the Ticinus and the Trebia 218 536 Battle of Lake Trasimene 217 537 Battle of Cannae 216 538 Strength of Rome and Carthage compared. — The strength of the combatants must now be differently estimated. In the interval be- tween the wars Rome had gained by the consolidation of Italy and the growth of national feeling. The tribes that had fallen before her were bound to her now by ties of kinship, fought under her flag, and shared in the glories and profits of the empire. They enjoyed the Pax Romana ; their burdens were as yet moderate, their allegiance secured by their interest and their affection, and, last but not least, by the network of roads and fortresses, the centres and pathways of Roman force and of Roman feeling. Rome's true strength lay in the /oyalty of her colonies and allies. She had gained the control of the sea, and held the chief harbours Sow Je letch's 'Ranv.Sist. LoTiffnums . Gr«&V' THE AGINIAN EMPIRE tnd Dependencies arthagtnian Domuvums .wtliaoinian Dependencies uuidom or Bier o CtznLertint amahali nuirclvihoTTt, CarOuxgoNma to Cannae ontan ten'ixorv or aihes , London,, New Yirr-k JoBonvbo}: PLANS OF HANNIBAL 175 of the Western Mediterranean, except those of Spain. She was strong in the temper and numbers of her citizen army, but she retained all the weakness of changing chiefs and divided counsels ; in cavalry she was deficient ; her generals lacked the tactics and strategy to meet the inventive and original genius of Hannibal. Carthage remained a loosely organised state, weak where Rome was strong. If she had partially restored her shattered finances, yet her naval monopoly was a thing of the past ; she retained her commercial ideas and unmilitary instincts, her untrustworthy population, and tendency to fight her battles with purchased mercenaries or reluctant conscripts. She was not untrue to her great leader, however inadequate her support may seem, but it was in Spain that Hannibal found his true base, and from Spain that he drew his reinforcements. He was strong in himself and in his army, especially strong in his magnificent cavalry, with its gallant leaders, Mago and Maharbal. He was weak in his siege-train and engineers, in the distance of his base and the difficulty of communication by sea. Above all was he weak in the spirit and energy of his country, at least as contrasted with the iron constancy of Rome. Plans of Hannibal. — Hannibal's plan of campaign reveals at once a genius for wide combinations and a careful provision for possible contingencies. The year 219 B.C. he spent in assiduous preparations and such reconnaissance of the future field of war as was yet possible. His central idea was to strike at Rome in Italy itself, and, while securing his remoter bases in Spain and Africa, and his communications with those bases, to find a nearer point d'appui in Cisalpine Gaul, from whence, if opportunity served, he might transfer his operations to Central and Southern Italy, recovering contact with Carthage. He could not, like Wellington, base himself upon a fleet, but his negotiations had provided powerful allies in the plains of the Po. Irritated by the colonies, the roads, and the land-distributions, the Boii and Insubres would furnish guides, supplies, and recruits whose numbers and enthusiasm would render them a formidable addition to the veteran nucleus of the Spanish army. He expected that Macedon, strengthened by the victory of Sellasia, and annoyed by Roman interference in Greek politics, would actively support him ; he might hope that the appearance of his army in the north would raise the South Italians in the Roman rear. All strategical considerations therefore pointed to the valley of the Po. The com- bined assault on Rome from north and south at once remained 176 HISTORY OF ROME the dominant idea of Carthaginian warfare. In pursuance of this scheme, Hannil)al, wliile he arranged for naval demonstrations in South Italy and at Lilybi^^um, devoted the bulk of his forces to the army of the north. His dispositions and designs show a complete control of the national resources and security in the national support. His available strength may have reached i20,roo foot, 16,000 cavalry, 58 elephants, and 50 ships of war — not all manned. The troops were mostly trained conscripts or allied contingents, no longer mercenaries. Of these, 20,000, mainly Spaniards, secured Africa and the route to Spain and held the passage of the straits, while the western garrisons were moved to Carthage. His brother Hasdrubal occupied Spain with 12,000 infantry, 2500 horse, half the elephants, and the fleet — a force mainly African. Hannibal marches into Gaul. — Having thus guaranteed the discipline and loyalty of his troops, and assured the safety of the capital and the vital points of connection, Hannibal, with 90,000 foot, 12,000 horse, and 37 elephants, his troops refreshed by rest and stimulated to enthusiasm, marched from Carthagena about the beginning of May B.C. 218, carrying with him " the desolation of Italy." He had chosen a difficult and dangerous route. Before him lay the Ebro, the Rhone, the Pyrenees, and the Alps, the strength of Rome, and the uncertain temper of the Gauls. Yet the coloured reports of his guides, geographical ignorance, the perils of the sea, swept by the Roman fleet, and the advantage of joining his allies precisely at the point chosen, combined to draw the leader of a maritime people by a land-route, often before traversed by maraud- ing Gallic hordes descending upon Italy. The difficulties of the route appeared at once. It cost him 20,000 men to force his passage to the Pyrenees. Hanno was left behind with 10,000 men in the newly conquered province ; a second 10,000 was dismissed to purge the army and create a good impression in the country he was leaving. With 50,000 foot and 9000 horse he pressed his march to the Rhone by the coast route, touching the river opposite Avignon late in the summer of 21 8 B.C. Delay in Spain made haste essential to forestall the closing of the Alpine passes. Previous negotiations had paved his way. From Avignon the valley of the Durance afforded an easy access to the lowest, least difficult, and probably most familiar gates of the mountain barrier between the valleys of the Rhone and Po— the Col de I'Argentiere and Mont (jenevre. Hither he was directing his march, avoiding the more difficult passages to the north, and the dangers of the Ligurian PREPARATIONS FOR J TAR 177 coast road, doubtless beset by Roman posts and hostile tribes, when he was met on the Rhone by a strong Gallic force to dispute his crossing, and shed the first Italian blood in a cavalry skirmish on the left bank. Preparations of the Romans. — The Romans were aghast, like the Austrian generals who fought the young Napoleon, at the deliberate audacity of this brilliant offensive idea. Unaccustomed to the strokes of genius and secure in the strength of Rome, they leisurely proceeded with ordinary preparations. Repeated warn- ings were in vain. With over half a million troops available, with a fleet of 220 quinqueremes, apparently superior in all but the quality and numerical proportion of their cavalry, they should have followed up the declaration of war with a rapid and crushing blow in Africa, combined with a descent in force on Spain. Both objects were certainly embraced in their plan, but they under- rated the strength and speed of Hannibal, as they misunder- stood his character and ideas. Of the consuls for 218 B.C., Ti. Sempronius Longus was destined for Sicily and Africa, with two legions, 16,000 allies, 2400 horse, and 160 quinqueremes; while P. Cornelius Scipio received the Spanish command with 22,000 infantry, 2200 horse, and 60 men-of-war. Including a smaller force under L. Manlius Volso in Cisalpine Gaul, Livy estimates the force under arms at 70,000 men, with 220 ships. The levies were late, and the expedition to Spain, vitally important as that was, to save the allies of Rome and threaten Hannibal's com- munications if it could not check his advance, was further delayed by an outbreak of the Gauls in North Italy, partly fomented by Punic agents, partly due to anger at the foundation of the fortress- colonies of Placentia and Cremona. The colonists — six thousand had been allotted to each — were expelled, their leaders imprisoned, and the praetor driven disgracefully into Tannetum. Scipio's troops were diverted to the north, and new regiments raised for the Spanish service. Saguntum had already fallen, and Scipio, coast- ing leisurely to Massilia, now learned with incredulous horror that Hannibal had crushed the tribes, passed the Pyrenees, and was in full march to the Rhone. The presence of the enemy on the Rhone- confirmed the unwelcome news. A cavalry recon- naissance on the left bank drove in a Numidian squadron, only to learn that while the Romans had dawdled on the route and dallied at the mouth, neglecting the farther bank, Hannibal had scattered their allies and crossed the river. A tardy advance in force made it at length clear that his real objective was Italy. The Rhone u 178 HISTORY OF ROME was lost, and Scipio, returning from an idle pursuit, in obedience to orders or to a true military instinct, despatched his brother (inacus with the bulk of the troops to Spain, and hastened in person to meet the enemy, debouching from the Alps, with the division of Cisalpine Gaul. Considering the large forces available in Italy and the value of Spain to Carthage and Hannibal, this conduct deserves the highest praise, and the Senate, with wise tenacity, maintained their Spanish army through the darkest years of the war, till the leader of that army closed the struggle on the field of Zama. Passage of the Rhone. ^ — Hannibal, on arriving at the Rhone, perceived his passage blocked at Roquemaure, four days' march from the sea, by a Gallic levy raised by Massiliot influence. Accordingly, while he rapidly accumulated the means of transport, he sent a strong division under Hanno, son of Bomilcar, to cross the river at a shallower point above and take the Gauls in the rear. When the signal-column of smoke arose, he pushed across with a select force in face of the enemy, who broke and fled as Hanno's men fired their camp and fell upon them from behind. The re- mainder followed at leisure ; the snow-fed stream was broken by a line of heavy ships moored athwart the current ; the elephants passed on rafts cunningly prepared. In six days, or possibly more, he had crossed a swift, broad, and dangerous river almost under the eyes of the Roman consul, of whose presence his cavalry made him aware. To run the gauntlet of a Roman army before he joined his allies offered no advantage. He determined to free his flank by an inland march, and, encouraging his dispirited troops by the promises of the Boian envoys and his own enthusiasm, marched four days upstream to the so-called " Island," the angle of the Rhone and the Is^re. Here he decided by arbitration or the sword the disputed succession to the chieftainship of the Allo- broges, and received in return ample supplies of food and clothing. The Passes of the Alps. — By what route Hannibal crossed the Alps is still disputed. It is a question of mountain geography, as well as a question of military, and to some extent of political, expediency. The decision, if at all possible, rests with the expert and the soldier, not with the historian. His military object was to find the shortest and safest route not so much to Italy as to his allies on the Po, and a route covered from flank attacks from the sea, to be traversed by a regular army with baggage-train and elephants. His choice was conditioned, besides, by the late season — it was October, or possibly November, before he reached the THE PASSES OF THE ALPS 179 summit, and he had meant to be earher — by the movements of Scipio, which had thrown him farther inland, and by the posi- tion of friendly and hostile tribes on either side. In spite of his careful inquiries his information was certainly inaccurate ; nor can we read into the argument our owri more intimate knowledge. In any case he had probably under-estimated the difficulties of what he knew to be a daring and a difficult project ; but he judged it not impossible. We need not exaggerate the risk of an under- taking planned and executed with the deliberate rashness of genius. Excluding at once the Cornice road and the passes to the north and east as obviously dangerous or impracticable, two main avenues are left diverging into four possible passes — the valleys of (i) the Isere, leading to the Little St. Bernard (7076 ft.) through the Graian Alps ; (2) its tributary, the Arc, leading up to Mont Cenis (6859 ft.) ; (3) the Durance, ascending to Mont Genevre (6101 ft.) over the Cottian Alps ; and (4) the Ubaye, which leads from the Durance to the Col de I'Argentiere (653S ft.). By several of these gorges armies had crossed ; all had been used as pathways of intercourse. The appearance of Scipio on Hannibal's flank, as we have seen, diverted his march from the Durance to the Isere. His route thence would be determined by the direction of the valleys and the relative easiness of the passes at that season of the year. Military considerations being equal, the best moun- taineering authority would point to the southerly routes ; that is, either to Mont Genevre or the Col de I'Argentiere. In any case, we must remember that the seasons, and therefore the difficulties, of the Alps vary with different years ; bridges or roads, such as Rome constructed later, there were none. They were traversed by moun- tain tracks, skirting the torrents and precipices by which the chain was cloven, broken continually by the storm and the avalanche. Statements of Polybius and Livy. — Turning to our authorities, we find in the general vagueness and uncertainty of geographical knowledge, in the absence of maps, and of any close attention to nature, nothing but rough outlines and ine.xact details. Polybius shows an ignorance not merely of larger physical formations, but even of the points of the compass. He is obscure as to North Italy, wrong as to the course of the Rhone ; he indulges in colourless and self-complacent generalities, and mentions few names. He made a personal, if limited, acquaintance with the Alps, but he had no eye for the general course or minor features of the range. An excellent military and political historian, he is also the older and more original writer, but we must as little press his stock touches l8o HISTORY OF ROME and approximate distances as the picturesque details which adorn the clear and consistent narrative of Livy. The descriptions given can be adapted to every Alpine pass and its approaches, and even the names of tribes may be due to later inquiries. The same sources were before both, and, in spite of the discrepancies between them as to the course of the stream followed or the names of the opposing clans, they agree in many of their details, in the starting- point, and, possibly, in the terminus, of the march. Nor need we emphasise their disagreement. The account of Polybius points pro- bably to Mont Cenis, if not to the Little St. Bernard. The latter, though the generally accepted route, debouching upon the Salassi and the vale of Aosta-Ivrea (the Dora Baltea), a familiar road for Gallic hordes, seems scarcely probable. In this case Hannibal would ascend not directly by the Isere, but by the Rhone to Vienne, across the country of the Allobroges to the Mont du Chat and Chambcry, and thence by the river-valleys to the foot of the pass. Thus he would march along two sides of a triangle to reach a higher, longer, and steeper passage. The top does not command a view of Italy, but of the glaciers of Mont Blanc. It ends in a long and perilous defile, and leads not to the Taurini, but to the Salassi, contrary to our authorities, while to move thence on Turin with Scipio at Placentia would be obviously idle. Climatic con- ditions alone make the Little St. Bernard incredible. We may conclude, then, that Hannibal followed the line of march described by Livy, whose account is based upon the history of L. Cincius Alimentus, then a captive in the Punic army. Of the two passes to which his narrative might point, both lower and more southern and both offering a more direct descent, Mont Genevre is the more generally favoured, but the Col de I'Argentiere is supported by a fragment of Varro ^ and by high Alpine authority. Hannibal crosses the Alps. — Hannibal, then, who had not crossed the Iscre, followed its valley to the left, av-oiding the direct route by tl^ Col de Cabres. Skirting the Vocontii, he turned south- east from Grenoble, and countermarching along the Drac, reached his original objective, the upper valley of the Durance, by the Col Bayard, whence he either followed the stream to Mont Genevre or struck across by Embrun to the' upper waters of the Ubaye and the Col de I'Argentifere. The ascent cost him nine days, fighting his way along the swollen torrent through the hostile clans. Twice he owed his escape from imminent destruction as much to good fortune as to good tactics. In the first encounter with the hill- ^ Preserved by Servius on Virgil's ^ncid, x. 13. HANNIBAL CROSSES THE ALPS i8i tribes they beset the defiles and crowned the heights. Hannibal amused them with a feigned attack, occupied by a night-surprise their ill-secured position, and after desperate fighting in the narrow gorge, with great loss of beasts and baggage, finally stormed their forts and revictualled his army. In the second struggle higher up he was treacherously surrounded ; great blocks were tumbled down the mountain-side upon the broken and disordered column. He spent the night in arms at the "White Rock," to which he had drawn back, but in the morning succeeded in restoring order. The attacks fell off, and he arrived at length with a worn and weakened host at the small plain on the summit, where he indulged his men with two days of such rest as the autumn nights would allow. The despondent and disheartened troops were cheered by the enthu- siasm of their chief, who felt that he had stonned the ramparts of Italy, and pointed their gaze in imagination to the walls of Rome. Storms of snow added to their discomfort and to the dangers of the descent. The steeper slope, coated with fresh-fallen flakes, was far more difficult, especially for the beasts of burden ; at one point the path had been broken by an avalanche, and in attempting to turn it men and elephants slid and slipped upon the treacherous surface of the trampled and frozen bed of older snow beneath. The attempt was renounced and a camp pitched, while the road was reconstructed. In cutting the rocks it is said that the sour soldiers' wir.e was used to soften the stone calcined first by fire. From that point the army rapidly reached without opposition the lower valleys, and there recruited its shattered strength. The long march had reached its end ; with 20,000 infantry and 6000 cavalry, " un- kempt, emaciated scarecrows," Hannibal stood on the soil of Italy. Cold and hunger, the precipices and the sword, had cost him over 30,003 men, of whom two-thirds marked with their bones the passage of the Alps. With this handful of heroic " shadows," trusting to Italy for recruits, commissariat, and immediate base, he flung himself upon the gigantic power of Rome. We are not in a position to criticise ; we do not know the nature of his alternatives, his difficulties, and original calculations. Its hazardous character does not impair the grandeur of an idea whose moral effect was worth a victory. Tremendous as were the sacrifices, whether foreseen or unforeseen, they were justified by success, and by success alone. Note. — The absence of nccurate indications and definite distances, the utter confusion of the actual Roman Calendar, and erroneous geographi- l82 HISTORY OF ROME cal ideas render it difficult to fix precisely the distances, topography, or chronology of this march and the following campaign. The length of the march from Carthagena to Italy, excliisi%'e of deviations and fighting, may have been from 900 to 1000 miles, equal at the rate of fifteen miles a day to, roughly, ten weeks' pure marcliing. The passage of the Rhone cost at least six days, the Alps fifteen. The total time allowed may be estimated at from five to six months at the least. Hannibal was later than he expected, and starting in May, reached the summit sometime between October 26 and November 7, the Trcbia being fought near December 21. He was at the Rhone probably about the middle of August. Scipio, delayed also, may have left T\ome in July, and arrived at Marseilles in August, moving leisurely. The despatch leading to the recall of Sempronius must have been sent to the Senate from the Rhone not later than the beginning of September. All dating depends on the time assumed respectively for Hannibal's arrival at the Rhone and on the summit. For the passage of the Rhone and the ascent, &c., a more liberal allowance must be made than is usual. The places of tiie encounters with the tribes vary, of course, according to the route given, and are purely conjectural. Scipio in Cisalpine Gaul. — Hannibal had arrived unexpected and with unexpected celerity ; he had a good start, and used it well. The Roman armies that should have met him were in Spain and Sicily. There was nothing at the front but the relics of the legion of Manlius and the division of C. Atilius, the praetor, that had not yet sufficed to quell the Celtic outbreak, to which alone was due the presence of any considerable force in the valley of the Po. In sending his army to Spain, Scipio had naturally trusted to the Senate for reinforcements in Italy, and the Senate at once re- called Sempronius. But they exaggerated the mountain obstacle ; they were ignorant of the genius of Hannibal and the altered character of Punic troops. Had Scipio landed at Genoa, moved along the chord of the arc and flung his whole force upon Turin, he might have choked the war in its birth. But a mountain range is a notoriously dubious barrier, to close its issues a complex problem. A difficult country and doubtful information A\'ould increase the risk. With uncertain allies and certain foes on flank and rear, Scipio might, if scattered, have been defeated in detail, if concentrated at Turin, ^ turned by the St. Bernard, and rolled up against the very mountains he was watching. As it was he arrived at Pisa with a small division in September, crossed the Apennines, and picking up the corps of North Italy, marched with a force of 20,000 men to intercept and destroy a wearied and broken army, ^ Cf. the campaign of Marengo. BATTLE OF THE TICTNUS 1S3 if the mountains had not ah'eady spared liim the trouble. In two months he had restored order on the right bank of the Po, and crossing to the left, from which the Romans had been expelled, was menacing the Insubres, when he became aware of the presence of Hannibal. A few days' rest had sufficed to recruit the Punic army, a few more to afford the Taurini, in the bloody storm of Taurasia, a convincing argument for friendship ; the troops were stimulated by a tournament a outrance among their Celtic prisoners to strike for the prize of victor}' or death. Battle on the Ticinus : Retreat of Scipio. — Moving down the left bank to relieve his Insubrian allies, Hannibal suddenly gained touch with the army of Scipio. The surprise was mutual. At the head of a strong reconnaissance of cavalry and light troops, Scipio, who, with rebels in his rear, had crossed, instead of disputing, the line of the Ticinus, met a similar party under Hannibal in person. In the vigorous skirmish that followed his foot were routed ; his horse, outflanked and taken in rear by the Numidians, after severe fighting fled with the wounded consul, whose life was sa\ed by his son, the future Africanus. Scipio had advanced with inferior numbers and a weak ca\alry. His confidence was disabused ; he saw the weakness of his force in the plains of the Po, and ex- tricating himself fi-om his dangerous position, fell back to the main stream by a rapid and almost precipitate march, broke down the bridges at some sacrifice, evacuated the left bank, and sat down under the walls of Placentia. Here he determined to maintain the defensive till his colleague arrived. Placentia and Cremona furnished him with a strong support, commanded the passage and navigation of the Po, and curbed the unquiet clans. Hannibal, unable to prevent this unexpected retreat or to pass the stream in face of the enemy, effected his crossing at a higher point, opened negotiations with the local tribes, and moving along the right bank, encamped in front of Scipio. Policy and strategy alike made him anxious for a general action to confirm the wavering Gauls, and to secure his commissariat and quarters. Scipio, wounded and waiting, refused battle — the tactics of patience were clearly wisest. But, alarmed by the treachery of a Gallic contin- gent, and thinking his position on the level insecure in face of superior cavalry, he retired across the Trebia in the silence of night, pursued by the Numidian horse, whose attention was luckih- called ofT by the plunder of the camp, and took up a stronger position on a spur of the Apennines, covered by the mountain torrent. iS4 HISTORY OF ROME TOMBSTONE OF ROMAN HORSE-SOLDIER FROM HEXHAM. [Of later date.) THE TREBIA 185 Position of the Two Armies. — The key to these and the subse- quent operations lies in the position of the Trebia, a stream which, descending rapidly from the hills, spreads in the plain a broad and pebbly bed, widening considerably to its mouth above Placentia. Nearly dry in summer, its course is rapidly filled by rain, and runs in winter with a strong and turbulent flood. The plain, at this point narrowed to a width of seven miles, presents an apparently level surface, seamed by similar streams with deep deceptive courses clad with bush. All strategical considerations go to prove that the first position of Scipio would be in front of the Trebia (left bank), connected with Placentia, probably by a bridge of boats ; that he then crossed the stream, and, protected by it, rested his right on the fortress, his left on the Apennines, covering his junction with Sempronius and his communications with Rome, while he checked the movements of the Celts, already hampered by the hostile attitude of the Cenomani. The weight of authority and the description given by Livy would certainly point to the opposite supposition, namely, that Scipio encamped immediately under Placentia, crossed the Trebia to the left bank, and there rested upon the Apennines and the magazines of Clastidium and Vic- tumvite, while Hannibal flung himself across his communica- tions. The first view is difficult to reconcile with the language of Livy, who was scarcely ignorant of the position of Placentia, and with the movements of the defeated Romans, while the successful junction of Sempronius and the capture of Clastidium by the Punic general conflict with the second.^ Sempronius. — Meanwhile, in pursuance of Hannibal's schemes, descents were made on the Italian coast. The Liparian islands had already been seized, when a lucky accident put Hiero in possession of the Carthaginian plans ; the praetor ^Emilius was warned, and the attempt to surprise Lilybaeum was defeated with loss. Sempronius Longus, who arrived immediately after in Sicily with 160 ships and a consular army, successfully frittered his time away over the cap- ture of Melita and such minor operations, till, to his chagrin, he was recalled by the Senate. After providing for the naval defence of the southern coasts, he despatched his troops, whether by land or sea is uncertain, to Ariminum, and from that point effected his junction with his colleague unopposed. Rash and ambitious — if the friend ^ of the Scipios may be trusted — he was as anxious to crown his ' Polybius' account leaves the real point undecided, but agrees with Livy's in the main. - Polybius. l86 HISTORY OF NOME consulship as Hannibal his first campaign with an exploit. The loss of Clastidium, betrayed by its Latin commandant, his at least equal forces — 40,000 men, without reckoning the Cenomani — the ravages of Hannibal, and the dubious attitude of the Gauls were powerful arguments for action. Scipio's masterly inactivity was probably the wisest tactics, but not easy to follow. Sempronius had yet to buy his experience of Hannibal, and that general habitually sold it dear. A cavalry action, brought on by the Carthaginian raids, elated the impetuous spirit of the Roman with a victory con- ceded by the cautious generalship of an experienced leader. It was Hannibal's policy to tempt his man from a strong position to a field of his own choosing, under the worst conditions. Battle of the Trebia. — The design succeeded. In one of the river-bed:;, in the rear of his chosen ground, concealed by the bushes and the banks, he placed an ambush of 2000 picked men, horse and foot, under his young and able adjutant and brother, Mago. On a day of mingled rain and snow, driven "by a nipping and an eager" wind, the well-instructed Numidians, in the early morning, drew the irritated Romans, cold and hungry, horse and man— first the cavalry, then the light-armed, finally the infantry ^ — to wade breast-high across the swollen ice-cold stream. The famished and shivering soldiers were confronted with a warmed and well-fed host. They fought with a river in their rear, outflanked on level ground by a superior cavalry. The fight was lost, before it was begun, by a bad tactical blunder. The Punic foot stood in one long line, with 8000 skirmishers in front and 10,000 cavalry and the elephants on their flanks. The Romans took their usual order. The light troops in front of their battle were scattered at once, and the strong Punic cavalry with the elephants, aided by the Baliaric skirmishers, soon drove ofif the Roman horse in headlong flight. Then, outflanked and taken in rear by the victorious cavalry, the Roman infantry maintained a gallant soldiers' battle till the outbreak of Mago's ambush — a brilliant stratagem brilliantly developed — and the dispersal of the Gallic auxiliaries gave the coup-de-qrdce. One corps, 10,000 strong, cut its way with splendid courage through the Punic line, and picking up the stragglers, forced its way to Placentia. Of the rest, many were cut down at the passage of the river, some found their way through the waters to the camp ; the rest were dispersed. The pursuit was stayed by the increasing fierceness of the storm ; the remnant of the army, with the wounded, were conveyed by Scipio, under cover of night and foul weather, to Placentia. The Romans had lost at least AFTER THE TREBIA 187 20,000 men ; Hannibal sufifered mainly in auxiliaries. But the cruel weather of the winter and the spring was fatal to his elephants, which ceased henceforth in Italy to play their dubious part. By this splendid victory he crowned and justified his march ; he could now secure recruits and supplies ; he could organise the insurrec- tion in Gaul. The enemy were shut up in their strongholds, and the consul, hurrying to the elections, barely escaped the squadrons which scoured the country. Flaminius elected Consul. — As the truth leaked out, the alarm at Rome was as great as hope had been sure. The situation was aggravated by a political crisis. Popular gratitude had raised to a second consulship C. Flaminius, a brave and blundering soldier of the Roman type, hero of hard escapes from his own bad strategy, statesman and friend of the people, whose attempt to limit the power of the oligarchy and stem the tide of capitalism made him the precursor of the Gracchi in their aims, and partially in their fate. The superstitious machinery of the Senate he met with sceptical defiance. In the teeth of the auspices he had main- tained his earlier ofifice (223 B.C.), and sealed his resistance by victory. He had triumphed by popular vote, and if the omen of a squeaking mouse had cost him the mastership of the horse, it only taught him now to anticipate such manoeuvres, to shirk the formali- ties of inauguration, and to turn his back on the storm of portents and prodigies rained by the complacent heavens upon the unbe- lieving and inconvenient demagogue. Roman Preparations. — Tlie preparations of Rome were vigorous but not extraordinary. The coast garrisons were increased, Spain reinforced, the fleet and cavalry alike strengthened, while Hiero despatched a large body of auxiliaries. With four new legions and the remnants of the army of the Po, the consuls occupied Arretium and Ariminum. Resting on their magazines and covering- the main roads to Rome, their outposts extending on the east to Cremona and Placentia, and on the west from the fortress of Pisae to Luca and Luna, they intended primarily to block the issues of the Apennines, and then developing the offensive, to hold Hannibal in front, threaten his right flank, and roll him back on the Po. The position, much the same as in 225 B.C., was turned as then by a rapid ad\-ance on the western flank. Passage of the Apennines and the Arno. — Hannibal, in his winter quarters, had contented himself with minor operations ; he had neither time nor means for a war of sieges. The inconstant Gauls, impatient of billeting, eager for plunder, had little stomach for a i88 HISTORY OF ROME serious campaign. By means of disguises he eluded assassins and gained information. (laul offered no permanent base, nor had he meant to find one there. By favourable treatment of Italian prisoners he attempted to sap the Roman alliance, and was pre- paring a new base in Italy itself. Weak as he was in the weak- ness of his country, in his isolation, in his home support and the number of his troops, he fought a political as much as a mili- tary campaign. The steady, methodical warfare of a Wellington, securing a patient advance, was not the game of genius. It was his idea rather, by puzzling, discomfiting, and discrediting Roman generals, to break up and destroy the Roman system. As the champion of the Italian subjects he could alone hope for ultimate success. Accordingly in the spring, after a reconnaissance re- pelled by tempest, he started from some point between Parma and Bologna, with an army largely swelled by Gallic recruits, and passed the chain of the Apennines, in the direction of Lucca and Pistoja. Thence, careless of communications and commissariat, he de- scended to the valley of the Arno, and pushed on by a short cut through the marshes and floods that covered the lowlands of the Serchio and Arno towards Fsesulae. This march, probably from Pescia to Empoli, took him four days of incredible suffering from fatigue, cold, and sleeplessness.^ His trusted troops formed the van, while Mago with the cavalry drove on the floundering and disheartened Gauls. He emerged with severe loss in men and horses, and at the cost of one of his eyes, destroyed by ophthalmia. But his object was gained. He had slipped through the chain of posts, and, after recruiting his strength and informing himself of the nature of the country and the character of his opponent, he took the inner road, passed Flaminius on the left, and striking for Cortona, cut his communications with Rome. By thus menacing the city and by systematic plunder he meant to rouse public feeling and force the popular general to action. At the same time, to have left 60,000 men in his rear was a piece of strategy that needed justification. The Roman position had now been turned. It was the duty of the consuls to secure the Flaminian Way and save the capital. Their plan appears to have been, either to repeat the tactics of the campaign of Telamon, taking Hannibal between two armies, or to form a junction at Perusia, and to crush him with their united force. Accordingly, Flaminius, tracking Hannibal by 1 The country was more marshy and exposed to floods, also nearer the sea, than now. Even on the higher ground by Ftesulas and in the valley of the Ombrone floods were frequent. BATTLE OF LAKE TKASLMEiYE 189 his devastations, hung upon his rear, at a distance justified by the Roman habit of entrenchment. If he fell into the trap laid for him, the disaster was due not so much to self-confidence, jealousy of his colleague, or the necessities of a politician, as to ignorance of his enemy and a thoroughly Roman neglect of the elementary duty of scouting. He did not force on, he had not even the option of battle. Battle of Lake Trasimene. — The lake of Trasimene is a large Walker (~£outaU sc. Roads A. Gauls and Caoalry in ambush B. Baliares and tight-anned C Heavy Infantry PLAN OK BATTLE OF L.\KE TRASIMENE. sheet of water, girdled by considerable hills, in the east of Etruria, between the Clanis and the Tiber. The road from Cortona to Perugia, turning to the left at the north-west corner, near Borghetto, is caught between Monte Gualandro and the marshy margin of the lake. After a narrow passage the mountains recede, leaving a small plain, divided into two bays by the projecting spur of Tuoro. At Passignano the hills close in again and form a long defile (2^ to 4 miles) to the north-east and east, from the end of which I90 HISTORY OF ROME the road turns abruptly up the lullsidc to Magione. This latter ascent is closed by a hill in front, and by the lake in the rear, and opens slightly at the lake-end by La TorriccUa. For the battle- field two sites are offered. Polybius seems to place it on the Torricella-Magione line, in a spot whose natural features scarcely fit his topography ; while Livy, whose clear and consistent account we follow, places it on the northern shore. The African and Spanish infantry were posted in the plain at the end, the Baliares and light troops in extended order on the northern hills, while the cavalry and the Gauls were concealed under Monte Gualandro, ready to close the entrance. Flaminius, in the mist of an early morning towards the end of April, entered the pass. From the clearer hill-tops the enemy listened to the tramp of the invisible legions marching into the jaws of death. When the head of the column gained touch with the Punic infantry and the rear-guard was already entangled in the defile, Hannibal gave the word, and his troops began the attack from all sides. It was a melee and a massacre. Caught in column of route, rolled in a niist, plunged suddenly from confidence to despair, the Romans were unable even to ami, much less to form order of battle. Commands could neither be giv^en nor obeyed. Powerless to estimate the nature and direction of the attack or to restore order in the hubbub, the consul toiled like a common soldier, and redeemed his errors by death, the victim of a Gallic lance. P"or three hours the carnage lasted ; some were cut down where they stood, fightiiig in chance groups ; some were speared, some drowned in the lake ; 6000 nien alone, the head of the column, cut their way to the eastern hills, and halted till the mist rose over the shambles beneath. Thence they broke out, only to surrender to Maharbal next day ; but Hannibal repudiated his lieutenant's terms, and they swelled the number of the 15,000 prisoners of war. As many more had fallen, and the army of Flaminius had ceased to exist. The Punic loss amounted to 1 500 men. During the battle an earthquake shock rolled away unfelt. To complete the disaster, the cavalry corps, 4000 strong, sent forward by Servilius to help his colleague, was cut to pieces or captured by Maharbal as it fell back on the main body, a loss which crippled his whole army. Fabius Maximus. — " We have been beaten in a great battle," said the preetor Pomponius to the panic-stricken crowd, whose belief in Flaminius is attested by the crowd of non-combatants which had thronged his camp. The Senate acted with energ-y. In the absence of the consul, the Assembly elected Q. Fabius HANNIBAL AND FAB I US 191 Maximus dictator,' with M. Minucius as Master of the Horse. He was a patrician of the highest house, stiff in opinion, proud and self-conscious, with a firmness that was ahnost obstinacy and a dehberation which was sometimes excessive. Reverent of authority, tradition, and rehgion, he despised pubhc opinion and the popular leaders, an opposition which intensified the peculiar traits of his character. Rome was hastily put in a state of defence, and the claims of offended religion satisfied. The army of Servi- lius was recalled and strengthened with two new legions. Orders were given to devastate the country and retire to the fortresses wherever Hannibal was likely to appear. Men of the lower class and freedmen were utilised for the city-garrison, and for the fleet which Servilius went to organise at Ostia, to meet the Cartha- ginian squadron, now cruising off Etruria in support of Hannibal. Hannibal Marches into Apulia. — That general, however, destitute of a proper train and taught by Saguntum, had no idea of exhaust- ing his force on a desperate siege in a wasted land where each man was a soldier and an enemy. Cool head and daring spirit, he combined the audacity of a Murat with the forethought of a Moltke. He had still to wait for Italian support ; Gaul was a broken reed, and, even after Trasimene, Etruria gave no sign. He turned with hope to the warlike Sabellian tribes, his real objective, and moving west, after a fruitless assault on the colony of Spoletium, marched through Umbria to Picenum, marking his path by plunder and massacre. In ten days he reached the Adriatic. The time gained by this unexpected movement he employed in recruiting his way- worn troops and horses, and in reorganising and rearming the African infantry with the spoils of victory — a dangerous manoeuvre in a hostile country. Hence he sent by sea his first official despatch to Carthage ; its news stirred his people to enthusiastic support. From Picenum he passed along the coast into Apulia, maintaining his connection with Carthage and Macedon. The sympathy of the Samnites was not yet forthcoming. Local autonomy, national feeling, and the prestige of Rome kept her allies faithful — a gain worth many victories. Tantce iiiolis crat Ronianain Tperdere ^c/i/c/n. As he marched into Apulia, Fabius appeared on his rigdit flank at ALcse, on the edge of the Daunian plain. Alasterly inaction sums up the tactics of Fabius — to worry, weaken, and starve an enemy whose necessity was victory, opposing a passive resistance to the 1 That he was only pro-dictator is probably a mere subtlety of the Augustan lawyers. iq2 HISTORY OF ROME provoc.'ilinns of Hannibal and the murmurs of the camp. The war must mark time while recruits were trained, confidence revived, and a new staff created by a campaign of skirmishes. Keeping his men together, carefully reconnoitring the ground, dogging the footsteps of his leader, making his enemy's eagerness the measure of his own caution, "Hannibal's lackey" kept his army intact, overawed the allies, and forced the enemy into a system of de- vastation, which, if it harassed Rome, endangered the keystone of his own policy. He was scarcely likely to intimidate Rome by plundering her confederates. The War in Campania.— Impatient of delay, Hannibal, who had already tampered with the faith of Capua, the powerful, ambitious and suspected capital of Campania, broke out from Arpi, and, closely observed by Fabius, passed Beneventum, ravaging as he went, and struck by Telesia for Casilinum. Casilinum was the bridge-head of Capua, holding the passage of the \'ulturnus, the point of junction of the Appian and Latin ways, the key to the Roman communications w-ith the garden of Italy. Taken by error as far as Allifae on the road to Casinum, he returned and wasted the Falernian plain under the eyes of the Roman army. Fabius, inferior in cavalry, watched with contentment his opportunity from the Massic mount. Securing the Appian road and the passes of Lau- tulae and Suessa, he drew the net tighter, as the enemy looked for retreat from the wasted land where no gates opened to him. Sup- ports were thrown into Casilinum ; the dictator, moving along the heights, covered from his central position, by Cales and Teanum, the broad exit of the Latin road and the hills beyond ; while to the east- ward 4000 men beset the remaining road, the entering defile be- tween the Mons Callicula and the river-barrier. But the meshes were too wide, the weaver too timid. Hannibal, building on the caution of Fabius, as he had on the rashness of Flaminius, by a famous stratagem drove 2000 oxen with lighted faggots on their horns up the hills to the left of the defile, drew off the puzzled guard by this semblance of a torchlight march, and passed at leisure through the gap, disengaging his light troops, with heavy loss to the Romans, next day. Fabius was too far off, or too suspicious, to impede the manoeuvre ; nor could he prevent the plunder of the Pcelignian land, or the settlement in winter quarters at Gereonium, on the edge of the Apulian plain, within equal reach of the broad cornfields and the upland pastures. Here, by the modern Capriola or Casa Calenda, close to Larino. Hannibal encamped outside the town, whose empty houses were stocked with the produce of syste- FABIUS AND HANNIBAL 193 matic foraging. If he was disappointed with the results of the year, at Rome and in the camp the feeling was strong against Fabius, the value of whose system, temporary at best, was scarcely as apparent as its defects. The discontent was exasperated by the stiff attitude of the dictator, and by the real success of his lieutenant, Minucius, who, by a judicious but unauthorised movement, had reaped the fruits of Fabius' tactics, cut up Hannibal's foragers, and forced him to fall back and concentrate in his old camp. Now, on the proposal of Metilius, backed by Terentius Varro and the popular party, in defiance of political and military precedent, a premium was set upon insubordination, and the majesty of the office and the value of a single command was destroyed by the appointment of Minucius as co-dictator. But the Fabian system was justified and disci- pline restored when, entrapped in a second version of the Trebia, Minucius was only saved from total ruin by his outraged but loyal colleague. The consul suffectus, M. Atilius Regulus, with Servilius, who had returned from a futile expedition to Africa, took over the legions and tactics of Fabius, as consuls and proconsuls, till the arrival of their successors in the following year (216 B.C.). The close of the campaign left Hannibal master of the ground scoured by his famous horse, unconquered in the field, politically no further ad- vanced. A still stronger blow was required yet to loosen the joints of the confederacy whose compact structure supplied the place of genius. The reinforcements he required were not substantially forthcoming. The resolute spirit of Rome in face of her wasted territory and vanished legions is shown by her refusal of help from Neapolis and Paestum, by the summons to Philip to surrender the rebel Demetrius of Pharos, and by the despatch of P. Scipio with thirty ships and 8000 men to Spain, to close the overland route to Italy. Parties at Rome. — In the elections for the consulate a severe party struggle came to a head. Impatient of the burdens of the war, with whose prolongation they charged the aristocracy, the popular faction saddled the Senate with the odium of the Fabian system — equally unpalatable as it was to the majority of that body. Gradually, in opposition to the new nobility, the masses had con- solidated themselves into a new democratic party, whose natural growth was favoured by the excitement of a disastrous war. and now, as if the soldier-politician had not done mischief enough already, they claimed and carried a genuine plebeian consul, a true son of the people, an active and eloquent anti-aristocrat, in a N 194 HISTORY OF ROME purely military crisis. In this election and its consequences, as in the previous conduct of the war, we find the clearest proofs of the inadequacy of Roman municipal institutions for an imperial and military policy. Annual election and dual leadership, the manage- ment of the war in a partisan sense by a Flaminius or a Fabius, the change of front in face of the enemy, the strategy of the Forum or the Curia, the disunion of government and governed, and the formal weakness of the real government — these things, more than the genius of Hannibal, account for the disasters of Rome. Varro. — C. Terentius Varro, a military ignoramus, to whose re- spectable civil talents and personal qualities his regular career of ofifice and constant subsequent employment sufficiently testify, of bourgeois family and average education, eloquent partisan and wretched tactician, came out alone at the head of the poll, a result due to irritation at the electoral manoeuvres of the aristocracy. L. ^milius Paullus, an able soldier of Illyrian fame and unpopu- larity (p. 1 66), accepted unwillingly the second place as Senatorian nominee. The day of the Cunctator was over ; policy and finance alike demanded a striking blow to confirm the allies and maintain the credit of Rome. All parties were at one ; and the consuls received definite orders and an overwhelming force. With eight strong legions of 5000 foot and 300 horse, and a correspondingly large contingent of Italians — equal infantry and double horse — i.e., with 80,000 foot and 6000 cavalr\', they were to envelop and destroy the 40,000 infantry and 10,000 cavalry of Hannibal. To effect a diversion, L. Postumius Albinus and M. Claudius Mar- cellus, consulars of tried ability, were despatched respectively to Gaul and Sicily, while Otacilius was directed to Africa. Hannibal, who, by his personal influence and care for their comfort, had kept together his motley host through the tedium of winter quarters, with troops grown restive in the increasing dearth of pay and provisions, unable to draw the proconsuls to the field, remained at Gereonium till May. Once already he had tried and failed to lure them to destruction by the bait of an apparently deserted and plunder-laden camp, and now, under cover of a similar suspicious trap, trading on their wariness, he broke up in earnest, gained a day's march, and surprised the Roman maga- zines at CannDe. At what point of time the consuls arrived is not clear, but their arrival precipitated a struggle. Battle of Cannae. — By his march to Canna;, Hannibal had cut off their supplies, and himself commanded the ripening harvest. BEFORE CANNM 195 In the now exhausted land provisions must be drawn from a dis- tance, and the huge army had the option of a dangerous retreat or a pitched battle on the unfavourable ground to which their skilful enemy had drawn them. In two days the Romans reached, without crossing, the Autidus, at a point six miles from Hannibal's camp, which was pitched on the right bank of the river, on a slope of the projecting ridge of Cannae. The course of the Aufidus (Ofanto) is, roughly speaking, south-west to north-east. Eight miles from the sea it issues from a distinct valley, a mile wide, confined THE AUFIDUS NEAR CANN/E. by moderate hills. On the left these hills terminate in a wide and waterless plain stretching to the sea ; on the right they break down in a series of undulations to a wide and fairly level upper plain, whose edge towards the river, continuing the ridge of Canna?, forms a bank from sixty to seventy feet high, which confines the vagaries of the stream and forms the boundary between the upper and lower level. Close at its foot may then have flowed the Aufidus, whose shrunken summer-stream, largest as it is of the eastern rivers, presented no difficulties. Its course for the direct six miles 196 HISTORY OF ROME has been, and remains, erratic ; but none of its bends aflfords an adequate battlefield, nor is there space in the valley above to manoeuvre an army. The upper plain is, if not so obviously good as the lower, yet "an excellent fighting-ground" for cavalry ; the contending forces would rest their wings on the bank, which was not too steep for horse to climb. Here Varro was more ready to risk battle than on the left bank ; nor was Hannibal unwilling to accept it. The evils of alternate command made themselves manifest in the action of the Romans. Elated by a successful skirmish, Varro had pressed his advance ; it only remained for his colleague to secure more equal terms for the contest. Fortifying a large camp on the left bank, and a smaller entrenchment on the right, lower down the stream, he hoped, by restricting the enemy's supplies, to force his retreat to a ground less dangerous for infantry. Hannibal transferred his camp to the left, and offered battle, which ^milius, aware of his situation, refused ; but on the sixth day, when his turn came, Varro, impatient of dilatory tactics and stung by the annoyance of the Numidian horse, who harassed his watering- parties, crossed the stream and drew out his army for action. The slight advantage of the eastern bank tempted his inexperience, and here, careless of retreat when all was staked on the single hazard, he posted his troops with their back to the sea, as Hannibal, with greater reason, neglected the Roman strongholds in his rear. The wind drove the dust in their eyes as they faced the south ; their right was crowded on the stream, their left exposed. Leaving 10,000 men in the large camp, to menace the Punic entrenchments and withdraw a division from their weakened army, he massed the infantry in column of cohorts in the centre, and flanked them on the right with the Roman cavalry, on the left with the stronger allied horse, covering the front with the usual screen of skirmishers. The maniples, drawn up thus directly behind each other — not in the ordinary quincunx — their depth many times greater than their front, increased the pressure of the column, but offered a prolonged flank to the enemy's superior cavalry. This extraordinary forma- tion — for the intei-vals between the maniples were at the same time diminished — whether due to the number of recruits, to the de- moralisation of the soldiery, or to a reminiscence of earlier tactics against elephants, sacrificed the advantage of superior numbers and was largely responsible for the disaster. This mistake enabled Hannibal not merely to extend an equal front, but to adopt a formation recently in use among the Zulus. He threw forward the Gallic and Spanish infantry in echelon, or possibly in line with BATTLE OF CANN.-E 197 retiring flanks, a crescent-like formation, on either horn of which the African infantry, armed in Roman fashion, were drawn up in deep column with a narrow front. The heavy cavalry under Ilasdrubal was posted on the left, while Maharbal, with the light brigade, outflanked the allied horse ; the Baliares skirmished in front. Hannibal took the centre in person ; Hasdrubal faced ^•Emilius ; the Roman left was under Varro ; Servilius took post in the centre. The battle, opened by the light troops, raged with especial iwxy on the Roman right and centre. In the confined CANNAE and surrounding Country (from Italian Ordnance Siineii 1859) Adriatic Sea Ifalker &■ BoiUall sc. PLAN OF CANNA:. space cavalry tactics were useless. Locked in deadly struggle, the heavy troopers, tearing each other from their horses, fought man to man, till the Romans broke and fled. Then the legions took up the fight, and pushing forward with converging front, drove in the convex Celtic line, and charging on with irresistible weight, shrouded in the dust of battle, buried themselves deeper and deeper in the living cul-de-sac. In an instant the Libyan columns faced right and left ; the now concave line of Gauls blocked the advance, while in tempestuous charges Hasdrubal with the heavy cavalry dashed upon their rear. He was in the 198 HISTORY OF ROME nick of time. The Numidian horsemen on the left had kept the allies in play, but could effect little against regular cavalry in a pitched battle, till Ilasdrubal, passing round the Roman rear, scattered them to the winds, and leaving them, with sound judg- ment, to the pursuit of the Africans, decided the day by his timely attack on the main body. Jammed and packed by their own mass and momentum between the hostile columns, helpless and hopeless, unable to fight or fly, the men were hewn down where they stood. It was a carnival of cold steel, a butchery, not CARTHAGINIAN HELMET FOUND AT CANN.*:. a battle. vEmilius, Servilius, and Minucius, with eighty senators and most of the officers, died on the field. Varro, with fifty horse- men, escaped to Venusia. The army of Rome had been wiped out, and the victory was completed by the capture of the two camps. At least 50,000 fell. The captives may have reached 20,000. At the utmost 10,000 escaped. The actual figures are difficult to establish.^ The detachments which escaped cut their way through to Canusium, where they were joined by -the braver spirits from the two camps and the surviving consul. 1 The existence of two Icgiones Carinenses testifies to a larger number of fugitives than Polybius allows. AFTER CANN^ I99 CHAPTER XXII THE SECOND PUNIC WAR FROM CANN/E TO ZAMA B.C. A.U.C. Capua and most of South Italy joins Hannibal 216 538 War in Campania 216-214 538-540 Death of Hiero- Philip of Macedon allies himself with Hannibal 215 539 Marcellus besieges Syracuse 213 541 Hannibal seizes Tarentum— Capua besieged and Syracuse taken by the Romans— The Defeat of the Scipios compels the Romans to give up Spain south of the Ebro ■ . 212 542 Capua taken— Young Publius Scipio appointed to com- mand in Spain 211 543 Scipio surprises New Carthage 210 544 Fabius recovers Tarentum 209 545 Defeat and Death of Hasdrubal at the Metaurus . . 207 547 Philip makes Peace with Rome 205 549 Scipio lands in Africa, but fails to take Utica 204 550 Scipio's Victories lead to the Recall of Hannibal from Italy 203 551 Battle of Zama .202 552 Peace arranged 201 553 After Cannae. — With the battle of Cannae the dramatic unity and breathless interest of the war ceases ; its surging mass, broken on the walls of the Roman fortresses — no bad type of the uncon- querable resolution of a people "most dangerous when at bay" — foams away in ruin and devastation through the South Italian provinces — ever victorious, ever receding. Rome, assailed on all sides by open foe and forsworn friend, driven to her last man and lowest coin, "ever great and greater grows" in the strength of her strong will and loyal people, widening the circle around her with rapid blows in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and Macedon, while she slowly loosens the grip fastened on her throat at home, till in the end, when the hour and the man are come, the final fight on the African sands closes at one moment the struggle for life and seats her mistress of the world. At Rome, as the day of battle approached, clamorous piety besieged the altars. An agony of despair followed. There was mourning in every house. Already one- fifth of the population had been killed or taken, and, to complete the tale, before the military year was out (216-215 B.C.) L. Postumius Albinus, consul elect, with two legions, had been cut to pieces in a Gallic ambush 200 HISTORY OF ROME at Silva Lilana. His skull set in metal remained a j^hasliy trophy, to deck the banquet-table. Q. Fabius Maximus, in power but not in office, led the Senate, whose calm energy restored order and confidence. Its unfaltering courage, its wisdom, its sacrifices, its splendid tenacity, vindicated its claim to the commanding position imposed by circumstances on the ruling body. Measures were taken for a last defence, the streets policed, mourning curtailed ; a mission under Fabius Pictor proceeded to Delphi ; recourse was even had to human sacrifice to satisfy the offended gods. In the camp, Varro collected the wreckage of his army ; a plot of faint-hearted nobles to abandon Italy was stifled by the young officers App. Claudius and P. Scipio ; two weak legions were formed, which were subsequently sent as punishment battalions to Sicily. The consul, who had behaved with spirit, returned, a defeated fugitive and a discredited leader, to face his judges at Rome. But in the common resolu- tion born of common suffering the voice of faction was silent ; the thanks of the Senate offered to the man who had not despaired of the Republic witness at once to his merit and the spirit of his country. Hannibal's Plans. — Hannibal, self-possessed, refused the invita- tion of IMaharltal "to dine with him on the Capitol in five days," and tried even now to negotiate. A rush on Rome was the idea of a cavalry officer, not of a general. A surprise would be impossible, a demonstration idle. The defeat of Regulus had shown that the results of an entire campaign might be frittered away in the siege of a fortified capital. It was the policy of Hannibal to storm, not the capital, but the confederacy. He liberated the Italian prisoners, and, content with his exploits as a soldier, meant now to reap the harvest of his political combinations. He expected re- inforcements ; his agents were working in Sicily and Macedon ; the Gauls were moving in the north ; in the south the Roman alliance was beginning to give. Though his Spanish succours had been intercepted at the Ebro, the home government, in- full communica- tion at last and justified in their policy by victory, was able to ignore the peace party and give a more than naval support. Mago, who had already organised the revolt in Bruttium, carried to Carthage the despatches of Hannibal and a bushel of gold rings from the fallen nobles of Cann^ ; 4000 horse and forty elephants were ordered to Italy ; an additional army was to be raised in Spain. The support was indeed inadequate, but a commercial nation ex- pected a successful war to pay. The indecision of Philip delayed REVOLT OF CAPUA 20 1 the action of Macedon ; and it was not till the following^ year that Sicily was ripe for revolution. Capua and South Italy join Hannibal. — The first-fruits of vic- tory were plucked in South Italy. The Lucanians and Bruttians, with few exceptions, were eager to resume their attacks on the Greek cities protected by Rome. Arpi, Salapia, and Herdonea, in Apulia, and the Samnite tribes, except the Pentrians, with the Hir- pini, joined the revolt. Last and most important of all was Capua. This city, the second in Italy, closely connected with Rome, pos- sessing lesser Roman rights, and the privilege of service in the legion, enjoying autonomy under its Senate and the Meddix Tuticus, with an army of 30,000 foot and 4000 excellent cavalry, was, like all the Campanian cities, divided between two factions, a Roman- ising aristocracy and an anti-Roman populace. Jealous and am- bitious, irritated by the Roman government on some question of the public land, the people, led by the aspiring- Pacuvius Calavius, overbore the Senate, and sealed the terms of their desertion to Hannibal by the murder of the Roman inhabitants. They stipu- lated for independence and immunity from burdens ; they looked to the future sovereignty of Italy. But the arrest and deportation of Decius Magius, the irreconcilable leader of the Roman party, by order of Hannibal, furnished an inconvenient commentary on Punic guarantees. Hannibal's Difficulties. — Hannibal was thus master of Italy to the Volturnus, with a wealthy city as a base, with Carthage behind him, with a veteran army, a magnificent staff; and yet from this moment his warfare is mainly defensive. He toiled, fought, organised, sus- tained the struggle in five countries at once, while he directed the policy of the State at home, undefeated in the field, never greater than in his lowest fortune — -"of all that befell the Romans and Carthaginians, good or bad, the one cause." If he failed in his attempt to crush and pulverise his enemy, the main cause of his failure lies not so much in the sporadic character of the war — this .was a part of his plan — nor in the lukewarm attitude of Carthage, whose support was given persistently, if not wisely, to the last, aor in the character or organisation of his victorious anny, as in the lack of subordination, insight, and self-sacrifice of his allies. The Italians showed little enthusiasm ; his position forbade con- scription. He possessed a base that he must maintain, not a base from which to advance. He was cramped by the Roman fortresses,^ 1 Such as Luceria, Venusia, /Esernia, Beneventum, Brundisium, Cales, Paestum, Cosa. 202 HISTORY OF ROME which, holding the best positions, standinjj^ menaces in his rear and flanks, hampered his movements and occupied his friends. Dependinj,-^ on Rome for their very life, they were open neither to threats nor cajolery. His artillery and engineers were deficient ; in a war of sieges and hill-fighting his strong arm — the cavalry — became comparatively useless. His effective force, weakened by the garrisons, which the existence of the colonies and of a Roman party in the towns themselves demanded, was insufficient to mask the fortresses, defend his frontier, and resume the offensive. All depended now on the auxiliary operations in Spain, Sicily, Sardinia, and Macedon, and chiefly on the part played by Philip of Macedon and the armies of Spain. It was the folly of Philip and the defeat of Hasdrubal which finally shattered the vast combinations of Hannibal. Marcellus in Campania. — Meanwhile Marcellus, who was or- ganising the fleet at Ostia, sent forward a legion of marines to Teanum, and picking up the relics of Canna?, followed the enemy to Campania. Too late for Capua, he threw a garrison into Neapolis and occupied Nola, where Hannibal's failure was mag- nified into a victory. Repulsed at Neapolis and Cumic, Hannibal reduced Nuceria and AcerrjE. Casilinum, heroically defended by M. Anicius of PrEeneste, capitulated in the spring of 215 B.C. He had secured the key of the Latin road, but failed to master a port, and now retired for the winter to Capua. The Senate refused his terms and expelled his envoys. The prisoners of Canute, ""^ pour eucourager les autrcs" and to save money, were left unransomed.^ Extraordinary measures were taken to meet the deficiency of men and means. Already 120,000 men had been lost to the State, and the disorganisation of finance, agriculture, and society was making itself felt. The dictator M. Junius Pera called out four new legions and icoo horse, and with a motley mass of avail- able troops, ransomed slaves, debtors, criminals, and boys — 25,000 strong — hurried to Teanum, to cover the capital and co-operate with Marcellus. To such desperate resorts was the city reduced ! When the levies were completed over 30,000 men had taken the field, with another 30,000 in reserve. The war received a new character ; the lesson of experience had been learned. Henceforth capable officers are elected and continued in command, Fabius, Fulvius, Manlius, Gracchus, above all the veteran M. Claudius Marcellus, ' The atrocities attributed to Hannibal on this and other occasions are of doubtful authority, and sort ill with his character and position. THE WAR IN CAMPANIA 203 the hero of the Gallic war, whose soldierly qualities and dogged determination need none of the spurious adornment with which the courtly writers of a later age have decorated the Marcelline legend. Resting on strong positions, accepting action with retreat secured, evading the redoubtable cavalry, they pursued the subtle offensive of persistent vigilance, a war of raids and entrenchments, cutting supplies, recovering the lost, overawing the doubtful. Rome still retained her Latin allies and her own citizens, Etruria and Cen- tral Italy, with the Greek harbours whose dangerous position had attached them to the Philhellenic city — Neapolis, Thurii, Rhegium, Tarentum. The feeling of Italian unity, of western civilisation, of common culture and interests, w-as strengthened by a natural and national antipathy to Gaul and Semite, and by fear of the possible vengeance of vindictive Rome. The forlorn defence of Petelia and Consentia was of good omen for her cause. Extraordinary Measures at Rome. — To meet the monetary crisis which threatened insolvency and revolution, a commission of three, triumviri inensarii, were appointed, whose functions re- main uncertain. The fearful gaps in the Senate were filled up by an extraordinary dictator, M. Fabius Buteo, appointed <^z^ //(?r, who, in a conservative spirit, selected from the men of political and mili- tary services 177 new members, and resigned the same day. The liberal but untimely proposal of Spurius Carvilius to call up repre- sentative Latins was indignantly thrown out. The War in Campania. — In the following spring (215 R.c.) over 6o,oco men enveloped Hannibal in Campania. Fabius at Cales covered the Latin road ; Gracchus, with slaves and allies, occupied Liternum and protected the Greek harbours ; while Marcellus watched Nola from the lines of Suessula. Tarentum and Brun- disium were strongly garrisoned ; and in Apulia, M. Valerius Lasvinus disposed of two legions. These forces, with the troops abroad, made up a grand total of fourteen legions, or 140,000 men,^ besides marines and irregulars. Squadrons cruised on the Latin and Calabrian coasts, though the bulk of the active fleet was at Lilybteum. The legions of Cannae had been transferred to Sicily. Hannibal was probably stronger than any of the three opposing armies, his Italian recruits, in spite of Capua's independent attitude, supplying the place of his garrisons and detachments. From Mons Tifata he commanded the plain, and, with nothing to 1 That is, if the allied contingents were, after the loss of South Italy, at all in proportion to the citizens. 204 HISTORY OF ROME get by action in face of the cautious tactics of the Roman generals, waited the development of events. He waited for Mayo, for the action of Syracuse, for Sardinia, for IVIacedon, but above all he waited for the decay of the Roman confederacy. Luxurious Capua, that cherished Nemesis of Roman legend, was not Hannibal's Cannae : Avith his old tactical caution, he was preparing for Rome a political Trasimene. The campaign opened in Italy with the S4.:rprise and massacre by Gracchus of 2000 Capuans at the Campanian feast at Kama;. Too late to avenge a treachery which Gracchus covered by a counter-charge of treason, Hannibal besieged Cumse, but was repulsed with some loss. Meanwhile Fabius had marched round Capua to Suessula, and moved Marcellus to Nola, whither Hannibal also proceeded, to effect a junction with his reinforcements brought over by Bomilcar, and to check the ravages of Marcellus in the Caudine valleys. In the three days' fighting before Nola, Marcellus, by a successful sortie, broke the spell of victory with a decided check, whose moral effect was seen in the desertion of some Punic troops. The defeat of Hanno at (irumentum and the raids of Lsvinus from Luceria, with the Punic capture of Locri and Croton, are the only other incidents of a dull year. The Gauls, by their suicidal inaction after the disaster of Postumius, enabled Rome to utilise the resources of Umbria and Etruria, and to organise a corps of observation at Ariminum, with a small reserve under Vano in Picenum. Punishment was postponed, not forgotten. Death of Hiero : Revolt of Sicily and Sardinia. — Abroad events were maturing. In 216-215 ]'..C. died the sage and politic Hiero, over ninety years old. For fifty-four years his firm and conciliatory rule had secured the peace and prosperity of Syracuse. A patron of science, agriculture, and the arts, a far-sighted and sagacious statesman, a consistent and generous ally, he had won the approval of Greece, and maintained his friendship with Rome without forfeiting his interest at Carthage. To preserve the balance of power, on which the existence of his state depended, or, if this was impossible, to cling to the safer Roman alliance, was the wise policy which his young and flighty grandson Hieronymus now flung to the winds. Egged on by an ambitious court, encouraged by the emissaries of Hannibal, — the soldier-politicians of mixed Punic and Syracusan blood and interests, Hippocrates and Epi- cydes, pupils of the tactics and policy of their master,— in face of the protests of the Roman praetor and his own wiser counsellors, he denounced the Roman alliance and made terms with Carthage, REVOLT OF SICILY 205 whose easy liberality granted extravagant demands. There was sufficient irritation in the Roman province, and ferment in the turbulent and vacillating Paris of antiquity, to support him. In COIN OF HIERO II. OF SYRACUSE. Sardinia smouldering discontent, enhanced by the exactions of the starving troops and fleet, left by Rome to forage for themselves, broke out in open rebellion. A strong force despatched by Carthage under Hasdrubal Calvus was delayed by tempests, and T. Manlius Torquatus massed in the interval sufficient strength to crush the insurrection, destroy the reinforcements, and secure the island. Hannibal's Reinforcements diverted. — To increase Rome's diffi- culties, the young and restless Philip, annoyed by Roman interfer- ence in Illyria and instigated by Demetrius of Pharos, adopted a policy sound in itself and dictated by his position, but carried out with fatal hesitation. He concluded with Hannibal an offensive and defensive alliance, whose price would be the Roman possessions in Illyria and the help of Carthage in his Grecian wars. The in- terception of his first embassy delayed action for a year, and gave Rome time not merely to increase her eastern fleet, but to prepare, if necessary, for the offensive in Macedon. Meanwhile the news from Spain had diverted thither the reinforcements destined by Carthage for the army of Italy. Had the Spanish and Sardinian armies, supported by Macedon, joined Hannibal in the spring the issue of the war had been different. At Rome the payment of her huge armies necessitated exceptional measures. Doubled taxes, which merely paralysed the paying power, were followed at the end of the year by a system of voluntary contribution towards the 2o6 IITSTORY OF ROME navy, amountin<,' to a graduated property-tax. All classes, officers, contractors, slave-owners, sacrificed pay or profit. To supply the Spanish forces, three companies of contractors accepted deferred payment (the State guaranteeing all risks and exempting them from personal service), and contrived to combine patriotism and jobbery by over-insuring- their scuttled ships. The Lex Oppia restricted expenditure l^y limiting the ornaments of women. The War in 214-213 B.C. — The change for the better was main- tained (214 B.C.). Twenty legions were on foot, and 150 ships guarded the coast. The general dispositions remained the same. Eight legions, resting upon Luceria, Beneventum, Cales, and Suessula, operated against Hannibal ; the remainder were serv- ing abroad, in reserve at Rome, or watching Gaul or Macedon. Fabius, who had arbitrarily prevented the election of incompetent officers, was, with Marcellus, in chief command. The attempts of Hannibal on Puteoli and Tarentum were frustrated ; the Punic garrison of Casilinum surrendered after a strenuous defence, but w-ere cut to pieces in the act of evacuation by the truce-breaker Marcellus, whose chronicler records yet another victory at Nola. The chief exploit of the campaign was the defeat of Hanno's Bruttian levies by the slave-legions of Gracchus, who received their liberty, the citizenship, and a triumphal reception at Beneventum. Hannibal retired to Apulia, and the combined Roman armies ravaged Samnium. During the year the theatre of war had widened, but in spite of Punic successes in Sicily the balance of advantage lay with Rome. Hannibal's reinforcements had been frittered away; his allies were inactive ; in Spain the Scipios more than held their ground. During 213 B.C. there was little progress. Hannibal watched Tarentum, so important for his communica- tions with Carthage and Macedon ; Fabius surprised Arpi, and several Bruttian towns surrendered. The block in the war was, if unfavourable to the Punic leader, discreditable to Rome. There were a few skirmishes, and Hanno destroyed a number of Roman irregulars. Hannibal takes Tarentum. — To this inconceivable inaction with so large an army succeeded the military and political blunders of 212 B.C. The execution of fugitive Tarentine and Thurian hostages, held as pledges at Rome, was a crime and a mistake. Treason co-operated with negligence, and Tarentum, except its citadel, was captured by Hannibal. Heraclea, Thurii, and Metapontum followed suit. The coast was in his hands, and the way open for the Macedonian phalanx. Only on the fortified hill which forms SIEGE OF CAPUA 207 the apex of the water-washed triangle of Tarentum the Roman garrison maintained itself to the end. Siege of Capua. — As the war went on its effects were growing more visible in the decline of faith, the worship of strange gods, and the demoralisation of society. The frauds of patriotic con- tractors, such as Postumius Pyrgensis, came to light, and met with tardy if severe punishment. The Senate dealt with the new gods and the danger to the national religion ; special commis- sioners raised the reluctant recruits, and sent malingerers to join the punishment regiments in Sicily. The army was made up to twenty-four legions on home and foreign service ; a new post was created in Etruria, which had been drained by requisitions for supplies ; the consuls concentrated at Bovianum for the siege of Capua. To strengthen the garrison Hannibal threw in 2000 horse, but the convoy prepared by Hanno to revictual the town was captured and the covering force destroyed by Q. Fulvius Flaccus near Beneventum. In spite of a sudden cavalry onslaught, which cost them 1500 men, Appius Claudius Pulcher and his colleague Fulvius had closed upon the city, when Hannibal unex- pectedly arrived and scattered them to the winds. He followed the retreating Appius into Lucania, till that general threw him off and swung round to his old position. He then retired to Tarentum, cutting to pieces on his march the irregulars of M. Centenius, a promoted centurion, and shortly after destroyed at Herdonea the two legions of the lax and negligent Gnteus Fulvius. Gracchus, who covered the siege on the Appian Way, fell a victim to the treachery of a turncoat Lucanian, in an ambuscade. His slaves dispersed ; his cavalry joined the consuls. Lucania was clear, and, confident in the strength of Capua, after a failure at Brundisium, Hannibal returned to Apulia to recruit his tired army and watch for Macedon. As he departed the avenging legions gathered round the doomed city. Summoning C. Claudius Nero from Suessula, the consuls, at the head of a combined force of 60,000 men, surrounded Capua with double continuous lines connecting their entrenched camps — " a city round a city," based on magazines at Puteoli, Casilinum, and the neighbouring posts. The works were completed late in the winter, in the teeth of the enemy's active cavalry. The democratic party, it appears, controlled the government of the town ; all terms were refused, nor was there one word of surrender. In 211 B.C. the same officers, as proconsuls, pressed the siege, strengthening their horse with light troops to meet the sallies of cavalry. Hannibal, warned of the danger, by 2o8 HISTORY OF ROME forced marches hastened to the relief with horse, elephants, and light-armed. A desperate attack on the Roman lines from both sides failetl. Hannibal marches on Rome. — Unable to lure the enemy out or to remain himself, he lingeied five days, and then tried the most Walker (b-Bomailsc PLAN OF CAMPANIA. daring expedient of a daring captain. Under cover of darkness he disappeared from Tifata, and marched on Rome. The route lie took depends on what he conceived as his main object, and on detailed information from his scouts as to the enemy's forces and the state of the roads, which is not within our reach. By one account, he crossed the Volturnus in boats, and audaciously taking the Latin 777^ MARCH ON ROME 209 road, pushed by the strongholds of Cales, Teanum, Fregelhe, on- wards by Gabii, dawdhng and plundering as he went, extending his flying squadrons right and left as far as Suessa and AUifie, en- camping finally unmolested near the Anio, three miles from Rome. On this supposition, it was his design to draw the legions from Capua to battle, and so relieve the town. According to the other account, which is generally preferred, he pressed by a circuitous but rapid march through Samnium, and having thrown the enemy off the scent, turned suddenly to surprise Rome, across the Anio from Reate, by Tibur and the Valerian Way. Hannibal was at the gates, and the agony of Rome was intense. But the urban levy then on foot and the mass of citizens and fugitives were enough to secure the walls, with the 10,000 loyal men of Alba Fucens whom legend has sent to Rome to rival the renown of the gallant Plataeans. If he had meant to surprise Rome, Hannibal had failed, and he failed equally to raise the siege of Capua. The mass of the Roman troops remained ; only Fulvius,^ with 16,000 men, hastened by forced marches along the Appian Way to the defence of Rome. Hannibal reconnoitred leisurely up to the very walls. He stayed a while to plunder the virgin soil and lure, if possible, the garrison to battle, while he gave time for the besieging armies to break up, then turned away through Samnium to Capua, by the Tibur road, followed by the consular legions. On these, when he learned his disappointed hope, he turned, beat them badly from their ground, and retiring hastily to Bruttium, attempted to surprise the port of Rhegium. He had seen his enemy face to "face, and driven the iron deep into her soul, as his cavalry wasted in triumph the lands of the Roman tribes. The march and retreat are framed in myths, that cover with bravado, superstition, and lies at once the danger, the terror, and the unyielding spirit of Rome. The temple of Rediculus Tutanus, at the spot where Hannibal turned, remained as monument of her peril and her gratitude. Fall of Capua. — Capua fell, surrendered at discretion by the starving people, and f^ulvius " did not his work negligently." The murder of Roman citizens and political necessity exacted an ex- ample, allowed by the bloody rules of ancient warfare. The lead- ing men died by the axe, or of starvation in prison ; their lands and goods were confiscated, the population sold as slaves, transplanted, dispersed ; the land became ager pnblicus of the Roman people, 1 This is denied. According to Pulybius, none stirred. There was a garrison at Rome and an army in Etruria. O no HISTORY OF ROM^ the city, deprived of its corjioratc existence, a rcceptaculuni araiorui>i inhaljited by an unorganised mob under a prafectiis iuri diciindo annually sent from Rome. The agcr Campatiiis was later a mainstay of Roman revenue in the Tcciij^iil, or dues, paid by the lessees. A few colonies were founded to hold the country down. The second city of Italy ceased to exist. Such was the stern settlement of the Senate, empowered by the Comitia to deal with the matter. It was the decisive point of the war. The fall of Capua after two years' siege, in the teeth of Hannibal, shook con- fidence in his cause. Its moral effect, followed by the failure at Rhegium and the relief of Tarentum, by creating disaffection and breeding suspicion, more than counterbalanced all he could gain from the discontent and exhaustion of Roman subjects. His hopes depended now on Spain and Macedon. Marcellus in Sicily. — Syracuse had already fallen. The childish tyranny of Hieronymus — a typical despot in embryo — led to his murder in the narrow street of Leontini. Revolution succeeded revolution with Parisian mobility and ferocity, watched with interest by the Roman and Carthaginian fleets. At length, for all the intrigues of Hippocrates and Epicydes, who had fished to pur- pose in the troubled waters and been carried by the reaction to high office, the Roman party, the older men, heirs of Hiero's policy but not his temper, supported by the Roman fleet, forced on a truce. But when Marcellus, specially despatched from Rome, stormed Leontini, where the Syracusan malcontents had declared their inde- pendence of both Syracuse and Rome, and massacred the deserters there captured, the highly coloured story of the Roman " fury " ' roused a storm of indignation. With the triumph of the popular party, Hippocrates and Epicydes assumed the government in the name of liberty and Hannibal. Mutiny was followed by massacre ; the worst elements were set loose ; the mob, the mercenaries, and the Roman deserters dominated the town. Marcellus and Appius early in 213 B.C. commenced the siege by sea and land. Syracuse consisted roughly of three towns. The original island settlement of Ortygia had expanded into the new city of Achradina, on the main- land to the north, and had become itself the citadel, arsenal, palace, and barrack. Since the great Athenian siege, beyond the walls of Achradina, two suburbs — Tyche and Neapolis — had grown up on the west, enclosed later by the great triangular lines of Dionysius the elder, eighteen miles in length, crowning the cliffs of Epipolae and running up to the apex fort of Euryalus. The lines, too long for adequate defence, were strong by site and art, lavishly supplied FALL OF SYRACUSE 211 with the splendid artillery of Archimedes. The scientific appli- ances of the j^reat mathematician, the " geometrical Briareus," his ballistse, his blocks, hooks, and cranes, which raised the assailants' ships and dashed them beneath the waves, baffled and discomfited Marcellus, while Bomilcar's fleet made a blockade impossible. The Punic government, inspired by Hannibal, strongly supported the revolt. Himilco, with a powerful army, landed at Agrigentum, and was joined by Hippocrates. A treacherous massacre by the Roman garrison at Enna and the cruelties of Marcellus added fuel to fire. If the legions of Cannae secured the western arsenals, Marcellus and Crispinus, with an additional division, could effect nothing. Marcellus takes Syracuse. — The war marked time, while Mar- cellus waited the working of treason. At last, during the careless jollity of the Artemisia of 212 B.C., the wall was scaled by night at a favourable point. Led by the traitor Sosis, a party seized Hexa- pylon, the key of the lines, and by morning Marcellus was master of Epipolae. The timely surrender of Euryalus secured his difficult position between the Punic and Syracusan armies and the city walls. He was able, as well as his lieutenant Crispinus, who had entrenched a position on the right bank of the Anapus, to beat off a combined attack of the besieged, the allied armies, and the marines of the strong Punic fleet. As summer advanced the deadly malaria, the ancient ally of Syracuse, decimated her defenders encamped on the marshes. Himilco and Hippocrates died ; the Sicilians dis- persed. Famine, disease, and anarchy raged within the walls ; the relieving fleet of Bomilcar, detained by contrary winds and watched by a Roman squadron, broke up ; the men-of-war slipped away to Hannibal at Tarentum ; the transports returned to Car- thage. An attempt to treat called forth a reign of terror ; the mutinous mercenaries and deserters controlled the city ; till at length the treachery of a Spanish officer admitted a detachment into Ortygia ; a larger force entered under cover of a general attack, and, the citadel island lost, Achradina surrendered (autumn 212 B.C.). Forgetful of her past services and unhappy circum- stances, Marcellus gave up the city to plunder and rapine, the great Archimedes perishing in the tumult. Stripped of her artistic glories, merged in the Roman province, a helpless tributary of Rome, Syracuse was reduced to extol the tender mercies of the ruthless conqueror. The misery of the ruined state drew com- passion even from the Senate. Leontini en bloc became Roman domain, leased out by the Censors. 212 HISTORY OF ROME Submission of Sicily. — For some years after, the flying squadrons of IVluttines, a brilliant officer of Hannibal's school, aided by the anti-Roman feeling, carried on a successful guerrilla warfare, till the folly and jealousy of Hanno led to his own emphatic defeat by Marcellus at the Mimera (21 1 H.C.), and the delivery of Agrigentum (210 B.C.) by the superseded and indignant Muttines to Marcellus' successor, M. Valerius Lrevinus. The town became a Roman colony and fortress ; Sicily was tranquillised, agriculture restored ; the praetor L. Cincius Alimentus regulated the island as a com- pact province, and arranged the relations of the different allied or subject communities. Gradually it recovered from the waste of the war, to fall beneath the cruel scourge of Roman business-men, Romanised Sicilian speculators, and annual Roman viceroys — its cities isolated, its lands exploited, its labour crushed by slave- gangs. The seeds of the Sicilian slave-war were sown by the forfeitures and confiscations, the robberies and outrages, that followed the Pax Romana. First War with Macedon. — Syracuse had fallen, and Macedon proved a broken reed. In 214 B.C. Philip opened the first Mace- donian war (214-205 B.C.) with a wretched fiasco ; Laevinus relieved Apollonia, and for three years, with one legion and a small fleet, paralysed his power at the very crisis of the struggle. Young, warlike, and popular, marked out by his position to be the leader of united Greece, Philip failed to see the necessity of a vigorous offensive in Italy and wasted a random and feverish energy on aimless enterprises. The discordant factions into which Greece was split were as incapable of subordinating their jarring interests to a common good as Philip of looking beyond the narrow horizon of the Greek hegemony. Their petty nationalism run mad had accepted foreign aid to crush a kindred state at every period of their history ; and now, whatever a larger patriotism, prescient of the future, suggested to wiser minds, they showed themselves again incapable of common action against the common enemy, at a time when the indolence of Egypt and the embarrassments of Syria left the field open for the assertion of Hellenism in the west. At length, in 211 B.C., Rome, alarmed by the fall of Tarentum, utilised the irritation caused by Philip's aggressive policy to organise against Macedon a coalition of Greek states, at the head of which stood the i4itolian league, supported by Athens, Sparta, Elis, and Pergamum, while the Acheeans acted for Philip. The partners in this complot, which, ugly as it looks, is in accordance with ancient precedent, agreed to divide the spoil. The /^Etolians FIRST MACEDONIAN WAR 213 stipulated for Acarnania and the conquered towns, the Romans receiving, in consideration of naval support, the movable booty and prisoners. Philip, occasionally helped by the Punic fleet, met the savage and desultory war with ubiquitous activity. In spite of repeated attempts at mediation, it spread into each corner of Hellenic sea and land, bringing debt and desolation in its train. At length the /Etolians, distressed and harassed by the struggle, weary of doing Rome's dirty work while their ally complacently regarded a contest which occupied her enemy and cost her little, in spite of Rome's protests, concluded a separate treaty with Macedon. The Senate followed suit in 205 B.C. One solitary action distinguished the wretched record of the ten years' war, the defeat of the Spartan tyrant Machanidas by the brave and able Achaean officer Philopoimen at Mantinea (207 B.C.). The .'Etolians had ruined themselves and earned no thanks from their employers. Philip had made a dangerous attack and a still more dangerous peace ; he now went on to irritate all his possible allies in the coming contest with the incensed Romans. He had gained nothing but a pa'try concession in Il'yria, where Rome retained her chief possessions. The War in Spain. — Of the Spanish war the distance of the operations, the family legends of the .Scipios, and the geographical ignorance of our authorities combine to present us with a confused and uncertain record. Invention and e.\aggeration are rampant. The character of the country and its inhabitants have through- out history made Spain easy to grasp, difficult to hold, and im- pressed on military operations from Hannibal to Napoleon a character of strange vicissitude. The same reversals of fortune, the same persistent guerrilla warfare, the same incapacity for sus- tained and regular combination, the same desperate sieges, the same massing and dispersion of brave but untrustworthy hosts, mark the story of the Roman conquest. At the outset a mere corollary of the Italian war — presenting a purely defensive problem, to hold the barrier of the Pyrenees and the line of the Ebro — it ends, by a necessary consequence, as a war for the expulsion of Carthage. Victories of the Scipios. — The unexpected arrival of Cn. Scipio at Emporiae in 218 B.C. revived the Roman connection in the north. Thedefeat of Hanno at Cissis (218 B.C.) effaced theeftects of Hannibal's brief and bloody campaign. From his base at Tarraco, Scipio was able to keep the activity of Hasdrubal in check. Early in 217 B.C. he succeeded in cutting out a Punic squadron at the mouth 214 HISTORY OF ROME of the Ebro, and on the arrival of PubHus with a fresh legion, the two brothers, able generals and skilled diplomatists, crossed the Ebro, and equally by force and policy advanced the cause of Rome. The treachery of the Spaniard Abeliix and the unwonted simplicity of a I'unic officer placed in their hands a useful weapon in the Spanish hostages collected at Saguntum. Meanwhile a Punic fleet, co-operating with Hannibal off Etruria, which had intercepted their transport fleet at Cosa, was driven from the waters by the consul Servilius with 120 sail. In the following year Hasdrubal, who had been occupied in stamping out a desperate insurrection on the Baetis, in the south, received definite orders to resume the offensive and force his way to Italy. In the actual state of Spain this was only possible if an adequate force was left behind ; but though, in answer to Hasdrubal's remonstrances, Himilco appeared with reinforcements to take over the command, the government under-estimated the strength of the Scipios and the weakness of their Spanish empire. The troops had been worth more in Italy. Fully awake to the crisis, the Scipios encountered Hasdrubal's columns at the Ebro. The spiritless conduct of the local conscripts decided the issue, and the victory of Ibera (216 B.C.) saved the existence of Rome. Hasdrubal barely escaped, and the next year the masters of the north pushed their arms to the Baetis. The vic- tories of Iliturgi and Intibili, however grossly exaggerated, repre- sent an advance sufficient, when taken with the rising of the tribes, to prevent a forward movement and divert to Spain the reinforce- ments raised by Mago for Hannibal. With this new strength Hasdrubal had been able (214 B.C.) to crush the insurgents and push the Romans behind the Ebro, where they maintained themselves with difficulty, when the outbreak of a near and dangerous war with Syphax, the Massa?sylian king, withdrew a strong force to Africa and reduced the remainder to the defensive. Sag^untum, besieged by Publius, fell in 214 B.C. ; Gna;us extended the Roman protecto- rate over the central plateau. In 213 B.C. negotiations were opened with Syphax, and an attempt made to organise his Numidian in- fantry, while the legions were strengthened with the ominous aid of 20,000 Spanish mercenaries, of whom some were sent to Italy. Defeat of the Romans. — But the defeats of Syphax (213-212 B.C.) by Carthage, with the aid of Massinissa, chief of the Massylians, brought the Scipios face to face with a powerful and victorious army under Hasdrubal, Mago, and Hasdrubal Gisgo. In the campaign that followed, the brothers, with divided forces, aban- doned by the fickle and possibly unpaid mercenaries, were attacked THE SCI PI OS 215 and destroyed in detail, Publius in the field, Gnreus in his ill-con- structed camp (212-21 1 B.C.). L. Marcius and T. Fonteius collected the remnants, called in the garrisons, and made good their retreat to the Ebro. Aided by the jealousy of the Punic leaders and the rapacious cruelty of Mago and Hasdrubal Gisgo, they maintained a gallant stand till the arrival of C. Claudius Nero with a strong legion and 1 100 horse, released at a critical moment by the fall of Capua. This capable leader is credited with a victory in Andalusia over Hasdrubal ; but the dangerous state of affairs led at the end of 211 B.C. to the appointment of an extraordinary officer for the Spanish war. The miraculous exploits of the defeated Roman armies deserve little belief, but through all the veil of fable the inactivity of the Punic leaders remains surprising. Thus in the eighth year of the war the tide of conquest rolled back to the Pyrenees ; with untiring patience Hasdrubal had organised victory out of defeat ; skilled diplomatist and gallant soldier, his personal influence and tactical ability had reaped at length their reward. Character of Scipio. — At Rome the Senate had been for some time aware of the danger threatened from Spain by the prepara- tions of Carthage. The war claimed a commander of no common gifts as soldier and statesman, to meet with daring initiative and powerful personality the gifted and magnetic Barcid. His services at the Ticinus and Cannae, his kinship with the dead, his peculiar qualities, backed by the interest of the great Cornelian house, pointed to the young and gallant son of Publius, P. Cornelius Scipio, the future conciueror of Zama. It is difficult to disentangle from our party-coloured authorities either the character or exploits of a man at once admired, loved, and hated. The power of his family is seen as much in his election as in the hereditary character of the Spanish war, and the arbitrary conduct of the three kinsmen alike in the military and political administration. The self-con- scious kingliness of his demeanour, the half-superstitious, half- politic mysticism, his Greek culture, and the un-Roman charm and grace of his manner attracted as much suspicion as homage. A self-idealised hero, young, handsome, melancholy, enthusiastic, he united pride and generosity, piety and calculation. By his keen intelligence and power of inspiration, his successful soldiership and refined diplomacy, he was marked out to be the " leader in these glorious wars." Saviour of his country as he was by his good fortune and his gifts, at the same time by his personal and family policy, by his impatience of equality and isolated attitude above and beyond republican forms and restrictions, he set the first unconscious pre- 2l6 HISTORY OF ROME cedents of monarchy. The irregularities in his cliaracter are the contradictions of a spirit above and yet limited Ijy his age and people ; nor can they be summed up in a single narrow formula, religious or political. The romance of his election may be chsmissed ; with a])undance of able officers, the Spanish command could not have gone begging. It was to sa\e friction and spare feelings that the Senate left to BUST OF SCIPIO AKRICANUS. the people an ostensibly unpremeditated choice ; and at the age of twenty-four (or twenty-seven) a young man of merely a^dilician rank was raised by his strong connections and popular favour to the most responsible and independent command in the war. Con- fident in divine support, sought so often in solitary prayer, the heaven-sent hero set sail as proconsul with i i,ooo men, with Gaius Laslius and Junius Silanus as adjutants and advisers. Capture of New Carthage. — The Carthaginians were occupied CAPTURE OF NEW CARTHAGE 217 in completing their work ; their divisions operated at some distance from each other, while the nearest was ten days' march from their centre and military capital, the key of their communications. Nova Carthago. Here were their magazines, hostages, and war mate- rial, defended by a small garrison, whose numbers, as well as the general spiritless conduct of the war by the Punic leaders, may be explained by a possible recall of troops to Africa or Sicily. During the winter Scipio had prepared his forces, and now, in the spring of 210 B.C., he secretly and swiftly crossed the Ebro with 28,000 men, to strike with happy audacity at the enemy's heart. The city, whose ancient site differs somewhat from the modern, lay upon hills of tolerable height, at the head of its harbour, on a tongue of land joined on the east by an isthmus to the mainland, surrounded on the south and west by the waters of the bay, on the north by a lagoon connected artificially with the sea, whose water- level sank at the ebb. Drawing his lines across the isthmus, he beat back a desperate sally, but was baffled in the assault, till, covering the movement by a double attack in front and from the sea, he rushed the walls across the lagoon at low water. Valuable prisoners, hostages, ships, and stores, with a large sum of money, fell into the victor's hands ; the artificers were spared to re-arm his troops with the Spanish sword, and to equip a larger force to meet the rumoured movements from Carthage ; the city was strengthened and garrisoned. Traits of generosity relieved the customary butchery of a Roman storm, and it is in this connection that we read of the restoration of the beauteous captive to her Spanish lover — the story^ of the continence of Scipio. Henceforth the Punic arniies rest on the ancient arsenal of Gades. Hasdrubal outmanoeuvres Scipio. — A pause ensued, spent by Scipio in treating with the tribes, while Hasdrubal husbanded his resources. In 209 B.C. Scipio laid up his fleet to swell his army, and moved out in search of Hasdrubal, now reinforced, and collect- ing men, money, and supplies for the long-planned and by this time indispensable march to Italy. He found him in the strong position of Boecula (Bailen), on the Upper Guadalquiver. An affair followed in which Scipio claimed the victory, but was clearly outmanoeuvred by Hasdrubal, who, cleverly masking the move- ment, gave him the slip, and with his best troops, elephants, and war-chest, struck unpursued north, and penetrated uninterrupted, either in the same or the following year (208 B.C.), by a route which ran along the north coast and through the western passes into Gaul. It looks as if Scipio had been designedly drawn from 2i8 HISTORY OF ROME his post by feigned inaction and rumoured dissensions, and occupied by the army of Spain or a rearguard while the expeditionary column escaped. By the winter of 208 B.C. Hasdrubal had pierced to the Upper Rhone, and, out of reach of the coast, was recruiting himself among the friendly Arverni. Scipio's assumption of the offensive and neglect to secure the western passes — a route he had not expected and may not have known — were responsible for the crisis of the Metaurus, where the victory of the superseded Claudius saved the laurels of his fortunate successor. Victory of Scipio. — He had retired to Tarraco, to close the eastern routes. In 208 B.C. little of note occurred ; the departure of Hasdrubal, the withdrawal of his namesake to Lusitania, and of Mago to the Baliares, left Scipio master of the east. His personal prestige and charm attracted the chivalrous Spaniards ; at Tarraco the popular " Imperator" kept an almost royal court, and by his legates carried on the war. Silanus defeated Hanno and Mago (207 B.C.) and drove the Carthaginians into the fortresses of Bastica ; Lucius Scipio stormed Oringis (Jaen). It was in the following year (206 B.C.) — so far as facts can be extracted from the epic of Scipio — that the crowning battle was fought at a place called Ilipa, Silpia, or Bascula, .on the right bank of the Bastis. It was decided by the skilful tactics and cool handling of the Roman general. For some days the two armies manoeuvred in front of each other, till in the early morning Scipio led his well-fed, well-instructed troops to attack the enemy, strongly posted with superior numbers on the skirts of a hill falling to a plain. Reversing, under cover of a screen of cavalry and skirmishers, the familiar arrangement of his troops, he drew his unsteady Spaniards to the centre, to con- tain the corps of African veterans, and moved the Romans to the flank in face of the enemy's Spanish recruits. Then, to prevent outflanking, as he rapidly advanced he withdrew the screen and wheeled his wings from line to column, simultaneously extending his front by a diagonal march, and bringing his cavalry from rear to flank. His centre thus refused, he charged the wavering wings, and by the ingenious if dangerous combination decided the cam- paign. The victory, prosecuted vigorously by Silanus, was followed by large adhesions of the native tribes. Scipio returns to Rome. — Scipio had already contemplated an attack on Africa. With Quixotic hardihood, he is said to have clinched his relations with Syphax by a personal visit. The story of his hairbreadth escape, of his meeting with Hasdrubal Gisgo at the king's table, of Sophonisba and the Libyan king, VICTORIES OF SCIPIO 219 belongs to the annals of adventure, though we need not reject as fictitious all the exploits ascribed by tradition and poetry to an extraordinary character in history. Little in any case was gained by the escapade. The charms of Hasdrubal's daughter Sophonisba carried the day for Carthage. The Senate was not yet disposed to sanction the daring enterprise. With Massinissa he had formed a more useful connection. Finally, in 206 B.C., after storming- the fortresses of the south, Iliturgi, Castulo, and Astapa, suppressing a dangerous mutiny by an energetic coup de f/u'dfre, crushing a native insurrection, and accepting the surrender of Gades, Scipio returned to Rome for the elections, to strike at once for the con- sulate and Africa. On technical grounds, the proconsul, who had not yet held the full imperium, was refused a triumph by the pedantic jealousy of the cautious Senate. Meanwhile Mago, who had evacuated Gades and failed to surprise Carthago Nova, win- tered in the Baliares, whence, in the absence of the fleet, laid up at Tarraco, he was able to transfer a formidable army, by order of the Punic Senate, to co-operate from Liguria with Hannibal. In Italy (210 B.C.) the fall of Syracuse and Capua permitted a slight reduction in the active army ; a self-denying ordinance filled the empty chest and furnished forth the fleet when additional taxa- tion met with steady passive resistance Marcellus, in spite of the bitter charges of the afflicted Syracusans, received a well-earned ovation and a fourth consulship, but, with all his boasting bulletins from Lucania, scored a very moderate success. A second FuK'ius was destroyed at a second battle of Herdonea ; yet the fall of Salapia and the loss of its garrison taught Hannibal to draw in his outlying detachments — a process not unattended with cruel excesses. The defeat of their squadron at Tarentum left the Romans still masters of the citadel ; while the fall of Carthagena, the inaction of Macedon, and the renewal of the Egyptian treaty balanced the account well in their favour. Fabius recovers Tarentum. — The elections of 209 B.C. were arbi- trarily decided for Fabius and Fulvius, who pursued the respectful policy of driving Hannibal by inches to the sea. Covered by his colleague's operations in Lucania and the Hirpinian country, and the dogged watchfulness of Marcellus in Apulia, Fabius recaptured the desperately defended Tarentum more by treason than force, and gave a second bloody warning to the revolted towns. Three thousand talents and 30,000 slaves were the relics of the promis- cuous plunder and carnage. Hannibal, unable to save the city, handled Marcellus so severelv in a series of smaller actions that 220 HISTORY OF ROME he shut himself up in \'eniisia. Then huminj^^ to the relief of Caulonia, he captured the band of Sicilian banditti transferred by Laevinus to Rhegium, who from that centre were harr^'inj,'^ Uruttium. A natural feeling of disappointment at these meagre results, backed by the impatience felt at the monopoly of power by an able bqt exclusive clique, found vent in the impeachment of the "ever- victorious" Marcellus. Discontent among the Latin Colonies and in Etruria. — A more seriuus anxiety harassed Rome in the blank refusal of twelve of the Latin colonies to furnish their quota of men and money for the war. This movement, whether prompted by actual exhaustion or smouldering discontent, threatened the existence of Rome. It appeared chiefly among the oldest and nearest colonies, in Latium, Etruria, North Campania, and among the Marsi. In her hour of bitterness she was only saved by the equally splendid and far- sighted patriotism of the remaining eighteen, headed by the gallant and ill-fated Fregellae. Picenum and the north, with the great for- tresses in South Italy, were true to the cause of Latin influence and Italian independence. While public gratitude honoured the faithful delegates, the government, with wise and terrible modera- tion, left the recalcitrants severely alone. To meet the want of funds, the accumulated reserve from the " vicesima manu mis- sionum,"— 5 per cent, tax on manumitted slaves, imposed 357 B.C., — was appropriated. Not unconnected with the Latin trouble, the agitation in Etruria, closely watched since 212 B.C., due to the pressure of naval and military requisitions, w^s coming to a head in secret conspiracies, when it was energetically repressed, Arretium garrisoned, hostages exacted, and the countrj' patrolled. The strength of Rome was under-estimated exactly by those who lay nearest the grasping and farthest from the fighting hand. Death of Marcellus. — Fabius now retired from active service (208 B.C.). The campaign opened with an attack on Locri, Hanni- bal's Bruttian base, but not only was Crispinus forced to fall back upon his colleague Marcellus, but the legion of Tarentum, moving to co-operate with a Sicilian fleet in carrying on the siege after his retirement, was cut to pieces on the march near Petelia by an unexpected back-stroke of Hannibal, who now proceeded to face the combined consular armies at Venusia. It was here, while re- connoitring a wooded height between the hostile camps, that the two consuls, with their cavalrj' escort, were enveloped by the cun- ning Numidian horsemen. Marcellus fell fighting, as he had lived ; HASDRUBAL 221 Crispinus died later of his wounds ; their armies were paralysed, while Hannibal by a rapid onslaught relieved Locri once more, and drove the besiegers to their ships. Rome was the poorer by the brave old soldier, a true Roman of the blunt type. Strong heart and ready hand, spirit but half-humanised by culture, his cruelty, treachery, and greed, the vices of his nation and his time, are something condoned by the unflinching loyalty and dogged courage which thwarted, if they could not conquer, his great oppo- nent. Hannibal honoured himself by the honourable treatment of Marcellus' corpse. Hasdrubal and Hannibal. — Except in Spain, with twenty-one legions on foot, nothing had been effected. With failing allies and fainting hearts, with her land exhausted, her population sink- ing, with famine prices and ruined prosperity, her armies locked up, her trusted leaders old or dead, Rome was now to face the last great moment of the war. In 207 B.C. Hasdrubal, with unexpected ease and speed, passed the Alps, and calling the Gallic and Ligurian tribes to arms, threatened to realise at the eleventh hour the gigan- tic scheme of Hannibal. Not in vain had he waited ; the blunder of Scipio was the opportunity of Carthage. . Rome put forth her utmost energy. With solemn sacrifice and inhuman superstition, the gods were summoned to bless he'r mighty armaments. Gains Claudius Nero, who had served with distinction before Capua and in Spain, was chosen consul, and received as colleague his personal foe, the injured and embittered conqueror of Illyria, the stern and sullen M. Livius Salinator, reluctantly dragged to Rome, reluctantly reconciled. Their powers and forces were alike excep- tional. To contain Hannibal, Claudius disposed of six legions, two under his personal command and four available in support at Tarentum and in Bruttium. With an equal force Livius was destined to hold down the disaffected communities and intercept the invader; 150,000 men were in arms in Italy alone, fifteen legions made up by strict recruiting and exceptional enlistments, of whom upwards of ico,ooo were disposable in the field, to meet a total Punic strength of 80,000 — a divided and inferior force, led, how- ever, by the first masters of the art of war. Hasdrubal meanwhile was his own messenger. He had knocked at the gates of Placentia, the virgin fortress, but effected nothing, and now, with 56,000 men and fifteen elephants, was in full march on Ariminum, driving before him a corps of observation under the praetor L. Porcius. Livius, with a strong army, joined his lieutenant, and fell back over the Metaurus to Sena. In the south, Claudius, with a similarly 222 HISTORY OF ROME strengthened force of over 40,000 men, marched to check the ad- vance of Hannibal, who effected his concentration rapidly, watched but not impeded by Nero, as he moved hither and thither to pick up his allies and garrisons. Finally Hannibal re-entered Apulia, advanced to Canusium, and there halted to gather supplies and in- formation. The consul, in spite of a reported victory at Grumen- tum, had been baffled, beaten, and eluded. But Hannibal was unable to advance, and unwilling as yet to risk a general action without more definite news. He could not abandon his allies and depots, and leave his base undefended. The army of the north must cut its own \vay first before he could reach out his hand. But the adventurous troopers who had carried the despatches of Hasdrubal in safety to the south were captured near Tarentum ; their news decided the consul's action. Hasdrubal begged his brother to meet him in Umbria, to move thence by Narnia upon Rome. March of Nero. — Nero, a man of no considerable exploits before or after, adopted in this agony of his country's fate an original and audacious strategy. It was open to him, as to Grouchy before Waterloo, to adhere to orders ; he might merely have detached re- inforcements ; he did not so conceive the problem. Ordering the urban reserves to Narnia and the Capuan supports to Rome, he left the bulk of his force to front Hannibal, while he hurried in person, at the head of a picked corps of 7000 men, by forced marches to join his colleague. The Senate approved a step they could not prevent. Amid immense enthusiasm, welcomed by the blessings of a people, his way prepared by cavalry, veterans flocking to his standard, he passed with the speed of life and death through Italy, and entered Livius' lines in the silence of night. He had thrown the enemies' spies off the scent by a pretended foray into Lucania ; six or seven days after he was deciding the issue of a battle in the north, upon which hung not merely the vindication of his bold stroke, but the very existence of Rome. Battle of the Metaurus. — Criticism was silenced by success. Next morning the enemy's suspicions were roused by increased numbers and the jaded appearance of a portion of the Roman cavalry ; they were confirmed by the twice-sounded signal from the camp, which announced two consuls in the field. Fearing for his brother's fate, Hasdrubal declined battle, and broke up by night, with the intention of falling back upon Gaul, there to await tidings from the south. Abandoned by his guides in the rough and un- known country, he missed the ford of the Metaurus, which for the Battle of the metaurus 223 last part of its course flowed in a kind of trough enclosed by steep walls — a sunken valley within a wider valley bounded by the hills — with a deeper bed and larger volume of water than it now possesses. The following day, as his weary columns wound along the wooded cliffs of the right bank, he was overtaken by the Roman cavalry, followed closely by the foot. He used the un- favourable conditions with tactical skill. The drunken and un- manageable Gauls were posted on the left, protected in front and flank by difficult ground ; the Ligurians and elephants formed the centre ; the right he closed himself with the firm African and Spanish battalions. Thus, with left refused, with deep files and narrow front, Hasdrubal awaited the attack of the stronger Roman army. A doubtful and desperate struggle ensued on the Punic right, and the event was still undecided, when Claudius grasped the situation, abandoned his useless attack on the refused flank, left a force to contain the equally defended and impeded Gauls, and passing- behind the Roman line, flung himself with decisive weight on Hasdrubal's flank and rear. The Spaniards fell where they stood ; the drunken Celts were butchered as they lay. Has- drubal, unwilling to survive the disaster, plunged in the thick of the fight, and died like a gallant soldier and a son of Hamiicar. With him fell the towering schemes of Hannibal. The victory of the Metaurus decided for a time the secular struggle of Semite and Aryan, of east and west. Claudius, daring strategist and cool tactician, vanished swiftly, as he came, from the well-fought field, carrying the head of Hasdrubal. The ghastly token flung with Claudian cruelty into the Punic lines — an ill repayment for his own generosity — told Hannibal at once his brother's and his country's fate. He evacuated Metapontum, abandoned Lucania and Apulia, and drew back to Bruttium. At Rome the news of victory, awaited with feverish eagerness, received with incredulous ears, roused, as credence grew, a boundless exultation. The consuls enjoyed the first real triumph of the war ; but the services of the unpopular chiefs, whose grim tenacity and brilliant ability had made victory possible, "paled their ineffectual fires" before the rising sun of Scipio. Hannibal in Bruttium. — The dying embers of the war smouldered away in Bruttium. Forgetful of Hannibal, the Romans gave them- selves up to the pursuits of peace. What they had gained by a skilful use of superior force, the inner lines, and full communica- tion with a central base was flung away by hide-bound strategical pedantry. No attempt was made to pour the united and victorious 224 HISTORY OF ROME armies upon Hannibal. Undefeated and undismayed, with splendid if useless obstinacy, he clung for four years to liis untenable corner, to resign it at his own convenience and the call of duty. Never was his generalship and control of men through good and evil fortune more magnificent. The reaction at Rome continued ; the need of rest, the effects of moral and material exhaustion, made themselves felt in the absence of immediate danger. The army and navy were reduced, and the large forces still in the field did little or nothing. The government applied itself to reorganising the ad- ministration, restoring agriculture, resettling and restocking the waste and depopulated districts. Arrears were looked up, the refractory colonies visited, and a beginning made of paying off the loans. Schemes of Scipic — Scipio, on his return in 206 B.C., was irregularly but unanimously elected consul, and received the pro- vince of Sicily, with its ordinary fleet and army. Clear of his pur- pose and his powers, and backed by popular feeling, he claimed the conduct of an African expedition. No doubt Hannibal was still in Italy, and the finances low ; nor could reliance be placed on the Numidian chiefs ; but a small force could easily hold him in check, till the loss of his communications and the danger to Carthage from foreign war and native mutiny should recall him home. There alone could the war be decided and an end put to the waste and wear of Italy. A methodical defensive was now an anachronism. Scipio was opposed by the devotees of red-tape and the old school, who disliked the man, with his modern culture and dominating habits, doubted his discipline and questioned the opportuneness of the enterprise. Balked by the majority of the Senate, who were supported by the tribunes, the popular consul showed a dangerous disposition to break through the usage of the constitution by an appeal to the Comitia. But for this the time was not ripe, and Scipio finally accepted a compromise. The expedition was permitted, the state forests placed at his disposal ; he might draw on the liberality of Etruria and Umbria, where the suspected communities, notably Arretium, anxiously established their character for patriotism. He must organise his own force without burdening the state-chest. From these and Sicilian sources he created a new fleet of thirty sail. Two of the four Sicilian legions, strengthened by drafts from the legions of Cannae, and a body of 7000 volunteers, veterans of the war — another symptom of growing professionalism — formed a total of 30,000 or 35,000 men. The year was spent in drilling, equipping, and SCHEMES OF SCIPTO 225 organising the army, in face of obstructive economy, with wisdom and forethought, as well as in ordering the aftairs of the province. Lu'lius, who was despatched to reconnoitre the ground and pre- pare the way with the Numidian chiefs, met with small encourage- ment. Carthage had taken energetic measures. Though the supplies destined for Hannibal were intercepted and the exhausted Philip could not be spurred to action, Mago was reinforced with men, money, and ships, and ordered to Liguria to renew the Italian war. At the same time Syphax was detached from the Roman interest, and the restless and adventurous Massinissa, at once his personal enemy and rival for the hand of the fair, brilliant, and patriotic Sophonisba, was expelled from his kingdom. Romance tells of his thrilling escapes, his restoration and revenue, his capture of his rival's bride, their marriage, and her tragic death. Her father, Hasdrubal, collected a powerful army and fleet, strengthened by Spanish mercenaries, a Macedonian corps and 140 elephants. Meanwhile Hannibal had e\acuated Thurii ; and Locri was recaptured by an expedition organised by Scipio, aided by a detachment from Rhegium. The plunder and outrage which stained the exploit, and the scandalous conduct of his officer, IMeminius, reflected the gravest discredit on the discipline and even the personal character of Scipio. It was of a piece, men said, with his un-Roman habits and the culpable laxness of his command. Fabius and his opponents seized the handle ; lively debates took place, but the commission of inquiry which arrived on the spot with powers of recall and arrest, and afterwards pro- ceeded to review his work in Sicily, were happily able to exone- rate the general, of whose preparations they presented a glowing- account. The provincial governors made up what \\'as lacking in official support. Mago in Italy. — Mago landed at Genua with 14,000 men (205 R.C.). His army, reinforced from home and strengthened with Gallic and Ligurian levies, soon reached a respectable total. It was " one more for Hannibal," one more cub of the lion's brood to work his father's will. Leevinus and Livius took up the old defensive posi- tions of Arretium and Ariminum ; nor could Mago venture to attack them, still less could he divert Scipio from the dream of his life. In 204 B.C. Mago crossed into Cisalpine Gaul, where he occupied himself in raising recruits and tampering with the Etrurian mal- contents. The conspiracy was, however, stamped out ; and in the next year (203 B.C.) a decisive and bloody action was fought in the P 226 HISTORY OF ROME Milanese, in which Varus and Cethegus claimed the victory ; but the wounded Mago was able to make good his long retreat un- opposed to the sea. In obedience to orders he embarked for Carthage, but died of his wounds on ship. For some )ears after, Punic officers kept North Italy in a ferment. Scipio lands in Africa. — A noteworthy incident of 205 B.C. was the introduction of tlie Phrygian worship of Cybele, utilised if not prepared by Scipio, whose expedition the coming of the Magna mater from Pessinus (in Galatia) crowned with a gracious omen of victory. Undaunted by the warnings of Syphax, Scipio sailed from Lilybasum with two legions, forty ships, 400 transports, and a siege-train (204 B.C.). On the voyage, whether by design or misadventure, he shifted his objective from the Emporia to Utica, where he disembarked without resistance. But his force was too small at once to secure a base at Utica and assume the offensive. The sequel showed that the point of attack had been ill chosen and the difficulties of the campaign undervalued. Massinissa brought little but himself; the subjects and allies of Carthage required a striking success to efface the memories of the mutiny. After a successful skirmish he proceeded to lay ^iege to Utica. Its stubborn resistance enabled Syphax to combine with Hasdrubal and relieve the town. The war was not to be ended at a rush. Before the vastly superior force, with its powerful cavalry, Scipio retired to his strong lines — called afterwards the Cornelian camp — on a small peninsula between Utica and Carthage. His position was sufficiently precarious, his surprise repulsed, himself hemmed in if not surrounded, dependent on the sea for his supplies, with nothing to hope from the home government. It was now that Massinissa, trained in the Punic service, versed in Punic politics, bold, persistent, and crafty, with all his influence among the fickle Berbers, proved his value. In the spring of 203 B.C. Scipio amused the Carthaginians with proposals to treat ; Syphax accepted readily the role of arbiter. Under cover of the negotiations, trusty officers reconnoitred the hostile lines. The terms proposed, a reciprocal evacuation of Africa and Italy, could not be seriously entertained. After all Rome's sacrifices, Carthage could not so cry quits. A fleet was preparing to co-operate with the Punic armies. Victories of Scipio. — Lulled to a fatal security, the Carthaginians had no expectation of attack, a carelessness encouraged by Scipio, who, breaking off the preliminaries, feigned a new attack on Utica, while he prepared to surprise the enemy's camps. They lay at some distance apart ; their inflammable huts were thatched with SCI no IX AFRICA 227 reeds and straw, their outpost duty neglected. The somewhat dubious stratagem succeeded admirably. The alarmed Nu- midians rushed from their blaz- ing barracks on the swords cf the column of L^lius ; roused by the glare and tumult, Has- drubal hurried to help his ally, but was intercepted by Scipio, who had flung himself between the camps. His huts burst into fire ; the bewildered soldiers fell in heaps. Thus extricated from the toils, Scipio, in the begin- ning of May, scattered in a second battle on the great plain the hasty Punic levies, strength- ened though they were with a Spanish and a Macedonian corps. Massinissa, welcomed by his tribesmen, followed, at- tacked, and captured his ri\al Syphax, and by the reduction of Cirta gained only to lose the loved and lovely Sophonisba. Numidia declared for Rome. Negotiations for Peace. — Meanwhile Scipio had occu- pied Tunis, and was receiving the submission of some subject communities, when he was sum- moned to Utica by an attack on his fleet, which he succeeded at length in beating off" at some expense, by means of a boom composed of transports moored four deep. On his re- turn from a plundering raid to the entrenched camp at Tunis he received an embassy for peace. The democratic party 228 HISTORY OF ROME liad by this time yivcn way to the opposition, to whose request Scipio granted an armistice of forty-five days, during which Carthage was to pay and victual the troops. Whatever preUnii- naries he may have proposed, he liad no power to conclude a treaty ; accordingly the envoys proceeded to Rome, where they met with a cool and contemptuous reception. Stormy and protracted debates delayed the decision. At length the desire for peace, a sense of the danger involved in the return of the Barcidae to Carthage, and the acknowledged services of Scipio procured the despatch of a commission late in September to assist the general in negotiation. Scipio wished to end the war in person, and was not in a position to be exorbitant. To this, as well as to the name of Hannibal and the strong walls of Carthage, was due the moderation of the terms. They included the surrender of deserters and captives, the evacuation of Italy, the renunciation of Spain and the islands, a large war indemnity, the restoration of Massinissa, and the permanent reduction of the fleet to thirty men-of-war. Recall of Hannibal. — During these events the war in Bruttium had dragged on indecisively, pushed with large forces and little energy. Punishment was exacted, in loss of privilege and addi- tional burdens, from the Latin offenders. The careful census of Livius and Nero (204 B.C.) revealed the ravages of war, pestilence and desolation. The Burgess-roll had sunk from 270,213 in 220 B.C. to 214,000. Hannibal clung to his last stronghold so long^ as his tenacity could prevent the reinforcement of Scipio's ill-sustained expedition. The African defeats and the defection of Numidia now demanded his presence. The Barcidas were summoned home, whether recalled by the war party preparing for a final struggle, or in accordance with the tenns of the armistice, or because the Senate, true to its traditions, refused to negotiate with an enemy still on Italian soil. Hannibal alone returned to measure swords with Scipio. Leaving in the temple of the Lacinian Juno a record of his exploits engraved on tablets of bronze — seen and used by Polybius — he sailed from Croton in the autumn of 203 B.C. If the negotiations should prove abortive, as the patriots probably in- tended, a winter would give him time to create an army which could extort a peace less dangerous to his country's independence. With the flower of his army — the rest he discharged or massacred in Italy — he landed at Hadrumetum, where he was joined by the troops of Mago. On his departure the Senate honoured the veteran Fabius with the wreath of grass as the saviour of HANNIBAL AND SCIPIO 229 the state. Shortly after, F'abius died (203 B.C.), at the age of nearly ninety years. Failure of the Negotiations for Peace. — The peace prelimi- naries led again to prolonged debates. The provinces for 202 B.C., including Africa, had already been allotted, and strong influences hindered the ratification of the terms, till the friends of Scipio pro- cured the approval of the people, and the final confirmation by the Senate about April 202 B.C. It was then too late. The arrival of Hannibal had strengthened the hands of the patriots ; a strong reaction carried them to power, aided by the distress, the burden of the Roman army, and the delays and difficulties connected with the peace. By one or other party the able and moderate Has- drubal was condemned to death ; his fate is variously recorded. A shipwrecked Roman convoy supplied the occasion sought ; the hungry and angry masses forced the hand of government ; the plunder of the distressed fleet during truce constituted an act of war. Whether this was merely a spontaneous outburst, or Scipio had been just deluded and repaid in kind, may be left uncertain. Anxious to avoid a rupture, he demanded satisfaction, but the refusal of his request and a treacherous attack on his returning envoys clinched the business. Unable to besiege the capital, Scipio wasted with fire and sword the fertile valley of the Bagradas, moving to join Massinissa, whom he had summoned from Numidia. Numidia was equally the objective of Hannibal. He could view with stern contentment a movement which drew the enemy farther from his base. Thither he pressed from Hadrumetum to strike at their point of junction, intercept the Numidians, and drive the Romans headlong to the coast. With 50,000 men and eighty elephants he appeared at Zama Regia. But the impatiently expected chieftain had effected his junction with Scipio, bringing 10,000 Africans, horse and foot, and the allies, aware of Hannibal's design, now pushed on to Naraggara (near Sicca), where they encamped. Here Hannibal met them. In a personal interview he is said to have offered the renunciation of all non-African possessions as the con- dition of peace. Scipio, though defeat meant destruction, in face of Hannibal, far from the sea, with no support but the restless Numidians, reiterated his demands. Rome's sacrifices and her honour demanded indemnity for the broken truce and guarantees for the future. Battle of Zama. — At an uncertain time and place, whether in the spring or autumn of 202 B.C., not far from Sicca, was fought the decisive action known as the battle of Zama. Hannibal disposed 230 HISTORY OF ROME the elephants — a formidable line — in front ; the mercenaries of Mage's army, 12,000 strong, formed the next line ; in support were the Libyan and national militia ; at some distance, in reserve, stood a strong corps of Italian veterans, with the Macedonian auxiliaries. A powerful Numidian contingent did not appear in time ; nor could he wholly depend on the loyalty of the troops, some of whom de- serted in the fight. His inferior cavalry covered the flanks. To meet the elephants Scipio formed his maniples in column of cohorts, leaving nine broad avenues through the triple line, filling the inter- vals in front with skirmishers destined to harass the huge beasts and draw or drivx them harmless through the gaps. Laslius and Massinissa, with the heavy and light cavalr>', took post respectively on the left and right wings. Hannibal commenced the attack with a charge of elephants. Scared by the blasts of horns and trumpets, vexed by a shower of missiles from the light troops, some turned in terror on the Numidian horse, whose rout was completed by the dashing onset of Massinissa, some trampled o\ er the light troops, and charged down the open gangways, sped on their path with blows, some threw the Punic cavalry on the right into a confusion which Lcelius promptly turned to account. Then with a shout the front lines closed ; in bloody conflict hand to hand, the Hastati, borne on by the steady pressure of the supports, thrust back the mercenary van. Then in the Carthaginian host a wild melee ensued ; with cries of treason, in mutual distrust, the undisciplined levies and their sus- pected and suspicious hirelings turned their arms upon each other. Promptly from the disordered mass of hacking soldiery Hannibal withdrew the two front lines to the flanks and pushed forward his strong reserves ; while Scipio reformed the broken divisions where they stood, marched up the steady Principes and the corps of veterans in column over the slippery ground, and deployed them outwards, forming continuous line on the new centre. Then came the final desperate shock ; the furious fight was only decided b\' the charges of the victorious cavalry' in rear. The outnumbered remnant fell where they stood, like the old Guard at Waterloo. Hannibal, when all was lost, fled to Hadrumetum, while Scipio followed up with vigour the crushing victory. Roman pride dwelt complacently on the part played in the defeat of Zama by the fugitive relics of the field of Cannae. The epic of Ennius and the Scipionic legends fill in the shadowy outlines of thp African campaign. While Scipio was fighting the combined armies of Carthage, whose concentration had been permitted by the policy or dilatori- ness of the Senate, eleven legions were in arms in Italy. Personal BATTLE OF ZAMA 231 pique wilfully held back the supports doled out by the government on the news of the rupture. The decisi\'e battle had been fought and won when a serviceable flieet and convoy arrived under the admiral, P. Lentulus. Terms of Peace. — Thus strengthened, Scipio could menace Carthage by sea and land ; the thorough defeat of Vermina's Numidian reliefs brought her finally to terms. Hannibal, trusted even in disaster, took the helm and conducted the negotiations. Protected by an armistice, the envoys proceeded to Rome, where, in spite of protracted discussion and the secret intrigues of the new consul, Cn. Lentulus, anxious for the credit of ending the war, the counsels of vengeance and personal machinations yielded to the will of the people, strong for peace and Scipio. At Carthage the hand of Hannibal dragged from his perch the clamorous agitator who harangued against the peace. Motives of generosity,, humanity, and a far-sighted statesmanship may have aided mili- tary and political considerations in dictating moderate terms. The strength of despair, the exhaustion of Rome, the designs of Scipio's enemies, the genius of Hannibal, had all their weight. Rome as yet desired no province. It was her policy to cripple, not crush ; to balance rival and ally. An elastic clause restored the posses- sions of Massinissa, to be a thorn in the flesh of Carthage and a convenient weapon of aggression, at the will of the suzerain power, but Vermina was left to check this dangerous friend. The surrender of navy, elephants, prisoners, and deserters ; the cession of Spain and the islands ; compensation for the plundered convoy ; a war in- demnity of 200 talents (^48,000) a year for fifty years, guaranteed by hostages ; the permanent reduction of her fleet, and the subor- dination of her foreign policy to Rome were the remaining terms of a peace that left Carthage a tributary vassal at the mercy of her conqueror. They were accepted with bitter tears, and an agitation sternly repressed by Hannibal. A defeated nation that demands revenge must organise its resources in patience and wait the progress of events abroad. Scipio returned in triumph. Rome could now dispense punish- ments and rewards. The reduction of the Celts necessarily followed. Heavy as was the doom of Capua, a heavier fate befell the Bruttian people, henceforth the serfs and Gibeonites of Rome. Heavily the allies of Hannibal paid in loss of lands and privileges, in execu- tions and confiscations, for their defection — Sabellians, Etruscans, Lucanians, and Greeks. The veterans of Africa received allot- ments, on some of the appropriated land new colonies were settled, 232 HISTORY OF ROME while the colonies that curbed the dangerous districts received additional garrisons. Large tracts fell as domain land to the occu- pation farms and slave-tended pastures of the grasping nobility. Character of the Hannibalic War. — The honours of the war remained with Carthage ; the profits, chequered with past losses and new perils, fell to Rome. The Punic armies, splendidly officered, had surpassed the Roman levies alike in tactics, strategy, and steadiness. From them was learned the freer handling of troops and bolder military ideas of Nero and Scipio. The combinations of Hann'bal had not once only threatened the existence of Rome. But the failure of his allies, the organisation of Italy, the unity of feeling and superior numbers of her military population, with her central position, enabled Rome to hamper his movements, harass his supporters, secure her own territory, while she checked his advance, and holding the narrow passages of the peninsula, to cut him from his communications — in a word, to wear him out. In the last struggle the genius of Scipio was aided by the absence of fortresses and the weakness of the Punic organisation to gain a victory earned and prepared by steadfast will and stern self-sacrifice. The nation conquered the man, and w^ith that conquest began an imperial system in which the small state system of the old world would be fused and lost. The absence of large naval operations is a remarkable feature of the war. Navies and transports pass to and fro freely on the waters. Descents and minor actions are alone recorded. Rome kept, on the whole, her command of the sea, a fact of decisive importance, while the energies of Carthage, after the failures of the first war, seemed chiefly diverted to the land service. Even in Greece the war-marine had everywhere declined. Results of the War in Italy and Abroad. — In Italy, Rome's victor)- welded the chains of the non-Latin allies. More and more the grades of autonomy are lost in the uniformity of a common subjection. Abroad, the fall of Carthage left her mistress of the West. Two new provinces were formed in Spain ; Sicily absorbed the realm of H iero. In Africa, Rome exercised a protectorate ; in the East she had relations with Egypt and Pergamum ; her connection with Greece must draw her farther and farther from her cherished Italian policy. She had entered on the path from which there was no retreat ; the consequences of her action and the chain of events carried her half unwillingly on to fulfil her imperial mission — to pulverise and assimilate the civilised world. To that empire, for lack of genius to create a new system adapted to new needs, she was to sacrifice her liberty and her constitution. The old EFFECTS OF THE WAR 233 forms were stretched to bursting as the centre of Italy became the centre of the world. Economic and Social Effects of the War.— But the effects of the war were felt not alone in external dominion or political organisation, but in the inner character and life of an essentially military people. The system of annual reliefs and changing com- mands, like the older tactics, had broken down beneath the strain of the long struggle and the distant fields of war. Plunder sup- plemented the miserable pay ; camp-life ruined the simple tastes of the yeoman, whose tone was further deteriorated by the slaves and criminals whom the state was forced to employ. The citizen soldier ceased to exist, and the affairs of Locri and Enna are symptoms of degeneration. In fact, the yeoman class as such was rapidly dying out. Its decay, due in the first instance to the waste of the war, was hastened by the growing monopoly of land by the rich. By the side of a thriving plutocracy stood an im- poverished proletariate. Wealth based on plunder and speculation, on war prices and fraudulent contracts, and on the exploitation of the state domains, contrasted vividly with the poverty of the ruined fanners, who flocked to swell the mob of pauper clients, or worked as serfs on the bloated estates of the great proprietors. The com- petition of foreign corn, the growth of slave-labour, and the attrac- tions of the capital combined with the effects of the war to create that swarm of dangerous drones, at once bribed and despised, the tool of the agitator, the lever of revolution, useless for good, powerful for evil, the sovereign mob. This growth of extremes, and the decay of the old equality of culture, feeling, and possessions, had its political counterpart in the timid exclusiveness which closed the gates of office equally against the genius of a noble and the aspiration of the no^ncs Jiomo. The burgess population had suffered by almost a fourth — the flower of the citizens ; Italian economy had been shaken to its centre ; the losses in men, money, and material were untold ; the misery unspeakable. Trade and commerce had stagnated. Great as were the results of the war in wealth and empire, her heroic struggle and splendid victoiy left Rome face to face with grave problems of policy. A wise statesmanship had to consider the proper government of the provinces and the modifications in her municipal constitution entailed by empire, the unification of Italy, the reorganisation of the army, and the restoration of rural economy and sound finance. To limit the love of pleasure, expressed in the increase of festivals and games, of funeral feasts and gladia- 234 HISTORY OF ROME toiial shows ; to stem the tide of scepticism and make a genuine culture of the fashionable Hellenism ; to meet the relaxation born of reaction and the war ; to breathe an imperial spirit into the ruling people — these were problems of a deeper order. To sharpen the distinction of governors and governed and close the burgess list ; to sacrifice Italian culture and feeling ; to plunder the provinces and share the spoils ; to crush tlie relics of the yeomanry, block tlie paths to distinction, and bribe the populace with plunder ; to govern at home in the interests of a class, abroad to accept the profits and refuse the responsibilities of empire ; to live from hand to mouth with a policy of makeshift, — would be to sacrifice the noblest fruits of victory, the gratitude of the conquered, and the homage of history. CARTHAGINIAN UOUECADRACHM — HEAD OF PERSEPHONE. CHAPTER XXIII FIFTY YEARS OF CONQUEST THE WARS IN THE WEST B.C. A.U.C. Extension to the Alps— Cisalpine Gaul conquered . 200-191 554-563 Peace restored by Gracchus in Spain . . .179 575 The Spanish Wars renewed 149-133 605-621 Viriathus • • 149-140 605-614 Numantia i44-i33 610-621 Rome not Ag'gressive. — The struggle for life was over. With the peace of 201 B.C. closes the heroic period of Roman historj', the period of vigorous effort and strong national life, of energy in the ROME'S FOREIGN POLICY 235 government, devotion in the people, of manners still uncorrupted and institutions still unimpaired. The story of the next fifty years sounds with the ceaseless tramp of legions marching, as by a resist- less ordinance of fate, at once to the conquest of the uorld and the ruin of the Roman Republic. Yet Rome must not be regarded merely as an intriguing and covetous power. This career of con- quest was in no sense the result of a deliberate scheme of annexa- tion. It was the outcome of existing political ideas, grasped and applied under peculiarly favourable circumstances by a cool, consistent, narrow-minded statesmanship. The growth of Roman dominion was the necessary and natural advance of a genuine governing nation in a world politically disordered, like the advance of the English in India, as unlike the empire of an Alexander or Mohammed as it is unlike the expansion of a colonising and commercial people. Selfish aggression there was ; but the aims of Roman statesmen were limited at first to the maintenance of Rome's supremacy in Italy against actual or possible enemies at home or abroad who might obstruct or nienace her peaceful develop- ment. It was the means they employed and the drift of events that led directly to a far different result. To understand this thoroughly, it will be instructive to compare for a moment the different issue of Greek efforts at unity and dominion. In spite of the various confederacies and hegemonies formed at different epochs, Hellas failed to found any abiding state system. This was due partly to geographical reasons, and partly to racial antipathies, as well as to the reaction against the Oriental empires, but it was mainly caused by the absence of political discipline, the incapacity for combination, and the hopeless sepa- ratism that sacrificed Hellas to the city-state, and the city-state to the party. Rome scarcely developed a party-system ; in her best days she stamped on contending factions a character of common loyalty to the common weal. Better, too, than any people of antiquity the Romans knew how to attract and assimilate kindred or even alien elements, just as they were ready to borrow useful institutions and adopt a higher cultivation. They could incorpo- rate a people without destroying its individuality or its self-respect. Their settled government and respect for law gave them an unique position in the civilised world, and made their city the natural refuge of the weaker, as their reputation for wisdom and good faith rendered them the arbitrators of distracted Greece. Ancient policy did 'not willingly recognise equal states living in armed peace. The European concert, the balance of power, and the 236 HISTORY OF ROME rights of nations are modern ideas. The only recognised right was the right of self-preservation and the might of the stronger. Between neighbours the alternatives lay between predominance, however veiled under the forms of alliance, and extinction. Inter- national politics are even now rarely disinterested ; in antiquity never. Rome differed from the rest merely in the logical thorough- ness with which she worked out her principles. She started with the advantages of a country physically united, in a strategically central position, severing the East from the West, and enabled by her westward aspect to escape serious disturbance from the East. She had perfected in these years of struggle her military and social organisation ; her people, apt for discipline, had been severely drilled and trained as citizens and soldiers ; her unflinching policy, depending on no individual, rarely touched by sentiment, and never diverted by disaster, spared no sacrifices, shrank from no instru- ments, lost no chances in compassing its ends, whether "by force or persuasion of gods or men." She knew how to isolate her foes, and disintegrate her friends, how to conquer by dividing and crush in detail, how to anticipate a danger or postpone a crisis. She watched a strong ally more jealously than a beaten enemy ; she could stoop at times to the lowest resources of a bullying or temporising diplomacy. Rome was not likely to fight for ideas. Finally, for a force so favoured and so wielded, the state of the Mediterranean world afforded a peculiarly appropriate field. Chang'e for the Worse. — In the course of the ensuing wars a distinct deterioration is visible, which corresponds closely to the change for the worse in Rome's relation to her Italian confederates. The crooked methods of a new school supplant the honest appeal to brute force. The old frugality and laboriousness, the famous probity and fairness, public and private, give way before the temptations of power. Cruelty, cynicism, and greed, even assassi- nation, stamp the new methods. Mutiny, corruption, and cowardice rot the armies and stain the officers. A policy of plunder and annexation succeeds to the old theory of a paternal protectorate. Yet the indestructible vitality of the nation and the weakness of its opponents enabled it to surmount all obstacles and survive all disasters, to conquer in spite of its generals and rule in spite of itself. Rome had reserves morally and materially ; its enemies fell each at a blow. The explosive little states of Greece, vapouring and corrupted Asia, enervated Egypt, and the e.xhausted phalanx of ?^Iacedon could oppose no effective resistance ; and if the Hellenic East had no national life, the barbarian West had no FOREIGN POLICY 237 national cohesion. Above all, the weakness of the Eastern states drew Rome inevitably forward, as her relations became more and- more complicated. It is hard for an imperial power to distinguish between its rights and its interests. Rome is more justified by modern practice than she is fairly condemned by modern morality. The change for the worse was gradual, and perceived only by the best men ; and even so, her reputation remained high among the nations. Compared with the Ptolemies, Seleucids, and Antigonids, her hands were clean, her motives pure, her rule bearable. In that intolerable Eastern hubbub, men's eyes turned still with envy and wonder to the stable and well-ordered republic of the West. General Survey. — In the West the heirs of Carthage were bound to organise the legacy they inherited. Sicily, the necessary appen- dage of Italy, had received definitive form, placed under a single praetor (210 and 201 P..C.) ; a few cohorts secured a profound peace till the slave-outbreaks of 136 B.C. From her the capital drew corn, the army its stores and clothing. Sardinia and Corsica were yet to be pacified ; and the two Spains, with their four standing legions, presented a grave military and financial problem. In this latter case Rome was forced to break with her traditional policy. Besides the value of the Spanish mines and commerce, there was the danger of a second Hamilcar, and the absence of any organised govern- ment capable of acting as her deputy and keeping the peace in this Roman India. The retention of Spain involved the control of the line of communication along the southern coast of Gaul. In Northern Italy the natural process of expansion took its course. It is in Africa and the East that a change of principle is most clearly marked. Reluctantly enough in the first instance Rome drifted into conquest. The chastisement of the Illyrian pirates (229 B.C.) had cleared the Adriatic ports and opened up relations with the Greek maritime states. Then the alliance of Macedon and Carthage, kindling a deep resentment and revealing a new danger, led to the war with Philip. Subtle statesmanship and sentiment were perhaps combined in the creation of that Roman protectorate over the several Greek cities which was ultimately fatal to Hellenic independence. The position so acquired or so thrust upon her, source as it was of endless intervention, and the complex relations of the Eastern communities, drew her Senate further and further into an Eastern policy, whose necessary results were the humiliation of Macedon and the shattering of Syria. At first Rome acted with genuine and statesmanlike moderation. Content with the dignity of paramount power, she took from the spoils of war nothing but 238 HISTORY OF ROME gold and glory. But the position was untenable. The spread of anarchy, due to the prostration of the governments and her own jealous methods of dismemberment as much as to the natural decay of society and the greed of despots, broke down the system of protectorates, while her own appetite came with the eating. The client-states were neither one thing nor the other. Actors in a burlesque of liberty seriously meant, they wasted their last energies in idle debates and idler struggles, dynastic feuds and pigmy politics. Their very feebleness made a tyrant of their pro- tector, who neither suffered freedom nor enforced authority. In- cessant commissions reported to a government whose utterances were neither consistent nor peremptory. The tribes of Lilliput could venture to ignore their master, neglect his orders, and pro- voke destruction. Meanwhile the frontiers of civilisation were exposed, denuded of their natural guardians, and new forces were being consolidated beyond the Roman horizon, in Parthia, Pontus, and Armenia, against which Rome's enfeebled clients would prove but sorry "buffers." The position was not realised, and this was due partly to a conflict of ideas at Rome, partly to a natural and laudable hesitation in undertaking such vast responsibilities, partly to lack of insight. Such problems are often less clear to con- temporaries than to philosophic historians, while the difficulties of confronting them loom larger to the eyes of statesmen who have to deal with them. Italy: (i) The Gauls — In Italy the Gauls displayed a belated energy when the work of punishment and frontier extension was resumed as the natural sequence of Hannibal's failure. The Boii, who, lying between Italy and the Po, behind the Roman advanced posts, were the first to be menaced, were encouraged by a slight success to break out in open rebellion (200 B.C.) under Hamilcar, an officerofMago, and were supported by the Insubres and Cenomani. They sacked Placentia and beset Cremona, thus delaying to some extent the war with IMacedon ; but ere the year was out the Cartha- ginian had fallen and Cremona was relieved. The struggle dragged on, till the final reduction of the Boii in 191 B.C., with varying fortune, severe defeats being balanced by still more bloody victories, which witness to the mendacity of Roman consuls and the " multiplying eye" of family chroniclers. In 197 B.C. the Insubres, victorious in the previous year, were deserted on the field by the Cenomani, and suffered a crushing defeat by the river Mincius. The fall of Comum (196 B.C.), captured by M. Claudius Marcellus, sealed their sub- mission. The Insubres and Cenomani were left free from triljute. ITALIAN WARS 239 in the enjoyment of their cantonal organisation, but for ever excluded from the Roman franchise. They were to serve as bul- warks against the inroads of their Transalpine brethren. The effect of these successes was seen in the humble attitude of the Helvetii beyond. The rapid Latinisation of the Transpadane district, followed by increasing population and prosperity, carried Roman influence to the Alps. The isolated Boii offered, however, a desperate resistance to the obviously impending occupation of their territory, but after the disasters incident to semi-savage warfare, their strength was broken (191 B.C.), the almost annihilated tribe ceded half its lands, and in the end vanished from Italian soil. The existing fortresses, reorganised in 198 B.C., were supple- mented by fresh foundations, as the municipal system was gradu- ally carried to the Po. Potentia and Pisaurum (184 B.C.), Bononia (Latin) (189 B.C.), Mutina and Parma (183 B.C.), guarded the new settlements, and communications were secured by the Via Emilia (187 B.C.) from Ariminum to Placentia, and the new Via Flaminia from Arretium to Bononia. (2) The Ligurians, Istrians, &c. — To clear the coast-route to Spain and secure the lowland towns, Rome had now to reduce the Ligurians, who had been driven by the advancing Celts into the heights that girdle the Gulf of Genoa from Marseilles to the Arno. These freebooting shepherds in their mountain fastnesses, during more than twenty years of guerrilla warfare, read some severe lessons to the incompetent leaders in the series of casual campaigns (197-173, 166 B.C., &c.). In 177 B.C. the burgess-colony of Luna (Spezzia) was founded to check their raids, and to serve as a port of embarkation for the West. Several thousands of the tribesmen had been already transplanted to repeople Samnium. By 176 B.C. the land was clear between the Arno and the Po, though the western clans still afforded materials for fictitious triumphs. In 154 B.C. Opimius was able, in defence of Massilia, to win the first Roman victory in Transalpine Gaul. Meanwhile the foundation of Aquileia, the last Latin colony in Italy, built to command the eastern passes and to control the Northern Adriatic, had led to a somewhat inglorious two years' campaign against the Istrians (178-177 B.C.). In 156 B.C. the reduction of the predatory Dal- matians completed the pacification of that seaboard. In Sardinia and Corsica the unconquered highlanders of the interior harassed the Roman fringe with ceaseless raids till the vigorous action of Tiberius Gracchus made "cheap Sardinians" a drug in the market (177 B.C.). 240 HISTORY OF ROME Spain. — The two Spains were as yet the only transmarine provinces of Rome. Of these, tlie Nortliern or Hitlier .Sjjain — the north-eastern corner — incUided the modern Arragon and Catalonia, while Farther .Spain covered the south and south-east, Andalusia, Murcia, and Valencia ; i.e., the old territory of Carthage. Here the (ireek and Punic towns adhered to Rome, and, amid the strange mixture of peoples and crossing of civilisations, some ground had been prepared, especially among the more cultured and wealthy Turdetani, for the rapid growth of Roman feelings and ideas. And this was already prefigured and the way opened by the success of Scipio's veteran settlement at Italica, on the Bcetis. Hitherto just the narrow and unbroken fringe of coast-land in that compact and little-known peninsula had been dotted by the factories of the Phoenician or the colonies of the Creek. Only the arms and policy of the Barcids had penetrated the wild and dangerous table-land. West and north and centre alike were filled with hardy barbarians, hungry for plunder and glory, simple, restless, chivalrous. These freebooters and guerrilleros were dangerous enough in battle, with their heavy column and short sharp swords, and died heroically behind their strong walls ; but their hasty levies, loose in combination and lacking in discipline, were apt to melt away like a Highland army of Montrose. The Roman government, as successor to Carthage, had now to determine its wavering frontier, to round off its pos- sessions by the reduction of the two Castiles (Celtiberia), and to repress the incursions of the tribes of Portugal and of the yet unvisited north. Character of the Spanish Wars. — Rome had retained Spain, for military and commercial reasons, in spite of the cost, the distance, and the dislike to the sea and the service, which rose occasionally to mutiny, in spite even of the fact that the maintenance of a standing garrison of experienced troops led directly to a state of things subversive of her miHtary and political system. Prolonga- tion of sei-vice, and the use of volunteers, veterans and mercenaries, favoured the rise of a professional army. The disastrous and fatiguing campaigns were a constant drain on Italy. The frequent prorogation and the independence of the commands reacted on the character of the officers. The uncertain nature of the warfare, the scantiness of the booty, and the unsatisfied greed of ever- changing officers, helped to give a stamp of treachery, avarice, and violence to the Spanish struggle ; and here, too, the system of annual rehefs was especially ruinous. For the actual fighting we have, as IV A /^S IN SPAIN 241 usual, no trustworthy authorities. The vagueness of the geography and ethnography assists the family annalist to confuse our accounts. A want of continuity and the ever-capricious character of irregular warfare adds to the already abundant difficulties of military opera- tions in this country. A sudden tide of war as suddenly ebbs, leaving nothing behind but the bones of a defeated legion. Sur- prises, stratagems, victories and defeats, succeed each other. In 195 B.C. M. Porcius Cato, as consul, began the whole task of subjugation afresh, starting from the port of Emporia;, but his UlMIUIV^'Lf. INPEIRATORDECRElvm VTEI'aVEI'HAST£N51VM.SERVE[ JNTVRRI'UA5CVTANA'HABITAR£NT J lEIBERErE5SENr'ACRVAA'0Pn(DV/AaV — ^ avOD'^ATEMPEiTATtPOJEDISENT JiJlTEM'P055/DEREHABEREaV£ IOVi*/P pVM'PoPLVJi-EMATVi-aVE F.0MAhJV5'VEHHTACT INCASTREIJ APXH'kfE^R UKCREK OF L. .flSMILIUS PAULLUS, TR/ETOR OF FURTHER SPAIN, REGULAT- ING THE POSITION OF A SPANISH CLIENT-COMMUNITY (180 B.C.). apparently thorough work had to be repeated again and again. Fighting went on in both provinces. There is the old series of defeats, regularly compensated by victories. We may well doubt the numbers of the towns taken and the men slain, but in the end Rome succeeded. The most permanent results were achieved by L. yEmilius Paullus(i89 B.C.), by C. Calpurnius over the Lusitanians (185 B.C.), by Q. Fulvius Flaccus over the Celtiberians (181 B.C.), and most notably by Ti. Sempronius Gracchus (179-178 B.C.), who by policy more than arms secured the fruits of conquest. Rome's Q 242 HISTORY OF ROME sovereignty was recognised and the rights of the communities secured by wise and equitable treaties. The chieftains were attracted to her service ; in the Spanish contingents she gained vakiable troops ; the tribesmen were settled in new towns. The name of Gracchus was gratefully remembered, and it was only the greed and cruelty of his successors which broke up a peace of thirty years, and prevented the natural extension of organised government over the divided tribes. As yet, Spain was treated with consideration ; the tributary communities paid fixed and moderate money taxes. Saguntum, Gades, and Tarraco became allies of the Roman people. It was the complaint of the Spaniards (171 B.C.) that gave the first impulse to the commission De Repetundis, and to protect them special decrees were passed. The intention of the government was good ; its arm was weak. Celtiberian War. — Trouble broke out again in 154 and 153 B.C., when the Belli and Titthi, refusing acquiescence in certain demands — a dispute in which each party relied on their version of the Gracchan arrangements and recent precedents — were attacked by the consul Q. Fulvius Nobilior. He allowed himself to be surprised among the mountains (153 B.C.), and in following up the victorious but retiring enemy towards Numantia was again de- feated. Ocilis also, with its magazines, surrendered. About the same time the Lusitanians (154 B.C.), under Punicus, severely de- feated the southern army, and, with the aid of the Vettones, inflicted on it a second defeat (153 B.C.) by the banks of the Tagus. Their further advance was checked by the praetor L. Mummius. The good results obtained in the north by the abler strategy and humaner methods of M. Marcellus (152- 151 B.C.), who induced the Arevaci, the Belli, and Titthi to submit, confirming a peace under the walls of Numantia, were disturbed by the grasping greed of L. Lucullus.^ Having treacherously attacked the peaceful and independent Vaccasi, by the massacre of the inhabitants of Cauca (near Segovia), after terms accepted, he closed the gates of other cities to his disappointed avarice. At Intercatia the starving invaders owed their supplies and a safe retreat to the pledged word of the military tribune y^milianus. The siege of Pallantia was raised, and the beaten and baffled general was pursued to the Douro. Thence he proceeded south to support his worthy colleague, Sulpicius Galba, who had been defeated by the Lusi- ^ He had been imprisoned with his colleague by the tribunes for severity in conscription, when the example of the younger Scipio alone produced the necessary supply of officers. VIRIA THUS 243 tanians. Next year this same Galba perfidiously massacred or enslaved 7000 surrendered and unsuspecting tribesmen (150 B.C.). Viriathus. — The revolted conscience of Rome yielded, in spite of Gate's protests, to the persuasions of rhetoric and the purse. Cialba evaded conviction, but from that massacre was kindled a "fiery war." Viriathus had escaped, to show himself, for the next ten years, a master of irregular fighting. Wily as brave, the low- descended, homely prince, with his fine figure, enduring frame, and temperate habits, fired by language and example his de- spondent countrymen, and beat, bafifled, and broke his blind and clumsy opponents. His is the one figure that attracts our sympathy in these sordid and squalid campaigns. In 149 B.C. he saved the surrounded and despairing Lusitanians from destruc- tion, held an army in check for two days with 1000 horse, trapped, defeated, and killed Vetilius, and scattered the allies who came to the Romans' rescue. In the three succeeding years three Roman generals succumbed. Legion after legion vanished in the defiles of the mountains, whose tops were crowned with trophies of Roman arms. At last (146 B.C.) the Senate, free from the pressure of the African and Macedonian wars, despatched Scipio's brother, Q. Fabius Maximus, with two legions to the Farther pro- vince, supported by C. Lselius in Hither Spain. The raw levies and demoralised veterans distinctly failed, till a stricter discipline enabled Fabius to gain the upper hand (144 B.C.). But no real impression was made. His successor, Quinctius, after repeated disasters, shut himself up in Corduba, leaving Viriathus to ravage the southern districts. Fabius' brother by adoption, Servilianus, arriving with fresh forces, experienced the capricious character of Spanish fighting. He penetrated Lusitania, but after some hard- won successes, marked by extreme cruelty, he was defeated (141 B.C.) before Erisane, cut off, and compelled to treat. The barbarian hero of this new Caudine Forks made no reprisals. Peace was confirmed, Rome recognising the independence of Lusitania under its chosen chief. Viriathus had mistaken his enemies. Secretly supported by the indignant Senate, Servilianus' brother and suc- cessor, Q. Servilius C^epio (140 B.C.), by intrigue and perfidy forced on the war. Viriathus evaded a conflict, and in 1 39 B.C., pressed on both sides, Popillius Lt^nas co-operating from the north, sued for peace. A series of harsh orders were executed by the natives, till finally their arms were demanded. The fate of Carthage was still fresh in men's minds, but the refusal it prompted came too late. Cfepio had suborned the chieftain's nearest friends, and Viriathus was 244 HISTORY OF ROME stabbed in his bed. His successor, Tautamus, proved unequal to the task, and Lusitania was disarmed. The pacification of the country was completed by D. Junius Brutus (138 and 137 B.C.), and the iristc cf contiuncliosuDi bclliim came to a close. Numantia. — A yet more disgraceful war had arisen in the Hither province. Viriathus' success had roused the Celtiberian tribes, especially the Arevaci, in their chief towns of Termantia and Numantia. The latter (Guarray, on the Upper Douro), strong both by art and nature, perched on its fortified precipices, girdled by two rivers, with its one passage to the plain blocked by mounds and trenches, held at bay for twelve years the gigantic resources of Rome. It was strong in its position and its distance, but it was stronger still in the incapacity of Roman generals. By 142 B.C., indeed, Q. Cciscilius Metellus Macedonicus had re- duced the Celtiberians except the two towns, which a demand for disarmament had at the last moment thrown back into obstinate resistance. But his successor, Q. Pompeius, a noviis /loiiio,^ with an army four times the fighting population of the city, was twice defeated and compelled to negotiate. Termantia then came in ; but the Numantine peace, made on moderate conditions, was shamelessly disowned by the wretched lawyer on his successor's arrival, and the Senate adopted his action. Leenas resumed the siege, and was in turn routed (138 B.C.). But the crowning disgrace befell C. Hostilius Mancinus(i37 B.C.) and his demoralised mob of insubordinate "men with swords." A disgraceful panic ended in a shameful capitulation. That even this was permitted was due alone to respect for the word of Ti. Gracchus, the noble son of an upright father, and the collective oath of the staff. Numantia un- wisely took no hostages, and the ecjuitable treaty was repudiated by the Senate. Mancinus, the scapegoat of the army, was delivered to the enemy, stripped and chained, and shivered a whole day in his shirt before the closed gates of the indignant town. The disaster and the farce alike was a still more shabby version of the affair of Caudium. Mancinus' colleague, Lepidus, keeping his hand in by an unprovoked attack on the Vaccaei, was half destroyed as he retreated from Pallantia (136 B.C.). Scipio ^milianus. — At last, in 134 B.C., Rome's only general, y'Emilianus, the conqueror of Carthage, was elected consul for the second time, for this special service, before the lapse of the proper interval. Stingily supplied by the Senate, he strengthened his army 1 i.e., the first of his family to obtain curule office. NUMANTIA 245 with allied troops, and protected his person by a guard, or cohorspra- ioria of 500 friends and clients. Under his command met Jugurtha and Gaius Marius. He purged the camp of its train of courtesans, sutlers, and soothsayers, of its luxurious furniture and baggage- train. A course of merciless drilling, marching, and trenching was seasoned with bitter contempt. Finally, with 60,000 men against 8000, fighting his battles with the spade against an enemy ready with the sword, he drew a double line of circumvallation more than five miles long, according to the strictest science, round the doomed city. The Douro was blocked by a boom, and a gallant effort at relief was bloodily thwarted. Only in the last extremity the gan-ison surrendered (133 B.C.), as "brave men to the mercy of the brave.'' The big battalions had won by famine. Those who had not perished by their own hand were sold as slaves, and the city was razed. All resistance was now broken, and this, added to the suc- cesses of the able and generous Decimus Brutus, who had settled Lusitania, founded Valentia (138 B.C.), and crushed the Gallasci (136 B.C.), completed the subjugation of Spain. No doubt in the Asturian mountains work was left for Augustus and Agrippa, while brigand- age and guerrilla fighting went on, but there was no more national war in Spain. In its i-eorganisation by Scipio and the Senate's com- mission the lines laid down by Gracchus were followed. The grow- ing prosperity of the land was further secured when Q. Metellus Baliaricus suppressed piracy in the Baliaric Islands (123 B.C.). Roman culture took deep root ; commerce and agriculture flour- ished in the best administered of the Roman provinces. CHAPTER XXIV FIFTY YEARS OF CONQUEST AFRICA B.C. A.U.C. Massinissa and Carthage— Siege of Carthage . 149-146 605-608 Scipio ^milianus— Province of Africa .... 146 608 Carthag-e and Massinissa. — The policy of Rome in Africa was to harass Carthage, while maintaining a rough balance of power. The settlement of 201 B.C. had left, in the vagueness of the clause secur- ing the territorial rights of Numidia, especially as interpreted by the 4) O "> M Z I, o E " " S V 3^H 8 W ii 3 rt o o <; s H < ge scarcely ome inadeq into the se is difficult t H « ^S-- < ■S^§c '/) n J" M n -^ rt.la 3 >-j= c o- m-- o „ c< ours mus ;s ru e of < i he Harb e city— nd jettie narrativ i < t of t ,of th iers a urate o hours of pi inacc ^^j U5 z; m^ < .2|S^ .ti S >,« K the trad aps, the ructed b rmation, (U X^ ■" O -^ ^ '1^'ri rt ■" ^ C 3 a 0-- ,/^ IJ ■" S u u c i\n 'A \ u M tu ^C 3 - c.E O ^'Sss ^•x-2 .- u .iS ;areful ;, now which But % orr's c pond.' lefor asins. wX\ jimffN ■o s £ c \u 4; y. ex C3 u \V\ c /V"; IS CARTHAGE AND AfASS/N/SSA 247 nervous partiality of the Senate, and in the prohibition of war with Rome's alhes, two powerful weapons for the vindictive and am- bitious Massinissa. Under the conduct of Hannibal the city had rapidly recovered. The finances had been reorganised and the go\'ernment reformed in a democratic sense ; the indemnity was being discharged as fast as Rome would permit, and Hannibal himself was looking hopefully to the East, when, in 195 B.C., on the eve of the war with Antiochus, he was denounced by the oligarchs and Roman spies and his surrender demanded. The sufitete fled ; his house was razed, his goods confiscated, and in the ferment of parties the Romanising oligarchs took the lead. But even now the unjust judges at Rome encouraged the Numidian king's encroach- ments. The patient Phrenicians, loyal to their engagements, what- ever the continual rumours to the contrary, appealed regularly to the suzerain, only to receive the visits of commissions, who discussed, reported, adjourned, and carried back stories of the imperishable wealth of the populous and prosperous city. The fertile districts of the Emporia, on the Lesser Syrtis, were already gone, and Carthage had actually paid a large indemnity to the aggressor, when, after an interval of apparent peace, fresh robberies produced fresh com- plaints, and the bitter cry for justice or downright subjection drew some little succour. For the times were still critical, and Massi- nissa had grown too strong. On the ruins of Syphax's nomad state he had founded a real kingdom. With the favour of Rome, he had thrown a girdle of annexation round Carthage, his destined capital, from the borders of Mauretania to the sands of Cyrene. He had filled his treasury, settled his people, and formed an army. He was a true king and tried soldier, tough and unscrupulous, as temperate and enduring as he was supple and cunning, who lived strongly every hour of his ninety years. He had created a capital at Cirta, had fostered a mingled Libyan and Punic civilisa- tion destined to a vigorous life, and founded a nation. He had now to learn, in spite of all his help in the Spanish and Eastern wars, of all his self-abasing flattery, that the day of vassal king- doms was over. A wiser policy would have kept the balance, as Hiero had done at Syracuse, between the rival states of Rome and Carthage. Cato and Carthage. — In 157 B.C. the commission under M. Por- cius Cato, which, after long delay, came to deal with the seizure by Numidia of Tusca and the plains by the Bagradas, left the question undecided, but brought back the settled conviction that closed each speech of the narrow-minded censor with the phrase, " Censeu 248 HISTORY OF ROME clelendam esse Carthaginem." Her docks and shipping, her fair gardens and crowded streets, her full treasurj' and arsenals, con- demned her. In vain Scipio Nasica and the minority protested. The annexationists prevailed, supported as they were by the in- fluence of commercial jealousy, of the old natural and nervous hatred, and of the zeal, eloquence, and enthusiasm of the aged and powerful Cato. Crippled, insulted, robbed, Carthage was still a terror to Rome, an eyesore to her commerce. The casus belli was not far to seek. In a struggle of factions the national democrats had banished some partisans of Numidia, and refused their re- instatement at the cost of war and in spite of the persuasions or commands of Rome. In 151 P..C. the vain and corpulent Hasdrubal had been thoroughly beaten by Massinissa under the eyes of yEmilianus, sent to Africa to get elephants for the Spanish amiy. The peace Scipio mediated broke down. The Punic troops surrendered, were disarmed and massacred. Now that the hard work was done, Rome, who had watched with secret pleasure her allies cut each other's throats, pushed aside her disappointed agent and appeared as principal. Breach with Carthage. — The treaty had been broken, an ally attacked, Rome's demand for disarmament neglected, her legates even roughly handled — at least such was the plea — and the enemy had already fallen. She prepared for war, and Utica, at odds with Carthage, at once surrendered, affording Rome a strong and convenient base. In vain Carthage condemned her leaders to death and offered every satisfaction. In 149 B.C. Manilius and Censorinus, with an unusually powerful force, left Lilyb^eum with secret orders. Before they left, the Punic plenipotentiaries had made an absolute submission. It was accepted, and they were guaranteed, on condition of giving up 300 hostages and " obeying such further commands as should be imposed by the consuls," their liberty, laws, territory, all but the city itself. The ominous conditions and equally ominous omission were marked, but not realised. Though the hostages were sent, the army sailed, and on its arrival at Utica the master-stroke of perfidy was played. The "further orders" were issued one by one. At last, when walls were stripped, arms delivered, ships surrendered, came the fatal command to destroy the city and settle ten miles from the beloved sea. It was a sentence of death. The ancient feeling for hearth and home, the gods and the dead, for the sacred city and its hallowed soil, for their harbours and their seas, fed by CARTHAGE and its Nfighbourliood. ^cjT^^fc^ H/^n ill- Jow 'Spaka ^M"'" -j::^^^ . '"^^mre. \iCtithera '^ a GREECE 20 40 60 80 100 m 'ikhodus P" H'aikey Cr BoittaU sc hostage and favourite of Rome. Throuyh him Flamininus and the Senate worked to create a Roman party in Macedon, but the favour of Rome was fatal to the unconscious victim. He fell by the intrigues of Perseus, the elder son by an unequal marriage, and destined heir, who saw in him a dangerous rival. Unable to recall the dead or retrieve the past, defrauded of the fruit of PERSEUS 275 his labours, the victim of his own schemes and passions, the king died of a broken heart (179 B.C.), leaving to the detected but un- punished Perseus the inheritance of revenge. Perseus. — Perseus, a " fine figure of a man," schooled by adversity, the pride of a loyal and warlike nation, the hope of Hellenic patriots, was sober, subtle, and persevering, with few passions and fewer scruples, with many kingly qualities, but, like Conacher in the "Fair Maid of Perth," his composition was crossed with a strain of weakness, narrowness, even cowardice. Penny-wise and pound-foolish, strong in preparation, weak in action, he was incapable of wise daring and generous expenditure. He lacked that rapid decision and unfaltering resolve that could alone have borne his enterprise to success. The resources of Macedon had been nursed for twenty-six years ; his treasury and magazines were full ; his army might amount, all told, to over 40,000 trained men. The administration had profited by the lessons of the last war. His policy was conciliatory, his rule un- questioned. But he had not the fortresses and influence of his father ; the phalanx had lost some of its prestige ; Rome's position in Greece was stronger. Abroad it was more difficult to win sup- port. His marriage alliances with Syria and Bithynia promised as little as the probably fabulous intrigues of Carthage or hopes from Samnium. Nothing had come of his reported attempt to launch a horde of barbarians on Italy, through the passes of the TKTKADKACUM OF PERSEUS. Eastern Alps, but the founding of the fortress of Aquileia and the destruction of the invading Bastarna^ in their retreat from Dardania. The chief of the Odrysians, the " brave and gentle Cotys," was a useful ally ; in Ualmatia he secured the drunkard 276 HISTORY OF ROME Genthius, prince of Scodra. Tlic eyes of dieccc, moreover, were turning to Macedon. A native at least was better than a bar- barian hegemony, and the action of Roman partisans irritated popular feeling. Eumenes was boycotted as a traitor, his gifts rejected, and his statues dishonoured. Several even of his subject cities, and politic Rhodes itself, recognised by striking demonstra- tions the growing power of Perseus. Except Peloponnesus, Greece was ripe for revolution, and Perseus made his market of the pre- valent bankruptcy and socialism. His decrees of amnesty, his ofifers of sympathy, called to his banner the debtors, criminals, and exiles of Hellas. The banner of Macedon was the banner of plunder and patriotism, of liberty and revolution. Rupture with Rome. — Rome was not without a casus belli, the encroachment on an ally or breach of treaty, nor was she slow to see the danger to her influence in Greece. The flame was fed by the assiduous complaints of Eumenes, who in 172 B.C. persuaded the Senate, in spite of Perseus' remonstrances, to prepare secretly for war. Nor was its temper softened by the firm language of the king's envoy. The rupture, imminent in 173 B.C., was however postponed. Senate and consul were still wrangling over the insubordinate action of M. Popillius Ltenas in the Ligurian war, and the conflict of powers resulted in a complete deadlock. The struggle between traditional authority and the ill-controlled executive ended in the submission of the acting consul and his rebellious brother. Perseus took no advantage of this, although at the close of 172 B.C., by denouncing the treaty of Cynoscephalas and claiming equal treatment, in answer to an imperious message from the Senate, he had made war inevitable. He suffered himself to be hood- winked by Q. Marcius Philippus with a pretence of negotiation, while Rome prepared her forces and undermined his popularity in the East. The fruits of immediate action were lost. Lyciscus secured ^tolia for Rome, the Achaean League garrisoned Chal- cis, while advanced corps occupied the route from Apollonia to Larissa. Success of Perseus. — The king, still hoping for peace or adhering stubbornly to the defensive, shut himself up within his mountains. The day for which he had sharpened the sword so long found him dallying with the scabbard. His allies proved a broken reed ; Rhodes, Syria, Bithynia, Byzantium, stood neutral or acted for Rome. For a time the blunders of the enemy saved him. In 171 B.C. P. Licinius Crassus landed in Greece. Besides the strong allied fleet under C. Lucretius, operating from Chalcis, he THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR 277 controlled a force of nearly 50,000 Italians and Greeks. Leav- ing a large reserve in lUyria, and advancing, undisturbed by the dispirited Perseus, to Larissa, he was able to isolate the king and get touch with his fleet and his Greek supporters. Here he re- mained inactive till Perseus, having fortified the passes of Tempe, moved up to observe him from the slopes of Ossa. The consul was provoked, harassed, drawn out, and finally beaten with loss in a brilliant cavalry engagement at Callicinus, and retired behind the Peneius. But instead of pressing the success and reaping the fruits of Greek enthusiasm, Perseus sue'd for peace, which was at once refused. After a second and indecisive encounter at Phalanna he evacuated Thessaly, and proceeded, with the aid of Cotys, to clear his northern and western frontier, while the Romans leisurely secured their position in Thessaly and Boeotia, where the bungling and brutal colleagues, Lucretius and Crassus, by lax discipline and shameless outrage on friend and foe alike, demoralised their troops and kindled an outburst of fierce indig- nation. Epirus went over to Perseus. The failures of Hostilius in restoring discipline and penetrating Macedon, and the scandalous cruelty and incompetence of the admiral Hortensius in the following year, branded on the Roman name a deeper stamp of military and moral corruption. Licensed rubbery, libertinage, and free furlough had rotted the morale of the army — men and officers alike. The chronicle of plunder and blunder was crowned by the repeated disasters of Appius Claudius and the army of communication in lllyria. The ill-informed Senate attempted to interfere, and an admiral was condemned, but the allies gained little, and Perseus securely repelled attacks, and continued his work in the north and west. A lack of dash and energy marked the whole war on both sides ; it was a war of mistakes and worse. Rome had lost all, even honour ; the king had failed to use his chance. The consul of 169 B.C., Q. Marcius Philippus, hero of a disaster in a Ligurian ambush, shrewder diplomatist than soldier, succeeded by sheer luck and impudence, helped by the negligence of an outpost, in masking the strong forts of Tempe, turning the fourfold barrier by a flank march over mountain paths, and piercing the rocky wall of Macedon, only to find himself, like Cromwell at Dunbar, jammed in on a narrow plain between the enemy, the mountain, and the sea, and depen- dent on a still invisible fleet. The easy prey was rescued by the panic-stricken retreat of Perseus from his impregnable lines at Dium, closing the coast- road, along which alone could Macedon 278 HrSTORY OF ROME be safely entered with the co-operation of a fleet, and within striking distance of the capital and Pella. But Philippus' ad- vance was checked by failing supplies, and he was only saved once more from annihilation in his retreat by the timely fall of the forts and magazines of Tempe in his rear. Perseus still blocked the way along the Elpius, and the net result of the year's work was the capture of the gates of Macedon. The king, while he left no stone vmturned to end the war, used his improved position to influence surrounding states. Genthius he was able to involve in strife ; he negotiated secretly with Syria, Bithynia, and Rhodes ; he hoped to obtain the mediation, or at least the benevolent neutrality, of Eumenes. But Syria had her Egyptian policy ; mutual distrust and personal avarice shattered his dealings with Eumenes ; Rhodes attempted intervention too late for her own safety. The services of a Gallic horde he de- clined as dangerous and burdensome ; from Greece came no efifectiv^e help. .^milius Paullus. — At length, in 168 B.C., public feeling rose. The Western army had been reduced to inaction, the fleet paralysed by desertion and disease ; the consul was marking time in his pre- carious position ; Macedon was intact. L. Aunilius Paullus, father of .^milianus, son of the general of Cannae, a man in the sixties, twice consul, a strict old-fashioned officer, with a creditable record in Spain and Liguria, poor, upright, noble, with real modern refinement to blend with his old Roman virtues, arrived with strong resolves and overwhelming resources. The Illyrian corsairs vanished from the seas ; the praetor Anicius defeated Genthius and took his capital in thirty days. The army was rapidly reorganised, and the hopes and proposed mediation of the Greek states discon- certed and forestalled by the still more rapid collapse of Macedon. Occupying attention with a feint in front, he turned the line of the Elpius by a flank march through the pass of Pythium (or Gythium), compelling a retreat on Pydna. Here, on the 22nd of June 168 B.C., after a night marked by a lunar eclipse, foretold, as was said, by a Roman officer, a skirmish of watering-parties brought on the unexpected battle which was to decide the fate of Greece, and finally settle on Rome the supremacy of the world. Battle of Pydna : Fall of Perseus. — Scarcely were the Romans formed in line when, out of the confusion of the fight in front, the phalanx burst upon them with its bristling forest of spears, striking awe into the heart of the veteran consul. In vain the brave Paelignian cohort impaled their bodies on the pikes. The whole BATTLE OF FY DMA 279 line shrank from that iron wall. There was hesitation, and finally retreat. The impending rout was changed to victory by the skill of the general, the tactical superiority of the maniple, and the cool head and brave hand of the Roman soldier. Renouncing resist- ance front to front, and profiting by the dislocation in the phalanx caused by the rapid advance and rush of battle, Paullus broke up his fighting line and thrust his maniples and cohorts into the gaps and intervals of its flanks and rear, avoiding its collective force and splitting It into its weaker elements. Well in hand and trained to mdependent action in open order, the legionary with his short sword dealt havoc in the shattered mass. The cavalry that should have covered the flanks fled, with their king to lead them. The phalanx as a fighting machine died, as it was born, in Macedon, whose power was broken with the force that made it. Macedon sub- mitted within two days, Perseus, hunted down and forsaken, fell, with his treasures, into the hands of Rome, to point the moralisings and adorn the triumph of the consul. His rapid fall startled the Hellenic East. With the doubtful stigma of cruelty and cowardice, and the sure reproach of avarice and irresolution, he may be dis- missed to end his days at Alba Fucens, where his son, the heir of Macedon, earned his living as a clerk. Macedon and Greece. — The land was settled by the generous Roman, aided by the usual commission of ten. Rome was once more in a dilemma. Unwilling to overload the structure of the state, anxious to keep the forms and spirit of the Republic, warned as she was by example of the clangers of conceding that free hand to her officers which it was almost impossible to refuse, without the genius or the impulse to create new forms of govern- ment to meet the novel situation, she was even more unwilling to leave a chance of the restoration of a dangerous power. She tried to evade her responsibility, and by a temporary expedient to stem the flowing tide of annexation. At the Congress of Amphi- polis (167 B.C.) Macedon was declared free ; the national kingship and national army were abolished ; except for a few frontier guards in the north, the country was disarmed. The compact state was split into four republics, isolated by restrictions on commerce, on reciprocal land-holding, and intermarriage ; local government was thrown into the hands of the nobles. Otherwise the old institutions were retained ; a tribute was imposed, as the pricci- of the pro tectorate — i.e., half the former land-tax, assessed on the new commonwealths, a fixed sum of 100 talents. For a time the gold and silver mines were closed, and the royal domains were kept 28o HrSTORY OF ROME by Rome. Tliis insidious constitution was guaranteed by the de- portation of the civil and military officers of the crown to Italy. But the date of independence was out for more than Macedon. Not only was Illyria broken up by a similar scheme, its fleet confiscated, and the land divided into three "free" states, paying tribute — a real boon to commerce — but the subservience of the independent states was everywhere, by fair means or foul, assured. In each the Roman partisans, Lyciscus, Callicrates, Charops, and their like, at least unpunished by Rome, carried on a campaign of informations, confiscations, and e.xecutions against the patriotic party. Those were more fortunate who were de- tained in Italy, escaping the reign of terror in Greece. Above looo Achasins, among whom was Polybius, together with the indepen- dent leaders in other districts, were selected for this purpose by a party commission, and all application for trial or release disregarded during at least sixteen years. It was a poor return for the loyal support of the Achaean government, whatever had been the out- bursts of childish irritation on the part of the people. Callicrates, the friend of Rome, was boycotted in the public baths and hissed by schoolboys in the street. A worse fate befell Epirus. By the orders of the Senate, to satisfy an ancient grudge, seventy of its towns were sacked and 150,000 souls enslaved. ^Etolia lost Amphipolis, Acarnania, and Leucas ; while Athens received Delos and Lemnos. Rhodes and Pergamum. —Rhodes, the old and favoured ally, paid the penalty for its independent attitude, and for the one mis- take in that consummate statesmanship which had hitherto secured her freedom of action and an honourable neutrality. Suffering in her commerce by the war and jealous of Pergamum, the pro-Mace- donian feeling of her people encouraged by Rome's mistakes, she had allowed herself to be lured by her own vanity and the artifices of Philippus into proposing, if not an armed intervention, at least a somewhat peremptory mediation. Rapidly as this outburst of Hellenism oozed away when Rome's weakness turned to strength, it was too late to avert the consequences. The Senate was not sorry for the chance, and the patriotic Rhodian leaders found that the civilised world was but the prison of Rome. Barely, by abject submission and the banishment orexecution of her chiefs, did Rhodes evade a declaration of war ; and when at last the cup of bitterness was full, and the Senate, to her humble petition, conceded an alliance, she had lost her valuable possessions on the mainland, while her commercial pre-eminence was ruined and her revenues ROME AND THE EAST 281 curtailed by trade restrictions and the establishment of the free port of Dclos. Similar suspicions of intrigue with Macedon, true or fictitious, had rankled in the Roman mind about their own creature and instrument, Pergamum. Eumenes soon found himself no longer necessary, was bowed out of Italy, and undermined at home. Pamphylia and Galatia were declared independent, the attacks of the Celts covertly encouraged. Of the spoil he received no share, while Rome listened eagerly to complaints of the hated upstart. But it was not easy to destroy the astute prince, and in vain Rome practised on theloyalty of his brother Attalus. The cringing Prusias of Bithynia, "being so contemptible, received a reward." Egypt and Syria — In 168 B.C. Rome practically extended her protectorate over Egypt by her abrupt intervention in the Syro- Egyptian war. The quarrel had risen over Coele-Syria and Palestine, which had been charged with the dowry of Cleopatra, the daughter of Antiochus the Great. On her death (173 B.C.) Egypt claimed the provinces, but Antiochus Epiphanes defeated the aggressor at Pelusium (171 B.C.). With his nephew, Ptolemy \'I. Philometor, in his hands, he renewed his project of conquest. In spite of the temporary success of the resistance at Alexandria under Ptolemy's younger brother Euergetes, surnamed Physcon (the pot- bellied), he once more lay before the town (168 B.C.), opposed by both brothers, when he was met by the Roman ambassador, C. Popilius Lasnas. Drawing with his vine staff a circle round the king, Lrenas demanded an answer to his ultimatum before Epiphanes stepped from the circle. The king obeyed and withdrew, and his obedience set the seal to Rome's mastery of the East. Position of Rome. — Zama, Cynoscephalte, Magnesia, and Pydna, left the Romans nothing to do but organise, pacify, and defend their dominions, to convert their sphere of influence into adminis- trative divisions, and so to construct a stable and compact empire. Amid the homage of kings and peoples, Paullus, the general of the transition, celebrated in solemn triumph the last great victory of the citizen army, typically due to the staying power of Rome and the sterling qualities of her troops. But the temper of those troops, surly at the loss of Macedonian plunder, reserved for the state by the honesty of Paullus, and the disgraceful management of the first campaign, were full of omens for the future. The citizen soldier was soon to become as rare as the citizen general. Nor is it here alone that the transition is seen. Not only does subtle diplomacy take the place of force, but there is a growing tendency abroad and at home to reduce friends to 282 HISTORY OF ROME dependents and dependents to subjects. The force of circum- stances, the methods of the conservatives themselves, played into the hands of the annexationists. It was the plain duty of Rome to put an end to the complicated and ruinous system of protec- torates. It was the plain duty of the Senate to set up where she had thrown down, to substitute standing garrisons for enfeebled militias, and a civil organisation for a chaos of authorities worse confounded by her own position as referee. She must recognise the duties as well as the rights of supremacy. In her attempt to secure an unassailable position she had been drawn on from victory to victory. There was no stable power but her own to maintain peace, keep the seas, and guard the frontier of civilisa- tion. Whatever the danger to her own form of go\ernment, the heiress of Carthage and Alexander must take up her inheritance, the liabilities as well as the assets. Revolt of Macedon suppressed — Some steps in the new direc- tion we have already traced. Nor was it long before the unworkable arrangements in Greece collapsed. Nineteen years after Pydna (149 B.C.) a pretender appeared in Macedon. His name was Andris- cus, the son of a fuller of Adramyttium, and he personated Philip, son of Perseus and the Syrian Laodice, who had died a prisoner in Italy. His pretended uncle, Demetrius Soter, king of Syria, had sent the Mysian Warbeck in chains to Rome. He had escaped once and again from custody by the contemptuous negligence of the Senate, and now, with some support from Teres of Thrace, and even the Byzantines, favoured by the prevailing confusion and irritation, he invaded Macedon, routed the local militia, drew to his standard the malcontent loyalists, defeated a praetor, and recovered Thessaly. The rebellion, for which Rome and her com- missions were directly responsible, was suppressed with energy. Q. Caecilius Metellus, with a strong army and the fleet of Per- gamum, crushed and captured the impostor, and thereby relieved a critical year (148 B.C.) of one source of anxiety. The blunder was not repeated ; Macedon became a province, including Epirus, the Ionian Islands, and the ports of Apollonia and Epidamnus, with the general protectorate of Greece. The arrangements of Paullus were otherwise retained. Local institutions remained, as usual, fairly intact. For the defence of the North and East Rome had now to answer. Her work was inefficiently done, and continued inadequate till the era of Augustus ; but to secure communications the \'ia Egnatia was constructed, from Dyrrhachium and Apol- lonia to Thessalonica, and later to the Hebrus. There was one AFFJ/KS OF GKEECF 283 last struggle in 142 B.C., when the pseudo- Alexander was crushed by the qu;Estor Tremellius. Greece and Rome. — As the reign of terror passed and the tools of Rome vanished one by one from the stage of politics, some measure of peace had returned to Hellas. But deeper sores re- mained ; social democracy, the fruit of wild theory and wilder revolutions, was rampant in thought and act. Public and private bankruptcy, debt, brigandage, depopulation, marked the ruin of the country. There was war between rich and poor, faction and faction, city and city. Marriage was neglected, property insecure. Peloponnesus had become the recruiting ground of the mercenary soldier. The foul story of the plunder of Oropus by indigent Athens (156 B.C.) blots the page of historj'. To apologise for national burglary and avert its heavy penalty came the leaders of philo- sophy, Carneades, Diogenes, jmd Critolaus, tickling with sophistries the unpractised ears of Rome, and kindling the indignant fears of Cato for the morality of his countrymen. The subservience of Callicrates and his party had preserved the integrity and independence of the Acha?an League. Exhaustion and the lack of leaders secured a seeming acquiescence, in spite of latent discontent exasperated by the detention of the exiles. At length, in 151-150B.C., the Senate conceded this point to the prayer of Polybius, the friend and instructor of the Scipionic circle, and the impatient appeal of Cato to " waste no more time in debating whether some old Greek dotards should be buried by Italian or Achaean undertakers." In answer to a second petition for the restoration of their lost rights, Cato advised Ulysses not to return to the Cyclops' cave to get his cap and belt. Return of the Greek Exiles.— But the new policy was as little calculated to ensure peace and a union of hearts as the old. Rome understood neither the qualities nor the defects of her Greek clients ; nor did she even attempt patiently to master the problem — almost insoluble by the wit of man — of reconciling her own ends with a stable Achaean Home Rule. The exiles of seventeen years — a wretched remnant — with their unsatisfied claims and their hatred of Rome, were a danger to the state. One of these restored hostages, Dia^us, a violent and dishonest man. President in 149 B.C., raised a storm of patriotism to conceal his share in a dirty job. His attack on the privileges guaranteed to Sparta as a member of the League was a demonstration against Rome. Sparta appealed to the Senate ; its ambiguous answers were sedulously perverted by both parties. At last the Acha?ans, disregarding express protests, 284 HISTORY OF ROME and relying- on Rome's embarrassment in Africa, her tried com- plaisance, and their own recent services in Macedon, urged on the struggle, invaded Sparta (148 n.c), and gained a decisive victory under Damocritus. The Achaean League force on War. — Next year L. Aurelius Orestes met the Diet at Corinth. He demanded the renunciation of Corinth, Argos, Sparta, and the most recent acquisitions of the League. Its extension had been only reluctantly allowed. . It had TEMPLE AND ACROPOLIS, CORINTH. become a nuisance, and the Romans had no further use for it. The demand was a sentence of extinction, brutal, but not wholly unde- served, and it raised a tempest of indignation, which scarcely spared the persons of the ambassadors, and fell heavily on the Spartan residents in Corinth. The Senate, however, whether from policy or lingering respect for the last relics of Greek freedom, was content to despatch Sext. Julius C;esar (147 B.C.) to remonstrate with the Diet at yEgium, His attempts at conciliation were baffled by the THE FALL OF CORINTH 285 folly of the incapable demagogue Critolaus {strategies, 147-146 B.C.), who, inferring Rome's weakness from her mildness, frustrated the conference arranged at Tegea, insulted the Roman embassy, and stumped the country to preach a sacred war. He sought supplies by an attack on capital and a suspension of cash payments. The envoys of Metellus were hissed from the theatre at Corinth ; the mob of the capital, controlling the assembly, intimidated the moderates and cheered the idle vapourings of their leader. War was declared with Sparta, and Rome requested to keep hands off. She was friend, not mistress. Metellus and Critolaus. — With some support from Thebes and Chalcis, Critolaus marched upon Heraclea under Oeta, which had seceded in obedience to Rome ; but on the advance of Metellus from Macedon, the Achaeans retreated precipitately into Locris, abandoning even ThermopyljE. They were routed at Scarpheia, their supports cut to pieces, the sorry remnant vanishing over the isthmus. Metellus, anxious to end the business, acted with moderation, even mercy, but the criminal obstinacy of Dijeus dragged on the war. By sheer terrorism, by the liberation of slaves and forced contributions, supported by the infuriated rabble, he collected forces, stamped out opposition, and hurried his country to ruin, amid mingled madness and dismay. Mummius and the Fall of Corinth. — The Achaean vanguard had already slunk from Megara before Metellus, when Mummius, a 7J0VIIS /lo/iio, an upright, good-natured ignoramus, of little wealth or personal distinction, but not unpopular with the conquered Greeks, arri\ed, and greedily accepting battle, scattered their feeble forces to the wind. Deserted Corinth, left open to the incredulous consul, was given over to plunder, its remaining inhabitants killed or sold, its buildings razed, its site cursed by the express order of the Senate. Its land was confiscated, together with some tracts in Euboea and Boeotia, as ager publicits. Its place was taken by Argos, the Roman com- mercial headquarters, and Delos, the centre of the transport traffic of the East. Diaeus fell by his own hand, while rude legionaries played dice on the masterpieces of painting preserved to adorn the towns of Italy and the temples of Greece. To ensure their safe transport, Mummius provided that any lost treasure should be replaced by one of equal value ! Settlement of Achaia : Polybius. — Thebes and Chalcis were reduced to villages and the leaders punished. On the whole, the conqueror showed striking moderation and still more striking 286 HISTORY OF ROME rectitude. The statesman and historian I'olybius was actively employed in arranj^inj^ the new system, and was able to improve materially the position of his countrymen. The confederacies, though they regained later a shadowy recognition, were sup- pressed. The communities were isolated, and restrictions on land-holding for the present enforced. Hut Achaia did not yet become a province. The states remained formally free, subject only, with some exceptions, to the payment of a fixed tribute, L- AAVAA AA 1- b f ' Co jOVd AVSPiao-IMPtKlO.Q^E eiVS-ACHAlACAri-CORlNTO r>EL£T^O-ROAAAM-RE Dl E IT TRIVA^PHAMS-OB'HASCE R£S-BENE-CESTAS'avoD IN-BELLO-VOVERAT HANOAEDEMETsiCNV HEI^CVLIWICTORIS JAAPERATOR-DEDICAT DEDICATORY INSCRIPTION OF L. MUMMIUS. assessed on the several communities, and to the control of foreign relations by Rome. Power in each was thrown into the hands of the rich, and in respect of their mutual relations and of high judicial and administrative questions they were subject to the general supervision of the governor of Macedon. Like Massilia, in Gaul, and the " free towns " generally, they were formally ex- cluded, virtually included in the province, or "command" of the Roman officer. The destruction of Corinth was a dark deed due to commercial SETTLEMENT Of ACHAIA 287 jealousy, a mark of the growing selfishness of Roman policy. But the rapidity of her ruin saved Greece from the extremities of war and the furies of faction. The regime of fussy confederacies, of political hysterics, of social disorganisation and ceaseless Roman commissions, had ended. There was at least a chance of peace, security, and progress. Unfortunately, the confusions of the Mithridatic and civil wars cut short the work of regeneration. No doubt Rome had sown discord and reaped rebellion, but the true cause of the ruin of Greece is to be found in her political vices. By their narrow patriotism and incapacity for combination, by their lack of tolerance and their quarrelsome intrigues, at once invoking and despising the dreaded barbarians, her leaders pulled down destruction on their own heads. CHAPTER XXVIII INTERNAL HISTORY (266-I<6 B.C.). General Characteristics— Actual Changes : (i) Religious Regulations ; (2) Reform of Comitia Centuriata ; (3) Administrative Changes- Growth of Power of Senate and Decay of Comitia— Growth of Oligarchy and the Great Houses. General Characteristics. — The Republic had received its final form in 287 B.C., with the definite recognition of the Concilium plebis. In the present period is developed that glaring contrast of form and fact which stamps so strongly the political institutions of Rome. The germs of the revolution, which, by concentrating power in the Senate, resulted in the creation of an oligarchy, were doubtless contained in the original state-system. They only needed favourable circumstances to work out their true nature. The movement which destroyed the patriciate left in its place an aris- tocracy of office, a " nobilitas," faced by a growing aristocracy of wealth. The normal development of the ancient city-state was suspended, the orderly succession of broadening constitutions checked. The arrest of growth was due to the defects of the popular assemblies, which possessed none of the powers or the spirit of the Ecclesia or the House of Commons, to the various restrictions on their activity, to the absence of an organised party-system, to the conservatism of the people, and, above all, to the peculiar excel- lences of the Senate, favoured by the demands of continuous and 288 HISTORY OP ROME desperate war. In the ])recediny^ period change had succeeded change. The old democratic movement had swept away pohtical disabihties and patrician privilege, had bridled an arbitrary exe- cutive, had dealt after a fashion with economic distress, and had secured for the once excluded plebeian a commanding position in the state. There was now a formal equality of rights and duties. Except for its social status and a few relics of privilege soon to disappear, the patriciate had ceased to exist. But here the growth of free institutions stopped. During 120 years of incessant fighting the government passed into the hands of a practically hereditary oligarchy, ruling under the forms of a moderate democracy. And yet there was no recognised order of nobles ; the Senate and the offices were nominally open, the formal powers of the sovereign Comitia were actually increased, and the burgesses, enjoying full rights and large privileges, bore few but military burdens. New statutes were rare ; no fresh principles were invoked ; there were indeed few who perceived the drift of events, and for active opposition there was neither time nor inclination. A state cannot change front in the face of an enemy. Beneath the surface, indeed, were maturing social and econo- mical problems, which were destined to produce a fresh and more formidable agitation, while the rapid extension of territory, de- scribed above, by aggravating the difficulties of administration, led to the final revolution of all. But for the present these dangers v/ere masked by the rapid rush and pressing interest of foreign affairs, and though we can detect grave symptoms of change, there are few domestic events to chronicle. The plebs was satis- fied with its victory ; the poor had not found out how little they had gained; all parties acquiesced in facts, and presented a united front at once to foreign foes and Italian outsiders. In the few points that remained the equalisation of rights was completed without difficulty, and the strife of patres and plebs became an anachronism. What is left is the story of a silent change. Religion. — In 300 B.C. the Lex Ogulnia had admitted the plebs to the augural and pontifical colleges. In 253 B.C. a plebeian became chief pontiff, the most dignified permanent official at Rome, and with this is possibly connected a change in the method of appointing priests. Hitherto co-optation had been the rule to preserve the consecrated succession. But with the increasing influence exerted by the colleges on politics, it became of real importance to secure some form of control by the community. Hence about this time the selection of the Pontifex Maximus, ROMAN RELIGION 289 and, later on, by the Lex Domitia of 104 B.C., of all the more pro- minent priests, was transferred from the colleges to the minority of the tribes (seventeen out of thirty-five), chosen by lot. This compromise avoided a direct command of the people, and the A ROMAN SACRIFICING. consequent breach of divine law, while it gave a sort of veiled designation or conge if clirc which could not be disregarded. The importance of these questions lay in the relation of the Roman state to its religion. T 290 HISTORY OF ROME This religion was a peculiar one. It had no theological dogma, no moral code to inculcate ; it had none of the rich poetry, the abundant originality, of Greek mythology, nothing of the sombre gloom of the Etruscan, nothing of the passion and mystic emotion of Asia. The iiumina of Rome, shadowy deities indistinctly conceived, were represented rather by symbols than by images, manifestations of divine power, deriving their names from their functions, indeed with no distinct names, traits, or lives of their own, save those borrowed from the lively fancy of the Greek. It was a faith of little spiritual value, and aftbrded no scope for religious movements or pious fanaticism. A gentile, or family, or political rather than a personal matter, it had always a formal and ceremonial character. Closely related as it was to Roman civil law — a relation natural and peculiar to early times — there was always something of a contract about it, of obligations well under- stood on both sides. Religion was lost in worship ; the Church was merged in the state. There was no priestly caste to utilise, for the subjection of the secular power, the scrupulous piety and reverence of the people ; the priesthoods were filled by the warriors and lawyers and statesmen of the Republic. The details of the ritual were elaborated by the same series of men who worked out the details of civil jurisprudence. Here again Roman con- servatism adhered closely to the letter of the law. The spirit and character of institutions might change, the consecrated word or form remained. The prosaic literalism of the Romans made piety consist in the exact performance of obligations undertaken, at the altars of the gods as in the prretor's court. With the gods also it was necessary to be strict and thrifty, to regulate accounts, to be cautious in stipulation and exact a rigorous return. Nor was all this without its value for conduct and character. The faith ex- pressed the man, typified his grave dignity, his self-respect and power of discipline. Its minute formalism acted as a restraint on excess ; its gods were moral guardians of engagements, of treaties, of hearth and home. Its very vagueness and absence of dogma, its attention to ritual and the letter, made its forms expansive and left thought free. They enabled Roman civilisation, by bestowing the franchise of the city on foreign worships, to avoid shipwreck on the rock of intolerance. They made a respectable conformity possible. They left abundant loopholes for skilful in- terpretation and religious fictions, which did as much to relieve conscience and expand ideas as the legal fictions and equitable constructions of jurisconsults did to enlarge and humanise the ROMAN RELIGIOX 29 1 strict letter of the Roman code. But Rome had to tliank its strong poUtical sense, its reverent conservatism and power of adapting institutions, for the fact that the old worship of nature, the old homage to the dead chief, passed into a serviceable political instrument. Religion and Politics. — It was this lay aspect of the Roman religion that made the question of the auspices and the religious colleges important. To the auspices the plebeian gained admis- sion when he entered the gates of office, and in a short time only a few priesthoods remained the uncoveted monopoly of the patrician. The relation of the people to its national religion had two sides — ;the state, as an assemblage o{ gentes zxvA fainilicE, is a religious family, which owes worship to its protecting deities, and that protection is ensured by the exact performance of rites and ceremonies, by the state as by the citizen. The Romans set great store by piety, but they drove hard bargains with gods as well as men. The other side consisted in the attempt to find out the will of the gods as to some definite action — auspicia — and this practice of divination, exercised at the will of the government in the interest of the state and restricted to experts, passed into a cold and complicated science. The Senate had a general control over the state faith. It kept an eye on foreign gods and rites, and upon unauthorised divina- tion and oracle-mongering. In i86 B.C., by the S. C. De Baccha- nalibus, it suppressed with a strong hand a dangerous secret society, which cloaked murder and lust with the garb of religion. After long investigations the licentious cult was stamped out in blood. Roman faith and morality, already sapped by the natu- ralisation of Greek and Asiatic worships, especially that of the Magna Mater oi Pessinus (205 B.C.), was threatened by this uneasy craving for outlandish superstitions. Assisted by the various colleges, the Senate also dealt with omens of danger, with cases of sacrilege, with vows and thanksgivings. The ius auspiciorinn belonged to the magistrate, originally to the patrician magistrate, who consulted the divine will upon all im- portant public acts. His power of reporting evil omens was used with effect to impede legislation. Of the three great colleges, the Pontifices ^ were the interpreters of sacred law. They arranged the calendar, whose movable feasts and general confusion were 1 The pontitices [irobably deiived their name frum the special ceremonies necessary to appease the river-god, injured by the erection of a bridge. 292 HISTORY OF ROME utilised to restrict slill further tlie scanty time available for the Comitia. They, too, built up the body of scientific jurisprudence. The Quindecemviri managed the Sibylline books ; the Augurs could decide if a bill were in order or a magistrate duly created. It is ^^^MARC/Vi-bf ■ J-0O>TVA/^iVSbF- C053ENA1Vm JiffSJt^.t/ OaogApvi? AEP£M \ Dv£tONA|.5c/ViF./v\aAVC>/Mf>VAl,£Rl.pF0.MlWClCF- Df-gACAI^lAUgvS avElfOlpeRATD EifM" JTA£X0EICErJ0VAAC£MJV£RE- NEiavV|J-£oiyA\5AcAmi/HApV0EV£l.ET- j£'AV£i £je/^TaV£r-5IBEIPe'Cf KfNT NfeCeiVJ-EiE6>\CAH'«^l,HA8ERF- EEIS.VTECAP rRvRB-^N^AI ftO/'A^A^•veNIRE^^TPgVATV.^ 3 ACA^VIR A^EiVliADlEJEVf i£T. CEIV(JR.OmANv] NrvE'NOA/^/NVilATlN^'v EVEiOCVAA aV/UQ,VAAA N(5EirP.v8PANVMAOIE5ENTliCi\/E.DEJ£>/ATVo5i£NrE'MTM )\ QVMjnIE MINVJ Sf NATodlBVj CADBSEIST avOA^EA RE $ CdfOl-ERrrVRIOViliENT C E X^.'l^*^ J ACERDojN EaVI J.Vf R E jf TM ACI 5TER NEOVE V / fcNtavf /AV^> f Ko>ihx:t?;^fcJi^ET N£ VCfEf VN'-'^Q.V'JOVAA^ eo^V/*^ CO^vAQUNM-j-f^^ NEVEJ poAMCy7M7VO-NEQN^VJR.VA^\^£av£ m^JCT^EAI aV loYAM FE"«4ie/El.f T N EVE po/r ^^A<•/^/7ER■);£pto'^la^RMJ_Naii't■C0^1MoV' S£ H£Vf-CDI««roj>fewi5aV/AMFec/sf VfiET n tvE'N-ror'i. (cop n/eve- i m PR£tV aTOD^''v/E EXJTMD "RgFM •iACgA-Ck.Vlsav/^FeaifVCl^'T NPSEJ PRV R ^A^MA•APIEfET•liQVE^)E::SE^JAT^/o5.JE/^/7t^'TJAb DVMNEMJNVJ HcMl^^f S PtoVi V <3| NVc/^S E I ViRD ATavEMVi.lEF.rj. am:/IA HE^VAAN FFc/SF-V/tl-ET N£VE»AnrERl5ClV»REIf^<'0V;'pvopV5AWl./Ek/5vypK,vJ^rpfgvS M /f3evE^^N^^''SO•P^pRv/^ANl5ENATvoiu\/Eif^^•ElH^lAl> VTEijvrRAt 5 CWPrVM tit- HAICEVrE/l/VCQVEN/r/OMIDEXDeirArfSNE^I^l/j.Tgl/gVA^ /goV/^£"NVA\ lENATVOjav/E^EWrC/s/T/AMVrE-l.iCJfA/rFS £5£TIJ. VoftvM 5£NTENriA ITA FVrr 5EJ0i/£iES£Nr CVEIARVOI^SVAA EAP-pf CwWt.W^iVpRAO SCRirrVMESr-^e^ f^€M CApV, rA WM FACJEry;>AM CEWiVE^^TOV E- 'tc . HoCElf>JTASOUAN\- AHEMAWV-TNCEfPERETrSITA-iJNATVVAIaVOM-Ce/sJyvi, VTEiaVEEA*\PiQIERIoVft£ATl5V(iEKACIlVA\eDCNOJc;ER.roT/JIT at^v^ vTEi f A-6 A<5T/i AM QVAAA-JEf «»y/p/(jf /.j^acm p f t ITAvTEf iVrRADS^f^'PryM^T. fN O/E&vj xav/evj-VOBf/STAgEtAJOAT^^r ER.VAfTMC/AmvjE/0l.fA^0^^5IEN' iN/A^^O • TEVK A^O LETTER OF THE CONSULS TO LOCAL MAGISTRATES, CONTAINING THE SENATUS CONSULTUM DE BACCHAN ALIBUS. thus evident how necessary it was for the plebeians to share in the control of the religious machinery of the state. On the other side, it became equally necessary to place their assembly under those religious restrictions from which, as plebeian, it had been free. Secular m its character, it stood outside the old religious RELIC, TOM AND POLITICS 293 system. In 156 B.C., liy the I^ex ALlia Fujia, a stronghold of the aristocratic party, power was given to the magistrates to apply to the Concilium Plebis the device of obmintiatio ; i.e., of dispers- ing the assembly by reporting unfavourable omens. This law was specially directed against tribunician agitators, and hencefor- ward we find officials not merely announcing omens on the spot, but proclaiming their intention of observing the sky on every available day. The auspices thus became a species of religious veto, a trusted weapon of the Senate. ! ;; rN ^% i /S^% ^~]f^ %^ ^ mf ^^%M ^^7v.^ V ^ ^ ^ (^\ ^ '^"■WM ^^#^ wwJ/ l^i^ \ y/i* Ijmm tap ( v\ vic^^i Vft^^^^r ' ^f-^ mW. uTMltji^ '/// \ ^ 1 >J 1. 1 m > — 7'-T' to the land. The only new features were the titles granted to the possessors, the inalienability of the lots, the imposition of a rent, and the attempt to secure the continuous execution of the law by a permanent commission. Objections to the Law. — Tiberius was no common demagogue, but a distinguished soldier and orator belonging to the highest TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 339 society. His reform was well meant, and the moment chosen was not unfa\ourabIe. The slave war and the Spanish disasters were making the failure of the government clear to the meanest capacity. But it was impolitic to attack the Senate single-handed, with no organised party, with colleagues he could not trust, with no force behind him but a fickle and corrupted mob, from a position which lasted only for a year, without possibility of re- election. His action ignored the real nature of the constitution VIAMFECEIAB-RECIO- ADCaPVam-ET I N-FAVlA-nONTEIS OMNEISMILI ARIOS TABELARlOSoyEPOSElVElHINCE-SVNT NOVCERIAMMEIUAai-CAPVAM-XXCIIM AAVRANVAAXXXIIll-COSENTIAAACXXIII VALFNTIAMClxXXBv AD-FRETVWAr STATVAM-CCXXXIi- REGIVAAtCCXXXVI' SVA^A•AF•CAnVA•REClVA^•MEILIACCC ETEIDE/APRAE tor-in ^^125 SICILIA'FVCJTEIVOS-ITALICORVAA CONQVAEISIVE IREPIDEIQJVE HOAAINES'^CCCCXVII- eidEaaqve PRlAAVS-FECElVT-DEACRO-pOPLieO aratoribvscederentpaastores FORVM-AEDISOyEPOPLlCASHElGFECtl MILESTONE SET UP BY P. POPILLIUS L.EN.\S, IN LUCANI.\, AS CONSUL, 132 B.C.l by its appeal to the formal powers of the Comitia against the authority of the Senate. Again, if it was proposed to confiscate land occupied by allies on sufferance or by treaty, without giving them a share in the redivision, the gross iniquity of the proposal would raise dangerous opposition. Economically the objections were also serious. In its disturbance of ancient claims and vested interests, the bill, in its final shape, took no sufficient account of 1 This illustrates (<;) roadmaking, vide infra, p. 553 ; (1^) Sicilian slave-war ; (c) Agrarian Law of Gracchus. 340 HISTORY OF ROME the change in the standard of landed wcakh and in the methods of industry since 367 B.C., and of the proper compensation for permanent improvements, for bond Jide investments and the displacement of capital. When Cato evicted the occupiers in Campania (165 B.C.), though the encroachments were recent and unauthorised, there had been at least compensation. The lapse of time made the resumption, in many cases, actual confiscation. It was a menace to all uncertain titles, and opened a ready way to vexatious prosecutions, a difficulty increased by the absence of exact registers, the lapse of payments, the working of sale and bequest. It would be hard enough even to get sufficient land, harder still to make farmers out of city loafers, while for the pasture land the system of allotment was unfitted. The clause prohibiting alienation was unworkable. The measure did not touch the real economic causes of depression in agriculture — slave labour, cheap corn, and bad laws. There is a curious mixture of legalism and youthful impatience in this impulsive attack on the landlord and oligarch. Octavius deposed and the Law carried. — A storm of opposition followed, not merely from noble lords, who clung half honestly, half unscrupulously, to their privileges, but from the moderates, who feared revolution more than they loved reform, and later on from the spokesman of the exasperated Italians. There were crowded meetings, eloquently harangued by the impassioned tribune ; the rural voters, on whom he depended, poured into the city. The Senate, the organ of the landowners, resorted to obstruction. M. Octavius, a friend and colleague of Gracchus, interposed his veto, to which Tiberius, equally constitutionally, replied by placing his seal on the treasury and blocking every executive act. He did more. Eager to avail himself of the presence of the country voters and the momentary consternation of the landlords, he declined to wait for the slow pressure of time and opinion, and pushed his proposal while the iron was still hot. The bill, once more moved, was again vetoed in spite of personal appeals to Octavius. Finally, after a fruitless negotiation with the Senate and repeated efforts to appease his colleague, he reluctantly proposed and carried the deposition of the refractory tribune. One or the other of them must go, he said ; and when Octavius refused to allow such an alternative to be put, he asked the people to declare that a tribune who acted against the popular will, ipso facto forfeited his office. Octavius was deposed and dragged away. It was a coup d\'tat. A magistrate could only resign ; he could not be deposed. In an FALL OF TIBERIUS GRACCHUS 341 apology which he felt bound to offer later, Tiberius descanted on the right of the people to control their magistrate : it was mere sophistry. Government becomes impossible if the people can cancel their mandate for every passing whim. To defy the right of intercession cut the ground from his own feet. Moreover, the tribunate had been of late years a valuable instrument of govern- ment ; to revive its earlier use as a weapon of opposition was a dangerous anachronism. A successor to Octavius was appointed, and the law carried by a single vote of the people. The two brothers and Appius Claudius were placed on the commission — a mere family conclave. The Senate amused itself by docking their allowance. Fall of Tiberius Gracchus. —But Tiberius had to prepare him- self for attack, especially for infringing the sacred rights of the tribunate. He must buy the favour of the urban electors, and ensure, if possible, his appointment for a second year, if he was to avoid impeachment and the ruin of his work. To this end he entered on a series of popular proposals, promising to extend the right of appeal, to shorten the term of service, &c. He meant perhaps to curtail the judicial and administrative prerogatives of the Senate, possibly in the end to give the franchise to Italy. The charge of aiming at the kingship was a fabrication of the nobles to justify their violence, to meet which he had provided himself with a large retinue, but personal peril and the logic of necessity pushed him further than he meant. Re-election to the tribunate was unconstitutional, but surely the people might make their own precedents. On this issue the question was fought out. The elections were fixed for a time when his rural supporters were busy with harvest. The nobles were able to postpone them to the following day. For that day both sides prepared, and Gracchus appealed alike to compassion, gratitude, and force. Strengthened by popular sympathy, he met the tribes once more in front of the Capitoline Temple. The Assembly was tumultuous. Obstruction was followed by riot, and the partisans of the Senate were ex- pelled. The wildest rumours circulated. A gesture of Gracchus was taken to mean a demand for the crown. Rumours reached the Senate, sitting in the temple of Fides, and when the wise consul Scasvola refused indignantly to slay citizens without trial, the optimates, headed by the younger Nasica, who summoned all patriots to take the place of a consul who betrayed the state, rushed forth and, followed by a mass of knights, clients, and gladiators, flung themselves, with bludgeons and bench-legs in their hands, on the o\erawed and cowardly mob. Tiberius, as he turned to escape, 342 in STORY OF ROME was felled to the ground with 300 of his associates : the bodies were thrown into the Tiber. Thus on this first day of wholesale murder in the streets of Rome the series of civil massacres was inaugu- rated by the party of order. The illegal executions were confirmed, in the following year, by the judicial execution of the Gracchans, of whom a large number, mainly of the lower classes, were condemned by a special commission under the consul P. Popillius. Nasica was rewarded with the pontificate in 130 B.C. The moderates ac- quiesced in the proceedings, and ^milianus, when he heard the news before the walls of Numantia, cried in the words of Homer — " ws ATToXoiTo Ka\ ciWo? oris TOiaPra ^e pe^oi." Weakness of his Position. — The building collapsed with its architect. His aim was good, and approved itself to good men — the regeneration of Italy based on a restored yeomanry and an extended franchise. Thus he hoped to infuse fresh blood into the Comitia and army, to stem the tide of corruption and pauperism, and place an invigorated people as a check on the government. The measure he proposed as a first step was, under the circumstances, a natural one. If it was oppressive to the rich, they had their own greed and negligence to thank. But he failed because he tried a revolution without understanding that it was a revolution, and without the means to carry it through. A rash and impetuous idealist, who failed to grasp the true nature of the -constitution and the de- generacy of the Comitia, he was hurried into false steps, struck down the platform on which he himself stood, and set in motion forces which would make a republican system impossible. He had no original intention of changing the form of government, aimed at no tyranny, was mainly interested in social questions. But by turning the tribunate against the .Senate and ruling Rome by popular meetings, he put the feet above the head and pam- pered the riotous arrogance of the sovereign mob. The Comitia had neither the morale nor the organisation necessary to make it a genuine organ of popular government. Such a body had no right to control provinces, direct administration, and vote itself land and money. The precedent set by Flaminius and copied by Gracchus was a caricature and not a revival of older pro- cedure, and its sure end was an oligarchic restoration or a saviour of society. For the present the nobles held their own and the storm passed by, its warnings unheeded. They gave their enemies' cause a baptism of blood, and raised by murder a mis- taken enthusiast to the rank of a hero and martyr. TIBERIUS GRACCHUS AND AFTER 343 CHAPTER XXXIV GAIUS GRACCHUS U.C. A.U.C. Death of Scipio ^milianus ...... 129 625 Fulvius Flaccus proposes to enfranchise the Italians— Revolt of Fregellse 125 629 Tribunate of C. Gracchus 123-122 631-632 Deaths of C. Gracchus and Fulvius . . 121 633 The interval between the tribunates of Tiberius and Gaius is marked on the whole by moderation. The violence of the ultras strengthened the hands of the more liberal members of the Senate, men like Metellus, Scasvola, and Scipio, averse to either extreme of oligarchy or democracy. The optimates, half ashamed of their work, were not unready to adopt the dead man's law, and get what favour they could by its execution. The opposition was for the moment powerless ; nor did the personal rivalries or divergences of opinion in the Senate amount to any real party division. But credit is mainly due to the sound sense of yEmilianus, whose real influence with all sections bears witness to his political honesty and independence. The Agrarian Commission. — The commission of three went to work with the approval of the Senate, P. Crassus receiving the vacant place. After his death in 130 B.C., and that of Appius, their places were taken by the active agitators M. Fulvius Flaccus and C. Papirius Carbo, the latter of whom, a distinguished orator, passed over later on to the optimates. Their accession gave energy to the work. As to its extent and value opinions differ, but there is evidence of distributions in South Italy, and the rapid increase in the census, said to amount to 80,000, may be attributed to the number of poor citizens, hitherto carelessly enumerated, who passed from the capite censi to the register of men able to bear arms. But it caused great and natural irritation. Exact returns could not be secured ; recourse was had to informations. The arbitrary decisions of a partisan court, empowered to define as well as to distribute the public lands, and acting often on imperfect evidence, disturbed not only recent and obvious occupiers, but bona fide possessors, even genuine owners whose titles were not forthcoming. The feeling of in- security and resentment became general ; and when, in 129 B.C., the commissioners began to deal with those lands which the Latin 344 HISTORY OF ROME or allied communities had occupied by express or implied per- mission of the people as a reward for their services or in default of sufficient citizens, it appeared high time to bring operations to a close. To assert in these cases the legal ownership of Rome was vexatious and impolitic. Action of Scipio. — Africanus took up the cause of his old soldiers, and mainly by his influence the judicial powers of the comrriission were transferred to the consuls. .Sempronius Tudi- tanus, to whom they passed, avoided the inevitable odium by betaking himself promptly to the army of Illyria. It was not the rAnfoD7i7:w^vvFVrcr?Ar C- J E / vvP RO N I V5T If OR A€ r.pArERivj--<:-F-c;AR&. E'AJA . l^ifM-PRONlVi'-Tl-F-. HjvmrivfKi TERMINI SET UP BY THE LAND COMMISSION IN THE L.^ND OF THE HIRPINl, 130-129 B.C. first time that Scipio had resisted popular feeling. In the heads of the commission the party of progress had found leaders whose ideas were visibly widening. Carbo in 131 B.C. not merely passed a Ballot Act, but attempted to legalise the re-election of tribunes and so remove the obstacle that had been fatal to Gracchus. Scipio, in a vehement speech, resisted the proposal, justified the execution of Tiberius, and silenced the bowlings of the mob with bitter sarcasms. He at least was not afraid of the "stepchildren of Italy, these freedmen whom he had sent in chains to the slave- market." The Bill, rejected for the present, may have passed afterwards in a modified form. SCIPIO yEMIlJANUS 345 Death of Scipio. — In 125 B.C. Flaccus, now consul, proposed that every ally should be allowed to petition for the franchise or for the right of appeal only if he so preferred, — a rather sweeping proposal. What Scipio would have said to this mea- sure of relief on behalf of his proteges we cannot tell. Soon after his defence of their claims in the matter of the land law, when on the point of delivering a further speech on the question, he was struck down by a sudden and mysterious death, at the age of fifty-six, in the fulness of his vigour and influence (129 B.C.). The foulest rumours were current, and suspicion has fallen on the democratic leaders. At the time there was no inquiry, and the evidence is conflicting. The assassination, if it was such, was the work of a few malcontents. The esteem of the world followed the last great Scipio to the tomb, whither he was borne by the four sons of his personal enemy, Metellus. He was "the noblest Roman of them all," this sober student of the simple wisdom of Xenophon, the friend of Polybius, La^lius, and Panie- tius ; the patron of Terence and Lucilius ; the proud, generous, and unselfish gentleman, who did his best for Rome, and, careless of popularity, steered clear of all her factions. The Italians and the Franchise. — The idea of e.xtending the franchise, already mooted by Cai-vilius, was in the air before Flaccus proposed his Bill. No doubt the very thought of it seemed treason at Rome, and the people were as unwilling as the Senate to share the rapidly increasing benefits enjoyed by the privileged minority. But the situation was becoming impossible ; the allies were restless, and the longer heads among the reformers saw their way to remove the stumbling-block to the Land Act, to strengthen their party and counteract the urban voters by a just and generous stroke of policy. They were not supported. A law of the tribune M. Junius Pennus (126 B.C.) enabled the authorities to expel non-citizens from Rome, and so prevent an influx of Italians from usurping votes or in- timidating opinion, and when Flaccus brought forward his Bill he met such universal resistance that he was as glad to take as the Senate was eager to give a military command in Gaul. But his proposal had brought the question into practical politics, and its re- jection was followed by the revolt of Fregella;, the loyal and pros- perous Latin colony which commanded the passage of the Liris. When L. Opimius had captured it by treachery, it was dismantled and reduced to a village, and a Roman colony, Fabrateria, was founded on its confiscated lands. With its fall collapsed whatever 346 If IS TO KY OF ROME other agitation may have existed, but the fate of Fregellae sank deep into the Itahan heart, as its revolt was the forerunner of a more terrible rebelHon. C. Gracchus. — C. Gracchus was absent for the time. He had supported the Bill for the re-election of tribunes, had opposed the Junian Law, and had worked as a land commissioner, while he cultivated his natural gifts for rhetoric and business. In 126 B.C. he went, with the consul L. Aurelius Orestes, as quaistor to Sardinia, and distinguished himself by his integrity, humanity, and diligence. The Senate tried to keep him out of the way by twice prolonging his superior's command, but at the end of the second year he re- turned without his chief, and successfully defended his actions before the censors and the people. He had served in the army twelve years instead of the legal ten, and two years instead of one as quaestor. He had taken a full purse to the province, and had brought it back empty. Others filled with their plunder the empty casks which they had taken out filled with wine. He escaped the censor's brand, and when charged with aiding and abetting the Fregellan outbreak, once more foiled the attempt to discredit his candidature. In I24P,.C. he was elected tribune amid great enthusiasm, though the influx of country voters was unable to secure him the first place. He was a stronger man than his brother in gifts and character Equally unselfish and idealistic, equally ardent and sympathetic, he had been disciplined by suffering and self-repression ; with a clear eye and unfaltering purpose, aided by an extraordinary power of work and an attractive personality, he took up his brother's ideas undaunted by his brother's fate, with an almost supersti- tious feeling of his summons to serve the people, avenge his cause, and die. Before coming to his measures, it may be noticed that there were two plebeian censors in 131 B.C., of whom Q. Metellus Mace- donicus delivered a curious harangue ag'ainst celibacy, just as Scipio, in his censorship, had attacked the fashion of dancing and the loose education of Roman children. Another sign of the times was the acquittal of at least two eminent governors, one of whom was the notoriously guilty Aquillius, by corrupted jurors in the court of extortion. His Programme. — The usual storm of prodigies heralded the reforms of C. Gracchus. His active work extended over the two years 123-122 B.C. Of its drift and purpose it is easy to form a general conception ; it is impossible to settle the details or de- termine the order of the several laws. Even of its drift divergent MEASURES OF C. GRACCHUS 347 views are possible ; it may be wilfully exaggerated into a tyrant's progress, and blessed or cursed as such ; it may be as easily belittled as exaggerated. It will be best to group his measures and proposals without regard to chronological order, and consider their general meaning afterwards. But this too is difficult, because to carry out his social programme and avenge his brother's death it would be necessary to secure a basis of power in and beyond the Roman populace, and to reduce the Senate to impotence by dividing and neutralising the strength of the upper classes. Hence there runs throughout a perplexing mixture of motives, reform and revenge, and the means he took must be carefully distinguished from the end desired. Agrarian Law revived.— To take first the measures intended to relieve distress and to confirm his hold on the popular vote. He revived the dormant Land Law and restored to the commis- sion its indispensable judicial powers. Sure of the sympathy of the allies, whose cause his party had espoused, he could include the Italian lands, whose wealthy occupiers would hope to be com- pensated by the franchise, while the poor, at least the Latins, were by a special clause to share as citizens in the colonial dis- tributions. But as the bulk of the available land had been dis- tributed, his real gift to Italian agriculture lay in the system of roads, whose construction, on improved methods, he personally superintended, and which were designed for the service of in- dustry and commerce. Scheme of Colonisation. — To this he added a large scheme of colonisation, but few of his foundations survived him. The proposed revival of Capua, now reduced to a shelter of shepherds, would have meant the resumption of public land, let by a new system on profitable leases, and would have roused bitter memories and jealousies. Neptunia was designed to restore Tarentum, hard hit by the competition of Brundisium, and to give an outlet to the Apulian allotments, as Minervia (Scylacium) would to those in Bruttium. The new colonies were no longer military' outposts, but served to deplete the capital and restore the trade and popula- tion of the ruined south. To Gracchus also was due the first attempt at foreign colonisation, the first Emigration Act. To revive and repeople the sites of Carthage and Corinth, to repair the injury done to the world's commerce in their destruction, to relieve the pressure of population, and, by Romanising the pro- vinces, to pave the way to a unity of feeling and interest, was, if grasped by Gracchus in this large sense, an idea as imperial and 348 HISTORY OF ROME far-sighted as it was premature. Possiljly he only meant to utihse two pieces of domain favourably situated for strong and compact settlements, lying waste under a special curse, with none but divine interests to disturb. The attempt was seriously made at Carthage, where, under the name of Junonia, he intended to form a settlement of 6000 Romans and allies, with large allotments. These allies were to become Roman citizens, exactly reversing the old custom. Its fulfilment was frustrated by religious prejudice and the fear of weakening Rome by establishing citizen centres RUINS OF AQUEDUCT, CAKTHAGE. abroad, but the idea bore fruit later under the Ceesars. Junonia was of a different type from the ordinary fortress colonies or from the later colonies of veterans, different even from Narbo, founded by the democrats in 118 B.C., the oldest transmarine colony of burgesses, guarding the communications with Spain along the Domitian and Aurelian roads. Lex Frumentaria. — As he had won the rural voters by the Land Law, and the artisans by his great works, so he attached the city mob to himself by the Lex FruiiienUiria. The supply of LEX FRUMEXTARIA 349 necessaries like corn and salt at moderate prices was often con- sidered the duty of government. Of salt the Roman state held a monopoly. A constant flow of corn from Syracuse to Ostia and the markets was secured by the arrangements with the Sicilian tithe-collectors, under the supervision of the aediles and the Ostian quaestor. Later on Egyptian and African corn poured into Puteoli. Free distribution by conquerors and candidates, or by the state in case of need, had been fairly frequent. On these precedents Gains established a regular system by which every citizen who should apply personally in the capital would receive 5 modii (ij bushels) of corn a month, at 6^ asses (3d.) a modhis, or not quite half of a low average price. The loss would fall on the treasury and the subjects ; recent annexations enabled Gracchus and his successors to organise the supply, and large granaries were built. One hostile senator took advantage of its general terms to discredit the measure by applying himself — he wished at least to have a share if his property was to be plundered. But the Bill was fatally popular. Gracchus, who borrowed the idea from similar Greek enactments, may have justified it as a payment of the citizens for their work in govern- ment, which gave them a share in the spoils of empire, and was some compensation for the land they had lost. He hoped above all to make them independent of the nobles and their doles, secure a firm support for future action, and buy their consent to Italian franchise and agricultural reform. His hope was vain. The prejudices of the mob could be excited and its votes bought as easily as before. The additional value of the franchise tightened the voter's grip on it. Gracchus had just taught him to use his power for his own benefit. His gigantic system of indiscriminate outdoor relief fostered pauperism, drained the ex- chequer, stimulated the rush to Rome, and ruined the agriculture he sought to develop. The Roman plebs henceforth means the pauper members of the thirty-five tribes, whether rustic or urban, now resident in the capital, fed by the largesses and organised for electoral purposes. The country voters rarely appeared, and could not be counted upon. At first it succeeded. To strengthen his hold on the Comitia, he carried out the reform of the Centuriata to its logical con- clusion by directing the centuries to vote throughout in an order fixed on each occasion by lot. He lightened the condition of service by shortening the legal term, which constant warfare made oppressive, by providing for the free supply of clothing 350 HISTOHY OF ROME to the troops without stoppages, and by extending the right of appeal to citizens under martial law.' The Jury-Courts transferred to the Equites. — Having thus secured the patronage of the plebs, he tried to find allies in the enemies' camp. Nowhere is the mixture of motives more obvious and more embarrassing. Hitherto the judices in all important processes, except the few that still came before the people, were taken from the body of senators, a course which tradition and their legal knowledge made natural. This privilege, when political and judicial functions were closely connected and party considera- tions decided legal issues, was a bulwark of senatorial authority, but collusion and corruption, especially in the court of extortion, in the interest of their order, had roused indignation and destroyed confidence. To transfer the courts to the people was absurd. Another class was available — that class of moneyed men which had gradually consolidated itself under the name of equites, i.e.^ the rich men of the first class who were not senators. These, not yet formally constituted as a separate order by a distinct census, were separated by law and by interest from the ruling nobility. Between the two classes there was mutual antipathy for social reasons, besides the constant friction in the provinces. This division of feeling was utilised by Gracchus, who created out of these elements a new order, an intermediate and privileged class — indices, publicani, ordo equester — with honorary distinc- tions and probably a peculiar census — 400,000 sesterces. To it he transferred the right of sitting as judices, registered in an official list or album, to the exclusion of senators, and thus at one blow placed it on the neck of the Senate and founded that wavering" alliance of capital and democracy which proved so broken a reed to those who leaned upon it. The judices were practically identical in interest, if not personally, with the publi- cani, to whom the control of the courts was a great object. Politi cally, and for the moment, Gracchus gained his object ; as a re- former he failed. Corruption and collusion went on as merril> as ever. Honest governors suffered ; the dishonest, who connived at the extortion of the tax-farmers and business men, escaped. The whole Equestrian body strenuously resisted every attempt to make judicial bribery penal. 1 The old limit for active service was seventeen to forty-five inclusive. The rule, however, arose that six years' continuous service gave a discharge, while twenty years in the infantry and ten in the cavalry gave e.xemption. Of the above arrangements, some, if passed, were not permanent. ORDO EQUESTER 35! The Taxation of Asia and the Equites He strengthened this alliance, while he struck at the administrative monopoly of the Senate by his arrangements for the taxation of Asia. Cancelling those made in 129 B.C. by which the communities paid moderate sums and the middlemen were restricted to the collection of dues and customs, he reimposcd on the province the old Oriental system of tithes {decutnce), besides large indirect taxes, and ordered the right of collecting the revenue to be put up for auction at Rome, and not, as in Sicily and Sardinia, locally, thus excluding the wholesome competition of the provincials, and handing over Rome's richest province to the tender mercies of a gigantic associa- tion, uncontrolled by the governors or the courts. Further to re- strict the discretion of the Senate, the conditions of the contracts were minutely fixed by law. So was established, at the expense of the nobles, a new order, a power to be reckoned with at home and abroad. The Republic became two-headed. Money and rank, capital and land, were thrown into collision. Under a colourable pretext of reform that imposed upon himself, the rash young man satisfied his political interests and his revenge. He divided to conquer, and even boasted of the dagger he had thrown down into the Forum with which his foes might cut each other's throats. But he sacrificed the prosperity of Asia to his Corn Laws and his Equestrian alliance, and plunged the courts deeper into the whirlpool of politics. The Assignment of Provinces. — Setting aside the docked and curtailed Senate, the tribune, relying on the support of the people and the knights, proceeded to utilise to the full the rights of his office and the prerogatives of the Comitia, with the apparent acqui- escence of his colleagues. He monopolised business and exercised an almost monarchical power. He interfered with financial and provincial and judicial affairs, distributed grain, selected jurymen, made roads, conducted settlements, guided the Assembly, led the dumbfounded Senate, with omnipresent and omnivorous industry. He limited the traditional right of the latter body to determine \.\\Q. provina'cF of the consuls for the ensuing year. Ordinarily this was done after the election, and the personal distribution was settled by the lot or by mutual agreement. This led to intrigue and jobbery, for the foreign command was the road to riches and triumphs. The disposal of this patronage was a stronghold of the Senate, and the appointments were decided largely on personal or partisan grounds. A Lex Sempronia directed the consular pro- vinces to be settled before the elections, and, to prevent obstruc- 352 HISTORY OF ROME tion by the tribunes, forbade the use of the veto. But its only effect was to organise more perfectly the art of manipulating the polls ; the slight check on jobbery was counterbalanced by the additional element of chance in the selection of men for im- portant positions. Indeed, as the custom grew of detaining the magistrates of the year to do business in Rome, a man's pro- vince might be determined a year and a half before he became available. Law of Appeal. — Another blow at the Senate was struck by the Law of Appeal, which, reaffirming and fortifying the Leges Valeria, the XII. Tables, and the Porcian Laws (198-184 B.C.), declared the indefeasible right of the people in the Comitia Centuriata to try and decide capital cases, enacting " ne de capite civimii Rontaiiorum ijiiiissu populi iudicare/tir" Primarily it was directed against the usurped jurisdiction of the Senate, which had arbitrarily and by decree appointed extraordinary commissions of treason, &c., in exceptional cases. As reasserting existing laws it applied retrospectively to Popillius, who went into exile. In the case of Tiberius Gracchus, the Senate had not merely summoned the consul to take the sword against citizens, but on his refusal had carried out a coup d'etat, which it attempted to legalise by declaring the tribune a public enemy and executing his adherents without appeal. No doubt in a crisis demanding immediate action the executive needed to be armed with exceptional powers, and custom both before and after the Gracchi permitted the Senate to confer such powers as against subjects and allies, and in extreme danger against citizens, by the ultimiim decrctinn, " videant Considcs ne quid Rcspublica detrijiienti capiat." But its employment against citizens was never legal, and the asserted right of the Senate to declare a domestic foe a public hostis remained a matter of political but scarcely legal dispute. The use of extraordinary qticestiones by the Senate stood abolished. Permanent Courts. — About the same time the Qucestio de Repe- tiindis was reorganised under the new judicial law, to be a scourge of senatorial governors, and possibly a new qusstio was provided to deal with miscarriages of justice — ";/^ quis iudicio circuin- veniretur." This type of court, which soon took over the mass of criminal business, being a delegation of the people, admitted of no intercession or appeal. Hence its sentence did not go beyond exile or outlawry, and the accused apparently retained as a rule his power of avoiding sentence by voluntary exile. Thus, besides improving the administration of justice, Gracchus limited the REFORMS OF C. GRACCHUS 353 action of the popular courts, and indirectly the infliction of the penalty of death. He had intended to punish the upright Octavius for his obsti- nacy by excluding from further promotion any official deprived of his functions by the people. His mother induced him to withdraw the measure dictated by personal revenge. Proposed Extension of the Franchise. — So far his energy, elo- quence, and honesty had carried him through. With bitter invectives he lashed the corruption of senators and diplomatists, and the cruelty of the magistrates to the allies and subjects. His passionate laments for his murdered brother moved the hearts of his opponents. He secured his own re-election for 122 B.C., with M. Flaccus, the consul of 125 B.C., as colleague, and the election of C. Fannius as consul. For all this mass of work a second year at least was indispensable, and the re-election was apparently unopposed, though the legality of the act is questioned. So far he had been able to combine various interests in an attack on an unpopular body and win support for his own schemes. The hardest question of all remained. The plan of regeneration and reform demanded the incorporation of Italy in Rome. Forgetting Fregellae, he dreamed himself strong enough to propose a measure whose details are unknown, but which perhaps offered the full franchise to the Latins, and to the Italians the Ills Latiiunii. The Bill, if carried, would swamp the electorate, assist agrarian reform, strengthen his party, but it was also just and reasonable. Yet, in spite of all his appeals to patriotism and pro- phecies of peril, of all his startling stories of Roman tyranny, of magistrates flogged for a dirty bath or a peasant murdered for a harmless jest, the meaner instincts of the mob applauded the argu- ments of Fannius, and refused to be crowded out of their places at the games or share their cherished doles. The Senate outbids Gracchus : Livius Drusus. — The Senate posed as the friend of the people, whose champion was whittling away the value of his own gifts. Nor were the knights prepared to share their privileges and profits with Latins and Italians. In defiance of the tribune's promised protection, all non-Romans were ejected by the consul, and when Livius Drusus, his sena- torian colleague, threatened intercession Gracchus had to with- draw. The failure of the Bill opened the way for the manoeuvres of the Senate, who set up Drusus to outbid the enemy and play the Tory demagogue. The Leges Liviie proposed (i) to remit the rent of lands distributed by the Gracchan laws ; (2) to establish twelve colonies in Italy of 3000 settlers each, who were to z 354 IT I STORY OF ROME pay no rent and enjoy freedom of sale ; and (3) to abolish the flogging of Latin soldiers by Roman officers. Drusus ostenta- tiously refused any personal share in their execution. It was a mere game of bluff. There was no land for the colonies, which were, in fact, not founded ; the flogging law, a sop to the allies, was, if carried, repealed. But the clumsy dodge succeeded. The Bills were passed while Gaius was away in Africa and ill-repre- sented at home by headstrong P'laccus. He could not hold together the discordant elements of his party, could not reconcile their interests in a common policy ; least of all could he trust the way- ward mob. In vain, on his return, he tried to recover popularity. He failed to obtain a second re-election, and his determined foe, Opimius, was elected consul. A handle against him was found in the matter of the colony at Carthage. He had gone to Africa as commissioner to arrange the settlement, and, after a short absence, had returned to select colonists, when the Senate was moved by the report of terrible omens to counsel the repeal of the Act which established it {Lex Riibria). The colony was not popular ; it was far away ; the land was accursed ; the whole thing was new ; the settlers were to be partly Italians. But it was a test case, and Gracchus was bound to fight it. After December 10, 122 B.C., he was a private citizen open to attack. Death of C. Gracchus. — The end came after the New Year, but the story of his death is confused. Early on the critical morning, while Fulvius was haranguing the Assembly summoned on the Capitol, Gracchus with his armed adherents, himself un- armed, came to secure the rejection of the Senate's Bill. As he awaited the issue walking apart in the porch of the temple, he was accosted and apparently insulted by a servant of the consul, then officiating at the usual sacrifice, who, bearing the sacred entrails in his hands, bade evil citizens avaunt. Antullius fell, atabbed by a Gracchan. In the tumult that followed apology was vain. Gracchus only succeeded in giving a fresh handle to his enemies by interrupting the inviolable tribune. The Assembly dispersed in disorder. Opimius, calling on the senators to arm for the defence of the constitution, summoned them and the loyal knights to bring their slaves armed, and occupied the Capitol, Senate-house, and Forum. Next morning, by a stage-trick, the corpse was solemnly paraded before the Senate, and Opimius was duly empowered to save the state. Meanwhile the riotous Flaccus had armed a rabble with his Gallic spoils, and called the slaves to aid. Friends guarded the house of his saddened comrade. FALL OF C. GRACCHUS 355 When morning came Fulviiis occupied the old popular stronghold, the Aventine, whither Gracchus followed, irresolute and without weapons. The Senate turned a deaf ear to negotiations and demanded unconditional surrender. .A. proclamation of amnesty A CAMILLUS, OR .\TTE\DANT AT SACRIFICE. thinned the rebel ranks, and, offering their weight in gold for the leaders' heads, the consul, with the veteran generals Metellus and Brutus, stormed the half-held height. Flaccus was hunted out and killed. Gaius fled reluctantly, defended by the heroism 356 HISTORY OF ROME of his friends, and when further flight was vain, within the sacred grove of Fiirina, fell on the sword of a slave, who slew himself on his master's body. One Septumuleius, a nobleman, earned the price of blood, doubled by the weight of lead with which he filled the skull. The body was flung into the Tiber. The murder was followed, as before, by a special commission, under Opimius, which executed 3000 victims. The houses of the refornlers were plundered, and from the proceeds of their estates the consul built that temple and basilica of Concord beneath whose dedicatory inscription the wit wrote, " The work of discord makes the temple of Concord." The city was purified of blood, but the memory of the murdered brothers was dear to the people they sought to serve, and an almost religious veneration clung to the spots where they fell. Criticism of C. Gracchus. — The Senate was right to crush an amied revolt, and the conduct of Gains shows that in this last scene he was acting with men whose methods he could not approve. He had rather die than fight his countrymen or fall into their hands. For this dilemma his own rashness was partly to blame, partly the Senate, which deliberately utilised a riot to crush a party. The ease with which he accom plished his work, and the equal ease with which its author was beaten down, bear witness to the uncertainty in all men's minds, as mach as to the lack of any civic force behind either government or reformers. Gains Gracchus had no idea of a constitutional /revolution. We have no evidence that he meant to establish a tyranny based on plebiscites. He abolished nothing and introduced nothing. His aim was to reduce the Senate to something like its strictly constitutional position, and to make the sovereignty of the people a reality, while he gave the Comitia new blood by the restoration of the yeomanry, by the inclusion of the Italians, and by making the masses independent of their patrons. He meant to make the tribunate once more the ministry of the people, and, steeped as he was in Greek ideks, may have hoped to reproduce in his own person the go\'ern- , ment of Pericles, Xoya fiev dnfioKparia epyoa Be vtto tov npcoTov dvBpus dpXV- ■'^n energetic administrator, with an insatiable appetite for work, he found fresh spheres of activity continually opening out before him, and, like the emperors later, he concentrated many offices in one person. In this, as in his attitude to the Senate, he set precedents for nionarchy, while he handed down to his successors ideas that remained the common stock of reformers, CRITICISM OF C. GRACCHUS • 357 and from them passed to the Empire. He enforced the principle that the land of the subjects was the property of the state, to be utilised for the creation of colonies and the maintenance of the Romans. He founded the democratic alliance with the equites. Administrative reform, Italian franchise, foreign emigra- tion, and possibly Romanisation of the provinces were Gracchan ideas. But his work was largely frustrated by his own vehemence and by his passion for revenge. If his end was patriotic, the means he used were dangerous, and indeed concealed a latent revolution. His Corn Law debauched the masses and ruined the farmer. He plundered Asia to buy a party. In raising up the equites against the Senate, he drove out Satan by Beelzebub. An idealist in a hurry, he failed to see facts as they were, and succeeded, in his ignorance of the true character of the constitution, in .weaken- ing the only possible government without creating a permanent substitute. The time was not ripe for monarchy ; to a republican the idea of it was impossible. For his Periclean ideal the Comitia and the tribunate offered no sufficient instruments. The nett result of his work and that of his successors was to demonstrate the hope- lessness of any genuine democracy. The two Gracchi, in their effort to bring about a social reform, in their hope to regenerate Italy, were drawn on to attempt a political revolution whose nature they did not realise, whose difficulties they did not understand, and for which their nieans were inadequate. They pursued a chima^ra. They were not rtevolutionists, but they were the fathers of revolution. They aimed at no tyranny and were the precursors of the principate. CHAPTER XXXV THE RESTORED OLIGARCHY AND THE WAR WITH JUGURTHA M.C. A.I'.C. Agrarian Legislation 119-111 635 643 Fall of Cirta . . . . . .112 642 Jugurtha at Rome . . . .. . . .111 643 Metellus in Numidia 109-107 645-647 Marius conquers Jugurtha 106-103 648-649 The restored Oligarchy. — The Senate, having stamped out the Gracchan movement, resumed its old position with curtailed powers and a chastened spirit. It had been superseded, not destroyed, shaken but not shattered. The opposition leaders 35S n/STOKV OF ROME were dead, and there was none to take their place. After all, the only solid and definite party, hammered together by attack and welded by common interests, was the party of privilege. The Gracchi and some few of their successors may have dreamed dreams of popular regeneration, but they failed to organise a genuine and lasting movement. The populares of the future, aiming vaguely at the limitation of the Senate and the humiliation of the ruling class, have at bottom no ideas of value to realise beyond their personal advancement. Between the factions there is little to choose, and for the present the chances are in favour of the more solid and organised party, which always emerges from the revolutions produced by its own incompetence safe if not sound, and somewhat the worse for wear. But the fabric of state was weakened by these continued shocks. Action and reaction destroyed all feeling of stability, impaired the Roman reverence for law and constituted authority, and, in the absence of any civil force to maintain order, brought about a growing disregard for constitutional methods. The restored oligarchy behaved for a time with prudence, but otherwise had learned nothing by its fall. No attempt was made to reform the composition or change the policy of the Senate, or, on the other hand, to limit the powers of the tribunate and the Comitia, which still remained easy weapons for the popular agitator. It was content to keep the peace, humour the people, and out- manceuvre its opponents. Fate of Gracchus' Measures. — The colonies of Drusus were dropped, but as the Senate had beaten Gracchus at his own game, it dared not repeal the Corn Laws or reclaim the allotments. The Corn Law particularly could be used to buy the loyalty of the mob, which cared for the gift and not the giver. The equites, too strong to attack, retained their control of the courts, their new insignia, and the Asian taxes. Popillius, however, was recalled, and when Opimius was impeached for the murder of citizens without trial, he was formally acquitted. The accused was defended by the renegade Carbo, and the verdict served as a valuable precedent for the use of the supreme decree to suspend the constitution in time of danger, Carbo, impeached on the same charge, committed suicide. The wider and wiser ideas of the Gracchi were thrown aside — the Italian franchise, transmarine colonisation, and Romanisation of the provinces. The assignments made, even at Carthage, were ratified, but the colony at Capua was cancelled, and the formation of new communities in Italy and abroad mostly suspended. Narbo, LATER AGRARIAN LAWS 359 founaed 1 18 ac, was rather a garrison, a fortiess of the old type, and a centre of trade for the Roman business men, like Utica, Delos, and Argos, in rivalry to Massilia. For settlements at Carthage and Corinth the cquites had no use. Agrarian Laws. — As to the Leges Agrarice, the indemnity to the exchequer imposed by Tiberius had been abolished by Drusus, and soon after Gaius's death the clause prohibiting alienation of the new allotments was repealed. It was an impossible clause. It tied men, however unfit in means or talents, to the soil. But it was an essential provision in the original scheme, and its repeal, if it relieved the peasantry, favoured the reabsorption of the land by the rich. Purchase, mortgage, and land-grabbing went on merrily. Not long after, a moderate statesman could assert that there were only 2000 rich burgesses in Italy. In Africa, in later years, half-a-dozen men owned half the province. With regard to occupation, a law of 119 B.C. abolished the allotment commission, stopped all further distribution, and imposed a fixed rent on the possessors everywhere, who were henceforth to hold their land undisturbed. The money so obtained was to be used for the purchase of corn or land, or simply for distribution in cash, for the citizens. Finally, in 1 1 1 B.C., by what is probably to be called the Lex Thoria, the agrarian dispute as to the public land was temiinated. By it all occupations became private pro- perty rent free, and the bulk of the public was converted into private land. There were excluded only certain tracts, e.g.^ the Ager Campanus, which were let on lease, and common pastures, on which cattle up to a low maximum could be grazed. The law secured the titles of all allotments and occupations granted in or since the year 133 B.C., and though it represents the final triumph of vested interests over the allotment laws, it was, on the whole, a wise statute. It removed a handle for agitation, it guaranteed the rights of the Latins and allies to their usufructs, it recog- nised titles acquired by recent legislation, and did away with the system of occupation for the future. Henceforward agrarian laws concern not the rights of the community to its own land, but the duty of the state to provide for its veterans and its poor. It is no longer a question of checking the growth of large estates by settling individuals on state domains, but of using public money to create a peasant proprietorship by purchase. The same law dealt with the public land round the sites of Carthage and Corinth, where similar causes produced a similar monopoly of the soil by the rich. Thus the attempt of the Gracchi to establish an 36o HISTORY OF ROME independent peasantry failed, but tlic failure was due more to natural forces than to adverse let^islalion. In 115 B.C. Scaurus did something to restrict the frecdmen ; in 119 r..c. the tribune C. Marius, as yet an honest soldier from the country, the client of the Herennii, who owed his position to the support of the Metelli, showed his integrity and independence by at once opposing the extension of the corn-doles and forcing through a law, against the earnest resistance of the Senate, to secure voters from corruption and intimidation by narrowing the passages which led to the polling-booths. Later on (106 I3.c.) a Lex S.n'ilia proposed to restore the judicia to the senators with dubious success {Tide ifi/rir, p. 384). Corruption of the Government — Thus of the Gracchan con- stitution only the more questionable parts remained. Obliged to share its power with two uncertain allies, the equites and the populace, who were perfectly ready to owe their perquisites to any other donor, the Senate was as unable to carry out its own policy as it was unwilling to devise new methods. Its government is marked by corruption and vacillation at home and abroad. It had learned nothing and forgotten nothing ; it had been alarmed and embittered, but not reformed. Its ranks were more tightly closed, its treatment of the poorer classes and the subjects more arrogant than ever. Metellus succeeded Metellus as by destiny in the consulship, and noble officers primed with a hasty smattering of Greek tactics flung away their annies, and owed their triumphs to the talents of some low-born officer. A terrible picture has been drawn of the immorality and luxury of the upper classes, of the decline in faith and manners, of the foul and sordid crimes which defiled public and private life. The story of the foreign wars, the state of Italy and the provinces, the prevalence of piracy and servile riots, bear witness to the lack of statesmen and soldiers, to the weakness alike of g;overnment and opposition. Numidia. — Among- the worst fiascos of this period ma)- be reckoned the Numidian war, which owes to the political issues raised and to the genius of Sallust its utterly factitious import- ance. An ordinary frontier war, of a type familiar to Englishmen, it was dragged out to a preposterous length by blundering and corruption. The kingdom of Numidia had been consolidated by Massi- nissa during his long reign, and it now stretched from the Molo- chath, on the border of Mauretania, to the Syrtes and Gyrene, JUGUKTHA 361 surrounding with a girdle the Roman province of Africa. Its capital, Cirta (Constantine), standing in an almost impregnable position on a rocky promontory, round which the river Ampsaga flowed in a deep ravine, was a populous and prosperous centre of commerce and civilisation. There were several considerable towns, including the ports of Hippo Regius and Great Leptis. Massinissa had left a full treasury and a thriving country. The wilder districts supplied a good and numerous cavalry. At Massinissa's death yEmilianus divided the kingdom between his sons, but the convenient decease of his brothers soon left Micipsa sole ruler, who in a reign of thirty years was able to develop his countr)' and propitiate Rome, while he devoted himself to the society of philosophic Greeks. In 1 18 B.C. he bequeathed his kingdom to his two sons Hiempsal and Adherbal, but joined with them their elder cousin Jugurtha, a natural son of his brother Mastanabal, whom he had adopted. Jug-urtha. — Jugurtha was a strong, handsome, active man, a keen hunter, a brilliant soldier, a clever ruler, greedy of power and popular with his countrymen. He had served with distinction at Numantia (134 B.C.), where Marius also won reputation, and had earned Scipio's favour by courage and dexterity. This opportunity he had used to gain friends among the Roman nobles, to study their character and learn the ways of Roman politics, a lesson whose value far outweighed the stern rebukes which his efforts drew from Scipio. There he learned Romcc omnia venalia esse. On his return he became a trusted agent of his adoptive father, but when the heirs succeeded to the throne, cjuarrels broke out which made their joint sovereignty impossible. An attempt to divide the heritage led to a rupture, and amid the disputes the rash, high-spirited Hiempsal was assassinated byjugurtha(i 16 B.C.). Civil war ensued between the remaining competitors, and Jugurtha, with his fewer but finer troops, ousted Adherbal, an easy-going, unwarlike man, who carried his complaints to the Senate. At Rome, which had hitherto ignored the wrangling princes, feeling favoured Adherbal, but Jugurtha, by a liberal use of gold, effected a rapid and even scandalous change of opinion. M. Scaurus, possibly retained by Adherbal, succeeded so far in his resistance to the job that the Senate, while it condoned the past, decided on a compromise and decreed the equal division of the kingdom (116 B.C.). The award was carried out by L. Opimius and a commission, who allotted to Adherbal the eastern part, including the capital, with the largest towns and ports, while Jugurtha 362 HISTOKY OF JWME received the more fertile and populous west, with its warlike tribes. Opimius was afterwards condemned for bribery, but the division was not unfair, and protected Roman interests by removing^ the more dangerous Jugurtha from the frontier of the province. The award was accepted, and for three or four years there was compara- tive peace, while Jugurtha prepared for attack. Whatever were the rights and wrongs of this wretched business, Rome could scarcely interfere in every disputed succession among barbarians ; and it must be remembered that the Jugurtha of the Roman historian is painted, like llannibal and Mithradates, in the blackest colours. Siege of Cirta. — At last, in 112 B.C., after tamely enduring con- stant provocation while he appealed to the protecting power, Ad- herbal was forced into war, defeated between Cirta and the sea, driven into his capital, and there besieged. During the siege appeared a Roman embassy, in answer to the earlier appeals, composed, as often, of young nobles serving their political apprenticeship. Politely but firmly baffled by Jugurtha, who was at no loss for excuses, refused admission to Cirta, and confronted by an un- expected situation, the young men returned. Scaurus. — In the fifth month of the blockade an escaped messenger brought an urgent prayer for help, which produced yet another mission, headed by the eminent Scaurus, the son of an impoverished patrician, whose talents and birth had won him the consulship ( 1 15 B.C.). As consul he had defeated the Kami, an Alpine tribe at the head of the Adriatic, and was now princeps Senatus, and in 109 B.C. became censor. Orator, author, and builder, he figured as the pattern aristocrat and leading statesman of his time, and^yet has been painted by an adversary as greedy, ambitious, and venal, skilled in steering near the wind, a man who knew and waited for his price. Him also Jugurtha amused to his face at Utica with protracted discussions, and when he departed, relied so far on his own strength in the Senate that, on the surrender of Cirta, he tortured and murdered his cousin with all and sundry his adherents. Among these he was mad enough, if our reports can be trusted, ta massacre a number of Italian merchants who are said to have been the main authors of the defence. The whole story sounds suspicious. Roman Intervention. — So far, whether it was due to that in- exhaustible gold of his or to the lack of interest at Rome, Jugurtha had been left to work his will. The Senate was disinclined for African adventures, nor was the state responsible for the protection of combative traders. Jugurtha hoped that the Senate would acquiesce ROMAN INTER VENTION VIEW OF CIRTA. 364 HISTORY OF ROME in accomplislied facts. But the massacre of Cirta roused the merchants and the public to back up the minority in the Senate. Rome's orders had been defied, her flag draj^getl in the mire, her blood shed through the base intrigues of noble senators. A strong and united Numidia, under an active soldier, was a menace to the province. Suspicion was fostered by the obstructive tactics of the Senate. A storm broke out. Gaius Memmius, tribune-elect (112 n.c), a bitter democrat, fanned the flame. The Senate, in alarm, permitted the declaration of war, Jugurtha's envoys were dismissed the country, and in 11 1 B.C. the consul L. Calpurnius Piso Bestia, a capable officer spoiled by avarice, with Scaurus as legate, and a staff of nobles chosen to screen his transactions, entered Numidia and gained some successes. The offered alliance of Bocchus, king of Mauretania, one of Jugurtha's fathers-in-law, was refused. The wily Numidian, however, who had apparently offered little resist- ance, soon secured, by liberal bribes to Bestia and Scaurus — a point neglected by the inexperienced Moor — not merely an armis- tice, but a treaty of peace. In return for a formal submission, a small fine, and the surrender of some horses and elephants, repurchased later from the corrupted army, he received his kingdom entire. When Bestia came back the storm broke out again. The war was popular, and it offered a prospect of slight risk and heavy booty from those famous treasures. Political feelingr ran high. And yet, apart from the bribery, the treaty was defensible. There had been terrible disasters in Macedonia and the north : the Cimbri were at tlie gates of Italy ; it would be something to be well out of this troublesome and possibly dangerous desert warfare against tough and patriotic tribesmen ; Jugurtha's cavalry might be useful once more as allies. But Memmius, with inflammatory harangues, denounced the nobility, and demanded instant inquiry into the scamped and irregular negotiations. Jugurtha at Rome.— The validity of the treaty was impugned in the Senate. It is said that Memmius procured the presence of the king himself at Rome, to be questioned publicly as a witness about the nefarious job ; that the king appeared in suppliant garb, under safe conduct, before the maddened populace ; was there and then indicted by Memmius, and advised to save himself by acting as in- former ; and, finally, that a hired tribune sealed by his veto the royal lips, and baffled alike his colleague and the people. Such is the effective scene depicted by the pen of Sallust. The king certainly came to Rome on business connected with the ratification of the treaty, and Memmius may have tried to use the occasion to obtain IVAJi" WITH JUGURTHA 365 startling disclosures. The attempt was foiled, but the discussion of the treaty went on. Jugurtha, who remained to watch events, might yet have succeeded, but a blundering stroke of craft and cruelty ruined his chances. He procured the assassination in Rome itself of a possible rival, Massiva, son of Gulussa and grandson of Massinissa, the candidate held in reserve by the opposition, through his confidant Bomilcar, whom he aided to escape from justice. It was the last straw. He was expelled from Italy, the peace was cancelled, and Sp. Postumius Albinus, the consul, who had attacked the treaty in the hope of getting the command, passed over into Africa (no B.C.). The election for this year had been delayed by the attempt of two obscure tribunes to prolong their tenure of office. Capitulation of Albinus.— As the king left Rome he looked back again and again, and at last broke into the cry, " Crbem venaleiii, et mature periiitram, si emptoreui iiweneritP Albinus found a demoralised army, corrupted by its foes, and terrible only to its friends, an enemy inactive and ready for terms. He could do nothing ; but when, fooled, bribed, or merely bafified, he returned for the elections, his brother and legate, Aulus, ambitious of conquest or urged by avarice, set off on a wild-goose chase in midwinter, to surprise a distant depot named Suthul or Calama. The attempt failed owing to the difficulties of the situation and the season, and Aulus, lured out into the desert, was himself surprised by night, his camp taken by treachery, his troops scattered. Next day he was forced to surrender, to send his army beneath the yoke, and evacuate Numidia within ten days (beginning of 109 B.C.). The disgraceful treaty, while it kindled Numidian patriotism, roused to fury the indignation of the Roman public against the misgovernment of the nobility. Senate and consul might discuss the treaty, but the tribune C. Mamilius Limetanus, with the support of the equites, and against the secret resistance of the nobles, carried the appointment of an extraordinary court of inquiry into the corruption, collusion, and treason connected with the African business. L. Bestia, C. Cato, Sp. Albinus, L. Opimius, C. Sulpicius Galba, among others, guilty or innocent, unpopular at any rate and suspected, were swept into exile by the hasty sentences of a partisan commission, on which the judicious Scaurus contrived to find a place. Metellus. — The Senate, having thrown overboard the most responsible men, was allowed to deal with what was now a serious scandal, so strong and so indispensable did that body remain. The 366 ins TORY OF ROME treaty was cancelled, as having been concluded without the con- sent of the Senate and people. The rebel king, who, deliberately refraining- from offensive action, had left Africa unmolested, did not receive even the person of the repudiated legate. The command was given to the haughty aristocrat, Q. Ca^cilius Metellus, nephew of Macedonicus, an honest governor, an upright man, a good disciplinarian, and a fairly capable officer, whose treacherous deal- ings with a mere barbarian are more shocking to modern than ancient notions. As chiefs of his staff he selected tried soldiers of lower birth, and, above all, P. Rutilius Rufus, the author of an improved drill, and Gaius Marius, the farmei-'s son of Arpinum, who had fought his way from the ranks. Battle on the Muthul. — Metellus, with his new levies, ap- peared in Africa late in 109 B.C., and probably spent the rest of the summer in reorganising the dissolute bandits, whom Albinus had found, on his return as proconsul, unfit to satisfy his burning desire to wipe out his brother's disgrace. Jugurtha, genuinely afraid, proffered a real surrender to the man he could not bribe. The consul, covering his treachery with a pretence of negotiatioji, tried through the envoys to secure the person of the king alive or dead, as a murderer liable to justice, whose power and popularity made him dangerous to Rome. Meanwhile he advanced cautiously into Numidia (close of 109 or beginning of 108 B.C.), where he was received with elaborate submission, and occupied Vaga, a busy and populous town, frequented by Italian merchants, not far from the frontier, as a depot and garrison. At last Jugurtha awoke, and prepared for resistance. On the line of march to the enemy's objective, Cirta, somewhere by the river Muthul {1 Rubricatus), he laid a skilful trap, a half- completed African Trasimene. As the Roman issued from the mountain pass, and debouched on the river-plain, his retreat was cut, his access to the water blocked, and as he advanced, his infantry was harassed by swarms of horse in rear and flank. The fight for the Muthul is a regular African desert battle, with its story of broken squares and thronging natives, the heat, the dust, the struggle for the stream, the victory snatched from disaster by the coolness of the chief, by the stability of the men, by the skill and courage of Marius and Rufus. Metellus had been outmanceuvred. Only the weakness of the Numidian infantry had spoiled the calcu- lations of Jugurtha. Flying columns under Metellus and Marius now raided the country, while the king maintained an active guer- rilla warfare. The march on Cirta was clearly abandoned, and ME TELL us /.V AFRLCA 367 Metellus, with small results for his labour, apparently retired on the province, and when next heard of is besieging the neighbouring town of Zama Regia, in the valley of the Bagradas, on the old Punic territory, in the hope of compelling a decisive action. But the besieged were so vigorously supported by the king that Metellus, unable to capture the town or force a battle, was compelled to re- treat into winter cjuarters. Thus the campaign of 108 B.C. (109), in spite of triumphant bulletins and state thanksgivings, afforded some grounds for the complaints of Roman business men and the caustic if insubordinate criticisms of Marius. The general had again re- course to treachery. Through Bomilcar, whom he contrived to corrupt, he induced the king to capitulate, and then employed the old device of a gradually widening ultimatum to delude, disarm, and crush his enemy, whose person he intended finally to entrap. Jugurtha surrendered his elephants, horses, and arms, promised an indemnity, furnished hostages, and handed over deserters, but when summoned to surrender himself, suspected treason, discovered the plot, and executed the traitor Bomilcar. Campaig-n of 107 B.C. — In the following winter (108-107 K.c.) Vaga, close as it was to the Roman frontier, revolted, and killed its garrison. The commandant, a Latin named Turpilius, who alone escaped, was scourged and beheaded by Metellus, and within two days the revolt was crushed. But the national feeling was unbroken, and Jugurtha, strong in his loyal tribesmen, had every means for irregular war. In the desultory fighting that ensued (107 B.C.) the Romans gained- some successes, after one of which Jugurtha fled, with his family and treasures, to the strong- hold of Thala, situated on an oasis south of the province. Hither Metellus pursued him, hoping to end the war by a surprise ; but though Thala fell, the bird was flown. The war extended itself; the Gietulians of the desert responded to the king's call ; and Bocchus, the rejected, in alarm for himself, received his son-in-law, abandoned his neutrality, and took up the cause. With a swarm of horsemen the princes advanced on Cirta, the impregnable city, which had apparently fallen into Roman hands. Marius.— In the meantime Metellus had been superseded. His legate, C. Marius, had been elected consul, and appointed general in Africa by special decree of the people. The son of a day- labourer, born at Cereatas (Casamare), then a dependency of Arpinum, in 155 B.C., he passed from the plough-tail to the camp. He was inured to fatigue by his country training, and schooled in war under the stern command of Scipio, whose respect he earned 368 HISTORY OF ROME by his soldierly qualities. By soldiership he had forced his way up, assisted by lucky speculations and the connections gained by marriage. In 115 r..c. he had been prretor, and as propraetor had done good work in Farther Spain. He had failed to obtain the icdilcship, and hitherto had not ventured to sue for the consulship, which the nobles defended with bitterness from the "pollution" of an able parvenu. Yet his wife Julia, aunt of the dictator, belonged to the patrician house of the Julii. At length the consciousness of merit and favourable prophecies pushed the ambitious and super- stitious man to make good his claims. He was indeed peculiarly fitted, by his integrity and industry, by his powers of discipline and organisation, by his strict but sympathetic attitude to the common soldiers, his thorough knowledge of their needs, and of the defects of the system, for the work of restoring the military prestige of Rome and asserting her superiority to African and Gallic barbarians. He was a popular commander and a leader of the first rank in the age of the second-rate. A plain, blunt soldier, with a great knowledge of war, and an equal ignorance of politics, as free from the vices as he was untouched by the elegances of his time, as unfitted for the Forum and the courts as he was for the salo73, his sound qualities were marred alone by a fierce and fatal ambition. It was his misfortune to become the figure-head and instrument of a party ; it was the fault of the nobles to drive into opposition a character essentially conservative and commonplace. Marius made Consul. — When he asked Metellus for leave of absence, to push his candidature, his patron, indignant at the pre- sumption, warned, scolded, and finally detained him to the last moment. " Safis mafure ilium cum filio sua consulatiini peti- tiiruni^'' he sneered.' The legate retorted by bitter criticisms of his superior's generalship. His boasts and promises were trans- mitted to Rome by his partisans in Utica and the camp, and a cry was raised for the transference of the command. When at last permitted to leave, twelve days before the elections, in spite of his shortened canvrfss he was elected by an enormous majority, and received the appointment by exceptional decree, 107 B.C. (108). This result was due to the dissatisfaction of the mercantile class, to the prostration of the nobility by the Mamilian commission, and to the combination of all the malcontents, who at last had a soldier to lead them. Amid popular enthusiasm Marius proceeded to levy troops. He treated his consulship as the spoils 1 " It would be soon enough for him to stand with Metellus' son," i.e., Metellus Pius, cos. 80E.C. MARIUS IN AFRICA 369 of war, and inveighed bitterly against tliese "men of antique race, witli their Greek culture, their banquets, play-actors, and cooks, with many iJiiagiiies and no campaigns, who, as soon as they became consuls, read up the deeds of their ancestors and the military manuals of the Greeks, and took for tutor in the field some soldier from the ranks." In selecting troops he set a new and important precedent. He not only called up a large number of veterans, but to avoid the hated conscription, and to secure men on whom he could depend, he enlisted recruits mainly from the capite censi, i.e., from those who possessed less than the minimum of the lowest class, and who had hitherto been drawn only on an emergency or for service as marines. The full bearing of the changes which he effected now, or in the creation of the army of the North, will be pointed out in connection with the Cimbric war {vide infra, pp. 379, 380). Marius in Numidia. — Meanwhile nothing had happened in Africa. Metellus, with almost childish annoyance, refused to act. Bocchus, who held the key of the situation, would not commit him- self. Marius arrived, 106 B.C. (107), trained his army, chastised the Gaetulians, proceeded to attack such cities as remained untaken, and, among others, captured the stronghold of Capsa, situated on an oasis, after a march of immense difficulty, undertaken in the hope of ecHpsing the exploit of Metellus at Thala. Having thus cleared Eastern Numidia, he entered on a long and difficult expedition to the Molochath, and took, by a lucky surprise, a certain treasure-hold of the king. Here he was joined by the quaestor L. Cornelius Sulla, with a reinforcement of cavalry. It was Sulla's first campaign, but under so good a master the Roman dandy rapidly learned the elements of war. From his advanced position Marius began a difficult and dangerous retreat. Possibly Bocchus had deluded him by assurances of friendship. Now he joined Jugurtha in force. Twice were the Romans enveloped ; twice through the hostile swarms of cavalry the way was opened by a pitched battle. On the first occasion, surprised in column of route, they were only saved by the military instincts of the soldiery and the negligence of the foe. On the second their safety was due to the brilliant manoeuvres of Sulla. Jugurtha betrayed to Sulla. — From winter quarters at Cirta negotiations were resumed with Bocchus, without whose aid the war was interminable. Envoys passed secretly between Bocchus, Marius, and the Senate. Finally the Moor sent for Sulla to seal the treaty and take over the prisoner. He accepted the perilous 2 A 370 HISTORY OF ROME commission, and Ijoldly traversed the camp of Jii^urtha, his small PRF^FNT Fl riiir» oc | SECTION. 30 Feet PLAN. % r PLAN AND SECTION OF THE MAMERTINE PRISON. (From Middleton s Rome. ) A. Opening in flonr over ihe Tnllianuin ; the only access. BB. Solid tufa rocl<. CC. Branch of Cloaca. DE. Position of modern stairs and door. FF. Front wall of prison. G. Probable original top of Tullianum. escort lost in a Moorish host. Sulla's firm bcarinL; decided the DEATH OF JUGURTHA 371 vvaverei". Deluded by the hope of conference, Jugurtha was en- trapped by his kinsman and ally, and carried in chains to Rome, where he adorned the triumph of the conqueror, January i, 104 B.C., and was starved to death in the foul dungeon carved in the Capi- tohne rock. " How cold is your bath ! " he cried as he fell into his hving grave. He had been caught at last, after the long struggle. He had furnished two generals with a triumph, and Metellus with the title Numidicus. The credit of his capture belonged largely to the cool and resolute Sulla ; the people lauded Marius, the Senate praised its own heroes, and the African war began the rivalry that ended in the proscriptions. Results of the War.— With the king's death the war closed. No province was formed. Bocchus received, as the price of blood, the western half of Numidia ; the remainder was given to Cauda, a grandson of Massinissa. The Qjetulians were declared free allies of Rome. The Senate was reluctant at this crisis (105 B.C.) to main- tain a standing army in Africa. The political results were more striking than the military. Corruption and incapacity had given the democrats their chance. A fairly successful commander had been superseded by a popular vote, and the Senate's control of the military command infringed. There had been bitter war between the equites and the people on the one hand and the Senate on the other. The ground of opposition had shifted from home to foreign policy, and the military power had come to the front. On January i, 104 B.C., Rome's only general entered on a second successive consulate in a panic caused by dis- asters in the North. CHAPTER XXXVI THE WARS IN THE NORTH B.C. A.U.C. Defeat of AUobroges and Arverni— Province of Narbo izi 633 Wars in Macedonia 112-110 642 644 The Cimbri defeat the Romans in Gaul .... 109-107 645-647 Battle of Arausio 105 649 Marius Consul 104-100 650-654 Battle of Aquae Sextiae 102 652 Battle on the Raudine Plain loi 653 Holding, as Rome did, Spain, Italy to the Alps, and Macedonia, it was her plain business to provide for the defence of the frontiers, the protection of the subjects, and the security of her communications. In Spain she was bound to chastise the Celtiberian and Lusitanian 372 HISTORY OF ROME tribes, and to hold tlic passes of the Western Pyrenees ; in (laul to protect Massiiia and the coast route ; in North Italy, to clear the Alpine passes on the west and east and check the invaders from the north ; in Macedonia and Illyria, to defend the ports of the western coast, and act as warder of the Balkans and of Rhodope. No doubt the effective control of the great ranges would precipitate conflict with the wandering hordes which ebbed and flowed behind the barriers, but of this danger Rome was scarcely aware, and nothing was gained by delay. Of all this little was done. Spain. — Of Spain, after the work of D. Brutus (136 B.C.) and the capture of Numantia, there is nothing to record except Marius' suc- cess in checking brigandage (1 14 B.C.), the repulse of the Cimbri by the warlike Celtiberians (103 B.C.), and the insurrection of the Celtiberians and Lusitanians, excited by the shameful defeats in Gaul, which was crushed by Didius and Crassus between 97 and 93 B.C. Under Didius served with distinction the famous Sertorius. There was hard fighting and some butchery, and Didius occasion- ally removed the troublesome highlanders to peaceful settlements in the plain. North Italy. — Here Roman ideas and habits had spread to the foot of the Alps. The Ligurians in the west had been severely handled and the coast route secured. In 143 B.C. Appius Claudius reduced the Salassi ; in 100 B.C. Eporedia was founded as a citizen colony to control the entrance of the north-western passes. No province was formed as yet and no tribute exacted, the communi- ties retaining their national institutions under the supervision of the consuls, furnishing contingents, especially the light Ligurians, and providing for their own defence. It was the inroads of the barbarians and the extension of the franchise to Italy which first compelled the creation of a distinct command in North Italy, whose necessity only ceased with the conquest of Gaul and Switzerland. Gaul.— Beyond the Alps, the route to Spain, whether by land or along the coast, from Piste, Luna, or Massiiia to Tarraco, had been secured partly by the fleet, and, after its decay, by the chas- tisement of the Lig^urians, by the aid of friendly tribes, but mainly by the ancient alliance with the faithful Massiiia, whose naval stations stretched from Nicfea and Antipolis to Agatha and Rhoda. In return for her help, Rome protected Massiiia against the bar- barians. In 154 B.C.' Opimius defended Antipolis and Nicaea 1 About this time occurred the attempt to protect the export of wine and oil from Italy, by the prohibition to cultivate the vine and olive in the Massilian dependencies (Cic. , De Rep. iii. 9). JFAJ^S IN GAUL 373 against the Ligurians of the Maritime Alps, the first Transalpine war. In 125 B.C. P'ulvius Flaccus, the democratic consul, his head full of Gracchan ideas, a true precursor of Caesar, laid the founda- tion of the future province by his victories over the Celto-Ligurian tribes — the Salluvii near Aix, and the Vocontii by Vaucluse. War with the Allobroges and Arverni. — The area of war rapidly expanded. The chief tribe in South Gaul was the Arverni (capital, Nemossus, near Clermont), who had risen to great wealth and power and a fair civilisation under the magnificent Luerius and his son Betuitus. Their available force amounted to 180,000 men. Their rivals for the hegemony were the weaker yEdui round Bibracte (Autun). The Belgic league of the north-east, with their leading clan, the Suessiones, just enter our horizon. In the south-east, however, the Romans came at once into contact with the strong clan of the Allobroges, in the valley of the Isere, who, coming to aid the Salluvii, were defeated (123 B.C.) by C. Sextius Calvinus, near the modern Aix. In 122 B.C. Cn. Domitius Aheno- barbus entered their land, and the attack upon them brought the Arverni as suzerains into the sphere of action. The refusal of their mediation led to war. The ^dui at once embraced the Roman alliance, a useful support in the enemies' rear. Ahenobarbus was reinforced (121 B.C.) by Q. Fabius Maximus, grandson of Paullus, who severely defeated the united armies (August S) at the confluence of the Rhone and the Isere, earning the surname Allobrogicus. The Allobroges submitted, and the Arvernian king, Betuitus, who had thought the Roman soldiers too few to feed his dogs, was entrapped by Domitius, figured in the triumph of Fabius, and was interned at Alba by the Senate, which censured the thief, but took the stolen goods. At some date before or after this battle Domitius gained a victory at Vindalium, above Avignon, due in part to the awe created b)' African elephants. Province of Narbo.— From the land of the Allobroges, who sank into a mutinous, heavily indebted tribe, was founded (121 B.C.) the province of Gallia Braccata or Narbonensis {the province^ Provence). It took its later name from the capital, Narbo Martius, an old Celtic town on the Atax, not far from the sea, henceforward the rival of Massilia for the inland traffic and headquarters of the 7ies;otiatores. Aquas Sextiae, founded 1 22 B.C., famous for its hot and cold springs, was the standing camp of the west. The new acquisi- tion, while it realised to some extent the colonising ideas of the Gracchi, was mainly designed to protect the communications with Spain and tap the trade of Gaul. Between the Alps and the Rhone 374 HISTORY OF ROME the tribes paid tribute to Rome or Massilia ; the Arverni ceded enough land between the Cevennes and the coast for the making of the great Domitian road from the Rhone to the Pyrenees ; the westward Hmits included the rich and ancient city of Tolosa and the upper waters of the Garonne. The country rapidly assimilated the language, habits, and ideas of its conquerors, and remained at peace till the Germanic invasion. The Balkan Peninsula. — In Illyria, Rome possessed Istria, Scodra, and part of Epirus, but had no effective control over the tribes of the " Hinterland," or of the rugg^ed coasts and rocky isles between Epirus and Istria. In consequence of bitter complaints from the subjects and allies, the rude and insolent pirates of Dal- matia were chastised by P. Scipio Nasica, who took Delminium (155 B.C.), and taught the confederacy "to concern itself about the Romans " for the future. The district was placed, like Cisalpine Gaul, under the consular control, and remained so even after the formation of the Macedonian province. No attempt was made by a regular and combined attack from Italy and Macedon on the mountain tribes from Gaul to Thrace to secure the line of the Alps and Balkans or push the frontier to the Danube. The countr)' was mainly occupied by Celtic clans, remnants of the great wave that spread itself from Spain to Galatia, passing on either side of the Alps, and penetrating alike to Rome and Delphi. In modern Switzerland, and beyond into Germany, along*^ the Upper Rhine, dwelt the Helvetii, who had not yet come into contact with Rome ; next to these, the Boii still held Bavaria and Bohemia ; in Styria and Carinthia dwelt the Taurisci or Norici ; the kindred Kami inhabited the hill-country at the head of the Adriatic. In the Tauriscan country, the mines of iron and gold about Noreia (near Klagenfurt) attracted Italian capital and labour. The in- digenous Ra;ti pushed their forays and levied blackmail from the heights of Eastern Switzerland and the Tyrol, whither the Celts had driven them ; the Euganei and \'eneti lived peaceably round the modern Padua and Venice, a wedge between the Cenomanian and Karnian Celts. Along the Balkans and in the basin of the Danube dwelt, first, the half-Illyrian lapydes, in Croatia, then the restless and roving Scordisci, above the Illyrians of the coast, in Bosnia and Servia, along the Save, plundering their neighbours from their stronghold of Siscia. The Thracians harried Macedonia on the east. Behind, fermented the obscure masses of the ever-moving north. Fighting can be dimly discerned going on round the Roman THE BALKAN PENINSULA 375 territories, whose sole frontiers were the swords of the legions. In 118 B.C. the Stoeni, above Verona, were reduced by Q. Mar- cius ; constant raids paid back in kind the inroads of the moun- taineers. There were conflicts in Thrace in 103 and 99 B.C. The piratical Vardjei were deported from Dalmatia into the in- terior (135 B.C.), and the Scordisci attacked and defeated. Tuditanus in 129 B.C., helped by the Spanish veteran D. Brutus, repressed the lapydes, and secured a temporary peace in Illyria. But in 1 19 B.C. Cotta had to move on Siscia, and L. Metellus cheaply earned the name Dalmaticus by capturing Salonas (i 19 B.C.), which became the Roman headcjuarters in those parts. But Metellus was shrewdly suspected of manufacturing a triumph from a sliam campaign. Froni about this time dates the commencement of the Via Gabinia from Salonai to the interior. Scaurus in 11^ B.C. defeated the Kami, crossed the eastern range, and opened up commercial relations with Noricum. But these successes in the Illyrian district were badly balanced by the extermination of the army under the censor's grandson, C. Porcius Cato (consul 114 B.C.), entrapped by the Scordisci among the mountains. Cato was condemned later, on a convenient charge of extortion. The pnttor M. Didius was able to check the victors' raids into Macedon. The war was continued with fair success till 109 B.C. M. Livius Drusus, the anti-Gracchan tribune, is said to have been the first Roman general who reached the Danube, in 1 12 B.C. ; but if he did indeed drive the Scordisci beyond the river, it was left for M. Minucius Rufus (iio B.C.) to complete their destruction. Henceforth the Dardani take their place as leading tribe. The Cimbri. — These new connections and the thinning down of the barrier clans soon brought Rome face to face with a more terrible enemy. Beyond the mountains had been wandering to and fro for some years a tribe of unsettled Germans, driven by pres- sure from behind, by natural convulsions, or by migratory instinct from their homes about the Baltic and the North Sea — a people on the march, women, children, and waggon-houses. Gathering fresh forces from the tribes they traversed, especially from the powerful Celtic Ambrones, the Cimbri, tall, fair-haired, blue- eyed men, with women as strong and tall, and children flaxen- haired, poured on towards the sunny South, by capricious onsets, harbingers of the final floods which drowned the later Empire, appalling the smaller-statured Romans with their huge forms, their long swords, and their terrific cries. They were rude and rough, brutal e\-en and savage, when they poured the blood of 376 If I STORY OF NOME captives for their white-clad priestesses to prophesy the issues of war ; yet they were chivah-ous after a sort, fond of single combats, KOMAN SOLDIER. tourneying with the foe at a chosen time and place. In their copper helmets and coats-of-mail, with their heavy missiles, narrow THE CTMBRI 377 shields, and Celtic swords, they formed in a deep square phalanx, the front ranks, it is said, tied man to man with thongs through their girdles. Defeat of the Romans. — On they came, a strange and motley host, breaking through the thin barrier whence hitherto the Celts of the Danube had repelled them. In 1 13 B.C. they appeared among the Taurisci. To protect the clients of Rome and cover the passes of the Alps, Cn. Papirius Carbo, brother of the renegade, who was then in Illyria, marched on Noreia, and when the Cimbri offered to evacuate and leave the friends of Rome alone, attempted to mislead and surprise them, but was defeated with great slaughter. Leaving Italy unmolested and passing peace- ably through Helvetia, they entered Gaul by the land of the Sequani and harassed it with devastating raids. In 109 B.C. they reappeared on the borders of the Gallic province, and being refused settlements and employment as mercenaries, they de- stroyed the army of the consul M. Junius Silanus, who had taken the offensive to protect the Allobroges and the Roman frontier. But so far from pursuing their advantage and pressing the Roman government, embarrassed as it was with the African war and at its wits'-ends for recruits, the Cimbri contented themselves with harrying the prosperous Gallic tribes. Their place was taken by their Celtic imitators and allies, the Tougeni and Tigurini, from Helvetia, who had penetrated into the valley of the Garonne as far as the modern Agen, under Divico, and in 107 B.C. decoyed and annihi- lated the army of the consul L. Cassius Longinus, v/ho fell with his legate L. Piso. The remnant passed ignominiously beneath the yoke, but C. Popillius, who signed the capitulation, was subse- quently convicted of treason. His condemnation was ensured by the passing of a Lex Ccrlia extending the ballot to trials (or pcr- diieUio. Disaster at Arausio. — This series of disasters shook the credit of Rome, and the rich town of Tolosa, on the western frontier, revolted and seized its garrison. Q. Servilius Caspio (consul 106 B.C.) re- covered the city by a night surprise and sacked the treasures of its ancient sanctuary. What became of these famous treasures no one knew. On the way to Massilia they were seized by robbers, and the consul was accused of connivance. If it was true, he had indeed gained, as the proverb said, " the gold of Tolosa." Disaster over- took the sacrilegious thief. Remaining on the defensive during 106 B.C., he was acting next year with a half-independent com- mand on the right bank of the Rhone, under the consul Cn. 378 HISTORY OF ROME Mallius Maximus, when the Ciml)ri and llicir allies returned under Boiorix. Tlic first to fail was M. Aurelius Scaurus, with a detachment of the consular army. His proud warning to the king to keep his hands off Italy cost him his life. Reluctantly Ca?pio obeyed his superior's orders and entreaties and crossed to the left bank. Here, possibly at Arausio (Orange), not far from Avignon, the powerful Roman amiy was concentrated, but its leaders were at discord, immovable by remonstrance even from the Senate. C;t.>pio declined to concert action, and when Mallius accepted the negotiations offered by the Cimbri, ap- parently ordered a separate attack. Taken in detail, with the river in rear, the divided armies were murderously defeated ; 80,000 men were reported dead, and the infuriated savag^es, in obedience to a vow, hung their prisoners, burned their booty, smashed the armour, and pitched the horses into the river. The 6th of October 105 B.C. recalled the deadly day of Cannre. Five armies had nowbeen swept successively away ; the passes were open, the Gauls at the gate. In the panic that followed, able-bodied men were bound on oath to remain in Italy. All exemptions were suspended. The allies gathered in alarm round Rome, and at the elections, in spite of law and custom, the precedent of the Punic wars was revived, and Marius, the victor of Africa, was re- elected in absence, and appointed to Gaul, to be continued in office, like a new Valerius Corvus, four years in succession. Rome's luck did not desert her : again the capricious hordes failed to push their victory, and passed westward to attack the strongholds of the Arverni and break their teeth on the warlike tribes and rocky fastnesses of Spain. There was breathing-time for re- organisation and revenge. Ctepio, stripped on the spot of his proconsular command by decree of the people, was in 104 B.C. driven from the Senate by a special law, providing this penalty for those deprived of imperium by the people, an enactment of doubtful validity. Probably in the following year (103 B.C.), in virtue of a plebiscitum, moved. by the tribune C. Norbanus and supported by L. Appuleius Saturninus, a commission was ap- pointed to try the treason and embezzlement connected with the Gallic command, which ended in the condemnation, among others, of Mallius, and of Ca;pio, whose property was confiscated and who barely escaped death, to end his life in beggary and exile. Marius reorganises the Army. — Meanwhile Marius, who had finished his work in Africa in 105 B.C., to which year must be as- MILITARY MEASURES OF MAR I US 379 signed the capture of Jugurtha, had returned to Rome. He busied himself for two years in organising a new army in North Italy and the south of France, where he remained on the defensive. He now completed the military reforms begun in his first consul- ship and made doubly necessary by the dearth of troops and the demoralisation that follows disaster. These disasters had emphasised all the tendencies which were irresistibly creating a professional army. Political, military, and social causes had produced a gradual change from conscription based on property to enlistment of paid volunteers, supplemented by contingents from Italy and abroad. The census ceased to be the basis of the army, and there was no need to enforce an un- popular senice when theie was a sufficient supply of eager and willing recruits. Moreover, the old tactical division into three lines was becoming as obsolete as the Servian institutions them- selves, and the loose arrangements of the maniples clearly needed revision since the recent failures. As to the cavalry, it was notoriously formed of Italians, Thracians, and Numidians, while the Ligurians and Baliares supplied the light-armed foot and slingers. The refomis connected with Marius gave full expres- sion to these changes. Whatever might remain of the old forms of the civic militia, its methods and principles, was now swept away. Though the legal obligation of ser\'ice remains, the army henceforth is filled by veterans, volunteers, and large drafts of allied troops. All non-military distinctions in equipment and in the line of battle disappear. There is no question of age or of property, only of service approved by the commanding officer. While Marius was still in Africa, Rutilius, the colleague of Mallius, had brought in his new method of training, derived from the masters of the gladiatorial schools. The excellence of the re- modelled army was based on the skill and coolness of the indi- vidual swordsman. The care of Marius, an old ranker himself, improved the weapons, the kit, and comfort of the rank and file. His experience also decided him to make the cohort, which already existed, the main tactical division instead of the maniple, though, of course, the maniple was retained. Ten strong cohorts combined the advantages of solidity and independence to resist the rush of the Germans. Company ensigns were abolished ; the cohort, with its six sections of 100, had its battalion colours ; the legion, 6000 strong, received the famous eagle. The three lines no longer represented separate corps ; military rank went by the numerical order of the cohorts and centuries. The velites dis- 38o ITTSTOR V OF ROME appeared as the eqiiitos liad gone, and the only distinct corps was the cohors pnetoria, originally created as a company of personal friends by /Emilianus in Spain, now a select and privileged guard, retained at headquarters for special service. The rank and file of the army was thus formed mainly of proletarians and the poorer classes, who rarely rose above the rank of centurion, the upper classes acting as officers or serving on the bodyguard. The military tribunes are gradually superseded in the command cf COMBAT OF GLADIATOKS : THE VANQUISHED COMBATANT APPEALING TO THE AUDIENCE. (^To illi{strate gladiatorial swords7nansIiip, p. 379). the legion by legafi, generally men of senatorial! rank, serving as generals of division. The change had been gradually brought about by military necessities. It created a soldier class because the conditions of that class existed. It was no device of an aspiring soldier, and yet we have here all the elements of the imperial army. The basis of the military republic was gone with its civic militia. Attached by his oath to the general, for a war, not for a cam- paign, rewarded and punished by the general, with no state system MARIUS IN GAUr 381 of pension or even poorhouse, the soldier, Roman or allied, owed his allegiance henceforth to the colours, the comrade, and the chief. Marius in Gaul. — Marius proceeded to Gaul with his legate Sulla, an experienced staff, and his Syrian prophetess Martha, with his contingents summoned far and wide, his raw levies and African veterans. There, by strict discipline and sturdy im- partiality, he got his masses in hand and attached them to him- self During the months of waiting he kept them employed by great military and civil works, especially by cutting a transport canal (Fossae Marianas) to improve the navigation of the Rhone. From a strong camp near the junction of the Rhone and the I sere he overawed the Tectosages and restored confidence, while he guarded the passage of the Rhone and covered the routes to Italy. To secure his re-election for 102 B.C. he was com- pelled to come to Rome and form an alliance with the popular tribune Saturninus, who forced the appointment in face of the growing discontent at this unconstitutional continuation of power. But the country needed a disciplinarian and a soldier, and though there were other officers available, the government was too un- popular to resist, and, at this crisis, acquiesced in the breach of a fundamental law of the Republic. Marius went through the farce of a pretended reluctance. The full peril of this unlimited power wielded by the general of the democracy at the head of a popular army was not realised till the danger was past. Public opinion enjoyed the defeat of the Senate. At last, in 103 B.C., the Germans reappeared on their way to Italy, their ranks swelled by adventurers and reinforced by the Tougeni and Tigurini, and by the Teutones from the Baltic, under Teutoboduus, whom they had met somewhere in Gaul. Their Gallic raids, re- pulsed by the Belgfe alone (103 B.C.), had filled their hands with plunder. This they now left under a powerful guard, which sub- secjuently became the people of the Aduatuci, on the Sambre. On their way south they divided their forces, the Teutones Tougeni and Ambrones taking the road by Roman Gaul and the western passes, while the Cimbri and the Tigurini were to cross the Rhine, skirt the Alps, and enter by the eastern defiles which they had surveyed in 113 B.C. The divisions would rejoin in the valley of the Po. Battle of Aquae Sextiae. — In the summer of 102 B.C. the Teutones crossed the Rhone unresisted, while Marius, still uncertain of his troops, watched his opportunity from his camp. For three days 382 HISTORY OF ROME he repelled the assaLiUs of tlic iKubaririns, and, it is said, refused to attack, though the enemy for six days, defiiinj^ past in long column with their vast baggage-train, offered an extended flank. Unmoved by their bitter taunts, as they asked if the Romans had messages for their wives at home, he waited till they were gone, and followed cautiously in their rear. At last, by Aqu;c Sextia;, on the road to Italy, twelve Roman miles from Massilia, Marius encamped on a range of hills destitute of water. A skirmish among the watering- parties brought on a regular engagement, in which the Ambrones were defeated. During the anxious night and following day, enveloped by the yelling barbarians, the Romans strengthened their lines and both sides prepared for action. On the third day Marius offered battle. In the night he had posted a small force, with the grooms and camp-followers mounted on baggage-horses, in the enemy's rear, invisible among the hills and trees. His main body was drawn up on the crest. The Teutones anticipated the attack, charging up the slope. The charge was checked at close quarters by a volley of javelins ; the infantry fell at the sword's- point on the blown and staggered Germans, while Marcellus burst from the ambuscade. Alarmed for their rear, broken by the severe struggle in the unwonted heat, the Teutones gave way, the king was captured, the army annihilated, many of the women slew themselves in despair. This decisive battle was fought in the valley of the Arc, on a range of hills still known as Mont St. Victoire. Marius' idea had been to secure the most favourable conditions, by induc- ing the enemy to take the long and difificult coast road, wedged in between the mountains and the sea, where they would be en- cumbered by their waggons and unable to utilise their numbers. Accordingly he had hung on their rear, harassed their march, and waited for a convenient position on ground that he had previously surveyed, to intercept and destroy them. The names in the district still recall the famous fight which saved Rome. Battle on the Raudine Plain.— The victor, re-elected consul for a fifth time, refusing a triumph, sent on his army to North Italy, and proceeded from Rome against the Cimbri in loi B.C. They had traversed Helvetia, and descended into Italy by the pass of the Brenner and the valley of the Adige. On the Athesis, Q. Lutatius Catulus (consul lo3 B.C.) had posted himself to stop their passage somewhere near Verona (neglecting the upper defiles above Tri- dentum), but was forced to retire by the cowardice of his troops, whose retreat he secured with difficulty. To do this he sacrificed a detachment, which was only saved by the heroism of a centurion AQU.^ SEXTL^ AND CAM PI RAUDII 3»- and the chivalry of the Cinibri. He brought his army with difficuky across the Po, and left the enemy to make themselves comfortable in the prosperous land he had so shamefully evacuated. Catulus, who took great credit to himself for his performance, remained in command as proconsul (loi B.C.), and on the arrival of Marius the two generals crossed the Po with 50,000 men. They met the Cimbri, who had marched up-stream to find a crossing, at Vercellse, not far from the Sesia. The story runs that, on the challenge of Boiorix, IMarius consented to appoint a time and place for battle — 30th July loi B.C., on the Campi Raudii, half-way between Turin and Milan. 'I'he plain would be serviceable for the superior Roman cavalry, an arm in which the invaders were throughout deficient. Marius, placing in the centre, which he drew back, the demo- ralised troops of Catulus, distributed his veterans on the flanks. The Cimbric infantry is said to have formed a square i\ miles each side. Their horse, surprised in a morning mist, was forced back on the advancing foot. The heat of summer told on the Northerners ; the wind, dust, and sun were all in their faces ; but the victory was decided by the trained discipline of the Roman infantry and the ability of Marius. Driven back to their waggons, where the women fell upon the fugitives with knives and axes, the Cimbri were annihilated. Their wives and daughters preferred death by the enemy's sword or self-destruction to the doom of Roman slaves. Catulus claimed the chief merit, but to the consul commanding belonged the title of " Saviour of Rome." With his victories closed the first act of the struggle of the Roman and the Teuton. Marius contented himself with a single triumph, which he shared with Catulus, but the rivalry of DENARIUS STRUCK. lOI B.C. — TRIUMPH OK M.\RIUS ; THE GODDESS, KOMp:. the generals became a political antagonism between the popular and senatorial champions. Catulus, a convinced aristocrat and bitter enemy of Marius, an elegant and accomplished memoir- 384 HISTORY OF ROME writer, orator, and dilettante, was a stron^^ foji to ^hc rude soldier, who had tlic shocking taste to step from his chariot to the Senate- house without changing his robe of triumph. It was an omen of his fate. He brought to the field of politics a mind and character as unfit for subtle party manoeuvres as it was incapable of the broad strokes of policy needed at this moment. CHAPTER XXXVII SATURNINUS, MARIUS, AND THEIR TIMES li.C. A.U.C. Lex Domitia 104 650 Slave War in Sicily 103-99 651-655 Coalition of Marius and the Demagogues - Laws of Saturninus — Death of Saturninus and Glaucia — Fall of Marius 100 654 Party Struggles. — During the wars party struggles had been bitter at Rome. The populares, supported by public wrath at the failures of the government, had again made head, and matters were fast approaching a crisis. We have mentioned inci- dentally the judicial commissions and convictions which followed the scandals and disasters in Africa and Gaul, and the popular movement, which, with a wave of indignation, swept Marius to the top. For the failures in Gaul, as in Africa, only more so, public opinion made the Senate and its officers responsible. In each case the storm discharged itself upon the wretched scape- goats, who suffered for the sins of their order as much as for their own incompetence and treason. The system was left un- reformed, perhaps because there was no way to reform it, and with an instinctive certainty men turned to the one strong man who, they hoped, would manage better. Party power oscillated a good deal. In 106 B.C. Q. Servilius Caepio, "patron of the Senate," and possibly leader of an anti-democratic movement, proposed a law restoring the judicial power wholly or in part to the Senate, a measure which, if carried, was swept away on his fall by an- other Lex Servilia of the tribune Glaucia. The same year saw the birth of Cicero and the great Pompeius. But for the internal history of this time we have even less authority than for the external. The abundant literature of the period has left but the merest outline and most meag-re abridg-ment behind it. Laws RELIGION 385 were passed and repealed, but no man of mark came forward on either side with a strong policy. There was a growing tendency towards violence, which left no room for constitutional growth. Lex Domitia.— The deposition of Cspio by popular decree (though not illegal, for proconsular power was not a definite office) was a marked interference with the Senate's prerogative. Equally noticeable is the tribunician Lex Domitia of 104 B.C. {vide supra, p. 289), which transferred to the people the right of nomi- nation to the religious colleges. A proposal to this effect had been defeated in 145 B.C., when it formed part of an abortive attempt of the tribune C. Licinius Crassus to anticipate the democratic re- forms of the Gracchi. On this occasion it was carried by a noble ancestor of the Emperor Nero, a candidate who had been black- balled by one of these exclusive clubs. Co-optation, which placed the ordination of priests, under the protection of heaven, in the hands of its ministers, was obsolete now that these ministers formed part and parcel of a go\ernment machinery. The priest had become politician ; henceforth the politician would be priest. This new development, however, swept away one more restraint upon hasty and ill-considered legislation, carried through in a single chamber of the most unpromising elements. Superstition at Rome. — Little indeed remained of the old faith now but its form and the superstitious terrors of the masses. During the Cimbric alarms there occurred a hideous scandal, followed by a cruel outburst of religious panic, not unmixed with meaner political intrigues, to which the sacred and high-born \estals and many noble Romans fell victims, and which only ended in a human sacrifice of two Greeks and two Gauls, to pacify the incensed deities — a relic of primeval barbarism forbidden later on by a Senaius Consulium of 97 B.C. There was a special com- mission under the Peducasan law, presided over by the aged and severe Cassius. Prosecutions grew in this ancient version of Titus Dates' plot ; the meanest evidence was raked up. The trial of the noble maidens by a secular court, while it set aside the religious jurisdiction of the chief pontiff, was also an in- direct attack on the upper classes. The sad and disgusting story is equally symptomatic of inner rottenness, whether the gross charges were proved indeed or were merely the result of diseased imagination, party rancour, and vulgar panic. Such things at least were credible of the highest society at Rome. The void of faith was filled more and more with the passionate rites and mystical beliefs of the East, whose frantic ceremonies 2 B 386 HISTORY OF ROME and self-deluded impostors and fakirs found welcome with the gapmg mob. The influx of dey^radinj,"' superstitions was at once a cause and an effect of the declining respect for the old religion. The customary remedies of strict censorships and sumptuary PART OF A STATUE OF A VESTAL. legislation were applied with the usual result. Cynical semions on the duty of marriage and restrictions on the price of dinners were as unavailing to mend morals and hinder extravagance as the condemnation of schools of rhetoric and modern education APPULEIUS SATURNINUS 387 by the cultured orator L. Crassus, censor 92 B.C., was to prevent the new ideas from leavening the lump of Roman rudeness. The most salutary feature in the new movement was the spread of the Stoic doctrine among thoughtful men. Saturninus. — The main incidents in the political struggle were, after all, the attacks on the Senate involved in the appointment of the two commissions of inquiry. The first belonged to the story of the Jugurthan war ; the second is connected with the first tribunate of L. Appuleius Saturninus. This notorious man, a sensitive and aspiring nature, as a speaker vehement and vigo- rous, who had been superseded by the Senate in the office of corn-qua;stor at Ostia, in favour of Scaurus, the Princeps Senatus, had in his mortification reformed his careless and irregular habits, and flung himself into political life as leader of the opposition. He was not precisely the dangerous and turbulent demagogue he has been painted, but for the next three years he was a most troublesome thorn in the side of the Senate. The acts of his two tribunates are not easy to disentangle. He supported the fourth candidature of Marius (103 B.C.), and apparently proposed, and possibly carried by means of violence, an abortive law for distri- buting land in Africa in large allotments to Marius' Roman and Italian veterans. Lex de Maiestate. — To this year also may ha\e belonged the Lex Appuleia de Maiestate, which was largely the work of his colleague Norbanus. It was primarily directed against the persons responsible for the fiascos and scandals in Gaul, and from it arose the commission which condemned the generals of Arausio. Crepio, contrary to precedent, was actually arrested, and would have suffered death, in spite of the stoutest resistance of his friends, but for the self-sacrifice of a loyal tribune. He, indeed, owed his fall as much perhaps to the anger of the equites, who afterwards acquitted his enemy Norbanus, as to his misconduct in Gaul. Nor- banus was brought under its provisions by a reaction in 94 B.C. ; for, though not intended as a general law, its loose wording could readily be stretched. He was defended by the great orator Antonius on the ground that his violence was excused by the necessities of the time. The expression inaiestatem niiniiere, to impair the honour or diminish the power of Rome, was as elastic as the modern phrase, "conduct calculated to bring the government into contempt." Republished by the Lex Varia of 91 B.C., and ex- tended by the Lex Cor/ielia of Sulla, this law was the foundation of the imperial statute of treason. But it may have been con- 388 IHSTORY OF ROME nected, not with the Gallic commission, but with the Appiileian Com Law of uncertain date ; and the Ca^pio impeached may have been the urban cjuiestor who, as Secretary of the Treasury, had opposed the measure in the Senate, and, when that bod)' resolved that the law was dangerous to the state, attempted by violence to stop the voting in the Comitia. In that case the law would be designed to fortify the power of the Iriljune and the party of the populares. Glaucia. — In the interval between Appuleius' two tribunates the censor Metellus Numidicus (102 B.C.) tried to remove from the Senate, on the ground of immorality, Saturninus himself and the favourite street-speaker, C. Servilius Glaucia, denounced by Cicero as a vulgar, shameless, and witty fellow, a sort of Roman Hyper- bolus, but obviously a capable orator and a clever politician. His popular gifts had brought him to the top, with the support of the knights, pleased by his abrogation of the law of Ca:pio. But the attempt to exclude the opposition leaders, frustrated by his col- league, recoiled on the head of its author. Set upon by Satur- ninus in his house and besieged on the Capitol, Metellus was only rescued by the aid of the equites of the eighteen centuries. Another scandal arose when Appuleius attacked the envoys of Mithradates for bribery, and incurred serious danger by his im- prudent revelations. Marius as a Politician. — The elections for 100 B.C. were marked by grave disturbances. Marius had discharged the army, which he had no idea of using to overthrow the constitution. For that the time was not ripe. He relied on his popularity and the votes of his veterans" to gain his ends. Forced into opposition by the aristocracy, circumstances made him the natural leader of a party. The great man of the hour, popular as much by his defects as by his virtues, his head turned by his success, he was called to a part for which he was unfit, and became the instrument of men whose aims he scarcely understood. Accustomed to command, and yet incapable of civil eminence, he clung to his seven predicted consulships, when there was no longer room for him in the state. The frugal plebeian, without tact or taste, was out of his element in Roman society ; the plain soldier had no talent for intrigue, no gift for oratory. Hence, like Pompeius, when he took the constitutional path to his wishes he placed himself in the hands of his party managers. He allied himself with Satur- ninus and Glaucia. The interests and aims of the three men coincided. The result was a scjualid version of the Gracchan MARIUS AND SATURNINUS 389 movement. For the popular party had fallen to pieces. The bottom had been knocked out of many ideals, and the more moderate men were afraid of revolution. Apart from brilliant speakers like Memmius and Crassus, who won their spurs in oppo- sition and passed with place to the government, the only leaders were mortified nobles and noisy obstructionists. Power was now in their grasp and public feeling behind them, but the coalition failed ; the popular idol lost his self-possession on the hustings. Like Pompeius again, he had no political courage ; he wanted to secure a prominent position and rewards for his veterans by constitutional means, a loyal dull man, led astray by ambition and his associates. Only once, on the field of Vercelke, had he shown a disposition to transgress the law, when he promised the fran- chise to some brave Italians, saying afterwards that in the din of battle he could not hear the voice of the laws. He was in a dilemma between his honesty and his ambition, pushed on faster than his ideas could grow, and in the crisis which followed he cannot be acquitted of a duplicity and dishonesty foreign to his nature. His associates, again, with all their skill in party intrigues and mob violence, were too wild and impetuous to conceive or carry out a consistent programme. The Laws of Saturninus. — By canvass and bribery, ISIarius secured his own election, thwarted the senatorial candidate, Metel- lus, and received a harmless colleague in L. Valerius Flaccus. Glaucia was elected praetor. At the tribunician elections there was an uproar. Saturninus only succeeded in getting the tenth place by the murder of the government candidate, Nonius. The coalition had obtained office by hook or by crook. Their first measure, in itself reasonable, was an agrarian law, which proposed to distribute all the land conquered by the Cimbri, which, on Roman principles, became public land by the defeat of its conquerors, and all avail- able soil in Sicily, Achaia, and ALacedon, mainly no doubt for the benefit of the veterans. It opened a side-door to the franchise by including a certain number of Italians in each of the burgess colonies to be founded. Rlarius was to carry out the assigna- tions and the necessary military work, probably by means of con- tinuous consulships, and would thus enjoy a position of indefinite power. Thus the Gracchan ideas of trans-Alpine extension and colonisation, of the limitation of the Senate, and Italian franchise were resumed, but instead of successive tribunates we have suc- cessive consulates and the rise of the military power. The equites were at first inclined to favour their ancient allies and to support 390 II/STO/n- OF A' CUE the soldier wlio promised to secure vigorous yovcrnment and commercial expansion. They were never unwilling to curtail the powers of the Senate. The coalition bid for the favour of the peo])!e by lowering the price of corn to a purely nominal sum. a measure whose date and fate are, it is true, a little uncertain, but the people remained indifferent or hostile. Saturninus' real support lay in the Marian veterans, for whom the agrarian law provided, and who carried it by violence in the teeth of the omens, the populace, and the nobles. There was a riot, in which the rustics and veterans dispersed the urban mob, and even the obstructing tribunes were insulted. To the announcement, as an omen, of an impending thunderstorm Saturninus replied by bidding the Senate beware of the hailstones. The Bill contained a clause designed to enforce its execution, by which the senators must, within five days, swear to obser\'e it on pain of fine and forfeiture of their seat — an in- sulting provision, which, precisely reversing the constitutional practice, prevented any discussion or amendment. Marius be- haved in a strange way. At first he refused compliance, and was followed by the Senate ; but when the appointed time had almost lapsed, he summoned the Senate, declared that he was afraid of the people, and took the oath to respect the law " in so far as it was legal," hoping by this device to satisfy the veterans and leave himself a loophole of escape. The Senate accepted the oath with the same proviso, with the solitary exception of Metellus, who alone maintained his self-respect and left Rome to study philosophy in exile. The action of the Senate in taking the oath and sacrificing- their leader was fatal to its authority. Failure and Death of Saturninus.— To carry out the law meant the re-election of the coalition. Saturninus, indeed, was elected to a third tribunate, and with him a pseudo-Gracchus, an impostor, who, in spite of Marius himself, was released from prison and raised to office by the people. But the consular elections ended in confusion. The orator Antonius had been chosen for one ; for the second place, C. Memmius, the renegade, was illegally opposed by Glaucia, who, as prtetor of the year, was ineligible. Memmius was publicly murdered by bravos, and the next day there was an appeal to arms. On the one side stood the rustics and veterans, whipped up from the country, with whose aid Saturninus and Glaucia seized the Capitol, at the same time opening the prisons and summoning the slaves. On the other were the optimates, with their clients, and the equites of the eighteen centuries, with their armed slaves. The Senate summoned Marius to interfere, FALL OF MA K I US 391 and eni]w\vercd the magistrates to use force. Reluctantly he prepared to attack his friends. They had gone too far, and the consul must either stamp out riot or proclaim revolution. The Senate turned out 01 masse; the tottering Scaurus, the aged augur Scjevola, donned their disused ai-mour. The city was guarded within and without. There was a battle in the Forum, the first fought in Rome ; the rebels were driven to the Capitol, and when Marius cut off the water, finally surrendered. Hoping to save them, he placed them in the Curia Hostilia, but when the young nobles stormed the roof and pelted the prisoners to death he was forced to let them perish. Fall of Marius (Dec. 10, 100). — In the massacre fell four officers of the Roman people, with other men of note, and with them fell the power and credit of Marius. The cause of the disaster lay partly in the vacillation and incompetence of Marius, who could neither control nor support his associates, partly in the reckless and riotous conduct of Saturninus and Glaucia, which alarmed the wealthier classes and consolidated the opposition. Men were ready to support a strong and upright man in cleansing the ad- ministration, but not to sacrifice material interests to military rowdyism and mob rule. Marius himself was half afraid of his allies, and wished to gain his own ends and wash his hands of the consequences. He is even said, on one occasion, to have passed from room to room of his house, like a man in a comedy, negotiating alternately with senators and conspirators. In the end his colleagues went on without him. They were not prepared to work without wages. For them to resign was destruction. But the murder of Memmius was a blunder ; it forced Marius' hand. Outmanoeuvred by his opponents, and compromised by his friends, he was forced to cut away his own supports, and fell at once, unhonoured, unregretted, unattacked. The coalition had been smashed. The equites drew towards the Senate as the sole hope of order ; Metellus returned in triumph ; a protesting tribune was murdered by the crowd ; the victor of Vercellas, afraid to stand for the censorship, withdrew to the East, and came back to find himself a nonentity, to nurse ambition and meditate revenge in his perverted soul. The populares were scattered ; some fled even to Pontus to join Mithradates. The Appuleian laws were cancelled, and when the tribune Titius, a paltry ape of Saturninus, attempted to revive the Agrarian Bill in 99 B.C., not only was it annulled on religious pretexts, but the tribune and other demo- crats were zealously convicted by the equestrian courts, Norbanus 392 HISTORY OF ROME hinibclf li.irely escaping because he bad punished ihe hated Crcpio. Slave-rising in Sicily. — The fall of Marius left the government in a strong position at home. Abroad there was little to do, and that little was more efficiently done. A rising in Spain was vigorously suppressed (97-93 B.C., vide supra., p. 372), and the year 99 is.c. saw the end of a dangerous insurrection in Sicily. It had resembled its predecessor in all its incidents except its immediate cause. Once more there had been a general ferment among the slaves. Serious riots had occurred at Nuceria and Capua, and at Thurii an enamoured and indebted knight, T. Vettius, to gain his love and escape his creditors, raised a revolt, called himself king, and required the arts and arms of a prietor to crush his mad outbreak. In Attica the slaves and convicts who worked the silver-mines mutinied, and, above all, in Sicily the old causes, lax police, cruel masters, and the excessive numbers of the slaves, produced the old effects. Feeling first found vent when P. Licinius Nerva, the governor, in obedience to a decree of the Senate (B.C. 104), took measures to release free men kidnapped and sent to the planta- tions by pirates or publicani. This decree was due to a statement of Nicomedes II. of Bithynia, in reply to a demand for auxiliaries, that his able-bodied men had been mostly kidnapped. The Senate directed the governor to see to the matter, and Nerva had in consequence set at liberty 800 men. But, frightened by the remonstrances of the aggrieved slave-holders and the excite- ment among the slaves, he suspended action, with the result that the expectant and defrauded suitors fled from Syracuse to sanc- tuary. But the rising was nipped in the bud with the aid of an escaped convict and popular brigand who betrayed the runaways. Tryphon and Athenic— Suppressed for the moment, it broke out in another place. The defeat of a detachment from Enna gave the insurgents arms and encouragement. Once more there were no etfective troops, and the wretched and ruined labourers supported the slaves, themiserable instruments of their own decay. Oncemore a juggling prophet called Salvius was declared king by the Syrians, and took the name of Tryphon, after the slave who had usurped the crown of Syria (142 B.C.). Order and discipline were introduced, and with a powerful force the king took the offensive, fell upon Morgantia, and defeated a relieving army, dispersing the Greek militia, who flung away their arms to save their skins. The town was rescued by the courage of the domestic slaves, whose promised freedom was afterwards refused. In the west, Athenio, a Cilician SLAVE-IVAKS 393 brigand chief, repeated the part of Cleon. A skilful soldier, a star-reader and dealer in the supernatural, he headed the revolt, organised an army, enforced discipline, and by his ability and clemency earned popularity and success. To the disappointment of the Romans, he submitted to the king. The rebels fortified their headquarters in a strong position called Triocala, in the centre of the island, where Tryphon paraded his royalty as an Eastern despot with Roman insignia. They failed in their attacks on the towns, notably at Lilybasum, but with the help of the free labourers they controlled the plains and spread famine and misery through the land. Even in the towns, with the aid of African contingents, the masters, cut off from their estates, barely controlled the slaves inside. In 103 B.C., in spite of the Cimbric disasters, the government scraped together a mixed force, contain- ing few Italian troops, under L. Lucullus, who gained a victory near Scirthaea over an enemy 40,000 strong. But his negligence or his losses prevented his following it up. He was forced to retire from Triocala, and was afterwards condemned on a charge of peculation. He was succeeded in 102 B.C. by Servilius, who did nothing, and received the reward of his predecessor. Tryphon appears to have died ; but Athenio, who had been left for dead at Scirthcca, revived, and ranged the island unimpeded, nearly captur- ing Messana by surprise. At last, in loi B.C., M'. Aquillius, the consul, defeated and slew Athenio in single combat, stormed the strongholds, and after two years' hard fig"hting, pacified the island. The Pirates. — There had been five years of misery, outrage, and anarchy. Sicily, stripped of its labourers, desolated by ravage, slowly recovered under a short spell of liberal government ; but the old evils were not cured. The administration of the provinces, with rare exceptions, remained what it had been, while the state of the seas was so bad that even this government was obliged to deal with it. In 103 B.C. M. Antonius, the praetor, was sent out with proconsular powers, and a fleet raked together from the allies, to Cilicia, where he destroyed the ships and castles of the buc- caneers. By the occupation of certain positions in the rugged Western Cilicia along the coast, a beginning was made of a pro- vince in that region ; but the solitary effort was ill sustained, and the pirates reasserted their sovereignty of the sea. The East. — In the East, as in Spain, the Senate was acting with rather more vigour. Ptolemy Apion, natural son of Physcon (Ptolemy Euergetes II.), who had received Cyrene in 117 B.C., on the death of his father, as a separate appanage, died in 96 B.C. and be- 394 HISTORY OF ROME qucathed his kingdom to Rome. The Senate accepted the lej^acy, but while exercising a nominal supervision from Utica, declared the Greek cities, Gyrene, Ptolemais, and lierenice free, and did not create a regular province till 75 l!.c. This curious mixture of in- trigue and negligence, which cvadedthe responsibility of annexation, while it checked the aggrandisement of Egypt, handed over the important commercial district to intestine strife. It was a more vigorous act when, in 92 B.C., Sulla, the rising man of the senatorial party, was sent, as governor of Cilicia, to check the pirates and settle the affairs of the East. By his resource and audacity he restrained for a time the aggressions of Mithradates and imposed respect on Parthia. CHAPTER XXXVIII THE LAWS OF DRUSUS Lex Caecilia Didia against Tacking Lex Licinia Mucia alienates the Italians Tribunate and Murder of Drusus B.C. A.f.C. 98 656 95 659 91 663 Lex Caecilia Didia. — The failure of Saturninus was naturally followed by a strong reaction. The spectre of anarchy had frightened the capitalists and broken up the purely political alli- ance invented by the vindictive genius of G. Gracchus. In 98 B.C. the government was strong enough to carry through the Lex Ccecilia Didia, proposed by the consuls Q. Metellus Nepos and a iiovus homo, T. Didius, designed to prevent hasty legislation and the combination of different measures in a single Bill. Itself an example of the abuse it aimed at checking, it provided for an interval of a Roman fortnight between the introduction and passing of a Bill {trinu7idinum = stv&x\t.&&n days), which, however inade- quate for the discussion of a complicated statute, would at least prevent the scandalous surprises sprung on an ignorant assembly, while it forbade the so-called practice of tacking — legem per saturam ferre — which compelled a legislative body to accept what it did not want, under pain of losing what it did. But the improve- ment came too late and was indeed too slight to affect the increasing oscillation of power and contempt for law, which were the results of weak government, of the degradation of the Gomitia, and of the statesmanship of party manoeuvre. LEX LICINIA MUCIA 395 In the same year Aquillius was acquitted of manifest extor- tions in Sicily, saved l)y his sei-vices and the rhetoric of Antoniiis. The Italians and the Lex Licinia Mucia. — In 95 B.C. the consuls were the great orator L. Crassus, who failed to scrape a coveted triumph by harrying the Alpine glens, and the great lawyer of a fainily of lawyers, Q. Mucius Scasvola, Pontifex Maximus, an able, upright, legally minded man. To these two distinguished persons was due the blunder of a mistimed and severe re-enact- ment of the old laws against aliens, intended to prevent the irregular voting and undue influence of Italians in the Comitia. The Lex Licinia Mucia created violent irritation among the allies by prohibiting non-citizens from claiming or exercising the fran- chise, by inc^uiring into the status of resident aliens, and probably by expelling those who usurped the right. Natural as it may have seemed, useful even to the depopulated townships of the allies, legal as it undoubtedly was, and fa\ourabIe as the moment ap- peared, the law came as a cruel shock after the patriotic exertions of the Cimbric war, after the hopes so often raised, after the use made of the Italians by both parties in turn. It ended every expec- tation of a liberal policy. Its explicit provisions reduced Rome's faithful allies, without distinction, to the status of aliens, and strictly punished all transgressors. Crassus, the popular accuser of Carbo, the supporter of the colony at Narbonne, the independent and moderate optimate, the ally of Drusus in his attack on the ecjuestrian courts, a re- spected and cautious statesman, and Scasvola, the honest governor, the pattern of rectitude, thoughtful and temperate in policy, no doubt hoped to purify the elections, and, as constitutional lawyers, saw the inevitable results of civic expansion, and meant to maintain existing forms. But the indignation caused by this law was one of the most important antecedents of the Social War. As yet its effect was not apparent. Quarrel between the Senate and the Equites. — Attention was absorbed by the imminent struggle between the Senate and equites, which broke the nine years' interval of peace. The alliance of equites and democrats being dissoh-ed, and the mob, if duly humoured, being at the disposal of the Senate, it only required some scandal exciting public indignation to sweep away the judicial privileges of the knights, who, through the court of ex- tortions, controlled the governors abroad and hampered the Senate at home. It was this which the majority of that body proposed to themselves in supporting the reforms of Drusus — 396 HISTORY OF ROME freedom from l)Iackmail and vexalious proceedings, and the re- storation of their privileges. The opportunity arose from the condemnation (in 92 B.C.) of the able and upright administrator P. Rutilius Rufus, adjutant and friend of the lawyer Q. Mucius Scicvola, the exemplary governor of Asia. Both had earned the deadly hatred of the publican! and the approbation of the .Senate by their defence of the provincials and punishment of outrage ; but vengeance fell alone on the less well-friended soldier, the plain Stoic, who despised the artifices of the advocates, and died in honoured and lettered exile at Smyrna. This gross miscarriage of justice, an infamous conviction on a charge preferred by an infamous informer, filled the cup of equestrian misconduct. All who were indignant at the plunder of the provinces were ready to join in an attack which promised at the same time to restore independence to their order. Livius Drusus.— The assault was headed by M. Livius Drusus, tribune of 91 B.C., an enigmatical character whose policy and actions remain a mystery. Emphatically a noble of a conservative family, the son of Gracchus' opponent, a man of good position and large fortune, proud, earnest, ardent, direct, lavish of public and private resources, respected indeed for his high aims and strong per- sonality, but popular neither with weak-kneed senators nor lazy piiupers, he had no political tact, no skill in party manoeuvres, and little capacity for guiding men or controlling movements. Among his supporters were Scaurus, the orator Crassus, the augur Scievola, the reformer Sulpicius Rufus, and generally the moderate conservatives of the Senate. He was bitterly opposed by the- shifty consul L. Marcius Philippus, once spokesman of the demo- crats, and author of a confiscatory land law, now the voice of the equites, destined to be a democratic censor, and finally a Sullan renegade ; by the violent, reactionary Q. Ca^pio, son of the Tolosa man, and by all the ultra-Tories. His programme of conservative reform on Gracchan lines was borrowed from both parties ; he meant to trump the enemy's cards by utilising their measures for the benefit of the Senate. His main ideas were two — the reconstitution of the Senate and the extension of the franchise to the Italians. To carry these through, and possibly with a hope of checking pauperism, he was prepared to bribe the populace with corn and land, and, while steering clear of assassination and riot, to use, if necessary, the strong hand. The Leges Liviae. — Therefore, keeping for the moment the franchise in the background, he brought forward a Lex Irunicn- ZJJFS OF DRUSUS 397 taria, probably increasing the doles (covering the expense by depreciation of the coinage), and an Agrarian Law, perhaps pro- viding for the establishment of the colonies promised by his father in 122 B.C. To these was tacked a. Lex mduiaria, involving a sort of compromise between the Senate and the equites. He proposed to institute a new Albinn iudictivi of 300 senators and 3CO knights, possibly at the same time raising the selected knights to the dignity of senators to recruit the now emaciated ranks of the order. He also provided a court for the investiga- tion of judicial corruption. This law, if intended to conciliate interests l)y the creation of senators and the division of powers, was not likely to succeed. The equites lost at least half their privileges, were bitterly opposed to the clause that made jurors amenable to justice, and were not appeased by a concession which they regarded as a snare. The new senators would be popular with neither order. Contrary to the law of 98 B.C., and in the teeth of the equites and their agent Philippus, the laws were carried en bloc, with the lukewarm sup- port of the irresolute Senate. There were violent scenes in the Forum and violent discussions in the House, which refused at first to desert its leader and annul the laws. Philippus, who had publicly declared that with such a Senate government was impos- sible, and that "he must look out for other advisers," was vehe- mently arraigned by Crassus, who died with suspicious suddenness after his great effort, and censured by a formal resolution. In the Assembly both he and C;tpio met with rude handling from the city mob and the poorer Italians, who flocked in to support their known friend by intimidation and irregular votes. Failure and Death of Drusus. — But Drusus, with his tatters of borrowed policy, had no force behind him, and when he tried to carry through his great measure of Italian franchise his allies failed him. Uneasiness had already shown itself; his power dwindled as the year went on. The mob, fickle in its attach- ments, was consistent in its refusal to lower the money value of its franchise. In the Senate the majority was keen for privilege, ready to bribe, readier still, in the tribune's words, to leave nothing for an agitator to divide but ca'luin aiit ccenum, by doing his work for their own profit ; the minority was not unfavourable to enfran- chisement as a measure of safety, which brought allies and evaded dangers at a trifling cost, but no one was prepared for a serious political struggle on behalf of a man whom they suspected perhaps as much as they respected. Gradually were spread about sus- 398 HISTORY OF ROME picious rumours — possibly canards — based on the known Italian sympathies and connections of Drusus, rumours of a far-reaching Italian conspiracy, whose partisans were bound to the Roman tribune by a solemn personal oath. The cuckoo-cry of treason was raised. Only the honour of Drusus had prevented the murder of the consul at the Latin games. An armed band, marching on Rome to coerce the Senate and co-operate with the tribune, had been with difficulty turned back. The form of oath was circulated. At once the old exclusiveness was up in arms ; the timid progres- sives ratted ; Senate and consul were reconciled. With stern dis- dain Drusus acquiesced in the annulment of his illegally passed laws by the body he sought to defend. The loss and the danger were theirs, and theirs the responsibility. They were making their own beds. In the same spirit he cried, when he fell at the door of his house, struck by an assassin's hand in the dusk of evening, '''' Ecquandone similem mei civein habebit respublica ? " Indeed, the failure of the unpractical, large-hearted man in his attack on capitalism and civic prejudice, while it shattered the last hopes of the foiled and frustrated allies, drove one more nail in the coffin of senatorial government. The weakness of his friends more than the strength of his foes was too much for him, as had been the case with the Gracchi, between whom and their conservative successor there is little to choose in singleness of purpose, in poli- tical tactics, and reforming ideas, save that the one acted as the patron of a decaying Senate, the others as champions of a decayed Comitia. His supporters had more credit than power, more dis- cretion than courage ; the forces of selfishness and /at'sses-fai're were against him ; even the Italians in each community were divided in interests, the Romanising aristocracy of landowners against the patriotic but needy and half-suppressed populace. As to himself, we cannot decide if his ultimate aim was the reconstitution of the Senate, or if he bought up all forces to support his Italian policy ; nor can we reconcile his refusal to protect his laws with his apparent readiness to use physical force, and even civil war. He was a man clearly of better intentions and larger ideas than he had political ability or good fortune. The mysterious death of their hero was felt deeply by the Italians, who now prepared in earnest for the war which Drusus hoped to avert. The usual reaction followed at Rome. A tribune, Q. Varius, an agent of the equites, carried by intimidation a Lex de Maiestate, from which issued a court of inquiry into the alleged conspiracy. Whether the moderates had or had not been tamper- FAILURE OF DRUSUS 399 ing with the Italians, the bare suspicion of intrigue afforded an excellent handle for removing opponents and punishing the Senate. The report of ferments in Italy and the outbreak of the revolt sharpened the edge of the charge. Trials of eminent men went on through 91 and 90 B c. Bestia and C. Cotta were exiled ; Antonius the orator and Pompeius Strabo were attacked ; old Scaurus, impeached once more, was content with the triumphant sally— " A Spaniard accuses Scaurus, Princeps Senatus, of treason. Scaurus denies the charge. Romans, which do you believe?' By a not uncommon irony, \'arius, infomier and suspected assassin, perished later by his own law. CHAPTER XXXIX THE SOCIAL WAR B.C. A.U C Outbreak at Asculum . . . . . 91 663 North : Defeat of Rutilius Lupus— Retirement of Marius— South : L Juhus Csesar driven from Campania — Lex Julia . .... 90 664 Pompeius Strabo puts down the Insurrection in the North and settles Cisalpine Gaul— Sulla defeats the Samnites— Lex Plautia Papiria — The Varian Commission restored — Economic Crisis and Murder of the Praetor Asellio - . 89 665 End of the Social War 88 666 Importance of the War. — The Social War was perhaps the most dangerous conflict in which Rome had as yet engaged. No Gallic tiimidhis, not even " dims Hannibal" himself, brought her power so low or forced from humbled arrogance a recantation of policy, while a victorious enemy yet held the field. The allies had they succeeded finally, would scarcely have been content with the exaction of their just claims. The separatist spirit, exas- perated by an obstinate struggle, would have undone the work of centuries and broken up with the power of Rome the unity of Italy. At best it would have substituted a loose federation, in- capable of preserving the provincial empire and the widespread influence of Rome. As it was, its effects were deeply felt in the history of Italy and the world, and in this lies the interest of the war, of whose course and events we have scanty and fragmen- tary information utterly disproportioned to its deadly nature and real importance. To the statesmen and leaders who brought it to a successful close, and above all to the commanding genius of the 400 HISTORY OF ROME soldier Sulla, Rome owes a debt whose magnitude is concealed by the veil with which time and natural feeling have shrouded a calamitous and unnecessary schism. Occasion of the War. — The immediate causes of the war lay no doubt in the failure of the plans of Drusus, which destroyed the last hope of constitutional agitation, in well-founded alarms for the future due to the \'arian Commission and to the restoration of the equites and reactionaries to power, in the negligence of the unsus- pecting Senate and the explosion of popular feeling at Asculum in Picenum. Thither, when the Senate, vaguely aware of restless movement and unwonted intercourse among the allies, had caused secret inquiries to be made by its agents in the various com- munities, came the Roman prastor Servilius with proconsular power and attended by a legate. He had been informed that the Asculans were exchanging hostages, and now, happening upon a meeting of the people in the theatre to celebrate the games, by a vehement reprimand he so kindled the passions of his audience that they tore him and his suite to pieces, and sealed the declaration of war by the murder of resident Romans. The hands of the leaders were forced and the re\'olt spread like wild- fire. Whatever conspiracy may have existed in the name of Drusus and the franchise, the deep disappointment of his death at any rate must have strengthened everywhere the faction of the secessionists against the moderates. Mutual understandings be- came definite treaties ; old associations were revived ; old tribal connections, reduced by Roman policy to religious formalities, sprang again to life. Even wider alliances were contemplated ; DENARIUS OF THE CONFEDERATES— TAKING THE OATH ; AND HEAD OF ITALIA. armed and drilled troops the allies possessed in the contingents liable for Roman service. The movement, some time in progress, was only precipitated by the revolt of Asculum. CAUSES OF THE SOCIAL WAR 401 Causes of the Social War. — For the real causes of the war lay far deeper. The strength of the Roman organisation of Italy had been in its skilful combination of the principle of autonomy with the ascendency of the paramount state. The commercial and political isolation of each city from its neighbours was compensated by its direct connection with Rome, as an immediate ally. By a dexterous use of the franchise and a wise graduation of privileges she had secured a divergency of interest between communities of different status, thus creating no uniform level of servitude, but an ascending scale of subjection. This system was fortified in a political sense by the maintenance of aristocratical governments in each city, whose members were attached by various privileges to Roman interests, and in a military sense by the formation of roads, protected at strategical points by powerful fortresses, whose citizens possessed Latin rights and were doubly bound to allegiance by the ties of interest and personal danger. At the same time the enjoyment of national languages and customs, of local rights and liberties, was ensured, peace maintained, the barbarian repelled, and commerce protected, while Roman conquest opened fresh fields for speculation and enterprise. In earlier times free ad- mission to a foreign franchise, involving the loss of local rights, could be no object to any community, but only to those individuals who should migrate to Roman townships. But when the value of the franchise rose with the rise of Rome and relative decline of the allied states, and there came a growing disinclination to admit new-comers, friction was set up. It was not so much the civic as the material advantages that were in question. In the city-state, with the principle of direct voting in collective assemblies, the extension of the franchise over a wide area was useless to its recipients, who could only vote on the rarest occasions, and added to the difficulties of good municipal government. The gain in new blood was small. But the decay of local politics inevitably drove the more ambitious spirits in Italy to covet a share in imperial business ; their restricted career in the local contingents galled the hearts of able soldiers. To men familiar with Rome the closing of the franchise and expulsion from the capital were a bitter grie\ance. The middle and lower classes resented their increas- ing burdens, the costly cavalry service, the enlarged contingents of infantry, the severity of martial law, the unfair distribution of land and booty, the exclusion from cheap corn, salt, and allotments. The Senate and people, instead of carrying on the work of gradual assimilation, had unwisely obliterated the distinction of 2 C 402 Iff STORY OF ROME Latin, ally, and subject, had closed the doors of the franchise and expelled resident aliens, had permitted their officers to lord it over the Italians in defiance of law and right, and suppressed all protests with contumely and violence. Terrible stories of outrage circulated from town to town. The claims of the allies, acknowledged as just by the best men of all parties, had been a tool in the hands of each party in turn. Every scheme of reform had been shattered on the short-sighted selfishness of reactionary nobles, jealous capitalists, and grudging paupers. Hope had been raised to the highest by the conversion of the majority of the Senate. The failure of this hope meant insurrection. Division of Feeling. — But among the subjects there were divi- sions of interest and feeling. Those districts whose position made the exercise of the franchise possible would be satisfied with this concession ; the wealthy landowners of Etruria and Umbria, where the agricultural depression had effectually destroyed the yeoman farmer, secure in their lordship by the favour of Rome, checked the first movement of revolt among their serfs. In Samnium and Lucania, less penetrated by Latin language and ideas, retaining still the old traditions of farmer life and civic equality, the national spirit, enkindled by the war, turned the demand for equal rights into a battle for national independence. In the particular states, again, even where there was most unity of feeling and action, there are traces of party struggles. Here and there a town like the Vestinian Pinna, or a corps like that of Magius of yEclanum, did yeoman service for Rome. The ruling nobilities must often have nursed pro-Roman sympathies, and divided counsels weakened the forces of insurrection. The Latin fortresses remained, in the first instance, loyal. Cam- pania, with Capua as a magazine, served as a second basis and source of revenue and supplies. Neapolis, Rhegium, and the other Greek cities would not sacrifice their favoured position to support their ancient enemies. They provided the nucleus of a fleet, and secured the communications by sea of the Southern armies. From the provinces Rome drew light infantry, archers, and cavalry, ships and supplies. She had the advantage of a central position, an organised constitution, and the tradition of victory. She fought on inner lines, with a power of concentrated action, against a hastily improvised confederacy, without coherence or established form. It was only the sloth of her government and the incapacity of her generals which dissipated her strength by ROME AND HER NEIGHBOTTRS. Hew & Leigh ',<: Rom. Hvst LongTTvans, (f Co LoTuLoTt Ne/wTbrl: &. Boinbay TV AA_g-Jn>ni« *"n T.^-miti-. a Efhuhur^ALcmdma- THE ALLIES 403 division and delay, and by her defeats hammered together the loose structure of the federal union. Organisation of the Confederates. — Roughly the allies fall into two divisions, Northern and Southern. In the north the smaller tribes — Picentes, Pieligni, Vestini, Marrucini, Frentani — centred round the Marsians, who ga\e their name to the " Marsic war." In the south the Samnites and Lucanians, with closer ranks and sterner purpose, followed a deeper policy. As their headquarters they selected Corfinium, a town strong in its seclusion on the river Aternus (Pescara), in. the Pcelignian land, and a convenient centre for the northern cantons. Italia, as it was renamed, became the seat of the federal government, an artificial creation, existing merely for military and political purposes. The central executive was closely modelled on the Roman pattern. There was a Senate of 500, two consuls, and twelve praetors exercising a full imperium. But how these were selected we cannot say ; nor do we know what relations precisely the communities in the various groups bore to each other, nor how the central government was constituted. The Italian stocks were not politically inventive enough to develop at once a full-fledged federalism, with a representative Senate and Assembly. Nor did they merely mean to create a new and fictitious city-state, with an Italian franchise and direct assemblies, reproducing the worst vices of the municipal polity of Rome. They just improvised a war organisation on the most available plan, selected a place of cong^ress, and left the question of Centralisation I'ersus Separation for later settlement. Their state was therefore a loose federation. A coinage was necessarily established, and Latin and Samnite were no doubt used indifi"e- rently for official purposes. Italia never appears as a sovereign- state ; the headquarters are shifted as occasion arises, and the armies of the league acted naturally in two main divisions. Strength of the Combatants. — In the number of their troops the opposing forces were roughly equal, the active armies amounting at first to 100,000 a side. Man for man, the hardy mountaineers, drilled in the Roman wars, were better than the Roman levies ; while the rebel officers showed from the outset superior ability, audacity, and resource. Geographically, they surrounded Rome from north-east to south-east in an elongated semicircle, occupying the range of the Apennines and the plains of the Lower Adriatic, the bulk of Central and Southern Italy. A few successes in Etruria and Campania would complete the circle to the sea. Rome could be alarmed on three sides at once bv forces issuing at will 404 HISTORY OF ROME from the innumerable defiles of their well-defended mountains. But their action was hampered by the faithful Latin fortresses, judiciously planted in commanding situations, whose reduction and relief provided for each side respectively the first object in this desultory war. In the north or Latin-speaking districts, from Picenum to Campania, commanded the "consul" Q. ]'ompa-dius Silo, a Marsian. His colleague, the Samnite, C. Papius Mutilus, DENARIUS OF MITII.US — SAMNITE BULL GORING WOLF; HEAD OF BACCHANTF. acted in Samnium and Campania. Each had six praetors as subordinate leaders of divisions. Preparations at Rome. — At Rome, when once the need was realised, desperate preparations were made. The envoys who came at the last in'Oment from the insurgents to demand the franchise were summarily dismissed, business was suspended, expenditure curtailed, contingents summoned from abroad. The consuls L. Julius Caesar and P. Rutilius Lupus divided the active forces. Among their legati, five to each consul, served officers of every shade of politics. With Caesar in the south were Didius, Crassus, Catulus, and Sulla ; with Lupus in the north the veteran Marius and Pompeius Strabo. The offensive lay with Rome ; the allies, secure in their mountains, would naturally keep on the defensive, at least till they had freed their flanks and rear from the pressure of the Roman strongholds. But as she had been slow to prepare, so now Rome failed to act with decisive force in any direction, frittering her strength away in inconclusive isolated engagements. Roman Fortresses. — The more important of the fortresses in question were, in the south, Venusia, watching the Apulian plain and the road to the southern ports ; Beneventum, guarding the com- munications between Capua and Apulia, by the Volturnus and Calor, or by the Appian road, at the gate of the Samnite hills; /^Esernia, THE SOCIAL WAR 405 in the heart of Samnium, holding the approach by the main stream of the Volturnus. In the north, Carsioli and Alba Fucens guarded the cross-road (Via Valeria) to the Adriatic, holding the issues of the Marsian heights and the basin of the Fucine lake ; Narnia and Spoletium, on the Via Flaminia, secured Umbria ; Nepete and Sutrium held down South Etruria and protected Rome on the left. In Picenum, Firmum supplied a check on Asculum, the author of the revolt. Communications with Campania were guarded by Fabrateria, at the passage of the Liris, and Cales, where the Latin road falls to the plain, and by the Roman colonies and Greek cities of the coast. Of the Campanian praefectures and allied towns, which were at once garrisoned for Rome, Casilinum, Nola, Acerrte, and Venafrum, held important positions. Success of the Insurgents in South Italy. — Rome's delay en- abled the allies to assail the more immediately dangerous of these posts. Silo, for instance, invested Alba ; Mutilus besieged yEsernia. In an attempt to relieve the latter by the old Volturnus route, Cccsar was defeated by P. Vettius Scato, and driven back with loss. The fall of Venafrum, in his rear, and a second and disastrous defeat by Marius Egnatius compelled a hasty retreat to Teanum, where the consul halted to recruit his shattered forces. yEsernia, after a stubborn resistance, relieved for a moment by an exploit of the bold and subtle Sulla, fell by the end of the year. A simi- lar fate to his own befell Caesar's lieutenants. Crassus, in Lucania, was shut up by Lamponius in (jrumentum. The road into Cam- pania was clear for Mutilus. Nola fell by treason ; and one by one, except Nuceria, the towns of South Campania went over, the prisoners and slaves being incorporated in the insurgent army. The Samnite was already besieging Acerree, when Cssar, alarmed at this sudden collapse and threatened loss of revenue and material, advanced to prevent the fall of Capua and the completion of the circle which wQuId cut the capital from the south. He achieved some success, but in spite of a seasonable repulse injlicted on Mutilus, which the Senate used as a pretext for discarding the military dress and dispelling the deep despondency at Rome, he could only maintain his ground in front of the enemy at Acerrae. His Numidian horse deserted to Oxyntas, son of Jugurtha, a state prisoner who had fallen into the hands of the allies at the capture of Venusia. He could not prevent the surrender of ^Esernia and the loss of Canusium and other towns in the south stormed or reduced by the active leader Judacilius. In fear for their communications, the Romans formed a fleet. and levied a 406 HISTORY OF ROME larye force of frccdmen to guard tlic line of the Latin and North Cam|)anian coast. Defeat of Lupus.— In the centre and norlli the natural objective was the reUef of Alba and the punishment of Asculum. A rapid and decisive advance would have created a powerful impression and cleared the ground in the neighbourhood of the capital. Accord- ingly Rutilius Lupus, however hampered by the dilatory counsels of Marius, whose policy of patience proposed to train the raw troops and exhaust the enemy's strength, had taken the offensive and marched on Alba along the Valerian road, when his advance was checked by the bloody defeat of his legate Perperna, followed only too soon by his own disastrous defeat and death at the crossing of the Tolenus (June 1 1, 90 B.C.). Vettius Scato, aware that the enemy was about to pass the river in two divisions, dexterously masking the cautious Marius with a small force, fell with his main army fi^om ambush on the consul, who crossed the stream, confiding in his legate's support. Eight thousand Romans fell. Marius. — Marius, enlightened by the bodies coming down- stream, occupied indeed the Marsian camp, but despair was deep at Rome when they knew the consul dead and Alba not re- lieved. A victory of S. Sulpicius over the Pfeligni, and the tactics of Marius, compelled the Marsi to draw back their lines ; and after Q. Ca^pio, Drusus' opponent, joined with Marius in the com- mand by the Senate, had been cut to pieces in a trap laid by the resourceful Silo, the veteran, now sole commander, maintained a victorious defensive, and is said to have inflicted severe defeats on the Marsi and Marrucini. In one of these Sulla, we are told, with a detachment of the southern army was able to co-operate. Characteristic stories are told of this campaign. When Pompa."dius Silo challenged Marius, " If you are a great general, come down and fight," he replied, " If you are a great general. Silo, make me come down and fight." On another occasion we hear how the troops, ancient comrades in arms, fraternised between the lines, while the Roman and the Marsian chiefs walked and talked to- gether on the field. At the close of the year Marius, old, fat, and heavy, unecjual or deemed unequal to the work, retired from the command in something like disgrace, to brood once more on that seventh consulate he had failed to achieve. Picenum. — In Picenum, Cn. Pompeius Strabo, driven by the combined forces of Scato, Judacilius, and Lafrenius from Asculum — a strong city desperately defended — fell back on Firmum, where Lafrenius held him besieged, while Judacilius hurried to Apulia. THE SOCIAL WAR 407 From this position Strabo was released by the victory of S. Sulpicius, who now advanced to Firmum. His assailants, taken in rear and front, were driven into Asculum, with the loss of their leader, and the siege began in earnest. It was the first genuine victory of the war, and helped to restore a little confidence at Rome. Results of the First Campaign. — Thus far the record of the war had been, on the whole, disastrous for the city. The con- federates, welded together by success, had organised victory, and were taking the offensive. The consular armies had been " beaten, bobbed, and thumped" by their own contingents. The south was gone, Campania was half lost, Rome herself was threatened in the north, her communications with the southern division endangered. Nola and Venusia had gone over, and there were symptoms of revolt among the Latins. In Umbria and Etruria, though L. Por- cius Cato and A. Plotius repressed rebellion, it was necessary to maintain corps of observation. The circle of steel was becoming^ perilously complete. There were menacing signs abroad, in Gaul and Spain, and above all in Asia, where Mithradates threatened the eastern frontier. Supplies of men and money were exhausted. In spite of the victories of Firmum and Acerras, the spirit of Rome was broken ; there was no longer the power of resistance in Senate and people that broke the conquering swords of Pyrrhus and Hannibal ; nor was the stake worth the struggle. The tide of feeling changed. Forced by this new Secession once more to abandon her obstinate attitude to reasonable reform, Rome sur- rendered the whole principle of the war, reversed her policy, and took her annoyance out in the punishment of the leaders of the war party. It was the happy moment for concession. Concession of the Franchise (i) to the Italians. — The Lex lulia of the consul Caesar, passed at the close of 90 B.C., which con- ferred the full franchise on the Latins, and on all the allies not actually in arms, checked the spread of rebellion, secured the Latins, and satisfied the wavering Umbrians and Etrurians. The Lex Plautia Papiria of 89 B.C., passed at the beginning of the tribu- nician year, struck at the root of trouble, and by offering the franchise to every Italian ally domiciled in Italy who should apply personally to a Roman magistrate within sixty days, gave the moderates and Roman partisans a pretext for returning to allegiance, sowed sedition in the enemy's camps, and without entirely sacrificing the dignity of Rome by capitulating to the separatists, afforded in the shape of a free gift satisfaction to their original demands. As to the authors of the war, the enemies of 4o8 HISTORY OF ROME Drusus, and the ciealors of the Court of Treason, they were punished l)y the reorganisation of the Varian Commission, through the tribune M. Plautius Silvanus, at the end of 90 or beginning of 89 B.C. A body of judices was selected ad hoc by the tribes, a solitary example of this mode of appointment. The power of the equites was for the moment broken, and the exiles were restored. (2) In Cisalpine Gaul. — The franchise was further extended in the course of 89 B.C. by a Lex Ponipeia of the consul Strabo, dealing with Cisalpine Gaul, which was now practically a part of Italy. The Latin colonies of the Cispadane had shared of course in the earlier concession, together with the allied towns on the right bank. Thus the Italian municipal system extended hence- forth to the Po, though the later administrative province of Cisalpine Gaul ran down to the Rubicon. On the left bank Pompeius organised civic communities on the Italian model, making adjacent villages depend on the towns, and endowed them with Latin rights, a step to the full franchise given by Cicsar in 49 B.C. The Celtic tribal system, which still subsisted along with the Celtic population, was rapidly assimilated to the Roman municipal type. Asculum. — The new departure, if it left the Samnites and the separatists still in the field, prevented the consolidation of the revolt, cut the supplies of the insurgents, and poured into Rome fresh and eager recruits. The effects were felt at once, and, sup- ported by a greater display of skill and energy, put a new face on the war. Early in the )'ear Strabo, in Picenum, intercepted and destroyed a Marsian army of 15,000 men marching to raise Etruria and Umbria. The other consul, Cato, who, having super- seded Marius, co-operated with his colleague in the attack on the northern positions, fell, it is true, after some successes, near the Fucine lake ; but Pompeius foiled an attempt by Judacilius to re- lieve Asculum, defeating the concentrated allies in a great and bloody battle, with a loss of 21,000 killed or captured. This, the biggest battle and perhaps the real turning-point of the war, decided the fate of Asculum. The siege was pressed both for strategical reasons and for the sake of example. At length the town fell, after Judacilius, who had forced his way in and mas- sacred his opponents, had died by his own hand on the funeral pyre. The battle and fall of Asculum, however, were possibly later events. Meanwhile the Roman generals had penetrated the Marsian, Pselignian, Marrucinian, and Vestinian territories ; the resistance STRABO AND SULLA 409 of the northern confederacies gradually collapsed, and Corfinium itself surrendered. Success of Sulla in South Italy. — In the south Sulla's energy soon retrieved the situation. Ciesar's successor, assisted by a naval force and enjoying a free hand, overran Campania ; with the aid of Didius and the loyalist Magius he recovered Stabile, Her- culaneum, and Pompeii, inflicted a series of crushing defeats on L. Cluentius, who tried to relieve Pompeii, and drove him beneath the SLING BULLETS FROM ASCULUM. {After Duricy. ) walls of Nola. Pushing his success, the " Imperator," as his troops had hailed him, advanced against the Hirpini, sacked yEclanum, surprised and defeated Mutilus in the passes of Samnium, and stormed Bovianum, the new centre of the league, near the source of the Tifernus, in the heart of the Samnite hills. Cosconius, in Apulia, had reduced Salapia and Cannas, had after a serious struggle conquered and killed Marius Egnatius, and was now master of the south-east. The advance from Campania had felt its way to the sea, and the division of the southern insurrection •410 HISTORY OF ROME was complete. Only in Lucania, Gabinius, after some successes, perished in an assault on the enemy's camj). The Samnites hold out.— So the year closed favourably for Rome. The war in the north was ended. The coasts were clear; the mountains of the centre and the mass of Apulia and Campania had been recovered, and the rebellion in the south cut in two by the surrender of the Hirpini and the reduction of Bovianum. The confederation had been broken up, and the war localised in Sam- niuni ; and all these results were due, in the main, to the policy of conciliation, seconded by the vigour and skill of Strabo and vSulla. The Samnites, humbled but persistent, led by the Marsian, Silo, and their own Mutilus, maintained the struggle, which simmered also in Lucania and Bruttium, raising as if by magic from the ground 51,000 free soldiers and emancipated slaves. Henceforth the revived nationalism of Samnium, centred in its new capital, ^sernia, stands in opposition to the actual government of Rome, and plays its own game among the conflicting parties. End of the Social War. — Sulla, Rome's ablest general, re- ceived the consulship for 88 B.C., and was destined for the command against Mithradates, who, though he had neglected the invitations of the insurgents to co-operate with them, was nevertheless pre- paring for war. Favoured by this diversion, hostilities dragged on. Strabo, in 88 B.C., went on with the pacification of the more northern cantons, while Metellus Pius, successor to Cosconius, recovered Venusia. Silo recaptured Bovianum, only to fall shortly after in a lost battle. Sulla cleared Campania and besieged Nola. The insurgent Lamponius, in Lucania, after defeating Gabinius, effected nothing further. The remnants of the war might soon have been finished, Nola stormed, and the Samnites reduced before the Asiatic campaign began, had not the insane struggles of the parties, re- commencing with the first lull in the storm, given a new turn to affairs, and threatened to sacrifice the whole results of the year. But henceforward the conflict is complicated with Roman faction- fights and political intrigues. The Social War as such is at end. Demoralisation of Rome and Italy. — Materially it cost Italy, first and last, the wealth and prosperity of her fairest regions, (hough Sulla was yet to complete the work by the harrying of Etruria and Samnium. The scarcity of money, a terrible hindrance to the allies, was bitterly felt at Rome, where the old strife between rich and poor revived with fiercer feeling, caused by deeper cleavage and greater extremes. In 8g B.C. a financial crisis, enhanced by the declining revenue from Asia and the unsound basis of Roman RESULTS OF SOCIAL IVAR 411 wealth, led up to a desperate conflict of debtor and creditor. The chronic cry of anarchic socialism, " Novce iabiilcr" the cancelling of debts, was raised. When, under the stress of a tightening market, debts were called in with interest, the urban pnctor A. Sempronius Asellio, an injudicious man, tried to revive, for the protection of the debtors, the laws controlling or forbidding inte- rest on loans. These useless, and now obsolete, laws had been as constant a feature of Roman history as the abuses they were designed to meet — exaggerated usury and a stringent law of debt. The debtors now claimed as penalty fourfold the amount of the illegal interest already paid. The highest judicial officer of Rome was murdered by the infuriated creditors as he sacrificed in the Forum, and no one was called to account. But the loss of men was worst of all ; 300,000 of the flower of Italy fell in this useless warfare. To the scarcity of soldiers the enlistment of freedmen and slaves bears witness. Terrible too was the de- moralisation of the troops, which went on from bad to worse in the wars which follow. When a Roman admiral fell by the hands of his mutinous marines, they were merely warned by Sulla to purge the offence by valour in battle. Reorganisation of Italy. — In the end, when Sulla had finished the work (82 B.C.), the whole of Italy became Roman up to the Po. Instead of a series of more or less autonomous states connected, in various degrees of dependence, with Rome, we find a number of urban communities of Roman citizens, gradually approximating to one type of organisation, under various names due to their various histories, but with few and slight differences in status and privilege. The old Latin towns, such as Tibur and Pneneste, the Latin colonies, the old municipia, the allied towns, which accepted the offered franchise, and the old pnefectures, at least for the most part, become Roman country towns or municipalities, and gradually receive a definite constitution. The system took time to build up. Here and there towns like Neapolis and Ilcraclea might hesitate to surrender their favoured position without more precise conditions and advantages, or some luckless places paid for a time the penalty of past disloyalty. But by the time of Caesar nearly all the towns in Italy proper, and after 49 B.C. in Transpadane Gaul also, enjoyed the franchise, and all, in fact if not in title, were practically municipia, with local self- government, as defined by the series of municipal laws. This local self-government, no doubt variously modified, with its city council, magistrates, elections, arrangements, and powers settled 412 HISTORY OF ROME and regulated by law, spread over the Roman world. The central authority would interfere in cases of difference between localities or of military necessity, as the central jurisdiction took cognisance of treason, conspiracy, and crimes of special gravity. P'or the rest, Italy remained the ordinary consular department, the only special provincia being Cisalpine Gaul, constituted by Sulla, after whose legislation military commands in Italy proper were irregular. Further Results of the War. — A second result of the war was, that when once the new citizens were equalised with the old — for in the first laws, in fear of swamping the Comitia, they were restricted to eight of the thirty-five tribes — the absurdity of the Comitial system became glaring. Only those near Rome could be serious voters ; except on special occasions, the bulk of the Italians abstained, and showed a total indifference to urban politics. This paved the way for a new system which made Italy, not Rome, the mistress of the world, which might make Italy in turn a province, and Rome, if still the capital, a mere municipality among the rest. Again, old Italian customs, ideas, and dialects decayed under the complete Romanisation. More immediately, the inclusion of the Italians furnished in its restrictions a handle for agitation to the populares, while later on it reinforced the class of moderate politicians, bringing into activity a large number of sqlid men, who form a new section of the so-called equites. CHAPTER XL SULPICIUS, MARIUS, AND SULLA (88 B.C.). State of Rome and Italy. — The troubles in Italy, which had been almost extinguished by the concessions of the government and the ability of its leaders, assumed a new and still more dangerous character, owing to the outbreak of revolution at Rome, coinciding with the alarming attack by Mithradates on the Roman power in the East. For the crisis in Italy and in Asia the demo- crats were immediately responsible, but the stupidity of the opti- mates was even more to blame. The folly which flung the new citizens into the arms of their opponents by the galling restrictions attached by jealousy to concessions wrung by fear, was as dangerous to the state as the mortified ambition and crazy vindictiveness of Marius, who hoped to retrieve in Asia the failure of the Social War. The MARIUS AND SULPICIUS 413 restriction on the citizenship destroyed the httle value it still pos- sessed in politics, and placed the honest Italian on a level with the emancipated slave. Only the merest perversity or pedantry could care at this time of day for the purity of the franchise or the swamp- ing of the electorate. It would have been wiser to give with a full hand, to have spread the Roman rights from Lilybfeum to the Alps, and to have extended the benefits of the Plautio-Papirian law at once to all insurgents who had laid down their arms after the appointed time, and as dediticii now lived on sufferance without the status of ally or citizen. Plentiful material for trouble was left. There were the friends of the exiles under the last commission, plotting to procure their recall ; the capitalists, exasperated by Asellio and their losses in Asia ; the debtors, broken by the economic crisis. There was the army, debauched by civil war, detached from civic interests, ready for mutiny and murder, its discipline sapped by personal and poli- tical intrigues. There was a spirit of bitterness and discontent abroad, a tendency to resort to extreme measures in all parties ; nor were there wanting turbulent spirits to use these troubles for their own purposes. Marias and Sulpicius Rufus. — Marius, eager for command, exer- cised his unwieldy carcass with the younger men in the Campus Martius, and used his solid fortune to buy up an able agent in the talented and indebted tribune Sulpicius. P. Sulpicius Rufus was a politician more enigmatical perhaps than Drusus, a distinguished soldier, an orator warmly praised by Cicero for his powerful voice, his graceful gesture, his tragic style, his vehement yet not unbridled eloquence. His birth was of the highest, his politics hitherto moderate. His recorded acts betray no particular partisanship. If he impeached the democrat Norbanus in 95 B.C., he obstructed as tribune the illegal election of the fedile C. CcEsar to the consul- ship, and vetoed a proposal to repeal judicial sentences by popular decree. As a moderate and a friend of Drusus, he meant perhaps to complete the latter's programme of Italian enfranchisement and conservative reform, but carried too far, either by his connection with Marius, by the difficulties of his own position, or by his personal feud with the Julii and their friends, he became the representative of a democratic revolution which used the name and played the cards of Gains Marius. Sulpicius now supported the recall of the Varian exiles, which he had at first opposed, brought forward a measure to distribute the new citizens and freed- men through all the thirty-five tribes, and is said to have proposed 414 HISTORY OF ROME that all senators owing more than a certain amount of debt should forfeit their seat, an unpractical proposal, and inconsistent with his own financial position. The Measures of Sulpicius. — The consuls Sulla and Pompeius Rufus, to suspend the voting, proclaimed an extraordinary festival ; but Sulpicius, who had surrounded himself with a guard of 3000 roughs and an "anti-Senate" of 600 knights, raised a riot in which Rufus' son was murdered, and Sulla only escaped, it is said, l)y Marius' back-door. The feast was countermanded, and Sulla went to the army at Capua. The laws were carried. In themselves they were not revolutionary ; the franchise law was, as regarded the Italians, necessary ; while the relief to the freedmen earned by recent military service could not be dangerous to the great families on which they depended. The law of insolvency, honestly carried out, might have purged the Senate of venal men whose votes their creditors carried in their pockets. The recall of the exiles was a measure of amnesty, favourable mainly to moderate men. But they had been carried by violence, and, under specious pretexts, certainly played into the hands of the opposition leaders. Hence the strenuous resistance not merely of the Senate, but of all who disliked the extension of the franchise, and of all who disapproved of legislation by an armed mob. The next proposal, however, brought a more formidable opponent into the field. Sulpicius, by decree of the people, now transferred the Asiatic command, with supreme proconsular power, from the duly appointed consul Sulla to C. Marius, a mQY&privafiis. It was a dangerous and unconstitu- tional proceeding. Possibly it was a counsel of despair, and he may have hoped to gain the Campanian army, and anticipate a march on Rome, by the use of the still popular name. More probably it was a part of the original programme. The party of reform was powerless without an army, and Marius was their only leader. He was still capable of even disastrous energy, and those who advised the fat old man, with a sneer, to cure his rheumatism at Baias learned too late the dangers of sarcasm. Character of Sulla. — L. Cornelius Sulla was the right man for the work in every sense. The impoverished scion of a noble but latterly somewhat obscure house, a man of genuine cultivation, of some taste and scholarship, a worldly spirit addicted as well to the humours and pleasures as to the refinements of life, he perhaps as reluctantly gave up the pursuit of amusement for the toils of active life as he readily resigned the burden of affairs which the times compelled him to assume. A boon companion, CHARACTER OF SULLA 415 passionately fond of wine and women, an indulgent friend, a lover of Bohemian life, careless of conventions, capable of vehement emotion and outbursts of passion, with his choleric and sanguine temperament, and that fair face that flushed so readily, he brought, for all that, to political life a mind destitute of illusions and a strong power of self-restraint. On every side he contrasted with the old- fashioned and boorish aristocrat. As markedly was he above TEMPLE OF FORTUNA (?) AT ROME ; (sO-CALLED FORTUNA VIRILIS). the ordinary aimless pleasure-seeker of the day. Though he did not take life too seriously, he could be terribly in earnest ; to him life was a supreme ironic game, in which Fors Forfuna held trumps. He claimed, indeed, to be the object of the special favour of Aphrodite, the goddess of chance, and, in the spirit of his time, paid attention to dreams and prophecies. His strong character was quaintly crossed by the ^\■hims and freaks of a truly Roman vanity. He had won his spurs as soldier and diplomatist in the 4l6 IHSTORY OF ROME Jugurthan campaign, where he gained the useful friendship of his future client and paymaster, Bocchus ; he earned favour as pra>tor (93 i!.c.) by the magnificence of his games, and credit as governor by his vigour in the East (92 n.c). The military art learned under Marius in the African and Cimbric struggles he had turned to the best account in the Social War. He had rivalled and effaced his master; and now, with all his knowledge of the field of war, his army trained to his service and attached to a leader who humoured its instincts and handled it well, he was called on to give up the prize of valour and the reward of his labours to his ancient enemy, the vengeful and unserviceable democrat C. Marius. Sulla marches on Rome. — The two military tribunes who claimed the troops for Marius fell victims to the fury of the mob. An army of volunteers serxing for pay and plunder, drawn from the lowest ranks, caring more for persons than principles, had even less respect for political authorities than it was apt to show for unpopular generals. Sulla, a typical Italian, a convinced oligarch, with a profound contempt for popular assemljlies and radical shibboleths, as clear-headed, hard-grained, and self-reliant as he was ironical, sceptical, and indifferent, with that trust in his star which is the superstition of a great man, that attention to the needs of the moment, that will to get business done, that clear grasp of the end and reckless use of the means, which characterise the strongest, if not the most moral, statesmen, was not sorry for the opportunity to clear the stage at Rome and settle accounts with the Sulpicians before he started on the Eastern war. He followed the lead of his soldiers, clamouring for Sulla and the loot of Asia, on the road that led a Roman army for the first time to the gates of Rome. His officers held back, but the general, marching from Capua with 35,000 men, joined his colleague Rufus, and pushed on, setting aside the prittors who tried to block the road. The consuls occupied the main entrances to the city, and crossed the sacred pomeriiim. There was no garrison on the neglected walls, no plan of defence against this novel stroke. But in the narrow streets a severe struggle took place as the legions tried to force their way up. At first they fell back beneath the storm of missiles from the lofty roofs and windows, till a turning movement took in rear and scattered the ill-armed force of freed- men and loafers. In vain the democrats appealed to the people, and finally to the slaves ; they were forced to flee. But more than the democrats had been conquered. It was the final and formal \ictory of force over law. The army and its MARIUS AND SULPICIUS 417 general appear as the decisive factor in political struggles. The work begun by Marius was unconsciously completed by his rival, and the coup d'etat of the conservative party set a precedent dangerous for itself and the Republic. The march of Sulla on Rome is the turning-point of the revolutionary movement. Death of Sulpicius : Escape of Marius. — For the rest, Sulla behaved with some moderation, and maintained the stringent discipline that he alone in these days could keep. The Sulpician laws were of course annulled ; and twelve persons, including Marius and Sulpicius, were formally outlawed. The head of the orator was stuck, in ghasth' mockery, on the rostra. Marius was more fortunate. The story of his escape has grown into a romance : how he fled to Ostia, found a ship, and was landed at Circeii, baffled by adverse winds ; how he wandered by the shore faint and half-starved, and just evaded his pursuers by wading and swimming towards two ships that hove in sight along the coast ; how the skippers refused to obey the summons of the horsemen to surrender him, and yet, in their fear, abandoned him in his sleep on the land by the mouth of the Liris ; how he hid in the marshes by Minturna;, sunk to the neck in mud, was discox'ered and dragged to prison, and there abashed the Cimbric executioner by the thun- dering demand, " Slave, darest thou slay Gains Marius ?" how the magistrates set him on ship and sent him away ; how he barely escaped with life from the praHor of Sicily, and landed in Africa hoping aid from the Numidian king ; how the outcast hero sent back the message to the governor who bade him quit the province, "Tell your master that you have seen Marius an exile, sitting among the ruins of Carthage." Finally, he found refuge in the island of Cercina, off Tunis, where he was joined by his son, the younger Marius, who owed his escape from the doubtful dealings of Hiempsal to the favour of a royal wife. Laws of Sulla. — Having cleared the field, Sulla wanted to restore and strengthen the government of the Senate, and to restrain the powers of the tribune and the Tribal Assembly as they had been developed by the action of the Gracchi and their suc- cessors. He proposed to fill up the gaps in the Senate, caused by the Social War and the strife of factions, by the election of a certain number of optimates, though it is doubtful if this was carried out. He took away the initiative of the tribunes in legislation, enacting that laws proposed by them must receive the previous sanction of the Senate. Beyond this, he is also said to have abolished the legis- lative functions of the Tribes, which had since the Le.x Hortensia 2 D 4i8 IIISTOKY OF ROME of 287 B.C. superseded the Ccnturiata as the working organ of government, and with regard to tlie latter l^ody, to ha\e abolished the voting arrangements of 241 B.C. {v. j., p. 295-6) and more recent reforms, restoring' the older so-called Servian method which assured the absolute predominance of the highest property-class. Thus the election of the chief magistrates would be entirely in the hands of the wealthy. It may again be questioned how far such a sweep- ing reaction was, under the circumstances, possible or probable. The Servian arrangements had been so long and so deeply modified as to be almost objects of antiquarian curiosity. At the same time he carried some measures for the relief of poverty and debt. Thus Sulla hoped to establish on a formal basis at last the power of the Senate in the constitution, and of the upper classes in the Senate ; to curb the caprices of the tribunes and the Comitia, and reduce the former by law to the position they had held by custom during the war-period as the instruments of aristocratic government, while he did soniething to propitiate the needy pro- letariate. His proposals, indeed, appear more "thorough" than they really were. The Senate was not only a necessary, but in fact the leading, element in the constitution. No one dreamt of abolish- ing it. Without its control the jarring powers of the divided magis- tracy and the sovereign rights of the degenerate Assembly would have made the Republic impossible. Under the circumstances, the only alternatives to personal rule were tribunician anarchy or the formal recognition of the de facto power of the Senate. The old understandings, the old respect for atictoritas, were gone ; the checks imposed by the veto and by religion were disregarded ; it remained to put things down in black and white. So, too, we may justify the reactionary attempt to reform the Centuriata. The standard of wealth had risen, and the practical exclusion of the poorer classes from the electorate might place some check on corruption, while this body, however modifie-d, had never been genuinely democratic. The proscriptions even, which were probably authorised by the people, were no novelty, and, compared with the Gracchan execu- tions, both formal and moderate. But Sulla must have seen how essentially shallow and temporary his work was. The decline of the Senate had been due as much to the vices of the nobles as to the acts of the demagogue. It was as impossible to restore political health by juggling with the constitution as it was to meet economic evils by usury laws and emigration. It was to mend old garments with rags. He did nothing' for the equalisation of rights, nothing to remove the extremes of wealth and poverty, or to reduce the SULLA'S FIRST REFORMS 419 bitterness of faction. The Senate, the equites, and the rabble remained as they were, and he himself had shown a contempt for constitutional cant and a belief in physical force which were likely to influence the future more than his reactionary legislation. Sulla goes to the East. — Nor could the author of the reform stay to watch over its working. Duty called him to the East, \\'here the situation had been aggravated by delay. And yet there were dangerous symptoms in Italy. The Samnites kept the field ; Nola held out ; Lucania and Bruttium were still unsubdued. The new citizens were exasperated by their disabilities, and many com- munities were still uncertain of their fate. Even at Rome the restricted electorate had placed alongside of Cn. Octavius, a brave and upright but pedantic aristocrat, the notorious and vulgar democrat, L. Cornelius Cinna. The army of the North mutinied, and killed its new general, Sulla's trusted colleague, Pompeius Rufus. Nor did Sulla venture to remove the suspected instigator of the mutiny, Pompeius Strabo, who resumed the command and condoned the outrage. Indeed he himself, yielding to the neces- sity of the time rather than to the repeated pressure of Cinna, was content with exacting a public oath from the consuls that they would be loyal to the constitution, left his legate, Q. Metellus Pius, with proconsular power to deal with the Samnites, while Appius Claudius was to carry on the siege of Nola, and embarked for the East in the beginning of 87 B.C. Cynic or patriot, who shall say ? he left the factions to fight it out while he marched against the public enemy. His departure was followed by the collapse of his work. CHAPTER XLI THE FIRST MITHRADATIC WAR B.C. A.r.c. Aggressions of Mithradates repelled by Sulla . . -92 662 Mithradates occupies Asia, and massacres the Italians there 88 666 Sulla and Archelaus in Greece 87 667 Sulla takes Athens -Battle of Chaeronea .86 668 Battle of Orchomenus 85 669 Sulla makes Peace with Mithradates and crushes Fimbria . 84 670 State of the East.- — For some time Rome, absorbed in domestic politics or more immediate dangers, had neglected Eastern affairs. The fate of Cyrene and the expedition to Cilicia have been already mentioned. Egypt, after the death of Euergetes II, (117 B.C.), was 420 HISTORY OP ROME allowed to become the prey of dynastic feuds. Similar factions convulsed the kingdom of Syria, which was rapidly falling to pieces. While Rome had obtained a footing in Cilicia, the Parthians annexed Mesopotamia, and every town and tribe that could, Jew, Arab, Cireek, or pirate, asserted its practical inde- pendence. In Asia Minor generally there had been little change. It remained a congeries of dependent kingdoms, principalities, leagues, cities, and cantons, in more or less intimate relation to Rome. The province of Asia, organised by Aquillius in 129 B.C., had been handed over by C. Gracchus to the publicani in 123 H.c, and its condition, between their exactions and those of the officials, had steadily gone from bad to worse. Occasionally an honest Scaevola protected the subjects, but average Roman rule had been marked by cruelty, confiscation, and plunder ; exactions had induced usury, and usury bankruptcy ; freemen were kidnapped as slaves, and the land exhausted. These benefits of Roman government had spread over the adjacent countries till the name of Rome stank in the nostrils of the East. And yet the garrison was slender ; there was no fleet to keep the seas, and the venality of Roman officials was so notorious that when Aquillius had sold Phrygia Major by auction to the father of Mithradates, Gracchus divided Roman agents and senators into three classes — those who had been bribed by Nicomedes, or by Mithradates \^, or by both. On account of this bribery Phrygia had been detached from Pontus and loosely connected with the province. Parthia and Pontus. — But the most salient feature in Eastern politics had been the growth of three kingdoms — of Parthia, Armenia, and Pontus. Parthia, which had deposed Syria from the hegemony of Asia, and stretched from the Oxus and the Hindoo Koosh to the Euphrates, lay as yet beyond the poli- tical horizon of Rome, save so far as its relation to the rising power of Armenia inclined it to maintain a friendship with the Western Republic. The principality of Great Armenia, independent since Magnesia (190 B.C.), sprang into importance under the dynasty of the Artaxiads, and attained its zenith under its present ruler, Tigranes, who shook off the Parthian suzerainty and claimed as Great King the supremacy of Asia. Most dangerous, however, to Rome was the de\elopment of Pontus, or Cappadocia by the sea. This district, which, owing to its remote position and rugged character, had been conquered neither by Persian nor Macedonian, had maintained its indepen- dence against the successors of Alexander, under a line of native MITHRADA TES 421 princes, who boasted their descent from the royal house of ancient Persia, from Darius, the son of Hystaspes. It grew unnoticed till the capture of Sinope (end of second century B.C.) gave it a capital and a naval basis on the Euxine. In the third Punic war Mithradates V. (Euergetes) had earned by his support the title of Roman friend and ally. In 131 B.C. he had received for his services against the pretender Aristonicus, and for cash down to Aquillius, the district of Phrygia Major, which he did not, however, long retain. Murdered in 120 (121) B.C., he left the kingdom to the boy Mithradates VI. (Eupator), aged from eleven to thirteen )-ears, under the regency of the queen-mother. Mithradates. — A halo of Eastern legend surrounds the childhood and youth of the great king, as a mist of Roman slander obscures TETKADKACHM OF MITHRADATES VI. the actions and death of Rome's persistent and detested enem\-. The comets at his birth, the treacherous guardians plotting against his life, his course of poisons and antidotes, the adventures of the homeless hunter in his seven years' wandering, the recovery of the stolen throne, the sudden disappearances of the king, and his journeys in disguise through Asia Minor studying the manners of men and the ways of their lands, his dramatic return to punish the treason of his queen and ministers, belong to the romance of history. He has all the traits of the Eastern hero. We hear of him as a wearer of gigantic armour, as a swift runner, an audacious horseman, a mighty Nimrod, a hard drinker, a vast eater, a royal lover, a master of twenty-two languages, dealing justice to the tribes of his kingdom. Born at Sinope, he received a Greek educa- 422 HISTORY OF ROME tion, which gave him indeed but a smattering of culture, a veneer of accomphshment, through which the inner barbarism was bound to break out, yet made him a patron of literature and art, and taught him, above all, the value of (ireck political and military science, helped him to organise kingdom and army, and made him select as his agents and generals the ablest and most instructed Greeks. His nature and training made him cruel, cunning, and treacherous, and in the crisis of his career his worst qualities were most conspicuous. He lound everywhere what he expected to find, treason, and practised freely himself what he most suspected in others. In his passionate fits cruel to ferocity, he spared neither friend nor kin, and was capable of atrocious outrage. Yet through the darkest shades painted by his foes we can discern the linea- ments of a great and even heroic character, however defiled by superstition, vindictiveness, perfidy, and lust. He was a strong^ king, an energetic organiser, a brave soldier, who could devise large schemes, appreciate good service, and employ able ministers. At times he could even show generosity and moderation. The heart and soul henceforth of Eastern resistance to Rome, he fought in turn with her ablest generals, and sprang with fresh strength from defeat. He created a disciplined army and a numerous fleet, collected vast treasures, and welded into a strong power the discordant elements of his empire. He conquered Asia Minor, invaded Europe, allied himself with every element of discontent, rebels, pirates, democrats, and almost united the Hellenic and Oriental world against his enemies. He was aided, of course, by the disintegration of the Roman state, by the folly of Roman parties, and the neglect which alone permitted his rise to power ; but something is left for praise to the ever-active, never-despair- ing king which may induce us largely to discount the malignity of hostile criticism. Historically, whatever parade Mithradates might make of Hellenic sympathies and Hellenic culture, however much he might pose as the defender of the liberties of Hellas, he stands out as in every respect essentially Eastern, in his personal char- acter as much as in the military and political organisation of Pontus. In himself he represents no cause but his own, with no aim but personal aggrandisement ; historically he is the successor of the Persian, the precursor of the Parthian and Arab in the struggle between East and West. The Kingdom of Pontus. — The kingdom of Pontus, as he re- ceived it, running from Colchis to beyond the Halys, included the MITHRADATES CASPIU/U M } ^ 423 424 HISTORY OF ROME inipoiuint towns of Sinope, Amisus, and Trapezus on the coast, lint had no inland towns to speak of. Scattered forts throughout the land guarded the royal magazines and treasures, and served as refuges to the numerous but primitive population, little affected by Western ideas. Mithradates began by enlarging his dominions to the east and north. He subdued Colchis, won Dioscurias, invaded the Scythian steppes, annexed the Tauric Chersonese (Crimea), and pushed his arms almost to the Ister, within touch of Thrace. The warlike nomads, of all the various races that ringed the Euxine round, Scythians, Taurians, Roxolani, Bastarnians, fled before his Greek generals and conciuering phalanx, paid him liomage, and furnished him recruits. The Greek colonies of the coast, hard pushed by barbarians, and now neglected by Greek and Roman alike, hailed him as the protector of their corn-markets and fisheries, their lands and lives. In Chersonesus (Sebastopol) and Panticapaeum (Kertch), in Theodosia and Phanagoria, he found the basis for the new kingdom of the Bosphorus. Hence he ch-ew a large revenue, huge supplies of corn, and a serviceable Cossack cavalry. By sea and land he was master of the Euxine. This, of course, was the work of time, but good progress had been made before the war with Rome and without interference from her ill- informed and preoccupied government. His ideas widened. He annexed Lesser Armenia, and formed with Tigranes, to whom he married his daughter Cleopatra, a compact of mutual support which left Tigranes free to extend his conciuests south and east, while Mithradates pushed his designs in Asia Minor. Paphlagonia and Cappadocia. — His first enterprise was natu- rally directed against Paphlagonia, which, on the death of the last Pylsemenes, became a bone of contention between Pontus and Bithynia. Mithradates claimed it by right of an alleged bequest ; Nicomedes put up a pretender. In the end, as a result of the rivalry or by a concerted partition, Mithradates kept the part he had occupied, and even cut off a slice of Galatia in defiance of Roman remonstrance. Of the two claimants Rome natural]}- favoured her client Bithynia, but was too much occupied by the Cimbric war to act with effect. The rival kings next intrigued for the possession of Cappadocia, where Ariarathes VI., brother-in- law of Mithradates, had been murdered by Gordius, a suspected agent of the Pontic king, to whom the assassin fled for refuge. In his place Mithradates set up his own nephew, Ariarathes VII., with Gordius as guardian, an arrangement which led at once to quarrels, and then to war. But the uncle murdered his kinsman MITHRADATES AND ROME 425 with his own hand, and crowned a fresh puppet, opposed by Nico- medes, who married the widow of the old monarch, and pushed a puppet of his own. Finally, Tigranes came in to support his wife's father, and buy his aid against the Parthians. When Sulla came first to the East as praetor of Cilicia in 92 B.C., a sham Ariarathes was governing Cappadocia, with Gordius as minister, in the in- terests of Pontus. The ancient royal house was extinct. Sulla as Pro- Praetor. — Sulla found a formidable problem. The Senate had permitted a strong and organised state to grow up on the Roman frontier, with an army 100,000 strong, with a fleet that, resting on Sinope and Chersonesus, made the Euxine a Pontic lake, strong in alliances, stronger in the absence of any serious fleet or army of Rome, pushing its aggressions right and left over countries in alliance with the Roman people. It had been warned already by Nicomedes and the Tauric princes, and now that Cappadocia had fallen, it was forced to act with some show of \ igour. Luckily the Roman name was still terrible. With a few regulars and auxiliaries, backed by the memories of Magnesia and Pydna, Sulla drove Gordius and his Armenian allies headlong from Cappadocia. Mithradates disowned his agents and withdrew his pretenders, promised to evacuate Paphlagonia, which w^as declared free, and to reinstate the Scythian chiefs. The Cappadocians, by free election, summoned Ariobarzanes to the throne. Sulla was the first Roman general who reached the Euphrates. Here took place the famous interview, when he assumed the place of honour between the newly elected prince and the ambassador of the King of kings, sent by the Arsacid to knit a friendship with Rome, in view of the encroachments of Armenia. New Aggression of Mithradates. — But the settlement was merely apparent. The events of 91 B.C. paralysed Rome, and Mithradates, always well informed in Roman politics, instigated Tigranes to expel Ariobarzanes, omitted to evacuate Paphlagonia, and con- tinued his Crimean wars. This might have been borne ; but when, on the death of Nicomedes II. of Bithynia (91 B.C. ?), the younger son, Socrates, supported by Pontic troops, evicted the rightful heir, Nicomedes III., the removal of this important buffer state brought the danger something too close to the frontier of the province. Mithradates had, however, committed no o\ert act of war ; nor, indeed, could an army have been spared to chastise him. In answer to the appeals of the expelled kings, M'. Aquillius, son, probably, of the conqueror of Aristonicus, colleague of Marius in loi B.C., and distinguished in the Servile war, but bearing a name 426 HISTORY OF ROME notorious in the East, was sent as a special envoy to settle affairs. Again a mere demonstration was enough ; the princes were re- stored (90 B.C.), and Mithradates, though he evaded the call for contingents, offered no resistance, disowned and executed Socrates, and sheltered himself behind his agents, Gordius and Tigranes, A true Oriental, persistent as pliant, he recoiled before an earnest front, waiting his time to pursue his projects by fraud, force, or corruption. In spite of the chance offered by the Social War, he Mas not prepared for an open struggle, and the Senate, as he knew, was bound to content itself with this demonstration of Roman supremacy. Neither could make up their minds to the inevitable. Aquillius forces on War. — Aquillius, true t\pe of a " prancing proconsul," forced the hands of both, at the worst time possible for Rome. He pushed on the young Bithynian king, his client and debtor, to enforce the evacuation of Paphlagonia. Nicoinedes closed the exit of the Euxine, threatened Amastris, and advanced towards the Pontic frontier. When Mithradates modestly de- manded his recall, or liberty of action for defence, Aquillius sternly forbade him to resist the aggressor, and collected three corps under Cassius, Oppius, and himself, mainly composed of Asian auxiliaries, in support of the Bithynian advance, on the frontiers of Pontus and Cappadocia. The only possible answer was the mobilisation of the Pontic fleet and anny. Once at bay, the king took up the work with thoroughness and energy. He had the prospect of the most complete revenge and the expulsion of the hated Westerns ; even the invasion of the West itself seemed not impossible at this time and with these resources. His rear and flank were covered by Armenia, which promised active co-operation ; he disposed by now of a force of 250,000 foot and 40,000 horse drawn from the fight- ing tribes of Asia Minor, the Caucasus, and the steppes, together with a powerful fleet, manned and officered by sailors from Eg>pt, Crete, and Syria. His generals, Archelaus, Neoptolemus, and the rest, were the ablest Greek soldiers of fortune. His envoys were seen in all the Eastern courts ; they penetrated into Thrace, Numidia, and Samnium. The bold piratical cruisers acted as privateers, harassing the transports and cutting the communica- tions of Rome. To strengthen his ill-assorted and motley hosts, he had enlisted a legion of Roman deserters and Italian refugees ; he expected contingents from the Greek cities whose protectorate he assumed. Above all, there fought for him at first the deadly hate of Greek and native alike for the foreign oppressor, — usurer, SUCCESSES OF MITHRADATES 427 merchant, governor, collector, — whose tyranny seemed worse as yet than the wildest caprices of an Oriental despot. Mithradates occupies Asia. — When a last mission to Acjuiliius failed, Mithradates took the offensive in the spring of 88 B.C. The Roman power collapsed at once under the rapid succession of disasters. The Bithynian army was the first to be scattered ; its camp was stormed, and the kingdom fell at a blow. The Asian militia dispersed in panic ; the small corps in Cappadocia was crushed ; Cassius, the governor of Asia, was forced to retreat on Rhodes ; Oppius, shut up in Laodicea (Phrygia), was surrendered, exhibited in derision as a show, and only later given up to Sulla. The thunderstruck Acjuillius was overtaken in his retreat, routed, and driven first into Pergamum, and thence to Mitylene, where he also was handed over by the people. Chained and mounted on an ass, or tied to the stirrup of a horseman, he was paraded through the towns of Asia as a laughing-stock ; and finally, if the tale be true, "his thirst was stilled" for ever with molten gold poured down his greedy throat by order of the king. Mithradates, like Hannibal, dismissed the native prisoners, and by his clemency and exploits so roused the enthusiasm of Hellenes and Asiatics alike that all the towns, with few exceptions, hailed him as a conquering god, de- liverer and friend, and placed themselves at his disposal. Rhodes, generously forgetful, remained a refuge and asyluii , and with her stout fleet and strong walls withstood the Pontic po\A ^r by land and sea. Magnesia, with the Carian and Lycian leagues, and the princes of Paphlagonia, alone besides were loyal. Asia was lost ; what fleet there was surrendered. The Romans had begun the war with inadequate forces, and were compelled from the first to act on the defensive. Even in 89 B.C. there was scanty hope of men or money from exhausted Italy ; and, to crown all, in the course of 88 B.C., the Sulpician revolution had diverted the army of Asia from Brun- disium to Rome. Massacre of Italians. — Mithradates crowned his successes by a crime and a blunder. A decree from Ephesus (88 B.C.), backed by the vengeful malice of an infuriated population and executed with Asiatic atrocity, threw to the dogs and vultures the bodies of 80,000 to 150,000 Romans and Italians, men, women, and children, massacred on a single day. No sanctuary was sacred, no age or sex spared. Debts of money and debts of vengeance were washed out in promiscuous bloodshed. The goods of the victims were shared between the assassins and the king. The story of the Asian fury, like the story of Aauillius' fate, has been no doubt 428 HISTORY OF ROME over-coloured, and the crime was possibly due as much to popu- lar feeling as to the king's order, but ghastly crime it was, and if Mithradates hoped to cement by blood the fickle loyalty of the Asian Greeks, he was doomed to disappointment. His own cruelty and their mutinous cowardice ruined the plan. Moreover, it was the one thing needed to stiffen public opinion and unite all parties, senatorian, democrat, Roman, Italian, in the pursuit of the murderer. Invasion of Europe. — Meanwhile his fleet, in the winter of S8-87 B.C., had forced the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, and entered the /Egean under the command of Archelaus, and, in the absence of a Roman navy, commanded the seas. The islands, including the great port of Delos, were successively occupied and the scenes of massacre renewed. From his new capital, Pergamum, the king organised his dominions, created satrapies, and distributed the plunder. The confiscations which filled his treasury enabled him to remit the taxes. Master of Asia Minor and inebriated by easy success, he now contemplated the invasion of the West. Already, possibly at his instigation, the Thracians and other tribes had raided Macedon and Epirus (90 and 89 B.C.), which had been defended by .Sentius, the governor, with some success. Delos, with its temple- treasures, had been restored, soaked as it was with Roman blood, as an act of grace to its ancient mistress, Rome's favoured ally, Athens. Euboea fell, and Athens herself, her fickle mob beguiled by gifts and promises, received Aristion, ex-slave, courtier, rheto- rician, and Epicurean professor, with his Pontic guard, as agent of the king and virtual tyrant. The Roman party perished or fled. Athens and the Pirteus then became the Pontic basis in Europe. Greece joins Mithradates. — Simmering discontent in Greece found a last outlet in this revolt. Even a barbarian liberator was welcomed as a relief from monotonous Roman supremacy, which weighed like a nightmare on the spirit of the people. But the nation was too rotten to the core, economically as well as spiri- tually, to put real heart into any movement. The best men held aloof. When Archelaus' expedition appeared the Achjeans, Laco- nians, and Boeotians went over. The legate of Sentius, Bruttius Sura, with his small Macedonian garrison and a few ships, saved Demetrias and Chalcis, recovered Sciathus, and, advancing to re- lieve loyal Thespit-e, fought gallantly but indecisively with Archelaus for three days in Boeotia, but he was finally forced to fall back (88-87 B.C.). The king's son, Ariarathes, occupied Thrace, entered SULLA IM GREECE 429 Macedonia, and secured Abdera and Philippi as naval bases. With the army now approaching by land, his Greek levies, his fleet, and the reinforcements arriving by sea, Archelaus was master of the situation. Mithradates, certain of his Eastern game, saw no reason to bring the aid demanded by the Italian insurgents, though his control of the sea made it possible. Sulla lands in Epirus. — When Sulla landed, in the summer of 87 R.C., on the coast of Epirus, it was to find Asia and Achaia gone and Macedon half lost. He brought with him but five legions — in the absence of the Italians barely 30,000 men. War-ships he had none, and never did Roman general feel more keenly the value of sea-power to an imperial people. He had no money in his chest, no prospect of support from home ; he was risking his life, his career, and the fortunes of his party to maintain the power and authority of his country. Militarily the task was difficult enough ; for, if the hug-e armies before him lacked unity of organisation and equipment, they were drilled and led by experienced soldiers, and rested on the resources of a powerful state. But when, in the course of the next year, he was himself deposed and outlawed, threatened even with attack by an army of Romans led by his legal successor, it may well have seemed impossible. From all these difficulties he emerged successful, and he owed his success as much to his own coohiess and self-possession, his own strategy and tactics, his own courage and foresight, as to the devotion and valour of his veterans. He was the greatest and most original general that Rome had yet produced ; possibly, with the excep- tion of Caesar, the greatest in the history of the Republic ; and his services as a soldier in maintaining the dominion and govern- ment of Rome far outweigh his famous work as a constructive statesman. Sulla takes Athens. — His appearance rapidly altered the ideas of the Greeks, who promptly seceded from their Pontic alliance. His demand for the restoration of the status quo being rejected, he advanced into Boeotia, and there defeated Archelaus and Aristion at Mount Tilphossium. From Thebes, whither he sum- moned yEtolian and Thessalian auxiliaries, he pushed on to attack Athens and the Piraeus, held respectively by Aristion and Arche- laus. His communications were secured by camps at Megara and Eleusis, his operations covered by Hortensius in Thessaly and Munatius at Chalcis, while the Greek cities redeemed their mutiny with men, money, and stores. Failing to carry the for- tresses with a rush, he settled down to a siege in form, while 430 HrSTORY OF ROME Archelaus conducted the defence in the most approved style and with consideral)le success. There was fierce and ahiiost desperate fighting under the walls, when Sulla and Murena defeated the relieving army of Dromichictes. But, without ships, to blockade the PinL'us was hopeless. To obtain them, in the winter of 87- 86 K.C. he sent L. Licinius Lucullus to Rhodes, Syria, and Egypt. Lucullus ran the gauntlet of the enemy's cruisers only to meet evasive answers from governments afraid to supply the oligarchic general, or made contemptuous by the failures of Rome. Once more .Sulla tried to storm the Piraeus (spring of 86 B.C.). Archelaus, building wall within wall, disputed his ground with desperation inch by inch. In the end, and after months of fighting, when he had retired on the impregnable Munychia, Sulla was compelled to leave him there masked by a sufficient force, while he proceeded to meet the invading army in Boeotia. Athens itself, not so easily supplied or so well defended, yielded finally to the blockade (March i, 86 B.C.). Famine and disease had done their work ; the storming party sacked and massacred unresisted. Aristion and the leaders of revolt were caught and killed, but the city, saved by its past, retained its full rights ; nor was even Delos taken away. TETKADRACHM STRUCK BY SULLA L\ ATHENS— ATHENA AND THE OWL. Position of Sulla. — Meanwhile Chalcis had fallen into the hands of Mithradates, with Amphipolis, and probably Demetrias, the keys of (Greece : Munatius and Hortensius were retiring before the enemy's advance. Sulla's position was critical. So far from re- covering Asia, he had lost Macedonia ; he had not yet captured the Piraeus, he had sufifered severe losses, and a valuable year was gone. To fill his exhausted chest he had " borrowed " the treasures BATTLE OF CH^RONEA 431 of the gods, with a promise to repay, fulfilled later with the con- fiscated lands of Thebes, and cynically interpreted the alleged sign of Apollo's wrath in his own favour. The sound of the lyre from the sanctuar}' declared the god's approval of the loan. At Rome his constitution had been wrecked, his friends massacred, himself proscribed, and the new consul, Valerius Haccus the younger, Marius' successor, was expected every day to supersede him. With- out a fleet he was tied hand and foot. Battle of Chaeronea. — Luckily, Mithradates, unaware of his chance, or despising a waiting game, ordered Taxiles, now in com- mand of the land amiy of 100,000 foot and 10,000 horse, to advance into Boeotia, where he was joined by Archelaus, who had evacuated Pirasus. It was a motley crowd, magnificently set up, blazirg with Oriental pomp, but without unity or cohesion. Sulla, glad of the opportunity, broke up his camp in Attica, joined Hortensius, and with a strength barely one-third of the enemy endeavoured to force an action. Against the advice of Archelaus, who pre- ferred the wiser policy of patience, Taxiles pressed on. The result was the crushing defeat of Chaeronea, in the swampy valley of the Cephissus (March 86 B.C.). Sulla had occupied the town, in er- cepted their march, and cut their connections with the sea, and now, before the long columns had well got clear of the hill-land, com- pelled battle on a ground fairly favourable to his smaller force. To protect his flanks from the superior ca\alry he dug deep trenches and threw up earthworks, while his centre was fortified with pali- sades, fixed between the first and second lines. The rush of the war- chariots was broken on the stockade ; their retreat in disorder broke up the phalanx of Greek recruits and the foreign legion, a confusion utilised by the Roman foot. To cover a reorganisation, Archelaus threw his cavalry in masses on the Roman left and rear, and when .Sulla, hurrying to the relief of the struggling squares, laid bare his right, attempted to assault the weakened flank. Hastily returning, Sulla flung himself in turn upon the enemy's left, now denuded of its protecting cavalry. The battle raged along the whole line, till gradually the Pontic infantry gave way. As the legionaries pushed their advance, the retreat became a rout, the rout a saiive-gta'-J.etef. The gates of the camp were shut to check the fugitives, but the Roman infantry poured on with irresistible force. The camp was stormed, and the scanty relics of the massacre — some ic,ooo men — found safety at last in Chalcis. With mendacity as consummate as his skill, Sulla reported his loss at fifteen. The want of ships and the arrival of Flaccus robbed him of the fruits of viciory. 432 HISTORY OF ROME Archelaus coinniaiidcd the son, and could even venture to attack Zacynthus. Flaccus had arrived in Thessaly with two legions ; but when Sulla marched to meet him, so far from withdrawing his rival's troops from their allegiance, he could scarcely restrain his own from desertion. Unimpeded by Sulla, he sheered off to the north, with the intention of taking Mithradates in the rear by way of the Hellespont, and gaining credit for the ended war — a happy solu- tion of the problem. Battle of Orchomenus. — In the spring of 85 B.C. a huge army under Dorylaus crossed to Eubcea, and taking up Archelaus as com- mander-in-chief, entered lioeotia. Sulla, eager for a decision and confident of victory, dared to meet them in the plains of Orcho- menus, and inflicted a second disastrous defeat in a pitched battle, marked by his own desperate valour. His troops were wavering under the weight of the cavalry, when Sulla leapt from his horse, grasped a standard, and rushed into the throng, bidding his soldiers tell their friends that they left their general at Orchomenus. The victory of Orchomenus compelled the evacuation of Europe. Macedonia and Thrace were reoccupied, and the Roman com- mander had leisure to settle the affairs of Greece and build the necessary ships. Mithradates was in ditificulties. He had lost two armies, and was threatened on two sides. In Asia his exactions and conscrip- tions, and his appalling acts of cruelty, had caused a strong reaction. Each community feared for itself the fate of depopulated and plundered Chios, or of the murdered Galatian chiefs ; many were actually in arms. Suspicion bred conspiracy, and 1 600 men perished in the reign of terror that followed. The maddened king decreed the abolition of debts, the division of lands, the enfranchisement of slaves and metics. Revolution and violence were rampant. Flaccus and Fimbria. — Moreover, Lucullus, aided by the victory of ChiEronea, had now raised a small fleet, which he had dexter- ously used to obtain some valuable successes at Cnidos, Colophon, and Chios. Flaccus, indeed, who had crossed from Byzantium to Chalcedon, had been murdered by his mutinous troops, egged on by his legatus, the Marian assassin and mob-orator, C. Flavins Fimbria, who was elected general, and displayed, for all his crimes, distinct capacity as a leader. The mutineers were loyal to their chosen chief, and Fimbria, successful in several encounters, managed to drive the half-ruined despot from Pergamum, and would have captured his person, the prize of the war, if Lucullus, PEACE WITH MITHRADATES 433 true to his principles and his party, had not refused the aid of his ships to his master's enemy while that master was treating with the king. Leaving the disappointed Fimbria and his demoralised ruffians to mark their path by plunder, murder, and outrage, and vent their sacrilegious spite on Ilium, Rome's reputed mother, Lucullus sailed away to win fresh victories at Lectum and Tenedos, which gave him, when reinforced by Sulla's fleet, the mastery of the Hellespont. Peace. — Meanwhile negotiations had been going on, whose slow progress gave Sulla time to reorganise Macedonia and chastise the frontier tribes. Both parties needed peace, and were ready to treat ; neither wished to lose the advantages of their position. With wonted sagacity, Mithradates, a careful student of Roman politics, preferred to deal with the outlawed Sulla, though he tried in vain to use Fimbria's existence to beat down the terms of Sulla's ultimatum. As idle was his hope to bribe the indignant Roman with the offer of his help against the democrats ; Sulla, in the face of the enemy, was no partisan, but a patriot. At length, under pressure of the continued march to Asia, the king was induced by the astute but incorruptible Archelaus to accept, however reluctantly, the proffered conditions. Proposed first at a conference at Delium after Orchomenus, and ratified at a personal interview at Dardanus, on the Hellespont, but never reduced to writing, they amounted to the original demand by Sulla for the restoration of the status quo. The conquests of Pontus, and especially Cappadocia, Bithynia, and Paphlagonia, with all prisoners, deserters, and eighty ships of war, were to be surrendered and the expelled princes recognised ; in addition, a considerable indemnity was of course exacted. Archelaus, by his conduct of the negotiations, won the peculiar, and perhaps ostenta- tious, regard of the Roman general, and therewith the suspicion of the royal court, which drove at last the man whom Sulla had failed to corrupt, as an honoured guest, into the Roman camp. Fimbria crushed and Asiatic affairs regulated. — The terms were moderate enough, but, under the circumstances, substan- tially secured the dignity of the Republic. The general of the oligarchy had other work to do ; he had no time to dally in Asia, and must perforce let slip the favourable hour for breaking the power of Pontus and avenging the Ephesian decrees. The easy task remained of crushing the brigand Fimbria. As Sulla approached, the Fimbrians began to desert, and refused to attack when ordered. Their desperate leader, disdaining the door of 2 E 434 HISTORY OF ROME escape opened by the man he had just failed to assassinate, fell on his sword. With the reorganisation of Asia, Sulla's work was ended. The anarchical decrees of Mithradates were cancelled, the agents of his murders executed. The arrears of taxation were called in, and a fine of 20,000 talents (^5,000,000) wrung from the wretched and guilty communities, a burden which hung round their necks for years a millstone of debt. The few faithful states were recompensed, and order was restored in Bitliynia and Cappadocia. The provincial system was remodelled, and L. Licinius Murena, with the Fimbrian soldiers, was left as legate to carry out the settlement. For the rest, it was hard, no doubt, to sacrifice the easy triumph, hard to balk the troops of well- earned booty, and hardest of all to shake hands in public with this colossal murderer. But the position in Italy was critical, and Sulla (84-83 B.C.) conducted his rested and recruited veterans in a powerful fleet from Asia to Greece, whence, for the first time, he sent a report of his actions in regular form to the Senate, blandly ignoring his own deposition. Among the treasures which he was bringing with him were the original writings of the philosopher Aristotle, which formed a part of the library of Apellicon, a wealthy disciple of the Peripatetic school, seized after the capture of Athens. The army, concentrated at Dyrrhachium, was trans- ported without difficulty to Brundisium. CHAPTER XLII THE CINNAN REVOLUTION AND THE CIVIL WAR l'..C. . Cinnan Revolution and Marius' Reign of Terror Death of Marius — Government of Cinna Sulla's Overtures rejected — Cinna killed in a Mutiny Sulla lands at Brundisium, and gets the better of Norbanus and Scipio in Campania 83 671 Battles of Sacriportus and the Colline Gate—Siege of Prae- neste— End of the War in Italy 82 672 Troubles at Rome. — Hardly had Sulla turned his back on Italy when trouble broke out at Rome. The elements of mischief were numerous, but the opposition had neither cohesion nor policy. It was a " syndicate of the discontented," whose figurehead, for want of a better, was a pinchbeck saviour of society, called L. Cornelius 87 667 86 668 84 670 DEPOSITION OF CINNA 435 Cinna, a man without aims or principles, a mere soldier of moderate gifts, pushed forward by stronger heads and fiercer passions than his o\\ n. The death of Rufus had cost the Senate its strongest army. Strabo sat carefully on the fence, a man whose adhesion, when bought, was of doubtful value to either side. The fanatic demo- crats thirsted for revenge, while a powerful clique was working for the recall of the exiles. The equites were out of humour. The effects of the financial crisis were still felt ; there was a sore feeling among the defeated insurgents, and the stupidity of the Senate, by resisting the demands of the new citizens, justified at once the action of the agitators and the stubborn attitude of the armed Samnites. The strongest forces behind the new consul were Cn. Papirius Carbo, orator, organiser, and general, and Q. Sertorius, the ablest soldier and most attractive personality of his party. Unfortunately for all, the latter was kept in the background ; among these aim- less and ferocious fanatics, the man of genius, moderation, and mercy was out of his element. Cinna deposed. — The first symptom of reaction was the effort of Cinna, with the aid of the majority of the tribunes, to remove the disabilities of the new citizens and freedmen and restore the exiled Marians. To meet the influx of Italians and the attempt to intimi- date the Comitia, Octavius armed his supporters against his perjured colleague. In the fighting through the Forum and the streets on this bloody "day of Octavius," io,oo3 victims are said to have fallen. Cinna was deposed, contrary to the law of the constitution, and he and all his associates were declared public enemies. It was a bad precedent set by a weak government, which once more put itself in the wrong. For, if Cinna broke his oath and disregarded the veto of the senatorian tribunes, the conservatives anticipated force by force, and illegally deposed a duly appointed magistrate. Justifying their action in this case by a piece of the ordinary religious jugglery, they unwisely elected the priest Corne- lius Merula, a good, weak man, unfit for stormy times, to take the vacant place. But the exiles, far from quitting the country, flung themselves on the support of the new burgesses, whose rights they had championed, and to whom the unwisdom of the senatorians had given for the moment a keen interest in Roman party politics. They could rely on the Samnites and Lucanians above all ; old soldiers and fugitive slaves flocked to their standards. Cinna could pose as the victim of oligarchic persecution, the defender of the rights of citizens. As such he presented himself, with the veteran Sertorius and the younger Marius, to the army at Nola, which, 436 HISTORY OF ROME having no special conservative sympathies, promptly recognised the deposed consul, and as promptly marched on Rome, strengthened by contingents of new citizens and allies. Return of Marius. — Meanwhile Cinna had invited Marius to return, and the \indictive old man had landed at Telamon, in Etruria, with a band of armed slaves and Numidians, which the magic of his name and a feeling of shame and sympathy for the oppressed hero soon raised to an army. He inflamed the public emotion by a parade of mourning and squalor, and swelled his legions by loosing the slaves chained in the rural ergastttla. With this force and the ships he had collected he blocked the Tiber, captured Ostia and the neighbouring ports, and gradually cut the supplies of the city from the west by sea and land. In spite of Sertorius' protest, Cinna officially recognised him. The name was indispensable to him, though Marius at Ostia and elsewhere had given a foretaste of the coming butchery. As Metellus was occu- pied in Samnium, the Senate called Strabo to Rome ; but Strabo, for his own ends, permitted the investment of the city, which he was well able to prevent, by the combined forces of the re\olu- tion, and preserved his doubtful attitude, though, when attacked by Marius, he defeated him, with the aid of Octavius, severely in a bloody street-fight. Rome invested. — The Senate fortified Rome, raised the citizens, and tried to recruit troops by extending the benefits of the franchise- law of 8g B.C. to those who had submitted after the appointed date. The tardy concession availed it little, and when it authorised nego- tiations with the Samnites, the demands of the latter were such as no patriot could accept. In spite of their rejection, Metellus was summoned to Rome, a movement which evacuated Apulia, set the insurgents free, and drew the net of investment closer round the doomed city. The fall of Ariminum cut away all hope of help from the north ; four armies surrounded Rome ; the demands of the Samnites were conceded in full by the democrats as the price of alliance. In this juncture it is said that the Senate swallowed its obstinacy and granted the equalisation of the franchise. But it was a war no longer of principles, but of passions and persons ; the only living cause was that of the independence of Samnium. There was severe fighting under the walls ; famine and disease decimated the crowded defenders ; Strabo himself, whose selfish policy was largely to blame for the situation, perished by the pestilence, and his mutilated corpse was dragged in fury through the streets. The efforts of Metellus, the only soldier left, were THE REIGN OE TERROR 437 marred by the pedantry of Octavius. Merula was a nonentity. The despondent and demoralised troops, when Metellus refused to supersede the consuls, began to desert in crowds. On either side, Octavius and Marius stubbornly obstructed compromise ; a con- ference with Cinna eftected nothing, and Metellus withdrew in despair to Africa. The slaves accepted the emancipation promised by Cinna, the populace was starving, and of relief there was no prospect. Capitulation became inevitable, Merula resigned his office, some legal pedantries were raised and swallowed, the outlaw was recognised as consul, and Rome submitted without conditions. Massacre of the Optimates.^ — The verbal promise of Cinna that there should be no bloodshed was heard by Marius in gloomy and sarcastic silence. He too, when his colleague entered the gates, waited with bitter irony for the decree of outlawry to be solemnly annulled, and then rushed to enjoy his carnival of revenge. For five days and nights the butchery of the optimates went on, and the example of Rome was followed throughout Italy. Clad in consular robes, Octavius met his death like a senator of the Gallic days. The orator Antonius, L. Caesar and his brother Gaius, P. Crassus, Catulus the consul of Vercellse, and the poor priest Merula were among the victims. With the last two, by way of irony, legal forms were obser\ed, and they avoided sentence by suicide. The bodies were left unburied, the heads fi.xed on the rosira; the whole city was one scene of plunder and outrage. Sulla's wife and children escaped, but his houses were wrecked and his goods confiscated. Death and Character of Marius. — Marius and Cinna are said to have declared themselves consuls for 86 B.C., without election — a curious sample of democratic practice ; but scarcely had the con- queror of the Cimbri and of his own country won his long- sought seventh term and a\enged him of his adversaries and their gibes, when he died of fe\-er, brought on, we are told, by the debauchery with which he deadened the stings of conscience. Poetic justice was complete ; but it hardly required this to bring down to the grave the over-strained nerves and worn-out frame of the hitherto temperate old man. For all this massacre, over-coloured beyond question by Sullan annalists, he and his butchers were responsible. Cinna dared not, Sertorius could not, stop him. There is no sadder picture in history than the moral downfall of Marius. In his earlier days an upright, simple-minded, honourable man, who had saved the state by his soldiership, he had fallen into the snares of political life. Devoured by ambition, the spoiled child of fame had become 438 HISTORY OF ROME a tool where lie meant to l)e master. Soured by failure, irritated by sneers, sick with craving for a place he had not the capacity to fill, maddened at the last by persecution and indignity, he wiped out the record of his services in blood, and died the horror of Rome, of which he had been in turns the glory and the jest (January 13, 86 V,.c). Equalisation of the Suffrage. — His place was taken by L. Valerius Flaccus ; his band of assassins was extirpated, to the number of 4000, by Sertorius ; and the Terror came to an end. The sole persons who had profited were the slaves who had won their freedom, and the equites who bought at auctions the pro- perty of the dead. The laws of Sulla were at once repealed, but the only other legislative acts of the new government were a dangerous law for the relief of debtors, which cancelled three- quarters of their obligations, and an Act for the equalisation of the suffrage, which distributed the Italians through the thirty-five tribes. This time the Act was duly executed by the censors, of whom one was the same shifty Philippus who had opposed the measure of Drusus. Their proceedings were confirmed by the Senate in 84 B.C. Sulla having been deposed and outlawed, the insignificant Flaccus was sent to take over his army. Failure and Death of Cinna. — For the next three years Cinna remained in supreme command. They were years of peace, for the country was exhausted. His power was unresisted, for the SuUans were dead or fled, and the democrats and new burgesses supported their leader, while the moderates acquiesced, dreading another reaction more than they disliked the revolution. The Samnites, still in arms, were friendly, and the majority of the pro- vinces accepted the situation — Sicily, Sardinia, the Gauls and vSpain, Africa too, secured through the quarrels of the oligarchs — and Sulla's hands were full. Yet Cinna and his colleagues, con- tent with unquestioned authority, appear to have governed merely from day to day, without thought for consolidating their position. Their total lack of political plans, of any effort to reorganise the government upon democratic lines, is the final proof that the democratic party so called had no genuine programme and could provide no real alternative to senatorial misrule. Their failure exhausted one possibility of republican reform, as Sulla exhausted another in his failure to restore the Senate. In their security they even neglected the formation of a proper army and fleet and the defence of the ports. Even the discomfiture of Flaccus and Fimbria failed to rouse them. At last, early in 84 B.C., came SULLA RETURNS 439 Sulla's announcement of the finished war and his proposed return. He promised to recognise the equalisation of the suffrage, and to confine his vengeance to the revolutionary leaders. The elder Flaccus, the leader of the Senate, tried to effect a compromise. Sulla was, of course, to disband his army and come to Rome, ' under a safe-conduct if necessary, and all levies meanwhile were to be stopped. But Cinna and Carbo, roused at last, scouting the proposals of the Senate, pushed on their preparations. Cinna, in fact, had already transferred to Greece some of the troops he had collected at Ancona, when he met his death in an attempt to quell a mutiny among the rest, who feared to cross the stormy seas. Carbo brought back the advanced detachment, and retired into winter quarters at Ariminum, abandoning the idea of meeting Sulla in Greece (84 B.C.). Sulla and Carbo. — To the Senate, Sulla replied that, with his loyal arm)-, he needed no guarantees ; he could offer them to the Senate and his friends. He demanded only the restoration of the exiles, and hinted at the punishment of the guilty. The Senate had shown some firmness and independence in opening negotia- tions at all — indeed the crisis was its opportunity ; but the efforts of the moderates to bring about an understanding and a general disarmament were shattered by the \igour of Carbo and the firmness of Sulla. The indefatigable consul, by hook or by crook, prevented the election of a successor to Cinna, acted as sole consul for the rest of the year, and raised a large force mainly of new citizens, amounting in the first instance alone to 100,000 men. It is clear that it was no longer a question of a small and discredited party ; Italy as a whole, and the majority of the existing Senate, a Roman Rump Parliament, purged of the oligarchs, was hostile to the inevitable reaction, and, in default of a peaceful settlement, was ready for war. Men dreaded, and with reason, a second Terror. None of the regular Marian leaders were elected consuls for 83 B.C. ; nor did Carbo nominate himself once more. The new officers were the moderate L. Cornelius Scipio, a feeble creature, but an anti-oligarch, and the uncompromising C. Norbanus, abler demagogue than general. Sulla and his Army. — Thus Sulla at Brundisium, with his five legions, confronted a practically united Italy, and his enemies wielded the authority of the constitution and the resources of the state. The tables had been turned. He was now the revolu- tionary outlaw attacking the established order. He had on his side a devoted and experienced army, strong in its esprit de corps, 44d HISTORY OF ROME witliout a vestige of civic feeling, loyal only to flag and chief, a chief who condoned all vices but cowardice and indiscipline. To fill his chest the veterans gave their savings. He trusted in his army and his star. But to conquer he must divide ; he must conciliate the moderates, disarm suspicion, attract the waverers, and propitiate the Italians. Accordingly he proclaimed an amnesty to all who should abandon the democrats, guaranteed the rights of the new citizens, promised to observe the strictest discipline, and swore his troops on oath to treat the Italians as burgesses of Rome. As a fruit of his moderation Brundisium received him with open arms, Messapia and Apulia submitted. The main army of the government was still (spring of 83 B.C.) at Ariminum, and the south-eas't coast was unprotected. Counsels were clearly divided. Except Sortorius, who had no influence, and was soon sent off to Spain, the onh- strong men were Carbo and the younger Marius. Sulla's Adherents. — From Brundisium, Sulla marched unre- sisted into Campania, where he met and defeated Norbanus at Mons Tifata, and drove him into Capua. He had been joined already by Metellus Pius from Liguria, whither he had fled, driven from Africa by the pn-etor Fabius Hadrianus, and by M. Licinius Crassus, who had escaped from Rome to Spain, and helped Metellus to fail in Africa. L. Philippus turned again at the right time, and was sent by Sulla to take Sardinia. But of all the recruits the most important was the young Cn. Pompeius, Strabo's son, trained in a good school at once of military science and political insincerity. He had served under Cinna, had been attacked on account of his father's supposed peculations in Picenum, had barely escaped by the friendship of Carbo and the eloquence of his advocates, and now, with rapid decision, chose the Sullan side, raised a force of tenants, comrades, and clients in Picenum, soon amounting to three legions, with which the general of twenty- three beat and baffled the leaders sent against him, joined his commander in the south, and earned from him the st}-le and title of Imperator. Scipio's Army deserts to Sulla. — Leaving Norbanus shut up in Capua, Sulla pushed on to meet Scipio, now advancing by the Appian road, too late to aid his comrade. He encountered him at Teanum, and induced him to conclude an armistice, while Scipio consulted Norbanus, whom he found in no humour to treat. Apparently by the fault of the democrats, the truce was broken, but Scipio's troops, who in the interval had fraternised with the enemy, refused to recognise their leader's action, and passed over THE CIVIL ]VAR 441 e)i viasse. Sulla dismissed the officers unharmed. Carbo, indeed, said of him that he was made up of a lion and a fox, and that the latter was the more dangerous animal of the two ; and it may well be that these repeated negotiations were the snares of a wily Italian. However that may be, from the breach of the truce of Teanum dates the implacability of the oligarchic general. Preparations at Rome. — Sulla and Metellus now took up their winter quarters in Campania, content with the year's results, and preparing for a dash on Rome It was to be no easy task. The new consuls, illegally elected, Carbo and Marius, raised large levies in Etruria and Cisalpine Gaul, especially among the Marian veterans. The Samnites and Lucanians promised energetic sup- port, and amply redeemed their word At Rome the war party got the upper hand, directed throughout by the violent and vigo- rous Carbo. Sulla's partisans were outlawed by decree of the people, and the war entered on a new and deadlier phase, which gave no hope of quarter or compromise. So far as it was not a mere struggle of persons, it was a battle between the Latin and the Etruscan and Samnite nationalities. On July 6, 83 B.C., the great temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, the patron of the Roman people, was burnt to the ground. Battle of Sacriportus. — When the campaign of 82 B.C. opened, Sulla, moving upon Rome, was opposed by the younger Marius, a true son of his father, brave, persistent, and ferocious, who was covering the capital ; while Metellus, in Picenum, confronted Carbo, who from his base at Ariminum kept his grip upon Gaul and Etruria. Pompeius had apparently accompanied Metellus northward, and was threatening Etruria from Spoletium. At Sacriportus, near Signia, Sulla came up with Marius as he retired on Praeneste, and drove him headlong back on the great stronghold, whose im- pregnable walls became henceforward the centre of the struggle. This decisive action uncovered Rome, which was evacuated by the pra?tor L. Brutus Damasippus. He signalised his departure by a supplemental massacre of the remaining optimates. The aged Q. Scjevola, who had barely escaped the dagger of Fimbria, was one of the victims. Leaving Ofella to blockade Marius, Sulla entered Rome, and passed on to Etruria, to join in combined operations against Carbo. He utilised his short stay to seize the government and turn the legal machinery against his opponents. Campaign in North Italy.— Carbo, who had checked the suc- cessful advance of Metellus, on learning the news of Sacriportus, retreated to Ariminum, and thence moved into Etruria, leaving 442 II/STORV OF ROME Norbanus to hold the valley of the Po. Sulla attacked them on three sides at once. Metellus, passing by sea into Cisalpine Gaul and pushing on to Faventia, cut Ariniinuni from the Po and threatened the enemy's rear while his legate Lucullus moved on Placentia. Pompeius, who had already harassed Carbo's march, advanced with Crassus through Umbria ; Sulla himself proceeded from Rome direct. An indecisive battle was fought at Clusium, which so far brought Sulla to a halt that Carbo could detach Carrinas to relieve Prjencste. But the expedition was defeated by Pompeius and Crassus, and its leader shut up in Spoletium, whence he escaped with difficulty. A second attempt in force, under Marcius, was once more baffled by Pompeius. Norbanus, too, after defeating Lucullus, was himself utterly routed at Faventia by Metellus. This decisive victory was followed by the break up of the democratic cause in the north. There had been serious desertion before ; now even the Lucanian contingents went over, and one commander bought his own acceptance by murdering his colleagues in his tent. The army of the north was scattered, and the road to Etruria was open. Norbanus fled to Rhodes, where he only avoided extradition by suicide. Carbo, threatened on all sides, despatched two legions under Damasippus to delay Sulla by a combined effort at Pr?sneste, but when this also failed, abandoned hope, and fled to Africa. Such of his troops as were not destroyed or dispersed marched with Carrinas to relieve Marius. Here, at Praeneste, the plot was thickening. The Samnites and Lucanians, under Pontius of Telesia and Lamponius, reinforced by the garrison of Capua, in all 70,000 men, had come up from South Italy with the same object. Sulla, leaving a corps to contain Carbo, hurried ofi" to support Ofella, and arrived in time to baffle the attempt. Battle at the Colline Gate. — Unable even with the aid of Dama- sippus to dislodge their dogged opponent, and now aware of their discomfiture in Etruria and the north, the democrats thought to copy the strategy of Hannibal, and force Sulla to raise the siege before the arrival of Metellus and Pompeius, by a sudden rush on the "wolves' lair." Success might secure everything ; failure would at least ensure revenge. Strategically it was a rash move ; they ran the risk of being caught and crushed between Metellus and Sulla ; but the possession of Rome was all in all, and Marius, set free, would guard their line of retreat. With sudden resolve they broke camp, and marched swiftly and fiercely forward. Sulla heard it with dismay, and followed by a forced march on parallel lines. It was BATTLE OF THE COLLIN E GATE 443 a race for life and death. The insurgents, marching by the Latin way, had scattered a sally of volunteers from Rome and pitched their camp by the Colline gate, ready for the assault, when Sulla, whose cavalry had preceded him at full speed, arrived on the scene towards noon, and leaving short space for rest and food, flung his weary troops, in defiance of all advice, with obstinate decision on the foe. The battle began in the late afternoon of the 1st of November 82 li.c., and lasted well into the night — the bloodiest and most desperate wrestle in Roman history. The frenzied hate of the Samnite pushed the veterans of Sulla's wing to the walls of Rome, the general hacking and hewing, like a common soldier, in peril of his life, till the closed gates forced them back to the fight. When darkness closed the struggle for a while, Sulla stood on the field half despairing of victory. It was only in the course of the night that he learned the success of Crassus, who had routed the enemy's left. In the morning he pressed the now retreating Samnites. The end came when 3000 deserters turned their swords against their friends. The Sam- nites were exterminated ; the prisoners, even the deserters, were butchered by masses in cold blood within earshot of the appalled Senators, sitting in the temple of Bellona to hear the victor's har- angue. He bade them attend to his discourse ; the noise they heard came from a few malefactors whom he was chastising. End of the War. — Praeneste fell ; Marius died by his own hand ; the garrison and its officers, with the majority of the citizens, were put to the sword ; and the ancient and loyal ally of Rome, so vainly proud of its cherished independence, was almost destroyed. The remaining strongholds were gradually reduced — Norba, Neapolis, Nola, and y4£sernia. The doom of destruction went out against Samnites and Etruscans. The " curse of Sulla" still rests on their wasted lands, the worst visitation falling on ravaged and depopu- lated Samnium. Nola, indeed, held out till 80 n.c, and \^olaten"as stood a two years' siege, but the country was rapidly pacified, the fortresses garrisoned, and the embers of rebellion stamped out. As for the provinces, Sardinia surrendered to Philippus, Gaul soon came in, and Perperna, who commanded in Sicily, evacuated it on the appearance of Pompeius with six legions and 120 ships. Pompeius, having executed the democratic leaders captured at Cossyra (Pantellaria), with scant generosity to his protector, Carbo, passed over to Africa, defeated Cn. Domitius Aheno- barbus (81 K.C.X drove out the usurper, Hiarbas of Numidia, re- stored Hiempsai II., and re-established the authority of the Senate 444 HISTORY OF ROME in forty days. On his return he was ordered to dismiss his army and was denied an illegal triumpli, but Sulla yielded to the murmurs ETRUSCAN ARCH AT VOLATERR.^5:. of the troops and the discontent of the young- general, permitted an equestrian to triumph for the first time, and added to the SULLA AND POMPEY 445 honour the title of IMagnus. The man who warned the optimates against Ca:sar, ut male praciiictum pucrtiin ccwcrcnt^ and spared his life reluctantly, knew as well the character as he recognised the services of Caesar's future rival. In Spain. Q. Sertorius was obliged for the present to give way, and lefrTHe country with uncertain aims. In the East, Murena, to gain credit and keep his Fimbrians employed, picked a C[uarrel with Mithradates, who was occupied in restoring his power in Colchis and the Crimea, reopened the war in defiance of the king's complaints and Sulla's remonstrance, crossed the Pontic frontier, plundering as he w^ent, and was promptly defeated by the still powerful king (83 B.C.). The Roman garrisons were driven from Cappadocia. Sulla again interfered, and peace was re-established. Only Mytilene gave trouble till 79 B.C., when it was taken and destroyed. In the storm the }oung Caesar earned the civic crown. So the wars were ended ; the democracy and its allies lay prostrate ; Rome, saved by the soldiership of Sulla and his army in that last grim battle of the Colline gate, was ready for the statesman's hand. Sulla had not trusted his star in vain. CHAPTER XLIII THE PROSCRIPTIONS AND THE NEW DICTATORSHIP 81 B.C. A.U.C. 673. Sulla's Executions. — Sulla's original programme had been to reward his friends and punish his enemies, and to give security to the government of the Senate. The Romans found him in both respects a man of his word and a man 'of method. The hour ©f compromise was past ; the failure of 88 B.C., the severity of the campaign, the unexpected toughness of the democratic resistance, and that moment of the Samnite terror had taught him a lesson. It was no longer a question of mere retaliation and punishment. It was necessary to clear the ground thoroughly for his proposed reconstruction. He meant, in his cool, ironical way, to stamp out, so far as blood and iron could, all democratic ideas, to smash and pulverise the democratic party, to annihilate its supports, and to leave no chance for a counter-revolution. His was a dangerous, not a vindictive or an irritable, temperament ; he set no value on HISTORY OF ROME human life, yet for his time and race could show comparative moderation. The rejected overtures, the broken truce, the re- peated massacres, might well have palliated a fierce outburst in the hour of victory. But, making every allowance for vengeful passions, for all indulgence to friends and connivance at unwar- ranted executions, the solid part of Sulla's bloody work remains due to deep conviction of political necessity. Modern sentiment, unfamiliar with ancient doctrines of the rights of war and the ferocity of ancient political revolutions, when death, exile, and confiscation were the constitutional methods of resigning power, stamps the proscriptions unfairly as mere atrocities. More to the point was Caesar's censure, when he called Sulla a tyro in poli- tics ; but Caesar died a victim to his clemency, Sulla peacefully in his bed. Proscriptions. — In pursuance, then, of a fixed purpose, he ordered the promiscuous execution of all the leading revolu- tionaries who had been in active opposition since the truce of Teanum. Public horror was enhanced by the uncertainty, which was turned to purpose by unscrupulous partisans, until, in response to appeals from Metellus and Catulus, Sulla issued definite lists of the proscribed. Hasty and ill-considered as the lists were, their issue made Sulla personally responsible, and substituted a sort of system for indiscriminate murder. Even so, they were grossly abused, and indeed falsified, to satisfy private grudges or mere greed. No plea, no sanctuary, availed. The victims were cut down without the barest form of even a drum-head court-martial. Throughout Italy the work went on ; Sullan emissaries and local partisans out-heroded Herod ; debtors murdered their creditors ; this man fell a victim to his baths, that to his palace or gardens. " Wretch that I am," said a curious gazer who found his name on the list, " my Alban villa pursues me." Private friends and inform- ing scoundrels perverted the criminal indulgence of the master, and the vilest names of the following epoch are to be found among the Sullan executioners. The worst punishment fell upon the equites, who, as jurors and speculators, had combined the business of condemning senators and purchasing their estates. Sulla grati- fied an ignoble malice by tearing the bones of Marias from their grave and breaking his monuments in pieces. Gratidianus, the adopted nephew of Marius, was tortured to death by the younger Catulus at the tomb of his murdered father. While ail who aided the proscribed were punished, the casual assassin received indem- nity and a fixed reward ; the heads were numbered and accounted THE PROSCK/PT/ONS 4itia'a', special or ordinary, fell by prescriptive, not by legal, right to the Senate. With the growth of special functions — governorships, military commands, and judicial commissions — unaccompanied by any adequate increase in the number of officials, the system grew up by which the Senate filled the vacancies at its discretion. Thus the people, the nominal source of supreme power, lost all direct control over the most valuable appointments, while the originally annual magistrates enjoyed, as a rule, a second term of office. The city magistrate, whom his work detained at Rome, looked, at the expiry of his service, for a lucrative provincial command to recoup his elec- tioneering expenses and gain his triumph, and for this purpose his imperium could be readily prolonged. REFORMS OF SULLA 453 Separation between Civil and Military Authority. — This usage played into the Senate's hands, and Sidla liad only to make it regular and formal. It was he who practically, and it may be legally, established the rule that consuls and praetors should dis- charge civil functions auring their year of office at Rome, except in case of a special decree of the Senate, and should then pro- ceed to the provinces as pro-magistrates with military authority. The arrangement of the departments was now definitely vested in the Senate. Thus was completed the separation between the home and foreign command, the civil magistrate and the military pro-magistrate, a separation, as Sulla himself had shown, fraught with danger to the Republic. Hitherto ihe pomeriuvi had been the local limit between the exercise of the civil jurisdiction and the full imperium of any single officer ; now a deeper division was set up. These regulations, together with the inclusion of Italy in Rome, led to the administrative separation of civil Italy, ex- tending from the Straits to the Rubicon, from Cisalpine Gaul and Illyricum, which, being mainly composed of non-Italian elements and needing a military force, became a province in the ordinary sense. Italy, under the general supervision of Senate and consuls, was withdrawn from the sphere of the military imperium, and stood as a whole in strong contrast to the dependent territories. The pomcritnn was, so to speak, advanced to the Rubicon. Thus the senatorial control of the home officers was assured ; it re- mained to enforce responsibility abroad and limit the freedom of action enjoyed by the provincial governor. Hitherto the traditional obedience to the ruling board had been supported only by the existence of a vague and ancient law of treason {perdtiellid), and by the Lex Calpitrnia de Repetiiudis. These were now reinforced by a Lex Cornelia de Maiestate^ reviving, defining, and modifying previous laws, and designed to curb the license and control the actions of men who, like Sulla himself, were but too apt to turn their independent and ill-defined authority against the liberties of the subjects, the rights of neighbours, or the government of their own country. They were now forbidden to declare war, invade a foreign state, or transgress the boundaries of their pro- vince without permission, or to remain within the boundaries more than thirty days after their successors' arrival. The well-meant and necessary law lacked only some power to enforce its provisions. These business-like and practical arrangements brought a clear and orderly system into the government. They provided at once for the continuous administration of Rome and Italv bv the 454 HISTORY OF ROME resident consuls, of the civil courts by the urban and peregrine pnrtors, and of the now reorganised criminal courts by the six other praetors, while the ten great foreign commands were held by the same officials in their second year. The Senate gained by the division of functions, and by the restrictions upon tenure and re- election and upon irregular prolongations and cumulations of office. Its authority both over the people and the individual was strongly fortified when it received the legal right to dispose of the military appointments. It could dismiss as it could appoint an extraordinary official, when to depose a consul or praetor would have been illegal. Checks were placed in every direction on irregularity, ambition, and intrigue. Sulla, taught by his own example and that of Marius, attempted earnestly, if in vain, to capture the military force for the governing body. The censorship was allowed to fall into abeyance ; the qua?stor- ship, by a law of Sulla, carried a seat in the Senate, and this auto- matic method of filling vacancies rendered a part of the censors' work unnecessary. The revision of the census was of no real importance now for army, Comitia, or taxation ; for the purity of the equestrian list Sulla had no care. The financial duties of the office could be, as they often had been, transacted by the consuls. If its disappear- ance removed the crown of the official career, yet the Senate as a body was delivered from the caprices of its odious supervisors. The Equites. — The equites, a Gracchan creation, and the object of Sulla's especial dislike, were as a middle order abolished. With temporary disturbances, they had kept their places in the courts till now, and had turned their position to immense advan- tage as a means of intimidating the Senate and of levying black- mail. All this was now lost. Their special honours and privileges were for the time taken away, together it may be with the farming of the Asian taxes. The blow was not undeserved. The essentially selfish policy of the capitalists, directed mainly towards monetary interests and class privileges, and their maladministration of justice, robbed them of all sympathy, whether from the democrats with whom they had coquetted, the Italians whose claim they had resisted, or the nobles on whose prerogatives they had encroached. Note. — If ihe collection of the tithe was taken from them, as Mommsen holds, it was soon restored. More probably Sulla established the prin- ciple of fixed payment as against tithe, not for taxation but only in the case of the war indemnity imposed by him on the province. In any case Asia remained the liappy hunting-ground of the usurer and speculator. REFORMS OF SULLA 455 The Senate. — The position of the Senate, the keystone of the Siillan faljiic, may be inferred. By a new and striking departure its ranks were tilled by the special election in the tribal Assembly of 300 men of equestrian fortune, mainly, no doubt, agents and adherents of the new regime, nominated by the dictator. As the quaestors also were elected in the Comitia Tributa, the Senate, filled by a self-acting arrangement, would rest for the future on a basis of indirect popular appointment. The new method was the natural development of existing usage and of the Ovinian law, which had practically confined the censors to the revision of a list constituted by the public choice. The lapse of the censorship, however, made the senator irremovable. The number of members was roughly doubled, from a variable 300 to about 600, not too many to meet the increase of judicial functions. Thus recruited, and emancipated from censorial revision, strong in a life tenure, and resting indirectly on popular election, the Senate received the legal gift of supreme control in legislative, executive, and judicial affairs alike. Its prerogatives were not merely restored, they were placed on a formal footing, and strengthened at the expense of Comitia, tribune, eques, and general. The Courts. — To complete his work Sulla thoroughly reformed and reorganised the courts of criminal justice. The popular courts and the ordinary civil procedure remained as they were, except that the single judices, who decided civil cases under the directions of the prii:?tor, were now drawn from the Senate, and their action was limited by the institution of new tribunals. The extraordinary procedure, whether in the shape of special or standing commissions {qiiccstiones), underwent reform. The qiuTsiioiies perpctucr, of \\hich several had now been created, and which were taking over the judicial business of the assembly of the people, were increased in number, their procedure and competence were carefully regulated, and additional praetors provided to act as presidents. Here again senators were substituted for knights as jurymen. Apart from the temporary political purpose served, this was the soundest part of Sulla's reforms. It was the beginning of a clear distinction between civil and criminal jurisprudence, a first attempt to codify criminal law and procedure. Since only the people could con- demn to death or imprisonment, and since there was no appeal from these standing delegations of the people, the direct sentence of death for treason and crime was practically abolished. The dangerous special commissions were rendered unnecessary, and the rough methods of popular justice set aside. But it was im- 456 HISTORY OF ROME possible at Rome, in the total absence of the judicial spirit, to deliver the administration of criminal justice from party bias and social prejudice. Finance, &c. — The financial situation was improved, apart from temporary but severe measures of taxation and confiscation at the expense of rebels, subjects, and allies, by the abolition of the grain largesses and the resumption of the Campanian domains. With the usual inconsistency of Roman debauchees, the dictator attempted to restrain extravagance by sumptuary legislation. Summary. — Such were the institutions of Sulla. To the modern critic it may seem that he lost a great opportunity. If he \\ould neither grasp himself nor permit another to grasp the c row n, an act for which the time was scarcely yet ripe, it was in his power to reform the Assembly, to secure the loyal interest of Italy, to give the Senate, recruited with new Italian blood, a less official and more directly representative character, while he relieved the execu- tive of some of those checks and balances that paralysed strong and responsible government. The criticism is beside the mark. Sulla was essentially a Roman and a noble. Of radical reform he had no notion. He had started with no ideals, and now, profoundly convinced of the danger of existing tendencies, bent on making the best of what was there, and perceiving that the constitutional defect lay in the ill-defined position of the Senate and the weakness of its safeguards, he saw no remedy but to put back the hands upon the clock, and to bolster up in the most legal and formal way the power of the only strong republican institution. The Senate had made Rome great ; by setting aside its authority the tribunes and the Comitia had made wreck of the old system. The demo- cratic leaders had failed in their self-appointed task ; they had proved to the hilt their incapacity for reform. Sulla saw the danger of government by opposite factions bidding hungrily for the support of the hungry mob, and found the only alternative in the recon- struction of the Senate. What it had been de facto he would make it de jure. Like all conservatives, his mind went back to a half- ideal past, and thus he parted with no historical institution. He neither abolished the tribunate nor did away with the Comitia ; possibly, in the face of existing ideas, he had not the full courage of his convictions. With the means at his disposal and the ideas of a reactionary he did all it was possible to do, and carried his work through with unswerving resolution, with consistency and success. He armed and fortified the Senate against the capitalist, the proletariate, and the proconsul, but his work was doomed to CRITICISM OF SULLA 457 failure. He could not educate his party, could not give it vigour, morale, and policy. He built his constitution with blood and iron, which are rarely durable materials. Above all, he worked with \\'orn-out ideas. He attempted to make dead bones live. He con- tended against Destiny, the one goddess of his belief, when he tried to stem the aiivancing tide of republican corruption and military despotism. AThere is nothing new in Sulla's constitution. As a soldier, indeed, he rescued the empire of the East, he broke the rebellion of Samnium, he saved the city itself; as an administrative and judicial reformer he did some sound and permanent work. It was he who settled the Italian question and centred the power of united Italy in Rome. But his constitution is a tissue of revivals and restorations of ancient usage and existing prescription. He left behind him no problem solved, and all parties discontented. The populace had kept its vices and lost its aliment ; the equites were at daggers drawn with the optimates ; the moderates and lawyers were thoroughly dissatisfied. The army had learned its power ; the proconsul could study Sulla's precedent. The social and economic sores were unhealed ; nothing had been done for the pro\inces ; the fairest regions of Italy lay waste ; t own and country were full of dangerous exiles and discharged soldiersJ The Sullan rcgiine is a parenthesis in a continuous development. In ten years the forces he fought against met to destroy it ; in twenty the patchwork was rent to rags. But the fault lay less with Sulla than with the vices of the age, in which he shared himself, and the weakness of the men to whom he left the government. He exhausted the possibilities of senatorial reconstruction. To him and to his work of consolidation is due, after all, the very existence of Rome, and of any material or opportunit)- for future progress. For the moment the constitution was universally accepted. Only in Spain, Sertorius, who had returned to try his fortune once more, headed a Lusitanian insurrection, and began that eventful and romantic war by which his name is best known. Moreover, Sulla knew how to maintain it against his own lieutenants. If he yielded ironically to Pompeius, and stomached the impudent reminder that men turn from the setting to the rising sun, yet when Ofella, the besieger of Praeneste, presumed on his services and persisted in disregarding the laws relating to candidature, he had him cut down in the open Forum, and silenced the murmurs of the mob with the significant fable of the countryman, the coat, and the troublesome parasites. Yet these ambitious officers remained a force to reckon with in the future, and the events of the war, in wliich 458 HISTORY OF ROME six generals had been murdered by tlieir troops, and which had been marked b)' notorious treachery and desertion, had accentuated the dangerous qualities of the professional fighters they commanded. Resignation of Sulla. — Meanwhile Sulla had conducted the home and foreign administration of P..C. 8i and 80, making as little use as might be of his exceptional powers. Senate and people, in their different spheres, were duly consulted, and the ordinary magistrates appointed for 81 B.C. In 80 B.C. he took the consulship with Metellus Pius, and thus paved the way for the restoration of the republican order. He refused re-election for 79 B.C., and at the beginning of the year resigned his dictatorship. Whatever share indifference and the desire of ease may have had in his deter- mination, this act was the logical outcome of his ideas. Enig- matical as it seemed, it was politically necessary if he was not to stultify his own legislation. More than this ; unless he accepted permanent office he could not accept office at all ; he was too big a man for the machine he had created. Calling' the people together, to their surprise and admiration, he laid down his power, dismissed his lictors and guard, offered to give a reckoning ior his acts, and passed away unchallenged to his home, a private citizen, amid the breathless wonder of the crowd. Not long after, he retired from Rome to his villa near Puteoli, where, in the following year, he died. Rome's " iron Chancellor" retired of set purpose, satisfied with his creation, interested in its success, ready to return to its rescue, but clear that, if it was to go at all, it had better go without leading-strings. He could not remain in power but not in office, or expose himself to be slighted and ignored as an ordinary private politician. Sulla in Retirement. — In spite of all the bloodshed, the per- sonal feuds, the harassed interests, he left the scene of the pro- scriptions without fear or hesitation, relying on the terror of his name, the reserve of veterans, the new interests he had created, with contemptuous self-confidence and indifference to events. The remainder of his days were spent in his quiet country villa at Cumre, surrounded by his family and friends. His beloved wife, Csecilia Metella, mother of his twin children, whom he had named Faustus and Fausta, in honour of his fortune, died, and was buried with unlawful splendour. But he married again, for the fifth time, a young and cocjuettish maiden called \'aleria, drew round him a circle of^iterary men and artists, and amused his leisure with the writing- of his famous memoirs. While he grati- fied to the full his lifelong love of pleasure, and the scandal of DEATH AND CHARACTER OF SULLA 459 his day accused the " mulberry-faced dictator " of every form of sensual indulgence, he found time and strength for field sports and regulated the municipal affairs of Puteoli. His passionate masterfulness broke out once more in the murder of the Mayor of that town, an outbreak Avhich was fatal to him, though a later legend declared that the man of blood was eaten of worms. He died in his sixtieth year (78 B.C.), still vigorous in mind and body, fortunate, as ever, in the moment of his death. .Successful in his \\ell-considered schemes, more so, as he said, in his impromptu actions, he assumed the title of Felix, and fortune, faithful to the last, did not falsify the assumption. His one failure, deeply felt, was the failure to complete the restoration of the burnt temple of Jupiter, undertaken in his latest days. Funeral and Character of Sulla. — His body was brought to Rome in solemn, ever-lengthening procession of friends and veterans and awe-stricken spectators. With sombre pomp the funeral was celebrated ; the ashes were honoured with burial in the Campus Martius. Vainly the consul Lepidus opposed the demands of public feeling and private loyalty ; awe of the dead man and his li\ing soldiers kept the peace about his corpse. Senate and magistrates, priests and priestesses, equites and people, were there. Hatred, revenge, and calumny were silent for a moment, as the greatest man in Rome, the reorganiser of the state, the one bulwark of order, crumbled to dust on his pyre, while the soldiery, w hom he alone could rule, defiled around the body of their chief. But the passions suppressed for the moment broke out again soon after, and pursued the name of Sulla with vindictive exaggeration of his vices and crimes. To his character, as we have described it, he was true even in last houi-s. The small ambitions of his circle did not touch him. It was his aim to get the most out of life. The force of circumstances and his position provoked and compelled the man of fashion and pleasure to put out his powers, to be a great general and a great statesman. He did the business of the moment as it came, trusting the future to fortune, and gave up power and place with the same indiffer- ence that he took them. His leading characteristic, perhaps, was just this ironical cynicism, this cool, frank nonchalance. He has been censured, with reason, for his lax morality, his self-indulgence, his connivance at the malpractices of friends, his breach of his own laws, his carelessness of human life. He was no more a moral hero than he was a political idealist ; he combined the vices of liis time and nation with the constitutional ideas of a bygone age. 46o III STORY OF ROME CHAPTER XLV THE RULE OF THE SULLAN RESTORATION B.C. A.U.C. Lusitanian Rising under Sertorius— Despatcli of Metellus Pius to Spain Death of Sulla- Democratic Proposals of Lepidus . Defeat and Death of Lepidus— Pompey sent to Spain Insurrection of Gladiators under Spartacus Murder of Sertorius— End of the War in Spain Crassus ends the Slave War by the Defeat and Death of Spartacus 71 683 Pompey and Crassus, as Consuls, repeal the Constitutional Measures of Sulla 70 684 80 674 78 676 77 677 73 68 1 72 68z Opposition to the Sullan Regime. — Sulla had re-established the Roman oligarchy in a strong position, but he had failed to heal the disorders of the state or to infuse a new spirit into the govern- ment. Within the camp of the aristocrats all was confusion when their champion was gone ; outside its narrow bounds numerous secret or open enemies were gathering their forces for an assault on the dictator's organisation of the Republic. Many and various were the elements of discontent grouped together and covered by the vague name of the popular party. The strict adherents to the party programme of the past demanded the restoration of the tribunician power, which Sulla had shorn of its chief prerogatives. Caesar. — In their ranks was numbered one man, C. Julius Caesar, who was destined to see the emptiness of partisan watch- words. Already men looked forw? rd with hope to his career, but at present he was a mere youth (born 102 B.C.), a leader' of fashion rather .than of politics. Though of the bluest patrician blood, he was bound to the democrats by family ties, for his aunt \\'as the widow of Marius and his wife the daughter of Cinna. Rather than divorce her at the bidding of Sulla, he fled for his life, and wrung from the dictator the saying, " In that young fop there are hidden many Mariuses." In the next ten years he proved his mettle by his services against Mithradates at Mitylene and else- where in Asia. Cicero. — Another young man of promise, the eloquent advocate, M. Tullius Cicero, first made his mark by daring to oppose the great dictator. In defending Sext. Roscius of Ameria he laid bare the iniquities of Sulla's freedman, Chrysogonus, and covertly cen- sured the carelessness of the too indulgent master After the orrosirioN' to sullan system 461 trial he ttiought it wise to retire to Rhodes and study rhetoric for two years, but his speech had done its work. It had given voice to the general hatred among the men of law and order for the violence which characterised the Sullan ft'giine. In the same spirit the strict jurists refused to recognise the validity of the Cornelian laws depriving several Italian communities of the franchise. Lovers of peace and quiet stood aghast at Sulla's proscriptions and confiscations, and at the atrocious injustice and cruelty perpetrated in his name. The Ordo Equester.^With these moderate men went the whole equestrian order. The merchants and bankers of the Roman world were by turns irritated by the inefficiency of sena- torial government into giving their support to the opposition, and frightened by democratic excesses into the arms of the aristocracy. The leaders of the order were the farmers of the provincial taxes, who for half a century had used the position of their class on the jury-bench to make the magistrates in the provinces their humble servants. The knights had also contrived to secure for themselves immunity from accusations both of provincial extortion and of judicial corruption. Even Sulla had acquiesced in this monstrous exemption. But the dictator had decimated the knights by his proscriptions and degraded them by his laws. They were ex- pelled from their seats of honour in the theatre, and from their more profitable position in the jury-box. At the same time their ranks had been recruited from the substantial burgesses of the Italian towns and the landholders of the country districts. These men were made Romans by the enfranchisement of Italy, they shared with the financiers of the capital their dread of violence and their jealousy of the nobles, and thus were ready to follow the leaders of their order in opposition to the Sullan men and the Sullan measures. Again, many of the country towns, especially in Etruria, re- sented or dreaded the confiscation of their lands. Be. ween the Alps and the Po there was a continual agitation for the coveted boon of the full Roman franchise. Nearer home, the freedmen repined at their confinement to the four urban tribes, and the city populace grieved over the loss of the dole of corn. Finally, the children of those whom the dictator had proscribed saw no hope of restoration, save in the overthrow of that society which had made them outcasts. The agitation found a fruitful soil in a land disorganised by ten years of war and violence. Ruined nobles and poor plebeians looked to another revolution as their one hope 462 HISTORY OF ROME of salvation. Even Sulla's veterans, the garrison whose mission it was to defend the new constitution, were now, in their eagerness for fresh opportunities of plunder, ready to follow the banner of rebellion. The Aristocratic Clique. — The aristocrats were in no state to meet the forces of disorder. Their ideal of government was a close hereditary oligarchy. Election to office was secured by open and organised bribery of the people, immunity from punishment by no less shameful corruption of the senatorial juries. Sub- division and frequent rotation of offices were, as in old days, adopted as safeguards against unrepublican pre-eminence of in- dividuals. But these precautions, without securing their object, enhanced the difficulty of governing the wide provinces of the e;mpire, and showed most clearly how incapable the narrow clique of oligarchs was of guiding the destinies of Rome. In their camp there were indeed able officei-s, such as Metellus Pius and Lucius Lucullus, and men of high culture and character, such as the solid and respectable Q. Lutatius Catulus. But their political creed was a blind belief in oligarchy, which led them to regard narrow and obstinate partisanship as the only true patriotism. And even to the service of faction they only devoted what time they could spare from the pleasures of the table and the patronage of literature. Crassus. — Two of the most powerful men in Rome were at present pledged to neither party. M. Licinius Crassus, a man of high birth but without loyalty to his caste, a soldier of no mean capacity, as he had proved in the service of Sulla, and an orator whose undoubted success was due rather to persistence and in- sistence than to any rhetorical gift, had become by adroit specu- lation the richest man in Rome and a power in the state. As the representative of the moneyed classes he aimed at political preponderance by mercantile means, and would sacrifice the pre- eminence of his order to the interests of the capitalists and a vague personal ambition, A vein of vanity and a desire for military renown crossed his more material projects. His crooked policy is the natural result of a crooked character drawn in different direc- tions by diverging aims. Oratory and wealth alike he used to build up power ; he shrank from no useful associates, readily con- sorting even with anarchists, and formed a political connection by lending money to statesmen of all parties. No leader, however reckless, dare provoke " the bull of the herd," as Crassus was called. And now the great speculator was prepared to make a daring bid for the prize of power. CRASSUS AND POMPEY 463 Pompey. — If the moneyed interest put their faith in Crassus, the popular voice was for another rising young Sullan officer, Cn. Pompeius. While still too young to enter on the career of office, Pompeius had raised an army and won victories for Sulla, from whose half-ironical admiration he had extorted a triumph and the surname of Magnus. The unbroken success of his military career won the hearts of the soldiery, and the respectability of his private life the esteem of the citizens. But for political leadership he had none of the necessary talents. He wished to be the lirst man in the state, and yet to avoid the responsibility of leadership. Unable to escape from the domination of ancient ideals and tradi- tions of whose existence he was impatient, he was a man in a false position, neither the true champion of constitutional liberty longed for by Cicero, nor the miserable poltroon, letting " I dare not wait upon I would," portrayed by Mommsen. While he shrank with horror from appealing to force, he could not see that the deference he expected was incompatible with true republicanism. Incon- sistent in his ends, he was still more unhappy in his choice of means. Ignorant of men, shrouded in self-conceit, without tact, taste, or affability, with no comprehension of the drift of events, or even of his own true position and power, he was incapable of an independent and consistent policy, unable to act, and unwilling to remain obscure. At one time he would strive to mask his indecision under the guise of a deep and subtle policy ; at another he would snatch at any assistance which promised to relie\e him from his immediate difficulties. Throughout his life men looked HEAD OF POMPEY ON A COIN STRUCK CIRC 38-36 B.C. to him for guidance in their perplexities and deliverance from danger, and found too late that there was neither light nor leading in the idol which they had set up for worship. Revolt of Lepidus. — Pompey's first interference in politics was in the support he gave to AI. /Emilius Lepidus in his canvass for 464 HISTORY OF ROME the consulship. Sulla in vain warned him of the levity and rash- ness of his new ally, from whom Cicsar wisely stood aloof, but did not live to see the fulfilment of his predictions. Before the dictator was buried, the consul Lepidus had begun to agitate for the overthrow of the constitution with all a renegade's ardour. The distribution of corn was revived, and the restoration of the tribunician power and of confiscated lands, as well as the recall of the proscribed, openly advocated. A revolt at Faesula; terrified the Senate into the absurdity of entrusting Lepidus as well as Catulus with an army. It thus provided the insurrectionary leader with a regular force, and when it decreed his recall, he met the order with a demand for the reinstatement of the pro- scribed and his own re-election to the consulship. Fortunately the ensuing war was brief and decisive. Pompey, convinced of error or alarmed at revolution, forced M. Brutus, the lieutenant of Lepidus in the valley of the Po, to shut himself up in Mutina, and eventually to surrender at discretion. Lepidus himself attempted to surprise Rome, but was met and vanquished by Catulus on the field of Mars, near the Mulvian bridge. He made good his retreat to Sardinia, but died before he could secure the island. The remnant of his troops found their way to Spain, under the command of the praetor M. Perperna {']^ B.C.). The Insurrection in Spain. — Spain had for some time been the refuge of the partisans of Marius. Q. Sertorius, despatched to that province in 83 B.C., and chased thence by the officers of Sulla, had, after taking Tingis (Tangiers), returned to Spain, and accepted the command of the revolted Lusitanians. Covering his hastily orga- nised legion with swarms of Spanish irregulars, he routed L. Fufidius on the BiEtis (Guadalquiver), and despatched his own lieutenant, L. Hirtuleius, to the Iberus (Ebro), where he destroyed, in succession, the armies of Hither Spain and Southern Gaul. Meanwhile the best senatorial general, Metellus Pius, had pene- trated into Lusitania, only to find himself baffled and outwitted at every turn by the rebel leader. Sertorius, refusing to risk a pitched battle and scorning the pedantry of scientific warfare, by a series of ambushes and surprises so harassed his methodical opponent that he could call nothing but his camp his own. Sertorius. — Sertorius was now supreme in Spain. In the attain- ment of his power he had shown himself a general ; in its employ- ment he proved himself yet greater as a statesman. He strove, not unsuccessfully, to reconcile Roman rule with the national aspirations of the Spaniards. In one aspect he was the Roman SEKTOR/US 465 governor, distinguished from others only by the gentleness of his rule over the provincials and the strictness of his discipline. In another, he was the national leader of Spain, the hero of the chival- rous nobility, and the favourite of the goddess Diana, who sent him her counsels by a milk-white fawn. But his final aim was to Romanise the provincials, and for that purpose he had the children of the nobles educated at Osca in the learning of Greece and Rome. Had time been granted him, the great democratic adven- turer and soldier of fortune might have forestalled in Spain the work of the early emperors. Pompey and Metellus in Spain. — But the fall of Lepidus set Pompey and his legions free for service abroad. Unwilling as the Senate was to violate in his favour the established rules of precedence, it had no alternative. No general but Pompey was willing to match himself with Sertorius, and Pompey demanded the post with scarcely veiled threats. The command in Hither Spain, with proconsular authority, was irregularly conferred on the young eques by the Senate. One summer was spent in re- pressing the disturbances excited by Sertorius in Gaul, during which time Hither Spain passed into the hands of the rebel leader. In the next campaign (76 B.C.), Metellus, who had maintained himself in Btetica, drove Hirtuleius from that province by the \ictory of Italica, while Pompey forced the passage of the Ebro and captured \'alentia after defeating the lieutenants of Sertorius. But when that general took the field in person, he completely outmanoeuvred Pompey and took the town of Lauro before the eyes of the relieving army. In 75 B.C., however, Metellus routed Hirtuleius at Segovia, and marched towards Valentia to join Pompey. With inexcusable jealousy the young commander accepted battle on the Sucro, without waiting for his colleague, and was only saved from disaster by his opportune arrival. " If the old woman had not come to help him, I should have whipped this stripling back to Rome," said Sertorius, with grim humour. One more pitched battle was risked by the rebel chief, and once more Metellus retrieved the half-lost day. The Spanish levies dispersed, and never again faced the legions in the field, but Sertorius clung obstinately to his strongholds on the Ebro, and still harassed the Roman generals by a guerrilla warfare. In the next two campaigns Metellus recovered Southern and Central Spain, while Pompey steadily wore down Sertorius' strength. Death of Sertorius. — In his perplexity that statesman was driven 2 G 466 HISTORY OF ROME to look round for liclp ainon^-^ the enemies of Rome. He allied himself with the pirates whose galleys swept the Mediterranean, and with Mithradates, king of Pontiis. But even so he would cede to the demands of the Eastern sultan only the client kingdoms on the frontiers, not a foot of Roman soil. In return for this con- cession and for the promise of Roman troops and an officer to lead his armies, the king agreed to send forty ships and 3000 talents. But this coalition came too late to save Sertorius. The discontent which was spreading among the hard-pressed Spaniards was aggra- vated by the e.xecution of the chieftains' sons whom lie had held as hostages at Osca. At last a conspiracy was formed against the general's life by the members of his own staff. The severity with which he punished detected conspirators only inflamed those who escaped discovery. The heroic soldier and far-seeing states- man, whom his own party had feared and distrusted, whom the Sullan Senate had made a rebel and a menace to Rome, was assassinated at a banquet by his own officers (72 B.C.). Their leader, Perperna, gained little by his base treachery. He was routed and taken prisoner by Pompey at their first encounter. A craven attempt to save his life by surrendering the correspondence of Sertorius was frustrated by the prudence or magnanimity of Pompey, who burned the letters unread and executed the traitor. The Gladiatorial War. — While the armies of the Republic were engaged in Spain, a dangerous outbreak took place almost at the gates of Rome. A band of gladiators escaped from the training school at Capua, and took refuge on Mount ^'esuvius. Their leaders were Spartacus, a Thracian, and two Gauls, Crixus and GInomaus i^j'^ B.C.). They dispersed the division of militia sent to blockade their stronghold, and e\ading the praetor \'arinius, retired into Lucania, the ancient home of brigandage. Here Spartacus routed the raw legions of Varinius, and raised the herdsmen-slaves of the South Italian pastures in revolt. The open country was given up to the insurgents ; even considerable towns were stormed and sacked. In the following year, though a detachment under Crixus was cut to pieces near Mount Garganus, Spartacus himself defeated both consuls and the proconsul of Cis- alpine Gaul. It was his aim to force a passage over the Alps and secure for his followers a return to their homes in Gaul and Thrace. But his undisciplined banditti, unworthy of their far-sighted leader, could not bear to leave Italy unplurdered, and while they roamed about the country, gave M. Crassus time to collect a force of eight SPARTACUS 467 legions. By wholesome severity he tauglit his raw troops to face the rebels, and driving- Sparlacus before him, blockaded him in the extreme corner of Bruttium. In tlie hope of rekindling the servile war in Sicily, Spartacus bribed the pirates, who then were masters of the Sicilian waters, to transport his troops across the straits. The faithless corsairs broke their word, but Spartacus, still unconquered, pierced the strong lines with which Grassus GLADIATORS— COMBATS OF SKCUTOR AND RF.TIARIUS. had hemmed him in, and reappeared in Lucania. Only the dis- union and insubordination of his followers saved Rome from disaster. The Celts and Germans again broke off from the main body, and were slaughtered to the last man. Yet once more the undaunted Spartacus inflicted a defeat on his cowardly enemies, but his victory was fatal to himself His followers, elated by success, insisted on fighting a decisive battle in Apulia, 468 HISTORY OF ROME and suffered a defeat made crusliiny by the loss of their gallant leader. Crassus, who had been appointed to the command in the hour of danger, and had vindicated the honour of the Roman arms, was the. true conqueror of Spartacus. But Pompey came home from Spain in time to cut to pieces a division of 5000 fug-itives, and to join in hunting down and crucifying the rebellious slaves. With characteristic egotism he claimed for himself the honours and rewards of victory as the man who had ended the gladiatorial as well as the Spanish war. Pompey and Crassus adopt the Democratic Programme. — The conquering generals lay with their armies before the gates of Rome. Within the city the democrats had long been agitating for the restoration of the full powers of the tribunate. Already, by a law of the moderate C. Cotta, the holding of the tribunate had ceased to be a disqualification for higher office, but, in spite of the zealous efforts of Licinius Macer and Cjesar, the tribunes remained without independence, bound hand and foot to the service of the Senate. The opposition also demanded a searching reform of the governing corporation. They asked for the dis- placement of the venal and unfair senatorial jurors in favour of the knights, and for the revival of the censorship to purge away the corruptions of the Senate itself. These old cries gained new strength and significance in the altered state of affairs. Pompey, officer of the Senate and partisan of Sulla as he had been, could only hope to gain the objects on which his heart was set by open force or by the aid of the democrats. A jealous Senate might perhaps have granted to his youth and victories the illegal triumph and the curule chair ; it would never have confirmed his supremacy by giving lands to his veterans, or the coveted com- mand in the East to himself. Crassus, the typical financier, was not inclined to risk his fortunes in an unequal contest with his popular rival on behalf of the Senate. The democratic leaders adroitly turned the discontent of the generals to their own ends. Pompey and Crassus, smothering their jealousies for a time, agreed to adopt the democratic programme, and in return were promised the consulship. Pompey was also to receive a triumph and allotments of land for his soldiers ; Crassus, the inferior partner in the alliance, had to content himself with a simple ovation. Overthrow of the Sullan System. — Pompey and Crassus were elected consuls for the ensuing year (70 B.C.) without opposition. OVERTHROW OF SULLAN SYSTEM 469 and at once began the task of reversing the ordinances of Sulla. The tribunes received again their old prerogatives, and in par- ticular the right of initiating legislative proposals ; once more the censors revised the list of the Senate, and justified their appointment by erasing no less than sixty-four names from the roll. The senators, whose corrupt perversion of justice had been branded by Cicero in the orations against that prince of pillagers, C. Verres, the scourge of the Sicihans, were not, however, entirely excluded from the jury-box. The praetor L. Cotta, a moderate politician, effected a compromise known as the Aurelian HELMET OF A GLADIATOR. Law, under which the jury in criminal cases was composed of three pannels, one of senators, one of knights, and one of tjibuiii icran'i. ^ The overthrow of the oligarchy set up by Sulla was now accomplished. All that was left of the great dictator's work was 1 The tribuni cerarii were originally responsible for the payment of the troops, and derived their name from this function ; but whether they are to be identified with the curatores of the 350 centuries {vide supra, p. 295/. ), who suc- ceeded to the presidents of the old Servian tribes, or were at all times merely private men of substance, whose name is a survival from a long-obsolete func- tion, is much disputed. In Cicero's time they were reckoned at least by courtesy with the equestrian order. 470 HISTORY OF ROME the new system of criminal procedure, with ;i few minor business arrangements. Tlie fall of his political institutions, which all his proscriptions and massacres had maintained for ten years only, was an apparent triumph for the popular party. The tribunate, restored to life and vigour, found employment in passing a series of laws which prohibited loans to provincials in Rome or to envoys of foreign states, and in restoring to the knights their scats in the theatre (67 B.C.) ; but the real strength of the new coalition lay in the armies, which their leaders kept outside the gates of Rome during their consulate. The true alternative to senatorial oligarchy was not democracy, but military monarchy. The fact was already dimly seen, and the people paid Pompey willing homage. When the censors made their review of the knights, Pompey appeared at their head leading his horse. To the question whether he had served all the campaigns required by law, he proudly answered, " I have made them all under my own leadership." This haughty reply was greeted by the crowd with thunders of applause, and the censors, taking the hint, rose and escorted the young consul to his house. All seemed to point to the absolute rule of Pompey. Crassus, inferior both in popularity and in military reputation, had the will but not the power to oppose the elevation of his rival to empire. Refusal of Pompey to grasp Supreme Power. — The dreaded catastrophe was averted by Pompey's loyalty and want of insight, and by the tact of the popular leaders. They induced Crassus to make advances to his colleague, and to offer to disband his army. Pompey was obliged to accept his overtures and follow his example, or else to seize supreme power by force. From the latter alternative, if indeed he realised its existence, he shrank with honest abhorrence. \The decision to discharge his veterans flung him back into political obscurity. With an army at his back he was the greatest power in Rome ; without it he was a quaiititd negligeable. Too proud to accept an ordinary pro\ince or to endure the petty routine of public life in the capital, he retired from politics, waiting for an occasion worthy of his mili- tary genius, and for a call to arms from his fellow-citizens. After two years the discomfiture of the Roman forces on sea and on land led to the reappearance of Pompey as the saviour of his country. \ THE PIRATES 471 CHAPTER XLVI THE WARS WITH THE PIRATES AND MITHRADATES POMPEY IN THE EAST ii.C. A.U.C. L. Lucullus and M. Cotta given Command against Mithra- dates, M. Antonins against the Pirates . -74 680 Relief of Cyzicus 73 681 Victory of Cabira — Conquest of Pontus .... 72 682 Capture of Tigranocerta . . 69 685 Capture of Nisibis 68 686 Defeat at Ziela— Mithradates recovers liis Kingdom — Lex Gabinia — Pompey conquers the Pirates . . -67 687 Lex Manilia — Victory of Nicopolis— Submission of Tigranes 66 688 Death of Mithradates—Settlement of the East . .63 691 In the Eatit as well as in the West the empire of Rome was shaken to its foundations through the negligence of the Sullan oligarchy. In the Balkan peninsula, it is true, the raids of the robl^cr tribes were checked by a combined attack from Dalmatia and Macedonia, which ended in the conquest of Thrace by M. Lucullus (73 B.C.). But the two powers which threatened serious danger to Rome, the corsairs of the Levant and the sultans of the East, Mithradates of Pontus and Tigranes of Armenia, were pro- voked by ineffectual opposition to further aggression. The Pirates. — The pirates were now no longer isolated gangs of freebooters and slavers, but formed an organised state of bucca- neers. Their dominion was the Mediterranean, which was abso- lutely under their control. They had harbours of refuge commanded by rock castles wherever its jutting capes and sheltering islands offered them safe shelter, but, above all, in the island of Crete and the craggy fastnesses of Cilicia. The supporters of lost causes, the refugees of all nations, joined a state which promised them revenge on their oppressors and freedom for themselves. The decayed Roman navy was utterly unable to cope with their light galleys, the forerunners of the Algerine corsairs, and left the trade of the Mediterranean to the tender mercies of the pirates. The towns and cities of the coast, such as Cnidus, Samos, and Colophon, were plundered outright, or suffered to redeem themselves by paying heavy ransoms. Sulla himself saw Clazomense and lassus pillaged before the eyes of his victorious army, but was powerless to avenge the insult. As a state the corsairs made treaties with Mithradates 472 III STORY OF ROME and with Sertorius, but liad not the judgment or the courage to throw themselves heart and soul into the struggle against Rome. Campaigns in Cilicia. — At length the Senate was goaded into action. Publius Servilius defeated the pirates' fleet off Patara, and destroyed their strongholds in Lycia, Pamphylia, and Cilicia. Not content with subduing the brigands of the sea, he crossed the Taurus and captured the mountain fastnesses of the Isaurians. Three severe campaigns (78-76 B.C.) proved the valour of the general and gained him the honourable title of Isauricus ; but the beaten corsairs betook themselves to their old haunts in Crete, and laughed at the empty triumph of their conqueror. Failure of M. Antonius. — At last, in 74 B.C., the Senate saw the necessity of operations on a large scale, but unfortunately M. Antonius,^ the admiral entrusted with the task of clearing the seas, proved incompetent. After driving the pirates from the coasts of Italy, he was defeated by the Cretans off Cydonia. The Senate resolved to avenge this disgrace to the Roman arms, but instead of strengthening their fleet, despatched Metellus with an army to subdue Crete (68 B.C.), The much-abused Cretans fought bravely in defence of their liberties, and it took the proconsul two campaigns to reduce their cities and earn the title of Creticus. Meanwhile the pirates scoured the waters of the Mediterranean unhindered. Italy itself was no longer safe. A Roman fleet was burnt in the roads of Ostia, two praetors with their retinue were seized ; worst blow of all, the corn-ships, on which the very life of Rome depended, could no longer cross the narrow seas. Famine and riot stared the rulers of the Republic in the face. Tigranes of Armenia. — The incapacity of the government dis- played itself with equal plainness in its management of the affairs of the East, though its errors were in part covered by the brilliant successes of its general. For several years Tigranes had been suffered to prove himself king of kings by a career of conquest. In Media Atropatene, in Corduene and Northern Mesopotamia he made himself over-lord in place of the Parthian. To secure his hold on the Euphrates he seized Eastern Cappadocia and passed on into Cilicia. The distracted house of the Seleucids could offer no serious opposition to his assumption of the Syrian crown. ^ The power given to Antonius {imperium infinitum ccquum), that is, an authority equal to that of a provincial governor, but not limited to a single province, is interesting as a precedent for the Gabinian Law {vide infra, p. 477). T/GRANES AND MITHRADATES 473 Tigranes aspired to play the part of the old Ikibylonian and P'er- siaii monarchs ; like Nebuchadne/:zar, he would build a j^reat city, Tigranoccrta, and carry thither the captives from his frontier /•••-*-• w ^ COIN OF TIGKANKS STRUCK IN SVKIA BEFORE 69 B.C. — (l) HEAD OF TIGRANES ; (2) ANTIOCH SEATED ON A ROCK. provinces. Like Xerxes, he never appeared in public without all the pomp and show of royalty. Mithradates. — Mithradates, who had learnt by experience the power of Rome, studiously refrained from all aggression. He strengthened himself in his new kingdom by the Bosphorus, and made his fleets and armies ready for the coming struggle. Rome, far from acting on the ofifensive, would not even take up the challenge of Tigranes or assert the rights over Egypt and Cyprus given her by the will of the last legitimate king, Alexander (8i B.C.). The outbreak of war was due in the end, not to any schemes of con- quest, but rather to mutual distrust. Rome feared that, while her energies were distracted by civil war, Mithradates would fall on Asia Minor ; the Eastern monarch, with justifiable alarm, suspected new aggression when Rome took over Bithynia under the will of its last king, Nicomedes (75 B.c.).^ Third Mithradatic War. — Mithradates, once aroused, strove with characteristic energy to unite all the enemies of Rome against her. With Tigranes his envoys had no success. But Sertorius sent him Roman officers to drill his troops, and the pirates, who flocked to his aid, enabled him to raise a large fleet. In 74 B.C. the great Pontic army poured down on Roman Asia. One corps was sent to Cappadocia, another to Phrygia, but the main army, sup- 1 These political testaments recur with suspicious frequency (:'. s., p. 328 474 HISTORY OF ROME ported by a large fleet on the Eiixine, marched along the north coast into Hithynia. To meet these vast forces L. Lucullus had only one fresh and four veteran legions, two of which were com- posed of Fimbria's disorderly troops. Many of the Greek cities, weary of Roman exactions, massacred their oppressors once again, and hailed Mithradates as a deliverer. The wilder tribes, the Pisidians, Isaurians, and Cilicians, joined his standard. Had not Deiotarus, a Galatian tetrarch, made a gallant stand against the Pontic generals, the whole province might have been lost. Nor was this widespread revolt the only danger which menaced Lucullus. His colleague, M. Cotta, shut up in Chalcedon by the main Pontic army, risked a naval battle in which he lost his whole fleet, and forced Lucullus, who was in Galatia, to hasten back to his rescue (74 B.C.). Mithradates did not allow himself to be shut up in the penin- sula of Chalcedon. Put, with short-sighted strategy, he neglected the enemy in the field, and after securing Lampsacus, sat down to reduce the island town of Cyzicus. He succeeded in seizing the bridge that joined it to the mainland, and even in establishing himself on the heights close to the town. But the citizens de- fended their walls stoutly, while Lucullus occupied a strong position in rear of the Pontic host and cut off its communications. Mithra- dates, shut in between an impregnable city and an immovable army, was dependent for supplies on his fleet. Famine and pesti- lence decimated the helpless and demoralised soldiery ; storms destroyed the siege-works. When spring began even the self- willed sultan was convinced of the hopelessness of prolonging the GOLU STATEK UF MITHRADATES VI. siege. He sought safety on board his fleet, and sailing to Lamp- sacus, picked up there such remnants of his great army of in- vasion as escaped from the swords of the pursuing Romans. LUCULLUS 475 Liicullus now, leaving his lieutenant to complete the conquest of Iiithynia, took the command of a hastily collected fleet, and de- stroyed the Pontic squadron which had \entured into the /Egcan. At length, uniting all his forces for a combined attack on Nicomedia, he drove the king before him in solitary flight to Sinope. Invasion of Pontus. — In the autumn Lucullus invaded Pontus, and pursued the retreating enemy far over the old Hmit of tlie Halys. Compelled by the return of winter to stay his advance, he still blockaded the principal towns, Amisus and Themiscyra. Next spring the weary and discontented legions were urged forward once more to meet the fresh levies of the irrepressible Mithradates. Near Cabira the long struggle was at last decided. The three legions of Lucullus were compelled by the strong Pontic cavalry to keep their station on the hills, but the flower of the king's army was cut to pieces in an attempt to seize the Roman convoy on its wa\- from Cappadocia. The king's preparations for further retreat spread a panic in his army, which was butchered almost without resistance as it turned to flee. Mithradates sought refuge in the dominions of Tigranes, who, after refusing the alliance of the king of Pontus, now provoked victorious Rome by granting protection to the homeless exile. Lucullus spent two years in reducing the Greek towns on the coast, which were heroically defended by their citizens with the aid of the pirates. Sinope, Heraclea, and Amisus had nothing to fear from a blockade while the sea was open, and their scientific fortifications rendered an assault difficult. They surrendered only when all hope of the restoration of Mithradates seemed at an end. A more serious task for Lucullus was the reorganisation of his province, which had been desolated no less by the tax-gatherers of Rome than by the armies of the enemy. With imprudent firm- ness, Lucullus limited the exactions of the creditors to 12 per cent. a year, without compound interest, and thus mortally offended the powerful financiers of the capital and earned the useless grati- tude of the oppressed provincials. War with Tigranes. — Heedless of the murmurs of the Roman capitalists, and of the weak desire of the government to avoid further intervention in the East, Lucullus pressed forward to the completion of his great work, the deliverance of the Greeks from Oriental dominion. This was still unfinished while Tigranes ruled in Syria and claimed sovereignty over the whole East. But the commission given to Lucullus was limited to the war against Mithradates, so the proconsul sought and found formal justifica- 476 HISTORY OF ROME tion for his wider schemes by sending,' Appius Claudius to the Armenian king to demand the surrender of Mithradatcs under pain of war. Tigrancs at once accepted war, and ordered a general levy of his troops. On his side, Lucullus, after providing for the occupation of Pontus, had only two legions left for the invasion of Armenia. Further, these were composed of Fimbria's veterans, who hated the aristocratic pride and stern discipline of their general, from whom they not unreasonably demanded their discharge earned by thirteen campaigns and numerous victories. Victory of Tigranocerta. — In spite of these difficulties, Lucullus, in the following spring, marched straight on Tigranocerta, the new capital of the Armenian Empire. By negotiations with the princes of Cappadocia and Sophene, he secured a safe passage over the Euphrates. His vanguard dispersed the regulars and Bedouins A\ho tried to bar his path, and advanced swiftly into the heart of the country. Before the grand army of the king of kings could be gathered from the distant provinces of his empire, Lucullus had laid I'egular siege to Tigranocerta. Refusing to raise the blockade on the approach of the relieving army, he advanced to meet it with only 10,000 men. Tigranes was amazed at the little band of Romans, who seemed to him too many for an embassy and too few for an army. Scorning the advice of Mithradates to starve out the enemy, he attempted to crush them beneath swarms of mail-clad lancers. But Lucullus seized a height which com- manded the position of the enemy's cavalry, and by a sudden charge threw them back in confusion on their infantry, and thus rolled up the Armenian line of battle at a blow. We need not believe that but five Romans fell in slaughtering a hundred thou- sand of the enemy, but, beyond all question, the battle cost Tigranes his newly won dominions. The princes of Syria accepted the suzerainty of Rome ; the very capital, Tigranocerta, was be- trayed by Greek settlers to the conquerors. Failure of Lucullus owing^ to Mutiny. — Tigranes passed from overweening confidence to the depths of despair, till his fainting courage was revived by Mithradates. The old monarch felt that his only hope lay in resistance, and made a last effort to unite the nations of the East against Rome. But Phraates of Parthia pre- ferred to secure the recovery of his lost provinces on the Euphrates by negotiations with Rome rather than risk further losses in a war. The wild border tribes proved more willing, and from their levies Mithradates formed a picked body of infantry, drilled by Pontic officers. The plan of campaign adopted was to avoid I.UCrT.I.US 477 pitched battles and draw the Roman army farther and farther into the mountains of Armenia, while the king's strong force of cavahy cut off their supphes. Luculkis resolved to force a battle by an attack on the ancient Armenian capital, Artaxata. In the summer of 68 B.C. he made his way on to the high plateau of Armenia, but his march had been delayed by continual skirmishes, and was interrupted by the snowstorms of a northern winter. The Roman legions refused to advance farther into the realms of snow and ice, and compelled their general to lead them back to the plains. Lucullus turned the enforced retreat to good account by storming Nisibis, where he wintered. But in his absence the weak detach- ments left to hold his conquests were defeated by the two kings. Tigranes kept L. Fannius shut up in a fort near Tigranocerta ; Mithridates defeated the Roman troops in Pontus, and wintered at Comana. Defeat at Ziela : Retreat of Lucullus. — In the ensuing spring-, Lucullus was forced by the entreaties of his hard-pressed lieutenants and the discontent of his troops at Nisibis to turn his march west- ward. He came in time to relieve his Armenian garrison, but found Pontus all but lost. His legate, Triarius, had been forced to give battle at Ziela by the clamour of his soldiers, and had lost the pick of his troops in a defeat which led to the capture of the Roman camp. The pusillanimous refusal of Q. Marcius to send help from Cilicia, and of the consul M'. Acilius Glabrio to assume the command to which he had been appointed in 68 B.C., forced Lucullus to confront the enemy at the head of a mutinous soldiery. Instead of marching to meet the Armenians, the troops retreated into the province of Asia, and left Mithradates in undis- turbed possession of Pontus. Thus the fruit of the many victories of Lucullus was wasted by the insubordination of his soldiers ; all that his masterly generalship could secure was a safe retreat, glorious to the leader alone. Rome had undertaken to curb the license of the pirates and to humble the pride of the monarchs of the East, and in both instances had courted disaster by the inade- quacy of her preparations, and had met with defeats ignominious for a great nation. The Gabinian Law. — The hour of his country's necessity was Pompey's opportunity. For two years he had lived in retirement, waiting for a summons from the people to take up the work to which the senatorial government had proved itself unequal. And now (67 B.C.) the tribune Aulus Cabinius proposed the appointment of a new high admiral to clear the sea of pirates. Rut the wide powers 478 H/STORY OF ROME and unparalleled character of the proposed office stamped the measure as revolutionary. A private individual was to be given supreme command for three years over the whole Mediterranean, and co-ordinately with the provincial governors over the coasts for fifty miles inland. He was authorised to levy a fleet of 200 sail and an army of 120,000 men, and for this purpose to dispose of the state treasure as he pleased. He was allowed to nominate twenty-five lieutenants, whom the law invested with pnetorian powers. In fine, magistrates, Senate, and people were all to divest themselves of their old prerogatives and bow down before a new military authority, the germ of imperial monarchy. Though the Senate had been granted the right to choose the general from the whole body of consulars, only one choice was possible— Pompey. The democrats might secret!)' fear him ; honest aristo- crats, like old Q. Catulus, might openly oppose him ; but the voice of the people was decisive in his favour. In vain did one tribune, bolder than the rest, L. Trebellius, interpose his veto ; Gabinius instantly took a vote of the people on a motion to dis- miss him from office, and so compelled him to give way, when seventeen tribes out of the thirty-five had declared against him. The people with one voice demanded the appointment of their only general. Success, of Pompey. — And the general justified their choice. In forty days, while his lieutenants, each in his appoint^! district, were chasing the pirates from the coasts of Spain and C.aul, Pompey himself swept clean the Sicilian, African, and Sardinian waters, and reopened the main routes of the corn trade.. Then he sailed eastward with sixty of his best ships. Ofi" Coracesium the bold Cilician sea-kings met with a decisive defeat in the one great battle of the war. With wise clemency, Pompey granted life and liberty to all who would submit. The great majority of the corsairs gladly consented to yield their fastnesses in Lycia and Cilicia, and were permitted to settle in the deserted towns which the victorious general refounded. In ninety days Pompey had crushed the pirates, and had restored commerce to the seas and abundance to the capital. The only dissentient voice amidst the triumphant applause which hailed the conqueror came from Crete. There the optimate governor, Metellus, refused to recognise the right of Pompey's lieutenants to accept the submission of the Cretan cities (though Crete was undoubtedly within the province assigned to Pompey by the Gabinian Law), and actually fought against the troops sent by Pompey to the island. But this colli- GAPIXIAN' AND MAMLTAX LAWS 479 sion with an ill-tempered aristocrat in no way sullied tlie fame of Pompeys achievements. Manilian Law. — Greater triumphs awaited the conqueror of the pirates. 'l"o undertake the war with Mithradates and the settlement of the East had long been his cherished ambition. And now he was on the coasts of Asia with an army, just when Lucullus' retreat had thrown all into confusion and dismay. A complaisant tribune, C. Manilius, proposed to recall AciliusGlabrio from Bithynia, and Marcius Rex from Cilicia, and entrust these provinces, together with the whole care of the Pontic-Armenian war, to Pompey. The financiers were led by their interest in the taxes of Asia, and the moderates by the necessity for ending the war, to support this extraordinary Bill. The democrats dare not break with Pompey ; only Catulus and Hortensius protested against handing over to an individual the empire of Asia. Pompey at once assumed the functions of captain-general in the East. He made alliance with Phraates, who was induced to support a son and namesake of Tigranes in his intrigues against his father. He prepared a force of 50,000 men for active service in the ensuing spring-, and pro- ceeded to Danala, in Galatia, to take over the command from Lucullus. A bitter quarrel took place between the mortified aristo- crat and the egotistic hero, destined, as usual, to wear the laurels won by the victories of others. Pompey's unworthy jealousy annulled the acts of his predecessor subsequent to his own arrival and threw obstacles in the way of his well-earned triumph. Final Defeat of Mithradates at Nicopolis. — In the spring of 66 ac. Pompey invaded Pontus. A futile demand for the uncon- ditional submission of the king led to a desultory campaign, At length, on the arrival of his Cilician legions, Pompey contrived to blockade Mithradates in his camp near the Upper Euphrates. Flight to the unknown wilds of the east was the king's only resource. But Pompey forestalled the manoeuvre by secretly occupying a defile on the line of retreat. The unsuspecting Asiatics encamped under the heights held by the legions. A surprise by night threw them into hopeless confusion ; trodden down by their friends or put to the sword by the enemy, the last levies which Mithradates led against Rome melted away. Submission of Tigranes. — The king himself fled, with a few faithful followers, to Armenia. But Tigranes, who had with difli- culty repelled the assaults of the Parthian army headed by his rebellious son, was in no mood to imperil his negotiations with Rome for the sake of Mithradates. The exiled king, finding that 4So HISTORY OF ROME .1 price had been set on his head in Armenia, fled nortlnvard to his principality on the Cimmerian Bosphorus. I'ompey turned aside from the pursuit to dictate peace with Armenia. As he lay encamped near Artaxata, the king- of kings rode up and begged for admission into his presence. In token of submission, he threw himself dow n at the feet of the victor, and placed his diadem in Pompey's hands. He was graciously reinstated on the throne of Armenia, at the price of a war indemnity and the surrender of all his conquests. The great king was reduced to a serviceable Roman vassal. Conquest of the Caucasus : Death of Mithradates. — The brave nations of the Caucasus, the Iberians and Albanians, were not disposed to bow down before the new lords of the East. But two decisive defeats compelled them to submit to the will of the con- c[uering general. Pompey passed on in pursuit of Mithradates, but when he had reached the mouth of the Phasis he shrank from this difficult and dangerous expedition, and after a fresh victory over the Albanians returned to Pontus. In truth, further pursuit of the vanquished sultan was needless. Mithradates did indeed reach Panticapa^um and deprive his renegade son Machares, who had submitted to Rome, of his kingdom and his life ; but his larger schemes miscarried. His plan for in\ading Italy by way of Paiv nonia, at the head of wild tribes of Scythians and Gauls, alienated the affections of the army which he had raised. The suspicions and cruelties of the old king led to desertion and insurrection. His favourite son Pharnaces put himself at the head of the in- surgents, and was joined by the army. Shut up in his palace, Mithradates in vain begged for the mercy he had never himself shown. At last, in the true spirit of Eastern despotism, he resolved to perish with all his house. His wives and daughters died of the poisoned cup, but the king himself found poison unavailing, and owed his death to the sword of a Gallic attendant (63 B.C.). His body was sent by Pharnaces to Pompey in Palestine, and was by his orders laid in the tombs of the kings at Sinope. The great leader of the East against the West, the man who had proved no unworthy opponent of Sulla, of Lucullus, and of Pompey, was dead, and his death was a greater gain to Rome than many A'ictories. Syria and Judaea. — Pompey had still to establish order in the East. In Syria, Arab emirs at the head of Bedouin tribes, robber chiefs in Mount Lebanon, like the modern Druses, and the Naba- t^ans from the desert round Petra were tearing to fragments the kingdom of the Seleucids. One stable power, the Jewish monarchy, POMPEY IN THE EAST 481 2 H 482 HISTORY OF ROME founded l)y the Maccabees, had for a time promised to restore order in the south. But after the death of the able Alexander Jannaeus the Jewish nation was split into contending factions. The Saddu- cees, headed by Aristobulus, a son of Jannaeus, made the temporal power their object, and hoped to re-establish the kingdom of David ; the Pharisees, whose nominal leader was Hyrcanus, another son of Jannaeus, regarded Judaism as a spiritual force, and aimed at the religious reunion of Jews throughout the world. Worsted by their enemies in civil war, the latter called in the aid of Aretas, the Nabatican chieftain, who kept Aristobulus and his Sadducee parti- sans shut up in Jerusalem. Pompey, who had sent forward various lieutenants to reconcile, if possible, all these jarring elements, reached Syria himself in the winter of 64 B.C. The all-powerful master of the legions chastised the robber chieftains and drove back the Arab sheiks into their native deserts. But the stubborn fanaticism of the Jews could not brook the command to renounce the mon- archy and conquests won by the Hasmonean princes. Aristobulus himself was undecided whether to submit or fight, but his adherents defended the Temple for three months against the Romans. When at last the legions effected an entrance while the besieged were resting on the Sabbath, Pompey insisted on entering the Holy of Holies, but otherwise treated the Temple and religion of the Jews with respect ; politically he carried out the ideas of the Pharisees, making Judtea a Roman dependency under the rule of its high priests (63 B.C.). Reorganisation of the East. -The organisation of the new territories was the last and greatest of the tasks imposed on Pompey. New provinces were formed (1) from Bithynia together with a part of Pontus, (2) from Syria, and (3) from the island of Crete. Cilicia was enlarged by the addition of Pamphylia and Isauria, so that the coasts of Asia Minor were now directly governed by the Romans. The interior was still left in the hands of dependent princes. Foremost among them were the king of Cappadocia, to whom was entrusted the district of Sophene and the guardianship of the passages of the Euphrates, and Deiotarus of Galatia, whose fidelity was rewarded by the grant of the Eastern Pontus, or Lesser Armenia. But the great and distinguishing merit of the Roman reorganisation of the East w-as the encouragement of city com- munities. As the champion of Western ideas in opposition to the feudal despots of the East, Rome everywhere in Asia promoted urban civilisation and commerce. Already Lucullus had rewarded Cyzicus, and repeopled Sinope and Amisus. Pompey now under- POMPEY IN THE EAST 483 took the work of colonisation on a large and generous scale. The subjugated pirates were allowed to settle in many places in Cilicia, and in particular at Soli, now named, after its second founder, Pompeiopolis. Including these settlements, Pompey founded no less than thirty-nine towns, the most noted of which were on the GOLDEN GATE OF TEMPLE AT JERUSALEM. battlefields of the late war, at Ziela, at Cabira (Diospolis), and at Nicopolis, where his invalided veterans formed a settlement to commemorate the last and crowning victory over Mithradates. Nor were the claims of existing Greek cities forgotten. Autonomy was granted to Antioch and Seleucia in Syria, and to Mitylene in Asia Minor. There was nothing original or striking in the 484 HISTORY OF ROME reorganisation of the ]\nman rule which made Pompey's a name to conjure with throughout the East. Just as his victories were won by careful attention to the plain maxims of the military art, so in his administrative achievements honesty of purpose and con- scientious study of details are his principal merits. The greatest problem in the foreign policy of the day, the relation of Rome to Parthia, he did not attempt to solve. He had not the courage to go to war, nor the wisdom to establish peace on firm foundations. He wounded the vanity of Phraates by refusing him the empty title of king of kings, and aroused his suspicions by refusing to respect the boundary of the Euphrates. For the moment the Parthian king submitted to the loss of Northern Mesopotamia, but he was simply waiting for an opportunity for revenge, rl^he half-hearted policy of Pompey was to bear bitter fruit for Ivia<'C« b'/\>r^ "-^ (iaJUi<,yfar 3 CaKseuTis Coiiquest.a, KTia-Vtsh Miles -rn o vo *o ^Y "V' r tbrc us TIC trsj x^^.^^- ^ j S I N LT S \ / Poi- 4- M H n. !^KW York .(,fia,nh.x THE HELVETir AND ARIOVISTUS 507 Gallic tribes. At their general council he listened to the com- plaints brought by the vEdui and Sequani against the tyranny of Ariovistus. But when he demanded from the German chief the restoration of the ^^duan hostages and a promise that no more Germans should cross the Rhine, Ariovistus haughtily refused compliance. Ceesar saw that arms alone could put a stop to German immigration, and moved at once against the enemy. By forced marches he reached Vesontio (Besan^on), the chief town of the Sequani, before Ariovistus could seize it, and by its occupa- tion secured abundant supplies for his troops. There he had to rally the fainting spirits of his followers, who were in deadly terror of the hardy and gigantic Germans. The carpet-knights who had come with him from Rome sought leave of absence or bewailed their expected fate in their tents. The common soldiers were making their wills for fear of the worst, and were expected to mutiny if ordered to advance. Caesar summoned his officers and centurions to a council of war, and by telling them that, if no one else would follow, he would go on with the tenth legion alone, shamed them into fresh courage. He then advanced rapidly through the plain between the Vosges and the Jura towards the Rhine. Ariovistus, after a fruitless conference, marched along the spurs of the Vosges past Caesar's camp, and so cut off the Romans from their base. Ca?sar in vain offered battle, and at length was obliged to imitate the crafty movements of the enemy, and formed a small camp for two legions beyond their position. At last he forced battle by posting his light-armed troops, drawn up to re- semble two legions of regulars, in front of this smaller camp, and advancing with all the rest of his forces against the enemy's lines. On the right wing Caesar drove the Germans back, but on the left the Romans were only saved from defeat by young Crassus, who brought up the reserve at the decisive moment. The foe fled in confusion across the Rhine, but few, among whom was Ario- vistus, escaped the pursuit of the Roman cavalry. Thus in a single summer Ciesar broke the two powers that threatened the peace of Gaul, and first brought the Roman legions to the great river that he was to make once for all the boundary of the empire (58 B.C.). The Conquest of the Belgae. — Caesar showed that he did not intend to relinquish the ground that he had won, by leaving his legions in winter quarters among the Sequani. The great con- federacy of the Belg;t, which reached from the Seine to the Rhine, considered themselves threatened by this advance, and gathered So8 HISTORY OF ROME early in the spring to resist any attack on tlieir frontiers. But Cfesar, with his usual rapidity, had already reached the land of the Remi (near Rheims), and accepted their offers of friendship. This opened his path up to the Axona, where he was met by the whole force of the Belgic. Though he had now eight legions, he did not dare to engage 300,000 men, but took up a strong defen- sive position, and defeating an attempt to cut his communications, waited for discontent and dissensions to break up the confederated tribes. After a time the Belgic chiefs were persuaded by the Bellovaci, whose land was being ravaged by the yEdui, to order their clansmen to return to their homes. Their retreat \\as turned into a disorderly flight by the hot pursuit of the cavalry and three legions under Labienus. Ciesar took full advantage of his bloodless victory. He fell suddenly, first on the Suessiones, and then on the Bellovaci, and compelled them to disarm and give hostages as pledges of submission. But the Nervii (in Hainault) were made of sterner stuff. Gathering their clients and allies, they laid an ambush for Csesar on the Upper Sambre. As Ctesar's six veteran legions were pitching their camp on one bank, and the cavalry and light-armed were exploring the woods on the farther side, the whole force of the enemy swept down the slope, brushed aside the cavalry, crossed the stream, and fell on the infantry. On the left the famous tenth legion, with the ninth, soon drove the enemy back across the river, but the cavalry took to flight, and the two legions on the right wing were rolled up in confusion. Caesar threw himself into their ranks, and by voice and example encouraged the faltering troops. Back to back the two legions stubbornly held their ground, till Labienus sent the fighting tenth to their aid, and the cavalry returned to the charge. The Nervii, who resisted to the last, were surrounded and almost annihi- lated. The defeat and surrender of this tribe and their allies secured the supremacy of Rome among the Belgic clans. The winter camps of the legions were on the Upper Loire, in the heart of Gaul (57 B.C.). The Veneti. — During the winter Caesar learnt that the \'eneti and the kindred tribes on the coasts from the Loire to the Seine had repented of their submission to P. Crassus, and seized the Roman envoys sent to recjuisition corn from them. In the spring Labienus was ordered to keep the Belga; quiet, Sabinus to hold the Upper Loire, P. Crassus to advance into Aquitaine, while Caesar himself led an army against the chief offenders. The Veneti, a hardy seafaring" people, defended themselves with sue- THE BELGAi AND VENETI 509 cess on the cliffs and islets round the mouth of the Loire. At length Decimus Brutus brought up the fleet which C;csar had ordered to be built in the winter. By cutting the rigging of the sailing-ships of the \'eneti he made them a helpless prey to the oared Roman galleys, and utterly destroyed their fleet. Cicsar punished their defection and the seizure of his envoys by putting the chiefs to death and selling the whole tribe as slaves. Mean- FIGUKE-HEAU OF KUMAN SHIP. while his lieutenants were equally successful in the performance of their appointed tasks, P. Crassus subduing the whole land of Aquitaine up to the Pyrenees (56 B.C.). Encounters with German Tribes. — Ctesar had now established the suzerain power of Rome throughout Gaul, but he had yet to secure his new conquests. The discontented Celts might call in the assistance of their kinsmen in Britain, or of the Germans across the Rhine. The latter danger had to be faced at once. Two SIO HISTORY OF ROME tribes, the Usipetes and Tencteri, dislodged by the Suebi from their old homes, had, with the connivance of the Menapii, crossed the Rhine and settled in their land. C;csar marched rapidly down the Meuse to prevent their further advance, and met their request for lands on the Gallic side of the Rhine with a curt refusal. Their attempts to negotiate he treated as subterfuges to gain time for the return of the bulk of their horsemen. Final!}-, enraged at a treacherous attack on his cavalry, he seized the chiefs who came to apologise for the breach of the truce, and fell upon the leaderlcss tribes. Helpless masses of Germans were slaughtered or driven into the Rhine. Caesar determined to complete the terror caused by this massacre by crossing- the river. In twelve days he built a bridge of piles, and then led his legions across it to the help of the Ubii. Their oppressors, the formidable Suebi, withdrew into their trackless forests, and Caesar contenting himself with laying waste the lands of the Sugambri, after eighteen days recrossed the Rhine and broke down the bridge (55 B.C.). First Landing in Britain. — In the autumn a similar demonstra- tion was made against Britain. Ctesar gathered eighty ships at Portus I tins (Wissant), placed two legions on board, and set sail across the Channel. Next morning he came in sight of the white cliffs of Britain, and sailing west, reached at last a low shore, probably that of Romney marsh, where it was possible to land. But the soldiers feared to leap into the water in face of the Britons on the beach, till the standard-bearer of the tenth set them an example, which was speedily followed. Directly they reached firm ground the enemy fled. Soon afterwards the Britons sent envoys to offer their submission, but on learning that a storm had destroyed many of Caesar's vessels and driven back the fleet carrying his cavalry, they returned to the attack. Ctesar, who easily repulsed their assaults, was yet glad to regain the Gallic coast without further misadventure (55 B.C.). Second Expedition to Britain. — Next summer Caesar repeated his expedition to Britain, and took with him a much larger force. The natives did not dare to oppose the landing of his five legions. Again a storm compelled him to repair his disabled ships and delayed his advance. When at length he marched inland, Cassivellaunus, the leader of the Britons, retreated, but harassed the Romans by sudden attacks with his war-chariots. Ccesar crossed the Thames and took the fortified camp of the enemy, but found the concjuest of the country a task beyond his powers. He was satisfied to return to Gaul after receiving from REVOLT IN GAUL 511 Cassivellaunus a promise to pay tribute and to abstain from attacking,"' the Trinobantes, a friendly tribe. No Roman army set foot on British soil for nearly another century ; the country \\as wild, and offered no prospect of booty to tempt the greed of invaders. Revolts headed by Ambiorix. — Withm Gaul itself there were dangerous signs of discontent, fostered doubtless by this injudi- cious dissipation of strength. The yEduan, Dumnorix, had refused to go with Ciesar to Britain, and had been cut down as a deserter on his way home. While C«sar was in Britain the Gallic nobles organised a widespread insurrection. Unfortunately for him scarcity of supplies compelled Caesar to station his legions in si.x separate and distant camps for the winter. He himself remained at Samarobriva (Amiens), having one legion with him and three within call. He stationed Labienus in the land of the Treveri, and Q. Cicero among the Nervii. In the most distant camp at Aduatuca, Sabinus and Cotta had a legion of recruits and five cohorts of veterans. This corps was furiously assailed in iti new winter quarters by the Eburones under Ambiorix, but might easily have held its entrenchments. In a weak moment Sabinus listened to the treacherous tale told by Ambiorix of a general assault on the scattered legions, and accepted his offer of a safe conduct for his soldiers to the camp of Labienus. The little force was decoyed into a trap by the wily chief, and Sabinus, who attempted to make terms, murdered with many of his officers. Cotta fought bravely to the last, till the unequal struggle ended in the total annihilation of the Roman division (54 B.C.). Q. Cicero relieved by Caesar.— Flushed with victory and re- inforced from the neighbouring cantons, the insurgents flung them- selves on the camp of Q. Cicero. But that officer met their attack with coolness, and doggedly refused to treat with an armed enemy. Messenger after messenger was seized on his way to Ca;sar, yet at length a Gallic horseman reached Amiens. Caesar started next morning with but two legions to rescue his lieutenant. Within five days the smoke of burning villages announced his coming and drew off the hosts of the enemy. Caesar kept within his camp as though in fear, and then by a sudden sally dispersed the Gauls in confusion. But the insurrection could not be stamped out in winter. As spring drew on, Indutiomarus, the chief of the Treveri, attacked Labienus, but fell in a cavalry skirmish. His tribesmen summoned the Germans to their aid, but a feigned retreat drew them into a hot pursuit after Labienus, and led to their destruction 512 HISTORY OF ROME before their German allies had come up. Caesar, who had already reduced to subjection, besides the Senones and Carnutes, the fierce Nervii and the hitherto unconcjuered Menapii, now followed up the easy victory of his lieutenant by a second military promenade across the Rhine. The only task left was the punishment of the guilty Eburones, who were hunted down with merciless severity. By the end of the summer Northern Gaul had been terrified into the peace of despair (53 R.C.). Vercingetorix raises Southern Gaul in Revolt. — Worse was yet to come. While Cicsar was in North Italy the patriots of Southern Gaul made a final effort to rouse the nation to resistance. At their head was a young Arvernian chief, \^ercingetorix, who speedily won over, first his own tribe, and then the clans of Western Gaul. His plan was to cut off Caesar from his legions by preventing his return from the province. While Vercingetorix was engaged in the /Eduan district his friend Lucterius threatened the province itself. But Caesar defeated their manoeuvres by his extraordinary rapidity. Cutting his way through the snows of the Cevennes in the depth of winter, he drew Vercingetorix off to the defence of his own clansmen, and then with a handful of cavalry dashed through the land of the yEdui to the camps of his legions. Vercingetorix fell back on the plan of starving out the enemy. The country was to be laid waste, the towns and stores burnt, and the Romans prevented from foraging by the fine Gallic cavalry. Only Avaricum (Bourges), the chief town of the Bituriges, was spared. Round that devoted city the war now centred. The Gallic infantry lay secure in impassable morasses ; the cavalry cut off Ctesar's communications. Still his famished legions refused to raise the siege, and at length triumphed over the heroic garrison. The town was stormed and the inhabitants massacred by the maddened soldiery (52 B.C.). Caesar repulsed at Gergovia. — C?esar now despatched Labienus with four legions northwards to hold the Carnutes and Senones in check, while he himself turned south against the Arverni. Labienus, however, made little progress on the Seine, and Caesar found his advance arrested by the impregnable fortress of Gergovia. He had not troops enough to blockade a hill a mile long and half as broad, and was compelled to try to storm the defences. The legions penetrated into the Gallic camp, but fell into confusion a rash assault on the wall of the city, and were driven down the hill with considerable loss. Their commander for the first time was compelled to beat a retreat, and that retreat was the signal REVOLT OF VEKCIMGETOKIX 5*3 for the defection of the /Edui and risings among the Belgjp. Timid counsellors advised Caesar to retire into the old province now threatened by the enemy, but he would not desert Labienus. That able general fought his way out of the country of the Seine and joined C;vsar at Agedincum. Siege and Capture of Alesia. — The united army now moved southward to protect the province. On the borders of the Sequani, Vercingetorix, fresh from his election as general of all Gaul, came CAVALRY CAMF;^t/\[V' # ~* Grei,ign^0Y ^ Montagne Menetieux n^^u, i^h^.,u,,^^. PLAN OF ALESIA. up with the Roman army. The Gallic cavalry was met, and, to its surprise, vanquished by C?esar's newly raised German horse. Despairing of success in the open field, Vercingetorix shut himself up in a fortified camp on the steep isolated hill of Alesia. But now CiEsar had all his forces united, and was enabled to draw his lines right round the town. In vain the Celtic cavalry tried to keep the communications open ; they were beaten back by Caesar's Germans, and had to be sent away before they were completely 2 K 514 HISTORY OF ROME heinmcd in. Tlie in- seated disease. Luxury he sought to restrain by the old ineffectual curb of direct sumptuary legislation, and, with more prospect of success, by the reimposition of custom duties at the Italian ports, whose weight fell chiefly on Eastern goods. Debt was a yet more rampant evil. To meet the crisis caused by the civil war, Caesar ordered that debtors should be entitled to deduct from the capital of the debt all interest already paid, and in repaying the residue to make over their real and personal property at its estimated value before the outbreak of the war. The justification of such exceptional measures is to be found in their acceptance by all moderate men, and in the necessity of delivering the unfortunate debtors from the grinding tyranny of the capitalists. C;i;sar's permanent legislation is of unimpeachable soundness, socially and economi- cally. His chief measure was a law of bankruptcy. By it an REFORMS OF CAESAR 547 insolvent debtor escaped imprisonment by becoming a bankrupt and giving up his property to his creditors. The great maxim that liberty should be forfeited by the criminal only, and not also by the unfortunate, was clearly enunciated. Caesar also attempted to discourage usury and revive Italian agriculture by compelling capitalists to invest half their money in land. Encouragement of Agriculture. — Indeed the encouragement of agriculture was a prominent feature in Caesar's reforms, as it must be in the programme of every Italian statesman. Besides attempt- ing to breathe new spirit into municipal government, he laboured more directly for that end. In his distribution of land to his veterans he avoided the mistakes of Sulla. He did not make a clean sweep of existing holders and settle whole battalions of veterans together on the soil, but scattered them about among the agricultural population. He thus contrived to respect private rights and to infuse a new and healthy element into Italian country life. Further, he compelled stock-farmers to give em- ployment to poor freemen, by enacting that at least a third of their herdsmen must be free citizens. And, lastly, the programme of public works planned by Caesar included the draining of the Fucine lake and the construction of a great high-road through the Apennines, necessary for the transport of the produce of Central Italy. The Provinces. — The provmces groaned under a yet worse load of misgovernment than Rome and Italy. In the Western pro- vinces, vSpain and Gaul, there were still vigorous races left whose union with Rome was destined to produce new forms of culture. But most of the countries round the Mediterranean had long lost their liberty and become the willing slaves of foreign or domestic tyrants. Yet it may be doubted if any Western government has ever laid on its subjects a heavier yoke than did the Roman oligarchy at this period. The taxes imposed by the central govern- ment were not heavy, but the illegal exactions of its agents swelled the total paid by the provincial to an incredible amount. It was admitted that a town on which Roman troops were quartered suffered nearly as much as one stormed by an enemy. The pro- consul hoped to make thi'ee fortunes out of his province : one to pay his debts, another to bribe the jury if he were brought to trial, and a third for himself; his retinue expected to be maintained in luxury, and his friends at home demanded presents of money, or wild beasts for the sports of the amphitheatre. Often the Roman officials were little better than a gang of robbers let loose 548 HISTORY OF ROME on the provincials. Sheer despair drove the SiciHans under V'erres to leave half their farms fallow. Yet the governor was a less evil than the tax-farmer and the usurer. The virtuous Brutus lent money to the town of Salamis, in Cyprus, at 48 per cent., and his energetic agent, Scaptius, be- sieged the municipal Senate in the council-house till five of their number were starved to death. The smaller land-owners in Illy- ricum and Asia were in point of fact the bondsmen of their creditors. These usurers made the Roman name a byword, and brought on their own heads the massacres by which the conquests of Mithradates were sullied. Caesar" s System. — Both governor and tax-gatherer were sternly checked by Ctesar. Asia was delivered altogether from the tithe- system and its attendant evils ; the other provinces were relieved from the arbitrary exactions of the governor and his suite. For these governors were no longer independent potentates acting in contemptuous disregard of the wishes and orders of the home government, but mere functionaries under the control of a strict and powerful master. The deeper-seated evils of usury could not be so promptly checked, but at least a new spirit was infused into the provincial administration. The magistrate became, not a ringleader of the strong who trampled on the weak, but a refuge for the oppressed, a protector of the helpless. Practical Character of Caesars Measures. — No account of Caesar's measures would be satisfactory which failed to emphasise the practical character of his genius. Like Napoleon, he was filled with a passion for order and organisation — government is to Ca;sar a science. The days of haphazard finance and hand-to-mouth legislation are over. Cassar was the first of Roman statesmen to conceive the idea of a budget, of a regular estimate of the income and expenditure. Like Alexander, he established an imperial gold coinage, current throughout the empire. The existing coinage was either entirely superseded or retained but a local and limited currency. The same spirit is shown in his reform of the calendar. Miscalculation and mismanagement had brought the old calendar to anticipate the true time by sixty-seven days. Ctesar substituted for the old year of 355 days with irregular intercalations the Julian system, which is the basis of our present calendar. Conspiracy to assassinate Caesar. — Yet the projects ^\•hich Cffisar was able to carry out were but a portion of his scheme. Had time been allowed him he would ha\e forestalled Augustus REFORMS OF CA^.SAR 549 in the rectification of the frontiers of the empire, and Justinian in the codification of Roman law. But the work of centuries was not thus to be compressed within the narrow limits of a single life. Admirable as were Caesar's administrative reforn-is, the new BUST OF M. BRUTUS. order of things was utterly opposed -to the ideas and sentiments of the Roman nobility. Despotism, which might be endured as a temporary expedient, was intolerable as a pennanent principle of government. While the tide of popular adulation rose high, 550 HISTORY OF ROME and flatterers pressed on Cncsar divine as well as regal honours, the old republicans were plotting his assassination. C. Cassius, who had surrendered the Ponipeian fleet after Pharsalia, had been pardoned and received into favour. But he felt slighted when M. Brutus, a younger and less distinguished man, was placed above him on the list of prostors. M. Brutus himself was a narrow-minded student, who saw in Caesar nothing more than a Greek tyrant, but who gave dignity to the conspiracy by his honest enthusiasm. Among the other conspirators were Caesar's trusted lieutenants, D. Brutus and Trebonius, as well as Casca and Cimber, on whom he had bestowed offices. The day finally chosen for the murder was the Ides of March, when Caesar was to announce to the Senate his resignation of the consulship in consequence of his approaching expedition against Parthia. When the time came Caesar was kept at home by the warnings and entreaties of his wife, till the traitor D. Brutus lured him into the snare. When Caesar had entered the Senate and taken his seat, Tillius Cimber pressed on him a petition fo'- his brother's pardon. The other conspirators crowded round, till Cimber seized his hands and robes as if entreating grace. Meanwhile Casca crept behind Caesar and smote him an ill-aimed blow as he rose and called for aid. The signal once given, the conspirators fell upon their victim with reckless haste ; Caesar staggered beneath a shower of blows to the base of Pompey's statue, and there fell dead at the feet of the rival thus horribly avenged. The Greatness of Caesar. — The assassination of Caesar could not prevent the empire. It only plunged the world into renewed strife and confusion, till the man on whom Caesar's mantle fell restored peace and order. It left the great work conceived by Caesar to be completed by smaller men in a less noble way. But though his career was cut short and his work unfinished, Caesar stands out as the one original genius in Roman history. We may justly admire the unaffected simplicity of his history of the Gallic wars, we may wonder at the transcendent military ability which saw in rapidity of movement the surest means of victory, but above all we must recognise in Caesar a man who studied the problems of pohtics in a scientific spirit, and amid the chaos and confusion of a worn-out world laid the foundations of a new, har- monious, and enduring order. His work must be judged impartially by the standards of his own age, and the possibilities of the time. To glorify his vigorous application of force is as needless, as it is idle to condemn him from the standpoint of modern con- DEATH OF CALSAR SSI ditions and ideas. The administrative problems before him he grasped with comprehensive insight, and solved with unexampled rapidity and success. It was rather his misfortune than his fault that he failed to give a permanent shape to his institutions, and to satisfy public opinion by reconciling the new regime with the forms and traditions of the past. rARODY OF A SCENE IN SCHOOL. How &.Leiah's lU : <^ Co.. Lonrion . 7V>»i- Yor^k ASomhctk: APPENDIX I ASSEMBLIES AT ROME COMITIA are assemblies of the whole people {p pitliis); a con- cilium, though loosely used of any meeting, means strictly an assembly of a part only of the people. There are three ordinary forms of Comitia, Curiata, Centuriala, and Tributa, and one im- portant concilium, that of the plebs. I. The Comitia Curiata, in which the people, meeting in the comitium, voted by curies {cf. pp. 44, 45), was in the regal period the only form of assembly, but in later times its functions were purely formal (p. 50), e.g., the lex ciiriaia de imperio. II. The Comitia Centuriata, in which the people voted by cen- turies, met under the presidency of a magistrate cum imperio in the Campus Martins outside the city. (For its original form, cf. pp. 27, 28, 45, 46 ; and for its reform in 241 B.C., pp. 293-296.) Its principal functions were — 1. The election of the higher magistrates, whether ordinary, as consuls, praetors, and censors, or extraordinary, as decemvirs and consular tribunes. 2. Judicially it is the highest court of appeal in all cases affect- ing the "caput" of a citizen {cf. pp. 48, 71, 352). 3. In legislation it always retains the right of declaring war. In early times all laws proposed by consuls came before it, but from the time of the Punic Wars consuls often preferred to make use of the more convenient Comitia Tributa {cf. pp. 450, 451). III. The Comitia Tributa, in which the people voted by tribes, met under the presidency of a curule magistrate in the forum {cf. pp. 71, 72, 294, 295, 451 n.). Its principal functions were — I. The election of curule asdiles, quaestors, and other minor magistrates of the populus, as well as of some among the tribuni militum. 5.S3 554 APPENDIX 2. Judicial appeals against penalties imposed by the curule asdiies or pontifex maximus. 3. Legislative. From the first all laws proposed by praetors, later most of those proposed by consuls were brought before the Comitia Tributa. 4. A special form of this assembly (Comitia Sacerdotum), in which only seventeen tribes taken by lot took part, elected the priests (c/. pp. 2S8, 289, 385, 451, 492). IV. The concilium plebis, meeting in the forum under the presidency of a tribune or a^dile of the plebs, voted originally by curies, but after 472 B.C., always by tribes (c/. pp. 55, 72). Legally this assembly was confined to plebeians, but this restriction was not enforced in practice. Its principal functions were — 1. The election of plebeian tribunes and aediles. 2. Judicial appeals against fines imposed by these officials. 3. Legislative. It could never pass laws {leges), but at least after the lex Hortensia, 287 B.C., its resolutions {plebiscita), proposed by plebeian tribunes and aediles, had the force of law, and in fact most important statutes are passed by it {cf. pp. 96, 294, 450, 451). APPENDIX II LIST OF THB MOST IMPORTANT ROMAN ROADS OF REPUBLICAN TIMES l^ia Appia. — To Capua, 312 ri.C. ; to Venusia, 291 B.C. ; to Brun- disium, circ. 268 B.C. Via Laiina. — To Anagnia, Fregellai", and Casilinum, where it joined the Via Appia. Via Salaria. — To Reate, Asculum, and the Adriatic. Via Valeria. — To Carsioli and Alba Fucens, circ. 299 B.C., ex- tended later to Corfinium. Via Flaminia.- — To Narnia, 299 B.C. ; to Fanum and Ariminum, 220 B.C. Via jEmilia. — From Ariminum to Bononia, Mutina, Parma, and Placentia, 187 B.C. ; with a cross road from Bononia by Florentia to Arretium, circ. 187 B.C. Via Cassia. — To Sutrium, Chisium, and Arretium ; reconstructed and continued to Luca and Luna, 171 B.C. or later. Via Aurelia. — The coast-road to Pis£e and Luna after 180 B.C. ; continued by the Via A^jtiilia (Scauri), to Genua, 109 B.C. Via Postinnia. — From Genua by Dertona to Placentia ; thence by Cremona and Verona to Aquileia, 148 B.C. Via Popillia. — From Capua by Nola to Salernum, and thence by Consentia to Regium, 132 B.C. {vide Inscription, p. 339). To the same period (and in part, i.e., from Ariminum to Atria to the same Consul, Popillius L^enas), were due the roads from Ariminum to Aquileia and from Fanum southwards to Brun- disium. Via Egnaiia. — From Apollonia and Dyrrhachium to Thessalonica, circ. 146 B.C., continued later to the Hebrus. Via Domitia. — From the Rhone to the Pyrenees, circ. 121 B.C., connected with Genua by the Massiliot coast-road. INDEX R. C. =■ Roman Colony, L. C = Latin Colony. In distinguhhing members of afat?iily, " his son," 5fc., refers to the name immediately preceding. AniJERA, 429. Abeliix, 214. Abgarus, 520. Abydos, 257, 260, 269. Acarnania, 213, 257, 261, 280. Accensi. 103, 138. Acerrae, 202, 405, 407. Achasus, 327. Achaean League, 165, 212, 213, 254 ; con- stitution and power of, 257-9, 261, 264-8, 272, 276; leaders e.xiled, 280, released, 283; war with, 284-7. Achaia, settlement of, 286, 287, 428, 429. Achillas, 535. Achradina (Syracuse), 210, 211. Acilius. See Giabrio. Addua(Adda)rv., 8, 85. Adherbal, 361, 362. Adoption (adrogatio), 45, 502. Aduatuca, 511. Aduatuci, 381, 505. ^acides, 124. /Ecs, 191. /Eclanum, 402, 409. jEdiles, 300, 305, 349, 452 ; curiile, 92, 94 ; plebeian, 55, 71 ; cf. Appendix I. ■^dui, 373, 505, 507, 508, 512, 513. /Egates Insulcc, battle of, 161. j'F.giuin, 258, 284. ^Tiiilianus. 5'f(? Scipio and Fabiu>. yEmilius. See Barbula, Lepidus, Papus, Paullus, Regillus, Scaurus. iEmilius, M., 185. ^neas, 20, 37. ./Equi, 16, 59, 61, 62, 77, 78, 98, 115. ALrariiim, 138. See also Quiestorcs. ^sernia, L. C., 164 «., 201 «. , 404, 405, 410, 443. iEsis R., 131. ^•Esium or ^sis, R. C, 164 n. i^itolians, 165, 212, 213, 254; constitution and power of League, 257, 258, 259-64, 267, 268, 272, 280. See also Cavalry. Afranius, L. , 529-31, 538. Africa, wars in, 155-7, 224-31, 245-53, 360-71, 531, 536-8. Africa, province of, 253, 359, 417, 437, 438. Africanus. See Scipio. Agatha, 372. Agathocles, iii, 120, 125, 127, 148, 150, 155. Agediucuni, 513. 557 Agelaus, 239. Ager Cainpanns, 210, 306, 335, 347, 359, 456, 500, 518. Ager publicus, 53, 56, 91, 92, 164, i66, 209, 279. 306, 335/, 347, 359, 389, 500. i,ee also Assignatio, Leges Agraria;. ■ Agis of Tarentum, 124. Agis of Sparta, 337. Agriculture, Italian, 306, 316-8, 334-6, 372 «■. 545-7- Agrigentum (Acragas), 18, 151, 211, 212, 327- Agron, 165. Ahala, C. Serviliiis, 76, 77 n. Ahenobarbus, Cn. Domitius, 373, Ahenobarbus, Cn. Domitius (his son), 385. Ahenobarbus, Cn. Domitius (his son), 443. Ahenobarbus, L. Domitius (his brother), 519, 528, 529. Ala, 139. Alba Fiicens, 16; L. C, 115 209, 279, 373, 405, 405. Alba Longa, 16, 20, 21, 24, 25. Alban Lake, 8, 80, 81, 84 «. ; Mount, 16. Albani (in the Caucasus), 480. Albinus, A. Postumius, 365. Albinus, L. Postumius, 165, 194, 199, 204. Albinus, Sp. Postumius (cos. 321 B.C.), 108-110. Albinus, Sp. Postumius (cos. no B.C.), 36s, 366. Aleria, 154. Alesia, siege of, 513, 514. Aletrium, 115. Ale,\ander the Great, 124, 125, 330, 544. Ale.xaiider the Molossian, 105, 106, 124, 125. Alexander, pseudo-, 283, 326. Alexandria. 488, 536. Algidus, Mount, 59, 61, 62, 78. AlHa (R.), battle of, 12, 85, 86, loS. Allies {socii) in army, 137, 139, 261 ; man fleet, 142, 152, 155, See Italians and Latins. AUifae, 192, 209. AUobroges, 178, 3:3, 373, 377, 494. Alps, Mountains, 3, 5 ; passes of, 178-82, 372. Alsium, R. C, 164 «. Amanus, Mount, 526. Amastris, 426. Ambiorix, 511. 558 INDEX Ambracia, 124, 272. Ambrones, 375, 381, 382. Amisus, 424, 475, 482. Amphipolis, 279, 280. Anai;nia. 16, 114. Anapus R., 211. Anares, 166. Ancona, 4, 85, 166, 439. Ancus Marcius, 25, 34. Andriscus, 282. Anicius, L., 278. Anicius, M., 202. Anio R., 6, 38, 90, 115, 209. Antigonus Doson, 165, 254. Antigonus Gonatas, 130. Antioch, 254, 483, 521. Antiochus III. (the Great), 254 ; attacks Egypt, 260-2 eastern wars, 265, 266 ; war with Rome, 266-71 ; peace with, 271, 272. Antiochus IV. (Epiphanes), 281, 329. Antipolis (.'\ntibes), 372. .\ntium, L. C, 58 ; R. C, 104, no. Antonius, C. (Hybrida), 488, 490, 493, 495. Antonius, M. (orator), 387, 390, 393, 395, 399- 437- Antonius, M. (son of the last), 472. Antonius, M. (iSlark Antony), i, 525, 523, 529. 533, 543- Antullius, Q., 354. An.vur, R. C. See Tarracina. Aous R., 262. Apennines, Mountains, 3, 4, 188, 317, 403. Apollonia, 142, 165, 212, 261, 267, 276, 282, 533- 534- Appian, 92, 246. Apsus R. , 262. Apulia, 4, 7, 8, 106, 107, 108, no, in, igi, 206, 207, 221, 222, 335, 409, 410, 436, 440, 528, 545. _ Aqu?e Sextiae, 373, 381, 382. Aquileia, 5; L. C, 239, 275, 309. Aquillius, M'. (cos. 129 B.C.), 328, 329, 346, 420, 421. Aquillius, M'.(cos, loi B.C.), 393,395, 425-7. Aquilonia, battle of, 119. Aquitania, 50S, 509. Arar (Saone) R., 506. Aratus, 254, 258. Arausio, 377, 378, 387, 544. Arcbelaus, 426, 428-33. Archidannis, 105. Archimedes, 211. Ardaa, 30, 40, 84, 87. Arelate, 544. Aretas, 482. Arevaci, 242, 244. Argos, 130, 258, 262, 264, 284, 2S5, 359. Ariarathes IV., 255, 271. Ariarathes VI., 424. Ariarathes VII., 424. Ariarathes (son of Mithradates), 428. Aricia, 104. Ariminum, L. C. , 164 «., 166-8, 185, 187, 22 1_, 225, 436, 439, 440-2, 527. Ariminum, ius of, 309. Ariobarzanes, 425. Ariovistus, 505-7. Aristaenus, 262. Aristion, 428-30. Aristobulus, 482. Aristonicus, 328, 329, 421. Aristotle, i, 434. Armenia, 238, 271, 330, 420, 425, 426, 471, 472, 476, 477, 479> 480, 519, 520. Armenia Minor, 424, 482, 536. Army of Carthage, 148 ; under Hamilcar, 170; under Hannibal, 176, igi, 231,232. Army, Greek. Sec Phalanx. Army, Roman, of Romulus, 23 ; Servian, 45, 46 ; manipular, 102, 135-41 ; re- organised by Marius, 369, 379-81 ; pay of, 80, 138 ; service in, loi, 136, 349, 350 n. ; minimum census for, 46, 293, 369; arms and tactics of, 102, 139, 140, I96,_ 23o,_ 263, 264, 279, 534, 535 ; pro- fessionalism in, 224, 233, 314, 379, 538 ; decay of, 245, 313, 411, 416. See also Allies, Cavalry, Legion, Phalanx, Veterans. Arnus (Arno) R., 6; marshes of, 12, 188. Arpi, 192, 201, ?o6. Arpinum, 114, 115, 366, 367, 488. Arretium, 112, 115, 121, 166, 167, 187, 220, 224, 225, 528. Arsa, C. Terentilius, 66. Arsacids, 329, 425. Artaxata, 477, 480. Artaxiads, 271, 420. Arverni, 218, 373, 374, 378, 505, 512. Asculum, 400, 405-9. Asellio, A. Sempronius, 411, 413. Asia, state of, 253^?, 271, 272, 329/., 420/, 472, 473, 482-4. Asia Minor, 320, 327, 428. Asia (province), 328, 396, 420, 427, 434, 475 ; taxes of, 351, 454 «., 499, 500, 548. Asparagium, 533. Aspendus, battle of, 270. Assembly. See Appendix I., Coinitia, Concilium plebis. Assignatio (allotment), 57, 82, 306, 335, 336, 338> 343, 359- Astapa, 219. Atella, no. .\ternus R., 7, 403. Athamanes, 261, 268. Athenio, 392, 393. Athens, i, 19, 261, 264, 2S0, 283, 428 ; siege of, 429, 430. Athesis (Adi^e) R., 5, 382. Atilius, C, 182. Atiliu.s. See also Calatinus, Regulus, Serranus. Atria, 5, 12. Attalids, 257, 328. Attalus I., 257, 261. Attains III., 328, 329, 33S. Attica, 327, 392. Atticus, T. Pomponius, 490. Aufidus R., 7, 195. Augurs, 95, 292. See Priests. Augustus (C. Octavius), 1, 3, 5, 79 «., 245, 326, 514, 539, 541, 542, 548. Aurelius. See Cotta, Orestes, and Scaurus. Ausculum, battle of, 128. Ausonians, in. Auspiciuy 291-3. INDEX 559 Autarltus, 163. Avaricum, 504 «., 512. Aventine, Mount, 21, 25, 27, 38, 58, 66, 355- . Axona (Aisne) R., 508. Bacchanalia, 291, 292, 321. Bactria, 330. Baecula, battles of, 217, 218. Bcetis k., 214, 240, 464. Bagradas R., 229, 247, 367, 531. Baliaric Isles, 146, 218, 219, 245, 330 ; sliiigers, 148, 190, 197, 379. Ballot. See Lex tabellaria. Barbula, L. ^milius, 124. Bastarnse, 275, 424. Belgse, 373, 381, 505, 507, 50S, 513. Bellovaci, 504 «., 508, 514. Beneventum, battle of, 130, 131 ; L. C. 164 «., 192, 201 «., 206, 404. Bestia, L. Calpurnius Piso, 364, 365, 399. Betuitus, 373. Bibracte, 373, 506. Bibulus, M. Calpurnius, 500, 516, 521, 531. Piithyas, 251. Bithynia, 267, 269, 271, 275, 276, 278, 329, 392, 424-7, 433, 444, 473, 474 ; province, 482. Bituriges, 85, 504 «., 512. I'lossiiis, C, 337. Bocchus, 364, 367, 369, 371, 416. BcEotia, 257, 261, 265, 267, 428, 429, 431, 432- Boii (Bohemian), 374. Boii (Cisalpine), 85, 122, 166, 16S, 175, 238, 239. Boiorix, 37S, 383. Bolae, 77, 78. Bomilcar (Punic), 204, 211. Bomilcar (Numidian), 365, 367. Bononia (Felsina), 12, 79 ; L. C, 239. Bosphorus, kingdom of, 424, 473, 480. Bovianum, 15, iii, 114, 207, 409, 410. Brennus, 86, 87. Britain, 504, 510, 511, 530. Britomaris, 121. Brixia, 85, 166. Brundisium, 4, 95 ; L. C, 164 «., 201,203, 207,347, 439, 440, 497. 528. Bruttii, 16, 17, 127, 129, 130, 200, 201, 209, 220, 223-5, 231, 335, 347,410,419, 467. Brutulus, Papius, 108. Brutus, D. Junius (cos. 138 B.C.), 244, 245, 355, 372, 375- Brutus, D. Junius (Caesar's lieutenant), 509, 529, 550.^ Brutus, L. Junius, 30-2. Brutus, L. Junius Daniasippus, 441, 442. Brutus, M. Junius (Lepidus' lieutenant), 464. Brutus, M. Junius (Caesar's murderer\ 548-50- Byrsa (Carthage), 145, 249, 252. Byzantium, 257, 260, 267, 276, 282, 432. Cabira, 475, 483. CcEcilius. See Metellus. Ca;lius, INFount, 25, 38. C^lius, M. Rufus, 525, 540. Cspio, Q. Servilius (cos. 140 B.C.), 243 Csepio, Q. Servilius (cos. 106 B.C.), 377, 378, 384, 385, 387, 392- Ca;p:o, Q. Servilius (his son), 38S, 396, 397. 406. Csere, 79, 85, 86, 88, 89, 141. Caerite franchise, 89, go, 104, 114. Caesar, C. Julius (aedile), 413, 437. Caesar, C. Julius, 85, 86, 325, 373, 408, 429; and Sulla, 445, 446, 448, 449, 460; a democrat, 460, 464, 468, 491 ; and Catiline, 485-7, 490, 4927^; pontifex niaximus, 491, 496, 497 ; coalition with Pompey and Crassus, 499 ; laws as con- sul, 499-502; in Gaul, 503-15; in Britain, 510, 511 ; at Luca, 517, 518, 519, 521, 522 ; and the Senate, 523/! ; in civil war, 525-39; rule of, 539-51; offices and titles, 541, 542 ; reforms, 544-8 ; assas- sination, 549-51. Caesar, L. Julius, 404, 405, 407, 437. Caesar, Sext. Julius, 284. Caesarism, 133, 323, 325, 326, 356, 357, 449, 470, 539/ Calatia, no, 114. (.Srir Errata.) Calatinus (Caiatinus), A. Atihus, 159, 160. Calavii (Capua), in, 201. Calendar, Roman, 181 «., 291, 548. Cales, L. C, 104, 109, 192, 203, 206. 405, Callicinus, 277. Callicrates, 272, 280, 283. Callicula, Mount, 192. Callidromos, Mount, 268. Calor R. , 7, 404. Calpurnius. See Bestia, Bibulus, Piso Calvinus, Cn. Domitius, 534, 536. Cannae, 409 ; battle of, 7, 194-8, 200. Canuleius, C, 73. Canusium, 7, no, 198, 223, 405. Camillus, J\l. Furius, So- 4, 87, SS, 92, 138. Camp, Roman, 140. Campania, 8, 13, 16, 17, 79, 100-4, 109-11, 114, 116, 118, 119, 192, 193, 20iyi, 309, 317. 340. 4o?-5> 407' 409, 410, 440, 448. Campus Martius, 39, 46, 59, 459, 545 Capena, 80, 82, 88. Capite Censi (^proletarii), 28, 136, 295, 343, 369, 379- Capitol, 21, 22, 38, 86, 87, 354, 543. Cappadocia, 255, 271, 329, 424 - 7, 433, 434. 445, 472-6, 482. Capsa, 369. Capua, Samnite, 79, 95, 100, 107 ; status, 104, no, in, 210, 309; in 2nd Punic war, 192, 201/C, 207-10; proposed colony, 347. 358, 500; Sulla at, 414, 416, 440; risings at, 392, 466 ; Pompey at, 524. Carbo, C. Papirius (Gracchan), 343, 344, 358, 395- ... Carbo, Cn. Papirius (his brother), 377. Carbo, Cn. Papirius (Marian), 435, 439-43. Caria, 254, 260, 427. Carneades, 283. Carnutes, 512. Carpetani, 172. Carrhae, battle of, 484, 520. 56o INDEX Carrinas, C. , 442. Carsioli, i6 ; L. C, 115, 405. Carteia, 314. Carthage, 19 ; treaties with, 99, 129, 142, 149; and Pyrrhus, 125, 129-31; people and power of, 135, 141, 142, 143-9 ; city of, 143-5, 249; 1st Punic war, 150- 162 ; mercenary war and Rome, 162, 164 ; and Barcids, 169-71 ; and Hanni- bal, 172, 175, 176, 200, 204-6, 211, 213, 224-31 ; and Syphax, 214 ; parties at, 169, 170, 228, 229, 247 ; peace witli, 231, 232, 240; 3rd Punic war, 245-53; — 261, 267, 315, 31S, 322, 337, 417; revival of, 347. 348. 354> 358, 359> 544- Carthago, Nova, 171, 176, 217, 219. Carthalo, 157. Carvilius, Sp. (cos. 293 B.C.), iig. Carvilius, Sp. (his son), 203, 310, 345. Casca, P. Servilius, 550. Casilinum, 7, 192, 202, 206, 207, 405. Casinum, 192. Cassander, 124. Cassias, C. Longlnus, 520, 521, 550. Cassius, L. Longinus (cos. 107 k.c), 377. Cassius, L. Longinus (Ravilla), 335. Cassius, Q. Longinus, 525, 537. Cassius, L., 426, 427. Cassius, Spurius, 57, 58 «., 63, 64, 97, 306. Cassivellaunus, 510, 511. Castrum Novum, R. C., 119. Castulo, 219. Catilina, L. Sergius, conspirator, 486-90, 492-5- Cato, C. Porcius (cos. 114 B.C.), 365, 375. Cato, L. Porcius (cos. 89 B.C.). 407, 408. Cato, M. Porcius (censor), in Spain, 241 ; and Carthage, 247, 248, 251 ; at Ther- mopylee, 268 ; sayings of, 283 ; as a poli- tician, 302-6, 320, 331 ; author, 40, 335. Cato, INI. Porcius Uticensis, optimate leader, 486, 494, 497, 499, 519, 521-3 ; in Cyprus, 503 ; character and death, 537, 538, 54°- . , Catulus, C. Lutatius (cos. 242 B.C.), 160-2, 172. Catulus, Q. Lutatius (cos. 102 B.C.), 382-4, 437. 404- Catulus, Q. Lutatius (his son), 446, 462, 464, 478, 479, 486, 492, 496. Cauca, 242. Caucasus. Mount, 426, 480. Caudine Forks, 108-10, 112, 119, 243, 244. Caulonia, 220. Cavalry, Roman, 136, 139, 175, 313, 520 ; Campanian, 118; auxiliary, 263, 314, 379, 513 ; Pompeian, 531 f. ; Eastern, 254, 476, 520 ; Gallic, 513. Celts. See Gauls and Galatians. Celtiberia, 240, 372, 531. Cenomani, 85, 166-8, 185, 186, 238. Censors appointed, 74-6 ; admission of plebeians, 94, 133, 346 ; under Sulla, 454, 455 ; revived, 468, 469 ; limited, 502 ; functions — census, 74; financial, 211; moral, 346, 386, 387 ; selecting Senate, 74, 299-301, 469 ; review knights, 470 ; term of, 74, 95, 96. Censorinus, C. Marcius, 442. Censorinus, L. Marcius, 248, 249. Census, 28, 74, 294-6, 379, 454 ; minimum census, 293, 369 ; census eque.^ter, 350. Centenius, M., 207. Centumalus, On. Fulvius (cos. 298 B.C.), 116. Centumalus, Cn. Fulvius (cos. 229 B.C.), 165. Centumalus, Cn. Fulvius (cos. 211 B.C.), 219. Centuria, 23, 28, 294-6, i,(><)\ pra^rogativa, 296, 349. Cephallenia, 272. Cephissus R., 431. Cercina, 417. Cerretanus, Q. Aulius, iii. Cethegus, C. Cornelius, 494, Cethegus, IVL Cornelius, 226. Cevenna, Mount, 374, 504, 512. Chferonea, battle of, 431, 432. Chalcedon, 260, 432, 474. Chalcis, 254, 261, 262, 267, 276, 285, 428-31. Chaldasans, 321. Chariots in war, 270, 271, 510, Charops, 262, 280. Chersonesus, Thracian, 271 ; Tauric, 424; city of, 424. 425. Chios, 260, 268, 432. Chrysogonus, 460. Cicero, ]\L Tullius, birth, 384 ; and Sulla, 460, 461 ; in Verrem, 469 ; and Catiline, 485, 486 ; character, 488, 489 ; policy, 325, 489-91, 499 ; crushes Catiline, 492-6, and Clodius, 497, 498 ; exile, 502, 503 ; recall, 516; and Pompey, 463, 517, 535 ; and triumvirs, 518, 519; defends Milo, 521, 522; in Cilicia, 525, 526; in civil war, 328, 536, 537 ; quoted, 63, 313, 388, 413- Cicero, Q. Tullius, 511. Cilicia, 254, 255, 271, 330; province, 393, 394, 420, 482, 483, 522 «., 525, 526 ; pirates, 471, 472, 477-9. Cimber, L. Tillius, 550. Cimbri, 364, 372, 375-8, 381-3. Ciminian lake and hills, 8, 13, 82, 88, 112. Cincinnatus, L. Quinctius, 61, 62, 65 «., 77_«. Cincius, L. Alimentus (annalist), 180, 212. Cineas, 124, 127, 128. Cinna, L. Cornelius, 419, 435-9, 460. Circeii, 78, 417. Cirta, 227, 247, 361, 362, 366, 367, 369. Cissis, battle of, 213. Citizenship. See Civitas and Franchise. Cius, 260. Civitas sine snjfragip, 90, 94, 104, 115, iig, 135.. 137 «M 296, 309. Ciassis, 27, 28, 46, 294-6. Clastidium, 185, 186. Claudius (emperor), 8, 40. Ckiudius, Appius (cos. 495 B.C.), 54. Claudius, Appius (decemvir), 67-9. Claudius, Appius Caecus (censor), 94, 95, iir, 116, 128. Claudius, Appius Caude.x, 151. Claudius, Appius Pulcher (cos. 212 B.C.), 200, 207, 210. Claudius, Appius Pulcher (192 B.C.), 267. INDEX 561 Claudius, Appius Pulcherfiyo B.C.), 277. Claudius, Appius Pulcher (SuUan), 419. Claudius, Appius I'ulcher (lieutenant cf Lucullus), 476. Claudius, Appius Pulcher (cos. 143 B.C.), 326, 337, 341, 343i 372- Claudius, C, 150. Claudius, C. Cento, 261. Claudius, C. Nero, 207, 215, 218, 221 ; at the iMetaurus, 222, 223 ; censor, 228. Claudius, P. Pulcher (cos. 249 B.C.), 159, 321. Claudius. See Clodius and Marcellus. Clazomenae, 471. Cleomenes 111. of Sparta, 254, 257, 337. Cleon (bandit), 327, 393. Cleonymus, 112. Cleopatra, Syrian, 266, 2E1. Cleopatra, Pontic, 424. Cleopatra of Egypt, 536. Clients, 23, 41, 305, 313, 318. Cloacce, 26, 38. Clodius (Claudius), P. Pulcher, 497, 49S, 502, 503, 516, 517, 521, 545. Cluentius, L. , 409. Clusium, 6, 8, 85, 117, 167, 442. Cnidos, 432, 471. Coele-Syria, 255, 281. Co-eiiiptio, 70. Cohors pmtorin, 245, 380. Cohorts, 138, 139, 379. Coinage, debasement of, 160, 294, 296, 397 ; Italian, 403 ; Gallic, 504 ; of Caesar, 548. Colchis, 424, 445. Collegia (clubs), 71, 502, 522 «., 545. Colline gate, battle, 443. Colonies, Greek, 18, 424. Colonies, Latin, 57, 88, 99, 104, iii, 115, 135, 164 «., 220, 239, 309, 345, 404, 405, 408, 411. Colonies, Roman, 57, 104, 134, 142, 164 it, 239, 309, 345 ; founded by Gracchus, 347, 348, 354, 357 ; after Gracchus, 353, 354, 358,, 373, 389, 397 ; Sulla's, 448 ; Pom- pey's, 483 ; Cjesar's, 500, 544. Colophon, 270, 432, 471. Comitia, 133, 224, 287, 288, 292, 29S, 299, 304, 305, .307, 308, 324, 325, 331, 332, 339,. 342, 41?. 500, 502. Comitia Curiata. See Appendix I — calata, 70. Comitia Centuriala, 50, 51, 67, 74, 94, 261, 349, 418, 450, 451, 491. See also Appen- dix I. Comitia Tributa, 94, 98, 417, 418, 450-2, 455, 502. See also Appcndi.x I. and Concilium plebis. Comitium, 39, 44. Comum, 168, 238. Concilium plebis, 65 «., 167, 287, 293, 340, 417, 418, 478, 502. See also Appendix I. Confarreatio, 70. Consentia, 105, 203. Consulship created, 31, 47, 48, 66; opened to plebeians, 92, 94 ; re-election to, 94, 300, 37iyl ; deposition from, 435 ; of Pompey, 468, 521 «., and Ca;sar, 522-4, 542. See also Magistracy Coracesium, battle of, 478 Corcyra, 124, 165, 261, 536. Corduba, 243. Corduene, 472. Corfinium, 7, 403, 409, 528. Corinth, 254, 258, 262, 263 ; fall of, 284, 285. 315 ; revivals of, 347, 359, 544. Coriolanus, C'n. JMarcius, 59-6i,.64 ?;., 65 «. Corioli, 59, 60. Cornelia (mother of the Gracchi), 336. ^3.S3- .. Cornehi, 450. Cornelius. See Cethegus, Cinna, Cossus, Dolabella, Lentulus, Merula, Scipio, Sulla. Corsica, 13, 19, 154, 164, 239. Cortona, 13, 112, 188. Coruncanius, L., 165. Co>vus, 152 «. , 154, 156. Corvus, I\I. Valerius, 90, 100, loi, 378. Corycus (Cyssus), 268. Cosa, L. C. , 164 w., 201, 214. Cosconius, C, 409, 410. Cossus, .^. Cornelius, 79, 80 n. Cossyra, 443. Cothon (Carthage), 145, 249, 251, 252. Cotta, C. Aurelius (cos. 75 B.C.), 399, 468. Cotta, L. Aurelius (cos. 65 B.C.), 469, 4S7. Cotta, L. Aurelius (cos. 119 B.C.), 375. Cotta, M. Aurelius (cos. 74 B.C.), 474. Cotta, L. Aurunculeius, 511. Cotys, 275, 277._ Crassus, C. Licinlus, 385. Crassus, L. Licinius (orator), 387, 395-7. Crassus, M. Licinius Dives, in civil war, 440-3 ; wealth of, 447, 463, 546 ; char- acter, 462 ; conquers gladiators, 466-8 ; consul, 468-70, 519 ; and Catiline, 485, 487, 488, 492, 493 ; fir.st triumvirate, 498- 500, 516, 518 ; at Carrhs, 520, 521. Crassus, P. Licinius Dives (his son), 508, 509, 520. Crassus, P. Licinius (cos. 171 B.C.), 276, ^77- _ . . . Crassus, P. Licinius Dives (cos. 97 B.C.), 372, 404, 405, 437. Crassus, P. Licinius Mucianus (cos. 131 B.C.), 328, 337, 343. Cremera R. , 62. Cremona, 85, 166; L. C, 168, 177, 183, 238. Crete, 264 ; and pirates, 330, 471, 472, 47S; province, 482. Crispinus, T. Quinctius, 21 r, 220, 221. Critolaus (Athenian philosopher), 283. Critolaus (Achaean strategus), 285. Crixus, 466. Croton, 18, 122, 129, 131, 204, 228. Cumae, 13, 18, 37, 100, 104, 202, 204, 458. Curia Hostilia (Senate House), 39, 354, 391, 521, 542. Curia, 23, 44,_ 45. _ Curio, C. Scribonius, 524, 525, 531. Curius, M'. Dentatus, 6, 95, 96, 119, 130. Cursor, L. Papirius (dictator), 107, 112, "3- Cursor, L. Papirius (his son), 119, 130. Curule. See yEdiles, Magistracy. Cybele {jiiagna water), 226, 291, 321. Cydonia, 472. Cvnoscephate, 263, 276, 281. 2 N 562 IMDnX Cyprus, 255, 329, 473 ; occupied, 503, 548. Cyrene, 145, 255, 329 ; Roman, 393, 394. Cyzicus, 257, 474, 482. Dalmatia, 165, 239, 275, 374, 375. Damocritus, 284. Danala, 479. Danube (Ister) R., 375, 424. Dardani, 261, 262, 275, 375. Dardanus, 433. Debt, laws of, 53, 70, 91, 96, loi, 411, 418, 438, 546, 547. See Interest. Decemviiate, 66 f. Decemviri litibus iitdicandis, 55, 71. Decius P. Mus (cos. 340 B.C.), 100, 102, 103. Decius P. Mus (his son), n6-i8. Decius Magius, 201. Decutnie (provincial), 164, 311, 351, 454, 499, 500, 548. Deiotarus, 474, 482. Delium, conference of, 433. Delmiiiium, 374. Delos, 280, 281, 285, 327, 359, 428, 430. Delplii, 258, 374 ; Apollo of, 30, 37, 80, 81, 84, 431. Demetrias, 254, 267, 428, 430. Demetrius Poliorcetes, 124, 125. Demetrius of Pharos, 165, 166, 193, 205. Demetrius, son of Philip V., 274. Demetrius Soter, 282, 329. Democrats. See Populares. Diaeus, 283, 2S5. Dictator, in Latin towns, 98. Dictator, early, 49, 50, 71 «. ; elected, 190, 191 ; two at once, 193 ; chooses Senate, 203 ; dictatorship, decay of, 297, 298 ; of Sulla, 448, 449 ; of Caesar, 541-3. Didius, M., 375. Didius, T. , 372, 394, 404, 409. Diodorus Siculus (historian), 85, 88. Diogenes, 283. Dionysius of Halicarnassus (historian), 35, 53. 57, 68, 77. Dionysius I. of Syracuse, 65 n., 79, 125, 210. Diophanes, 337. Dioscurias, 424. Dium, 277. Divico, 377. Dolabella, P. Cornelius (cos. 283 B.C.), 121, 122. Dolabella, P. Cornelius (cos. 44 B.C.), 540. Domitius, Cn., 270. iJomitius. See Ahenobarbus and Calvinus. Dorylaus, 432. Drepana, 154, 159, 160. Dromichaetes, 430. Druids, 504, 505. Drusus, M. Livius, 353, 354, 358, 359, 375. Drusus, M. Livius (his son), 395-8, 400, 413- 438. Duilius, C, 153-4. Dumnori.\, 506. 511. Druentia (Durance R.), 176, 179, 180. Duria (R.), 326. Durius (Douro R.), 242, 244-5. Dyrrhachium, 282, 434, 528, 531-4. Edurones, 511, 512. Kcnomus, battle of, 155, 156. Egypt and Pyrrhus, 124, 130 ; early rela- tions with Rome, 131, 164, 165, 219, 232; position and power of, 254, 255, 259 ; and Syria, 260, 261, 265-7, 281 ; pro- tected by Rome, 281, 473, 487 ; feuds in, 329, 394, 419, 502, 517, 519; Ca;sar in, 535, 536. . Elephants in war, 126-8, 151, 157, 186, 187, 248, 263, 270, 271. Eleusis, my.steries of, 165. Elis, 212, 258, 268, 272. Elpius R., 278. Emporia, the, 226, 247. Emporiae, 171, 213, 241. Enipeus R., 534. Enna, 211, 233, 327, 328, 392. Ennius, 35, 230. Ephesus, 255, 266, 268, 269, 328, 427. Epicydes, 204, 210. Epidamnus, 165, 282. Epirus, 105, 124, 125, 257, 267, 26S, 277, 280-2, 374, 428, 528, 529, 531-4- Eporedia, R. C, 372. Egiiester Ordo, 133; growth of, 315, 316, 412, 461 ; policy of, 332, 389-91, 435, 438, 461, 491 ; and C. Gracchus, 350, 351, 357, 358; and Senate, 395^., 499; and Sulla, 446, 447, 454, 455 ; restora- tion of, 469 ; in civil war, 527. Kqiiites equo />ublico, centuries of, siv patrici.in, 23, 26, 28, 45, 51 ; eighteen, 28, 45, 51, 139, 294-6, 300, 3:5, 316, 333, 388, 390, 470. Erbessus, 151. Ercte, Mount, i5o. Ergastida (slave-barracks), 327, 436. Erisane, 243. Eryx, 160. Eshmun, temple of, 252. Esquiline, Mount, 27, 38. Etruria (Roman) in Hannibalic war, 167, 191, 207, 220, 224, 225, 231 ; agriculture 'II. 317, 327, 334, 337 ; in social and civil war, 402, 407, 410, 441-3, 447, 448 ; and Catiline, 486, 493, 495. Etruscans (Rasenna), 12-15, ^"^J Fabii, 62, 63 ; decline of, 19, 78, 79, 112, 115. 141 ; disasters of, 79-85, 88-90, 100, J12, 116, 117, 120, 121; architecture, 13, 39, 40; soothsaying, 14, 80, 84. Etruscan kings at Rome, 26, 39, 40, 84 n. Euboea, 267, 285, 428. Eudamus, 270. Euganci, 374. Euhemerism, 35, 321. Eumenes I., 257. Eumenes II., 270, 271, 276, 278, 280, 281, 328. Eunus (Antiochus), 327, 328. Euphrates R., 420, 425, 472, 476, 4S2, 484, 520. Euxine Sea, 421, 424, 425, 474. E.xile, 352, 501-3, Fabii, legend of, 62, 63, 65 «. Fabius, C. (legate of Caesar), 529. INDEX 563 Fabius, M. Buteo, 203. Fabius, C Hadrianus, 440. Fabius, Q. Maximus RiiUianus, censor, 95 ; Magister eguitiiai, 107, 108 ; dictator, III ; conquers Etruria, 12, 112 ; in Sam- niuin, 113, 116, 117 ; at Sentinum, 118, ^ '.9- Fabius, Q. Maximus Gurges (his son), 119. Fabius, Q. Maximus (cunctator), 174 ; dictator, 190, igi ; tactics of, 191-4 ; in Hannibalic war, 200, 202, 203, 206, 219, 220, 225, 228, 229. Fabius, Q. Maximus ^milianus, 243. Fabius, Q. Maximus Servilianus, 243. Fabius, Q- Maximus Allobrogicus (son of iEmilianus), 373. Fabius, Q. Sanga (Maximus Allobrogicus), ^494- Fabius, Q. Pictor (annalist), 59, 112, 200. Fabrateria, 104; R. C, 345, 405. Fabricius, C. Luscinus, 96, 122, 128, 129. Fasulse, 167, 1 83, 464, 493. Falerii, 80, 82, 88, 89, 121, 164. Falernus ager, 9, 192. Falto, P. Valerius, i6t. Faiiiilia, 40. Fannius, C., 353. Fannius, L., 477. Fasces, 26, 31, 49, 50, 526. Faustulus (Faunus), 21, 36. Faventia, 442. Felsina. See Bononia. Ferentina, spring of, 60, 65 tj. Ferentinum, 115. Fericp LathiiF, 16, 398 Fetiales, 24, 109. Fidenae, 38, 79. Fimbria, C. Flavius, 432-4, 441, 474, 476. Finance (Roman), 160, 203, 205, 206, 219, .314, 315. 318, 4'o. 4". 447> 546, 548- Firmum, L. C, 164 «., 405, 407. Flaccus, Cn. Fulvius, 207. Flaccus, L. Fulvius, 108. Flaccus, M. Fulvius (cos. 125 B.C.), 343, 345, 353-5, 373.. Flaccus, Q. Fulvius, 202, 207-10, 219. Flaccus, Q. F'ulvius (liis son), 241. Flaccus, L. Valerius (cos. 195 B.C.), 268, .304- Flaccus, L. Valerius (cos. 100 B.C.), 389, ^439,448. Flaccus, L. Valerius (cos. 86 B.C.), 431, 432, 438. F/aiiien, 24, 86, 95, 321. Flamininus, T. Quinctius, 262-5, 268, 273, 274; 302- Flaminius, C, agrarian law, 166. 1C7, 305-S; democrat, 187, 296 «., 342 ; in Cisalpine Gaul, 16S ; at Lake Trasiniene, 188-90. Flavius, Cn., 94. Flavius, L. , 499. Fonteius, T. , 215. Formije, 104. Forum, 26, 39, 113, 354, 521 ; Boarium, 167 ; Julium, 545. Forum Julii (Fr6jus\ 544. Fossa Cluilia, 24, 38, 60. Franchise, use of, by Rome, 134, 401, 402 ; ■extension of, 94, 104, 108, 115, 345, 346, 353. 357, 396, 397. 407, 408, 4" ; restric- tion of, 95, 309, 310, 412-14, removed, 438 ; Sulla's settlement, 450 ; Trans- padane, 488, 544. See also Caerite, Civitas, Italians. Freedmen, 41, 94, 95, 136, 293, 295, 296, 305, 316, 318, 336, 406, 413, 414. 435, 450, 461, 542. Fregella;, L. C, 7, 104, 106, 109-11, 2oq, 220, 345, 346. Fregenae, R. C. , 164 n. Frentani, 15, no, 403. Frusino, 115. Fucinus Lacus, 7, 8, 15, 40S, 547. Fufidius, L., 464. Fulvius. See Centumalus, Flaccus, and Nobilior. Fundi, 104. Gabii, 29, 30, 37, 209. Gabinius, A., 410. Gabinius, A. fcos. 58 n.c), 477, 478, jtq Gades, 146, 170, 217, 219, 242, 544. Gaesatae, 167, 168. Gaetuli, 367, 369, 371. Galatians, 255-7, 281, 374, 424, 474, 482. Galba, C. Sulpicius, 365. Galba, P. Sulpicius (cos. 200 B.C.), 261, 262. Galba, S. Sulpicius, 242, 243, 304. Gallaeci, 241;. Games, Isthmian, 165, 264 ; Roman, 233, 320. Garganus, Mount, 4, 7, 466. Gauda, 371. Gaul, Cisalpine, 3, 5, 12, 166, 16S, 175, 188, 204, 225, 231, 238, 239, 317, 408, 441, 442; province, 412, 453, 502, 523-6; Transpadane, 309, 374, 461, 486, 488. Gaul (Narbonensis), province, 373-4, 438, 443, 502-4, 544- Gaul, Transalpine, Hannibal in, 176-8 ; wars in, 239, 345, 372 ff., 465 ; Caesar in, 504 JC ; province, 514, 523-6, 547. Gauls, in Italy, 11, 12, 79; tribes of, 84, 85, 166 ; character of, 84, 85 ; attack Rome, 85-8, 90; wars with Rome, 115- 118, 121, 122, 166-8, 177, 199 ; in Cartha- ginian army, 148, 186-8, 196. 197, 221, 223 ; in Greece, 254, 278 ; in Balkan Peninsula, 374, Transalpine. 377, 504, 505- Gellius, Egnatms, 116-8. Gelo of Syracuse, 65 n., 125. Genava, 503, 506. Gens, 41, 42. Genthius, 276, 278. Genua, 3, 225. Genucius, Cn., tribune (472 B.C.), 58. Genucius, L., tribune (339 B.C. ),ioi. Gereonium, 192, 194. Gergovia, 512. Germans, 3757C, 505-7, 509, 510. Glabrio, M' Acilius (cos. 191 B.C.), 268. Glabrio, M'. Acilius (cos. 67 B.C.), 477, 479- Gladiators, 14, 100, 233, 320, 379; war with, 466-8. 5^4 INDEX Glauria, C. Servilius, 388-91. Gordius, 424-6. Gracchi, the, 187 ; ideas of, 320, 338, 373, 385, 389, 417, 448, 502; failure of, 325, 357, 359> 398.. Gracchus, Cloehus, 61. Gracchus, C. Sempronius, character, 337, 346: agrarian law, 341, 343, 347; and Italians, 346, 353; colonies, 347, 348, 354, 545, lex frumentaria, 348, 349 ; and equites, 350, 351, 394, 420, 454; other reforms, 351, 353, 451 ; fall of, 353-6 ; criticism of, 356, 3^7. Gracchus, Ti. Sempronius (238 B.C.), 164. Gracchus, Ti. Sempronius (cos. 215 I'-.c), 202-4, 206, 207. Gracclius, Ti. Sempronius (cos. 177 n.c), 239, 241, 242, 245, 303, 336. _ Gracchus, Ti. Sempronius (trib. 133 n.c), at Numantia, 244 ; character, 336, 337 ; agrarian law, 337-40, 343, 347 ; fall of, 341, 342> 346> 352- Gracchus, pseudo-, 390. Graecia, Magna, 18, 100, 120, 126. Greece, contrast with Italy, 2, 3 ; factions of, 212, 258, 262, 265, 280; decay of, 265, 276, 283 ; and Rome, 257-60, 264, 265; conquest of, 284-7; Mithradatic war, 428, 429. See also Achaia and Hellenism. Grumentum, 204, 222, 405. Gulussa, 250, 365. Hadrumetum, 228-30. Halys R., 271, 422, 475. Hamse, 204. Hamilcar, Punic general, 154, 156. Hamilcar, officer of Mago, 238. Hamilcar Barca, 147 ; in Sicily, 160-2 ; in mercenary war, 163, 164 ; statesman, i6q ; in Spain, 170, 171. Hannibal, son ofGisgo, 150, 151, 154. Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, 158. Hannibal, son of Hamilcar Barca, 168, 17c; character, 171, 172; plans, 175; takes .Saguntum, 172-4 ; march to the Rhone, 176-8 ; crosses the Alps, 178-82 ; victories of the Ticinus, 183 ; the Trebia, 185 7 ; crosses Apennines and Arno, 187, 188; at Trasimene, i8g, 190 ; and Fabius, 191-3 ; at Canna;, 194-8 ; at Capua, 201 _/?, and Macedon, 205, 212, 213 ; takes Tarentum, 206; fails at Capua, 207-10; march on Rome, 208, 209 ; and Sicily, 210-12 ; in South Italy, 219-25 ; re- called to Carthage, 228 ; at Zama, 229- 231; makes peace, 231, 232; exile of, 247 ; and Antiochus, 266-70 ; death of, 273-. Hannibal the Rhodian, 158. Hanno, Punic admiral (264 B.C.), 150. Hanno, son of Hannibal, 151. Hanno, Punic general (262 B.C.), 151, 156. Hanno in Corsica, 154. Hanno, Admiral, at Lilybaeum, 161. Hanno "the Great," 169, 171. Hanno in Spain (218 B.C.), 176, 213. Hanno, son of Bomilcar, 178. Hanno, officer of Hannibal, 204, 206, 207. Hanno in Sicily (211 n.c), 212. Hanno in Spain (208 B.C.), 218. Hasdrubal, officer of Hannibal, 197, 198. Hasdrubal, grandson of Massinissa, 249. Hasdrubal Calvus, 205. Hasdrubal the Fat, 248-53. Hasdrubal, son of Gisgo, 214, 215, 218, 219, 225-7. Hasdrubal, son of Hamilcar Barca. in Spain, 176, 213-5, 217, 218; march to Italy, 221 ; at the Metaurus, 222, 223. Hasdrubal, son-in-law of Hamilcar Barca, 170, 171. Hasdrubal, son of Hanno, 156, 157. Hastati, 138, 230. Hatria (Hadria), L. C, 119, 122. Hellenism at Rome, 234, 262, 265, 303 304, 320, 321, 333, 337, 356 ; in the East 422, 424. Hellespont, 238, 268-70, 428, 432, 433. Helvetii, 239, 374, 377, 506. Heraclea, 129, 135, 206, 309, 411; battle of, 126, 127. Heraclea Pontica, 475 ; Heraclea Tra- chinia, 285. Herculaneum, 107, 409. Herdonea, 201 ; battles of, 207, 219. Hermaean, Cape, battle of, 157. Herminius, '1'., 32, 33. Hernici, 16, 78, So, 98, 99, 102, 113, 114; league with, 64. Herodotus, 12 n., 37. Hiarbas, 443. Hiempsal 1., 361. Hiempsal II., 417, 443. Hiero I., 13, 78, 79, 125. Hiero II., policy and position of, 18, 163, 164, 204, 210, 247 ; finance of, 311 ; ally of Rome, 151, 159, 185, 187 ; and Mamer- tines, 150, 151 ; death, 204. Hieronymus (his son), 204, 210. Himera, 157; battles of, 146, 212. Himilco (at Lilybaium), 158. Himilco (2nd Punic war), 211, 214, Himilco Phameas, 249, 251. Hippocrates, 204, 210, 211. Hirpini, 15, 17 «., 201, 409, 410. Hirtuleius, L., 464, 465. Horatius, M. Barbatus, 69. Horatii, legend of, 24, 25, 37. Horatius, M., 32. Horatius Codes, 32, 59. Hortensius, Q., 479. Hortensius, L., 429-31. Human sacrifice, 200, 385. Hypsaeus, L. Plautius, 328. Iapvdes, 374, 375. lapygians, 16, 17. lassus, 471. Ibera, battle of, 214. Iberus (Ebro) R., 171, 213-5, 4^4, 465, 529. 53'- Ilerda, carnpaign of, 529-31, 540. Iliturgi, 214, 21Q. INDEX 565 Ilium, 433. Illyria, 4, 17, 165, 166, 168, 213, 277, 278, 280, 326, 375, 377. Illyricuin, 453, 502. Imagines, 73, 300, 369. Iiiipetinm, of king, 42, 46 ; of consul, 47, 49, 54 ; of dictator, 50, 54 ; doiiii ct tnilitiie, 49, 452-4. Iiii/'eriuin prxonsulare, 107, 297, 31 1-3, 325, 452-4, 472 «., 517; conferred Ijy people, 478, 479; irregidar, 464; taken away, 378, 385. Indutiomarus, 511. Iiisiibres, 85, 166, 168, 175, 183, 238. Interamna, Lirinas, 7; L. C, iii, ii3. Interamna (Terni), 6. Intercatia, 242. Iiitercessio, of a consul, 47 ; of tribune, 54, 72. 298. 340. 34' > 352. 353. 364, 45 •> 452, 478, 525- ^ , Interest, rate of, fixed by law, 70, loi, 411 ; high rates, 317, 475, 548. Inter-rex, 42, 95, 109, 448. Intibili, 214. Ipsus, battle of, 124. Isara (Isere) R., 178-80, 373. Tsauri, 472, 474, 482. Issa, 165. Istria, 168, 239, 374. Italia (Corfinium), 403. Italica (in Spain), 240, 314, 465. Italians, relation of communities to Rome, 133-5, 308-10, 401, 402, 411, 412, 450; misgovernment of, 302, 309, 310, 40T, 402 ; expelled from Rome, 309, 345, 353 ; franchise of, 345, 346, 353, 357, 389, 395, 397-9, 407, 408 ; and agrarian laws, 340. 343-S> 347. 359 ; "n social war, 399- 412 ; and Sulla, 447, 448, 461 ; and Cicero, 516; and Csesar, 525-9, 531, 544-7- , . , Italy, and Rome, i, ig, 20; geographical position, 2, 142, 143 ; mountains of, 3-5 ; rivers of, 5-7 ; lakes of, 8 ; races, n-18 ; climate and products, 8-ii ; agriculture in, 316-18, 334-6, 347, 545-7 ; extension to the Padus, 408, cf. 453 ; contrast with Greec", 2, 3, 11 ; contrast with provinces, 310. 3". 453- Itius, Portus, 510. Janiculum, Mount, 19, 24, 25, 38, 59, 86, 96, 491. Jannajus, Alexander, 482. Jerusalem, 482. Jews, 329, 480-2. Juba I., 527, 551, 538, 540. Judacilius, C, 405, 406, 408. Judices, 297, 350, 397, 408, 455; 461, 469. See also Equester Ordo, Lex iudiciaria, and Quirstioncs. Jugurtha, character, 361 ; war with Adher- bal, 361, 362 ; at Rome, 364, 365 ; war with, 364-71 ; capture and death, 371, 379- . TuUa, wife of Marius, 368, 491. Julia, daughter of Caesar, 500, 521. Julius. See Caesar. Junius. ^■fV Brutus, Pennus, Pera, Pullus, and Silanus. Junonia (Carthage), 348. Jupiter, Juno, &c. See Temple. Jura Mountain, 506. Jtis Arhnini, 309. /its auspiciorutn, 291. • Jus coniibii et coimuercii, 98, 103, 134 n. Jus gentium, 297. Kakni, 362, 374, 375. Kings at Rome, powers of, 42-4 ; com- pared with consul and diet. tor, 47-50; dominion of, 58, 59 ; kingship revived by Cresar, 542-4. Knights. See Equester Ordo, Eqiiites. Labici, 77, 78. Labienus, T., 491, 492, 50S, 51 1-4, 526, 537-q- Laconians, 264, 428. Lade, 260. Lseca, M. Porcius, 493. Laelius, C. (cos. 190 B.C.), 216, 225, 227, 230. Laelius, C. Sapiens (his son), 243, 252, 336, 345- Lsenas, C. Popillius(cos. 172 B.C.), 276, 281. Laenas, M. Popillius (cos. 173 B.C.), 276. Laenas, M. Popillius (cos. 139 n.c), 243, 244. _ Laenas, P. Popillius (cos. 132 B.C.), 339, 34?, 352, 358- , . , Laivmus, M. Valerius (cos. 210 B.C.), 203, 204, 212, 220, 225. Laivinus, P. Valerius (cos. 280 B.C.), 126, 127. Lamponius, M., 405, 410, 442. Lampsacus, 474. Lanuvium, 104. Laodicea, 427. Larissa, 263, 267, 268, 276, 277, 534, 535. Lartius, Sp., 32. Lartius, T. , 33. Latins, magistrates of, 98 ; rights of, 98 ; demands of, loi ; war with, 102, 103 ; help Rome, So, 127. See also Italians. Latin league, 16 ; allied with Rome, 63, 64, 97, 98 ; closing of, 99 ; dissolution of, 103 ; reorganised under Rome, 103, 104, 135 n. Lata ills, 103, 104, 135,309, 310, 353, 401 ; extended outside Italia, 408, 544. See Franchise and Colonies. Latium, 14, 16, 142, 145. Lautulae, pass of, 95, loi, in. Law, primitive Roman, 66 ; twelve tables, 70, 71, 352 ; formulas published, 95 ; connected with religion, 290-2 ; adminis- tration of, 297 ; equity, 297 ; code of Sulla, 455. See a\^o Lex unAQuees tiones. Lebanon, Mount, 480. Lectum, 433. Legends, of the kings, 20-31 ; sources of, 34-7 ; of the early Republic, 31-4, 59- 63; criticism, 59, 64, 65 «. ", of decem- virate, 68, 69 ; of Maelius, 76, 77 ; of Camillus and the Gauls, 8o-go. 566 INDEX Legion, development of, 102, 137-9, 379 '• contrasted with phalanx, 125, 126, 128, 263, 264, 279. Scf Army and Phalanx. Ligioncs CafiiuHses, 198, 200, 203, 207, 224, 230. I.emnos, 280. Lentulus, Cn. Cornelius (cos. 201 B.C.), 231. Lentulus, L. Cornelius (cos. 275 n.c), 130. Lentulus, L. Cornelius, Crus. (cos. 49 B.C.), 525- Lentulus, P. Cornelius, 231. Lentulus, P. Cornelius Sura, 493, 494. Leontini, 210; land of, 211, 325, 335. Lepidus, M. .iEmilius (cos. 187 h.c), 260. Lepidus, M. .i^imilius (Porcina), (cos. 137 B.C.), 244. Lepidus, M. .(Emilius (cos. 78 B.C.), 4.59, 463-5- Lepidus, M. /Emilius (his son), triumvir, 529- Leucas, 280. Le.\ JEWa. Fufia, 293 Leges agrariae, 57, 58, 95, 359 ; Licinia, 9ti 92, 336, 338 ; Flaminia, 166, 167, 306-8 ; Sempronia, 338, 341, 343-5, 347 ; Livia, 353, 354 ; Thoria, 359 ; Appuleia, 387, 389, 391 ; Servilia, 490 ; Julia, 500. Leges Appuleiae. 387, 391. Lex Aurelia iudiciaria, 469. Lex CKcilia Didia, 394. Lex Calpurnia de Repetundi-;, 313, 333, ■ 45'- Lex Canuleia, 73. Lex Claudia, 315, 317. Leges CornelisE (88 B.C.), 417, 418, cf. 438. (81-80 B.C.), 387, 449-56. <:/• 469. 47°- Lex curiata de imperio, 51. Lex Domitia, 289, 385, 492. Leges Frumentariae, Sempronia, 348, 349 ; various, j6o, 388, 390, 396, 451, 456, 464, 502 ; Julia, 545. Lex Gabinia, 472 «., 477, 478. Lex Hortensia, 96, 417. Lex Icilia, 55. Leges iudiciariae. See Lex Aurelia, Cal- purnia, Cornelia, Livia, Sempronia, Servilia. Le.\ Julia (90 B.C.), 407. Leges Julia; (59 B.C.), 499-5oi- (49-4 + B.C.), 544-8. Lex Junia de peregrinis, 345, 346. Leges Liciniae Sexti^, 91, 92, 336, 338. Lex Licinia Mucia, 395. Leges Ljviae (122 B.C.), 353, 354. Leges Li viae (91 B.C.), 396, 397, Lex Manilla, 479. Lex Ogtilnia, 95, 288. Lex Ovinia, 96, I33, 455. Lex Peducaea, 385. Lex Plautia Papiria, 407, 413. Lex Poetelia, 96. Lex Pompeia (9 B.C.), 408. Leges Pompeiae (52 B.C.), 522-5. Lex Publilia Voleronis, 55. Leges Publiliae Philonis, 94. Lex Roscia, 470. Lex Sacrata, 55, 56. Leges Sempronia; of Ti. Gracchus, 337- 341 ; of C. Gracchus, 346-54. Lfjges ServiliiE iudiciariae, 360, 384, 388. Leges Sulpicia;, 413, 414, 4:7. Leges sumptuari«e, 206, 320, 456, 546. Leges tabellaria;, 333, 344, 377. Lex Valeria, 48, 71. Leges ValerieE Horatiae, 71. Lex Villia Annalis, 300, 452. Libo, L. Scribonius, 531. Libyans, 145, 146, 230. Licinius. See Crassus, LucuUus, Macer, i\Iurena, Nerva, Stolo. Liger (Loire) R., 508, 509. Ligurians, 11, 166, 225; troops, 148, 221, 379 ; wars with, 164, 239, 276, 372, 373. Lilybaeum, 129, 157-62, 176, 185, 203, .393- Lingones, 85, 166, 168. Lipara, 154, 157, 185. Liris (R.), 7, 16, 95, 99, 104, no, 114, 345, 405, 417. Lissus, 165. Liternum, 203. Livius, C, 268, 269. Livius. See Drusus and Salinator. Livy (T. Livius), 53, 57, 59, 63, 64 «., 68, 69, 78, 79«., 85 «., 87, 88, go, 116, 177, 179, 180, 185, 190. Locri, 122, 129, 130, 204, 220, 221, 225. Longus, Ti. Sempronius, 177, 182 «., 1S5, 186. Luca (Volscian), 104. Luca (Lucca), 187 ; conference at, 518. Lucania, 116, 122, 130, 207, 219, 222, 223, 405, 410, 419, 466, 467. Lucanians, 16, 17, 100, 105, 106, 112, 116, 120, 126, 127, 129, 130, 201, 231, 402, 403.. 435, 441, 442, 447- Luceria, 108, no; L. C, in, 118, 127, ?oi, 204, 206, 528. Luceres, 23, 44. Lucilius, C, 345. Lucretia, legend of, 31. Lucretius, C, 276, 277. Lucterius, 512. Lucullus, L: Licinius (cos. 151 B.C.), 242. LucuUus, L. Licinius (his son), 393. Lucullus, L. Licinius (his son), admiral of Sulla, 430, 432, 433 ; war with Mithra- dates, 474, 475 ; with 'I'igranes., 475, 476 ; retreats, 477 ; recalled, 479 ; in his province, 328, 475, 482 ; at Rome, 462, ''96- , . . . Lucullus, M. Licmius (his brother), 442, 471. Luenus, 373. Luna, 1S7 ; R. C, 239, 372. Lupercus, 21, 36; Luperci, 38; Luper- calia, 543. Lupus. See Rutilius. Lusitanians, 242-4, 304, 372, 457, 464. Lutatius. Sec Catidus. Lycia, 255, 427, 472, 478. Lyciscus, 276, 2S0. Lycortas, 258, 273. Lysimachia, 260, 266. Lysimachus of Thrace, 124, 125. INDEX 5^7 Maccabees, 329, 4S2 Macedon, kingdom of, and Pyrrlius, 124, 125, 130; and Rome, 164, 165; and H.innibal, 175, 191, 200, 204, 205; wars witli, 212, 213, 261-5, 276-9; power and policy of, 254, 257-60, 272 ; settlement of, 279-80 ; revolts, 282 ; made a pro- vince, 282, 283. Macedonia, province, 282, 283, 286, 31 r, 326, 372, 374, 428, 429, 432, 433, 471, 490. Macer, C. Licinius, 468. Machanidas, 213. Machares, 480 Maelius, Sp., 76, 77. Mscnius, 104, III. Magalia (Megara), 249, 251. Magister cqnituiit, 48, 50. Magistracy, collegiate character of, 47, 48, 76, 141 ; division of, 76, 96, 175, 298, 299 ; control of, by Senate, 97, 133, 258, 209; annual tenure, 47, 48, 141, 175; order of (cursus honorinii), 300, 301 ; re- organised by Sulla, 452-4, and Pompey, 522, and CcEsar, 542. Magius Minatius, 402, 409. Magnesia, under Mount Sipylus, 427 ; battle, 270, 271, 272, 281, 420. Mago, son of Hamilcar Barca, under Hannibal, 175, 188, 200; at the Trebia, 186 ; in Spain, 214, 215, 218, 219 ; in Liguria, 225 ; dies, 226. Mago, Pujiic author, 318. Maharbal, 173, 175, 190, 197, 200. Matesfas, 3S7, 398, 408, 453. Mallius, Cn. IVLwiimus, 377, 378. Mamertines, 127, 129, 131, 150. Mamertine prison. See TuUianum. Mamiliu^. C. Limetanus, 365. Mancinus, A. Hostilius(cos. 170 B.C.). 277. Mancinus, C. Hostilius (cos. 137 li.c), 244. i:-7- Mancinus, L. Hostilius (cos. 145 B.C.), 251. Maniiius, C. , 479. Manilius, M'., 24*^, 249. Manlius, C, 493. Manlius, M. (Capitolinu.s), 87, 88, 91 «. Manlius. See Torqu-.tus and Volso. Mantinea, battle of (207 B.C.), 213. Marcellus, C. L laudius (cos. 50 B.C.), 524. Marcelhn, C Claudius (cos. 49 B.C.), 525. Marcellus, M. Claudius, vi'ins sjf>olia o/>i ma, 168 ; in Campania, 202-4, 206 ; in Sicily, 210; takes Syracuse, 211, 219; death, 220, 221. Marcellus, M. Claudius, his son (cos. ig6 B.C.), 238. Marcellus, M. Claudius (cos. 51 B.C.), 524. Marcius, C, 215. Marcius, Q. Tremulu=, 114. Marcius. See Censorinus, Coriolanus, Re.\, Philippus, Rutilus. Marius, C. , tribune, 360, 361; in Spain, 245, 372 ; legate of Metellus, 366, 367 ; character and consulate, 367, 368; com- mands in Africa, 369-71 ; reorganises army, 314, 325, 378-81 ; at Aquae Sextiae, 3S1, 382 ; at Raudii Canipi, 382-4 ; in politics, 384, 388, 389 ; and .Satmninu-, 3S9-91 ; fall, 391 ; in Social war, 404, 406, 408 ; and Sulpicius, 412- 414, 416 ; flight, 417 ; return, 436 ; mas- sacres and death. 437, 438, 446 ; and Cae.sar, 460, 503. Marius, C. (the younger), 417, 435, 440-3, 447- Marius, Egnatius, 405. 409. Marius, M. Gratidianus, 446. Marriage. See Confai reatio, Co-eviptio, Usns. Ins conubii. Marrucini, 15, 403, 406, 408. Mars, 15, 21, 35. Marsi. 7, 15, 113, 115, 220, 403, 406, 408. Massilia, 141, 142, 145, 177, 178, 239, 286, 320, 359, 372, 373, 504, 522, 529, 531. Massinissa, 214, 219, 225-7, 229-31, 247-9, 360, 361. M;4ssiva, 365. Mastanabal, 250, 361. Matho, 163. Mauretania. 247, 360. 364. Meddi.x Tuticus, 201. Mediolanum, 85, 166, 168. Megellus, L. Postumius, 114 (i^^r Errata), iiS, 123. Melita I., 146, 185. Melpum, 12, 79, 84. Memmius, C, 364, 389-91. Menapii, 510, 512. Menenius Agrippa, 54. Mercenaries, at Carthage, 148; war with, 162, 163. 169. Merula, L. Cornelius, 435, 437. Mesopotamia, 420, 472, 484, 5i'o. Messalla, M'. Valerius Ma.ximu^, 151. Messana, 18, 127, 129, 131, 150, 151, 164, 327- Mfssene, 258, 264, 26S, 272, 273. Messius, C, 517. Metapontum, 112, 206, 223. Metaurus R., 7 ; battle of, 222, 223. Metella, Caecilia, 458. Metellus, L. CeEcilius (cos. 251 B.C.), 157, '58. Metellus, Q. Caicilius Baliaricus (cos. 123 B.C.), 245, 330. Metellus, Q. Cacilius Celer (cos. 60 B.C.), 495- Metellus, Q. Csecilius Creticus (cos. 6g B.C.), 472, 478, 496. Metellus, L. Cjecilius Creticus (trib. 49 B.C.), 529. Metellus, L. Caecilius Dalmaticus (cos. 119 B.C.), 375. Metellus, Q. CsEcilius Macedonicus, 244, 2S2, 285, 337, 345, 346, 355. Metellus, Q. Cascilius Nepos (cos. 98 B.C.), 394- Metellus, Q. Caecilius Nepos (cos. 57 B.C.), 496, 497, 499- . . Metellus, Q. Cacilius Numidicus (cos. 109 B.C.), in Num dia, 366-9, 371 ; censor, 388 ; e.\iled, 390 ; returns, 391. Metellus, Q. Csecilius Pius (cos. 80 B.C.), in social and civil war, 410, 419, 4^6, 437, 440-2 ; and Sulla, 446, 458 ; politician, 462, 486 ; in Spain, 464, 465 ; dies. 568 INDEX Metellus, Q. Cacilius Scipio, 522, 525, 534, 537- 538- Metilius, M., 193. Mevaiiia, battle of, 113. Mezentius, 20, 40. Micipsa, 250, 361. Miletus, 260. Milo (Epirot), 124, 129, 130. ISIilo, T. Annius, 516, 521, 522, 540 ]\Iinciiis R., 5, 8, 11, 12, 238. Minervia, 347. Minturna;, 7; R. C, 119, 417. Minucius, L. (Augurinus, cos, 45S n.c ), 61. Minucius, L. (? C.) (Augurinus), 76. Minucius, Ti., 114. Minucius, M. Rufus, magister equittiin, 191 ; co-dictator, 193, 198, 305. Minucius, M. (? Q.) Rufus (cos. no n.c.)i 375- Mithradates I., of Parthia (Arsaces), 329. Mithradates V., of Pontus, 329, 420, 421. Mithradates VI., of Pontus, the Great, accession of, 329, 421 ; intrigues, 388, 391, 410 ; and Sulla, 394 ; and Sertorius, 466; aggressions of, 412, 424-6; char- acter of, 421, 422 ; 1st war with, 426-33 ; 2nd war with, 445, 460 ; 3rd war with, 471, 473-7- 479. 480; death, 480. Mithradates, of Perganium, 536. Mitylene (iMytilene), 427, 445, 460, 483. Molochath R., 360, 369. Mommsen, Prof. Th., 58 «., 64, 65 «., 69, 77 «., 85 «., 91 «., 99 II., 103 «., 122 ft., 296 «., 463. Morgantia, 392. Mosa (Meuse) R. , 510. Motye, 145. Mucins. See Scsevola. Mulvius, Pons, 464. Mummius, L. , 242, 285 286. Munatius, 429, 430. Mnnda, 539, 542. Municipal system, 134, 135, 408, 411, 412, 4So,_ 544, 545, cf. 482, 483. See also Latin league. Municipia, 135, 309, 411. See Ceerite franchise, Civitas sine siiffragio. Munychia, 430. Murena, L. Licinius, 430, 434, 445, 493. Muthul K., 366. _ Mutilus, C. Papius, 404, 405, 409, 410. Mutina, R. C, 168, 239, 464. Muttines, 212. Mylse, battle of, 154. Myonnesus, battle of, 270. Mytilene. See Mitylene. NABAT^ANa, 480, 482. Nabis, 257, 262, 264, 267. Nar R., 6, 15. Naraggara, 229. Narbo Martius, R. C, 34B, 358, 373, 504, Narnia (Nequinum), L. C, 15, 115, 16 222, 296 n., 405. Nasica. See Scip!o. Naupactus, 254, 258, 259, 268. Navy of Carthage, 142 _^., :52, 156, 175, 176, 231, 232. Navy of Mithradates, 428y!, 474, 475. Navy, Roman, weakness of, 141-3, 149, 152, 165 ; inactivity of, 232 ; creation of, 152, 153, 157, 158, 160; allies in, 152; decay of, 302, 314, 429, 471 ; drawn from allies, 261, 262, 268-70, 282, 430, 432, 433 ; under Pompey, 478, 527,/^ Neapolis, 18, 106, 107, 135, 193, 202, 203, 309, 402, 411, 443. Nemossus, 373. Nepete, 82 ; L. C, 88, 405. Nepheris, 252. Neptunia (Tarentum), 347. Nero. See Claudius. Nerva, P. Licinius, 392. Nervii, 508, 511, 512. Nicaea (Nice), 372. Nicanor, 263. Nicomedes IL, 392, 420, 424, 425. Nicomedes IIL, 425, 426, 473. Nicomedia, 475. Nicopolis, 479, 483. Nile R., 519, 536. Nisibis, 477. Nobiles, rise of, 96, 287, 299-302. Nobilior, KL Fulvius(i89 h.c), 272. Nobilior, Q. Fulvius(i53 B.C.), 242. Nola, 107, no, in, 202-4, 206, 309,405, 409, 410, 419, 435, 443. Nomentum, 104. Nonius (Nunnius), Q., 389. Norba, 443. Norbanus, C, 378, 387, 391, 413, 439, 440, 442. Noreia, 374, 377. Norici, 374, 375. Novce Tabula", 411, 540, 546. Novus homo, 233, 300, 304, 394, 488. Nuceria, 107, no, 113, 202, 392, 405. Numa Pompilius, 24, 25, 34, 37. Niunantia, 242, 244, 245, 326, 342, 361. Numidia, chiefs of, 214, 218-19, 225-9 > kingdom of, 247-8, 250, 251, 253, 360-1, 371. 443> 527 ; wars in, 364-71, 443, 531, 538; . Numidian cavalry, in Pumc army, 146, 148, 177, 186, 196-8, 220, 227, 230-1, 249 ; in Roman army, 251, 314, 379, 405. Ohnuntiatio, 293. Occupatio, 56, 57, 306, 317, 335, 336, 338, 340. 343. 359- Ocilis, 242. Ocriculum, T13, 115. Octavius (Octavianus), C. Sec Augustus. Octavius, Cn., 329. Octavius, Cn. (cos. 87 B.C.), 419, 435-7. Octavius, M. (tribune, 133 B.C.), 340, 341, 353- Octavius, M. (admiral), 531. (Enomaus, 466. Ofella, Q. Lucretius, 441, 442, 457. Olcades, 172. Oligarchy at Rome, 287, 288, 299-302 ; re INDEX 569 stored, 357, 35S, 462 ; overtlirown, 469, 541. See Of'iiviates and Parties. Opiniius, L. (cos. 121 B.C.), 345, 354, 356, 358, 361. 362, 365. Opimius, Q. (cos. 154 b.c)., 239, 372. Oppius, Q., 426, 427. Ofitimates, 343, 412, 417, 485, 486, 488, 522-5. See also Oligarchy and Parties. Orchomenus, battle of, 432. Orestes, L. Aureliiis (cos. 157 B.C.), 284. Orestes, L. Aiirelius (cos. 126 B.C.), 346. Oreslis, 264. Oricum, 533. Oringis, 218. Orodes, 520, 521. Oropiis. 283. Ortygia, 210, 21 1. Osca, 465, 466. Oscans, 14, 16, 17, 106, 107. Ossa Mountain, 277. Ostia, 6; R C, 25, 38, 191, 202, 349, 387, 4 '7. 436, 472- Otacilius, T. Crassus, 194. Cxyntas, 405. Pacorus, 521. Padus (Po) R., 5, 383; plain of, ii, 13, 85, 166, 442, 464. Sec also Gaul, Cis- alpine. Pasligni, 15, 113, 278, 403, 406, 408. Pa;stum, 7, 11, 105 ; L. C, 164 «., 193, 201, Pa;tus, P. Autronius, 487. Palsopolis. 106, 107. Palatine, Mount, 21, 22, 27, 37, 38. Palestine, 28 1, 480. Pallantia, 242, 244. Palma, ^j^o. Paniphylia, 255, 2S1, 472, 482. Pana;tius, 320. 345. Paniuin, Mount, battle of, 266. Panormus, 145, 154, 157, 160; battle of, 157. 158. Panticapaeum, 424, 480 Paphlagonia, 424-7, 433. Papirius. See Carbo, Cursor. Papius. See Brutulus and Mutilus. Papus, L. /Emilius, 167. Parma, R. C, 239. Parthia, ri^e of, 238, 254, 255, 329, 330, 4?o ; and Sulla, 394, 425 ; and Tigranes, 472, 476, 479 ; and Pompey, 484 ; and Crassus, 518-21 ; and Cassar, 543. 550. Parties at Rome, beginnings of, 187, 193, 194 ; nullity of, 235, 287, 304, 324, 332, 358 ; struggles of, ;84, 391, 434/, A,to/., 485, 486, 497, 498, 519. Patara, 472. Fairia potestas, 40, 70. Patricians, government of, 51, 52; e.\ , clusiveness of, 73. 74 ; power broken, 96. Patruin atictoritas, 44, 50, 51, 94. Paullus, L. yEmilius (cos. 219 b.c), 166, 194. 196, 198. Paullus, I,. ./Emilius (Macedonicus, cos. 181 B c), in Spain, 241, 251 ; at Pydna, 278, 279, 281. 282 ; Hellenist, 320. Paullus, L. jEmilius (Lepidus, cos. 50 B.C.), 524. Pedum, 104. Pella, 278. Peloponnesus, 258, 264, 268, 272, 276, 283 Pelusium, 281, 519, 535, 536. Pennus, M. Junius, 345. Pera, M. Junius, 202, 298. Petduetlio, 377, 453, 491. Pergamum, kingdom of, 255-7 ! I olicy of, 259, 260 ; and Antiochus, 262, 267, 270, 271 ; and Rome, 212, 232, 264, 271, 272, 2S0, 281 ; left to Rome, 328 ; town of, 427, 428, 432. Pericles, i, 356, 357, 497, 541 Perperna, C, 406. Perperna, M. (cos. 130 B.C.), 328. Perperna, M. (Marian), 443, 464, 466. Perseus, 274-9, 282. Perusia, 13, 112, 118, 188. Pessinus, 226, 291. Petelia, 203, 220. Petra (Arabia), 480. Petra (Epirus). 534. Petreius, M., 495, 529-31, 538. Phalanna, 277. Phalan.v, Greek, 125, 126, 128, 130, 254, 263, 264, 270, 271, 278, 279 ; Italian, 46, 85. i.S7,.294- Phanagoria, 424. Pharisees, 482. Pharnaces, 480, 536. Pharos, 165, 166. Pharsalus, battle of, 534, 535. Phasis R., 480. Philetccrus, 257, Philippi, 429. Philip V. of Macedon, 166 ; and Hanni- bal, 200, 202, 205, 225 ; ist war with Rome, 212, 213 ; power of, 254 ; ch:ir- acter, 259 ; and Antiochus, 260, 261, 265-8, 272 ; 2nd war with Rome, 261-5 '• last years, 273-5 Philippus. L. Marcius (cos. gi B.C.), 396, 3.97, 438, 440, 443- Philippus, Q. Marcius (cos. 1S6 B.C.), 276-8, 280. Philip, pseudo-, 251, 282. Philo. See Publilius. Philocharis, 122. Philocles, 262. Philopoemen, 213, 258, 261, 267, 272, 273. Phocaeans, 19, 145. Phoenicia, ^55, 268 ; Phoenicians (in Sicily), 18, 125, 143, 146, 149. Phraates, 476, 479, 484. Phrygia, 254, 329, 420, 421, 473. Picentines, 15, 115, 403. Picenum, 166, 191, 204, 220, 400, 405-8, 440, 441, 52S. Pilutit, 102, 139. Pinna, 402. Piraeus, 267, 428, 430, 431. Pirates (Baliaric), 245, (Illyrian) 165, 278, 280, 374, (Cretan, &c.), 314, 327, (Cilician) 393, 426, 466, 467, 473 ; power of, 471 ; war with, 472 ; ended by Pompey, 478, 483. Pisae, 166, 167, 182, 187, 372. Pisaurum, R. C, 239. 570 INDEX Piso, C. Calpurnius (cos. i8o B.c.)i 241. Piso, Cn. Calpurnius (Catilinariaii), 487, 48S, 490. Piso, L. Ca'purnius (Frugi, cos. 133 B.C.), 333- Piso, L. Calpurnius (Ca;sonnius, cos. 112 n-t.). 377- Piso. See also Bestia. Placentia, L. C, 5, 168, 177, 183, 185-7, 221, 238, 239, 442_. Plaiicus, '1'. Munatius Bursa, 521, 522. Plautius, M. Silvanus, 408. Plebs origin of, 41, 42, 44 ; secessions of, 54, 6g, 96 ; admitted to the Senate, 50 ; to decemvirate, 67 ; to consular tribu- nate, 73, 74, 76 ; to quaestorship, 76 ; to consulate, 92, cf. 296 ; to other offices, 94, cf. 346 ; to priesthoods, 95, 28S, 291, 292; grievances of, 52_/C, 72, 73, 82; and the ius conubii, 71, 73; later mean- ing of, 349. See also Concilium and Tribunes. Plebiscitnin, 55, 96, 294, 450. See also Appendix I. Pleniinius, Q., 225. Plotius, A., 407. Plutarch (author), 59. I'ollentia, 330. Polybius (historian), 6, g, 12, 87, 90, 122 «., 179, 180, 185 n., 190, 198 «., 209 «., 251, 253, 305 ; (statesman), 280, 283, 286, 320, 345- Polyxenidas, 268-70. Pomerium, 37, 416, 453. Pompeii, 107, 409. Pompeius, Q. {co^. 141 B.C.), 244. Pompeius, Q. Rufus, his son (?) (cos. 88 B.C.), 414, 416, 4'9. 435- Pumpeius, Q. Rufus, his grandson (trib. 52 B.C.), 521. Pompeius, Cn. Strabo (cos. 89 B.C.), 399, 404, 406-8, 410, 419, 435, 436, 440. Pompeius, Cn. Magnus (his son, Pompey), born, 384 ; in civil war, 440-5 ; and Sulla, 444, 445, 457 ; character of, 388, 389, 463, 535 ; and Lepidus, 463, 464 ; in Spain, 465, 466 ; first consulate, 468, 469 ; retires, 470 ; conquers pirates, 477, 478 ;• war with Mithradates and Tigranes, 479, 480 ; reorganises the East, 480-4 ; and Roman parlies, 485-7, 489-91, 496 ; return^, 497 ; triumvirate, 49S-503 ; intrigues, 516, 517 ; at Luca, 517, 518 ; second consulate, 519 ; sole consul, 521, 522 ; alliance with the Senate, 522-5 ; war with Caesar, 527-35 ; defeat and death, 534, 535 ; sets pre- cedents for Cassarism, 323, 325, 449, 478, 479. 521- Pompeius, Cn. Magnus (his son), 537-9. Pompeius, Sext. Magnus (also his son), 537-9- Pomptine marshes, 16, 95. Pontile Insulas, L. C, in. Poutifex Maximus, 288, 328, 385, 491. Pontifices, 24, 49, 95, 291, 292. Pontius, Gavius, 108-10, 119. Pontius Telesinus, 442. Pontus, kingdom of, rise of, 238, 255, 329, 330, 420, 421 ; extent of, 422-4 ; wars with, 426-33, 445, 473^, 536. PopiUius, C, 377. Popillius. .!)V(rLa;nas. Po/>itliires, 324, 358, 384, 388, 391, 412, 438, 460, 468,470,478, 485-8, 490/1,496, 497- . Population cf Italy, 137 ; decline of, 228, 317, 318, 336, 546; increase in, 343. Populonia, battle of, 122. Porcius, L. , 221. Porcius. See Cato. Porsenna, Lars, 32, 33, 40. Portoria, abolished, 499 ; re-iniposed, 546. Possess/0. See Occuj/iatio, Ager publicus. Postumius, M. Pyrgensis, 207. Postumius. See Albinus, Megellus, Reg- illensis. Potentia, R. C, 239. Potitus, L. Valerius, 69. Prcejectiira {Prcefictiis iuri dicuitcio'), 90, no, 135, 210, 405, 411. Priefectus iirhi, 48, 529. Praeneste, 16, 98, 99, 104, 309, 441-3- Praetor, old name for consul, 98 ; special office instituted, 92 ; open to plcbs, 94 ; increase of, 297, by Sulla, 452 ; func- tions of, 297, 313, 453. 454- Priests, colleges of, 49, 74, 95, 290-2 ; elec- tion of, 288, 289, 333, 385, abolished, 451, restored, 492. See also Appen- dix I. Princifics, 138, 230. Privernum, 104, 108. Proconsul and propraetor, 107, 311-13, 452- 454. 547- Proscriptions, 417, 41S, 445-8, 461, 486, 491. Provinces, government of, 310-13, 547 ; law of C. Gracchus, 351, 352; Sulla's law, 452, 453, 523 ; Pompey's law, 522, 523 ; Cffi^ar's reforms, 501, 548 ; Sicily, 164, 232 ; Sardinia, 164 ; two Spains, 232, 240, 464, 465 ; Macedonia, 282 ; Africa, 253 ; Asia, 328, 329 ; Gallia Narbonensis, 323 ; Cilicia, 393, 482 ; Gallia Cisalpina, 412, 453 ; Crete, Syria, Bithynia, 482 ; Gallia Comata, 514. Pr02>inci(i, 310, 351, 412, 452, 502. Fiwocatio, 32, 48, 66, 71, 352, 449, 491, 494. 502, 503. Prusias I., 255, 260, 270, 271, 273. Prusias II., 255, 281. Ptolemaic, 394. Ptolemy 1., Soter son of Lagus, 124 Ptolemy II. Philadelphus, 165, 255. Ptolemy III. Euergeles 1., 255. Ptolemy IV. Philopator, 255, 760. Piolemy V. Epiphanes, 255, 260, 266. Ptolemy VI. (VII.) Philometor, 281, 329. Ptolemy VII. (IX.) Euergetes II. Physcon, 281, 329, 393, 419. Ptolemy X. (XII.) Alexander II., 473, 502. Ptolemy XI. (XIII.) Auletes, 487, 502, 517, Ptolemy XIT. (XIV.), 535, 536. Ptolemy XIII. (XV.), 536. Ptolemy Apion of Cyrene, 393. Ptolemy of Cyprus, 503. INDEX 571 Publicani {\.a.x-ia.rmerf.), 311, 312, 315, 327, 350. 35', 392> 420i 454> 461, 475. 479. 499. 500, 548. See Equcstcr Ordo and Tiixation. Publicola, P. Valerius, 31, 32, 48 Publilius, Q Philo, 94, 107. Publilius, Volero, 55. Pullus, L. Junius, 160. Punic wars, ist, 149-162 ; 2nd, 174-234 ; 3rd, 245-53. Punicus, 242. Puteoli, 206, 207, 349, 458, 459. Pydna, battle of, 278-9. Pyla;menes, 424. Pyrenees Mountains, 2, 176, 213, 372, 529. Pyg'. 79- , ,.. Pyrrhus, and Tarentum, 123 ; early life, 124, 125 ; schemes of, 106, 125 ; victories of, 126, 12S ; and Sicily, 18, icg, 131, 143, 149, 150 ; defeat of, 130 ; death, 130. Pythium, pass of, 278. QucFstiones special, ordered by Senate, 291, 342, 356, forbidden by Gracchus, 352 ; ordered by people, 365, 368, 387, 398, 399, 408, abolished by Sulla, 455 ; cjf. however 497, 521. QiicFstiones /'crpetuie (standing), Calpur- nian de Repetundis, 313, 333, 352 ; Sempronian, 350, 352, 353 ; Cornelian, 455, 456- See also Leges iudiciaiije. Quiesto7-es, parricidii et (Frarii, 48, 72 ; for military chest, 76 ; classici, 142 ; in pro- vinces, 297, 311, 315, 346; Ostian, 349, 387 ; proprKtore, 488 ; number increased by Sulla, 452 ; elected by tribes, 76 ; right to sit in Senate, 454-5. Quinctius, 243. See Cincinnatus, Cris- pinus, Flamininus. Quirinal, Mount, 22, 27, 38, 62. Quirinus, 23, 24, 35, 86. Rap.irius, C, 491. Raeti, 12 «., 374. Kamnes, 23, 44. Raphia, battle of, 265. Rasenna. Sec F^truscant'. Raudii Campi, battle of, 383. Ravenna, 5, 525. Kegia, 39. Regillensis, A. Postumius, 33, 34. Regillensis, M. Postumius, 77. Regillus, Lake, battle of, 33, 59. Regillus, L. yEmilius, 269. Regulus, C. Atilius (cos. 225 B.C.), 167. Regulus, M. Atilius (cos. 294 B.C.), 118. Regulus, M. Atilius (cos. 256 b.c), 148, 155-7, '5^1 2°°- Regulus, M. Atilius (cos. 217 B.C.), 193. Religion, Roman, compared with Greek, 35, 290 ; character of, 288-93 ; and politics, 187, 291-3 ; foreign worships, 226, 290, 291, 321 ; decay of, 320, 321 ; superstition, 385, 386 ; sacrilege, 385, 497- Remi, 504 «., 508. Remus, 21, 35, 36. Re/>etiind(P, 242, 313, 333, 353, 453, 501. Rex, Q. Marcius (cos. 118 n.c), 575. Rex, Q. Marcius (cos. 68 B.C.), 477, 479. Rex sacroruiii, or sacrijiciilus, 47, 95. Rhegium (Regium), 4, 18, 122, 146, 402; seized by Campanians, 127, 129, 150 ; retaken by Rome, 131, 150; in 2nd Punic war, 203, 209, 210, 220. Rhenus (Rhine) R., 504, 507, 510, 512. Rhodanus (Rhone) R., 11, 176-8, 182, 37^, 374, 503. 506. Rhodes, power and policy, 255, 257, 259 ; and Philip, 260, 264 ; and Antiochus, 266-8, 270, 272 ; and Perseus, 276, 278 ; humiliation of, 280, 2B1, 304, 315 ; and Mithradates, 427, 430 ; refuge, 442, 461. Rome, positinn of, i, ig ; trading centre, 6, 19, 42, 141, 142 ; original settlements, 37, 38 : unification, 38-40 ; sack and rebuilding of, 86-8 ; threatened by Han- nibal, 208, 209 ; by Samnites, 442, 443 ; under Caesar, 545. Romulus, 21-3, 34-7. Roscius, Sext. , 460. Rostra, 104, 417, 437. Rubicon R. , 5, 408, 453, 525, 526. Rufus. See Caelius, Klinucius, Rutilius .Sulpicius, Vibullius. RuUus, P. Servilius, 490. Rupilius, P., 328. Ruspina, 538. Rutilius, P. Lupus, 404, 406. Rutilius, P. Rufus, 366, 379, 396. Rutilus, C. Marcius (diet. 356 B.C.), 94, lOI. Rutilus, C. Marcius . (Censorinus, cos. 310 B.C.), I 12. SabelliaiN'S, 14, 15, 78, 107, 191, 231. Sabines, 14, 15, 167 ; rape of, 22, 36; and civitas, 119, 305. Sabinus, Q. Titurius, 508, 511. .Sabis (Sambre) R., 508. Sacer Mons, 54. Sacraiircnt-uin, jj, 1^9, 380. Sacriportus, battle of, 441. Sacroianct, 54, 71, 432. Sadducees, 482. Saguntum, 171-4, 177, 191, 214, 242. Salamis in Cyprus, 548. Salapia, 201, 219, 409. Siilassi, 166, 180, 326, 372. Salii, 24, 38. Salinator, M. Livius, 166, 221-3, 225, 228. Sallustius, C. Crispus (Sallust), 360, 361, 365. .368. Salluvii, 373. Salonae, 375. Salvius (IVyphon), 392. Samarobriva, 511 Samnites, iribes of, 15-17, 118; attack Volsci, 78, 99 ; seize Campania, 79, 100; ist war with, 100; alliance with, loi, 102 ; 2nd war with, 106-14 ; 3rd war with, 115-19; and Pyrrhus, 120, 123, 126, 127, 129, 150; and Hannibal, 201; in Social war, 402-5, 408-10, 419 ; in civil war, 435, 436, 438, 441-3. 57: INDEX Samniiiiii, 4, 130, 206, 209, 239, 448, 545. Samos, 255, 268, 269, 471. Sardinia, 11, 19; and Carthage, 13, 146, 154; i)roviiice, 163, 164, J46, 351; re- bellions in, 205, 239, 336 ; in civil wars, 438, 440, 443, 464, 529. Saticula, L. C. , in. Satricum (near Antiuni), 78, 99. Satricum (near Arpinum), no. Saturninu.s, L. Appuleius, 378, 381, 387, 389-91, 491. SccEvola, C. Mucius, 33, 59. Scsevola, P. Mucius (cos. 133 n.c), 337, 343- ScJEVola, Q. Mucius (augur, cos. 117 n.c), 39t, 396. Scaevola, Q. Mucius (pontif. nia.\., cos. 95 B-c.), 395, 396, 441. ScHptius, 548. Scarpheia, battle of, 285 .Scato, P. Vettius, 405, 406. Scaurus, M. /Emilius (cos. 115 b.c), 360-2, 364, 365. 375> 387. 391. 396, 399- Scaurus, M. Aurelius, 378. Sciathus, 428. Scipio, L. Cornelius Barbatus (cos. 298 B.C.), 116, IT7. Scipio, Cn. Cornelius Asina, his son (cos. 260 B.C.), 154, 157. Scipio, L. Cornelius, his brother (cos. 259 B.C.), 154. Scipio, Cn. Cornelius Calvus, his son (cos. 222 B.C.), 16S, 178, 213-5, Scipio, P Cornelius, his brother (cos. 218 B.C.), against Hannibal, 177-9, 182-7 ■ in Spain, 193, 213-5. Scipio, P. Cornelius Africanus (his son), at the Ticinus, 183 ; at Cannae, 200; char- acter of, 215, 216; commands in Spain, 216-9 ! consul, 224, 225 ; in Africa, 226- 231 ; at Zama, 229, 230 ; in Asia, 268- 271 ; death, 273 ; and politics, 300-5 ; and Caesarism, 133, 323. Scipio, L. Cornelius Asiaticus (his brother), 218, 268, 273, 303. Scipio, P. Cornelius .lEmilianus Africanu'=, in Spain, 242, 244, 245, 248, 313, 361, 367 ; at siege of Carthage, 248-53, 313 ; in tlie East, 330 ; censor, 331, 346 ; char- acter of, 332, 333 ; policy of, 337, 342-4 ; Hellenist, 320, 337 ; death of, 345. Scipio, L. Cornelius Asiaticus (cos. 83 b.c), 439, 440 Scipio, P. Cornelius N.isica Corculum (cos. 162 B.C.), 248, 331, 374. Scipio, P. Cornelius Nasica Serapio (cos. 138 B.C.), 341, 342. Scipio. See also Metellus. .Scirthasa, battle of, 393 Scodra, 165, 264, 276, ;74. Scordisci, 326, 374, 375 Scylacium (Scolacium), R. C. , 347. Scythians, 329, 330, 424, 425, 480. Segesta, siege of, 154. Segovia, 465. Seleucia, 483. Seleucids, 254, 472, 544. Seleucus I. Nicator, 124. Selinus, 145. Sellasia, battle of, 165, 175, 254. .Sempronius. Sec Asellio, Gracchus, Longus, Tuilitanus. Sena Callica, R.C., 122, 221. Senate, of the kings, 23, 42, 44; of the early republic, 50-53 ; resists reforms, 53, 66, 74, 92 ; patricio-plebeian, ascendency of, 96, 97, 128, 133, 287, 288, 297-Q, 304 ; controls army, 136, 137; controls reli- gion, 207^ 291 ; controls administration of provinces, 228, 271, 279, 311-13, 351 ; struggles with consuls, 224, 276 ; with comitia, 261, 307, 308, 339-42, 3477^'., 390, 414 ; foreign policy of, 228, 234-7, 262- 265, 271, 272, 280-2, 322, 323, 330, 331, 393i 394) 47i~3 \ failure to govern, 325, 32^> 331-3, 357. 358, 360- 365 ; number increased, 455, 542 ; and Drusus, 395-7 ; restored by Sulla, 418, 449 yl ; over- thrown, 469, 470, 478, 479; and triumvirs, 497-500 ; and Pompey, 522, 523, 527 ; of Caesar, 529, 542. Senatus consniiziin de Bacchanalihus, 291-2 ; ultimum, 298, 352, 435, 491, 493, 497> 525- . ^ , .Senones, 15, 85, 121, 122, 166 ; in Gaul, 512. Sentinum, battle of, 118, iiy. Sentius, C, 428. Septimius, L., 535. Se/itiinontiittii, 37, 38. Septumuleius, L., 356. Sequana (Seine) R., 507, 508, 572, 573. Sequani, 505, 507, 513. .Serranus, A. Atilius, 267. Sertorius, Q , in civil war, 435-8 ; in Spain, 372,440, 445, 457,_ 464-6, 472, 473. Servilius, C. (in .Sicily), 393. Servilius, C. (praetor, 91 B.C.), 400. Servilius, Cn. Geminus (cos. 217 B.C.), 190, 191, 193, 197, 198, 214. Servilius, P. Vatia Isauricus (cos. 79 BC ), 472, 492. _ Servius Tullius. 26-9 ; wall of, 27, 38, 39 ; constitution of, 27-9, 45-7. .Sestius, P., 517, 518. Sestos, 269. Sextius, C. Calvinus, 373. .Sextius, L. Lateranus, 91, 92. Sibylline books, 30, 292. Sicily, 2, 18, 19; and Pyrrhus, 125, 129- 131; and Carthage, 143, 145, 146, 169; in ist Punic war, 149-62 ; province, 164; tithes of, 311, 317, 351; in 2nd Punic war, 185, 200, 203-6, 210-12, 224, 225 ; slave wars in, 326-8, 392, 393 ; in civil wars, 438, 443, 529, 531 ; and Verres, 469, 489. Sicoris (Segres) R., 529-31. Sicyon, 2:;8, 262. Silanus, D. Junius (cos. 62 B.C.), 493, 494. Silanus, M. Junius (praetor, 212 B.C.', 216, 218. Silanus, M. Junius fcos. log b.c), 377. Silo, Q. Pompaedius, 404-6, 410. Silva Litana, 200. Sinnaca, 520. Sinope, 421, 424, 425, 475, 482. Sinuessa, R. C, 119. INDEX 573 Siris R., 126. Siscia, 374, 375. Slavery, forms and influence of, 316/., 327, 546 ; in Sicily, 164, 212, 326-8, 392, 393. Slaves in army, 202-5 ; tax on manumission of, 220. Smyrna, 268, 270, 396. Social war, causes of, 395, 400-2 ; import- ance of, 399 ; course of, 405-10 ; results of, 410-12. Socii. See Allies, Italians, Latins. Socrates of Mithynia, 425, 426. Soli (Pompeiopolis), 483. Solon, 66, 337. Solus, 145. Sophene, 329, 476, 482. Sophonisba, 218, 219, 223, 227. Sora, 104, III, 114; L. C., 115. Sosis, 211. Spain, 2, 3 ; conquered by Carthage, 145, 169, 170-5, 178 ; in 2nd Punic war, 202, 205, 210, 213-19 ; ceded to Rome, 231 ; provinces, 232, 240, 242, 311, 312 ; wars in, 240-5, 368, 371, 372, 392 ; and Sertorius, 440, 445, 457, 464-6; and Piso, 4S7, 490; Caesar in, 492, 498, 529-31, 537, 539; under Pompey, 518, 522, 527; under Csesar, 544, 547. .Spanish sword, 139, 217. Spanish troops, 137, 148, 190, 196, 214, 218, 223, 225, 227. Sparta, 165, 212, 213, 254, 258, 267, 272, 273, 283-5. Spartacus, 4G6-8. Spendius, 163. Spina, 5. Spoletium, L. C, 15, 164 «., 168, igi, 296 «., 405, 441, 442. SpoUa opiiiia, 22, 79, 80 «., 168. Stabias, 409. Statins Gellius, 114. Sthenius Statilius, 120, 122. Stipenditun (provincial), 253, 311. See Ta.xation, .Stffini, 375. Stoics, 297, 321, 387. Stolo, C. Licinius, 91, 92, 306. Subura, 27, 38. Sucro R., 465. Suebi, 505, 510. Suessa Aurunca, L. C, iii, 192, 209. Suessiones, 373, 508. Suessula, 203, 204, 206, 207. Suetonius (biographer), 87. Sugambri, 510. Sulla, Faustus Cornelius, 458. Sulla, L. Cornelius Feli.\, 9, 17 ; captures Jugurtha, 369-71 ; in Cilicia, 394, 425 ; in Social war, 404-6, 409, 410; character of, 414-16 ; march on Rome, 416 ; first legislation, 417, 418; and Mithradates, 429-34, 471 ; in civil war, 439-45 ; pro- scriptions, 417, 445-8, 486 ; colonies, 44S ; dictator, 448, 449 ; constitution of, 325, 411, 412, 449-58, overthrown, 461-4, 469, 470, 492 ; resignation and death of, 45S, 459 ; and Cajsar, 445, 446. 460, 491, 540, 542, 547 ; and Pompey, 440, 443-5, .Sulla, P. Cornelius (Catilinarian), 487. Sulpicius, P. Rufus (trib. 88 B.C.), 396, 413..414, 4'7: Sulpicius, Servius (in Social war), 406, 407. .Sura, Bruttius, 428. Suthul, 365. Sutrium, 82; L. C, 88, 112, 405. Sybaris, 18. .Syphax, 214, 218, 225-7, 247." .Syracuse, q, 18 ; naval power of, 79, 165 ; and Pyrrhus, 125, 128, 129, 131 ; .and Carthage, 141, 142, 146, 163 ; in ist Punic war, 149 f. ; allied with Rome, 151; with Carthage, 204; subdued by Marcellus, 210-12, 219 ; Roman, 349, 392. Syria, and Pyrrhus, 124, 130; position and power of, 212, 254, 255, 259 ; war with, 265-72 ; and Perseus, 275, 276, 278 ; Rom.in Protectorate, 281 ; decay of, 329, 330, 420 ; under Tigranes, 472, 475, 476 ; and Pompey, 480-2 ; province, 482, 518, 519. 521. 535. 536. T.4!NIA, the, at Carthage, 249, 251. Tagus R., 242. Tamesis (Thames) R., 510. Tannetnm, 177. Tarentum, 17, iS, 95 ; and Lucanians, loi, 105-7, i"> 112, 119, 120; treaty with, 122, 142; war with, 122-30; and Car- thage, 131, 135, 146,, 150; in 2nd Punic war, 203, 206, 207, 210-12, 219, 221, 222 ; Neptunia, 347. Tarquinii, 88, 89, 99, 112. i Tarquinius Collatinus, 30, 31. Tarquinius, L. Priscus, 25, 26, 38, 40. Tarquinius, L. Superbus, 29-34, 38, 40. Tarquinius, Se.xtus, 29-31, 37. Tarracina (Anxur), 78, 95 ; K. C, 104. Tarraco, 213, 218, 219, 242, 372. Tartessus (Tarshish), 170. Tatius, T., 22, 23, 35. Taurini, 166, 180, 183. Taurisci, 374, 377. Tauromeniuni, 328. Taurus, Mount, 270, 271, 472. Tautamns, 244. Taxation in Italy: Tributnm, 46, 82, 135, 138, 295, 315; vicesittta manumissio- H7it>i, 220, 315 ; extraordinary, 205, 206 ; portoria, 499, 546 ; in provinces : decu)n(F, 164, 311, 351, 454, 499, 500, 548 ; stipenditiin or tributuiii, 242, 279, 280, 311 ; methods of, 311, 314, 315. Taxiles, 431. Teanum, Appulum, 110. Teanum, Sidicinum, 100, 192, 202, 209, 405, 440, 441, 446. Tectosages, in Galatia, 257 ; in Gaul, 381. Tegea, 285. Telamon, battle of, 167, 168, 188, 436. Tempe, pa-iS of, 262, 263, 277, 278. Temple, at Jerusalem, 482 ; of Persephone, at Locri, 130 ; of Juno Lacinia, 228 ; Juno at Veil, 81, 82, 84 n. Temples at Rome, of Bellona, 443 ; of Castor and Pollux, 34; of Concord, 92, 356 ; of Diana, 27 ; of Fides, 24, 341 ; 574 IMDEX of Janus, 24 ; of Juno on the Aventine, 82 ; of Jupiter Capitolinu*;, 26, 30. 32, 40, 341 ; burnt, 441 ; restored, 496, 497 ; of Jupiter Feretrius, 22, 79 ;/. ; of Jupiter Stator, 22, 36, 37, 493 ; of Rediculus Tutanus, 209 ; of Vesta, 34, 42, 43. Tencteri, 510, 519. 'I'enedos, 433. Terentius, P. Afer (Terence), 345. Terentius. See Varro. Teres, 282. Termantia, 244. Terminus (a god), 24, 30. Teuta, Queen, 165. Teutoboduus, 381. Teutones, 381, 382. 'I'liala, 367, 369. Thapsus, battle of, 538. Thasos, 260. Thebes, 263, 285, 429, 431. Theniiscyra, 475. Thena;, 253. Theodosia, 424 Thermae, 157. Thermon, 258. Thermopylae, 258, 263, 268, 285. Thespiae, 428. Thetsalonica, 282, 531. Thessaly, 254, 262, 264, 267, 268, 274, 277, 282, 429, 432, 534, 535. Thrace, 266, 268, 270, 274, 374, 428, 432, 47i._ Thurii, 120, 122, 123, 203, 2o6, 225. Tiber R., 6, 15, 19, 32, 33, 38, 85 n., 86, .113- Tibur (Tivoli), 6, 16, 98, 99, 104, 209, 309. Ticinus R., 5, 8 ; battle of, 1S3. Tifata, Mount, 100, 203, 208, 440. Tigranes, king of Armenia, 420, 424-6, 47 1-3. 475-7. 479. 480. Tigranes (his son), 479. Tigranocerta, 473, 476, 477. Tigurini, 377, 3S1. Tilphossium, Mount, 429. Tingis (Tangiers), 464. Titles, 23, 35, 44 ; Titii, 35. Titius, Sext., 391. Tolenus R., 406. Tolistoboii, 257. Tolosa, 374, 377, 504. Tolumnius, Lars, 79. Torquatus, L. Manlius (cos. 65 B.C.), 487. Torquatus, T. Manlius, Imperiosus (cos. 340 B.C.), 90, 101-3. Torquatus, T. Manlius (cos. 235 B.C.), 164, 202, 205. Tougeni, 377, 381. Transpadanes. See Franchise and Gaul. Trapezus, 424. Trasimene, Lake of, 8 ; battle at, i8g, 190. TrebeDius, L., 478. Trebia R., 5 ; battle of, 183-7. Trebonius, C, 529, 537, 550. Trebula, 115. Tremellius, L., 283. Trerus R., 7, 16, 64, 78, no, 114. Treveri, 511. Triarii, 103, 138. Triarius, C. Valerius, 477. Tribuni cerarU, 469 «. Tribiini villi tuiii, 136, 139, 300, 380. Tribuni militnut consulari potestate, 73, 74- . . Tribum pubis, origin of, 54-6 ; sacrosanct, 54, 71, 72, 452, 491, 525 ; number in- creased, 66 ; powers increased, 72, 97 ; instruments of Senate, 97, 224, 298, 308 ; again popular leaders, 308, 338 _/C, 341, 342, 346 /., 387 /, 413, 414 ; powers limited, 417, 418, 450-2, restored, 468-70; office of, suspended, 66, 67, deposition from, 340, 341, cf. 478, re-election to, 341. 344. 34''. 353- Tribnnicia potestas, 542, 543. Tribits of Romulu-, 23. 44 ; Servian, 27, 46, 47 ; number increased, 88, 104, 108, 115, 134; number completed, 293; and centuries, 295, 296 ; size of, 305. ^^calso Comitia tributa, Concilium plebis, and Franchise. Tributuin (Roman), 46, 82, 135, 138, 295, 315 ; (provincial), see Stipeniiinin and Ta.\ation. Trifanum, battle of, 103. Trinobantes, 511. Tritiundinuin, 394. Triocala, 393. "Triumvirate, First," formed, 499 f. ; re- newed, 518-20; breach in, 52iy^ Triumviri mensarii, 203. Trocmi, 257. Troy, 20, 84. Tuditanus, C. Sempronius, 344, 375. Tullianum, 25, 38, 370, 371, 494. Tullius, Attius, 60. TuUus Hostilius, 24, 25, 34. Tunes (Tunis), 156, 227, 249. Turdetani, 240. Turnus, 20, 40. Turpilius, T. Silanus, 357. Tusca, 247; R., 253. Tusculum, 99, 108. Twelve Tables, 70, 71. Tyndaris, battle of, 155. Tyrrhenian = Etruscan, 12, 79; coast and sea, 4, 13. Ubii, 510. Umbria, 116, 118, 191, 204, 222. 224, 402, 405, 407, 408, 442. Umbrians, 14, 15, 113, 167, Unciarium fenus, 70. Usipetes, 510, 519. Us Its, 70. Usury. See Debt and Interest. Utica, 143, 146, 163, 226, 227 ; Roman ally, 248, 253, 359, 362, 368, 394. U.xellodunum, 514. Vacc^i, 172, 242, 244. Vadimo, Lake, first battle of, 112 ; second battle of, 122, 166. Vaga, 366. Valentia, 243, 465. Valeria, legend of, 60, 61. Valeria, wife of Sulla, 458. INDEX 575 Valerius. See Corvus, Falto, Flaccus, Laivinus, Messalla, Puljlicula, Triarius. Valerius, L. (admiral), 122, 123. Valerius, M'. Maxinnis 54. Vardaei, 326, 375. Varinius, P., 466. Varius, Q., 398, 35)9. Varro, C. Terentius (cos. 216 B.C.), 193, 194 ; at Cannae, 196-8, 200 ; 204, 305. Varro, M. Terentius (author), 80, 180, 546 ; in Spain, 531. Varus, P. Quintilius, 226. Vaiinius, P., 502, 517, 519. V'ectigal. See Ager Catiipaniis and Ager ptiblicus. Veil, 59, 62, 63, 79-S2, 84, 86, 88. Velabrum, 37, 39. Velia, 32, 38. I 'elites, 138, 139, 379. Velitrae, 40, 59, 78, 104, 108. Venafrum, 405. Veneti (in Italy), 12, 87, 166, 167, 374. Veneti (in Gaul), 508, 509. Venusia, L. C, 119, 126, 127, 201, 220, 404, 405, 407, 410. Vercelte, battle of, 383, 389. Vercingetorix, 512-4, 523. Vermina, 231. Verona, 5, 375, 382. Verres, C., 469, 480, ^48. Verulfe, 115. Vesontio, 507. Vestal Virgins, 24, 35, 49, 85, 86, 385, 386. Vestini, 15, 403, 408. Vesuvius, Mount, 5, 466; battle of, 103. Veterans, Scipio's, 224, 240, 314; Marius', 369, 379, 390 ; Sulla's, 448, 462, 483 ; Pompey's, 4S6, 499, 500 ; Caesar's, 537, 538, 542. 547- Vetilius, C, 243. Vettius, T., 392. Vettones, 242. Veturia, 60, 6t. Veturius, T., 108. Viae. .9t'<; Appendix II. Via Aimilia, 239. Via Appia, 7, 95, in, 114, iig, 192, 207, 209, 404, 440, 521. Via A'lrelia, 348. Viii Doiititia, 348, 374, 504. Via Egnatia, 282, 531. \'ia Flainiiiia, 15, 115, 168, 188, iqd n., 405, 528 ; nova, 239. \'ia Cabinia, 375. I'ia Latina, 7, 192, 202, 203, 208, 405, 443- I'ia Valeria, 115. 209,405,406; Claudta- I'aleria, 7. VibuUius, L. Rufus, 528. J''icesi)na tiianujnissioniiiii, 220, 315, Vicus sceleraiiis, 29. Viminal, Mount, 27, 38. Vindaliuni, battle of, 373. Virginia, legend o(, 68, 69. Viriathus, 243, 244. Viridomarus, 168. Vocontii, 180, 373. Volaterrae, 13, 116, 443. Volci, 40, 126. Volsci, 16, 40, 59-61, 65 «., 78, 98, 99, 104. Volsinii, 82, 118, 126; lake of, 8. Volso, Cn. Manlius (cos. 189 B.C.), 271. Volso, L. Manlius (cos. 256 B.C.), 156. Volso, L. Manlius (praetor, 218 B.C.), 177 182. Volturnus R., 7, 95, 106, 192, 201, 208 , 404. 4p5- Volumnia, 60, 61. Volumnius, L., 116. Wall of Romulus, 37 ; of Servius Tuliius 27, 38. 39- Wills, Roman, 45, 70. Women, old position of, 41, 65 «. ; emanci- pation of, 320. Xanthifpus, 157. Yeomanry, decay of, 233, 317, 318, 334, 335, 545-. Yoke, passing under, 62, 109, 365. Zacvnthu.s, 268, 272, 432. . Zama Regia, 367 ; battle of, 178, 229, 230, 273. Ziela, 477, 483, 536. Printed by Ballantynf, Hanson v5*= Co, Edinburgh <5^ London ^ 642-44 so rJ^'^^'^NE LOS ANGE^::y'L^-r, : •»?; W'. ii^^ ^ii;Wr^^^ ■^'x\ ■•i^ >'^-i yx'v- '-'■■".if--' AA 000 9113150 CENTRAL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY University of California, San Diego DATE DUE APR 1 1 1975 *»iiR 1 8 RECT . ~:0 •J 9 QEC16 Wf' CI 39 UCSD Libr, , .■^'>''l'0;flc'' '■;■